The remarkable career of Scotland's Alex Harvey is one laced with tragedy and wild creativity. His brother Les, guitarist with Stone The Crows, died on stage in the early 70s and the accident seemed to galvanise Alex into a burst of creative energy, forming a new band, one that cemented his own legend as leader of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. His career began in the early 60s, (he won a competition as Scotland's answer to Tommy Steele), through a stint in "Hair" and then the SAHB's always fighting the bottle and fate. This comprehensive double is a perfect overview of the career of one of rock's true characters.

Harvieu’s defiance against the odds and her willingness to lay herself open to make what she believed was within her is baked into every groove of the record, across every stylistic turn: the giddy pop of ‘Strange Thing’, the gothic swoon of ‘Cruel Disguise’, the smokey seductiveness of ‘Yes Please’ through to the stirring torchsong finale ‘My Body She Is Alive’.

Harvieu has come a long way from the 17-year-old who was signed to Island Records and who had no intention of becoming a singer-songwriter. Even when she made her debut album “Through The Night”, her confidence was low. “I did help write a few of the songs on that record, which I’m still very fond of, but I felt more of a mouthpiece for someone else’s talent, which eats away at you especially because I had so much to say lyrically I just hadn’t learnt how to as yet.”

Her injury - a broken spine following “a freak accident” between recording and releasing her debut album - undermined Harvieu even further. Likewise, Island parted ways with her six months after it’s release, despite a Top 5 chart entry, making the BBC’s Sound Of 2012, a 5-star live review from The Guardian and TV exposure. What followed was what Harvieu describes as “some very dark years” which she addresses in songs like ‘Spirit Me Away’ and the 50’s ballad-evoking ‘You Don’t Know Me.’ A split with her long term partner, her manager and then her beloved Salford. “In one fell swoop everything was gone. I knew I had to get away, start again, rebuild myself.”

It wasn’t until 2015 to be exact, when she met Romeo Stodart, the Magic Numbers frontman and songwriter who had emailed after seeing her perform on Later… With Jools Holland, to ask if she’d consider writing together. “When we started, the energy was immediately different to anyone I’d worked with before, there was this insane instant musical connection” she says. “I loved that Romeo really embraced who I was and encouraged it, I was starting to realise that I didn’t have to be anything other than myself.”

The pair spent the next two years co-writing: “I wasn’t in a massive hurry, because at last I was having fun” Harvieu says. ‘We’d stay up all night drinking, dancing and playing music, I felt like I was re-discovering a girl who had been hidden, quietened. I’d tell Romeo, I don’t just want to paint pretty pictures I want to revel in the drama of my life, the good and the bad, before I was afraid to say something in my lyrics, but no longer. I felt free.”

The album was co-produced by Romeo Stodart and Dave Izumi Lynch, owner of Echo Zoo studio in Eastbourne where recording took place. “It was a truly magical experience working with Dave & Romeo, they are two absolute nurturing musical wizards.” says Harvieu.

Harvieu’s lyrical confidence is evident throughout the album and has you leaning in to absorb line after line. Her voice, soaring and caressing in equal measure, is matched in force by her flirtatious personality. From the album’s opening lyric “Let me put my paws on you, strange thing’through to the feminine bite of ‘Curves And Swerves’ “I’ve got some curves and some swerves, what you gonna do about it?” which crackles with sexual tension and an aching vulnerability.

Among Harvieu’s new songs are messages of hope to her younger, anxious self. To the teenage goth Ren in ‘Little Raven’, she says: “I want you to know, that I’m starting to feel, but its gonna take time, but I’m ready to heal”. ‘Tomorrow Girl Today’ is to the Ren “who would make bad decisions… we can all be very self-destructive, but will we make it this time?”

So what now, Ren Harvieu? “I’ve created a second chance for myself“ she says. “And I will keep creating second chances for myself, because this is my life and I’m not afraid to revel in it anymore.” Revel In the Drama of Ren Harvieu - finally we all can too.

TRACK LISTING

1. Strange Thing
2. Teenage Mascara
3. This Is How You Make Me Feel
4. Curves And Swerves
5. Cruel Disguise
6. Yes Please
7. Spirit Me Away
8. This Is Our Love
9. You Don’t Need Me
10. Tomorrow’s Girl Today
11. Little Raven
12. My Body She Is Alive

Hakushi Hasegawa (They/Them pronouns) is a musician, producer and singer-songwriter based in Tokyo, Japan, and the first Japanese artist signed to the Brainfeeder label. Consistent with Brainfeeder’s ethos of seeking out artists operating outside the confines of genre since the label was founded in 2008 by Flying Lotus, Hakushi’s music is tricky to categorize as it straddles a few genres: alternative, electronic, jazz, pop/J-pop. Sometimes it’s pretty, at times it’s very intense and fast-paced. Releasing since 2018, they’ve already made a name for themselves domestically in Japan with a string of wonderfully wild releases and started to build a cult following internationally. Collabs to date have included Kid Fresino, yuigot, TOKYO SKA PARADISE ORCHESTRA, Yukichikasaku/men and Eye from Boredoms. Their debut album “Air Ni Ni” arrived in 2019, cementing their reputation as one of Japan’s most exciting, adventurous artists.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Only You
A2. O(__*)
A3. Scary Point
A4. Desert
A5. Cold Goat
A6. Stamens, Pistils, Parties

B1. Evil Things
B2. Itsukushii Hibi
B3. I Can See Mountains
B4. Neutral

'Mahogakko' is the new album by Hakushi Hasegawa (They/Them pronouns) – a musician/singer-songwriter based in Tokyo, Japan, and the first Japanese artist signed to Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. The record includes the singles ‘Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)’ – featuring bass wizard Sam Wilkes (Leaving Records) – and ‘Boy’s Texture’ plus ‘Gone’ with rapper KID FRESINO. Consistent with Brainfeeder’s ethos of seeking out artists operating outside the confines of genre since the label started in 2008, Hakushi’s music is tricky to categorize as it straddles a few genres: alternative, electronic, jazz, pop/J-pop. Sometimes it’s pretty, at times it’s very intense and fast-paced. The FADER described ‘Mouth Flash’ as “wild-eyed free-associated beat poetry delivered through achingly beautiful melody”. Their music’s singular character has earned Hakushi plaudits from Crack Magazine, Needledrop (Anthony Fantano), XLR8R, Paste, Jazziz, Bandcamp Weekly, and Tone Glow.

TRACK LISTING

1. Departed
2. Gone Feat. KID FRESINO
3. Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)
4. Repeal (Tekkai)
5. The Blossom And The Thunder
6. KYOFUNOHOSHI
7. NENNEKOKOROMI
8. Forbidden Thing (Kimmotsu)
9. Mahōinter (v2)
10. Boy’s Texture
11. Enbami
12. Outside (Soto)

Hakushi Hasegawa (They/Them pronouns) is a musician, producer and singer-songwriter based in Tokyo, Japan, and the first Japanese artist signed to the Brainfeeder label. Consistent with Brainfeeder’s ethos of seeking out artists operating outside the confines of genre since the label was founded in 2008 by Flying Lotus, Hakushi’s music is tricky to categorize as it straddles a few genres: alternative, electronic, jazz, pop/J-pop. Sometimes it’s pretty, at times it’s very intense and fast-paced. Releasing since 2018, they’ve already made a name for themselves domestically in Japan with a string of wonderfully wild releases and started to build a cult following internationally. Collabs to date have included Kid Fresino, yuigot, TOKYO SKA PARADISE ORCHESTRA, Yukichikasaku/men and Eye from Boredoms.

“Somoku Hodo” was Hakushi’s debut release in 2018 as a teenager, featuring fan favourites ‘Somoku’ and ‘Doku’ – a hyperspeed junglist jazz workout.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Somoku
A2. Doku
A3. Ta Hui Xiaoxi
A4. Qie Boming

B1. Cue
B2. Hamidasu Yubi
B3. Doku (SCREWED) [Vinyl-only Bonus Track]

A glance at the résumés of Hash Redactor’s members might seed certain expectations. But with their debut full-length, Drecksound, the band―fronted by guitarist Alec McIntyre of Ex-Cult, featuring NOTS rhythm warriors Meredith Lones on bass and Charlotte Watson on drums, and rounded off by George Williford (stringed instrumentalist of various Memphis acts) on second guitar―banishes any residual side-project status.

Though Drecksound at times evokes certain mini-masterpieces of recent history, like The Country Teasers’ Destroy All Human Life, or labelmates Spray Paint’s Feel the Clamps, it ventures into musical territory tethered neither to its own lineage, nor to that of the current era...a clattering, distorted oasis in the sleek digital desert of the late twenty-teens.

Yet perhaps both because and in spite of the isolation that can typify rock music-making at the end of this malfunctioning decade, these twelve songs deliver a timely and cathartic social criticism: one that champions a comic nihilism, acknowledging the abyss while laughing in its face. As McIntyre wryly sneers in the opening lines of Open Invite to the Cave Party, “I won’t settle for anything less than a four-star refugee camp...” McIntyre’s writing chortles in puckish amusement at humanity’s paradoxical impulse toward self-destruction. A merry prankster, but one more in the mold of a black-clad Terry Gilliam than a Ken Kesey acid casualty. This is on no fuller display than in A-side epic In The Tank, written through the eyes of a vindictive custodian who boils alive the wealthy patrons at the isolation tank facility where he works. HR is out for some weird revenge, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

McIntyre and Williford’s guitar interplay draws from a rundown of usual and unusual suspects in the tight corner of avant-punk guitar work, conjuring some free-association that includes: Marquee Moon, an imaginary-electric John Fahey, the playing on Ornette Coleman’s mid-70s Body Meta and Dancing In Your Head, prime-era Flesheaters, plus the first two Meat Puppets albums. Without anything resembling traditional leads, guitars snake in and out and around Lones’s bass lines, which alternate between slinky, ohrwurm hooks and steel-cable raw power. All of this is locked together by Watson’s visceral swing. It doesn’t feel controversial to claim that the duo of Watson and Lones constitutes one of the best rhythm sections to be heard anywhere in contemporary punk music. Taken as a whole, the songs possess the character of drunken koans—belabored jokes that, peeling away layers of churning riff and gnarled hook, possess some kind of ultimate truth, albeit a cheeky one.

After playing out heavy in 2018 with a refined live show, a four-song demo, and several Gonerfest appearances under their belt, Drecksound was cut entirely at home on a borrowed 8-track cassette machine. Matt Qualls of Memphis’ Young Avenue Sound mixed the resulting deranged mess into its final form which Goner Records and Upset The Rhythm have teamed up to release.

The latest transmission from the world of Gunnar Haslam, "Kalaatsakia" wildly sprawls across the intersections of techno and more abstract sounds to take us on a wideranging journey from the subterranean to the coastal, from blown-out dub tones through fractured rhythms. An incredible work that is not easy to pigeonhole, "Kalaatsakia" is a full length album that navigates and sketches landscapes where new languages are created from old, dead ones to emerge as the lingua franca of interconnected immersive zones.

Haslam is an avid home listener of dub, dancehall and calypso, and that influence is quickly felt as Kalaatsakia launches with a tight electro snap and dubwise crash. Kalaatsakia advances and retreats seasonally, tightening up for the floor with the chrome-plated “Broadcast” and “Kjolle” while splintering apart on “Kalapuyan” and “nxbound”. Its constituent parts are often left to collapse in on themselves, smearing themes into residual trails. As the narrative of the album disintegrates and unfolds into more deconstructed territory, it stretches out even further with a striking skittering mental tease, settling into burbling sub-audible vocals and resonant spaces that all form a part of Haslam's self-created subconscious language.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Been patiently waiting for this epic long player since hearing the clips a few weeks back. Gunnar Haslam is a stone cold gee, and we're lucky enough to be accompanying this producer on his ascension in real time - with each release superseding the last. "Kalaat Sakia" is a modern masterpiece.

TRACK LISTING

1. Broadcast
2. Kalapuyan
3. Transdisciplinary
4. Nxbound
5. Kjolle
6. Rservoir
7. Istvaeonic
8. Kpalaga
9. Kaltrees
10. Invariance
11. Density
12. Second Version 

AMC’s hit series ‘Halt And Catch Fire’ captures the rise of the PC-era during the early 80s and the technology revolution. Nominated by Vox as the best show in 2016, it’s “a potent look back at the earliest days of the internet that also glimpsed, through some hazy curtain, the world we live in right now.” Acclaimed for its exceptional soundtrack by former Tangerine Dream musician and award winning composer, Paul Haslinger has created a period-appropriate synth score that admirably sets the mood and tone of the bygone era.

Revisiting his time in the pioneering electronic band during the mid-80s, the Austrian composer writes with a uniquely knowledgeable yet less overtly nostalgic ear that keeps the show’s current audience in mind. Acknowledging the time in which the series itself has been created alongside when the show is set, Haslinger’s bold and innovative scores have seen his Hollywood career escalate over the last two decades. The man behind the music for Blow, Resident Evil and Death Race has become one of the industry’s most sought after composers. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Golden Gate
2 A Wolf In Unix
3 The Scenic Route
4 First Day On The Job
5 It Speaks
6 Reverse Engineering
7 Security Is A Myth
8 The Morning After
9 Rooftop Fireworks
10 I Need A Little Time
11 Western Arrivals
12 The Slingshot
13 10broad36
14 The Way In
15 Run Time
16 Last Nerve
17 Gordon Steals A Cabbage Patch
18 The Cost Of Doing Business
19 Joe's Truth
20 Go Get The Bike
21 The End Of Donna's Day
22 It's Not Right
23 MacMillan Utility 

It’s a strange betweenworld, bookended by sleep and the jolt of being wide awake in a place where you wonder how you got there. You know the feeling… It seems familiar but the colours are, well, unreal. In a high-ceilinged room, a grand piano plays lush melodies as, meanwhile, somewhere, an Alice In Wonderland clock ticks, cellos are bowed, a swarm of something vibrates and the hallucinatory crowd around Rosemary’s Baby babble. An echoey electronic hum builds and falls like a 50s refrigerator passed through and effects board, things run backwards, staccato strings are plucked… and that’s not the half of it. “I’ve never been happy staying in one particular school of musical thought. The fun has been turning things on their heads, to try something you were not supposed to do.” We’re on an immersive and adventurous travelogue with the former member of the legendary Tangerine Dream, Paul Haslinger - this is a man who knows how to build tension, hold moods, illustrate contempt, lies, passion and pleasure; He can create fear, loathing and love - he’s been unlocking the nuances of such emotions in a hugely successful career as a TV and film soundtrack composer (Halt And Catch Fire, Underworld and the Golden Globe-nominated Sleeper Cell). ‘Exit Ghost’ is his long thought out opus, a moment caught in time, flicking through reference points, taking an ethereal excursion that permeates musical genres as it becomes awash with intricate sounds and cross-pollinating rhythms. Built originally from the warmth of his grand piano ‘Exit Ghost’ resonates with purity and power, from an eerie and evocative betweenworld, that’s at once expansive and rolling, then intoxicating and suffocating in equal measures; modern composition at its most uplifting; cerebral, celebratory, intense and beautiful. “The soul searching in connection with this record was extensive. Finding places of resonance, giving a colour to your memories. It was more challenging because it’s not somebody else’s narrative. Finding the core of your own story can be the most difficult task of all.” Created over the span of eight years and filled with literal and personal references, the album itself is a testament to the search - a quest filled with hints, particles and suggestions. 

TRACK LISTING

A1 The Faltering Sky
A2 Intrinsic
A3 Room 3
A4 Exit Ghost
A5 Valse I
A6 August 2-22
B1 Berlin 86-11
B2 White Sun
B3 Mayerling
B4 FernDell

The Living City captures the Jon Hassell Group in September 1989 performing as part of an audio-visual installation inside the World Financial Center Winter Garden in New York City, with Brian Eno mixing the band live.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Ituri
B1 Alchemistry
B2 Adedara Rising
C1 Mashujaa
C2 Paradise Now
D1 Nightsky

Further Fictions is a double CD anthology of the music on the vinyl editions (as well as over-arching title for the reissue campaign as a whole), with a disc devoted to each album in hardbound book style packaging, and an extensive booklet containing sleevenotes and archival images.

TRACK LISTING

DISC ONE
The Living City
1 Ituri
2 Alchemistry
3 Adedara Rising
4 Mashujaa
5 Paradise Now
6 Nightsky

DISC TWO
Psychogeography
1 Aerial View
2 Neon Night (Rain)
3 Cityism Superdub
4 Harambe
5 Freeway
6 Cuba Libre
7 Midnight
8 Waterfront District
9 Favela
10 Emerald City
11 Cloud-Shaped Time

pen·ti·men·to / noun
'Reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.'

First new album in nine years by a musical visionary and hugely influential figure in new music. Forty years since its creation, Jon Hassell's "Fourth World" aesthetic remains a powerful influence on modern electronic music. Continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing, fragments of performance are sampled, looped, overdubbed and re-arranged into beguiling unexpected shapes. Hassell applies the painterly technique of ‘pentimento’ to the arrangements, teasing out texture by the overlaying of sound upon sound, or a carefully timed reveal of the delicate bones pinning the frame of a track together.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dreaming
2. Picnic
3. Slipstream
4. Al Kongo Udu
5. Pastorale Vassant
6. Manga Scene
7. Her First Rain
8. Ndeya

Psychogeography is a situationist re-thinking of the 1990 City: Works Of Fiction album, a carefully edited sequence of alternate takes, demos and studio jams put together by Jon Hassell in 2014 using Debordian philosophy as his guide.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Aerial View
A2 Neon Night (Rain)
A3 Cityism Superdub
B1 Harambe
B2 Freeway
B3 Cuba Libre
C1 Midnight
C2 Waterfront District
C3 Favela
D1 Emerald City
D2 Cloud-Shaped Time

“Listen as if you were being told a secret” - Federico Fellini

A companion piece to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, this second volume in the pentimento series presents eight new tracks by the music visionary, continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing. Pentimento is defined as the “reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over” and this is evident in the innovative production style that ‘paints with sound’ using overlapping nuances to create an undefinable and intoxicating new palette.

In classic Hassell fashion, the title can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, but perhaps the most pertinent at the moment is the human instinct to sing and play through a rain of difficulties. A future blues of indeterminate and ever-shifting shape. The album is buffered by two 8-minute plus epics at the beginning and the end - the hypnotic “Fearless” with it’s metronomic, almost Can-like rhythm, and blurry, noir-ish texture of sound emerging like car headlights from the fog; mirrored at the end of the record by the beautiful sci-fi lullaby of “Timeless”, a track with a gaseous, billowing quality as electronic clicks and bubbles float over a landscape of shimmering, glacially paced complexity. The bridge between those two worlds is no less compelling, from the frantic, spidery IDM sketch of “Reykjavik” to the collapsed-time ballad of “Unknown Wish”. Whilst containing seeds of classic ‘fourth world’ fusion, this record finds the artist still questing to create new forms and mutations of music, a thrilling window into what music could sound like in a world to come.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: In essence experimental electronic music, but with a rich and evocative seam of cohesive melody and rhythm woven through it's core. Programmed percussion and sequenced synths lend a sense of drive to the otherwise floating new-age-electronic swirls. It's amazing how many influences can be skilfully brought together in the right hands, and Hassell has those hands.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fearless
2. Moons Of Titan
3. Unknown Wish
4. Delicado
5. Reykjavik
6. Cool Down Coda
7. Lunar
8. Timeless

A classic masterpiece from 1981, never re-released on CD before. Originally 1000 copies pressed on orange/red vinyl. 120 copies were sold through Rough Trade and Virgin Records. 800 copies were bought and later destroyed by the United Dairies label, makin this record even more rare. Hastings of Malawi were Heman Pathak, David Hodes and John Grieve. They recorded the album in one night in 1981 with no plan and no idea of what they were doing. They played drums, clarinet, synthesiser and piano but also made use of things that they found lying around the studio - old records, cookery books, telephone directories and a telephone. All three had been involved in the recording of the first Nurse with Wound album.

The Truth: London Town-based alternative quartet HATCHAM SOCIAL are poised to come back into the fray with a new album, a revamped line-up and a zestily rewired leftfield pop attitude.

‘About Girls’ follows up the band’s critically acclaimed debut ‘You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil’, which received excellent reviews in the UK (including 10/10 in Vice,8/10 in NME and Album Of The Month” in Artrocker) and gained them support tours with The Maccabees, The Charlatans, Good Shoes and Razorlight.

Despite no official ‘releases’ in 2010 they made Artrocker's Top Ten singles of the year with 'NY Girls', which made a fleeting appearance on fierce panda's hypnotically limited 'Gruff Trade' compilation EP, while in 2011 they kept the home fires burning with the free download release of ‘Like An Animal’ and the Young & Lost digital club single ‘Shut Your Mouth’ whilst selling out the Lexington before Christmas.

The new album ‘About Girls’ was recorded in their very own studio in Wales, with the help of legendary producer Laurie Latham and Jim Anderson. The songs are punchier, perkier, with a "guitar heavy" sound that sees them move away from the synth-dappled sheen of 2009's 'You Dig The Tunnel…'. Hatcham Social themselves consider 'About Girls' to be "less layered, with more concise, playful and honest lyrics”. Catch Hatcham off guard and they might even say this is their "party" record.

Hatcham Social are set to return with a new album of their very own art-pop, post-punk, and rock ‘n’ roll sound on Crocodile Records on the 2nd of October 2015. ‘The Birthday of the World’ is the follow up to last years ‘Cutting Up The Present Leaks Out The Future’, described by Q Magazine as “a thrilling long dark night of the soul”, and features ten new tracks including the recent download release ‘Bucket Of Blood’.

Since the release of their debut long player ‘You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil’ in 2009, Hatcham Social have never been a band to fall neatly into a scene or formula. From lo-fi bedroom pop cassettes, to post-punk shards and poetry, short films, girl-boy rock 'n' roll, and drug fuelled dark folk tinged psychedelia they have constantly reinvented and evolved with each release.

The atmospherics, lyrical heart, and energy are carried through to this new album: a science fiction themed art-pop odyssey titled ‘The Birthday of the World’. Inspired by the stories of Isaac Asimov, Ursula K Le Guin, and Arthur C Clarke, the new album is an exploration of Earth’s last days and the colonisation of Mars and is without doubt their finest collection of songs to date. 

TRACK LISTING

Bucket Of Blood
Wondrous Place
The Struggle That Keeps Us Together (Coming Of Age In The Milky Way)
Find A Way To Let In Your Sins (Hit Red Cut A Right)
Our Love Will Carry Us Through The Stars (Song For Joanna)
Hanging Rock
A New World Calling
Darling
Life In An Endless Love Song
Star Woman

‘Sensational - that’s Frank Hatchett!’ These words can be found on many of the 16 albums credited to the legendary NYC jazz dancer, choreographer, and teacher to the stars - Madonna, Brooke Shields, Olivia Newton-John, and Naomi Cambell.

In the highlights compiled on this expansive double LP set, the sounds of Hatchett’s albums run the gamut from disco and funk in the 1970s to electro and proto-techno as they glide through the ’80s. Most tracks clock in at a brisk 2:30 – the ideal length for Hatchett’s classes or his students’ recital performances. Fans of library music will find a similar focus on immaculate performances, while the tightly coiled drum breaks, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and thumping 808s will send rare groove collectors into a state of head nodding bliss.

Hatchett’s name and photos may appear on the sleeves of his records like Dance Crazy, Jazz Power, or Vop Style, but he is nowhere to be found in the music contained within. Instead, these albums dating back to 1974 were recorded by studio players under the guidance of musical director Don Tipton or arranger Zane Mark. Performers include: keyboardist Fred McFarlane (Madonna, Keith Sweat, Evelyn “Champagne” King), drummer Bernard Davis (Steve Winwood, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kool & The Gang).

TRACK LISTING

6 8
Which Way Is Up
Rainforest
For The Lover In You
Ccdclip
Dance Crazy
Just Dance
Hollyrock
Break Out
Getaway
Wishing On A Star
Sams Tune
Malibu Nites
Music Is The Answer
Message From Kenya
Shamballa
The Men
We Supply
Flashy Super Groove
Stratus

The second album from Hatchie, ‘Giving The World Away’ is the truest introduction to the songwriter at the helm of the project, Harriette Pilbeam. Although her sound arrived fully-formed, a dazzling dream-pop and shoegaze tangle, it’s here that she distills the core of herself into a record.

“There's more to me than just writing songs about being in love or being heartbroken -- there's a bigger picture than that,” Pilbeam explains. “This album really just feels like the beginning to me, and scratching the surface – and even though it’s my third release as Hatchie, I feel like I’m rebooting from scratch.”

For Pilbeam, that bigger picture explored here includes confronting her anxieties after decades of compartmentalisation; realising her own self-confidence and self-esteem; taking control of her own narrative, and her place in both her professional and personal life. On ‘Giving the World Away,’ she held herself to higher standards, especially with personal lyrical precision. At the time she started working on it, she was caught in a strange headspace. When 2018 EP Sugar & Spice and subsequent debut LP Keepsake both arrived to critical acclaim and catapulted Hatchie into an international spotlight, she felt both unsure of herself and an intense, self-imposed pressure to keep going forward. Trapped in constant motion, Pilbeam was unable to be present or appreciative of herself, both professionally and personally.

She tackles that struggle directly in the moody single “Quicksand,” written with GRAMMY-nominated Olivia Rodrigo collaborator Dan Nigro. “I used to think that this was something I could die for / I hate admitting to myself that I was never sure,” she sings, inverting the thesis of one of her early break-out singles “Sure.” And then, a few lines later, she regains her footing -- in her musicality, and in herself: “It’s all I know, and I’m taking it back.”

“Quicksand is about dealing with the realisation that you'll never be satisfied” Pilbeam comments. “I started writing it when I was home between tours in 2019 before finishing it with Joe Agius and Dan Nigro the next year. I was feeling guilty and ungrateful for not being happy about a few different things in my life that were technically going well. I had to work through some tough learned thought processes and emotions that had been working away for years to try to understand how to be happy with my present, and stop fixating on my past and future. The video digs deeper into showing this juxtaposition of such sadness and anger despite being surrounded by glamour and grandeur."

Director Nathan Castiel adds: “For ‘Quicksand', I created a video that plays off of some tropes of Hollywood glamour in a melancholy and surreal way while giving Harriette room to perform and express the song's raw emotions. We leaned into a neon-tinged after hours aesthetic and shot on 16mm which added a griminess to the opulent locations and set pieces.”

“Quicksand” sets up the rest of the record; an album about self-confidence, about reclamation, about the strange time in young adulthood where you begin to finally be able to see yourself clearly.

Produced by Jorge Elbrecht, also recently GRAMMY-nominated and known for his work with Sky Ferreira, Japanese Breakfast, and Wild Nothing, ‘Giving the World Away’ is Hatchie’s most thunderous, sprawling work yet. Featuring extensive input from longtime Hatchie collaborator Joe Agius, it takes the celestial, shimmering shoegaze and pop sensibilities of her earlier releases, but with the volume knob cranked up tenfold. Built out with percussion from Beach House drummer James Barone, it’s synthed-out, sonic opulence, a more structured and ornate musicality with traces of ‘90s trip-hop and acid house influences.

Pilbeam initially intended for these songs to go in a higher-energy direction -- she had the distinct vision of a Hatchie show turned dance party, inviting more movement and vibrancy into her live shows. But then, between Covid and the lockdowns in Australia, Pilbeam retreated more into herself, and that introspection and self-discovery served as the true inspiration for the record. Again and again across ‘Giving the World Away,’ she returns to that same theme – dismantling internalized shame and finding gratitude and steadiness, and finally being able to trust herself. Pilbeam grew up the youngest in her family, a self-described “big baby,” but says the last year and a half gave her the space to understand herself better. After years of emotional avoidance, here she excavates her fears fully.

‘Giving the World Away’ is an album about self-confidence, about reclamation, about the strange time in young adulthood where you begin to finally be able to see yourself clearly. Incisive and probing, ‘Giving the World Away’ is the clearest look at Pilbeam yet, and a relic of the power and bravery that spring forth from embracing vulnerability and putting your heart on the line.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Crystalline synths and rolling bass licks permeate the retro-tinged percussion and dreamy echoic vocals, bringing to mind the perfect pop of Tegan & Sara mixed with walls of shoegaze fuzz.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) Lights On
2) This Enchanted
3) Twin
4) Take My Hand
5) The Rhythm
6) Quicksand
Side B
7) Thinking Of
8) Giving The World Away
9) The Key
10) Don't Leave Me In The Rain
11) Sunday Song
12) Til We Run Out Of Air

BONUS TRACKS On Download Card:
Back Into Your Arms (Hatchie's Version)
Don't Leave Me In The Rain (Demo)
Quicksand (Demo)
The Rhythm (Demo)

For the making of ‘Keepsake’, the Brisbane-bred musician otherwise known as Harriette Pilbeam recorded in a home studio in Melbourne and worked again with John Castle - the producer behind ‘Sugar & Spice’, a 2018 release that prompted Pitchfork to dub Hatchie the “dream-pop idol of tomorrow.” And while the album begins and ends with two massively catchy pop tracks - the brightly defiant ‘Not That Kind’ and the euphoric and epic ‘Keep’ - many songs drift into more emotionally tangled terrain, shedding light on experiences both ephemeral and life-changing.

Throughout ‘Keepsake’, Hatchie’s kaleidoscopic sonic palette draws out distinct moods and tones, continually revealing her depth and imagination as a musician and songwriter. On lead track ‘Without A Blush’, jagged guitar riffs and woozy rhythms meet in a sprawling piece of industrial pop, with Hatchie’s gorgeously airy voice channelling loss and longing, regret and self-doubt.

Another industrial-leaning track, ‘Unwanted Guest’, unfolds in wobbly synth lines and fantastically icy spoken-word vocals, along with lyrics about “being dragged to a party I don’t want to be at, then getting at a fight at the party, and kind of hating myself for it but hating everybody else too.” Meanwhile, on ‘Her Own Heart’, Hatchie presents a radiant jangle-pop gem that puts a singular twist on the post-breakup narrative. “I’d seen people in my life go through breakups and end up with no idea what to do with themselves,” she says. “I wrote that song from the point of view of a girl who winds up on her own and embraces having to figure out who she is, who doesn’t let her life get turned upside-down like that”.

On ‘Stay With Me’, Hatchie offers up ‘Keepsake’s most utterly rhapsodic track, all incandescent synth and unstoppable rhythm. “At first I thought I could never put that on my album - it felt too dancey and pop, and I figured it could really shine on someone else’s record,” she says. “But then I realized: I’m the one dictating what my sound is; what I put on my album is up to me.”

That self-possessed spirit infuses all of ‘Keepsake’, which ultimately serves as a document of a particularly kinetic moment in Hatchie’s life. “I’m not much of a nostalgic person when it comes to memories, but I do have a tendency to hold on to certain things, like tickets from the first time I went someplace on holiday,” says Hatchie in reflecting on the album’s title. “It made sense to me to call the record that, at a time when I’m going to probably end up with a lot of keepsakes - and in a way, this whole album is almost like a keepsake in itself.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Shoegaze goes pop and it's a total joy. Great songs.

TRACK LISTING

Not That Kind
Without A Blush
Her Own Heart
Obsessed
Unwanted Guest
Secret
Kiss The Stars
Stay With Me
When I Get Out
Keep

A reawakening for the Swedish visionaries, Sincere solidifies their impressive trajectory in a fuzzed out haze of dark and arresting shoegaze pop. An expansive trip through noisier, bittersweet pop realms that recalls My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Deerhunter.

Underpinning everything there’s a continuing sense of drama throughout; richly textured crescendos, chiming guitars and delicate melodies are guided by Caroline Landahl’s tender yet sharpened vocals. Sincere is joyously effervescent, but with a dark underbelly where fury manifests in a swirl of entrancing and propulsive percussion.

A gorgeous and dazzling piece of aching romanticism, destined to feature on a thousand mixtapes.

Recorded last year in Malmö, Hater welcomed two new band members and those early day sparks saw them quickly turning demos into fully-formed new songs that appear on the record. Sincere was produced by long-time collaborator Joakim Lindberg and was mixed and mastered by John Cornfield, whose credits include Ride, The Stone Roses and Robert Plant.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Something
A2 I'm Yours Baby
A3 Bad Luck
A4 Proven Wrong
Side B
B1 Brave Blood
B2 Far From A Mind
B3 Summer Turns To Heartburn
B4 Renew, Reject
B5 Hopes High

“Swoony Swedish indie-pop.” Record Collector. Two new tracks from Malmo’s much-praised Hater. “One of the best bands in the world” Gorilla Vs Bear. Hot on the heels of last year’s ‘Siesta’, their second studio album and first for Fire Records. It’s a compelling slice of angular pop music; dysfunctional, dreamy, tempting, and teasing. ‘Four Tries Down’ presents an acute hand-tooled angular rasp, with its chiming guitar chopped out against a disengaged rhythm, topped with the dreamy ambience of Caroline Landahl’s whispered confessional that cuts through the mesmerising hum. ‘It’s A Mess’ is more subtle, with a teenage Nico admitting to inevitable boyfriend trouble. Drums rattle before cutting down to the basics to let Landahls pontificate as it all goes wrong – it’s a beautiful mess. Beautiful. “Nostalgic for ‘90s indie pop innocence.” MOJO Set for release this Autumn, 7" 'Four Tries Down' coincides with Hater’s first US tour. “Too noisy to be indie pop, too sweet to be post punk.” Clash.

Hater’s powerful vulnerability and charm has seen them rise quickly through the ranks earning kudos from NPR (Austin 100), Stereogum (Best New Bands Of 2017), The Fader, BBC6 Music, BBC Radio 1 and more. Effortless and assured, the Scandi quartet drift eloquently into well-structured and stunning melodies. Resolute in their sound, ‘Siesta’ is the perfect soundtrack for that summer romance and the inevitable break up. Heartbreak has never sounded so sweet!.

Produced by Joakim Lindberg (Yast and Hey Elbow) at Studio Sickan within old railway sheds outside of Malmö Sweden. Hater tackle their personal experiences of life, love and relationships yet through their shared songwriting there's a togetherness. Synth pop earworm ‘It’s So Easy’ contrasts the slower paced 'I Wish I Gave You More Time Because I Love You' that blends beautiful sweeping sax from Inge Petersson Lindbäck. Hater “boast Marr-esque guitars and vocals reminiscent of fellow Swedes and The Concretes” (Norman Records) whilst having the pop sensibilities of The Chills, Alvvays, Snail Mail and Makthaverskan.

TRACK LISTING

1. From The Bottom Of Your Heart
2. It's So Easy
3. I Wish I Gave You More Time Because I Love You
4. Closer
5. Fall Off
6. I Sure Want To
7. Things To Keep Up With
8. Your Head Your Mind
9. Why It Works Out Fine
10. The Mornings
11. Cut Me Loose
12. All That Your Dreams Taught Me
13. Seems So Hard
14. Weekend

“With “Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police’ I am continuing the project that I started last year with my “Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John” album. I hope to continue to go deep into covering artists that were important to me in my formative years. The songs I’ve chosen seem to resonate in the present moment. “Rehumanize Yourself”, “Landlord”, and “Murder By Numbers” explore ugly kinds of nationalism, abuses of power, and the mendacity of large swaths of the ruling class. And then there are the timeless, relatable psychodramas: “Every Breath You Take”, “Can’t Stand Losing You”, “Canary In A Coalmine”. In the Police, each player’s style was so distinctive, accomplished and unique that I didn’t even attempt to match any of it; for anyone to try and play drums like Stewart Copeland would be a thankless, pointless task that is bound to fail. Instead, I simplified and deconstructed, playing a lot of the drums myself, in my rudimentary, caveman style. Chris Anzalone (Roomful Of Blues) played the rest of the drums. Ed Valauskas (the Gravel Pit) and I each played about half of the bass parts, while I did all the guitars and keyboards. I listened to a lot of the Police when I was preparing and making this album, and their recordings are as refreshing and exciting as ever. I hope that my interpretations of these songs can inspire people to keep loving the Police like I did, and still do.” -Juliana Hatfield

TRACK LISTING

1. Can't Stand Losing You
2. Canary In A Coalmine
3. Next To You
4. Hungry For You (J'aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)
5. Roxanne
6. Every Breath You Take
7. Hole In My Life
8. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
9. Murder By Numbers
10. Landlord
11. Rehumanize Yourself
12. It's Alright For You

Ranging from inner-city soul to orchestral grandeur to a bluesy ballad to easy-listening pleasantries, 'Extension Of A Man' was Donny Hathaway's most ambitious LP, the justly titled capstone to his phenomenal career. Coming, however, from one of soul music's most widely talented figures, this wasn't exactly a surprise; both of his previous studio full-lengths, 'Everything Is Everything' and 'Donny Hathaway', treated soul as merely a starting point to express his multitude of ideas concerning music and arrangement, song and performance. First up is six-minute orchestral piece "I Love the Lord; He Heard My Cry, Pts. 1-2." Arranged and orchestrated for 45 musicians by Hathaway himself, it applied the buoyant optimism of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" to a religious context, and segued smoothly into the transcendent "Someday We'll All Be Free," one of Hathaway's most beloved songs. Elsewhere we get chart hits "Love, Love, Love" and "Come Little Children".

Queen of the underground, leader of the new school and visceral techno genius Helena Hauff returns to the Piccadilly shelves with a new double LP on the evergreen Ninja Tune. The title has a duality that Hauff enjoys - the German word “Qualm” ( kvalm) translates as fumes or smoke, whilst the English meaning refers to an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or fear, especially about one's own conduct. True to form, the record is unapologetically raw and finds her returning to her original modus operandi - jamming on her machines - “trying to create something powerful without using too many instruments and layers”.
A former resident of the Golden Pudel club in her hometown Hamburg, Helena’s profile and global standing has grown exponentially since the release of “Discreet Desires” in 2015, purely on the strength of her authenticity and her expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, EBM, techno and post punk. Gigging incessantly (and still lugging a box of records across the world) Helena’s reputation earned her an invitation to join the BBC Radio 1 Residency, she was the subject of cover features for Crack Magazine and DJ Mag, she played headline sets at Sonar (b2b with Ben UFO) and Dekmantel, and at the end of 2017 Crack Magazine declared Helena “The Most Exciting DJ In The World (Right Now)” and her ballistic BBC Essential Mix was voted the best of 2017.

Born and raised in Hamburg, a self-confessed child of the 90s, Helena was obsessed with the music she discovered via the television on channels such as MTV and VIVA. She recalls her grandmother buying Technotronic's 'Pump Up The Jam’ at the flea market for her and watching coverage of iconic electronic music festival Loveparade in Berlin on TV. She has fond memories of borrowing CDs from the local library and making her own mixtapes - these days an archaic practice but from a curatorial standpoint these were her earliest outings as a DJ. Helena picks out Miss Kittin & The Hacker and Toktok vs. Soffy O as inspirations but it was the self-titled album from 2001 by electro icon Radioactive Man that was "a real eye-opener" providing the stimulus for her to dive in and immerse herself in the music and culture.

At university Helena studied first for a Fine Art degree, but whilst she enjoyed the emphasis on experimentation and artistic freedom, she realised that she didn’t have an innate need to make visual art, the prerequisite for a career in that oeuvre according to her lecturer. However, she did have exactly that compulsion in regards to DJing: “I was obsessed with DJing, there was no question that I had to do it. It wasn’t about the money, I just wanted to DJ somewhere,” she explains. Next Helena enrolled on a degree in Systematic Music Science and Physics. Heading in almost the polar opposite direction to her Fine Art background, it was a highly technical syllabus incorporating maths, physics and acoustics but perhaps on some level this juxtaposition of science and art has shaped her approach to coaxing music from her machines?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Hauff brings the heat for her newest one for the legendary Ninja Tune, with shadowed beats clashing headfirst with snarling resonant 303 and clattering industrious ambience, a brilliantly produced LP, and a thoroughly rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Barrow Boot Boys
2. Lifestyle Guru
3. Btdr-revisited
4. Entropy Created You And Me
5. Fag Butts In The Fire Bucket
6. Hyper-Intelligent Genetically Enriched Cyborg
7. The Smell Of Suds And Steel
8. Primordial Sludge
9. Qualm
10. No Qualms
11. Panegyric
12. It Was All Fields Around Here When I Was A Kid

South London producer Ben Hauke takes a sonic excursion to South America via Lewisham for a new seven track release for Far Out Recordings. While littered with Afro-Latin percussion, and samples of obscure Brazilian, Cuban and Colombian records, Only Old stays true to Ben’s distinctly London identity, with a record that fluctuates between house, broken beat and instrumental hip-hop.

Having collaborated with the likes of Nubya Garcia and Joe Armon Jones, Ben Hauke stands at the electronic end of London’s new jazz movement. Currently working on new releases with more of a focus on live instrumentation, Ben titled the release ‘Only Old’ as it leans more heavily on his foundational approach to music making: an idiosyncratic, almost brazen sampling style in productions bursting with personality.

Always full of character and style, Hauke’s productions have seen him likened to Theo Parrish and Madlib, with an altogether physical approach to sound. Title track ‘Only Old’ is moody broken beat with eerie sampled vocals and piano. ‘Get Up To Get Down’ is a light n’ breezy summer house stepper, while Brazil-inspired ‘Runners’ sounds as if it was made for MF Doom.

TRACK LISTING

It Weren’t A Satellite
Get Up To Get Down
Only Old / Runners
You’re Not Deep
Digi Luv Ft. Eggrum
Bait Leo

Graceful compositions flow throughout. Steve Hauschildt’s fourth release for kranky following his Where All Is Fled full length from late summer 2015.

The songs fluctuate from the serene calm of album opener Horizon of Appearances, to the pulsing hypnosis of Ketracel, and on to searing grandeur of album closer Die in Fascination, Throughout, Steve remains restrained and in complete control of his sound.

Strands is a song cycle that is about cosmogony and creation/destruction myths. The title alludes to the structural constitution of ropes as I wanted to approach the compositions so that they consisted of strands and fibers which form a unified whole. This was so the songs could have the appearance of being either taut or slack without being fundamentally locked to a grid. So the sounds/tones have a certain malleability to them and sound like they're bending through time. It's also grittier and more distorted than my previous albums.

I wanted to try and capture that moment in nature and society where life slowly reemerges through desolation, so it has a layer of optimism looming underneath. The music represents this by seemingly decaying at times but then reforms and morphs in a fluid way back to its original state. I was also inspired by the movement of rivers, particularly their transformative aspect and how they're in a state of flux and change, in particular the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland where I live, which notoriously caught on fire thirteen times because of industrial pollution in the 1960s and before. I was very interested in the dichotomy of oil and water and the resulting, unnatural symptoms of human industry. It's a very personal record for me as it is a reflection of my hometown where I grew up and where it was mostly recorded.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Where 'Where all Is Fled' was nuanced, but rife with confident and optimistic moments, 'Strands' is much more tilted towards the uneasy. Slightly syncopated melodies and growing pads unsettle but never become jarring, merely lending an equally proficient counterfoil to the majority of his already startling oeuvre.

TRACK LISTING

1. Horizon Of Appearances
2. Same River Twice
3. A False Seeming
4. Ketracel
5. Time We Have
6. Strands
7. Transience Of Earthly Joys
8. Die In Fascination

For Volker Bertelmann, aka HAUSCHKA, music is not solely about its sound, but also a means to facilitate the exchange of ideas and foster meaningful interactions between individuals, revealing his fascination with human connection and engagement. Despite being known for his distinctive prepared piano sound, the Academy Award-winning composer intentionally named his 15th solo studio album PHILANTHROPY to express his compassion and openness. The album's song titles, such as "Diversity," "Nature," "Loved Ones," and "Altruism," perfectly align with their respective musical compositions. HAUSCHKA's albums often serve as a platform to provoke dialogue on specific themes, and PHILANTHROPY follows this pattern, aiming to offer optimism and energy in response to the challenges of recent years. The album combines upbeat and pensive pieces, featuring moments of joy, introspection, and peaceful interludes. Overall, PHILANTHROPY showcases HAUSCHKA's compositional prowess and serves as a gift that sparks reflection and celebration.

TRACK LISTING

1. Diversity
2. Searching
3. Inventions
4. Detached
5. Limitation Of Lifetime
6. Nature
7. Science
8. Loved Ones
9. Generosity
10. Magnanimity
11. Altruism
12. Noise

Hawk Eyes are from Leeds. They consist of Paul Astick (vocals / guitar), Rob Stephens (guitar), Ryan Clark (bass) and Matt Reid (drums), and have done so in some form or another since 2005. Well, since drummer Matt joined from Whores Whores Whores anyway.

One of those previous so-called ‘forms’ was Chickenhawk, whose gruesomely complex ‘Modern Bodies’ album of 2010 cheerily brutalised a not-so-innocent generation of grumpy grunged-up kids as they toured the known universe with Alexisonfire, We Are The Ocean and The Computers.

The end of 2011 saw the renamed and reconstructed HAWK EYES foursome setting out their stall for future ever-so-slightly-mellower chaos with a nomination for Best Hard Rock Act at the Artrocker awards, touring fun with Turbowolf, The James Cleaver Quartet and Ginger Wildheart (though not all at the same time, you understand) and the release of the five-track ‘Mindhammers’ EP on Brew Records, a manically precise fusion of ferocious melodies and vivacious riffs which spewed forth comparisons with Foo Fighters, QOTSA, Alice In Chains and the epically heavy monstersound of Faith No More.

All extremely true, and all very indicative of a band growing up and rolling with the melodic punches. And the ‘Mindhammers’ template is refined and rewired on ‘Ideas’, HAWK EYES’ debut album which is sleek and modern and hardcore and suitably post-post-everything, but also cosmic and mischievous and never averse to (ab)using a classic riff here or there.

“Writing this album, I opened up my closet, and a skeleton came out.” In a café just around the corner from his Edinburgh flat, Hamish Hawk is contemplating his extraordinary new record, A Firmer Hand. “The thing that links all of the songs is a sense of the unsaid, whether out of guilt, shame, repression, embarrassment, coyness, whatever it might have been. I realised: I am going to say these things, and not all of them are going to make me look good. The album made so many demands, and I just gave myself over to it.”

At this stage, where only a handful of close associates have heard the finished album, Hawk is still unsure of what the reaction might be from fans, critics, even family. He jokes that A Firmer Hand is the first of his records that his parents might not enjoy. “But the fact that it makes me nervous tells me it was the right thing to do.”

It takes only a couple of listens to be sure that it was a risk worth taking. And just a couple more to determine that A Firmer Hand is the best and boldest record Hamish Hawk has delivered to date. “It’s a bit of a coming of age record,” he says. And a record for the ages.

TRACK LISTING

1. Juliet As Epithet
2. Machiavelli’s Room
3. Big Cat Tattoos
4. Nancy Dearest
5. Autobiography Of Spy
6. You Can Film Me
7. Christopher St.
8. Men Like Wire
9. Questionable Hit
10. Disingenuous
11. Milk An Ending
12. The Hard Won

“Writing this album, I opened up my closet, and a skeleton came out.” In a café just around the corner from his Edinburgh flat, Hamish Hawk is contemplating his extraordinary new record, A Firmer Hand. “The thing that links all of the songs is a sense of the unsaid, whether out of guilt, shame, repression, embarrassment, coyness, whatever it might have been. I realised: I am going to say these things, and not all of them are going to make me look good. The album made so many demands, and I just gave myself over to it.”

At this stage, where only a handful of close associates have heard the finished album, Hawk is still unsure of what the reaction might be from fans, critics, even family. He jokes that A Firmer Hand is the first of his records that his parents might not enjoy. “But the fact that it makes me nervous tells me it was the right thing to do.”

It takes only a couple of listens to be sure that it was a risk worth taking. And just a couple more to determine that A Firmer Hand is the best and boldest record Hamish Hawk has delivered to date. “It’s a bit of a coming of age record,” he says. And a record for the ages.

TRACK LISTING

1. Juliet As Epithet
2. Machiavelli’s Room
3. Big Cat Tattoos
4. Nancy Dearest
5. Autobiography Of Spy
6. You Can Film Me
7. Christopher St.
8. Men Like Wire
9. Questionable Hit
10. Disingenuous
11. Milk An Ending
12. The Hard Won

Angel numbers: a series of recurring numerical patterns or sequences which those who believe in such things invest with cosmic significance.

Also, the name of the forthcoming album by Hamish Hawk – an apt title for an artist who bounces between scepticism and wonder, who alchemises the quotidian, who is engaged in a constant quest to outwit and outflank the ordinary. With the release of Heavy Elevator in September 2021, Edinburgh-based Hawk established himself as a writer of heartfelt, headstrong, unashamedly literate songs to stimulate both pulse and psyche. Heavy Elevator offered words to savour and tunes to relish. The songs were filmic and romantic, blending wit, wisdom, resignation and beauty with a kind of sceptical joie de vivre, delivered in a rich baritone that has drawn comparisons to everyone from Jarvis Cocker to Scott Walker. A singer of style and guile peddling accessible intelligence: what’s not to love? Heavy Elevator established a powerful artistic imprimatur which nonetheless felt neither defining nor confining. While the album has been justly lauded, Hawk’s next steps have moved the story considerably further forward. Angel Numbers meets growing expectations head on, with panache and aplomb.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A roaring mix of cleverly written rock music, with jagged melodies and gritty distortion tempered with rich production and Hamish's wonderfully emotive vocal stylings. 'Angel Numbers' is great fun, beautifully written and well worth a listen.

Laura says: Without doubt one of the most extraordinary musical talents to emerge in the last few years. His song writing takes in everything from chamber-pop to post-punk, with smatterings of country and indie-pop. The guitars jangle, twang and shimmer, interwoven with keys and occasional strings, providing the perfect backdrop for his witty, evocative lyrics. I enjoyed his debut, Heavy Elevator, but this album has blown me away - one of my albums of the year for sure!

TRACK LISTING

1. Once Upon An Acid Glance
2. Think Of Us Kissing
3. Elvis Lookalike Shadows
4. Bridget St. John
5. Frontman Ft. Anna B Savage
6. Desperately
7. Bill
8. Angel Numbers
9. Money
10. Dog-eared August
11. Rest And Veneers Ft. Samantha Crain
12. Grey Seals

Vivian Comma paints the Madonna, visibly on the verge of fainting. Christopher Wren walks amongst us once more, forswearing designing cathedrals for singing them. One half of the 1973 Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champions has a perfect serve. The boy who inhabits Track Three of John Lennon’s Imagine repeat-dials, passive-aggressively, to Tiree. A funeral, swinging to the Gay Gordons. A latter-day Paul the Apostle is offended by the sight of Edinburgh Castle – and, infinitesimally worse, can’t finish a beer.

These are the people and places, scenes and scenarios of the songs of Hamish Hawk.

Rich of voice and even richer of imagination, the singer-songwriter from Edinburgh creates musical pen-portraits as vivid in lyric as they are in melody. In all the wholly best ways, these are chamber pop songs that have swallowed both a dictionary and a compendium of modern urban (and island) fairy tales. And, on Heavy Elevator, his first fully-formed album, this prolific artist presents a perfect ten tracks packed with characters, incident, emotion, geographical/artistic references and tunes to hang your coat on.

Heavy Elevator, released on September 17th 2021, is the critically-acclaimed breakthrough album from Edinburgh’s Hamish Hawk.

TRACK LISTING

1. Vivian Comma
2. This, Whatever It Is, Needs Improvements
3. The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973
4. Bakerloo, Unbecoming
5. Your Ceremony
6. Caterpillar
7. Daggers
8. Heavy Elevator
9. Calls To Tiree
10. New Rhododendrons 

Despite an aversion to the spotlight, Marquis Hawkes is one of the fastest-rising names in house music. A string of 12"s for labels such as Dixon Avenue Basement Jams, Clone and Aus preceded a trio of exceptional EPs for Houndstooth, which won him swathes of new fans, from the DJ booth and the radio studio to, of course, the dancefloor. Now he presents his long-awaited debut album, ‘Social Housing’.

Including a devastating new song with legendary vocalist Jocelyn Brown and contributions from regular collaborator Timothy Blake, the album encompasses the full spectrum of house music, from deep grooves to disco cut-ups, soulful keyboard jams to jacking drum machine workouts. With several high profile DJs already singing its praises, ‘Social Housing’ is set to be the soundtrack for the Summer.

The aptly-titled "Raw Materials" sees Marquis Hawkes making a welcome return to the primitive house rhythms for which he became known via his early work for Dixon Avenue Basement Jams. Highly influenced by house originators Ron Hardy, Gene Hunt and Roy Davis Jr, "Raw Materials" updates the form with modern production techniques whilst preserving its authenticity. The title track sprawls over the A-side, making you move with a deep and hypnotic 808 beats and mesmerising dusty pads. Far deeper than a straight up banger, this is transportative club music of the highest order. The flip, on the other hand takes no prisoners, offering instead two cuts of raw drum machine clatter, strained vocal cuts and analogue tones in the form of ‘‘Ave That" and "Jerk U Later". All in all, this is a well rounded release, moving effortlessly from the immersive beauty of the A-side to the deadly dancefloor destroyers on the flip.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: "Raw Materials" sees the DABJ mainstay blessing Houndstooth with the sexiest, most sultry house sound you're likely to hear this year. Deep, warm and intimate, this is marriage material. The two B-side cuts on the other hand, are sleazy, raw and gritty basement bangers for all the hoodrats.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Raw Materials
B1. ‘Ave That
B2. Jerk U Later

Well, this is rather nice! A super-limited 12" in a hand stamped and numbered screen printed sleeve.

Artwork by H. Hawkline.

Last Thing On Your Mind and unreleased b side "More Salt".

Recorded in Los Angeles with Samur Khouja, who worked with Huw on his last album, In The Pink Of Condition, the track features Cate Le Bon and Josiah Steinbrick.

Talking about the track, Huw said:

'It waits like the cat who knows it'll eventually get cream. Sits, makes eyes and then sips, always watching, one eye on the washer, the warm smell of fresh china'

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

THREE TRACK RECORD STORE DAY ONLY 12” SINGLE LIMITED TO 750 COPIES WORLDWIDE.

EXCLUSIVE TO INTERNATIONAL RECORD STORE DAY

LIMITED GREY VINYL EDITION OF 750 UNITS OF THIS FACSIMILIE RELEASE OF HAWKWIND OFFSHOOT HAWKLORDS’ CLASSIC RARE 1979 12-INCH EP

NEWLY REMASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES Atomhenge, the home of HAWKWIND’s catalogue between 1975 – 1997 (managed by Esoteric Recordings) are pleased to announce the release of an official Record Store Day limited facsimile edition of the classic and rare Grey Vinyl 12-inch EP “25 Years”, originally issued by Charisma Records in 1979.

Originally featured on the album “25 Years On”, the A-side of this EP was significantly remixed in 1979 for this release.

This reissue is strictly limited to 750 units, has been newly re-mastered from the original master tapes and fully restores the original release artwork.

QTY FOR UK: 500

TRACK LISTING

1. 25 Years
2. (Only) The Dead Dreams Of The Cold War Kid
3. Pxr 5

The Hawklords open the doors of perception to a 'Brave New World' In celebration of a decade since The Hawklords re-booted for the 21st century in 2008, the band release their seventh consecutive studio album "Hawklords VII: Brave New World". It follows the band's critically acclaimed 2017 album "SIX" which charted in the Official UK Top 40 Rock Chart. Featuring former Hawkwind members Harvey Bainbridge (synths & vocals) and Jerry Richards (guitar & vocals), with Dave Pearce (drums) and Tom Ashurst (bass & vocals), "Brave New World" is an album of soaring transcendence and grinding power.

Described by the band as, "Dedicated to all fellow travellers who choose to explore SPACE on their own terms", HAWKLORDS release their 12th consecutive album and 10th studio album comprising all brand new songs.

From the bone-crushing opener, Gravity Well, with its Dante-esque 'Fires of Hell' lyrical commentary, to the pop- strut ear-worm mantra of Super Star Drive, the darkly explorative construct, Lost in Space, which is as much about loneliness as it is about the vastness of the Universe, to The Silence of Space, a dark poem about the fate of the galaxy set to an electro/industrial soundtrack reminiscent of any sci-fi classic movie, Gravity Zero and its super hook classic chorus, "Any life on Mars?" to You Will Be The Sun, a romantic ode to any form of love under the stars, this is an album for audiophiles of all kinds which takes the listener on a journey through the dark and the beautiful spaces of human existence.

"Inner space, outer space, head space: Human Race" to quote Hawklords founder member, guitarist and songwriter, Jerry Richards. The S P A C E band line-up is: Mr Dibs (Bass, Vocals, Audio Generators), Dave Pearce (Drums) and Jerry Richards (Guitars, Bass, Vocals, SFX and Foley).

Their NEW album, in full, iconic KPM cover is a return to the laidback jazz-funk that helped Alan and Brian demonstrate their library chops. The album is classic Hawkshaw/Bennett. It swings, it grooves, moves and thrills with a flair these two have perfected over years.

Alan Hawkshaw (piano/Hammond) and Shadow’s drummer Brian Bennett are responsible for some of the slickest, funkiest and most sought-after library records ever made in the UK, particularly ones recorded on the legendary KPM label. Their work has now become the go-to place for sampling in music today. Artists such as Dilla, Nas, and the xx, right through to the billion selling Kanye & Drake have taken Hawkshaw’s and Bennett’s immaculate beat-driven soundscapes for their own usage.

Their new album, in full, iconic KPM cover is a return to the laidback jazz-funk that helped Alan and Brian demonstrate their library chops. The album is classic Hawkshaw/Bennett. It swings, it grooves, moves and thrills with a flair these two have perfected over years.

Standout tracks such as "Hole In One", "In The Clouds", "Interchange", "Oasis", "On The Nile" and "Corcovado" are no mere excursions in nostalgia, for they carry lots of deft studio work that many a producer would give their right arm for. Hawkshaw’s arrangements allow the drums, guitar, bass, strings, Hammond, flute and brass to swirl elegantly around the 12 original tracks; a masterclass in recording.

Cut by Pete Norman, housed in a beautifully designed Richard Robinson sleeve and pressed at 180g by Record Industry in Holland, this release has been afforded the care and attention it rightly deserves. Essential.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: The kings of the KPM library scene, groove barons Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett hit the studio together for the first time in years and treat us to an eagerly anticipated LP of new material. As you'd expect from this pair of heroes, it's a far out and funky affair. KPM x BeWith for the win!!!

TRACK LISTING

Flying
Hole In One
Reignited
Straight Up
Serengeti
Open Road
In The Clouds
Corcovado
On The Nile
Marrakech
Oasis
Midnight Jazz

McKeown creates a patchwork of dream sequences and woozy psychedelia that range from low key groove and floating-in-space cosmic horror. “Electronic folk horror” was how it was described to me, and I gotta say I can get on board with that description. But there’s much more happening here. Moments I’m reminded of Colin Stetson’s excellent Color Out Of Space score, while other times there’s a real Tangerine Dream vibe, ala their Legend soundtrack.

This incredible new release follows a path along the electronic skyways first created by the German Krautrock electronic pioneers of the 1970s, such as Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Roedelius and Michael Rother.

Hawksmoor is James McKeown. He first created Hawksmoor five years ago as an imaginary hauntological soundtrack, inspired by the six Hawksmoor churches in London. Further releases have followed on Environmental Studies, the cassette-only label Spun Out of Control, Castles in Space and The Library of The Occult.

For his debut on Soul Jazz Records, Hawksmoor has created a fascinating blend of these two sensibilities – a love of German electronic music of the 1970s alongside the British retrofuturism and cultural memory bank aesthetic of hauntology - Ghost Box, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, Advisory Circle, Focus Group, etc.

Using strictly modular synths (Moog Sub37), electronic drum rhythms and guitars, Hawksmoor creates an electronic landscaped music world that is both new and old, immediately identifiable and yet utterly unique.

TRACK LISTING

Cycloid
Nuclear Kites
Praxis
Telepathic Heights
Athanasia
A Neural Interval
Synesius
The City Ships Of Alpha
Dream Logic
Abstract Machines

Cherry Red Records are pleased to announce the release of the new album by the legendary Hawkwind, Into The Woods. It follows the critical acclaim and commercial success of last year’s Top 40 album The Machine Stops. “Part of this album is a continuation of the story begun in The Machine Stops,” says Hawkwind’s head honcho Dave Brock, “living above the ground and Into the Woods.” Warm-up dates for Hawkwind in mid-March are dubbed ‘A Glimpse Into Greenness’, which gives some indication of the conceptual and lyrical themes behind the new album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Into The Woods
2. Cottage In The Woods
3. The Woodpecker
4. Have You Seen Them
5. Ascent
6. Space Ship Blues
7. The Wind
8. Vegan Lunch
9. Magic Scenes
10. Darkland
11. Wood Nymph
12. Deep Cavern
13. Magic Mushroom

A recorded document of the Hawkwind's “Chronicle of the Black Sword” stage show of 1985, based on the Elric series of novels by Michael Moorcock. This newly remastered edition features the entire stage show and restores Moorcock’s narrative on CD for the first time (outside of a rare 1994 American CD release) making a definitive edition of one of Hawkwind’s most memorable works.

Atomhenge, the label home for the Hawkwind catalogue between 1975 – 1997 is pleased to announce the release of “The Charisma Years 1976 – 1979”; a 4 CD set comprising all four of Hawkwind’s albums originally released by the Charisma label – “Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music”, “Quark Strangeness & Charm”, “Hawklords: 25 Years On” and “PXR 5”.

These recordings saw the influence of lyricist and front man Robert Calvert come to the fore in the band. The originally and breadth of Hawkwind’s music was expanded greatly during this period and the four albums released between 1976 and 1979 are now regarded as ground-breaking classics.

This official 4CD clamshell boxed set features each album in a replica card sleeve wallet and includes an illustrated poster.

Cherry Red Records are pleased to announce the release of the new album by the legendary Hawkwind, 'The Machine Stops'. A concept studio album and a live stage show, The Machine Stops is based on EM Forster's sci-fi classic. His dystopian vision of the future is brought to life with characteristic Hawkwind style.

An atmospheric, musical interpretation beginning in tunnels deep beneath the earth, where every need is controlled and catered for by the machine. The struggle to escape and find a way to reach the outer surface is a utopian dream, which could prove to be the most deadly dream of all. Forster's visionary masterpiece provides a chilling warning of the dangers of isolation, reliance on computer technology and the effects upon society.

• THE LONG AWAITED OFFICIAL REMASTERED EDITION OF HAWKWIND’S CLASSIC 1975 ALBUM
• FEATURING THE FIRST EVER REMASTERED VERSION MADE FROM THE ORIGINAL ANALOGUE MASTER TAPES
• PLUS ONE BONUS TRACK
• FEATURES BOOKLET WITH PHOTOS, MEMORABILIA & ESSAY

ATOMHENGE, the home of HAWKWIND’s catalogue from 1975 – 1997, are pleased to announce the long awaited release of a definitive edition of the classic 1975 album “WARRIOR ON THE EDGE OF TIME”.

Recorded in 1975, the album is a ground-breaking classic of Hawkwind’s career. Featuring a line-up of DAVE BROCK, NIK TURNER, LEMMY, SIMON HOUSE, SIMON KING & ALAN POWELL, the album is arguably one of the finest rock albums of the mid-1970s.

• THE LONG AWAITED OFFICIAL EXPANDED 3 DISC DELUXE REMASTERED EDITION OF HAWKWIND’S CLASSIC 1975 ALBUM
• FEATURING THE FIRST EVER REMASTERED VERSION MADE FROM THE ORIGINAL ANALOGUE MASTER TAPES ON CD ONE PLUS 8 BONUS TRACKS, FIVE PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
• CD TWO FEATURES A NEW STEREO MIX BY STEVEN WILSON MADE FROM THE MULTI-TRACK MASTER TAPES PLUS 5 BONUS TRACKS, TWO PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
• DISC THREE – NTSC REGION FREE DVD FEATURING NEW 5.1 SURROUND & STEREO MIXES OF “WARRIOR ON THE EDGE OF TIME” BY STEVEN WILSON & A 96 kHz 24-BIT FLAT TRANSFER OF THE ORIGINAL 1975 STEREO MASTER TAPES
• ALSO FEATURES BOOKLET WITH PHOTOS, MEMORABILIA & ESSAY

Atomhenge, the home of HAWKWIND’s catalogue from 1975 – 1997, are pleased to announce the long awaited release of a definitive edition of the classic 1975 album “WARRIOR ON THE EDGE OF TIME”.

This Atomhenge edition marks the first time that the original analogue stereo master tapes have been used for a remastered edition. This set also features the single B-side “Motorhead” as a bonus track.

The first of a series of Richard Hawley music boxes.

Turn the handle to play a snippet of Coles Corner.

It'll melt your heart!

It’s been a while since the last Richard Hawley album - 4 years in fact. During that time he made a decision to break the recording / touring cycle he’d been working since he was 14 and went off to write music for films and also an acclaimed musical, "Standing At The Sky's Edge", based around a housing estate in his home town. But now he’s back, with a new album, and although there’s plenty of the swoonsome, croonsome Hawley we know and love, he’s not been afraid to push the boundaries a little.

If you’re a 6music listener, then you can’t fail to have heard the opening track, the bluesy rock’n’roll stomp of “Of My Mind” - maybe a bit of a shock to the system for long-time Hawley fans, but fear not! It’s followed my the Smithsian “Alone” and then the gorgeous “My Little Treasures” - a beautiful, heartfelt song written about drinking with two of his late father’s oldest friends. The sweeping strings and pedal steel of the title track and slow strummed ballad  “Emilina Says” wind things down beautifully.

I don’t know if the album was put together with the thought of an A-side and B-side in mind, but that’s how it comes across, with both sides opening with a big ballsy blast that slowly eases as the needle creeps inwards. The B-side opens with “Is There A Pill?”, with it’s pounding drums and big string surges that bring to mind “A Design For Life” era Manics. It’s followed by the chugging “Galley Girl” and then gently drifts into the languid “Not Lonely”. “Time Is” could be a Neil Diamond cover (he wrote some gems you know!) and is followed by my favourite track on the album “Midnight Train” - classic Hawley! And finally, the album is rounded off with the short but sweet, gentle strum of “Doors”.

“Further” is possibly the most diverse album Richard Hawley has recorded, but it flows beautifully - partly down to the wonderfully intertwined guitar playing of Hawley and long-time cohort Shez Sheridan, but also because Hawley is such a great song writer. If like me, you are unsure on first listen, stick with it - it’s worth it!

TRACK LISTING

1. Off My Mind
2. Alone
3. My Little Treasures
4. Further
5. Emilina Says
6. Is There A Pill?
7. Galley Girl
8. Not Lonely
9. Time Is
10. Midnight Train
11. Doors

The new album by Richard Hawley, 'In This City They Call You Love' sees Richard ditch the distortion pedals and go back into making voice most prominent.

Following the universal acclaim for 'Standing At The Sky's Edge', the award-winning musical based on his songs, in May Richard Hawley returns with 'In This City They Call You Love', his ninth studio album and his first since 2019's 'Further'.

'In This City They Call You Love' features 12 outstanding songs, many of which can be described as 'vintage Hawley' and are amongst some of the finest ballads he's ever written. Gorgeous melodies and arrangements are accompanied by his emotive and sonorous voice, which sounds better than ever, and will make this a crowning moment in a hugely successful recording career of almost 25 years.

TRACK LISTING

1. Two For His Heels
2. Have Love
3. Prism In Jeans
4. Heavy Rain
5. People
6. Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow
7. Deep Space
8. Deep Waters
9. I’ll Never Get Over You
10. Do I Really Need To Know?
11. When The Lights Go Out
12. ‘Tis Night

Iconic singer/songwriter Richard Hawley recorded live at the beautiful Piece Hall in Halifax on Saturday 4 September 2021. Live at Halifax Piece Hall captures, for the first time, Richard Hawley in concert with his band in full force. Recorded on a beautiful autumn night in September 2021 and in spectacular settings, the album features many Hawley classics as well as songs from his most recent album ‘Further’, augmented by a 4 piece string ensemble. Simply put, it is Hawley at his best.

TRACK LISTING

1. Off My Mind
2. Alone
3. Standing At The Sky's Edge
4. I'm Looking For Someone To Find Me
5. Tonight The Streets Are Ours
6. Coles Corner
7. Galley Girl
8. Don't Stare At The Sun
9. Open Up Your Door
10. Down In The Woods
11. Is There A Pill
12. For Your Lover Give Some Time
13. There's A Storm A Comin'
14. Heart Of Oak

The latest in the Richard Hawley music box series is  fan favouriet ‘I’m Looking For Someone To Find Me’, from the award winning Singer-Songwriter’s 5th studio album ‘Lady's Bridge’. 

Released in 2007, Hawley said the LP was about “leaving the past behind” and was named after another landmark location in his hometown of Sheffield. The Guardian called the record “beautiful, moving pop at its best" and it was lauded by the NME as “an album that has moments that won't be bettered this year or any other.” with BBC Music adding that it “furthers his cause in becoming a proper national treasure".

Richard Hawley is widely recognized as both one of the UK’s greatest songwriters and one of its most respected. Alongside two Mercury Music Prize Nominations, a BRIT award nomination and 4 UK Top 10 Albums, the Sheffield native songwriter has collaborated with the likes of Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, Lisa Marie Presley, Paul Weller and Elbow.

Following the success of Standing At The Sky’s Edge, which won Best New Musical and handed Hawley Best Original Score at the 2023 Olivier Awards, BMG announce the first ever Richard Hawley collection; Now Then: The Very Best of Richard Hawley.

Curated by Hawley and long-term collaborator Colin Elliot, Now Then spans his twenty plus year career, exhibiting all facets of his song writing mastery; marrying his most cinematic moments with his most tender, his best loved work and a host of hidden gems from his early work, to create a collection for both his hardcore fanbase and the perfect entry point for his newest fans. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A much-needed best-of from the brilliant Richard Hawley, spanning a full 20 years in the business and including a whole host of quintessentially Hawley offerings including 'Coles Corner' and 'Standing At The Sky's Edge'. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklisting:
Side A
Open Up Your Door
Midnight Train
Tonight The Streets Are Ours
Coles Corner
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Baby, You're My Light
Side B
Not The Only Road*
My Little Treasures
Standing At The Sky's Edge
Heart Of Oak
The Ocean
Side C
Seek It
Off My Mind
Coming Home
I Still Want You
Just Like The Rain
Run For Me
Side D
Alone
For Your Lover Give Some Time
Serious
Don't Stare At The Sun
There's A Storm A'Comin
*previously Unreleased/exclusive

CD Tracklisting:
CD1
1. Open Up Your Door
2. Midnight Train
3. Tonight The Streets Are Ours
4. Coles Corner
5. Ballad Of A Thin Man
6. Baby, You're My Light
7. She Brings The Sunlight
8. Not The Only Road*
9. Which Way
10. My Little Treasures
11. Naked In Pitsmoor
12. Standing At The Sky's Edge
13. Long Black Train
14. Heart Of Oak
15. You Don't Miss Your Water
16. The Ocean
CD2
1. Don't Stare At The Sun
2. I Still Want You
3. Off My Mind
4. For Your Lover Give Some Time
5. Hotel Room
6. I’m On Nights
7. Seek It
8. Serious
9. Precious Sight
10. Remorse Code
11. Alone
12. Born Under A Bad Sign (Single Version)
13. Our Darkness
14. Run For Me
15. Kelham Island
16. There's A Storm A'Comin'
*previously Unreleased/exclusive

The 2nd in the series of Richard Hawley music boxes.

Wind the handle to play the gorgeous refrain from Open Up Your Door.

An absolute gem!

‘Standing At The Sky’s Edge’ is the title track from Richard Hawley’s sixth studio album, which debuted at number three in the UK albums chart in 2012 and was nominated for that year’s Mercury Prize. Named after Skye Edge, a hillside area with views over the city centre, the song went onto inspire a musical which tells the story of three families over sixty years living in Sheffield’s Park Hill housing estate. It premiered at the Crucible before transferring to the National in London and won Best Musical Production at the UK Theatre Awards and the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Theatre. This is another great Music Box version of one of Hawley's best-loved songs, so why not…

The third in the series of Richard Hawley music boxes.

"Do you know why you got feelings in your heart....."

Vice Cooler from Oakland CA is the sonic insurgent behind the Sonic Youth approved Hawnay Troof. "Dollar And Deed" is his second album following on from the groundbreaking debut "Get Up Resolution: Love".

The music of Hawthonn is dense and atmospheric, but not inaccessible. Experimental electronic techniques fuse with doom-laden organ riffs, crystalline piano, elemental drones and haunting vocals. Largely guided by their own unconscious muse, the band’s chief inspirations lie outside of music, in Romantic poetry, dreams and reveries, esoteric symbolism, the history of magic and witchcraft, folklore and the English landscape.

Hawthonn is Leeds-based duo Layla Legard and Phil Legard. Having previously collaborated in music, as well as text and photography, they officially formed in 2014 to deepen their uniquely imaginative approach to musicmaking. Often developing from obsessive explorations of a particular theme, their work precipitates dreams and imaginative journeys, which inform the direction of their music. Their earliest music explored the afterlife mythos of Coil’s Jhonn Balance through the image of the Hawthorn tree and Cumbrian landscape where his ashes were scattered. Their approach draws lyricism from the psychoacoustic phenomena of “phantom words”—sonic textures translated from geographical space into droning sound spectra, and verbalized dream imagery.

The prime symbol of Red Goddess (Of This Men Shall Know Nothing), is mugwort. An herb associated with dreaming, travel and menstruation, mugwort particularly favors edgelands: those abandoned, untended places, part man-made, part rural, where nature begins to reclaim what humanity has left behind. The music here unfolds a mandala of symbolism from these liminal spaces, drawn from a web of fascinations which unfolded during the recording process.

TRACK LISTING

1 In Mighty Revelation
2 Misandrist
3 Lady Of The Flood
4 Eden
5 Dream Fugue

Archaic Devices will also release long-awaited reissues of 2009's psychedelic Observatory EP, 2011’s The Haxan Cloak LP and 2013’s Excavation LP.

Listening to everything Bobby Krlic has recorded as a composer, songwriter and producer is a thought-provoking and exciting experience. With an impressive and ever-growing list of film and television titles to his name, the launch of Archaic Devices allows listeners to revisit his early work as The Haxan Cloak in anticipation of a third full length album that will no doubt be as innovative and metaphysically eye-opening as its predecessors

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
CONSUMED
EXCAVATION (PART 1)
EXCAVATION (PART 2)

SIDE B:
MARA
MISTE

SIDE C:
THE MIRROR REFLECTING (PART 1)
THE MIRROR REFLECTING (PART 2)

SIDE D:
DIEU
THE DROP

Bobby Krlic shares “N/Y,” the first new piece of solo music released as The Haxan Cloak in over a decade. Blistering and propulsive, “N/Y” draws upon the sonic hallmarks Krlic established as fundamental to The Haxan Cloak but with newfound depth drawn from the skills that he has honed over the past decade composing music for film and TV. It is accompanied by a visual also produced and directed by Krlic.

‘N/Y’ is a feeling I’ve had for a really long time,” he says of the track. “It was made with the intention of being something that I could play live only, and was just this burst of intensity that could re-contextualize anywhere I would play it in. I kept working on it and it became something that I wanted to hear regardless of the context. I made the video in the same way. Making charcoal drawings and oil paintings, then fusing these together with self-shot video of myself in my studio. It feels immediate and without compromise. It was made quickly, in a moment, with complete intention. I really hope it changes the space you’re in.”

Krlic’s work in the early 2010’s as The Haxan Cloak bridged the then radically separated worlds of avant garde, drone, metal and electronic music. Earning critical praise from the likes of DAZED, The FADER Pitchfork, Mixmag, The Quietus, The New York Times and The Wire, among others, Krlic’s staunchly independent output brought him to the attention of such luminaries as Björk, Goldfrapp, and Father John Misty as an in-demand producer. Since 2015 he has established himself as a composer for Film, Television and Games, winning a BAFTA award for his score to the Playstation 5 flagship game, Returnal and an Ivor Novello award for his original score for Midsommar, a celebrated artistic collaboration with director Ari Aster. He returned to this collaboration this year with Beau Is Afraid. In addition to his recurring work with Aster, Krlic has flexed his compositional chops for two radically different projects this year, contributing scores to A24 and Netflix’s No.1 acclaimed dark comedy thriller Beef and Warner Bros and DC Studios’ Blue Beetle, the latter of which went on to top the box office upon release.

The release of “N/Y” coincides with the announcement of Archaic Devices, a new label founded by Krlic that will serve as the home for his future releases as The Haxan Cloak alongside reissues of his past work under the moniker. Krlic admits that starting a record label wasn’t something that had occurred to him until he finished building his own home studio in LA and he regained the master tapes to his records from various underground labels. All of his archival releases have been remastered, with aspects of their design and presentation tightened up by Krlic to present his music exactly as he initially intended. Working with revered visual artist Christopher Leckie, Krlic has built a stark, unique identity for his newly minted label Archaic Devices that extends to a new line of merchandise, as well as new visual directions for the label’s first and forthcoming releases. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
N/Y

SIDE B:
N/Y

Archaic Devices will also release long-awaited reissues of 2009's psychedelic Observatory EP, 2011’s The Haxan Cloak LP and 2013’s Excavation LP.

Listening to everything Bobby Krlic has recorded as a composer, songwriter and producer is a thought-provoking and exciting experience. With an impressive and ever-growing list of film and television titles to his name, the launch of Archaic Devices allows listeners to revisit his early work as The Haxan Cloak in anticipation of a third full length album that will no doubt be as innovative and metaphysically eye-opening as its predecessors. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
OBSERVATORY

SIDE B:
HONFOUR (TEMPLE)

Archaic Devices will also release long-awaited reissues of 2009's psychedelic Observatory EP, 2011’s The Haxan Cloak LP and 2013’s Excavation LP.

Listening to everything Bobby Krlic has recorded as a composer, songwriter and producer is a thought-provoking and exciting experience. With an impressive and ever-growing list of film and television titles to his name, the launch of Archaic Devices allows listeners to revisit his early work as The Haxan Cloak in anticipation of a third full length album that will no doubt be as innovative and metaphysically eye-opening as its predecessors

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
RAVEN’S LAMENT
AN ARCHAIC DEVICE

SIDE B:
BURNING TORCHES OF DESPAIR
DISORDER

SIDE C:
THE FALL
THE GROWING

SIDE D:
IN MEMORIAM
PARTING CHANT

This EP is Hayashi's release sincehis debut LP Ambivalence. Hayashi has studied under Japanese avant-classical composer Mica Nozawa. When not DJing,he works in a record store in Tokyo. Thus far, Hayashi has released a string of 12”s on labels including Going Good Records, Jinn Records, Lovers Rock, Gravity Grafittiand Moscoman’s Disco Halal. Previous work by Hayashihas been called “a complex patchwork of studio gear, live instruments, dusty jazz records and smartly cut library sounds, whose textures are soft and inviting. But its arrangements are constantly ruffled, squeezed, brushed and pinched—which is to say, nothing stays still for long”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1.U
2.Cs

Side B:
1.I
2.Sr

The full 33-minute, unreleased, psychedelic funk jam session by Memphis rhythm kingpins the Bar-Kays, mixed directly from the original tapes. Contains bonus rhythm section instrumental and booklet detailing the history of this never-before-heard version of one of Isaac Hayes’ most famous songs by Hayes historian Bill Dahl.

Hayes was already a cutting-edge funk master at Stax Records when he accepted the unprecedented assignment of creating a soundtrack for the 1971 action flick Shaft. At a time when R&B songs routinely timed out at three minutes and under, Hayes’ albums for Stax’s Enterprise imprint had been breaking new ground since 1969. His masterpiece Hot Buttered Soul consisted of only four tracks, two songs on The Isaac Hayes Movement clocked in at a hair under 12 minutes, and one selection on his …To Be Continued stretched to 15:33.

But his epic “Do Your Thing,” one of the cornerstones of the two-LP Shaft soundtrack, outdid them all. Occupying nearly the entire last side of the set, it concluded after 19-and-a-half grooving minutes with the overdubbed sound of a needle scratching violently across a piece of vinyl. No one knew that jarring ending masked the existence of another 13 minutes of “Do Your Thing.” Consigned to the vaults, those improvisatory extensions—somewhere in between free-jazz and psychedelic rock—were seemingly destined never to be heard. Until now.

Even from the very first 'wikka', anyone on the planet can spot the classic theme from Shaft. Creative juices in full flow, the mighty Isaac Hayes penned a Blaxploitation theme so funky, fresh and orchestrally superior that it seized control of the collective pop consciousness with a vice-like grip. But if you look and listen beyond the ubiquitous title, Hayes delivers four sides of melodic and conscious mood music, only rivaled by Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" for the genre's top spot. The contemplative groove of "Bumpy's Lament" found favour with Mobb Deep and Dr Dre, "Ellie's Love Theme" did the trick for Biggie Smalls while "Do Your Thing" prompted Big Daddy Kane to get super smooth. Each and every track is worth a mention, especially the breezy soul jazz sway of "Cafe Regio's", but rather than hear me wax lyrical, you should just cop a load of this wax - Black Moses in full effect!

Band on the Wall Recordings is excited to present the first release from The Singles Club; a body of new work for 2021 that celebrates the artistic practice and far-reaching talents of one of its favourite artists and one of the hardest working musicians to grace the Band on the Wall stage.

Second year participant of Gilles Peterson’s Future Bubblers scheme and rising vocal talent, Mali Hayes is a jazzy-nu-R&B type neo soul artist, who has received personal endorsements from the likes of Jamz Supernova, Gilles Peterson & Jamie Cullum.

“A really great new British female vocalist from Manchester… She's got a real un-flashy kind of approach which I really like. Kind of a milder Jill Scott / Erykah Badu, definitely one to watch. We'll be hearing a lot more from her I'm sure!” – Jamie Cullum, BBC Radio 2

"I was fortunate enough to play demo's on my shows here at the BBC by Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. All premiers. And this is another one I think I'm gonna be proud of in a few years. Remember the name, Mali Hayes” – Gilles Peterson

A rising star in a flourishing Manchester music scene, jazzy-nu-R&B type neo soul artist Mali Hayes steps in a new direction for The Singles Club. Calling on past sounds, she breathes new life into previous work, combining vibrant real-life stories with honesty and soul, resulting in a release that is refreshing, infectious and dynamic. The lead track ‘Forgive You’ is a collaboration with fellow Future Bubblers participants, Medikul & Cult Architect.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Two stunning tracks from Mali Hayes fresh off the new Band on the Wall Recordings label, if this is a sample of what’s to come then we’re in for a treat. Soulful hazy-jazz which is good for the soul, mind and body.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Forgive You
B1. Come Closer

English songwriter and ex-Hefner frontman Darren Hayman releases his enthralling and ambitious new album ‘Thankful Villages Vol. 1’ via Rivertones.

A thankful village is a village in Britain where every soldier returned alive from World War I. Darren Hayman visited each of the 54 thankful villages and, focussing on village life, made a piece of music and a short film for each one. Some take the form of instrumentals inspired by the location, some are interviews with village residents set to music and others are new songs with lyrics or found local traditional songs.

‘Thankful Villages Vol. 1’ is the first (of three) volumes of the project and contains the first 18 villages that Darren visited during 2014/15. The pieces do not necessarily refer to the Great War, rather they portray the village and its communities at many points in history.

TRACK LISTING

Knowlton
Culpho
St Michael, South Elmham
Puttenham
Stoke Hammond
Little Sodbury
Rodney Stoke
Holywell Lake
Aisholt
Stocklinch
Strethall
Welbury
Scruton
Chelwood
Langton Herring
Herodsfoot
Butterton
Bradbourne

English songwriter and ex-Hefner frontman Darren Hayman releases his enthralling and ambitious new album ‘Thankful Villages Vol. 1’ via Rivertones.

A thankful village is a village in Britain where every soldier returned alive from World War I. Darren Hayman visited each of the 54 thankful villages and, focussing on village life, made a piece of music and a short film for each one. Some take the form of instrumentals inspired by the location, some are interviews with village residents set to music and others are new songs with lyrics or found local traditional songs.

‘Thankful Villages Vol. 1’ is the first (of three) volumes of the project and contains the first 18 villages that Darren visited during 2014/15. The pieces do not necessarily refer to the Great War, rather they portray the village and its communities at many points in history.

TRACK LISTING

Knowlton
Culpho
St Michael, South Elmham
Puttenham
Stoke Hammond
Little Sodbury
Rodney Stoke
Holywell Lake
Aisholt
Stocklinch
Strethall
Welbury
Scruton
Chelwood
Langton Herring
Herodsfoot
Butterton
Bradbourne

When Darren Hayman (Hefner) and Emma Kupa (Standard Fare/Mammoth Penguins) decided to make a duets record, we knew the results would be great, but we didn’t expect them to be THIS great. Gathering together a rhythm section consisting of Michael Wood (Whoa Melodic/Singing Adams) on bass and Cat Loye (Fever Dream) on drums, The Hayman Kupa Band create brash, bold and effortlessly melodic power pop. Sharing writing duties and sometimes singing each others words, lines are blurred and creativity explored in a wonderfully exuberant collection of songs.

The album, recorded in 3 days, is an exploration of relationships and, at its heart, it’s the sound of a friendship being made. Darren explains further: It’s only happened a few times but just once or twice I have seen someone on stage and thought, “I want to be in a band with them.” But I thought it the first time I saw Emma playing with her magnificent and under-rated band Standard Fare. I met her properly a little later in Sheffield when we played together. Before the gig I said I was suspicious of bands that wore hats. She wore a hat on stage. They say imitation is a form of flattery and I was glad that I noticed when I wrote the song “Boy, Look at What you Can’t Have Now” that it sounded like the sort of thing Emma might write. I covered up my theft by asking her to sing on it. When we were recording the song I suggested that we should write a whole album of duets. Musicians suggest things like this all the time because they are stupid or drunk. A few months later Emma told me she had started writing the album. This is what Emma does; she says something then does it. I race to play catch up. The songs were written over 3 weekends at her house and mine. Co-writing is something I’m not used to. It’s very intimate and me and Emma became friends through the process. Emma’s lyrics are sharp and precise whereas mine are more metaphoric. We talked about relationships and that’s what the album is about. It’s about our fears and paranoias and the search for trust and love. We deliberately swapped lines and genders so the narrative is never truly that of traditional duets. We wanted a band to make the album and chose Michael Wood and Cat Loye. 

TRACK LISTING

A1) Let’s Do Nothing
A2) No More Bombs
A3) Red Petal
A4) Over’s Now Overdue
A5) We Can Get By
A6) Do You Know

B1) A Tent Of Blankets
B2) Draw The Line
B3) My Right Arm
B4) Pretty Waste Of Time
B5) Reach Out
B6) Then We Kissed

Always perfectly capturing the zeitgeist, Darren Hayman releases his 18th solo album, 12 Astronauts, on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing 12 men have walked on the moon, and 12 Astronauts includes a song for each of them, from Neil Armstrong to Harrison Schmitt and Gene Cernan (the Apollo 17 astronauts who quibble about who was the last man on the moon, was it the last person to set foot on the moon (Schmitt) or the last person to take his foot off the moon (Cernan)?). Darren has always had an interest in space travel since 1977 when he saw Star Wars.

Back in 2001 Hefner (Darren Hayman’s previous band) released a single called Alan Bean about the 4th man on the moon (an all new version is included on 12 Astronauts). In 2011 he contributed songs and pictures to Vostok 5, a London exhibition (and compilation album) about people and animals in space (he has also illustrated the cover of 12 Astronauts). In March 2014, as part of a year-long residency at Dalston’s Vortex, he played a set of his space-related songs supported by Robin Ince (this included the live debut of a number of tracks from 12 Astronauts).

His record label, ‘Belka’, is named for one of the first two dogs to go into earth orbit and return alive, so it should come as no surprise that the 12 Astronauts were in the back of his mind while he researched, wrote and recorded his classics about Thankful Villages, the Essex Witch Trials, Lidos, William Morris and British seaside resorts. The songs are works of historical fiction. Although Darren researched heavily he is essentially imagining himself as each astronaut and singing in the first person. The songs are not all set during the Apollo missions. Buzz Aldrin battles with his demons and fights for his marriage. Pete Conrad sympathises with his partner’s fear of an accident in flight. David Scott wonders what happened to his bodyguard on his press tour. Gene Cernan list every object he can think of that was left on the moon. Although the subject is big Darren has always written songs about small things and this album is no different. Darren collects together tiny moments from magnificent lives.' The album itself is curious in its genesis as Darren conceived and started the album back in 2008 and only recently came back to complete it. Some of the vocals are recorded 10 years apart.

TRACK LISTING

1. Spaceman No More (Neil Armstrong),
2. Low Orbit (Buzz Aldrin),
3. Timber Cove (Pete Conrad),
4. Alan Bean (Alan Bean),
5. Don't Clip My Wings (Alan Sheppard),
6. Hard Disk In The Sky (Edgar Mitchell),
7. Major Sunday (David Scott),
8. Genesis Rock (James Irwin),
9. 100% Oxygen (John Young),
10. Duke's Dream (Charles Duke),
11. It's Geology (Harrison Schmitt),
12. Things We Left Behind (Gene Cernan) 

An autobiographical album about break ups, the record is tender, honest and frequently funny. Darren set an 8 track, acoustic rule for the record. Everything sounds warm, close and intimate. Darren’s own love-worn, London voice is joined on every song by the sweet antipodean tones of Hannah Winter and Laura K, recording artists and songwriters themselves with Common or Garden and Fortitude Valley. When Darren Hayman made his debut in 1997 with the acclaimed indie band Hefner his lyrical remit was the broken hearted.

His early songs told the story of the lonesome and lost, and broken dreams of love on the back streets of London. After Hefner, Hayman’s palette grew to include a unique take on place and memory. In the early 2000s he wrote a trilogy of albums around the history of Essex. In 2012 he made an instrumental album describing the tranquillity of Lidos. In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. His most recent record, 12 Astronauts, tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon. Darren is continually obsessed with the idea of what songs can be, and the stories they can tell. As he explains, “With projects like Thankful Villages, I became interested in what a record could be, using field recordings, interviews and songs to make sound collages. I wanted to return to the stricter art of song writing and try and make the twelve best compositions I could.

I wanted to make useful songs, words that could be comfort, not just thoughts that would depress.” The songs for Home Time were written over a three-year period but recorded quickly, and with love, in Darren’s home. Home Time is a fragile, subtle slice of prettiness. Wrap it around you. Three digital singles will be released; ‘I Tried and I Tried and I Failed’, a song about the endless, circular nature of being human, ‘I Was Thinking About You’, a song about the uncontrollable nature of memory and how it continues to haunt us even when we consider the long buried, and ‘The Joint Account’, about how when trying to negotiate matters of the heart and mind, it is sometimes the physical objects that anchor us down in the mire.

TRACK LISTING

A1) Curl Up
A2) I Was Thinking About You
A3) Because We Were Impossible
A4) I Am The Noise
A5) I Want To Get Drunk
A6) I Tried And I Tried And I Failed

B1) I Love You, I Miss You, Come Back
B2) Dinosaur Plate
B3) The Joint Account
B4) Kissing A Cloud
B5) A Girl That I’m Seeing
B6) Wrap Yourself Around Me

English songwriter and former Hefner frontman Darren Hayman continues his journey around the United Kingdom’s 54 Thankful Villages. A Thankful Village is a village where every soldier returned alive from World War One.

An ongoing and hugely ambitious folk project, ‘Thankful Villages’ is only partially concerned with the war itself, moreover it is a celebration of British rural life. Darren pulls together first person interviews, folk tales and songs, field recordings and his own personal experiences to create a vast patchwork depicting community, history and legend.

‘Thankful Villages Vol. 2’ is something akin to an arcane musical radio documentary. The success of the first volume of ‘Thankful Villages’ has encouraged Hayman to go deeper into his subject. Themes of ‘the river’ and ‘death’ weave their way through these eighteen villages. A centuries old drowning is uncovered in ‘Arkholme’ on Bonfire Night. Dennis, the river man, tells us of a tragedy on the Weir in ‘Cromwell’. Judy Dyble, the original singer of folk legends Fairport Convention, joins Darren in the village of ‘Upper Slaughter’ and sings a lyric about the generations flowing like water through the village.

Darren uncovers two World War II air disasters in ‘Woodend’ and ‘Wigsley’, where he records in the abandoned control tower at the airfield, the so-called cemetery of lights. Perhaps the most shocking and miraculous of tales is found in ‘Flixborough’ where in 1974 the local plastics factory exploded killing everyone inside but nobody in the lucky village. Derek and his son tell us the story of finding each other amongst shards of glass.

However, glimpses of light shine through the darkness; a sunny day of wild swimming in ‘Tellisford’, a village fete with bell ringing in ‘East Norton’ and a tale of a grateful Belgian refugee in ‘Norton Le Clay’.

TRACK LISTING

Cundall
Norton Le Clay
Chantry
Tellisford
Woolley
Shapwick
Cromwell
Wigsley
East Norton
Maplebeck
Stretton En Le Field.
Nether Kellet
Arkholme
Colwinston
Upper Slaughter
Woodend
Coln Rogers

English songwriter and former Hefner frontman Darren Hayman continues his journey around the United Kingdom’s 54 Thankful Villages. A Thankful Village is a village where every soldier returned alive from World War One.

An ongoing and hugely ambitious folk project, ‘Thankful Villages’ is only partially concerned with the war itself, moreover it is a celebration of British rural life. Darren pulls together first person interviews, folk tales and songs, field recordings and his own personal experiences to create a vast patchwork depicting community, history and legend.

‘Thankful Villages Vol. 2’ is something akin to an arcane musical radio documentary. The success of the first volume of ‘Thankful Villages’ has encouraged Hayman to go deeper into his subject. Themes of ‘the river’ and ‘death’ weave their way through these eighteen villages. A centuries old drowning is uncovered in ‘Arkholme’ on Bonfire Night. Dennis, the river man, tells us of a tragedy on the Weir in ‘Cromwell’. Judy Dyble, the original singer of folk legends Fairport Convention, joins Darren in the village of ‘Upper Slaughter’ and sings a lyric about the generations flowing like water through the village.

Darren uncovers two World War II air disasters in ‘Woodend’ and ‘Wigsley’, where he records in the abandoned control tower at the airfield, the so-called cemetery of lights. Perhaps the most shocking and miraculous of tales is found in ‘Flixborough’ where in 1974 the local plastics factory exploded killing everyone inside but nobody in the lucky village. Derek and his son tell us the story of finding each other amongst shards of glass.

However, glimpses of light shine through the darkness; a sunny day of wild swimming in ‘Tellisford’, a village fete with bell ringing in ‘East Norton’ and a tale of a grateful Belgian refugee in ‘Norton Le Clay’.

TRACK LISTING

Cundall
Norton Le Clay
Chantry
Tellisford
Woolley
Shapwick
Cromwell
Wigsley
East Norton
Maplebeck
Stretton En Le Field.
Nether Kellet
Arkholme
Colwinston
Upper Slaughter
Woodend
Coln Rogers

When Darren Hayman made his debut in 1997 with the acclaimed indie band Hefner his lyrical remit was the broken hearted. His early songs told the story of the lonesome and lost, and broken dreams of love on the back streets of London. After Hefner, Hayman’s palette grew to include a unique take on place and memory. In the early 2000s he wrote a trilogy of albums around the history of Essex. In 2012 he made an instrumental album describing the tranquillity of Lidos. In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. His most recent record, 12 Astronauts, tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon. Darren is continually obsessed with the idea of what songs can be, and the stories they can tell.

As he explains, “With projects like Thankful Villages, I became interested in what a record could be, using field recordings, interviews and songs to make sound collages. I wanted to return to the stricter art of song writing and try and make the twelve best compositions I could. I wanted to make useful songs, words that could be comfort, not just thoughts that would depress.”

TRACK LISTING

A1) How It Could Be
A2) You Were My Map
A3) Don’t Haunt Me
A4) A Real Human Being
A5) Let’s Drift
A6) Love Is Through
B1) Otium
B2) A Room Within A Room
B3) No Lime For The Gin
B4) The Safest Way
B5) Turn My Grey Tick Blue
B6) Feel Like This Every Night
C1) Girls Who Look Like You
C2) Here’s The Stillness
C3) Loser Run
C4) Say You Want To Be Alone
C5) We Are Repaired
C6) Easter Gold
D1) Actually I Still Really, Really Miss You
D2) Holiday Eyes
D3) Where Were You
D4) Adverse Camber
D5) I Am Owned
D6) You Were Always Here 

Angular, intense songs, in a Fugazi quiet-loud-quiet style.

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

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

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

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

STAFF COMMENTS

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

TRACK LISTING

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

Boz Hayward returns with a deeply personal album which combines his particular take on modern folk, and adds a a vibrant slice of country music, together with his trademark whimsical pop elements. "Tennessee Ten" is ten new songs written during and around two visits with his mother in 2014 and 2015 to care for his aunt in Eastern Tennessee whose health was failing, and, who passed away during the second visit. There is a narrative that runs through the album creating a delightful and sometimes poignant atmosphere.

Using his trusted band of musicians Hayward delivers 38 minutes of varied tunes with a combination of sardonic humour and wry observations about life in the latter half of the 2010s. There was a clear intent to write a few songs with a country feel, given the Tennessee location and this is the most of obvious in "Night of the Fireflies" "Trail of Tears" and "The People Are Good". But as with any release from Hayward the sounds vary between quirky alternative pop in the spirit of Ray Davies, Kevin Ayers or Robyn Hitchcock, Morricone soundtracks, Klezmer, a hint of lounge jazz, and gentle country/folk/blues

TRACK LISTING

1.Totally Weird 02:24
2.Night Of The Fireflies 04:03
3. Patsy Lane 03:04
4. Trail Of Tears 03:02
5. In My Little Bubble 04:17
6. The Lexicon Of Life 05:14
7. The People Are Good 04:03
8. Now That You Are Free 04:38
9. You Ain't No Man 04:22
10. Byrdman And Birdo 02:44

Charles Hayward is an English drummer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with Mal Dean's Amazing Band, Dolphin Logic, and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in the group Quiet Sun project as well as a short stint with Gong. He was a session musician on The Raincoats' second album, Odyshape, and on one occasion played drums for the anarchist punk band Crass.

Since the late 1980s he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations, including Massacre with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith. Begin Anywhere is his brand new solo album and shows a different side to the Charles Hayward we know. The drum set is left in the corner, and instead we get fragile yet powerful songs on piano and voice. A very personal Hayward album, let yourself be surprised. 

Boz Hayward’s third album is a collaboration with the late Brian Tibby. Shortly before falling ill, over a number of weeks Brian - the regular opener at Chorlton Folk Club - gave a series of handwritten letters to Boz, containing amongst them a series of whimsical observations of local life… Inspired by the workings of Brian’s colourful and wonderfully eccentric imagination, ‘Edward Edwardly and the Marquis of Flixton’ is Boz’s witty response, a 13 track album which, named after one of the most vivid character sketches from the collection, sets each of these to his own unique blend of orchestral urban folk music.

Crossing Calexico with Mogwai will take you some way here… but only some way… This is very welcome unchartered territory. A highly original 10-track acoustic film score album rich in melody, harmonies, atmosphere and dynamics with a good mix of tempos that will take the listener to many places inside 40 minutes.

Boz Hayward’s fourth album SHORTSCORES is the first body of work created solely for Video Jam – the experimental short film/live score event from Manchester. Boz has been associated with Video Jam since its inception in January 2012. His cinematic, narrative writing style, coupled with his quaint and idiosyncratic 'Bozchestra' (traditionally consisting of Boz himself on acoustic guitar, a mariachi bass/guitarron, violin, trumpet and percussion) lends itself perfectly to the art of the film score. A rich, rewarding listen.

Simple and beautifully crafted acoustic songs with rich, clear vocals and
haunting harmonies. Refreshingly original. The nearest you could get to
this? – Possibly the music of Richard Hawley stripped down with a filmic
feel that takes you from baking spaghetti western to frozen dark gothic.
Some laments, some storytelling, observations of everyday people and
consumerist society and a message of love. A charming complement to a
weekend morning or life on the road...

Shay Hazan radiates with musical diversity on 'Wusul وصول', His second solo album on Batov Records. Acclaimed Tel Aviv bassist, band leader, composer and producer, Shay Hazan emerges into the limelight with his highly anticipated second solo album, 'Wusul وصول'. This groundbreaking musical odyssey artfully melds the enchanting sounds of Gnawa music, spiritual jazz, hip hop grooves, and electronic production, with a rich tapestry of Middle Eastern and African influences.

Hazan's debut solo album for Batov Records, 'Reclusive Ritual,' unveiled a fresh musical realm. It introduced the guimbri, a three-stringed camel-skin-covered bass plucked lute used by the Gnawa people of Morocco, to a landscape of jazzy horns, synths, and laid-back hip-hop beats.

The album garnered support on BBC 6 Radio Music and earned Hazan a mix on the Huey Show. With over two four- 'لوصو star reviews, Songlines magazine dubbed it "groovy," while Mojo magazine described it as "hypnotic." 'Wusul builds on this legacy, offering a broader sonic palette, enhanced organic instrumentation, a lighter atmosphere, and elevated production values.

The album's enigmatic title, 'Wusul' (Arabic for 'arrival'), celebrates the expected birth of Hazan’s first born child, expected to arrive around the same time as this album. Fitting, given that the latter is the result of a transformative phase in Hazan's career, with many of the album’s songs evolving and taking shape during live performances. Most notably, a majority of the musicians featured on 'Wusul لوصو' are integral members of Hazan's live band, bringing a synergy and connection to the music that is palpable.

Standout track, “Sunflowers”, featuring the exceptional Nitai Hershkovits on keys, showcases Hazan's prowess on guimbri, guitar, percussions, and synths. This mesmerising composition, recorded by Hazan himself, seamlessly weaves together a diverse array of musical elements, resulting in an uplifting and danceable masterpiece.

On “A Walk In Dir El-Assad”, Hazan invites listeners with him to the small Arabic village of El-Assad, where at night the air is full of sounds of music emanating from multiple weddings. Over a cacophony of percussion, live drums from Shahar Haziza, and Hazan’s earthy guimbri-led basslines and gritty guitar, Eyal Netzer and tenor sax and Roy Zuzovsky trade solos and harmonise over the melody.

Delivering one of the heaviest grooves on the album, “Vibe jadid” commences with the distinctive percussive sound of krakebs, large iron castanet-like musical instruments, primarily known for supplying the rhythmic aspect of Moroccan Gnawa music, before the earthy guimbri bassline hits, accompanied by a half time hip-hop-like kick drum and clap. Triumphant horns ring out the anthemic melody, offset by otherworldly synths.

Shay Hazan's creative process reveals a cross-cultural narrative influenced by his extensive travels, from Central America to Japan, where he encountered the rich tradition of Gnawa musicians in Tel Aviv. The album includes a fascinating tune named “Shimo Kitazawa”, inspired by a Tokyo neighbourhood, as well as other tracks infused with the global vibes that have touched his musical soul. Dedicated compositions like “Dew” and 'Yooltz” pay homage to the friends and musicians who helped shape this album. Opener “Dew” is a nod to trumpeter Tal Avraham, who contributes a hypnotising solo. “Yooltz” is a loving tribute to tenor saxophonist Eyal Netzer, who contributes a soulful solo to the song, adding a distinctive layer of brilliance to the album. The Afrobeat leaning “Oladipo”, on the other hand, is dedicated to the late great drummer, musical director of Fela Kuti's band legendary Africa '70, and pioneer of the sound, Tony Allen.

Hazan utilises synths to create an eerie atmosphere on “Street Souls”, inspired by the characters who frequently inhabit the streets around Hazan's studio, sharing insightful comments from time-to-time. The slim wall of separation, provided by his machines and studio walls, from the junkies and prostitutes outside is emblematic of the slim divide between his privileged existence and theirs. This urban tension continues on album closer “Riff Raff”, taps into the tumultuous undercurrents of social movements and demonstrations, injecting a sense of urgency into the album's diverse tapestry, with its jolting groove. Shay Hazan's journey continues as he embarks on a series of international performances, including the Jazz Jantar Festival in Dansk, Poland, and the Tel Aviv Jazz

Festival. He has recently captivated audiences at the prestigious Jazz in the Park Festival in Romania and the Jerusalem Jazz Festival. His music transcends borders, uniting listeners worldwide in a vibrant celebration of sound and culture.

'Wusul لوصو' is an introspective journey through the intricate tapestry of musical influences that have shaped Shay Hazan's unique sound. While Western and Mizrahi pop have left their marks on the record, they serve as threads in a larger, more intricate musical fabric. Hazan's profound exploration transcends traditional boundaries, weaving together a rich sonic tapestry that defies easy categorization.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dew
2. Oladipo
3. A Bite Of Sand
4. Sunflowers
5. A Walk In Dir El-Assad
6. Yarabi
7. Shimo Kitazawa
8. Yooltz
9. Vibe Jadid
10. Street Souls
11. Riff Raff

Birthed out of the boredom of rural village life in Buckinghamshire, Haze now reside in Bristol and make urgent, dissonant music, described as a ‘special brand of ramshackle post-punk that’s raucous and dripping with irony’ by So Young Magazine.

Lyrically, often adopting the biographical form, they have strived to deconstruct our society, addressing topics such as toxic masculinity in ‘Ladz Ladz Ladz’ and our false deification of historical figures in ‘Piochitas’ and new single ‘St John’, whilst maintaining a sense of humour that pervades their live shows

TRACK LISTING

A - St. John
B - Piochitas

It’s safe to say The Hazey Janes have undergone their fair share of globetrotting in their ten years together, all the while refining their zig-zag path from country to psych to power pop. They’ve headlined throughout the UK, played in support to the likes of Elbow, Idlewild and Snow Patrol, made two trips to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas - where they showed their versatility by being able to open for both Susanna Hoffs and The Presidents of the United States of America.

Since 2011’s The Winter That Was, the group’s third album, the quartet have undertaken some of their most rigorous and prestigious tours to date, opening as guests for Wilco on the European leg of their world tour and, more recently, Deacon Blue - the latter culminating with a sold out performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Inspired and rejuvenated by their time in Spain, where their dates with Wilco concluded, the band ensconced themselves in the country’s South-west to record fourth album, Language of Faint Theory, returning to El Puerto De Santa Maria to collaborate with Paco Loco (The Posies, The Sadies, Josh Rouse) and John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Sonic Youth, The Hold Steady), the team that produced and mixed their debut, 2006’s critically lauded Hotel Radio.

Engineering skills aside, one of the main the reasons we chose Paco’s studio is the vast array of vintage recording equipment and weird and wonderful guitars and keyboards he collects. The whole session went down to two-inch tape via an old 1970s Cadac console from Scorpion Studios in London which was previously used by Queen, T-Rex, Supertramp and goodness knows how many other bands that swanned in through their doors. John then mixed down to quarter-inch tape, completing the album’s warm analogue sound, which we had our hearts set on from the start” says front-man, Andrew Mitchell. No matter how far the apple drops from the tree, home is where the heart is, and within lead single, ‘The Fathom Line’s chiming, saturated guitar-pop and euphoric vocals is a homage to their beloved hometown of Dundee.

Mitchell explains; “For many years Dundee’s long and illustrious, if somewhat tumultuous, past has been the source of much debate and deliberation in both song and literature. While ‘The Fathom Line’ continues that tradition, weaving through tragedy and triumph of the history that hangs in the air through the city by the Silvery Tay, it observes and celebrates the plight of the underdog.” Bassist Matthew Marra elaborates, “While the recording of the album may have been geographically detached from the East coast of Scotland, there’s a strong narrative of our lives in Dundee running through Language of Faint Theory. The year leading up to the recording was a particularly emotional one for the four of us and that certainly infiltrated the writing process. All the songs depict events, people and places in and around the City of Dundee.”

“…cruising between REM, The Byrds, and The Beatles, awash in glistening three-part harmonies…” Classic Rock.

TRACK LISTING

1. Iwan
2. The Fathom Line
3. All Is Forgotten
4. In Shadows Under Trees
5. If Ever There Is Gladness
6.Beyond The Heath
7. The Genesis
8. (I’m) Telescoping
9. Language Of Faint Theory
10. Bellefield Moon

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

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

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

The Head and the Heart came together in the summer of 2009, during frequent visits to the open mic night at Conor Byrne in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood.

Californian Josiah Johnson and Virginia-native Jonathan Russell formed the core songwriting partnership, before adding keyboardist Kenny Hensle. Kenny, then 21, had packed up his piano and moved up to Seattle from California to pursue musical score-writing. Charity Rose Thielen, violin and vocals, had just returned from a year of studying and playing music in Paris. Drummer Tyler Williams moved from Virginia after Jon sent him the demo of Down in the Valley, relocating across states to be a part of this. Finally, Chris Zasche, was bartending at Conor Byrne and mentioned one day that he'd be happy to play bass for the nascent band. It all felt right: The Head and the Heart was born.

The band entered Seattle's Studio Litho in early 2010 to record these songs that had been kicking and twisting in the catalytic development of their live show. Recorded by Shawn Simmons at Studio Litho and Steven Aguilar at Bearhead Studio, the band was selling burned copies in handmade denim sleeves at local shows within a few weeks. Self-released in June 2010, the debut album helped build an impressive head-of-steam for the band through the second 1/2 of the year, gaining fans at influential Seattle station KEXP, local record shops (a consistent top 10 seller for Easy Street and the #1 album of 2010 at Sonic Boom), and venues up and down the west coast.

For the 2011 re-release of the album, Sounds Like Hallelujah has been re-recorded, live favorite Rivers and Roads has been added, and the album has been re-mastered.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cats And Dogs
2. Coeur D’Alene
3. Ghosts
4. Down In The Valley
5. Rivers And Roads
6. Honey Come Home
7. Lost In My Mind
8. Winter Song
9. Sounds Like Hallelujah
10. Heaven Go Easy On Me

Bonus Tracks:
11. Chasing A Ghost (Live)
12. Josh McBride (Live)
13. River’s And Roads (Live)

Kerrie from E Bloc's Dark Machine Funk goes from strength to strength with her first guest producer featuring on the label's fifth release. Head Front Panel, Kerrie confesses, has been a massive source of inspiration both for her own productions and the direction of the label; so she musta been well buzzing when they agreed to this feature!

"Panama" starts us off with concentric brick wall drums and a tribal whoop carrying Detroitian strings and swelling synth passages. Instantly traversing the Atlantic with a track that's equal parts us and Motor City. "Tactile" continues this allegiance with wigged out, nagging leads ricocheting off clattering metallic beats that somehow tips its hat to both Jeff Mills and Luke Slater simultaneously.

"Surdo" goes for a mainroom throb, fluttering hats and thrusting low end reminding us of DJ Rush in peak flow. Finally "Them", the most Millsian offering here, utilizes pitched 909s, a circular acid line and expert saturation to create a track that'll twist craniums and summon interplanetary communication between us and any passing UFOs.

Top stuff. Real techno! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Serious UK-Detroit hybridization here with one of my favourite releases on Kerrie's DMF label. Strictly for the headstrong, fierce, uncompromising techno that beats its chest gleefully.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Panama
A2. Tactile
B1. Surdo
B2. Them

Liverpool legend Michael Head (Shack, The Strands, Pale Fountains) returns with a stunningly beautiful double A-side single. "Velvets In The Dark" is a gorgeous conversational swooner in the style of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talking", whilst the flip, "Koala Bears" has an almost jazzy flavour and slips into (Bacharach and David's) "Close To You" as made famous by The Carpenters! Strange, inspired magic from a bygone time, these two tracks perfectly complement one another: two evocative little stories done justice by the prettiest finger-picking, warmest horns and the classiest of arrangements. All in all, a little gem.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: This is a beautiful, stand alone single, unavailable anywhere else and a good old fashioned double A side too. Both songs are absolutely beautiful but then that's a given where Mick is concerned.

Not surprisingly (if you are familiar with any of the members’ other bands), the music is a whirlwind of intensity, which is fitting given that it was written, recorded, and produced in the span of only a week before being released by Three One G Records in 2005. All seven tracks showcase Blilie’s one of a kind, relentlessly vicious vocals. Listen more closely, and you will quickly recognize Serbian’s rapid-fire, precision drumming mixed with Pearson’s hard-hitting bass lines, which mesh perfectly alongside Votolato’s cacophonous guitar style in conjunction with Zinner’s playing (which takes on a harsher tone than we typically get to hear from his playing in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

Clever and humorous song titles such as “I’m a Taxidermist- I’ll Stuff Anything” and “Street College” give way to lyrics that are full of curious imagery and bellicose attitude, emanating influence from each of the band’s members.

As for the rest of the world, we are left to wait with baited breath for the moment when all of these radical friends can find another free week or two to set aside and blow our minds (and ear drums) once again. The band has been left open-ended over the years, and members are optimistic about creating new material in the future.

‘The sort of music that might make you want to drive a motorcycle across a thinly-iced lake, or start a PCP-fueled wrestling league’ - VICE

Reissue and remastered 2005 EP from post-hardcore supergroup

Featuring Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner, the Blood Brothers' Jordan Blilie and Cody Votolato, and The Locust's Justin Pearson and Gabe Serbian

TRACK LISTING

1: Radical Friends
2: I’m A Taxidermist I’ll Stuff Anything
3: Prick Class
4: Street College
5: New Soak For Our Empty Pocket
6: Thrash Zoo
7: Michael J. Fux Feat. Gnarls In Charles

Jowe Head's first post-Swell Maps recordings from 1980 and a further session from 1982 after his first LP 'Pincer Movement' was released in 1981. 6 tracks from these recordings were released on Constrictor in Germany in 1986 alongside tracks from Pincer Movement as 'Strawberry Deutschmark' but the other 13 here are previously unreleased. Completely remixed by Jowe Head in 2020 for Glass Modern. "I recorded these tracks in my home at Londesborough Road, Stoke Newington, between 1980-1982, using a TEAC 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. All instruments played by me: electric guitar, fretless bass, electric fire, typewriter, sticks, a battered trumpet and an old harmonium. Overdubs recorded at GWBB in 1983. Remixed at Perch Street in 2020. Words and music composed by me”. (Jowe Head, November 2020

TRACK LISTING

1. Insect Valley
2. Back Door To Heaven
3. Easter Bunnies
4. Loose Tongue
5. Clear The Floor
6. Carrot And Cane
7. Son Of Tar Baby
8. Lime Tango
9. Phantom Of The Airwaves
10. Cooling Fins
11. Some Other Day
12. Tar Babies
13. Nearest Faraway Place
14. Chad Valley 15. February
16. Shiney Black Shirt
17. Insect Flavour Valentine
18. Snake Eggs

Beautiful and evocative and recorded in his home-town of Liverpool between March 2016 and June 2017, the album is the culmination of four years of hard work. Equal to his finest moments, Adiós Señor Pussycat will undoubtedly only further cement his reputation as one of this generations greatest songwriters.

Since a self-imposed hiatus in 2008, Michael Head has been working with a fluid concept of an ever-rotating band format to provide a flexible platform for the range of his new live and recorded works.

‘Under the guise of Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band in 2013, they released their sought-after debut EP, Artorius Revisited, and followed this with a double A sided 7”, Velvets In The Dark / Koala Bears in 2015.

A soulful and poetic genius, fate, bad luck and circumstance and often conspired to deny him his rightful dues. Loved and lauded by fellow artists and critics alike, he started out in the early 1980s with The Pale Fountains, with whom he recorded a brace of acclaimed albums, Pacific Street (1984) and …From Across The Kitchen Table (1985). He subsequently formed Shack with his brother John and went on to record five albums over almost twenty years including the much loved and acclaimed Waterpistol and HMS Fable in 1999 which saw the band briefly flirt with chart success and hailed from the cover of the NME as “our greatest songwriter”

He also released, what is often regarded as his classic album, The Magical World Of The Strands under the name of Michael Head & The Strands in 1997, and with Shack currently on hiatus he has been performing under the Red Elastic Band guise for the past few years.

The album features the following musicians:
Michael Head - Vocals & Acoustic Guitar
Steve Powell - Electric & Acoustic Guitars
Phil Murphy - Drums
Tom Powell - Bass Guitar
Nina - Piano
Dan Rogers - Electric Guitar
Rod Skipp - Cello
Dewi Tudor Jones - Violin
Helen Tonge - Viola
Martin Smith - Trumpet
Andy Diagram - Trumpet
Simon James - Saxophone
Steve Powell, Joanne Head, Phil Murphy, Mary McCombs - Backing Vocals
Michael Head, Phil Murphy, Karina Townsend - Percussion

TRACK LISTING

1. Picasso
2. Overjoyed
3. Picklock
4. Winter Turns To Spring
5. Workin' Family
6. 4&4 Still Makes 8
7. Queen Of All Saints
8. Josephine
9. Lavender Way
10. Rumer
11. Wild Mountain Thyme
12. What's The Difference
13. Adios Amigo

62 years of music, loves, losses, long summer days and longer, darker nights are vividly recalled by ‘our greatest living songwriter’, Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band as he plays out flickering scenes from his life on new album, Loophole.

12 evocative and autobiographical songs to be accompanied by the written word as Michael Head prepares his memoirs for release with an autobiography with Nine Eight Books. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Dear Scott's mellower sibling picks up where our record of the year left off, with the stunning Shirl's Ghost, and meanders beautifully through Mick's usual magical worlds before ending on his ages old, but hitherto not recorded, lost classic, Coda. Mick's only gone and smashed it again. As the maestro himself would undoubtedly say: Is Right!

TRACK LISTING

1 Shirl's Ghost
2 Ambrosia
3 Ciao Ciao Bambino
4 Tout Suite!
5 The Human Race
6 You Smiled At Me
7 A Ricochet Moment
8 Connemara
9 Merry-Go-Round
10 You're A Long Time Dead
11 Naturally It's You
12 Coda

7" - Exclusive To Dinked Edition
Side A
1. Connemara - Acoustic (Live From Hebden Bridge)
Side B
2. Tour Suite! (Live Acoustic From Hebden Bridge)

2015 is a busy year for Michael Head:

His second record as ‘Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band’ has just been released on his own label, Violette - ‘Velvets in the Dark’ 7 inch single. Shack’s 1990 single ‘I Know You Well’ opens ‘Perfect Motion’, Jon Savage’s 2LP compilation as “a musical return-trip to these fondly remembered years spanning 1988-93”.

Plus, Megaphone is set to reissue ‘The Magical World of The Strands’ in its original form, with the addition of a 20-page booklet, including new liner notes by Michael Head himself and photographs testifying to the album’s sleeve work-in-progress.

The CD version will come with 2 bonus tracks – the B-Sides to the 1998 NME and Melody Maker Single Of The Week ‘Somethin’ Like You’. ‘Green Velvet Jacket’ is an acoustic solo piece by Michael Head. And Queen Matilda (demo) was recorded in early 1993 and produced by the band’s friend and live engineer Ian Eastwood on a 4-track Tascam cassette recorder.

Alongside this reissue comes ‘The Olde World’, an exclusive new album of recordings from the same sessions.

Last but not least, Michael plans his first gigs as ‘Michael Head & The Strands’ promising to play his classic album ‘The Magical World of The Strands’ in full.

After a couple of demos for the French promoter who paired him with his childhood hero Love’s Arthur Lee in 1992, Pale Fountains and Shack legend Michael Head entered a Liverpool recording studio the following year, with a new project in mind, ‘The Strands’. Michael teamed up with his brother and lifelong companion, John, his long-time drummer Iain Templeton and two new recruits, Michelle Brown on bass and Les Roberts on flute. The recording sessions would last two years and were only halted because Michael was offered a new major label deal. A deal, not for his current work, but for him to record as Shack again.

So it came to be that Stephane Bismuth, the French promoter, was left with 100 or so minutes of a thwarted project, only a third of which had made it to the mixing studio in Sheffield in the summer of ‘95.

Patch-working and weaving rough mixes and sketches – by engineer Steve Powell, made in Liverpool – with completed mixes by producer Mark Coyle who had hired an arranger and string section for sessions in Sheffield, Stephane Bismuth founded a new label Megaphone and finally released ‘The Magical World of The Strands’, in autumn of 1997.

This work-in-progress comprising sketches, rough mixes and fully orchestrated tracks, garnered great critical acclaim and is still rated by many as the "rarest jewel of the 90s", Q Magazine.

About “The magical world of the strands” :

“AS THE MAGICAL WORLD SO CONCLUSIVELY PROVES HE DESERVES THE WORLD” (9/10 NME 1997)
“THE RAREST JEWEL OF THE 90S” (Q 2014)
NME :`LIKE NICK DRAKE STRUMMING ALONG WITH THE STONE ROSES."
- **** GUARDIAN: "ONE OF THE FURTHEST REACHING ENGLISH GUITAR RECORDS THIS DECADE."
- **** Q: "INCREDIBLY AFFECTING, A STAGGERING ALBUM.
- **** UNCUT: "Regarded by many as the equal of the STONE ROSES debut."
- **** THE TIMES : ’BIGGER THAN A LEGEND '.

TRACK LISTING

1. Queen Matilda
2. Something Like You
3. And Luna
4. X Hits The Spot
5. The Prize
6. Undecided (Reprise)
7. Glynys And Jaqui
8. It's Harvest Time
9. Loaded Man
10. Hocken's Hay
11. Fontilan

CD BONUS TRACKS:
Green Velvet Jacket
Queen Matilda (Demo) 

Finding that luck, love and letting things roll works out for him just fine, Michael Head leads his Red Elastic Band into a fresh chapter with optimism and some of the best music of his career, releases his, Bill Ryder-Jones-produced album, Dear Scott.  

Revered by heavyweight songwriting peers and discovered by new generations of discerning listeners, all enraptured by the fruits of Head’s winding, 40-year career, the Liverpool singer-songwriter enters a new age of creativity and collaboration with Dear Scott. Promising to be a shimmering jewel cast by the minds and hearts of Merseyside’s finest musicians, the 12-track album is dusted with both Ryder-Jones’ artistry and the heavyweight musicianship of The Red Elastic Band, which Head found had ‘stepped up’ following almost a year apart, forcing him to dig deeper himself.

Of slipping back into writing and recording in 2021, Head continues: “After being apart for a while, I went for a walk on the beach with the band and it was beautiful, literally and personally. Rehearsals followed and it clicked into place, with one thing leading to the next. It’s very much the ethos we’re working by, keeping things simple, but keeping the momentum. I’d met Bill a few times and he’s a lovely guy. Once we knew he was interested in producing the album we didn’t need to think about it again, it just progressed and became a completely natural thing.”

Dear Scott refers to novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose debt-ridden, down-and-out years captured the imagination of Head, specifically a postcard Fitzgerald addressed to himself upon checking in at Hollywood’s infamous Golden Age retreat, The Garden Of Allah Hotel. Head explains: “A decade after being the king of the jazz age, Fitzgerald arrived unfashionable and sober, ready to conquer Hollywood. His agent with a sense of humour booked him into The Garden Of Allah, where writers, movie stars and even Stravinsky sometimes lived. He famously picked up a postcard on checking in and addressed it to himself.”

The postcard read: Dear Scott, How are you? Have been meaning to come and see you. I have living at the Garden Of Allah. Yours Scott Fitzgerald

Head states that the formation of The Red Elastic Band in 2008 began with ‘whoever was available at the time’, primarily as a vehicle for live performance, producing one, previous album in 2017’s Adiós Señor Pussycat. The band has since developed into a cohesive, mutually-supportive and permanent line-up, with Phil Murphy on drums, Tom Powell on bass, Danny Murphy on guitars and Nathaniel Cummins on guitars and backing vocals being the musicians taking on the world in 2022 alongside Head.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Kismet
A2 Broken Beauty
A3 The Next Day
A4 Freedom
A5 American Kid
A6 Grace And Eddie
B7 Fluke
B8 Gino And Rico
B9 The Grass
B10 The Ten
B11 Pretty Child
B12 Shirls Ghost