"Ziggy Stardust wrote the blueprint for David Bowie's hard-rocking glam, and Aladdin Sane essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre lounge-jazz flourishes from pianist Mick Garson and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs. Bowie abandons his futuristic obsessions to concentrate on the detached cool of New York and London hipsters, as on the compressed rockers "Watch That Man," "Cracked Actor," and "The Jean Genie." Bowie follows the hard stuff with the jazzy, dissonant sprawls of "Lady Grinning Soul," "Aladdin Sane," and "Time," all of which manage to be both campy and avant-garde simultaneously, while the sweepingly cinematic "Drive-In Saturday" is a soaring fusion of sci-fi doo wop and melodramatic teenage glam. He lets his paranoia slip through in the clenched rhythms of "Panic in Detroit," as well as on his oddly clueless cover of "Let's Spend the Night Together." For all the pleasures on Aladdin Sane, there's no distinctive sound or theme to make the album cohesive; it's Bowie riding the wake of Ziggy Stardust, which means there's a wealth of classic material here, but not enough focus to make the album itself a classic." - AllMusic.

The album, produced by Tony Visconti (bar "Space Oddity" itself which was produced by the late Gus Dudgeon), was a giant leap forward in terms of songwriting for Bowie compared to his eponymous debut, and can be considered as the first truly essential David Bowie album. Noted for a list of collaborators, including session players Herbie Flowers, Tim Renwick, Terry Cox and Rick Wakeman, the album delves into psychedelic folk-rock, as well as prog, with its genre-defying template creating a blueprint of what would become over the next decade and more, one of the most inimitable British artists.

TRACK LISTING

1 Space Oddity 5:11
2 Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed 6:12
3 (Don’t Sit Down) 0:44
4 Letter To Hermione 2:36
5 Cygnet Committee 9:35
6 Janine 3:25
7 An Occasional Dream 3:01
8 The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud 4:52
9 God Knows I’m Good 3:21
10 Memory Of A Free Festival 7:10

"After the freakish hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie returned to singer/songwriter territory on Hunky Dory. Not only did the album boast more folky songs ("Song for Bob Dylan," "The Bewlay Brothers"), but he again flirted with Anthony Newley-esque dancehall music ("Kooks," "Fill Your Heart"), seemingly leaving heavy metal behind. As a result, Hunky Dory is a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class. Mick Ronson's guitar is pushed to the back, leaving Rick Wakeman's cabaret piano to dominate the sound of the album. The subdued support accentuates the depth of Bowie's material, whether it's the revamped Tin Pan Alley of "Changes," the Neil Young homage "Quicksand," the soaring "Life on Mars?," the rolling, vaguely homosexual anthem "Oh! You Pretty Things," or the dark acoustic rocker "Andy Warhol." On the surface, such a wide range of styles and sounds would make an album incoherent, but Bowie's improved songwriting and determined sense of style instead made Hunky Dory a touchstone for reinterpreting pop's traditions into fresh, postmodern pop music." - Allmusic.

TRACK LISTING

1 Changes 3:30
2 Oh! You Pretty Things 3:12
3 Eight Line Poem 2:56
4 Life On Mars? 3:51
5 Kooks 2:50
6 Quicksand 5:07
7 Fill Your Heart 3:07
8 Andy Warhol 3:57
9 Song For Bob Dylan 4:12
10 Queen Bitch 3:19
11 The Bewlay Brothers 5:22

David Bowie's seventh album was his last to feature the famous "Spiders From Mars" band. It originally came out in November 1973 and is unique in that it is made up entirely of cover versions. In the original liner notes Bowie wrote that the original songs carried the flavour of "64 to '67 London" when he was first getting his band together. As such, it really does feel like a labour of love. Apart from enormo stars Pink Floyd, The Kinks and The Who, he also mastered tracks by The Merseys, Pretty Things and Easybeats. In short, a fine collection of classic songs given that indefatigable Bowie stamp.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rosalyn
2. Here Comes The Night
3. I Wish You Would
4. See Emily Play
5. Everything's Alright
6. I Can't Explain
7. Friday On My Mind
8. Sorrow
9. Don't Bring Me Down
10. Shapes Of Things
11. Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
12. Where Have All The Good Times Gone

Originally released through RCA Victor on 6th June 1972, Ziggy Stardust was David Bowie’s fifth album, co-produced by Bowie and Ken Scott. Incredibly, the album was written whilst Bowie was recording 1971’s Hunky Dory album, with recording beginning a couple of months before that album’s release. It was recorded at Trident Studios, London between 8th November 1971 and 4th February 1972, with the line up: Mick Ronson (guitar, piano, backing vocals, string arrangements), Trevor Bolder (bass), Mick Woodmansey (drums), Rick Wakeman (keyboards) and backing vocals on ‘It Ain’t Easy’ by Dana Gillespie. As well as performing vocals, Bowie also played acoustic guitar, saxophone and harpsichord on the album and was involved in the arrangements too.

The album eventually peaked at #5 on the UK Album Chart on 22nd July having entered the chart at #15 on 1st July. Key to the album’s rise in the UK were the two TV performances of “Starman” on Granada TV’s Lift Off With Ayshea and nationally on the BBC’s Top Of The Pops. The album’s influence is immeasurable – it converted legions of fans, becoming the zeitgeist and a major influence on the next generation, particular those who were involved in the punk movement – musicians, artists, designers – and the subsequent re-birth of rock and pop.

Famously Bowie killed Ziggy at his peak at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, on July 3rd, 1973, though Ziggy Stardust’s influence was to redefine popular culture forever: pop music was never the same again.

LAST EVER COPY!!!!

Bowie At The Beeb is a four-disc 180g vinyl box set, which was previously released on CD in 2000. This is the debut of the Best Of David’s Bowie’s BBC radio sessions from 1968 – 1972 on vinyl. The set comes in a lift off lid box and features a full colour 20 page booklet.

This vinyl version features ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ from a Sounds Of The 70’s: Bob Harris session broadcast in September 1971 which was previously exclusive to the Japanese release of the CD. This performance features just David and Mick Ronson as a duo.

Completely exclusive to the set, and therefore making it’s debut, is the once lost ‘The Supermen’ from Sounds Of The 70’s: Andy Ferris session broadcast in March, 1970 and performed by The Hype.

This recording was only re-discovered during the research for the original CD set and remained unreleased until now.

‘Keep It Together’, the third album in just over three years by Indianapolis-based sisters Lily & Madeleine, is set for release via esteemed New West Records.

The spellbinding ten-song statement is the dynamic product of two distinct musical personalities, bound by kinship, melding seamlessly into one ephemeral and dreamy collection.

The sisters have come a long way since they began making YouTube videos in 2012, releasing two critically acclaimed albums on Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty Records and selling out myriad shows both in the US and overseas.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Cheery jangly Summer-pop on the newest album from singer-songwriting sisters Lily & Madeleine. Upbeat but slightly introspective, minimal pop-pieces for hazy days and sunsets. Beautiful stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Not Gonna
For The Weak
Westfield
Chicago
Hourglass
Hotel Pool
Smoke Tricks
Midwest Kid
Small Talk
Nothing

Written at home by Mason, the tracks were then rehearsed in Brighton with touring band mates Steve Duffield and Greg Nielson, before being recorded with Elbow keyboardist and producer Craig Potter at Blueprint Studios in Salford. Recorded in the studios ‘big room’, an ex-factory space with floor to ceiling windows, the album took shape during a smooth and enjoyable six weeks in the early summer of 2015.

Following from his ‘double political concept album’ ‘Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time’ this album is a move towards a more simple ethic; ‘an album where each song is a separate entity, where there is no great narrative running through it.’

‘Meet The Humans’ is shot through with a sense of renewal following Steve’s recent move to Brighton, swinging musically across dance, pop, folk, dub, and deep house influences. It’s a record which repeatedly returns to core themes, the possibility of others to redeem the self, the opportunity of change for the better in the individual, the joy of life and the world we inhabit, it’s arguably the most complete and direct of Steve’s long discography - eleven personal stories combined into one positive and proper whole, the sweep of the human condition written large and full of love and hope and joy.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: The funky ex Beta Band maestro returns with a buoyant encapsulation of all that is good in his groovesome world. The lush production and airy vibes make this pretty close to a pop record, but as ever, there's always the melancholy in the melody for Mr. Mason. However, certain tracks on here take us right back to those glorious baggy days of 1989, which I always thought was Steve's musical template. Combining these with the more introspective moments make this possibly the best album of his career so far. Inspirational.

TRACK LISTING

1. Water Bored
2. Alive
3. Alright
4. Another Day
5. Ran Away
6. To A Door
7. Hardly Go Through
8. Through My Window
9. Planet Sizes
10. Like Water
11. Words In My Head

Produced by Drew Vandenberg - who has worked on albums by Of Montreal, Deerhunter and Porcelain Raft - at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, Georgia in December 2014, ‘When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired’ features collaborations with Josh McKay of Deerhunter on vibraphone as well as McKendrick Bearden of Grand Vapids, who played bass and provided string arrangements throughout. Comprised of eight songs - the majority of which were written while Leschper was finishing art school in early 2014 - Mothers’ debut LP is an introduction to the foundations of the young band, a snapshot of a particular period of their genesis that maps both where they began and where they are heading.

The album’s bookends perhaps most explicitly display this musical chronology. The gorgeous “Too Small For Eyes” was the only one of a few solo songs Leschper had written on the mandolin that made it onto the album, its use of space, piano, strings, and her voice entwining and undulating to elegantly set the stage for what unfolds afterward; closer “Hold Your Own Hand” blooms from its plaintive opening bars to an ascendant, spirally waltz to an uproarious math-y breakdown, hinting at the louder, more post-rock and math rock-influenced sound for which their live show is fast becoming known for.

Across the album, Leschper meditates on the human condition: what anyone’s place is in the universe; what is our value; mortality; and what it means to have relationships in consideration of all these things. And while the songs are filtered through her frequently difficult, personal microcosmic experiences, she relates them in a manner that is at once highly intimate and readily universal.

At heart, ‘When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired’ is about being alive, and just how surprisingly unmooring - and exhausting - this fundamental thing can be. The album is a window into the long path Leschper traveled while creating it: breathtakingly honest and rooted in the subconscious of one’s journey.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: This album plucks at your heartstrings, quite literally. The soft, gentle riffs and the sounds of innocent trembling vocals create a humble and sombre tone. The music is authentic and honest. Don’t let this record pass you by; it’s too good to miss.

It may come as no surprise to someone hearing 'Magnetic Seasons' for the first time that purveyors of said album, Mugstar, are on a label run by stalwart post-rockers Mogwai. Though they share a similar philosophy to music, it is by no means derivative.  There is a noticeable ambience around this whole collection, and with it, a certain calmness. Though the sounds themselves are not typically mellow, their delivery carries the pieces along in a haze. This is drone for those who love a bit of movement or melody, or post-rock for those who love improvisations around a theme. This is a competant and assured collection from a band who have much to offer. Robust but nuanced instrumental loveliness. 

The follow-up to the quartet’s million-selling self-titled debut. It is a bold and brilliant record made up of infectious pop hooks and sprawling electro sonics, an ambitious stride forward for one of the UK’s most exciting young bands.

Pinkshinyultrablast are a five-piece band from Saint-Petersburg in Russia, whose debut album, 'Everything Else Matters', released at the beginning of 2015 was met with huge critical acclaim. Headline shows across Europe, an energetic and committed fanbase, continued support at radio - all combined to make this upcoming second record one of the most anticipated in 2016. Around the first album the band were quoted as saying "we realised the local indie scene was totally boring and wanted to play something radically different". The vision of achieving notoriety outside of Russia has been integral to the band's philosophy - they are very much an international band now.

A Russian band making a shoegaze record, was seen by some, as something of a novelty. The novelty was quickly eroded, firstly by shoegaze fans who awarded the band an invaluable seal of approval, but also by the music press, who quickly realised that they were not just 'any' shoegaze band. This was a band with widespread appeal, an engaging front-woman and a thrilling live show.

They've been compared to Lush among others. But this is no mere throwback tribute. Grandfeathered is a more experimental listen compared with the debut album, it's the sound of a band unafraid to try new things and embrace those fine lines between visceral noise and restrained subtlety. The band saying of the new sound "The new album has been recorded and mixed much faster than the previous one. The songs have more density to them and are generally more complex."

The band take their name from an Astrobrite album, an act who were, according to the band, instrumental in how they "researched spaces between ambient, heavy guitar and pop music"

TRACK LISTING

1. Initial
2. Glow Vastly
3. I Catch You Napping
4. Kiddy Pool Dreams
5. Comet Marbles
6. The Cherry Pit
7. Mölkky
8. Grandfeathered

Plaza is the third album by Quilt; a name implying a meeting place, a crossroads, a coming together. In the space of ten songs, Plaza clarifies Quilt’s musical stance of a congregation, mixing folk, pop-psych, and wanderlust into a common ground where each form takes on the characteristics of one another to create something wholly satisfying, styles and sentiments hand in hand, the purest and sharpest distillation of Quilt’s group aesthetic to date.

On Plaza, Quilt has pivoted their sound on a new foothold. The guitars shimmer, squawk, warble, swell, and tense up. The organs and synths flow in the background as mood-enhancers. The drums dig in a little deeper. We hear flutes and harps, a string quartet, grand pianos and Casios, feedback and distorted violas. Among all these sounds the group’s shared and solo vocals showcase some of the strongest lyrics and hooks the band has made to date.

Plaza showcases a tighter, more concise version of Quilt, particularly as the members have learned to encourage each other’s strengths and allow each other to confidently exist as distinct voices cooperating within a very intimate creative space; their songcraft has tightened up, their singing now crystal clear, vis á vis personal experiences of loss, frustration and isolation.

TRACK LISTING

1: Passersby
2: Roller
3: Searching For
4: O’Connor's Barn
5: Eliot St.
6: Hissing My Plea
7: Something There
8: Padova
9: Your Island
10: Own Ways

SVIIB is the final School Of Seven Bells album, produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Nine Inch Nails, The Mars Volta). It was in the summer of 2012 that SVIIB was written, “I can easily say that it was one of the most creative and inspired summers of our lives”, Deheza recounts. “What followed was the most tragic, soul shaking tidal wave that life could ever deliver, but even that wouldn’t stop the vision for this record being realized”.

It was in the fall of 2012 that Curtis was diagnosed with a rare form of T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma, less than a year later Deheza would be the sole member of the group. Benjamin Curtis passed away on December 29, 2013. In 2014 Deheza moved to Los Angeles to finish the record with Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Nine Inch Nails, M83), “I’m trying to feature Benjamin as much as possible”, Meldal-Johnsen says. As soon as Alley was settled in LA it took the two only a month and a half to finish the record. “ This is a love letter from start to finish. It's the story of us starting from that first day we met in 2004, and that's the story of School of Seven Bells,” Alley says, “When I see those roman numerals, I just think of an era”.

Having been available exclusively as the second disc to 2015's 'Collaborative Works', Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm's improvised audio recordings 'Trance Frendz', taken from their 45-minute studio film of the same name, have been given their own vinyl release – out March 4th, 2016.

Prior to a string of collaborative Erased Tapes releases, which include 2012's 'Stare' 10” and last year’s 'Life Story Love and Glory' 7” and 'Loon' 12” – compiled on the 'Collaborative Works' 2-CD set, Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm spent many hours together in their studios across Berlin and Reykjavik. Both have carved out genre-defying musical careers and formed unique live shows, creating a fan base loyal to their prolific output.

During a session at Durton Studio in Berlin last summer, Nils and Ólafur invited Alexander Schneider and his camera to document it. The recording continued long after the first take, stretching out into the next day until, eventually, several new improvisations had been recorded in 8 hours with no overdubs or edits. The unexpected nature in which these pieces had been created was reminiscent of their first on-stage improvisation many years ago. It became immediately clear how special these songs were.

"At the end of the night we had all this music that sounded unfamiliar even to us, loudly asking to be included in this collection.”

Originally made available as a 45-minute film on their joint website (www.arnaldsfrahm.com) last September, 'Trance Frendz' is now available on vinyl. Press for their 'Collaborative Works':

'A particularly joyous wash of slinky percussion and juddering layers' (8/10) – Clash

'An enchanting listen. The bar for a Lads' Night In has just been raised a few notches' (7/10) – Drowned In Sound. 

‘This is music for slowing down the pace of modern life... An immersive listening experience is guaranteed, while we must hope Frahm and Arnalds go on ‘holiday’ together more in future, and don’t forget to take their musical instruments.’ ★★★★ – MusicOMH. 

'A collection of gorgeously intimate piano compositions and eye-opening synth pieces, each never aggressive but always powerfully poignant' (8/10) – Under The Radar.

'What Collaborative Works offers is something strange: a shared world created by two mad geniuses. Long may Arnalds and Frahm tinker' (8/10) – PopMatters.

'Collaborative Works further proves just how natural a fit Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm are together' – Resident Advisor. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. 20:17
A2. 21:05
A3. 23:17
B1. 23:52
B2. 00:26
B3. 01:41
B4. 03:06

Recently discovered in the vaults – 10 previously unreleased and virtually unheard studio recordings.

Including covers of Bob Dylan, Sly & The Family Stone, The Smiths, Led Zeppelin, Bukka White and Jevetta Steele, in addition to the first ever studio recording of his signature song ‘Grace’ and ‘Dream Of You And I’, an unheard original recording which informs the deeply intimate and profoundly personal mood of the album. These recordings represent the breadth of Buckley’s influences and talent for interpretation.

Recorded prior to the sessions which would become his seminal debut album ‘Grace’, these tracks offer a unique insight in to the creative process of a developing genius and inimitable immerging talent.

The Columbia/Legacy release of Jeff Buckley's You and I has been overseen by the artist's mother, Mary Guibert.

TRACK LISTING

1. Just Like A Woman (Bob Dylan Cover)
2. Everyday People (Sly & The Family Stone Cover)
3. Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Cryin’ (1st Recorded By Louis Jordan)
4. Grace (original Studio Version)
5. Calling You (Jevetta Steele Cover)
6. Dream Of You And I (original)
7. The Boy With The Thorn In His Side (The Smiths Cover)
8. Poor Boy Long Way From Home (Bukka White Cover)
9. Night Flight (Led Zeppelin Cover)
10. I Know It’s Over (The Smiths Cover)

'Distance Inbetween' is The Coral’s first album of original material since 2010’s Butterfly House, a gap punctuated by last year’s surprise release of their lost album, 'The Curse of Love'. Since their debut EP release in 2001 the band have sold over a million UK albums, with five reaching the Top 10 including 2003’s chart-topping 'Magic and Medicine'. Their eight Top 40 singles include Dreaming Of You, In The Morning, Pass It On, and Don’t Think You’re The First.

Recorded at Liverpool’s Parr Street Studio with co-producer Richard Turvey, 'Distance Inbetween' was recorded live and mostly in just one take. The seams of each of the album’s 12-tracks are purposely rough-hewn and pave the way for a new visceral sound from a totally reenergised band.

"Before we started making the album we had discussed that we wanted it to be more minimal and rhythmical,” explains James Skelly (vocals, guitars). “We thought ‘if you've got a rhythm section that’s been playing together for almost twenty years, why not make that the centre of the songs?’"

On the album James, Ian Skelly (drums/percussion/vocals), Nick Power (keyboard/vocals), and Paul Duffy (bass/keyboards/vocals) are joined by Coral newbie, guitarist Paul Molloy, formerly of The Zutons.

“Paul was playing with Ian in their band, Serpent Power, and we'd all been mates with him for years,” says James. “We already had a couple of tunes recorded and Ian suggested Paul add some guitar. His parts really enhanced the tracks; he understood where he needed to leave space. From that point we didn't look back. We had a full line-up and were confident we could make an album that would stand next to the others."

On 'Distance Inbetween' listeners are invited into The Coral’s world of Richard Yates’ books, Alan Moore comics, 1980's toys, the sound of krautrock compilations and Muddy Waters’ Electric Mud, and Gregory Crewdson’s darkly beautiful photography.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Based on The Wirral, which geographers will tell you is directly between Liverpool and Wales, it's heartening that this classic Northern band sound precisely like a blend between Gorkys and Super Furries on the one hand, and Shack and the Bunnymen on the other. Throw in The Doors with a sprinkling of 60's psych and you have a superb blend: cosmosis if you will! This is their come back album. And it's excellent!

TRACK LISTING

1. Connector
2. White Bird
3. Chasing The Tail Of A Dream
4. Distance Inbetween
5. Million Eyes
6. Miss Fortune
7. Beyond The Sun
8. It’s You
9. Holy Revelation
10. She Runs The River
11. Fear Machine
12. End Credits

Heron Oblivion are Meg Baird (Espers), Noel Von Harmonson (Comets On Fire, Six Organs Of Admittance, Sic Alps, The Lowdown), Ethan Miller (Comets On Fire, Howlin’ Rain, Feral Ohms), and Charlie Saufley (Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound).

Listening to Heron Oblivion’s album feels like sitting in a lovely meadow in the shadow of a dam that’s going to burst any moment.

Members of this new San Francisco combo have put in time in both raging and relatively tranquil psychedelic sound units. This is the premise and the synergy behind this very unique and special new album.

The group first properly gigged in April of 2014 opening for War On Drugs. They finished the record independently then inked a deal with Sub Pop in early 2015. Most recently they toured the West Coast with Kurt Vile and Cass McCombs.

‘Heron Oblivion’ was recorded at The Mansion in San Francisco by Eric Bauer.

“Expressive guitar lines laced with feedback sprawl out again and again without trailing away too far. Meg Baird’s serene voice harkens back to ’60s folk singers, subdued in a way that lends special gravity without being bombastic. Frankly, the group sounds exactly like what psychedelic rock should sound like” - Stereogum

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: In parts, Heron Oblivion perfectly juxtapose eastern influenced guitar stanzas with almost ghostly and ethereal vocal lines. Elsewhere, fuzzy minor-key pop with soaring melody lines. Think Sonic Youth meets Low via Grails. Unsettling and clangy, acerbic but impeccable. Low-fi beauty at it's best.

TRACK LISTING

Beneath Fields
Oriar
Sudden Lament
Rama
Faro
Seventeen Landscapes
Your Hollows

Palehound, the musical alias of 21-year-old Boston-based guitarist and songwriter Ellen Kempner, releases the ‘Dry Food’ album on Heavenly Recordings.

Recorded with Gabe Wax (Wye Oak, Speedy Ortiz), ‘Dry Food’ is full of sonic and emotional twists and turns, written as it was at a time in Kempner’s life that was defined by instability and uncertainty.

“The way some people have a way with words, Palehound singer/songwriter Ellen Kempner has a way with a guitar: Looped lines tumble out in the knotty configurations worthy of a sailor’s handiwork, or maybe of academic writing.” - SPIN Album Of The Week

“‘Dry Food’ confronts the point it’s been evading: kidding yourself is no way to recover, and comfort offers little impetus to move on. Palehound’s discomfiting, unflinching debut suggests she knew it all along.” - Pitchfork (8/10)

“Palehound’s ‘Dry Food’ is one of the best albums this year because it doesn’t reinvent any wheels so much as the axis the wheels spin on.” - The Observer

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: One of my favourite 'new band' things so far this year. Lovely inventive guitars topped with Ellen's insightful lyrics; at times playful at others melancholic. The rhythms tumble along intertwined with clever melodies, bringing to mind past gems such as Belly and The Breeders, while at other times the sudden changes in direction and tempo bring to mind Pavement. But despite these references, it's by no means retro, it has a really fresh feel to it.

TRACK LISTING

Molly
Healthier Folk
Easy
Cinnamon
Dry Food
Dixie
Cushioned Caging
Seekonkt

Recorded over the course of a year against a backdrop of personal instability, Human Performance massively expands the idea of what a Parquet Courts record can be. They've been one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the last 5 years; this is the record that backs all those words up.

“Every day it starts, anxiety,” began the first song on 2014’s Content Nausea. Those were essentially the song’s only lyrics, but Human Performance picks up where that thought left off, picking apart the anxieties of modern life: “The unavoidable noise of NYC that can be maddening, the kind of the impossible struggle against clutter, whether it's physical or mental or social,” says singer, guitarist and Human Performance producer/mixer Austin Brown.

There has always been the emotional side of Parquet Courts, which has always had an important balance with the more discussed cerebral side, but Andrew Savage sees Human Performance as a redistribution of weight in that balance. "I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance,” says Savage. “I felt like a sort of malfunctioning apparatus,” he says. “Like a machine programmed to be human showing signs of defect.”

The sonic diversity, time, and existential effort that went into its creation makes Human Performance Parquet Courts' most ambitious record to date. It's a work of incredible creative vision born of seemingly insurmountable adversity. It is also their most accessible record yet. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: After bursting on the scene with the explosive and thrilling splendour of “Light Up Gold” (a Piccadilly Records Album Of The Year back in 2013) Parquet Courts seemed to be on a mission to alienate with a succession of somewhat “difficult” releases, the ‘Monastic Living’ EP in particular was a real head scratcher! But thankfully with ‘Human Performance’ the Brooklyn based four piece have rediscovered their smart pop edge.
Kicking off with the upbeat and catchy “Dust”, the band immediately plug in to their trademark “Americana punk” showcasing an uber cool sound that brings to mind the perfect New York lineage of Sonic Youth, Television and The Velvet Underground.
Almost every track on ‘Human Performance’ screams “Single” potential; we have the goofball pop of “I Was Just Here”, “Berlin Got Blurry” and afore mentioned “Dust”; the slacker-rock (dare we say Pavement influences?) of “Paraphased”, “Outside” and “Keep It Even”; the jaunty rumbles of “Pathos Prairie” and “Captive Of The Sun”; the mellow hazy-psych of “Steady On Mind” and the uptempo but chilling “Two Dead Cops”. The title track chronicling a relationship breakdown is a serious song of the year contender with its introspective verses and explosive shouted choruses; and then we have album’s centrepiece, “One Man No City”, a six minute plus drawn-out long-jam epic combining bongos and the jagged guitars of “The Gift” period VU. Lastly, "It's Gonna Happen" is a perfect finale, a brooding refrain that leads out with the reflective “…it’s gonna happen every time so rehearse with me in mind…”
‘Human Performance’ is Parquet Courts reaching a songwriting peak, refined and intelligent off-kilter Brooklyn art-rock.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dust
2. Human Performance
3. Outside
4. I Was Just Here
5. Paraphrased
6. Captive Of The Sun
7. Steady On My Mind
8. On Man, No City
9. Berlin Got Blurry
10. Keep It Even
11. Two Dead Cops
12. Pathos Prairie
13. It's Gonna Happen

‘United Crushers’ is POLIÇA’s third full length release and most remarkable album yet. Lead singer Channy Leaneagh and non-touring fifth member producer Ryan Olson wrote the album in Minneapolis in the winter of 2015 and recorded it at the renowned Sonic Ranch Studios in El Paso, TX with their live line up of dual drummers, Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu, Chris Beirden on bass. The new album builds on POLIÇA’s signature synthesizer and percussion-heavy sounds with more complex arrangements, tighter grooves and a bigger, crisper hi fi punch.

The record, a tribute to their hometown of Minneapolis, was named after the graffiti tag seen throughout the city as a reminder of its bleak past and uncertain future and is short for “United States of Dreams Be Crushed.” Even at its darkest, the record is musically the band's most upbeat and celebratory. It is a weapon meant to empower the weak, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised; its very creation an act of rebellion in the face of the hopelessness that casts such a long shadow over Middle America's slow urban decline.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This record, more so than 2014's Shulamith oozes a sort of dystopian dread, displayed through repetitive synth-swells and rippling arpeggios. Though this is in many ways a record about decay, it seems hopeful, like there is something to be gained by adapting. Through adversity comes triumph. This is a bleak yet upbeat offering, dynamic, and exciting.

TRACK LISTING

Summer Please
Lime Habit
Someway
Wedding
Melting Block
Top Coat
Lately
Fish
Berlin
Baby Sucks
Kind
Lose You

Spearheaded by David Holmes, in collaboration with film and TV composer Keefus Ciancia (True Detective), and songwriter-vocalist Jade Vincent (The Jade Vincent Experiment), Unloved are born of 60s girl groups, influenced by the great George 'Shadow' Morton, Jack Nitzsche, the soundtracks of Morricone, Nino Rota and the electronic sounds of Raymond Scott.

David met Keefus and Jade in LA in 2013, that same summer Keefus and Jade started a regular Tuesday night residency in Los Feliz called The Rotary Room. A collective of great musicians, including Woody Jackson (Red Dead Redemption), Gus Seyffert (Beck, The Black Keys), Jay Bellerose (T Bone Burnett) and Deantoni Parks (John Cale), forming informal ensembles curated by Jade, Keefus and David Piltch, with David Holmes invited to DJ between each band.

These common themes and sonic adventures led to the birth of Unloved, evoking the sounds and spirit of The Shangri La's, Bruno Nicolai, The Paris Sisters, The BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Phil Spector's wall of sound.

A band was then brought together at Woody Jackson's VOX Studios in LA, where the sound they had envisaged could actually be realised. Further Unloved contributors have included the legendary Jim Keltner (John Lennon, Ry Cooder), Wayne Kramer (MC5) and Tommy Morgan (The Beach Boys, Elvis).

TRACK LISTING

Guilty Of Love
After Dinner
Damned
Cry Baby Cry
When A Woman Is Around
Xpectations
This Is The Time
The Ground
I Could Tell You But I'd Have To Kill
We Are Unloved
Silvery Moon
Forever Unloved

Violent Femmes' ninth studio album and first full-length collection in more than 15 years, WE CAN DO ANYTHING is among the most provocative and playful in the legendary trio's remarkable canon. As the album's title makes plain, the band - singer/songwriter/guitarist Gordon Gano, bassist Brian Ritchie, and drummer Brian Viglione - remains as intrepid and fearless as ever before, traversing genre and emotion via their immediately identifiable, still utterly idiosyncratic, mash of rambunctious folk, minimalist punk, cubist blues, cosmic jazz, and backwoods rock 'n' roll.

Produced by Jeff Hamilton - a longtime member of the Horns of Dilemma, Violent Femmes' ever-evolving cabal of multi-instrumentalist backing musicians - and mixed by the legendary John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile, Dinosaur, Jr.), WE CAN DO ANYTHING was recorded in studios in Brooklyn, Nashville, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Denver, while on tour during the summer of 2015. The album's cover image was drawn by Barenaked Ladies' Kevin Hearn, who also contributed accordion, guitar, keyboards, and backing vocals on several recordings. Rounding out the live touring band and members of The Horns of Dilemma are John Sparrow and Blaise Garza who has been playing with the band since he was 14 years old.

Gano gathered the album's material by diving headlong into his own voluminous archives, listening to ancient cassette demos and leafing through old journals in search of suitable songs. Among his finds were such new classics as the murderous "Big Car" and the fractured fairy tale, "I Could Be Anything," Of the album's more recent songs, "Foothills" and "Holy Ghost" were both penned with the team of Sam Hollander and Dave Katz (Train, Joe Cocker), while "Issues" - co-written by Gano with Hollander and Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin (Christina Perri, Howie Day) - stands out as vintage Violent Femmes, as lyrically cutting as it is musically kinetic. Penned by Gano's big sister, gifted folk singer/songwriter/artist Cynthia Gayneau, "What You Really Mean," the album's sole cover, might as well be an original composition, hewing remarkably close to the frontman's own sonic sensibility and lyrical heart. Colored by explosive arrangements that veer on a dime from hard charging stomp to intimate melancholy, WE CAN DO ANYTHING is Violent Femmes at their very finest - joyous, exciting, and eternal.

Violent Femmes will celebrate WE CAN DO ANYTHING with a full-scale North American headline tour. Complete details will be unveiled soon - for up to the minute news and information, please see www.vfemmes.com/tour.

WE CAN DO ANYTHING arrives hot on the heels of Violent Femmes' acclaimed 2015 EP, HAPPY NEW YEAR. Recorded in Ritchie's adopted home of Hobart, Tasmania as the band prepared for a sold out New Year's Eve 2014 concert at the world famous Sydney Opera House, the EP is highlighted by "Love Love Love Love Love" and "Good For/At Nothing" both of which are accompanied by animated companion videos streaming now at the band's official YouTube channel. HAPPY NEW YEAR is available now on the iTunes Store and other online retailers.

One of the most beloved bands of the golden age of indie rock, Violent Femmes returned to action in 2013 with an acclaimed performance at Coachella, their first live appearance in several years. Drummer Brian Viglione (The Dresden Dolls, Nine Inch Nails) came aboard in 2013. The Violent Femmes embarked on a wide-ranging tour that included headline dates and ecstatically received festival sets around the world. The Guardian applauded their London show as "a triumphant rampage through their back catalogue," declaring the band's self-titled 1983 debut to be "a cult classic of teenage alienation - a sneerier, post-pubescent Catcher in the Rye, if you like, with added nocturnal emissions and rattling acoustic bass solos."

Violent Femmes came together in 1981 and were quickly ranked among the era's most inventive and original, constantly pushing forward with their singular blend of folk and punk, sarcasm and spirituality. The trio released eight studio albums and more than a dozen singles, among them such iconic classics as "American Music," "Gone Daddy Gone," "Nightmares, "Add It Up," "Kiss Off" and of course, "Blister In The Sun." Violent Femmes' remarkable three-decade career earned them cumulative sales in excess of 10 million worldwide, with 1983's VIOLENT FEMMES earning RIAA platinum certification eight years after its initial release.

M. Ward returns with a stunning new album, ‘More Rain’, released on Bella Union. Ward has released a string of acclaimed solo albums over the past several years, along with five albums with Zooey Deschanel as She & Him and a 2009 collaborative album with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis under the moniker Monsters Of Folk.

In addition to his celebrated work as a musician, Ward is an accomplished producer, handling those duties for such luminaries as Mavis Staples, Jenny Lewis and Carlos Forster as well as his own projects.

M. Ward knows how to live with rain. Having spent the last decadeand- a-half based in the perennially damp Portland, Oregon, the singer-songwriter and producer has learned how to shine through the soggy gloom by simply embracing its inevitability. For Ward, there is inspiration in a dark sky and harmony in foreboding winds. With his new album ‘More Rain’ he has made a true gotta-stay-indoors, rainyseason record that looks upwards through the weather while reflecting on his past.

“I think one of the biggest mysteries of America right now is this: How are we able to process unending bad news on Page One and then go about our lives the way the style section portrays us?” says Ward. “There must be a place in our brains that allows us to take a bird’s-eye view of humanity, and I think music is good at helping people - myself included - go to that place.”

This album, Ward’s eighth solo affair, finds the artist picking up the tempo and volume a bit from his previous release, 2012’s ‘A Wasteland Companion’. Where that record introspectively looked in from the outside, ‘More Rain’ finds Ward on the inside, gazing out. Begun four years ago and imagined initially as a DIY doo-wop album that would feature Ward experimenting with layering his own voice, it soon branched out in different directions, a move that he credits largely to his collaborators here who include REM.’s Peter Buck, Neko Case, kd lang, The Secret Sisters and Joey Spampinato of NRBQ.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: More warm 50's/60's vibes from the golden voiced maestro. Another enveloping record where everything feels just right. Great songs, obviously.

TRACK LISTING

(More Rain)
Pirate Dial
Time Won’t Wait Up
Confession
I’m Listening (Child’s Theme)
Girl From Conejo Valley
Slow Driving Man
You’re So Good To Me
Temptation
Phenomenon
Little Nany
I’m Going Higher

Parisian psych duo Yeti Lane release their third album ‘L’Aurore’. It’s the follow-up to their acclaimed 2012 release ‘The Echo Show’, and perfectly balances their love of analogue electronics with huge waves of guitar.

This time they discarded their suitcase of gear and improvised, building their sound up from scratch, and the result is a record that is rougher, dirtier and darker than its predecessor. It also finds them singing in their native French for the first time; the title, which translates as ‘the dawn’, is almost literal.

Yeti Lane were formed from the ashes of underrated psych-folk-prog outfit Cyann & Ben in 2009 and their self-titled debut album followed the next year to great acclaim, but its release was followed by the departure of founding member LoAc Carron. Undaunted, the remaining duo of Cédric Benyoucef (vocals, guitar) and Charlie Boyer (drums, electronics) came back two years later with ‘The Echo Show’, which combined Kraftwerk with LCD Soundsystem and My Bloody Valentine to incredible effect, resulting in more glowing reviews, BBC 6 Music sessions and memorable live shows, including Liverpool Psych Fest, supporting The Brian Jonestown Massacre and backing Can legend Damo Suzuki.

It was these last two connections that pointed the way to the new album: the shows with Suzuki were completely improvised and then Cédric and Charlie travelled to Berlin for some freeform (and still unreleased) sessions with BJM mainman Anton Newcombe and Primal Scream guitarist ‘Little’ Barrie Cadogan.

“We’ve always considered each album in response to the previous one, we try to never repeat the same things, the same gimmicks,” explains Charlie of the duo’s new methods. “We needed to forget our habits, to clean our minds in order to find new directions. We had a lot of fun improvising, which opened us to new playgrounds.” As is clear from the first sight of the stunning, acid-bright artwork by London-based design studio Heretic, ‘L’Aurore’ was created with the same new-found freedom. “We wanted to keep the excitement of the moment, with no routine,” says Cédric. “Everything was recorded as we were playing, just the two of us in the same room. We chose takes in which we felt something was happening, rather than the ones in which we were playing perfectly; we kept the mistakes.”

On ‘Exquis’ and ‘Ne Dis Rien’ you can hear the ideas forming and shape-shifting; elemental titles such as ‘Liquide’ and ‘Crystal Sky’ are a giveaway, too. But this is definitely not a self-indulgent record, especially when there are tunes as good as ‘Acide Amer’, ‘Good Word’s Gone’ and the title track. The duo’s core influences remain the same – 13th Floor Elevators, Neil Young, The Flaming Lips, Spacemen 3 – but it was their rediscovery of the French scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s that inspired Cédric to try writing the lyrics in French. (He cites a number of artists from the Saravah label, such as Brigitte Fontaine, Higelin and Areski, as well as ‘Obsolete’, Dashiell Hedayat’s largely improvised record made with Gong.) But, perhaps the biggest influence on the band has been simply the world around them.

“These past two years, especially 2015, were dark to us on many levels,” says Charlie. “I think it was this darkness that influenced the writing and the sound a lot more than bands or movies.” The result? ‘L’Aurore’: the first light from a new Yeti Lane. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Délicat
2. Good Word’s Gone
3. Acide Amer
4. Liquide
5. L’Aurore
6. Crystal Sky
7. Exquis
8. Ne Dis Rien

BONUS DISC INFO: Emmy was born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mother and English father and spent most of her childhood there. She's always been a fan of UK/US music but there has also been a less conspicuous affection for South East Asian pop derived from her time in that past of the world. When she plays in Hong Kong she often throws in a couple of local songs sung in Cantonese. And on this bonus CD she has finally found the time to record some of her own songs in Cantonese and Mandarin. In the case of the latter admittedly with some help from her mother.

Emmy The Great announces her highly anticipated third album ‘Second Love’, released on Bella Union.

There is a distinct nod to her debut ‘First Love’ in terms of the storytelling that first impressed her lyrical and emotional dexterity upon so many. On ‘Second Love’, however, Emma-Lee Moss delves into the chambers of a human heart ever-connected to the glare of a nearby screen.

This is an album imbued with modern sounds, a nod to new eras while maintaining the human warmth always associated with an Emmy The Great album. The songs are full of emotion and questioning, with the chatter of friends and collaborators ‘coded’ into the sonic landscape. These tender, glacial arrangements lead ‘Second Love’s exploration through a new world, filtered through technology.

“In all the uncertainty,” Emmy concludes, “I couldn’t say for sure whether this is Utopia or Dystopia or something in between, but for some reason it only made me more certain of one thing: that, wherever we’re heading, we’re going to need music, and we’re going to need love. ‘Second Love’ not only helped me reach this conclusion, it led me to almost every good thing that has happened to me in the last three years.”

The roll call of talent enlisted to assist Emmy The Great’s new albums is as impressive as the vision itself. Produced by Dave McCracken (Oh Land, Beyonce) and Ludwig Goransson (Haim, Childish Gambino) and mixed by Neil Comber (M.I.A.), the album features musicians from far and wide, including Tom Fleming (Wild Beasts) and Leo Abrahams (Pulp, Brian Eno).

London-based psych-folk outfit The Hanging Stars release their much anticipated debut album Over the Silvery Lake in March 2016 via The Great Pop Supplement/Crimson Crow. Blending folk pastoralism with swampy 60s Americana, they sound like the missing link between the California desert sun and the grey skies of London Town. The album was recorded between LA, Nashville and Walthamstow, with each of these vastly different places leaving an indelible mark on the songs.

Fronted by London-based songwriter, singer and guitarist Richard Olson (The See See, Eighteenth Day of May), The Hanging Stars are essentially a loose collective of people who weave together a blissed-out psychedelic tapestry.

During 2015, the band released two critically acclaimed singles via The Great Pop Supplement (both of which also appear on the album). “Golden Vanity” was premiered by The Line of Best Fit who said; “you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just unearthed a rare deep cut from the late 60s/early 70s boom of psychedelia infused Americana” and “The House on The Hill” was described by The Guardian as; "a hazy, desert-dream of a song, nicely sharpened with steely-eyed guitars, Mersey-laced harmonies and just a whiff of the Gun Club”. They picked up a good amount of support at 6 Music and “The House on the Hill” scored a much-coveted 10/10 by John Robb on Steve Lamacq’s Roundtable. The Hanging Stars played a sold-out three-night residency at London’s Betsey Trotwood, recently shared the stage with The Clientele at Islington Assembly Hall and have toured extensively throughout Europe.

There are a number of allusions to nature and the weather on the album, borne in part out of the contrasting surroundings in which it was produced. The band’s fascination with Americana led them to record some of the material Stateside, laying down some of the parts at Battle Tapes Studios in Nashville (Lambchop, Paperhead), as well as at Vision Quest Studios in Los Angeles with Rob Campanella. His work with The Quarter After, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beachwood Sparks and The Tyde was a perfect match to capture their sound and they even had San Franciscan legend Christof Certik step in on lead guitar for a couple of tracks.

Following the LA recordings, a trip to the Californian desert provided the core notion of what they wanted to produce - a shard of light that they clung on to whilst recording the rest of the album in the significantly more rain soaked atmosphere of Walthamstow, London, under the watchful eye of Brian O'Shaughnessy at Bark Studios (The Clientele, Comet Gain, My Bloody Valentine). As the band explain: “Ultimately we hope you can hear both the sand and the rain in this record.”

"a hazy, desert-dream of a song, nicely sharpened with steely-eyed guitars, Mersey-laced harmonies and just a whiff of the Gun Club." - Guardian.

"Swampy psychedelia that recalls the Medway Delta as much as the Mississippi, the band's new single neatly conjoins these influences." – Clash.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: I have Aficionado's Jason Boardman to thank for this one. In his words, 'like Crosby, Stills & Nash...but Scouse,' the Mersey-jangle-meets-cosmic-country of "Over The Silvery Lake" is the perfect record for a strung out evening by the fireside.

Barry says: Encompassing equal elements of hazy psychedelia and indie-pop, smattered with americana and folk, this truly is a melting pot of influence, but rather than sounding like an uncomfortable meshing of styles, it flows incredibly smoothly. Slick production and warm sounding saturated guitar slides add to the smooth vibes, all topped by Olson's harmonised vocal over the top. Definitely a record to blast on those hot hazy summer days.

TRACK LISTING

1) Floodbound
2) Cure Your Ills
3) I'm No Good Without You
4) For A While
5) Golden Vanity
6) Rainmaker, Sunseeker
7) The House On The Hill
8) Ruby Red
9) She Never Sleeps
10) The Hanging Stars
11) Hang Me High
12) Crippled Shining Blues
13) Running Waters Wide

Providing the ideal entry point for neophytes and an intoxicating aural high for the faithful, Damien Jurado’s new opus extends the hot streak ignited by 2012s Maraqopa and its 2014 follow-up Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son. Cut once again with label mate and super producer Richard Swift at the latters National Freedom recording facility in rural Oregon, Visions of Us On The Land, out 3/18 on Secretly Canadian, completes the tale of an individual who has had to disappear from society in order to discover some universal truths. Today, we’re excited to share the song “Exit 353,” premiered by NPR Music.

There was no grand scheme to make a trilogy at the outset. Exuberantly prolific, its creator simply wanted the first record to be “a quick snapshot,” says Jurado. “Maraqopa is this peaceful place I can go to in my mind. A little bit psychedelic, but youre not using substances. The brain is such a powerful thing. In that uncharted territory I was able to tap in and find this place. Which was called Maraqopa. Similar to the fictional towns in television or books.”

Maraqopa the album introduced a character deliberately unnamed, intended to represent anyone feeling that way who stumbles upon the titular locale then gets into a car crash… which only frees him further. Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son. It picked up the narrative after the accident, in a commune inhabited by Silver Timothy, Silver Donna, and Silver Malcolm. Visions of Us On The Land journeys further into the subconscious mind, a symbolic road trip spotlighting the people and towns that our central figure and his travelling companion, Silver Katherine, encounter upon leaving the commune. Hence the capitalized track titles, alluding to real American locations refracted through ones third eye in the rear view mirror. Like all great art, its about life and death and love and freedom. A sonic map with no set destination, revealing more with each ride.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: I was a massive johnny-come-lately with this guy, whilst my shop customer-friends had been extolling his virtues for years. Well, they were right! This is proper, deep, cavernously produced Americana with a subtle psych twist, and again, just huge, huge songs throughout. There's a lot on here and it is all good. Now for his OTHER ten records!!

TRACK LISTING

1 November 20
2 Mellow Blue Polka Dot
3 QACHINA
4 Lon Bella
5 Sam And Davy
6 Prisms
7 ONALASKA
8 TAQOMA
9 On The Land Blues
10 Walrus
11 Exit 353
12 Cinco De Tomorrow
13 And Loraine
14 A.M. AM.
15 Queene Anne
16 Orphans In The Key Of E
17 Kola1

Political post-punk trio This Heat dissolved at a turbulent time in the UK. Margaret “The Iron Lady” Thatcher was in power, and her budget-cutting, ultra-conservative influence was felt strongly in–among many other places–the cultural melting pot of Brixton, South London, where This Heat had their origins. Dusting himself off after the collapse of the band in 1982, guitarist/vocalist Charles Bullen united with Julius Samuel to form Lifetones and embraced the sounds of the local West Indian community to fuse reggae flavor to the kind of propulsive, rhythmic, and experimental music made by This Heat.

'Deceit', This Heat's 1981 album, had seen them work with David Cunningham, who had already helped mesh dub reggae with new wave pop on The Flying Lizards’ 1979 single, “Money (That's What I Want Want).” Even so, 'For A Reason' was a great leap, one that created a strange, unsettling mood as Bullen’s multi-tracked, chant-like vocals met dub beats and Krautrock-informed repetition. Where 'Deceit' dealt with the nuclear threat, 'For A Reason' was less reactionary, even quoting Bob Marley in its lyrics: “you love the life you live, you live the life you love.”

Just six tracks and half an hour long, the album was recorded at Cold Storage studio and released on Bullen’s own Tone Of Life Records. It has become a sought-after collector’s item that changes hands for hundreds of dollars a time. As a solo artist, Bullen was not prolific–it was 15 years until, in 1998, he released Internal Clock under the name Circadian Rhythms–but like the rest of his band, he has enjoyed a long, enriching career in unending pursuit of new sounds.

Even though This Heat had no commercial success to follow up on, 'For A Reason' was an album created with no intention of hitting the charts. Reissued on Light In The Attic, Lifetones’ single album retains a timeless quality and perhaps - on tracks such as “Good Side” - a futuristic sound that nobody else ever caught up to.

"A lot of geezers my age don't work out of their comfort zone anymore because once you become legendary you don't want people challenging you.”- Iggy Pop.

'Post Pop Depression' is the 17th Iggy Pop album, and a worthy addition to the 22 album legacy spawned with the immortal trilogy of The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power, spanning massively influential solo outings including 1977’s opening 1-2 combo of The Idiot and Lust For Life, and 1990’s gold-certified Brick By Brick.

The first Iggy Pop album co-created with producer / guitarist / songwriter / multi-instrumentalist / bandleader Homme, Post Pop Depression began with a succinctly worded text from Iggy to Joshua, and was realized in seclusion with Homme's enlisted aid of his Queens Of The Stone Age bandmate and Dead Weather-man Dean Fertitia and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders. Both became instantly integral in creating and shaping the Detroit meets Palm Desert by way of old Berlin vibe of Post Pop Depression: Interweaving with and augmenting even more superhuman than expected Iggy vocal performances and Homme's tapestry of guitar, bass, piano and backing vox, Fertitia's talent for wringing the most out of only the most essential notes worked in seamless tandem with Helders' pushing himself and his new bandmates to unforeseeable heights and depths.
The result would be a timeless work, one that sounds as if it's always been there, has existed before any of the musicians were even born-yet imbued with the ramshackle energy of a garage band that threw itself together yesterday.

"I wanted to be free," recalls Iggy of the earliest germ of the partnership with Homme that culminated in Post Pop Depression. "To be free, I needed to forget. To forget, I needed music. Josh had that in him, so I set out to provoke an encounter-first with a carefully worded text, followed by a deluge of writings all about me. No composer wants to write about nothing. He got revved up and we had a great big rumble in the desert USA.”

"This was to go where neither of us had gone before," adds Homme. "That was the agreement. And to go all the way."

Post Pop Depression is equal parts a dream come true for co-creator Homme as it is a record that defiantly takes its place in Iggy's storied discography alongside the twin towers of The Idiot and Lust For Life-two records and the mythic Berlin era of their creation canonized as much lyrically ("German Days") as sonically ("Sunday") on this new record. The album will be supported by a tour realizing Homme's ambition to assemble a live outfit worthy of both bringing the new album and doing justice to the gems and wreckage of the Ig's sprawling solo catalogue: The core band that recorded the album will be expanded by QOTSA's Troy Van Leeuwen and journeyman guitarist Matt Sweeney.

Post Pop Depression is a singular work that stands proudly alongside the best works of either of its principles, from The Stooges to Queens Of The Stone Age, bearing its creators' undeniable sonic DNA while sounding like nothing they've done before. It's a record that wouldn't exist without either Pop or Homme-and one that probably shouldn't in theory if you really think about it-but it does, and we and rock n roll are all the better for it.

TRACK LISTING

1) Break Into Your Heart
2) Gardenia
3) American Valhalla
4) In The Lobby
5) Sunday
6) Vulture
7) German Days
8) Chocolate Drops
9) Paraguay

Primal Scream release their 11th studio album, ‘Chaosmosis’, on the band’s own First International label through Ignition Records. Recorded in London, New York and Stockholm and written and produced by Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes, ‘Chaosmosis’ is the freshest sounding album the band have ever made.

The exhilarating first single, ‘Where The Light Gets In’ (produced by Bobby, Andrew and Bjorn Yttling), features a duet with Sky Ferreira.

Other guests on the album include Haim (good friends of the band since playing with them at Glastonbury two summers ago) on backing vocals and Rachel Zeffira from Cat’s Eyes.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Fantastic electro-rock/pop album and their highest Tune count since ooohhh..... Screamadelica?!

TRACK LISTING

1 Trippin’ On Your Love
2 (Feeling Like A) Demon Again
3 I Can Change
4 100% Or Nothing
5 Private Wars
6 Where The Light Gets In
7 When The Blackout Meets The Fallout
8 Carnival Of Fools
9 Golden Rope
10 Autumn In Paradise

‘Aloha Got Soul’ encompasses a vibrant era of contemporary music made in Hawai’i during the 1970s to the mid-1980s as jazz, rock, funk, disco and R&B co-existed alongside Hawaiian folk music. Hawai’i’s identity had undergone huge change: statehood into America in ‘59 and the Vietnam War were the backdrop as Hawai’i’s youth found inspiration in a new wave of international music led initially by The Beatles and Stones and, later, by US R&B bands like Earth Wind & Fire and Tower Of Power. Garage bands flourished during the ‘60s and, by the ‘70s, live music was at its peak.

For the ‘70s generation of artists, some came through the talent contest ‘Home Grown’ and its accompanying compilation LP. Singer Nohelani Cypriano won it with her instant radio hit, ‘Lihue’. Other winning songs, like Marvin Franklin’s soul surfer jam ‘Kona Winds’, burned more slowly but have endured with DJs today. Many records also packed a powerful message. In 1978, Hawaiian was made the official state language and a huge movement arose to revive hula and traditional music. Steve & Teresa’s ‘Kaho’olawe Song’ longs for an island long gone: the US military had used Kaho’olawe as a bombing range since Pearl Harbor. Nohelani Cypriano sang about the once sleepy town of Kailua, now a popular tourist destination: “Kailua needs no high-rise with her blue skies, not for our eyes. Can you realize?” Leading Hawaiian artists like Aura, Mike Lundy and keyboardist Kirk Thompson’s Lemuria took time in high quality facilities like Broad Recording Studio to make albums. Others grabbed studio time when they could: Tender Leaf’s Murray Compoc worked for the city bus by day and recorded an album during night sessions. Other albums were spontaneous. In 1983, Steve Maii & Teresa Bright recorded an acoustic set in just 3 hours after being invited to a studio following a gig.

For the artists of the ‘70s, the climate for music changed rapidly during the mid- ‘80s as DJ culture grew and live venues shut down. Hawai’i’s R&B era shone brightly and relatively briefly but, despite brilliant musicians, regular gigs and LP releases, most of the music barely made it to the mainland. Thanks largely to Aloha Got Soul’s Roger Bong, a new interest in this fertile era of Hawaiian music has grown, culminating in this new compilation of overlooked gems. ‘Aloha Got Soul’ is compiled and annotated by Bong and features rare photos and original artwork.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tender Leaf - Countryside Beauty
2. Aura - Yesterday's Love
3. Aina - Your Light
4. Lemuria - Get That Happy Feeling (Instrumental)
5. Roy & Roe - Just Don't Come Back
6. Hawaii - Lady Of My Heart
7. Hal Bradbury - Call Me
8. Mike Lundy - Love One Another
9. Nova - I Feel Like Getting Down
10. Nohelani Cypriano - O'Kailua
11. Brother Noland - Kawaihae
12. Marvin Franklin With Kimo And The Guys - Kona Winds
13. Greenwood - Sparkle
14. Chucky Boy Chock & Mike Kaawa With Brown Co. - Papa'A Tita
15. Steve & Teresa - Kaho'Olawe Song
16. Rockwell Fukino - Coast To Coast.

Berlin based duo Africaine 808 will release their debut album “Basar” via NY imprint Golf Channel.

“Basar” pushes their divine blend of West African bass and rhythms, disco, island-funk and house to newer heights. Their deep and timeless debut is about “Freedom and Freedom only” and is an album that reaches for the party Arthur Russell was talking about when he said “I wanna see all my friends at once.”

Africaine 808 are Dirk Leyers, formerly one half of Closer Musik, and Berlin DJ and established artist Nomad. The pair met in Berlin at the city’s annual summer techno demonstration Fuckparade in 2000, where they caught the infamous “Techno Viking” scene live as it unfolded. Nomad got his first drum aged 6 years old, from a church collective yard sale. Now an avid collector of African influenced musical styles, from South African Shangaan to Westafrican Funk, his rhythmic quest has lead him to study and explore African and world music for almost 3 decades. The Africaine 808 project grew out of Nomad’s Vulkandance parties; a melting pot of African, Latin, and Caribbean club music.

The title “Basar” comes from the ancient term for “oriental marketplace", a place to experience a multitude of impressions with your senses. Like an exotic marketplace, “Basar” is filled with different sights and sounds around every corner. From the deep and mystical “NGONI” which takes West African music to the rave with wobbling bass and hints of 90s ethno-dub to the killer squirmer of a bassline on “Language of the Bass ft. Alex Voices” which keeps things heavy but nimble whilst recapturing UK bass histrionics. The smokey, soulful tones of OFRIN on “Ready For Something New” offers a mystical downbeat gem. Whereas “Basa Basa” takes it back to the dancefloor for a sweaty rhythmic number that bounces off the walls with it’s tribal funk groove. Recent 12” single “Rhythm Is All You Can Dance” also makes an appearance; wedding funk, earthy rhythms and frenzied African grooves to the gurgle of an 808.

The duo made their debut back in 2013 with “Tummy Tummy”; which featured on Will Speculators W.T. Recordings compilation "DJ MUSCLE." The following year Golf Channel put out "Lagos New York." Pairing New York flecked disco with West African bass and rhythms, "Lagos New York" made for one of 2014’s most essential electronic releases.

Having found the right home with one of the best labels (and parties) in New York City, the Berliners debut album “Basar” has the feeling of an essential piece of music all over - a big, brooding, emotional and uplifting record that you can dance, laugh and cry to.

Here’s the deal. In 2012, people loved Silver Age (to a degree that surprised me, pleasantly), likewise Beauty & Ruin in 2014 (despite the heaviness of the subject matter, which I thought might be a bit alienating... apparently not. Another pleasant surprise.)

But PATCH THE SKY is the darkest one.
After the Letterman performance in February 2015 where “dust fell from the rafters,” it would have seemed logical to go the punk rock route—an entire album of two minute songs—but that wasn’t where my soul was at. I withdrew from everyday life. I wrote alone for six months. I love people, but I needed my solitude. The search for my own truth kept me alive. These songs are my salvation. I’ve had a solid stretch of hard emotional times, and thanks for the condolences in advance. I don’t want to go into the details—more death, relationships ending, life getting shorter—because they’re already in the songs. Just listen and see if you can fit yourself into my stories. The words make you remember. The music makes you forget.

But PATCH THE SKY is also the catchiest one.
I always aim for the perfect balance of bright melodies and dark stories. I’ve used this juxtaposition for years. This time, I’ve tuned it to high contrast. The first side of the album is generally simple and catchy. The second side is heavier in spirit and tone. Opposing forces and properties. I love both sides of PATCH THE SKY. At the core of these songs is what I call the chemical chorus—you hear it once and your brain starts tingling. The heart rate picks up. It gets worse—you know it’s coming again and you can barely stand the anticipation. Then, the beautifully heartbreaking bridge appears, and you’re all set up—hooked for life. Music is an incredibly powerful drug. I want to be your drug dealer. I have what you need. --Bob Mould.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Moreso than his previous offerings, 'Patch The Sky' is the catchiest and most singable Bob Mould offering yet. Singularly melodic, bringing to mind (respectable) skate-punk of yesteryear (Pennywise, Lagwagon, NUFAN etc) but with Mould's imitable vocal delivery. Beautifully produced, and masterfully written punk-rock anthems.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Voices In My Head
The End Of Things
Hold On
You Say You
Losing Sleep
Pray For Rain

SIDE B
Lucifer And God
Daddy’s Favorite
Hands Are Tied
Black Confetti
Losing Time
Monument

Bibio returns with his fifth studio album on Warp, ‘A Mineral Love’, a record that draws influences from across several decades, coloured with texture and detail that only a seasoned and ceaselessly inspired producer can create.

‘A Mineral Love’ is Bibio’s most varied album yet, drawing at times from 1960s rock to 1970s experimental folk and 1980s funk and soul.

The record elaborates on certain sounds Bibio has carved out for himself throughout his career as a musician - from the playful guitar-picking of ‘Saint Christopher’ to the pastoral and nostalgia-flecked ‘C’est La Vie’ and ‘Wren Tails’.

‘Light Up The Sky’ is one of many elegantly structured songs on the album that demonstrate just how much Bibio has progressed as a songwriter since 2010’s ‘Mind Bokeh’. Collaborations with Gotye and Olivier St Louis (‘The Way You Talk’ and ‘Why So Serious?’) further create a variety in styles, anchored by vocal refrains and pop hooks that replay in your head days after listening.

“This album celebrates the sacred and precious struggles of human insecurities through many windows of familiar musical forms. It's also a celebration of my love of the craft of record making, drawing influences from many sources across all decades from the late sixties to the present. All these referential forms have a twist, some are more full on cocktails.

The album as a whole is an unashamed expression of my fondness of, and need for, variety... I feel this album is built more from those memories and an exposure to music of many styles rather than close analytical study of any particular one. I think that's why it all sounds like me, regardless of the deliberate references and nods to artists and records of the past. It is after all just a view through my stained-glass telescope.” - Bibio

CD in wallet with booklet. Double LP in gatefold sleeve with printed inners and digital download card.

TRACK LISTING

01. Petals
02. A Mineral Love
03. Raxeira
04. Town & Country
05. Feeling
06. The Way You Talk (Featuring Gotye)
07. With The Thought Of Us
08. Why So Serious? (Featuring Olivier St. Louis)
09. C'est La Vie
10. Wren Tails
11. Gasoline & Mirrors (Featuring Wax Stag)
12. Saint Thomas
13. Light Up The Sky

The rock canon has many anti-heroes, Black Mountain being the latest. In the past, Can’s Tago Mago established that the only rule in rock and roll is that there are no rules. Pink Floyd’s prodigious output in the 70s showed us that architecture can be cool, while delinquent proto-metalers Black Sabbath demonstrated that you can make a lot from not that much. Now Black Mountain teach us that you don’t have to be afraid of the past to move bravely into the future, defining what it is to be a classic rock band in the new millennium. Today, they announce IV, an unapologetically ambitious record made by a group of musicians who are at the peak of their powers.

The group’s sense of rediscovery as a creative whole is tangible throughout. Stephen McBean, Jeremy Schmidt, Amber Webber, and Joshua Wells were joined in the studio by spiritually attuned bassist and veteran purveyor of the riff, Arjan Miranda (formerly of S.T.R.E.E.T.S, Children, and The Family Band) whose roots, heart, and soul are connected to the same soil and cement that Black Mountain were borne from. Recording was primarily done in close collaboration with producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Wolves In The Throne Room, Marissa Nadler) at his trusted Avast! facility in Seattle.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mothers Of The Sun
2. Florian Saucer Attack
3. Defector
4. You Can Dream
5. Constellations
6. Line Them All Up
7. Cemetery Breeding
8. (Over And Over) The Chain
9. Crucify Me
10. Space To Bakersfield

The Wilderness is the band’s sixth album, and first non-soundtrack effort since 2011’s ‘Take Care, Take Care, Take Care’. Arguably the most progressive instrumental rock album since EITS’ 2003 breakthrough ‘The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place’, The Wilderness is a bold, experimental work combining the singular song craft that has sold hundreds of thousands of albums and tickets with the cinematic sensibility that has elevated the band to the level of regard and demand its members enjoy as film composers (Lone Survivor, Manglehorn, Prince Avalanche, Friday Night Lights).

The first Explosions In The Sky album not produced entirely by the band, The Wilderness features long time collaborator (and Grammy-winning producer) John Congleton in a co-producer role for the first time. The band's most ambitious songs to date branch into unexpected new dimensions accordingly - Exhibit A being “Disintegration Anxiety,” currently streaming on all platforms and available as an instant grat download with all pre-orders. With its cacophonous opening washes that ultimately resolve into a locked groove, “Disintegration Anxiety” marks the rock solid midpoint of an aggressively modern and forward-thinking work. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Expanding upon their trademark sound, much like fellow Texans This Will Destroy You ; Explosions In The Sky have encompassed, to great effect, elements of drone and electronica into their (still unmistakeable) post-rock sound. Distorted beats, crunchy snares, and dusty arpeggios atop soaring guitars and crackly synths. A vast departure for the band, but without endangering what makes them tick, The Wilderness is bold, brave, and brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wilderness
2. The Ecstatics
3. Tangle Formations
4. Logic Of A Dream
5. Disintegration Anxiety
6. Losing The Light
7. Infinite Orbit
8. Colors In Space
9. Landing Cliffs

The album finds Alex Turner and Miles Kane reunited with James Ford (production and drums) and Owen Pallett (string arrangements) and joined by Zachary Dawes (Mini Mansions) on bass, recording the follow up to 2008’s ‘The Age Of The Understatement’ at Shangri La Studio in Malibu.

Featuring current single ‘Bad Habits’, ‘Everything You’ve Come To Expect’ is a more open and expansive work than its predecessor, wearing its influences less obviously on its sleeve – by turns the album is soaring, snarling and breathlessly seductive.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Once again, Alex Turner and Miles Kane deliver a minor-key slice of melancholic yet melodic indie-rock. Dark reverbed vocals, snappy snare hits and oy-like shouting appears completely naturally, the sound not suffering at all from a change of pace. The strings on show here further emphasising the crescendo of both tone and density, and exacerbating the lifting tension present. Low-fi but meticulously crafted, and yet another reason (as if you needed one) that Turner and co. deserve your attention.

TRACK LISTING

1. Aviation
2. Miracle Aligner
3. Dracula Teeth
4. Everything You’ve Come To Expect
5. The Element Of Surprise
6. Bad Habits
7. Sweet Dreams, TN
8. Used To Be My Girl
9. She Does The Woods
10. Pattern
11. The Dream Synopsis

7"  Bonus Tracks (Indies Exclusive Vinyl Only)
1. Bad Habits
2. The Bourne Identity

You can call them a supergroup, but Moderat understands that it’s the group aspect that makes them interesting. Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary (aka Modeselektor) and Sascha Ring (aka Apparat) have been working together as a trio almost as long as their two separate projects have existed.

Intent on creating something that contrasted with their own projects, the group started the cycle which blossomed on their second album, aptly titled ‘II’, culminating now in the trilogy’s completion, ‘III’. Whereas ‘I’ was the combination of two separate entities, ‘II’ brought the members closer together, and in ‘III’, the final chapter in the trilogy, Moderat sounds like one band.

Both Szary and Ring will tell you that Moderat moved progressively from making tracks towards a more traditional writing approach of making songs – a process more fully realized on ‘III’. That’s partly why the vocals have become more prominent. Mostly, you hear Ring singing (there are no guests this time), as he so often does as Apparat, but listen closely to ‘Ghostmother’ to hear Bronsert and Szary backing him up.

Szary describes the idea behind Moderat as, "imagining yourself sitting in the cinema and watching a movie with an incredible soundtrack." This is true with Moderat in general, but ‘III’ in particular pairs an emotional pull with sensual imagery, creating dynamic sound and a new depth.

One of the best parts of Moderat is their use of electronics to achieve orchestral diversity. They update the songwriting tradition with an intriguing palette, borne of careful attention and skill, informed by their "experiences with sounds of nearly 25 years of sub and club culture." Let’s not forget that these three were brought together by Berlin’s now legendary rave scene. With this as their common foundation as individuals, ‘III’ signifies Moderat’s maturation in modern pop - an achievement shared under their collective belt.

Bronsert explains that, "the new album isn’t based on jams. We went into the studio and knew exactly what we needed to do." This is reflected in the sophisticated themes explored in the music. Take 'Ghostmother', which ponders inner peace, acceptance, fear of the unknown and how facing that fear often reveals something not so scary. Or 'Running', which is about being part of a mass that constantly needs to move to function, but doesn’t have the power to decide the direction of motion. Or how about the wisdom of 'Reminder', which recognizes the world for its flaws and our role we’ve each played in that, but choosing to act differently and light the way to something better.

Given that, it’s a bit of an understatement when Bronsert says, "I’d say our music has definitely matured." Successful in their own endeavors, now they’ve mastered the group. It doesn’t mean the end of Moderat, but it does mean they’ll have to find something else to excel in.

The album is composed of reworked versions of the music recorded for the soundtrack to director Mark Cousin’s acclaimed documentary Atomic: Living In Dread and Promise, which first aired on BBC Four last summer.

Constructed entirely of archive film, Atomic is an impressionistic kaleidoscope of the horrors of our nuclear times - protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl and Fukishima - but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how x-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. Mogwai’s soundtrack encapsulates the nightmare of the nuclear age, but its dreamlike qualities too. It is the latest in the band’s series of impressive soundtracks and scores, following acclaimed albums Les Revenants (The Returned) and Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.

Cousins says of Atomic, the film: “I’m a child of the nuclear age, and in my teens I had nightmares about the bomb. But physics was my favourite subject in school, and I nearly studied it at university. Learning about the atomic world excited me. It was like abstract Star Wars.”

Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite says: “The Atomic soundtrack is one of the most intense and fulfilling projects we've taken on as a band. Ever since we went to Hiroshima to play and visited the peace park this has been a subject very close to us. The end results, both the film score and the record are pieces I'm extremely proud of.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Continuing along the same route as their much heralded synthesiser-heavy 2014 album, Rave Tapes, comes Atomic. Though not strictly an album (it is of course, a soundtrack first and foremost), it is as emotive and moving as you would expect from a band as dab-handed at soundscaping as Mogwai are. Even from the very first piece, twinkling synths meet with triumphant GYBE-esque horns, over a slowly whirling background, this is not quite the most melodic track on the album, but serves as an unsettlingly pleasant introduction. Much like the subject matter investigated in the film, this album is full of emotional ups and downs. Optimistic and dark in equal measure but stunningly gorgeous throughout.

Sil says: Mogwai bring their soundscapes to another stunning score. This one is a experimental documentary that looks at the Hiroshima nuclear bomb and its legacy.
The Scottish ensemble produce a soundtrack full of synthesizer bliss which finely balances the darkness and certain optimism that is reflected in this highly recommended documentary. If you enjoyed the Zidane soundtrack, this is for you.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ether
2. SCRAM
3. Bitterness Centrifuge
4. U-235
5. Pripyat
6. Weak Force
7. Little Boy
8. Are You A Dancer?
9. Tzar
10. Fat Man

Amen & Goodbye is the fourth studio album from Brooklyn-based band Yeasayer.

Yeasayer offer a peek into the world of Amen & Goodbye with “I Am Chemistry,” the first track to be heard from their highly-anticipated forthcoming album. Featuring guest vocals from the legendary folk singer Suzzy Roche of The Roches, “I Am Chemistry” is a linear psychedelic journey proving Yeasayer still has the knack for writing very odd pop songs.

Amen & Goodbye is the follow up to 2012’s work Fragrant World. Moving away from a digital - heavy approach, Yeasayer recorded Amen & Goodbye to tape at Outlier Inn Studio in upstate New York, then brought on board Joey Waronker (drummer - Atoms For Peace / Beck) to deconstruct everything to make the final document.

Amen & Goodbye features Yeasayer’s trademark sound without sounding like anything the band has done before. They have created a collection of strange fables from the Bible from a universe that does not yet exist.

TRACK LISTING

1 Daughters Of Cain
2 I Am Chemistry
3 Silly Me
4 Half Asleep
5 Dead Sea Scrolls
6 Prophecy Gun
7 Computer Canticle 1
8 Divine Simulcrum
9 Child Prodigy
10 Gerson’s Whistle
11 Uma
12 Cold Night
13 Amen & Goodbye

'Love Streams' takes its cues from the avant-classical orchestration and extreme electronic processing of his previous full-length, 2013’s 'Virgins', but shaped into more melancholic, ultraviolet hues. Inspired by notions of 15th century choral scores (particularly those by Josquin des Prez), transposed to an artificial intelligence-era language of digital resonance and bright synths, the album was assembled gradually, with layers of studio-tracked keyboards, choir and woodwinds being woven into the mix, then molded and disfigured through complex programming. Like hearing some ancient strain of sacred music corrupted by encryption, Hecker admits to thinking about ideas like “liturgical aesthestics after Yeezus” and the “transcendental voice in the age of auto-tune,” during its creation.

The 'Love Streams' sessions took place throughout 2014 and 2015 at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, Iceland - where parts of both Virgins and Ravedeath, 1972 were tracked - with Hecker reuniting with the same crew of collaborators from Virgins (Kara-Lis Coverdale, Grímur Helgason) and bolstered by the Icelandic Choir Ensemble, whose vocal arrangements were scored by Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson.

The title of Hecker’s new work can be interpreted any number of ways - erotic, technological, spiritual - although his own conception is appropriately vast, calling it “a riff on the ubiquity and nihilism of streaming of all forms of life.” Now we stream more than we love. Nowadays music too frequently resembles a product, or white noise. With a career spanning fifteen years, Tim Hecker belongs to a select camp actively resisting this undertow, this reduction in significance.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: What more apt a title could be given to the newest excursion of Canadian Sound sculptor Tim Hecker than 'Love Streams'? Recalling moments of Four Tet's similarly titled 'There Is Love In You', chopped vocal harmonies atop twinkling synths, churning yet shimmering industrial drones underpinning the whole adventure. This is Hecker's most optomistic and beautiful exploration yet. This is, as Princess Jasmine once famously said : a 'Shining and Shimmering Wonder'.

The art of songwriting has been the driving force behind Brilliant Sanity, the process of crafting of the immaculate pop song, the dogged pursuit of the perfect hook. The result is an album that appears fastidiously and impeccably made, but also charged with joy.

Now a four-piece made up of singer and guitarist Tommy Sanders, his brother Jonny on synths, Pete Cattermoul on bass and Hiro Amamiya on drums, the process of touring has honed Teleman into a spectacular live act and brought about the decision to record the new record in a very live and spontaneous way.

Six months were spent in a rehearsal space in Homerton, working on the songs written by each band member, with Sanders’ own songwriting forming the core of the album. “I don’t know if other bands do this,” says Tommy Sanders, “but in our rehearsal room we had a white board, and for each song we’d write the chords up on the white board, write the structure out. We’ve got different colour pens and stuff. It’s very professional.”

With lyrics written on the road ‘when you’re sitting on a tour bus for eight hours just looking out the window’, Brilliant Sanity shows Sanders as an accomplished and distinctive lyricist, with a passion for the music of words themselves and an eye for the singular image.

In Dan Carey’s Streatham studio, the songs’ structure changed little, but it was Carey’s suggestion that they choose core synthesiser sounds — the Mellotron, the Roland Jupiter, the Korg Trident — to help define the aesthetic of the album. Sanders talks of their time in the studio, of their collective obsession with the Vietnamese restaurant across the street, of how they would set the mood for recording each song using a series of coloured lights, and of how, in breaks from recording the band would go out on the roof and gaze at the moon through Carey’s telescope, “It had,” he says, “a very calming and settling influence.”

“Sometimes,” he says, “a record can take itself a bit too seriously. So it’s good to have a bit of a lighthearted side. It’s good just to enjoy making it, for your own sake — because if you’re enjoying making the songs then other people are going to enjoy listening to them.”

TRACK LISTING

1 Dusseldorf
2 Fall In Time
3 Glory Hallelujah
4 Brilliant Sanity
5 Superglue
6 Canvas Shoe
7 Tangerine
8 English Architecture
9 Melrose
10 Drop Out
11 Devil In My Shoe

On Halloween 2014, the director and composer John Carpenter introduced the world to the next phase of his career with “Vortex,” the first single from Lost Themes, his first-ever solo record. In the months that followed, Lost Themes rightfully returned Carpenter to the forefront of the discussion of music and film’s crucial intersection. Carpenter’s foundational primacy and lasting influence on genre score work was both rediscovered and reaffirmed. So widespread was the acclaim for Lost Themes, that the composer was moved to embark on something he had never before entertained – playing his music live in front of an audience.

2016 will host the first ever John Carpenter tour and in true Carpenter spirit, a sequel to Lost Themes: Lost Themes II. The follow-up brings quite a few noticeable changes to the process, which result in an even more cohesive record. Lost Themes’ cowriters Cody Carpenter (John’s son) and Daniel Davies (John’s godson) both returned. Cody was recently also heard as a composer for Showtime’s Masters of Horror series (Cigarette Burns and Pro-Life), and NBC’s Zoo. Davies was a composer for NBC’s Zoo, as well as the motion picture Condemned.

All three brought in sketches and worked together in the same city, a luxury they weren’t afforded on the first Lost Themes. The result was a more focused effort, one that was completed on a compressed schedule — not unlike Carpenter’s classic, notoriously low-budget early films. The musical world of Lost Themes II is also a wider one than that of its predecessor. More electric and acoustic guitar help flesh out the songs, still driven by Carpenter’s trademark minimal synth.

Keep your eyes peeled for John and his co-writers to hit the road next year performing both lost and newly found themes, in addition to retrospective work from Mr. Carpenter’s multi-generational career. Long live the Horror Master.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Master of Kosmische synth-workouts and general synth-based sountracking legend John Carpenter returns here with the second instalment of his surprising 'not a soundtrack' offering from last year. More twinkling synths, motorik pulses and cavern-soaked reverbed drums. Though soundtracks have always been Carpenters raison d'etre, this outstanding expansion on his lost themes selections just goes to show that Carpenter is indeed the king of the cosmic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Distant Dream (3:51)
2. White Pulse (4:21)
3. Persia Rising (3:40)
4.Angel’s Asylum (4:17)
5.Hofner Dawn (3:15)
6.Windy Death (3:40)
7.Dark Blues (4:16)
8.Virtual Survivor (3:58)
9.Bela Lugosi (3:23)
10. Last Sunrise (4:29)
11. Utopian Facade (3:48)
12.Real Xeno (4:30) (CD / Download Bonus Track)

This spring sees the release of PJ Harvey’s ninth studio album, The Hope Six Demolition Project.

The Hope Six Demolition Project draws from several journeys undertaken by Harvey, who spent time in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. over a four-year period. “When I’m writing a song I visualise the entire scene. I can see the colours, I can tell the time of day, I can sense the mood, I can see the light changing, the shadows moving, everything in that picture. Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with”, says Harvey.

The album was recorded last year in residency at London’s Somerset House. The exhibition, entitled ‘Recording in Progress’ saw Harvey, her band, producers Flood and John Parish, and engineers working within a purpose-built recording studio behind one-way glass, observed throughout by public audiences.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Documenting trips to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington DC with photographer Seamus Murphy, this album is a protest album of sorts. A natural progression from 'Let England Shake', it looks at the aftermath of American political decisions, acts in the name of progress, both home and abroad and the often negative consequences. Dealing with war, death, displacement and poverty amongst other things, you know it's never going to be easy listening. The songs are at times bleak but there's empathy, defiance and conviction in Polly's delivery that married to a swamp-blues soundtrack embellished with funereal keyboards, wailing sax and field recordings, makes for a powerful, intoxicating album. Having seen her perform live in the Summer completely sealed the deal for me. Her performance was completely captivating and emphasised the power of the album and also what an exceptional musical force Polly Harvey is.

Barry says: What better positive rock icon could there be than PJ Harvey? Her meaningful and often hard-hitting lyrical themes serve as a powerful back-up to her latent politicism. The trademark outpourings are as much on show here as they ever were, but through the variety of influences absorbed for this undertaking, there is a diversity both thematic and aural. Rock hooks above barely-there guitar solos and brass stabs. Clanging guitars and fist-pumping choruses meet meandering noodles, underpinned by sonic sweeps and a rawkus, but often smooth vocal delivery. Rousing and anthemic, everything you'd expect from Harvey, and everything you could ever want.

Sil says: PJ Harvey takes the role of musical war correspondent critiquing the injustices and political abuse that the powerless suffer upon. This album is a poignant reminder of the state of the world. The melodies are poppy and catchy but the lyrics are like a mirror reflecting back at us which makes us question our role in it all.
A Line in the Sand is my favourite track here. Infused with evocative melodies and the overpowering PJ Harvey's falsetto.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Community Of Hope
2. The Ministry Of Defence
3. A Line In The Sand
4. Chain Of Keys
5. River Anacostia
6. Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln
7. The Orange Monkey
8. Medicinals
9. The Ministry Of Social Affairs
10. The Wheel
11. Dollar, Dollar

The first new music from Lush for 20 years, and the first the band have released since their single 500 (Shake Baby Shake), taken from their last album Lovelife, in July 1996.

The four tracks were recorded in the summer of 2015 with Daniel Hunt (Ladytron) and Jim Abbiss (Adele, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys)

Talking about the recording of the EP, Miki Berenyi commented:
"It certainly took sometime to come together, but once we were in the studio, everything came together incredibly quickly. It was great fun!
It's been a long time since I've written Lush lyrics, and I realised early on with this EP that what I wrote about then is not what I feel comfortable writing about now. My perspective, and what is close to my heart, has changed, and I think that's conveyed in the songs."

Bassist Phil King added:"I know I'm biased, but I work for a music magazine and so much of the music I hear played in the office sounds non-descript or derivative. Emma has this way of writing unusual chord changes and manages to weave lovely melodies over the top, and it immediately sounds distinctive, like Lush."

Signed to 4AD in 1989, over the course of 3 full-length albums, an early mini-album and a number of EPs and singles, they went on to sharpen their pop sound, outliving and outgrowing the 'scene' with which they were initially associated.

4AD recently released, to much acclaim, both a vinyl reissue of Lush's 'best of' compilation Ciao! and a limited edition five-disc box set titled Chorus.

Hold/Still, the third studio album from Suuns, is an enigmatic thing: an eerily beautiful, meticulously played suite of music that embraces opposites and makes a virtue of cognitive dissonance. It is a record that does not give up its secrets easily. The 11 songs within are simultaneously psychedelic, but austere; sensual, but cold; organic, but electronic; tense sometimes to the brink of mania, but always retaining perfect poise and control. "There's an element of this album that resists you as a listener, and I think that's because of these constantly opposing forces," says drummer Liam O'Neill. "Listen to the song 'Brainwash', for instance, "It's a very soft, lyrical guitar song, existing alongside extremely aggressive and sparse drum textures. It inhabits these two worlds at the same time."

From the beginning, Suuns (you pronounce it "soons", and it translates as "zeroes" in Thai) have sought to do things differently. They formed in Montreal 2007, when singer/guitarist Ben Shemie and guitarist Joe Yarmush got together to work on some demos, soon to be joined by Liam, Ben's old schoolfriend, on drums and Max Henry on synth. Their group's first two records, 2010's Zeroes QC and 2012's Polaris Prize-nominated Images Du Futur – both released on Secretly Canadian – were immediate critical hits, and Suuns soon found themselves part of a late '00s musical renaissance in the city, alongside fellow groups like The Besnard Lakes, Islands and Land Of Talk. Still, at the same time, Suuns feel remote from the big, baroque ensembles and apocalyptic orchestras that typify the Montreal scene. "We write quite minimal music," thinks Ben. "They're not traditional song forms, sometimes they don't really go anywhere – but they have their own kind of logic." Or as Joe puts it: "It's pop music, but sitting in this evil space."

After two records produced by their friend Jace Lasek of The Besnard Lakes at his Montreal studio Breakglass, Suuns decided Hold/Still demanded a different approach. In May 2015, they decamped to Dallas, Texas to work with Grammy- winning producer John Congleton (St Vincent, The War On Drugs, Sleater- Kinney). For three intense weeks, the four recorded in Congleton's studio by day, the producer driving them to capture perfect live takes with virtually no overdubbing. At night, they returned to their cramped apartment and stewed. "Recording in Montreal, it's more of a party atmosphere," says Joe. "Here it felt like we were on a mission. We were looking for something to take us out of our element, or that might seep into our music." Luckily, the effect was galvanizing. Under Congleton's instruction, 'Translate' and 'Infinity', songs the group had been reworking for years, suddenly found their form.

The result is undoubtedly Suuns' most focused album to date, the sound of a band working in mental lockstep, crafting a guitar music that feels unbeholden to clear traditions or genre brackets. From the haunted electronic blues of 'Nobody Can Save Me Now' to throbbing seven-minute centrepiece 'Careful', Hold/Still foregrounds the work of Max, a synthesizer obsessive who builds hisown patches and confesses to using cranky or budget equipment as well as top-of-the-range kit because "[good gear] does all the work for you, and that's not always fun". Certainly, this is a band as inspired by the dark groove textures of Andy Stott, the flourishing arpeggios of James Holden or the serrated productions of Death Grips as anything familiarly rock. "Things don't feel right until they've been touched or cast over in an electronic light," elaborates Liam. "It's rare that acoustic drum kit, guitar, and bass comprise a finished product for us. For a song to be Suuns, it has to be coloured by electronics".

Certainly this remains a band in love with the aesthetic of obscurity. The album cover is an image of Ben's former workmate Nahka, who was captured by photographer Caroline Desilets using a pinhole camera with a four-minute exposure time – Hold/Still, indeed.

In another contradiction, this record finds Ben's vocals far more enunciated and upfront than before. If there are themes that tie Hold/Still together, says Ben, they might be investigations "about sex... perhaps not the act specifically, just [themes] of a sexual nature. But there's also a spiritual undertone that points to another kind of searching." The sexual is illustrated in the dark romance of 'Careful', while longing becomes both sexual and spiritual in the thirsty pleas of 'Instrument': "I wanna believe/I wanna receive..." The spiritual takes over on the back half of the record. 'Nobody Can Save Me Now' evokes artist Tracey Emin's ghostly invocation For You at the Liverpool Cathedral: "I felt you / and I knew that you loved me", while side B opener 'Brainwash' wonders: "Do you see, all seeing? / Do you know, all knowing?"

In a cultural centre like Montreal, bands can get too comfortable playing to their peers. Suuns, though, feel like a band always looking to the nearest border. They found early audiences in France and in Belgium, where they curated the Sonic City Festival in 2012, booking acts as diverse as Swans, Tim Hecker and Demdike Stare. Meanwhile, the last couple of years have seen them tour as far afield as Mexico, Morocco, Beirut, Taiwan and Istanbul – sometimes with friend Radwan Moumneh of the multimedia project Jerusalem In My Heart, with whom they released a brilliant collaborative record, Suuns And Jerusalem In My Heart last year.

"We tour a lot as a band and we've been all over the map at this point," says Ben. "There is a concerted effort on our part, when the opportunity arises, to do that. It's like, this time, let's try to go further east, let's try to go further south. You find yourself playing in front of people who don't get bands playing in front of them often, and that can be really fun." In short, good things happen when you venture outside of your comfort zone – a truth that you could equally apply to Hold/Still itself: an album which derives its eerie power from simmering tensions and strange, stark juxtapositions, and in doing so, directs rock music down a new, unventured path.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Hold/Still is a chaotic and jagged foray into the recesses of thought. Distorted synth pulses underpinning cracked drums and glitched pads. Hypnotic repeated guitar loops bringing things back to earth before exploding into a rain of percussion and psych-drone chanting. Exhilarating and deep, the appeal of this grows with every listen and it is more than worth the time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fall
2. Instrument
3. Un-No
4. Resistance
5. Mortise And Tenon
6. Translate
7. Brainwash
8. Careful
9. Paralyzer
10. Nobody Can Save Me Now
11. Infinity

"Woods have always been experts at distilling life epiphanies into compact chunks of psychedelic folk that exists just outside of any sort of tangible time or place. Maybe those epiphanies were buried under cassette manipulation or drum-and-drone freakouts, or maybe they were cloaked in Jeremy Earl’s lilting falsetto, but over the course of an impressive eight albums, Woods refined and drilled down their sound into City Sun Eater in the River of Light, their ninth LP and second recorded in a proper studio. It’s a dense record of rippling guitar, lush horns, and seductive, bustling anxiety about the state of the world. It’s still the Woods you recognize, only now they’re dabbling in zonked out Ethiopian jazz, pulling influence from the low key simmer of Brown Rice, and tapping into the weird dichotomy of making a home in a claustrophobic city that feels full of possibility even as it closes in on you. City Sun Eater in the River of Light is concise, powerful, anxious - barreling headlong into an uncertain, constantly shifting new world." - Sam Hockley-Smith.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Woods' second album in a proper studio continues where "With Light.." left off with superb tunes, cool grooves (now funky and even jazzy) and their usual mellow 60's vibe. There's also a tangible reggae flavour here, which is a tasty addition to their template (all things transcendent) whilst The Song is still, of course, king. Really good record!

TRACK LISTING

1. Sun City Creeps
2. Creature Comfort
3. Morning Light
4. Can't See At All
5. Hang It On Your Wall
6. The Take
7. I See In The Dark
8. Politics Of Free
9. The Other Side
10. Hollow Home

The London 4-piece return with an album brimming with new sounds amid a vibrant energy, flecked with sublimely delicate, intimate spaces and recorded by Simon Raymonde (Bella Union / Cocteau Twins).

At the core is a deep respect for the frailty of life and the nobility that can be observed in death. Sonar, a highly emotional Liela Moss vocal, delivers a poignant goodbye to a loved one, framed by a magnificent circular guitar hook around which organs, bass and drums carry prayer and eulogy. There are some maverick guest appearances throughout the record, Mark Lanegan, Raymonde himself, longterm TDS collaborator Terry Edwards (PJ Harvey/Gallon Drunk) and old friend Sam Windett from Archie Bronson Outfit is here also to duet with Liela on the wiry post-punk vibes of Side By Side.

One of the many standouts on the album is Pacific, a hyper vigilant and introspective tale of travel and self-discovery, of the realisation that often silence is a better way to communicate than with words. Adding to the tension, a force that pulls you in deep throughout the album, is a beautiful melody at the start of the song played on the saw by Mara Carlyle who also lends her effortlessly fluid voice to this and Sonar.

Despite these cameos, this is about The Duke Spirit, who in ten glorious songs, have resurfaced effortlessly and quietly, with one of the most exhilarating albums of this year.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blue And Yellow Light
2. Sonar
3. Wounded Wing
4. Hands
5. Here Comes The Vapour
6. Pacific
7. Anola
8. Side By Side
9. 100 Horses Run
10. Follow

For more than 12 years Marissa Nadler has perfected her own take on the exquisitely sculpted gothic American songform. On her seventh full-length, Strangers, released 20th May on Bella Union , she has shed any self-imposed restrictions her earlier albums adhered to, stepped through a looking glass, and created a truly monumental work.

Today Nadler has shared “Janie in Love”, one of her most texturally rich songs to date and one that updates her signature sound with some of the most prominently featured drumming of her career. Her talent for powerfully juxtaposing the ominous and the beautiful is on full display. 

In the two years since 2014’s elegiac, autobiographical “July”, Nadler has reconciled the heartbreak so often a catalyst for her songwriting. Turning her writing to more universal themes, Nadler dives deep into a surreal, apocalyptic dreamscape. Her lyrics touch upon the loneliness and despair of the characters that inhabit them. These muses are primal, fractured, disillusioned, delicate, and alone. They are the unified voice of this record, the titular “strangers.”

Once again partnered with July producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Black Mountain) Nadler has created an album equal in sonic quality to the apocalyptic lyrical tone that covers its 44 minutes. In places her voice and guitar play off subsonic synths, while elsewhere, a pulsing drumbeat launches the songs off into an intense, confrontational place. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Following 2014's 'July' is this outstanding offering from Marissa Nadler. Seamlessly segueing between melancholic off-kilter pop and plucked acoustic anthems without skipping a beat, this is an accomplished and startling stylistic journey, and a formative expansion of Nadler's already breathtaking musical palette.