Bartees Strange has been one of the most significant indie artists to break out in the post-Pandemic era. He debuted with ‘Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy’, an album length collection of The National songs released in March 2020, on the cusp of the Pandemic. Later that year came his first LP, ‘Mustang’, which was named in endless year-end Best Of lists, including those from Pitchfork, Stereogum, Rolling Stone and NPR Music. He quickly signed to 4AD, and his debut for the label, ‘Farm To Table’, turned him into a club headliner and an arena-sized opening act with genre-defining artists such as The National, boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers and Courtney Barnett.

The vinyl-exclusive release, ‘Magic Boy’, represents the Bartees story before this story began -33 1/2 minutes of recordings created before he entered the public eye, with eight out of ten never previously released. It finds his ever-malleable sound touching on genres like coffee house folk (‘IDK’, ‘Best Of You’, ‘You’re Here’), emo troubadour (‘Count It Back’, ‘Little Brother’), and wigged-out experimentation (‘Eat Your Heart Out’). Appended with two tracks previously available only as digital Bsides from ‘Say Goodbye’ (‘HAGS’, ‘Going Going’), ‘Magic Boy’ reads as a kind of ‘lost’ album for someone shaping up to be a major voice in indie music.

Bartees’ story is a fairy tale of independent community and a triumph of efforts to diversify what the word ‘indie rock’ even means, reclaiming it for Black artists. The ‘Magic Boy’ LP is a fine way to celebrate Bartees Strange’s explosive trajectory, especially following his run of dates opening for The National at arenas across Europe in Autumn 2023.

TRACK LISTING

1. IDK
2. Going Going
3. HAGS
4. Best Of You
5. Eat Your Heart Out
6. You’re Here (Feat. Project Diem)
7. Count It Back
8. Get Over It (Feat. Lizzie No)
9. Little Brother
10. Going Going (Reprise)

“It seems like the sky’s the limit with him. He’s got big things ahead...” - Bryce Dessner, The National

Bartees Strange has been one of the most significant indie artists to break out in the post-Pandemic era. His 2020 album, ‘Mustang’, was named to countless year-end best lists. He quickly signed to 4AD and his debut for the label Farm To Table turned him into a club headliner and an arena-sized opening act with genre-defining artists such as The National, boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers and Courtney Barnett.

‘Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy’ is where Bartees’ story began - a full-length cover album of songs by indie rock kingmakers The National. Quietly released in March 2020 - the day before lockdowns shut the world down - it instantly sold out its 300-copy pressing. Now back in print to celebrate his explosive trajectory and a run of dates opening for The National at arenas across Europe in Autumn, 2023.

A kind of fairy tale story of independent community and the effort to diversify what the term ‘indie rock’ even means, reclaiming the phrase for Black artists. ‘Say Goodbye’ also happens to touch upon Bartees’ incredibly broad palette of musical influences, with a sound ranging from garage rock (‘Mr. November’) to emotional R&B chill (‘About Today’ and ‘The Geese of Beverly Road’) to house music (‘Looking for Astronauts’). Members of The National have called Bartees’ hard riffing, emo-pop-rock rendition of ‘Lemonworld’ the definitive version of the song.

For fans of L’Rain, The National, Kara Jackson, boygenius, The Beths, TV on the Radio, Alvvays.

TRACK LISTING

About Today
All The Wine
Mr. November
A Reasonable Man (I Don’t Mind)
Lemonworld
The Geese Of Beverly Road
Looking For Astronauts
Lemonworld (Live At Studio 4)

This Is The Kit is the project of Kate Stables, born in England and based in Paris. They first gained notice due to heavy radio play on BBC 6 - and have twice had LPs named to 6 Music’s Album Of The Year lists. Later they gained more notice as a hand-picked opening act for The National, Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzalez, Sharon Van Etten and Alexi Murdoch - musicians who share a similar independent streak and warm-hearted approach to creating modern yet timeless music. In North America, they are regulars on US Triple A radio stations like KEXP, indie folk festival line-ups, and tastemaking platforms such as NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.

In the years since ‘Wriggle Out the Restless’ was released in 2010, This Is The Kit have continued to gain momentum. Their 2015 follow-up album, ‘Bashed Out’, was made with The National’s Aaron Dessner (producer for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Mumford & Sons). Stables then sang on The National’s 2019 album/film ‘I Am Easy To Find’ and became a touring member on subsequent live dates. Finally, in 2020, ‘Bashed Out’’s title track became a streaming hit after an impactful needle drop in a key episode of Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’ series.

For fans of Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Beth Orton, Sharon van Etten, Bon Iver, Father John Misty, Joni Mitchell, Sam Amidon, Anais Mitchell.

This is the first time ‘Wriggle Out the Restless’ has been widely available on vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Sometimes The Sea
Easy Pickings
See Here
Waterproof
Spinney
Trick You
The Turnip
White Ash
Earthquake
Sleeping Bag
Moon
Treehouse

“‘Bashed Out’... will also likely be her breakout... get ready to hear a lot more from her.” - Stereogum

This Is The Kit is the much beloved musical project of Kate Stables, born in England and based in Paris. ‘Bashed Out’ was produced Aaron Dessner, a member of The National known for both minting indie icons (Sharon Van Etten, Local Natives) and, more recently, becoming a producer to stars like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. Dessner’s former client Sharon Van Etten called This Is The Kit her “favorite new artist” in Pitchfork.

The backing band gathered for ‘Bashed Out’ combines the talents of This Is The Kit’s touring members alongside session players drawn from the Brooklyn music scene: Bryce Dessner, Thomas Bartlett (Doveman, The Gloaming), Matt Barrick (The Walkmen) and Ben Lanz (Beirut, The National) made key contributions.

Since this LP’s initial release Kate made significant contributions to The National’s 2019 album/film ‘I Am Easy To Find’ and became a touring member on subsequent live dates. In 2020, ‘Bashed Out’’s title track became a streaming hit after an impactful needle drop in a key episode of Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’ series.

This music is honest, human and humane - a folky-lovely slowrumble. It’s rock but of the groovy, hangover-friendly, stoner variety. Stables’ voice hearkens back to the singer-songwriter era - her distinctive, cutting vocals up front in the mix.

The Line of Best Fit has the band as an “essential fixture of British folk music for the past 10 years… one of a handful of truly innovate songwriters working with the British folk template today.”

For fans of Joni Mitchell, Bon Iver, Sharon Van Etten, Father John Misty, Gillian Welch, Laura Marling, Natalie Prass, Jose Gonzalez.

This is the first time ‘Bashed Out’ has been widely available on vinyl since 2019.

TRACK LISTING

Misunderstanding
Silver John
Spores All Settling
Magic Spell
Bashed Out
All In Cahoots
Nits
Vitamins
We Are In
Cold And Got Colder

"Music For Wood And Strings" might be the official follow-up to Bryce Dessner’s 2013 solo debut "Ahyem" but this ‘solo’ record is really the meeting of three great musical entities: Dessner (a member of The National) wrote the piece, renowned quartet So Percussion perform it and Aron Sanchez (of Buke And Gase) built the custom Chordstick instruments upon which it’s played. The music is pointillist then hazy, distorted then crisp and always hypnotic, melodic and engrossing. Weighing in at 35 minutes in length, "Music For Wood And Strings" is the most ambitious piece of music Dessner has released to date. The CD has a run time of 70 minutes, presenting the composition both as a full length concert piece and in nine playlist-friendly ‘sections’. Dessner et al lure the listener in with an assortment of gentle drones before the piece erupts into a mesmeric gossamer of chiming notes and cascading chords. Blossoming from the fertile space between the minimalism of Reich and Glass and the playful and emotive neo-classical of Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Haushka and Owen Pallett, "Music For Wood & Strings" is an unconventional triumph.

The new record by People Get Ready is called ‘Physiques’. It ramps up the band’s fierce, joyful, heedless interplay; their love of big pop songs and trancelike slow jams and songs that fall somewhere in-between and, above all, their devotion to pleasure.

‘Physiques’ was made during three months of tracking with Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier at the Clocktower Gallery in downtown Manhattan. Founded by Alanna Heiss, who also created what would become MoMA PS1, the Clocktower Gallery was one of the first entrants in New York's ‘alternative art space’ movement in the 1970s. Invited to the space by curator Joe Ahearn (Showpaper, Silent Barn), People Get Ready were among the very last artists to work at this pioneering art space, which is now being renovated into condos. It would not be wrong to take ‘Physiques’ as a kind of tribute to and last gasp from a more lovely time in New York, when art ran free in downtown Manhattan.

People Get Ready consist of two Arizonans (Steven Reker, Jen Goma) and a Californian (James Rickman). Produced by Greg Saunier, the album began as a collection of deliberately incomplete sketches that they developed over three months of improvisation, revision and accidental magic. Steve Marion (Delicate Steve), Brian Betancourt (Hospitality, Here We Go Magic) and Ryan Seaton (Callers) guested on a few songs and former band member Ian Chang (Matthew Dear, Body Language) played drums. Booker Stardrum, the drummer for experimental outfit Cloud Becomes Your Hand, joined the band that autumn.

People Get Ready came together in New York in 2009 while frontman Steven Reker was looking for new ways to combine his devotion to avant-garde movement and pop art after working with Miranda July and touring as a dancer and guitarist on David Byrne’s year-long Everything That Happens tour. The band took shape around a run of shows at The Kitchen, described in the New York Times as “an experience beyond hearing music in a club or viewing a dance... a moving meditation that suggests dreams.”

Nurtured by and connected to several generations of America’s hypercreative bleeding edge of multi-hyphenate musicians / artists / makers, People Get Ready challenge what it means to be a band. NPR’s Bob Boilen, placing their performances among his Top 5 concerts two years running, put it best: “No single show took my breath away the way this one did - part rock concert, part performance art, part dance, all perfectly melded together. Having seen so many dudes with guitars... it was incredibly refreshing to find a group challenging and changing the norm.”

TRACK LISTING

Rainbow
Physiques
Crueller
Aquarium Date
Jealousy
Sooooooooon
Hot Fruit
You Should Have Seen Our Face
Blockbusterer
Bees

“On each of their releases to date, Buke & Gase have never been anything less than absolutely thrilling” - Pitchfork

For fans of DIY art-rock bands like Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors, Tuneyards, Shellac, and possibly progressive metal, such as Tool.

Buke & Gase garnered new levels of attention when NPR Music showcased them in their live webcast from CMJ. Smart music lovers around the world were blown away by the band’s uncategorizable sound. One commenter dubbed them “fiery metal-infused indie rock,” while another suggested an “avant-folk duo.”

The band’s second album, ‘General Dome’, finds them evolving their already innovative sound. The band rented a cavernous empty room in between heavily used railroad tracks and the Hudson River to set up a temporary recording studio. The recordings have hints of their surroundings, such as natural reverb, train horns, rumbling annoyances. The size of the new space led to a grander songwriting style. As per usual, the band recorded and mixed the album themselves.

“People Get Ready is an experience beyond hearing music in a club or viewing a dance; it is a moving meditation that suggests dreams” - NY Times

Brooklyn-based People Get Ready are Steven Reker, Luke Fasano (ex-Yeasayer), James Rickman (ex-Lizzie Trulie, ex-Slow Gherkin), and Jen Goma (A Sunny Day In Glasgow).

In 2006 Reker moved from Arizona to New York City, finding work as a dancer and guitarist on David Byrne’s 2008-09 tour, as a composer in Yasuko Yokoshi’s recent dance work, and as a choreographer for Miranda July’s film ‘The Future’. 2009 marked the debut of People Get Ready in a performance at The Kitchen’s Dance And Process series, designed to pay homage to both sides of Reker’s creativity.

People Get Ready forge continuing creative bonds with the formidable list of artists whose paths they’ve crossed. One of Denniston Hill’s founders, the painter Julie Mehretu, has provided cover art for their album; the band’s music has found coveted slots on playlists curated by Byrne and July; and they’ve shared stages with the likes of Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr, TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, !!! and the who’s who of Brooklyn artists selected for Aaron & Bryce Dessner’s scene-defining Crossing Brooklyn Ferry festival at BAM.

This album is perhaps the most accessible and radio-ready album Brassland has ever released. Would appeal to fans of Talking Heads, Dirty Projectors, Yeasayer, TV On The Radio.

TRACK LISTING

Windy Cindy
New June
Three Strangers
Orange Grove
Dark Candy
Shoe
Middle Name
Mr. Shoulders
Zelda Maria
A Squandering

When they crafted the ‘All In Time’ EP, all four members of Pela lived in the not-so-fashionable waterfront neighbourhood of Red Hook, the setting of Hubert Selby Jr’s ‘Last Exit To Brooklyn’, and home to many artists, dock workers, cranes, and shipping containers.

The sketchy romanticism of the neighbourhood was but one of the inspirations for these desperate songs about addiction, isolation, hope, murder, sex, and Mexico. In spite of the dark subject matter the songs are quite catchy and have led one writer to opine that “Pela’s music recalls what might happen if Modest Mouse hitched a ride on U2’s wide-horizon rock ‘n’ roll tour bus.”

In 2010, Pela singer / songwriter Billy McCarthy and bassist Eric Sanderson formed We Are Augustines with drummer Rob Allen.

TRACK LISTING

Latitudes
Episodes
All In Time
Parade Of Geronimos
Venom

'A retro romo romp through a New York ghost world that is neither the drainpipe-and-denim sweat pile of CBGBs nor the mirrorball glitz of Studio 54 but somewhere in between' – Uncut. 'Imagine if fate had been kinder and Ian Curtis was still with us and recording with Money Mark, producing low-fi paeans to the everyday struggles of life and love writ through with a wry irony. A crooner for our times, Baby Dayliner's monotone voice and cranky instrumentation belies a hopeless romantic who would make Serge Gainsbourg and Leonard Cohen smile' - Wallpaper Magazine.