Legendary Manchester band A Certain Ratio return with new single 'Clockwork Orange' on Speedy Wunderground as part of their illustrious 7" single series. 'Clockwork Orange' marks the band's first material since the release of their acclaimed new album It All Comes Down To This, which Speedy Wunderground's own Dan Carey also produced. Carey explains that he has long had an affinity for the pioneering band: “A long time ago when I was a teenager, I was out in Manchester and spotted a poster that said something about A Certain Ratio remixed by Norman Cook. At the time I didn't really know what a remix was, who Norman Cook was, or who/what A Certain Ratio was, but somehow I knew it was worth investigating. As a result, I discovered ACR, figured out what remixes were, and started trying to do my own. I’ve loved ACR ever since."

'Clockwork Orange' builds around malign synths, incorporating contorted vocal passages and shape-shifting electronics that make the song a compellingly dark, shadowy force.

Martin Moscrop (trumpet, guitars) comments on working in the customarily quick fashion that Carey and the Speedy Wunderground single series are so famed for: "We spent a day recording the song with Dan Carey and arranged to pick up our equipment the following morning at 10am. Dan had been up since 8am working on the elements of the song and as we walked into the studio our jaws dropped. He had transformed the song into something very dark, different and full of interest factor. We left the studio on a real high telling Dan to carry on in that direction and make it as heavy as he possibly could. It was a real eureka moment."

Continuing, Jez Kerr (bass guitar, vocals) says: "We’d worked with Dan on the album, so we knew how quickly he liked to get things down. As a joke [Factory Records producer] Martin Hannett used to like to confuse engineers by disappearing to the pub with the parting line, “yeah just tidy up that patchbay and make that delay on the guitar a bit more yellow.” I think Dan is the guy who can actually make a delay more yellow."

ON TUESDAY OCTOBER 15TH AT 6PM WE WILL BE WELCOMING PICCADILLY FAVES FIELD MUSIC TO THE SHOP FOR AN INTIMATE ACOUSTIC SET TO CELEBRATE THE RELEASE OF THEIR NEW ALBUM 'LIMITS OF LANGUAGE'.

ADMISSION IS BY TICKET ONLY SO PLEASE PICK ONE OF THE TICKET BUNDLE OPTIONS TO GAIN ENTRY. 

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About the album:
Field Music announce ‘Limits of Language’, their first album of new music for almost four years. Back in 2022, the touring cycle for the ‘Flat White Moon’ album ended with a sense of finality. For the first time since the Mercury-nominated ‘Plumb’ ten years earlier, Peter and David had no plan for what, if anything, would come next. However, after six years of continuation, they were clear that if Field Music was to carry on then it would have to be different, in both sound and scope.

Solo projects followed with 2023 seeing the arrival of David’s quietly-jazzy ‘Soft Struggles’, the playful of electronica of Peter’s ‘Blowdry Colossus’ alongside a limited-issue brass collaboration LP ‘Binding Time’ and the vault-raiding ‘John Monroe EP’, made with original Field Music keyboard player Andrew Moore.

Katie Gavin’s debut What A Relief taps into the unguarded self-possession and homespun pop sensibility of singers like Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco, and uses their tenacity as a north star for Gavin’s own trek towards self-discovery. “This record spans a lot of my life – it’s about having a really deep desire for connection, but also encountering all the obstacles that stood in my way to be able to achieve that, patterns of isolation or even boredom with the real work of love” they say.

Written over the course of seven years, What A Relief comprises a set of songs that Gavin always loved but which “had something in them” that she and her bandmates felt didn’t quite fit within the universe they were trying to cultivate with MUNA. Many of them were written on acoustic guitar, and are rooted in “a style of music that’s very much in my blood, and natural for me,” as typified by the Women & Songs CDs that Gavin loves, which compiled music by artists like Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan.

That openness of spirit is the overwhelming character of What A Relief, an album that’s refreshing in its willingness to accept people as they come, even as it remains in dogged pursuit of a life that’s kinder, wiser and more loving. Gavin’s explorations of desire and intimacy feel time-worn and necessary – songs that might teach a generation if not how to live, exactly, then at least how to look within oneself for guidance about how to move forward.

Compiled by Jason Boardman ( Before I Die Records) Celebrated Manchester club-night curator & record Label Owner , DJ & digger - supreme.

An album of early 1980s Post-Punk era musical bedroom & small studio innovations & DIY Inspirations - Featuring rarely / never heard cuts from that period. Including tracks sampled by DJ Shadow & a singular Post-Punk era back-handed tribute JCC track :-) From Coventry's 2-Tone associated Skeet to Surface Mutants Cabaret Voltaire facilitated Dub & the out-there pastoral Post-Punk spaciness of The Dealers ..A rich vein .

"This is a snapshot of a fertile time in UK music, a time of independent artists, studios, labels & distributors collaborating to do it themselves, sidestepping the majors to take their shot at the big time. It didn't always work out but they made a record and that's what counts. It is a collection of the lost and overlooked - not intended to be a definitive guide to the period but an opportunity to shine a light on the creative output of these artists and share them once again so they can get the recognition they deserve." (Jason Boardman May 2024).

Alex Kassian's extended rendition of E2–E4 promises a 12-minute electronic odyssey, tailor-made for diverse dancefloors from it’s spiritual home Ibiza and beyond. On the flip side, Mad Professor embarks on a club-oriented version excursion, a rare gem in its own right. This reimagining breathes new life into the classic, offering fresh perspectives for music aficionados everywhere. Hot tip for release of the Summer!

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Probably one of the most the eagerly anticipated twelves of the year. Alex Kassian and Mad Professor deliver new versions of Manuel Gottching's epic Balearic-house-krautrock crossover monster "E2-E4".

Emotive, break-beat minimalist trio GoGo Penguin are back, with their brand new album “Everything Is Going to Be OK”. Bursting with the optimism of new beginnings, with a new drummer, their new record label, (Sony Records' electronica and classical imprint XXIM Records), and a subtly updated and developed sound, the band are ushering in a more ambient era.

“Everything Is Going to Be OK” is born from a time of turbulence and loss. During an oppressive grieving period, the studio offered the band a sanctuary from real life. The resulting project, given such vibrant life here, draws its strength from a shared understanding and empathy. Life has many great aspects to it and despite the lows, we should be mindful and grateful to celebrate the highs at every turn. Through our hardships, we will emerge stronger - everything is going to be ok.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I've loved GoGo Penguin in every iteration of their sound thus far. Minimal loungy jazz business, flickering electronica and grooving soulful instrumentals, they've all been brilliant. It's a big thing then, when I say with some confidence then that the optimistic melodic turns and perfectly produced hazy flicker of 'Everything Is Going To Be Ok' is by far my favourite GGP sound yet. Lovely.

Two jazz-funk heavyweights get the chop on this Semi-Secret 12 inch hailing from the north of England. 'Int milk brilliaaaannnt!?

Ultra Heat Treated for maximum punch.

Can you guess what it is yit?! 

Limited copies, cop now or cry later. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Brilliant new diversion from this well seasoned Manchester-based surgeon. No more clues will be given at the moment!

It’s abundantly clear from the first bars of their 5th studio album Through Other Reflection, that this is, and could only ever be, The Soundcarriers. From the enchanting vocal duets of folk-bidden Chanteuses Leonore Wheatley and Dorian Conway; to the precise bass lines of Paul Isherwood and the limber, jazz-cool, Hal Blaine-esque drums of his his co-songwriter Adam Cann; from the fairy-like flutes, 60s-garage guitars and organ sounds pilfered from the archives of exotica - listening to the Soundcarriers resembles a rediscovery of all the most prized, esoteric corners of the 1960s, all bundled up, warped and refracted through the quartet’s astutely modern cultural lens. Channelling Tropicalia, Middle Eastern psychedelic Jazz/Funk, The French Library sounds of Nino Nardini, and a whole host of lavish obscurites beside, Through Other Reflection delivers another sonic adventure from one of the most unique and distinctive voices of British Psychedelia.

After an 8 year wait for their album 4 - 2022’s Wilds - it thankfully didn’t take so long for the follow-up this time round. In many ways, this feels like a companion to Wilds; recording again at their Nottingham warehouse studio, Through Other Reflection retains that same organic glow, all the passions and imperfections of a tightly clipped unit jamming out these living, breathing pop-art nuggets as if straight onto the acetate.”We wanted to keep an air of spontaneity with this album and not get too bogged with the recording process”, explains Cann, “It was more a case of getting the songs as tightly written and arranged as possible first so we could get them down quickly in the studio. It always takes longer than you think”

Less packed with strident pop hooks as its predecessor however, the music of Through… has been given extra licence to breathe, stretch out, and wander more uncharted terrains. While gleaming psych-pop of tracks like ‘The City Was’, or ‘Already Over’ confidently carry on from where they left off, from the album’s 2nd track ‘Always’, the trip becomes a little less predictable. Starting out as a smoky Procol Harum-meets-French-Psych organ ballad, the music drifts, as if of its own accord into an eerie, garage trance that lingers, cycles, and hypnotises, growing ever stranger, reaching ever-further away from its point of conception.

And almost every track on Through Other Reflections holds that outer-body moment, where the band fix themselves on a limber, lysergic groove, lose all grip on time and reality, and melt themselves away into a liquid state of blind euphoria. There are sequences on this record that feel more like rituals than songs, built upon a single hypnotic rhythm which, like the centre of a vortex, pulling everything under its beatific command. Take the finale to ‘What We Found’ for instance, sounding like a ghostly march across the psychedelic moors, or ‘Feel The Way’, where a single athletic drum-loop rises and rises, growing ever more urgent and suspenseful underneath its frantic harpsichords and rasping flutes.

Full of such rich stylisms as these, The Soundcarriers showcase themselves as abstract storytellers par excellence by virtue of their textures and arrangements alone. Resembling Romantic composer Maurice Ravel, but if he had just a four-piece rock band at his disposal, Through Other Reflects is rich with detail; there’s shakers, rattles, clarinets, booming drums; there’s synthesiser swarms, chiming xylophones, vintage organs and experimental Cluster & Eno-esque ambiences. Within all this nuance the music flows like some undisclosed narrative swathed in a magnetic secrecy. “It almost comes across like a story in some ways”, says Cann of the album, “the music is quite sectional with elements of exotica and cinematic type layers, it's a good balance of grooves, tunes and weirdness”. No more is this “epic cinematic feel” heard more proudly than on short instrumental ‘Sonya’s Lament” - its innate, hauntological atmospheres befitting a Peter Strickland soundtrack, or the classics of Lex Baxter, the so-called ‘Founder of Exotica’ himself.

On the other hand, providing a greasier undercurrent to all these bucolic sounds is a leaning towards a more “direct” lyricism referencing more “external concerns. Laying down the first tracks for the album in the wintry gloom of pre-lockdown 2020, and drawing inspiration from time spent in Berlin, Through Other Reflections returns to some of the post-apocalyptic futurism explored in 2014’s Entropicalia - a loose concept album inspired by J.G Ballard’s The Drowned World. “The songs explore a disillusionment with the way things are going particularly after 40 years of neoliberalism”, says Cann, “They follow that folk-song tradition of wanting to escape to an imagined time, but here it’s more urban than pastoral. The first couple of ideas I came up with when doing some music in Berlin and had some time to wander aimlessly. And think the atmosphere seeped in, particularly on The City Was and Already Over.

He continues, “One aspect of the title, ‘Through Other Reflections’ is about synthesis and layers of influence. How things can be filtered through other things and change the perspective. This is something you get in cities as well.” Though, as with everything The Soundcarriers make, “It can mean anything. It also just sounds kind of cool.”

Field Music announce ‘Limits of Language’, their first album of new music for almost four years. Back in 2022, the touring cycle for the ‘Flat White Moon’ album ended with a sense of finality. For the first time since the Mercury-nominated ‘Plumb’ ten years earlier, Peter and David had no plan for what, if anything, would come next. However, after six years of continuation, they were clear that if Field Music was to carry on then it would have to be different, in both sound and scope.

Solo projects followed with 2023 seeing the arrival of David’s quietly-jazzy ‘Soft Struggles’, the playful of electronica of Peter’s ‘Blowdry Colossus’ alongside a limited-issue brass collaboration LP ‘Binding Time’ and the vault-raiding ‘John Monroe EP’, made with original Field Music keyboard player Andrew Moore.

It was these albums that provided fresh impetus for what was to become the new Field Music record. Whilst Peter amassed the instrumental compositions which become ‘Blowdry Colossus’, he was also tinkering with a batch of songs which would form the basis of ‘Limits of Language’, songs which mixed synthesised textures with off-the-cuff flickers of guitar and layers of disorientating found-sound percussion.

These fleshed-out demos included ‘The Waitress of St Louis’, an ode to the now-closed Sunderland café ’Louis’, which featured on the cover of their 2007 album ‘Tones of Town’, and to the Maggiore family who ran this cherished institution.

David’s songs came from a different angle but leant into the same sonic palette and shared the same sense of a past becoming granulated. Album opener, ‘Six Weeks, Nine Wells’ pits the hazy ecstasies of school summer holidays against the fear and foreboding of a child peeking through into an adult world.

‘Limits of Language’ sees Field Music continue with their astonishing, bloody-minded run of releases. A run which equates to an impressive twenty-one “Field Music Productions” in nineteen years as a band. 

In upstate New York, deep in the seam between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Valley, a richly swelling, spellbound sound emerges, eddying and flowing like the local Esopus Creek, or in the slipstream of the grander Hudson river, carrying the flotsam and jetsam of our hopes, dreams, fears. A sound composed of organic and electronic; guitars, keys, brass, strings, woodwind, drums - and a voice of incantations, tapping streams of consciousness that similarly eddy and flow.

Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev’s ninth album ’Born Horses’ spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision begun with skeletal chords and surges of self-reflection, alive to the notions and motions of time and reality somehow both linked to their exalted past whilst quite unlike anything they have created before?’’

Grasshopper:
“When Jonathan and I first met, one thing we bonded over was Blade Runner, both Ridley Scott’s film and Vangelis’ soundtrack: that feel of the past and the future, the haunting noir mood and the romance of the future…Born Horses taps into some of that. Looking back to childhood, to Broadway tunes, to lonesome blues, Chet Baker, Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, records that our parents listened to, but we put a twist into the future. From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert.”

The album title, named after the majestically rippling sixth track ‘Born Horses’, was chosen because its words resonate through the entire record, encompassing the idea of flight (“I dreamed we were born horses waiting for wings”) and the phrase “You and I” that appears at different junctures on the album. This is not the concept of two separate people, but two parts of one self.

Jonathan:
“When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others. I don’t know where the bird came from, but it’s there now, and I don’t question it. It’s just the bird that wants to sing.”

‘Born Horses’ opens with ‘Mood Swings’. A Trumpet, evoking bohemian mariachi and the windswept terrain of the desert prairie, opens up to a dynamic panorama of sound, wandering through and enveloping Jonathan’s intimate recitation, conflating memories and confessions of feelings trapped and unwrapped: “My mood swings come and go as they like / rebellious fickle teenagers, unable to decide.” It establishes ’Born Horses’’ tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of human experience, buffeted by the currents all around us. The flightiness of feelings is further explored by the metaphor of a bird, most clearly in ‘Bird Of No Address’ and the album’s pulsating finale ‘There Has Always Been A Bird In Me’.

More inspiration was provided by the spirits of the art minimalist Tony Conrad and beat poet Robert Creeley, acolytes of progressive thought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo, the city where the band was formed.. Amongst other credentials, Conrad was a member of LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate along with John Cale and a close friend to The Velvet Underground. Creeley was one of the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century as well as an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets.

Grasshopper:
“Tony was a trickster, who loved to shake things up. He knew how to put things together that might not inherently fit but then became something completely new. Robert- the beauty of his sparseness with words, but playful too, and a sense of romanticism. For me, there is also some subconscious echo in ‘Born Horses’ of Patti Smith’s Horses, the nomadic recitations that incorporate poetry into music…. it’s like a tip of the hat.”

Jonathan:
“There are a few unquestionable watermarks of Grasshopper’s studying with Tony Conrad and my own time spent with Robert Creeley. Distilling down lyric and song. Heating up during intense bursts of recording followed closely by long periods of cooling down/ listening to the work and then… un-listening to it. Leaning in to the uncertainty of what is being created. Not by us, but for us. Psychological ‘letting go of the balloon’ distance as perspective. Something we both inherited from Tony and Robert… Stepping in and stepping out of frame.”

“Since our beginning in the mid 1980’s with David Baker through the recording of Born Horses with new permanent members, Woodstock native (pianist) Jesse Chandler and Austrian born (keyboardist) Marion Genser, we’ve celebrated this unspoken trust in the ‘statue already inside the marble’. We didn’t make ‘Born Horses’ by throwing clay on top of clay; we allowed Time to reveal what was always there.”

Quiet Village announces new label, The Quiet Village, and new single, "Reunion". Matt 'Radio Slave' Edwards and Joel Martin's critically acclaimed project's first official single under the Quiet Village name in seventeen years!

Beginning life as a 'heady 6/8-time urban jazz odyssey, "Reunion" is a stunning piece of modern, hi-tech jazz that draws influences from Pat Metheny, Timeline, Innerzone Orchestra, and Clyde Stubbelfield's drumming.

While previous Quiet Village material was hewn from a myriad of samples extracted from Edwards' and Martin's notorious digging, "Reunion" and its follow-ups are drawn from a tight-knit crew of session musicians, including the likes of Jon Hester and Thomas Gandey, adding further depth and feel to the QV sound. Already a firm favourite with Gilles Peterson and Luke Una, the latter of which leaked a clip of the release via his inimitable Instagram presence and called it 'something so fucking beautiful. Tony Allen, Sun Ra meets Carl Craig, Underground Resistance, house, tech, funk, everything rolled into one'.

"Reunion" is the first single on The Quiet Village, Quiet Village's new imprint. Despite continually producing new music and a slew of remixes, most recently for Running Back and Isle of Jura, the long-term friends and collaborators have been unable to release under their Quiet Village moniker since their LP "Silent Movie" in 2008. While a few releases under QV and their sometime DJ aliases of Maxxi (Edwards) and Zeus (Martin) have emerged, "Reunion" is the beginning of a new and re-energised Quiet Village that will see more original material and remixes, DJ and live touring that began in Japan in May and curated compilations of treasures, old and new, in the coming months and years.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Rightly causing a bit of a stir, the infamous Quiet Village return after a long hiatus with a sensuous and luxurious new track that joins the dots between Cinematic Orchestra, Galaxy 2 Galaxy and Floating Points. Creamy, luscious orchestration and depth, unfathomably beautiful and almost naturally effortless.

Exploring late-night, after-hours meditations on sound; ‘Everything Above The Sky (Astral Travelling with Luke Una)’ is a new compilation by the titular DJ, promoter and enigmatic cultural curator. Off the back of the E Soul Cultura phenomena, this compilation comes at a timely point in Luke’s rich career as he soars the heights of playing all over the world. Avoiding any chance of his sound being pigeonholed, Luke has put together a tracklist of songs and music that have a transcendental feel, after coming off the grid, going back to source, outside the city walls .

Music has long been believed to aid out of body experiences and many of us have searched long and hard for a combination of those elusive ingredients that might alleviate some of the monotony of everyday life, our daily routines and obligations, and those things that seem to block us from the spirit of the universe. In this collection, Luke selects music with all the right ingredients in just the right quantities, allowing the listener to engage in an esoteric journey of enlightenment through sound. Being a prolific collector of music, Luke initially delivered enough tracks to compile several compilations, making the licensing process the biggest effort to date for the label. The music moves softly and slowly, never becoming too intrusive, exemplifying the wonderful elevating properties of simple songs played from the heart.

Luke’s Everything Above The Sky manifesto reads, “Astral Travelling in the meadowlands with acid folk, spiritual jazz, around midnight hocus pocus, cosmic psychedelic soul, magical spellbound whirling swirling love songs, Brazilian ballads of light into machine soul gospel utopia dreaming, Balearic bossa, Outer Space ancient African drum, the breath of trees, escaping the big bad modern world, gathering round winter fires, walking amongst the bracken in Padley Gorge in late summer twilight, overlooking the Hope Valley, escaping ego, detaching and finally letting go amongst the stars with the slowly floating people. It’s beautiful beyond. Everything above the Sky”.

Beginning his career as an original Sheffield house young blood in the mid 1980s, Luke’s move to Manchester and partnership with Justin Crawford saw the birth of Electric Chair, a cornerstone cult night in the UK underground club scene. Then came Electric Elephant, a Croatian festival paying homage to their wild eclecticism from Balearic to Brazilian to É Soul, house, disco and techno. Luke’s much loved, long-running Homoelectric night and more recently Homobloc sell out festival for 10,000 souls has been at the forefront of Manchester’s LGBTQ+ cultural landscape. Luke’s Friday evening show on Worldwide FM captured imaginations and became a cult four-hour must-listen monthly journey for fans all over the world. Today, Luke remains, as ever, at the forefront of a changing milieu, pairing the momentous legacy of Manchester’s 80s and 90s scene with the delivery of what today’s club communities need to get down. 

The complete uncollected Noise New York studio recordings of Galaxie 500. A twenty-four track chronological journey through rarities and outtakes including never-before-heard songs, from the start of their incendiary career to their final studio session. Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 marks Galaxie 500’s first release of new archival material in nearly thirty years and their most comprehensive collection of unreleased and rare material ever. Produced and engineered by Kramer at Noise New York 1988-1990.

• Complete uncollected Noise New York studio recordings of iconic indie band.

• Features rarities and outtakes, plus first release of new archival material in nearly thirty years.

• Historical photos and liner notes by the band.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1983 post-punk / reggae masterpiece from Khartomb becomes the eighth release on Jason Boardman's indispensable BiD label! Khartomb's masterpiece "Swahili Lullaby / Teekon Warriors" was influenced by contemporaries of the time The Slits & The Raincoatsand and was originally released on 7" on 23rd June 1983. A Balearic secret weapon now available for aficionados everywhere with local lads Synkro & Talking Drums bolstering the release outstanding reworks to boot.

Despite initial interest following their Peel Session & support from Melody Maker and Zig Zag the band were unable to capitalise & "Swahili Lullaby / Teekon Warrior" remains their only vinyl release until now.
40 years later, the tracks have been exclusively licensed by BiD alongside the previously unreleased Pat Nevin favourite "Daisy High". 

"Swahili Lullaby" is an under the radar post punk jam with killer drums, dubby bassline and spidery guitar, topped off by a haunting melancholic vocal.

"Teekon Warriors" is a deep ode to the fallen, dope drums, angular guitar, tribal drums and a sweet vocal.

"Daisy High" was dubbed by John Peel as 'Subversive MOR' who are we to disagree? A haunting, flute peppered slow jam with a bossa feel & a sick guitar lick.

Synkro's Balearic Dub of "Swahili Lullaby" takes the original version and sends it to a transcendental spiritual realm, creating a future classic for sunrises and sunsets for the next millennium. The Talking Drums Redub of the same track tweeks, extends & amps up the dub pressure to maximum psychedelic levels.

Support from JD Twitch and Essential Space. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: JB lifts the lid on a truly inspired slice of John Peel championed, post-punk-reggae from London. The story is as delightful as the music - and credit to Before I Die for sourcing something that's both a true curio and highly listenable. If the "Spiky Dread" compilation were to issue a second volume - this would have to be on it!

Longing. Heartbreak. Levity. Joy. Being filled with love for all things. All of these sensations flow at once through Canadian singer-songwriter Tess Parks’ new album, Pomegranate. Re-establishing Parks as the consummate artist-observer against a swirling nouveau-delic backdrop, her third solo album is released via Fuzz Club and was produced by multi-instrumentalist and close collaborator Ruari Meehan, who shared mixing duties with Grammy-nominated engineer Mikko Gordon (The Smile, Gaz Coombes, Arcade Fire).

Though Tess Parks first became widely known for her string of collaborations with Brian Jonestown Massacre mastermind Anton Newcombe, her 2022 solo offering And Those Who Were Seen Dancing left an unforgettable impression with its signature blend of weight, whimsy, and open-heartedness. The New York Times would praise its “confident, enchanting presence”, whilst Exclaim! proclaimed it as a record that “demands to be heard and felt”. Where Dancing retained a fair measure of bedroom-demo charm, this time the canvas is bigger, with Meehan’s arrangements stretching all the way to the horizon. This is the most ambitious and cinematic Parks’ music has ever sounded. Drawing on psychedelic elements in a way that sounds decidedly fresh, the dreamlike atmospheres feel oddly nostalgic and modern at the same time.

The pair are backed on most tracks by band members Francesco ‘Pearz’ Perini – whose piano and organs shine through gloriously on ‘Koalas’ and ‘California’s Dreaming’ respectively – and Marco Ninni, who provides the solid backbone throughout on drums. From a vocal perspective, it feels like Parks pushes her voice to new heights on this album too. Her lyrics are sharp, ever-present, and imbued with strength, depth, and poetic purpose, which shine particularly bright on tracks like ‘Koalas’ and ‘Charlie Potato’. They weave through her flurries of beautiful melodic hooks, featuring sublime choruses and complex, multi-layered harmonic structures, as showcased on ‘Crown Shy’ and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ especially.

On Pomegranate there are also plenty of new experiments and guests introduced. ‘Koalas’, for example, features the spellbinding whistling of Molly Lewis, lending a bittersweet Morricone-esque charm. ‘Crown Shy’ features soaring strings (arranged by Ninni and played by Joe Butler), and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ and ‘Charlie Potato’ are elevated by Kira Krempova’s ethereal flute playing – the latter also accompanied with Wurlitzer piano played by Oscar ‘SHOLTO’ Robertson. The euphoric ‘Running Home To Sing’ and album-closer ‘Surround’ centre the synthesiser for the first time, whilst the piano features more prominently across many of the tracks.

‘The Night The Zombies Came is Pixies’ tenth album, if you count their classic 1987 4AD mini LP Come On Pilgrim, and first new music since 2022’s acclaimed Doggerel LP. 13 new songs that find Pixies looking ahead to the most cinematic record of their career.

Songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Black Francis explains:

“Fragments that are related and juxtaposed with other fragments in other songs. And in a collection of songs in a so-called LP, you end up making a kind of movie.”

Druidism, apocalyptic shopping malls, mediaeval themed restaurants, 12th century poetic form, surf rock, gargoyles, bog people, and the distinctive dry drum sound of 1970s era Fleetwood Mac are just some of the disparate wonders that inform the new songs.

For the new album recording sessions the band returned to work with producer Tom Dalgety, who drummer David Lovering refers to as “a fifth Pixie” after producing 2016’s Head Carrier, 2019’s Beneath the Eyrie and 2022’s Doggerel. Early on in the recording process at Guilford Sound studio in Vermont, the band noticed the new songs were dividing into two camps: what they came to call the “Dust Bowl Songs” - country-tinged, ballad-esque numbers such as ‘Primrose’ and ‘Mercy Me’, and on the other side, the album’s furious punk numbers such as ‘You’re So Impatient’ and ‘Oyster Beds’. Only ‘Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)’ keeps its feet in both camps — reminiscent of early 60s Phil Spector, the band hitting the sweet spot between mushy and abrasive, it’s a track that Black Francis allegedly likened to being chased by a swarm of bees.

The Night The Zombies Came sessions also saw Pixies welcoming new bass player Emma Richardson (Band Of Skulls) to the line up; the first British band member to join the group. There’s also an expanded role for guitarist Joey Santiago. After contributing his first-ever Pixies lyrics on Doggerel, for the new record Santiago wrote the words to ‘Hypnotised’ by completing a complex lyrical riddle of sorts, known as a sestina.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the celebrated Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme’s concert film Stop Making Sense, the set will be re-released as a 2LP and 2CD/Blu-ray set this summer.

When it arrived in September 1984, Stop Making Sense was an artistic and commercial triumph. The film had people dancing in theatre aisles, and the soundtrack sold over two million copies. Just last year, the Library of Congress added Stop Making Sense to the National Film Registry in recognition of its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. The inspiration for Stop Making Sense came when director Jonathan Demme saw Talking Heads perform during the band’s 1983 tour for Speaking in Tongues. Afterward, he approached them with the idea of making the show into a concert film. They agreed and worked together over the next few months to finalize the details. Ultimately, Demme filmed three shows at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in December 1983 to create Stop Making Sense.

Alan Sparhawk of Low’s solo debut for Sub Pop is at once a bold new, electro-pop-infused adventure, and an extension of the innovation and experimentation that drove his work as a member of Low. It is his first album since the tragic 2022 loss of his wife and partner in Low, Mimi Parker.

Alan Sparhawk has always been a prolific, protean musician. A restless soul eager to explore unfamiliar sonic and psychic terrain. Though he’s obviously (and justifiably) best-known for his thirty years as frontman of the legendary band Low, a look at Sparhawk’s many side projects across that same span of time shows him experimenting with everything from punk and funk to production work and improvisation. Low itself never settled for a set sound or approach. The band was always a collaboration—a conversation, a romance—between Sparhawk and his wife, Mimi Parker, who was the band’s co-founder, drummer, co-lead vocalist, and its blazing irreplaceable heart. To take the journey from Low’s hushed early work, through the tremendous melodies of their middle period, all the way to the late lush chaos of their final albums, is to witness heads, hearts, and spirits in an act of perpetual becoming. Parker passed away in 2022 after a long battle with cancer, and there is no question that WHITE ROSES, MY GOD is a record borne of grief. You can hear it in the title, as well as tracks such as “Heaven”, in which Sparhawk describes the afterlife, wrenchingly, as “a lonely place if you’re alone.” You can sense it too in Sparhawk’s decision to create this thing entirely on his own: every note, every lyric, every programmed beat. It would be reductive, even foolish, to see grief as the sole source or the final limit of this taut, brilliant, provocative, thrilling album, whose bold experimentation is powered by profound lyrics and propulsive beats.

“Can you feel something here?” Sparhawk asks on “Feel Something.” The line repeats over and over, evolving first into “I want to feel something here” and then “Can you help me feel something here?” Meanwhile the musical means he’s chosen to convey this message—especially the pitch-shifter—might seem at first like they’re making it harder to access that very something he wants us (and himself) to feel. Isn’t the vocoder a barrier between us and the deep emotionality we’ve long associated with an Alan Sparhawk vocal? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not. But even if it is, then it’s a barrier worth breaking and the music itself is the hammer. Sparhawk conjures forth the ghosts trapped inside these machines. WHITE ROSES, MY GOD is an exorcism whose purpose is not to banish the spirit but to set it free. In many ways WHITE ROSES, MY GOD feels like a hard break with the past, almost a debut. And yet there’s incredible continuity with Sparhawk’s past work and his traditional ways of working. He’s pathbreaking, yet again, invested as ever in the endless process of becoming himself. As he puts it on “Station”: “I can please myself with the things I seek out.” Us, too. We are lucky to be here to hear it as it happens.

A full artwork vinyl edition of this much hyped Kwengface track; with the hugely popular Joy O x Overmono version added for good measure. A fierce UK drill cut with razor sharp lyrics and killer delivery. Joy O and Overmono give it a bass n breaks rub-down which takes it directly to the clubs and festivals. 

Cut loud on a limited 12" with full artwork.

This one will fly out so get those orders in quick! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: An absolute genius pairing that finally sees a vinyl release. Kwengface's biting drill track "Freedom" is transformed into a festival-friendly stadium-slayer via the deft hand of Joy O and Overmono.

‘Million Dollar Baby’ is Pixey’s most accomplished and ambitious pop project to date, written between her bedroom in Liverpool and studios in London over the course of a year and a half. Self-produced by Pixey herself, alongside Tom McFarland (Jungle, Olivia Dean, Alfie Templeman) and Rich Turvey (Rachel Chinouriri, Blossoms, The Coral), the record follows her journey of self-discovery as an artist and shedding the illusions surrounding it. Combining her love for 90s breakbeats with her pop prowess and skill as a producer, ‘Million Dollar Baby’ samples and interpolates some of her favourite tracks to not only bridge the gap between old sounds and new, but to craft an entirely new sound altogether.

“This album is more than just music to me,” she says, “it’s the final form of years of trying to prove myself. I’ve always felt as if I’m so close to something but never quite there. This is the story the album tells; navigating the perception of myself through the male gaze, whilst also trying to take some power back and form my truest identity. The sentiment of the album is this: the path to fulfilment isn’t a performance for others but instead, is a journey of becoming your authentic self.”

Across her career to date, Pixey has picked up acclaim from The Times, The Sunday Times Culture, Notion, The Forty Five, NME, The Independent, DIY, Dork, The Line Of Best Fit, CLASH and more. She has also received swathes of tastemaker support across national radio at the likes of BBC Radio 1, where she has received a plethora of accolades including Best New Pop, Poppest Record, Future Bop, two Tune Of The Week nods and over 100 plays and 20M impressions across her entire catalogue.

Who doesn't love a good edit, some nice Balearic, and especially some mystical Balearic edits? Well, that's just what we have here from Matsoaka who taps into several worldly flavours on this new six tracker courtesy of Magic Wand. 'Parlband Utmed Kusten' starts slow and steady, wet and dubby. 'Jah Banana' is a supremely horizontal and sun-kissed beach groove and 'Alligator' cuts loose on glistening melodies and playful chord vamps. Gentle breakbeats power the seductive 'Shish Balearic' and 'Asian Dance Groove' closes out with loose, percussive rhythms and funky guitar rifts. A truly global sonic trip.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Magic Wand have always risen well above the rest of the edit wheat and chaff, employing skilled splicers and exclusive source material. Matsoaka maintains their high watermark across five previously rarely heard nuggets from around the world. All infectious in their own way and possessing boat loads of beach party fun.

Blur celebrate the one-year anniversary of their 'Live At Wembley Stadium' shoW. 'Live At Wembley Stadium' is a collection of songs captured across two unforgettable nights in the summer of 2023 - the biggest shows of the band's 30+ year career to date - which saw Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree perform to over 150,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, Blur's first time ever to play the iconic London venue.

Almost 35 years on, The Chameleons return once again, to one of Manchester’s most iconic venues, playing the original set they played that evening...

The atmospheric post-vocalist/bassist Mark Burgess began with the Cliches, guitarists Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding arrived from the Years, and drummer John Lever (who quickly replaced founding member Brian Schofield) originated with the Politicians. After establishing themselves with a series of high-profile BBC sessions, the Chameleons signed to Epic and debuted with the EP Nostalgia, a tense, moody set produced by Steve Lillywhite which featured the single 'In Shreds.'.... The quartet was soon released from its contract with Epic, but then signed to Statik and returned in 1983 with the band's first full-length effort, Script of the Bridge. What Does Anything Mean? Basically followed in 1985, and with it came a new reliance on stylish production; following its release, the Chameleons signed to Geffen and emerged the following year with Strange Times. The dark, complex record proved to be the Chameleons' finale, however, when they split following the sudden death of manager Tony Fletcher; while Burgess and Lever continued on in the Sun & the Moon, Smithies and Fielding later reunited in the Reegs. In 1993, Burgess surfaced with his proper solo album Zima Junction. He and his band the Sons of God toured America the following year.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's no mistaking The Chameleons, and they're in fine fettle here, smashing through a perfectly performed set of classics and sounding every bit the band we remember at Manchester's iconic Ritz.

Blessing/curse. Division/unity. Love/hate. It’s in the context of a polarising 24-hour, digitised, globally connected world that NightjaR finds its wings. NightjaR being the nom-de-plume and smudged rainbow constellation of collaborative copy-and-paste sound-wrangling and hip-hop from Jimi Goodwin. But it’s here and it’s Mala Leche.

Mala Leche (Spanish: Bad Milk) is 16 tracks of beats and bars, vocals provided by some of the hip-hop artists at the very top of his own, personal home listening lists and interludes that throw back and forth through eras and genres in sometimes playful, occasionally awakeningly abrasive styles. How did it all come together?

“The good thing about social media is that it makes everyone available. Everyone has their contact details or their management’s contact details on their profiles. I could literally just email or DM someone.”

Goodwin has form in this, his chosen arena. Anyone paying attention to his extra-curricular activities at the same time his ‘day job’ in the still-active Doves presented him a third UK No.1 album in 2020 will have noted his production, as Coup Diablo (“Bollocks, that name! I don’t know what I was thinking!”) on Pan Amsterdam’s Ha Chu album in the same year. Improbably connecting the nocturnal, lamp-lit laboratory vibe of a home studio at the foot of England’s Peak District with Miami, Florida, Goodwin and Pan Amsterdam linked up once again this time around, with the one-time jazz musician-turned rapper’s authoritative prose and trumpet gracing first single, Space Bar and album closer, Glove Department.

Much like the basis for many of Mala Leche’s new-era collaborations, the two have never met in person, yet the creativity flowed easily through fibre optics and across time zones.

“I like clever wordsmiths,” says Goodwin, “not just cusses and Pan is exactly that kind of artist. He’s The Don. Full respect to him, he got fed up with the jazz scene he was part of, frustrated by the bullshit. He’s gone and called it out and done his own thing. You’ve got to admire that.”

Kindred spirits. NightjaR finds Goodwin, whilst not breaking ranks as a member of Doves (“They are my peers, man!”) in the same way as Pan rejected the accepted notions of local jazz circuit, it’s something that visibly lights new creative fires in him. “I make a beat every other day. There’s no agenda, nothing obscure or clever, it’s just instinctive. There came a point when I considered getting these rappers involved… to bring it out of it just being me on my own… YOU CAN’T DO THAT JIMI! Turns out that I could!”

First fruits borne of the collaborative seeds sown on Mala Leche are heard on the album’s second track, Baby Don’t, where both Birmingham, UK-based rapper SonnyJim and Detroit’s Quelle Chris commit their voices to a tantalisingly brief (only 2m 14s) NightjaR beat laced with chiming, crystalline melodic motifs. The two rappers had already put out music in combination, drawing Goodwin’s ear with the SonnyJim’s 2016 release, Mud In My Malbec, featuring Quelle Chris on the track, Dorchester. Bandcamp has proved revelatory while constructing the new NightjaR world, with these discoveries, Pan Amsterdam and others coming directly through that platform.

Not all commitments have come without the warmth of personal encounter, however. New York’s Homeboy Sandman, skimming studied street verse over the stand-up bass-driven track, Pirates, appears on the album following a personal, if chance encounter. As Goodwin recounts, “I was in New York in 2017, just exploring the city on my own. One day I’d been in touch with Homeboy Sandman, just exchanging messages, just asking if I could send him my beats. Same day, totally by chance, I come out of the subway and bump right into him! Whatever the ways of contacting these rappers I’ve been able to put together my dream team.”

Closer to home, the unmistakable voice, meter and lyrical proclivities of Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson land, without ambiguity, on Blood Red Dead. With the peal of a repeating, distorted guitar lick and a single, grounding organ note, Williamson’s Nottinghamshire brogue is welcomed through a longstanding sense of mutual interest and respect. Of the same generation, compatible politics and frequently lost in a world of instant, all-too-public messaging, the pair are long-time acquaintances.

“We’ve never met in person,” admits Goodwin, “but we’re on the phone to each other all the time. I was blown away by what he’s done on ‘Blood Red Dead’. It’s totally ‘him’. I admire people who are just like ‘fuck you!’ and working and living with that sense of conviction. Just people who can completely be themselves.”

Much like Sleaford Mods, Doves or any band name, NightjaR is a useful alias in the process of Goodwin becoming, like Williamson, completely himself. After percolating over seven years and finally facing the prospect of going public, the name crept from corners of inspiration linked to both voodoo doctor Dr John’s unsettling, 1968 debut album, GRIS-grisand the bird of the same name. Nocturnal creatures camouflaged from discovery while roosting in the daytime, and ascending to mythical status for an ages-old reported ability to steal milk from goats, the enigmatic bird is a well-chosen totem to Mala Leche’s similar sense of post-dusk mystery.

Less than a year after her album Through and Through, Baby Rose returns with Slow Burn, a collection of songs that explode her sonic palette from progressive R&B into a rawer, richer and more sprawling lens of American music. Here, Rose asserts herself as not only a once-in-tenlifetimes vocalist, but as a formidable songwriter connecting the dots where Muscle Shoals meets psych, psych meets jazz, jazz meets Americana, and the right players bring it all together. Produced by BADBADNOTGOOD, Rose and the band found an instant but seemingly endless well of inspiration; what started as an introduction became a day, became a song, became a night, became Slow Burn. Baby Rose was already a powerful position player — she can share the stage with Robert Glasper without breaking a sweat, or close an epic film like Creed III, for which she performed the closing credit song, with steely confidence. When Rose first met with BADBADNOTGOOD the idea was to say hello, get acquainted, see what a collaboration could, over time, potentially become. But the connection was instant, and together they put down lead single “One Last Dance” in just that first meeting. It was Rose’s first freestyle vocal, and it snapped crucial pieces of her vision into focus. “I’ve known deep down there were new spaces and sounds that I could rise to,” Rose explains. “I’ve always been into different sounds that bring in those rawer textures.” And so while the speed of their collaboration thrilled and surprised Rose, the potential and the end results did not. “We moved quickly,” she says, “and it really was a faucet. Once we got ‘One Last Dance’, it became clear everything was going to flow.”

The songs on Slow Burn were inspired in part by Rose’s experiences driving between her family’s home bases: the noise and chaos of DC and the quiet, Carolina countryside. Rose would crank music and let her mind drift, making room for the internal monologues and imagined dialogues you might not otherwise dare to hear. There’s a dreaminess in those moments, and they smolder on Slow Burn: memories lose their realities, feelings replace happenings. Slow Burn’s title track, for example, sets soft, ambling drums against Rose’s lyrical repetitions, as she traces those recollections—some lives, some felt— with patient, insistent desire.

The standout “One Last Dance” arrives disguised as a love song, but is actually an ode to a lost friendship, and an imagined dream of one more day like the old days. Reality blurs with feeling again, vocals layer into lullaby, and BADBADNOTGOOD’s bassist Chester Hansen brings that dreamlike quality to a sneaky, cautious but loving undertone. In fact most of the songs on Slow Burn have that stealthy, shadowed feel, like they’re arriving on tiptoe: intimate but a little dangerous, tender but a little mysterious. As complete and compelling a work as this is, Slow Burn points to a bigger, higher ascent in Baby Rose’s future. “I feel boundless,” says Rose. “It’s one thing carrying the weight of the emotion I’m going to bring as a vocalist and lyricist, but now I feel like I’m the head on a body with all these players and artists and other limbs. I’m in love with that process. When you have the right energy and the right synergy,” she says, “all that’s left is to trust yourself.”

Released on 12th September 1994, the band’s sixth single was 'We Are The Pigs'. The first song to be released from the 'Dog Man Star' album, The Times commented "Propelled by one of Bernard Butler's finest riff chord sequences and fuelled by the nightmare visions of Brett Anderson's lyric, the song romps home with a glorious chorus that combines old-fashioned sing-a-long appeal with an intriguingly sinister edge." The single peaked at number 18 in the UK charts.

The B-side was 'The Killing Of A Flash Boy'. This song did not appear on the 'Dog Man Star' album, but in recent times, Brett has commented that in hindsight, he would have included the song in the album’s tracklisting.

Crack Cloud has always been something beyond a rock band: both profound and grand, vaporous and elusive.

The first iteration of Crack Cloud was formed nearly a decade ago as a proxy-rehab outlet on the fringes of Calgary. Over time, two EPs and accompanying visual pieces were produced out of the residence known as Red Mile. By 2017, several members had relocated to Vancouver, working out of harm reduction centers and low-barrier shelters. Sobriety, self-reformation and the idealism of their work further formed an ethos for Crack Cloud. It was during these years that the band produced their astounding 2020 album ‘Pain Olympics’. At once, their vision became expansive, cinematic.

Now, ‘Red Mile’ is a bit of a homecoming. Members have returned to Calgary. But Calgary/home has become a liminal space, a place of flux. After a decade of personal and collective growth, what does home even mean? ‘Red Mile’ is, for them, something like samsara: a return and a rebirth.

‘Red Mile’’s sound breathes expansive energy into the circuitous, street bound sonics of Crack Cloud’s prior material. Fizzling synths intertwine with chiming pianos. Songs layer like Russian nesting dolls; one may find a Ramones chorus set within a desolate Western prog soundtrack only to watch it erupt into a joyous anthem. Real-ass guitars — alternately lilting, scuzzy and soaring — ring out across wide sun-bleached spaces. In 2024, the cumulative effect is (in rock instrumentation terms) naturalistic. Any whiff of embalmed nostalgia is absent. Even the close of the album – a winding, alllllmost Jerry Garcia guitar noodle that leads us out of ‘Red Mile’ – is delivered without sentimentality.

Principal songwriter Zach Choy’s lyrics are cutting but merciful, with a sharp self awareness that never slides into self-satisfaction. Crack Cloud as artists are critical — and ultimately as forgiving — of themselves as they are the melting world around them. The songs balance an easy charm and cathartic power: affirming life without denying death.

Recorded predominantly between the outskirts of Joshua Tree California, and Calgary, Alberta, this record is informed by a bittersweet mélange of old and new. The sprawling, novelistic structures of their previous albums are condensed and sharpened, while maintaining their refusal to delve into superficiality. Through playful melodies and elliptical guitar soliloquy, they deliver a final product of exceptional depth and distinctly unprecious warmth. Crack Cloud have produced a mature, vital work that interrogates the platitudes of the rock-n-roll lifestyle, but ultimately exalts its sacredness.

‘Red Mile’’s de facto thesis statement “The Medium” is itself a rock song meditation: an ode to the form and its practitioners. This genre that — typical, repeatable, corporatized as it can be — somehow still has the power to help us live through life. We see the dusty sentiment of “I love rock and roll” exhumed, taken apart, and stitched back together. It’s a song guided by faith — if the medium helps us proclaim our love today, it’s worth protecting from derision tomorrow. We live in an era where music seems to love hitting its head against the wall. Crack Cloud’s ‘Red Mile’ is the sound — the feeling! — of the bricks giving way.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Though there are little nods here to the musical greats of the 70's and 80's, that Cure Guitar tone for example, or The Ramones' vocal snarl, it's never anything but classic Crack Cloud. They've got an uncanny ability to make you think you know where it's going and then drastically veer into the weird and wonderful. Never was that more evident than on the brilliant Red Mile.

Acclaimed pianist Joep Beving and cellist Maarten Vos share their first collaborative album, vision of contentment, via Nils Frahm’s LEITER label. It follows work together on 2019’s Henosis, Beving’s third album, which came about after the two musicians shared a bill in Amsterdam in 2018. Mixed by Frahm at LEITER studio in the German capital’s famed Funkhaus complex, the LP contains eight brand new compositions and is available on vinyl as well as via all digital platforms.

While Beving’s never recorded an entire album with another artist before, Vos has regularly engaged in such activities, sharing credits with artists such as Julianna Barwick, Nicolas Godin (AIR) and Alex Smoke. For Beving, it was a natural step to take, and arguably overdue. “Doing an album from scratch as a joint project was something Maarten and I wanted to try for a while now,” he says. “When my deal came to an end, we saw an opportunity to start making music. I’m always trying to create small worlds for the listener to temporarily live in. Working with Maarten and Nils has helped immensely in achieving this. Maarten is a sculptor of sound and Nils is, well...the master of sound!”

Most of vision of contentment was written and recorded during July, 2023, after Beving and Vos unpacked their gear – recording equipment, various synths, a cello – to join the upright piano awaiting them in de berenpan, a shed hidden away in the forest outside Bilthoven, a small village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. The friends had already spent time together in Beving’s Amsterdam studio as well as Vos’ Funkhaus setup, sessions from which two further album tracks are taken, but their week in the countryside would prove particularly fruitful, if for uncomfortably poignant reasons. Out of their sometimes-sombre work emerged a universal eulogy to what the pianist calls “Finding comfort in the acceptance of the inevitable,” but the album represents far more than this. It’s also an astonishing personal tribute to Mark Brounen, their friend and, in Beving’s case, manager.

Vos considers the haunting sounds of vision of contentment “a sonic landscape that encourages imaginative exploration”, and the duo talk of Morten Feldman as a musical guide, and Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto as ‘mentors’. Beving, meanwhile, says he intends to leave listeners with a simple sense of love, adding that he hopes it will also enable “a search for harmony and understanding” that also delivers “a big fuck you to fascists and fear!”

Transitions are a theme on vision of contentment, not least because, by the time Beving and Vos had settled down in the woods, their friend Brounen had been fighting cancer for three years. And yet, if his imminent ‘passing over’ cast a shadow upon proceedings, it’s wasn’t exclusively a cause for sadness. “The central theme here is the ‘Blue Hour’, the twilight,” Beving explains. “Transitioning from one state to the other, but also embracing the darkness. Mark had shown a remarkable way of dealing with his disease and impending end. He was at peace with his destiny.”

As touching an achievement as The Durutti Column’s A Paean to Wilson, Vini Reilly’s salute to his own manager and Factory Records’ boss Anthony Wilson, vision of contentment may be stylistically very different, but it’s similarly cathartic, spiritually awakening and ultimately full of love.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It makes sense that this is on Frahm's label, because not since Frahm's 'Felt' have I heard such a beautifully unassuming suite of tentative piano and in-the-room atmospherics. It's got moments of activity and dynamism, but the pace is beautifully managed and leaves a lot of thinking space for the listener too. Gorgeous.

After forming on a group trip to Blackpool, Manchester-based quartet Umarells have announced their debut EP 'One More Day' via Fear of Missing Out Records.

The record circles peaks, plummets, and upside-down turns for a front-row seat on the emotional Big Dipper of life. The faded sparkle of the Blackpool seaside trails through five postcards of smouldering indie-rock on the EP.

Slip this delirious disc out of the lime/slime green sleeve and you're up close and personal with the new chapter in the TD saga.
A dance floor triptych of such seismic scale that the crew spent two years trying to wrangle the tracks on wax, finally finding a plant with the power to press them up.

Sprawling across the A-side is the devastating 'Doner Summer', an instrumental extension of some lost Munich disco masquerading as an Anatolian excursion. Ditching the vocals and cutting the kase, the crew lay down a galloping groove topped with Turkish licks and disco strings, take us into the psychedelic swirl of a tumbling drum breakdown before hitting the big red button marked banger for a searing second half. Firing up the hardware, TD blast this one further into the Phuture, dropping technoid sequences, nagging 303 and Cowley-style FX fuckery for a full on club assault.

In the alternate B-side universe, Hans Zimmer lost his dread note and Denis Villeneuve was forced to turn to Talking Drums for the Dune soundtrack. They obliged with the sci-fi rai of 'Chaba Ranks', reshaping an Algerian OG with a dancehall kick, off beat vamps and star-crossed synths, then letting loose with a heavy bass tone.
|In time honoured fashion, the team also drop a dub version, cutting out the vocals and focussing on those additional elements for the wildly cosmic 'Chaba Skanks'.

Limited Press - Numbered Insert - Drum Fun Guaranteed !

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Those crafty cutters are at it again! Dicing up some Turkish leaning Munich disco into a cosmic-technoid-disco romp; and dubbing out nice an Algerian dancehall curio. The results are particularly arresting on this edition!

To celebrate 10 years of one of London’s most loved underground club nights, Tangent, Mr Bongo are thrilled to launch this new compilation series. Crafted by its two residents, John Gómez and Nick the Record, it aims to transmit a taste of Tangent’s spirit. A party rooted in inclusivity and open-mindedness, whose name captures the spontaneous switches in musical direction that are a defining element of their nights. For the compilation, the pair have cherry-picked a selection of their prized, rare and dancefloor-ready tracks from around the globe, that have soundtracked the past decade of parties.

Friends for close to 20 years, music lovers, record obsessives and internationally renowned DJs in their own right, John and Nick have two lifetimes worth of musical knowledge to draw from. John a long-standing NTS Radio resident and compiler for Music From Memory. Nick one of the UK’s go-to record dealers, resident DJ since the ‘90s at one of Japan’s pioneering parties, Life Force, and co-captain / co-edit-expert of Record Mission with Dan Tyler (Idjut Boys).

In 2014, the pair decided to bring some of Life Force’s grassroots principles to the UK, whilst channelling underground clubbing institution Plastic People’s meticulous attitude to sound. Tangent grew from being a small gathering of friends, to an established fixture in London’s nightlife, whilst always maintaining a strict no guest DJ policy. “As London’s clubs have become increasingly reliant on international guests, we wanted to emphasize the importance of a club night growing through its residents”, John and Nick reflect. With 10 years of the duo at the helm, an intimate connection between DJ and dancefloor has been built, allowing for freedom of expression on both sides of the decks.

Tangent reaches around the globe and across different eras to make connections that stimulate emotional reverberations in the unfamiliar. Where the blissfully Balearic ‘Laberinto’ by Miguel Perikás, goes hand-in-hand with the Cameroonian hip-house of King B.’s ‘Love is Crazy’. The thundering ‘Amek Amek’ by L'Innovateur Djoe Ahmed et le Zoukabyle, rubs shoulders with the soulful Caribbean-influenced touch of Champagn’s ‘Bel Ti Négress’. And Pellegrin El Kady’s afro-cosmic ‘Seiva de Carnaval’, crosses paths with Kajou’s Kompa disco anthem ‘Tet Chajé’.

Tangent’s longevity is in part down to it having always embraced contemporary sounds. The sub-rattling bass of Srirajah Sound System’s stunning Molam dub stepper ‘Si Phan Don Lovers Rock’ and the slow, woozy mantra of leftfield dancehall explorer Androo’s ‘Lyriso’, are two shining examples.

This compilation represents an ongoing dialogue between past and present, transporting listeners to the heart of a pure musical experience, where open minds and open hearts are eager to follow the tangent. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Two of London's most decorated and respected music aficionados present a compilation of hits from their long running club night. Including plenty of new tweaks and twists by some well feted friends, as well as new tracks standing proud alongside the old, it's a brilliantly colourful and varied set which really paints a picture of this much celebrated London institution.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds return with new album, ‘Wild God’.

“I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me,” Cave says. “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a masterplan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”

Across ten tracks, the band dance between convention and experimentation, taking left-turns and detours that heighten the rich imagery and emotion in Cave’s soul-stirring narratives. It is the sound of a group emboldened by reconnection and taking flight. There are moments that touch fondly upon the Bad Seeds’ past but they are fleeting, and serve only to imbue the relentless and restless forward motion of the band.

Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis, and mixed by David Fridmann, Cave began writing the album on New Year’s Day 2023. With sessions at Miraval in Provence and Soundtree in London, the Bad Seeds added their unique alchemy, with additional performances from Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).

“Wild God…there’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.” Nick Cave

Grammy nominated Laura Marling is back with her eighth studio album Patterns in Repeat. Now eight albums and 15 years into her career as one of the most acclaimed, prolific and respected songwriters of her generation (Grammy and Mercury Nominated and Brit award winning).

Patterns in Repeat was written following the birth of her daughter in 2023 and finds Laura reflecting on her motherhood experience as well as more broadly diving deeper into her reckoning with the ideas and behaviours we pass down through family over generations.

“A huge thing for this record was to make it feel as close to our live show as possible,” says Tom Sharkett of W.H. Lung’s latest album. “We didn’t want it to sound live but we wanted to capture the excitement of the live performances.”

This is something that has become paramount to the group in recent years as they have undeniably blossomed into one of the most joyous and arresting live bands in the country. “The reason I’m in a band is to play live music,” says singer Joe Evans. “For me, music is live music. That’s what it’s for, to be played with people.”

The five-piece band, also featuring Chris Mulligan, Hannah Peace, and Alex Mercer-Main, decided to try something new on their third album after two incredibly successful collaborations with previous producer Matt Peel. In order to capture the energy, spirit and dynamism of their live shows, they relocated to Sheffield to work with Ross Orton (MIA, Arctic Monkeys, Working Men’s Club) who was able to harness this side of the band to remarkable effect. “Ross is the Sheffield Steve Albini,” says Evans. “He’s the king of not overthinking it and trusting the process of the art of recording songs. He was always there to stop us fucking around with cerebral stuff and get it down.” Sharkett echoes this too: “He was the exact producer we needed without us even realising. His productions and mixes are bombastic, lively and in your face and that’s exactly what we wanted.”

However, while this album is rooted in a sense of capturing a moment and a sparky liveness, that’s not to say it’s a raw or ragged record. It is still a meticulously composed, delicately layered and pristinely produced piece of work that, in true W.H. Lung style, runs the gauntlet from dance to pop to indie while still capturing that distinctly unique quality that is unquestionably their own. “It was a really big thing for me to realise what made us sound like us on this record,” says Sharkett. “I think the album sounds a lot more confident and self assured because of it. Some songs sound just so much like Lung and I’m really proud of that. I’m not sure we’ve done that as consistently across the other records.”

While the band have drilled deeper into finding their own singular identity, it’s not a record resting on its laurels. It’s a significant leap forward, expanding on their solid foundations while also breaking new ground. “The big difference with this record is its directness in every sense,” says Sharkett. “The songwriting is more upfront. Previously we’d focused a lot on vibe and production as opposed to just writing songs. The overall mission here was to revert to a classic songwriting structure and for the production to come afterwards.”

And so what you have on this record are deeply considered and well-crafted songs, then recorded with blistering intensity in the moment, and then given a touch of experimentation afterwards. Then throw in Orton’s contributions to the band and it’s proven to be a real winning formula. “He brought a real dose of magic to the songs we’d written,” says Sharkett. “And brought an extra bit of wonk and quirkiness each time.”

Such quirkiness is apparent from the opening ‘Lilac Sky’ which very briefly samples a learn to speak Spanish 12” before whirring atmospherics, hypnotic bass, and shimmering synths began to propel the song for launch. “I like it when there’s really clear punctuation at the start of a record,” says Sharkett. “It’s almost like a statement of intent and I wanted something like that, where if people knew the tune they could identify it within the first second.”

It’s also the perfect album opener in more than one way, setting the tone for an album rooted in exploration. “I went out onto Hampstead Heath one day when it was dusk and the sky was mad and I’d just taken some mushrooms,” recalls Evans. “I was thinking: just remember this, this is how things really are. So maybe this track acts like an invocation or a calling for the rest of the album. It’s about listening closely, paying attention, and being overwhelmed with an open heart.”

On ‘Bliss Bliss’ the band almost veer into anthemic indie territory, with its rousing chorus, euphoric lashes of synths and a vocal delivery that is festival headline worthy. “I sang it like I was singing a song I’d forgotten from when I was a teenager,” says Evans of his impassioned performance. It was a fresh approach for the band. “I thought the guitars felt too college rock at first but I just went with it,” says Sharkett. “It’s a completely different style of guitar playing for me and something much more traditional in the indie world but I was enjoying that.”
In many ways this was another foundational song for the LP. “This was the first instance of us writing more traditional songs for the album,” says Sharkett. “It kind of embodies our balance between being a live conventional guitar band and the shiny, synthy side of Lung to me. It feels like the perfect culmination of our experience as a band so far.”

The band’s ability to write more traditional and conventional songs is clearly a skill they’ve taken to with ease, at times there’s an almost Springsteen-like quality – but if he'd ever had an ecstasy period – to tracks such as ‘Thinner Wine’ and ‘Bloom and Fade’. While ‘How to Walk’ was constructed with one thing only in mind: that it would absolutely slay on stage. “I can’t wait to play this live,” says Evans. “We wanted a song to represent our live set, a new big one, and this is it.” Once again it leans towards the anthemic, with its driving, propulsive charge complete with incandescent synths and vocal melodies so irresistible you can already hear them being sung in unison by a crowd.
It’s an incredibly difficult feat to pull off a record that is more rooted in traditional songcraft while also capturing the power of a live performance, as well as pushing sonics into experimental new directions while working with a brand new collaborator. But here the band has managed to do just that.

And the album’s closing song ‘I Will Set Fire To The House’ is a perfect example of such a thing. It’s a song that feels immaculately constructed but also very much alive and of the moment as its radiating synths engulf from the off, and Evans’ vocal is silky but powerful and in perfect symbiosis with Peace’s. It’s a song that captures the endless joys of music playing long into the night. “It may be a bit of a bloody bombastic way to end an album saying ‘and we’ll dance into the sunrise’,” says Evans. “But fuck it.” 

"We Can Live Together is the first full LP by Earthtones on Wonderwheel. The title is a message, a prayer, and a vision for humanity. It is a reminder that we are in this life together, that love binds us all, and it is only the ideologies and social systems built to prohibit our ability to recognize how close we are that hold us back. We can live, together. The record is based in Folkloric Futurism, a movement that explores the convergence of global folk traditions with technology. Channeling the influence of proto House & Techno pioneers like Mr. Fingers, Kevin Saunderson and Inner City, Earthtones combines analog synthesizers & vintage drum machines with folkloric vocals and instrumentation in a way uniquely his own. It's a celebration of the intersection of past and future, here and there, ancestry and technology. It celebrates themes of spirituality, feminism, love, and most of all, peace. Highlights include "Ọ̀sanyìn", a prayer to the Orisha Ossain, with Maikel Alberto Salazar of rumba super-group Obbatuké on vocals. Recorded in Santiago De Cuba, the track is evocative of Mala's classic "Mala In Cuba" album that broke down barriers between electronic music & traditional music. "La Mujer Serpiente", having seen a sellout 7" last year features Polaris prize winning artist Lido Pimienta-behind the live cumbia rhythms, bass synths, analog keys, 808 drums & guitars, the vision of this track is one of uplifting womxn and femmes everywhere. Ancestral and contemporary Colombian voices are present on the mid-tempo dancefloor track that is the single "Limones" with Semblanzas Del Rio Guapi, Oliwa & the chugging analog rap soundscapes of "Quiero Que Mami" with Verito Asprilla . The album also touches into ambient moments ("Song of the Wind" , Waves") – inspired by friends Carlos Nino, Matthew David, Colloboh and the vibrant West Coast environmental sound movement.

They're back! And they've brought some local Aussie legends to join em on a cosmic-outback-bush-boogie doof party; with four epic, dub-olicious, psych rock, Afro disco jams. There's two rambunctious percussive funk heaters from label regular, JB Edits, whilst Space Jockeys hit the high octane hi-nrg throttle, and Barney In The Tunnel melts our minds with the slo-mo cosmic-balearic wriggler, "New South Whales" - sure to be a winner fans of Harvey, Kelvin Andrews and Moonboots. Magic. 

Support in from JD Twitch (Optimo), Charles Webster and Lex, Rob Da Bank, Horse Meat Disco and many more.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Ever the modern stable of creativity. The Sosilly cartel boost their modest discography with, in my opinion, their hottest record yet. Already big in Warrington and beyond!

Morrissey's live album, Beethoven Was Deaf, which was recorded during the Your Arsenal tour in Paris '93, has been remastered at Abbey Road Studios and is now reissued for the first time since its original release in 1993. 

The Swedish stallion comes correct once again with another clutch of mash-ups. This time turning his hand to the poppier end of the spectrum, as Tailor Swift, Peggy Gou and many more are given the Beatconductor treatment.

Pre-orders advised!

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: He's been keeping bar DJs on trend and Karen's at bay for over a decade now, Beatconductor can mashitup like no one else! This one's gonna be a big one, the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card; as it features the monolith that is Taylor Swift.

Two revered dance music institutions come together here as Pye Corner Audio steps up to Emotional Response with his debut EP for the label. What's more, it is a two-parter with the first half also available now. This one from Martin Jenkins finds him making an homage to the acid house he has always loved with opener 'Stegan Acid' starting with slow grocers and foggy moods run through with subtle 303 modulations. 'Magnetic Acid Three' is another deep and stripped-back sound with rumbling drums and bass coloured with soft acid contours and 'Thermionic Acid' gurgles a little more as the icy hi-hats cut through a mutant deep techno swamp. 'Magnetic Acid One' is one final meditation on acidic house depths.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: If anything, this is the more sonically downbeat of the two offerings, contrasting the perky hands-in-the-air acid of 'Acid 1' with a slightly more dubby set of slow-building crackly numbers and weird blissed-out crackle. They're both brilliant, and quite different to what he's done before. A perfect addition to Emotional Rescue.