21st Century troubadour Hak Baker - following his critically acclaimed debut album 'World's End FM' - releases new EP 'Nostalgia Death Act I'. 'Nostalgia Death' is about looking to the future and "succeeding ourselves" rather than "tunneling into hubs shrouded in nostalgia... it’s dangerous, moreish and comfortable." Do old habits really die young?

TRACK LISTING

1. No Control!
2. Nameless
3. Boys X Girls
4. Blender
5. Nostalgia Death
6. Everybody's Dyin’
7. Prometheus (Live)
8. LUVLY
9. Poems

The debut album from London's finest, Hak Baker - 'Worlds End FM' represents the war in Hak's mind, the culture war on the streets of London and the individual battles of his community - from his mother to his brother to his best friends. In a year that will see Hak perform alongside Pete Doherty at The Royal Albert Hall, Jamie T at Finsbury Park & his own headline UK & Germany tours, the campaign has already garnered support from Rolling Stone, NME, Clara Amfo, Steve Lamacq, Jamz Supernova & partnerships with Dr Martens, Fred Perry, Fender, FIFA & Hugo Boss to name a few. Previous highlights include performing on Later with Jools, Glastonbury 2022 (Other Stage), the first artist ever to play at the BBC's new Eastbank site, selling out two Village Underground shows & been championed by the likes of Clara Amfo, Jack Saunders, Sian Eleri, Tom Ravenscroft, Jo Whiley, Huw Stephens & Charlie Sloth.

TRACK LISTING

1. World’s End FM
2. DOOLALLY
3. Windrush Baby
4. Collateral Cause
5. Bricks In The Wall
6. Full On
7. Babylon Must Fall (MC Grindah Skit)
8. I Don't Know
9. Run
10. Telephones 4 Eyes
11. Watford’s Burning (Connie Constance Skit)
12. Brotherhood
13. Luv U Bro (Big Zees Skit)
14. Dying To Live
15. Almost Lost London
16. The End Of The World 

After dropping hints for months and following the release of their first single 'Sugar in the Tank', Julien Baker & TORRES are releasing their debut album 'Send a Prayer My Way'. The album has been in the works since the two played their first show together in 2016 and at the end one singer turned to the other and said, “You know, we should make a country album.” This is the origin story, the stuff of legend in the world of country music, and the beginning of a collaboration between two artists already admired for their spare, elegant lyrics as well as the courage to share their struggles with those who love their music. It’s also the beginning of creating a work that, like the most enduring country albums, sustains and inspires, reminding both singer and listener that not one of us is ever totally alone in this world, that music is a steady companion.

Julien Baker & TORRES’ 'Send A Prayer My Way' was written and sung in the best of the outlaw tradition - defiant, subversive, working class, and determined to wrestle not only with addiction, regret and bad decisions, but also with oppressive systems of power. Mercifully, this is only the beginning of the stories TORRES and Baker are determined to tell. Because these are also songs about radical empathy and second chances, and third chances, and while there’s plenty of struggle and regret in here, there’s also humour and defiance.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A hugely evocative country album from two of the biggest stars in the very much in-vogue pseudo-country indie revival that hasn't let up in the past decade. 'Send A Prayer My Way' includes all of the clever melodic turns and well-written pieces we'd expect from Baker or Torres, but pointed at a contemplative, updated version of classic Americana.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dirt
2. The Only Marble I’ve Got Left
3. Sugar In The Tank
4. Bottom Of A Bottle
5. Downhill Both Ways
6. No Desert Flower
7. Tape Runs Out
8. Off The Wagon
9. Tuesday
10. Showdown
11. Sylvia
12. Goodbye Baby

Little Oblivions is the third studio album by Julien Baker. Recorded in Memphis, TN, the record weaves together unflinching autobiography with assimilated experience and hard-won observations from the past few years, taking Baker’s capacity for storytelling to new heights. It also marks a sonic shift, with the songwriter’s intimate piano and guitar arrangements newly enriched by bass, drums, keyboards, banjo, and mandolin with nearly all of the instruments performed by Baker.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Julien Baker returns for another beautifully rich set of crescentic rock, coloured with an unmistakeable country hue. It's a delicate balance and is accomplished here with a beautiful warmth and comforting melodicism. Another wonderful journey, full of emotional duality and songwriting genius from Baker.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hardline
2. Heatwave
3. Faith Healer
4. Relative Fiction
5. Crying Wolf
6. Bloodshot
7. Ringside
8. Favor
9. Song In E
10. Repeat
11. Highlight Reel
12. Ziptie

Memphis, TN-based songwriter Julien Baker is the latest addition to the Matador Records roster. The 21-year-old’s devastating and vulnerable debut album, ‘Sprained Ankle’, which was originally released in 2015, is now being made available again. A 7” single by Julien Baker is also being released at the same time.

For years, Baker and a group of close friends performed as the band Forrister (formerly The Star Killers) but when college took her four hours away, her need to continue creating found an outlet through solo work. The intent was never to make these songs her main focus, yet the process proved to be startlingly cathartic. As each song came into shape, it became more apparent that Baker had genuinely deep, surprisingly dark stories to tell from her thus far short life. Tales of her experiences are staggering and when set to her haunting guitar playing the results are gut wrenching and heartfelt, relatable yet very personal. There’s something wonderfully hypnotizing about Baker gently confessing her soul with such tremendous honesty.

“Richly poetic songs of trauma and redemption, moving from almost unbearable fragility to confessional strength.” - The New York Times

TRACK LISTING

Blacktop
Sprained Ankle
Brittle Boned
Everybody Does
Good News
Something
Rejoice
Vessels
Go Home

Julien Baker releases her highly anticipated second album, ‘Turn Out The Lights’, via Matador Records.

‘Turn Out The Lights’ arrives nearly two years to the day after Baker’s debut album, ‘Sprained Ankle’, which was widely acclaimed by outlets including The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Noisey, and MOJO, among others.

Recorded at the legendary Ardent Studios in Baker’s hometown of Memphis, TN, ‘Turn Out The Lights’ expands upon the sound and vision of ‘Sprained Ankle’ while retaining the haunting, confessional songwriting style for which she has become known. Throughout the album, Baker reflects on experiences of her own and those closest to her, exploring the internal conflicts that wrestle inside us all: how we deal and cope with our struggles and how it all impacts both ourselves and our relationships of all kinds. The result is a deeply empathetic album that embraces the greys and complex truths of humanity and mental health.

‘Turn Out The Lights’ was written and produced by Baker and mixed by Craig Silvey (The National, Arcade Fire, Florence & The Machine).

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Sprained Ankle' went down a storm in here (was it really that long ago?) and I have no doubt this will surpass that. More heartfelt lyrics, cleverly constructed melodies and introspective moments, all wrapped in that warm veneer of Baker's spellbinding voice.

TRACK LISTING

Over
Appointments
Turn Out The Lights
Shadowboxing
Sour Breath
Televangelist
Everything That Helps
You Sleep
Happy To Be Here
Hurt Less
Even
Claws In Your Back

Melanie Baker makes music about everything that hurts and everything that feels just right. Based in Newcastle (UK), she writes with unflinching honesty — songs that sway between noisy catharsis and quiet confession, between absurd humour and deep vulnerability. With pounding drums, fuzzy guitars, and tender lyrical precision, Baker reclaims the grit and spirit of ’90s alt-rock through a queer, modern lens.

TRACK LISTING

1. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!
2. Sad Clown
3. HAHA!
4. Bored
5. Why Would I Want To Be Just Like You? A6 - Cabin Fever
6. My Head Fell Off Last Night B2 - Real Life
7. City Strange
8. Bye Bye, Loser Blues
9. Slugs
10. You’ll Get Better

A band who are at the forefront of Rio de Janeiro's artistic renaissance, they channel influences of Brazilian 60s Tropicália, 70s psychedelia and MPB to create a nostalgic, yet joyfully, avant-garde sound. The band is comprised of four distinct characters, each one an incredible talent in their own right and each with impressive credentials in the Brazilian Independent music scene. Central to the resurgent Rio de Janeiro musical community, the quartet of Dora Morelenbaum, Julia Mestre, Lucas Nunes and Zé Ibarra thrive in a group dynamic. They formed Bala Desejo to play collaboratively for a festival date in 2021, but when that show became a victim of pandemic shutdowns the idea for an album project materialised.

'Sim Sim Sim', which translates into English as 'Yes Yes Yes', weaves through a fusion of genres, taking twists and turns as it progresses. There is Tropicália, MPB, rock, samba-canção soul-funk and reggae in the mix. It possesses many of the qualities of a classic album from Brazilian music's golden era of the 60s and 70s, but also manages to sound very now, which is not an easy task to pull off. As solo musicians, they have worked and collaborated with Brazilian icons Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso and Milton Nascimento to name but a few. Bala Desejo feels like a natural extension of what came before, taking the baton from these luminaries, adding their unique spin and moving the sound forward. When we first heard Bala Desejo, we were blown away. Their epic theatrical live shows leave audiences stunned and they are the band we had always been hoping to find. A modern- day Novos Baianos or Mutantes, but definitely not an imitation. They celebrate their influences, but are an innovative group, and consequently, they have created one of the finest records to come out of Brazil in recent years. A truly sensational debut!

TRACK LISTING

1. Embala Pra Viagem
2. Baile De Mascaras (Recarnaval)
3. Lua Comanche
4. Clama Floresta
5. Dourado Dourado
6. Nana Del Caballo Grande
7. Nesse Sofa
8. Lambe Lambe
9. Passarinha
10. Sim Sim Sim
11. Muito So
12. Cronografia (O Peixe)

Germany's premier proponents of handsome soft pop Balcony DC make a long overdue appearance in the good ship Piccadilly with gorgeous sophomore LP "Puma Pride". Taking a playful approach to their art, Chistoph Mü and Denny Thiele practise a particularly post-modern version of pop music, equally indebted to the sensual funk of Prince, slacker antics of Mac Demarco, lo-fi soul of Blood Orange and arch-vaporwave of Macintosh Plus.

Sounding like a glimpse of a future I want to live in, the eight cuts slink and shimmy through futuristic pop with a charming surprise around every corner. Syrupy beats and erogenous bass keep their own jaunty time in the rhythm section, lo-fi guitar licks burst out from beneath the dry-ice mist of synthesis and those falsetto vocals coo right into your ear - pillow talk for the valium generation. Currently getting maximum approval ratings from Ryan Horsebeach, Mine, Millie and yours truly (Patch), this is deeply dope folks.

TRACK LISTING

A1. How To Deal With Love
A2. Appetite
A3. Eglantine
A4. OK
B1. How Could I Not?
B2. Mirror
B3. Bonfire 2009
B4. Humming Bird

This relatively new Stockholm duo have been making waves with their latest vinyl output. This EP conveys their love for the disco house sounds of Chicago, spearheaded by the likes of DJ Sneak. ‘Spoon Bait’ leads the way using an almost dreamlike vocal hook over a deep bass led groove with dub effects to boot. ‘Tuborg Translate’ picks up the tempo, chopping up a Philly style hook, underpinned by crisp beats and otherworldly space effects. Title track ‘Silja Line Superstar’ keeps the peak-time action going utilising warm emotive strings and brass whilst ‘Kenneth Knaster’ bounces along on a sublime disco ride bringing the EP to a close.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Big one for fans of that mid-90s house sound. Think Pal Joey, DJ Sneak, Glen Underground etc. Lots of disco samples and organic drums; looped up to perfection with extra filter abuse. Anyone that went The Red Light at Sankey's will dig.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Spoon Bait
A2. Tuborg Translate 
B1. Silja Line Superstar
B2. Kenneth Knaster 

Daniele Baldelli and Jolly Mare come together for a record that feels less like a collaboration and more like a shared state of mind. "Flusso Uno" moves through Afro-cosmic kraut-inflected psychedelia and cinematic electronics with a natural, unforced flow, where rhythm, texture and narrative all pull in the same direction.

Rather than referencing the past, the EP treats it as a living language. The longform, ritualistic percussion of early cosmic dance culture meets the hypnotic motorik pulse of krautrock and the more structured, sample-driven tribalism that followed in later decades. What ties it all together is a deep sense of atmosphere and intention: music that feels physical, emotional and quietly transportive. 'We particularly focused on ritual percussions, hypnotic grooves and suspended atmospheres, trying to blend musical anthropology, auteur electronics and narrative instinct.'

"Dhol Parade" opens the journey like a slow-burning procession, drums circling and expanding as if guiding the listener into another space. With "Icari" the perspective lifts, melodic lines drifting and tilting, constantly searching for balance between gravity and flight. "Huldufolk" pulls everything back into a shadowy, nocturnal zone, where textures feel half-real, half-imagined.
Finally, "Viaggio Tascabile" loses the record in a quietly reflective way, a compact voyage that sums up the EP’s philosophy: small in scale, deep in meaning. "Flusso Uno" is not about nostalgia or revivalism. It is about taking the spirit of cosmic culture and letting it breathe in the present, where storytelling, dancefloor intuition and sonic exploration still meet. A record made for open ears, open minds and long nights.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: The cosmic maestro is at it again, this time joined by Jolly Mare for very quintessential display of that afro-funky sound!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Dhol Parade
A2. Icari
B1. Huldufolk
B2. Viaggio Tascabile

Daniele Baldelli: A Cosmic Life is a documentary about the life and career of cosmic pioneer Daniele Baldelli. Cosmic, or afro-funky as it was sometimes called, is a musical genre that revolutionized club culture in Italy and worldwide. The doc traces his career through archival footage and testimonies from artists and producers, showcasing how his vision influenced entire musical scenes.

The film, along with its soundtrack, highlights Baldelli’s ability to blend electronic, funk, Afro, rock, ethnic, and experimental music, creating a unique sound that has made four generations of young people dance in iconic venues around the world.

This record primarily includes new tracks specifically created for the film and the dancefloor, alongside his classics such as “Isotropo Funk,” “Funk Me Again,” and “Diffrazione” which are now very difficult to find on vinyl. It also features an unreleased track produced for the film by his trusted collaborator Marco Dionigi.

It's an absolutely essential item for anyone with a penchant for this particularly magical, long lasting and influential sub genre of dance music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: A sublime and brilliantly realized encapsulation of the visionary's sound which neatly seems to summarize nearly 40 years of cosmic disco into one tidy full length album. He truly is the godfather of the genre.

TRACK LISTING

Not Expected
Quelli Sani
Cosmic Source
Funk Me Again
Unky
Diffrazione
Incanto
Isotropo Funk

One of the more unexpected - if worthwhile - by products of the 21st-century underground American folk revival is a renewed interest in solo acoustic guitar music. Spare, haunting, pastoral sounds have struck a new chord, and the names John Fahey and Takoma are hip again. Matt Baldwin, raised in California's rustic Pacific Grove, educated in the alternative mecca of Berkeley, sits in the center of this quiet, swirling scene. He is the visionary wildcard of today's solo guitar music, the ambitious fever dreamer, the serpent in the grass. Unlike many of his peers, he looks beyond the traditions of Fahey (whom he calls 'a teacher', not a god), bringing portentous and progressive elements into his music, alongside a dreamy country lilt. He covers krautrock legends Neu! ("Weissensee") and metal Vikings Judas Priest ("Winter"), and culls inspiration from prog heroes yes on the closing epic "Rainbow". His music comes on like a creeping moss, verdant but threatening, comforting yet unsettling.

Led by composer/arranger and leading UK-based Djembe player, Yahael Camara Onono and featuring members of bands including Kokoroko and SEED Ensemble, Balimaya Project intently synthesise and bridge London's bustling jazz circuit with traditional repertoire and folklore of the Mandé peoples of West Africa, and in turn connect the music's contemporary and ancestral forebears.

Their album Wolo So arrives after five years in the making, yet its roots chart a young percussionist forging a deeper musical identity from even further back.

Meaning 'the essence of kinship' in Mandé's Maninka language, the word Balimaya articulates a family model not limited to blood relations but of a shared history and experience, of friendship and community, a concept at the heart of Camara Onono's vision for the 16-piece group, declaring that "it's become a brotherhood."

Like Fela's Egypt 80 or Sun Ra's Arkestra before them, Balimaya Project are a big band unlike any other. Made up of members from across the UK's landscape of Afrobeats and jazz to UK Rap, the idea was to create a fuller sound with many instruments that are used for traditional music.

Camara Onono's vision on this project has been to bring together and make emotionally available to each other, young black men in the diaspora and celebrate them in a way that doesn't happen enough. He has brought together people who understand the music of black Britain and of the African continent.

Having performed himself with Family Atlantica and Maisha, Camara Onono has recruited musicians including Godwin Sonzé (Young T & Bugsey, Juls and Wande Coal) and Moses Olukayode (who performed at Burna Boy's Grammy Awards performance 2021).

TRACK LISTING

1. Balimaya
2. Soninka/Patronba
3. Viens Me Libérer (Interlude)
4. I No Go Gree/Aniweta
5. Anangofoli
6. City Of God
7. Dakan

Spiritual World presents: Ashleigh Ball — "Center of the Universe", a transcendental flute journey from the singer and flutist of Teal. "Center of the Universe" is a 32-minute improvisational odyssey recorded inside the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO), a National Historic Site on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia Canada..

Inspired by the pioneering work of Paul Horn and his Inside series, the recording channels a similar spirit of reverent exploration within a space rich in history and resonance. Completed in 1918, the observatory is home to the Plaskett Telescope - once among the largest and most powerful in the world - playing a key role in mapping the Milky Way.

Following months of coordination, three hours of private access were granted on the morning of August 25, 2025. Beneath the observatory’s towering telescope, Ball performed a wordless meditation, moving between alto flute and soprano concert flute, allowing each note to merge with the chamber’s vast natural reverb. Tones bloom, linger, and return, carried along the massive curved steel walls.

Captured using a minimalist recording approach, "Center of the Universe" preserves the purity of the moment—its warmth, stillness, and the architecture’s subtle mechanical resonance. Here, the observatory itself becomes an instrument, shaping the sound into something elemental, timeless, and deeply human. 

RIYL: Paul Horn, Pauline Oliveros, James Newton & Kali Malone

TRACK LISTING

1. Side 1: 17:34
2. Side 2: 14:40

A classic Vee-Jay side from 1965 that originally sneaked out on the Bay Area Wee label. The original goes for around £100, the second Wee press for £75, while the Vee-Jay version is 50 quid a throw. That said, copies are few and far between these days.

Featuring an upbeat, brass-powered Temptationslike harmony with a call and response, a deep sax wail and a piano motif pushing it forward towards a glorious middle eight that breaks into a Gospel roll out.

Powered by Ric-Tic-like drum rolls; a euphoric soulful classic split into two essential parts.

The Ballads were a four-piece from Oakland, across the bridge from San Francisco, featuring Freddie Hughes, who would later sign to Wand. The band themselves almost made it, charting in 1968 with the Willie Hutch-produced ‘God Bless Our Love’ but this earlier recording is the business.

Both sides remastered from the original sound source.

TRACK LISTING

I Can’t See Your Love (For The Tears In My Eyes) Pt.1
I Can’t See Your Love (For The Tears In My Eyes) Pt.2

A$AB Mob affiliate Marty Baller, started his career out as A$AP Ferg’s hype man, before becoming a serious solo artistic his own right. The last year and a half has seen Baller steadily building up to the release of ‘Baller Nation’ with co signs from A$AP Mob and support tours with the likes of Future. ‘Baller Nation’ is Marty’s second mixtape, following 2016’s ‘Marty G Raw.’ The concise 10 track tape sees Marty upping the stakes, with confident lyrics, big trap beats and an all start features list including A$AP FERG, Rich The Kid, Rob $tone and Smooky Margeilaa. Omerta Inc will be bringing Marty Baller’s ‘Baller Nation’ to vinyl for the very first time, to celebrate the 1st anniversary of the albums original release. Limited to 150 copies pressed onto 180gm cocaine white vinyl. Each copy will be individually hand numbered in gold pen and come housed in a high quality matte finish sleeve with original artwork

TRACK LISTING

1. First Quarter
2. Gladys Knight (ft 5Am & Reese LAFLARE)
3. Do My Thing (ft Madein-TYO)
4. I'm On The Moon
5. Slick Talk (ft Rob $tone)
6. Like Mike (ft A$AP Ferg, SMOOKY Margielaa & Aexyz)
7. Send Em My Way (ft A$AP Ferg)
8. Rambo (ft Rich The Kid)
9. Nothing Wasted
10. Throw The Money Away

'Patterns' is the 15-song follow-up to Kelsea Ballerini’s GRAMMY-nominated 'Rolling Up The Welcome Mat'. Again teaming with producer/songwriter Alysa Vanderheym, the 30-year-old multiple Country Music Association award winner has delivered a song cycle that embodies the next chapter in a life completely embraced. Beyond her 'Cowboys Cry Too' duet with Alternative sensation Noah Kahan, she explores what it means to move on, fall in love, stay in love, hate love, exhale love - and face her own patterns, good and bad.

Written with Vanderheym, Songwriter Hall of Fame inductee Hillary Lindsey, Songwriter of the Year GRAMMY nominee Jessie Jo Dillon and Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild, Welcome Mat’s vulnerable intimacy is met with some of the most intoxicating melodies that reach across genres. Atmospheric, sunny, rhythmic and whispered, 'Patterns' balances self-discovery with an album one can blissfully surrender to.

TRACK LISTING

Tracklist TBC:
1. Track 1
2. Sorry Mom
3. Track 3
4. Track 4
5. Track 5
6. Track 6
7. Track 7
8. Track 8
9. Track 9
10. Track 10
11. Track 11
12. Cowboys Cry Too (with Noah Kahan)
13. Track 13
14. Track 14
15. Track 15

Leisure Rodeo is the new album from Scott Ballew, following up 2021’s surprise debut Talking to Mountains. Born in Austin in the early 80’s Ballew eventually drifted out west to California, where he made a name for himself as a film director. At the age of 30 he ended up back in Austin, got sober, picked up the guitar and started writing songs. Most of those songs ended up on Ballew’s debut, but he kept writing and refining his craft, eventually ending up with ten tracks for a follow up album. Picking up where he left off, Leisure Rodeo features world-weary vignettes in the vein of Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker set to rustic country-folk arrangements. Frequent collaborators Jesse Woods, Shane Renfro (RF Shannon), Jesse Siebenberg, and Todd Hannigan are back, joined by special guest appearances from Ryan Bingham on “Border Kid” and Erika Wennerstrom (The Heartless Bastards) on “Convenience Store World”. Highly anticipated new album from Scott Ballew, featuring contributions from Ryan Bingham, Erika Wennerstrom (The Heartless Bastards), Jesse Woods, and Shane Renfro (RF Shannon). 

Tyler Ballgame’s stunning debut, 'For the First Time, Again', is a bracing reminder of how great songs delivered by a gifted vocalist can move, captivate, and inspire. Produced by Jonathan Rado (Foxygen, The Lemon Twigs, Weyes Blood) and Ryan Pollie (Los Angeles Police Department) and delivered in Ballgame’s astonishing, versatile tenor, these 12 finely crafted tunes, rooted in classic rock, indie, and Americana, will make anyone with a heart feel seen. Even before the insightful, often provocative lyrics register, Ballgame’s infectious melodies draw you into a story both relatable, and unlike any you’ve heard. After one listen, Ballgame’s message of belief in one’s true self resonates deep and wide.

On 'For the First Time, Again', Tyler Ballgame and his talented circle of fellow music-makers enthusiastically offer listeners songs to fill them with hope, acceptance, delirious happiness, and support for rough roads ahead. For healing to occur, Ballgame offers, “We need to dissolve into experience.” With its gorgeous melodies, wise invocations, irrepressible – and sometimes mischievous – generosity of spirit, and THAT VOICE, 'For the First Time Again' is in itself an amazing experience.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A spellbinding debut that perfectly highlights the huge vocal range and emotional heft of Tyler's voice, spanning country rock and folk, with a good dose of syrup-sweet crooning thrown in for good measure. It's a wonderfully off-piste sound that only Mr. Ballgame could pull off.

TRACK LISTING

1. For The First Time, Again
2. I Believe In Love
3. You’re Not My Baby Tonight
4. Matter Of Taste
5. Sing How I Feel
6. Goodbye My Love
7. Got A New Car
8. Ooh
9. Down So Bad
10. I Know
11. Deepest Blue
12. Waiting So Long

One of the cult acts of the heyday of London clubland in the early 1990s, The Ballistic Brothers consisted of future X-Press 2 members Ashley, Rocky and Diesel, alongside David Hill and Uschi Clansen.

Both of their ‘Vs. Eccentric Afros’ releases have legendary status, with ‘Volume 1’ featuring their classic ‘Blacker’. After the reissue of the first instalment last year, Acid Jazz are set to release the second set.

‘Blacker’ reprises here in the form of ‘Divine Fact (Blacker 2)’ and the ‘Marden Hill Sween Green Jam Mix’, showing the cross-pollination of the 1990s London club scene, where hedonists could find many routes and possibilities.

A vital snapshot of a very unique place in time, specially remastered for this Acid Jazz release and set in a spined sleeve for the first time, with a beautiful expansion of the original artwork.

TRACK LISTING

Delancey Street... The Theme
Unhooked And Lost
Save The Children]
Blacker (Marden Hill Sweet Green Jam Mix)
Jam Jah
Divine Fact (Blacker 2)
Goodvibes… Good Night
Anti Gun Movement

Comprising of Darren Rock, Darren House and Ashley Beadle (of XPress 2), alongside David Hill and Uschi Classen, they combined their talents on a series of mysterious vinyl releases in the heady days of the London club scene. If you were part of a clubbing tribe in the early/mid ‘90s - any clubbing tribe - you will have danced to the Ballistic Brothers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Portobello Café
2. Come On
3. Soho Cab Ride
4. I’ll Fly Away
5. Jah Jah Call You
6. Mark’s Lude
7. I Don’t Know
8. Sister Song
9. A Beautiful Space
10. Steppin’ Into Eden
11. Peckings
12. Uschi’s Lament

One of the cult acts of the heyday of London clubland in the early 1990s, the Ballistic Brothers consisted of later-X-Press 2 members Ashley, Rocky and Diesel, alongside David Hill and Uschi Clansen.

Both of their ‘vs. Eccentric Afros’ releases have legendary status, with Vol. 1 featuring their classic ‘Blacker’. After the reissue of the first instalment last year, Acid Jazz are set to release the second set.

‘Blacker’ reprises here in the form of ‘Divine Fact (Blacker 2)’ and the ‘Marden Hill Sween Green Jam Mix’, showing the crosspollination of the ‘90s London club scene, where hedonists could find many routes and possibilities.

A vital snapshot of a very unique place in time, specially remastered for this Acid Jazz release, set in a spined sleeve for the first time, with a beautiful expansion of the original artwork.

TRACK LISTING

1. Delancey Street.. The Theme
2. Unhooked And Lost
3. Save The Children
4. Blacker (Marden Hill Sweet Green Jam Mix)
5. Jam Jah
6. Divine Fact (Blacker 2)
7. Goodvibes… Goodnight
8. Anti Gun Movement

At the start of 2024, Acid Jazz announced a long-term collaboration with cult club troupe The Ballistic Brothers.

After a sell-out 7” of the classic ‘Blacker’, and a series of digital releases, came the reissued ‘London Hooligan Soul’ in April.

Originally consisting of Ashley Beedle, Rocky and Diesel of X-Press 2, with contributions from keyboard player Uschi Classen - David Hill of Nuphonic would join for Volume 2 - each member has had storied roles in UK club music.

The Ballistic Brothers are a unique product of time and place. A place where a generation of clubbers sought the many routes and possibilities of the burgeoning London dance scene.

’ The Ballistic Brothers vs. The Eccentric Afros (Vol. 1)’, originally released on the ‘On Delancy Street’ label in 1994 was a club smash. It sat somewhere between a mini album and a 12” EP. The reality is - a lot like 'London Hooligan Soul' - it was its own thing.

For the first time, it will be presented in a full-spine outer sleeve, with a beautiful recreation of the original graphics by The Unknown, and the music restored and remastered from the original master DATs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nyx 2
2. Gangstalene
3. Ushi’s Groove
4. And It Goes Like
This
5. MCF 2870
6. Blacker
7. Valley Of The Afro
Temple
8. Grover’s Return

The definitive biography of Shane MacGowan, fully updated to include Shane's final months and the response to his passing. Punk protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon. The complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogues' notorious frontman from outcast to national treasure.

A Furious Devotion vividly recounts the experiences that shaped the greatest songwriter of his generation, including the formative trips to his mother's homestead in Tipperary and the explosion of punk which changed his life. As well as exclusive interviews with Shane himself, author Richard Balls has secured contributions from his wife and family, and people who have never spoken publicly about Shane before: close associates, former girlfriends and the English teacher who first spotted his literary gift. Nick Cave, Aidan Gillen, Cillian Murphy, Christy Moore, Sinead O'Connor and Dermot O'Leary are on the rollcall of those paying tribute to the gifted songwriter and poet.

This frank and extensive biography includes many previously unseen personal photographs.

Fourth album from the acclaimed Belgian quintet.

‘Fever’ follows the band’s self-imposed hiatus, a break that saw frontmen and writing partners Jinte Deprez and Maarten Devoldere pursuing different individual interests from both a personal and creative perspective that has ultimately led the band to fashion their most cohesive album to date.

On reconvening the band had no plans, just a simple desire to better their previous works and to further the band’s story. Both primary songwriters agreed on a less serious vision leaning towards a looser, refreshed sound - less melancholic but retaining their unerring ability to create a hookladen armoury.

TRACK LISTING

Fever
Changes
Wrong Faces
Whatchu Doin’
Phone Number
Entertainment
I’m Never Gonna Let You
Down Again
Grapefruit
Wrong Vibration
Roller Coaster
You’re So Real

Belgium’s sophisticated yet sometimes worldweary indie superstars return with their fifth album and follow up to 2019’s ‘Fever’.

Further pushing on from ‘Fever’’s shift into more soulful waters, ‘Sand’ presents a more cohesive body of work that flirts with a soulful indie vibe and an at times almost slow disco undercurrent, the two singles ‘Losers’ and ‘On A Roll’ perfectly capturing the mood.

Back when you could go to gigs the band were at the point where they were selling out the Scala in London and commanding decent size crowds regionally (especially Brighton, Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow).

TRACK LISTING

Moment
Losers
On A Roll
I Want You
You Won’t Come Around
Linger On
Hourglass
Passing Through
Leaving Antwerp
Halfway
Powerless

After spending a few nights in a beautiful old castle near Brussels at the start of 2021 (following lockdown), Belgian art-poppers Balthazar returned from their stay with Sand Castle Tapes, a documentary and live concert filmed by Heleen Declercq and co-produced with HolyShit sessions. They released Sand Castle Tapes as a digital EP on 24th September 2021, featuring 10 songs from the film; 8 songs reworked from the album and two jams. On 29th April 2022, Balthazar are releasing Sand Castle Tapes for the first time in physical format as a single LP.

The band say of the stay: “You only get to fully understand an album when you start playing it together, the relaxed circumstances lead to a whole other way of interpreting the songs than we would have for a live show. It’s refreshing, it’s very human.” 

TRACK LISTING

1. On A Roll (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
2. Powerless (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
3. Jam 1 (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
4. Moment (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
5. You Won’t Come Around (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
6. Linger On (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
7. Jam 2 (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
8. Losers (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
9. Halfway (Sand Castle Tapes Version)
10. I Want You (Sand Castle Tapes Version)

On June 28th, 2019, Latin music Global star J Balvin teamed up with then rising star Bad Bunny to release a career defining joint album. 'OASIS' combined Balvin's urban pop sounds and avant garde street style with Bad Bunny's solid Boricua manifesto to create one of the most talked about and critically acclaimed Latin albums in history. The album debuted Top 10 on Billboard's 200 chart and a #1 on the Latin Albums chart.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mojaita
2. Yo Le Llego
3. Cuidao Por Ahí
4. Qué Pretendes
5. La Canción
6. Un Peso (feat. Marciano Cantero)
7. Odio
8. Como Un Bebé (feat. Mr Eazi)

Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force “Planet Rock” 12-inch re-issue on glow-in-the-dark vinyl (Limited edition of 1982 copies) B-Boy anthem from 1982 lights up any dancefloor…literally! First time ever on glow-in-the-dark vinyl! Fresh off Bambaataa’s historic donation of his vinyl collection to the Cornell University Hip-Hop Collection and the Fall 2014 “Renegades of Rhythm” tour by DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist celebrating his unparalleled contribution to hip-hop, Get On Down celebrates the song for which the Godfather of Hip-Hop is best known: 1982’s “Planet Rock,” a Kraftwerk-meets-Bronx-B-Boy anthem. Renowned the world over as a never-fail floor-filler, this new 12-inch pressing of the single is pressed on glow-in-the-dark vinyl for the first time ever. Although Bambaataa may have gotten top-billing on the release, it was a team effort, with crucial contributions by a team including DJ Jazzy Jay, Afrika Islam, Arthur Baker, John Robie, a Roland TR-808 drum machine (aka Planet Patrol) and of course MCs Mr. Biggs, G.L.O.B.E. and Pow Wow. This edition is housed in a clear, custom-embossed Get On Down poly-bag to let the glow show through.

Produced by Graham Sutton (These New Puritans, Bark Psychosis), 'Birthmarks' is New York band Bambara's ffth, and best, studio album.

A wild, musically adventurous suite of songs that follows a host of lost characters caught in a multi-generational cycle of love, violence and rebirth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hiss
2. Letters From Sing Sing
3. Face Of Love
4. Pray To Me
5. Holy Bones
6. Elena's Dream
7. Because You Asked
8. Dive Shrine
9. Smoke
10. Loretta

DREAMVIOLENCE is BAMBARA’s full-length follow-up to their acclaimed debut EP Dog Ear Days (2010). After playing countless deafening shows in their hometown of Athens, touring the US in sweaty house shows and sharing bills with Iceage, Grimes, Liturgy, A Place to Bury Strangers, and Parts and Labor, BAMBARA decided to leave their beloved Athens and move to a basement apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn for a change. Here they practiced, slept and recorded for the majority of 2012. Following the release of a Kate Bush cover and a 10 minute improv noise EP RINGS early in the year, BAMBARA began to work on DREAMVIOLENCE.

With a minimal recording set-up and little sunlight, the band was able to completely capture the dark, grimy, noisy sound they are known for while maintaining the lush beauty that glues it all together. Reid’s voice croons and snarls the fragmented images of the city. Blaze and William’s driving rhythm section plows and swings through the dirge of vocal noise with furious power. BAMBARA doesn’t want you to get comfortable inDREAMVIOLENCE. They prefer to send you through vortexes of haunting noise before you reach the dreamy euphoria waiting in the wreckage.

TRACK LISTING

1. All The Same
2. White Dresses
3. Bird Calls
4. Hawk Bones
5. Young Mother
6. Nail Polish
7. Train Daze
8. Bar
9. Divine Teeth
10. Z
11. Breaker
12. Blonde
13. Disappear

With ‘Love on My Mind’ - the six-song mini-album, mixed by Claudius Mittendorfer (Tennis, Parquet Courts, Johnny Marr) - Bambara condense all the energy and darkness that have made them so compelling and rearrange it into something defiantly new.

Opening track, ‘Slither in the Rain’, all hissing high-hat and spectral synthlines, is a true statement of intent. It’s minimal and atmospheric, foregrounding Bateh’s raw vocals as he introduces one of ‘Love on My Mind’s main characters years after the events of the album are over, a lonely man who throws bottles at airplanes and dances a two-step in the pattern of a figure-8. While Bateh has always been adept at character sketches, tracks like ‘Slither’ introduce a newfound vulnerability that runs true through the entire album and cause the songs to hit on a more human level.

Similarly, ‘Point And Shoot’ - in which each stanza describes the louche, lawless scenes of “rooftop girls / standing shoulder-to-shoulder, naked figures with their hips / cocked,” busted up jaws, and couches full of burnholes captured by the snapshots of ‘Love on My Mind’s female lead - displays an autobiographical intimacy that is not as apparent in Bambara’s previous releases. This tenderness is echoed on ‘Birds’, a rare love song (from which the EP’s title is derived), and album closer ‘Little Wars’, a gripping finale of loneliness and isolation.

But while these songs may display a softer side of Bambara, it’s important to note that they haven’t lost the thrill of what attracted so many people to them in the first place. ‘Mythic Love’ (featuring vocals from Bria Salmena), with its driving bassline and ricocheting guitar lines, brings to mind past rave-ups like ‘Serafina’ and ‘Sunbleached Skulls’ but obliterates them in the process, while ‘Feelin’ Like A Funeral’ - a dangerously oscillating tale of a city knifing - is probably the most thrillingly anthemic song the band have ever recorded.

Taken together, ‘Love on My Mind’ amounts to another massive step forward for Bambara - the boldest thing they’ve ever done - and the sound of yet another breakthrough.

“Engrossing, dark and irresistible… an adventurous group, who just keep getting better all the time.” - CLASH

“Never anything less than captivating.” - Upset

“What Athens, Georgia bunch Bambara do, they do very well… the trio’s commitment to the dark side is never in question.” - DIY

“Bambara are ice cold and sharp as a knife’s edge.” - Loud & Quiet

“Brooklyn based doom-mongers delight… the trio go further than most in their quest to rattle.” - Q (4/5)

For fans of Daughters, Protomartyr, IDLES, King Krule, Ice Age.

TRACK LISTING

Slither In The Rain
Mythic Love
Birds
Point And Shoot
Feelin’ Like A Funeral
Little Wars

Bambara are a Brooklyn based dark, noise / punk band with a Western slant. The trio consisting of twin brothers Reid (vocals / guitar) and Blaze Bateh (drums) and childhood friend William Brookshire (bass) formed in Athens, GA, deriving their name from a character in the cartoon ‘Aeon Flux’. They moved to a basement apartment in Brooklyn where they recorded their ambitious debut album ‘Dreamviolence’ (2013), their sprawling noise-collage EP ‘Night Chimes’ (2014) and their snarly, apocalyptic sophomore album ‘Swarm’ (2016) to much acclaim.

Although Reid plays all the guitar on their records, Bambara recently added two guitarists to their live shows, allowing Reid to sneer and stagger around the stage as he sings unhindered by instruments.

TRACK LISTING

Dark Circles
Doe-Eyed Girl
José Tries To Leave
Night's Changing
Monument
The Door Between Her
Teeth
Human Hair
Steel Dust Ocean
Sunbleached Skulls
Wild Fires
Backyard
Back Home

One thing you won’t be able to avoid on Bambara’s 'Stray' is death. It’s everywhere and inescapable, the key to the whole record. That though won’t be the first thing that strikes you about their fourth – and greatest – album to date. That will be its pulverising soundscape; by turns, vast, atmospheric, cool, broiling and at times – on stand out tracks like “Sing Me To The Street” and “Serafina” – simply overwhelming. This NYC-via-Georgia trio (the Bateh brothers, Reid and Blaze, singer and drummer respectively, and bassist William Brookshire) have been evolving their midnight-black noise rock into something more subtle and expansive ever since the release of their 2013 debut 'Dreamviolence.' That process greatly accelerated on 2018’s 'Shadow On Everything,' their first on New York’s Wharf Cat label and a huge stride forward for the band both lyrically and sonically.

A rapturously-received concept album (NPR called it a “mesmerising…western, gothic opus”), it elevated the band’s status on both sides of the Atlantic (capturing the attention of, among other people, the UK band IDLES – who invited them to tour with them – and influential British 6Music DJ Steve Lamacq, who dubbed them the best band of 2019’s SXSW). The question was, though: how to follow it? The band knew that they wanted to push further: experiment with instrumentation and not limit their songwriting in terms of what they could or could not reproduce live. They also wanted to showcase a wider range of influences. Their Georgia upbringings means that Southern Gothic is in their DNA (the likes of Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews) but there’s more to them than that and this time they wanted to show that, offering up touchstones as diverse as Laurie Anderson and Sade as well as classic French noirs like L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafraud as key influencers on their thinking.

The record was written in an airless Brooklyn basement in the first half of 2019, the songs being continually reworked over many months. Once they felt cohesive, they travelled back to their hometown of Athens, GA to record the building blocks with their friend Drew Vandenberg. After that, a period of experimentation and enriching began: additional instrumentation was added, (violins courtesy of Adam Markiewicz, trumpets via Sean Smith), as well as a crucial and leavening layer of female vocals (thanks to Public Practice’s Drew Citron and Palberta’s Anina Ivry-Block). Finally, in a remote cabin in the woods in rural Georgia, Reid laid down his vocals.

Now, while the music itself is evocative and propulsive, a fever dream all of its own, the lyrical content pushes the record even further into its own darkly thrilling realm. If the songs on 'Shadow On Everything' were like chapters in a novel, then this time they’re short stories. Stories that are connected by death, both abstract and personified, and that deal with how that affects the characters in contact with it. “Death is what you make it” runs a lyric in “Sweat” and in a way that’s the key line on the whole record. It would be wrong to characterize 'Stray' as simply the sound of the graveyard though. Light frequently streams through and love and longing are present too (particularly on “Made For Me”). It’s a record that avoids simple characterization but one thing that is certain about it is that it represents another monumental leap forward for the band. Sometimes groups need time to grow. Here Bambara finally sound like they’ve locked into what they were always destined to achieve. It’s electrifying!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brooging, gothy rock a-la Nick Cave, meets the cavernous insistent guitars of mid-80's Manchester, and hazy surf percussion underpinning the whole adventure. Brilliantly diverse but cohesive collection from Bambara.

TRACK LISTING

Miracle
Heat Lightning
Sing Me To The Street
Serafina
Death Croons
Stay Cruel
Ben & Lily
Made For Me
Sweat
Machete

Upon ‘Swarm’’s 2016 release, Brooklyn-based Bambara had been honing their noise-rock brutalism since forming in Athens, Georgia in 2009. On ‘Swarm’, their second full-length, the band began to pull their approach into sharp focus, and the result was a foundational triumph.

After the pure noise experimentation of their 2013 debut, ‘Dreamviolence’, here the band began to develop many of their later trademarks. Marrying the maniacal ravings of The Birthday Party and the brutality of early Swans with the tangled roots-punk of The Gun Club, the spotlight started to fall on vocalist / guitarist Reid Bateh’s lyrics as well as the ‘Spaghetti western’ atmospherics that would come to the fore to such effect on later releases such as ‘Shadow On Everything’ and ‘Stray’.

For fans of Bambara’s visceral and pummelling performances, which led to extensive touring opportunities along rising star contemporaries such as Gilla Band, Algiers, and IDLES, before earning the band their own headlining slot on multiple international tours, ‘Swarm’ will serve as a sort of missing link. Now, for the first time ever, live-set favourites such as the brooding ‘An Ill Son’, the flawlessly dynamic ‘Black’, and the pop-snarled ‘All the Ugly Things’ can be listened to at a level of audio fidelity on par with the band’s later recordings.

Tiny Mix Tapes praised ‘Dreamviolence’, the band’s first LP, by saying that “complete, utter anguish has never sounded this good.” ‘Swarm’ made it sound even better. With these 12 songs, Bambara proved that sometimes the only way to confront a fucked-up world is to sink to its level. As Henry Rollins succinctly summed it up at the time, this is a “REALLY cool record.”

“‘Swarm’... is a beautifully dynamic nightmare.” – NPR

“Since 2008, Bambara have reined nigh-unintelligible noise into something more artfully restrained, but the wildness remains intact.” - Pitchfork

“Bambara hail from Athens, Georgia, famously home to REM and The B-52’s, but what they do is far noisier, angrier, scarier. They sound like a band always on the lookout for something bigger.” - The Quietus

“Bambara write chaotic songs held together with formless washes of noise and anxious vocal drones, crafting pallid but vibrant pieces that thrashed with... mutant energy.” - VICE

TRACK LISTING

Clearing Out The Weeds
Her Sister Touya
An Ill Son
Black
Like Waves
I Don’t Mind
Filled Up With Night
It’s Nothing
All The Ugly Things
I Can’t Recall
In Bars
As Her

Sekouba Bambino’s ‘Sebema’ first time on vinyl (previously CD / cassette only) with edit treatment from frequent collaborators Pete Blaker & Dionisos on the A-side and the original on the flip.

Originally released in 2004 by the Guinean multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, this cut was taken from his 'Ambiance Ballon' album. Real name Sékouba Diabaté, he was previously a member of Bembeya Jazz National, who are regarded as one of the most significant jazz groups to emerge from Guinea as well as joining Africando All Stars in the late 90’s. Bambino went on to pursue a solo career and released projects throughout the early 2000’s on Syllart Productions.

The edit by Pete Blaker and Dionisos overdubs sound effects, additional percussion and guitar licks to build tension throughout the track and emphasises that hypnotic chorus.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: First ride out on glorious black wax for this afro-disco bomb. Aided and abetted by current edit royalty Pete Blaker & Dionisos. Simple unmissable.

TRACK LISTING

Sebema (Pete Blaker & Dionisos Edit)
Sebema (Original)

BAMBOO (Nick Carlisle - keyboards, production, also of Peepholes / Katy & Nick) & Rachel Horwood (vocals, electric banjo, also of Trash Kit / Bas Jan) announce their third studio album "Daughters Of The Sky", on Upset The Rhythm.

The album was written and recorded over a two year period where ideas and arrangements were allowed to slow-cook and develop over time, in contrast with the last album "The Dragon Flies Away" which came together relatively quickly for the duo. The music comprises the usual (for Bamboo) mix of Horwood's flawlessly resonant folk cadence and Carlisle's pristine synth production, whilst TR808 drum machines and samples lock together with acoustic drums, themselves often given the "Tony Visconti" Eventide Harmoniser treatment of Berlin-era Bowie albums. Ancient ARP synthesisers and Mellotron flutes and horns sit next to contemporary digital sounds and samples in a hauntological tapestry over which Horwood can intone her sometimes mournful, often uplifting vocals.

The first single taken from the album, "Weeping Idols", reflects upon a recurring theme of religious dogma and spiritual entrapment, and is accompanied by a stunning video shot by Jack Barraclough around the North Coast of Northern Ireland, taking in the Giant's Causeway and the Kinbane Castle ruin. Carlisle's infectiously colourful synth riffs and pop production, featuring sun-burst harp playing from Brighton-based singer/multi-instrumentalist Emma Gatrill, contrasts sharply with the darker tone of Horwood's lyric, jarring in a way reminiscent of "You Have Placed A Chill On My Heart" by The Eurythmics.

Although "Daughters Of The Sky" breaks away from the storybook concept format of The Dragon Flies Away, in that sense being more similar to Bamboo's debut album "Prince Pansori Priestess" (2015, ★★★★★ - Record Collector Magazine), there are still recurrent themes that run through the album such as motherhood, the cyclical nature of life, emancipation and liberation. "Branches dancing, bud stems growing, fibres swaying, arms unfurling" Horwood sings in The Deku Tree, a song which roots motherhood in nature's eternal cycle of birth and death. In the title track we see two perspectives of women spanning time and geography, Horwood drawing inspiration from the personal and also political. In 1917 a Russian match stick worker looks out of her window dreaming for a better life; in 2019 a Filipino maid in Hong Kong yearns to return to the children she has left behind. Both share a revolutionary spirit, protesting and fighting for a new world.

What might be the centrepiece of the album, "East Of The Sun / West Of The Moon", an 11 minute epic, begins with a serene, desolate ambient intro which eventually transports us over the waves to some unknown land. Here we track the journey of a displaced people who are rejected from pillar to post, prevented from crossing over political lines, judged by fellow humans by their few differences over their myriad similarities. "And we all walk a different pace, though we end up in the same place" sings Horwood, as the song's new-found rhythm seems to break apart again and slowly splinter away in different directions, the fragments hanging in the air as a new section emerges featuring a rare lead vocal from Carlisle.

Bar the brief instrumental coda "Tenebrae", the album ends on an optimistic note with "A World Is Born", an upbeat song of renewal. Horwood sings of the creation of a new world for a new generation, out of the ashes of a society stagnating under the collapsing weight of late capitalism. Saxophones provided by Emma Gatrill (her second guest appearance on the album) answer each vocal line in call and response style over more harmonised drums reminiscent of Bowie's "Low". Carlisle originally wrote the music following the death of Bowie, and Horwood added some Prince-like backing vocals (Prince having been name-checked in the title of the first Bamboo album). Although her lyric makes no reference to the loss of these giants, their influence hang over the song in a way which can only add to the sense of hope and rebirth, a sense which is indeed felt throughout the album.

TRACK LISTING

01. Diamond Springs
02. Weeping Idols
03. Daughters Of The Sky
04. Memories All At Once
05. Off-World Colony
06. East Of The Sun / West Of The Moon
07. The Deku Tree
08. Under Larches
09. A World Is Born
10. Tenebrae

Following on from the November release of the Material Things / Pike album Rain & Cymbals, 12th Isle enter the new year with a limited vinyl edition of Through Global Frequency, a prescient work of ambient synth, electro-acoustic music and voice recordings by long-standing Dutch multimedia artist Michel Banabila (b. Amsterdam, 1961). Structured around a poem largely composed of titles from recordings he has made over the years, and written during a period marked by new Dutch migration policies, the genocide in Gaza, and the rise of the far right across Europe, Banabila enlists the voices of friends and family, each reciting the poem back to him in their native language. These voice recordings are set within a unique composition that works with the tonality, cadence and rhythm of the vocals, encompassing languages such as Arabic, Spanish, isiZulu, German, French, English, Japanese, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Dutch. Contributions come from Scanner (Robin Rimbaud), Ines Kooli, Sebastian Lee Philipp (Die Wilde Jagd), Yuko Kobayashi, Simone Eleveld, Cengiz Arslanpay and more.

“I felt the need to create something warm, something that embraced diversity. Every voice here is uniquely recognisable and reflects how I know them. I truly enjoyed working with these recordings, focusing on their personalities and the distinctive sound of their languages. For me, making music has always been a way to stay sane, and I have always loved working with voice recordings.”

Music, mix and poem by Michel Banabila,
track 3 featuring Robin Schaeverbeke,
track 8 featuring Cengiz Arslanpay,
track 10 featuring Machinefabriek.
Cello on track 9 by Peter Hollo.

Artwork by Al White.
Mastering by Miles Whittaker.
Executive producer Fergus Clark.
Worldwide Distribution: Rubadub
2026 ℗ 12th Isle (Licensed from Tapu Records)

TRACK LISTING

A1. Aunt Nadira
A2. Claudia
A3. Philisiwe Twijnstra
A4. Through Global Frequency - Sebastian Lee Philipp
A5. Ines Kooli
B1. Scanner
B2. Yuko Kobayashi
B3. Cengiz Arslanpay
B4. Maryana Golovchenko
B5. Simone Eleveld

Ever since he released his music in the early '80s Michel Banabila has been hard to pinpoint to a specific genre or style. His musical output includes jazz, experimental cut-up electronics, world music (especially influenced by the Fourth World music as developed by Jon Hassell), New Age, eclectic pop tunes, music for dance or other stage projects, and soundtracks for TV. Some listeners may have found it difficult throughout the years to find their way in this versatile output.

For this particular release, Bureau B chose a different approach. Instead of archiving early works from the 1980s, Wah-Wah Whispers focuses on Banabila's more recent output. It is a collection of works showcasing many facets of his music: a journey visiting the minimal and cinematic sample scape, contemplative ambient / fourth world scenes and more. The album ends with a kaleidoscope of atmospheres gradually building up to a noise climax.

To say that the intervening 4 years since the arrival of their debut album had been tumultuous for Melbourne/Naarm’s Bananagun would be an understatement. Released during the height of lockdown in the summer of 2020, the group were forcibly “scattered” following the release of The True Story of Bananagun. Australia’s ultra-strict lockdown rules - declaring it illegal to travel beyond a 5km radius - made it nigh on impossible for the band to get together at all, with the only rehearsals requiring them to sneak past military checkpoints undetected.

Coinciding with this too was a great period of personal change for the band’s guitarist/vocalist/flautist, and songwriter Nick van Bakel.“ "I had a myriad of mountains to be crossed which was pretty challenging” he explains. “so I just cocooned into lots of spiritual side quests and soul seeking. Band members were travelling etc so it was ages before we got through the stop-start stop-start phase and regained some band momentum…”

This climate of upheaval does not go unheard on the band’s long-awaited follow-up, ‘Why is the colour of the Sky?’. While it’s by no means a pessimistic work - far from it - it’s an album that departs from the ultra-slick bursts of sunshine-pop and afrobeat that defined ‘True Story… ‘, and muddies the waters with a heavy blend of incendiary jazz and freak-beat experimentation. It’s Bananagun alright, but braver, bolder and more mysterious than ever…

With the only conscious musical dictum being that percussion and groove was brought “to the fore” - and, boy, is this album groovy - the band decamped to a Button Pusher studio Preston, Melbourne with equipment “on par with any 60's studio”, tracking with minimal takes - ‘warts’ n’ all’ - battling through the temperaments of analogue mixing equipment late into the night under the assertion that these more traditional methods provided “the most, organic pure way to record”. Also imperative was to manipulate the social conditions in which the takes were performed and nail the ‘vibe’ during recording: “It was all “attitude towards life and esoteric stuff, natural law, how energy transfers, sounds, chemistry between people”, explains van Bakel, “trying to foster an environment together where we can make some magic, capture the phenomena of energy and soundwaves interacting with each other in the room. And that was definitely what we wanted it to sound like - pro human”.

In many ways, “pro-human” captures the radical quintessence that Why Is the Colour of the Sky? is fulsomely jazz-shuffling towards. For a record that recognises, in it’s every breath and sinew the humbling, restorative and life-affirming power of collective creative endeavour - it’s also a work that resists an ever more technologically-driven and isolating world that can feel ever more dehumanising in its quests for ‘perfection’. A theme directly addressed in ‘Children of the Man’ with it’s “Robo-sapien” lyric, it’s a thread that runs across the entire record:
“I feel like a lot of human nature and tradition is worth preserving because we've probably evolved to be this way.”, van Bakel notes, “[Why is the Colour…] is all just about not losing your head and being over stimulated by the ‘goggle box’; the need for spirituality and nature; the need to be able to communicate and share ideas and adapt in a rapidly changing world without being judged and profiled. The preservation of human needs, so we don't all get homogenised and isolated and poisoned to stupidity and obedience. “
And what better way is there to feel human than by laying down a dynamite groove, or nine?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Woozy, dreamy psychedelic business here from Melbourne's Bananagun. Channelling the spirit of early Floyd / Syd Barrett into a modern distillation of folk, rock and folk. there are moments here that feel disorganised and loose, only to come together perfectly into a perfectly formed patchwork of emotion. Wonderfully loose, low-slung psychedelic rock.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Brave Child Of A New World
Children Of The Man
Those Who Came Before
Feeding The Moon
Gift Of The Open Hand

Side B
With The Night
Hippopotamusic
Free Energy
Wonder Part I
Wonder Part II

Bananarama celebrate over 40 years at the top with the release of ‘Glorious - The Ultimate Collection’. With 40 tracks selected by Sara and Keren themselves, the album revisits every decade of the band’s career, with hits including ‘Cruel Summer’, ‘Venus’, ‘Love in the First Degree’, ‘Only Your Love’, ‘Preacher Man’, ‘Move in My Direction’ and more, along with two new singles, ‘Feel The Love’ and ‘Supernova’.

TRACK LISTING

LP (Transparent Red)
Cruel Summer (3am Mix)
Robert De Niro’s Waiting
Venus (Boys Noize Rework Edit)
Love In The First Degree
Preacher Man
Movin’ On (Disco Chic)
Move In My Direction
Look On The Floor
Love Don’t Live Here
Stuff Like That
Looking For Someone
Favourite
Masquerade
Forever Young
Feel The Love
Supernova

2CD / 3LP (Transparent Gold)
Really Saying Something
Cruel Summer
Robert De Niro's Waiting
Venus
More Than Physical
A Trick Of The Night
I Heard A Rumour
Love In The First Degree
Only Your Love
Preacher Man
I Could Be Persuaded
Movin' On [Disco Chic]
Last Thing On My Mind [Electrified]
Every Shade Of Blue
Take Me To Your Heart
Prove Your Love
If
Crazy
Move In My Direction
Look On The Floor (Hypnotic Tango)
Feel For You
Lovebite
Love Comes
Love Don't Live Here
Seventeen
Extraordinary
Baby It's Christmas
Now Or Never
La La Love
Stuff Like That
Looking For Someone
I'm On Fire
It's Gonna Be Alright
Favourite
Masquerade
Forever Young
Running With The Night
Cruel Summer (3am Mix)
Feel The Love
Supernova

Banco de Gaia has been performing and releasing for over 25 years now, along the way becoming one of the music industry's most maverick innovators. His legacy is as glittering as it is diverse, ranging from Hollywood film sound credits to the critically acclaimed 'Last Train to Lhasa', first released in 1995 to a rapturous reception. His live act still packs out venues and festivals all over the world, with audio visual performances renowned for their explosive, cutting edge quality: from sampling wizardry fused with haunting vocals and poignant acoustics to genre-hopping musical instrumentals, all accompanied by socially engaged visuals.

TRACK LISTING

01: Heliopolis
02: Mafich Arabi
03: Sunspot
04: Gamelah (Dub 3)
05: Qurna (Mister Christian on the Decks)
06: Sheesha
07: Lai Lah (v1.infinity)
08: Shanti (Red with White Spots Edit)
09: Maya
10: Heliopolis (Aethereal Mix)
11: Mafich Arabi (Original Demo)
12: Sunspot (Unpeeled Mix)
13: Gamelah (Live at Oscillate 1994)
14: Qurna (Livemix #2-4 Edit)
15: Sheesha (Green Tractor Mix)
16: Lai Lah (Marine Mix)
17: Shanti (Red With White Spots Original Master)
18: Heliopolis (Veloce Remix)
19: Mafich Arabi (Temple Hedz Remix)
20: Sunspot (100th Monkey + Mr Noisy Return to Qurna Mix)
21: Gamelah (Dub 1)
22: Qurna (Haji Ali's Birthday Mix)
23: Data Inadequate (Live at Megadog 1993)
24: Lai Lah (Eat Static Kitchen Sink Remix)
25: Shanti (Live in a Field in Oxford 1993)
26: Soufie (Blue Mix Original)

'Do They Know It’s Christmas?' is a single by Band Aid, a charity supergroup founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. To commemorate 40 years since the original recording, a newly compiled CD and vinyl reissue will raise vital funds for the Band Aid Trust.

The reissue features the original 1984 version, and subsequent Band Aid 20 and Band Aid 30 versions, plus the 2024 Ultimate Mix – an extraordinary new edit by Trevor Horn which mixes together vocals of the many artists who have recorded the song over the decades into one seamless whole.

Here on one record are the finest voices and the greatest musicians of British rock n roll history.

TRACK LISTING

1. Band Aid – Do They Know It’s Christmas? – 1984 Version
2. Band Aid 20 – Do They Know It’s Christmas? – 2004 Version
3. Band Aid 30 – Do They Know It’s Christmas? – 2014 Version
4. Band Aid – Do They Know It’s Christmas? – 2024 Ultimate Mix
5. Band Aid – Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Live At Wembley Stadium, 1985

"'Country Sides' is about our world and how we've used music to live in the spaces where we want to exist: To Get High On Our Own Supply - This record is both a nod to the past and a look to the future - We've been writing, recording and performing music that inspires us for TWENTY YEARS and we hope in turn it connects with and inspires others - Pretty simple, right?

"There are soul and folk, rock and roll and 'Country Sides' to all of the music we make. This time around, we spent a little more time exploring the 'Country Sides' of our musical personality. Take a ride on an ethereal wave of a pedal steel swell, but feel your feet rooted firmly to the ground and the muscle of the bass and drums. They give you an undeniable rhythm to move to. Follow the Wurlitzer piano dancing along with the acoustic guitars to find the vocals, always leading, but always blending and making a sweet sweet harmony.

"We are a band of brothers, who started by walking in the footsteps of the musical giants that were laid long before we set out on this journey. Now, twenty years in we are on our own path, enjoying the view as we ride along the country side. "

- The Band Of Heathens

TRACK LISTING

1. No Direction
2. High On Our Own Supply
3. She's The Night / Lead Don't Follow
4. Forever's Not A Long Time
5. Finish Something I Started
6. Pleasing People
7. Good As I Can Be
8. Take The Cake
9. Just As Much
10. Letting Go

The apotheosis of Band Of Holy Joy's bile toward today's pathetic state of affairs will be released shortly – a blistering remix of "The Devil Has A Hold On The Land" from their last album, Neon Primitives. Remixed by Youth (Killing Joke bassist, Paul McCartney collaborator, producer of Melanie C and U2!), who was so taken by the song as to remix it gratis, the remix will be part of a series of 23 discrete 7" 45s by Jon Langford of The Mekons and an assortment fellow travellers from around the globe. Dreams Take Flight transitions from political discourse into a post-virus rebirth of human relationship and the inevitable fumblings of the society's psychological reconstruction over the forthcoming year. Have you ever wondered what purpose your joy or my pain? All those moments shared together to be washed away by the rain . . . Have you ever doubted our super hipster being love-in at all? Just a pair of urbane fools passing through waiting for our call . . . Take a leap into the great unknown. Almost perversely heart-on-sleeve, Johny Brown and compatriots have never fitted well within a particular scene - nor have they ever seem to try.

Although recorded under the existence of quarantine and a healthy amount of paranoia, in search of the joy of greatly hindered collaboration, the band has opted to turn over each song to a different visionary video artist for an exhibition which will take place for a week at London's Gallery 46 beginning at the end of February and open to the public. The video exhibition will subsequently be available online, before the album's release. While still featuring some of the band's strongest songs, Dreams Take Flight has a strange film-like ambience in parts, almost as if planned as a soundtrack, a thought mirrored in Inga Tillere's sublime, dream-like sleeve, best seen in real life. "A Leap Into The Great Unknown" and "Notes From A Gallery" will likely be heard as too disarmingly direct for radio, and the videos will likely never see the entry door to MTV, but Dreams Take Flight will ultimately be considered a masterwork of clarity in a confused, contentious time.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Is The Festival Scene 
2. A Leap Into The Great Unknown 
3. That Magic Thing 
4. When Love Is Not Enough 
5. On Set Romance 
6. Notes From A Gallery 
7. The Rhythm Of Life 
8. A New Clear Vision 

Early Band Of Holy Joy existed somewhere on the cut-up side of proto-industrial music, resting between Marc Stewart & Maffia, Sonic Youth, and Current 93, and proponents of a more romantic musical language - Virginia Astley, Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins among them - all artists whose work BPHJ's music sat comfortably alongside across on a stream of low-budget vinyl and cassette compilations after the start of the eighties. A great leap in polish led to a deal with Rough Trade and several early '90s albums which flirted with the mainstream, with BOHJ almost an odder, less obvious cousin to Dexys Midnight Runners. When these releases failed to take off as hoped, lost years followed on smaller labels and self-released projects, until the renewed urgency of the 2016 Brutalism Begins At Home EP and increasingly majestic albums on which saw leader Johny Brown's lyricism enter a new phase. The common thread through BOHJ's four decades of recordings is the foundational warmth and humanity of Brown's words. The band's earliest recordings seemed garnered from street-level observations of neighbourhood people and sights. By the time of near-hit "Tactless", their songs - whatever the underlying impulses may have been - had become immediate enough to overcome the mystery of a line like "Do you remember the swan that was shot in the park?"

Over each of their last three albums - Funambulist We Love You, Neon Primitives and Dreams Take Flight - BOHJ has bettered itself, and may now have reached their apex, Fated Beautiful Mistakes. We live in a time of generally justifiable gloom and awkward uncertainty. So it may appear cavalier to claim this album sounds revelatory in that context, but Band Of Holy Joy's strengths rest largely in Johny Brown and the band's ability to capture a wider societal feeling. One listen to the escapist fantasy of "Our Flighty Season Under The Flighty Sun" and its slightly-haunted ending speaks volumes beyond most of what passes for music in 2023, and it's just one of many perfect moments on this album.

TRACK LISTING

Lighthouse Keeper
New York Romantic
A Citadel Of Crooked Soul
Mersey Ferry On The River Thames
Our Flighty Season Inn The Dirty Sun
Circus Folk
City People
Instagram Moon
The Curve Of The Bay
The Full Bloom Of Roses
Babylon Farewell

Achieving musical transcendence is a tricky feat. If it happens - a big if - it does so naturally, and perhaps nobody knows that better than Band of Horses, whose landmark debut 'Everything All The Time' still, after twenty years, feels as vital and, dare we say, transcendent as when it came out in 2006.

Guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell formed Band of Horses in Seattle in 2004, after the end of his nearly ten-year run in northwest melancholic darlings Carissa’s Wierd. Carissa’s Wierd trafficked in beautiful orchestral pop, whose songs told unflinching stories of heartbreak and loss, leavened with defeatist humor. Band of Horses rose from the ashes of that well-loved band, buoyed by Bridwell’s warm, reverb-heavy vocals, and woodsy, dreamy songs oozing with tension, longing and hope. Armed with a fresh Sub Pop deal and a smashing batch of songs, the band recorded their debut full-length, 'Everything All the Time', with producer Phil Ek at Seattle’s Avast studios.

At times raggedly epic ('The Great Salt Lake') and delicately pensive ('St. Augustine', 'Monsters'), 'Everything All The Time' is an album painted gorgeously in fragile highs and lows. That’s part of the genius in Band of Horses: they craft intelligent, classic movements within their songs, perfectly balancing desperation and hope, calmness and mania, love and fear. And of course there’s the massive single, 'The Funeral', which became a defining song of the era, and continues to inspire new generations of fans and artists alike. On top of tons of film and TV placements, the song was sampled by Kid Cudi, and transformed into a 2025 dance edit by acclaimed producer/multi-instrumentalist Gryffin.

Now, on the occasion of the 20th birthday of the album, Sub Pop and Band of Horses present the definitive snapshot of the band circa 'Everything All The Time'. For this anniversary release, the album has been fully remastered, with the artwork refreshed and expanded into a gatefold jacket with liner notes by Phil Ek. And the album is accompanied by an additional LP of bonus tracks, including the 2005 tour EP, a trove of previously unreleased studio and live tracks, and rarities like 'The End’s Not Near' (as featured on The O.C.) and a demo version of 'The Funeral'.

TRACK LISTING

1. The First Song
2. Wicked Gil
3. Our Swords
4. The Funeral
5. Part One
6. The Great Salt Lake
7. Weed Party
8. I Go To The Barn Because I Like The Barn
9. Mons
10. St. Augustine
11. (Biding Time Is A) Boat To Row
12. Part Two
13. Coal Mine
14. Worry Song
15. The End's Not Near
16. The Funeral (Demo Version)
17. Wicked Gil (Demo Version)
18. Our Swords (Demo Version)
19. I Go To The Barn Because I Like The / Monsters (Live At The Crocodile)

Band Of Horses 2006 debut, "Everything All The Time" was a big favourite here at Piccadilly and so naturally we're very excited about this follow up. For a lot of reasons, "Cease to Begin" is the perfect title for this record. Not only do the songs themselves weave this theme through the record, but stopping and starting anew is also a reflection of the past year and a half for Band Of Horses. Though they worked with producer Phil Ek again, as they did on "Everything All The Time", much has changed between the fairly recent then and now. There have been band members who have come and gone, including Mat Brooke, who left the band to pursue other interests and his own band. For core members Ben Bridwell, Rob Hampton and Creighton Barrett, there has been a move from Seattle, WA to Mt. Pleasant, SC, a relocation that had been planned for some time so that they could all be closer to their families. And, close friends and family have come and gone-some far too early. Necessarily shot through with these experiences, the songs on "Cease To Begin" are strikingly beautiful, if less elliptical and more straightforward, with more sophisticated arrangements than the last record. It certainly doesn't disappoint.

TRACK LISTING

Is There A Ghost
Ode To LRC
No One’s Gonna Love You
Detlef Schrempf
The General Specific
Lamb On The Lam (In The City)
Islands On The Coast
Marry Song
Cigarettes, Wedding Bands
Window Blues

Band Of Nowhere is a new constellation project by Juanjo Sánchez, together with other collaborators with whom he had previously worked. It is worth mentioning Bob Drake on drums, former member of the legendary formation Thinking Plague (also on Hail, 5UU's, The Science Group) who has also mastered the project from their studio in the Midi-Pyrénées and also to mention the guitarist Jordi Cabayol (Camino al Desván) both Juanjo and Jordi began their career in a significant band of Barcelona of the early eighties, such as Entr'acte.

The becoming of Juanjo Sánchez would take him to other latitudes as a member of Alondra Satori and without losing the lighthouse of his city, he would collaborate with other outstanding musicians such as Quicu Samsó (Koniec, Macromassa).

The fluidity and chromaticism of his previous album Gonza Magilla is still perceived in here, but in a much more electrified way with guitars that are sometimes expansive, other times exuberant wrapped up with contagious synthesizer modulations and very marked rhythms. The production and especially the arrangements are fantastic with those special presences of synthesizers that are not common around here.

Its original improvisation and experimentation is skilfully adjusted by Juanjo Sánchez, giving a much more playful result with unexpected combinations, very much in continuity with a certain European Art Rock such as Aksak Maboul, Etron Fou, Zamla,The Work or the mischievous resonances of The League of Gentlemen; all this mapping the sound transit, to an unpredictable and vibrant non-place.

Housed in it's original hand made artwork with the little upgrade twist of silk-screen printing textured grey cardboard and including a insert colour with photos and text provided by Juanjo Sánchez.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Calling All Beginners
Fleeing To The Poles
Ashes
Rouler Ma Bosse
Sunday Machinery

SIDE B
Lucid Dreams
Twisted Maze
Rolla Bolla
Chinese Forecast

A 2026 repress of Band of Skulls' critically acclaimed debut album, 'Baby Darling Doll Face Honey'. The album was produced, recorded, and mixed by Ian Davenport, recorded at Courtyard Studios in Oxfordshire, and mixed at the House of Blues studio in Los Angeles. It features the single 'I Know What I Am', which was released as the Single of the Week in Canada. This, along with the band's other two early albums, has been remastered for enhanced sound quality.

TRACK LISTING

1. Light Of The Morning
2. Death By Diamonds And Pearls
3. I Know What I Am
4. Fires
5. Honest
6. Patterns
7. Hollywood Bowl
8. Bomb
9. Impossible
10. Blood
11. Dull Gold Heart
12. Cold Fame

A 2026 repress of 'Himalayan', the third studio album from UK rock group Band of Skulls, originally released in 2014 and produced by Nick Launay, highlights tracks like 'Asleep at the Wheel' and 'Hoochie Coochie', showcasing the band's signature fusion of blues, indie, and hard rock influences. The album originally arrived following a documentary detailing their rise to fame, solidifying Band of Skulls as one of the most compelling modern rock acts.

TRACK LISTING

1. Asleep At The Wheel
2. Himalayan
3. Hoochie Coochie
4. Cold Sweat
5. Nightmares
6. Brothers And Sisters
7. I Guess I Know You Fairly Well
8. You Are All That I Am Not
9. I Feel Like Ten Men, Nine Dead And One Dying
10. Toreador
11. Heaven’s Key
12. Get Yourself Together

A 2026 repress of the English rock group's second studio album, which debuted at #14 on the UK Albums Chart and features the single 'The Devil Takes Care of His Own'. This, along with the band's other two early albums, has been remastered for enhanced sound quality. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Sweet Sour
2. Bruises
3. Wanderluster
4. The Devil Takes Care Of His Own
5. Lay My Head Down
6. You’re Not Pretty But You Got It Goin’ On
7. Navigate
8. Hometowns
9. Lies
10. Close To Nowhere

Produced by Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters, Patti Smith) and recorded in Rockfield Studios, By Default is the sound of a group on the sharpest form of their career, more engaged and focused than they’ve ever been. The follow up to 2014’s Himalayan, from the English trio - made up of Russell Marsden (guitar, vocals), Emma Richardson (bass, vocals) and Matt Hayward (drums) – the new record came about via a conscious decision from the band to take a step back from their relentless world-wide touring schedule (having never spent more than a month off the road in the last 2 years) to decamp to and write songs in a Southampton Baptist Church-cum-makeshift HQ. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Magic
2. Back Of Beyond
3. Killer
4. Bodies
5. Tropical Disease
6. So Good
7. This Is My Fix
8. Little Momma
9. Embers
10. In Love By Default
11. Singing
12. Something 

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of The Band’s fourth studio album, ‘Cahoots’. On December 3, Capitol/UMe will release the newly remixed and remastered album in variety of formats to celebrate this iconic and influential album.

‘Cahoots’ was the fourth studio album, and last album of original material for four years.

The front cover painted by New York artist/illustrator Gilbert Stone Back cover features a photograph portrait of the group by Richard Avedon.
Features guest vocals from Van Morrison (on “4% Pantomime”)

TRACK LISTING

Life Is A Carnival
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Last Of The Blacksmiths
Where Do We Go From Here?
4% Pantomime
Shoot Out In Chinatown
The Moon Struck One
Thinkin’ Out Loud
Smoke Signal
Volcano
The River Hymn

"The Band's first album, Music from Big Pink, seemed to come out of nowhere, with its ramshackle musical blend and songs of rural tragedy. The Band, the group's second album, was a more deliberate and even more accomplished effort, partially because the players had become a more cohesive unit, and partially because guitarist Robbie Robertson had taken over the songwriting, writing or co-writing all 12 songs. Though a Canadian, Robertson focused on a series of American archetypes from the union worker in "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" and the retired sailor in "Rockin' Chair" to, most famously, the Confederate Civil War observer Virgil Cane in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." The album effectively mixed the kind of mournful songs that had dominated Music from Big Pink, here including "Whispering Pines" and "When You Awake" (both co-written by Richard Manuel), with rollicking uptempo numbers like "Rag Mama Rag" and "Up on Cripple Creek" (both sung by Levon Helm and released as singles, with "Up on Cripple Creek" making the Top 40). As had been true of the first album, it was The Band's sound that stood out the most, from Helm's (and occasionally Manuel's) propulsive drumming to Robertson's distinctive guitar fills and the endlessly inventive keyboard textures of Garth Hudson, all topped by the rough, expressive singing of Manuel, Helm, and Rick Danko that mixed leads with harmonies. The arrangements were simultaneously loose and assured, giving the songs a timeless appeal, while the lyrics continued to paint portraits of 19th century rural life (especially Southern life, as references to Tennessee and Virginia made clear), its sometimes less savory aspects treated with warmth and humor." - All Music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Just as good as the first, maybe without the same impact. Includes the world-classic "The Night They Drove Old Whiskey Down".

TRACK LISTING

1. Across The Great Divide
2. Rag Mama Rag
3. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
4. When You Awake
5. Up On Cripple Creek
6. Whispering Pines
7. Jemima Surrender
8. Rockin' Chair
9. Look Out Cleveland
10. Jawbone
11. The Unfaithful Servant
12. King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

The four-parts Canadian, one-part Arkansan quintet's sophomore effort boasts more soon-to-be-staples than any other Band studio recording, what with the likes of the Joan Baez hit "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "Across the Great Divide", and "Up on Cripple Creek" standing out among the dozen uniformly memorable tracks.

Lesser-known group originals such as the achingly lovely "Whispering Pines" and the cryptic "Unfaithful Servant", however, play crucial roles in giving this 1969 classic its unique flavour.

Now in limited edition Bone White vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

01. Across The Great Divide
02. Rag Mama Rag
03. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
04. When You Awake
05. Up On Cripple Creek
06. Whispering Pines

01. Jemima Surrender
02. Rockin' Chair
03. Look Out Cleveland
04. Jawbone
05. The Unfaithful Servant
06. King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

Newly remastered. First time on vinyl in decades. Includes “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” “Ophelia” and many more!

TRACK LISTING

LP Tracklist:
A1. Up On Cripple Creek
A2. The Shape I'm In
A3. The Weight
A4. It Makes No Difference
A5. Life Is A Carnival
B1. Twilight
B2. Don’t Do It
B3. Tears Of Rage
B4. Stage Fright
B5. Ophelia
B6 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

CD Tracklist:
1. Up On Cripple Creek
2. The Shape I'm In
3. The Weight
4. It Makes No Difference
5. Life Is A Carnival
6. Twilight
7. Don’t Do It
8. Tears Of Rage
9. Stage Fright
10. Ophelia
11. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Banda Black Rio's 'Maria Fumaca' is one of the strongest Brazilian samba-disco-funk-soul-fusion albums of all time. It was voted No. 38 in the Top 100 Brazilian Albums Ever in Rolling Stone Magazine, Brazil. This official Mr Bongo re-issue comes complete with replica original artwork.

Banda Black Rio were formed in 1976 by the late Oberdan Magalhães in Rio de Janeiro. They revolutionised black instrumental music at the time with their Brazilian re-interpretation of soul, jazz, funk and disco grooves, inspired by the likes of Tim Maia and reminiscent of Kool & The Gang and Earth, Wind & Fire during their most on-point period of the 1970's. 'Maria Fumaca' is the groups first album, originally released by Atlantic in 1977 and a record that bought the group worldwide fame.

The title track is a real stand-out for us and a long term firm favourite. 'Miss Cheryll', more of a disco / AOR jam, was released by RCA UK in 1980 as the track become popular within several London scenes.

Saci Pererê is an album by Banda Black Rio, a Brazilian music group from Rio de Janeiro, formed in 1976. The group pioneered the soul-funk movement in Brazil led by renowned saxophonist Oberdan Magalhães and is known for its danceable blend of samba, jazz, and Brazilian rhythms. They have been compared to other soul funk bands such as Kool and the Gang and Earth, Wind & Fire. This summer is the perfect time to rediscover this album.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Saci Pererê
2. Miss Cheryl
3. Melissa
4. De Onde Vem
5. Subindo O Morro

Side B
1. Amor Natural
2. Profissionalismo é Isso Aí
3. Broto Sexy
4. Tem Que Ser Agora
5. Zumbi

180 GR Records is proud to present a new release by N-Zino, reimagining two tracks previously released by Four Flies Records: “Mo...” and “Living Disco Club”, offering two distinct yet complementary interpretations. “Mo... (180 GR Disco Mix)” takes its cue from the original Banda Maje version, itself a contemporary homage to Peppino Di Capri, already given a club reinterpretation. N-Zino elevates the track with a nu disco approach, emphasizing its elegant groove and sunnier, funkier side, blending disco influences with pulsing basslines, shimmering percussion, and warm synth textures, all infused with contemporary sensibilities while keeping the original melody alive. The result is a bright, danceable reinterpretation designed for both listening and the dancefloor. In a different yet perfectly complementary direction, “Living Disco Club (Don Ciccio Tribute Mix)” explores a deep house dimension, turning Banda Maje's disco-inspired original into a hypnotic, late-night groove. Deep bass, soft drum machines, essential rhythms, and atmospheric pads create a rich, warm, immersive vibe, ideal for after-hours or more refined, introspective club moments. Together, these remixes highlight N-Zino and 180 GR Records' vision: celebrating strong musical roots, connecting Italy's musical past with contemporary club culture, offering tracks that honor the tradition and the originals released by Four Flies, while speaking directly to modern dancefloors.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Brilliantly versatile double header with an exuberant disco jam on one side and a fantastically deep house jam ont'other. No brainer if you're working the 4x4s at the weekend...

TRACK LISTING

1. Mo... (180 GR Disco Mix)
2. Living Disco Club (Don Ciccio Tribute Mix)

Bandjo is Jacob Haage and Fredrik Johansson from Stockholm, responsible for more of that shimmering psychedlic / Balearic sound the Swedes seem to do oh-so well. What’s unique about Bandjo though is that while their songs are full of sand and seagulls (and seagulls full of sand), there is a strong sense of the foreboding also at play. “You & The Sun” is a late afternoon at the shore turning to storms. The sky has gone ominous as the wind whips your hair and the waves crash fiercely, echoing the lightning in the distance. The calmness of the lazy afternoon is a distant memory as nature moves around you at double speed. Quick, hammer in that windbreak!

Badasonic Records proudly presents a new chapter in its Soundclash Series: a transatlantic 45rpm featuring Belgian ska-reggae-soul collective The Utopians and Austin, Texas’ finest rocksteady outfit The Bandulus. Each band reimagines one of the other’s songs, creating a true musical exchange that bridges continents while celebrating shared roots.

On the A-side, The Utopians take on The Bandulus’ rocksteady gem 'Be Your Man' and transform it into a driving early reggae cut, infused with raw energy and vocal stylings influenced by Toots & The Maytals. Flipping to the B-side, The Bandulus reinterpret The Utopians' 'Don’t Work'. Originally an early reggae track, the song is reborn as a late-70s reggae version, adding a fresh electronic edge while keeping the soulful core intact.

This special release is the direct outcome of the two joint European tours that brought the bands together, solidifying not only their artistic respect but also a genuine friendship. Produced and mixed by Nico Leonard for Badasonic Records, the single captures the warmth of analog recording and the creativity of two groups committed to carrying Jamaican-inspired music into the present day.

Available as a collector’s edition 45rpm vinyl and digitally worldwide, this split single is more than just a record — it’s a cultural dialogue, a celebration of collaboration, and a testament to the strong bond between The Utopians and The Bandulus.

TRACK LISTING

1. Be Your Man
2. Don’t Work

During the five years since the release of their first EP, Bane have grown into the leaders of the new hardcore movement. "Give Blood" is undoubtedly Bane's most commanding and highly anticipated release to date. The album was produced and engineered by Brian McTernan (Cave In, Hot Water Music, Snapcase) and this really is a truly intense experience for the listener.

“Chiroptera” is the soundtrack of 'Acte 2 : Retour à la Caverne', a creation by JR with Thomas Bangalter and choregrapehed by Damien Jalet. It was performed in Paris in front of the Opéra de Paris (Opéra Garnier) on November 12th, 2023 by more than 150 dancers. 

Side A is a wild tour de force of sound design and synthesis which I'm sure would have soundtracked the accompanying theatrics wonderfully. On the flip, the 'solo intro' is a somewhat more subdued affair. I'm assuming given the title, introducing the piece slowly into its environment. 

TRACK LISTING

Face A :
1 - Chipotera
Face B :
1 - Chipotera (Solo Intro)

Bangkok formed in late 2004 and with a set of songs echoing a diverse range of influences, Bangkok have created a sound that acknowledges their northern heritage while retaining the band's unique style and beliefs. Imagine a hybrid of the Doves and Embrace, with Axl Rose on vocals.

Acid Jazz present a new collaboration between Chris Bangs and Mick Talbot, ‘Back To Business’, celebrating the mod club jazz sounds that are at the backbone of their DNA.

DJ and Producer Chris Bangs first coined the term ‘acid jazz’, and has produced records for Galliano and Paul Weller, alongside his own project, Quiet Boys.

Mick Talbot was a founding member and keyboardist of The Style Council with Paul Weller. He has since played with Galliano, Dexys Midnight Runners and Candy Staton.

Having previously recorded together in Yada Yada and Soundscape, ‘Back To Business’ marks the first Bangs & Talbot collaboration for years. Vital for mod collectors and beyond.

TRACK LISTING

Sumthin’ Else
Surf’N’Turf
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)
Stingray (Live At PJ’s)
Kookie T
It’s Alright (Instrumental)
Leela’s Dance
Blue Jeans
Goody Goody
Pick’N’Mick’s
Jerk Chicken
Blues Walk

Acid jazz founding figure Chris Bangs and former Style Council founding member Mick Talbot return with their new album ‘Smokin’ Aces’. It follows their acclaimed 2022 duo-billed debut album ‘Back To Business’ and two rapid sell-out 7” singles ‘Sumthin’ Else’ and, most recently ‘K-Jee’.

Chris Bangs coined the term ’acid jazz’ and was a prominent figure on the early scene, before an extensive production and DJ career, alongside the likes of Yada Yada, Quiet Boys and Paul Weller. Mick Talbot is one of the UK’s top keyboard players. After founding the Style Council with Weller, he went on to play with Merton Parkas, before embarking on a preeminent session career.

‘Smokin’ Aces’ is an uplifting, contemporary fusion of genres and influence, distilling these sounds to create a timeless Acid Jazz album - ‘retrophonic but contemporary at the same time’ says Talbot.

Recorded and developed over a 2-year spell, following the last album, the new record features 12 new tracks, with Bangs & Talbot joined by instrumentalists and voices from all over the world.

Another important landmark in the careers of these two prolific artists, and the wider sounds of acid jazz.

TRACK LISTING

1. Smokin’ Aces
2. K-Jee
3. Keep Love Moving On
4. Subway Strut
5. Una Mas
6. Club Date
7. Double Standards
8. Soul Sauce
9. TLC Tender Loving Care
10. Play The Game
11. Chilli Tamales
12. The Last Minute

Acid jazz legend Chris Bangs returns with 'Dream World a brand new album for 2024 – a characteristic font of latin jazz from the maestro producer.

Bangs is known for originally coining the term ‘acid jazz’ – a movement which subsequently morphed into the label – as he and likeminded DJs (including Gilles Peterson and Eddie Piller) began to combine jazz, soul and rock-fusion with the prominent sounds of acid house in the late ‘80s
.
The album draws influence from the Mizell Brothers, Wayne Henderson and George Duke – the latter providing direct inspiration, with a cover of ‘My Soul’ opening the record and serving as the first single.

The tracks see some new collaborators in the Bangs ranks – including Argentine keyboardist Luciano De La Rosa, Italian Massimo Morganti on trombone, Chile’s Juan Pi Salvo on trumpet, and Fabio Tiralongo on sax – making it a truly global production.

Self-described as ‘pure labour of love’ by Bangs himself, the album is a further expansion of his remarkable sound and vision, and his own ever-expanding dream world of (acid) jazz that moves far beyond genre-casting.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Soul
2. Dream World
3. En Cielo
4. Better Days
5. Riding On The Storm
6. Starship
7. Alegria
8. Mozambique
9. Sugar Slam

Devendra Banhart was born in Houston, Texas, and moved with his mother to her native Caracas, Venezuela, when his parents separated. The family relocated to Los Angeles during his teenage years; it was there that he learned to speak English, skateboard, and play music. Banhart first began to perform in public while attending the San Francisco Art Institute. He has since lived in New York City, Paris, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where he currently resides.

Banhart first attracted international notice with his 2002 debut album, Oh Me Oh My… The Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit – a collection of recordings he had made for himself. Subsequent albums include Rejoicing in the Hands (2004), Niño Rojo (2004), Cripple Crow (2005), and Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (2007), and What Will We Be (2009). Mala, his Nonesuch debut, was described by Q as a ‘career-best’ and by the Wall Street Journal as his ‘most concise, hushed and winsome effort to date’. Banhart has collaborated with fellow musicians including Anohni (formerly known as Antony) and the Johnsons, Beck, Vashti Bunyan, Os Mutantes, and Vetiver. He also has performed with both Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, and was part of a David Byrne–curated concert at Carnegie Hall.

An accomplished visual artist, Banhart’s distinctive, minutely inked, often enigmatic drawings have appeared in galleries all over the world, including the Art Basel Contemporary Art Fair in Miami; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; and Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2015 Prestel published I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street, a collection of his of drawings, paintings, and mixed media pieces. He has created the cover art for most of his records, and in 2010 his artwork and packaging for What Will We Be was nominated for a Grammy.

Ape in Pink Marble, Devendra Banhart’s ninth album, was written, produced, arranged, and recorded in Los Angeles by the singer/songwriter/guitarist with his longtime collaborators Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick, both of whom also worked on Banhart’s most recent album, Mala (2013). 

TRACK LISTING

1. Middle Names
2. Good Time Charlie
3. Jon Lends A Hand
4. Mara
5. Fancy Man
6. Fig In Leather
7. Theme For A Taiwanese Woman In Lime Green
8. Souvenirs
9. Mourner’s Dance
10. Saturday Night
11. Linda
12. Lucky
13. Celebration

Last spring, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson started to make a record that was like nothing they had made before — an ambient album that would be both a haven from a suddenly terrified world and a heartfelt musical dialogue between two artists who have been friends and collaborators for over two decades. Refuge is an album of profound meditative beauty which offers the listener a much-needed sense of peace and renewal. But while it was recorded in 2020 its roots go back much further — all the way to the start of their friendship and, beyond that, to the shared sounds and ethics of their childhoods.

Devendra grew up in Venezuela while Noah, six years older, is a native of Nevada City, California. But as they got to know each other, they realised that they had a similar history in the New Age subculture of the 1980s: a world of meditation, Eastern music, the Bhagavad Gita and The Whole Earth Catalog. Childhood memories were coloured by the aromas of health food stores and the sound of New Age labels like Windham Hill Records. Noah, whose production and mixing credits include Joanna Newsom and the Strokes, came on board as co-producer of Devendra’s 2005 album Cripple Crow and they have been working together ever since.

It was while making Devendra’s 2019 album Ma that the pair finally decided to make their ambient record. Despite complicating logistics, 2020 created an emotional craving for music with this contemplative, therapeutic quality. Inspired by both memories of the past and the needs of the present, Refuge is an act of companionship and generosity which gives the listener room to breathe. “We’re hoping to create a sense of comfort and coming back to the moment,” Devendra says. “It’s really important to have a little bit of space between us and our anxieties and impulses. What you do with that space is up to you.” Dorian Lynskey May 2021

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Book Of Bringhi
2. A Cat
3. Rise From Your Wave
4. Peloponnese Lament

SIDE B:
5. In A Cistern
6. Into Clouds
7. For Em

SIDE C: 
8. Three Gates
9. Horn In Deep Night
10. Sky Burial

SIDE D:
11. Asura Cave
12. Aran In Repose
13. Lament Return

Can you believe it? Devendra Banhart's 'Cripple Crow' - originally released by XL in 2005 - is turning 20 years old. This was the 5th album from the Venezuelan American artist who is considered the pioneer of the "Freak Folk" and "New Weird America" movements. To celebrate - Devendra has compiled a reissue of the out of print release that features a 3rd Bonus LP (on Clear Green Smoke!) featuring 9 bonus tracks, including 1 B-Side, 5 previously unreleased demos, 2 previously unreleased live tracks, and 1 unearthed smash hit from the recording sessions.

This release is the first on his newly created Heavy Flowers label.
The album received a "Best New Music" 8.4 review from Pitchfork upon its release. The release date will fall 1 day prior to the actual 20th Anniversary, which will be the first time Devendra is early for anything. Now THAT is something to celebrate!

TRACK LISTING

1. Now That I Know
2. Santa Maria De Feira
3. Heard Somebody Say
4. Long Haired Child
5. Lazy Butterfly
6. Quedate Luna
7. Queen Bee
8. I Feel Just Like A Child
9. Some People Ride The Wave
10. The Beatles
11. Dragonflys
12. Cripple Crow
13. Inaniel
14. Hey Mama Wolf
15. How’s About Tellin A Story
16. Chinese Children
17. Sawkill River
18. I Love That Man
19. Luna De Margarita
20. Korean Dogwood
21. Little Boys
22. Canela
23. There’s Always Something Happening
24. La Ley
25. Chicken
26. Stewed Bark Of An Old Oak Tree
27. La Pastorcita Perdida
28. Lickety Split
29. Shame
30. The Seventies
31. How’s About Tellin A Story (Demo)
32. Ay Jalisco (Demo)
33. I Feel Just Like A Childe (Demo)
34. So Long City Ways (Demo)
35. Long Haired Child (Live)
36. Hey Mama Wolf (Live)
37. Tarot (Demo)

Flying Wig is an album of recurrent dualities; a can of paradoxes, a box of worms. The redwood and pine-surrounded cabin studio where Banhart was “constantly listening to The Grateful Dead” somehow birthed something slick, modernist, city pop-adjacent and Enoesque.

Banhart's eleventh record, it's the actualisation of a “precious friendship” with the acclaimed solo artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and Mexican Summer stable-mate Cate Le Bon — a coming together prophesied by the mirror-image titles of their early solo albums (Banhart’s 2002 Oh Me Oh My to Le Bon’s 2009 Me Oh My) and a tenderness built on crude haircuts (“we finally met, soon after she was cutting my hair with a fork and that was that”) and home-made tattoos — but never previously translated into the recording studio.

“It’s about transmuting despair into gratitude, wounds into forgiveness, and grief into praise,” - the product of a ritualistic creative practice that melts down and re-casts as it mulls, the stuff of sadness beautified as it changes shape — culminating in a record that “sounds like getting a very melancholic massage, or weeping, but in a really nice outfit… if I’m going to cry, I wanna do it in my best dress.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A silk-smooth melting pot of neo-soul, woozy Balearic and city pop, all topped with Banhart's syrupy vocals. There are hooks aplenty, but they sit beneath waves of reverb-drenched keys, guitar and bursts of trill brass.

TRACK LISTING

1. Feeling
2. Fireflies
3. Nun
4. Sight Seer
5. Sirens
6. Charger
7. Flying Wig
8. Twin
9. May
10. The Party

“Tunggak Semi” is the third album from Indonesian musician and producer Bambang Pranoto. Originally released in 2000, it’s an exemplary slice of what has become his signature style, a dream-like meditation on aspects of nature, combining elements of accordion, acoustic guitar, flute and percussion. The compositions cross eastern and western notation to inhabit a world of their own, a world between worlds, where harmonies reflect the beauty and joy of nature.

Bambang had a rather atypical entry into music, and studied electronics and telecommunications, before he took advantage of the wave of computer software like Cubase and Protools in the 1990s that enabled him to set about recording his own compositions and soundscapes. After playing in groups, he developed his own approach to constructing his productions. He invites musicians to record interpretations of his themes, which he then pieces together in Protools like a jigsaw puzzle. “The musicians have never even met!” he chuckled on a Skype call.

“Tunggak Semi” refers to the giant trees that appear all over Bali, and their process of renewal and regeneration. “If you cut the tree, and leave the roots, they will grow again. Everytime we cut, they grow again. It’s limitless. This philosophy means there’s always something new coming, whether an idea or music, anything.” This approach has grown out of Bambang’s studies into meditation, including Indian and Chinese scriptures, also Balinese and Indonesian religions. Music, like meditation, is a daily practice, and acceptance of the music and its ‘unfinishedness’, forms a central part of the process.

“We must not just think, but we must also feel, and we must accept that feeling,” explains Bambang, and that’s a step of opening one’s mind to possibility. It seems in keeping with two of Bambang’s musical inspirations, namely Ryuichi Sakamoto and Peter Gabriel, both known for their love of world folk music, and fusion of musical traditions. That’s mirrored in Bambang’s own collage-like approach, recording elements and piecing them together to make something unimagined. While the acoustic sound palette for “Tunggak Semi” is rooted in live recordings, Bambang is not afraid to put the digital technology to good use.

“We have to use the computer as a tool in the best way we can,” Bambang says. “Sometimes people say music is made by people, not by the computer, but it’s just another piece of equipment. What can we compose from this equipment? It’s technology music!”

Written and produced by Bambang Pranoto at interactive garden studio, Depok, Bogor between September and December 2000. 2025 version remastered by Wouter Brandenburg at Brandenburg Mastering.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Indonesian new age music, primarily driven by some mystical suling (bamboo flute) passages and gently picked guitar lines. Instantly taking you off into the exotic islands of the Pacific Ocean.

TRACK LISTING

Rain In The Noon
Parahyangan Suite
Wild Flower & The Bees
Wave Of Life
Mother Earth
In The Trade
Tunggak Semi
Remembering Of The Bubats War
Sekar Ceplok Piring

As Interpol’s front man, Paul Banks has largely been a cipher; while certainly not lacking in charisma, his sardonic manner and dry sense of humour often polarised and confounded listeners and critics alike.

Banks’ first solo album found him assuming the alter ego of Julian Plenti, but he’s now jettisoned this for ‘Banks’, credited to Paul Banks (as was its preceding EP).

Whereas 2009’s Julian Plenti ‘Is…Skyscraper’ album was culled largely from songs pre-dating Interpol, ‘Banks’ is a vivid documentation of Banks in the here and now, and may be his most personal work to date. “Yeah, I suppose I wanted to simplify things this time around,” he explains. “Julian Plenti was something that I had to do, but once it was done, I didn't need to hold on to it. I'm just making music and hoping to let it speak for itself.”

Here Paul delivers some of his most disarming and heartfelt lyrics to date, far removed from his often detached anomie with Interpol.

Produced by Paul Banks and Peter Katis (Interpol, Jónsi, The National).

Joe Banks’ Rock and Role is the definitive biography of Peter Hammill (leader of Van der Graaf Generator, and one of the most unique solo artists in rock). Coming in at over 500 pages, and illustrated with hundreds of images - many rare and previously unseen - Rock and Role is both a highly accessible biography and a serious critical appreciation of one of rock’s genuine visionaries, providing an in-depth look at PH's music and lyrics, investigating the ideas behind his songs, and presenting a portrait of Hammill as both artist and man. 

So It Started There chronicles the life and career of drummer Nick Banks, and how he came to be in one of the UK's most iconic and beloved bands: Pulp. Beginning with his childhood in Rotherham, Nick recounts his personal and musical journey through the genres, first as a punk, then as a goth; how it all started when he was first inspired to pick up the sticks by Sex Pistols drummer, Paul Cook.

Flash forward to the eighties, Nick has been playing in a handful of Sheffield groups and spies an ad from his favourite band, Pulp, in a local club. He pays Jarvis and the gang a visit and the rest is history. From there, Nick describes his growth as a professional drummer and musician, the trials and tribulations of chasing success in the music industry, touring triumphs and horrors, the band's journey from relative obscurity to becoming a global sensation, and the process of writing and recording their most famous albums.

Paul Banks of Interpol offers his distinctive take on two Iggy Pop staples—'Sister Midnight' and 'Gimme Danger'— released via Partisan Records, drawn from the official soundtrack to the film Sister Midnight (dir. Karan Kandhari).

Originally co-written with David Bowie and The Stooges, these tracks are reimagined by Banks with a moody, atmospheric touch that honours the originals’ grit and menace while leaning into his own shadowy sensibility.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gimme Danger
2. Sister Midnight

A raw, intimate journey through Manchester’s dance music history — told by the people who lived it.

From breakdancers on lino floors to the birth of Acid House, from the Haçienda’s hedonistic nights to the underground parties that defined a generation, Manchester Scene Stories: The Dance Years captures the heartbeat of a city in motion.

Documentary storyteller Paul Banks has interviewed more than 100 DJs, dancers, ravers, promoters, and unsung legends. This book brings 30 of their most powerful stories together — unfiltered, emotional, funny, and full of the spirit that shaped Manchester’s nightlife.

Featuring first-hand accounts from the Haçienda, Paradise Factory, The Boardwalk, warehouse raves, breakdance crews, Canal Street pioneers and more — these are the memories that built a scene, changed lives, and still echo through the city today.

This book is a collection of conversations about Manchester — told by the people who lived it.

Following on from Manchester Scene Stories: The Dance Years, this volume leans towards indie, but doesn’t stick to neat categories or timelines. Instead, it moves through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and beyond, guided by memory, chance meetings, and the way scenes actually form in real life.

The chapters are built around relaxed conversations rather than formal interviews. Some were recorded for my YouTube channel, others specifically for this book. They took place in pubs, living rooms, studios, and over Zoom. People talk openly — about music, clubs, bands, friendships, venues, and the strange routes that led them where they ended up.

The book begins with Johnny Roadhouse, a shop that quietly shaped generations of Manchester musicians, and ends in the present day with a new generation still finding its voice. Along the way, it captures moments that rarely make it into official histories — the small rooms, early gigs, chance encounters, and personal turning points that define a scene long before it becomes a headline.

This isn’t a definitive history of Manchester indie music.

It’s something closer to how it actually felt at the time.

Short, honest chapters you can dip into — built from memory, conversation, and lived experience.

Manchester Scene Stories: Soul to Jungle is a journey through the hidden roots, forgotten clubs and untold stories that shaped Manchester’s underground music culture.

From reggae sound systems in Moss Side and jazz jams in Hulme flats, to the rise of Jungle, Drum & Bass, Hip Hop, Acid Jazz and the legendary club nights that defined generations, this book captures Manchester from the inside — through the voices of the people who lived it.

Featuring DJs, promoters, musicians, ravers, record shop staff and cultural pioneers including Mr Scruff, Lou Rhodes (Lamb), Sappo, Mark XTC, Dave Kendrick, Matt Nickson (Matt & Phred’s), Danny Ward, Woody, Ottilia, Rich Reason and many more, these are personal stories of creativity, survival, obsession and community.

This isn’t a history of the obvious Manchester story.

It’s the other Manchester.

The city of pirate radio, basement clubs, blues parties, jazz workshops, jungle nights, flyers, record bags, dubplates, afterparties and independent spaces built by people who simply loved music enough to create something for themselves.

Written in a raw, conversational style drawn directly from interviews and memories, Soul to Jungle documents a side of Manchester culture that rarely makes it into official histories — but helped shape the city just as much as anything that came before it.

Soul to Jungle is the third volume in the Manchester Scene Stories series.

Bantam Rooster has been kicking out it's own brand of cathartic messed up rock 'n' roll for some time now. Fourteen tracks of primal sophistication and their best album yet.

Night School is extremely proud to work with Billy Bao and Munster to present Lagos Sessions. “Experimental; Conceptual? That’s what these sort of things are usually called, when references are anything but immediate: in the feeling, hearing, and seeing, especially by many. Even more troubling, when the accustomed in us gets ajar... We lack articulation of the seemingly unfamiliar! Even at that, I think the most charitable review of this live electronic exploration will suggest the four sections bordering on insanity. How else? Even when not a few self-styled patriots were booking their flights out of the country, with an election looming to signal the end of a nation, and a band of modern day faith-heads detonating grenades in every other street corner, two dreamers swim against the currents and sneak through the lagoon into the country collecting inputs of derelict art; of garbage can noise; of hooting; honking horns on screeching brakes squelching tar; rackety generator booms? For an imagined program! What’s that? Who, what do these doods think they’re doing with Lagos?! I’ll call it rebirth. That simple. How to find a centre here? The output? The hum-drum of the street’s daily accent compels the sense of the immediate, the terrestrial; and then those primitive, primeval-seeming echoes of the earliest beginnings of the big bang and its wave-sound simultaneously releasing Sun Ra’s reverb sensation of end time! This should not be danceable but these guys are suggesting the possibility of rhythm in the inchoate. Believe me, you can’t miss the Lagos Faaji, Sakara flow, Awurebe, Afrobeat slices; its jazz, highlife/ Euro- Afro funk/rock/rap and seedy night echoes too. But in their otherworldly dimension. No matter the accolades, I will encourage a therapy of some sorts to the creators of this production.” Sola Olorunyomi, poet, bassist, co-editor of Glendora Review Kunle Tejuoso, Jazzhole, Lagos.

Lagos Sessions featuring: Billy Bao, Ambido, Diana Bada, Duro Ikujenyo, Mark Ido, Oduyomi Isaiah Oluseye, Joel Isioma Okoh, Orlando Julius, Mendo, Emeka Ogboh.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A bizarre but brilliant glitched-journey through hip-hop, experimental rock, electronica, afrobeat percussion aspects, and spoken word. Immersive and disconcerting, intense and exciting.

Some Like It Hot is a 1959 film starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon about a group of rogue musicians on the adventure path. It is funny, sexy, rambunctious and evergreen – a showcase of a triple-threat cast at full-throttle. Some Like It Hot is also the new album by London three-piece bar italia  – and certain parallels are perhaps not accidental. It pulses with romance, intrigue, self-discovery and rapture over lustful rockers, spellbinding folk pop, punch-drunk ballads and undefinable moments that sneak up on you like a burst of 5pm sunshine. The record is the culmination of the joint world of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton – three singer-songwriters who have transcended their underground roots to embrace a bold, widescreen horizon.

The synergy of this three-way blunt rotation is embedded in the trio’s DNA. Cristante brings a studied actors’ sensibility to vocals ranging from honeyed (the aforementioned ‘Marble Arch’) to hell-bent and possessed (‘rooster’). Fehmi ranges from airy, brooding baritone (‘Lioness’) to mic-chewing megaphone histrionics (‘omni shambles’). Fenton, a wispy tenor, can veer between mystical melodicism and soaring blue-eyed soul within the same 8 bars (‘Plastered’).

The cultivation of their sound, from early homespun recordings like hand drawn sketches (the band presented an exhibition of their drawings in 2023) into the ceiling-wide brush strokes of Some Like It Hot, was chiselled via a relentless writing and touring schedule. When bar italia emerged in 2023 from an underground following to release two critically acclaimed albums on Matador only several months apart – the poised Tracey Denim and the grand The Twits – they were a shy, eye-contact-avoiding band, starting sets in darkness and just as soon disappearing backstage. They spent the next two years traversing the globe, with headline performances from Istanbul to Tokyo, sold-out multi-night stints in New York and Los Angeles, and festivals including Corona Capital, Glastonbury and Coachella. With over 160 shows worldwide across 2023-2024, they dispelled any mystique by becoming an exhibitionist and muscular five-piece that gives multiple encores – equally comfortable at festival mosh-pit incitement and moments of pin-drop intimacy.

Some Like It Hot is telling of this journey: a collection of rock songs voraciously embracing the main stage. The lightning choruses of ‘omni shambles’ and ‘Eyepatch’ show a band who have mastered melding their idiosyncrasies into tightly coiled pop songs. A pining for tangibility abounds: “just show me the face that you've been trying to hide”, Fenton opines on the Balkan-tinged waltz of ‘bad reputation’. Other songs surrender to abandon wholesale: “I was lost to the world from the moment we kissed”, Fenton sings on ‘rooster’, while on the 12-string new wave majesty of ‘Lioness’, Fehmi states, “You have no idea what I can do for you when I’m in this mood”.

bar italia have married their serious and heartfelt subject matter with a joy in showmanship. These are songs that twist their quirks into huge choruses, and find elevation in tension, playing with self-identity, emotion and performance until the lines blur. That 1959 Hollywood classic from which the album takes its name ends with the immortal line: “Well, nobody’s perfect.” This, however, comes pretty close.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Wonderfully clever, dynamic rock music that grows and twists around a solid melodic core. As ever, the band's vocal interplay is key, and results in an album as interesting as it is melodic and enjoyable.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fundraiser
2. Marble Arch
3. Bad Reputation
4. Cowbella
5. I Make My Own Dust
6. Plastered
7. Rooster
8. The Lady Vanishes
9. Lioness
10. Omni Shambles
11. Eyepatch
12. Some Like It Hot

bar italia are the London based three-piece of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton.

‘The Twits’ was recorded by the trio over eight weeks from February 2023 in a makeshift home studio in Mallorca, and was mixed by Marta Salogni. It finds bar italia’s economical yet evocative songcraft taking raucous, mystic, unkempt, occasionally sinister, and wholly committed turns. Songs like “my little tony”, with its in-the-red riff and excitable hooks, the cathartic four-on-the-floor of ‘world’s greatest emoter’ and the festival tent psychedelia of “Hi-fiver” need little in the way of exposition – these are exhilarating rock songs, if wayward and strange.

Other moments see the band’s increasingly signature, three-act mini-dramas moving into previously uncharted territory. Cristante, Fehmi and Fenton can each manifest a different melody, mood, and cadence – at times overlapping and linear, at others unexpectedly divergent – often within the space of thirty seconds, a tag team rooted in shared language and kinship. “Jelsy”, for instance, plays out like a conversation between friends over wistful, buzzing country blues, the alternating voices at points comforting, wry and hopelessly yearning. The sinuous, slow-burning waltz of “twist” stands out in its bare lyricism and seems to invite each band member’s individual take on a confessional.

While Tracey Denim was notable for its compact 2-3 minute compositions, horizontal and open-ended tracks like “Shoo” ebb and flow, moving from reptilian dive-bar soloing to a palpitating two-note piano coda. ‘glory-hunter’ takes playful twists and turns before ending up somewhere entirely different from where it started. “Real house wibes (desperate house vibes)” and “que surprise” imply sleepless, noirish misadventure, while at the other end of the light spectrum, “sounds like you had to be there” features some of the band’s most sweetly optimistic musical gestures yet. Closer “bibs” is a rare instance where all three can be heard in unison, as a procession of ghostly chords and lacerating feedback bookends the group’s most adventurous and rich set to date.

Released in May, bar italia’s Matador debut ‘Tracey Denim’ followed a string of word-of-mouth releases on Dean Blunt’s World Music label and received widespread attention from publications including The Guardian (“one of the albums of 2023 so far”), The Times (“excellent debut album”), The Observer (‘Artist To Watch’), NME ("a lasting impression that’s all of their own making"), The Quietus (“endlessly evocative”) and Pigeons And Planes (“quickly establishing themselves as one of the most enticing upcoming bands”). Single “Nurse!” was playlisted on BBC 6 Music and received spins from BBC Radio 1, Absolute Radio and NTS. The release was accompanied by a UK tour, culminating in a sold-out headline show at the ICA in London, which The Spectator described as “transfixing… They just make their beautiful, off-kilter music, and let you unfold your own stories on top”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: We've absolutely fallen in love with Bar Italia here at Picc HQ, so we were over the moon when we found out that they'd be releasing their second LP of 2023. And what a banger it is! Mega tunes and no bullshit, Bar Italia have honed and polished their sound even further. You won't get a better one-two punch than 'Tracey Denim' and 'The Twits' in the indie-sphere right now. So what you doing? Get on both!

TRACK LISTING

1. My Little Tony
2. Real House Wibes (desperate House Vibes)
3. Twist
4. Worlds Greatest Emoter
5. Calm Down With Me
6. Shoo
7. Que Suprise
8. Hi Fiver
9. Brush W Faith
10. Glory Hunter
11. Sounds Like You Had To Be There
12. Jelsy
13. Bibs

bar italia, the London trio of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton, have announced details of their new album ‘Tracey Denim’, which is released on Matador Records.

‘Tracey Denim’ was recorded and produced by bar italia with mixing from Marta Salogni. It features the single “Nurse!” which was released in March to acclaim, and described as “a hypnotic post-punk ballad” (The Guardian) and “narcotically arresting” (Pitchfork).

Over the last two years, bar italia have released two albums, an EP and several singles on Dean Blunt’s World Music label, leading to much word-of-mouth, sold out headline shows, and festival performances at Pitchfork Music Festival London, by:Larm, OUT.FEST, Le Guess Who?, and End Of The Road.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ethan says: On ‘Tracey Denim’, bar italia sound like a 90s underground-American-indie outfit that miraculously discovered Britpop one day, and then were immediately whisked through time and space to a pristine recording studio in the 2020s. And the result is absolutely brilliant!

There’s a ‘slacker’ approach to this band’s whole aesthetic, with their loose performances and inconsistent lower-case approach to titling. That is, in everything except the immaculate production, where they manage to pull off some incredibly unique drum sounds and edgy guitar tones while still remaining light and gentle. There’s the silvery hi-hat powering through “guard”, the guttural bass defining “Horsey Girl Rider”, and fuzz-tinted power chords on “Punkt”. Everything here has a definite Sonic Youth edge, or maybe a more-relaxed Modest Mouse would be more appropriate. It’s all wrapped up in a very tongue-in-cheek gen-z humour, best exemplified through their digs at Kate Nash through Track 7’s stupidly-long title.

All this gushing about the band and I haven’t even mentioned what sets them apart from all the sub-par 90s throwback bands. Their unique selling point is the Beatles approach to vocals, which is to say lead vocals are distributed between all band members at a fairly equal rate. “Missus Morality” is a beautiful exchange between Nina Cristante’s alto range and Jezmi Tarik’s deeper, tenor timbre. The two then duet on tracks like “changer”, and the band even bring in Sam Fenton for a trio on tracks such as “Friends”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Guard
2. Nurse!
3. Punkt
4. My Kiss Era
5. F.O.B
6. Missus Morality
7. Yes I Have Eaten So Many Lemons Yes I Am So Bitte
8. Changer
9. Horsey Girl Rider
10. NOCD
11. Best In Show
12. Clark
13. Harpee
14. Friends
15. Maddington

Blended incantations for dancefloor situations, BAR:LOW kicks off his tenure with three very different but equally exciting cuts. "Nupert Sature" opens proceedings with a tribute to everyone's favourite Giorgio Moroder track - "Super Nature". Adding extra sfx swirls, tougher construction and hypnotic edits; it's a nice update on this bonafide disco dancefloor staple.

"Nine Inch Chugger" satiates the penchant for all things chuggy and new beat related - mixing a lost Nine Inch Nail track into a throbbing, coital chug-a-thon. Twangy electrics, searing strings, Trent's yearning, ghostly vox, and a highly kinetic rhythm section make this an absolute no brainer for dancefloor seeking that in-vogue sound. 

Finally, "Balearic Bruce" takes every dad's favourite guilty pleasure down to the beach for a spot of hammock time. Or conversely, a secluded love in tucked away in a private cove somewhere hidden along the coast. Either way, its sensual moods, languid approach and delicate construction should have bra straps and trouser buttons removed in record quick time.

Incredibly limited copies - buy now or cry later! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Trust us when we say - this is gonna blow up!! That NIN cut is nothing short of epic - and with everyone including yer nan lapping up the new beat / EBM vibes at the moment, it's perfectly timed to cause a stampede. Get one step ahead of the rest and get this bagged NOW!

TRACK LISTING

A. Nuper Sature
B1. Nine Inch Chugger
B1. Balearic Bruce

Ken returns! BAR:LOW#2 lands on the Cobbles! 

Blended incantations for dancefloor situations from a thus-far unknown entity! Maybe it's William Roache himself?! What we do know is that volume 2 chucks up three more expertly snipped musical missivs for our delectation.

"Ba-ba-low" fires up the vintage Casio keyboard rhythm section for a throbbing, high-NRG EBM workout. "John Kennon" channels more electrified body music with an unignorable vocal cameo our favourite bespeckled Mersey Beat bed dweller. "Ken You Dig It" allows us some blissed-out respite courtesy of some hybridized English rose... Deidre and Maude might be long gone, but Ken's still kickin' it! 

Limited copies. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: After wow'ing us with #1 (no. 2 in our Singles of 2025), the anonymous Bar:low returns with three more utterly captivating cuts aimed at the more curious corners of the dancefloor.

TRACK LISTING

A. Ba-ba-low
B1. John Kennon
B2. Ken You Dig It

Carl Barât & his new band The Jackals announce the release of their debut album Let It Reign through Cooking Vinyl Records on Monday 16th February.

Let It Reign was recorded in LA and London and was produced by Joby J. Ford (The Bronx) and features guest musicians, such as Beastie Boys percussionist Alfredo Ortiz on Glory Days. "I actually started making this record solo, but the long and short of it is I just didn’t like my own company," says Carl, adding that he soon realised that he wanted to get a new band together.

Rather than call up some old mates to recruit for The Jackals, Carl decided to post a few ads online asking if there were any likeminded souls out there who wanted to try their luck at playing with him. The response was overwhelming, with thousands of people replying. Carl adds "I was lucky, because I found a bunch of people who genuinely fit together as a gang."


TRACK LISTING

1: Glory Days
2: Victory Gin
3: Summer In The Trenches
4: A Storm Is Coming
5: Beginning To See
6: March Of The Idle
7: We Want More
8: War Of The Roses
9: The Gears
10: Let It Rain

Barbara are Brighton brothers Henry & John Tydeman. Their music is influenced not only by the pop greats of the 1970s - The Kinks, ABBA, ELO - but also by the charming, eccentric work of British writers like George Orwell and Harold Pinter; their songs tell stories of strange characters, buffeted on the seas of life. But there is always a sense of fun, of the uncool, and - most importantly - of dance, in all Barbara's music, in spite of the unpredictable lyrical content. So, come for the dancing... and stay for the stories. (Or, if you prefer, come for the stories, and stay for the dancing! That way is just as fun...)

Barbara have toured with The Divine Comedy, Haircut One Hundred, and most recently, Paul Weller (see quotes below, including praise from legendary producer Steve Lillywhite. “Barbara are one of the best groups about. Live they’re great, and their songs too. Clever and melodic. The Babs are fab!” Paul Weller “They are so up my street ... really tight songwriting, very poptastic!” Neil Hannon on Barbara "This band is nothing like anything I've ever heard and I love them!" Steve Lillywhite “Barbara are wonderful. I love their songs and their humour. We need more Barbara in our lives!” Chris Difford “Haircut One Hundred loves Barbara. They’re as bold as our brass! Bacharach with bats and balls. We love ‘em!” Nick Heyward (Haircut One Hundred) “Barbara are one of the most inventive and original musical acts I've seen in donkey's years! They're already making a lot of noise on the UK music scene, and with their delightful and original approach to lyric and melody, combined with an infectious and joyous performance style, their future success in an inevitably crazy music biz is assured. Go see 'em!” Dean Friedman "Barbara are an insanely talented band with an innate sense of melody and arrangement ... The ambitious scope and toe tapping immediacy of their sound belies their tender years." Phill Jupitus “Such a bright, catchy and intriguing song” John Kennedy (Radio X) on ‘Property-Owning Democracy’ “An absolute killer song … a pocket-sized pop symphony!” Gary Crowley (BBC Radio London) on ‘Property-Owning Democracy’.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mein Fräulein
2. These New Communications
3. Tolerant Nation
4. Beryl
5. A Perishing Of Cherished Things
6. Property-Owning Democracy
7. Master Narrative
8. Pretty Straight Guy
9. The Contented Commuter
10. BRB

“Melds blue-eyed soul and electronica to addictive effect.” - Sunday Times · There were plenty of reasons for Londoner James Mathé to simply keep course after the release of his well received debut album, ‘Chemical Campfires’, in 2008 on Fence Records - a flourishing reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting acoustic troubadours, a prominent spot in Johnny Flynn and Jose Gonzales’ backing bands, the roar of applause from the audience at a sold-out show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom still ringing in his ears… but Mathé had other ideas: “I loved the acoustic scene, but knew it was not all I was about,” he remembers. “So I dug out all my old Casiotone keyboards, drum machines and analogue synths and just started writing.”

From the sultry ache of opener ‘Bloodline’ (a nod to Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ “about not picking up the bad habits of the generation before you”, says Mathé), to the Pharrell Williams-inspired urban crunch of ‘Turbine’, all the way to ‘The Load’ (written when Mathé was indulging in his love of Jurassic 5 era 90s hip hop), ‘Bloodlines’ is a brilliantly varied listen that pulls and paws at your heartstrings.

If there’s a gloriously loose, tenebrous feel to songs like the blue-eyed electro-soul ‘Pagliacco’, it might have something to do with the Londoner’s organic approach to song writing. “I just sit down with my dictaphone and make sense of what comes out afterwards. The best stuff usually comes when I’m hungover or not really thinking. The minute I try to be clever with words, it just sounds sh*t,” Mathé laughs. Instead, the album’s lyrics burn with a simple, poignant immediacy and Mathé sings them with touching, soulful grace.

“Melds blue-eyed soul and electronica to addictive effect… exquisite” - The Times

“A great example of someone following their musical instincts into new areas and finding success” - Drowned in Sound

“Mathé employs his soft soul falsetto over juddering beats, double-time drum claps and a synth riff… a revelation” - The Guardian

Barbarossa, the nom de plume of Londoner James Mathé, follows 2013 album ‘Bloodlines’ with ‘Imager’ on Memphis Industries. ‘Imager’ is a cerebral, slow-burning album, tinged with melancholy and an alluring humanism.

Mathé’s musical journey started with folk-tinged balladry that saw him become part of the Fence Collective and subsequently a band member for the likes of José González, Johnny Flynn and Junip. With ‘Bloodlines’ Mathé started to infuse his songwriting with electronic flourishes and now, with ‘Imager’, he completes his transformation into fully fledged electronic soul pioneer.

Working with co-producer Ash Workman (Metronomy, Summer Camp) Mathé builds on the foundations provided by his organic approach to songwriting, to build elegiac electronic anthems that are filled with a simple, poignant immediacy.

‘Imager’ is pervaded with a sense of disquiet, perhaps driven subconsciously by the fact that the spaces where creativity and culture flourish in London are rapidly disappearing; that the artistic communities that Mathé grew up with are being driven out of London due to financial pressures and, as a result, something vital is being lost. Yet while the album deals in displacement and heartbreak, a sense that everything is in flux, there are redemptive moments to stir the soul.

‘Silent Island’ is perhaps the best example of this. Its melancholic refrain “this city holds no beauty for me” giving way to a blissful yet propulsive chorus that suggests creativity will always find a way.

Elsewhere, ‘Settle’ is the sound of dislocation in the big city, a questioning of how to respond to your surroundings as they become increasingly alien.

The languid ‘Home’, which features a guest vocal from José González, is the light to ‘Settles’ shade; its phrase “you’re one of the lucky ones...” providing reassurance and redemption.

‘Imager’ is the sound of Barbarossa stepping out of the shadows and into the limelight as a talent to be reckoned with in his own right, questioning his surroundings, his own creativity and coming up with answers that are compelling, affecting and thoughtful.

TRACK LISTING

Imager
Home
Solid Soul
Settle
Nevada
Dark Hopes
Silent Island
Muted
Human Feel
The Wall

Since the release of his last record, ‘Imager’, in 2015, a lot has changed for London-born James Mathé AKA Barbarossa. Most importantly, he’s become a father for the first time and made the hugely liberating move from London, the city that had for so long defined him and his sound, to Margate.

‘Lier’, Mathé’s brand new album, is the perfect sonic story to accompany these big life changes and as a result, his most personal record to date. Across the 10 tracks, ‘Lier’ is a hugely uplifting and cathartic record that takes you from the depths of his intricate and wonderful creative mind to the wider wonderful emotions that come with becoming a father.

Picking up where 2015’s ‘Imager’ left off, ‘Lier’ is further electronic wizardry from Barbarossa - one of the UK’s finest song writing talents. This time, his vocal is at the forefront on some of the most accessible pop songs he’s ever written.

‘Don’t Enter Fear’ is the perfect way to introduce the record. Written on the piano in his parent’s house, it encapsulates everything that the whole album represents and is ultimately a reminder to himself not to be scared of the seismic changes in both his own life and the political world around him.

‘Lier’ was written and recorded with Mathé’s producer friend Ghost Culture in Margate with percussion and drumming skills supplied by Joel Wästberg AKA Sir Was and artwork by fellow Margate dweller Tom Vek. The album is focused on the theme of geographic and personal change - ‘Cyclone’, the album opener for example, focuses on the move from city to sea and the calm and space that can bring, whilst album title track ‘Lier’ was inspired by swimming in the Walpole Bay tidal pool.

Inspiration comes from everywhere - ‘Aluminium Skies’ was written in Gothenburg, Sweden whilst James was on the road with José Gonzalez (he plays in the José Gonzalez live band), whilst ‘Thickening Air’ was inspired by the classic songwriters that Mathé obsesses over - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Brian Wilson and Joni Mitchell.

What unites the songs on ‘Lier’ are central themes of loss, love and confronting who you are as time moves on and things change within and out of your control. By the end of the record you are left with the feeling that when things are simplified, they are at their most beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

Cyclone
Aluminium Skies
Broken Beauty
Griptide
Don’t Enter Fear
Ancient Light
Thickening Air
Lier
Shells
Feel My Sins

New album from Barbarossa, a.k.a. British singer-songwriter and producer James Mathé via Memphis Industries. Produced by Ghost Culture (Daniel Avery, Kelly Lee Owens, Falle Nioke), “Love Here Listen” is Mathé’s sixth album since his debut, “Sea Like Blood”, released on the Fence Collective back in 2006, since which time he’s joined Jose Gonzales live show, become a member of Junip, toured with POLICA and This is the Kit and morphed from acoustic troubadoury to electronic song smithery all the while seemingly searching for an elusive balance between hopefulness and melancholy. On “Love Here Listen”, it feels like he has found it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Always Free
2. Iris2Iris
3. Recliner
4. Cellular
5. Intuit
6. Make It Through
7. Long Wave
8. Awakeners Awaken Us
9. Hide
10. Love Here Listen

Records are made every day, released every week, and even with the best will in the world this means that scores of records are ignored or lost from the moment that they are pressed. However it is also true that the collector, the DJ and the fanatic are all out there looking for something that can lift their soul. So there is always hope that if your record is good enough, one day it will be discovered and revered. Artists as diverse as Terry Callier, David Axelrod and Vashti Bunyan have all benefited from this effect, and if there is any justice in the world so should Sandy Barber’s album ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’.

An appearance at the Apollo, Harlem was heard by Chris Curry who arranged for Sandy to audition for David Jordan a producer who was working on a group called Rare Pleasure. He had a song called ‘Let Me Down Easy’ and felt that Sandy’s voice was perfect for it. The record released on Cheri Records became a club anthem - today probably better known for being sampled by David Morales on his hit ‘Needing U’ - with Sandy’s vocals perfectly capturing the songs pleading nature. Sandy didn’t enjoy working with a group and went out on her own soon after, a decision that was vindicated when a mutual friend introduced her to the producer, writer and record label owner Clyde Otis, who Sandy describes as ‘her mentor’. Otis liked what he heard and signed her immediately to the deal that would produce her album ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’.

The album opens with ‘Look Out Sky’ which lays out the stall for the whole album. A glorious uplifting soul song that benefits from the thoughtful arrangement that allows for plenty of space within the record for the voice to shine through. ‘I’ve Got Something Good’ has a pounding four to the floor rhythm and a great horn arrangement as Sandy tells about her good thing. ‘The First Time’ takes the tempo way down and is a jazz based ballad reminiscent of Marlena Shaw’s ‘Go Away Little Boy’, with a fine string arrangement. The first side ends with the fantastic ‘Don’t You Worry Baby (The Best Is Yet To Come), seven minutes of carefully arranged ecstatic soul.

The album has become sought after in recent years for the cut that opens up side two ‘I Think I’ll Do My Stepping At Home’, once more the rhythm section and its arrangement proves to be the perfect foil for Sandy’s love-worn but defiant voice. This is followed by the discofied version of the theme to ‘Wonderwoman’ the late 70s TV staple starring Linda Carter. This contrasts with the vibrant, but extremely jazzy ‘Can’t You Just See Me’ which rolls along on an astounding piano part and some bluesy guitar. The original album ends with the emotional overload of the second ballad of the album ‘Stay Here With Me’, a fitting showcase for Sandy’s voice.

Barberos are from Liverpool and make the sort of driven, angular psychedelic noises that Battles and And So I Watch You From Afar excel at. It is a riotous, jagged beast, slathering with reams of grooving distorted bass, punchy percussives and sliding synth squeals, enriched with otherworldly echoes. It is forceful, surprising and as heavy as you get without killing the groove. Barberos are a talented bunch, and know how to make a stone-cold groove. Killer melodies, thundering percussion and an absolute riot. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Barberos kill it with this collection of off-kilter jams, otherworldly cosmic squeals and soul-shaking groove. Killer math-rock. Essential.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Return Of The Ladius
2. The Ladius
3. Timur
4. Hoyl
5. Concerto (Reprise)
6. Akropolis
7. Obladden

Richard Barbieri remains one of contemporary music's most distinctive voices.

Emerging as a key architect of the late '70s/'80s synthesiser revolution with David Sylvian's art-rock ensemble Japan, his visionary synthesiser programming expanded the horizons of electronic music & left a lasting mark on artists from The Human League & Duran Duran to Gary Numan & Talk Talk. His subsequent & ongoing tenure with Steven Wilson's legendary progressive outfit Porcupine Tree across albums such as 'In Absentia' (2002), 'Fear Of A Blank Planet' (2007) & most recently, 'Closure/Continuation' (2022) further affirmed his status as one of the most intuitive & unique musicians of his generation.

'Hauntings' is Barbieri's first studio album since 2021's 'Under A Spell', deepening the pensive, dark instrumental aesthetic of its predecessor. A diverse collection of immersive sound worlds, both dark & uplifting in equal measure, 'Hauntings' is influenced by a nostalgia for the past & future & for things that didn't happen yet still manage to haunt the mind & soul. What is real & what is simulation?

The album finds Barbieri at the height of his powers, his deft keyboard & sonic architecture conjuring a shadowy, creeping Lovecraftian atmosphere. The music wanders through the streets of a gloomy lamp-lit Victorian London & drifts into grain-speckled snapshots of Belle Epoque Paris. These journeys into the past are contrasted with nihilistic but euphoric forays into the future, 'Traveler' & 'A New Simulation' bristling with the itchy modern anxiety that often runs through his best work. Contrasting the sound designs & electronics of Barbieri, the album features performances from renowned musicians Morgan Agren (drums & percussion), Percy Jones (bass guitar) & Luca Calabrese (trumpet).

TRACK LISTING

1. Snakes & Ladders
2. Anemoia
3. Victorian Wraith
4. 1890
5. Artificial Obsession
6. Paris Sketch
7. Perfect Toys
8. Traveler
9. Reveille
10. Last Post
11. A New Simulation 

The album (featuring all new material) draws on the fine musical heritage of Barclay James Harvest whilst bringing the BJH legacy up to date with expansive compositions and thoughtful lyrics. The band’s roots in rural north-west England are explored on the album’s title track, along with another extended piece, ‘On Leave’. The album also includes the recent digital single ‘Unreservedly Yours’ and ‘Ancient Waves’, a song performed live in more recent times.

TRACK LISTING

1. If You Were Here Now
2. Ancient Waves
3. In Wonderland
4. On Leave
5. The Real Deal
6. On Top Of The World
7. Unreservedly Yours
8. North
9. The End Of The Day

12 tracks from Oldham's finest prog rock exports Barclay James Harvest at £5.99 who can complain.