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Before The Verdict Hits For RSD Black Friday 2023 In A Gold Vinyl Pressing. In 2010 Madlib launched the Madlib Medicine Show Series - an ambitious undertaking that saw the prolific producer release a new title on a monthly basis - which kept him busy into 2011. The series debuted with Before The Verdict with Guilty Simpson, a seventeen track rap outing with the Detroit MC. In addition to being the debut of Madlib's Medicine Show Series the release also served as a prelude to Guilty Simpson's OJ Simpson album, his collaboration with Madlib from later that year. Before The Verdict, an action-adventure psycho-thriller in the form of a full-length rap album, is back on print on vinyl for RSD Black Friday 2023

TRACK LISTING

1. Arraignment (Intro)
2. Ode To The Ghetto (OJ Simpson Remix)
3. Yikes (OJ Simpson Remix)
4. Further
5. Lucky Guy
6. Pigs (OJ Simpson Remix)
7. Life Goes By
8. Get Bitches (OJ Simpson Remix)
9. The Exclusive (feat. MED)
10. Robbery (OJ Simpson Remix)
11. Kill 'Em (OJ Simpson Remix)
12. The Paper
13. I Must Love You (OJ Simpson Remix)
14. Looking For Trouble
15. Young Guns (feat. J Dilla)
16. My Moment (OJ Simpson Remix)
17. American Dream & Future (OJ Simpson Remix)

It's the 21st Century and the cult of mass information has finally vanquished the allure of mystery. Reality TV, live blogging, social media and iCloud leaks - we don't wanna see our idols airbrushed, we wanna see them before they zip their skin up. We want the process dammit, the 4 a.m. burnout, the smudged ink and the pencil shavings. 
Melody As Truth know what we want, and the Amsterdam label duly give it to us with their new MATstudio series. Inviting us into their workspace, Jonny Nash and Suzanne Kraft catalogue some of the experiments, explorations, accidents and fortuitous events that regularly take place. Each record will feature two compositions created from a collage of works created using guitar, bass, synth, piano, chime and fx.
This first offering treats us to a pair of drifting dreamscapes, both strange, beautiful and organic. Imagine floating down a river in a land of divergent DNA.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Jonny Nash and Suzanne Kraft serve up the first in a series of recordings taken from live jams, improvised sessions and machine experiments. Floral beauty on the A-side, seismic power on the flip.

TRACK LISTING

A1. In Strange Company He Spoke Softly
B1. The Land Through Which We Pass

There's no shortage of heat emanating from the Neapolitan scene right now, and Periodica's latest must have masterpiece comes from the expanded mind of E. Fierro, otherwise known as Space Garage and Mystic Jungle Tribe member Milord. Switching up the format for spectacular 7" to luxurious LP, the Italian keeps the palate reassuringly spacey, tripping us out with library-style synthesis, twisted space echo and killer funk arte facts. Ambient opener "Mnemonic Induction" chimes wonderfully with the retro-futurist sleeve art, bringing to mind Superman's Fortress of Solitude or that trippy crystalline bit in Bill & Ted. "Onironauta" introduces rhythm in the most syrupy cosmic style, serving up spaced out slow mo complete with churning sequencers and tasty FX. We take another plunge into the symphonic and synthetic with the soundscaping of "Sub-aquatic level" before "Virus Of Time" takes us on a subtle glide through sparkling circuitry and dub delay. Flipping the disc, we're instantly unhinged by the library-styled techno of "The Glass Maze", scattershot electro of "Third Layer" and deliriously disorienting synth squelch of "Static Rain". All that remains is for "False Awake" to fling us through an interdimensional portal of sleek sequencing, proggy tones and tripped out FX and we're entirely enlightened by another amazing Periodica release.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Naples in the house! The Italian city is totally killing it at the moment, dominating our staff picks with releases from Nu Guinea, Mystic Jungle Tribe, Space Garage and Whodamanny. Now Milord goes solo on Periodica with a killer LP of spaced out sounds, proggy electro funk and A-grade cosmic. As usual, it's buy on sight tackle.

TRACK LISTING

Mnemonic Induction
Onironauta
Sub-aquatic Level
Virus Of Time
The Glass Maze
Third Layer
Static Rain
False Awake

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2018 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Red smoke coloured Vinyl. 35th anniversary package of remixes, including Kygo club hit.

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10" Black Vinyl single

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"Moules Frites is perhaps the inevitable denouement for two ‘seasoned’ musicians, Rose Elinor Dougall and Louis Eliot. After a brief and ultimately disastrous stint on various European cruise ships, (erasing memories of that final performance aboard the Plymouth to Santander back in 2009, has proved difficult for the few unfortunate witnesses), the unlikely pair retreated to the studio, to produce what was intended as their opus magi, a work of unparalleled ambition and genius. A decade later that somewhat unwieldy project is apparently ‘still cooking’ according to Eliot, so in the meantime they have offered up a couple of stripped back versions of two of their favourite songs from the old set. Recorded to tape, late at night, at Vacant TV Studios by cohort Euan Hinshelwood, these tracks are intended as an homage to two of the greats, Julie London and Barney Kessel."

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Marika's first 2 EPs pressed on vinyl for the first time

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Mayer Hawthorne is an R&B / soul singer who debuted on Stones Throw in 2009 with A Strange Arrangement - The Impressions EP, a collection of covers, was released in 2011 for free online. This RSD exclusive edition brings these covers to vinyl for the first time - Exclusive art for the vinyl by Alvaro Ilizarbe / Freegums - Includes covers of tracks by Chromeo, Average White Band, ELO, and more Tracklisting Side A 1. Mr. Blue Sky 2. Donít Turn The Lights On 3. Youíve Got The Makings Of A Lover Side B 4. Fantasy Girl 5. Little Person 6. Work To Do

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This double LP release includes one of Miles Davis' final great bands including John Scofield on guitar, Bill 'The Other Bill Evans' Evans on saxophones, flute and electric piano, Darryl Jones on bass, Al Foster on drums and percussionist Mino Cinelu. Miles was back in amazing form (ìincandescent and iridescent as ever as Greg Tate noted), when he mounted the stage at the Theatre St-Denis during theFestival International De Jazz De Montreal in July 1983 and this release is the first time this revelatory performance will be released. It has been lovingly mixed and mastered and will be included on CD and digitally in the next edition of the Miles Davis Bootleg series that focuses on the 1981-1985 period, coming later in the year, but the Record Store Day release would be it's exclusive release on vinyl.What It Is includes tracks from that year's release Star People, the Marcus Miller tune Hopscotch and the song Jean-Pierre that appeared on 1982's We Want Miles. The recordings of What It Is and That's What Happened were so well thought of by Miles that he utilized them for his 1984 release Decoy, but in heavily edited form and this release would include the first release of them in complete form. Packaged in beautiful gatefold packaging, the album features liner notes penned by the incomparable music journalist Greg Tate and represent some of his final writing.

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Opaque Pink Coloured LP Vinyl - M.E.B. (formerly Miles Electric Band) led by Vince Wilburn, Jr collects a progressive All-Star ensemble featuring Miles Davis alumni and the players Miles inspired. This brand new, never-released studio recording captures a multi-generational whoís who of acclaimed artists performing new Miles-inspired compositions. Two tracks of the five on the album include unreleased trumpet performances by Miles and the album, produced by Miles' alumni Lenny White and Wilburn, features music legends including Ron Carter, Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke, Donald Harrison, Darryl Jones, Vernon Reid and John Scofield. This album is dedicated to the memory of Wallace Roney and Bernard Wright and contains some of their final recordings. The cover is an original painting from artist and Milesí associate Mikel Elam. Pressed on hot pink vinyl, this is the exclusive vinyl release.

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A COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTION OF THE PRE-ATTACK OF THE GREY LANTERN ERA SINGLES & B-SIDES, RELEASED ON LP FOR THE FIRST TIME FOR RECORD STORE DAY 2023.



In 1995, Mansun signed to the legendary record label Parlophone (home to The Beatles & Radiohead) & headed to the studio to record their seminal #1 album 'Attack Of The Grey Lantern'



The debut album topped the charts & remains one of the classic brit pop albums of the 90's. Formed in Chester in 1994, the band wrote & released a collection of songs before the album sessions, released on CD/7-inch vinyl leading up to their debut album. Now, for the first time, these pre- Grey Lantern tracks has been compiled on this essential album - 'Before The Grey Lantern'.



Included in the compilation is 'Take It Easy Chicken' (1995 Original Self Released Version), the band's first ever single & a song Mansun famously closed sets with, right up until they disbanded in 2003. Elsewhere on the record, stand- out moments include tracks from the bands One, Two, Three, Four & Five EP's & Bsides from the 'Stripper Vicar' & 'Wide Open Space' singles.



The exclusive LP is available as a Record Store Day 2023 release on black vinyl.



Kscope, having acquired this impressive catalogue, are running a thorough reissue series that delves into a treasure trove of previously unreleased audio & visual material, including the much- awaited 21st- anniversary remaster of their experimental Top 10 album 'Six', which jumped back into the UK charts in 2019, as #1 Vinyl album, #5 Indie album, #12 Physical album & #36 Album. Meanwhile the label's reissue of 'Attack Of The Grey Lantern' reached #28 in the UK album chart & ultimate 25- disc box set 'Closed For Business' (which chronicled the band's entire career) gained critical acclaim upon its release in 2020 with Record Collector describing it as a "truly monolithic collection".

TRACK LISTING

Take It Easy Chicken (1995 Original Self Released Version )
Flourella
The Greatest Pain
The Edge
Rebel Without A Quilt ( 2018 Remaster )
No One Knows Us
The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail
Skin Up Pin Up
Ski Jump Nose
Things Keep Falling Off Buildings
Lemonade Secret Drinker ( Acoustic Version - 2018 Remaster )
Drastic Sturgeon
Moronica
The Most To Gain

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First time on vinyl for the gorgeous 'Late December', with a second LP featuring rare recordings from her Live Acoustic LA tour in 2006, the package includes new liner notes and a download of the studio album and live show. An album thatís broader than Broadway, a panoramic view of life, love and loss filled with drama and theatricality. Plus a live set thatís heart-on-sleeve time, bringing together songs from Lone Justice, plus covers of the traditional country anthem 'The World Is Not My Home', Richard Thompson's 'Has He Got A Friend For Me' and three songs that show the bittersweet beauty of her brother Bryan MacLeanís song writing. In total, it's Kurt Weill, Springsteen, itís the million-selling global hit 'A Good Heart' delivered by the songwriter herself in all its Phil Spector-like baroque beauty.

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Metronomy’s last studio album "Small World" revisited : new version of each track with a guest . This 1 x Black LP will be the only physical edition and features an exclusive artwork. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Life And Death - Metronomy X Porij
A2. Things Will Be Fine - Metronomy X PPJ
A3. It’s Good To Be Back - Metronomy X Panic Shack
A4. Loneliness On The Run - Metronomy X Nadeem Din Gibisi & Tony Njoku
B1. Love Factory - Metronomy X Katy J Pearson
B2. I Lost My Mind - Metronomy X Jessica Winter
B3. Right On Time - Metronomy X Haich Ber Na
B4. Hold Me Tonight - Metronomy X Bolis Pupul
B5. I Have Seen Enough - Metronomy X Sebastien Tellier

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Denton, TX indie folk-rock pioneers Midlake announce their first catalogspanning double live album, ‘Live At The Roundhouse’.

Recorded at London’s historic Roundhouse in April 2022, the album includes material from their latest album For The Sake Of Bethel Woods, fan favorites from 2013’s exploratory Antiphon, dark psych-folk thickets of 2010’s The Courage of Others, and the highly wondrous and critically acclaimed modern classics of 2006’s The Trials of Van Occupanther.

A pivotal city to the band’s success and their dedicated fanbase, London was the obvious show to record during their most recent tour. Midlake’s Eric Pulido shares, “Since our early days, London has been like a second home. We’ve been embraced so warmly all of these years and knew our show at The Roundhouse would serve as the perfect night to celebrate our 20-year relationship with our first live album.”

A long overdue retrospective, Live at Roundhouse includes 75+ minutes of music including Midlake classics “Roscoe,” “The Old and the Young,” “Head Home,” and “Acts of Man,” featuring vocals from singer/songwriter Bess Atwell.

The packaging showcases a gorgeous matte-board double album, printed on Translucent Red (Side A) and Translucent Orange (Side B) 180-gram vinyl, with expansive artwork by photographer Andy Little.

‘Live At The Roundhouse’ is a true collector's item for any fan of the band.

TRACK LISTING

Commune
Bethel Woods
Glistening
We Gathered In Spring
Young Bride
Acts Of Man
Children Of The Ground
Antiphon
Aurora Gone
Meanwhile…
Feast Of Carrion
Roscoe
Noble
The Old And The Young
Head Home

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 22ND ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.



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First time on vinyl in at least 30 years, this underground collectable from producer Bunny Lee features early '70s productions with Max Romeo The album was originally distributed by (VP Records family) Chin Randy's in North America.

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'Faithfull Forever' is a 1966 studio album by Marianne that was only issued in the United States. This RSD pressing marks its first U.K release and it has not been re-issued on vinyl in the U.S. In 2024 Marianne celebrates her 60th anniversary in music, and for fans of her Decca catalogue ëFaithfull ForeverÖí is a must. The album is a defining moment of the baroque pop sound and features some of Marianneís best 60ís performances with interpretations of songs by writers particularly suited to her interpretive gifts. Standout compositions include ëWith You In Mindí by Jackie De Shannon who had previously written ëCome And Stay With Meí for her, Donovan contributes ëIn The Night Timeí aka ëHampstead Incidentí which was released 6 months in advance of his own recording, Bob Lindís ëCountingí arranged by Jack Nitzsche and ëTomorrowís Callingí written for her by Eric Woolfson later of the Alan Parsonís project. The album features some unexpected song choices from Marianne including a pop arrangement of Ewan MacCollís ëThe First Time Ever I Saw Your Faceí originally recorded for her second folk LP ëNorth Country Maidí, her reading of the Love theme from ëThe Umbrellas of Cherbourgí soundtrack performed in the original French, and a foray into jazz on the Herzog Jr / Kitchins classic ëSome Other Springí which will be a revelation to those who only know Marianne as a singer of folk pop. This track along with ëLucky Girlí by Les Reed and Barry Mason and Norma Tanegaís ëIím The Skyí have never been released in the UK, and are still unavailable elsewhere. 7 of the albums 12 tracks are also appearing on vinyl for the first time since the original release.All tracks have been remastered from the original tapes by Andrew Batt, and this special RSD release comes with detailed sleeve notes featuring exclusive commentary by Marianne herself and new artwork based on the original sleeve shot by the master French photographer Jean-Marie Perier.

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5-song stripped-back EP featuring guest appearances from Manchester Orchestra, Bully, and Mannequin Pussy.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

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For Recordstore Day 2024 Universal Music Recordings and Virgin Records will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the album ëMonty Python Live At Drury Laneí. Inspired by Terry Gilliamís unmistakable animations and graphics, the original artwork was created by Kate Hepburn (who later created visuals for Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones) and has been adapted for a first release on picture disc by Darren Evans and Holly Gilliam, who were also responsible for 2019 ëLife Of Brianí RSD release.Following the success of four studio albums ñ ëMonty Pythonís Flying Circusí (1970), ëAnother Monty Python Recordí (1971), ëMonty Pythonís Previous Recordí (1972), and ëThe Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchiefí (1973) ñ ëMonty Python Live At Drury Laneí was recorded in March 1974 on the last night of a sell-out four week-run at the London theatre. It peaked at No. 19 on the UK album chart that July, where it nestled between Marvin Hamlischís soundtrack to The Sting, and the debut album from Bad Company.The album features live versions of sketches made famous on the BBC TV progamme Monty Pythonís Flying Circus, written and performed by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terr Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, with support from Lyn Ashley and Neil Innes. This 50th anniversary celebration can only mean that the following message, that appeared on the original 1974 artwork, was a little premature: ìThis could be, but by no means definitely, perhaps almost your very last chance but one to hear some of these classic rib-ticklers, before they are all handed over to the British Museum archives (Loopy and Dappy Things Department).î

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“The letter X marks the spot, crosses over, literally with a cross. It’s the former, the ex-. The ex-lover known simply as “an ex”. Ex- is the latin prefix meaning “out”. Exterior, an exit. Extraordinary. Excellent. It’s exciting. Generation X. X-files. X is the unknown. X is Extreme“.

Extreme is Molly Nilsson’s tenth studio album. Recorded in 2019 and throughout the 2020 global pandemic at home in Berlin, Extreme is a departure for Nilsson, an explosion of angry love. It’s an album of anthems for the jilted generation, soaked with joy and offering solace, bristling with distorted, Metal guitars and planet-sized choruses that bring light to the dark centre of the galaxy. It’s an album of the times, by the times and for the people. It’s a record about power. About how to fight it, how to take it and how to share it.

Absolute Power explodes with massive guitars, double kick beats and the instantly iconic line “It’s me versus the black hole at the centre of the galaxy.” Nilsson’s performance itself portrays absolute power in its confidence but the song is a call-to-arms, an entreaty to grasp the here and now, to take the power back. It’s Nilsson pacing the ring and we’re instantly in her corner. Earth Girls takes familiar Molly Nilsson themes - female empowerment and subverting the patriarchy - but casually throws in one of the choruses of her career. “Women have no place in this world” she sings, but it’s the world that isn’t good enough. Stadium-sized but still warmly hazy, Earth Girls has its fists in the air, glorifying in harmony, almost ecstatic in its feeling good. Nilsson’s Springsteen-level conviction and righteousness bleeds through the speaker cones, the cognitive dissonance between the song’s cadences and angry lyrics redolent of Bruce in his prime. Female empowerment isn’t always an angry energy on Extreme, however. On Fearless Like A Child, Nilsson’s anthem to the female body and women’s sovereignty of it, she croons over a mid-80s blue-eyed Soul groove. It sets a nocturnal scene as the narrator surveys her past and her surroundings. Before we’re fully submerged in a dreamlike, Steve McQueen-era Prefab Sprout poem to learning from your mistakes the song erupts into one of those lines only Molly Nilsson can get away with: “I love my womb, come inside I feel so alive” she fervently sings. Against the backdrop of ever-encroaching, conservative rulings on women’s reproductive rights in places like Texas, it’s simultaneously angry and full of love.

Every song on Extreme is a gleaming gem in a pouch of jewels. On Kids Today, Nilsson is the voice of wisdom, archly commenting on the eternal struggle between youth and authority. Wisdom infuses Sweet Smell Of Success with a transcendent love that forgives the narrator’s shortcomings and celebrates the moment, it’s a letter to the author from the author that asks “what is success” and concludes that this is it, this song, this moment. It’s a rare moment of simple reflection that is generous in its insight to Nilsson’s inner life. “Success” is a tool of power and we don’t need it… We need power tools and there are moments on Extreme where it feels like Nilsson is showing us how to find them. It's an open conversation through out Extreme. She’s a warm, comforting presence through out the album and specially on these songs of encouragement, songs perhaps sang to a younger Molly Nilsson or, really, to whomever needs to hear them. “They’ll praise your efforts, they’ll call you slurs a rebel, a master, an amateur / Merely with your own existence, you already offer your resistance.” On Avoid Heaven she’s even more direct, pleading with us to avoid concepts of purity and to embrace the glorious, ebullient, emotional mess we’re often in as a method of upending the power structures who need things to be perfect.

They Will Pay brings back the big, distorted power chords in the form of a agit-punk, pop slammer. Of course, when Molly Nilsson does punk pop we get the catchiest chorus this side of The Bangles or The Nerves. It’s rendered in an off the cuff, throwaway manner that is just perfect in its roughness. However, it’s on Pompeii that Nilsson delivers the album’s epic, emotional heartbreaker. Like 1995 on Nilsson’s album Zenith, or Days Of Dust on Twenty Twenty, the lyrics of Pompeii are heavy with a transcendent sadness, an aching poetry that cuts to the truth of the heart like the best Leonard Cohen lines, though here delivered with an uplifting, life-affirming love. It contains the most personal moments of Extreme, a song lit by the dying embers of romance. Yet it’s here where the alchemy at the base of all Nilsson’s best work is found. Turning small nuggets of personal truth into big, generous universal moments that invite everyone to cry, to love and to fight the power. In an album of jewels, it might be the shining star.

Molly Nilsson’s biggest, boldest and most vital album to date, Extreme is about power. Against the love of power and for the power of love.

TRACK LISTING

1. Absolute Power
2. Earth Girls
3. Fearless Like A Child
4. Kids Today
5. Intermezzo
6. Sweet Smell Of Success
7. Obnoxiously Talented
8. Avoid Heaven
9. Take Me To Your Leader
10. They Will Pay
11. Pompeii

Michael Price, one of the UK’s most sought after composers (Unforgotten, Sherlock, Dracula), releases the original soundtrack from director Craig Roberts’ (Submarine, Just Jim) latest feature Eternal Beauty, starring Sally Hawkins.

The Eternal Beauty soundtrack will be released on vinyl as the 73rd Dinked Edition, exclusive to the Dinked network of the UK’s best independent record shops.

The 16 track Première edition LP - exclusive to the Dinked network - is a limited edition on blue vinyl with multi-colour splatter and includes a signed and numbered print.

It becomes available to pre-order from October 2nd, coinciding with the cinema release and on demand première of the film. It will also be available exclusively on Bandcamp from the same date, before arriving on all other digital platforms in November.

Recorded and mixed by Andrew Dudman at Abbey Road Studios and The Control Room.
Mastered by Oli Morgan at Abbey Road Mastering.

Price’s score, as his so often do, serves as a narrator, a character helping to guide us through the true highs and lows of Jane’s (Sally Hawkins) rarely uneventful life. Price’s signature sweeping strings, underpinned by piano and a beautifully restrained use of sound design ensures that whilst the score drives the story forwards it never distracts from that which is unfolding before our eyes.

“A soundtrack that provides the rocket fuel for a story that unzips our understanding of ’normal’ " Adrian Bates, Eternal Beauty Producer

When Jane (Sally Hawkins) is dumped at the altar she has a breakdown and spirals into a chaotic world, where love (both real and imagined) and family relationships collide with touching and humorous consequences.

The reality we see through Jane’s eyes is vividly different, heightened in the film by the stylized palette, camera work and intoxicating score - a reality that the film celebrates and treats with dignity, humour and affection.

On writing the music, Michael Price explains:

"Finding a musical voice for Jane was a little daunting at first. Craig Roberts' kaleidoscopic writing, and Sally Hawkins' blazing performance seemed to fill so much of the air around me, that the first few notes to emerge were tiny and bird-like. In fact, there is literally bird-song, an Irish nightingale, that stayed in the score, early in the film when Jane sits and feeds the pigeons in the park. That became a key to unlocking Jane's interior world, as did using snippets of her vocalisations, which became percussion instruments and stretched into more ambient pads. Once I had opened the door to her world, though, the music came tumbling out - rich, romantic, delicate and tender, and sometimes terrifying. All of it brought into life by the writing and performance, and the opportunity to celebrate Jane's "superpower", as Craig described it.”

Shot in and around writer/director Craig Robert’s native South Wales, the inspiration for the character of Jane at the heart of Eternal Beauty came from people Craig was close to when growing up. He explains “The character came fully formed. I just kind of knew those people, to be honest.

On the recording, Michael Price recalls:

When we finally recorded the orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, I was touched to see that Craig had brought some of his family down to listen too. I think this is an incredibly personal film for him, and there was something about hearing the orchestra sounding majestic and noble, which seemed as if we had done musical justice to both the characters, and the people who had inspired their creation."

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's something inherently soundtracky about Michael Price's work for the decidedly soundtracky Erased Tapes records, so it's no giant surprise that this soundtrack of his for Craig Roberts' 'Eternal Beauty'. It's the perfect score, and displays wonderfully how talented a composer Price is.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. A Walk And A Wedding
2. Eternal Beauty
3. Different Dose
4. Where Have You Been
5. Cannibals
6. Beauty Pageant
7. Marry Me

Side B
8. Pot Plant
9. Unpacking
10. Making You Better
11. The Other Side
12. Towards The Light
13. Time To Go
14. More Friends Than You
15. Nice Or Really Nice?
16. The End

The accomplished and uniquely characteristic world-builder Mart Avi delivers his most complete body of work yet with Vega Never Sets. His fifth full-length solo release, a record of abstract soul and spectral electronic textures finds him evolving further into a state of hyperkinetism and timeless grandeur. Like the great storyteller, Mart Avi blends the familiar and comforting with the new and the unpalatable, to seduce the unawares with a bold new record that veers between folkloristic tech-noir and melodic, post-digital ballads; a movement of electronic pulses, gently held together by his finely composed worlds. Pulling at deeper contexts, he expresses an unstrained defiance of gravity through his playful character — one that is smartly dressed, charming and full of boyish anarchism. As The Quietus wrote, Avi is “like a David Foster Wallace of pop”, cerebral and hot-blooded, with plenty of fervour and a lust for living.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Porridge Bullet play host to Mart Avi's fifth full length solo release, revelling in every second of its uncanny beauty. Reminiscent of both the chamber pop of Dutch Uncles, James Blake's electronic ballads and the synthesised shimmer of Rex Orange County, this is Avi's most honed release to date.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Feather
A2. Wire
A3. Soul Reaver
A4. Avirex
A5. Firefly
B1. The Fifth Season
B2. Spark
B3. Endsville
B4. Milton
B5. Vega

Originally released as one side of a split E.P on Firewire Recordings back in 2002 “Venting Steam” and “Solid Gear” get a fresh remaster on Varial Records.

Featuring alongside are two additional unreleased tracks created and recorded at The Cube in the same time period, "Muted Point" and "Tallon Drive" provide a more lo-fi 4/4 techno workout. Inspired by the other worlds we escape into through sci-fi and video game culture. Both original tracks have become sought artefacts amongst devote techno and electro collectors whilst the new ones on offer here have plenty of kinetic energy nestled within their grooves to power a dancefloor when the doors reopen in June. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Venting Steam
A2. Solid Gear
B1. Muted Point
B2. Tallon Drive

Maria McKee has been out of the proverbial spotlight for some time, her creative talents re-engaging with her first love of acting, performance and the musical tapestries that accompany such activities.

Candid and passionate, she’s, quite simply, had a beatific awakening and in a crescendo of prose, her new album ‘La Vita Nuova’ unlocks her story, sketching out her journey that started many moons ago when she sang in her bedroom with her older brother, the late, great musical innovator Bryan MacLean. Along the way she retooled punk and country in Lone Justice, released a string of evocative and eclectic solo records, wrote chart topping hits and touched millions of people before seemingly disappearing…

Some of the new album sounds like modern show tunes for musical extravaganzas that are still to be penned.

‘Little Beast’ is almost Disney-esque and ‘I Should Have Looked Away’ has a real stagey feel to it. Title track ‘La Vita Nouva’ and ‘Let Me Forget’ are all beautifully written stories of relationships in various states of evolution or disrepair. And, ‘However Worn’ is like a slice of American gothic.

A homage to new life, the completion of ‘La Vita Nuova’ saw Maria’s life entirely change and illustrates an important period in the artist’s life.

“It’s a really personal record; all I can do is tell my story. People can find their own meaning in it, taking them deeper, perhaps, into something they need to experience, I think that’s what music and art does.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
A1 Effigy Of Salt
A2 Page Of Cups
A3 Let Me Forget
A4 I Should Have Looked Away

Side B:
B1 Right Down To The Heart Of London
B2 La Vita Nuova
B3 Little Beast

Side C:
C1 Courage
C2 Ceann Bró
C3 The Last Boy

Side D:
D1 I Never Asked
D2 I Just Want To Know That You're Alright
D3 Weatherspace
D4 However Worn

Where once was Superwolf, now roam Superwolves, the new album and demon spawn of Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy

The songs that make up Superwolves, the duo’s second album and first since 2005’s Superwolf, go boldly into undreamed-of places, and go deep, as Matt and Bonny take all the musics they know to make songs that penetrate. In classic Garcia-Hunter style, Sweeney and the ‘Prince’ first work separately, finding a path to each other in their solitary imaginings. Bonnie lyric sets delivered to Matt spark Sweeney’s guitar brain; chords and a melody are shaped, recorded fast and loose and sent back to the Prince, then the two parties meet up to sing, stitch, strengthen and finally perform them together in front of a small unsuspecting audience. Then new sets of lyrics are sent, animated and played in a high wire style until the shared songs and experiences are ready to commit to record. This is just the beginning of their fusion process, as words imply vocalizations to counter and support, and guitar lines suggest harmonic fields to subtly push into. In this process, a new creature grows out of the old one. In this name of this partnership, the guitar shares an open and fluid space with the vocals, the voices sing with the guitars—every moment in the life of Superwolves is an extravaganza, guided only by its need.

“The chemistry comes from lives, lived separately, in which music is crucial sustenance. We listen with gratitude and awe, knowing that we belong in there. We construct our dream selves with the faith that these selves will have their chance at life. We know what we are capable of doing and just need each other’s support to bring the imagined languages to life.” — Will Oldham

“I love the challenge to write melodies for Will to sing. Struggle with that challenge too. Knowing that Will’s voice will elevate the melody makes me reach higher and dig deeper for the tune. Makes me want to match it with a guitar part that holds his voice like a chalice holds wine (or blood, or whatever is needed to live the best life). I also love singing harmonies and responses to this voice of his.” — Matt Sweeney

As far as this record, as in when and how it came together, the two man crew started working on it five years ago. The first actual session, however, went down about a year ago at Brooklyn’s Strange Weather and the next took place at the Butcher Shoppe in Nashville. Sweeney oversaw the mixing of the Brooklyn sessions with Oldham overseeing the Nashville mixes. On the album, Sweeney sings harmonies along, with, and around his favorite singer, and plays all electric, acoustic, and bass guitars, joined in places by David Ferguson on stand-up bass, Mike Coltun on electric bass, Mdou Moctar on electric lead, Ahmoudou Madassane on rhythm guitar, Souleyman Ibrahim, Ryan Sawyer and Peter Townsend on drums and Mike Rojas on keys. The Bonnie ‘Prince’ sings. Does he ever. And Superwolves rules over all.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This is a perfect collaborative effort from Sweeney & Oldham here, offsetting BPB's sometimes saccharine vocal style with Sweeney's brilliantly dynamic guitar playing. There are moments of stunning minimalistic bliss ('Resist The Urge') or more psychedelic grooving force ('Hall Of Death') but this is a constantly confounding and rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Make Worry For Me
2. Good To My Girls
3. God Is Waiting
4. Hall Of Death
5. Shorty’s Ark
6. I Am A Youth Inclined To Ramble
7. My Popsicle
8. Watch What Happens
9. Resist The Urge
10. There Must Be A Someone
11. My Blue Suit
12. My Body Is My Own
13. You Can Regret What You Have Done
14. Not Fooling

Where once was Superwolf, now roam Superwolves, the new album and demon spawn of Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy

The songs that make up Superwolves, the duo’s second album and first since 2005’s Superwolf, go boldly into undreamed-of places, and go deep, as Matt and Bonny take all the musics they know to make songs that penetrate. In classic Garcia-Hunter style, Sweeney and the ‘Prince’ first work separately, finding a path to each other in their solitary imaginings. Bonnie lyric sets delivered to Matt spark Sweeney’s guitar brain; chords and a melody are shaped, recorded fast and loose and sent back to the Prince, then the two parties meet up to sing, stitch, strengthen and finally perform them together in front of a small unsuspecting audience. Then new sets of lyrics are sent, animated and played in a high wire style until the shared songs and experiences are ready to commit to record. This is just the beginning of their fusion process, as words imply vocalizations to counter and support, and guitar lines suggest harmonic fields to subtly push into. In this process, a new creature grows out of the old one. In this name of this partnership, the guitar shares an open and fluid space with the vocals, the voices sing with the guitars—every moment in the life of Superwolves is an extravaganza, guided only by its need.

“The chemistry comes from lives, lived separately, in which music is crucial sustenance. We listen with gratitude and awe, knowing that we belong in there. We construct our dream selves with the faith that these selves will have their chance at life. We know what we are capable of doing and just need each other’s support to bring the imagined languages to life.” — Will Oldham

“I love the challenge to write melodies for Will to sing. Struggle with that challenge too. Knowing that Will’s voice will elevate the melody makes me reach higher and dig deeper for the tune. Makes me want to match it with a guitar part that holds his voice like a chalice holds wine (or blood, or whatever is needed to live the best life). I also love singing harmonies and responses to this voice of his.” — Matt Sweeney

As far as this record, as in when and how it came together, the two man crew started working on it five years ago. The first actual session, however, went down about a year ago at Brooklyn’s Strange Weather and the next took place at the Butcher Shoppe in Nashville. Sweeney oversaw the mixing of the Brooklyn sessions with Oldham overseeing the Nashville mixes. On the album, Sweeney sings harmonies along, with, and around his favorite singer, and plays all electric, acoustic, and bass guitars, joined in places by David Ferguson on stand-up bass, Mike Coltun on electric bass, Mdou Moctar on electric lead, Ahmoudou Madassane on rhythm guitar, Souleyman Ibrahim, Ryan Sawyer and Peter Townsend on drums and Mike Rojas on keys. The Bonnie ‘Prince’ sings. Does he ever. And Superwolves rules over all.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This is a perfect collaborative effort from Sweeney & Oldham here, offsetting BPB's sometimes saccharine vocal style with Sweeney's brilliantly dynamic guitar playing. There are moments of stunning minimalistic bliss ('Resist The Urge') or more psychedelic grooving force ('Hall Of Death') but this is a constantly confounding and rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Make Worry For Me
2. Good To My Girls
3. God Is Waiting
4. Hall Of Death
5. Shorty’s Ark
6. I Am A Youth Inclined To Ramble
7. My Popsicle
8. Watch What Happens
9. Resist The Urge
10. There Must Be A Someone
11. My Blue Suit
12. My Body Is My Own
13. You Can Regret What You Have Done
14. Not Fooling

Minds expanded and bodies soothed by Krakatau’s deep spiritual eruptions, Growing Bin take us back to the beginning with three impressionistic jazz landscapes from the magical Merge. Inspired by childhood memories of an Iranian oasis, Jo Lienen let his fingers breeze over the keys like a warm shamal, leading him back through dusty streets and covered markets to his long forgotten Kashan. As the needle nestles into the well pressed groove we gaze through Lienen‘s eyes upon an ancient beauty, the sapphire skies and tan sands which surround the endless domes and lush gardens of his childhood home. Focusing on the bustling market in the morning sun, ‚Part I‘ races down the narrow alleys to a bright bossa rhythm, weaving past the crowds with a swaying bassline and lithe guitar. The soothing air carries the faint heat of spice and the voices of the bazaar, while the delicate piano falls like a warm desert rain. As afternoon prayer leads the crowds to mosque, ‚Part II‘ strolls through the empty streets, following mystical melodies to a moment of trascendent beauty. Hissing snare rolls leap above subtle percussion, carrying the earthy bass and airy piano as emotive guitar drifts through the city like smoke in the wind. A dervish solo erupts with spiritual fervour and the crowds flood back through the streets bringing Kashan back to life once again.
‚Part III‘ finds us at sunset, drinking spiced tea with red dust underfoot. Taking a slower, more sedate pace, this bass led beauty rolls on restrained but rhythmic percussion, flooding the senses with synth harp and dreamy guitar. The music might stop and the mirage may disappear, but thanks to Growing Bin we can visit any time we want.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Basso rounds off a spectacular year of Growing Bin goodness with some brand new material from German jazz troupe Merge. Swapping coastal breeze for the heat of Iran, the desert jazz of 'Kashan' is as warm, refreshing and intoxicating as an afternoon aperitif.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Kashan I
A2. Kashan II
B1. Kashan III

"Naive overlooked New Beat / New Age project from 1989"

Sometimes in life, a certain incentive is needed to convert talent into productivity. As for the case of MKS, the enigmatic and musical disguise of Nicolas Aubard, it was a merely coincidental encounter at the end of the 80s that set the stone rolling. For Nico, it all began in his hometown of Saint-Quentin in Northern France. At a young age, he got obsessed with Japanese and American cartoon culture. Being a devoted collector of cartoon-related toys and widgets, he spent hours watching anime series on TV and creating scale models of science fiction and horror-related sceneries. Growing up in a musical household, young Nico took on stringent training in classical and jazz piano. But, frustrated with the fact of not being the technical virtuoso he wanted to be, he turned away from his training at the age of 16. “I had no choice, as I felt as if my creativity got limited by my piano. That’s when I got drawn into the world of synthesizers.” Not long after, Nico put together a home studio and started to experiment with ambience and sound-inserts. Despite years of experimentation and music making, all Nico’s productions stayed between the 4 walls of his modest home studio. Something that would change in 1988, when Nico bumped into Emmanuel “Manu” Prevost.

“We met on a night out in Lille”, Nico recalls. “I usually just stood by the dj booth, as I wasn’t a good dancer. So instead of throwing shapes at the dancefloor, I started a conversation with the dj, who happened to be Manu. By the end of the night, I handed him a demo tape of the album I was wanting to do.” Propelled by good fate, a fruitful collab happened between Nico and this dj. For Manu, everything also fell in place: “At the time, I was looking for a composer to work on producing a new beat record. As a dj, I often crossed the Belgian border for gigs and this new style was in full explosion over there. I heard Nico’s songs and naively told him: “Let’s make an album”, without knowing how.” Despite the high hopes for the new alliance, the project turned out to be a shot in the dark. “I assumed Manu already had some experience, as he proposed to do the mastering himself. But funnily he only told me after the release of the record that it was his first time too. But you know, we managed.” Not willing to release under his own name, Nico came up with Musical Keyboard System, abbreviated as MKS. The alias was born and the journey ready to take off.

The album finally released in September 1989. After the release, Nico went on a low-key promo tour together with Manu in Northern France. “We aired a video clip on FR3 for two songs, together with a short interview. In their studio, we created a scrimpy décor with some green plants to resemble the Vietnam jungle (as for the track Nam Revelation) and we shot the clip. Manu even lay down behind a screen operating the fog machine.” As a live act, MKS’ career was rather short-lived, with a first and final gig in the Theatre of Saint-Quentin a few months after the release. “In France, we would remain illustrious strangers. Yet in the meantime, our music got played on new age radios in the USA.” After the end of MKS, Nico moved to Paris and Manu took on his military duty. In the army, Manu met movie animator Jacques Rouxel (the man behind French cult series Les Shadoks) and got him in touch with Nico. The duo collaborated with Rouxel on some compositions, before they went their separate ways at last. Nico went on to pursue his childhood dream, as a pioneer in France for integrating 3D animations into classical cartoons. Manu in turn became a producer for feature films.

TRACK LISTING

A1. The New Age Of House
A2. Twilight Zone
B1. Figure
B2. The Dream
B3. Nam Revelation

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2020 RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY AS PART OF THE AUGUST 29TH DROP DAY AT 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Color vinyl. Never before released three track 7" from Mouth Congress, the musical comedy duo of Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini, best known for Kids in the Hall.

Recommended If You Like: Pedro The Lion, The Sea and Cake, David Bazan, Major Murphy, Kurt Vonnegut & Guided by Voices. For ten years now, I’ve understood “Oscillate Wisely” as a play on the Smiths’ instrumental “Oscillate Wildly”--itself, of course, a pun on Morrissey’s muse, Oscar Wilde. This is not to say that anything about Mike Adams and his band reminds me of the Smiths (especially­Morrissey), as much as the idea that rock bands like Mike Adams At His Honest Weight take shape more or less as a thesaurus of past ideas--winking at them, borrowing them like a library book, checking them out from across the room, cloning them.

But the best stuff is more ineffable, far more than just cut-and-paste. There’s a weird grandeur to Adams' music, starting with that fully formed, geekily majestic 2011 debut LP Oscillate Wisely, that I don’t hear in anything else, before or since. A sense that Adams is guiding his listeners toward a cosmic joke so personal, so inscrutable, so funny (“funny”), if you give him your attention. It's in his blood, I think. He's not Oscar Wilde, but a uniquely Midwestern type of deeply sincere romantic and dyed-in-the-wool goofball cast from the mold of Hoosier icons like Letterman and Vonnegut.

He doesn’t want to believe in anything, he didn’t create this body, he­loves­a parade.­ It’s all in fun, but it gets so personal. Onstage, Adams is gregarious and playfully self-effacing, a college town denizen telescoping backwards to the brief early 90s moment when “college rock” entered the corporate suite, and performers forced to become showmen retreated to the comfort of their native tongue: irony.­And­Oscillate Wisely­has demonstrated for a decade that earnestness and sarcasm are as intricately bound in rock and roll's­lingua franca­as hang-ups and chill hangs. I’ve never heard any musician summon everything I love about being from Indiana so perfectly. And I’m­fucking­old. Eric Harvey.

TRACK LISTING

1 Bad Weather
2 Skeletons In The Cloner
3 I Don’t Want To Believe In Anything
4 I’m Not Worried
5 Sunrise
6 Don’t You Blanket When That Happens
7 I Did Not Create This Body
8 IIIIIIIII Love A Parade
9 It’s All Been Done You Said
10 You’ll Have Me As Long… 

The Current Inside”, Marja Ahti's sophomore album for Hallow Ground, plays with the theme of currents - connecting and animating movements in the form of air, water and electricity. It approaches sound as a poetic medium, focusing both on the experience of sound as form and energy and on a loosely narrative arc, suggesting a riddle on the relations between the sounds. It implements alternative as well as intuitive tunings, analog and digital synthesis, recordings of sonorous spaces and vessels, electromagnetic fields transduced into audio, acoustic close-ups of elements in motion and other field recordings. Fluently connecting quite diverse sound sources, Ahti's music lingers in a zone between abstract sonorities and vaguely familiar acoustic environments. The first half of the album consists of ”The Altitudes”, a piece commissioned by Ina GRM for Présences Électronique and Sonic Acts. It was inspired by descriptions of the layers of Earth's atmosphere. Imagining a movement through layers of air, the piece unfolds with a slow intensity, interweaving concrete sounds and closely tuned electronic sonorities.

Traversing the altitudes, a landscape of entangled elements, masses and currents emerges. The air around us has weight and it presses against everything it touches. As gravity pulls it to Earth, it is sensed as pressure. The rotation of the planet, the angle of the sun at any new moment sets the elements in motion in a chain reaction. The other side consists of four shorter pieces. ”The Currents” opens with a dance of trembling charged movements. ”Lost Lake” extracts resonant tones from a trail of close-up recordings of winter environments, while ”Fluctuating Streams” channels streaming air in different forms. The closing track, ”Sundial”, could be construed as the steady turning of the planetary angle towards the sun, unfolding through fragments of everyday activity against the backdrop of piercing, slowly twisting, suspended tone. Marja Ahti (b. 1981) is a musician and composer based in Turku, Finland. Originally from Sweden, Ahti has been a part of the Finnish experimental music scene for more than ten years in different constellations.

TRACK LISTING

1.The Altitudes (20:09)
2.The Currents (04:21)
3.Lost Lake (04:25)
4.Fluctuating Streams (06:12)
5.Sundial (04:43) 

Marina Allen glides on angelic highs, surfing the husky deep; she is one of the great new voices of her generation. Writing songs that carry notes from other realms; these are kitchen table tales about love and fear, the capturing of the wild heart, sketching the breaking of dawn, bringing real life back to life. Every song on stunning debut album ‘Candlepower’ is a tick box of influences, asides, inspirations, quickfire theories, storylines and melodic progressions that galvanise a chemical reaction for each dramatic scene that unfolds on this genre-traversing seven song epic.

One listen to opening track ‘Oh, Louise’ underlines the range of Marina’s talent, it’s a filmic play on words, with an arrangement that’s like a Kate Bush dream sequence. It’s the perfect foil for the plaintive strum of ‘Sleeper Train’, a haunting, folky paean fit for Judee Sill brought up to date with some echoey electric guitar; or the conversational ‘Believer’; with a nod to Joni Mitchell in the lyrics it sounds every bit like Simon And Garfunkel at their Big Apple best listening to the ‘7 O’Clock News’ re-imagined on Sunset. The stuff of legend for a voice that surfs many musical tangents, hovers, and persists, that stings with honesty; morphing from Karen Carpenter’s gentle reverence to Laura Nyro’s soulful grit, moving through the phases like some possessed Dada performance artist before throwing in a melody from Joni at her jazziest or from the close harmonies of the lamented Roches when they flipped out with Robert Fripp. ‘Candlepower’ is a juxtaposition of melodies, an achingly beautiful set of songs set against the clank of the mundane world, a beguiling commentary on the everyday and everywhere. It’s all here, in under 20 minutes… every second counts.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Oh, Louise
A2 Original Goodness
A3 Belong Here
A4 Sleeper Tran
B1 Believer
B2 Ophelia
B3 Reunion

LA-based musician Marina Allen’s spectacular debut proper, and follow up to last years acclaimed 18 minute mini-opus, ‘Candlepower’.

‘Centrifics’ is a joyful collection of observations and questions about the self, the world, and how they interact. Awe-inspiring reflections accompany mesmerizing melodies while Allen’s extraordinary range and depth of singing showcases a wide array of influences from Karen Carpenter to Karen Dalton, from Joanna Newsom to Fiona Apple, from Cate Le Bon to Waxahatchee, via Meredith Monk and the New York avant-garde.

Produced, engineered and mixed by Chris Cohen. Co-engineered by Jonny Kosmo.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Celadon
A2 Getting Better
A3 Or Else
A4 Smoke Bush
A5 Superreality
Side B
B1 New Song Rising
B2 Halfway Home
B3 My Stranger
B4 Foul Weather Jacket Drawing
B5 Gardiner's Island

The third album of powerfully vivid songwriting from Marina Allen. Beautifully orchestrated, highly melodic and delivered with unrivalled lyrical perspective. Across two acclaimed records, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter has ripened a rare harvest, but her third studio album is an arrival home.

Taking fragments and stories from Marina’s past, Eight-Pointed Star deftly weaves together a new future, in what feels for all the world like a glittering, clear-eyed modern classic of alternative folk and Americana. For fans of Aldous Harding, Fiona Apple and Waxahatchee.

Ineffable and timeless, this collection of songs holds a curiosity that’s as open to you as you are to them. Compared to the soaring and swelling compositions of Allen’s second album Centrifics or the innocent tranquillity of Candlepower, the world of Eight Pointed Star is more deeply addressing and open-armed. It favours a type of soul-searching that doesn’t dwell in complications, and is open to answers. Rolling guitars rise and fall with the canyons and dust is kicked-up from the red scarred earth. Allen’s vocals pure and crystalline whilst the instrumentation is rich and bursting with brightness. You can hear contentment radiating from the music, with Chris Cohen’s production offering a full-band affair.

Allen’s affection runs deepest for singers who in her words can really sing, from The Roches to Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsom to Meredith Monk. But these influences vanish like ghosts in the attic when she starts to sing herself. Allen has a voice that stands up to the canon – inimitable – and it’s never sounded more resolute than it does here.

TRACK LISTING

A1 I'm The Same
A2 Deep Fake
A3 Red Cloud
A4 Swinging Doors
A5 Bad Eye Opal
B1 Easy
B2 Love Comes Back
B3 Landlocked
B4 Between Seasons

Two days after his 100th birthday, Marshall Allen started recording New Dawn, his debut solo album. A member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra since 1958, Allen assumed leadership of the band in 1995. Throughout his nearly seventy-year career, Allen has never released a solo album under his own name, and yet, instead of capping such a legendary output, New Dawn seems to herald a new beginning. A love letter to spacetime, it channels a century of musical intelligence into seven tracks, showing Allen at his most protean—freely moving from relaxed, transdimensional palettes to bluesy big band and beyond.

One of music’s vanguard avant-saxophonists, Allen continues to deliver durational feats during the Arkestra’s gigs. Still, the compositional energy contained on New Dawn is striking. Allen was approached with the idea of a solo record by Week-End Records’ Jan Lankisch. The Arkestra’s Knoel Scott — who has lived with Allen at the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra since the 1980s — worked with Allen to pore over the archive of unrecorded material and develop this debut. Scott assembled some of Philadelphia’s brightest jazz stars as well as some Arkestra veterans for the sessions. New Dawn was then recorded over a couple of days in Philadelphia, with additional recordings to be added in the coming weeks and months. The legendary Neneh Cherry will lend her unmistakable voice to the title track “New Dawn”.

Though greatly informed by the philosophy of Sun Ra and his Saturnian teachings—traverse jazz’s traditions, dig deep into spiritual geographies — New Dawn signals Allen as his own singular voice, one that’s swinging and bopping and reflecting into the future, with no sign of stopping. Week-End Records is proud to release this debut solo album by Marshall Allen.

“New Dawn is clearly an extension of Ra’s legacy and sound, but it’s also a masterful endeavour filtered through Allen’s tastes and approach”. – John Morrison, The Wire, November 2024 (cover story)

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A stunning achievement and stylistic continuation of the incomparable legacy of Sun Ra from the great Marshall Allen, with a broadening of the sound into more placid pastures and more pop-based song structures. Beautifully done.

TRACK LISTING

01 Marshall Allen Prologue 00:00:45
02 Marshall Allen African Sunset 00:07:28
03 Marshall Allen / Neneh Cherry New Dawn 00:06:34
04 Marshall Allen Are You Ready 00:05:40
05 Marshall Allen Sonny's Dance 00:05:31
06 Marshall Allen Boma 00:10:22
07 Marshall Allen Angels And Demons At Play 00:04:22

Guitarists Marisa Anderson and William Tyler distil deeply rooted and varied traditions into distinctive voices all their own. Anderson and Tyler are each unyielding in their desire to extend through those traditions and the confines of ‘guitar music’ to craft music at once intimate and expansive, conversational and transcendent.

The duo’s debut collaborative album tethers together their singular voices into unified narratives that glisten, drive and sway. On ‘Lost Futures’, Anderson and Tyler’s guitars dance through lush arrangements and pastoral duets serpentine and reverent. 

‘Lost Futures’ takes its name from writer Mark Fisher’s cultural theory of the loss of potential futures, the hopes and ideals which once felt inevitable but have since been interrupted. Anderson and Tyler’s use of textural drones, rhythmic repetition and harmonic shifts embody the building tensions of uncertainty created by profound loss: loss of life, experience, companionship, compassion. Across ‘Lost Futures’, Anderson and Tyler mold their instruments into breathtaking panoramas of blight and bliss. Each movement contains a dense biome of transportive sound. 

The duo’s music together reckons with mounting pressures as well as the joy of newfound friendship and gratitude for being able to play together. In tandem, Marisa Anderson and William Tyler have composed a work of remarkable breadth, brimming with resplendent odes of solace.

Marisa Anderson and William Tyler are both prolific solo artists. Tyler has also toured with groups including Lambchop and Silver Jews and Marisa has contributed to recordings by Beth Ditto, Sharon Van Etten and Circuit Des Yeux among others. 

‘Lost Futures’ features guests Gisela Rodriguez Fernandez on violin and Patricia Vázquez Gómez playing quijada.

Package features artwork by Sam Smith. LPs include artworked inner-sleeve featuring photography by Marisa Anderson.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Both Marisa Anderson and William Tyler have impeccable form for crafting gorgeous acoustic guitar anthems, ranging from the beautiful simplicity of Anderson's plucked acoustic to Tyler's country-tinged Americana anthems, so I really couldn't imagine a better combination than the two of them. It works perfectly here with each artist's own voice coming through wonderfully while accentuating each-other perfectly.

TRACK LISTING

1. News About Heaven
2. Lost Futures
3. Pray For Rain
4. Something Will Come
5. At The Edge Of The World
6. Hurricane Light
7. Life And Casualty
8. Haunted By Water

‘Still, Here’ emphatically makes the case for Marisa Anderson’s profound artistry, each piece intimately revealing a new aspect of Anderson as a player and as a human being navigating the path laid before her.

Marisa Anderson’s ‘Still, Here’ is for the listener an alchemical salve, the work of a gifted player with an exceptional ability to convey the complexities of the human experience through composition.

Marisa Anderson is one of the most eminent guitarists working today. Her lucid, eloquent approach to guitar music and composition has established her as an unparalleled artist and an insightful, coveted collaborator. Anderson’s work draws on a mosaic of folk musics and lives in conversation with myriad musical traditions.

“[Anderson] the solo guitarist creates truly borderless music, fusing the diverse global traditions she favors without drawing too much attention to the act of juxtaposition.” - Pitchfork

TRACK LISTING

In Dark Water
The Fire This Time
The Low Country
Night Air
Waking
The Crack Where The Light
Gets In
La Llorona
Beat The Drum Slowly

Matt Anniss's critically acclaimed alternative history of UK dance music in the acid house era returns in updated and expanded form. Named by Rolling Stone UK as one of the best books on British music culture, Join The Future puts forward a persuasive new argument about the origins of UK club culture's longrunning love affair with bass. Since the dawn of the 1990s, Britain's dancefloors have moved to a string of styles built around skeletal rhythms and heavy sub-bass, including breakbeat hardcore, jungle, drum & bass, dubstep, UK garage, grime and bassline. Yet another previously overlooked sound pre-dated them all: bleep and bass, or bleep techno, the first distinctly British form of electronic dance music.

Hailing from the West side of St. Louis, Missouri, Mikahl Anthony’s sonic roots spread far across the global Alt-Soul / Hip-Hop scene. A highly soughtafter multidisciplinary artist (who has collaborated with the likes of Mick Jenkins, Chance The Rapper, Joey Purp, Smino & more), as well as being a founding member of Chicago’s THEMpeople collective, he now prepares to unveil his masterful full-length debut ‘MUSE’ via R&S Records.

Accompanied by several beautiful, self-directed film pieces, MUSE is a record with storytelling at its core. Interspersed with commentary from a range of sources telling their stories to Mikhal, whilst collaboratively analysing their personal experiences, it speaks a candid and honest narrative, which reinforce the heartfelt lyrics within. With the project’s name anchored around a dual meaning acronym (1. Ms. Using sensual energy & 2. Making use of seclusion every day). The record is an audio version of docufilm, that creatively interprets the idea of self-therapy, an internal/interpersonal reflection of life experiences that serendipitously connect to Mikahl’s personal romantic relationships. Mikahl explains: ‘I wanted to use a unique style of songwriting, arrangement and filming with the intention of soundtracking my self-development/maturation process’.

On the project’s lasting impression on the listener, Mikahl elaborates ’The exploration of inner truth and vulnerability is key to the future of good music. I want this project to act as symbolism that highlights the mantra that honest approaches and authenticity still has the most value. I also want people to see how important the use of community is when you can connect them to your subject matter...I'd like my audience to observe and engage in their own self-reflections, approaches by way of listening or interacting with the story.’

Drifting to an elevated state of consciousness, ‘MUSE’ is a deeply intoxicating and engrossing listening experience from front to back. From the sliding, kaleidoscopic shadows of opening track ‘La Flare’, via the trepidation-laced atmosphere of ‘Polyamorous’ and the hazy, reverb drenched saxophone notes of LP closer ‘Eddie Kane’ - Mikahl channels moments of joy and pain, infused with spirit enriching instrumentation and gritty textures.

Visual stimuli play an integral role within Mikahl’s music. His songs represent transparency and openness dipped in funk. Layers of soft velvety vocals emerge from jazz harmonies, trap rhythms, and social commentary sourced from voiceovers/excerpts. His creations are the musical representation of documentary films. His art is imagery embodied.

TRACK LISTING

A1. VINTAGE COLLECTION
A2.LA FLARE
A3. DEEP AIN’T IT
A4. SOOTH SAYINGS
A5. MOLLYAMORY
B1. OVER THE PHONE
B2. CANDYMAN
B3. SUPANATURAL
B4. BRICK THAT BROKETHE WINDOW
B5. SPACE BLUE
B6. BUTTAFLIES & BROWNIES

A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon. Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone. A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongside Shuji Terayama; a sitar-led psychedelic wig-out runs into a killer excursion in modal, spiritual jazz. Existentialism and noir, mystery and allure, hurt and hauteur. With excellent notes by Alan Cummings and the fabulous photographs of Hitoshi Jin Tamura. Hotly recommended.

TRACK LISTING

Nemuru No Ga Kowai
Chicchana Toki Kara (Live)
Blue Spirit Blues
Fushiawase To Lu Na No Neko
Govinda
Chicchana
Toki Kara
Boro To Furutetsu
Aisa Nai No Aise Nai No
Uramado
Kamome
Machi
Gogo
Zenkamono No
Christmas
Hikkoshi
Cabaret
Konna Fūni Sugite Iku No
Nara
Onna
Yuki Ga Furu

Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke joins the Hoodna Orchestra, Tel Aviv’s number one Afro funk collective, melding his enchanting vibraphone playing with their brass heavy force across seven original compositions that play tribute to the classic Mulatu sound while forging fresh paths. Produced by and featuring Dap-King Neal Sugarman, the results are gritty, yet majestic, soulful and uplifting.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tension
2. Major
3. Hatula
4. Yashan
5. Delilah
6. Dung Gate

Strut present the official reissue of a landmark album in the field of African music, Mulatu Astatke’s ‘Mulatu Of Ethiopia’ from 1972. Recorded in New York, the album arrived at a time when Astatke had begun to master the delicate fusion of styles needed to create Ethio jazz. “I left the UK for America and studied at Berklee College in Boston. I learnt the technical aspects of jazz and gained a beautiful understanding of many different types of music. That’s where I got my tools. Berklee really shook me up.”

Journeying regularly to the Big Apple to play and watch live shows at the Cheetah, the Palladium and the Village Gate, Astatke met producer Gil Snapper on the circuit. “Gil was a nice and very interesting guy. He produced music and worked with all kinds of musicians.” The meeting would lead to a series of albums on Snapper’s Worthy label, Astatke began to hone his sound, infusing funk and Azmari “chik- chikka” rhythms into the mix. Returning to a downtown Manhattan studio with Snapper and working with some of the city’s top young jazz and latin session players, ‘Mulatu Of Ethiopia’ began to take shape. “We rehearsed for 3-4 weeks,” remembers Astatke. “it took them a while to get the right feeling in the music.”

The resultant album represented the first fully formed document of Astatke’s trademark Ethio jazz sound. It features ‘Kulunmanqueleshi’, ‘Dewel’, and ‘Kasalefku-Hulu’, tracks that Mulatu would return to regularly on singles and in live shows, the Ethio- Latin workout ‘Chifara’ and the self-titled groover ‘Mulatu’ (“I wanted to make a track for.... myself!”).

TRACK LISTING

A1. Mulatu
A2. Mascaram Setaba
A3. Dewel
B1. Kulunmanqueleshi
B2. Kasalefkut-hulu
B3. Munaye
B4. Chifara

In celebration of the label's 25th anniversary, Strut have released a special edition of a landmark album within the realm of African music - Mulatu Astatke's 'Mulatu Of Ethiopia’. Recorded in New York in 1972, this pivotal album marks a juncture in Astatke's musical journey when he adeptly fused various styles to craft the distinctive genre known as Ethio-jazz.

For this special edition, the release features the original stereo mix of the full album, as well as a special ‘mono-mix’ of each track retrieved from the original 2" tapes, pressed on opaque white vinyl 2LP.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mulatu (Stereo Mix)
2. Mascaram Setaba (Stereo Mix)
3. Dewel (Stereo Mix)
4. Kulunmanqueleshi (Stereo Mix)
5. Kasalefkut-Hulu (Stereo Mix)
6. Munaye (Stereo Mix)
7. Chifara (Stereo Mix)
8. Mulatu (Mono Mix)
9. Mascaram Setaba (Mono Mix)
10. Dewel (Mono Mix)
11. Kulunmanqueleshi (Mono Mix)
12. Kasalefkut-Hulu (Mono Mix)
13. Munaye (Mono Mix)
14. Chifara (Mono Mix)

Vibraphone and keyboard player, master arranger and bandleader, Mulatu Astatke is one of the all-time greats of Ethiopian music and the creator of his own original music form, Ethio jazz. Through the acclaimed Ethiopiques album series and through featuring on the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, his music has belatedly reached a global audience and a new, younger generation of fans. In November of last year, he recorded an inspired new album with London psych jazz band The Heliocentrics for Strut’s ‘Inspiration Information’ studio collaboration series. Now, Strut are proud to present, for the first time anywhere, the definitive Mulatu career retrospective covering his landmark ‘60s and ‘70s recordings.

Mulatu is a true pioneer of African music. He was the first Ethiopian musician of his generation to travel extensively and to record abroad – he studied in the UK in Wales and at Trinity College Of Music in London, cutting his teeth on the buoyant London jazz scene of the early ‘60s. He became the first African student to attend Harvard and he lived and recorded in New York, developing a unique sound that fused Western jazz with traditional Ethiopian melodies.

Tracing the progression of his Ethio jazz experiments with full access to all of the labels for whom he recorded, Mulatu Astatke: New York-Addis-London is the essential Mulatu. Covering his first recordings in the UK during 1965, his groundbreaking fusions for the small Worthy label in New York and his key ‘70s recordings back in Addis on Amha, Phillips and Axum, the album features comprehensive sleeve notes by Miles Cleret, boss of the excellent Soundway Records imprint, and rare, previously unseen photos from Mulatu’s personal archive.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Yèkèrmo Sèw
A2. I Faram Gami I Faram
A3. Shagu
A4. Emnete
A5. Mulatu
B1. Yègelé Tezeta
B2. Asiyo Bellema
B3. Ebo Lala
B4. Fikratchin
B5. Yefikir Tizita
C1. Dèwèl
C2. Yèkatit
C3. Girl From Addis Ababa
C4. Mascaram Setaba
C5. Ené Alantchie Alnorem
D1. Nétsanét
D2. Kasalèfkut Hulu
D3. Wubit
D4. Lanchi Biye
D5. Tezeta

Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, one of the preeminent musicians, orchestrators, arrangers and composers of our time, presents his magnum opus. 12 years in the making, ‘Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1’ comprises three and a half hours of music spanning jazz, modern classical and ambient.

Composed, arranged and produced by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson with contributions from 50+ friends and family including Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, DOMi & JD Beck, Jeff Parker, Carlos Niño, Austin Peralta, Bennie Maupin, Lara Somogyi, Jamael Dean, Jamire Williams, Burniss Travis II, Deantoni Parks, Brandon Coleman, Marcus Gilmore and more.

For fans of Flying Lotus, Floating Points with LSO & Pharoah Sanders, Kamasi Washington, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ólafur Arnalds.

Miguel joined an all-star lineup at the Hollywood Bowl recently, to conduct the Los Angeles Studio Orchestra in a performance of ‘Promises’, the acclaimed 2021 album recorded by Floating Points with the late tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders.

Miguel has released music on cult indie labels such as Ninja Tune, Kindred Spirits and International Anthem.

He is best known to hip-hop fans for his stunning orchestral tribute to the music of James ‘Dilla’ Yancey - ‘Mochilla Presents Timeless: Suite for Ma Dukes’ in 2009.

TRACK LISTING

Disc 01:
1. Kiseki
2. Persinette
3. Narva
4. Eudaimonia
5. Porpita
6. Nazo No Tenkai (Ernok)
7. Mångata
8. Ano Yo
9. Zarra
10. Kairos (Amor Fati)
11. Magnolia (Aisling)
12. Cho Oyu
13. Matumaini
14. Zoticus

Disc 02:
1. Légäsi
2. Votivus
3. Querencia
4. Kundinyota
5. Dragons Of Eden
6. Eunoia
7. Znaniya (Falkor)
8. Tzedakah
9. Apocrypha
10. Asherah
11. Plotinus
12. Kairos (Kefi)
13. Qumran
14. Makaria
15. Kupaianaha
16. Taijasa
17. Vesta
18. Ziggurat

Disc 03:
1. Ziya
2. Scar
3. Let The Light Shine In
4. Komorebi
5. Daydream
6. Dream Dance
7. Apotheosis
8. Magnolia (Astronomia Nova)
9. Moksha
10. Datsuzoku
11. Hypatia
12. Kuleana
13. Aldous
14. Jijivisha
15. Paititi
16. Airavata
17. Znaniya (Ahura Mazda)
18. Nag Hammadi
19. Halcyon
20. Sweet Invitation

I Tried Words began with words, mostly words. Moriah Bailey laid the lyrics out on several pages. The words were crafted over many months with feedback from Bailey’s sister and input from the growing melodies and body of music that began to take shape around those words. The contributing musicians, Sarah Reid (violin), Ryan Robinson (percussion), and Ricky Tutaan (guitar), recorded their own parts and sent them to Bailey. The result is lush, intricate arrangements that complement a solid base of harp and vocals.

The album explores dualities: yes/no, future/past, darkness/light, giving/taking, masculinity/femininity, wants/needs. It is in part about Moriah Bailey’s struggle to learn healthy boundaries but also about the harmfulness, complexity, and entanglement of many social boundaries.

With I Tried Words, Bailey relies less on experimental sounds, and instead, lyrically focuses on her struggles to understand and make sense of definitions and expectations of femininity. It explores these themes through an intimate narrative of losing oneself in a relationship and struggling to find a way out of the relationship.

The album ends with a triumphant goodbye and joyous new beginning in “Not Staying”. She sings: “I contorted my body and stretched myself thin to form a bridge between now and when. So, as I'm gathering my strength to say goodbye, please quit saying I should've tried.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Wishful Thoughts
2. A Late Spring
3. The Downpour
4. So You Say…
SIDE B:
5. The Ocean LIfe
6. My Father’s Words
7. My Mother’s Words
8. Not Staying

"Laughing Boy", the second solo album from Matteah Baim, was recorded in Chicago, where it was produced, arranged, and mixed by Baim with engineer Jamie Carter. Expanding on the sounds hinted at with her previous band, Metallic Falcons, and her first solo record, "Death of The Sun", Baim has created her most lush and beautiful recordings yet with "Laughing Boy". Matteah Baim was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1996, at the age of 17, she moved to California to study painting and drawing at the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduating, Baim moved to New York where she met Sierra Casady. In 2005, the duo began to write music together and formed the 'soft metal' Metallic Falcons. Voodoo Eros released their first record, "Desert Doughnuts", in 2006, recorded in Brooklyn, New Mexico, and Chicago, with performances by Antony, Devendra Banhart, Jana Hunter, and Greg Rogove. After the Metallic Falcons disbanded, Baim moved to Los Angeles and began writing and recording material (both at her Venice Beach home and at Chicago's CarterCo studio) for "Death Of The Sun". She spent the next two years touring and writing material for "Laughing Boy", working on music for several films, and exhibiting drawings.

Musical conversations between Meg Baird (Espers) and Mary Lattimore are intimate, fluid, effortless and spontaneous. They’re filled with the euphoria of creation and, at times, they articulate hard truths and tangled emotions with an ease only trusted friends can manage. The songs alternate between extended ethereal instrumental excursions, gauzy and dreamy pop, blown-out Bull of the Woods heavy haze, and modern re-imaginations of epic traditional balladry all while touching on the strange and otherworldly places between these stations.

TRACK LISTING

Between Two Worlds
Damaged Sunset
In Cedars
Blue Burning
Painter Of Tygers
Fair Annie

Meg Baird’s songs are rarely made up of tidy stories. In fact, for Meg, mystery itself is often the medium. With ‘Furling’, Meg’s fourth album under her own name, she explores the breadth of her musical fascinations and the environments around them - the edges of memory, daydreams spanning years, loose ends, loss, divergent paths, and secret conversations under stars. ‘Furling’ moves through these varied spaces with the slippery, misty cohesiveness of a dream - guided by an ageless, stirring voice that remains singular and unmistakable.

Since co-founding the beguiling and beautiful Espers in the mid-aughts amid Philadelphia’s fertile underground music community, Meg’s solo recordings have constituted just a fraction of her work.

Her first solo LP, the disarmingly out-of-time ‘Dear Companion’ (2007), saw her carve a quiet, sunlit space away from the flickering swirl of Espers. Since her last solo releases, ‘Seasons on Earth’ (2011) and ‘Don’t Weigh Down the Light’ (2015), Meg has lent thunderous drumming, lead vocal, and poetry to Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop) on an album that garnered praise from the New York Times and made Mojo’s Top Ten Albums Of 2016 list. She collaborated with harpist Mary Lattimore on the mesmerizingly hazy ‘Ghost Forests’ (2018). She’s played drums with Philadelphia scuzz-punks Watery Love (In The Red, Richie Records) and explored her deep familial folk roots in the Baird Sisters (Grapefruit Records). She also contributed her vocal arrangements to albums from Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, Will Oldham and Steve Gunn, and toured with Angel Olson, Dinosaur Jr., Bill Callahan, Thurston Moore and Bert Jansch, among others.

Yet ‘Furling’ is the album that most irreverently explores the span of her work and musical touchstones. It showcases her natural tether to 1960s English folk traditions. But it also reveals her deep love for soul balladry, the solitary musings of Flying Saucer Attack and Neil Young shackled to his piano deep in the foggy pre-dawn, dubby Bristol atmospherics, the melancholy memory collage of DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’, and the delicious, Saturday night promise of St. Etienne.

‘Furling’ was primarily recorded at Louder Studios by Tim Green (Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses, Melvins, Wooden Shjips). Additional piano and vocal recording were captured at Panoramic Studios in Stinson Beach, CA with Jason Quever (Papercuts). It was mastered in Brooklyn by Heba Kadry, who mixed Bjork’s ‘Utopia’ and mastered albums for Slowdive, Cass McCombs and Beach House.

For all its adornments, ‘Furling’ remains deeply intimate. The entire album was performed by Meg and her long-time collaborator, partner, and Heron Oblivion bandmate Charlie Saufley. While her prior solo work hinted at more expansive horizons, ‘Furling’ explores the idea of Meg Baird as a band much more freely. Venturing beyond the musical confines of fingerstyle guitar, she plays drums, mellotron, organs, synths, and vibraphone over her piano and guitar foundations. Her distinctive, simultaneously elegiac and uplifting vocals, meanwhile, connect surreal dream montages, graft sunshine sonics to swooning mediations on romantic solidarity in trying times, and weave odes to the simple gestures of friendship - and the loss of family and friends.

This rich sound world makes the songs a varied bunch: ‘Twelve Saints’ mates Pacific sunset ambience and Pink Floyd pastoral to a meditation on mortality and escape. The infectious and kinetic ‘Will You Follow Me Home’ contemplates hope and longing through the looking glass of a Jimmy Miller-era-Stones strut. And in the closing piece, ‘Wreathing Days’, language disintegrates over tone clusters that feel somewhere between falling and flying.

‘Wreathing Days’ also reveals much about Meg’s mastery of contrast - situating the dear and delicate adjacent to chaos. And while it’s true that some songs on ‘Furling’ grapple with humanity’s existential unknowns in stark terms, they primarily revel in the mysteries that hide in nature and humanity at their most ordinary. ‘Furling’ lives in the notion that whole universes of experience, enlightenment, elation and ecstasy can bloom in these corners.

TRACK LISTING

Ashes, Ashes
Star Hill Song
Ship Captains
Cross Bay
Twelve Saints
Unnamed Drives
The Saddest Verses
Will You Follow Me Home?
Wreathing Days

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.

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

Banabila returns with a second LP release on Knekelhuis. The renowned Dutch producer is up there among the stars when it comes to ambient music and the so-called ‘fourth world’ legacy. On this eleven-track album, we witness soul-wrenching, kraut-tinted, and early-yet-modernist electronics.

Coming from his heart, these imaginative recordings center around otherworldly voices – fictional characters chanting in a made-up language, imbued with a captivating spirit, transcending linguistic barriers. Through remarkable complexity and technique, 'Unspeakable Visions' is full of sonic textures, together evoking a layered, emotional arc.

While the track 'Rattles' still references the artist's first album on Knekelhuis, 'Echo Transformations', the style of most other tracks departs towards an intriguing new mix of both pop-infused songs and gloomy abstraction, balancing between a sense of anticipation and desolation.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Real trippy weirdness with moments of cerebrum-popping brilliance. Granular sound design, fractal glitches, manipulated organica... A truly immersive long player for your next mushroom ritual.

TRACK LISTING

Viva Voce
Vowels Of Love
Darker And Darker
Hometapers Tricky Universe
So Far Yet So Near
Your Words Against Mine
Rattles
Little Star
AI Brainfire
Sounds From An Unforgettable Place 1 (Uv Remix)
Unspeakable Visions

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.

These two tracks from Mike Bandoni and Chip Wickham have been a long time coming. These two stable mates from the 'Craig Charles Fantasy Funk Band' have been discussing a collaboration for years and now; it's finally in the bag!

Mike brings his trademark killer funky Drums (Recorded by the legendary Malcolm Catto), Percussion, Rhodes, Bass and vintage Guitar vibes to the party whilst Chip delivers some sublime and highly complimentary work on sax and flute.

Infinity Pool sounds like a long lost Bobbi Humphrey meets Bob James composition with the flute taking centre stage underpinned by what can only be described as mammoth funk grooves on every other instrument. A true modern Jazz Funk classic with just a fraction more Funk than Jazz!

Get It! is a cool number with a phenomenally infectious groove and a hook that stays in the brain for days! Think early Kool & The Gang. You'll be humming these hooks day and night! Chip again raises the bar further with some sublime flute and sax work and is ably joined by Eoin Grace on trumpet to deliver that full fat section accompaniment that so completes this composition.

Both tracks are equally at home listened to through headphones or pumping loudly through a sound system in a club at your best Funk and Soul events.

Both tracks are getting plenty of radio play so it's likely to shift quickly! One for the collection and a must have. Limited to 500 copies.

TRACK LISTING

1. Get It (feat. Chip Wickham)
2. Infinity Pool (feat. Chip Wickham)

Most music does not come out of nowhere. Arising and appearing in a pre-existing system of influences, cross-references, roots, memories and desires, it either directly points towards a heritage or into the future. Mark Barrott’s "Nature Sounds of the Balearics" is a bit of both. The mastermind behind the International Feel label and the Sketches from an Island series presents an intermediary.

Technically, it’s his departure from a software based workflow and onto (or back to) a hardware driven creative point of view. Philosophically, it deals with the schizophrenia of our times: the late Paul Virgilio’s dromology and logistics of perception versus a decelerated life outside of cities, internet algorhythmics (sic!) versus meditation, the excessive stock market (all track titles are derivates of that world) against a tactile way of living.
Musically, it is the outcome of what Barrott himself described as his "techno album". For people whose definition of techno has to do with speed (again) and kick drums that might seem like a misinterpretation. Listeners who remember the Artificial Intelligence and Freezone compilations, various chill out channels or Detroit’s mellow moments, will tend to agree. "Nature Sounds of the Balearics" miraculously evokes those days and times, without breaking his neck. It is as much at home in a Caribbean water utopia between dolphins and old fishing boats as it feels current and applicable in a Ridley Scott dystopia. And if meta levels aren't your thing: it’s just a beautiful album.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Moving away slightly from the beach-bound cocktail-fuelled halcyon lysergia of the previous outings, Barrott opts for off-kilter melodies and hardware-based sequencing to create a more rhythmically diverse offering, as fascinating as it is engrossing. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Aroon
A2. Morning Star
A3. Point & Figure
A4. Heikin-Ashi
A5. TRIX
B1. Keltner & Chalkin
B2. Ichimoku
B3. Donchian Reprise
B4. Boolean Hawks
B5. Evening Star 

Mixing classical and contemporary sound, Mario Batkovic seeks to explore the sonic possibilities of the accordion, without effects or loops, rather through a mutualist symbiotic relationship between man and instrument. Challenging, hypnotic and grandiose; Batkovic’s symphonic vision is unique and he has received widespread critical acclaim, including Rolling Stone magazine who voted his self-titled debut album in the Top 10 ‘Best Avant Albums of 2017’

‘Introspectio’ is a self-questioning, self-examination of society and the meaning of sound. Featuring collaborations with electronic sorcerer James Holden and former BEAK> member Matthew Williams aka MXLX, in addition to drummer Clive Deamer (Radiohead/Portishead/Robert Plant/Roni Size), saxophonist Colin Stetson and concert choir Cantus Domus, Batkovic questions the place of sound, clichés and prejudices, taking the listener on a journey through infinite universes of sound.

Musical contrasts run throughout the album. Sound aesthetics versus compositional ethics play out, it all about creation and destruction as our sound researcher creates his very own macrocosm of music and sound. Whether solo or in collaboration, ‘Introspectio’ invites us on a rhythmically pulsating trip somewhere between dissolution and new beginnings.

TRACK LISTING

SANATIO
REPERTIO (w/ Clive Deamer & MXLX)
CHOREA DUPLEX (w/ James Holden)
QUIS EST QUIS (w/ Colin Stetson)
SURROGATUM
PRIMORDIUM FINALE

Masaki Batoh’s solo career continues to rise up with his 5th solo album, and second in the last two years, Smile Jesus Loves YOU.

As long time listeners of Ghost and The Silence are well aware, Batoh’s music is of the world and for the world . . . it exists as part of the conundrum of the world, for us to hear and form thought or feeling. We have no way of knowing it, other than to listen. The defiance of a fixed notion in Batoh’s world and music is made clear, as with the ambiguities of last year’s mortality meditation Nowhere, by the title of his new album. This shouldn’t be taken at face value. It might be a politically bitter statement. It might not be political at all, in this time of insane corrupt leaders who clearly believe in nothing except what they can use. It is a question for anyone who believes, or doesn’t believe. Listeners must come up with their own understanding, based on their own sentiment and where they find themselves in their evolving form.

Following the mostly solitary activity of making’ Nowhere’, Batoh has invited several guests to play with him for parts of ‘Smile Jesus Loves YOU’. Like family members, collaborators from The Silence and Ghost make guest appearances, including, for two songs, ex-Ghost and legendary percussionist Hiroyuki Usui (Fushitsusha).

For the journey of this new album, Batoh takes us a great distance, singing in Japanese, English, Spanish and Latin, including an amazing cover of one of his heroes, Atahualpa Yupanqui, with lyrics translated from Spanish to Japanese, giving them a haiku-like feeling.

Batoh plays a variety of stringed instruments throughout, as well as mellotron and shanai, supported at times by the playing of others on flute, piano, lap steel, saxophone, contra bass and drums. The songs expand amoebically, with music styles of the world shifting and merging to form their whole. Through phases of dark and light, including some new musical discoveries in Batoh’s world, we travel through the multipart epic title track to salvation.

This world is a difficult place, whether or not the gods will come to save us, but there is a happy ending for us if we accept and make it so. As with all of Batoh’s recent releases, Smile Jesus Loves YOU is a 100% analogue recording of absolutely human playing, with no digital copying and pasting. This allows us to hear and feel the air around the recording as if it is our own.

TRACK LISTING

In The Hour Of Serpent
Pobrecito Mi Cigarro
Uzumaki
No Momento
Sarabanda
Smile Jesus Loves YOU

Dream Violence, Michael Beach’s fourth full-length, is an epic album that explores the duality of the human condition. Or, as Beach himself puts it, the album is about “human futility, passion, desire, anger, frustration, and the struggle to maintain hope in a somewhat hopeless time.” Dream Violence, then, addresses the existential crisis of being an artist in 2020. Known for his work touring with the Australian guitar pop band Thigh Master and the late, brilliantly eccentric Israeli guitarist Charlie Megira, currently the focus of a number of reissues by the Numero Group, Beach is the architect of a sound that is both well-built and ramshackle, straightforward and indeterminably complex, out of the norm yet familiar in all the best ways. Dream Violence unfolds like a revelation, filled with sonic tumbleweeds that reference Neil Young’s On the Beach, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, and the Go Betweens’ Before Hollywood. Influences ranging from the enigmatic outlier Megira to Glenn Branca to the Oblivians are combined to create a new, exhilarating sound, part of the path that Beach has been on since 2008’s Blood Courses. A veteran of year-end indie rock round ups beginning with Golden Theft in 2013 and continuing with Gravity/Repulsion, released in 2017, Beach distills the best of those early albums and adds sharpened intent.

TRACK LISTING

1. Irregardless
2. De Facto Blues
3. The Tower
4. Metaphysical Dice
5. You Know, Life Is Cheap
6. Spring
7. Curtain Of Night
8. You Found Me Out
9. Dream Violence
10. Sometimes I Get That Cold Feeling

A new chapter, a new-line-up, a newly minted sound; Miki Berenyi Trio's debut album 'Tripla' is a landmark record for its three creators: Miki Berenyi, KJ 'Moose' McKillop and Oliver Cherer.

The album's richly layered, imaginative and uniquely slanted strain of dream pop is an often euphoric and sometimes melancholic mix of guitars and electronica, fronted by Miki's instantly recognisable vocal, overlaid with an often profound and sometimes abrasive or yearning view of the world.

Miki Berenyi Trio, or MB3 for short, is named after its lead singer - a direct way to convey the presence of the former singer/co-guitarist of Lush, and one of the most instantly recognisable faces of the '90s - but the songwriting is entirely a three-way collaboration, as the album title describes: acknowledging the mother tongue of Miki's father, 'Tripla' is Hungarian for 'triple'.

Miki and Moose, who came of age during the era of shoegaze and Britpop in Lush and the equally beloved Moose respectively, arrived here from Piroshka, which the couple formed in 2017 with drummer Justin Welch (ex-Elastica) and bassist Mick Conroy (Modern English). When Mick broke his arm during the tour that followed Piroshka's second album 'Love Drips And Gathers', in stepped Oliver, Justin's bandmate in Aircooled and an eclectic, roving solo artist, under aliases such as Dollboy and Gilroy Mere.

With Mick moving to America, and Justin swamped by session work and live duties for The Jesus & Mary Chain and The Pretenders, Piroshka was put on ice, before the Miki-Moose-Oliver trio came together to play a handful of Lush songs whilst promoting her hugely acclaimed memoir Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success.A bout of songwriting sessions followed. "Nothing was planned," Oliver recalls. "It was more of an organic process."

Likewise, the gleaming, gliding MB3 sound. Minus a drummer, the trio incorporated drum machines behind Moose and Miki's guitars and Oliver's bass, which led to the addition of more electronic components. Freed too from the logistics of touring with a drumkit, MB3 have seized the chance to regularly play live, including support tours to Gang Of Four and Wedding Present (twice) plus regular headline shows, including summer 2024's US dates, supported by post-punk legends Lol Tolhurst x Budgie

TRACK LISTING

1. 8th Deadly Sin
2. Kinch
3. Vertigo
4. Gango
5. Big I Am
6. Hurricane
7. Manu
8. Ubique
9. A Different Girl

'Compelling, funny, vivid.' Mojo
'Beautifully written.' Stylist
'Remarkable, revelatory.' The Times

Formed in 1988, Lush were part of the London gig scene during one of the most vibrant and creative periods in UK music. Now, Miki Berenyi tells all. From the bohemian ways of her father's social circle to the privileged glamour of her mother's acting career, Miki's young life was a blur of travel, celebrities and peripatetic schooling.

But frequent relocation, parental neglect and the dark presence of her abusive grandmother resulted in crippling shyness, mental-health issues and a vulnerability to exploitation. The route out of this hole was music - a passion shared by schoolmate Emma Anderson. The teenagers began attending gigs together and would ultimately go on to form Lush.

Talented and exuberant, the band became hot property, swiftly transitioning from shoegaze icons to Britpop darlings. Re-living the tours, recording sessions and music-industry madness they experienced along the way, this uncompromising memoir documents Lush's thrilling rise and untimely fall. Yet at the heart of the book are Miki's own battles: the conflict between her mouthy public persona and her thin-skinned private identity; the trials of being a woman in an infuriatingly male world; the struggle to find a middle ground between 'safe' indie obscurity and 'sell-out' international success.

Miki also explores her complicated relationship with Emma - one that has fluctuated between camaraderie and rivalry over the years - and addresses the devastating tragedy that led to the band's split. Told through frank confession, wry humour and searing emotional honesty, this is the incredible tale of a trailblazing woman and a seminal band.

'Get Sunk' is an ode to the infinite. It brings brush-stroked, blurry memories to the surface, amassing in a heap of colors and connections that stretches beyond individuality and into an endless altering. Under water, everything moves in slow motion and for Matt Berninger, he saw his creative voice slipping away with the current. But sometimes we have to drown to remember how to breathe. 'Get Sunk' is the purgative inhale. It’s seeing the undulating reflection in the water and realizing that you are not yourself without a thousand others: parents, friends, siblings, spouses and exes, college roommates, childhood best friends, cousins and kids, strangers even––all of it––make up the spirit of 'Get Sunk’s narrator. Berninger wanted to figure out why he loves what he does and it’s in the album’s collaborative spirit and loose, unfurling attitude that Berninger looked up and felt the warmth on his face. When we sink into ourselves, we’ll often find that we are actually swimming with others. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Inland Ocean
2. No Love
3. Bonnet Of Pins
4. Frozen Oranges
5. Breaking Into Acting Feat. Hand Habits
6. Nowhere Special
7. Little By Little
8. Junk
9. Silver Jeep Feat. Ronboy
10. Times Of Difficulty 

Whether you’re familiar with Matt’s Live shows or want to understand what they are like, this album takes you there! From the excited audience chatter to the clarity of his pulsing KORG, each element resonates with perfect clarity. Berry and The Maypoles' musical prowess shines through their prog-folk excursions and trombone flairs which are reminiscent of an early Acid Jazz release, all with the a nod to Berry's surreal and panoramic world-view.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Innkeeper’s Song
2. So Low
3. October Sun
4. Take My Hand
5. Sorry (Theme From)
6. Solstice
7. Snuff Box
8. Song For Rosie
9. Medicine
10. Devil Inside Me
11. The Pheasant

Gather Up is the culmination of ten years on Acid Jazz for Matt Berry. Gather Up comes as a beautifully packaged 5LP Box set with a 64 page booklet or 4CD Hardback book-set with a 28 pages of illustrations and notes.

The 55 tracks are split between an anthology compilation that tracks the very best tracks from his 8 albums and associated singles for the label over the last decade, an album of unreleased tracks and rarities, a demo version of his 2020 album Phantom Birds and the previously unreleased Live At A Festival LP which showcases Matt & his band the Maypoles in full flight.

The book included in both formats has an extended essay by Chris Catchpole which review Matt’s musical career and an exclusive set of photo images culled from the archive of Matt’s long time photographic collaborator Ben Meadows.

The LP Box is strictly limited to 1500 copies and comes with a certificate of authenticity signed by Matt.

TRACK LISTING

CD 1 - Gather Up
1. Take My Hand
2. Something In My Eye
3. Medicine
4. Badger's Wake
5. World In Action
6. One By One
7. Take A Bow
8. October Sun
9. So Low
10. Summer Sun
11. Gather Up
12. Theme From Snuff Box
13. Middle Of The East
14. Like Stone
15. Phantom Birds
16. Music For Insomniacs Part IV
17. Say It Again
18. The Innkeepers Song Live
19. Obsessed & So Obscure
20. Woman
21. Solstice

CD 2 - Rare & Unreleased
1. Bigger Than A Dog - Original Witchazel Intro
2. Take My Hand - Live On Absolute Radio
3. Autumn - Witchazel Outtake
4. The Dawn - From Myspace EP 'Summer Sun' 2010
5. Snuff Box - Live Loop Used Live Between 2005 - 2012
6. Catch Me In Time
7. Dark Beach - From Myspace EP 'Summer Sun' 2010
8. The Hangman - Acoustic Version 2007
9. Wonder Theme - Became 'Something In My Eye’
10. Music For Insomniacs - Alternative Intro
11. Theme From 'Sorry’ - Live From Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe 2007
12. Music For Insomnaics - Rejected Theme
13. Walk With Samuel - Devil Inside Me’
14. Blankety Blank - Vocal Intro
15. The Blue Elephant - Trip Two
16. Sweet Velvet - Became 'Seasons On Fire’
17. The Blue Elephant - Alternative

CD 3 - Phantom First
1. Covered In Clowns
2. Get Her Out Of My Mind
3. I'm Going
4. Make It Go Away
5. Peter Cleopatra And The Windmill
6. Play On
7. Take A Bow
8. The Preacher's House
9. A Shot Rang Out In The Forest
10. The Wrong House
11. Where's My Love?
12. You Danced All Night

CD 4 - Live At A Festival
1. Medicine / So Low
2. Silver Sun
3. Theme From Snuffbox
4. Solstice
5. The Pheasant

Following the huge acclaim earlier this year for Matt Berry’s eighth studio album The Blue Elephant, Acid Jazz Records release Gather Up, a compilation album encompassing the singular musical adventures this extraordinary musician has taken over the past decade, offering a revelatory and fascinating insight into the working process of a genuine musical maverick and sonic explorer.

Over 10 years with Acid Jazz Records Berry has released nine incredibly diverse albums (including one live album). From the tangled-folk rock thickets of Witchazel and Kill The Wolf (which features the song from which this box gets its name), to the out-there explorations of Music For Insomniacs or TV Themes’ retro-kitsch delights, through the soul power in Matt Berry & The Maypoles Live or the twilight grooves of The Small Hours to the classic pedal-steel songwriting of Phantom Birds and the smorgasbord of psychedelic sounds on The Blue Elephant, Berry’s journey has produced a feast for the ears that twists and turns down more unexpected avenues than most artists could manage over several careers. 

Gather Up pulls together an excellent 21-track career spanning collection expertly compiled by Berry, available as a separate, standalone release on 2LP or single CD, including non-album tracks such as ‘Snuff Box Theme’. No easy achievement considering the sheer breadth, diversity and volume of his exceptional musical output. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Take My Hand
2. Something In My Eye
3. Medicine
4. Badger's Wake
5. World In Action
6. One By One
7. Take A Bow
8. October Sun
9. So Low
10. Summer Sun
11. Gather Up
12. Theme From Snuff Box
13. Middle Of The East
14. Like Stone
15. Phantom Birds
16. Music For Insomniacs Part IV
17. Say It Again
18. The Innkeepers Song Live
19. Obsessed & So Obscure
20. Woman
21. Solstice 

Matt Berry returns with his first new solo album since 2021’s ‘Blue Elephant’. This time he delivers a Soul and West Coast Psych-inspired collection of songs, which attach an innate sense of melody to a lush, contemporary take on classic recording techniques. All of this is allied with Matt’s rich voice and unique lyrics.

The album’s opening single ‘I Gotta Limit’ is a sharp, pounding number with vocal duties shared with Kitty Liv. Elsewhere, there are collaborations with Eric D Johnson of The Shins, and Golden Globe-winning actress Natasha Lyonne. In the past four years Matt has been busy with a number of projects, including his Library Music collaboration with KPM ‘Simplicity’, and his EMMY award nominated role as Laszlo in ‘What We Do In The Shadows’.
 
This record, his 8th studio album for Acid Jazz, sees him return to his love of music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Why On Fire?
2. Silver Rings
3. Interlude
4. Be Alarmed
5. I Gotta Limit
6. Wedding Photo Stranger
7. Stay On The Ground
8. I Entered As I Came
9. There Are Monsters
10. To Live For What Once Was
11. Canada Dry
12. The Snakes Will Slide
13. Interlude 2
14. Sky High

In 2013, Matt Berry released his second album on Acid Jazz, ‘Kill The Wolf’, introducing progressive music, 1970s pop and psychedelic experimentation for a critically acclaimed album that established him as a musician in his own right. 

The original release plan saw a short run of a box set that included exclusive music and has inevitably become a sought after rarity since. 

For the album’s tenth anniversary, special edition deluxe versions make these tracks availableagain, in some formats for the very first time.

TRACK LISTING

CD
Gather Up
Devil Inside Me
Fallen Angel
Medicine
Wolf Quartet
Solstice
October Sun
The Signs
Knock Knock
Bonfire
Village Dance
Farewell Summer Sun
The Dawn
You That I See
Fire Chant
Food Chain Blues
Early Knock
October
To The Floor
Sea Chant
Devil Inside Me (Walk With Samuel)
Honky Knock
Venison Sketch
Wolf Quartet (‘Original’ Mix)

2LP
Gather Up
Devil Inside Me
Fallen Angel
Medicine
Wolf Quartet
Solstice
October Sun
The Signs
Knock Knock
Bonfire
Village Dance
Farewell Summer Sun
The Dawn
Devil Inside Me (Walk With Samuel)
Fire Chant
You That I See
Early Knock
To The Floor
Wolf Quartet (‘original' Mix)
Ukenwhistle
Venison Sketch
On A High
October
Honky Knock
An Electric Hero
Food Chain Blues
Sea Chant

BAFTA Award-winning actor Matt Berry has been the star of a number of high profile TV series including Toast Of London, The IT Crowd and most recently What We Do In The Shadows. Concurrently he has cultivated a career as a musician that has seen him release six solo albums and collaborate with the likes of Bond composer David Arnold, Jean-Michel Jarre and most recently Josh Homme, who invited him to perform on the Desert Sessions.

His most recent album ‘TV Themes’ was a UK Top 40 hit and was awarded four stars by Will Hodgkinson writing for The Times. His reinterpretation of British TV themes of the past was no mere wallow in nostalgia but an exploration of recording techniques and a joyous celebration of the music.

‘Phantom Birds’ was inspired by a fascination with Bob Dylan’s ‘John Wesley Harding’, the way it was recorded with the minimum of musicians to draw attention to the songs. For the recording Matt worked with drummer Craig Blundell - known for his work with Steven Wilson and Steve Hackett - and legendary pedal steel player BJ Cole, yet the tinges of Americana are never allowed to overwhelm Matt’s own distinctive style.

TRACK LISTING

Something In My Eye
You Danced All Night
Phantom Birds
Moonlight Flit
Man Of Doom
Where’s My Love?
Take A Bow
Intermission
Hail To The King
In My Mind
That Yellow Bird
Waving Goodbye
Covered In Clowns

This November Matt Berry will release a unique collaboration with esteemed Library Music label KPM. KPM is renowned for providing the musical bedrock for so many classics of British TV and international cinema, using the best British composers - such as Keith Mansfield, Alan Hawkshaw, John Cameron and Alan Moorhouse - to do so. ’Simplicity’ follows in the footsteps of these giants, and is a worthy successor to them. Alongside his formidable acting career, Matt Berry has released a series of acclaimed albums on the Acid Jazz label. Ranging from the folk stylings of ‘Kill The Wolf’, the ambient electronica of ‘Music For Insomniacs’, to the psych rock of ‘Blue Elephant’, these have marked Berry out as an impressive musician and recording artist in his own right. Embodying the form of KPM’s original LPs geared towards film and television pitching, the album consists of 11 sharp and vibrant instrumentals, which will no doubt be heard productions for many years to come. released in special collaboration with Acid Jazz, the album is presented in a beautiful graphic sleeve, with notes that allude to the original KPM releases, for something that is instantly hip and familiar, yet unmistakably new.

TRACK LISTING

1. Top Brass
2. Driving Seat
3. Rising Bass
4. Set The Scene
5. Good Sport
6. Transition To…
7. Simple Basics
8. Widescreen
Features
9. Too Many Hats
10. Telescopic
11. Top Brass Two 

After a busy, successful and critically acclaimed year Matt Berry offers one final salvo to his fans. A unique 12” single featuring his two collaborations with Sean Ono Lennon.

Sean worked on two tracks from ‘The Blue Elephant’ album and applied his mind to give us distinctive re-interpretations of ‘Summer Sun’ and ‘Like Stone’. Psychedelics mixed with a stomping beat for ‘Summer Sun’ and something a little bit weird and reflective for ‘Like Stone’.

TRACK LISTING

Summer Sun (Sean Ono Lennon Remix)
Like Stone (Sean Ono Lennon Remix)

In his tenth year with Acid Jazz, the ever-prolific Matt Berry has crafted a psych masterpiece. Once again proving his artistic progression and ambition knows no bounds

Recorded during the summer of 2020, ‘Blue Elephant’ is testament to Matt’s exceptional musicianship, production skills and songwriting prowess with every instrument played by Matt including, guitars, bass, a variety of keyboards and synthesizers (piano, Wurlitzer, mellotron, Moog, Hammond, Vox and Farfisa organs), with the exception of drums – supplied by Craig Blundell, on arguably his best album to date. 

This music soundtracks an album that explores themes surrounding today’s close scrutiny in all its bewildering, objectifying and unnerving experiences. Very much a conceptual and, therefore, continuous long-player, the album’s infectious grooves come to the fore on standout tracks ‘Summer Sun’, heavy-psych instrumental ‘Invisible’, the three-part ‘Blues Inside Me’, which encompasses a psych journey through a late ‘60s and early glam filter mixed with the propulsive ‘Like Stone’.

TRACK LISTING

1. Aboard
2. Summer Sun
3. Safe Passage
4. Now Disappear
5. Alone
6. Invisible
7. Blues Inside Me
8. I Cannot Speak
9. The Blue Elephant
10. Life Unknown
11. Safer Passage
12. Like Stone
13. Story Told
14. Forget Me
15. Now Disappear (Again)

Featuring the theme from his BAFTA Awardwinning TV show ‘Toast Of London’, ‘Take My Hand’, it has been his biggest selling album and has been out of print on vinyl for several years.

Acclaimed at the time of release, The Guardian said “‘Witchazel’ is enchanting… genuinely impressive,” while The Times labelled it “… psychfolk genius.” The album has since matured into an acknowledged classic.

TRACK LISTING

An Awakening
Take My Hand
Accident At A Harvest Festival
A Song For Rosie
So Low
Look In My Book
The Pheasant
Woman
The Badger’s Wake
Rain Came Down
From The Manger To The
Mortuary/Recorder Dance
Into The Sky
Roosting Time

Strange things can happen during the morning twilight. Mysterious shapes appear and play tricks on the mind but it is also when the magic happens. Emerging from the darkness, Matt Berry’s new album, ‘The Small Hours’ captures that awakening feeling and the moment all his wild imagination springs to life.

“‘The Small Hours’ is that time before dawn when we worry about things,” tells Matt of the album’s title and its beautifully complex and beguiling nature. “It can be an intensely quiet time so all your thoughts and fears can be amplified.”

Cello player and electronic artist Martina Bertoni returns with her 2nd album for Karl: Hypnagogia delivers six new, masterfully crafted tracks between experimental ambient, drone and modern composition.

Cellist and composer Martina Bertoni started playing the cello at a very young age. Classically trained, her career further developed around experimental and film music, for which her cello has been featured in numerous records, works and soundtracks for films and series. After two EPs and her debut full length All The Ghosts Are Gone (2020), Bertoni joined the Karl roster where she released Music For Empty Flats in January 2021 to critical acclaim (a.o. one of the Top Ten drone albums of 2021 / Acloserlisten.com).

On her new album Hypnagogia she continues to explore the sonic possibilities of her cello which she uses as primary source for composition and sound processing through reverbs, feedbacks and sub-bass frequencies, thus crafting sonic sculptures, rich of atmospheres and frictions, fed by ambient as much as drone and modern composition.

In the words of Martina Bertoni:
"The six tracks that constitute Hypnagogia have been written during 2021 and partially inspired by the reading of Stanislaw Lem's book Solaris. The title refers to a transitional state of consciousness from wakefulness to sleep, during which one might experience sensorial hallucinations and lucid dreaming, and can tap into the pristine structures of the subconscious. Hypnagogia portraits an imaginary cosmic journey of the Self that crash ends into a blinding sun."

TRACK LISTING

1. Inversion
2. Collided
3. From E To W
4. Orchid
5. Hemisphere
6. Your Sun

Though her music is firmly based in the Irish tradition, Mary Black is equally at home with Lennon & McCartney, country, pop, jazz, show tunes and American gospel too. Her first influences included Sandy Denny and the bonus disc of this compilation of her best work recorded between 1991 - 2001 is a haunting version of the Denny classic "Who Knows Where The Time Goes".

Fleetwood Mac have had a chart-topping career that spans over fifty years and includes some of the biggest-selling albums and greatest hits of the 20th and 21st centuries. But the band's story is one of enormous triumph and also unimaginable tragedy. There has never been a band in the history of music riven with as much romantic drama, sexual tension and incredible highs and lows as Fleetwood Mac.

Dreams is a must-read for casual Fleetwood Mac fans and die-hard devotees alike. In this unique collection of mini-biographies, observations and essays, Mark Blake explores all eras of the Fleetwood Mac story to explore what it is that has made them one of the most successful bands in history. Blake draws on his own exclusive interviews with Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and the late Peter Green and Christine McVie, and addresses the complex human drama at the heart of the Fleetwood Mac story, including the complicated relationships between the band's main members, but he also dives deep into the towering discography that the band have built over the past half-century.

First official release in nearly five years from the rapper, poet, and trailblazer Mykki Blanco, since their debut full-length "Mykki." Features special guests Blood Orange (Dev Hynes), Big Freedia, Kari Faux and is produced by FaltyDL.

Opening with the groovy yet ethereal "Trust A Little Bit" - seared with soulful auto-tune and huge harmonies - we move into the anthemic boom-slap of "Summer Ride" which has vintage Outkast vibes beamed via a hologram of Justin Timberlake. It's clear that Blanco's hear is in big tunes that fill the room.

Elsewhere we get drank-fueled, slo-mo RnB, cut with trap beats and rich with FaltyDL's glassy, refracted production aesthetic. Somehow perfectly bridging the gap between pop and RnB's hooky ephemera, gritty street rap and the overwhelming stimulus of bass music and future beats. There's some quirky, idiosyncratic skits that tie tracks together that really, you're only gonna dig if you follow the artist's whole social profile (that's followers grandad - Ed) but they do provide some light yet beautifully timed, and sometimes comedic relief between the attitude-riddled songs that pepper the album.

Includes the 6Music A-listed single "Free Ride" co-produced with Hudson Mohawke.

TRACK LISTING

1. Trust A Little Bit (God Colony Version)
2. Free Ride
3. Summer Fling (feat. Kari Faux)
4. It’s Not My Choice (feat. Blood Orange)
5. Fuck Your Choices
6. Love Me (feat. Jamila Woods And Jay Cue)
7. Want From Me (feat. Bruno Ribeiro)
8. Patriarchy Ain’t The End Of Me
9. That’s Folks (feat. Big Freedia)