In an era of increased nationalism and xenophobic bullshit, Antinote reach out to make their first French-Russian connection. Olga is from Moscow. She introduced herself to the label after Dominique Dumont's show in Paris, winter 2018. Zaltan et al immediately fell in love with the song 'Mojno' and step by step built up a nice collection of tracks which became the "1905" LP! Very active in the electronic music scene, she’s spent the last ten years releasing music, performing, recording & DJing as well as being busy with her tech-project Playtronica (with them she's created 3 controllers with which you can play scales on people, objects and colors). Across the "1905" LP she utilises some DIY devices such as Yamaha sampler vss-33, voice glitcher from the Russian company “Naked Boards” and organelle synth that creates this synesthetic tone in “ready when you are”. Besides dreamy pads and dancy beats Olga is ironically singing on Russian about her daily routine, in a positive way. There's no sadness and melancholy in the dark snowy days, where even the full moon or retrograde-mercury don’t even bother you ...if you are in harmony with mother nature's 5 elements.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Contemporary cold wave, icy electro-pop and melodic minimal wave from Russia's Omma here, who works her magic in the same vein as Carla Del Forno, Epsilove and fellow Antinote fam Domenique Dumont.

TRACK LISTING

A1. La Qi
A2. 1905
A3. Romantika
A4. Vmeste
B1. Ready When You Are
B2. Mojno
B3. Hearteater
B4. Normalno

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2021 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY JUNE 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

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180 gram vinyl reissue of 1961 album. This was the first Jamaican album to be manufactured and released in the UK. This re-issue commemorates the 60th anniversary of its release.

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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Following her critically acclaimed, Mercury-nominated, debut album ëMessyí released earlier this year, Olivia Dean returns with a limited edition vinyl featuring live audio from her performance at Londonís Jazz CafÈ. Step inside a magical show from one of UK popís most original and versatile voices, featuring performances of The Hardest Part and Be My Boyfriend. This is a hot ticket not to be missed.

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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Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Junk Culture; the fifth studio album and one of OMDís most successful and acclaimed records. This limited edition 2LP on blue and purple vinyl consists of the 15 bonus tracks featured on disc 2 of the 2015 deluxe edition, previously only made available on CD. Featuring the B-sides, ëThe Avenueí, ëWrappupí, the re-recorded version of ëJuliaís Songí, as well as 12î versions of original album tracks ëLocomotioní, ëTesla Girlsí and ëTalking Loud And Clearí. Also includes three of the Highland Studios Demos which are new to vinyl. To be cut at half speed on 180g vinyl by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios.

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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Recorded live from the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge: Olivia Rodrigo covers Noah Kahanís breakout hit Stick Season, while Kahan delivers his stunning rendition of Lacy from Rodrigo's sophomore album GUTS. Available on 7inch coloured vinyl exclusively via Record Store Day.

A pop record for tired times. Sugared with bits of shatterproof glass to put more crack in your strap. At long last, verse / chorus. A weathered thesaurus. This is OSEES bookend sound. Early grade garage pop meets protosynth punk suicide-repellant. Have a whack at the grass or listen while flat on your ass. Heaps of electronic whirling accelerants to gum up your cheapskate broadband. Social media toilet scrapers unite! Allow your 24-hour news cycle eyes to squint at this smiling abattoir doorman. You can find your place here at long last. All are welcome from the get go to the finale…a distant crackling transmission of 80s synth last-dance-of-the-night tune for your lost loves. Suffering from Politic amnesia? Bored of AI-generated pop slop? Then this one is for you, our friends. Wasteland wanderer, stick around. Love y’all. For fans of Teutonic synth punk and Thee Oh Sees (who the fuck are they?)” — John Dwyer.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The brilliant OSEES are back with a vitriolic blast of fuzzy guitars, frenetic percussion and wonky synth sweeps. Dwyer and co are without a doubt at the forefront of the garage/indie movement, crafting a sound that's both hugely impactful and undoubtedly their own, with more than a hint of irony peeking through here and there. Brilliantly done, as ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stunner
2. Blank Chems
3. Intercepted Message
4. Die Laughing
5. Unusual & Cruel
6. The Fish Needs A Bike
7. Goon
8. Chaos Heart
9. Submerged Building
10. Sleazoid Psycho
11. Always At Night
12. LADWP Hold

A pop record for tired times. Sugared with bits of shatterproof glass to put more crack in your strap. At long last, verse / chorus. A weathered thesaurus. This is OSEES bookend sound. Early grade garage pop meets protosynth punk suicide-repellant. Have a whack at the grass or listen while flat on your ass. Heaps of electronic whirling accelerants to gum up your cheapskate broadband. Social media toilet scrapers unite! Allow your 24-hour news cycle eyes to squint at this smiling abattoir doorman. You can find your place here at long last. All are welcome from the get go to the finale…a distant crackling transmission of 80s synth last-dance-of-the-night tune for your lost loves. Suffering from Politic amnesia? Bored of AI-generated pop slop? Then this one is for you, our friends. Wasteland wanderer, stick around. Love y’all. For fans of Teutonic synth punk and Thee Oh Sees (who the fuck are they?)” — John Dwyer.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The brilliant OSEES are back with a vitriolic blast of fuzzy guitars, frenetic percussion and wonky synth sweeps. Dwyer and co are without a doubt at the forefront of the garage/indie movement, crafting a sound that's both hugely impactful and undoubtedly their own, with more than a hint of irony peeking through here and there. Brilliantly done, as ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stunner
2. Blank Chems
3. Intercepted Message
4. Die Laughing
5. Unusual & Cruel
6. The Fish Needs A Bike
7. Goon
8. Chaos Heart
9. Submerged Building
10. Sleazoid Psycho
11. Always At Night
12. LADWP Hold

An extraordinary twilight world opens while listening to Organizatisya. Adventurous yet humble, they push the limits towards the unknown. One thing’s for sure, it’s fresher than the juiciest peach on a perfect summer day.

Organizatsiya hail from Lyon, France. Leo and Zoe clearly have strong roots in folk and acoustic music. These ‘old worlds’ blend in surprisingly well with more contemporary digital, futuristic sounds. Soothing analog recordings meet hyperdigital compositions reminiscent of IDM creations and peppered with spoken words that dance around in unexpected ways.

Seductive, intelligent and deeply hypnotic, this esoteric material delivers a dreamlike experience.

Like finishing a game and celebrating victory with cheap champagne in a neon light lit bubble bath with the end tune of The Legend of Zelda in the air.

With great contributions from several guest musicians in this record involved. Designed sleeve and printed inner sleeve by Guilhem Prat.

TRACK LISTING

Die Idee Der Toleranz
Ophélia
We Cannot Promise You Privacy
A Song For Marius
Une Comptine Pour Jeanne
Avatha Subumbra Feat Benoit B
Sur La Digue
A Shade Of The Princess Z' Castel

Our Girl ‘Live At St Pancras Old Church’ showcases tracks from the bands acclaimed debut album like you’ve never heard before. Recorded in London on 19th March 2018 during the snow storms and some of the coldest weather England had seen in decades, Our Girl returned from an overnight flight from the US to play the legendary St Pancras Old Church. The bands specially re-arranged set captivated the capacity crowd and reinforced their standing as one of the most diverse and brilliant new acts in the U.K.

The groove of the 70s dancefloor jazz made an impact on the Finnish jazz scene and the track 'Grandma's Rocking Chair' is viewed as a highlight of that era. Featured on the original pressing in 1976, the track was picked up by legendary US house producer Kenny Dope when he sampled the track for his record 'The Illout'. Most likely the track was taken from a "Finnish Jazz 66 - 75" bootleg album.

Born 6 August 1949, Olli Ahvenlahti is a Finnish pianist, composer, and conductor and has been one of Finland's leading Jazz artists since the 70s. He has recorded with several artists including UMO Jazz Orchestra. There was a small group of very talented jazz musicians in Finland during the 70s, of which Ahvenlahti was one of the key players. His band consisted of the cutting-edge musicians of that decade, including Markku Johansson, Bertil Strandberg and Pekka Pöyry.

The LP version is manufactured in Japan in Mr Bongo's new, improved, super high quality sleeves and replicates the original 1976 release exactly.

It was November 2018 that Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin met at Studio Rymden, in a quiet, pretty suburban district of Stockholm, to make the music that became ‘Ghosted’. They can’t remember exactly when it was made because that time - the when and where that it was recorded - doesn’t really matter anymore. Now the music of ‘Ghosted’ exists in the intention of a shared moment of playing, a clearly delineated time, put forth with a steady flow of small details on bass, guitar and drums, in a remarkable display of rhythmic flexibility within a minimal framework.

Oren and Johan have met many times onstage and off since 2003, with several duo recordings to their credit, as well as additional encounters in the group Fire! with Mats Gustafsson and drummer Andreas Werliin. A while back, Oren and Johan decided to reconvene in the studio for a furthering of the thought process that they’d come to on the second Ambarchi / Berthling collaboration, 2015’s ‘Tongue Tied’. As Andreas had mixed that session, it felt right to have him on kit - he’d already been intimately involved in the process.

The music they all play together in Fire! is, to put it mildly, loud. This session, they sensed an opportunity to explore different dynamics - to tap, perhaps, a shared inner ECM space. Studio Rymden sits on an upper floor of the building it’s located in, and the light coming through the windows was pleasant on that day. They set up, picked out some amps (including the best-sounding Leslie speaker Oren’s ever heard) and got started.

Rooting in the rich tonality and repeating figures of Johan’s acoustic (and sometimes electric) bass, the four tracks that make up ‘Ghosted’ act as variations on a theme, unspooling continuously over the course of 39 minutes with the terse flow of krautrock jams - closely observed percussive riffs and repetitions that build continuously with subtle shifts as they move forward, with the small details flying expansively in and out across the stereo spectrum. Oren’s guitar often sounds with an organ-like tone, with notes of fire and glass wafting out over the percolation and permutation in Johan and Andreas’ rhythms. These men have been playing long enough to, without any real words, shape their improvisations with short- and long-term goals.

Performances that day ranged from almost five minutes to almost sixteen. With an eye toward further expansion, they’d invited the legendary Swedish reed player Christer Bothén, whose knowledge of the guimbri and donso n’goni was incisively shared with the great Don Cherry some fifty years ago. Christer plays donso n’goni on the first track, and his parts sync like cogs in a watch, revolving in fluid coordination with Oren, Johan and Andreas.

Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Berlin, ‘Ghosted’ highlights the intimate dialogue between players, as well as the careful curation of space between them. It is rare to think of silence in relation to music where everyone is constantly playing - and yet, listening to this, we do.

Once it was all done, Pål Dybwik’s misty, nocturnal basketball court images seemed to embody the spirit of the album, while once more steering it in a direction that nobody had stopped to imagine, because this was just something in the air.

TRACK LISTING

I
II
III
IV

Missing out on that super-chill, uber-jittery minimal groove thing? Let’s get real, real Ghosted again.

An utterly unique guitar/bass/drums triad: the guitar sounds like anything but a guitar; bass and drums simultaneously insistent and relaxed. Telepathic group-think opens a window to fresh fields of fusion: funk-jazz heads, polyrhythmic skeletons, ambient pastorals, post-kraut drones and shimmering soundtrack reveries. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere, marked by subtle, shifting dynamics playing out in an open sound field.

Oren Ambarchi has been collaborating with the Fire! trio (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin) for over a decade – and both Johan and Andreas played on Oren’s Live Hubris as well. Oren and Johan began music-making together back in the early aughts – but it wasn’t until 2021 that the three of them got together to record music. That became the first Ghosted album. When they were done, it was clear they had founded a new group. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere marked by subtle, shifting dynamics, Ghosted was released in May of 2022 to psyched response everywhere; the trio embarked upon an ongoing series of concert bookings around Europe, with loads of other people in the world still hoping to have the chance to be in the room at the next show. Two years on, Ghosted has gone through several represses, now it’s time for the “dreaded follow up album”! Rather than go back to the well, the guys decided to tear everything down and start all over again, reimagining themselves from scratch.

Just kidding! As we’ve noted, Oren, Johan and Andreas have been playing together for years and years, developing an essential telepathy within their shared space. They get each other and feed each other’s music processes on an elemental level. Why change that? What made the most sense was to go back to Daneil Bengtsson at Studio Rymden in Stockholm for a couple days, then have Oren and Joe Talia mix and Joe master it at Good Mixture in Melbourne again, then get Pål Dybwik to do some well-distinctive cover art, and once more, call it a record.

That’s just what they did — and it should be no surprise at all that the new Ambarchi/ Berthling/Werliin album looks and sounds as engrossing as their debut, if not more so! Ghosted II has a definitively fresh quality radiating throughout. The mutual feeling among the three players goes deep, allowing for lots more to say every time they get together — a further recombination of elements, a new expedition through alternative angles... there’s always more, and incredibly, it’s all improvised, with next-to-nothing prepared going in and minimal overdubs after they’ve laid things down. References are shared in shorthand, with just a single word, like “Santana,” or “Police” acting as working titles for certain pieces on this record (have a guess!). It’s a disservice to call them jams: above and beyond the innate feel of the songs, there’s a strong sense of structure, informed by the band’s communal aesthetic, and edified immeasurably by their time spent in concert the last couple years.

As noted at the top, these guys balance their music improbably between a relaxed feel and a nervy resolve, as each member holds down their corner in an open sound field. Making Ghosted II, the band found that there’s a different kind of tension making something for an established project rather than the kind one feels making something for the first time — and they used this new variety, as before, as a kind of fuel — driving their terse minimalism fruit-fully through the process of succumbing to and then transcending guilty pleasures. Finding fresh territory in funk sketches, jazzy heads, ambient pastorals and droning soundtrack pieces, Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin compellingly haunt a mad variety of spaces, leaving us wanting to get Ghosted II.

TRACK LISTING

En
Två
Tre
Fyra

Evolving the tactics of works like ‘Quixotism’, ‘Hubris’ and ‘Simian Angel’, Oren Ambarchi invites an international all-star cast to dialogue with his guitar and triggers inventions.

Intricate theme-and-variations build upon the staccato rhythms via expansive improvs from BJ Cole, Sam Dunscomb, Chris Abrahams, Jim O’Rourke and Julia Reidy.

Bridging minimalism, contemporary electronics, and classic ECM stylings, and bringing together a cast of preternaturally talented contributors, ‘Shebang’ is unmistakably the work of Oren Ambarchi: obsessively detailed, relentlessly rhythmic, unabashedly celebratory.

TRACK LISTING

I
II
III
IV

Presenting a new collaboration featuring Oren Ambarchi on guitar, the electronics of Robin Fox, and both performing on various other instruments. The music on this album came about as the result of the two being asked to co-compose the soundtrack for a new production by renowned Australian contemporary dance company Chunky Move for their Connected production.

"Chunky Move's artistic director Gideon Obarzanek was drawn to the organic and deeply musical qualities of Ambarchi's work and the digital, almost scienti?c quality of Fox's sound. Over a process of many weeks these two aesthetics were merged. Working both in the Chunky Move studio and Head-gap studio in Melbourne, new works were forged from both digital and analog sources.

"This release brings together two of the most extraordinary artist/musicians working in Australia today. Both are renowned internationally for their individual practices, and here they join forces to produce powerful music that fuses Ambarchi's legendary guitar sound with Fox's mathematically rigorous tones and textures. This fusion results in sound works that stretch in scope from the sublime and spacious to the intensely dense and foreboding. Treading a precarious line between music and abstract sound, between organic and inorganic tones, this collaboration is a must listen for anyone interested in contemporary soundworks.

For Now I Am Winter is Ólafur Arnalds’ third full-length studio album. His earlier albums, soundtracks and EPs, have been released through the Berlin based cult label Erased Tapes.

Building and expanding on his previous more minimalist work, Arnalds’ new album is his first to involve a full orchestra (coarranged by Nico Muhly) and a vocalist (Agent Fresco lead singer Arnór Dan) on selected tracks, making it his most broadly appealing work to date.

With his previous recordings, extensive touring activities and prominent synch placements of his music he has managed to build up a dedicated fan base in Europe, North America and China.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sudden Throw - Ólafur Arnalds
2. Brim - Ólafur Arnalds
3. For Now I Am Winter - Ólafur Arnalds, Arnor Dan
4. A Stutter - Ólafur Arnalds, Arnor Dan
5. Words Of Amber - Ólafur Arnalds
6. Reclaim - Ólafur Arnalds, Arnor Dan
7. Hands, Be Still - Ólafur Arnalds
8. Only The Winds - Ólafur Arnalds
9. Old Skin - Ólafur Arnalds, Arnor Dan
10. We (Too) Shall Rest - Ólafur Arnalds
11. This Place Was A Shelter - Ólafur Arnalds
12. Carry Me Anew - Ólafur Arnalds

Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm announce Double-CD release ‘Collaborative Works’ – comprising all three vinyl EPs ‘Loon’, ‘Stare’ and ‘Life Story Love And Glory’ as well as 7 new songs from their ‘Trance Frendz’ studio film

‘Stare’ (2012) was the very first collaborative recording made by Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm – a true family effort featuring long-time collaborator and cellist Anne Müller, which took place in 2011 between Reykjavík and Berlin. Originally released as a strictly limited 10-inch vinyl record exclusive on Record Store Day 2012, this long sold-out must-have was re-issued on July 17, 2015 – this time in 12-inch format. Óli and Nils recorded and mixed their first collaborative record between Reykjavík and Berlin as a surprise release for label founder Robert Raths.

‘Loon’ (2015) is a synthesiser-led 5-track EP that was recorded in autumn 2014 across five days at Nils’s Durton Studio in Berlin, and continues with the ambient sounds of ‘Stare’ but with the addition of more percussive elements and dub influences. For ‘Loon’ they wired the Oberheim 4 Voice and a Korg PS3100 to the patch bay/mixing desk and performed live takes. With all four hands on its pots, all mixes were recorded straight onto 2-track ½-inch tape.

'Life Story Love And Glory' (2015) is a 2-track live improv affair on two pianos, also recorded at Nils’s place in October 2012, the day before the two went on the road for the Erased Tapes 5th Anniversary Tour. It was released on August 21, 2015 as a surprise 7” available through record stores only, two weeks ahead of its digital release, and entered the Official UK Vinyl Single Charts at #3, still remaining in the Top 10 after 3 weeks.

‘Trance Frendz’ (2015) is the audio recording of their intimate 45-minute studio film. Originally planned as a short video session of previously released tracks, instead the two ended up recording seven brand new improvisations – showcasing the nature of their musical friendship. It was revealed on September 1, 2015 as part of their joint website www.arnaldsfrahm.com

"The music on this CD is a collection of our studio collaborations from recent years. We would meet in Reykjavik or Berlin with the intention to share some days off work, hiking, swimming or eating pizza. That is great for a couple days, but after a while we would always end up back in the studio, fiddling with synths or pianos. This collection of recordings cannot be an album. It will remain a collage of our studio experiments of the past. It simply is convenient to have them all together here, so you don’t need to look out for some limited 10” somewhere or deal with a nerdy record dealer in Japan to track down this one 7 ̋ which will turn out to sound pretty rough anyways... consider them as moments in space and time where we shared the same room for some days to come down and enjoy making music. After deciding to release the studio collaborations, we planned to do a video session of us performing an improvised duet to promote the release.

On the 28th of July 2015 we met up at Durton Studio in Berlin and invited Alexander Schneider and his camera to document it. But instead of ending the session after the first take we continued improvising throughout the night, ending up with several new pieces written and recorded in 8 hours with no overdubs and no edits. We felt there was something special in these songs as they arrived so quickly and unexpectedly, remembering that our friendship and collaboration originally started with live improvisation on stage. At the end of the night we had all this music that sounded unfamiliar even to us, loudly asking to be included in this collection.” (Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm)

TRACK LISTING

CD 1
1. Four
2. Three
3. Wide Open
4. W
5. M
6. A1
7. A2
8. B1
9. Life Story
10. Love And Glory

CD 2
1. 20:17
2. 21:05
3. 23:17
4. 23:52
5. 00:26
6. 01:41
7. 03:06

Originally released as a strictly limited 10-inch vinyl record exclusive on Record Store Day 2012, this long sold-out must-have for fans of these two artists will finally be re-issued – this time in 12-inch format!

Erased Tapes label mates Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm recorded and mixed their first collaborative record between Reyjkjavík and Berlin as a surprise release for label founder Robert Raths.

The ambient/electronic work ‘Stare’ is a true family effort with long-time collaborator Anne Müller joining in on cello and all graphics created by close label-friend and designer Torsten Posselt of FELD Studios.

Words by Nils Frahm:

“I heard ‘Eulogy For Evolution’ for the first time six years ago and I was totally captivated. Impossible to know back then that I was supposed to meet Ólafur many years later as my label mate. Later when he took me along a tour of his we also noted that we kind of like hanging out together, doing important things like cover versions of long forgotten songs or eating veggie pizza. Also he would join my live set for a jam and I would return the favour by playing along with his set.

All in all, I fell for Óli and after one memorable jam session we had in Berlin at Roter Salon in 2011, he finally proposed the idea to visit me in my studio in Berlin to work on 'some music'. I was happy and delighted about that idea, so we got together in April 2011 and after having a big pizza, I plugged in some old analogue synths and we played for four days until late in the night. Also queen Anne Müller stopped by after a show with Agnes Obel to record some cello at 5 am in the morning for ‘b1’. Making music together with people is lovely!

The time I spent with Óli in Berlin made me very happy and the music wasn't like anything I have heard before. It was all very reduced and minimal and I felt like I couldn't have done this alone. So we decided to do another 4-day jam at Óli´s E7 studio in Reykjavik. So I flew there in the end of October 2011 to repeat the trick and record some out of this world ambient music. It didn't take us too long to write ‘a1’ and ‘a2’. I can’t wait for the follow up!”

Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds reissues and revives his debut album in form of a special remastered 10th Anniversary edition titled Eulogy For Evolution 2017 — available worldwide via Erased Tapes on August 25th. Following its initial release in 2007 and coinciding with Ólafur’s 30th birthday, label founder Robert Raths gifted the chance for this record to shine a second time. Eulogy For Evolution is a journey from birth to death, transporting the listener through life itself.

Originally written as a teenager, the record has now been restored with the help of his friends, remixed by Ólafur himself and remastered by Nils Frahm. The cover art was redesigned and enhanced by Torsten Posselt at FELD using the original photographs taken by Stuart Bailes during a trip to Ólafur’s home in Iceland in 2007.

To experience the record in the present day is not only to experience the past, but also the sheer timelessness and relevance of these compositions, and the ambition Ólafur has had from the very beginning. “Fast forward 10 years, our relationships and knowledge in sound have matured, but you can still hear this urgency in Óli’s songs that caught my ears to begin with”, states Robert Raths.

TRACK LISTING

1. 0040
2. 0048 / 0729
3. 0952
4. 1440
5. 1953
6. 3055
7. 3326
8. 3704 / 3837

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary Edition of Olafur Arnalds For Now I Am Winter, the album has been remastered for vinyl and pressed in a limited edition clear colour with exclusive art prints inside.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Sudden Throw
Brim
For Now I Am Winter
A Stutter
Words Of Amber
Side B
Reclaim
Hands, Be Still
Only The Winds
Old Skin
We (Too) Shall Rest
This Place Was A Shelter
Carry Me Anew

BAFTA winning Icelandic composer,Ólafur Arnalds' highly anticipated new record 're:member' features Ólafur’s ground-breaking new software, Stratus, which transforms the humble piano into a unique new instrument. He is currently performing his new material on a huge worldwide tour. The Stratus Pianos are two self-playing, semi-generative player pianos which are triggered by a central piano played by Ólafur, and are the centrepiece of his new works. The custom-built software is born out of two years of work by the composer and audio developer, Halldór Eldjárn. The algorithms generated from Stratus were also used to create the innovative album artwork.

On the album Ólafur uses these methods reinvigorate the compositional experience, feeding back into the creative process in a completely new way. As Ólafur plays a note on the piano, two different notes are generated by Stratus, creating unexpected harmonies and surprising melodic sequences. Speaking of the album, Ólafur says, “This is my breaking out-of-a-shell album. It’s me taking the raw influences that I have from all these different musical genres and not filtering them. It explores the creative process and how one can manipulate that to get out of the circle of expectations and habit.” 

Creative reimaginings for piano of Ólafur Arnald’s some kind of peace album (2020).

The Icelandic modern classical composer, performer and producer brings together a diverse group of friends, collaborators and musical kindred spirits from across the globe and musical spectrum to experiment and rework his music.

This Ólafur-curated lineup includes artists from the worlds of modern classical, electronic, jazz and alternative, featuring Yiruma, Dustin O’Halloran, Hania Rani, Alfa Mist, tstewart, JFDR, Lambert, Sophie Hutchings, Eydís Evensen and Magnús Jóhann.

TRACK LISTING

Loom - Eydís Evensen
Woven Song - Hania Rani
Spiral - Dustin O’halloran
Still / Sound - Sophie Hutchings
Back To The Sky - Lambert
Zero - Alfa Mist
New Grass – Tstewart
The Bottom Line (live) - Jfdr
We Contain Multitudes – Yiruma
Undone - Magnús Jóhann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

TWO WEEK EXCLUSIVE RECORD STORE ONLY RELEASE!

Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm reveal a new 7” single titled ‘Life Story Love and Glory’ following on from their recently re-issued 2012 collaborative EP ‘Stare’.

Erased Tapes artists and friends Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm have separately carved out a musical career that defies genres both with their unique live shows and a loyal fan base that’s always eager to hear what their prolific output will bring.

Their latest collaborative 2-track release ‘Life Story Love and Glory’ is a live improv affair on two pianos, recorded in 2012 at Nils’s Durton Studio in Berlin. Fans may wonder why they have waited until 2015 to release these tracks, but having revealed a new website www.arnaldsfrahm.com you may think this may not be the end to their musical story this year.

“We would meet in Reykjavik or Berlin with the intention to share some days off work, hiking, swimming or eating pizza. That is great for a couple days, but after a while we would always end up back in the studio, fiddling with synths or pianos.” – Nils Frahm.

“You can hear in the beginning of ‘Life Story’ how I have already started playing the piano whilst Nils is still moving microphones around and preparing everything. It was all kept in!“ – Ólafur Arnalds.

‘Life Story Love and Glory’ will be released as a 7” on Erased Tapes – exclusively through record stores only on August 21, 2015 ahead of its digital release later on – as an ode to this classic and beloved format.

A contemporary dance score for award winning British choreographer Wayne McGregor inspired by Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872-1929). 'My composer for Dyad, Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds, is coming in next week to finish work on the score. It’s an amazing piece of music – it's melancholic and spatial then cuts to extreme rhythmic violence - it's hauntingly inspiring' – Wayne McGregor (Random Dance).

Born in 1987, Ólafur hails from the suburban Icelandic town, Mosfellsbær, just a few kilometres outside of Reykjavík. He has immersed himself completely in a world of delicate symphonic compositions generating near weightless orchestral pieces. Arnalds explores the crossover from classical to pop by mixing chamber strings and piano with discreet electronics which makes him a perfect fit for cinematic pop label Erased Tapes. His motivations are clear: 'The classical scene is kind of closed to people who haven't been studying music all their lives. I would like to bring my classical influence to the people who don't usually listen to this kind of music... open people's minds'.

Icelandic contemporary composer Ólafur Arnalds created and released a new song, one per day for one for one whole week during the month of October 2011. The songs were recorded and filmed live in the living room of his Reykjavik apartment and released instantly for free as streamed videos and mp3 downloads. Thousands of fans followed this exciting project online at: livingroomsongs.olafurarnalds.com

Following in the spirit of Ólafur Arnalds' critically acclaimed Found Songs (2009) where he wrote, recorded and released a free song every day for a week - now comes 'Living Room Songs'. This time Ólafur takes the idea further and invites the audience into the comfort of his living room, where the songs were recorded live and the whole process filmed. The songs were instantly released in form of a free mp3 download and video stream- straight from Ólafur's Reykjavik apartment.

In his own words: 'One night I was just playing my piano here in this apartment and I was writing a new song and I didn't have my phone on me which I usually use to record ideas. So I actually took out my MacBook and I didn't want to open like a proper recording program, so I just opened Photo Booth and recorded a video of myself playing the song so that I would remember the song. And I really liked the atmosphere of that video and that's when I thought I should do a series of songs in my living room...' - Ólafur Arnalds

One Little Indian release composer, producer and performer Olga Bell’s ‘Incitation’. The mini album follows Bell’s acclaimed 2014 song cycle and album, ‘Krai’, which was described by The New York Times as, “at once a folkloric study of her homeland and a contemporary exercise in electronic production” and was included in The Quietus’ Albums Of The Year.

Bell’s newest offering is a collection of deeply personal, urgent songs with her voice once more at the helm of her singular production. This time, “a kind of personal violence is the main force at work,” she says of the mini album, “but it’s more of a brawl with fear than something shell-shocked or confessional. The emotional language of Incitation recognizes that while fear can be brutal, even crippling, it is also a necessary force for change and, perhaps most importantly, not a permanent state. Its remedy is simple: action.”

Born in Moscow and raised in Alaska, Bell is now based in Brooklyn where she makes original music, remixes and videos under her own name. She also makes dance music with British musician Tom Vek as half of Nothankyou. From 2011 to 2013 she toured as a vocalist and keyboardist with Dirty Projectors and Chairlift and is currently at work on her third full-length album, set for release in early 2016 on One Little Indian.

A prodigious classical pianist as a child and teenager, Bell graduated from the New England Conservatory before moving to New York City to pursue electronic composition and songwriting. In 2009 composer Osvaldo Golijov and soprano Dawn Upshaw selected Bell for a workshop and concert of new works by contemporary composers at Carnegie Hall. In 2011 she received a Jerome Fund Grant from the American Composers Forum to aid in the completion of her first large-scale composition, ‘Krai’, which was released as an album in 2014 after a sold out premiere at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

TRACK LISTING

Incitation
Rubbernecker
Pounder I
Pounder II
Goalie

Following on from the success of her critically acclaimed ‘Incitation’ EP, Olga Bell is back with new album ‘Tempo’, released via One Little Indian Records.

“Grand compositional ambitions and a dynamic voice... the arty, adventurous edge of pop” - The New York Times

“For those uninitiated, Bell’s work lies somewhere between an industrial night at Berghain and a cyborg performing at Carnegie Hall.” - Dummy

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Encompassing aspects of outsider-pop, synthwave and electronic soul, 'Tempo' confounds expectations of the singer songwriter. Quirky off-kilter rhythms and textures permeate the whole endeavour , rapidly switching from acid pulse-wave stabs to glitched out snares and clave hits. Like a medley of all the electronic tropes of the last 20 years, but distilled into a cohesive and concise representation of modern electronic music culture. This is a capable and sparkling outing, and at no point feels too far from comfort. Like hopping between ten different parties of ten different varieties, each playing different music, and loving each and every minute.

TRACK LISTING

Power User
Doppio
Randomness
ATA
Regular
Zone
Ritual (ft. Sara Lucas)
Your Life Is A Lie
Stomach It
America

A founding member of the London based folk-collective Broadside Hacks (amongst other banded-ventures), Oscar Browne's debut solo endeavour 'Never Quite Right' was released in 2022 to critical acclaim; an established inauguration which saw him eventually signing to So Young Records in the spring of 2023.

Following a six-month spree in which Browne found himself tirelessly writing in order to process the changes taking place around him, the five songs which would eventually go on to form his debut EP 'If Only', are a deep- dive into the heart and soul of an artist who masterfully captures all the joys and heartaches of life in your early-twenties.

Recorded over one week at Bristol's The Playpen, home to producer Ali Chant (Aldous Harding, Katy J Pearson), 'If Only' was all-in-all, a long time coming. Selfaccustomed to doubling things up and hiding imperfections, it was through the art of collaboration, and Ali's teachings in the power of emotional transparency that the pairing of Browne and Chant really shined. "Ali was a massive part in keeping the recordings minimal" notes Browne "he kept the rawness".

Oscar Browne's creative- capability is a limitless array of captivating delights. These aren't simply re-interpretations of eras gone by. Browne channels as much Ben Howard or Kurt Vile as he does Nick Drake and John Martyn. Rather, it's through his ear for musical- lucidity, highlighted throughout the course of these selected songs, that enables Browne to transport his love of traditional folk and folklore, into a uniquely contemporary realm. His fearlessness in baring- all to those who'll listen creates an artistic magnitude will only keep growing with fine prowess, as Browne continues to cut his teeth as a beguiling 'one to watch'.

TRACK LISTING

Cut Me Off
You And I
All Or Nothing
Somebody Else
If Only

The score, lighter and more delicate than Oliver Coates’ previously released music, functions as shadows or half-glimpses, a glowing form of ambient music which adds emotional colour to the cinematography. Aftersun features ‘One Without’, the much talked about piece of music used in the final scene and credits – the one that audiences have been known to sit in silence through the credits for. ‘One Without’ was made away from the film after the composer’s first meeting with Charlotte Wells, the director. On it, the strings are reversed and sped up a little, Each harmony has the next chord bleeding into it because of the reversed tails. The string vibrato is slightly unreal because the playback is faster and Coates explains that the “whole score is derived from the music within this final piece.” The film is a poetic meditation and gradual emotional arc towards the presence of absence, of another story not revealed. It is the light of the camera work, the physical gait of the actors and the music which come together in a climatic resolution.

Coates’ score stands for memory within the film, a growing awareness that the film might be a memory trawl to try and make sense of trauma. The score makes the film feel like it is starting to become self-aware, like a film within a film. Over time the score develops and helps the viewer move beyond the naturalistic and the diegetic. It is made of simple elements, old synths, reversed and slowed down strings. These, the composer explains “gradually reveal the sluggishness in Calum’s (Paul Mescal) demeanour, suggesting something hanging over him.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Memory Opening
2. One Without
3. Bus
4. DVCAM
5. Swimming Pool - Sky
6. Boat
7. Ocean>Rave
8. Gliders Peace Of Mind
9. Tai Chi
10. Sophie Pool With The Guys
11. Night
12. Limit
13. Happy Birthday Sophie
14. Last Dance (score)
15. Afterglow
16. I Love You

For Shelley’s on Zenn-La, Oliver Coates designs a complex of bending truths and reverse walkways to vernal states. Open ears can peer down hidden aux channel corridors, while melodic patterns present two-way mirrors to rooms of other retinal colors. An endless euphoria is just beneath the dance floorboards of Shelley’s, and an inquisitiveness unencumbered by the institution of knowledge surrounding its frame and inhabitants. Shelley’s on Zenn-La was made between the Elephant and Castle neighborhood of London and a future dreamscape. In this realm out of time and space, Shelley’s (Laserdome) – a once-legendary late 80s / early 90s nightclub in the industrial town of Stoke-on-Trent in the north of England – can simultaneously exist on the fictional planet of Zenn-La, and can house a devotional, alien ritual of early UK rave culture, pioneering IDM, and deep minimalism. Much of the album’s construction extends from specific, self-imposed ambitions; particular palettes applied to individual creative ideas. These limitations become limitless manifestations of theme: two bass lines running in parallel (one cello, one synth), synthesized waveforms phasing with bowed acoustic drones and chords, synth sequences in nonstandard tuning sitting against folk melody in standard tuning. Coates made a lot of the music for Shelley’s in Renoise, composing drum sequences in hexadecimal numbers and pencil drawn waveforms and cementing specificity in the intricate, intelligent dance machinations. Cellist, composer, and producer Oliver Coates has studied at the Royal Academy of Music, been an artist in residency at London’s Southbank Centre, and received the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award. Coates has contributed to the recordings of Radiohead, and collaborated with Laurie Spiegel and John Luther Adams. 

TRACK LISTING

1.Faraday Monument
2.A Church
3.Lime
4.Charlev
5.Norrin Radd Dreaming
6.Cello Renoise
7.Prairie
8.Perfect Apple With Silver Mark

"Significant Other" is now available on vinyl. The score comes pressed on blue vinyl, housed in a spined sleeve with download card and double-sided printed insert. Significant Other follows the sinister events plague a young couple when they take a backpacking trip through the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Oliver Coates is a cellist, composer and music producer known for his work with Radiohead, Mica Levi and more.

TRACK LISTING

Forest Replicant
Deer Jumpscare
Theme's In Ruth's Mind
First Montage
Isn't That Enough
The Cave & Second Montage
Proposal At The Cliff Face
Harry's Return
Goodbye Ruth (Do I Love You?)
Beach
Shark
Endcave
Ruth Smash
Dread Credits

This is an unusual album in the catalogue of Ornette Coleman, and one that passes by most critics. It is however a unique insight into the ‘free jazz’ pioneer’s way of working in the early 70s. Recorded at his large loft space in downtown New York which inspired a whole scene of experimental musicians who were locked out of playing established venues.

The music is a romp showing Ornette playing trumpet as well as saxophone. His quartet which featured second saxophonist Dewey Redman alongside long term cohorts Ed Blackwell and Charlie Haden prove to be the perfect foil for this legendary set.

This is the first vinyl reissue in nearly 20 years and utilises a fresh 24/96 transfer from the original production master.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1. Friends And Neighbors - Vocal
2. Friends And Neighbors - Instrumental
3. Long Time No See
Side Two
1. Let's Play
2. Forgotten Songs
3. Tomorrow 

The Shape of Jazz to Come was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz. The record shattered traditional concepts of jazz harmony, disposing of both the piano player and the whole idea of concretely outlined chord changes. The compositions here follow almost no predetermined harmonic structure, allowing Coleman and Don Cherry an unprecedented freedom to take the melodies of their solo lines in whatever direction they felt in the moment, regardless of what the piece's tonal centre appeared to be. This was the first time Coleman recorded with a rhythm section - consisting of bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins - that was open- eared and loose enough to follow his already controversial conception. All the composition are by Ornette Colman.

TRACK LISTING

Lonely Woman
Eventually
Peace
Monk And The Nun
Focus On Sanity
Congeniality
Chronology
Just For You

The songs on Some Waking Woman come up like ragged wildflowers in the unnameable heel of wasteland between the end house of the terrace and the already-dated concrete and plastic of the new business park. The songs come up from the hot gap between the weird dissociative dreamscape and the phone-alarm of a slate Tuesday morningtime. They look out from the record with a gaze that's lost between doe-eyed affection and a murky voyeurism. They're made of a music caught between the battered nylon-string and a layered orchestration turning between lush and gritty.

It's between the pottery and the calcified dogshit, between the filthy rebels and the eerie loyalists, between the probable cause of an action not quite either the Frenchman's crime of passion or the English barfight. It's a record of between-ness - like, this is just between us, right It's the same gap between the ballad and the mumbled apology, the love song and the exasperated sigh. My trousers have been pulled down in the playground again. Tsk. I love you and all of love turns out to be a colossal shitshow. Tsk.

Some Waking Woman isn't an anthem nor an elegy, although it has moments of both. It isn't quite in the gutter, but it's sure as hell not looking at the stars - the album has its gaze locked on the school playground, or the overgrown tarmac country-road corner, or another identical dawn colouring in the PVC windowframes. In the hands of O. D. Davey, the ordinary surfaces of a life like the one everyone actually has are made to glimmer weirdly with the inevitable love, misery and resignation underneath them.

These are touching, intricate ballads with melodies of nursery-rhyme sweetness, as reimagined by a failed gameshow host humming his old theme-tunes as he staggers back home pissed after closing time. But they're songs of love, for all that, his daughters haven't called in months. The sense is that these narrators have more love than they know what to do with, move love than they can trust themselves to handle, more love than they can believe in. Davey handles the flaws and imperfections and fractures of day-to-day living, finds the gap and digs in. This is an attention paid to the agonising and lovely awkward corners of life that don't get talked about. This is a record as in an LP, but a record too in the sense of a setting down of something true.

TRACK LISTING

1: Some Waking Woman
2: Every Rebel Campaign
3: Two Fingers Flicked
4: The Way Home
5: Holy Land
6: Crash
7: The Blue Note
8: The Mustard Cloud
9: This Time
10: A Right Honorable Friend

Fast rising UK soul-pop star Olivia Dean releases her long-awaited debut album Messy. Featuring the singles ‘Danger’ and ‘UFO’, Messy cements Dean as one of the most original and versatile voices in UK pop.

Crafting classic yet conversational hooks with genre-fluid tinges, she’s honed a way of exploring universal themes of love, loss and everything in between with razor-sharp but open-hearted storytelling. Of her debut album, Olivia shares, “Going into making the record, I'd just done this ‘Growth’ project. And for ages, I was like, well, my debut album needs to be what I've grown into, I need to have the answer. And that really confused me for a while. Then I realised, I'm always going to be growing. So this doesn't have to be a destination, it's just where I’m at now.”

Auckland-based guitarist Oscar Dowling embarks on his debut solo album, leaving his deepest emotions laid bare across the table. The former New Gum Sarn member has created a subdued guitar record in the great indie tradition of his homeland. One that leads into the abyss, tantalising with heartbreak and his unsettling bitterness towards life and death. Influenced heavily from the identity of his country and battling with "my own identity, falling in love, anxiety and mental illness, friends, family and enemies to name a few".

Free And Easy was recorded and mixed with Ben Lawson at The Red Bull Studios in Auckland. The album features local luminaries Steven Huf, Will Wood, Mason Fairey, and Sam Hamilton. Dowling recalls; "Ben heard me play at my neighbours wedding and later asked if I wanted some studio time at Red Bull. He gave me a week in between other projects and last minute I realised I didn't want to record solo and asked friends Steven Huf and Will Wood if they wanted to help me out. I'd seen both of them play with a lot of different people over the years and knew they could pull it off without much warning. I think we only practiced 3 times."

Recording in such swish surrounding felt alien to Oscar, as he states "it was different to the DIY style I'm used to, lots of fancy gear and a soundproofed, air conditioned live room. We had a reasonably strict time schedule so when we were there it was all go and no fucking around."

Whether soaked in Oscar's melancholy voice and warped out guitars, ('Sally Free and Easy'), or accompanied by a delicate piano ('Low Moon') or the jarringly raw ('Ease My Passing') each track paints a vivid picture of Oscar's life. Title track ('The Life') is best at transcending this portrait of the hardship of life with an entrancing melody line and ruthless lyrics, those lyrics severing as a medium for "understanding subjects such as death and love" and finding comfort in writing about his relationship with mental health, the outcome being "very therapeutic."

After spending the past year beekeeping with his brother, Oscar is still able to live out the perfect balance between city life and the countryside. Having grown up in the sticks, he tells us that the reason for moving to the capitol was that "people from all over come here to make music and find others making music, so it has a decent scene. I moved here for that reason and it has influenced me massively in terms of how I think about music and why I continue to make it."

The heavy use of dialogue is what will transcend Free and Easy to it's listeners - reconnecting us with our own identity and making us remember what really is important. "My family, my girlfriend and my friends. They are the people I look to for inspiration everyday."

TRACK LISTING

1. The Life
2. Ease My Passing
3. Sally Free And Easy
4. Human Connection
5. Fair Weather Friend
6. Cream And Peaches
7. Low Moon
8. The Circus
9. Rotten Apple
10. Motorway

Raised by pioneering parents on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC, Odetta’s milieu was a “colorful culture of artistry,” that included early exposure to community activism, renegade film screenings, poetry readings and trips to CBGB's. Inchoate punk and hip hop were aural wallpaper, as were the 45s spinning in the household jukebox featuring her dad’s extensive collection of soul and afrobeat records, as well as her Appalachian mother’s classic country selections. A classically trained violinist with a penchant for back-porch banjo, Odetta combines these variegated sounds of her childhood with her personal passion for folk music and the musicological legacy of Alan Lomax.

Lomax is writ large on Old Rockhounds... at least in spirit anyway. Odetta plays all the instruments on this and her debut 222, which made problematic the changeovers between songs when playing live. Field recordings the singer had collected on her travels were utilized to make such transitions seamless, and so successful was that intermingling of songs and soundscapes that they’ve transitioned into the recording process. It makes for a strangely intimate listen: tingly and a little tipsy: an album for twilight, sitting within the nocturnal hinterland between dusk and somnambulance - candlelit and confidential - a time for stories and secrets.

So far, so old skool. And yet, Old Rockhounds Never Die also embraces modernity without ever sounding incongruous. The mix of manipulated 21st century beats and the musical traditions of centuries meet at a crossroads and consummate their curiosity without inhibition. It’ll probably not surprise anyone listening to the album then that its a co-production. Odetta writes and performs all the songs while her partner Jack Inslee is in the background bringing the digital dark arts. Experimenting with found sounds & foley, the two have developed a sonic vernacular built around playing around with a-typical instruments. Hartman explains: “Many of the beats on the album were recorded in the kitchen: the snare sound is actually a running faucet, or if you hear these glockenspiel bells that's actually a set of kitchen bowls. Other percussive elements include scissors, a pepper grinder and keys on the radiator.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Old Rockhounds
2. Cowboy Song
3. You You
4. Widow's Peak
5. Sweet Teeth
6. Auto
7. Honey
8. Smoke Break
9. The Ocean
10. Spit
11. Freedom
12. Misery
13. Dettifoss
14. Carbon Copy
15. (Still Alive)

Self-described as "cowboy soul, future folk", NYC/DC artist Odetta Hartman’s sound is both traditional and modern; that modernity often featuring through the spacey and fragmented production of her partner Jack Inslee.

'Swansongs' is a dynamic and powerful reflection of love andambition, hopeful, energetic and at times chaotic but always captivating.Following her debut mini-LP '222' and 'Old Rockhounds Never Die', which saw her touring herunique performance style, part Jack White rock and roll folk blues, part electronicexperimentations, with the likes of Let's Eat Grandma, Cosmo Sheldrake and Skullcrusher, shereturns with her strongest set of songs to date - another fever dream of a record including theexperimental pop of 'Goldilocks', the dramatic string lead 'Dr. No.'

TRACK LISTING

1. Rise Above
2. Goldilocks
3. Good Socks (Happy)
4. Winter Constellations
5. Wacky
6. Mudlark
7. Mother / Child
8. Chaos / Magic
9. Dr. No
10. Shea
11. Pictured Rocks
12. Ode 222 You

Olivia Jean is back on the beat with her second full-length (and first self-produced) album, Night Owl, due out August 30, 2019 on Third Man Records. The album mines the shared spaces between bubblegum, beach pop undercurrents and fuzzed out garage a la B-52s and Dick Dale, lyrically diving headfirst into the frustrations of perfectionism, mental barriers, obsession and modern heartache. Unlike Bathtub Love Killings on which we found Olivia playing every instrument on the vast majority of the album, Night Owl is decidedly more collaborative, with a studio band of buddies backing up her up. Night Owl is exactly what it sounds like: the wee-hour workings of an artist engrossed in a project, pushing against omnipresent forces of fear and judgment to do exactly what you’ve always wanted to do and be exactly what you’ve known you are. It’s candy-coated and also bittersweet, fully aware and also full-hearted.

TRACK LISTING

1. Garage Bat
2. Night Owl
3. Shut Your Mouth
4. Brushfire
5. In Two
6. If You Don’t Love Me By Now
7. Rhinestone
8. The Hunt
9. JaanPehechaanHo
10. Can You Help Me?
11. Siren Call
12. I Used To Be Lonely
13. Perfume
14. Tsunami Sue

Raving Ghost is an album populated by mysterious characters in various states of danger – cursed lovers, doomed souls, women deliriously haunted by unseen forces. Over the course of its 11 spellbinding tracks, Olivia Jean amplifies that drama with her wildly melodic take on garage rock, handling each riff with the power and precision she’s previously shown as a member of the Black Belles and as an in-demand session/touring musician who has played with legends like Wanda Jackson.

Featuring backing from such top musicians as My Morning Jacket keyboardist Bo Koster, Jellyfish co-founder Roger Joseph Manning Jr, and drummers Carla Azar (T-Bone Burnett, Nikki Lane) and Patrick Keeler (The Raconteurs, The Afghan Whigs), the album is a feverish collision of goth- punk, power-pop, and classic garage, charged with an energy so intense that the speakers to several of Valentine Recording Studios’ vintage amps ended up blowing out during the sessions. A stunning evolution of the retro-surf sound featured on Olivia Jean’s critically acclaimed past solo work, Raving Ghost ultimately proves the most magnificently heavy and mesmerizing output yet from an endlessly fascinating artist. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Olivia Jean presents a sleek, enjoyable mid-point between lo-fi garage rock and melodic goth-pop, all topped with Jean's psychedelic vocals. Brilliantly produced and presented too, classic Third Man.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE 1
1. Raving Ghost
2. Too Late
3. Spider
4. Trouble
5. I Need You
SIDE 2
1. Ditch
2. Fun
3. Fate
4. Orinoco Flow
5. Godmother
6. Don't Leave

Bathtub Love Killings is the debut solo LP from Olivia Jean, the multi-instrumentalist who cut her teeth in the Third Man stable backing folks as varied as Karen Elson, Wanda Jackson and Jack White in addition to fronting the much-loved Black Belles. Jean has accrued a lifetime of experience in a few short years, from highlight performances on The Colbert Report, Conan, Late Show With David Letterman and the Grand Old Opry stage to having one of her songs used as the theme for the television series Elvira’s Movie Macabre.

Produced by Jack White, Bathtub Love Killings showcases Jean as a songwriting force to be reckoned with. Playing damn-near every instrument she could get her hands on, the result is a well-rounded, catchy record that’s chockfull of ear worm moments.

• Olivia Jean was lead singer, guitarist, main songwriter of the Black Belles (also released by Third Man Records)
• produced by Jack White, who also plays guitar on “Cat Fight”
• drums on “Deadly Hex” and “Cat Fight” by Patrick Keeler (the Raconteurs, the Greenhornes)
• “Green Honeycreeper” features songwriting contribution by Coco Hames (The Ettes, The Parting Gifts)

Oscar Jerome hibernated to make what became The Spoon, his second album. The pandemic had halted his concerts, and he found himself alone in Berlin playing guitar and writing poetry.You can feel that interiority on The Spoon, a laconic piece of work of melodic melancholy. He’ll move from a whisper to a scream throughout the album, and he’s as ready to talk about his feelings of depression as he is to rage about the injustices of his home country. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Dark Slide
2. Sweet Isolation - Oscar Jerome Feat. Kaidi Akinnibi
3. Berlin 1
4. The Spoon
5. The Soup
6. Channel Your Anger
7. Feet Down South
8. Aya & Bartholomew
9. Feed The Pigs
10. Path To Someone
11. Hall Of Mirrors - Oscar Jerome Feat. Léa Sen
12. Use It Well

One of the most innovative and pioneering musicians of his time, Orlando Julius made an amazing difference to the Nigerian music between the late 60s and early 70s, influencing the likes of Fela Kuti and Tony Allen along the way. This Vampi Soul collection brings together his LPs "Super Afro Soul" (as Orlando Julius & His Modern Aces), and "Orlando's Afro Ideas 1969-72" (as Orlando Julius & His Afro Sounders), previously available on Soundway offshoot Ekosound). The 23 tracks offer up a mind blowing mix of Nigerian highlife grooves, melding jazz, soul, and funk with wonderful Afro-funk rhythms.

Strut present a limited transparent vinyl pressing of the seminal album by one of the all-time legends of Nigerian music, the late, great Orlando Julius, in a mouth-watering collaboration with London super-group The Heliocentrics, originally released in 2014. Starting with his club residency in Ibadan in the mid 60s, Orlando Julius set the blueprint for a whole generation of Afrobeat and Afro funk stars, going on to play with Louis Armstrong, The Crusaders, Hugh Masekela and Lamont Dozier among others, famously co-composing the classic ‘Going Back To My Roots’ in 1979 whilst based in the USA.

For ‘Jaiyede Afro’, Julius went back to his own roots, revisiting several compositions from his early years which had never previously been recorded.

Recorded at the Heliocentrics’ fully analogue HQ in North London, the band take Orlando’s sound into new, progressive directions, retaining the raw grit of his early work and adding psychedelic touches and adventurous new arrangements. They also contribute live favourite, the James Brown cover ‘In The Middle’ and a series of memorable shorter interludes. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Buje Buje
A2. Love Thy Neighbour
B1. Aseni
B2. Sangodele
C1. Jaiyede Afro
C2. Omo Oba Blues
C3. In The Middle
D1. Be Counted
D2. Alafia 

In Okay Kaya songs, her world looks a lot like ours — Netflix, jetlag, vegan peanut butter and chocolate ice cream, lonely bowls of ramen, diet trends. But unlike ours, each of these vibrates and shimmers with deeper, darker meaning, with existential dread and desire for understanding. Through Norwegian-raised New Yorker Kaya’s dreamy soft-focus lens, the language of Twitter memes becomes modernist poetry as her breathy contralto voice sings lines like, “If you don’t love me at my guttural sound, you don’t deserve me at my guttural sound.” This is Sade for nihilists. On the opening track of her new record she sings, “I used to fight the feeling, always let it win.” As she transforms these feelings, defeats, and victories into songs, the lyrics often involve pools of sweat, oceans, and other forms of wetness. But Okay Kaya’s world is not one of renewal and rebirth—it’s not water at all, actually. “It’s more like bile,” Kaya says, “It’s what comes out in the purge.” In these songs, Kaya swims through her melancholy and anxiety— not as a way of cleansing herself, but as an understanding of their depths

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby Little Tween
2. Ascend And Try Again
3. Insert Generic Name
4. Overstimulated
5. Psych Ward
6. Gutteral Sounds
7. Asexual Wellbeing
8. Popcorn Heart
9. Mother Nature’s Bitch
10. Hallelu Ya Hallelu Me
11. Symbiosis
12. Givenupitis
13. Helsevesen
14. Stonethrow
15. Zero Interaction Ramen Bar

Though "Say You Love Me" wasn't "Om" Alec Khaoli's first solo recording, the 1985 EP solidified the bass player and songwriter's standing as one of South Africa's most consistently innovative pop auteurs. He built a career on ubiquitous rock, pop and soul hits with groundbreaking bands like the Beaters, Harari and Umoja. But Khaoli's seemingly endless fountain of music continued outside these ensembles, where he usually played bass and contributed songwriting and vocals. Khaoli released several successful solo works while he made records with Umoja and worked on other productions with friends.
This creativity was aided by Khaoli's own recording studio. He was the first South African to have a privately-owned studio. As black artists were forced to record during lunch breaks and didn't get sufficient access and time in the white-owned studios, having his studio allowed Khaoli to develop in his own way. Hence his productive output during the 80's and early 90's, releasing 5 LPs with Umoja and 5 solo LPs, along with numerous singles and EPs. There's something broad and dynamic about the almost epic pop sound Khaoli creates on "Say You Love Me". Being the first South African to take control his recording process and thereby free himself from one of apartheid's many strictures, he took his vision of music to new realms and made timeless music for the dance floor in the process. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Another rarity reissued by the erm...awesome... Awesome Tapes From Africa, kicking off with the emotional pop of "Say You Love Me", a shoulder rolling love song which could easily have found its way onto the end credits of many an 80s buddy movie. "Make Me Your Lover" fuses a little Paul Simon style songwriting with traditional African styles (oh the irony), while "Crosslines" is an oddball synth funk freakout a la Herbie Hancock. Last but not least we feel the force of the show-stealing "Enjoy It", a dreamy bit a Afro-cosmic for the Balearic crowds.

TRACK LISTING

1. Say You Love Me
2. Make Me Your Lover
3. Crosslines
4. Enjoy It

World music and ethno sounds with an obvious Japanese origin meet progressive rock and psyche. The result is a captivating piece of melodic and deeply atmospheric music that paints pictures of life in ancient Japan into your mind when you lay back, close your eyes and listen closely with your thoughts turned off. If PINK FLOYD were Japanese their music might have sounded like that. The frequency of the arrangements on „Benzaiten“ reminds of what our English heroes have created in the early to mid 70s just with a different ethnical approach. „Benzaiten“ is even a more progressive effort than anything most British bands have ever managed to fabricate and still utterly natural and vivid concerning the flow of the music. All participating musicians here are professionals and their performances are tight and still passionate. The sound is warm and vivid, the song structures are wide open and welcome you to slip inside. East meets West on this record and Osamu Kitajima and his companions really grab you by the soul. Electronic elements in the percussion section add some oddity to the whole musical picture. Not sure what Osamu Kitajima and his band intended when they recorded this record but I am certain they achieved it. The cool aspect of „Benzaiten“ is the rocking guitar which keeps the whole album together. Must be the Japanese pendant to German acts like AMON DÜÜL II, EMBRYO and GURU GURU. Well, there is definitely some truth in this comparison. Anyway, this album will enchant you!

Oliver Knight is part of the Robin Hood Bay posse of outstanding musicians. Son of the late lamented Lal Waterson, nephew to Norma and cousin to Eliza Carthy, "Mysterious Ways" is his first album under his own moniker. Contributions from Norma Waterson, Eliza, John Tams, Christine Collister, Barry Coope and Maria Gilhooley add to Knight's skilled arrangements and make for a most enjoyable listen.

Second album from West London, singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Oscar Lang. A split from his childhood sweetheart sent Lang spiralling, dramatically changing the course of the follow-up to the psychedelic-tinged fuzzy-rock of his 2021 debut Chew The Scenery at the same time as driving Lang into the most creatively fruitful period of his short career. The diversion has resulted in Look Now, an astounding record that makes Lang’s previous output sound like he was just testing the waters. Chew The Scenery and three melodically-breezy EPs that preceded it introduced Lang as a songwriter of rare talents but here is where he really lays down a marker, emerging with an album that takes in playful hooks, poignant lyricism, orchestral swells, ba-roque-pop instrumentation, a record that’s expansive but never overblown, intimate at the same time as being epic. It is his definitive artistic statement.

TRACK LISTING

A Song About Me
Everything Unspoken
Crawl
Leave Me Alone
Blow Ur Cash
Circle Line
Take Me Apart
On God
One Foot First
When You Were A Child (feat. Molly Payton)

Beside Trawbreaga Bay, in Co Donegal, on the north coast of Ireland, in an old schoolhouse, with a suitcase full of hired recording gear, Oisin Leech strums gently on an acoustic guitar and watches the tide pull the water away from the ancient inlet - The thickness of Oisin's voice soothes the room as the sound waves bounce around in the land where his ancestors still live and still wander - With a musical history that led Leech from the street punk bands of yesteryear through an ongoing stint with folk duo The Lost Brothers, he found himself for the frst time working on songs to sing alone In his mind, the songs became imagined vignette flms playing behind closed, guitar eyes. After writing nearly 40 new songs in this fashion, Leech wrote "October Sun" which would become the foundation for his debut solo record, Cold Sea.

Cold Sea was produced by guitarist/ songwriter Steve Gunn. Leech dreamt of making the record in Donegal Ireland, a county signifcant to him because it is the home of his ancestors. Pitching this idea to Gunn sparked the frst of several serendipities circling the Cold Sea sessions - Gunn had always wanted to visit Donegal to connect with his own familial roots in the region.

Cold Sea is perhaps most notable for its tremendous warmth. Each song was recorded in a few takes and adorned gently with synthesizers and guitar from Gunn. Several songs feature contributions on the upright bass by Bob Dylan band stalwart Tony Garnier. M. Ward plays guitar on October Sun and there are strings by Roisin McGrory and bouzouki by the legendary Donal Lunny throughout. It is a friendship record but even at its most collaborative, Cold Sea remains centered around the humble acoustic guitar and wool blanket vocals of Leech.

TRACK LISTING

October Sun
Colour Of The Rain
One Hill Further
Maritime Radio
Empire
Malin Gales
Cold Sea
Trawbreaga Bay
Daylight

Mr Bongo reissue series exploring the incredible back catalogue of Sonny Lester's iconic Groove Merchant record label. First up, the spellbinding funk-fuelled, soul jazz album 'Simba', by guitar maestro O'Donel Levy.

Baltimore-born, Levy was already well regarded as one of the best up-and-coming jazz guitarists at the time of Simba's release. Having toured with George Benson and Jimmy McGriff, as well as featuring on McGriff's Black Pearl album on Blue Note, he went on to sign with Sonny Lester's Groove Merchant. Produced by Lester himself and recorded over two back-to-back days of sessions in 1973, Simba features a who's who of '70s session players. The album features the legendary studio drummer Steve Gadd, Cecil Bridgewater on Flugelhorn, bass by Tony Levin and arrangements by Manny Albam.

A masterclass in tight yet effortlessly funk-driven rhythms, the tracks showcase these musicians at their zenith. Album opener 'Bad, Bad, Simba' wouldn't have been out of place on a Lalo Schifrin '70s car chase soundtrack. Levy's playing is brilliant, bright and slick, with an infectiously exuberant energy that is complimented perfectly by Gadd's supreme drumming. 'Playhouse' serves up another vibrant offering, Wah Wah guitars, horns and flutes duelling it out in a fast-paced fashion.

The cinematic thread continues throughout, yet with the tempo taken down a notch. 'Sierra Lonely' and 'Sad, Sad, Simba' head into lush ballad territory, with superb arrangements by Albam and beautiful playing by Collins and Bridgewater on Flugelhorn. Here Levy shines without taking any limelight, as the players synergize to a relaxed perfection. 'Nigerian Knights' closes the album flawlessly, showcasing once more Levy's understated yet magnetic flow on the guitar.

Every track on 'Simba' is a winner. As with CTI Recordings of the same era, the feel and textures of Sonny Lester's productions have that pre-emptive, hip-hop aesthetic, which later producers would rework and reimagine. This album is expertly balanced, deftly arranged and magically executed, ebbing and flowing with a cool buoyancy that just grooves and grooves.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bad, Bad, Simba
2. Kilimanjaro Cookout
3. Playhouse
4. Sierra Lonely
5. Sad, Sad, Simba
6. Joni
7. Nigerian Knights

'Aquatic and Other Worlds (1983-1989)' marks the debut release proper by Oksana Linde. The daughter of Ukrainian immigrants to Venezuela, Oksana was born in Caracas, 1948 and began making electronic music in the early '80s.

With benefit of hindsight, it's quite possible to identify Oksana as Latin America's answer to Delia Derbyshire, Suzanne Ciani or Laurie Spiegel. Oksana Linde belongs to the same creative trail started by artists such as Delia Derbyshire, Suzanne Ciani or Laurie Spiegel, because like them she knew how to create a personal universe by exploring electronic sounds and to find a place in an eminently masculine environment. Aquatic and other worlds is her first album, which compiles electronic synthesizer pieces recorded between 1983 and 1989. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1948, into a family of Ukrainian immigrants, Oksana Linde's work became known at the beginning of the 80s, coinciding with the emergence of a new scene of Venezuelan electronic synthesizer music, with names such as Ángel Rada, Miguel Noya, Musikautomatika, Vinicio Adames, Oscar Caraballo, Aitor Goyarrola and Jacky Schreiber.

In 1981, at the age of 33, Oksana Linde left her job as a researcher due to health issues and began to devote more time to music and painting. She borrowed a Polymoog synthesizer, then a TEAC open reel tape recorder and a Moog Source. With this equipment she set up her small home studio and began to compose her first pieces around 1983-1984. She eventually expanded her equipment, acquiring a 16-channel mixer, a Roland Tape Echo, a TR-505 drum machine, a Korg M1, and years later a Korg TR-88. Between 1984 and 1986 she recorded more than 30 pieces. Between 1989 and 1996 she continued to produce another 30 pieces, thus accumulating a large archive that has remained unpublished.

Oksana Linde's music can be intensely hypnotic and psychedelic, but also melodic and playful. Linde programs and plays all the instruments and develops melodic lines that are superimposed on loops and sequences, as well as various layers of reverberant and floating sounds that come and go, and always establish a very cinematic narrative, very typical of the tradition of synthesizer music.

The early work of women in electronic music in Latin America is one of those areas that has yet to be worked in depth, but happily research has already started. In Latin America, the introduction of the synthesizer in experimental, progressive and electronic music from the 70s on, is associated almost exclusively with male figures, which is why the work of Oksana Linde gains particular relevance, as she establishes herself as a figure who breaks that hegemony, and whose extensive production in turn places her as one of the most prolific and notable exponents of synthesizer music in Latin America. The work of Oksana Linde and the publication of this album provide an opportunity to get closer to an unexpected universe of sounds, a sign of another history that is yet to be written.

Compiled by Luis Alvarado. Includes notes by Oksana Linde, Ale Hop, and Luis Alvarado.

Available on a Limited edition of 300 copies on vinyl.

Art by René Sánchez.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1 Intromersión 03:31
A2 Viaje Hacia La Luz 05:07
A3 Playa Caribe 06:04
A4 Bajo La Lluvia 02:14
A5 Estudio Para Una Sinfonía Folclórica Ucraniana 03:02
SIDE B
B1 Mariposas Acuáticas 01:44
B2 Psicocatálisis 02:57
B3 Descubrimiento 03:01
B4 Orinoco 03:41
B5 Nenufar 02:28
B6 Recordando A Kitaro 02:24
B7 Ensueño 03:41

Rocafort Records say hello to 2023 with a deep, sultry lilt to usher in the new year. Madrid-based producer, Oscar Martos, offers two wide-hipped tracks that are not rushing to go anywhere – apart from a soft shuffle to the feet and booty.

Both tracks feature the sweet vocals of Cuban singer, Essy, who adds a sexy heat and dreamy languor. 'So Lonely' has a hint of a 90s soul R'n'B hit; not overly produced and left to breathe its groove with instant hook and harmonies. B side, 'Mi Vida' carries a similar imprint, this time with a more pronounced latino/hip-hop sabor. Confident mid-tempo tracks that could easily seal the end of many hot, sweaty nights.

After having worked on a variety of other artists' projects, Martos is finally ready to blow his own trumpet.

TRACK LISTING

1. So Lonely (feat. Essy)
2. Mi Vida (feat. Essy)

There is a sense of quiet, reserved confidence about' Hither Thither', O Emperor‘s debut LP. Many commentators have noted that it sounds more like the recording of a band on their third or fourth album, such is the display of maturity and self-awareness on show. The diversity on display is striking. From songs like 'Don Quixote' (a dense production featuring a stunning, lush string arrangement by pianist Philip Christie), 'Po' (an elusive tale of imaginary childhood friends set against a driving 70s style production) and 'Don‘t Mind Me' (a gracefully melodic, sun-kissed affair, with vocal harmonies shared by all five members) to the albums quieter, more introspective moments of 'Sedalia' (a plaintive narrative with an unexpected psychedelic shift), 'Heisenberg' (an eerily minimalistic piano-led composition) and 'The Fat Lady Sings' (a dramatic send-off that at times hints at a taste for the avant-garde), 'Hither Thither' is an album of dense, sprawling beauty - a collection that is diverse while remaining focused on an overriding aesthethic. A journey from Hither to Thither indeed.

“As Irish debuts go, it’s in a league of its own.” The Irish Times.

“A sumptuous and wondrous debut from a band with a frighteningly bright future.” The Sunday Business Post.

“Think Fleet Foxes/Local Natives, with various vocalists and the vibe of The Band thrown in for good measure…” Futuresounds.

TRACK LISTING

O Fracas return with the limited edition "Factfinding" EP featuring two tracks from their forthcoming debut album, "Fits & Starts", due early next year (08). The band recently signed to I Can Count in the UK and Vinyl Junkie in Japan and this release follows the release of two critically acclaimed singles on Marquis Cha Cha. This EP comprises of two lead tracks "Factfinding" and "And So A Scratch Runs Down A Wall", taken from "Fits & Starts". Along with "Moth To A Flame" and a remix of "Scratched Wall" by Leeds' up and coming hip hop export Breaking The Illusion. O Fracas are the collision of a myriad of influences. Inspired as much by the DC hardcore of Fugazi and Q And Not U along with the rhythms of Billy Cobham and Fela Kuti, they bring this together with the range of Talking Heads songbook and condense it into three minutes pop songs played with a vigour and taut musicianship beyond many of their peers. Lyrically, lead singer Ben writes about the human condition with the insight of a man twice his age, O Fracas set themselves apart from the pack and with an average age of just twenty this really is surely just the beginning for O Fracas.

The album condenses the bands first three years of work, influenced by the likes of Fugazi, Fela Kuti and The Mars Volta into one un-cohesive package. Ranging from the folky lament of "Menwith Hill" to the frenetic avant-rhumba-punk of "Zeroes And Ones", a dystopian view of 'the idea of a liberating universal internet consciousness'.

Another great slice of spikey, angular guitar noise from Leeds lads O Fracas.

Dynamite Cuts is proud to be able to press for the first time on 7” vinyl, two killer soul cuts. “Ride Your Pony”, the Lee Dorsey classic, gets a seductive twist by The Moments, which just oozes sexy soul vibes with a tough groove. On the flip it just gets better, “Sugar, Sugar” is a great soul track, a right singalong, classic club track! Both are first time on 7” vinyl in true Dynamite Cuts fashion, essential for all good music lovers.

TRACK LISTING

A - “Ride Your Pony Girl”
B - “Sugar Sugar”

O Terno’s 2019 DIY masterpiece of modern Brazilian pop, , is now widely available on vinyl for the first time. The album (which features Devendra Banhart and Shintaro Sakamoto) had its first limited domestic vinyl pressing evaporate instantly, necessitating this essential Psychic Hotline pressing and an opportunity to introduce O Terno ("The Suit" - they both have three pieces, get it?) to a wider audience with their fourth and finest album.

At its core the band is made up of Tim Bernardes (lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and piano player), Guilherme “Peixe” D’Almeida (bass) and Gabriel “Biel” Basile (drums) though all three play a part in producing, with Bernardes stepping forward to mix this record as well as composing and arranging ’s orchestral elements.

A distinct departure from their previous albums - more sixties pop and less indie and psych rock - is the product of the band working in a familiar studio (RISCO) surrounded by a creative community. In the

studio, they followed the open-source formula mapped out by The Beatles, The Kinks, Os Mutantes, Harry Nilson and others: write a good song (the hardest part), create a simple, yet elegant arrangement for bass, drums and guitar/piano, adorn the song with complementary instruments and melodies, and record it well, employing studio wizardry selectively and intentionally. As a result, the album sounds both retro in its analog texture and minimalist production, but contemporary in Bernardes’ songwriting and vocal style, which owes as much to Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) and Grizzly Bear as to Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso or John Lennon.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tudo Que Eu Não Fiz
2. Pegando Leve
3. Eu Vou
4. Atrás / Além
5. Nada / Tudo
6. Pra Sempre Será
7. Volta E Meia
8. Bielzinho / Bielzinho
9. O Bilhete
10. Profundo / Superficial
11. Passado / Futuro
12. E No Final

O-Mandroid is Kawabata Makoto’s new trio with the Acid Mothers Temple drummer Satoshima Nani (voice, drums, sampler) and bassist Hamachang from a Kobe based post punk band BLONDnewHALF

All music and words were improvised though, the sound is like composed psychedelic & progressive rock / late 70’s - early 80’s post punk / Japanese underground experimental, etc.

Kawabata Makoto : guitar, synthesizer, voice
Satoshima Nani : drums, synthersizer, voice
Hamachang : bass, voice

TRACK LISTING

1. Proto Sapiens (7:09)
2. Stone Age Second Stage (11:29)
3. Cyborg Primitive (6:33)
4. Cannibal Bag (13:07)

Continuing to dig up the finest and rarest hip hop bangers, most of which are pressed on a 45 for the first time, 5 Borough Breaks deliver yet another nugget in the shape of O.C.'s legendary "Time's Up". Over on the flip its the original sample source, this time a wigged out big band/jazz cover of The Beatles "A Day In The Life". Another essential release for DJs everywhere. As always very ltd qty pressed, when they’re gone they’re gone.

TRACK LISTING

A. Les Demerle - Times Up
B. O.C. - A Day In The Life

Honing their fearless sound through a residency at Brixton’s iconic venue The Windmill, as well as on support slots across the UK and Europe with fellow heavyweights black midi and Gilla Band, O. – the London-based duo of baritone saxophonist Joe Henwood and drummer Tash Keary - have now distilled their unique live energy into their debut album, 'WeirdOs'.

Featuring production from Dan Carey, 'WeirdOs' is Tash and Joe at their most raucous and free. Across 10 tracks of high-octane instrumentals recorded live to tape, the duo encompass everything from cathartic dancefloor drops, to junglist breakbeats, intricate jazz lines, and sludgy, menacing doom metal.

Speaking about the album, the band say, 'WeirdOs' is a dark, heavy album based around our love of riffy basslines, blast beats, dub, noise, and all the weird sounds in between. It was recorded live across 2 weeks in the studio with Dan Carey and aims to replicate the feeling of being at one of our gigs.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. 176
3. TV Dinners
4. Wheezy
5. Micro
6. Cosmo
7. Green Shirt
8. Whammy
9. Sugarfish
10. Slap Juice

Coming hot on the heels of last November’s debut single “OGO” – which won enthusiastic support from Stereogum, Loud & Quiet, DJ, NME and Rough Trade – Slice is a four-track snapshot of the duo’s first two years of existence. “Slice” and “Grouchy” turn sax and drums into pneumatic patterns of riff and rhythm that draw from the muscular viscerality of metal and the dancefloor dynamics of build and drop. “Moon”, meanwhile, snakes a limber saxophone line through a variety of dub production styles. And the closing “ATM” takes up a familiar melody with subversive intent, repurposing it into something that swings from beauty to rage and back again.

Says Tash: “We played loads of gigs before we ever got in the studio, so we had lots of tracks to choose from. We picked these four because they’re all quite different from one another, while showing off all the styles we like to play.”

The pair recorded the EP live with Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey at his South London studio. Following the recording, the three subjected the tracks to an array of post-production tricks, making full use Carey’s enviable selection of vintage dub production units. “Dan’s got a full collection of spring reverbs, tape delays, digital delays, bucket brigade delays and plate reverbs,” says Joe. “We don’t see ourselves as a dub group or anything like that, but we both really love heavy, bass-driven music, and none of this stuff would exist without King Tubby.”

As the circular simplicity of their name suggests, O. are a true self-contained unit. They formed in London during lockdown, when Joe and Tash – both veterans of a string of London ensembles – found themselves in a bubble together. When they started jamming, it was with no preconceptions: don’t overthink it, just play and see what happens. Before long, though, they were augmenting live instruments with effects – Joe routing his saxophone through a pedal board, Tash treating her drums with reverb and delay. As their sound grew and grew, it gradually became clear there wouldn’t be space for anyone else.

O. played their first show at Brixton Windmill, and the venue’s booker Tim Perry invited them back to support Black Midi. Immediately after their set, Black Midi’s Morgan Simpson invited them out on tour around the UK and Europe – a true trial by fire. “I think our fifth gig was at Alexandra Palace – it was terrifying,” remembers Tash. “But the main thing we learned was that we can be as weird as we want to be. Black Midi’s whole approach is that it’s OK to be playful. We both really liked that, because there's a playfulness to our music, too.”

It was this experimental urge that saw Joe and Tash run their own nights, O Zone, at Brixton Windmill – collaborative live sessions that saw O. improvise onstage with luminaries including Nerija’s Rosie Turton, Edna from Goat Girl, Melt Yourself Down’s Pete Wareham and Steam Down’s Wonky Logic. Following a tour with Dublin’s Gilla Band, though, O.’s music has just been getting heavier, louder, more intense. “People have come to see us and said they’ve enjoyed the fact it feels about two centimetres from falling apart,” says Tash. “With two instruments, you have to push yourself, physically, right to the edge to keep it interesting. But we enjoy that challenge.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Slice
2. Moon
3. Grouchy
4. ATM

The two-man band are set to release their long-awaited debut album in 2019 on Bureau B. The eight tracks contain familiar OTTO ingredients, from organ sounds and rhythm presets to disco strings and the monophonic waves of a 1970s synthesizer. Arpeggio and Hohner notes add extra sharpness to the proceedings. Classics from their live repertoire sit alongside brand new numbers, invariably strange synthesizer compositions.

Communing at the triangulation of words, music and image, O’Brien has always conjured powerful worlds: but none more powerful, or as immersive, than on her debut record. In the space that exists between her delivery – at once wry, silky, vicious, and self-assured – and the music – a dynamic, dancing call-and-response from her collaborators, guitarist Julian Hanson and drummer Oscar Robertson – lies a productive tension. Using a method of creating on-instinct, in constant communication with multisensory cues, O’Brien is carving out a space as a musical oracle for an ever-shifting era. The 11-track album was produced by indie super-producer Dan Carey (Fontaines DC, Squid, Black Midi, Kae Temptest, Bat For Lashes, Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand) and recorded in his south London studio Mr Dan’s in late 2021.

“The story of the album is built up in layers; one song giving context to the next” explains Sinead; “I thought about becoming undressed; testing my ideas, my voice. Working myself out across themes of identity, curiosity, creative process. Experimenting with the form and shape of language, using tone and delivery to get to the immediate centre of what I am saying. The record opens and closes with poems, these tracks have a really clear direction - a form which is set apart from the ‘songs’. I hold stops in different places, moving emphatically through the lyrics, changing the meaning. No punctuation - only the voice mapping out the way.”

“The album title “Time Bend and Break The Bower”, from the song ‘Multitudes’, came into my head and made its demands, an idea that pressed on me throughout the record. It has a very active role. The clock symbol is enlarged, it looms like a moon over my activity watching, counting me down to zero. Dripping with self-sabotage and the feeling of being chased; it pulls and pushes against the verses which talk of ’Multitudes’; the things that faithfully come back - the images, the words, creativity. It is creativity itself.”

Since 2020, O’Brien has garnered international critical acclaim from titles like Rolling Stone, DIY, Dazed, Dork, Loud & Quiet, NME, Paste, Stereogum, The FADER, The Guardian, The Quietus, and AnOther Magazine, among others. O’Brien has also been consistently supported on national radio: she counts Jack Saunders at BBC Radio 1, and Steve Lamacq and Amy Lamé at BBC Radio 6 Music as champions of her music, with the latter station giving two tracks a spot on their B List. And O’Brien is building on her US support from the likes of Seattle’s KEXP alongside appearances at SXSW – in virtual form in 2021, and live with her band in Texas later this spring.

With a background on the design teams for John Galliano and, later, Vivienne Westwood, it’s no surprise that raven-haired O’Brien’s cultural touchstones also span a rich history of art, photography, film, dance and movement: from Helmut Newton femme fatales and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s bleak landscapes to modern performance by Michael Clark and Michael Laub companies, to the writings of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett. Recently tapped by Alessandro Micele’s Gucci to perform, it’s clear that O’Brien’s esoteric instincts will continue to inspire those beyond the industry as well as within it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pain Is The Fashion Of The Spirit
2. Salt
3. Girlkind
4. End Of Days
5. Like Culture
6. The Rarest Kind
7. Holy Country
8. Spare For My Size, Me
9. There Are Good Times Coming
10. Multitudes
11. Go Again

Where the River Meets the Road is the fifteenth solo release from GRAMMY award winning artist, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Tim O'Brien. Each of the 12 tracks on the album is connected to his home state of West Virginia. Two originals, "Guardian Angel" and the title track "Where the River Meets the Road," tell deeply personal stories of O'Brien's family - the death of his older sister when he was a toddler, and the tale of his great grandfather moving to his hometown of Wheeling in the 1850s.

The remaining ten songs were collected and compiled after more than a decade collaborating with the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame .Inducted into the Hall of Fame himself in 2013, his work with the organization helped connect him with the sheer width and breadth of music born of West Virginia's native sons and daughters. The project altogether paints a cohesive picture of the beauty and hardship that makes West Virginia the haunting, comforting, magnetic homeland that it is. All at once quintessentially West Virginian and archetypically Tim O'Brien.

Geoffrey O'Connor, one time frontman for euphoric guitar pop band Crayon Fields, returns with his first solo album in seven years - but is it really a solo album? For As Long As I Can Remember is a suite of duets with some of Australia's most iconic modern singers, including Jonnine (HTRK), Sarah Mary Chadwick, Laura Jean, Sui Zhen and more. The album explores late night tales of unsublimated desire, a synth-pop cocoon world where obsessions drift slowly into the rear view mirror and exert an unsteadying backwards pull. Geoffrey's duet partners do not proffer easy love or solace, rather they challenge him, gently put him down, or glance back at a history of faded passion.

Other guests include Nicole Thibault of Chapter artists Thibault, Jess Ribeiro, June Jones, Summer Flake's Steph Crase, Sienna Thornton (Cyanide Thornton) and Mystery Guest's Caitlyn Lesiuk. Sydney funk sophisticate Donny Benet appears on bass on two tracks. Since his previous solo album, 2014 critic favourite Fan Fiction (written up by Pitchfork, Spin, All Music and elsewhere), Geoffrey has released Crayon Fields comeback album No One Deserves You (2015) and an expanded reissue of 2009 classic All the Pleasures Of the World. He has also produced albums for Sarah Mary Chadwick, June Jones, Summer Flake and others. Geoffrey has appeared on records by The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Donny Benet, been remixed by Chet Faker, and was a member of Melbourne psych pop band Montero

TRACK LISTING

1. For As Long As I Can (with Jonnine)
2. Foolish Enough (with Laura Jean)
3. What A Scene (with Sui Zhen)
4. Renee (with Sienna Thornton)
5. Strange Feeling (with Sarah Mary Chadwick)
6. Precious Memories (with Remember Sarah Mary Chadwick)
7. Catwalk (with Caitlyn Lesiuk)
8. Tired Of Winning (with June Jones)
9. Shelley Duvall (with Nicole Thibault)
10. Tunnel Of Love (with Jess Ribeiro)
11. Love Is Your Best Friend (with Stephanie Crase)

Self-produced American songwriter London O’Connor announces a partnership with New York City-based record label True Panther Sounds as well as the remastered official re-release of his critically acclaimed debut album ‘OΔ’. 

Upon self-releasing ‘OΔ’ on SoundCloud, London’s diary-like accounts and immediate pop songs wooed both critics and fans alike. His energetic live show atop his one-of-one light cube impressed on both sides of the pond just months after the initial release of the album. His first chapter ‘OATMEAL’, the present and relatable ‘Nobody Hangs Out Anymore’ and the I-hate-everything anthem ‘GUTS’ were instant streaming favourites that all wound up getting play on BBC Radio 1 and American radio stations, while the epic album closer ‘SURVIVE’ found a whole new meaning when a room full of music lovers and industry folk in France sang along in sync with O’Connor mere days after the tragic events at The Bataclan Theatre.

‘OΔ’ (pronounced ‘Circle Triangle’) is a post-any-genre narrative told through vivid and visual production he made from the contents of his backpack while sleeping on floors and couches in New York City. It details the suburban world he grew up in and fled from in Southern California years before. The cinematic album also acts as a rallying cry and arrived hand-in-hand with a direct message from O’Connor: “If when you hear it, you feel like its talking about where you live, then I want you to leave.”

The original version of the album lingers on the internet along with a tweet of his actual cellphone number. The creative direction of London’s body of art and the viscerality of its themes to overcome one’s environment liken the symbol ‘OΔ’ in the eyes of his fans to one perceived like the emblem for the Rebel Alliance.

“A singular talent” - The Guardian

“Effortless and blissful, like falling asleep in the grass” - Dazed

“A dreamy tribute to growing up bored in the suburbs and finding adventure in the nether regions of his imagination” - The Fader

“‘OΔ’ works like a mini motion picture” - Pigeons And Planes

“As expertly constructed a pop album as anything that will be released this year” - Pitchfork

“Mercurial, genre-shifting” - Stereogum

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: This album is unbelievably catchy, it’s an electro-pop sensation. It cleverly dips in to many different genres while all at the same time retaining a distinctive style. Oh and it’s impossible not to sing along to ‘I hate your gu-uuts’!

TRACK LISTING

(open) 00 00
Oatmeal
Natural
Steal
Nobody Hangs Out Anymore
Guts
Coordinates 00 36
Love Song
09 87 (Where Is Your Home)?
Survive

Sinead was born in Dublin in 1966, and was discovered by Paul Byrne, drummer of U2 proteges In Tua Nua, while singing wedding covers in the city. After cowriting the first In Tua Nua single, she left school to focus on music, studying voice and piano at the Dublin College of Music before relocating to London in 1985.

The follow-up album to the hugely successful I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got album, Am I Not Your Girl? was released in September 1992 and features Sinead performing a collection of songs that she had grown up listening to and which had inspired her to become a singer. It was during the promotional campaign for the album when Sinead made a controversial appearance on Saturday Night Live.

Am I Not Your Girl? features Sinead's unmistakable voice accompanied by an orchestra, performing big- band arrangements of tracks such as the single 'Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home' (a Top 20 hit), 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina', and 'Why Don't You Do Right?'.

TRACK LISTING

Why Don't You Do Right?
Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered
Secret Love 
Black Coffee
Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home
Don't Cry For Me Argentina
I Want To Be Loved By You
Gloomy Sunday
Love Letters 
How Insensitive
Scarlet Ribbons
Don't Cry For Me Argentina (Instrumental)

Sinead was born in Dublin in 1966, and was discovered by Paul Byrne, drummer of U2 proteges In Tua Nua, while singing wedding covers in the city. After cowriting the first In Tua Nua single, she left school to focus on music, studying voice and piano at the Dublin College of Music before relocating to London in 1985.

Released in November 1987, Sinead's striking debut album The Lion and the Cobra was met with critical and commercial success. The album synthesises several of Sinead's influences into a diverse array of sounds and styles, from the hushed, atmospheric 'Troy' and 'Jackie' to the pop-rock hit single 'Mandinka', and the hip-hop inspired 'I Want Your (Hands on Me)'. The album also includes 'Drink Before The War', a song written by Sinead about her experiences at the Catholic reform school she attended, and was recently featured in the HBO series Euphoria.

The album remains a high point.

TRACK LISTING

Jackie
Mandinka
Jerusalem
Just Like U Said It Would B
Never Get Old
Troy
I Want Your (Hands On Me)
Drink Before The War
Just Call Me Joe

Sinead was born in Dublin in 1966, and was discovered by Paul Byrne, drummer of U2 proteges In Tua Nua, while singing wedding covers in the city. After cowriting the first In Tua Nua single, she left school to focus on music, studying voice and piano at the Dublin College of Music before relocating to London in 1985.

Released in September 1994, Universal Mother was described by Sinead as "the first attempt to try to expose what was really underneath a lot of the anger of the other records". The album features sparse, striking but delicate arrangements on intense and honest songs. Standout moments include the singles 'Thank You For Hearing Me' and 'Fire On Babylon', along with contributions from Germaine Greer (opening track 'Germaine'), and Sinead's son Jake Reynolds ('Am I A Human?'), plus a cover of Nirvana's 'All Apologies'.

TRACK LISTING

Germaine
Fire On Babylon
John I Love You
My Darling Child
Am I A Human?
Red Football
All Apologies
A Perfect Indian
Scorn Not His Simplicity
All Babies
In This Heart
Tiny Grief Song
"Famine"
Thank You For Hearing Me

With the help of producer Billy Pavone (The Fall, Asobi Seksu, White Rabbits), the latest O’Death opus, Outside, is their subtlest work by far, but also the most impressive of the band's career. This is a record that lives up to its name with spacious and cinematic arrangements, layers of subtle percussion, and at times an impenetrable wall of found sound.

O'Death recorded the album over a two-month period, easily the longest they've ever spent on a production. The extended recording time allowed the band to write in studio, as well as cultivate the organic noise for the record in an intimate setting. As Pavone observed, "Creating the album in the recording, and not in the mix, was a leap of faith for me. It was challenging to let go and allow the album to breathe a bit, and be its own creation– unique and very different from some of the sounds we hear so often in the world of digital manipulation.

The result is a record that is both the most subtle and massive accomplishment of the band's career, a darkly triumphant and free-flowing album that represents exactly where the songwriters have found themselves in this moment. As Pycior notes, "I love the dynamic disparity in the album: the fragile parts of ‘Bugs,’ ‘Ourselves,’ and ‘Don't Come Back...,’ the huge endings in ‘Alamar,’ ‘Look at the Sun,’ and ‘Pushing Out.’ I know we have the right sequence this time around… and I love ending on a different and demented tone with ‘The Lake Departed.’”

TRACK LISTING

1. Bugs
2. Ghost Head
3. Alamar
4. Black Dress
5 . Ourselves
6. Look At The Sun
7. Howling Through
8. Don’t Come Back
9. Pushing Out
10. Back Of The Garden
11. The Lake Departed

‘Radum Calls, Radum Calls’ is Sean O’Hagan’s second solo album. His first came out in 1990, titled ‘High Llamas’. Nearly 30 years down that once-was road, 10-12 albums of the extreme pleasures that High Llamas song craft and sonic obsessions have provided (counting a comp and a remix record), here’s Sean again, with his second solo opus. Sean continues to modify, adjust, turn and amend aspects of his unswaying beliefs to produce sound fresh and new.

In the past decade there have been two High Llamas albums. During that time, Sean’s day job has largely been in the studio, arranging and producing with other outfits - most recently, Mount Kimbie, Fryars, James Righton from Klaxons and Hockney. The ways of the new generation are reflected in the mix of ‘Radum Calls, Radum Calls’, with bold latest obsessions side by side with the grand old traditions. As the parts old and new rotate inevitably back and forth in cyclical perfection, we are reminded of the beauty and craftmanship of the old cuckoo clocks; an ingenuity of cogs and gears to express perfect time as entertainingly as possible. Threaded in with exquisite melodies are hard- punching drum sounds, low rumbling synths, an extra-sharp dubby sound-design for percussion. In moments of this concision of old and new, Sean’s goal is honestly to conjure a new musical language.

Sean’s approach to lyrics reaches for the deft, tongue-in-cheek understatement of a LeCarre or a Philip K. Dick - and as fantasia melts into social portraiture into out-there sci-fi, we discover some of Sean’s most toothsome topics - ‘The Paykan (Laili’s Song)’ tells the story of one of the Shah’s servants masking a dash for freedom at the dawn of the Islamic revolution in 1979 Iran. ‘Spoken Gem’ and ‘Candy Clock’ use the lyric interventions of Sean’s former Microdisney vocal-partner Cathal Coughlan to free-associate the listener into fantastic, elastic, unknowable worlds.

Sean working with Cathal, or with his backup singers May Robson, Livvy O’Hagan and Kelsey Michael, brings their participatory energy - that of joy - to the mix and to our ears. And all this energy - derived from history, ambition, humour - is presented simply but effectively, sinking deep into our ears. ‘Radum Calls, Radum Calls’ reaches across time, curating details from wherever its fascination lands, then working them into the harmonic flexibilities of Sean O’Hagan. The album is a light delight and marks this place in time as a very pleasant stop on the way forward.

TRACK LISTING

Candy Clock
Better Lull Bear
I Am Here
The Paykan (Laili’s Song)
McCardle Brown
Clearing House
On A Lonely Day (Ding, Dong)
Spoken Gem
Sancto Electrical
Take My Steps (Nora
Bramms)
Radum Calls
Calling, Sending

On 1 0 0 1, Dustin O‘Halloran (Marie Antoinette, Lion, Transparent) contemplates ideas of technology & humanity entering the age of artificial intelligence - one of the most fundamental transformations in the history of mankind. What will distinguish humanity and technology in the future? How will this affect concepts like ‘love’ and the ‘soul’? Will language survive as the primary tool for our species’ communication? What role will consciousness have in a world whose rapid evolution continues to accelerate? 1 0 0 1 is based on a ballet, first premiered in 2019 (collaborating with dancer Fukiko Takase), that was developed further into the album during the pandemic.

TRACK LISTING

Side A

1. Spiritus Naturae Aeternus
2. Cymatic Love Spiral

Side B

3. Harmonic Dream Sequence
4. Transfigural Syntax Eclipse 

Tara Jane O’Neil describes her latest and eighth solo album “Self Titled” as a “singer songwriter” endeavor. At the invitation and design of Mark Greenberg (The Coctails), she recorded, mostly live, half of the record at Wilco’s Loft Studio in Chicago with a band that included James Elkington, Gerald Dowd, Nick Macri, and Greenberg himself. The other half was made in O’Neil’s home studio in California with Devin Hoff, Wilder Zoby, Walt McClements and string supervisor Jim James.

The album also features the voices of Chris Cohen, Carolyn Pennypacker-Riggs and Joan Shelley. O’Neil herself plays guitar, bass and percussion. A founding member of Rodan, The Sonora Pine, amongst other ensembles, O’Neil has also collaborated on recordings and stages with Papa M, Michael Hurley, Little Wings, Marisa Anderson, Catherine Irwin, Mirah, Mount Eerie, and many, many others. She’s performed at clubs, galleries, and DIY spaces around the world and venues such as the Centre de Pompdou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and All Tomorrow’s Parties, while also starring in the cult classic film Half-Cocked. Her visual art work has been shown in cities including London, Tokyo and Portland and has been published in three monographs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Flutter
2. Blow
3. Sand
4. Joshua
5. Kelley
6. Laugh
7. Cali
8. Purple
9. Pink
10. Great
11. Metta

Damian O'Neill is the lead guitarist of the Undertones. Damian wrote several singles and many album tracks during the career of The Undertones, often writing with bassist Michael Bradley. Together, they wrote "My Perfect Cousin" which turned out to be The Undertones highest chart entry (top ten).

Damian has recently taken the opportunity to record a selection of material for solo release, under the name Damian O'Neill and The Monotones, in long player and compact disc format. Co produced, engineered and mixed by Damian, Andy Ramsay (ex Stereolab) and Paul Tipler with musical contributions from Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas) amongst others.

There's some old, new, borrowed and blue on this record. You'll hear new songs and instrumental tracks that are guaranteed to thrill and melt your heart plus Damian's delved into his musical past and revamped selected self penned Undertones/That Petrol Emotion songs too.

Following 5 BBC Folk Awards nominations and a designation by the Guardian as Folk Album of the Year in 2019, it is fair to say that Lisa O’Neill is one of the most evocative songwriters in contemporary Irish music today. Fresh off 2018’s collection Heard a Long Song Gone for the River Lea imprint, The Wren EP in 2019 and an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s "All the Tired Horses" for the final scene of epic TV drama Peaky Blinders, O’Neill now returns with her latest album, and first for the Rough Trade label, the beautiful, resonant All Of This Is Chance.

A raconteur in the truest sense of the word, every story starts somewhere and O’Neill starts this extraordinary collection here on earth, on Irish soil, hands in the land. The album is full of both orchestral masterpieces like the ambitious and cinematic "Old Note", /the title track All Of This Is Chance, inspired by the great Monaghan writer Patrick Kavanagh's prescient meditation on The Great Hunger as well as stirring meditations on nature, birds, berries, bees, and blood that ring out over a clacking banjo, dusting and devastating all those in its wake.

All Of This Is Chance takes Lisa’s inimitable voice to greater heights, or depths, depending on which way you look at it.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: While 'All Of This..' is undeniably reasonably traditional folk, it swims with emotion wrought through O'Neill's evocative rhythmic vocals and a deft instrumental talent, with both guitar and strings perfectly accentuating the affecting and dynamic vocal delivery. There are echoes of folk standards here but it's no more than a dedication, with the originality of the pieces shining on their own merits.

TRACK LISTING

1. All Of This Is Chance
2. Silver Seed
3. Old Note
4. Birdy From Another Realm
5. The Globe
6. If I Was A Painter
7. Whisht, The Wild Workings Of The Mind
8. Goodnight World

Debut single on Clown Prince recordings, from this Wigan based singer / songwriter who cites influences as diverse as Johnny Mathis and the Sex Pistols. His songwriting encapsulates his thoughts and feelings on life with a blend of pathos and tongue in cheek humour, in the most English, self-depreciating way.

Tara Jane O'Neil and Dan Littleton have been seminal figures in the indie rock scene for some time now. Tara first surfaced in 1991 as part of the influential, yet short-lived, band Rodan. Tara then assumed duties concurrently in Retsin and Sonora Pine before embarking on a solo career in early 2000. Over the last ten years or so, you can see Tara's transformation from post-punk rocker to intimate singer-songwriter. This album is reflective of her musical progression.

Recorded between the chaos and bustle of a New York cinema on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn and the windswept loneliness on the south-side of the Isle of Wight in the spring of 2017, I Can't Stand The Sound is the second album from Berlin based English/Irish songwriter Ryan O'Reilly. Produced by David Granshaw and in collaboration with Canadian, Tyler Kyte the album is an exploration in searching for meaning, the meaning in a fatal car accident, the beauty and darkness on the streets of Berlin, comprehending the American landscape at the end of 2016 and trying to filter out the noise of relentless opinions on 24 hour news TV and online.

Littered with snapshots from myriad conversations; A Grandmother's warning that ghosts are never as dangerous as humans, talking to a loved one after a terror attack, a fall from a horse, with a hangover whilst reading in the bath and the faceless people who blithely tell you to 'live your dreams' the characters and conversations restlessly change locations and perspectives.

I Can't Stand The Sound began life on the journey between New York and Tennessee in the aftermath of the American election in 2016, the long conversations, the search for conclusions and reasoning in a void of reason. Written on municipal Frisbee-golf course in East Nashville, a front porch in Hamilton, Ontario and along side the beautiful, dirty Spree in Ryan's adopted hometown of Berlin each place finds it's way into the heart of the album. In May 2017 Ryan, Tyler and Dave travelled back to New York. Joined by members of Toronto's Dwayne Gretzky and Ryan's European touring partners The O'Pears to begin recording of I Can't Stand The Sound in the Cinema/bar where the journey towards the album began six months earlier. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Don’t You Know That
2. Make It Holy
3. Never Be Afraid Of Ghosts
4. I Can’t Stand The Sound
5. People Tell You
6. The Modern World
7. Flesh & Blood
8. Conversation
9. Somethings Really Wrong
10. Till It Ends

2015 and the silence has been broken with ‘Simple Songs’. Jim O’Rourke is ready to talk to you again with his first pop album since 2001. ‘Simple Songs’ is an amazing record of musical song entertainment because Jim O’Rourke knows what he wants and how to get it.

The range of sounds and songs that have turned Jim’s head are numerous enough to have crushed together into something that is unmistakably his. The music is played so immaculately by so many instruments and most of them by the creator’s hand. ‘Simple Songs’ was worked over, from source material to finished mix, for five years or more now. Jim’s writing is rooted in the approach of ‘Insignificance’ - frosted pop tarts that leave a darkly bitter aftertaste.

Let ‘Simple Songs’ seep into your brain, as a musical expression and a statement of animal motherhood. It may help you get your bearings in a world gone hopeless.

"The Visitor" is a seriously all-Jim O'Rourke affair - all the sounds you hear are Jim and Jim alone. This time you can't blame any of those session dudes and their bloodless line readings - the chill you're getting is a one-hundred percent O'Rourke effect. As a matter of fact, it might be more like two hundred percent — some of it is tracked so deep, it took two hundred tracks to hold it all. It doesn't sound like it though - to Jim's credit, the mix sounds very minimal, very straightforward - not like several hundred tracks at all. All the classic O'Rourke-isms are here: percolating banjos, smooth electric leads, organic, kicking drum sounds, the flickering of shakers to the left and right, mellow but ominous woodwinds, sounds that indicate 'vintage', sonic jokes and sonic tear-jerkers, all wrapped in spacious yet subtle left to right placement of everything in the picture. This is one one-track album everyone's gonna have to buy. However, "The Visitor" doesn't overstay its welcome. Get ready for redefinition - Jim O'Rourke is back.

O’Rourke’s process – sourcing resonant sounds to be enmeshed together into a music that supersedes their resident parts – makes a fitting soundtrack for Kyle Armstrong’s “prairie gothic” tale of down-on-the-farm horror way up north in Canada. His minimalist score inhabits the wide open, big sky landscape, flowing into suddenly-deep (and opaque) emotional waters, then panning out to a chilly omniscient remove. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Go Spend Some Time With Your Kids
2. Wasn’t There Last Night
3. He’s Only Got One Oar In The Water
4. That’s Not How The World Works
5. A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him
6. Here Is Where I Seem To Be / The Good Lord Doesn’t Need Paperwork
7. You Have No Idea What I Want
8. One Way Or Another I’m Gone

This is the album that put Jim firmly in the ranks of studio Meisters elite. Up until that point, Jim had used walls of noise / sound to create music, but with 'Bad Timing', he stepped back a little, stripped it all down and the arrangements became paramount.

On "Eureka", Jim O'Rourke's musical career sets of in a whole new direction. An album of near perfect, bright pop songs, including a cover of Bacharch and David's "Something Big".

One of the rarest records in the world, by ‘Os Mutantes’ before they were ‘Os Mutantes’. heavyweight Brazilian Psychedelic Rock and Folk.

‘O’Seis’ are the core members of the mighty and legendary ‘Os Mutantes’ - namely Rita Lee and brothers Arnaldo and Sergio Baptista, accompanied here by Raphael Vilardi, Maria ‘Mogguy’ Malheiros and Luiz Pastura.

The record features anthemic, heavyweight, psychedelic rock on ‘Suicida’ b/w deeper, tripped-out MPB-folk on ‘Apocalipse’. Both tracks were written by Rita Lee, assisted by Tobe and Vilardi respectively.

The term ‘holy grail’ is a little overused these days perhaps, but this definitely is one. Originally pressed and released by the band themselves in 1966, apparently only a handful of copies are known to exist (sources/numbers vary). The record has changed hands for up to a staggering $5000! Ouch.

The Colour of Entropy (In Three Stages) is a collaboration between Belgium's Sleeperhold Publications and multi- instrumentalist  /  composer Daniel O’Sullivan (DOS) with imagery by French artist Felicia Atkinson. The title of this release might not unreasonably suggest decay and decomposition. The first few bars of Entropy instantly dispel any such forebodings. You find yourself, instead, transported to some ineffably gorgeous but nevertheless very earthly paradise. Entropy is over fourteen-minutes long, staged in three parts and, as anyone who knows and loves Daniel O’Sullivan will tell you, he is nothing if not mercurial.

Daniel O’Sullivan has achieved international acclaim writing, recording and performing with Grumbling Fur, Ulver, Sunn O))), Guapo, Miracle, Æthenor and the recent reincarnation of This Heat in the form of This Is Not This Heat. As for his solo work, DOS seems to mature with every recording he puts out. The Colour of Entropy (In Three Stages) features one lengthy suite broken down into three parts which meticulously melt into one other. Every section has its own character, taking us on a voyage of majestic beauty and uniquely ornamented melancholy. With an all-star cast of musicians DOS creates a auditive spectacle with an enduring lyrical poise and an elegant palette of sounds.

Felicia Atkinson’s colourful drawings adorn Entropy’s sleeve and one side of the wax. (All three tracks are featured on the record's A-side.) The experimental French musician, poet, and visual artist reacted in beautiful contrast to the musical output of DOS. Scrawls of colour, not quite figurative but highly suggestive messages of inner space. DOS’ music and Atkinson’s artworks, share a common ground. Views of the natural world through a lens that invokes almost alien qualities. Raising their little families while investigating a series of landscapes, both internal and external.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blue Music: Angelic Architecture (5:29)
2. Yellow Music: Chemical Wedding (2:57)
3. Red Music: Fire In The Breath (5:39)

Third in a trilogy of albums of library music miniatures from composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Æthenor, Ulver, This Is Not This Heat, etc) following 2020’s Electric Māyā and 2021’s Fourth Density. For heads, the term “library music” in 2021 might evoke dodgy Italian gray market LPs and crate-diggers hunting for “funky breaks”—but London’s venerable KPM Music is working with groundbreakers like O’Sullivan to open up new avenues for composers to experiment. The fifteen tracks on The Physic Garden are fully-formed and orchestrated compositions, which would be highlights on anyone’s release, never mind as incidental music. Of the music, O’Sullivan says: “The Physic Garden is an album of diverse instrumentals inspired by a swathe of verdant vistas from manicured gardens and follies to urban common land, overgrown and forgotten. Convalescent memories in the shape of psychedelic auditory botanics.” Key tracks include the droning acoustic folk of the title song; the Canterbury-esque rolling horn and woodwind melody of “Return The Heart” (with expert drum kit from Frank Byng); the prog-ish odd meter interlude “Buttercup Tea”; The quiet ambience and delicate melody of “Dusty Feather:”; and the Eno-like drift of “Vapourer Larvae.”

TRACK LISTING

1. The Physic Garden
2. Greenfingers
3. Return The Heart
4. Ivy In The Holly
5. Buttercup Tea
6. Wishes On The Wind
7. Crawl Under Here
8. Dusty Feather
9. The Vine Column
10. Paul
11. Perennials
12. On Lawn Drake
13. Vapourer Larvae
14. Axial Flame
15. The Scented Ape

O’Flynn and Frazer Ray - two much-celebrated UK producers and DJs - release their collaborative album, "Shimmer", on Ninja Tune imprint, Technicolour. The album arrives as a result of the duo’s love for the UK dance music scene, from garage to breaks, trance and hardcore. Frazer and O’Flynn’s vast knowledge and respect for underground cultures and genres shine through as a direct influence.

Smothered in a very crisp, very glossy, very now patina; high fidelity throughout and stylishly showing off what modern soundsystems are capable of. It's one of those albums that'll play right through on long, nocturnal night drives or soundtrack your afters whilst still in the spirit of the night before. Half the tracks can also be cherry picked by DJs to smash apart dancefloors as we transition into 2023. A highly functionally, dare-I-say accessible album which still pushes boundaries in terms of production and arrangements.

For fans of Overmono, Soundbwoy Killah, Ross From Friends,HAAi.. Two Shell etc. 

TRACK LISTING

Luna Bay
Call For Noise
Love Fading
Troopa
Holsten
Kolfax
Satyr
Rosetta Feat. Byulah And Ekhe
Tando
Katara
Light It Out
You Need Me

The long-awaited second solo album from The Undertones guitarist Damian O'Neill is an exquisitely inventive collection of largely instrumental tracks, mixed by veteran producer Paul Tipler (Stereolab, Placebo, Julian Cope, House Of Love). The title "An Crann" is Irish for "The Tree", a symbol of growth and inspiration.

O>L>A “One Little Atlas” are a Electronic/Ambient two piece based in Manchester.

They self produced & released their debut album which was recorded in England & West Coast of Scotland between 2012-2013 on their own Desty Records. 

Over 2014 they have collaborated with a number of musicians, artists and writers on various projects. In May they worked with Video Jam for Sounds From The Other City festival in Salford on a soundtrack to the opening 15 minutes of documentary Baraka which was performed live.

In October O>L>A then collaborated with artists Alison Erika Forde & writer David Gaffney for the exhibition Men Who Like Women Who Smell of their jobs at John Rylands Library, Manchester. They had responded to the text and paintings by writing three original pieces of music and performed them live within the library's historic front entrance.

On November 1st they performed in Manchester Cathedral opening for Columns Festival performing alongside Future Islands, East India Youth & Zola Jesus.

They are currently touring, working on their second album release.

TRACK LISTING

Sails
Fold Time
Summer
Luminy
Elska
Reverie
Coastline

Reissue of Paul Oakenfold's classic "Southern Sun" from 2002, now
remastered for 2023 - this remix package features the full 9 min 44 sec trance journey by Tiësto & the equally dazzling Gabriel & Dresden remix, both of which have seen their stocks rise inline with the recent upinterest in trance; meaning 2nd copies fetch quite the pretty penny. 

Originally released as a double A side with "Ready Steady Go", it peaked at No. 16 in the UK chart. It was taken from 1M worldwide selling album "Bunkka" which was released the following month (and is also reissued alongside this single). Featuring vocals by Carla Werner, the original version and various remixes have been included on over 70 compilation albums. 

Tiësto's remix is an absolute beast of a track. Pulsating and rippling with various arps and leads, it epitomizes the long form trance epic - with a detailed and adventurous arrangement which constantly reveals more tantalizing hooks and endorphin-rushing greatness, the soaring vocal only surfacing towards the second half of the track. 

Gabriel & Dresden's remix contrasts jagged, hard-edge bass notes with an eerie mood and squishy background breaks. The vocal emerges early, guiding the track alongside an almost live bassline. If anything is accentuates the pop-like sensibilities of the track; with the focus on that vocal part; but the production surrounding it is nothing short of breaktaking, even some 20 years later. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Southern Sun (Tiësto Remix)
2. Southern Sun (Gabriel & Dresden Unplugged Remix)

The first time vinyl pressing of Paul Oakenfold's 1 million selling classic debut "Bunkka". The original vinyl release from 2002 featured remixes, whereas this version contains the original album mixes. It has been remastered + pressed on 180g heavyweight double vinyl. The inner sleeves packaging includes extra iconic 'robogirls' imagery designed by Michael Nash Associates + photographer Matthew Donaldson that was originally used on the single packshots from the album campaign.

A galaxy of music stars, including Nelly Furtado, Perry Farrell, Ice Cube, and Tricky as featured artists. It also contains his 3 biggest selling tracks: "Starry Eyed Surprise" with Shifty Shellshock from Crazy Town, "Ready Steady Go," with vocals by So Solid Crew's Asher D. + "Southern Sun" with Carla Werner. Furtado and Tricky guest on album closer "The Harder They Come," while Farrell sings on "Time of Your Life." Ice Cube chimes in on "Get Em Up," followed by former Grant Lee Buffalo frontman Grant Lee Philips on "Motion". Author Hunter S. Thompson, and vocalists Emiliana Torrini and Tiff Lacey also make appearances on 'Bunkka'.

21 years old & till sounding fresh, it's now become a timeless classic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ready Steady Go (feat. Asher D)
2. Southern Sun (feat. Carla Werner)
3. Time Of Your Life (feat. Perry Farrell)
4. Hypnotized (feat. Tiff Lacey)
5. Nixon's Spirit (feat. Hunter S Thompson)
6. Zoo Zoo York (feat. Clint Mansell & Kronos Quartet)
7. Hold Your Hand (feat. Emiliana Torrini)
8. Starry Eyed Surprise (feat. Shifty Shellshock)
9. Get Em Up (feat. Ice Cube)
10. Motion (feat. Grant-Lee Philips)
11. The Harder They Come (feat. Nelly Furtado + Tricky)

"Gypsum Strings" is Oakley Hall's second full-length record of 2006, and while the first, "Second Guessing", established Oakley Hall as one of the premier roots rock bands in the land, "Gypsum Strings" turns the volume way up and the traditions on their heads. Guitarists Fred Wallace and Pat Sullivan, and amplified fiddler Claudia Mogel trade leads with abandon on "Confidence Man" and "Lazy Susan". Cutting through the dense arrangements are powerhouse harmonies. Rachel Cox emerges as the Blue Ridge amalgam of Sandy Denny and Linda Ronstadt while Pat Sullivan's gravelly baritone anchors it all in Johnny Cash and John Doe territory. The sextet's trademark killer songwriting chops are in evidence as "Gypsum Strings" boasts some beautiful ballads that temper the heaviness, like "Living In Sin In The USA", "Nite Lights, Dark Days" and "Bury Your Burden". All told, "Gypsum Strings" cements Oakley Hall's rep as luminaries of the new psych-roots movement. They look to the past to make modern music striking in its originality.

‘(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?’ is Oasis’s biggest-selling album, with 22 million copies sold worldwide. On release in October 1995 it spent 10 weeks at No.1 and is the 5th biggest-selling album in UK Chart history. In their 14-year recording career (1994 - 2008) Oasis sold over 70 million albums worldwide, had 22 consecutive UK Top 10 singles, 7 No.1 studio albums but, more than that, they helped define a generation.

It was during the ‘Morning Glory?’ era when Oasis played their some of their most iconic gigs, including two nights at Maine Road Stadium, the then home of Manchester City Football Club, in April 1996 and Knebworth House, where the band played to 250,000 fans over two nights in August 1996. Over 2.6 million people applied for tickets for the shows, making it the largest ever demand for concert tickets in British history.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hello
2. Roll With It
3. Wonderwall
4. Don't Look Back In Anger
5. Hey Now!
6. [Untitled]
7. Some Might Say
8. Cast No Shadow
9. She's Electric
10. Morning Glory
11. [Untitled]
12. Champagne Supernova