Brighton-based, Welsh instrumentalist Gwenifer Raymond is set to announce her third studio album to be released September 5th on Canadian label We Are Busy Bodies. Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark is a hybrid of the ancient and the futuristic where the arcane etchings of occult folk horror fuse with the unfathomable equations of the cosmos. A big bang, yes, but also an atom cleaved. On her latest album, this celebrated new champion of the finger-picked guitar looks upwards, outwards. somewhere beyond. Now the landscape is mapped – its knotted woodlands, its aurora-crowned mountains, its tangled undergrowth – Gwenifer Raymond hears the stars call.

Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark is a natural evolution for such an intensely questing, personally excavating artist. The album is Raymond’s first since 2020’s Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, which drew widespread acclaim for its repurposing of Mississippi blues and John Fahey’s intricate Americana to embody Raymond’s roots in rural South Wales and her interests in folk horror and the avant garde, a new form dubbed Welsh Primitive. Now, on her forthcoming album, Raymond finds herself conjuring the work of pioneering rocket scientists, the words of fictional hobo prophets and the concepts of mathematical infinity.

Having toured Europe, the US and Canada with the likes of Michael Chapman, Michael Hurley, The Handsome Family, Lankum, Charlie Parr, Richard Dawson, Ryley Walker and Squid, and played festivals including WOMAD, Green Man, End of the Road and Transmusicales in France, Raymond began recording Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark; exploring textures and following threads alone in her flat’s home studio, trying to get a sonic grip on a world spinning out of control.

Sci-fi and scientific readings provided a strange, objective clarity. One key reference was Tom O’Bedlam, an insane homeless mystic from Grant Morrison’s comic book series The Invisibles who sees holy words in street signs reflected from the city’s wet concrete, hidden meanings within the modern chaos. “The world seems to have been taking on an increasingly surrealistic tilt,” Raymond says, “and ol’ Tom makes more and more sense.”

“I’ve always been a big sci-fi reader,” she says, listing Phillip K Dick, Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury amongst the authors she read avidly as a child from her parents’ extensive sci-fi collection. Raymond would go on to complete a PhD in Astrophysics at Cardiff University, before moving to Brighton to become an AI and video game programmer.

Midway through writing her third album, then, she was drawn to the pulp sci-fi corners of Brighton market, picking up and devouring second hand tomes of strange science and the mystique of eternities. “A bunch of the stuff I was reading had these themes about the nature of infinity, and tying this into concepts about the afterlife,” she says. “Those thoughts were running in my mind a lot, especially when I was creating some of the droney sounds that book-end the album. The album enters from the cosmic void and exits through the galactic plane. Maybe you’re exiting out of hyperdrive into some strange planet where the album lives, then you zip out to find whatever is next.”

At times, ladies and gentlemen, she found herself floating in space. The opener ‘Banjo Players of Aleph One’, for instance, is built on a celestial drone – its Gibson Mastertone banjo an off-world presence, purchased second-hand from a widow looking to pay for her husband’s funeral. “I had this image in my head of him somewhere very distant, playing the banjo on the cliffs of Mount On,” Raymond says. Hence the reference to Aleph numbers, a mathematical concept often used to describe the size of infinite sets, and by Rudy Rucker in his novel White Light to outline levels of the afterlife. “I’ve always felt a strong pull to the world of the weird, and I don’t think there’s a lot weirder than infinity, the product of a division by zero,” this atheist astrophysicist muses. “We all get divided by zero eventually.”

‘One Day You’ll Lie Here But Everything Will Have Changed’ has a more serene star-gazing feel, Raymond’s slide guitar tones resembling comets filling the night sky with warping, criss-crossing threads. The title track – a Tom O’Bedlam quote – is a frenetic blues that bends and twists like space-time. And lead single ‘Jack Parsons Blues’ is a passionate fingerpicking dervish full of Arabian flair and flamenco fury, named in honour of a 1940s Californian rocket scientist who helped found NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was also a friend of L Ron Hubbard and acolyte of Aleister Crowley.

“I’ve long been obsessed with Jack Parsons,” Raymond says, recalling reading Fortean Times articles about him as a teenager. “He lived in this vast old mansion which he shared with a whole cast of oddballs and shysters. He also came to an abrupt end, blowing himself up in his home lab. For all his faults, I find him to be a sort of romantic character – full of boundless zeal and ideas. He was both a scientist and an embracer of the weird and esoteric. He’s oddly inspirational.”

Converts to Raymond’s brand of Welsh Primitive will find plenty to clutch at their ankles here too, with tracks evoking mythical Welsh goddesses (the prairie-wide ‘Dreams of Rhiannon’s Birds’) and Raymond’s childhood woodland discovery of gruesome animal remains (the frantic, exotic ‘Bleak Night in Rabbit’s Wood’), played on a devil-haunted guitar.

A kissing cousin of Lankum’s mutant folk, the furious, gothic and wonderfully wild ‘Champion Ivy’ sounds like Hell’s hoedown, while ‘Bliws Afon Taf’ (Welsh for ‘Taff River Blues’) is more pastoral and tumbling, wrapping the listener in spider threads of gossamer guitar. At Raymond’s blessed fingertips, the earthly meets the stellar on some far-off event horizon, and you can barely see the join. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gorgous, dark folk music that's got more than a little hint of Alexander Tucker or John Fahey and moves beautifully between frenetic fingerpicking and slow, bucolic fireside balladry.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Banjo Players Of Aleph One
Jack Parsons Blues
Bliws Afon Tâf
Bonfire Of The Billionaires

Side B
Dreams Of Rhiannon’s Birds
Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark
Cattywomp
Bleak Night In Rabbit’s Wood
One Day You’ll Lie Here But Everything Will Have Changed

Welsh musician Gwenifer Raymond’s 2018 debut album, You Never Were Much of a Dancer, introduced a new voice on acoustic guitar, receiving 5 stars in The Guardian, big spreads in MOJO and UNCUT, and airplay on multiple BBC programmes. This led to months of touring on the European festival circuit. Her latest, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, finds Raymond ranging into unexplored experimental territory, drawing from her Welsh roots.

In her own words : My new album, 'Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain', has eight songs in it. All were recorded in a basement flat in central Brighton, locked-down amidst a global pandemic. I recorded them myself and neither I, nor any of the songs saw said outbreak coming. Coronavirus may have dictated the circumstance under which the album was recorded but it did not otherwise inform any of the compositions that run through it; like I said, we didn't see it coming. Growing up in Wales was not a theme strongly present in my first record (perhaps not too surprising in an album of 'American Primitive'), but I feel as though my memories of that time have started to insinuate themselves in the tunes here.

In my opinion, landscape does a lot to shape a community's folk music; from my childhood I recall tall, spooky trees, black against the grey sky, breath misting in cold air, and I have tried to take something of Welsh folk horror to make my own 'Welsh Primitive'. Whilst this isn't the only theme present in the album, childhood memories do form the background for a couple of tracks: coal trains steaming along the foot of our garden, rattling the glasses on the kitchen table; and the titular 'Strange Lights...' dancing above the peak of the mountain which loomed over the house where I grew up. Dead men also feature prominently, as well as personal tragedies and the madness of touring. It's possible this album is leaning more into the left-field than the first - the songs are longer and more 'compositional' for lack of a better word, rather than deriving so heavily from the folk and blues traditions, though, they're still there - all of those dead men are hard to shake. Some parts go fast and others go slow. Sometimes I play more aggressively than I intend to and other times I play exactly as aggressively as I intend to. I still say it's punk music and I have no idea what key the last tune is in.For Erik Satie, Master Wilburn Burchette, and Ruben the dog.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: At points taut, but brilliantly emotive throughout, 'Strange Lights...' is an album full of rhythmic twists and unbelievably skilful and effecting performances.

TRACK LISTING

1. Incantation
2. Hell For Certain
3. Worn Out Blues
4. Marseilles Bunkhouse
5. Gwaed Am Gwaed
6. Ruben’s Song
7. Eulogy For Dead French Composer
8. Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain 

As one-third of seminal band Cocteau Twins, Simon Raymonde helped to create some of the most beautiful and memorable albums of the '80s and '90s - music that continues to cast a spell over millions. This is the story of the band, in his words. Beginning with Simon's remarkable childhood and exploring his relationship with his father, Ivor Raymonde (the legendary producer, musician and arranger for acts such as the Walker Brothers and songwriter for artists including Dusty Springfield), the book will journey through the musician's rise to prominence and his time with Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil.

It will also chart the successful career he has forged running his own label, Bella Union, for the past twenty-seven years, discovering and developing globally renowned artists like Beach House, Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty and John Grant. And the narrative will lead us back to the present day, reflecting on Simon's most recent experiences in the music industry - all while going deaf in one ear. A must-read for music fans, this is the incredible tale of Simon's life and legacy.

Rayographs have carved out their own distinctive sound which taps into a dark shimmering psychedelia: blue like petrol, kaleidoscopic with flecks of colour throughout. The songs have an odd timeless quality that yearn for absent cinematic visuals. Swooping, atmospheric vocals, stream-of-consciousness vignettes encased in 60s garage hooks. A heady and eclectic mix of sonic, visual, and literary influences contribute to the Rayographs’ sound, notably The Pixies, David Lynch, 60s Psychedelia, Can, Angelo Badalamenti, Patti Smith, Francesca Woodman, Shellac, Nick Cave, Derek Jarman, Raymond Carver and Eugene O’Neill. This melting pot of ideas has resulted in a sound rich in imagination with a blues tinge, that has become galvanised in studios and on stage, quietly and carefully honing their craft to produce a body of work that is uniquely their own.

Rayographs self-titled debut album was recorded by legendary underground producer John Hannon at a studio in a farm in Essex. The record is dense in its variety, shifting from urgent riffs in "Marazion" to the nightmarish, hollowed out 60s pop of "Space of the Halls", to the somnambulistic looped narrative of "Falconberg Court". "Providence, Rhode Island" is a song for Francesca Woodman, "Cartwheels" about Nan Donohoe, an Irish traveller In between the songs display the poetry of individual experience. This lyric from "My Critical Mind", could be said to sum up the album, 'there is no order of things, just a sequence of illuminated events embedded in memory'; as if the stories depicted are both conscious and unconscious revelations undulating both within and below the songs, timeless in their universality but at the same time deeply personal in their biographical fortitude.

'Invoking the restless blues spirit of proto-riot grrrl heroines in the mould of Patti Smith as well as the dreamy tremblings of The Breeders, (Rayographs) provide demure elegance in a sea of grubby punks, with pummelling rhythms strewn with forlorn, waif-like voices and surging progressive chords'. NME.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: After a couple of great singles, Rayographs bring us their debut album. A collection of post-punkish, psyche-tinged songs, that draw on a whole host of influences that start at Patti Smith, and follow through to The Breeders, Throwing Muses and beyond. Moody, dramatic, and well worth a listen.

The swirling cloud of deranged noise emanating from the highly radioactive inner core of RAYON BEACH has once again reared its head up, bucking wildly and shattering the iridescent thunder of the heavens into shards of wonderfully damaged sound. After the inescapable fallout from their debut Memory Teeth 12-inch EP in 2010, they have rightfully emerged with their first proper full-length LP, dragging the trembling scraps of electronic punk slime through a kaleidoscopic garbage can and out into the light, where they can cook properly in the blinding Texas sun. But whereas on their first record the band was still carving out their slithering sound, melting from one mellifluous life form into another over the course of those first six treacherous tracks, here they’ve found their footing on their first LP, clenching a roughly pristine throb and riding it out into a sizzling pinnacle of modern punk precision.

Oakland band Rays return with their second album, You Can Get There From Here, their first release since their eponymous Trouble In Mind debut in 2016. You Can Get There From Here represents a turning point for the band, angling their scrappy, post-punk fury into a more refined & melodic pop sensibility, drawing inspiration from UK DIY pop & punk like Dolly Mixture, Cleaners From Venus & Television Personalities. Songs like "Fallen Stars" & "The Garden" temper their sonic crunch ever so slightly, relying more on the harmonic wallop of a solid hook than the sheer volume of guitars.

This is urgent, chiming guitar pop that clangs with a sonorous melancholy & a ramshackle grace. Rays can still lay it down with the rest of 'em; tunes like "Subway" & "Work of Art" shuffle & stumble forward, skirting chaos in a flurry of strums, recalling antipodean groups like UV Race or Dick Diver who cull inspiration from idiosyncratic UK greats like Mark E. Smith or Robyn Hitchcock. The new album finds the core group of Stanley Martinez, Eva Hannan, Troy Hewitt & Alexa Pantalone augmented by new member & keyboardist Britta Leijonflycht, whose synth flourishes add melodic embellishments, sonic heft or psychedelic swirl where needed. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Fallen Stars
2. The Garden
3. The Big One
4. To The Fire
5. Veterans
6. Yesterday’s Faces
7. Around The Town
8. Anti-Hand Man
9. Subway
10. Work Of Art
11. Ray Johnson
12. Before Sunrise 

The second single from their self titled second album is "America", and it's an anthem in the making.

Razorlight are back with this cracking first single from their eagerly anticipated second album.

Platinum selling indie-rock heroes Razorlight are set to make a triumphant return with "Olympus Sleeping", the band's first album in ten years. The record sees lead-singer and songwriter Johnny Borrell in top form, dishing up instant classics like the insanely catchy "Carry Yourself" or the album's lead single "Olympus Sleeping".

TRACK LISTING

Got To Let The Good Times Back Into Your Life
Razorchild
Brighton Pier
Good Night
Carry Yourself
Japanrock
Midsummer Girl
Iceman
Sorry?
Olympus Sleeping
No Answers
City Of Women

Razorlight were at the forefront of the indie-rock resurgence of the early 2000s, their biggest moments - ‘Golden Touch’, ‘Somewhere Else’, ‘In The Morning’, ‘America’ and ‘Wire To Wire’ - driving three Top 5 albums, nine Platinum album certifications, an NME Award, and live highlights including headlining the Reading Festival and performing at Live 8.

After reuniting for live shows in 2021, the classic line-up - Johnny Borrell (vocals/guitar), Björn Ågren (guitar), Carl Dalemo (bass) and Andy Burrows (drums) - will release the new album ‘Planet Nowhere’, their first together since 2008. Since reuniting, Razorlight have sold-out a headline tour which included a London show at the Eventim Apollo, and played shows as guests to Muse, Kaiser Chiefs and James. But as the ever ambitious Johnny challenged himself, “Who wants to be a greatest hits band?” So he hatched a plan, and late in 2023 booked a five-day session with the legendary producer Youth (The Verve, James) at his Space Mountain studio in Spain.

Youth knew what they had to achieve, telling the band, “Razorlight’s quite simple isn’t it? Just a driving bassline, driving drums and a story.” For whatever reason, things weren’t that simple. After four days they had a stack of ideas, but nothing really worth pursuing. And then, as Johnny recalls, something remarkable emerged from out of nowhere. “I’d been down in the barranca, and came back up to find the studio empty. So I picked up this weird six-string bass/guitar hybrid I'd never seen before and wrote this thing. On our last night, I started playing it with the guys. The drums came in hard, the bass pounded. It sounded like shit. Absolute shit. But Youth was there, saying 'Can, Velvets, see where it takes you’ and 'Why don’t you try it like that?' But still the track just wouldn't budge, locked in its own inertia. Youth says, 'You're getting there, just one more' and almost instantly the song came out, from nothing to something, like a statue coming up out of marble.” That song was ‘Scared of Nothing’ and listening back to the finished track, it’s easy to see why it resparked Razorlight’s mojo. Exuding taut, spiky post-punk energy in a way that’s instantly infectious - the very traits that attracted highfalutin praise from NME back when they started out (“More tunes than Franz, more spirit than The Strokes, and more balls than nearly every band out there”). And as ever, Johnny demonstrates the swaggering, high intensity charisma that took him from being a figurehead of the Camden scene to rise to become a Vogue cover star. It was also the track which unlocked Razorlight’s creativity, leading the band to return to Spain with Youth for a second session earlier this year, during which they crafted an extensive catalogue of songs for the upcoming album. Other titles vying for inclusion include ‘Zombie Love’, ‘U Can Call Me’, ‘Dirty Luck’ and ‘Cool People’.

Since returning, Razorlight have also looked back on their initial achievements, first releasing ‘Razorwhat? The Best of Razorlight’ (complete with the new song ‘You Are Entering The Human Heart’) and then last month issuing the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of their breakthrough debut album ‘Up All Night’. Never a dull moment. Writing a new ending for themselves, Razorlight are back to cast out the boring in your life.

TRACK LISTING

1. Zombie Love
2. U Can Call Me
3. Taylor Swift = US Soft Propaganda
4. Dirty Luck
5. Scared Of Nothing
6. F.O.B.F.
7. Empire Service
8. Cyclops
9. Cool People
10. April Ends

Whatever you think of Johnny Borrell, there's no use in denying that he was born to do this. He's a natural, and though his New York / blighty street poetry is often cliched, the phrasing is perfect, the choruses brilliant, the playing super-tight and rocking. This is a bolder, better version of the debut album (hence the eponymous title) and whilst some of its references are mainstream (but good!) there's a drive and joie de vivre here that's hard to contain. A hit?!

Including the singles 'Somewhere Else', 'Golden Touch', 'Stumble And Fall', 'Rip It Up' and 'Vice', Razorlight's debut 'Up All Night'  is presented here on crystal clear vinyl for it's 20th anniversary.

TRACK LISTING

1. Leave Me Alone
2. Rock'n'roll Lies (Sawmills 04)
3. Vice
4. Up All Night
5. Which Way Is Out
6. Rip It Up
7. Don't Go Back To Dalston
8. Golden Touch
9. Stumble & Fall
10. Get It & Go
11. In The City
12. To The Sea
13. Fall, Fall, Fall
14. Somewhere Else

It was back in April 2021 when Johnny Borrell, Andy Burrows, Björn Ågren and Carl Dalemo revealed they’d been back working together for the first time in over a decade, correcting the unsatisfactory conclusion to their original formation.

Crucial to the group’s reunion was an emotional meeting between Borrell and Burrows near Johnny’s home in the Basque country in summer, 2020, which plays a pivotal part in the groups forthcoming ‘Fall To Pieces’ documentary, premiering on November 4th at the Genesis Cinema in Whitechapel & is part of this year's Raindance film festival.

“I had to go and chat with Johnny and make things good,” recalls Burrows. “If I didn’t, I’d have gone on thinking about it for the rest of my life, that we should’ve met up, we should’ve played together again, it was too special to leave behind.”

Bridges have been built. The artistic, and sometimes unwieldy, connection between the two has been re-established. It has been a heartening experience for those involved. “My trust with Andy was at absolute zero so to get that back was really inspiring,” says Borrell. “That’s never happened before and it made me think a lot about my life, like if I can get my trust back with Andy, I could do it with anybody.” “Whilst our relationship hasn’t always been plain sailing, when Johnny and I sit down to write music together, there’s a magic that happens. I’m so grateful to have him and the band back in my life,” agrees Burrows.

TRACK LISTING

Golden Touch
In The Morning
Who Needs Love?
Before I Fall To Pieces
Violence Forever?
Stumble And Fall
America
Somewhere Else
You Are Entering The Human Heart
Rip It Up
Good Night

Sexy lil' 10" from the Greta Cottage Workshop. Artist by name of RDMA who's previously had around seven releases spread across a variety of labels. Here we get two smoldering downtempo house tracks, with "Flashback Of Time" being the busier of the two with concentric acid, enveloping pad sweeps and gentle perc hits gently ushering the track forward through thick midday fug when energy levels are at their most cherished. This is perfect tackle for daytime sets in the hotter party climates...

"Utopia & Vision" is even less focused; a jazz-coloured hi-hat pattern decorating unimposing atmospheres that wander through crepuscular flecked, tree-lined paths. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Flashback Of Time (7:05)

1. Utopia & Visions (4:34)

More from the Ron Hardy archives with four tracks of Musik Box inspired hedonism. These tweaks go the extra mile to sending you spiralling into the stacks with a rocket up your backside.

Side A sees two rambunctious disco jams conveying the joys of love making and music. "Ready" on side B is a beautifully orchestrated slice of peak time disco while "Handsome" is the kinda track that'd go on to inspire Jamal Moss' Members Only series - pretty much dedicated the voodoo tape experiments pioneered by Ron Hardy during the Musik Box years.

Essential edits for the discerning disco connoisseur! 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Making Love (6:42)
2. Music (3:33)
Side 2
1. Ready (5:30)
2. Handsome (6:26)

An album of sound collage grooves, densely layered songs, overlapping loops and filter treatments. On Constellation, home of Godspeed, A Silver Mount Zion, Do Make Say Think.

With over 1 million copies sold and a legacy that spans from the UK Top 20 to #1 in the Netherlands, 'On the Beach' remains the gold standard for "sophisticated summer." This 40th Anniversary Edition on sea blue marble vinyl celebrates the album that redefined Rea’s career, blending his signature gravelly baritone with the smooth, Balearic slide guitar that made him a global icon.

TRACK LISTING

1. On The Beach
2. Little Blonde Plaits
3. Giverny
4. Lucky Day
5. Just Passing Through
6. It’s All Gone
7. Hello Friend
8. Two Roads
9. Light Of Hope
10. Auf Immer Und Ewig

Hardcore punk from Boston on Victory.

Back in stock the 1999 album by one of of the best, most tuneful of the new hardcore bands. This is an absolute cracker.

Much anticipated second album from Brooklyn-based Scottish singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. Way Out I’ll Wander was produced in New Hampshire and upstate New York by Charlie Van Kirk and features a cast of musicians including Jefferson Hamer (Anais Mitchell), Jeff Picker and Sarah Jarosz.

The recordings capture Read’s formidable songwriting in intimate arrangements which reflect her background in traditional Scottish and English folk while also calling to mind the ice-cool delivery of Mary Lorson or Nina Nastasia. The songs set characters in a finely-drawn geography of wooded slopes and crisp, clean air - city lights flickering on the horizon - to explore time and place from Hannah’s migrant perspective.

Hannah spent her youth playing fiddle and singing in the rich traditional music scenes of Edinburgh and on the Isle of Eigg, a remote Island off the west coast of Scotland. With musical training at The City of Edinburgh Music School, The American School of Modern Music in Paris and the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Hannah gathered the musical tools, vocabulary and experience that propelled her into the thriving Brooklyn music scene.

She has performed throughout the USA, UK, Canada and Europe with her own self-titled project, as well as with the likes of Julie Fowlis and Grammy Awardwinning Sarah Jarosz. In 2017 - as part of the Songs of Separation project alongside Eliza Carthy and Karine Polwart - Hannah won a BBC Folk Award for Best Album. “One of the finest singers of our day” - MOJO

For fans of: Songs of Separation, Nadia Reid, Julie Fowlis, Mary Lorson, Nina Nastasia.

TRACK LISTING

Moorland Bare
Ringleader
Interlude 
I’ll Still Sing Your Praises 
Alexander
She Took A Gamble 
Way Out I’ll Wander
Boots 
Campsea Ashe

A full-colour account of Lindsay Reade and Tony Wilson’s working life and relationship told through scans of their letters, pictures and Lindsay’s diary entries accompanied by commentary and reflections from Lindsay.

A Continual Farewell tells the story of the relationship between Factory Records’ Tony Wilson and his first wife, Lindsay Reade, through their letters, Factory Records memorabilia and numerous family photos and snapshots.

Many are typed on Factory notepaper, or are scrawled on pages from various studios and hotels. They begin in the punk year of 1976 from love at first sight to marriage, from a music show entitled So It Goes to the formation of Factory and the Hacienda, across domestic infidelities, separation, stalled reconciliations and a brutal sacking.

After all that, when the reader would doubt any recovery was possible, the letters describe a renewed but now illicit love affair of former marriage partners. And beyond that, to a lasting friendship.

Real Estate’s sixth full-length album Daniel was recorded in an ebullient nine-day spree at RCA Studio A, in Nashville with GRAMMY-winning producer and songwriter Daniel Tashian (Kacey Musgraves). In 11 compulsively tuneful songs, they connect the uninhibited wonder of their earliest work with the earned perspective of adulthood.

Several days into recording, all five members of Real Estate were discussing album titles when someone suggested “Daniel,” simply because it seemed funny to bestow a human name upon a record. Was it for Daniel Tashian? Maybe. Was it a nod to The Replacements’ Tim? Possibly. Was it the sign of a band that has now been around long enough to take its music seriously without taking itself or its perception too seriously? Absolutely.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Real Estate may have reached a point in their career where they're unworried about calling a record 'Daniel', and in a way the duality of the silliness of the name is the perfect metaphor for Real Estate's playful but deeply skilful song writing. Here we get the upbeat majesty and jangly drift we've known them for but with a more mature, less frenetic end result.

TRACK LISTING

1. Somebody New
2. Haunted World
3. Water Underground
4. Flowers
5. Interior
6. Freeze Brain
7. Say No More
8. Airdrop
9. Victoria
10. Market Street
11. You Are Here 

On In Mind, the fourth full-length record from Real Estate, the band fine-tunes the winsome songwriting and profound earnestness that made previous albums - 2009’s Real Estate, 2011’s Days, and 2014’s Atlas - so beloved. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Cole M. Greif-Neill (Julia Holter, Beck), In Mind delivers the same kind of warmth and soft-focus narratives that one has come to expect from the band - pastoral guitars, elegantly deployed arrangements, a sort of mindful melancholy - but there is also a newly adventurous sonic edge to the proceedings.

It offers a mild shifting of the gears, positing a band engaged in the push/pull of burgeoning adulthood. Reflecting a change in lineup, changes in geography, and a general desire to move forward without looking back, the record casts the band in a new light - one that replaces the wistful ennui of teenage suburbia with an equally complicated adult version.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: One of Piccadilly Records' favourite janglers return with another swooningly resigned ache-a-thon, this time with added quirk and expanded dynamism thanks to the addition of the splendid Julian Lynch on lead guitar.

TRACK LISTING

1. Darling
2. Serve The Song
3. Stained Glass
4. After The Moon
5. Two Arrows
6. White Light
7. Holding Pattern
8. Time
9. Diamond Eyes
10. Same Sun
11. Saturday

'The Wee Small Hours: B-Sides and Other Detritus 2011-2025' consists of rarities spanning Real Estate's last decade plus with Domino.

“This is something we’ve talked about doing for a while now: a compilation of non-album tracks with a title, subtitle, and maybe throw a span of years in there to make it official-sounding,” Martin Courtney said of the compilation. “The title comes from the lyrics to an unreleased song we recorded during the Atlas sessions at Wilco’s loft in Chicago back in 2013, which in turn references a great Frank Sinatra record. This feels to us like a worthy addition to the catalog and we hope you all love it.”

The compilation’s earliest track dates back to 2011, with a cover of The Strokes’ 'Barely Legal' for a Stereogum Tribute album, and the b-side of the 'It’s Real' / 'Blue Lebaron' 7”. Other covers include 'Paper Dolls' (The Nerves) from 2014, 'Days' (Television) from 2021, and of course 'Daniel' (Elton John) from 2024. It also includes 'In My Car', dating back to a Record Store Day fanzine flexi-disc from 2012, more b-sides including the tracks from the 'Atlas' bonus 7” from 2013, and an unreleased track entitled 'Two Part' from the 'Atlas' sessions.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pink Sky
2. Exactly Nothing
3. Barely Legal
4. In My Car
5. Two Part, Part Two
6. Paper Dolls
7. Blue Lebaron
8. Days
9. The Chancellor
10. Recreation
11. Daniel
12. Two Part

The brand new album delivers the band’s most inspired and self-aware set of songs to date, created over the course of a year at upstate New York’s Marcata Sound. Following his work on 2011’s Days, engineer Kevin McMahon returns as producer, and, for the first time ever, Real Estate have brought in outside instrumentalists and special guests like Sylvan Esso, whose vocalist Amelia Meath features on first single, “Paper Cup.”

Across the album’s 13 interrogative tracks – as full of depth, strangeness, and contradictions as they are lifting hooks – the band balances existential, environmental, and political anxieties with fatherly sentiments, self-satirizing lyrics, forever-lively guitar lines, and shimmering strings.

The Main Thing arrives with a fresh commitment the members of Real Estate - Alex Bleeker (bass), Martin Courtney (vocals, guitar), Matthew Kallman (keyboards), Julian Lynch (guitar, vocals), and Jackson Pollis (drums and drum programming) - have made to each other, 10 years and 5 full-length LPs into a career spent crafting unmistakable and influential palettes of sound. The band underwent a collaborative evolution for this album, which saw each member experimenting in new roles, and alongside Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath, Matt Barrick of The Walkmen, Aaron Johnston of Brazilian Girls and a string quartet all play on the record.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Real Estate have always held a special place in our hearts, and certainly our racks, and 'The Main Thing' is just further unnecessary evidence that they will remain just as beloved for years to come. Soaring, hazy guitars and shimmering psychedelic progressions make the perfect backdrop for Courtney's longing vocals, forming a cohesive and immersive blanket to keep you warm. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

Friday
Paper Cup (feat. Sylvan Esso)
Gone
You
November
Falling Down
Also A But
The Main Thing
Shallow Sun
Sting
Silent World
Procession
Brother

Real Farmer’s debut album, Compare What’s There, is released 8th March 2024. As active members of the vibrant local music scene of Groningen in The Netherlands with their wonderfully infectious punk noise, concocting fast paced, driving songs with wiry riffs, propelling drums, and winding melodies. Each track stands on its own, both expressing a nostalgia for a different time and reflecting the time and place the songs were written in, showing the multifaceted personalities that make up Real Farmer. Real Farmer will be playing six shows for Independent Venue Week in January and February on the ‘Triple Dutch Tour’ with fellow Dutch up-and-comers Personal Trainer (including members of Real Farmer) and The Klittens. In March the band are on the road again supporting Bull in Brighton along with five headline shows

TRACK LISTING

1. The Feeding
2. Inner City
3. Waiting For
4. Empty
5. Gentrified
6. I Can't Run
7. Perry Boys
8. Next In
9. The Straightest Line
10. Consequence
11. Wayside
12. Wasted Words
13. Never Enough

Real Farmer's new album becomes their third release to be recorded at Far Out Sound Studios in Rotterdam by Niek Van Den Driesschen (Rats on Rafts, Iguana Death Cult), following debut album 'Compare What's There' (2024) and EP 'RF II' (2025). "Not all songs are punk songs, but everything is written in this spirit," says Real Farmer. "There’s so much happening in the world, that if you’re even a little empathetic, you can’t help but feel overwhelmed and saddened [by it all]. Music remains such an important outlet as well as a meeting point for politics and worldviews. And with this album we hope listeners can also find a sense of empowerment and hope through our songs."

TRACK LISTING

1. Missing Link
2. 9 Till Not Alright
3. I.D.K.T.S
4. Sob Story
5. System
6. Settle
7. Wash Away
8. Heart Out
9. Beggars Hymn
10. The Mass
11. Run By Animals
12. Judas

Flexi-disc:
1. The Pressue Of Others

'We Will Annihilate Ou Enemies' is about taking the hand of someone you love intensely and running headlong into the chaos and noise and grinding forces that dominate modern life. It follows gilded 2024 collaborations with Mall Grab, Kettama and Drain Gang’s YEAR0001 label.

Lyricist Kevin Lee Kharas and producer Patrick King created the record in their studio, hidden away under a railway bridge somewhere in London’s Zone 3. Three pictures stared down at them from the walls throughout, including an image of a young Sasha Shulgin in the relief print style of Che Guevara t-shirts sold at Camden Market, and a photo of an orbiter fairground ride in flight, taken sometime in the early 2000s. Kharas’ lyrical inspiration comes when he steps away from the tsunami of data flooding his consciousness and paces London’s rain-soaked streets late at night.

“I wanted the songs on WWAOE to confront modern reality head-on, unflinching,” he explains. “I didn’t want to whine about a lost past. I didn’t want nostalgia. I wanted to learn to love the modern world, with all its horrors and futility.”  After a teenhood spent playing in hardcore bands, the duo found ecstasy at a squat party for the first time, and moved to London. Since then, they’ve made music about finding romance and fun when the moon is up, becoming a cult act in the process. While their second album ‘Lad Ash’ (2022) was written during lockdown, and saw the group turn inside themselves, to their memories and formative teenage traumas, for inspiration, ‘WE WILL ANNIHILATE OUR ENEMIES’ is a very different record, one written in the present tense that takes aim rather than turns away.

It mythologises lost friends, exalts the natural world, explores patriotism as a force for positivity rather than jingoism, and identifies cocaine as an unctuous leveller in a class-conflicted society. There is a love story steeped in local history, a song dedicated to the profound cultural impact wrought by Shulgin, and, with the help of actress Jessica Barden Dune: Prophecy/The End of the F***ing World), a tender and defiant closing duet about coming to terms with reality after dreams hit their sell-by date - “With a daughter we called England / in a town we named despair.”

The album is the start of a new chapter for Real Lies, whose misfortunes have conversely cemented their status as one of the UK’s most enduring electronic acts. A six-figure record deal vetoed at the last minute, plunging them into years of existential inertia. A world tour with Pet Shop Boys that never happened because their dancers needed too much time to get changed between songs. A global pandemic that broke out just as they were revving up
to release their second album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Loverboy
2. Towards Horses
3. Wild Sign I Choose You
4. WWAOE
5. Down And Out (Where E-Girls Meet)
6. Loverdrink
7. I Could Join The Birds
8. Arielle
9. Shulgin
10. LOVERWORLD
11. Finding Money (feat. Jessica Barden)

If there was ever an ass-kicking punk band that wore kilts, drank tons of booze and took bags of drugs, got every fist in a club pumping each and every time they played, and were Scottish guys from Canada, then it's the Real McKenzies.

Minneapolis' Real Numbers return with a new full length album, the gorgeously pop-tastic 'Was It Always This Way'. Ten expectant, exuberant songs mixing hope and despair, the future and the past, all set to the sounds of late-80s/early-90s UK indie-pop. While definitely picking up where their 2021 EP 'Brighter Then' left off, the emphasis this time is on multi-layered guitars intended to complement the wistful and melancholy tracks with glittering awe.

'Was It Always This Way' refines Real Numbers' already-stunning songs, polishing the tunes into a swooningly perfect album that recalls 90s antecedents like Field Mice and St Christopher, as well as fellow pop practitioners like Ducks Ltd, Chime School and The Umbrellas. Album highlights like 'Darling' and 'Never Never Again' show that Real Numbers stand tall with their influences, paying close attention to the past while taking their art straight into the future with assurance and flair.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Empty Frame
2. I Can Tell
3. Darling
4. Star
5. Twist The Blade
6. Don't Look Away
7. Everlasting Happiness
8. Was It Always This Way
9. Never Never Again
10. Remembrance

Real Ones are the latest, and arguably greatest, export from the burgeoning conveyor belt of musical talent currently flowing from Bergen, Norway. You'll hear the zany joy of The Flaming Lips, the cocooning otherworldly warmth of alt-country lynchpins Wilco, with the universal thoughts and perspectives of The Band. Ultimately, you'll hear Real Ones, and that's one glorious world to find yourself floating in. 'Richly melodic, psychedelic-tinged pop' - The Guardian. 'Psychedelic folk-pop with nods to Wilco, Flaming Lips and The Band' - Clash.

The Real People is the 1991 self-titled album from The Real People. It includes the singles "Open Up Your Mind (Let Me In)", "Window Pane" and "The Truth", which feature the band’s distinctive combination of guitar-driven melodies and layered vocals. Recorded during the early 1990s, the album captures the band at a formative stage, offering a snapshot of the UK indie scene just before the Britpop movement emerged. The tracks move between lively, guitar-driven, baggy songs and more introspective moments, giving a sense of the band’s approach to melody and arrangements. "The Real People" offers a clear picture of the band’s formative style and the musical environment they were part of, highlighting their role in shaping the sound that would influence other British bands in the years to come.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Ultra-melodic, semi-baggy, Scouse, psychedelic pop that was a big influence on Oasis. Is right!!

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Window Pane
2. I Can't Wait
3. For You
4. The Truth
5. Everyday's The Same
6. Wonderful

SIDE B
1. Open Up Your Mind (Let Me In)
2. She
3. In Your Hands
4. Looking At You
5. Words
6. Another Day

Are bagpipes making a comeback? From one very traditional disc of the Highland pipes (Gary West) to another that makes rather more unconventional use of them. The Real McKenzies' are punks with kilts adding old skool style to the Scottish folk tradition. Total ass-whoopin', pint liftin' good time punk. As a footnote the piper has a huge Mohawk!

Great album which mixes Serge Gainsbourg, St. Etienne and Beck.

Mr Bongo presents a reissue of one of the rarest releases on the illustrious and now ultra-rare tax scam label TSG Records.

A label with a checkered past, operated by Lloyd Price and with alleged ties to boxing promoter Don King. The album in question, 'Disco Party' by Reality, is a stunning journey through '70s dancefloor-focussed funk into early proto-disco grooves. Back in mid-'70s Manhattan, Dr. Otto Gomez and a group of fellow New York musicians including Tony Dixon, Norman Drayton, Tony Dupree, Al Jones and Fred Nanton were brought in for a recording session by songwriter and producer, Billy Nichols. Laying down one of Nichols' songs and a selection of the group's own, they were paid as session musicians and thought little of it. The tapes came to the attention of Lloyd Price who struck a deal with Nichols unbeknownst to Gomez and the rest of the band. Price then pressed the album and put it out in 1976 on a newly formed subsidiary label, TSG Records, that would later be documented as one of the US tax scam labels of the '70s.

Such labels were created to exploit a loophole in the US tax system, running up inflated production costs / losses that investors or the parent label could write off against their tax bills. Releases on these labels were never intended to have commercial success. They would usually be produced in incredibly limited pressing numbers and have little to no promotion or distribution. As such many of these records instantly fell into obscurity, becoming mythical amongst DJs and record collectors. Sadly, this meant that artists like Dr. Otto Gomez and friends never had the chance for their record and their talents to shine at the time. In fact, it was only when Jazzman reached out for their 2022 reissue that Dr. Otto Gomez became aware that the album had ever been released and heard the story behind it.

'Disco Party' is a time capsule where '70s instrumental funk edges and intertwines into an early disco sound. The sessions are for the dancefloor, minimalist and groovebased. The bass and drums are at the forefront, providing the pulse of the album. Driving funky guitar licks, and a brilliant horn section weave their way in and out of the productions. Highlights include the uplifting feel- good 'Let's Party People', the early disco swagger of 'Reality', and 'Disco Party (Let's Have A)' with its wah-wah groove and percussion break, which could easily have found its home on a Blaxploitation film soundtrack of the period.

It's not just rarity that makes this record so sought after, but rather the fact that it is a superb example of dancefloor-focussed mid '70s funk and disco.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reality
2. Road 
3. Disco Party (Let's Have A) 
4. Welcome 
5. Movin' & Groovin' 
6. Let's Party People
7. You Keep Me Holdin' On
8. Clap & Hustle

Suburban Architecture are pleased to announce the launch of a new release series, 'New Town Dubs', following in the footsteps of the now sold out 'Architecture Dubs' series. Whereas 'Architecture Dubs' enlisted remixers from drum & bass's mid 90s golden era (among them the likes of Peshay, Blame, 4Hero and Ray Keith), 'New Town Dubs' turns its attention to the new breed of producers inspired by the sounds of drum & bass and jungle's foundations.

Who better to kick off the series than Tim Reaper: The London based DJ and producer has become a figurehead of the UK's jungle revival and, via his Future Retro label and events, has been spreading the gospel of jungle's new wave to a future generation of listeners; with releases on labels including Deep Jungle, Myor and Hooversound among others. His remix of 2021's 'Unwound' is a sureshot, bringing an unquestionable dancefloor bounce to proceedings while retaining just the right amount of atmospherics and Jungle inspired drum programming from the original.

Drumskull has been quietly making waves in the more progressive corners of the Jungle revival and related breakbeat led scenes since the release of his 'Interlocked' LP in 2020 and recent releases on Sherelle's Hooversound label. His remix of 2022's 'Distant Response' features masterful production, treading a line between footwork, jungle and more forward thinking sounds.

Pressed on 10" vinyl and housed in brown kraft paper sleeves, the series makes visual reference to the exclusive dubplate pressings which introduced so many classic cuts to the UK's dancefloors in the 90s. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Contemporary jungle's poster boy returns on this new project from Suburban Archecture. Now I don't need reminding of how effortlessly Tim brings those classic sounds up-to-date, but this is a prime example of the producer's prowess. Keeping that OG spirit alive with just enough freshness to mark its differences from the first wave of breakbeat pressure.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Suburban Architecture - Unwound (Remix Tim Reaper )
B1. Suburban Architecture - Distant Response (Remix Drumskull )

Two track demo from Manchester band The Reason. Offering radio friendly, guitar-driven music, they've amassed a huge following, and as well as national coverage, local press has been wholly positive too, with the band being championed by local music icons such as Clint Boon and Warren 'Dermo' Dermody.

Back in print for the first time in ten years on split black & white vinyl. All profits donated to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. #MatadorRevisionistHistory #JayReatard

TRACK LISTING

Jay Reatard – “Hang Them All”
Sonic Youth – “No Garage”

New EP by legendary Country Teasers' front-man B.R. Wallers, aka The Rebel. Raw and brilliant proto-punk-hillbilly-garage horror. Explosive and rocking, disturbing and funny, often compared to The Fall for originality.

Deriving their name from information reading proteins on the cell surface of the brain, this northern California duo creates strikingly original prog-influenced / semi-improv soundscapes from their secluded Mt Shasta studio. Musically the sound can be reminiscent of everything from Can to Sonic Youth, to early Floyd and Coil. The instrumentation is diverse, yet focused; some-what minimalist yet always interesting. Receptor Sight has developed as a vehicle to push musical boundaries while dually serving as a sort-of consciousness exploration. If you allow it, this album will take you places far beyond the normalcy of reality. With "Cycles And Connections", the groups sophomore effort, Receptor Sight has come into their own sound; and admirably, not a single computer or synthesizer was used in the recording of this album. Expanding upon their influences of psychedelic rock, Receptor Sight has created a sound which has yet to be truly categorized. Synchronicity is the theme here, a coincidence of sounds that, once they are played, seem to be meaningfully related. The energy which permeates the universe will flow from your speakers.

Reckonwrong returns with ‘How Long Has It Been?’, a long-in-the-making debut album of expansive low-lit ballads and keyboard vignettes that draws equally on classic songwriting touchstones and contemporary experimental landscapes.

The London-based producer and songwriter is best known for his run of releases on AD93, which joined dots between skewed club constructions, new-wave pop drama, and intimate atmospheric worlds. Recent years have been spent out of view, gradually giving shape to a set of songs exploring themes of transformation, friendship, love and the search for self-knowledge.

A couple of days at Press Play studio in Bermondsey marked a turning point, and the record is tied together sonically by Rhodes electric piano and Reckonwrong’s distinctive vocals, performed in the studio to a small group of friends. These takes laid the foundation for a DIY-spirited production world of plastic backing-bands, galaxy-brained noodling, Arthurian echo, and yearning Balearic chug, all cut with equal measures of sincerity and humour.

Renewal, resolution, celebration... How long has it been? forms the first release for New Year, a label shooting off from nights at South London well-of-goodness Spanners. The label aims to be an informal and exploratory home for music by friends and fellow travellers, with a gentle focus on songwriting and voice. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Winter Visitor
2. Water of Life
3. My Eyes
4. Before & After
5. Loving Kindness
6. I'm Not Me
7. How Long Has It Been?
8. Lamp Lady
9. Two Lovers
10. Black Keys
11. EGTBOK 

Kicking off 2026 in style! Here we have volume 5 of the annual Razor-N-Tape Family Affair series. As always a wide-ranging collection of vibes and grooves from the extended international Razor-N-Tape network, this year’s vinyl sampler includes label newcomers and veterans across 6 tracks. Recloose, Medlar & Daisybelle, Misiu, Saucy Lady, Anoraak and Marina Trench deliver in their respective signature styles, taking us on a genre-bending tour of genres and sounds. From House to Disco, Dub to Breaks, and Chuggers to Pumpers, there’s bit of something for everyone here…fun for the whole Family!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Recloose Ft. Hazmat Live - Dance Girl
A2. Mike Misiu - Hold Your Body
A3. Medlar & Daisybelle - Body Ache
B1. Mpharanyana - Disco (Anoraak Edit)
B2. Saucy Lady - Falling
B3. Marina Trench - Icy

Recoil is the musical project of former Depeche Mode member, Alan Wilder, and Mute are reissuing the project’s last three albums - ‘Liquid’, ‘subHuman’ and ‘Unsound Methods’.

Originally a solo venture for Alan’s more experimental work outside of Depeche, Recoil became his primary music project after he announced his departure from the band in 1995.

The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet, Rosa Torras, Diamanda Galás, Nicole Blackman, Samantha Coerbell and others power Alan Wilder’s passionate yet unsettling Recoil album, ‘Liquid’.

Released in 2000, ‘Liquid’ possesses a hypnotic and deeply charged allure drawn from its intense tapestry of desire, fury and violence. An exceptional piece of work for self-reflection in the company of darker side yourself, the record is intended drill holes into your psyche in a genuinely unhinged way.

“‘Liquid’ is a concept album that serves as a look into the mind of a warped and jaded man whose life is flashing in front of his eyes.” - AllMusic

“Meticulous musical sculpting and a filmic sense of creepiness combine to form an intensely dramatic album” - Sputnik Music

TRACK LISTING

Black Box (Part One)
Want
Jezebel
Breath Control
Last Call For Liquid
Courage
Strange Hours
Vertigen
Supreme
Chrome
Black Box (Part Two)

Recoil is the musical project of former Depeche Mode member, Alan Wilder, and Mute are reissuing the project’s last three albums - ‘Liquid’, ‘subHuman’ and ‘Unsound Methods’.

Originally a solo venture for Alan’s more experimental work outside of Depeche, Recoil became his primary music project after he announced his departure from the band in 1995.

After a 6-year break from recording, Alan Wilder returned with Recoil’s fifth studio album, ‘subHuman’. This dark electronic album, which sets the listener a challenge to analyse what makes us human and subhuman, is a collaboration with bluesman Joe Richardson, who Wilder came across via a Google search.

Richardson provided guitar, harmonica and eerie vocals, dealing with themes of murder, death and religion. Singer Carla Trevaskis llent her ethereal vocals on ‘Allelujah’.

“A perfect way to reintroduce Recoil back into the consciousness of underground music fans everywhere.” - Treble

“‘subHuman’ is equally hackneyed and entry-level postmodern, but like the collage, it’s skilfully polished and best suited for lovers of dark, incongruous genre blending.” - AllMusic

“‘subHuman’ traffics in the thick, surging, hip-hopinspired beats, sweeping strings, and grandiose arrangements…” - PopMatters

TRACK LISTING

Prey
Allelujah
5000 Years
The Killing Ground
Intruders
99 To Life
Backslider

Recoil is the musical project of former Depeche Mode member, Alan Wilder, and Mute are reissuing the project’s last three albums - ‘Liquid’, ‘subHuman’ and ‘Unsound Methods’.

Originally a solo venture for Alan’s more experimental work outside of Depeche, Recoil became his primary music project after he announced his departure from the band in 1995.

Recorded at Alan Wilder’s home studio, ‘Unsound Methods’ is Recoil’s fourth studio album. The record included a number of collaborators, with four separate solo vocalists: Douglas McCarthy of Nitzer Ebb, Siobhan Lynch, New York spoken word artist and poet Maggie Estep, and Hildia Cambell, who Wilder worked with on his final Depeche Mode album.

Although all collaborators were allowed free range, ‘Unsound Methods’ still reverberates as the epitome of Recoil’s dark and atmospheric sound.

TRACK LISTING

Incubus
Drifting
Luscious Apparatus
Stalker
Red River Cargo
Control Freak
Missing Piece
Last Breath
Shunt

Red Axes return with 'LOUD' - their most explosive record to date.

Blending post-punk grit, indie-rock swagger, and their signature electronic pulse, the duo deliver 13 tracks packed with raw energy, twisted hooks, and fearless experimentation.

Following over a decade of ground-breaking releases and genre-defying sets at Coachella, Glastonbury, Sonar, and Berghain, 'LOUD' showcases Red Axes' ever-evolving sound and genre-defying legacy. Drawing inspiration from acts like Amyl and the Sniffers, Viagra Boys, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Red Axes channel their roots in psychedelic rock into something gritty, loud, and deeply addictive.

TRACK LISTING

1. Girl
2. We Do For Love
3. Home "La La La"
4. Up & Down
5. Blind
6. Church Ave
7. In The Club
8. Lava Lava
9. Seek & Destroy 
10. Life Is Young 
11. Cloud 
12. Dreamer Of Dreams 
13. Freak 

Melody (vocals, synth), Casey (vocals, synth), Bill (bass), Scott (guitar) and Marcus (drums) united through a shared post-punk sensibility and began experimenting with some angular drum and guitar give-and-take, layered with duelling synth refrains.

Over this Melody and Casey worked-up their vocal harmonies through impulse, developing an interplay reminiscent of The Go Go’s at both their most serene and severe. The pairs vocals drift through each track, punctuating the profound and guiding us through each song’s uncanny terrain.

After a busy year of local shows and bouts of instinct-first songwriting, Red Channel chose a number of their most resonant songs to record with Andrew Schubert at Golden Beat. These were subsequently mixed by Eric Carlson and then mastered by John Hannon for this debut 7” EP on Upset The Rhythm entitled ‘Crazy Diamonds’.

The title track launches the listener through a stratosphere of cascading notes, swoonsome lyrical turns and tack-sharp pivots in rhythmic practice. ‘Crazy Diamonds’ is an exhilarating rush of a song, both wistful and defiant. Melody explains that it is “about the forever fluctuating reality that weaves in and out of ecstasy, loneliness, yearning and destruction. It’s about women being free from a superficial beauty, it’s about the cessation of ideals and power worship.” ‘Giver’ is a similarly sprightly yet pointedly questioning track, “alone in your room, alone with your thoughts, of sleepless shadows, but what do I get?” sing Casey and Melody in spooked unison.

‘Demons’ swirls with minimalist pop moves, a trailing backing vocal and a tumbling bass motif, whilst a dream-like quality pervades the guitar and keyboard lines. Melody then peppers the song with references to extinguished lights, evil forces, bags of sugar, floods and heaven on earth, drawing us so close that we enter the vision too. ‘Slowness’, which brings this debut EP is a close, is another triumph of illusory lyrical association and punchy gesture. In fact the band sound “caught in a fragment, non-corporeal” throughout all the four tracks. Opalescent passages freewheel into splintered eruptions, there’s a duality constantly in play, “somebody dies, somebody’s born”.

The songs collected here are manifestly catchy, conjured in cyclical patterns that are distorted by a desire that tends towards stream of consciousness. It’s this willingness to wake-up in the unreal and see each moment reflected in the mirror which really sets apart Red Channel’s first record.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crazy Diamonds
2. Giver
3. Demons
4. Slownwess

Vicious, complex hardcore / grind / mathcore apocalypse of sound. A densely structured maelstrom tightly bound by precise hammer blows and coloured by searing guitars and dark exorcistvocals. Like opening the door on a blast furnace.

We Play House Recordings label boss Red D is back on his Red Basics solo outlet with more lo fi rawness, this time taking cues from spoken word deep house legends like Blake Baxter and Mike Dunn. Opener ‘The J Principle’ pairs seductive lyrics by the enigmatic Max Erotic with pure electronic house funk to make any soul melt.

After this there’s no time to rest when ‘Raw Shit’ comes along with its wicked off-kilter groove spiced up with dirty lyrics and chord stabs to shake up those late night floors. On the flip side it’s all about Red D’s love for the 313 with a slamming oldskool Detroit techno track aptly called ‘Troisentrois Groove’.

Basics were rarely this fundamental.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Came for the Mike Dunn-esque, vocal jack trax "The J Principle" and "Raw Shit"; stayed for the slamming, Detroit-inspired techno blast that is "Troisentrois Groove". A happy time had throughout.

TRACK LISTING

The J Principle
Raw Shit
Troisentrois Groove

The follow-up to 1999s "Californication". Sixteen songs, over an hour's worth of music.

The limited-edition vinyl double LP features 17 tracks recorded during the I'm With You Sessions, previously released as 7" singles. Artwork Kelsey Brooks.

Red Hot Chili Peppers announce their brand new studio album, Return of the Dream Canteen which will be released on Warner Records. The surprise announcement was dropped at Denver’s Empower Field to rapturous response as the North American leg of their critically and commercially acclaimed global stadium tour kicked off.

The news of Return of the Dream Canteen's imminent release marks the band’s second album of 2022, hot on the heels of the platinum-selling chart topper Unlimited Love which was released in April debuting at #1 in the UK. It will also be the band's second Rick Rubin produced album of 2022, and reinforces their reputation as a band at their absolute peak, riding the crest of an undeniable creative wave.

Continuing to win over audiences across the generations, the band performed a run of sold-out UK/EU dates earlier this year, including two nights at London Stadium. "A scorching European touch-down from the California legends" – CLASH.

We went in search of ourselves as the band that we have somehow always been. Just for the fun of it we jammed and learned some old songs. Before long we started the mysterious process of building new songs. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundreds of times along the way. Once we found that slip stream of sound and vision, we just kept mining. With time turned into an elastic waist band of oversized underwear, we had no reason to stop writing and rocking. It felt like a dream. When all was said and done, our moody love for each other and the magic of music had gifted us with more songs than we knew what to do with. Well we figured it out. 2 double albums released back to back. The second of which is easily as meaningful as the first or should that be reversed. 'Return of the Dream Canteen' is everything we are and ever dreamed of being. It’s packed. Made with the blood of our hearts, yours truly, the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Red Hot Chili Peppers unveil their new album and twelfth full-length offering, Unlimited Love. It notably marks their first recording with guitarist John Frusciante since 2006 and first with producer and longtime collaborator Rick Rubin since 2011.

“Our only goal is to get lost in the music. We (John, Anthony, Chad and Flea) spent thousands of hours, collectively and individually, honing our craft and showing up for one another, to make the best album we could. Our antennae attuned to the divine cosmos, we were just so damn grateful for the opportunity to be in a room together, and, once again, try to get better. Days, weeks and months spent listening to each other, composing, jamming freely, and arranging the fruit of those jams with great care and purpose. The sounds, rhythms, vibrations, words and melodies had us enrapt.

We yearn to shine a light in the world, to uplift, connect, and bring people together. Each of the songs on our new album UNLIMITED LOVE, is a facet of us, reflecting our view of the universe. This is our life’s mission. We work, focus, and prepare, so that when the biggest wave comes, we are ready to ride it. The ocean has gifted us a mighty wave and this record is the ride that is the sum of our lives. Thank you for listening, we hope you enjoy it.
ROCK OUT MOTHERFUCKERS!” - Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, John Frusciante

On lead track “Black Summer,” ethereal guitar underlines introspective lyrics as the rhythm unlocks a hypnotic drum groove highlighted by evocative bass. It quietly inhales only to exhale with a massive refrain, “It’s been a long time since I made a new friend, waiting on another black summer to end,” before a guitar solo echoes to the heavens and back.

Unlimited Love resumes a three-decade partnership with Rick Rubin [Johnny Cash, Adele]. Their creative collaboration spans legendary albums, including the diamond-selling Blood Sugar Sex Magik [1991], Californication [1999], By The Way [2002], and Stadium Arcadium [2006].

The interplay between the band borders on intergalactic once again—yet elevated to another stratosphere altogether. Unlimited Love represents the united spirit of four individual souls still fearlessly exploring the future of their eternal friendship and musical congregation. 

'RENO', the debut album from Red Leather, is a scorched-earth confession wrapped in the swagger of classic rock and the soul of Americana. Written in the aftermath of addiction, heartbreak, and self-reckoning, it’s an unflinching look at what it means to burn your life down and start over. Across its 14 tracks, Red Leather howls through desert nights and neon cityscapes, blending grit and grace in equal measure. Songs like 'Deathwish', 'Burn in Hell', and 'The Only Time It Rains in Hollywood' are raw, cinematic, and deeply human—each one a snapshot of pain, defiance, and redemption. Equal parts road trip and resurrection, 'RENO' cements Red Leather as one of the most compelling new voices in modern rock.

TRACK LISTING

1. TRAIN'S LEAVIN'
2. BURN IN HELL
3. DEATHWISH
4. SINS
5. PUSHERMAN
6. THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD
7. EL DORADO
8. DOWN BAD
9. DESERT STORM
10. WATCH MY DADDY DIE
11. WALK AWAY
12. HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN
13. DAKOTA
14. DEVIL'S GRIP
15. THE ONLY TIME IT RAINS IN HOLLYWOOD

The fringes of the desert have a way of changing a man, but the high-altitude chill of the Sierras will strip him down to his soul.

Following the gritty, neon-soaked introduction of his debut, Red Leather returns with his sophomore studio album, 'TAHOE'. If his first record was a desperate sprint through the dark alleys of the soul, 'TAHOE' is the cold morning after—a cinematic, sweeping exploration of isolation, clarity, and the jagged edges of recovery.

Named after the alpine lake that serves as both a sanctuary and a graveyard for secrets, the album navigates the duality of the landscape.

The songwriting dives deep into the "blue" period of his life—tackling themes of sobriety, the weight of sudden fame, and the ghosts of past versions of himself. It is an album about the silence that follows the storm, and the realization that the higher you climb, the thinner the air becomes.

TRACK LISTING

1. THE HARDEST CLIMB
2. THE GOOD THE BAD & THE UGLY
3. BONNIE AND CLYDE
4. LAST CALL
5. SOS
6. GHOST TOWN
7. WISH YOU WERE HERE (FAR AWAY)
8. ANGEL'S SONG
9. MS. WHISKEY
10. LAKE OF THE SKY
11. LOSING MY RELIGION
12. GET OUT OF MY HEAD
13. RAISED BY WOLVES|
14. DIVINE INTERVENTION
15. THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK
16. BURY ME IN VEGAS

RLC are multi-national group of nomadic musicians recruited by front man Richard Frenneaux in 2007, with one objective in mind- to make a huge record. "Fine Fascination" is provocative, it explores the profundity and seduction of relationships, addiction and friendship by contrasting dark lyricism with euphoric instrumentals.

Red Light Company release a new single, "Scheme Eugene", as the follow-up to the limited edition single "Meccano". Vocalist and guitarist Richard Frenneaux describes Scheme Eugene- 'the song reflects my attraction, and the natural human fascination, with the darker side of life - it's a song partly inspired by the film Christiane F and partly inspired by a car crash relationship between a boy with an addiction to sex and a girl with an addiction to drugs.'

Already receiving heavy rotation from the likes of Andy C (natch), Ed Rush & Optical, Fresh (BC) etc "Pitch Switch" is a tough stepper with a buzzing fly-trapped-in-the-mixing-desk style sound. "Screwball" on the flip is a bit funkier, but in a Ram style.

A brand new EP from Southern California's explosive Red Onions. A hyper-charged blast-out of Stooges-fueled punk rock, delivered with tight rhythms, powerful riffs, tons of adrenaline, and plenty of destruction in mind.

THIS YEARS BANGER IS HERE! After last years crossover smasher ‘Italo Disco Banger’, which picked up love from DJ Harvey, Gerd Janson and Fatboy Slim, Red Rack’em has been back in the lab, cooking up this years contribution to his ever growing, genre hopping series of ‘Bangers’. He’s hit discotheque paydirt once more with the euphoric tropical disco house burner vibes of ‘Secret Banger’. The feedback has been insane with early support from a wide range of tastemakers including Make A Dance, Nikki Nair, Luke Una, Boris Dlugosch and Gallegos, it’s a crossover, summer magic jam, perfect for those Adriatic or Balearic mornings. Secret Banger is an instant classic. Perfectly pitched for festival sunshine and late night heads down parties. It’s a ‘moment’ track, combining the biggest vocal hook this side of Daft Punk, ecstasy pads, tropical boogie strut and the trademark Rack’em club shaking sub bass. Secret Banger is a sureshot, guaranteed to give eyes closed moments to even the most frosty dancefloors. Monday is ostensibly ‘the deeper B Side cut’ but it’s also a certy club wrecker. Samples are being mad flipped people. A wacked out street soul snippet is sliced and diced before the track mutates into a huge pitched down late night jaw bothering incantation. The OG sample is hard cut into the track like a more clever than most DJ on the decks. You need this.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Secret Banger
B1. Monday

In March 2016 Red Rack’em pressed up 300 copies of a record called ‘Wonky Bassline Disco Banger’. It was more than just a quirky title though - it quickly became THE crossover hit of the year. Described as ‘game changing’ by all that heard it pre-release. They were right.

The first pressing sold out before it even hit the shops. 2 months later, it was on its third repress. By the end of the year it had sold over 3,000 copies on vinyl. Crowned ‘Record Of The Year’ by multiple record shops. Number 5 in the German club chart. Elton John called it ‘Unbeatable’.

From underground clubs to festival main stages, it’s had huge support from Moodymann, DJ Harvey, Blessed Madonna, Bicep, Dixon, Carl Craig, François K, Masters At Work, Idjut Boys, Mr Scruff, Crazy P, Disclosure, Make A Dance, Claptone, Paul Woolford, Dam Swindle, Mousse T.

BBC Radio 1 went crazy for it too with repeated plays from Pete Tong, Annie Mac, MistaJam, B.Traits, Danny Howard, Heidi and Monki.

Hammered everywhere from Love International to Sonar. ‘Almost like it’s come down from a different planet’ - Groove Armada

A decade later and it still sells out every time it gets repressed so to celebrate 10 Years Of Wonky, this special 10th anniversary edition arrives on transparent red vinyl with full colour jacket and sleeve notes from Red Rack’em telling the full story for the first time.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: A beautifully folkloric story that doesn't dilute the floor-shaking force that Red Rack 'Em managed to harness. Almost alchemical in its execution - utilizing a few simple elements to shattering devastation. I've never seen this not go off when played.

TRACK LISTING

A1: Wonky Bassline Disco Banger
B1: Jazzy Extension
B2: Destined

Whilst touring during 2018 in support of Broken Stay Open Sky, their 4th album, Red River Dialect uncovered a new depth of communication in their playing, and the follow-up bears the fruit. Abundance Welcoming Ghosts finds the British folk-rock band relaxing into a natural, playful confidence. It was recorded at Mwnci Studios (Southwest Wales), during 4 days in 2018, just a month before the band’s songwriter David Morris left the UK for a 9 month meditation retreat at a remote Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia. By the time the band reached the studios, the imminent hiatus lent a poignant and celebratory atmosphere to the sessions. The compositions had not been fully formed prior to recording, but any pressure was transmuted into invigoration, resulting in the jubilant energy that adorns even the most turbulent songs. This expansiveness bears testament to the skill of long-term collaborator and guide Jimmy Robertson (Michael Chapman), who engineered and mixed the songs. Guest musicians Joan Shelley, who sings the hidden spaces on “Snowdon” and “Piano,” and Tara Jane O’Neil (Rodan, the Sonora Pine), who plays sweet aching slide guitar on “My Friend,” complement the core sextet. Ed Sanders’ violin alternates between soaring with crisp highland sadness on “BV Kistvaen” and burying jaws into the flesh of songs like “Salvation.”


Coral Kindred-Boothby’s bass swings the anchor in deep blue fathoms, but frequently dances up to the clouds; she sings heart-swelling, radiant harmonies on “My Friend.” Lead guitarist Simon Drinkwater weaves spry and subtle lines just under the surface of the ocean, breaking for gasps of air and bicycle kicks, slicing the air on “Snowdon” and “Blue Sparks.” Kiran Bhatt rides the drums out to all the cardinal points, tapping high bright stars on “Piano” and pulsing with the circular tide on “Two White Carp.” Robin Stratton has one hand rummaging in the swamp around “Red River” and the other under a waterfall on “Slow Rush”; his piano and organ playing flow like water into both rhythm and lead roles.The thread of mourning that has long held sway in Morris’ songwriting, particularly on 2015’s Tender Gold and Gentle Blue, is not fully unravelled. There are familiar questions about allegiances to caution and pensiveness, but the songs edge ever closer to abandoning restraints, including the desire to achieve coherence in meaning as some form of salvation. Regarding the title, he points to a quote attributed to the eleventh century Tibetan spiritual master Machig Labdrön, 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Blue Sparks 4:04
A2. Two White Carp 4:26
A3. Snowdon 5:33
A4. Slow Rush 4:24
A5. Salvation 4:42

B1. Red River 5:32
B2. Piano 6:27
B3. My Friend 5:44
B4. BV Kistvaen 4:21

Red Rum Club return with 'BUCK', their boldest record yet — a defiant, high-energy evolution that smashes expectations. Following the band’s best-selling 'Western Approaches' and a landmark headline show at M&S Bank Arena. , 'BUCK' is built for the big moments.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crush, TX
2. Taste
3. American Nights & English Mornings
4. Buck
5. Call Me On Your Comedown
6. Trouble In The Neighbourhood
7. Wild
8. Vanilla
9. Animal
10. Wish I Was Here
11. Someone’s Baby Isn’t Coming Home

Western Approaches, a fitting title for a band who's spent much of the last two years living their American dream, however you'll find its origins are a lot closer to home. An old World War II Naval base in Liverpool city centre shares the same name and it's no coincidence. The album was conceived on the docks, a new location for the band and again much closer to home for the boys. It seems the further afar they play the tighter their grip on their roots become, playing their biggest headline show to date in Bootle a small town in North Liverpool where some of the lads grew up. This nostalgia and a dockland setting provided a post-war aesthetic to inspire the album, reflected in the name and the artwork. America had also become a new pasture for the band which you can really hear in this album. A change from the well polished, clean cut sonic that had become a theme in the band's previous works and replaced with the raw energy they're known to produce onstage. The industrial influence is reflected in the production and it became a conscious effort to add more sound effects, distortions and echoes into the arrangement of the songs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Western Approaches 0:36
2. Godless 3:19
3. Black Cat 2:20
4. Afternoon 2:05
5. Undertaker 3:00
6. Hole In My Home 3:32
7. Last Minute 2:50
8. Houdini 3:33
9. Daisy 3:13
10. Alive 2:50
11. Jigsaw Shores 4:18

The fourth album from this husband and wife team firmly establishes them as a top Americana act. With their music a cross of country and rock and their songs tales of murder, misery, dysfunction and depression they have gained an appreciative cult following. Listening to this it would appear that audience will keep growing.

Limited 7" from this hot Sydney three piece, bursting on to the music scene with a fuzzed out guitar sound, the simplicity of a three piece format and the haunting vocals of Sarah Kelly. This is distorto dream pop, that reminds me of Juliana Hatfield and Lush a bit too. Sisters Sarah and Lizzie Kelly form the core of the band and record with the addition of a boy drummer / vocalist.

Taking the energy and spirit of the greatest female punk rock revolutionaries and firing it squarely into the 21st century, Red Vinyl Fur are four women ripping through the preconceptions about girl bands being all sweetness and light. Vocalist Chelle packs more than a punch with both her vox and her vintage wardrobe, polished spikes and streams of distortion come courtesy of Kara, already renowned as one of Manchester's most inventive guitarists, whilst drummer Nadene and bassist Sue prove you don't need testosterone to build a powerful rhythm engine. The debut CD single couples the Penetration-esque "Take What You Want" with the "Dry" era PJ Harvey squall of "Slow Girl" and captures both sides of the band's current buzz.

Rick Anthony's first release since 2013's critically-acclaimed No Selfish Heart LP (Chemikal Underground) that Uncut magazine called “Superb… beautiful…. a glorious album [9/10]" and The List claimed was “Something akin to a masterpiece".

These three new songs show the side of Anthony that he's been exploring between shifts at his day job as singer of Glasgow late-aughts indie rock stalwarts The Phantom Band. Soft and entrancing, limited to 300 hand-numbered copies.

Awake Unto is the second mesmerising collection of songs by Rick Redbeard, aka Rick Anthony of cosmic rock magicians The Phantom Band, and comes three years after his delicately poetic solo debut No Selfish Heart. Quarried from similar stone to that of Michael Hurley, Leonard Cohen and Bill Callahan and wrapped in layers redolent of Angelo Badalamenti, Awake Unto weaves folk, balladry and filmic impulses into a tapestry of song so deftly detailed the rewards multiply with every listen.

Where his debut trod an uncluttered path, employing little more than Anthony's burnished baritone, acoustic guitar, piano and violin, Awake Unto brings a far broader spectrum to bear on its heavenly melodicism — banjo, accordion, reversed keyboards, drums, widescreen electric guitar — while still leaving space for the simple formula which lit up its predecessor. There’s a larger pool of contributors here too: Rick’s sister Josephine duets on “Get Friendly (Blood)” while a cohort of his Phantom Band colleagues (Duncan Marquiss, Gerry Hart and Iain Stewart; Derek O’ Neill mixing) also manage to join the cèilidh. The family connections continue, with Awake Unto’s vivid artwork supplied by Anthony’s mother, providing yet another contrast to No Selfish Heart’s austere, monochrome woodland.

While lyrical themes suffuse both albums — love, sex, death, dreams and memory loom large — Awake Unto’s approach is less allusive and more confident as Anthony learns to stretch his limbs as a solo performer. Rick Redbeard is no maudlin troubadour either: in “The Golden Age” you find a loping, rainbow-bright paean to positivity; “What Fine People” salutes the human spirit over an almost too beautiful haar of classical guitar and harmonium; and the closing “Let It Rust” makes the case for reality versus reverie as a painterly series of textures unfolds and dazzles, the mystical heart of the music a counterpoint to the plea underpinning the lyrics.

Following in the wake of two Phantom Band albums - Strange Friend (2014) and Fears Trending (2015), and the music he wrote for Theresa Moerman’s New Talent BAFTA-winning documentary ‘The Third Dad’, it’s hardly surprising Awake Unto marks an assured shift in scope, colour and tone from its spartan forerunner. Rick: “If No Selfish Heart was a tasteful black and white pencil sketch, Awake Unto gets the crayons out to colour it in.” He’s too modest by half of course, as even the most cursory listen will demonstrate. Awake Unto takes the core elements of Rick’s debut — his towering, mahoganied voice and melodic imagination — and cloaks them in fabrics and hues; elevating them to giddying new heights in the process.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Another wonderful solo album from the Phantom Band front man. Although we've not had Summer yet, this makes me long for cold Winter nights - it feels like you should be curled up in front of a roaring fire with a nice single malt listening to this!

TRACK LISTING

Wild Young Country
In My Wake
The Golden Age
Unfound
The Night Is All Ours
Field Years Get Friendly (Blood)
Yuki Onna
What Fine People
Let It Rust

Debut solo album by Rick Redbeard of The Phantom Band. Eight years in the making, ‘No Selfish Heart’ is a warming, darkly poignant collection that navigates universal themes of love, place and the passage of time.

Recorded at his parents’ house in rural Aberdeenshire and the flat he calls home in the West End of Glasgow, ‘No Selfish Heart’ has an intimate, homely feel to it which only adds to the album’s sense of timelessness.

While the album evokes certain elements of Leonard Cohen, Bill Callahan and Bruce Springsteen, the album remains undeniably Scottish, harking back to the dark (often macabre) lovelorn tragedies of that country’s folk tradition.

Rahim Redcar (fka Christine and the Queens) presents his new album “Hopecore”. Collector Transparent Blue Vinyl. Includes “DEEP HOLES”. 

TRACK LISTING

A Side
A1. Forgive 8888888
A2. Elevate
A3. Ins8de Of Me
A4. Deep Holes
A5. Red Birdman Emergency

B Side
B1. Opera - I Understand
B2. Manuela Danse 

REDD KROSS & THE HARD-ONS. From LA and Sydney respectively. Separated by an ocean, but with ties that go back to when they were label mates on the US Big Time label in 1987 and maybe even further. Beyond that the connections are plentiful; both started playing out on their respective punk scenes when they were very young - Redd Kross as pre-teens and mid-teens in '79-80, The Hard-Ons as mid-to-late teenagers in '82-83 - and both ruffled plenty of feathers when they did. Both bands transgressed the accepted boundaries of punk, and both pushed audience excitement buttons with high energy, great tunes, an outrageous visual element and a willingness to not only include '60s pop influences into their punk sounds, but also flashy and trashy '70s hard rock.

Indeed, two bands were arguably the first two to understand the musical thread that joined Kiss and the Ramones, and in doing so they together helped make the world a brighter place.

Current Hard-Ons singer Tim Rogers goes back decades with Redd Kross too - a young You Am I were on the bill when Redd Kross toured Australia with the Hoodoo Gurus back in 1994.

TRACK LISTING

1. I'll Take Your Word For It (Acoustic) (Redd Kross)
2. Stuff (Acoustic) (Redd Kross)
3. The Lady In The Front Row (Acoustic) (Redd Kross)
4. Always Think With My Temper (Hard-Ons)
5. You'll Always Be Safe With Us (Hard-Ons)
6. Getting Older (Radio Edit) (Hard-Ons)

In 1979, two school-kids all hopped-up on punk-rock started their own group in their hometown of Hawthorne, Los Angeles (birthplace of the Beach Boys) and soon found themselves opening shows for notorious scene pioneers Black Flag. Jeff McDonald was fifteen, his brother Steven McDonald only eleven. But that didn’t stop their group from becoming one of the most remarkable, enduring and unique outfits punk-rock ever belched up.

2024, then, marks Redd Kross’s forty-fifth birthday— an important anniversary for any group whose heart pulses at 45RPM—and the brothers are celebrating the event with a veritable multimedia extravaganza. There’s a memoir, Now You’re One Of Us, due in November, author Dan Epstein telling the group’s story in the McDonalds’ unmistakable (and occasionally contrary) voices. A brilliant rockumentary, Born Innocent, directed by Andrew Reich, will premiere later in the year. Most exciting of all, this new album—an eponymous double-album, no less, packed with eighteen of their sharpest, most addictive songs yet. These years of joyful service to rock’n’roll have seen Redd Kross evolve into a killer pop-rock concern, dealing in dayglo power-chords, choruses as tall as skyscrapers and a lyric sheet thick with acid couplets and arch popcultural references their loyal following will gobble up like quaaludes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Candy Coloured Catastrophe
2. Stunt Queen
3. The Main Attraction
4. Cancion Enojada
5. Good Times Propaganda Band
6. What’s In It For You?
7. I’ll Take Your Word For It
8. Terrible Band
9. Stuff
10. Back Of The Cave
11. Too Good To Be True
12. Way Too Happy
13. Simple Magic
14. The Witches’ Stand
15. Lay Down And Die
16. The Shaman’s Disappearing Robe
17. Emanuelle Insane
18. Born Innocent

Music critics and fans agree, Redd Kross is back and delivering their signature brand of genuine rock 'n roll with a vengeance. Founded 34 years ago in Los Angeles during the first wave of LA punk rock by brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald (then respectively 15 and 11 years old), Redd Kross cut their teeth opening for Black Flag at a middle school graduation party. Their debut recordings caught the attention of Rodney Bingenheimer, who quickly became a fan as he spun their Ramones inspired songs like “Annette's Got The Hits” and "I Hate My School" on the world famous KROQ.

Their following releases maintained roots still firmly planted in punk, but the band started to experiment with different musical elements and band members. Redd Kross boldly broke new ground by intuitively and inventively mixing their eclectic inspirations in song and performance. They understand and embrace the esoteric commonalities between the Partridge Family and the Manson Family; the Beatles and Black Sabbath; The Osmonds and the New York Dolls. The result was a band that was ahead of their time - daringly original, artistic and uncontrived. Records like “Teen Babes from Monsanto”, “Born Innocent” and “Neurotica” became precursors to the Seattle bands of the 90's, as well as becoming an inspiration to many indie and alternative rock bands worldwide. “(Redd Kross) are definitely one of the most important bands in America” - Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore

In 1990 the band released their major label debut, “Third Eye”. Taking their obsession with late 60's bubblegum am radio to a new level, the song writing matured with more complex arrangements, harmonies and lush production. Redd Kross had their first single chart “Annie's Gone”(#16 billboard modern rock), and began to tour with notable artists such as Sonic Youth, The Go-Go's, The Posies, Jellyfish, The Lemonheads, and the Hoodoo Gurus. Robert Hecker took leave as lead guitarist and the McDonald brothers were joined by Eddie Kurdziel (guitar), Brian Reitzell (drums), and Gere Fennelly (keyboards). They released the critically acclaimed “Phaseshifter” album in 1993 featuring the hit songs “Jimmy's Fantasy”, “Lady In The Front Row”, and a raucous cover of Frightwig’s “Crazy World”.

In 1997, Redd Kross released one of their most polished albums, “Show World” featuring the perfectly crafted pop single, “Mess Around”. After supporting the album by touring with Sloan and the Presidents of the United States, the band went on a much needed hiatus. Fans wondered when they would return, and things seemed more uncertain after the untimely passing of guitarist Eddie Kurdziel in 1999.

The McDonald brothers launched www.ReddKross.com and began to reconnect with their fans and make new ones. They experimented with the new medium just as innovatively as they do with their music - Steven McDonald released an online only mashup album called “Redd Blood Cells” by adding bass tracks to the White Stripes album, Jeff McDonald began podcasting (“Hit It!”) before iPods or podcasts were invented, and also released a web based video series (Bitchin' Ass”) far ahead of YouTube.Redd Kross reissued their classic “Neurotica” album as they worked on a variety of other projects including “Ze Malibu Kids”, “The Steven McDonald Group”, and worked in various capacities with other bands on stage and in the studio such as the Donnas, Turbonegro, Imperial Teen, Anna Waronker, be your own pet, fun., Sparks, Tenacious D, Beck and OFF!.

In 2006, Jeff and Steven announced their reunion with the “classic Neurotica” line up – and were joined once again by guitarist Robert Hecker (IT’S OK) and drummer Roy McDonald (the Muffs). Redd Kross have been playing to enthusiastic audiences at sold out select shows and festivals such as the Azkena Festival, Coachella, The HooDoo Gurus’ Invitational - “Dig It Up”, All Tomorrow's Parties, and Pop Montréal. “Researching the Blues” is the highly anticipated new record. It is their first new album in 15 years and will be released on Sweet Nothing August 6th, 2012.

TRACK LISTING

Researching The Blues
Stay Away From Downtown
Uglier
Dracula’s Daughter
Meet Frankenstein
One OF The Good Ones
The Nu-Temptations
Choose To Play
Winter Blues
Hazel Eyes

One of the most influential soul singers of the 1960s, Otis Redding exemplified to many listeners the power of Southern "deep soul" – hoarse, gritty vocals, brassy arrangements, and an emotional way with both party tunes and aching ballads. At the time of his tragic death at the age of 26, Redding was on the verge of breaking through to a wide pop audience (which he would indeed do with his posthumous number one single "[Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay"). He was also tremendously respected by many white groups, particularly the Rolling Stones, who covered Redding's "Pain in My Heart." (via Allmusic.com)

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Ole Man Trouble
2. Respect
3. Change Gonna Come
4. Down In The Valley
5. I’ve Been Loving You Too Long

Side 2
1. Shake
2. My Girl
3. Wonderful World
4. Rock Me Baby
5. Satisfaction
6. You Don’t Miss Your Water

“Dock Of The Bay Sessions” was compiled with input from Roger Armstrong of Ace Records and Otis biographer Jonathan Gould and has the Redding family’s full endorsement. Although the individual tracks have been previously released across a smattering of posthumous albums and compilations, this marks the first time they have been assembled to resemble what this album could possibly have been.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the album’s opening track “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay,” one of the last songs Redding ever recorded. Released in January 1968, it soon topped the charts in March 16th in the US becoming the first posthumous #1 single in the history of the U.S. music charts. It also reached number 3 in the UK, and went on to sell more than four million copies worldwide.

Ailbhe Reddy is a Dublin-born songwriter whose music captures the quiet intensity of life’s in-between moments. Her third album 'KISS BIG' is a breakup record — but not in the traditional sense. It explores what happens after the fallout: the numbness, the confusion, the brief flashes of clarity. How identity slips, rearranges, and occasionally reforms. Written between London, New York, Dublin and Donegal, 'KISS BIG' draws on literary influences like Fleishman Is in Trouble and Sarah Kane’s 'Crave', combining diaristic lyrics with soft-spoken intensity. The result is a record that sits somewhere between indie rock and confessional folk, echoing the emotional weight of artists like Julia Jacklin, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus.

Reddy’s previous albums 'Personal History' and 'Endless Affair' earned critical acclaim and a Choice Music Prize nomination, with praise from outlets like The Guardian, Pitchfork, and The Times. She’s performed at Glastonbury, SXSW, The Great Escape and beyond, steadily building a loyal audience drawn to her honesty and emotional precision. With 'KISS BIG', Reddy leans further into her ability to make the personal feel universal. These are songs for endings, almosts, and the quiet beginnings that come after.

TRACK LISTING

1. Align
2. That Girl
3. So Quickly, Baby
4. Untangling
5. Graceful Swimmer
6. Dead Arm
7. Gorgeous Thing
8. Kiss Big
9. Crave

Redinho returns with two heavyweight tracks - ‘Square 1’ featuring Kimbra and ‘Mmm Mmm featuring Vula. After a solo album on Numbers, working as Hudson Mohawke’s musical director on the ‘Lantern’ tour and producing for the transatlantic rap group Swet Shop Boys with Riz Ahmed and Heems, Redinho is now focusing back on his solo output and these new tracks feature his signature sugar-rush R&B meets pop and electronic sound.
‘Mmm Mmm’ was crowned World’s Hottest Record by Annie Mac and features Vula of Basement Jaxx Fame. ‘Square 1’ features a Timbaland-esque beat with hypnotising sultry vocals from Grammy Award winning artist Kimbra, known for her feature on the Gotye single ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’. Both cuts come in vocal and instrumental versions - hot!

In Redinho’s own words…

‘Mmm Mmm’: “This track was written by Nao and me. The original demo wound up on a HudMo mix in 2015 just as I was starting work as his musical director for the ‘Lantern’ live show. After that I got busy with producing Swet Shop Boys, but managed to get one of my absolute favourite singers Vula to do her thing on this track because she killed it so hard when we used to play it live. So I’m really happy this jam is finally getting released. I’ve lived with it for a while now but I’m stoked that when people hear it for the first time they’re like, oof.”

‘Square One’: “I wrote this track with Kimbra a few years ago when we were jamming in London. Those sessions produced ‘Sweet Relief’, a track I also wrote and produced with her, and also ‘Square One’. The initial loop was the result of jamming with my Talkbox, Kimbra messing with her Voice Live skills, and me sampling the whole thing as we went along. My brother John Calvert was also in the room and fleshed out some chords. Kimbra put down a brilliant guide vocal, then we did some back and forths online as she wrote the lyrics. Absolutely stoked to be finally releasing this track. Despite both of these tunes being written years ago, I’m proud that they still feel relevant and worth hearing.”

STAFF COMMENTS

David says: Woah, is Timbaland in the house? I haven't heard a groove as bad as this peak time R'n B' banger in years. Massive!

TRACK LISTING

Mmm Mmm Ft Vula
Mmm Mmm (Instrumental)
Square 1 Ft Kimbra
Square1 (Instrumental)

Ace new Def Jam LP on a fatter than fat funky jeep beat tip. Guest spots from DJ Kool, Scarface, Method Man, Missy Elliott, etc. Inspired.

Sam Redmore made a significant impact on the UK music scene with his debut album Universal Vibrations, a vibrant collection of eclectic, dancefloor-ready tracks that earned extensive radio play on BBC 6 Music. His follow-up album Modulate builds on this foundation, blending electronic and live instrumentation across a diverse range of genres, from house and funk to afrobeat and salsa. Sam, now exploring and expanding his creative process, incorporated live performances into the album's development, and collaborated with notable artists including Dele Sosimi and Abdominal.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pride
2. Home (feat. Dele Sosimi)
3. What Would You Do? (feat. Lumi HD)
4. Glow
5. Mother Earth (feat. Abdominal)
6. A Sad Story But A Good Story (feat. Aaron Applause)
7. Good Vibes (feat. Mr Auden Allen, Lumi HD & Richie Culture)
8. I Feel It Now (feat. Lumi HD)
9. El Camino (feat. Ellie Coleman)
10. Woah!

Having established himself first as a DJ and then as a remixer, Sam Redmore is now very much making himself known as an original producer of quality global grooves that can light up any dancefloor, carnival or party.

After garnering early support for his remixes from the likes of Gilles Peterson, Quantic, Nightmares On Wax, The Nextmen, Lauren Laverne, Danny Krivit and Craig Charles, Sam has built a name for crafting soul-drenched remixes of the classics, with his army of fans eagerly awaiting every new re-work.

Signing to Jalapeno Records for his debut album of original material, Sam has kept the eclectic tastes of all his fans satisfied with a series of very different singles showcasing the wide range of styles he is known for - all picking up rave reviews and a very wide spread of radio support including Radio 1 / 6 Music / Radio 2 / Jazz FM / Worldwide FM in the UK as well as hitting Number 1 most added on US college radio charts (world).

The single Nagu in particular has become a mainstay on daytime 6 Music but each successive release has been finding new fans. From his killer cumbia covers (Tears / Just Be Good To Me) through to the afro-house exuberance of One More Time and leading neatly up to Just Can't Wait, an extremely soulful disco house floorfiller, this is an album with broad appeal both in the UK and overseas.

In the meantime, Sam has been honing his live shows throughout 2022, with festival bookers keen for a piece of the action. Boomtown, Wilderness, Green Man, Kendal Calling and a whole host of others have seen what the punters at Mostly Jazz, Funk & Soul Festival saw last summer, when Sam debuted his live show on the main stage of a key festival on the Saturday afternoon. Anyone who was there and saw the audacious 12-piece live ensemble playing their first show knew they were seeing something special.

TRACK LISTING

1. Just Can't Wait (feat. Lumi HD)
2. One More Time (feat. SANITY)
3. Nagu
4. Music Is… (feat. Mr Auden Allen)
5. Alegre (feat. Ellie Coleman)
6. Party (feat. Lumi HD)
7. On The One (feat. Mr Auden Allen & Renegade Brass Band)
8. Only Because You're Around (feat. Andrea Brown)
9. Blockbuster
10. Tears
11. So Real (feat. Lumi HD)

Sam Redmore's forward thinking eclectic global grooves continue to shine bright. Known for making feel good tracks that effortlessly straddle across electronic, jazz, latin and afro music, Sam returns with the sublime cover of Dames Brown's 'What Would You Do?' featuring outstanding vocals by Lumi HD and a team of quality backing singers and musicians. The result is a lush combo dripping with organic warmth, and a spirited statement of intent calling out lovers to make the right choice. On the flip is the equally essential track 'Glow' which was released earlier this year to much applaud from tastemakers, for its ambitious and infectious groove.

TRACK LISTING

1. What Would You Do? (feat. Lumi HD)
2. Glow

Led by brothers Danny and Robin Herbert, with Andrew Turnbull on drums, Robbie White on bass, and Alice Hancock on live samplers and backing vocals, rEDOLENT are gearing up for 2024, focusing on their upcoming debut album. Their debut LP marks a moment of the band taking control while confident in their warped take on the world, offering harsh reality and joyous escapism over the course of ten sleek, considered tracks.

With all of their output created at Post Electric Studios in Leith, rEDOLENT operate as sole creators of their artistry; writing, recording, producing and mixing their work independently. Whilst citing influences as diverse as Mount Kimble, king krule, Animal Collective, brockhampton, LCD soundsystem, Madvillain, Tom Vek, Clairo, CAN and Talking Heads, the band are undoubtedly operating in their own lane and carving a bespoke sound, which has been recognised and applauded from titles including NME, Clash, The Line of Best Fit, DIY, Hunger, Notion, The Skinny - and still, it’s just the beginning.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dinny Greet
2. Just Trying To Relax
3. Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen To Me
4. Ravvy
5. 5 Day Til' The Weekend
6. Congratulations For Getting Off The Drink
7. How Are You Making It Look So Easy (oshie-t)
8. Dunno (_____)
9. Wherever
10. Yaldi

Having penned over 200 songs in the last six years, The Reds, Pinks and Purples release a collection of tracks previously unreleased on physical format that continues to romanticise the wonders and woes of the world.

With song titles that read like chapter sub-heads for a post-Douglas Coupland novella, ‘The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed’ takes The Reds, Pinks and Purples central orator Glenn Donaldson through the turmoil of small talk and everyday water cooler moments with a fine sense of pathos and irony.

Set to a soundtrack that swerves between the dark days of Television Personalities and Byrdsian twang to the Jarvis Cocker-styled rhetoric and vocal tenderness of ‘Richard In the Age Of The Corporation’ with hints of everything from Husker Du’s fuzzed splendour to the chiming majesty of The Chameleons it’s an empowering listen.

The pathos and irony of the glorious track ‘The World Doesn’t Need Another Band’ sets out the band’s store, it’s a measured and quietly outspoken rant at lacklustre opposition peppered with a gorgeous guitar break. Meanwhile, ‘I Only Ever Wanted To See You Fail’ rumbles with an Eddie And The Hot Rods pre-punk riff before dissolving into a tale of self-doubt and remorse, bemoaning others’ good luck. ‘Toxic Friend’ is from the book of the TVP’s Daniel Treacey with an upbeat chorus that smacks of all that was good in old school indie in a hail of fuzzy logic and guitars.

From humble beginnings as a home recording project, The Reds, Pinks and Purples has blossomed into a sporadic live unit with tours on both sides of the Atlantic and appearances at Pitchfork Fest London and Woodsist Fest as well as support slots for indie legends such as Destroyer, Guided By Voices, and The Feelies.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A lovely selection of pieces that haven't ever been available on a physical format from one of our favourite psychedelic jangle-pop outfits, and most prolific songwriters. It's always a hit and miss affair, the ol' B-sides compilation, but if anyone can sidestep that, it's the RP&P. A great, stylistically fluid collection.

TRACK LISTING

1. The World Doesn’t Need Another Band
2. I Only Ever Wanted To See You Fail
3. A Figure On The Stairs
4. Slow Torture Of An Hourly Wage
5. Trouble Don’t Last
6. You’re Never Safe From Yourself
7. Your Cult Is On Fire
8. My Toxic Friend
9. Your Taste Makes You Strange
10. Marty As A Youth
11. What’s The Worst Thing You Heard?
12. No One Absolves Us In The End
13. Richard In The Age Of The Corporation
14. There Must Be A Pill For This

'Acknowledge Kindness' expands The Reds, Pinks And Purples’ distinctive brand of emotional pop, music built for the quiet hours and the restless mind. Evolving naturally from the heavier, melancholic indie rock of previous releases, the mood here feels more exposed and reflective, blossoming into lush dreamscapes that recall the bittersweet sorrow of The Cure or the tenderly gloomy transcendence of California by American Music Club.

Created from a new headspace, the album finds Glenn Donaldson observing both the present and the weight of what came before it. Songs lean into a deeper sense of nostalgia, allowing him to look back with intent and revisit moments that once carried a sting.

Donaldson comments: “This album is probably about learning to live with your ghosts and trying to be alive in the present. There’s a certain kind of big sounding record I aspire to make, like California by American Music Club or 16-Lover's Lane by The Go-Betweens, works that steer into the pain but become a transportational device for the listener.”

Donaldson’s vocals are captured in high fidelity, raw and immediate, with lyrical abstraction underpinned by chiming acoustic guitars and achingly beautiful piano.

‘New Leaf’ teases with a perpetual guitar line plucking at the heartstrings while a sub-melody cushions Donaldson’s musings. ‘Heaven of Love’ tackles cynicism with positive energy as it tumbles into a glorious chorus, while the guitars on ‘Worthy of Love’ chime dutifully as it dispels heavy memories and heads for a better place. Two plush instrumentals, the winsome ‘Blue Heron Lake’ and the symphonic title track, sound like Eno post Roxy pre ambient or Felt without words.

Having written more than 200 songs and released nine albums in just six years, Glenn Donaldson has shaped a distinctive songwriting world rooted in emotional clarity and romanticised wonder.

Across its 11 tracks, 'Acknowledge Kindness' expands The Reds, Pinks And Purples’ emotional and sonic panorama, with Donaldson’s ongoing world-building remaining both warmly nostalgic and strikingly original.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There has always been a pronounced melancholic tinge to The Reds, Pinks And Purples' canon, but it comes to the fore here with Donaldson's voice and the well crafted shoegaze-adjacent instrumentals leaning heavily towards The Cure's particular brand of wavy, minor-key gloom. A solidly produced and wonderfully evocative journey, as ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Is It You, Or Is It Them?
2. Heaven Of Love
3. Emo Band
4. New Leaf
5. Houses
6. Blue Heron Lake
7. Worthy Of Love
8. Doubt In Vain
9. Where Did I Go Last Night?
10. Build Love
11. Acknowledge Kindness

Summer at Land’s End is not an interlude or tangent for The Reds, Pinks & Purples but rather a perfect fourth movement following the albums Anxiety Art, You Might Be Happy Someday, and Uncommon Weather. As with these self-recorded records (the primary work of songwriter Glenn Donaldson), the songs on Summer at Land’s End were crafted slowly and then drawn together to make a unified statement. But here, and more than before, Summer at Land’s End combines Donaldson’s rueful pop sensibility with a parallel musical universe, one composed of pictures, dreams, and feelings without words. Even if the underlying theme of this collection is one of conflict or unhappiness, the vision of the music presents an escape to a new world, always fading in and out of sight.

For listeners who may not be familiar with Donaldson’s corner of San Francisco––the Richmond district––or the current wave of hazy, melodic DIY pop groups performing in the city, Summer at Land’s End pulls in images and scenes that feel like a collision of the mundane and the sublime of this present landscape. But settings such as these are the backdrop for personal narratives, expressed as a struggle with love, with companionship and the conflicts of home. With this record, The Reds, Pinks & Purples give less focus to the vanities of a subculture and more to the challenge of connecting with someone, to the ordinary goals of being human and finding harmony with others.

This deliberate saturation in drama and ambiance, along with some of Donaldson’s best songwriting to date, is what gives Summer at Land’s End its special class in the project’s discography. Of the album’s cinematic mood, Donaldson refers to films like Summer of ‘42 and the influence of the classic 4AD catalogue of the 1990s. This style informs much of Donaldson’s prior and current ventures of course (The Ivytree, Vacant Gardens, and a dozen projects in between) but now The Reds, Pinks & Purples have taken the mantle, embracing this instinct for instrumental or dreamier modes of pop songwriting. It’s a pleasure to experience Summer at Land’s End, as this record finds a thrilling balance between songs and sounds, instruments and voices, and the ironic twin poles of art and life.

TRACK LISTING

1. Don’t Come Home Too Soon (03:12)
2. Let’s Pretend We’re Not In Love (03:06)
3. New Light (02:53)
4. My Soul Unburdened (02:21)
5. Summer At Land’s End (07:02)
6. Pour The Light In (04:10)
7. All Night We Move (02:42)
8. Tell Me What’s Real (03:05)
9. Upside Down In An Empty Room (03:15)
10. Dahlias And Rain (02:37)
11. I’d Rather Not Go Your Way (01:56)

DINKED EDITION:
Side A
Don’t Come Home Too Soon (03:12)
Let’s Pretend We’re Not In Love (03:06)
New Light (02:53)
My Soul Unburdened (02:21)
Summer At Land’s End (07:02)
Side B
Pour The Light In (04:10)
All Night We Move (02:42)
Tell Me What’s Real (03:05)
Upside Down In An Empty Room (03:15)
Dahlias And Rain (02:37)
I’d Rather Not Go Your Way (01:56)
Side C (DINKED EXCLUSIVE)
Never Said I Was Sorry Then (02:34)
Hummingbirds (03:19)
Holiday Cheer (02:56)
Randy, If You Were Here (02:34)
Public Fountains (02:37)
Side D (DINKED EXCLUSIVE)
Outer Avenues (02:37)
Sea Wall (02:43)
Mountain Lake Park (05:10)
Conservatory Of Flowers (03:19)
Like A Ghost Warmed Over (02:48)
Midday Sun (04:05)

RIYL: Sarah Records, Even As We Speak, The Field Mice, Blue Boy, The Clientele, early Belle & Sebastian.

It’s ok to play out of time.

Music toys with time. Or, maybe songs reflect back that time is always toying with us. The world of a song takes hold of us like an eternity to be lost in, with its repetitions and variations, but ultimately, as with everything else, it has a start and then ends. And there’s no place to lose time like San Francisco, where there are no seasons and all the seasons occur within one day; where the fog takes the space where your plans might have been; where there’s insane wealth all around and everyone you know and love is hanging on at the periphery and making art on any given Tuesday night. About Glenn Donaldson’s new record, The Town That Cursed Your Name, he says, “I realized as I was piecing it together that it's a song cycle about trying to live while also feeling called to make music”. It’s a double life when it works and a deeper doubleness to mirror the Gemini nature of songs themselves. The Town That Cursed Your Name contemplates this problem with wryness, generosity, and the micro- and macroscopic realness Donaldson is known and loved for.

Whereas the 2022 collection Summer at Land’s End was a softer, gauzier world, The Town That Cursed Your Name is heavier, with fuzzed lines running through. 'Leave It All Behind' starts out with an amorphous whine but quickly launches into something both supremely melodic and buzzing at the edges. 'Here Comes the Lunar Hand' is an impressionist geometry that seems to capture the album’s themes without telling you how. Lyrically, Donaldson embraces the earnestness of his heroes Paul Westerberg and Grant McLennan. Sonically, late '80s college rock is filtered through song-forward lo-fi acts like East River Pipe and House of Tomorrow-era Magnetic Fields. Like the images that accompany his releases – flowers and residential street scenes are pushed to the breaking point with colour – Donaldson’s songs are at the same time dazzling and lurid, beautiful and burdened, not unlike life as a musician around here.

In the liner notes, Donaldson dedicates the record “to everyone who ever tried to start a band in the Bay". There will be many knowing smiles at his title, 'It’s Too Late For An Early Grave'. But, this dedication captures something else about the particular strain of sincerity that laces the city water supply – the front man around here is on stage under those lights evincing the fervor not of the pop star but of the biggest fan.

- Karina Gill.

TRACK LISTING

1. Too Late For An Early Grave
2. Leave It All Behind
3. Life In The Void
4. Here Comes The Lunar Hand
5. Burning Sunflowers
6. Waiting On A Ghost To Haunt You
7. What Is A Friend?
8. Mistakes (Too Many To Name)
9. Almost Changed
10. The Town That Cursed Your Name
11. I Still Owe You Everything
12. Break Up The Band

A message from an old friend earlier this year: “I heard an album yesterday and thought: I bet Laura likes this”. It wasn’t a record I knew, but one look at the record’s sleeve and I was pretty sure he’d be right - It looked like an album I’d love! (We’ve all bought an album ‘cos we love the artwork right?) He was talking about this, the third LP in as many years from San Francisco resident Glen Donaldson. Self recorded and self produced, this collection of 13 succinct, super melodic, understated pop songs has a lovely warm, hazy feel to it. With song titles like “A Kick In The Face (That’s Life)” and “I Hope I Never Fall In Love” you can guess there’s a heavy dose of melancholy in the songwriting, but the gorgeous guitar jangles that chime through the low-fi haze lift the spirit, like the sun breaking through the clouds on a summer's day. 

TRACK LISTING

Don’t Ever Pray In The Church On My Street (02:46)
I Hope I Never Fall In Love (02:56)
The Biggest Fan (02:47)
Uncommon Weather (01:54)
A Kick In The Face (that’s Life) (02:01)
I Wouldn’t Die For Anyone (02:35)
I’m Sorry About Your Life (02:05)
The Record Player And The Damage Done (02:22)
Pictures Of The World (03:11)
Life At Parties (02:52)
Sing Red Roses For Me (03:54)
The Songs You Used To Write (02:49)
Sympathetic (03:11)

RIYL: The Field Mice, Blue Boy, The Clientele, Cindy.

The cinema of the scenes as told from the heart and spirit of the omniscient narrator shines through the awe-inspiring oeuvre of Glenn Donaldson's canonical titan that is The Reds, Pinks & Purples. The storied and esoteric histories of every underserved underdog becomes immortalized in records and poignantly penned paeans that evoke the eras and underachievers that became synonymous with their own respective corresponding localized micro-movements. Donaldson channels that psychic spirit and journeyman earned wisdom to provide contemporary era rock operas that eulogize tales of infinitely influential rises and falls. Crystalizing the tragic self-celebrating kingdoms of fortunate failures, false heroes, music press deities of limitless deceit, hometown dive gods and humanity in the grips of all its romanticized wonder and woe — the latest sortie of the sensational and spectacular takes aim at the threads of hope and an untethered abandon into the intimacy and dualities of idolatry and isolation with Unwishing Well.

Ever since its emergence from the harried late 2010s — The Reds, Pinks & Purples have become the absolute encapsulation of Donaldson's own proliferation and prestige. From a musical legacy that chronicles a long list of minor successes and major tragedies; Glenn distills the timelines of distinction from yesterday, today, tomorrow and whatever may be into a musical phenomenon that embodies something more than all of its analogous inspirations. Beyond the clamor about the retro cult pop artistic allusions and tropes that can be found in those spirit expanding kaleidoscope chord chimes; Donaldson takes you on a guided tour through the San Francisco underground movements that would have been, could have been or perhaps never were at all from the start. The Reds, Pinks & Purples’ coveted catalog inadvertently, consciously or unconsciously, offers an authorized and anonymous history of imperfect and ambitious debutantes, dilettantes, auteurs, et al. The lauded visionaries whose volition informed the big money touring stage headliners, but only enjoyed a fleeting jaunt through the glorious corporate clad carnival canopies from the touring circuit routes and tech funded festival tent tabernacles. Unwishing Well is a eulogy for the buzz bands that crashed, the wily one hit wizards, and omnipresent (and often uninspired) eternal aesthetes who work the lucrative outlets of licensing media markets.

Glenn pulls no punches with the promiscuity of the pop machines and their exploited propped up brand ambassadors on the cutting "Your Worst Song is Your Greatest Hit" that tangles with the lumbering and inescapable creatives and careerist trajectories that trade in boardroom playbooks and verticals. Expressions and influencers break out into the collective commissaries of commerce exhibitionism on “Public Art”, to auditing the forums of fandom that pertain to developed affinities and the roads to rabid infatuation with the obsessive in earnest, “Learning to Love a Band”.

And while the Glenn spins many yarns on the under-appreciated secret histories of DIY, Unwishing Well offers cathartic hymns of modern malaise. Sighing in lamentation of regressive trends, “What’s Going on with Ordinary People'' balks with concern over contemporary states of devolution, while “Faith in Daydreaming Youth” questions what vestiges of hope and valor can be found in the new vanguards of political bodies that govern the world’s sovereign daydream nations. The dustbins of dastardly discontinuity are imbued with desire and grief on the dramatist tragedy of “Dead Stars in Your Eyes”, to basking in the discarded ditches of the damned below in voids of obscurity on “Nothing Between the Lines at All”. The human addiction to languishing in anguish, misery and negativity tussles, tosses and turns on “We Only Hear the Bad Things People Say”, the penultimate ode to inherent human infallibility as Donaldson rides the audience out into the gilded sunset glow of “Goodbye Bobby”.

The central set piece of Unwishing Well revolves around the title track that wrestles with wellness and wishes tempered by the sobering reality of ultra pragmatic skepticism. Donaldson shows the audience where the dream falls short, an indictment on the fickleness of wants and the life/work/art balances of making it all work. It's the group that never makes it, the idea that never gets off the ground, the recognition that never arrives, the raise that is never awarded, nor the promotion to the next ladder rung that remains laughably inaccessible. Glenn has the gift of bridging the divide between the hunger artist, their adoring cult public and the common threads that connect these local and global communities through the humanist cause of collective commiseration.

As increasingly found in the continued adventures of The Reds, Pinks and Purples canon — Glenn circles the drain of surrendering to unabashed sentimentality in passions worthy of being showcased as the top headlining spot that your favorite revered then later reviled pop act never even had the chance to claim or ascend. Unwishing Well uplifts and uproots the undercurrents that carry the commonalities between the spectators and the spectacles. Donaldson pays homage in heart to everything and everyone that never got their due or to the lucky ones that made the grade, but paid an ultimate price. The cycle of these pop vignettes depict successes and failures in the same sentences, existing within the same stanzas, where the stories of making it and breaking it operate as events that live on different sides of the same coin. Unwishing Well is a reflection of us, the icons we adore, the Adonises we worship, the false prophets that proselytize the edicts from theses cults of personality, the fallouts, the third acts and the artistic fabrics that spool these sub-sects of artful dodgers into the stuff of legend.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There are obvious comparisons to be made here with the jangling, morose indie of the late 80's and 90's but the resulting sound on The Red Pinks & Purples' new album is both hugely modern, while breezily embracing the lo-fi jangle and airy melodicism of the era. 'Unwishing Well' is a perfect distillation of both Donaldson's established sound and the musical influences he absorbs, and results in an absorbing and emotional listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. What’s Going On With Ordinary People
2. Learning To Love A Band
3. Unwishing Well
4. Faith In Daydreaming Youth
5. Your Worst Song Is Your Greatest Hit
6. Dead Stars In Your Eyes
7. Nothing Between The Lines At All
8. Public Art
9. We Only Hear The Bad Things People Say
10. Goodbye Bobby

Redskins were formed in York in 1982 by Chris Dean (vocals/guitar), Martin Hewes (bass/backing vocals) and Nick King (drums), with the ambition to “sing like The Supremes and walk like The Clash”. Dean and Hewes were members of the Socialist Workers Party and politics guided the music created by Redskins, their soulful songs brimming with righteous passion. Six tracks on ‘Neither Washington Nor Moscow’ were released as singles, including the band’s only Top 40 “Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing)” and the prophetic “Kick Over The Statues”. Redskins split in late 1986, leaving a legacy and influence that stretches far beyond their short recording career.

The reissue comes complete with new sleeve notes by Redskins bassist Martin Hewes, and the boxset will include a 68-page booklet with liner notes from Hewes and Redskins drummer Paul Hookham (who replaced original drummer Nick King in 1985) and renowned contemporaries including Billy Bragg and Paul Morley.

TRACK LISTING

LP Tracklist:
A1 The Power Is Yours
A2 Kick Over The Statues!
A3 Go Get Organized!
A4 It Can Be Done!
A5 Keep On Keepin’ On!
A6 (Burn It Up) Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing)
B1 Hold On!
B2 Turnin’ Loose (This Furious Flames)
B3 Take No Heroes!
B4 The Crack
B5 Let’s Make It Work!
B6 Lean On Me!
B7. Lean On Me! (Reprise - ‘The Return Of The Modern Soul Classic’

CD Tracklist 
A1 The Power Is Yours
A2 Kick Over The Statues!
A3 Go Get Organized!
A4 It Can Be Done!
A5 Keep On Keepin’ On!
A6 (Burn It Up) Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing)
A7 Hold On!
A8 Turnin’ Loose (This Furious Flames)
A9 Take No Heroes!
A10 The Crack
A11 Let’s Make It Work!
A12 Lean On Me!
A13 Lean On Me! (Reprise - ‘The Return Of The Modern Soul Classic’
A14 16 Tons (Coal Not Dole)
A15 Reds Strike The Blues (Take 4)
A16 99 And A Half Won’t Do (with Reprise)
A17 You Want It? They Got It!
A18 A Plateful Of Hateful
A19 Take Your Gods And Bury Them (‘Take No Heroes’ - Alternative Version)

B1 Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing) - 12” Version
B2 Keep On Keepin’ On! (Die On Your Feet 12” Mix) Produced By Ted De Bono, Mixed By Redskins
B3 The Power Is Yours (MGM Mix By Stephen Street)
B4 Keep On Keepin' On (Original March ’84 - 12” Mix)
B5 It Can Be Done! 7” Version (Additional Recording And Mix By Stephen Street Alternate Mix)
B6 You Want It? They Got It! (Alternate Jammin’ Magazine Mix)
B7 Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing) (7” More FX Mix)
B8 Keep On Keepin’ On! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
B9 Let’s Make It Work! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
B10 Bring It Down! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
B11 Kick Over The Statues! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
B12 Tracks Of My Tears (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) With Billy Bragg
B13 Back In The USSR (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) With Billy Bragg & Jerry Dammers
B14 Skinhead Moonstomp (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) With Jerry Dammers
B15 Keep On Keepin’ On! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) - Speech Version With Bruce George, South African Activist

C1 The Power Is Yours (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd Apr, 1986)
C2 Kick Over The Statues! (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
C3 Hold On! (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
C4 The Crack (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
C5 99 And A Half Won’t Do (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
C6 Let’s Make It Work! (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
C7 Unioinize / Pickin’ The Blues (Peel Session, 9th Oct, 1982)
C8 Reds Strike The Blues (Peel Session, 9th Oct, 1982)
C9 Kick Over The Statues! (Peel Session, 9th Oct ’82)
C10 The Peasant Army (Peel Session, 9th Oct ’82)
C11 Young And Proud (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
C12 Hold On! (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
C13 99 And A Half Won’t Do (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
C14 Take No Heroes! (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
C15 A Plateful Of Hateful (Kid Jensen Session, 16th Jan ’84)
C16 It Can Be Done! (Kid Jensen Session, 16th Jan ’84)
C17 Keep On Keepin’ On! (Kid Jensen Session, 16th Jan ’84)

D1 Lev Bronstein (CNT 7”, 1982)
D2 The Peasant Army (CNT 7”, 1982)
D3 Lean On Me (Original CNT 7” Single)
D4 Unionize (CNT 7”, 1983)
D5 Move / Let My Words Be Bullets (Live In Munich, 1986)
D6 Don’t Talk To Me About Whether (Live In Munster, 1986)
D7 Levi Stubbs Tears (Live In Munich, 1986)
D8 The Most Obvious Sensible Thing (Unissued Session, 1986)
D9 Lean On Me (Northern Mix, CNT 12”, 1983)
D10 Unionize (Break Mix, CNT 12”, 1983)
D11 Stickies (Demo, 1981) As ‘No Swastikas’
D12 Strike (Demo, 1981) As ‘No Swastikas’
D13 Unnamed (Demo, 1981) As ‘No Swastikas’
D14 Anglo-Irish Summit Tapes: Interview With Redskins, 1986
D15 I Can’t Stand The Boss (Live Bootleg, ICA, London, 1986) With Introduction From Martin Hewes
D16 Names Were Named (Live Bootleg, SWAPO Festival, Italy, 1986)

Repress of the 2021 reissue the 1986 debut album - and only studio album – by The Redskins, ‘Neither Washington Nor Moscow'.

The reissue comes complete with new sleeve notes by Redskins bassist Martin Hewes, and the CD boxset includes a 68-page booklet with liner notes from Hewes and Redskins drummer Paul Hookham (who replaced original drummer Nick King in 1985) and renowned contemporaries including Billy Bragg and Paul Morley. 

TRACK LISTING

LP Tracklist:
1.  The Power Is Yours
2.  Kick Over The Statues!
3.  Go Get Organized!
4.  It Can Be Done!
5.  Keep On Keepin’ On!
6.  (Burn It Up) Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing)
7. Hold On! 
8. Turnin’ Loose (This Furious Flames)
9. Take No Heroes!
10. The Crack
11. Let’s Make It Work!
12. Lean On Me! 
13. Lean On Me! (Reprise - ‘The Return Of The Modern Soul Classic’

CD Box Set Tracklist:

CD1
1.  The Power Is Yours
2.  Kick Over The Statues!
3.  Go Get Organized!
4.  It Can Be Done!
5.  Keep On Keepin’ On!
6.  (Burn It Up) Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing)
7.  Hold On! 
8.  Turnin’ Loose (This Furious Flames)
9.  Take No Heroes!
10.  The Crack
11.  Let’s Make It Work!
12.  Lean On Me! 
13.  Lean On Me! (Reprise - ‘The Return Of The Modern Soul Classic’
14.  16 Tons (Coal Not Dole) 
15.  Reds Strike The Blues (Take 4)
16.  99 And A Half Won’t Do (with Reprise)
17.  You Want It? They Got It!
18.  A Plateful Of Hateful
19.  Take Your Gods And Bury Them (‘Take No Heroes’ - Alternative Version)

CD2
1.  Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing)  - 12” Version
2.  Keep On Keepin’ On! (Die On Your Feet 12” Mix) Produced By Ted De Bono, Mixed By Redskins
3.  The Power Is  Yours (MGM Mix By Stephen Street)
4.  Keep On Keepin' On (Original March ’84 - 12” Mix)
5.  It Can Be Done! 7” Version (Additional Recording And Mix By Stephen Street Alternate Mix)
6.  You Want It? They Got It! (Alternate Jammin’ Magazine Mix)
7.  Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing) (7” More FX Mix)
8.  Keep On Keepin’ On! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
9.  Let’s Make It Work! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
10.  Bring It Down! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
11.  Kick Over The Statues! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’)
12.  Tracks Of My Tears (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) With Billy Bragg 
13.  Back In The USSR (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) With Billy Bragg & Jerry Dammers
14.  Skinhead Moonstomp (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) With Jerry Dammers
15.  Keep On Keepin’ On! (Live In ’85 From The ‘Kick Over Apartheid Tour’) - Speech Version With Bruce George, South African Activist

CD3
1.  The Power Is Yours (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd Apr, 1986)
2.  Kick Over The Statues! (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
3.  Hold On! (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
4.  The Crack (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
5.  99 And A Half Won’t Do (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
6.  Let’s Make It Work! (Live At The Town And Country Club, 22nd April, 1986)
7.  Unioinize / Pickin’ The Blues (Peel Session, 9th Oct, 1982)
8.  Reds Strike The Blues (Peel Session, 9th Oct, 1982)
9.  Kick Over The Statues! (Peel Session, 9th Oct ’82)
10.  The Peasant Army (Peel Session, 9th Oct ’82)
11.  Young And Proud (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
12.  Hold On! (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
13.  99 And A Half Won’t Do (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
14.  Take No Heroes! (Peel Session, 8th Aug ’83)
15.  A Plateful Of Hateful (Kid Jensen Session, 16th Jan ’84)
16.  It Can Be Done! (Kid Jensen Session, 16th Jan ’84)
17.  Keep On Keepin’ On! (Kid Jensen Session, 16th Jan ’84)

CD4
1.  Lev Bronstein (CNT 7”, 1982)
2.  The Peasant Army (CNT 7”, 1982)
3.  Lean On Me (Original CNT 7” Single)
4.  Unionize (CNT 7”, 1983)
5.  Move / Let My Words Be Bullets (Live In Munich, 1986)
6.  Don’t Talk To Me About Whether (Live In Munster, 1986)
7.  Levi Stubbs Tears (Live In Munich, 1986)
8.  The Most Obvious Sensible Thing (Unissued Session, 1986)
9.  Lean On Me (Northern Mix, CNT 12”, 1983)
10.  Unionize (Break Mix, CNT 12”, 1983)
11.  Stickies (Demo, 1981) As ‘No Swastikas’
12.  Strike (Demo, 1981) As ‘No Swastikas’
13.  Unnamed (Demo, 1981) As ‘No Swastikas’
14.  Anglo-Irish Summit Tapes: Interview With Redskins, 1986
15.  I Can’t Stand The Boss (Live Bootleg, ICA, London, 1986) With Introduction From Martin Hewes
16.  Names Were Named (Live Bootleg, SWAPO Festival, Italy, 1986)

In the mid ’80s, in the midst and direct aftermath of the era defining Miner’s Strike, the Redskins, as political activists, delivered their electrifying and radical Socialist Workers Party missives and broadsides through the ministry of their music - a unique post-punk rock/soul hybrid that gained their lead singer, Chris Dean, the sobriquet ‘Tamla Motormouth’.The Redskins were taking a stand for the working man and by standing up, they stood out - and never so forcefully as in the live arena! With their stellar musicianship and crack brass section honed through a never ending whorl of ‘fighting fund’ benefit gigs, they were the furious flames that kept the anti-Thatcher fires of dissent burning throughout those challenging years marked by her seeming unassailability.

These Furious Flames!’ is a 25 track documentation of the energy, commitment and drive of the Redskins as that campaigning live act. Issued in 2xCD capacity wallet, double vinyl and digital editions, each format couples together a recording of the full set of the finale concert of their 1985 ‘Kick Over Apartheid!’ tour - including guest appearances from Jerry Dammers and Billy Bragg - with the BBC broadcast tracks from their 1986 concert at the Town And Country Club.

The double CD edition comes with a 40 page booklet that compiles new and period quotes by band members Martin Hewes, Chris Dean, Paul Hookham and Kevin Robertson as well as thoughts by an array of associates and celebrity fans including poet Atilla The Stockbroker, Billy Bragg, Colin Revolting, their studio album producers Pat Foley & Chris Silagyi and DJ Gary Crowley. The booklet also contains gig reviews, photographs and a condensed digest of media quotes about the band.

The double vinyl LP format has printed inner bags replete with evocative archive photographs and a written introduction by Redskins founding member Martin Hewes, with whose co-operation and input this celebratory release has been curated."

TRACK LISTING

1. Lean On Me
2. Reds Strike The Blues!
3. Hold On!
4. Unionize!
5. Kick Over The Statues!
6. 99 And A Half (Won’t Do)
7. It Can Be Done!
8. Turnin’ Loose (These Furious Flames)
9. Plateful Of Hateful
10. Bring It Down!
11. Don’t Talk To Me About Whether
12. The Power Is Yours…

**Self-released by Reducer on their RUSS imprint in a continued spiritual association with Bokeh Versions**

REDUCER'S LAST AUTONOMOUS RELEASE • LTD ED 250 WHITE VINYL • RECORDED 1986 & 1987 • PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED, UNHEARD & UNREMASTERED • ORIGINAL 12" 45 REGGAE DISCOMIX • THESE ARE THE LAST ARCHIVE QUALITY RECORDINGS WE HAVE- BOTH WERE RECORDED AS "LIVE" AS POSSIBLE SO TO RETAIN THE POWER, ENERGY & SPONTANEITY WHICH IS THE ESSENCE OF REDUCER.

SLENG TING: This discomix version of Sleng Teng was recorded before Rich joined the band & thus has a Snake only vocal, and features a keyboard bass & vocal over dubs - which is the only time overdubs were ever used on a Reducer track.

SENSAROUND: Was recorded during a "break" in recording of other material & was written spontaneously & played just once, as it features only Rich on vocal, it makes a good balance to the Snake only track. It was never performed live.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Fierce, industrial dub-dancehall here that's more aligned to punk anarchy than ganja-huffing the peace pipe. Proper loving the sirens and sense of urgent claustrophobia on that "Sesaround" track.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Sleng Teng ('86 Discomix Version)
B1. Sensaround
B2. Sensarouns Dub

Exact replica reissue of the much sought-after £100+ garage band DIY/Punk 45 rarity from The Reducers. Sounds like a lo-fi version of other early DIY punk groups like TV Personalities, O-Levels and Desperate Bicycles.

Originally self-released in four different colour sleeve variants on Vibes Records in 1978 and now available to independent retailers on Soul Jazz Records in a very special one-off edition.

The Reducers were from Bury, Greater Manchester, in existence 1978-1980. They released two singles on the independent Vibes label, followed by one more single after briefly signing to EMI.

TRACK LISTING

Things Go Wrong
We Are Normal

Bristol hip hop duo release their debut 12” ahead of an album in July featuring a thumping electro remix by SURGEON (Dynamic Tension/ Tresor Records) and an extended remix by Ree-Vo themselves.

The lp ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release in July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.

T. Relly is pure Bristol hip hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 lp with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’. 

TRACK LISTING

A) Combat (Spaceland Remix)
B1) Combat (Surgeon Remix)
B2) Combat (Surgeon Instrumental)

In 2021 Bristol hip-hop duo Ree-Vo released two singles from their forthcoming album ‘All Welcome On Planet Ree-Vo’. The first was the electro-fused, LFO-surfing ‘Combat’ with a remix by techno legend Surgeon. The second was the dark, submersive ‘Groove With It’ remixed by New Jersey’s legendary Dälek and ‘Protein’ remixed by The Bug.

Ree-Vo begin 2022 in contrast with this their hookiest track on their album, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control. “Lift off, blast off, shirt off, pants off, bra off, Dance off! Naked in the dance hall SPACE BOX!” is the beamed mantra, rapper Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy. “We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.

Helping them on this seven’s mission are two remixes, one by NØISE (the musical collective of Joe Cassidy, Shepard Fairey, Merritt Lear and John Goff) and BATBIRDS (the duo of Joe Cassidy and Aaron Miller). Common to both of course is Joe Cassidy who recorded for Dell’Orso (as well as Rough Trade and Dedicated) as Butterfly Child. These mixes were made at the end of 2020, the record sent off to print in February 2021, five months before Joe’s incredibly sad departure from this planet, at least physically. So for all involved it’s a very bittersweet release, but another piece of art that Joe was undoubtedly thrilled to be involved with.

TRACK LISTING

A) Spacebox (NØISE Remix)
AA) Spacebox (Batbirds Remix)

Produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, also handling guitar duties on all songs, "Transformer" was Lou Reed's second solo album, but the first containing new songs (his debut consisted reworks of songs he wrote in his Velvet Underground days). "Transformer" is considered Lou Reed's signature album and includes his most known songs as "Satellite of Love", "Vicious"(inspired by Andy Warhol) and "Perfect Day". Rumours has it that, though not credited on the album, "Wagon Wheel" is actually written by David Bowie.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Vicious (2:55)
A2 Andy's Chest (3:17)
A3 Perfect Day (3:45)
A4 Hangin' 'Round (3:32)
A5 Walk On The Wild Side (4:13)

B1 Make Up (2:56)
B2 Wagon Wheel (3:19)
B3 Satellite Of Love (3:39)
B4 New York Telephone Conversation (1:32)
B5 I'm So Free (3:08)
B6 Goodnight Ladies (4:20)

Celestial Echo is here with one of the all time holy grail soul double siders. When we tell you a record will never leave your bag after buying it, this is exactly the record it applies to.

Originally released in 1970 and written, produced and arranged by the great Van McCoy, Washington D.C.’s Bobby Reed stepped up and delivered “The Time Is Right For Love” an incredible loved up stepper, and then “If I Don’t Love You”, a perfect compliment, another… loved up stepper.

This one isn’t a fresh find, or a new discovery - Just an essential, officially licensed reissue of an incredible slice of soul.

Pressed and distributed by Prime Direct Distribution—. Don’t miss!

TRACK LISTING

A1. The Time Is Right For Love
B1. If I Don’t Love You

Eli Paperboy Reed's Hits And Misses is a remastered collection of rarities, originals, & covers, featuring Eli's spin on Motorhead's "The Ace of Spades"

Eli takes Motorhead's hard rock classic and reimagines it as a soul revival with Hammond organ, brass horns, electric guitar, Eli's signature vocal wails and a backbeat that creates a new take on the song that is no less powerful than the original.

Hits And Misses also includes Eli's noirish R&B take on Steely Dan's 1972 hit "Do It Again" that brings the original song back in time 30 years and a cover of Latimore's 1974 hit "Let's Straighten It Out," showcasing a vocal intensity that's not quite as present in the nearly spoken word original.

In addition to covers, Eli Paperboy Reed's original, IDKWYCTD (I Came to Play) is an anthemic party starter. This high- energy track is featured in Disney's Marvel comic series, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. The album also includes covers of Bob Dylan's, "To Be Alone With You," Merle Haggard's "I'm Gonna Break Every Heart I Can," and more.

TRACK LISTING

Ace Of Spades
Do It Again
To Be Alone With You
Anytime You Want Me
IDKWYCTD (I Came To Play)
Let’s Straighten It Out
Bad Girl
I Don’t Know (What The World Is Coming To)
I’m Gonna Break Every Heart I Can
That’s Love
Steal Away