THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 14th.

Latvia's Ugis Jansons comes highly recommended by Manchester's own Michael Holland, and sees Jansons working through a number of beautiful poppy piano pieces and shimmering loungey jazz numbers. Sitting somewhere between the off-kilter pop of Efterklang, the twinkling piano of Frahm and Jens Lenkman's cleverly produced sunshine pop. There's elements peeping through of dancefloor electronics and post-dubstep, before breaking into super-smooth glitched hip-hop, but all of the seemingly disparate elements are pulled together into a refined and beautifully polished whole. It's constantly surprising, thoroughly entrancing and most importantly, a great listen. 

TRACK LISTING

1. KLAVRĪT 02:55
2. PLKST 1 13 5 04:01
3. JĀ 03:38
4. MIERĪGA 03:06
5. STARPSPĒLE 00:59
6. RĪT 03:56
7. UPE 04:13
8. WAVESTATE 03:41
9. KNTRLE 04:44
10. NAKTHTTPS 04:24
11. ELĒPSPRATS 01:13

The musicians: Ulrich Schnauss, born in Kiel in 1977, now residing in London, three solo albums released to date, Engineers keyboard player and an in-demand remixer (Mojave 3, Depeche Mode, Lunz/Roedelius, to name just a few). Mark Peters, born in Liverpool in 1975, bass player, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter in the British band Engineers, also three album releases to their name thus far.

The music: synthesizer, piano, guitar and drum computer, a reduced, yet bacchanal instrumental combination of ambient, electronica and shoegaze sounds. Transporting the sound of shoegazer aesthetics into an electronic context, this is how Ulrich Schnauss once described his artistic goal. Influenced by bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins and Chapterhouse on the one hand, yet wholly at ease with the electronica of bands like The Orb, Bionaut, Orbital, 808 State and unequivocally appreciative of veterans of the genre, Tangerine Dream or Manuel Gottsching for example. A brother in spirit of Robin Guthrie one might say, an apposite epithet for Schnauss. His collaborative partner Mark Peters might also be considered his soul brother. Through his band, Engineers, he has similarly found success in following the footsteps of his musical paragons. Engineers have released wonderful albums of dream pop, infused with the same spirit as the solo efforts of Schnauss.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Messiah Is Falling
2. Long Distance Call
3. Forgotten
4. Yesterday Didn't Exist
5. Rosen Im Asphalt
6. The Child Or The Pigeon
7. Ekaterina
8. Amoxicilin
9. Gift Horse's Mouth
10. Underrated Silence

Electronic duo Ulrich Schnauss (A Long Way to Fall, A Strangely Isolated Place) and Mark Peters (of the band Engineers) return with a second collaborative album titled Tomorrow is Another Day, released by Bureau B. This second project offers a sublime exploration into their signature expressionistic landscapes while exploring the potential of a collaborative model in which Schnauss's keyboards and Peters's guitar work together in juxtaposition.

Ulrich Schnauss, born in the industrial port town of Kiel in northern Germany in 1977, emerged in Berlin's drum 'n bass scene in the mid-1990s. Mark Peters was born in Liverpool in 1975 and embraced a deeply euphonic pop aesthetic that incorporated intricate formal structures. The two musicians met years ago when both were making shoegaze music and formed a close friendship. Schnauss joined Peters's band Engineers as a keyboardist in 2010. After the collapse of the second-wave shoegaze movement in the early 2000s, both musicians drifted away from the genre's dreamy, shimmering aesthetic and returned solidly to their own musical roots. Peters has subsequently explored classic, guitar-based music and Schnauss has returned to his origins as an electronica producer.

Tomorrow is Another Day represents a maturing of the pair's creative process. Following their first collaborative album titled Underrated Silence (2012), which seamlessly blends the two instrumental voices into an integrated sonic landscape that delivers surprisingly intense emotion beneath the surface of its delicate composition, Schnauss and Peters subsequently began to craft a musical exchange in which each musician's contribution was emphasized in contrast to the other's voice. The differences in Schnauss' and Peters's musical backgrounds are highlighted and embraced as their two voices emerge in dialogue. Here, the synths are drier, the guitars more discreet. The shifting tonality of the music's richly layered patterning defines its composition with punctuated gestures as melodic lines emerge in sharper relief. With neither musical style overpowering the other, the effect is that of two equally masterful voices in coherent conversation, celebrating the dynamic nature of instrumental combination and exploring a new method of creative approach - one that allows for concurrence and dissent, in turn.

TRACK LISTING

1. Slow Southern Skies
2. Tomorrow Is Another Day
3. Das Volk Hat Keine Seele
4. Inconvenient Truths
5. One Finger And Someone Else's Chords
6. Additional Ghosts
7. Walking With My Eyes Closed
8. Rosmarine
9. Bound By Lies
10. There's Always Tomorrow

Electronic duo Ulrich Schnauss (A Long Way to Fall, A Strangely Isolated Place) and Mark Peters (of the band Engineers) return with a second collaborative album titled Tomorrow is Another Day, released by Bureau B. This second project offers a sublime exploration into their signature expressionistic landscapes while exploring the potential of a collaborative model in which Schnauss's keyboards and Peters's guitar work together in juxtaposition.

Ulrich Schnauss, born in the industrial port town of Kiel in northern Germany in 1977, emerged in Berlin's drum 'n bass scene in the mid-1990s. Mark Peters was born in Liverpool in 1975 and embraced a deeply euphonic pop aesthetic that incorporated intricate formal structures. The two musicians met years ago when both were making shoegaze music and formed a close friendship. Schnauss joined Peters's band Engineers as a keyboardist in 2010. After the collapse of the second-wave shoegaze movement in the early 2000s, both musicians drifted away from the genre's dreamy, shimmering aesthetic and returned solidly to their own musical roots. Peters has subsequently explored classic, guitar-based music and Schnauss has returned to his origins as an electronica producer.

Tomorrow is Another Day represents a maturing of the pair's creative process. Following their first collaborative album titled Underrated Silence (2012), which seamlessly blends the two instrumental voices into an integrated sonic landscape that delivers surprisingly intense emotion beneath the surface of its delicate composition, Schnauss and Peters subsequently began to craft a musical exchange in which each musician's contribution was emphasized in contrast to the other's voice. The differences in Schnauss' and Peters's musical backgrounds are highlighted and embraced as their two voices emerge in dialogue. Here, the synths are drier, the guitars more discreet. The shifting tonality of the music's richly layered patterning defines its composition with punctuated gestures as melodic lines emerge in sharper relief. With neither musical style overpowering the other, the effect is that of two equally masterful voices in coherent conversation, celebrating the dynamic nature of instrumental combination and exploring a new method of creative approach - one that allows for concurrence and dissent, in turn.

TRACK LISTING

1. Slow Southern Skies
2. Tomorrow Is Another Day
3. Das Volk Hat Keine Seele
4. Inconvenient Truths
5. One Finger And Someone Else's Chords
6. Additional Ghosts
7. Walking With My Eyes Closed
8. Rosmarine
9. Bound By Lies
10. There's Always Tomorrow

London-based producer Ulrich Schnauss and Danish guitarist and producer Jonas Munk have both unfolded their unique visions of electronic music over the past two decades, and they have been collaborating since the mid-2000s. "Eight Fragments Of An Illusion" is their first album in over four years, their third overall. The latest effort is ambient and introspective in nature, but with a kinetic, polyrhythmic energy pushing it forward. There's a floating quality to Ulrich's synthesizer washes and Munk's guitar patterns, yet the eight tracks are anchored by pulse and compositional direction.

The duo brings their individual strengths to the table, yet the music transcends any of their previous work conceptually. There are echoes of blissed-out new age music and kosmische from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as traces of shoegaze-era abstraction and leftfield electronica. But ultimately there's no off-the-rack category that fits it. It exists in its own rarefied space. Pieced together from sessions spanning the course of three years, mostly in Ulrich's London studio – a workspace packed with rare synthesizers and vintage outboard gear – "Eight Fragments Of An Illusion" is a luxurious listen. Compared to the duos previous two releases there's more of a focus on texture and slowly evolving patterns, which naturally reflects the fact that Ulrich has spent a large portion of the last seven years as a full-time member of legendary synth group Tangerine Dream. Sonically, the tracks have a certain silky and shimmering characteristic, with Ulrich's mallet-like arpeggios and glittering analog synthesizer pads merging with Munk's melodic guitar lines as the most natural thing in the world. Throughout, the guitar is used both in a rather traditional manner, but often also as a vehicle for sonic exploration, processed into cloudy layers using outboard effects and software. This might be their most minimalist outing to date, but it still radiates that uplifting widescreen magic that both artists are known for. "Eight Fragments Of An Illusion" is their most focused collaborative musical statement to date, and arguably the most rewarding.

TRACK LISTING

1. Asteroid 2467
2. Return To Burlington
3. Solitary Falling
4. Perpetual Motion
5. Narkomfin
6. Faint Lights In The Distance
7. Along Deserted Streets
8. Polychrome

The new album by electronica producer Ulrich Schnauss and the Engineers guitarist Mark Peters 'Destiny Waiving' lands in store on Hamburg's Bureau B.

Hailing from Kiel in North Germany, it's now 20 years since the electronica prodigy Ulrich Schnauss released his debut album. His second, 'A Strangely Isolated Place' cemented his reputation as both a pioneer and an artist who routinely creates inspirational music that is adored by many. As a full time member of Tangerine Dream since 2014, his lifelong passion for their work inspired a creative resurgence for the band, resulting in their most successful new album for over 30 years, 2017's 'Quantum Gate'.

Liverpool born guitarist (and founder of the dream pop outfit Engineers) Mark Peters shared a similar musical path, exploring ambient textures and effect laden songwriting via a series of blissful albums for the band. In 2017 he released his first solo album, 'Innerland' which was enthusiastically received by BBC6 music and later included in Rough Trade's top ten best albums of 2018.

'Destiny Waiving' completes a collaborative trilogy that began with 2011's 'Underrated Silence' and followed by 2013's 'Tomorrow Is Another Day' (Schnauss also became a full time member of Engi-neers at this time). Initial sessions began at Ulrich's East London home studio in early 2017 and final mixes where completed there in late 2020. Despite it's extended conception, most tracks where com-pleted during 2017, in part informed by improvisational sets in London, Dublin and St James' Church in Birmingham (as part of the Seventh Wave electronica festival).

Despite these exercises in exploration, 'Destiny Waiving' is perhaps the most focused and concise collection of all three releases. Ranging in tone from precognitive foreboding to soaring optimism, the album delicately hones a particular atmosphere that is unmistakable in their work. While track titles such as 'The Supposed Middle Class' acutely display a concern for society at large, compositions and performances reveal a great deal more light and shade. This inherent balance is a key facet of the duo's chemistry, signposted by the titles of 'Chiaroscuro' and 'Clair-Obscur' and the shifting moods within the tracks. For every rushing, upward sweep (Hindsight is 20/20, 'Circular Time'), contemplative countering is evident in tracks such as 'Words Can Be Dismissed' and 'So Far', 'The Moment'.

As we're all tired of hearing now, the global situation in 2021 is less than ideal, but if it's any consolation, Ulrich and Mark have fulfilled their destiny by creating a work that's both undeniably potent and endlessly immersive.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. The Supposed Middle Class
2. Hindsight Is 20/20
3. Circular Time
4. Chiaroscuro
Side B
1.Words Can Be Dismissed
2.Speak In Capitals
3.Clair-Obscur
4.So Far, The Moment

Bonus Dinked EP
Side A:
1.Hindsight Is 20/20 (Count Two Four Version)
2.Circular Time (Measure By Measure Version)
Side B:
1.Words Can Be Dismissed (Talking Snare Version)
2.Speak In Capitals (Uppercase Drumming Version)

Ulrich Schnauss, the highly respected German electronic music composer, has taken the opportunity to remaster his entire back catalogue having recently had all his recording rights returned to him. Reissued on his own Scripted Realities label. The fourth of five albums, ‘A Long Way To Fall - Rebound’ was originally released in 2013 and has been rerecorded and reworked as well as being remastered. It now sounds the way Ulrich had intended, hence the new additional ‘Rebound’ title.

For fans of Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins, Tycho

TRACK LISTING

Her And The Sea
Broken Homes
Like A Ghost In Your Own Life
A Long Way To Fall
I Take Comfort In Your Ignorance
A Forgotten Birthday
The Weight Of Darkening Skies
Borrowed Time
Ten Years A Ritual In Time And Death

Ulrich Schnauss, the highly respected German electronic music composer, has taken the opportunity to remaster his entire back catalogue, having recently had all his recording rights returned to him.

The second of five albums, ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’ was originally released in 2003. It is generally regarded as a landmark electronic music statement.

TRACK LISTING

Gone Forever
On My Own
A Letter From Home
Monday – Paracetamol
Clear Day
Blumenthal
In All The Wrong Places
A Strangely Isolated Place

Ulrich Schnauss, the highly respected German electronic music composer, has taken the opportunity to remaster his entire back catalogue having recently had all his recording rights returned to him. Reissued on his own Scripted Realities label. The first of five albums, ‘Far Away Trains Passing By’ was originally released in 2001 and was the album that introduced Ulrich to the world. It is generally regarded as a landmark electronic music statement and now comes with 9 bonus tracks.

For fans of Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins, Tycho.

TRACK LISTING

Knuddelmaus
Between Us And Them
Passing By
Blumenwiese Neben Autobahn
Nobody’s Home
Molfsee
Brooks Was Here
Sunday Evening In Your Street
Suddenly The Trees Are Giving Way
A Lie For Breakfast
Nothing Happens In June
As If You’ve Never Been Away
A Million Miles Away
Crazy For You
Wherever You Are

Ulrich Schnauss, the highly respected German electronic music composer, has taken the opportunity to remaster his entire back catalogue, having recently had all his recording rights returned to him.

The last of the five albums, ‘No Further Ahead Than Tomorrow’ was originally released in 2016 and has been rerecorded and reworked as well as being remastered. It now sounds the way Ulrich had intended, hence the change of title from ‘Today’ to ‘Tomorrow’.

TRACK LISTING

Melts Into Air
Love Grows Out Of Thin Air
The Magic In You
Thoughtless Motion
No Further Ahead Than
Today
Wait For Me
New Day Starts At Dawn
Water Under The Bridge
Negative Sunrise
Illusory Sun

Though Ural Thomas is universally recognized as one of the most exciting singers remaining from the original soul era, and an active musical institution for over sixty years, his band, all decades younger, are treated as equals. The Pain are no backing band - but rather a well-oiled tightly knit musical aggregation that have spent the last eight years with Thomas developing a unique sound of their own. 

The relationship extends beyond the stage and the studio and the practice room. On a given night you may witness the octogenarian soul journeyman turning up at the club with a crew one-third his age at midnight. If you don't recognize him, he's the sharp-dressed man with the charismatic grin out on the floor cutting a rug long after the young folks went home. This love of life and crossgenerational relationship is the essence of Ural Thomas & The Pain. 

Despite the usual COVID-19 obstacles, Ural Thomas and The Pain finally completed their much-anticipated third album, ‘Dancing Dimensions’. While exploring everything from sweet Chicago soul to airy West Coast psychedelia to Sly funk, their latest collection retains the distinctive sound the band organically developed over years of relentless work.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dancing Dimensions
2. Heaven
3. Do You Remember The
4. Times We Had?
5. First Dimension
6. Apple Pie (Oh Me Oh My)
7. Ol Safiya
8. El Eey Em Eh
9. Gimme Some Ice Cream
10. Second Dimension
11. My Favourite Song
12. Third Dimension
13. Hung Up On My Dream
14. Promises
15. If It Wasn't For Love

Originally made back in 2002, this tune has never had a well deserved single release, so here it is remastered and backed with a version previously unreleased on vinyl! U Brown tells a story of his involvement in the soundsystem scene since the late 60’s, so come take a ride on this heavy musical excursion...

Produced by Jah Warrior, mixed by Dougie Wardrop at Conscious Sounds Studio, mastered by Sam John at Precise Mastering.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Biiiiig modern digi cut with plenty of rub-a-dub flavour and a sounds shaking sensibility few will be able to resist.

TRACK LISTING

U Brown - Rougher Than The Rest
Jah Warrior - Rougher Dub

U-BEND return with two certified benders that won't disappoint those trapped in this permanent bent affair.

Possessing many of the bendy qualities prized by balearic connoisseurs, the duo serve up ‘Better Place’. This timely, optimistic workout swells with the kind of uplifting energy that only the brothers bend can deliver.

‘Couples Therapy’ is a cosmic reimagining of an old bent favourite that picks up where 50Peter20 left off. Swollen chugs and sordid womps take listeners on a backseat drive through familiar territory.

U-BEND’s infinite lack of wisdom ensures that these are once again kitchen-and-living-room verified as go-to options for the last track of the night, or the first track of the morning. A dyed-in-the wool MO which proves once a legend is established, the truth can never catch up.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: The infamous and now buy-on-sight refixers return with, arguably, the best sonic soldering yet. With John Martyn and Eurogliders undergoing some clean plumbing that'll have your sink fixed in no time!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Better Place
AA1. Couples Therapy

“The U-Men are one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. They were hypnotic, frenetic, powerful and compelling. It was impossible to resist getting sucked into their weird, darkly absurd world. They effortlessly blended The Sonics, Link Wray, Pere Ubu, and Captain Beefheart. Their shows were loose-limbed, drunken dance parties and no two shows were alike. The U-Men were avant-garage explorers and, most importantly, they fucking rocked. I was lucky enough to live in their hometown and I saw them every chance I could.

“From 1983 to 1987, the U-Men were the undisputed kings of the Seattle Underground. No one else came close. They ruled a bleak backwater landscape populated by maybe 200 people. They were the only band that could unify the disparate sub-subcultures and get all 200 of those people to fill a room. Anglophilic, dress-dark Goths; neo-psych MDA acolytes; skate punks who shit in bathtubs at parties; Mod vigilantes who tormented the homeless with pellet guns; college kids who thought college kids were lame; Industrial Artistes; some random guy with a moustache; and eccentrics who insisted that they couldn’t be pigeonholed: all coalesced around the U-Men.

“Sub Pop co-founder, Bruce Pavitt released the first record by the U-Men, a 4-song 12” EP on Bombshelter Records. By the time they had recorded songs for another record, Bruce was too broke to release it on his proto-Sub Pop label, so he hooked them up with Gerard Cosloy at Homestead Records. This was a big deal. Homestead had a heavy rep at the time with recent releases by Foetus, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, and Big Black. I was sure that the release of their second 12”, Stop Spinning, would propel the U-Men into the ranks of those Homestead acts and the worldwide underground would get hip to Seattle’s finest. Following the departure of bassist Jim Tillman (replaced by Tom Hazelmyer of Amphetamine Reptile Records, and then Tony Ransome), the band recorded two fantastic singles, and recorded their one full-length album, ‘Step On A Bug’, for Black Label, which was run out of Fallout Records. They became increasingly disenchanted with the direction the Seattle underground was heading and called it quits in 1989.

“The U-Men had nothing to do with Grunge. They were their own unique thing. I loved them and I still miss them. I remember thinking at the time that most of their recordings were a little soft and didn’t capture the power of the band live. Now, thirty years later, their records sound great to me and we are lucky that they exist. I’m stoked that Sub Pop complied these long out-of-print records and scrounged up some unreleased songs so that everyone has a chance to take a trip back to old weird Seattle.” - Mark Arm, Seattle, August 2017

TRACK LISTING

Blight
Flowers DGIH
Shoot 'em Down
Gila
Trouble Under Water
Mystery Pain
Last Lunch
Clubs
The Fumes
Cow Rock
Green Trumpet
A Year And A Day
Ten After One
They!
U-Men Stomp
Solid Action
Dig It A Hole
Whistlin' Pete
2 X 4
A Three Year Old Could Do That
Juice Party
Flea Circus
Too Good To Be Food
Willie Dong Hurts Dogs
Papa Doesn't Love His Children Anymore
Pay The Bubba
Freezebomb
That's Wild About Jack
Bad Little Woman
Selfish

In Spring 2021, Mike Paradinas (µ-Ziq and the owner of Planet Mu) spoke to long time friend and past label signing Hannah Davidson (Mrs Jynx) about the therapeutic power of writing music when times are tough. Both had recently been dealing with the loss of a parent due to cancer, and fresh from writing Scurlage, Paradinas suggested a collaboration. “I’ve always thought Hannah’s melodic sensibilities chime well with my own," says Paradinas, "and I've wanted to collaborate with her for a long time, since [her 2010 album] 'Shark Carousel' in fact, because she'd written some melodies that I wish I had.” In a matter of weeks the two collaborated online, sending stems back and forth, each encouraging the other and fitting perfectly together. “After about ten days we had ten tracks we were happy with." adds Davidson, "It was exciting to hear what Mike would do with the stems I sent, and equally exciting to see what he thought of my additions to his stems.”

Overall the result is an opus of deeply personal moments of grief, depicted in a feeling of serene, misty tranquility that makes it easy to get lost in. Davidson and Paradinas settled on the title 'Secret Garden' due to the melodic vista which unexpectedly opened up before them on the final track. The album truly is a melodic exploration that is so often missed in this genre. There are twists and turns in mood, from the pastoral loveliness of 'Jynxiq' and 'Unheard Melodies' which fall away to the dubby beats of 'Hi Jynx'; the sadness of 'Loss' leading into the beatless forlorn 'The Ballad of Darth Vader. The album ups the pace with the muffled kicks and warm atmosphere of 'Afternoon Sunshine', which sets the tone for the happier mood of the second half. This all leads up to the album's denoeument in final track 'Secret Garden' whose naïve meandering synth melodies, orchestral accompaniment and glockenspiel end the album in happy resolution.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Jynxiq
2. Unheard Melodies
3. Hi Jynx
4. Loss
Side B:
1. The Ballad Of Darth Vader
2. Afternoon Sunshine
3. Cocker Boo
4. Philip Steak
5. Hulo
6. The Secret Garden

"Duntisbourne Abbots..." is U-Ziq's first new album for four years and first new material released since 2005. It's a more reflective body of work compared to the whirlwind of chaos that was "Bilious Paths"; introspective and rather melancholic, U-Ziq revisits his roots in the early 90s ambient techno scene pioneered by, among others, The Black Dog, Aphex Twin and himself. Amongst these 17 tracks of off-key melodies, nauseous harmonies and woozy beats can be found gems such as the beautiful "Strawberry Fields Hotel" in which a lone bassline strikes out a refrain of unexpected simplicity while bees swarm overhead around a fig tree. And "Drum Light" where a five-part melody gives way to a startling noise assault. "Acid Steak Night", a collaboration with label-mate The Doubtful Guest, is a more straightforward techno number with 303 basslines warring it out with spooky melodic synth lines. A melodic tour de force.

Mike Paradinas, veteran producer and Planet Mu label owner has written a new album called ‘Grush' and it's full of weird bangers that reclaim the 'dance' part of the woeful term IDM. A back-to-first-principles record, inspired in part by the group of artists IDM was coined for; melodic dance music that didn't come out of urban scenes, but interpreted them from a distance. The tracks on ‘Grush’ are all road-tested live favorites developed with feedback from Mike's touring partner and visuals guy Mora (Jan Moravec). It's a detailed and energetic journey which replicates the flow of a live gig. A lot of the tracks have been made in hotel rooms in response to shows, ‘Imperial Crescent’ is named after a Japanese Hotel, as is ‘Belvedere’ in Prague, while some tracks such as ‘Hyper Daddy’ were created specifically to play live. Drums are confidently at the fore here and the album feels like it traces Mike's musical history and interests neatly around his sweetly nostalgic melodies, with atmospheres and structures which twist and turn with a charming softness which contrasts with the tension in the drums. Take ‘Hyper Daddy’s’ spiralling notes and twinkling piano which remind one of early Black Dog or Omni Trio rushing alongside splashy jungle drums, or the aquatic acid footwork of the title track with its drums softly bubbling and kicking. Elsewhere there's territory which harks back to his Tusken Raiders pseudonym, like the heads down Drexciyan funk of ‘Windsor Safari Park,’ which transforms from moody electro into a sunny hardcore track midway.

The album is interspersed with Reticulum A, B and C at the start middle and end of the album which suggest a theme which carries across the music in an effortless and joyful way. ‘Grush’ is a strong album that works both for listening and DJing and a great snapshot of where Mike Paradinas musical head is at in 2024.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reticulum A
2. Hyper Daddy
3. Fogou
4. Magic Pony Ride (Pt.4)
5. Imperial Crescent
6. Reticulum B
7. Grush
8. Belvedere
9. Raver
10. Windsor Safari Park
11. Hastings
12. Manscape
13. Metaphonk
14. Reticulum C

Planet Mu owner Mike Paradinas (a.k.a. µ-Ziq) wraps up 2022 with his 3rd release of new material this year. ‘Hello’ is the mirror image of the ‘Goodbye EP’. The intensity is heightened, the breaks more manic and melodies inhabit every corner. The material is the final chapter of the ‘Magic Pony Ride’ material and even includes another version of that track. 'Iggy’s Song’ has a slowed down sample of Mike’s son screaming, ‘Ávila’ is an ode to his father’s hometown in Spain and ‘Green Chaos’ even includes a nod to RP Boo. On Side B things get more interesting. ‘Pyramidal Mind Dispersion’ slows things down while amping up the tension, Modulating Angel is at drum & bass tempo but with a choir of angels from hell in the background, while the final two tracks recall the experimentation and melodies of Lunatic Harness.

TRACK LISTING

LP:
A:
1. Hello
2. Iggy's Song
3. Magic Pony Ride (Pt.3)
4. Green Chaos
5. Ávila
B:
1. Pyramidal Mind Dispersion
2. Modulating Angel
3. Pentagonal Antiprism
4. Metabidiminished Icosahedron

CD:
01. Hello
02. Iggy's Song
03. Magic Pony Ride (Pt.3)
04. Green Chaos
05. Ávila
06. Pyramidal Mind Dispersion
07. Modulating Angel 08 Pentagonal Antiprism
09. Metabidiminished Icosahedron
10. Goodbye VIP
11. Giddy All Over
12. Moise
13. Rave Whistle
14. Rave Whistle (Darkside Mix)
15. Rave Whistle (Jungle Tekno Mix)

Bless This Mess is the highly anticipated eighth album by U.S. Girls, the nom de plume of North American multi-disciplinary and experimental pop artist Meg Remy. A dynamic suite of dexterous melodies and a nuanced artistic response to the complexities of motherhood, Bless This Mess was crafted in tandem with the conception and birth of Remy’s twin boys. It expands the sonic and thematic palette of U.S. Girls, fusing the muses of funk, mythology, and the radical disorientation of joy into an electric tapestry of anthems, aches, and awakenings.

As Remy’s body changed so did her voice; her diaphragm lost breathing room, adjusting to the growing lives inside. Many takes on Bless This Mess were tracked with the babies in utero, or in her arms. (She even samples her breast pump on the album’s poetic closing cut, “Pump”). The resulting performances are suffused by the physicality of this journey: more blood, more feelings, the interwoven wonders, and wounds of procreation.

The ten songs on Bless This Mess were pieced together stem by stem with a vast cast of collaborators (Alex Frankel of Holy Ghost!, Marker Starling, Ryland Blackinton of Cobra Starship, Basia Bulat, Roger Manning Jr. of Jellyfish and Beck,) and audio engineers (Neal H Pogue, Ken Sluiter, Steve Chahley, Maximilian Turnbull). Long-time collaborator, husband, and co-parent Turnbull played a key role facilitating these fluid muses. The production throughout is exquisite, warm, and wood-panelled, framing the voice, keys, bass, and rhythms in heightened textural harmony.

TRACK LISTING

Only Daedalus
Just Space For Light
Screen Face
Futures Bet
So Typically Now
Bless This Mess
Tux (Your Body Fills Me, Boo)
R.I.P. Roy G. Biv
St. James Way
Pump

U.S. Maple's first album, before they fell all apart on 'Sang Phat Editor'. This is the album that "rocks". Disjointed machinations, poppy locksteps and jarring sideways excursions all leading down a path to nowhere's-ville. Engineered by Jim O'Rourke with a cold. Pressed on Muleta Maroon Colored Vinyl LP includes a vinyl-only bonus track plus a two-sided footlong OBI and lyric sheet.

In high school, the members of U.S. Maple never said a word to anyone. And although this had disastrous results (stolen shoes, constant de-pantsing, gum in the hair, etc...), a fire was burning inside each one of them. A beginning was struck in Chicago, early in 1995. The four met near the corner of Grand and Western Avenues to devise a working method for reorganizing rock and roll, keeping what was felt to be it’s most important core elements. The mumblings are slick. The melodies are souped-up and soured. The drums are spastic bursts of laughter, rocket fuel and confetti. It is fronted by a singer who reminds one or the other of Kevin Costner's stoner bro. A 7” single and a version of AC/DC’s 'Sin City' are the first to be recorded. U.S. Maple’s debut full-length, 'Long Hair In Three Stages' was recorded late in 1995 with Jim O'Rourke at Solid Sound Studios in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. This was Jim's first legitimate recording session with a rock and roll band. The album receives critical acclaim. Soon thereafter, U.S. Maple find themselves flying coach to Deutschland for a European tour. The extensive six-week tour spans 12 countries and includes a Peel Session for the BBC's John Peel Show. More history is made. 'Long Hair In Three Stages' goes on to be ranked #85 on the Alternative Press “90 Greatest Albums of the '90s” list. We all know better.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hey King
2. Letter To ZZ Top
3. Home-Made Stuff
4. Magic Job
5. The State Is Bad
6. Aplomado
7. You Know What... Will Get You You Know Where
8. When A Man Says Ow
9. Northwad
10. Lady To Bing
11. Found A Place To Have My Kittens

‘U.S. Velvet’ is the debut release from the LAbased duo of the same name, made up of Zahara Jaime and Collin Davis. Their debut single is a raw, post-punk mission statement about the anxieties of living in the 21st Century.  The 12” single includes an instrumental version (exclusive to the 12”) and a dub version by ATOsigned artist, Pachyman. 

Collin is currently an engineer and producer at Stones Throw Studios in Los Angeles and Zahara is a touring musician with The Simps and Eyedress. Zahara and Collin both create solo music as Zzzahara and Ynes Mon respectively. The duo will release a video to accompany their ‘U.S. Velvet’ single, which features a cameo from Stones Throw’s founder Peanut Butter Wolf’s alter ego, Folerio. 

Dub version of the single by Pachyman, who just released his new album ‘The Return of…’ with ATO Records and opened two shows for Khruangbin.

TRACK LISTING

1. U.S. Velvet
2. U.S. Velvet (Pachyman Dub)
3. U.S. Velvet (Instrumental)

U.V. are an electronic duo comprising singer Zandra Klievens and writer / producer Jonjo Feather. They formed in late 2012 and are based in Manchester, U.K. They spent their formative months writing and performing in Berlin and returned to the UK in June 2013. Zandra is the former lead vocalist with NME favourites The ABC Club and Jonjo has previously released two critically acclaimed solo albums under his own name. U.V. released their first single 'Wish' in June 2013. Their new single 'Receiver' is out now on limited edition audio cassette and download.

Second release on the reissue series MTMB (Music Take Me Back) features two amazing dance floor tracks by U.X.B., the six-piece disco band founded by lead singer Keith Pole in the early 80’s. Both “Sting Me” and “Your Starring” were dedicated to Keith’s first love who he eventually married. After being featured on a Disconet Program Service compilation in 1982, Sting Me was later picked up by Belgian label Rainbow to receive a single release including an extended vocal and dub version. A 7″ single was pressed too that included the otherwise unreleased “Your Starring”.

Incl insert which states:

''The bees are in trouble!

By purchasing this record you have donated 1 euro to Buglife, a nonprofit organisation that helps them thrive and survive''

TRACK LISTING

A1. Sting Me (vocal Version)
B1. Your Starring
B2. Sting Me (dub Version)

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8AM ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 30TH).

How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb is a collection of 10 songs taken from the original recording sessions for How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, U2’s 2004 critically acclaimed, eight-time Grammy-winning album. Recently discovered in the band’s archive and now released for the first time as a standalone record, this shadow album features new, previously unreleased songs, including “Luckiest Man In The World,” “Happiness” and “Country Mile,” as well as newly remastered songs, including “Picture Of You (X + W),” all collected together for the first time to mark the 20th anniversary of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Available on black and red marble color vinyl exclusively for Record Store Day.

Brand new album from Bono and the boys, back to playing straight forward rock songs.

Atomic City’, the brand new track from U2, is produced by Jacknife Lee and Steve Lillywhite and comes ahead of the band’s upcoming run of dates at Sphere in Las Vegas. This Limited Edition Photoluminescent Transparent 7’’ Vinyl, includes the original song, alongside an etching on the B-Side.

TRACK LISTING

Side A: Atomic City
Side B: Etched

AVAILABLE ONLINE ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 27TH FROM 8AM.

LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the U2 single ‘Gloria’, originally released as a single in October 1981, the second single to be taken from U2’s second studio album October. It remains a staple in U2’s live set ever since.This 40th anniversary limited edition EP includes the studio version of ‘Gloria’ plus three live versions from three different decades.The 1990s are represented by the Point Depot show on the band’s home turf of northside Dublin (track A2). Although ticketed as 31st December 1989, the show started at midnight on 1st January 1990 and was broadcast across Europe at the time.Side B contains two previously unreleased live recordings of ‘Gloria’ – recorded at the Fleet Center in Boston during the Vertigo tour in 2005, and at London’s O2 Arena during the third night of their run of shows in the English capital as part of the iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour in 2015.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Gloria (Studio Version)
2. Gloria (Live From The LoveTown Tour, The Point Depot, Dublin, 31st December 1989) – Currently Unavailable
Side B
1. Gloria (Live From The Vertigo Tour, Boston, 26th May 2005) – Previously Unreleased
2. Gloria (Live From The INNOCENCE + EXPERIENCE Tour, London, 29th October 2015) – Previously Unreleased

Including ‘One’, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, & ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: I'm famously a massive fan of U2, and this epic collection sees them reworking (upcycling?) tons of their older tracks, but stripped back to a reasonably unadorned core instrumental skeleton. Once again, a clear sign of a band still in control of their craft.

This EP features five tracks from one of U2’s two legendary open-air performances at the RDS Arena, Dublin in August 1993, the hometown stop on their worldwide industry-defining ZOO TV Tour. While much sought-after bootlegged copies of the RDS show audio have been in circulation for years, this marks the first official release, making it a highly covetable collectable for fans and collectors alike.

TRACK LISTING

Zoo Station
Mysterious Ways
Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World
Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
Love Is Blindness

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of U2’s Zooropa, September 2023 sees the release of a limited edition coloured vinyl pressing of the Grammy-award winning album to coincide with the band’s performances at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Initially intended to be just an EP, Zooropa became a fully-fledged album with 10 tracks recorded in six weeks in 1993, making it the fastest U2 album ever produced. Produced by Flood, Brian Eno and The Edge, the album went to Number 1 in the UK, USA, Ireland, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Sweden, Austria, France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland and featured the singles ‘Numb’, ‘Lemon’ and ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!)’.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
Zooropa
Baby Face
Numb
Side 2
Lemon
Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car
Side 3
Some Days Are Better Than Others
The First Time
Dirty Day
The Wanderer
Side 4
Lemon (The Perfecto Mix)
Numb (Gimme Some More Dignity Mix)

Starting out as an organ and drum machine solo project for Luke Richards, Ubiquitous Meh! are now a fully-fledged band.

Self-described as ‘Cult post-something organ jams for fans of Young Marble Giants / Dead Moon / the Stranglers’, they still only record to 4-track and still only do seven song records, pushing the old Hohner into every corner of the experimental pop landscape.

“Vintage synth wizardry... a nostalgic evocation of late-1970s electronic experimentalism.” - Electronic Sound

“Reminds me of the kind of post-punk indie releases John Peel would introduce on his radio show around 1979-80... entertaining and intriguing at the same time.” - Fear and Loathing

“There’s a unique, underground beauty lurking within it.” - The PRSD

“Hooky as hell, mysterious and prudently brilliant.” - HiveMind

TRACK LISTING

Songs Wrought Wrong
Jigsaw
Your Heart Is Still In Its Shrink
Do You Want To Play Dress Up?
Outta The Traps
Gold Plate Coffin
Smoke Like
Got Nerves
That’s Needless
Fecund With Love
Unit 4
Mindrockin’
Meh! Can Empower You 1
Meh! Can Empower You 2

UEVPD - Usage/Efficiency/Variance/Platform/Domain - is the solo project of Dominic Goodman, a former member of Mosquitoes and currently one half of Komare.

UEVPD is released in an edition of 250, each in hand printed, die cut sleeves. 

The self-titled UEVPD debut LP, released on 22nd November via World of Echo, consists of eight sequentially numbered electro-acoustic tracks made over approximately five years, living recordings that have morphed in shape over time, each systematically stripped back to their elemental form before being deemed complete. From the outset, Goodman purposefully deployed a relatively limited array of equipment and adopted a determinedly minimalist approach to composition, a practice in restraint that privileges detail and nuance. Field recordings, made using a combination of dynamic, condenser, contact and electret microphones, geophones and hydrophones, were allied to a basic modular/analogue synth setup, allowing for little in the way of excess or indulgence.

The results are markedly defiant, displaying an expert exercise in control and restraint that lets in little light but plays a great service to space and time. This is patient, claustrophobic sound design that bears out the value in attentive listening, a meditation on the acceptance of passing time, change, growth, death and regeneration. As such, listeners might connect associative lines with the likes of Pan Sonic and Mika Vianio’s solo work, Emptyset and Civilistjavel (who’s Tomas Bodén shows up on mastering duties here), though this remains distinctively Goodman’s vision, a continuation of his interests shown in Mosquitoes and Komare that further pushes out into the murky unknown.

RIYL: Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio, Emptyset, Peter Rehberg, Civilistjavel, Prangers, library electronics, circuit bent sounds. 

TRACK LISTING

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Welcome to Uffie’s new album Sunshine Factory – an alternate reality that is only accessible to those yearning for escape. A nod to the ballroom scene, it is a place where you can be your most authentic self. Inside this trippy wonderland, you’ll meet Uffie, dancing amongst the lights of your hallucinations. Sunshine Factory is a wonderfully restless record. It’s a joyride through the club, hurtling into the forest, and crowd surfing into the arms of a lover… and yet it’s also the sound of waking up to a heap of champagne soaked jeans, the bass of your heart still throbbing along to last night’s melodies.

A decade after her first record, which included–debatably–the internet’s first viral hit, the electro smash “Pop The Glock,” Uffie “the French-American singer/rapper/DJ/fashion designer who took the internet by storm” (Brooklyn Vegan) is most definitely back. Raised between Florida and Hong Kong before moving to Paris with her British father, the now Los Angeles-based Uffie is undeniably a “child of the world;” unsurprisingly, the making of this record clocked up a few air miles as well. Birthing what would become the Sunshine Factory in Fonte da Telha, Portugal collaborating with Norwegian savant Lasse Lokøy, Uffie soon found a home for these songs back in California with Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi–who co-produced several of the tracks–and his Oakland-based label, Company Records. The resulting album is one of intricate production, sonic experimentation, and subtle poetic brilliance amongst a few Fleabag glances to the camera.

Amidst double entendres galore, her record exists in a curious space between punk and pop, which can be heard in the ska-meets-fashion week “dominoes.” Contrarily, “sophia” – which marked the advent of Uffie and Chaz’s creative partnership several years ago – poises Sunshine Factory as an otherworldly dance record one would hear in Berlin’s famous Berghain nightclub. She is the party girl who is at her most vulnerable in the chaotic “where does the party go?” where she reckons with facing who she truly is when she’s all alone. It’s in these dualities and juxtapositions that the joy of Uffie writhes.

The album also has a cameo or three, including the one and only Peaches. And after finding kinship and admiration in the genre-defying NNAMDÏ, she tapped him for the record’s sole feature on “month of mondays.” It is at this point in the record that the beloved je ne sais quoi that Uffie has always possessed really emerges. When the comedown begins and the insatiable few remain on the dancefloor, “a month of mondays” is the knowing nod to a stranger signaling the night’s shift in course. With Sunshine Factory, it’s a pop-up party wherever you can find some speakers. Cool.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mvp
2. Where Does The Party Go?
3. Peaches (interlude)
4. Domines
5. Prickling Skin
6. Queen Ilona (interlude)
7. Anna Jetson
8. Sophia
9. A Month Of Mondays (feat. NNADMÏ)
10. Giants
11. Teddy <3 (interlude)
12. Cool
13. Crowdsurfinginyoursheets

Italian alchemists and power trio Ufomammut return with their ninth studio album, Fenice via Neurot Recordings. But not as we’ve heard them before, now “more intimate, more free.”

For over 20 years, the band has combined the heaviness and majesty of dynamic riff worship with a nuanced understanding of psychedelic tradition and history in music, creating a cosmic, futuristic, and technicolor sound destined for absolute immersion.

Fenice (meaning Phoenix in Italian) symbolically represents endless rebirth and the ability to start again after everything seems doomed. The album is the first recording with new drummer Levre, and truly marks a new chapter in Ufomammut history.

“I think we lost our spontaneity, album after album,” says Urlo. “We tried to make more complicated songs and albums, but I think at some point we just ended up repeating ourselves. With Fenice, we were ready to start from zero, we had no past anymore - so we just wanted to be reborn and rise from the ashes..”

While the band are well-known for their psychedelic travels into the far reaches of the cosmos, Fenice is a much more introspective listening experience. Fenice was conceived as a single concept track, divided in six facets of this inward-facing focus. Sonic experimentations abound in the exploration of this central theme; synths and experimental vocal effects are featured more prominently than ever before as the band push themselves ever further into the uncharted territory of their very identity.

The towering synths on the opening track ‘Duat’ evoke an almighty machine rising from the depths of primordial ooze. There’s a shift to a frenetic garage-psych pace before mellowing out into a more familiar doomy stomp. ‘Kepherer’ is a respite, albeit a slight one, returning to the pulsing rhythms of the album’s intro before plunging the listener into the menacing build and release of ‘Psychostasia’ next. Each oscillation of this extraordinary album feels inevitable - Ufomammut are after all, masters of their craft, and when it comes to creating enveloping sonic journeys into the unknown, it’s their uninhibited sense of exploration that breaches new sonic ground.

Fenice is the sound of a band whose very essence has been rejuvenated, and are welcoming the chance to create music in the way they know best; by unfolding carefully and attentively, by melding those extreme dynamics which render Fenice as a living and breathing creature - and by writing gargantuan riffs that herald their very rebirth. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Duat
2. Kheperer
3. Psychostasia
4. Metamorphoenix
5. Pyramind
6. Empyros

Godlike Snake is the first album of Ufomammut, originally out in 1999.

After 18 years the band decided it was time to release a new version of the album.

Urlo remixed (from the original tapes) and remastered the entire album to make it sound like it was supposed to, years ago.

Ufomammut formed in the late 90s by Poia (guitars, FXs) and Urlo (bass, vocals, FXs, synths), (rising from the ashes of past band Judy Corda), together with Vita (drums). With Levre taking over on drums in 2021, the band has undergone a rebirth, culminating in the release of the album Fenice and the Crookhead EP.

Over the course of 25 years, the band has developed a unique sound that combines heavy, dynamic riff worship with a deep understanding of psychedelic tradition in music.This has resulted in a cosmic, futuristic, and technicolor sound that fully immerses listeners.

The band has produced 10 records along with various other releases, such as compilations, EPs, and live albums.

Now, in 2024, as they celebrate their quarter-century milestone, the band is set to release their latest album, HIDDEN. This album marks a shift in the band’s musical composition, aiming for a more intense and heavy sound, and it’s the third release featuring Levre as the band’s new drummer.

The title, HIDDEN, reflects the concept of the presence of everything in our existence and the ability to bring to light what lies within us. With HIDDEN, Ufomammut delves into a sonic journey that traverses vast expanses of space and time.

From the crushing heaviness to the hauntingly melodies, from the textured compositions to the otherworldly atmospheres, HIDDEN testify the neverending evolution of Ufomammut and their mastery of creating immersive sonic experiences: a fitting celebration of their 25 years of sonic exploration and experimentation.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crookhead - 10.39
2. Kismet - 8.56
3. Spidher - 4.05 #
4. Mausoleum - 10.47
5. Leeched - 5.38
6. Soulost - 4.26

UFOMAMMUT, Italian sorcerers of supernatural and obliterating doom, have completed their sixth full-length, and first as part of the Neurot Recordings family. This is the mammoth follow-up to their 2010 full-length Eve, the band's most devastating piece of magic to date... until now.

Oro is the title for UFOMAMMUT's latest work, divided into ten massive movements overall which is now confirmed to be delivered in two separate pieces during the coming year. The first chapter, Opus Primum, will see arrival in April, and the second, Opus Alter, in September. The vinyl versions of both chapters will be handled directly by Malleus's own label Supernatural Cat Records, who were responsible for the release of all of the band's previous material. This is the third album in a row the band recorded with Lorenzo Stecconi. The band are also in the process of crafting a full video/visual version of Oro which will accompany the audio.

As with all previous UFOMAMMUT albums, the concepts behind Oro are expansive and multi-faceted, mutating the Italian palindrome which translates to "gold" with the Latin translation of "I prey." Oro explores the concept of knowledge and its power; the magical stream controlled by the human mind to gain control of every single particle of the world surrounding us. Oro is the alchemical process to transform the human fears into pure essence; into Gold. Although Oro's two chapters will be released months apart from each other, they must be considered as a single track in which the musical themes and the sounds appear and reappear, mutate and evolve, progressively culminating in the crushing final movement. Oro is an alchemic laboratory in which substances are flowing, dividing and blending themselves in ten increments from the alembics and stills, culminating into the creation of Gold.

This power trio, formed in Italy by Poia, Urlo and Vita, is recognized as the creator of a unique brand of psychedelic sludge. With monolithic and hypnotic repetition, the band combines a monumental riffing attitude with the psychedelia of the more visionary Pink Floyd. Since their inception in 1999, UFOMAMMUT has toured extensively, and crossed the ocean to the United States for the first time in 2009 for a tour of the West Coast. They've performed at renowned, international music festivals including Roadburn, Hellfest, Leper, Stoned from the Underground, Asymmetry, sharing the stage with Neurosis, Down, Amen Ra, Baroness, Sons Of Otis, Motorpsycho and endless more along the way.

'Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes' is the debut album from Gregory Uhlmann (SML, Anna Butterss, Duffy x Uhlmann, Perfume Genius), Josh Johnson (SML, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet & New Breed, Meshell Ndegeocello, Anna Butterss, Leon Bridges), and Sam Wilkes (Sam Gendel, Louis Cole, Chaka Khan). The three improviser/arranger/producers' impressive individual credits encompass such a wide stylistic pendulum swing that a collection of group music from the trio could mine any number of musical territories with masterful results. In these 11 instrumental songs, the trio explores a spacious lyrical curiosity that could be described as a jazz-informed take on progressive electro-acoustic chamber music.

Conceived during two live shows at ETA and a session at Uhlmann's house in Los Angeles, the album maintains a focus on beauty, melody, and rhythm as the pieces unfold, with the trio pushing their instruments and highly-dialed effects to sculpt otherworldly sounds with the collective sensibility of a rhythm section. The ethos of these instant compositions is arrangement-minded improvisation that showcases the mournful beauty of Uhlmann's fingerpicked electric guitar, the hybrid rhythm-lead of Wilkes' bass chording, and the textural harmonic world building of Johnson's effect-laden alto saxophone.

TRACK LISTING

1. Marvis
2. Fumarole
3. Arpy
4. Frica
5. Hoe Down
6. Jicama
7. Unsure
8. Fields
9. Shwa
10. Rewinded
11. The Fool On The Hil

The fifth UK Subs studio album, from 1983, remastered – and not available on vinyl for nine years. Now with a new inner bag featuring all the lyrics and unseen band photos. A limited-edition, transparent yellow ochre vinyl with improved original sleeve art. Album ‘F’ in the UK Subs A-Z series of albums.

The album came at a crossroads for the UK Subs. Punk had become unfashionable, and the early line-ups had split leaving Charlie Harper to form a new band. He enlisted early Subs bassist Steve Slack (who’d left before their first recordings, replaced by his brother), drummer Steve Jones and guitarist Captain Scarlet. Navigating between the UK Subs punk ethos and wider accessible styles, with many songs co-written by Slack and Scarlet, Charlie’s lyrics reflected the current political paranoia of an Orwellian future, alongside hedonistic punk tales of life lived and characters met along the road.

The album successfully led the band to embark on decades of world tours and continue the now-legendary A-Z series of albums. Although the current band have given up lengthy tours, since Charlie’s 80th birthday they still reconvene regularly for festivals and short excursions.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl:
Flood Of Lies
Veronique
Soldiers Of Fortune
Waiting For The DB’s
Tampa Bay
After The War; Violent Revolution
In The Red
Dress Code
Revenge Of The Jelly Devils
In The Wild, Seas Of Mars

CD1:
Flood Of Lies
Veronique
Soldiers Of Fortune
Waiting For The DB’s
Tampa Bay
After The War; Violent Revolution
In The Red
Dress Code
Revenge Of The Jelly Devils
In The Wild
Seas Of Mars
Bonus Singles:
Another Typical City (7”)
Still Life
The Spell
Private Army
Multiple Minds
Primary Strength
Another Typical City (12”)

CD2: Demos:
Still Life
In The Wild
Can Anybody Hear Me?
Live Chicago:
Emotional Blackmail
New Barbarians, In The Wild
Véronique
Flood Of Lies
Warhead
Limo Life
Disease
Violent Revolution
Soldiers Of Fortune
Ice Age
Dress Code
Telephone Numbers
Stranglehold
You Don’t Belong
Party In Paris.

*REPRESS OF THIS ESSENTIAL GAMM CATALOGUE CLASSIC!!*
GAMM have only dropped two of their 'battle weapons' previous to this - tracks so illusive and powerful they have to be released in short supply under strict embargos.

For the third installment, Ukokos and keyboard wizard Jabco lay down some Dilla(ish) hip-hop beats and piano action over that incredible live video clip that went viral with Kanye West's Sunday Service band doing a combined live gospel / soul cover of "Keep Rising To The Top" and "All Night long". 100% guaranteed to get Tarquin and Esme runnin' over to the decks eagerly requesting a track I.D....

Limited quants! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: A true classic from the GAMM catalogue resurrected for our pleasure. Keni Burke and Lionel Richie are covered by a gospel band then bolstered by Ukokos & Jabco in one of those bewildering, re-edit of an edit of a cover moments that get both trainspotters and dancers weak at the knees.

TRACK LISTING

1. Keep Rising All Night Long (Sunday Service Mix)

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Pressed on yellow vinyl, and individually numbered 1-500.

TRACK LISTING

Anarchy In The UK
God Save The Queen (acoustic)
Pretty Vacant
Anarchy In The UK (acoustic)
Holidays In The Sun
Problems
God Save The Queen (live)
Anarchy In The UK (live)

ULNA’s OEA is a “bar-rock getting sober record.“ The first full length solo record of ULNA, aka Adam Schubert of Cafe Racer, OEA is an ode to reinvention. Along with the release comes a rebranding--formerly Ruins, Shubert’s new pseudonym ULNA is a reference to a pivotal moment in his childhood. At the age of 14, Schubert shattered the bone on the inside of his forearm in a skating accident, and took up the guitar. “That’s what made me serious about playing music,” says Schubert.

This name change also accompanied Schubert’s shift towards sobriety--OEA was created right as Schubert reconfigured his life without drugs or alcohol. With the exception of the final track, “Dead Friends,” the whole album was written while in a recovery program. “You have to reinvent your whole personality, you have to be a different person,” says Schubert.”Who am I if I’m not the crazy drunk dude who’s doing drugs in the bathroom?”

OEA is an intensely personal record, in subject matter but also quite literally--Schubert plays every instrument, though the record feels far from a home-demo, recorded and mastered by Robby Hanes at Strange Magic Recording in Chicago’s Logan Square. Schubert’s songs are ambling and full of picked guitar and retro harmonies, a stylistic sensibility he attributes to a love for the Beatles and “acoustic rock with a weird punk edge,” a-la Big Thief and Kurt Vile. Though instrumentally sunny, his vocals hint at something else - there’s an underlying ache. OEA is an easy listen, but with a depth of emotion that demands listeners’ attention.

OEA explores the range of emotions experienced in the transition to sobriety, from fear to backslide to self doubt. At first listen, “Turn The Record On” feels almost like a love song, with a chorus of “turn the record on/ you’re my favorite song,” but in actuality the song is the story of an empty encounter rather than romance. “It’s kind of about this sad hookup with someone else who is equal in your addiction, you’re just using each other because you don’t want to be alone in your using,” says Schubert. “We both have this problem and we can have fun in it together because we both understand. They know the score.”

While “Turn The Record On” speaks to a moment of shared addiction, other tracks examine what comes after sobriety. “And I took the pill like I should / and I stayed clean just like I said I would,” begins “Last Song,” which Schubert cites as one of the hardest tracks to write. “I got sober and I take medication and - I’m doing all this stuff now but nothing’s changed,” says Schubert. “ I think that’s pretty common in people who get sober. I did all this stuff and now what?”

The penultimate track on the album, “Last Song” fades into a noisy interlude that gives listeners the feeling of motion, like entering a tunnel and emerging into a quieter, lo-fi recording, the closing track “Dead Friends.” The only non-studio track, “Dead Friends” was recorded in Schubert’s home, and carries with it a warm intimacy. “I wanted it to sound like you’re outside somewhere, you're walking, and you step inside somewhere that feels safe,” says Schubert.

This closing track embodies the mood of OEA- warm but with a melancholy edge, like coming in from the cold but still feeling a lingering chill. It’s an album that feels comfortable and cohesive--though individual tracks stand alone, OEA works best when listened through start to finish. It’s a record to put on while cooking dinner and let sink in. 

TRACK LISTING

1. I Was A Monster
2. Been So Far
3. Borrowed Time
4. Ocean Ridge
5. Too Loud
6. Turn The Record On
7. Last Song
8. Dead Friends

RIYL: Mercury Rev, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, Deerhunter, Atlas Sound, Stereolab.

Close to five years on from their last transmission, Ulrika Spacek resurface from self-imposed exile with their third album, Compact Trauma, a collection of songs that function as a chance treatise of sorts for our current collective condition. With a title like that arriving at this point in time, it’s tempting to interpret the record solely in the context of the global events of the past few years, but the roots of these ten songs arc back much further in time, charged with their own personalised internal damage.

Mid 2018, approaching exhaustion and feeling increasingly fragile from the stresses of itinerant road life, the five-piece of Rhys Edwards, Rhys Williams, Joseph Stone, Syd Kemp and Callum Brown began work in earnest on the follow up to their second album, Modern English Decoration. Released less than a year earlier and having promoted it constantly in the months that followed, now might have represented a fine moment for the band to take a breath. Yet Ulrika Spacek were not familiar with the concept of slowing down, conditioned by a strong work ethnic and the demands of capricious touring cycles that necessitated more content and at speed. Moving too fast, it was difficult to avoid the hazards up ahead.

The band’s previous albums had both been recorded in KEN, a studio and rehearsal space in Homerton that also doubled as their shared home. As writing for album three began, KEN suddenly became another victim to the indiscriminate violence of gentrification, rendering the project both hub- and homeless. Writing and recording at KEN was then abruptly shifted to a professional studio in Hackney, only the second time they had worked in such conditions, and tensions and logistical difficulties soon became apparent. The enforced switch to an unfamiliar locale would have been discomforting enough, but when allied with the fractures already beginning to splinter through the band, made for an especially frazzled experience. Somehow, a record began to emerge piecemeal from the gloom, though it was one obviously infected with its circumstances.

Trauma, in its myriad forms, is often hard to qualify, even harder to rationalise. When something begins to go wrong, how do you gain perspective? What is a temporary roadblock, and what is unmitigated disaster? In its first phase of life, Compact Trauma was a document of a band striving to perfect an idea while the universe around them seemed to want to shut down. And then, at an impasse of sorts and with a record halfway complete, it suddenly did. If Ulrika Spacek were a band in need of the breaks applying, it was the force of a global pandemic that made it happen. As the world stood still, Compact Trauma was filed away, unfinished and unheard by the wider world, possibly to remain that way forever. And yet, there was to be a second act. If mutability is our tragedy, it's also our hope, clearer days slowly began to emerge as the bad slipped away. The wound, as the saying goes, is the place where the light enters you.

The prolonged break enforced by myriad lockdowns may have separated the group but it also afforded the five time to reflect on what had already been committed to tape.. As the lights came back on and the shutters up, they found themselves drawn back towards Compact Trauma. What they rediscovered was a record that seemed to preempt the shared grief of a global pandemic. Even if the specifics were different, the themes were uncannily similar. Addressing existential freak out, displacement, substance reliance and encroaching self-doubt, these highly personalised songs suddenly took on a wider significance, speaking in part to a bigger narrative.

Opening track, ‘The Sheer Drop’, begins with the line “Homerton is caving in”; ‘It Will Come Sometime’ describes a “liver like a lightbulb and swelling”; and Lounge Angst (an almost perfect description of those maddening lockdown days indoors) laments, ‘seems my friends grew up or left’. The fear and panic is palpable. The lyrics are matched to a soundtrack that oscillates between the febrile and the off-kilter, unconventional song structures and knotty arrangements either spinning the listener in unexpected directions or offering some kind of cathartic release. Take, as example, the aforementioned opener, ‘The Sheer Drop’. A wire-taut exercise in tension-and-release rendered in three parts, a whimsical synth opening giving way to characteristic chiming guitars before a nail biting coda sets its controls for the heart of the sun or the end of the world, whichever comes first. Either way, it’s a hell of a way to reintroduce yourself after a five year absence. ‘If The Wheels Are Coming Off, The Wheels Are Coming Off’ is equally instructive, a lacerating exposition of self-doubt that bursts into ecstatic release at its climax, demanding repeat listens, while ‘Stuck At The Door’ is an 11-minute Pacific North West-style epic that threatens, ‘the worst of it’s to come’. But it’s the title track that might be the true heartbeat of the record. Either addressing itself or some unknown assailant, it begins by demanding that they “take your hands and your head off the table”, while spiralling around a breathless riff fueled by an infectious anxious energy, before changing tact completely and shifting to a lullaby-like finale, concluding with the ominous thought, “compact trauma? Or full blown disaster? I'll be back in an hour (Or so i think)”. It’s a fitting encapsulation of a highly complex record. They could have left it alone, but in coming back to what they knew, Ulrika Spacek found their best work yet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Six full years it's been since the brilliant 'Modern English Decoration' and 'Compact Trauma' very much sounds like an album that's been meticulously crafted throughout, despite the troubling circumstances surrounding it's genesis. Both resplendent with moments of clever production and beautifully realised performances, it's also swimming with the sort of fractured haze and lo-fi grit we've come to know and love. A perfect return.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Sheer Drop
2. Accidental Momentary Blur
3. It Will Come Sometime
4. Lounge Angst
5. Diskbänksrealism
6. Through France With Snow
7. If The Wheels Are Coming Off, The Wheels Are Coming Off
8. Compact Trauma
9. Stuck At The Door
10. No Design

The relatively short amount of time between their first and second albums is testament to the band’s self-contained creative environment and the productivity it encourages. There’s a tendency to label this degree of self-reliant creativity ‘DIY’ - and the band do certainly feel emboldened by that ethos - yet to consider Modern English Decoration solely in these terms is a disservice. Their craft is considered and purposeful, the means of its production reflecting the band’s overall vision rather than the value system of an often haphazard and accidental DIY culture. “We enjoy listening to music through the album format and want our records to reflect that”, says Rhys Edwards (guitars, vocals, synthesiser).

Ulrika Spacek formed in Berlin in one night, when 14-year-long friends Rhys Edwards and Rhys Williams conceptualised ‘Ulrika Spacek’ and came up with The Album Paranoia as their debut album title. Moving back to London with the intention to record it, they were joined by Joseph Stone (guitars, organ, synths, violin), Ben White (bass) and Callum Brown (drums, percussion), ossifying into the five-piece they are now. The album was released soon after with little forewarning and was accompanied by a year long, near-monthly club night called Oysterland.

Given the lyrics often favour abstraction and the vocals can be more impressionistic than declarative, the album title itself offers perhaps the most telling entry point to the record. In part, it’s a self-effacing play on an interior design cliché that references the meticulous creative processes the band adheres to. There’s also a nod towards the environment in which it was created – a Victorian house turned art gallery turned home studio

Unsurprisingly given the context of its creation, Modern English Decoration might be considered a companion piece of sorts to The Album Paranoia.But there are crucial differences. Most notably, this isn’t the work of the Ulrika Spacek conceptualised by Edwards and Williams in Berlin – Modern English Decoration is the band as five rather than two people, and it shows. Those who have witnessed the intensity of their live show will instantly recognise the merits in this. The bass and drums provide a versatile anchor, at once soft, then aggressive, while the vocals drift woozily in and out, like druggy hindsight or skewed premonition. With three guitarists in the band guitars were always going to be central to the music, but what is less expected is the dynamic interplay between the trio that suggests a three-headed version of the Verlaine-Lloyd axis at the heart of Television. What’s more, the absence of reverb is integral, in part attributable to the ambience of the studio, but also a conscious decision in order to add focus. And focus is the abiding term: this is an album designed to be just so - a 45 minute commitment, a surrender.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mimi Pretend
2. Silvertonic
3. Dead Museum
4. Ziggy
5. Everything, All The Time
6. Modern English Decoration
7. Full Of Men
8. Saw A Habit Forming
9. Victorian Acid
10. Protestant Work Slump

RIYL: Mercury Rev, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, Deerhunter, Atlas Sound.

Ulrika Spacek is a British experimental rock band formed in Berlin by Rhys Edwards and Rhys Williams, relocated to Homerton, London. Work on debut album ‘The Album Paranoia’ began in the summer of 2014 in the band’s shared house KEN, and was finished there last month. In conjunction to the making of ‘The Album Paranoia’, the band has curated a number of nights under the name ‘Oysterland’ combining their first live performances with a series of exhibitions. The band's music has drawn various interpretations, a cross pollination of hypnotic fuzz, Verlain-Malkmus guitar idiosyncrasies and intertwining feelings of both angst and melancholia. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Ulrika Spacek's debut album is an addictive roller coaster of blissful psychedelia, hypnotic melancholy and raucous, repetitive kraut rock. Heavy and droning in some places, dreamy and pensive in others, its atmospheric soundscape makes it an album to get lost in.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Don’t Know - 04:35
2. Porcelain - 03:59
3. Circa 1954 - 02:13
4. Strawberry Glue - 03:32
5. Beta Male - 06:20
6. NK - 06:54
7. Ultra Vivid - 04:14
8. She’s A Cult - 04:22
9. There’s A Little Passing Cloud In You - 06:53
10. Airportism - 02:07

Melvin Bliss' iconic 'Synthetic Substitution' (1973) has been sampled hundreds of times. Gracing records from Naughty by Nature's 'O.P.P' to Public Enemy's 'Don't Believe the Hype', it's one of the foundations of hip-hop. However, there's a school of thought that says the sample could have been retired forever after Ced Gee used it for 'Ego Tripping'. It was the first song to use those wonderful Bernard Purdie drums, and arguably the best.

Their first release on Next Plateau Records, this instant 1986 classic slams from the first bar, that hard-as-hell beat underpinned by stabs and the breathy 'ultra-magnetic-magnetic' chant beneath. Meanwhile, Ced and future legend Kool Keith go to town with pseudo-science and a thinly veiled diss of Run DMC – 'Say what, Peter Piper, to hell with childish rhymes'. It's a song shot through with promise they'd more than fulfil on their debut album, 1988's landmark 'Critical Beatdown'.

The flip, 'Funky Potion', doesn't coalesce with quite the same genius but is still more than a curio, with the MC's doubling down on their futuristic nonsense approach to lyricism. Rufus Thomas' 'Do the Funky Penguin' is the base for yet more stabs, discordant scratches and a kitchen-sink approach that shows just innovative the group were prepared to be.

Never before released before on 7", this undeniable hip-hop classic comes complete with bespoke hype stickers incorporating one of the great rap logos of all time.

TRACK LISTING

Ego Tripping
Funky Potion

Atlanta's favourite trio of power pop vixenettes have done it again, this time delivering a refreshingly gritty sweet pop gem showcasing a musical breadth ranging from straight forward pop crunch and rock heavy velocity to slightly twisted Psychedelia, blending the guitar attack of Cheap Trick, the vocal gymnastics of Throwing Muses and the pop sensibilities of the Bangles, Breeders, and the Beatles without running out of breath. Britta Phillips of LUNA plays bass! Woohoo!

Following the release of their highly acclaimed new album ‘Sister’ in March 2020, Ultraísta have announce a remix package featuring the talents of Floating Points, FaltyDL, Zero 7, Crate Classics and Leifur James. Ultraísta are formed by Grammy-winning producer/engineer/musician Nigel Godrich, best known for his two decades helming Radiohead’s groundbreaking studio output; celebrated drummer Joey Waronker, who’s toured and recorded with everyone from R.E.M. and Beck to Roger Waters and Elliott Smith; and singer Laura Bettinson, an acclaimed solo artist whose work combines synthdriven electropop and dreamy vocal looping.

TRACK LISTING

Ordinary Boy (Floating Points Remix)
Ordinary Boy (FaltyDL Remix)
Ordinary Boy (Zero 7 Remix)
Ordinary Boy (Crate Classics Remix)
Ordinary Boy (Leifur James Remix)

Ultraísta are releasing their first new album since 2012's self-titled debut. "Tin King" is a collection that defies easy categorization, and one that proves that Ultraísta — Grammy-winning producer/engineer/musician Nigel Godrich, best known for his two decades helming Radiohead’s groundbreaking studio output; celebrated drummer Joey Waronker, who’s toured and recorded with everyone from R.E.M. and Beck to Roger Waters and Elliott Smith; and singer Laura Bettinson, an acclaimed solo artist whose work combines synth-driven electropop and dreamy vocal looping — is far more than just the sum of its remarkable parts.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tin King
2. Harmony
3. Anybody
4. Save It ’til Later
5. Ordinary Boy
6. Mariella
7. Water In My Veins
8. Bumblebees
9. The Moon And Mercury

Ultralyd was formed in 2004 when legendary saxophonist Frode Gjerstad suggested that the trio Gjerstad/Olsen/Hana needed a distinct bass player. The very first rehearsal with Kjetil D Brandsdal (also of Noxagt) was released as the self titled album "Ultralyd" in 2004. After a UK tour the same year the band established the sound captured on the album "Chromosome Gun" which was released in 2005 on the American avant-rock label Load Records. Frode Gjerstad decided to leave later in the year and for a short while the band operated as a trio before recruiting new sax player Kjetil Møster. During two extensive European tours and several studio sessions Ultralyd's direction slowly changed from a rather chaotic free rock approach towards composition and more structured forms of improvisation, experimenting with different layers and altered roles of the instruments, integrating elements from contemporary music, electronic music, funk and doom metal and ending up with something that might be classified as chamber rock. However contradictory that might sound. Ultralyd is part of the N-Collective, an international conglomerate of musicians, composers, improvisors and artists.

WRWTFWW Records is honored to reissue revered UK electronic duo Ultramarine’s best kept secret from their discography, the superb A User’s Guide album, available as a limited double LP housed in a beautiful heavyweight sleeve with inside out printing. 

On the rare occasions that Ultramarine’s story is told, the duo’s fifth album, 1998’s A User’s Guide, tends to get omitted from the narrative. Radically different to anything the duo released before or since, it has remained a slept-on, timeless and inherently futurist classic ever since.

Unavailable on vinyl since the year it was released – in part because the label it originally came out on, New Electronica, folded shortly afterwards – A User’s Guide was the result of a conscious decision by Ultramarine members Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper to change their working methods and the “sound palette” that underpinned their work.

Out went the partially improvised hybrid electronic/acoustic sounds and the collaborations with guest musicians they’d become famous for. They were replaced by painstakingly created electronic sounds and textures, metallic motifs, spaced-out chords, rhythms rooted in contemporary techno and drum & bass culture, and nods aplenty to pioneering music of the period, from the post-rock atmospherics of Tortoise, and the hazy dub techno of Basic Channel, to the tech-jazz of Detroit, the minimalism of Berlin, and the musically expansive warmth of Chicago deep house.

It may have taken a year to create – part of which was spent developing this head-spinning new sound – but the results were undeniably unearthly and effortlessly forward-thinking. Over a quarter of a century may have passed since it first appeared in record stores, but A User’s Guide still sounds fresh and modern – a remarkable achievement given the relatively sparse and basic equipment used in the making of the album.

As this first vinyl reissue conclusively proves, the material showcased on A User’s Guide has lost none of its sparkle in the 26 years that have passed since its release. For proof, check the head-nodding IDM bubbliness of opener ‘All of a Sudden’, the queasy, lopsided tech-jazz of ‘Sucker For You’, the locked-in beats and mind-mangling motifs of ‘Zombie’, the ghostly, out-there electro of ‘Ambush’, the Autechre-esque ‘Ghost Routine’ and the triumphant closing cut ‘What Machines Want’, a classic of minimalistic, jazz-flecked techno futurism.

Fully remastered from the original DATs by Jason G at Transition Studios, the 2024 vinyl edition of A User’s Guide thrusts Ultramarine’s most overlooked album back into the spotlight. This WRWTFWW edition also features brand new contextualizing sleeve notes, complete with new quotes on the production process from Ultramarine, by dance music historian Matt Anniss (author of Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music, and founder of online electronic music platform Jointhefuture.net)

TRACK LISTING

A1. All Of A Sudden
A2. Surfacing
B1. Sucker 4U
B2. On The Brink
B3. Zombie
C1. By Turns
C2. Ambush
C3. 4U Version
D1. Ghost Routine
D2. What Machines Want

The story of Ultrasonic Grand Prix is one of two vintage 60s guitars and their owners - multi-instrumentalist / producer Shawn Lee and guitar maestro Barrie Cadogan - of Nottingham freakbeaters Little Barrie.

“We’d been talking for years about making some kind of record. Cadogan explains, “but we were always being pulled in different directions with other commitments. Shawn got the ball rolling for real when lockdown happened, called me up and said, “You know we keep talking about doing a record, well the time is now”. I’m so glad he did.”

And the music that did emerge was weird, startling, and insatiably groovy. With one foot dipped in the organ-warbling garage of 60s psych, and the other vibrating in the mind-expanding fractals of the British Acid House boom, ‘INSTAFUZZ’ plies the earthly quintessence’s of blues, rock, soul and jazz, against the preternatural discomforts of programmed drums and unhinged synthesisers to produce something distinctly and nostalgically futuristic.

It’s a style that pays its debt to this project's launch-pad inspiration, 2012’s ‘Personal Space’ compilation. A collection of underground U.S 45s from the late 70s and early 80s fittingly dubbed ‘Electronic Soul’ - an appropriate descriptor, incidentally for these experiments from Ultrasonic Grand Prix.

With all the graininess of a documentary film compiled from bits and pieces of raw archive footage, INSTAFUZZ mashes various details and cuttings from its choice influences to invariably intriguing effects. The guitar twang-meets-intense synth of emphatic opener ‘Seamoon Rising’ is The Limiñanas at The Haçienda. At another extreme of the spectrum, ‘Green Means Go’ drifts into the neo-psychedelic waters of The Soundcarriers or Vanishing Twin - hauntological, uncanny, cruising into the wonders of egoless delirium, suspicion and atemporal intrigue.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's always a great thing when two respected musical minds come together and you can't really hear their individual influence on the end product, rendering a whole new electronic blues palette from their audio coalition. Brilliantly done, and full of passion from both these greats.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Seamoon Rising
Instafuzz
Triple Denim
Green Means Go
Right Left
96 Tiers

Side B
Slippery When Chet
Tin Wolf
A Guy Called Harold
Pop Eyes
22 Years I Worked For This Guitar
King Condor

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8AM ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 30TH).

The album includes the UK top 10 and worldwide hit Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, along with the singles One Small Day and the title track Lament.

To celebrate the anniversary, Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) has made a new Stereo Mix the album, presented here on vinyl for the frst time, along with a previously unreleased Instrumental version of the album which is exclusive to this release.

TRACK LISTING

White China
One Small Day
Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
Lament
Man Of Two Worlds
Heart Of The Country
When The Time Comes
A Friend I Call Desire
White China [Instrumental]
One Small Day [Instrumental]
Dancing With Tears In My Eyes [Instrumental]
Lament [Instrumental]
Man Of Two Worlds [Instrumental]
Heart Of The Country [Instrumental]
When The Time Comes [Instrumental]
A Friend I Call Desire [Instrumental]

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

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

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: We loved last year's 7" from the Umarells, and this new EP is no different! With the title track being one of our fave indie tracks of the year, there's plenty of dreamy jangle on here from this Manchester lot (we sure haven't lost it as a city) - don't snooze on this!

TRACK LISTING

1. Closer
2. June
3. Ocean
4. You're Not Here
5. One More Day 

Manchester four-piece Umarells release their debut 7” “You’re Not Here / Closer” on 03 November 2023 via Fear of Missing Out Records. Named after the Italian word for retired men who watch construction sites, Umarells channel the blissed-out shoegaze of Beach House; the hushed vocal deliveries of Crumb and the analogue warmth of Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Gorgeous shimmering dream-pop from this Manchester 4-piece.

TRACK LISTING

1. You’re Not Here
2. Closer

‘Black Bile’ compiles some of Umberto’s most resplendent, sanguine music to date. The solo work of LA composer Matt Hill draws heavily from the world of cinema, spinning immersive narratives and rich atmospheres using sound alone.

Hill, an active composer for film and television, recently scored the 2022 Jerry Pyle film ‘Loveseat’ (soundtrack was released in 2023). Other recent scores include the 2020 thriller ‘Archenemy’, from the producers of cult classic ‘Mandy’.

Inspired by the ancient Greek theory of the ‘four humors’, an early medical theory linking the inner workings of the human body to the elements, ‘Black Bile’ specifically links the feelings of melancholy with autumn. Hill’s celestial compositions are an autumnal soundtrack conveying beauty, yearning, reflection and comfort.

Many of the album’s phrases are constructed from just two notes or sounds, arranged by Hill into complex patterns that undulate with an organic pulse. The spare melodic structure holds myriad small and beautiful details. The songs began with Hill improvising on the piano, to find the notes and patterns that created the musical and emotional structure from which he could expand with textural detail. Hill then would often remove the initial structure leaving a sparer, more skeletal one which he could again expand upon to create a full piece. The careful attention to each detail gives his minimal compositions emotional heft.

The album masterfully stakes Umberto’s claim among other avant-ambient boundary pushers such as Lawrence English or Laurel Halo.

“There is real compositional variety and intrigue in his songs… elaborate and unpredictable... it’s hard not to be impressed with Umberto’s evolution of late, as lacerating experience as it may be at times.” - The Quietus

“Songs that are subtle yet unsettling, like a horror film that rattles your psyche without relying on tired shock tactics.” - Self-Titled

“Masterfully polished and skilfully arranged... dazzling” - Brainwashed

TRACK LISTING

Grasp
Spoonwood
Empty Shell
October
Monkshood
Vestige
Dying Honey & Linden

New album from Umberto, his first for Mogwai’s Rock Action label.

Created and recorded as a film soundtrack for the Glasgow Music & Film Festival in February 2012, ‘Night Has A Thousand Screams’ conveys a deep love of the film scoring greats such as John Carpenter, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and Vangelis.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: Once again Umberto's love of italian soundtracks shines through on 'Night has a thousand screams'. It follows on from his previous work & is still synthesizer heaven.

Umbra Sum is Ed Sánchez-Gómez, a Costa Rican expatriate. Following a love/hate relationship with classical guitar studies at the University of Costa Rica, Umbra Sum emerged in 2003 as a way of reconciling with the instrument. After leaving Costa Rica, Ed wandered around Europe and later Argentina, where he acquired a taste for the South American folk music that permeates his work. He left Argentina to study improvisation in Chicago, where he currently resides.

'Aún no has demostrado nada' is the first official release by Umbra Sum: an eclectic mini-album that has hints of the summertime harmonies of the Beach Boys, the psychedelic folk of Los Jaivas, the doleful spirit of Hood, and the melodious uproar of My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr.

In this debut album, harmonious noise, snaking rhythms and layered voices all serve as a chorus that creates a lyrical mural, hearkening to the heavens and earth: like a rudimentary yet well-made treehouse made of exotic woods, projecting out from within the dense Indie-Rock forest that surrounds us.

'Aún no has demostrado nada' was recorded by Ed Sánchez-Gómez in Evanston, IL; mixed by Joel Jiménez-Cabezas in Goshen, IN; and mastered by Jeff Lipton (Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The Magnetic Fields) at Peerless Mastering in Boston, MA.

TRACK LISTING

1. Años Como Flores
2. Que El Verano Nos Perdone
3. Nuestro Imposible
4. ¿Quién Dijo Miedo?
5. Aún No Has Demostrado Nada
6. Hazmerreír
7. Dulce Reposo

RIYL: Orange Juice, Sarah Records, early Creation, Mary Chain, C86, Lush.

The Umbrellas are four renegade romantics crafting irresistible indie pop hymns. The band’s self-titled 2021 debut album became a breakout moment, winning critical praise and sparking an international tour. Follow-up LP ‘Fairweather Friend’ goes a step further – absorbing the sonic attack of their live shows, it balances this with studio finesse, allowing the San Francisco four-piece to become the band they’ve always aspired to be.

It's a record overflowing with highlights. The candyfloss melodies of introductory track ‘Three Cheers!’ are matched to an impactful percussive punch; ‘Say What You Mean’ finds The Umbrellas working with total confidence, letting the song ride out to its chiming conclusion, four voices working in precision. ‘When You Find Out’ offers rotating notes of guitar punctuated by a vocal that pushes past angst to accept a world full of hope. A lean 10 track affair, it grasps towards beatific pop while fuelled by a sense of risk, and the precision that comes from long months on the road.

The Umbrellas coalesced around a group of musicians who would frequent legendary San Francisco record emporium Amoeba Music. Singer and guitarist Matt Ferrera links with bassist Nick Oka, while Keith Frerichs is the powerhouse drummer. A chance encounter with Morgan Stanley singing karaoke at a Fourth of July party cemented the line-up around an avowed thirst for melody. “All of us love really earnest pop songs,” Nick points out. “I guess we got to a point in our lives where we wanted to be genuine.”

Playing shows at San Francisco’s vital DIY redoubt Hit Gallery, The Umbrellas would share line-ups with local heroes such as April Magazine and Cindy. Recording their debut album across a two-day spell at Matt’s parents’ house, the results won a devoted cult following. Yet the experience of touring bonded them tightly and allowed the volume to tick up a little higher, and higher, and higher. “I think we got tired of people saying, oh you’re so much louder than I thought you’d be!” laughs Matt. “Our early recordings are sweet and earnest… and we wanted it to be louder.”

Kicking off sessions in November 2022, the band used an ad hoc space Matt created in his basement, working across a four-month period. Sessions were a little more relaxed in terms of timescale than their debut, but The Umbrellas were incredibly focussed on the project. “We gave ourselves more space for this album,” says Keith. “We wanted time to sit on the songs, and really work on them.”

Allowing their live dynamic to bleed out on tape, The Umbrellas are at once more physical and yet also more controlled on their new album. Take opening track ‘Three Cheers!’ – the peppy, sun-soaked rush masks a barbed lyric, courtesy of Nick Oka. “It’s a pseudo-political song about power struggles that occur in a job situation, or a friend group. It’s an observational song.”

‘Toe The Line’ has an unkempt, rollicking sense of energy, the playful relationship analogy of the lyric pushed to the speed of light by Keith’s ultra-fast punk drumming. ‘When You Find Out’ meanwhile epitomises their unified, egalitarian way of making music – with The Umbrellas, each voice counts. “It sounds different from any song we’ve ever written together,” says Morgan. “It shows how much we’ve grown. Trust helps us to build the songs. It’s definitely a team effort.”

It's also a record of ambition. ‘Say What You Mean’ stretches past the four-minute mark, the viola performance informed by Estonian minimalist composer Arvo Pärt. ‘Gone’ was the first song attempted for the new album, and the last they actually finished, endless re-writes transforming it into a manifesto of control and release. Taken as a whole ‘Fairweather Friend’ is a bold indie pop triumph, crafted with purpose and attention. Taking their time over each note, the four-piece have strengthened their songwriting, adding depth and assurance while unlocking their potential. Some bonds last a lifetime – The Umbrellas are ready to capture your heart.

TRACK LISTING

Three Cheers
Goodbye
Toe The Line
Echoes
Say What You Mean
Games
Gone
When You Find Out
Blue
PM

Umfang makes her debut on Ninja Tune’s Technicolour imprint with the album "Symbolic Use Of Light". Highly rated for her analogue-based rhythmic excursions previously released via videogamemusic, 1080p, Phinery and Allergy Season; the New Yorker is a co-founder of Brooklyn’s colossal Discwoman crew and resident at Bossa Nova Civic Club’s Technofeminism monthly. Here we get a collection of reduced analogue hypnopompic  excursions - drifting between the lucid and hallucinatory.

TRACK LISTING

Full 1
Weight
Symbolic Use Of Light
Where Is She
Path
Pop
Sweep
Wingless Victory
Full 2

One of Piero Umiliani's most dancey tracks ever is finally available again on 12'' vinyl, both in its original version and in a special edit retouched by Jolly Mare that further increases its dancefloor potential.

Discomania was recorded by Umiliani in 1978 under the moniker Rovi (one of the many aliases he used at the time to avoid saturating the Italian library music market with his name), and sounds wonderfully in tune with the then-emerging cosmic disco scene, brimming as it is with Afro, disco and black music influences. In short, it was expressly conceived as music fit for the discos of the time (or the idea that Umiliani had of them). Moreover, Discomania enjoys a special place in Italian pop culture, having entered the collective imagination of national TV viewers between 1981-1987, when it was used as the closing theme song for RAI television football program 90° minuto.

This single launches RELOVED, a new series from Four Flies in which accomplished DJs and producers rework tunes from Italian golden age soundtracks and library music.

Choosing Piero Umiliani for the first release in the series was almost inevitable. Four Flies has devoted much of its archival music research and restoration efforts to the Florentine composer, contributing to expand his discography with two compilations featuring plenty of previously unreleased music (Studio Umiliani and L'Uomo Elettronico), as well as with various represses of seminal albums, the most recent of which is the library LP Paesaggi.

And who better than Jolly Mare, one of the label's greatest friends and collaborators, to put a contemporary spin on Umiliani's original track? As previously shown in Alessandro Alessandroni's Afro Discoteca Reworked and Giuliano Sorgini's Africa Oscura Reloved, the two records out of which the idea for this series was born, the Apulian DJ and music production wizard is perfectly at ease with reworking Afro-cosmic disco sounds.

Starting this autumn, future RELOVED releases will come in two different formats: special-edition 12-inches focussing on individual composers/themes, and 7-inches co-curated by Little Beat More and each containing a rework (on side A) and its original (on side B). The underlying aim is to give new life to absolute gems from the great but still relatively underrated legacy of Italian film and library music, launching them into the world of international clubbing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Discomania (Jolly Mare Lifting) [feat. Jolly Mare]
2. Discomania (Versione Originale)

A cosmic coming together that sees two of Luke's secret weapons, re-edited and re-contextualised by the man himself to provide optimal dancefloor euphoria. A stalwart of the underground for nearly 40 years, Luke has become an appointed leader of the late night disenfranchised, with an unquestionable ability to pick records that make minds tick. Not least through his two E Soul Cultura compilations released on Mr Bongo over the past two years.

A taste that traverses genres as much as it does emotions and decades, who better to give an insight into the tracks he has chosen to edit, than the man himself. "I've been an avid collector of afro-beat house, techno and underground black heart disco since before the basement soul days of Electric Chair 30 years ago. Both these bombs were very much holy grail finds, plucked from the last four decades of digging in random crates of dusty vinyl all over the world."

First up, Thandi Zulu & The Young Five's interpretation of Pure Energy's early '80s disco power play - 'Love Game'. With a distinctive South African synth bass and killer keys combo, Luke explains the original has this "bonkers alchemy of heavy machine soul, uptempo rawness and a majestic disco evangelism", making it ripe for a re-edit.

On the B side, Lionel Pillay's Jazz dancer 'Plum'. "The original was a relentless 18- minute raw jam", Luke states, "which despite its late '70s South African origin kinda reminded me of a 1986 Chicago piano House record".

"These edits strip the tracks back and rebuild them, giving them more sonic weight with that looped up drum jacking militancy from the days of Chicago, combined with a boosted sense of transcendental, psychedelic, cosmic disco. They have always had such an explosive reaction on so many dancefloors including the heavier electronic club, so it felt only right to reshare them".

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Two sneaky cuts from Lord Luke's studio cache. There's no stopping him at the moment!

TRACK LISTING

1. Thandi Zulu & The Young Five - Love Games (Luke Una Edit)
2. Lionel Pillay - Plum (Luke Una Edit)

The latest release from Uncle Brian "It Just Seems Right" is their best work to date. This six track mini album is bigger and better for Salisbury's finest ska / pop punkers.

At long last a superb reissue from this massively influential band that featured Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and Mike Heirdon.

At long last a superb reissue from this massively influential band that featured Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and Mike Heirdon.

Mark Robinson and Trevor Kampmann are Uncomfortable Police. They have been collaborating for years. First as Fang Wizard (2011) and then Party Milk in 2023. While those LPs are primarily instrumental, this new 15-song 'Michelin Star Hardcore' album sees them both getting in front of the microphone as lead and background singers. Mark started and starred in the bands Unrest (who just released the 30th Anniversary edition of their 'Perfect Teeth' album with 4AD), Air Miami, Flin Flon, Grenadine and more. Trevor’s records his solo material until the moniker hollAnd for years and has produced and mastered albums by the likes of Cat Power and Explosions In The Sky. On Mark’s seminal Teenbeat label that he formed at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, just outside DC. This physical phonograph record contains one extra song that will not be available digitally.

TRACK LISTING

1. Exile On Wall Street
2. Exclusive Single
3. Pentagram Lamb
4. Cocaine Chow Mein
5. Power Corruption And Levis
6. JFA Per Se
7. Banana Cheer
8. Bullet Fever
9. Minor Threat, Burgers & Fries
10. Monochrome Hookup
11. Typeface Arms Race
12. Ra Ra Ya Ya
13. Bubblegum Guillotine
14. Emotion Explosion

The release of "Look! Who's Sorry Now?" follows the success of previous single "Windmills", backed with "Vodka Stomach" and "Set Me Free", this is intense psychedelic-surf-pop with twinges of the Modern Lovers, Twin Peaks and film noir.

Debut album from Under A Dying Sun formed in the Bay area from ex-members of Three Summers Gone, Nexus Six and Living Room War. It's a highly anticipated set of high-intensity emocore tracks that have a moody reflective edge but when it gets heavy (as it does-frequently) then brother look out!

The Balearic beacon's going up! Sweden's purveyor of mellow magic, the one and only Dan Lissvik, hit us up last week with a small batch of his brilliant new project Under Allt. Working in collaboration with Malmo musician Henric Claesson, the former Studio man is in the form of his life on this six tracker, and together the duo deliver a perfect journey of horizontal sonics.

Opener "Premiere" puts a dubby bassline over a drum box bossa, laying the foundation for the West Coast guitars and textured pads to take us for a pleasure cruise. The tempo drops a little for the melancholic Balea-rock sway of "Boboh", then picks back up as we swoon into the midpoint with the bass-led, solo laced title track. The tender surrender of "Depart" boasts a little downbeat dopeness on the B1, reminding us all this ain't their first rodeo, before the majorly Meditaranean and totally fucking brilliant "Tape Run" threatens to steal the show. Finally, "By Chance" sets the tempo to three spliffs in, turns the fuzz up and floats off into the mid afternoon sun, offering an alternative reality where Helter Skelter never happened.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Premiére
A2. Boboh
A3. Mellanrum
B1. Depart
B2. Tape Run
B3. By Chance

After the release of their critically acclaimed first album " Bluestaeb & S. Fidelity Present Underground Canopy " (MENACE - 2020), Underground Canopy (UC) was able to take time, due to the unforeseen period of doubt in 2020, to craft new compositions with a fresh approach. Throughout this forced period of introspection, the Parisian band experimented with more refined musical codes and colorful sounds.

Following the new additions of Raphaël Henry on drums and Christopher Johnson on electric guitar, UC was able to record and film a live rendition of four original pieces at the end of 2020, thanks to an invitation by the Centre des Arts d'Enghien-les-Bains's artistic program and SENSE. These music videos, each filmed in one shot by Romain Lalire, capture UC's musical digressions away from their mainly hip-hop and groove-infused jams and into new territory.

The resulting new EP "Séquences : Live Session" celebrates cinematic aesthetics and the suspension of time. It stands as an audiovisual testimonial to the band's continued progression. In this era marked by uncertainty but full of hope, what will come next?

TRACK LISTING

1. Crépuscule
2. Feelm
3. Le Lac
4. Slonnie Tendo
5. Générique

Parisian émigrés Underground Railroad return with a brand new album ‘White Night Stand’, a record that finally strikes the keynote of what the band are all about.

Across its 11 songs, produced by the band in London's Stamford Hill, guitars explore and meander, circling the biggest melodies of the band's career so far. It's intense and amped, touching and subtle at points and hugely tuneful, taking in early Radiohead and Liars as well as the beloved American alt rock bands that made the three fall in love with music in the first place.

There are moments of fitting intensity. Most notably 'Seagull Attack', the album's crescendo centrepiece, that clocks in at over nine minutes with its hypnotic repetitive guitar cascade. Then there's the distinctly Radioheadesque 'Ginkgo Biloba', another album highlight.

Further inspiration across the album came from ‘Twin Peaks’ and David Lynch, with Marion naming 'The Black Widow', 'The Orchid's Curse', and 'Traces To Nowhere' after episodes of the show, and 'Yellow Suit' in reference to his 'Blue Velvet' film.

TRACK LISTING

1. 8 Millimetres
2. We Were Slumbering
3. The Black Widow
4. The Orchid’s Curse
5. Russian Doll
6. Yellow Suit
7. Ginkgo Bilboa
8. Lucky Duck
9. Seagull Attack
10. Traces To Nowhere
11. Rude Awakening

The Underground Youth is a Manchester-born, Berlin-based group led by Craig Dyer that, on March 12th 2021, will release their tenth album, ‘The Falling’, via Fuzz Club Records. The new full-length sees Craig and band trade their acerbic post-punk melancholy for a more refined and stripped-back sound that, instead, enters the world of romantic, shadowy folk-noir. A marked departure from the primal intensity often heard on the band’s previous work, ‘The Falling’ showcases a softer, more cinematic musical landscape shaped by acoustic guitars, piano, accordion and a heavy presence of violin and string arrangements. It’s not just the instrumentation and atmospherics that have undergone a transformation on this record, it is also Craig’s most sincere and introspective work to date. “Lyrically this album finds me at my most honest and autobiographical. I still shroud the reality of what I have written within something of a fictional setting, but the honesty and the romance that shines throughout the record is more sincere than it has been in my previous work. The idea was to strip back the band to allow for lyrical breathing space”, Craig reflects on the album.

With the original plans of heading into the studio upon their return from their 2020 USA tour grinding to a halt – the tour cancelled midway through due to the Covid-19 outbreak and followed by months of isolation in their Berlin apartments – the album is also very much a product of the distressing and unfamiliar world we now find ourselves in. As a result of the pandemic, ‘The Falling’ was recorded between Craig and guitarist/producer Leo Kaage’s apartments-turned-home-studios (also in the band is Craig’s wife, the artist Olya Dyer, and Max James, who formerly played in Johnny Marr’s live band): “The album sees me going back to my writing approach from our earliest records, writing the demos as stripped back acoustic tracks at home. What started out as a set of romantic and deeply personal songs also took on the surrounding frustrations and feelings towards the situation we found ourselves in. Born from the heartbreak of how the worldwide pandemic has changed the industry we were thriving within, this album also functions as a love letter to the past.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The gloomy, post-punk atmospherics of Undergound Youth past is eschewed for a more subdued, Dylanny guitar and harmonica vibe. It's a testament to an act when they can shift direction quite so capably and 'The Falling' shows every bit of the skill of previous releases, but wrapped in a new skin.

TRACK LISTING

1) The Falling
2) Vergiss Mich Night
3) Egyptian Queen
4) And I…
5) A Sorrowful Race
6) For You Are The One
7) Cabinet Of Curiosities
8) Letter From A Young Lover 

Berlin via Manchester outfit The Underground Youth present their ninth album, Montage Images of Lust & Fear, on Fuzz Club Records. In support of the new album, and keeping to their prodigious work ethic, the band have also announced details of a mammoth tour across the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia that’ll see them visit 25 different countries. In its rawest moments (‘The Death of the Author’, ‘Blind II’), The Underground Youth’s haunting post-punk melancholia recalls the abrasive banshee-like noise of The Birthday Party and Suicide; jagged, shrieking guitars twist and turn as Craig Dyer’s dour vocals jerk from morose and impassioned to macabre screams.

Though this is an album of two sides; the more intense and challenging songs punctuated by heartfelt and solemn ballads (‘Too Innocent To Be True’, ‘This Anaesthetised World’) that are aided by the additional lap steel guitar of Kristof Hahn (Swans) who plays on six of the album’s nine songs. This is The Underground Youth’s most intense and honest record yet - in the ambitious songwriting and live recording (a first for the band), as well as the lyrical subject matter. Talking about the album, Craig explains “Montage Images of Lust & Fear is inspired by the succession of experiences we are increasingly dealt by the media. Sex, violence, love, suspicion, desire, distress, etc.

The album acts as a montage itself, the subject of each song dealing with an aspect of either lust or fear. Like flicking through the channels on a television. Until the end you are overcome by white noise. Static.” Since the release of their aptly-titled eighth full-length, What Kind Of Dystopian Hellhole Is This?, in February 2017, the band have set out on four UK/European tours clocking in at over 100 shows (not including stand-alone gigs). If all that time touring has taught the band anything, it’s how to work together as a collective and Montage Images Of Lust & Fear is all the better for it - the first The Underground Youth record with all the band members involved in the writing. “Unlike previous albums in which I’ve written the tracks and taken them into the studio to record with or without the band, this record is the product of us all working on the music and arranging the songs together,” Craig explains: “We recorded the album live with the four of us playing in the same small room and with our guitarist Leo as producer, running back and forth from the mixing desk to the live room. As a result, the recording perfectly captures the raw intensity of our live performance, something we’ve never done before.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sins
2. Last Exit To Nowhere
3. The Death Of The Author
4. This Is But A Dream
5. Too Innocent To Be True
6. Blind
7. Blind II
8. I Can't Resist
9. This Anaesthetised 

Fuzz Club Records are reissuing the ‘Beautiful & Damned’ EP from The Underground Youth, the Blackpool-born and now Berlin-based band led by musician, poet and author Craig Dyer. A homage to the F. Scott Fitzgerald book of the same name, the 4 track EP confirmed Dyer’s obsession for the darker side of literature and poetry of the last two centuries, as well as his early DIY approach. Rigorously recorded in the band’s home studio with the help of producer James Shillito in early 2014, ‘Beautiful & Damned’ acted as a preview to their 2015 ‘Haunted’ LP. It was the first TUY material featuring synth and electronic equipment and also represented a significant shift to a much darker sound and lyrical content, as anticipated by their first single/video ‘Naked’ – a fan-favourite to this day that exhibits a perfect encounter between the atmospheres of the Cocteau Twins and the early Creation Records sound. The 2021 reissue of the EP comes on a coloured 10” with remastered audio.

TRACK LISTING

1) Behind
2) Damned
3) Naked
4) Shadow

Berlin-based post-punk band The Underground Youth, led by Blackpool-born musician and author Craig Dyer, return with their twelfth studio album ‘Décollage’. Self-written, recorded and produced by Dyer, the album is an exercise in artistic deconstruction in both name and form, marking a decisive musical shift. “‘Décollage is the art of creating an image by ripping, tearing away or removing pieces of an original existing work’. My idea was to apply this technique to music”, he explains. “I built walls of static coated hip-hop drum samples, layers of Lee Hazlewood style string arrangements and Serge Gainsbourg inspired mellotron melodies, then I began tearing away at these beautiful, chaotic walls of noise, exposing a new sound for The Underground Youth.” The result, Dyer says, is “a trip-hop infused soundtrack to a collection of lyrics dealing with adoration, ancestry, originality, hallucinations of revolution and a hope that something better can be born from the ashes of the horror that exists in our world.” From moments of ghostly minimalism to sweeping crescendos of noise and melody, there is a shadowy, dreamlike quality to the songs here. If its predecessor ‘Nostalgia’s Glass’ (2023) mined a more introspective nostalgia, ‘Décollage’ feels more hauntological in nature – tearing apart and re-transforming what once was in search of a future left spinning from reel-to-reel on warped and distorted old tape. Alongside Dyer, The Underground Youth is comprised of drummer and visual artist Olya Dyer, guitarist Leonard Kaage (who also assisted with post-production on the record) and bassist Samira Zahidi. Initially formed as a solo project by Dyer in 2008, the band has sinced released 11 – now 12 – studio albums and 4 EPs, evolving a unique sound that has over the years ranged from cinematic lo-fi psychedelia and raw melancholic post-punk to gothic folk-noir. Throughout they have maintained a devoted global following continuously built upon by the band’s extensive touring through Europe, Asia and North America.

TRACK LISTING

1. You (The Feral Human Thunderstorm)
2. One Of The Dreamers
3. I Was There
4. From The Ashes Of Our Age
5. Father
6. Calliope
7. Your Beloved Hollywood
8. Believe In Something

Manchester's The Underground Youth is here with with yet another hauntingly beautiful record that blends shoegaze, post-punk and psychedelia. TUY is the name under which Manchester’s underground poet, Craig Dyer, has produced his records since 2009. In 2011, Fuzz Club Records started putting out his prolific catalogue, bringing to light a number of LPs and singles that had only circulated virally on the Internet. Since then, TUY, with Craig and Olya Dyer as the core of the band, have expanded to a five piece, gaining a solid international fan-base and touring all around the UK and Europe.

Drowned In Sound said of their Eindhoven set: “combining the mesmeric rhythms of The Velvet Underground - Olya Dyer's driving beats make her the new psych generation's Mo Tucker - with rippling feedback associated with Bad Moon Risingera Sonic Youth and a dash of the Mary Chain thrown in as well, they're a captivating force”. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Manchester's Underground Youth return with another slice of post-everything psych-rock-tronica. Combining beautiful guitar melodies and repeated vocal refrains with overwhelming pastoral electronic washes, this is a collection founded on indie pioneers past, but expanded upon to the Nth degree and updated. 'Drown In Me' is a particularly accomplished slice of synth-heavy industrial sadness, interspersed with bursts of cautiously optimistic shoegaze-y guitars. Nothing too sunny about this, but it's nice to wallow in the bleakness of life sometimes, and there really is no better way to do it. A soundtrack to industrial ruins, and rainy evenings. Highly recommended.

TRACK LISTING

1. Collapsing Into Night
2. Haunted
3. Dreaming With Maya Deren
4. Self Inflicted
5. Drown In Me
6. The Girl Behind
7. Slave
8. Deep Inside Of Me
9. Returning To Shadow

To celebrate its ten-year anniversary, Fuzz Club Records are reissuing The Underground Youth’s 2011 ‘Low Slow Needle’ EP on 10” vinyl with remastered audio. ‘Low Slow Needle’s hauntingly minimal, neo-psychedelic melancholy provides a more lo-fi snapshot of the now-Berlin-based band’s earlier days – when The Underground Youth was more of a DIY solo endeavour for Blackpool-born musician Craig Dyer, as opposed to the much-adored, full-band, international touring force that it is now. Looking back on ‘Low Slow Needle’, Dyer said: “The EP was recorded in September 2011, I had just returned to the UK from St. Petersburg where Olya [now drummer in The Underground Youth] and I had just got married.

Olya had to stay in Russia to finalise her paperwork before we would move into our first home together in Manchester. It was a difficult time, being apart after just getting married, and so I distracted myself by working on these songs that would become the Low Slow Needle EP. It was sort of my love letter to that period, looking back and also looking to the future. I worked closely with mine and Olya's friend in St. Petersburg, Daria Xenofontova, who gave her beautiful voice to my words and featured on three of the most popular songs on the EP, 'Midnight Lust', 'Addiction' and 'Blue'. These three songs still remain popular with our fans, who still request we play them live to this day.” When compared with the cinematic folk-noir heard on the band’s tenth album, the newly-released ‘The Falling’ (2021), what we find here captures a more stark and stripped-back The Underground Youth as the project was about to come out of its embryonic phase: “All five tracks were recorded in my bedroom and I really wanted to strip back the sound, to give a romantic feel of that period for me. To consider it 10 years on, it feels like the beginning to the next step of the journey, my life in Manchester with Olya, making contact with Casper at Fuzz Club and signing up with the label (this came just after the release of Low Slow Needle) and us putting together the first incarnation of TUY's live band (again this followed the release of the EP). So, in a way, this record marked the end of the first era of The Underground Youth, and in doing so, paved the way for the next.”

TRACK LISTING

1) Midnight Lust
2) On Your Screen
3) Addiction
4) Blue
5) Witchcraft

Chicago house don Glenn Underground digs further into his archive of classic funk & disco edits and comes up with 4 more of his favorite dancefloor weapons. Includes classics from Loose Joints, Machine, The Isley Brothers, and Le Cop. Very limited hand-stickered white labels in paper sleeves. HEAT! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: More exquisite audio surgery from the Chi-town wizard. While Rahaan and the Hot Biscuit crew attempt the steal the edits crown; GU offers up some serious competition through his Classiques series; each and every one essential.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Le Cop - Move Your Body (A Fire House Chicago Classique)
A2. Machine - Marisa (GU Edit)
B1. Loose Joints - Tell You Today (GU Edit)
B2. The Isley Brothers - Hurry Up And Wait (GU's Extended Version)

The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1975 and released their third album ‘Positive Touch’ in 1981 which peaked at #17 in the UK Charts.

The Undertones' Positive Touch marks the departure from speedy pop-punk of their first two debut albums though the songwriting remains as tight and lively with plenty of hooks that keep you listening.

The punk-derived energy is almost entirely gone, replaced by a more varied and softer instrumental palette that features new textures like piano (courtesy of Paul Carrack, then in Squeeze) recorders and brass instrumentation.

Features the lovely "Julie Ocean" which has an undercurrent of anxiety, as well as much faster tracks like the pounding opener "Fascination" and the near-paranoid "His Goodlooking Girlfriend" are downright nerve-wracking.

This reissue is an exact replica of the embossed original sleeve and has been pressed on white colour vinyl for the first time. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Fascination
Julie Ocean
Life's Too Easy
Crisis Of Mine
You're Welcome
His Goodlooking Girlfriend
The Positive Touch
Side B
When Saturday Comes
It's Going To Happen
Sigh And Explode
I Don't Know
Hannah Doot
Boy Wonder
Forever Paradise

The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1975 and released their fourth album ‘The Sin Of Pride’ in 1983 which peaked at #43 in the UK Album Charts.

The Sin of Pride was by far the most exploratory album the Undertones ever issued. For their fourth album, the band injected more post-punk dance into their growing soul sound and so the album is looser and more focused on mood and groove than their previous titles.

The record still offers some classic tracks from the Northern Irelanders, including ‘’Got To Have You Back", "Chain of Love" and fan favourite "The Love Parade’’.

Covers such as Leon Ware's "Got to Have You Back," which opens the LP, and Smokey Robinson's "Save Me," which closes it, are bookends for a moving blend of funky, driving, deeply textured psychedelic soul music that makes pearls of tracks such as "Untouchable".

This reissue is an exact replica of the original release and has been pressed on plum colour vinyl for the first time. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Got To Have You Back
Valentine's Treatment
Luxury
Love Before Romance
Untouchable
Bye Bye Baby Blue
Side B
Conscious
Chain Of Love
Soul Seven
The Love Parade
Save Me
The Sin Of Pride

The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1975 and released their debut album ‘The Undertones’ in 1979 which peaked at #13 in the UK Charts.
John and Damian O'Neill partnered infectious guitar hooks to '60s garage, '70s glam rock, with Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver. Those qualities came together on their breakout hit "Teenage Kicks," whose simplicity harked back to '60s ideals of when the song was king.

This classic debut record infuses so much unabashed joy in two-minute three-chord pop songs, and there's little pretension in their unapologetically teenage worldview, that even the darker hints of life in songs like the suicide-themed "Jimmy Jimmy" are delivered with a sense of optimism at odds with so many of their contemporaries.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Family Entertainment
2. Girls Don't Like It
3. Male Model
4. I Gotta Getta
5. Teenage Kicks
6. Wrong Way
7. Jump Boys
8. Here Comes The Summer
Side B
1. Get Over You
2. Billy's Third
3. Jimmy Jimmy
4. True Confessions
5. (She's A) Runaround
6. I Know A Girl
7. Listening In
8. Casbah 

Uncompromising, vehement and bestial metallic hardcore characterised by unrelenting bloody throat screaming, searing guitar breaks and a steamhammer rhythm section. As angry a record as I've heard all year. Not for the faint hearted...

"A few months ago it was decided that OGen004 would be a vinyl and digital release of some poems by Jack Underwood. We had no real idea how much interest would be generated by a 7" single of poetry but everyone who had heard Jack's poetry seemed to like it and the idea was we would treat it like any other release of a song by a band - we thought that if we didn't make out we thought it was a little odd that nobody else would."

This release documents the coming together of two fallible musical instrument systems and their creator-operators. In June 2023, Graham Dunning's Mechanical Techno and Sam Underwood's Acoustic Modular System took a train journey to Galerie Paradise in Nantes, France. Following a period of exploration, points of cohesion, jeopardy and happenstance were exploited to create these nine unruly pieces that appeared initially on the ultra-limited vinyl release on the gallery’s record label. Now they celebrate a new pressing of Beaux Timbres on Accidental.

Using innovative methods, they create abstract, rhythmical and textural experimental soundscapes. Graham uses an extended turntable: a regular DJ turntable with numerous sensors, modified vinyl records and synthesizers creating irregular rhythmic patterns. Sam presents his Acoustic Modular System: a device for creating acoustic sounds with bellows, feedback and chaotic sequencers.

Beaux Timbres has been performed twice as part of the artists’ residency in Nantes and their machines haven't met up again since. All of their collaborations work like this. They develop their machines independently and they tend to meet up for a few days before a gig to get them acquainted again.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rôtation Côsmik
2. Les Yeux Avides
3. Pest Modern +
4. Ecusson
5. Biscuit And Milk
6. Beaux Timbres
7. Air
8. Prix Libre
9. Machines A Musique

What is "Drift"?

• It’s precisely one year inside the minds of Underworld.

• It’s a journey that began on 1st November 2018 when Underworld released the track "Another Silent Way" and set off with no map, no fixed destination and a simple mantra ('Drift is the opposite of ‘normal’ or ‘usual’ practice; we’ll do this until we’re dust'). Rick Smith and Karl Hyde’s aim was to create and publish music and film episodically for 52 weeks and see where the journey took them. Within a few weeks, the experiment found its own path, prompting the electronic pioneers to react to previous releases and create new works accordingly. Over time, the duo’s innate curiosity opened up a unique space in which they could experiment, learn and explore new frontiers - together and with others (including Tomato’s Simon Taylor, Australian improv-trance band The Necks, techno producer Ø [Phase], Japanese noise band Melt-Banana, economics writer Aditya Chakrabortty and members of Black Country, New Road). During the 52 weeks, five self-contained episodes were released (respectively in November, January, March, May and August) - collectively, they form "DRIFT Series 1". 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: An impressively on-going, interactive, year-long project from the band culminates in the album's actual release in October. Always keen to push the envelope, the idea behind this is very satisfying.

TRACK LISTING

Appleshine
This Must Be Drum Street
Listen To Their No
Border Country
Mile Bush Pride
Schiphol Test
Brilliant Yes That Would Be
S T A R (Rebel Tech)
Imagine A Box
Custard Speedtalk

First released in 2002 – This 2025 reissue of 'A Hundred Days Off' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

Review from 2002:
This is everything you want and expect from an Underworld LP! It's full of richly textured techno and tech-house tracks (vocal or instrumental) with the occasional lush slowie thrown in for good measure. As good as anything else they've done, but unlikely to get them any new converts. Includes the fantastic "Two Months Off" single.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mo Move
2. Two Months Off
3. Twist
4. Sola Sistim
5. Little Speaker
6. Trim
7. Ess Gee
8. Dinosaur Adventure 3D
9. Ballet Lane
10. Luetin

First released in 2016 – This 2025 reissue of  'Barbara Barbara We Face A Shining Future' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

Review from 2016:
Underworld duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith return with their first new studio album in six years. It’s fair to say that 'Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future' finds the pair creatively reborn. Its seven tracks are fleet-footed, raw and spontaneous - a direct result of a strict working process in the studio that saw Smith and Hyde write entirely new music each time they met. That process has helped produce an album that stands alongside the recently reissued classics 'dubnobasswithmyheadman' and 'Second Toughest In The Infants'.

So what’s there in the shining future? The opening punch of a two-note detuned bass riff crunching over relentless percussion; the elegiac swoop of strings as they stretch out across off-world electronics; a demented lupine howl that curls itself into an unshakeable earworm; celestial techno and South American acoustics; voices that warp into harmonic riffs; found lyrics that form fine-tuned monolgues; head music to dance to.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Exhale
2. If Rah
3. Low Burn
4. Santiago Cuatro
5. Motorhome
6. Ova Nova
7. Nylon Strung

First released in 2010 – this 2025 reissue of 'Barking' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

"Barking" is Underworld's sixth studio album, but the first time Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have collaborated with other producers. The record enlists the help of techno producers Mark Knight and D. Ramirez, plus a whole cast of brilliant and like-minded producers from across the spectrum of modern dance music to add personal touches to the band’s original material. Enter Welsh drum and bass artist High Contrast, Dubfire, Bristol-based dub step producers Appleblim and Al Tourettes and long term Underworld team member Darren Price.

The question is, with such a glittering cast of extras, how does it actually sound? From the first undulating pulses of submariner bass, the first vocals - soft like a whisper in the ear - and the first fizz of hi-hats that force along the pace, the sound is unmistakably Underworld. Electronics wrapped effortlessly around songs; streams of consciousness lyrics that form indelible images; a perfectly balanced mix of melody and rhythm. Underworld’s sixth studio album is a thundering return to form, although it’s fair to say that the band responsible have never really been below par. Like the bomb on the Icarus II in Sunshine, this new process of working had the effect of not so much reigniting a creativity within the band as exploding it into myriad new fragments. And through all of this, brilliantly and uniquely, it sounds just like Underworld.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bird 1
2. Always Loved A Film
3. Scribble
4. Hamburg Hotel
5. Grace
6. Between Stars
7. Diamond Jigsaw
8. Moon In Water
9. Louisiana"

First released in 1999 – this 2025 reissue of 'Beaucop Fish' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

"Beaucoup Fish" is the fifth album by Underworld, released in 1999. Following the huge success of the single "Born Slippy" from its use in the film Trainspotting, Beaucoup Fish was Underworld's most anticipated release. It spawned several successful singles, including "Push Upstairs", "Jumbo" and "Moaner", which was previously used in the film Batman & Robin. "Beaucoup Fish" was well-received critically (one review calling it 'electronica's "The Dark Side of the Moon"') and remains Underworld's most successful album, with over one million copies sold. It is the last studio album to feature Darren Emerson who departed in 2001 and third album by the techno / house orientated version of Underworld which became active in about 1991/1992 (tracks were being released around this time under the names Lemon Interupt and Underworld). I personally remember this being a particularly arresting album in 1999, with a rollercoaster of dynamics which took you to the dizzying heights of techno stompers "Push Upstairs" & "King Of Snake" and down to the come-down frazzled lullabies of "Skym" and "Winjer" via the Portishead-esque introspection of "Push Downstairs" and the baggy breakbeats of "Bruce Lee". A classic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cups
2. Push Upstairs
3. Jumbo
4. Shudder/King Of Snake
5. Winjer
6. Skym
7. Bruce Lee
8. Kittens
9. Push Downstairs
10. Something Like A Mama
11. Moaner

First released in 1995 – this 2025 reissue of 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

Having seen their synth-rock band Freur grind to a halt in 1989, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith relocated to Romford, hooked up with DJ Darren Emerson and became the art-rock reinvented as techno outfit Underworld. Featuring Smith's stream of consciousness vocals (created by taking a pen an paper with him and “mapping out journeys across cities at night”) and Smith, Emerson and Hyde's immense electronica / techno cuts (equally inspired by early influences like Kraftwerk, Steve Reich, Hawkwind and  Tangerine Dream as the early 90s Romford rave scene) 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' is a landmark 1990s techno album. With Emerson on hand to road test tracks in his DJ sets, the album has key dancefloor winners, but also works a home-listening full length LP. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Dark & Long
2. Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You
3. Surfboy
4. Spoonman
5. Tongue
6. Dirty Epic
7. Cowgirl
8. River Of Bass
9. M.E.

First released in 2007 – this 2025 reissue of 'Oblivion With Bells' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

Review from 2007:
Five years on from "A Hundred Days Off", Messrs Hyde and Smith return with a new Underworld album. Opening with the single "Crocodile", the album continues in a club-track vein, complete with Hyde's stream of consciousness vocals, before dropping the lush ambient track "To Heal", perhaps influenced by their recent work with Gabriel Yared on the "Breaking And Entering" soundtrack. Next up "Ring Road" heads back to the early 80s and 23 Skidoo / Byrne and Eno for inspiration, and is book-ended by another ambient winner "Glam Bucket". Like The Chemical Brothers, those other purveyors of 'dance albums that indie kids can buy', Underworld show here that they have kept up with what's been going on in dance music over the intervening years (updating equipment, adding a glitch here and there), while retaining their own distinctive sound and still remaining relevant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crocodile
2. Beautiful Burnout
3. Holding The Moth
4. To Heal
5. Ring Road
6. Glam Bucket
7. Boy, Boy, Boy
8. Cuddle Bunny Vs The Celtic Villages
9. Faxed Invitation
10. Good Morning Cockerel
11. Best Mamgu Ever

First released in 1996 – this 2025 reissue of 'Second Toughest in the Infants' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

Originally released in March 1996, 'Second Toughest In The Infants' is Underworld’s masterpiece. Following 1994’s groundbreaking predecessor 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' (the record that cemented the band’s reputation as one of the UK’s most important dance acts), 'Second Toughest…' was the point they forged out alone, in turn creating some of the most forward thinking electronic music this country has ever produced.

TRACK LISTING

1. Juanita : Kiteless : To Dream Of Love
2. Banstyle/Sappy's Curry
3. Confusion The Waitress
4. Rowla
5. Pearl's Girl
6. Air Towel
7. Blueski
8. Stagger

Welcome to Strawberry Hotel.

Here, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lines while scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produce ghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead, removed from the overheard; words borrowed from the ether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimes reappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side to side. Each track a very different room - some soundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drum and robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer of melody and euphoric noise - and each room unmistakably, uniquely Underworld. The only advice from Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde upon entering: “Please don’t shuffle.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Poppies
2. Denver Luna
3. Techno Shinkansen
4. And The Colour Red
5. Sweet Lands Experience
6. Lewis In Pomona
7. Hilo Sky
8. Burst Of Laughter
9. King Of Haarlem
10. Ottavia
11. Denver Luna (acapella)
12. Gene Pool
13. Oh Thorn!
14. Iron Bones
15. Stick Man Test

Motown producer and songwriter Norman Whitfield assembled The Undisputed Truth to further explore the psychedelic soul he had been developing with the Temptations on songs like ‘Cloud Nine’ and ‘Psychedelic Shack’.

Joe Harris, Billie Calvin and Brenda Evans were assembled as the vocal front-line and their first single was ‘Save My Love For A Rainy Day’/’Since I’ve Lost You’ that was released on Gordy in February 1971 and got to #43 on the R&B Chart.

It was followed by ‘Smiling Faces Sometimes’/’You Got The Love I Need’ that was a massive hit single getting to #2 R&B and #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their debut album “The Undisputed Truth” followed and not only contained all four tracks issued on 7” but an almost interstellar version of ‘Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today)’, ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ as well as a very soulful prowl through Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. Tracks like ‘California Soul’ and ‘Aquarius’ also ticked the psychedelic soul box. All told it was a fantastic debut and sold strongly.

Amazingly this fantastic album has not been repressed since 1972. Thus Ace are delighted to put it back into the record racks pressed on 180gm black vinyl.

With the planet still a ‘Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today)’ records like this speak to both an old and new generation. Good music never goes out of fashion.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE ONE
1. YOU GOT THE LOVE I NEED
2. SAVE MY LOVE FOR A RAINY DAY
3. CALIFORNIA SOUL
4. AQUARIUS
5. BALL OF CONFUSION
(THAT'S WHAT THE WORLD IS TODAY)

SIDE TWO
1. SMILING FACES SOMETIMES
2. WE'VE GOT A WAY OUT LOVE
3. SINCE I'VE LOST YOU
4. AIN'T NO SUN SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE
5. I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
6. LIKE A ROLLING STONE

"The Oncoming Storm", Unearth's third album and Metal Blade debut is probably their best to date, some achievement following on as it does from the critically acclaimed "Stings Of Conscience" and "Endless" LPs. This release should definitely cement their position as nu-metal/hardcore innovators, a reputation that has earned them tour slots with In Flames, Hatebreed, Lamb Of God, Killswitch Engage, Soilwork and Chimera. Vocalist Trevor Phipps gives his most powerful performance, alternating hardcore razored throat rage with a cleaner vocal style; all beautifully set against a burning double seven string guitar assault and bruising double bass, fuelling crushing breakdowns. Gorgeous, apocalyptic and articulate.

A fine emocore release from a band who are compared to Jets to Brazil, Joshua and Chamberlain. Elegant, simple yet with complex undercurrents. Strong songs and a great debut.

Arriving at their fourth album with only eight candles on the cake, unhappybirthday have always tempered youthful energy with an impressive maturity, but this is the moment when they truly come of age. Armed with deeper grooves, tighter arrangements and unconventional hooks, the German trio have found the perfect balance between song and sound on their most irresistible work to date.

The briefest trip through their back catalogue unearths a wealth of artefacts from an unremembered 80s, be it the cassette tape fuzz which saturated early releases or the genuine love of the decade’s underground outcasts. Recall a distant teenage memory of hours lost in an older, cooler friend’s record collection; a blur of bedsit anarchists, jangling romantics and monochrome poets alive in polyphony. The result is a mirage of Post-punk and Postcard, Penthouse and Pavement, inspired by the past but but impossible to pigeonhole. Ever referential but never reverential, unhappybirthday have that rare ability to distill their influences into an innovative expression far more potent than the sum of its parts.

For mondchateau, their second LP on the mighty Tapete Records, unhappybirthday swap Cocteau cool for cocktails by the pool, fusing their sophisticated pop with the louche grooves and ambient beauty of Deutsche Balearic.

Taking a stroll through Miko’s garden, the trio find Sade under the Kalimba Tree, enjoy an I.C. spritz and savour the tristeza of the late afternoon sun. Punctuated by rhythm box exotica and Diana Kim’s limber bass, the nine songs lilt and sway from T.V. Scene to Same Old Scene, the beguiling combination of optimism and melancholy yielding a yearning beauty. Equal parts brooding and ringing, Tobias Rutkowski’s guitar is the embodiment of this tension, while the digital keys, glassy mallets and moonlit chimes of Daniel Jahn’s SQ1 provide a shimmering home for his seductive croon and husky introspection.

Their ongoing collaboration with Berlin producer Jonas Meyer continues to lend a maturity and clarity to the unhappybirthday sound, while guest vocals from the likes of indie pop icon Andreas Dorau and label-mate Sebastian Lee Phillip (Die Wilde Jagd) add nuance and texture to their sonic palette.

A resort collection for SS20, mondchateau offers horizontal dancers, beachfront dreamers and tidal drift; an aspirational statement undercut by the inescapable feeling that the summer ends only too soon.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Hey you! That's right, you with the LNCC subscription - you can put the acoustic guitar down, the Balearic record of 2020 is already here, and it hails from Hamburg. The latest evolution of the Unhappybirthday sound sees the German group in sophisti-pop mode, serving nine swooning, crooning beauties dripping in resort cool. You'll find hints of Blue Nile, Flash & The Pan, Linda Di Franco and Talk Talk in here, but the strength of songwriting and melodic purity ensure 'Mondchateau' stands on its own.

TRACK LISTING

1. Margo
2. Cristal
3. Station
4. Delon
5. Burgund
6. Saiso
7. Mondpalais
8. Plaza
9. Dunster

Unhappybirthday from Hamburg have been releasing dreamy Avant-pop records and touring Europe consistently for over 10 years now. "Stella Loops" circles around the vast cosmos offering refuge from the feeling of confinement that has enveloped us all over the last few years and to help achieve this Unhappybirthday have mixed their trademark elements of Electronica, House and Ambient music and for this release invited a guest list that includes Andreas Dorau, Martha Rose and Jimi Tenor to contribute.