Introducing "The Sevens" - A Sonic Revelation from A Place To Bury Strangers Prepare to embark on a transcendent auditory journey with "The Sevens" a series of four 7-inch vinyl records that unveil a treasure trove of previously unreleased tracks from A Place To Bury Strangers' critically acclaimed 6th album, "See Through You"

Renowned for their visceral sonic assault and immersive live performances, A Place To Bury Strangers has cemented the end-all-be-all space for over-the-top post- punk / shoegaze destruction. With this special vinyl collection, the band invites listeners to delve deeper into their sonic universe, exploring uncharted territories and hidden gems. You'll Be There For Me/ When You're Gone is the fourth release.

"When looking back at the recordings that were done around the time of See Through You there were a bunch of great tracks that just captured life back then and really had something incredible going on. Even though they are a bit raw and a bit personal, I thought it would be a mistake if they didn't come out. I thought it would be best to go back to my roots and put out a series of 7"s the way A Place To Bury Strangers started. That strange weird format where the tracks each speak for themselves, no album context to muddy the water. These tracks are such a contrast to the way I am feeling now and the current songs we've been working on so slip back into this moment in time." says APTBS' Oliver Ackermann.

TRACK LISTING

1. You'll Be There For Me
2. When You're Gone

Influential jazz collective Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids return with an epic new opus, ‘Shaman!’, featuring a fresh line-up including original 1970s Pyramids member Dr. Margaux Simmons on flute Bobby Cobb on guitar, long-term associate Sandra Poindexter on violin, Ruben Ramos on bass, Gioele Pagliaccia on drums and Jack Yglesias on percussion. The band transitions from the political and social commentaries of 2018’s acclaimed ‘An Angel Fell’ into more introspective themes. “I wanted to use this album to touch on some of the issues that we all face as individuals in the inner space of our souls and our conscience,” explains Ackamoor. “The album unfolds over four Acts with personal musical statements about love and loss, mortality, the afterlife, family and salvation.”

Evolving around Ackamoor’s intricate compositions, the album takes us effortlessly across moods and emotions through a series of expansive, extended pieces. Starting with ritual, soul-searching, and masculine vulnerability on the title track, the band explores timeless existence on ‘Eternity’ and mourns the sudden loss of loved ones in the prescient ‘When Will I See You Again?’, a track which gains new relevance amidst the current COVID-19 crisis. Ackamoor pays tribute to his mentor Cecil Taylor on the angular ‘Theme For Cecil’ and renders homage to the ancestors on ‘Salvation’ and ‘The Last Slave Ship’, recalling the last ship to bring slaves to the US from Africa, the Clotilda. The superb ‘Virgin’ is an anthem of forgiveness, new beginnings and self-healing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Shaman!
2. Tango Of Love
3. Eternity
4. When Will I See You Again?
5. Salvation
6. Theme For Cecil
7. Virgin
8. The Last Slave Ship
9. Dogon Mysteries

“Listening closely, influential visions of aquatic realms, such as the mythic Atlantis, and evocations of flying birds (and, perhaps, humans) may reveal themselves. No matter if Statik inspires you to soar above or below the horizon, Actress and Smalltown Supersound promise you a safe and transcendent journey.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:

A1. Hell
A2. Static
A3. My Ways
A4. Rainlines
A5. Ray
A6. Six

Side B:

B1. Café Del Mars
B2. Dolphin Spray
B3. System Verse
B4. Doves Over Atlantis
B5. Mellow Checx 

2024 ushers in a brand new Barry Adamson album entitled, ‘Cut To Black’ The album swaggeringly embraces Adamson’s trademark genre hopping compositions, covering Pop, Soul, Jazz, Hip Hop and Gospel.

A must for fans of all things Cinematic Soul, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Post Punk, Massive Attack, Unloved and much more

TRACK LISTING

1. The Last Words Of Sam Cooke
2. Demon Lover
3. Cut To Black
4. Manhattan Satin
5. These Would Be Blues
6. Please Don’t Call On Me
7. Amen White Jesus
8. One Last Midnight
9. Was It A Dream?
10. Waiting For The End Of Time

From pirate radio to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, journalist and rapper Franklyn Addo pens an extraordinary narrative of the history, present and future of Grime music. The influence of Grime on contemporary British culture is difficult to understate. From fashion trends and evolving language to potent political statements, Grime is a musical juggernaut that has reverberated far throughout British society.

Chronicled for the first time in powerful literary prose, Addo intelligently documents the genre's cultural explosion and investigates how it became the voice of a generation. A phenomenal insight into the captivating and electrifying genre that has taken the British music scene by storm, A Quick Ting On: Grime is an essential and long-awaited read for Stormzy aficionados and grime newcomers alike.

Grammy®-winning Arooj Aftab is set to release Night Reign, the follow up to her critically-acclaimed album Vulture Prince, on 31 May on Verve Records. Aftab makes the night the focus of this nine-song collection. Entirely in her own voice and through her own story, she delves into the multifaceted, bold and fascinating realm that comes to life after dark. Some nights are for falling in love, some are for solitude and introspection, some are to be annoyed at a forced social gathering–and so go the stories of Night Reign. The album features new friends like Cautious Clay shredding on flute, Moor Mother echoing Aftab’s sentiment of how cruel the world is, and Chocolate Genius aka Marc Anthony Thompson lending his tender sensibilities to a song about being grounded. Longtime collaborators Petros Klampanis and Maeve Gilchrist also continue their musical partnership as core members of Arooj’s musical family. The resulting new music again showcases Aftab’s striking ability to build a thing of beauty from distinct elements. Night Reign is a clear departure from tradition or the reinvention of ancestral music. It’s a reflection of Aftab’s 15 years living in New York City and her unapologetic commitment to stay true to herself. With open-heartedness, candour and wit, Aftab lets us get even closer to her.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Aey Nehin
2. Na Gul
3. Autumn Leaves (ft. James Francies)
4. Whiskey
5. Zameen (ft. Chocolate Genius, Inc.)
Side B
1. Raat Ki Rani (version Exclusive To Vinyl)
2. Saaqi (ft. Vijay Iyer)
3. Bolo Na (ft. Moor Mother & Joel Ross)
4. Last Night (Reprise) (ft. Cautious Clay, Kaki King, Maeve Gilchrist)

Tokyo based band and Afrobayashi pioneers Ajate are back with their third album: experience the explosive encounter of Afro groove and Japanese traditional Ohayashi music!

During a stay in West Africa in the late 2000's, Japanese musician Junichiro "John" Imaeda was taken aback by the similarities he felt between the Afrobeat that resonated in the streets of Accra, and the sounds of the "Ohayashi", the music played during ancestral Japanese festivals, in which John had participated since his childhood.

On his return to the archipelago in 2009, Imaeda created Ajate, a collective of ten passionate musicians. Together they started crafting music that moves from one world to another, with intertwined roots. The drums, flutes and bells are joined by curious instruments handmade by John himself with the essential material of the Japanese countryside: bamboo. The "Jaate", an amplified xylophone-balafon equipped with piezoelectric sensors on each of its keys, or the "Piechiku", a bamboo version of the Malian "Ngoni" or the Gnawa "Guembri", equipped with shamisen strings and connected to an arsenal of guitar pedals, give Ajate an absolutely unique sound. Powerful and catchy Japanese female and male vocals bring the final touch to an incredible groove where Afrobeat and Ohayashi music are woven together so seamlessly that Ajate has managed to capture a truly distinct fusion. The band sings about the power of human connections, the force of being and living all together, the joy of sharing, and the beauty of life. Ajate's music is a magnificent example of the way sounds are able to migrate in contemporary music.

The band's explosive live performances have taken Ajate to the most prestigious stages in Japan, such as the Sukiyaki Meets The World and Fuji & Sun festivals. The release on French label 180g of their "Abrada" and "Alo" albums, in 2017 and 2020 respectively, opened the doors to Europe, with memorable shows at the Transmusicales de Rennes festival - followed by a session on KEXP (Seattle, USA) - at Jazz a Vienne, and at WOMAD UK, among many others. With their brand new album "Dala Toni", Ajate prove once again that they are at the forefront of global music "made in Japan".

TRACK LISTING

1. Waya Yawa
2. Iduchihemo
3. Nagi Yoni
4. Kopi Lakanka
5. Roghinaware

Aigul Akhmetshina is the fiery young mezzo taking the opera world by storm. In her debut album Aigul, the illustrious young opera singer Aigul Akhmetshina finds her voice in the role of Carmen and traces a path through her own remarkable journey. Her story is one of determination and perseverance against the odds, starting in a rural village in the mountains of Bashkortostan. She left home aged 14 to pursue her singing career. Despite facing rejection from a conservatory in Moscow, where she was told she lacked the right voice and appearance, at the age of 27 Aigul has already etched her name in history. She has become the youngest artist ever to take on the title role of Bizet’s Carmen at both the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, both of whom have created new productions around her. Performing the role all over the world, Aigul feels an affinity with the character.

Kalita are proud to announce the first ever 7” single reissue of what is possibly the most coveted gospel disco record in existence, the Al-Dos Band’s soulful masterpiece ‘Doing Our Thing With Pride’. This iconic reissue is backed by the band’s previously unreleased recording ‘Love Jones Coming Down’. At long last, Kalita revives this South Carolinian grail single, housed in a limited-edition picture sleeve. Originally penned and produced in 1976 by husband-and-wife duo William and Elizabeth Robinson in Greenville, South Carolina – a city steeped in musical heritage – the record was released in a run of just 200 copies the following year on their own label, Warmer Productions. ‘Doing Our Thing With Pride’ epitomises the best in uplifting crossover gospel disco, equally suited to both peaceful listening and dancefloor action. Despite garnering some attention upon its original release, the single struggled to make headway against the prevailing music forces of the time. Coupled with mounting academic and familial obligations, the release faded into obscurity, eventually becoming a highly sought-after gem, commanding exorbitant prices whenever an original copy surfaced for sale—a rarity that occurred only once every decade. Now, following their successful unearthing of the band’s unreleased album in 2021, Kalita present this remarkable record in a limited-edition 7” picture sleeve single.

TRACK LISTING

A. Doing Our Thing With Pride
B. Love Jones Coming Down

A human history told through clay, from the critically acclaimed author of The Foghorn's Lament.

'Clay contains infinite possibilities in its transmutations, evidenced on the shelves of our homes, our galleries and museums. Every time we make something with clay, we engage with the timelines that are in the material itself, whether it was dug from a clifftop, riverbed or pit. In firing what we make, we bestow the material with function, meaning, or feeling, and anchor its form in a human present... Objects made from clay contain marks of our existence that collectively tell the story of human history more completely than any other material. There is a reason there are so many pots in museums: because fired clay is one of the most effective keepers of stories we have.'

This book is a love letter to clay, the material that is at the beginning, middle and end of all of our lives; that contains within it the eternal, the elemental, and the everyday.

People have been taking handfuls of earth and forming them into their own image since human history began. Human forms are found everywhere there was a ceramic tradition, and there is a ceramic tradition everywhere there was human activity. The clay these figures are made from was formed in deep geological time. It is the material that God, cast as the potter, uses to form Adam in Genesis. Tomb paintings in Egypt show the god Khum at a potter's wheel, throwing a human. Humans first recorded our own history on clay tablets, the shape of the characters influenced by the clay itself. The first love poem was inscribed in a clay tablet, from a Sumerian bride to her king more than 4000 years ago.

Born out of a desire to know and understand the mysteries of this material, the spiritual and practical applications of clay in both its micro and macro histories, Clay: A Human History is a book of wonder and insight, a hybrid of archaeology, history and lived experience as an amateur potter.

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

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

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

The relatively short life of San Francisco’s Aluminum has so far yielded a single (Spinning Backwards, 2020) and an EP (Windowpane, 2022), but their debut LP, Fully Beat, overflows with tenured confidence and a singular style that deftly comprises shoegaze, big beat, and jangle pop. With influences ranging from Orbital, to Wipers, to The Avalanches and Sly and the Family Stone, theirs is a multifaceted take on established forms, fed through fuzz and led by honeyed, male-female vocal harmonies from Bay Area post-punk veterans Marc Leyda (of Wild Moth) and Ryann Gonsalves (of Torrey).

“Smile” begins with deceptive sparseness, adding neon swirls of stacked tremolo over a mesmerizing lyrical refrain, and hinting at the dynamism to come with understated grace and grit. “Always Here, Never There” is Fully Beat’s first pure hit of melodic pop: its liquid bass groove winds beneath a melancholy-sweet synth hook and Leyda’s plaintive vocals, while drummer Chris Natividad’s deep, pillowy snare and propulsive style maintain a driving pace. Lead single, “Behind My Mouth”, shifts gears into a big beat shuffle and howl of overdriven guitars, which relent to Gonsalves’ rolling bassline and playful, snarky vocal.

Composed across several weeks of experimentation, it is a prime iteration of Aluminum’s meticulous world of sound, which nevertheless carries an air of wry nonchalance. Asking, “Do you ever see behind my mouth?”, Gonsalves notes that the song “comes from a place of wanting to be understood authentically, and to communicate intentionally.”

This approach speaks to the album’s broader theme of exhaustion amid the demands of the modern grind: working unfulfilling jobs to pay exorbitant rent, feeling society break at the seams, and trying to maintain a meaningful personal life with the remaining scraps of morale. The response, then, must be to find joy. These songs were crafted over a half-dozen months in basements and practice spaces, creating an abundance of authentic passion and catharsis that’s as nostalgic and comforting as a cherished, tattered band t-shirt.

The closer, “Upside Down”, is a full-throttle blare of joyous release – “a straight-up love song,” according to Leyda. The deliberate choice to end it with a gradual fade, rather than a dramatic climax, smartly suggests the ambivalence of acceptance – perhaps fitting, when considering the immensity of the album’s subject matter. It also hints that there is much more to be said, and as such a rich and compelling debut, Fully Beat shows that Aluminum are only getting started.

TRACK LISTING

1. Smile
2. Always Here, Never There
3. Behind My Mouth
4. HaHa
5. Pulp
6. Beat
7. Everything
8. Call An Angel
9. Birds Flew Here
10. Upside Down

With 'Death Jokes', for the first time since the project's incarnation in 2006, the spiritual reflections and meditations of Amen Dunes are turned away from himself, and out sharply towards the world. The album is also a drastic turn musically and thematically, rooted in the electronic music of raves and of rap music he grew up with but never imagined himself able to make, playing like a scathing electronic essay on America’s culture of violence, dominance, and destructive individualism.

The work on 'Death Jokes' began just weeks before the first word of the pandemic came in the winter of 2019; it was completed three years later as we began to emerge from the worst. The album's meaning morphed as the pandemic went on, first a reflection on our attachment to form, and to ourselves, and then shifting into a solemn indictment of our culture’s blind spots as we misjudge and attack, veiled self-centeredness and self-importance masquerading as morality.

TRACK LISTING

1. Death Jokes
2. Ian
3. Joyrider
4. What I Want
5. Rugby Child
6. Boys
7. Exodus
8. Predator
9. Solo Tape
10. Purple Land
11. I Don’t Mind
12. Mary Anne
13. Round The World
14. Poor Cops 

Amery Sandford began releasing as Alpen Glow in 2020 after years playing in punk groups in Newfoundland and as half of Montreal pop duo Born At Midnite (Arbutus). Recorded in Montreal by David Carriere (TOPS, Marci), Patrick Holland, and Kristian North, Continue As Amery is a blast of melodic joie de vivre. On her debut Sandford brings her punk and DIY credentials into sharp focus on 8 perfect pop odes to city living, making mistakes and figuring it out as you go along. Suffuse with powerful imagery and an almost uncanny talent at spinning out hooks brimming with humour and spirit, Amery’s soundworld is informed by friendship, experience and by her day job as a renowned illustrator and visual artist. Beginning Alpen Glow in a spirit of fun and now shedding the alias, Amery’s ready to hotwire the nite.

Each song is rich with story. Mountain FM, named for the radio station in Sandford’s home town in the mountains of Alberta, launches into a tale of speeding, blasting the radio too loud, the giddy burning of rubber with no care in the world to slow you down. Featuring live band members Sarah Harris, Jack Bielli, and Frank Climenhage, the singer bristles to get out of her stifling hometown while lamenting the wide eyed adventurer who left for the big city. On Hotwire The Nite, Amery is out on the town, with imagery loaded with the night’s promise. Amery sings “Black candle / Dripping intel / Dagger hanging by an emerald handle / Holy roller that I just can’t have without my hand on an old flame,” diving in and out of fantasy and desire over a pulsating banger. Moments like these feel like a thesis on aural pleasure, with the production sleek and silky playfulness persisting throughout.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mountain FM 
2. Hotwire The Nite 
3. Spirit Is Broken 
4. Ennui 
5. Miracles 
6. Rocker Blues 
7. C9 (with Fireball Kid) 
8. Continue As Amery

Horace Andy [a.k.a.Sleepy] must process one of the sweetest and most distinctive voices in reggae music. 1951 in Kingston Jamaica. He cut his first track in 1966 for producer George ‘Phil’ Pratt, a tune called ‘Black Man’s Country’. But it was four years later his star really began to shine when he joined the stable of Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd’s Studio One. It was Coxsone Dodd who renamed him Andy after another of his leading artists Bob Andy, such was his belief in Horace’s writing talent and singing abilities. Still only twenty years of age Horace used his falsetto talent to the fore and cut some impressive tracks at 13 Brentford Road, Studio One’s headquarters. Such reggae standards as ’Skylarking’, ‘Just Say Who’, ‘Love of a Women’ and ‘Something on my Mind’ to name but a few. The early 1970’s saw Horace due to political reasons move on to work with producer Bunny Lee, a move that suited his talents and beliefs, Horace being an early advocate to the Rastafarian faith.The tracks which he cut with Bunny, which we concentrate on here gave his songs a rootsy feel. The rhythms often cut at Channel ONE and Randy’s Studio17 and finalised at King Tubby’s, provided a fine backbone for Horace to recut some of his earlier classics, along side his newer songs also to become reggae standards. Like ‘Money Money’, ‘Zion Gate’ the great ‘You are my Angel’ and a version of The Heptones ‘My Guiding Star’. The power of these recordings were such that the earlier tracks like ‘Skylarking’ became hits a second time around.Proving that the ‘you can’t keep a good tune down’ mantra was alive and kicking… …A golden time for Horace and Reggae music in general… Horace would go on to work with other producers like Everton Da Silva in 1977 creating the ‘In the Light’ album and the New York based Lloyd ‘Wackies’ Barnes in the 1980’s for his ‘Dancehall Style’ recordings. Most recently his work with Massive Attack has brought his majestic voice full circle and back into the arena once more. Those ‘Massive’ recordings and this dub collection here seem to fit side by side. Horace’s distinctive vocal riding over the rhythms adding a magic as only he can .....

RESPECT JAH FLOYD.

TRACK LISTING

1 Why Oh Why Dub
2 Dub Larking
3 Zion Dub
4 Dub Money 
5 A True Dub
6 Dub Guidance
7 Dub Say Who
8 Dub On My Mind
9 Love Of A Dub Band
10 Use This Dub
11 Dub Letter
12 Dub Angel
13 Bless This Dub*
14 Dub Ah Fulfil*
*CD Bonus Track

Animal Collective celebrate the 15-year anniversary of their seminal album Merriweather Post Pavilion with a deluxe vinyl repress via Domino. The album is pressed to colour vinyl for the first time, available as a 2xLP in Translucent Green and Bluish and comes in a reflective foil jacket. 

Merriweather Post Pavilion was universally acclaimed upon its release in 2009 and was named the #1 best album of the year by Pitchfork, MOJO, Clash, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, and Uncut. “Every once in a while, musicians sweep away the existing musical landscape to create something new,” stated NPR at the time. “Animal Collective is such a group, and its new Merriweather Post Pavilion is such an album.”

It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records of the 2000s with Uncut naming it “one of the landmark American albums of the century so far” and MOJO labelling it “astonishing”.

Numero’s second bundle of cover 45s is all things soulful.

The Rotterdam-based Another Taste electrifies Maxx Traxx’s 1984 Chicago boogie grail “Don’t Touch It,” which makes its debut on the 7” format here.

Colemine Records’ Say She She delivers a glamorous rendition of Jim Spencer’s yacht-disco hit “Wrap Myself Up In Your Love.”

Columbia Recording artist Leon Bridges effortlessly transforms Pastor T.L. Barrett’s “Like A Ship,” updating the 50 year old gospel soul classic for the 21st century. All three are housed in a newly imagined Numero custom sleeve, reflecting the many shades of our ongoing Eccentric Soul 45 imprint.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Another Taste - Don’t Touch It
B1. Maxx Traxx - Don’t Touch It

"The wash of flangers & shimmery reverb have been the foundation in Cali psych ever since the Byrds went electric. And while that sound might've dropped off occasionally, it never dropped out. The Velvets minimalist stylings were infused into the mix by The Dream Syndicate in the early 80's & thus a game changer was born. Clay Allison, Opal, Green On Red all took their charge from that current. Then the Shoegaze scene of the 90's looked at those bands as vectors, things got a little more drenched, so yet more seeds were sown into the fertile terroir. Cut to current climes & the bay area is teeming with the latest iterations: Children Maybe Later, Now, & Cindy easily come to mind. But curiously the band most steeped in the mohair constitution is April Magazine, who (thus far) have been content in the shadows. Up till now they've seemed like characters plucked out of a Kazuo Ishiguo novel-mysterious & ethereal-but perhaps this pressing of last year's cassette only release will flush them out. 'Wesley's Convertible Tape For The South' shows the band defly balancing all those that have come before them while also incorporating flourishes of Les Rallizes DeNudes, Hallelujahs & Nagisa Ni Te into the pageantry . So in a way, April Magazine is transforming the landscape yet again; denser, fuzzier, lush & wistfully challenging. 'Wesley's Convertible Tape For The South' is the band's 1st vinyl release stateside (an LP of older tracks was released last year via a UK only label) so no import tariffs! What were once whispers are now proclamations. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean you can't love them. So grab a copy & hug it out amongst yourselves." - Tom Lax (Siltbreeze Records).

The final part of this ‘A.R. Kane reissue collection is 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental pop sensibilities over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing compositions, the album did exactly what a great double-set should do - indulge the artists sprawling pursuit of their own imaginations but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop both transcends and toys with the listeners expectations. Jason Ankeny has noted that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of ‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a three year period in which the duo had made some of the most prophetic and revelatory music of the entire decade.

After ‘i’ the duo’s output became more sporadic with Tambala and Ayuli moving in different directions both geographically and musically, with only 1994’s ‘New Clear Child’ a crystalline re-fraction of future and past echoes of jazz, folk and soul, before the duo went their separate ways. Since then, A.R. Kane’s music has endured, not thanks to the usual sepia’d false memories that seem to maintain interest in so much of the musical past, but because those who hear A.R. Kane music and are changed irrevocably, have to share that universe which A.R. Kane opened up, with anyone else who will listen. Far more than other lauded documents of the late 80s it still sounds astonishingly fresh, astonishingly livid and vivid and necessary and NOW.

TRACK LISTING

1) Hello
2) A Love From Outer Space
3) Crack Up
4) Timewind
5) What’s All This Then?
6) Snow Joke
7) Off Into Space
8) And I Say
9) Yeti
10) Conundrum
11) Honeysuckleswallow
12) Long Body
13) In A Circle
14) Fast Ka
15) Miles Apart
16) Pop
17) Mars
18) Spook
19) Sugarwings
20) Back Home
21) Down
22) Supervixens
23) Insect Love
24) Sorry
25) Catch My Drift
26) Challenge

‘Sixty Nine’ the group’s debut LP that emerged in 1988 had critics and listeners struggling to fit language around A.R. Kane’s sound. As a title it was telling - the year of ‘Bitches Brew’, the year of ‘In A Silent Way’, the erotic möbius between two lovers - and as originally coined by the band themselves, ‘dream pop’ (before it became a free-floating signifier of vague import) was entirely apposite for the music A.R. Kane were making. Crafted in a dark small basement studio in which Tambala recalls the duo had “complete freedom - We wanted to go as far out as we could, and in doing so we discovered the point where it stops being music”. There was an irresistibly dreamy, somnambulant, sensual and almost surreal flow to ‘sixty nine’s sound, but also real darkness/dankness, the ruptures of the primordial and the reverberations of the subconscious, within the grooves of remarkable songs like ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Crazy Blue’. Alex’s plangent vocals floated and surged amidst exquisite peals of refracted feedback but crucially there was BASS here, lugubrious and funky and full of dread, sonic pleasure and sonic disturbance crushed together to make music with a center so deep it felt subcutaneous, music constructed from both the accidental and the deliberate, generous enough to dance with both serendipity and chaos. ‘sixty nine’ remains - especially in this remastered iteration - ravishing, revolutionary – Neil Kulkarni.

Dream POP, they called it. Given AR Kane’s Alex Ayuli once worked for advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, it’s no surprise that he and collaborator Rudy Tambala invented their own genre before critics could stick their oar in. It was a canny move, but more importantly, it was accurate: the music of AR Kane was made for dreamers, by dreamers, and its languor and longing made it particularly bewitching listening; their music is often smeared and blurry, happily lost in its own indefinable pleasures. “We wanted dream pop,” Tambala says, “that feeling of a dream where the rules are different. Dream logic.” -UNCUT REISSUE OF THE MONTH

"A.R. Kane carved out a unique musical path, welding elements of pop, psych, dub, electronica, funk, noise, jazz, ambient and more in a way that had never been done before. Or since. Their debut in particular is a work of unbridled brilliance." *Electronic Sound*

TRACK LISTING

A1. Crazy Blue
2. Suicide Kiss
3. Baby Milk Snatcher
4. Scab
5. Sulliday
B1. Dizzy
2. Spermwhale Trip Over
3. The Sun Falls Into The Sun
4. The Madonna Is With Child
5. Spanish Quay

A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and
artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that!

The duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in 1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of WHERE to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here – a tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.

The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. SimonReynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby Milk Snatcher
2. W.O.G.S
3. One Way Mirror
4. Up

Following their critically-acclaimed UK Top 20 album “As Days Get Dark”, Arab Strap return with their 2nd long player for Mogwai’s Rock Action Records with the excellent titled “I’m totally fine with it - don’t give a fuck anymore”. Almost 28 years after their debut, Arab Strap have never sounded more essential, and this new record is a fierce testament to their laser focus on wider horizons. Written and performed exclusively by Malcolm Middleton & Aidan Moffat, and finessed with longtime collaborator Paul Savage, the album furthers the band’s transformation from swooning, slow-core romantics to raging, alt-pop chroniclers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Allatonceness
2. Bliss
3. Sociometer Blues
4. Hide YOur Fires
5. Summer Season
6. Molehills
7. Strawberry Moon
8. You’re Not There
9. Haven’t You Heard
10. Safe & Well
11. Dreg Queen
12. Turn Off The Light

Especial is a label always on a mission to unearth left-of-centre perspectives on club music. This new EP, Be Honest, is just that from long-time friends Lipelis and Arsenii, who are based in Belgrade and New York but seek inspiration in the New York sounds of the 80s and hook up with Gayana for some woozy and lovelorn vocal additions. 'Be Honest' is a dubbed out and swaggering deep disco groove that comes as long, dub and cappella versions on the A-side. The 12" dance mix brings some superb house drums into the picture and the Dubplate VIP is a fresh jungle rhythm. This is an EP with something for all.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Be Honest (Extended Mix)
2. Be Honest (Dub)
3. Be Honest (Acappella)

Side 2
1. Be Honest (12" Dance Mix)
2. Be Honest (Dubplate VIP)

First edition of a two-part set: a comprehensive compilation of South London art-rockers Art Brut, spanning their early discography, demo takes, alternative mixes and live recordings between 2003 – 2008.

Features the debut album 'Bang Bang Rock and Roll', their second studio album 'It’s A Bit Complicated'. Also includes unreleased live material Art Brut – Live in Paris 2006 & Art Brut Live Form ULU with Horns.

Comes with a 24 page zine, with a 2,000 word liner note from Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos and exclusive photography of the band. Also includes a signed print of an original Art Brut artwork, painted by Eddie Argos

TRACK LISTING

CD1: Bang Bang Rock And Roll
1. Formed A Band
2. My Little Brother
3. Emily Kane
4. Rusted Guns Of Milan
5. Modern Art
6. Good Weekend
7. Bang Bang Rock & Roll
8. Fight!
9. Moving To L.A.
10. Bad Weekend
11. 18,000 Lira
12. Subliminal Desire For Adventure

CD2: It’s A Bit Complicated
1. Pump Up The Volume
2. Direct Hit
3. St. Pauli
4. People In Love
5. Late Sunday Evening
6. I Will Survive
7. Post Soothing Out
8. Blame It On The Trains
9. Soundtrack Of The Summer
10. Nag Nag Nag Nag
11. Jealous Guy

CD3 – Bang Bang Rock And Roll, Bootlegs And B-Sides + Live From ULU W/ Horns
1. Formed A Band (Brutleg/Single Version) 
2. Bad Weekend (Brutleg/Single Version)
3. Modern Art (Brutleg / Single Version)
4. My Little Brother (Brutleg / Single Version)
5. Good Weekend (Brutleg)
6. 18,000 Lira (Brutleg)
7. Bang Bang Rock And Roll (Brutleg)
8. Moving To LA (Brutleg)
9. Moving To LA Acoustic (Brutleg)
10. These Animal Menswe@r
11. It’s About Time
12. Maternity Ward
13. Really Bad Weekend
14. Every Other Weekend
15. Home Altars Of Mexico
16. Top Of The Pops! Art Brut (and Friends)
17. Don’t Blame It On The Trains
18. Enrique Gatti (Subliminal Desire For Adventure) (Brutleg)
19. Pump Up The Volume – With Horns
20. Moving To LA – With Horns
21. Late Sunday Evening – With Horns
22. Emily Kane – With Horns
23. Post Soothing Out – With Horns
24. Direct Hit – With Horns
25. Good Weekend – With Horns

CD4: It’s A Bit Complicated (Bootlegs And BSides)
1. I Found This Song In The Road
2. Our Parents Record Collection
3. Wasted Week-End
4. I Want To Be Double A-Sided
5. Ignorance Is Bliss
6. Direct Hit (Alternate Vesrion)
7. Direct Hit (Duet With Hank Starrs From Animals That Swim)
8. Late Sunday Evening (Alternate Version)
9. Blame It On The Trains (Russell Senior Version)
10. Post Soothing Out (Russell Senior Version)
11. St Pauli (Russell Senior Version)
12. Bad Weekend (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)
13. Formed A Band (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)
14. Emily Kane (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)
15. These Animal Menswe@r (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)

CD5: Paris Live 06.02.06
1. Formed A Band
2. My Little Brother
3. These Animal Menswe@r
4. Bang Bang Rock And Roll
5. Blame It On The Trains
6. Moving To LA
7. Rusted Guns Of Milan
8. Modern Art
9. St Pauli
10. Post Soothing Out
11. Emily Kane
12. Bad Weekend
13. Stand Down
14. 18,000 Lira
15. Good Weekend

Richard Ashcroft’s fourth solo album ‘These People’ became a fan-favourite in 2016, receiving great reviews and becoming a #3 album in the Official UK Albums Chart.

His reunion with Wil Malone, who had previously worked on the string arrangements for The Verve's seminal albums 'A Northern Soul' and 'Urban Hymns' added depth and emotional resonance to the album's sound. Ashcroft demonstrated his continued relevance and creative prowess as a solo artist, reaffirming his status as one of Britain's most enduring and influential musicians.

TRACK LISTING

1. Out Of My Body
2. This Is How It Feels
3. They Don’t Own Me
4. Hold On
5. These People
6. Everybody Needs Somebody To Hurt
7. Picture Of You
8. Black Lines
9. Ain’t The Future So Bright
10. Songs Of Experience

The LA-based ASHRR outfit is back with more of their superbly warm and soul-infused sounds here with 'Different Kind of Life'. Their own ASHRR Soundsystem version of the original is a gloriously upbeat and funky bit of space disco with lavish synth lines and chugging drums that lock you in. Berlin electronic mainstay Massimiliano Pagliara, who has landed on the likes of Ostgut Ton, Cocktail d'Amore and more, then brings his own two remixes. The first has some nice indie vocals and dazzling chord work, while the second is a deep dub that pairs things back. All three of these are swaggering and uplifting disco cuts with a difference.

TRACK LISTING

Different Kind Of Life (Massimiliano Pagliara Remix)
Different Kind Of Life (Massimiliano Pagliara Dub)
Different Kind Of Life (ASHRR Soundsystem Version)

LA-based trio ASHRR return with another sunkissed dose of cosmic new wave and indie electronica laced with psychedelic hues in the form of ‘Sway’. This time they’re joined by internationally renowned DJ and ESP Institute imprint manager ‘Lovefingers’ on remix duties, who supplies three genre-bending experimental dance gems perfect for summer terraces, pool-side parties or the dance floors of Pikes Ibiza. Lovefingers’ ESP Institute has dropped releases that have found their way into the bags of dance-floor heavy-hitters from Harvey to Weatherall and Moodymann to the legendary David Mancuso. His take on ASHRR original showcases dubbed-out oddities and psychedelic left turns in signature style. In addition to the Lovefingers remixes, ASHRR returns with their very own ‘ASHRR Soundsystem Version’ offering up a tripped-out feel-good cut for the dance floor.

TRACK LISTING

Sway (Lovefingers Rimini Remix)
Sway (ASHRR Soundsystem Version)
Sway (Lovefingers Lechuza Dub)
Sway (Lovefingers Skeleton Dub)

Los Angeles-based ASHRR are back on 2020 Vision ahead of a new album and this time serve up their own superb version of The Romantics's 1983 hit 'Talking in Your Sleep.' In their hands, it becomes a club-ready sound with a vocal you may recognise as it featured in the Mad Max episode of Stranger Things. Add in some DFA-inspired punk funk vibes and with all the instruments reapplied while new layers of bass and synth are added and you have one fantastic new version. Balearic don Fernando steps up for two remixes, first stripping things back to a deep house sound and then bringing some dub disco vibes to the fore.

TRACK LISTING

Talking In Your Sleep (ASHRR Version)
Talking In Your Sleep (Fernando Deep Mix)
Talking In Your Sleep (Fernando Disco Dub)

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

A huge part of this exploratory new era was Aaron Dessner, who produced Light Sleeper. His isolated cabin studio Long Pond, in Hudson Valley, was once Bess' desktop background, but she never thought she would end up star-gazing on its veranda and noodling away on the same instruments used by her heroes, not to mention a certain pop star...

The immediate trust between the pair clicked the moment Atwell walked through the doors of the iconic recording space; Dessner showed her around and then promptly left her alone to play on the many instruments at the heart of her favourite The National songs. As Atwell puts it, they seemed to speak the same musical language. "I trust his ear and I knew we had the same vision" she says. Since the release of 'Already, Always' Atwell has been through a number of personal transformations including tapering off antidepressants, after "years of avoiding it". Reflections on her upbringing and re- evaluations of some of her experiences led to a autism diagnosis in May 2023, which has helped her to make sense of many different moments.

Motifs of sleeping and waking run throughout Light Sleeper, which constantly stirs and settles, Atwell embracing the full range and rawness of her voice like never before. By the title- track, which closes the album, twinkling, starry synthesisers lead her to a place of quiet realisation: "I'm ready to be a light sleeper again/To wake up and feel everything/I can carry the weight of it"

TRACK LISTING

1. Everyone Who's Not In Love With You Is Wrong
2. Release Myself 
3. Sylvester
4. Fan Favourite
5. The Weeping
6. Something Now
7. Spinning Sun
8. I Am Awake
9. Crowds
10. Light Sleeper

Live albums are often a ‘hit or miss’ affair but ‘Live Oblivion’ 1 & 2 buck that trend, Recorded across 2 nights in 1974 at the Hollywood venue The Whisky A Go Go. The group were finishing off a huge US tour that had roared down the east coast then across the Midwest and by the time they hit LA, as Brian recalls “we were all absolutely performing at our height. So I decided that I really needed to record the band live at that point”. Utilising the Wally Heider Mobile Truck, the scene was set for one of the greatest jazz-fusion live recordings to be made. The show opens with a hyper fast version of Beginning Again due to drummer Steve Ferrone being almost an hour late and running high on adrenaline, Brian remembers thinking “I don’t even know if I can play it that fast!” Fortunately, he and the Oblivion Express including stellar vocalist Alex Ligertwood rise to the challenge and the result is akin to some frenetic jazzy drum & bass but also pushes the group onto another level altogether for the rest of the show. Across both volumes there are no fillers and the highlights are many - Bumpin’ On Sunset, Freedom Jazz Dance, and Inner City Blues are all stunning, but especially the epic version of Maiden Voyage which Mos Def sampled on his 1997 'If You Can Huh! You Can Hear', and both DJ Mitsu in 2004 and 2017 Crimeapple both dipped into Live Oblivion to sample that fire for their own projects.

Auger, in the original liner notes opines how live recordings can often have drawbacks but "I hope that spirit shines through" Live Oblivion 1 & 2, 50 years on from being committed to tape, certainly achieve that and much more. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Beginning Again
2. Don't Look Away
3. Bumpin' On Sunset
4. Truth 

Live albums are often a ‘hit or miss’ affair but ‘Live Oblivion’ 1 & 2 buck that trend, Recorded across 2 nights in 1974 at the Hollywood venue The Whisky A Go Go. The group were finishing off a huge US tour that had roared down the east coast then across the Midwest and by the time they hit LA, as Brian recalls “we were all absolutely performing at our height. So I decided that I really needed to record the band live at that point”. Utilising the Wally Heider Mobile Truck, the scene was set for one of the greatest jazz-fusion live recordings to be made. The show opens with a hyper fast version of Beginning Again due to drummer Steve Ferrone being almost an hour late and running high on adrenaline, Brian remembers thinking “I don’t even know if I can play it that fast!” Fortunately, he and the Oblivion Express including stellar vocalist Alex Ligertwood rise to the challenge and the result is akin to some frenetic jazzy drum & bass but also pushes the group onto another level altogether for the rest of the show. Across both volumes there are no fillers and the highlights are many - Bumpin’ On Sunset, Freedom Jazz Dance, and Inner City Blues are all stunning, but especially the epic version of Maiden Voyage which Mos Def sampled on his 1997 'If You Can Huh! You Can Hear', and both DJ Mitsu in 2004 and 2017 Crimeapple both dipped into Live Oblivion to sample that fire for their own projects.

Auger, in the original liner notes opines how live recordings can often have drawbacks but "I hope that spirit shines through" Live Oblivion 1 & 2, 50 years on from being committed to tape, certainly achieve that and much more. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Freedom Jazz Dance
2. Happiness Is Just Around The Bend
3. Maiden Voyage
4. Second Wind
5. Whenever You're Ready
6. Inner City Blues
7. Straight Ahead
8. Compared To What 

For his fourth release via Touch Sensitive under the 'Dyslexia Sound' banner, Autumns strips it right down to the bone and takes it back to the Source. "Raw Product" indeed, Dyslexia Sound Source sucks up and spits out influence over ten tracks that are both lean but massively heavy. A decade on from his nascent, no-wave debut for Downwards Records, Autumns' productions have both matured and sonically expanded into a dubbed-out dysfunctional metal dance without losing any of the intensity from those early blasts. Anyone who has caught him live over the last few years knows there is simply no compromise. We hear the raw rhythm of Cut Hands, the weight of Jah Shaka's sound system, the slink of an ESG bassline, the sensuality of Chris & Cosey, and the soundboard magic of Adrian Sherwood. However, as always, an Autumns release is far from a facsimile. With a unique touch and endless desire to push things forward, this collection can only be classified as thee Dyslexia Sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. Phone Me
2. Digital Swing
3. Raw Product
4. Interpretive Dance Is A Scam
5. Holding A Sign To Be Recognised
6. Purely Reasonable
7. Just To Say You Were There
8. Inside The Bins
9. 23 Summers
10. Buy Me A Cornet

J Axel and Eva Essa find magical harmony on this new collaboration on the Do It Now Recordings Vinylized label. 'Turned Your Back' is a perfectly heart-melting, life-affirming bit of soul-drenched and intimate deep house with gorgeous vocals and super smooth drums all healing you to your core as the gentle rhythms wash over you time and time again. It's a faultless original but one that is also ripe for remixing and who better than Atjazz who slightly ups the tempo but keeps the deep, wavy rhythmic vibes and adds a little cosmic magic in the synths. A sublime package indeed.

TRACK LISTING

Turned Your Back (Extended)
Turned Your Back
Turned Your Back (Atjazz Extended Remix)
Turned Your Back (Atjazz Extended Remix Instrumental)

Less than a year after her album Through and Through, Baby Rose returns with Slow Burn, a collection of songs that explode her sonic palette from progressive R&B into a rawer, richer and more sprawling lens of American music. Here, Rose asserts herself as not only a once-in-tenlifetimes vocalist, but as a formidable songwriter connecting the dots where Muscle Shoals meets psych, psych meets jazz, jazz meets Americana, and the right players bring it all together. Produced by BADBADNOTGOOD, Rose and the band found an instant but seemingly endless well of inspiration; what started as an introduction became a day, became a song, became a night, became Slow Burn. Baby Rose was already a powerful position player — she can share the stage with Robert Glasper without breaking a sweat, or close an epic film like Creed III, for which she performed the closing credit song, with steely confidence. When Rose first met with BADBADNOTGOOD the idea was to say hello, get acquainted, see what a collaboration could, over time, potentially become. But the connection was instant, and together they put down lead single “One Last Dance” in just that first meeting. It was Rose’s first freestyle vocal, and it snapped crucial pieces of her vision into focus. “I’ve known deep down there were new spaces and sounds that I could rise to,” Rose explains. “I’ve always been into different sounds that bring in those rawer textures.” And so while the speed of their collaboration thrilled and surprised Rose, the potential and the end results did not. “We moved quickly,” she says, “and it really was a faucet. Once we got ‘One Last Dance’, it became clear everything was going to flow.”

The songs on Slow Burn were inspired in part by Rose’s experiences driving between her family’s home bases: the noise and chaos of DC and the quiet, Carolina countryside. Rose would crank music and let her mind drift, making room for the internal monologues and imagined dialogues you might not otherwise dare to hear. There’s a dreaminess in those moments, and they smolder on Slow Burn: memories lose their realities, feelings replace happenings. Slow Burn’s title track, for example, sets soft, ambling drums against Rose’s lyrical repetitions, as she traces those recollections—some lives, some felt— with patient, insistent desire.

The standout “One Last Dance” arrives disguised as a love song, but is actually an ode to a lost friendship, and an imagined dream of one more day like the old days. Reality blurs with feeling again, vocals layer into lullaby, and BADBADNOTGOOD’s bassist Chester Hansen brings that dreamlike quality to a sneaky, cautious but loving undertone. In fact most of the songs on Slow Burn have that stealthy, shadowed feel, like they’re arriving on tiptoe: intimate but a little dangerous, tender but a little mysterious. As complete and compelling a work as this is, Slow Burn points to a bigger, higher ascent in Baby Rose’s future. “I feel boundless,” says Rose. “It’s one thing carrying the weight of the emotion I’m going to bring as a vocalist and lyricist, but now I feel like I’m the head on a body with all these players and artists and other limbs. I’m in love with that process. When you have the right energy and the right synergy,” she says, “all that’s left is to trust yourself.”

TRACK LISTING

1. On My Mind
2. Slow Burn
3. Caroline Feat. Mereba
4. Weekness
5. It’s Alright
6. One Last Dance

Following on from 2022s ‘Human Capital’, which mercilessly attacked Conservative meritocracy and the exploitative forces of late capitalism, ‘Contempt’ ups the ante yet again and explores the continued effects that austerity has had on the working public and specifically capital’s destruction of the planet and its inhabitants. It’s released with multiple essays in an accompanying zine, one that follows environmental and humanitarian journalist Aidan Frere-Smith and another that tells the story of a homelessness crisis in a city full of unused housing. Utilizing a mix of propulsive rhythm and furious, explosive guitars to maximum effect, Bad Breeding have weaponised their anger in the fight for survival; “Because these days are ours to take / Seize them with union, love and rage”. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Temple Of Victory
2. Survival
3. Devotion
4. Liberty
5. Discipline
6. Retribution
7. Gilded Cage / Sanctuary
8. Vacant Paradise
9. Idolatry
10. Contempt

As you may already know, BAD WITH PHONES is a one-off. The self-proclaimed ‘extra guy’ is extra in unique ways, and his debut album CRASH holds a high-wire duality of instant recognisability and true individuality. Manny, as he’s known to his friends, is a guitarist and frontman, a future don of weirdo pop, R&B, rap and post-punk in a pink and blue wig and sunglasses. He’s here to transmit songs that are epic and iconic, low key hypnagogic and soaked in bliss and damage like Tyler The Creator, Grace Jones or Basquiat if they’d grown up in 1990s Deptford listening to Sade and David Bowie. This album is packed with intimate anthems and comedown soothers for the day after a mangled night.

The CRASH back sleeve cover features a snap of his hired jeep, destroyed, on a volcanic landscape. The south east Londoner had been due a break after the stresses of releasing Marinade and had just signed to Brixton label Don’t Sleep. He was maybe going to see family in Togo but instead flew to Lanzarote with a girlfriend. Once on the island, there was a massive car crash. Miraculously, they both emerged unharmed. CRASH is both therapy and a kind of sci-fi, with each song an episode that captures and channels the dazed aftermath of intense life experience.

And his name? It came from an experiment where he went phone-free for six months or just because he didn’t pay his bills, depending on what you want to believe. Either way, it suits the sense of blurry disconnection he infuses through this music, the background electricity of sky-high pylons powered through his guitars, the dissociated but super-gentle love-not-love songs – until the energy levels ramp up like they do on the indie disco anthem ‘Don’t Talk To Me’ with its all-comers blah blah blah chorus echoing through the streets and dancefloors of next summer and the summer after that. BAD WITH PHONES is coming for you.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. (call Me) Friday
2. DennisRodman
3. Devils
4. Don't Talk To Me
5. InAWeek (anything Can Happen)

Side B
1. Monica Too
2. Drive.
3. Emmanuelle
4. LVR
5. TICKET

‘Beyond This Place’ is Kenny Barron’s second album on Artwork Records.

On the heels of his GRAMMY-nominated solo album, ‘The Source’, Kenny Barron brings together a multi-generational quintet featuring some of the most acclaimed musicians of their time.

Along with Kenny Barron (13-time GRAMMY nominee, American Jazz Hall Of Fame), ‘Beyond This Place’ features saxophone’s rising star Immanuel Wilkins (“Divinely inspired jazz” - The New York Times), Jonathan Blake, one of the most accomplished drummers of his generation, Kiyoshi Kitagawa, Kenny Barron’s longtime double bassist, and Steve Nelson, one of the most highly regarded vibraphonists in the world.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Nearness Of You
2. Scratch
3. Innocence
4. Blues On Stratford Road
5. Tragic Magic
6. Beyond This Place
7. Softly As In A Morning
8. Sunrise
9. Sunset
10. We See
11. You've Changed 
12. Dewdrop 

Vocal house duo Bäs Noir’s ‘My Love Is Magic’ receives edits from British DJs Bushwacka! and Mark Broom on Nu Groove. Hailing from Philly, the female duo of Morie Bivens and the late Mary Ridley first released ‘My Love Is Magic’ as Bäs Noir in 1988, with the Rhano Burrell production going on to chart in the UK. Today, the record remains a favourite of tastemakers everywhere, with Big Love label boss Seamus Haji dropping the OG at Defected Croatia in 2023. The hugely influential British DJ and producer Bushwacka! now returns to the legendary NYC label Nu Groove, following his four-track EP ‘House Sounds Vol. 1’, to bring out the percussive power of ‘My Love Is Magic’ with its distinct piano bassline and modern synth work. Also a Nu Groove returnee, the seasoned DJ Mark Broom delivers a techno A-12 Edit and house Dub Re-Touch of the Bäs Noir vocal house staple.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Bushwacka! Edit
A2. Club Mix
B1. Mark Broom’s Dub Retouch
B2. Mark Broom’s A12 Mix

43°C, the debut LP by French electronic producer Basile3, is the result of a decade of cultivating a musical identity that focuses on hybridization, sonic recycling, and playfulness. The enigmatic title "43°C" signifies a haze of bliss (4+3=7, the producer's lucky number) backdropped by the ecological state of a world that’s grown slightly but surely warmer.

In this anticipation fiction, Basile3 offers a soundtrack that is an exploration of club music, electronica infused with r&b and ambient synths. The French producer warmly invites listeners to his state of mind, blooming with genre-bending floating soundscapes.

Featuring TelmaCappelo, Daisy Ray, Loydfears, Lucy Sissi Miller and Minor Science.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wire Rise Feat. Lloydfears
2. Air Quality
3. Grateful, After All
4. U Stole The Summer
5. Secret Gathering
6. Love Machine Feat. Daisy Ray
7. 4Friends
8. My Window Feat. Lucy Sissy Miller
9. In The Clouds
10. Sirens Feat. Thelma Cappello
11. …And Tuning (Stereo Mix)

‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is an ode to motherhood created in LA, Natasha’s second home, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a sonic archive of a time when Natasha birthed her daughter Delphi earth side. The record weaves together ten song poems, documenting the polarity of navigating both an exterior world that was seemingly turning upside down, whilst also experiencing theprofoundly personal and transformational early moments of mothering Delphi, named after the Greek Oracle, the ancient future teller. The music became Natasha’s sanctuary, born out of stolen trips to the studio, where each track was improvised and completed in a few hours and chronologises her diary like offerings over a period of two years; from “TheMidwives Have Left”; to writing a “Letter To My Daughter”; and all the way through to “Waking up”, as well as a cover of her daughter’s favourite song, “Home”.

While the storytelling behind Bat For Lashes’ previous albums have traditionally used otherworldly narratives and female lead characters (e.g. ‘Laura’, ‘Daniel’ and ‘The Bride’), for the first time, ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is about Natasha’s personal experience of themagical and sometimes melancholy intimacy of early motherhood. This record creates a more private form of mythology around the music than her previous work. ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ touches on more of an instrumental “Bat For Lashes” world, and shows Natasha to be both a confident composer and craftswoman of intimate landscapes. While the music creates a more womb-like, ambient space for the listener, it still leaves ample room for her signature dream pop songwriting to vibrate through. Natasha has worked with Brad Oberhofer, Mary Lattimore and Jack Falby on this record.

TRACK LISTING

The Dream Of Delphi
Christmas Day
Letter To My Daughter
At Your Feet
The Midwives Have Left
Home
Breaking Up
Delphi Dancing
Her First Morning
Waking Up
The Dream Of Delphi (Extended Strings Version)

Scream from New York, NY, the first album by Been Stellar captures an image of ‘20s New York that’s unrelenting and harsh, where tenderness is a finite resource burned up by the machinery of the city and human connection is a luxury product. Released via Dirty Hit, their debut album embodies the spirit of a city that makes and breaks its inhabitants on a daily basis.

TRACK LISTING

1. Start Again
2. Passing Judgment
3.Pumpkin
4. Scream From New York, NY
5. Sweet
6. Can’t Look Away
7. Shimmer
8. Takedown
9. All In One
10. I Have The Answer

Beings are... Zoh Amba, Steve Gunn, Shazad Ismaily & Jim White.

On Beings’ There Is A Garden, shapeshifting melodies highlight each players’ voice. In one second, the album may sound hectic, teeming with craggy, unpredictable melodies, but by the time the next track rolls around, it’ll transform into a psychedelic reverie or blossom into a sprawling drone. For Beings, the NYC-based supergroup quartet of Zoh Amba, Steve Gunn, Shahzad Ismaily, and Jim White, the music fl­ows naturally: It’s an ever-transforming organism built on the quartet’s openness and willingness to explore, together.

TRACK LISTING

1. Small Vows
2. Flowers That Talk
3. God Dances In Your Eyes
4. In The Garden
5. Face Of Silence
6. Sun Greeted
7. Happy To Be
8. Morning Star
9. Do Come Again

Whatever and Ever Amen is the sophomore album from alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five. Originally released in 1997, the album features fan favorite songs like "Brick", "Kate", and "Song for the Dumped.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
One Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces
Fair
Brick
Song For The Dumped
Selfless, Cold And Composed

SIDE B
Kate
Smoke
Cigarette
Steven’s Last Night In Town
Battle Of Who Could Care Less
Missing The War
Evaporated 

New 7” from Benny Sings featuring covers of Christopher Cross’s yacht rock classic, ‘Sailing’, and Drake’s ‘Passionfruit’.

Benny Sings released his most recent album, ‘Young Hearts’, in March 2023 via Stones Throw. The record was produced in collaboration with Kenny Beats.

Benny’s cover of ‘Sailing’ was his first non-album related release since ‘Young Hearts’ and it has amassed over one million streams across DSPs and over 280,000 views on the music video so far.

The B-side is Benny’s cover of Drake’s ‘Passionfruit’, originally released in 2018 as a digital single, the first song Stones Throw released with Benny Sings. It’s a live favourite and is available on vinyl for the first time ever. The song has over 15 million streams on DSPs and 3.5 million views on the music video.

TRACK LISTING

Sailing
Passionfruit

‘The Clocks' was originally issued in 2007 as a CD-only limited edition of 110 for members of 'The Bevis Frond Online Community'. It comprised 19 previously unissued tracks. Most of these were home demos featuring just Frond frontman Nick Saloman on all instruments and vocals. Since then, it has never been re-issued in any format. It is therefore with great pleasure that Blue Matter are re-issuing it for the first time, and now as a vinyl double album and limited CD. Due to certain circumstances, three of the original tracks could not be used, so these have been replaced these with another three previously unheard tracks from Nick Saloman's extensive archives. These songs include the seven minute 'She's Taken It All', originally intended for 2004's 'Hit Squad' album but dropped at the last minute due to timing constraints. The beautiful 'You Better Make Do' and the edgy 'Devil Doll' have also been added. We are delighted to be able to make this 'long lost' album available once again and think it will be a welcome addition to the Bevis Frond canon.

TRACK LISTING

Side One.
1 Worlde Is Older
2 The Clocks
3 Home Is Where The Head Is
4 Cut To The Quick
Side Two.
5 Bless Him
6 Anything You Say
7 Devil Doll
8 God
9 When I’m Gone
10 I Need The Rush.
Side Three.
11 Watch The Sun
12 You Better Make Do
13 Little Ray
14 She’s Taken It All.
Side Four.
15 Things He Said
16 I’ll Save Myself
17 I Wasn’t There
18 I’m Better Now
19 Shades 

Yaya Bey unveils her latest studio album Ten Fold via Big Dada, available on standard black LP and translucent red indie LP.

New York-bred R&B vocalist Yaya Bey conjures a comprehensive self-portrait on her new studio album, Ten Fold.

Where her previous works were earnest and mindful, Yaya’s new LP is definitive, harkening back to aspects of her past while examining the future of the world that surrounds her with a stream-of-conscious intentionality.

Over rapturous production from Corey Fonville of jazz group Butcher Brown, Karriem Riggins, Jay Daniel, Exaktly and Boston Chery, Yaya delivers a free-spoken masterpiece that speaks to the intricacies of persevering through a year punctuated by grief and loss, life-altering milestones and everything in between.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crying Through My Teeth
2. The Evidence
3. Chrysanthemums
4. Sir Princess Bad Bitch
5. East Coast Mami
6. Chasing The Bus
7. All Around Los Angeles
8. Slow Dancing In The Kitchen
9. So Fantastic (feat. Grand Daddy I.U.)
10. Eric Adams In The Club (feat. Exaktly)
11. Me And All My Niggas
12. Iloveyoufrankiebeverly
13. Career Day
14. Carl Thomas Sliding Down The Wall
15. Yvette's Cooking Show
16. Let Go

Within the first few seconds of the opening song on Australian troubadour Peter Bibby’s latest album, we get an unvarnished look at the man behind the music as he observes the late-night scene of a local watering hole with increasingly bleary eyes:“No one seems to want to talk to me / ‘cuz I’m the arsehole, probably.”

Indeed, that lovable ambivalence is at the heart of Drama King, Bibby’s fourth studio album for Spinning Top Records. The project was produced by first-time collaborator Dan Luscombe (The Drones, Amyl and the Sniffers) and mixed by White Denim’s Josh Block a frequent collaborator with Leon Bridges.

An artist who has been celebrated as inherently working-class and wholeheartedly independent, Bibby comes by this caution honestly, having cut his teeth in the rough-and-tumble underground rock scene centered around Perth’s Hyde Park Hotel in Western Australia.



Bibby’s affable personality has gotten him plenty of mileage as a live act. He’s toured the U.S. with Pond and performed at the infamous open mic night at Pappy and Harriet’s in the California desert. He’s also taken the stage at international festivals such as Laneway, Falls, All Points East, South by Southwest and South Africa’s Rocking the Daisies while notching his fair share of rowdy headlining shows.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. The Arsehole
2. Fun Guy
3. Bin Boy
4. The One
5. The Pricks
6. Baby Squid
SIDE B:
1. Terracotta Brick
2. Turtle In The Sand
3. Feels
4. Bruno
5. Old DC
6. Companion Pony

Words are not to be taken for granted. Especially when they’re being bellowed, full blast, by a broad-shouldered poet with the brimstone fire of a preacher and the honesty and wisdom of a layman, over ground-shaking live beats and between anthemic blasts of melody and rousing riffage.

Words matter. History matters. People matter. And BIG SPECIAL matter.

For BIG SPECIAL - Joe Hicklin (vocals) and Callum Moloney (drums) - their sound is one that comes from vital, frustrated young working-class voices that don’t always get heard on the scale they should do. It’s a frustration that comes to the fore through a voice that is at times coarse and raw, but sensitive, desperate and soulful at others. Hicklin's brimstone-fired voice marches from guttural punk barks and serrated spoken word to soaring soul and back again, arriving siphoned from their forebears, crushed under the weight of history, and retooled for a new generation. It’s wrought, raw and angry at a world lacking options, the thinning of the common understanding between the social classes of England, exasperation at repeating cycles, and the feeling that you’re watching your own life unfold from the outside.

These are songs that channel that voice you hear when you look in the mirror and see your true self – fight songs for a world gone wrong.

TRACK LISTING

01. BLACK COUNTRY GOTHIC
02. I MOCK JOGGERS
03. DESPERATE BREAKFAST
04. SHITHOUSE
05. THIS HERE AIN’T WATER
06. MY SHAPE (BLOCKING THE LIGHT)
07. BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE
08. BROADCAST: TIME AWAY
09. ILL.
10. MONGREL
11. BUTCHER’S BIN
12. DUST OFF / START AGAIN
13. TREES
14. FOR THE BIRDS
15. DiG!

Formed in the first wave of British post-rock alongside the likes of Mogwai in the late 90s, John Peel favourites Billy Mahonie are set to return with the first new music from their original line-up in some twenty-four years. Whilst their debut album ‘The Big Dig’, released in 1999 on Too Pure Records, is considered a classic of the post rock genre, Billy Mahonie always crafted their intricate music with memorable hooks and melodies and performed it with energy and gusto. Theirs was not an aimless, meandering sound, instead the songs and attitude were rooted in punk rock, and still are. Billy Mahonie put the rock into post-rock.

Set for release this coming May 24th via their own label Whistling Sam Projects, ‘Field Of Heads’ sees the band returning with their classic original line-up of Gavin Baker (guitar), Howard Monk (drums), Hywell Dinsdale (bass and guitar) and Kevin Penney (bass and guitar). Whilst this line-up has been semi active for a few years, no new material came to fruition. After their last gig in 2017, however, the band decided it was time to get back into the studio, but with two members living abroad new challenges were faced, but ideas were shared, old ones were resurrected and finally in October of 2019, Billy Mahonie were back in the studio.

Recorded over two long weekends on either side of the Covid 19 lockdowns, the band tracked at The Church studios, owned by their former collaborator and front of house engineer Paul Epworth, with senior engineer Luke Pickering at the controls, allowing ‘Field Of Heads’ to quickly take shape.

New single ‘Kaiju’ gives the music world the first taste of ‘Field Of Heads’ and right from the off, it’s classic Billy Mahonie. Immediately bursting into life with the energy and melody that is so unique to their sound, Howard’s driving drums thrust the music ahead as the guitars and synths weave their way around them. Intricate and shifting, but never at the expense of a tune that sticks in your head.

“This one came from a chord progression myself and Gav first tried out jamming in 2010,” explains drummer Howard. “Needless to say, when Hywell and Kev got their hands on it, it became something no-one ever envisaged. Kev's great title is, of course, the Japanese name for the subgenre of monster-based science fiction. A frenetic riff opens the song and for a counter guitar part only two options remain, play in the minimal gaps or find an overarching theme. We chose both. Kaiju films influence the additional Synths, echoes of those early Japanese movie themes. Some people we have played this to in advance have suggested this track is one we should lead with, as it is kind of where we left off. We agree. It rocks pretty hard. And is a bit funky too. What’s not to like?!”

After nearly quarter of a century, Billy Mahonie are very much back. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Atomic Clock
Kaiju
Hearts Vs Minds
Spy Guy
Side B
The More I Know You
Impossible Sky
Tributer
Dry Season

When Nathan Salsburg’s daughter was a baby, he often sang her to sleep in a rocking chair. At one point, he remembered a song he had taught himself as a teenager: “The Evidence” by Lungfish, the Maryland band who coined a singular brand of post-punk in the 90s and 00s. Salsburg realized he could play the guitar part with one hand, singing while holding Talya in his other arm. Though the original version of “The Evidence” is only five minutes long, it’s essentially a repetitive mantra, so Salsburg could extend it as long as he wanted–10 minutes, 20 minutes, even an hour. “It was therapeutic and calming and just lovely for me,” he says.

“And it worked on her.” Eventually Nathan and Talya moved on from their ritual, but his lullaby cover stayed in his head. So he proposed to his fellow Louisville collaborators Bonnie “Prince” Billy (aka Will Oldham) and Tyler Trotter that they record a version with Salsburg on guitar, Oldham singing, and Trotter adding drum machines and synths. They decided to pair it with a rendition of another Lungfish song, “Hear the Children Sing,” playing each tune for more than enough time to fill two sides of an album. The result is the beguiling Hear the Children Sing the Evidence, an album that displays the strengths and visions of the participants while showcasing how richly powerful Lungfish’s songs are.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hear The Children Sing (19:56)
2. The Evidence (21:08)

These are fighting times, people. We are surrounded by grit, spit, and bloody war, but in the distance moving forward is The Black Angels. Passover, The Black Angels debut album, speaks of real-life horrors, death, and destruction with doses of love, sex, and healing. Don’t lose track, these are caring times as well.

Formed in 2004 and hailing from the mescaline-infused outskirts of Austin, Texas, this gang of musical misfits has been on the road non-stop since their birth, performing at such renowned venues as Sin-e, Middle East, and Spaceland. In early 2006, the band’s self-titled debut EP was dubbed highly recommended in Spin Magazine while receiving heavy radio airplay on such influential stations as KEXP and BBC Radio 1 by Zane Lowe.

Growing in spades since their EP, Passover showcases a band on the make. Spiraling upwards to the skies with the enemy straight on their trail, “The Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven” sees The Black Angels reaching high and stretching out with trance-inducing guitar lines from Christian Bland, Nate Ryan’s filthy medical dumpster bass, and the grizzly preacher vox of lead shaman Alex Maas. “Black Grease” is a bluesy monster full of swagger propelled by the primitive beat of drummer Stephanie Bailey and the mourning drone of organist Jennifer Raines.

10-songs deep, Passover has come again. Reflecting and questioning the intergenerational psychosis of American social life that surrounds us, The Black Angels put forth their answers in song. It’s a “Call To Arms” for those ready to join the good fight, a rock ‘n’ roll salvation during the times we need it the most. As Maas bellows on “Young Man Dead,” “Fire for the hills, pick up speed, and let’s go…”

TRACK LISTING

Young Men Dead
The First Vietnamese War
The Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven
The Prodigal Sun
Black Grease
Manipulation
Empire
Better Off Alone
Bloodhounds On My Trail
Call To Arms

Black Decelerant, the duo of Khari Lucas, aka Contour, and Omari Jazz, explore spiritual jazz traditions through contemporary tone and texture, fostering sonic meditations on themes of Black being and nonbeing, life and mourning, expansion and limitation, and the individual and collective. Their self-titled debut album, and the collaboration’s core intention, inspires a space for listeners to find stillness and solace, while providing a basis for a movement beyond “the moment”

Black Decelerant is an album guided by process and intuition. Since meeting in 2016, Lucas and Jazz dreamed of a collaborative album that could utilize formless music in both political and poetic ways. They eventually cultivated the project in 2020 across six months of remote sessions (living in South Carolina and Oregon respectively), communicating through improvised instrumentals and sample-based production as reflections of their inner and outer worlds.

“It felt like a remedy to some of the existential stress we were feeling during the time,” says Lucas. “Simultaneously being in the height of lockdown and thinking about encroaching fascism and anti-Blackness, in the US especially. The making of the record felt very meditative and offered a dimension to ground us.”

Listening and responding to one another in real time, the sessions became a vessel to channel ideas around Black humanity primordiality and ontology, and slowness as a cumulative technology for protection against violence and extraction. The album’s ten compositions configure vast, resonant landscapes with signals, weathers and spirits, suspended in memory and distilled in time.

The Black Decelerant machine recalibrates archival relics and acoustic impulses into collages of amalgamated timbres, where harmony exists not without discordance. Across the expansive space of the record, cadent storms of modulated sound ascend beside serene melodic spells. Piano keys and bass lines tumble in free fall throughout the release, accompanied on tracks “two” and “eight” by the spectral trumpet improvisations of Jawwaad Taylor.

The duo arrived at their name upon reading Aria Dean’s Notes on Blacceleration, an article which explores Accelerationism within the context of Black being or non-being as a foundational tenet of capitalism. Coupled with the record’s intended effect, “Black Decelerant”references the music being an invitation to slow down, while hinting at the shared politics between themselves and the artists and thinkers who inspire them.

“Part of it is about challenging the space that asks that you do more than your natural state and actively pushes you towards over-exertion or exhaustion, and all these late stage capitalist ideas,” says Jazz. “Rest is so wrapped up in that and the absence of it for Black people is something that needs to be challenged in multiple ways.”

The record emerges as a portal and a mirror to a way of living, which as Lucas and Jazz explain, is about leaning into the mind and body’s natural inclination to do what is nourishing for it, away from commodified or virtuous iterations of rest and care attached to capitalism and white supremacy. Black Decelerant serves as both a tonic and journal in a tradition laid forth by musical and philosophical ancestry, a radiant offering and invitation.

Black Decelerant will be released June 21st, 2024 in vinyl and digital editions. The album represents the second volume of Reflections, a new series of contemporary collaborations orchestrated by RVNG Intl.

TRACK LISTING

1. Three
2. One
3. Six
4. Seven ½
5. Two
6. Five
7. Nine
8. Eight
9. Four

A twelve-track collection of “cassette-ified” lo-fi psych-pop, ‘Wobble’ is the eleventh studio album from Black Market Karma and their first on Fuzz Club. Hailing from London and now residing on the South Coast, BMK’s prolific output is fuelled by band-leader and multi-instrumentalist Stanley Belton who writes, performs, records, produces and up until now self-released everything from his own live-in ‘Cocoon’ studio. Pooling influences from 60s pop and psychedelia, crunchy hip-hop break-beats and lo-fi electronica, ‘Wobble’ is the first of a two-part album series and is due for release July 26th 2024.

The album’s title is a reference to tape wobble / wow and flutter, subtle fluctuations in pitch characteristic of analogue recording equipment. Where once seen as a limitation by older generations, for others they evoke a welcome sense of nostalgia and that’s what Belton sought to excavate here: “Sonically, I wanted the album to feel like a collection of discarded and worse for wear instruments came to life, refurbished themselves and started to play. The sound is an attempt to give form to the often formless feeling that is nostalgia. With songs attempting to crystallise a feeling known as ‘fernweh’. A kind of longing for a place and time you’ve never experienced, be it in this world or another.”

“As formats evolved these characteristics were slowly phased out but with this album I was aiming to put them back in through different methods of sound degradation”, Belton says, “reaching for a sweet spot where the sound had a lo-fi flavour but with the punch of a higher quality recording.” Drums are recorded live, run back through guitar amps and pedals and sampled. Vintage guitars are totally warped by effects, with lead bass melodies being run through overloaded Vox guitar amps. All topped with heavily saturated vocals, mono synths, electronic flutes, mallet sounds and a bunch of other instruments and the sort of creative experiments that over a decade spent enjoying total freedom in your own ever-growing DIY studio allows for.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mushy Conscience
2. Oozer
3. Lead Laces
4. Waterbaby
5. Sonic Broth Soul Taster
6. Puddle Eyed Sponger
7. Going On Easy
8. Thin Wild Mercury
9. The Din Of An Ending
10. Olive
11. The Death Throes Of Nuance
12. Stepping Loose

Founded in the mid 70s, Black Uhuru really burst into the reggae scene in the early 80s when Sly & Robbie took over artistic direction duties and produced crucial albums like Showcase, Sinsemilla, Red, Chill Out and Anthem.

Not only were the albums groundbreaking from an artistic standpoint, but the live shows were terrific. An avalanche of heavy-as-lead drum and bass, augmented by borderline metal rock guitars courtesy of the late Darryl Thompson, provided a bedrock of rhythm and energy for Michael Rose's lead vocals and Duckie Simpson's and Puma Jones' backing vocals.

Black Uhuru's first US tour took place in 1982. Back then, Reggae was in its infancy in the US and there were only 3 Reggae radio shows in California: Doug Wendt in San Francisco, Roger Steffens in LA and Lance Linares in Santa Cruz. In addition to running his radio show at KUSP, Lance also booked artists in Santa Cruz and worked with the Soledad Prison to help inmates acquire professional skills that could be used once they would be out of jail. Lance contacted the Black Uhuru organization and offered to organize a concert in the prison itself. To his surprise his idea was enthusiastically accepted and the group performed in front of a full house at Soledad Prison.

What we hear on this double LP is the entire concert, which was broadcast live on KUSP. Its historical significance is huge and can be compared to the reggae equivalent of the legendary live recording at Folsom by America legend Johnny Cash.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stage Intro
2. Puff She Puff
3. I Love King Selassie
4. Mondays
5. Youth Of Eglington
6. Chill Out
7. Darkness
8. Whole World Is Africa
9. Happiness
10. Sponji Reggae
11. Sensimilla

Celebrating 45 years of Blancmange, Everything Is Connected (Best Of) is the first collection to be curated by Neil Arthur, tastefully blending a mixture of hits and personal favourites. Originally from the UK’s post punk DIY scene, Blancmange found success in 1982, long player ‘Happy Families’ selling Gold in the UK, and its 3 singles becoming international hits. They went on to have 7 Top 40 hits and 70 weeks in the UK album charts. Long-standing admirers include Moby, John Grant and Honey Dijon, who states that “British synth pop was hugely influential in the burgeoning house music scene and Blancmange was a big part of that.”

TRACK LISTING

LP:
Side One
1 Living On The Ceiling
2 Waves
3 Blind Vision
4 Don’t Tell Me
5 The Day Before You Came
Side Two
1 What’s The Time?
2 Distant Storm
3 Mindset
4 Reduced Voltage
5 Some Times These

CD:
Disc 1
1 Sad Day (Original Version)
2 I’ve Seen The Word
3 God’s Kitchen
4 Feel Me
5 Living On The Ceiling
6 Waves
7 Game Above My Head (12 Inch Version)
8 Blind Vision
9 That’s Love, That It Is
10 Vishnu
11 Don’t Tell Me
12 The Day Before You Came
13 What’s Your Problem
14 Lose Your Love
15 Why Don’t They Leave Things Alone
16 Drive Me
17 I’m Having A Coffee
18 The Western
19 Just Another Spectre
Disc 2
1 The Fall
2 Last Night (I Dreamt I Had A Job)
3 Jack Knife (Red Shift EP)
4 What’s The Time?
5 We Are The Chemicals
6 Anna Dine
7 Distant Storm
8 I Smashed Your Phone
9 Not A Priority
10 Mindset
11 This Is Bliss
12 Clean Your House
13 Commercial Break
14 Some Times These
15 Reduced Voltage
16 Take Me
17 Again, I Wait For The World
18 Wish
19 Empty Street 

New York pop savants Charly Bliss want their new album Forever to crush you under the weight of pure feeling. They want to sweep you up in a hurricane of heartbreak. They want you to pour your soul out singing along at their shows and alone in your bedroom. In short, says singer Eva Hendricks, they want to destroy you...but in a fun way.

Produced by Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus) and Caleb Wright (Samia) along with the band’s Sam Hendricks, Forever follows five years after their critically acclaimed 2019 album Young Enough. Full of the band’s biggest, brightest batch of power pop yet Forever crams a lifetime of feeling, decades of friendship, and years of craft into a batch of sonically tight but emotionally vast songs that activate the pleasure centres in your brain whether you’re listening alone in your headphones or in a packed room at a live show. The songs shimmer and burst, the way fireworks look like they should sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tragic
2. Calling You Out
3. Back There Now
4. Nineteen
5. In Your Bed
6. I’m Not Dead
7. How Do You Do It
8. I Don’t Know Anything
9. Here Comes The Darkness
10. Waiting For You
11. Easy To Love You
12. Last First Kiss 

Inspired by the Buddhist sutras, Blitzen Trapper's radiant new album, 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions, offers a captivating take on rebirth and transcendence, navigating its way through the space beyond dreams and reality, beyond gods and mortals, beyond life and death.

The songs here are as sincere as they are surreal, rooted in rich character studies and deep reflection, and the production is intoxicating to match, blending lo- fi intimacy and trippy psychedelia into a mesmerizing swirl of analog and electronic sounds. Add it all together and you've got a gorgeous collection of stripped-down bedroom folk wrapped in lush layers of synthesizers and washed out electric guitars, a poignant, expansive exploration of perception and purpose that manages to look both forwards and backwards all at once.

Launched roughly two decades ago in Portland, OR, Blitzen Trapper broke out internationally with 2008's Furr, which cemented their status at the forefront of the modern indie folk revival. Rolling Stone hailed the band's "hazy, psychedelic Americana," while NPR praised their "explosive live performances and infectious roots- rock swagger." Dates with Fleet Foxes, Wilco, and Dawes followed, as did festival appearances at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, and Coachella, among others. The band would go on to release six more similarly lauded studio albums, culminating with 2020's Holy Smokes Future Jokes, which Mojo proclaimed "sound[s] like the Beatles at Big Pink."

TRACK LISTING

Ain't Got Time To Fight
Dead God Of The Green Arising
Cosmic Backseat Education
Hesher In The Rain
Cheap Fantastical Takedown
So Divine
Planetarium
Hello Hallelujah
Long Game
View From Jackson Hill
Upon The Chain
Bear's Head
At The Cove

Recommended if you like: Hand Habits, Slow Pulp, Frankie Cosmos, Lomelda, Lucy Dacus, Big Thief.

“Bloomsday’s Iris James Garrison makes achieving sonic bliss look easy.” Consequence of Sound

Produced by Ryan Albert of Babehoven; features vocals from Babehoven, Richard Orofino, h. Pruz. Mixed by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp.

'The way Bloomsday’s Iris James Garrison writes songs feels like somewhere between a mirror and a memory. Spacious, full-bodied folk songs, they are an ode to things that are good no matter how small; they sometimes feel like the ghost of a Mary Oliver poem. Bloomsday’s new record, 'Heart of the Artichoke', is a relic of unfettered creativity and community. They recount the miracles of the mundane, the memories that become sacred, an ode to all that is holy: nightswimming, songs plucked from the ether, the ways friendship can endure.

Like earlier Bloomsday songs, the work here is threaded with warmth; it’s simmering, crisp and deeply human, an encapsulation of the present moment. Recorded across 10 days in June 2023 in upstate New York at duo Babehoven’s studio and co-produced by Babehoven’s Ryan Albert, with mixing by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp. The record was built out with a wide ranging group of collaborators, including inventive drumming from Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Babehoven’s Maya Bon, Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.), and Chris Daley. It was an insulated and collaborative experience: all family dinners on the back porch, bonfires, feeling a full sense of joy, of friendship, of purity in the artistic self.

Collaboration is an integral part of Bloomsday’s musical process. Garrison is malleable in the studio, their songwriting generous and spacious. But in listening to the record, there’s a sense that Garrison leaves room for the players, for the listener; for songs to find the shapes they’re meant to take. Garrison’s role as maestro is crucial, singular – it’s a collaborative, exploratory spirit harnessed by Garrison’s intuition, and by an honest commitment to carve out creative space for play, to delve into what’s known – or pushing past that, into unknown. “The ghosts of the past still come up and haunt me,” Garrison says, “but I sit in what I have and see it. All of these songs are about loved ones, about personal struggles with getting out of my head and being present.” Heart of the Artichoke was written from a healed, matured place – written in a moment of safety from chaos. It’s a prayer for the present, an appreciation of tenderness and what happens once we give ourselves the space to really see, and really feel – becoming free and whole – an ode to the way healing allows us to bloom.

TRACK LISTING

1. Where I End And You Begin
2. Virtual Hug
3. Dollar Slice
4. Artichoke
5. Look After
6. Night Swim
7. Carefully
8. Bumper Sticker
9. Object Permanence
10. Old Friend

Starchris sees Body Meat (real name: Christopher Taylor) weaving his sugar-coated production wizardry with deeply soulful vocal performances and kaleidoscopic percussion. Across 13 tracks, he explores the roughest edges of r&b, IDM, club music, experimental pop, trap, footwork, and metal, only to soften them into something remarkably warm and welcoming, finding catharsis amongst chaos.

With this record, Body Meat embarks on a multi-dimensional endeavor, partly influenced by the interwoven and complex world-building found in role playing video games. Taylor imagines each song as its own distinct ‘level,’ and himself as the avatar moving through an immersive storyline. In its totality, Starchris evokes both the exhilaration and the emotional challenges that are part of any long, transformative journey.

This record follows a string of acclaimed EP releases, which earned Body Meat early profiles with Pitchfork, Clash, Fact Mag, Bandcamp + more.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Tone In The Dark
2. The Mad Hatter
3. High Beams
4. Electrische
5. Focus
6. Right Here
7. Crystalize
8. North Side
9. Starchris
10. Im In Pieces
11. Demons
12. Ōbu No Seirei (Spirit Of An Orb)
13. Paradise

Bogdan Ra is based in the musical hotbed of Lisbon and his excellent What Is A DJ? EP takes its inspiration from the late 80s acid house and Italo, displaying a real mix of vintage charm and contemporary relevance that will strike all the right notes on the dancefloor. From the snappy title cut to the electro rhythms of 'Arroios' via the funky disco rhythms of 'Tonic Glue' and feel good factor of closer 'That's All', this is quality production that will more than stand the test of time

TRACK LISTING

What Is A DJ?
Arroios
Tonic Glue
That's All

Over the years, Bonny Light Horseman has accumulated many miles on the collective odometer of life. The band’s core trio – Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman – has amassed an incomparable collected resume. Mitchell is a celebrated solo artist as well as the playwright and songwriter behind the hit Broadway musical Hadestown, which notched eight Tony Awards and a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. Johnson is best known as the mind behind beloved indie mainstays Fruit Bats, as a longtime collaborator with The Shins, and as a film score composer. And Kaufman is a multi-hyphenate extraordinaire: songwriter, producer, and position player, having recorded and performed with artists ranging from Bob Weir to The War on Drugs to Taylor Swift, Hiss Golden Messenger and The Hold Steady. As a group, Bonny Light Horseman’s debut album received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album, and the track "Deep in Love" was nominated for Best American Roots Performance.



More important than any of this, though, they’ve also lived a big ol’ messy and tangled up pile of life, and all that living permeates their music with the wisdom, humor, and depth that underlies the accolades. Theirs is the stuff that defines folk music as a genre: love and loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time. The Big Stuff, with the stakes sky high.



At the center of Bonny Light Horseman is, always, the singular combination of three powerful and tender artists, artists who expertly dodge superlatives but are quick to acknowledge that their bond makes each one better, braver and more vulnerable than they’d be on their own. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the force of their voices together, which work with complete trust in one another through the gentlest moments and the most ruthless wails.



Bonny Light Horseman’s new album, Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free, is an ode to the blessed mess of our humanity. Confident and generous, it is an unvarnished offering that puts every feeling and supposed flaw out in the open. The themes are stacked high and staked even higher: love and loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time all permeate Bonny Light Horseman’s most vulnerable and bounteous offering to date. Yet for all of its humanistic touchpoints, Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free was forged from a kind of unexplainable magic.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Keep Me On Your Mind
2. Lover Take It Easy
3. I Know You Know
4. Grinch Funeral
5. Old Dutch
6. When I Was Younger
7. Waiting And Waiting
8. Hare And Hound
9. Rock The Cradle
10. Singing To The Mandolin
11. The Clover
12. Into The O
13. Don’t Know Why Youmove Me
14. Speak To Me Muse
15. Think Of The Royalties Lads
16. Tumblin Down
17. I Wanna Be Where Youare
18. Over The Pass
19. Your Arms (All The Time)
20. See You Free

‘Show & Tell’ is the much anticipated debut album from Bored At My Grandmas House (AKA 22 year old songwriter Amber Strawbridge). With critical acclaim and deserved plaudits lavished on Amber following her debut EP ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’, ‘Show & Tell carries on the emotive and philosophical themes of the EP, pinned around themes of connection; with yourself, with the world, with loved ones. There is soul-searching, introspection and a challenge to the ways of the world, all packed into 12 hook filled, shoegaze-fused-indie-pop slices.

Emerging from the hotbed of exceptional guitar music bubbling up out of Leeds in recent years, Amber has been supported by BBC 6Music, BBC Radio 1, DIY, and played Glastonbury, Radio 1’s Big Weekend and more.

Speaking about the album, Amber explains “I want to understand connections and process the emotions which surround them. The album covers topics of queer love, humanity and it’s ‘delusions of grandeur’, mental health, introspection and purpose. It’s one big project of of self introspection and a guidebook to understanding my brain’

‘Show & Tell’ also marks a brand new release from the exciting new partnership between Clue Records and EMI North, the first physical major label office to open outside London.

If you have a thing for Soccer Mommy, Alvvays, Girl In Red and boygenius, this record is for you. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Intro
Inhibitions
Show & Tell
Friendship Bracelets
How Do You See The World
Side B
I Like What You Bring Out In Me
Don’t Do Anything Stupid
Moving Slow
We See The World In The Same Way
Hide & Seek

Dinked 7” Tracklisting:
Side A
We See The World The Same Way - “4-Track” Version (exclusive For Dinked)
Side B
Show & Tell - “4-Track” Version (exclusive For Dinked)

Sounds as diverse as Tropical Disco, Afro Funk, Highlife, Juju, Disco, Soukous & more combine effortlessly on the Debut full LP from Bosq & Kaleta. Brilliant songwriter and former member of legendary African groups like Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 & King Sunny Ade’s African Beats, Kaleta helms the vocal duties with his signature chants in a mixture of Yoruba, Goun, French, English & Fon.

Bosq brings his renowned balance of organic & electronic production to give the album a current but timeless feel. A fantastic cast of guest musicians from as far and wide as Colombias Choco region on the Pacific Coast, to Brooklyn, to Port Novo, Benin & Lagos Nigeria bring a depth of musicianship & musical histories to the beautiful group of tracks.

TRACK LISTING

A1. No Be Today
A2. I No Dey Play
A3. Ose
B1. Sonayon
B2. Mifon
B3. Ipade
C1. Miselou
C2. Meji Meji
C3. Debiteur Insolvable
D1. Ajanaku
D2. Ariya Tide
D3. Robojiyan

Clay Pipe is pleased to welcome back the Tinderstick’s keyboard player David Boulter to the label.

Since his Yarmouth LP in 2020, and the spoken word-based Lovers Walk the following year, Boulter has concentrated on his soundtrack work. He has produced scores for documentary maker Volkan Üce’s Displaced – and Tinnitus, a visually striking film by Brazilian director Gregorio Graziosi. He has also released a series of lathe-cuts featuring his soundtrack work, and the Factory Mini CD and Twelve Bells for Libuše flexi-disc single on Clay Pipe.

St Ann’s, is a tribute to the council estate, on the edge of Nottingham city centre that defined Boulter’s formative years:

“I was born in the old St Ann’s. Famously documented in the late 60s as some of the poorest social housing in England. Crumbling, cramped, and full of damp. We had a shared toilet in the backyard and no bathroom, some of the houses were without hot water, it was freezing cold in winter. Everything seemed black and white.”

By the late 1960s, St. Ann's, like many other city centre areas, had become run down and was earmarked by the council for slum clearance. 340 acres were bulldozed and 30,000 people including David's family were compulsorily uprooted. In 1970 the Victorian streets were replaced with a Radburn-style estate.

“We moved to the new St Ann’s when I was six. There were two indoor toilets! A bathroom with a shiny white ceramic bath that you could fill whenever you wanted. Central heating, and a small garden at the front and back of the house. We had our own shed, and a cherry blossom tree just over the fence. Everything came into colour.”

Subtle use of guitar, double bass, vibraphone, tenor recorder and field recordings conjure up the old streets of cobble and slate, damp brickwork and grey skies, juxtaposing the newer post-1960s world of pebble dash and green grass, fresh air and a brighter future.

“After we moved to the new house, I still went to the old Victorian school, until it was demolished about a year later. It was very strange to walk to school through all the old houses and streets while they were being torn apart.”

This is a record full of personal memories, but it also tells the tale of Britain’s inner cities and their renewal in the 60s and 70s.

“At the end of 2022, my Mum could no longer live alone in our house. I spent Christmas packing belongings and emptying it, what to keep, what not to keep? The emotions and memories were intense. There was still the same carpet on the stairs that my Dad had put down when we’d moved in.
I’d already started to make some music that I knew had something to do with Nottingham, and the streets I’d spent my childhood wandering. When I arrived back home in Prague, the feelings poured into the music.

I grew up in St Ann’s and lived around the area until I left for London when I was 25. This LP is a celebration of a community, streets that still hold a special place in my heart. I will always be from St Ann’s and St Ann’s will always be a part of me.“

TRACK LISTING

01 Plantagenet Street In The Morning
02 Cobbles And Slate
03 Blue Bell Hill
04 Donkey Hill
05 Grafton Terrace
06 Plantagenet Street In The Afternoon
07 Corporation Oaks
08 The Arboretum
09 Ford Street St Mary's
10 A New St Ann's
11 Along The St Ann's Well Road
12 Abbotsford And Hunger Hill
13 Pebble Dash And Green Grass

On 24th May, 2024, the exact day of its Golden Jubilee, Diamond Dogs will be issued as a limited edition 50th anniversary picture disc LP, pressed from the same master as the half speed version. The first single from the album, ‘Rebel Rebel’, reached number 5 in the UK and the album would also reach similar heights on both sides of the Atlantic reaching number 1 in the UK and number 5 in the USA.

This new pressing of Diamond Dogs was cut on a customised late Neumann VMS80 lathe with fully recapped electronics from 192kHz restored masters of the original master tapes, with no additional processing on transfer. The half-speed was cut by John Webber at AIR Studios

The writing of the album was influenced by Bowie not being able to secure the rights for a theatrical production of George Orwell’s 1984 and the work of William S. Burroughs, whom Bowie had interviewed for Rolling Stone in November 1973. The songs on the album created an urban apocalyptic scenario with Bowie appearing on the cover as a controversial half-man, half-dog hybrid painted by the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert from photos by the world-renowned photographer Terry O’Neill. Since its release, tracks from Diamond Dogs have been covered by artists such as Beck, Tina Turner, Duran Duran, Def Leppard, Joan As Police Woman, Dead Or Alive and The Struts. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE ONE
Future Legend
Diamond Dogs
Sweet Thing
Candidate
Sweet Thing (Reprise)
Rebel Rebel

SIDE TWO
Rock ’n’ Roll With Me
We Are The Dead
1984
Big Brother
Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family 

Half-Speed Master Vinyl Edition
David Bowie’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! Charts Bowie’s journey to Ziggy Stardust. Starting with early home demos, through radio sessions and live performances, to session recordings, outtakes and alternate versions from the recording of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust album.

The 1LP half-speed master which accompanies the 5CD+BR version features alternative takes and mixes including an alternative version of ‘Lady Stardust’, an unheard version of the deep-cut classic ‘Shadow Man’ and an up-tempo take of The Who’s ‘I Can’t Explain’, which he would later slow down and cover for the PIN-UPS album. 

5CD + 1 Blue-Ray Edition
David Bowie’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! is a 5CD and 1 Blu-Ray Audio set that explores David Bowie’s journey from February 1971 through the creation of the Ziggy Stardust character, the recording of the iconic The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars album, and captures the international mania that surrounded the Ziggy phenomenon in the form of UK radio sessions and TV performances, as well as live tracks from Ziggy and the Spiders’ 1st October 1972 show at the Boston Music Hall.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! contains 29 unreleased tracks, covers early songwriting demos, recordings from David’s band, The Arnold Corns, rehearsals at Bowie’s then-home, Haddon Hall, BBC sessions, singles, live performances, plus outtakes and alternative versions from the original album recording sessions, which have been newly mixed by original album producer, Ken Scott.

Unreleased highlights include an alternative version of ‘Lady Stardust’, an unheard version of the deep-cut classic ‘Shadow Man’ and an up-tempo take of The Who’s ‘I Can’t Explain’, which he would later slow down and cover for the PIN-UPS album.

The Blu-Ray includes a version of the Ziggy Stardust album called Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) taken from Trident Studio tapes dated 15th December 1971, which features an alternative running order and four songs that didn’t make the final album.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! also contains two books. The first is an extensive 112-page book with detailed liner notes, memorabilia, contemporary reviews and articles, rare photographs from Barrie Wentzel, Michael Putland, Mick Rock, Sukita and Alec Byrne, as well as brand-new notes and interviews with Ken Scott, Mark Carr Pritchett and David’s plugger from the time, Anya Wilson. Accompanying the main book is a 36-page compiled reproduction of David’s personal Ziggy Stardust era notebooks. 

TRACK LISTING

Half-Speed Master Vinyl Edition
Side 1
1. Hang On To Yourself (early Ziggy Session Take)
2. Star (Take 5 Alternative Version)
3. Lady Stardust (Take 1 Alternative Version)
4. Shadow Man (Ziggy Session Version)
5. The Supermen (Ziggy Session Version 2023 Mix)
6. Holy Holy (Ziggy Session Version Alternative Mix)
7. Round And Round (alternative Mix)
Side 2
1. Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix)
2. Looking For A Friend (Ziggy Session Version)
3. It's Gonna Rain Again (Ziggy Sessions Outtake)
4. Sweet Head (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix)
5. Starman (Top Of The Pops Version 2022 Mix)
6. John, I'm Only Dancing (alternative Trident Studios Version)
7. I Can't Explain (Trident Studios Version)

CD/Blu-Ray Edition:
Disc 1
1. So Long 60s (San Francisco Hotel Recording) *
2. Hang On To Yourself (early Demo) *
3. Lady Stardust (demo)
4. Ziggy Stardust (demo)
5. Star (Aka Stars) (demo) *
6. Soul Love (demo And DB Spoken Notes) *
7. Starman (demo 1 Excerpt) *
8. Starman (demo 2) *
9. Moonage Daydream (The Arnold Corns Version)
10. Hang On To Yourself (The Arnold Corns Version)
11. Looking For A Friend (The Arnold Corns Version – Rough Mix) *
12. Haddon Hall Rehearsals Segue: Ziggy Stardust / Holy Holy / Soul Love *
13. Star (Aka Stars) (Haddon Hall Rehearsal) *
14. Sweet Head (Haddon Hall Rehearsal) *

Disc 2
Sounds Of The 70s: John Peel
Session Recorded On 11th January, 1972 And Broadcast On 28th January, 1972
1. Ziggy Stardust *
2. Queen Bitch *
3. Waiting For The Man *
4. Lady Stardust *
Sounds Of The 70s: Bob Harris
Session Recorded On 18th January, 1972 And Broadcast On 7th February, 1972
5. Hang On To Yourself
6. Ziggy Stardust
7. Queen Bitch
8. Waiting For The Man
9. Five Years
Old Grey Whistle Test Performance
Filmed On 7th February, 1972 And Broadcast On 8th February, 1972
Except ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ Which Was Not Broadcast Until 1982.
10. Oh! You Pretty Things (take 1)
11. Queen Bitch
12. Five Years

Disc 3
Sounds Of The 70s: John Peel
Session Recorded On 16th May, 1972 And Broadcast On 23rd May, 1972
1. White Light/White Heat
2. Moonage Daydream
3. Hang On To Yourself
4. Suffragette City
5. Ziggy Stardust
Johnnie Walker Lunchtime Show
Session Recorded On 22nd May, 1972 And Broadcast From 5th – 9th June, 1972
6. Starman
7. Space Oddity
8. Changes
9. Oh! You Pretty Things
Sounds Of The 70s: Bob Harris
Session Recorded On 23rd May, 1972 And Broadcast On 19th June, 1972
10. Andy Warhol
11. Lady Stardust
12. White Light/White Heat
13. Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide
Top Of The Pops Performance
Filmed On 5th July, 1972 And Broadcast On 6th July, 1972
14. Starman

Disc 4
1. Round And Round
2. The Supermen (Ziggy Session Version)
3. Holy Holy (Ziggy Session Version)
4. Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy Session Outtake)
5. Starman (original Single Mix)
6. John, I’m Only Dancing (original Single Version)
Recorded Live At The Music Hall, Boston.
Recorded On 1st October, 1972
7. The Supermen
8. Changes
9. Life On Mars?
10. My Death *
11. John, I’m Only Dancing

Disc 5
1. Looking For A Friend (The Arnold Corns Version 2022 Mix) *
2. Hang On To Yourself (early Ziggy Session Take) *
3. Star (take 5 Alternative Version) *
4. Lady Stardust (take 1 Alternative Version) *
5. Shadow Man (Ziggy Session Version) *
6. The Supermen (Ziggy Session Version 2023 Mix) *
7. Holy Holy (Ziggy Session Version Alternative Mix) *
8. Round And Round (alternative Mix)
9. It’s Gonna Rain Again (Ziggy Session Outtake) *
10. Looking For A Friend (Ziggy Session Version) *
11. Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix) *
12. Sweet Head (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix) *
13. Starman (Top Of The Pops Version 2022 Mix)
14. John, I’m Only Dancing (alternative Trident Studios Version) *
15. I Can’t Explain (Trident Studios Version) * Bonus Mix
16. Moonage Daydream (2003 Instrumental Mix)

Blu Ray Audio
THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS
Original Album Mix (96khz/24bit Stereo)

THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS AND EXTRAS
2003 5.1 Mixes (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 - 96khz/24bit)

WAITING IN THE SKY (BEFORE THE STARMAN CAME TO EARTH)
Early Ziggy Stardust Album Tracklisting – December 1971 (96khz/24bit PCM Stereo)

THE SINGLES
(96khz/24bit PCM Stereo)

OUTTAKES AND ALTERNATIVE VERSIONS
(96khz/24bit PCM Stereo) 

Along with Bikini Kill, Bratmobile spearheaded the riot grrrl revolution of the early 1990s, battling the long-standing dominance of men within the punk rock community to help empower a new generation of female musicians and fans - Comprised of singer Allison Wolfe, guitarist Erin Smith, and drummer Molly Neuman, Bratmobile made their debut at 1991's International Pop Underground convention; after a handful of singles--with members spread out between California, Washington, and Maryland, recording was a logistical nightmare--the trio finally released Pottymouth in 1993

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Thing
2. Throway
3. Stab
4. P.R.D.C.T.
5. Cherry Bomb
6. Some Special
7. Fuck Yr. Fans
8. Polaroid Baby
9. Panik
10. Bitch Theme
11. Richard
12. Cool Schmool
13. Juswanna
14. Untitled
15. Kiss And Ride
16. No You Don't
17. Queenie

In 1975, the New York City alto saxophonist Alan Braufman released his debut album, Valley of Search, on the India Navigation label. Braufman went on to record and tour with everyone from Carla Bley to The Psychedelic Furs, and didn't release another album under his name until 2020's The Fire Still Burns, which received rave reviews from The WIRE, Downbeat, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and NPR.

2024's Infinite Love Infinite Tears is a surprisingly catchy program of free jazz, richly detailed and forthright, embodying a range of emotions and circumstances that convey individuality, collectivity and hope. There is much history and love in this band, and in Alan Braufman’s art overall. Fifty-odd years after debuting on record, his sound-world is as vital and inviting as ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chasing A Melody
2. Infinite Love Infinite Tears
3. Spirits
4. Edge Of Time
5. Brooklyn
6. Liberation 

N u m e r o G r o u p Leon Bridges/Pastor TL Barrett Like A Ship Numero’s second bundle of cover 45s is all things soulful. The Rotterdam-based Another Taste electrifies Maxx Traxx’s 1984 Chicago boogie grail “Don’t Touch It,” which makes its debut on the 7” format here. Colemine Records’ Say She She delivers a glamorous rendition of Jim Spencer’s yacht-disco hit “Wrap Myself Up In Your Love.” Columbia Recording artist Leon Bridges effortlessly transforms Pastor T.L. Barrett’s “Like A Ship,” updating the 50 year old gospel soul classic for the 21st century. All three are housed in a newly imagined Numero custom sleeve, reflecting the many shades of our ongoing Eccentric Soul 45 imprint

TRACK LISTING

A. Leon Bridges W/ Keite Young - Like A Ship

B. Pastor T.L. Barrett & The Youth For Christ Choir - Like A Ship

Since their debut as Brijean, the project of percussionist/singer-songwriter Brijean Murphy (the percussive heartbeat for live bands like Mitski, Poolside, and Toro y Moi) and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart has moved with ingenuity, fusing psych-pop abstraction with dance floor sensibilities. Through the body and mind, rhythm and lyricism, they make sense of the worlds around and within; 2021's 'Feelings' celebrated self-reflection; 2022's 'Angelo' processed loss, coinciding with the duo's first headlining tour, which doubled down on the material's desire to move. Now, across the playful expanse of 'Macro', arriving in 2024 on Ghostly International, Brijean engages different sides of themselves, the paradox of being alive. They've leveled up to meet the complexities and harmonies of the human experience with their most dynamic songwriting yet. Colorful, collaborative, sophisticated, and deeply fun, the album animates a macrocosm with characters, moods, and points of view rooted in the notion that no feeling is final and the only way out is through. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Get Lost
2. Euphoric Avenue
3. Bang Bang Boom
4. After Life
5. Roxy Mountain
6. Breathe
7. Counting
8. Counting Sheep
9. Workin’ On It
10. Scenic Route
11. Roller Coaster
12. Laura 

Tetsu Shibuya, better known as simply Tetsu or Brisa is a Japanese producer and DJ known for works on the iconic Japanese Jazzy Sport imprint, King Street sub-label Nite Grooves and his own Brisa Music. Leading the EP is title-track 'Stir', in collaboration with Turbojazz Brisa delivers a classic slice of deep house built upon layers of bright stab sequences and loose organic percussion. Detroit's beloved Jon Dixon turns his hand to 'Stir' next, encapsulating the soul of his hometown in reshaping fragments of the original composition. The original of 'Reverie' opens the B-side, laying down a broken rhythm, low-pitched vocal hooks and elongated bass grooves for a more bruk tinged feel. Byron The Aquarius then extracts the core of 'Reverie' and spins it into bumpy, subtly nuanced house workout. Lastly the third original 'Flux' rounds out the release, shifting deeper in funkinfused realms with a playful plucked bass groove and heavily swung drums.

TRACK LISTING

Stir (feat Turbojazz)
Stir (feat Turbojazz) (Jon Dixon Remix)
Reverie
Reverie (Byron The Aquarius Remix)
Flux

Released on the band's own Golden Chariot Records label comes this lovingly rendered reissue of 'The Decline of British Sea Power', the band's debut album, originally released in June 2003 to huge critical acclaim and available now on coloured vinyl for the first time

Over the course of their 5 studio LPs and three award winning film soundtracks, British Sea Power have become a true British institution: Top 10, Mercury nominated LP, 3 UK silver discs and renowned for their astonishing live shows in unique and unlikely locations - National History Museum, Great Wall of China, Cutty Sark, Cern Hadron Collider, Chelsea Flower show, down a Cornish mine, up in the hills in the highest pub in England, Jodrell Bank and at the John Betjeman centenary with Nick Cave, Barry Humphries, Ronnie Corbet and Prince Charles - as well as hundreds of more traditional sell out tours and festivals around the world.

TRACK LISTING

Men Together Today
Apologies To Insect Life
Favours In The Beetroot Fields
Something Wicked
Remember Me
Fear Of Drowning
The Lonely
Carrion
Blackout
Lately
A Wooden Horse

Distant Call is a collection of early demos of songs by Trish Keenan and James Cargill that would subsequently appear as finished productions on the albums Haha Sound, Tender Buttons and The Future Crayon.

The album also includes two songs discovered by James after Trish’s passing: “Come Back To Me” and “Please Call To Book”. These were her response to Broadcast’s 2006 ‘Let’s Write A Song’ project, where fans were asked to submit lyrics on a postcard which would then be worked into a finished song.

Distant Call is a closing of the door on Broadcast and will be the last release from the band.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tears In The Typing Pool [Demo]
2. Still Feels Like Tears [Demo]
3. Come Back To Me [Demo]
4. The Little Bell [Demo]
5. Distant Call [Demo]
6. Valerie [Demo]
7. Colour Me In [Demo]
8. Ominous Cloud [Demo]
9. Flame Left From The Sun [Demo]
10. Where Youth And Laughter Go [Demo]
11. Poem Of A Dead Song [Demo]
12. O How I Miss You [Demo]
13. Pendulum [Demo]
14. Please Call To Book [Demo]

Falko Brocksieper is a cult German minimalist who was favoured by the likes of Craig Richards and his Tyrant project. This new EP from 20/20 Vision takes a deep dive into his back catalogue to unearth a gem that first arrived via Treibstoff Recordings almost 20 years ago in 2006. 'Frantic Formula' is a nice liquid cut with wispy sci-fi pads and rolling grooves for early evening warm-ups, while 'Outrun' gets more upright with its jumbled drum loops and gurgling bass. 'Covert Action' is another masterfully languid and elastic rhythm that layers up cowbells, wobbly low ends and silky loops that soon lock you into the groove. A welcome remaster and reissue for sure.

TRACK LISTING

Frantic Formula
Outrun
Covert Action

Originally released in 1979 on the ITAL MUSIC label, this cult album was reissued only on CD in 1998 by the RAS label. Recorded at CHANNEL ONE and mixed at KING TUBBY studios by Scientist, it features THE original ROOTS RADICS backing band with Flabba Holt on bass, Style Scott on drums, Bingi Bunny and Jah Sowell Tempo on guitar, Winston Wright on keyboards, Bongo Herman on percussion, Glaston Anderson on piano and, of course, Peter Broggs on vocals. This magic formula, which combines the best engineers and musicians on the island, hits the nail on the head and delivers a real DIAMOND in the rough, 100% pure ROOTS, where everyone excels. By far, one of the finest reissues of Roots Reggae in recent years, remastered and delivered as a 180 g vinyl with 350 g sleeve and a remastered CD. A MUST HAVE for all reggae fans.

TRACK LISTING

1. Never Forget Jah
2. Don't Get Weary Rasta
3. Jah Jah Help Us
4. I Don’t Know
5. Cool Down
6. Forward Natty
7. Having A Party
8. Live Up
9. River Jordan
10. Give Thanks

Broken Keys, as you may know, is a multi-talented musician and producer based in Los Angeles. His cut 'Assorted Colors' has become a real underground house classic that now lands on wax for the first time as a special extended 12" remix that really locks you into the languid grooves. The legendary Galcher Lustwerk steps up to add his own distinctive take on the original and infuses it with a techy yet atmospheric groove. Then Broken Keys explores a different facet of his sound with three distinct cuts on the flip that range from blunted beats and sun-kissed Balearic to chilled-out future soul. They make for a diverse package that has something for many different situations.

TRACK LISTING

Assorted Colors (Extended 12" Mix)
Assorted Colors (Galcher Lustwerk Remix)
Say You Do
Caught Out In The Rain
500 Days

This is the soundtrack to Get Carter (1971), the all-time classic British gangster flick starring Michael Caine and directed by Mike Hodges. It became the bridge by which jazz musician Roy Budd successfully expanded his horizons to film music, with a score brimming with moments of his genius.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film's opening, we drew on the original Japanese (1971) and British (1998) OST releases to put together an expanded edition of the OST - including a bonus disc featuring various different outtakes and bits of dialogue.

This is the 3rd installment in Beatball's series of Roy Budd Classic Soundtrack Scores, packed with a jazzy (and groovy) score done in Budd's signature style, as well as key lines of dialogue for you to relive the scenes from the film!

TRACK LISTING

Get Carter Intro
Dialogue “is There A Mr. Carter In The Room?”
Main Theme - Carter Takes The Train
Dialogue “do You Know A Man Called Albert Swift?”
Looking For Someone
Dialogue - The Race Track
Something On My Mind
Dialogue “who Killed Frank?”
Gettin' Nowhere In A Hurry
Dialogue “tell Me About The Girl”
The Girl In The Car
Dialogue “i Fancy You”
Love Is A Four Letter Word
Dialogue “you're Lucky. They Kill As Well”
Living Should Be This Way
Dialogue “all It Takes Is One Call To The Police”
Manhunt
Dialogue “drink Up: Eric”
Goodbye Eric + Dialogue
Dialogue “i Want You To Listen Very Carefully”
Hallucinations
Goodbye Carter!
Get Carter (alternative Mix 1)
Plaything
Dialogue "stay Away From The Car"
Hallucinations (alternative Vocal Mix)
Dialogue "do You Wanna Go To The Toilet, Albert?"
Gettin' Nowhere In A Hurry (instrumental)
Love Is A Four Letter Word (alternative Mix)
Manhunt (alternative Mix)
Dialogue "you're A Big Man"
Get Carter (alternative Mix 2)
Gettin' Nowhere In A Hurry (alternative Vocal Mix)
Hallucinations (instrumental)
How About You
Get Carter (7" Single Version)

Bullion is Nathan Jenkins, an enduring cult figure of electronic music. A producer and songwriter quietly to be found connecting artists, genre and UK subculture. His credits range from Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Howard, NilüferYanya and Avalon Emerson’s breakout album & The Charm to records for Westerman and Joviale. Bullion’s celebrated solo releases, meanwhile, have run parallel on Young, The Trilogy Tapes, Jagjaguwar and his own DEEK Recordings. It’s a creative red-thread Bullion ties together on his surprise new album, Affection - a warm, occasionally off-kilter and beautifully realised pop record that’s bold enough to step from behind-the-scenes and show affection in public.

Affection started life upon Nathan’s move back to London from Lisbon, where he relocated in 2018. Back then, the comfort of the crowd suited him: self-confessedly passive and faltering by nature, the opportunity to exist somewhere without any personal history proved liberating. Returning home, Nathan increasingly found himself reflecting on his place in the world, seeking affection in place of cynicism.

Bullion’s music has always been difficult to pin down, but entirely distinctive - and on Affection, its rich pleasures are in hearing how this uncompromising approach is strengthened, in part, by softening. The album wonders-aloud about the meaning of intimacy, in relationship to others and the self. Masculinity and other contemporary concerns are punctuated by old-world charms, found in the ‘hat stands and watches’ of World_train. Influences stretch from morning swims to adolescent fears and a book of poems his Dad wrote as a young man, in songs that are tender if not always true of Nathan himself. Affection ultimately asks how we understand people, but in being more vulnerable at least attempts to care a little less about what they think, too.

Taking your own advice is integral to Bullion’s latest album, where Nathan applies what he’s encouraged fellow artists to do in the studio for years: be open to adventure. Affection steps into a more emotionally-present, often playful space, with collaborators Carly Rae Jepsen and Charlotte Adigéry gracing songs that prioritise feeling over fixed meaning. Rare, for instance, emerged during sessions for Jepsen’s recent album in Toronto: high energy turning coy to express something ‘deep in the heart’. World_train, meanwhile, is an eccentric and brilliantly odd angle on Bullion’s love of pop, its locomotive power summoning a lost past amidst the uncertainties of the everyday. ‘I can hardly understand what it takes to be a real man’, Bullion sings. ‘…and nobody can’, Adigéry confirms. Still, connections - missed, imagined, or still possible - cocoon much of Affection, with Panda Bear collaboration A City’s Never emerging after Noah and Nathan lived in Lisbon at the same time but never actually met. For Bullion, the willingness to allow others into his songwriting process is as much about opening up the world of the album as it is about bettering the work and the person.

In blurring the observational with the introspective, Affection’s avant-pop touch abandons categorisation. The albums lyrics are as unguarded and devotional as they are inquisitive of alternative ways of being, signing off with ‘being still is hard to do’. Nathan has mastered his sound, but life - in its expectations, contradictions, impulses and desires - remains impossible to control.

TRACK LISTING

1. A City’s Never (ft. Panda Bear)
2. Affection
3. Rare (ft. Carly Rae Jepsen)
4. Your Father
5. The Flooding
6. Cinch
7. World_train (ft. Charlotte Adigéry)
8. Cavalier
9. Once, In A Borrowed Car
10. Open Hands
11. 40 Waves
12. Hard To Do

‘Good Grief’ is the first new solo album in 25 years from songwriter and producer Bernard Butler. Between then and now, Butler had ventured into the world of pop songwriting and producing, including two seminal albums with folk musician Sam Lee, a Mercury nominated project with actor Jessie Buckley as well as working with Bert Jansch and Ben Watt From Everything But The Girl, The Libertines, Tricky and an eight-million selling, Grammy-winning record with Duffy.

Of returning to solo work after two and a half decades, Butler says ‘For a good while I was scarred and I was scared. I was happily distracted and joyously involved with so much music. I realised just being there was more than I had ever hoped for. I gave a lot to other people, but realised that my story was defined but what I was, rather than what I am. I set myself a modest commercial goal, an expectant creative one: perform to 10 people without being bottled, then find 11 the next night. Thus began the undoing of my own embarrassment. I would write as I thought and sing as I wrote until the bottles fly. And so, the songs arrived.’

Bernard booked himself into a rehearsal space in Holloway every Wednesday afternoon for months, just him, a guitar and a microphone. The first fruit of these sessions is the new single ‘Camber Sands’, “For years and years I have drawn straight lines from North London to every coastline I could see. To life-worn Londoners escape is the dream and return most likely. The story I found was not the sea but the journey. Camber Sands, Mersea Island, Dunwich, or a dozen more horizons of possibility, the sea and the seawalls, and the endless return to face the city. Camber Sands is a love song - we flee the past, the present, ourselves, to survive, to defy. The loneliest music of the resolute, the half-light and the saddest tunes.’

Round circle shows with friends Norman Blake and James Grant across Scotland gave Butler the taste for venturing back out on stage, and while writing with Jessie Buckley for the Mercury Prize nominated For All Our Days That Tear the Heart album, Bernard tucked away his own discoveries and continued the journey once Buckley returned to the silver screen. Confronting his own songwriting process, he wrote words down, away from the security of his guitar, before carving music around the lines.

‘Good Grief’ finds Bernard Butler owning three decades of work, free to perform, bookended by wildly contrasting experiences of loss, joy, and bewilderment. The album is a journey from city to coast and back, and between it, an entire spectrum of human emotion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Camber Sands
2. Deep Emotions
3. Living The Dream
4. Preaching To The Choir
5. Pretty D
6. The Forty Foot
7. London Snow
8. Clean
9. The Wind

One of the finest groups of the late 50s, the Jazz Lab was co-led by the inimitable horn players Gigi Gryce and Donald Byrd. Although the group worked extensively from February to September of 1957 it broke up shortly after. However, all their albums together have become jazz classics, among them the group's first LP, presented here.

"Gigi Gryce and Donald Byrd's innovative, but unfortunately short-lived Jazz Lab Quintet recorded several sides during 1957, seven of which were released on this excellent LP. Jazz Lab makes for an excellent introduction to the hard bop catalogue." - 4.5 STARS AllMusic (Stephen Cook)

TRACK LISTING

1. Speculation
2. Over The Rainbow
3. Nica's Tempo
4. Blue Concept
5. Little
6. Niles
7. Sans Souci
8. I Remember Clifford
9. Smoke Signal

Neon Pill is the highly anticipated new album from Cage The Elephant, and group’s first new music since their album, Social Cues, which won Best Rock album at the 2019 GRAMMY Awards. Cage The Elephant consists of brothers Matt Shultz (vocals) and Brad Shultz (rhythm guitar) along with Daniel Tichenor (bass), Jared Champion (drums), Nick Bockrath (lead guitar) and Matthan Minster (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals).

Despite the album’s playful title, Cale’s second album in just over a year still contains the same feelings of fierce and inquisitive rage that were present in 2023 album MERCY. He remains angry, still incensed by the willful destruction that unchecked capitalists and unrepentant conmen have hoisted upon the wonders of this world and the goodness of its people. But this is not at all MERCY II, or some collection of castoffs, as throughout his career of more than six decades, Cale has never been much for repetition. His vanguard-shaping enthusiasms have shifted among ecstatic classicism and unbound rock, classic songcraft and electronic reimagination with proud restlessness.

And so, on POPtical Illusion, he foregoes the illustrious cast to burrow mostly alone into mazes of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that, as far as Cale goes, constitute a sort of swirling hope, a sage insistence that change is yet possible. Produced by Cale and longtime artistic partner Nita Scott, POPtical Illusion is the work of someone trying to turn toward the future – exactly as Cale always has.

TRACK LISTING

1. God Made Me Do It (don’t Ask Me Again)
2. Davies And Wales
3. Calling You Out
4. Edge Of Reason
5. I’m Angry
6. How We See The Light
7. Company Commander
8. Setting Fires
9. Shark-Shark
10. Funkball The Brewster
11. All To The Good
12. Laughing In My Sleep
13. There Will Be No River

Isobel Campbell is no stranger to navigating turmoil. On her previous album, There Is No Other (2020), she re-emerged after a decade of label trouble with a gem of subtly questing psychedelic folk. Four years on, Campbell spreads her net wider on Bow to Love, a soft-spun yet sharp-edged set of reflections on modern crises that doesn’t stop at diagnosing the problems: it goes further to ask how we might progress from our tense, conflicted times.

With all the dexterity the Glasgow-born singer-songwriter and cellist is known for, the result is an album of lambent surfaces and choppy riptides, a deeply personal record for today poised between hope and despair. “The album is about what we’re all in right now, and my response to that and my life as a microcosm within that,” says Campbell, before suggesting how exposing modern horrors might prove purgative. “I think there’s a quote from A Course In Miracles which says, ‘Love brings up everything unlike itself for the purpose of healing and release.’ Maybe these horrible things are coming up and out so we can get rid of them and things can be better.”

Her radar keenly attuned to inequities, Campbell spotlights toxic masculinity on the luminous ‘Everything Falls Apart,’ it’s circling lilt and warm, fretless bass framing a call to unmask patriarchal power in readiness for “a brand new start”. “My elegy to the patriarchy” is how Campbell pitches it, noting how “even the words we use to insult a substandard man will often blame the woman – ‘son of a bitch’, ‘bastard’.” The spellbinding psych-folk of ‘Spider to the Fly’ and ‘Second Guessing’ add themes of “narcissistic abuse” and “repetition compulsion”, lending bite to the album’s take on relationships.

Some songs were first conceptualised in 2016, when Brexit and Trump exacerbated what Campbell describes as “real tension” amongst people. Between its gently jazzy shuffle and cushioning arrangement, the Yoda-esque ‘Do Or Die’ foregrounds fortitude in the face of gnawing anxieties. The rainy-day soul-pop of ‘Keep Calm Carry On’ also started in 2016, when Campbell was staying at her aunt’s flat in Yoker and her then-husband and collaborator Chris Szczech texted her from New York about the Brexit vote. “Chris was saying, ‘It looks like it’s going to happen’ but I was like, ‘No way.’ And actually – ‘way’. It did happen.”

Technology is touched on with first single ‘4316’, an almost robo-folk-pop challenge to the idea of the “transhuman”: the idea that technology might sire a new stage in human evolution. Favouring “honest, decent communication” over AI, Campbell takes a dim view of our “friend, unfriend, block, unblock” culture. “I know what I love and it ain’t that,” she says. “I was talking to an Uber driver the other day and I said, ‘I don’t want to be living in a video game.’ And he said, ‘Well, we are.’ I feel like I’m offering a human element in these transhuman days of artificial intelligence.”

The looping sing-song swing of the title track applies that open, complex thinking to myths about love: “It’s not enough to bow to love” is the full lyric, offering a grown-up take on the matter. “I grew up loving The Beatles and ‘All You Need Is Love’,” Isobel says, “but sometimes love’s not enough. Sometimes love can get a bit wonky. Love brings up everything - good, bad, ugly - and it can push your buttons.”

To close the album, a warm cover of Dire Straits’s ‘Why Worry’ disregards any hipster disdain for Mark Knopfler’s band to find a core of consolation at the song’s heart. “I never really bought into all that hipster stuff,” says Campbell. “If something speaks to me, it speaks to me. My dad had all those records and I would always sing it to myself.”

In making the album, Campbell chose an environment that spoke to her. She recorded and co-produced the record with Szczech in his studio in Los Angeles, sticking with what works through the upheaval in their personal lives. “Chris Szczech and I made this record no longer as a couple. There’s been shit tons going on but then as I tell myself, things come up to be addressed and dealt with.”

The result is an inquisitive, complex and fully matured album from an artist who has travelled long and far. Campbell was first noticed as a teenage founder member of Belle & Sebastian, before she released two dream-folk solo albums under the name The Gentle Waves and left B&S in 2002. Two records under her own name followed, leading to a union with late rock-carved growler Mark Lanegan for three albums of gravel’n’honey Americana duets, where Lanegan would stand aside while Campbell called the creative shots.

A move to LA and a near-decade of label troubles followed; the latter ended with There Is No Other in 2020 before – as Campbell puts it – “the world went down the crapper” for the pandemic. And on Bow to Love, suggests Campbell, the world’s ongoing troubles are clear. “Anyone with two eyes, a brain and a heart can see that people are struggling, and I suppose I have a lot of thoughts about that. And it’s this album.”

An album that also, says Campbell, has thoughts about how the future remains unwritten. “I feel like we’re living in some kind of dystopia, but I think it’s up to us what we buy into and what we react to. We do have a choice, even if sometimes we think we don’t. You can still see acts of great kindness. In all the bleakness, that’s what I hang on to. We are co-creators. Where we go next is up to us.” Mounted with clear-sighted artistry and care, Bow to Love is a light in the dark of uncertain times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Everything Falls Apart
2. Do Or Die
3. Spider To The Fly
4. Second Guessing
5. Bow To Love
6. 4316
7. Dopamine
8. Keep Calm Carry On
9. Saturday’s Son
10. Take This Poison
11. Om Shanti Om
12. You
13. Why Worry

The acclaimed Can live series continues with the release of Live In Aston 1977, available via Mute and Future Days (the new EU label created by Spoon Records).

The series was overseen by founding member Irmin Schmidt and producer/engineer René Tinner, who delicately worked on restoring the archival recordings to the best quality for current modern technology. This record captures the band’s 1977 performance in Aston and features Schmidt (keyboard & synths), Jaki Liebezeit (drums), Michael Karoli (guitars), Holger Czukay (wave receiver & spec.sounds), plus Rosko Gee (bass), who appears for the first time in the series.

This release features sleeve notes by former Sex Pistol, Glen Matlock, sharing his first-hand experience of witnessing CAN's live show.

Live In Aston follows the release of Live In Paris 1973, the first in the series to feature Damo Suzuki’s vocals [“…among the greatest documents of their untouchable alchemy…” – Record Collector 5*]; Live In Brighton 1975 [“Pure dynamite… keep them coming” – MOJO]; Live in Stuttgart 1975, [Uncut’s Reissue of the Year, #2 in MOJO’s Reissues of the Year, #7 in The Wire’s Archive Reissues of the Year plus more]; and Live In Cuxhaven 1976, which again featured heavily in the Reissues of the Year.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklist
A1 Aston 77 Eins
A2 Aston 77 Zwei
B1 Aston 77 Drei
B2 Aston 77 Vier

CD Tracklist
1 Aston 77 Eins
2 Aston 77 Zwei
3 Aston 77 Drei
4 Aston 77 Vier

Loyle Carner has Mercury and Brits nominations, NME Awards, global brand campaigns, and 2 top #3 albums! After performing at a SOLD-OUT Royal Albert Hall on his 29th birthday, the multi-talented artist is looking to make history once again with this release.

Loyle Carner has been announced as a headliner for 2024’s All Points East. His only London live date for 2024 and his biggest yet, he’ll be playing on Saturday 17 August, joined by special guests including Nas, André 3000, Lianne La Havas, Ezra Collective and Flying Lotus across the East, West and North stages that Carner himself has curated.

TRACK LISTING

Hate
Plastic
Georgetown (feat. John Agard)
Polyfilla
Desoleil (Brilliant Corners) (feat. Sampha)
Homerton (feat. JNR Williams)
Blood On My Nikes (feat. Wesley Joseph & Athian Akec)
Nobody Knows (Ladas Road)
Still
Loose Ends (feat. Jordan Rakei)
A Lasting Place
Speed Of Plight
The Cycle
HGU
Ottolenghi (feat. Jordan Rakei)

"Remembering is not the opposite of forgetting," Casey MQ sings at the start of Later that day, the day before, or the day before that, his new LP and Ghostly International debut. It's a phrase fittingly misremembered from something the LA-based, Canadian-born composer came upon as he spiraled into unconscious and subconscious-led writing sessions at the piano. Casey’s known for his 2020 breakthrough release babycasey, which gave voice to songs seen through the lens of childhood, various film score work and collaborations with artists such as Oklou (who returns here), Eartheater, and Vagabon. His gifts as a producer and songwriter are rooted in textural world-building and the excavation of personal truth. With Later that day... he questions what is true entirely, understanding our mind's tendency to bend and project onto pictures of the past. Across vivid, baroque pop balladry, Casey MQ reorients his recording project and point of view under the notion that memories are malleable. All the joy, pain, love, and loss housed within remembrance is open to interpretation and deconstruction, which he does deftly, with curiosity and complete artistic freedom.

"It's a memory album," Casey puts it simply, winding up for the deeper unpacking, "and it might be a breakup album, too...there are more questions than answers." Engaging his dreams and sitting with sheet music at his newly acquired piano, he looked to new and old inspirations including the works of Claude Debussy, Joni Mitchell, and Joe Hisaishi's beloved Studio Ghibli film scores. "Since I was young, I always wanted to write a piano album." babycasey's studied electronic sound isn't wholly abandoned on Later that day... instead, it comes through like an atmosphere, giving Casey's more spacious, minimal arrangements a distinct luster and sheen. The textures and tones shift from song to song as if mirroring the way our minds constantly recontextualize, remember, and forget.

Cathartic opener "Grey Gardens" — its title derived from a dream abstractly related to the Toronto restaurant, but not the 1975 film, which he cites as another coincidental false memory — presents the record's plaintive, haunted feeling. "Even if not reading into lyrics, sonically I wanted it to feel like you're being pulled into a universe. Not fantasy or otherworldly per se, something more tangible, of the body and mind,” Casey says. “Hearing it back, I realized this track was the key to unlocking it." His tender falsetto hovers above ambient washes and echoed keys, each word falling carefully in the crevices. "Asleep At The Wheel" unfolds on arpeggiated synth before a burst of symphonic color; the synth returns inverted to harmonize with the outro, "I love a car crash, I love a story, I love a memory, I swear it's real..."

Casey leans into digital imagination on the warm, introspective "Me I Think I Found It." Subdued, stuttered percussion underscores the singer as he cycles through pixelated imagery — screenshots, smiles, streetlights — searching for higher meaning through love. Built on ascendent chord distortions, "Dying Til I'm Born" gives the record one of its boldest pulses of emotion. The back half stretches out; "Is This Only Water" is sparse and foggy, "Baby Voice" is intimate and desperate for something to remain. "Words For Love" grooves on guitar, and "Tennisman9" aches in heartbreak. French musician Marylou Mayniel, aka Oklou, appears as the collection’s only guest for the closing duet, "The Make Believe," a bright and buoyant send-off that gives Later that day... both a sense of resolve and cyclical-motion. "We are young, under the sun," they sing together, a parting image brimming with lightness.

TRACK LISTING

01. Grey Gardens
02. Asleep At The Wheel
03. Me, I Think I Found It
04. Dying 'Til I'm Born
05. Is This Only Water
06. See You Later
07. Baby Voice
08. Words For Love
09 Tennisman9
10. The Make Believe (feat. Oklou)

Introducing the new album from Johnny Cash titled 'Songwriter'.

Johnny Cash recorded an album’s worth of unreleased, self-penned songs in 1993 ahead of him signing with American Records and his releases with Rick Rubin that re-established himself as one of world’s best songwriters to a new generation of fans. Songwriter’s 11 songs have been updated by his son John Carter and longtime producer David Ferguson.

In early 1993, the legendary Johnny Cash found himself between contracts in his then nearly 40-year career and recorded an album’s worth of songwriting demos at LSI Studios in Nashville of songs he’d written over many years. LSI at the time was owned by his son-in-law Mike Daniels and daughter Rosey, and he wanted to help the family financially while also record some songs special to him. Not long after the fruitful session, Johnny met producer Rick Rubin, and the recordings were shelved as the two embarked on an important and prolific musical partnership that revitalized the Man in Black’s career that would last the rest of his life.

Some thirty years later, John Carter Cash, the son of Johnny and June Carter Cash, rediscovered the songs and stripped them back to just Johnny’s powerful, pristine vocals and acoustic guitar. Along with co-producer David “Fergie” Ferguson, the two invited a handpicked group of musicians that played with Johnny, including guitarist Marty Stuart and the late bassist Dave Roe, along with drummer Pete Abbott and several others, to the Cash Cabin, a hallowed space in Hendersonville, Tenn. where Johnny would write, record and relax, to breathe new life into the tracks, taking the sound back to the roots and heart of the songs.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl:
Side A
1. Hello Out There
2. Spotlight
3. Drive On
4. I Love You Tonite
5. Have You Ever Been To Little Rock?
Side B
1. Well Alright
2. She Sang Sweet Baby James
3. Poor Valley Girl
4. Soldier Boy
5. Sing It Pretty Sue
6. Like A Soldier

CD:
1. Hello Out There
2. Spotlight
3. Drive On
4. I Love You Tonite
5. Have You Ever Been To Little Rock?
6. Well Alright
7. She Sang Sweet Baby James
8. Poor Valley Girl
9. Soldier Boy
10.Sing It Pretty Sue
11. Like A Soldier

Bonus Disc (2CD):
1. I Walk The Line (1988 Version)
2. The Night Hank Williams Came To Town (with Waylon Jennings)
3. Sixteen Tons
4. Long Black Veil (1988 Version)
5. Cry, Cry, Cry (1988 Version)
6. Guess Things Happen That Way (1988 Version)
7. Get Rhythm (1988 Version)
8. Ring Of Fire (1988 Version)
9. Folsom Prison Blues (1988 Version)
10. Cat's In The Cradle
11. Hey Porter
12. Wanted Man

Casinoboy makes a triumphant return to Duca Bianco with a sparkling EP that once again shows his studio mastery. Previously featuring alongside luminaries like Rune Lindbaek and Khidja on a well-received compilation, Casinoboy's latest kicks off with 'Honesty' which is a blend of Balearic and breaks that brings a shuffle-and-wiggle experience with uplifting samples and an old-school UK rap edge. 'This Feeling' has a catchy Street Soul feel, while 'Searos' mixes up ambient sounds and Spanish Guitar to evoke the essence of the White Isle. Closing with 'Astral Go Go,' really pumps the party in ways only he knows how.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Friends of the shop Duca Bianco are back with another varied edit compilation, this time curated by Casinoboy. DB12 013 sold out super quick so don't snooze!

TRACK LISTING

Honesty
This Feeling
Searos
Astral Go Go

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds return with new album, ‘Wild God’.

“I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me,” Cave says. “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a masterplan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”

Across ten tracks, the band dance between convention and experimentation, taking left-turns and detours that heighten the rich imagery and emotion in Cave’s soul-stirring narratives. It is the sound of a group emboldened by reconnection and taking flight. There are moments that touch fondly upon the Bad Seeds’ past but they are fleeting, and serve only to imbue the relentless and restless forward motion of the band.

Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis, and mixed by David Fridmann, Cave began writing the album on New Year’s Day 2023. With sessions at Miraval in Provence and Soundtree in London, the Bad Seeds added their unique alchemy, with additional performances from Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).

“Wild God…there’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.” Nick Cave

TRACK LISTING

1. Song Of The Lake
2. Wild God
3. Frogs
4. Joy
5. Final Rescue Attempt
6. Conversion
7. Cinnamon Horses
8. Long Dark Night
9. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
10. As The Waters Cover The Sea

Fresh from winning ‘Best Live Act’ at NI Music Prize 2023, Chalk relentless ascent continues to gather thrilling pace, with EP lead single ‘The Gate’ landing on the BBC 6 Music playlist (alongside PJ Harvey, IDLES, Sampha) to kick off 2024, whilst widespread praise throughout the press community (The Independent, NME, DIY, Dork, So Young, The New Cue, Rough Trade, Consequence of Sound) has certainly positioned the trio at the very forefront of the emerging indie elite.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Gate
2. Claw
3. Kevlar
4. Bliss

‘BRAT’ is the eagerly awaited follow up to 2022’s ‘CRASH’, which reached number 1 on the UK’s official album chart, and promises to be an exhilarating club record built around high art references and social commentary.

Avant-pop and electronic superstar Charli XCX has become an iconic figure in the arts, having helped expand the landscape of popular music over the last decade by seamlessly traversing the underground and mainstream with her artistic output. Over the course of a trailblazing career, the multi-hyphenate creative has earned critical acclaim for her innovative style and entrepreneurial spirit and seen her forward-thinking approach reshape pop culture in the process.

Her lasting impact was cemented last year when Charli was honoured with the Visionary Award at the annual Ivor Novellos in London, while she also received the Powerhouse Award at Billboard’s Women In Music ceremony in Los Angeles in March.

TRACK LISTING

1. 360
2. Club Classics
3. Sympathy Is A Knife
4. I Might Say Something Stupid
5. Talk Talk
6. Von Dutch
7. Everything Is Romantic
8. Rewind
9. So I
10. Girl, So Confusing
11. Apple
12. B2b
13. Mean Girls
14. I Think About It All The Time
15. 365

A deeply personal and powerful memoir from beloved music icon Neneh Cherry. *A GUARDIAN MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024**A BBC CULTURE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024*Top of the Pops, December 1988. The world sat up as a young woman made her debut: gold bra, gold bomber jacket, and proudly, gloriously, seven months pregnant.

This was no ordinary artist. This was Neneh Cherry. But navigating fame and family wasn't always simple.

In this beautiful and deeply personal memoir, Cherry remembers the collaborations, the highs and lows, the friendships and loves, and the addictions and traumas that have shaped her as a woman and an artist. At the heart of it, always, is family: the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance and her legacy. Musician.

A beautifully packaged compilation of China Crisis' greatest hits and favourite tracks - The chosen songs have been arranged by Jack Hymers and recorded and mixed in a cinematic style by 3 time Grammy Award winning engineer Mark Phythian - Featuring Wishful Thinking, Arizona Sky, Christian, King In A Catholic Style, Black Man Ray, It's Never Too Late and many more.

TRACK LISTING

LP 1
Animals In Jungles
Wishful Thinking
Arizona Sky
It's Everything
Christian
King In A Catholic Style
Papua
It's Never To Late
When The Piper Calls
Black Man Ray
You Did Cut Me

LP2 (Deluxe Vinyl And CD Only)
It's Never Too Late (For You And Me Mix)
Wishful Thinking (Brecon Beacons Mix)
Papua (Pacific Mix)
It's Everything (Everything Mix)
King (Reprise Mix)
Christian (WW1 Mix)
Arizona (Sequential Mix)
Black Man (Way Mix)
The Understudy

Following on the theme from last year’s critically acclaimed The Hypnogogue. 15 new songs take the story further.

TRACK LISTING

1. Realm Of Minor Angels
2. Pleasure
3. Amanita
4. 2054
5. Manifesto
6. The Immediate Future
7. Sublimated In Song
8. Song 18
9. The Weather
10. Korea
11. Song From The Machine Age
12. Sleeping For Miles
13. Last Melody
14. A Strange Past
15. Music From The Ghost Hotel

With X’s, Cigarettes After Sex finally takes center stage as not just one of today’s preeminent indie bands, but as one of the most globally accomplished acts across any genre, whose often unconventional path to superstardom has helped reshape the very definition of success for artists in the modern era.

Filled with raw, imagistic, sometimes smutty vignettes set to entrancing, slowburn pop songs, bandleader Greg Gonzalez captures every emotion a romantic arc inspires. But where previous albums have drawn from an amalgam of relationships, for the most part, X’s centralizes on just one relationship that spanned four years. “The record feels brutal,” admits Gonzalez. “I could sit and talk about this loss to someone, but that wouldn’t scratch the surface. I have to really write about it, sing about it, have the music, and then I can start to analyze and learn from it. Or just relive it—in a good way. I don’t have that Eternal Sunshine-thing of wanting to forget.”

While continuing to observe classic pop song structures, Gonzalez has moved away from the prior sonic touchstones of the ’50s and ’60s, finding himself now drawn to a ’70s/’80s slow dance. While (in typical Cigarettes style) these changes may be subtle, the overall resulting energy is akin to disco ball-refracted tears on the dance floor.

TRACK LISTING

1: X's
2: Tejano Blue
3: Silver Sable
4: Hideaway
5: Holding You, Holding Me
6: Dark Vacay
7: Baby Blue Movie
8: Hot
9: Dreams From Bunker Hill
10: Ambien Slide

Since launching in 2020, Claremont 56’s Claremont Editions series of compilations has delivered a trio of must-check collections featuring a mixture of unheard gems from the label vaults and brand-new, previously unreleased tracks. Label founder Paul ‘Mudd’ Murphy continues with this blueprint on 2024’s instalment, the fourth in total.

There's naturally some genuinely headline grabbing highlights amongst the nine tracks on display, starting with opener ‘Crossing’ – a fresh cut from C56’s in-house super-group Hillside (AKA Paul Mudd Murphy, Alex Searle and Patrick Dawes), featuring lead vocals from long-time friend of the family Quinn Lamont Luke. The track is prime Hillside: all rolling hand percussion, warming keys, simmering synth-strings, sun-splashed solos and blue-eyed soul vocals from the effervescent Quinn.

It sets a high bar, quality wise, but predictably the rest of the collection hits similarly heady heights. Mudd contributes two other tracks of note: a first collaborative outing with long-time creative partner Ben Smith for five years, Smith & Mudd’s ‘Journey Seven’ – a languid, slow-motion affair that hints at what we can expect from their forthcoming album – and a typically rich, jazz-fusion influenced solo excursion, ‘Massimo’s Steps’. As vivid, emotive and detailed as you’d expect, the track explores similar sonic territory to Mudd’s recent album, In The Garden of Mindfulness.

It's usual for Claremont Editions collections to include tracks from new members of the Claremont family. Editions 4 is no different, with Danish producer Fureby – a close friend of fellow Danes Mike Salta and Peter Visti – joining forces with Guy Moscoco and Brian Faber on ‘Halcyon (Extended Mix)’, a gorgeously kaleidoscopic Balearic groover rich in fluttering flute solos, simmering disco strings and sun-bright electronics.

Elsewhere, a few familiar favourites contribute suitably stellar tracks. Mai Fujinoya dons the Yamp Kolta alias for the first time since appearing on the first editions compilation in 2020, serving up the languid Japanese language Balearic pop brilliance of ‘Saturate’, featuring beautiful lead vocals by Yuzz. Krautrock-influenced duo Neumayer Station – who made their C56 bow on last year’s Editions collection – lay down a typically stretched-out, dubbed-out groove with Spaghetti Western soundtrack flourishes (the lilting and atmospheric ‘Bassrutscher’), while Ferdi Schuster invites us to dive into the immersive depths of ‘Resonance’ – a lightly art rock and progressive rock-influenced soundscape best enjoyed while lying flat on your back.

Slow-motion house specialists Hear & Now continue to join the dots between tactile Balearica and pitched-down Italian ambient house on the stunningly gorgeous ‘Chimaera’, while there’s a surprise return for a Claremont 56 favourite: Mudd’s sought-after extended mix of Bel’s 2018 single ‘Ready To Die’, a sing-along modern Balearic classic. This time round, it has been re-edited by Blank & Jones, who teases out the sun-soaked instrumentation before finally dropping the original’s emotion-rich lead vocals.

It all adds up to another must-check instalment of the indispensable Claremont Editions series. As usual, the vinyl version has been pressed in limited qualities and comes housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, complete with another stunning cover painting by illustrator Mark Warrington.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hillside Feat. Quinn Lamont Luke – Crossing
A2. Mudd – Massimo’s Steps
B1. Bel – Ready To Die (Mudd’s Extended Mix) (Blank & Jones Edit)
B2. Fureby, Moscoso & Faber – Halcyon
C1. Smith & Mudd – Journey Seven
C2. Neumayer Station – Bassrutscher
C3. Yamp Kolt Feat. Yuzz – Saturate
D1. Ferdi Schuster – Resonance
D2. Hear & Now – Chimaera

On Parenthesis, I, Josienne Clarke has not only embraced her past but has also redefined herself in the present, presenting a body of work that is shimmering, warm, intimate, and at times, profoundly heart-wrenching. Throughout her career, Clarke has been both a Rough Trade-signed artist and a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winner, two opposing poles that neatly sum up her inability to be pigeonholed. Parenthesis, I is a masterful journey through her personal and musical evolution, drawing influence from folk greats Nick Drake and Sandy Denny, as well as more contemporary artists like Julia jacklin, Courtney Marie Andrews, Anaïs Mitchell and Lucy Dacus.

TRACK LISTING

1.  Friendly Teeth
2.  Spherical
3.  Fear Of Falling
4.  Do You Know Now
5.  Looking Glass
6.  Forbearing
7.  Most Of All
8.  Double-Edged Sword
9.  Firecracker
10.  Dead Woman’s Bones
11.  The Calm
12.  Parenthesis, I
13.  Magic Somehow

In 1974, Cluster entered the sugar era. This doesn’t mean that they had finally arrived in their promised land, but they had simply moved from Berlin to the country, to a small place called Forst on the river Weser. Many a thing had changed for band members Moebius and Roedelius since Cluster II: They had moved from boisterous Berlin to this calm rural village, they had founded the band Harmonia, had set up their own studio and had bought new equipment. As a result of this and many other things, new impulses were noticeably spurring the evolution of their music. The album Zuckerzeit (“sugar era”) launched a revolution for Cluster.

Strictly speaking, Zuckerzeit is not ­really an album by Cluster. More pre­cisely, the LP contains two mini solo al­bums by Moebius and Roedelius. Those who were familiar with the stylistic pe­culiarities of the two musicians could easily relate the solo pieces to either one of them. As Roedelius and Moebius had not yet released any solo works by the time, it was actually not possible to draw up any comparisons yet. What could be clearly heard, though, was that there were two different musical attitudes to be found on one album. One thing they did have in common was the consistent use of the analogue rhythm machine. This was something new for Cluster inasmuch as on their last album Cluster II, they had still focussed on completely different methods that were to give structure to the pieces. Zuckerzeit, on the contrary, is designed in a clearly rhythmical way: a rhythm machine, triggered synths and harmonic patterns played by hand inspired life and imagination on the melody lines: This was different as well. Once again, Roedelius and Moebius took on work in such a remarkably light-hearted and down-to-earth manner as was typical of Cluster. Zuckerzeit is light and cheerful, freed from the Germanic gravity and the mystic incense fumes that were so fashionable at the time. Cluster man­ aged to keep both feet on the ground without becoming plain or even sterile.

The friendliness of the music is clear­ly due to the two personalities of Roedelius and Moebius; its down-to-earth character possibly comes from Michael Rother, the album’s co-producer. Michael Rother had already performed with Kraftwerk and had founded the band NEU! together with Klaus Dinger before moving to idyllic Forst himself in 1973. The same year, the band Harmonia (Roedelius, Moebius, Rother) was born. The music might also have been influenced by the lovely environment of the hilly countryside surrounding them. We are told that some of the visitors to Forst had believed themselves in Tolkien’s Shire, although nobody had ever seen hobbits in the area. Maybe this impression was an all too romantic one.

Yet, those who have experienced this peaceful atmosphere for themselves may at least be able to understand what we are talking about.

By then, Cluster could finally call themselves lucky owners of their own recording equipment consisting of a multi-track recording machine, a mixer and peripherals. This gave them the possibility to develop and record their Zuckerzeit material without precipitat­ing things or having to depend on other people. So they did everything on their own except for the finishing which took place in the studio of Conny Plank, the sonic magician of their early days, something which vitally accounted for a successful outcome by the way. One has to admit that technical equipment at Forst was not quite up to the standards even of that time. Moebius and Roedelius, however, knew how to make use of the devices they had in such a skilful way that it almost seemed ob­solete to consider working in large and professional studios in the future. So, many years were yet to go by until Cluster set foot in a studio other than their own again, this time not only to do the finishing but also the recordings.

When comparing Zuckerzeit to the works of other electronic combos produced at the same time, it is first of all the shortness of the tracks that seems most striking (2’20” to 6’10”). Listeners who were expecting long and booming pieces were badly advised with this album—what kind of trip is this that lasts for six minutes only? Those who loved listening closely and who were fond of sophisticated, varied and elaborate music could not be more satisfied though, because every single one of the ten pieces is far from being boring. The fact that Cluster worked in such a calm and collected way, that they concentrated on their musical ideas instead of ­losing themselves in long-windedness, that they took their time working on the album and not least that they could rely on the ideas of their co-producer Michael Rother —all this taken together gave way to the creation of electronic miniatures that sounded as extraordinary in the 1970s as they still do today. Nothing reminds us of psychedelic music that was common at the time. Instead, we find transparency, a hint of utopia and above all new sounds and noises, something which was unheard of in popular music until then. Even fifty years after its first release, Zuckerzeit might easily figure as a reverberating chapter in the latest edition of the imaginary handbook “The Golden Rules of Electronic Music”.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Hollywood
A2 Caramel
A3 Rote Riki
A4 Rosa
B1 Caramba
B3 Fotschi Tong
B4 James
B5 Marzipan
B6 Rotor
B7 Heiße Lippe

Flavia Coelho hypnotises us right from the start with her song ‘Mama Santa’, a nod to her mother. The Garota do Rio, who took the French music scene by storm in 2011 to prove to her father that she was a true artist.

Flavia Coelho is continuing her exploration of identity and her quest for authenticity, tackling the themes of reconstruction, courage, and resilience, with her loyal producer and arranger Victor Vagh-Weinmann, whom she met in her early days in France. Together, they initiated and designed all the compositional material, electro pads, organs, keyboards, guitars, and percussion. These ingredients, combined with the catchy melodies and sublime voice of the bewitching Flavia, have given life to the ten nuggets of ‘GINGA’.

The writing of this new opus began two years ago, after a key phrase, heard by the artist: "We live our first twenty years, then the next twenty serve to understand the first twenty.” 43-year-old Flavia Coelho has precisely reached this stage in her life.

To create ‘GINGA’, the singer immersed herself in all the music of her youth, particularly South American songs from kitschy telenovelas.Then Flavia recorded her ideas on her Dictaphone, and began writing and producing her songs in the studio between August and December 2023, in a vital urgency, like a personal challenge to be taken up and a typically "Coelhian" saudade, bursting with emotion.

Funk, house, Latin American, samba, reggae and amapiano, in ‘GINGA’, Flavia Coelho fuses genres and heritages, orchestrated with varying degrees of sensuality and vibrancy, the fruit of over a hundred hours of recording. For the first time, Flavia Coelho has entrusted the mixing of her album to renowned collaborators, as if she needed to entrust her work to them and take a step back to give a whole new dimension to the songs that are so close to her. Tom Fire, Prince Fatty, Paul from Synapson and Guts were given the delicate task of mixing the final version of the album.

Flavia takes flight and takes us on a journey, from Brazil to London via Provence, Paris and everywhere in between. ‘GINGA’ is a sharpened set of legs that takes us through the sound system of Flavia Coelho's life, while continuing to accompany our own.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mama Santa
2. Nordestina
3. Mais Amor
4. Lapa
5. Passageiro
6. Nosso Lar
7. Sistema Solar
8. Tamarindo
9. De Vous À Moi
10. Bira