Performed by:
E, piano & vocals
P-Boo, piano
MC: Judd Apatow

Recorded December 6th, 2019 at Largo at the Coronet, Los Angeles, California, celebrating Judd Apatow's birthday -- A benefit for Children's Hospital L.A.

TRACK LISTING

I Need Some Sleep
It's A Motherfucker
That Look You Give That Guy
Raspberry Beret

After a four year wait, EELS will release their highly-anticipated new album The Deconstruction via E Works/[PIAS].

“Here are 15 new EELS tracks that may or may not inspire, rock, or not rock you. The world is going nuts. But if you look for it, there is still great beauty to be found. Sometimes you don’t even have to look for it. Other times you have to try to make it yourself. And then there are times you have to tear something apart to find something beautiful inside.”

EELS singer-songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett).

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: From the bubblegum sweetness (and reticent unease) of Eels' early works to todays melancholic and refined productions, Mark Oliver everett has maintained his impeccable ear for melody and unrivalled attention to detail. 'The Deconstruction' is in many ways the pinnacle of their works to date, instantly recognisable but undeniably boundary-pushing.

TRACK LISTING

The Deconstruction
Bone Dry
The Quandary
Premonition
Rusty Pipes
The Epiphany
Today Is The Day
Sweet Scorched Earth
Coming Back
Be Hurt
You Are The Shining Light
There I Said It
Archie Goodnight
The Unanswerable
In Our Cathedral

After a four year wait, EELS will release their highly-anticipated new album The Deconstruction via E Works/[PIAS].

“Here are 15 new EELS tracks that may or may not inspire, rock, or not rock you. The world is going nuts. But if you look for it, there is still great beauty to be found. Sometimes you don’t even have to look for it. Other times you have to try to make it yourself. And then there are times you have to tear something apart to find something beautiful inside.”

EELS singer-songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett).

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: From the bubblegum sweetness (and reticent unease) of Eels' early works to todays melancholic and refined productions, Mark Oliver everett has maintained his impeccable ear for melody and unrivalled attention to detail. 'The Deconstruction' is in many ways the pinnacle of their works to date, instantly recognisable but undeniably boundary-pushing.

TRACK LISTING

The Deconstruction
Bone Dry
The Quandary
Premonition
Rusty Pipes
The Epiphany
Today Is The Day
Sweet Scorched Earth
Coming Back
Be Hurt
You Are The Shining Light
There I Said It
Archie Goodnight
The Unanswerable
In Our Cathedral

TRACK LISTING

In Gratitude For This Magnificent Day
I'm A Hummingbird
The Morning
Baby Loves Me
Spectacular Girl
What I Have To Offer
This Is Where It Gets Good
After The Earthquake
Oh So Lovely
The Man
Looking Up
That's Not Her Way
I Like The Way This Is Going
Mystery Of Life 

Reflection Of Youth - which was recorded in a studio on a working dairy farm deep in the wilds of West Wales as well as in the producer’s home studio in Cork, Ireland - is an album of visceral beauty and blistering honesty. It is a brave, candid and uncompromising record about finding purpose from confusion and strength in your weaknesses. It’s about learning how to work through your problems and take charge of your own life, instead of relying on others to do it for you. Its ten songs were largely composed in the small hours of the night and are arguably best experienced in that context, when soul-searching and introspection come naturally.

For Anna Lena, the album is a document of a tumultuous chapter in her life. It’s very much about living through your twenties, which in Norwegian society are “the years when you’re supposed to figure everything out.”

On Reflection Of Youth, EERA’s sound has already evolved into something rawer, rockier and noticeably angrier. "It was a really odd experience to listen back to the record and realise what I'd made," says Anna Lena. "I was surprised by how different, how much more powerful it felt from the EP. Those songs sounded like I was quietly knocking on the door, trying to get in, whereas the album feels like I'm stepping through it." If Anna Lena set out to achieve anything, she says, “it was to make an incredibly honest record that would give people a real sense of who I am. I think it’s important to be vulnerable, to not be afraid of showing emotion and be open about it with the people around you. We all face problems in our lives, so why not meet them head-on?”

TRACK LISTING

Living
Beast
Christine
I Wanna Dance
Survived
10 000 Voices
Watching You
Trust
Wise Man
Reflection Of Youth

A cinematic ocean of sound. Eerie Wanda's Marina Tadic draws you into her inner worlds on these 11 new songs produced by Kramer (Galaxie 500, Unrest, Ween, Daniel Johnston.) On Internal Radio, the new album by Eerie Wanda, visual artist and musician Marina Tadic welcomes you to her inner world. Guided by intuition, Tadic's songs use haunting, ethereal space, growing whole universes from the seeds of ideas. Internal Radio documents Tadic becoming the artist she wants to be, working through some things, and even exorcizing a few demons.

The result is the most realized Eerie Wanda album yet, building on the project's guitar pop past for a more experimental, other worldly, serious grown-up affair that ventures into sensitive, motional territory.

"Pet Town is delightfully airy; a set of songs that have drifted in on a breeze from some strange and foreign landscape you won't find on any map.” Gold Flake Paint.

“Tadic’s melody here is part of that Brian Wilson lineage … she sets those notes adrift with a casually graceful minimalism… It evokes a pleasant stroll through a city at the moment when night begins to fall on a daydream.” Stereogum.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sail To The Silver Sun
2. NOWx1000
3. Long Time
4. On Heaven
5. Confess
6. Nightwalk
7. Someone's In My House
8. Sister Take My Hand
9. Birds Aren't Real
10. Puzzled
11. Bon Voyage

For Dutch/Croatian songwriter and visual artist Marina Tadic, Pet Town represents time well spent in one’s own shell. Her second LP as Eerie Wanda (and first for Joyful Noise Recordings), Pet Town is a stripped down spectral manifestation, anchored by Tadic’s wistful lyrics and self possessed vocal delivery. Mixed by producer Jasper Geluk, the album is perched in warm, homespun recordings live drums are replaced with handclaps, finger snaps, and a Roland-CR 78 drum machine, enhancing the music’s tactile and intimate headspace. Using minimal recording techniques, Tadic shaped these ten songs on sheer intuition, while drawing inspiration from solitude: how it can be both a state of euphoria but also one of loneliness of inner meditation and outer yearning.

Echoing the sonorous gleam of West Coast pop, opening song "Pet Town" initially sounds like a love letter to one’s hometown, as both a tangible and emotional sanctuary. Between the lines, Tadic grapples with the sudden absence of shiny beacons that once enriched her life. "Hands Of The Devil" casts spells of attraction with its hypnotic flamenco cadence, whereas the humdrum amble of "Sleepy Eyes" evokes a rude awakening from those very spells. Tadic is still left guessing how Pet Town came to be, exactly. “I wrote the songs over a period of time spent inside my shell, and I needed that time. Not escaping it brought me a lot of growth.” Like some mysterious shamanic voice from the future, Eerie Wanda hushes turbulent peaks and valleys into a comforting, deft equilibrium. “I love to think I'm connected with some other dimension which sends me the songs and I can catch them if I'm in the right zone.” 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Warm and intimate, Eerie Wanda is the counterfoil to the loud and chaotic musical world of today. Easily drifting between stripped-back psychedelic folk, worldly rhythms and rich, anthemic indie. It really is a beautiful mix of sounds, and one put together with Tadic's trademark skill.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pet Town
2. Big Blue Bird
4. Rockabiller 
5. Magnetic Woman 
6. Moon 
7. Sleepy Eyes 
8. The Intruder
9. Couldn't Tell 
10. Hands Of The Devil 
11. Truly.

EE hails from San Francisco, California and features Soo Young Park from Seam on guitar / keyboards and Tobin Mori ex-Korea Girl on guitar / lead vocals. The sound is very reminiscent of Seam in many ways. It's not the usual sort of Asian Man skacore sound, being more in a emo style with slow burners developing into epic rockers.

"Rhizomes" is the debut full length from the all-female outfit, Effi Briest. The nine-song opus, "Rhizomes", unleashes a propulsive beat that drives angular guitars and bone chilling vocals over dark bass, dense drones and clattering, dance-like percussion. The atmospheric psychedelia owes as much to Arthur Russell as to Amon Duul. "Rhizomes" includes two of the band’s UK singles on Loog Records, and seven more previously-unreleased original songs.

"Performing Parades" is a limited edition album featuring Efterklang performing their 2007 album Parades in full, accompanied by The Danish National Chamber Orchestra. Mojo magazine enjoyed the show so much, they gave it a glowing full page live review! The concert was recorded in their hometown of Copenhagen in September 2008, and will be performed again at the Barbican in London on October 28th, this time with The Britten Sinfonia. Mojo described the Copenhagen concert as 'uplifting, celebratory and gloriously ridiculous, like an alternate national anthem for a new northern utopia of untrammelled happiness'. The stunning live recordings will be issued as a limited edition deluxe CD+DVD package and a limited edition 2LP+DVD in a lush gatefold sleeve, with brilliant design to match the quality of "Parades" and "Under Giant Trees". These special editions are surefire future collectors' items. The live audio recording is packaged with a 55-minute concert film on DVD. The DVD includes plenty of extras, including a behind the scenes documentary of the preparations for the event, and all six videos made for tracks from "Parades", including lead single "Mirador", which has racked up over one million (1,000,000!) views on Youtube.

Over the years Efterklang hae developed an insatiable taste for adventure, keen to immerse themselves in different projects and be challenged musically. Collaborating with classical orchestras is one such challenge that the band have never shied away from, and the results have always been stunning. With the release of their fourth album ‘Piramida’, they continued this tradition by performing it for the first time - before the record itself was released - at the iconic Sydney Opera House in May 2012 with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. An unorthodox way of introducing a new body of work, perhaps, but the moment has become a milestone in Efterklang’s twelveyear history.

Early on in the gestation process of ‘Piramida’, Efterklang enlisted the talents of renowned composers Missy Mazzoli and Karsten Fundal to provide orchestral arrangements for the Sydney performance. Their invaluable contributions brought the orchestra into sharp focus, becoming the catalyst for the performance rather than an embellishment.

Since their appearance at the Sydney Opera House, the band have played fifteen other such concerts - dubbed The Piramida Concerts - around the globe, including sold out performances at London’s Barbican with the Northern Sinfonia and New York’s Metropolitan Museum concert hall with The Wordless Music Orchestra.

The album ‘Piramida’ was released in September 2012. It is named after a forgotten mining settlement on the Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen, located just south of the North Pole, abandoned since 1998 and slowly decaying. The trio of Casper Clausen, Mads Brauer and Rasmus Stolberg spent nine days exploring this ghost town, collecting field recordings that would help form the backbone of their fourth studio record. Although cut from the same cloth, The Piramida Concerts differ from Piramida and, keen to present this other side, Efterklang decided to commit one of the performances to tape. Fittingly, they chose the concert they played in their native Denmark, and this will be released as a deluxe double vinyl package (with a copy of the album on CD).

‘The Piramida Concert’ by Efterklang & Copenhagen Phil was recorded live at Copenhagen’s Royal Academy Of Music Concert Hall in October 2012. Over the course of two sold-out nights Efterklang - plus special guests Peter Broderick, Katinka Fogh Vindelev and Budgie (Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Creatures) - teamed up with the 33-strong Copenhagen Phil orchestra and German conductor André de Ridder to perform ‘Piramida’ in its entirety.

The concert also features ‘So’, a song written during recording sessions for ‘Piramida’, and ‘Vælv’, a classical piece commissioned by Efterklang and composed by Karsten Fundal.

Mixed to tape by Francesco Donadello at the Vox-Ton studio in Berlin, the deluxe gatefold double vinyl will consist of one black disc and one white, designed by Danish artists and long-time Efterklang collaborators Hvass&Hannibal.

Altid Sammen (meaning “always together”) is deep and sonorous, steeped in the sonic experimentation that has long been their trademark since Tripper, the Danes’ 2004 debut. As bold and ambitious in scope as their last collection of songs, Piramida, Casper Clausen (vocals), Mads Brauer (synths, electronics) and Rasmus Stolberg (bass) have taken another creative U-turn, this time fusing baroque instrumentation with their signature expansive sound.

Efterklang’s last release, Piramida, centred around a ghost town in the Arctic, was a grand and all-encompassing project that spawned a movie, live album and a series of unforgettable shows (including a live debut at the Sydney Opera House). Their final performance in Sønderborg – the southern Danish town where the band grew up – marked a closing of a chapter, for Piramida and for Efterklang.

“We needed a break from the album and touring routine, and we needed a break from Efterklang,” says Clausen. “After the Sønderborg show, things felt very exciting – and a bit scary too. We could think freely, and move in new directions again, just focusing on the things that excited the 3 of us.”

That break saw the trio explore projects outside of the group’s confines. Together they co-wrote and performed an opera with friend and composer Karsten Fundal (LEAVES, The Colour Of Falling) as part of the Copenhagen Opera Festival. Meanwhile, Clausen, Brauer and Stolberg reunited with Efterklang’s touring drummer Tatu Rönkkö for a new band, Liima. In sharp contrast to Efterklang, they scaled down the music process, creating songs in a day, and released two records of icy, grand electronic pop, ii (2016) and 1982 (2017).

What lured them back as Efterklang was another off-kilter collaboration, this time with B.O.X, a Belgian ensemble founded by lute player Pieter Theuns that performs new music with baroque orchestration. Initially invited by Theuns to compose music for a joint performance, the experience inspired and invigorated the trio to return to the studio for a new Efterklang album proper. For perhaps the first time in the band’s history, they took a less-is-more approach to Altid Sammen, engaging on a more primal and emotional level. The album also sees the trio break from tradition with Clausen singing in his mother tongue some of his most personal lyrics thus far.

“Altid Sammen’s songs are about belief and togetherness,” Clausen says. “Not in a religious way – none of us are believers of a defined religion. The words are searching for meaning in intimate relationships, in nature, in death and eternity. The bonds we create; to gather, hold hands, sing or share a moment together. We’re all connected, across nations, age, sex and gender. We come together with all of our backgrounds, and we move apart in all sorts of directions, always together.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I've loved Efterklang for some time now, and it really has been fascinating to see the trajectory of the core band and their former members (Peter Broderick being one of them!). Their newest outing takes the morose poppy melodies of Piramida with some of the electronic scree of their earlier work, and it's a perfectly measured and completely brilliant electronic pop LP. Superb as ever from Clausen & co.

TRACK LISTING

Vi Er Uendelig
Supertanker
Uden Ansigt
I Dine øjne
Hænder Der åbner Sig
Verden Forsvinder
Under Broen Der Ligger Du
Havet Løfter Sig
Hold Mine Hænder

Since 2000, Copenhagen-based quartet Efterklang (plus an ever evolving number of collaborators) have been quietly honing their craft, fusing left-of-centre electronic beats with grand orchestral gestures. Self-sufficient by nature and necessity, the band have, until now, always written, recorded and produced every element of their music from the comfort of their Copenhagen bunker. In this time, they have also released records through their own Rumraket label, working with the likes of Grizzly Bear, Amiina and Slaraffenland. So far, the results have been nothing short of revelatory; in particular, 2007’s hugely ambitious "Parades", an album that was difficult to define but even harder to fault, it raised their profile enormously, and with "Magic Chairs" they continue their evolution, exploring previously unchartered territory.
The result is an intimate and immediate record that exudes warmth. The grandiose classical structures heard so prominently and admired so highly in previous albums "Tripper" and "Parades" have been replaced by something far more streamlined, deconstructed and altogether melodious. Opening track "Modern Drift" is a statement of intent with its intricate and looping arpeggios whilst "I Was Playing Drums" is arguably their most accessible pop song to date, the echoes of its refrain linger irresistibly in the ear. ‘Magic Chairs’ still bears the occasional signature moment (an electronic buzz here, a choral flair there) but, all told, it is an album that is an even bolder step forward.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Featuring a host of guest musicians including Peter Broderick, "Magic Chairs" is an immense melodic strewn avant epic, that snuggles nicely in your collection between the latest Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear albums.

One of two double CD reissues containing Efterklang’s first two full-length albums, together with their accompanying Eps, in deluxe foldout card packaging with new 16-page booklets containing sleeve notes written by the band.

Watershed second album "Parades" is now joined by the long-deleted "Under Giant Trees" mini-album. This also features two live recordings of tracks from the album.

TRACK LISTING

CD1:
1. Polygyne
2. Mirador
3. Him Poe Poe
4. Horseback Tenors
5. Mimeo
6. Frida Found A Friend
7. Maison De Réflexion
8. Blowing Lungs Like Bubbles
9. Caravan
10. Illuminant
11. Cutting Ice To Snow

CD2:
1. Falling Horses
2. Himmelbjerget
3. Hands Playing Butterfly
4. Towards The Bare Hill
5. Jojo
6. Mirador (Live)
7. Cutting Ice To Snow (Live)

Forever fascinated by the purest possibilities of sound, since forming in 2001 Efterklang - childhood friends Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen and Rasmus Stolberg - have consistently adjusted their sonic modus operandi to suit very specific inspirations. The results the band have produced so far - most notably across three acclaimed albums, 2004’s ‘Tripper’, 2007’s ‘Parades’ and 2010’s ‘Magic Chairs’ - have each explored different directions, each an end product of remarkably studied songcraft and emotional resonance. But ‘Piramida’ is perhaps the band’s greatest achievement: an album bringing the outside in, informed by frozen time and the relics humanity leaves in its expanding wake.

‘Piramida’s roots were laid in 2010, when the band first saw photographs of a forgotten settlement lying, slowly dying, on Spitsbergen, an island of the Svalbard archipelago midway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole. This ghost town, which the trio eventually visited in August 2011 (drummer Thomas Husmer left before ‘Piramida’s commencement), would give their fourth album its title, and comprise the conceptual catalyst for its contents.

Once an outpost for some 1,000 Russians, the former mining facility was abandoned in January 1998. Between the empty oil drums and fuel tanks, glass bottles, lampshades, sea birds and polar bears, the band discovered the world’s northernmost grand piano, standing proudly in a concert hall that once held 400 people. Its notes can be heard on ‘Piramida’, perhaps for the first time anywhere in over a decade.

When the band returned home, nine days later, they’d accumulated just over 1000 field recordings from the many and varied environments they explored in Piramida. The beginnings of this approach can be seen on the band’s 2010 film collaboration with Vincent Moon, ‘An Island’. Then the time came to transform these audio snapshots of abandonment, of isolation touched by unique beauty, into songs.

Every added element - including contributions from Peter Broderick (violin), Earl Harvin (drums), Nils Frahm (piano), brass from the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra, and a 70- piece girls choir - owes its presence to the trio’s Piramida visit. “Everything that has gone onto this record is connected with that trip,” says Clausen. Adds Stolberg: “We didn’t really know where we were going to end the record - but the starting point was something we could control. That was an amazing framework for us, and we could constantly put what we were working on in the context of that trip.”

Lyrically, Clausen isn’t telling of empty houses and dusty grand pianos - but his heartfelt performance, more prominent in the mix here than on past albums and all the more affecting for it, is carried by a different kind of isolation, of abandonment. In his words there are glimpses of a relationship splintered, a community of two lost to the winds. It’s thousands of geographical miles away from Piramida, yet becomes the heart of Piramida.

A less-densely layered collection than the electronic-hued ‘Parades’, and more direct than ‘Magic Chairs’, ‘Piramida’ is a rare example of a conceptually strong project that never forgets to let the concept serve the song, rather than the other way around. It’s a streamlined sound, but distinct and absorbing too. It showcases a band superbly capable of transitioning experiences shared by a select few into music that can be enjoyed by a wide, open-minded audience.

Danish band Efterklang returns with their seventh studio album 'Things We Have In Common’, set for release on September 27th via City Slang.

An album about friendship, belonging, faith and understanding, themes which are palpable in the music, which is gentle and uplifting, healing and rousing.

Efterklang has become an open community with three permanent members: Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen and Rasmus Stolberg. On this album the core trio re-connected with their old friend and founding Efterklang member Rune Mølgaard who left the band in 2007 to join the mormon church, and ultimately withdrew from the church in 2022. His profound spiritual journey significantly influences the album's content and tone, on which he has co-written seven of the nine songs.

'Things We Have In Common' coincides with the 20th anniversary of the band’s debut album, and presents 2 decades of collaboration, exploration, evolution and reconnection.

The album features contributions from a variety of international musicians. Zach Condon of Beirut, Finnish drummer Tatu Rönkkö, Venezuelan guitarist Hector Tosta and Guatemalan cellist and singer Mabe Fratti all became key collaborators. Italian award- winning mixer Francesco Donadello and South Denmark Girls’ Choir both left their indelible mark on the record, as their did with the band’s 2012 album ‘Piramida’.

TRACK LISTING

1. Balancing Stones (feat. Mabe Fratti)
2. Plant (feat. Mabe Fratti)
3. Getting Reminders (feat. Beirut)
4. Ambulance
5. Leave It All Behind
6. Animated Heart (feat. Sønderjysk Pigekor)
7. Shelf Break
8. Sentiment
9. To A New Day (feat. Sønderjysk Pigekor)

Featuring a line-up of DAVE STEWART (organ, piano, tone generator), MONT CAMPBELL (bass, vocals) and CLIVE BROOKS (drums), the band had evolved from the group URIEL who also featured STEVE HILLAGE. By the end of 1968 the group was reduced to a trio with the departure of Hillage to the University of Kent and they became known as Egg.

Egg singed to Decca Records in the summer of 1969 and recorded their wonderful debut album later that year. Originally issued by Decca’s Deram Nova label in January 1970, ‘EGG’ is now regarded as a classic early progressive / psychedelic rock album.

This new Esoteric Recordings vinyl edition is newly remastered and restores the track ‘Symphony No. 2 – Third Movement’, which was withdrawn from the original release due to the piece borrowing from themes by Stravinsky. The album has been cut at Abbey Road studios and fully restores the original LP artwork.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1 Bulb
2 While Growing My Hair
3 I Will Be Absorbed
4 Fugue In D Minor
5 They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano
6 The Song Of McGuillicudie The Pusillanamous (or Don’t Worry James, Your Socks Are Hanging In The Coal Cellar With Thomas)
7 Boilk

Side Two
1 Symphony No. 2 – First Movement
2 Symphony No. 2 – Second Movement
3 Blane
4 Symphony No. 2 – Third Movement
5 Symphony No. 2 – Fourth Movement

William Eggleston is a famed photographer and musician credited for iconic album covers such as Spoon’s Transference and Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American. 512 was inspired and recorded at the Parkview Apartments in Memphis, Tennessee where Eggleston lived for almost ten years. The apartment was full of art and inspiration: cameras, naturally, but also high-end stereo tube amplifiers and objects that you’d rush towards money in hand at your local flea market. But also a gigantic nine foot Bosendorfer grand piano and a massive grand vintage JBL theater speaker console. His home was overwhelmed by music.

By recording there the album captures not just his performances, but also the vibe of the place; it often felt as though there were artists lurking in the aether listening along. His visitors over the years were no small change: Lee Friedlander, Carl Sagan, Dennis Hopper , Paul McCartney and many others came to see him and listen to his hypnotic “Musik”. You can hear local traffic, a dog barking, weather; reality, in other words. But there was another space layered on top, a kind of surreality echoing his music, as you can imagine a gathering of musicians listening in, eager to join him. Thus came along 512 which features the legendary Brian Eno on bells and production from Leo Abrahams (Regina Spektor, Paul Simon, Jon Hopkins).”

TRACK LISTING

1. Improvisation
2. Ol’ Man River
3. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
4. Over The Rainbow
5. That’s Some Robert Burn
6. Onward Christian Soldiers

Native Memphian William Eggleston, 77, is widely regarded to be the most important photographer of the late 20th Century but there is another side to him that took root in his Sumner, Mississippi childhood, where he discovered the piano in the parlour that ignited in him a lifelong passion for music.

In the 1980’s, Eggleston, who disdained digital cameras and modernity in general, became surprisingly fascinated with a synthesizer, the Korg O1/W FD, which had 88 piano-like keys and in addition to being able to emulate the sound of any instrument, also contained a four-track sequencer that allowed him to expand the palette of his music, letting him create improvised symphonic pieces, stored on 49 floppy discs, encompassing some 60 hours of music from which this 13 track recording was assembled.

The music, which he refers to as ‘Musik’, adopting the German spelling of his hero, JS Bach, is highly emotional, whether he’s improvising a Bach-like organ fanfare out of whole cloth, using a Korg patch titled ‘Guitar Feedback’ to create a dirge, or playing Lerner and Lowe’s ‘On The Street Where You Live’ as a dramatic overture.

Release available in a beautiful gatefold double LP with photography by Alex Soth.

Golden-era of kinked, acid-hued, analogue, harmonic song writing sits at the heart of The Eggmen Whoooooo!’s first, mind-bending, full-length album. Two-decades of meandering musicality fans the embers of cult Welsh legends, El Goodo, glowing beneath Benedict Frye’s latest bakeries of sound.

Whisking effervescence and colour into the flat glass of soda of mundane middle age, the former El Goodo pace-setter has gathered a band of five other, talented souls and asks the jittery cut of sparking psych to lead the charge as the band’s debut album, ‘Fuzzy Eggs, Please’ is announced for release on Fri 25 October 2024.

Almost a full two decades since El Goodo rose to an elevated position amongst discerning music-lovers as consorts to, support act beneath and studio collaborators with Super Furry Animals, and a full four years since the final act of the departed band (their last, acclaimed studio album, Zombie) a tapestry of distinctly and brilliantly odd songs scrambles from the heart of the Welsh hills. Transplanted into the chest cavity of a new, stage-ready six-headed creature, what awakes is a new beast of valve amp and feedback-fuelled splendour.

All ten songs, recorded in mountainous seclusion in Carmarthenshire with producer, Thighpaulsandra (Spiritualized, Tim Burgess), have clustered in strange harmony on The Eggmen Whoooooo!’s very first, perfectly imperfect album.

Formed in a lightning strike of inspiration by prolific, remote South Wales-based keeper of various musical flames, Benedict E Frye, The Eggmen Whoooooo! finds members of kindred, Welsh musical spirits, El Goodo, Los Blancos and Trecco Beis, joining hands and overloading studio plug sockets in a display of unchallenged creative hubris. With nobody to please but themselves, the six-piece’s indulgence in sounds straddles sun-licked Californian harmonies and the torn-sneakered snottiness of New York punk making for thrilling sonic schizophrenia with only their own record collections occasionally poached. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A)
1) I Don’t Need Your Drugs (I’m A Kool Kunt Already)
2) Eggman Vs Hellboy
3) I Don’t Care
4) It’s Just Your Mind
5) Fuzzy Eggs, Please

Side B)
1) Rwy’N Dy Garu Di
2) The Old Man Kmows Best
3) Stronger Than Dirt
4) So Long (Bye Bye, Baby)
5) Ready To Go Now

Hero of the nu-disco crowd and one of the founding godfathers of Italo Disco, Beppe Loda comes to prominence once again with a brand new album of instrumental synth loveliness under his Egotrya guise.

The album harks back to the heavy influence of 80s prog rock on the cosmic disco scene. Tracks like ‘Landscape’ utilise strong synth motifs and experimental melodic touches, brought into the 21st century with crisp production. Imagine Rustie vs. Vangelis and you’re somewhere close.

‘Typhoon’ is an all-out synth bonanza with chugging basslines and steady disco beats. ‘Volcano’, written and produced with Francesco Boscolo, is a prime slice of Italo glamour that’ll have the nu-disco pups reaching for the stars. ‘Cave’ builds on the glacial sci-fi atmospheres whilst ‘Wind (Stella Vocal)’ drives hard with its mesmerizing groove. ‘Open Air’ provides meditative, crystalline relief before ‘Rare Earth’ propels the album forward with hollowed-out tom patterns and rapid synth switch-ups.

The album comes to a close with the motoric ‘Underwater’, a manic, soaring piece of music paired with the trickling sounds and long modulated synth bows of ‘Water Games’ to finish.

Every element of Egyptian Blue’s fierce, uncompromising sound feels like hypnotism fuelled by psychosis. Their grinding riffs achieve a mesmeric power through brute repetition, while their rhythm section produces taut, nervous energy and intense post-punk grooves in equal measure.

Following on from their incendiary debut E. P’s; 2019’s ‘Collateral Damage’ & 2020’s ‘Body Of Itch’, the band garnered a fervent following and had support from key tastemakers across the media including Steve Lamacq, Jack Saunders, Tom Ravenscroft, NME and Fader.

In the intervening time they have been heralded by their peers as one of the best new bands in the country; IDLES frontman Joe Talbot describing them as “fucking sick’’ and picking them as his act of choice for the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury 2022. Yannis Philippakis is another avowed super-fan, personally choosing Egyptian Blue as support for Foals’ run of arena shows in the UK & Europe during their Life Is Yours tour run.

With a new clarity of vision fully formed during the extended hiatus of 2-years of pandemic enforced delays, ‘’A Living Commodity’’ represents a dynamic artistic shift from Egyptian Blue and showcases in full the scale and ambition of their songwriting.

The first teaser of new music came in the form of ‘Geisha’; a psyche-tinged punk attack driven by Luke Phelps propulsive bass combined with Isaac Ide’s tight percussion, underpinned by dual frontmen Andy Buss & Leith Ambrose jagged guitar playing adding to the angsty and foreboding lyrics with Buss professing ‘’I live for only you’’ making a magnetising collage of sounds. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Matador
2. Nylon Wire
3. Belgrade Shade
4. Skin
5. In My Condition
6. A Living Commodity
7. Apparent Cause
8. Suit Of Lights
9. To Be Felt
10. Contain It
11. Geisha

The genre, electro (or electro-funk), is sometimes perceived to have a separate identity to hip-hop; however, this electronic cousin was integral to the early development of the hip-hop sound. Drawing on drum machines, such as the Roland TR-808, and influenced by funk, these two genres were intertwined and rode a parallel axis for a while, with rap, breakdance, and graffiti as pillars of the culture and community. The mechanical sound of electro would later go on to inspire a different set of producers and played its part in influencing contemporary electronic dance music. For this 7” release we are taking things back to 1984 and 1985 with a split single from The Egyptian Lover and Jamie Jupitor.

First up is a track from The Egyptian Lover, AKA Greg J. Broussard, the cult Los Angeles-based producer, vocalist and DJ, who is a true hip-hop / electrofusion pioneer. ‘Computer Love (Sweet Dreams)’ is a seminal electro-fusion / machine-funk classic that saw a release on the iconic label Freak Beat Records (owned by Greg himself). The original 7” release is now very sought-after by collectors. On the flip we have another electro jam from The Egyptian Lover disciple, Jamie Jupitor. ‘Computer Power’ was additionally produced and arranged by The Egyptian Lover, and was released on Egyptian Empire Records (the label that evolved from Freak Beat Records). For this release we have opted for a special 7” unreleased radio edit, that has Greg kindly provided us with, which differs slightly in composition from the previously released versions. One for fans of D m Funk, electro and 80s funk

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: No it's not a cover of Kraftwerk! But LA's veteran electro-funk / freestyle legend Egyptian Lover reissuing some highly treasured HEAT from his early catalogue.

TRACK LISTING

Computer Love (Sweet Dreams) - The Egyptian Lover
Computer Power - Jamie Jupitor

Egyptian Lover's Egypt Egypt: 40th Anniversary 1984-2024 celebrates a seminal track in the evolution of electro and techno. Originally released in 1984, 'Egypt Egypt' remains a cornerstone of West Coast electro, influencing both early techno and hip-hop. This anniversary reissue underscores the track's enduring impact, as its innovative rhythms and pioneering sound continue to resonate with new generations of listeners. The 40th Anniversary edition features a remastered version of 'Egypt Egypt' on Side 1, preserving its original energy and groundbreaking appeal. Side 2 offers the 'Girls' 40th Anniversary Mix, which breathes new life into the classic while retaining its iconic essence. This reissue not only honors the legacy of Egyptian Lover's influence but also introduces its revolutionary sound to contemporary fans, highlighting its crucial role in shaping electronic music and hip-hop culture.

TRACK LISTING

Egypt Egypt
Girls (40th Anniversary Mix)

Egyptian Lover is celebrating 40 years of releasing music in 2024 and 'Emotions' is the first track from his upcoming album titled 1987. It's a classic 80s inspired west-coast electro style cut - a style that Egyptian Lover is pretty much responsible for creating, harking back to his classic material like 'Egypt, Egypt' and 'I Need a Freak', his use of the Roland 808 along with Kraftwerk and hip-hop influences making the artist synonymous with the origin of the electro sound. Also included is 'Emotional' which is the instrumental version of the title track. For the B-Side 'Dirty Passionate Yell' is featured, again along with the instrumental version (Dirty Music). Grab your cardboard and meet us on the dancefloor.

TRACK LISTING

Emotions
Emotional (Instrumental)
Dirty Passionate Yell
Dirty Music (Instrumental)

While Duster went into hibernation in the year 2000, Clay Parton’s four-track never stopped rolling. Recorded alone at home over several years, Birds In The Ground is an album of 30-something, post-9/11 malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (Everything Is All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym, Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy and clean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocal disappear into noise. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Bunny
2. No More Like That
3. Birds
4. The Voice Of Music
5. Bees
6. The Coffin Was So Light I Thought It Might Float Away

Side B
7. Good God Y’all
8. Secret Gypsy Language
9. On A Peoplemover
10. Two Thousand Twelve
11. The Drunk Pilot And The Romantic Passenger
12. Modulator Hustle

Paul Hartnoll (Orbital) is 8:58. Featuring a very impressive cast list of Robert Smith, Lianne Hall, Lisa Knapp, Ed Harcourt, The Unthanks and Fable.

After a very successful reunion in 2008 that included sell out tours, headline appearances at festivals around the world, special guest Matt Smith as Doctor Who at Glastonbury, the Paralympics opening ceremony with Professor Stephen Hawking, and not forgetting the highly- acclaimed album ‘Wonky’, brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll have decided to bring down the curtain on Orbital’s remarkable 25 year career.

The title of the album ‘8:58’ comes from Paul’s fascination with the theme of time. ‘I’ve always had a thing for clocks and for time as a powerful force - but also the way it oppresses you,’ explains Paul. ‘It’s one of those things I keep coming back to. For me, 8:58 is a moment of choice. It’s almost 9 o’clock. Are you going to school? Are you going to this job you hate? Everybody faces that decision now and again. 8:58 am is when you’ve got to make up your mind.’As Cillian Murphy says at the very beginning of ‘8:58’: brace yourself for freedom. Now.

TRACK LISTING

1. 8:58
2. Please
3. The Past Now
4. Villain
5. The Clock
6. A Forest
7. Broken Up
8. Nearly There
9. Cemetery

Paul Hartnoll (Orbital) is 8:58. Featuring a very impressive cast list of Robert Smith, Lianne Hall, Lisa Knapp, Ed Harcourt, The Unthanks and Fable.

After a very successful reunion in 2008 that included sell out tours, headline appearances at festivals around the world, special guest Matt Smith as Doctor Who at Glastonbury, the Paralympics opening ceremony with Professor Stephen Hawking, and not forgetting the highly- acclaimed album ‘Wonky’, brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll have decided to bring down the curtain on Orbital’s remarkable 25 year career.

The title of the album ‘8:58’ comes from Paul’s fascination with the theme of time. ‘I’ve always had a thing for clocks and for time as a powerful force - but also the way it oppresses you,’ explains Paul. ‘It’s one of those things I keep coming back to. For me, 8:58 is a moment of choice. It’s almost 9 o’clock. Are you going to school? Are you going to this job you hate? Everybody faces that decision now and again. 8:58 am is when you’ve got to make up your mind.’As Cillian Murphy says at the very beginning of ‘8:58’: brace yourself for freedom. Now.

TRACK LISTING

1. 8:58
2. Please
3. The Past Now
4. Villain
5. The Clock
6. A Forest
7. Broken Up
8. Nearly There
9. Cemetery

Paul Hartnoll (Orbital) is 8:58. Featuring a very impressive cast list of Robert Smith, Lianne Hall, Lisa Knapp, Ed Harcourt, The Unthanks and Fable.

After a very successful reunion in 2008 that included sell out tours, headline appearances at festivals around the world, special guest Matt Smith as Doctor Who at Glastonbury, the Paralympics opening ceremony with Professor Stephen Hawking, and not forgetting the highly- acclaimed album ‘Wonky’, brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll have decided to bring down the curtain on Orbital’s remarkable 25 year career.

The title of the album ‘8:58’ comes from Paul’s fascination with the theme of time. ‘I’ve always had a thing for clocks and for time as a powerful force - but also the way it oppresses you,’ explains Paul. ‘It’s one of those things I keep coming back to. For me, 8:58 is a moment of choice. It’s almost 9 o’clock. Are you going to school? Are you going to this job you hate? Everybody faces that decision now and again. 8:58 am is when you’ve got to make up your mind.’As Cillian Murphy says at the very beginning of ‘8:58’: brace yourself for freedom. Now.

TRACK LISTING

CD 1
1. 8:58
2. Please
3. The Past Now
4. Villain
5. The Clock
6. A Forest
7. Broken Up
8. Nearly There
9. Cemetery

CD2
1. 8:58 (Instrumental)
2. Please (Instrumental)
3. The Past Now (Instrumental)
4. Villain (Instrumental)
5. The Clock (Instrumental)
6. A Forest (Instrumental)
7. Broken Up
8. Nearly There
9. Cemetery (Instrumental)
10. Risky

Southend stalwarts Eight Rounds Rapid release their third album 'Love Your Work' with German label Tapete. Rooted in the infamous Canvey Island R'n'B tradition, Eight Rounds Rapid channel the fervour of Dr Feelgood, Wire, Gang of Four and Public Image Limited with their gritty tales of the Essex underworld.

The band's debut album gained excellent reviews from the likes of Uncut, who said, "Edgy, drugged-up thug punk. 'Loss Leader' is Thames Estuary crude given a vital contemporary twist. Invest now". Mojo gave the band a 4-star review and Classic Rock summed the band up: "Thrashing the moody cut-and-shut Mk1 Capri of Essex geezer rock like they stole it. A welcome blast of no-frills, bullshit-free excitement that can only be deadly live". Eight Rounds Rapid supported Wilko Johnson on two major UK Tours, and have had airplay from BBC DJs Mark Radcliffe, Gary Crowley, Gideon Coe and Steve Lamacq.

Second album 'Objet D'Art' also received critical acclaim. Mojo praised its "high octane rebelliousness and cheeky wit" and guitarist Simon Johnson's "trashy, thrashy guitar, a cacophonous hybrid of his dad Wilko, Johnny Thunders and early Pete Townsend". Vive Le Rock hailed the band as "One of the most exciting new bands I've heard since Sleaford Mods […] the rhythm section of Jules Cooper and Lee Watkins power it like a V8 cadillac"

The band's songs are rooted in traditional rhythm and blues, but impulsive guitar from Simon Johnson (Wilko's son) and acerbic delivery from singer David Alexander make the act sound like John Cooper Clarke and Mark E Smith fighting in a Southend bus depot. The line-up also features Jules Cooper [bass] and Lee Watkins [drums]. Everett True said, "This is great. Art Brut meets ATV, with a touch of the old Wilkos. With a smattering of all those (rather scary) old ruffians: The Inmates, Nine Below Zero, Dr Feelgood. All that crowd".

Recorded under the spectre of a global pandemic, 'Love Your Work' reflects feelings of confusion, angst and isolation - all delivered with singer David Alexander's trademark sneering dry wit. The customary low life and underground subjects are still the only language they know, but this album is as much a commentary on contemporary music confronting modernity as it is a collection of musical compositions. The new album grapples with the folly of nostalgia while singles 'Love Don't', 'Tricks' and 'Eating' ramp up the energy levels. Violent lowlives and losers populate the songs as usual, but David Alexander now draws himself closer into view, with 'Aging Athlete', a metaphor for a musician searching for legitimacy in a dull landscape.

Music as duty. Love your work.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Wait
2. Passive Aggressive
3. Love Don't
4. Letter
5. Future Estates
6. Black Tide
7. Tricks
8. Retro Band
9. Eating
10. Onesie
11. Mirror
12. Ageing Athlete

"Obsession" marks a subtle change in emphasis from their debut; the sound is less punishing - James Hart does still let go an occasional impassioned scream, but most of the vocals are sung - but it loses none of it's emotional intensity for all that. The original anger might have been tempered to a more sombre and considered approach, but it's every bit as powerful and effecting.

Eighth Day Army are a three piece 'experi-metal' band from Liverpool. Formed in 2005 by brothers Jon and Matt Lawton (guitar and bass respectively) and drummer Richard Moore. Since forming, the band has recorded 3 EP's and released their debut album, played gigs with the likes of Fall of Troy, Johnny Foreigner, Hell is for Heroes and Yourcodenameis:milo, have completed there first UK tour and have recently won the Liverpool Barfly Rock Star Wars Battle of the Bands competition.

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

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

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT [Isolated Vocals] is a variation of the hit album by Billie Eilish, previously sold exclusively as a digital download on her D2C store. The title features the isolated vocal recordings, showcasing the album in a stripped back and raw light and highlighting the power of Billie’s vocals. The vinyl is pressed exclusively for RSD Indie Black Friday and includes a unique inverted album cover. 

It's wonderful to see a true star in the making isn't it? I often wonder if people heard the first couple Madonna LP's and thought 'well, she's going to be massive'. It's impossible to ignore Eilish's trajectory, and even listening to a couple tracks of 'Happier Than Ever' will dispel any lingering doubts. It's surprisingly mature and wonderfully formed pop perfection.

TRACK LISTING

1. Getting Older
2. I Didn’t Change My Number
3. Billie Bossa Nova
4. My Future
5. Oxytocin
6. GOLDWING
7. Lost Cause
8. Halley’s Comet
9. Not My Responsibility
10. OverHeated
11. Everybody Dies
12. Your Power
13. NDA
14. Therefore I Am
15. Happier Than Ever
16. Male Fantasy

Billie Eilish’s third studio album, "Hit Me Hard And Soft", released via Darkroom/Interscope Records is her most daring body of work to date, a diverse yet cohesive collection of songs— ideally listened to in its entirety from beginning to end—does exactly as the album title suggests; hits you hard and soft both lyrically and sonically, while bending genres and defying trends along the way. With the help of her brother and sole collaborator, Finneas, the pair wrote, recorded, and produced the album together in their hometown of Los Angeles. This album comes on the heels of her two massively successful albums “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" and "Happier Than Ever" and works to further develop the world of Billie Eilish. 

Billie Eilish’s meteoric rise to global stardom has been nothing short of phenomenal and arguably unparalleled to date. Since her "Ocean Eyes" debut, Billie has quietly, yet unapologetically infiltrated the forefront of pop. Thanks to a growing legion of loyal followers across the globe, an EP that has sat in the Billboard Top 200 for more than 18 months now.

'When we made "Bury A Friend," the whole album clicked in my head,” Billie explains. 'I immediately knew what it was going to be about, what the visuals were going to be, and everything in terms of how I wanted it to be perceived. It inspired what the album is about. "Bury A Friend" is literally from the perspective of the monster under my bed. If you put yourself in that mindset, what is this creature doing or feeling?' She continues. 'I also confess that I’m this monster, because I’m my own worst enemy. I might be the monster under your bed too.'

"When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go" was written, produced and recorded entirely by 17-year-old Billie Eilish and brother Finneas in their childhood home of Highland Park, Los Angeles. Recorded in Finneas’ bedroom opposite Billie’s, the pair spent most of 2018 writing songs on the road, then spending many days and nights when off the road, at home, recording the album. The first to be revealed since the album announcement is "Bury A Friend," a driving tour-de-force of a song, trailblazing its way into the world and sounding quite unlike anything else that’s out right now. Reaffirming Billie Eilish’s place, always ahead of the curve, never compromising her sound or vision.

TRACK LISTING

1. !!!!!!!
2. Bad Guy
3. Xanny
4. You Should See Me In A Crown
5. All The Good Girls Go To Hell
6. Wish You Were Gay
7. When The Party's Over
8. 8
9. My Strange Addiction
10. Bury A Friend
11. Ilomilo
12. Listen Before I Go
13. I Love You
14. Goodbye

Widely hailed as a genius, Arthur Lee was a character every bit as colorful and unique as his music. In 1966, he was Prince of the Sunset Strip, busy with his pioneering racially mixed band, Love, and accelerating the evolution of California folk-rock by infusing it with jazz and orchestral influences, a process that would climax in a timeless masterpiece, the Love album Forever Changes. Shaped by a Memphis childhood and a South Los Angeles youth, Lee always craved fame.

He would achieve his ambition with a mixture of vaulting talent and colossal chutzpah. Drug use and a reticence to tour were his Achilles heels, and he succumbed to a dissolute lifestyle just as superstardom was beckoning. Despite endorsements from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Lee s subsequent career was erratic and haunted by the shadow of Forever Changes, reaching a nadir with his imprisonment in 1996 for a firearms offence.

Redemption followed, culminating in an astonishing postmillennial comeback that found him playing Forever Changes to adoring, multi-generational fans around the world. This upswing was only interrupted by his untimely death from leukemia in 2006. Written with the full consent and cooperation of Arthur s widow, Diane Lee, Forever Changes is a meticulously researched biography that includes lengthy extracts from Arthur s vivid, comic, and poignant memoirs, published here for the first time.

Author John Einarson has also amassed dozens of new interviews with the surviving members of Love and with many others who fell into the incomparable Lee s flamboyant orbit. This updated edition adds a new foreword by Love s co-founder and lead guitarist, Johnny Echols.

‘Kick The Ladder’ the anticipated debut album from Icelandic composer and songwriter Kaktus Einarsson, frontman of post-punk outfit Fufanu, will be released by One Little Independent on May 7th. It was produced by Kaktus, alongside Swiss electronic composer Kurt Uenala, and finished in New York City. It draws heavily on the concept of how we as a society relate to our surroundings, whether it’s environmental or personal. 

TRACK LISTING

Kick The Ladder
Ocean’s Heart
Hypnotized
No Runaway
Daydream Echo
Gone To Bed
My Driver
45rpm
Story Of Charms
One Of Those
Space Soul
Chimes

'Lobster Coda’ incorporates dreamy, glistening synth-pop and melancholic ambience, created through layers of atmospheric keys, percussion, and groove-laden funk bass. Kaktus details his journey following a stress-induced nonepileptic seizure that halted his brain’s ability to communicate with the rest of his body, resulting in losing control of his legs, arms and causing involuntary facial tics. Crucially, he spent months on a course of physical therapy while also trying to care for his children and his partner, that by his own admission he then needed to reconnect with. With an occasionally brutal candour, Kaktus’s new album is about taking the time to reflect and recognise changes that need to be made, to listen to your body, and to trust the process no matter how long it might take.

Album standout ‘Be This Way’ merges the darker post-punk of his previous Fufanu material with glacial pop and additional vocals from Nanna, of the Icelandic band Of Monsters And Men.

‘Gumbri’ features long-time friend and collaborator Damon Albarn. The Blur/Gorillaz frontman and Kaktus have known each other for many years, Kaktus played trumpet on ‘Stop The Dams’ at age 15, and shortly after he was flown to London to work on Damon’s debut solo album ‘Everyday Robots’, which they then toured together. Kaktus also engineered ‘Maison Des Jeunes’ for the Africa Express project that Albarn launched. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Lobster Coda
2. Daze Gold Feat. School Of X
3. Be This Way Feat. Nanna
4. Saka
5. Heart Spell
6. Koddi
7. White Burn
8. Gumbri Feat. Damon Albarn

Neubauten's new release "Alles Wieder Offen" ("All open again") is released on their own Potomak label. Working outside the usual confines of the record industry, Neubauten recorded this album in their own studio funded by pre-payment by a world-wide network of subscribing supporters via their website www.neubauten.org. It is possibly Einstürzende Neubauten's most fully and perfectly realized album yet. Alexander Hacke's bass has never sounded warmer, Jochen Arbeit's guitar more graceful, the metal of Rudolf Moser and the percussion of N.U. Unruh more unsettling and diverse. Blixa Bargeld's vocals are mercurial and powerful.

Reissue of Einstürzende Neubauten's seventh album from 1996 "Ende Neu" (Ending New), one of the most important turning points in the band's history, not only because of the important musical developments but also the resultant changes in band members. Although the four composers leafed through their archives of the industrialization of modern music for this album, Einstürzende Neubauten's compositions were never before as harmonious and lyrical as on "Ende Neu". "Stella Maris", a ballad performed in duet by Blixa Bargeld and Meret Becker accompanied by opulent string instruments, is probably the best known song that resulted from this re-orientation. Probably the most sensational evolution of Einstürzende Neubauten since their debut "Kollaps" in 1980, "Ende Neu" is now reissued on the band's Potomak label with reworked artwork and enhanced by bonus material.

Reissue of Einstürzende Neubauten's seventh album from 1996 "Ende Neu" (Ending New), one of the most important turning points in the band's history, not only because of the important musical developments but also the resultant changes in band members. Although the four composers leafed through their archives of the industrialization of modern music for this album, Einstürzende Neubauten's compositions were never before as harmonious and lyrical as on "Ende Neu". "Stella Maris", a ballad performed in duet by Blixa Bargeld and Meret Becker accompanied by opulent string instruments, is probably the best known song that resulted from this re-orientation. Probably the most sensational evolution of Einstürzende Neubauten since their debut "Kollaps" in 1980, "Ende Neu" is now reissued on the band's Potomak label with reworked artwork and enhanced by bonus material.

A concept of "conceptlessness" was created at that time from a spontaneous idea (many thought it was an April Fool's joke when the Einstürzende Neubauten first stood on the stage at Berlin's "Moon" on April 1, 1980; more than 35 years ago), from which the "brilliant dilettantes" developed their own strategy against social and musical architecture using metal pipes, feathers and machines. In keeping, Blixa Bargeld constructed metaphor-laden poetry, around which unique worlds of sound were built up from objects of the most varied origins. The band discovered sounds beyond the pain barrier, the beauty of dissonance and the aesthetics of the scrapyard. They are regarded as the most important engines in the development of new musical strategies.

Hardly another German band has characterized the music landscape as lastingly as EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN. Their influence on the music world was and is as great as their timeless character. "We didn't die", sings Blixa, "we're just singing a different song"."The difference", he goes on to clarify, "is in the song". The song in question, "How Did I Die?", comes from Lament, Einstürzende Neubauten's 2014 soundtrack to a specially commissioned live performance by the Belgian Flemish town of Diksmuide to mark the centenary of its fall to German troops at the outbreak of the First World War. It might be steeped in the history of catastrophe but it's also the newest track on Greatest Hits, the compilation album named after the special shows they've been touring the world with these past few years, initially while they were researching and preparing Lament for its Belgian premiere performance.

The music for those Greatest Hits shows was largely drawn from the last 27 years, and then most all of it created by their current longest lasting line-up. The earliest track here, however, is a newly mixed version of "Haus Der Lüge", the title track of their 1989 album Haus Der Lüge; except it's now adorned with freshly recorded trombone and string parts, which the group wanted on the original but couldn't afford, so had to use synth simulations instead. 1993's Tabula Rasa is represented by two tracks, "Die Interimsliebenden" and "Salamandrina". It's the last album to feature bass player Mark Chung, who joined in 1981 shortly after FM Einheit, aka Mufti, while they were both members of the Hamburg punk group Abwärts. Mufti himself left during the recording of 1996's Ende Neu, and he doesn't actually feature on Greatest Hits' opening track"The Garden", the first line of which was inspired by an English woman overheard by Blixa: "If you want me you will find me in the garden/Unless it's pouring down with rain". Here begins proper the phantasmagoric journeys documented on Greatest Hits, taking Einstürzende Neubauten - so the song goes - to the banks of all four rivers and the spring of consciousness, through all four seasons while waiting for the apple to fall. And the music they've made on those journeys has reflected those changing seasons, responding to the changing times, refracting those hard knocks.

Five tracks are taken from their 2000 album Silence Is Sexy: "Sabrina", "Sonnenbarke", "Total Eclipse Of The Sun", "Redukt" and "Die Befindlichkeit Des Landes". , Translating as "The Lay Of The Land", "Die Befindlichkeit Des Landes" also featured in Einstürzende Neubauten's melancholic soundtrack to Hubertus Siegert's Berlin Babylon, a 2001 documentary about the changing face of the purportedly unified city since the November 1989 fall of the Cold War-built Wall dividing it since 1961. The ten minute piece "Redukt", meanwhile, has become a live favourite, long ago replacing the early Einstürzende Neubauten staple "Sehnsucht", both as a showcase for the group's extraordinary capacity for invention, and as a vent for the emotions accumulated over the course of a concert. Two Greatest Hits tracks, "Dead Friends (Around The Corner)" and "Ein Leichtes Leises Säuseln", originated on their Supporters Album #1, which in publicly modified form became Perpetuum Mobile (Mute, 2004). Something like 2000 supporters financially pledged their faith in Einstürzende Neubauten two more times, for which they received Grundstück (2005) as their first dividend, followed by a special supporters' version of the self-released Alles Wieder Offen (Potomak, 2007). The latter provides the following three tracks to Greatest Hits: Einstürzende Neubauten's playful homage to early 20th century's dada pranksters "Let's Do It A Da Da", "Susej" and "Nagorny Karabach". The last named is a simultaneously haunting and heartbreakingly beautiful psychogeographical piece that stands as one of Einstürzende Neubauten's greatest album hits. As the song indicates, they have taken more than a few hard knocks, bumps and glitches on the way, but there's no stopping them now. Now as then as always, declares Greatest Hits' aforementioned newest track "How Did I Die?", "The difference makes the song".

TRACK LISTING

The Garden
Let`s Do It A Da DA
Die Interimsliebenden
Haus Der Lüge (New Mix / Rec)
Sabrina
Sonnenbarke
Susej
Total Eclipse Of The Sun
Dead Friends (Around The Corner)
Die Befindlichkeit Des Landes
Redukt
Nagorny Karabach
Salamandrina
How Did I Die?
Ein Leichtes Leises Säuseln

Einstürzende Neubauten present their new album. RAMPEN (apm: alien pop music)

They search for new forms - pursuing undiscovered sounds and unspoken words.

Since the band was founded on April 1, 1980, Einstürzende Neubauten have been shifting the parameters of mainstream and subculture to make the inaudible audible - perhaps the unheard as well. This experimental field research, spanning more than four decades, is now entering the next stage.

In its 44th year of existence, the band is going back to its roots while redefining itself. It’s a change in self- image, for which the Berlin quintet plus one has created its own genre in 2024: apm – alien pop music.

Constant evolution – that’s how Einstürzende Neubauten’s body of work can best be summarized. A musical evolution, which began with the debut album Kollaps in 1981 and is now being manifested with the release of the album Rampen – apm: alien pop music in April 24, on which Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Felix Gebhard present themselves from their most unpredictable and unconventional sides. On their new album, the Neubauten now put an – albeit belated – end to all sound speculations.

Since the mid-1980s, Einstürzende Neubauten have been experimenting on stage with what they call “ramps”: public improvisations with open developments and outcomes; launchpads into the still unexplored that the band performed in 2022 during the encore on its last Alles in Allem tour and those recordings served as the basis for the new album.

Rampen – apm: alien pop music is pop music for parallel universes and in-between worlds - for hyperspaces and interzones. It is microcosmic and intergalactic at the same time. It’s a demi-sophisticated claim outside of all physical laws, with which the Einstürzende Neubauten enter a stylistic no man’s land between the past and future. There’s a return to the roots on one side, while a new art form emerges on the other from powerful eruptions of noise encountering cryptic, often fragmentary lyrics: Popular music for aliens and outcasts. Anti- pop has become alien pop. Outlandish. Spun like a cocoon. Unheard. Sonus inauditus. Not unintentionally, the reduced artwork on the cover is reminiscent of the iconic layout on the Beatles’ White Album. “It’s based on the idea that the Einstürzende Neubauten are just as famous in another solar system as the Beatles are in our world,” Blixa Bargeld said, remarking on the balancing act between avant-garde and tongue-in-cheek, provocation and pop-cultural discontinuity.

This approach also directly defines the central theme running like a common thread through all the songs: change, utopian mind games and transience.

“On the album, I found a few solutions and formulated things in ways I haven’t formulated them before, because they were never so clear to me. I’m somebody who believes you can attain knowledge through music. It’s always been that way. I follow the conviction I’ll find something in the music that I didn’t know before. And sing some- thing that I didn’t know. Something that turns out to be true. Or, to take this down a notch, something that at least has meaning.” This album represents the next step in the evolution, where the familiar language is finally left behind, opening further, infinite possibilities: alien pop music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Brooding, enigmatic and avant-garde, this is Neubauten at the peak of their powers. 44 years since they formed, and Blixa Bargeld and co. are still the kings of "Alien-Pop Music"!

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1:
01. Wie Lange Noch?
02. Ist Ist
03. Pestalozzi
04. Es Könnte Sein
05. Before I Go
06. Isso Isso
07. Besser Isses
08. Everything Will Be Fine

Disc 2:
01. The Pit Of Language
02. Planet Umbra
03. Tar & Feathers
04. Aus Den Zeiten
05. Ick Wees Nich (Noch Nich)
06. Trilobiten
07. Gesundbrunnen

Re-issue of the band's 2000 album, formerly available via Mute Records and now on the band's own label.

After 20 years together, Einsturzende Neubauten had changed. Gone was the purgatorial clamour of old. In its place are textures and dark humour. Gone, too, was the brittle anger. On Silence Is Sexy, Blixa Bargeld is laconically louche, with a love for subtleties. The title track of album is an unbending, confusing spiral of sound--voices chanting, music forbidden, sometimes as sweet as trickling honey. "Zampano" is more familiar to old school fans, but "Sonnenbarke" invokes the boisterous atmosphere of ghostly beer halls while "Musentango" is self-descriptive. Sometimes chilling, sometimes life-affirming, never dull, Silence Is Sexy is a turbulent document of the times--much like Neubauten's beloved Berlin.

Drawing the connections between Wendy Eisenberg’s releases feels like undertaking a wide-ranging investigation. Albums of wildly inventive guitar, tempo-shifting avant rock and curiously leftfield pop fit together as offerings of Eisenberg’s curious mind. On Auto, their most innovative and inner-reaching album yet, Eisenberg explores emotional, subjective truth, and how it interacts with an objectivity no person alone can grasp. Inspired by the solo work of Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) and David Sylvian’s Blemish, with playing skills that have already seen them climbing Best Guitarist lists and an unvarnished vocal immediacy, Wendy Eisenberg has created an album of subtle display that resonates with maximal impact.

Auto has multiple meanings. First, automobile: “A lot of these songs were written about and mentally take place when I’m in the car on my way to gigs,“ says Eisenberg. Immediate melodies came to them on these trips, to which they’d later add complex guitar parts. And automata: “I make myself into a machine, which is why everything that’s played is precise.” Finally, they frame their work in the literary technique of auto-fiction, “the semi-fictionalized presentation of the self in a narrative form of growth,” as Eisenberg sees it.

The album served as a means toward working through emotional conflicts from adolescent trauma and PTSD, and dissects the dissolution and conflict that led towards the breakup of their former band. With much of it written while its events played out, Auto faces the grief of losing what one thinks is their future while experiencing a dramatic reshaping of their past; it delves openly into the limited nature of one person’s narrative.

After making a few efforts to record Auto, Eisenberg ultimately chose to collaborate with childhood friend Nick Zanca, who contributes electronic elements and production. Mirroring the personal and organic offered by Eisenberg, synthetic sounds form a kind of boundary or context for everything. They “sound like commentary on songs that were written from an organic or subjective perspective,” says Eisenberg. Their place on the album is integral for Eisenberg’s goal “to outweigh the subjectivity of normal singer-songwriter guitar songs with the objectivity of electronic sound.”

Hey Mr Ferryman is Mark Eitzel's tenth solo album, his first in three years, and the first full studio album recorded entirely in London. It was made at 355 Studios with Mercury Prize winner Bernard Butler (Suede, McAlmont & Butler). Butler produced and played all of the electric guitar, bass, and keyboard parts on the album. Hey Mr Ferryman features the vivid melodies long associated with Eitzel's former band American Music Club as well as Butler's distinctive guitar that serves to complement Eitzel's expressive vocals. Of that voice, Pitchfork once wrote: "If Leonard Cohen's voice is a story about the passage of time and Levon Helm's is a story about losing what is most precious to you, Eitzel's is about the circuitous roads we take in search of ourselves." Mark Eitzel has released over 15 albums of original material with American Music Club and as a solo artist. The Guardian has called him "America's greatest living lyricist," and Rolling Stone once gave him their Songwriter of the Year award.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Eitzel goes from the serene to the triumphant between one song to the next, the brilliant balladry of 'In My Role As Professional Singer And Ham' and the easy listening morose indie charms of 'An Answer' providing a soaring and stripped-back counterfoil to the more rocking pieces like the brilliant 'Mr Humphries'. A brilliantly balanced, and eminently listenable delight. Brilliant.

First release on new London label Happy Death.

Ejecta are Leanne Macomber - of Neon Indian fame - and Joel Ford - formally known as GAMES with Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never).

Produced by Ford, whose credits include Autre Ne Veux, Oneohtrix Point Never and Ford + Lopatin.

Macomber describes Ejecta as a character, one which conceptually represents her inner struggles and also as a way to deflect them.

Unrequited love, failed attempts at adulthood and the death of a close friend are the key themes explored lyrically.

Ejecta’s electronic pop sound hints of quintessential early 4AD releases like Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil, but feels fresh in a Kavinsky and Chromatics kind of way.

Having already made a name for himself in Nollywood (the Nigerian film industry) and in the sweatiest of London’s sweaty clubs. Ekiti Sound fuses Chicago house, Detroit techno and African poly rhythms with deviant electro synth patterns and a sub bass so deep you can hear the speakers rattling from Manchester. Throw in some cowbell, (what sounds like, to my uneducated ears anyway) arabic vocal and you have a dark, brooding, wall shaking, floor filling Lagos via London bomb.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Area 10k Boys Riddim
B1. Area 10k Boys Riddim (Flightmode Remix)
B2. Area 10K Boys Riddim (Radio Edit)

A magnificently malevolent two-hander. The Ekman is a furiously maxed-out piledriver; the Vereker is more Thing than machine, massive and roiling, scorpion-tailed and owl-eyed. The pulverising besiegement; the gory carnage.
Proper warehouse bangers, with a vengeance.

TRACK LISTING

A. Acid7
B. Acid7 (Vereker Rmx)

A stunning social history of British rap and grime by one of the nation's foremost cultural chroniclers. 'A stunning exploration of a genre, a movement and a world. It's every bit as lyrical as the rap Ekpoudom has documented.'CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, author of Queenie'Illuminating and intimate.

Ekpoudom's prose is rhythmic and deft but also crackles with joy. I know I'll be reading it for years to come.'CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, author of Small Worlds'A rousing, inspiring, often breathtaking history that reads with the flow of a magnificent novel. Ekpoudom is one of the very finest chroniclers of black British culture.'MUSA OKWONGA, author of One Of Them***I met people who never quite fit in where they were supposed to, who found solace, salvation and meaning in these sounds, these words.

Something is happening in Britain, trembling the tracks as it unfolds. Recent years have borne witness to underground genres leaking out from the inner cities, going on to become some of the most popular music in the nation. In this groundbreaking social history, journalist Aniefiok Ekpoudom travels the country to paint a compelling portrait of the dawn, boom and subsequent blossoming of UK rap and grime.

Taking us from the heart of south London to the West Midlands and South Wales, he explores how a history of migration and an enduring spirit of resistance have shaped the current realities of these linked communities and the music they produce. These sounds have become vessels for the marginalised, carrying Black and working-class stories into the light. Vividly depicted and compassionately told, Where We Come From weaves together intimate stories of resilience, courage and loss, as well as a shared music culture that gave refuge and purpose to those in search of belonging.

Ekpoudom offers a rich chronicle of rap, identity, place and, above all, the social and human condition in modern Britain. ***'A landmark work that will undoubtedly shape conversations about not just UK rap and grime, but British music for years to come.'YOMI ADEGOKE, author of The List'Phenomenal - this is the book we've all been waiting for. Like the heroes he chronicles, Ekpoudom acts as torchbearer, his book a beacon, for the story that follows..'GUY GUNARATNE'Essential .

The first repress of El Búho's classic 2017 classic debut Balance. Widely respected as being one of the key releases that brought the digital folklorica & natural cumbia sound to the world, the album represents a meeting of different currents that make up Búho's music: a fascination with the natural world, and its protection, a fascination with the rhythms, traditions and sounds of Latin America and a fascination with modern electronic music and production aesthetics.

TRACK LISTING

1. Coro Del Amanecer (feat. Verónica Valerio)
2. Corazon De Rubi (feat. Minük)
3. Tlacotlan
4. Juku (feat. Rumbo Tumba)
5. Chucum
6. Complete (feat. Feat. Dina El Wedidi)
7. Xica Xica (feat. Uji & Barrio Lindo)
8. Brigantes
9. Papan (feat. Citlaly Malpica & Pablo Emiliano)
10. Ynglingtal (feat. Jhon Montoya)
11. Madre Tierra (feat. Luzmila Carpio)
12. Ceiba (feat. Kaleema)

El Buho's fifth studio album may be his most personal yet. Strata draws from Robin's attempts to grapple with the tension of experiencing happiness, joy and gratitude in our daily lives with loved ones or through sharing music while the world falls apart around us. This dynamic of trying to live in the moment and enjoy the privileged life we have yet in the back of your mind there is an overwhelming sense of dread that the world will never be the same and, as climate change really starts to hit home, there are incredibly difficult times ahead. It is about our attempts to find a place of peace, balance and fulfillment between these powerful strata above and below us.

This is an album heavy with intimate and personal music that moves between personal joy and the anguish of our modern world. Timini is dedicated to Robin's second son Oscar who earned the nickname Petit Mini (Little Mini) which became 'Timini'. The track was inspired by the rustling wind and shaking leaves as Robin walked home from the hospital the evening after Oscar's birth, writing the whole track in one exhausted and emotional sitting. Gentle Breeze was inspired by the feeling of a warm early summer's afternoon with the family at home. Beautiful simplicity.

On the other hand, Alarma de Emergencia is a cumbia for the endless alarm that has been ringing, unheard across our planet for decades. Fuel Fandango singer Nita's beautiful lyrics to its sister track Cenizas de Agua reference the need to "open our hearts, look for our own reflection and break the silence" While on Brujería Bomba Estereo frontwoman Li Saument implores us to sanar (heal) and limpiar clean above Robin's trademark floating flutes and an organic dem-bow beat.

Meanwhile tracks like Piañuco show a new direction, blending the deep bass and unique rhythms of amapiano music with huayno folk melodies, featuring a whole host of musicians, including over 50 saxophone lines, meticulously recorded by argentine saxophonist Leandro Guffanti and his students in Barcelona. The album ends with Ley de Origen where we see El Búho reunited with his long-time collaborators Minük (Corazon de Rubi, Mirando El Fuego) for another moving and delicate song this time mixing Alumnis and Marcus' beautiful vocals with a deep, warm sub bass and percussion and marimbas from Colombia's pacific coast.

TRACK LISTING

1. Floating Islands
2. Cenizas De Agua (feat. Nita) [feat. Nita]
3. Gentle Breeze
4. Brujería (feat. Li Saumet) [feat. Bomba Estéreo]
5 .Piañuco
6. Timini
7. Alarma De Emergencia
8. Llanto De Los Cerezos
9. Ley De Origen (feat. Minük) [feat. Minük]

El Condorez are a three-piece band based here in Manchester. Currently picking up great reviews and a recent 'single of the week' accolade on XFM Manchester. They are being compared to rock legends like Led Zeppelin, The Who, and The Faces.

Welsh psych-pop band El Goodo return with their long, long awaited third album By Order Of The Moose, due out on Cian Ciaran’s (Super Furry Animals) Strangetown Records. Recorded over the course of 8 years in an old derelict cinema in their home village of Resolven, the album is a continuation of where the band left off in 2009 with their previous effort Coyote. Wielding the wide open spaces of spaghetti westerns with the close melodic harmonies of girl groups and the good humour of Nuggets inspired garage rock’n’roll, El Goodo takes you on a trip through their fascination with 60s music.

Comprised of brothers Elliott (drums, percussion) and Jason Jones (guitar, vocals), Pixy Jones (guitar, vocals, keyboards), Lewie Sewers (guitar), Matthew Young (keyboards) and Andrew Cann (bass), El Goodo (named after a Big Star song) are a band enthralled by the past. They recorded the album on a 16-track with a small collection of faulty equipment, creating a collection of melodic pop songs, embellished with strings, brass, sitars, harmonicas, xylophones and vocal harmonies (and then seemingly covered it all with dust), that you’d expect to find on some forgotten 60s record that someone has stumbled upon in their attic.
Elliott saw the words “Loyal Order Of Moose” carved into stone on the side of a building in Neath and they all liked the sound of it for the album title. They changed it slightly to By Order Of The Moose. As Pixy explains; “I’ve always thought of it as "The Moose" is some evil guy who wears a moose head hat and controls people’s minds, making them do evil things. In reality though it means nothing, we just liked the way it sounded.” Jason, who made the intricate cover illustration, seems to have interpreted the title to be more of a circus, depicting a Wild West ringmaster, wild animals and acrobats.

From the first recording in November 2008 with the track “When”, the album took eight years to complete. Initially thinking it would only take them a few months, they set out to record at The Music Box in Cardiff. Two years later they decamped back to their village, to the Resolven Miners’ Welfare Hall.
The first single “It Makes Me Wonder” is their interpretation of a 60s girl group song. Pixy describes bringing the song to the band; “On the demo I sampled the drums intro of “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes. Matty commented that the drums sounded good, how did I get that sound? I told him that I played it in the kitchen on various saucepans and he believed me.”

The similarly titled opening track “Sit & Wonder” was an attempt to do something like Zager & Evans’ “In The Year 2525”, but it didn’t turn out like that. The lyrics were based on war films like Come And See, Ivan’s Childhood and Red Dawn. “So It Goes” was meant to be like a Marty Robbins cowboy song but ended up being more like a Nuggets track. “Susan and Bill” is a touching tribute to his parents.

TRACK LISTING

1) I Sit And Wonder
2) It Makes Me Wonder
3) September
4) Sail The Ocean
5) So It Goes
6) 5 In The Morning
7) Heavy On My Mind
8) Susan & Bill
9) When
10) It's All Over
11) Lay It On My Honey
12) As You Said Your So Longs

This album begins with El Goodo’s most famous song ‘Feel So Fine’ and includes the radio smash hits ‘I Saw Her Today’ and ‘Information Overload’.

As The Sunday Times wrote back when – This album mixed by the Super Furries' Cian Ciaran has an incredibly sure touch in romping through 1960s (and occasionally later) pop sounds, whether early Beatles, Joe Meek meets Morricone, the Monkees or The Velvet Undeground. As the album progresses, El Goodo calmly assimilate these influences and make the sounds their own on a superb set of songs"

SFA’s young-buck buddies El Goodo are here to prove you know of at least two Welsh bands who can kick ass, and in the hearts of some of our worlds, save rock-n-roll. - Children of the Coal.

The Welsh five piece release an album filled with summery psychedelic harmonies and spaghetti western rhythms: a match made in vintage heaven – PopMatters.

TRACK LISTING

1) Feel So Fine
2) Aren’t You Grand
3) Don’t Worry Marie
4) I Saw Her Today
5) Information Overload
6) Talking To The Birds
7) Pete
8) I Can’t Make It
9) Be My Girl
10) Oh, To Sleep
11) I Only Dream

”The Choko King” is Jono´s third album since 2009, but the recordings are from the period between 1995 and 2008, some of which predates his first album by four years. ”The Choko King” offers an open door into Jono´s surrealistic musical universe and is a rare gift to his increasing number of fans and anyone interested in the workings of a truly eccentric and artistic mind. The album has been meticulously assembled from home recordings, demos, rehearsal tapes, live and studio recordings and made into a completely new work by Jono himself.

Jono El Grande is a self-taught composer, musician, conductor and prankster and remains an outsider on the far margin of the Norwegian experimental music scene. He released his debut mini album ”Utopian Dances” in 1999, a collection of absurdist instrumentals recorded at home using not much more than a workstation synth. 2003 saw the release of ”Fevergreens”, an album that drew upon classic progressive rock, film music, easy listening and a variety of pop idioms and featured a nine piece orchestra. The Wire noted that ”the vitality of his writing keeps just the right uplifting balance between sweetness and acidity” and called it ”a pleasant surprise”. Next up was ”Neo Dada” (2009), an album brimming with musical adventure, odd turns, weird combinations of sounds and instruments, complex signatures and a good portion of pure joy, all mysteriously sugared with infectious melodic hooks. ”Neo Dada” represented something of an artistic breakthrough and received great reviews everywhere. This was followed by ”Phantom Stimulance” in late 2010. The sleeve paintings are by acknowledged Norwegian artist Christer Karlstad and shows the Choko King, intentionally misspelt to point to the megalomaniac´s hybris: to choke on what you desire the most.

”The Choko King” also comes as a limited, numbered vinyl edition of only 300 copies with ”insanely nerdy details” on each track by Jono himself.
The CD edition has a 14 minute bonus track.

Jono El Grande is a self-taught composer, musician, conductor and prankster and remains an outsider on the far margins of the Norwegian experimental music scene. He released his debut mini album ”Utopian Dances” in 1999, a collection of absurdist instrumentals recorded at home using not much more than a workstation synth. 2003 saw the release of ”Fevergreens” (RCD2031), an album that drew upon classic progressive rock, film music, easy listening and a variety of pop idioms and featured a 9 piece orchestra. The Wire noted that ”the vitality of his writing keeps just the right uplifting balance between sweetness and acidity” and called it ”a pleasant surprise”.His previous album ”Neo Dada” (2009) was a masterstroke; brimming with creative ideas, odd turns, weird combinations of sounds and instruments, complex time signatures and a healthy dose of pure musical joy, all mysteriously sugared with melodic hooks that would stick to your brain like any annoying pop tune. As far as musical form and content goes, this can be said to continue with ”Phantom Stimulance”, his fourth album. It´s put together to celebrate Jono´s 15 years as a composer and performer and 10 years as a band leader, but it´s not a mere compilation. Recorded in Athletic Studio, home to great analogue recordings by Supersilent, Motorpsycho, Scorch Trio and countless others, it´s a collection of new versions of stage favourites and previously unreleased songs as well as a brand new song.Jono lists movements like Rock in Opposition and the Canterbury Scene and artists and composers like Frank Zappa, Stravinsky, Magma, Henry Cow and Gentle Giant as inspirational sources but has established his own signature with his latest releases and stage shows. Instrumentations and arrangements have become more adventurous, he has picked up the electric guitar again and successfully added a rougher edge to the ensemble sound.

TRACK LISTING

Borrelia Boogie
Utopian Semi-Waltz
La Dolce Vidda
Phantom Stimulance
Rise Of The Baseless Press-bay Toy
Pongery In Evention
Beggar To Beggar
Moon-stricktly In Love With A Figment Foetus
Negation / Penetration
Double-edged Triplets
The Goat

A collection of songs, which switch between art-punk and avant-garde, from this Washington DC duo. For fans of Gang of Four / Trans Am.

Hanni El Khatib, the definitive purveyor of visceral, blues-wracked, punk-spiked, soulwarped, knife-fight rock n’ roll who artfully blends serrated guitars with his love for hiphop, releases his fifth album FLIGHT, produced by and recorded with long-time friend Leon Michels (El Michels Affair, Lana Del Rey, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, and Eminem).

From 2010 until 2017, when he released his previous albums, there was the usual cycle that consumes most working musicians: make an album, tour it, return home, rinse and repeat. And with it came the predictable pitfalls that ensnare too many artists - It is a dream until that one night when it isn’t any longer, and despite his gratitude for his fans, El Khatib found himself wracked by depression and anxiety. It became readily apparent that if he didn’t make drastic changes to his lifestyle, there might not be a life to speak of. So he quit drinking, stopped touring, and took an indefinite hiatus from the studio. But eventually, the desire to create songs slowly returned.

What would eventually become El Khatib’s fifth studio album, the virtuosic but characteristically raw FLIGHT, began as spontaneous experimentation. The finished result is a rollicking sampledelic opus that recalls the beautiful chaos that the Dust Brothers created on Paul’s Boutique and Odelay. It’s the type of thing that Dilla and Madlib would’ve created if they had come up on The Cramps.

TRACK LISTING

1. CARRY
2. GLASSY
3. ALIVE
4. COLORS
5. STRESSY
6. ROOM
7. LEADER
8. GEM
9. HARLOW
10. DUMB
11. HOW
12. DETROIT
13. PEACE

Hanni El Khatib’s first idea for his Savage Times project was to do something he’d never done before. Instead, he ended up doing …well, everything he’d never done before. He’d be playing new instruments, writing in unfamiliar new ways, opening himself up to an unrelenting stream of ideas and dedicating himself totally to pure musical instinct. And the result? 19 best-of-the-sessions songs, as well as the kind of creative revelations that only happen when you quit looking around and start looking ahead.

Originally, he’d hoped to explode the lingering idea that he was simply a blues-rock guitar player, but that’s why Savage Times touches on everything from garage rock to punk to disco, hip-hop and even some unexpected solo-guitar self-portraiture. But on the way, he also exploded his own idea of what he could do—even maybe who he was, or would be. Savage Times was an experiment as well as an experience, that touched on some of the most personal, social & political elements to date.

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby's OK
2. Gonna Die Alone
3. Born Brown
4. Paralyzed
5. Miracle
6. Mangos & Rice
7. Come Down
8. No Way
9. Mondo And His Makeup
10. Gun Clap Hero
11. Black Constellation
12. So Dusty
13. Till Your Rose Comes Home
14. Hold Me Back
15. Savage Times
16. 1AM
17. Peep Show
18. This I Know
19. Freak Freely

When Leon Michels and El Michels Affair released their fi­rst record, Sounding Out The City, in 2005, it was hard to guess what was next for Michels and his then-introduced, now-patented “cinematic soul” sound. Now, four EMA studio albums and scores of tribute and remix projects later all while producing for some of the biggest names in the industry Michels has trademarked his sound, with each project taking audiences somewhere new and pushing the boundaries of what he is known for. The man is a river, not a lake and this time he takes his golden touch into the realm of hip-hop laying down a musical bed for one of the greatest to ever rhyme into a microphone: Black Thought of The Roots crew.

Releasing on Big Crown Records, the LP is called Glorious Game and it is a remarkable debut partnership in more ways than one. Michels provides his bottom-heavy, soul-tinged production for Black Thought who gives us some of the more personal and transparent verses we've ever heard from him. Michels and Black Thought have been in each other's orbit for a while now. The two fi­rst met in the 2000s when Thought was fi­rst getting familiar with the contemporary soul scene. "Out of that whole world, Menahan Street Band was probably my favorite," recalling the funk and soul group Michels was a founding member of back in 2007. Fast forward a few years and musicians from that collective Dave Guy on trumpet and Ian Hendrickson-Smith on sax are now full time players with The Roots. This connection eventually led Leon and Thought to doing a few fundraising events around NYC and Philly together. "Before long, Black Thought was coming around the studio and would jam with us from time to time," Michels explains. "Then, fast forward to 2020 and COVID lockdowns, he just hit me up out of the blue, wanting me to send him stuff to write to. We both were looking to stay busy."

Being that Black Thought is the co-founder and emcee for, hands down, the best live-band group in hip-hop. Michels took a decidedly different approach to this project and instead of sending recorded tracks of live compositions, he pulled out the sampler and sampled himself and some records from his collection. "I'm a big fan of soul music," as if Michels has to remind us. "And part of hip-hop's appeal to me has always been the sample-based production".

For Glorious Game, Michels would make wholly composed and recorded soul songs in his studio, sample himself, then chop and/or loop up his sounds and create instrumentals for Black Thought. On some tracks he took a more traditional hip-hop approach, starting from samples of other people’s music but then adding live instrumentation on top. But for the most part, it's him reinterpreting his own compositions into something new.

The result is an organic feel of loop-based tracks that breathe and fluctuate enough for Black Thought to ‑ex on. "What I write about is determined by the equation of the producer's energy and my energy," Black Thought says. "It's about where we meet." So armed with Michels sampled and re-sampled soul cinematics, Black Thought rhymes through personal memories and distinctive.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: With Michels laying down scattered soul-infused hip-hop beats, and the legendary Black Thought on vocal duties, this was always going to be a superb outing, but it's the ease with which these talented producers work together that is really refreshing. Forging an entirely new sound through their respective, distinctive voices, 'Glorous Game' is even more of a triumph than expected. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Grateful
2. Glorious Game Feat Kirby
3. I’m Still Somehow
4. Hollow Way
5. Protocol (feat. Son Little)
6. The Weather
Side B
7. That Girl
8. I Would Never
9. Alone
10. Miracle
11. Glorious Game (Reprise)
12. Alter Ego (feat. Brainstory)

The Instrumental version of the underground classic El Michels Affair & Black Thought collaborative album Glorious Game.

When Leon Michels and El Michels Affair released their fi­rst record, Sounding Out The City, in 2005, it was hard to guess what was next for Michels and his then-introduced, now-patented “cinematic soul” sound. Now, four EMA studio albums and scores of tribute and remix projects later—all while producing for some of the biggest names in the industry—Michels has trademarked his sound, with each project taking audiences somewhere new and pushing the boundaries of what he is known for. The man is a river, not a lake and this time he takes his golden touch into the realm of hip-hop laying down a musical bed for one of the greatest to ever rhyme into a microphone: Black Thought of The Roots crew.

Releasing on Big Crown Records, the LP is called Glorious Game and it is a remarkable debut partnership in more ways than one. Michels provides his bottom-heavy, soul-tinged production for Black Thought who gives us some of the more personal and transparent verses we've ever heard from him. Michels and Black Thought have been in each other's orbit for a while now. The two ­first met in the 2000s when Thought was fi­rst getting familiar with the contemporary soul scene. "Out of that whole world, Menahan Street Band was probably my favorite," recalling the funk and soul group Michels was a founding member of back in 2007. Fast forward a few years and musicians from that collective Dave Guy on trumpet and Ian Hendrickson-Smith on sax —are now full time players with The Roots. This connection eventually led Leon and Thought to doing a few fundraising events around NYC and Philly together. "Before long, Black Thought was coming around the studio and

would jam with us from time to time," Michels explains. "Then, fast forward to 2020 and COVID lockdowns, he just hit me up out of the blue, wanting me to send him stuff to write to. We both were looking to stay busy."

Being that Black Thought is the co-founder and emcee for, hands down, the best live-band group in hip-hop. Michels took a decidedly different approach to this project and instead of sending recorded tracks of live compositions, he pulled out the sampler and sampled himself and some records from his collection. "I'm a big fan of soul music," as if Michels has to remind us. "And part of hip-hop's appeal to me has always been the sample-based production" For Glorious Game, Michels would make wholly composed and recorded soul

songs in his studio, sample himself, then chop and/or loop up his sounds and create instrumentals for Black Thought. On some tracks he took a more traditional hip-hop approach, starting from samples of other people’s music but then adding live instrumentation on top. But for the most part, it's him reinterpreting his own compositions into something new. The result is an organic feel of loop-based tracks that breathe and fluctuate enough for Black Thought to flex on.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Grateful (Instrumental)
Glorious Game (Instrumental)
I’m Still Somehow (Instrumental)
Hollow Way (Instrumental)
Protocol (Instrumental)
The Weather (Instrumental)

Side B
That Girl (Instrumental)
I Would Never (Instrumental)
Alone (Instrumental)
Miracle (Instrumental)
Glorious Game (Reprise) (Instrumental)
Alter Ego Feat. Brainstory (Instrumental)

El Michels Affair & Black Thought treat us to an unstoppable new 45. Pulling two standout tunes from their forthcoming Glorious Game record. The A side features the album's title track "Glorious Game", a bouncy, in the pocket tune that lands somewhere between G Funk and Outkast's Spottieottiedopealicious. Black Thought raps about trials of fame and respect but also being the best version of oneself while balanced by patience. KIRBY jumps in on the chorus with her distinct voice and luscious melodies putting the song comfortably at home in the speakers of a Cadillac. The B Side "Grateful" is a thick, low-end banger with a haunting flute line, and a sample of Shabba Ranks "Ting-A-Ling" that sends the message that class is in session. Black Thought's verses lay heavy in the way we've come to love: cadences that walk a line between street teacher and poet, explanation and experience. He pays homage to what's come before him and how it's made him with lines like "I guess the moral of the story is, any sip you pour me is, a toast to the warriors who bit the dust before me, kid." Die hard fans may also recognize the instrumental from the late great Virgil Abloh's Louis Vuitton 2022 Fashion Show video.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Off the back the Danger Mouse project (Black Thought's first official collaboration and #2 in our albums of 2022), the Roots rapper must have caught the bug for teamwork, as here he joins with new funk / jazz outfit El Michels Affair for a dynamite hip-hop cut which is joyously the first single off a new album planned by the two acts in question.

TRACK LISTING

Glorious Game
Grateful

There has always been a Reggae in­uence in the music of El Michels Affair. From their cover of “Hung Up On My Baby” done in a Reggae style, to the general sound and approach that permeates Leon’s production style. While recording Bailey’s 2020 Ekundayo album, they did some straight forward reggae tunes inspired by different eras alongside some modern R&B tracks that would sit more comfortably next to Frank Ocean than Jacob Miller. It is this same notion that old and new can live so comfortably together that birthed the idea of Ekundayo Inversions.

Traditional dub came out of reggae in the late 60s and early 70s when pioneers like King Tubby and Lee Perry started taking the multi track recordings of songs and running them back through the board adding effects and additional instrumentation. These recordings are called “dubs” or “versions” and are typically instrumentals with ­ourishes of vocals from the original tracks.

El Michels decided to use the blueprints left behind and make something using the in­uences of today. He wound up straying so far from the traditional format that it didn’t seem right to use the word ‘Dub’, hence Ekundayo Inversions. All the songs are tied together by WhatsApp messages between Leon and Liam that perfectly narrate the story of this record and their working relationship.

One of the highlights on Ekundayo Inversions is a guest appearance from the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry on the “Ugly Truth” version. L$P switches between singing and talking, proclaiming his powers one minute and playing with the track’s title the next. On “Awkward take. 2” Leon takes one of the most experimental songs from Ekundayo and actually straightens it out. A track that once seemed to be ­oating in space has now been anchored by the addition of drums and bass. “Faded”, a version of “Paper Tiger”, is given the full EMA treatment with the addition of emotive horns over an uncomfortably sparse rhythm track peppered with Liam’s voice drenched in delay and echo.

“Champions” features a verse from Black Thought of The Roots and halfway through, El Michels sends the rhythm section 50 years back. At the end of the day, Ekundayo Inversions is a testament to how strong the original songs are. Whether they’re in a R&B style, reggae style, stripped down to their bare bones, or loaded with production, the songs will move you.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: What a truly stunning set of songs this is, swimming in dubby atmospherics while still retaining the groove and soul of the originals. Some of the pieces are a little bit more in the downbeat realm, before we get the smooth as silk R&B and dubby cuts that bring things back to the (decidedly relaxed) dancefloor. A superb selection of versions, perfectly at home with the orignals, while remaining resolutely distinct from them.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Conquer & Divide
Feat. Black Thought
2. Amazing Woman
3. Angel Face
4. Walk With Me
5. No One Else
6. King

SIDE B:
1. Ugly Truths Feat. Lee Scratch Perry
2. I Love NY
3. Superstar
4. Awkward (Take 2)
5. Lucky Man
6. Faded

Big Crown Records is proud to present Adult Themes, the latest full length offering from El Michels Affair. This album takes the band’s “Cinematic Soul” aesthetic literally and sends the listener on a journey through a whirlwind of moods and energies. With their 2005 debut album Sounding Out The City, EMA spearheaded an instrumental funk / soul movement that inspired a slew of bands and even lead to the creation of a few independent record labels. El Michels has since lent his signature sound to artists from Adele to Dr John, Lana Del Rey to Aloe Blacc, and a who’s who list of others. In 2016 he co-founded Big Crown Records and has since produced the lion’s share of its output. A short stint as the touring band for Wu Tang Clan in 2007 led to the cult classics Enter The 37th Chamber (2009) and Return To The 37th Chamber (2017). Adult Themes marks the long awaited, highly anticipated return to an album of original compositions from El Michels Affair.

In 2017 in between producing, playing, and recording on other artists’ records Leon Michels began creating compilations of short interludes intended to be sampled by hip hop producers. Some of these wound up becoming songs by Jay Z & Beyonce, Travis Scott, and Don Toliver. These minute-long snippets were inspired by the dense moody work of ‘60s composers like David Axelrod, and Francois de Roubaix, as well as Moondog’s brand of classical jazz. Michels was having so much fun creating these instrumental / orchestral nuggets that he decided to expand on some of the ideas and create what would become the soundtrack for a movie that has yet to be made, an imaginary film entitled “Adult Themes.” The album plays like the colors on an artists pallet. Songs like “Rubix” and “Villa” are densely orchestrated with the hard-hitting drums that El Michels Affair is known for. On “Life of Pablo”, Leon’s son makes his first appearance on record and intros a song with an epic arrangement and a moving mood. “Hipps” is a drum heavy ballad that could’ve easily fit on EMA’s debut record, Sounding Out the City. Other compositions like “The Difference” and “Kill The Lights” are bare, melodic mood pieces with sparse drums and sophisticated chord movement. All of these tunes come together to make perfect backgrounds for dialogue and action. One of the beautiful things about instrumental music is that the listener can decide what the narrative is. With Adult Themes El Michels Affair has created a “choose your own adventure” in musical form.

TRACK LISTING

1. Enfant
2. Adult Theme No. 1
3. Kill The Lights
4. Villa
5. Adult Theme No. 2
6. Life Of Pablo
7. Adult Theme No. 3

SIDE B:
1. Rubix
2. A Swift Nap
3. Hipps
4. Munecas
5. Adult Theme No. 4

Fresh off of their 2020 offering Adult Themes, El Michels Affair is back with a new full-length release. Titled Yeti Season, this newest album has everything we've come to expect from EMA’s patented cinematic style of instrumental soul music. Where Adult Themes inspired a soundtrack to an imaginary film, Yeti Season brings us to a different place in time with new inspirations. Taken with Turkish-styled funk and an almost Mumbai-esque take on soul, El Michels Affair offers us a different kind of drama and imagination with Yeti Season. If you've been following along, this shouldn't be viewed as too far a departure for El Michels Affair.

The first single off of Yeti Season showed their hand back in 2018. A double-sided banger, that release brought the musical textures to the fore that dominate this record. The first song, titled "Unathi," is fully realized with the beautifully haunting-yet-hopeful vocals of Piya Malik, formally of 79.5 another Big Crown artist. Singing in Hindi, Piya's ethereal voice is telling us to work and strive together toward progress.

Even if you don't understand her language, you can still hear the urgency of purpose, creating a lasting vibe that sits on top of it all. Leon Michels explains that Piya had a vital influence on this record: "When Piya started singing in Hindi, she had a different voice, a different tone. I knew we had to do something together." And so Piya appears on three other songs on Yeti Season: "Zaharila," "Murkit Gem," and "Dhuaan." Each providing particular signatures to the album. "Zaharila" is a building and changing love song punctuated by blaring trumpets, driving drums, and Piya's pleading lyrics. While the more upbeat "Murkit Gem" opens with a fuzzed out, Wu-Tang-esque baseline that buoys Piya's stylings. The psychedelic guitar and Piya's changing tones and textures singing about an all-consuming love are what pushed "Dhuaan" on to the second single from Yeti Season.

There is also a vocal appearance from Shannon Wise of The Shacks, yet another Big Crown artist. Her song called "Sha Na Na," lies more in the familiar EMA vein: melodic, hypnotic, soulfully visual. But between Shannon's airy singing, the jumpy baseline, moody vibes, the active drum lines, it sounds like a pensive walk home after a strangely dramatic night. So what is Yeti Season? It could be more of a feeling than an actual place or time of year. It's a heavy album as evidenced by the signature musicianship and dramatic vocal expressions. But it's also a hopeful record, with phrasings, textures, and chord changes that hint at something better or fuller coming our way. You hear it in songs like "Ala Vida," with its stabby, pulsing chords laying a bedrock for EMA's bright, atmospheric horn lines. Or even in "Fazed Out," which leaves you with a feeling of determination, a striving for resolution even though the driving, march-like song structure should accompany some conquering army.

This persistence has to come from the fact that Leon Michels and company finished this record during the lockdown. It was a tough and troublesome time. But look at what has come of it: Yeti Season a record of high and heavy drama, but also one of hope and promise. It may take a year like 2020 behind us to find hope in a winter big footed creature like a Yeti, but that's where we are.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another brilliantly rich and beautifully soulful suite from El Michels Affair here, flitting between eastern psychedelia and filmic grooves into more beat-driven downbeat territory. It's all wonderfully produced (as is the way with EMA) and presents a hypnotic and alluring repeat listen.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Unathi
A2. Sha Na Na
A3. Ala Vida
A4. Fazed Out
A5. Murkit Gem
B1. Lesson Learned
B2. Dhuaan
B3. Perfect Harmony
B4. Silver Lining
B5. Zaharila
B6. Last Blast

Swedish singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer El Perro Del Mar announces her first album in 8 years "Big Anonymous", out Feb 16th 2024 on City Slang. The musical path taken by this shape-shifter artist encompasses a spectrum: doo-wop redux, mystic ballads, electronic dance, ecstatic love songs, film soundtracks, dance scores, global pop, and more. With this record, she goes places where few dare to venture: dialogues with the dead, musings on her own mortality, and reflections on the inner darkness that she's inherited. It's gothic, crepuscular, moody- and magnificent. And in the end you might just find it uplifting. She does.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Big Anonymous' is a journey to be undertaken in one fell swoop, moving cohesively between grand gothic ambience, choral majesty and imposing fractured glitch. Though there are pieces that sound undeniably impactful alone (In Silence for example is a life-alteringly affecting piece regardless of context), within the album as a whole, every impeccable part has its place and comes together flawlessly.

TRACK LISTING

1. Underworld
2. Suburban Dreams
3. Cold Dark Pond
4. In Silence
5. The Truth The Dead Know
6. Between You And Me Nothing
7. Please Stay
8. One More Time
9. Wipe Me Off This Earth
10. Kiss Of Death 

El Perro del Mar releases her new EP FREE LAND on 20 November 2020 on limited edition hand numbered 12” vinyl via Memphis Industries. “FREE LAND” is about deconstruction and construction. It’s about resisting giving in. It’s about freedom of creativity and freedom of thought. It’s also an appraisal of the free artist as a well as a reclaiming of creative integrity in an over-commercialized world. The EP includes a collaboration with Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange who lends his vocals to a cover of Black Sabbath’s song “Changes” (“Alone in halls”).

TRACK LISTING

1. Enter
2. Life Is Full Of Rewards
3. White On White
4. Free Land
5. Alone In Halls (feat. Blood Orange)
6. Dreamers Change The World
7. EXIT

El Perro Del Mar is the alter ego of Sarah Assbring. Her second album is an opus, chock full of non-traditional folk songs that explore the world at large. She's joined at times on the record by members of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Gothenburg Symphonic Choir.

Written and produced by El Perro Del Mar & Jacob Haage, the 10 original songs of ‘KoKoro’ are her most ambitious and musically adventurous to date, yet no less emotionally direct, covering themes that speak to both big and small matters of the heart. With the state of the planet - musically, politically, environmentally - on her mind since the birth of her son, Assbring sees ‘KoKoro’ as not only an album but also as an aesthetic and political movement of sorts. She explains: “‘KoKoro’ is about the vulnerability and the strength of the heart. What the heart is exposed to, both internally and externally. The heart cannot be protected. Not from pain, not from happiness. Not from love, not from corruption. I've been thinking a lot about issues such as ‘who am I if the social norms, expectations and pressures I carry were to be stripped away? Hard? Soft? Or maybe both? In a time that seems to go backwards humanistically and morally, seeking to put up walls rather than tearing them down, I realized I wanted to make a borderless album that belongs nowhere but has a universal voice and a universal heart.”

With soundscapes that echo of Thailand, Sumatra, India, Ethiopia, and China, the orchestration of ‘KoKoro’ is unlike any of El Perro Del Mar’s previous releases, a direction only hinted briefly on the ‘Pale Fire’ LP highlight “I Was A Boy.” It features the Chinese string instrument Guzheng, the Japanese Shakuhachi flute, various other Asian flutes, Arabic strings, Dulcimer, and rhythms influenced by Ethiopian music. Assbring explained, “One of my absolute clearest aims was to distance myself from the kind of common Western sound of today” in an effort to “find a new way to write relevant pop music with references and influences that feel fresh.” ‘KoKoro’ was inspired by legendary singers like Pakistan’s great Sufi exponent Abida Parveen and Nahid Akhtar, India’s Asha Bhosle, Ethiopia’s Yeshimebet Dubale, Cambodia’s Sinn Sisamouth, and South Korea’s Kim Jung Mi, as well as Ethiopian musician Enimut Kindie, Javanese gamelan music, and Chinese guzheng music. The album was recorded with multi-instrumentalist Andreas Söderström, bassist Johan Berthling, drummer Mattias Bergqvist, who has collaborated with First Aid Kit, and wind multi-instrumentalist Per “Ruskträsk” Johansson, who has collaborated with Robyn, José González, among many others.

The first single “Breadandbutter” is about finding a means to communicate and find solidarity among people, while other songs on ‘KoKoro’ implore for self-reflection and self-improvement across friendships, relationships, and life at large in an effort to reach enlightenment. Capitalism’s arguably toxic effect on the human spirit is addressed on “Ding Sum,” where El Perro Del Mar sings, “Pics of girls and ads of boys / Hit you, hit you as you go / There's a notice for your heart / To want a bit of what they got (Gimme it, gimme all!) / Listen, you got robbed / But it’s not your fault.”

Last year, El Perro Del Mar reissued her self-titled, critically acclaimed debut album in celebration of its 10 year anniversary, earning praise from Pitchfork for “the way it stripped girl-group pop songs down to their barest essentials and used them to express immense inner sadness.” HBO’s ‘Girls’ featured its single “God Only Knows (You Gotta Give To Get)” in the closing credits of an episode in Season 4. More recently, El Perro Del Mar released covers of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Breaking The Girl,” which was recorded for her 2012 album ‘Pale Fire’ but not included, and Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U” in honor of what would have been the late legend’s 58th birthday. For the former, she partnered with Fred Armisen to direct its music video, who praised her “romantic and dreamy music” in an interview with Rolling Stone.

TRACK LISTING

1. Endless Ways
2. KoKoro
3. Breadandbutter
4. Clean Your Window
5. Ging Ging
6. Kouign-Amman
7. A-Bun-Dance
8. Hard Soft Hard
9. Ding Sum
10. Nougat Mind

The fourth studio album from Sweden’s El Perro Del Mar, released on Memphis Industries.

The chiming cymbals, bewitching vocals and downtempo disco vibe of ‘Walk On By’ promise an album of spellbinding intro- and extrospection. Airy, translucent synths meld with languid, otherworldly sounds, making this album soft and hazy, but never forgettable.

From her early DIY releases on the Gothenburg scene - including collaborations with Jens Lekman - through to 2009’s ‘Love Is Not Pop’ album, and recent work with Lykke Li, Gruff Rhys and Chad Valley, El Perro Del Mar aka Sarah Assbring has woven sophisticated late night tales of love and loss. With Assbring returning to the producer’s chair, ‘Pale Fire’ is her most seductive work yet.

Young local five piece's first recorded CD. Elements of funk, punk, indie and garage rock add to this ever growing sound. Not yet the finished article, but getting there in leaps and bounds.

El Rego is a true legend of African Soul Music. Here for the first time on album are 12 of his greatest recordings from the late 60s and early 70s hand-picked by Daptone Records.

Afro-soul collector / DJ Frank Gossner had spent years combing West Africa tracking down 45s by Theophile Do Rego (aka El Rego) before finally meeting him face to face in his home in Benin. From that relationship came this album. The music of El Rego varies astoundingly in style and rhythm: traditional rhythms of Benin played with modern instruments, John Lee Hooker-esque blues, Fela Kuti inspired afro-beat, afro-cuban claves, and straight-up James Brown style funk. However, there is a common musical thread that runs throughout. The music has a raw soulfulness and a unique flavor that can be attributed beyond the sound of Benin, to the sound of El Rego himself. There is a timelessness to the recordings that ties all of the traditions that inspire them directly to the grooves that were dominating the radios and jukeboxes of the early 70s. The record is teeming with breaking drums and twanging guitars, twisting basslines and undulating percussion. But most importantly. the rhythms are all crafted by a man that not only performed, but also owned nightclubs and had an intimate understanding of the importance of dancing.

Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the reissue of Ammar El Sherei's sought-after instrumental album " Music From The East" from 1976. Here, the iconic Egyptian musician and composer revisits seven classic compositions by another Egyptian legend, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, in his own hypnotic way. Mixing Arabic music with funky arrangements and electric keyboard experimentations, the album is a perfect showcase for El Sherei's artistry. Curated and annotated by Lebanese-born Arabic music expert Mario Choueiry from Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, this reissue has been newly remastered and comes with original Soutelphan artwork.

TRACK LISTING

1. El Kamh
2. Maliesh Amal
3. Abgad Hawaz
4. Eldonya Helwa
5. Enta Enta
6. Balad El Mahboob
7. Eftekerny

RIYL: Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, Do Make Say Think, Mogwai.

Defying expectations is standard operating procedure for El Ten Eleven. Seriously, who would expect two instrumentalists to create such a large and complex sound? But thanks to inventive arrangements and a masterful use of looping, Kristian Dunn (bass/guitar) and Tim Fogarty (drums) developed a pulsating sound full of atmospheric intensity. They’ve also crafted an incredibly durable career, and the duo credit the ongoing interest in their debut album as the foundation for that success. The music of El Ten Eleven has been embraced by fans of many genres - from math rock, to jazz, to lo-fi hip-hop. The duo's sound is sharply evocative in mood and feeling, yet simultaneously abstract and meditative.

The combination of these qualities has stimulated the imagination of the group's fans, and gives space for listeners to assign their own value and meaning to the sounds. "I'm aiming for emotional impact when I come up with songs," Dunn explained. "Does it move me? Does it make me feel something? Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's technically interesting but it doesn't make me feel anything. But I don't want music that's interesting. I want music that's emotionally resonate." 

TRACK LISTING

1. New Year’s Eve
2. Meta Metta
3. The Time Knife
4. Isn’t Everything Enough?
5. Sixteen Circles
6. A Reflection Of A Reflection

RIYL: Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros, Do Make Say Think, Mogwai, Russian Circles, Minus the Bear.

Experiencing an unexpected tragedy or loss often provokes a period of self-reflection, a time to contemplate one’s own place and purpose in the world. That was true for El Ten Eleven’s Kristian Dunn. When a beloved family member passed, Dunn found his own reflections on life emerging in the music he composed. Those expressions led to the creation of Tautology a sonic meditation on the arc of human life, composed in three parts.

Over the course of three discs, Tautology is, in Dunn’s words, “a representation of life from the teenage years, through middle-age, until the end of life.” The sounds on the album echo Dunn’s own experiences, veering from aggressive metallic riffs to blissful ambient soundscapes. And while there are shared melodies and harmonies through all three records, each one has its own distinct qualities: Tautology I, which represents adolescence, is angsty, aggressive and occasionally depressive; Tautology II is head-noddy and mid-tempo, and represents middle age; while Tautology III, quiet and ambient, represents one’s golden years.

Tautology is not a typical rock album, and El Ten Eleven are not a typical rock band. For seventeen years the instrumental duo of Dunn (bass/guitar) and Tim Fogarty (drums) have flourished outside the accepted norms of rock orthodoxy, releasing eight full length albums and four EPs, and performing over 750 live shows. Utilizing inventive arrangements and a masterful use of looping, El Ten Eleven create a sound much bigger than the sum of its parts. Joyful Noise Recordings will digitally release each of Tautology’s three discs, individually and in sequential order, beginning May 1st, with a physical 3LP release on September 18, 2020.

Dunn explains there’s no right or wrong way to listen to Tautology, suggesting that a deep dive into the full project will yield rewards. “I think someone could listen to any one of the discs by themselves and have a really great experience—even if they didn't know about the others. But if they do want to go deeper, I think there will be a lot of interesting stuff to discover. It works symbolically and it all connects. I think this is the best record we've ever done.” 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having been at the forefront of two-man post-rocking for some time now (their self titled debut was, and still is one of my favourite albums), it was a delight to see this triple LP covering all the ground they've touched on in the past 10 years or so. Starting off a lot more driven and gradually rolling towards tender, shimmering post-rock,this is a true impression of just how varied El Ten Eleven can be. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

1 Entropy
2 With Report
3 Jejune
4 Moral Dynamite
5 Division
6 Lassitude
7 Besotted
8 Shimmer
9 Nocturne
10 The Silent Bell That Rings
11 Half Mast
12 Queen’s Gambit
13 Growing Shorter
14 Farrago
15 Caducity
16 You Are A Piece Of Me, You Are A Piece Of Her
17 Aubade
18 Shimmered
19 Let's All Go Out Like Francis
20 Senescent
21 All Of This Bliss Doesn’t Come Without A Price

Recommended If You Like: Godspeed.. , Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós, This Will Destroy You, Do Make Say Think, Mogwai, Lymbyc System, Tycho, Ratatat, Positive/uplifting instrumental loopage ‘n riffage.

Valley of Fire is El Ten Eleven's most thematically committed record, merging personal anecdotes with the larger ecosystem of the sound. While the album was inspired by organic beauty, its seven songs are still rife with El Ten Eleven's trademark technical flair. This is their 13th record, and it's clear El Ten Eleven have evolved with a cadence similar to the changes time has made to The Valley of Fire itself. The trials of age and experience have ushered in something altogether new. “El Ten Eleven is proof that live looping and programming can rock; and that instrumental tracks can captivate and hold a room’s attention as well as any vocal-led group.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's always a pleasure to hear an El Ten Eleven LP, I've been a big fan since the starting notes of 'My Only Swerving' from their 2004 debut and 'Valley Of Fire' is probably the closest in post-rock grandeur and melodic beauty to the early days of ETE. Stunner.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Year’s Day
2. Not Even Almost
3. Volsens
4. Two Views Of A Secret
5. White Domes
6. Days Of Our Lives
7. Valley Of Fire

EL VY is the collaboration between Matt Berninger, vocalist and lyricist of The National, and Brent Knopf, the Portland musician and producer best known for his work in Menomena and his more recent band, Ramona Falls.

Their debut album, Return To The Moon, is a project Berninger and Knopf have been thinking about for years. Their friendship spans nearly a decade, starting back when The National and Menomena played small half-empty clubs along America’s west coast. Feeling an immediate musical kinship, the pair kept in touch, Brent sending Matt occasional rough sketches of music and Matt responding with ideas and lyrics. Finally, in the winter and spring of 2014-115, they got together to make an album.

Return to the Moon sounds exactly like you'd hope a collaboration between these artists would: Berninger's darkly funny, lyrical storytelling and his immediately identifiable sense of melody offset by Knopf's playful, architectural arrangements and inventive production.

Hip hop pioneer El-P returns with ‘Cancer4Cure’, his first full solo album in five years.

The album features Interpol’s Paul Banks, Outkast associate and Atlanta native Killer Mike, Nick Diamond of Canadian indie band Islands, and eccentric rappers Mr Muthaf*ckin’ eXquire and Danny Brown.

Musically, the record takes another leap forward from El-P’s 2010 instrumental workout ‘Weareallgoingtoburninhellmeggamixxx3’, deploying menacing synths, fist-pumping beats, bottomless bass, live instrumentation and earworming melody, and generally setting the standard for hip hop production higher than ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Request Denied
2. The Full Retard
3. Works Every Time (w/ Paul Banks Of Interpol)
4. Drones Over Brooklyn
5. Oh Hail No (with Mr. Muthafuckin EXquire And Danny Brown)
6. Tougher Colder (w. Killer Mike And Despot)
7. True Story
8. The Jig Is Up
9. Sign Here
10. For My Upstairs Neighbor
11. Stay Down (With Nick Diamonds Of Islands)
12. $ Vic/FTL (You And Me)

Few artists can combine uncomfortable with catchy; paranoiac with head-nodding; morbid with springy. It's hard to scare the sh!t out of you while simultaneously keeping your foot moving. Rapper, producer and Def Jux founder El-P knows how to get to parts of the brain others can't. As a solo artist and frontman for seminal hip-hop group Company Flow or producer of Cannibal Ox, Cage, Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock, NIN, Beck, The Mars Volta (and many, many more), an El-P production can drive you to hide underneath the bed, punch a wall and nod your head all at the same time. Which brings us to Weareallgointoburninhellmegamixxx3 (Gold Dust, August 3rd 2010), the sort of, kind of but not really follow-up to his past two mixes of the same name previously released at live shows.

It's another unique release in the artist's catalog. In the tradition of Company Flow's Little Johnny From The Hospitul (1998), El's own Collecting The Kid (2005), and more recently "Weareallgoingtoburninhellmeggamixx2" (2007), Hell3 is a fully realized suite of instrumentals that continues to exemplify the producer's versatile, otherworldly, futuristic and wholly original sonic worldview.

Given this format, Hell3 both sounds similar to and nothing like anything you've heard before. "Drunk With a Loaded Pistol" starts off woozy and deranged before evolving into a warning alarm/drum attack. "Time Won't Tell" opens as a soundtrack for the apocalypse followed by the layering of guitar-driven pop over boom-bap drums. As the album title implies, El-P creates a dark, dystopian sonic universe filled with ominous basslines and thumping, punishing drums.

TRACK LISTING

01. Take You Out At The Ball Game
02. Whores:The Movie
03. Meanstreak (In 3 Parts)
04. DMSC
05. Drunk With A Loaded Pistol
06. Time Won’t Tell
07. Secret Police Man’s Ball
08. I Got This (El-P Remix) Redux
09. Jump Fence, Run, Live
10. He Hit Her So She Left
11. Driving Down The Block (El-P Remix) Redux
12. Honda Redux
13. How To Serve Man (Stripped)
14. Contagious Snippet (Wilder Zoby Feat. El-P)
15. Eat My Garbage 2

When Modeselektor got introduced to the music of eLan, they immediately fell for the effective simplicity and on their constant mission to discover the next new beat, signed the young talent from California right away. Following the release of a much acclaimed vinyl EP trilogy on Monkeytown Records, eLan, member of the super eclectic WEDIDIT Collective (incl. Shlomo and several others), part of the Indigo Pyramid crew now brings us the CD version. This 2xCD contains the 12 original tracks from all three EPs as well as remixes from Modeselektor, Lazer Sword, Cosmin TRG, Byetone (Raster Noton), Anstam and many others. On top of all the vinyl highlights you will find several unreleased bonus tracks and remixes on this 2xCD. A must have for all fans of the Monkeytown Records camp!

TRACK LISTING

CD1:
1. I Can't Breathe
2. Benson Bridges
3. Bleep Bloop Brrrrmmp
4. Dry Lemons
5. Good High
6. Alligator Snaps
7. Hunting Season
8. Saccharin On Top
9. Shoot The Beam
10. Blackout
11. Next 2 Last
12. Brandy
13. 2in5four

CD2:
1. Next 2 Last - Mindesign Remix
2. Benson Bridges – HeRobust Remix
3. Hunting Season - Mike Gao Remix
4. Bleep Bloop Brrrrmmp – Byetone Remix
5. Bleep Bloop Brrrrmmp – Lazer Sword Remix
6. Good High - Devonwho Remix
7. Alligator Snaps – Cosmin TRG Remix
8. Saccharin On Top - DJ Pound Remix
9. Hunting Season - Nasty Nasty Remix
10. Bleep Bloop Brrrrmmp – Modeselektor Remix
11. Shoot The Beam - Fitz Ambrose Remix
12. Saccharin On Top – Anstam Remix

Elaquent kicks off 2018 with his latest EP, Celebrate Life! The six-track record is set for release on March 16th 2018, via URBNET. Celebrate Life! is born out of reflection and graciousness, as expressed by Elaquent,“Life sucks sometimes. With all the depressing things that happen throughout the world, to people you know, to yourself even, it’s important to take a moment and appreciate the beautiful things the world has to offer, to prevent from going crazy. Stay positive, celebrate life”. Celebrate Life! features collaborations with notable producers K, Le Maestro and Dibiase.

TRACK LISTING

1. Celebrate Life!
2. Cocoa
3. Black (feat. K, Le Maestro)
4. No. 540
5. Something Classic (feat. Dibiase)
6. São Paulo

Rough Trade Records are delighted to announce the reissue of Elastica’s debut album ‘Elastica’ which came out in 1994 and went straight to number 1.

Justin Welch “The band is shocked and totally overwhelmed at the outpouring of love that obviously still exists for Elastica after all these years. Unfortunately, there are no immediate plans for a reunion but we are really excited to announce that we are working with Rough Trade Records and the re release of the first album on vinyl to coincide with Record Store Day 2017.”

TRACK LISTING

Line Up
Annie
Connection
Car Song
Smile
Hold Me Now
S.O.F.T
Indian Song
Blue
All-Nighter
Waking Up
2:1
Vaseline
Never Here
Stutter

"Asleep In The Back" was the debut album from Elbow, originally released in 2001 to huge critical acclaim and reaching number 14 in the UK charts. The album was nominated for that year's Mercury Music Prize which of course they would go on to win in 2008 for "Seldom Seen Kid". "Asleep In The Back" is home to many timeless tracks which remain firm fan favourites and make up a good proportion of their live shows now, including the singles "Powder Blue", "Red" and "Newborn" and the epic "Scattered Black And Whites". 

TRACK LISTING

1. Any Day Now
2. Red
3. Little Beast
4. Powder Blue
5. Bitten By The Tailfly
6. Asleep In The Back
7. Newborn
8. Don't Mix Your Drinks
9. Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)
10. Coming Second
11. Can't Stop
12. Scattered Black And Whites

elbow return with their tenth studio album, ‘AUDIO VERTIGO.’ Recorded throughout 2023 at the band’s home studios, Migration Studios in Gloucestershire, The Dairy in London and mixed at the band’s facility at Blueprint Studios, Salford, the album marks a significant step change for the group following 2021’s ‘Flying Dream 1’.

In the words of lead singer and lyricist Guy Garvey, ‘AUDIO VERTIGO’ was built from ‘gnarly, seedy grooves created by us playing together in garagey rooms’ and is both more direct and sonically varied by purpose that its predecessor.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Elbow bring us their comfortingly familiar but sonically surprising 'Audio Vertigo', a perfect mix of the melodic leanings and swooning choruses that have won us over so many times over the years, and a more gritty garage-rock scuzz. Jagged drums and frantic percussion give way to Garvey's beautifully emotive vocals and airy guitar stabs. A welcome return for a beloved band in perfect control of their craft.

TRACK LISTING

1. Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years
2. Lovers’ Leap
3. (Where Is It?)
4. Balu
5. Very Heaven
6. Her To The Earth
7. The Picture
8. Poker Face
9. Knife Fight
10. Embers Of Day
11. Good Blood Mexico City
12. From The River

Following the long awaited and well deserved success of their previous album "The Seldom Seen Kid", Elbow make a much anticipated return.

"Build A Rocket Boys!" features guest contributions from the Halle Youth Choir, retaining Elbow’s strong links with both their home town and the Halle itself, with whom they collaborated on a very special show at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in 2009.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lippy Kids
2. The Birds
3. With Love
4. Neat Little Rows
5. Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl
6. The Night Will Always Win
7. High Ideals
8. The River
9. Open Arms
10. The Birds (Reprise)
11. Dear Friends

So everyone's saying Elbow are happier now? Don't worry this is still heavy and atmospheric, but it's somehow more liberating, less cloying, than their debut album. Sure, there's the creepily sinister "I've Got Your Number" and they still have a proggy bent, like Radiohead but with ace songs. But there's jazzy vibes, lovely electronica and in "Switching Off" they have another mega slowie. There's mad percussion, gospel choirs, beautiful poetry: all so introspective yet somehow anthemic. Sadness that makes you feel 10 foot tall? Now that's wonderful. And weird! Best of all is "Grace Under Pressure", so awe inspiring it sounds like a hymn. It ends with the crowd at Glastonbury chanting 'we still believe in love so fuck you!'. It's the best thing they've ever done. And the album's at least matched its incredible predecessor. Perhaps even surpassed. There's plenty of unravelling and bewitching to be getting on with here. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Ribcage
2. Fallen Angel
3. Fugitive Motel
4. Snooks (Progress Report)
5. Switching Off
6. Not A Job
7. I've Got Your Number
8. Buttons And Zips
9. Crawling With Idiot
10. Grace Under Pressure
11. Flying Dream 143

Elbow finally release the long awaited b-sides album: 'Dead In The Boot' which brings together b-sides and hard to find non-album tracks from the band's lengthy recording career. The release tells an alternative elbow story beginning with the early years, with tracks like 'None One' from the original 'Newborn' EP in 2000, right up to 'Buffalo Ghosts' from last April's 'Open Arms'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Whisper Grass
2. Lucky With Disease
3. Lay Down Your Cross
4. The Long War Shuffle
5. Every Bit The Little Girl
6. Love Blown Down
7. None One
8. Lullaby
9. McGreggor
10. Buffalo Ghosts
11. Waving From Windows
12. Snowball
13. Gentle As

Elbow release their much anticipated ninth studio album, ‘Flying Dream 1’. 

Like most bands I imagine, Elbow spent lockdown in isolation, writing and exchanging musical ideas remotely. These 'little love notes' as Guy calls them formed the basis of the LP and the band finally convened at the empty Brighton Theatre Royal to perfect, perform, and record the songs.

 For the most part, it's an album about love and relationships, family and friends. Things that have been brought sharply into focus for many people over the last 18 months. And Guy's lyrics are as wonderful as ever: poetic, romantic, nostalgic but never cloying.  

There are no big anthems here, instead we're treated to lush melodies and delicate instrumentation, twinkling keys, brushed drums and Guy's soothing tones, even the inclusion of clarinets, saxophones and backing vocals are done with subtlety and grace, adding depth without stepping too far out of the lulling mood. It's a wonderfully understated album that feels somehow fitting for these strange times. 40 odd minutes of calm, amidst the turmoil and anxiety of the world. 

Beautiful.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Flying Dream epitomises that dreamy, melodic sound we've come to know from Elbow, and is full of the spine-tingling euphoric moments that have peppered albums of recent years. Lead single 'Six Words' is classic, beautiful melodic fare and is echoed throughout the rest of this collection. A worthy addition to any collection.

TRACK LISTING

Flying Dream 1
After The Eclipse
Is It A Bird
Six Words
Calm And Happy
Come On, Blue
The Only Road
Red Sky Radio (Baby Baby Baby)
The Seldom Seen Kid
What Am I Without You

‘Giants of All Sizes’ was recorded at Hamburg’s Clouds Hill Studio, The Dairy in Brixton, 604 Studios in Vancouver and Blueprint Studios in Salford with additional recording taking place at various band member’s home studios spread across Manchester. As with their previous four studio albums, ‘Giants’ was produced and mixed by Craig Potter. Guests across the album include Jesca Hoop, The Plumedores and South London newcomer Chilli Chilton.

Guy Garvey describes the album as “an angry, old blue lament which finds its salvation in family, friends, the band and new life.” It is a record that lyrically takes in moments of deep personal loss whilst reflecting its times by confronting head-on the spectres of injustice and division not just in the UK but across the world. It is a record that could only have been made in the 21st Century.

Given such bleak, if ultimately redeemed, subject matter, it is also, perversely, the most relaxed record which elbow have made in some time. On ‘Giants of All Sizes’, each band member extended their usual process of working on demos alone and followed their vision to its conclusion rather than, as Craig Potter puts it, ‘taking the edges off things to find compromise’. In tandem with this, they returned to playing live in the studio, encouraged to experiment with the banks of analogue equipment at Clouds Hill in Northern Germany, giving songs a looser, more live feel.

The result is the most starkly dynamic record from the band in recent times, “Sonically unabashed”, as Guy would have it. Whilst album closer ‘Weightless’ has the gossamer melodies and communal harmonies for which the band have latterly been known, this album echoes earlier elbow work at times whilst also breaking new ground.

‘White Noise White Heat’ is motorik, metal machine soul driven by a vocal that is rage incarnate, ‘Doldrums’ mixes John Carpenter with The Plastic Ono Band to brilliantly disturbing effect and ‘On Deronda Road’ hitches stark bass beats and glitches to an ad-hoc choir. ‘Empires’ delivers dark resignation via an insidious melody and ‘Seven Veils’ continues the subversion by inverting the perception of elbow as a band for lovers into a band for haters, a double-barrelled fuck-you song par excellence. ‘The Delayed 3:15’ marries mariarchi guitars to jazz dynamics, Morricone via Buddy Rich, and ‘My Trouble’ is a clockwork, analogue shuffle housing a delicate melody that builds over the course of the song into a fragile monolith to the power of love.

Lead track, ‘Dexter & Sinister’, released on 10” ahead of the album, encapsulates the whole. A seven-minute musical journey that blends deep bass grooves, sudden keyboard stabs, dislocated piano and guitar runs and soul stylings then abruptly shifts gear, parts the storm clouds and takes wing, flying towards the heat of the sun. It is the soundtrack for these ‘hope free, faith free, charity free days’, a denial of the divine and a reconciliation, two songs in one song, two emotions for one emotion, human, fragile and brilliant like the album which it opens.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dexter & Sinister
2. Seven Veils
3. Empires
4. The Delayed 3:15
5. White Noise White Heat
6. Doldrums
7. My Trouble
8. On Deronda Road
9. Weightless

'Leaders of the Free World', Elbow's third album, sees the band try to beat down their major league contemporaries with a more ambitious set of songs. The results are impressive and may form the band's best work yet. Beginning with the beautiful, slow-building "Station Approach", and ending with the short but touching "Puncture Repair", 'Leaders of the Free World' takes in an a host of minor classics along the way including the captivating title track. The album is the result of a collaborative projecy between the band and film-makers, the Soup Collective.

TRACK LISTING

1. Station Approach
2. Picky Bugger
3. Forget Myself
4. The Stops
5. Leaders Of The Free World
6. An Imagined Affair
7. Mexican Standoff
8. The Everthere
9. My Very Best
10. Great Expectations
11. Puncture Repair

‘Little Fictions’ was recorded in Scotland and Manchester and sees the band collaborate with the string players of The Hallé Orchestra, the Hallé Ancoats Community Choir, members of London Contemporary Voices and session drummer Alex Reeves. As with the previous three elbow albums it was produced by Craig Potter.

‘Little Fictions’ is emphatically a band album. Having written individually for its chart-topping predecessor, ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’, sessions this time were collective affairs, with all four members gathered initially in a house in Scotland before moving to Guy’s attic in Prestwich and finalising recordings in the familiar setting of Blueprint studios, Salford.

‘Little Fictions’ is an upbeat album. All the band talk of the sessions being ‘joyful’, Mark summarises it as ‘the sound of four people who love what they do and each other’, of an album that came into being naturally and, at times even unconsciously. Lead single ‘Magnificent (She Says)’ was embraced for the joyous, thrilling piece of music it is, positive and outward looking. Mark never even considered his audible switch towards electric guitars, most notable on the psychedelic lushness of ‘All Disco’, until the very end of the process.

The departure of drummer Richard Jupp prior to commencing the writing and recording process in earnest saw early sessions characterised by new approaches to rhythm, with the band utilising percussive noises, sampling and loops to build tracks. The grooves that run through much of the album, from the go-go beats of ‘Gentle Storm’ through the jagged trip hop of ‘Kindling’ to the soulful ‘Firebrand & Angel’ represent both the band’s widest musical palette and a newfound sense of experimentation borne from both necessity and desire. That desire fuelled the title track, an eight minute piece that is epic without at any point feeling excessive. As a shorthand for the album it is perfect, crossing musical genres and experimenting with sound in ways that demonstrate the confidence and enthusiasm of the band throughout the recording process.

‘Little Fictions’ is, therefore, more than just yet another brilliant elbow album. In many ways it marks the start of a new chapter for the band, characterised by a rediscovery of shared purpose in doing the thing that has always brought them together, the place that Mark describes as ‘the creative space where we all meet’.

TRACK LISTING

Magnificent (She Says)
Gentle Storm
Trust The Sun
All Disco
Head For Supplies
Firebrand & Angel
K2
Montparnasse
Little Fictions
Kindling

‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ was recorded in Real World Studios and at the band’s facilities at Blueprint Studios, Salford. As with previous albums, the million selling ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ and platinum follow up ‘build a rocket boys!’ it was produced by the band’s keyboardist Craig Potter. The making of ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ saw the band take a new approach to writing and recording. Previously songs were mostly developed by the band as a whole but this new album sees individual members and subgroups take the lead on several tracks.

‘Honey Sun’ was written and recorded at home by guitarist Mark Potter, his brother Craig wrote the music for ‘Real Life (Angel)’ and bassist Pete Turner built ‘Colour Fields’ using apps on his iPad. The first track to be heard from the album, ‘Fly Boy Blue / Lunette’ was developed by drummer Richard Jupp alongside Pete and Mark whilst both Guy and Craig were away from the studio.

The album features several guests including the Hallé Orchestra (‘Manchester’s oldest band’ as Guy affectionately calls them) with Pete McPhail, Tim Barber, Bob Marsh and Kat Curlett adding brass to selected tracks and tour mate and long term friend Jimi Goodwin of Doves adding backing vocals on ‘New York Morning’.

Despite the changes in approach musically and lyrically ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ contains many familiar elements for fans of the band. Early taster ‘Fly Boy Blue / Lunette’ harks back to debut single ‘Newborn’ in its step change melody and rhythmic shift mid song whilst ‘New York Morning’, the first single proper from the album, carries at its centre the type of life affirming refrain that run through elbow songs from ‘Scattered Black and Whites’ from their debut to ‘Open Arms’ from ‘build a rocket boys!’.

Sharp eyed elbow watchers will also note the presence of ‘Charge’, which was performed live during the band’s last run of UK arena shows during the ‘build a rocket boys!’ campaign in December 2012. The song demonstrates that elbow retain an ability to deliver the darker side of human nature that echoes the likes of ‘Little Beast’ and ‘I’ve Got Your Number’ from earlier albums.

Familiar themes return, the welcoming of old friends, the mourning of past loves and, as Guy would say ‘some of the big and little, positive and negative, life experiences that any group of men approaching forty can expect’.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Blue World
2. Charge
3. Fly Boy Blue / Lunette
4. New York Morning
5. Real Life (Angel)
6. Honey Sun
7. My Sad Captains
8. Colour Fields
9. The Take Off And Landing Of Everything
10. The Blanket Of Night

‘What Am I Without You’ is the closing track on elbow’s ninth studio album; ‘Flying Dream 1’. The album was recorded at The Theatre Royal in Brighton in 2021, while closed due to the pandemic. Uncut called it "gorgeously somnambulant, yet softly romantic”, mojo cited “the subtle complexity of the music” and the observer noted it’s “softly articulated warmth and empathy" - drawing comparisons with talk talk's legendary ‘laughing stock'.

Raising money for Mat from Vibes Records' recovery fund Elbow are donating their share of proceeds from this music box to help facilitate the ongoing therapy for their good friend Mat Andrew, the former owner of Vibes Records in Bury. We will also be donating our share of the proceeds to the fund.

More info on Mat’s recovery and his Gofundme page here

The music box version of this plaintive classic is a charming reminder of the beauty of the original melody, so why not…

In August of 2023, while on tour in Europe, Elder was invited to record a live session at the legendary BBC Maida Vale Studios for the Radio 1 Rock Show with Dan Carter. The resulting session is a snapshot of the band's powerful live performance and setlist from that tour.

The session was recorded in a single afternoon in a few takes under the guidance of longstanding BBC engineers Guy Worth and Clive Painter, and mastered and cut for vinyl by Carl Saff.

Elder and Stickman Records have gone to pains to deliver a deluxe package for hardcore fans, including gorgeous artwork by designer Adam Hill, 180gr. solid red vinyl, a full-size A2 fold out poster and download code. The album is also available on CD and digitally.

TRACK LISTING

1. Merged In Dreams - Ne Plus Ultra
2. Lore
3. Thousand Hands

Elder is a heavy psych band from Boston, USA. Founded by long-time friends Nicholas DiSalvo, Jack Donovan and Matt Couto, the group spent years plodding in Sabbathian territory, releasing their self-titled debut in 2008. In the years that followed, Elder took a surprising turn away from their more traditional stoner rock roots, incorporating uplifting melodies and progressive song structures into their lengthy epics. The release of 2011's Dead Roots Stirring sent ripples through the underground and established the band as one of the genre's most interesting and experimental. Between lengthy hiatuses where DiSalvo resided in Germany, Elder continued writing, taking in inspiration from travels and experiences in non-musical territory. 2012 saw the release of Spires Burn/Release EP, the next chapter in the group's progressing mindstate. In the following years Elder toured the U.S. and Europe several times, culminating in the release of their live album Live at Roadburn 2013 from the Dutch festival's 18th edition.

Lore is the third full-length album by Elder and a watershed moment in the band's history. Joining the interplay of heaviness and melody which has become the hallmark Elder sound are a host of new meanderings through uncharted kosmische territory; krautrock, prog as well as classic heavy rock and doom can all be heard unfolding throughout the record's five songs. By giving equal credence to riffs and atmosphere, Lore bypasses genre constraints, the group's penchant for progressive songwriting and melody shining more brightly than ever.

Electrelane are a band with a relatively long history – three albums and an EP as well as several singles over six years – yet their consistently uncompromising attitude and ability to release outstandingly fresh and unique records has kept them somewhat of an enigma, with each record feeling like a re-birth and the beginning of something very special. "Singles, B-Sides & Live" is not only a celebration of Electrelane's diverse work but also the first time that rare, non-album tracks have been available on one compilation. It includes limited 7" releases from Fierce Panda and Indenial as well as singles released on Electrelane's own label Let's Rock before signing to present label Too Pure in 2003.

Recorded in 1991 by the quintet of vocalist Billie Ray Martin and Birmingham-based electronic musicians Brian Nordhoff, Joe Stevens, Les Fleming and Roberto Cimarosti, Electribal Soul was conceived as the sequel to the band’s 1990 debut album, Electribal Memories.

Electribal Memories had yielded the hits ‘Talking With Myself’ and ‘Tell Me When The Fever Ended’ and pushed Electribe 101 to the forefront of a crossover electronic scene that fused dance music with pop savvy. They were snapped up by Phonogram, managed by Tom Watkins and hailed as “the next band to meet the Queen” by i-D. The band took the coveted support slot for Depeche Mode on their epochal World Violation tour and supported Erasure at Milton Keynes Bowl. Seen as the next big thing, everything pointed toward enduring critical success for Electribe 101, and the band settled into putting their second album together.

“There was a degree of confidence among us when we came to write the second album,” recalls Billie Ray Martin. “To me, the songs we put down sound like some of our finest moments.” More immediately lush and warm than the dancefloor-friendly structures of Electribal Memories, the clue to the sound of Electribal Soul lies in the second word in its title: soul. Songs like the aching sensuality of opening track ‘Insatiable Love’ or the emboldened defiance of ‘Moving Downtown’ showcase Billie Ray Martin’s distinctive vocal range as it moves from haunting quiet to dramatic, euphoric rapture. Lyrics from ‘Moving Downtown’ had found their way into ‘Pimps, Pushers, Prostitutes’ by S’Express, and the song would appear as ‘Running Around Town’ on Martin’s 1996 solo album. The strikingproduction on the version of the song presented on Electribal Soul suggests classic late sixties soul influences, such as those of legendary Motown producer Norman Whitfield, with the long shadow cast by Kraftwerk never being far away.

‘Deadline For My Memories’, the song that provided the title for Martin’s first solo album, was originally intended for the second Electribe 101 album. Its lyrics document a sense of freedom and liberation from the darkness of a bad relationship, accompanied by jazzy piano and organ sounds over a quiet rhythm and discrete electronics. In contrast, ‘A Sigh Won’t Do’ finds Martin in soothing vocal mode, despite its devastating message about the final ending of a strained relationship, her lyrics framed by restrained and subtle beats and sounds.

To spend time with Martin’s voice on Electribal Soul is to find yourself moved deep into the ordinarily impenetrable emotional corners of your own psyche. “I was into big ballads at the time and listening to all kinds of US and UK singers, and I was also young enough to want to prove myself as a belter of ballads,” explains Martin of the classic soul edge the album showcased.
Electribal Soul heads into darker territory with ‘Hands Up And Amen’. Originally written by Martin in Berlin in the period before moving to London and forming Electribe 101, the song was then perfected and enhanced by the band’s production nous. ‘Hands Up And Amen’ savagely documents the mugging of a woman in Queens, NY at gunpoint, only to resolve itself with a middle section that nods reverently toward gospel tradition. The song coalesces around a regimented break and burbling synths, finally ending with layers of urgent synth sounds.

Meanwhile, a cover of Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Persuasion’ takes us into a seedy world of sexual coercion and creepy infatuation, predating Martin’s chilling version of the track with progressive house unit Spooky two years later. Supported by a minimal, nagging rhythm and barely-fluctuating sounds, Electribe 101’s take on ‘Persuasion’ makes for uneasy listening, even though Martin manages to inject a sort of twisted sympathy for the protagonist as the song progresses.

That Electribe 101 were as comfortable offering complicated, nuanced tracks like ‘Persuasion’ alongside pop house bangers like ‘Space Oasis’ – written by Billie Ray Martin with Martin King before Electribe 101 was formed – is testament to the way the band wove their way effortlessly through electronic music reference points. Framed by light, jazzy piano melodies and string sounds, the energy of ‘Space Oasis’ soars so high that it could easily reach the moon, while highlighting how well-suited Martin’s voice has always been to club music. We hear the same reminder of her dance music credentials on ‘True Memories Of My World’, finding her describing a Hollywood actress who reflects on being used by directors to sell her ‘tears’.

Hooking up with the Birmingham-based Nordhoff, Stevens, Fleming and Cimarosti after placing a Melody Maker ad in 1988 (“Soul rebel seeks musicians – genius only”), it was clear that Martin had found a group that recognised the unique power and importance of her voice. Having worked with genres as diverse as reggae, rock and R&B, the four producers proved to be perfect collaborators, presenting carefully-sculpted backdrops that emphasised the towering emotional dexterity of her voice.

“Listening back to these tracks now, I was reminded of what a bunch of great musicians they were,” says Martin. “They had a rule that if a part still sounded good after a day or two then it could stay. If it bothered the vocals, it would go.” Even more so than on Electribal Memories, Electribal Soul places Martin at the captivating centre of these pieces, surrounding her voice with everything from dubby rhythms to chunky R&B beats to nascent trip hop breaks; wiry, acid-hued synths uncoil gently without ever dominating, while horn samples and lush, disco-inflected strings provide a rich, naturalistic accompaniment for Martin’s emotional outpourings.

The band finished mixing the album at London’s Olympic Studios in 1991. They were assisted by Apollo 440’s Howard Gray on production duties for ‘Deadline For My Memories’, ‘Insatiable Love’ and ‘Space Oasis’, with Gray supported by talented engineer Al Stone. Pre-release promo tapes were issued and an enthusiastic energy started to build around the band’s anticipated second album.

It was not meant to be. Against a backdrop of a worsening relationship with Tom Watkins, and a disinterested Phonogram, instead of receiving a positive reaction to the new tracks, Electribe 101 were swiftly dropped by their label. Electribal Soul languished, unreleased, and the band yielded to pressures that had been building and split up. After collaborating with Spooky and The Grid, Billie Ray Martin went on to release her seminal debut solo album in 1996, with it securing the era-defining hit ‘Your Loving Arms’, while the other group members continued to work together as The Groove Corporation.
Thirty years after the songs were recorded, we’re now finally able to hear what the second and final chapter of Electribe 101’s story sounded like. Electribal Soul shows that the band had really only just got started when they dropped their first album in 1990. Heard only by a select and privileged few, what followed elevated the band’s music to a completely new level, making Electribal Soul musical buried treasure of the most precious and rare variety.

TRACK LISTING

Insatiable Love
Space Oasis
Moving Downtown
Conquering Tomorrow
Deadline For My Memories
A Sigh Won’t Do
True Moments Of My World
Hands Up And Amen
Persuasion
Deadline For My Memories (alternative Version) (cd Bonus Track)
You And I (keep Holding On) (cd Bonus Track)

One-off Soul Jazz Records’ collectors Punk 45 pressing. Comes in fold out paper sleeve and specially silk-screened Punk 45 outer sleeve.

Electric Chairs’ ‘So Many Ways’ is post-punk / funk at its height in 1979 - tough rhythms, avant-garde, addictively hypnotic and hypnotic. Two hard to find bomb tunes.

Superb exact reproduction of this excellent postpunk / funk mini masterpiece by the Electric Chairs, who were Wayne / Jayne County and the Electric Chairs until Wayne / Jayne County, true to their own song, ‘Fucked Off’. The Electric Chairs included in their line-up Henry Padovani, who joined the group after being chucked out of a new band called The Police (replaced by Andy Summers).

However, it’s the production skills of David Cunningham that sets this apart from most punk / post-punk singles. At the time Cunningham was working with a stunning array of avant-garde artists including This Heat, Michael Nyman, David Toop and his own ‘experimental pop group’, The Flying Lizards.

Electric Chair’s ‘So Many Ways’ features on Soul Jazz Records’ ‘Punk 45: I’m A Mess’.

TRACK LISTING

So Many Ways
J’Attends Les Marines