Obscure 1965-1968 recordings, most of them previously unreleased, by The Individuals, The Tokays and Euphorian Railway, bands which featured Andy Cahan aka Johnny Farfisa as main songwriter and organ player.

Over those three years, Cahan and his teenage bandmates produced a remarkable set of R&B/garage/blue-eyed soul tracks of outstanding quality, collected here for the first time.

Growing up in the town of New Rochelle, New York, young Andy Cahan got his kicks making horror films using an 8mm movie camera and a Wollensak tape recorder. But Cahan was also a gifted piano player with a good musical ear. Like thousands of American kids, his life changed forever on February 9, 1964 - the day The Beatles debuted on the Ed Sullivan Show. "I was totally amazed at these four guys who could sing and play perfectly and had awesome haircuts, matching suits and very cool boots," he says.

His first surf band The Jaguars became The Tokays, named after a brand of sweet white Hungarian wine. The group started to play some of Andy's original material, inspired by The Beatles and other British invaders like The Zombies and The Dave Clark Five. One of those tracks, the plaintive minor-key ballad 'Where Young Lovers Go', is included here, a remarkably mature effort for a bunch of 17-year-old kids. "Reno Franze and Richie Struts were the lead singers, Sandy Reiner was on drums, Larry Kramer on guitar, and I played the grand piano and organ. There was no bass."

Soon after, Andy made an important change. "The Beatles all played guitars, so I had to either learn guitar or, since I already was a piano/organ player, emulate Mike Smith of The Dave Clark Five with his red Vox organ. That's when I traded my old Thomas organ for the new Farfisa Combo Compact red organ. After opening the factory package on the living room floor and setting it up, I immediately assumed the stance that Mike Smith had. I purchased Beatle boots, as did my band buddies, and we changed the name to The Individuals."

By this time Richie Struts had left the group. The Individuals worked hard and soon began making a name for themselves. "We rehearsed every day until we were so good that we won three separate Battle of the Bands contests in New Rochelle and other cities in Westchester County, New York." The group also found time to go into the studio in 1965 and 1966 to record demos - most of which can be heard on this album. The tough Farfisa-led garage rocker 'She's Gone Away' is one of the highlights. With its memorable guitar and organ hook and haunting vocal melody, 'I Don't Play' is one of the band's strongest compositions from this period. In the studio they tried several different approaches, one with an overdubbed 12-string guitar, and another - designated the 'soul version' - with Reno doing a moody spoken vocal. Another standout is the hard-driving 'The Sky Is Falling'.

The Individuals broke up around 1967 when Larry Kramer elected to go to college rather than pursue music full-time. Andy, Sandy and Reno reconfigured as The Boys in Dutch, adding Jerry Delesio on guitar, and gigged across the New York area throughout 1967. After that band ran its course, Andy decided to start a new project, Euphorian Railway, with Reno on lead vocals, Vinny Derminity on guitar and vocals, Ken Lennington on bass and vocals, and Frank McConville on drums.

Euphorian Railway went into the studio in March 1968 and in one five-hour session cut an album's worth of original material. Five tracks are featured here, including a powerful remake of 'The Sky Is Falling', along with dynamic new material like 'She Showed Me'. The influence of The Rascals is strong, especially in Reno's impassioned Eddie Brigati like vocals, but Cahan's electric harpsichord provides some distinctive touches, especially on the psychedelically-inclined 'On My Way To The Sun'.

The band was short-lived. In the summer of 1968 Cahan relocated to Los Angeles, where he quickly made a name for himself as a keyboard player and arranger, working with such people as Graham Bond, Dr John, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Harry Nilsson and Flo & Eddie of The Turtles. He was also a founding member of Geronimo Black, along with ex-Mothers Jimmy Carl Black, Denny Walley and Bunk and Buzz Gardner, and one-time Love member Tjay Contrelli.

As for his Johnny Farfisa alias, that originated with David Gibson of Moxie Records, who in 1980 released a seven-inch EP of The Individuals' mid-60s recordings titled "Johnny Farfisa's Greatest Hits": "He was the one who gave me the name Johnny Farfisa from the idea of combining Johnny Rotten and my Farfisa organ!".

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
THE INDIVIDUALS
1. SHE'S GONE AWAY (Vocal)
2. I DON'T PLAY (Version 1)
3. IT MAY BE
4. THE SKY IS FALLING
5. I DON'T PLAY (Soul Version)
6. MONKEY ON MY BACK
7. MY BABY'S BAD
THE TOKAYS
8. WHERE YOUNG LOVERS GO

Side 2
THE INDIVIDUALS
1. I DON'T PLAY (12-string Version)
EUPHORIAN RAILWAY
2. THE SKY IS FALLING
3. SHE SHOWED ME
4. ON MY WAY TO THE SUN
5. I THOUGHT I KNEW YOU
6. NOTHING AND NO ONE
THE INDIVIDUALS
7. SHE'S GONE AWAY (Instrumental)

For Fans Of: J. Tillman, Phosphorescent, Low, Damien Jurado, Bill Callhan.

“It’s going to be hard to talk about this when it’s done.” So begins A Mold For The Bell, the new album from Colorado singer-songwriter and producer Logan Farmer. What follows that enigmatic lyric is a collection of stark and ambient folk songs, tethered solely by Farmer’s unadorned vocals, acoustic guitar, and moving embellishments from contributors, including saxophonist Joseph Shabason (who also mixed the album) and renowned harpist Mary Lattimore. With the help of Grammy-nominated producer Andrew Berlin (Gregory Alan Isakov), Farmer tracked all of the vocal and guitar parts over two days in the early months of 2021. The tracks were recorded quickly, live in the studio to capture the raw intimacy and immediacy of Farmer’s live performances. The rest of the album’s creation occurred remotely, over texts, phone calls, and emails with Shabason and a handful of other musicians, as wildfires, insurrections and the pandemic raged around them.

“I was working at a bookstore that winter,” Farmer explains, “and I’d walk to my shift every day, obsessing over lyrics and early mixes in a cheap pair of earbuds.” These daily walks would take him past a church, where he’d often stop on the sidewalk and listen to the bells at the top of the hour. “I’ve always loved the sound of church bells, but as the situation worsened, what began as a comfort began to feel ominous, almost threatening.” This experience, along[1]side influences as disparate as Tarkovsky’s film Andrei Rublev and the novels of Olga Tokarczuk, led to a collection of songs that are similarly foreboding, expanding upon the stark and spacious universe of Farmer’s last album (2020’s Still No Mother) to reveal an atmosphere that’s even more oppressively still, like an abandoned Victorian home.

TRACK LISTING

01 Silence Or Swell
02 Cue Sunday Bells
03 Horsehair (feat. Mary Lattimore)
04 Crooked Lines
05 William
06 The Moment
07 Renegade
08 South Vienna

British singer / songwriter Lizzy Farrall releases her debut mini album, ‘All I Said Was Never Heard’, which will drop just in time for her scheduled UK tour supporting Seaway.

Lyrically the release is about situations she went through in her teenage years and forms a diary of that time.

For fans of Julien Baker, Now Now, Dashboard Confessional, Neck Deep, This Wild Life.

TRACK LISTING

Broken Toy
Pack Of Wolves
Better With
Better Off
Hollow Friends

With his sophomore full-length album, Born Hot, Chris Farren paired polished, up-beat pop songs with lyrics full of self-examination and insecurity, all while developing a newfound sense of humor when it came to promoting himself. Stereogum called it “a tongue-in-cheek exploration of ideas of confidence and self-loathing," while The Atlantic featured it on their “Best Albums of 2019” list.

On his third full-length album, Doom Singer, Farren injects his latest work with a newfound sense of power and cohesion. Collaborating for the first time with outside drummer Frankie Impastato (Macseal), Farren's songs take on a whole new dimensionality, with Impastato's live drums bringing a fresh spontaneity to the tracks. Doom Singer marks another significant milestone in Farren's career as it is the first time he collaborated with a producer, multi-instrumentalist Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Bachelor, Routine). Her masterful production experience adds a layer of sophistication to Farren's sound, creating a rich and multi- dimensional sonic landscape that takes his music to new heights. With Duterte's keen ear and meticulous attention to detail, the album resonates with a level of clarity and depth that showcases Farren's songwriting and vocal abilities in a whole new light.

Chris Farren’s music has been praised in outlets such as MTV, Stereogum, and The Atlantic, who describes his music as having “bright-eyed hooks, sparkly orchestration, and tight songwriting.” With numerous world tours alongside artists such as Jeff Rosenstock, The Gaslight Anthem, Laura Stevenson, and others, Farren has been building a dedicated following of fans who connect with his introspective lyrics and infectious pop sensibilities.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bluish
2. All We Ever
3. Get Over U
4. Only U
5. Doom Singer
6. Screensaver
7. First Place
8. My Beauty
9. Cosmic Leash
10. StatueSong

Orig released in 1978 and unavailable on vinyl since then, "Vampires Stole My Lunch Money", is regarded as one of the best albums by Mick Farren (the Deviants). Featuring guest appearances from Wilko Johnson, Chrissie Hynde, Sonja Kristina and more.

As powerful as rock gets this punk influenced album also includes r&b jams and features an impressive roster of musicians.

Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard cultivate a certain taste for subtly arranged compositions and pop songs that feel both timeless and current. And beyond this elegance, beyond their solar songs, even beyond Maxwell's majestic voice, we can deeply feel that music is above all a story of meeting and sharing.

Since the time of our early talks with the duo, we've known one thing for sure: their first album "Once" had a misleading title. There was never any question of quickly closing the deal, of getting close to the top and packing up. "Our time alone, our finest hours are spent" sings Maxwell Farrington on the opening, and we don't believe a word of it. Recorded last fall while on tour, "I Had It All" offers 6 new treasures, 6 new proofs of our musicians' dazzling talent, an achievement even more remarkable considering the disc's short format.

Released back in April 2021 "Once" sealed the meeting between Maxwell Farrington (musician, crooner, Australia jack-of-all-trades living in Binic) & the SuperHomard (Christophe Vaillant: orchestration, arrangements, production). Acclaimed by critics, widely praised by the public, this first opus allowed the band to play (in quintet form) at various festivals (Villette Sonique, La Route du Rock, Hop Pop Pop, etc.) and through- out France.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Had It All
2. Two Hopeful Lovers
3. Burning
4. Donna
5. Change Direction
6. Il Cacciatore

Released in early 2019 on the Spanish label Elefant Records, "Meadow Lane Park" was the debut album by Avignon-based Christophe Vaillant under his new entity, Le SuperHomard. Undoubtedly dreamlike and enchanting, hailed by critics both in France and abroad, and by Paul Weller (who invited the group on his entire European tour), the musician laid the groundwork for a new artistic direction. Originally from Brisbane, Maxwell Farrington left Australia in 2013, travelling to the United Kingdom and then France. After Marseille and Toulouse, he moved to Saint-Brieuc and took part in the formation of Dewaere, a noise quartet bathed in 90s influences. Maxwell's vocals bring a poppier and warmer touch. Christophe and Maxwell met during a joint concert at La Boule Noire, on the MaMA Festival in 2019. During his band's sound check, the Australian performed an a capella version of a song by American composer Burt Bacharach. This lead to an engaging conversation between the two musicians, who discussed their common passion for Lee Hazlewood, Scott Walker and Frank Sinatra. We find this elegance again reiterated throughout these compositions – in the orchestral pop, the subtle arrangements, the velvet singing voice. "Once" is a four- handed collaboration. Recording began in February 2020, ending within a short distance of the New Year. "Once" is a journey, both near and far, where everyone will find a safe haven.

TRACK LISTING

1. We, Us The Pharaohs
2. North Pole
3. Free Again
4. Lights & Seasons
5. Love
6. La Mesa Motel (Feat. Max Meser)
7. Good Start
8. Oysters
9. Hips
10. Happening Again
11. Big Ben (Feat. Evelyn Ida Morris)
12. Tonight

'Please, Wait...', their sophomore album, emerges from a profound collaborative evolution, contrasting with Once, which was crafted remotely during the lockdown. This album is steeped in shared experiences from two years of touring, showcasing a symbiotic musical evolution between Maxwell and Christophe. Please, Wait...is a journey into the realm of the senses, an invitation to a dreamscape where listeners are free to find their own meaning. This record is a testament to beauty and modern hedonism, crafted by artists who live and breathe the epicurean ethos.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Wistful hazy melodies, psychedelic twists and theatrical vocal work all mix together into a lovely distillation of influences. Lounge, melancholic rock and grand orchestral melodies all slotted together perfectly.

TRACK LISTING

The Boat
The Nimbostratus Jig
Plat Du Jour
Backgammon
Hexagon
Galbulus
Begging's Not My Business
Catch 42
Topinambur
Postprandial Promenade (feat. Nadine Khouri)
Stirred But Not Shaken

Reissue of the influential Californian post-hardcore band's first album for Immortal Records/Epic in 1996.
Reconstructed artwork for vinyl by Simon Tripcony.
Mastered for vinyl by Jan Oberg at Hidden Planet, Berlin.
Manufactured at Matter of Fact, Germany.
FFO: Deftones, Quicksand, Hundred Reasons, early-Biffy Clyro.

TRACK LISTING

01. What I've Wanted To Say
02. Love, American Style
03. In The Aisle, Yelling
04. Girl
05. Seasick
06. Job's Eye
07. Punchdrunk
08. Celebrate Her
09. Boring Life
10. Joining The Circus
11. Cut-out
12. Sorrow's End

The second release for Epic was still granite hard and the arrangements every bit as engagingly eccentric as their opener "Tin Cans With Strings To You", but it was more textured. The little extra effort demanded of the listener was definitely worth it though - and if you're prepared to take my word for it enough to get your sticky hands on a copy of this passionate, multilayed 1998 groundbraker, you'll find out why.

Debut art-rock album project from Moaning’s (Sub Pop) founding member/bassist/synth player, Pascal Stevenson (she/they).

RIYL: Moaning, Wire/Colin Newman’s solo work, early Brian Eno, Cate Le Bon, Crack Cloud, Japan, Preoccupations, Deerhunter, Iceage, Ought.

Scrutiny, the debut album from Moaning's Pascal Stevenson under her new solo alias Fashion Club, explores the mind's complex relationship to morality, and the way structures of power tend to replicate themselves through unexamined habits. Stevenson began writing the songs that would become Scrutiny toward the end of 2018, as Moaning embarked on a European tour in support of their critically acclaimed first album. Between shows, in the back of the band's tour van, she traced early drafts of Scrutiny's instrumentals on her laptop, planting the seeds of what would bloom into her captivating solo debut.

While concocting Scrutiny's dreamlike art-rock palette, Stevenson drew inspiration from artists working during the incipient decades of the synthesizer’s lifetime, like Kate Bush, Brian Eno, and Wire's Colin Newman –
musicians whose work bridges the gap between disarming experimentalism and pop pleasure. The album similarly channels the influence of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s tactile, material production on Janet Jackson’s late ‘80s albums Control and Rhythm Nation 1814, records that exploded the potential of digital music-making and entwined the sounds of new technology with the currents of the body.

TRACK LISTING

01. Pantomime
02. Failure
03. Dependency
04. Scrutiny
05. Feign For Love
06. Reaction
07. Chapel
08. Phantom English
09. All In Time

A Yorkshire farmer who led a challenging and isolated existence, caring for elderly relatives whilst running her farm in the most extreme conditions. She became an overnight celebrity after appearing in an ITV documentary, her virtues of hard work without any complaints, without any expectations of praise or credit, were something an entire nation identified with. Hauxwell is the subject of album track ‘Perfectly Planned’, whilst ‘Hellsto’ looks on admiringly at the working women of WW1 and WW2, who often go nameless, under the radar. “FORGE’ is about the small pockets of communities that are overlooked, unheard, ignored. Their ways of work and living are changing, either drying up or being sold off, and this is causing people to burn with frustration whilst also causing them to reaffirm their strengths and identities”, say Fassine.

The London trio’s distinctive take on electronic music has previously earned acclaim and support from the likes of The Guardian, The Independent, Clash and more. Yet on ‘FORGE’ they’re bolder than ever before, the instrumentation heavier and more aggressive than on previous full lengths ‘Gourami’ (2017) and ‘Dialectik’ (2016). They still follow tradition in one sense though, opting again to feature a cover, this time Paolo Conte’s‘ Max’ with guest vocals from Italy’s Fabrizio Pagni (Arqtic, Zen Circus). Recorded primarily at London’s Battery Studios, Sarah Palmer, Laurie Langan and James Hayward (Fassine) would play late into the night, adopting a much more improvisational approach than previously, “This process was far more improvisational - a lot of ideas were done on-the-fly in the studio. We had a skeletal demo, then ideas were batted out and put down.

Far fewer demos were gone through to begin with, and gut instinct was followed much more quickly. We also decided that no matter what the song, if we liked it, it would go on’’. Since their last release, Fassine have been busy on our screens, the London trio’s XTC cover of ‘That Wave’ appeared on the Sky Arts’ documentary on the seminal band, This Is Pop. Their track ‘Whatever It Takes To Help You Sleep’ played as the backdrop to Netflix’s first feature film ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’, and ‘Leaves’ was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s Queen Sugar. ‘FORGE’ literally meaning to ‘create something strong and enduring’. And with this album, Fassine have embodied the grit and grime of their personal heroes to weld into existence something that’s an industrial and hard-hitting piece of craftsmanship. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Forge
2. Limbs
3. Magpie
4. Perfectly Planned
5. Migraine
6. Everyone Is Guilty To Me
7. Max
8. Bloom
9. Hellsto (The Sweetness Came For Us)

Collection of the lost recordings of Fast Eddie, one of the most exciting live bands of the early 1980s Rhythm ‘n’ Soul-fuelled Mod Revival.

From Billericay, the band followed in the wake of Thames Delta Blues pioneers Dr. Feelgood, originally playing raw, authentic R&B before expanding their sound to incorporate club soul and a broader palette of influences and sounds.

Originally produced and managed by legendary label man and broadcaster Eddie Piller, founder of Acid Jazz, who released their first single on his first own Well Suspect marque in 1982.

An exciting collection of Mod-Revival-era tunes, and an important document of the wider Mod Revival and Acid Jazz Records story.

TRACK LISTING

Shake A Tail Feather
I Don’t Need No Doctor
Sugar Coated Love
Sweet Sensation
Turn On Your Love Light
Vicinity
My Babe
Ninety-Nine & A Half
Out Of Sight
Fever
Keep Your Hands Off It
Teenie Bit Of Your Love *
Barefootin’
Hit The Road Jack
36-22-36
Homework
Treat Her Right *
Land Of 1000 Dances *
Little Suzy (Instrumental) *
Help Me *
* = CD Only Track

Fat Dog’s second single, ‘All The Same’, b/w exclusive b-side, ‘Land Before Time’.

Fat Dog are the most exciting breakthrough band of the past few years, conjurers of the sort of frenzied and wild live shows not seen in the capital for years and now the creators of ‘WOOF’., a brilliant and mind-bending debut album. A thrilling blend of electro-punk, rock’n’roll snarling, techno soundscapes, industrial-pop and rave euphoria, ‘WOOF’. is music for letting go to or, in the words of frontman Joe Love, “screaming-into-a-pillow music”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Vigilante
Closer To God
Wither
Clowns

Side B
King Of The Slugs
All The Same
I Am The King
Running
And So It Came To Pass

For the tenth anniversary of Fat Freddy's Drop's "Blackbird" album,  the group have commissioned a plethora of remixes which make up the "Blackbird Returns" album. Friends, legends and innovators from around the world: Nightmares on Wax, Jazzanova, KINGS, Syrup D, Christoph El Truento & Lucky Lane, DJ Philippa, Feiertag, Marcus Worgull, The KCBS, YARNI feat. Liv East, Dub Pistols vs Freestylers and Kid Fonque have remixed their favourite "Blackbird" tracks.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: A diverse range of remixes celebrating the New Zealand 7-piece's long standing reign over the more funky, skanking, and leftfield dance tents and concert halls of the world. House, downbeat, DnB, funk and soul - all bases are covered with an all star cast of contributors.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Blackbird (Kings Remix)
A2 Russia (Nightmares On Wax 10th Anniversary Remix)
A3 Clean The House (Christoph El Truento & Lucky Lance Remix)
B1 Silver & Gold (Yarni Feat. Liv East Remix)
B2 Bones (Philippa Dub)
B3 Soldier (Jazzanova Remix)
C1 Mother Mother (Feiertag Remix)
C2 Blackbird (Marcus Worgull Remix)
C3 Blackbird (The Kcbs Rework)
D1 Bones (Dub Pistols & Freestylers Remix)
D2 Mother Mother (Kid Fonque Remix)
D3 Silver & Gold (Syrup D Version) 

Fat Freddy's Drop present the 'LOCK-IN' album, a sonic moment in time as the band jam conscious songs of freedom and hope for a generation. The studio session was captured at the iconic Michael Fowler Centre in the band's hometown of Wellington, New Zealand during the pandemic lockdown. Devoid of audience, it's a reflection of the surreal times that's halted tour life 2020.

The band re-located their BAYS studio to the MFC and set up in a circle on the MFC stage for the recording, providing a unique space to jam slow burn classics such as 'Soldier', 'Hope' and 'This Room' as well as test drive 'Avengers' a brand new track in the making. The other tracks recorded are 'Special Edition', 'Six-Eight', 'OneFourteen' and 'Trickle Down' from 'Special Edition Part 1' the band's most recent album. The crisp multi-track production was recorded by Western Audio, monster mix back at BAYS studio by DJ Fitchie, Freddys beat master and producer Mastering at Calyx studio in Berlin. The 'LOCK-IN' session melds Freddys fastidious studio chops and love of freewheeling jams with a tautness that comes from 21 years in the business and a reputation as one of the finest live draws in the world.

TRACK LISTING

1.Special Edition
2.SixEight
3.This Room
4.Trickle Down
5.Avengers
6.Soldier
7.Hope For A Generation
8.114

Wairunga finds the Freddy juggernaut digging deep to debut five songs and revisit two classics captured in an outdoor performance sans audience but with wild weather elements playing an important creative role in producing this unique live album.Recorded in Wairunga, high above Waimarama Beach in New Zealand, it is place etched into the DNA of Fat Freddy's Drop who've roamed here for over 20 years; to party, relax between tours, make a song Wairunga Blues in its honour and even to get married

Farmed by the Parker family for a century, Wairunga is an oasis of green pasture and native tree filled valleys that fall away to the ocean below.In inimitable Freddy's fashion the new tunes run a gamut of genre busting styles. Coffee Black is layered with cosmic hot buttered soul and cinematic wigged out psyche-blues while Shady continues Freddy's Afro-Acid adventures with Fitchie's beat-making tapping into a South African township brand of techno Freddys experienced on tour.

Bush Telegraph is a reggae classic featuring MC Slave aka Mark Williams on the mic with freshly minted yum char spiced rhymes of hope. The other new tracks Leave Your Window Open and Dig Deep are loose rhythmic experiments that the band have been working on for a long time. Versions were developed, rehearsed, but then set aside – dismissed, demonised - only to be revived with new energy in some future moment of creative cohesion. The results are loose-limbed; broken and bruised beats smashing into subterranean bass and twisted up melodies.

Bones and Wairunga Blues are the two classics from Freddy's vast back catalogue. Off the Blackbird album, Bones has aged beautifully - like a fine wine - the song's component parts matured and melded together in harmony and balance. DJ Fitchie rates this 2021 vintage superior to the 2013 original. Wairunga Blues has been a work- in- progress since it was released on Bays in 2015. Kuki dials up some appropriately off- kilter keys to match the wonky- funk laid down by Fitchie's bass line and the horns. It's a mighty comeback – and a fitting tribute to this magical place.

TRACK LISTING

Coffee Black
Bones
Shady
Wairunga Blues
Bush Telegraph
Leave Your Window Open
Dig Deep

Tasty selection of street beats and blunted head nodders courtesy of Five Deez' Fat Jon. Lots of juicy soul licks and hard-edged MPC rhythms thrown together into a sonic bong bowl before being sparked up and inhaled by our ears. Don't forget, these instrumental hip-hop albums are great for budding wordsmiths to hone their freestyle / battle skills! 

This 12 track LP serves as a soundtrack to the eponymous manga published by Dark Horse Comics and comes with a 12"x12" manga poster, in a full print jacket. A must have for fans of Jon's work on classics like Samurai Champloo.

RIYL: Dez Andres, Ras G, MF Doom. 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Manifestation (2:13)
2. OI (Mortal Dilemma) (2:10)
3. Scramble District (2:07)
4. Intimidation (3:15)
5. Kinetic (2:02)
6. Septembers (1:17)
Side 2
1. Bazaar (2:18)
2. Radioactive Aura (2:57)
3. Triggered (Two Faces) (2:53)
4. Just Say It (2:17)
5. Levitation (2:07)
6. Fascination (3:04)

When he's not busy laying down tracks with A$AP Rocky and Das Racist or hosting shows for VICE Fat Tony kicks back with close bud and producer Taydex spitting close to the bone, observational bars. This, his first release on Carpark records drops right on cue with his riotous live dates with Black Midi and Blackalicious. For "Wake Up", Fat Tony invited a cast of talented peers, including Sophia Pfister, Negashi Armada, Dai Burger, Clarence James, and Revenge Wife, to spit verses on the album. The record’s lead singles “Godly” and “Get Out My Way” show the musical and conceptual range the album has to offer. Fat Tony hopes that the creative risks taken on the album gesture a leap forward in his discography while retaining the charisma and sincerity his fans know him for.

Nigerian-American rapper and entertainer Fat Tony’s fifth studio album, "Wake Up", a collaboration with producer Taydex, is saturated in the candid confidence that has carried him through his tenure in underground Hip Hop. "Wake Up" is an anthemic return to form after 2018’s "10,000 Hours". Inspired by quietly groundbreaking rap records like De La Soul’s "Buhloone Mindstate" and Ghostface Killah’s "Supreme Clientele", "Wake Up" shows Fat Tony widening the scope of his storytelling while maintaining his light-hearted and selfreflective demeanor. Taydex’s instrumentals provide a colorful and turbulent backdrop to Fat Tony’s anecdotal and satirical verses. 

Fat Tony explains. “After that, I just decided, let’s make an EP together.” The pair began recording a five-track EP in December 2018 at Taydex’s studio, which would lay the groundwork for Wake Up. Fat Tony and Taydex put the project on pause for about three months while Fat Tony was living in New York and co-hosting Viceland’s late-night variety show VICE LIVE. After the show ended in April 2019 Fat Tony flew back to LA and spent a month and a half with Taydex recording new tracks and elaborating on what they had already started.

“I thought it would be more interesting to make it an album than an EP, and that the time we spent apart before making the second batch of songs would make it a more interesting and diverse body of work.” By the end of the second session, Fat Tony and Taydex had created a complex collage of sounds, stories, and references that flexes the MC’s growth as a writer the producer’s masterful assembly. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Everyone here will no doubt tell you i'm not a massive fan of a lot of modern hip-hop, but there's something about this superb outing from Fat Tony (not fat) and Taydex that really does it for me. Maybe it's the weighty, synthpop production, or possibly the weird gamey vibes, either way, it's superb and it's going on the player, RIGHT NOW.

TRACK LISTING

1. Get Out My Way (ft. Sophia Pfister)
2. Godly (ft. Negashi Armada)
3. Big Ego (ft. Sophia Pfister, Dai Burger)
4. Magnifique
5. Run It Up (feat. Sophia Pfister)
6. Omaha (ft. Clarence James)
7. Wake Up
8. Cut That
9. Make It (ft. Revenge Wife)

‘Smart Ass Black Boy: Redux’ is the 10th Anniversary remixed and remastered edition of Houston rapper Fat Tony's second studio album and first for Young One Records (an early Partisan imprint).

‘Smart Ass Black Boy’ was one of the most acclaimed hip-hop records of 2013, ultimately becoming one of the most beloved Houston rap records of the 2010’s. The album landed on year-end lists at Complex and VICE, with Noisey and Pitchfork premiering the videos for "BKNY" and "Hood Party" respectively. It was featured in NPR’s First Listen series where they described it as "refreshing" and "promising," while Pitchfork said it "absolutely knocks." Robert Christgau gave the record an A- review (“homespun and imaginative”), and Rolling Stone called it a “thoroughly enjoyable batch of smart-ass raps.” Fat Tony has since released records with Don Giovanni and Carpark, most recently this year’s ‘I Will Make a Baby in this Damn Economy’.

'Smart Ass Black Boy: Redux' will be released digitally and on opaque red vinyl on December 1, 2023, on Partisan. The album features a never before released “BKNY (Remix),” featuring new verses from Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire, Melo-X, and GLDNEYE.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A rework of Fat Tony's 2013 LP, bringing to the fore FT's crisp lyrical timing and impeccably staggered groove. It's a worthy bunch of reworks too, with every one benefitting from the technological advancements since, and brought right up to date with ease. Fat tony remains one of the most singular rappers around.

TRACK LISTING

1. Smart Ass Black Boy (Redux)
2. Final Destination (Redux)
3. Creepin' (ft. Jahlil Nzinga) (Redux)
4. BKNY (ft. Old Money) (Redux)
5. I Shine (Redux)
6. Never Let You Go (ft. Shan) (Redux)
7. Hood Party (ft. Kool A.D. And Despot) (Redux)
8. Frenzy (ft. GLDNEYE) (Redux)
9. Father's Day (Redux)
10. Sleepover (ft. Shawn Neon) (Redux)
11. The More Things Change (The More They Stay The Same) (Redux)
12. BKNY [Remix] (feat. Mr. Muthafuckin' EXquire, Melo-X, And GLDNEYE) (Redux)

Fat White Family are back with the most sophisticated, vital and flamboyant creation of their career.

The cult south-London band’s resplendent fourth album Forgiveness Is Yours, like everything they’ve done, has pushed them to the limits not only of their creative talent, but of their health, their sanity, their very existence.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another blistering outing from Fat White Family, their first since 2019's brilliant Serfs Up! We get a little more sleazy lounge groove this time around, and a little more synthesiser pulses among the instantly recognisable postpunk march and taut art-rock rhythms, but it's the same FWF at heart. Ace.

Serfs Up! is Fat White Family’s third album and their first for new label Domino. It marks the most gratifying and unexpected creative volte face in recent musical history.

Having released their second album, Songs For Our Mothers in January 2016, core-members Lias and Nathan Saoudi relocated to Sheffield and set about writing the album. Joined by co-conspirator Saul Adamczewski and recorded at their own Champzone studios in the Attercliffe area of the city, Serfs Up! was finished in late autumn 2018 with the help of long-time collaborator, Liam D. May and features a guest appearance from Baxter Dury on Tastes Good With The Money.

Serfs Up! is a lush and masterful work, lascivious and personal. Tropical, sympathetic and monumental. It invites the listener in rather than repel them through wilful abrasion. Fat White Family have broken previous default patterns of behaviour, and as such their third album heralds a new day dawning.

Gregorian chants, jackboot glam beats, string flourishes, sophisticated and lush cocktail exotica, electro funk and the twin spirits of Alan Vega and Afrika Bambaataa punctuate the record at various junctures, while the dramatic production of Feet is as immaculately-rendered as ‘Hounds of Love’-era Kate Bush. The dirt is still there of course, but scrape it away and you’ll find a purring engine, gleaming chrome.

Echoing within the arrangements throughout are traces of blissed-out 60s Tropicalia, Velvets/Bowie sleaze-making and star-gazing, 80s digital dancehall, David Axelrod-style easy listening, joyous Pet Shop Boys synth crescendos, acid house, post-PIL dub, metropolitan murder ballads, doom-disco and mouth-gurning, slow-mo psychedelia so by the time it comes to a close only a fool would deny that Serfs Up! is something very special. No longer is unadulterated music malevolence Fat White Family’s stock in trade; this is cultivated music for the head, the heart. For tomorrow’s unborn children.

Where once they soundtracked a grubby Britain of vape shops, Fray Bentos dinners and blackened tin-foil, a crepuscular comedown realm stalked by Shipman, Goebbels and Mark E. Smith, Fat White Family now inhabit another cosmos entirely. Serfs Up! is the product of a band of outlaws reborn. Few but themselves could have forecast it: Fat White Family survived. Fat White Family got wise. Fat White Family got sophisticated.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Fat White Family’s turbulent and well documented Peckham squat/smack/crack background has found unfiltered expression in their anarchic output, exacting gleeful slaughter on common decency and sacred cows alike. Both artwork and lyrics are used as iconoclastic dirty bombs; butchered Nazi and Communist symbolism, the IRA, dead pigs, big cocks, Harold Shipman and your mum have been deployed with a complete lack of due reverence. Decamping to Sheffield, kicking heroin and recent diversions into more melodic side projects might have led them into calmer and broader sonic waters, taking in glam, corrupted disco and cod reggae, but they are still viciously irreverent. Amongst the carnage, Kim Jong Un’s nuclear potential is saluted in the Balearic balm of “Kim’s Sunsets”, “Tastes Good With The Money” makes bitter reference to wealthy sightseers of Grenfell and the dark disco rampage of “Feet” to the human cost of war in Syria.
It ought to have been a shambles, but it actually works just beautifully.

TRACK LISTING

1. Feet
2. I Believe In Something Better
3. Vagina Dentata
4. Kim’s Sunsets
5. Fringe Runner
6. Oh Sebastian
7. Tastes Good With The Money
8. Rock Fishes
9. When I Leave
10. Bobby’s Boyfriend

After enjoying a successful first decade in the music industry with The Housemartins, Beats International and Freak Power, Norman Cook put all of his other projects to one side in 1995, concentrating instead on new alias Fatboy Slim. After the 12" release of two killer club tracks, "Santa Cruz" and "Everybody Needs A 303", the Fatboy was ready to conquer the world and duly dropped "Better Living Through Chemistry" on Skint in 1996. As the set barrelled through a rapid fire succession of 60s soul samples, funk backbeats and wigged out synth action, Cook set about creating a new sound informed by all those rare nuggets he'd spun in Brighton's club scene. Taking hip hop's sampledelic spirit, the boundless energy of rave and the filtered brilliance heading over the channel from Paris' new breed, Cook laid the template for the chart topping, party starting, mainroom magic which would fill Britain's dancefloors for the next decade. It was the starting point of a roller-coaster journey that has gone on to include massive hit singles, multi-platinum selling albums, three Brit Awards, a Grammy, an Ivor Novello, 10 MTV Awards, the 2012 Olympic closing ceremony and worldwide DJ superstardom which continues to this day with a hectic schedule of DJ performances and festival headliner shows. This album celebrates where it all began - the brilliant original album - a seminal dance music moment in history, and expands on the story with a whole disc of bonus tracks including recordings from the Fatboy vaults that have never been released before. 

One of Fatboy Slim's crowning glories, "You've Come A Long Way Baby" saw the Brighton luminary take the big beat grenade and detonate it overground, taking the sound to the clubs, beaches, adverts and coffee tables of Great Britain and beyond. If you were conscious in 1998 it was impossible to ignore this album, with companies queuing up to align themselves with the coolest new trend in club land. Fatboy himself used the platform to elevate his Big Beach Boutique brand - two phenomenal parties on Brighton beach (the first seeing 65K revellers, the second - 250K!!); the likes of which sadly, I doubt, we will ever see again. I can personally remember exactly where I was the first time I heard "Rockafella Skank" and to me this is up there with "Dig Your Own Hole", "Music For The Jilted Generation" and "Homework" as one of the most iconic dance music albums of the nineties. I wasn't old enough to hear the tracks in the club, but its cultural impact travelled up and down the generational ladder from everyone at high school to people's Mum's cleaning the kitchen.

A celebratory 20th anniversary reissue as part of BMG’s ‘Art of The Album’ series showcasing seminal albums that broke new ground in concept, production, song writing, and genre, leaving a lasting legacy as a complete album work of art. Deluxe edition CD and LP format packaging including 180g gatefold vinyl, 6 page 12” roll-fold booklet (LP), 12” display art card (LP) and 28 page booklet (CD).

Exclusive anniversary sleeve notes from Ralph Moore (Editor at Large, Mixmag) and album timeline from Damian Harris (Skint Records).
Number one on the UK albums chart, number one in New Zealand, number two in Australia and number thirty-four on the US Billboard 200 containing four top ten singles. These tell a beautifully story much better than I can hear and really give creedence to this golden age of dance music that Norman was spearheading.

Ranked number 81 in Q magazine's readers' poll of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever".

Brit Awards: Best Dance Act 1999, 2001. Brit Awards: British Single 1999 (nominee), Male Solo Artist 1999 (nominee).

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Makin' me all teary eyed comes this 20th anniversary of THAT, seminal, big beat opus. The one that broke the sound overground, if you don't end up watching youtube videos of Brighton Beach I'll eat me slipmats...

TRACK LISTING

Right Here, Right Now 6:28
The Rockafeller Skank 6:54
Fucking In Heaven 3:55
Gangster Tripping 5:20
Build It Up - Tear It Down 5:05
Kalifornia 5:53
Soul Surfing 4:57
You're Not From Brighton 5:21
Praise You 5:24
Love Island 5:18
Acid 8000 7:28

You've Come a Long Way, Baby is the second album by Fatboy Slim. It was first released on 19 October 1998 in the United Kingdom on Skint Record and a day later in the United States by Astralwerks.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby proved to be Cook's global breakthrough album, peaking at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number 34 on the US Billboard 200. Praised by critics for its sound and style, the album brought international attention to Cook, earning him a Brit Award in 1999, and was later certified four times platinum by the BPI and platinum by the RIAA. Four singles were released from the album: "The Rockafeller Skank", "Gangster Trippin", "Praise You", and "Right Here Right Now", all of which peaked within the top ten on the UK Singles Chart. "Build It Up – Tear It Down" was also released as a promotional single.

The album has now been remastered at half speed into the best available audio quality possible. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Right Here Right Now
2. Rockafeller Skank
3. Fucking In Heaven
SIDE B
1. Gangster Trippin
2. Build It Up Tear It Down
3. Kalifornia
SIDE C
1. Soul Surfing
2. You’re Not From Brighton
3. Praise You
SIDE D
1. Love Island
2. Acid 8000

Originally scheduled for release on Halloween 1985 this privately pressed all female post-punk / broken-folk collective concept LP was resurrected from the ashes of the original line-up of The Fall and Velvet Underground singer Nico’s Blue Orchids backing band at the command of pioneering Manchester female punk icon Una Baines before disappearing into the annals of UK punk purgatory.

Comprising all the DIY traits and snarling attitudes of Manchester’s smartarsed punk retaliation, with haunting mechanical folk, pastoral drones and a back story that unites sleeve artist Linder Sterling (Ludus), Spider King, Martin Hannett, Tony Baines, Martin Bramah and John Cooper Clarke with the 16th Century Pendle Witches, this virtually unknown LP is a vital missing piece in Manchester’s self-help anti-pop industry. Lost in the ether, lauded by collectors and likened by Mark E. Smith to the Third Ear Band this unclassifiable arty-fact renders tags like Pagan punk utterly redundant.

Seemingly unaffected by the passing years since its original release, ‘Furia’ stands alone as a unique vision and testament to its communal casting of fragile mischief - set apart from the era of its conception and eschewing tags like avant-folk, pagan-punk and pastoral-drone by existing within its own spectral significance. It’s hard to imagine a similar record from then but certainly wholly conceivable that such a record would come to pass now.

TRACK LISTING

Ceaseless Effort
Bridget Of Ireland
Sheila / Beats In My Heart
No Romance
Strength (I)
Holy Hymn
Who Am I?
Ritual
Strength (II)

Father John Misty returns with 'Chloë and The Next 20th Century', his fifth album and first new material since the release of God’s Favorite Customer in 2018.

'Chloë and the Next 20th Century' was written and recorded August through December 2020 and features arrangements by Drew Erickson. The album sees Tillman and producer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson resume their longtime collaboration, as well as Dave Cerminara, returning as engineer and mixer. Basic tracks were recorded at Wilson’s Five Star Studios with strings, brass and woodwinds recorded at United Recordings in a session featuring Dan Higgins and Wayne Bergeron, among others.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Father John Misty has always been one of the most distinctive voices working in the middle ground between modern indie and country music, and his latest is the perfect illustration as to why he's so revered in the field. Beautifully produced and gorgeously evocative throughout, this is classic Misty.

TRACK LISTING

1 Chloë
2 Goodbye, Mr. Blue
3 Kiss Me (I Loved You)
4 (Everything But) Her Love
5 Buddy's Rendevous
6 Q4
7 Olvidado (Otro Momento)
8 Funny Girl
9 Only A Fool
10 We Could Be Strangers
11 The Next 20th Century

When discussing ‘Father John Misty’, Tillman paraphrases Philip Roth: ‘It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you won’t get it’. What I call it is totally arbitrary, but I like the name. You’ve got to have a name. I never got to choose mine.”

He goes on, “‘People who make records are afforded this assumption by the culture that their music is coming from an exclusively personal place, but more often than not what you hear are actually the affectations of an ‘alter-ego’ or a cartoon of an emotionally heightened persona,” says Josh Tillman, who has been recording/releasing solo albums since 2003 and who recently left Seattle’s Fleet Foxes after playing drums from 2008-2011. “That kind of emotional quotient isn’t sustainable if your concern is portraying a human-being made up of more than just chest-beating pathos. I see a lot of rampant, sexless, male-fantasy everywhere in the music around me. I didn’t want any alter-egos, any vagaries, fantasy, escapism, any over-wrought sentimentality. I like humour and sex and mischief. So when you think about it, it’s kind of mischievous to write about yourself in a plain-spoken, kind of explicitly obvious way and call it something like ‘Misty’. I mean, I may as well have called it ‘Steve’”. Musically, “Fear Fun” consists of such disparate elements as Waylon Jennings, Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, 'All Things Must Pass', and 'Physical Graffiti', often within the same song. Tillman's voice has never been better and often sounds like Roy Orbison, “The Caruso of Rock”, at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark, mysterious and yet conversely playful, almost Dionysian quality. Lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit, in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of Bukowski or Braughtigan, the hedonistic philosophy of Oscar Wilde and the dried-out wit of Loudon Wainwright III.

The album began gestating during what Tillman describes as an “immobilizing period of depression”, in his former Seattle home. “Songwriting for me had always only been interesting and necessary because I saw it as this vehicle for truth, but I had this realization that all I had really done with it was lick my wounds for years and years, and become more and more isolated from people and experiences. I don’t even like wound-licking music, I want to listen to someone rip their arm off and beat themselves with it. I don’t believe that until now I’ve ever put anything at risk in my music. I was hell-bent on putting my preciousness at stake in order to find something worth singing about.” He continues, “I lost all interest in writing music, or identifying as a ‘songwriter’. I got into my van with enough mushrooms to choke a horse and started driving down the coast with nowhere to go. After a few weeks, I was writing a novel, which is where I finally found my narrative voice. The voice that is actually useful.”

“It was a while before that voice started manifesting in a musical way, but once I settled in the Laurel Canyon spider-shack where I’m living now, I spent months demoing all these weird-ass songs about weird-ass experiences almost in real-time, and kind of had this musical ‘Oh-there-I-am’ moment, identical to how I felt when I was writing the book. It was unbelievably liberating. I knew there was never any going back to the place I was writing from before, which was a huge relief. The monkey got banished off my back.”

Tillman brought the demos to LA producer/songwriter/pal Jonathan Wilson, and in February 2011 began recording at his home-studio in Echo Park. “Initially, the idea was to just kind of recreate the demos with me playing everything, since they were pretty fleshed out and sounded cool, but a place like LA affords you a different wealth of talent, potential, etc than just about anywhere else. I realized what was possible between Jonathan’s abilities, and the caliber of musicians that are just hanging around LA, pretty quickly. People were coming in and out of the studio all day sometimes, and other days, it would just be Jonathan and I holed up, getting stoned, and doing everything.

“I was honest with myself about what music actually excites my joy-glands when I was considering the arrangements and instrumentation,” says Tillman. “As opposed to what’s been enjoyable to me in the past – namely, alienating people or making choices based what I think people won’t like or understand. Pretty narcissistic stuff.”

When asked about Laurel Canyon, where he eventually ended up living in the aforementioned tree-house with a family of spiders, Tillman says, “My attitude about it all is pretty explicit in the record. Given my pretty adversarial personal attitude about the music and aesthetic that comes from that place, it’s kind of a huge joke that I live in a former hippie-fantasy land. I have a really morbid sense of humour.” Phil Ek (who everyone knows has worked with Fleet Foxes, Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses) heard the rough versions of the album in May 2011 and offered his services to mix. “Phil and I have known each other for a while by virtue of Fleet Foxes, so he was familiar with my music, but we had never discussed working together. I think he immediately recognized the shift in my writing and singing from a producer and friend’s standpoint. His excitement is really evident in mixes, I think.”

Father John Misty is the nom-de-plume of Josh Tillman, who has been recording and releasing solo albums under his own name since 2003 and who recently left Seattle’s Fleet Foxes after playing drums with them from 2008-2011.

When discussing Father John Misty, Tillman paraphrases Philip Roth: “‘It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you won’t get it.’”

‘Fear Fun’, Father John Misty’s album from 2012 and now available again through Sub Pop, began gestating during what Tillman describes as an “immobilizing period of depression” in his former Seattle home, when he had lost interest in songwriting and wound up finding his voice by writing a novel. After breaking from Seattle and settling in a spider-infested Laurel Canyon treehouse, Tillman spent months demoing songs, eventually liberating himself from his creative impasse. With the help of LA producer/songwriter/pal Jonathan Wilson, a wealth of talented musicians kicking around LA and producer Phil Ek (who everyone knows has worked with Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes), ‘Fear Fun’ blossomed into a fully-formed expression of Tillman’s unrestrained vision.

‘Fear Fun’ consists of such disparate elements as Waylon Jennings, Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, All Things Must Pass and Physical Graffiti, often within the same song. Tillman’s voice has never been better and often sounds like Roy Orbison at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark, mysterious yet playful, almost Dionysian quality.

Lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit, in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of Bukowski or Brautigan, the hedonist-philosophy of Oscar Wilde and the dried-out wit of Loudon Wainwright III.

TRACK LISTING

Funtimes In Babylon
Nancy From Now On
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings
I’m Writing A Novel
O I Long To Feel Your Arms Around Me
Misty’s Nightmares 1 & 2
Only Son Of The Ladiesman
This Is Sally Hatchet
Well, You Can Do It Without Me
Now I’m Learning To Love The War
Tee Pees 1-12
Everyman Needs A Companion

Written largely in New York between Summer 2016 and Winter 2017, Josh Tillman’s fourth Father John Misty LP, ‘God’s Favorite Customer’, reflects on the experience of being caught between the vertigo of heartbreak and the manic throes of freedom.

God’s Favorite Customer reveals a bittersweetness and directness in Tillman’s songwriting, without sacrificing any of his wit or taste for the absurd. From “Mr. Tillman,” where he trains his lens on his own misadventure, to the cavernous pain of estrangement in “Please Don’t Die,” Tillman plays with perspective throughout to alternatingly hilarious and devastating effect. “We’re Only People (And There’s Not Much Anyone Can Do About That)” is a meditation on our inner lives and the limitations we experience in our attempts to give and receive love. It stands in solidarity with the title track, which examines the ironic relationship between forgiveness and sin. Together, these are songs that demand to know either real love or what comes after, and as the album progresses, that entreaty leads to discovering the latter’s true stakes.

God's Favorite Customer was produced by Tillman and recorded with Jonathan Rado, Dave Cerminara, and Trevor Spencer. The album features contributions from Haxan Cloak, Natalie Merring of Weyes Blood, longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson, and members of Misty’s touring band.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Tillman segues into Beck territory a little here, with falsetto harmonies and jagged college-rock melodies, tastefully accentuated with staggered percussion and swooning loungey piano. As ever, FJM smashes out another killer album, conceptually clever and brilliantly accomplished, exactly as you'd expect.

TRACK LISTING

1 Hangout At The Gallows
2 Mr. Tillman
3 Just Dumb Enough To Try
4 Date Night
5 Please Don't Die
6 The Palace
7 Disappointing Diamonds Are The Rarest Of Them All
8 God's Favorite Customer
9 The Songwriter
10 We're Only People (And There's Not Much Anyone Can Do About That)

STANDARD VINYL EDITION, with a gatefold jacket with black vinyl and fold-out poster, featuring a collage of Emma Tillman’s intimate photos, designed by Alia Penner and an extensive “Exercises for Listening” written by Josh Tillman

CD EDITION, which includes fold-out poster, featuring a collage of Emma Tillman’s intimate photos, designed by Alia Penner and an extensive “Exercises for Listening” written by Josh Tillman

'I Love You, Honeybear' is the highly-anticipated follow up to his acclaimed debut, Fear Fun. The album, featuring “Bored In The USA,” “Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins),” “True Affection,” and the title track, was produced by Josh Tillman and Jonathan Wilson, mixed by Phil Ek, and mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Americana's answer to Jarvis Cocker, Josh Tillman uses his FJM persona to tease and torment (and behave like the coolest, sexiest, superstar ever!) whilst behind the guise casually writing some of this year's greatest songs! It's a superb record and a huge hit.

TRACK LISTING

01 I Love You, Honeybear
02 Chateau Lobby #4 (in C For Two Virgins)
03 True Affection
04 The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apt.
05 When You’re Smiling And Astride Me
06 Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow
07 Strange Encounter
08 The Ideal Husband
09 Bored In The USA
10 Holy Shit
11 I Went To The Store One Day

Since 2012, Father John Misty, aka Josh Tillman, has unexpectedly emerged as a singular (if not undeniably, um, idiosyncratic) voice. Whether by virtue of his lyrics, which routinely defy the presumed polarities of wit and empathy; his live performances which may perhaps be described best as “intimately berzerk”, or the infuriating line he seems to occupy between canny and total fraud online or in interviews, Father John Misty has cultivated a rare space for himself in the musical landscape - that of a real enigma. Pure Comedy sees Tillman at the height of these powers: as a lyricist, and equally so a cultural observer - at times bordering on freakishly prescient. Tillman’s bent critiques, bared humanity and gently warped classic songwriting are all here in equal measure and - at 75 minutes - there’s a veritable fuck ton of it. The album navigates themes of progress, technology, fame, the environment, politics, aging, social media, human nature, human connection and his own role in it all with his usual candour, and in terms as timely as they are timeless.

Tillman wrote the majority of Pure Comedy throughout 2015 and recorded all the basic tracking and vocals live to tape (in no more than two takes each) at United Studios (fka the legendary Ocean Way Studios, favored by Frank Sinatra and The Beach Boys) in Los Angeles March 2016.

Pure Comedy was co-produced once again by Josh Tillman and long-time producer Jonathan Wilson; mixed by Tillman, Wilson and Trevor Spencer, and mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering Studios. The album features string, horn and choral arrangements from classical iconoclast Gavin Bryars (Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet, Sinking Of The Titanic), with additional contributions from Nico Muhly and Thomas Bartlett.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pure Comedy
2. Total Entertainment Forever
3. Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution
4. Ballad Of The Dying Man
5. Birdie
6. Leaving LA
7. A Bigger Paper Bag
8. When The God Of Love Returns There’ll Be Hell To Pay
9. Smoochie
10. Two Wildly Different Perspectives
11. The Memo
12. So I’m Growing Old On Magic Mountain
13. In Twenty Years Or So

Father Murphy, one of the most mysterious and enigmatic musical entities to emerge from Italy in recent years, presents their fifth full-length via The Flenser. This dark psychedelic / industrial cabaret is a religion-themed concept album titled Croce (“Cross” in Italian), one side representing suffering and sacrifice and the flip reflecting what comes after—the end of suffering, resurrection, or perhaps oblivion. The work was recorded by John Dieterich in Albuquerque, NM, and mixed by Greg Saunier.

From the shadowy atmospheres of Croce spring forth unexpected blurts of impossibly catchy noise pop, at times operatic like some twisted musical detailing the trials and tribulation of the crucifixion. Male and female vocals by Freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee intertwine over distorted blasts of guitar crunch, anchored by stuttering, homebuilt percussion. This sound is textural and nuanced yet noisy and chaotic, carefully sculpted into jagged shards of fragmented pop.

A-side closer “In Solitude” is an appropriately dour slab of murky miserablism that sounds like a slow sonic death, a haunting dirge that dissolves into that ineffable space between the record’s two sides; the netherworld, the afterlife, Purgatory. But Father Murphy erupts from this stygian blackness with the second half of Croce—the light to the A-side’s dark. “Long May We Continue” retains a doom-like approach at first, stringing a field of metallic shimmer and junkyard percussion together into a spare framework over which dramatic male vocals soar. The female counterpart responds like some demonic Greek chorus, delivering a sense of warmth. Finale “They Won’t Hurt You” is all majestic pipe organ, a stirring and stately court music, lush and lovely and epic, the sound of rebirth: redemptive and restorative, a return from the beyond, arisen from the grave, ascended into the heavens, the sounds drifting upwards, beyond the galaxy, the universe, into the unknowable infinity.

“… a fascinating listen… an unapologetic venture into head music and contains some powerful compositions. It’s steeped in a sense of reverence, but one that looks below, rather than expecting anything from above.” —Drowned In Sound.

“The oddball psychedelic chamber pop the Italian duo exhales will creep you out with drones, lullabies, and anguished vocals all competing for frontrunner spot in your next nightmare. Perfect.” —Terrorizer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blood Is Thicker Than Water
2. A Purpose
3. So This Is Permanent
4. In Solitude
5. Long May We Continue
6. All The People Yelling Fire
7. We Walk By Faith
8. They Won't Hurt You

Two stoic nomads in sound, united in difference, emerge on Deep Cover with a brace of cranium rattling reanimations. Mission objective: body kinetics!

Two highly frenetic numbers that'll get arms flailing and hips gyrating as they venture deep into jacking zone on side A. Meanwhile on side B we get a space probing cosmic number with big gated drum splashes and hints of Italo dreaminess.  

12" with insert in stickered sleeve, limited to 300 hand-numbered copies.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Deep Cover continue their crucial excavations of lost cosmic oddities, rare disco and minimal wave experiments. This one's a particular curio, leaving the more intrepid listener in a whole manner of confusion as to when and whence it came.

TRACK LISTING

A. Stanton Carlisle
B. Navarone Again

London based Brazilian specialists Far Out Recordings venture further out to Uruguay to record a new album with fusion legend Hugo Fattoruso. After a twenty-year search for the man behind the cult 70s jazz-funk group Opa, Far Out are honoured to present Barrio Opa: a new work from Fattoruso and his team of world-class musicians, including the sensational Candombe drumming of the renowned Silva brothers.

Recorded at Sondor Studios, Montevideo, the album is the natural development of the original Opa sound, fusing Afro-Uruguayan rhythms, jazz harmony and heavy funk attitude, under Hugo’s unique musical vision.

Fusing Candombe (traditional rhythm of Uruguay) with rock, jazz, funk and other Latin American rhythms, Opa created a distinctive Afro-Uruguayan voice within the global jazz vernacular, influencing a generation of musicians throughout the seventies and beyond. Fattoruso also famously collaborated extensively with Airto Moreia, arranging and playing on a plethora of hit records including Fingers and I’m Fine, How Are You. More recently Fattoruso’s music has been sampled by the likes Flying Lotus and Madlib.

Recorded at the state of the art Sondor Studios in Montevideo’s iconic Barrio Sur district, the album features some of the world class musicians at the forefront of today’s Uruguayan jazz scene, including Hugo’s son Francisco Fattoruso on bass, Tato Bolognini on drums, Albana Barrocas on percussion and Nicolas Ibarburu on electric guitar. The album also features the Candombe drumming of the legendary Silva brothers, Mathias, Guillermo Diaz and Wellington, who give the album its Afro-Uruguayan identity, transporting the listener to Barrio Sur, the spiritual home of Montevideo’s Candombe heritage.

In Hugo’s own words “this is the sound of Opa today.” This is most prevalent on ‘Goldenwings’ the fresh take on the funk-fusion masterpiece which became an underground hit in London jazz clubs in the 80s ‘. The stripped back yet equally rip-roaring trio piece ‘Botijas’ is led by Hugo’s virtuosic piano playing and hypnotic wordless vocals, and backed by an inventive, heavy grooving fusion of Latin rhythms from Tato Bolognini on drums. The shining moments for the Silva brothers’ Tambor playing are ‘Candombelek’ - a beautifully moody Afro-Uruguyan groove with characterful rhodes and vocal harmonies - and ‘Candombe Alto’, a carnival-esque track, awash with soaring synth lead, wahwah guitar and pulsating keys.

TRACK LISTING

La Del Cheche
Botijas
Candombe Beat Funk
El Romance Del Sordo
Trenes De Tokyo
Candombelek**
Candombe Alto
Llamada Ins Lita
Antes
Goldenwings
For You To Be Proud**

**CD Only

Faun Fables are back with ‘Born Of The Sun’. Since 1998, Faun Fables has been the musical world of Dawn McCarthy, visited in collaboration with her partner Nils Frykdhal. In early times, their wild spirit roamed the streets and hills of the SF / Oakland community while, pilgrim-like, wandering the world and issuing two albums of deeply-rooted, swirlingly other folk music in 1999 and 2001. With the release of ‘Family Album’ in 2004, Drag City got involved and ‘The Transit Rider’ (2006), ‘A Table Forgotten’ (2008) and ‘Light Of A Vaster Dark’ (2010) followed. Now, suddenly, it’s 2016. Six years have passed since ‘Light Of A Vaster Dark’ appeared. Life has happened, in the form of three children born to Dawn and Nils.

Anyone who has spent time in the thrall of Faun Fables’ bewitching sound knows that this was the dream; beyond Dawn’s passion for song, dance, theatre and all manner of folklore (plus a regular regimen of yodelling), the mythic shadows of home and hearth, friends and family, have infused all of their expressions. Now, raising the family that was once only dreamed about makes for an earthier and more expansive Faun Fables album, informed by the slow and sudden progress of time that occurs when we are with the very young.

‘Born Of The Sun’ is in itself another birthing, the songs gestating over several years, then recorded mostly in concentrated periods over the past two winters. On previous albums, the passions of Faun Fables seemed to be laid firmly on the stones of the Old World. The minstrels who cavorted across the cover of ‘Mother Twilight’ seemed out of another, hard-to-place time. ‘Born Of The Sun’ continues on in this exalted tradition but also reflects the rhythms of family living, where each day is a new and irreversible step forward through the necessarily scorched earth of raising children.

Where ‘Family Album’ and ‘A Table Forgotten’ looked yearningly through time at the spiritual natures of communal living, ‘Born Of The Sun’ is forged in the crucible of now and, as such, has a feeling apart from the previous days of Faun Fables.

Dawn and Nils and the kids (whose vocals on ‘Wild Kids Rant’ suggest they are following their parents’ path into the forest) are embracing the phenomena of creation as they move inexorably forward. ‘Born Of The Sun’ is the bountiful and exuberant album of this place and time - an old, candlelit world of arcane beliefs in our brightly-lit world, growing ever more profound in the light of perpetual discovery that bathes all of Faun Fables’ songs.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: An enchanting and often beguiling mix of traditional medieval folk and swirling Californian psychedelic sounds. Progressive but coherent chord changes and textures develop as time goes on, building and morphing into a cacophony of instrumental depth and vocal intensity. Fascinating and thoroughly skilled instrumentation and (in places) frightening heart-wrenchingly poignant lyricism. A Journey not to be missed.

TRACK LISTING

Holding The Sky
YDUN
Goodbye
Ta Nasza Mlodosc
Country House Waits
Madmen & Dogs
Born Of The Sun
Wild Kids Rant
Outing In The Country
O My Stars
Invitation
Mountain

Happy 20th birthday to ‘Family Album’, the third recording of Faun Fables and the first one released on Drag City.

These songs belong to sons and daughters, entwined and orphaned, domesticated and feral; to all the family vines unravelling from a ball of yarn.

In this family album, runaways graze the wild together, a mother finds her courage playing the piano, dogs become thieves and wolves, and a son is taken too soon. Fourteen-year-old nymphs sit dangerously at the crossroads, a younger brother tries to find his place, packs of girls defeat fear with a march, and the nightly adventures of the household mouse are spied upon.

Dawn McCarthy’s creative background was forged in oral tradition amidst a large musical family in Spokane, Washington; studying piano, music theatre, rock bands, guitar, folklore and ethnomusicology. Dawn cut her teeth as a singer and performer with various bands and cabarets in Madison, Wisconsin and New York City, most notably as yodeller with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, who inspired her to want a gypsy life with a kindred spirit someday. Her focus took a pivotal turn in that direction in 1997 with a solo quest through the UK and Ireland and their bardic traditions; singing songs in clubs and homes, all the while undergoing a pastoral, psychological experience with the land. Upon her return to the States, a fateful meeting with Oakland, CA born-and-raised Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) moved McCarthy back to the West to begin a new creative collaboration in the thriving hills and art community of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since 1999, Faun Fables have released six albums and performed their animist, otherworldly folk music across North America and Europe, with shows in Australia, New Zealand and Israel, as well. Dawn’s writing and voice (described by The New Yorker as “one of the more compelling instruments in contemporary music”) opens hearts and minds with a whisper to a rallying battle cry, further animated by Frykdahl’s adventurous musicality and vocals.
Dawn has written musical theatre performed by the Idyllwild Arts Academy, among others, and has lent her vocals to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on ‘The Letting Go’ and ‘What the Brothers Sang’. In 2022, Faun Fables debuted their family band, joined onstage by their daughters with vocals, percussion, keyboard and dance.

TRACK LISTING

1. Eyes Of A Bird
2. Poem, No. 2
3. A Mother
4. And A Piano
5. Lucy Belle
6. Joshua
7. Nop Of Time
8. Still Here
9. Preview
10. Higher
11. Carousel With
12. Madonnas
13. Rising Din
14. Fear March
15. Eternal
16. Mouse Song
17. Old And Light

‘Mother Twilight’ is the second Faun Fables album. It has since been noted by Scottish author R.J. Stewart as a work containing true artifacts of the oral underworld tradition. Dawn and Nils made a handassembled first pressing and peddled it to nearly every bar and rural hall across North America from 2001 to 2003. Drag City reissued the CD in 2004.

Things are glowing outside, enough to bring any sun worshiper in for the night. But you must remain outside and begin walking. It’ll prepare you for the night, which otherwise comes as a chilling surprise. If you pay attention this time, maybe you’ll understand why you’re becoming invisible. When your memory began, it wasn’t startling, wasn’t a mistake. It came out of an old, dark and familiar thing, like a storyteller, like Twilight… so save us from fear, mother, and tell your story.

Dawn McCarthy’s creative background was forged in oral tradition amidst a large musical family in Spokane, Washington; studying piano, music theatre, rock bands, guitar, folklore and ethnomusicology. Dawn cut her teeth as a singer and performer with various bands and cabarets in Madison, Wisconsin and New York City, most notably as yodeller with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, who inspired her to want a gypsy life with a kindred spirit someday. Her focus took a pivotal turn in that direction in 1997 with a solo quest through the UK and Ireland and their bardic traditions; singing songs in clubs and homes, all the while undergoing a pastoral, psychological experience with the land. Upon her return to the States, a fateful meeting with Oakland, CA born-and-raised Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) moved McCarthy back to the West to begin a new creative collaboration in the thriving hills and art community of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since 1999, Faun Fables have released six albums and performed their animist, otherworldly folk music across North America and Europe, with shows in Australia, New Zealand and Israel, as well. Dawn’s writing and voice (described by The New Yorker as “one of the more compelling instruments in contemporary music”) opens hearts and minds with a whisper to a rallying battle cry, further animated by Frykdahl’s adventurous musicality and vocals.

Dawn has written musical theatre performed by the Idyllwild Arts Academy, among others, and has lent her vocals to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on ‘The Letting Go’ and ‘What the Brothers Sang’. In 2022, Faun Fables debuted their family band, joined onstage by their daughters with vocals, percussion, keyboard and dance.

TRACK LISTING

1. Begin
2. Sleepwalker
3. Shadowsound
4. Hela
5. Traveller
6. Returning
7. Train
8. Beautiful Blade
9. Mother Twilight
10. Lightning Rods
11. Moth
12. Girl That
13. Said Goodbye
14. Washington State
15. Catch Me
16. Live Old

For fans of: Tirzah, Caroline Polachek, Erika de Casier, Oklou, Smerz.

Between the ages of 2 and 18, Cora Gilroy-Ware lived in a haunted place. On the outside, this small edge of Connecticut coastline was a quintessential New England town. Yet beneath its quaint surface was a netherworld that got steadily darker over the course of those sixteen years. From a serious drug problem to environmental pollution leading to deadly illnesses, frequent suicides and an above average number of fatal accidents, something about this place was cursed. Amid this world Cora was an outsider, someone who preferred pop and RnB to the music of her peers, who mostly subscribed to the dregs of a Deadhead culture that was more nihilistic than utopian. Still, she found herself on weekends drinking in the woods with the rest of them, playing along until it was time to leave.

Christmas breaks and summer months were spent across the Atlantic in a completely antithetical environment. In London, the city of her birth, Cora spent her teen years taking the bus home at dawn after raves under the railroad arches, or riding the tube to her cousin’s house in Camden. For a long time, Cora’s life was composed of these two strands ghostly East Coast suburbia and inner-city London which she was forced to fold in and out of one another like a two-strand French braid. She quickly learned to adapt and be whoever the particular moment demanded. Her outsider status was intensified by the fact that, being of mixed Afro-Caribbean and European descent, her family didn’t look like the others in Connecticut. In the 2000s, this meant Cora had to contend with a deeply ingrained kind of folk-racism, both conscious and unconsciously expressed. Nobody talked about these things back then, and she internalized a lot of shame.

The ability to shape-shift became integral to Cora’s artistic practice. Her survival mechanism at school was to carve out her own worlds through visual art and dance. Music was less of a creative outlet than a way of life, something like a form of religion for her family, who all played instruments and saw music as the form to which all art aspires. She studied violin and learned enough guitar chords to write her first songs. Cora always wanted to be a performer, but, having moved around constantly, craved stability and independence. Eager to make her own way in the world, she began to write about painting and sculpture, which eventually led to time spent working in Naples, Italy and a day job teaching the History of Art at university level.

It wasn’t until 2018 that Cora first shared her first songs with the wider world. Having collaborated and played live with Jam City (Jack Latham, who has co-produced each of her releases), she finally embarked on a solo career, which for her felt inevitable, only a matter of time. Following four acclaimed Eps Toxic Femininity (2018), Lashes in a Landfill (2019), Dreamcatcher (2020) and Maiden No More (2021), this year will see the release of her debut album The Golden Ass. For her artist name she chose, “Fauness”: a play on the Latin faunus, a woodland god with the body of a man and the horns, ears, and legs of a goat. The feminine equivalent fauness is a modern invention, made up by rococo sculptors in 18th century France. Cora was drawn to this pseudonym because of its temporal layers and amalgamation of beauty and beast, which, for her, captures something of her complex personal story.

TRACK LISTING

01. Lonely
02. Mystery
03. Peaches
04. Hours
05. Siena
06. Grape & Grain
07. Laura
08. High
09. Cinnamon
10. Girl In The Moon

After a decade-long hiatus, Bristol-based shoegaze ensemble, The Fauns, have reemerged from their secret bunker with eagerly anticipated third album.

The Fauns’ journey began in 2007, self-releasing their eponymous debut album in 2009, followed by the 2013 release of "Lights." These two works garnered warm acclaim from both critics and fervent shoegaze-loving fanbase alike - arriving into an atmosphere rekindled by the return of My Bloody Valentine.

This latest album bridges The Fauns' transformation from their earlier incarnation to their current evolution. The tracks traverse a spectrum of styles, ranging from intricate, guitar-driven sci-fi fantasies to industrial-tinged new wave compositions. The hallmark shoegaze elements are now stretched over gritty pulsating electro beats.

Moreover, the album marks a shift in lyrical themes and attitude. Poignant tracks coexist with narratives of vodka-infused nights in dimly lit clubs, reflecting a departure from introspection. "This album is less about the melancholy associated with the genre and more about getting our audience dancing.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mixtape Days
2. Shake Your Hair
3. How Lost
4. Afterburner
5. Doot Doot
6. Clear
7. Modified
8. Dark Discotheque
9. Spacewreck

Faust for all - The Krautrock legends lay down the musical foundations for everyone else to make something of their own.More than 40 years after their debut, Faust have come up with another archetypical album: inspiring, innovative, unpredictable, crossing boundaries, anarchic – Faustian!

“j US t”—pronounced “Just Us”—is the new album from legendary Hamburg band Faust. Founder members Jean-Hervé Peron and Zappi Diermaier have laid down twelve musical foundations, inviting the whole world to use them as a base on which to build their own music. The tracks presented by Peron and Diermaier are clearly, intrinsically typical of Faust in their own right, yet offer enough space for completely different works to develop. Which is exactly what they hope will happen. Whilst Diermaier largely remains true to his habitual handiwork—drums and percussion—Peron, as we might expect, incorporates all manner of unusual sonic sources alongside his bass, various string instruments and piano, even using a sewing machine as a metronome.

Tracks like “nur nous” and “ich bin ein pavian” show that Faust have lost none of their predilection for avant-garde Dadaism and improvisation. Peron and Diermaier actually surprise us with folkloristic excursions (“cavaquiñho”, “gammes”). In short, there is something for everyone to work with here. Peron and Diermaier await the results with bated breath. Faust will follow the same principle on the accompanying tour by inviting local artists to collaborate with them on stage.

Originally part of 2021’s Faust Box Set release commemorating the bands 50th anniversary Momentaufnahme I and II are now set for their own stand alone release by popular demand. This is for all those that missed out on the limited edition box set release. They collect together music recorded at the band's studio - a converted schoolhouse in rural Wümme between 1971 and 1974 in a similar vein to the way in which 'The Faust Tapes’ (released in 1973) was assembled. These two albums range from minimal electronic pulses, ambient dreamscapes, vocal collages to heavy drone, ritualistic percussion and psychedelic grooves. Highlights include the hypnotic space jams of ‘Vorsatz’ and ‘Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür’, the delicate acoustics of ‘I Am… An Artist' and the radiophonic workship-esq 'Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre‘.

Let’s let founding member Jean-Hervé Peron explain more…. Faust were originally a group of musicians, each following our own inspirations, desires, illusions: many facets, many directions, different styles, different languages. We often had to struggle with the clash of our egos but there was also a natural tacit understanding of each other's role. We had the privilege to work with a great producer and an extraordinary recording engineer. From spring 1971 to spring 1974 we existed as a group. Then Faust became a Gestalt with various incarnations. Momentaufnahme? Don't panic here, it is only German for 'Snapshot’. Momentaufnahme I and II present a collection of unreleased snapshots which offer a wonderful insight into the world of Faust. Some tracks are extremely raw and experimental, others are fully rounded productions. So far we have MA I and MA II but we plan to do more of these when we come up with more material or new ideas.

TRACK LISTING

01. Naja
02. Flaflas
03. Es Ist Wieder Da
04. Mechanika
05. Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre
06. Karotten
07. RéMaj7
08. Fin De Face
09. Vorsatz
10. Acouphènes
11. Interlude 18. Juni
12. Dadalibal
13. Bonne Soupe Au Fromage
14. Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür

Originally part of 2021’s Faust Box Set release commemorating the bands 50th anniversary Momentaufnahme I and II are now set for their own stand alone release by popular demand. This is for all those that missed out on the limited edition box set release. They collect together music recorded at the band's studio - a converted schoolhouse in rural Wümme between 1971 and 1974 in a similar vein to the way in which 'The Faust Tapes’ (released in 1973) was assembled. These two albums range from minimal electronic pulses, ambient dreamscapes, vocal collages to heavy drone, ritualistic percussion and psychedelic grooves. Highlights include the hypnotic space jams of ‘Vorsatz’ and ‘Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür’, the delicate acoustics of ‘I Am… An Artist' and the radiophonic workship-esq 'Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre‘.

Let’s let founding member Jean-Hervé Peron explain more…. Faust were originally a group of musicians, each following our own inspirations, desires, illusions: many facets, many directions, different styles, different languages. We often had to struggle with the clash of our egos but there was also a natural tacit understanding of each other's role. We had the privilege to work with a great producer and an extraordinary recording engineer. From spring 1971 to spring 1974 we existed as a group. Then Faust became a Gestalt with various incarnations. Momentaufnahme? Don't panic here, it is only German for 'Snapshot’. Momentaufnahme I and II present a collection of unreleased snapshots which offer a wonderful insight into the world of Faust. Some tracks are extremely raw and experimental, others are fully rounded productions. So far we have MA I and MA II but we plan to do more of these when we come up with more material or new ideas.

TRACK LISTING

01. Danach
02. Gegensprechanlage
03. Lampe An, Tür Zu, Leute Rein!
04. Purzelbaum Mit Anschubsen
05. Tête-à-Tête Im Schredder
06. Dampf
07. Testbildhauer
08. I Am... An Artist
09. Wir Wollen Mehr Volumen Kriegen
10. Arrampicarsi Sul Vesuvio
11. …und Alles Durcheinander
12. The Fear Of Missing Out
13. Ma Trompette
14. As-tu Vu Mon Ombre?

After the overwhelming success of last years 1971-74 box set release, containing the first four studio albums and for the first time ever this lost 'last' album recording, 'Punkt' gets a deserved and necessary stand alone release to the relief of fans and collectors and the undoubted future gratification of those yet to experience the magic in these recordings.

'While working on the "lost" album which the band recorded in Munich, it became clear that I was listening to the last ever made recordings of this band lineup. It had been their attempt to release another album, which did not happen for several reasons. After this Munich session every band member focused on other things.So this was the end of Faust. No further recordings, no shows. Punkt. Which means "full stop" in German and has "punk" in it as well. An attitude which the band or at least some of the members certainly approved'. Gunther Buskies - bureau b

The band called it 5½, fans referred to it as the "Munich album" and for almost fifty years it's been the missing chapter in Faustian mythology. Now for the first time, the German iconoclasts' previously unreleased fifth album sees the light of day as Punkt. Not only does this title place a bold full stop after the final recording by the group's seminal line up of Péron, Irmler, Sosna, Wüsthoff and Diermaier, but it also references the unflinching anarchism of German rock's ultimate outsiders. Punktis Faust at their most unhindered, untethered and unstoppable.

Returning to Germany after a loss-making U.K. tour and after their manager Uwe Nettelbeck had split with them,the group dusted themselves down and planned their next project, what would have been their second for Richard Branson's Virgin. Joined as always by their engineering genius Kurt Graupner, the band took residence in the Arabella High Rise Building, the luxury hotel which housed Giorgio Moroder's Musicland Studio in its basement. At the time, the Italian's space disco odyssey was yet to blast off, and he gave the group the studio downtime around his sessions with Donna Summer.

Off the leash and on the lash (running up a record breaking room service bill), Faust spent their nights below ground, creating the sublime cacophony which courses through these seven tracks. Driven by Diermaier's primitive repetition and Péron's rabid low end growl, "Morning Land" stomps its way through almost ten minutes of heavy psychedelia. Vocals disintegrate into the sonic landslide of guitar feedback and synth scree, momentum building until the track rends open the hellmouth with its unthinkable heft. A Luciferian spirit courses through the beatless "Crapolino", a tumult of scorched guitar chords, strident FXs and disembodied vocals which bares all the hallmarks of a black mass. And just like that, the group summon some demonic hunting party for "Knochentanz" (bone dance), arguably their most immersive creation. Opening with Péron's plangent horn, the track soon establishes a hypnotic c ounterpoint between Irmler's electronic sequences and Diermaier's sparse rhythm, a pulse which continues to build for six minutes as kick drum, snare, shaker and toms pile on beneath the ever-present drone. The storm clears for a second to allow a celestial chord progression to emerge from the darkness before the heavens open and Sosna's snarling, sawing guitar rains down from above, carrying "Knochentanz" through its final iteration, a collision of muscular fretwork, percussion freakout and bleeping organ which completes the most psychedelic recording you've never heard.

The frazzled optimism of "Fernlicht" buzzes away like an acid Beethoven bathed in neons, before the breathless "Juggernaut" stretches the definition of blues rock to its limit as squirming sine waves, clattering cymbals and corrosive guitars pan, reverse and overlap, each following its own unhinged rhythm. Then for a time the sound and the fury abate, making space for the frankly sublime "Schön Rund", a piano-led diversion into the soul-swelling realms of ECM jazz and fin de siècleimpressionism, which rivals anything else in their catalogue for pure beauty. And in case you thought they'd gone soft, Faust sign off with the guttural groans and course drones of "Prends Ton Temps".

After ten days of recording, it became clear that Branson wasn't footing the bill and Péron, Irmler and Sosna were arrested until the mothers of Sosna and Irmler paid the bill - though not before smuggling the master tapes into an undisclosed location, where they've waited ever since...

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This final 'Lost' article from the Faust pentalogy sees the German experimental powerhouse in fine form, wildly swaying between avant jazz, lounge funk and krautrock in a musically surprising triumph. Bonkers and brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Morning Land

2. Crapolino

3. Knochentanz

4. Fernlicht

5. Juggernaut

6. Schön Rund

7. Prends Ton Temps

There's something perversely fabulous about the thought of this warped masterwork wandering into 60,000 unsuspecting British homes in 1973. Faust's second-and-a-half album hit the shops to celebrate their signing to the nascent Virgin Records, who were looking to take advantage of the zeitgeist for German music at that time. Undeterred by the fact the band's unwillingness to engage with the commercial landscape had seen them dropped from Polydor, Branson and co cooked up a suitably spectacular marketing strategy, selling the LP for 49p, the bargain price of a single. Shoppers flocked in their thousands to grab a copy, raced home and then spent the next forty five minutes checking their tracking, banging the speakers and blowing the needle, all to no avail. Do not adjust your set - This is Faust.

What was lurking within the grooves was a condensed collage of outtakes, oddities, sketches and samples previously known to the band's nearest and dearest as 'The Faust Party Tapes' - and how you wish you'd been to those parties. Cacophonous keys and roaring drones splinter into a deranged hybrid of tumbling toms and yelping vocals; committed experimentalism which in no way prepares you for the beautiful ballad which follows. Armed with acoustic guitar, playful piano and panning vocals, Faust fashion a pastoral idyll imbued with the most profound yearning.

"Flashback Caruso" brims with Byrds-ian jangle and Syd's psychedelia, its non-sensical English lending the piece a Confucian lyricism perfect for expanded minds. And just as the soaring, searing solo suggests we're on route to eternity, the group snap, crackle and pop into another rabid découpage. Sliced and spliced between TV snippets, dissonant trumpet and the sound of someone pissing, the utterly freaky fuzz-rock of "J'ai Mal Aux Dents" sounds positively radio-friendly, far less far out than if it were encountered alone. Compared to the non-musical madness beside it, this thrash-jazz trance dance makes perfect sense, as does the corrosive breakbeat of "Two Drums, Bass, Organ", a mutant funk workout which rivals Can in an all- German dance off. The progressive and symphonic "Dr. Schwitters", dissected by fragments of dissonant process music, haunted vocal takes and the proto-industrial grind of "Elerimomuvid", charts a course for the dark side of the moon more suited to the serious cosmonauts of the world. Then the record freefalls into disorienting drum workouts, mixing desk experiments and a wicked premonition of no-wave jazz ("Hermann's Lament") before taking slight respite in the beauty of "Rudolf Der Pianist" and "I've Heard That One Before".

The particles of prepared piano, power tools and tape echo continue to cascade through the soundspace, gradually building into the final trilogy of "Stretch Out Time", "Der Baum" and "Chère Chambre", which return to conventional song structure, albeit in the group's typically twisted style. Once again though, in comparison to the wonderfully weird pieces which precede them, these three tracks are entirely accessible, and in this lies the brilliance of the LP. It doesn't just succeed as a conceptual prank, or musical prediction, but by an expert balancing act between the profane and profound, presents its most accomplished moments in their most intelligible form.

For the open minds and eager ears, Faust's cryptic charm had been laid bare, and the heads had a new favourite band.

TRACK LISTING

1. Several Hands On Our Piano
2. Don't
3. Flashback Caruso
4. Voices And Trumpet And All
5. J'ai Mal Aux Dents
6. Beim Nächsten Ton Ist Es…
7. Two Drums, Bass, Organ
8. Dr. Schwitters Intro
9. Several Hands On Our Piano (Continued)
10. Beam Me Up, Scotty
11. Elerimomuvid
12. Dr. Schwitters (Continued)
13. Have A Good Time, Everybody
14. Above And Under Our Piano
15. Hermanns Lament
16. Donnerwetter
17. Was Ist Hier Los?
18. Rudolf Der Pianist
19. Ricochets
20. I've Heard That One Before
21. Watch Your Step
22. Under Our Piano Again
23. Fluid Chorus
24. Stretch Out Time
25. Der Baum
26. Chère Chambre

The Fossils label has been unearthing more musical treasure for its fifth outing, and this one takes you directly to the Middle East for some twisted disco-funk with red hot grooves courtesy of Fava Luva & Dr. Professor. The source of the tunes is obscure and unknown but the pair bring plenty of their own goodness with additional layers of live instrumentation really bring them to life. 'Lahatz' is steamy and full of sensuous vocal magic and cosmic synth work that will get the floor into action, while 'Kerem' is even more topical and exotic with its rich array of strong melodies and downtempo beats making for a woozy and wonderful trip.

TRACK LISTING

Lahatz
Kerem

For most of us, life is a series of human interactions; some good, some bad, some happy, some sad. But what would life be without those peripheral characters who plant themselves into our worlds through the sheer force of their presence? Whether we speak to them or not, those vibrant contrasts to the everyday tide of ordinary people are a magical part of the human experience. Oddballs and misfits, flamboyant instigators or low-key game changers, we all clock them on our own hectic journeys, and they make the day a little brighter. Everyone has their favourite people.

Following the runaway success of their first one-shot single in 2020, Favourite People reconvene for a full-length of blues-tinged cuts stemming from sessions at Selva Studios in Brooklyn. The project’s roots predate the studio, from scattered jams and sweaty nights in New York nightspots to impromptu recordings on cruise ships, but the flashpoint of inspiration that truly set the album in motion was the arrival of a blonde 1960s Fender Telecaster. From there, the motley crew of sharp-shooting string slingers and sticks men set about crafting paeans to those striking souls who make the world a more colourful place.

The emphasis here is on the kind of forward-facing, electrically charged mix you felt (whether you realised it or not) hearing early Sabbath or Priest for the first time. With their undeniable bias towards vintage soul, Favourite People are far from heavy metal, but the same lineage of blues and by extension jazz informs the music, while the tonal crunch of that 70s era guides the sound. Feasting on tasteful overdrive and leaning on the unmistakable flavour of tape for much of the recording, the deal was sealed on this purposeful exercise in vibe thanks to the near-mythical texture of Guy Davie’s EMI Nigeria console at Electric Mastering.

Across the album there are mellow shades and bursts of good-time get-down exuberance, but the lead singles capture the essence of the band in no uncertain terms.

‘Promise Of Nibbles’ brings the Favourite People MO into sharp relief with a low-slung, hard swinging blues confection full of overheating organ and duelling guitars in pursuit of Southern-stewed boogie (im)perfection.

‘We’ll Be Late To The Party’ turns up the tempo and dials in the fuzz, striking an anthemic note which lands somewhere between urgent highway escapism and euphoric communal revelation.

‘Mass and Mustiness’ leans in on the funk dimension of the group’s sound with the sweetest licks and chops on that fabled telecaster backed up by an acutely angled beat and the slinkiest of b-lines.

These are but three of the vibrant vignettes laid down by this quietly unassuming collective of heads down jammers, loose groovers and vintage sound freaks –heavy grooving instrumentals pulled from their own moments of pure musical magic and captured on disc for your listening, dancing, living, loving pleasure.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wading Out
2. Click And Advance
3. Mass And Mustiness
4. Mortified Mick
5. We’ll Be Late To The Party!
6. Rural Disinformation
7. Glint Of Quartz
8. Promise Of Nibbles
9. Lunático
10. Cosmic Salami
11. Divine Symmetry

Ask Bill Fay about his relationship with his instrument and he says something revealing, not ”Ever since I learnt to play the piano,” but “Ever since the piano taught me…”

What the piano taught him was how to connect to one of the great joys of his life. “Music gives,” he says. And he is a grateful receiver. But, it makes him wonder, “Who is the sender?”

Fay - who after more than five decades writing songs is finally being appreciated as one of our finest living practitioners of the art – asserts that songs aren’t actually written but found. He recorded two phenomenal but largely overlooked albums for Decca offshoot Nova in 1970 and 1971. After 27 years of neglect, people like Nick Cave, Jim O’ Rourke, and Jeff Tweedy were praising those records in glowing terms. Recorded in Ray Davies' Konk Studios, North London, Who Is The Sender? sees Bill expanding upon themes he has touched on from the beginning, spiritual and philosophical questions, observations about the natural world and the people in the city he has lived in all his life.

The temptation to mythologize Bill Fay can be overwhelming; Fay was, for decades, as prolific as he was under-appreciated. Fay’s unsung-hero status has changed slowly, steadily, on the order of almost twenty-five years. With each new album comes new hosannas and evangelizers — Jeff Tweedy, Kevin Morby, Adam Granduciel and Julia Jacklin, to name just a few.

The Bill Fay Group, in particular, is Fay’s most significant collaborative work; he records as a member of a larger group here, and the result summons a grander sonic scale, an elegent counterweight to Fay’s instincts for the understated. Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow brings to bear the galactic qualities of early rock, the intricacy of jazz improv, and Fay’s earthy folk magic.

Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow has a patchy release history: recorded between 1978 and 1981, it was not released until 2005, when it appeared on CD with limited streaming and no vinyl companion. A 2006 reissue brought the album onto vinyl but with a truncated sequence and nine song missing. Now, finally, Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow arrives in full worldwide. Available on streaming services worldwide and pressed to a double-album vinyl edition, it features the album’s original 22 songs and includes rare and previously unseen photographs from Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow’s original recording session.

In the words of Gary Smith and Rauf Galip, missing Bill Stratton, and abbreviated from the forthcoming album notes:

We chose five songs to record as finished pieces: Life, Spiritual Mansions, Cosmic Boxer, Strange Stairway, Isles of Sleep, all recorded in two studio sessions. We sent them out to try and get a record deal. There were few really independent labels back then and Punk was in the record labels’ ears. No deal.

And now, Dead Oceans who have a lot of faith in Bill’s music wants to re- release the ‘Tomorrow’ album. A double vinyl package. Is there any more unreleased music for the fourth side? Of course. So, we’ve been opening old boxes, finding CDRs, cassettes, a musical archaeological dig. This is our choice from all the music we found.

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1 SIDE A:
1. Strange Stairway
2. Spiritual Mansions
3. Planet Earth Daytime
4. Goodnight Stan
5. Tomorrow Tomorrow And Tomorrow
DISC 1 SIDE B:
1. Just A Moon
2. To Be A Part
3. Sam
4. Lamp Shining
5. Turning The Pages
6. Love Is The Tune
7. After The Revolution
8. Jericho Road
9. Strange Stairway (Demo)
10. Birdman (Bonus Track)

DISC 2 SIDE A:
1. Life
2. Hypocrite
3. Man
4. Cosmic Boxer
5. We Are Raised
6. Isle Of Sleep
DISC 3 SIDE B:
1. Coming Down
2. Hypocrite (Demo)
3. Spiritual Mansions (Demo)
4. Cosmic Boxer (Alternate Version)
5. The Coast No Man Can Tell (Bonus Track)
6. Man (Take 1)
7. When We Set Sail (Bonus Track)

Mary Lattimore’s version of 'Love Is The Tune' alongside Bill Fay's original.

TRACK LISTING

Mary Lattimore - Love Is The Tune
Bill Fay - Love Is The Tune

Bill Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. A prime Fay song is a deceptively simple thing which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply. There are ten of these musical haikus on Countless Branches, as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded. For decades now - it’s almost 50 years since he cut his classic albums “Bill Fay” and “Time of the Last Persecution” - songs like these have been Fay’s ambassadors helping rave reviews and endorsements from the likes of Jim O’Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) which led to a huge revival of interest in his music. He had continued to make music almost every day in the intervening decades. For Countless Branches he’s completed new toplines over some of his cache of backing tracks, most of them 20 to 40 years old.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brittle and almost entorely unadorned (safe for a guitar and a guitar at most), Bill Fay's crackling voice soars above these perfectly produced and stunningly stripped back Americana gems. Evocative and stunning, this is a gem in an already hugely influential career.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Human Hands
2. How Long, How Long
3. Your Little Face
4. Salt Of The Earth
5. I Will Remain Here
6. Filled With Wonder Once Again
7. Time’s Going Somewhere
8. Love Will Remain
9. Countless Branches
10. One Life

Deluxe LP Bonus Tracks:
11. Tiny
12. Don’t Let My Marigolds Die (Live In Studio)
13. The Rooster
14. Your Little Face (Acoustic Version)
15. Filled With Wonder Once Again (Band Version)
16. How Long, How Long (Band Version)
17. Love Will Remain (Band Version)

Bill Fay has always sung about attempting to understand the most universal questions: those of nature, spirituality, humanity. His songs are “calming hymns for another chaotic time”, he says. His influence can be traced through many artist’s work, and so it only seemed right to celebrate this with a collection of newer voices interpreting his timeless tracks. Originally released in 2010 by David Tibet (Current 93), Still Some Light was released as a double CD, made up of 70’s album demos (Disc One) and 2009 home recordings (Disc Two). This year, for the first time, this collection of recordings will be pressed to vinyl and released digitally, presented alongside contemporary reimaginings of the tracks by Kevin Morby, Steve Gunn, Julia Jacklin and Mary Lattimore. Bill Fay’s words and melodies remain unaffected by the passing of time and changing trends; and here alongside the original recordings, these reinvented versions still calmly guide us through another moment of chaos.

Bill Fay’s Still Some Light was originally released on compact disc as a two CD collection in 2010. Reimagined with new artwork and available for the first time ever on vinyl, Dead Oceans is pleased to present Still Some Light Pt. 1, collecting Fay’s archival recordings from 1970 and 1971. Many of the songs are intimate sketches which were eventually re-recorded for Fay’s self-titled debut and for his landmark album, Time of the Last Persecution. This double LP set includes heart wrenching versions of some of his timeless works, such as “I Hear You Calling” and “Pictures of Adolf Again”, and features equally powerful songs like “Arnold is a Simple Man” and “Love is the Tune,” which only appear in this collection

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Plan D
2. Sing Us One Of Your Songs May
3. I Will Find My Own Way Back
4. Love Is The Tune
SIDE B: 
1. Backwoods Maze
2. The Sun Is Bored
3. There's A Price Upon My Head
4. Time Of The Last Persecution
SIDE C: 
1. Pictures Of Adolph
2. Tell It Like It Is
3. Release Is In The Eye
4. Dust Filled Room
5. I Hear You Calling
SIDE D: 
1. Laughing Man
2. Arnold Is A Simple Man
3. Just To Be A Part
4. Inside The Keeper’s Pantry

Bill Fay has always sung about attempting to understand the most universal questions: those of nature, spirituality, humanity. His songs are “calming hymns for another chaotic time,” he says. His influence can be traced through many artists’ works, so it only seemed right to celebrate this with a collection of newer voices interpreting his timeless tracks.

Originally released in 2010 by David Tibet (Current 93), ‘Still Some Light’ was issued as a double CD, made up of 70’s album demos (Disc One) and 2009 home recordings (Disc Two). This year, for the first time, this collection of recordings will be pressed to vinyl as a double LP with reimagined artwork, presented alongside contemporary reimaginings of the tracks by Julia Jacklin and Mary Lattimore. Bill Fay’s words and melodies remain unaffected by the passing of time and changing trends; and here alongside the original recordings, these reinvented versions still calmly guide us through another moment of chaos.

From their first gig in April 08, The Hayley Faye Band have garnered a loyal following. This debut single features two tracks: "Babysleepmode", which is driven by a propulsive snare drum beat and the upbeat stomp of "Kings And Queens", with both tracks being defined by Hayley's distinctive, charismatic vocals and perceptive lyrics.

FAR aka Simon and Robin Lee's Faze Action Records serve up a special 7" featuring Faze Action's 'Fantasy' which sounds very much like a tune you might unearth in some dusty old crate that hasn't been heard since the 70s and 80s. It has lush synths reaching up to the stars and gentle disco beats that sweep you off your feet. The bustling arrangement bubbles with subtle energy and gorgeous vocals are layered in for extra escapist magic. On the flip is an instrumental that is pared back and more direct, but both tunes really do take you into a fantasy world.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Incredibly funky and incredibly catchy, this little disco number will improve your day considerably. Two copies were snapped up as soon as it hit the shop player, the last one is up for grabs now!

TRACK LISTING

Fantasy
Fantasy (Instrumental)

Fazerdaze, aka Auckland-based singer / producer / multiinstrumentalist Amelia Murray, is back with new music after a very intentional five year pause.

Fazerdaze returns with ‘Break!’, an air-punch purge in musical form, marking an important reintroduction to an essential artist of our times.

In a society where being strong and resilient is often held up like a badge of honour, it’s much, much harder to acknowledge when enough is enough - to accept when it’s time to let go. It’s a truth that Murray has spent years wrangling with, but one whose story thankfully comes with an empowering punchline of personal reclamation. Rewind back half a decade and, objectively, things for Fazerdaze were hitting their stride. Then residing in Auckland, an early determination to graft hard and “put herself in the right places” had led to working for and then signing with legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun. A debut LP - 2017’s ‘Morningside’ - followed, full of gauzy melodies and influenced by Frankie Cosmos, Japanese Breakfast, and the dream-pop landscape of the time.

Finishing up touring for the record at the end of 2018, Amelia speaks of a deep sense of burn out and, more than that, of feeling the “wheels starting to come off” in her general life. “No longer being stoic and strong was the best thing I ever did for myself. Giving up on the people and things that weren’t working in my life was this big release where I could finally put down this weight that I was carrying, and ever since then everything has been better in my life overall,” she continues with an audible sense of relief. “I can hear my intuition and write songs and be creative; I signed a record deal, I moved into my own place. It’s like the floodgates opened for good stuff coming into my life.”

TRACK LISTING

Break!
Winter
Thick Of The Honey
Come Apart
Overthink It
Flood Into

Formed in July 2002, Fear Before The March Of Flames have developed a distinctive sound, a head on collision of intricate song structures, shifting time signatures and an overall filthy temper to produce an intense and inventive blend of metal, post hardcore and crunching indie rock. Easy listening this is not. Takes up where At the Drive In, The Blood Brothers and Dillinger Escape Plan leave off and trashes them in the process.

Includes 4 bonus tracks, which don't appear on import copies.

One can’t overstate the size of the Fear Factory boot print on the neck of heavy metal. Unleashing influential albums with devastating anthems for over 30 years, Fear Factory is widely recognized as both crucial and innovative in extreme metal circles. Fear Factory manufactured, demanufactured, and remanufactured a sound that reverberates across several subgenres. They perfected an explosive blend of staccato paint-stripping riffs, industrial-tinged drums, electronic flourishes, and a scream/sing dichotomy, all of which became staples in heavy music, ever since the group first emerged in L.A.

Fear Factory headline major festivals; earned several awards from the international sales charts; toured with Black Sabbath, Slayer, Iron Maiden, and Metallica; and influenced generations of bands. But it’s the group’s commitment to unrelenting extremity and creative authenticity which ensured its place in heavy metal history, from the highly-revered Demanufacture to the similarly dominating Genexus. Songs like “Zero Signal,” “Shock,” and “Fear Campaign” are instantly recognizable anthems, as much a part of the musical DNA of modern metal subculture as the riffs and scream/sing style within them.

Fear Factory records are cinematic in scope; sonic landscapes, echoing the dystopian post-apocalyptic futures found in classic sci-fi literature and films, from Ray Bradbury to Blade Runner. Recoded provides reimagined versions of songs from their tenth studio offering, Aggression Continuum. Much like their previously successful crossover release Remanufacture, Recoded takes a moment to focus on the band’s industrial and dark wave side, along with their metal roots. Whatever may come, Fear Factory will be there, a soundtrack to humankind’s uncertain times ahead.

TRACK LISTING

CD Tracklisting:
1. Adapt Or Die – Intro Narrative By Jake Stern, Sound FX By Zardonic
2. Hatred Will Prevail – ‘Monolith’ Remix By Rhys Fulber
3. Disobey – ‘Disruptor’ Remix By Zardonic
4. I Am The Nightrider – ‘Fuel Injected Suicide Machine’ Remix By Dualized/Zardonic
5. Path To Salvation – ‘Purity’ Remix By Rhys Fulber
6. Worthless – ‘End Of Line’ Remix By Zardonic
7. Empires Fall – ‘Collapse’ Remix By Tyrants Of Death
8. System Assassin – ‘Aggression Continuum’ Remix By Rhys Fulber
9. Hypocrisy Of Faith – ‘Manufactured Hope’ Remix By Rob Gee
10. This Is My Life – ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ Remix By Zardonic
11. Recoded – ‘Recode’ Remix By Blush Response

LP Tracklisting
Side A:
1.Adapt Or Die – Intro Narrative By Jake Stern, Sound FX By Zardonic
2.Hatred Will Prevail – ‘Monolith’ Remix By Rhys Fulber
3.Disobey – ‘Disruptor’ Remix By Zardonic
4.I Am The Nightrider – ‘Fuel Injected Suicide Machine’ Remix By Dualized/Zardonic
Side B:
1.Path To Salvation – ‘Purity’ Remix By Rhys Fulber
2.Worthless – ‘End Of Line’ Remix By Zardonic
3.Empires Fall – ‘Collapse’ Remix By Tyrants Of Death/
Side C:
1.System Assassin – ‘Aggression Continuum’ Remix By Rhys Fulber
2.Hypocrisy Of Faith – ‘Manufactured Hope’ Remix By Rob Gee
3.This Is My Life – ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ Remix By Zardonic
Side D:
1.Recoded – ‘Recode’ Remix By Blush Response
2.Turbo Factory – ‘End Of Line’ Remix By Turboslash
3.Break Off – ‘Disruptor’ Remix By Rhys Fulber.

Fear Of Men was born when Jess Weiss (vocal/guitar) had been writing and home recording ambient songs as soundtracks to short films and Daniel Falvey (guitar) attended an exhibition of her work. The two began swapping mix-tapes and started a project based on a shared love of melody and an eclectic mix of artists such as Grouper, Pixies and Daniel Johnston. After several sold-out 7"s on small UK labels, the band have recently announced their debut album, 'Loom', to be released this April. The first single 'Luna' is set for release as a flexi-zine - a 20 page booklet curated by the band accompanied by a 5" flexidisc with exclusive b-side 'Outrun Me'

Fear Of Music are Jo Rose (vocals/guitar), Ali Esmaail (bass), Mike Ward (guitar) and Rick Morgan (drums). They formed as schoolfriends, took their name from a seminal Talking Heads album, and together, they're out to give British rock its soul and spirit back, and power up their hometown of Manchester with some rocket-fuel riffs. With the spirit of The Smashing Pumpkins, the screech of Placebo, the scale of (yes) Muse and the conscience of Manic Street Preachers, but also the grace of Jeff Buckley and the hysteria of Pixies, Fear Of Music mine a virgin sound all of their own.

Richard Fearless follows his critically acclaimed psycho-geographical techno masterpiece ‘Deep Rave Memory’ with its companion album ‘Future Rave Memory’.

Across titanium kosmische, industrial ambience, weightless acid and dark drone, this new record is an instrument of evocative wonder and heavy emotion.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Future Rave Memory swims with atmosphere, wrought from echoing synth drones and sliding 303 abstractions. Grains of sound clash together to form dreamy passages both organic sounding, but charged with electricity. It's a masterfully crafted and enduringly enjoyable listen.

TRACK LISTING

Tamas
Earth Tapes
Future Rave Memory
Vision
Rotation Axis
Our Acid House

Pieced together over five years, Oíche chronicles growth through challenges, instability, and relationship changes, both with one's self and others. The album reveals itself much like a coming of age novel about the breaking apart of girlhood and rebuilding of a young woman.

An intimate depiction of discovery, Oíche unearths internal dialogue, and makes peace with uncertainty. Oíche, meaning 'night' in Irish, was recorded in three bedrooms, hospital, and the Domino Recordings studio in Brixton.

Fears is London-based Irish artist Constance Keane. Combining reflective electronics, acoustic samples, and haunting vocals with organic visuals, Fears invites the listener on an ethereal journey, blurring the boundaries between music and visual art. Her minimalist approach centres on emotive subjects, which are all-at-once deeply personal yet remarkably universal.

Oíche is the first release on TULLE, run by and for exceptional women.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: In parts brittle, raw and minimalistic before breaking into deep, rich electronics and beautifully produced meandering instrumentation, 'Oiche' is a rich and dynamic juxtaposition of genre biases and electronic-adjacent songwriting. Immediately alluring, but unendingly expressive, this is a wonderfully produced and cleverly written gem.

TRACK LISTING

A1. H_always
A2. Bones
A3. Daze
A4. Fabric
A5. Vines
B1. Dents
B2. Brighid
B3. Tonnta
B4. Blood
B5. Two_

This heavy hitting three piece, two four string guitars and one drummer, recorded "X Patriot" with Steve Albini in Electrical Audio, Chicago. They toured the UK last year, leaving minds blown and jaws agape at their blend of noise rock, lurching forth with a dark, distasteful scuzz rock. Sure there's some 70s rock in there but with a sound akin to Budgie as mauled by Killdozer and doused in a southern blues hell as often described by the likes of the Laughing Hyenas. To say this record is a hard rock record is to serve it up a supreme injustice, this is gothic horror dirge rock with a drunken drive!!!

Pittsburgh, PA’s feeble little horse makes thrilling and wildly unpredictable songs that are a reflection of the joys that come with making music with your best friends. The band’s sophomore album was made focusing on intuition over intention: letting the magic of collaboration come first. “Anything that makes us laugh or puts a smile on our faces, we usually end up keeping in the songs,” explains drummer Jake Kelley. Across 11 self-recorded and self-produced tracks, the band careens from blissed-out pop to harsh noise, glitchy programmed drum beats, and off-kilter indie rock—sometimes all in one song. As a follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2021 debut Hayday, Girl with Fish, with its overwhelmingly inviting and emotionally resonant tracklist, is a document of four people trusting their instincts and most importantly each other.

TRACK LISTING

1. Freak
2. Tin Man
3. Steamroller
4. Heaven
5. Paces
6. Sweet
7. Slide
8. Healing
9. Pocket
10. Station
11. Heavy Water 

Pittsburgh’s feeble little horse is a 4-piece band that writes intricately catchy, digitized noise pop songs. Formed by Sebastian Kinsler (guitar, production, vocals, bass) and Ryan Walchonski (guitar, vocals) in Ryan’s student apartment in South Oakland, PA in February 2021, the duo soon added Ryan’s roommate Jake Kelley on drums, and, inspired by a wave of creativity, the trio released their first EP – modern tourism, in May 2021, with artwork contributed by future member Lydia Slocum (vocals, bass).

After officially joining the band in June of that year as bassist and vocalist, Lydia added her own sweet vocals, rich melodies, and punchy lyrics to the band’s heady mix. From summer to fall of that year, the quartet played their first shows at DIY establishments across Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, gaining a word-of-mouth reputation as one of the most exciting new bands on the scene.

In October 2021 feeble little horse released their first full-length album, Hayday, via Julia’s War Recordings. Full of dense textures and exhilarating tension, the album’s eleven songs bristle with pent-up energy, the mood flipping between sweet noise-pop elements and more visceral discharges, the whole thing balanced on a knife-edge between the light and dark, the earnest and unhinged.

The band continues to expand and evolve in 2022, with new music on the horizon that looks set to redefine the band’s sound once again. Before that, however, comes a reissue of Hayday, in conjunction with Unstable – a record label started by the band. Available on vinyl for the first time, this reissue also features two bonus tracks: the previously unreleased "Dog Song 2" and a remix of "Termites" by Full Body 2. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Worth It (Intro)
2. Termites
3. Chores
4. Tricks
5. Too Much
6. Sherman's Last Ride
7. Picture
8. You Got It Babe
9. Kennedy
10. Drama Queen
11. Grace (Outro)
12. Dog Song 2*
13. Termites*

*Bonus Track 

Twin Cities duo Feel Free Hi Fi return to their in-house imprint Digital Sting with their first full length entitled “I was so far in I was out.” After two prior EP's and collaborations with Equiknoxx and Duppy Gun Feel Free Hi Fi deliver 8 new tracks of their distinct but eclectic digital dub. Amalgamating many of the sounds, sonics, and aesthetics of prior releases into these eight percussive instrumentals. The industrial dub and weirdo dancehall remain but the focus is further refined while also exploring environmental and cinematic sounds to create often dark and heavy versions that are as singular as they are collective, as introverted as they are expansive.

The records come in double sided silk-screened printed custom DJ Jackets, with Obi Strip style stickers and hand stamped white labels created and printed by Digital Sting.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Blood
A2. Gateless Barrier
A3. Spring Rain
A4. Triton
B1. Marauder
B2. Vexed
B3. Digital Tomb
B4. Computer Paul

One of two classic albums by New Jersey alt rockers The Feelies. "Crazy Rhythms" is a masterwork of perfectly honed minimalist rock that leaps and darts into the corners of the listener's consciousness, a true sonic tour de force that Rolling Stone deemed one of the '100 Best Albums of the 1980s'. Fans of the Velvet Underground, Wire and Brian Eno's early solo work will surely appreciate the 'forces at work' (to quote a song title) on this masterpiece.
As the band considers each album to be a discrete aesthetic artifact, the copious bonus material including demos, B-sides, EP tracks and some new live recordings from the re-united group is included on digital download cards.

18 classic songs from the Velvet Underground catalog performed by The Feelies at White Eagle Hall/ Jersey City, NJ - October 13, 2018. The Feelies have spent their entire career covering songs by the Velvet Underground and are masters of the VU sound. They toured Europe opening for Lou Reed in the 1980s, sharing meals, hanging out backstage, even joining him to perform some of his classic material. On October 13, 2018 the Feelies were invited to perform Velvet Underground songs at Jersey City, NJ’s White Eagle Hall as part of a traveling museum show of VU memorabilia.

This double vinyl album of 18 classic Lou Reed songs includes VU standards like “Sweet Jane,” “Rock & Roll” and “I’m Waiting for the Man” as well as rarely covered gems like “I Heard Her Call My Name” and “That’s the Story of My Life.” The Feelies are one of the most influential bands to emerge from the NY post punk scene of the late 1970s and have continued to perform together and make records for 4 decades. Includes guest performances from Bongos members James Mastro and Richard Barone.

Double LP Includes liner notes by veteran music journalist Howard Wuelfing. 

TRACK LISTING

01. Sunday Morning
02. Who Loves The Sun
03. There She Goes Again
04. What Goes On
05. Sweet Jane
06. Head Held High
07. I’m Waiting For The Man
08. White Light/White Heat
09. I Heard Her Call My Name
10. New Age
11. That’s The Story Of My Life
12. All Tomorrow’s Parties
13. Rock And Roll
14. We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together
15. Run Run Run
16. I Can’t Stand It
17. After Hours
18. Oh! Sweet Nuthin’

Get a load of Castle Face’s first local release from their new home in East LA: native Angeleno four-piece Feels and their debut self-titled LP.

Scuzzy, slanted guitar interplay, a little grrrlish swagger, flashes of raw emotion and a cement chip of punk attitude propel these songs directly to your dome and down the brain stem. Kinetic, omnivorous, and easy to get stuck in the noggin, Feels has charm and grit to spare and is pushed deeper into the red, weird wilds by Ty Segall’s home-cooked production.

‘Make It Up’ is the long player follow up to FEET’s debut album ‘What’s Inside Is More Than Just Ham’ which catapulted them into the indie-rock spotlight in 2019. Crowd pleasing thrillers such as ‘Petty Thieving’, ‘the anthemic ‘English Weather’ and more recent crowd favourite ‘Changing My Mind Again’ have solidified the band as one of the most exciting guitar acts on the scene.

‘Make It Up’ distils the FEET of old with a fine-tuned, cohesive, and compelling new output that builds on the sonic DNA of their debut, while effortlessly taking it to the next level.

“There’s no throw away ideas on this album and everything has to have its place. It has to be ironed out and perfected,” explains frontman George Haverson. “I don’t like to say polished, but it is perfected to a point where everything can be done in its fullest form. I feel like we’ve got 12 complete songs on this album and not 12 ideas. We’ve made the FEET machine and now it’s a case of inserting the right idea and the output is a great song. Before, it felt a bit more like we were throwing shit at the wall. This time round, everything feels a bit more refined.”

“Being in a band is a big chunk of time in your life, but this is a choice we all make, and we don’t ever have to even think about coming back to FEET. It’s like our child, really, and we’re all the surrogate fathers of this band! That keeps us together, this desire to create and make something that’s truly great.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Better Than Last
2. The Real Thing
3. I’m Wrong
4. Greasy Boy
5. Why Would I Lie
6. Truly Awful
7. Sit Down
8. No Vision
9. When You’re Feeling Strange
10. Bullseye
11. On The Wire
12. Goodbye (So Long, Farewell)

The multi-faceted artist & producer Feiertag has established himself as a leading name within the electronic music sphere since making his debut in 2015. He defies convention in ways many cannot, from his immersive productions on Last Night On Earth, Boogie Angst, Majestic Casual and Kitsuné. After two successful EPs and even more singles, Feiertag took his time for this debut album. This can be heard on each of the sixteen tracks: Extraordinary attention to detail, sophisticated arrangements and a sound aesthetic that couldn‘t sound more modern are probably the first impressions you take away from "Time To Recover". On second or third listen through, however, you realize that almost every one of these songs has hit potential somehow.

After the dubby head-nodding opener "Stranger To One" follows "Yearn", with Oli Hannaford from London and Tessa Rose Jackson from Amsterdam, revealing a melancholic and shimmering musical soundscape. Majestic vocals combine with lush percussive elements and smooth drums, whilst rich chords work atop of resonant strings. A song destined for eternity!

Tessa is also featured on "Follow" and "Riptide". Then there‘s the collaboration with GOSTO, "Stronger", a song that gains in punch and impact with each successive listen. And with every rewind, you turn up the volume a little more. As loud as enough that you can also enjoy "It‘s Alright" with James Alexander Bright in its full glory and exuberant optimism. Similarly good-humored is the instrumental "Saccharine" tasting full of sweet summer, unbridled exuberance and outdoor parties.

With "Panorama" Feiertag shows his calmer, more ambient side towards the end of the album to finally set an absolutely dignified closing point together with Pete Josef on "Where Are We Now". "Time To Recover" is an almost furious ride through current musical styles and genres - all from the artful and almost grandiose orchestrated point of view of Feiertag.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Stranger To One
A2 Yearn Feat. Oli Hannaford & Tessa Rose Jackson
A3 Solidity
A4 Follow Feat. Tessa Rose Jackson
B1 Memoirs
B2 It’s Alright Feat. James Alexander Bright
B3 Riptide Feat. Tessa Rose Jackson
B4 Remote Island
C1 Yucca
C2 Pretend
C3 Saccharine 374
C4 Trepidation Feat. Msafiri Zawose
D1 Bilbao
D2 Stronger Feat. GOSTO
D3 Panorama

Ezra Feinberg’s third album Soft Power sees the composer-guitarist enlist an impressive array of fellow musicians including Mary Lattimore, David Moore (Bing & Ruth), Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Robbie Lee and share the life affirming lead single ‘Future Sand’.

Defined by its abundance of melodies, repeating figures and ecstatic improvisations, Soft Power exudes an enlightened and transformative spirit to empower the listener. Feinberg, a practising psychoanalyst and former founding member of the San Francisco psychedelic collective Citay (Dead Oceans / Important Records) resides in the artistic enclave of upstate New York's Hudson River valley. Initial recordings emerged in the late summer of 2020, before added synthesis with collaborator John Thayer (Arp, Sunwatchers) during early 2021. Soft Power follows previous albums ‘Recumbent Speech’ (2020) and ‘Pentimento and Others’ (2018).

The compassionate, tender-hearted opener ‘Future Sand’ deftly interweaves flutes and steady arpeggios. The Reichian pulse beneath the soaring melody is played not on the customary analogue sequencer, but on finger-picked acoustic guitar, one of the lodestars of Feinberg’s compositional approach. ‘Soft Power’, the buoyant and mesmeric title track that follows builds over a rich bed of guitars and a reverb-y Rhodes melody reminiscent of a Strata East LP, its narrative arc bountiful in energy, optimism and future dreaming, a perfect accompaniment to long days of summertide. “The most unexpected, unpredictable, and spontaneous moments in life live in the realm of softness”, quotes Feinberg. ‘Pose Beams’ blends the chamber-jazz approach of Penguin Café Orchestra with a balletic kosmische, climaxing with a galvanising crescendo and “free improv” section performed by fellow New Yorkers - Robbie Lee (piano) and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, whose granular and modular synths sprinkle particle dust over the expressive drumming of John Thayer. ‘Flutter Intensity’ evokes in part the music of Cluster as played on acoustic guitars, which ping-pong across the stereo field, providing the canvas for a plaintive vibraphone line reminiscent of TNT-era Tortoise. Instruments move in tandem, but also drift and glide allowing them the space to hang in the air, the variegated rhythms, textures, and tones all laced into the fabric of the album.

At the centrefold of the albums 7-tracks is ‘The Big Clock’, a tryptic piece that evolves from pairs of stretched varying tones, creating fields of technicolour over an unabashed motorik beat, serving to offset the pastoral and ambient registers heard elsewhere. It features the first of two appearances from David Moore (Bing & Ruth) who plays lilting piano lines on the come-down. ‘There Was Somebody There’ returns to the album’s earlier wistfulness, a hard stereo-panned soundworld with lightly strummed, interlocking acoustic guitars combining to pigment a washy, painterly scene. David Moore and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma provide reviving synths, the underlying pulse that seems to simulate a life cycle; another day on Earth. The album closes with the reflective ‘Get Some Rest’ featuring Mary Lattimore, whose harp pluckings set a dreamlike tone against bare organic acoustics and flourishing flutes to create a sense of realignment and restoration.

Feinberg artfully transcends the listener to an enriched place, his compositions distinguished by the deep humanity that lies at their core, plugging the listener into a state of wide eyed being, open and alive. Soft Power then is Ezra’s own mantra but also one of power giving - a colourful catharsis translated into music.

Feinberg’s music always speaks to the listener, but Soft Power, in whispering, speaks loudest.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Future Sand
A2. Soft Power
A3. Pose Beams
A4. Flutter Intensity
B1. The Big Clock
B2. There Was Somebody There
B3. Get Some Rest

Beautifully crafted and at times lo-fi acoustica from this highly acclaimed Canadian songstress. Described by iD as having '...one of the warmest purest voices you'll hear all year'.

Multi-Award winning, hugely influential musician Feist returns with Multitudes, her sixth solo album and first since 2017’s Pleasure.

Multitudes was produced by Feist with longtime collaborators Robbie Lackritz (The Weather Station, Bahamas, Robbie Robertson) and Mocky (Jamie Lidell, Vulfpeck, Kelela). Blake Mills (Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, Perfume Genius) and Joseph Lorge came in to mix, with Mills as a co-producer in the final stages.

Multitudes took shape soon after the birth of her daughter and sudden death of her father, a back-to-back convergence of life-altering events that left the Canadian singer/songwriter with “Nothing performative in me anymore.” As she cleansed her songwriting of any tendency to obscure unwanted truths, Feist slowly made her way toward a batch of songs rooted in a raw and potent realism which is touched with otherworldly beauty.

Largely written and workshopped during an intensely communal experimental show of the same name through 2021 and 2022, the songs on Multitudes developed in parallel with and were deeply influenced by the mutuality of the unconventional experience. The production, developed by Feist with legendary designer Rob Sinclair (David Byrne’s American Utopia, Peter Gabriel, Tame Impala) was formulated to bring people together as they re-emerged from lockdown while providing an outlet for connection between artist, art, and community.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hiding Out
2. In Lightning
3.Love Who We Are Meant To
4. Forever Before
5. Red Wing
6. Rings Off
7. Borrow Trouble
8. Of Womankind
9. Become The Earth
10. Martyr Moves
11. Calling All The Gods
12. Song For A Sad Friend

Feist’s first album in six years reflects on secrets and shame, loneliness and tenderness, care and fatigue and is at its core a study on self-awareness. As the fourth full-length from the Canadian singer/songwriter born Leslie Feist, Pleasure builds off the warm naturalism of the Polaris Prize-winning Metals and emerges as her most formally defiant and expansive work so far. Recorded over the course of three months—in Stinson Beach, Upstate New York, and Paris — Pleasure was co-produced by Feist with longtime collaborators Renaud Letang and Mocky. Following the album’s title-track, Feist has now shared ‘Century’, which features Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker in addition to reaffirming Feist as a cagily inventive guitar player, the album threads her shape-shifting and often haunting vocals into sparse and raw arrangements. Released on a Limited Ed Digi and 2LP set

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: From the mournful lo-fi balladry of 'I Wish I Didn't Miss You' to the country-tinged minor key melodies of 'Any Party' and stomping cyclic rock of century, this is a confident and cohesive collection of classics from one of the all-time masters in the field. Feist smashes it again.

TRACK LISTING

1. “Pleasure”
2. “I Wish I Didn’t Miss You”
3. “Get Not High, Get Not Low”
4. “Lost Dreams”
5. “Any Party”
6. “A Man Is Not His Song”
7. “The Wind”
8. “Century”
9. “Baby Be Simple”
10. “I’m Not Running Away”
11. “Young Up”

Soundway Records' latest vinyl release offers two chapters of instrumental, lo-fi dreamscapes, exquisite homemade musical sketches, and ethereal jazz harmonies recorded direct to two cassettes.

In the Felbm project, Dutch multi-instrumentalist Eelco Topper steps away from his previous synthesiser-laden sounds as Falco Benz, towards a much looser, simpler and sketch-like approach. Picking up a number of acoustic instruments, he began experimenting with a Tascam 4-track tape recorder and allowed these sketches to flourish.
The result is Tape 1 and Tape 2, a two-part project stretching across fifteen tracks - encompassing fluttering piano melodies, subtle jazz drums, rumba rhythms and soothing ambience. The jazz element links back to Topper’s childhood. “I grew up playing drums, switched to playing piano at sixteen and in the meantime I produced hip-hop beats,” he recalls. “I went to study jazz piano at the Utrecht Conservatory, which I finished with pain and effort… I was interested more in electronic and present-day music.”

This mix of being rooted in traditional jazz composition whilst searching for something more contemporary is the perfect encapsulation of these recordings. Tape 1’s jazz roots are palpable and as things move into Tape 2, it takes on a neo-classical, psychedelic soundscape and cinematic quality.

“Tape 1” and “Tape 2” digital EP are released separately, but the full album download comes with the vinyl album “Tape 1 / Tape 2”.
Vinyl album comes with dual front cover that can be flipped over, reflecting the project’s 2 segment structure.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Birkelunden
A2. Funicular
A3. Monolocale
A4. Sternenhimmel
A5. Bladerdek
A6. Memoirists
A7. Sakura
B1. Tandem
B2. Anderstein
B3. Birkach
B4. Herfstzon
B5. Maktene
B6. When It Rains
B7. Samensmelten
B8. Takumi

Following on from the success of his previous debut album “Tape 1/Tape 2” on Soundway, Felbm delivers Tape 3/Tape 4 - an intimate, emotional, lilting and melodic solo project.  These 14 lo-fi, instrumental, jazz-infused sketches were written on guitar, with cascading keyboards, vibraphone and drum machine. Possessing a restorative and soothing quality, it goes some way to balancing out a chaotic year for the world at large.
With echoes of the dreamier end of 1980s English indie-pop, minimal ambient music and Brazilian bossa-nova, Topper’s musical storybook includes touches of The Durutti Column, hints of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Baden Powell, whilst all set all firmly in the summer fields of Germany and the Netherlands.
The recording method used for the creation and recording of Tape 3 and Tape 4 follows the same as his previous release: all sketches were initially recorded onto cassette on a 4-track tape machine. Most notably a vibraphone finds its way onto almost every track fitting Topper’s sound-palette perfectly: warm yet distinctive, a percussive as well as sustaining sound that evokes some melancholy and a certain timeless nostalgia. Features that most certainly also apply to the other ‘new’ instrument on the tapes: mellotron flutes.
Tape 3/Tape 4 navigates the space between quiet, open, meditative tunes and more solid instrumental works, reflecting his constant search for an optimal balance between stillness and movement.

TRACK LISTING

Filatelie
Tartufai
Tiquetonne
Veluwe
Herausweh
Talmen
Heisei
Brunnengasse
Colorists
Langeweile
Beaufort
Somnambulant 
Regtur
Midori

Cut live to tape with very little overdubbing, Undress was recorded in the late summer of 2018 in Germantown, New York. Band members Ian Felice, James Felice, Will Lawrence (drums) and Jesske Hume (bass) teamed up with producer Jeremy Backofen to record their most personal and reflective album to date.

Many of the songs on the new album are motivated by a shift from private to public concerns, says songwriter Ian Felice. It isn’t hard to find worthwhile things to write about these days, there are a lot of storms blooming on the horizon and a lot of chaos that permeates our lives. The hard part is finding simple and direct ways to address them.

Undress follows the bands 2016 album Life In The Dark, and finds the group in a very different place three years later. Between personnel changes, families growing and the political landscape, the result is a tighter, more-paired down release. Every song is a story, said James Felice. On this album everything was a bit more thoughtful, including the arrangements, the sonic quality and the harmonies.

TRACK LISTING

Undress
Holy Weight Champ
Special Announcement
Nail It On The First Try
Salvation Army Girl
Poor Blind Birds
TV Mama
The Kid
Hometown Hero
Jack Reminiscing
Days Of The Year
Socrates

The Felice Brothers kicked off in 2006. They did what any delinquent youths, lost in upstate New York with dim job prospects would do: become obsessed with traveling the world and playing extremely loud rock and roll. After settling on minor matters like who plays what (Ian Felice- vocals/guitar, James Felice- accordion/keys/vocals, Greg Farley- fiddle/vocals, Josh Rawson- bass/vocals. Recent addition David Estabrook- old friend/new drummer – completes the current line up), the band procured instruments, cans of sardines and packed up tents and devoted their lives to studying the art of song craft. It was a long way to the top.

The Felice Brothers' new album 'Favorite Waitress' marked the first time the band ever recorded in a proper studio. Produced by the band's longtime producer and collaborator Jeremy Backofen, the album is their most fully realized statement yet.

The Felice Brothers return with nine songs in their unique blend of folk, country, rock and soul. Uncut magazine has described the band as, "just glorious". Life in the Dark was recorded in the garage on a farm in upstate New York, with no distractions and no outside influences.

So, it's not surprising the band produced the album themselves. Highlights include, "Aerosol Ball," and "Plunder." The Felice Brothers will be playing select shows and festivals throughout the spring and summer, with a US Tour scheduled for the fall and UK/EU dates in the winter.

The Felice Brothers got their start as a band playing in the New York City subway. They stayed in a little apartment in Brooklyn and would play in the subway stations at 42nd Street and Union Square and in Greenwich Village. The three brothers originally hail from Palenville, New York in the Catskill Mountains.

The band has five main members: Ian and James Felice, their friend Josh "Christmas Clapton" Rawson, previously a traveling dice player, fiddle player Greg Farley and drummer David Estabrook. Ian is the main vocalist and plays the guitar and piano. James contributes vocals and plays the accordion, organ, and piano. Christmas plays the bass guitar.

Simone Felice is a founding member (lyricist, vocalist, drummer and guitarist) of internationally acclaimed, Catskill Mountain-based artists The Felice Brothers and The Duke & The King. He has toured and worked with the likes of The Band's Levon Helm, Conor Oberst & Bright Eyes, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Rick Rubin, The Avett Brothers, and Old Crow Medicine Show.

In 2010 Simone underwent emergency open-heart surgery to correct the slow, degenerative effects of a childhood fever. It was this close brush with death, coupled with the need to tell his own story, which prompted him to walk the solo artist's path. His new full-length album, Strangers, is a ten song collection recorded in the Catskills with guest artists The Felice Brothers, Leah Siegel, and Wesley Schultz & Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers. Here is an effort that truly captures Simone's rare gift as a poet, song-crafter and unique visionary.

In The Kingdom Of Dreams is the debut solo album from Ian Felice of The Felice Brothers. The album was recorded in his childhood home of Palenville NY, with his brother Simone Felice on production duties. Simone produced and co-wrote recent hit albums from The Lumineers and Bat For Lashes. On the album, Ian was joined by fellow Felice Brothers James Felice on keys, Simone Felice on drums and Josh Rawson on bass. The Felice Brothers was conceived in 2006 after the recording of Iantown, a 10 song album of Ian’s first songs recorded in one night in January of 2006. In The Kingdom of Dreams is a collection of songs Ian wrote in 2016 and recorded over the course of 4 days in February of 2017, with his brother Simone at the helm.

Simone Felice has long dedicated his storied life to the arts, and perhaps his brushes with death during childhood as heard in the song “No Tomorrows” have proved an unlikely but powerful source of inspiration. All The Bright Coins is his latest, arguably greatest devotion to song and the power of the words within it. Yet, like all artists worth their salt, he claims not to have quite grasped what he’s been reaching for.

There had been no grand plans to write this new album. Simone was happy with his lot and becoming increasingly more successful as a frontline record producer and songwriter (The Lumineers, Bat For Lashes, Jade Bird, Matt Maeson f/ Lana Del Rey, and indeed, The Felice Brothers) but, he muses, sometimes the lure and pull of penning his own material becomes too strong to resist, most closely referenced in the track “Puppet” f/ Four Tet. “Year Around The Sun”, written on New Year’s morning in 2021, after a year of endless lockdowns and constant fear and confusion, is a recalibration of what’s real and what’s important.

With help from friends, music, laughter & time, we’ll find a rebirth. I began writing All The Bright Coins in 2019,” says Felice. “It had been several years since I had written anything of my own, as I’d felt called to produce records and write with other artists I love. Then one rainy morning I wrote ‘Puppet,’ a mainly autobiographical tune about the dark, empty, and farcical side of being an underground touring troubadour most of my adult life.

Part of me felt as though perhaps this should, and would, be the last Simone Felice song I’d ever put out, ‘Puppet stand, Puppet bow,’ a final curtain call. But then a few months later I wrote ‘Prisoner,’ and then‘ Bare Trees.’ The ‘Heat’ (that’s what myself and a few close friends call it: that sweet, painful, ungovernable whisper) was with me once again... All The Bright Coins is a richly rewarding and inspired sound, that makes a personal connection with the listener. It’s built squarely on a bedrock of emotion, utilizing an acoustic guitar, and occasionally a piano to back the distinctive voice. It’s a record that requires attention, a headphones record.

TRACK LISTING

1. Year Around The Sun
2. Moonlight Promises
3. The World's Fair Simone Felice Feat. Four Tet
4. Puppet Simone Felice Feat. Four Tet
5. 90s
6. No Tomorrows
7. All The Kings Of The Earth

Following a run with Cherry Red Records that featured a potential major label jump, guitarist Maurice Deebank quitting and rejoining multiple times, several pop stardom carrots just out of reach, mixing battles with Robin Guthrie, and a shocking entry into the record charts, Lawrence (just “Lawrence”, like “Cher” or “Madonna” thank you very much) knew he would be making a change with his band Felt. He would be seeing out his plan of ten albums and ten singles in ten years alongside a new partner in Creation Records. This compilation beautifully captures those years. Creation was beginning a rapid ascent at the time, with Alan McGee serving as its hyperactive mouthpiece and focal point. McGee was all in on the band. “Lawrence achieved pop perfection, a breathless rush of sensitivity and intelligence. It was too understated to be commercial, too art to go pop, too pop to go art—in other words it was a perfect combination of all the music I loved at the time.” McGee was thrilled to have what he considered a real star on the label, and Lawrence was equally thrilled to have such an enthusiastic cheerleader. He funneled that enthusiasm into some of the most focused songwriting of his career, as well as some of his wildest experiments, all of which are on display here.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Will Die With My Head In Flames
2. Stained-Glass Windows In The Sky
3. I Didn't Mean To Hurt You
4. Space Blues
5. Autumn
6. Be Still
7. There's No Such Thing As Victory
8. Magellan
9. The Final Resting Of The Ark
10. Sandman's On The Rise Again
11. Don't Die On My Doorstep
12. Tuesday's Secret
13. Book Of Swords
14. Female Star
15. Fire Circle
16. The Darkest Ending
17. Bitter End
18. Rain Of Crystal Spires
19. Voyage To Illumination
20. Ballad Of The Band

Anyone who’s been living on the grapevine these past few years must have heard the rumours about the coming of the FELT reissues – well they’re here.

During the ‘80s Felt made ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This beautifully produced series examines the work of one of the greatest underground groups of modern times. These records, unavailable for many years, have been remastered and revisited by Lawrence, and he has fashioned the ultimate definitive collections.

Lawrence’s ambition was to release the best debut English album ever! Adrian Borland offered his services, then commitments with his band The Sound prevented this from happening. So Felt began a relationship with Swell Maps producer John A. Rivers. Recorded and mixed in six days the band got a taste of how bitter reality fares compared to the “mellow fruitfulness” of blind ambition.

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1. Evergreen Dazed - Felt
2. Fortune - Felt
3. Birdmen - Felt
4. Cathedral - Felt
5. I Worship The Sun - Felt
6. Templeroy – Felt

Bonus 7" (With CD Format)
1. Something Sends Me To Sleep - Felt
2. Something Sends Me To Sleep (Alternate Version) - Felt

Following the release of FELT’s first five albums in February, the band’s reissue campaign continues with the second half of their discography. During the ‘80s Felt recorded ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This gorgeously-produced series explores the work of one of the greatest indie groups in recent memory. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Rain Of Crystal Spires
2. Down But Not Yet Out
3. September Lady
4. Grey Streets
5. All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead
6. Gather Up Your Wings And Fly
7. A Wave Crashed On Rocks
8. Hours Of Darkness Have Changed My Mind

7"
1. Primitive Painters
2. Cathedral

Lawrence Hayward knew that he wanted to be a pop star as a teen, and he devised a plan to release ten albums and ten singles over ten years to make that dream come true. A particular and determined individual, he would only be known as Lawrence from that day forward. His hopes for stardom would be pinned on his newly formed band, the succinctly named Felt. Soon signed to Cherry Red Records, Lawrence’s achingly cool vocals and the group’s way with walking melodies were evident on their debut for the label, “Something Sends Me To Sleep.” This compilation collects material from Felt’s Cherry Red period of 1981 to 1985, kicking off with that confident start, assembling numerous high points, and closing with their biggest hit, “Primitive Painters.” This phase of the band is defined by the songwriting partnership and unique interplay of Lawrence and guitarist Maurice Deebank, with Deebank’s stylish and confident playing the envy of many of their counterparts. He delivers a constant string of shimmering hooks that wrap themselves around and over top of Lawrence’s more traditional beat combo song structures, as if trying to fit four songs worth of ideas into a pre-set radio friendly cutoff time. It works wonderfully as Lawrence always counters with a solid bedrock. In one of many brushes with the brass ring, in 1984 Felt recorded versions of “Dismantled King Is Off The Throne” and “Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow,” for the newly formed and Warners-backed label Blanco y Negro, in hopes that the band would follow their A+R man Mike Alway to the executive suite. Despite putting forward two of their finest songs, it was not to be. While major label dreams had to remain on the shelf, fans were delighted to be able to hear these beautifully stripped down and more direct versions when this compilation was released a few years later. By 1985 the Felt roller coaster was something Maurice Deebank was constantly getting on and off of. As Gary Ainge always kept the beat, and Lawrence never lost focus, they were joined by local teen prodigy Martin Duffy on keyboards, filling out the arrangements, and following Deebank’s racing six-string cascades in “The Day The Rain Came Down” you can even hear a tiny hint of the next phase of the band in Duffy’s organ before Maurice swoops to the finish. The newly expanded Felt would then put everything they had into making one of the defining releases of the 80s: “Primitive Painters.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Something Sends Me To Sleep
2. Trails Of Colour Dissolve
3. Dismantled King Is Off The Throne
4. Penelope Tree
5. Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow
6. Crystal Ball
7. The Day The Rain Came Down
8. Fortune
9. Vasco Da Gama
10. Primitive Painters

Anyone who’s been living on the grapevine these past few years must have heard the rumours about the coming of the FELT reissues – well they’re here.

During the ‘80s Felt made ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This beautifully produced series examines the work of one of the greatest underground groups of modern times. These records, unavailable for many years, have been remastered and revisited by Lawrence, and he has fashioned the ultimate definitive collections.

Produced by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins and featuring the skyscraping vocal of Elizabeth Fraser on the mighty Primitive Painters. Felt found themselves at the top of the independent charts. Unhappy with the overall sound though – it was as if some of Lawrence’s best songs were lost in an “ethereal swirl.” John A. Rivers has been given access to the original master tapes and six songs have been remixed. Also – side 2 has been focused, edited and “made symmetrical.” Finally these songs can be heard as intended by Felt. It has become at long last a cohesive whole.

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1. My Darkest Light Will Shine (Remixed)
2. The Day The Rain Came Down (Remixed)
3. Scarlet Servants (Remixed)
4. I Don’t Know Which Way To Turn (Remixed)
5. Primitive Painters
6. Textile Ranch
7. Black Ship In The Harbour (Remixed)
8. Elegance In D
9. Caspian See (Remixed)
10. Southern State Tapestry

Bonus 7" (Comes With Deluxe CD)
1. Mexican Bandits
2. The World Is As Soft As Lace

Following the release of FELT’s first five albums in February, the band’s reissue campaign continues with the second half of their discography. During the ‘80s Felt recorded ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This gorgeously-produced series explores the work of one of the greatest indie groups in recent memory.

TRACK LISTING

Disc: 1
1. I Can’t Make Love To You Anymore
2. Mobile Shack
3. Free
4. Budgie Jacket
5. Cartoon Sky
6. New Day Dawning
7. Down An August Path
8. Never Let You Go
9. She Deals In Crosses
10. Get Out Of My Mirror

Disc: 2 (7”)
1. Space Blues
2. Tuesday’s Secret

Following the release of FELT’s first five albums in February, the band’s reissue campaign continues with the second half of their discography. During the ‘80s Felt recorded ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This gorgeously-produced series explores the work of one of the greatest indie groups in recent memory. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Declaration
2. Silver Plane
3. She Lives By The Castle
4. Stained-Glass Windows In The Sky
5. Riding On The Equator
6. Dark Red Birds

7”
1. Ballad Of The Band
2. I Didn’t Mean To Hurt You

Following the release of FELT’s first five albums in February, the band’s reissue campaign continues with the second half of their discography. During the ‘80s Felt recorded ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This gorgeously-produced series explores the work of one of the greatest indie groups in recent memory. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Apple Boutique
2. Ivory Past
3. Until The Fools Get Wise
4. How Spook Got Her Man
5. Bitter End
6. Tuesday’s Secret
7. Christopher Street
8. Jewels Are Set In Crowns
9. Under A Pale Light
10. Don’t Die On My Doorstep

7"
1. Rain Of Crystal Spires
2. I Will Die With My Head In Flames

Anyone who’s been living on the grapevine these past few years must have heard the rumours about the coming of the FELT reissues – well they’re here.

During the ‘80s Felt made ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This beautifully produced series examines the work of one of the greatest underground groups of modern times. These records, unavailable for many years, have been remastered and revisited by Lawrence, and he has fashioned the ultimate definitive collections.

Previously named Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death, this album is now retitled The Seventeenth Century – the original name for the album was changed late in the day. This reversal of misfortune was classed as an awful mistake and Lawrence’s biggest regret. Flash forward to now and this situation can finally be rectified. “You can’t change the title of an album” - they told him – so he said; “if Kraftwerk can and Bowie can then I can too!!”

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1. Song For William S. Harvey
2. Ancient City Where I Lived
3. Seventeenth Century
4. The Palace
5. Indian Scriptures
6. The Nazca Plain
7. Jewel Sky
8. Viking Dress
9. Voyage To Illumination
10. Sapphire Mansions

Bonus 7" (Comes With Deluxe CD)
1. Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow
2. Sunlight Strings

Anyone who’s been living on the grapevine these past few years must have heard the rumours about the coming of the FELT reissues – well they’re here.

During the ‘80s Felt made ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This beautifully produced series examines the work of one of the greatest underground groups of modern times. These records, unavailable for many years, have been remastered and revisited by Lawrence, and he has fashioned the ultimate definitive collections.

Lawrence escapes the contours of a bland city and retreats into his mind. Felt had risen from the underworld searching for a new horizon but only managed to slip into a desolate obscurity! Dark black slabs of creosote guitar – vast swathes of epic interplay – casting futuristic Shadows – an idiosyncratic and unobtrusively brilliant band, the music Felt made on this album is unlike anything attempted before. This really is a template for an age yet to come. And it pays to know that Maurice Deebank now resides in a monastery in Birmingham!

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1. Red Indians - Felt
2. The World Is As Soft As Lace - Felt
3. The Optimist And The Poet - Felt
4. Mexican Bandits - Felt
5. The Stagnant Pool - Felt
6. A Preacher In New England - Felt

Bonus 7" (With Deluxe CD Format)
1. Trails Of Colour Dissolve - Felt
2. My Face Is On Fire - Felt

Lawrence escapes the contours of a bland city and retreats into his mind. Felt had risen from the underworld searching for a new horizon but only managed to slip into a desolate obscurity! Dark black slabs of creosote guitar – vast swathes of epic interplay – casting futuristic shadows – an idiosyncratic and unobtrusively brilliant band, the music Felt made on this album is unlike anything attempted before. This really is a template for an age yet to come.

During the ‘80s Felt made ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This beautifully produced series examines the work of one of the greatest underground groups of modern times.

Before the Stone Roses and after Be-Bop Deluxe and Plastic Ono Band, John Leckie worked with Felt. Booked into a metal/reggae studio in Birmingham’s industrial wasteland he sculpted a Michelangelo slice of new rock – exquisite and beautiful guitar odysseys – quite unlike anything the city had experienced before. Merging pop with a classical nuance Felt stood alone as the forerunners of a brand new style.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1 Red Indians
2 The World Is As Soft As Lace
3 The Optimist And The Poet
Side Two
1 Mexican Bandits
2 The Stagnant Pool
3 A Preacher In New England

Anyone who’s been living on the grapevine these past few years must have heard the rumours about the coming of the FELT reissues – well they’re here.

During the ‘80s Felt made ten albums and ten singles for the Cherry Red and Creation labels. This beautifully produced series examines the work of one of the greatest underground groups of modern times. These records, unavailable for many years, have been remastered and revisited by Lawrence, and he has fashioned the ultimate definitive collections.

Before the Stone Roses and after Be-Bop Deluxe and Plastic Ono Band, John Leckie worked with Felt. Booked into a metal/reggae studio in Birmingham’s industrial wasteland he sculpted a Michelangelo slice of new rock – exquisite and beautiful guitar odysseys – quite unlike anything the city had experienced before. Merging pop with a classical nuance Felt stood alone as the forerunners of a brand new style. And Gary Ainge was finally allowed to use his high-hat!

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1. Roman Litter
2. Sempiternal Darkness
3. Spanish House
4. Imprint
5. Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow
6. Vasco Da Gama
7. Crucifix Heaven
8. Dismantled King Is Off The Throne
9. Crystal Ball
10. Whirlpool Vision Of Shame 

Bonus 7" (Comes With Deluxe CD)
1. Penelope Tree
2. A Preacher In New England