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 ‘Peace Song’ is available on limited edition 12” vinyl, backed by a glitchy breakbeat version from TowerBlock1, the creative alias of Jimmy Cauty (The KLF/The Orb).

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”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A wild and uncompromising mix of electroclash, industrial and rave aesthetics wrapped around indie instrumentation and garage rock production. Effortlessly fleeting from soaring synth atmospherics into snarling, driving mayhem. Wildly brilliant.

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

Fat Freddy’s Drop hit the ground running with new studio album 'SLO MO', a bass-heavy blast of redemption and resolution. Described by Fitchie as 'afro rhythmic soul music, an exploration of Black music from Polynesia’, this heady mix creates the undefinable Freddy’s sound. Renowned worldwide for euphoric live shows, the Aotearoa band stepped inside their BAYS studio in Wellington, sunup to sundown, to craft a sixth studio album. 'SLO MO' is the strongest studio representation yet of a Freddy’s live show’, says Chopper Reeds. 'Usually we take the stage to the studio and this time, we're excited about taking our studio creation on to the stage.'

Emerging with nine tunes, 'SLO MO' will drop first on double vinyl, opening the door for the full length album to be experienced as a body of work curated as Freddys intended.

Chopper Reeds continues, 'Towards the latter part of the record, Joe Dukie’s vocal presence becomes quite spectral allowing listeners to inject themselves into the music.

The evocative cover art is by Dan Tippett, Aotearoa New Zealand Artist, who describes the image as ‘an ancient ngahere forest in a Jurassic Aotearoa dreamtime.’

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Deep, dubby grooves and snappy guitar bursts, athletic soulful vocals and warm horn swells. It's the classic Fat Freddy's Drop experience, with even more of an emphasis on recreating the energy of their spellbinding live show.

TRACK LISTING

1. AVENGERS
2. SLO MO
3. NEXT STOP FEAT MC SLAVE
4. STAND STRAIGHT
5. OLDEMOS
6. OUT TO SEA
7. ROLAND
8. GETTING LATE
9. I DON’T WANNA SEE YOU

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

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. 

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

After a decade being born, Josh Tillman is finally busy dying.

'Mahashmashana' is the sixth album by Father John Misty. It was produced by Josh Tillman and Drew Erickson. It was engineered and additionally produced by Michael Harris. It was arranged by Drew Erickson. It was performed by Josh Tillman, Drew Erickson, Jonathan Wilson, Dan Bailey, Eli Thomson, David Vandervelde, Chris Dixie Darley, Jon Titterington, and Kyle Flynn. It was executive produced by Jonathan Wilson.It was recorded and mixed at Five Star and East/West , United and Drew's House

'Mahasmasana' -- great cremation ground, all things going thither.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This feels like a distillation of the serious side of Father John Misty, partially eschewing the humoured twists and surprising musical frivolity of his earlier works. For me, this really shows the skill of a musician and in this instance, a great look at the other side of Josh Tillman.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mahashmashana
2. She Cleans Up
3. Josh Tillman And The Accidental Dose
4. Mental Health
5. Screamland
6. Being You
7. I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All
8. Summer's Gone

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)

Father John Misty’s landmark 2015 sophomore album, I Love You, Honeybear, is back on vinyl, remastered and repackaged as a single LP (It was originally released as a double LP).

The now-classic album includes fan favorites “Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins),” and the title track, “I Love You, Honeybear.” On release I Love You, Honeybear earned a Pitchfork Best New Music, a perfect score from Exclaim!, and rave reviews from NME, Mojo, Q, Spin, and more. It was hailed as one of the best albums of 2015 by Pitchfork, Billboard, The A.V. Club, NME, and Stereogum. I Love You, Honeybear was produced by Josh Tillman and Jonathan Wilson, and mixed by Phil Ek. This 2024 edition was remastered in 2024 by Adam Ayan at Ayan Mastering.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Love You, Honeybear
2. Chateau Lobby #4 (in C For Two Virgins)
3. True Affection
4. The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apt.
5. When You're Smiling And Astride Me
6. Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow
7. Strange Encounter
8. The Ideal Husband
9. 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

South Street Soul are on a roll with another fantastic re-issue, this time championing two singles by US Funk band Father's Children. Originating from Washington DC, the band rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 70's, releasing a debut album on Mercury Records, which Wayne Henderson of The Crusaders produced. Notice to collectors and diggers; this takes the two killer tracks from the album nicely replicating the 1979 original 45, which would set you back over £100.On the A-side, 'Hollywood Dreaming’, is a laidback revivalist soulful groover that will undoubtedly give your hips and shoulders a shuffle. On the flip, feel the funk with ‘Shine On’. A commanding slap bassline runs throughout the track with harmonised vocals and stabbing horns. Lace them up people, it's time to cut some rug!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hollywood Dreaming
B1. Shine On

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

Faun Fables’ most encompassing collection of “songtelling” to date: a true family album, etched exquisitely and studded with fine-hewed jewels of song. The richly lived-in atmosphere is a sonic world unto itself. Timeless folk music, warmly redolent of traditions passed down in an eternal recurrence that promises renewal – the a joyous counterclockwise movement spread over generation upon generation.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Wedding
2. Ember Bell
3. Washing Song
4. Widdershins
5. Black Diamond
6. Elfrida
7. Fearful Name
8. Black Angels (Czarne Anioły)
9. Woolsey Street & The Lake Of Fire
10. Sugar Camp
11. Lullaby
12. Hiawatha
13. Wonderous Stories
14. Maybe
15. Joy Of Counterclockwise
16. Celestial Bell

‘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 dipping into the archive to deliver a series of essential reissues, Bureau B continue to encourage the chaotic brilliance of Faust with an LP of brand new music curated by originator Zappi Diermaier and a band of musical friends, including fellow founder Gunther Wüsthoff. Over the years Faust has become many things, each as separate as the fingers, but as together as the hand which makes up their eponymous fist. From 1971 to 1974 the Hamburg band blazed a bold sonic trail, helping to create the distinct and delirious strand of German music we've come to know as Krautrock. Uncompromising, innovative and experimental, their releases in that period, and the stories accompanying their creation, are nothing short of legendary, and the fact that after a hiatus, the band returned and remained active in a variety of separate and simultaneous incarnations is entirely fitting for these musical revolutionaries. On Blickwinkel, Diermaier's incarnation embrace synchronicity and chance in order to capture the moment in a six track snapshot of industrial churn, unsettling ambience and psychedelic motorik.

Sonically and politically, Blickwinkel is a profoundly Faustian venture, a communal project based on democratic ideals which eschews external influences to create something entirely out on its own. As with the previous LP, Daumenbruch, the journey started with Zappi behind a drum kit at the home studio of his neighbour Dirk Dresselhaus AKA Schneider TM (bass), alongside electronics whizz Elke Drapatz (drum effects). The trio embarked on a session of instant composition, playing wordlessly with a deep empathy to each other as well as the energy in the room. While the Daumenbruch session, which took place in the midst of lockdown, delivered three long-form pieces, this two hour spell served up six diverse tracks, an audio analogue for the speed of life post-lockdown. These considered and complex creations, as far from simple jams as it gets, were mixed by Dirk in a third hour, and then sent off to a varied cast of collaborators, each adding their overdubs independently with no knowledge of what the others were doing.

These contributions came via a multidisciplinary melange of approaches and instruments including Gunther Wusthoff's Spieluhr (a sequencer unit he built for his ARP synth back in the early 1970s) and Andrew Unruh's percussive objects; the guitar, kalimba and harmonium of Jochen Arbeit (all twisted through an fx unit, naturally) and Sonja Kosche's inventive use of a harp fashioned out of the wires of a bed and a ventilator. Drones, delays, clatter and clang came from all corners - in fact, only Uwe Bastiansen (Stadtfisch) added melodies, lending long distance support to Dirk Dresselhaus' insistent bass sequences, and channeling the magic of their moment into potent pagan tonalities. Despite their differing practices and processes, these musicians all have a long history together, and their free association produced unexpected outcomes which were embraced by Zappi and Dirk when it came to reassemblage. Dismissing veto power as the height of neo-liberal bullshit, they chose to keep more or less all the overdubs on the album, harnessing the power of arrangement and the mixing desk to fuse all these assorted elements into the impactful entities you hear on Blickwinkel.

The result is a shapeshifter, at times commune friendly psychedelia, then grinding industrial, eerie ambient or driving motorik, but always refusing easy categorisation. The stylistic definitions are constantly disrupted by unexpected guests - baroque strings, impish horns, found sound breakdowns, or else mind melting phasing and flanging - each offering a new combination on this

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: You know you're always in for a winner with a Bureau B release, and this time sees the turn of legendary Krautrockers, Faust. Zappi Diermaier and a host of collaborators smash through a selection of wild psychedelic grooves and insistent hypnotic jangles. Brilliantly done, as ever.

TRACK LISTING

A1 For Schlaghammer
A2 Künstliche Intelligenz
A3 Sunny Night
B1 Kriminelle Kur
B2 Die 5. Revolution
B3 Kratie

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

Originally released in 1972. This is 2010 re-release available in limited numbers. Original artwork, remastered by Hans-Joachim Irmler. Originally released on Polydor

Faust’s “So Far” (1972) presents the more commercial and accessible side of the legendary German krautrock band without giving up their advanced and experimental personality. It is a perfect album to begin exploring the group's discography, featuring one of their most well-known songs, ‘It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl,’ and is considered a striking work on par with Neu!'s first album or Can's “Tago Mago”. Preceding other artists like Throbbing Gristle and Nurse with Wound, Faust were pioneers in creating industrial and futuristic atmospheres using processed rhythms, as on the track ‘Mamie is Blue.’ An essential krautrock masterpiece.

Remastered from the original tapes.

Faux Real’s long-awaited debut album 'Faux Ever' is a self-described “11-piece-symphony for head-banging and longing,” the album sees the fraternal duo continuing to play on the outskirts of language and sound, exploring themes of heartbreak, labor, and the home with harmonies and humor, playful beats, and en franglais. Recorded between Paris, New York, London, Los Angeles, and Provence, 'Faux Ever' thrusts Faux Real’s sultry, surreal, and unclassifiable sound towards a glossier pop horizon, an existential sonic pastiche with a glistening digital sheen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Faux Maux
2. Rent Free
3. Sketches Of Pain
4. Love On The Ground
5. The More I Know
6. 99 Ghosts
7. Walking Away From My Demons
8. Hi Tension
9. Workhorse
10. Full Circle
11. Scratch

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.

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

New Zealand artist and producer Fazerdaze (Amelia Murray) explores the complexities of womanhood on her transformational sophomore album, 'Soft Power'.

Across 11 self-dubbed “bedroom stadium” tracks, Amelia melds dreamy synths and electronic beats with rock band elements, creating a sound that balances gritty authenticity and refined pop brilliance. Soft Power was recorded and produced by Amelia herself and explores themes of devotion, fierce self-compassion, and matured self-awareness.

Soft Power follows Fazerdaze's 2017 cult classic debut Morningside and 2022 Break! EP, which were praised by outlets including Pitchfork, MOJO, The Guardian, and more.

TRACK LISTING

1. Soft Power
2. So Easy
3. Bigger
4. Dancing Years
5. In Blue
6. A Thousand Years
7. Purple
8. Distorted Dreams
9. Cherry Pie
10. Sleeper
11. City Glitter

If the protagonist of Daft Punk’s ‘Da Funk’ was walking around the streets of New York City today there’d be one thing playing on their boombox and it’d be Fcukers. Whilst on their journey throughout the Lower East Side they'd probably end up running into members of the band working nightlife jobs as DJs, throwing parties in local bars and restaurants or simply finding the frequency of Manhattan’s beat and locking in. Fronted by the energetic and enigmatic Shanny Wise (previously of The Shacks) and backed by producer/nightlife DJ Jackson Walker Lewis, Fcukers have discovered their own new frequency where a history of playing together and in other projects has led them to syncing on a singular vision built around 90s/00s house music, tasteful trip hop, big beat, indie rock and everything in between. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Bon Bon
2. Heart Dub
3. Homie Don’t Shake
4. UMPA
5. I Don’t Wanna
6. Tommy

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.

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!!!

Second slice of mystic cosmic funk from Golden Ape Records...Collaborators are Fedka & the Wulf, with Luke’s Anger on the remix tip, bringing their wonky hardwired electro funk to the label. They have been warping minds and shaking bootsies as part of Pest on Ninja Tune since the ’90s and now are bringing all that funk to bear on this release.

"Beardvasion" is a super limited vinyl - 100 only! - 4 track EP with radically different missions. "Beardvasion" - original mix has filthy bass bent on destroying speakers. Luke's "Anger" remix is a hard jacking minimal workout. "Earlyworm" is a twisted shout out to Detroit, and "Serena" a funk flavoured electro sugar rush. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Angry but fun technoid / industrial freakout that should appeal to the weirder corners of the club. Got a bit of that microhouse madness to it, like Akufen, Magda, Matthew Herbert et al. Well good!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Beardvasion - Original Mix
A2. Serena
B1. Beardvasion - Luke’s Anger Remix
B2. Earlyworm

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

It says a lot about the interconnectedness of the global dubwise underground that it took downtime with Bristolian Neek in Portland to spur the link between ZamZam and Feel Free Hi Fi out of the Minneapolis Twin Cities. Once he put us on to them we were hooked- not only by their brilliant music but by their rigorously DIY approach and aesthetic. Heavily inspired by the more esoteric angles of early digi-era JA dancehall and UK dub (Shaka, Disciples, Mixman and Gussie P being some touchstones) the duo create a sound both reverential and unique, steeped in the traditions but striking out hard left into idiosyncratic territory all their own. Releasing all of their works up to this point on their own fantastic Digital Sting label, we’re excited to showcase them on ZamZam.

In “Voyageur” an ominous mid-range figure, heaving synth bass and complex intertwining melodies drive the tune into heavily cinematic territory, thick atmospherics and strange synthetic animal calls like a lost John Carpenter soundtrack-in-dub. The duo says, “Voyageur in its title speaks a bit to the mythic, mysterious, but also very real wild places of the North Country where we live... and how it all rubs up against the contemporary urban environment.”

“Underground”s opening stabs, bassline and drums could have time-travelled from Unity Sounds or Jammys, but bring an eerie darkness in their deployment that is unmistakably now. Feel Free Hi Fi explain, “Underground in its title is a tribute to the spirit of underground music, of the DIY non commercial ethos... So the tunes together kind of speak to time and change, and the struggle of what's going on now. Trying to preserve the environment and and also the wild places of basement and warehouse gigs, and the outsider mentality of underground music that also seems like it's fading away but hopefully isn't lost.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Leading soundsystem killers, ZamZam Sounds enlist Minnesota's avant dubwise fashionistas Feel Free Hi Fi to ramp up the low hertz for a double header of digi-dub steppers aggression.

TRACK LISTING

A. Voyageur
B. Underground 

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.

'Only Life' is the third album by the American rock band the Feelies, released in 1988.It was made with the same line-up that appeared on the band's previous album, 'The Good Earth'.The album contains a cover of the Velvet Underground's 'What Goes On'. The album peaked at No. 173 on the Billboard 200. Jonathan Demme directed the video for 'Away'. 'Only Life' has been described as an "updated and mature form" of its predecessor, 'Crazy Rhythms'. It features fewer acoustic tracks, with a "greater focus on speedy jangle-strum rockers"

TRACK LISTING

1. It's Only Life
2. Too Much
3. Deep Fascination
4. Higher Ground
5. The Undertow
6. For Awhile
7. The Final Word
8. Too Far Gone
9. Away
10. What Goes On

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’

'Time for a Witness' is the fourth studio album by the American rock band the Feelies, released in 1991 on A&M/Coyote. Most of the lyrics were written by Glenn Mercer.[4] The album was co-produced by Gary Smith. The band would tape their rehearsals and look for interesting parts in the jams. 'What She Said' uses harmonica and slide guitar. 'Real Cool Time' is a cover of the Stooges song. Ensemble playing was always vital to the Feelies, and Time for a Witness is a superb document of the musicians' interaction. On Time for a Witness, what the Feelies say isn't as important as how they say it. Their sonic articulation here is outstanding. The Feelies broke up months after this LP was released. Despite its flaws, Time for a Witness shows they bowed out in proud form. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Waiting
2. Time For A Witness
3. Sooner Or Later
4. Find A Way
5. Decide
6. Doin' It Again
7. Invitation
8. For Now
9. What She Said
10. Real Cool Time

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)

Having moved into their North London flat together back in September 2019, FEET are now living “like a hive mind” and have level-upped their kinship - both as people and artists - several times over. Spending endless days making music, the band’s journey since their debut has been a rollercoaster - one with a definite U-turn. An initial batch of songs ended up being entirely scrapped after a sobering practice room realisation that, far from sounding like a cohesive second record, “one song sounded like a covers pub band, and another sounded like Eminem could throw some bars over it,” notes Callum.

And so, they sat down to write a manifesto: one that would tame their overflowing pot of ideas and put some necessary parameters around what they were doing. “No wanky guitar solos, no sailor outfits, no bringing a broom onstage,” jokes George. All fair points. But as well as that, the band started digging into what they actually wanted to sound like, setting up their home studio and taking a bigger interest in production and the atmosphere of the tracks, trying to hit the cross-section of pop music and something a little darker that they’ve always loitered around.

“We’re not a post punk band, we don’t sound like a ‘London band’ whatever that is, but the indie reference in our shared hive mind is related to a major label, squeaky clean sound which isn’t what we want from our band,” explains George. “You either go the mainstream route or the sleazy South London route and we’re slap bang in the middle, so we’re trying to state our spot. We’re pretty comfortable where we are and this is the direction we wanna take it in”.

‘Walking Machine EP’ takes these ideas and moulds them into four tracks that show a band still more than willing to throw in a liberal smattering of humour at the right moment, but who aren’t relying just on japes to get them through. They’ve still got a classically FEET name for their new direction, Crease Pop, but even that’s got some logic to it. “It’s taking the pop music formula - hooky choruses, nothing too self-indulgent - but it’s still got a bit of edge,” says George. “With Indie music, there’s an element where it can get quite soft and it’s quite easy to go through that phase where you think you sound like The Beach Boys, but we’ve come off the end of that where we want to be a bit grittier.”

Having beamed fans into their living room over lockdown with a series of livestreams imbued with more genuine live show energy than most, the tight-knit camaraderie the band have honed over the past year is there for all to see. Far from the group of novices they first emerged as, FEET are now a proper unit.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Peace & Quiet
Library

Side B
Busy Waiting
Arena

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”

Gummy Soul's Amerigo Gazway mixes tracks from Afro-beat legend Fela Kuti with acapellas from hip hop pioneers De La Soul to killer effect. A 33 minute long journey into the world of Afro-beat rhythms, funky horn riffs, and classic hip-hop gems. Eight tracks in total, including mash-ups of "Stakes Is High", "Trouble In The Water", "Itsoweezee" and Gorillaz track "Feel Good Inc".

Gazway says; 'I came up with the concept for this project in fall of 2010. I wanted to follow through with it not only because it was a great mash-up title and good idea, but because of the powerful impact both these artists have had on me and my music. Afro-beat, jazz, funk, and hip-hop are already so interconnected, and I always thought it would be exciting to work on a project that combined all of these elements together.'

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Don't sleep on this much needed repress of this Amerigo Gazaway classic. Exactly the same formula as his other imperative works only with Fela Kuti & De La Soul as the source material! There's even a Gorillaz track mashed up for good measure!

TRACK LISTING

Stakes Is High (5:44)
Trouble In The Water (4:43)
Oooh (feat Redman) (4:02)
Rock Co. Kane Flow (feat Mf Doom) (2:23)
Itsoweezee (3:54)
Interlude (0:24)
Much More (3:46)
Breakadawn (3:36)
Feel Good Inc. (feat Gorillaz) (4:11)
Still Ego Trippin' (bonus Track) (5:10)

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, recently signed to Conor Oberst's [Bright Eyes] new record label, Million Stars, release their new album, Valley of Abandoned Songs.

The 13 song collection consists of recordings primarily from sessions for the band's 2019 album, Undress, as well as their most recent release, 2023's Asylum On The Hill, both of which were captured live in an 1870s church with the band's current lineup of Ian Felice (guitar/ vocals), James Felice (piano/ vocals), Jeske Hume (bass), and Will Lawrence (drums).

TRACK LISTING

Crime Scene Queen
Flowers By The Roadside
New York By Moonlight
Younger As The Days Go By
So Long John
Black Is My True Love's Hair
Raccoon, Rooster And Crow
Stranger's Arms
Birdies
Tomorrow Is Just A Dream Away
Let Me Ride Away With The Horsemen
It's Midnight And The Doves Are In Tears
To Be A Papa

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

Morrissey marks 40 years in music with no record label, no management, no airplay, no promotion, no new release and no media support.

The legendary singer embarks on a world tour facing an uncertain future. Frenzied front-line fans rally to their under-fire hero in a series of concerts across the globe. Dickie Felton attends 16 Morrissey shows in little over a year and captures a singer and his audience bonded in history, unity and love.

Focussing on gigs in iconic cities of Dublin, Liverpool and New York, Felton photographs fans and captures the world of Morrissey at a crossroads.

Featuring more than 125 images, 'I AM HATED FOR LOVING' is a visual and written documentary of a unique subculture. The sanest days are mad everywhere from The Stockton Globe to the Salle Pleyel in Paris – yet the world won’t listen.

The book is a collaboration between Dickie and Persian artist Iman Kakai-Lazell who has created books with Kristin Hersh, Mark Lanegan and Kirk Brandon.

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

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 

“‘The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories’ may not have the cachet or reputation of albums by the "big-name" bands of the era, but it has the songs and that's what counts the most. This is Lawrence and Felt at their absolute classic best, not to be overlooked or missed for any reason.” AllMUSIC

One of the first five album re-issues from February 2018.These vinyl records, unavailable for many years, have been remastered and revisited by Lawrence, and he has fashioned the ultimate definitive collections.

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 Roman Litter
2 Sempiternal Darkness
3 Spanish House
4 Imprint
5 Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow
Side Two
1 Vasco Da Gama
2 Crucifix Heaven
3 Dismantled King Is Off The Throne
4 Crystal Ball
5 Whirlpool Vision Of Shame

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. Train Above The City
2. On Weegee’s Sidewalk
3. Run Chico Run
4. Press Softly On The Brakes Holly
5. Spectral Morning
6. Teargardens
7. Book Of Swords
8. Seahorses On Broadway

Disc: 2 (7”)
1. The Final Resting Of The Ark
2. There’s No Such Thing As Victory

Sam Fender's debut album, Hypersonic Missiles was written, recorded and produced at Fender’s own self-built warehouse studio in North Shields. It was recorded alongside long-standing friend and producer, Bramwell Bronte.

Sam Fender is a rare talent. A 24-year-old working-class musician from the North who plays every gig as though it might well be his last, armed with this huge, cavernous vocal, guitar strapped on (a Fender, obviously), and fuelled by that seemingly old-school belief that great guitar music still has the power to change lives and influence people. There’s a loose thread that has run through all of Sam’s songs to date and that’s in the focus of his lyrics. Observational, questioning and socially engaged, Sam has an innate gift for simplifying matters of the newsworthy and topical

Sam Fender’s third studio album, People Watching, released via Polydor Records on 21st February 2025, was written over the last 3 years and recorded in London and L.A. The album was co-produced by Sam alongside Marcus Dravs and The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: For his third album, Sam Fender the production talents of The War On Drugs' Adam Granduciel and the result is a grand, sweeping Springsteeny wash of soaring guitars and rippling Americana, all acoustic guitars and lilting basslines. The title track is a particularly lovely single.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. People Watching
2. Nostalgia’s Lie
3. Chin Up
4. Wild Long Lie
5. Arm’s Length

Side B
6. Crumbling Empire
7. Little Bit Closer
8. Rein Me In
9. TV Dinner
10. Something Heavy
11. Remember My Name

Almost two years since the release of Sam’s critically acclaimed debut album Hypersonic Missiles debuted at number 1 in the UK album chart. Seventeen Going Under finds Sam turning the mirror on himself; his adolescence and the trials and tribulations of growing up. It’s a relatable journey that careers through an often misspent youth, navigating tumultuous relationships with both friends and family, and trying to figure out what comes next and how to get there. North Shields is the ever-present backdrop for these deeply personal vignettes of a young life travelling breathlessly from nought to sixty, hauling on the breaks and zipping back again from where he started. Over the course of the record, these stunning songs chronicle all the cherished memories, tricky encounters, and events that Sam cannot unsee.

It’s the story of a young teen losing not only his innocence, but then finding strength to stagger blindly into adulthood and all that entails.

‘Fenella’ is the latest project from Jane Weaver - musical polymath and one of the most respected electronic composers of recent times - and her long-term bandmates Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah.

Having already released three critically-acclaimed LP’s within the last five years Weaver’s creativity continues to expand ever further into the (modern) kosmos with this reimagined soundtrack to Marcell Jankovics’ cult animation Fehérlófia.

Released in 1981, Fehérlófia is a remarkable animation based in ancient folklore with a narrative culled from mythical tales of the Scythans, Huns and Avars.

Weaver’s richly emotional and psychedelic music offers a perfect contemporary dialogue with Jankovics’ astonishing visual aesthetic.

A mixture of ambient textures, menacing drones and spine-tingling vocals combine to create a lavish soundscape saturated with hypnotic moods and cinematic atmosphere.

Fenella’s self-titled LP is a continuation of Fire Records re-imagined score series.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: F'in-ell-a, this is good. As you'd expect, a project from Raz, Jane and Peter being anything but wonderful would be a rare day indeed, but this woozy slab of arpy psychedelia is pushing the boundaries. Intricate but easily digested, this rich tapestry of fizzing oscillators and analogue saturation is a gift straight from the white mare's mouth. AT LEAST 250ug of pure joy.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Slow Swoop
Three Heads Rising
Bright Curse
Occurring In Waves
Triangular Journey
The Seed
Pendulum
Shard Of Glass
Truly Seduced

Side B
The Spectacle
Battle
Echo Chamber Of Your Heart
Strength In Air
Rotation Wells
Gilded Griffin
Transfiguration Into One

Jane Weavers experimental ensemble in collaboration with Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah, Fenella returns with a hallucinogenic excursion into ambient textures and hypnagogic drones on new album ‘The Metallic Index’. Taking further steps into their combined compositional universe with this follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed Fehérlófia album.

Loosely based on a genuine story accounting the short-lived abilities of a young psychic nurse in 1920’s London, Fenella’s niche muse justifies this celebratory return to vinyl but not once does it fall into the supposed tropes of staid hauntological-plunderphonics which repeatedly come to muddy our thirsty streams. Fenella make spirited melodic progressive pop music that pulsates with the same magnetism that fans of Jane Weaver's own The Silver Globe and Modern Kosmology have come to expect and hold closely.

Handcrafted using a generous archive of some of the best vintage equipment in the country (partly recorded at Soundgas studios in Darkest Derbyshire) the sound structures you hear at the heart of this album form the basis for Fenella's best work yet, while the individual spectral vocalisations and ethereal electronics that circle the room capture this trio's return, as peripheral visions, in full-phantasmic bloom.

"A sonic exaltation and refinement of craft, going further into the realms of atmospheric abstract cosmology blissfully morphed with the mythopoetic" The Quietus.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Pulsion (Nurse On Train)
A2 Instituts Métapsychique
A3 "A Young Girl Of Medium Height"
A4 Hexagonal Table
A5 Telekinetoscopes
Side B
B1 Shadow Apparatus
B2 The Metallic Index
B3 Lilacs Illuminate In Indigo
B4 After The Visions
B5 Stellar In Spectra
B6 Are They With You? (The Final Chord)

Marcel Fengler can look back upon a very productive year as an artist. There was the “Frantic EP“ on Ostgut Ton, followed by DIN (a joint project with Efdemin) whose compositions formed one third of the “MASSE“ CD and ballet and then arguably his most creative and intense project to date: the release of his debut solo album “Fokus“. For the remix EP accompanying this release Dave Clarke, Aubrey, The Exaltics and The Traveller were invited to place their focus on some chosen tracks.

Dave Clarke opens the 12“ with his remix of “Sky Pushing“, the forceful but tender character of the original track is overturned into deep distortion and systematically lead towards gentle chaos, the steady drive of this rework leaves no room for pause as it propels the energies set free.

The break techno of The Exaltics, whipped up with nervous bass and smoky drums, serves as one of the groovier additions to this EP. The massive beats that follow the break lift the track to another level and when the mellow vocals of “Mayria“ set in, things fall into place in perfect combination.

On the other side Aubrey redefines “Trespass“. The absorbing arrangement combines unpredictable use of hi-hats and synths from the original with a dark and classic pumping beat and inspired flanger effects to diffuse the tension and create a balanced mix.

The final remix by The Traveller is also the greatest surprise, the track lures you in with a soft intro but soon develops into an old school techno stomper, the heavy kick and percussion is complemented by the reoccurring melody from “Jaz“ inviting you to immerse yourself in the sound.

All the energy, piss and vinegar of the Ataris, New Found Glory and Blink 182 a corking little band that's heading your way.

3rd album by Berlin's indie weirdos Fenster. Presenting a varied palette of post-psychedelia on this original soundtrack for the movie "Emocean"

Fenster's Emocean is the soundtrack to an adventure sci-fi film created by and starring the band. The music is a swirling cosmos of richly varied post-psychedelia, transcending the boundaries of reality and traditional pop-records to join the ranks of other genre bending Music Films like Daft Punk's "Interstella 5555" or Prince Rama's "Never Forever". With Emocean, the band utilizes their classic approach to non-traditional percussion and instrumentation, but this time ventures deeper into new territory with funky bass lines (Off The Cahin) complimented by additional instruments like bass clarinet (Memories), flute (Phantasia) and modular synthesizers (Samson's Theme). Emocean is a nuanced and surprising departure from their first two albums. The approach to this record was a more holistic exercise in "collective songwriting" and was resulted from a series of feverish jam sessions. The sounds evoke a broad spectrum of parallel universes - from soothing surfy tidal cliffs to analog synth dungeons, interstellar purple-funk disco-techs, wobbly organ's in houses of worship, acid blues parades and delicate maiden's picking daisies on the moon (Les Fleurs). The most danceable track is definitely Off the Cahin, and Memories is a sun soaked summer jam.

Feral Ohms is a power trio from Oakland, California, led by Comets On Fire / Howlin Rain / Heron Oblivion guitar and voice fireball Ethan Miller along with animal drummer Chris Johnson (Drunk Horse / Andy Human) and the loudest bassist in fifteen counties, Josh Haynes (Nudity).

The band turns the spatial pyrotechnics and expansive spirit of classic psychedelia inside out, dragging it through the punk rock era kicking and screaming and boils it down into a series of explosions that start at needle drop and end when the record does. They blast pure action and outlaw rock’n’roll joy through relentless, violent musical force, blowing the doors off psychedelic rock and letting loose the raw, wild, high speed feedback wail of something massive careening off the rails and into your ears.

This is FO’s debut studio album. Recorded by Eric “King Riff” Bauer (Ty Segall, White Fence, Heron Oblivion), Phil Manley (Earthless, Wooden Shjips) and mixed with scorched Earth policy by Chris Woodhouse (Thee Oh Sees, Fuzz).

The white-hot set of Live In San Francisco not only features Feral Ohms’ shaggy guitar heroics captured directly to ferromagnetic medium for your grokking, but also happens to be their debut record. From zero to vertical from the get of the set, the ’Ohms muscle this one out fast and hot, featuring Ethan Miller of Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire and recent psych-folk breakouts Heron Oblivion.

Miller gives free rein to his most pyro-psycho-technic guitar fancies, not to mention a full-throated demon-worthy wail, with Chris Johnson on drums (previously of Drunk Horse and currently of Andy Human and the Reptoids) full MC5 style with freight train pummel, with rides so heavy in the mix it sounds like early Damned. Josh Haynes (of the unGoogle-able Nudity) is a total forehead smacker on bass as he bi-amps a filthy sound while wearing some weirdo humility leather strap face harness - it’s just dirty.
“Teenage God Born To Die” indeed. Expect great things from them and this concise set is just long enough to get a dander up for a proper full length, set for release on Ethan’s Silver Current label in 2017. In the meantime, keep an eye out for their live shows and don’t forget the ear plugs, they’ll singe your minge...

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Damage
2. Early Man
3. Teenage God Born To Die
4. Value On The Street
5. Super Ape
6. The Glow