Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita’s Inoyama Land project spans nearly four decades, still active to this day . This collection expands upon their sound heard on Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990 (LITA 167) to illuminate material that is even lesser known outside of Japan – some of it presented publicly for the first time.

A portmanteau of their family names, the “Land” of Inoyama hovers between imagined mythical space and concrete reality, extending beyond physical releases into installations, site-specific sound design and theatre scores. After their famed Haruomi Hosono-produced 1983 release Danzindan-Pojidon, the duo became involved in the budding environmental music business that was taking shape in Tokyo during the development boom of the asset bubble – working directly with figures like Hiroshi Yoshimura (with whom they developed sound design for the International Stadium in Yokohama) and Takashi Sekiguchi (Bamboo from Asia).

Working initially with Munetaka Tanaka’s Sound Process Design (an acoustic consulting company formed by Tanaka with Satoshi Ashikawa, before Ashikawa’s tragic death in 1983), their commissioned work mirrors the sound world first fleshed out on Danzindan: chiming synthesizers, pastoral hues, childhood memory – all pulsing with a distant, emotional resonance. This material – culled from limited CD issues of the material on Tanaka’s Crescent label, Kazunao Nagata’s Transonic Records and self-released CDRs – presents a window into this process, illustrating how Inoue and Yamashita’s idiosyncratic musical identity gelled perfectly with all of the disparate environments of their commissions. Included is music written for the Kankaku (Sense) Museum in Miyagi, an exhibit on slime molds at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno park, the 1977 stage performance Collecting Net (which also included music that would later become Danzindan-Pojidon) and their score for a Tokyo re-staging of New York avant-theatre pioneer Richard Foreman’s post-modern stage piece Egyptology.

TRACK LISTING

Hair Air
Cycle
Soushiyou To Shiteiru
Garasudama
Aa Egypto
Skyfish
Bananatron
Fairy Tale
Morn
Kodama
Ougon No Sara
Candy Floss
Watashikara Ubawanaide
Anatano Yushoku No Tameni
Candy (alt.)
Sekai No Owari

In case you don't know by now, Insecure Menare led by Saul Adamczewski (Fat White Family) and his schoolmate Ben Romans-Hopcraft. There debut album was a glorious mess of  exotica, easy listening, lounge and timeless pop music.They now return with this 10 track covers record, feat. takes on Bruce Springsteen, The Pogues, The Carpenters, Peter Andre et al.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a completely bizarre but thoroughly brilliant re-working of some karaoke classics from Insecure Men here, including the Police, the Denny's and PETER BLOODY ANDRE. WTAF / This is brilliant. Special shout-out to the Pogues' 'A Rainy Night In Soho'.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Rainy Days And Mondays
2. Mysterious Girl
3. She Thinks I Still Care
4. A Rainy Night In Soho
5. Streets Of Philadelphia

SIDE B
1. Roxette
2. I'm So Depressed
3. Sail Away To The Sea
4. Picture Cards Can't Picture You
5. Madame George

“Insides’s music shimmers and tingles with the tantalising promise of a different direction that UK pop could’ve gone: future-facing and fresh, rather than nostalgic regurgitation.” Simon Reynolds, author and music critic, writing in Euphoria re-issue liner-notes in 2019

“A sound still as dew fresh, dawn dazzled and shot through with luscious darkness as it was nigh on three decades ago.” Neil Kulkarni, The Wire, 2019

Insides are Julian Tardo and Kirsty Yates. They first recorded together in the early 90s as Earwig, and released an album, 'Under My Skin I am Laughing', which brought them to the attention of 4AD. Earwig morphed into Insides and two further albums were released on 4AD’s Guernica imprint: ‘Euphoria' (1993) and 'Clear Skin' (1994). In 2019 ‘Euphoria' was reissued for US Record Store Day by Beacon Sound, and was hailed as a lost treasure by discerning outlets.

'Soft Bonds' is Insides’ first release for 20 years. It’s the sound of heart-stopping slow motion, blood rushes, fingers digging into bruised flesh, and sleeping with clenched fists.

“We found some things that were recorded a long time ago. We added some things that have been haunting us for for years and recorded some other ideas that we’d just thought of. Recording started at home in 2012, and continued every now and then in our studio, on trains, in the Greek island of Naxos and while wandering around Cissbury Ring, Chanctonbury Ring and Devil’s Dyke in the South Downs. We finally walked away from the recordings in late 2019 and decided to release a small run of CDs and LPs on our own Further Distractions label.

'Soft Bonds' is about the past haunting the present, and gripping onto your crumbling sense of self. It’s informed by the spirit of This Heat/This Is Not This Heat, Patty Waters, Annette Peacock, Eartheater, Mhysa, Hailu Mergia, Scott Walker and Arca.”

The first track to be released, 'Ghost Music', was also the first to be finished and came about by scrapping the original structure, leaving only the trace elements. Working in the negative space that’s left behind, where rhythms are pulses and heartbeats and melodies are memories, it’s insistent, staring, but not shouting. Almost absent, or heard from another room. The video uses footage of Kirsty and Julian filmed and used in live shows in 1993 and cut with more recent footage from 2016. The past haunts the present.


“Pop loving the sound of itself to death. And hating the fact that it can’t stop loving.” Rob Young, The Wire, 1993

“...they seemed to be creating an entirely new version of pop. Their hooks were unmistakable, in that they triggered movement like perpetual-motion clockwork. Their grooves were sparse and spectral and nagged at you like breakbeats but made your heart and hair-follicles dance more than your feet. Their music was amniotic, ebbing and alive with iridescent melodic detail and lyrics that turned the turmoils and trauma of love into the sweetest searing honesty you’d been privy to since you first heard the Supremes.” Neil Kulkarni, The Quietus, 2011.

New on Honest Don Records. One of Florida best undiscovered acts, that's all about to change with this excellent little opus. The members are barely 20 but the 12 songs on offer here are done with the mastery of a band of old sweats. Exceptional emocore with a feel of The Ataris and Saves The Day about them.

This release sees ‘Devil Hopping’ re-issued on vinyl for the first time since its original release, housed in a standard 12” sleeve on limited edition 140g red vinyl.

Originally released on 22nd March 1994, ‘Devil Hopping’ was Inspiral Carpets’ fourth studio record and reached #10 in the UK album charts, featuring the singles ‘Saturn 5’, ‘I Want You’ and ‘Uniform’. Regarded as one of the main components of the Madchester movement in the early 90s, the Inspirals released a further three albums on Cow Records (via Mute Records) before disbanding in 1995.

Originally released on 23rd April 1990, ‘Life’ was Inspiral Carpets’ debut record and reached #2 in the UK album charts, featuring the band’s most notable single ‘This Is How It Feels’. Regarded as one of the main components of the Madchester movement in the early 90s, the Inspirals went on to release a further three albums on Cow Records (via Mute Records) before disbanding in 1995.

This release sees ‘Life’ re-issued on vinyl for the first time since its original release and will be housed in a standard 12” sleeve on limited edition 140g gold vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Real Thing
A2. Song For A Family
A3. This Is How It Feels
A4. Directing Traffik
A5. Besides Me
A6. Many Happy Returns
B1. Memories Of You
B2. She Comes In The Fall
B3. Monkey On My Back
B4. Sun Don’t Shine
B5. Inside My Head
B6. Sackville

This release sees ‘Revenge of the Goldfish’ re-issued on vinyl for the first time since its original release, housed in a standard 12” sleeve on limited edition 140g orange vinyl.

Originally released on 5th October 1992, ‘Revenge of the Goldfish’ was Inspiral Carpets’ third studio record and reached #17 in the UK album charts, featuring the singles ‘Dragging Me Down’, ‘Bitches Brew’, ‘Generations’ and ‘Two Worlds Collide’. Regarded as one of the main components of the Madchester movement in the early 90s, the Inspirals released a further three albums on Cow Records (via Mute Records) before disbanding in 1995.

Originally released on 22nd April 1991, ‘The Beast Inside’ was Inspiral Carpets’ second record and reached #5 in the UK album charts, featuring the singles ‘Caravan’ & ‘Please Be Cruel’. This release sees ‘The Beast Inside’ re-issued on vinyl for the first time since its original release 30 years ago and will be housed in a widespine 12” sleeve on limited edition double 140g purple vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Caravan
A2. Please Be Cruel
A3. Born Yesterday
B1. Sleep Well Tonight
B2. Grip
B3. Beast Inside
C1. Skidoo
C2. Niagara
C3. Mermaid
D1. Further Away
D2. Dreams Are All We Have

Formed in Oldham in 1980, Inspiral Carpets rose to prominence alongside such bands as The Stone Roses, The Charlatans & The Happy Mondays, as part of the Madchester scene in the late 80s/early 90s. They have released five studio albums; ‘Life’ (1990), ‘The Beast Inside’ (1991), ‘Revenge of the Goldfish’ (1992), ‘Devil Hopping’ (1994) and ‘Inspiral Carpets’ (2014), achieving four UK Top 20 Albums and UK Top 20 Singles. Their biggest singles include ‘This Is How It Feels’, ‘She Comes In The Fall’, ‘Saturn 5’, ‘I Want You’ and ‘Dragging Me Down’.

For the first time since their 2003 compilation ‘Cool As’, Mute/BMG announce a newly remastered singles collection; The Complete Singles including all of their biggest hits, features collaborations with Mark E.Smith & John Cooper Clarke plus material from their 2014 self-titled album, fully remastered on Heavyweight Black ‘Midnight Licorice’ Double Vinyl. The package features brand new artwork and sleeve notes from past and present band members.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There are few bands more revered in Manchester (and revered *by* bands that are revered in Manchester) than Oldham's Inspiral Carpets. This collection features some of their best tracks, and some of their best collaborations and on the extended CD edition, remixes too. Essential bit of musical history.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl
A1. Keep The Circle Around
A2. Butterfly
A3. Joe
A4. Find Out Why
A4. Move
A5. This Is How It Feels
A6. She Comes In The Fall
B1. Biggest Mountain
B2. Weakness
B3. Caravan
B4. Please Be Cruel
B5. Dragging Me Down
C1. Two Worlds Collide (7" Edit)
C2. Generations
C3. Bitches Brew
C4. How It Should Be
C5. Saturn 5
C6. I Want You (ft Mark E Smith)
D1. Uniform
D2. Come Back Tomorrow
D3. You're So Good For Me
D4. Fix Your Smile
D5. Spitfire
D6. Let You Down (Edit)
All Tracks 2023 Remasters

CD1
1. Keep The Circle Around
2. Butterfly
3. Joe
4. Find Out Why
5. Move
6. This Is How It Feels
7. She Comes In The Fall
8. Biggest Mountain
9. Weakness
10. Caravan
11. Please Be Cruel
12. Dragging Me Down
CD2
1. Two Worlds Collide (7" Edit)
2. Generations
3. Bitches Brew
4. How It Should Be
5. Saturn 5
6. I Want You Ft MES
7. Uniform
8. Come Back Tomorrow
9. You're So Good For Me
10. Fix Your Smile
11. Spitfire
12. Let You Down - Edit
CD3
1. Dragging Me Down (Jon Dasilva Remix)
2. This Is How It Feels (The Go! Team Remix)
3. Caravan (No Windscreen Mix)
4. Generations (Denmark 2 Germany 0 Remix)
5. Commercial Reign (Rub-A-Dub Mix)
6. You're So Good For Me (Like A Tonic Remix)
7. Dubville
8. Two Worlds Collide (12 Inch Mix)
9. Saturn 5 (High Energy Mix)
10. This Is How It Feels (Robbery Mix)
11. Skidoo (Possession Mix)
12. Bitches Brew (Horse)
13. Changes (Martyn Walsh & Simon Lyon Remix)
14. Uniform (Scripka Mix)
CD1 & CD2 2023 Remasters

With half the band having left their native Texas for New York, Readjusting the Locks is the first Institute album written across the country. Despite the distance it sounds every bit as cohesive as if they were all still hanging out every night in the same Austin dives. The newly NYC-based Moses Brown and Arak Avakian flew to Houston in October 2018, where they joined Barry Elkanick and Adam Cahoon to demo the entirety of the new album in a single day. In December, the band got back together in Brooklyn to record with their longtime producer Ben Greenberg (Uniform).

Where the previous Institute albums often wandered into the experimental, Readjusting the Locks strives to be economical, its 13 tracks clocking in at a tight 29 minutes. The band has seamlessly incorporated more ’77 rock n’ roll into their sound, some songs feeling like they could’ve been a Stiff Records single. This sound is emphasized by Greenberg’s expert production — crisp but still blown out and dirty. Lyrically, Readjusting the Locks moves away from the traditionally personal words of frontman Moses Brown. Rather than attacking the internal workings of his brain or its socialization, as on previous records, this album attempts to address the societal atmosphere in which his agita exists.

Blaming Neoliberalism and the irresponsible notions of utopia fostered under it, Brown argues that in recent decades the Western world’s assumption that humanity would continue to prosper into the future has, on the contrary, created a disastrous political vacuum. This has allowed banks, corporations, and their politicians to aimlessly advance the Neoliberal agenda into an inconceivably dangerous place. He argues that we are deadlocked in a permanent existential crisis, stuck in an unhumanitarian and environmentally destructive system so all-consuming that we will not find a clear alternative. Without a true plan for a sustainable future those in power will continue to offer humanity new policies, technologies, and politicians that promise change but are only capable of “readjusting the locks” on our incomprehensible existential predicament.

TRACK LISTING

1. M.P.S. (2:15)
2. Mon Cherie (1:53)
3. Let Me Be (2:02)
4. Indoctrination Set (1:45)
5. Roll Music (2:30)
6. Can’t See Nothin’ (1:14)
7. Shangri-La (2:56)
8. St John’s Wort (1:23)
9. Dazzle Paint (2:36)
10. Anxiety (1:53)
11. Utopia Sound (1:26)
12. Fooled Again (2:38)
13. Deadlock (4:28)

Having made a name for themselves over the last few years as avant-garde, forward thinking producers who set trends instead of following, Instra:mental lay down a full length album showcasing where their productions are at now rather than being a summary of where they’ve come from.

Tracks like "Aggro Acid" and "Talkin Mono" give us crude analogue acid modulation at its rawest that twists and gurgles across the sound spectrum with mesmeric manipulation, whilst others such as "Memory Implant", "Waterfall" and "Plok" take us deep into synth arrangements that have become synonymous with their name. Alex Green and Damon Kirkham have studied every avenue to seek out new and interesting possibilities for originality within a tempo range, with most of this album focused on the 120-140 bpm range. They take elements of eras gone by and revitalise them with the use of old skool equipment mixed with modern production techniques. As usual their impressive hoard of vintage hardware plays an integral part in their characteristic sound. Whether it be techno, acid house, dubstep, drum & bass or electro that they turn their hand to, the Instra:mental sound shines through and makes genre irrelevant.

TRACK LISTING

CD TRacklisting:
1. Sun Rec
2. User
3. 8
4. Waterfalls
5. Aggro Acid
6. Arc
7. Love Arp
8. Thomp
9. Talkin’ Mono
10. Rift Zone
11. Plok
12. Delta Zone (Advance)
13. Memory Implant

LP Tracklisting
A. 8
B. Talkin Mono
C. Rift Zone
D. Aggro Acid
E. Delta Zone (Advance)
F. User

Centred around the varied and estimable talents of longtime Elephant 6 collaborator Heather McIntosh, The Instruments' new record culls from such disparate and beautiful influences as Sufi Devotional Music, the old country waltz, Nico's dunn cathedrals of song, and atmospherically harmonic pop emanating from somewhere way out near Eno's weird Green World. "Dark Småland" is resplendent with all the esoteric and sophisticated detail you'd expect from McIntosh and her two different crews of Instruments, though it never loses touch with the rarefied and dynamic melodic sense she's developed through years of performing with heavies like Circulatory System, Elf Power, Japancakes, Kevin Ayers, Of Montreal and Gnarls Barkley. As dense and layered as this album gets, it is at its core an elegantly melancholic folk-pop record sweetly at home in your heart next to Richard and Linda Thompson's most beautiful, hymnic monuments or the vestigial ghost of some ancient lullaby from your longlost childhood.

If musicians painted images with their instruments, The Intelligence's soundscapes would be set in a grainy, ash-gray world, among piles of scrap metal and busted machinery, with discarded computer parts blinking in cobwebbed corners and factories belching out toxins at irregular intervals. It'd be a black-and-white wasteland of humanity, a post-apocalyptic industrial revolution, warmed only by the distant loops of a delayed, disembodied guitar riff. At the center of it all would be Lars Finberg, delivering deadpan lines like 'Going out with you is like going out with a cop'. He'd be pounding bent garbage-can lids with one hand and programming distorted beats on his keyboard with the other, a one-man laboratory of intoxicating post-punk experimentation. The music is so jagged and cinematically poetic and dusted in clouds of lo-fi noise that listening to it at different times can conjure completely different visions. It's par for the course for Finberg, who has participated in some of Seattle's most exciting musical forces such as the A-Frames and The Dipers. The Intelligence are demanding attention in and beyond the Northwest, creating a new direction in sound based on the fundamental elements of bands like The Fall and PiL, yet beneath the post-punk clang lies a serious pop sensibility.

“For folks who dig A Frames, Country Teasers, Wire, Gang of Four, pita chips and dad’s boozy breath, may we present The Intelligence, captured live in a truly subterranean underground show space below SF vintage clothier Vacation.

“Lars Finberg: a name synonymous with artisanal hand-crafted, locally brewed, and organically-farmed song lasers. Hilarious, fast, tour-tight and ballsy—the band has all these perks in pocket, and all that on borrowed gear! I’ve watched this band go through many variations over the years and in their own right all of them have been marvelous. This particular version of the line up is constructed entirely of road-dogs. These guys don’t fuck around—or maybe they only fuck around, who can tell anymore? They drink, they get bawdy, they shred, and when we asked Lars if the band would be into doing a small show in a basement in the Tenderloin in SF for a live LP, he asked ‘What should we play?’ and I replied ‘nothing but the hits’— and they did exactly that.

“The Intelligence and Lars himself are masters at the penning of hits—hit after hit after hit—and with a soft-shoed tippity-tap of crowd work and banter, you can really smell the basement on this one and feel the cobwebs grazing the top of your head as you go deaf in one ear from the eye level PA pointed directly at your soul hole. If you love this band then this is a great live LP of them scorching the hits and talking trash. If you don’t know this band (shame on you) then this is a good place to start.” —John Dwyer

TRACK LISTING

1. Virgos
2. Dating Cops
3. Debt & ESP
4. We Refuse (To Pay The Dues)
5. Whip My Valet
6. Evil Is Easy
7. Thank You God For Fixing The Tape Machine
8. Estate Sales
9. Janitors
10. (They Found Me In The Back Of The) Galaxy
11. Confidence
12. Telephone Wires
13. Males

The Intended formed years ago in a procrastinator’s threesubject
notebook during chemistry class. Four longtime friends
began passing the time playing music together—Kevin Boyer,
Larry Williams and Heath Heemsbergen were playing in
Tyvek; Glen Morren and Heath Moerland made sounds in
Detroit freakout ensemble Odd Clouds, and after many jams,
a band existed. Trying out song ideas, working on a ’60s cover,
expanding on sketches—a few local gigs and a few years pass.
The zero-pressure nature of how The Intended began shows
up in how the group progressed: a single materialized and the
band’s vibe was caught perfectly on four track by Chris Durham
in his basement practice space. More four track sessions
ensued until a bag of unlabelled cassettes made its way to the
studio to be transformed into the debut album: Time Will Tell.
Held together by a raw fidelity (those tape warbles and
wonky pitch changes aren’t plug ins), the songs twist through
diversions such as the ebullient blasting of “The Ineffable,” the
juvenile classroom anxieties of “Dirty Secret,” and the spoken
revelations of “Beast and the Priest.” Straying from Tyvek’s
punk tendencies, mellow ’60s rockers “Don’t Wait Too Long”
and the title track hit a jangling nerve. Time Will Tell shines a
spotlight on the blemishes of youth, somehow embraced with a
fearless yet awkward glance.

TRACK LISTING

1. Huguenot
2. The Ineffable
3. Desperation
4. Dirty Secrets
5. Time Will Tell
6. Beast & The Priest
7. Blue Law Sunday
8. Fighter Pilot
9. Don?t Wait Too Long
10. Nobody Move

IMA (Intense Molecular Activity) is the duo of Don Hunerberg (synthesizers) and Andy Blinx (drums and percussion). Based in New York City and active between 1979 and 1982. Don, a studio Sound / music engineer and musician, Andy an electronic clothing designer, drummer and sound reinforcement engineer at downtown clubs like Max's Kansas City, Mudd Club and CBGB. In between doing sessions at Radio City Music Hall Studios for groups such as Ramones, Richard Hell, Sonic Youth, Liquid Liquid, John Zorn, Glenn Branca and many others, IMA took advantage of off hours to create their own music. As far as influences go, Don's background was in electronic music and Andy's in prog rock.

To produce the songs, Don used his own method of creating patterns from 2-track tape loops and then edited them together on to a 24-track recorder adding more tracks of overdubs, In a very similar way that sequencers are used today. By 1980 the duo honed their own unique sound and version of post punk and no-wave with the tools of the trade of the early 80s. Situated above the proscenium of the Radio City Music Hall stage, the studio was outfitted with a variety of orchestral instruments (timpani, bells, xylophone, etc). They self-released a 4-song EP titled “IMA” on an 8” flexi-disc which was distributed by Ed Bahlman of 99 Records. The music bridges the wild psychedelic-rock of the 60s, the synth-punk of the late-70s and the elaborate constructions of progressive-rock. There are nods to the freak-outs of Chrome and the super neurosis of Suicide, but IMA takes a more clinical approach which also takes notice of Hawkwind and Pink Floyd's interstellar overdrive. Dark Entries have added 4 bonus tracks recorded during the same studio sessions and included them here for the first time on vinyl. DJ Hell lifted elements of IMA's song "Blurb" virtually intact and unaccredited for his electroclash club hit "Keep On Waiting" 20 years later. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. 

TRACK LISTING

Blurb 
Points In Space 
Just Testing, Blinxong
Beat Street
Battery Life 
Rapid Ear Movements 
The Look.

"Manchester record store / label All Night Flight delves into the labyrinthine back-catalogue of respected producer Uwe Schmidt’s private label Rather Interesting with a vinyl sampler of the 1995 self-titled album Interactive Music. Previously released on CD only, Interactive Music came during a time of explosive creativity for Schmidt (also known as Atom™, Atom Heart, or Señor Coconut), where the German artist sought to release a new, individual album each month, each backed by their own design and conceptual structure with the goal of expanding the boundaries of technology, sound and electronic music as a whole. The motivation behind Interactive Music was to explore a new way of composing music, allowing both machinery and recorded elements to ‘interact’ with each other within a systems-based arrangement whilst incorporating any randomness and unpredictability that arose in order to create a sense of the organic or sentience within the machines. The four tracks here plucked from the original source demonstrate the breadth of styles Schmidt covers under his intuitive systems approach, leading with the atmospheric slo-motion creep of opener ‘Dynamic Link’, followed by the spluttering, melody-rich, UK-techno indebted ‘Kinky Sky Candy Drops’ that pays homage to Warp’s legendary Artificial Intelligence series of the early 90’s. On the B-side, ‘I See No Evil’ unleashes a taut electro piece, heavily enriched with Schmidt’s intricate drum programming and unique ear for sound design, whilst the extended closer ‘Assembler’ sees the ‘Interactive Music’ system firing on all pistons with an array of percussive and melodic elements working in unison for a heavily textured, free-form, electronic free-jazz-jam. A pioneering and easy to overlook masterclass in electronic production, rightly framed in a fresh new context.

Remastered by Miles Whittaker (Demdike Stare). "

TRACK LISTING

Dynamic Link - 6:22
Kinky Sky Candy Drops - 8:27
I See No Evil (Vinyl Edit) - 7:04
Assembler - 11:41

Originally released on Nice & Ripe in 1994 produced by Grant Nelson, Si Firmin & David Thackeray. Re issued & Remastered for the first time on DTR. This is an essential piece of UK Garage & Classic House in the same style as their 24hr Experience / GOD releases. Limited Pressing so act fast!

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Elbows-out, UK garage / house with hard swagger and 4x4 flavour (before it went all two-step). Still cutting it amongst today's piers, this should nice up the dancefloor no end.

TRACK LISTING

A1. 1 2 LUV
A2. SAMPLER
B1. GROOVEMENT
B2. DUBMENT

Interlopers is the new project from Steven Lindsay, singer and songwriter in influential Scottish trio The Big Dish, who were contemporaries of Talk Talk, Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti. 

The Big Dish released three albums between 1986- 1991 (‘Swimmer’, ‘Creeping Up On Jesus’ and‘Satellites’), and Lindsay subsequently released two critically acclaimed solo albums, ‘Exit Music’(2005) and ‘Kite’ (2007), before the demise of his label, Echo. 

After being shortlisted for Scotland’s Aspect Art prize in 2011, Lindsay became a full-time artist and has found acclaim and success as a painter

TRACK LISTING

1. Move On
2. Something Got Lost Along
3. The Way
4. Nothing Will Ever Be The
5. Same Again
6. The North Sea
7. Rainbow’s End
8. Hypnotised
9. Here Comes Everybody
10. The Bell
11. Dawn On The Boulevard
12. Turn Out The Light
13. Twins Of Gemini

The Internal Tulips is a new project from two guys who have a history in American Bands such as Medicine and Savage Republic and who have separately released more abstract electronic music on Planet Mu in the past; they are Brad Laner who was Electric Company and Personal Electronics and Alex Graham who is Lexaunculpt, and they continue continue these experiments in pop. The project has a Beach Boys / Brian Wilson/Beatles influenced sound, but it manages to avoid being another exercise in retro comfort music because Brad and Alex use laptop trickery learnt form their more experimental pasts to bring their sound firmly into the present.
Aside from making beautiful songs, sung in Brad's delicate multi-tracked falsetto, The Internal Tulips give their whole project a very modern, psychedelic production, treating their slow burning but gently arranged Americana to unusual treatments that blur the layers between acoustic and electronic sounds, cutting and editing vocals and instruments and adding depth and clarity to the arrangements, giving them an extra sense of the dreamlike. It's an album that feels immediately familiar; we're used to Grizzly Bear and the Fleet Foxes, bands you could superficially compare to Internal Tulips, but after a few listens the modern abstraction and production at the heart of the album will pull you in and take you somewhere else.

'Inertia is working, it's like Manchester desperately needs to spit out another great band, and this time it looks highly likely that International One could be that choice. Coming from the street side of town, the lads simply write brilliant tunes that make you feel good.'

This all analog promenade through the seminal 1968 album by Gram Parsons' International Submarine Band is widely regarded as the record that launched the country-rock movement and was the first album to spotlight Parsons' charismatic vocals and visionary songwriting. Cut all analog from the original mono masters!

TRACK LISTING

Blue Eyes
I Must Be Somebody Else You've Known
A Satisfied Mind
Folsom Prison Blues/That's All Right
Knee Deep In The Blues
Miller's Cave
I Still Miss Someone
Luxury Liner
Strong Boy
Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?

The Moonlandingz founders / writers Adrian Flanagan (Eccentronic Research Council) & Dean Honer (All Seeing I / I Monster) bumped in to lead singer, Leonore Wheatley (The Soundcarriers) at a ‘Circuit Bending Workshop’ in South Yorkshire where they decided to try writing “one song together and see what happens!”

Well, what happened from writing that one song was; Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music invited them in to do a live radio session for which they wrote a couple more songs. Then the Lord & Lady Mayoress of SHEFFIELD outsider pop music, Jarvis Cocker & Roisin Murphy, both invited the group (now calling themselves, INTERNATIONAL TEACHERS OF POP) to do a few live shows with them. One (with Jarvis) was for two nights in a cave in Derbyshire and the other (with Roisin) at the prestigious Somerset House in London, so the band wrote a few more songs to give themselves something resembling a live set.

Immediately after those live shows they signed a record & distribution deal with Republic of Music in Brighton which allowed the group to put out a couple of killer singles over the summer - the Northern Rail baiting, nerd disco of ‘Age of the Train’ & the ‘Moroder playing down a youth club in Rotherham’ radio bothering, ‘After Dark’ which helped the group build some traction via their own label imprint, Desolate Spools. Now, after a spate of sporadic sell out shows, a mini tour and electrifying festival appearances, ITOP are proud to announce the release of their eponymously titled debut album and a full U.K. tour to support it.

‘International Teachers of Pop’ was all written, recorded and Mixed at Dean Honer’s Bowling Green Studios in Sheffield using mainly pre- 1980’s U.S & Soviet analogue synthersizers and a collection of dusty old drum machines and is influenced by producers of disco & pop such as Giorgio Moroder, Martin Rushent & Bobby Orlando whilst straddling a lineage of artist such as Kraftwerk, the Human League, Suzanne Ciani & Broadcast.

An album covering an esoterically wide array of subjects from throbbing disco monster (and possible next single) ‘The Ballad of Remedy Nilsson’, a song about a disobedient pet, ‘On Repeat’ which is a song about the monotony of going to work in Brexit Britain, or album closer, and ode to terrible pronunciation, - ‘Oh Yosemite’ which also features additional vocals & drums from ‘Levenshulme High School Choir’ and Moonlandingz / ITOP live drummer, Richy Westley.

Always with one eye on pop music and the other on something more artful, playful and slightly wicked, Leonore Wheatley from the group describes it as “Grace Slick on the raz with Donna Summer and the Pet Shop Boys, legging it over to Kraftwerk’s gaff for a quick synth-sesh before getting a cab round to All Saints gaff to sing at the telly til the sun comes up!”

Adrian Flanagan of the group continues: “I think It’s the 3rd most important outsider pop album to come out of Sheffield since Dare & Different Class. Sheffield has a great history of drawing out these awkward, gangly weirdoes that make a very British, nay eccentric, kind of pop music that stews in the underground for a few years then appears seemingly from nowhere fully formed, like a very peculiar butterfly. I think as we collide head first in to this political sea of ‘total and absolute’ carnage, people are gonna need music & live shows like ours. We are not about separating ourselves from society and being another bunch of rockstar /pop star dicks, we have always been on the outside anyway, it’s about unifying ; ITOP is a bonafide 125 BPM cuddle for the masses!”

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1: After Dark
2: The Ballad Of Remedy Nilsson
3: On Repeat
4. Time For The Seasons
5. She Walks In Beauty

Side B:
1. Interstellar
2. Age Of The Train
3. Praxis Makes Prefect
4. Love Girl
5. Oh Yosemite 

‘Turn On The Bright Lights’ is the seminal debut studio album by American post punk revival band Interpol.

The album was originally released in August 2002 and was co-produced, mixed and engineered by Peter Katis and Gareth Jones.

Recorded with longtime associate Peter Katis, "Antics" is an optimistic exploration of the dark landscapes visited on Interpol's hugely successful debut "Turn On The Bright Lights". Some of Interpol's greatest songs are here: "Evil", "Take You On A Cruise", "Slow Hands" and "Not Even Jail" among them.

For the first time since 2007’s Our Love to Admire, Interpol have opened themselves up to the input of a producer. For two-week spells between December of 2017 to April of 2018, they travelled to upstate New York to work with Dave Fridmann – famed for recording with Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, MGMT, Spoon, Mogwai, and countless more.

In the run up to writing and recording, Sam found himself immersed in soul drummers such as Al Jackson Jr (Otis Redding’s drummer) and 80’s funk producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. “How can I make shit swing?” was the question Sam repeatedly asked himself, and the answer is in the striding gallop of opener “If You Really Love Nothing,” the embellished skip ‘n’ bounce of “Stay in Touch” and the R&B swagger of closer “It Probably Matters.” Interpol have always been world-beaters at creating a feeling, but Marauder is where the feel is just as crucial.

Paul may have stepped out of the shadows as a bassist, but he’s stepping into an even brighter light as a songwriter. During Interpol’s previous albums, the singer largely kept himself out of his own work, preferring to fill his lyrics with detached thoughts, characters, and observations, often phrased in abstract. But more than 20 years on since forming at NYU, the frontman is finally allowing himself to play a role in his own stories.

“This record is where I feel touching on real things that have happened to me are exciting and evocative to write about,” he explains. “I think in the past, I always felt autobiography was too small a thing for me to reference. I feel like now, I’m able to romanticize parts of my own life.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: FOUR YEARS! That's long enough to wait for a new Interpol album isn't it, if anything i'd say it was a little too long, but you'll be delighted to know (as I was) that it's every bit the Interpol album we all want and deserve. Brilliant hooks, snarling vox and heavy AF guitars. Thoroughly killer.

TRACK LISTING

If You Really Love Nothing
The Rover
Complications
Flight Of Fancy
Stay In Touch
Interlude 1
Mountain Child
NYSMAW
Surveillance
Number 10
Party's Over
Interlude 2
It Probably Matters

Our Love to Admire marked a critical and commercial breakthrough for the band. Recorded at New York's Electric Lady and the Magic Shop studios with producer Rich Costey (Muse, Death Cab for Cutie), the album boasts an expansive, cinematic sound that drove home such notable songs as The Heinrich Maneuver, Pioneer to the Falls, No I In Threesome, Mammoth and Rest My Chemistry. Upon its release, the album debuted in the Top Five in both the U.S. and the U.K. Interpol formed in the late 1990s and quickly established a dense, intoxicating sound featuring layers of guitar, bass and synthesizers. The band came up through the vibrant New York scene, alongside such notable contemporaries as the Strokes and the National, but gained crucial early attention in Britain, where they recorded a prestigious live session for legendary BBC DJ John Peel.

TRACK LISTING

Pioneer To The Falls
No I In Threesome
The Scale
The Heinrich Maneuver
Mammoth
Pace Is The Trick
All Fired Up
Rest My Chemistry
Who Do You Think
Wrecking Ball
The Lighthouse

If fate didn’t quite ordain the circumstances for Interpol’s seventh album, it was at least fortunate that the band had happily concluded their Marauder cycle on stage in front of 30 thousand-odd Peruvian fans. Rather than be sent scrambling like so many other musicians on tour or promoting new music, when lockdown clamped in March 2020, Interpol quickly got into a productive mood.

Coming from a group whose early work was characterised by Polish knife-wielders and incarcerated serial killers, you might expect Interpol’s pandemic record to be an emotional tar pit — doubly so, given the presence of towering producer-engineer duo Flood and Moulder on the boards. But Banks felt the call to push in a “counterbalancing” direction, with paeans to mental resilience and the quiet power of going easy. “The nobility of the human spirit is to recover and rebound,” he says. “Yeah, I could focus on how fucked everything is, but I feel now is the time when being hopeful is necessary, and a still-believable emotion within what makes Interpol Interpol.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Interpol are back for their seventh outing, recalling the superb melodic moments of their early years (Something Changed for example is classic Interpol) but with a more scattered, world-weary stagger. As ever, wonderfully engaging, aided by legendary production duo Flood and Moulder. Dream team.

TRACK LISTING

Toni
Fables
Into The Night
Mr. Credit
Something Changed
Renegade Hearts
Passenger
Greenwich
Gran Hotel
Big Shot City
Go Easy (Palermo)

Interrobang‽ - with a clear vision to create something current and relevant. Something that speaks to the generations who grew up in the shadow of punk, with hopes and dreams, full of rebellion. Bruce and Hamer both have previous form as awkward troublemakers in the anarcho-pop-cabaret troupe Chumbawamba whilst Griffin was a former enfant terrible in the London louts, Regular Fries. What happened to that spark? How do we express our anger now? How relevant are we? How do we make ourselves heard and where do we fit in now? The eponymously entitled Interrobang‽ album is vocalist Bruce laid bare, torn open asunder, as he finds himself deep in those 50-something blues. Lyrically the album is an exploration of his determination to never give up the struggle despite his own malaise.

He questions and rails against his own demise with song titles such as Curmudgeon, Mad As Hell and Am I Invisible Yet? whilst still full of that anger about the state of the world in songs such as Are You Ready People? and Here Now. He veers from the personal to the political, from the poignant to the pithy, never pulling any punches, always being brutally honest but with an ability to laugh at himself as well. The music of Griffin and Hamer is short, sharp and urgent. Interrobang‽ pride themselves on their tightness and economy in these rapid-fire assaults and with their crisp, cutting backing vocals the band have created an album that is pointed and precise, exciting and exhilarating. This is an album’s worth of hard hitting songs for hard hit people with Griffin’s guitar technique building layers of scorching sonics which when seen live will astound. From such statements of intent as Here Now to the lament Do You Remember? about Bruce’s difficult relationship with his father to the uplifting and inspiring Love It All, we are taken on a rollercoaster of an adventure. This whole journey is all based on a true story of discontent but Interrobang‽ have thrust themselves back in the fray, with something to say; they are determined to not fade away and this is their cri de couer! 

TRACK LISTING

Here Now
The Inclement Weather 
Asking For A Friend 
Are You Ready People? 
Mad As Hell 
Curmudgeon 
Music Of The Gross 
Taciturn 
Do You Remember? 
Love It All 
Based On A True Story 
Billingham 
Breathe 
Am I Invisible Yet?

After three studio albums and over a decade deep into the music game, The Interrupters deliver their new album, In The Wild.

This 14-track opus is the real deal; it's a story of survival, a story of resilience, by a band being bold and rejecting the easy impulses of simply repeating what's worked before. Together during lockdown, Aimee Interrupter, partner and guitarist Kevin Bivona, and his younger twin brothers, Jesse (drums) and Justin (bass), decided to put idle hands to work. After building a home studio in their garage together, Kevin stepped up and took charge of production duties to become "the accountable one" this time around. The record took shape in an unforced and organic fashion, and the recording process was evidently a fun one, which is refected in the sound of the album, gliding across a spectrum of breathless punk rock, doo-wop, gospel, dancehall, and the band's customary nods to the lineage of two-tone. It's further evidenced in the uplifting spirit and the glittering rollcall of guests (Tim Armstrong, Rhoda Dakar, Hepcat, The Skints) involved too. Thanks to the cocoon of the intimate environment they'd built and relaxed working practices, the results made for the most personal Interrupters album to date, as well as being the one all four feel most connected to

Reykjavík’s finest export Intr0beatz is back on the SB label with 5 expertly crafted tracks for the heads that like it deep & bouncy. He’s back slicing and dicing samples over his trademark swung out rhythms like never before.

‘Concentrate’ is a dusty & nostalgic Deep House jam, with its MPC’d piano chords, swinging hats and vintage hip hop style hooks. ‘Homage’ is a soothing slab of House with slow filtering chords, crisp hats, deep subby bass & ethereal pads. ‘Use What You Got’ is a lesson in doing just that, doing what he knows best, how he knows best. Raw, bumpin’ rhythms back up crystalline synths that sparkle over cavernous bass. ‘Don’t U Ever’ takes a deeper dive with it’s low-passed lead humming along over phasing hats, chunky kicks and chopped vocals calling back to the days of Max Graef and Money $ex. Finishing up the EP is the sexiest cut ‘Line’ with chopped soul vocals echoing over deeply filtered chords and bass synth accents.

With the Fókus EP, Intr0beatz displays his deft touch and restraint as a producer to lock in a groove, craft a vibe and create an atmosphere that few can rival.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Concentrate
A2. Homage
B1. Use What U Got
B2. Dont U Ever
B3. Line

Single LP with 8-page booklet

High-octane tour-de-force by legendary post-punk group, INU. Widely considered in Japan to be one of the all-time greatest punk records, 1981's Don’t Eat Food! remains shockingly unknown to the rest of the world. Led by literate but unhinged Machida Machizo, a magnetic stage presence who sang in a thick Osaka dialect that sounded like nothing else at the time, INU took Japan by storm in the late '70s with their powerful and often belligerent live show. Their membership changed frequently but INU's final lineup -- the group that recorded Don't Eat Food! -- was sharp as a knife, and the band's airtight debut still wows forty years later.

It's hard to describe INU's unique sound in comparison to other bands, but maybe imagine a more fidgety Richard Hell & The Voidoids jamming with PiL? Better yet, just listen for yourself.

This first-ever fully-licensed edition has been remastered from the original tapes and cut by Kevin Gray and includes an 8-page booklet with never-before-seen photos, lyrics in English and Japanese, and liner notes by Syojiro Ishibashi in English and Japanese.

With not one but two tracks being BBC 6Music Recommended by Steve Lamacq, the self-titled debut album from Invaderband (based in Derry, but frontman Adam Leonard is from Manchester) is a slickly drilled post-punk gem built on Krautrock foundations. For fans of Buzzcocks, Wire, Magazine, The Fall, Devo, Half Man Half Biscuit, Pete & The Pirates, etc. "A smashing record" - Gideon Coe, 6Music.

On their first album together since Maze of Woods (2015), Matthew Robert Cooper (Eluvium) and Mark T. Smith (Explosions in the Sky) further their creative curiosities as Inventions. Beginning with a trace of uncontrollable laughter that shifts into the driving atmosphere and unfolding elation of opening track “Hint and Omens,” Continuous Portrait is an album of strange hypnosis, punctuated by songs that venture quite far from the respective oeuvres of Cooper and Smith. The spry, playful layers of “Calico” bounce against a steady thrum of rhythms and samples from everyday noises, while the dancing lightness of “Outlook for the Future” is met with a storm of emotional resonance. Both tracks emerge as distinctively different directions for Inventions, and it is that very sense of exploration, pleasure, and ceremonial melancholia which informs the entire album from front to back. Inventions has always been the product of two friends who find comfort and inspiration in the genuine surprise of creating and combining sounds. Continuous Portrait whirls and hums like Cooper and Smith want us to invoke our inner playfulness and welcome a greater joy into our lives, if only for a moment. The result is a portrait that continuously embraces the completely foreign and familiar, and evolves with each successive listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hints And Omens (5:38)
2. Calico (3:57)
3. Continuous Portrait (2:54)
4. Outlook For The Future (3:31)
5. Close To People (3:16)
6. Spirit Refinement Exploder (5:15)
7. The Warmer The Welcome (3:57)
8. A Time In My Life (4:11)
9. Saw You In A Movie (4:07)

The greatest hits and rare grooves from legendary UK lovers group, The Investigators is some essential listening. First issued in 1991, this compilation collects together the groups late 1970s to mid-1980s recordings of bangers after bangers. The groups sweet-talking lyrics and glowing melodies are an absolute dream.

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Is What You Make It
2. Turn Out The Light
3. Close To You
4. How Could I Let You Get Away
5. Marley's Gone (Tribute To Bob Marley)
6. Baby I Am Yours
7. Summer Time Blues
8. Living In A World Of Magic
9. Woman I Need Your Loving
10. Run Away Child

In a career packed with plaudits, critical praise and plenty of highlights (for instance, when I put them on at Sounds From The Other City), The Invisible have cut a singular path through the musical world, remaining independent and individual whilst still achieving mainstream success. That they manage to pull this off whilst still boasting an ephemeral, essentially indescribable sound and style is remarkable when you think about it. 
Here the trio follow their excellent third LP with a 12" single brought to you in collaboration with DJ, producer, jazz genius and man of the moment Floating Points. And it's the Eglo man who kicks us off, taking the controls for an A-side remix chocked full of loose funk and heart swelling melody. Sweeping, autumnal strings drift over syncopated drums and punchy bass, fusing into a nebulous shelter for Dave Okumu's gossamer vocals. Dreamy, deep and dancey, the track drops out into stripped back, groove led excursions with just enough frequency to make those maximal moments hit with full emotional resonance. Peppered with the trilling synths, sparkling sequences and subtle tones he's made his own, this is Floating Points in full control of all around him - simply masterful. Even for a man of FP's inummerable talents, none of this would be possible with from piss-poor material, and The Invisible's original version opens the flip in no less impressive fashion. Emotive, immersive and blessed with the kind of off-kilter rhythm missing from music since Micachu had her Shapes, this fusion of jazz tones, funk beats and dreampop haze is worth the admission fee alone. But that's not all folks, for deep in the obscurity of the B2 glimmers a brand new track, co-written by Floating Points. Powered by thudding drum machines and sparkling sequences, "First Time" offers dramatic 80s tinged guitar chords, booming boogie bass and all the wonk you'd expect from an intoxicated evening at an Eglo showcase. If you're digging on the synthetic soul sound of Blood Orange or Ghostpoet right now, you'll love this. 

Listen to The Invisible’s new album, 'Patience', and what you will feel most strongly is the band’s sense of “joy and gratitude for being alive.” The experiences of Dave Okumu (guitar, vocals), Tom Herbert (bass & synthesizer) and Leo Taylor (drums) since the release of their last album, 'Rispah', both individually and collectively, mean that the group “have gained a deeper understanding of the value of life,” and a mission to communicate that to the listener. On 'Patience', they achieve these aims with a kind of effortless transcendence.

From the opening bars of the wonderful “So Well”, (featuring their friend and collaborator Jessie Ware), the feeling of joy pervades the record. Although the group have worked on this record with Anna Calvi, Rosie Lowe, Connan Mockasin and Sam Shepherd (Floating Points) as well as Ware, the sense of collective excitement and pleasure in music-making is what holds sway. It’s an album which hints towards the London soul of Ware, but combines it with the experimentation of the LA beat scene (where Dave Okumu went to write many of the songs) and the raw funk of D’Angelo.

Shortly before the release of Rispah (itself a heartfelt tribute to Okumu’s dead mother), Okumu was electrocuted while playing with the band onstage in Lagos, Nigeria. It’s possible that only the intervention of Herbert, who pulled his guitar off him, saved his life. This personal sense that the band have of deliverance has lead to Patience, not least their sense that they are “the luckiest men alive.”

Joyous without losing any of its intelligence or compositional rigour, the record takes its title from an unfashionable but profound idea - that, if we want to solve problems we have to be prepared to work and to wait rather than expecting instant results. It was an idea clarified when Dave found himself playing in Paris only a week after the gun attacks which ripped through the city on November 13th 2015. On his way home he read an interview with the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield in which he talked about a realisation that could only have come to him in space: “What started seeping into me on...seeing all the ancient scars, was the incredible temporal patience of the world.”

TRACK LISTING

So Well
Save You
Best Of Me
Life’s Dancers
Different (ft Rosie Lowe)
Love Me Again (ft Anna Calvi)
Memories
Believe In Yourself
K Town Sunset (ft Connan Mockasin)

Listen to The Invisible’s new album, 'Patience', and what you will feel most strongly is the band’s sense of “joy and gratitude for being alive.” The experiences of Dave Okumu (guitar, vocals), Tom Herbert (bass & synthesizer) and Leo Taylor (drums) since the release of their last album, 'Rispah', both individually and collectively, mean that the group “have gained a deeper understanding of the value of life,” and a mission to communicate that to the listener. On 'Patience', they achieve these aims with a kind of effortless transcendence.

From the opening bars of the wonderful “So Well”, (featuring their friend and collaborator Jessie Ware), the feeling of joy pervades the record. Although the group have worked on this record with Anna Calvi, Rosie Lowe, Connan Mockasin and Sam Shepherd (Floating Points) as well as Ware, the sense of collective excitement and pleasure in music-making is what holds sway. It’s an album which hints towards the London soul of Ware, but combines it with the experimentation of the LA beat scene (where Dave Okumu went to write many of the songs) and the raw funk of D’Angelo.

Shortly before the release of Rispah (itself a heartfelt tribute to Okumu’s dead mother), Okumu was electrocuted while playing with the band onstage in Lagos, Nigeria. It’s possible that only the intervention of Herbert, who pulled his guitar off him, saved his life. This personal sense that the band have of deliverance has lead to Patience, not least their sense that they are “the luckiest men alive.”

Joyous without losing any of its intelligence or compositional rigour, the record takes its title from an unfashionable but profound idea - that, if we want to solve problems we have to be prepared to work and to wait rather than expecting instant results. It was an idea clarified when Dave found himself playing in Paris only a week after the gun attacks which ripped through the city on November 13th 2015. On his way home he read an interview with the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield in which he talked about a realisation that could only have come to him in space: “What started seeping into me on...seeing all the ancient scars, was the incredible temporal patience of the world.”

TRACK LISTING

So Well
Save You
Best Of Me
Life’s Dancers
Different (ft Rosie Lowe)
Love Me Again (ft Anna Calvi)
Memories
Believe In Yourself
K Town Sunset (ft Connan Mockasin)

Swedish singer, songwriter, producer and filmmaker, ionnalee (Jonna Lee), brings the evolution of her ten-year creative career to a new peak with the release of her new self-produced solo album EVERYONE AFRAID TO BE FORGOTTEN on 23rd February 2018 on To whom it may concern.

Even considering Lee's past endeavors as the creator and frontperson of iamamiwhoami, who have captured the internet's attention since 2009, this is the most ambitious project which the Stockholm-based master of audiovisual artistry has embarked on.

EVERYONE AFRAID TO BE FORGOTTEN is a studio album and standalone filmic counterpart directed by ionnalee and cinematographer John Strandh, made in visual alliance with fashion and art trail-blazers, COMME des GARÇONS.

Breaking from tradition, the feature is not a sequential track-by-track visualization of EVERYONE AFRAID TO BE FORGOTTEN, rather its own separate organism, combining a dramatic plotline, music and art house cinematography with an avant-garde fashion slant.

“John Strandh and I were discussing the format of what we do and how the online distribution arena affects that format”, ionnalee says. “Our work is predominantly regarded as a form of music video because there is music and movement in it. But, in reality, we have been at the very forefront of the audiovisual format and, in the past couple of years, a lot of other works have patently drawn inspiration from ours, so that the term “visual album” is now part of common parlance and practice.” Consequently, ionnalee and Strandh wanted to try an alternative configuration, rather than treading the same old ground and to go closer to the feature film format”.

The official album cover is shot by John Strandh and features a sculpture made by ionnalee.

TRACK LISTING

1. Watches Watches
2. Joy
3. Work
4. Like Hell
5. Not Human
6. Temple
7. Samaritan
8. Dunes Of Sand - With Jamie Irrepressible
9. Blazing
10. Simmer Down
11. Here Is A Warning
12. Gone
13. Memento - With Barbelle
14. Harvest - With Tr/St
15. Fold

Acid Jazz Records celebrate an exclusive licensing agreement with Albarika Store, the legendary record label that defined the sound of Benin and influenced the entire region of West Africa and beyond with this first exhaustive trawl of the archive and will see the label presented in a way that ensures its historical importance is recognized.

‘Ipa Boogie’ is a super rare LP from 1978 that almost never surfaces in good shape. Today even average condition copies can command £500 to £1,000 on the collector's market and for good reason. These are the only known recordings by this obscure band and they present the listener with some of the finest afro-boogie and afro funk that the extensive Albarika Store catalogue has to offer.

Transferred from the original tapes and remastered by Grammy award-winning engineer Frank Merritt at The Carvery, the album is presented with beautiful artwork and packaging to match the sonics. This is the music as it should be heard.

TRACK LISTING

Get The Music Now
Africa
Jesus Kese Me
Alo Dangereux
Giving Yourself To Me
Sunga Mba

Using broader concepts, ‘Dreamer’ is “more introspective, because it's about things that I’ve been through over the last few years,” she says. The album is an intimate journey through snapshots and memories of Nabihah’s life. Exploring personal identity and grief through the soft-focus lens of melancholy, the album is not one specific sound. Her left-field lo-fi aesthetic twirls itself throughout as she manages to skate between tracks without ever sounding disjointed. Apart from four of the songs which have live drums on them, Nabihah wrote, recorded and produced the album herself. Incorporating the harmonium and sitar in her music for the first time, instruments reflective of her Pakistani heritage, it’s Nabihah’s rawest and most personal work yet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Though not a million miles away sonically from her 2017 debut album ‘Weighing Of The Heart’, Nabihah Iqbal's second long player ‘DREAMER’ does sound like the London based musician, producer and DJ has taken on a new creative direction, deconstructing her trademark sound of electronic shoegaze and dreamy synth-pop into its core elements. While sounding more mature and confident than its predecessor, the record also shows more vulnerability, as if past struggles (among them stolen equipment and a family emergency during the pandemic) have left her visibly exposed. The ethereal, otherworldly opener “In Light” is followed by a catchy dream pop number, the aptly titled “Dreamer”, before “This World Couldn't See Us” introduces more electronic elements and spoken vocals without interrupting the sonic theme of melancholy that is undisputedly making its mark throughout the entire the album.

‘DREAMER’ sounds like it was written by someone who feels just as at home at an intimate gig as at a rave, but it manages to combine Iqbal's influences so effortlessly that the album flows and never strays from what it set out to do, despite featuring tracks as wildly different as the introspective, stripped back “Lilac Twilight”, the haunting, beatless “Sweet Emotion (Lost In Devotion)” and the anthemic, trance influenced “Sky River”; one of the songs on the album that showcases her love for dance music. Awash with ambient synth pads, reverb laden guitars, textured melodies and big beats, ‘DREAMER’ manages to please both stargazers and night-time ravers. A truly beautiful record by an artist who is at a creative peak in her career.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Light
2. Dreamer
3. This World Couldn’t See Us
4. Sunflower
5. Lilac Twilight
6. Gentle Heart
7. Sky River
8. Sweet Emotion (Lost In Devotion)
9. A Tender Victory
10. Closer Lover

Two brass-powered monster tracks from Deptford Northern Soul Club Records.

Irene And The Scotts’ 1967 smash goes for around £150 a copy these days. A Detroit soul side arranged by the legendary Dennis Coffey, produced by Motown man Bob Babbitt, co-written by Ray Monette (later a member of Motown act Rare Earth) and featuring the mysterious Irene’s punchy torch vocal backed by Chicago soul band The Scott Brothers. Rife with brass stabs and a glorious sax break - an absolute floor filling gem.

Backed with The Chantels’ ‘Indian Giver’ from 1966, which first appeared on the Verve label (a copy of which would now fetch around £275 a throw). A super-rare soul side from the Bronxbased all-girl doo wop pop outfit who found the funk in the mid ‘60s. Delivered over a hypnotic backbeat, ‘Indian Giver’ is a horn-laden uptempo groove with a drummer on double-time. An absolute handclapping, split-inducing dance classic.

TRACK LISTING

Irene And The Scotts - I’m Stuck On My Baby
The Chantels - Indian Giver

Belgian underground prog band Irish Coffee are at times reminiscent of Deep Purple, particularly William Souffreau's powerful and soulful vocals, and the guitar / keyboard duets of Jean Van Der Schueren and Paul Lambrechts. A must for fans of the heavy vintage progressive sound.

A wonderfully weird and wacky one from Iris on Tax Free, "Speah" contains 21 cute little sonic sketches or vignettes. Slightly spellbound, with gamelon, Reichian minimalism and nods to Manhattan Research Project - it's like ⅓ downbeat, ⅓ library, ⅓ DIY electronix - all made to pleasure the ears and put a smile across one's heart.

If you've already a sucker for the wild world's inhabited by Max Graef, Glenn Astro, Funkycan, Employee etc - this one for you!A wonderfully weird and wacky one from Iris on Tax Free, "Speah" contains 21 cute little sonic sketches or vignettes. Slightly spellbound, with gamelon, Reichian minimalism and nods to Manhattan Research Project - it's like ⅓ downbeat, ⅓ library, ⅓ DIY electronix - all made to pleasure the ears and put a smile across one's heart.

If you've already a sucker for the wild world's inhabited by Max Graef, Glenn Astro, Funkycan, Employee etc - this one for you!
 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Rub Ix (1:25)
2. Steely Dreem (1:09)
3. Dreem Reprise (1:17)
4. T 7 Ret (1:31)
5. Down By The Rivrrrs (1:08)
6. Werld (1:20)
7. Deth (1:40)
8. Miragem (1:29)
9. Deadlocked (4:32)
10. Flesh (1:07)
11. I Speah (2:42)
Side 2
1. Leer Die Kasse (1:14)
2. Dezert (1:21)
3. Maga (2:33)
4. Bels (1:34)
5. Thee Sun (0:45)
6. JPT Acid (4:08)
7. Graveyard (1:54)
8. Resurec (2:58)
9. Wav (0:13)
10. Dezert (Other) (1:47)

Irma Vep is the on-going, evolving main vehicle for polymath musician Edwin Stevens and on Embarrassed Landscape the project has reached a zenith. Primarily recorded in Stevens’s adopted home town of Glasgow over two days with frequent collaborators Ruari Maclean and Andrew Cheetham, Embarrassed Landscape is an album that breathes in a fetid skip full of millennial dread, self-effacing anxiety and doubt before exhaling it as heartbreaking songs and ecstatic abandon. Following a series of limited releases spread out over the course of a decade, recorded in fits and starts around the United Kingdom as the protagonists wanderlust saw fit, Irma Vep’s 4th album proper presents Stevens’s vision in its fullest and most realised form.

Built around the skeleton of Stevens’s songwriting and fleshed out with loose, virtuoso playing, it’s a body of work that could have been the anxious songs of an over-thinker but rendered here Embarrassed Landscape revels in a kind of un-selfconscious confidence. Indeed, various tensions throughout the album are constantly revealing. Lyrics are riven with poetic, crushing self-analysis and absurdity only to be performed against a backdrop of trance-rock music skewered with Stevens’s own instantly recognisable guitar playing, a style free and full of fire.

Songs wring nuggets of uncanny truth out of prosaic, every day activities while sounding like Rolling Thunder Revue era-Dylan. Songs that seem hewn from some unspeakable personal pain are laced with a disarming streak of black humour, massive, world-ending psych jams that harken to Vibracathedral Orchestra’s wall of sound dissipate into tender songs that deserve to be picked apart and cried to. Tension needs release and here the release needs tension. For example, Opener King Kong is bold in several directions at once. A pummelling trance spurred on by the endlessly enjoyable interplay between drummer Andrew Cheetham’s free jazz-inflected style and Stevens’s barely contained guitar wildness, the music screes for 6 minutes of transportation on its own steam before Stevens’s vocal even comes in.

Perhaps the biggest dichotomy at the heart of Embarrassed Landscape is between the unbridled energy of the songs’ performances, their often bold arrangements and the heartbreaking, darkly funny songwriting at their heart. Closing song Canary brings most of these tensions to a sweet end. Within the alternating crescendos of violin and guitar Stevens intones about canaries brushing teeth down sinks, alcohol abuse, ghostly images half-seen through the fug of depression yet saved somehow by the social crutches friends and lovers provide. Embarrassed Landscape feels like the album Irma Vep always threatened to make, by some strange alchemy transforming the anxieties and self-criticisms inherent in the lyrics into a liberation, a letting go, a release from the tensions built up by a life lived full.

TRACK LISTING

1. King Kong
2. Disaster
3. I Do What I Want
4. Standards
5. The Feeling Is Gone
6. Tears Are The Sweetest Sauce
7. Not Even 8. Purring
9. Canary

Irma Vep is a loner, a joker, a roamer, a ribald construct riddled with both earnest anxiety and mercurial songwriting talent birthed by a young Edwin Stevens in Llanfairfechan, North Wales. Having since fully grown into Irma Vep and now residing in Manchester, Stevens' discography has expanded to document every aspect of his music, from ecstatically free group experiments to bare, sparse songwriting that cuts to the quick, shorn of ornament or pretence. No Handshake Blues is a homage to Llanfairfechan (Transylfechan to the locals).

Having bedded down into Manchester's bourgeoning DIY scene, Stevens moonlights in several other groups (Sex Hands, Klaus Kinski, Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, Yerba Mansa…), bringing with him an instantly recognisable guitar language. However it's in Irma Vep that his most life-affirming, troubling and thrilling music is made. Much Irma Vep feels like what "classic" music should feel like if it weren't so Classic. Each record, each song and each performance exists as an evolving drama.

Edwin has toured the West Coast of America after being invited by Chris Johanson to play his Quiet Music Festival of Seattle and Portland. BBC 6 Music regularly spin his work. He tours the UK and Europe “butt loads”. Somehow he also finds time to run a tape label and put on gigs in Manchester under the ”Very Bon" moniker. Irma Vep performs solo, and also expands to a full band that includes Manchester legends DBH, Andrew Cheetham, Dave Rowe, Kiran Leonard and Dylan Hughes.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Woman’s Work Is Never Done
2. It Runs Slow
3. Plod
4. No Handshake Blues
5. Hey, You!
6. The Moaning Song
7. Armadillo Man
8. I Want To Be Degraded
9. You Know I’ve Been Ill
10. Still Sorry

Archive Series Volume No. 5: Tallahassee is the lost-in-time debut album from Iron & Wine. A collection of songs recorded three years prior to his official Sub Pop debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002). A period before the concept of Iron & Wine existed and principal songwriter Sam Beam was studying at Florida State University with the intent of pursuing a career in film. Tallahassee documents the very first steps on a journey that would lead to a career as one of America’s most original and distinctive singer-songwriters.

Creek arrived like a thief in the night with its lo-fi, hushed vocals and intimate nature, while almost inversely Tallahassee comes with a strange sense of confidence. Perhaps an almost youthful discretion that likely comes from being too young to know better and too naïve to give a shit. The recordings themselves are more polished than Creek and give a peak into what a studio version of that record might have offered up.

Tallahassee was recorded over the course of 1998-1999 when Beam and future bandmate EJ Holowicki moved into a house together. Beam had not been performing publicly, however he was known for playing an original song or two in the early morning glow of a long night. Holowicki also in the film program and who would go onto a career as a sound designer at Skywalker Sound, had a mobile recording device and after some prodding convinced his friend to record these late-night meditations.

Together they would record close to twenty-four songs, ideas and sketches, with EJ on bass and Sam on vocals, guitar, harmonica and drums. The recordings – all captured in the house where they lived – have a “live in the room” feel akin to say Neil Young’s Harvest or Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, rather than the homespun lo-fi 4-track home recording experiment taking place at the time.

These recordings, minus one track, have never been made available and were instead left preserved on a hard drive for the last twenty years. The one track that floated out there, called “In Your Own Time” was shared without a title to childhood friend Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses) at some point. The song became known as the “Fuck Like A Dog” song and Ben shared it with more than a few folks during the golden era of mix cd’s. Two of those folks were Jonathan Poneman from Sub Pop and journalist Mike McGonigal, who included it on his best songs of 2001 mix cd, passed out to friends and acquaintances. And for many that is where the Iron & Wine story begins, until now…

Tallahassee is the foreword to your favorite book that you’ve somehow skipped over time and time again. It’s an alternative history mixed with some revisionist history told over the course of eleven songs. It’s also the debut record by Iron & Wine some twenty years after the fact. 

TRACK LISTING

Why Hate The Winter
This Solemn Day
Loaning Me Secrets
John's Glass Eye
Calm On The Valley
Ex-Lover Lucy Jones
Elizabeth
Show Him The Ground
Straight And Tall
Cold Town
Valentine

"I must confess that I’ve always shied away from album introductions citing the usual "dancing to architecture" cop out. Speaking to their own work is uncomfortable for many artists, but I’ve made a new album called Beast Epic which is important to me and I wanted to take a moment to talk about why. I’ve been releasing music for about fifteen years now and I feel very blessed to have put out five other full lengths, many EPs and singles, a few collaborations with people much more talented than myself, and made contributions to numerous movie scores and soundtracks. This is my sixth collection of new Iron & Wine material and I’m happy to say that it’s my fourth for Sub Pop Records.

It’s a warm and serendipitous time to be reuniting with my Seattle friends because I feel there’s a certain kinship between this new collection of songs and my earliest material, which Sub Pop was kind enough to release. In hindsight, both The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) and Our Endless Numbered Days (2004) epitomize a reflective and confessional songwriting style (although done with my own ferocious commitment to understatement, of course.) I have been and always will be fascinated by the way time asserts itself on our bodies and our hearts. The ferris wheel keeps spinning and we’re constantly approaching, leaving or returning to something totally unexpected or startlingly familiar. The rite of passage is an image I've returned to often because I feel we’re all constantly in some stage of transition. Beast Epic is saturated with this idea but in a different way simply because each time I return to the theme I’ve collected new experiences to draw from. Where the older songs painted a picture of youth moving wide-eyed into adulthood’s violent pleasures and disappointments, this collection speaks to the beauty and pain of growing up after you’ve already grown up. For me, that experience has been more generous in its gifts and darker in its tragedies.

The sound of Beast Epic harks back to previous work, in a way, as well. By employing the old discipline of recording everything live and doing minimal overdubbing, I feel like it wears both its achievements and its imperfections on its sleeve. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed experimenting with different genres, sonics and songwriting styles and all that traveled distance is evident in the feel and the arrangements here, but the muscles seemed to have relaxed and been allowed to effortlessly do what they do best.

I’ve been fortunate to get to play with some very talented musicians over the years who are both uniquely intuitive and also expressive in exciting ways. This group was no different. We spent about two weeks recording and mixing but mostly laughing at The Loft in Chicago.

To be honest, I’ve named this record BEAST EPIC mostly because it sounds really fucking cool! However, with that said and perhaps to be completely honest, “a story where animals talk and act like people” sounds like the perfect description for the life of any of us. If not that, then it’s at least perfect for any group of songs I’ve ever tried to make. I hope you enjoy it." - Iron & Wine

Collecting songs ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released, "Around The Well" spans Iron and Wine's earliest sessions which yielded the band's debut (2002's "The Creek Drank the Cradle") through to material recorded for 2007's "The Shepherd's Dog". The "Around The Well" collection is broken up into two sections. The first half is an assortment of hushed home recordings, unedited and raw, and the second highlights moments captured in the confines of proper studios with the help of other musicians, friends and engineers. The album's title comes from a line in the song "The Trapeze Swinger", a fan favourite which was written for and included in the movie 'In Good Company'. Three more songs written and recorded for the film finally make their appearance here as well: "Belated Promise Ring", "God Made The Automobile" and "Homeward, These Shoes". "Around The Well" also brings together hard-to-find covers such as The Flaming Lips' "Waitin' for a Superman" and New Order's "Love Vigilantes", along with one of Iron and Wine's earliest originals, "Sacred Vision".

Collecting songs ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released, "Around The Well" spans Iron and Wine's earliest sessions which yielded the band's debut (2002's "The Creek Drank the Cradle") through to material recorded for 2007's "The Shepherd's Dog". The "Around The Well" collection is broken up into two sections. The first half is an assortment of hushed home recordings, unedited and raw, and the second highlights moments captured in the confines of proper studios with the help of other musicians, friends and engineers. The album's title comes from a line in the song "The Trapeze Swinger", a fan favourite which was written for and included in the movie 'In Good Company'. Three more songs written and recorded for the film finally make their appearance here as well: "Belated Promise Ring", "God Made The Automobile" and "Homeward, These Shoes". "Around The Well" also brings together hard-to-find covers such as The Flaming Lips' "Waitin' for a Superman" and New Order's "Love Vigilantes", along with one of Iron and Wine's earliest originals, "Sacred Vision".

"Boy With A Coin", the first single to be taken from forthcoming album "The Shepherd's Dog", is darkly playful, tumbling under its cascading melody and backwards guitar textures. A worthy example of the highest standard of songwriting displayed on the rest of the album and marks a departure in style from Beam's previous work, without betraying his blissful Americana roots.

New to 4AD, Iron And Wine deliver the perfect way to start any year.

It’s been over three years since Iron & Wine released "The Shepherd’s Dog", a collection of songs that Sam (Beam) himself described as an attempt to replicate something in the vein of Tom Waits’ "Swordfishtrombones".

While Waits fans might gasp at such a notion, making the kind of records that had brought much of their early successes would have been all too easy and living up to folks expectations never sounded all that interesting to Sam.

After all, the most fascinating journeys are the ones where you have no idea where you’re headed, and that’s what the experience of making the record turned out to be. In the end, they were rewarded with a warm reception from both fans and critics alike.

"Kiss Each Other Clean" is the next logical step and should have been done sooner had life not got in the way. As is well documented, Sam resides outside of Austin, Texas close to the middle of nowhere where he and his wife tend to a rather large homestead.

As one journalist who visited him once said, “he lives exactly as you hoped he would”. Good for us, sometimes difficult for him.

When possible, recording sessions were taking place over the course of 2010 in Chicago with Brian Deck at the helm again as well as a number of familiar names who pop up to contribute musically.

Not one to rest on laurels, "Kiss Each Other Clean" takes off where "The Shepherd’s Dog" left us with layer upon layer, rhythm upon rhythm and of course some acoustic guitar and whispering vocals for good measure. In a recent interview Sam said that the resulting ten tracks make for a “more focused pop record”, albeit with “straight-up jazz, blues and African elements” experimentally thrown in.

If we are to believe Sam on his earlier Waits-ian comparison then it’s safe to say that "Kiss Each Other Clean" could be the second phase in his own trilogy a la "Rain Dogs". One thing is certain, he’s yet to show any sign of letting up.

When the pandemic began, and the world shut down, so did the process of creating for Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam. In its place was a domesticity that the singer hadn’t felt in a long time, and although it was filled with many rewards, making music was not one of them. Reflecting on that time;

Beam notes:
“I feel blessed and grateful that I and most of my friends and family made it through the pandemic relatively unscathed compared to so many others, but it completely paralyzed the songwriter in me. The last thing I wanted to write about was COVID, and yet every moment I sat with my pen, it lingered around the edges and wouldn’t leave. This lasted for over two years.” The journey back began with a recording session in Memphis to record a handful of Lori McKenna tracks for the EP Lori with friend and producer Matt Ross-Spang. The cathartic experience reconnected Beam with his love for making music, and soon enough the paralysis had passed, and he was finishing lyrics and booking studio time for what would become Light Verse. Light Verse was recorded with engineer and mixer Dave Way at his studio Waystation high up in Laurel Canyon (with an additional session at Silent Zoo Studio with a 24-piece orchestra), with a host of talented musicians joining Beam: Tyler Chester, Sebastian Steinberg, David Garza, Griffin Goldsmith, Beth Goodfellow, Kyle Crane, and Paul Cartwright. And, Fiona Apple joined Beam on vocals for the duet “All In Good Time.” Beam lyrically once again takes focus on a series of both fictional and personal insights, filled with desperate characters and wide-eyed optimists, offering promise and a dose of heartache, tears and laughter, life and love. Taking stock in the album’s title, he jokes, “Light verse is a form of poetry about playful themes that often uses nonsense and wordplay, and it’s my first official Iron & Wine comedy album!…. Just kidding….”

While true this may be Iron & Wine’s most playful record, Beam says the title mostly reflects the way the songs were born with joy after the heaviness and anxiety of the pandemic. Where recent records like Beast Epic or Weed Garden gave air to the disquiet of middle-aged frailty and brokenness, these songs trade that for the focus acceptance can bring. Moment by moment, they delight in being pointed or silly (or both) and attempt beauty over prettiness.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Sam Beam presents a tenderly melodic suite of swinging symphonies and off-kilter jangle. Pieces like the enthralling opener 'You Never Know' are both wonderfully syncopated and display Sam's ability to switch from breezy to near-chaotic in the blink of an eye, without ever breaking the listening spell. Beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Never Know
2. Anyone's Game
3. All In Good Time
4. Cutting It Close
5. Taken By Surprise
6. Yellow Jacket
7. Sweet Talk
8. Tears That Don't Matter
9. Bag Of Cats
10. Angels Go Home

Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, released "Our Endless Numbered Days", his second in March of 2004. It followed his hushed, literate, intimate, melodic, 2002 debut album, "The Creek Drank the Cradle", a quiet treasure which, with its unaffected candor and depth, found fans all over. "Our Endless Numbered Days" was recorded both at Sam’s Miami home and in Chicago’s Engine Studios with Brian Deck (Red Red Meat, Modest Mouse, Ugly Casanova, etc.) On it, Sam is aided and abetted by his then touring and recording conspirators: his sister Sarah Beam, Patrick McKinney, Jeff McGriff, EJ Holowicki, and Jonathon Bradley. Listening to "Our Endless Numbered Days" makes plain Sam’s deft touch with words and melody; one that allows him to turn out stories about love, loss, faith, or the lack of it that are at once personal and universal, set to music that is sweetly haunting and timeless.

This reissue features the original album, plus eight previously unreleased demo versions and a 12-page booklet with an essay about the album by Amanda Petrusich.

TRACK LISTING

On Your Wings
Naked As We Came
Cinder And Smoke
Sunset Soon Forgotten
Teeth In The Grass
Love And Some Verses
Radio War
Each Coming Night
Free Until They Cut Me Down
Fever Dream
Sodom, South Georgia
Passing Afternoon
Naked As We Came (demo)
Cinder And Smoke (demo)
Teeth In The Grass (demo)
Love And Some Verses (demo)
Free Until They Cut Me Down (demo)
Fever Dream (demo)
Sodom, South Georgia (demo)
Passing Afternoon (demo)

Iron & Wine follow up their 2018 Grammy-nominated full-length Beast Epic with Weed Garden, a collection of material that began about three years ago. The six-song EP features songs that were part of the writing phase for Beast Epic, but went unfinished. They were part of a larger narrative for principal songwriter Sam Beam, who ran out of time to get them where they needed to be for inclusion on Beast Epic. Weed Garden also includes the fan favorite “Waves of Galveston.”

While on tour last fall, the final pieces of material took shape and a sense of urgency prevailed in bringing these characters full circle. To resolution. To completion. In January, Beam and company hunkered down in Chicago at The Loft recording studio to capture these six songs.  No more, no less.
Weed Garden joins the good company of previous Iron & Wine EP’s – The Sea and Rhythm, Woman King, In the Reins – and in 2018’s attention-span challenged world that's not a bad thing.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: If you've heard Iron & Wine before, you'll be well aware of Mr. Beam's capability for weaving a rich acousticana tapestry, and 'Weed Garden' is exactly that, beautifully played organic instrumentation with a strong melodic sensibility, relaxing and transportative. (Iron &) Wine-not give it a go.

Iron & Wine’s Who Can See Forever is an accompanying live record to the film of the same name. Captured at Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, the soundtrack features nineteen songs from the twenty plus year career of singer-songwriter Sam Beam. Having found inventive ways to re-invent his catalog live over the years, Who Can See Forever offers new and fresh versions of Iron & Wine songs including “The Trapeze Swinger”, “Boy With a Coin” and “Naked As We Came.” The film - initially intended as a live concert film - evolved into a visual portrait capturing Beam during a creative outburst that earned him four Grammy nominations in four years. Like his music, the film touches on universally personal themes as Beam juggles being an artist, husband and father. Taken as one, the soundtrack and film are a fascinating first-time glimpse behind-the-scenes of Iron & Wine.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Trapeze Swinger
2. Boy With A Coin
3. Woman King
4. Thomas County Law
5. House By The Sea
6. About A Bruise
7. Sodom, South Georgia
8. Last Night
9. Monkeys Uptown
10. Wolves (Song Of The Shepherd's Dog)
11. Grace For Saints And Ramblers
12. Dearest Forsaken
13. Glad Man Singing
14. On Your Wings
15. Passing Afternoon
16. Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car
17. Naked As We Came
18. Call Your Boys
20. Muddy Hymnal

Following 2011’s ‘Kiss Each Other Clean’, which debuted at number two on the US Billboard chart, ‘Ghost On Ghost’ is to be the fifth studio album from Austin-based Sam Beam.

While Rolling Stone said of ‘Kiss Each Other Clean’ that “pop music hadn’t seen anything like it since the heyday of Cat Stevens,” and Pitchfork said it “more closely resembles the lush, gold-toned singer songwriter records of the late 60s and early 70s - ‘Astral Weeks’, ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’”, Beam felt it time to move from what he called the “anxious tension” from this record and his previous one (‘The Shepherd’s Dog’). “This record felt like a reward to myself after the way I went about making the last few,” he says.

Recorded in New York and produced by Beam’s longtime associate Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Califone, Fruit Bats), helping achieve Beam’s vision were a group of stellar musicians including Rob Burger of Tin Hat Trio, Steve Bernstein, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen, and Briggan Krauss of Sex Mob, jazz drummer Brian Blade, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes of The Jazz Passengers, bassist Tony Garnier (Bob Dylan’s band), cellist Marika Hughes, Maxim Moston and Doug Wieselman of Antony And The Johnsons, and Anja Wood. Burger (Tin Hat Trio) has worked with Beam intermittently through the years and handled arrangements for strings and horns on ‘Ghost On Ghost’.

For the album’s cover, Beam, who is also a visual artist, chose an image from the series ‘Private Views’ by noted photographer Barbara Crane.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Another mellow delight from Sam Beam. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

Caught In The Briars
The Desert Babbler
Joy
Low Light Buddy Of Mine
Graces For Saints And Ramblers
Grass Windows
Singers And The Endless Song
Sundown (Back In The Briars)
Winter Prayers
New Mexico’s No Breeze
Lovers’ Revolution
Baby Center Stage

"Our Endless Numbered Days" is the second full-length album from Iron and Wine and it was recorded both at Sam's Miami home and in Chicago's Engine Studios with Brian Deck. On it, Sam is aided and abetted by regular touring and recording conspirators: his sister Sara Beam, Patrick McKinney, Jeff McGriff, EJ Holowicki, and Jonathan Bradley. No grand gestures here, instead the record is filled with tiny moments, little windows into our shared mortality in a way that serves to sharpen the hunger for love and connection over time rather than dull or defeat it. Listening to "Our Endless Numbered Days" makes plain Sam's deft touch with words and melody; one that allows him to turn out stories about love, loss, faith, or the lack of it that are at once personal and universal, set to music that is sweetly haunting and timeless.

Iron And Wine the recorded word of one Samuel Beam, Miami, Florida; is one of those one-guy-and-his-tapedeck affairs. "The Creek Drank the Cradle" is filled with hushed, restrained vocals, affecting lyrics from a naturalist's perspective, exploring relationships and the hope born from them, all of which come across as though whispered to you personally, accompanied by guitar, banjo, slide guitar. Taken as a whole, "The Creek Drank The Cradle", Iron and Wine's debut CD, is an ode to an older South; a part of America that is defined by 'traditional values', pastoral imagery and arcane manners. Or maybe that's just what we want to hear.

Parlophone Records is thrilled to announce the release of Iron Maiden’s 17th studio album Senjutsu, their first in 6 years. It was recorded in Paris with longstanding producer Kevin Shirley and co-produced by Steve Harris.

For Senjutsu – loosely translated as ‘tactics & strategy’, the band once again enlisted the services of Mark Wilkinson to create the spectacular Samurai themed cover artwork, based on an idea by Steve Harris. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Iron bloody Maiden eh? They return for their SEVENTEENTH LP and you know what? It's great! It's a lot more of a proggy affair than during their heyday, but there is an absolute wealth of undeniable hooks and brilliantly hefty songwriting. Dickinson's voice is in top athletic form too.

TRACK LISTING

Senjutsu (8:20)
Stratego (4:59)
The Writing On The Wall (6:13)
Lost In A Lost World (9:31)
Days Of Future Past (4:03)
The Time Machine (7:09)
Darkest Hour (7:20)
Death Of The Celts (10:20)
The Parchment (12:39)
Hell On Earth (11:19)

2022 is the 40th Anniversary of Iron Maiden’s Iconic third album The Number of The Beast. The first Iron Maiden album to feature Bruce Dickinson on vocals, The Number of the Beast was also the band’s first album to hit the number 1 spot in the UK. The album spawned the crossover hit singles Run To The Hills and The Number of The Beast, and introduced the band to a truly global audience.

To celebrate this milestone anniversary Iron Maiden release a very special 3LP collectors vinyl featuring the original album with revised track list plus the legendary 1982 live show from Hammersmith Odeon ‘The Beast Over Hammersmith’.

The original album replaces Gangland with Total Eclipse in a revised track list. The accompanying double live album The Beast Over Hammersmith is presented on vinyl for the first time.

This collectible 180g 3LP vinyl set is packaged in a double gatefold sleeve featuring a special ‘split’ cover image and many rare photos from the time. Also, featured are excusive sleeve notes from Steve Harris.

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1 - The Number Of The Beast
Side 1:
1. Invaders
2. Children Of The Damned
3. The Prisoner
4. 22 Acacia Avenue
Side 2:
1. The Number Of The Beast
2. Run To The Hills
3. Total Eclipse
4. Hallowed Be Thy Name
Disc 2 - Beast Over Hammersmith (LIVE)
Side 3:
1. Murders In The Rue Morgue
2. Wrathchild
3. Run To The Hills
4. Children Of The Damned
5. The Number Of The Beast
Side 4:
1. Another Life
2. Killers
3. 22 Acacia Avenue
4. Total Eclipse
5. Transylvania
Disc 3 - Beast Over Hammersmith (LIVE)
Side 5:
1. The Prisoner
2. Hallowed Be Thy Name
3. Phantom Of The Opera
4. Iron Maiden
Side 6:
1. Sanctuary
2. Drifter
3. Running Free
4. Prowler

Recorded in 2003 as he was travelling around the country, this very simple, intimate, and home spun record continues to stun all who have heard it as a self released CDR. Asa's vocals are complemented so perfectly by his dear friend Swaan that the songs resonate with the mutual knowing only old close friends can share. If you are at all familiar with his efforts in Feathers, or watched him hunch over a guitar with Witch, or have been perplexed and amazed at his saw blade solo work, this document will be an irreplaceable eye-opener to how well grounded and concurrently high reaching Asa's music can be.

Ironweed is Aniff Akinola, formerly one half of the massively underrated Manchester band Chapter And The Verse (amongst other things!). "Down To My Grave" is a slab of soulful, stoned blues delivered with an awesome deep 1930s dustbowl style vocal. The CD includes the 'dustbowl mix', a more stripped down 'audio suspects remix' and two more uptempo remixes from Interfearence and First Man, along with an accapella version.

Open The Gates is Philadelphia-based free jazz collective IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS’s third full length album (and first double LP length album). Recorded at Rittenhouse Soundworks in Philadelphia, across 73 minutes of music the band – featuring Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro & drummer Tcheser Holmes (who released their duo debut Heritage of the Invisible II on International Anthem last year), saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and bassist Luke Stewart – supplement their raw, organic punk-jazz sound with firsttime experiments with electronics and synthesizers.

“Irreversible Entanglements’ fearless music takes to task the police, American politics, capitalism, and racism.” – The Nation

"The jazz ensemble evokes our American topography, both physically and psychologically, by capturing what’s in the news and what’s underneath that surface.” – Pitchfork

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly soulful storm of free-jazz timbres and spoken word phrases bolstered with snappy counterpoint and harmonic dissonance, both unnerving and hypnotic, but thoroughly enthralling throughout. Brilliantly inventive and momentous.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1. Open The Gates
A2. Keys To Creation
SIDE B
B1. Lágrimas Del Mar
B2. Storm Came Twice
SIDE C
C1. Water Meditation
SIDE D
D1. Six Sounds
D2. The Port Remembers

'Impulse! Records proudly announces the signing of free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements with their label debut Protect Your Light. Fusing elements of jazz, hip-hop, global music traditions and spoken word, the new album sees the quintet (vocalist/poet Camae Ayewa, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, drummer Tcheser Holmes) break molds with adventurous improvisation driven by Ayewa’s poetry about the Black experience, love, power, community and liberation.

Back in the 80s I became a big funky jazzy and soulful vinyl collector. Which opened the world of the late great Mr Weldon Johnathan Irvine music, I managed to collect all of him LPs and singles back in the days. All have a place in my heart, back in the 90s I was also lucky enough to meet him. Licensing & Compiling for a small up label called Hubbub records. Mr Irvine was such a calm and gently person who just oozed music. He sadly passed away in 2002, which was a shock. But now years later It is a great honour to be able to release some of his music from his Nodlow music label on to 7" for the first time.

In 1974 Weldon released his "In Harmony" These two tracks are high line early 70s Weldon, "Fat Mouth" again features the Weldon rift. This Clavinet heavy groove is back up with the mighty Joe Jones on organ, is held steady with pumping drums of Napoleon revels "Turkish Bath" is a laid-back jazz groove, with Weldon laying down a superb lead Rhodes story and melody. Backed up with Joe Jones on the piano. Weldon's keyboard echo throughout his music with such simplicity.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fat Mouth
2. Turkish Bath

Formed in London, the Is Tropical line up of Gary Barber (vocals / guitar / keys), Simon Milner (vocals / guitars / Keys) and Dominic Apa (drums & programming) first came to international attention with the release of their debut single ‘When O’ When’ on Hit Club Records in January 2010. Produced by Al Al Al (The Big Pink / Klaxons), the single, together with their spectral live shows, saw the band attract the attention of fans and critics alike. After signing to Kitsune and releasing the single ‘South Pacific’, they now deliver their debut album.

‘Native To’, produced by the band with Jimmy Robertson and mixed by Lifelike, features twelve new tracks including the recent single ‘South Pacific’ and the forthcoming new release ‘The Greeks’. Effortlessly swooping from raw pop anthems to lo-fi dance songs with fantastic results, as well as the two singles other standouts include ‘Take My Chances’, ‘Lies’ and ‘Think We’re Alone’.

TRACK LISTING

01. South Pacific
02. Land Of The Nod
03. Lies
04. The Greeks
05. What???
06. Clouds
07.take My Chances
08. Oranges
09. Berlin
10. Think Were Alone
11. Zombie
12. Seasick Mutiny

Can you sleep? (04:30) Idler chronicles a personal struggle with insomnia that inspired the album’s title, it combines bossa nova, 70s analog synths and the polymorphous vibrations of London’s new burgeoning jazz scene.

Jamie Isaac is a young producer and songwriter, born in Croydon to Burmese and British parents. He signed to Marathon Artists in 2014 and has been harnessing his sound ever since, operating in the space between jazz, soul, R&B, electronics and hip hop. Across a handful of singles and EPs, as well as a mixtape, his debut album and its follow-up, he has evolved into a formidable artist with a transatlantic following.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: This might just be the perfect hybrid of synths, hip hop-jazz and electronic sound wrapped up in one record like a present. I can't get enough of the soft dreamy vocals, you need to listen to this it's a beaut!

TRACK LISTING

Doing Better
Maybe
(04:30) Idler
Sleep
Interlude (Yellow Jacket)
Eyes Closed
Slurp
Counts For Something
Melt
Drifted
Rope
Delight

Can you sleep? (04:30) Idler chronicles a personal struggle with insomnia that inspired the album’s title, it combines bossa nova, 70s analog synths and the polymorphous vibrations of London’s new burgeoning jazz scene.

Jamie Isaac is a young producer and songwriter, born in Croydon to Burmese and British parents. He signed to Marathon Artists in 2014 and has been harnessing his sound ever since, operating in the space between jazz, soul, R&B, electronics and hip hop. Across a handful of singles and EPs, as well as a mixtape, his debut album and its follow-up, he has evolved into a formidable artist with a transatlantic following.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: This might just be the perfect hybrid of synths, hip hop-jazz and electronic sound wrapped up in one record like a present. I can't get enough of the soft dreamy vocals, you need to listen to this it's a beaut!

TRACK LISTING

Doing Better
Maybe
(04:30) Idler
Sleep
Interlude (Yellow Jacket)
Eyes Closed
Slurp
Counts For Something
Melt
Drifted
Rope
Delight

King Jammy breathes new life into a top draw selection of Cool Ruler Classics on this highest upgrade to Gregory Isaacs Kingston catalogue

Making the journey down to Jammy's Warehouse HQ to look down the safest combinations is an A- list selection of Jamaica's finest including Sean Paul, Shaggy, Alborosie, Jesse Royal, Bounty Killer etc.

Gregory Isaacs finest performances on those never say die tuff King Jammy Riddims all now combination style and 21st Century Fresh

TRACK LISTING

It Go So (ft. Shaggy) - Gregory Isaacs
Another Try (ft. Sean Paul) - Gregory Isaacs
Don't Take Your Love From Me (ft. Jesse Royal) - Gregory Isaacs
First Class Lover (ft. Aza Linegae) - Gregory Isaacs
Dance With Me (ft. Ras Demo) - Gregory Isaacs
You're Like An Angel (ft. Brandon The Messenjah) - Gregory Isaacs
Dreadlocks Bridge (ft. Alborosie) - Gregory Isaacs
Another Warning (ft. Bounty Killer) - Gregory Isaacs
Never Give Your Love (ft. Junior Reid) - Gregory Isaacs
Counterfeit Lover (ft. Ras Shiloh) - Gregory Isaacs
You Can Have The Bits (ft. Projexx) - Gregory Isaacs
Flirting Around (ft. Claire Angel) - Gregory Isaacs
Lost My Happiness (ft. Chaka Demus) - Gregory Isaacs
Don't Go (ft. Flinix) - Gregory Isaacs
My Pride Won't Let Me (ft. Bunny General) - Gregory Isaacs

Career peak cool ruler classic form '73 here twin-spinned with producer Glen Brown's vocal mover Another first time.

Pantomine coupling and limited one-time press

TRACK LISTING

One One Cocoa
Take A Step

Taken from the album: "Reggae Anthology: The Gussie Clarke Story", Gregory Isaacs' "Rumours" is a archetypal slice of original JA dancehall. Originally released in 1988 on Music Works in Jamaica, and on Greensleeves here in the UK; the track is produced by Augustus Clarke and sees the development of digital technologies within the Jamaican music cannon which would go on to define the dancehall genre.

Isaacs' vocal – ruminating on the police assuming his modest wealth has been achieved through illegal means - is delivered with a wry, dark sentiment whilst the instrumental section is full of primitive sampling, splashy digi-drums and a bassline composed on the Casio MT40 which was gaining huge popularity in the scene after the infamous "Sleng Teng" riddim.

On the flip we have a fully expanded exercise in top tier digi-dub version! Adding a multitude of extra layers, including a mystic melodica line, brash synth stabs, sizzling electronic strings and huge reverb splashes it sees Clarke go wild on the, what was then, quite new technologies - digital mixing desks and DSP effects and such like.

A classic of the dancehall genre - available for a limited time once again! 

TRACK LISTING

A. Rumours
B. Rumours Version

1978's Slum in Dub album re-issued on 180 gram RED vinyl in its original cover. Coupled with the succinct Revolutionaries band and Isaacs quality songwriting, the deconstructed cuts, weave and flow like any good quality dub album should.

TRACK LISTING

Public Eye's
Slum
Reform Institution
Crofs
Tam Tam
Aso
Nigger
Leaving
Leggo Beast
Embarrassment

Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony marks a milestone for the Colorado-based singer-songwriter, re-imagining songs from his previous three studio albums— The Weatherman, This Empty Northern Hemisphere, and That Sea, the Gambler —along with the debut studio recording of “Liars,” a fan favourite and staple of his live shows for many years.

TRACK LISTING

01. Liars
02. Dandelion Wine
03. Big Black Car
04. The Stable Song
05. Amsterdam
06. Master & A Hound
07. Saint Valentine
08. That Sea, The Gambler
09. Living Proof
10. If I Go, I'm Goin
11. Unwritable Girl

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now calling Colorado home, Gregory Alan Isakov is a lifelong traveler, farmer, and Grammy-nominated folk artist

Since his debut in 2003, Isakov has released four full-length studio albums with over 1 million in sales and has toured widely, building a devoted international audience.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Really excited about this LP. His previous releases have all been wonderful. That voice....

TRACK LISTING

The Fall
Before The Sun
Appaloosa Bones
Silver Bel
Watchman
Miles To Go
Terlingua
Mistakes
One Day
Sweet Heat Lightning
Feed Your Horses

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised in Philadelphia, Isakov moved to Colorado at the end of the 90's to study and made it his home.
He has been described as, "Strong, subtle, a lyrical genius" and has been compared to his influences, Bruce Springsteen, Kelly Joe Phelps, Iron & Wine and Gillian Welch. Gregory's humble presence and his overwhelming voice and guitar style have been treasured by an ever-growing and captivated fan base. 
This 2007 LP is a gorgeous gentle affair, with finger picked guitars providing the perfect accompaniment to his distinctive vocals.

TRACK LISTING

All There Is
The Stable Song
Black & Blue
San Francisco
Salt And The Sea
John Brown's Body
3 A.m.
That Sea, The Gambler
Raising Cain
Unwritable Girl
The Moon Was Red And Dangerous

The Weatherman is Johannesburg born, Colorado based singer songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov’s fifth album (his third that has been widely available) . It follows a similar path to his previous releases with his poetic, evocative lyrics woven delicately around understated instrumentation.

An absolute beauty.

TRACK LISTING

Amsterdam
Saint Valentine
Second Chances
Living Proof
Time Will Tell
O' City Lights
Astronaut
California Open Back
The Universe
Suitcase Full Of Sparks
Honey, It's Alright
All Shades Of Blue
She Always Takes It Back

TRACK LISTING

Dandelion Wine
Light Year
That Moon Song
Evelyn
Virginia May
Big Black Car
Master & A Hound
This Empty Northern Hemisphere
Idaho
Words
Fire Escape
If I Go, I'm Goin
One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong

On their first album in six years, ISAN once more weave together electronic soundscapes, delicate rhythms and the occasional odd sound into a pulsating, ever-morphing whole. Glass Bird Movement is Antony Ryan and Robin Saville's eighth studio album since they have started the project two decades ago. Exchanging ideas between England and Denmark, where Ryan currently resides, ISAN have crafted an album which is reminiscent of heyday Boards Of Canada productions, the friendlier ventures of Aphex Twin or the most focused moments of Ulrich Schnauss, if you will. However, this album (as well their impressive back catalogue, as subtle it may seem) displays a strong signature. ISAN constantly move forwards without leaving their respective studios. And why should they - it's warm and dry in there and the kettle is always boiling.

The title Glass Bird Movement, like those of many of their records and songs, is the product of an free associative process which reflects ISAN's creative methods and frames the eleven songs in a way that triggers the imagination. Communicating less about their music than rather with their music, Ryan and Saville together immerse themselves in complex structures without shutting out their audience. Instead, the friendly bouncing grooves of songs like "Napier Deltic", the washed out harmonies of the aptly titled "Risefallsleep" or the circular rhythms of the album's opener, "Cuckoo Down", have dream-like, inviting qualities to them. ISAN are particular about incorporating the element of chance, a sort of second-hand human touch, in their music. If it's a cheap keyboard that is only good for one note in one song alone or a tape loop cut by hand, anything can find its way into an ISAN song. Even though they take most of their inspiration from the machines they work with, they do not fetishise their gear - but play with it.

Glass Bird Movement relies just as heavily on all those sonic idiosynkrasies as it does on the sophisticated rhythms and throbbing basses that form its foundation. Like the colourful art of Morr Music's in-house designer Julia Guther, which was based on Saville and Ryan's visual ideas, it is a record that very politely defies categorisation. One might call the music that ISAN make Intelligence Dance Music, as it has often been done. However, be aware that there has reportedly only ever been one person seen dancing to it. Glass Bird Movement is likely best enjoyed where it is warm and dry, while the kettle is boiling.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cuckoo Down
2.  Lace Murex
3.  Parley Glove
4.  Glass Bird Movement
5.  Leonardo's Formula
6.  Every Since And Then
7.  Napier Deltic
8.  Rattling Downhill
9.  Slow Rings
10.  Risefallsleep
11.  Linnæus

Antony Ryan and Robin Saville - the inventors of electronica - are returning with their ninth studio album. Three years in the making, "The Lamenting Machine" will go down in history as the deepest and most satisfying chapter yet in the ongoing musical conversation between these brilliant musicians. Subtle yet mesmerizing melodies evoking long forgotten memories, calmly throbbing bass figurines pulsing gently along - all paying tribute to free-floating rhythms and their eternal noises. ISAN has always been an intimate and personal take on electronic music.

Jason Isbell - award-winning artist is back with his fifth album Something More Than Free featuring Isbell’s Southern-inspired vignettes of working class men, women and traditions that permeate these 11 new songs. The pure honesty and authenticity of Isbell’s poetic lyrics and soulful vocals have connected deeply with so many, and they shine as brightly as ever on the new album.

It is Isbell’s most sonically diverse album to date. The opening track, “If It Takes A Lifetime” exudes a classic country tone, while “24 Frames” flows effortlessly with its easy, Laurel Canyon vibe. The wistful folk balladry of “Flagship”, along with the bluesy Southern rock timbre of “Palmetto Rose” and epic “Children Of Children” prove that Jason Isbell is an artist whose creative pinnacle has yet to be within sight.

Something More Than Free is the follow up to Isbell’s 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern, which received overwhelming support from the press and sold over 150,000 copies. Isbell was subject of stories in outlets ranging from The New York Times Magazine and Wall Street Journal to NPR’s All Things Considered and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit made many television appearances, including The Late Show with David Letterman, Conan and Austin City Limits. Isbell won Artist of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year at the 2014 Americana Music Awards.

In August of 2012, Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit assembled in their home state of Alabama in front of a couple of sold-out concert halls to record their first live album, Live From Alabama.

After years of hard touring, the critically-lauded band has gelled into a versatile rock and roll squad that is equally at ease performing Muscle Shoals soul to hardcore country to balls-out rock. Live From Alabama's tracklist mines some of Isbell's most popular songs and includes a pair of inspired covers in Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" and Candi Staton's "Heart on a String."

TRACK LISTING

1. Tour Of Duty
2. Decoration Day
3. Goddamn Lonely Love
4. Heart On A String
5. Danko / Manuel
6. In A Razor Town
7. Alabama Pines
8. Outfit
9. Cigarettes And Wine
10. TVA
11. The Blue
12. Dress Blues
13. Like A Hurricane

“Georgia Blue is a labor of love. On election day 2020, when I saw that there was a good chance the state of Georgia might go blue, I came up with an idea: to record an album of Georgia- related songs as a thank you to the state and donate the money to a Georgia based non-profit organization. I will admit my motivations were a bit selfish. For years, I’ve been looking for an excuse to record these songs with my band and some friends. The songs on this album are some of my favorite Georgia-related songs, but the tracklist is not meant to be comprehensive. I would love to cover Outkast and 2 Chainz, but I don’t think the finished product would be very good. We’re a rock band, so we covered rock songs. We have roots in blues and R&B, so we enlisted some brilliant artists to help us pull off songs by Precious Bryant, James Brown, and Gladys Knight. My favorite part of the Georgia Blue recording process was having the opportunity to work with these very special artists, and I thank them: Amanda Shires, Brittney Spencer, Adia Victoria, Brandi Carlile, Julien Baker, Bèla Fleck, Chris Thile, Steve Gorman, Peter Levin, and John Paul White. I hope you enjoy listening to these recordings as much as we enjoyed making them. Keep listening to good music and fighting the good fight.” - Jason Isbell

TRACK LISTING

1. Nightswimming Feat. Bela Fleck And Chris Thile
2. Honeysuckle Blue Feat. Sadler Vaden
3. It's A Man's Man's World Feat. Brittney Spencer
4. Cross Bones Style Feat. Amanda Shires
5. The Truth Feat. Adia Victoria
6. I've Been Loving You Too Long
7. Sometimes Salvation Feat. Steve Gorman
8. Kid Fears Feat. Julien Baker And Brandi Carlile
9. Reverse
10. Midnight Train To Georgia Feat. Brittney Spencer And John Paul White
11. In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed Feat. Peter Levin
12. I'm Through
13. Driver 8 Feat. John Paul White

Live From The Ryman was primarily recorded during the group’s six sold out nights at Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium in 2017. The album features 13 live versions of songs from their last three critically acclaimed, award-winning studio albums - Southeastern (2013), Something More Than Free (2015), The Nashville Sound (2017).

TRACK LISTING

1. Hope The High Road
2. 24 Frames
3. White Man's World
4. Flagship
5. Cumberland Gap
6. Something More Than Free
7. The Life You Chose
8. Elephant
9. Flying Over Water
10. Last Of My Kind
11. Cover Me Up
12. Super 8
13. If We Were Vampires

Reunions is the new album from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Jason Isbell is a four-time Grammy award winner and nine-time Americana Music Association award winner

TRACK LISTING

1. What’ve I Done To Help
2. Dreamsicle
3. Only Children
4. Overseas
5. Running With Our Eyes Closed
6. River
7. Be Afraid
8. St. Peter’s Autograph
9. It Gets Easier
10. Letting You Go

The Nashville Sound was recorded at Nashville’s legendary RCA Studio A and produced by Grammy Award-winner Dave Cobb, who produced ‘Something More Than Free’ and Isbell’s celebrated 2013 breakthrough album ‘Southeastern’.

‘The Nashville Sound’ features 10 new songs that address a range of subjects that include, politics and cultural privilege (“White Man’s World”) longing nostalgia (“The Last Of My Kind”), love and mortality (“If We Were Vampires”), the toxic effect of today’s pressures (“Anxiety”), the remnants of a break up (“Chaos and Clothes”) and finding hope (“Something To Love”). Songs such as “Cumberland Gap” and “Hope The Highroad” find Jason and his bandmates going back to their rock roots full force.

TRACK LISTING

1. Last Of My Kind
2. Cumberland Gap
3. Tupelo
4. White Man's World
5. If We Were Vampires
6. Anxiety
7. Molotov
8. Chaos And Clothes
9. Hope The High Road
10. Something To Love

Weathervanes is a collection of grown-up songs: Songs about adult love, about change, about the danger of nostalgia and the interrogation of myths, about cruelty and regret and redemption. Life and death songs played for and by grown ass people. Some will make you cry alone in your car and others will make you sing along with thousands of strangers in a big summer pavilion, united in the great miracle of being alive.

A Jason Isbell record always lands like a decoder ring in the ears and hearts of his audience, a soundtrack to his world and magically to theirs, too. Weathervanes carries the same revelatory power.

This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. He shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equalling four once you reach a certain age - and carry a certain amount of scars.

Jason Isbell has established himself as one of the most respected and celebrated songwriters of his generation. The North Alabama native possesses an incredible penchant for identifying and articulating some of the deepest, yet simplest, human emotions, and turning them into beautiful poetry through song. Isbell sings of the everyday human condition with thoughtful, heartfelt, and sometimes brutal honesty.

The record features the rolling thunder of Isbell’s fearsome 400 Unit, who’ve earned a place in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos alongside the greatest backing ensembles, as powerful and essential to the storytelling as The E Street Band or the Wailers.

Isbell broke through in 2013 with the release of Southeastern. His next two albums, Something More Than Free (2015) and The Nashville Sound (2017), won Grammy Awards for Best Americana Album and Best American Roots Song. Isbell’s song ‘Maybe It’s Time’ was featured in the 2019 reboot of A Star Is Born.

His most recent full-length album, Reunions (2020), is a critically acclaimed collection of ten songs that showcased an artist at the height of his powers and a band fully charged with creativity and confidence. The roots of Weathervanes go back into the isolation of the pandemic and to Isbell’s recent time on the set as an actor on Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon.

TRACK LISTING

1. Death Wish
2. King Of Oklahoma
3. Strawberry Woman
4. Middle Of The Morning
5. Save The World
6. If You Insist
7. Cast Iron Skillet
8. When We Were Close
9. Volunteer
10. Vestavia Hills
11. White Beretta
12. This Ain't It
13. Miles

Jason Isbell's songs are filled with ghosts. They're haunted by spirits both welcome and unwelcome, by the personal and historical legacies that make us who we are. Nowhere is this more evident than on his 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern. Isbell offers confessions, reflections, and promises that confront and make communion with those who have come before and remain with us still. Its twelve tracks represent an extended meditation on the concept articulated by another celebrated southern storyteller, author William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It isn't even past"

TRACK LISTING

Black Vinyl / Coloured Vinyl Tracklisting
1. Cover Me Up
2. Stockholm
3. Traveling Alone
4. Elephant
5. Flying Over Water
6. Different Days
7. Live Oak
8. Songs That She Sang In The Shower
9. New South Wales
10. Super 8
11. Yvette
12. Relatively Easy

3CD / 4LP Tracklisting
CD1/LP1
1. Cover Me Up
2. Stockholm
3. Traveling Alone
4. Elephant
5. Flying Over Water
6. Different Days
7. Live Oak
8. Songs That She Sang In The Shower
9. New South Wales
10. Super 8
11. Yvette
12. Relatively Easy
CD2/LP2
1. Cover Me Up (Demo)
2. Stockholm (Demo)
3. Traveling Alone (Demo)
4. Elephant (Demo)
5. Flying Over Water (Demo)
6. Different Days (Demo)
7. Live Oak (Demo)
8. Songs That She Sang In The Shower (Demo)
9. New South Wales (Demo)
10. Super 8 (Demo)
11. Yvette (Demo)
12. Relatively Easy (Demo)
CD3/LP3&4
1. Cover Me Up (Live)
2. Stockholm (Live)
3. Traveling Alone (Live)
4. Elephant (Live)
5. Flying Over Water (Live)
6. Different Days (Live)
7. Live Oak (Live)
8. Songs That She Sang In The Shower (Live)
9. New South Wales (Live)
10. Super 8 (Live)
11. Yvette (Live)
12. Relatively Easy (Live)

Charting a course between electronic experimentation and the dark echoes of 1980s post-rock, ishi vu’s music transports the young artist’s philosophical meditations in Gothenburg to imagined dancefloors worldwide. Created in response to a deep transformational experience, his debut album 'La Luz' is truly unique: channelling all genres and none into a depiction of some of the most fundamental human feelings. La Luz is a vivid and poignant distillation of club culture into something familiar, temporarily distant, but fresh. With the precision of someone who has thought carefully about an exact psychological, physical - and perhaps even spiritual - effect they want to provoke.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
La Luz BLue18
This Is Your Life - Vinyl Version
Isolated Incidents

Side B
Poison Dart
Bell-Tower Trip

Side C
Neverending Elation
Brightly Burning, Yet Alone
A.S.I.S.O.A. 1000

Side D
The Wasp
SANCTUAry, It MUST HappeN AGain!
10 Tolls: A Threnody For The Luz
Persuaded To Embrace In Saving Faith
[A CURIOUS END]

Drag City present the first domestic release of any kind from the Japanese singer songwriter Eiko Ishibashi, and the first vinyl release of any kind for this already-accomplished performer. And what a release. ‘Imitation Of Life’ isn’t just another pop record from another part of the world - it’s got a sci-fi theme and is produced by none other than Jim O’Rourke.

Eiko Ishibashi is a singer-songwriter, producer and session musician, focused on piano, but adept on drums, flute and vibraphone as well. She actually started out as a drummer, playing in several different bands. Then, at a filmmaker friend’s request, she did a soundtrack score, and the fulfilment of composing led to her solo career. Since 2006, she has released four pop albums and a solo piano album, all of which have been highly rated by the Japanese press. She plays at least a hundred gigs a year, including big rock festivals and European tours.

Artists Eiko has played with include Keiji Haino, Akira Sakata, Charlemagne Palestine, Seiichi Yamamoto, Gasper Claus, Oren Ambarchi, Glenn Kotche, Darin Gray and Merzbow. She is also a member of the current Jim O’Rourke band and recently formed an improv group called Kafka’s Ibiki, with O’Rourke and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto.

After her third album, ‘Carapace (2011), Eiko decided to do something new, which was when she started Eiko Ishibashi To Mou Shinda Hitotachi. The members of this group (Jim O’Rourke, Toshiaki Sudo, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Atsuko Hatano) became the band for ‘Imitation Of Life’, featuring production, like ‘Carapace’ before it, by Jim O’Rourke.

With an understanding of band dynamics developed through her many live shows and recordings, Eiko’s delicate, precise compositions are arranged with a dramatic-yet-humorous prog-pop sound. The flowing backgrounds she has conceived for her light, sweet melodies are captured by O’Rourke with a lively sense of play, which matches Eiko’s lyric concept, embodying a science fiction story which brings the album to a challenging new level. The variety of sounds, the impact of lyrics and her imagination keeps expanding, and in the latter stages of the album, the songs achieve a shattering impact.

The respected Japanese jazz drummer Akira Ishikawa was not messing around when he recorded the 'Uganda (Dawn of Rock)' album with his band the Count Buffaloes

For this offering, originally released in 1972 on Toshiba Records, Akira Ishikawa takes us on a deep tripped- out journey. 'Uganda (Dawn of Rock)' is a fusion of progressive and psych rock with African percussion workouts, dergy- wah wah blues-funk, and jazzy sensibilities; with different genres morphing and uniting as they progress.A long way from his funk and afrobeat album 'Back To Rhythm', reissued on Mr Bongo in 2019, this record has a darker, deeper, abstract and experimental stoned tone with the listener being pulled into its vortex for the ride. This record doesn't pull any punches.

For this album, Akira is joined by Hideaki Chihara on bass, guitarist Kimio Mizutani, sounding at times like an early 70s Peter Green, percussionist Larry Sunaga and composer Takeru Muraoka.

The album has become highly sought- after amongst psych, prog and acid rock collectors and due to the rare nature of original copies they come at a hefty price tag.

TRACK LISTING

Wanyamana Mapambazuko
Na Tu Penda Sana
Vita
Pygmy

For this offering, originally released in 1972 on Toshiba Records, Akira Ishikawa takes us on a deep tripped- out journey. 'Uganda (Dawn of Rock)' is a fusion of progressive and psych rock with African percussion workouts, dergy- wah wah blues-funk, and jazzy sensibilities; with different genres morphing and uniting as they progress.A long way from his funk and afrobeat album 'Back To Rhythm', reissued on Mr Bongo in 2019, this record has a darker, deeper, abstract and experimental stoned tone with the listener being pulled into its vortex for the ride. This record doesn't pull any punches.

For this album, Akira is joined by Hideaki Chihara on bass, guitarist Kimio Mizutani, sounding at times like an early 70s Peter Green, percussionist Larry Sunaga and composer Takeru Muraoka.

The album has become highly sought- after amongst psych, prog and acid rock collectors and due to the rare nature of original copies they come at a hefty price tag.

We are delighted to present an officially licensed re- issue of this underground Japanese rock rarity.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wanyamana Mapambazuko
2. Na Tu Penda Sana
3. Vita
4. Pygmy

Ultra-rare jazz-funk/fusion album by Japanese drummer, Akira Ishikawa, featuring percussion-heavy versions of ‘Let’s Start’, ‘Bongo Rock’ and ‘Pick Up The Pieces’. ‘Back To Rhythm’ was the final recording in Ishikawa’s Africaninfluenced period. He cut this record with his band ‘Count Buffalos’, featuring Kiyoshi Sugimoto, Takeru Muraoka, Larry Sunaga and arranger Hiromasa Suzuki. It includes excellent cover versions of The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, BT Express, Stevie Wonder, Average White Band, Incredible Bongo Band and Fela Kuti. Originally released in Japan in 1975 by Columbia, this is now extremely difficult to find in its original format, and very pricey indeed!

TRACK LISTING

I’ve Got To Use My Imagination
Bongo Rock
Do It Til You’re Satisfied
Hey Jude
El Condor Pasa
Pick Up The Pieces
Love Is The Answer
I Shot The Sheriff
Let’s Start
Boogie On Reggae Woman

Following a banner year for Pete Cunningham - best known as dextrous saxophonist Ishmael and leader of the namesake Ishmael Ensemble - 2019 now brings debut album ‘A State of Flow.’ This new long player builds on Cunningham’s work as proud protector of Bristolian heritage, sketching loving sonic pictures of the South West in his Bristol-inspired ‘Severn Songs’ series, whilst also incubating local visual and musical talent, within the Ensemble.

‘A State Of Flow’ touches on various styles of jazz, stirring ambient invocations, club-ready percussive workouts, spiralling grooves & hazy psychedelic electronica. This would be a confusing melange, but for Cunningham’s excursions as a genre-agnostic DJ – something evident in the real house shuffle of ‘Lapwing’ – which evokes walking into a smoky afterhours haunt and finding a session in full, forward motion or the organic garage beats of ‘Full Circle’ and classic trip hop style ‘Waterfall’ fuelled by Holysseus Fly’s honey toned and evocative vocals.

This album, borne of strong vision and stronger hometown pride, embellishes Ishmael Ensemble as one of the UK’s finest new groups. As shown across ‘A State of Flow’, the future of Bristol’s musical legacy is in more than capable hands.

TRACK LISTING

A1. The Chapel
A2. Full Circle Feat. Holysseus Fly
A3. Siren!
A4. Lapwing
A5. Yellow House Feat. Yama Warashi
B1. The River
B2. First Light
B3. Waterfall Feat. Holysseus Fly
B4. Surge

‘A State Of Flow’ touches on various styles of jazz, stirring ambient invocations, club-ready percussive workouts, spiralling grooves, hazy psychedelic electronica and Japanese lyrics.

Nodding to the city’s instantly-familiar hilltop location Dower House, ‘Yellow House’ explores geographic duality, with Japan-born, Bristol-based vocalist Yama Warashi singing native-language tales, of the magnetic and pastoral charm, of her adopted home.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Chapel
2. Full Circle (feat. Holysseus Fly)
3. Siren!
4. Lapwing
5. Yellow House (feat. Yama Warashi)
6. The River (feat Yazz Ahmed)
7. First Light
8. Waterfall (feat. Holysseus Fly)
9. Surge 

Fresh from their celebrated UK tour, featuring a stand-out performance at London Jazz Festival, Ishmael Ensemble return with ‘Reasons’ the lead single from their forthcoming EP ‘New Era’, a collaborative project with lyricist and MC Rider Shafique.

Ishmael Ensemble’s Pete Cunningham says: “I first came across Rider Shafique about 6 years ago after I heard his piece “I-Dentity” via Bristol’s Young Echo collective & was immediately struck by his powerful way with words. A true master of his craft.This record was an opportunity to lean into the more bass-heavy side of my music taste. I’ve always been a massive fan of dub in all its forms & producers like King Tubby, Adrian Sherwood & Pinch have been a constant source of inspiration over the years. This sound palette coupled with a voice like Rider’s is something I’ve always wanted to make so I’m super happy with what we’ve produced here.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Intro (name Tbc)
A2. Polestar
A3. New Era
B1. Salm
B2. Reasons

Following a breakthrough year that saw the release of their second album “Visions Of Light” bring critical acclaim to the Bristol group led by producer & saxophonist Pete Cunningham - Ishmael Ensemble return with “Versions Of Light” - a collection of reworks, remixes and reimagined versions by an exciting line-up of friends and family from the wider Ishmael Ensemble contingent.

The aim of the project in Cunningham’s words “was to avoid just putting together another predictable club-centric remix package with a few extra kick drums added here and there, instead I’ve approached this record as an opportunity to further lean into the collaborative nature of Ishmael Ensemble, whether that’s asking friends to rework tracks or inviting new vocalists to add their story to the melting pot”

These include Rider Shafique's politically charged take on Empty Hands Grove’s twisted bashment version of Wax Werk. There are also clubby moments from London based House aficionado Medlar, who turns Soma Centre into a heady peak time banger, and Indian producer Sandune’s post-dubstep twist on the title track.

As well as appearances from bandmates Holysseus Fly, Rindill & takx - the record also features many of the original collaborators from “Visions Of Light” given free reign to re-contextualize their contributions including an otherworldly version of Looking Glass by the inimitable STANLÆY, an ethereal performance of The Gift by Tiny Chapter and a hazy lofi home recording of Morning Chorus by Cunningham and long term collaborator & vocalist Chris Hillier. 

TRACK LISTING

1. "Intro" (Rindill Version)
2. "Visions Of Light" (Sandunes Version)
3. "Wax Werk" (Grove Version)
4. "Soma Centre" (Medlar Version)
5. "Empty Hands" (Rider Shafique Version)
6. "Feather" (Takx Version)
7. "Looking Glass" (Stanley Version)
8. "Morning Chorus" (Home Version)
9. "The Gift" (Tiny Chapter Version)
10. "January" (Holysseus Fly Version)

Bristol experimental jazz collective Ishmael Ensemble reveal their expansive new album “Visions of Light”. 

Helmed by producer and saxophonist Pete Cunningham, Ishmael Ensemble’s richly inventive 2019 debut “A State Of Flow” marked them out as an explosive new force in UK jazz, imbuing lush cinematic compositions with left-field dub and electronic sensibilities redolent of Bristol’s vital musical landscape. Named The Guardian’s ‘Contemporary Album Of The Month’ and Mojo’s ‘Jazz Album of The Month’, it saw the group perform Maida Vale sessions for both Gilles Peterson and Tom Ravenscroft, as well as feature on compilations for Brownswood Recordings and Soul Jazz Records.

Ishmael Ensemble has since become a platform for Cunningham to subvert the conventional notions of producer/artist relationships, unsettling genre tags, and transcending the familiar landscape of UK jazz itself. Across the album’s 10 tracks, Cunningham practices a holistic approach with a long list of collaborators. Together, they explore vast new sonic terrain with an honesty, intimacy and emotional heft impossible for a conventional band.

“Visions Of Light” tells the story of Ishmael Ensemble’s development across its two sides. The first draws from the energy Cunningham and his bandmates discovered whilst extensively touring “A State Of Flow”. The album opens with a cascade of harp glissandos and the gorgeous “Feather” – Holysseus Fly’s lush vocal lulling the listener into a false sense of security, before her voice is warped beyond recognition in the high-octane, cacophonous “Wax Werk”. The tracks that follow take a darker, heavier turn. The driving, uninhibited performances of Stephen Mullins (guitar) and Rory O’Gorman (drums), along with Jake Spurgeon’s agile synth work, lay the foundation for Cunningham to deliver his most confident and direct saxophone performances to date.

Side B sees Cunningham settle into his role as producer and collaborator, resetting the scene with the vivid and playful “Looking Glass”, inviting vocalist, harpist and strings arranger STANLAEY to take centre stage. The landscape shifts again for the movingly nostalgic “Morning Chorus”, whilst “The Gift” sees the angelic vocals of Tiny Chapter (Waldo’s Gift) initiate a dizzying crescendo of swirling synthesisers and string arrangements. When “Visions Of Light” resolves with the gorgeous slow-burner “January”, it is with an unmistakable hopefulness – something that, in these times of disquietude, is urgently felt.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Intro
2. Feather
3. Wax Werk
4. Soma Centre
5. Empty Hands

Side B
1. Looking Glass
2. Morning Chorus
3. Visions Of Light
4. The Gift
5. January

Isik Kural works like a photographer of sound, documenting the passing and returning of time as if material snapshots of life’s temporality. Across the album’s twelve songs, each composed from chance loops and cocooned within the soft container of Isik’s memorable voice and melody play, time is held on to hopefully, impossibly, eternally.

Born in Istanbul, Isik studied music engineering at the University of Miami, alighted in New York City, and eventually settled in Glasgow, immersing in a sound design masters and audiovisual practice. While these paths guided him between different projects and cities, a voice was simultaneously growing inside the artist, informed by a vision of the world in its everyday luminosity. This voice was expressed in the lyrical and instrumental waves of 2019's As Flurries, a cassette collection for Italian label Almost Halloween Records.

It was during a brief trip home to Istanbul in 2019 that the invisible details of in february were first exposed. While assisting on a session at his old haunt Babajim Recording Studios, Isik happened upon a beautiful piano, the kind “in which you hear a melody with the touch of a single note.” A looped segment from a recording of improvised tinkering on the instrument formed the basis “pillow of a thought,” which christens Isik’s new album. A bed for a passing notion, image, moment.

Adopting this novel way of working, Isik produced another twelve passages made from loops of unexpected recordings, nothing over three minutes. Eschewing both compositional plans and live performance proclivities, which had informed previous creative explorations, Isik sought a more instantaneous effect. Minute nylon string refrains, lilting synthesizer hums, and a scrap of a chamber recital are collaged with sympathetic verse and synesthetic details captured around Glasgow and activated at Green Door Studios.

Literary images also accompany the sensory of in february, weaving wanderlust symbolism through these spiraling studio and field documents. At the center of the album, “lo si aspetta” and “che si aspetta,” are titled after a telling line from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Long Road of Sand. Other word works are yoked to this promise. A verse by Turkish poet Gulten Akin, which connects the weather to lost friendship, meets a translation of Sophokles by Anne Carson in “yeniden,” one of three collaborations with vocalist Stephanie Roxanne Ward, pka spefy, on in February.

Isik treads lightly between the streams of poetry, sound and photography across in february, together impressing an imagistic lightness and immediacy. Although quick as the blink of a camera’s eye or the brush of two hands in passing, the brevity of these works should not be taken for granted: they whisper into each other with elaborate detail, intuitively papered over old and new stories of love and longing.

TRACK LISTING

01. Pillow Of A Thought
02. Simdi Iki
03. Paperhat
04. Pineapples And Lime
05. Hopefullyhopefully
06. Coral Gables (feat. Spefy)
07. Lo Si Aspetta
08. Che Si Aspetta
09. Sevdiklerine
10. Yeniden (feat. Spefy)
11. Berceuse (feat. Spefy)
12. Slippin
13. Film Festival

Originally called 'Love Island' - until "Linus didn't make the audition process so we jumbled it around" (or, possibly, for legal reasons) - Third Man London's first signing settled instead on 'Island of Love'.

For the label, an island within the UK music scene is exactly what Karim, Linus and Daniel are: feedback-fuelled adolescents with a depth of songwriting unheard since Teenage Fanclub's formative 'Catholic Education', and late '80s Dinosaur Jr. So mind-bendingly good are the group that Third Man co-founder and owner Ben Swank presented an offer approximately thirty seconds after they played the opening weekend of Third Man's new Soho digs (...new to the extent that the drummer left the stage with paint up his back).

Bonded by playing in various punk, hardcore and metal bands in their hometown of London, Island of Love's now double frontmen, Linus and Karim, would write and share demos between their family homes. The lo-fi, fuzzy fruits of these sessions melded into 2020's seven song 'Promo Tape', followed by 2021’s Third Man EP ‘Songs of Love’. Now, no longer a bedroom project, they present their adrenaline-filled debut, awashed with guitar distortion, Linus and Karim's dark harmonies and contemplative lyrics beyond their teenage years. This special release is sure to go down in both the TMR history books as well as mosh pits nationwide

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Island Of Love's debut is a roaring mix of 90's grunge, huge walls of sound and sharp distorted riffs twist under an undeniably tempering vocal performance from both guitarists. 'Grow' is the quintessential mid-point between grunge, pop-punk and indie, full of grit and swimming with earworm melodies.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Big Whale
2. Fed Rock
3. Grow
4. Blues 2000
5. Sweet Loaf

Side 2
1. I've Got The Secret
2. Losing Streak
3. Weekend At Clive's
4. Charles
5. Never Understand
6. It Was All Ok Forever