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BACK CATALOGUE - O

Taken from the new album ‘I Am Very Far’, ‘Rider’ was recorded by a massive version of Okkervil River – two drummers, two pianists, two bassists, and seven guitarists, all playing live in one room.

The band then spent a week of live-in-the-studio marathon sessions, performing a single song obsessively over and over for as many as 12 hours at a time to capture just the right take.

Okkervil River have thrown away all maps and compasses but they continue to chart their way, unblinking, toward destinations unknown.

“The noise they make is thrilling. ‘Rider’ is like Bowie’s ‘Panic In Detroit’ re-tooled in the anthemic manner of Springsteen or Arcade Fire, a bold unfurling, a majestic racket” – Uncut.

TRACK LISTING

Rider
I Guess We Lost

Okkervil River

The Silver Gymnasium

    Although he has long been known as a characterdriven songwriter, Okkervill River’s Will Sheff announced that this album is a work of autobiography.

    ‘The Silver Gymnasium’ is set in a very specific time and place from Sheff's childhood - in 1986 in the small town of Meriden, NH, where Sheff's parents worked as teachers for a boarding school. Sheff conceived the album as a tribute to the spirit of pre-adolescence, meant to evoke the nostalgic feeling of “an action figure you found in the woods.”

    This was also the era of video games like ‘Leisure Suit Larry’, ‘Maniac Mansion’, and ‘King’s Quest’. To pay homage to those early games, Sheff created his own online adventure game in partnership with Eyes And Ears' Benjamin Miles.

    Okkervil River

    The Stage Names

      With "The Stage Names", Okkervil River dynamite the walls of past release, "Black Sheep Boy"'s gothic, moss-walled castle from the inside to let in the glaring sun. Where "Black Sheep Boy" presented a fairytale of dark babbling streams and high distant towers, "The Stage Names" takes place in an unmistakably modern world, where snowy televisions blast into cheap hotels the spectral images of soap stars endlessly betraying each other, where losers in late-night bars languish to the beat of their favourite songs, where broken-down actresses place their final cell calls from lonely mansions high in the hills. Riddled with characters real and fake, with true-life biography and brazenly fabricated autobiography, with the relics of high culture and the crumpled-up trash of low culture, "The Stage Names" is a cinemascopic take on the meaning of entertainment.

      Okkervil River

      Wake And Be Fine / Weave Room Blues

      "Wake And Be Fine" is the first single from the forthcoming "I Am Very Far" album from Okkervil River.

      Work on "I Am Very Far" started after a year spent on other projects. Band member Will Sheff contributed vocals to The New Pornographers’ album "Together", wrote a song for Norah Jones' "The Fall", produced an upcoming album for the Brooklyn-based band Bird Of Youth, and helmed Roky Erickson's acclaimed "True Love Cast Out All Evil" with Okkervil River. (Sheff’s liner notes for said album earned him a 2011 Grammy nomination.)

      TRACK LISTING

      Wake And Be Fine
      Weave Room Blues

      Okkervil River

      Your Past Life Is A Blast

        ‘Your Past Life Is A Blast’ is the third single from ‘I Am Very Far’ from Okkervil River. The release of this single coincides with the band's late festival season appearance at End Of The Road.

        “The goal was to push my brain to places it didn't want to go. The idea was to not have any idea – to keep myself confused about what I was doing,” frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil River's newest album. The resulting record is a startling break from anything this band has done before. By turns terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it's a celebration of forces beyond our control.

        ‘Gold Faces’ is an exclusive new non-album song.

        Okonski

        Entrance Music

          After nearly two years, Okonski returns with 'Entrance Music' — an album that finds the trio at the height of their improvisational prowess and celebrating the spontaneous and meditative. On the heels of 2023’s debut 'Magnolia', pianist and leader Steve Okonski has reconvened long-time musical collaborators (Durand Jones and the Indications bandmate Aaron Frazer on drums and bassist Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery) for another session in the spirit of artists like the Bad Plus, Gerald Clayton, and The Breathing Effect. Ultimately 'Entrance Music' serves as an invitation to early hours, where songs linger in the doorway, announcing their presence before returning to the air, in a meticulous drift into the next.

          Recorded over a five day session, 'Entrance Music' was one of the first albums committed to tape at Portage Lounge, Terry Cole’s studio in Loveland, OH. “It was a new setup, but with Terry behind the dials it was very familiar,” says Okonski. “I can’t emphasize enough how much Terry feels like a fourth member [of the band] because of the space he’s curating, the energy he is bringing, and the production ideas.” The energy and sound created with the Colemine label head at the helm makes for a listening experience equally at home with ECM or Stones Throw catalogues.

          Whereas much of the debut resonates with his time in New York, Entrance Music “feels a little less ‘on the streets at 2 A.M.’ and a little more nature-based…a little more ethereal,” says Okonski. “It’s definitely age, environment, and family — all of that does come through in the music.”

          TRACK LISTING

          1. October
          2. Vista
          3. Lakebridge
          4. Wind Or Vertigo
          5. Passing Through
          6. Summer Storm
          7. Dahlia
          8. Dusk
          9. Penny

          Ryo Okumoto

          Coming Through

            Ryo Okumoto is a keyboardist with a rather impressive resume. He has worked with the likes of Phil Collins and Eric Clapton. He is also the keyboardist for Spock's Beard and this work is an extension of his work with the band with added jazz and fusion elements.

            Dave Okumu & The 7 Generations

            I Came From Love

              Okumu released his first solo record Knopperz in 2021; an instrumental concept album based on pianist Duval Timothy’s 2017 album Sen AmIt was friend and mentor Lexxx who sparked the soul searching that kicked off his next record after he told Okumu that he was trying to explain who Okumu was but struggled to summarise his vast catalogue.

              “There are all these ways into these aspects of who I am and I felt like he was saying, it would be so cool if you could find out how to say who you are in a comprehensive way”. Okumu took on that challenge and in response devised his sophomore release I Came From Love, a tapestry of Black experience that explores ancestry, the legacy of slavery, what it means to exist in an unjust society, and Okumu’s own family history.  

              The album writing and demoing process began in January 2021 at Lexxx’s East Sussex studio The Barn, while early recordings were completed at Okumu’s studio with Tom Skinner on drums, and Nick Ramm on keys, and Aviram Barath on synths. On I Came From Love, Okumu calls on a star-studded array of guests, including Eska, Kwabs, Wesley Joseph, Robert Stillman, Anthony Joseph, Byron Wallen, Raven Bush, and Grace Jones.

              Rather than release solely under his name, Okumu has chosen the moniker ‘Dave Okumu & the 7 Generations’, which Okumu sees as “my actual ancestors, the ancestors of others, my musical ancestors, and my descendants”. Sonically the album hits a kaleidoscopic frenzy of notes, rocketing through bass heavy rhythms, neo soul-tinged cries and frenetic spoken word passages.

              The album is a body of work presented in chapters; “You Survived So I Might Live” [tracks 1-4], “The Intolerable Suffering Of (The) Other” [5-8], “Seduced By Babylon” (9-11), and “Cave Of Origins” (12-14).

              TRACK LISTING

              Two Things
              7 Generations
              Blood Ah Go Run Streets
              My Negritude
              The Cost
              Prison
              Black Firework
              Scenes
              Amnesia
              Get Out
              The Struggle
              Eyes On Me
              Abaka
              A Paradise

              Debut solo album from Dave Okumu - who you probably don't know from producing and guesting on projects with Arlo Parks, St. Vincent, Tony Allen and Jesse Ware (amongst others). You might recognize him as singer and guitarist from the Mercury nominated band, The Invisible.

              However this isn't anything like anything he's made before. An ode to early electronica, downbeat and instrumental hip-hop, it combines elements of glitch, boom-bap, and warped sample heaven to create something with soul, identity and, more important, something that'll sound amazing in your living room as the dark nights draw in.

              Playing with a tantalizingly organic palette of sounds, it's jazz-indebted, with lots of dusty piano, upright bass and brushed drums strung up with an elastic, head-bobbing groove which I can't workout is some expert MPC trickery or some other kind of beat-production voodoo. Either way it pulls you in and out, fast and slower as it nods through its movements and is a guaranteed H I T for anyone with penchant for stoner, instrumental hip-hop in the vein of Madlib, J Dilla and Your Old Droog. 


              TRACK LISTING

              Intro
              Son Of Emmerson
              Ballpark
              Trouble
              New Dawn
              Brother
              Reprise
              RTN
              Don’t Die

              Ol' Dirty Bastard

              Return To The 36 Chambers - The Dirty Version - 2021 Repress

                It's safe to say that hip-hop has never seen an album like Ol’ Dirty Bastard's 1995 solo debut 'Return to the 36 Chambers'. The brief glimpses of ODB's unhinged genius provided by Wu-Tang Clan's landmark Enter the Wu-Tang album two years earlier were begging to be expanded on to a larger canvas, and, with RZA guiding production, the album promised to give Dirty the creative license to make one of the most bizarre, entertaining and original LPs in hip-hop history. With his raspy, drunken flow and dark sense of humor, Dirty fearlessly attacks from all angles, throwing himself fearlessly into punchy rhyme attacks (“Damage,” with GZA), drugged-out party jams (the monster singles “Brooklyn Zoo” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”) and bizarre, grimly hilarious fantasies of sex and violence (“Don't U Know” and the R&B-tinged “Sweet Sugar Pie”). Backed by RZA's appropriately gritty, dissonant beats and appearances from the Clan, Return became an instant hit, selling over 1 million copies and earning a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap Album in 1996. The album stands as a high water mark in the Wu-Tang Clan's collective creative output and was selected as one of the Best 100 Rap Albums by The Source magazine in 1998.


                TRACK LISTING

                1. Intro
                2. Shimmy Shimmy Ya
                3. Baby C'mon
                4. Brooklyn Zoo
                5. Hippa To Da Hoppa
                6. Raw Hide
                7. Damage
                8. Don't U Know
                9. The Stomp
                10. Goin' Down
                11. Drunk Game (Sweet Sugar Pie)
                12. Snakes
                13. Brooklyn Zoo II (Tiger Crane)
                14. Proteck Ya Neck II The Zoo
                15. Cuttin' Headz

                David Wingo is a busy man. In the years since the release of his last record as Ola Podrida, he's written and recorded soundtracks for several movies including Take Shelter (winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2011), MUD (starring Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon), and Prince Avalanche (starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch and co-composed with Explosions In The Sky), both of which are seeing wide release this coming spring/summer. When he had time in between films, Wingo assembled a live band featuring Colin Swietek on guitars, Matt Clark on bass, and David Hobizal on drums and began to bring his new songs in to the band. A first for Ola Podrida, the new album Ghosts Go Blind was recorded to tape in a proper studio, mostly live, with the full band. The resulting songs are energetic and accessible, while Wingo's abstract narratives are more personal and intimate than ever. Throughout the album bittersweet memories of youth are filtered through the nostalgic eyes of a man starting to accept his adult life for the first time. The album opens with last guy at the party pleading for someone to stay with him, and keep the revelry going a little longer. It's an almost cringeworthy desperation, and yet Wingo makes it feel relatable. The final refrain "It's no fun, being alone at the end" takes on a bigger meaning, giving you the feeling his friends have grown up and moved on, leaving him to decide how he'll proceed with his life. By the middle of the album, the character has evolved, now pleading with his partner again, but this time the goal is to stay home and shut out the world.

                TRACK LISTING

                1. Not Ready To Stop, 5:40
                2. Fumbling For The Light, 4:03
                3. Washing Away, 4:40
                4. Blind To The Blues, 4:32
                5. Staying In, 4:06
                6. Ghosts Go Blind, 5:12
                7. Speed Of Light, 4:07
                8. Some Sweet Relief, 4:07
                9. Notes Remain, 5:14

                Old Apparatus

                Compendium

                The music of Old Apparatus carves its own niche, leading you by the hand into unknown territory, exotic and mysterious, but shot through with a sense of magic and wonder that always pulls it out of the horror it hints at. A low key audio-visual group, they’ve deliberately worked out of the limelight, and consequently released some of the most ambitious and beautiful electronic music of the last few years. Old Apparatus started life on Mala’s Deep Medi record label 2 or so years ago, releasing two highly praised singles that were some of the best sellers on the label, however they were an unconventional choice, sitting uncomfortably with the dancefloor aimed dubstep that the label was known for, as their beautifully crafted mix of drones, sculptured soundscapes and dub moved far beyond the rulebook, and their audio-visual live shows became renowned for their quality. In 2012, Old Apparatus launched a bid for independence with their own ‘Sullen Tone’ imprint to release their own projects and others. The first of these releases on the label were EPs that spanned the second half of the year, opening with the Derren EP before releasing a series of EPs from three separate members of the group. Compendium draws together the highlights of those EPs into a sequenced mix that draws the sheer drama out of the music, like contrasting scenes in a film, enabling the listener to pick out details in music and get lost in its generous sound world. Starting with Zimmer’s rising strings and watery hiss, rolling seamlessly into the far away shoegaze of Mernom and then the warm, woodblock and acoustic guitar 2-step of Derren. The mood switches up to the jungle atmosphere of Dourado, with hypnotising drums and a feeling of panic, before the chopped and screwed march of Lingle drops the mood down, the club-footed hip hop and ritualistic astral atmosphere of cauliroot, creates a mysterious ambience, before the album hones down into the bell-like melodies and sliding drums of boxcat. Chicago opens next with a bare piano and heartbeat thud, working out of the rainy atmospheres, the shimmering drones Octofish lead into the vast waves of Realise, ending the album on a powerful note.

                TRACK LISTING

                01. Zimmer
                02. Mernom
                03. Derren
                04. Dourado
                05. Lingle
                06. Cauliroot
                07. Boxcat
                08. Chicago
                09. Octofish
                10. Realise

                Old Fire

                Songs From The Haunted South

                The pet project of Texas based programmer John Mark Lapham, - of The Earlies and 4AD band The Late Cord fame - Old Fire joins a world-class roster that includes the likes of Steven Wilson, The Pineapple Thief, Anathema, Nordic Giants and The Anchoress. Taking nearly a decade to make, Songs From The Haunted South has been a labour of love for Lapham.

                Born from an album concept for a 4AD project with singer Micah P. Hinson (The Late Cord), the album was originally intended to feature different singers and musicians recording songs that were both covers and originals. After parting ways with Micah, Lapham remained determined to realize his vision for the album and sought voices he considered special or fitted the inspiration.

                The first piece of the puzzle fell in to place after meeting the former owner of 4AD, Ivo Watts Russell, who introduced Lapham to singer/songwriter, Tom Rapp - who recorded a string of haunting albums in the late 60s and 70s under the name Pearls Before Swine. The vocals Rapp provided formed the basis of the track Shadows. In the following years, guest vocals were recorded by Sara Lowes (The Earlies), DM Stith, Christopher Barnes (Gem Club), Rebekka Karijord, and Alex Maas (Black Angels).

                The project also features a myriad of exceptional musicians including Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive) - Guitar, Thor Harris (Swans) - Drums, Christian Madden - Rhodes piano & Organ and Semay Wu (Cello).

                The 13 track album contains a selection of songs that in one way or another are dedications to people, some dead and some still living. Musically, inspirations range from ambient artists such as Brian Eno and Stars of the Lid to Psychedelic Rock, traditional Country and early 4AD.

                Sitting alongside the original Old Fire compositions are a selection of intriguing cover versions. Lapham uniquely interprets songs by Psychic TV (The Orchids), Low (Laser Beam), Ian William Craig (A Sight Grip, A Gentle Hold), Jason Molina (It's Easier Now), Camberwell Now (Know How) and Shearwater (Helix).

                Songs From The Haunted South' was produced by John Mark Lapham, mixed by JM Lapham and Mark Kuykendall, and was mastered by Ian Hawgood.

                The powerful cover art was designed by UK's Grammy Award winning designer Vaughan Oliver, famed for his work with artists such as Mojave 3, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, The Breeders, This Mortal Coil, Pixies, Throwing Muses in addition to artists such as David Sylvian and Bush. The cover shot taken in 1958 features Lapham's father during bivouac camping basic training in the foothills of the Ozarks, at Fort Chaffee.

                STAFF COMMENTS

                Barry says:

                TRACK LISTING

                Old Fire 3
                Along Came A Sadness
                Helix
                Know How
                It's Easier Now
                A Stranger In The Family
                Bloodchild
                Faust
                Shadows
                A Slight Grip, A Gentle Hold
                Laser Beam
                The Orchids
                Deadhouse Dream

                Old Fire

                Voids

                  For Fans of: Bill Callahan, Adam Torres, Cross Record, Julia Holter, Low, Damien Jurado.

                  The album’s Texas-based producer John Mark Lapham was a member of Secretly Canadian band The Earlies. Voids employs the vocal talents of Bill Callahan, Emily Cross, Adam Torres, and Julia Holter across twelve genre-fluid, yet impressively cohesive tracks that span baroque dream-pop, filmic ambient, raga-like drones, avant-country, and even spiritual jazz, all imbued with poetic heft and seared by the West Texas sun. It was beneath this same sun that Lapham lost both of his parents, mourned a withering relationship, and shouldered the fallout of the pandemic, turning his life into the rusted-out scraps he then used to build Voids from the ground up.

                  There is no better narrator for Lapham’s story than fellow Texas resident Bill Callahan, whose iconic delivery perfectly personifies the core themes of Voids. By the time Callahan appears, he does so over a saw-blade drone that sounds like machinery echoing off the corrugated steel walls of a nearby workshop, which then breaks open into a loose yet pained confluence of violin and upright bass that recalls Joe Henderson’s 1974 spiritual jazz album The Elements. On “Dreamless” the album crystallizes into its most straight-ahead moment as Lapham trains his compositional lens on a brilliant piece of pop songwriting. Featured vocalist Adam Torres soars over John Mark’s punctual arrangement of stomping drums and rapturous string-work to anthemic, and gently psychedelic consequence.

                  Voids concludes with the pleasant clatter of “Circles” wherein Lapham throws all his ingredients into a pot of celebratory catharsis. Drum sets collide with one another gleefully, and harmonized textures scatter and roll about the floor like a dropped bucket of ornate marbles. Lapham’s collage-work, which up to this point has been smartly restrained, comes unglued as he transmutes grief into relief within a moment-of-death montage of aural imagery. Across Voids, that same awareness of tragedy and loneliness is made palatable by the album’s exciting and varied topography, which stands insubordinately against Lapham’s real-life surroundings. The settlers who established West Texas towns like the one he calls home must have done so with a sense of hope despite the hostility of their surroundings, however inevitable the withering. Similar spirits speak through John Mark Lapham’s work, and he welcomes them as fascinating old friends. “That more than anything inspired a lot of what I try to express through Old Fire, faded memories, former glories, places lost in time,” he discloses. “Whatever I was trying to express with Old Fire wasn't finished with the first album, like a story that was only half-read. It seemed like that was only the beginning, and there was a lot more ground to cover.” If there is ground still uncovered for Old Fire after Voids, it's sure to be lush in spite of or perhaps because of the dusty soil beneath it.

                  TRACK LISTING

                  01. All Gone [2:11]
                  02. Blue Star (ft. Emily Cross) [4:07]
                  03. When I Was In My Prime (ft. Bill Callahan) [5:05]
                  04. Corpus (ft. Bill Callahan) [4:15]
                  05. Love Is Only Dreaming [2:45]
                  06. Dreamless (ft. Adam Torres) [3:08]
                  07. Don't You Go (ft. Bill Callahan) [4:38]
                  08. Window (ft. Julia Holter) [4:24]
                  09. Uninvited [8:22]
                  10. Memory [5:51]
                  11. Father As A Child [4:24]
                  12. Circles [6:57]

                  Old House Playground

                  God Damn That Gold

                    A booze and smoke filled stumble through love and loss taking in rock, blues, folk and swing. .

                    Observers of a world of people trapped in dreams producing music that wants to find out why this happens. Songs that dismantle the procedure of life and ask how are people oblivious? Rooted deep in the folk culture of story telling and drawing characters, picking up something new from every stop along the way. Their gift is the music that is melded from all that they have seen and experienced and offers the listener a doorway into a different path. .

                    Old House Playground are a two piece band based in Manchester UK. Their trail of gigs leads a winding path across europe taking in Manchester, London, Ireland, Greece, Germany and Switzerland with airplay in the UK, Ireland, Greece, Germany, Switzerland and even Romania. Their album God Damn That Gold was recorded to analogue tape by label mate Chris Evans, and will be released on 11th June 2012 through The Evening Economies and Fat Bob Records.

                    Old Mexico

                    Old Mexico

                      In 2016 Dead Meadow’s Jason Simon ventured north to San Francisco to take part in the Family Folk Explosion: a Last Waltz-style concert series hosted by Trans Van Santos and what the SF Weekly has called "his band of Merry Pranksters." Simon picked a handful of songs to perform with the Trans Van Santos band, leaning heavily on unrecorded material and selections from his last solo album. When he arrived in San Francisco for rehearsals he was immediately taken with the band’s much jazzier interpretations of his songs; a particular revelation coming from the loose and idiosyncratic swing of San Francisco drummer and Spirit Jazz elder Dave Mihaly (known for his work with Jolie Holland and his own group; Dave Mihaly & The Shimmering Leaves Ensemble).

                      Of all the songs that Jason Simon brought to the table that evening, none were more important to the future NorCal/SoCal collaboration between these two sonic tribes than “Past the Western Wall;" a song Simon felt necessitated a Free Jazz approach that had proven difficult to capture. Not so in San Francisco, where the song became the lengthy and searching centerpiece of the set. Behind Dave Mihaly’s inspired work on the trap kit, Jason Simon’s exploration of Indian motifs on lead guitar, and the Bob Weir-like rhythmic accompaniment of Trans Van Santos, the song found its wings, stretching freely in the open landscape of the songs middle section. Clocking in at nearly fifteen minutes, “Past the Western Wall" was the clear highlight of a show that featured more than a few bright moments. The next morning Jason Simon drove back to Los Angeles with a copy of Dave Mihaly’s most recent album and an invitation to join Trans Van Santos at the TVS2 sessions in Joshua Tree, California the next month.

                      Jason Simon listened to the Dave Mihaly album on the drive back to Los Angeles and then he listened to it again, and again. The next month in Joshua Tree he presented Trans Van Santos with a proposition to record an album featuring material from the three songwriters. They pow-wowed and smoked the peace pipe and formulated a plan: the album was to be recorded in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, in the northern reaches of Old Mexico, and feature contributions from members of their respective solo projects. Songs would be recorded live over a couple of sessions with very few overdubs. “Western Wall" would be the foundation that the album would be built upon. Jason Simon would produce and steer the ship through the process and toward completion. This album is the fruit of that cross genre and multigenerational collaboration out on the edges of West. Welcome to Old Mexico.

                      Old 97’s

                      American Primitive

                        The 13th studio album from Old 97’s arose from what vocalist/guitarist Rhett Miller refers to as a “de-evolution.” “As much as I want us to calm down and grow up, the songs that felt right for this record were mostly big and loud and brutal and dirty.” Produced by Tucker Martine and featuring appearances from Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5) — American Primitive is gloriously rowdy, revealing a band more attuned than ever to the raw, reckless energy of timeless rock-and-roll.


                        Old Saw

                        Dissection Maps

                          Old Saw, the enigmatic New England collective led by Henry Birdsey (Tongue Depressor), return with their third long-playing record, Dissection Maps. It is not enough to trace the fields. The choreo-cartographic demands the casting of stone, a grassfire, a carnival; something with which to rupture the horizontality of existence and imagine the vertical.Earth is the eighth morning, folded against the week's work. The field is a line drawing of oblivion. The house is a forest in the shape of a womb. America is a quarry in the image of god.(Aidan Patrick Welby – 2024)

                          “The band captures the American stretch, the spaces in-between and the hollowness that haunts us along those routes…fades the radio to static to let the nothingness linger among the soul.” (Raven Sings the Blues) “ evokes an ambience of prayer-like solemnity that celebrates something decidedly terrestrial, what the label describes as “a rusted and granular shadow world where the dive bar meets the divine.” It recalls one of those junkyard shrines built by some sincere eccentric, improbably wonderful forms of weathered stone and scrap metal standing like totems to an unrecognised religion rooted in the earth around us.” (Various Small Flames).

                          TRACK LISTING

                          Sleeps With Dice
                          Singing Loom
                          Dealt In Silver
                          Revival Hearing
                          Measured Mile End
                          Last Rings

                          Oldboy

                          Bloody

                            The debut album from pre-grunge crunch merchants oldboy:

                            oldboy formed as a past-time - like golf or knitting - between old friends with a love of having a loud good time. created by Max and Chris in an industrial estate rehearsal room back in 2019, get togethers were few and far between but something was popping - it felt like fun.

                            Since then, practises were again few and far between but after recruiting an old friend - Ryan - on bass (they didn't want to be a two piece - lightning bolt have that covered) they decided to try a little bit harder and as the world went into reverse they somehow wrote what you have here - their debut album 'bloody'.

                            Recorded at the Total Refreshment Centre in three days with Jonah Falco (fucked up, chubby and the gang, the chisel) and then mixed in three hours in the basement of rough trade west you get exactly where oldboy are at. it's fast and relentless. it swings in places. It's super raw and the sound of three people having a high ol' time.

                            Mucho influenced by the prime / premiere cuts of the late 80s / early 90s Chicago / US noise, as once released by Touch and Go, Amphetamine Reptile and Sub Pop.. pummelled home with a British post punk thWACK... it’s pop music, it’s just nasty pop music.

                            For fans of: Tar, Shellac, Precious Wax Droppings, Helmet, Scratch Acid, Tad....

                            Play loud…
                            …and often

                            TRACK LISTING

                            1. Proper Son
                            2. Big Balls
                            3. Soft To The Touch
                            4. Fux Been Given
                            5. Wow
                            6. Slap On The Wrist
                            7. Pedestal
                            8. Brace Yerself
                            9. Underwater Bats

                            Olden Yolk

                            Olden Yolk

                              Olden Yolk is a New York-based group whose penchant for dystopian folk, abstract poeticism, and motorik rhythms have enveloped them in a sound uniquely of-the-moment yet simultaneously time-tested. The project is currently led by songwriters, vocalists, and multiinstrumentalists Shane Butler and Caity Shaffer, whose interlaced vocals are found guiding each composition on their enlivening self-titled debut. The project was initially conceived in 2012 by Butler as an outlet for one-off songs and visual art while touring and releasing albums with the band Quilt (Mexican Summer).

                              Following the release of a split-record with Weyes Blood in 2014, Olden Yolk became a collaborative entity. Olden Yolk’s debut ruminates on questions surrounding love, self-doubt, and locating autonomy amidst burgeoning unrest. Wrought with hazy melancholy and halcyon joy, Butler and Shaffer’s lilting vocals play off one another through a devotional dialogue, taking form in haunting choral melodies and candid rock n' roll. These songs are ecstatic odes to the life of the city; to the subway platforms, kiosks, and monuments which enliven and encompass our collectivity, elevating into an urban-psychedelia.

                              On the album, Butler and Shaffer are joined by drummer Dan Drohan (Tei Shi, Uni Ika Ai) and guitarist Jesse DeFrancesco who round out the studio sessions and live-band. Drohan’s deep passion for jazz, hip-hop, and experimental percussion come to fore while Defrancesco’s minimal yet powerful guitar ambiences are heard swelling in the peripheries of each song. The album was recorded at Gary’s Electric in NYC by Jarvis Taveniere (Woods) with co-production, electronics, and mixing by Jon Nellen (Ginla, Terrible Records). Other guests, such as multi-instrumentalist John Andrews (Woods, Quilt, The Yawns) and violinist Jake Falby (Mutual Benefit, Julie Byrne), add to the mercurial nature of the record, creating a landscape tinged with beatific songwriting and transgressive underpinnings. 

                              STAFF COMMENTS

                              Barry says: The familia, often-tread middle ground between folk and psychedelia is a dangerous one. On one hand, you have bands which sound like they could have come from any era in the past 30 years, and could slip away a mere month later. On the other hand, you have the undiluted hypnotic beauty and filmic soaring majesty of Olden Yolk, perfectly marrying the mind-melting chemical meltdown of the 70's with the pristine production and thematic purity of todays folk. Superb.

                              TRACK LISTING

                              1. Verdant
                              2. Cut To The Quick
                              3. Gamblers On A Dime
                              4. Vital Sign
                              5. Aria
                              6. Common Ground
                              7. Hen’s Teeth
                              8. Esprit De Corps
                              9. After Us
                              10. Takes One To Know One

                              Olden Yolk

                              Living Theatre

                                The musical duo of Shane Butler & Caity Shaffer released their debut album as Olden Yolk last year, an alluring concoction of hypnagogic folk & kosmiche rhythms, expanding & refining Butler's work in his former band Quilt toward a more focused direction. "Living Theatre" is the follow up to that eponymous debut & more than lives up to its promise. The songs on "Living Theatre" were written & recorded during a heavy time of transition & upheaval for the duo, with personal tragedies and a big move from their NYC home to a warmer climate in Los Angeles coloring the album's inception.

                                Thematically "Living Theatre" tunes seem to be about how humans react to the ways life is colored by both fate and the consequences of the conscious & unconscious decisions we make. Musically, the duo's songwriting has gelled into a unified front, relying more on the subtle shifts of melody & rhythm than a barrage of chord changes; "Living Theatre"s hooks lap at your feet like a babbling brook, rather than bowl you over like violent waves. The refinement in tunes like "Castor & Pollux", "Grand Palais" & first single "Cotton & Cain" points to a new frontier for the group; soaring skyward toward the emotionally textural plateaus of trailblazers like The Go-Betweens or Yo La Tengo. There's a discernible romantic feel to tunes like "Violent Days" or "Distant Episode"'s lush arrangements with Shaffer in particular finding her own voice here; poetic, abstract & expressive. "Living Theatre" showcases a band breaking free from its chrysalis, and embracing its next phase of evolution

                                TRACK LISTING

                                1. 240 D
                                2. Blue Paradigm
                                3. Cotton & Cain
                                4. Meadowlands
                                5. Castor & Pollux
                                6. Violent Days
                                7. Every Ark
                                8. Grand Palais
                                9. Distant Episode
                                10. Angelino High

                                Paul Older is the man behind the Disco Mind Records and after something of a short break, he and it are back with a bang. These two superb cuts are the result of him going on a deep digging record trip and unearthing two marvelous old gems that have been expertly restored for modern dance floors without losing any of the grit and realness that makes old tunes so appealing. 'The Venetian Girl (Marisa)' comes on strong with huge horns and big Philly percussion that reminds immediately of the legendary Studio 54 and then 'Up' is a big-time party pumper with funky elements to get the floor going.

                                TRACK LISTING

                                The Venetian Girl (Marisa)
                                Up

                                Toy Tonics presents the first EP by Paul Older. Italian hero of vinyl diggers and maestro of rare edits. Paul is known for doing some of the sickest versions of rare jazz funk and Italian disco around. Played by every important DJ of the scene.

                                4 mad tracks based on recording of real musicians and bands from the Sonoton catalogue that he reworked legally and created vibrant versions for the dancefloor. This is amazing organic dance music. Live bass, drums, guitars and keyboards... played in a Afro-American vibe turned into modern house and indie dance that will put every dancefloor on fire.


                                STAFF COMMENTS

                                Matt says: Toy Tonics keep up to their consistently high standards, introducing the work of Italian Paul Older. It's that stylish mix of disco and house that the label do so well, executed in full force by this new addition to their roster. Impeccable.

                                TRACK LISTING

                                A1) Guapita
                                A2) Keep On
                                B1) I Like It, I Wanna It (Extended Version)
                                B2) Loop Story

                                Oldfield Youth Club

                                The Hanworth Are Coming

                                  After releasing his seventh - arguably best and most popular album - The Odd Shower, The Bitter Springs' singer / songwriter Simon Rivers reinvented himself as Poor Performer, whose own debut, Like Yer Wounds Too, followed the same winning formula, widened somewhat by the inclusion of songs with a greater fragile beauty and introspection . . . though rarely without a degree of self-effacing humour and a rather stylish wit. Decades of self-releasing compact disc-only albums from the far southwestern suburbs of London, with scant regard for promotion or the normal machinations of showbiz - touring, for instance - did little to spread the word about Rivers' unique and prestigious talents. A conversational singer with a delightfully warm and convivial stone, Rivers' sense of the absurd and willingness to portray aspects of life generally unrecognised by pop music, one supposes it's not entirely unfair to have expect Top of The Pops to come calling. Yet the relative absence of cult of Simon Rivers fans is somewhat perplexing, for his lyrics, ideas and tunes all do merit it. There's little affectation in the sense of stage persona, but heaps of personality and intriguing, occasional perverse idea. It's hard to listen to anything he's down without a degree of sheer enjoyment. It's real, without affectation. The very real bumps heads with the slightly mental, just like in life! So what does this new guise - Oldfield Youth Club - have to offer? It's partially a revival of Rivers' first 'real' band, Last Party, and it displays hallmarks of that band's youthful energy. There's a bit of teen glam in Good News I'm Afraid and (Theme From Oldfield Youth Club, even while lead track We're The OYC and When Bob Grant Ruled The World add a dollop of an energetic ruefulness to the mix. A Kind Of Loving In A Loveless Town is an immediate classic, a song one could hear dozens of times before really reaching the core of its magic and majesty. Lest this sound like the work of a solo artist, it does feel like a band - a rather clever one, in fact. Including members Kim Rivers and Neil Palmer (both from Last Party), as well as trumpeter / vocalist Alison Targett, Oldfield Youth Club is a band with an obvious musical kinship. There's a connection to the literal style of Vic Godard's Subway Sect (and members have been shared between both acts) or early Go-Betweens . . . there's an alchemical sensibility shared by all three acts wherein their words and tunes inform each other in a deceptively casual but arresting manner. It's hard not to love, a rare work that earns immediate affection and just grows better from there.

                                  TRACK LISTING

                                  We're The Oyc
                                  Good News I'm Afraid
                                  Strange Family Dynamic
                                  Lightbulb Moments
                                  When Bob Grant Ruled The World
                                  A Kind Of Loving In A Loveless Town
                                  (theme From) Oldfield Youth Club
                                  Cutbacks
                                  Talk 2 People
                                  Baby Joy
                                  The Glue
                                  Net Curtains

                                  Mike Oldfield

                                  Tubular Bells - 50th Anniversary Edition

                                    This 50th Anniversary celebration edition of Tubular Bells, overseen by Mike Oldfield, contains a brand new half-speed Abbey Road master of the original album, plus a second album that unites several beguiling versions of Oldfield’s masterwork for the first time.

                                    Receiving its first outing on vinyl is Tubular X, that Mike recorded in 1998 for an X-Files album*; Mike’s remix collaboration with York, the original Mike Oldfield’s Single (Theme From Tubular Bells)* and, for the first time since a very limited run in 2012, Mike’s stunning Tubular Bells/In Dulci Jubilo (Music for the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games).Of particular interest brand new eight-minute track Tubular Bells 4 Intro, which may well be the last thing ever recorded by Oldfield.

                                    TRACK LISTING

                                    Vinyl Tracklist

                                    LP1

                                    1. Tubular Bells - Part One (2023 Half Speed Master By Miles Showell)
                                    2. Tubular Bells - Part Two (2023 Half Speed Master By Miles Showell)

                                    LP2 - SIDE A

                                    1. Tubular Bells 4 Intro (previously Unreleased Demo)
                                    2. Tubular Bells/In Dulci Jubilo (Music For The Opening Ceremony Of The London 2012 Olympic Games)

                                    LP2 - SIDE B

                                    1. Tubular X
                                    2. Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield & YORK Remix)
                                    3. Mike Oldfield's Single (Theme From Tubular Bells)


                                    CD Tracklist

                                    1. Tubular Bells - Part One
                                    2. Tubular Bells - Part Two
                                    3. Tubular Bells 4 Intro (previously Unreleased Demo)
                                    4. Tubular Bells/In Dulci Jubilo
                                    5. (Music For The Opening Ceremony Of The London 2012 Olympic Games)
                                    6. Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield & YORK Remix)

                                    Will Oldham & Lori Damiano

                                    Shorty’s Ark

                                      ‘Shorty’s Ark’ is a book for young readers, a collaborative effort between singer Will Oldham and graphic artist Lori Damiano, based on work by Oldham and musician Matt Sweeney. Drawing inspiration from the story of Noah, ‘Shorty’s Ark’ names and pictures a wild variety of species to inform and engage an equal variety of young minds with the diversity that can be found around this great planet of ours. The flood stands as metaphor for current impending changes in our planet, and the story works as a springboard for understanding concepts of interdependency, diversity and extinction.

                                      Colourfully illustrating as many creatures and their places as possible, ‘Shorty’s Ark’ is an earth-affirmative vision meant to stimulate the curiosity and passion of those who encounter it. Will Oldham makes songs, mostly out of his home in Louisville, KY where he lives with his wife Elsa Hansen Oldham and their daughter, Poppy Jo. Increasingly, Oldham’s lyrics make sense. He loves partnering up in order to make the strongest work; it was partnership that yielded the song ‘Shorty’s Ark’ (it can be heard on Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s ‘Superwolves’ album), and his partnership with Lori Damiano that make this book what it is.

                                      Lori Damiano is an illustrator / animator / textile artist based in Oregon. She loves to tell stories in pictures made out of paint, yarn, or pixels. A lot of the stories she draws are based on observing her fellow earthlings.

                                      Bouquet Records features Olive T. for their sixth EP release on vinyl to infuse their 2021 roster with the desired verve and energy that dormant club kids are thirsting for.

                                      Releasing in early summer, the energetic dance tracks herald a return to the dance floor, uplifted by soul-stirring synthesiser orchestral strings.
                                      The native New Yorker and scene fixture was influenced by 90's house, inspired by Raze, Deee-lite, Green Velvet, and smooth disco flows.
                                      The ascension sensation of 'Goin' Up' builds on familiar house grooves with digital synths and a thoughtful utilisation of today's technology.

                                      Known to play a range spanning hip hop to club, jazz to funk, disco to garage, and more, Olive T has DJ'd countless venues and over international airwaves.
                                      An early exposure to house and techno, combined with a wide span of diverse musical taste, shaped her unique style. In 2020 she started her own 2 hour radio show on The Lot Radio.

                                      Olive T worked with Tiro! due to her admiration of his use of traditional sounds of the 90's era, sensing he also listened prolifically to 90's house and techno. Tiro!'s remix of 'This Is A Bop' adds organic flare to the original.
                                      A long-time fan of Matt Karmil, she invited him to remix 'Opaque' - He flips the track upside down to reveal a different, but still vibrant interpretation, with his technical approach to remixing.

                                      Olive T has released singles and remixes on Nervous records, 2MR, and on her own. The four track record 'Goin' Up' marks Olive T's first label-released EP, and first release on San Diego-based Bouquet Records.

                                      TRACK LISTING

                                      A1. Opaque
                                      A2. Opaque (Matt Karmil Remix)
                                      B. This Is A Bop
                                      B. This Is A Bop (Tiro ! Remix)

                                      Oliver Brouwer

                                      LP3

                                        Composer and pianist Oliver Brouwer releases his third album with Swedish record label 1631 Recordings. This forms the final part in a trilogy of albums shared over the last three years. ‘LP 3’ was recorded on the night of the 22nd of June, at Lancaster Priory Church. 



                                        Oliveray

                                        Wonders

                                          Being musical companions and label mates for years, it was just a matter of time until modern contemporaries Peter Broderick and Nils Frahm would start their first standalone project together.

                                          Blog post by Peter Broderick: 'I am super excited to announce the debut release from a project very dear to me! Oliveray consists of me, Peter Ray Broderick, and one of my greatest friends in the world, the incredible musician / producer Nils Oliver Frahm. We've been collaborating in many ways these past couple years and traveling a lot together. Now finally we have arrived with our first truly 50/50 collaboration effort entitled Wonders. It all started when I was asked to create a cover version for my great friends Efterklang. I asked Nils if he'd like to work with me on the project. So one day we got together in his studio and ran through the song (Harmonics) a couple times and then laid it down to tape in the most relaxed way possible - me playing the guitar and singing and him on the piano... We were both really happy and inspired with how easy and fun this process was. We thought you could hear and feel that relaxed atmosphere in the song. So when our Japanese friends Cote Labo asked us to prepare some kind of release for our Japan tour, me and Nils set aside a couple days to record some music in a similar manner. Without much preconception we just set up the mics and started recording, with an aim to create a short album of half instrumentals, half vocal-based songs. We ran through a few fresh musical ideas that each of us had, improvising along with each other, sometimes just improvising entirely. And before we new it we had a nice little collection of eight intimate pieces of music. The first official output of what will hopefully be a lifelong collaboration, Wonders feels really special to me. Here comes Oliveray!'

                                          Next year will mark two decades of existence for the instrument of sonic chaos known as Mondo Generator. The project, formed by then-soon-to-be-Queens of the Stone Age bassist/vocalist Nick Oliveri released their first album, Cocaine Rodeo, in 2000 via Southern Lord Recordings and never looked back through a whirlwind of intense punk, speed metal and heavy rock. Across four studio full-lengths and more tours than one could count, Mondo Generator has never been anything less than completely in your face, so that even Oliveri‘s acoustic work arrives dripping with attitude. Topped with artwork by Branca Studio and presented on limited blue and black vinyl and CD, this collection spans the career of the band, with guest appearances throughout from Josh Homme, Dave Catching, Dave Grohl, Alain Johannes, John Garcia, Brant Bjork, Alfredo Hernandez, Mark Lanegan, Chris Goss and many more.. A European tour sometime in the fall to coincide with this release is anticipated.“I’m stoked that somebody wants to put out the best of record and the songs on the album are the best songs over the years, 1997 to the present,” says Oliveri. “I feel that those records slipped through the cracks and now this is a chance for people to get a better presentation of the band. Only the best songs off the records!” 

                                          TRACK LISTING

                                          1. 13th Floor
                                          2. F.Y.I.F
                                          3. Sonicslowmotiontrails
                                          4. Like The Sky; Dog Food
                                          5. Smashed Apart; The Last Train
                                          6. So High
                                          7. Simple Exploding Man 
                                          8. Four Corners 
                                          9. Dead Silence
                                          10. I Never Sleep
                                          11. Shawnette Jackson 
                                          12. Detroit; Lie Detector 
                                          13. Take Me Away 
                                          14. Like You Want
                                          15. Sleep The Lie Away
                                          16. Turbonegro Must Be Destroyed 
                                          17. All The Way Down 
                                          18. Paper Thin

                                          Chris Olley

                                          Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wade

                                            "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wade" is a mixture of acoustic and electric songs which carry the theme of a commentary on modern life in the same tradition as Lou Reed and Bob Dylan. Lyrically this album talks about failed friendships, the overbearance of mobile phones and technology in our lives, and about how much 'bullshit can be up ahead'! It's a taught and claustrophobic comment on modern life which few songwriters are prepared to make.

                                            This album features 9 songs and is 40 minutes long. Limited to 100 and all signed and numbered, this CD comes in a clear DVD wallet and has an 8 page booklet printed on double weight paper with lyrics.

                                            TRACK LISTING

                                            1. The Rise And Fall And Decline Of Everything
                                            2. Ghosts
                                            3. Suicide Junkie
                                            4. How Does It Feel To Get Just What You Want
                                            5. Teach The Children 2010
                                            6. Rebel In A Bad Suit
                                            7. Living Is Just Too Damn Hard For You
                                            8. Cruising On The Highway Of The Superlost
                                            9. The Black Sheeps

                                            Many of the superlatives describing Angel Olsen refer to how seemingly little it takes for her to leave an audience speechless, even spellbound. But Olsen has never been as timid as those descriptors imply, and the noisy, fiery hints in her earlier work find a fuller expression on her newest LP, Burn Your Fire for No Witness. Here, Olsen sings with full-throated exultation, admonition, and bold, expressive melody. Also, with the help of producer John Congleton, her music now crackles with a churning, rumbling low end and a brighter energy.

                                            Angel Olsen began singing as a young girl in St. Louis, where she explored the remarkable range of her voice and the places it could take her songwriting. Her self-released debut EP, Strange Cacti, belied both that early period of discovery and her Midwestern roots. Cautious and homespun on the one hand, the EP transported us to a mystical, unrecognizable world on the other, and it garnered extensive praise for its enigmatic beauty. Olsen then went further on Half Way Home, her first full-length album (released on Bathetic Records), which mined essential themes while showcasing a more developed voice. Olsen dared to be more personal.

                                            After extensive touring, Olsen eventually settled for a time in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood, where she created "a collection of songs grown in a year of heartbreak, travel, and transformation." The new songs go on to tell us to leave, or to high-five a lover who is lacking, or to dance our way up and out of sorrow. Many of them also remain essentially unchanged from their bare beginnings. In leaving them so intact, a more self-assured Olsen is opening up to us, allowing us to be in the room with her at the very genesis of these songs, when the thread of creation is most vulnerable and least filtered. Our reward for entering this room are many head-turning moments and the powerful, unsettling recognition of ourselves in the weave of her songs.

                                            This act of meaning-making recurs as a theme throughout the album, as the sublimating response to the power of negativity. In the song, "Stars", for example, Olsen wishes to "have the voice of everything" and in a moment of hatefulness and hurt realizes that the strength of fury results in the power she had been seeking all along. Thankfully for us, Olsen has decided to channel a lot of this newfound power into the ethereal, hypnotic performances of her new and revealing songs, sharing with us the full grace and beauty of her transformative moments.

                                            TRACK LISTING

                                            1. Unfucktheworld
                                            2. Forgiven/Forgotten
                                            3. Hi-Five
                                            4. White Fire
                                            5. High & Wild
                                            6. Lights Out
                                            7. Stars
                                            8. Iota
                                            9. Dance Slow Decades
                                            10. Enemy
                                            11. Windows

                                            "Anyone reckless enough to have typecast Angel Olsen according to 2013’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness is in for a rethink with her third album, MY WOMAN. The crunchier, blown-out production of the former is gone, but that fire is now burning wilder. Her disarming, timeless voice is even more front-and-center. Yet, the strange, raw power and slowly unspooling incantations of her previous efforts remain.

                                            Over two previous albums, she gave us reverb-shrouded poetic swoons, shadowy folk, grunge-pop band workouts and haunting, finger-picked epics. MY WOMAN is an exhilarating complement to her past work, and one for which Olsen recalibrated her writing/recording approach and methods to enter a new music-making phase.

                                            As the record evolves, one gets the sense that the “My Woman” of the title is Olsen herself, absolutely in command but also willing to bend with the influence of collaborators and circumstances. An intuitively smart, warmly communicative and fearlessly generous record, MY WOMAN speaks to everyone. That it might confound expectation is just another of its strengths."

                                            STAFF COMMENTS

                                            Barry says: Whether she is banging out swooning gothic eyeshadow-pop choruses or walking us through rural America with swinging slide-guitar laden finger-clickers, Angel Olsen constantly manages with aplomb. The Melancholy lilt in some parts only serves exacerbate the impact of her more driven passages. This isn't a cheery listen, but it is touching and masterful. Highly recommended.

                                            TRACK LISTING

                                            1 Intern
                                            2 Never Be Mine
                                            3 Shut Up Kiss Me
                                            4 Give It Up
                                            5 Not Gonna Kill You
                                            6 Heart Shaped Face
                                            7 Sister
                                            8 Those Were The Days
                                            9 Woman
                                            10 Pops

                                            Angel Olsen

                                            Aisles

                                              While spending time trying to conquer the audio of live-stream athome performances, I got better acquainted with my friend Adam McDaniel, an engineer and producer in Asheville, NC. Adam and I had known each other for years. When the band was a bit smaller I’d often rent his studio, Drop of Sun, for pre-recording / pre tour rehearsals. Summer 2020 was tough for many reasons. But Adam and his wife Emily opened their home to me and made it a safe space to create and let go. I had an idea to record some covers and bring some of the band into the mix, or add other players. I wanted to record 80’s songs that I’d overheard walking the aisles at the grocery store, and I needed to laugh and have fun and be a little less serious about the recording process in general. I thought about completely changing some of the songs and turning them inside out.

                                              I’d heard “Gloria” by Laura Branigan for the first time at a family Christmas gathering and I was amazed at all the aunts who got up to dance. I imagined them all dancing and laughing in slow motion, and that’s when I got the idea to slow the entire song down and try it out in this way. I felt that “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats could be reinterpreted to be about this time of quarantine and the fear of being around anyone or having too much fun. It made me wonder, is it safe to laugh or dance or be free of it all for just a moment?

                                              I know it’s not really in my history to do something unintentional or just for the hell of it but my connection to these songs is pretty straightforward, I just wanted to have a little fun and be a little more spontaneous, and I think I needed to remember that I could!

                                              STAFF COMMENTS

                                              Barry says: It's Angel's turn on the 80's tip this time, with her voice perfectly fitting the melancholic swell of synths and slo-mo takes on these well recognised classics. There's just enough here to recognise the originals, but with Olsen's wonderfully athletic vocals and inventive production they take on a new life entirely.

                                              TRACK LISTING

                                              1. Gloria
                                              2. Eyes Without A Face
                                              3. Safety Dance
                                              4. If You Leave
                                              5. Forever Young

                                              The descent into darkness is a trope we find time again across history, literature and film. But there’s also an abyss above. There’s a winding white staircase that goes ever upward into the great unknown — each step, each turn, requiring a greater boldness and confidence than the one before. This is the journey on which we find Angel Olsen.

                                              Olsen’s artistic beginnings as a collaborator shifted seamlessly to her magnificent, cryptic-to-cosmic solo work, and then she formed bands to play her songs, and her stages and audiences grew exponentially. But all along, Olsen was more concerned with a different kind of path, and on her vulnerable, Big Mood new album, All Mirrors, we can see her taking an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations. In the process of making this album, she found a new sound and voice, a blast of fury mixed with hard won self-acceptance.

                                              “In every way —from the making of it, to the words, to how I feel moving forward— this record is about owning up to your darkest side,” Olsen said. “Finding the capacity for new love and trusting change, even when you feel like a stranger. This is a record about facing yourself and learning to forgive what you see. It is about losing empathy, trust, love for destructive people. It is about walking away from the noise and realizing that you can have solitude and peace in your own thoughts, that your thoughts alone can be just as valid, if not more.”

                                              STAFF COMMENTS

                                              Barry says: Swooning synth strokes, huge cavernous percussion and snappy mid-heavy bass form a fittingly retrophilic cushion for Olsen's always hypnotic voice, in this instance its commanding presence soars above the backdrop, both haunting and uplifting. 'All Mirrors' is a triumph.

                                              TRACK LISTING

                                              SIDE A
                                              1) Lark
                                              2) All Mirrors

                                              SIDE B
                                              3) Too Easy
                                              4) New Love Cassette
                                              5) Spring

                                              SIDE C
                                              6) What It Is
                                              7) Impasse
                                              8) Tonight

                                              SIDE D
                                              9) Summer
                                              10) Endgame
                                              11) Chance

                                              Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us. Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen’s Big Time were forged in such a whiplash.

                                              Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen’s process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she’d been avoiding for some time. “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me,” she said. Three days later, her father died and shortly after her mother passed away.

                                              The shards of this grief—the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully by her parents— are scattered throughout the album. Three weeks after her mother’s funeral she was in the studio, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album. Loss has long been a subject of Olsen’s elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she.

                                              If that bursting-at-the-seams, running downhill energy has come to seem intractable to her work, this album proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She’s working with an elastic, expansive mastery of her voice—both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.

                                              STAFF COMMENTS

                                              Barry says: Angel Olsen has always had a unique skill in writing melodies, but it's here on the heartbreaking 'Big Time' that her command of melody and atmosphere come together into the perfect whole. It's beautiful and sombre in parts, and downright jubilant in others. Beautifully balanced and achingly affectionate and tender.

                                              TRACK LISTING

                                              1. All The Good Times
                                              2. Big Time
                                              3. Dream Thing
                                              4. Ghost On
                                              5. All The Flowers
                                              6. Right Now
                                              7. This Is How It Works
                                              8. Go Home
                                              9. Through The Fires
                                              10. Chasing The Sun

                                              Angel Olsen

                                              Cosmic Waves Volume 1

                                                A few years ago, Angel Olsen quietly formed somethingscosmic, a new imprint and a home for Olsen to have “the flexibility to release when and how I want to with the help from my longtime partners at Jagjaguwar". Somethingscosmic’s second release, ‘Cosmic Waves Volume 1’ is a compilation reimagined as a dialogue; Side A features artists chosen by Olsen, with each artist choosing their own song for the collection. Side B is a collection of songs from the same artists, but chosen by Olsen and recorded by her. Each, unsurprisingly, illuminates a star in the constellation of talents that make Angel Olsen such a spectacular and enduring artist. Hearing Olsen refract the artists’ songs back to them reveals not just the depth of Olsen’s imagination, but the multiple masters at work across the collection as well.

                                                “As someone that emerged into the music scene through a small tape label,” says Olsen, “I’ve wanted to continue the spirit of discovery and of my debut release, ‘Strange Cacti’, while supporting and collaborating with artists and friends whose music I have been moved by. I feel there is something unique and special about covering another artist's song,” she continues. “We all make it our own, or we try to, but I personally always learn something new about the process when I’m engaging someone else’s words and melodies in such a
                                                close way. Time and again I find that putting myself into various different styles of songs can lead to new ways of thinking and creating.”

                                                The artists on 'Cosmic Waves Volume 1' draw from a sprawling, myriad sounds, eras and inspirations. Poppy Jean Crawford’s magnetic growl and guitar-god heaviness; Coffin Prick’s reckless, psychedelic fuzz; Sarah Grace White’s hypnotic voice and melody; Maxim Ludwig’s expert minimalism; and Camp Saint Helene’s beautiful, big sky folk. “Thank you for listening and
                                                supporting this experiment,” Olsen says. “If you like what you hear, please support these artists by buying some of their music, merch, a ticket to their show, or telling your friends about them. It goes a long way. Love, Angel”


                                                TRACK LISTING

                                                Side A - Compiled By Angel Olsen
                                                1. Poppy Jean Crawford - Glamorous
                                                2. Coffin Prick - Blood
                                                3. Sarah Grace White - Ride
                                                4. Maxim Ludwig - Make Believe You Love Me
                                                5. Camp Saint Helene - Wonder Now

                                                Side B - Performed By Angel Olsen
                                                6. The Takeover (Poppy Jean Crawford Cover)
                                                7. Swimming (Coffin Prick Cover)
                                                8. Sinkhole (Sarah Grace White Cover)
                                                9. Born Too Blue (Maxim Ludwig Cover)
                                                10. Farfisa Song (Camp Saint Helene Cover)

                                                Angel Olsen

                                                Forever Means

                                                  'Big Time' brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realization that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it, and Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen’s words, “in search of something else.”

                                                  “I was somewhere traveling,” says Olsen, “stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking ‘what does ‘forever’ really mean? What are the things I’m seeking in friendship or love, and how can ‘forever’ be attainable if we’re always changing?’” Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realized “maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you’re finished learning or exploring.” ‘Forever’”, says Olsen, “remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest.”

                                                  All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise Forever Means, songs from Olsen’s roads traveled and the ones ahead. “Nothing’s free / like breaking free” Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.

                                                  TRACK LISTING

                                                  SIDE A:
                                                  1) Nothing’s Free
                                                  2) Forever Means

                                                  SIDE B:
                                                  3) Time Bandits
                                                  4) Holding On

                                                  Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork!!!! After her highly-acclaimed debut Strange Cacti landed in the hands of listeners, it became very obvious the special presence Angel Olsen offered to listeners. She had a fresh edge to her sound, a warm and wonderful range, and a level of skill and charm out of this world. Obviously, fans ate it up. And now here we are, a mere 2 years since her initial Bathetic release—the original cassette version of Strange Cacti. The release of Half Way Home is something everyone has been excited for. We've always wanted to see and hear what Angel brings out through her music. Half Way Home is a continuation of her elegance brought forth.

                                                  TRACK LISTING

                                                  Acrobat
                                                  The Waiting
                                                  Safe In The Womb
                                                  Lonely Universe
                                                  Can't Wait Until Tomorrow
                                                  Always Half Strange
                                                  You Are Song
                                                  Miranda
                                                  The Sky Openend Up
                                                  Free
                                                  Tiniest Seed

                                                  Angel Olsen

                                                  Phases

                                                    How does one best describe Angel Olsen? From the lo-fi, sparse folk-melancholy of her 2010 EP, ‘Strange Cacti’, to the electrified, polished rock ‘n’ roll bursting from 2016’s beloved and acclaimed ‘MY WOMAN’, Olsen has refused to succumb to a single genre, expectation or vision. Impossible to pin down, Olsen navigates the world with her remarkable, symphonic voice and a propensity for narrative, her music growing into whatever shape best fits to tell the story.

                                                    ‘Phases is a collection of Olsen’s work culled from the past several years, including a number of never-before-released tracks. ‘Fly On Your Wall’, previously contributed to the online-only, anti-Trump fundraiser ‘Our First 100 Days’, opens ‘Phases’, before seamlessly slipping into ‘Special’, a brand new song from the ‘MY WOMAN’ recording sessions. Both ‘How Many Disasters’ and ‘Sans’ are first-time listens: home-recorded demos that have never been released, leaning heavily on Olsen’s arresting croon and lonesome guitar.

                                                    The B-sides compilation is both a testament to Olsen’s enormous musical range and a tidy compilation of tracks that have previously been elusive in one way or another.

                                                    Balancing tenacity and tenderness, ‘Phases’ acts as a deep-dive for longtime fans, as well as a fitting introduction to Olsen’s sprawling sonics for the uninitiated.

                                                    STAFF COMMENTS

                                                    Barry says: 'Phases' provides the linking thread between the varying facets of Olsen's songwriting, with B-sides and unreleased odes, come a further understanding of Olsen's innate songwriting ability and how important even these previously unused pieces can be! Lovely stuff.

                                                    TRACK LISTING

                                                    1 Fly On Your Wall
                                                    2 Special
                                                    3 Only With You
                                                    4 All Right Now
                                                    5 Sans
                                                    6 Sweet Dreams
                                                    7 California
                                                    8 Tougher Then The Rest
                                                    9 For You
                                                    10 How Many Disasters
                                                    11 May As Well
                                                    12 Endless Road

                                                    Angel Olsen

                                                    Whole New Mess

                                                      The time had come, Angel Olsen realized in the fading summer of 2018, to take her new songs out of the house. Olsen's 2016 marvel, My Woman, had been a career breakthrough, but it catalyzed a period of personal tumult, too: a painful breakup, an uneasy recovery, an inadequate reckoning. At home in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, Olsen penned songs that finally grappled with these troubles, particularly love:"how forever is too much to promise, how relationships can lock us into static versions of ourselves, how you can go through hell just to make someone else happy. These heartsore explorations shape Whole New Mess, Olsen's first solo album since her 2012 debut and an emotional portrait so intimate and vulnerable you can hear her find meaning in these crises in real-time.

                                                      At least nine of the eleven songs on Whole New Mess should sound familiar to anyone who has heard All Mirrors, Olsen's grand 2019 masterpiece that earned high honors on prestigious year-end lists and glossy spreads in stylish magazines. "Lark," "Summer," "Chance" - they are all here, at least in some skeletal form and with slightly different titles. But these are not the demos for All Mirrors. Instead, Whole New Mess is its own record with its own immovable mood, with Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the Pacific Northwest. If the lavish orchestral arrangements and cinematic scope of All Mirrors are the sound of Olsen preparing her scars for the wider world to see, Whole New Mess is the sound of her first figuring out their shape, making sense for herself of these injuries.

                                                      Considered alongside All Mirrors, Whole New Mess is a poignant and pointed reminder that songs are more than mere collections of words, chords, and even melodies. They are webs of moods and moments and ideas, qualities that can change from one month to the next and can say just as much as the perfect progression or an exquisite chord. In that sense, these 11 songs - "solitary, frank, and unflinching examinations of what it's like to love, lose, and survive -" are entirely new. This is the sound of Angel Olsen, sorting through the kind of trouble we've all known, as if just for herself and whoever else needs it.

                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                      Whole New Mess
                                                      Too Easy (bigger Than Us)
                                                      (new Love) Cassette
                                                      (we Are All Mirrors)
                                                      (summer Song)
                                                      Waiving, Smiling
                                                      Tonight (without You)
                                                      Lark Song
                                                      Impasse (workin’ For The Name)
                                                      Chance (forever Love)
                                                      What It Is (what It Is)

                                                      Mark Olson

                                                      The Salvation Blues

                                                        A two-year journey through the heart of loss and redemption, in words and music. Illustrated photographs. Mark Olson was a founding member of The Jayhawks, the most acclaimed band to emerge out of the alt-country scene. He left the Jayhawks in 1996, after the release of the band's biggest-selling album, "Tomorrow The Green Grass", but continued to record music with his new band, The Creekdippers, at his new home in the California desert. Mark recently finished recording his first true solo album, "The Salvation Blues", with producer Ben Vaughn. On this deeply personal album, Mark's voice and poetic lyrics are complemented by Vaughn's gorgeous musical backdrops, which feature the work of some of LA's best studio musicians. The album also features the long-awaited reunion with his former Jayhawks bandmate Gary Louris on three songs.

                                                        This is music that will speak to you about things that have happened! An album that sounds like you are alone in the desert all by yourself. Remembering childhood experiences and musical instruments and all the joy that took place. We have forgotten because of terrible things that have happened. Is it the truthfulness that attracts you to this music? Listen out of time: Mark Olson & Ingunn Ringvold are singing 'Spokeswoman of the Bright Sun', the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Alternative Country/Americana masterpiece 'Good-bye Lizelle' (Glitterhouse Records, 2014).

                                                        All original track recordings were made with a Nagra field recorder. These tracks were delivered to John Schreiner for mixing and mastering. This is the moment a rainbow came into town. John has worked in some of the most important historically speaking and result speaking recording studios in Los Angeles. John worked with Hal Blaine in the past and in the present reinforced his studio sounds in San Clemente, CA with room sounds from studio 3 at Western Recorders. John mixes in groupings and the results are a new step forward in post modern folk-rock sound exploration. Enjoy the warmth and spaciousness of these outstanding musical mixes!

                                                        Mark Olson was born and raised in Minnesota by a family of mostly farmers and school teachers. He has been involved with musical instruments since the age of twelve and is self taught for the most part and uses alternate tunings and two part unison singing followed then by breaking off into harmony in his writing and live performances. He lives now in the California Desert with his wife Ingunn Ringvold. Mark and Ingunn tour off and on internationally almost every year.


                                                        TRACK LISTING

                                                        01 Dear Elisabeth
                                                        02 Time Of Love
                                                        03 Spokeswoman Of The Bright Sun
                                                        04 Mary Francis
                                                        05 Seminole Valley Tea Sipper Society
                                                        06 You Are All
                                                        07 Gravity Loss
                                                        08 Nicola
                                                        09 All My Days
                                                        10 Death Valley Soda Pop Cool Down Dream

                                                        Richard Olson & The Familiars

                                                        Richard Olson & The Familiars

                                                          Welcome to the debut album by Richard Olson & The Familiars, A LP full of dreamy harmony laden melancholy and, dare we say it, Singer Songwriter Pop Music – though Pop Music in the sense that each track is a gorgeous ear worm that you can wrap yourself in and within. Richard was a member of the now-legendary Eighteenth Day Of May, before forming The See See who would then evolve into the much loved and revered The Hanging Stars.

                                                          On Richard’s debut LP we are treated to a record full of lush harmonies, acoustic guitars and strings as well as Richards most personal and reflective writing, Songs that are full of a hazy warmth and yearning that superbly capture the feel and sound that lies somewhere between The Byrds (think Easy Rider) and The Clientele. The plaintive gorgeousness of opening track ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ reflects the heart-rending, deep feeling that flows throughout the whole of Richard Olsen and The Familiars debut LP.

                                                          Richard has a great, expressive voice, capable of switching from harmonious and melodic to world-weary within a single song. Air is especially affecting and effective - gorgeously near-ambient kaleidoscope vibe of whispered vocals with pedal steel and slide guitar. ‘I’m A Butterfly’ blends a sumptuous bouncy riff with harmonica and tambourines into hazy dream of pop perfection. Inside Sunshine is the perfect song to close the LP, lilting into the sunset as Richard creates an wonderous retro hued filter - a filmic paean to love with Luke Barlow’s flute playing adding to the trance created.

                                                          Olympia

                                                          Flamingo

                                                            ‘Flamingo’ is a glorious collection of 11 tracks, resonating with complex pop unspooling, vast lyrical scope and the confident animation of a world lit with familiar dreams and desires. A striking follow up to the debut ‘Self Talk’, an album that was nominated for an ARIA award, J Award for Best Video, shortlisted in the Australian Music Prize and selected as triple j feature album.
                                                            Olivia Bartley, creative force behind the project, co-produced the upcoming album with long-time collaborator Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett, DMAs).

                                                            “The record explores how grief and desire are intertwined. It’s referencing a personal tragedy – the addiction and loss of someone very close to me,” says Bartley. “But it’s not a project of catharsis – I chose to submit myself to this experience because I wanted to create from inside it, rather than explaining it. I’ve tried to borrow from my own grief to create its inverse: something joyous. Something beyond myself, something fantastic -something new”.

                                                            “It’s the most personal I’ve ever been, but also the most confident. This album is a force.”

                                                            Taking the stage as a curtain raiser for ‘Flamingo’ is brand new track ‘Hounds’, a shimmering, kaleidoscopic requiem about calling someone out on their bullshit, or rather, what it means to be human; to feel and to evolve. This song is pure emotional force. A compelling journey from the first beat which drives to ever-escalating releases within the song. Lyrics are immediate, addressing someone driven by dissatisfaction, chasing something they can’t name even to themselves: ’Your reinventions endless, I’ll keep belief suspended’; trying out multiple versions of themselves as though magic tricks: ‘Walking on water, cut in half’; and someone who falls for everything, they could even ‘drown in the sun’.

                                                            The listener is rewarded at each lift within the song, as Bartley demonstrates masterful pop sensibility. Sonically we hear a deft balancing act between moments that touch on nostalgia, even facetious sonic hints at religiosity, with elements that are startlingly unique and their own.


                                                            TRACK LISTING

                                                            1. Star City
                                                            2. Come Back
                                                            3. Easy Pleasure
                                                            4. Nervous Riders
                                                            5. Hounds
                                                            6. Won’t Say That
                                                            7. Two Hands
                                                            8. Shoot To Forget
                                                            9. First You Leave
                                                            10. Flamingo
                                                            11. Wrong Number

                                                            Olympic Lifts

                                                            Do One

                                                              Debut album from this hip hop vs rock'n'roll crew. Irresistably catchy hooks, cut-up samples and breaks, a dose of attitude and all with a pop twist of their own making.

                                                              Olympic Lifts

                                                              Madeline's Lies

                                                                New 7" from Northern Irish leftfield-indie rockers The Olympic Lifts. A 2 track limited 7" and a cinematic tale of underground crime, violence and dreams lost.

                                                                The pinball wizard's back at it again, depositing three more tracks from the FXHE studio. "O MAARR" kicks off to be frank, possesses a bump and shuffle that's unique to the Motor City - harnessed by Alex Smith this is one of the hottest vocal joints on FXHE for some time. A real basement buggin, e-soul heater that's gonna find tons of favour over here in the Rainy City.

                                                                Couple more experimental jams to round off the EP. "Glass" utilizes those fractured drum machines bit crushed hand claps, complete with a rattling dub-wise synth section. Sounding like a mine cart derailing as brake neck speeds!

                                                                "Bug Off" is a sultry, technoid number which again, could only have come out of the mind of Omar S. Wild synth resonances, rib punching kicks and moody, red-lit keys... backroom tackle that'll have everyone getting loose...Recommended! 


                                                                STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                Matt says: Both "Can't Get" from a few weeks back, and this one find Omar S in as strong a form as ever. I don't think he's compromised his personality once, and FXHE is one of the most consistent and solid labels of Detroit's third wave.

                                                                TRACK LISTING

                                                                1. O MAARR
                                                                2. Glass
                                                                3. Bug Off

                                                                Rex Omar

                                                                Rex Omar

                                                                  Soundway, presents the four premier cuts for a new self-titled EP, along with Kele Ngele taken from his 2004 album Ajala. Finally given the vinyl treatment, it's a London-centric blend of street-soul-come-highlife 90s RnB, certain to captivate the discerning ear. Staying true to its original colab effort, London based producer Aroop Roy steps in with a modern rework of the four-to-the-floor scorcher Dada, revisited and repurposed for today's dancefloor.

                                                                  TRACK LISTING

                                                                  Side 1
                                                                  1. Dada
                                                                  2. Tokota
                                                                  3. Konka

                                                                  Side 2
                                                                  1. Osisi
                                                                  2. Kele Ngele
                                                                  3. Dada (Aroop Roy Rework)

                                                                  Shinichi Omata

                                                                  With My Dog Ricky: The Early Works Of Shinichi Omata 1981-1983

                                                                  Somewhere between Solid State Survivor, Force Majeure and Danzindan-Pojidon you’ll find Shinichi Omata’s Boku ・ Neko ・ Platanus. Or rather you won’t – throughout his captivating debut from 1984, reissued by chOOn!! in 2022, you’ll hear connections to other music but its unique unbridled will keeps pushing those references out of mind.

                                                                  Shinichi Omata is a fascinating figure – an unsung hero of early Japanese electronic music who between 1981–84 recorded three albums of incredible DIY techno-pop while studying as a student in Tokyo. At University, Omata worked and collaborated as a sitar player and keyboardist with artists such as Hiroko Yoshihara, Takami, DEA and various members of the LLE music circle, where he developed an expressive fusion of minimal synth and psychedelia.

                                                                  This selection, lovingly extracted from Omata’s unreleased early recorded output, dating from 1981’s Neo Modernism through to 1983's With My Dog Ricky, demonstrates just how closely he clung to the original abstract ideal of moulding 8-bit bleeps and ungainly drum patterns into lo-fi triumphalism. On paper you wouldn’t give this aesthetic clash a pass were it not for the aural evidence of a unique sensibility, precociously openminded and visionary, charmingly transparent in respect of its influences yet possessed of a need for individuality.

                                                                  Throughout this kaleidoscopic collection, all the ghost plastic in Omata’s head, Kosmische synthesis, synth-funk squiggles, arcade games and early Ambient is thrown together, reimagined and regarded affectionately – through a glass lightly, so to speak. Beneath the pulsing arpeggiated bleeps, Omata’s compositions show a remarkable economy and poise hinting at European classical influences - like a reimagining of Erik Satie’s piano miniatures that swaps 19th century Parisian boulevards for Tokyo’s 1980s technopolis. The music is sheer skin- puckering delight throughout, a delirious, mesmeric collage of dark disco bubblegum and eccentrically enchanting atmospheres that you cannot quite believe you’ve never heard before.

                                                                  Available for the first time on vinyl, With My Dog Ricky: The Early Works of Shinichi Omata 1981-1983 is a vivid selection of synth miniatures lovingly extracted from Omata’s unreleased early recorded output.

                                                                  Produced in cooperation with the artist for chOOn!!.

                                                                  Mastered for vinyl/digital by Josh Bonati. Artwork by the acclaimed book designer Luke Bird

                                                                  TRACK LISTING

                                                                  A1. Asphyxiation In The Womb
                                                                  A2. Nostalgia In Bombay
                                                                  A3. Suteki Na Costa
                                                                  A4. Sea Bottom Fish
                                                                  A5. With My Dog Ricky
                                                                  B1. Death Mask Dance
                                                                  B2. Iron Rose - Early Version
                                                                  B3. Medusa
                                                                  B4. Gymnopédie No. 1
                                                                  B5. Tora-chan No Yume

                                                                  Omater

                                                                  Selfunkinsoul

                                                                    Omater hails from Bolton, thanks to a multicultural, multimusical upbringing, her range of influences is broad as her accent. Aimed straight at your coffee table, her dulcet tones and easy laid back grooves will be perfect for the summer.

                                                                    Om

                                                                    BBC Radio 1

                                                                      Recorded live at BBC Radio 1, Maida Vale, May 3rd, 2019.

                                                                      The songs continue to evolve; two each from the classic OM releases Advaitic Songs and God Is Good, encompassingly recorded and mixed with the pristine quality that BBC engineers (and OM) bring to recorded sound.

                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                      Gethsemane 11:17
                                                                      State Of Non-Return 8:22
                                                                      Cremation Ghat I 3:43
                                                                      Cremation Ghat II 5:37

                                                                      Om

                                                                      Conference Of The Birds

                                                                        Comprised of two songs that build on Om's use of cyclical rhythm, riff and vocal intonation, the duo's new album "Conference Of The Birds" blends metal, doom, chant, drone, dub and psychedelia. The band's lyrics expound upon the structure of the universe, potentiality and freedom from the physical body. Engineered by Billy Anderson and produced by the band, "Conference Of The Birds" progresses beyond their debut, "Variations On A Theme", with more fully realized songwriting and production. Om is Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, rhythm section of legendary sludge and stoner rock pioneers, Sleep.

                                                                        OMD

                                                                        English Electric - 2024 Reissue

                                                                          Written, recorded, produced and mixed by OMD – Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys – ‘English Electric’ is a 12-track letter to technology, space, love and a grand return to form for a band whose 1980 hit ‘Enola Gay’ occupied the world’s stage at last year’s Olympics Opening Ceremony.

                                                                          As percolating synth-pop is pulled along at different speeds and executed with needle-sharp finesse, late night electro ballads collide with big sounding club cuts on a record which also features three interlude tracks, including dystopian missive ‘Please Remain Seated’ and ‘Decimal’, which is accompanied by this suitably mechanical video, directed by German motion and graphic designer Henning M. Lederer.

                                                                          As Andy McCluskey says of the album; “the overarching feel tends to be a sense of loss, of melancholia, that things haven’t turned out the way you wanted them to, whether it be with technology or personal relationships.” The title itself – taken from a British industrial manufacturing company – has further resonance for the pair as locomotive enthusiasts and self-confessed technology geeks.

                                                                          TRACK LISTING

                                                                          1. Please Remain Seated
                                                                          2. Metroland
                                                                          3. Night Café
                                                                          4. The Future Will Be Silent
                                                                          5. Helen Of Troy
                                                                          6. Our System
                                                                          7. Kissing The Machine
                                                                          8. Decimal
                                                                          9. Stay With Me
                                                                          10. Dresden
                                                                          11. Atomic Ranch
                                                                          12. Final Song

                                                                          OMD

                                                                          History Of Modern - 2024 Reissue

                                                                            With artwork designed by Peter Saville, History Of Modern was originally  release in 2010, following a 14 year haitus. It was described by Andy McCluskey as their  "best album since Architecture and Morality" - high praise indeed.

                                                                            TRACK LISTING

                                                                            1. New Babies: New Toys
                                                                            2. If You Want It
                                                                            3. History Of Modern (Part I)
                                                                            4. History Of Modern (Part II)
                                                                            5. Sometimes
                                                                            6. RFWK
                                                                            7. New Holy Ground
                                                                            8. The Future, The Past, And Forever After
                                                                            9. Sister Mary Says
                                                                            10. Pulse
                                                                            11. The Night
                                                                            12. Bondage Of Fate
                                                                            13. The Right Side?

                                                                            OMD

                                                                            The Punishment Of Luxury - 2024 Repress

                                                                              Blue vinyl reissue of OMD's 13th studio album The Punishment of Luxury - back on vinyl for the first time in 7 years.

                                                                              The follow up to the critically acclaimed ‘English Electric’ (released in 2013) ‘The Punishment Of Luxury’ is a daring collection of stylish synth pop and masterful songwriting which will certainly rank alongside their very best.

                                                                              Written, recorded, produced and mixed by OMD – Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys – the album is the sound of a band in their prime. ‘On this album we have managed to make beautiful things out of noises and repetitive patterns’, explains Andy. ‘The trouble is, we just cant help but write a catchy melody!’

                                                                              The album takes its name from an 1891 painting by the Italian Giovani Segantini and contains everything from the Kraftwerkian ‘Isotype’ and ‘Robot Man’ to the blue eyed soul ballads of ‘One More Time’ and ‘The View From Here’ as well as more traditional OMD songs like ‘Kiss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Bang’ and the synth heavy title track.

                                                                              TRACK LISTING

                                                                              A1) The Punishment Of Luxury
                                                                              A2) Isotype
                                                                              A3) Robot Man
                                                                              A4) What Have We Done
                                                                              A5) Precision & Decay
                                                                              A6) As We Open, So We Close
                                                                              B1) Art Eats Art
                                                                              B2) Kiss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Bang
                                                                              B3) One More Time
                                                                              B4) La Mitrailleuse
                                                                              B5) Ghost Star
                                                                              B6) The View From Here

                                                                              Self-titled album from new Transatlantic duo Omega Male, comprised of David Best (Fujiya & Miyagi) and Sammy Rubin (Project Jenny, Project Jan).

                                                                              Ten rump-shaking electronic tracks which combine Best’s trademark hushed vocals with pulsating funk-led basslines.

                                                                              As well as exploring notions of masculinity and what it means to be an ‘Omega Male’, evident on such songs as lead single ‘Testosterone’, Best’s darkly witty lyrics also cover subject matter as diverse as the coalition government (‘Blue Narcissus’) and voodoo dolls (‘Wax & Glue’).

                                                                              TRACK LISTING

                                                                              Omega Male
                                                                              Testosterone
                                                                              Uh-pol-uh-jet-ik
                                                                              You Bore Me To Tears
                                                                              Wax & Glue
                                                                              Blue Narcissus
                                                                              No
                                                                              Rotten Fruit
                                                                              X
                                                                              Buildings Like Symphonies

                                                                              Omega Tribe

                                                                              Angry Songs

                                                                                ‘Angry Songs’ by Omega Tribe is anarchist punk at its finest, with powerful unrelenting lyricism, caustic riffs and an immediacy that came to define the genre.

                                                                                It was produced by Penny Rimbaud plus Pete Fender and included Hugh Vivian on guitar and vocals, Daryl Hardcastle on bass, Pete Fender on guitar and Pete Shepherd on drums.

                                                                                The band have recently reinvented themselves, are creating and releasing new music, and they have a new album out.

                                                                                First released on 7” vinyl, limiting the sound, the new repressing has been remastered for 12” at Abbey Road Studios, allowing the release to be heard as never before.

                                                                                This, plus enlarged replicas of the original covers, brings new gusto to the already radical sound.

                                                                                TRACK LISTING

                                                                                Another Bloody Day
                                                                                Profiteer
                                                                                Is This A Future?
                                                                                Time For Change

                                                                                OM albums are rituals, personal convictions transcripted into verse. Playing the music is visceral, emotional, a catharsis of soul and spirit. As ever, dynamic relationships and the slow building of mood are attenuations that shape the structures of "God Is Good". With careful microscopic increase, the energy grows through the four songs, leading towards moments that one could interpret as… Revelation? Oblivion? Awakening?

                                                                                Omni

                                                                                Networker

                                                                                  Enter Networker, the new album by Omni and first with indie giant Sub Pop Records. Their sound is still defined by sparse drums, locked-in bass, blistering guitar, and nonchalant, yet assured vocals, but from the first notes of "Sincerely Yours" you'll immediately notice that Networker sounds much cleaner and more "HI-FI" than their prior two albums, Deluxe (2016) and Multi-task (2017). The departure in fidelity suits the new record and allows the listener to enjoy the nuances of their meticulous arrangements. Don't worry, the riffs of Gang of Four and Wire are still present, but the production is more lush and the harmony is even more expansive.

                                                                                  Despite nods to the sounds of the ’70s and ’80s what comes through is a record fully rooted in the here and now. Thematically, this is apparent on the title track "Networker" taking a candid snapshot of the “digital you” aspect of life in the age of the internet. The otherwise fun romp “Skeleton Key” also acknowledges the “direct message and obsessive” side of social media with lines like “if you don't like what you see, the pretty face on the screen, scroll on by...”  Networker was written half between tours and half during recording sessions. The band, Philip Frobos on bass/vocals and Frankie Broyles on guitars/drums/keys, returned with longtime collaborator Nathaniel Higgins to the studio in South Georgia where they also recorded Multi-task and most recent single "Delicacy." In this case, the “studio” is a cabin near Vienna, GA (pronounced Vye-anna) that was built by Frankie Broyles’ great-grandparents in the 1940s. The band completed four sessions between November 2018 and April 2019.

                                                                                  Omni hit their stride in the cabin with songs such as "Moat,” which cruises along at a nice mid-tempo clip with sounds that are maybe piano or maybe the “behind the bridge” strings of a Jaguar a la Sonic Youth or This Heat. "Blunt Force" provides a nice contrast to some of the more upbeat cuts, getting jazzy with it’s less traditional arrangement and psychedelic outro. Overall, Networker is simultaneously fun, catchy, and contains some truly impressive musicianship. This combo is especially hard to pull off as bands that are great players often don’t have great or memorable songs. Omni and Nathaniel Higgins have done a stellar job of reigning in their diverse influences into a cohesive record by curating their sounds into a tight package that leaves you just on the cusp of understanding where the band is coming from, while still feeling like you’re hearing something totally fresh. While their earlier records had more of a “post-punk” sound, Networker is an amalgamation of the best sounds of the ’70s and ’80s, all arranged with (mostly) guitars, bass, and drums for our contemporary age, and it really works! There are hooks everywhere, vocal and instrumental, that will leave you humming along, even during the first listen. As Philip Frobos says in “Present Tense,” “guess who’s on my mind right now?” Well, Omni’s on mine and will be on yours soon.


                                                                                  STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                  Barry says: Omni's sound has been gradually gathering momentum since their superb 2016 LP 'Deluxe' (almost definitely since before then, but 2016 was my entry point). What we've ended up with is a brilliantly confident and swaggering combination of technically superb guitar riffage and off-piste rhythmic hooks all coated in those relaxed vox, delievered perfectly but with the minimum of fuss. Effortlessly cool.

                                                                                  TRACK LISTING

                                                                                  1. Sincerely Yours
                                                                                  2. Courtesy Call
                                                                                  3. Moat
                                                                                  4. Underage
                                                                                  5. Skeleton Key
                                                                                  6. Genuine Person
                                                                                  7. Present Tense
                                                                                  8. Blunt Force
                                                                                  9. Flat Earth
                                                                                  10. Networker
                                                                                  11. Sleep Mask

                                                                                  Omni

                                                                                  Souvenir

                                                                                    The music of Atlanta trio Omni has always swung fast and hit hard. And Souvenir, their fourth album and second for Sub Pop, packs their biggest punch yet. Inactive during the majority of the pandemic–the longest downtime in their history–they approached this recording with lots of pent-up energy. Guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos, and drummer Chris Yonker converted their creative fuel into sharp, driving songs that land immediately, sporting chopping riffs, staccato beats, and wiry melodies.

                                                                                    Why does Souvenir sound so sharp? Because each track is a compact unit that stands on its own, reflecting the time and place in which it was created. That’s why Omni called the album Souvenir: it’s a collection of audio objects, a stash of musical miniatures. Think of it as a family photo album, a binder of rare playing cards, a shoebox holding precious gems.

                                                                                    Take “Plastic Pyramid,” the first song Omni wrote after coming out of lockdown. Filled with twists and turns, it’s a journey unto itself, charged by clanging chords, spinning rhythm, and Frobos trading lines with Izzy Glaudini of Automatic, with whom Omni toured with last fall. (Glaudini sings on two other Souvenir tracks, the first guest vocalist the band has collaborated with). Or take opener “Exacto,” a slicing web of intertwined guitar and bass. Its razor-fine notes and syncopated beats perfectly match pointillist Frobos lyrics such as “Exacto, de facto, concise, quite right”–a line that could well be an Omni mantra.

                                                                                    The precision and clarity of Souvenir comes from some new Omni developments. For one, this is their first album with Yonker as their full-time drummer, and his forceful playing adds exclamation points to every pointed moment on Souvenir. In addition, the trio worked with Atlanta-based engineer Kristofer Sampson for the first time. Sampson pushed the band to a higher degree of power, with Frobos’s vocals more upfront in his pulsing mix and the rest of the music leaping out of the speakers. You might notice that Frobos’ singing is a bit more emotional and even nostalgic this time around. In crafting his vocals, he was inspired by the early college radio rock of formative favorites like REM, the Cure, and Big Audio Dynamite–the kind of bands whose melodies could have been top 40 hits in an alternative universe. The lyrics on Souvenir are also by turns funny, absurd, and even cryptic. A wry humor has always coursed through Omni’s songs, and this time, it comes in shades of both dark and light. In “Granite Kiss,” an “astronomical” love story concludes with the hope that “we can decay together,” while in “PG,” a romantic walk in the park includes a rose-colored mugging.

                                                                                    Immediacy rushes throughout every moment of Souvenir, making it the band's most powerful album to date. Omni has truly crafted a musical keepsake–a set of songs that you’ll want to keep close, an aural memento you'll cherish for the rest of time.

                                                                                    STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                    Barry says: Though Omni's sounds are clearly rooted in the gloomy mire of post-punk, Omni could never be accused of staying in place for long enough for it to stick. Though 'Souvenir' is decidedly more truncated and pop-forward than their previous outings, it's not a huge leap from 2017's brilliant 'Multi-Task' or 2019's 'Networker' in term of sheer inventive momentum.

                                                                                    TRACK LISTING

                                                                                    1. Exacto
                                                                                    2. Plastic Pyramid
                                                                                    3. Common Mistake
                                                                                    4. INTL Waters
                                                                                    5. Double Negative
                                                                                    6. PG
                                                                                    7. Granite Kiss
                                                                                    8. Verdict
                                                                                    9. F1
                                                                                    10. To Be Rude
                                                                                    11. Compliment 

                                                                                    Omo is a new band comprising occasional Chap keyboardist Berit Immig and visual artist David Muth. Together they make pop that delights and surprises, eminently hummable and chewable, it's post pop pop for the now generation. A little like Laurie Anderson jamming with the Tom Tom Club but only a little. This is a sure-fire chart hit in a parallel universe where all TV programmes are made by David Lynch and every household owns a hover car. On the flip we have the kings of school teacher dada pop that never fails to entertain, The Chap. "Well Done You" is as smooth as baby food, spiky as a sea urchin and as fruity as Leslie Nielsen. Their tribute to achievement is a top notch slice of noughties pop that will have you grinning all the way to the Bill Gates motivational speech.

                                                                                    Former Smith Western frontman Cullen Omori releases his debut long player, ‘New Misery’, through Sub Pop Records.

                                                                                    The album, which features the highlights ‘Cinnamon’ and ‘Sour Silk’, was recorded by Shane Stoneback (Sleigh Bells, Fucked Up, Vampire Weekend) at the now defunct Treefort Studios and was mastered by Emily Lazar (Sia, HAIM, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire, Bjork) at The Lodge.

                                                                                    In early 2014 Omori began working on the solo material that has now fully materialized as ‘New Misery’, a collection of 11 songs building upon his own musical past while reaching towards the future of what guitar rock could be. His songs marry dark yet blissful pop with vocal melodies and hooks that are at once immediate yet demand to be heard again and again.

                                                                                    Along with Omori, ‘New Misery’ features additional bass and keyboards from Ryan Mattos, drums from Loren Humphrey and James Richardson on guitar. Unlike the more distributed roles within the Smith Westerns, Omori wrote, played and oversaw nearly every part of the new album, beginning a true new chapter of his long-term creative growth.

                                                                                    Cullen Omori knows it’s a false cliché to say there are no second acts in American lives but after the 2014 breakup of his acclaimed band the Smith Westerns living that cliché was his greatest fear. His solo debut is a direct challenge to that anxiety: an album that goes beyond the glam punch of the Smith Westerns to new sounds, new sources of inspiration and greater self-awareness.

                                                                                    TRACK LISTING

                                                                                    No Big Deal
                                                                                    Two Kinds
                                                                                    Hey Girl
                                                                                    And Yet The World Still Turns
                                                                                    Cinnamon
                                                                                    Poison Dart
                                                                                    Sour Silk
                                                                                    Synthetic Romance
                                                                                    Be A Man
                                                                                    LOM
                                                                                    New Misery

                                                                                    Cullen Omori

                                                                                    The Diet

                                                                                      Cullen Omori’s path to his second album ‘The Diet’ wasn’t an easy one. After the release of his first album, ‘New Misery’, he had to deal with busted vans, crashed cars, mangled relationships and other trials that can leave one feeling like the world is playing a cosmic joke. From the guitar that drops out of the sky on the opening track ‘Four Years’ all the way through the fade-out of kaleidoscopic closer ‘A Real You’, ‘The Diet’ is a powerful modern indie rock album that is buoyed by warped, analogue pedals / transistors and tailor-made guitar tones. Omori’s winsome vocals crisscross 70’s art rock and classic songwriting all within the span of 40 minutes.

                                                                                      Omori crafted ‘The Diet’ as a series of what can loosely be defined as love songs that metaphorically channel the frustrations and ruptures of his turbulent 2016-2017 into unforgettable compositions with abstract yet sharply rendered lyrics. Omori’s version of the love song medium goes far beyond the la-la-love-you template: “Only a few deal with loving or falling out of love with an actual, physical person,” says Omori. “Then there are, like, love songs to my antidepressants or whatever I thought my life would be like at 27.”

                                                                                      After relocating from Chicago to Los Angeles in 2016, Omori re-examined his whole artistic process. “Whereas on ‘New Misery’ I was locked in a room with a producer for a month tinkering away, this time around I wanted the sessions to be a revolving door of musicians: different people, different aesthetics. I pushed against my inner nature by actively pursuing collaborators.”

                                                                                      ‘The Diet’ was recorded at Velveteen Laboratory with Taylor Locke, whose talents wound up being well-suited to the intricacies of the songs that would become ‘The Diet’. “He can sing, he is a multi-instrumentalist. On top of that, he is also a producer. Working with him really lent itself to my process of songwriting,” says Omori.

                                                                                      ‘The Diet’ represents a new chapter for the former Smith Westerns member, one in which he stretches out his songwriting chops and uses his life experience to craft loose-limbed, hook-filled songs that combine pop appeal with finely sutured lyrics. “I spent my early 20’s saddled with the ill-conceived, romantic notion that the best songs are written through suffering. The process of trying out a completely different persona and approach in ‘New Misery’, and then facing my negative experiences and the shortcomings of that persona, clarified where I wanted my music to go. While making ‘The Diet’, my songs were constantly presenting themselves to me, and when I got a chance to listen back and read my song journals I saw what a truly beneficial and cathartic event had taken place.” ‘The Diet’s collection of 12 songs has Omori well on his way.

                                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                                      Four Years
                                                                                      Borderline Friends
                                                                                      All By Yourself
                                                                                      Happiness Reigns
                                                                                      Master Eyes
                                                                                      Quiet Girl
                                                                                      Black Rainbow
                                                                                      Natural Woman
                                                                                      Millennial Geishas
                                                                                      Last Line
                                                                                      Queen
                                                                                      A Real You

                                                                                      Sometime in the spring of 2012 the musicians that would go on to form the Chicago & Minneapolis based trio ON AN ON found themselves at a tipping point. The three of them—Nate Eiesland, Alissa Ricci, and Ryne Estwing—had played music with one another in various capacities for the better part of a decade. Most recently, they had shared the stage and studio as three fifths of the indie-pop outfit Scattered Trees, which had seen its fair share of success. But with the band’s studio time only a few weeks away and the other members now spread out across the country pursuing other endeavors, they would chart their own course and come out stronger for it. What emerged was ON AN ON.

                                                                                      For ON AN ON, the precariousness of breaking new ground only three weeks before recording with accomplished producer Dave Newfeld (Broken Social Scene, Super Furry Animals, Los Campesinos!) provided a jolt of creative energy. The musicians had become disenchanted with their past approach to songwriting and recording, finding the process of striving for polished pop both tiresome and constrained. Newfeld proved the perfect counterpart to their initial vision for the record, encouraging them to push boundaries and go with their instincts.

                                                                                      According to Eiesland, the sessions were something of an exorcism: “We really wanted to get away from the sterility of our previous approach to recording.” Eieseland, Ricci, and Estwing embraced musical risks that in the past it might have shied away from. In the studio, the band members explored a natural chemistry and honed their sound; synthesizers, scattershot electro beats and ambient ear candy gave guitars, bass and drums a ghostly sheen.

                                                                                      While the melodies might clue one in to the trio's evolved sonic palate, it's through the album's themes that the group member’s respective evolution becomes most apparent. Eiesland wrote the majority of the lyrics, in the process coming to terms with death and the traps that life springs upon us. Whether letting his intuition guide him on "I Wanted To Say More” ("You are a saint and you’re the devil/Every word I spoke to you, I thought that they were wings/ But they were only feathers”) or owning up to life's inevitability on "All The Horses" ("A family tree will split in two halfway through its life"), there's a tempered calm to the thought-provoking imagery he espouses through his words. Estwing offered up his own lyrical séance on his lead vocal track "Cops," although the bassist says his message—that the police can be surprisingly corrupt—is more direct. After smashing everything they knew to pieces, they pulled themselves together around Give In, ON AN ON’s ten-track debut album – a dream-washed textural journey armed with a biting perspective on life, love, and the commonality of loss. It is an affair that sizzles with electricity and calls one in with its unnerved openness.

                                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                                      1. Ghosts
                                                                                      2. Every Song In The World
                                                                                      3. American Dream
                                                                                      4. The Hunter
                                                                                      5. All The Horses
                                                                                      6. Bad Mythology
                                                                                      7. War Is Gone
                                                                                      8. Cops
                                                                                      9. Panic
                                                                                      10. I Wanted To Say More

                                                                                      On An On

                                                                                      And The Wave Has Two Sides

                                                                                      Sometime in the Spring of 2012 the musicians that would go on to form the Chicago & Minneapolis based trio ON AN ON found themselves at a tipping point. The three of them – Nate Eiesland, Alissa Ricci, and Ryne Estwing – had played music with one another in various capacities for the better part of a decade. Most recently, they had shared the stage and studio as three fifths of the indie-pop outfit Scattered Trees, which had seen its fair share of success. But with the band’s studio time only a few weeks away and the other members now spread out across the country pursuing other endeavors, they would chart their own course and come out stronger for it. What emerged was ON AN ON.

                                                                                      For ON AN ON, the precariousness of breaking new ground only three weeks before recording with accomplished producer Dave Newfeld (Broken Social Scene, Super Furry Animals, Los Campesinos!) provided a jolt of creative energy. The musicians had become disenchanted with their past approach to songwriting and recording, finding the process of striving for polished pop both tiresome and constrained. Newfeld proved the perfect counterpart to their initial vision for the record, encouraging them to push boundaries and go with their instincts.

                                                                                      According to Eiesland, the sessions were something of an exorcism: “We really wanted to get away from the sterility of our previous approach to recording.” Eieseland, Ricci, and Estwing embraced musical risks that in the past they might have shied away from. In the studio, the band members explored a natural chemistry and honed their sound; synthesizers, scattershot electro beats and ambient ear candy gave guitars, bass and drums a ghostly sheen.

                                                                                      While the melodies might clue one in to the trio’s evolved sonic palate, it’s through the album’s themes that the group members’ respective evolution becomes most apparent. Eiesland wrote the majority of the lyrics, in the process coming to terms with death and the traps that life springs upon us. Whether letting his intuition guide him on “I Wanted To Say More” (“You are a saint and you’re the devil / Every word I spoke to you, I thought that they were wings / But they were only feathers”) or owning up to life’s inevitability on “All The Horses” (“A family tree will split in two halfway through its life”), there’s a tempered calm to the thought-provoking imagery he espouses through his words. Estwing offered up his own lyrical seance on his lead vocal track “Cops,” although the bassist says his message – that the police can be surprisingly corrupt – is more direct.

                                                                                      After smashing everything they knew to pieces, they pulled themselves together around Give In, ON AN ON’s ten-track debut album – a dream-washed textural journey armed with a biting perspective on life, love, and the commonality of loss. It is an affair that sizzles with electricity and calls one in with its unnerved openness.

                                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                                      1. Behind The Gun
                                                                                      2. Icon Love
                                                                                      3. Alright Alright
                                                                                      4. I Can’t Escape
                                                                                      5. It’s Not Over
                                                                                      6. Drifting
                                                                                      7. Wait For The Kill
                                                                                      8. Stay The Same
                                                                                      9. You Were So Scared
                                                                                      10. Secret Drone
                                                                                      11. Interlude
                                                                                      12. All At Once

                                                                                      On Fillmore

                                                                                      Extended Vacation

                                                                                        Both Glenn Kotche and Darin Gray are highly respected musicians in their own right, having played in countless critically acclaimed groups over the years. This is their third album but first for Dead Oceans, having previously released on Drag City. On Fillmore are the dream rhythm section that played on Jim O'Rourke's much loved "Eureka", "Halfway To A Threeway" and "Insignificance". A beguiling and wily yet beautifully melodic record, painstakingly put together over a number of years - atmospheric and spacious.

                                                                                        On Histories Of Rosenberg

                                                                                        On Histories Of Rosenberg EP

                                                                                        On Histories of Rosenberg can swell from a shimmering hush to full cinematic bloom in a matter of seconds, before arcing off on some other fractured, razor-edged tangent. Having recently changed their name from previous incarnation Caesura this new and exciting entity release their debut self-titled EP on Function Records. The record comes laden with cascading guitar lines and enveloping piano, set against an explosive rhythm section and richly harmonic vocal lines, conveying a deep, surreal and sometimes starkly honest lyricism.

                                                                                        Once And Future Band

                                                                                        Once And Future Band

                                                                                          In the vapor trail of “How Does It Make You Feel,” the first track on this self-titled full length, one can smell the burnt ozone of a seventies-full-orchestra-nebula-pop-odyssey, the flakes floating down and landing like snow, giving grave-chills … the ash of a masterpiece pop song. Once And Future Band: this incredibly accomplished cabal of total prog wizards has circled the earth, but then, these are the accomplished gentlemen of many former pursuits (the formidable Drunk Horse among them) and all of them comets themselves.

                                                                                          The very mid-’70s vibe at work here surpasses pastiche, and crests that lovely anachronistic conceptual peak: a fully realized and meticulously arranged psych record, meant to be listened to from top to bottom, with the lights down low and in a comfy chair perhaps, or while gazing out the window of your life pod. The Dark Side of the Moon feel, with shades of early Yes’s technicality, a dash of Steely Dan’s vocal prowess and effortless sheen, and some seriously outsized hooks that call to mind the mighty ELO, Le Orme and, yes, even the unsinkable Queen powered on Brian May’s tape echo jet fuel and sequined power cells. This is a head record in the classic sense but utter fealty to The Dark One insures both being trapped and infected by the pop-parasite. That it is largely self-produced (with tracking / engineering on three of the songs by Phil Manley at El Studio) makes it all the more jaw dropping. Making prog cool again, again, and then slightly more complicatedly, again.

                                                                                          A month after the release of his debut album as Tambores En Benirras, 2021’s fabulous Orbe Dotodo, Graham Newby’s life changed forever. After years living with a visual impairment, his sight had deteriorated so much that he was declared “registered blind”. For a man who had spent decades dividing his time between travelling, DJing, running clubs and lengthy sessions in his own studio, it was a genuinely life-changing moment.

                                                                                          It was against this backdrop, and the need to alter his working methods, that Ondas Horizontales, the second Tambores En Benirras album took shape. Inspired by a mixture of daydreaming, visualisation, immersion in other people’s music (escapism that provided mood enhancement, rather than a specific set of ideas) and long periods spent soaking up the sun in Ibiza, the album is the most vividly detailed, sonically colourful, and sun-soaked collection that Newby has released to date.

                                                                                          Newby’s declining sight forced him to stop spending long spells staring at a screen and undoubtedly slowed down the production process. Yet it also allowed him to reconnect with his emotions, appreciate the storytelling and mood-shifting potential of music, and mine mind’s eye memories of places and spaces that have meant much to him over the years.

                                                                                          The results are undeniably stunning. Designed with horizontal listening in mind, the set distils a range of musical and real-life inspirations –or, as he puts it, “ambient soundtracks, cosmic journeys, Balearic rhythms and poolside sessions” – into ten mesmerising and magical tracks; an undulating, slow-motion journey that’s as breath-taking as it is beguiling.

                                                                                          Newby sets the tone with ‘Mi Sueno Vibe En Reverb’, a swelling, slow-burn ambient masterpiece that tiptoes between hope and melancholia, before flitting between imaginary sunset soundtracks (‘Estrellas En Mastella’, where lilting pedal steel sounds, bubbling electronics and shuffling breakbeats catch the ear), kaleidoscopic sun-up beats (the gorgeous warmth of ‘Generadora De Reyos’), enveloping beatless soundscapes (‘Templos Del Sol’, a drowsy drift in becalmed waters under the heat of the mid-afternoon sun), and dubby, loved-up lusciousness (‘Mokono’).

                                                                                          As the album progresses, bobbing and weaving on an ocean of vibrant chords, pulsing melodies and heart-stopping melodies, there’s no sign of Newby’s inspiration waving. ‘Alma Hablando’ channels the spirit of mid-80s ‘worldbeat’ and douses it in layers of Balearic bliss, while ‘Extrensor Entragado’ recalls the head-nodding haziness of his best Gripper productions of old while combining them with the musical equivalent of a humid summer breeze. Then there’s the mood-enhancing joy of the album’s superb title track –a mission statement of sorts – and the life-affirming post trip-hop/Balearic fusion of ‘Un Placer Celestial (Reprise)’, where the influence of his old friend Aim is clearly evident.

                                                                                          A serious sonic step-up from its predecessor and a future Balearic classic in its’ own right, Ondas Horizontales marks the start of a new musical and personal journey for its creator. It is, in his words, not the end of an era, but the start of a new one.

                                                                                          TRACK LISTING

                                                                                          A1. Mi Suenno Vive En Reverb
                                                                                          A2. Estrellas En Mastella
                                                                                          B1. Generadora De Rayos
                                                                                          B2. Templos Del Sol
                                                                                          B3. Dias Mas Brillantes
                                                                                          C1. Molokono
                                                                                          C2. Alma Hablando
                                                                                          C3. Extensor Entregado
                                                                                          D1. Ondas Horizontales
                                                                                          D2. Un Placer Celestial (Re-prise)

                                                                                          Ondatropica

                                                                                          Baile Bucanero

                                                                                            Here is the second record from the widely acclaimed Ondatropica project produced by Will ‘Quantic’ Holland and Mario Galeano. In the words of Will and Mario: “The premise of the second album was to record in Bogota and Old Providence Island (Isla de Providencia). Two contrasting locations, but united by their reputation as musically creative hubs - Bogota, with its subversive underground expressing an active, punky, DIY mentality and Providence reinterpreting and updating a Colombian national identity through a proud renaissance of regional folklore coupled with a fervor for dancehall and reggae sounds. Rather than separate the stylistic Anglo-, French- and Spanish-Caribbean influences, our goal was to explore the common ground and the ways in which these different styles synthesise.' Fuelled by bushy rum, the LP sessions, often including up to 35 musicians, captured the dialogues between Calypso and Gaita, Accordion and Lapsteel, Clave and Mandolin, even synthesizer and a horse’s jaw bone. Beautifully presented as a Gatefold LP and CD with extensive liner notes and photos by B+, this Soundway release is a treat for all the senses.

                                                                                            Ondatropica

                                                                                            Ondatropica

                                                                                              Ondatropica release their debut album through Soundway Records. The project, conceived by Colombian musician Mario Galeano, the force behind the band Frente Cumbiero, and English producer Will Holland AKA Quantic, brings together an iconic group of top Colombian musicians representing both the classic and more modern styles of la musica Colombiana. The album is released on CD and triple vinyl LP.

                                                                                              Ondatropica fuses traditional Colombian styles such as cumbia, gaita and champeta with boogaloo, ska, beat-box, MCs, dub and funk to create a progressive album that re-interprets the tropical musical heritage of Colombia with new approaches in composition, arrangement and production. Artists such as Fruko, Anibal Velasquez, Michi Sarmiento, Alfredito Linares and Wilson Viveros (to name but a few) joined a group of younger Colombian musicians, including members of both Mario’s band Frente Cumbeiro and Quantic’s Combo Barbaro, to (re)generate the excitement that positioned Colombian music as one of the most influential in South America.

                                                                                              STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                              Philippa says: Ondatropica was put together by Colombian musician Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero), and UK producer Will Holland (Quantic). The pair bring together an iconic group of top Colombian musicians representing both the classic and more modern styles of la musica Colombiana.

                                                                                              One Day, After School

                                                                                              The Future Is Ours, Comrade

                                                                                              One Day, After School… have been working on the periphery of Wakefield music for a number of years. The bedroom based project of writer / musician Dean Freeman, ODAS have released a string of home demos through various labels and institutions (Philophobia Music / Geek Pie Records / Rhubarb Bomb) over the past few years. These recordings ranged from ambient downbeat, to crunchingly lo-fi alt rock but with this new record, their first ‘proper’ one, ODAS has found a more upfront, dynamic sound that more accurately represents the live approach of the band as a whole.

                                                                                              ‘The Future Is Not Ours, Comrade’ is a record that mixes a love of Philip K Dick, alternate universe novella’s and ideas of fatalism / solipcism and politics with the very harsh reality of working a shit job in the incredibly boring ‘real’ world.

                                                                                              "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Philip K Dick.

                                                                                              Musically it touches many bases; the intense condensed wordplay or early manics, noise squall breakdowns of Sonic Youth, gentle Sparklehorse-esqe intermissions, grumpy Arab Strap borderline ‘rap’ mumbling with sprawling post rock conclusions. But unlike their early work, ODAS have finally managed to tie it all together in a cohesive, complete package.

                                                                                              Due to their ever changing live setup, One Day, After School… have played with a diverse set of bands in the past, including Shrag, Stanley Brinks (Herman Dune), Napoleon IIIrd, Lucas Renney, Miles Davis (Wonder Stuff) Just Handshakes (We’e British) and St Gregory Orange and will be supporting this record with a full 5 piece (2 bass) line up.

                                                                                              One Fathom Down - are Tony Fathom, Jonny One and Dan Down. These psycho surf punk gunslingers are something else and they’ve taken to slaying audience with their finely honed guitar onslaughts. Melding poptastic surf guitars onto a punk rockin’ back beat. In their time they’ve even supported surf legend Dick Dale. You’ll go nuts for One Fathom Down if you’ve ever downed your whisky to Man or Astroman, Link Wray or Guitar Wolf.

                                                                                              The Humms - are a Garage band based in Athens, GA. In 2010 they released their debut record, "Lemonland" (Odd Box, 2010) to much critical praise internationally. Best Album (2010) - Athens Music Junkie, USA, #8 Top album (2010) - SoundsXP, UK. The Humms return with a gentle ballad called 'Jupiter'. It is infact one of their earliest recordings and shows that the band have always a subtle side.

                                                                                              One Line Drawing

                                                                                              Sketchy #2

                                                                                                Second One Line Drawing release from Jonah Matranga (ex FAR frontman) plangeant chords, yearning voiced. An intimate emocore outing from a new talent.

                                                                                                One Little Plane

                                                                                                Into The Trees

                                                                                                  Kathryn Bint follows her perfectly formed debut 'Until' (2008) with an album that reveals her remarkable range as a musician and songwriter. Her tender vocals still send husky shivers down the spine, but 'Into The Trees' is so much more than beautiful folk songs.

                                                                                                  Produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), 'Into The Trees' weaves a fabric of different sounds, united by Bint’s elegiac voice and strong storytelling. Radiohead's Colin Greenwood lends the album his bass powers, and tracks like ‘Paper Planes’ and ‘I Know’ rock with a swagger that surprises and yet fits perfectly with the whole. The musicianship of Scowcroft and Jamieson is on full display as the record moves deftly from the acoustic warmth of ‘Hold You Down’ to the sunshine pop of ‘Simmer Down Simmer’ to the dreamy synth of final track ‘Synthesizer’. Hebden’s touch is a delicate one; there is a modesty and clarity to these songs that speaks to the confidence and judgment of those involved. ‘If You Ask’ is so simple and clean that no extra seasoning is required.

                                                                                                  This is an optimistic record in which “hope stretches out like a leaf”. Recorded in 2010 at Bryn Derwen studios in North Wales, while Bint was pregnant with her first child, these songs are imbued with a tangible determination and hope. As she sings on ‘Simmer Down Simmer’: “We’ll ride until we fall and then get back up”.

                                                                                                  Bint was born in Australia, grew up in Chicago, and moved to London nine years ago, where she began writing songs in earnest. After the release of Until, she got together with Henry Scowcroft and Lucy Jamieson, with whom she toured Europe and played festival dates.

                                                                                                  Hebden’s influence is most apparent on ‘Bloom’—a spare, electronic piece with the precision of his Four Tet work—and yet this track is the heart of the album, encapsulating its central themes of people among nature. Lovers intertwine like vines, asleep beneath a canopy of trees, holding hands in leaves of grass. These songs are Whitman-esque odes to man’s place in the natural world; they remind us to stop and listen, to live in the moment. As we hear on the album opener ‘She Was Out In The Water’: “Honey, I don’t believe in majesty or things that you compare, I just want to be here now tasting the salty sea air.”

                                                                                                  And yet, there is majesty in these songs. In ‘It’s Alright’, One Little Plane suggests “we reach for something like stars”. This is pure modesty; Into The Trees most definitely reaches for stars, and it touches them too.


                                                                                                  One Love Series Cards

                                                                                                  I Heart Bass

                                                                                                    Blank Inside For Your Own Message.

                                                                                                    One Love Series Cards

                                                                                                    I Heart Tapes

                                                                                                      Blank Inside For Your Own Message.

                                                                                                      One Man Army

                                                                                                      Rumors And Headlines

                                                                                                        One Man Army's sound can be described as punk rock'n'roll and this, their third full length album just goes to affirm this even more.

                                                                                                        One Time Angels

                                                                                                        Sound Of A Restless City

                                                                                                          One Time Angels feature ex-members of Screw 32,St James Infirmary and Fury 66 and this album captures a rawness and an intensity that will leave you stinging.

                                                                                                          One True Pairing

                                                                                                          One True Pairing

                                                                                                            The musical touchstones of Tom Fleming, former Wild Beasts songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalis, were Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Tom Petty alongside Depeche Mode and Swans. He wrote and played everything himself and then brought in Ben Hillier (Nadine Shah, Graham Coxon) on mixing and production duties.

                                                                                                            One True Pairing is an album shaped by class frustration and self-despair and there is a continuation of the exploration of masculinity that made Wild Beasts so unique. As well as being deeply personal, OTP has a wider political resonance. "This country is going through a terrible moment and if you listen to the art nobody seems to give a shit,” Fleming says emphatically. He believes that class is entirely discounted from the current conversation about inclusivity and privilege. In its 11 songs of discordant guitar and aggressive synth Fleming channels his discontent with Britain in 2019 and a “feeling of directionless rage and cheatedness which hasn't gone away."

                                                                                                            TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                            Zero Summer
                                                                                                            I’m Not Afraid
                                                                                                            One True Pairing
                                                                                                            Weapons
                                                                                                            Dawn At The Factory
                                                                                                            Blank Walls
                                                                                                            Reaper Of Souls
                                                                                                            Elite Companion
                                                                                                            Alive In The Resplendent Flames
                                                                                                            King Of The Rats
                                                                                                            Only God Can Judge Me

                                                                                                            One True Pairing

                                                                                                            Endless Rain

                                                                                                              Endless Rain is the startlingly intimate and gorgeously realised new album from One True Pairing. Recorded in Dublin with producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, black midi, Caroline), Endless Rain boldly restates Fleming’s vision with an autumnal, searching and often uplifting record shaped by the backgrounds in traditional music, classical and noise rock of its players, which include Cormac mac Diarmada of Lankum. Sonically, Endless Rain is an ambitious and widescreen record quite unlike anything in Fleming’s back catalogue.

                                                                                                              TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                              1. As Fast As I Can Go
                                                                                                              2. Endless Rain
                                                                                                              3. Tunnelling
                                                                                                              4. Human Frailty
                                                                                                              5. Prince Of Darkness
                                                                                                              6. Doubt
                                                                                                              7. I Don't Want To Do This Anymore
                                                                                                              8. Mid-Life Crisis
                                                                                                              9. A Landlord's Death
                                                                                                              10. Ruthless Streak
                                                                                                              11. Frozen Food Centre
                                                                                                              12. Be Strong
                                                                                                              13. The World Said No

                                                                                                              One Unique Signal

                                                                                                              Hoopsnake

                                                                                                                The latest offering from experimental noise masters One Unique Signal is a collaboration between the three core band members and 20 of their contemporaries, who each designed a piece of music inspired by a single riff. Much like the process of continuous recreation that its namesake symbolises, the West London groups third LP, Hoopsnake, devours the seemingly eternal riff and constantly reinvents it to form a series of parallel iterations to the original composition. The riff was born from a repetitious loop originating from the sessions for their previous LP, the Sonic Boom mastered Aether. The band then recorded two versions of it (one a loud, guitar-driven take, the second a softer synth passage) and shared it with friends and collaborators, inviting each artist to create a corresponding sonic interpretation, which have all been mixed into four separate 10 minute long tracks.

                                                                                                                The result is a seamless meshing of ideas from some of the best minds in the underground music scene - including The Oscillations Demian Castellanos and Steven Lawrie of The Telescopes - whose recordings span the weird and wonderful, ranging from home made noise box to Godin Artisan ST II recorded on solar power in a caravan, to simply lime green guitar. The roster of musicians and their various tools and instruments has been documented on the vinyl editions printed inner sleeve, and reads like a cross between a tech catalogue and a fantasy novel. The album was originally intended to serve as a second disc for Aether, however an extended, separate version was eventually called for to allow the project to fully realize it's 46 minute cycle, which was inspired by the long, warm summer evenings England experienced in 2013. Despite the new process undertaken for Hoopsnake, the methodically exploritive approach is typical to One Unique Signal, as is the feeling of continuity. The groups Nick Keech explains. From the very beginning, the Signal mythos has been repetition. Fellow band member Byron Jackson continues. The LP destroys itself, reflects upon the destruction, and is finally recreated, ready to repeat the process again. Along with fellow member Daniel Davis, the trio also perform as a part of space rock legends The Telescopes. 

                                                                                                                TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                1. HS01
                                                                                                                2. HS02
                                                                                                                3. HS03
                                                                                                                4. HS04

                                                                                                                One Window

                                                                                                                Don't Believe The Things They Tell You

                                                                                                                  Debut album from Manchester's One Window. Recorded over 18 months, the album is a sublime mix of laid back grooves, contemporary beats and simple songwriting, all topped with Zoe Stafford's strong vocals. There's hint's of everything here, from St Etienne, to Morcheeba, to Kings Of Convenience.

                                                                                                                  OneDa

                                                                                                                  Formula OneDa

                                                                                                                    "OneDa's story is so clearly mirrored in her music: a sprightly flow preaching a message of empowerment, enveloped in a dark, raucous soundscape…interlacing vibrant, punchy lyrics with that classic drum & bass sound has given OneDa a new lease of life."

                                                                                                                    "An artist who refuses to be boxed in, OneDa’s music speaks for itself. Always beginning with her own intrepid demeanour and dexterous wordplay, her tracks incorporate elements from the hip-hop and drum and bass scenes of her home city of Manchester before adding an eclectic mix of afro-trap and tinges of afrobeats that lean into her Nigerian heritage.Oneda's expertise transcends mere lyrical skill; it involves effortlessly merging her chicaning poetic verses with the ever-changing rhythm of shifting beats. Her boundless linguistic talent distinguishes her as a unique force of nature and a master craftswoman. Named by The Face as one of the key MC’s at the forefront of the eh renaissance, OneDa is a multihyphenate who has long focused on empowering others. Now, she is speeding off the starting grid on her own with her self-produced debut album, ‘Formula OneDa’, released on Heavenly Recordings." - DJ Magazine

                                                                                                                    STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                                                    Barry says: A blistering debut from Heavenly's newest signing, Manchester's OneDa. Perfectly toeing the line between super modern glitchy trap and classic drum & bass, with OneDa's athletic vocals over the top. Instantly addictive beats, and great wordplay to boot.

                                                                                                                    TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                    Let Me In
                                                                                                                    Major Pay
                                                                                                                    The Formula
                                                                                                                    Raised
                                                                                                                    Over My Dead Body
                                                                                                                    Pull Up
                                                                                                                    Sometimes
                                                                                                                    The Plug
                                                                                                                    Leader
                                                                                                                    The Western Way
                                                                                                                    Superwoman
                                                                                                                    Set It Off 

                                                                                                                    Oneida

                                                                                                                    Success

                                                                                                                      Recommended If You Like: Can, Tortoise, OOIOO, Sonic Youth, Ty Segall, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Bitchin Bajas, The Cars, Liars.

                                                                                                                      Experimental psych-punk institution Onedia returns with Success, the band’s most guitar-centric, rocking album in decades. Long straddling the gray area between the NYC punk/psych/rock community and the art/experimental world, the music of Oneida is celebrated for its mix of abstract, atmo[1]spheric sounds and pulsing, hammering anthems. Success finds the band getting to the core of what makes minimal rock music

                                                                                                                      so good - songs pared back to beat and melody with a limited number of guitar chords. If a song or two gets ripped in half later by a corrosive guitar solo, well, what did you expect? This is Oneida.



                                                                                                                      “Oneida are the rare experimentalists who can hammer away at a riff or idea incessantly and somehow make it really last.” Pitchfork

                                                                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                      1. Beat Me To The Punch
                                                                                                                      2. Opportunities
                                                                                                                      3. Low Tide
                                                                                                                      4. I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand
                                                                                                                      5. Paralyzed
                                                                                                                      6. Rotten
                                                                                                                      7. Solid

                                                                                                                      Oneida

                                                                                                                      Romance

                                                                                                                        Oneida has been a cornerstone of the Brooklyn underground for nearly two decades. Always evolving, the group has been a beacon of musical exploration and enthralling unpredictability, gaining legendary status among heads that know and expanding the limits of what it means to be a rock band. With a discography spanning over a dozen full-lengths, plus live releases, EPs, singles, and limited one-offs, Oneida has demonstrated a mastery of collective improvisation, off-kilter songwriting, complex composition, and everything in between. In 2011 Oneida lost its home base, its studio dubbed the Ocropolis in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, due to the pervasive gentrification and over-development of the neighbourhood that was once a thriving arts community.

                                                                                                                        After watching the Monster Island building that housed the Ocropolis transform into a pile of rubble, the band began an intense period of exploration and discovery, retreating from the studio in favor of the stage, and birthing a panoply of limited, uncompromising releases that documented the band’s continuously unfolding journey. Six years after the release of A List of the Burning Mountains, the final emission from the Ocropolis, the band will release their newest studio creation Romance, their first album for Joyful Noise Recordings and a record marked by wild eclecticism, even for a group known for its shape-shifting nature. Recorded over several years in various locales, the 11 songs on Romance are built around deeply developed long-arc rhythm/phase concepts, noise, yearning, blind guitar rage, longing, the lurch of dying electronics, and a multi-modal embrace of human fallibility and artifice. From the crackling synth-led opener “Economy Travel” to the expansive 18-minute epic “Shepherd’s Axe,” Romance is an album in constant flux.

                                                                                                                        On “Bad Habit” the band employs phasing between organ and guitar to great, disorienting effect, while the primitive riffs of “Cockfight” offer a contrasting vision of rock minimalism. Listen closely on “Lay of the Land” and you will hear constant rhythmic development, with drummer Kid Millions eschewing repetition in favor of morphing patterns of hi-hat and snare. As with all mystery, Romance reveals more through closer attention and multiple listens. Oneida, always formidable in the live environment, will be touring throughout the year.

                                                                                                                        Kid Millions remains one of the most in-demand drummers in New York, exploring the outer reaches of percussion music with his own Man Forever project, as well as playing with Laurie Anderson, Royal Trux, and People of the North with Oneida compatriot Bobby Matador. Bobby also takes part in the psych-pop duo Nurse & Soldier, and recently formed yet another duo called New Pope. Guitarist Shahin Moita is a co-founder of underground stalwarts Ex Models and Knyfe Hyts. Through it all Oneida remains a powerful collective voice, a propulsive force for wildness and excitement, with Romance heralding the return of the epic, artful ballad version of the journey. 

                                                                                                                        TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                        Economy Travel,
                                                                                                                        Bad Habit,
                                                                                                                        All In Due Time,
                                                                                                                        It Was Me,
                                                                                                                        Good Lie,
                                                                                                                        Lay Of The Land,
                                                                                                                        Cedars,
                                                                                                                        Reputation,
                                                                                                                        Cockfight,
                                                                                                                        Good Cheer,
                                                                                                                        Shepherd's Axe.

                                                                                                                        Oneida

                                                                                                                        Expensive Air

                                                                                                                          A song is a song until it isn’t, until it’s pushed to its limits and beyond to become harder, faster and more dissonant. The music on Oneida’s 17th full-length album, Expensive Air, all started as tightly structured, melodic rock songs very much in line with the non-stop bangers of Success from 2022 but along the way, they changed.

                                                                                                                          Bobby Matador sketched the structures of these songs from his home base in Boston, then sent the demos to Oneida’s New York contingent: Kid Millions, Hanoi Jane, Shahin Motia and Barry London. “We were working out the songs in New York without Bobby. We would start out riding the riffs, and then Shahin and Jane would add wild, out-of-tune licks,” said Kid Millions. “It seemed so perfect.”

                                                                                                                          Oneida has long straddled gray-area boundaries between the NYC punk/psych/rock world and the art / experimental world, playing at gritty rock clubs and elevated cultural institutions. Oneida’s previous album, Success, came after a four-year hiatus, unleashing the band’s pent up creative energy in a set of catchy, accessible, nearly poppy songs. Song structure remained important in the run up towards Expensive Air, but so was the instinctual, improvisatory interplay that has always been a part of Oneida’s process. The band had been playing live together for two years, sharpening its attack and pushing its songs to go harder, faster and wilder.

                                                                                                                          The new album expands on what Oneida achieved with Success, but also pushes past it, laying down irresistible song structures then blowing them to psychedelic bits. “I found myself thinking about this record as a darker, looser, louder, counterpart to Success,” he explains. “Both records charge forward from the jump and mix the elliptical with the blunt, and longing with self-mockery. But Success is like laughing in a car gunning carelessly through an ice storm, and Expensive Air is how you laugh at yourself as the car spins into the ditch, or a tree. Same trip, but a little closer to the bone.”

                                                                                                                          RIYL: The Fall, Dead Kennedys, Dinosaur Jr., The Damned, The Cure, Wire, Peaking Lights, The Clean, ZZ Top, Gene Clark, The Ramones, Sun Ra, Martin Rev, Allen Ravenstine, Horse Lords, Liars, CAN, NEU!, Pram, Minami Deutsch, ESG, Acid Mothers Temple, Erase Errata. 

                                                                                                                          STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                                                          Barry says: Oneida (especially here) encapsulate the live aesthetic on the recorded medium. There's a clear energy and an excitement that comes through the speakers when you play them loud, and it places you right at the front of one of their gigs. Bracing, punky blasts and excitable bursts of atonal guitar screech abound, you can't help but nod along to all of it.

                                                                                                                          TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                          1 Reason To Hide
                                                                                                                          2 Spill
                                                                                                                          3 La Plage
                                                                                                                          4 Stranger
                                                                                                                          5 Here It Comes
                                                                                                                          6 Expensive Air
                                                                                                                          7 Salt
                                                                                                                          8 Gunboats

                                                                                                                          After the debut album "Hypnos" and the "Veni Nox Anima" EP finally new material of this New York based composer. With ONEIROGEN, Mario Diaz de Leon creates his own style of hallucinatory music, merging ethereal synths, brutal distortion, dark ambient and noise. The project was initiated in 2012 with the release of "Hypnos", which garnered widespread acclaim among fans of experimental and heavy music for its varied and cinematic intensity. Steve Smith of the New York Times praised the disc for its hallucinatory intensity. While maintaining a strong electronic (and unclassifiable) sound, "Kiasma" offers an intensification of the metal elements present on the debut. Thoughout the album's walls of drumless distortion, melody is a prominent feature, with tracks such as "Numina", "Mutilation", "Pathogen", and "Mortisomnia" exploring revelatory intersections of heavy synths and guitars. The 14-minute "Katabasis" opened nearly every live show of 2012, and is rooted in drone/doom metal, with elements of modern classical and noise. "Gauze" and "Imminence" serve as haunting interludes, and are concise takes on bleak and cold melody. Ranging from melancholic to brutally foreboding, another immersive and visionary album by ONEIROGEN.

                                                                                                                          TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                          1. Numina (6:08)
                                                                                                                          2. Pathogen (6:50)
                                                                                                                          3. Mutilation (7:26)
                                                                                                                          4. Imminence (4:16)
                                                                                                                          5. Katabasis (14:35)
                                                                                                                          6. Gauze (2:39)
                                                                                                                          7. Mortisomnia

                                                                                                                          Onelinedrawing

                                                                                                                          Visitor

                                                                                                                            You've got to have a lot of self-belief to sing lines like 'Her hips are like seashells / I can hear the ocean when I listen' - Oooer missus! Jonah Matranga, singer / songwriter of New End Original and formerly of Far has bags of it. As Onelinedrawing he's played over 300 shows in the US, UK, and Europe. This CD is full of all the emotional and ultimately uplifting songs his fans have come to expect. It's another quality Jade Tree release.

                                                                                                                            Oneness Of Juju

                                                                                                                            Space Jungle Luv - 2024 Reissue

                                                                                                                              When bandleader James “Plunky” Branch created Oneness Of Juju in 1975, he had spent five years working on both the West and East coasts of the U.S. The group’s previous ncarnation, Juju, had become a fixture within New York’s avant-garde jazz scene. Upon moving to Richmond, Virginia, Plunky re-grouped with a new set of musicians, fusing African percussion with funk and R&B. The band recorded two of their most celebrated albums during 1975 and 1976, 'African Rhythms' and 'Space Jungle Luv'.

                                                                                                                              This change of direction ushered in the most successful era yet for the band. Plunky connected with distributor, publicist and DJ Jimmy “Black Fire” Gray, and African Rhythms scored a huge local success. Plunky recalls, “A year later, with 'Space Jungle Luv', I moved from R&B into a more mellow, spiritual direction. The music featured a smooth progressive sound that was perfect for our singer Lady EkaEte’s mesmerizing, soulfully sweet vocals.

                                                                                                                              That album also introduced guitarist Melvin Glover to the group; his songs broadened our repertoire by adding celestial, harp-like tones and textures. ” The pianist from Pharoah Sanders’ band, Joe Bonner, also guested on the sessions. “With 'Space Jungle Luv', I was making a Pharoah kind of record, ” continues Plunky. “I wanted to deliver a spiritually uplifting message; artists like George Clinton and Sun Ra had explored the theme of space and people were looking towards the future and new technology. We were also describing the album – space music, jungle music, love songs. Among the tracks, ‘River Luvrite’ describes positive people as constituting a flow, a continuous spirit. With ‘Follow Me’, we were just saying,‘come along with us and find new places together.’”

                                                                                                                              This new reissue of Space Jungle Luv features the full original artwork, including the cover painting by Muzi Branch. It is remastered by The Carvery and includes a brand new interview with bandleader James “Plunky” Branch alongside rare photos. The release also includes brand new liner notes by James “Plunky” Branch.

                                                                                                                              TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                              1. River Luvrite
                                                                                                                              2. Follow Me
                                                                                                                              3. Soul Love Now
                                                                                                                              4. Space Jungle Funk
                                                                                                                              5. The Connection
                                                                                                                              6. Love’s Messenger

                                                                                                                              Oneohtrix Point Never

                                                                                                                              Again

                                                                                                                                Daniel Lopatin is a Brooklyn-based musician, composer, and Mercury Prize nominated producer who records and performs as Oneohtrix Point Never. "Again" is his tenth album and is released via Warp Records.

                                                                                                                                The artwork features an original sculpture by Matias Falkbakken, conceptualized in concert with Lopatin and photographed by Vegard Kleven. Design and packaging was developed by Memory, a newly formed collaboration between Lopatin and Online Ceramics (Elijah Funk & Alix Ross).



                                                                                                                                STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                                                                Barry says: Daniel Lopatin is always innovating, from his hugely memorable scores for Uncut Gems or Good Time, but for me it's Lopatin's work as Oneohtrix Point never that shines with all that he has to offer. Bright moments shine through the deep, meticulously crafted electronic hiss and rich audio bath. Classic OPN

                                                                                                                                TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                                01. Elseware
                                                                                                                                02. Again
                                                                                                                                03. World Outside
                                                                                                                                04. Krumville
                                                                                                                                05. Locrian Midwest
                                                                                                                                06. Plastic Antique
                                                                                                                                07. Gray Subviolet
                                                                                                                                08. The Body Trail
                                                                                                                                09. Nightmare Paint
                                                                                                                                10. Memories Of Music
                                                                                                                                11. On An Axis
                                                                                                                                12. Ubiquity Road
                                                                                                                                13. A Barely Lit Path

                                                                                                                                Oneohtrix Point Never

                                                                                                                                Again (Blu-ray Edition)

                                                                                                                                  Again (Blu-ray Edition), features an exclusive Dolby Atmos mix by Mike Dean, Tommy Rush & Sean Solymar, & the original OPN album accompanied by all official music videos. The 17-track collectable, out on Warp Records, features contributions from such wide ranging collaborators as Robert Ames, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O’Rourke, Xiu Xiu, lovelivescrushing, and more.

                                                                                                                                  TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                                  01. Elseware
                                                                                                                                  02. Again
                                                                                                                                  03. World Outside
                                                                                                                                  04. Krumville
                                                                                                                                  05. Locrian Midwest
                                                                                                                                  06. Plastic Antique
                                                                                                                                  07. Gray Subviolet
                                                                                                                                  08. The Body Trail
                                                                                                                                  09. Nightmare Paint
                                                                                                                                  10. Memories Of Music
                                                                                                                                  11. On An Axis
                                                                                                                                  12. Ubiquity Road
                                                                                                                                  13. A Barely Lit Path
                                                                                                                                  14. A Barely Lit Path (Music Video)
                                                                                                                                  15. Nightmare Paint (Music Video)
                                                                                                                                  16. On An Axis (Music Video)
                                                                                                                                  17. Memories Of Music ANIMATIC {Draft} (Music Video)

                                                                                                                                  Oneohtrix Point Never

                                                                                                                                  Age Of

                                                                                                                                    Daniel Lopatin has never been to afeared to tread a relatively unfollowed path, with his ambient synth excursions of the early 00's sending many a mind into the outer reaches of the stratosphere, before his major label debut with 'R Plus 7' for Warp in 2013. His follow-up outing, 'Garden Of Delete'  pushed what was becoming his trademark glitched-out synth excursions into exciting new territories with fragented patchworks and overlapping collages of sound forming a solid but oft missed melodic patchwork. 

                                                                                                                                    The newest outing, "Age Of" is Daniel Lopatin’s most cohesive and richly composed work to date, weaving a tapestry of disparate musical histories — early music, country and folk balladry, melodic pop, computer music and much, much more — that demonstrate both the complexity and range of the artist's repertoire. With sounds that are unsettlingly familiar and uniquely his own, "Age Of" guides us through an unclassifiable new world. 

                                                                                                                                    STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                                                                    Barry says: Oneohtric moves from strength to strength, with his newest outing eschewing the glitched-out cut/paste madness of 'Garden Of Delete' for a more refined, but still comfortingly bizarre robo-choral affair. I've been a big fan of Lopatin since the mid 2000's, and this continues the tradition of excellence. Killer.

                                                                                                                                    TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                                    01 Age Of
                                                                                                                                    02 Babylon
                                                                                                                                    03 Manifold
                                                                                                                                    04 The Station
                                                                                                                                    05 Toys 2
                                                                                                                                    06 Black Snow
                                                                                                                                    07 Myriad.industries
                                                                                                                                    08 Warning
                                                                                                                                    09 We’ll Take It
                                                                                                                                    10 Same
                                                                                                                                    11 RayCats
                                                                                                                                    12 Still Stuff That Doesn’t Happen
                                                                                                                                    13 Last Known Image Of A Song

                                                                                                                                    Oneohtrix Point Never

                                                                                                                                    KCRW Session

                                                                                                                                      Brooklyn's Daniel Lopatin has had one hell of career, practically dominating the new synth experimental movement since his casette debut in 2007. For Warp's eighth release in the 'TX' series we skip continents to LA, with Oneohtrix Point Never's 2018 session for KCRW radio is documented here.

                                                                                                                                      As per the format now, four highlights are lifted from the session and presented here for our enjoyment. "Love In The Time Of Lexapro" is a long standing favourite live performance by our man, and this particular instance is a dream on the ears - musical, tectonic and cataclysmic all at once.

                                                                                                                                      "RayCats", taken from the "Age Of" LP is an experimental number comprised of rhythmic nuances such as singing bowls, wind chimes and 'perc frog' scrapes before being decorated with some skilled synthesizer work - bright leads, lysergic swirls and emotive washes all centering in on this wonderful slice of futuro-exotica.

                                                                                                                                      "Toys 2" shows off all dazzling flamboyance of 5D charisma of the artist's impressive synth array. Not a million miles away from James Ferraro's new new age masterpiece: "Farside Virtual", it highlights this transitional and momentous period, proto-vapourwave when Lopatin and friends were regarded as heroes of the Nu World, their bright optimistic synthscapes an escape from the hatred and separation that began to sweep through society. 


                                                                                                                                      STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                                                                      Barry says: Whilst Lopatin's work has gone from filmic ambient synth work (Rifts, Returnal) to more glitchy, beat based mayhem (Garden Of Delete), he's always maintained a focus on richly textured layers of synth pads and a slowly shifting instrumental weight. This 2018 session perfectly displays his unbeatable grasp of the fine balance between dynamics and weight, balancing the impassable mountain of sound with micromelodies and barely perceptible atmospheric movement.

                                                                                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                                      A1. Love In The Time Of Lexapro
                                                                                                                                      A2. RayCats
                                                                                                                                      B1. Toys 2
                                                                                                                                      B2. Chrome Country

                                                                                                                                      The end of 2019 was soundtracked by one of the most unanimously critically acclaimed film scores of recent history, an anxiety-driven joyride paired to the Safdie Brothers’ noir thriller Uncut Gems. Unknowingly, Lopatin captured a universal feeling of dread that cuts even deeper in the current state of world affairs. And now, just as many artists are leaning into a newly discovered darkness as this year closes, Lopatin turns his dial towards a frequency of profound self-awareness on an even deeper journey inwards towards peace. With the backdrop of re-imagined programming for a soft rock-era format that symbolically spans from morning drive into late night hours, “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never”, the name a reference to a misheard play on words of Boston’s Magic 106.7, is a nostalgic and self-referential career defining body of work, collaging maximalist baroque within atmospheric glitter. Here Lopatin has mastered his own autobiography; an ornate musical double entendre from an artist making the most enlightened music of his career.

                                                                                                                                      STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                                                                      Barry says: It's always a transcendent experience listening to a new OPN album, and 'Magic..' is exactly that, flitting between ambient synthy business and soaring glitchy vocal streaks. As ever, perfectly produced and with every bit of the sheen we've come to expect.

                                                                                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                                      Vinyl Tracklist:
                                                                                                                                      A1. Cross Talk I
                                                                                                                                      A2. Auto & Allo
                                                                                                                                      A3. Long Road Home
                                                                                                                                      A4. Cross Talk II
                                                                                                                                      B1. I Don’t Love Me Anymore
                                                                                                                                      B2. Bow Ecco
                                                                                                                                      B3. The Whether Channel
                                                                                                                                      B4. No Nightmares
                                                                                                                                      C1. Cross Talk III
                                                                                                                                      C2. Tales From The Trash Stratum
                                                                                                                                      C3. Answering Machine
                                                                                                                                      C4. Imago
                                                                                                                                      C5. Cross Talk IV / Radio Lonelys
                                                                                                                                      D1. Lost But Never Alone
                                                                                                                                      D2. Shifting
                                                                                                                                      D3. Wave Idea

                                                                                                                                      CD Tracklist:
                                                                                                                                      01. Cross Talk I
                                                                                                                                      02. Auto & Allo
                                                                                                                                      03. Long Road Home
                                                                                                                                      04. Cross Talk II
                                                                                                                                      05. I Don’t Love Me Anymore
                                                                                                                                      06. Bow Ecco
                                                                                                                                      07. The Whether Channel
                                                                                                                                      08. No Nightmares
                                                                                                                                      09. Cross Talk III
                                                                                                                                      10. Tales From The Trash Stratum
                                                                                                                                      11. Answering Machine
                                                                                                                                      12. Imago
                                                                                                                                      13. Cross Talk IV / Radio Lonelys
                                                                                                                                      14. Lost But Never Alone
                                                                                                                                      15. Shifting
                                                                                                                                      16. Wave Idea
                                                                                                                                      17. Nothing’s Special

                                                                                                                                      Warp Records are pleased to announce the release of Oneohtrix Point Never's 'R Plus Seven'. The album contains many familiar sonic touchstones for listeners who have followed the acclaimed electronic music composer’s development over the last half-decade, his Warp Records debut is a major departure from his previous work. Lopatin’s experimental inclinations lurk behind the scenes - in the concepts and procedures he adopted to create the tracks - while the music itself comes as close as he's has ever got to anything resembling traditional song structure. Which, for the producer, is only so close: The work is full of overlapping, abstract musical through-lines, puzzle-like pieces that, taken together, might allow you to glimpse an overarching tableau.

                                                                                                                                      The Brooklyn-based artist has always deftly balanced the experimental with the accessible: He has released several albums under his Oneohtrix Point Never moniker on various independent labels - including the 2013 3-CD/5 LP 'Rifts', a compilation of his early work - as well as amassing a large catalogue of mini-album tape releases. His most recent disc, 2011’s 'Replica', was built around samples of television commercials.

                                                                                                                                      OPN has built live soundscapes at the Museum of Modern Art; collaborated with Montreal-based ambient electronic music composer Tim Hecker on the largely improvised 2012 'Instrumental Tourist'; and recast the title track from his 2010 disc 'Returnal' as an elegant and emotive piece for piano, featuring the otherworldly voice of Antony Hegarty. Advertising powerhouse Saatchi & Saatchi tapped Lopatin for an installation event at the 2012 Cannes film fest and Sofia Coppola’s longtime cohort Brian Reitzell invited him to create original music for Coppola’s The Bling Ring.

                                                                                                                                      'R Plus Seven' is disruptive and hypnotic in equal measure, and the fun of it lies in trusting Lopatin as he guides you past - and often through - its succession of walls and mirrors.

                                                                                                                                      TRACK LISTING

                                                                                                                                      01. Boring Angel
                                                                                                                                      02. Americans
                                                                                                                                      03. He She
                                                                                                                                      04. Inside World
                                                                                                                                      05. Zebra
                                                                                                                                      06. Along
                                                                                                                                      07. Problem Areas
                                                                                                                                      08. Cryo
                                                                                                                                      09. Still Life
                                                                                                                                      10. Chrome Country


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