There’s no band that can lay claim to being the true best in the business, except VIDEO. Crawling from the musical wasteland that is Texas, their intentions are simple: they want to own the world. While the band features members of Bad Sports, Wiccans, Radioactivity, and the Wax Museums (just to name a few), VIDEO stands on its own as one of the most powerful and visceral bands active today. Combining equal parts snotty punk, hard rock, and melodic dissonance, VIDEO are pioneers of their own subgenre, Hate Wave. Going well beyond the confines of paint by numbers punk, and generic, flaccid garage rock, VIDEO forges a new cult like movement. So pay attention, consumers, and don’t miss out on the best thing going today. Long Live The New Faith, Long Live VIDEO.

TRACK LISTING

1. Opening
2. The Entertainers
3. New Immortals
4. Drink It In
5. Nothing Lasts Forever
6. Shackles
7. No Art
8. Never Enough
9. Out Of My Hands
10. I Will Wait
11. The End Of It All

Recorded in a barn-turned-studio in rural Ontario, the seven songs that make up ‘Viet Cong’ were born largely on the road, when Matt Flegel and bandmates Mike Wallace (both ex members of the much loved band Women), Scott Munro and Daniel Christiansen embarked on a 50-date tour that stretched virtually every limit imaginable.

The repetition throughout ‘Viet Cong’ hypnotizes but also softens, leaving a space that is deceptively personal.

‘Continental Shelf’ orbits a thousand watt hook with a thick crackle and a battering-ram drum line.

‘Silhouettes’ is a tripwire of a song, opening with an almost Joy Division-esque exposition and moving at breakneck speed - frantic and pitch-black at a thousand miles an hour - until, before you know it, they are howling. Actually howling. Maybe you are too.

TRACK LISTING

1 Newspaper Spoons
2 Pointless Experience
3 March Of Progress
4 Bunker Buster
5 Continental Shelf
6 Silhouettes
7 Death

Recorded in a barn-turned-studio in rural Ontario, the seven songs that make up ‘Viet Cong’ were born largely on the road, when Matt Flegel and bandmates Mike Wallace (both ex members of the much loved band Women), Scott Munro and Daniel Christiansen embarked on a 50-date tour that stretched virtually every limit imaginable.

The repetition throughout ‘Viet Cong’ hypnotizes but also softens, leaving a space that is deceptively personal.

‘Continental Shelf’ orbits a thousand watt hook with a thick crackle and a battering-ram drum line.

‘Silhouettes’ is a tripwire of a song, opening with an almost Joy Division-esque exposition and moving at breakneck speed - frantic and pitch-black at a thousand miles an hour - until, before you know it, they are howling. Actually howling. Maybe you are too.

TRACK LISTING

1 Newspaper Spoons
2 Pointless Experience
3 March Of Progress
4 Bunker Buster
5 Continental Shelf
6 Silhouettes
7 Death

When The View reconvened last year after five years apart, the three old-friends realised just how much they have missed… well, everything about being in a band: the rush of seeing an audience react to their performances, the camaraderie of being together, a simple jam idea evolving into a fully-fledged song. A run of comeback gigs at Glasgow’s O2 Academy saw all 10,000 tickets sold in advance, the fan reaction was overwhelming and they were even joined on-stage by an old friend in the shape of ‘Line of Duty’ actor Martin Compston. After all that, how could you resist wanting more? Especially as their rehearsals for the shows saw the band conjure up a wealth of new song ideas just like they did back when they first started out. 

Frontman Kyle Falconer says, “Working with Youth on our third album 'Bread and Circuses' was one of the best experiences of my career so we jumped at the chance to revisit the opportunity with him in Spain. To be able to go into the studio again as a band with added experience was just magical."

Kyle and bandmates Kieran Webster (bass/vocals) and Pete Reilly (guitar) departed their homes in Scotland to record the record in the inspiring surroundings of Granada, Spain, with the assistance of a top tier producer in the shape of the Grammy Award winner Youth (The Verve, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Charlatans). They returned with ‘Exorcism of Youth’ in the bag, a record which combines the raucous energy of The View’s early work with some poignant slowburners drawn from personal experience, and Kyle’s gift for lyricism which is equal parts observational, witty and insightful.

The View launch the album by sharing its lead single ‘Feels Like’. The band’s fiery energy ignites the song in a blaze of melody before hitting the kind of instantly irresistible hook with which they’ve made their name. It’s a track perfectly built for upcoming shows too, with its breakdown sure to be an immensely atmospheric moment when they hit summer festivals.

Kyle adds, “This one felt anthemic from the get go. Even though under the surface it’s about somewhere everyone’s been in their life before: regret of losing someone amazing due to your inner demons and seeing them moving on with their life, when you’re stuck in a ‘nightmare not a dream.’ When I first sat down to write it I had Holden Caulfield from ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in mind. It’s playing out in his mind and it’s his own paranoia destroying him from the inside out when in reality she’s the perfect woman."

Elsewhere, the album darts from highlight-to-highlight, taking in a cocktail of ‘60s pop and punky punch on ‘The Wonder Of It All’, strutting and swaggering on ‘Neon Nights’, and channelling driving, anthemic rock like a trio of Scottish Springsteens on ‘Woman of the Year’. At times, though, it represents an evolution for the band too, with the sweeping strings of ‘Black Mirror’ and the darker alt-pop production of ‘Footprints In The Sand’. Ultimately ‘Exorcism of Youth’ is where The View should be at this stage in their lives: still burning with the passion of youth, but with the confidence and control that comes from having been around the block and, in the process, learned from the experience.

TRACK LISTING

1. ‘Exorcism Of Youth’
2. ‘Feels Like’
3. ‘The Wonder Of It All’
4. ‘Arctic Sun’
5. ‘Shovel In His Hands’
6. ‘Allergic To Mornings’
7. ‘Black Mirror’
8. ‘Neon Nights’
9. ‘Dixie’
10. ‘Woman Of The Year’
11. ‘Footprints In The Sand’
12. ‘Tangled’

Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited is a stunning reimagining of Kraftwerk’s seminal album, created to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

The perfect (post) Christmas gift for discerning fans of cutting edge analogue electronica. And Kraftwerk!

Radioland was initially devised as a breathtaking audio-visual live experience by the Anglo-French trio of Matthew Bourne (synthesisers, voice), Franck Vigroux (electronics) and visual artist Antoine Schmitt.

The original music has been transformed with hurricanes of modulated electronics, earth-shattering bass frequencies, vocoders ebbing and throbbing and the occasional drop into periods of eerie near-silence.

Using a variety of vintage analogue synthesisers and electronics, they have recreated the futuristic, industrial world of ominous darkness and dazzling light imagined by Kraftwerk in 1975 and reconstructed in this bold new manifestation for 2015.

The album is mastered by Denis Blackham, who mastered Kraftwerk’s classic 1974 album Autobahn.

“A darkly intriguing contemporary spin on the seminal Teutonic band Kraftwerk’s electronic concept… a mix of hard-edged industrial grooves and ethereal, moog-infused soundscapes” - Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise.

“Bourne, a staggeringly talented pianist, also has an ability to explore the synthesiser’s most Kraftwerkian properties” - John Lewis, The Guardian.

Referencing the easy, sleazy sounds of the 90s, Viji – real name Vanilla Jenner – has been cementing herself as one of the most exciting alternative artists to watch in the UK right now.

Having previously released music on Dirty Hit, she recently signed to Speedy Wunderground and has rapidly built a loyal fanbase whilst receiving widespread plaudits from the likes of BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, BBC Radio 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, CLASH, Dork, DIY, Wonderland, So Young, and many more.

So Vanilla was recorded predominantly in London, in partnership with four-time Mercury Prize nominated producer and Speedy Wunderground label head, Dan Carey (Fontaines D.C., Kae Tempest, Wet Leg). Having finished So Vanilla in November 2022, Viji relays that every song had a different writing process – some saw her and Carey playing guitar chords together for hours, until the sounds fused into one, and others came from late night ramblings at home.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: From snarling vocals and fuzzy, grungy guitars to hushed acoustic breeze, 'So Vanilla' is a captivating and brilliantly off-piste debut from a hugely talented artist. A hefty, 90's tinged treat.

TRACK LISTING

1 Anything
2 Down
3 Sedative
4 Sundress In Pink
5 Karaoke
6 Blanket
7 Sharks
8 Slip Out Quiet
9 1850
10 Say Hi
11 White Lighter
12 Ambien

The debut album from one of Brazil's most exciting young solo artists. A beautiful bossa inflected record that showcases Vilar's classic songwriting flourish and modern spark. A special talent. The latest addition to Far Out’s growing stable of new Brazilian talents Rafael Vilar fits in perfectly with bossa-influenced close friends Sabrina Malheiros and Clara Moreno. On "Studies In Bossa" Vilar moves between Portuguese and English vocals through tracks that evoke the great bossa nova, folk and samba of 60s and 70s Brazil whilst incorporating global jazz and electronica.

Recorded with musician friends in London the relaxed atmosphere allowed Vilar’s beautifully unhurried songs to flourish. Producer and bossa nova enthusiast August Jacobsen, best known as Hunsley & Guz and resident DJ at some of London’s biggest clubs such as Fabric and The Egg, provided the electronic elements especially present in "Solidao", which mixes synthesizers with the accordion. That zestful quirky edge comes out through the album with the sounds of toys, books, keys and coins in the pocket blending perfectly with more traditional instrumentation. "Studies in Bossa" draws on many of the singer-songwriter’s influences; as diverse as Jewel and Tom Waits’ folk; samba from Noel Rosa; and original bossa nova from João Gilberto and Chico Buarque. Raf’s love of jazz came from his uncle Ivan Conti who is the drummer for Far Out legends’ Azymuth, hence his eventual link to the label.

With this recording Vilar is unveiled to an international audience. Until now undiscovered, the quality and beauty of these recordings is undoubted: a rare nu-bossa star has arrived.

Kurt Vile has a way of tying time in knots. You can hear it on his new album "Smoke Ring For My Halo" from the get-go – the pinwheeling guitars and reaching atmospheres of "Baby’s Arms" are as strange as they are familiar: a demonstration of how Kurt can put worn methods and sounds through himself and end up with something that isn’t emotionally or sonically obvious. Instead we’re left with a record that contains traces of the past but doesn’t waste precious time in the now being reverent.

Once compared to Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, Psychic TV and Animal Collective in the same review, Kurt can bring to mind anything from Suicide to Leo Kottke to My Bloody Valentine, Bob Seger, Nick Drake and Eastern ragas. Still, he pieces together these disparate elements so seamlessly and unpretentiously that such reference points are rendered pointless by the singularity of his sound. Kurt Vile might belong to a long lineage of classic American songwriters, but he’s the only one who’s alive and in his prime today.

This is the fourth time Kurt Vile has put an album’s worth of songs together and stuck a name on it, but in a sense "Smoke Ring For My Halo" is his first real album - every flinching guitar arpeggio and vocal wander was made to be here, made with this record in mind, to sit alongside another in situ and in sequence. It’s a record that is perfect for any given day during whatever season, to satisfy all moods in every possible scenario, be that first thing in the morning or last thing at night; today, tomorrow or five years from now.

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby’s Arms
2. Jesus Fever
3. Puppet To The Man
4. On Tour
5. Society Is My Friend
6. Runner Ups
7. In My Time
8. Peeping Tomboy
9. Smoke Ring For My Halo
10. Ghost Town

Suicide Squeeze celebrates Chastity Belt with the latest in its split 7" single series–a pair of covers by Friends of the Band and tourmates Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett. For this release, Kurt and Courtney each recorded a song from the band's third album, 2017's I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone, in their signature styles. Side K is Kurt's version of "This Time of Night," on which he lovingly recreates the anxious interplay of Julia Shapiro and Lydia Lund's guitars, stretching each note of the song's fraught vocal melody to its breaking point. Flip the record to Side C for Courtney's take on "Different Now," where she pulls the song from its Pacific Northwest haze, leaves it out to dry in the middle of the desert, and wrings something almost joyous from the original's ambiguity. 

On his major label debut album, Kurt Vile pulls his talents as a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer in unexpected directions — and the result is a vibrant, yet meditative record propelled by laid-back charm and curious spirit.

Kurt Vile’s signature brand of laid-back and meandering rock takes center stage on the lead single off his first major label album, (watch my moves). Produced by Kurt Vile & Rob Schnapf.

Ravenously creative songwriter Kurt Vile broke through to mainstream success after years of steadily working on his craft. His laidback and drifting guitar rock took notes from masters like Neil Young, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr., exploring inventive guitar tones on meditative and often self-reflective songs. He co-founded the War on Drugs with friend Adam Granduciel in 2005, but quit shortly after the band got off the ground to focus more on his own music. After several albums on various indie labels, Vile signed with Matador in 2009 and would find increasing success with each new album. His 2013 album, Walkin' on a Pretty Daze, broke through bigger than anything before it, taking Vile's blurry-eyed musings and signature songwriting style to a worldwide audience. He would continue frequent collaborations, working with a multitude of special guests on his own records as well as co-creating albums with Steve Gunn and Courtney Barnett.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This latest offering sees Vile in a perfectly laid back, tranquil mood, slowly moving from shimmering, country-lite into classic Kurt psychedelia. It's a perfectly composed and unsurprisingly brilliant twist to his established sound. Dreamy, evocative bliss.

TRACK LISTING

1. Goin On A Plane Today
2. Flyin (like A Fast Train)
3. Palace Of OKV In Reverse
4. Like Exploding Stones
5. Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)
6. Hey Like A Child
7. Jesus On A Wire
8. Fo Sho
9. Cool Water
10. Chazzy Don’t Mind
11. (shiny Things)
12. Say The Word
13. Wages Of Sin
14. Kurt Runner
15. Stuffed Leopard 

'b’lieve i'm goin down…' is Vile’s sixth album, and shows Kurt both deeply introspective and briskly self-assured. As longtime fan Kim Gordon wrote in her bio for the album: “Kurt does his own myth-making; a boy/man with an old soul voice in the age of digital everything becoming something else, which is why this focused, brilliantly clear and seemingly candid record is a breath of fresh air.

Recorded and mixed in a number of locations, including Los Angeles and Joshua tree, b’lieve i'm goin down… is a handshake across the country, east to west coast, thru the dustbowl history (“valley of ashes”) of woody honest strait forward talk Guthrie, and a cali canyon dead still nite floating in a nearly waterless landscape. The record is all air, weightless, bodyless, but grounded in convincing authenticity, in the best version of a singer songwriter upcycling.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Pretty Pimpin
2. I’m An Outlaw
3. Dust Bunnies
4. That’s Life, Tho (Almost Hate To Say)
5. Wheelhouse
6. Life Like This
7. All In A Daze Work
8. Lost My Head There
9. Stand Inside
10. Bad Omens
11. Kidding Around
12. Wild Imagination

B’lieve I’m Goin Down *
Less Talk (More Walkin Away) *
Nicotine Blues *
Bad Omens (No Faders) *
No Stranger To The Ball Bust *
Sax Omens (J Turbo) *
* = Bonus Tracks On Deluxe LP Only.

Back to Moon Beach (Verve Records) is an EP by no one’s definition but Kurt Vile’s. For Kurt, this collection is an expression of just how deep his well of non-album material runs.

The vinyl edition includes six tracks culled from various sessions over the last four years, representing a wide swath of the inspirational musical community Kurt surrounds himself with.

“[Kurt Vile is] the beloved and reliable purveyor of a hazy, zoned-out, weirdo brand of classicist rock.” - Stereogum.

“Vile remains our era’s great inheritor of the Neil Young/Meat Puppets/Dinosaur Jr. tradition of bending chords, spooling out hypnotic solos, and chilling with your demons until they start feeling like drinking buddies.” - Rolling Stone.

“Loose, sprawling, and filled with spacey but intimate jams that couple drum machines, smoke-curled guitars, and off the cuff vocals, [(watch my moves)] feels like being invited into Vile’s head to sit down and hang out a spell.” - Aquarium Drunkard.

“Vile’s sprawling new album captures the magic, loss and wonderment of being alive.” - AV Club

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Is it an EP? Is it'nt? It really doesn't matter, it's classic Vile, lagging instrumental groove and slow guitar twangs below KV's stoned drawl. Rich, melodic and heartfelt.

TRACK LISTING

CD (9 Tracks)
1. Another Good Year For The Roses (5:34)
2. Touched Somethin (caught A Virus) (6:31)
3. Back To Moon Beach (8:15)
4. Like A Wounded Bird Trying To Fly (5:29)
5. Blues Come For Some (5:09)
6. Tom Petty’s Gone (but Tell Him I Asked For Him) (8:15)
7. Must Be Santa (5:12)
8. Passenger Side (3:10)
9. Cool Water (Single Mix) (4:29)

VINYL (6 Tracks)
Side A:
1. Another Good Year For The Roses (5:34)
2. Touched Somethin (caught A Virus) (6:31)
3. Back To Moon Beach (8:15)
Side B:
1. Like A Wounded Bird Trying To Fly (5:29)
2. Blues Come For Some (5:09)
3. Tom Petty’s Gone (but Tell Him I Asked For Him) (8:15)

Travel can inspire in surprising ways: Kurt Vile discovered as much making his first record in three years, the eclectic and electrifying Bottle It In, which he recorded at various studios around the country over two very busy years, during sessions that usually punctuated the ends of long tours or family road trips.

Every song, whether it’s a concise and catchy pop composition or a sprawling guitar epic, becomes a journey unto itself, taking unexpected detours, circuitous melodic avenues, or open-highway solos. If Vile has become something of a rock guitar god—a mantle he would dismiss out of humility but also out of a desire to keep getting better, to continue absorbing new music, new sounds, new ideas—it’s due to his precise, witty playing style, which turns every riff and rhythm into points on a map and takes the scenic route from one to the next.

Using past albums as points of departure, Bottle It In heads off in new directions, pushing at the edges of the map into unexplored territory: Here be monster jams. These songs show an artist who is still evolving and growing: a songwriter who, like his hero John Prine, can make you laugh and break your heart, often in the same line, as well as a vocalist who essentially rewrites those songs whenever he sings them in his wise, laconic jive-talkin’ drawl. He revels in the minutiae of the music— not simply incorporating new instruments but emphasizing how they interact with his guitar and voice, how the glockenspiel evokes cirrocumulus clouds on “Hysteria,” how Kim Gordon’s “acoustic guitar distortion” (her term) engulfs everything at the end of “Mutinies,” how the banjo curls around his guitar lines and backing vocals from Lucius to lend a high-lonesome aura to “Come Again.”

These journeys took Vile more than two years to navigate, during which time he toured behind his breakout 2015 album b’lieve I’m goin’ down, recorded a duets album with Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist Courtney Barnett, opened for Neil Young in front of 90,000 people in Quebec, famously became a clue on Jeopardy, hung out with friends, took vacations with his wife and daughters. “I’ve been bouncing around a lot and recording all over. My family would meet me in the middle of America, and we’d go on a road trip somewhere. I would record in between all that stuff.”

As Vile prepares for another round of lengthy tours and countless shows, these songs should prove good company, reminders of the love and responsibility he has toward those he leaves at home and those
he meets along the way. That makes the sentiments resonate more strongly and lends Bottle It In an emotional weight. “It’s like that moment on the airplane,” Vile says, “when you’re on your way somewhere and you have that burst of panic. When you’re terrified of dying, that’s when you want people to know you love them.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Everything we love about KV in one superb LP. More dynamic than his last outing and the most beautifully produced of all his albums, Bottle It In also features a cover of Charlie Rich's Rollin With The Flow: a massive, classic, country-pop beaut, which is possibly the prettiest thing he's ever committed to tape.

TRACK LISTING

1. Loading Zones
2. Hysteria
3. Yeah Bones
4. Bassackwards
5. One Trick Ponies
6. Rollin With The Flow
7. Check Baby
8. Bottle It In
9. Mutinies
10. Come Again
11. Cold Was The Wind
12. Skinny Mini
13. (bottle Back)

Kurt Vile’s Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) was recorded and mixed in sporadic sessions that spanned four years at The Butcher Shoppe studio in Nashville, TN. It includes five songs —covers of John Prine and “Cowboy” Jack Clement as well as two originals —and was recorded alongside a cast of local heavies like Bobby Wood, Dave Roe, and Kenny Malone with Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) and Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Superwolf) tossed into the mix as well.

Most importantly, it features what KV has called "Probably the single most special musical moment in my life” –a duet with the late John Prine on the songwriter’s well-loved tune, “How Lucky.” “The truth is John was my hero for a long time when he came into The Butcher Shoppe to recut one of his deepest classics with me. And, man, I was floating and flying and I couldn't hear anything he told me while he was there till after he was gone for the night,” notes Vile in a personal statement that accompanies the record. “A couple nights later we were playing ‘How Lucky’ together again; this time onstage at the Grand Ole Opry on New Year's Eve at the turn of 2020. Nothing like seeing John and his band of musical brothers and family and friends playing into the new decade in front of an adoring audience on that stage in Nashville, TN... and, yup, that's just how lucky we all got that night."

TRACK LISTING

Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness
Gone Girl
Dandelions
How Lucky (with John Prine)
Pearls

10th anniversary of his fifth full-length and first 2xLP, ‘Wakin on a Pretty Daze’ (2013).

To celebrate this milestone, it has been brought back as a yellow vinyl version of the record.

Where previous albums alternated between gorgeous fingerpicking and heavy guitar workouts, ‘Wakin’ blended the two into dreamy and expansive songs that frequently stretched well out beyond the five-minute mark.

Back then we said: “It’s a record that would have sounded great 30 years ago, sounds great today, and will still sound great 30 years from now.” Ten years down the line, we’re still confident that ‘Wakin’ will deliver the goods – yesterday, today, and in 2043.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Wakin On A Pretty Day
A2. KV Crimes
A3. Was All Talk
B1. Girl Called Alex
B2. Never Run Away
B3. Pure Pain
C1. Too Hard
C2. Shame Chamber
C3. Snowflakes Are Dancing
D1. Air Bud
D2. Goldtone

Five and a half minutes into ‘Was All Talk’, the third track off his new album Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Kurt Vile murmurs in his beatific, laconic burr, “Makin’ music is easy / Watch me”. If that sounds like an empty boast it’s likely you’ve just not listened to enough of Vile’s music yet, as the way Kurt’s songs fall into place suggests that his art is entirely and convincingly effortless. That these songs zero in on a hazy perfection with such laser-guided precision shows that behind this veneer of lackadaisical creativity, beavers a songwriter toiling hard to make music so beguilingly laid-back.

Kurt Vile (his real name) is one of ten children, born in 1980 and raised in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. As a teenager, his bluegrass-lovin’ father gifted him a banjo, when what Kurt truly craved was a guitar. So, with a ‘can do’ spirit that’s a boon to any independent musician, he simply played it as if it were a guitar. Along with his passion for the 4-track-toting titans of early 90’s indie-rock, Vile also harboured a love for classic rock of substance – Creedence, Tom Petty, Neil Young, artists with their roots in ‘Roots’, but with enough vision to carve out an Americana of their own. Within the footprints he was following, Vile began carving a path of his own, making an art of dipping from introspective mellow rambles, to sky-scraping anthems; eager to rock out, equally unafraid to sing low and sweet.

Fast-forward some years and with The Violators in tow (the Heartbreakers to his Tom Petty, if you will) barnstormers like ‘Freak Train’ from the full-length Childish Prodigy [2009] were contrasted with more reflective and sun-dappled tunes from his break-through album Smoke Ring For My Halo [2011], as Kurt quietly became one of the great American guitarists and songwriters of our time.

Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Vile’s fifth full-length, is an album that builds on all Kurt has done before, that makes sense of the supposedly contrary impulses of his previous work. Learning whilst ascending, he’s crafted an album that would have sounded great 30 years ago, sounds great today and will still sound great 30 years from now.

Realising he’s in no rush to prove anything to anyone, songs on Wakin On A Pretty Daze unfurl at their own extended and unhurried pace, but not a second of this loveliness is wasted or surplus. The likes of ‘Air Bud’, ‘Was All Talk’ and ‘Gold Tone’ could keep on ringing out, exploring every possible wrinkle in its chord sequences and expounding with wisdom on the simple pleasures of a beautiful day, for as long as Kurt could stand to play them. These aren’t jams; these are songs that glide as they unwind, with a natural charm that’s enough to convince you that, yes, for Kurt, Makin’ music is easy. So, seriously: Watch him.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wakin On A Pretty Day
2. KV Crimes
3. Was All Talk
4. Girl Called Alex
5. Never Run Away
6. Pure Pain
7. Too Hard
8. Shame Chamber
9. Snowflakes Are Dancing
10. Air Bud
11. Gold Tone

Villa Åbo is the alternative solo project of Swedish musician and producer Jan Svensson, who has been making electronic music for the best part of 30 years. The artist behind such aliases as Frak, Studio SS and Alvars Orkestra, Svensson also runs legendary Swedish dance and experimental music label Börft, the product of a mutual appreciation for Severed Heads and Terse Tapes. As Villa Åbo he released two records in 1997 on Börft and remained inactive for 17 years until the Dutch label Bio Rhythm coaxed him into revisiting the project and released a double 12″ in 2014. Jan has since followed with a steady stream of 12” singles for Kontra-Musik, Noise In My Head and Radio Lundberg.

“Magnetic Moves” is Villa Åbo’s debut album, originally released in an limited edition of 65 hand-numbered cassettes by Funeral Fog in 2016. Clocking in at over 46 minutes, this first-ever vinyl edition spreads the 8 ragged techno tracks across four sides for maximum loudness. Some songs are aggressively potent, with cyclical synth riffs and razor-sharp acid lines riding a heavy, funk-fuelled techno groove. Others tracks are more fluid, vintage Underground Resistance or Derrick May with killer drum machine workouts that come in handy as DJ tools. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The record is housed in a custom made jacket designed by Eloise Leigh, featuring a photograph of Jan’s mother’s house, the meaning behind “Villa Åbo”. Each copy includes a double-sided postcard with notes. 

TRACK LISTING

Again Again
The Tiny One
Doortest 
Dreams Of Italy 
Assiduous Dreams 
Massive Duometer (Raw Mix)
Bianco Festival
Water Galaxy (Version D)
Short Relaxing End

Holy Grail alert! Two stunning sweet soul cuts from New York based quintet, The Village Choir. Blending latin, soul & jazz, two dancefloor swayers of serious class. This super soulful 70’s 7 inch has regularly been changing hands for over £500 on the second hand market & for the first time ever, it has been officially licenced and lovingly reissued on heavyweight 7 inch vinyl for this RSD exclusive release. For the dancers and the romancers!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Along The Beach PT1
B1. Sweet Hot Lips

This really groovy album features a bunch of New York dudes and dudettes singing and playing music from Sesame Street ("ABC's", the Sesame Street theme song, "Rubber Duckie" etc) plus their own funk and soul compositions (conducted by Clip Hightower, produced by Sir Charles Matthews). Dig it!

Conor O'Brien is pleased to announce Villagers' fifth studio album Fever Dreams which will be released on August 20th via Domino. Escapism is a very necessary pursuit right now, and Fever Dreams follows it to mesmerising effect. It works like all the best records - it becomes a mode of transport; it picks you up from where you are and sets you down elsewhere.

O’Brien says on the gestation of Fever Dreams: “I had an urge to write something that was as generous to the listener as it was to myself. Sometimes the most delirious states can produce the most ecstatic, euphoric and escapist dreams.”

These are songs with the strange, melted shapes and the magical ambivalence of dreams. The intent of the songs is both mysterious and as clear as a bell. With Fever Dreams, there is a sense of a deepening mastery and an expanding reach by O’Brien. Inspiration for the album was found in many places and came in from all angles, from night swimming on a Dutch island to Flann O’Brien, Audre Lorde, David Lynch, L. S. Lowry via the library music of Piero Umiliani and Alessandro Alessandroni and jazz from Duke Ellington and Alice Coltrane.

Written over the course of two years, the main bodies of the songs were recorded in a series of full-band studio sessions in late 2019 and early 2020. During the long, slow pandemic days, O’Brien refined them in his tiny home studio in Dublin, and the album was then mixed by David Wrench (Frank Ocean, The xx, FKA Twigs).

TRACK LISTING

Side A
01 Something Bigger
02 The First Day
03 Song In Seven
04 So Simpatico
05 Momentarily

Side B
01 Circles In The Firing Line
02 Restless Endeavour
03 Full Faith In Providence
04 Fever Dreams
05 Deep In My Heart

Following the kaleidoscopic adventure of Villagers’ fifth album Fever Dreams, award-winning Dublin singer-songwriter-instrumentalist-dramatist Conor O’Brien returns with the intimate inventory, That Golden Time, set for release on May 10th.

After the band-centred sessions of its predecessor, That Golden Time’s solo-centric core was not forced on O’Brien by lockdown. “For me, That Golden Time has an internalised voice, so much so that I almost found it impossible to let anyone else in,” he says. “It’s probably the most vulnerable album I’ve made. I played and recorded everything in my apartment, and finally, towards the end, invited people in.” Invites went out to, among others, Irish legend Dónal Lunny [Planxty, The Bothy Band] on bouzouki, American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick on violin, and a group of players that O’Brien had first seen performing in a tribute to one of his great loves, Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who added soprano vocal, viola and cello.

The understated poetry within That Golden Time is effortlessly carried by gorgeous melodies and sublime instrumentation. In “No Drama”, as the narrator pleads for respite from the vicissitudes of life, O’Brien equates an orchestral swell with an appeal for quiet beauty and peace. “Behind That Curtain” is a rare moment of musical discombobulation as a solemn, soulful ballad hands over to a jazzy coda, “It’s the sound of deafening alarm bells inside your head,” remarks O’Brien. Exploring these themes further, there is also a secondary image of a coin on the artwork (an Irish twenty pence piece) to which O’Brien explains: “The types of physical currency change throughout time, but the essential power relationships and bartering principles persevere throughout the cosmetic changes.”

As the album comes to its conclusion with “Money On The Mind”, we find a moment of serenity with a ray of hope. The very last line, softly crooned, is “My money’s on the mind, truth be told,” a shout-out to the resilience of the human spirit. The moth might be disorientated, but it swerves the flame to live another day.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another wonderfully heartfelt selection from Conor O'Brien, with his sweeping instrumentation and perfectly smooth vocals weaving together into modern folk ballads that are as evocative as they are distinctive. Beautifully warm, memorable and deep.

TRACK LISTING

1. Truly Alone
2. First Responder
3. I Want What I Don’t Need
4. You Lucky One
5. That Golden Time
6. Keepsake
7. Brother Hen
8. No Drama
9. Behind That Curtain
10. Money On The Mind

Always restless and inventive while always true to the power and glory of song-writing and melody, Conor O’Brien has made another great leap forward with Villagers’ fourth studio album, The Art Of Pretending To Swim, released by Domino on Friday 21st September.

Following the exquisitely sparse, intimate aura of 2015’s Darling Arithmetic, O’Brien’s new record reconnects with the multi-faceted approach of Villagers’ 2010 album debut Becoming A Jackal and 2013’s {Awayland} while adding a new-found soulfulness, rhythmic nous and dazzling panoply of sonic detail, both analogue and digital, creating feverish moods while writing effortlessly accessible tunes. Balanced with subtle aspects and lyrical themes that embrace existential fears and hopes in this desperate, technologically-centred dystopian age, The Art Of Pretending To Swim is the most brilliantly realised Villagers album to date.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Beautifully played acoustic guitars, bolstered with tender electronic flourishes and a driving percussive backline, Villagers perfectly mix the appeal of melodic indie with the silken, shimmering swagger of synth pop to great effect. Beautiful stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Again
2. A Trick Of The Light
3. Sweet Saviour
4. Long Time Waiting
5. Fool
6. Love Came With All That It Brings
7. Real Go-Getter
8. Hold Me Down
9. Ada

‘Where Have You Been All My Life?’ is a collection of songs that distils five years and three albums of Villagers’ songwriting into one flowing narrative.

Recorded in one day at London’s RAK Studio with Richard Woodcraft (Radiohead, The Last Shadow Puppets) and Villagers live engineer Ber Quinn, the album is a re-imagining of older material seamlessly woven with present glories from Villagers’ most recent studio album, ‘Darling Arithmetic’.

Released in April 2015, Conor O’Brien’s third album under the guise of Villagers was a more pared-back, intimate journey compared to the multi-faceted arrangements of ‘Becoming A Jackal’ (2010) and ‘{Awayland}’ (2013). This fresh approach was extended on subsequent Villagers tours, where old songs were reinvented to match the new. Then for one day in July 2015, 18 songs were quickly captured and 12 songs chosen for the final album, making it Villagers’ most intense but satisfying session to date. These recordings are all first or second takes and the immediacy of the occasion was part of the magic that day, live and unadorned by overdubs or studio trickery.

The unique nature of these arrangements is due in no small part to the musicians in the room at the time of recording: Cormac Curran on grand piano and analogue synthesizer, Danny Snow on double bass, Mali Llywelyn on harp, mellotron and vocals and Gwion Llewelyn on drums, flugelhorn and vocals. The result is a lush, harmony-laden and vibrant document of a time and a place.

Included in the album is a new recording of ‘Memoir’, which O’Brien wrote for Charlotte Gainsbourg; it can be found on her 2011 album ‘Stage Whisper’ but has never before been recorded by Villagers until now.

TRACK LISTING

Set The Tigers Free
Everything I Am Is Yours
My Lighthouse
Courage
That Day
The Soul Serene
Memoir
Hot Scary Summer
The Waves
Darling Arithmetic
So Naive
Wichita Lineman

Following 2017’s Infinite Avenue and 2013’s Sleeper, Both Lines Will Be Blue is Carmen’s first full instrumental album. A 7 track collection of cosmic excursions and dubby ambient-jams, the album is written, recorded, played, produced and mixed by Carmen in her Oslo studio. The soothing atmospherics are made up of tapestries of field recordings, synths, piano, drum-programming, zither and modular sounds. Throughout, Carmen’s music is colored by experimenting with different sounds and learning new techniques or by adding new instruments to the mix

"I’ve been playing around with instrumentals for a long time, and it was something I wanted to do more with after I finished Infinite Avenue,” says Carmen. “Leaving out my voice and lyrics got me out of my own head a bit, which I needed. Working with sound is to me the ultimate meditation and is a more unconscious way of expressing whatever is going on inside.”

The flute, played by Chilenean-Norwegian Johanna Scheie Orellana (formerly of Sassy 009), is a central part of this new album. Carmen got her in to the studio to both record melodies that she had written, as well as making plenty of room for impro/freeform. Prins Thomas also appears on the record, playing percussion on “I Could Sit Here All Day.”

“I made this track based on a Roland SH-101 sequence run through various processing,” says Villain. “The whole thing came together kind of like a jam, I wrote the flute in one take, and it just felt right. I wanted real flute on this, so asked Johanna if she'd like to come in, and we've been collaborating ever since.”

TRACK LISTING

1.Observable Future
2. Are You For Real
3. Type
4. I Trust You
5. I Could Sit Here All Day
6. Sometimes I Love You Forever
7. Impossible Color

The US-born, Norwegian-Mexican musician and producer Carmen Villain, real name Carmen Hillestad, has spent the last nine years and four albums gently unraveling song into the sound of emotional impulse. From the tilt and croon of her first two albums to the expansive warmth that flows and pulses beyond ambient in her more recent output, Hillestad’s journey is artful musical deconstruction but also somehow spiritual growth.

Hence new album Only Love From Now On, her fourth full-length and the culmination of a build-up that really began with the turn in sound evident from third album Both Lines Will Be Blue (2019, Smalltown Supersound) and the subsequent releases Affection In A Time Of Crisis (2020, Longform Editions) and Sketch For Winter IX: Perlita (2021, Geographic North). While the seed of her aesthetic was planted earlier, it has blossomed into something unexpected, benevolent in its composure and altogether luxuriant in its sensuality. Perhaps that’s why she collaborated with the likes of Jenny Hval and Parris – appearing on the latter’s new debut album. And why he – along with Biosphere, DJ Python and others – have contributed remixes for her.

Listening to Only Love From Now On is simultaneously comforting and alluringly strange. Partly it’s the contributions of guests Arve Henriksen (trumpet, electronics) and Johanna Scheie Orellana (flutes). Partly it’s the fluidity between instruments – such as clarinets – field recordings, the studio, jam, and careful composition. She calls the process a conversation with sound that occurs in her deliberate attempts to experiment with new methods, like granular synthesis, for her music-making. But mostly that strange comfort is in the peace and grateful contentment she has found via the stark recognition of her own privilege – laid bare by the pandemic. Only Love From Now On is fueled by the sense of scale in feeling small in the face of things so large, the contemplation of how the biggest impact we can have is in the people close to us, the attempt to make sure that impact is a positive one, and the choice to try to focus on love instead of fear.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A

1. Gestures W/ Arve Henriksen
2. Future Memory
3. Liminal Space
4. Only Love From Now On W/
Johanna Scheie Orellana

Side B
1. Subtle Bodies
2. Silueta
3. Portals

Two of the best-known names in contemporary electronica, Berlin-based DJs and composers Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer share their admiration for music on ECM in a unique double-album of specially-created 'sound-structures' - a project that will bring the label’s music to a new listenership.

Using original ECM recordings as a starting point, Villalobos and Loderbauer create new music that bridges several worlds, including ECM’s world of space-conscious improvisation and composition and the worlds of ambient electronics and minimal techno. Source materials on "Re: ECM" include recordings of Christian Wallumrød (The Zoo Is Far & Fabula Suite Lugano), Alexander Knaifel (Svete Tikhiy, Amicta Sole & Blazhenstva), Louis Sclavis (L'imperfait des langues), John Abercrombie (Timeless), Bennie Maupin (The Jewel in The Lotus), Arvo Pärt (Kanon Pokajanen), Wolfert Brederode (Currents), Paul Giger (Ignis) and more - looped, sampled, remixed and reworked in evocative new treatments.

TRACK LISTING

CD1
01. Reblop (from Christian Wollumrød's Fabula Suite Lugano)
02. Recat (from Christian Wallumrød Ensemble's The Zoo Is Far)
03. Resvete (from Alexander Knaifel's Svete Tikhiy)
04. Retimeless (from John Abercrombie's Timeless)
05. Reemergence (from Miroslav Vitous' Emergence)
06. Reblazhenstva (from Alexander Knaifel's Blazhenstva)
07. Reannounce (from Louis Sclavis' L'imperfait Des Langues)
08. Recurrence (from Wolfert Brederode's Currents)
09. Requote (from Christian Wallumrød's Fabula Suite Lugano)

CD2
01. Replob (from Christian Wollumrød's Fabula Suite Lugano)
02. Reshadub (from Paul Giger's Ignis)
03. Rebird (from Paul Motian's Tati)
04. Retikhiy (from Alexander Knaifel's Svete Tikhiy)
05. Rekondakion (from Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen)
06. Rensenada (from Bennie Maupin's The Jewel In The Lotus)
07. Resole (from Alexander Knaifel's Svete Tikhiy)
08. Redetach (from Christian Wallumrød Ensemble's The Zoo Is Far)

Ricardo Villalobos' first album "Alcachofa" from 2003.
Originally released by Playhouse as a 3x12“ record set, the re-release adds a fourth 12“, the "Alcachofa Tools".

TRACK LISTING

A Easy Lee
B Theogenese
C1 Bahaha Hahi
C2 La Raja
D I Try To Live (can I Live)
E1 Quizås
E2 Fusion The Enemies
F Dexter
G Bach To Back
H1 Y.g.h.
H2 Waiworinao

On October 15th and 16th, 2020, drummer Daniel Villarreal was joined by guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butters for two afternoons of recording in the backyard of Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles. For all three musicians, ti was the first ensemble recording session they'd done in-person since the pandemic locked the world down just seven months prior. Some choice moments from these sessions made it onto Villarreal's critically-acclaimed 022 album Panamá 77, but most of the music remained unreleased.

Lados B is a deep dive into the high-level spontaneous music made by Villarreal, Parker, and Butters across those two days in 2020.Villarreal's heard leading the group through various rhythmic modes and structures of improvisation - flow as informed by the Latin soul of Fania Records as it is by the otherworldly humanity trance of Brain Records - while Parker and Butters draw on their extensive experience playing free together (as heard on Parker's recently-released Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, and the LA side of Makaya McCraven's 2018 LP Universal Beings) to build harmonic buoys for their spontaneous melodicism. The result is a beautifully vivid illustration of context, creativity, and collective composition from a particularly rich moment in history.

TRACK LISTING

1. Traveling With
2. Sunset Cliffs
3. Republic
4. Chicali Outpost
5. Bring It
6. Salute
7. Daytime Nighttime
8. Things Can Be Calm
9. Rug Motif

For his lead artist debut Panamá 77 he engages a diverse array of friends and collaborators - including Bardo Martinez (Chicano Batman), Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Marta Sofia Honer (Adrian Younge), Anna Butterss (Jenny Lewis), and Aquiles Navarro (Irreversible Entanglements) - to create a vibrant and verdant suite of multi-textural psychedelic instrumental folk-funk

TRACK LISTING

A1 Bella Vista
A2 Ofelia
A3 Uncanny
A4 I Didn’t Expect That
A5 In/On
A6 Cali Colours
B1 Activo
B2 Sombras
B3 Parque En Seis
B4 Patria
B5 18th & Morgan
B6 Messenger

5th of the RSD limited series for Vinalog and Mr. G. Handstamped limited release. Mr. G comes on strong like cough medicine - offering up the slow and gloopy deep house swoon of "Radio In The Kitchen" which utilizes sloppy pad stabs and even sloppier beats to devastating effect. Vinalog joins Eddie Danielle, Bastien Carrara and Tiger & Woods - effortlessly conjuring up a tape-friend, loopy disco edit that'll titillate the dancers and DJs in equal measure. Finally, "Bonus RSD" is a clever and catchy rhythm tool that's ruff around the edges but direct in approach - a lot like some of Anthony Shake's more rambunctious DJ tools. Recommended!

TRACK LISTING

A. Mr.G - Radio In The Kitchen
B1. Vinalog - Mad Disco
B2. Bonus RSD

8th instalment from the mighty Relative and it's a belter! Vinalog churn out some more tapey, squashed but mightiyl infectious house music, full of their usual grit, charm and swing. This release concentrates on four traxx all based around the same theme - soundsystem friendly bangers for the peaktime. Ranging from loopy vox, machine-code drum and sweeping breaks, this is specialist tackle for DJs out in the field. Tough and uncompromising, with a very live, highly energetic feel yet never losing its unrelenting grip on the dancefloor. Absolute magic, every last one of these jams. John Swing and EMG could well be the hottest thing in house right now. Most recommended.

Vincent Black Lightning are a three piece band who dance to a different tune and don't sound quite like anyone else. Old valve amps, guitars and drum kit and classic English offbeat songwriting.

The second LP from Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps, a self-titled affair, was recorded in October 1956 a mere 4 months after the band's debut. Again featuring the searing guitar work of Cliff Gallup, this album shows Vincent at his most mature and confident. The band was capable of running circles around basically all white rock and roll groups around at the time and this LP showcases their depth and breadth fantastically. Featuring amazing originals, one of the more brilliant covers of The Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody", and a haunting version of The Delmore Brothers' "Blues Stay Away From Me", Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps is necessary for all fans of early rock and roll.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Red Blue Jeans And A Pony Tail
A2 Hold Me, Hug Me, Rock Me
A3 Unchained Melody
A4 You Told A Fib
A5 Cat Man
A6 You Better Believe
B1 Crusin'
B2 Double Talkin' Baby
B3 Blues Stay Away From Me
B4 Pink Thunderbird
B5 I Sure Miss You
B6 Pretty, Pretty Baby

'Instance' is an 8 track EP conceived by Keir whilst in residency in the bucolic surroundings of Suffolk and completed in his London based studio. Using unlocked village churches Keir took the opportunity to make a series of recordings that established the overall feeling for the compositions. It is this sense of crystalised moments and chance that directed the continuing ethos of the work.

A number of highly personal field recordings found their way on to the record. A sung stream of consciousness from a friend directly after an epileptic seizure, a local East End Jewish Ice cream van that makes the rounds locally, to the healthy rhythm of a heartbeat whilst in Homerton hospital’s maternity ward. Instance is imbued with memory, and the feeling of remembering. The loss that makes a life. Keyboard drones and long patient chords shift gradually. It is a record that constructs place. Reverb and natural acoustics deliver the listener into a highly considered idiosyncratic sound world.

Contemplative piano chords ring out amidst field recordings, a female voice evokes from a distance that obscures clarity whilst a sense of captured patience laments. There are touches of Satie, Ghost box and Max Richter. Those musicians who place equal importance to atmosphere, setting and emotive suggestion.

Keir Vine is best known to many as the keyboard and Hang player from the Mercury Prize nominated band Portico Quartet. He has composed and arranged music for both film and theatre as well as produced sound pieces for art gallery installations. He also co-operatively runs a studio space in Hackney by the name of Studio 9.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bob The Dog
2. Hench Chant
3. Uncle Doovey's Return
4. Meditation No. 1
5. Wavey Blade
6. Audiogram
7. Under Water
8. Acceptance

Vintage Crop serve to serve again. Over the last four years the Geelong group have become a burgeoning force in the Australian punk scene. Their burly, brusque yet supple songs have evolved from the garage rock of 2017’s ‘TV Organs’ album into the post-punk panic attack of last year’s ‘Company Man’ EP. Now they’ve sculpted their sound further, the barrage now offset with robust songwriting, their full-pelt bounce tempered with flailing guitar lines and sardonic commentary. Bringing to mind Wire tackling tracks from early 7”s by The Yummy Fur, it’s an inspired approach, both striking and effortlessly mirthful. Vintage Crop still dish-up plenty of commanding stomp, their lyrics remain as keen-eyed as ever, but now they’re unafraid to mess with the tempo and drive their point home.

‘Serve To Serve Again’ is Vintage Crop’s third full-length album. It was recorded by Mikey Young after a year of playing solid shows, including tours in Europe and the UK alongside Louder Than Death and URSA and some of the band’s biggest shows to date in Australia with Amyl & The Sniffers, R.M.F.C. and The Stroppies.

This allowed Vintage Crop to nail the songs live before committing them to tape, pulling and pushing ideas, stretching them into new-found territories. ‘First In Line’ races off the blocks with its sawtooth riff and splintered beat, all jagged edges and ragged vocals. Quickly follow a pair of totemic bruisers in the guise of ‘The Ladder’ and ‘The North’, both brimming with a nigh anthemic quality, confident in their faculty to rouse the rabble. ‘Jack’s Casino’ is a lurching romp about gambling, ‘Streetview’ is similarly propellent, only choosing to meander and divert itself with cryptic trips around the neighbourhood: “He only moved to that side of town because the postcode is worth it’s weight in gold”.

There’s no better poised nod to frustration than ‘Gridlock’ - “the hustle and bustle of inner-city traffic is driving me nuts because the radios on static”. Guitar lines entwine and wriggle wildly free from the song’s pouncing rhythm and potent vocal, making for the most vigorous of rackets. ‘Just My Luck’ prowls with a shared thrumming verve, whilst ‘Everyday Heroes’ closes out the album with measured flair. Skewed and fervent, rangy at times yet always assured in its intent ‘Serve To Serve Again’ is long-legged leap for Vintage Crop into the delirious now. These songs strive to make sense of futility, they criticise the chain of command, question privilege and most importantly make us want more from life. Now all we have to do is turn up the volume!

TRACK LISTING

01. First In Line
02. The Ladder
03. The North
04. No Praise
05. Jack’s Casino
06. Streetview
07. Serve Again
08. Gridlock
09. Life And Times
10. Just My Luck
11. Tension
12. Everyday Heroes

Returning once again via Geelong, Australia; Vintage Crop offer up their new single “Springtime”. With 2022’s “Kibitzer” album still looming large in the rear-view mirror, the band now speed ahead once more with this two-track seasonal treat.

“Springtime” exhibits the band’s growing strength in harmonic arrangement, whilst staying true to their taut roots - allowing the lyrics to shimmer. Following the arc of a relationship on the rocks and both people coming to terms with their situaEon, the song is a rare moment of vulnerability for the band that demonstrates their range. The flip side of the EP sees “Mercenary” deliver the sort of post-punk punch that fans have come to expect from the band. Brutish, brash & refusing to sit still; all the makings of a classic Vintage Crop number. Paired with lyrics exploring the online music scene, the track pokes fun at the “Internet Sound” that now dominates the underground. Springtime is a firm foot forward for Vintage Crop.

TRACK LISTING

Springtime
Mercenary

Geelong’s favourite sons Vintage Crop return with their much-anticipated fourth album, ‘Kibitzer’. Running with the ball that 2020’s “Serve To Serve Again” punted forward, this album marks another energetic break towards the goal for Vintage Crop. ‘Kibitzer’ sees the band define their field of play, more melodic at times, still bruising, forever droll. These ten tracks of ‘snappy as elastic’ Australian punk are packed with tensile riffage, hefty beats and witty refrains of everyman curiosity.

‘Kibitzer’ was written in quick response to their critically lauded ‘Serve To Serve Again’ album. Harsh guitars, a brutish rhythm section and a knack for always having the right words at hand are still abundant, but this time Vintage Crop’s songs expand upon their forceful nature with greater harmonic arrangement. It was recorded by Jasper Jolley in one single session on a former apple orchard in Geelong, a backdrop that mirrors the band’s own organic growth whilst highlighting their willingness to approach capturing their own sound their own way. The album was then mixed and mastered by Mikey Young.

‘Kibitzer’ delves into themes of identity, resilience and acceptance; some of the more upbeat notions that the band have dealt with to date. ‘Casting Calls’ opens the record, slamming through the speakers with gusto and setting the tone for the following 30 minutes. “It’s rolling, we’re rolling, we’re winding back the tape, we’re getting better with each take” sings lead songwriter Jack Cherry. Accepting your limitations and taking pride in your work are key themes on ‘Kibitzer’. In fact ideas around learning, growing and being able to take things in your stride are strongly felt through their entire body of work. These themes hit home with the album’s title too, with Cherry feeling that ‘Kibitzer’ is an apt way to describe a lot of the band’s focus. “I feel like a lot of our lyrics over the years have been our unsolicited opinions on other people’s situations, the very definition of the word Kibitzer. So for this record we wanted to lean into that tendency by acknowledging it and even go as far as stamping it on the album cover.”

Musically the band have expanded their palette on this album; exploring a world of rhythmic harmony and a newfound vocal melodicism. There’s also greater lyrical elaboration and considered song structures at play. ‘The Duke’ is a mob of rollicking chants and heavy hitting, catchy to the core. ‘The Bloody War’ is a more sanguine reflection of tumbling drums, struck chords and shrill keyboard warble. “He’s got the keys to the universe and they’re hanging from his belt loop, his wit is as quick as lightning, his disapproving gaze is the thunder that follows” pipes Cherry on ‘Double Slants’, guitars chiming through the hubbub. ‘Hold The Line’ turns the wry amusement of dealing with cold callers into a fidgety anthem of knowing frustration. Whilst ‘Switched Off’ even welcomes the introduction of horns (courtesy of Heidi Peel) to the group’s repertoire, ushering in an unexpected serenity into their tough sound. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
01. Casting Calls
02. The Duke
03. Double Slants
04. Hold The Line
05. Impact Of Wisdom
Side B
06. Drafted
07. The Bloody War
08. 2K Hip Pocket
09. Under Offer
10. Switched Off

PLEASE NOTE: THESE ARE A PICK UP INSTORE ONLY ITEM!!!

WE DON'T SHIP THESE!!!!

This solid wood 12" / LP record storage unit is professionally built and assembled by a crack team of skilled craftsmen, FSC approved 18mm Medite™ MDF wood.

Stylish rounded edges and corners and are hand sanded for an ultra smooth finish. The 12'' vinyl record storage cubes are modular so can be stacked on top of each other or wall mounted using the rear panel.

Each 12'' / LP vinyl record storage CUBE holds approx 110 x 12'' vinyl records and is supplied fully assembled.

Dimensions (mm): Ext. H:366 W:366 D:330

PLEASE NOTE: THESE ARE A PICK UP INSTORE ONLY ITEM!!!

WE DON'T SHIP THESE!!!!

This solid wood 7″ record storage unit is professionally built and assembled in FSC approved 18mm Medite™ MDF wood.

Stylish rounded edges and corners are hand sanded for an ultra smooth finish. The 7'' vinyl record storage cubes are modular so can be stacked on top of each other or wall mounted using the rear panel.

Each 7” vinyl record storage CUBE holds approx 110 x 7" records and is supplied fully assembled.

Dimensions (mm): Ext. H:241 W:241 D:241

Lionel "Vinyl" Williams is an American multimedia artist based in Los Angeles, his music is deeply intertwined with his other media of expression (graphic design, interactive website and videos) with whom he shapes a consistent immersive new-age-infused psychedelic universe

Vinyl Williams' celestial pop is part of the construction of his own 'Cosmopolis', an ideal city, where the skyline is drawn by marvellous organic architecture and monumental ancient structures, where while walking on twisted paths, you can hear indistinctly lush vocals, iridescent gauzy keyboard harmonies, and rolling rhythms. Without acknowledging it, you are floating, your soul can ramble, free to imagine.

Musically, 'Cosmopolis' is a synthesis of Williams' craze, his contemporary dreampop production, 60s sunshine pop influences, Brasilian Tropicália hints, jazz chords, and complex arrangement. He continues to dig deep into his parallel universe, which he has developed with a rare consistency. From chaos emerges harmony and incredible pop songs.

For fans of: Triptides, Gold Celeste, Toro y Moi, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, GUM, Tame Impala, Swin Mountain, Chris Cohen, Morgan Delt, Dungen, Dumbo Gets Mad, Pond, Maston, Holy Wave, Arthur Verocai, The Free Design, The Association, Once And Future Band...

TRACK LISTING

Probable Cause
Beaming
Exopalace
Modern Arch
Paracosm
Solar Coaster
Telaculum
Precious Star
Saturnalia
Ode To Artifice
Hyperbolic

Vinyl Williams is the moniker of Lionel Williams, 25 year old Los Angeles based artist and experimental-pop musician. ‘Into’ - his startlingly accomplished second album - effortlessly fuses psych, krautrock, ambient and shoegaze into a transcendental whole.

The record ripples outward into blissful sonic geography. Lead track ‘World Soul’ sounds like celestial soul music; ’Gold Lodge’ floats on jazzy chords and a propulsive baseline; ’Greatest Lives’ and ‘Iguana City’ are loungey new age jams that continually unfold; ‘Xol Rumi’ closes the album in an etheric motorik voyage. Uniquely, all the album’s 14 tracks are written, performed and produced solely by the multi-instrumentalist Williams.

Williams is highly influenced by the archetypal forces of ancient initiation, multi-religious symbolism, and Jung's take on psycho-analysis. He interweaves these ideas into a vacuum of supernatural and futuristic realms of sound & colour; aiming to create a paradoxical menage of “sonic matrices” deliberately designed to have a beneficial psycho-physical effect on the listener. It is the singular sound of a restless creative scrying these concepts to conjure a uniquely personal & intuitive experience.

The interactive visual elements for each song on the album create a constellation of simulated synesthesia, impressions of multi-sensuous realms beyond the senses. Williams employed scientific illuminism (the method of science & the aim of religion) in the process of creating the virtual worlds as well as soundscapes – to generate an entire mysterious planet of harmony & equilibrium.

His music’s amorphous sensation is a constant across all Williams' artistic mediums. He has exhibited his similarly ethereal art across New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Seoul, and created official videos for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tears For Fears, Young Magic, and Dub Thompson.

Vinyl Williams on Into:
“Into’ was made to help subconsciously stimulate as well as soothe the listener into a critically neutral / balanced mental state. The main technique employed was through the incorporation of opposites into the sound & visual, such as meditative abrasiveness.”

Williams is the grandson of film composer John Williams and the son of Mark Towner Williams, drummer for Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Tina Turner, and Air Supply; his mother Leah was a classical pianist. He grew up in a Mormon community in Utah, USA. As a direct reaction to religious dissonances experienced in Utah, he has experimented with audio as a pragmatic healing tool. He also created one of the world’s first truly interactive music videos (players could explore an environment and manipulate individual elements of audio with their movements.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gold Lodge
2. Space Age Utopia
3. Ring
4. World Soul
5. Hall Of Records
6. The Tears Of An Inanimate Object
7. Iguana City
8. Greatest Lives
9. Zero Wonder
10. Axiomatic Mind
11. Eter Wave Agreement
12. Plinth Of Uncanny Design
13. Allaz
14. Xol Rumi

After three albums released on No Pain In Pop (Lemniscate, 2012) and Chaz Bundick’s Company (Into, 2015, Brunei, 2016), Vinyl Williams has joined French label Requiem Pour Un Twister for his fourth album: Opal. Throughout his art, both musical and visual, Lionel Williams is always exploring the syncretistic territory between reality and dreams, between earth and space. For him “music is a chance to transmute qualitative opposites into the center, to dissolve all illusions of duality”. As “chaos and disorder is an illusion”, with Opal, Vinyl Williams is trying to reach a new state of celestial harmony. The result of which is an album fuelled with mysticism and space age utopia, ten kaleidoscopic lush pop songs that takes you into a transcendental journey.

For fans of: Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Toro Y Moi, Todd Rundgren, Morgan Delt, Mild High Club, Triptides, Homeshake and Connan Mockasin

TRACK LISTING

Sanctuary Spells
Noumena
Spirit Of Now
Lansing
Aphelion
Florian Veridiction
Nether Congrenes
None With Other
Eternity
Millenial Ballroom

Los Angeles-based visual artist and musician Lionel Williams was born and raised in a family of musicians - he is the grandson of soundtrack composer John Williams. Since 2010, he has been releasing music as Vinyl Williams. After three albums released on No Pain In Pop (Lemniscate, 2012) and Chaz Bundick's Company (Into, 2015 and Brunei, 2016), Vinyl Williams joined French label Requiem Pour Un Twister for his fourth album Opal released in 2018. Throughout his art, both musical and visual, Lionel Williams explores the syncretistic territory between reality and dreams, between earth and space. "Music is a chance to transmute qualitative opposites into the center, to dissolve all illusions of duality", he says. Since chaos and disorder are an illusion, Vinyl Williams is trying to reach a new state of celestial harmony on Opal. The result is an album fueled with mysticism and space age utopia, ten kaleidoscopic lush pop songs that takes you into a transcendental journey on an opal marbled vinyl limited to 500 copies.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sanctuary Spells
2. Noumena
3. Spirit Of Now
4. Lansing
5. Aphelion
6. Florian Veridiction
7. Nether Congrenes
8. None With Other
9. Eternity
10. Millenial Ballroom

This exclusive remix compilation with minimalist and oh-so-silverish artwork brings you Finland's best kept secret: experimental popsters Viola. CD features fresh remixes and remakes by the unspoiled cream of Finnish underground electro scene and the band themselves, taking the original versions into unknown and spaced out territories. 'Music is Better' residents Boys Of Scandinavia and Roger deliver their trademark fusion of electronic dance music and punk/funk grooves. Think Yello and Brian Eno remixing hand in hand the lost Cure B-sides circa '81. Originally intended as an art gallery promo only the compilation was a kind of an underground success in Finland earlier this year, and now a limited pressing is available here too.

Emanating from a ‘prehistoric’ existence near the end of the last millennium, Andy Votel and his slightly older college mates were once best recognised in Mancunian clubs and bars as teenage vinyl nerds and bum-fluffed battle rappers under the collective name Violators Of The English Language (which in acronymic form explains Andy’s own exotic pen-name).

As steadfast supporters of the 1980s / 90s Brit-core rap scene coming out of London, the multicultural Violators’ Mancunian accents were perhaps a bridge-too-far to secure dream job contracts for humble labels like Kold Sweat and Music Of Life. An unlikely constructive meeting with Gang Starr’s DJ Premier (while Andy helped out at a radio station), plus playing warm up DJ sets for countless US rap heroes might have temporarily added inspirational fuel to the fire, but after an active period combining graffiti, rapping, scratching, obsessive record digging and beat making into their daily operations, adulthood eventually began to rear its unwelcome head.

A decade later, Andy Votel and his digging skills would begin to provide direct sample material for the likes of Madlib, Mos Def, Jay Z, Nas, Dr Dre, Ghostface Killa and Action Bronson, amongst others, and the Violators’ black book of breakbeats and catalogue numbers soon began to feed a same-butdifferent rap beast.

For a project that has taken thirty years, it would be totally inadequate to call the formation of Hypocritical Beatdown Records a lockdown-project. There’s a deep history and psychology in these records by Violators Of The English Language and their spin-off groups Magnets (Rap Group) and ProVerbs, that combines stage-fright, loss, pride, creative-schizophrenia, racial inequality, surrealism, personal politics, brotherhood, artistic-constipation, better judgment, love, anti-love, soul searching and much more.

As well as Andy Votel taking care of both production and part of the microphone duties, some might recognise fellow MC and solo recording artist Figure Of Speech as a prominent voice here. The trio of Magnets (Rap Group) sees Andy also joined by local B-Girl legend Jeni Chan aka Penny Chew, and rapper and DJ Benjamin Hatton who has previously recorded with Kid Acne, The Mongrels and Sheffield’s Invisible Spies’ long-running squadron. Widely respected visual artist Rick Myers (now living in Massachusetts) also contributed scratches for many of these recordings via file sharing and custom dub-plates to keep the Violators’ authentic line-up intact, as well as galvanising the crew’s semi-reluctant art-school roots.

Extra production credits for the label also go to Sean Canty from Demdike Stare, and the late great Dan Dwayre aka Black Lodge (Mo Wax) who sadly passed away during the completion of these recordings. The members of Violators Of The English Language who you’ve not yet heard of will quickly make themselves known as the needle drops on this long-mooted debut vinyl release.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: New material from this cult adored, quirky and singular northern English rap troupe featuring Andy Votel, Sean Canty and Dan Blacklodge (RIP) alongside a wealth of fresh collaborators.

TRACK LISTING

Ages
Brain Stimulated
Dragonwyck
Statues & Limitations
Battlescar Vernacular
Doper Dogfood
Kackaboom
Def Laid An Egg
Rewind
Plantocracy
Split Light Prism

Brooklyn’s Violens was formed in 2007 by Jorge Elbrecht (a producer, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of the art company Lansing-Dreiden). The band eludes classification, blending percussive guitar work and silky harmonies with a wash of ’90s sonic pop via artists like Pale Saints, Cocteau Twins and McCarthy. Their 2010 self-recorded debut album Amoral is best understood as digital collage; a dark, guitar-and-synth-pop voyage of melodic and rhythmic collision.

Violens’ sophomore effort True shifts course toward a more subtle and desaturated sonic landscape. The writing process began while traveling together on tour, and showcases a more collaborative effort. Band members Iddo Arad (backing vocals, synths, guitar) and Myles Matheny (backing vocals bass, guitar) had a much larger influence on the songwriting and the album’s sonic direction. Framed by Will Berman’s distinctive drumming, True shows the band interacting and reflecting in ways both promising and exciting.

The album’s first single, “Totally True,” sports a stone-washed, semi-improvised feel, celebrating bands like The Chameleons and Martin Newell’s Cleaners From Venus. Elsewhere, “Unfolding Black Wings” (the band’s aural approximation of a Goya etching) nods to Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. While the song’s lyrics reflect upon a sort of unimaginable winged beast, the music conveys its attack with a forward-marching rhythm as unorthodox guitar tunings provide manic chord changes and blistering single-note melodies. “When to Let Go” delivers a classic mélange of guitar pop (not unlike Sonic Flower Groove-era Primal Scream) and ’60s harmony groups (Zombies, Beach Boys, The Millennium), while “Watch the Streams” features ’60s ghost organs and a Brill Building pop beat that coalesces with stacked vocal harmonies.

Ground breaking US band Violent Femmes return with 10th studio album ‘Hotel Last Resort’.

Album includes featured appearance from professional skateboarder Stefan Janoski on backing vocals on a new version of the classic Femmes track ‘I’m Nothing’.

Album title track ‘Hotel Last Resort’ features legendary guitarist Tom Verlaine (Television).

For fans of Pixies, Television, Pavement.

TRACK LISTING

1 Another Chorus
2 I Get What I Want
3 I'm Nothing
4 Adam Was A Man
5 Not OK
6 Hotel Last Resort
7 Everlasting You
8 It's All Or Nothing
9 I'm Not Gonna Cry
10 This Free Ride
11 Paris To Sleep
12 Sleepin' At The Meetin'
13 God Bless America

Teeming with teenage angst, punk sensibilities, and Violent Femmes’ own special brand of jittery folk-rock, the trio’s self-titled 1981 debut Violent Femmes became a cult favourite. Featuring the anthems “Blister in the Sun,” “Please Do Not Go,” “Gone Daddy Gone,” and “Add It Up.” This expanded 40th anniversary edition features a trove of rare demos, live tracks, and more.

TRACK LISTING

CD Tracklisting:
Disc 1
1. Blister In The Sun
2. Kiss Off
3. Please Do Not Go
4. Add It Up
5. Confessions
6. Prove My Love
7. Promise
8. To The Kill
9. Gone Daddy Gone
10. Good Feeling
11. Ugly
12. Gimme The Car
13. Girl Trouble (Demo)
14. Breakin' Up (Demo)
15. Waiting For The Bus (Demo)
16. Blister In The Sun (Demo)
17. Kiss Off (Demo)
18. Please Do Not Go (Demo)
19. Add It Up (Demo)
20. Confessions (Demo)
21. Prove My Love (Demo)
Disc 2
1. Special (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
2. Country Death Song (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
3. To The Kill (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
4. Never Tell (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
5. Break Song (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
6. Her Television (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
7. How Do You Say Goodbye (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
8. Theme And Variations (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
9. Prove My Love (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
10. Gone Daddy Gone (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
11. Promise (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
12. In Style (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
13. Add It Up (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)

Vinyl Tracklisting:
Disc 1 - Side A
1. Blister In The Sun
2. Kiss Off
3. Please Do Not Go
4. Add It Up
5. Confessions
Disc 1 - Side B
1. Prove My Love
2. Promise
3. To The Kill
4. Gone Daddy Gone
5. Good Feeling
Disc 2 - Side A
1. Girl Trouble (Demo)
2. Breakin' Up (Demo)
3. Waiting For The Bus (Demo)
4. Blister In The Sun (Demo)
5. Kiss Off (Demo)
Disc 2 - Side B
1. Please Do Not Go (Demo)
2. Add It Up (Demo)
3. Confessions (Demo)
4. Prove My Love (Demo)
Disc 3 - Side A
1. Special (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
2. Country Death Song (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
3. To The Kill (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
4. Never Tell (Live At Beneath-It-All Café, Milwaukee, WI - 9/12/1981)
5. Break Song (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
6. Her Television (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
Disc 3 - Side B
1. How Do You Say Goodbye (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
2. Theme And Variations (Live At The Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI - 12/8/1981)
3. Prove My Love (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
4. Gone Daddy Gone (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
5. Promise (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
6. In Style (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
7. Add It Up (Live At Folk City, New York, NY - 1/26/1983)
7" Single
Side A
1. Ugly
Side B
1. Gimme The Car 

The textbook American cult band of the ‘80s, Violent Femmes captured the essence of teen angst with remarkable precision; raw and jittery, the trio’s music found little commercial success but nonetheless emerged as the soundtrack for the lives of troubled adolescents the world over. Their self-titled 1983 debut was a blueprint for legions of sardonic alternative rockers that would follow, and they continued their blend of searing, darkly humorous lyrics and sharp-edged folk-rock on other standout albums like 1991’s Why Do Birds Sing.

Violent Femmes formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the early ‘80s, made up of singer/guitarist Gordon Gano, bassist Brian Ritchie, and percussionist Victor DeLorenzo. After being discovered by the Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott while they were busking on the street, the band signed to Slash and issued their self-titled debut, a melodic folk-punk collection which struck an obvious chord with young listeners who felt a strong connection to bitter, frustrated songs like “Blister in the Sun,” “Kiss Off” and “Add It Up.” Though never a chart hit, the album remained a rite of passage for succeeding generations of teen outsiders, and after close to a decade after release, it finally achieved platinum status.

40 years on, Violent Femmes’ legacy remains strong, while their influence can be heard across multiple genres—from the anti-folk movement of the early 2000s to the chart-topping hits of Barenaked Ladies, and the indie-pop of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. In 2014, Popmatters declared that the folk-punk pioneers “may have very quietly been one of the most important rock bands of the 1980s, if not the past quarter-century…[They] celebrated the simplicity of pop music from the fringes, attacking convention with a mix of humour and violence.” Pitchfork argued that “The Femmes don’t signify an era so much as a time of life,” adding that “for young people growing up in the internet age” their music “is part of a shared language.”

Why Do Birds Sing? is the fifth studio album and their last studio album with original drummer, Victor DeLorenzo. Featuring the fan favourite “American Music,” which reached No. 2 in the Billboard Modern Rock Chart, as well as a cover of Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.”

TRACK LISTING

1LP
Side A
American Music
Out The Window
Look Like That
Do You Really Want To Hurt Me
Hey Nonny Nonny
Used To Be
Side B
Girl Trouble
He Likes Me
Life Is A Scream
Flamingo Baby
Lack Of Knowledge
More Money Tonight
I'm Free

2CD
Disc 1
1. American Music
2. Out The Window
3. Look Like That
4. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me
5. Hey Nonny Nonny
6. Used To Be
7. Girl Trouble
8. He Likes Me
9. Life Is A Scream
10. Flamingo Baby
11. Lack Of Knowledge
12. More Money Tonight
13. I'm Free
14. Me And You*
15. Color Me Once (Early Version)*
16. 4 Seasons (Early Version)*
17. Breaking Up (Early Version)*
18. American Music (Alternate Mix)*
19. Dance, M.F., Dance!

Disc 2
1. Look Like That (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
2. Out The Window (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
3. Fat (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
4. Blister In The Sun (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
5. Prove My Love (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
6. Country Death Song (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
7. Old Mother Reagan (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
8. Confessions (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
9. Girl Trouble (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
10. Add It Up (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
11. Good Feeling (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)
12. More Money Tonight (Live At The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA / 1991)

‘Awake And Pretty Much Sober’ is the debut full-length album from multi-instrumentalist and producer Jeremy Larson - AKA Violents - and vocalist Monica Martin (of PHOX).

Colourful, effervescent, honest and emotive, the record turns the traditional duets album on its head, offering up its own version of electronic-influenced pop music along the way.

Stacked with string arrangements, electronic samples, pop melodies, bursts of piano, layers of vocal harmonies and blasts of brass, their collaboration bridges the gap between two musicians from different ends of the musical spectrum.

TRACK LISTING

Awake And Pretty Much Sober
Line Lie
How It Left
Unraveling
Spark
Second Class
Equal Powers
Fair
Hue
It Won’t Stop

"C-C-C-Cat" is the band's fourth single and the tastiest morsel to date from Norwich's feistiest femme threesome. Violet Violet landed the number 21 spot in Artrocker's Singles Of The Year with their 'Bring! Bring! EP'. ('Echoes of bands like Huggy Bear, Gertrude and Bikini Kill - shouty vocals, angry 'bitchy' lyrics and big punk riffs, almost enough to recall the great Babes in Toyland' - Artrocker) The girls hold nothing back on this new track.

The Violets are four punk fantasists from London who set out to create a sinister mood with elemental and triumphant pop music. Drawing inspiration from a range of disparate influences such as Neue Deutsche Welle, David Lynch and French Coldwave, The Violets have created a monochrome corner of their own.

…If I Die, I Die was released only weeks before the Heresie box set. The two albums show very different faces of the Virgin Prunes – one that explored mythical worlds and another that showed their surrealistic interest in the creative power of insanity. They also highlight the ways in which the band enjoyed experimenting with different genres, sound forms and recording techniques. As Friday has commented recently, ‘The Virgin Prunes contained four different bands at the same time.’

The album was recorded at the Windmill Studios in Dublin in the summer of 1982 and produced by Wire’s Colin Newman. Rather than adopt an A/B format, the sides of the 1982 vinyl and album cover, which was designed by Steve Averill, were given brown and blue colours, signalling earth and sky respectively. The art work on each side of the sleeve was also inverted so that either side could be read as the front cover. Ursula Steiger’s photography captured, on the brown side, the band running through a forest like a nomadic tribe. On the blue side we then find them in different costumes, performing with fire and mannequins within a derelict building.

This 40th Anniversary Edition of the album sees a full remaster housed in a Limited Edition Special Finish Gatefold Sleeve on Transparent Vinyl. This Deluxe LP also comes with a 16 page booklet featuring sleeve notes by Dr. Jonathan Wood exploring the writing, recording and production of the record. Plus an exclusive 12x12 Art Print. The album is also available as 2CD Mediabook & Digital Deluxe.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklisting:
A1. Ulakanakulot (2022 Remaster)
A2. Decline And Fall (2022 Remaster)
A3. Sweethome Under White Clouds (2022 Remaster)
A4. Bau-Dachöng (2022 Remaster)
B1. Baby Turns Blue (2022 Remaster)
B2. Ballad Of The Man (2022 Remaster)
B3. Walls Of Jericho (2022 Remaster)
B4. Caucasian Walk (2022 Remaster)
B5. Theme For Thought (2022 Remaster)

2CD Tracklisting:
1. Ulakanakulot (2022 Remaster)
2. Decline And Fall (2022 Remaster)
3. Sweethome Under White Clouds (2022 Remaster)
4. Bau-Dachöng (2022 Remaster)
5. Baby Turns Blue (2022 Remaster)
6. Ballad Of The Man (2022 Remaster)
7. Walls Of Jericho (2022 Remaster)
8. Caucasian Walk (2022 Remaster)
9. Theme For Thought (2022 Remaster)

1. Baby Turns Blue (Colin Newman Remix 2004) (2022 Remaster)^
2. Chance Of A Lifetime (UK 12") (2022 Remaster)
3. Yeo (UK 12") (2022 Remaster)
4. The Faculties Of A Broken Heart (What Should We Do If Baby Turns Blue) (UK 12") (2022 Remaster)
5. King Of Junk (Instrumental) (Rough Mix) (2022 Remaster)^
6. Ballad Of The Man (Rough Mix) (2022 Remaster)^
7. Fado (Rough Mix) (2022 Remaster)^
8. Bau-Dachong (Rough Mix) (2022 Remaster)^
9. Theme For Thought (Rough Mix) (2022 Remaster)^
10. Pagan Lovesong (Demo) (2022 Remaster)^
11. Pagan Lovesong (2022 Remaster)
12. Dave-Id Is Dead (2022 Remaster)
13. Pagan Lovesong (Vibeakimbo) (2022 Remaster)
^ Previously Unreleased

The Virgin Prunes were masters of the uncanny, juxtaposing nightmares with lullabies, beauty with cruelty, combining gentle vocals and the spoken word with anguished wailing from purgatory itself. This first album powerfully laid out this terrain. Its themes ranged from mournful tales of unrequited love, frustrated sexuality, morbid eroticism and wasted youth, to yearnings for distant dreamlands which were juxtaposed with macabre visions of dystopian societies, overpowered by dark forces and where demons run amok. Guggi’s art work for A New Form of Beauty, which intimates a heartless transaction within a domestic setting, is in keeping with this sensibility.

A New Form of Beauty (1981) was recorded and produced by the band itself. It includes the tracks of the first four parts of what was a five-part, mixed-format project with Rough Trade Records. Part 1 was a 7” record, Part 2 was a 10”, Part 3 was a 12”: these were recorded between July and October 1981. Part 4 was ‘Din Glorious’, released as an audio cassette, was a recording of extracts of a live event on 8th November 1981 at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin. Part 5 was to be a film of ‘Performance, Exhibition, Event staged at the Douglas Hyde Gallery on 7th and 8th November 1981.

TRACK LISTING

LP1
A1. Sandpaper Lullabye (2024 Remaster)
A2. Sleep Fantasy Dreams (2024 Remaster)
A3. Sad World (2024 Remaster)
B1. Come To Daddy (2024 Remaster)
B2. Sweethome Under White Clouds (2024 Remaster)
LP2
C1. Beast (Seven Bastard Suck) (2024 Remaster)
D1. Abbágall (2024 Remaster)
D2. Brain Damage (2024 Remaster)
D3. No Birds To Fly (2024 Remaster)
LP3
E1. Din Glorious, Pt. 1 (2024 Remaster)
F1. Din Glorious, Pt. 2 (2024 Remaster) 

CD1
1. Sandpaper Lullabye (2024 Remaster)
2. Sleep Fantasy Dreams (2024 Remaster)
3. Come To Daddy (2024 Remaster)
4. Sweethome Under White Clouds (2024 Remaster)
5. Sad World (2024 Remaster)
6. Beast (Seven Bastard Suck) (2024 Remaster)
7. Abbágall (2024 Remaster)
8. Brain Damage (2024 Remaster)
9. No Birds To Fly (2024 Remaster)
CD2
1. "Din Glorious" (2024 Remaster)
2. Yesterday Is Tomorrow / Come To Daddy (2024 Remix By Apparition) *
3. Sweethome Under White Clouds (2024 Remix By Apparition) *
4. Yesterday Is Tomorrow / Come To Daddy (2024 Instrumental Remix By Apparition) *
5. Sweethome Under White Clouds (2024 Instrumental Remix By Apparition) *
6. Beauticide (2024 ANFOB TapeLoop Mash Up By Apparition) *
*previously Unreleased

Virginia Trance first LP, the solo project of Scott Ryan Davis (formerly of Images and Psychic Ills), after a self-released 7″ single “Your Guru” presents this debut album following the same loose-jointed, rambling expedition through mercurial guitar and lilting, Neil Young-esque vocals that are joined by steady bass and dynamic percussion. Sounding lighter but groovier, songs with expressive drumming, reverb-dipped vocals, and dewy guitar.

Ryan-Davis says “The album was recorded and mixed in three sessions during the Summer 2014 - Winter 2015 in Brooklyn, NY with my friend RJ Gordon. I had recently moved back into town after spending time out in Arkansas to be with my now wife. We were in a small town located between Memphis, Tennessee and West Memphis, Arkansas on the Mississippi River. There were soybean fields outside my bedroom windows. The idea for the sessions was to lay down a few songs I had been writing. Everything is loose, rambling, and slightly fried. The album takes cues and titles from recent history. Outside of RJ (who also plays in the bands Baked, Titus Andronicus, etc) I was fortunate to have longtime bassist Jarred Joly playing on a few tracks like Lunar Son, and Booker Stardrum (who also plays his own stuff, in Cloud Becomes Your Hand, etc) on drums for a few tunes includingNew Attitude. So we kept everything stripped down with minimal production and there you go”.

TRACK LISTING

01 With One Hand
02 Two Of A Kind
03 Homer´s Second Love Affair
04 Side By Side II
05 New Attitude
06 Easy
07 Side By Side I
08 Lunar Son

One of the year's most daring and true pop records, private LIFE comes as the result of Virginia Wing living through, and with, huge personal emotional and mental traumas. It is a document of how the very process of music creation in a group can be of huge therapeutic benefit to people. The three members of Virginia Wing have explored the depths of their creative and artistic inspirations within performance, production and composition, and have made a candid and brash pop record that speaks clearly about hope, desperation, impulse, addiction, urge and shame.

More tumultuous than its predecessor, private LIFE knocks hard. The evolution of Virginia Wing’s sound continues to build on the broad creative flow of the last album whilst being another audacious contribution to contemporary pop. The drums are huge and playfully unquantized. Edits are both assured and heavy handed, the instrumentation lightly mediates the two and finds itself on the edge of collapse alongside them. The icy facade of Merida Richards’ words are still front and centre, but are contrasted by dense, multilayered improvisations, vying for attention throughout the record. Over ‘I’m Holding Out For Something’s relentless juggernaut of 90’s R’n’B beats, Richards examines the relentless hope and desperation glued to modern consciousness, and speaks of how we often find the answer, or the route through, right at the breaking point. Subsequently, ‘St Francis Fountain’ compounds the issue, observing that often our own coping mechanisms can grow into full blown traumas of their own. Virginia Wing’s last record opened its arms into euphoric light, private LIFE invites you through a door and closes it. It examines what we’re doing at night, on our own, after work. What we do to enjoy ourselves, to cope, to be together, to be alone. It shines a dim blue light on what might be happening, causing us anxiety, stress and desire.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Virginia wing bring another nuanced slab of moody synth-indie, with 'Private Life' displaying all of the superb songwriting prowess which made 2018's 'Ecstatic Arrow' such a heavy hitter, but with a more world-weary experience and depth of feeling. Superb stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 I’m Holding Out For Something
A2 Moon Turn Tides
A3 Soft Fruit
A4 Michael Returns To The Garden
A5 99 North
A6 Return To View

Side B
B1 St. Francis Fountain
B2 Private Life
B3 Half Mourning
B4 Lucky Coin
B5 OBW Saints
B6 I Know About These Things

Founding fathers of the New Romantics and pioneers of the 80s sound Visage, return with a new album ‘Hearts And Knives’.

‘Hearts & Knives’ is the title of the fourth Visage album. It is not only a paraphrased lyric from the lead single ‘Shameless Fashion’, but also a metaphor for the past 29 years of Steve Strange and Visage. Life is always mixture of trials, highs and lows. There are always people, situations and circumstances to cut you down (the knives), however the love, compassion and caring that has surrounded Steve Strange throughout his life is truly heartfelt.

The first song to be written for the album was co-written with long time collaborator and former Visage and Magazine keyboard player Dave Formula. ‘Diaries Of A Madman’ is a sneaky tongue and cheek vocal poke at Steve’s detractors. This and new songs crafted with Steve Barnacle and Robin Simon proved to be the catalytic creative spark to bring the album together. With a this core classic (and analogue) Visage sound in place the picture slowly started forming and the band reached out (once again) to Martin Rushent. He suggested the blueprint for the album and had began working on the first tracks before his untimely death in 2010. Undeterred, the Visage then reached out for further songwriting collaborations. Mick MacNeil, the creative musical core of Simple Minds, contributed to two songs the classic sounding ‘She’s Electric (Coming Around)’ and the radio-friendly ‘Dreamer I Know’ (which was also co-written with 80s super producer Youth). The Welsh connection was further extended when Visage co-wrote three songs with Rich Mowatt.

The sound of ‘Hearts & Knives’ is classic Visage, with the odd tip of the hat to modern production values. Most 80s groups reforming and making albums shy away from using the classic analogue hardware synthesizers. They remember how much work it was, and it’s all plug ins and software these days. Not Visage. All synthesizers on the album (aside from one bassline) are analogue. The production by John Bryan and analogue synthesizer collector Sare Havlicek is firmly rooted in the 80s.

Confined in an expansive country villa, the group soon found the breathtaking beauty of the area little compensation for the almost complete lack of wheat-and/or gluten-free products and a severely limited selection of DVDs. Only able to record in scant free hours, the group often had no choice but to forgo their simple daily routines of sampling local gastronomic delicacies and honing their horse-riding skills in order to complete the album.

In spite of these obstacles, the ever-adventurous Vision Fortune have created their most sonically inventive work to date - sparse, yet incredibly detailed and precise - the percussion on 'Dry Mouth' was created solely from the sound of silverware chiming against fine china bowls of foie gras d'oie. 'Broken Teeth''s crooning vocals and amaretto-smooth bass lines, meanwhile, are juxtaposed with lyrical content concerning the difficulties of pursuing legal action against large commercial airlines, and the conflicting emotions that arise when presented with extreme financial comfort.

Given the difficulties Vision Fortune faced in the creation of Country Music, it is perhaps unsurprising that the album is both challenging, and rewarding, in equal measure.

TRACK LISTING

1: Blossom
2: Habitat
3: Dry Mouth
4: Cleanliness
5: Tita
6: Ties And Bound
7: Sandrino
8: Stalker
9: Drunk Ghost
10: Broken Teeth
11: New Jack City
12: Back Crawl Ii

Confined in an expansive country villa, the group soon found the breathtaking beauty of the area little compensation for the almost complete lack of wheat-and/or gluten-free products and a severely limited selection of DVDs. Only able to record in scant free hours, the group often had no choice but to forgo their simple daily routines of sampling local gastronomic delicacies and honing their horse-riding skills in order to complete the album.

In spite of these obstacles, the ever-adventurous Vision Fortune have created their most sonically inventive work to date - sparse, yet incredibly detailed and precise - the percussion on 'Dry Mouth' was created solely from the sound of silverware chiming against fine china bowls of foie gras d'oie. 'Broken Teeth''s crooning vocals and amaretto-smooth bass lines, meanwhile, are juxtaposed with lyrical content concerning the difficulties of pursuing legal action against large commercial airlines, and the conflicting emotions that arise when presented with extreme financial comfort.

Given the difficulties Vision Fortune faced in the creation of Country Music, it is perhaps unsurprising that the album is both challenging, and rewarding, in equal measure.

TRACK LISTING

1: Blossom
2: Habitat
3: Dry Mouth
4: Cleanliness
5: Tita
6: Ties And Bound
7: Sandrino
8: Stalker
9: Drunk Ghost
10: Broken Teeth
11: New Jack City
12: Back Crawl Ii

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

After the success of the Visioneers albums "Dirty Old Hip Hop" and "Hipology" producer Marc Mac (4hero) returns with that classic Visioneers Jazz meets Hip Hop sound. "Mystic Brew" & "Smilin' Billy Suite" are two tracks made famous through sampling by many Hip Hop artists throughout the golden era and became sort ofter by record collectors and beat diggers. Visioneers approach these classic tracks and flip them in a way only they can. The Visioneers releases always have plenty of support from top Jazz, Funk, Hip Hop DJ's worldwide and their 7" Vinyl releases have gained cult status among the modern Jazz, Funk and Hip Hop collectors. The Visioneers Mystic Brew 7" is cut on heavy weight vinyl with full colour labels and sleeve (shrink wrapped). Limited Edition ONLY 500 copies pressed.

Visionist’s first release for Mute is a hypnotic elegy. ‘A Call To Arms’ is Visionist’s third album release and where previously the artist used his vocals as samples, we hear his singing voice in the form of song and lyric for the first time.

Along with the addition of Visionist’s vocals, the album is host to a varied list of collaborators including Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) and Morgan Simpson (Black Midi).

TRACK LISTING

By Design
Form
Allowed To Dream
Nearly God
A Born New
The Fold
Lie Digging
Winter Sun
Cast

Visionist AKA Louis Carnell returns with his second album, ‘Value’, a precise body of work which builds across its 10 tracks on his conceptual, thematic process, finding assertion in the values of self-discipline and self-education through meticulous composition. The sounds are crushingly epic, with pneumatic bursts of white noise mixed with torn apart beat reduction and angelic, reverb-drenched vocals meeting a modern symphony of strings, synths and glistening keys - all working to elevate the album into the heavens. 

The album features collaborative artwork from influential artist Peter De Potter (Kanye West ‘The Life Of Pablo’).

TRACK LISTING

Self-
New Obsession
Homme
Value
Your Approval
No Idols
Made In Hope
High Life
Exi(s)t
Invanity

Originally released in 2019, ‘Heaven’ served as a benchmark for what modern house music is. The essential record from Ben Westbeech and KON’s The Vision project dominated stages around the world, receiving support from a plethora of top house artists; Gerd Janson, Horse Meat Disco, The Blessed Madonna, Groove Armada and Eli Escobar to name just a few. Now Defected release a special 12” package featuring the most recently released remix from Groove Assassin, where he masterfully combined it with Supernova’s Jackin Mix of Kerri Chandler’s iconic ‘Hallelujah’ for a killer house cut. Also featured on the package is the original in all its glory, as well as Danny Krivit’s heralded edit and an edit from The Vision’s own KON.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Glitzy, high glamour modern disco here from a truly all-star cast of producers on remix duties.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hallelujah In Heaven (Groove Assassin's Supernova Edit)
A2. Heaven (Original Album Version)
B1. Heaven (Danny Krivit Edit)
B2. Heaven (KON's 7 Edit) 

Emotional Rescue looks to the newly rebuilt but still very much culturally separate East and West Germany of the 1980s with this new EP. It's dub reggae through a post-punk and alternative lens by Hanover artists Felix Holter aka Dubvisionist. All these cuts have a very live, improvised feel because father way he worked from rhythms first and jammed endlessly before adding the vocals. They are taken from their 1987 release 10 Tracks Of Reggae & Dub Music which was inspired by the great Adrian Sherwood label On-U Sound label, and you can hear that clearly.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. "Far Away"
2. "Different Language"
3. "Whirl"

Side 2
1. "Natty Vision"
2. "Fear"
3. "No 4"

The Visitors, formed by Factory Records' Karl Walsh (To Hell with Burgundy) release their debut album “Above You”. Original material engineered by Dan Broad (Happy Mondays) and Mixed by Paul Mortlock (Jessica Hoop). Think Bowie, Bolan and Dylan’s fresh, melodic song writing and harmonies. A wider range of influences have created a punchy guitar based sound that builds up to panoramic effect.

The Visitors are a four piece from Manchester. Hooked on a 70s rock groove, watching you through Bowie's eyes and fuelled by a Muse injection. They are smooth, racy, melodic and spacey.

'Turning (Inside Out)' is the new 12" dance single from Arbutus Records, a collaboration between Canadian synthpop artist Moon King and Baltimore production team Visors, with added vocals from fellow Bmore rapper DDM and, in a surprising turn of events, saxophone from the Neptunes' Chad Hugo, under his St Charles alias.

The 'pandemic-era online collab' has given us some strange and unlikely gems, of which this record is certainly one - a mesmerizing mid-tempo groove with Moon King and DDM's call and response vocals floating above, culminating in a catchy chorus: 'feels like turning inside out, when I need you there, you're not around'.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Turning (Inside Out)
A2. Turning (Inside Out) (instrumental)
B1. Out Of Control
B2. Out Of Control (instrumental)

Debut album from Glasgow indie rock quartet that channel Kleenex and The Smiths, featuring members of Golden Grrrls (Slumberland / Night School). Following on from the band’s two cassettes of demos on Comfortable On A Tightrope and their sold out and well regarded 7”.

“somewhere between the oblique minimalist pop of Flying Nun and early Rough Trade signings such as The Raincoats.' CLASH.

Playing their first shows in Glasgow in 2015 during a summer that never threatened to show up, Vital Idles’ origins are closely tied with a tireless underground culture, a culture that informs the band’s refusal to take it easy. Matthew Walkerdine, Nick Lynch and Higgins are responsible for Glasgow DIY publishing institution Good Press - an independent volunteer-staffed zine and art book shop - while Guitarist Ruari MacLean’s pedigree stretches back to breakneck-indie-pop group Golden Grrrls and the Rose McDowall band.
Following two self-released demos and a sold out debut 7”, Vital Idles arrive on Upset The Rhythm with ‘Left Hand’, a bare manifesto layered with meaning and non-meaning. The group can conceivably be called artists, or Artists, but in approaching their debut album Vital Idles have stripped away all extraneous ornamentation to sculpt an incredibly life-like, vibrant pop music completely détourned and re-thought.

For a conglomerate of art outsiders and aesthetes, Vital Idles are primitive, whimsically brutal. Sculpting a skeleton from a body already lean, there’s a thrilling minimalism that runs through every beat and strum, a sparseness that feeds Jessica Higgins’s surreal, oblique vocal delivery all the nourishment it needs.

Following practice room and bigger-budget recordings with Glasgow engineer Andy Monaghan, Vital Idles took complete control of their debut album, with Edwin Stevens (aka recording artist Irma Vep) providing an outside perspective on the hermetically sealed group’s music. Engineered by Stevens and MacLean, ‘Left Hand’ crackles with a raw, punk approach to writing warped pop songs that don’t just talk of disorder but often actively demonstrate it. At the heart of ‘Left Hand’, the beating pulse in the tool box, is a conflict never resolved. Higgins manages to create dialogues that she narrates both parts of, Dada-ist songs that seem obfuscated by layers of meaning that, when taken on their own terms as evocative mini-worlds, reveal themselves to be pieces that have an internal melancholy and logic. Like Gertrude Stein growing up on Dunedin pop groups, peel away the deliberate awkwardness and ‘Left Hand’ reveals itself to be a book of complex, literary short stories at pleasing odds with the wired, no-frills melodic thud MacLean, Lynch and Walkerdine serve.

At times a perilous journey into the unknown and at others an immensely enjoyable foray into form deconstruction, lyricist Higgins repeatedly builds narratives out of mis-hearings, peons to doing things wrong, sideways-glances at conventional narrative. The delivery tightrope-walks between deadpan epithets and a Smiths-ian pop singing which gives many of the lyrics bite, pathos, and a surprising amount of surrealistic positivity. With Chains’ Troggs-ist chug stomping, Higgins flips the symbolism of the Chain into something to be tendered, cared for, is it a warped metaphor for the future, is a chain an aspiration? There’s an existential friction at the heart of Cave Raised that sees the narrator attempting escape, perhaps, unsure of themselves, “a poorly appointed project manager who says the best part is bowling around, which is a little like knocking around” that breaks into a melodic reprieve that feels like an unexpectedly romantic pay-off in the middle of “white space,” “Let’s tread the tides of time, to live it down, we’ll stretch these shores of mine to steal away.” Like many of Vital Idles songs, it can be read as a mini treatise on the song itself, or enjoyed as a visceral song that never does what you want it to.

Like fellow Glaswegians Life Without Buildings, Vital Idles make the oblique sound essential. On Like Life, Higgins is at her most precarious with straight-up emotion; MacLean’s melodic bassline seems to duet with the vocal as it seems, for once, to be straightforwardly vulnerable. After telling us “I don’t really care but I could, I should” our narrator begs the listener “Don’t leave me at home with all the people I lost and all the things I forgot. For all the people I lost, I care.” Whether it’s a slip of the artist’s mask of distance or a deliberate trick to fool us into caring, we care. It’s indicative of the tension in Vital Idles: pop songs unwilling to bend to convention, chart hits in the alternative timeline where Messthetics compilations are Now That's What I Call Music, endlessly inventive linguistics that reveal emotional depth, a dry, punk minimalism able to turn on a dime into a mouldy, witty kitchen sink story narrated by Samuel Beckett. It’s a tension that threatens to fall apart into dissonance or resolve into sweetness but thankfully does neither, rather it keeps Vital Idles moving forward, never standing still, never taking it easy.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
01. A Premise
02. Solid States
03. Chains
04. Fall Into Shape
05. Waxes Colder
06. Carve A Bat
07. Cave Raised

SIDE B
08. Blue, Black & White
09. Time Free
10. Rising Damp
11. Geraniums
12. Like Life
13. Now & Again
14. The Scenery

Cult label Total Stasis return with more of their odd-ball, uncategorizable sound - hynagogic reflections from the worlds of dance music and beyond. Anom Vitruv is a sufficiently illusive and mysterious producer to add to this bastion of esoteric brilliance. Four tracks that refract off the surface of a glistening icy lake, taking in tribal ritual chants, auto-tuned exotic r'n'b and wacked-out drone. As always, the record needs a second listen to understand, and a third and forth to completely enjoy. But then, aren't they the best ones? Never in danger at burning out after one or two plays, you'll re-visit this curio of musical genius time and time again. A sonic relic to love and cherish. Total Stasis have done it again. Highly recommended.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Untitled
A2. Untitled
A3. Untitled
B1. Untitled

There’s much to be said for chance meetings. Vitruvians – in their words, “a meeting of minds, cultures, styles and experiences, powered by music, and designed by faith” – owe their very existence to once such random encounter. In the summer of 2014, producers Frankie Valentine and Thomas “T-Ash” Sciurpa bumped into each other in a London shoe shop. Over a fine selection of brogues and loafers, the conversation drifted onto music. The duo quickly realized they had much in common, and a plan began to form: they would get together and make music as Vitruvians, using the alias as a vehicle for their collaborative work. Some 18 months and numerous recording sessions in England and Italy later, the first Vitruvians record is ready for release. Dropping on Paul Murphy and Simon Purnell’s Leng Records imprint, “Spaghetti Saloon” is a banjo-pickin’ hoedown at the last drinking hole in the Milky Way. Propelled forwards by a restless drum machine rhythm, the duo’s original version expertly combines winding synthesizer melodies, wild honky-tonk piano solos, clanging ‘closing time’ bells, and the most loved-up banjo player in the galaxy. Ennio Morricone, eat your heart out.
The flipside of the 12” features a pair of tasty, DJ-friendly revisions. There’s the chugging Banjo Dub, where delay-laden bells and undulating banjo lines rub shoulders with a throbbing, space disco groove, and the even more psychedelic and alluring Piano Dub. As the title suggests, this pushes the duo’s distinctive keys work to the fore, stretching out the life affirming solos in a bid to incite even greater dancefloor abandon. Down a glass of bourbon, grab a partner, and get dancin’.

TRACK LISTING

A. Spaghetti Saloon
B. Spaghetti Saloon (Banjo Dub)
B. Spaghetti Saloon (Piano Dub)

A loose, funky swagger that the Happy Mondays would be proud of, "Screamadelica"-style laid back beats and classic songwriting are all on show on this six track EP from Glasgow's Viva Stereo.

Featuring a myriad of influences, "Roar Lion Roar" is the soundtrack of Saturday night excesses, Sunday soul searching and the workday drudgery of the 9 to 5 job. With Viva Stereo members all in their 30s and dealing with the inevitable pressures of daily life from financial burdens to parenthood, to resisting the feeling that it's time to 'grow up', this album is a celebration of still enjoying love, life, and the occasional allnighter. As part of Fife's celebrated Fence Collective, Viva Stereo have partnered with other Fence artists on their latest release. Malcolm Middleton lends his voice on "The Seaward", Chris Deveney of My Latest Novel features on "Last Living Hope", and Candythief of the Fence Collective features on the vocals of "This is Not An Exit". Another Fence Collective member, Onthefly, co-wrote "Pariah State", and King Creosote added accordion to "Teenage Dreams".

Two years on from their debut, this cool-as-you-like husband and wife duo from Portland are letting us into their groovy, spaced-out world for a second time. It's all about the vibe, so stoned riffs and campfire jams chug along with half-there melodies which recall a damaged Monkees or wonky Beach Boys. There's plenty of overdubs and soundscapes going on, whilst the bass-lines are surprisingly fat. This is sixties, acoustic-based, freed-up music, but with shades of the Flaming Lips or (zonked-out) Pixies and a whiff of folkiness, there's a timeliness that comes with being Tunng's lablemates. It's happening, man!

Enfant terrible Danny Mommens (producer) and Els Pynoo (singer / supermodel) are back with more kitsch / cheeky electro-pop.

Isoviha was recorded four years ago, inspired by ideas that Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay) had been reflecting on for a long time. This album is a counterpart to his two Rakka albums which were a personal reflection on the nature and sound-world of the northern Arctic wilderness, 1000 kilometres north of where he lives on the Finnish island of Hailuoto. It's an area he loves to explore, trekking out alone to enjoy its rugged power. However the sound world of Isoviha is a return to man-made civilization. Musically Isoviha presents a more complicated world than Rakka; overloaded and unpredictable, audio archaeology that layers and juxtaposes everyday sounds into intense sculptures of noise and drone. As a musical observation internally and externally, it's influenced by the heightened anxious intensity Sasu feels when returning from the empty wilderness. The ratcheting up of urban noise on Isoviha is built with insistent loops that seem to malfunction the faster they spiral and the dangerous overwhelming potential of ordinary objects and events: shimmering, hammering, crowds, radio distortion, ancient backfiring engines. It's hypermodern musique concrète, married to a jazz drummer's intuitive sense of rhythm. Going back even further in time but still tethered to the local, Isoviha also means 'the great wrath' and refers to a time in Finland under Russian occupation in the 1700s. A time when all the Islanders of Hailuoto were killed, apart from a single couple who were left to bury the dead. As if time is non-linear, the response to toxicity and madness that drives the album feels even more appropriate now than when it was written four years ago and confirmation that the horrors of the past still darken the present.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Isovitutus
2. Isosusi
3. Isonuha
4. Isotv
5. IS
6. Isoteko
Side B:
1. Isoviha
2. Isorakas
3. Isopaska
4. Isooo
5. Isovihane
6. Isomulkku
7. Isopieni

After several years of releasing albums through his own Huume label, and following his part in the Moritz Von Oswald Trio album, producer Vladislav Delay joins The Leaf Label to release "Tummaa", his most organic, acoustic record to date. "Tummaa" sees him collaborate with celebrated Scottish soundtrack composer Craig Armstrong (on piano and Rhodes) and Argentine saxophonist / clarinetist Lucio Capece, with Ripatti returning to his background as a jazz drummer and percussionist. Ripatti's reputation as a genuine musical maverick precedes him, with venerated work as Delay, Luomo, Uusitalo and with partner Antye Greie as AGF/Delay.

Richmond Fontaine and Deline's singer/songwriter, Willy Vlautin will release his fifth novel, 'Don't Skip Out On Me' on Feb 1 2018 . Decor Records have released a vinyl version of the soundtrack, along with this, the soundtrack to his previous novel "Northline" - previously only available as a CD supplied with the book. 

Vlure defy the rules, they rip up trends and create new ones. With a certain honesty and a vulnerability, they confront you and get under your skin. They make you feel things, the way music should.

"One of the most buzzy young bands Scotland has to offer." - Line Of Best Fit

"With their hard-hitting blend of electro-noir-glam, industrial-rave and post-punk - a sound that's simply designed

TRACK LISTING

Show Me How To Live Again
Heartbeat
The Storm
I Won't Run (From Love)
Euphoria

Buzzing new Glasgow five-piece Vlure release their hotly anticipated debut 7” ‘Shattered Faith / Desire (Live)’ via London-based label Permanent Creeps Records.

Recorded between the halls of a deconsecrated church in the heart of the Scottish Borders, the self-produced ‘Shattered Faith’ is an indulgent, genre bending coming of age anthem influenced by the rhythms, repetitions and euphoric hooks of Glasgow’s thriving afterparty and club scene with an angular post-punk foundation. Speaking on the track the band explain: “We wanted to create something that felt at home on the dancefloors that we all found ourselves on growing up, yet still equally at home in the sweat-filled venues that the band was conceived in. At its crux, “Shattered Faith’ is about self-empowerment. It’s the disillusionment with where you are and what you’ve been given. It’s lying on your kitchen floor at 3am realising who you truly are and finding power in that - it’s a new lease of life. We believe that, if they want to find it, there is something for everyone in this song.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Superb abrasive, sythn-infused post-punk from this Glasgow five piece.

TRACK LISTING

A. Shattered Faith
B. Desire (Live)

The eerie and utterly grandiose fourth album. Unfurling like mellow smoke from some alien opium den, the title track introduces the sonic soiree in a pleasant mood, as distant acoustic plucking and electronic oscillations provide a pillowing backdrop for some elegant electric guitar flourishes. No sooner is serenity induced than the trip goes dark, as metallic-tinged acid guitar rips a flurry of shrapnel over a storm of chugging drums and slinky bass lines. Imbued with an intense array of moods and textures, "The Tenth Corner" is a tremendously cinematic listening experience a sound that draws from the early flights of 70s German avant rock (Agitation Free, Cosmic Jokers, Ash Ra Tempel) and synth-powered cosmic (Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh) if it were created in the embryonic electronic music labs of the 60s and 70s. Transcendent, gritty, hallucinatory – undoubtedly Vocokesh's finest hour.

The Vocokesh (previously simply 'Vocokesh') formed in 1991 when guitarist Richard Franecki spun out of orbit from F/i, the legendary Milwaukee psychedelic veterans he co-founded. Thinking them turning a bit polite, The Vocokesh provided the necessary vessel to sufficiently blast Franecki's undiluted vision of full-blown experimental/free-acid rock mayhem further out into the ether. Multiple recordings for RRRecords, Drag City, Lexicon Devil (responsible for many a Vocokesh and F/i reissue) and Strange Attractors Audio House chart relentless trajectories of improvised, analog electronics-laced instrumental rock psychedelics that reverently summon the spirits of the most marginalized ruffians of 70s Krautrock (Amon Duul I, Ash Ra Tempel, Agitation Free) while exploring newer terrain. With 2005's "Through The Smoke", The Vocokesh took a bit of a detour by lacing their hallucinatory flurries with actual 'songs', in the vein of latter 60s fuzz/psych. Franecki and the boys' restless spirit never wanes, and thus "... All This and Hieronymus Bosch", The Vocokesh's eighth long player, marks more departures from previous formulas, resulting in some of their finest and freshest sonics yet.

The bright new duo, Marcel Vogel & LYMA, triumphantly returns to Boogie Angst with their sizzling new EP offering, No Time.

Following the recent release of their lead single, Free Time, we're proud to introduce four new, unique tracks to their burgeoning collection of juicy tunes.

Funkiness and abstraction take center stage on this EP. Opening up with the previously released Free Time, featuring filtered vocals and an unconventional structure that blends rich synths with dusty analog stabs and 1990s rave plucks.

The tempo slows down on Easy, a gorgeous song that sounds like a lost Sade demo, featuring subtle beatbox textures, tiny synth plucks, all ending up in a delightful culmination of delayed textures.

Broken Wings begins with a captivating vocal performance, leading to a sturdy Roland bass drum, sustained chords, and resonant arp sequences, with hints of Freestyle.

Flame On creates an almost tropical atmosphere with looping, scattered vocals and an abundance of cowbells. All before the EP closer, You're A Star, rounds things off with clunky basslines, a steady groove and hypnotic pitched vocals.

No Time follows the duo's debut Boogie Angst EP, Games Change, and is a powerful step forward in their young, yet promising catalogue.

A special vinyl edition of No Time will also grace our stores soon.

TRACK LISTING

1. Free Time
2. Easy
3. Broken Wings
4. Flame On
5. You're A Star

For his twelfth studio album, Pianissimo, Matthias Vogt ([re:jazz], Motorcitysoul) makes a clear political statement in symbiosis with his well-placed notes and the stylishly experimental and pronouncedly eclectic electro-jazz sound. "Pianissimo" does not only mean playing very softly but also playing very intensively. It is definitely not an album to skip through.

Matthias Vogt combines great music with current socio-political attitudes and issues for this new album. He conducted interviews on topics like climate change with people from his circle of friends and acquaintances - creatives, artists, activists and musicians who tick similarly to himself and with whose voices he could give expression and form to his own thoughts. With this material, he created this hybrid piece of music and socio-political reflection.

His companions are Demian Kappenstein (ÄTNA & Massa) on drums & guitarist Daniel Stelter (Sing mein Song, TV-Total Heavytones). Vinyl incl. the outer packaging will be produced on a completely recycled basis by INFRACom! which starts its 30 years celebration with this release.

TRACK LISTING

Pianissimo
Quintessence
Music For Interviews
Elegy
Shimmering Sea
Cargo
Amdu
The Mind Traveller

Dystopia
Afraid Of The Future
Lament In D Minor
Down To Earth
I Remember Being Loved
Introduction
Outro
Une Nuit Exceptionnelle

Words as mirrors in a framework of clatter shape the arches to Voice Actor’s pavilion. Surrounded by offerings of flowers, a construction is shown. The unusual compact scale conforms to tiny standards for intimate listening. All is half-height, so the visitor has to enter on hands and knees. From the verandah a crumbling, overgrown statue can be glimpsed, pointing at the pond nearby. The water is framed by a soundfence of endless space nobody can leap, a tree branch repetitively dips into it from above. Visitors can be seated on large rocks and have the surprising pleasure of hearing tear-stained but triumphant hearts sing.

TRACK LISTING

HHBYL
Slush 77
U Projected 2
Daydream
Let U Go
Camden
What It’s Worth
Stand Tall
Freefall
False Glistening
Minefields
Exposed
Closer
Myself 2 Myself
Shoulder Length
Pelli

Named following the rare find of an 1870's tome full of lectures on the Apocalypse, Voice Of The Seven Thunders is the new project from Rick Tomlinson - the distillation of years of divergent musical exploration that have followed his much-acclaimed Voice Of The Seven Woods debut (Twisted Nerve, 2007). Taking leave of his previous incarnation, this new project is a notable departure; with infernal and primitive energies mingling with the bucolic reveries that won him previous acclaim: this time round, multi-instrumentalist and sound sculptor Tomlinson introduces us to his fully-fledged rock group.

"Open Lighted Doorway" begins the album with a glimmer of what went before, the pastoral shades of Tomlinson's earlier recordings appearing soaked in reverb as if corrupted by time. Giving way to the monolithic "Kommune" its rhythmic percussive layers of huge primal weight and beat, and a build up of rolling guitars. "Out Of The Smoke" follows with its acerbic electric and acoustic contrasts, "The Burning Mountain" like flames erupting from an Anatolian mirage, a tide from the East; its fury subsides only for the exceptional, purely acoustic, respite offering "Dry Leaves", before "Dalälven" breaks the spell with its vertiginous howl. "Cylinders" swells from dark kosmische drones into warm opiate depths, only for "Set Fire To The Forest" to erupt like a nefarious dervish, a blinding acid haze that is quenched by final track, stripped down vocal harmony - the nostalgic, introspective "Disappearances".

Already drawing comparison with bands from the heyday of 70s acid rock and the likes of Amon Düül II, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Japan's Flower Travellin' Band, the early years of Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground's drone jams, as well as the electronic kosmische of Cluster and the unhinged organic grooves of International Harvester. The album was recorded in just three days in the spring of 2009 - featuring long-standing collaborator Chris Walmsley on drums and Rory Gibson on bass, without prior rehearsal, in Andy Ramsey's Stereolab studio with engineer Jimmy Robertson.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: A stunning album from Rick Tomlinson and his new rock band; scorched psyche, kosmische drones, nostalgic folky intricacies, and heavy doses of narcotic Eastern delight.

Everyday Is The Song is Joni Void’s 3rd album for Constellation and a deeper plunge into emotive audio montage; the Montréal-based French-British producer calls it “Tape Vortex / Musique Verité / Memory Collage”. The album’s raw material relies centrally on a Walkman bought at local record shop Death Of Vinyl in spring 2020 and lost at a Backxwash show two years later, but not before hours of audio snippets were captured and archived. Everyday Is The Song is an evocative sample-based sonic diary brimming with warmth, transience and hyper-specificity where Void explores a more abstract and interstitial terrain of drifting miniatures. It remains very much a collection of songs, but relative to the more assertive and intensive tracks channeling explorations of traumatic interiority on their previous pair of acclaimed LPs, Void’s new album flows with intentional lightness and a more incidental atmosphere. Songs are constructed from audio recordings made all over and often while literally on the move: walking, cycling and skateboarding around the city; in bus and train stations; from car windows. The album’s overt musical material was recorded, often spontaneously and informally, in all sorts of jam spaces, living rooms and at local live shows. Perambulation is a central theme and constituent fabric of Everyday Is The Song, carrying with it a colloquial spirit of gentle, intrinsic sentimentality. The self-proclaimed “love, soul, agency, and whimsy” virtues of Ruby Yacht (R.A.P. Ferreira, Pink Navel, et al) have also been a lodestar for Void in this respect.

As Sasha Geffen writes in their glowing 8.0 Pitchfork review of Joni Void’s last album Mise En Abyme (2019): "There is still experience that can't be atomized and analyzed, however slippery it may be even to those feeling it; [Void] hunts that sensation of flux and liminality, unearthing warmth in a landscape of paranoia." Everyday Is The Song continues in this ineffable vein, but on an explicit mission to substitute psychosis with the ephemera of fleeting delight in observation, documentation, participation, the daily small acts of sharing, caring, enthusiasm and kindness of creative being in-the-world. The album’s sonic travelogue through local audio geography and community conveys a sort of urban pastoralism and charming softness. Less kinetic and beat-driven than previous work, a field recording and audio art sensibility prevails, with a tempered intimacy that sends this new song cycle sailing along mostly dulcet but detailed waves of materiality. The result is an electro-acoustic tape collage album of beautifully drifting melody, occasional voice, wide-ranging ‘instrumentation’ and enchanting texture. Void’s deeply personal and keenly original aesthetic of assemblage and experimentation is on fine display, less burdened by forceful statement-making, but scrupulous, generous, and full of feeling.

Musician friends whose instruments, sounds and voices appear on the album include Owen Pallett, N NAO, YlangYlang, Sarah Pagé, Shota Yokose, Mojeanne Behzadi, Maya Kuroki, Moshi Moshi and Thoughts On Air to name just a few. The album’s title comes from Strawberry723, a Twitter bot that posted “Everyday Is The Song” on May 5th 2018 (the anniversary of Void’s 2017 Constellation debut Selfless) and serendipitously invokes Void’s own long-running local event and micro-label platform Everyday Ago, itself taken from the Japanese-to-English auto-translate of a sentence about depression that yielded the phrase “I am being sad, everyday ago.” Everyday Is The Song remains perhaps broadly melancholic in temperature, but marks a turn away from angst, agitation, despondency or despair for Joni Void. Instead, its subjectivity imbues the quotidian with affecting narrative, understated wonder, and a wholly engaging serenity.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tape
2. Still Life
3. Disposable
4. Non Locality
5. Event Horizon
6. Negative Loop
7. In-Between Moments
8. Parallax Error (+ N NAO)
9. World Is Spinning At 33 RPM
10. Vortex Any% Speedrun
11. Present Day Montage
12. Post-Credits Scene

A selftaught musician making tracks since he was 14 years old and living in Lille, France, Cousin moved to Montréal in 2012 to pursue Film Studies. He plunged into the city’s fertile DIY/loft scene and in a spirited transformation, evolved from cloistered bedroom/virtual persona to highly engaged organizer and performer. Cousin has selfreleased a cavalcade of original albums and remixes since 2011; Selfless is his debut release on a record label. Cousin’s earliest records, made as a teenager, combine piano and field recordings, inspired by the film soundtracks of Jon Brion, Philip Glass and Yann Tiersen and the sample worlds as Boards Of Canada, The Books, Four Tet and Burial.

An increasing obsession with micro-sampling, aleatory composition, history of cinema and the techniques of foley and film sound editing – along with an increasingly active practice of remixing and beat-making – has seen Cousin’s music flourish in fascinating ways. Perhaps most importantly, Cousin now constructs his tracks entirely from found sources and aims not to ‘play’ anything at all. His personal hero Delia Derbyshire (White Noise; the early years of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) cemented his commitment to making musique concrète avant-pop inspired by these analog tapebased
pioneers.

Selfless is an exploration of catharsis and the escape from entrapments of subjectivity and solipsism, guided by Cousin’s renunciation of any ‘original’ playing or recording of his own, while celebrating intimate community and inter-subjectivity through solicitation of private voice recordings from close friends: Natalie Reid recites her own poem on the hypnotic “Observer (Natalie’s Song)”; Ogun Afariogun (aka Tide Jewel) contributed a freestyle rap recorded and sent by phone on “Yung Wether (Ogun’s Song)”; Ayuko Goto (aka Noah) provided a sound file of whispers for “Empathy (Ayuko’s Song)”; “Dissociation (Kyla’s Song)” is entirely constructed of vocals by Kyla Brooks (aka Nag). The rest of the album’s 12 songs explore a gamut of strategies ranging from the textural, beatless, Satie-inflected opener “Song Siènne” to the pulsing ambientindustrial techno of “Cinema Without People” and “Abjection”, and the kinetic, deconstructed IDM-electronica of “Aesthetics Of Disappearance” and “Agnosia”. 

TRACK LISTING

01 Song Siènne
02 Observer (Natalie's Song)
03 Doppler
04 Empathy (Ayuko's Song)
05 Aesthetics Of Disappearance
06 Désolé (Pardon The Interruption)
07 Cinema Without People
08 Yung Werther (Ogun's Song)
09 Abjection
10 Disassociation (Kyla's Song)
11 Agnosia
12 Deaf (No More Songs)

Yet another lost gem from the halcyon days of rave, hardcore and piano house gets reissued by the rigorous Salford City Records massive. The "Void EP" by Void (Paul Welding, Daniel Nolan & Dave McBurney) was originally released in 1991. Beginning with "Orcana" - a tough slice of swampy breakbeat, analogue fx swirls and occasional fog horn blasts - the kinda track that would make little sense until you were a double of Mitsubishi’s deep into the fun at Bowlers; whence it would transport you to a hellish rave utopia. As per the original release, it's the DJ Welly Warehouse mix featured here.

On the flip, "Addiction (The Tunnel Mix)" is a more celebratory and buoyant number than its darker cousin over on side A. Sugar-rushed female vox pairing beautifully with rising pads, flanging perx and frenetic arpeggios. A real fairground treat, with perfectly timed drops and breakdowns; pulsating with that day-glo ecstasy energy throughout.

Officially licensed, 180g vinyl pressing. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: As we near the end of Salford City Records' frankly commendable and thoroughly extensive piano house reissue campaign there's still some gems to unearth. Void's tracks have featured previously in the series but now the label gift us the two most regarded mixes of "Orcana" and "Addiction". A huge one for the Angels / Bowlers / Thunderdome crowds of the 90s.

TRACK LISTING

A. Orcana (Wellys Warehouse Mix)
B. Addiction (The Tunnel Mix)

It's when VOIGT & VOIGT gather in the same studio that the sparks start to fly dangerously low within this unique machinery humbly named Kompakt, resulting more often than not in a rather unlikely combination of separate elements suddenly kickstarting into communication. For their debut full-length DIE ZAUBERHAFTE WELT DER ANDEREN, the Voigt brothers draw from a plethora of influences to build an incomparable sound world, for the first time fully realizing what previous, now classic tracks on SPEICHER have been hinting at. Produced side by side with the essential Techno of ERDINGERTRAX, this album opts for a strong psychedelic narrative, brilliantly showcasing Voigt & Voigt’s experimental inclinations while knowing a thing or two about the perfect groove.

Marrying the more cerebral aspects of Techno science with the sheer will to party, the Voigtian output is an unpredictable, but constant fixture in KOMPAKT's back catalogue that brings together the distinctive talents of brothers WOLFGANG and REINHARD VOIGT. With each one being a highly prolific artist in its own right, the joint work on their album debut never ceased to surprise even its originators, who used the twilight of their nightly studio sessions to process a shared stream of auditive consciousness feeding on influences as diverse as Techno and New German cinema.

Full of nods to specific movie and TV esthetics, Voigt & Voigt’s DIE ZAUBERHAFTE WELT DER ANDEREN references the higher and lower brows of auteur film culture already in its name, where widely known French alternative comedy DIE ZAUBERHAFTE WELT DER AMELIE and Oscar-winning German drama DIE WELT DER ANDEREN find themselves forming a truly odd couple. It’s an unusual combination, but it works, as first track INTRO KÖNIG confidently proves, indulging in some sort of abstract theme motive until a poker-faced beat creeps in, priming the sound canvas for things to come. DER ERSTE ZUG takes on the challenge and establishes a monochrome rhythm pattern springing to live when chatting percussion introduces it to the thrust of Hitchcockian railroad travel.

In the meantime, DER KEIL NRW delves deep into Fassbinder territory and fuses the matter-of-fact news style of Germany’s late Seventies TV with a throbbing rhythm straight out of Thrillerville, making this a perfect candidate for car chasing scenes in Cold-War-era Berlin. TJA MAMA, SANDRA MAISCHBERGER (citing a popular German talk show) and SOZIAL consecutively calm things down for a little mid-movie catharsis, but the tension rises back up soon enough with whodunit-styled spine-chiller DIE GLOCKE (ENDSTATION WIENER PLATZ) and retro-romantic audio drama HOTEL NOKI, followed by the hauntingly detached mantra of AKIRA.

Multi-angled police procedural TRYPTICHON NUMMER 7 sees Voigt & Voigt dissecting their own trademark sounds as the end credits slowly start to roll, leading to an excitingly minimalist Synth Pop work-out eventually washed away by final orchester hits full of foreboding. It’s as if the album wants to show you one final, very important picture, and indeed it does with DER LETZTE ZUG, a short ride to the other side of reality, clocking in at just over two minutes, but carrying all the weight of an epic cliffhanger. To be continued, hopefully.

TRACK LISTING

01. Intro König
02. Der Erste Zug
03. Der Keil NRW
04. Tja Mama, Sandra Maischberger
05. Sozial
06. Die Glocke (Endstation Wiener Platz)
07. Hotel Noki
08. Akira
09. Triptychon Nummer 7
10. Der Letzte Zug

Repress! First LP from (then) rising, (now) international supergroup – Voilaaa. The Favourite-backed project of Bruno Patchworks (The Dynamics, Taggy Matcher etc). It sees the insatiable French producer return to his first love and specialty, disco music, focusing this time around at the African and Caribbean influences. Surrounded by a very dynamic music scene, where there is no shortage of artists with African origins, Patchworks decided to work with local singers resulting in a professional level of authenticity.

Featuring collaborations with Renaud Bilombo, and label mates Hawa and Fouley Badiaga, the 10 tracks of the would set the scene as to what was to come – two more star-studded LPs followed and Voilaaa is now a household name for modern disco lovers across the globe. File alongside: Nu Genea, Mystic Jungle and Space Grapes. 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Spies Are Watching Me (feat Sir Jean) (7:13)
2. On Te L'avait Dit (feat Pat Kalla) (6:25)
Side 2
1. Le Disco Des Capitales (feat Pat Kalla) (6:43)
2. Bark (6:24)
Side 3
1. Vampires (feat Hawa & Fouley Badiaga) (5:02)
2. Enlevez-Moi Ca (feat Pat Kalla) (5:16)
3. Jungle Fire (6:19)
Side 4
1. Pas Bon (feat Fouley Badiaga) (6:09)
2. Tomowa (feat Renaud Bilombo) (5:31)
3. Niarela (3:58)

Featuring Grammy Award-winning artist Justin Vernon of Bon Iver on vocals.

‘Repave’ brings Volcano Choir into sharp focus. The glitch-laden, cautious presentation of the band’s previous work serves as points of both reference and departure across these eight songs, the product of growing conviction and trust, of a fully-operational rock band, gifted in shading and nuance, and rumbling with power.

‘Repave’ is the sound of confident musicians extending their reach to anthemic peaks and pulling back to reveal moments of real vulnerability, sure enough of themselves to let them stand on their own.

TRACK LISTING

Tiderays
Acetate
Comrade
Byegone
Alaskans
Dancepack
Keel
Almanac

Featuring Grammy Award-winning artist Justin Vernon of Bon Iver on vocals.

‘Repave’ brings Volcano Choir into sharp focus. The glitch-laden, cautious presentation of the band’s previous work serves as points of both reference and departure across these eight songs, the product of growing conviction and trust, of a fully-operational rock band, gifted in shading and nuance, and rumbling with power.

‘Repave’ is the sound of confident musicians extending their reach to anthemic peaks and pulling back to reveal moments of real vulnerability, sure enough of themselves to let them stand on their own.

TRACK LISTING

Tiderays
Acetate
Comrade
Byegone
Alaskans
Dancepack
Keel
Almanac

Volcano Choir is an assembly of Wisconsinites Jon Mueller, Chris Rosenau, Jim Schoenecker, Daniel Spack, Justin Vernon, and Thomas Wincek. You might find these old friends also frequenting records and stages under different monikers, Collections Of Colonies Of Bees and Bon Iver. The collaboration predates the meteoric rise of Justin Vernon's Bon Iver project, with original songwriting dating back to the summer of 2005, right around the time the Bees first toured with Vernon's previous band DeYarmond Edison.
While entirely a studio record, the collection doesn't suffer from the overburdens of a digital pile up or over-thinking. Rather it breathes and convulses in equal measure, radiating an inherent dynamism found only in the voluntary bondage of intimacy. With influences ranging from David Sylvian and Steve Reich to Mahalia Jackson and Tom Waits, it might be more accurate to say the group's influence is music itself. You can hear it in the care and real love generously applied to each moment of "Unmap". With the vibe of some intimate backwoods gospel, plus a spirit of patience and thoughtful repetition, the music of Volcano Choir is as dynamic as it is lovely.

A calculated hysterical melting pot of This Heat, Robert Wyatt, Faust and The Residents, of musique concrète and ethno-folk, all seen through a prism of theatrical improvisations and unhinged set pieces. Formed in 1995, and after several self-released tapes and CD-Rs, VTB so excited Nurse With Wound´s Steven Stapleton that he brought his United Dairies label out of cold storage to release their first album proper, ”The Inhazer Decline”, in 2000. Since then they´ve released music on such labels as Misra, Beta Lactam Ring, Textile, Digitalis, Pickled Egg, Alt Vinyl as well as their own imprints Volucan and Volfurten with the exceptional ”Classic Erasmus Fusion” from 2006 being a possible highlight.

On record VTB offer stark and stunning absurdities in the most bizarrely beautiful way. Recycling and recontextualising their material is an innate habit, and the variety of recording options they might chose (be it a highly equipped professional studio or a second hand dictaphone) allows their craft to be formed in a myriad of different ways. VTB have toured extensively throughout Europe and North America and in concert they are the duo of Daniel Padden and Aaron Moore. Third member, Clarence Manuelo, no longer performs live but his inimitable sounds and influence are still very much a part of a VTB performance. In their unique, often chaotic live shows, the adrenalin and invention drips from their earlobes as they thrust spectacular oddities in the faces of their audiences, always aided by their sublime multi-instrumentalism. Absurd humour and eclectic ways of producing sounds are characteristic of their live performances and their extensive knowledge of the traditions of experimental and folk music makes the band difficult to categorise. The band record everything they play and will often use these recordings as raw material for their albums. VTB have released a number of records since the start, often mixing studio, live and home recordings. Golden Rhythm/Ink Music is their first more or less ”proper” studio album since ”Amidst The Noise And Twigs” back in 2007.

Largely based on the sonic fault-line between Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden, it´s also the most focused and driven of VTB’s prolific output so far, showcasing the duo’s unique musicality and interplay, whilst retaining their trademark eccentricity and humour throughout. It presents “rock music” as seen through VTB’s skewed eye, featuring more of Padden and Moore’s drum/guitar combination than on previous albums. Taking the bizarre energy of their live duo performances into a studio environment, and combining it with VTB’s eclectic instrumentation and Clarence Manuelo’s singular audio-work, GR/IM shows VTB making their most vital work to date.

"Africa Just Wants To Have Fun" announces the return of Chicago trio Volcano! following a two-year hiatus. The lead single is taken from the band's second album, "Paperwork", set for release on September 1st. Debut album "Beautiful Seizure" was an underground hit in 2006, with Drowned In Sound readers voting it #2 Album Of The Year. "Africa Just Wants To Have Fun", like much of the new material, demonstrates a more playful, immediate side to the band, while clinging to the unpredictability and originality that defines their sound. The song is a razor-sharp satire of certain rock stars who purport to save the world with dubious, self-serving rhetoric. On the flip is "Performance Evaluation Shuffle (Slow Version)", a re-recording of the opening track on "Paperwork". This downbeat quasi-croon reflects a theme of disillusionment in the workplace that runs throughout the album.

Paperwork is the second album by Chicago out-rock trio Volcano! Debut "Beautiful Seizure" was named as #2 Album of 2006 by Drowned in Sound readers, and attracted a 10/10 review on the DiS site. Fresh from a two year hiatus the band have a created a much more mature and direct record than their debut. The characteristically complex layering of sounds is still evident, but with greater focus and structure, and more danceable than ever before. "Paperwork" deals with workplace issues, loss of idealism and a coming of age story - frontman Aaron With is a man with something worth saying. The album will be packaged in a superbly designed digipak, up to the usual Leaf standards. Will appeal to fans of Dirty Projectors, Deerhoof, Why?, Liars, and Battles.

Almost four years in the making, Chicago trio Volcano! have delivered the long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s celebrated Paperwork album. Their outstanding third offering, Piñata, is well worth the wait - by any measure it's their best yet.

Piñata is the sound of volcano! past distilled into a most potent formula for the present: unsparingly concise, stickily melodic, lyrically stronger and stranger, darkly humorous, ferociously driven, fabulously inventive. Clocking in at just over 40 minutes, the album has an aggressive energy that’s as exciting as it is unpredictable. It’s leaner and meaner than its predecessors, with the themes behind the songs drawn from more familiar sources. “They're mainly based on weird fantasies,” says frontman Aaron With. “Our goal was to tell stories with strange but universal sentiments.”

The fantasies that form the foundations for certain songs are hardly commonplace musings on love and life. ‘Child Star’ imagines its protagonist (re)born with all the skills and experience of a previous life, gaining competitive advantage over a helpless peer group. ‘St. Mary Of Nazareth’ takes the listener on a tour of a spaceship disguised as Catholic hospital, where the nurses are nuns, and the nuns are aliens. Lead single ‘Piñata’ is a petty vision of posthumous karmic retribution, while ‘Fighter’, the album’s dramatic centrepiece, is a violent revenge fantasy set to music. But while the songs can be complex conceptually, the incisive compositions ensure they effortlessly get under your skin.

More immediate than anything the trio has crafted before, it makes perfect sense that at the time of writing Piñata, volcano! were indulging themselves on radio hits alongside a steady diet of music from the outer reaches of the spectrum. Meanwhile the band has lost none of the playful, idiosyncratic elements that make them unique. “We kept the weird energy, the melodic tension, and the neurotic rhythm,” says With, “but we’ve made the framework a little more decipherable.” Not a second is wasted as volcano! gleefully take a baseball bat to musical convention in the name of great pop.

Aaron With (vocals, guitar), Sam Scranton (drums, percussion) and Mark Cartwright (synths, bass) formed volcano! in 2003, and have stockpiled critical acclaim since the beginning. Their debut album Beautiful Seizure (2005) was awarded 10/10 by Drowned in Sound and was dubbed the “soundtrack to the Bible” by Fader; Paperwork garnered four stars in Mojo and Uncut, and the video for ‘Africa Just Wants To Have Fun’ has notched up 200,000 views. The two albums have become cult favourites among those fortunate enough to hear them, and the sense of anticipation for Piñata is palpable.

TRACK LISTING

1. A1. Piñata
2. A2. So Many Lemons
3. A3. Child Star
4. A4. Platebreaker
5. A5. Danceman
6. B1. Fighter
7. B2. St. Mary Of Nazareth
8. B3. Supply And Demand
9. B4. Long Gone

Joe Volk is a solo artist from Bristol, England now based in Bern, Switzerland. He was one of the first musicians signed to Invada records, headed by Portishead's Geoff Barrow, and has had over 13 releases on the label. Joe Volk was the original singer and lyricist in the band Crippled Black Phoenix, and was signed to Domino Publishing with Justin Greaves as sole songwriters of the band. After six studio albums, one live album and several EP's, Volk left the group to focus his energy on his solo material. He was also the original singer and lyricist with hard rock band Gonga, one of the first bands signed to Invada.

On the new album, Volk worked closely with the Emmy nominated composer Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow (the songwriting partnership behind the soundtrack to Alex Garland's 2015 film 'Ex Machina'), with both being credited as additional producers along with Volk. The album was mixed by Joe Volk and Jim Barr (Portishead / Get The Blessing), as well as the musician and artist Leafcutter John. The album features the three producers, along with Jim Barr, Billy Fuller (Robert Plant, BEAK>), Adrian Utley (Portishead), Mark Ophidian (US / Animals With Machinery), Guy Metcalfe (Thought Forms), Leafcutter John, Luke Harney (Typesun) and a collection of other musicians, all active in the Bristol music scene.

The spectrum of the album is broad, ranging from low-fi acoustic pieces featuring subtle analogue electronics from Ophidian and instrumentation from Salisbury, to more realised tracks, layered with Volks harmonies and intricate guitar work with backing from Fuller and Barrow, who constitute the rhythm section of the band Beak>. There is a track featuring a full orchestral score by Ben Salisbury, played by the Bristol Ensemble Orchestra, with a haunting accompaniment by Volk on acoustic guitar and voice, and then, again in contrast, there are tracks at 120 BMP with programmed drums, bass, analogue synths, electric guitars, samples and electronics, with Volk pushing his voice to new extremes for his solo work. This is an album with a broad scope of sounds, styles and influences, yet it manages to translate into a cohesive body of work. The common thread running throughout is the instantly recognisable guitar playing and voice of Volk, which is uniquely complemented by the different musicianship that is bought to each track from the wide array of artists from different genres that he worked with.

After leaving Crippled Black Phoenix in 2013, Volk teamed up with the experimental Japanese band Boris to release a split 12" EP. Volk wrote, recorded and produced his tracks, and the EP was released to widespread critical acclaim. He toured the UK and Europe with Boris, and since this tour, he has been completing work on his new album in Switzerland. Volk is also a composer, having written scores for independent European and British short films. He has had his material used by the BBC, HBO and had commissions from National Geographic. Volk contributed music to the Academy Award nominated documentary on Bristol street artist Banksy, entitled "Exit Through The Gift Shop". 

'Inland finds Vollebekk baring his soul and achieving a deep poignancy [and] effortlessly transcends the singer-songwriter paradigm'. - EYE (Canada****).

For fans of: Patrick Watson, Joanna Newsom, Devandra Banhardt. A visit to his Plateau apartment in Montreal reveals an endless collection of records from Bob Dylan to Ray Charles. An avid fan of vinyl, Leif wrote half the songs for his own, "Inland", while studying Icelandic and Philosophy in Reykjavik, Iceland. The other half were written upon his return home to Montreal, Canada, where he recorded and self-produced the debut album a short time later at Montreal's Breakglass studio (Wolf Parade, Patrick Watson, Besnard Lakes). Arranged and orchestrated entirely by Leif, "Inland" is primarily centred around Leif’s acoustic guitar and story-telling, featuring string quartets on occasion, piano at times, and splashes of harmonica and drums. Vollebekk, a multi-instrumentalist, is often seen performing solo, playing the violin on stage, using loop-samplers for accompaniment and then switching to electric or acoustic guitars to create a sound similar to the album, but an entirely different experience

TRACK LISTING

1. In The Morning
2. You Couldn’t Lie To Me In Paris
3. In The Midst Of Blue And Green
4. Michael Robartes & The Dancer
5. Quebec
6. Northernmost Eva Maria
7. A Dozen Mares
8. 1921
9. Don’t Go To Klaksvik
10. Ladyland

Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, Leif Vollebekk is a multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter known for his somber, melancholy pop songs that capture the themes of yearning, long-lost love, and adventure. During his childhood and teens, he discovered the music of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Lou Reed whilst also discovering a connection with the writings and works of Beat Generation authors Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski. Having tried his hand at a multitude of instruments, he was initially interested in composition and shaping a song, rather than the lyrics; that is, until he heard Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate." With a newfound obsession for illustrating stories and images with words, he sought to expand upon his creative abilities and headed to Iceland to discover his Nordic roots

TRACK LISTING

1. Southern United States
2. Off The Main Drag
3. Cairo Blues
4. Photographer Friend
5. At The End Of The Line
6. A Wildfire Took Down Rosenberg
7. Takk Somuleidis
8. Pallbearer Blues
9. When The Subway Comes Above The Ground
10. From The Fourth