One track single from Manchester's The Exports, there sound has been described by Manchestermusic.co.uk as 'Pulsating, post punk rock'.

The fourth Express Rising LP (and second featuring the expanded lineup of William Suran and Kevin Blagg, in addition to leader Dante Carfagna) finds the trio largely eschewing percussion in favor of twelve concise, three-minute-or-so-long bittersweet excursions that nevertheless retain the restrained, measured, and highly melodic scaffolding of their previous work. There’s more than a bit of Santo & Johnny at their most somnambulant here, slightly glazed, definitely reverb’d out, mysteriously bottling the flaring, saturated light of the desert at dusk.

TRACK LISTING

A
1. Smooth False Foxglove
2. Canary Folded
3. Area Man
4. Drawing Of A Lake
5. Mansion
6. Asunder

B
1. Focus Puller
2. No Trace Of You
3. Unfamiliar Lights
4. Pass From View
5. The Apache Door
6. Touch Of Goodbye

Originally released as a 4x7" box in 1983.

First time on vinyl LP.

With all original artwork, A2 poster and 16- page photo-booklet.

"This package continues the dance of the dispossessed, with a thick atmospheric reconstruction of a factory’s death... The ultimate urban blues, a soundtrack that sounds like a manic collision between Neubauten and the Gang Of Four.Hammer hard beats with an ever present human touch throb along mechanically. Man and machine in perfect harmony you might say..”

Latest offering from Amsterdam's experimental anarcho-punk legends. This one is engineered by Steve Albini who stamps his authority and sound all over this release.

Originally released in 1982, History Is What's Happening features one of the most harrowing title/cover art combinations in recent memory. What at first glance looks like a firing squad is, upon closer inspection, a concentration camp orchestra. On their second album, The Ex advance into a distinctly more post-punk style: textural guitar shards and tumbling motorik drumming with Bas Masbeck's thunderous bass shouldering much of the melodic load. These twenty songs are a quick-moving and caustic trip, a DIY studio rendition of the band's explosive live set from this era. History Is What's Happening remains an important signpost in the history of both Ex-evolution and the cataclysmic '80s. With their sophomore LP, the group would put Holland on the underground music map. Indeed, many now-lifelong fans around the world were just beginning to take notice and get down with the mighty Ex. This first-time vinyl reissue comes with 23" x 16" poster and 24-page booklet. 

Eye Flys brings together the minds of four musicians known for their work in some of the most extreme, blistering bands today. The quartet was initially started by Full Of Hell guitarist Spencer Hazard and former Backslider drummer Patrick Forrest as an outlet to play aggressive music with equal intensity that would contrast the breakneck speeds of their other projects. After asking Backslider bassist Jake Smith to join on guitar and vocals and Triac’s Kevin Bernsten on bass, Eye Flys’ potential for crafting impossibly heavy songs was solidified.

Eye Flys’ debut ‘Context’ was written and recorded just a few short months from the band’s inception, drawing on each members’ considerable experience and driven by the excitement of playing in uncharted territory. This is an album of commanding, lean noise rock absolutely brimming with vitriol.

The direct, raw energy of Eye Flys’ music is simultaneously menacing and intoxicating. Drawing immediate comparisons to bands like Unsane, Cherubs and The Melvins (where they take their name), the quartet’s bludgeoning sound is underpinned by a razor sharp edge. Smith’s vicious lyrics are paralleled by his unrelenting barks with passages like the opening of ‘Weaponize’ literally spat through grinding teeth. Their taut, muscular riffing and pummelling drums lay atop a foundation of deceptively intricate arrangements.

Eye Flys’ ‘Context’ stands as a testament to its members’ abilities to produce music that is as ferocious as it is addictive. In just six songs Eye Flys not only prove their place among their peers but stand out as a force of sheer, immovable power.

TRACK LISTING

Stems
Dosed
Crushing Of The Human
Spirit
Weaponize
The Triumph Of Hagbard Celine
Fuckface

Eye Flys are a quintessential Philadelphian band whose aggressive brand of noise rock is leading a wave of bands that harken back to classic era AmRep noise rock. Their rage is palpable and their wit is biting. Eye Flys are unsparingly heavy, driven by the colossal rhythm section of bassist Kevin Bernsten and drummer Patrick Forrest. Vocalist / guitarist Jake Smith delivers sharp humour with a healthy dose of venom and bile with each bestial growl while his dirty riffs roar at you.

Recorded by Bernsten at his own Developing Nations studio (Full of Hell, Integrity, Jarhead Fertilizer) and J Robbins’ The Magpie Cage, the band’s self-titled album features artwork drawn by artist and drummer John Herndon (Tortoise), known for his singular drawings and his band’s iconic ‘TNT’ cover. Eye Flys wades deeper into the muck and mire of modern living to take an unflinching look at the horrors of late-stage capitalism and offer a caustic remedy for its ravages.

Expanding on their bludgeoning debut ‘Tub of Lard’, ‘Eye Flys’ is lean and aggressive, fast and unforgiving. ‘Trepanation Summer’’s ferocious riffs bore directly into the skull, mimicking the crude pressure release of the ancient surgical process of the same name, Smith crying to “release the pressure” from within a wall of feedback. ‘Sleep Forever’ throws down a thrashing, infernal groove, demolishing all in its path as Smith’s craggy guitar figures rise like toxic smoke from the devastation. ‘Draining Pus’ revels in septic sludge, while ‘Bananarchy Zoo’ manages to strip things down to an even more lean and incisive realization of the trio’s punishing sonic palette, in an exploration of Smith’s love / hate relationship with his Florida roots.

Eye Flys offers a reassuring reminder that you haven’t gone mad and you’re not alone - that weird ‘n’ heavy music is still here as a respite from the madness of modern living and an outlet for righteous rage.

TRACK LISTING

Trepanation Summer
Sleep Forever
Tuck & Roll
Draining Pus
Feeding Regression
What’s That Behind Your Ear?
Tear Away Face Plaster
Bananarchy Zoo

In just over a year since their initial inception, Eye Flys have established themselves as a force beyond reckoning. Their debut full-length ‘Tub of Lard’ is stunningly potency full of piss and vinegar, scientific in its ability to pulverize everything in its path. Due in part to the considerable pedigree of the band’s line- up (including members of Full of Hell, Backslider, Triac), the East Coast-based quartet chew through steel-barbed riffs and off-kilter rhythms with exponential force. Their 2019 debut EP ‘Context’ set an early precedent for just how lean and ruthless they can be. On ‘Tub of Lard’, Eye Flys launch that potential into 10 songs of maximum impact that find both raw power and subtlety in their simplicity.

For fans of Unsane, Cherubs, The Melvins.

TRACK LISTING

Tubba Lard
Guillotine
Predator And Prey
Not Ready For Tomorrow
Reality Tunnel
Nice Guy
Chapel Perilous
Extraterrestrial Memoradum
BLS
Perception Is Gamble

EYE – the new band from Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard (MWWB) singer-songwriter/musician Jessica Ball – has announced the arrival of their eagerly awaited debut album, 'Dark Light’.

"These songs have been many years in the making... Some of these ideas were crafted before MWWB, this is something I've always wanted to do. Over the last couple of years, I’ve spent some time on finishing and crafting these ideas and pieces of music into songs. Some were snippets of lyrics from my early twenties which reflect on what seems like a different person. I think it’s quite poetic how it’s all come together now.

I was also encouraged after finding musicians who understood the vision and style I was trying to achieve, and of course my experience of being in MWWB. I’m a guitarist above all, and I loved reconnecting with guitar again. It feels like all my influences and favourite styles have come together in this album. Shoegaze, doom, folk, dream pop... It’s a real mix bag but as a whole, it represents many different stages of my life and tells a story.

The album ultimately is quite introspective yet lyrically loose enough to be open to interpretation – I’ve always been a fan of songs that seem to perfectly slot into the situation I’m experiencing and not too specific to one person's experience... I think that comes across in this album.”

Jessica relocated from Wrexham to join her new partner, veteran Welsh musician Gid Goundrey (Gulp, Ghostlawns, Martin Carr), in Cardiff just as the pandemic era dawned. Confined to their small Grangetown flat, they quite naturally began making music together.

Having earned acclaim and a fervent fan following for her role in MWWB, Ball took the opportunity to compose songs that were all her own – nuanced, lyrical, and hypnotically distinctive.

Triggered in part by the existential dread looming outside as well as the sudden ill health of her dear friend, MWWB guitarist Paul “Dave” Davies, then fighting for life after a Covid-related stroke.

With Goundrey on drums (for the first time in his musical career) and joined by keyboardist Johnny TK, Eye experimented with sounds to match Ball’s melodic songs, traversing a diverse spectrum of dark folk, dreampop, IDM and psychedelic doom, to create sometimes heavy and foreboding drones, alongside spare but still richly textured sonics.

The result is their debut album ‘Dark Light’. An intensely atmospheric fusion of emotionally charged songcraft and inspired sonic energy. The clue is in the album's paradoxical title. Chilling and even bleak melodies with arrangements daringly and deliberately stripped down and minimal. Revealing a kinship with sonic bed-fellows Mazzy Star, Chelsea Wolfe or even Portishead.

Songs like “The Other Sees”, “Respair”, "See Yourself" are chameleonic and commanding, wielding snaky, chiming guitar back to back with fuzzed out riffs.

Vocal melodies may be sweet but melancholic, amidst tightly contrasted spatial dimensions, and Ball’s signature vocals are at the forefront, sometimes soaring but also with a heart of darkness.

Of the two ‘heavier’ numbers “In Your Night,” slowly builds to a brooding fuzz-groove like a down-tuned Yo La Tengo until a huge space-doom riffs carries you home while with "See Yourself" the contrast from folk delicacy to tripped out sub-bass fuzz riffage is astounding.

So, whilst not strictly speaking ‘Doom’ or ‘Metal’ fans of Jessica’s previous work with MWWB will not be disappointed. Along with producer Chris Fielding (MWWB, Conan) EYE have produced something otherworldly, which is at times heavy and epic, yet still deeply intimate and dark.

A striking debut.

TRACK LISTING

1. Window
2. Dark Light
3. The Other Sees
4. In Your Night
5. In The Sun Eternally
6. Respair
7. Out Of Sight
8. Stillness
9. See Yourself
10. Rescue You

Eyedress returns with a new album, 'Let's Skip To The Wedding' - a loved up remedy for uncertain times. Eyedress is an LA based Filipino singer, musician and producer. 'Let's Skip To The Wedding' is his first album since relocating from Manila to the US in late 2018. A passionate exploration of the themes of love, adjusting to life in a new city, and preparing to welcome a child into this ever changing world. His unique songwriting pairs lovesick lyrics with infectious guitar hooks & his trademark, cold wave inspired, woozy synths.

The album follows his Valentine's Day single, which was championed by Mike D on his Beats 1 show, and 2019's 'Jealous' EP, whose title track has grown to become his most popular to date. Over the past year Eyedress began collaborating with kindred spirits like Cuco, Triathalon and Inner Wave, and earned a reputation for his wild and unpredictable performances.
He’s shared stages with acts like Homeshake, Enjoy, Jasper Bones, N8NOFACE and B Cool Aid, as well as supporting Inner Wave on their 13 date west coast tour. His last album 'Sensitive G' was a personal reflection of Manila life told through the music of his youth; dreampop, punk & indie rock. In 2017 he released his debut album 'Manila Ice', a record about love and survival in the Philippines. Eyedress has previously collaborated with King Krule, VRITRA, Fazerdaze and Jess Connelly.

TRACK LISTING

1. Let's Skip To The Wedding
2. Skateboarding Day
3. Never Want To Be Apart
4. Can I See You Tonight?
5. Romantic Lover
6. X-Girl
7. I Don't Wanna Be Your Friend
8. Jealous
9. Last Time I'm Falling In Love
10. Pop The Question
11. Happy Hour
12. Trauma
13. My Girl The Finest
14. Never Been To Prom
15. Mystical Creature's Best Friend
16. Pick Up Your Phone
17. Self Improvement
18. Kiss Me Like It's The Last Time
19. Anything For You

Portland, Oregon’s Eyelids existed long before the actual band came to be. Friends for over two decades, principal songwriters John Moen and Chris Slusarenko had long desired to get together to write songs, “sweet melodies” paired with “bummer vibes,” which would fuse Big Star’s jangle to XTC’s melodicism, connecting the dots between the dream pop sounds of the ’80s Paisley Underground to the homespun post-punk of the legendary Flying Nun label.

For years, Moen and Slusarenko played and wrote in the company of some of the most legendary songwriters of indie rock including Robert Pollard(Guided by Voices),Stephen Malkmus(Pavement / Jicks),Colin Meloy (The Decemberists) and Elliott Smith. In 2014 they decided that it was time to finally start writing and recording together, adding the talents of guitarist/vocalist Jonathan Drews (Sunset Valley, Damien Jurado). The end result was their thirteen-song debut album, 854, which gained positive notes from A/V Club, Brooklyn Vegan, BBC6 Radio and MOJO magazine. NPR called them “Portland’s best kept secret.” With Or, the band’s second full-length LP, they’ve created a more emotional record. Produced by Peter Buck of R.E.M. and mixed by Thom Monahan (Peter, Bjorn and John, Devandra Banhart, Fruit Bats), the album is liberally sprinkled with the hooks, melodies, and charming wordplay that make a certain kind of rock and roll fan fall madly in love.

Joined by guests Jay Gonzales (Drive-By Truckers), Jonathan Segel (Camper Van Beethoven) and Buck himself, the record demonstrates what happens when a group of old friends get into a room and truly collaborate. This is the sound of a band realizing its potential, of old friends connecting creatively and sonically, creating exuberant, nuanced, pop music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Slow It Goes
2. Camelot
3. Falling Eyes
4. Tell Me You Know
5. My Caved In Mind
6. Ghost Ghost Ghost
7. 23 (Years)
8. (I Will) Leave With You
9. Don?t (Please) Come Around
10. Moony
11. You Know I Gotta Reason
12. Furthest Blue

On The Accidental Falls, Portland Oregon's Eyelids, one of rock's best-kept secrets, step firmly out from the considerable shadow cast by the band members' second-to-none pedigrees earned from time spent in Guided By Voices, The Decemberists, Stephen Malkmus and Elliott Smith's bands. Produced by REM iconoclast Peter Buck who also plays on the record with Tucker Martine (Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Neko Case) and Heba Kadry (Deerhunter, Bjork) who mixed and mastered the record respectively. Eyelids' fourth album finds the outfit as both stewards of a classic sound (Alex Chiltonites and disciples of early REM or later XTC will fall hard for this project) and accomplished artists propelling their craft to thrilling new heights.

Eyes of Others is the studio alias of Edinburgh based John Bryden, a self-christened ‘post-pub couldn’t get in the club’ producer.

Having announced their signing to Heavenly Recordings last November with the release of a 10” vinyl-only 6-track EP, Bewitched By The Flames, which sold out immediately through independent shops and mail order, Eyes Of Others is now set to present their debut, self-titled album.

Marrying the anything-goes, freestyle magpie tendencies of Beck and The Beta Band to the electronic stylings of primetime 80s New Order by way of the spacious moods conjured by King Tubby, Eyes of Others debut’s whimsical demeanour is the perfect sonic balm to the utter confusion of the outside world. As is its sense of almost Balearic musical freedom. Such a mindset is fundamental to the music according to Bryden.

“I was thinking where’s my spot?” Bryden reflects about the pick & mix quality of the album. “The music is later than a gig but it’s not full-on early morning club fare. It’s the in-between space where I was imagining where my music works.”

But his beguiling tunes are perfect for the music soundtracking the afters too. As the dawn breaks and the sun begins to rise. “Maybe there aren’t enough venues opening at 7am!” he laughs, before quickly adding: “I don’t think it will catch on unfortunately.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Eyes of Others is, basically, the musical alias for Edinburgh based artist, John Bryden. Even though it’s on the mighty Heavenly Records, this summer release has remained pretty much under the radar. But, not in our shop it hasn’t! This is a dreamy whimsical, electronic pop record that floats around and drifts all over the musical landscape. Heavenly describe it themselves as “Pure musical freedom” and if you could imagine a sound palette which includes dub, synth, techno and folk then you’d be halfway there. It’s delightfully elusive but Bryden depicts his sound as kind of “later than a gig, but not full-on early morning club fare. It’s the inbetween space.” I’m gonna say, it sounds like the Beta Band jamming with Peaking Lights over The Stone Roses’ “Something’s Burning” around at Arthur Russell’s flat. Have some of that!

TRACK LISTING

Once, Twice, Thrice
Safehouse
Escalation
At Home I Am A Leader
New Hair New Me
Ego Hit
Mother Father
Jargon Jones And Jones
Come Inside
Big Companies, Large Tentacles 

Synergy in motion, London five-piece Ezra Collective are proving themselves as a harmonious tour de force. Their sound nods respectfully to a classic jazz footprint, celebrating the originators whilst simultaneously carving a path solely their own. Ezra Collective marry the delicate technicalities of jazz musicianship with afrobeat and hip hop, tied together by a sound that’s unmistakably London. Their live show is one of dynamic union; the strength of their partnership shines in performances that are commanding yet sensitive, soulful and pertinently groove-laced. Following a joyous and stunningly cohesive show in May 2016, Boiler Room rightly labelled the group as “pioneering the new-wave of U.K. jazz”. As the genre enjoys a new lease of life that is gaining momentum across the country, Ezra Collective are adding their own fresh and imaginative face to a style that continues to be “as entertaining as it is educational” (Trench). In a year that saw them sell out legendary London venue Ronnie Scott’s not once but twice, 2017 also bought with it the release of their genre-bending second EP, Juan Pablo: The Philosopher . After Ezra Collective took the EP on a successful tour across the U.K and Europe and completely sold out of the vinyl, Juan Pablo: The Philosopher went on to win the accolade of Best Jazz Album at Gilles Peterson’s esteemed Worldwide Awards in January 2018.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Absolutely loving this album at the moment! This London quartet take classic hard bop style and infuse it with afrobeat, funk and hip hop. The result is a fresh, dynamic sound that perfectly marries the old and the new.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Juan Pablo
3. Dylan's Dilemma
4. The Philosopher
5. People In Trouble
6. James Speaks To The Galaxy
7. Space Is The Place

Ezra Collective’s new era, a venture in discovered maturity and raised stakes, will be defined by the anticipated second album.

'Where I’m Meant To Be' is a thumping celebration of life, an affirming elevation in the Ezra Collective’s winding hybrid sound and refined collective character. The songs marry cool confidence with bright energy. Full of call-and-response conversations between their ensemble parts, a natural product of years improvising together on-stage, the album - which also features Sampa The Great, Kojey Radical, Emile Sandé, Steve McQueen, and Nao - will light up sweaty dance floors and soundtrack dinner parties in equal measure.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Infusing afrobeat, funk, dub and hip hop into their jazz foundation, Ezra Collective bring the party once again. They’ve thrown in a little Latin flavour and a whole heap of guest musicians this time around too. Where I’m Meant To Be is a shot of pure feel good energy and you can’t fail to be swept up in their positive vibrations. Sooooo good!

TRACK LISTING

1. Life Goes On (feat. Sampa The Great)
2. Victory Dance
3. No Confusion (feat. Kojey Radical)
4. Welcome To My World
5. Togetherness
6. Ego Killah
7. Smile
8. Live Strong
9. Siesta (feat. Emeli Sandé)
10. Words By Steve
11. Belonging
12. Never The Same Again
13. Words By TJ
14. Love In Outer Space (feat. Nao)

"Juan Pablo: The Philosopher" has been one of our favourite releases here at Piccadilly in recent years, so we were utterly buzzing to hear word of a new LP from the mighty Ezra Collective. Soon enough the London five-piece furnished us with a promo CD, and it's been on the Piccadilly player ever since. Continuing the genre-bending journey they began on "Juan Pablo", "You Can't Steal My Joy" sees the ensemble apply their incredible musicianship to elements of Afrobeat, hip-hop, grime and dub, wrapping their diverse influences into their fearless, fun and contemporary take on jazz. If you needed any further evidence of their top tier credentials, they recently broke off from a sold out, mosh-pit-filled UK tour to play at Quincy Jones' birthday party - nuff respect. This is the jazz sound of 2019 folks - get joyful.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Contemporary Jazz 5-piece Ezra Collective have encapsulated joy in record form, and you can feel the happiness radiating through the tracks here, especially “Chris And Jane” and “Quest For Coin”. My record of the year by far, Afro-beat meets Jazz meets Hip Hop makes for a glorious combination to put you in an upbeat mood.

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1
SIDE A
1. Space Is The Place (Reprise)
2. Why You Mad?
3. Red Whine
4. Quest For Coin

SIDE B
1. Reason In Disguise Feat. Jorja Smith
2. What Am I To Do? Feat. Loyle Carner
3. Chris And Jane

DISC 2
SIDE C
1. People Saved
2. Philosopher II

SIDE D
1. São Paulo
2. King Of The Jungle
3. You Can't Steal My Joy
4. Shakara Feat. KOKOROKO

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

4 Track EP on limited double gatefold 7" vinyl.

When EZTV lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Ezra Tenenbaum sings, “Facedown on the concrete, While I dream of wider streets” on ‘States Of Confusion’ you can hear weariness in his voice and a touch of wistful ‘what if’ longing for more room, a little less hassle, a few more trees... maybe even a garage to park the 8-track machine.

The shining ‘High Flying Faith’ - the first song written for the album - is a refutation of urban weariness, its title perhaps acting as a makeshift motto for the optimism (and stubbornness) that is key to New York bands like EZTV. Inspired by the lyrics of ‘Broken Heart’ by Skip Spence, it’s a 12-string-propelled nugget that best shows how EZTV operate: toeing the line between past and present, with a keen ear for left-of-the-dial experimentation that never lets the songs hew too far into pastiche and genre nostalgia.

Many of the band’s foundational inspirations - the Feelies’ upstart jangle, the upside-down pop architecture of Arthur Russell’s power pop band The Necessaries, Shoes’ aching harmonies - are back in play on ‘High In Place’, their sophomore album, though new instruments and feels abound throughout. Produced and engineered by the band themselves, a baby grand piano rings and 12-string acoustic guitars shimmer throughout the album, recalling the cleareyed production techniques of Jeff Lynne.

Taking advantage of tour stopovers, trips to attend weddings, or even just commandeering someone’s vacation for a few days, EZTV invited some likeminds and fellow songwriters into the studio - Jenny Lewis, Chris Cohen, Martin Courtney and Matt Kallman of Real Estate, John Andrews of Quilt, Nic Hessler and Mega Bog - to guest on ‘High In Place’.

Aptly recorded on a tape machine purchased from a Lower East Side Studio that was going out of business, in a space where the New York City skyline both loomed and inspired through its glass windows, ‘High In Place’ is an album of golden pop songs worthy of any era.

“Low on drama but high on seemingly effortless jangle pop brilliance, [debut] ‘Calling Out’ feels like a long-lost classic and an exciting discovery.” - All Music

TRACK LISTING

High Flying Faith
Racing Country
Reason To Run
Clear
States Of Confusion
Hammock
Temporary Gold
Still
How Long’s It Gonna Be
Goodbye Morning

The French feel good maestros over at Treasure, dig up another haul of glorious gold for ears to wrap around. F.R dusts off the goods on this find, delivering three functional and fearsome reworks of certifiable classic cuts, that will have the dancefloor in the palm of your hands.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Muddy
B1. Stronger Than Pride
B2. Nothin Can Come

The French feel-good maestros over at Treasure, dig up another pair of gems from the vaults. This time F.R delivers two more killer reworks of certified classic cuts, that will have the dancefloor in the palm of your hands, anytime of year.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Pearls
B1. Makes Me Wonder

The Treasure team keep digging and uncovered another pair of gems. More reworked classic tracks from F.R. for today’s more select dancefloors.

Continuer à danser.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Georgie Porgy
B1. Paradise

Continuing their quest, the Treasure team has unearthed another enchanting bunch of gems. Introducing a new compilation of revamped classic tracks from F.R, meticulously tailored to meet the refined preferences of today's dance connoisseurs.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Canny Hot (Vocal)
A2. Canny Hot (Dub)
B1. Delicated
B2. Daddy’s Face

The seven-track album finds the duo unexpectedly exploring a dub influenced universe, though in truth it’s one already familiar to both. F.S.Blumm, for instance, is co-founder of Quasi Dub Development, whose 2014 album, Little-Twister vs Stiff-Neck, featured Lady Ann and Lee Scratch Perry, while Frahm’s music – not least 2018’s All Melody – has occasionally betrayed a fondness for the form’s associated studio techniques, though he concedes wryly that his approach has always been “a little bit more German” than his influences.

F.S.Blumm, a revered mainstay of the German underground for over two decades, and Nils Frahm, who’s enjoyed significant success in recent years with his ground-breaking compositions for piano and synths, first met in the early 2000s. Frahm was a big fan of Blumm’s 2001 album, Mondkuchen – he refers to his fellow Berlin resident admiringly these days as “a vital brick in the Berlin Wall” – while Blumm was soon dazzled by Frahm’s studio set up. “Compared to mine,” he says, “it was like a space ship!” Soon they were working together on a variety of projects – including theatre pieces and animated films – and by 2010 they’d released their first collaborative album, Music For Lovers Music Versus Time. A second, Music For Wobbling Music Versus Gravity, followed in 2013, and a third, Tag Eins Tag Zwei, in 2016.

2X1=4 is very different to its predecessors, but its final track, ‘Neckrub’, first took shape as they wound up work on Tag Eins Tag Zwei. “We had a certain sound in the back of our heads,” Blumm recalls, “which was influenced by these 80s rhythm machines, and we suddenly discovered a common love for dub.” Most of the new album, therefore, was initially developed in 2016 during improvisation sessions recorded by Frahm to two-track cassette. “It was like we were running a combine harvester,” Blumm laughs, “so we could write our names on a single grain!”

Afterwards, they worked on editing and overdubs in Frahm’s new studio at Berlin’s legendary Funkhaus. “We kept on making new songs out of these sessions and starting over and over again,” Frahm smiles. “It was a process that was time consuming but really fun.” Not that either of them is eager to claim a purist approach. “I love ending up somewhere where I’m surprised by myself or the machine or the person with whom I’m making music,” Blumm concludes, while Frahm emphasises that, “None of this is too serious. The record is only as much of a dub record as the ones before are jazz records…”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Blumm & Frahm have worked together before a couple times resulting in a number of excellent outings for Sonic Pieces, but this time sees the talented duo explore more dubby landscapes, with deep basses and electronic blips, wonderfully inventive and brilliantly immersive.

TRACK LISTING

Desert Mule
Presidential Tub
Puddle Drop
Buddy Hop
Sarah & Eve
Raw Chef
Neckrub

Mainly instrumental album from these legendary Peel faves. For fans of Kranky / Payola etc.

Fuck-Off Machete are the latest beautiful new animal born from the fertile Glasgow scene. Quick on the draw and a force to be reckoned with, they formed in 2003 after the demise of bassist & vocalist Natasha Noramlys previous band Ganger (Domino), and began recording their debut album a mere three months after inception. Fuck-Off Machete's music is as strong as it is catchy, displaying a stripped-back and raw three-piece dynamic. Fractious guitars flanked by mighty bass and solid rhythms propel the centrepiece of vocals simultaneously both innocent and commanding. Descriptions such as 'noise-pop' do little to describe the pulverising hooks and seductive stage presence, and references such as Sonic Youth, Polvo, and Joy Division will still leave you unprepared.

After many delays, Sorcerer is please as punch to finally reissue the debut LP from 1987 by Milwaukee space-rock gods, F/i: Why Not Now?… Alan! Available for the first time on the format since its initial release, it remains a Holy Grail item for lovers of cosmic rock & roll sounds from Underground Amerika in the 1980s. F/i had been churning out tape upon tape of experimental electronics since the early ‘80s. Influenced by Krautrock (particularly Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel) and the harsh noise of Industrialists Throbbing Gristle and early SPK, by the mid ‘80s they morphed into a fully-fledged “rock” band, albeit one incorporating all of the above. This LP is the perfect synthesis of these sounds: grimy, lo-fi ‘rock’ with elements of industrial clang and extended, Hawkwind-ish space-rock jams; from the two-step cosmic churn of “Electric Waltz” to the ‘Neubauten-style bang & bash of “Zombie Theme”. Remastered by Mikey Young, the sleeve perfectly replicating the original, our edition is a limited edition of 500 copies.

'I'm not here to change your mind about Dusty Springfield or Shostakovich or Tupac Shakur or synthpop. I'm here to change your mind about your mind.' There are countless books on music with much analysis given to musicians, bands, eras and/or genres. But rarely does a book delve into what's going on inside us when we listen.

Michel Faber explores two big questions: how we listen to music and why we listen to music. To answer these he considers biology, age, illness, the notion of 'cool', commerce, the dichotomy between 'good' and 'bad' taste and, through extensive interviews with musicians, unlocks some surprising answers. From the award-winning author of The Crimson Petal and the White and Under the Skin, this curious and celebratory book reflects Michel Faber's lifelong obsession with music of all kinds.

Listen will change your relationship with the heard world.

With engineer / producer Alex Newport and Fat Mike on production duties Fabulous Disaster are charged up and ready to steal your underwear with an all-out punk rock "Panty Raid!". 14 songs that are true to the band's gritty live sound, while retaining their knack for melody and hooks. Fabulous Disaster are up there with other women bands like The Donnas and The Distillers.

All girl band on Pink & Black : torn fishnet stockings tattoos and punk-fire. They play tighter than an elephant-sized cork shoved in a gnat's arse! It's all about the devastation and the smeared lipstick! Touring and more tattoos to follow.

"How To Ruin Everything" sees Face To Face reaffirm their status as one of the 1990s new-punk trailblazers who have often been cited by bands like Blink 182 and the Alkaline Trio as major influences. Trever Keith, Scott Shiflett and Pete Parada formed as a trio in 1991 with a passion for old skool punk rock and this direct, no nonsense approach is there to be heard on this 2002 punk epistle.

New look. New season. New in. New frock. New ideas. By new graduates and bedroom designers. Celebrated here. The future of fashion across 40 pages. New for you. In the new issue of THE FACE.⁠

The Face returns with the best stories, talent, fashion and photography in the world.

Volume 1, issue 1 aappeared back in 1980; today the original style magazine continues to sahre the best stories, culture, talent, fashion, photography and design in the world. A no-brow bounty of film, sports, sex, drugs, pop and politics. 

Starring Halle Bailey, Ewan Mitchell, RXK Nephew, fisherman Chris Yates and loads of dogs. 

Starring... Charli XCX, D-Block Europe, Dominic Sessa, Nia Archives, and Kristen McMenamy. Plus! High art, hard places, raw visions, the biggest small town in America, and a phone call with Goldie while he makes a pizza.

Starring! Olivia Rodrigo, BKtherula, Nina Cristante, Kiko Mizuhara, Jim Goldberg, and Jim Goldberg’s goat. Plus! A big British South Asian portfolio, a report on the happiness of teenage girls, Doja Cat’s biggest fans, the word from student journalists around the country, and more fashion than you could shake a well-dressed stick at.

Chicago trio’s third album (ex-Disappears). Chicago trio FACS have evolved very quickly in the span of their three year existence. "Void Moments" is their third & latest off¬ering; a dark & claustrophobic album with rivulets of seismic beauty peeking through the din. Formed in the wake of the dissolution of Disappears, guitarist Brian Case & drummer Noah Leger's project is the logical continuation of the trails blazed in their former outfit. Since their 2017 debut "Negative Houses", the band have reworked, retooled & reshaped their sound, and with the addition of bassist Alianna Kalaba on 2018's "Lifelike", their evolution has coalesced into something distinct. Gone is the bone-rattling minimalism of "Negative Houses"; "Void Moments" o¬ffers an abstraction of the melodic elements that crept into "Lifelike" and contorts them toward a new horizon.

Where "Lifelike" rang with a metallic, near-industrial racket, "Void Moments" cloaks the music behind a black velvet curtain of sonance, obfuscating the band's most direct set of songs to date. "Boy" kicks o¬ with a lurch of vocals and Case's sinewy guitar-line guiding a stoic march. By the time Kalaba drops in with the bass, the track morphs into a milky swirl, leading into the chiming swirl of "Teenage Hive’s buzzing churn. "Casual Indiff¬erence" expertly fuses the band's rhythmic pulse with a sombre dissolve of guitars, vocals and backwards-masked drums. "Version" closes out side one with lush surges of Case's shoegaze'd guitar & voice weaving around the rhythm section. Side two careens in with Leger's cavernous drums, with Kalaba and Case riding alongside.

The album's final two tracks "Lifelike" and "Dub Over" cascade into one another, becoming one & act as a perfect analogy to "Void Moments" mutability, both musically & lyrically. Despite its foggy presence, "Void Moments" still careens toward the light. By embracing fluidity, FACS continue to evolve & refuse to be ensnared by genre. "Void Moments" ruminates on humanity's increasing refusal of identity, not only by our increasing reliance on technology, but also within our society's challenging of societal & gender norms. "Void Moments" feels one step closer to oblivion, but its sounds are a welcome salve

TRACK LISTING

1. Boy
2. Teenage Hive
3. Casual Indifference
4. Version
5. Void Walker
6. Lifelike
7. Dub Over

"Chicago trio FACS was founded in 2017 by former Disappears members Brian Case & Noah Leger, along with their bandmate Jonathan van Herik. After van Herik amicably parted ways with the group just before their debut album "Negative Houses"'s release, Case & Leger recruited longtime friend Alianna Kalaba (Cat Power, We Ragazzi) to play bass. "Lifelike" is their sophomore release; six tracks clocking in at half an hour, carrying forward the musical trail blazed by the debut towards a new frontier. "Lifelike" occupies a space in between the band's debut & Case & Leger's work with Disappears, applying minimalism & space in compositions that reside somewhere near the realms of post-punk, art-rock, shoegaze, industrial music & post-rock. "Lifelike" however adds a more melodic sensibility, without sacrificing any of the debut's punishing sonic muscle, with a discernible audial force perceivable thru the speakers (credit due to engineer Jeremy Lemos' recording via Electrical Audio as well as John Congleton's mastering for accurately capturing the punishing heft of the band's live sound)"

Kicking off with the lumbering "Another Country", whose opening drone lulls the listener into a trance before Leger's drums crack the earth below. The band veers close to This Heat territor y here, with Kalaba's minimal bass throb and Case's nearly unrecognizable guitar loops and multi-tracked voice punctuating the spaces between. Album standout "In Time" careens with purpose with cascading sheets of guitar noise over the rhythm sections ever-advancing march, while "XUXA"s melodic washes of monochrome eases the tension ever so slightly. Side two awaits, with the anxiety-ridden opener "Anti-Body" and the claustrophobic "Loom State"s clanging aura of menace. "Lifelike" closes with "Total Histor y", whose syrupy shuffle belies the blunt-force trauma of its closing minutes, with the sheer weight of sonic force seeming to blow out the speakers it emanates from. A phoenix returning to the ashes from whence it came. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a beguiling beast this, brimming with the spirit of post-punk but rife with interesting fragments of electronica, concrète minimalism and art-rock posturing. Heavy and immersive, but imbued with influence from all over the musical spectrum.

TRACK LISTING

1. Another Country
2. In Time
3. XUXA
4. Anti-Body
5. Loom State
6. Total History

FACS sprung forth in early 2017 , Brian Case, Jonathan van Herik & Noah Leger were formerly of Chicago band Disappears. "Negative Houses" is their debut recording; an abstraction of their former outfit, even more minimal and bare than what came before. "Negative Houses" approaches the stark, gothy post-punk previously perfected more rhythmically and abstract than in Disappears, with Leger's motorik, machine-like drumming taking the forefront (see the tunes 'Skylarking' and 'Others') and van Herik's guitar alternating between slashes of dissonant ambience and percussive accent. Case switches from guitar to bass in FACS, adding an economical throb to the band's drive on songs like 'Just A Mirror' & the album's centerpiece, the near nine-minute, sax-soaked tour-de-force 'Houses Breathing', whose electric heartbeat lumbers forward, sounding like an outtake from Cold Storage Studios circa 1979. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Skylarking
2. Silencing
3. Houses Breathing
4. Just A Mirror
5. Others
6. Primary
7. Exit Like You
8. All Futures

Chicago trio’s fourth album in four years (ex-Disappears).

Recorded at Electrical Audio by Sanford Parker

Chicago trio FACS never stop pushing forward; they’ve honed and refined their stark, minimal scrape and clatter for four years and counting, having risen out of the ashes of beloved Chicago band Disappears in 2018 with the bone-rattling intensity of Negative Houses. The trio return in 2021 with Present Tense, their fourth album and perhaps their sharpest statement as a band.

Opener “XOUT” barrels forward like a tank, with Case’s guitar chiming like warning bells, until the climax comes crashing down, glitching out near the close. “Strawberry Cough” comes next, its fusion of corporeal playing and stately, electronic heartbeats punctured by random bursts of noise or backwards masked sounds. “Alone Without”, a track originally recorded for Adult Swim’s 2020 singles series appears next in different form; more menacing and serpentine. Side two opens with “General Public”, taking the loud/quiet dynamic as a jumping off point for the song’s unsettling seasick vibe. ‘How To See In the Dark” offers a brief respite, with its persistent, dark quietude that lingers until the song’s end. “Present Tense”, the album’s title track, offers up its first truly weird moment mid-song when the song changes mood distinctly, and the music drops out save for Case’s guitar and vocals. The album’s final track, the densely packed “Mirrored”, begins with a restrained, post-rock shuffle. The mind-scrambling cacophony that comes next takes its time to roll in, but once it does, it comes in waves, flipping back onto itself multiple times until it’s folded into oblivion.

FACS once again shuttered themselves into Electrical Audio with lauded engineer Sanford Parker to lay down the basic tracks and overdubs for Present Tense. This time, the band approached their songwriting from a different angle “Alone Without was the first song we recorded and we really built it in the studio” Case says, “Alianna and I played different instruments, and I think that freedom informed how the other songs developed. All the lyrics were random phrases on a big sheet and were put together as the songs took shape, so I feel like I was collecting these thoughts and trying to figure out how to process them as a big picture vs making complete ideas in individual songs.” Case adds ”...letting the songs go where they wanted, without steering them into what we all think a FACS album should be.” The change is palpable from last year’s claustrophobic and fried Void Moments, but Present Tense is still ALL FACS, albeit draped in a layer of haze. Paranoia in soft focus, perhaps?

TRACK LISTING

1. XOUT
2. Strawberry Cough
3. Alone Without
4. General Public
5. How To See In The Dark
6. Present Tense
7. Mirrored

RIYL: Unwound, MBV, The Jesus Lizard, SUUNS, METZ, The Dead C, Echo & The Bunnymen, Liars, This Heat, PIL. Everything eventually turns to dust. Everyone knows this, but few want to acknowledge that our time on this mortal coil is fleeting, preferring to remain in stasis, in hopes that "the end" will pass them by. Chicago trio FACS (guitarist Brian Case, bassist Alianna Kalaba & drummer Noah Leger) have been perfecting their brand of intense, cathartic post-punk over the course of four ever-evolving albums, beginning with 2017's "Negative Houses" thru 2021's landmark "Present Tense", which saw the trio dig deep into the gaping maw of a black hole & pulling back whatever debris they could grasp onto.

Their newest "Still Life In Decay" comes as an addendum to the last album - a "post-event review" if you will. "Still Life In Decay" starts with a squall of white noise before collapsing into the band already locked into "Constellation"'s lumbering groove, with Case's guitar a ghostly presence, appearing & disappearing in washes of gauzy feedback throughout the track. FACS have never been more locked in as a unit, and "Still Life In Decay" is a decidedly more focused effort. The apocalyptic chaos that defined their previous album "Present Tense" is waved away in favor of an examination of events with cumbrous clarity. FACS are a heavy band, but they don’t necessarily FEEL like one (see side two's "Still Life", where Case's fluttering, melodic guitar lines are buoyed by the insistent, underlying pulse of the bass & drums). As a rhythm section, Kalaba & Leger dance & twist around each other like a double helix, forming the DNA of what makes FACS special.

Collectively they approach rhythm from outside the groove as opposed to inside it, creating a lattice where Case weaves guitar lines like creeping vines, which makes the moments on "Still Life In Decay" where the band DOES lock in even more powerful. When the guitar punctures the lock-step swing of "When You Say", it hits like a hammer. Case utilizes his lyrics like a person suffering from anterograde amnesia; repeating phrases & holding onto old memories in a desperate attempt to avoid the slide into oblivion. Freeform poetic missives touching on themes of resignation, cynicism, class warfare, and a search for identity & meaning in a crumbling society; A primal desire to hold onto anything in a post-pandemic barrage of sensory overload. The album is a decidedly local affair; recorded once again at Chicago's famed Electrical Audio by renowned engineer Sanford Parker & mixed at his Hypercube Studio in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood & mastered by Matthew Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Constellation
2. When You Say
3. Slogan
4. Class Spectre
5. Still Life
6. New Flag

Following on from 2011’s debut album Enter Castle Perilous and Christmas single Lucybel, Factory Star return with a new 10” mini-LP on Occultation Recordings.

Asked to comment, Factory foreman Martin Bramah merely muttered something about “channelling the Dark Spark...”

Fad Gadget - aka Frank Tovey - was the first ever signing to Mute. Frank's incarnation as the increasingly bizarre Fad Gadget gave rise to four albums in the early eighties, and prompted NME to proclaim that he 'Mixed rock with the '80s in a way Iggy Pop would have killed for'. This collection encompasses all of Frank's classic moments. These include the cult hit "Collapsing New People", the final single, "One Man's Meat", and his darkly satirical guide to nightlife - "Saturday Night Special".

Formed from the ashes of Tomorrow's Gone, Faded Grey have been honing their sound for the last two years and these are their strongest recordings so far. Fast driven hardcore with a ton of heart and sincerity that can't fail.

The debut album from legendary Sheffield band Faerground Accidents sees a brilliant collection of late night songs, a missive from bohemia laced with perfect melodies and a bright and thrilling rush of neon melodies and great acidic lyrics from a band that Adam Ant calls the best new band in the UK and are also tipped for success by the likes of Richard Hawley and Jarvis Cocker.

“With witty vignettes comparable with the bedsit psycho-sexual melodrama of the likes of old Moz himself, witty kiss offs (“I went to the supermarket after every one of those/And I spent my last pennies on a value meal for one”) capturing the futility, fumblings and fragility of affairs of the heart, it’s a rather smart tune indeed..” GODISINTHETV

“An eclectic group that merges the fey eroticism of Pulp with the solid chops of a machismo rock band. Faerground Accidents have managed to forge a distinctive style that’s both enigmatic and direct. And, quite frankly, that I can’t get enough of!”
Lee Adcock (Dandelion Radio).

TRACK LISTING

Empty :
1. The Same Things
2. Woeful Small Town
3. My Former Baby
4. She Makes Me Want To Die
5. Please Stay

Full:
6. Gaslighter
7. Into The Wild
8. Sleep In The Woods
9.Claustrophobic
10. The Moralist
11. Ether Girl

Kate Fagan took the Chicago punk scene by storm in the early 80’s with her self-released single “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool,” which became the best-selling single ever by a local artist at the legendary Wax Trax! Records. Today, Captured Tracks is thrilled to present an expanded, re-mastered edition of I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool as a full-length vinyl album. Fagan wrote “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool” after moving to Chicago from New York in the late 70’s. The track is a critique of the emergent “hipster” attitude of the disco crowd and the posturing she was witnessing among her peers in New York. With its surf-inspired drum machine, irresistible melody, and defiant lyrics, “Too Cool” was immediately embraced by club DJs, radio stations, and independent record stores. Its b-side, “Waiting For The Crisis,” also gained notice for its raw musical style and politically charged Reagan-era lyrics, which still resonate today. In the years that followed, Fagan continued to break new ground. In 1980, she co-founded the enormously popular ska band Heavy Manners (whose dance parties are still legendary), and with them opened shows for The Clash, Grace Jones, Peter Tosh, The English Beat, and many more.

The “Too Cool” single became a sought-after rarity among record collectors for decades after its initial release, until Manufactured Recordings gave it a proper reissue in 2016. Captured Tracks’ expanded 2023 follow-up features four unreleased songs, which encapsulate the gutsy, new wave energy that pulses through the original single. The final track, the reggae-tinged “Say It”, features production from the reggae legend Peter Toshand Bob Marley’s guitarist Donald Kinsey, who flew in from Jamaica to record with Heavy Manners after witnessing their impassioned live show. While the 2016 reissue re-established Fagan’s cult-classic status for a new audience, this new expanded release solidifies her place in a tradition of trailblazing, powerhouse frontwomen.

TRACK LISTING

1 I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool
2 Waiting For The Crisis
3 Master Of Passion
4 Come Over
5 Cover It Up
6 Take Your Chances
7 Something’s Wrong
8 Say It

The long lost 1968 debut album by singer-songwriter, Scott Fagan, once tipped to be bigger than Elvis, is set for release on 9th February 2024 via Earth Recordings. ‘South Atlantic Blues’ will be reissued for the first time in its original artwork, with an iconic portrait of Fagan by famed rock photographer, Joel Brodsky, following a widely celebrated 2015 release.

Revisiting his mystical, mythical, and deeply soulful masterpiece, this psych-folk gem doffs a Tropicalia hat direct from downtown New York. “His songs embrace a broad sonic fantasia, swirling in ’60s New York R&B and ’40s jazz, as well as the Caribbean rhythms of calypso, meringue and Pachanga.” New York Times

Scott Fagan’s story is worthy of a movie in itself. A swinging hipster who landed in 60s Greenwich folk scene, escaping the abject poverty of his U.S. Virgin Islands upbringing, Fagan found himself mentored by the Brill Building’s Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and feted as the next big thing. “Forget Rodriguez, forget Searching for Sugar Man,” says Sharyn Felder, daughter of the late Doc Pomus, the legendary songwriter who signed Fagan to management in 1964. “Scott was so much more. He was cut from a different cloth.”

‘South Atlantic Blues’ is the perfect soundtrack to this tale, an epic song cycle wrapped around an impassioned love story, driven by Fagan’s dense, allusive lyrics, and production by Elmer Jared Gordon (Pearls Before Swine) and rich arrangements by Horace Ott (Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, The Shirelles). The Earth Recordings reissue coincides with a resurgence in activity for Fagan, with a new album in the works – the never-recorded soundtrack to ‘Soon’, the 1971 Broadway rock musical he co-wrote and starred in – and a documentary ‘Soon: the Story of Scott Fagan’ currently filming through Scissor Kick Films, from director Marah Strauch, writer Chris Campion (who rediscovered the singer-songwriter in 2015), and producer Eric Bruggeman.

TRACK LISTING

A1. In My Head
A2. Nickels And Dimes
A3. Crying
A4. The Carnival Is Ended
A5. South Atlantic Blues
B1. Nothing But Love
B2. Tenement Hall
B3. In Your Hands
B4. Crystal Ball
B5. Madam-moiselle

Scott Fagan’s debut album, ‘South Atlantic Blues,’ is a genuine lost classic - a mystical, mythical and deeply soulful masterpiece.

Recorded when Scott was just 21, virtually homeless and with pennies to his name, it was released in 1968 on Atco Records but remained obscure, confounded by a series of frustrating near-misses. From being mentored by Doc Pomus to being discovered by Jasper Johns, Scott’s incredible story and music unfolds on ‘South Atlantic Blues,’ remastered and reissued for the first time ever on CD and vinyl on Saint Cecilia Knows (the label that also released the acclaimed Mickey Newbury box set, ‘An American Trilogy) in association with Scott Fagan’s own lil’fish records.

Steeped in delicate psych, soul and resonant acoustic guitars “that stroke and stone you to the core” (Shindig). It’s an epic song cycle about Fagan’s hard-scrabble life in the Virgin Islands, where he was raised and lived until 19 before returning to his birthplace of New York City. A teenage prodigy, mentored and managed by songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Scott recorded early material for Columbia and Bert Berns’ BANG label before signing with Atco. In 1969, artist Jasper Johns discovered ‘South Atlantic Blues’ in a cut-out bin, fell in love with the record, and used it as the inspiration for three artworks, known as ‘Scott Fagan Record.’

The pieces are now housed in the permanent collections of MOMA, the Met and the Walker Art Center. Born on 52nd Street, Scott was the son of a sax player and singer who fraternized with jazz greats. That familial connection with music would come full circle when Fagan discovered he was the biological father of songwriter Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. They did not meet until the premiere of a documentary about Doc Pomus in 2013. A conversation between the two is included in the liner notes of this CD release. The initial pressing of the vinyl comes as a limited edition, hand-numbered, 180g vinyl with a reproduction of Jasper Johns’ 1970 lithograph, ‘Scott Fagan Record,’ as cover art, and includes a digital download.

The CD comes with extensive liner notes, rare photos, and a download of five bonus tracks—the original 1965 demo for Doc Pomus as well as a recently-discovered acetate, the only copy in existence of a previously-unknown Doc Pomus song, All For The Sake Of Love, that only Scott Fagan recorded. 

TRACK LISTING

1. In Your Head
2. Nickels And Dimes
3. Crying
4. The Carnival Is Ended
5. South Atlantic Blues
6. Nothing But Love
7. Tenement Hall
8. In Your Hands
9. Crystal Ball
10. Madame-Moiselle.

Bonus Tracks (download With CD Only) :
1. They Think She’s Crying Cause She’s Happy
2. When You’re Lonely And You’re Blue
3. Bonua
4. I’ve Been So Lonely For So Long
5. All For The Sake Of Love

Recorded in 1995 and 1996, mostly in John Fahey’s room at a Salem, Oregon boarding house, the performances on ‘Proofs & Refutations’ prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey’s final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat.

Cloaked in the language of dogma - what is he proving? refuting? - this is Fahey dancing a jig in the Duchampian gap, jester cap bells a-jingling. True believers? He’s got something for you: an uncompromising vision that you can sneer at (“guy can’t play anymore and refuses to concede!”) or embrace as evidence of his genius (“the reinventor does it again!”). Skeptics? He’s there with you, too: sending up the fallacy of certitudes altogether. Institutions, systems, accepted wisdoms. Heroes. Alternative facts, indeed.

Right out the gate, Fahey re-materializes before us, somewhere between Oracle of Delphi and Clown Prince at Olympus. Mounting a thundering dialectic from on high, ‘All the Rains’ resembles nothing else in his extensive discography - betraying roots in everything from Dada to Episcopal liturgical chant - and contains nary a plucked guitar note. You can’t fool him! When the lap steel of yore appears on ‘F for Fake’, it serves more as soundbed for an extended sequence of vocal improvisations, running the gamut from wordless Bashoian caterwauling to free-form (but decidedly fake) Tuvan, even revealing a burnished falsetto in the process.

Fahey takes on a different kind of provocation in the two acoustic guitarbased tracks closing Side 1 - ‘Morning’ parts 1 and 2 - the first of four recordings in this session that have him wrestling with the ghost of Skip James, perhaps Fahey’s effort to wrench the “bitter, hateful old creep” (his words) back into the grave.

Anchoring Side 2 is the two-part ‘Evening, Not Night’, the second half of his extended cathexis on James (and the latter’s avowed castration complex - another story for another day, perhaps). Bit of a chill in the air – where’s the impish Fahey from earlier? Unmistakably working through some psychic wounds here, we might think: the unheimlich rendered in glistening viscera. Or is he playing with our notions of authenticity, of his reputation as troubadour of raw emotional states, a pilgrim of the ominous, the simmering unconscious? These cards are kept decidedly close to the vest. The opening and closing pieces again feature Fahey’s guitar as drone soundbed - employing distortion, oscillation, and an altogether absurd quotient of reverb to create texture and harmonics that are - if we want to go there - not dissimilar to the sustained tonic clusters of Tibetan singing bowls, the hurdy gurdy, Hindustani classical music, or La Monte freaking Young.

Portions of this material appeared on obscure late 1990s vinyl in the 7” or double-78 rpm format, but as a ‘session’ it has lain dormant more than a quarter century now. Taken together, we can now see these tracks as secret blueprints to latter-day Fahey provocations, several years prior to records like 1997’s ‘City of Refuge’ and ‘Womblife’.

TRACK LISTING

All The Rains
F For Fake
Morning, Pt 1
Morning, Pt 2
For LMC2
Evening, Not Night, Pt 1
Evening, Not Night, Pt 2
Untitled (w/o Rain)

The delightful Fair Ohs release their second full length, Jungle Cats. Inspired by trips to North Africa, the lost music of forgotten tribes, San Francisco psych, James Brown’s unequalled dedication to the Holy Groove and Carlos f**kin’ Santana; Jungle Cats is a record to seduce to.

Fair Ohs formed four years ago in a haze of beer-soaked free love party-vibes. Eddy, Joe and Matt came together like young romantics, vowing to show everyone the meaning of true love. The years that followed the consummation of their musical marriage on that hot summer’s day saw them release a series of 7″ singles and cassettes – some shared with the likes of Women, Male Bonding, and Cold Pumas – that made people like Pitchfork say “hey, these guys are A-OK!”. But no one was prepared for the earth shattering power of debut album Everything Is Dancing. A record so inventive and hip-shakingly awesome that fans and critics alike regularly begged them for locks of hair, sweat-drenched t-shirts and babies. But Fair Ohs gave them nothing, the music was the gift they shared, not their love.

Everything Is Dancing was the sound of East African guitar music colliding with Indian ragas and Cuban rhythms in the hands of three shirtless London punk virtuosos. And it was rad. They toured after that, playing to the braying masses. All furious and drunk and hypnotic, they bewitched Europe and Great Britain, casting their magical musical spell in the tiniest of dives and the most sun soaked of festivals. But then they rested, and waited, and created. Setting the ‘desert vibe’ tone from opener Green Apple Milk – full of crackling, dusty Ethiopian jazz samples and three-part saxophone harmonies that eventually descend into a slow and psychedelic Santana and Earth-inspired desert trip – and featuring 2012’s ‘Salt Flats’ albeit a new far jazzier version of the hit flexi single - this is a record to be naked to…. A record to dance all night with your crush to…. An endless fiesta that Lionel Richie promised, but never delivered.

TRACK LISTING

1. Green Apple Milk
2. Citric Placid
3. Mayan Flex
4. Sleep
5. Panama Red Jets
6. Ya Mustafa
7. Silver Jade Mountain
8. Cayman Brac
9. Salt Flats
10. Mountain Bombs

There are plenty of performers who rock critics describe by using the label "primitive," but few if any can hold a candle to the greatest American rock primitive Jad Fair - With his wildly influential band Half Japanese or as a solo performer, Fair has constructed a prolific and extremely interesting career.

He writes and records songs that display an uncomplicated emotional directness, unselfconscious charm and warmth, and a genial simplicity that is beyond words. From Jad: "I set a goal for myself to release 100 albums in a year's time. I was able to pass that mark. I released over 150 albums. This album is a "best of" compilation of the songs recorded that year. It's 100 songs chosen from 160 albums."

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
Side 1
1. Worm Boy
2. Star
3. We Have To
4. Our Now Is Forever
5. We Made Ourselves A Promise
6. Not The Same No More
7. The Love Club
8. Rising Star
9. Garbage Man
10. Zombies Walk The Earth
11. Too Late
12. Together We Will
13. Witch
14. It Is Them
15. Choose Your Own Future
16. Embrace Love
17. June Or July
18. All Around Us
19. Sunshine Happiness
20. No Secret
21. Day In The Sun
22. Whenever
23. Ghost Of Frankenstein
24. Apple, Pear And Peach
25. Curses

Side 2
1. Love Love
2. So Far So Good
3. The House
4. Wonderful
5. Son Of A Gun
6. Stupid Kicks
7. Perfectly Dreadful
8. Them
9. Coffee
10. Run Away Home
11. Even Smaller
12. You And Me
13. Vicious Circle
14. Hear The Call
15. Our Eyes
16. Time For Love
17. The Laughing Monster
18. Invigorate Your Life
19. Got It Made
20. Stayed At Home
21. The Invasion
22. Honey Bear
23. Open The Door
24. On My Palm
25. Not Too Late

Disc 2
Side 1
1. Night Of The Devil Bat
2. Slime
3. Safety Net
4. Chase Away
5. Only One
6. Afraid Of Nothing
7. Life In The Suburbs
8. It's Wonderful
9. Mission Accomplished
10. True Love Is Here
11. Spinning Around
12. Your Wish
13. The Moth Man
14. Make The Pieces Fit
15. What Else Is New?
16. It's Alive
17. One Thing Only
18. The Welcome Mat
19. Sunshine
20. Out There
21. No One Knows For Sure
22. Our Way
23. Listen To The Birds
24. What Can We Do?
25. Viva Love

Side 2
1. Alright
2. Two Of A Kind
3. Pale Green Pants
4. The Word Yes
5. The Vampires Are Back
6. The Biggest Big
7. In Its Net
8. Over Our Heads
9. Without A Clue
10. Haunted Home
11. He Has His Nerve
12. The Knack
13. The Junk Pile
14. Probably Alright
15. Shrunken Head
16. Haunted Hill
17. How It's Done
18. In The Eyes
19. Invading Our Planet
20. Why?
21. Better Good Times
22. Right From The Start
23. Flashing Lights
24. Magic
25. It's Alright

In 1974 Jad and David Fair teamed up to form a band called Half Japanese. The route was simple, at first. If one pounded on drums the other could squeeze sounds from an electric guitar. There were no other band members to stay in tune with, so there was no particular reason for them to worry about tuning the guitar in a traditional manner or learning traditional chords. They were free from the start to express their music in their own way. They traded off the guitar and drumming rolls. Whichever one sang the words also played the guitar and the other one drummed. For a couple of years they wrote, recorded and performed this way, without the convention of more members. When they did decide to expand they went big. They first thought of recruiting an outside drummer, so that both could play guitars at the same time.

In 2014 Jad and David stripped things back to the roots. They went back to recording as a duo. One sang and played guitar, the other one drummed. 40 years had passed, but they slipped right back into the original roles and churned out a number of breath-stealing songs. 40 years later; 40 years better. One pick, two sticks and heart-warming vocals...... That's all they needed; two brothers, still rockin' the same damn deal! 

The words and primary voice are those of Jad Fair, that enduringly idiosyncratic artist revered in discerning pockets of the global indie rock underground for decades. Danielson’s Daniel Smith has long admired Fair, drawing inspiration from Half Japanese (the band Fair formed with his brother in the ‘70s) on through to his prolific career today. Their discussions of collaborating finally came to fruition when Joyful Noise Recordings designated Fair its “Artist In Residence” for 2014 and Danielson was tapped as one of 4 artists (including R. Stevie Moore; Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake; and Strobe Talbot) to record separate respective albums with him for a boxed-set limited release.

“Flattered and honored” is how Smith sums up his feelings about the project -- and grateful to get a game-plan for what always seemed a complementary pairing. Sounds Familyre will be doing their own non-limited release of Solid Gold Heart in June, on CD, digital and gold vinyl. The 11 tracks of sweet collaboration collected under said title sound like what you might expect, given the respective artists: gleaming tunes of sincere sing-speak, resplendent with sparkling back-up vocals and warmly melodic, inventive instrumentation; a sunshine-bright outlook of positive encouragement to keep “rockin’ on the side of gooood” -- because, after all, “We deserve chocolate cake/ We deserve apple pie/ Enjoy your life ...”

The collaborative process commenced with Fair sending Smith his unique vocal demos of recited lyrics with articulated mouthsound musical qualities (some bits remain in the final mixes). Smith then wrote music for each chosen track, eventually getting Fair and drummer Gilles Rieder into his Clarksboro, NJ studio to record their parts during a few hours break from touring. Aside from Smith’s own guitar-playing and singing throughout the album, there were contributions made by his brothers David and Andrew on percussion, and sisters Rachel and Megan along with wife Elin on vocals. Spicing things up at Fair’s behest were members of Texas art-polka band Brave Combo: Carl Finch on accordion and keys; Jeffrey Barnes on sax and woodwinds; and Danny O’Brien on trumpet. Bringing things full-circle was Kramer (Shockabilly, Bongwater, B.A.L.L. et al.) on bass, who also co-mixed and mastered the album.

The result is a beguiling blend that builds off each participant’s strengths, truly a fresh sum that is greater than its parts. “The goal was to make 3-minute pop songs, as accessible and fun and immediate as possible,” notes Smith. And that’s what you’ll hear, each track an uplifting, mutually enhanced concoction. Anyone who ever had a Solid Gold Heart -- wouldn’t they want to turn around and share it? Of course they would. Jad Fair and Danielson are happy to offer up theirs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Go Ahead
2. Rockin On The Good Side
3. Ready Steady
4. Here We Stand
5. Solid Gold Heart
6. With The Knowledge 
7. Apple Apple
8. Not No
9. On And On
10. You Got Me In A Spin
11. Here’s Our Time

12 songs dealing with the uncertainty of life and those troublesome emotional issues that crop up from time to time. Getting older but not necessarily wiser and finding that the American Dream is a bit of a nightmare. For fans of 'quality soft core' such as the Alkaline Trio, NOFX and Lagwagon.

Timothy J Fairplay is back on the label with a 7” single containing two tracks cut from a rock of uranium. “Pathfinder Theme” and “UFO’s Over China” might differ in sound and tempo but are connected by a radiant feeling. The two tracks bathes in a greenish/yellow bright toxic aura.

This plutonium charged music carries with it some quality elements known from his earlier repertoire like for example a primitive yet crisp beat working as foundation to a few but very exquisite synth sounds.

Timothy J. Fairplay stands on the shoulders of past Italian masters and the works of John Carpenter but with an accentuated alien feel. Something otherworldly, maybe good, maybe harmful, is hidden in the vibe on both sides of this 7”. The balance between good and evil is very even - yin/yang from outer space!

TRACK LISTING

A. Pathfinder Theme
B. UFOs Over China

"Recorded mainly at Dungeon Module (1) - my last studio in London, except for ‘Castle Force’ recorded at current studio Dungeon Module 2. To some extent a lost album, the bulk of the album was made for a project which never came to fruition, and like ‘A Snowstorm In The Tropics’ there’s a few tracks which have been my live sets for a few years but have never had a proper release."

Raw emotional synth and rhythm tracks for late nights in the dungeon. Cassette and Digital. Cassette comes in cool 80s video game/90s rave tape pack style case!

TRACK LISTING

1. I Lay Awake At Night Scheming
2. Creeping Anxiety
3. The Next Day
4. Castle Force
5. When's The Call?
6. Hidden Entrance
7. There's No Use
8. Without Warning

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

Moat on the Ledge: Live at Broughton Castle, August '81 is a live folk rock album by Fairport Convention. The album was produced by Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg.

DELUXE VINYL EDITION!!!!

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Walk Awhile
2. Country Pie
3. Rosie
4. Matty Groves
SIDE B
5. Both Sides Now
6. Poor Will & The Jolly Hangman
7. The Brilliancy Medley The Cheroke
8. Woman Or A Man
9. High School Confidential 

Digitally remastered with bonus tracks, "Farewell To A Poor Man's Son" and "Breakfast In Mayfair", enhanced packaging and extra sleeve notes.

The trajectory that Fairport Convention took in the space of four albums and two years is one of the most remarkable in British popular music - these records contain some of the most storied names not just in British, but world music.From a bunch of school friends setting out to be 'the British Jefferson Airplane', over the course of their first quartet of releases, the group metamorphosed into the leading exponents of British folk rock.

In the way American folk and blues had looked back to gospel songs and spirituals, Fairport mined a seam a traditional English folk song, and then combined them with rock rhythms to create something ground- breaking and quickly emulated. For many, this is the frst time the considerable talents of Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, Ashley Hutchings, Ian Matthews, Dave Swarbrick and Dave Mattacks would have been heard on record In May 1969, the band were involved in a fatal car accident which killed their drummer Martin Lamble and Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn. In a state of obvious shock, Fairport decided to carry on, making Swarbrick a permanent member and adding drummer Dave Mattacks. Ashley Hutchings submerged himself in traditional British music and, as a result, fourth album Liege And Lief contained five traditional tracks, and three originals in the folk style. It established the template that Fairport would follow and is one of the most influential albums in British rock. The eight- minute masterpiece Matty Groves built On A Sailor's Life and gave Fairport another long-lasting anthem. By the time the album was released, Sandy Denny and Ashley Hutchings had both left the group, and another chapter was to begin.

Fairport Convention are still playing to this very day, still with original member Simon Nicol in the line- up. Their annual Cropredy Festival has become a reassuring landmark in the UK concert calendar - and many of these songs here feature in their set today.

TRACK LISTING

Come All Ye
Reynardine
Matty Groves
Farewell, Farewell
The Deserter
Medley: The Lark In The Morning; Rakish Paddy; Foxhunter's Jig; Toss
The Feathers
Tam Lin
Crazy Man Michael

Fairport Convention are rightly regarded as the greatest band to originate from the British folk rock scene of the 60s. Over the course of their first three albums they shaped a new, unique style by drawing on traditional folk tunes and contemporary American songs as well as the songwriting talents of Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Ian Matthews. A crucial change had taken place since the release of their debut album when Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny (known as Sandy) joined the band. Sandy Denny was the greatest female folk singer of her generation and "What We Did On Our Holidays" opening song "Fotheringay" is a Denny classic - her achingly beautiful and penetrating vocal adding an extra dimension to a band already overflowing with talent. 1969's "What We Did on Our Holidays" is one of their finest albums with its mix of traditional folk songs, their best self-penned songs to date and wonderful cover versions of Dylan and Joni Mitchell tracks.

New EP from the excellent emo-core outfit Faiweather which contains three new tracks. An inspired mix of riff and lyrical intensity with hints of Slint, Fugazi and Sonic Youth.

Fairweather : very young, very intense, brooding, energetic and melodic. They've toured loads and are signed to the same label as Saves the Day another excellent young indie/emocore band. Their music is about passion, intensity and movement through life and they're pretty impressive.

Taking a short break to compose and work on their second album has done Fairweather no end of good. They've returned with a no-holds-barred emotionally rampaging disc that builds on the stop gap four-track EP "Alaska" and moves into even more dynamic and sophisticated territory. "Lusitania" is an hour long journey filled with tension, hope and the human condition: a breathtaking album that moves emo in a new and positive direction.

In 1992, after an extensive period of touring, San Franciscan rockers Faith No More released Angel Dust. The album swings between extremes—aggressive and disturbing, but also beautiful and soothing—showing off every facet of the band’s quirky eloquence on such diverse tracks as “Midlife Crisis,” “Jizzlobber,” “R.V.” and “Small Victory.”

Celebrating the classic albums that helped establish the band’s vital and visceral musical legacy Rhino Records releases a fantastic 2LP Deluxe Edition of Angel Dust. Featuring the original album and an additional disc packed full of rarities related to the album.

Among the tracks featured on the bonus disc is a mix of “Midlife Crisis” by the band’s longtime producer Matt Wallace, a trio of live recordings from a concert in Munich, Germany, as well as covers of the Dead Kennedys’ “Let’s Lynch The Landlord” and the band’s unforgettable take on the Commodores’ “Easy.”

Last summer, Faith No More treated fans to “Sol Invictus,” the group’s first new studio release in almost 20 years. This year, the band will revisit two classic albums with Deluxe Editions of “King for a Day…Fool for a Lifetime” and “Album of The Year.”

Following its Grammy nominated album “Angel Dust,” Faith No More returned in 1995 with “King for a Day…Fool for a Lifetime.” Recorded at Bearsville Studios near Woodstock, New York, it was the first without longtime guitarist Jim Martin, whose departure had an influence on the direction of the album. The band recorded some of their most progressive and experimental tracks on this album such as “Cuckoo For Caca” and “Ugly In The Morning” along with some of their mellowest such as “Take This Bottle” and “Caralho Voador”.

This release will be available as a double LP on 180 gram heavyweight black vinyl, featuring the remastered original, along with rare bonus tracks, many of which are making their vinyl debut. Among the eight bonus tracks are the b-sides “Spanish Eyes” and “Absolute Zero,” as well as the band’s cover of the Bee Gee’s “I Started A Joke,” which was originally released as a b-side in 1995, and then as a single in 1998.

‘Sol Invictus’, Faith No More’s highly anticipated follow-up to ‘Album Of The Year’, arrives via Reclamation Recordings / Ipecac Recordings.

‘Sol Invictus’ is the band’s first new album in 18 years.

‘Sol Invictus’ was produced by Bill Gould and recorded in the band’s Oakland, California studio.

Faith No More have influenced bands of all genres, including System Of A Down, Incubus, Muse and more.

The single ‘Motherf*cker’ heralded the arrival of the album and was followed by ‘Superhero’. Both songs feature on the album along with eight other brand new tracks.

TRACK LISTING

Sol Invictus
Superhero
Sunny Side Up
Separation Anxiety
Cone Of Shame
Rise Of The Fall
Black Friday
Motherf*cker
Matador
From The Dead

‘Negative Capability ’ is Marianne Faithfull’s 21st album and the most emotionally powerful of her 54-year recording career. Facing down arthritis and bolstered by collaborators including Warren Ellis, Nick Cave, Rob Ellis, Ed Harcourt and Mark Lanegan, ‘Negative Capability’ is charged with brutal honesty and autobiographical reflection as she addresses losing old friends, her loneliness living in her adopted city of Paris, and love.

Driven by her supernatural reinterpretative skills, florid lyricism, battle against the pain she lives with, and realised with her stellar group of musicians, ‘Negative Capability’ is Marianne’s unflinchingly honest and relentlessly beautiful late-life masterpiece. The stark emotional heft, exquisitely framed by ornately sensitive musical backdrops can only be likened to the late-life works by Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen.

Recorded at La Frette studio on the outskirts of Paris, ‘Negative Capability’ is inexorably overshadowed by grief at losing close friends from the ‘60s such as Anita Pallenberg, Martin Stone and Cream album designer Martin Sharp. It’s produced by both Rob Ellis – the PJ Harvey producer who’s been Marianne’s collaborator for five years -and Warren Ellis from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Warren’s violin blesses songs such as ‘Misunderstanding’ and ‘Born To Live’ – her intensely moving eulogy to departed lifelong friend Anita - with the stark but lustrous autumnal beauty that makes the album

The first single ‘The Gypsy Fairie Queen’ – inspired by Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – was co-written with Nick Cave and features his vocals and piano playing.

TRACK LISTING

Misunderstanding
The Gypsy Faerie Queen
As Tears Go By
In My Own Particular Way
Born To Live
Witches Song
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
They Come At Night
Don’t Go
No Moon In Paris
Loneliest Person (deluxe)
No Moon In Paris (radio Edit) (deluxe)
They Come At Night (alt Version) (deluxe)

Great angst ridden rock from these four guys from that hot bed of rock'n'roll... Doncaster. Both formats include exclusive tracks.

Fake Laugh’s self-titled debut album arrives this summer as a delicate accumulation of years of experimentation. Unfurling slowly, the full length has been a gradual process: part playfulness, part perfection. Whilst perpetually in tune with the digital disconnect of contemporary life, the album is a vivid rummage through sixties US-pop standards and British alternative stalwarts. Fake Laugh showcases a familiar world of love, confusion and self-questioning but refocused through the bright lens of the London/Berlin based artist Kamran Khan. Tirelessly writing and recording whenever he can, a busy 2016 saw Khan release the energetic 'Ice' EP, the bubbly trepidation of double A side 'Mind Tricks/Birdsong Lullaby' and the more complex and serene ‘Great Ideas’ EP. All three were important steps towards manifesting the right combination for the eagerly anticipated debut. Khan confesses that once upon a time Fake Laugh was “a bit of fun on the side”.

However, now with the project his sole focus, there’s a revitalised commitment to recording that has seen him finishing the album this year. Reuniting once again with producer Theo Verney (Traams, O.Chapman) in Brighton, Khan has brought the intimacy of his bedroom and added it to a more luscious environment. Certain parts of the record date as far back as 2013, whilst others were recorded only in the past few months. The result is a record that flows with a wise but youthful abandon. Echoing latter Belle & Sebastian records - that retained their adolescent flare and longing - Khan has fortified his dreams rather than forgotten them. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Melt,
2. Short Of Breath,
3. Kinda Girl,
4. As I Get To Know You Better,
5. Hiding Place,
6. Freely,
7. You Would Find Out,
8. Wouldn’t Bother,
9.Physical,
10. You Do Know,
11. Time To Die. 

Zoooooooommmm! Massive space disco 12" here with absolutely no info! A brief listen through either side will tell you that you're in the land of Hi-NRG, Italo-disco fire power with a specific focus on the more cosmic end of the spectrum. I'm guessing these are edits, and I'm sure I know the source material, though an extra hot This'N'That at lunchtime has left me light-headed and low on memory recall. The A-side offers us a Donna Summer-styled slammer befitting the Fake Love moniker, but with extra Patrick Cowley synth riffery, cosmic disco vox, sci fi samples and a phat vocoder. Over on the flip, we have another poppers-fuelled pounder, this time taking proggy chords, vamping keyboards and a perfectly panned sequence and strapping them to a thumping 4/4. Tops off!

TRACK LISTING

A. Untitled 1
B. Untitled 2

Composed of Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Dag Nasty), Michael Hampton (S.O.A., Embrace), Dennis Lyxzén (Refused, INVSN, The International Noise Conspiracy), Johnny Temple (Girls Against Boys, Soulside) and the newest member Brendan Canty (Fugazi, Rites of Spring), the band is a veritable posthardcore dream team. However instead of rehashing the past, Expendables is a reinvention that sees the band dialing back the distortion and leaning into the melodies. The result pairs their unparalleled pedigree with a pop sensibility that's slightly unexpected and wholly satisfying. "For our last record [2019's FAKE NAMES]the general influences were 70's U.K. punk and power-pop; but it wound up with a little classic rock vibe as well, like the Vibrators meets Aerosmith. We never saw that coming!" , Baker explains. For Expendables the band enlisted producer Adam "Atom" Greenspan (IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Baker explains, "The pop influences are a little more out front on this one and the production really helps it shine. It sounds more direct, more urgent." Expendables is the latest exchange in a musical conversation that spans four decades. Baker aptly refers to the lineup of FAKE NAMES as a "mutual admiration society" and says that once the five members got in the same room together, it felt as if they had already been in the band together for years.

TRACK LISTING

Targets
Expendables
Delete Myself
Go
Dont Blame Yourself
Cant Take It
Damage Done
Madtown
Caught In Between
Too Little Too Late

In early 2016, D.C. punk legends Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, Bad Religion) and Michael Hampton (S.O.A., Embrace, One Last Wish) met up at Hampton’s Brooklyn home to play music together.

Friends since first grade, the two guitarists ended up writing a handful of songs that day, then closed out the session with a spur-of-the-moment decision to start a band.

When it came to finding a bassist, Baker and Hampton looked to Johnny Temple of Girls Against Boys and Soulside (another fellow student at their elementary school), who equally shared their passion for what Temple refers to as “loud, angry, visceral music”. By the end of the year, the band had enlisted Refused frontman Dennis Lyxz n as their singer, thus cementing the lineup to punk-rock supergroup Fake Names.

Soon after dubbing themselves Fake Names a moniker that’s part Raising Arizona reference, part recognition of the “ubiquitous and demonic use of the term ‘fake news’”, according to Baker the band headed to Renegade Studios with the goal of creating a demo to present to record labels. But after playing those recordings for Baker’s Bad Religion bandmate Brett Gurewitz, the Epitaph founder made an unexpected proposal. “Brett said to us, ‘This isn’t a demo, this is the album,’” Baker recalls. “He was pretty adamant about putting it out exactly as it was, so that’s what we wound up doing”

TRACK LISTING

All For Sale
Driver
Being Them
Brick
Darkest Days
Heavy Feather
First Everlasting
This Is Nothing
Weight
Lost Cause

"Hard Islands" showcases a tougher, more grown-up sound than Nathan Fake's hugely successful "Drowning In A Sea Of Love" debut, as the producer continues to mature in perfect step with Britain's youthful new wave of danceable electronica. The album edges towards the tougher end of electronica occupied by Warp and Rephlex stalwarts Clark and Aphex Twin, where spine-tingling melody meets Fake's acute awareness of what works on the dancefloor.

Fake’s ‘Steam Days’ album opener ‘Paean’ gets the remix treatment from two of Nathan’s favourite young British electronica upstarts: sometime Werk Discs brethren Lone, and Lukid.

Recent R&S album recruit Lone takes the Fake original and makes it very much his own, as 'Paean’s wistful strains slot seamlessly into Lone's seductive wobbly, wonky, early Nineties retro-futurist world view.

Fresh from 'Lonely At The Top' album duty, Lukid’s rework is a more transformative affair, sprinkling his trademark bass heavy hypnotic drum mantras with a suitably warped smattering of Fake’s mystical twinkles.

Finally, Fake’s own bonus contemplative ‘Coda’ version wrings every last ambient drop out of his utopian original.

The ultra-collectable 10” vinyl edition (with artwork by Jack Featherstone) is strictly limited to just 500 copies.

Nathan Fake has grown from his beginnings as an undeniably skilled, but relatively inoffensive purveyor of twee IDM (see the cutesy electronic rhythms and circuit-bent melodies of 'Drowning In A Sea Of Love') into a powerhouse of challenging electronics and innovative melodic constructions.

The brash and stomping 'Feelings 1' could easily be stretched into a 6-minute long OPN track from his early catalog, but retains its impact and drive in part due to it's brevity, letting up after only a couple short minutes with a thematic segue into the thumping title track. Utilising his tried-and-tested technique of a filtered-out beginning into a revisitation of that theme, but injected with fiery percussion and swooning synthplay, Fake constructs a towering wall of chaotic arps and fizzling saturation, underpinned by distorted kick drums and dusty pads.

'HoursDaysMonthsSeasons' is much more along the lines of Border Community heavy-hitters Holden or Luke Abbott, pitching tweeting modulars and syncopated throbs against a droning foundation of fire and brimstone. As with all of Fake's more recent work, this is a deep and rewarding experience, but gives as much as you do, revealing it's complexities through patence and perserverance. 

Moving further along (we have convered the towering 'DEGREELESSNESS elsewhere), we move into ambient territory with 'SmallCityLights' which is a relaxing and much-needed respite (make use of it while you can) before the thudding dystopian sidechained duality of 'Radio Spiritworld'. Like a pack of robots fizzing and staggering towards a neon sun, we get chillwave guitars, industrial hammering and crackling electronic connections, coming together into a bracing mix of rampant retro-futurism and forward-thinking outsider 'tron.

Providence is as contrary and (I imagine) divisive as anything Fake has accomplished thus far, founded upon his considerable talent for writing a dancefloor stomper, but abstracted into the outer realms of melodicism and rhythm. A challenging, towering behemoth of an album, that will confound and amaze in equal measure. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Nathan Fake does OPN. Shimmering synths, soul-shaking drone and abstracted rhythms mashed together (amazingly) into a brittle and brutal amalgamation of conceptual genius and technical mastery. A++, Will listen again.

TRACK LISTING

Feelings 1
PROVIDENCE
HoursDaysMonthsSeasons
DEGREELESSNESS (ft Prurient)
The Equator & I unen
SmallCityLights
Radio Spiritworld
CONNECTIVITY
RVK (ft Raphaelle)
REMAIN
Feelings 2

With a line-up of members from New Brunswick, Canada and Manchester, UK, it should be no surprise that the songs of Faker Junior have the feel of both wide open spaces and urban grit, distilled and blended into brief ringing-guitar symphonies. Strong vocals (singer Ryan Lamey has been compared to both Buckleys, Tim and Jeff), layered guitars and driving rhythms are combined to form cliche-free melodic songs with enough of the sweet and the bitter, the dark and the light, to satisfy in full, but without excess or wasted effort, and with the occasional unexpected turn. Previously a solo singer-songwriter seeking musicians, and a group of musician-writers seeking a frontman, they connected online and first met in Manchester on an appropriately snowy night in December 2008. The chemistry was immediate and within weeks they had pooled resources and their disparate influences to write their first new songs. By February 2009 they were in the studio to record demos of 4 tracks with producer Yves Altana, but the initial results were so good that recording was extended and the finished tracks have become the band's self-funded debut EP, "Need To Know".

"East of Any Place," out December 1st via Habibi Funk, is a treasure trove of songs discovered alongside Rogér Fakhr's acclaimed 2021 album, "Fine Anyway." These tracks, hidden for decades and only passed between a handful of people, offer a glimpse into Rogér's musical genius and the vibrant scene of Lebanon during a period marked by civil war and social upheaval. This release serves as a companion to "Fine Anyway," feat studio tracks that didn't make it into the previous album.

Around 2 years ago, we released an album by Rogér Fakhr entitled "Fine Anyway" on Habibi Funk. It came about as a result of afternoons spent at Issam Hajali's jewelry shop on Mar Elias Street in Beirut. We had started working on the idea of re-releasing some of Issam's music and he proposed his first album "Mouasalat Ila Jacad El Ard," recorded before starting his band Ferkat Al Ard. At some point, Issam mentioned how he had actually kept some of Rogér's music on tape in his basement - but cautioned that he couldn't play it to us before Rogér would give the green light. Eventually, after some hesitation, Rogér luckily did. During this time there were a number of ongoing projects and we somehow missed out on inquiring further. Yet Rogér's name kept on coming up in conversations with musicians of the same generation in Beirut. No matter whether it was Ziad Rahbani, Munir Khauli or anyone else talking about him, every single mention would almost inevitably be followed with a huge praise for his music and approval of his talent. The disparity between him being so highly appreciated amongst his peers, while somehow simultaneously not being part of the researchable musical history of Lebanon (at least to us!) of the last decades, baffled me and at some point, we just asked Issam for Rogér's contact. After, we exchanged some emails and he ended up sending a selection of music recorded in the late 1970's in Beirut. While some of that material had never seen a release, other songs were released on his album "Fine Anyway" - which Rogér had, at the time of release, hand copied around 200 cassette copies. When we first heard the songs of "Fine Anyway" we were blown away! The music was a mixture of folk with touches of other genres. Maybe one could also refer to it as "singer-songwriter," since all of the songs were Rogér's own compositions. Songs of unique beauty both musically and lyrically. At the same time, they gave us the feeling of them being somehow isolated capsules of time and space. Nothing really revealed where they could've been recorded and, not knowing it was Beirut, a first guess would have likely been Southern California, sometime in the 1970's. The immersive effect of his compositions and voice are just incredible. When we put the album out, we knew we loved the songs and the music, but with its sound being slightly different and the lyrics sung in English, we were not sure whether it would find the same appreciation that other releases had had under the umbrella of Habibi Funk. Luckily, the appreciation of the album became quite apparent very quickly and it did not die down in the years to follow. In the process of putting together "Fine Anyway" we came across a number of other songs Rogér had recorded around the same time. Initially Rogér was not too fond of them for one reason or another, though in our minds the musical quality was not the reason. It was a treasure trove of songs that only a handful of people had access to. Some time ago, Rogér started working on some new songs that will hopefully will turn into a new album, and while we spoke about these, we brought up all these other songs we still had from the same sessions as "Fine Anyway," and that we felt it would be great to share them with the world as a bonus to the songs already shared as part of "Fine Anyway." Luckily, Rogér eventually agreed, and this is how we are able to share "East of Any Place." As always, both vinyl and CD come with an extensive booklet featuring background and interviews with Rogér, including unseen photos, scans and more. "Rogér Fakhr: East of Any Place" will be out everywhere December 1st to coincide with Bandcamp Friday, be sure to listen to eponymous focus track, the psych-folk-tinged "East of Any Place."

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A heady selection of woozy, psychedelic folk that wouldn't sound out of place in 1960's California, Roger Fakhr's 'East Of Any Place' is just as mindblowing as his 'Fine Anyway' LP on Habibi Funk. There are echoes here (pre-echoes) of Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and there's also loads in common with modern psychedlia. Quite the treasure.

TRACK LISTING

1. (You Look) So Funny
2. Dawn
3. East Of Any Place
4. Queen Of Diamonds
5. Road Of Farewell (feat. Bruna-Maria Naufal)
6. Down To My Bones
7. For Free
8. Rainhill
9. Had To See Harry
10. Drinking Tea

"...an anthemic album that takes songwriter Kyle Falconer in bold new musical directions, that works the heart as much as the head, the dancing feet as much as the punching fist of joy."

As the frontman of The View, Kyle Falconer smashed into the charts with the classic singles "Same Jeans" and "Wasted Little DJs" and earned a Mercury nomination for their #1 debut album ‘Hats Off To The Buskers’. A rocket powered decade followed during which they barely let up, careering through a rock ‘n’ roll attitude both on-and-off stage. A stint in rehab was followed by another stint in rehab. The songwriter reflects on that period in new song ‘Laura’, a heart-on-the-sleeve, not-quite-title-track paean to the aforesaid missus. He started by writing more songs on piano rather than guitar, before teaming up with the producer Frankie Siragusa and using a selection of Motown, soul and funk classics as reference points. The duo spent last August christening the brand-new studio in The Libertines’ recently opened Albion Rooms hotel and arts space in Margate, playing everything on a wealth of new material that Falconer had prepared. ‘No Love Songs for Laura’ is an earworm-stuffed, summer-evoking album demanding repeat plays, streams, views, likes and clicks. For another, this is Falconer reborn and rebooted, like we’ve never heard him before.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stress Ball
2. Wait Around
3. Laura
4. Funeral Song
5. Mother
6. On My Own
7. Still Here
8. Miracle
9. Listen Lucy
10. Moan
11. Rake Me In
12. Don't Call Me Baby
13. Monsters

"U.F.O" was one of the many highlights of the "Swedish Library Grooves Vol 2" LP which was released in 2022.

These explorations of the mid-70's sounds of rare grooves and library music, were all reimagined, recorded and produced by a Swedish duo consisting of multi-instrumentalists Carl Johan Fogelklou and Fredrik Segerfalk aka Falk & Klou.

"U.F.O" was Jason Boardman's (Before I Die) go to psychedelic jazz-funk party starter so he approached the FK Library about a release on vinyl, with an expanded version.

BiD knew there was only one person for the role and were delighted when Andi Hanley (Misadventures / Nu Northern Soul / Ruf Kutz) accepted and consequently turned out a superb 7-and-a-half-minute psychedelic funk workout, expanding on the original arrangement and taking it to another cosmos.

Falk & Klou: Bass, Fender Rhodes, synthesizers, guitar, flute, percussion, vocals.
Daniel Hanson Cederskär: Saxophones.
Jakob Gudmundsson: Trumpet and flugelhorn
Andreas Paylsson, Drums
Rework by: Andi Hanley

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: A swampy and lysergic slo-mo cosmic number with searing guitar lines taken deep into the plasma pool by local legend, The Bat aka Andi Hanley. Before I Die goes from strength to strength, keenly eying up that label of the year award at this rate!

TRACK LISTING

A. U.F.O (Andi Hanley Rework)
B. U.F.O (Original Version)

Triple beat breakdowns, speed riffs from Hell, from the opening note to the killer artwork, Fall Silent have produced one of the best hardcore / metal albums of the year. The follow up to "Six Years In The Desert", on "Drunken Violence" they approach their sound with more speed and anger than any other album the band has released. With the speed collapsing into powerful breakdowns, they have been described as Pantera meeting Black Flag in a dark alley with flicknives. Cool!

Taking the DIY ethic and mixing hardcore, punk rock and death metal they use primal vocals and a precise monsterous guitar attack that will hit you like a punch in the gut. This CD collects the band's previously out of print releases and features 17 hard and nasty tracks.

Beggars Arkive is excited to reissue The Fall’s 10th studio album, 1988’s THE FRENZ EXPERIMENT. Available as an expanded edition on CD and LP, the releases both contain the original album, plus singles and B-Sides. The notes included with both formats contain brand new interviews conducted by Daryl Easley in May 2020.

“I was clearing out the other day and I came across a review of Frenz Experiment, saying how this could have been great, how it could have been like T. Rex’s Electric Warrior. I never attempted to make an album like T-Rex. I don’t see the point in anybody trying to make an album like T-Rex, although people do. I don’t mind it when journalists make fair comparisons, when they’ve done their homework. But comparing Frenz to Electric Warrior is plain daft.”
- Mark E Smith, Renegade – The Lives And Tales Of Mark E Smith, 2008

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Beggars Arkive re-issue The Fall’s 10th studio album, 1988’s ‘The Frenz Experiment’. Released at the height of their mainstream popularity, this expanded edition (on vinyl and CD) features the monstrous “Hit The North” as well as the cover versions of “Victoria” and “There’s A Ghost In My House”, alongside firm fan favourites like “Carrier Bag Man”, and “Bremen Nacht”.

TRACK LISTING

2LP

A1 Frenz
A2 Carry Bag Man
A3 Get A Hotel
A4 Victoria
A5 Athlete Cured
B1 In These Times
B2 The Steak Place
B3 Bremen Nacht (Vinyl Version)
B4 Guest Informant (Excerpt)
B5 Oswald Defence Lawyer
C1 There's A Ghost In My House (from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
C2 Sleep Debt Snatches (from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
C3 Mark'll Sink Us (from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
C4 Haf Found Bormann(from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
C5 Bremen Nacht Run Out (from The Bremen Nacht Run Out Single)
C6 Northerns In Europ (from The Hit The North Single)
D1 Hit The North Part 1 (from The Hit The North Single)
D2 Australians In Europe (from The Hit The North Single)
D3 Guest Informant (B-side From The Victoria Single)
D4 Tuff Life Booogie (B-side From The Victoria Single)
D5 Twister (B-side From The Victoria Single)

2CD

CD1
1 Frenz
2 Carry Bag Man
3 Get A Hotel
4 Victoria
5 Athlete Cured
6 In These Times
7 The Steak Place
8 Bremen Nacht (Vinyl Version)
9 Guest Informant (Excerpt)
10 Oswald Defence Lawyer
11 Bremen Nacht Run Out (from The Bremen Nacht Run Out Single, Included W. Initial Pressing Of The Album)
12 Mark'll Sink Us (2) (from The Bremen Nacht Run Out Single)
CD2
1 There's A Ghost In My House (from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
2 Sleep Debt Snatches (from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
3 Mark'll Sink Us (from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
4 Haf Found Bormann (from There’s A Ghost In My House Single)
5 Hit The North Part 1 (from The Hit The North Single)
6 Australians In Europe (from The Hit The North Single)
7 Northerns In Europ (from The Hit The North Single)
8 Guest Informant (B-side From The Victoria Single)
9 Tuff Life Booogie (B-side From The Victoria Single)
10 Twister (B-side From The Victoria Single)
11 Bremen Nacht (Alternative)
12 A Day In The Life (from Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father NME Compilation, 1988)
13 Frenz (1987 Janice Long BBC Session) *
14 There’s A Ghost In My House (1987 Janice Long BBC Session) *
15 Get A Hotel (1987 Janice Long BBC Session) *
16 Haf Found Boorman (1987 Janice Long BBC Session) *

* - Previously Unreleased

The Fall-Outs' fourth full length album, recorded at Egg Studios with Johnny Sangster at the helm these thirteen tracks are filled with the Fall-Outs trademark dark cynicism balanced with angelic harmonies and pop smart hooks, this is garage rock / pop at its finest.

A youngish Mark E Smith is interviewed about all things Fall and Manchester whilst answering by often avoiding the interviewer’s questions in some of Mark’s favourite surroundings- outside on a Manchester slag heap- most answers are preceded by a pause whilst he inhales another draw on his cigarette

The expanded 3-CD follow up to the iconic now out of print 50,000 Fall Fans Can’t be Wrong compilation, now features songs right up to the groups last album. Compiled and annotated by long time Fall aficionado Daryl Easlea from across all the labels the band has appeared on. The booklet designed by long time Fall designer Becky Stewart contains a track by track overview. Mastered by Andy Pearce from the best sources available. Formed in Manchester in 1976, Fall were a seminal English post-punk group. The group existed in some form from that point on, built around its founder and only constant member, the late, great Mark E. Smith. Initially associated with the punk movement of the late 1970s, the group's music underwent stylistic changes over the years, but was always characterised by an abrasive guitar-driven sound and frequent use of repetition, underpinned by Smith's distinctive vocals and often cryptic lyrics. This compilation is ideal for anyone wanting to discover the weird and wonderful world of the Fall. "They are always different; they are always the same." 

TRACK LISTING

Disc: 1
1. Repetition
2. Rebellious Jukebox
3. Industrial Estate
4. Rowche Rumble
5. Fiery Jack
6. How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'
7. Totally Wired
8. New Face In Hell
9. Prole Art Threat
10. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
11. The Classical
12. Hip Priest
13. Joker Hysterical Face
14. The Man Whose Head Expanded
15. Kicker Conspiracy
16. Eat Y'self Fitter
17. Oh! Brother
18. C.R.E.E.P.

Disc: 2
1. No Bulbs
2. Cruiser's Creek
3. Spoilt Victorian Child
4. Us 80's-90's
5. Mr Pharmacist
6. Living Too Late
7. Hey Luciani
8. There's A Ghost In My House
9. Hit The North
10. Carry Bag Man
11. Victoria
12. Big New Prinz
13. Dead Beat Descendant
14. Telephone Thing
15. High Tension Line
16. Free Range
17. Why Are People Grudgeful?
18. Lost In Music
19. Behind The Counter
20. M5
21. Feeling Numb

Disc: 3
1. The Chiselers
2. Powder Keg
3. Masquerade
4. Touch Sensitive
5. Dr Buck's Letter
6. Hollow Mind
7. Susan Vs Youthclub
8. Mountain Energei
9. Theme From Sparta Fc # 2
10. Blindness
11. Reformation (Uncut)
12. Wolf Kidult Man
13. Bury!
14. Greenway
15. Sir William Wray
16. The Remainderer
17. Venice With The Girls
18. Wise Ol' Man
19. New Facts Emerge

Beggars Arkive reissue The Fall’s ninth studio album, Bend Sinister, originally released in 1986. This edition is titled Bend Sinister/The 'Domesday' Pay-Off Triad-Plus!

It was the last of three albums in a row produced by John Leckie and was named after a dystopian novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

After the universal acclaim for the previous year’s This Nation’s Saving Grace, Bend Sinister often stands in its predecessor’s shadow. It is a dark, brooding album made at the height of the group’s Beggars Banquet years and many people include this at the top of the list of favourite Fall albums.

From Bend Sinister, “Mr. Pharmacist” is a lurching instalment in pop music’s ongoing conversation with drug dealers, illicit and otherwise. Actually a cover of 1960s garage-rockers the Other Half, it’s also a demonstration of how the Fall’s relatively unchanging style could bolster other people’s songs. – PITCHFORK

“Part musical hypnotist, part ranting madman, Smith was a singular figure in post-punk. His Mancunian accent, dry witticisms and plays on words were one of the Fall’s most constant characteristics. Their songs were odysseys into his ever-verbose psyche, marked by repetitive rhythms and melodies.” – ROLLING STONE

“At various points in the band’s four-decade career, the Fall might sound like punk, hard rock, psychedelia, funk, blues-rock, jazz-rock, electropop or sheer noise. “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s the Fall,” Mr. Smith once declared. The BBC disc jockey John Peel, an early and steadfast supporter, said of the Fall that ‘they are always different, they are always the same.’” - THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Mark E Smith’s group of psychedelic post-punks rank as one of the most visionary, singular British bands of all time.” -THE GUARDIAN

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Originally released in 1986, one year after the highly celebrated ‘This Nations Saving Grace’, ‘Bend Sinister’ was a darker brooding album, but had the Brix pop sensibility to counteract Mark E. Smith’s caustic vocals. Still highly regarded by Fall fans to this day, this was MES and his band hitting their creative peak. Reissued as a double disc edition with a plethora of bonus material.

TRACK LISTING

LP TRACK LISTING:
A1. R.O.D.
A2. Dktr. Faustus
A3. Shoulder Pads 1#
A4. Mr. Pharmacist
A5. Gross Chapel – British Grenadiers
B1. U.S. 80’s – 90’s
B2. Terry Waite Sez
B3. Bournemouth Runner
B4. Riddler!
B5. Shoulder Pads 2#
C1. Living Too Late (From The Living Too Late Single)
C2. Hot Aftershave Bop (From The Living Too Late Single)
C3. Lucifer Over Lancashire (From The Mr.Pharmacist Single)
C4. Auto Tech Pilot (From The Mr.Pharmacist Single)
D1. Hey! Luciani (from The Hey! Luciani Single)
D2. Entitled (from The Hey! Luciani Single)
D3. Shoulder Pads #1b (from The Hey! Luciani Single)
D4. Living Too Long (From The Living Too Late Single)

CD TRACK LISTING:
1-1. R.O.D.
1-2. Dktr. Faustus
1-3. Shoulder Pads 1#
1-4. Mr. Pharmacist
1-5. Gross Chapel – British Grenadiers
1-6. U.S. 80’s – 90’s
1-7. Terry Waite Sez
1-8. Bournemouth Runner
1-9. Riddler!
1-10. Shoulder Pads 2#
2-1. Living Too Late (Remastered/from The Living Too Late Single)
2-2. Hot Aftershave Bop (Remastered/from The Living Too Late Single)
2-3. Lucifer Over Lancashire (Remastered/from The Mr.Pharmacist Single)
2-4. Auto Tech Pilot (Remastered/from The Mr.Pharmacist Single)
2-5. Hey! Luciani (Remastered/from The Hey! Luciani Single)
2-6. Entitled (Remastered/from The Hey! Luciani Single)
2-7. Shoulder Pads #1b (Remastered/from The Hey! Luciani Single)
2-8. Living Too Long (Remastered/from The Living Too Late Single)
2-9. R. O. D (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2-10. Gross Chapel – British Grenadiers (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2-11. U. S. 80s – 90s (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2-12. Hot Aftershave Bop (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2.13. Luciani (Original Version, Previously Unreleased)
2.14. DKTR. Faustus (Rough Mix, Previously Unreleased)
2.15. Terry Waite Sez (Yellow 2 Mix, Previously Unreleased)
2.16. Lucifer Over Lancashire (Abbey Road Take 2, Previously Unreleased)
2.17. Entitled (Abbey Road Take 2, Previously Unreleased)
2.18. Town And Country Hobgoblins (Live, From The Bend Sinister Cassette Release)

Founded by its only constant member, Mark E. Smith, The Fall formed in Manchester in 1976 and were one of the most prominent post-punk groups in the world. Musically, there may have been several stylistic changes over the years, but it was often characterised by an abrasive guitar-driven sound and frequent use of repetition, always underpinned by Smith's distinctive vocals and often cryptic lyrics. “Dragnet” is the second studio album – released 26th October 1979 - these editions celebrate the fortieth anniversary of this seminal album. Originally released through record label Step-Forward, it predicated 2 major factors in the group’s career – high productivity and high group turnover. The album has historically garnered excellent reviews, including 4/5 in MOJO, 8.7/10 on Pitchfork and 4/5 in Q Magazine. Featuring the one and only Mark E. Smith alongside Steve Hanley (bass), Marc Riley (guitar), Craig Scanlon (guitar), Mike Leigh (drums), Kay Carroll (backing vocals) and Yvonne Pawlett (keyboards). 

TRACK LISTING

CD:

Disc: 1
1. Psykick Dancehall
2. A Figure Walks
3. Printhead
4. Dice Man
5. Before The Moon Falls
6. Your Heart Out
7. Muzorewi's Daughter
8. Flat Of Angles
9. Choc-Stock
10. Spectre Vs. Rector
11. Put Away
12. Rowche Rumble
13. In My Area
14. Fiery Jack
15. 2nd Dark Age
16. Psykick Dancehall No.2 (Alternate Take)
17. Rowche Rumble (Take 2)
18. Rowche Rumble (Take 3)
19. Rowche Rumble (Take 4)
20. Rowche Rumble (Take 5)
21. In My Area (Alternate Take 1)
22. In My Area (Alternate Take 2)

Disc: 2
1. Psykick Dancehall (Live In Retford)
2. Rowche Rumble (Live In Retford)
3. Flat Of Angles (Live In Retford)
4. 2nd Dark Age (Live In Retford)
5. Rebellious Jukebox (Live In Retford)
6. Muzorewi's Daughter (Live In Retford)
7. In My Area (Live In Retford)
8. Choc Stock (Live In Retford)
9. Printhead (Live In Retford)
10. A Figure Walks (Live In Retford)
11. Fiery Jack (Live In Retford)
12. No Xmas For John Quays (Live In Retford)
13. Psycho Mafia (Live In Retford)

Disc: 3
1. Psykick Dancehall (Live In Los Angeles)
2. Rowche Rumble (Live In Los Angeles)
3. Flat Of Angles (Live In Los Angeles)
4. Rebellious Jukebox (Live In Los Angeles)
5. Various Times (Live In Los Angeles)
6. Stepping Out (Live In Los Angeles)
7. Your Heart Out (Live In Los Angeles)
8. Dice Man (Live In Los Angeles)
9. Spectre Vs Rector (Live In Los Angeles)
10. Choc Stock (Live In Los Angeles)
11. Muzorewi's Daughter (Live In Los Angeles)

This double vinyl package features tracks from across The Fall's glittering career.

TRACK LISTING

Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
Man Whose Head Expanded
Hit The North
Jerusalem
Popcorn Double Feature
Behind The Counter
Fantastic Life
Bremen Nacht
I'm Into CB
Room To Live
Carry Bag Man
Eat Y'Self Fitter
Lucifer Over Lancashire
The Classical
L.A.
Big New Prinz
Why Are People Grudgeful?
2 X 4
Frenz

Grotesque (After The Gramme) is the third studio album by the Fall. The album reached number one on the UK Independent Chart, spending 29 weeks on the chart in total. The Fall's music at the time was described as "Mancabilly", and by Smith himself as "Country 'n' Northern". In 2020, Rolling Stone included Grotesque (After The Gramme) in its "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list, praising the band for its "ability to craft impossibly catchy songs that simultaneously sound like they're shaking apart at the seams"

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Pay Your Rates
2. English Scheme
3. New Face In Hell
4. C'N'C-S Mithering
5. The Container Drivers

Side B
1. Impression Of J. Temperance
2. In The Park
3. W.M.C - Blob 59
4. Gramme Friday
5. The N.W.R.A.

I Am Kurious Oranj is The Fall’s eleventh studio album. Released by Beggars Banquet 30 years ago, in 1988, it contains some of their most loved songs including “Cab It Up!”, “New Big Prinz” and “Jerusalem” which takes its lyrics from a poem by William Blake.

The album was written as the soundtrack to an avant-garde ballet titled I Am Curious, Orange, produced by the experimental Michael Clark Company and performed in London with The Fall playing live. As it said in the original ballet program, replicated inside this reissue, “Mark E. Smith is a history buff and admirer of Michael Clark, and I Am Curious, Orange spawned the idea of a thematic delving into the foibles and little-known psyche of William of Orange.”

According to Mark E. Smith in his book, Renegade, “We adapted the title from a Swedish porno film--I am Curious, Yellow. I was trying to make the point that we all share some kind of common knowledge that’s within ourselves; that comes out in all sorts of things. Some people call it a gene pool. It’s as if you already know subconsciously about historical incidents. You don’t have to have been taught it. It’s in-built. At the time I wanted to put this across, basically as a loose explanation of what was happening in Belfast: it’s in the head and bones and there’s nothing you can do about it. I was on a roll at the time. I’m rarely short of ideas, and I’m not into preserving them much, either. If it’s in your head and you’ve got the right people around you them there’s no better time to tell the story.”

TRACK LISTING

New Big Prinz
Overture From ‘I Am Curious Orange’
Dog Is Life/Jerusalem
Kurious Oranj
Wrong Place, Right Time

Win Fall C.D. 2080
Yes, O Yes
Van Plague?
Bad News Girl
Cab It Up! 

The first full-length album of The Fall, Live At The Witch Trials, is not actually a live album. Emerging out of a two-day studio session at Camden Sound in North West London during a sickly December of 1978, Witch Trials amounts to the sinister foundation of the band's diverse sound. Every song explores drastically different styles and wild terrain, leaving much to decipher over its eleven tracks. 

TRACK LISTING

CD:

Disc: 1
1. Frightened
2. Crap Rap 2/Like To Blow
3. Rebellious Jukebox
4. No Xmas For John Quays
5. Mother-Sister!
6. Industrial Estate
7. Underground Medecin
8. Two Steps Back
9. Live At The Witch Trials
10. Futures And Pasts
11. Music Scene

Disc: 2
1. Bingo Master's Break-Out!
2. Psycho Mafia
3. Repetition
4. It's The New Thing
5. Various Times (Extended Version)
6. Dresden Dolls (Home Rehearsals From Dresden Dolls Bootleg Single)
7. Psycho Mafia (Home Rehearsals From Dresden Dolls Bootleg Single)
8. Industrial Estate (Home Rehearsals From Dresden Dolls Bootleg Single)
9. Stepping Out (Live From Short Circuit: Live At The Electric Circus)
10. Last Orders (Live From Short Circuit: Live At The Electric Circus)
11. Rebellious Jukebox (John Peel Session)
12. Mother - Sister! (John Peel Session)
13. Industrial Estate (John Peel Session)
14. Futures And Pasts (John Peel Session)
15. Put Away (John Peel Session)
16. Mess Of My (John Peel Session)
17. No Xmas For John Key (John Peel Session)
18. Like To Blow (John Peel Session)

Disc: 3
1. Like To Blow (Live 1978)
2. Stepping Out (Live 1978)
3. Two Steps Back (Live 1978)
4. Mess Of My (Live 1978)
5. It's The New Thing (Live 1978)
6. Various Times (Live 1978)
7. Bingo-Master's Break-Out! (Live 1978)
8. Frightened (Live 1978)
9. Industrial Estate (Live 1978)
10. Psycho Mafia (Live 1978)
11. Music Scene (Live 1978)
12. Mother-Sister! (Live 1978)

The Marshall Suite from 1999 builds on the techno-influenced beats of its predecessor Levitate, while also returning to a more rockabilly-influenced sound reminiscent of earlier Fall line-ups with songs such as the catchy "Touch Sensitive" and the strange, complex, thumping jungle beats of "The Crying Marshal".

The Marshall Suite was made immediately after an American tour during which Mark E. Smith had an onstage fight with members of the band and was arrested following ongoing altercations at the hotel at which the group were staying. While the remaining band members quit and returned to England, leaving Smith in a cell in Manhattan, Julia Nagle chose to stay in the band, helping to assemble the group's new line-up. During the recording of the album, this new line-up was still taking shape and the album features two different bassists. None the less it was a very well-received album at the time and is highly collectible by now.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Touch Sensitive
2. F-'Oldin' Money
3. Shake-Off
4. Bound
5. This Perfect Day

Side B
1. (Jung Nev's) Antidotes
2. Inevitable
3. Anecdotes + Antidotes In B#
4. Finale : Tom Ragazzi

Side C
1. Early Life Of Crying Marshal
2. The Crying Marshal
3. Birthday Song
4. Mad.Men-Eng.Dog
5. On My Own

Side D
(Blank/No Music)

The Fall's fourth studio album Perverted by Language was released in 1983. The album was produced by the band's vocalist and songwriter Mark E. Smith and recorded at various studios in Manchester. Perverted by Language features some of The Fall's most renowned tracks, including "Garden". The album's sound is characterized by its sharp and angular post-punk guitar riffs, driven by a heavy bass and drums rhythm section, all layered with Mark E. Smith's distinctive vocals.

Lyrically, Perverted by Language deals with themes of alienation, disorder, and the unpredictability of modern life. Smith's idiosyncratic and cryptic wordplay, including his penchant for inventing new words and phrases, adds to the album's overall sense of unease and dislocation. Despite its challenging sound and lyrics, Perverted by Language is considered by many critics and fans to be one of The Fall's finest albums, showcasing the band at their creative and innovative peak.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Eat Y'self Fitter
2. Neighbourhood Of Infinity
3. Garden
4. Hotel Bloedel

Side B
1. Smile
2. I Feel Voxish
3. Tempo House
4. Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot

The classic second line up of The Fall, classic material too. Mark E. Smith (vocals), Martin Bramah (guitar), Tony Friel (bass), Una Baines (keyboards), Karl Burns (drums). Tony Friel’ s last gig before he went off to join Dick Witts in The Passage. The Fall set was recorded on cassette by Chris Hewitt , a copy was given to Bernie Wilcox RAR gig organiser who passed it on to Mark. Mark thought it was such an important gig recording despite not being brilliant quality that he asked Chis could The Fall release it – so it first appeared on CD in 1999. In 2013 Mark E Smith told Chris Hewitt it was now due a release on vinyl and would he sort it out on Ozit. It has taken a bit of time since Mark’s suggestion but here it is.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

1 Psycho Mafia
2 Last Orders
3 Repetition
4 Dresden Dolls
5 Hey Fascist
6 Frightened
7 Industrial Estate.

Side Two

1 Stepping Out
2 Bingo Masters Breakout
3 Oh Brother
4 Cop It
5 Futures And Pasts
6 Louie Louie 

The Fall is an English post-punk band, formed in Manchester in 1976. The band has existed in some form ever since, and is essentially built around its founder and only constant member Mark E. Smith. Initially associated with the punk movement of the late 1970s, the group's music has gone through several stylistic changes over the years, characterised by an abrasive guitar-driven sound and frequent use of repetition, and is always underpinned by Smith's distinctive vocals and often cryptic lyrics. The band is noted for its prolific output: as of autumn 2017 they have released over 32 studio albums, and more than triple that counting live albums and other releases. This collection features all the A-sides recorded across a multitude of labels: Step Forward, Rough Trade, Kamera, Beggars Banquet, Cog Sinister, Permanent, Artful, Action… oh, and Cherry Red! We got the lot!

TRACK LISTING

Disc: 1
1. Bingo-Master
2. It's The New Thing
3. Rowche Rumble
4. Fiery Jack
5. How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'
6. Totally Wired
7. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
8. Look, Know
9. The Man Whose Head Expanded
10. Kicker Conspiracy
11. Marquis Cha-Chaâ
12. Oh! Brother
13. C.R.E.E.P.
14. Draygo's Guilt
15. Couldn't Get Ahead
16. Cruiser's Creek

Disc: 2
1. Living Too Late
2. Mr. Pharmacist
3. Hey! Luciani
4. There's A Ghost In My House
5. Hit The North Part 1
6. Victoria
7. Jerusalem
8. Cab It Up
9. Telephone Thing
10. Popcorn Double Feature
11. White Lightning
12. High Tension Line
13. Free Range
14. Ed's Babe
15. Why Are People Grudgeful?
16. Behind The Counter
17. 15 Ways
18. The Chiselers

Disc: 3
1. Masquerade
2. Touch Sensitive
3. F-'Oldin' Money
4. Rude (All The Time)
5. Susan Vs Youthclub
6. (We Wish You) A Protein Christmas
7. Theme From Sparta F.C. #2
8. Distilled Mug Art (Mix 15)
9. I Can Hear The Grass Grow
10. Reformation! (Uncut)
11. Slippy Floor (Mark Mix)
12. Bury! #2+4
13. Laptop Dog
14. Victrola Time
15. Sir William Wray (Single Mix)
16. The Remainderer
17. Wise Ol Man

Popstock was created by the surviving members of the Slates iteration of The Fall to present unusual and alternative versions of the brilliant records they helped create.

These records promise to be unique in that they are the only new Fall releases going forward where actual members of the group are consulted, involved and remunerated at all. Slate Live Again presents live versions of the six songs that make up the original mini- LP, with the incredible versions chosen in order to present the songs at every stage of their live performance, both pre and post recording.

Lovingly curated with input from band members at every stage, including sourcing, mastering and design, and with sleeve notes by Fall Uber- fan Stewart Lee, Slates Live is the type of release that Fall fans have been craving for years.

TRACK LISTING

1. Middle Mass
2. An Old Lover Etc.
3. Prole Art Threat
4. Fit And Working Again
5. Slags, Slates Etc.
6. Leave The Capitol

Originally released in 1985, their 8th album is one of The Fall’s most loved releases and is often hailed as one of the greatest albums of the 1980s. Drawing from the well of primal rock ‘n’ roll, the band play with muscular spontaneity and inspiration to create music that still sounds unique and challenging, especially against today’s anodyne imitations of Rock and ‘guitar music’.

This LP has also been mastered from HD files.

TRACK LISTING

LP:
A1. Mansion
A2. Bombast
A3. Barmy
A4. What You Need
A5. Spoilt Victorian Child
A6. L.A.

B1. Gut Of The Quantifier
B2. My New House
B3. Paintwork
B4. I Am Damo Suzuki
B5. To Nkroachment: Yarbles

Presented on white vinyl with sleeve notes 'White Lightning' encompasses the period between 1978 and 2001; just short of two-thirds of the group's four-decade existence The Fall is known for their distinctive and unconventional sound, marked by Mark E. Smith's often inscrutable lyrics, abrasive vocals, and a constantly evolving lineup of musicians.

Throughout their career, The Fall released numerous albums and singles. Their music was characterized by a mix of punk rock, experimental rock, and a unique sense of irony and humour.

The Fall had a devoted following and influenced many bands and artists within the post- punk and alternative music scenes. Mark E. Smith was a prolific songwriter and a distinctive voice in the world of music. He passed away in 2018, but the legacy of The Fall continues to be celebrated by fans and musicians alike. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Frightened
2. Before The Moon
3. Flat Of Angles
4. Jawbone & The Rifle
5. Extricate
6. Your Heart Out
7. Bill Is Dead
8. Black Monk Theme 1
9. Black Monk Theme 2
10. Gotta See Jane

The group were founded in Sheen in 2004 by best friends, Rob Symmons, formerly guitarist of original UK punk band, Subway Sect, and Rob Green (who appeared with a later version of Subway Sect) and they remain the core songwriting team and driving force behind The Fallen Leaves sound and vision. The Fallen Leaves operate within a strict set of self-imposed rules, including no jeans, no t-shirts, no cover versions - punk rock for gentlemen. They believe in the DIY Punk ethos - Song, Sound and Performance are all, simple songs for complex people, though they ask you to remember that simple and easy are not the same thing, The Fallen Leaves are a Group, not a band and The Fallen Leaves play 'shows', never gigs!

The Falling Doves a force of electric energy. Their music is a fusion of stadium rock with garage rock familiarity, a sound that has helped the guys win over the ears and hearts of fans around the globe.

Personally mentored by Phil Solemn (the Rembrandt’s), the late Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots), and Pete Best (the Beatles), the Falling Doves have additionally shared the stage with such established acts the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus, Fastball, and Gilby Clarke; the list grows with each passing year.

Prior to COVID-19, their "Electric Dove World Tour" was set to sweep through Europe, Asia, and Latin America with nothing short of thunder and lightning. The band was able to tear Australia down before restrictions were set in March.

The band is now rescheduling those missed dates, with a summer tour, dubbed the “Lightning Strikes Twice Tour,” The band will be visiting as many countries as allowed by the ease of restrictions the remainder of 2021.

While in the UK, at the height of the pandemic, the band sought refuge at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, working under the direction of engineer / producer Chris Bolster with pre-production done at Motor Museum Studios in Liverpool (Oasis, The 1975, Arctic Monkeys ) for a future album, called ‘Liverpool,’.

About the Double Vision 2022 World Tour in April 2022, will bring the elements of a stadium live concert production into small halls, with a rich visual texture of music videos and the element of lights and theater you would expect from bands like Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones.

Don’t let the lightning pass you by as the storm rolls through your town and don’t forget your leather jacket. 

Falling Floors is a psych-rock three piece, formed in the pandemic out of a desire for distraction from dark times and an unending stream of shit news (seriously, what the fuck is going on?) There’s no master plan, no grand ambition, no product-market fit, just a shared love of 60s psych, 70s rock, and the fearless, genre-less experimentation of Krautrock and early prog to get us through.

Riding the trans-Pennine underground (up the hill and out of the crags, down there, you know?), you can hear magical sounds coming out of the Valley. On a cold and wet Calderdale winter, the band recorded their self-titled first album, DIY, live, in two days in Hebden Bridge. Rawness not perfection and feel over finesse were the aims. This album, a trans-Atlantic joint release by Riot Season (UK) and Echodelick (US), lives by slips, fuck-ups, and simple, joyous expression.

Falling Floors is Rob Herian (ex-feral stoner rockers Early Mammal) on guitar and vocals, Harry Wheeler (no ravers The Family Elan) on bass and keys, and Colin Greenwood (ex-shoegaze folk rockers No Sorrows) on drums. It’s no one’s project, and no one’s in charge. But there’s enough in common to keep it honest.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Infinite Switch (8:05)
A2. Interlude 1 (Making A Scene) (0:58)
A3. Ridiculous Man (4:41)
A4. Interlude 2 (Negotiations) (1:16)
A5. Flawed Theme (4:50)
A6. Interlude 3 (Going Quietly) (2:00)
B. Elusive And Unstable Nature Of Truth (18:48)

The lead singer of beloved heartland-punk band The Gaslight Anthem, Brian Fallon steps away from that sound and into a stripped-down Americana space on his third solo album, Local Honey. Produced by Grammy-award winning producer Peter Katis (The National, Frightened Rabbit, Death Cab for Cutie), the album showcases Fallon's songwriting in small vignettes, from a loving devotional for his daughter to a vengeful murder ballad.

TRACK LISTING

1. When You're Ready
2. 21 Days
3. Vincent
4. I Don't Mind (If I'm With You)
5. Lonely For You Only
6. Horses
7. Hard Feelings
8. You Have Stolen My Heart