Bold post-punk, female trio, PINS release their third full-length LP Hot Slick via their own Haus of Pins label. The vibrant album is filled with neon synths, loud guitars, and cheeky melodies that mirror the group’s new boldly-hued imagery and create the sound of a girl gang refreshed and amplified. Hot Slick features a trio of recently released singles: the glitchy and cathartic title track (produced by Jamie Hince of The Kills) and anthemic “Bad Girls Forever” (produced by Rich Woodcraft) as well as the high-heeled skittering beat struts of “Ponytail”.

The 10 new original tracks found the trio of singer/guitarist Faith Vern, guitarist Lois MacDonald and bassist Kyoko Swan welcoming a rotating cast of collaborators following the departure of their original rhythm section. Rich Woodcraft oversaw the entire project as producer and engineer, while Jamie Hince and Dean Horner contributed additional production and Nathan Saoudi of Fat White Family lent his talents on the keys. The resulting album highlights an expanded soundscape with nods to influences such as Soulwax, LCD Soundsystem, Suicide, and New Order.

Since the release of Girls Like Us in 2013, PINS has exuded strength in their danceable alternative post-punk transmissions and earned the trust, endorsement, and creative blessings of rock royalty such as Iggy Pop, with whom they collaborated on 2017’s The Bad Thing EP. 2015’s Wild Nights earned widespread critical acclaim including an Album of the Week nod from Stereogum and profiles in Harper’s Bazaar, Interview Magazine, The Guardian, DAZED, and i-D.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive transparent orange vinyl.

Erland Cooper is set to release Hether Blether, the third and final album in a trilogy of releases shaped by the islands where he grew up. Hailing from the archipelago of Orkney in Scotland, the contemporary composer and multiinstrumentalist has explored the birdlife (2018’s Solan Goose), sea (2019’s Sule Skerry) and, on Hether Blether, the land, manifesting an immersive collection of music, words and imagery.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Alternative (green) album cover, reverse board outer sleeve*
• Pressed on recycled vinyl
• A4 matt print*
• Foldable map of Orkney*
• Hand-Numbered*
• Limited Edition of 500.
*Exclusive to Dinked Edition

Dinked Edition LP includes MP3 Download Code.

LP Info: Recycled vinyl.

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

To celebrate the anniversary of the original album Flying Lotus presents Flamagra (Instrumentals), shining a light on Flylo’s untouchable arrangements and production.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xLP Info: Double LP comes with printed inners in wide spine outer sleeve plus download card. Packed in poly sleeve with custom turntable powered slipmat and labels.

Thee debut longplayer from Thee MVPS, on their own label, taking cues from all of their favourite labels…Influenced by SST, In The Red, Au Go Go, Goner, Stiff, Castle Face, Dischord etc. (you know, the good ones!!).

The band lives in the same house in Leeds, they have a whole slew of 7” records out all over the world, some sold out, some, not, they are steeped in music, playing live and this album shows that: Thee MVPs (Most Valuable Players) love music a whole bunch and hope they made a record that shows that.

Thee MVPs believe you can do a band just as well as anyone else

Thee MVPs ran in to quite the hurdles trying to do make this album, a good few Gs sank in the wrong places and to say bad luck follows them would be an understatement

Thee MVPs have already done 350+ shows all over the world.

Thee MVPs have played with all your favourite bands.

Thee MVPs mastered the record in Chicago with Bob Weston of Shellac.

Thee MVPs wanted the first record to be 10 songs, Blue Album style.

Thee MVPs think some of the guitar solos are like J Mascis.

Thee MVPs think the bass is the best sounding instrument on this album.

Thee MVPs like Hot Snakes, The Stranglers, Sleep, Meatbodies, Marked Men, Quelle Chris, CAN, Black Sabbath, Black Flag and Super Furry Animals. Please add on whatever else that makes them sound like they have cool influences.
Thee MVPs ditched the reverb and space echo on the vocals and traded it for better lyrics.

Thee MVPs consider this album part concept - tying in references and homages to Sci Fi with themes of difficulties all of us face as we get a little less away from youth. Some themes include always having camaraderie in the face of any dire straight, how being contactable 24/7 probably isn't best for any of us and how really we're not any more different/cooler/better/worse/charming/narcissistic than anyone else because we do a band

Thee MVPs were lucky enough to have Edd's mum Sahrah, an architect student to design the cover based off Joel's readings of polymath Walter Russell.

This is the best MVPs record until the next one is out.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: ● Super exclusive “super-on-the-nose-sci-fi-warpspeed-hyperspace” Splatter blue.
● Dinked X MVPs Slipmat.
● Hand- numbered album art insert.
● Exclusive label sticker.
● Limited 350 pressing.

Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, but The Cool Greenhouse are about to shatter glass ceilings with their self-titled debut LP.

“I wanted to hear repetitive music that wasn’t pretentious” tells the band’s voice Tom Greenhouse of his personal agenda to inject some pop sentimentality into the rock’n’roll textbook. “The mission was to make long, repetitive pop music that wasn’t boring. I soon realised I could do that through focusing on the lyrics.”

With phrases culled from the pages of his many notebooks, Greenhouse has a way with words. Exploring Rotary Club jumble sales and mausoleums or making futuristic voyages into musical VR, his songs dig at the gammon classes and scoff at the stupidity of society alongside pop punches about female harassment. Inspired by conversations and magazine articles he narrates upon the world as he sees it, preferring wise-cracks and judgement to merely passing comment. “At school I wrote a story about a whale that fell in love with a submarine and tried to have sex with it which almost caused a serious nuclear meltdown; it won a prize. As a teenager I thought I was Arthur Rimbaud so moved to Paris and wrote terrible poetry.”

Down and out in Paris and later, in London, Tom got skint fast so headed to the sticks of Norwich. Sitting in his garden, inspired to turn scripture into song and record it on a friend’s tape recorder, he began penning the album between writing clickbait articles to get by and turned to humour to express his deeper thoughts; “A lot of punk is on the nose like “fuck the Tories” but I’m not that hardcore. Humour is good for talking about serious things without getting too sentimental.”

Encouraged by The Shadow Ring’s Graham Lambkin (“I wrote to him asking whether it was worth the bother. He sent a really nice reply. He probably doesn’t remember, but it spurred me on.”), Tom took to the live circuit, but his solo backing track performances needed a fuller sound. Ahead of securing a show with The Stroppies, he turned to the talent of guitarist Tom O Driscoll, bassist Thom Mason, drummer and percussionist Kevin Barthelemy and Merlin Nova on keys and synths, harmonium, melodica, violin and backing vocals. “We practiced the songs and played that first show; we did a good job and Melodic signed us! Those guys are crazy,” Tom says. Perhaps not; also championed by DIY it could be a sign of things to come as the band prepare for their Great Escape debut.

Discovering The Cool Greenhouse’s first 7” (which coincidentally mentioned his own surname) ace producer, sound engineer and mixer Phil Booth (Sleaford Mods, Jake Bugg) invited the group to his JT Soar studio in Nottingham. The old potato-packing warehouse offered an idiosyncratic working method for the band, who recorded the album over 7 days as live between kipping on its couches, 4am whiskey-soaked sessions and Mario Kart ’64 on demand. “Phil’s got all the kit and know-how, but the studio is rough around the edges with great character,” Tom tells. “There were weird little synchronistic miracles… discussing a song then seeing its title on a shop window, finding things in pubs straight out of our songs… these zapped me onto some sort of Jungian plane where I didn’t need sleep and knew just what to do.”

Blissfully instinctive, Tom’s lexicon flies across the album with the agitation of an internal monologue that won’t quit. From pop culture to cautionary tales, anything deemed too musically extravagant was swiftly removed before being mastered by Mikey Young (Bodega, Amyl and the Sniffers); “we added a tympani and clarinet but ended up taking it all off again” At times the Truman Show-trappings of ‘Trojan Horse’ or ‘Gum’s unsettling cowbell hint at the motoric. For now, whatever it is that gets you going, let’s just call it The Cool Greenhouse effect.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Exclusive Dinked ‘Ultra Clear’ colour vinyl.
• Exclusive signed and numbered postcard.
• Exclusive Dinked Colour OBI strip.
• Includes download code containing two bonus tracks exclusive to Dinked.
• Reverse Board Outer Sleeve.
• Matt Black Inner Sleeve W/ Centre Holes.
• Matt Art Paper Two Sided Insert.

GLOK is the electronic solo project from Andy Bell of shoegaze legends RIDE (formerly of Oasis/ Beady Eye/Hurricane #1). His debut album under the moniker, Dissident, was originally released last year on a limited edition cassette by Bytes, an offshoot of Ransom Note Records. That sold out in 24 hours, and was followed by a vinyl pressing of 500 copies, on transparent green vinyl, sold via Bandcamp and two online shops.

However, with that edition now sold out pretty much on word of mouth, due to popular demand, Dissident is being repressed and is this time being made available to a wider audience via a partnership between Bytes and Republic of Music/K7.

The name GLOK is a misspelling of the German word for Bell. The German connection fits well as there is a strong Krautrock influence in the music, especially on the title track, ‘Dissident’, an epic clocking in just shy of the 20-minute mark, which blends synthwave, minimalism, trance, Detroit techno and John Carpenter soundtracks, with Andy even dropping in some killer John Squire-esque guitar licks.

The album was supported by Andrew Weatherall, Justin Robertson, Tom Ravenscroft at BBC 6 Music, The Times, Electronic Sound, Clash, DJ Mag, ChainDLK, Stamp the Wax and Groove.

Dissident Remixed will follow on June 26, 2020, featuring reworkings from Andrew Weatherall, Jay Glass Dubs, Maps, Richard Sen, Minotaur Shock, C.A.R., Timothy Clerkin and Andy himself.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Transparent red vinyl.

Invada Records are proud to release Blanck Mass’ score to ‘Calm With Horses’ on vinyl and CD! Black Mass’ first feature length, synth-heavy score was previously released on digital platforms on 13th March.  Blanck Mass is the solo project of Benjamin John Power. The musician, also one half of Fuck Buttons, has been making music under the moniker since 2010 and has released three albums on Sacred Bones, 2015's Dumb Flesh, 2017's World Eater and 2019’s Animated Violence Mild. Calm With Horses, Nick Rowland’s feature film debut, is a raw and beautiful tale of one man’s struggle to navigate both crime and family life in rural Ireland.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: The vinyl is pressed on black & white marble vinyl, and housed in a deluxe spined sleeve with printed insert and digital download card included.

“Silence is a complex subject and completely affects you depending on context,” the band say of the track, which is accompanied by a self-directed video. “Silence can be deafening in people when they struggle to communicate. Other times silence is awkward. Silence can also be golden, to have built a relationship with someone and just to be with them is enough, finding somebody to share this with is rare and should be appreciated.”

A near death experience being sucked into an active sandstorm during a US road trip is enough to make you think about life. Being immersed in a swirling vortex of sand, dust, tumbleweed and detritus whilst trying to keep control of a speeding car might have only been a brief flash moment in Steven Dove’s life but it was enough for the Psychic Markers man to question life. “These things impact you,” he says. “I got thinking about human nature, our proneness to mistakes, imperfection and the implications of reactionary decision making.”

The results of such lyrical reflection, and broad spectrum of thought, can be heard throughout the latest Psychic Markers album, one that Dove describes as, “Imagine a David Cronenberg-style movie in which each morning you awake to find your brain merged inside someone else’s head - you see life from a totally different angle.”

Approaching things from a different angle was also the objective sonically. “We wanted to make an album that was 100% us,” says Leon Dufficy, who heads up the band with Dove. “With zero dilution from other influences.” This natural, intuition-led, direction is something immediately apparent on the album, one that weaves seamlessly between pulsing groove-locked electronica and psychedelic pop as frequently as it glides from sparkling melody to rich cinematic ambience.

“Cohesive yet diverse,” is what the band have said of their music and it fits their personalities too, with members coming from as far afield as Australia and Yorkshire. Dufficy and Dove wrote and produced the record together, the sultry yet subtle bass comes from Luke Jarvis, who also did the band’s artwork, whilst the glowing backing vocals of Alannah Ashworth feature alongside the shared percussion duties of Lewis Baker and Jim Wallis.

The opening track ‘Where Is the Prize?’ is a perfect opener that encapsulates Dove’s introspective yet existential lyricism, as well as the band’s expanded sonic terrain. It’s written from the perspective of an old person who sees friends die off until only they remain. “We strive for old age but what’s even there if you make it?” asks Dove. Musically, it opens with gently lapping waves of electronics that sets the tone for a more electronically-leaning record.

A total electronic overhaul this is not, however. Instead, their third album sits in a sweet spot between evolutionary and revolutionary step; retaining the core essence and personality of the band but also moving into new territory. It embellishes and emboldens the band’s pre-existing palate, one that still nods to 1970s Germany on the careering ‘Clouds’ (a song that, antithetical to the opener, looks at life from the perspective of a child) and one that still exhibits their seamless knack for immersive melody via the gorgeous Yo La Tengo-like closer ‘Baby It’s Time.’

Amidst the engulfing soundscapes of ‘Juno Dreams’ is a sample of an old Texan psychic that cannot foresee a future for its subject, whilst the serene-to-nightmare psychedelic noise trip that is ‘Sacred Geometry’ is a direct exploration of the moment Dove was caught in the sandstorm. “The track is that nanosecond you have to make an important decision – the second part of it being the knock-on effect of making the wrong one.”

Playing with structure and form, and the overlapping role between lyrics and music, is rooted in the album. “I was tired of writing within the constraints of a verse/chorus structure and wanted to be expressive in alternative ways,” says Dove. “It’s like walking the same route to get from a to b - eventually it becomes mundane and for this record I wanted to try walking a different way.”

Dufficy also found himself going down a rabbit hole of old gear for the album, exploring four tracks, micro cassettes and drum machines. “I wanted to see how it would impact our writing and recording process,” he says. “By taking away the endless options you have in the digital world.” The result is one that adds to the already deeply textural world of the band - an approach that has previously reared its head via doo-wop-esque harmony vocals, thoughtfully layered immersive guitars or enveloping atmospheres - as well as adding a further sense of diving into the unknown.

The dodgy motors of the four-track led to drums and keys being all over the place on the track ‘Enveloping Cycles’, creating its own woozy, distinct rhythm of gently fizzing beats. That is before the machine gave up completely. “The four-track died right at the end of making the album, so its quirks will only ever exist on this album,” Dufficy says. “I like that, it's kind of romantic to me.”

Much like being caught in the middle of a sandstorm, or a piece of equipment holding out until the final sputtering moments of musical completion, there’s something unique, engulfing and encompassing about the latest Psychic Markers album. A beautiful bottling of time and place that magically ends up somewhere completely new

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Yellow/gold vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announce Chunky Shrapnel, a feature-length motion picture that follows King Gizzard’s adrenaline-inducing onstage performances from the perspective of the band. The film is accompanied by a double LP featuring the music from the film, which was recorded throughout the band's 2019 European tour. The film will premiere on Friday, April 17 via an online live-stream -- watch the trailer and purchase tickets to the premiere HERE. The film's accompanying double LP will be available for pre-order next Friday, April 10, before its digital release on April 24. “John Stewart (director of Chunky Shrapnel) followed us around for a few weeks through Europe," says the band's Stu Mackenzie. "It was fun and funny and wild and weird. Sometimes an inconspicuous fly on the wall, sometimes an intrusive camera man one inch from my face. Always exciting though. Chunky Shrapnel was made for the cinema but as both concerts and films are currently outlawed, it feels poetic to release a concert-film digitally right now."

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Gold coloured vinyl.

Nonesuch Records releases the Magnetic Fields’ Quickies, a set of five vinyl EPs that features twenty-eight new short songs by Stephin Merritt, ranging in length from thirteen seconds to two minutes and thirty-five seconds. Quickies also will be available on CD.

Merritt explains his thinking behind the Quickies concept: “I’ve been reading a lot of very short fiction, and I enjoyed writing 101 Two-Letter Words, the poetry book about the shortest words you can use in Scrabble. And I’ve been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to languor. So I’ve been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and I’ve been thinking of narratives that are only a few lines long. Also, I had been using a lot of small notebooks, so when I reach the bottom of the page, I’ve only gone a short way. Now that I’m working on a different album, I’m enforcing a large notebook rule so that I don’t do Quickies twice in a row.”

Quickies features Merritt and other Magnetic Fields band members Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo. They are joined by longtime friends and collaborators Chris Ewen, Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman.

To date, Stephin Merritt has written and recorded twelve Magnetic Fields albums, including the beloved 69 Love Songs and the 2017 critically acclaimed Nonesuch box set, 50 Song Memoir, which chronicled the first fifty years of the songwriter’s life with one song per year. New York magazine called the box set ‘a celebration of Merritt’s sky-high range as a writer and a player, through the exploration of the circumstances that helped cultivate it … a delightful flip through the untold back pages of one of rock’s most singular voices, and, all in all, the best damned Magnetic Fields album in the last ten years.’ Merritt has also composed original music and lyrics for several music theatre pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman’s novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radio’s This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.

FORMAT INFORMATION

CD Info: Softpak with one disc.

5x7" Box Set Info: Vinyl boxset with five 7” vinyl discs.

French three-piece Servo deal in the kind of dark, psychedelic noise-rock that storms with ease between gloomy, hypnotic moments and bouts of powerful, motorik noise. With a string of singles, EPs and their 2016 debut ‘The Lair of Gods’ behind them, the Rouenbased band are now gearing up to release their second album, ‘Alien’, via Fuzz Club. Servo’s sound finds an unstable home between heavy, droning psych-rock and gothic post-punk; forlorn, jangling guitars and deep, austere vocals breaking down into piercing blasts of feedback and distortion. Comprised of Arthur Pierre (guitar / vocals), Louis Hebert (bass / vocals) and Hugo Magontier (drums / vocals), Servo have spent the last few years bringing their intense live-show – an assault of trance-inducing noise and blinding flashes of light – to growing audiences around mainland Europe and the UK. After a couple of typically riotous and deafening shows in London, at underground haunts like The Shacklewell Arms and The Windmill, the band caught the attention of Fuzz Club, ticking all the label’s boxes: overloading on fuzz, reverb and drone. ‘Alien’, their first release on the label, comprises seven tracks of dark visceral psych.

'Like The Stooges fucking a pizza to death' CLASSIC ROCK.

With the bands eagerly awaited second album due late Spring 2020 and a sold out tour with Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs still ringing in everyone's ears, the time seemed right to repress the bands 2018 debut 'Primitive Fuck' which upon it's original release actually sold out on pre order.

Black Helium are a four-piece formed in 2016 for a special one-off Halloween gig at the notoriously heady Guild Navigator club in East London, and have since then spread their sonic gumbo of hard-edged psychedelic head-fuckery and Neanderthal glam rock swagger across the country.

Heavy friends Stuart Gray (vocals/guitar), Beck Harvey (vocals/bass) Davey Mulka (guitar) and Ben Davies (drums) went on to record their debut, Primitive Fuck, at Hermitage Studios with Margo Broom in March 2017. Although, Ben Davies disappeared abruptly after recording his drum tracks after experiencing a ‘profound life-changing mystical occurrence’.

Influenced by bands such as Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Amon Düül II and The Stooges; Primitive Fuck channels an era when psychedelic rock stood for mind expanding eclecticism, and hip shaking sonic hedonism in equal measure, moving from motor city heroism, to shapeless Kosmische ambient ego-death via space ritual riff worship. Now, with new drummer, Diogo Gomes on board, Primitive Fuck represents the birth of a band your psychiatrist warned you about.

‘Black Helium aren’t content to create nebulous explorations: these songs swig whiskey, stomp the dance floor into dust, and slam the door shut when a riff’s job is done.’ DECIBEL MAGAZINE

‘Chemically hazed colossus of mind morphing intent tripping third eye astral planes all the time crafting out a mesmeric mosaic of subliminal head messaging via slo-mo psych dream machine dissipates which all said ought to see it comfortably filed between your Cheval Sombre and Fuxa treasures.’ LOSING TODAY

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited 300 only repress on hot pink vinyl. Housed inside a gloss finished full colour sleeve with download code and insert.

Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records bring forth the cranium busting - Munehiro Narita - ‘Live P.S.F (Psychedelic San Francisco)’. Recorded live at the Hemlock Tavern (by PSF worshiper Ethan Miller). For those young pups not quite in the know - Munehiro Narita, the original "psychedelic speed freak," is for many people the undisputed king of the motorcycle fuzz guitar. Active since the late '70s, Narita is a Japanese psychedelic underground legend. After playing in cult bands like Kyoaku no Intention, he founded the brutal heavy-psych power trio High Rise in the '80s and more recently Green Flames with his furious guitar playing, which involves lethal doses of fuzz-wah at ear-splitting volume. Narita was lucky to be in the right place in Tokyo to see many performances by one of the most out of control guitar players ever to handle 6 strings in Takashi Mizutani (Les Rallizes Denudes) as well as taking in wild performances from Keiji Haino, Gaseneta and their take no prisoner maelstrom is a style that Munehiro holds dear too.

When Munehiro Narita needed a band for playing 4 west cost dates in 2017 Steve Krakow knew that LA Acid Punk David Jasso (OGOD) would be the perfect musician/foil for Narita (it should be noted that David released Green Flames on his Assommer label). David in turn knew TJ – A drummer who hits hard and was more than capable of handling the cruel punishment it requires to play real Speed Freak music. Six tracks were quickly nailed in rehearsals – a selection of High Rise (4) and Green Flames (2) tunes were then played over the four dates. The shows left audience stunned (listen to the reaction from this show) and by the time of the San Francisco show they were on fire. Luckily Ethan Miller was there to press record and document this feral in the red paint peeler of a gig as Munehiro Narita peels off wah soaked fireballs on top of the primal throb and groove that David Jasso and TJ lay down.

Another of the hopefully famed Cardinal Fuzz bootleg style releases that is so beloved of myself – By that I mean recordings that are distorting while warping time and space at the same time with Munehiro Narita guitar playing out front in the mix (which is how I love my music – guitars up front and laying waste to all) – By the time you get to their whirlwind take on closing number “Pop Sicle,” a tune bringing to mind the most frantic of Les Rallizes Denudes (think Fantastique) the energy and wildness of the recording perfectly captures the wild fury of all 3 musicians playing and creating an energy that is impossible to sedate.

Ethan Miller somehow managed to capture and record some of the most brutal playing in prime tape saturated / in the red glory for you know to relive.
The positivity of these shows eventually lead to all 3 members forming P.S.F. and their debut LP was released on Black Editions in 2019 which was a full-throttle adrenaline shot into the 21st Century (seek it out).

Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube records are proud to bring to you, Naujawanana Baider - Volume 1 & 2 on double heavy black vinyl.
Naujawanan Baidar (Farsi for Enlightened Youth) is the project of artist and musician N.R. Safi (The Myrrors).

With roots in the now-endangered sounds of 1960s-80s Afghan cassette culture, Naujawanan Baidar filters the traditional music of Safi's paternal heritage through a labyrinth of buzzing drones, tape manipulation, and fuzz-drenched percussion, warping both traditional and popular forms into a tangled mass of tape-saturated noise inspired by the very medium that once carried them.

Traditional folk instruments (both acoustic and home-amplified) like the rubab, armonia, sorna, and tabla, twist and melt into blown-out electrical storms, proving that one does not necessarily need guitars or any other standard western instrumentation to channel the trance-like energy of rock and roll. Although the end results may sound far removed from the original artists that helped inspired them (legendary performers like Ahmad Zahir, Beltoon and Hamidullah, or Salma Jahani) there is something to be said for this "new" or "imagined" form of contemporary Afghan experimental music. Had the dusty backstreets of pre-war Kabul birthed an experimental music scene paralleling German's krautrock movement, one can imagine that the results might have sounded a little something like this.

These tracks were cut over the course of 2017 to 2019 as a sort of sonic notebook, documenting the evolution of the project as it first took shape. Though the majority were originally conceived of as nothing more than demos or impressionistic sketches, the spontaneous and ramshackle approach of the tapes was eventually deemed more than befitting the spirit of the project . Naujawanan Baidar both reaffirms its ties to a relatively hidden (to outside eyes at least) cultural history while at the same time pushing outwards into new and unexplored territories.

Originally released via Radio Khiyaban on cassette (the packaging and artwork on both cassette releases was a direct homage to 1970s Afghan tape design)

Adana born Manchester raised Al Robinson specialises in a languid style of bittersweet funk music, spurred on by the blue eyed soul of 70's icons Todd Rundgren& Daryl Hall besides taking heavy influence from the legends of poetic groove; Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder & the brothers Isley. A former touring musician with Los Angeles psych-pop outfit Drugdealer, starlet Charlotte Gainsbourg and New Zealand's iconic ConnanMockasin, RH remains a prolific and determined figure in Manchester’s musical scene, often seen collaborating & performing with The Birthmarks, The Foetals and Duds.

In his debut LP "Respect 4 Devotion", he unveils the Timbaland flavoured 'Since 1992', Jazz fusion inflected "Better 2" and sorrowful pop ditty 'Jaded Lovers', featured on the LP amongst others are pianist John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Sebastian Tellier), drummer Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint) and guitarist Alex Brettin (Mild High Club). To celebrate the release, Aldous RH shared the first single ‘Since 1992’. Al explains, “Lyrically we're talking about looking for true love, with some trials and tribulations along the way”. The track is accompanied by a video which Al adds, “mainly serves as an homage to RNB video directing. The idea behind the clock is to show that time can heal almost any wound of the heart. And of course some believe the zodiac to serve as an oracle for relationship compatibility - how true that rings I cannot say. Henceforth I believe the potential for the zodiac to find you your soul mate is merely down to the time elapsed in your search for them & for me personally I was born in 1992, so it all began on that day.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Azure blue vinyl.

BlackLab ‘the dark witch doom duo from Osaka, Japan’ are poised to return with their new long playing record ‘ABYSS’. BlackLab’s first lp emerged to reviews a plenty. “BlackLab’s relentlessly bleak, feedbackdrenched and fuzz-laden take on doom/noise is as dark and mysterious as a black hole, and every bit as absorbing” CLASSIC ROCK.

“Blacklab are awesome. Fall under their hex immediately” KERRANG

“Raw, noisy and groove laden, an extreme, arcane force” METAL HAMMER

The first album was a remixed collection of the band’s early tracks, a melting pot of influences as they set out to inhabit their own space. Now with ‘ABYSS’ the band are very much defining what that space is.

Once again, the album was produced by Jun Morino in Osaka, and mixed in London by Wayne Adams (Pet Brick, Green Lung, Cold In Berlin) and is an uncompromising beast of a record. Recorded under a full moon over 3 intense days, the album has the ‘off the leash’ abandon of ‘Fun House’ era ‘Stooges’ and is marked by a fat dose of doom meets slowed down hardcore punk; filled with loud, ultra distorted guitar, and yet, a surprising amount of melody as well. In fact, Yuko has said that the band’s name is a combination of Black Sabbath and Stereolab, well here on ‘Abyss’ is where that strange mix begins to make musical sense. The band haven’t lost their love of lo-fi or ‘Riot Grrrl’ attitude. The guitars are loud and heavily gnarled to the point of chaos.

Vocals go from shoegaze melodic to hardcore screams (in fact rarely has a vocalist in this genre screamed so musically as Yuko does) and underneath all this, Chia batters the skins, all rolling and tumbling thunder amidst the riffs. Yes there is a smattering of ‘Sabbathy Wizarding’ of course, but submerged within dark, deep fuzz and punk rock crank and grind. In truth the vibe is closer to both the arty heaviness of early Boris, and the sweet savagery of My Bloody Valentine, than any kind of ‘doom’ tropes. It’s a sound that is undoubtedly BlackLab’s own. So over 8 tracks, clocking in at around 42 mins, you get the current Blacklab world view. ‘Insanity’ creeps in with a sound familiar to doom lovers. Then over the course of eight minutes manages to motor into its own riff time continuum, fuelled by heavy fuzz, pounding drums, and vocals that run the gamut from surly, to sweet, to full on throat- shred.

‘Fade and Melt’ is quirky, odd even, but heavy too, marrying a sweet Japanese melody to a dense, rolling barrage of distortion. ‘Weed Dream’ is driven by chugging, barely under control guitar and grunge punk swagger, and it’s here that Yuko most obviously channels her inner Stereolab. ‘Amusement Park Of Terror’. The title sounds like some cheapo 60’s bug movie, or a grade B slasher flick from the 80’s. Well to be honest this short instrumental interlude would be the perfect soundtrack to either. Both ‘Forked Road’ and ‘Chained’ are cut from the same cloth, a mash up of ‘Stooges’ meets ‘Comets On Fire’ mayhem and loping Sleep - esque riffs. ‘Sleepless Night’ is all throbbing distortion and understated threat, albeit with a curiously catchy chorus and coda. Then you have ‘Sun’ an underscore to any number of nihilistic apocalypses. It crashes in with a guitar tone so huge it’ll threaten to demolish your speakers. Abyss is an album that is as raw and alive as it gets. It’s refreshingly free of artifice, and it doesn’t arse around. Say hello to the Osaka underground.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 3 colour Green, yellow & black cosmic swirl vinyl.

Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen & Danny Blanchard (of Sweet Spirit) also perform together in the Austin Texas outfit A Giant Dog. Trinidad was recorded and produced by Stuart Sikes (Cat Power, Black Joe Lewis, White Stripes)

"When people dance, they are fulfilling a human desire where instinct and culture meet. Dance and music are built into the mechanics of being human. We are born instinctively with these impulses. To dance is to speak unspoken agreements," says Sweet Spirit frontperson Sabrina Ellis.

The six members of Sweet Spirit like pranks, glitter eyeshadow, and good stories. They also enjoy making music, as evidenced by the 12 bands they collectively play in. But above all, they love dancing, that place between exorcise and exercise. Sweet Spirit's famously raucous and sweaty live shows satisfy both their own and their audience's need for connection and release.

Trinidad marks the Merge debut of this mighty sextet from Austin, TX. The songs are stripped down yet more intricate than ever before. It's a pop record made by punk rockers sonically happy but lyrically bitter. Lustful, sassy, and passionate.

Touting inspirations as varied as Prince, T. Rex, William Onyeabor, ABBA, Roy Orbison, Shintaro Sakamoto, Francoise Hardy, and Robyn, Sweet Spirit have created an album that pulsates with more LinnDrum and synth than guitar. From the opening riff of 'Behold,' Sabrina, Andrew, Danny, Josh, Jon, and Jake establish their slightly cynical world of fantasy, hard truths, and all manner of longing.

“No Dancing” bemoans the lack of magic in the club, while live favorite “Fingerprints” sets out to “get you away from your lover.” Author/composer Mark Mallman of Minneapolis says, “Those who believe in demons see demons. In music, the demon is silence. In nature, snakes that appear to dance are actually fighting. Palm trees that kiss the beach during hurricane winds appear to dance when set to music in a video. There is no genre to dancing, only to its cause. In this instance, the cause is called Sweet Spirit.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk (of Jade Hairpins) also perform together in Canadian outfit Fucked Up. Harmony Avenue is the debut album by Jade Hairpins. LP is black vinyl in jacket & printed inner sleeve + LP3 album download. CD is 4-panel wllet + 24 page booklet. Jade Hairpins sneaked onto the scene in late 2018 with a mysterious 12-inch on Merge Records and a couple of poetic sentences about hiding in trees. The label remained tight-lipped while touting Dose Your Dreams, a truly epic new Fucked Up album released on the same day.

Fast forward to 2020, when Fucked Up drummer Jonah Falco and songwriter/guitarist Mike Haliechuk burst out of the proverbial trees with Harmony Avenue, a collection of songs written and recorded in real time. Pop foraging with analog acoustics and electronic landscaping. As the project expanded, Falco took on frontman and main lyricist duties for the first time and is building a live band based in his adopted hometown of London, England. He describes the new record as “straddling the post-post-punk of something like New Order, Scritti Politti, and Orange Juice, with a primordial sense of humour and absurdity not unlike Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Television Personalities, or the Monks.” Each Jade Hairpins song was conceived in studio, then edited and crafted to become Harmony Avenue. Each vocal approach was different— first focusing on creating stories for character-based writing, and then on less absurd  motional/thoughtful/personal reflection.

The LP was originally conceived as a potential addendum to the universe of Dose Your Dreams, but the end result was more exciting than Falco and Haliechuk anticipated and deserved its own spotlight. The themes of Harmony Avenue mostly focus on contradictory behavior and double entendres as well as regret and control, revelation, support, and complete absurdity. Jade Hairpins are here to challenge, confound, and sparkle their way into listeners’ hearts and keep them coming back for more!

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

After years of success in the world of neo-classical music with his band Balmorhea, RG Lowe took an artistic sharp turn leading to his soulful 2017 debut, Slow Time, which Stereogum called "impossibly smooth." Three years later, Lowe returns with Life of the Body, produced by David Boyle - known for his work with Glen Hansard, Patty Griffin, and Okkervil River. This wide-angle collection of songs invites us to reconnect with ourselves and our world through the senses by illuminating our intrinsic connection with the physical world, and the freedom found therein. Echoing the ardor of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and channeling Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, Lowe asks us each to "feel the wind blow on your face, camerado." At once intimate and epic, opening track "Sorrow" sets a tone of longing and malaise, from which Lowe expands and breaks out of, over the next 8 songs. As the album progresses, he explores myth, desire, love and the mystery of art, concluding with the ethereal, acoustic guitar-driven "Beauty Finds Forever," on which it's clear he's transformed. He's found the deepest nourishment; an enrichment of the soul found through a saturation of his physical senses, an antidote to our anguished age.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Cream & Bone Vinyl.

The 1975 deliver the follow up to BRIT Award Album of the Year winner ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ on 21st February 2020. The band’s 4th album ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’ is set to be already the most anticipated album of 2020 and features the lead single ‘People’ and the Greta Thunberg call to arms album opener, ‘The 1975.’

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Indies exclusive white vinyl.

2xLP Info: Standard clear vinyl.

Esther Edquist is Melbourne artist Sweet Whirl. She is also one of the best songwriters you have heard in a very long time. How Much Works is her debut album proper, after a handful of releases acclaimed by the likes of Gorilla Vs Bear, The Guardian and Clash Magazine. How Much Works arrives fully formed, a classic ten song album from an artist with both a command of history and a drive for new expression. The album is a beautifully crafted triumph over bleak moments. It's the love-addled confessions of a seasoned party girl, romantic yet sardonic, a troubadour who sings of the heart with a knowing sense of the timeless victory of song. Esther dissects experiences with wit and depth, emerging as a powerful, indomitable voice. Musically and lyrically, How Much Works draws on wells as deep as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Sheryl Crow. It distils personal, reflexive narratives into something universal and wondrous. Esther plays almost everything on the album, with guitar and therevox from engineer Casey Hartnett (Sui Zhen, Sleep Decade) and drums from Monty Hartnett (Dreamin Wild, Sleep Decade). Fellow Chapter Music recording artist Gregor contributes backing vocals to Make That Up For Me and Conga Line. Esther has previously served in Melbourne duo Superstar, who released two delay-drenched albums during the mid 10s.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies only white vinyl version

How inspiring it is to hear Tim Burgess conjuring up exciting and life-affirming sounds as he, almost inconceivably, enters his fifth decade on public duty. Frontman, singer, label boss, DJ and author, he’s been instrumental in so many great records over the years, always bringing enthusiasm, positivity and diversity of influence, which altogether light the way for those who hold him dear.

While in The Charlatans, Tim’s indefatigable energy has been a consistent fuel for the band across thirteen high-charting albums, his solo adventure has been no less extraordinary, scaling new heights in 2020 with his fifth solo release to date: ‘I Love The New Sky’. Released on Bella Union, it features wonderfully connective songs of everyday minutiae and universal experience, of love and anger, of loss and belonging, all united by elaborate yet natural arrangements and an effortless but deceptively expert way with melody.

‘I Love The New Sky’ differs from its predecessors in that all twelve tracks were self-penned. “In the past, I've written collaboratively,” says a characteristically, but rightfully excited Burgess. “(2012's) ‘Oh No I Love You’ was written with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner in Nashville, and then ‘Same Language, Different Worlds’ was a collaboration with Peter Gordon who had worked extensively with Arthur Russell.”

The spark for ‘I Love The New Sky’ came after a year of touring another album, ‘As I Was Now’, which he’d made in 2008 but had a belated release ten years later. “That one was made in three days, just friends getting together”, he says – the amigos included Josh Hayward from The Horrors, Primal Scream Keyboard player Martin Duffy, Ladyhawke and My Bloody Valentine's Debbie Googe.

“I didn’t realise the album hadn't actually come out as I had a copy of it on my ipod so I figured that maybe everybody did. So, all those years later I thought it would make an interesting release for Record Store Day. It did really well, so I was approached to tour it for Independent Venue Week and after that a load of festivals asked us to play too. Average Sex were the support band that then became my band so it was a brilliant little tour. After that, I was really energized, and I thought, Right, I'm going to do another album, but really concentrate on making it a solo record, where I write everything on my own and all the songs are the very best I can make them.”

“I’d been listening to a lot of Isaac Hayes, Olivia Tremor Control, Carole King, Todd Rundgren, John Maus, Weyes Blood and Kevin Ayres - I’m not sure how much they have influenced the album but they were the impetus and inspiration.”

The twelve tunes of ‘I Love The New Sky’ were authored, he says, “in Norfolk, in the middle of the countryside, with the nearest shop eight miles away. There are no distractions, and I guess that way things happen. I wrote everything on acoustic guitar, and the chords were really considered. The guitar lines would lead the melody, and the melody would inform the lyrics – just dreaming away with music.”

So far, so Laurel Canyon, though ‘I Love The New Sky’ would end up sounding anything but hippie/folkie, thanks to a connection Tim made while living in a warehouse space in gritty Seven Sisters in North London, before heading to Norfolk.

“The Quietus had their office there,” he recalls. “I used to know pretty much all the stuff they were writing about, but then their album of the year for 2013 was ‘Glynnaestra’ by Grumbling Fur, and I really fell in love with it. I started talking to the band about working together. To cut a long story short I recorded a song with Grumbling Fur, they remixed two Charlatans tracks and a couple of Daniel O'Sullivan's solo albums came out on my label.”

As well as bass and drum duties on I Love The New Sky, O’Sullivan plays piano on much of the album, from the bouncing chamber-pop chords of ‘Sweetheart Mercury’ and the punchy chorus of ‘Empathy For The Devil’, through to ‘Comme D’Habitude’’s juxtaposition of blissfully rolling West Coast singer-songwriting and a complex Sparks-y Broadway-esque bridge, to the Velvets-y ramalama moves on ‘Warhol Me’ and ‘Undertow’’s sombre balladry.

The album was arranged and recorded quickly but not rushed: “Ideas happen fast, don’t they?” Tim reasons. The first sessions at Eve Studios in Stockport were with long-serving Charlatans engineer Jim Spencer. Tim, Daniel and Nik Void cut three tracks in two days, with Nik layering up modular synths in line with her previous day job in Factory Floor.

A third keyboard maestro entered the picture when Thighpaulsandra, a maverick musician and producer, came into the frame, best known for his work for Julian Cope, Coil Spiritualized and Elizabeth Fraser. I found out that he was based at ‘Rockfield’ [legendary residential facility near Monmouth, South Wales]. So I said, ‘Okay, that’s where we’re going to record the rest of it’.” As well as enlisting his know-how as an engineer, the cosmically-inclined Welshman also applied vintage synths and what Tim hazily calls “wizardry”.

For Burgess himself, the return to Rockfield was meaningful: “I hadn’t been there since we recorded ‘Tellin' Stories’” he says. “It was a matter of ending this long period of not going there, because after Rob died we couldn’t face it again. So nearly 25 years later, we returned and the positive feelings came back. Mark Collins [Charlatans guitarist] came down to play on ‘Empathy For The Devil’ and ‘Sweetheart Mercury’, and he actually had the same room as he had in 1996. It was like no time had passed at all.”

“I was in search of a certain sound there,” Tim adds, of his overriding motivation for returning. “I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what it was I was searching for, but I knew if it was there that I’d be able to find it”.

The results are nothing short of astounding. ‘I Love The New Sky’ has landed somewhere between Paul McCartney's ‘RAM’ and Brian Eno's ‘Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)' and certainly that recipe covers both the all-pervasive tunefulness and high quality. Stylistically, though, it runs the widest gamut, from 'Empathy For The Devil's gospel style rockabilly skip, through to the sophisticated song-craft of ‘Sweetheart Mercury’ and the Nilsson-esque ‘Sweet Old Sorry Me’, with the angst-y gravitas of ‘Undertow’, which Tim describes as “a mood-changer, influenced by 10cc.”

Lyrically, this might almost be a defining collection from Burgess after thirty years honing his craft. There’s plenty of typical lightness of touch of ‘Only Took A Year’s joking reference to the album’s twelve-month gestation period, and the quip, “what’s your favourite Cure LP? I like ‘Pornography! But it could be any one of three.”

Equally amusing in its self-referencing is ‘Warhol Me’ set to a soundtrack of New York bubblegum pop. ‘Sweet Old Sorry Me’ finds Burgess reminiscing on his former life in Los Angeles, but drolly updating the Steely Dan vernacular for the social-media era with the line, “I had to unsubscribe from that particular tribe”. ‘Lucky Creatures’, meanwhile, follows Tim on his day back in LA on tour, as he enjoys “tacos on the underground”, revisiting his old everyday haunts in Hollywood.

‘The Mall’, too, revels in its everyday setting: “it’s an ordinary feature of everyday life. I’m pretty sure that the ‘escalating drama on a moving staircase’ bit happened at Boots in Piccadilly Circus. Maybe they'll put a blue plaque there one day. I love it round there, it’s like the whole world is happening – but it’s taking a small idea and trying to make it into something more universal.”

‘I Got This’ has the line “the future is friendly”. Says Tim: “Everyone’s been going through a lot of tough times. And the future is uncertain. But you have to have that optimistic outlook – like, waking up in the morning and feeling that it’s gonna be a good day.”

There is a sense of community within this solo venture, which is emphasised when Tim and Nik’s six year old son joins in on ‘Comme D’Habitude’, and with the assembly of what Tim calls a “gang chorus”, in the spirit of Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ ‘Plan B’, for the closing chant of the album title on ‘Laurie’. This song is particularly heartfelt, as Tim mistily reveals, written for “someone I love who I never met”. The end section happened spontaneously at Rockfield: “Everybody that came into the studio, I asked them to sing, so there are about 20 people doing that vocal – Mark Collins, Daniel, our friend Ally, Nik, Thighpaulsandra – everybody singing it, and for this spirit that is loved.”

The final stages of the album’s year-long narrative arc were enacted at Jet Studio in Brussels, with the Echo Collective string section. Burgess looked on “mesmerised at what was happening to the songs, taking an even more magical turn.”

With that icing on the cake, Tim is in no doubt that he has his finest solo record under his belt. On this occasion, it’s coming out on time, and he’ll be touring it with a live ensemble featuring Daniel O’Sullivan, Thighpaulsandra, another O Genesis artiste called Keel Her, and renowned avant-jazz violinist Peter Broderick, who plays on ‘’Empathy…’ and will recreate the Echo Collective parts, too. So, the community will grow. Just like Tim says, “the future is friendly.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 180 gram LP.
Transparent splatter vinyl with download code.

Banana Skin Shoes is Damon Gough's ninth album and is comprised of 14 tracks including previously released track 'Is This A Dream?'.

Always one to wear his heart on his sleeve, Gough's ninth album is a truly personal & heartfelt collection of songs, a huge statement of intent & the most glorious, colourful warming, honest pop record you'll hear this year.

Katie Von Schleicher doesn’t hold back. Her music, drenched in layers of warmth and fuzz, mines depression, devotion, power, and anxiety without reserve.

But if channeling weighty subject matter is a constant in Von Schleicher’s music, so too is transforming that material into sonic landscapes that defy expectations. On Von Schleicher’s second record, Consummation, she blasts past the lo-fi power ballads of her debut Shitty Hits (2017) with a severe expansion of her sonic palette; its 13 shape-shifting songs depict a deeply personal exploration of trauma. The result is both potent and listenable; strange and familiar; intense and entertaining - and, perhaps most of all, teeming with life.

Von Schleicher pulls the listener in from the outset. The synths and drum machines of the album opener “You Remind Me” evoke a room depressurizing, signaling a crossover into unsettling, dream-like territory. Her self-assured voice floats above the fray, her lyrics pointed: “And now I can’t confine my rage.” The following songs vary in genre and tempo, ranging from a pulsating, electronic rocker (“Brutality”) to upbeat and jagged kraut (“Wheel,” “Caged Sleep”) and a melancholic, cosmic ballad (“Gross”). There’s even a brief, haunting crooner of a track (“Strangest Thing”). What they share is lyrical concision, emotional heft, and conscientious production.

Consummation is, in part, inspired by an alternate interpretation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In 2018, Von Schleicher rewatched the seminal film and was struck by its largely unanalyzed subtext of abuse. She knew immediately that this hidden narrative, which spoke to her personal experience, would be the basis of her next album.

While writing and engineering the record, she found sanctuary in the words of other women: namely, Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, and Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The latter proved particularly influential: Soon after revisiting Vertigo, Von Schleicher stumbled upon Solnit’s lacerating take on the film. Solnit describes the “wandering, stalking, haunting” of romantic pursuit that it depicts as “consummation,” while “real communion” - understanding and mutual respect between two lovers - is, to the men in the film, “unimaginable.” The consequence is a fundamental failure of communication. At its core, Consummation evokes the pain of being unable to bridge that vast psychic distance between oneself and another.

Can love that destroys, Von Schleicher asks, be love at all? At the close of the album, it seems she’s arrived at something of an answer, at least for herself. On “Nothing Lasts,” the record’s final song, a romantic verse gives way to an anthemic, albeit fatalistic chorus - one that feels something like a sigh of relief: “Cause nothing lasts for long, nothing lasts, see it’s gone.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Exclusive clear vinyl.
• Exclusive bonus 7” with two tracks ("CMWA" / "Display").
• Exclusive tote bag.
• Hand numbered sleeve.
• Limited 300 pressing.

Chicago songwriter and guitarist James Elkington who has collaborated with everyone from Richard Thompson to Jeff Tweedy to Tortoise recorded his sophomore album at Wilco’s Loft, expanding upon his celebrated 2017 debut Wintres Woma (PoB-034) as well as his recent production and arrangement work for the likes of Steve Gunn, Nap Eyes, and Joan Shelley. Casting glances back to British folk traditions as well as toward avant-garde horizons, these brilliant new songs, as accessible as they are arcane, buttress Elkington’s brisk guitar figures and baritone poesy with strings, woodwinds, and backing vocals by Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station.

“An epiphany… a cryptic storyteller and dazzling acoustic guitarist.” Rolling Stone

“Elkington stands apart among the wave of 21st century guitar soloists. Beautiful, complex, and assured.” Pitchfork

“A convincing, warmly whirling weather system of his own.” The Guardian

“James Elkington is a friend of mine, and I have long enjoyed and indeed found satisfaction from witnessing the juicy fruits of his successful labors. Though it sounds like a line culled from a murderous Child ballad, “Ever-Roving Eye” has everything to do instead with the slipperiness of satisfaction, and the equal parts virtue and vice that is being your own mule and driver. Meticulously planned and quickly tracked (the Elkingtonian way), it includes Wintres Woma alumni Nick Macri (James’ longtime bass colleague) and Macie Stewart (violin), plus new recruits Lia Kohl (cello), Spencer Tweedy (drums), The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman (vocals), and the prolific Paul Von Mertens (Brian Wilson) on woodwinds. Where the first record was more firmly situated in the sonic tradition of England’s more interesting 1970s folk revivalists, Eye engages in a broader wrassle, roping in echoes of British library musics, horror-film soundtracks, demure psychedelia, and more rocking elements of folk-rock. The result is a record even more elaborate, shrewd, thoughtful and confessional than its predecessor. Ever-Roving Eye is instead a sublime distillation of the humane wisdom of a dude who’ll never be; the dude who sings on the single, “Nowhere Time”: “There’s a master plan somebody understands / And I wish that one was me.” It might well cast a pox on the concept of satisfaction altogether. Though it still satisfies the hell out of me”. Nathan Salsburg, December 2019

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Deluxe indies-only green glass vinyl.

Soul Jazz Records’ ‘Black Riot: Early Jungle, Rave and Hardcore’ is a brand new collection of heavyweight ragga influenced hardcore jungle tracks from the early 1990s. Dark and heavy. Featuring classic and seminal tracks from the likes of Levictus and Krome & Time alongside a host of rare and little-known ragga and junglist hardcore tunes, featuring the likes of Babylon Timewarp’s hypnotic ‘Durban Poison’, Rhythm For Reasons’ mad ‘The Smokers Rhythm’, The Freaky rave-y breakbeat sound of ‘Time and Age’, Trip One’s super dark ‘Snowball’ and loads more. Expect super heavy basslines, equally heavy twisted ‘Amen’ drum loops, even heavier ragga vocals. Original jungle style - roots and culture - from the earliest days of drum and bass.

Included with the first edition of the ‘Black Riot’ vinyl and CD is a free graphic mini-novel ‘Black Riot: The Mysterons save Planet Earth from the Xatheroid Angels’. This is the third collaboration between writer Paulo Parisi and Soul Jazz Records. This new graphic story continues the story of black electronic dance music - this time set in London circa 1992 - from Soul Jazz’s earlier ‘Invasion of the Killer Mysterons’ (Jamaican electronic dub, co-compiled by Kevin Martin (The Bug)) and ‘Mysterons Invade the Jackin’ Zone’ (about Chicago acid and experimental house 1986-93).

“A Heart So White” represents a continuation of the working philosophy adopted during the recording of their debut; immersion in an unfamiliar recording environment with a limited set of tools and the goal of exploring the possibilities that lie within these limitations.

The album was written and recorded in the Willem Twee Concertzaal, a converted synagogue in Den Bosch, Holland. Whilst “Passive Agressive” explored virtual instruments and environments, “A Heart So White” shifts the focus to acoustic instrumentation, breath, air and physical space. Using the hall’s mechanical drawer organ and Steinway piano, the pair craft a delicately balanced suite of compositions, stripping things back to reveal the bare essence of their shared musical language.

Music From Memory are delighted to present Fools’ debut album ‘Fools’ Harp Vol. I’ and the first solo release of American musician Christopher Bear. Drummer and multi-instrumentalist of cult Indie band ’Grizzly Bear’, ‘Fools’ is a pseudonym that Christopher has been using while working on his independent music making for some time now.

Often finding the structure and form of a more traditional ‘song’ and the concept of an album too restrictive, Christopher finally set aside a six week period in the summer of 2019 to explore the possibilities of jamming alone and seeing where it took him: recording each instrument himself and then responding through improvisation to his own recordings. Whilst doing most of the recording in a digital set up, he also set out to capture some of the same mental and sonic space from his time recording on 4-track.

The results of these Fools sessions, he explains, feel “almost more like a mixtape than an ‘album’ per se” to him. With a sense of the dichotomy between nostalgia and the future, ‘Fools’ Harp Vol. I’ seeks to transport the listener to a world both familiar and comforting, exploring something undiscovered while maintaining a deep sense of openness and curiosity. 

Hear & Now’s 2018 debut album Aurora Baleare was undoubtedly one of the most magical full-length excursions to appear on Claremont 56 to date; a drowsy, mood-enhancing masterpiece full to bursting with tactile grooves, blissful guitar motifs, dreamy aural textures and seductive, slow-burn melodies. The culmination of two years of work by longtime friends Ricky L and Marco Radicioni – a pair of experienced deep house producers whose solo careers stretch back to the 1990s – the album was as finely crafted as it was musically stunning.

Two years on, the pair return to Claremont 56 with the hotly anticipated follow-up, Alba Sol, a similarly seductive and sun-kissed set that is every bit as beguiling as its lauded predecessor. Once again built around the pair’s trademark blend of colourful synthesizer melodies, ear-catching improvised guitar motifs, soft-touch grooves, enveloping chords and fireside-warm bass, the set’s eight tracks are vivid, vibrant and as memorable as watching the sun rise over the Mediterranean or Adriatic seas. This time round, listeners can expect a few more nods towards the kind of glassy-eyed ‘dream house’ that was once one of Italian dance music’s greatest exports – think Don Carlos, Sueno Latino, Keytronics Ensemble etc. – and synthesizer-heavy 1980s new age ambience, though the duo’s trademark sonic template is evident throughout.

These influences can clearly be heard on “Larus”, where jangling piano riffs, mid-80s new age synths and cascading David Gilmour style guitar solos rise above thickset chords and sparse beats, the eyes-closed, arpeggio-driven goodness of “Acqua Tronica” – which also features some of Marco’s funkiest guitar playing to date – and the head-nodding haziness of “Danza Delle Onde”. They’re there, too, within the mid-tempo rush of “Litorale”, an emotive and life-affirming mixture of metronomic beats, fluid piano solos, retro-futurist synths, locked-in bass and pads so sumptuous you almost want to reach out and grab them. While the subtle evolution of the duo’s sound is evident throughout, Alba Sol also contains a swathe of tracks that echo the slow-motion hedonism of their earlier work. Closing cut “Pioggia Sil Mare”, for example, is a beguiling and brilliant foray into kaleidoscopic ambient house territory rich in in slowly unfurling musical motifs, while “Polvese” chugs along on waves of stretched-out electric guitar notes, echoing percussion hits and the sort of stoned bass that was such a feature of Aurora Baleare.

Then there’s the album-opening title track, a gloriously epic, joyously blissful number that first wowed listeners on the recent Claremont Editions One compilation and already feels like a downtempo classic. It brilliantly sets the tone for a sophomore set that’s arguably even more wonderful than its stunning predecessor.

Arriving via a triangulation of Athens, Crete and London, yet existing at a psychic intersection between the ruins of crumbling infrastructure and an intimidating future dystopia Kooba Tercu have seen fit to take arms as only they see fit. ‘Proto Tekno’ is their mission statement writ large - a potent and pulverising collection of incendiary jams fuelled by the modern age yet transcending it with vicious style. Equal parts groove-driven mantra, red blooded freakout and experimetnal onslaught, this is the sound of a fearless band raging against the dying of the light.

Confident that all formulas are fundamentally there to be mercilessly rearranged, and that a sheer force of will can easily transform the ridiculous into the sublime. ‘Proto Tekno’ seamlessly travels from a fuzz-bass headbanger like the opener ‘Benzoberry’ to the mantric blowout of ‘Qasan’ (assaulting CAN-esque dimensions equal parts caustic and cinematic) and from the sleazy swagger of ‘Cemento Mori’ (redolent of the suave machinations of Girls Against Boys) to the polyrhythmic drive of the ceremonial centrepiece ‘Fair Game’, while maintaining their unique full-throttle intensity and generosity of character.

There’s Melvinsstyle groove to be had on ‘Proto Tekno’ (Kamehameha’) ‘just as much as Beta Band-style songcraft (‘Puppy Pile’) yet these disparate influences coalesce vividly into an invigorating and intimidatingly confident assault on the senses. Inhabiting a modern era in which creating art, as the Fluxus group originally proposed, is more than ever a revolutionary act in itself, ‘Proto Tekno’ stands as much as formidable monument to insurrectionary spirit as it does the furious clanguour of six heads in an overheated rehearsal room. It’s a weapon of psychic defence just as much as a love letter to the three ‘R’s of repetition, repetition and repetition. Yet as the ongoing battle against adversity gathers momentum, one thing is for certain - you’ll want Kooba Tercu on your side.

New York quartet ’s fourth album. Recorded by Josh Druckman at The Outlier Inn.

Despite (perhaps) being the band’s most accessible & melodic work to date, New York quartet Sunwatchers‘ fourth album arrives in a flurry of notes with the buzzing hum of “Sunwatchers vs. Tooth Decay”; the title referencing a 1976 album featuring athlete and activist Muhammad Ali. A cheeky nod to be sure, but laced with the utmost reverence. This attitude sums up Sunwatchers’ aesthetic in a nutshell; the acknowledgement (typically via the band’s irreverent song titles or album art) that the things in life we should take seriously are better faced and understood when disarmed by a wink or nudge. The band may cloak their fiery activism in a jester ’s outfit, but it does nothing to dull the force of their attack.

The one-two punch of “Love Paste” & “Brown Ice” hits next, with the former ’s tender opening melody punctuated by exuberant “WOO!”s while the latter launches into an urgent, stuttering march that utilizes an effective musical wind-up and release, ratcheting up a ferocious intensity across its near six minute runtime. “Thee Worm Store” closes out the first side, beginning with a lumbering synth growl, until it picks up speed and ends as a frantic noisy free-for-all. Side two strides forth with “The Conch”, an obvious ‘Lord of The Flies’ reference, and a delicious subversion of the idea of a “hero’s anthem” weighted down by the trappings of tribalism. The album’s showstopper however is “The Earthsized Thumb”, the near twenty-minute closing track. Guitarist Jim McHugh lays down a hypnotic Saharan guitar melody as the rest of the band ushers themselves in one by one over the tune’s distinct musical movements, a cosmic “Quick One” for all the heads perhaps?

The album’s title “Oh Yeah?” is at once an homage to Mingus, Thee Oh Sees’ album “Help” (whose Brigid Dawson hand-sewed the tapestry adorning the album’s front cover), and (naturally) the rallying cry of KoolBrave himself - the Kool-Aid Man-as-Braveheart avatar the band adopted as their symbol. The three years since the band’s second album (and TiM debut) “II” was released, has seen the band grace stages across the USA and Europe, enlisting more comrades in their mission of solidarity (sonically speaking) with every show.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 'Brown Ice' coloured vinyl.

The debut album from British singer/songwriter Eve Owen, Don’t Let the Ink Dry, is a work of raw sensitivity and uncontained imagination, brought to life over the course of three transformative years. During that time, the 20-year-old artist spent her summer holidays writing and recording in New York with The National’s Aaron Dessner, immersing herself in a creative exploration that provided welcome refuge from her sometimes-troubled school life. As she discovered an entirely new sense of freedom and belonging, Owen devised a sonic language all her own: frenetic yet delicate, mercurial yet nuanced enough to capture the most ephemeral of feelings. Produced by Dessner at Long Pond Studio (a converted old farmhouse deep in the Hudson Valley), Don’t Let the Ink Dry finds Owen embracing her affinity for folk music while pursuing the endless possibilities in electronic experimentation.

“I’ve often felt a bit uncomfortable in myself, and I love how that came out in the music,” says Owen. “I don’t really care for songs that flow just right or have a perfect cadence—I’d rather there be some sort of unnerving element to them. I think Aaron and I are both attracted to weirdness in music, and we instinctively went after that without really even talking about it.” For his part, Dessner reflects on the first day of their collaboration: “Eve came up to visit the studio for a day a few years ago when she was 16. I thought we would record one song but we ended up working on several in just one day. By the next morning she had written a few more songs based on her experience the previous day. This prolific songwriting continued throughout our work together. Every morning there would be new songs, written sometimes overnight. I’ve been lucky to work with some incredibly talented artists and it was clear to me immediately that Eve was deeply gifted, expressing herself with such force and sincerity on essentially her first proper recording day at Long Pond. I was spellbound.”

If I Break Horses’s third album holds you in its grip like a great film, it’s no coincidence. Faced with making the follow-up to 2014’s plush Chiaroscuro, Horses’s Maria Lindén decided to take the time to make something different, with an emphasis on instrumental, cinematic music. As she watched a collection of favourite films on her computer (sound muted) and made her own soundtrack sketches, these sonic workouts gradually evolved into something more: “It wasn’t until I felt an urge to add vocals and lyrics,” says Lindén, “that I realized I was making a new I Break Horses album.”

That album is Warnings, an intimate and sublimely expansive return that, as its recording suggests, sets its own pace with the intuitive power of a much-loved movie. And, as its title suggests, its sumptuous sound worlds – dreamy mellotrons, haunting loops, analogue synths – and layered lyrics crackle with immersive dramatic tensions on many levels. “It’s not a political album,” says Lindén, “though it relates to the alarmist times we live in. Each song is a subtle warning of something not being quite right.”

As Lindén notes, the process of making Warnings involved different kinds of dramas. “It has been some time in the making. About five years, involving several studios, collaborations that didn’t work out, a crashed hard drive with about two years of work, writing new material again instead of trying to repair it. New studio recordings, erasing everything, then recording most of the album myself at home…”

Yet the pay-off for her long-haul immersion is clear from statement-of-intent album opener ‘Turn’, a waltzing kiss-off to an ex swathed in swirling synths over nine emotive minutes. On ‘Silence’, Lindén suggests deeper sorrows in the interplay of serene surface synths, hypnotic loops and elemental images: when she sings “I feel a shiver,” you feel it, too.

Elsewhere, on three instrumental interludes, Lindén’s intent to experiment with sound and structure is clear. Meanwhile, there are art-pop songs here more lush than any she has made. ‘I’ll Be the Death of You’ occupies a middle ground between Screamedlica and early OMD, while ‘Neon Lights’ brings to mind Kraftwerk on Tron’s light grid. ‘I Live At Night’ slow-burns like a song made for night-time LA drives; ‘Baby You Have Travelled for Miles without Love in Your Eyes’ is an electronic lullaby spiked with troubling needle imagery. ‘Death Engine’’s dark-wave dream-pop provides an epic centrepiece, of sorts, before the vocoder hymnal of closer ‘Depression Tourist’ arrives like an epiphany, the clouds parting after a long, absorbing journey.

For Lindén, Warnings is a remarkable re-routing of a journey begun when I Break Horses’s debut album, Hearts (2011), drew praise from Pitchfork, The Guardian, NME, The Independent and others for its luxurious grandeur and pulsing sense of art-pop life. With the electro-tangents of 2014’s Chiaroscuro, Lindén forged a new, more ambitious voice with total confidence. Along the way, I Break Horses toured with M83 and SigurRós; latterly, U2 played Hearts’ ecstatic ‘Winter Beats’ through the PA before their stage entrance on 2018’s ‘Experience + Innocence’ tour. Good choice.

A new friend on Warnings is US producer/mixing engineer Chris Coady, whose graceful way with dense sound (credits include Beach House, TV on the Radio) was not the sole reason Lindén invited him to mix the album. “Before reaching out to Chris I read an interview where he said, ‘I like to slow things down. Almost every time I love the sound of something slowed down by half, but sometimes 500% you can get interesting shapes and textures.’ And I just knew he’d be the right person for this album.”

If making Warnings was a slow process, so be it: that steady gestation was a price worth paying for its lavish accretions of detail and meaning, where secrets aplenty await listeners eager to immerse themselves. “Nowadays, the attention span equals nothing when it comes to how most people consume music,” Lindén says. “And it feels like songs are getting shorter, more ‘efficient’. I felt an urge to go against that and create an album journey from start to finish that takes time and patience to listen to. Like, slow the fuck down!” Happily, Warnings provides all the incentives required.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Clear vinyl

2xColoured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

An autobiographical album about break ups, the record is tender, honest and frequently funny. Darren set an 8 track, acoustic rule for the record. Everything sounds warm, close and intimate. Darren’s own love-worn, London voice is joined on every song by the sweet antipodean tones of Hannah Winter and Laura K, recording artists and songwriters themselves with Common or Garden and Fortitude Valley. When Darren Hayman made his debut in 1997 with the acclaimed indie band Hefner his lyrical remit was the broken hearted.

His early songs told the story of the lonesome and lost, and broken dreams of love on the back streets of London. After Hefner, Hayman’s palette grew to include a unique take on place and memory. In the early 2000s he wrote a trilogy of albums around the history of Essex. In 2012 he made an instrumental album describing the tranquillity of Lidos. In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. His most recent record, 12 Astronauts, tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon. Darren is continually obsessed with the idea of what songs can be, and the stories they can tell. As he explains, “With projects like Thankful Villages, I became interested in what a record could be, using field recordings, interviews and songs to make sound collages. I wanted to return to the stricter art of song writing and try and make the twelve best compositions I could.

I wanted to make useful songs, words that could be comfort, not just thoughts that would depress.” The songs for Home Time were written over a three-year period but recorded quickly, and with love, in Darren’s home. Home Time is a fragile, subtle slice of prettiness. Wrap it around you. Three digital singles will be released; ‘I Tried and I Tried and I Failed’, a song about the endless, circular nature of being human, ‘I Was Thinking About You’, a song about the uncontrollable nature of memory and how it continues to haunt us even when we consider the long buried, and ‘The Joint Account’, about how when trying to negotiate matters of the heart and mind, it is sometimes the physical objects that anchor us down in the mire.

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

An air of the unsettled is a staple of Robert Lloyd’s career, from The Prefects’s dank dexterity and jittery paranoia of the first Nightingales’ release, Idiot Strength, onward through four decades of top-notch recordings. If the unique persona of Lloyd and crew always came across on their ten albums and countless line-ups, it was largely as an acquired taste of the musical cognoscenti. Labels good and bad seemed to feel, at one point or another, a public duty and a point of pride to release a Nightingales album before returning to the business of business. Four Against Fate is remarkable. It’s the work of what’s now the band’s longest-serving line-up. The instrumental precision of any version of Nightingales has been one of the band’s defining hallmarks, but the psychic interplay of a group can take a few albums to kick in with full majesty - here’s proof of that. The rhythm section of Fliss and Andi functions now on a purely intuitive level.

Jim’s work now ranks with that of any guitarist in modern ‘rock’ music, not just in originality, but also across an egalitarian mass of inspiration. Each member sings. Although Robert’s voice functions as the band’s superego, Fliss takes lead in several songs. Few bands today sound as much like a single unit as do Nightingales, but this group has the bonus of a distinct and credible musical language, exemplified by The Desperate Quartet, which comes across as both a medieval war march and the anthem of looming apocalypse.

When at the song’s halfway point, American classical musician Clara Kebabian’s violin and Mark Bedford’s (of Madness) double bass overtake the Robert, Fliss, Jim and Andi, it’s a jawdropper of such intense perversity that it alone defies the listener to not play the album again from the start. Not that this album lacks ‘hits’ - The Top Shelf, Everything Everywhere All Of The Time, Devil’s Due and The Other Side are stunners. Robert claims Four Against Fate is the first of his album on which he skips no tracks on playback! Finally, the world has awakened to one of British music’s last treasures. After forty years of new labels, this is the first time Nightingales have released an album on the same label as their last full-length.

Dislocation Songs was recorded over the past 3 years – on and off – in Chris Menist AKA Awkward Corners' home studio. It started as a reaction to the UK post-2016's Brexit vote and an emotional response to the negative direction the country is taking with regards to immigration, politics and social priorities. The record shifts between optimism and resignation. The recording process offered emotional catharsis, and a space to summarise feelings that can be hard to put into words. The record is a collection of textures, rhythms and tones touching on downtempo beats, devotional music and electronic sounds. Music you can even meditate to. Chris is joined for three tracks by Sarathy Korwar, who plays tablas in this setting.

Intriguing opener Drawing A Blank features a minimal, distorted rhythm around which filtered Balafons & Illimbas work. Straight Ahead employs a unique swinging rhythm composed of a single repetitive tone. Dream-like soloing synth lines float over Chris's conga percussion. I'll Do It Tomorrow is one of Dislocation Songs standouts: a beautiful composition of both organic conga and percussion sounds and electronic synth lines. Dub effects punctuate throughout.

Just Around The Corner gets its groove on with Sarathy Korwar's tablas taking centre stage alongside the exquisite sounding Shahi Baaja. A single repetitive tone is again employed to hypnotic effect. John Dillinger's Death Mask Parts 1 and 2 concludes the LP in epic style with 10 experimental minutes of delayed, flanged and distorted beats, tones, tablas and Shahi Baaja - a dark meditation on governmental failure and obfuscation.

Awkward Corners is Chris Menist, a musician, DJ and writer. It started life as a small project in Islamabad, where Chris was living at the time. Initial recordings were made with local musicians in Pakistan and then subsequently in Thailand. This culminated in the Sweet Decay LP that came out on Finders Keepers' Disposable Music in 2014, and in turn led to a limited tape release on Boomkat/Reel Torque of original compositions and re-edits of Thai 45s the same year.

Playing drums and percussion since he was a kid, Chris is the percussionist for The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band. As well as co-founding record label Paradise Bangkok (and hosting a monthly NTS Radio show of the same name) Chris has curated compilations for labels such as Finders Keepers, Soundway and Dust-To-Digital. He has been featured on the Boiler Room, Vinyl Factory Collections, played at the Four Tet curated Nuits Sonores festival, and recently put together an edition of Volumes which featured unreleased Awkward Corners compositions.

During the past decade, the Chicago-based multiinstrumentalist and producer, NNAMDÏ, has quietly become one of the most prolific musicians of the modern era. Whether under his own name or one of the many bands he’s spent time in, either as a full-on member or merely a touring partner, there’s been an endless stream of music that NNAMDÏ has had his hands in. Pair that with the fact he co-owns his label, Sooper Records (KAINA, Sen Morimoto), and it’d be easy to wonder how he finds time to do anything other than make music.

On BRAT, the follow-up to 2017’s critically acclaimed DROOL, NNAMDÏ removes the veil to show just how much effort and energy it takes to work at such a high level without any breaks. That process of finding a balance between NNAMDÏ the performer and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya the person is what fuels BRAT, an introspective record that’s still as dexterous and exciting as anything that’s come before, but is intimate and hushed, commanding a listener’s full attention from the very start. Like all things he’s done before, BRAT proves that genre classifications don’t really work here. BRAT is part hip-hop, part indie-rock, part gospel, and part West African music, and in NNAMDÏ’s hands, these seemingly disparate pieces fit together snuggly, as if there was never a question of their compatibility. NNAMDÏ wrote, performed, and recorded BRAT by himself. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Indies Exclusive LP Info: Indies exclusive splatter vinyl.

Once more we're ready to take flight on Africa Airways, for this sixth journey we're taking you above 5280 feet and laying on the funk.

The flight opens with the punchy horns, afro rhythms & groovy bass of Eko Roosevelt's "Ndolo Embe Mulema". Keeping the tempo high we usher in fellow Cameroonians JM Tim & Foty for another punch of brass with the funky "More And More (Ye-Male)". We stay in Cameroon with Ngalle Jojo, here he lays down another funktastic bass heavy stomper with "Ngigna Loko". Jude Bondeze hails from Bangui, Central African Republic and is probably best known for his more traditional Tene Sango album... but his debut 1981 release saw him in a very funky mood indeed! Next up, Nigerian Vicky Edimo gets his thumb out and lays down some glorious slabs of deep funk... along with a rather splendid bass solo! JK Mandengue played bass off & on for the British Afrobeat band "Osibisa", playing on the uber funky "Super Fly TNT" Motion Picture Soundtrack album.. Certainly putting him on a path to the Wahahwah'tastic "Kosa Mba" taken from his 1979 self-titled album. Slow percussive classic raw street funk from Nigeria's Akwassa, who's line up is the same as "Heads Funk Band", are up next. Another outing for Vicky Edimo on this 1978 beauty from Mike Kounou. Also on guitar duties for Mike Kounou is Francois Amadou Corea, who's funky chops can be heard on "Ngigna Loko" & "Njonjo Mukambe". Hi-Octane funk from Airto Fogo, percussion, rhodes & horns aplenty on this 1974 instrumental cut "Black Soul". As we prepare to start our decent Francois Misse Ngoh drops in some filth with this 1980 bass face monster "Njonjo Mukambe"... head nodding isn't essential, but it's best to brace yourself for impact.

Your next Africa Airways departure will be ready for boarding soon, so keep your passports at the ready!

Birthed at the turn of the ‘80s, synth and wave music has remained a constant force over the last four decades, with a recent spike in interest in the sound offering further proof of its’ timeless, out-of-this-world quality. It’s against this backdrop that Dutch DJ Interstellar Funk presents his celebration of the style, “Artificial Dancers – Waves of Synth”.

A bumper compilation bristling with obscure and hard-to-find gems, the set sees the Artificial Dance label founder joining the dots between synthesizer and drum machine-driven tracks in a variety of subtly different styles. It’s the result of hundreds of hours spent digging through dusty old records, tapes, and the Bandcamp accounts of DIY musicians who have been active since the sound’s first boom in the early 1980s.

The 11-track set draws on tracks made and released at different times over the last 40 years, with the earliest cut committed to tape in 1978 and the most recent in 2018. While the tracks date from the ‘80s, ‘90s, noughties and 2010s, the showcased cuts are united by a primitive but futuristic quality that makes dating them difficult. In many cases, it’s hard to tell which tracks were made in the early 1980s and which were conjured up in 21st century studios.

As you’d expect, highlights are plentiful with a number of the most unknown or sought-after cuts appearing on vinyl for the first time. In this category you’ll find the Human League’s odd but inspired early number “4JG”, a near mythical 1982 live version of Liasons Dangereuses’ “Dias Cortas” (previously only available on a VHS video) and Chris and Cosey’s “Hybrid C”, a brilliant mid-’90s cut plucked from their CD-only album “Skimble Skamble”. You’ll also find a rare demo version of Clan of Xymox’s Dutch darkwave classic “Stranger”, which became a club smash across Europe in 1983.

Interstellar Funk has also chosen to showcase tracks by a range of DIY producers and lesser-known artists. These include Californian band Batang Frisco, who self-released a sole private press album in 1986 (their contribution, “Sewing Machine”, is dedicated to founder member Bill DiMichele, who passed away this year), Matthias Schuster’s Im Namen Des Volkes project – which contributes the previously unreleased 2014 track “Alles Ist Gewinn” – and Zahgurim, a short-lived early ‘80s act who reunited in 2018 to record their first new material since 1983.

If that wasn’t enough to set pulses racing, the compilation also showcases a solo track by sadly departed Psyche member Stephen Huss. Nobody is quite sure when Huss recorded “Infinity Sign”, but we can confirm this is the first time that one of his solo productions has ever appeared on vinyl.

Memphis has always been a studio town, where making hit records looked easy. An unknown Elvis could walk into Sun Studios and cut a side, while Willie Mitchell worked his magic around the corner at the Hi Records studio. This vast studio ecosystem meant that even when Stax Records folded in 1975, everybody still knew somebody who could get them into a real recording facility. The city’s largest player in the business was gone, but the possibilities that it introduced were not.

Stone Crush is the definitive overview of Memphis’ modern soul scene of the post-Stax years. It’s a collection of funky tracks of hope—from dentist O.T. Sykes, who traded dental work for studio time, to the ad-man who moonlighted as the visionary mastermind behind Captain Fantastic & Starfleet, few of them ever had anything to do with a hit, but across the board, each believed. Like Cato Walker, whose father’s gig as B.B. King’s driver got him an in, and The Bar-Kays’ former costume maker Libra, some had tangential connections to the city’s deep-rooted music scene that gave them a head start on their hopeful path to fame.

Over a decade in the making, Stone Crush is an expertly curated compilation of these home-grown slices of Memphis stylings, from roller skate boogie to private press soul to bedroom funk—rare sides whose original copies are considered holy grails by DJs and collectors all over. This collection does more than transport us to a time gone by. It helps us hear what couldn’t be heard then.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Galaxy haze orange/red coloured vinyl, limited to 500 copies, housed in a gatefold jacket with 24-page full colour book.

2xLP Info: Black vinyl housed in a gatefold jacket with 24-page full colour book.

Hamilton Leithauser has proven himself as a master collaborator and solo artist throughout his nearly 20 year career. His latest work and second solo record “The Loves of Your Life” was written and produced by Hamilton in his home studio and is a collection of stories about real people he’s met over his years living in New York City.

Following his time as the frontman of the Walkmen, Leithauser released the critically acclaimed collaboration with Rostam “I Had a Dream That You Were Mine” in 2016. The album debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart, #1 New Artist Album, and was named one of the Year’s Best by Pitchfork, Esquire, NPR, and more.

When Light In The Attic released Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986 in 2019, it was the first collection of its kind to be released outside Japan. It proved to be just what music fans had been waiting for—a compilation of sought-after tracks that had been nearly impossible to obtain unless you were well-connected with dealers and collectors, or traveled regularly to the countless record stores in Japan. Pacific Breeze included Minako Yoshida, Taeko Ohnuki, Hiroshi Sato and Haruomi Hosono among other key players of ‘70s-’80s Japanese City Pop, the nebulous genre that encompassed an “amalgam of AOR, R&B, jazz fusion, funk, boogie and disco, all a touch dizzy with tropical euphoria,” as we described it the first time around.

With Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-1986 we dig deeper into those sounds of bubble-era Japan. From the proto-City Pop funk of Bread & Butter and Eiichi Ohtaki to the crate-digger favorites Eri Ohno and Piper, the latest entry in Light In The Attic’s Japan Archival Series brings another set of sought-after tunes, most of which have never before been available outside of Japan. Tomoko Aran and Anri, also included in this compilation, are just a few of the artists who have gained popularity in recent years thanks to Vaporwave, the meme-genre that heavily samples Japanese City Pop to create its particular aesthetic.

Pacific Breeze 2 once again feature the artwork of renowned Tokyo-based illustrator Hiroshi Nagai, whose iconic images of resort living have become synonymous with City Pop. Nagai’s urban tropical imagery is a perfect match for the expertly curated tunes, evoking a certain sense of nostalgia for the leisure lifestyles of ‘70s-’80s Tokyo, while simultaneously being perfectly in tune with the current zeitgeist.

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

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive opaque creamsicle coloured vinyl.

Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn stepped out of 2019 with a Top Ten album under their belt, Eton Alive, their biggest sold out tour to date and the swagger of a band that have never been more relevant, topically challenging and downright entertaining.

Sleaford Mods are set to continue their onslaught into 2020 with the release of All That Glue, a collection of songs spanning the last seven years of the bands career; an array of crowd pleasers, B sides, unheard tracks and rarities for fans and the curious, released via Rough Trade. Over the past few years Sleaford Mods have become one of the most intractable British pop stories. One of its best. Their music is drawn at a flawless fault-line of anger, tenderness and humour, a triumvirate of raw energy which frequently jostles in the space of a cadence for supremacy. On record you can hear their sinews, live you can touch their veins.

Ahead of All That Glue's release the band will be making available fan favourite Jobseeker for the first time. In addition, footage from the duo's acclaimed sell out show last year at the Eventim Apollo, will be released for the first time and kicks off with an incendiary performance of Tweet Tweet Tweet.

Limited edition independent store-only double white vinyl includes a 16-page A5 booklet - a précis in the inimitable style of Jason Williamson - documenting Sleaford Mods inexorable rise since their inception in 2011 to the present day, together with praise from the incomparable Iggy Pop.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: White vinyl – independent store exclusive, includes booklet. One pressing only.

Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is the fifth studio album from Perfume Genius that will be released May 15th on Matador Records. It sees artist and musician Mike Hadreas re-teaming with GRAMMY-nominated producer Blake Mills and features contributions from musicians Jim Keltner, Pino Palladino and Matt Chamberlin. It was recorded in Los Angeles, where Perfume Genius settled in 2017 with longtime partner and musical collaborator Alan Wyffels.

The album explores and subverts concepts of masculinity and traditional roles, and introduces decidedly American musical influences. Throughout Hadreas plays with themes of love, sex, memory and the body, channeling popular music mythologies while irreverently authoring its own – from the delirious, Cyndi Lauper-nodding celebratory pop of ‘On The Floor’, specters of Elvis on haunted tremolo waltz ‘One More Try’, to the harpsichord- punctuated baroque pop of ‘Jason’, and gliding steel guitar and Balearic rhythm of ‘Without You’.

“I wanted to feel more open, more free and spiritually wild,” says Hadreas, “and I’m in a place now where those feelings are very close-- but it can border on being unhinged. I wrote these songs as a way to be more patient, more considered -- to pull at all these chaotic threads hovering around me and weave them in to something warm, thoughtful and comforting.”

First album taster ‘Describe’ captures this sense of fleetingness and living in the moment through a heavy fog of grizzly distortion and tumbling slide guitars: “It started as a really somber ballad. It was very minimal and very slow. And then it turned into this beast of a song. I started writing that about when you are in such a dark place that you don’t even remember what goodness is or what anything feels like. And so, the idea was having someone describe that to you, because you forgot or can’t get to it.” Its accompanying video, self-directed by Hadreas, envisions “an end of the world where there are no boundaries, there are no edges, no rules, or the rules are completely new with how you interact with each other and the space around you.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Transparent blue vinyl.

NG Records answer our prayers here hooking us up with a limited repress of their amazing "Napoli Segreta" comp in time for the release of the second volume. Focusing on the hidden gems from Napoli's 70s and 80s disco and funk scenes, this set serves body moving basslines, skew-wiff synthery, cool guitar chops and big Italian vocals from a whole load of names you've probably never heard of. If you're after a quick example of the kind of fire power held within, check out Oro's "Stop The War", a Neapolitan 7" I dropped £70 on about 6 years ago and have been using to destroy dancefloors ever since.

After more than 12 years, Einstürzende Neubauten’s long-awaited new studio album ALLES IN ALLEM is finally going to be released. The album marks the quintessence of the band’s output, opening yet another unexpected door in 40 years of ongoing sound research bya very experimental group of musicians around Blixa Bargeld. This band, like nearly no other, has managed to create a musical cosmos. It has, in fact, built up its own genre by uniquely combining edgy sound with sophisticated poetry.

Appropriately, in the Year of the Rat – the symbol of ingenuity and versatility according to the Chinese zodiac – the band is not resting on the laurels of its last four decades. Instead, it curiously continues to explore everything that the sound universe has to yield, with one eye on the future and with boundless playfulness. The unique sound and textual landscapes of the band, founded in 1980 in Berlin, reveal the timelessness that Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit and Rudolph Moser have continuously maintained. And yet, through experimental approaches to songwriting, instruments developed over four decades and collective input, the band sounds remarkably cutting edge within its own time. In fact, through its individual brand of music the Einstürzende Neubauten seem to always command each and every manifestation of the here and now – whether industrial in its early years, the driving beats of the 1990s or its more considered later work. The verse “Wir hatten tausend Ideen / Und alle waren gut” (We had a thousand ideas / And all of them were good) from albumtrack “Am Landwehrkanal” could easily be perceived as the band’s description of itself.

The sum total is a special compilation: ALLES IN ALLEM, Einstürzende Neubauten’s first regular studio album in 12 years, presents an incomparable band that defies categorization to create a genre all its own.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd Box Set Info: Contains the CD and vinyl of the standard album plus a 164 page book with hand-written notes from Blixa Bargeld and an additional multi-media CD exclusive to the box.

The career of Acid Mothers Temple has been an interesting and varied one. With well over 200 releases to their name since 1996, the band have certainly put in the hard yards. Recent times have seen a resurgence in their underground cult popularity.

Between Autumn 2014 and December 2015, core AMT members Tsuyama Atsushi (bassist / vocalist) and Shimura Koji (drums) left the band. Original members Makoto Kawabata & Hiroshi Higashi took this as their chance to create a new line-up and that this was a good chance to refresh the band with new members.

The last Acid Mothers Temple album released by Riot Season was 'Reverse Of Rebirth in Universe' in 2018 which was incredibly well received, and is now into it's fourth vinyl pressing. For that album the newly settled line up featuring new boys Wolf (bass), Satoshima Nani (drums) and Jyonson Tsu (vocals) re-recorded old AMT classics and a few new jams. The album and subsequent world tour were incredibly well received, not only by long time AMT diehards but also a whole new crowd who were discovering the band for the first time, either via the album of the show, which included the bands first appearance at Glastonbury Festival in summer 2019.

Now we finally get to 'Chosen Star Child's Confession', the latest studio album from the band which should be considered the genuine 'first album' of this new line-up with the added presence of Geoff Leigh (ex Henry Cow)

In the bands own words ...

"We had recording session with Geoff Leigh (ex. Henry Cow) at the beautiful Sam and Rachel's recording studio in London in July 2018 (with work completed back in Japan in 2019). It was the first year of the new vocalist Jyonson. We recorded some our standards and classics also new jam session. We found many musical direction, daydream psychedelic, dubby jazz groove, Si-Fi trance, experimental exotic chaos, etc... it's the truly beginning of Acid Mothers Temple's new era!"

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited edition 500 only on sun orange vinyl.

Since their foundation in 2014, this malevolent rogues gallery of luminaries of the UK underground have consistently proven to be capable of projecting vibrations that transcend and usurp any idea of the sum of their component parts. It is true that they’ve clocked up notable experience sparking tinnitus with everyone from Mugstar and Bonnacons Of Doom (bassist Jason Stoll) to Dethscalator (vocalist Dan Chandler and drummer Stuart Bell) and from Earth (guitarist Jodie Cox, who also introduced keyboard player Ollie Knowles to the melee) to a dizzying variety of endeavours from the paint-stripping skronk of Dead Neanderthals to the righteous ire of Idles (all via saxophonist Colin Webster). Yet Sex Swing represents less a group of disparate musicians pooling their resources, and more a peculiar spark of collective chemistry, with all forces gravitating towards the pursuit of the same dissolute and mysterious goal.

‘Type II ’ is that goal reached in effortless style and amplified to intimidating aural vistas. This mighty monument of swagger and malice also sees fit to add a certain amount of glitter to the trademark grit this time around. Just as the artwork from long-term collaborator Alex Bunn boasts a luminous sheen absent from the unsettling abjection of the sleeve of their 2016 debut, so the rolling grooves and mantric hypnosis here boast a new-found structure and a feline sleekness fresh and unusual for this pugilistic outfit. Nonetheless, this remains a band fundamentally obsessed with the expression of decadence and wrongdoing through the mediums of repetition and overloaded frequencies.‘

Type II ’ is more than the mere machinations of a rock band - it’s a howl of malfunction rendered terrifyingly visceral. It’s the lightning flash and unearthly roar of the primeval battle between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla that provokes awe and disquiet in the realm of fantasy, It’s the haunted clangour of the faullty air conditioning unit that lurks in the anonymous office building yet lends it eerie ambience. It’s man vs machine where discord becomes harmony, and it’s a fearsomely invigorating spectacle to behold.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Grey/Cream swirl vinyl.

Moses Sumney evades definition as an act of duty: technicolor videos and monochrome clothes; Art Rock and Black Classical; blowing into Fashion Week from a small town in North Carolina; seemingly infinite collaborators, but only one staggering voice. A young life spent betwixt Southern California and Accra, Ghana — not so much rootless as an epyphite, an air plant. The scale is cinematic but the moves are precise deeds of art and stewardship. Sumney’s new, generous album, græ, is an assertion that the undefinable still exists and dwelling in it is an act of resistance.

To try to pin Sumney down on a sound - and really, on any matter - is to end up with a hand full of fog, but his genius is never allowing the set to sound like a hodgepodge. His forthcoming double album expands upon the sonic universe built in Sumney's critically-acclaimed debut LP Aromanticism and subsequent EP Black In Deep Red, 2014. The songs on græ may be divergent, like the visceral, Smashing Pumpkins drama of "Virile" and the intoxicated, outro jazz of "Gagarin." There's the kinky, ambiguous bop of "Cut Me" countered with the sweeping, amphitheater-ready "Bless Me." But there's that voice, always unknowable and penetrating, threading these pieces together: a heavenly rasp, a whale call, Miles' horn, a soulful snarl. It all works to create a paradox, keeping art and artist somewhere between any one sure thing - but surely something that demands your attention affixed and your breath bated. All of this is græ.

There's probably a biblical analogy to be made about a person who just happens to be named Moses, who flees the binary, splits a massive body into two pieces, and leads us through the in-between - holy and wholly rebellious. By breaking up græ into two multifaceted, dynamic pieces, Sumney is quite literally creating a "grey" in-between space for listeners to absorb and consider the art. Not strictly singles, not strictly albums, never altogether songs or spoken word segments on their own. It's neither here nor there. Neither/Nor, if you will. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: One disc white and one disc black vinyl.

On her third album U kin B the Sun, Vancouver-based singer/songwriter FrazeyFord inhabits an entire world of shapeshifting rhythm, elevating every beat and groove with the subtle magnetism of her mesmerizing voice. At turns ecstatic and heavy-hearted, gloriously shambolic and deeply purifying, U kin B the Sun is the outcome of a certain personal transformation that Ford has experienced in recent years. With its graceful collision of soul and psychedelia and sometimes ’70s funk, it’s a body of work that invites both self-reflection and wildly joyful movement, and ultimately sparks a quiet transcendence.

A departure from the guitar-driven and largely solitary songwriting that’s defined Ford’s previous work, both in her folk bluegrass trio The Be Good Tanyas and her solo albums Obadiah (2011) and Indian Ocean (2014), much of U kin B the Sun took shape from spontaneous collaboration with her longtime bassist Darren Parris and drummer Leon Power. Over the course of several late-night sessions in the thick of summer 2019, the three musicians joined producer John Raham (Destroyer, Stars, Dan Mangan, Said The Whale) in dreaming up a brilliantly untethered sound, recording as they improvised and continually tapping into their potent camaraderie.

ADULT. make a triumphant return after their 2018 album This Behavior, dubbed “…one of the best records of their career…” by Ryan Lathan of Pop Matters. This chilling continuation takes the form of Perception is/as/of Deception, an anxiety fueled cyclone of pandemonium that only ADULT. would know how to harness. While This Behavior was recorded in the isolated snow-covered woods of northern Michigan, Perception is/as/of Deception was given life in a temporary space the duo created by painting their windowless basement entirely black, with the sole intention to deprive their senses, question their perceptions, and witness the resulting ramifications.

With over 23 years and a sprawling discography left in their wake, Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus have spent their entire career as ADULT. obscuring any defined genre or style. With a history as uncanny as ADULT., the pieces that making up Perception is/as/of Deception might be perceived as their most punk-infused and introspective work to date. The elements of frustration and apprehension that have consistently woven throughout their material are at full mast, although augmented by a strident and more “head-on” approach.

Tracks like Have I Started at the End successfully maintain the duo’s classic EBM signatures and synthesized aggression, cradled by a suspicious mantra that questions….what’s the point? Why Always Why offers a disorienting mutation of the heralded sounds of classic dance music, like a remix that escaped prison and is on the run. The dystopian anthem, Total Total Damage, comes in full force with an frantic energy which jolts any bystanders to attention, with only the defiant chants of Kuperus’ vocals outlining the ever-degenerating state of societal affairs. The dramatically glam synth parts scattered throughout the album, while at times ominous in nature, seem to also act as a merciful reminder that through the journey of Perception is/as/of Deception, one can still enjoy the chaos.

With the rampant sense of emptiness on the minds of many these days, there continues to be few attempts at scoring these common, unfortunate human qualities with pure sincerity. Thankfully, ADULT. has a long-standing reputation for creating the soundtrack for our insecurities, and Perception is/as/of Deception further solidifies their apprehensive position

Hanni El Khatib, the definitive purveyor of visceral, blues-wracked, punk-spiked, soulwarped, knife-fight rock n’ roll who artfully blends serrated guitars with his love for hiphop, releases his fifth album FLIGHT, produced by and recorded with long-time friend Leon Michels (El Michels Affair, Lana Del Rey, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, and Eminem).

From 2010 until 2017, when he released his previous albums, there was the usual cycle that consumes most working musicians: make an album, tour it, return home, rinse and repeat. And with it came the predictable pitfalls that ensnare too many artists - It is a dream until that one night when it isn’t any longer, and despite his gratitude for his fans, El Khatib found himself wracked by depression and anxiety. It became readily apparent that if he didn’t make drastic changes to his lifestyle, there might not be a life to speak of. So he quit drinking, stopped touring, and took an indefinite hiatus from the studio. But eventually, the desire to create songs slowly returned.

What would eventually become El Khatib’s fifth studio album, the virtuosic but characteristically raw FLIGHT, began as spontaneous experimentation. The finished result is a rollicking sampledelic opus that recalls the beautiful chaos that the Dust Brothers created on Paul’s Boutique and Odelay. It’s the type of thing that Dilla and Madlib would’ve created if they had come up on The Cramps.

Born in Paris, raised in Vienna, resident in Ibiza, saxophonist and composer Muriel Grossmann embodies the borderless, pan-continental energies of contemporary European jazz. Her music emerges from the lineage of European jazz that's absorbed the progressive music of Coltrane, Dolphy and Sanders. Today, she cites players such as Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young in the same breath as the masters of the avant-garde, and her playing marries the directness and eloquence of the older generation with the questing, spiritualised playing epitomised by Coltrane. The roster of musicians she has played with is long, and includes veteran European avant-gardists including Joachim and Rolf Kühn, Wolfgang Reisinger and Thomas Heidepriem, and she works tirelessly with contemporary groups and big bands across the continent.

Since her first recordings in the early 2000s, Grossmann has released a dozen albums as leader, featuring sounds ranging from hard-swinging modernist jams to free improvisation, expansive spiritual work to rhythm-focussed Afrocentrism. But at the centre of her work is a thread of pure and heartfelt spiritual music in the modal tradition defined by Coltrane and close collaborators like Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. You can't play this music successfully if you don't mean it – like the music of her contemporary Nat Birchall, Grossmann's engagement with the Coltrane tradition is sincere and deep. Her music resonates within the tradition – more than just a style, it adds a new chapter to the story of modal and spiritual jazz in Europe.

This Jazzman set draws a selection from her 2016 album Natural Time ('Your Pace', 'Peace For All') and from 2017's Momentum ('Elevation', 'Chant' and 'Rising'). Featuring her regular quartet of Radomir Milojkovic (guitar) Uros Stamenkovic (drums) and Gina Schwarz (bass), the music on Elevation is pure sound, soul and spirit!

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Punk Slime Recordings are proud to present the new album from the garage-punk and acid-corroded new-wave outfit that is Chemtrails. Having started life as the lo-fi bedroom recording project of romantic partners Mia Lust and Laura Orlova back in 2016 Chemtrails quickly set about releasing two digital-only EPs before making their album debut in early 2018 with Calf of the Sacred Cow, while drawing the attention of ex Stereogum, KEXP, The Line of Best Fit, DIY and more.

Another EP, Cuckoo Spit, was released on 12” vinyl late the same year and Chemtrails spent 2019 working on their next full-length, which is now finally here. The Peculiar Smell of the Inevitable is the band’s heaviest and wildest record yet, with their trademark big melodies and harmonies performed over a frenzied wall of raw guitar noise and glistening synths.

Trace Mountains Lost in The Country is the new album from Dave Benton (formerly of LVL Up and ex-co-owner of indie label Double Double Whammy.) First release for Lame-O Records, Lost in The Country feels Phil Elverum tinkering with a dash of Lambchop electronics.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Opaque light blue vinyl.

All of Moby’s profits from All Visible Objects will be donated to the charities outlined below. The album tracklisting can be found among them.

Over the last 10 years Moby has been donating 100% of the profits from most of his work to animal and human rights charities. His restaurant, little pine, his free film music site, mobygratis, his festival Circle V, and his last few albums have all donated 100% of their profits to animal and human rights organizations.

Brighter Green is a public policy action tank that works to raise awareness of and encourage policy action on issues that span the environment, animals, and sustainability, ensuring future healthy MORNINGS for all. From its SIDE and in partnership with other organizations and individuals, Brighter Green generates and incubates research and project initiatives that are both visionary and practical.

Mercy For Animals exists to end the greatest cause of suffering on the planet: the exploitation of animals for food, in particular, industrial animal agriculture, aquaculture, and fishing. MY support of MFA ONLY increases every year, as does my LOVE for the animals.

If this past year is any indication, we have our work cut out for us in 2020. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is uniquely suited to make enormous changes happen. We're tough. We're tenacious. We think big and don’t back down. In our 30-year history, we have secured hundreds of critical victories for the environment and partnered with Indigenous communities around the world; and have helped protect millions of acres of REFUGE forests in Indonesia, Canada, Chile, Brazil and beyond.


We are facing an unprecedented global emergency, ONE of our own making. Life on Earth is in crisis: scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown. This is our LAST chance and we are in the midst of a mass extinction. We are out of TIME. This is our Extinction Rebellion.


The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. The people have the POWER, and the ACLU exists to make sure this IS never TAKEN for granted.


Animal Equality’s vision is a world in which all animals are respected and protected. We are an international organization working with society, governments, and companies to end cruelty to farm animals. We can all help if we RISE UP together IN unity, with understanding and LOVE.


The Humane League began as a tiny grassroots organization in 2005—protesting foie gras on bitterly cold nights at local restaurants in Philadelphia—has since grown into an effective and global nonprofit organization. Yet, one thing has stayed the same. We are, always have been, and FOREVER will be for the animals.


The Physicians Committee is dedicated to saving and improving human lives (and animals TOO) through plant-based diets and ethical and effective scientific research. Our efforts are producing MUCH needed CHANGE in the way doctors treat chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and cancer. By putting prevention over pills, doctors are empowering their patients to take control of their own health.


We are the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. Anti-poaching rangers form the first and last line of defense for nature. Without the right training, equipment, management and support, they cannot protect the world’s natural heritage for future generations. The requirement for inspiring urgent action towards the safekeeping of the planet cannot be overstated. This responsibility should transcend all levels of industry, business and society as we strive to increase the SEPARATION of greed and humanity.

The Good Food InstituTE - We work with sCIEntists, investors, and entrepreneurs to make groundbreaking good food a reality. We focus on clean meat and plant-based alternatives to animal products - foods that are more delicious, safer to eat, and better for the planet than their outdated counterparts.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies-only clear vinyl.

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, the San Francisco-based band fronted by singer and songwriter Thao Nguyen, is set to release their fifth studio album Temple on 15th May via Ribbon Music. In celebration of the upcoming album, the band is debuting the title track alongside a video directed by Jonny Look, featuring choreography by Erin S. Murray

The album is among Thao’s most open and honest work yet, finding her coming out in her public life after a long career in which she kept her queer identity quiet in an effort to avoid turmoil with and alienation from a family and culture she deeply loves. “But that shit will kill you,” Thao says.

“I have divided myself into so many selves. I am nervous, but hopeful that in belonging to myself, I can still belong to my family, and my Vietnamese community, especially the elders.” She continues, “I believe that shame has made my work more general, when I’ve always wanted to be specific. This record is about me finally being specific. If you listen to my music, I want you to know who you are dealing with.”

Thao almost opted not to make another record, feeling that rock music no longer was capable of saying what she needed to express. But it turns out making a record was necessary; it forced her hand to create a space wherein she could finally exist as her entire self. Temple is an album compelled by love and the urgent need to live one full, whole life. Thao and her girlfriend got married recently, and she says, “I have my partner and our home to ground me in this life, in my one life. And everything I do now, everywhere I go, every time I present myself to people, it is finally all of me.”

Temple is the first Get Down Stay Down record to be self-produced. Thao teamed up with longtime bandmate Adam Thompson to produce the record; he shares writing credits on five songs. Mikaelin “Blue” Bluespruce (Solange, Carly Rae Jepsen, Mariah Carey) mixed the record. “Blue mixes more in the hip-hop and pop world and that’s what we wanted,” says Thao. “More fidelity, more upfront beat and groove-heavy mixes that are filled out and immersive…high highs, low lows, lush tones.”

Temple follows Thao & The Get Down Stay Down’s 2016 album A Man Alive, which was released to widespread critical praise. Over the past year, Thao also served as guest host of the acclaimed podcast Song Exploder.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 150g transparent salmon pink coloured vinyl. 24" x 12" Folded Poster.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Tyyni is the third album by Finnish-born sound artist and musician Cucina Povera aka Maria Rossi. The second album recorded using a more studio-based scenario – as opposed to last year’s Zoom, a collection of in-situ, spontaneous recordings – Tyyni feels like a slowly unfurling mediation on the clash between nature and mechanical living, a rumination on the complexities of modern life that begin to unveil more about the inner landscape of the artist as it progresses. A Finnish word referring to still, serene weather, the title belies a new note of turmoil in Cucina Povera’s soundworld. Tyyni represents a more detailed focus on the sculpting of sounds that curl around Rossi’s hymnal vocal performances.

It’s a more adventurous work than Rossi’s previous output that goes further into noise elements and vocal abstraction while maintaining the balance and ecclesiastical ecstasy of her debut Hilja. While tension at the core of Cucina Povera is always prevalent, previously it was organic sounds that were used to counterpoint Rossi’s singing but on Tyyni these are often replaced with aggressive synths and distortion, profane clashes with the seemingly sacred hymns. Whether close mic’d and intoning in a loop or in full flight, Maria Rossi’s voice remains in the foreground, set here against a more synthetic backdrop.

This development builds new worlds for Cucina Povera, a digital environment which brings in a sense of the alien for Rossi’s vocal to duel. The effect is often dazzling. On Salvia Salvatrix, an ode to the medicinal plant used to ward off evil spirits, Rossi’s invocation is encircled by a distorted synth sound tearing at the fabric of the composition. It’s an inspired juxtaposition, leaving the listener to appreciate both sounds as separate and as a duet. Anarkian kuvajainen embraces a sense of chaos, an accidental transmitting mobile phone’s pulse is swept up gently with looped synth swells as Rossi’s prayer-like vocal rhythmically teases the composition into loops that embrace and then drift apart. Teerenpeli flirts with a minimal beat rendered by sampler and processed, layered field recordings of capercaillies, while Side A ends with one of Rossi’s most beautiful, simple tracks yet recorded.

Varjokuvatanssi is an a cappela recording built on top of a wordless glossolalia, a shadowy interplay which foregrounds the solo vocal. Pölytön nurkka is the most melodic song yet recorded by Cucina Povera. While it still maintains an off-the-cuff performance style, the synthesized chimes and 4/4 beat are smothered by a distorted synthesizer which almost replicates the bravado of an electric guitar feedbacking into the night. Rossi’s subject matter talks of trying to start anew, getting rid of extraneous material, perhaps still feeling powerless to affect positive change. On Haaksirikkoutunut, the protagonist vocal is lost, a vessel rudderless on the ocean, buffeted by waves metaphorical or real, digital, atonal chords gurgling and splashing against the bow, a storm forever brewing on the horizon. Saniaiset recalls Coil in its eldritch, nocturnal tone and digital-bell like synth, Rossi’s half-spoken/half-sung voice attaining a creepy tone before flipping into flight.

Album closer Jolkottelureitti uses an escalating, sequenced synth that splinters into both abrasive tones and harmonising chords creating a kosmische effect, reminding the listener of Kluster or synth-era Popol Vuh, all the while elevated by Rossi’s searching vocalising. For an artist with such a singularly unique musical language, Cucina Povera is continually teasing new strands and emotive tones from an evolving palette. Most importantly, Tyyni appears to be pulling back the veil to uncover an artist finding a synergy between her own emotional inner world and practice. As such, on her third album, Maria Rossi has found a third way between abstraction and extraneous emotion, personal experience turned inside out to reveal more about the listener.

Abracadabra is the second album on Stones Throw from leftfield indie pop artist Jerry Paper. Jerry Paper has previously collaborated with Tyler, The Creator; Weyes Blood; Charlotte Day Wilson, and BadBadNotGood.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies Exclusive Green Vinyl.

The album art, made by my close friend Quintin Caldwell, is a farm scene made in the isometric style of a silicon valley tech company's marketing content. The cattle's enclosures are smart-phone shaped. "John Wayne" is a comment on American individualism and the characters that symbolize it. John Wayne's many, yet consistent characters and the consistent but multi-actored Bruce Wayne (Batman) serve as model citizens and vigilantes. They justify violence in fighting crime, or disrespect, while doing little to address underlying causes of injustice. I see in myself similar tendencies of false self-reliance despite knowing that collective effort will be critical to successful change. My previous album, Anthropocene, asks in the title track, "where will I go/ if I don't want to be/ with idle hands awaiting catastrophe/ here in the Anthropocene."

The Greener Pasture offers a somewhat defeated answer to that question in its own title track: "The greener pasture is also fenced in/ the wider trough has an asterisk/ rotate the herd every few days/ or is it every few years/ we got their tags on our ears/ standing in shit crying bovine tears." As cattle's comfort is often forgone, I've been uncomfortably seeking my role in a market economy that might allow me to contribute to necessary change in the system. Even those reluctant to acquiesce to the demands of the labor market such as myself are these days made valuable through their data and attention.

Just as screens have reached beyond squared corners, up and around user-facing lenses, screens have spread beyond times square to capture the core of our culture and economy at a rapid pace. In the process of vying for a chance to call music my profession, I've writhed in the pain of isolation it's brought and sunk deeper into hermetic habits, buttressed by social media platforms that my more successful peers have somehow managed to excel using. Where others have managed to perform for the public, I have somewhat remained a private spectator, attached to systems I know well are designed to invade my time with promoted content and a false sense of connectedness. Whether sleeping in a hotel far from home or the back of a vehicle searching for nothing up a national forest road, my transience only sunk the hooks deeper.

I hopped from one fill-in living arrangement to the next in anticipation of frugal touring sweeping me off my feet. I've largely neglected other skills except when necessary to pay bills. When I received my advance for a second Western Vinyl album, no other theme called me as much as an examination of phone use. I invested in equipment to record myself instead of studio time so that I could come closer to mastering the craft to which I've dedicated myself and simultaneously to capture and store as much value as possible from the advance, given the scarcity of revenue in my musical efforts. In the process I dove deeper into isolation and into my phone in a cabin in the woods, which had been made available on very friendly terms.

Now that the work of recording is through, I am continuing to write for the next album but looking for the place to reinsert myself into the organic plane of existence. I signed a lease for a place of my own for the first time. I'm building wooden phone stands to sell as merch that will sport artwork intended to encourage users to leave their phones in one place while home - that isn't a pocket - such as to deter excessive phone use."

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 'Grass Is Greener' Green Vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

When considering any great work of art, be it a painting, a novel, or a piece of music, it’s natural to wonder what might have inspired it: ‘the story behind the song’. Mark Lanegan’s new album, Straight Songs Of Sorrow, flips that equation. Here are 15 songs inspired by a story: his life story, as documented by his own hand in his new memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep.

The book is a brutal, nerve-shredding read, thanks to Lanegan’s unsparing candour in recounting a journey from troubled youth in eastern Washington, through his drug-stained existence amid the ’90s Seattle rock scene, to an unlikely salvation at the dawn of the 21st century. There’s death and tragedy, yet also humour and hope, thanks to the tenacity which impels its host, even at his lowest moments. As Lanegan writes near the end: “I was the ghost that wouldn’t die.”

Today, Lanegan is a renowned songwriter and a much-coveted collaborator, as adept at electronica as with rock, constantly honing his indomitable voice: an asphalt-laced linctus for the soul. While the memoir documents a struggle to find peace with himself, his new album emphasis the extent to which he came to realise that music is his life.

“Writing the book, I didn’t get catharsis,” he chuckles. “All I got was a Pandora’s box full of pain and misery. I went way in, and remembered shit I’d put away 20 years ago. But I started writing these songs the minute I was done, and I realised there was a depth of emotion because they were all linked to memories from this book. It was a relief to suddenly go back to music. Then I realised that was the gift of the book: these songs. I’m really proud of this record.”

Straight Songs Of Sorrow combines musical trace elements from early Mark Lanegan albums with the synthesized constructs of later work. The meditative acoustic guitar fingerpicking – provided by Lamb Of God’s Mark Morton – on Apples From A Tree and Hanging On (For DRC) echo 1994’s Whiskey For The Holy Ghost. Yet one of that record’s touchstones was Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, echoed in the new album’s opener I Wouldn’t Want To Say, where Lanegan extemporises *à la Ballerina over musique concrète wave patterns generated by his latest favourite compositional tool, a miniature computer-synth called the Organelle. The lyric clings onto the music, emulating his book’s queasy momentum: *“Swinging from death… to revival.”

“That song is the explanation, the beginning and middle and end of that entire period of time,” Mark says. “The encapsulation of the entire experience, book and record. So I started with that.”

Lanegan affirms that every song references a specific episode or person in the book, albeit some more explicitly than others. Hanging On (For DRC) is a loving ode to his friend Dylan Carlson, genius progenitor of drone metal and a fellow unlikely survivor of Seattle’s narcotic dramas. “I was always unhappy, and he was the guy who was always smiling, even through my crazy schemes that eventually got both of us into a lot of trouble.” The richly cinematic mood of Daylight In The Nocturnal House, meanwhile, paints a more impressionistic scene: factory smoke, rain, a phone call from *“somebody’s grand-daughter”, who’ll *“pay to make somebody crawl/And send you to heaven.” The singer’s perspective is ambiguous. “I got into a lot of shady business in those years,” Lanegan says.

Longtime observers will recognise some familiar recurrent themes. Death. Destruction. Bad behaviour. In the case of At Zero Below, all in the same song. “Yes, I did burn someone with a cigarette,” Mark says. “Yes, I did spit in somebody’s face – maybe more than once in my life. Stuff I’m not proud of. That song is also about one of my many ex-girlfriends who is no longer with us. It’s all linked to the book.”

At Zero Below features two of the album’s many stellar guests. Singing admonitory harmonies with himself is Greg Dulli, another ’90s alt-rock veteran, Lanegan’s erstwhile partner in mischief and fellow Gutter Twin. The song’s incantatory fiddle is played by The Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis. No lesser figure than Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones provides Mellotron on the serpentine Ballad Of A Dying Rover (*“I’m just a sick sick man/My days are numbered”). Aside from mandolin, all Daylight In The Nocturnal House’s cobwebbed atmospherics are by Portishead’s Adrian Utley. Ed Harcourt is Lanegan’s pick for album MVP (“He’s all over it – everything that he plays, piano or Wurlitzer, becomes magical”), with special mention to bassist Jack Bates, son of Peter Hook; that duo make especially distinctive contributions to Churchbells, Ghosts a bleakly humorous lament to the drudgery of life on the road (*“I’d ask somebody for a quarter/If there were someone for me to phone”).

Ketamine is a numb blues, with Lanegan shadowed by Cold Cave vocalist Wesley Eisold, who inspired the album’s only overt drug song (ironically, about a drug that Lanegan has never actually taken). “Wes is good friends with Genesis P-Orridge,” explains Mark, “and he said the last time he saw Gen she was in a hospital bed, saying to this priest, ‘No thank you sir, I don’t need any last rites, but if you have any ketamine that would be perfect.’” He laughs. “So I immediately wrote that song and had him sing on it. There’s drugs throughout the record – they’re rife in Bleed All Over – but that song was the only real specific one.”

The material on the last two Mark Lanegan Band albums had Lanegan’s words set to music by various other sources. But aside from the Mark Morton collaborations, Straight Songs Of Sorrow was built from the ground up by Lanegan alone, aided by producer Alain Johannes, his longtime consigliere. Only two other songs have shared credits, and even these stay in-house: Burying Ground and Eden Lost And Found were co-written by Mark’s wife Shelley Brien, with whom he also duets on the Rita Coolidge/Kris Kristofferson-style ballad This Game Of Love. “Let’s put it this way,” says Mark. “Every girlfriend I’ve ever had, for any amount of time, left me. All the good ones left me! Until my current wife. It was great to sing that with Shelley, it really shows she’s a great singer. And it has a depth of emotion that I’m not used to. This is a more honest record than I’ve probably ever made.”

A crushing twin-song centrepiece proves that. First, Stockholm City Blues, a sparse, beautiful, strings and finger-picking meditation on the remorse code of addiction (*“I pay for this pain I put into my blood”). Then, the seven-minute epic Skeleton Key, a supplicatory confessional (“I’m ugly inside and out there is no denying”) that also provides the album title. It’s a remarkable performance from a man whose punishment for plumbing the depths was simply to continue further along the road. “My wife called that my ‘redemption song’,” says Lanegan.

And indeed, there is a happy ending to this story. Just as his book closes with the hero overcoming adversity and turning, battered but cleansed, towards a new day, so Straight Songs Of Sorrow closes with Eden Lost And Found. *“Sunrise coming up baby/To burn the dirt right off of me,” marvels Lanegan, with his words echoed by Simon Bonney of Crime & The City Solution, an all-time hero. “I wanted to make a positive song to end this record, because that’s the way the book ended,” Mark says. “And what’s more positive than to have your favourite singer sing with you?”

Straight Songs Of Sorrow feels both definitive and unique, a culmination of its creator’s arc yet also indicative of the energy that drives him onto future horizons. No wonder Lanegan is proud.

“I do feel this is something special for me, something honest,” he says. “’Cos records are not real life, man – in case no one told ya. They’re just a fake version of life!” Mark Lanegan laughs. “Well, at least you have one now that’s a little closer to being real. Unfortunately, it’s by me.”

Keith Cameron.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: 180 gram crystal clear vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with printed inners.

2xColoured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

2xLP Info: Double 180 gram vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with printed inners.

2xLP includes MP3 Download Code.

New album from kosmiche folk-rock quartet Modern Studies. A glorious compendium of haunted disco hallelujahs, mercurial krautrock chorales, cosmic pop adagios and euphoric, resilient, anthems. ‘The Weight of the Sun’ sees principal songwriters Emily Scott and Rob St John further their warm, esoteric field studies with Pete Harvey and Joe Smillie, as previously reconnoitred on ‘Swell To Great’ (2016) and ‘Welcome Strangers’ (2018).

“The exact point where Fairport Convention meet Jim O’Rourke at a remote Scottish railway station.” Tim Burgess.

“Melancholic magic… recalls Johnny Marr’s hazier reveries and the febrile, electrified folk of Polly Harvey’s Let England Shake.” UNCUT

There is a strange familiarity, and a welcome strangeness, in the quiet alchemy of Modern Studies.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Exclusive “Sunburst Splatter” vinyl.
• Exclusive numbered lyric sheet.
• Dinked sticker.
• 300 only.

Dinked Edition LP includes MP3 Download Code.

LP Info: Standard black vinyl with DL card.

After much anticipation, our Belgian disco diamonds Rheinzand present their debut full-length album. On their self-titled record, The Belgian trio wraps the human heart in synthetic threads of modular electronic disco. 9 songs writhing on timeless dancefloors, morphing in and out of shapes of luxuriant melody and vivid instrumentation.

The album is full of classic disco and electro sounds, wielded with imposing prowess by multi-instrumentalist Reinhard Vanbergen. It’s both an exploration of dance music’s electronic genealogy and the vintage cool that has defined its different eras. Still, an organic atmosphere pervades as the blend of real instrumentation fixes a sort of retro-futurism, imagining an alternative timeline that’s a bit more exciting, more sensuous and libidinal, maybe more human, too, than our current outlook.

We start the engines with Break of Dawn, a compelling beat rises from the basement and soon we’re submerged by the pulsing bassline. Dark sunglasses on, we cruise through the night, letting flashing city lights flow into unbroken torrents of color. Blind awakens us, a splash of handclaps in the face, vivid strings and Charlotte’s trademark slick vocals enter the stage. Tantalizing sunbeams power up circuits of electronic synths blipping and beeping away.

Later down the road, we hit the Latin part of town. Porque fits enchanting vocal spells in beautiful Spanish on playful flamenco rhythms. Fourteen Again is a throwback to early electro, playing around with knobs and buttons. An oscillating synth imagines new worlds of plastic emotion. Still disco and still very cool, though. A constant velocity is sustained throughout the album by this recurring locomotive synth, trudging away beneath the action. Once in a while, we hear the deep, mighty, trembling voice of Mr. Rheinzand speaking to us in incantations. Someone’s pulling the strings here. On Slippery People, the trio cover the Talking Heads classic in a characteristic procedure of bouncy funk. We’re swirled around by the delirious glasswork of You Don’t Know Me into the hypnagogic funk noir of Strange World. Drifting through the house of mirrors after the fourth mojito.

Obey collects all these threads in a full-bodied future classic disco anthem, before Queen of The Dawn wraps up the show with a sky-bound epic of operatic choirs and ceremonious drums that lands somewhere between Kate Bush’s Aerial and Peter Gabriel’s most bombastic.

New studio recordings by Roddy Woomble (Idlewild) Roddy - “My new EP is not poems recited over music, or spoken word, but neither is it a straight forward collection of songs.”

The idea for it was literally conceived in a teepee in the Scottish Highlands. In September 2018, Andrew Mitchell (my frequent solo collaborator and Idlewild band mate) Oliver Coates (Cellist, Composer, Producer, Pal) and I were playing a concert at The Dell of Abernethy in the heart of the Cairngorms.The concert was in an actual teepee, although one with a capacity of fifty, a bar and a fire pit. In the twilight between soundcheck and gig Oliver decided to compose a piece to function as environmental music while the audience arrived, a “dystopic collage of Roddy Woomble’s cut-up phonemes with cinematic drones” is how Oliver describes it.

It was to function instead of playlist music; to condition the atmosphere. Oliver set to work recording me reciting several lines from my notebook, which were then spliced and triggered by computer algorithm while cello & synth drones of varying length looped and grew underneath the booming & panning cut ups of the words, chopped in the tradition of Williams Burroughs to reveal subterranean, cultish and hypnotic meaning through abstract play of sound. When played back through the PA system it sounded both fractured and soothing and suited the atmosphere of the evening - it was the start of autumn, with a chill in the air - the audience was getting close to the fire, drinking beer and gin, with this strange and hypnotic soundtrack all around them quietly playing.

The concert itself was lovely - Oliver played an amazing set followed by Andrew and I, with Oliver joining us on Cello (and laptop) for several numbers. The evening had a spirit of collaboration about it, a spontaneous and creative feel, in the cold and magical highlands forest. Oliver continued to work on the track and it appears at it’s original length on the EP. Oliver titled it ‘RW OC Cuttup’ as that was what the file was named on his computer. It is really much more his work than mine, but he was happy for it to be included on this EP which I’m very grateful for.

At seventeen minutes in length I appreciate that it might be a bit too long or discordant for some - but if you give it time it’s a very meditative and rewarding listen - good to have on headphones while you are climbing a hill in the drizzle, or indeed sitting around a bonfire in the Cairngorms sipping Glen Livet.

Cardinal Fuzz and Little Cloud Records are ecstatic to bring forth the latest The Cult Of Dom Keller album ‘Ascend!’

The Cult Of Dom Keller formed in 2007 and in that time have released five albums, toured Europe and played many a headline slot on the festival circuit while all the time never compromising their sound. With ‘Ascend!’ The Cult Of Dom Keller have reached the apex of their post-apocalyptic, scalp sizzling sonic freak-out vision as they pull you down a visceral black hole that leaves ears ringing and heads reeling.

From the dystopian intro the door bursts open into ‘Hello Hanging Rope’ – a face melt of smog chocked bump and grind that throbs with a demonic menace and carries with it a swagger of Les Rallizes Denudes (think Flames Of Ice) – a total head trip. Tracks meld into each other as The Cult Of Dom Keller howl like a beast, bass and drums locked in and revved up, the keyboard wheezes and reels out wailing drones while guitars erupt with frantic head tripping fuzz a rama lama cyclonic riffs – It’s very heavy and very far-out.

Be sure to double up on your medication before sitting down and listening to ‘Ascend!’ For fans of Chrome, Les Rallizes Denudes, The Stooges, German Oak (it is that basement vibe).

Regresa, Buscabulla’s long-awaited debut is set for release via Ribbon Music.

The album, recorded in its entirety in Raquel’s and Luis Alfredo’s home studio in Puerto Rico, is an emotional rollercoaster in which they face and ponder the issues affecting them and Puerto Rican society at large.

For the finishing touches, the band worked with Patrick Wimberly (Chairlift, MGMT, Solange, Blood Orange, etc.) who contributed additional production and mixed the album.

They also enlisted their dear friend Roberto Carlos Lange, aka Helado Negro, to contribute an orchestral arrangement for ‘Club Tú y Yo’.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive pink vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

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”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive hot pink coloured vinyl.

‘Flow & Heady’, the stunning new record from Dire Wolves Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band, captures the group flying high at the height of their powers. Recorded live at the ‘Festival Of Endless Gratitude’ in Copenhagen, and released jointly on Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records, this beautifully packaged LP documents some of the band’s 2019 European Tour. (*the included download code also features two additional live concerts!) For these dates, the Dire Wolves were joined by Nik Rayne of The Myrrors (guitar and clarinet) and Bell Lungs from Scotland (violin, voice and birds), each adding potent textures to the collective’s deep sonic glossolalia.

The music Dire Wolves create is what they call 'Cosmic Free Rock' as via amplified instrumentation they summon a sound that pulls at psych, kosmiche, acid folk and spiritual jazz. Fans of Trad Gras Och Stenar and Amon Duul II will easily get lost in these zones, as droning violins, fuzzed acid guitars and wordless floating angelic vocals (that nod towards Rentate Knaup) are propelled by a rhythm section that knows exactly how to not overplay as they create the hypnotic essence from which Dire Wolves drift away. The raw overblown recording, à la White Heaven, becomes an Instrument unto itself, placing you squarely in the moment with the group, amidst the swirling transcendent improvisation. This is a heavy record. This is Psychic Rock for the mind and body. Close your eyes, breathe deep and get lost in ‘Flow & Heady’.

No-bullshit underground free-rock and proto-punk dosage featuring a multi-piece line up of GRs !

This acetate slab of defiant mixture makes the magic happens like an hallucinatory disenchantment incorporated into some ultra vindictive power… Infectious, scary, brutal, elegiac, freakish and wickedly stylish, GR’s fifth solo album The GR Record Head pushes the boundaries straight up to cook your synapses.

Once again, the album comes out outside of the standards, with no other backing than GR himself on all instruments plugged into overheated tubes, then a few dusty razor-like moving coil transducers, a mixing board built like a Panzer and an analog 4 track reel to reel recorder from another age.
GuitaRazing, frenzied riffing and cranked soloing vagabondage on corroded strings, mesmeric tone, acid rave ups, rhythms like catapults, motorik plus deconstructive free forms, opaque vocals full of venom and fuelled by raw lines & metrics…— Now pair all that with the craft of fixing sounds onto an early 80s’ 1/4 inch reel tape and you got an idea of what The GR Record Head is all about.

The Mother of all fuckers in actual D.I.Y/Low-Fi Rock’n’roll.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited edition of 300 white-colored vinyl / comes with Lyrics insert sheet / printed on 300 gram uncoated reversed card sleeve.

Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records are proud to present the Napalm Blast that is the forthcoming new Banshee record – ‘Livin’ In The Jungle’.

Hailing from Boston and blazing red hot cinders through your eyes Banshee channel widescreen, kick out the jams motherfuckers psyche-rock-a-rama with a singer doing his best to channel both Alice and Iggy. Yes they rock like crazy and play with the fired up fury of The Stooges, MC5 and The Alice Cooper Group as they let their freak flag fly.

On ‘Livin In The Jungle’ Banshee detonate over 11 tracks of pure diamond arrangements that will lay you out flat and have your head swirling from the whallop of the sleazy voodoo racket that Banshee have created. Informed in equal parts by the intensity of 60’s Detroit and The Alice Cooper Group and with a rhythmic underbelly the calls on in parts the funk explosion of WAR. From the opening Intro of ‘Genesis’ amid a barrage of bells, chimes jungle sounds and a group feeling the funk they lay straight into ‘The Law’ where without missing a beat and over a blast of guitar riffs, dive bombing bass lines, thunderous drums and a voice that spits out and caterwails with a vengeance you find Banshee freewheelin’ into what will become your favourite rock’n’roll LP for 2020. The engine has started and the whole record is executed at a breakneck pace that is a furious rollercoaster ride to sweet oblivion. On the final epic sprawl that is ‘Caged birds’ which starts out with a garage like Sister Ray bump’n’grind chug before descending into a glorious meltdown of fuzzed up wah wah guitars and glockenspiels before everything finally fades back into the jungle. ‘Livin In The Jungle’ is one rabid rock’n'roll animal of a record. 

Jon Brook’s ‘How to Get to Spring’ is his fourth record on Clay Pipe. Stepping into new sonic territory with a gentle nod to his more recent Advisory Circle work, he has produced a beautiful new record that moves us gently from the winter into the spring.

“It’s when we realise that even the most seemingly inextricable connections are but, a flicker. Despite devices put in place, to the contrary, every connection is, ultimately, a temporary one."

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Numbered and limited white coloured vinyl.

Grammy-winning artist RAC (Andre Allen Anjos) returns with his highly anticipated new album “BOY”, released on Counter Records following his 2017 release “Ego”. Stand alone single is a cover of the iconic early 2000s hit “Never Let You Go” from Third Eye Blind featuring singer, songwriter, DJ and record producer Matthew Koma and his actress wife Hilary Duff.

Recommended if you like… Odesza, Classixx, Goldroom, St Lucia, Sigala, Rudimental, Tourist, Elderbrook, Big Wild, Jai Wolf, Sigma, Louis The Child

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Indies exclusive opaque pink & white splatter vinyl.

"What would you do if you accidentally killed someone? Death Waltz Recording Company invites you to ponder this with the haunting score to Matthew Pope & Don Thompson's film BLOOD ON HER NAME, composed by Brooke and Will Blair (GREEN ROOM, I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE). A unique Gothic-noir meditation on classic themes of honesty and tragedy, the film asks the audience how they would react after a fatal incident, and how far their conscience would allow them to go. Underlining this is a score that reaches into the dark pit of your stomach, where your feelings lie.

BLOOD ON HER NAME is a score that is built around atmosphere and tension. In an almost Poe-like narrative, it pulsates and undulates; it's both incredibly unsettling and serene in its beauty, delving into the murkier sounds that you'd expect while also taking on strangely ethereal tones. But when you think you might be comfortable, it transforms into something jarring, capturing that biting doubt reaching up from inside you. The tension rackets up and something launches itself at you, forcing you to react on instinct without giving any mind to the consequences. And you will, there's no doubt about that."

- Charlie Brigden (CritiqueFantastique.com)

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP Info: Pressed on 180 Gram Black Vinyl.

Two celebrated collaborative recordings by Croatian Amor & Varg2TM available on limited vinyl for the very first time! “Body of Water” from 2018 was the first collaboration between Croatian Amor & Varg- 5 tracks of aquatic ambient celebrating the myth of brilliant summers. It was followed in late 2019 by the lean and quick, beatdriven “Body of Carbon”. Now available together on limited vinyl presented in black disco sleeve with printed labels. "Hazmat bouquets drenched in rain, A tiny piece of coral on a chain around neck, An invitation to see the miracle in the things around us. Croatian Amor & Varg2TM together. Contemporary electronic music.

Razor-N-Tape has assembled an all-star lineup of modern disco royalty for a massive triple 12” pack worthy of their milestone 50th release.

Started as a passion project of label heads Aaron Dae and JKriv in 2011, RNT has now established itself as the preeminent dancefloor edits label, and ‘Fifty Discos Deep’ includes offerings from many of the producers whose releases who contributed to RNT’s journey.

From Dimitri from Brooklyn, to Eli Escobar, Joey Negro, Jacques Renault and more, this triptych delivers a who’s who of disco dons, and a complete set of party-rocking heat across 12 tracks. With beautiful packaging showcasing the entire RNT catalog (designed by the multi-talented Al Kent!) and a classic Bill Bernstein photo gracing the cover, this release is collectable, functional, and absolutely essential!

Happyness' third LP comes after a hiatus of almost three years for the band. Core members Jonny Allan and Ash Kenazi describe the record as ‘both a break-up and a coming out album’, it having been spawned from a period of turmoil and the subsequent major shifts in the lives and outlooks of the band; most visibly, drummer Ash Cooper's emergence from a supporting role into a fearless drag queen to co-front the project with singer Allan. Floatr sits in tone somewhere between the ragged euphoria of Weird Little Birthday and the lush balladry of Write In, and with a fresh injection of characteristically mad, artfully self-aware lyrical turns (first single “Vegetable” references Chumbawumba, drag queen Jujubee, vaping and Scientology’s E-meter auditing process all in the space of less than 4 minutes) - it seems the band may be entering their most thrilling era yet. Happyness, to the runway.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Clear Vinyl Edition.

CD Info: Gatefold CD with a two sided poster as the insert.

Created over the course of four years, Making a Door Less Open is the result of a fruitful “collaboration” between Car Seat Headrest, led by Will Toledo, and 1 Trait Danger, a CSH electronic side project consisting of drummer Andrew Katz and Toledo’s alternative persona, “Trait.” To realize this, the band recorded the album twice: once live with guitars, drums and bass, and once in a MIDI environment using purely synthesized sounds. During the mixing process, the two approaches were gradually combined using elements of each, with additional overdubs.

In this way, Making A Door Less Open sees Toledo embarking on new and imaginative roads to songwriting and recording, placing emphasis on the individual songs, each with its own “special energy,” rather than attempting to draw a coherent storyteller narrative through the album as he has in the past , resulting in his most dynamic and open-ended work to date.

Comprised of Will Toledo, Andrew Katz (drums), Ethan Ives (guitar) and Seth Dalby (bass), Car Seat Headrest has either released 11 or three albums to date, depending on the way you look at it. A prolific songwriter, Toledo took his moniker from making early recordings in the private environment of his family’s car, releasing a dozen self-recorded and produced albums on Bandcamp and building a tight-knit following. Toledo has since gone from an empty five-seater to selling out tours and filling festival main stages. 2015’s Teens of Style was a collection of songs from his early years. The band’s proper Matador debut, Teens of Denial, followed in 2016 and catapulted them to overnight commercial success and widespread critical acclaim, as well as highlighting Toledo as a prodigious lyricist. 2018’s Twin Fantasy, an epic re-imagination of an album originally released in 2011, demonstrated newfound scale, depth and ambition.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive opaque pink vinyl.

The two-time Mercury Prize nominee Ghostpoet (aka Obaro Ejimiwe) follows up 2017’s acclaimed 'Dark Days + Canapés’ with a record which couldn’t feel more prescient, a dystopian snapshot of the universal unease and anxiety we feel as we enter into this new decade, an uncertain future distilled across these 10 vital tracks.

The bluesy, gritty ‘Concrete Pony’ is the perfect entry point to the record – in Obaro’s own words; “It’s a snapshot of where we’re at as a society I feel, we seem to have everything and nothing at all. Infinite possibilities and choices galore but we seem set in stone, frozen in place, oblivious to the storm clouds in the distance…”

Recorded in London and written, arranged and produced by Ghostpoet, ‘I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep’ incorporates a myriad of sounds and styles but is anchored by the more alt-rock sonics presented across his last two records. It features guest vocals from an eclectic mix of artists; Art School Girlfriend, Skinny Girl Diet’s Delilah Holiday, SaraSara and Katie Dove Dixon. Obaro has always had a keen ear for collaboration, having worked with the likes of Massive Attack, Nadine Shah, Melanie Di Biasio, Maximo Park’s Paul Smith and Damon Albarn’s Africa Express amongst others across his distinguished career.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited crystal clear vinyl.

Ride handed the entirety of their highly acclaimed 6th studio album, ‘This Is Not A Safe Place’, to mysterious London act Pêtr Aleksänder, who stripped the songs back to just the vocals and added their customarily beautiful string arrangements, keys and synth textures beneath them.

The results take Ride deep into the neo-classical / ambient territory that a couple of the remixes of their previous album hinted at.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

RIYL: Craven Faults, Plaid, Boards of Canada, John Carpenter, Pye Corner Audio.

Brand new album from DALHAM following last years 'Heat Death' full length on Castles In Space and two previous albums on PUBLIC HOUSE. In Jon's words: 'This album was inspired by reading Carlos Castaneda's The Art of Dreaming. Are there multiple planes of existence that we filter out? Can we re-enter them through a conscious effort? The Alderson Loop is one of these. The deeper you go and the more gates you pass through the further you are removed from objective reality. The first gate is very shallow though, so be careful you don't get trapped there unwittingly. Can you still see your hands?'

Jon grew up in the Suffolk countryside, but currently resides in London. A pianist since a young age, he started to produce electronic music following the acquisition of a relatively cheap synth bought on impulse. These first steps developed into an addiction to the “inspiring and rewarding” sound vistas available to him as an electronic musician and as the collection of equipment grew, so the Dalham project developed into a fully formed concern about four years ago.

Alderson Loop is his second album for Castles In Space. Jon is currently working on a set of longer tracks for a 10” single.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited splatter coloured vinyl in a gatefold sleeve. Locked groove on Side B.

What’s New, Tomboy? is an album that seeks respite in bare minimums and barren revelations: sometimes frail, sometimes affirming, sometimes wry, and usually a threadbare mix of all those sentiments. It could be considered Damien Jurado’s finest collection of music to date, with songs exuding the inviting warmth of a lone porch light gleaming amidst the disorienting darkness. Though more stripped and grounded in their execution, songs like “Sandra”, “Ochoa” and “Alice Hyatt” are generous and candid in their vocabulary, eschewing the sometimes abstruse imagery of Jurado’s previous releases. “There is no hiding on these tracks.” Though What’s New, Tomboy? is the first Damien Jurado record that ends with a question mark, he has never sounded more assured and content in giving up his ghosts: “I’m only living sentences // That were long before I got here.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

'Allegiance and Conviction' is the first album in 8 years from the legendary Dearborn duo . Windy and Carl have been crafting inner space electric guitar and bass vistas for nearly three decades now, but their latest feels as vital and vaporous as any peak opus in their vast catalog. Written and recorded across six years, the songs swirl between shoegaze minimalism and stargaze drift, over which Windy Weber whispers veiled poetic narratives of transformation, isolation, and escape. Allegiance and Conviction is their first album since 2012's We Will Always Be. The six compositions are something of outlier in their catalog, shorter in nature than most on their previous releases. All of the tracks are saturated with Hultgren's signature guitar work, intimate constructions of murmurs, drones and his trademark layered filigree, gently amassed into alternately lighter and heavier than air atmospheres. Despite being their first full-length in more than half a decade,the album fully belongs to the bewitching galaxy of sound Windy and Carl innovated and within which they remain the sole occupants: music of thresholds and peripheries and eternities. Allegiance and Conviction is the multifaceted, contemporary take on their sound.

Ital Tek (a.k.a. Alan Myson) returns to Planet Mu with his sixth album ‘Outland‘. The album was written during a period of new beginnings following a move out of the city to a quieter space and the birth of his first child. During this time of self-imposed isolation Alan recorded a huge amount of source material and spent weeks and months sitting up at night with his newborn, listening back and making notes on how the new record should take form, focusing and developing ideas to shape this lean ten-track album. Alan talks of the record being a collaboration between two parts of himself, something that definitely comes across as the album unfolds.

Textures are something Alan excels at and on his last album, the largely beatless ‘Bodied’, it felt as if he was building a new sound-world. On ‘Outland’ he expands upon this. The album brings together the extremes of Alan's sound, contrasting roughened bass and beats with starker more detailed atmospheres and emotions. The most beat-driven song here is ‘Deadhead’, with its gnarled bouncing bass, angular distorted melodies and cavernous textures.

On tracks like ‘Bladed Terrain’ the contrasts are even more defined with buzzing drones and razor sharp drums plunging into a grainy fog, giving the track a dramatic 3D feel. Then there are the stop-start pauses of ‘Leaving The Grid’, where the song evaporates into space before reemerging with shuddering rhythms and ghostly textures. Melodies crawl around these tracks as if they’re just waking up, as heard on the atmospheric ‘Angel In Ruin’. The sleep-deprived fraying of the senses became Alan’s routine and one which he says gave him a renewed creative energy; half-asleep, working through the night, and then into the daytime super-focused but exhausted. Prone to audio hallucinations whilst writing the album, he aimed to capture these distortions in his perception of pitch and time, and you can hear these effects interpreted on tracks like ‘Endless’ and ‘Open Heart’ as melodies phase and slip out of time like an emotional Doppler effect. This is also true of the soaring atonal synths at the peak of ‘Diamond Child’, which feel like the aural equivalent of eye floaters. These intuitive feelings and functions are a difficult thing to capture in sound, but Alan manages it beautifully and always makes the result feel warm and adventurous, heartfelt and epic.

Berlin based composer and producer Ben Lukas Boysen returns with his most progressive and shape-shifting work to date, the long awaited Mirage, on 1 May 2020 with Erased Tapes. The third album to be penned under his own name proceeding his Hecq moniker, Mirage follows 2013’s Gravity and the acclaimed 2016 full length Spells, a record as much admired by his peers as it was loved by fans that not only yielded remixes from Max Cooper and Tim Hecker, but also opened Jon Hopkins’ Late Night Tales compilation.

Since the release of Spells, Ben continued to be in demand for his scoring abilities, collaborating with cellist and composer Sebastian Plano on the music for David OReilly’s landmark innovative video game Everything. It was added to the long list for the Best Animated Short at the 90th Academy Awards, making it the first video game to qualify for an Oscar. In 2019 Ben contributed to the Brainwaves project alongside fellow Erased Tapes artists Michael Price and Högni Egilsson in collaboration with a team of scientists at Goldsmiths University, London — linking states of consciousness and music. He also scored the soundtrack to the DAFF award-winning German TV show Beat, the feature film The Collini Case, and co-composed the music for the short film Manifesto with Nils Frahm, starring Cate Blanchett.

As with Gravity and Spells, Ben has an array of musical guests adorning Mirage, including long time collaborator, Berlin based cellist and composer Anne Müller as well as Australian saxophonist and composer Daniel Thorne — for whom Ben wrote parts specifically, having heard his 2019 solo debut Lines of Sight. Lead track Medela features both and takes the listener on a kaleidoscopic journey that slides with ease across sonic terrains. By the end it’s difficult to tell what exactly was heard; “I wanted to experiment with blending these recordings with 100% artificial elements, often to points where an instrument becomes an abstraction of what it was and the musicians’ presence in the song is much more of an important DNA string in the song rather than an obvious layer.”

Mirage, like its title suggests, feels like a sonic optical illusion — each piece containing sounds and techniques bent and processed to make them seem overexposed; the overly felt-y piano on Clarion, Daniel Thorne’s saxophone on Medela, the single note voice of Lisa Morgenstern splitting into different chords on Empyrean. It is detectable but also easily missed, like the double piano on Kenotaph that could be perceived as one, but is actually two pianos in two different rooms, separate countries even — one is digital while the other is acoustic.

While on Spells Ben made programmed pieces sound indistinguishable from human playing, with Mirage he set out to do the opposite and make the human touch unrecognisable, creating something of a mystery or a mirage.

Wildly acclaimed Brooklyn songwriter Joan As Police Woman returns with her new album “Cover Two”. This is Joan’s second album re-working songs by other artists and again, Joan makes some very interesting choices. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Red vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

In the last dozen years, Elder has stepped out of the shadows of their peers in the heavy rock underground to emerge a unique voice, delivering album after album of almost unparalleled consistency and creativity. Omens, the band‘s fifth full-length record, is the newest pillar in the construction of their own musical universe. Following 2017’s Reflections of a Floating World and the 2019 experimental EP The Gold & Silver Sessions, it was anyone’s guess what the band’s next full-length might have in store. Having cemented their own heavy progressive rock sound, the latter EP showcased an exact opposite side of Elder, more rooted in sparse krautrock and even jazz-tinged jams. Omens answers this speculation with a contradiction that embodies the spirit of Elder: somehow, there’s even more everything. In five cinematic songs, lush, intricately interwoven melodies grow and dissolve into spaced-out jams. Massive riffs thunder down into a churning sea of psychedelic sounds and unpredictable grooves carry away the listener.

Elder paints pictures with their music, and Omens shows the band experimenting with an even more colorful palette – with good reason. After thirteen years, this is the first full-length recorded with a new lineup including guitarist Michael Risberg and new drummer Georg Edert, along with guest performances by Fabio Cuomo on Rhodes piano and synthesizers. This is music for a vacation from reality – to lose oneself in another world. And yet Omens is not purely an exercise in escapism, but also reflects the increasingly bleak, confusing and antagonistic times in which it was written. Composed as a concept album spanning the lifespan of a civilization, the album also reads as a commentary on our own society hell-bent on profitability at the expense of our own lives and environment.

Omens was recorded and mixed at Black Box Studios in France with engineer Peter Deimel (Shellac, dEUS, Motorpsycho) and mastered by Carl Saff in Chicago. The result is an album that is rich, warm and dynamic, presenting the many layers of Elder’s complex sound clearly and offering new discoveries with every listen.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: 180gr azure marbled vinyl.

2xColoured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Being in a toxic relationship can sometimes feel like being lost in a maze. Every attempt to turn a corner lands you back where you started. Austra aka Katie Austra Stelmanis’ fourth album, HiRUDiN is both a bold acknowledgement of such patterns of behaviour and a testament to the power of breaking them.

Katie Austra Stelmanis has been better known by her middle name for three albums, ten years, and countless tours. She wrote, produced, and performed all her own records, occasionally sharing the spotlight with a band to tour live. From the outside, things were going really well for a while: she built a devoted fan base and sold out shows all around the world. However, on the inside, Stelmanis was beginning to feel stagnant and uninspired. “I was losing faith in my own ideas,” she explains. Without realising it, she’d got caught up in a toxic relationship that was tearing her apart.

It wasn’t until Stelmanis was ready to face her insecurities that she was able to see a way forward: “My creative and personal relationships were heavily intertwined, and I knew the only answer was to part ways with all of the people and comforts that I’d known for the better part of a decade and start again.” Alongside making changes in her personal life, HiRUDiN saw Austra taking an entirely different, free-spirited approach to making a record. Seeking out all new collaborators, she booked three days of sessions in Toronto with improv musicians she’d never met before. They included two thirds of contemporary classical improv group c_RL, the cellist and kamanche duo Kamancello, kulintang ensemble Pantayo, and a children’s choir.

Accumulating a vast and vibrant mass of source material, Austra then holed up in a studio in the Spanish countryside and took a collage approach to sampling, arranging, writing and producing to reveal the songs that would form the album.

HiRUDiN traces a deeply personal journey towards regeneration, dealing with the fallout of toxic relationships, queer shame, and insecurity along the way.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Moss Dark Green Coloured Vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

This deluxe 2LP package also contains an extensive booklet by Brian Poust detailing Marks’ story. Download card for WAV files included with 2LP. These songs, found on reels that Marks kept in his home, colour Marks’ stylistic development from his earliest work for the legendary Tuska label in the late ‘60s, through his more mature releases on smaller regional labels into the late ‘70s. Marks’ story is that of an unsung soul and funk hero; he was a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter whose phone number was in Al Green’s, Barry White’s and Eddie Kendricks’ rolodexes, but his talents have only been heard in sporadic bursts.

He and his music are unknown to the majority, but to an obsessive minority, he is a lightning rod: that singular point at which numerous Southern soul and funk musicians converged and exploded, spreading wondrous music in all directions. Marks died of cancer in May 2006. His first album was our Never Satisfied anthology, released posthumously. He stands out as a most mysterious talent to originate from Atlanta, a city that birthed no shortage of genius, and Love Is Gone: The Lost Sessions 1969-1977 further makes the case for a reassessment of his talents and his place in the soul and funk canon. Previously unreleased soul and funk from legendary Atlanta guitarist / singer / songwriter Richard Marks, the companion piece to Now-Again’s Never Satisfied anthology.

Honus Honus (aka Ryan Kattner) has devoted his career to exploring the uncertainty between life’s extremes, beauty and ugliness, order and chaos. The songs on ‘Dream Hunting In The Valley Of The In-Between’, Man Man’s first album in over six years and their Sub Pop debut, are as intimate, soulful and timeless as they are audaciously inventive and daring, resulting in his best Man Man album to date.

The 17-track effort, featuring ‘Cloud Nein’, ‘Future Peg’, ‘On the Mend’, ‘Sheela’ and ‘Animal Attraction’, was produced by Cyrus Ghahremani, mixed by S. Husky Höskulds (Norah Jones, Tom Waits, Mike Patton, Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette, Allen Toussaint) and mastered by Dave Cooley (Blood Orange, M83, DIIV, Paramore, Snail Mail, clipping).

‘Dream Hunting In The Valley Of The In-Between’ also includes guest vocals from Steady Holiday’s Dre Babinski on ‘Future Peg’ and ‘If Only’ and Rebecca Black (singer of the viral pop hit ‘Friday’) on ‘On the Mend’ and ‘Lonely Beuys’.

The album follows the release of ‘Beached’ and ‘Witch’, Man Man’s contributions to Vol. 4 of the Sub Pop Singles Club in 2019.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Loser Edition coloured vinyl.

The tenth edition of the popular compilation series featuring long-lost vintage 60s-70s proto-metal and stoner rock singles. As the celebrated series reaches landmark double-digits, there are no indications it will slow down in the near future. The Brown Acid series is curated by L.A. label RidingEasy Records and retailer/label Permanent Records.

Here is what they have to say about the record:

"Here we are, arriving at the tenth edition of Brown Acid in just half as many years! As always, we packed in the highest highs of the dankest hard rock, heavy psych, and proto-metal tracks previously lost to the sands of time. Like we've done throughout this series, all of these tracks were painstakingly licensed legitimately and the artists were paid. It's hard to believe we're already up to 10 volumes of this lysergic Neanderthal wail, but the long-lost jams just keep-a-coming like Texas crude to fuel your rock 'n' roll engine and melt your metal mind.

This Trip kicks off with the Hammer of the Gods howl of "Plastic Thunder" by Bitter Creek. The Atlanta, GA quintet's lone single from 1970 on Mark IV Records is rated #6 of the Top 50 Heaviest Songs Before Black Sabbath by GuitarWorld Magazine. You can hear why in the ominous riff and larynx-ravaging chorus that merges the deepest of Deep Purple sludge with The Who's rollicking psychedelia.

Not much is known about The Brood's 1969 bluesy paean to dirtbag weed consumption "The Roach" on the It's A Lemon imprint, except that it's a big, growling rocker with a crazed in-the-round blowout of wailing guitar solos, screeching organ blasts, wildly overlapping vocals and drum rolls for days.

Nova Scotia, Canada sextet Brothers and One's double-entendre laden single "Hard On Me" certainly pushes the boundaries of what would be acceptable at the time (especially amongst their ever-polite Canadian brethren.) Their lone full length was released in 1970 on short-lived Audat label, the group featuring two sets of brothers (hence the name) recorded the album while all members were between age 13-18-years-old. This glam-influenced single was privately released on the band's own label nearly 4 years later.

Louisville, KY quartet Conception's excellent revision of Blue Cheer's "Babylon" (1969, Perfection Records) adds heavy phaser effect on the guitar and a more driving rhythm to make the song entirely their own. Lead guitar and high harmony vocals by Charlie Day (not to be confused with the Sunny Philadelphian actor) are assertive and commanding as he implores listeners onward to hallucinagenic nirvana.

Not exactly a typically psychedelic band name for the era, but First State Bank's "Mr. Sun" (1970, Music Mill) pays hearty dividends of boogie bustle. The Central Texas band led by guitarist/vocalist Randy Nunnally released only 3 singles in its career from 1970-1976. For those keeping score at home, their song "Before You Leave" was featured on The Third Trip back in 2016. "Mr. Sun" is the heavy B-Side to "Coming Home To You."

Clearly inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Tucson quartet Frozen Sun topped the local charts in 1969 with this barnstorming rocker "Electric Soul" (Capt. Zoomer Records.) The song is replete with guitarist/vocalist (with big Hendrix hair) Ron Ryan's spoken interlude, "Well have you been electrically stoned? You know, living in the danger zone?" We say yes.

Ralph Williams and the Wright Brothers took flight with "Never Again" on Hour Glass Records in 1972, and apparently never landed after this 45 with "Dark Street" on the A-side. The serpentine riff and sexually-charged backing vocal grunts drive this archetypical tale of a young man's chemical odyssey... or, should we say, trip?

Sounds Synonymous pretty much epitomized heavy fuzz from Michigan with their 1969 single "Tensions" on the Wall Productions label. The Hendrix "Fire" meets Arthur Brown's "Fire" track lunges and lurches with glee throughout its 3-minutes and change of unbridled crunch. Tabernash's "Head Collect" (1972) is the suburban Denver quartet's only release following the name change from The Contents Are and a move from Davenport, IA. This more stately psych-rock chune features Byrds-like harmonies, twangy reverse-looped guitar soloing and Keith Moon-esque drumming that should've made it a chart-topper, but we all know there's no justice in rock'n'roll.

The Tenth Trip closes, appropriately, with the "War Pigs" reminiscent fuzz of New Orleans quartet The Rubber Memory's 1970 tune "All Together." The band self-released only 110 copies of their lone album, making it an incredibly sought-after rarity for decades. Alongside a limited edition reissue in 2000, the group reformed for a one-off show before quickly bouncing back into our collective cosmic consciousness."

“This is an examination of madness and loss,” says Brian Christinzio, the inimitable force behind BC Camplight. “I hope it starts a long overdue conversation.”

Fired by his ongoing battle with mental illness, Shortly After Takeoff is the final, and finest, chapter of what Christinzio calls his “Manchester Trilogy”, following 2015’s “How To Die In The North” and 2018’s “Deportation Blues”. All three albums were created after the native Philadelphian had moved to Manchester. Like Deportation Blues, Shortly After Takeoff spans singer-songwriter classicism, gnarly synth-pop and ‘50s rock’n’roll, with Christinzio’s similarly distinctive, flexible vocal carrying a fearless approach to lyrical introspection, but the new album is a major leap forward in songwriting sophistication and lyrical communication.

“It’s important to stress that this isn’t a redemption story,” he says. “I'm a guy who maybe lives a little hard and I’m in the thick of some heavy stuff. But as a result, I think I've made my best record.”

The “heavy stuff” has come thick and fast for Christinzio. Just days before How To Die In The North was released, he was deported and banned from the UK because of visa issues. Estranged from his new home, his girlfriend and his dog, unable to promote his album and back home with his parents, Christinzio sunk deep into the dark. An Italian passport, care of his grandparents, eventually allowed him to re-settle in Manchester, but then just days before Deportation Blues was released, his father Angelo unexpectedly died.

“I went into a spiral that was worse than any time since my twenties,” he recalls. Hence the title Shortly After Takeoff: the feeling of being suddenly thwarted by what life throws at you. Making matters worse was a neurological disorder that returned after years in remission: “I see TV static, and it messes with how my brain interprets everything from sound to my own feelings.”

One way to process tragedy is comedy, which elevates Shortly After Takeoff to a heightened plateau, from grief-stricken vulnerability to armoured bravado, from the black dog of depression to gallows humour. None more so than ‘Ghosthunting’, which opens with an extraordinary (fabricated) passage of Christinzio doing a stand-up routine, centring on the memory of hallucinating his father’s ghost. “I want to drag the listener into this world and hopefully they question why they feel uneasy,” he explains.

“I also wanted to make a record totally free of whimsy and irony, that was just clear and open and honest. I don’t think you really heard the chaos in Deportation Blues, but in Shortly After Takeoff, I can hear I’m finding undiscovered places to go, only because I was so lost. Lyrically, I wanted people to hear and understand me this time. Before, if I would have written about my father dying, I would have made up some weird bullshit, like an analogy about a tree shedding leaves or something. That Brian is gone. I have a direct line to the listener now. I have a direct line to myself too. It’s a benchmark moment for me.”

Shortly After Takeoff ends with the gorgeously tender 93-second ‘Angelo’, “a little fleeting moment for my dad. I wanted his name on the album, and something that sounded like a goodbye. It ends with the drums, like a heartbeat stopping…”

That’s Christinzio and Shortly After Takeoff: his best, most honest, open and frequently heartbreaking record.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Surely this must finally be the record which brings Brian Christinzio the attention he deserves. He is simply an incredible melodicist and creates tracks full of surprising twists and unusual turns. Dark, crazy but funnily inspirational lyrics are offset against the sweetest voice and catchiest songs you’ll hear all year. Just brilliant.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Clear vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

“What Kinda Music” is an astonishing collaboration between two artists of very different disciplines, and one of the most unique and seamlessly original projects of its ilk to date. Moving fluidly through sleek electronica, avant-garde jazz, vintage hip hop and so much more, Misch and Dayes take you on a journey that is by turns surprising and spontaneous, heady and head spinning, and nothing less than compelling – a singular vision which fuses the DNA of both musicians with spectacular results, as can be seen in the title track, which comes backed by a gorgeously atmospheric video by XX.

Even though the fundamental bones of this project came together very quickly, its actual provenance stretches back much, much farther back, with the pair not only growing up in the same area of South East London, but Misch actually seeing Dayes play on drums in the school talent show for the first time when he was roughly 8 or 9. They both kept tabs on each other – Misch becoming a fan of Dayes’ act YussefKamaal, Dayes clocking his videos in 2014 – but it was only when they met at a launch party for Misch’s debut LP “Geography” in 2018 that the proverbial creative sparks began to fly. “As a musician you’re always looking for contemporaries who can push you and challenge you and make you better”, says Dayes. “I instantly felt that with Tom – he was such a gifted musician, and so prolific”. That summer they decided to go into the studio together, jam a little, and see what happens, with no other expectation placed upon it.

As it turns out, the music came fast and furiously. Two initial tracks were suddenly followed by a handful of others, and the pair found themselves contemplating what to do next. “Pretty soon, we knew that something was gelling”, Dayes says. “It didn’t feel like a one-off collaboration, it felt like a body of work”. What made the pair click, according to Misch and Dayes, were the exact same factors that meant it shouldn’t, by all rights, work. Misch says, “Yussef comes from a more experimental background, and he has a lot of loose, crazy ideas. I know how to write a catchy melody, but with interesting chords and have a good understanding of popular song forms, so I think I streamlined those ideas and made them accessible”. And certainly, in “What Kinda Music” you can sense the DNA of both musicians, but fusing so effortlessly and beautifully that it creates something else entirely, the appropriately named “Lift Off” sending goosebumps with its jazz flecked crescendo, and “Night Rider” hynotising with its deeply mesmeric grooves. “I have a love for harmony and chords”, Misch adds. “Working with someone like Yussef, who has such a gifted sense of rhythm allowed a perfect balance”.

Throughout the record, there is an utterly joyful feel of two musicians at the top of their game sparking off one another, picking up ideas and running with them – zigging where the other zags, ebbing where the other flows, with Misch producing the majority of the record and both having a hand in the overall sound and feel of the record.

“Working with Yussef has actually changed the way I work as a musician”, Misch muses. “He’s pushed me and unlocked a more experimental part of me that I hadn’t really allowed myself to explore before. I think we really did impact each other in a fundamental way”. Dayes is similarly effusive in his praise for Misch. “A musician like him, who’s at the top of his game, he doesn’t need to do this”, he raves. “He can just keep doing the same thing and why not? He’s killing it. The fact that he’s so humble, that he’s so curious about everything and open to collaboration, speaks a lot to him as an artist, because it’s not easy finding musicians who want to collaborate. Something always gets in the way, whether it’s ego or their team or whatever. But with Tom it felt like the intention was purely creative, and that’s what made it exciting”. In fact, Dayes says that the intentions of the record go even deeper than just music. “Both our parents who’d never met each other before, are now best friends as a result of this, they now see each other more than we do! I’d like to think, in some small way, that this album has a similar impact for people too – everything feels so divided these days, it would be nice for people to hear the record and hear two very different musicians coming together and realise it doesn’t have to be that way”. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xDeluxe LP Info: 180g vinyl, gatefold sleeve with music book, recycled plastic dust jacket and recycled plectrum.

2xLP Info: 180g vinyl, gatefold sleeve.

The much loved Portland band Other Lives return after five years away following 2015’s ‘Rituals’.

Recorded at their own Cooper Mountain Sound studios, ‘For Their Love’ is a ten track collection that nods to the past whilst progressing positively towards the future.

The band have a loyal following across the UK, as seen by their social engagement.

Initial LP copies of ‘For Their Love’ pressed on clear vinyl, with an exclusive orange sleeve.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Other Lives return with their 4th and greatest record yet. For Their Love combines their dark and doomy, widescreen Baroque Rock with the best set of songs they’ve written so far. Well worth the wait.

“There's something about this record,” Benson says, describing his Third Man Records debut album Dear Life. “A friend of mine called it ‘life-affirming.’ I thought it was a joke at first but then realized, well, it’s about life and death for sure. I don’t know if that’s positive or optimistic or whatever, but that's what's going on with me.”

Brendan Benson finds himself in an enviable spot as he enters the third decade of a remarkably creative, consistently idiosyncratic career – an accomplished frontman, musician, songwriter, producer, band member, husband, and dad. Benson’s seventh solo album, and first new LP in almost seven years, Dear Life is this consummate polymath’s most inventive and upbeat work thus far, an 11-track song cycle about life, love, family, fatherhood, and the pure joy of making music. Produced and almost entirely performed by Benson at his own Readymade Studio in Nashville, the album sees the Michigan-born, Nashville-based artist – and co-founder, with Jack White, of The Raconteurs – reveling in a more modernist approach than ever before, fueled by a heady brew of cannabis, hip-hop, and a newly discovered interest in software drum programming. The result is an untapped playfulness that elevates expertly crafted songs like the opener, “I Can If You Want Me To,” and the first single, “Good To Be Alive,” with voluble arrangements, elastic grooves, and incandescent power. Imbued with revitalized ambition and confidence, Dear Life is Brendan Benson at his very best.

Beginning with his now-classic 1996 major label debut, One Mississippi – recently reissued by Third Man in its first-ever vinyl pressing – and its masterful 2002 follow-up, Lapalco, Benson has always infused classic craftsmanship with contemporary invention. Along with his own critically acclaimed canon, Benson is of course co-founder – with Jack White, Jack Lawrence, and Patrick Keeler – of The Raconteurs. The band first convened in 2006, winning worldwide acclaim, Grammy Award nominations, and a chart-topping smash single in “Steady As She Goes,” with their now-classic debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers The Raconteurs returned two short years later with 2008’s Consolers Of The Lonely. Like its predecessor, the LP proved a popular and critical phenomenon, earning the Grammy Award for “Best Engineered Non-Classical Album” as well as a nomination as “Best Rock Album.”

Dear Life came about gradually and organically after a self-imposed creative hiatus rooted in the happy arrival of his son and later, a daughter. Having spent the majority of his adult life on the road, Benson decided he’d prefer to stay home for a change and just be a dad. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving,” he says. “I was so enamored with my kids, I just sort of lost touch with my career. I just didn’t want to go back to work.” Instead, Benson directed his musical energies elsewhere and fast proved an in-demand producer/engineer (Robyn Hitchcock, Young The Giant, Trapper Schoepp, The Greenhornes) and collaborative songwriter, with a CV that includes partnerships with Jake Bugg, Iain Archer (Snow Patrol), and The Kooks’ Luke Pritchard, among others. Despite his successes, after a few years in this voluntary wilderness, Benson surprised himself in 2017 by writing and recording the rocker “Half A Boy (And Half A Man).” “It just felt really good,” he says. “I felt like I was like born again. Seriously, it was almost a religious experience, like, oh my God, I love making music. I had forgotten. That’s how it started. It was kind of a spark. A re-ignition.”

Following the success of last year’s “Twelve Nudes”, Ezra Furman returns with Sex Education OST, songs from season 1 and 2 of the hit Netflix TV show. The 19-track LP will be released via Bella Union and is available to download and on DSPs from Friday, 24th January, with a physical release on CD and vinyl to follow on 10th April.

When the makers of the hit Netflix series Sex Education told Ezra Furman, “We want you to be the Simon & Garfunkel to our The Graduate", they clearly recognised a kindred spirit. Who better to articulate all that awkwardness and alienation than Furman?

Sex Education is about Otis Milburn, a socially awkward high school student who lives with his sex therapist mother, Jean. In season 1 Otis and his friend Maeve Wiley set-up a sex clinic at school to capitalise on his intuitive talent for sex advice. In season 2, as a late bloomer Otis must master his newly discovered sexual urges in order to progress with his girlfriend Ola whilst also dealing with his now strained relationship with Maeve. Meanwhile, Moordale Secondary is in the throes of a Chlamydia outbreak, highlighting the need for better sex education at the school and new kids come to town who will challenge the status quo.

The Sex Education soundtrack gathers the original songs that Furman composed for the first series and the brand new second series, whilst adding tracks featured on the show that can be found on prior Furman albums such as “Perpetual Motion People” and “Transangelic Exodus”. Lining up alongside older cover versions of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘ I Can Change’ and Melanie’s ‘The Good Book’ is a new rendition of ‘Devil Or Angel’, The Clovers’ doo-wop jewel from 1956. It all adds up to a bumper 19-track set of Furman’s trademark enthusiastic emotional catharsis.

“Making music for a TV show was a new experience for me,” she says. “As a fan of many a high school comedy, for example The Breakfast Club and 10 Things I Hate About You, I knew how fun the music can be, and also how emotional. I wanted to rise to the challenge.”

Furman and her band recorded the new songs in between sessions for a “loud punk record,” namely the exhilarating “Twelve Nudes”, released by Bella Union in 2019. “I decided I’d use the Sex Education project as a place to put my tenderness, my sadness and longing,” she says. “The soft teenage feelings that every adult knows continue long after high school ends.”



For the first series, Furman was supplied with an extensive description of the show and the episode scripts. For the second series, she says, “They trusted us completely. They were like, ‘you know what to do’. I try to imagine what’s going to be on screen as a jumping-off point, but they don’t need songs that fit, they need songs of a high quality, that come from a real place. That’s why they wanted me, I guess. Also, I guess they noticed an exuberant vulnerability. I lay all my feelings out there.”

Given Furman’s personal experience at high school, having been closeted with regard to gender and sexuality, she wasn’t method-acting for a second. The new songs allowed her to reconnect to that past, but also the present, as teenager and adult. ‘Amateur’, for example. “I’m an amateur in my heart, and the show is about amateurs,” she says. “About bodies not yet fully formed, and hearts not yet hardened to the world.”

‘Every Feeling’ was inspired by a bad bout of depression: “I was so bored of having these feelings year after year, I just wanted to feel them all and get them over with.” ‘Care’ is afflicted by, “the noise of celebrity culture and politics.” Why can’t we just have, as Furman sings, “a world of love and care”? “That’s the dream I hang on to,” she says.

Songwriting, Furman concludes, “is a way of keeping tabs on what I care most about, the purest stuff, the matters of the heart that don’t expire. It’s what matters to teenagers, and revisiting the teenage perspective has been oddly centering for me. It’s a reminder of what’s important, and the emotional dramas that persist through life.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Lorenzo Senni returns with a new album on Warp Records. Nearly 4 years since his well-acclaimed ‘Persona’ EP, the Milan-based multi-disciplinary artist, makes his first move with the momentous single DISCIPLINE OF ENTHUSIASM. In keeping with his distinctive pointillistic style and no drum beat etiquette, this is the next part in Senni’s process, accelerating and expanding his idea of Rave Voyeurism.

The Finnish electropical ensemble Maajo is releasing their second full-length album "Kuru Kuru" on Queen Nanny records on March 2020. Three years after their sought-after debut, Maajo's African and Balearic influences now include more of the mysticism of Northern nature. The record resonates with a desire to connect across borders, and aspire to marvel at life on planet Earth. Live percussion, traditional balafons and kalimbas rattle and clang on top of drum machines and lively basslines. African High-life guitars dialogue with cheap vintage synths, electric pianos, birdsong, homemade flutes as well as the masterly vocalists: Senegalese Ismaila Sané, Zambian Waina and Beninese Akim Color.

The album begins upbeat with the drumming song Soma, followed by Esukey, a slice of Afro-pop cassette nostalgia with maestro Ismaila Sané on the vocals. A Song For Spring steers into mid-tempo funk, while Meje Ibo is a Turkish style 7-beat with West-African guitars and minimalist choir. The sparkly Ghana-inspired beach dancer Nkoranza and the acidy kalimba disco of Aamuapoltan head straight for the dancefloor, the midpoint of the journey.

Ismaila Sané's bonfire chant on Ito Urok leads the second half of the album on a nocturnal adventure. The hypnotic African mallets continue their work on the mysterious Jacana. Gbêmen Nayon is a ride down a flowing stream, while Akim Color sings a dirge. The percussive shamanistic hum-along trance of Yara Mantra points the way to the Waina-lead conscious dance anthem Lost Road.

The mysterious Pejzaz (1/2 of Ptaki) returns to The Very Polish Cut-Outs for another sample-based excursion.

While his debut - 'Ostatni Dzien Lata' ('The Last Day of Summer') was a love letter to the 60's to 70's nostalgia, baroque pop, soul (and their extension through the golden age hip hop), the sophomore is built around dancefloor oriented cuts, deep house, r'n'b and quirky excerpts from Polish pop (like a couple of bars nicked from a Duran Duran cover).

It fills in the gap for a proper house/pop/DJ album coming from Eastern Europe.

Pole, aka musician, producer and mastering engineer Stefan Betke releases the remastered reissues of his debut album releases, 1, 2 and 3 as a box set. Released on vinyl (for the first time in nearly 20 years) and CD (remastered since its 2008 reissue), the box set release marks 20 years since the trilogy was completed and a return to the label for the groundbreaking artist.

Pole 1 (1998), Pole 2 (1999) and Pole 3 (2000), originally released as three consecutive albums in their own right, and described by The Wire as “…a set of roadmaps for the soul”, are presented together to highlight Pole’s deliberate statement - reinforced by the titling of the albums and their minimalist monochrome cover art.

Coastlines is the self-titled long player from the new Japanese production unit of DJ and producer Masanori Ikeda and solo artist, session musician and Cro-Magnon keyboard player Takumi Kaneko. Masanori and Takumi have been part of the Japanese dance music scene for years and Coastlines was born out of their working together on soundtracks for video projects. The pair wanted to make laid-back listening music for now, laying Takumi’s playful keys over Masanori’s widescreen balearic jazz-fusion to conjure beautiful and breathtaking “coastlines”. A couple of two-track 7"s put out in late 2018 and early 2019 on Japanese house music label Flower Records soon sold out. Those four tracks were expanded to a full album of music, “a joyous, relaxing, summery soundtrack for everyone’s after hours wind down” that was released just in time for summer. It soundtracked many a Be With BBQ in 2019.

The album opens in the horizontal with the sophisticated, cocktails-by-the-pool groove of “Sunset Reflection”. A lush, beatless wonder. Their re-imagining of Ralph MacDonald’s “East Dry River” removes all the original’s bells and whistles (quite literally) and re-gears it with a subtle balearic chug. The result is a percussive gem. “Coastline” is a beach-jazz noodle. “Drifting Ice” is as chilled and glacial as its title would suggest, yet Masanori’s head-nod slo-mo house beats throb not far below the surface. “My Fire” is another soft killer, all swelling, swirling organ over muted kicks and snares. An elegant boom-bap. A pair of insistent tunes of the deeply balearic variety raise the tempo, but not by too much of course. On “Woods And My Guitar” a half-heard vocal refrain breathes life into the synthetic xylophone and guitar. Deft piano-work turns “Half Moon Shadow” into lounge-house for the sophisticated beach bum. A classy duo.

The self-assured re-work of Azymuth’s “Last Summer In Rio” is arguably the album’s centrepiece. Ten minutes of casually propulsive slapped bass, steel pans and slick 80s soul beats. Cue the steel drum interlude of “Maracas Bay” before album closer “Down Town” transitions us one with a shuffling, string-hinted hit of ethereal, euphoric piano bliss. Gentle disco for the new decade. As former Test Pressing scribe Dr. Rob observed on his ever-reliable Ban Ban Ton Ton blog, the Coastlines fusion is very much in conversation with their 80s counterparts, both at home and along the coastlines of different continents. So among the nods to revered Japanese artists like Hiroshi Sato, Sakamoto and Casiopea, there are also hints of Marcos Valle and Mtume, of the aforementioned Azymuth. “The production though is very much now, not then. Not retro, just proper”. We couldn’t put it better ourselves.

Coastlines was originally a CD release only available in Japan, with HMV putting out a super-limited vinyl version a few months later for Japanese Record Store Day. But this music is just too good, so when Be With was asked via Ken Hidaka to take care of a vinyl version for the rest of the world it wasn’t a tough decision.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xLtd LP Info: Limited to 500 copies.

The long awaited third album from much loved vintage synth maestros Billy Bainbridge and Mike Johnston, finally finds its home on Ghost Box Records. This is unironically joyful and melodic electronica; informed by library music, music for children’s TV and a deep passion for the history of music technology.

Plone are very much part of Ghost Box’s DNA. They were a central part of the 90s retro-futuristic scene in Birmingham that included Broadcast and Pram and to which the label has always had strong ties through graphic designer and co-manager, Julian House. They are also cited by the label’s other boss, Jim Jupp, as a major influence on his work as Belbury Poly.

The band was formed as a three-piece in the mid-90s and their debut single, Press a Key, was championed by John Peel. The first album, For Beginner Piano, was released on Warp Records in 1999. Their warm, witty and unfunky music stood out from the crowd, almost in defiance of the moody and masculine post-rave electronica of their contemporaries.

A selection of bootlegged demos from the early 00s was rumoured to be the follow up album, but it never materialised. After that Billy went on to tour with Broadcast and later formed Seeland with another former band member Tim Felton (also of Ghost Box’s Hintermass). Meanwhile Mike formed the ZX Spectrum Orchestra, released solo singles as Mike in Mono and was a member of The Modified Toy Orchestra.

Twenty years on and Plone have reconvened as a duo with a third album, Puzzlewood. It’s compiled from material recorded at various points since the “lost album”, right up to the present day.

Kanaan from Oslo, Norway is back with their 2nd album in 2020. Following the impromptu Odense Sessions with Causa Sui guitarist Jonas Munk released in February, Double Sun is a different beast all together: Treading the same path as their 2018 debut Windborne, Double Sun is a studio effort in the best sense of the word. Perfectly balanced on the edge of dynamic improv, throbbing beats sizzled in scorching fuzz and topped off with deeply layered soundscapes. This album sees Kanaan reach a new plateau. Kanaan presents a unique perspective to psychedelic rock, painting with a wide palette that includes jazz and post-rock. Double Sun devotes as much energy to sonic colour as it does to groove and energy. The spirit of experimentation is everywhere: From the savory, pastoral sounds of opening track Worlds Together, to the soaring exploratory paths of the two-part title track. In the creative process, Kanaan dived deep into the possibilities of the studio, adding intricate layers and twists and turns to these tunes: acoustic guitars, percussions & synthesizers embrace and enhance the Norwegian modern day version of a power-trio. T

Melbourne’s RVG return with their highly anticipated second album, Feral. Following their beloved 2017 debut ‘A Quality of Mercy’, RVG perform the tricky alchemy of combining rock’s urgency, punk’s anarchy, and pop’s empathy to create a record that feels vital: Feral is a catharsis, a call to arms, and a forthright indictment of contemporary complacency. ‘Feral’ was recorded at Head Gap studios with producer Victor Van Vugt (PJ Harvey, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Beth Orton). Internationally renowned, Van Vugt currently resides in Berlin, Germany and travelled to Melbourne to work with RVG. One of the producer’s key tenets is a sense of spontaneity, of capturing the essence of a song’s live performance, a concern that RVG prize above all else when recording The band recorded the album’s instrumentals live to track, allowing their playing to be infused with the kind of electricity that has seen the band’s live show lauded across Australia and internationally. ‘Feral’ is RVG’s first full-length release in three years and marks the beginning of an exhilarating new era for the band. Both a cry for help and a call to action, this is an album that demands your attention.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Yellow vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Brooklyn based composer/producer/performer JG Thirlwell (Foetus, Manorexia, Xordox) - who has collaborated with the likes of Zola Jesus, Melvins, Swans, Kronos Quartet and is the composer for the highly acclaimed animated TV series ‘Archer’ and ‘Venture Bros’ - and Swedish multiinstrumentalist and theatre music composer Simon Steensland collaborate on a new album, ‘Oscillospira’.

Different yet complementary, both creators make idiosyncratic music that can be characterised by dramatic intensity, shadowy suspense, darkness and light, sometimes breath-taking and always evocative cinematics. ‘Oscillospira’ is an odyssey of dark chamber prog with a cinematic bent, a largely instrumental album with eerie choral parts.

For fans of Adult Swim/FX animation shows, Nine Inch Nails, Mike Patton, David Lynch soundtracks.

“Andrew Lloyd Webber in the haus, punching Magma in the nuts” - Mike Patton (Ipecac, Faith No More)

On May 8th three-time Grammy Award winner Lucinda Williams unabashedly takes on some of the human, social and political issues of our day with her boldest and most direct album to date, Good Souls Better Angels. During the course of her celebrated four-decade, pioneering career Williams has never rested on her laurels as she continues to push herself as a songwriter. On Good Souls Better Angels, she has much she needs to get out. In 2014 and 2015, Williams released two critically acclaimed double albums back to back with Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone and The Ghosts Of Highway 20, respectively.

Both releases found her experimenting with arrangements, vocals, song structure and personal subject matter. On Good Souls Better Angels, Williams changes course and chooses to forgo the personal and narrative-based songcraft that has become synonymous with her name and instead speaks to some of the injustices permeating our society. The new songs cut straight to the core with frank and honest commentary on domestic abuse (“Wakin’ Up”), the constant barrage of news (“Bad News Blues”) the dangerous, quick to judge and convict aspects of social media (“Shadows & Doubts) and the haunting reality of the “Man Without A Soul”.

Williams recorded Good Souls Better Angels backed by her remarkable, long time band, featuring Butch Norton (drums), Stuart Mathis (guitar) and David Sutton (bass). The rock-solid unit propels the music with both fire and finesse, particularly on the raw blues number “You Can’t Rule Me”, which kicks off the album with equal parts attitude and swing. Good Souls Better Angels also features some of Williams’ most intimate and up front vocals on record. She addresses the pain of depression on the achingly beautiful “Big Black Train” and tenderly delivers a poignant song of hope with “When The Way Gets Dark”. She encourages us to push forward on the path of promise and perseverance on the deeply soulful and moving album closer “Good Souls”. Good Souls Better Angels marks the first time Williams’ husband/manager Tom Overby is credited as a co-writer on many of the new songs. The album was co-produced by Williams, Overby and Ray Kennedy, who last worked with Williams on her 1998 landmark album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. 

For over a decade, the duo comprising Christian Berghoff and Sebastian Haas have been busy dealing in swampy, fuzzed-out delta blues with a penchant for strung-out psychedelic drones and on their latest effort, picking up where 2017’s ‘The Rhythm of Ooze’ left off, they return sounding better than ever.

If you ever wondered what’d happen if two best friends who share a collective mission to not take life too seriously spent just as much time soaking up the muddy blues of Mississippi as they did the kosmisch experimentations of West Germany (the pair also play in Krautrock collective Datashock) then Pretty Lightning are your answer. Unsurprising, then, that as often as their sound is indeed full to the brim with crunch, swagger and feedback, they’re also just capable as easing off on that oft-abused accelerator and dealing in something more far hypnotic and drone-like

Chatham County Line’s 12th studio album, Strange Fascination features newly added drums and modern effects that drive a revamped sound. From the dreamy shuffle of ‘Oh Me Oh My’ to the bold acceptance of ‘Leave this World,’ the group demonstrates their sharp self-awareness with a good dose of humor. A beautifully crafted album, Strange Fascination highlights the band’s exceptional songcraft and musicianship, as well as their continual innovation.

Blair Howerton started songwriting as a coping mechanism during her formative years. Her vivid lyricism has bloomed into the dazzling, full-band emotional release known as Why Bonnie. The band's Fat Possum Records debut EP Voice Box celebrates unhindered expression via beguiling, propulsive guitar pop. In a decisive step to start performing her backlogged material, Howerton moved back home to Texas after graduating college in 2015. In Austin, Howerton joined lifelong best friend Kendall Powell, who she met in preschool. Powells classical piano chops swapped to synth for the new project. Both active in the Austin scene, guitarist Sam Houdek and bassist Chance Williams later joined to complete the lineup. In 2018, the band emerged on petite indie outlet Sports Day Records with In Water. The EP eulogized Howertons older brother, who passed away years prior. Intimately bristling tracks explored the grieving process, introducing the groups uncanny ability to stir up huge catharsis in a seamless rise. Follow-up Nightgown expanded the effort, pulling lush Mazzy Star and Cranberries influences.

Embarking on their first DIY tour the same year, Why Bonnie quickly landed opening runs for the like-minded sounds of Snail Mail and Beach Fossils. The sum of those experiences culminates in the sweeping, layered rock sound of third EP Voice Box. Fuzzed-out guitars and crystalline vocals drive a tough-edged struggle in the space between suppression and artistic liberty. Howerton explains: It encapsulates a disconnect between my inner and outer world, and not being able to express myself authentically because of that. But, ultimately knowing I will crash and burn if I dont The intense effort isnt always pretty. The title track fumes with quiet wisdom, urging: I know it's easier to bury your uncertainties in a cloud of masculinity / Guess is the curse you bear to talk over me. Breeders-inspired Athlete endeavors self-doubt in a blistering metaphor of failed sportsmanship. Fiery No Caves rises to a forceful album finale, unleashing the full windswept power of Howertons vocals, padded by Houdek. Of the ending ascent, the lead singer decides about the freedom of realizing that you can't hide anymore. You have to put yourself out there.

Wake UP! is the debut album from Californian-based singer songwriter Hazel English. It features the 60s psych-influenced single Shaking, written by Hazel and frequent collaborator Blake Stranathan (Lana Del Rey) as well as timeless dream-pop tunes Off My Mind and Five And Dime. The album was recorded over a two year period and made in LA with super-producer Justin Raisen (Sky Ferreira, Charli XCX, Angel Olsen) and in Atlanta with Ben H. Allen (Deerhunter, M.I.A, Animal Collective).

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: Black vinyl, gatefold sleeve.

CD Info: Digipak.

WE ARE TRULY BLESSED! Pastor Smokie Norful, two-time Grammy award winner, leads proceedings with the FIRST EVER UK release of his Motown Modern Soul Anthem “I’ve Got What You Need”. DeeJay’s stand up and take note, if you subscribe to “OVO” (original vinyl only) this is your opportunity to pack the floor –

Side 1, Track 1 – it couldn’t be simpler!

You really don’t need any other reason to buy this album, but, how about our title track, the original version of “The Only Way Is Up” by the late great Otis Clay – Side 2, Track 1 – another guaranteed floorfiller. It is of course familiar to everyone for the chart-topping 1988 cover-version by Yazz and the Plastic Popualtion.

Another sure fire winner is the Cornelius Brothers’ Gold Disc “Too Late Turn Back Now” which caught the imagination of the rare soul scene in the Nineties and remains a firm dance floor favourite today. We must also be grateful for the first ever independent license of Jerry Butler’s awesome “Stop Steppin‘ On My Dreams” which first came to light on his 1972 ‘Spice Of Life’ album.

And we haven’t even mentioned Jesse James, Jackey Beavers, Alice Clark, Gloria Scott and the original and best version of the ‘Cleopatra Jones’ song “It Hurts So Good” by Katie Love. “The Only Way Is Up!”

Ed O’Brien never planned to make a solo record. As a guitarist with Radiohead, who over almost three decades and nine albums have established themselves as one of the most innovative and influential musical forces of our time, he thought his artistic side had its outlet and was happy to spend any downtime from Radiohead with his family. Plus, he wondered, would it really be necessary? “Thom, Jonny and Phillip are making music,” he says, “and I’m like, ‘The last thing the world needs is a shit album by me.’”

But suddenly a switch was flicked and the songs came pouring out of him. That creative surge resulted in an album of rediscovery and adventure by O’Brien under the moniker EOB that deftly veers from moments of delicate folk to euphoric house, its songs seamlessly pinned together by unswerving melodic hooks and candid lyricism. A spirit of collaboration runs through it, from the production team of Flood, Catherine Marks, Alan Moulder and Adam ‘Cecil’ Bartlett to the extraordinary musicians O’Brien assembled to help bring these tracks to life; Omar Hakim, Colin Greenwood, David Okumu, Laura Marling, Adrian Utley, Nathan East and Glenn Kotche.

But every group of collaborators needs a leader, and this album is all O’Brien’s vision. “I wanted to make a record from the heart,” he says. “I wanted to make something direct. I wanted to talk about love, your family in the immediate and the wider sense, where we are on the planet, the bigger picture, life and death. I wanted to make a big hearted, warm and colorful album… something hopeful and full of love.”

It all started in Brazil. Ed and his family moved out to the Brazilian countryside at the end of 2012. After setting up a home studio and dabbling with the idea of making an electronic record, a listen to Primal Scream’s landmark Screamadelica was O’Brien’s eureka moment. “I thought, this is it… I want my music to have that joy, that light, the depth and breadth of that album… elements of dance, soul, ambient… Uplifting in parts.” He immediately picked up an acoustic guitar and started writing, the new direction further influenced by a trip to Rio Carnival. “Carnival was another eureka moment… an extraordinary explosion of rhythm, melody, dance, light and joy… I felt there was a thread right through Screamadelica, rave and carnival.”

The O’Briens returned home in summer 2013 and Ed hunkered down in a remote cottage in the shadow of the Cambrian Mountains in Wales to begin writing songs. As the material for the album was taking shape, Flood offered his services as producer having heard some of the demos. “I had my man, my producer… He’s probably my favorite producer. The breadth of the stuff he’s done, from Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey, U2, Foals… he’s a sonic maestro.”

They rented a big house in Wales and over three weeks, in the Autumn of 2017, O’Brien and his house band – East, Hakim and Okumu – got down the bones of the record. A year of tinkering and re-working followed at Assault & Battery Studios in Willesden, London. “The house band was so good for some tracks – but other stuff needed a different approach. Any record that I’ve been involved with, that’s been of any merit, is always a journey.”

And then, following five years of writing and recording scheduled during any possible break from the making and touring of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, EOB’s debut was finally completed. “I see this as part of a bigger story…. A trilogy perhaps…I’ve really just started.” It has been a long, necessary process, and O’Brien has emerged a different person. “You have to keep moving and finding the things that inspire you and that resonate… there’s a music that I’m chasing… this feels like the right start.” EOB marks a new beginning for Ed O’Brien. From here, he can go anywhere.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies Exclusive Orange Vinyl.
180 gram vinyl.
Gatefold jacket.
6 lithographs.
Printed insert.
Manufactured with recycled packaging.

In the week that their eighth studio album, ‘Giants of All Sizes’, became their third consecutive UK Number One album, elbow played a series of special acoustic shows for select audiences in Leeds, Kingston and Manchester. Combining tracks from the new album with songs from their extensive and ever growing back catalogue, the shows offered fans a rare opportunity to see elbow in small venues, with the recordings emphasising the special bond that exists between the band and their fanbase.

The short tour included two sold out, hometown shows at Manchester’s Ritz, a place that looms large in the band’s history, being the site of a legendary headline show on the release of their debut album ‘Asleep in the Back’ in 2001 that had the Manchester Evening News display their fortune telling skills when they suggested ‘elbow are on the verge of something big’.

The Ritz set reminded fans of that history with versions of both ‘Newborn’ and ‘Scattered Black and Whites’ from that debut album alongside versions of ‘Grounds for Divorce’ from ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’, ‘Magnificent (She Says)’ from ‘Little Fictions’ and ‘Great Expectations’ from ‘Leaders of the Free World’. As befits an album from a band so intrinsically intertwined with their hometown, the show also saw Guy Garvey quote John Cooper Clarke and pay tribute to various Manchester luminaries lost along the way.

Jon Tye and Pete Fowler have been making music as Seahawks for a decade now. Given the sounds they’ve been exploring over those ten years it was a cosmic inevitability that they would be asked to contribute to the catalogue of the legendary library label KPM. They replied with Island Visions, an exploration of sound for vision where they construct “audio micro-worlds to explore and inhabit”. A way to transport the listener away from the everyday without the bother of getting on an aeroplane. Mind travel is space travel after all, and much better for the environment.

Mostly recorded at The Centre Of Sound in Cornwall, with additional recording at Studio 34 in London, Jon and Pete’s travelling companions on this particular trip were boogie wunderkind Sven Atterton on fretless bass and keys, Nick Mackrory on percussion and the Seahawks live team of Dan Hillman and Alik Peters-Deacon. From the grooves of Brian Bennett to the moog vibrations of Mike Vickers, the lush textures of Les Baxter to the experimental sounds of Delia Deryshire and David Vorhaus, this new music channels sounds and moods from across the KPM universe.

The spacious “Hot Sand Shuffle” opens the record with some of Seahawks’ familiar “deck-shoegaze”. The slinky digi-dub of “Sky Blue Sky” follows, gently encouraging us to lay back and relax. “Mystic Beach” is a refreshing ocean spray of a synthetic groove that clears the head, priming a pathway to receive “Crystal Forest”, a new age house groove of birds and flutes. Dense, deep and dreamlike, “Distant Shore” is ambient rainforest house with a 90s vibe, its dense foliage clearing to let us bask in the shimmer and shine of “River Run”. Hang drum, electric gamelan, flute and loon close side A.

Side B bounces into being with “Catch A Wave”, an upbeat beach groover of synthetic guitar, effervescent synth and snappy drums. Equatorial bubbler “Paradise Bird Bath” soon glides in with marimba, crisp beats and fat synth bass. Fender rhodes, space echo and fretless bass make “Smooth Runnings” a laid-back poolside groove. “Spirits Have Flown” conjures a hazy vibe with marimba, sax, synth funk bass and chilled beats before “Rolling Deep” serves up a light cocktail of sultry rhythms, refreshing textures, cooling sax and fretless bass. Almost-title track “Island Blues” brings the horizontal poolside feels with melodic chimes, oboe and more fretless bass for maximum vibrations. The marina drone of modular electronics, celestial trumpet and jungle ambience pay the album’s final respects to the cosmos on “Sun Salute”.

Like many KPM suites, this is a record of two distinct sides. The sunrise of side A brings a deep meditation, a journey within to renew the jaded self. Side B refreshes with cocktails by the pool and a chance to groove away the evening at some sunset beach party before dancing under the stars in the house of dreams. Pete’s front cover for the LP is part map, part postcard: “the record has five different sections and I wanted to reference those in the worlds they created, musically and physically. From beach campfire, to poolside hanging and nighttime dancing. A kind of portal to those places and the pictures they inspired in my mind. All places we’d like to be in this turbulent year”. The track descriptions on the back help guide the way.

2020 marks 10 years since Ocean Trippin’, the first Seahawks release, and Island Visions is the perfect distillation of the sounds, sights, textures and moods that Jon and Pete have been exploring over the last decade. Sunrise to sunset condensed to two sides of an LP. The normal rules of space and time don’t apply here. This is the first time Be With has worked with Seahawks, but individually Jon and Pete have been members of the extended Be With family since forever (Pete did those posters for our Ned Doheny tour and we worked with Jon on the vinyl version of Hatchback’s Colors Of The Sun). Of course we were going to put this out on vinyl. Mastered by balearic engineer of choice (and Be With’s regular audio co-pilot) Simon Francis, cut by the legendary Pete Norman and pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry, the sonic frequencies of these Island Visions have been precision tuned and encoded for optimum travelling conditions. Take the trip.

Shabazz Palaces’ Black Up, the group’s Sub Pop debut, was recently hailed as one of the best albums of the decade by outlets like Pitchfork, Gorilla Vs Bear, and Variety. Pitchfork summed it up thusly: “Black Up is drowned in murky instrumentals and bombastic, introspective rhymes. The sounds flirt with jazz but also root themselves in a firm understanding of silence, or the sparse magic of simplicity. The songs teem with unexpected climaxes...From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision.” That “impossible vision” has continued to confound and engage Shabazz Palaces fans over the course of four acclaimed albums and two EPs. Each release feels like an evolution, letting the music speak for itself, while slowly revealing more about its creator. With The Don of Diamond Dreams, the group’s fifth album, that spirit remains, this time embracing modernism in hip-hop and rap.

Featuring 10 tracks in 43 minutes, the album features the highlights “Fast Learner (ft. Purple Tape Nate),” “Chocolate Souffle,” “Bad Bitch Walking (ft. Stas THEE Boss), and “Thanking The Girls.” It also features contributions from singer/keyboardist Darrius Willrich, Seattle’s OCnotes (who collaborated with Shabazz leader Ishmael Butler on the Knife Knights project), Los Angeles musician Carlos Overall, and bassist Evan Flory-Barnes. The Don of Diamond Dreams was recorded throughout 2019 and produced by Shabazz Palaces at Protect and Exalt: A Black Space in Seattle, mixed and engineered by Erik Blood at Studio 4 Labs in Venice, California, and mastered by Scott Sedillo at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Los Angeles.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Loser edition on sky blue vinyl.

Gerry’s eagerly anticipated second album ‘The Bonny’ is out on his own Little Runaway label.

“It’s probably not smart to release during a lockdown when the shops are closed and everyone’s isolating but no chance I’m letting folk down. Never gave a fuck about numbers anyway not gny start now. Albums out April 17”.

He’s already exceeded 115 million plays at Spotify, including the recent singles ‘Dark Days’ and ‘Sun Queen’. Everything that Gerry has achieved has been done entirely independently via his own label Little Runaway. It’s the result of making a connection with fans in the purest way. His songs tell relatable stories which have captured the imagination of audiences up and down the country. Gerry makes a habit of whipping the audience into a frenzy which sees them leaving on a high and wanting more!

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive red vinyl.

Waves of Anzac / The Journey is Mick Harvey's first soundtrack release in over 10 years. The album features two recent soundtracks to powerful subject matters recorded by Mick Harvey. The first, Waves of Anzac looks at Sam Neill’s personal family history interwoven with the history of the First World War and the Anzacs through to the modern era while the second, The Journey, is a four-part composition released in support of #KidsOffNauru, a campaign working for the child refugees and people seeking asylum who find themselves in offshore detention.

Waves of Anzac is a 10-track score, created for the ABC documentary on forgotten war stories and lives lost, a personal history by the actor Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, The Piano) set against a contemporary increasingly divided political backdrop. ‘Why Anzac? with Sam Neill’ (Dir. KrivStenders, 2015) is named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) who served together in the Gallipoli Campaign, their first engagement in World War I and continued as a military unit until after WW2. The film is a look at this pivotal point in our shared history, and the impact it still has on a personal and on a geopolitical level. Harvey recently examined this period via the prism of a fictional soldier/poet for his collaboration with Christopher Richard Barker, The Fall and Rise of Edgar Bourchier and the Horrors of War.

The Journey is a four-part composition, recorded with The Letter String Quartet, in support of people seeking asylum who have found themselves in Australia’s offshore detention program. The piece was composed as a study of the hardships endured by the detainees on Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island before and during their internment and as an expression of hope for a humane outcome to their plight. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Clear vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Primo are a quartet from Melbourne writing up-tempo, terse, chorus and verse with two guitars, bass, drums and a shared group vocal sensibility to adorn their enquiries into deconstructed punk. Their songs chime and charm, sounding at times bountiful, at others brittle, always buoyant with attention to detail. Primo songs are inquisitive, chasing down questions for answers hurrying away, amidst minimalist shuffle beats and ringingout chords. The group’s debut album ‘Amici’ (2018) was a triumph of the underplayed, its small details pulling focus, allowing the album to treat us to unexpected truths in plain sight. Primo's newest member since ‘Amici’ was recorded is Amy Hill, who also plays in Terry and Constant Mongrel, on bass. Outside of Primo, Xanthe and Violetta both have lent their guitar skills to Terry and The Shifters respectively, whilst Suzanne works in film. 2020 sees Primo return with their second album of prudent delights entitled ‘Sogni’, from the Italian for ‘dreams’. Using the same musical lexicon and internal logic developed through their debut, ‘Sogni’ reflects on themes of decision-making, change, time, heartbreak, the practicalities of work and daily life.

The songs came together as a way of making sense of the times - offering a way through. Tracks were demo-ed quickly by early 2019, then developed collectively through the year in the rehearsal room, played live and finally recorded onto 8-track in late 2019 by Al Montfort in a number of home studios across Melbourne. Vocal duties were largely shared throughout the record, which has the same post punk sensibility and minimal approach as in previous recordings, but here imbued now with electronic flourishes and expanded instrumentation that sees Primo’s sound growing bolder. ‘Sogni’ will be released through Upset the Rhythm on March 20th.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies only opaque orange vinyl.

“I love songs that make you want to cry and dance at the same time,” says Tony Donson, the London-based musician who records as SONIKKU. That sense of unfettered release and liberation drives his new album, Joyful Death. A fluent, fertile and full-colour hybrid of vibrant Italo-house, liquid synth-pop, righteous disco and French philosophical asides, it’s an album that signals the emergence proper of SONIKKU – a fully formed dancefloor artist. It’s also a farewell of sorts, perhaps, but with an emphatic rebirth at its heart. “This album feels like a transformation in the sense that I’m creating the music I’ve always wanted to make. A fully realised, coherent pop record that showcases my craft as a song-writer and producer.”

Total control of his craft is swiftly asserted on ‘Let the Light In’, where the influences of lost-in-music disco and the Pet Shop Boys merge under vocals from immersive, exploratory British singer-songwriter Douglas Dare. The pace accelerates as ‘WKND’ gets into a groove pitched somewhere between Madonna, Daft Punk and Indeep, with LA future-pop singer LIZ primed for dancefloor abandon on vocals. Meanwhile, SONIKKU’s independent intent is firmly asserted on the freestyle-inspired ‘Don’t Wanna Dance with You’, where singer Aisha Zoe coolly brushes off unwanted advances in favour of dancefloor pleasures.

LIZ assumes vocal duties again for ‘Sweat’, a song fully equipped to make dancefloor devotees do as its title suggests. Dreamily melodic evidence of SONIKKU’s dynamism (and love of melancholy Swedish electro-pop queen Robyn) beckons on ‘X Hopeless Romantic’, where Little Boots contributes a sweetly loved-up vocal over a sublimely infectious chorus.

Pummelling synths signal a dramatic shift of pace on the almost electro-darkwave dash of ‘Remember to Forget Me’, where actor/singer Chester Lockhart presides over a summit meeting between Depeche Mode and New Order. Performance artist Tyler Matthew Oyer takes the vocals for the Italo-disco-inspired title-track, a vividly imagined album manifesto – of sorts – inspired to varying degrees by an 1892 poem, French thinker Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the “body without organs” and a 1997 anime called The End of Evangelion. Finally, that grand piano takes over as Dare returns, presiding over an achingly stripped-back version of ‘Remember to Forget Me’.

With help from friends and artists he admires on vocals, Joyful Death is a hugely confident and self-contained leap forward for SONIKKU after his time as a feted DJ. Having moved from Derby to London at the age of 18, Donson worked as an intern (at MTV, Dazed & Confused, SHOWstudio and elsewhere) then turned to DJing (from London to Tokyo, Paris and Berlin) after he was signed to London label Lobster Theremin. Though he continues to DJ regularly at Tottenham’s LGBTQ rave-up Adonis, he has extra ambitions in mind: “I love DJing but I’m more looking forward to developing a live show.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Mint Green Vinyl.

Nathan rouses his Cambria Instruments label for his first album since 2017s ‘Providence’. ‘Blizzards’ is a returns to a clubbier sound, whilst keeping the melodic depth and rewarding narratives that have entranced his fans worldwide since his early records on Border Community and his seminal track ‘The Sky Was Pink’. Using a similar setup to his slamming live show, the album’s track were mostly recorded in one take with a deliberately limited hardware selection.

The first release on Optimo Music founder JD Twitch’s new compilation-focused label Cease & Desist will be a collection of pioneering turn-of-the-90s British “Bleep & Bass” techno tracks curated by author and music journalist Matt Anniss.

Join The Future: UK Bleep & Bass 1988-91 is a partner product to Anniss’s critically acclaimed book on the foundations of British dance music’s ongoing love affair with sub-bass, Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music. The book, which was published by Velocity Press in December and features a foreword by JD Twitch, documents in vivid detail the previously untold story of the Yorkshire-pioneered style and the impact it had on the development of UK dance music.

The compilation is the first to focus on Bleep & Bass since the sound’s heyday in the late 1980s and early ’90s. It features a mix of historic cuts, period classics, overlooked gems and unreleased material. It was mastered for release by Warp Records co-founder and Forgemasters member Rob Gordon, a producer, remixer and studio engineer who arguably did more than anyone else to define the sub-heavy sound of the style.

Gordon also contributed a previously unheard version of Alfanso’s “Dub Feels Nice”, a near mythical track he produced in 1991 that has never received a proper commercial release. The cut has been a secret weapon for a handful of Sheffield DJs for almost 30 years, most notably Gordon’s fellow Forgemasters member Winston Hazel. Fittingly, the compilation also includes the original unreleased instrumental version of Tuff Little Unit’s Steel City classic “Join The Future”.

Many of the other tracks on the compilation are rare, hard to find or have not been issued on vinyl or digital since their initial release. It opens with Unique 3 and the Mad Musician’s “Only The Beginning” – the 1988 A-side of the first ever Bleep record – and also includes tracks and remixes from fellow scene pioneers Ital Rockers (an early alias of dub hero Iration Steppas), Nightmares on Wax, Cabaret Voltaire and DJ Martin and DJ Homes, the previously unheralded Chapeltown duo behind the influential Leeds-based studio and record label BASSIC.

Elsewhere on the compilation you’ll find Birmingham producer Demonik’s sought-after debut single “Layrinthe”, a hard-to-find cut from Bedford-based men of mystery Original Clique, two classic cuts from the vaults of influential Midlands label Network Records and a glassy-eyed slab of Bleep/deep house fusion from 100 Hz.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xLP includes MP3 Download Code.

Gilles Peterson presents a time capsule of musical magic. Taken from a day of live sessions in London’s legendary Maida Vale Studios - studio MV4 to be exact, it was originally intended just for Peterson’s BBC radio show broadcast on 20th October 2018. Struck by what a special moment the sessions captured, Peterson has decided to mark the results with a release proper on his Brownswood imprint. It features a diverse, all-star cast of some of the acts celebrated by Peterson in recent years, in a series of freewheeling and off-the-cuff recordings, several of the tracks backed by the group of Brownswood signee, Joe Armon-Jones. Featuring Dylan Jones, James Mollison, Mutale Chashi, and Marijus Aleksa as well as guest turns from Fatima, Asheber, Nubya Garcia, Hak Baker, and Oscar Jerome, plus a double track special from Bristol based collective, Ishmael Ensemble.

"The space-age songsmiths of Once & Future Band have been ting-tinging away on the truly heavy anvil of hominid perspective and emotion again to bring you this singing scape of songs.
Annealing for over a year now, until it was cool enough to hold in your ears, nested in the pinnae, the time has finally come.
Dew drops pop and hiss as they settle on the gliding guitarmonies.

Once & Future Band have outdone themselves this time around, in my opinion. If songs could stop heated exchanges by mere presence, these are the ones, and more needed than ever.
As I tuned in to each new transmission, each step closer to this perfect platter, I had to stop and do nothing else, and merely absorb how wonderful this album is. Each tune exists in the company it was born to live with. There are haunting chorale escorts here...long trains of room warmth... the belting of the machine heart...lofty guitar and bass melange... and just beautifully laid to magnetic tape with a sure hand by the throbbing brains that are Once & Future Band for fans of Roy Wood, Idle Race, ELO, Roxy Music, Head Hunters, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, The Lord Bowie, The Band, and the soundtrack from every movie that ever pierced your cold, cold heart”
- John Dwyer.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • EXCLUSIVE translucent “beer” coloured vinyl
• EXCLUSIVE FOLDED 12” x 24” poster (folded with LP)
• EXCLUSIVE 3 track flexi-disc
• Numbered sleeve
• Strictly limited edition of 300

After the sell out success of 3 12 inches released at the tail end of 2019, For the Love of You is a 12 track compilation of lovers rock covers curated by Sam Don and overseen by Euan Fryer of AOTN.

Featuring amazing covers of tracks by artists such as Leon Ware, Mtume, Archie Bell, The Gap Band, Lowrell, Prince, Starvue, Bobby Caldwell & The Isley Brothers, there is not a filler in site, essentials all the way.

The project has taken almost 2 years with the help of many musicians, singers and producers from the scene. A special shout out goes to Peter 'Honeyvoice' Hunnigale for going the extra mile and doing many introductions.

The “yéyé noir” of Juniore has always been rooted in the cinematic as much as the musical. The Paris outfit’s blending of 1960s French pop, hazy psychedelia, seamless pop, surf grooves and lush orchestration feels as intertwined with big screen aesthetics as greatly as it does being found in the grooves of vinyl. So it makes perfect sense that the band would sooner or later find themselves appearing on more film and TV soundtracks, including the universally lauded drama Killing Eve.

It marks a period of continuous upward trajectory and forward momentum for the band who, since the release of their acclaimed 2018 album Magnifique, have been exposed to more people all over the world via stages and screens. From playing huge venues to thousands of people opening for the likes of the Dandy Warhols, to “corners of dive bars with duct tape holding the stage together” the band have been solidifying their sound, approach and relationship by playing extensively. “We’ve become more connected and better musicians,” Says the band’s songwriter and singer Anna-Jean. “I think the new songs are full of that wonderful conversation we have with each other on stage.”

It’s this sense of deeper understanding that the band have reached between one another that has allowed them to record an album that sounds as natural, graceful and seamless as this one. “We are now even more who we are than before,” she says of their musical and personal bonding. “And yet we still don’t really know who we'll become next. I know it sounds absurd but it's a very nice feeling.” It’s a feeling that is mirrored in the music too. There is a sense of familiarity, a retro pop flourish – filled with infectious rolling bass lines, razor-sharp guitar lines, dense atmospheres and immersive melodies – yet predicting where the album will go remains a constant impossibility.

The album’s title Un, Deux, Trois is another nod to the tight unit of the group. Swanny Elzingre and Samy Osta make up the trio, with the former on drums and the latter sharing guitar and keys along with Anna-Jean. It was in Samy’s cosy Paris studio that the album was recorded. The finished tone of the album - recorded often live to a 16 track - sounds like an amalgamation of their favourite French 60's muses like Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot and Anna Karina with the new wave spark of Devo and the B-52's. While that cross-pollination between sultry, sophisticated pop and good-time energy and vibrancy is certainly present, there’s also a wealth of other touching points that underpin the record. So much so that Anna-Jean says of the themes that run through the album: “It’s a mix of everything we have loved and watched and felt in the last few years. It's like a laboratory of feelings – not really my or our feelings but more universal feelings and emotions – it's like a nonsensical Frankenstein’s laboratory."

However, as fun as this record is, much like its predecessor, there's an underlying lyrical message that remains a key part of the band’s identity as they push forward equality-based principles. “It's the same as we've been trying to state since the beginning,” Anna-Jean suggests. “The importance of being independent, of counterculture, humour and poetry. Of not taking ourselves seriously but being very serious about it and fighting against sexism, ageism, racism, consumerism – all the worthwhile fights.”

The flag bearer for dancefloor-orientated electronic music has come up with something rather special for, what I think, is his twelfth proper studio album to date. Reaching, through his ever-forward-glancing soundscapes, to even deeper levels of intimacy, intricity, abstraction & intrigue. Four Tet continues to usher in the Now; way before you even knew it existed.

Utilizing a beguiling and enchanting array of patches, synths, DSP units and the latest computer technology to yield a decidedly humanoid (read: cybernetic) approach to modern commentary and body movement through sound; our trusty technician has once again proven why he's the go-to tastemaker across the dance music global village, whatever particular camp you chose to shake your boots in.

Housed in a fractal-psychedelic sleeve which upon first inspection reveals very little, as the first utterances begin to emanate off the record it's clear Hebden is painting a multidimensional canvas of our current world. Musically and visually it resonates with current moods and emotions, especially as technology continues influence and interact with our daily lives.

After a crystalline and atmospheric opening track, "Baby" rushes through our senses at 5G; a track so quintessentially Four Tet yet unfathomably beautiful you'll curse the producer for not gifting it to us sooner. "Teenage Birdsong", a previously released single relishes in its languid, BOC-esque downbeat electronica while "Romantics" closes off the opening side with a warped but elegant moment of transcendence.

"Love Salad" smothers us delicate rhythmic glitches and morphed pianos, "Insect Near Piha Beach" deploys the mangled electro-acoustic palettes that garnered much of Hebden's early works while "ISTM"'s gentile flurries and ASDR-enveloped stimulation propels us off into dreamlike fantasy worlds unknown to our consciousness.

Side C is a somewhat nocturnal and tranquil affair, with obvious stargazing references contrasted with the whispering fairylike lullabies beamed down from the heavens.

After treating us to such a glorious three sides, Four Tet then leaves jaws floor bound by gifting to us an entire side of locked grooves straight from the stems of the album!!! - Honestly, this is some real treasure folks, ready to mined by Ableton heads, mixed and juggled by 3-deck wizards and used as DJ tools across other tracks; it's an unfathomably classy and fortunate touch that closes off one of the producer's most essential albums to date. 10 / fu**ing 10. Essential.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Arg! It's a decade since Keiran hinted at our Meta New World with "There Is Love In You"; and almost all of his predictions have metamorphosed into this hybrid sonic species for 2020. He's still predicting the evolution of electronic music with an almost Darwinian accuracy, setting the high watermarks for others to follow...

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xLtd LP Info: Gatefold Double Vinyl.

Quelle Chris has recorded with plenty of producers but his bond with Chris Keys extends beyond music. After linking through mutual collaborator Roc Marciano, the two Chris’ became fast friends. About four years worth of hang-out sessions, bong hits, video games and take-out food culminated in 2Dirt4TV3: Innocent Country, a deceptively subtle character study of self disguised as an excellent piece of stoner headnod hip-hop.

Throughout the 33 minutes that comprise Innocent Country, our two protagonists are in synch like a pair of Jaeger pilots. Though the LP certainly has instances of energy and aggression, “Madness In The Oasis” and “Where The Wild Things Roam” are two, more often than not it lives within introspective mid-tempo moments like the languid “Nothing Moves.” Quelle is the wayward MC waxing bittersweet on the reflective “Well Running Deep,” filling Chris Keys’ sweeping string samples with palpable nostalgia. Our peregrine rapper is the lowkey consummate artist, powerful enough to give a rousing performance on the moving “I Asked God,” then turn on a dime and nail the hilarious and self-effacing “Drugfest TooThousandToo.”

Upon repeated listens, one might see that Innocent Country speaks to the blissful naivete of youth. It’s the soundtrack to self-medication as an escape from reality, but it doesn’t jump ship before the inevitable moment of clarity. Innocent Country is a party, but it’s also the morning after and the day before. A sweet experience on the surface, this is therapy billed as reefer night at your man’s spot.

Songwriter, composer, director and visual artist Dev Hynes - best known under his moniker Blood Orange - releases the original motion picture score for the highly accoladed ‘Queen & Slim. ‘Queen & Slim’ is a 2019 American romantic crime drama film that follows two African-Americans on the run after killing a police officer in self-defence during a traffic stop. Directed by Melina Matsoukas (Beyonce’s Formation) and written by Lena Waithe (Master of None and Ready Player One), the film stars Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Jodie Turner- Smith, Bokeem Woodbine, Chloë Sevigny, Flea, Sturgill Simpson and Indya Moore.

The release of the ‘Queen & Slim’ score marks an incredible couple of years for Hynes, who recently wrapped up a tour opening for Tyler, The Creator in arenas across America. As Blood Orange, he released the mixtape Angel’s Pulse this past summer, in addition to directing a video for Beck, writing a collection of classical music with Third Coast Percussion, directing and releasing a series of his own videos and being called one of the Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People For 2019

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Victories at Sea follow the release of two singles in 2019 with their second studio album Everybody’s Lost and All I Want Is to Leave on 21st February 2020. Recorded on the shores of Loch Fyne and mixed in their native Birmingham, the album refines and redefines the sound of Victories at Sea.

The location of recording has had a marked influence on the album. The vast landscapes of Loch Fyne are there in the grandeur and sky scraping ambition of the already heard ‘Quiet House’, the changeability of the weather mirrored in the skittering melodies, looming builds and sudden explosion of ‘Late’; the shift from calm to cloud to downpour made melody. The switch from what JP White, lead singer and lyricist describes as being, ‘far from the electric daylight of city evenings’, during recording to that very cityscape created a tension within the album that confronts this nature seeped creation with mechanics and artificiality.

So, the sweeping melodies and delicate piano interludes of album opener, ‘When The Dark’, are abruptly interrupted by a crescendo of closing noise that brings to mind the hectic, circular motion of rush hour traffic on Birmingham’s inner ring road. Current single, ‘Follow You’, delivers a seemingly straightforward and direct verse / chorus moment of ear worm brilliance only to abruptly skip and slide into a locked machine groove, the sound of Birmingham’s industrial past breaking through the sheen of modernity.

If this sounds ambitious, maybe even a little pretentious, then that is a charge that Victories at Sea are happy to rebut. Everybody’s Lost and All I Want Is to Leave was conceived and realised as a statement. A permanent marker of the pinnacle of the trio’s possible creation, an honest and direct expression of the collective power of the three band members. This album is more than a collection of songs, it stands as a collective of artistic work designed at every point to demonstrate a belief in the power of the album, the power of music, the power of words. Something beautiful that would remain forever.

Victories at Sea follow the release of two singles in 2019 with their second studio album Everybody’s Lost and All I Want Is to Leave on 21st February 2020. Recorded on the shores of Loch Fyne and mixed in their native Birmingham, the album refines and redefines the sound of Victories at Sea. The location of recording has had a marked influence on the album. The vast landscapes of Loch Fyne are there in the grandeur and sky scraping ambition of the already heard ‘Quiet House’, the changeability of the weather mirrored in the skittering melodies, looming builds and sudden explosion of ‘Late’; the shift from calm to cloud to downpour made melody.

Emotional Response is delighted to present a special project, a collection of music from Bartosz Kruczynski, recorded for "Selected Media" and presented here as a time-piece of his continuing works. Initially known as one half of sample based project Ptaki (The Very Polish Cut Outs / Transatlantyk), Kruczynski first appeared for Emotional Response as The Phantom for the first series of SchleiBen in 2015. Featuring two works of deep 'fourth world' sounds, they highlighted a shift to more mellow, synthetic and hazy compositions. His break out came, however, when he explored this sound further on his eponymous album Baltic Beat, for the acclaimed Growing Bin Records. This has been augmented with the recent club based music as one half of the wonderful Earth Trax (Rhythm Section International / Phonica Records) project.

Here though, Kruczynski returns to the ambient and ethereal - plus a touch of dub techno - to showcase his expansive collaborative work with Polish studio, TVP Culture. Given free artistic license, the 15 'short form' recordings included here were for programming, in the main, on modern Polish Art including the likes of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Miroslaw Balka and Tadeusz Kantor, as well as some international aspects for Enrico Prampolini, Ai Weiwei and Monica Bonvicini. Taken from over 70 episodes the material included recollects imagery, video and memory to present a series of short vignettes that together create one whole. Minimal and hazy ambience (V, VII, VIII, XI, XII) envisages classic melodies and chords and is accompanied by further 'fourth world' pieces (I, II, III, VII, X) that present an oeuvre that is recognisably the music of Kruczynski, while remaining fresh and perfectly meditative. A counter can be found in the atmospheric dub works (IV, IX, XIV) that hint at echo chamber environs to get infinitely lost in. As an album then, "Selected Media" can be heard as a snapshot to Kruczynski's music journey, a meeting of art and music that is oft overlooked but very much essential.

Bassist Antti Lötjönen, one of the most highly-regarded and active musicians working in the Finnish jazz scene, steps ahead with his debut album as a leader on Helsinki's We Jazz Records. "Quintet East" features hard-hitters Verneri Pohjola on trumpet, Mikko Innanen (of Koma Saxo) and Jussi Kannaste (of 3TM) on saxes, plus Joonas Riippa on drums. Lötjönen himself is best known from his inspired work with The Five Corners Quintet, 3TM, Ilmiliekki Quartet, Aki Rissanen Trio and Timo Lassy, to name but a few. In late 2018, Lötjönen completed a successful trio stint of European headline shows with Jeff "Tain" Watts and Kurt Rosenwinkel.

On his new album, Lötjönen shines bright as both bassist and composer, presenting a compact yet far-reaching program of 9 tracks, 8 of which are penned by him. Monumental compositions such as the steadily swinging lead track "Erzeben Strasse" and the calmly confident "Le Petit Lactoire" rub shoulders with short-but-sweet teasers such as the funky "P.S.", the pastoral "Rowan" and the two solo bass tracks, "Monographs" I & II. While star-studded and packing unlimited improvisational potential, the band remains together as a unit and delivers a beautiful musical statement, one which echoes the DIY ethos and fire of the late 60's free music but also one which is very much of today and tomorrow, as constantly evolving jazz music.

Antti Lötjönen's "Quintet East" is released by We Jazz Records on 17 April on vinyl with old school tip-on sleeve and silver lettering, on CD and digitally. It arrives a day before the artist's 40th birthday, thus also achieving his goal of releasing his debut LP before turning 40. Already a fixture in the local live circuit, the band heard on "Quintet East" will likely be a force to be reckoned with outside of their native surroundings, as well.

“The man singing these songs isn’t exactly the same man who wrote them,” says Pokey LaFarge of Rock Bottom Rhapsody, his eighth and latest studio release. “This album is about the story of who I used to be.” In early 2018, LaFarge - searching for the sort of artistic freedom and inspiration he wasn’t finding in the Midwest - relocated from his longtime home base of St. Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles, California. New songs came quickly to LaFarge in his new environment but new temptations soon found him, as well. Though he declines to get into specifics, LaFarge admits that he experienced a significant “fall from grace” during the last months of 2018. “Things sort of started to unravel in my mind.” Shortly before the recording of ‘Rock Bottom Rhapsody’ began, LaFarge experienced a spiritual awakening - and the faith he re-embraced in his hour of darkness helped to buoy him through the making of the album.

Though he was struggling for spiritual equilibrium at the time, LaFarge at least had some rock-solid musical support to lean on. Recorded primarily at Reliable Recorders on Chicago’s Northwest side, ‘Rock Bottom Rhapsody’ was produced by LaFarge’s friend and collaborator Chris Seefried (who also cowrote several of the album’s tracks) and features the considerable talents of guitarist Joel Paterson, keyboardist Scott Ligon, upright/electric bassist Jimmy Sutton and drummer Alex Hall.

Musically, LaFarge continues to mix and match a wide variety of styles and traditions, while never losing track of his own vision “This record is kind of like Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan hanging out with chanson singers and French jazz bands in like the forties, but I was never trying to make it sound like a particular person.” Despite the trying period that preceded its recording, ‘Rock Bottom Rhapsody’ is ultimately far more uplifting and life-affirming than its title would suggest. “That desperation, that struggle,” LaFarge ponders, “Did it add something to the record? It certainly did. I mean, I don’t know if it made it better; it just is what it is. It’s not up to me to decide if people are going to feel that…”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive carnation pink vinyl.

Animal Collective’s live album ‘Ballet Slippers’, set for release via Domino, is an homage to the 10- Year Anniversary of their modern classic, ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’. Recorded in the midst of the band’s extensive and acclaimed nine-month tour in 2009, the album features ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’’s greatest hits alongside favourites from ‘Strawberry Jam’, ‘Sung Tongs’, ‘Feels’ and ‘Danse Manatee’. Mixed by Ajay Saggar and edited by Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), the release is culled from several shows from that album’s North American tour and sequenced to reflect a full concert experience, complete with song transitions and interludes, creating a captivating document of the genre- defying group

FORMAT INFORMATION

3xLP includes MP3 Download Code.

The mid ‘80s were an exciting time for music in Kansai (OsakaKyoto), Japan. There were more stages for bands to play on, more releases by independent labels and a variety of bands playing in different styles. The 80s were also a time when women’s rights in Japan, though a topic of conversation, were not widely visible in the real world. There were very few women in the underground music scene at the time, but none of them dressed like punks or dyed their hair, or outwardly showed much interest in declaring independence from the usual rules. So, in 1981, when Hikko, Mika, and Emiko (aka Chasenmaru) first appeared together as OXZ, they were intentionally shocking.

Nothing happens in a vacuum, however. It was already acceptable for young women to form bands in the safety of their high school music clubs. They generally played cover songs at school events. However, actually stepping out into the dirty world of live houses was for the adventurous and compelled. To do so in OXZ’s overtly provocative, dramatic way was unheard of. Contemporaries of Shonen Knife, OXZ were known for the intensity of their live performances. Releasing their first EP in 1984 – an 8” EP – their catalog belies their reputation for moody, dark post-punk ahead of its time. The bass and drums dominate; the guitars are angular and spiky – punk, but with something extra. Along Ago: 1981-1989 collects the band’s entire catalog – three EPs and a single – alongside unearthed, unreleased demos.

Then, 1989, it ended as the band went their separate ways. And the name? No one seems to remember how it came about, but it should be noted that in Japan, O means acceptable and X means rejected, so maybe OXZ means “going beyond all usual standards.”

“One of the pioneering Japanese female underground bands... unique, strange and provocative.” - Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mother’s Temple)

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Lavender coloured vinyl.

In Ghana "to chop" is to eat, so the phrase No Funk No Chop quite simply means; deliver afro funk and disco bombs, or no one will eat today. With this in mind we jump on the bus to begin our journey. We find our man Grégoire Lawani in fine form with one of the greatest party starters "Africa Land of Soul". Brethren Tany Welck tells the world that he is indeed a" Sexy Man". Peter Mukoko "Esimo Esimo" delivers the breakdown to end all breakdowns. Django Strong supplies us with his super slick "Hoo Dou Hoo Mine". Jide Obi "Give's It Everything he has got", just listen to that bass! Fosto transports us with a synth laden boogie portraying his vision of Africa, K3 Band give us the "Feeling" and we reach our destination ending with Tchamy Patterson's "Camerounaise Children". So, let's eat!!

We hope you enjoyed your trip!

Founded in 1972, SteepleChase Records is one of the most significant and prolific European jazz record labels. With a catalogue running to well over 200 titles, the Copenhagen-based imprint has recorded and released music from some of the greatest names in jazz, including Dexter Gordon, Andrew Hill, Jackie McLean, Horace Parlan, Chet Baker and Stan Getz. Starting out by recording visiting Americans when they performed at the legendary Café Montmartre, founder Nils Winther was encouraged to start the label by none other than the great Jackie McLean, who was the first artist to release a record on the new imprint. From there, Steeplechase rapidly grew into one of the foremost labels to document European jazz with all its distinctive originality and style. With a particular emphasis on recording front rank American artists who had chosen the expatriate life in Europe, Steeplechase was first in line to document the sounds of the greats as they developed in exile. Featuring in-demand tracks from the likes of Billy Gault, Johnny Dyani and Khan Jamal, and unearthing deep cuts from greats like Jackie McLean and Mary Lou Williams, our Spiritual Jazz 11: Steeplechase pays tribute to one of Europe's most important jazz labels.

It’s a very busy time in Eggland right now. Since the release of their last album ‘This Is Eggland’ in 2017, The Lovely Eggs have sat back and watched the world mutate and slowly eat itself. However, rather than remaining frozen in despair, they have used their relentless analysis of a modern culture that is bringing the world to its knees and poured every bit of inspired anger, contempt and hysterical laughter into new album ‘I am Moron’.

We got to hear the first results of their observations as 2020 lurched into life from its seasonal slumber, in the seething two-minute-and-fifty-seconds of rage in ‘This Decision’ and its accompanying mind-scrambling video, signaling the return of the Lancaster psych-punk duo. The single reached number #1 in both the physical and vinyl charts and was hammered by DJs at BBC 6 Music including Iggy Pop, Marc Riley, Steve Lamacq, Chris Hawkins, Gideon Coe, Tom Robinson and John Kennedy at Radio X. Not a bad start to their year, at all.

‘I am Moron’ is their second album to be co-produced and mixed by Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Tame Impala) and continues their journey through Eggland into the unknown, with artwork by genius artist and video director Casey Raymond, who has the unbridled talent to perfectly visualize The Lovely Eggs sound, spewing Eggland out in a swirling whirlpool of dayglo colours, melting faces and symbols.

Throughout their 13-year career, The Lovely Eggs have embraced isolation. Both metaphorically and geographically the married couple have chosen to shun the social conventions of normal life and dedicated their band and their life to the pursuit of what feels right.

Operating out of their hometown of Lancaster, The Lovely Eggs are lonely pioneers and self-confessed kings of idiocy. Working in an industry whose currency is money, success and nepotism, The Lovely Eggs want none of it. They call out everything fake and plastic about the music industry and demand you to re-evaluate on their terms.

‘I Am Moron’ was self recorded by the band in Lancaster (“The Twin Peaks of Northern England”) between Lancaster Musicians Co-op and their home. During the recording, Lancaster Musicians Co-op was threatened with closure, so the band put their album on hold to fight the eviction.

While the band were writing the album, they became fascinated by the Mars One program- a global project which aims to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Applicants are offered a one-way ticket- never to see earth again. This fascinated Holly and David who drew parallels between this mission and their own isolation as a band.

Continuing the heaviness of ‘This is Eggland’. ‘I am Moron’ brings more depth to their sound bringing with it a mix of heavy psych, pop and strangeness. Some songs flicker between an earthly realism and the otherworldly loneliness of a one-way space mission. While in contrast, ‘Insect Repellent’ launches a gonzo-style attack against the middle classes and Bearpit questions the essence of working-class freedom.

With no booking agent, manager, record label or publisher The Lovely Eggs are truly independent. And this isn’t due to economics. This is by design. From day one. And support for them is snowballing. They are selling out bigger and bigger venues and more eggheads are joining them in their crusade against bullshit.

Welcome to their world. This Is Eggland!

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Neon yellow vinyl in gatefold sleeve.

“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig” reasoned George Bernard Shaw. “You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” True to form, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have left the wiser of us aware that they are no band to be messed with. This is made manifest on ‘Viscerals’, their third proper, and an enormous leap forward in confidence, adventure and sheer intensity even from their 2018 breakthrough ‘King Of Cowards’.

Incisive in its riff-driven attack, infectiously catchy in its songcraft and more intrepid than ever in its experimental approach, ‘Viscerals’ is the sound of a leaner, more vicious Pigs, and one with their controls set way beyond the pulverising one-riff workouts of their early days. Yet Pigsx7 have effortlessly broadened their horizons and dealt with all these new avenues without sacrificing one iota of their trademark eccentricity, and the personality of this band has never been stronger, whether on the Sabbathian and philosophical warcry of ‘Reducer’, the debauched, Jane’s Addiction-tinged swagger of ‘Rubbernecker’, the Melvins vs Sonic Youth demoltion derby of ‘New Body’ or even the demented MBV-meets-Twisted-Sister party-banger from hell that is ‘Crazy In Blood’.

“We’re a peculiar bunch of people - a precarious balance of passion, intensity and the absurd” notes vocalist Matt Baty. Such is the unstoppable character of this unique and ever-porcine outfit; still the hungriest animals at the rock trough.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 'Drained Of Blood vinyl' (Blood Red vinyl).

Indies Exclusive LP Info: 'Blood And Guts vinyl' (Blood Red / Guts Yellow Swirl vinyl).

“It Is What It Is” was produced by Flying Lotus and Thundercat and features musical contributions from Ty Dolla $ign, Childish Gambino, Lil B, Kamasi Washington, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Louis Cole and Zack Fox. The album follows his game-changing third album “Drunk” (2017). That record completed his transition from virtuoso bassist to bonafide star and cemented his reputation as a unique voice that transcends genre. “This album is about love, loss, life and the ups and downs that come with that,” Bruner says about “It Is What It Is”. “It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at different points in life you come across places that you don’t necessarily understand… some things just aren’t meant to be understood.”

The unruly bounce of new single ‘Black Qualls’ is classic Thundercat, teaming up with Steve Lacy (The Internet) and Funk icon Steve Arrington (Slave). It’s another example of Stephen Lee Bruner’s desire to highlight the lineage of his music and pay his respects to the musicians who inspired him. Discovering Arrington’s output in his late teens, Bruner says he fell in love with his music immediately: “The tone of the bass, the way his stuff feels and moves, it resonated through my whole body.”

‘Black Qualls’ emerged from writing sessions with Lacy, whom Thundercat describes as “the physical incarnate of the Ohio Players in one person - he genuinely is a funky ass dude”. It references what it means to be a black American with a young mindset: “What it feels like to be in this position right now… the weird ins and outs, we’re talking about those feelings… Part of me knew this [track] was where Steve [Arrington] left us.”

For fans of Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Flying Lotus, Kamasi
Washington, BADBADNOTGOOD.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Deluxe LP Info: 140g transparent clear vinyl, housed in a 6mm spined gatefold sleeve with gold foil detail and OBI strip.

Deluxe LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Indies Exclusive LP Info: 140g cream vinyl, housed in a 3mm spined sleeve with OBI strip.

Indies Exclusive LP includes MP3 Download Code.

CD Info: CD softpack.

Harvieu’s defiance against the odds and her willingness to lay herself open to make what she believed was within her is baked into every groove of the record, across every stylistic turn: the giddy pop of ‘Strange Thing’, the gothic swoon of ‘Cruel Disguise’, the smokey seductiveness of ‘Yes Please’ through to the stirring torchsong finale ‘My Body She Is Alive’.

Harvieu has come a long way from the 17-year-old who was signed to Island Records and who had no intention of becoming a singer-songwriter. Even when she made her debut album “Through The Night”, her confidence was low. “I did help write a few of the songs on that record, which I’m still very fond of, but I felt more of a mouthpiece for someone else’s talent, which eats away at you especially because I had so much to say lyrically I just hadn’t learnt how to as yet.”

Her injury - a broken spine following “a freak accident” between recording and releasing her debut album - undermined Harvieu even further. Likewise, Island parted ways with her six months after it’s release, despite a Top 5 chart entry, making the BBC’s Sound Of 2012, a 5-star live review from The Guardian and TV exposure. What followed was what Harvieu describes as “some very dark years” which she addresses in songs like ‘Spirit Me Away’ and the 50’s ballad-evoking ‘You Don’t Know Me.’ A split with her long term partner, her manager and then her beloved Salford. “In one fell swoop everything was gone. I knew I had to get away, start again, rebuild myself.”

It wasn’t until 2015 to be exact, when she met Romeo Stodart, the Magic Numbers frontman and songwriter who had emailed after seeing her perform on Later… With Jools Holland, to ask if she’d consider writing together. “When we started, the energy was immediately different to anyone I’d worked with before, there was this insane instant musical connection” she says. “I loved that Romeo really embraced who I was and encouraged it, I was starting to realise that I didn’t have to be anything other than myself.”

The pair spent the next two years co-writing: “I wasn’t in a massive hurry, because at last I was having fun” Harvieu says. ‘We’d stay up all night drinking, dancing and playing music, I felt like I was re-discovering a girl who had been hidden, quietened. I’d tell Romeo, I don’t just want to paint pretty pictures I want to revel in the drama of my life, the good and the bad, before I was afraid to say something in my lyrics, but no longer. I felt free.”

The album was co-produced by Romeo Stodart and Dave Izumi Lynch, owner of Echo Zoo studio in Eastbourne where recording took place. “It was a truly magical experience working with Dave & Romeo, they are two absolute nurturing musical wizards.” says Harvieu.

Harvieu’s lyrical confidence is evident throughout the album and has you leaning in to absorb line after line. Her voice, soaring and caressing in equal measure, is matched in force by her flirtatious personality. From the album’s opening lyric “Let me put my paws on you, strange thing’through to the feminine bite of ‘Curves And Swerves’ “I’ve got some curves and some swerves, what you gonna do about it?” which crackles with sexual tension and an aching vulnerability.

Among Harvieu’s new songs are messages of hope to her younger, anxious self. To the teenage goth Ren in ‘Little Raven’, she says: “I want you to know, that I’m starting to feel, but its gonna take time, but I’m ready to heal”. ‘Tomorrow Girl Today’ is to the Ren “who would make bad decisions… we can all be very self-destructive, but will we make it this time?”

So what now, Ren Harvieu? “I’ve created a second chance for myself“ she says. “And I will keep creating second chances for myself, because this is my life and I’m not afraid to revel in it anymore.” Revel In the Drama of Ren Harvieu - finally we all can too.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive clear vinyl.

A prolific writer, producer and performer, M. Ward has established himself as one of modern American music’s most unique and versatile voices. For his tenth album he journeyed to Quebec, Canada to work with Arcade Fire’s Tim Kingsbury, Richard Reed Parry, producer/mixer Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Florence and the Machine) and Teddy Impakt. Together at Arcade Fire’s Montreal studios they recorded a collection of 11 songs inspired by stories of human migration.

M. Ward’s music has always felt intricate, intimate and other worldly. With Migration Stories he breathes beautiful life into vignettes of human flight, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy as it reckons with a world that feels more divided than ever before, even as its inhabitants grow more inextricably linked by the day.

On "Flight of Ideas", Warm Digits make a call to arms: when we all think our ideas are right, what are the costs of never believing you could be wrong? Looking back to the history of psychology to find out what happens when ideas outlive their sell-by date, with their vocal guests they set up a blistering musical exchange between fluorescent agit-funk, primary-coloured synth-bounce and fizzing sheets of guitar noise. The LP features vocal contributions from Maximo Park’s Paul Smith, The Lovely Eggs, The Orielles, Rozi Plain and the Delgados’ Emma Pollock.

Infused with the restive spirit of Warm Digits and their guests, these inspirations are taken as a call to arms rather than an academic panel discussion. “Fools Tomorrow” uses the language of scientific revolutions and a spiral-eyed swirl of electro shoegaze to show how being able to accept you’re wrong can change your life, while “Replication” takes the ever-circling influence of Steve Reich and cult synth-composers like Laurie Spiegel to create a luminescent sparkling throb that’s impossible to resist. The Delgados’ Emma Pollock lends her vocals to "The View From Nowhere" which concerns two people working out their closeness and distance. It could be about any relationship, but the title is a reference to the way psychoanalysts historically kept themselves a "blank screen" with their patients, as if they could take a "view from nowhere" and be wholly objective in what they saw. “Feel the Panic” sees wigout psych-merchants The Lovely Eggs take advantage of Warm Digits’ relentless momentum to enthusiastically rail against pigeonholing and outmoded systems of authority with an unruly air-punching chorus. The song was inspired by the "being sane in insane places" experiment, which argued that the power wielded by psychiatrists' diagnoses was dangerously capricious, and that in some instances the treatment induced precisely the psychic distress they sought to classify.

"Shake The Wheels Off" is about the moment when those subjugated by archaic systems of control take their power back: in this instance, the way research on transport safety took the male body as the norm, drastically increasing the risk that women would get injured in a car crash. The Orielles' roll-call of female engineering heroes heralds the moment when the balance starts to be redressed. Meanwhile Rozi Plain gently turns insecurity on its head over a pulsating Eurobeat-meets-MBV backing to make “Everyone Nervous” almost feel like a valedictory slogan. Celebrate Your Uncertainty!

In an increasingly off-kilter world where reality shifts daily, truth is merely what we decide it to be, and an avalanche of possible identities overwhelms us with possibility, it can feel like our lives are careering towards chaos down a one-way street. The question is: do we “Feel The Panic” or “Shake The Wheels Off”? With its glorious defiance and heart-bursting grooves, “Flight of Ideas” calls to our past experience for answers, and dares us to listen.

Warm Digits are Andrew Hodson and Steve Jefferis from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Their previous album for Memphis Industries, "Wireless World", featured guest vocals from Field Music and Sarah Cracknell, amongst others, garnered plaudits from BBC 6Music including an "Album of the Day" slot and playlists for “End Times” “Growth of Raindrops”, and boosted them on to the festival bills of Bluedot, Green Man and Festival No.6 amongst others.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Exclusive mirror-board sleeve
• Exclusive 7” featuring two brand new non-album tracks
• Orange vinyl
• Signed postcard
• Limited to 300

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive 180g orange vinyl.

Friday Forever is the second album from multi-artist project Everything Is Recorded, helmed by producer artist Richard Russell. This follows the critically acclaimed and Mercury Music Prize nominated debut of 2018, Everything Is Recorded by Richard Russell. Friday Forever takes on a multi-lensed perspective of a classic night out, followed closely by the sobering reflections of the next morning. The album features an array of new collaborators – in British rappers Aitch, Flohio and Berwyn, Irish singer songwriters Maria Somerville and Kean Kavanagh, the inimitable voices of A.K. Paul, James Massiah, and returning vocalist Infinite Coles – as well as established names like Ghostface Killah and Penny Rimbaud.

Over the past decade or so, Chris Forsyth has produced a series of perennially year-end list haunting studio albums of expansive art-rock, from 2013’s Solar Motel to 2019’s All Time Present , in the process becoming one of the leading lights of the so-called “indie jam” scene, musicians combining omnivorous influences with post-Dead sprawl. These critically lauded albums have established Forsyth as one of today’s most unique and acclaimed guitar player/composers - a forward thinking classicist synthesizing cinematic expansiveness with a pithy lyricism and rhythmic directness that makes even his 20-minute workouts feel as clear, direct, and memorable as a 4-minute song.

Pitchfork has called his music “a near-perfect balance between 70s rock tradition and present day experimentation,” NPR Music named Forsyth “one of rock’s most lyrical guitar improvisors,” and the New York Times calls him “a scrappy and mystical historian… His music humanizes the element of control in rock classicism (and) turns it into a woolly but disciplined ritual.” But the studio records are just the tip of the iceberg. You see, in a live setting Forsyth’s music is never really finished. He hasn’t had a fixed band in years and plays with a rotating cast of characters. Regulars in Forsyth’s bands have included bassists Doug McCombs (Tortoise) and Peter Kerlin (Sunwatchers), and drummer Ryan Jewell (Ryley Walker, too many others to mention), among others - basically, whoever is available for the given gig or tour.

These are not groups that rehearse, exactly. Operating more like a jazz band, Forsyth and his players treat the songs as frameworks that remain identifieable but morph based on who’s playing them, like weather to a landscape. Embracing this flux has become a cornerstone of Forsyth’s live sets, rendering every performance special and thereby catching the attention of tapers from his home base in Philly to New York City, Chicago, and Minneapolis. In fact, most of his live performances over the last few years are recorded and posted on the Live Music Archive site. But the taper recordings, though many are high quality and full of character, are not professionally recorded and mixed multi-tracks.

Which brings us to Peoples Motel Band , the new live LP culled from a set that Forsyth played with NY-based group Garcia Peoples as his band, and is self-releasing on his own Algorithm Free label in a limited pressing of 500 copies. Recorded September 14, 2019 before a packed and enthusiastic hometown crowd at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia, Peoples Motel Band catches Forsyth and Garcia Peoples (plus ubiquitous drummer Ryan Jewell) re-imagining songs from Forsyth’s last couple studio albums with improvisatory flair.

Forsyth and Garcia Peoples played a number of 2019 shows together, beginning with a semi-legendary jam set at Nublu in NYC in March, through a couple dates on Forsyth’s month-long weekly residency at Nublu in September and concluding with a five-date tour of the Northeast in December. The chemistry between the players is tangible. As is often the case with Forsyth shows, the gloves come off quickly and the players attack the material - much of it so well-manicured and cleanly produced in the studio - like a bunch of racoons let loose in a Philadelphia pretzel factory.

Recorded and mixed with clarity by Forsyth’s longtime studio collaborator, engineer/producer Jeff Zeigler, the record puts the listener right in the sweaty club, highlighted by an incredible side-long take of the chooglin’ title track from 2017’s Dreaming in The Non-Dream LP (note multiple climaxes eliciting wild shouts and ecstatic screams from the assembled). This is not the new Chris Forsyth album, exactly, but then again, it kinda is because whenever he sits down to play, something new comes out.

Few projects at the forefront of contemporary art truly push visceral sonic boundaries in the way that Yves Tumor does. With an arc that impartially sits between psych-rock and modern pop, comparisons only serve as limitations intended to define that which cannot be. Yves Tumor melds restraint and chaos; diluting reality by giving meaning to the abstract and allowing for dissonance to be seen and heard as harmony.

Heaven To A Tortured Mind - written and composed by Yves Tumor and produced by Yves Tumor and Justin Raisen (Sky Ferreira, Ariel Pink, Charli XCX) - marks the fourth official full-length release from Yves Tumor and the follow-up to 2018's critically acclaimed and era-defining Warp release, Safe In The Hands Of Love. Breakout singles "Noid", "Licking An Orchid" and "Lifetime" shifted critical perception into media such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, the Fader, NPR and more awarding the album as one of the best releases of the year.

Yves Tumor has steered the project into a whole new realm with Heaven To A Tortured Mind, piercing through contradiction, redefining expression through song, and catapulting Yves Tumor into the next phase of illusion and evolution. Heaven To A Tortured Mind finds its place in music history as a collection of anthems for a generation.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Silver vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

It is a cliché to describe music as a trip or an ocean or whatever, so this album, Tecwaa’s album “Beyond the Altai” released on Höga Nord Rekords, will in part be described as a snowman: the snowman has its characteristic familiar shape. He is cold yet there is something warm and cuddly about him, something that makes you feel happy and safe.

The A side on the album goes from that warm/cold cosy feeling but elements of destruction like melodies in minor keys slowly transforms the album to become only cold and not so cosy - the snow turns grey and the snowman’s smiling mouth becomes a twisted grin. Its contours disappears and the shape dissolves as the snow melts and floats out on the ground beneath its body. As the album develops, the sound gets harder and darker and the York based DJ moves closer to his roots in electro and Roland-machine knob-turning.

In some ways, “Beyond the Altai” is a call from the eighties and nineties dancefloors like in the tracks “Back To The Atomic Ether” and “10 Swords” on the B-side but all melts together in Tecwaa’s music to create his own obstinate and loose sound!

After more than five years, Purity Ring have returned to announce their third album, entirely produced and recorded by the duo of Megan James and Corin Roddick. Womb chronicles a quest for comfort, the search for a resting place in a world where so much is beyond our control. The striking vulnerability of “ruby insides” - “If I could, I would let you see through me” - charts a course that’s both intensely personal and deeply connected to those close to us, our kin whether by nature or nurture. As the ground shifts beneath their feet, Womb’s characters help one another face death, despair, and world-altering discovery with resilience and grace. For all the terrain it encompasses, Womb’s quest culminates in “stardew”, a glittering, transcendent invitation to “just be where you are” - to experience the kind of powerful peace that can only be found by truly coming home.

Womb follows Purity Ring’s 2012 internationally-acclaimed and highly influential debut Shrines and 2015’s another eternity. On another eternity, The New York Times praised the songs as “only a few steps removed from radio hits by singers like Ariana Grande and Ellie Goulding” while Rolling Stone called them “lustrous synth pop plus cavernous hip hop” and The New Yorker lauded the duo for “creat[ing] electro-pop that is as warm and human as it is cold and alien, an intoxicating combination that feels boldly futuristic.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive opaque red vinyl.

‘Rock Sutra’ is the new space rock album from Sun Araw. ‘Roomboe’, the first track, illustrates this process. Experience is elastic. Humans alive right now tend to think there is some sort of ‘baseline’ experience of a thing, a room, a person, a feeling, some version we all agree on. This isn't true at all: experience is completely dependent on the quality of attention of the experiencer. There is a granularity to experience that, when tuned up, reveals deeper and deeper space inside of things. When you zoom in (by pure observation: by not-articulating, not-thinking), you create ‘room’, you make space. Just like that. For instance, ‘Roomboe’ has an extremely limited tonal framework; about 9 notes for the main guitar melody. As the guitar pushes against these melodic limitations with continually renewed attention and energy, it begins to create space around itself. And all of the sudden (at about 4:57), out of this constriction, space balloons up from everywhere simultaneously. ‘Roomboe’ is a clue about how to open a portal outwards into free space.

‘78 Sutra’ is about orbital motion. ‘Catalina’ is about taking a walk. ‘Arrambe’ is about a peculiar feeling you can get when you zoom in far enough. The music is offered in a spirit of generosity and adventure; it doesn’t stay put and it keeps zooming in to reveal more and more. The album was recorded live-to-midi with the band and this is the first Sun Araw album recorded like that. That band is Jon Leland on drums and percussion and Marc Riordan on synthesizers and Cameron Stallones on synthesizers and guitar and vocals.

‘If You’re Dreaming’ was tracked with producer Sam Evian in his home studio in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York. Where the first album had been a rush of inspired songwriting followed by a drawn-out process of arrangement and mixing, Burch and Evian worked with self-imposed time limitations to establish a sharper focus and get to the core of the new songs. The work was swift but somehow more relaxed, locking into a groove of tracking the basic elements and then expanding on the arrangements with overdubs and auxiliary instrumentation. The end goal was to present not just an assortment of new songs but craft an album that moved dynamically through an interconnected emotional arc.

With recurring themes of isolation, weariness and longing, these songs deliver that emotional arc with a delicate but uncompromising execution. Burch’s intrinsically catchy songwriting dials down the urgency of her debut a notch, taking a turn towards airy, jazz-voiced chords, floating reverb and an expansion of the sonic palate with unexpected instrumentation. The soft-rock bass grooves and understated saxophone lines of ‘Not So Bad’ push an impressive pop structure into exciting new territory and the sweetly melancholic Tell Me What’s True centres around muted electric piano, its languid but metered vibe recalling the gentler side of Carole King.

The nuance of arrangements that could sometimes get buried on debut ‘Quit The Curse’ rises to the surface on patient, opulent tunes like ‘Every Feeling’ and in the twelve-string guitar hooks of ‘Party’s Over’. The album drifts dreamily as much as it hones in with a sharper clarity on some of Burch’s most personal songs. Even at its most introverted, ‘If You’re Dreaming’ is always warm and present. It’s a deliberately drawn chapter of Burch’s work, trading in the wild-eyed and sometimes neurotic party hopping of ‘Quit The Curse’ for a more solitary walk after midnight. Daring and clear- headed, these songs cut deeper in their subtleties. ‘If You’re Dreaming’ moves with intention, taking its time revealing new layers of sophistication and growth in Burch’s always charming songcraft

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Purple vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

The three EPs will be available as one full length release titled All Encores featuring 80 minutes of music to follow his masterful 2018 album All Melody.

Whilst Encores 1 focused on an acoustic pallet of sounds with solo piano and harmonium at the core, and Encores 2 explored more ambient landscapes, now Encores 3 sees Nils expand on the percussive and electronic elements in his work.

“The idea behind All Encores is one we had from before All Melody; to separate releases each with their own distinct musical style and theme, perhaps even as a triple album. But All Melody became larger than itself and took over any initial concepts. I think the idea of All Encores is like musical islands that compliment All Melody.”

Moulded during All Melody but refined by his live performances, All Encores is testament to Nils’ exceptional ability to craft his art on stage. Artificially Intelligent which showcases his ‘mad professor’ organ, and All Armed which has been a live favourite for some time, appearing on set lists since 2015, are now available to hear on record for the very first time. The final track of Encores 3, as well as the whole series, Amirador, perhaps aptly nods to the Spanish word for ‘lookout’ and hints at what’s to come.

FORMAT INFORMATION

3xLtd LP Info: In celebration of the fifth Piano Day, Nils Frahm releases his acclaimed 'All Encores' album on 3LP vinyl.

Boston's Dana Kelley aka Callisto is a man whose music has long been the subject of much deserved adulation. A student of the deep and soulful, an explorer of the melodic and galactic, and an artist who manages to capture imaginations with his supremely crafted sonics. He is a much missed artist, someone who departed the physical too early, but the body of work he left behind has spoken to generations of listeners, DJ's and fans in equal measure.

This is the third and final instalment of 3 compilations focused on Callisto's golden period of productions for the legendary Chicago label Guidance Recordings. As with the other volumes that preceded it, it's an outright and joyous celebration of his music, his vision and the forward looking nature of his music that is still intact today. It's hard to think of someone with a more unique style and with a truer idea of their own sound-world. Callisto takes us deep inside, into other worlds with his own individualistic take on house, techno, ambient and even jungle and D&B.

These compilations celebrate one of the most idiosyncratic artists from the second wave of US house music producers, a truly essential body of work presented here respectfully, sourced from all audio sources courtesy of Above Board Projects, Guidance Recordings and Dana's family. Mastered by Curved, London and with special artwork by Atelier Superplus featuring a never before seen image of Dana from his family's photo albums.

Within A Western Circular lies an exciting and varied crew of guest artists including MF DOOM, Samuel T. Herring (Future Islands), Sudan Archives, and Laura Groves, all contributing vocals to his rich, dexterous compositions. These collaborations are the by-product of several years of writing and producing. Recently, he’s appeared extensively on the debut albums by Sudan Archives (writing the lead single, 'Confessions', no less) and Nilüfer Yanya (contributing seven songs), alongside work with Celeste, and another writer and production credit on Jessie Ware’s Devotion.

An album that’s been in the works for the past half-decade, A Western Circular is a bold, reflective piece that directly relates to Archer’s personal experiences of life and death, centered on one particular week where they breathed with equal intensity. The record’s themes of greed, love and loyalty all relate back to that specific time. Inspired by author John Fante, A Western Circular is a spiritual voyage through life’s pushing and pulling: finding beauty in the rough, sadness in the bright. Ostensibly, it’s a poignant reflection on the duality of the human condition.

On the record, Archer has uncovered new depths and forged an invigorating singular sound - supple and multi-layered, honouring his acoustic heritage and influence, while building a sonic universe that commands contemporary references to everything from Frank Zappa to Yasuaki Shimuzu, Robert Wyatt to Arthur Russell.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive clear vinyl.

Deluxe LP Info: Album on clear vinyl, comes with white label 12” of Last Sniff featuring MF Doom on black vinyl.

Composer, radio dramatist and performance artist Frieder Butzmann began exploring experimental music in the late 1960s. One of the pioneers of German industrial music and a member of the Geniale Dilettanten movement, Butzmann has collaborated with artists such as Genesis P-Orridge, Blixa Bargeld, and Santrra Oxyd, as well as releasing numerous solo works. Frieder Butzmann joined forces with author and artist Thomas Kapielski in the early 1980s. Most of their compositions are minimalist tracks interspersed with everyday noises and fragments of speech, as can be heard on their WAR PUR WAR album, first released on Zensor in 1987. This utterly unique work is an idiosyncratic mix of eccentric electro-pop and bizarre sonic collages and has gone on to become a sought-after collector's item. Now lovingly remastered, with refreshed artwork and two bonus tracks, WAR PUR WAR is being reissued on LP and CD on Bureau B, complete with previously unpublished photos and liner notes by Frieder Butzmann. 

On The Corner deliver the long-awaited repress of sold out album Super Liminal, the debut LP by Afrolatin music collective Penya. It is released alongside their new EP ‘Penya Safari’ in collaboration with legendary gogo musician Msafiri Zawose. 'Super Liminal' is an otherworldly mix of modern, afro-motorik rhythms, chants and improvised congotronics. ‘Liminal’ – an in-between state – references the transitional process the four-piece band entered during a series of self-produced recording sessions held at Penya's multi-instrumentalist Magnus P.I's home studio between March 2016 and May 2017. Penya's percussive and futuristic Afro-Latin sound also owes its genesis to the concept of ‘liminality’: the threshold of disorientation occurring during ritual practices.

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: Repress.

Euros Childs returns with his fifteenth album Gingerbread House Explosion released on his own label National Elf. Recorded by Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) at Gus' Dungeon II studios Cardiff, it features Stuart Kidd (Kidd, The Wellgreen, Dr Cosmo's Tape Lab) on drums and Stephen Black on saxophone, clarinet and guitars.

Following last year's all instrumental Olion, Gingerbread House Explosion sees Euros singing once more and returning to the more familiar melodic pop songwriting that he is perhaps best known for. It's an album brimming with memorable hooks and choruses, with songs tackling subjects such as Richard Branson acquiring the moon ( Virgin Moon) somebody's bits falling off in the bath ( Bits of me (Falling off) a couple bonding over a love of bombs ( Cuddle Up to the Bomb ) a man developing an unhealthy obsession with someone else's bins( Bin Night )and screwing things up (Screw It Up ).

Gingerbread House Explosion is an album that will make you laugh, cry and tap your toes - possibly all at the same time. 

Five years after Tangier Sessions, Sir Richard Bishop, we presume, is back from his travels around the world. With Oneiric Formulary, he’s dug deeper into his bag of extra-musical gestures from the eternal and unknowable, along with a few sounds we might recognize, all transmuted for our mortal ears’ enjoyment. The last couple of Sir Richard Bishop releases on Drag City were genre exercises of sorts — The Freak of Araby explored the musical legacy of late Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid while Tangier Sessions explored the sound of an obscure 19th century guitar that Rick had acquired from a mysterious Swiss luthier.

The title Oneiric Formulary, may sit contrarily on the tongue — but we may refer to it as representing “a collection of dream states” — which means we like it! With such a lofty goal in mind and at his fingertips, Sir Rick returns to the approach of his DC debut, Polytheistic Fragments — a different sound, a different instrument, for nearly every track, drawing from the music of all nations, including and especially that infamous republic with only one person on the census roll (initials SRB). It’s got mad variety, the kind you don’t see much of anymore — an Ed Sullivan kind of evening out, with some spinning plates, dancing mice, and of course, an appearance from Zippy the Chimp.

What it means is that when you drop the needle/raise the laser/press the head to tape/or do whatever happens when you stream it, you’ve got sounds that don’t sound at first like guitars — because they’re not! Then you’ve got sounds that sound initially like guitars — because they are! Sir Richard found joy in not only finding unlikely sounds, but also writing a fake jingle, soundtracking an unreleased film, reflecting on Southern origins, going concrète (Beatles-style!), using computers (Sir Rick, no!), and accidentally juxtaposing Frippian electric guitar drone against the grit of ol’ school acoustic guitar while thinking of sci-fi, as well as revisiting (t)rusty old forms such as Americana, classical, gypsy and raga. It’s all trotted out to phantasmic effect, as it brings to us with the freshness, the roar of the old crowd as they see, smell and hear the greatest show on earth. What a night! Thank you, Sir Richard Bishop.

CMON is the new recording project of Josh da Costa and Jamen Whitelock. Even as they established themselves as integral members of New York’s DIY scene with their band Regal Degal, da Costa and Whitelock were acutely aware of how closed off they had become. As Regal Degal mounted its final tour, with clubs pushing their set times earlier and earlier to make space for the DJs who followed da Costa and Whitelock took notes. “We were definitely getting swept further from where we wanted to be and the excitement we wanted to portray,” Whitelock says. “There’s such joy in going out and dancing that was completely missing in a lot of shows, especially in New York. Nobody wants to move, everyone’s too self-conscious. But when you go to the club, everyone’s in it—you just want to dance, and that’s all that matters.”

The community potential and the promise of physical liberation that came with dance music spoke loudly to both da Costa and Whitelock, and following the dissolution of Regal Degal, da Costa set up a new life for himself in Los Angeles—a steady relationship, a pet bird, a car —and got down to work with a copy of Ableton. Back in New York, his head spun by DJ Rashad, Whitelock was learning to program, too. They kept their line of communication open, and eventually Whitelock started making the cross-country trek to work and record with his old bandmate. They mined the sound they established with Regal Degal, applying their old band’s heavy atmospherics and melancholy soul to four-on-the-floor rhythm grids and smoothed-out guitar lines, taking production cues from EBM and AOR in equal measure. If Confusing Mix of Nations is a tour of anything, though, it’s not countries so much as psychic spaces.

Each of its ten tracks feels like a postcard from an aesthetic territory worth returning to. Opener “Coo” begins with locked-in grooves reminiscent of Drugdealer (for whom da Costa drums) or Mild High Club, until it suddenly gives itself over to a rhythm that’s been chattering away in the back of the track. As da Costa and Whitelock follow its hints, “Coo” suddenly inverts its priorities and sounds like Miami bass all leaned out for Halloween, then calmly returns to the opening groove, the only proof of the excursion an excess of delay on da Costa’s vocal. “Peter Pan” struts like it’s on its way to meet side two of Sandinista! in its verses, then glows with New Romantic shine in the chorus. The pop hooks on “Good to Know” feel like they could set off a festival crowd, but they’re offset by a strange hollow ache at the song’s center—a weird sadness that makes you feel a little bad for dancing to it.

Critically acclaimed indie rock mainstays Born Ruffians return with their sixth studio album, Juice, which finds the band moving into a more confident and polished direction, bringing to mind 1970s songwriting prowess with layered, and mature production sensibilities. The album was produced by Graham Walsh, known for his work with Alvvays, !!! (Chk Chk Chk), and Holy Fuck.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Yellow vinyl.

The full-length debut from Ellis, Born Again takes place in spaces both intimate and vast, ordinary and near-mythic: warm beds and lonely church pews, restless cities and desolate forests and the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Produced by Jake Aron (Snail Mail, Solange, Grizzly Bear) and recorded partly at Aron’s Brooklyn studio, Born Again arrives as the follow-up to Ellis’s debut EP The Fuzz—a self-released, self-produced effort that promptly led to a deal with Fat Possum Records. In a departure from the viscerally charged dream-pop of The Fuzz, Born Again unfolds with a mesmerizing subtlety, gracefully spotlighting Ellis’s unhurried melodies, starkly confessional lyrics, and the luminous vocal work she’s shown in opening for artists like Soccer Mommy and Alvvays.

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

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

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

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

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP Info: Limited to 500 copies only.

Following the 2018 release of a 12" preview sampler, BBE Music is excited to present the album 'A Taste of Chicago', a compilation of classic house edits by Jamie 3:26. Hailing from Beverly on the South Side of Chicago, Jamie 3:26 is an artist driven by a deep desire to get people moving in the dance. A Chi-Town vibe is always the focus for the master selector and producer who's capable of lighting up dance-floors around the world and that ethos shines through on this compilation, featuring a collection of tracks giving listeners a true insight into the sound, culture and style of the Windy City. The compilation sees classic tracks by the likes of Chip E, Quest and more get a serious Jamie 3:26 twist, with edits that not only capture the best of celebrated eras gone by, but point to the future too. Get ready for a unique and timeless journey into Chicago's famous house music scene, courtesy of one of the city's key players.

“This compilation represents the true unspoken sound of my city. While the House scene was blossoming into what would be a globally recognized phenomenon, we had this whole hidden movement going on. These personal edits that I played back then represent magical moments in time that are still being created in many of my sets today. A huge thank you to my music brothers Marshall Jefferson, Braxton Holmes, Tone B. Nimble, Chip E, Pap Spencer, Doc Brucio, Carl Bias for trusting my ears with your creations.” - Jamie 3:26

‘I’m learning how to say goodbye / to let you go and face the tide / to wrap my feelings in a song,’ sings Dana Gavanski on the title track of her debut LP, Yesterday Is Gone. To wrap her feelings in a song: this is the task Dana has dedicated herself to with this record. It’s a goal common to many songwriters, but few approach it with such aplomb. By turns break-up album, project of curiosity, and, as Dana puts it, ‘a reckoning with myself’, Yesterday Is Gone is her attempt to ‘learn to say what I feel and feel what I say’: an album of longing and devotion to longing, and of the uncertainty that arises from learning about oneself, of pushing boundaries, falling hard, and getting back up.

Born in Vancouver to a Serbian family, Dana has always harboured a desire to sing. In her final year of university in Montreal, she picked up the guitar left by her ex-partner and decided to re-learn. But with a father in film and a painter mother, other art-forms clamoured for her attention. She spent a summer as her producer father’s assistant in the Laurentians, in a derelict hotel-turned-office that looked like something out of The Shining. The long days behind a computer cemented her desire to make music, ‘because it was so impossible to play that I needed to, in order to feel like it was real.’ The income she saved that summer funded a year of writing religiously, leading to EP Spring Demos in September 2017, which Dana describes as ‘whatever was coming out of me. A flood.’

Following Spring Demos, Yesterday Is Gone reflects Dana’s aim ‘to make something bigger, more thought through’. Steeped in determination and uncertainty in equal measure – ‘I just wanted to write a good song’ – the album took shape after she returned from a writing residency in Banff, Alberta. She left the residency resolved not to worry about her songs being ‘too obvious’. She’d begun to learn the art of empty time, of being alone with her emotions, losing herself in a landscape. She thought of Vashti Bunyan, riding for hours and writing, writing, writing. She considered how she might use writing to make sense of her life after the tumults of a break-up and a new city. Adrift in Toronto, Dana struggled to feel at home and connected to people, but the solitude also allowed her to ground herself in writing. She kept office-style hours at her bedroom desk every day until she started to understand the writing process, to see that ‘transforming a burning desire into something clear and tangible is a vulnerable and delicate act. You have to be able to let things happen, to accept losing control.’

The record is a co-production between Dana, Toronto-based musician Sam Gleason, and Mike Lindsay of Tunng and LUMP. While Sam helped Dana bring out the tunes, Mike’s input marked ‘the beginning of developing a sound that was closer to what I had in my head’. Though excited by the other elements of a song introduced during production, Dana and Mike were keen on ‘finding essential things, not overblowing, keeping things bare and letting the elements speak for themselves’. Not that the sheer variety of sounds and instruments didn’t overwhelm. ‘But you have that feeling,’ Dana says, ‘then you just pick up an instrument. At the base, you do know what you want. It’s about how to chip away at what you don’t want.’

The album shapeshifted as it passed through the hands of Dana, Sam, and Mike, taking on different tastes, feelings, and visions. When Dana performed the songs with a band, they found new form again. She was intrigued by performers like David Bowie and Aldous Harding, who inhabit different personalities on stage, physically tuning themselves to their music. ‘Watching these kinds of performances,’ Dana says, ‘I feel my body longing to express myself in exaggerations … to leave behind self-consciousness and become this energy.’ But a three-month trip to Serbia in autumn 2018 really pushed performance to the forefront of Dana’s mind. She took singing lessons to learn how to sing with the resonance that defines traditional Serbian song. Stirred by the bombast of fifties, sixties, and seventies music, including the high-energy kafana, or café music, as rooted in expressive pouts as it is vocal resonance, the trip incited a yearning to completely inhabit herself on stage. ‘I often feel we’re all just these controlled bodies,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I just want to make a snarl with my lip and keep it there.’

Stood on a crowded train last spring, Dana sang the Macedonian song Jano Mome to an audience of cheery Scottish ladies. The moment, brief but beautiful, lays bare Dana’s craving for live spontaneity. But it also reflects her injection of stylish drama and vivid emotion into the folk landscape that inspires her, from contemporary singers H Hawkline and Julia Holter, to stalwarts Fairport Convention, Anne Briggs, Connie Converse, and Judee Sill. Expressive urges run all through Yesterday Is Gone. Moments of beguilement splinter a backdrop of tenderly picked guitar, bass, synth, and poppier elements, which commune to produce her own kind of wall of sound. Each component is meticulously placed, yielding a deeply sincere response to the chaos of human emotion. ‘Often we have to go a little far in one direction to learn something about ourselves,’ Dana says. The months of solitary writing and self-doubt testify to this, but they’ve led to Yesterday Is Gone: an optimistic, steely-eyed gaze into the future.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive orange vinyl.

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.

The Orb (Alex Paterson and Michael Rendall) return with a new album that features Youth (Killing Joke), Steve Hillage (Gong, System 7), Roger Eno (co-creator of the Apollo album with Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois) & Jah Wobble (PiL, Primal Scream Orb, Invaders of the Heart). Really The Orb should need no introduction by now, but in essence they’re a rotating cast of members helmed by Paterson that began in 1988 and still thrives to this day. They were there since UK acid house day one, providing a unique ambient take on the musical milieu and soon rising to chart-topping, huge-venue-headlining prominence. They’ve released 19 albums plus EPs, singles, compilations and live recordings, influencing countless other musicians along the way.

2020 sees the thirtieth anniversary of the album that launched the solo career of sometime Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster. Upon its release ‘Danger In The Past’ met with universal acclaim from critics, even drawing comparison with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ in some quarters. To mark this milestone, Needle Mythology will be reissuing expanded versions of both Danger In The Past and its 1992 successor ‘Calling From A Country Phone’. The re-release of these albums comes on the back of an incredible 2019 for Forster, in which he released an acclaimed studio album Inferno and received unanimous five star reviews for G Is For Go-Betweens Vol. 2, the second in a trilogy of box-sets gathering Go-Betweens studio albums and previously unreleased live recordings and outtakes. Forster himself has been fully involved on this expanded reissue contributing new liner notes and newly unearthed photographs. For Danger In The Past, Robert recorded in Berlin with an illustrious ensemble that included Bad Seeds alumni Mick Harvey (producer, multi-instrumentalist), Hugo Race (guitar) and Thomas Wydler (drums). BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe, described the record as "a beautiful, confident solo debut.” Of these new remasters, Needle Mythology co-founder Pete Paphides says, “The remastering (from Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios) has dramatically revealed a depth and physicality to these recordings that casts new light on Robert’s intentions for these records. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: LP + bonus 7".

2020 sees the thirtieth anniversary of the album that launched the solo career of sometime Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster. Upon its release ‘Danger In The Past’ met with universal acclaim from critics, even drawing comparison with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ in some quarters. To mark this milestone, Needle Mythology will be reissuing expanded versions of both Danger In The Past and its 1992 successor ‘Calling From A Country Phone’. The re-release of these albums comes on the back of an incredible 2019 for Forster, in which he released an acclaimed studio album Inferno and received unanimous five star reviews for G Is For Go-Betweens Vol. 2, the second in a trilogy of box-sets gathering Go-Betweens studio albums and previously unreleased live recordings and outtakes. Forster himself has been fully involved on this expanded reissue contributing new liner notes and newly unearthed photographs. For Danger In The Past, Robert recorded in Berlin with an illustrious ensemble that included Bad Seeds alumni Mick Harvey (producer, multi-instrumentalist), Hugo Race (guitar) and Thomas Wydler (drums). BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe, described the record as "a beautiful, confident solo debut.” Of these new remasters, Needle Mythology co-founder Pete Paphides says, “The remastering (from Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios) has dramatically revealed a depth and physicality to these recordings that casts new light on Robert’s intentions for these records. 

What do we hold on to from our past? What must we let go of to truly move forward? Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield spent much of 2018 reckoning with these questions and revisiting her roots for answers. The result is Saint Cloud, an intimate journey through the places she’s been, filled with the people she’s loved.

Written immediately in the period following her decision to get sober, the album is an unflinching self-examination. This raw, exposed narrative terrain is aided by a shift in sonic arrangements as well. While her last two records featured the kind of big guitars, well-honed noise, and battering sounds that characterized her Philadelphia scene and strongly influenced a burgeoning new class of singer-songwriters, Saint Cloud strips back those layers to create space for Crutchfield’s voice and lyrics. The result is a classic Americana sound with modern touches befitting an artist who has emerged as one of the signature storytellers of her time. Many of the narratives on Saint Cloud concern addiction and the havoc it wreaks on ourselves and our loved ones, as Crutchfield comes to a deeper understanding of love not only for those around her but for herself. This coalesces most clearly on “Fire,” which she says was literally written in transit, during a drive over the Mississippi River into West Memphis, and serves as a love song to herself, a paean to moving past shame into a place of unconditional self-acceptance.

Over the course of Saint Cloud, which was recorded the summer of 2019 and produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver), Crutchfield peels back the distortion of electric guitars to create a wider sonic palette than on any previous Waxahatchee album. It is a record filled with nods to classic country, folk-inspired tones, and distinctly modern touches. To bolster her vision, Crutchfield enlisted Bobby Colombo and Bill Lennox, both of the Detroit band Bonny Doon, to serve as backing band on the record, along with Josh Kaufman (Hiss Golden Messenger, Bon Iver) on guitar and keyboards and Nick Kinsey (Kevin Morby) on drums and percussion. Saint Cloud marks the beginning of a journey for Crutchfield, one that sees her leaving behind past vices and the comfortable environs of her Philadelphia scene to head south in search of something new. If on her previous work Crutchfield was out in the storm, she’s now firmly in the eye of it, taking stock of her past with a clear perspective and gathering the strength to carry onward.

For the fifth entry in our Collector`s Series we enlist the skills of Japan-based musical connoisseurs, Ken Hidaka, Max Essa, and Dr. Rob. Their compilation Oto No Wa sets out to map the evolution of chilled Japanese sounds across 3 decades. Collecting 14 tracks, produced by a wide range of artists. From ambient pioneers to dance-floor veterans. Roping in 9-piece reggae band, Little Tempo, percussionist Kazuya Kotani, and organic, psychedelic collective, Olololop.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the era when “environmental music” became prevalent, there`s Yoshio Ojima`s cool computer-generated Sealed. The compilation also includes later work by his contemporaries Takashi Kokubo, and Yoshiaki Ochi. Theirs are compositions designed for art galleries and museum installations. “BGM” built from emerging technology, and / or counterpoint tapped out expertly on sticks and stones. The 90s give us the seminal electronics of Susumu Yokota, and the solar-flare strut of Scha Dara Parr - Japan’s answer to The Beastie Boys. Here, remixed by the legendary Major Force. Moving into the 21st century we have the post-house productions of Flower Records. Kentaro Takizawa`s oceanic Gradual Life, and Little Big Bee`s colourful coral reef-diving Scuba. Fellow traveller, Kaoru Inoue`s “Kyushu kosmische”. Representing the next decade are Flower Records` current rising stars, Coastlines, who calmly combine classic fusion, library music, and gentle nova bossa nova rhythms. Alongside them are the sun-baked electro-acoustics of Karel Arbus & Eiji Takamatsu, plus Chillax` previously unreleased epic analog / modular jam.

All of these selections are the result of some serious “digging” but more importantly they represent physical connections made during Ken`s 20-plus-year career in the “Biz”, Max` decade of DJing all over Japan. Music made by folks interviewed by Rob at the websites, Test Pressing and Ban Ban Ton Ton. Friendships forged at Lone Star - the trio’s long-running party, which takes place every month at Bar Bonobo in Harajuku.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: MFD look to Japan for the latest instalment of their imperious Collectors series, inviting Ken Hidaka, Max Essa and Dr Rob to pick out some personal highlights from the late eighties to the late teens. Across thirteen tracks you'll hear environmental ambience, sophisticated house, low slung fun and gentle jazz fusion, all perfectly suited to the Balearic mindframe. Maximum respect to Ken, Max and Rob, and to Music For Dreams for keeping these comps coming!

DJ-Kicks starts off its 25th year with a selector who’s been doing just that for even longer than we’ve been going. A true giant of the underground dance world, we proudly present the original ‘Jazz Potato’ himself: Mr. Scruff!  His 31-track masterclass features one new and exclusive track and lands 27th March 2020. Spanning the decades like a funky timelord for our special mix, Scruff brings some of the world’s best analogue and digital musicians together in a head-spinning melange of sinuous groove – ably blending sometimes disparate elements into an aurally nourishing whole - courtesy of two of the safest DJ hands you’ll ever have the pleasure to be in.

Aporia is a New Age album from Sufjan Stevens and his step-father and record label co-owner, Lowell Brams. In the spirit of the New Age composers who sanded off the edges of their synths’ sawtooth waves, Aporia approximates a rich soundtrack from an imagined sci-fi epic brimming with moody, hooky, gauzy synthesizer soundscapes. The album may suggest the progeny of a John Carpenter, Wendy Carlos, and Mike Oldfield marriage, but it stands apart from these touchstones and generates a meditative universe all its own. This is no mere curio in the Sufjan Stevens catalog - but a fully realized collaborative musical piece.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Yellow vinyl.

Little Dragon—the pioneering Swedish four-piece fronted by enigmatic vocalist Yukimi Nagano, with multi-instrumentalists Håkan Wirenstarnd and Fredrik Wallin on keyboards and bass respectively and Erik Bodin on drums and percussion—return with their sixth studio album, “New Me, Same Us”.

For a band who are proudly left-of-centre and fiercely protective of doing things on their own terms, they have achieved no shortage of mainstream recognition. Grammy nominated for 2014’s “Nabuma Rubberband”, Little Dragon have long been seen as one of the most sought-after groups to work with. Chalking up an enviable list of collaborators throughout the years, working with equally groundbreaking artists like BADBADNOTGOOD, Gorillaz, SBTRKT, Flying Lotus, Flume, Kaytranada, Big Boi (who was first put on to the band via fellow Outkast member André 3000), De La Soul, DJ Shadow, Tinashe, Mac Miller, Future, Raphael Saadiq, Faith Evans and more. Their hugely popular and highly regarded live performances have spawned a decade-spanning career which has seen them recently co-headline a show with Flying Lotus at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl and perform at some of the world’s most revered festivals such as Coachella, Glastonbury, Bestival, Lollapalooza, Melt, Dour, Sonar and Tyler, The Creator’s ‘Camp Flog Gnaw’.

Having played together since their school days in Gothenburg—where they’d meet up after class to jam and listen to records by artists like A Tribe Called Quest and Alice Coltrane —“New Me, Same Us” is the sound of a band going back to basics and falling back in love with their instruments: drums, bass, keyboards, harp, guitar and voice, to produce some of their most focussed and inarguably best music to date. “This album has been the most collaborative for us yet.” they explain, “which might sound weird considering we’ve been making music together for all these years, but we worked hard at being honest, finding the courage to let go of our egos and be pieces of something bigger.”

Entirely self-produced and recorded at their long-term home-built studio in Gothenburg, “New Me, Same Us” represents another chapter in the continuing evolution of Little Dragon, finding new direction in their unique style of unhurried, off-kilter r’n’b, pop and electronics, they sound as rejuvenated and energised as ever. The record also finds them in a reflective mood, Yukimi’s distinctive vocals musing on transitions, longing, and saying goodbye. “We are all on our own personal journeys,” they say, “full of change, yet still we stand united with stories we believe in, that make us who we are.” Lead single ‘Hold On’ is a message about breaking away and moving on, ‘Rush’ is about yearning for a love now lost, ‘Another Lover’ is described as a daydream of heartache, “I can’t understand what I'm doing / don't understand where we going” Yukimi laments in the opening lines. The aptly named ‘Sadness’ speaks to “how you might think you know someone but then time shows you a new face” say the band. ‘Where You Belong’ is a lullaby of fear of loss and death. There is room for optimism too, though. ‘New Fiction’ seeks that space in which to create new narratives and forge your own path and ‘Are You Feeling Sad’ is a reminder to take a step back and not worry too much: “you gonna be alright / don’t worry don’t worry / things gonna turn out fine”. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive orange vinyl.

Together with co-producer James Dring (Gorillaz, Jamie T, Nilüfer Yanya), best friends Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen have woven 925 like a dreamscape in which idyllic and hellish scenes intermingle, forcing the question of what is real and what is make believe. Inspired by everything from Hermann Hesse to Aphex Twin and old-school crooner Tony Bennett, their experimental and holistic approach marks them out as a thoroughly 21st century band; from their open-minded approach to genre to their creativity allowing them to self-produce the music and direct accompanying videos.

Joined by drummer Lincoln Barrett and Campbell Baum on bass, Sorry emerged from a thriving scene of bands in London, and though 925 is their debut album, it is by no means their first statement. It follows a series of mixtapes, released sporadically and used as a way to experiment with the disparate influences and sounds that give 925 its distinctively modern and apocalyptic sound.

Where previous singles and mixtapes earned the band their status as one of the most vital and relentlessly creative new British bands of the moment, 925 is a record which will undoubtedly cement their status as true originals and cross-genre innovators in 2020 and beyond.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive silver vinyl.

"Oh why didn't I just listen to myself in the first goddamn place," Basia says. Somewhere in the middle of making her fifth album, Bulat took almost a whole year off. Because she had fallen in love, because her father died, because she had lost her sense of beauty and where it might be hidden. "The desert exposes you," she admits. "There's nowhere to hide." "Throughout this whole record, I was struggling between keeping it together and letting go," she explains, "between holding onto old narratives or accepting what's before me." There was death and grief, but also forgiveness, reinvention and love: "coming to terms with the past and acceptance of the present and trying to stay open to the future."

The result is an album that’s gorgeous and startling, quietly strange, a shining desert record with a bit of dusty rose over all its 13 tracks. Are You in Love? is searching and certain; it’s the sound of a singer who’s refusing to hide. The title track sashays like a girl-group classic; "No Control" flashes like that group’s hard stare. "Already Forgiven" ripples with reverb like a ribbon in a windstorm, whereas "Your Girl" is cruising down the highway – with Bulat doing her best Christine McVie. "Love Is At The End of the World," the album’s gradually thunderous closing tune, is one of the most thrilling things Bulat has ever created: a blazing, incandescent ever-after, all raw electric hope.

Renowned UK producer Daniel Avery and acclaimed experimental musician and Nine Inch Nails synth artist Alessandro Cortini announce their debut full-length collaboration, ‘Illusion Of Time’, set for release on Phantasy.

Beginning as a collaborative experiment before the pair had even met, Avery and Cortini then worked remotely and free of concept or deadline over several years. The result, finally completed when both artists were touring with Nine Inch Nails in 2018, is a quietly powerful album rooted in trust, process and experimentation.

“It was very much a shared process,” notes Avery. “I would like to credit Alessandro with his belief that music has a life of its own, as well as the importance he places on the first take... That even something that may be considered out-of-step by some should be respected. Some of the tracks were borne simply out of a tiny synth part, or a bit of tape hiss that we had recorded. And that approach taught me a lot. It’s a record that’s been worked on hard, but not laboured over.”

“I was a big fan of Daniel’s, and his work always spoke to me in a certain way,’’ explains Cortini. “Then, when we started working together, it just clicked. It’s very hard to explain, but I can always hear the love in his work, and that is true on this record. After our first collaboration, we just kept sending each other music and maintaining that dialogue. Next thing you know, we’re sitting in a hotel room in New York and had finished the record in three hours.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: LP pressed on transparent magenta heavyweight vinyl plus embossing with machine gloss on sleeve and digital download code.

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

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies only limited 'Pink Void' vinyl version.

Bon Iver’s Blood Bank EP was originally released in early 2009, hot on the heels of the beloved album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’. The EP was a harbinger of a new sound for Bon Iver: a movement away from the acoustic guitar-led instrumentation of the debut and the beginning of an exploration into the experimental sounds that have evolved but defined Bon Iver ever since. The reissue of this seminal EP is coupled with brand new live renditions of all the EP tracks.

A reflection on the Blood Bank EP by Ryan Matteson: "When I reflect on the songs that make up the Blood Bank EP, I am drawn to mantras, both musical and lyrical. The driving and pulsating rhythm of the title track is held steady by the repeated refrain, I