Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band’s story, Sonic Youth’s The Walls Have Ears appeared / disappeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité. It’s now issued for the first time officially under the band’s auspices.

The ’85 shows were the second time the band appeared on UK soil, Brits now getting juiced to the mythos of the emerging guitar-slinging American independent underground; an art / punk band from NYC sporting casual attitudes and tees sporting Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Prince made some good press copy on top of their bludgeoning stage appearance. Paul Smith of the newly-founded Blast First label acted as an overseas diplomatic envoy for Sonic Youth through their SST years as well as issuing their classic 1988 Daydream Nation outside the USA. However the Smith-produced ‘bootleg’ of their ’85 UK gigs surfaced much to everyone’s surprise, just before EVOL was to be released. It turned out to be a marker of the group’s dissatisfaction that ultimately led to the release’s deletion, and the band and Smith parting ways after Daydream.

In this 2LP set brimming with primitive classics like ‘The Burning Spear,’ ‘Death Valley 69,’ and ‘I’m Insane’ (uncredited on sleeve), segues and live guitar changes ooze together threaded by Madonna tapes and vocal loops off the board (somewhat a necessity for distraction until the band had a full fledged stage crew to prepare guitars). The first two sides of Walls are massive, cavernous, with newly-drafted drummer Steve Shelley. SY tear it up especially on one trash-fi excerpt of ‘Blood On Brighton Beach’ (actually ‘Making The Nature Scene’) from a legendary outdoor gig November 8th where [Thurston] Moore, [Kim] Gordon and [Lee] Ranaldo’s guitars treble-blast dissonant shockwaves over the black-stoned beach of Quadrophenia fame.

The record’s second slab spotlights an April 1985 at London’s Hammersmith Palais and was one of the final appearances live of Bob Bert on drums, again featuring some molten takes on ‘Brother James,’ ‘Flower’ (listed as ‘The Word (E.V.O.L.)’), and others. This document remains an essential representation of some lean and mean years of the quartet’s throttling march out into the world.” 

TRACK LISTING

1. C.B.
2. Green Love
3. Brother James
4. Kill Yr. Idols
5. “Mad” Groove
6. I Love Her (All The Time)
7. Expressway To Yr. Skull
8. Spahn Ranch Dance
9. “Blood On Brighton Beach”
10. Burning Spear
11. Death Valley ’69
12. Speed JAMC
13. Ghost Bitch
14. World Looks Red
15. The Word (E.V.O.L)
16. Brother Jam-Z
17. Killed And Kicked Off

Described by Uncut magazine as “One of the most charismatic and eccentric pop craftsmen of the past twenty years”, Liam Hayes has been making critically acclaimed records since the 90’s. His first single “Three-Quarters Blind Eyes b/w Found a Little Baby” released under the moniker Plush, was cited by the NME as being “..one of those rare records - and incredibly rare debuts - that instantly seems a classic..” Although he emerged from the Chicago indie-rock scene, Hayes is often compared with artists such as Jimmy Webb, Brian Wilson, Laura Nyro and Harry Nilsson. Like some of the best folk-pop or soft soul from the 1960’s and 1970’s there is a timeless quality to his music.

Re-release of debut album More You Becomes You is remastered from the original analogue tapes by Jason Hillier and recut for vinyl by Bob Weston, who also remastered the CD and Streaming formats.

A deluxe 12 page full size booklet comes with the LP version (which also comes packaged as close to the original as possible, with a printed outer envelope/bag) and a 20 page booklet comes with the CD version put together by Liam and Jason Harvey, with Sleeve Notes by John Mulvey.

TRACK LISTING

01. Virginia
02. More You Becomes You
03. (I Didn't Know) I Was Asleep
04. The Party L
05. The Party Ll
06. Soaring And Boring
07. (See It In The) Early Morning
08. Save The People
09. Instrumental
10. The Sailor

Following on from 2019's 'The Unforgiving Current', Horsebeach's Ryan Kennedy returns with his fifth record 'Things To Keep Alive'. With 'The Unforgiving Current' exploring the themes of isolation whilst living in Tokyo, Kennedy has since returned to the perpetual grey of Mancunia. But rather than viewing his return to Manchester as a step back, Kennedy has used Horsebeach as a catalyst to explore and make positive strides within his mental health.

From Beatles-esque balladry, fuzzed out shoegaze and a lavish cover of a 00s pop classic, 'Things To Keep Alive' still importantly retains the Horsebeach DNA and even has moments that will take fans all the way back to Kennedy's C86 inspired debut LP. In turn, this results in Horsebeach's most varied and rewarding album to date. A record that inspires and shows growth; a record that makes you appreciate the things you help to keep alive.

Here’s what Ryan (Horsebeach) had to say about the album."I always treat each album as a snapshot of a certain period of my life and Things To Keep Alive is no different. However, it's less of a measure of time and more a snapshot of the mental space I've come to occupy over the past few years.

Fundamentally, this album is about my own struggle with one particular side effect of my mental health. Especially my propensity to long for the sweet release of death. I've come to learn how to deal with these things over time and I have always cared for my many cats, plants and important people close to me. These things bring me great joy and through the fog of my depressed haze I have finally learned to water, feed and care for myself as well. These are the things I keep alive. Musically I've decided to revisit themes from my earlier work but allow myself to open up to sounds I might have restricted from the Horsebeach palette in the past. It's quite a simple album thematically but perhaps the one I'm most proud of to date. I've given myself much longer to write this album and I hope the extra time I’ve spent nurturing each song comes through in the end."

Ryan

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: After an unbearable wait, Horsebeach finally return, and guess what, it's their best record so far! Fabulously varied and with tunes to die for, this record will jangle and sigh its way straight into your hearts.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Friend By The Lake
2. In The Shadown Of Her
3. A Fault In All Of Us
4. Things To Keep Alive
5. Let Me Stay In Tonight
6. Until You
7. Cinnamon Challenge
8. Pure Shores
9. Colourless
10. Tradition 

About the album:

Beautifully produced and rich in scope – ‘Iechyd Da’ is Bill Ryder-Jones’ most ambitious record to date. At times joyous and grand, at others intimate and heartbreaking, the past few years spent producing other artists have provided that gentle nudge to expand into new territory, from kids choirs and tender strings to dramatically re-contextualised disco samples.

Making this album has been a process that has been endlessly rewarding for Ryder-Jones, both creatively and personally, as he finally accepts that he’s made an album that has bettered one he’s been trying to top for a decade. “It's been incredible making this,” he says. “Despite all the life stuff that's happened, it has brought me immense happiness. I've always railed against it when people ask if making a record is cathartic but I’d have to admit that this one really was. Over the years my music has lost a bit of its hope I reckon. It were important for me to make a record that had more hope in it. Even by my standards the last few years have been rocky, but I’ve chosen to soundtrack it with more positive music, you know? I love this album. I haven't been this proud of a record since A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A
I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)
A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart Pt. 3
If Tomorrow Starts Without Me
We Don’t Need Them
I Hold Something In My Hand
This Can’t Go On
Side B
1. …And The Sea…
2. Nothing To Be Done
3. It’s Today Again
4. Christinha
5. How Beautiful I Am
6. Thankfully For Anthony
7. Nos Da

Dinked Edition Bonus 7”:
Bedbound Melodies (Big Softies)
When Will I Get Used To This? (Big Softies)

Ducks Ltd. make inviting and frenetic guitar pop for when life feels overwhelming. While the band’s songs are ostensibly breezy, a palpable anxiety boils underneath that communicates something deeper about everyday existence. On their latest album Harm’s Way, the Toronto duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis hones in on interpersonal and societal collapses, urban decay, and the near-impossibility of keeping a level head when everything around you seems to be falling apart.

Even with its often dark subject matter, Harm’s Way is Ducks Ltd.’s most vividly rendered and collaborative collection yet. It’s an undeniable evolution for the band, not just in how these songs soar, but in their entire writing and recording processes. Composed on tour while supporting acts like Nation of Language, Illuminati Hotties, and Archers of Loaf, the album displays the band’s finely tuned songcraft and well-earned, road-tested confidence.

The band, fortified by this strong sense of sonic identity and a self-assurance in their new material—and in contrast to their critically acclaimed 2021 debut Modern Fiction and 2019 EP Get Bleak, both self-recorded and self-produced in a Toronto basement—wanted to bring Harm’s Way to life in a new city, with an outside producer, and with some of their favorite musicians. Working with producer Dave Vettraino, they enlisted a marquee cast of Windy City collaborators to round out the tracks on Harm’s Way, including: Finom’s Macie Stewart; Ratboys’ Marcus Nuccio; Dehd’s Jason Balla; and backing vocals from Julia Steiner (Ratboys), Nathan O’Dell (Dummy), Margaret McCarthy (Moontype), Rui De Magalhaes (Lawn), and Lindsey-Paige McCloy (Patio). The band’s touring drummer, Jonathan Pappo, and bassist Julia Wittman also appear on the LP.

Harm’s Way’s lush, melodic swagger is clear from the first notes of opener “Hollowed Out.” A song about living with decline (inspired by a Toronto sinkhole), its bright, indelible catchiness serves in contrast to its lyrical unease. Anchored by Lewis’ shimmering electric guitar, “The Main Thing” laments growing apart from a person whose views you once shared while managing to toss in references to both the unglamorous lives of middle relief baseball pitchers and the occult. Other songs split the difference between country and krautrock, like the rollicking “Train Full of Gasoline,” which uses the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in Quebec as a metaphor for self-destructive patterns.

Harm’s Way is Duck Ltd.’s most intuitive and organic album yet, the result of keen observation, self-possessed songwriting, and a collaborative spirit. Building on the successes of their previous releases, the deeply relatable album displays a band operating at a nuanced, lyrical and musical best.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Hollowed Out
2. Catherdral City
3. The Main Thing
4. Train Full Of Gasoline
5. Deleted Scenes
Side B
6. On Our Way To The Rave
7. A Girl, Running
8. Harm's Way
9. Heavy Bag

Marking 40 years of The Jesus And Mary Chain, ‘Glasgow Eyes’ was recorded at Mogwai’s Castle of Doom studio in Glasgow, where Jim and William continued the creative process that resulted in their previous album, 2017’s ‘Damage and Joy’, becoming their highest charting album in over twenty years. What emerged is a record that finds one of the UK’s most influential groups embracing a productive second chapter, their maelstrom of melody, feedback and controlled chaos now informed more audibly by their love for Suicide and Kraftwerk and a fresh appreciation of the less disciplined attitudes found in jazz.

Jim Reid says, “But don’t expect ‘the Mary Chain goes jazz.’ People should expect a Jesus and Mary Chain record, and that’s certainly what ‘Glasgow Eyes’ is. Our creative approach is remarkably the same as it was in 1984, just hit the studio and see what happens. We went in with a bunch of songs and let it take its course. There are no rules, you just do whatever it takes. And there’s a telepathy there - we are those weird not-quite twins that finish each other’s sentences.” ‘Glasgow Eyes’ not only extends The Jesus and Mary Chain's story, but feels simultaneously like a return to roots. From the incendiary ‘Psychocandy’ debut and its classic ‘Just Like Honey’ onwards, the Reid brothers steadily became the misfits who made good without compromise.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: A gentle tweak of the template brings electronic bleeps and keys to that trademark Mary Chain sound. Hear the new track and you'll be left in no doubt. JAMC Forever!!

TRACK LISTING

1. Venal Joy
2. American Born
3. Mediterranean X Film
4. Jamcod
5. Discotheque
6. Pure Poor
7. The Eagles And The Beatles
8. Silver Strings
9. Chemical Animal
10. Second Of June 1
1. Girl 71
12. Hey Lou Reid

Making his debut with the Mercury Prize-nominated Here Be Monsters in 2001, Harcourt has released music under his own name that blends raw emotions, impeccable songwriting and visionary flights of imagination. A succession of ten rich, enthralling albums have followed that first spark of his, including the intoxicating addictive Strangers in 2004; 2013’s breathless Back Into The Woods which was recorded in just eight hours; and Furnaces which compellingly and entreatingly envisioned family ties confronted by the small matter of the apocalypse. After that LP in 2016, Harcourt then moved to explore the instrumental sphere with recent soundscape albums Beyond The End and Monochrome To Colour.

While recognisably bearing all the hallmarks that have made him such an admired and prolific songwriter, one of Britain’s most cherished yet inventive music creators, Ed’s new record, El Magnifico, also finds him striving for something new. It is an Ed Harcourt record, but one with a desire to seek fresh reward.

With his body of work to date, it would be foolhardy for Harcourt not to lean on his artistic foundations, not just as a solo artist, but as an acclaimed music-maker in a variety of guises. His creativity has stretched beyond his own impressive catalogue too. Consistently inspired by the power of collaboration, as a writer, producer and, often, one-man backing band, he has aided the musical visions of the likes of Afghan Whigs, Lissie, Jamie Cullum, The Libertines and Marianne Faithfull, plus has worked with an array of fast-rising new talents. He has also engaged closely with filmmakers, scoring movies and documentaries and is a member of the gloriously louche, sonically hard bitten rock trio Loup Garoux.

With that array of creativity fizzing behind him, Harcourt enjoys a spectrum-spanning number of outlets of expression, ensuring his bountiful creativity and cascading of ideas always find an appropriately unique home. And ‘El Magnifico’ is the beneficiary of this immense scope and musical insight. 

TRACK LISTING

1. 1987
2. Into The Loving Arms Of Your Enemy
3. Broken Keys
4. Strange Beauty
5. The Violence Of The Rose
6. Ghost Ship
7. Deathless
8. Anvils & Hammers
9. My Heart Can’t Keep Up With My Mind
10. At The Dead Of The World
11. Seraphina
12. El Magnifico

Heaven is the follow up to Cleo Sol's second album, Mother, which was released in 2021. In celebration of its two-year anniversary, she tweeted: "Two years since we released mother into the world, thank you for embracing me, and seeing me, writing my truth is sometimes difficult, but it’s freeing, and having you support me pushes me to be brave."

Thought to be the primary vocalist for the mysterious collective SAULT, Cleo Sol primarily collaborates with producer Inflo. Earlier this year, during London Fashion Week, she joined Alicia Keys as a special guests alongside Little Simz, and performed Simz's track, "Woman".

TRACK LISTING

1. Self
2. Airplane
3. Go Baby
4. Heaven
5. Old Friends
6. Miss Romantic
7. Golden Child (Jealous)
8. Nothing On Me
9. Love Will Lead You

The Smile’s new album Wall Of Eyes, will be released on 26th January on XL Recordings. The new album, was recorded between Oxford and Abbey Road Studios, and is produced and mixed Sam Petts-Davies. It features string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra. Wall Of Eyes is the follow up their 2022 debut LP A Light For Attracting Attention

TRACK LISTING

1. Wall Of Eyes
2. Teleharmonic
3. Read The Room
4. Under Our Pillows
5. Friend Of A Friend
6. I Quit
7. B7ending Hectic
8. You Know Me

It was in December 2022 that The Staves celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut album Dead & Born & Grown – a strange and beautiful period in the lives of sisters and band members Jessica, Camilla and Emily Staveley-Taylor, making their fourth album All Now with the same organic vulnerability as that first record: except now everything was different, and they kind of were too.

All Now emerges, bold and bright, from a period of quiet, which followed a period of chaos, for the band. When Good Woman was released in 2021, to positive reviews, it felt like “an echoing silence” to share such a cathartic album with a world shut down. So The Staves had to retreat, again, and actually wrestle with everything they had been through.

The result? An album as rich and honest as all the most profound music by The Staves scattered across albums for the last decade, calcified here into something special.

But the most thrilling part of this album, is that the hardest pills to swallow, here, almost have a sweeter taste. Once you’ve survived the climb to the top, learned from the journey, you may as well enjoy the view. “When you sing about hesitation and fear, there’s a lot of power in not making it sound fearful and being quite steadfast instead,” says Camilla. “It feels like an act of taking control.” With All Now, there’s no letting go. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
All Now
I Don’t Say It, But I Feel It
Fundamental Memory
Make A Decision
The Echo
Side B
I’ll Never Leave You Alone
After School
Great Wave
Recognise
So Gracefully
The Important One
You Held It All

Over the course of her career, spanning three-plus decades, Laetitia Sadier has never shied away from the hard topics, or stopped advocating for the possibility of self determination and emancipation in the face of the powers that be, conscious or unconscious. This is an essential part of the foundation she co-built with Stereolab, showcasing her spiritual, scientific and sociopolitical inquiries. She’s continued this process with Monade and under her own name and as a writer/singer/and musician whose every album acts as a report on her journey of the self through time, space and the collective.

On Rooting For Love, the report is set alight by the heat of a turbulent world, collapsing institutions and Laetitia’s fully engaged process of expression as well as orchestration. The opening number, “Who + What” elucidates the central issue of the album: a call for a collective striving for Gnosis – an inquisitive outlook that will lend clues to the traumatized civilizations of Earth, allowing us to evolve away from millennia of alienation and suffering and towards the achievability of healing. The musical arrangements help to embody the layers of the issue, as with “Who + What”’s combination of organ, synths, guitar, bass, trombone, drum programming, vibraphone and zither, all working along intricate paths of chord and tempo changes. Leading from the inside is the implacable presence of Laetitia Sadier, herself interacting with a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir. The regular reappearance of The Choir throughout Rooting For Love is a reminder of this music being one of a people in critical mass, in addition to an evolution that continues to deepen the rich harmonic fields in which Laetitia plays.

Past wounds are addressed again and again in the libretto, as the music provides a transformational balm to aid the healing process. The melodic funk of bassist Xavi Muñoz leads a Chic-adjacent slink to the occasional dance floor vibes and no-wave rockouts, while Hannes Plattemier and Emma Mario take turns in mixing the tracks and informing the far reaches of the material, with vibes, additional drum programming and synths alongside a talented cast of players and singers from Laetita’s Source Ensemble and beyond.

Whether drawing inspiration from Zen Shiastu training, or the lyrics of Véronique Vincent, (lyricist and singer for Aksak Maboul, and once upon a time, lead singer of the Honeymoon Killers), Laetitia faces the truth without flinching. The shadows, whatever stuff they are made of - individual and collective, present and ancestral - need to be recognized and acknowledged, because the more we heal within ourselves, the more undivided we become in the face of looming Neo-fascist/Neoliberal narratives polluting the inner and outer landscapes. As with the cover image of the winter tree mirrored by the word patterns of Rooting For Love, Laetitia maintains that how we heal the world that’s coming, and what we make of it, will be a co-creation. The quality of our imagination, the orientation we give our thoughts and the capacity to bring love to ourselves and the world are a first step.

Alongside of her collaboration with Modern Cosmology, last year’s incredible What Will You Grow Now?, as well as her continued tours with a reformed Stereolab, Rooting For Love finds Laetitia back in the world, once again urging all our grounded inner alignment and heart power to make us better equipped for creating what’s to come.

TRACK LISTING

01 Who + What
02 Proteiformunite
03 Une Autre Attente
04 The Dash
05 Don’t Forget You’re Mine
06 Panser L’inacceptable
07 The Inner Smile
08 La Nageuse Nue
09 New Moon
10 Cloud 6

Where’s My Utopia? is the follow up to the Leeds band’s critically-acclaimed debut record The Overload which arrived in January 2022. The Overload was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize after a slew of positive reviews, national radio playlistings and a placing at #2 in the Official Charts. The new album is a co-production between Yard Act and Gorillaz member Remi Kabaka Jr. 

Speaking about ‘Dream Job’, Yard Act’s James Smith said: “‘Dream Job’ feels like an apt introduction to the themes explored on Where's My Utopia? - though not all encompassing. In part I was scrutinising and mocking myself for being a moaning ungrateful little brat, whilst also trying to address how the music industry is this rather uncontrollable beast that hurtles forward unthinkingly and every single person involved in it plays their part. Myself included, obviously. As with pretty much everything else going through my head last year, trying to find the right time to articulate the complexity of emotions I was feeling and the severity to which I was feeling them couldn't be found - or accommodated, so instead I tried to capture it in a pop song that lasts less than three minutes once the fog had cleared a bit. It’s good and bad. I'm still glad that everything that happened to me happened.”

What do you do when everything you’ve ever wanted suddenly lands in your lap, but the questions still keep on coming?

Since first steering their golden Rover into swift public acclaim back in 2020, Leeds quartet Yard Act have become one of the great indie success stories of the decade so far. Along the way, they’ve ticked off milestones ranging from a Number Two chart placing and Mercury Prize nomination for debut album The Overload, to a co-sign from Elton John who joined the band to guest on a string-laden reworking of album closer ‘100% Endurance’.

Yet, whilst the band’s trajectory continuously shot upwards, vocalist James Smith and his wife had also welcomed in a son. And it’s this duelling sense of responsibility and ambition, guilt, love, drive and everything in between that forms the narrative backbone of brilliantly exploratory second album Where’s My Utopia?

Written in snapshots of time between a relentless touring schedule, and produced jointly by the band and Gorillaz’ Remi Kabaka Jr, the quartet’s second act is a giant leap forward into broad and playful new sonic waters. “The main reason that ‘post-punk’ was the vehicle for Album One was because it was really affordable to do, but we always liked so much other music and this time we've had the confidence to embrace it,” James explains. Across the record, influences ranging from Fela Kuti to Ennio Moricone via Spiller’s ‘00s pop smash ‘Groovejet’ make themselves known.

It’s a celebratory palette upon which Smith allowed himself to reach lyrically deeper into himself than ever. Gone, largely, are the outward-facing character studies of yore, replaced with a set of songs that stare fully into the headlights of life, wrangling with the frontman’s own fears and foibles to create a sort of Promethean narrative - but with jokes. “You can commit to the idea that we’re just animals who eat and fuck and then we die, and that’s fine,” he suggests. “But for me, creativity always seems to be the best way of articulating the absolute minefield of what human existence is.”

TRACK LISTING

1. An Illusion
2. We Make Hits
3. Down By The Stream
4. The Undertow
5. Dream Job
6. Fizzy Fish
7. Petroleum
8. When The Laughter Stops
9. Grifter’s Grief
10. Blackpool Illuminations
11. A Vineyard For The North

Sprints' debut album ‘Letter to Self' embodies their substantial evolution over the past 3 years. Transforming pain into truth, passion into purpose and perseverance into strength, the Dublin four-piece have steadily grown in stature, releasing two acclaimed EPs and building a fearsome live reputation.

'Letter to Self' is the sound of Sprints consolidating and levelling up. Exhibiting their most vulnerable moments and imbuing their visceral garage-punk with a palpable sense of catharsis that we can all benefit from.

Inspired by Savages, their sound matured into energetic and abrasive garage-punk, synthesising influences ranging from early Pixies, Bauhaus, Siouxsie Sioux, Idles and LCD Soundsystem.

Singer, guitarist and lead-songwriter Karla Chubb tackles her inner turmoil head-on, and uses her platform to address inequality and issues close to hear heart, like the campaign for 'Repeal The 8th', and women’s ongoing fight for bodily autonomy, struggles with self acceptance, identity, mental health struggles, sexuality and catholic guilt.

For their debut album the band set about transforming so-called “negative energy” into an opportunity for communal catharsis and healing. Karla Chubb explains sums up message that lies at the very heart of the album: “No matter what you're born into, or have experienced, there's a way to emerge from this and be happy within yourself.”

TRACK LISTING

A1 Ticking
A2 Heavy
A3 Cathedral
A4 Shaking Their Hands
A5 Adore Adore Adore
A6 Shadow Of A Doubt
B7 Can’t Get Enough Of It
B8 Literary Mind
B9 A Wreck (A Mess)
B10 Up And Comer
B11 Letter To Self

Temple, Bassey, MacLaine and now, Hurt; in a world of Shirleys, the name Sophia Ruby Katz has chosen for her music is perhaps prophetic as it captures her stunningly emotive vocal approach. And whilst Shirley Hurt might be the perfect nom de plume for the creative Toronto-based artist, it’s her self-titled debut album which positions her as protagonist of her own universe.

Traversing sonic landscapes, Shirley Hurt’s vocals ebb and flow like lyrical Ley lines tracking the contours of her own well-travelled map. By the age of 18, Hurt had travelled extensively, having lived in upwards of 20 different apartments and houses, as a result never really feeling “at home” anywhere. At this age was when Hurt found herself in New York, dipping her toes into various scenes and musical realms. The first and only place she ever felt at home, and a partial home-base for her, she travelled between Toronto and New York until the age of 26.When the project she was working on in New York reached a dead-end she returned West, moving in with musicians Harrison Forman (Hieronymus Harry, Zones) and Patrick Lefler (Roy, Possum). Being surrounded by their improvising at all hours, a new approach emerged. “Harrison is a virtuosic guitar player, and I hadn't picked up a guitar in any serious way since I was 16,” she says, “by osmosis I started playing again for fun.” Without agenda, the process grew organically from there.

Hurt and Forman decided to travel across the US and Canada in a trailer for half a year, with the entire album written in the final months of their trip. Hurt had been writing loose ideas here and there but felt blocked creatively. When the pair reached Berkley, they wound up house-sitting for a tuned-in friend who recommended she pray, in a very direct way, to remove the block. “I took her advice and to my surprise it worked. The album was conceptualized and finished within a couple of months.” Shapeshifting in tone and phrasing, Hurt’s music alchemizes the furthest corners of experimental indie folk, pop, and country into a singular sound with elegant unpredictability.

Whilst Shirley Hurt’s lyrical and structural ideas may have emerged on the road, the album was self-produced and recorded at Joseph Shabason (The War on Drugs)’s Aytche studio in Toronto’s West End. It was engineered by Nathan Vanderwielen and Chris Shannon (Bart), and Hurt enlisted collaborators Jason Bhattacharya, Nick Dourado, Patrick Lefler, and Harrison Forman to hone her vision. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with the songs until we returned to Toronto,” she recalls. “Joseph and I had been talking about working together after sending across some demos and Jason happened to recommend his studio at the exact same time, so everything came together naturally at that point.”

Whilst her most recent adventures may have seen Shirley Hurt bound for Texas as an official SXSW artist (hand-picked by Gorilla Vs Bear to perform at their own showcase), she currently resides in her native Canada, more specifically rural Ontario, close to friends and family, and is already working on her second album. The ties to lineage are interwoven in the fabric of the music. Hurt’s mother, artist Leala Hewak, instilled a lust for life and innate value of creativity in her from a young age as she explored the role of gallery owner, vintage jewellery show host, mid-century modern furniture expert, real estate agent, painter. Hurt’s father, a civil litigation lawyer and new-wave obsessed music lover with an extensive vinyl collection, introduced Hurt to a wide-range of artists at a young age such as Nina Hagen, Laurie Anderson, Tom Tom Club, and endless others.

In her video for ‘Problem Child’ Hurt’s grandmother walks her through a generationally revered pie-making process. One would be tempted to hear this, and other songs, as autobiographical. Yet, Hurt’s lyrics are rarely pulled from her relationships or personal history––at least not consciously. Rather, they arise from somewhere less tangible or defined. “Lyrics tend to come to me when I am doing non-musical things - washing dishes, brushing my dogs, walking to the grocery store. I have a lot of voice memos on my phone and half-filled notebooks and when I hear something, I have to stop what I'm doing to get the idea down. Usually it’s bits and pieces. It's rare a full song comes to me in one go, but it's great when they do, and those are often my favourites.”

Carving out a space of her own in an all-encompassing universe, Shirley Hurt is the introduction to a long artistic story, and if the journey so far is anything to go by, it will be stippled with evermore unpredictable chapters.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Bells
2. Problem Child
3. Let Me Down Easy
4. All Looks The Same To Me
5. Empty Hands
6. Pendulum
7. Smile
8. Charioteer
9. Pulse

East Los Angeles quartet Levitation Room’s floaty, cosmic songs are always a trip. Since forming nearly a decade ago, they’ve self-produced dizzying, otherworldly music that’s connected with fellow travelers in the hallucinogenic world of outré rock music.

Led by singer and guitarist Julian Porte along with founding members Gabriel Fernandez (lead guitar) and Johnathan Martin (percussion), the band has enchanted live audiences at Desert Daze and on tour with like-minded groups Post Animal and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. The band’s vivid sound has found them placed on popular playlists like Modern Psychedelia and the legendary superproducer’s Danger Mouse Jukebox. Their 2015 debut, “Friends,” has surpassed 18 million streams. Joined by new member Kevin Perez (bass) in 2021, Levitation Room have continued to expand their colorful, unearthly sound, a process that has culminated with the vibrant new album Strange Weather.

Collaborating with former Brian Jonestown Massacre keyboardist Rob Campanella, Jason Kick (Mild High Club), and Black Crowes’ Joel Robinow, Levitation Room take a new step in their story and vision with Strange Weather. The record’s lyrical narratives—about love in the park, life in the city, and the fact that “The world today is such an illusion”—are appropriately steeped in ’60s sonics and a dreamy, lo-fi atmosphere. It’s spacey, celestial guitar music for escaping into, and “it feels just like heaven.” Join Levitation Room on their new voyage.

TRACK LISTING

1. Heaven
2. Strange Weather
3. Cool It, Baby
4. Expectations
5. Immortal Love
6. Scene For An Exit
7. Pintura
8. Morning Star
9. Revelations
10. The Other Side

TANGK is the righteous and vibrant fifth album from madcap truth-seekers, IDLES. Pronounced “tank” with a whiff of the “g” - an onomatopoeic reference to the lashing way the band imagined their guitars sounding that has since grown into a sigil for living in love - the record is the band’s most ambitious and striking work yet. Where IDLES were once set on taking the world’s piss, squaring off with strong jaws against the perennially entitled, and exercising personal trauma in real time, they have arrived in this new act to offer the fruits of such perseverance: love, joy, and indeed gratitude for the mere opportunity of existence.

A radical sense of defiant empowerment radiates from TANGK, co-produced by Nigel Godrich, Kenny Beats, and IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen. Despite his reputation as an incendiary post-punk sparkplug, frontman Joe Talbot sings almost all the feelings inside these 10 songs with hard-earned soul, offering each lusty vow or solidarity plea as a bona fide pop song—that is, a thing for everyone to pass around and share, communal anthems intended for overcoming our grievance.

TANGK is a love album—open to anyone who requires something to shout out loud in order to fend off any encroaching sense of the void, now or forever.

TRACK LISTING

1. IDEA 01
2. Gift Horse
3. POP POP POP
4. Roy
5. A Gospel
6. Dancer
7. Grace
8. Hall & Oates
9. Jungle
10. Gratitude
11. Monolith

Since first emerging in early 2020 with the anthemic ‘Quit Fucking Around’ and releasing a critically acclaimed 3-part EP trilogy between 2020 and 2022, Francis of Delirium gained praise for distilling the angst and despair that plagues a generation who faces an uncertain present and future.

Francis of Delirium was shortlisted for 2022’s highly prestigious ESNS Music Moves Europe Award, as well as gaining accolades from the world’s music press and supporting some of the biggest artists on the planet, at still only 22 years old. A restless energy and desire to connect with the listener lies at the core of the project, with Jana’s personal lyrics being underpinned by a fierce rock sound that is as liberating as it is intense. Hailed as a Gen Z’er excitingly redrawing 90s classic indie rock (unsurprising given her chief collaborator Chris Hewett hails from Seattle and is three decades her senior) a deep admiration for contemporary acts such as Car Seat Headrest, Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens is also abundantly clear.

The upcoming album is titled ‘Lighthouse’, as their music has always straddled the line of light and darkness, both musically and lyrically. Expanding the instrumentation by incorporating more pianos and acoustic guitars, the tracks on ‘Lighthouse’ are intimate and disarming.

“Tackling big existential questions and turbulent emotions, (Francis of Delirium) throw off promising sparks of brilliance.” Pitchfork, 7.4 EP Review.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Ballet Dancers (Never Love Again)
2. Real Love
3. First Touch
4. Want You
5. Blue Tuesday
6. Cliffs

Side B
7. Starts To End
8. Alone Tonight
9. Something's Changed
10. Who You Are
11. Give It Back To Me

The story of Ultrasonic Grand Prix is one of two vintage 60s guitars and their owners - multi-instrumentalist / producer Shawn Lee and guitar maestro Barrie Cadogan - of Nottingham freakbeaters Little Barrie.

“We’d been talking for years about making some kind of record. Cadogan explains, “but we were always being pulled in different directions with other commitments. Shawn got the ball rolling for real when lockdown happened, called me up and said, “You know we keep talking about doing a record, well the time is now”. I’m so glad he did.”

And the music that did emerge was weird, startling, and insatiably groovy. With one foot dipped in the organ-warbling garage of 60s psych, and the other vibrating in the mind-expanding fractals of the British Acid House boom, ‘INSTAFUZZ’ plies the earthly quintessence’s of blues, rock, soul and jazz, against the preternatural discomforts of programmed drums and unhinged synthesisers to produce something distinctly and nostalgically futuristic.

It’s a style that pays its debt to this project's launch-pad inspiration, 2012’s ‘Personal Space’ compilation. A collection of underground U.S 45s from the late 70s and early 80s fittingly dubbed ‘Electronic Soul’ - an appropriate descriptor, incidentally for these experiments from Ultrasonic Grand Prix.

With all the graininess of a documentary film compiled from bits and pieces of raw archive footage, INSTAFUZZ mashes various details and cuttings from its choice influences to invariably intriguing effects. The guitar twang-meets-intense synth of emphatic opener ‘Seamoon Rising’ is The Limiñanas at The Haçienda. At another extreme of the spectrum, ‘Green Means Go’ drifts into the neo-psychedelic waters of The Soundcarriers or Vanishing Twin - hauntological, uncanny, cruising into the wonders of egoless delirium, suspicion and atemporal intrigue.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Seamoon Rising
Instafuzz
Triple Denim
Green Means Go
Right Left
96 Tiers

Side B
Slippery When Chet
Tin Wolf
A Guy Called Harold
Pop Eyes
22 Years I Worked For This Guitar
King Condor

Nadine Shah announce her fifth album Filthy Underneath, the follow up to 2020's critically acclaimed Kitchen Sink and 2017's Mercury Prize nominated Holiday Destination.

Filthy Underneath chronicles a period of unprecedented turbulence in Nadine Shah’s life. And yet, the experience of listening to it is oddly life-affirming – a parade of ghosts spanning the entirety of Nadine’s thirty-seven years, moving with balletic beauty to the music that Nadine and long-time co-writer and producer Ben Hillier have created around them, with renewed emphasis on placing melody and movement front and centre.

TRACK LISTING

1. Even Light
2. Topless Mother
3. Food For Fuel
4. You Drive, I Shoot
5. Keeping Score
6. Sad Lads Anonymous
7. Greatest Dancer
8. See My Girl
9. Twenty Things
10. Hyperrealism
11. French Exit

A hugely in demand repress (the original vinyl pressing on North Country changes hands for hundreds of pounds..) now released on Shack’s newly created own label Shack Songs.

The Shack story is one of music’s greatest legends. It incorporates hardship, bereavement and chaotic misadventure, but above all it tells the tale of beautiful music triumphing over trouble and tragedy.

‘Here’s Tom with The Weather’ boasts a majestic and fresh form. These are magical songs, psychedelic folk songs of the finest Head vintage. Sleepy-eyed, wistful and mystical, yet crafted with a cunning and acute dexterity beyond just about anybody you can think of.

The two profoundly Liverpudlian brothers Mick and John Head have made several brilliant albums together , but none as quickly as ‘Here’s Tom…’ which was completed in seven weeks at Brynderwen Studios in North Wales along with drummer Iain Templeton (RIP) , bassist Guy Rigby and producer Jay Reynolds in 2003.

In the 80’s , the two brothers from the notorious Kensington estate in north Liverpool were singer and guitarist with The Pale Fountains , an effervescent pop group which imploded under the weight of two albums in 1986. The Heads returned in ‘88 as Shack and a debut album Zilch. In 1991 , Shack made ‘Waterpistol’ , an inspirational guitar jewel that would have proved just as influential as any British album in that era had the studio not burned down, taking the master tapes with it. Four more years passed , but by the time it was finally released on Marina it had developed ‘lost classic’ status.

The Heads battled on. They toured as their hero Arthur Lee (RIP) of Love’s backing band. In ‘97 , they created a new group called The Strands and recorded the delicate, dreamy masterpiece ‘The Magical World Of The Strands’ . They spent a long time making another classic ‘HMS Fable’ , and then decided that next time they wouldn’t take quite as long recording. Enter ‘Here’s Tom With The Weather’.

Showcasing John’s slow , shy emergence as a songwriter to challenge his brother (on the sparkling, heartbreaking ‘Miles Apart’ and ‘Carousel’ , and the spun-out ‘Kilburn High Road’ ) , toasting Mick’s newest confirmation as the most unrecognised genius of his or any other generation (the ode to his bro, ‘Byrds Turn To Stone’ , the mariachi horns that break open the slow folk fog of ‘Meant To Be’ , the two lullaby bookends ..and on , and on) .

“The journey we’ve had together has been beautifully turbulent”, laughs John. “But there’s times when we glide and we’re gliding forward now”

Mick agrees. “Making this album has been frantic, chaos, carnage, intense : the normal way with us. But it doesn’t sound like that. That’s all that matters. The story is what it is. But so are the songs and so are the records. Because we’re good.”

Nobody could disagree with that.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Michael and John Head have such a storied career together as Pale Fountains and of course, Shack. It seems that "success" proving elusive, was ironically the catalyst for them to produce such differing work of immense high quality. Here's Tom is no exception. It's fresh. These are concise, taught, acoustic based story- telling pop songs. It's uncluttered and upfront; song after majestic song. That Mick's brother John weighed in with his first full Classic was also a joy to behold. Timely and much in demand re-issue!

TRACK LISTING

SIDE ONE:
1. As Long As I’ve Got You
2. Soldier Man
3. Byrds Turn To Stone
4. The Girl With The Long Brown Hair
5. On The Terrace
6. Miles Apart
SIDE TWO:
1. Meant To Be
2. Carousel
3. On The Streets Tonight
4. Chinatown
5. Kilburn High Road
6. Happy Ever After

When Casey called it a day back in 2019, it felt like a premature demise. Their two full-length albums – 2016’s ‘Love Is Not Enough’ and 2018’s ‘Where I Go When I Am Sleeping’ – had firmly established the Welsh five-piece as one of the most exciting bands in Britain’s alternative scene in just a few short years.

Some four or so years later, the band have returned; not only to sold out crowds on their first reappearance on stage, but also with new music in hand. One listen to the new songs, and it’s clear the band needn’t worry about the integrity of their fresh creative vision, nor their emotional investment in it. The new music is quintessential Casey, open hearts dripping with the same kind of pain and trauma that defined the band from the start. Because Casey songs don’t just replicate the feelings that inspire them – they embody them. That hasn’t changed.

Incredibly, this will be the 25th album Gruff Rhys has released in his 35 year career individually, collaboratively and as a member of various bands. “Sadness Sets Me Free” is also the follow up to 2021’s “Seeking new Gods”, his first solo top ten record.

Lead-off single “Celestial Candyfloss” is a telling four minute glimpse of the forthcoming album, revealing the heady wonders and classic pop sounds within. Soaring strings carry the sweet melodies along, anchored by just enough necessary melancholy to add emotional ballast. The eye-popping video was created by long-time collaborator Mark James and compliments the scope and style of the song on a galactic scale.

“Celestial Candyfloss” is, Gruff says, “an attempted pocket symphony about the cosmic lengths that people will travel in the pursuit of love and acceptance. Mark James has brought the Sadness Sets Me Free album cover to life & managed to place me watching TV interference in a shipping container that’s lost in space. For what is apparently the 25th album I’ve had a hand in writing I’ve reverted to a rich seam of inspiration relating to shedding some light on sadness and the general terror of cosmic loneliness.”

And so it was that Gruff and his band – Osian Gwynedd (piano), Huw V Williams (double bass) and former Flaming Lips drummer turned Super Furry Animals archivist Kliph Scurlock (drums) piled into a van driven by the late, legendary tour manager “Dr” Kiko Loiacono and raced from Dunkirk, where they had just played the final show of a tour of Spain and France, to the outskirts of Paris in the early hours of a March morning in 2022. There, in La Frette Studios, a recording facility installed in a 19th-century house, Gruff and his road-hardened group tracked “Sadness Sets Me Free” in just three days. Backing vocals were added along the way by Kate Stables from This Is The Kit along with additional strings and orchestration and it was mixed between Marseille and Cardiff. What finally emerged from these intense bouts of cross-continental activity was Gruff’s most accomplished and beautiful record to date.

In a career that has taken him from the slate-mining towns of north-west Wales, down to the expat communities of Patagonia, up to the Mandan tribe of the Great Plains of North America and across to the Tuareg rock groups of the Saharan Desert, Gruff Rhys, one of Britain’s most beloved and successful singer-songwriters, has always been willing to follow an opportunity, wherever it may lead him. “At this point I quite like working with serendipity,” he says. “Not in a cosmic way, [but] I try and leave things open to chance encounters and chance geography. As I'm around 25 albums in I’m always looking for ways to make a different-sounding record”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sadness Sets Me Free
2. Bad Friend
3. Celestial Candyfloss
4. Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)
5. On The Far Side Of The Dollar
6. They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper
7. Peace Signs
8. Cover Up The Cover Up
9. I Tendered My Resignation
10. I’ll Keep Singing

Dinked Edition Bonus 7”:
A. Amser
B. (etching, No Audio)

A special ‘Submerge” 12” EP featuring a bunch of reworks of this pivotal track from Apta's forthcoming ‘The Pool’ album on Castles in Space.

The EP contains remixes from Pye Corner Audio, Polypores, GNOD, The Hardy Tree and Field Lines Cartographer.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: The first taste of a new album from our very own Apta (the best egg) sees the lead single twisted and churned into a variety of sounds from Pye Corner Audio, Polypores and Gnod as well as a reworking of the title track from the man himself. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Apta - Submerge
A2. Emerge (The Hardy Tree Remix) 
A3. Emerge (Polypores Pink Oceans Remix)

B1. Emerge (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
B2. Emerge (Gnod Remix)
B3. Emerge (Field Lines Cartographer Remix) 

The Libertines are excited to announce the release of their fourth studio album entitled, All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade out 8th March 2024. The release marks the band’s first new album in nine years and opens with the infectious new single, Run Run Run.

On All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade, the quartet of unlikely lads have gathered from their new-found homes in France, Denmark, Margate and London to solder a strongest-ever internal bond, and scale new creative heights resulting in the best music of their extraordinary career so far.

TRACK LISTING

Run Run Run
Mustang
I Have A Friend
Man With The Melody
Oh Shit
Merry Old England
Night Of The Hunter
Baron’s Claw
Shiver
Be Young
Songs They Never Play On The Radio

Following the release of her debut album, Stay Alive (2020) and the At War With The Silverfish EP (2021), Emmy-nominated artist, author, musician, activist and Against Me! founder/songwriter, Laura Jane Grace, returns with Hole In My Head - her beautiful new album featuring eleven tracks that showcase her undeniable power as a songwriter & storyteller. The album features her most personal and emotionally gripping songs of her career - stripped down masterpieces like Dysphoria Hoodie paired with blistering distorted anthems like Hole In My Head and Birds Talk Too, tracks that demand the listener’s attention with an immediacy and urgency unlike anything Grace has written before.

Recorded at Native Sound in St. Louis, Missouri by David Beeman and mastered by Matt Allison (Lawrence Arms, Rise Against), the album is a sonic curio cabinet containing multitudes. Featuring warm 50s-rock-influenced guitar riffs and rock style melody a la Jonathan Richman and Eddie Cochran, saved-for-later lyrics, love letters to St. Louis, dysphoria apparel, and thoughtful reflections on a punk life lived, Grace's forward vocals are backed predominately by her performances on guitar and drums but are bolstered by Drive By Trucker's bassist Matt Patton.

The record's title track Hole in My Head takes off with a driving guitar-heavy approach that will be welcome to long-time fans of Against Me! electric machinations, while first single Dysphoria Hoodie has been a staple in Grace’s setlist, and one which is as personal as it is pertinent in today’s climate.

Choice cuts I’m Not A Cop and Punk Rock In Basements are written through a post-pandemic rose-colored lens, the latter looking back on the formative underground spaces of Grace’s youth. Basement shows for decades were hallmark experiences for anyone involved in their local punk scenes, shaping movements, connections, and culture through the forced, sweaty proximity necessary to pour over raucous punk music.

Hole in My Head is a record which captures the nuances of humanity and experience in a strangely optimistic manner. The lightness of its influence and the journalistic recollection of experience set against a battered and warm folk-punk delivery from beginning to end makes Hole in My Head a fun comfort. It is a welcome embrace of life and just the start of a new chapter in Laura Jane Grace’s raucous journey.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Hole In My Head
2. I'm Not A Cop
3. Dysphoria Hoodie
4. Birds Talk Too
5. Punk Rock In Basements
Side B
1. Cuffing Season
2. Tacos & Toast
3. Mercenary
4. Keep Your Wheels Straight
5. Hard Feelings
6. Give Up The Ghost

South London six-piece Tapir! serves as a ‘boiling together’ of different mediums: at once musical, theatrical, mythological, artistic, collaborative, narrative-led and, above all, something to be enjoyed and shared.

With their debut album, “The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain”, Tapir! have proven they are more than technically adept at transporting the listener to another realm. You could read the whole album as being an escape from the trappings of the modern material world, a sidestep into a pre-industrial, pre-internet wonderland where creativity and community reign supreme. The narrator of ‘My God’ might suggest to us ‘Maybe it was Maybelline that put you at a loss/That’s my God’, but for Tapir! it is imagination itself that is king.

Exclusive DINKED edition presents the record on crystal clear vinyl, a blank “colour-me-in” alternative sleeve (with artwork outline, inviting fans to colour themselves) and a double-sided pull-out print.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Act 1 (The Pilgrim)
On A Grassy Knoll (We'll Bow Together)
Swallow
The Nether (Face To Face)
Act 2 (Their God)
Broken Ark
Side B
Gymnopédie
Eidolon
Act 3 (The King Of My Decrepit Mountain)
Untitled
My God
Mountain Song

Take a look at the cover art for Plantoid’s debut album, the jazzy, prog-rock opus Terrapath. In a desolate, misty landscape, a massive half-vegetable, half-machine structure resembling a spaceship looms above figures shrouded in shadow. It’s weird and eerie, but it also ignites a feeling of wonder and nostalgia, like cracking open your favourite sci-fi novel as a kid. It harkens back to ‘70s rock artwork, where ornate fantasy scenes gaze back at you from dusty vinyl gatefolds—and yet it was created with the decidedly modern AI software Midjourney. In short, it’s the perfect visual for a band that is able to marry both the old and the new in a fresh and exciting way.

Musically, Plantoid’s cauldron harnesses multiple subgenres at once to concoct a sort of primordial soup, the molecules of which are built as much from progressive rock as they are jazz, fusion, folk, and even a bit of ‘70s hard rock for good measure. The band began as the brainchild of Chloe and Tom, who formed the band Mangö and started gigging around town with drummer Louis Bradshaw, who Tom had been good friends with since secondary school.

After making a name for themselves locally, the three relocated to London and recruited bassist Bernardo Larisch, who they met at a uni freshers party. Now a four-piece, and renamed Plantoid, the band were ready to dig even deeper into their shared influences, ranging from Miles Davis to Todd Rundgren, to Jeff Buckley, all the way around to the more acute experimental fare that gives Plantoid their razor-sharp edge. 

Emotion, whether it be through their music, lyrics, or performances, is a large part of Plantoid’s creative impetus. Think back to that little alien searching for meaning with his big green spaceship: through all the crazy solos, elastic basslines, acrobatic vocals and supermassive drum beats, Terrapath is a story about finding yourself through the music you love.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Is That You?
Pressure
Modulator
It’s Not Real
Dog’s Life
Side B
Only When I’m Thinking
Wander/Wonder
Insomniac (Don’t Worry)
G.Y. Drift
Softly Speaking

The sophomore and final studio album from punk icons - X-Ray Spex.

The highly sought after album received a very limited CD only release in 1995 on Receiver Records in the UK and has been officially unavailable for the past 27 years!

The album reunited the iconic X-Ray Spex vocalist - Poly Styrene with original X-Ray Spex saxophonist - Lora Logic and bassist - Paul Dean, as well as guitar from Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills under his then pseudonym Red Spectre.

This release has been remastered from the original master tapes and is available on LP for the first time ever! Including the original and expanded artwork, including previously unpublished lyrics and original sleeve notes from Poly.

Pop culture is full of classic albums that slip between the cracks. In recent years the late Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex have achieved iconic status with their 1978 debut ‘Germfree Adolescents’ album but the group’s follow up album 'Conscious Consumer’ released 17 years later has been lost to the sands of time.

These days most people don’t even realise that X-Ray Spex had a follow up to what is now embraced as one of the classics of the punk rock period. This lovingly compiled revisit puts the spotlight on a lost gem that has many of the hallmarks of the debut but is sieved through a different lens. ‘Conscious Consumer’ was an upgrade of the classic debut with a same punk rock urgency and themes of consumerism but with a poppier edge and a more considered wisdom gleamed from the ups and downs of life from the perspective of an older, wiser, Krishna devotee.

In 1995 the album was an unexpected comeback and a lost classic. It was the first new material recorded by the band for years despite many of the songs being written a decade before. On release, though, the album disappeared into a void being out of sync with the times and before Poly got her deserved iconic status.

The band who also re-formed in 1991, 1995 and 2008 are now revered worldwide for sparking a new kind of attitude in music. The late Poly is now a pop culture pin-up for an originality and feminism that barely existed at the time. Her acerbic, witty and brilliant lyrics and distinctive voice have stood the test of time, and along with the band’s original sax player Lora Logic, she has become part of the punk rock narrative. The fuzzy snapshots of the brief early lineup see the sassy and sharp dressed teenager core oozing talent, originality and style in a freeze frame of pop culture punk rock perfection.

Listening to the album again after a long break, Paul Dean is surprised.

“‘Conscious Consumer’ now sounds so much better than I remember. It wasn’t properly released at the time and so no one knows about it. If you love Germfree Adolescents you will love ‘Conscious Consumer’ they are linked together. X-Ray Spex didn’t have just one great album it was two!”

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Cigarettes
2. Junk Food Junkie
3. Crystal Clear
4. India
5. Dog In Sweden
6. Hi Chaperone
Side B
7. Good Time Girl
8. Melancholy
9. Sophia
10. Peace Meal
11. Prayer For Peace
12. Party

Big Sigh brings together the best of Marika’s previous works as an indie musician and adds a new layer of epic sounds and full-bodied production.

Big Sigh is the “hardest record” Marika has ever made. As the title suggest, it is a relief of sorts – of sadness, of stress and lust, but mostly relief.

Co-produced with Sam Petts Davies (Frank Ocean, Radiohead, Red Hot Chilli Peppers) & Charlie Andrew (Alt J, Wolf Alice, London Grammar). Lyrically there’s always romance alongside grief, with elements of vulnerability and feeling trapped.

“This album took a long time to make. It was not easy, and by the time I got to the end of it I was quiet. I wanted to be away from it and let it sit in its own space. Now the dust has settled and I’ve got re-enter the world of Big Sigh, and I’m excited. Stepping into a new world, moving forward, chipping away. Breathe in, breathe out. Big sigh.”

TRACK LISTING

1. The Ground
2. No Caffeine
3. Big Sigh
4. Blood
5. Hanging
6. The Lonely House
7. Vitamins
8. Slime
9. Please Don’t Be So Kind
10. The Yellow Mile

Sleater-Kinney has announced their eleventh studio album, Little Rope, which will be released via Loma Vista Recordings. Recorded at Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, Oregon with Grammy-winning producer John Congleton, Little Rope is a powerfully honest and soul-baring album by one of modern rock’s most vital bands.

Little Rope is one of the finest, most delicately layered records in Sleater-Kinney’s nearly 30-year career. To call the album flawless feels like an insult to its intent – it careens headfirst into flaw and brokenness – a meditation on what living in a world of perpetual crisis has done to us, and what we do to the world in return. On the surface, the album’s 10 songs veer from spare to anthemic, catchy to deliberately hard-turning. But beneath that are perhaps the most complex and subtle arrangements of any Sleater-Kinney record, and a lyrical and emotional compass pointed firmly in the direction of something both liberating and terrifying: the sense that the only way to gain control is to let it go.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hell
2. Needlessly Wild
3. Say It Like You Mean It
4. Hunt You Down
5. Small Finds
6. Don’t Feel Right
7. Six Mistakes
8. Crusader
9. Dress Yourself
10. Untidy Creature

Swedish singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer El Perro Del Mar announces her first album in 8 years "Big Anonymous", out Feb 16th 2024 on City Slang. The musical path taken by this shape-shifter artist encompasses a spectrum: doo-wop redux, mystic ballads, electronic dance, ecstatic love songs, film soundtracks, dance scores, global pop, and more. With this record, she goes places where few dare to venture: dialogues with the dead, musings on her own mortality, and reflections on the inner darkness that she's inherited. It's gothic, crepuscular, moody- and magnificent. And in the end you might just find it uplifting. She does.

TRACK LISTING

1. Underworld
2. Suburban Dreams
3. Cold Dark Pond
4. In Silence
5. The Truth The Dead Know
6. Between You And Me Nothing
7. Please Stay
8. One More Time
9. Wipe Me Off This Earth
10. Kiss Of Death 

Lime Garden are a Brighton four-piece - four friends whose coming of age indie-rock songwriting jumps over genre boundaries to create a sound that is uplifting yet somehow laid-back. They achieve this neat trick by harnessing catchy melodies and earworm hooks into an almost nonchalant net of lo-fi sounds, which is then sprinkled with a dry-wit to bring their world to life. It's a world of late-night conversations and observations that strike a chord.

The band came together via a twist of fate when Chloe Howard and Annabel Whittle, friends on social media, found out they'd just enrolled at the same college. Here they met Leila Deeley and the three bonded over a love of Talking Heads and the lyrics of Courtney Barnett along with note taking trips to gigs at the Boileroom in Guildford. With college life done and dusted, the bright lights of Brighton beckoned for Leila and Annabel, which is where the fourth and final member Tippi Morgan fell into the equation yet again but chance. Having coaxed Chloe down to the south coast the line-up was complete.

The debut album 'One More Thing' is the band’s love letter to the indie music they surrounded themselves with in their formative years, as well as a statement of love, fear, gratitude and embracing imperfections. Produced by Ali Chant (Perfume Genius, PJ Harvey, Yard Act), ‘One More Thing’ is the culmination of a stellar run of singles and non-stop touring from Lime Garden since their emergence in 2021. The songs on this album challenge societal norms, breathe life into the mundane and they dream big. 'One More Thing' is ambitious in its song-writing as well as its themes, Lime Garden welcome new technologies to help their traditional guitar sounds flourish into pop songs for the here and now.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Love Song
Mother
Nepotism (baby)
Pop Star
Pine
Side B
I Want To Be You
Floor
Fears
It
Looking

The memoir from Joel Gion, the tambourine playing frontman of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, one of the great contemporary cult American rock and roll bands.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre are one of the great contemporary cult American rock and roll bands. At the peak of their anarchic reign in the San Francisco underground of the mid '90s their psychedelic output was almost as prodigious and impressive as their narcotic intake. Immortalised in one of the most unforgettable rock and roll documentaries of all time, DIG! alongside their friends/rivals/nemeses, The Dandy Warhol's, in their early years when the US were obsessed with grunge, the BJM felt like a '60s anachronism. But with albums like Their Satanic Majesties Second Request and Thank God for Mental Illness, and incendiary, often chaotic, live shows, they burnished their legend as true believers and custodians of the original west coast flame; a privilege and responsibility which continues to this day when the band have a bigger and more dedicated audience than ever.

Joel Gion's memoir tells the story of the first ten years of the band from the Duke Seat. A righteous account of the hazards and pleasures of life on and off the road, In the Jingle Jangle Jungle takes use behind the scenes of the supposed behind the scenes film that cemented the band's legend. Funny as hell, shot through with the innocence and wonder of a 'percussionist' whose true role is that of the band's 'spirit animal', In the Jingle Jangle Jungle is destined to take its place alongside cult classics in the pantheon of rock and roll literature like Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands, Head On, and 45 by Bill Drummond. It will also feature a foreword by Anton Newcombe, fellow member and founder of The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Black Grape could only have been made in Manchester. The swagger, fun and cryptic humour seem hewn from a city historian AJP Taylor once described as offering an archetypally different way of English urban life to London. Both Shaun Ryder and Paul Leveridge, known as Kermit, came from edgy-but-cool parts of the city. In Shaun’s case Salford, with Kermit originating from Moss Side. For those unfamiliar, ‘the Moss’ lay in the shadow of Manchester City’s old stadium at Maine Road, and was one of the first multi-ethnic areas in Manchester.

Black Grape are widely regarded as one of the most innovative and iconic bands of the last twenty five years. Black Grape have had 4 Top 10 singles and their debut album It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah shot straight to No.1 in the UK charts upon its release in 1995 and went Platinum. Follow up album Stupid Stupid Stupid went Gold in 1997.

Ryder has grown from a wild young tearaway into a British National Treasure. Black Grape always were a grimily cosmic musical jigsaw, melding rock, hip-hop, acid house, psychedelic pop and reggae with Ryder’s gutter poetry, delivered in his inimitable shyster’s bark.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dirt
2. Pimp Wars
3. Button Eyes
4. Quincy
5. In The Ground
6. Loser
7. Milk
8. Panda
9. Self Harm
10. Sex On The Beach

Bonus Tracklist (on Deluxe CDX & Coloured LPC2)
1. Part Of Everything
2. The Limelight
3. Liquid Sunshine

Debut album from The Goa Express, led by Clarkey alongside his brother Joe and best friends Joey, Naham and Sam.

They met as young teenagers in Burnley - growing up in the rural shadow of England's industrial north, music was a means of escape and a vessel for friendship. Their shared adolescent experiences shaped their collective attitudes and behaviours and, ultimately, the sound and spirit of their band. 6music playlists and Radio 1 support has followed along with a heavy touring schedule.

TRACK LISTING

Honey
It's Never Been Better
Good Luck Charm
You're The Girl 
Small Talk
Can't Stay Quiet
Better Than OK
Talking About Stuff
Portrait
Prove It

Joanna Brouk’s most ambitious recording, Sounds of the Sea is a concept album full of mystery and eroticism. A conch shell bookends this journey into the deep, going down and down and down further, never reaching bottom. Drawing inspiration from various legends of mermaids and sailors, Brouk weaves circling flutes, vocals, drones and whale songs to describe a sense of unfathomable longing more clearly than words could ever express. Sounds of the Sea is a hypnotic and profound achievement by one of new age’s greatest composers.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A - Atravesta
1. Invocation
2. Atavesta
3. Playing In The Water
4. Aurora
5. Diving Deeper, Remembering Love
6. Going To Sleep

SIDE B - The Sailor And The Nymph
1. The Reminder Of Long Ago
2. The Nymph Rising
3. Calling The Sailor
4. First Meeting
5. Touching The Sky
6. The Sounding
7. Return To The Deep