PRE-ORDER ANY FORMAT FOR 1 FREE WRISTBAND FOR AN INTIMATE EVENING (6PM) OUTSTORE GIG AT THE SOUP KITCHEN IN MANCHESTER ON FRIDAY JULY 5TH. 

A culmination of life and musical experience, uncompromising in its vision, STONECHILD, the new studio album from Jesca Hoop is a self-described “compassion project.”

Released by Memphis Industries, STONECHILD is Hoop refined and defined. Beautiful, subtle and stark, her fifth album, the follow up to 2017’s highly acclaimed ‘Memories Are Now’, is her best yet.

Despite being a long-term resident of Manchester, Hoop, has until now, returned to her native California to record. This time round however, “it was” according to Hoop “time to step out of my comfort zone, my safe place”, venturing south to Bristol to team up with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, This is the Kit). Parish’s minimal and purist approach helped clarify Hoop in her ideas and subtly yet effectively realigning her sound. The simplified arrangements draw focus to the fundamental sophistication of the songs.

While Hoop’s trademark finger-plucked guitar and ethereal textures remain, the songs and their presentation are ever more direct. Parish “was a gentle collaborator until he killed one of my darlings” Hoop jests. “I’ve never been so brutally edited, and I wasn’t shy about expressing my discomfort at the sight of my work on the cutting room floor. He said, you will forgive me, and in some way, I think I actually enjoyed that treatment…being stripped back to the bare basics…albeit painfully”. STONECHILD ventures further into fresh territory with other voices joining the narrative, with Kate Stables (aka This is the Kit) Rozi Plain and Lucius singing the choruses and expanding the sensual depth of the sonic bloom.

STONECHILD, Hoop says, is intended to “wrap its arms around our human planet spinning in its increasingly precarious wobble”. These rich and curious songs derived from themes of our troubled times speak Hoop’s heart and mind from her empathetic yet tough loving centre point. With writing so fluid, so natural the result is an album where everything is truly meant.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Mirror board sleeve.
• Signed 12 x 12 lyrical scrawl art print, by Jesca.
• White and black 180g marble vinyl.
• An exclusive flexidisc featuring non-album song “Waking Andreas”.
• Numbered.

Dinked Edition LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Coloured LP Info: Indies Exclusive Limited Edition White and Black Marble vinyl (180 gram).

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Indies exclusive 140g orange vinyl in a wide-spine single sleeve with an additional 10th track (Ladies & Gentlemen, Thank You for Coming).

2xColoured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

2xDeluxe LP Info: A beautiful hardback book containing both the lyrics and many strange drawings done in pencil by Stanley Donwood & Dr Tchock.

Orange 180 gram double vinyl with an additional 10th track (Ladies & Gentlemen, Thank You for Coming).

Printed onto Italian Fedrigoni Special Brown material paper and section sewn, the book is made up with an exposed orange cloth spine and orange gilt edging and finished with Bodonian Binding.

2xDeluxe LP includes MP3 Download Code.

2xLP Info: Black 140 gram double vinyl in a wide-spine single sleeve with an additional 10th track (Ladies & Gentlemen, Thank You for Coming).

2xLP includes MP3 Download Code.

In June 2017, New Order returned to the stage at Manchester’s Old Granada Studios where Joy Division made their television debut on Tony Wilson’s So It Goes programme in 1978. For the celebrated show ∑(No,12k,Lg,17Mif) New Order + Liam Gillick: So it goes .., New Order deconstructed, rethought and rebuilt a wealth of material from throughout their career: familiar and obscure, old and new.

Featuring tracks such as Disorder, from Joy Divisions Unknown Pleasures and not played live for 30 years, up to 2015’s Plastic from New Order’s critically acclaimed Top 5 album Music Complete - this is the perfect document of those magical 5 nights. The album was recorded live on 13th July 2017 and includes the full show and encore plus 3 additional tracks recorded over the residency to give listeners a full representation of the breadth of material performed. 

This special series of intimate shows took over Stage 1 of Manchester’s iconic Old Granada Studios for five nights in June 2017. Created in collaboration with visual artist Liam Gillick, who has previously presented solo exhibitions at venues such as Tate Britain and MoMA in New York; and orchestrated by composer-arranger Joe Duddell, a fellow son of Manchester and a frequent collaborator with the band, the live show was performed by the band with a 12-strong synthesiser ensemble from the Royal Northern College of Music. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

3xColoured LP Info: Limited Edition Triple album pressed on transparent coloured vinyl.
Vinyl 1: Red Transparent.
Vinyl 2: Light Green Transparent.
Vinyl 3: Blue Transparent.
Packaged in individual sleeves and into a hardback slipcase, all with spot gloss finish.
24 page 12" sized booklet with silk finish containing exclusive imagery and text relating to the legendary event.
Includes hi definition digital download of all 18 tracks.

2xCD Info: Double CD w/ Deluxe Booklet, packaged in triple gatefold sleeve with spot gloss varnish.

This month has seen Liam Gallagher make a typically full-throttle return. Super intimate sold-out show at Hackney Round Chapel? Biblical. Premiere and release of the long-awaited ‘As It Was’ documentary? Completed. Featured on the cover of Q, who described him as “rock’s finest frontman”? Naturally.

Liam wrote lead single ‘Shockwave’ with two of the key collaborators behind the all-conquering ‘As You Were’ album: Andrew Wyatt, who won the Academy Award for Best Original Song as co-writer of ‘Shallow’ from the film ‘A Star Is Born’, and the multiple Grammy-winner Greg Kurstin who also produced the track. It was recorded in Los Angeles.

Liam Gallagher’s debut solo album ‘As You Were’ was a critical and commercial smash. It debuted at #1, out-selling the rest of the Top 10 in the process, and was soon certified Platinum. Liam was back where he belonged, selling out huge outdoor shows and earning major awards from Q, NME and GQ.

More details regarding ‘Why Me? Why Not.’ will be revealed imminently. “It’s a better record than As You Were,” promises Liam. “Which is saying something, as that was epic, wasn’t it?”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive bottle green coloured vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve.

LP Info: 140 gram black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve.

Deluxe CD Info: Deluxe CD with 3 bonus tracks (14 in total).

PRE-ORDER THE LP OR CD FOR 1 FREE WRISTBAND FOR AN EXCLUSIVE EVENING OUTSTORE GIG AT THE SOUP KITCHEN IN MANCHESTER ON MONDAY 30TH SEPTEMBER. WE ALSO HAVE A LIMITED NUMBER OF WRISTBAND ONLY PURCHASES AVAILABLE. 

It is one of the brilliant facets of recorded music that while it can frame forever in time one of humanity’s most fluid art forms, those captured sounds themselves can go on to become an active launchpad for the ideas, memories, emotions and feelings of those listening. Returning with their third album, Hot Motion, Temples have not just provided a strong demonstration of this dual static/frenetic nature, but they’ve created a record that revels in this beautiful contradiction. 

A brilliantly crafted, thoughtfully recorded collection, the album’s propulsive, seemingly immediate songs soon reveal an impressive depth of ideas and energy with subsequent listens because, as its title warns, Hot Motion is not a record that stands still. 

THIS SHOW IS STRICTLY OVER 18's - PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ID MAY BE REQUIRED AT THE VENUE.

WRISTBANDS CAN BE COLLECTED WITH YOUR PURCHASE FROM DAY OF RELEASE. WE ADVISE SELECTING THE 'PICK UP INSTORE' OPTION AT CHECKOUT RATHER THAN RISKING POSTAGE DELAYS AS THE GIG IS VERY CLOSE TO RELEASE DATE.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited transparent red and black marble edition.

Indies Exclusive LP Info: Limited indies only zoetrope version. US import. Forest green & tan mixed vinyl with red & yellow splatter. Standard weight. Includes animated zoetrope labels, gatefold jacket, double-sided fold-out poster, custom inner sleeve, and digital download card.

Wristband Only Info: IMPORTANT - this gives you access to the gig on Monday 30th September ONLY. It does not entitle you to a copy of the album. Max 2 per person.

The Center Won’t Hold is the tenth studio album by Sleater-Kinney. It addresses transformation as it relates to the corrosion and decomposition of forms. Fractured and frayed by age or by loss, by internecine politics, by trauma or depression, these eleven songs ask what remains of a body, a human spirit, a relationship, a city, a country. The narrators herein sing from the brink of madness, corruption, loss, or grief. And though they speak to us from the narrow, near desperate strands to which they are consigned by others, or upon which they’ve self-exiled—feeling small, fearing obsolescence—they ask to be heard on the most sprawling of canvasses. By couching these personal stories in a sonic palette that unabashedly takes up space, what remains is a tale of survival: a treatise on female friendship, inner strength, resilience, and community.

If The Center Won’t Hold forces a reconsideration of a band people thought they knew, it’s due to the methodologies employed in the writing and making of the album. The tools upon which Sleater-Kinney had relied proved inadequate, both metaphorically and literally, so they sought new ones. They used the geographical distance between them, along with the larger uncertainty and brokenness swirling around them, as a means of inducing and exploring sonic change. Most concretely, they worked with producer Annie Clark (St. Vincent), who treated each song as its own world, letting them find a specific vernacular through careful construction and deliberation.

The most succinct thing to say about The Center Won’t Hold is that Sleater-Kinney continue to challenge the idea of what three women sound like when they create music together over the course of twenty-five years.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Deluxe LP Info: Heavyweight black vinyl, gatefold sleeve with inner bag + bonus black vinyl 7” of ‘Hurry On Home’.

LP Info: Heavyweight black vinyl in a gatefold sleeve.

‘Hasta El Cielo’ is Khruangbin's glorious dub version of their second album ‘Con Todo El Mundo’. The full album has been processed anew along with two bonus dubs by renowned Jamaican producer Scientist.

The band’s exotic, spacious, psychedelic funk aligns with the dub treatment particularly well. Indeed, keen fans won’t find this a surprising release. Dubs of tracks from their first album ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’ appeared on limited vinyl releases of ‘People Everywhere’ for Record Store Day 2016 and ‘Zionsville’ on the BoogieFuturo remix 12”. The especially eagle-eared will have caught a dub of ‘Two Fish And An Elephant’ playing over the credits of the track’s celebrated video.

“For us, Dub has always felt like a prayer. Spacious, meditative, able to transport the listener to another realm. The first dub albums we listened to were records mixed by Scientist featuring the music of the Roots Radics. Laura Lee learned to play bass by listening to Scientist Wins the World Cup. His unique mixing style, with the emphasis on space and texture, creates the feeling of frozen time; it was hugely influential to us as a band. To be able to work alongside Scientist, a legend in the history of dub, is an honor. This is our dub version of Con Todo El Mundo.” - Khruangbin

Formed of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald “DJ” Johnson on drums; Khruangbin’s sounds are rooted in the deepest waters of music from around the world, infused with classic soul, dub and psychedelia. Their 2015 debut album ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’ was heavily influenced by 60’s and 70’s Thai cassettes the band listened to on their long car journeys to rehearsal in the Texan countryside. 2018’s follow up ‘Con Todo El Mundo’, which received hugely positive critical reactions and radio play around the world, took inspiration not just from South East Asia but similarly underdiscovered funk and soul of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, particularly Iran.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: LP and 7", both pieces are pressed on individually numbered yellow vinyl and this is an indies exclusive version.

LP Info: LP and 7".

Bat For Lashes - aka Natasha Khan - releases her fifth studio album, entitled Lost Girls, via AWAL Recordings.

Lost Girls is another brilliant full-length in Khan's incredible, acclaimed discography, mixing sounds she's always loved -- heavy bass lines, synth arpeggios, Iranian pop beats, cascading choruses -- with some of her finest songwriting to date. It's an album full of romance, an homage to Los Angeles, to being a kid in the 80's, to films that touched and changed her life.

Spanning 10 tracks, Lost Girls sees Khan dreaming up her own fully formed parallel universe, creating an off-kilter coming of age film in which gangs of marauding female bikers roam our streets, teenagers make out on car hoods and a powerful female energy casts spells and leave clues for us to follow.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indie exclusive - clear vinyl with red & pink splatter effect, no DL code.

LP Info: Standard black vinyl, no DL code.

Preorder the album from us and be in with a chance of winning an ultra limited test pressing of the album. To enter just write "test pressing" in the comments box when you place your order.

Recorded in November 2018 at Ballintubbert House, Ireland, “a few pay grades above what we're used to!”, the alien construction of Ballintubbert and its corridors help to navigate Girl Band’s cataclysmic sound within a world of its own.

“In many ways the idea behind the album was to make an audio representation of the house.“ And this enigmatic manor becomes Girl Band’s sonic playground: to place yourself within a space, and to work with that space harmoniously. Dan continues, “We recorded all the drums twice: once on the landing and once in the cellar” -The Well of Souls- “and during production we could actually cut in between both these sounds”. The Talkies vacillates between being big, ambient, and atmospheric to suddenly terribly intimate and up close.

The Talkies is living, breathing, in a continual state of metamorphosis. It encompasses everything there is to love about Girl Band while simultaneously causing an exciting level of discomfort. The moaning and sawing guitars, atonal blankets of sound, abstractive lyrical repetition, chugging snare and ascending/descending snakes and ladders noise-rock guitar deliver something that is so distinctively Girl Band.

…Eregenis. Album closes to steady breathing. It drips with catharsis, slow and mindful and purging over the familiar key and darkly syncopated grooves which closes the door to Girl Band’s sonic universe and brings ‘The Talkies’ to its first and final silence.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive blue vinyl.

Forever Turned Around came together over several sessions across the country. Though Julien Ehrlich is Whitney’s lead singing drummer while Max Kakacek is the lead guitarist, when writing, both transcend their roles to piece together each offering lyrically and compositionally. “The way it ends up working is one of us comes up with a basic idea for a song and the other person serves as the foil to complicate that idea. We ask, ‘What can we change to make it more interesting?’” says Kakacek. Challenging each other is the core of their songwriting partnership.

It’s these risks and experiments that make Forever Turned Around a triumph. Take opener “Giving Up,” which started from a stream-ofconscious revelation when Ehrlich improvised the chorus while Kakacek played Wurlitzer. What began as a nod to Neil Young’s Live at Massey Hall 1971 in an afternoon turned into a heart-rending and relatable song about the ups and downs of long-term relationships. Over twinkling piano, Ehrlich sings, “Though we started losing touch / I’ve been hanging on because / You’re the only one I love.” He explains, “In a relationship, you don’t stay at the same level at all times. You go through weeks where you’re closed off.”

After a session with producers Bradley Cook (Hand Habits, Hiss Golden Messenger) and Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty) helped color in the arrangements, the album truly revealed itself when they reunited with original rhythm guitarist Ziyad Asrar in his basement Chicago studio—the same place where they hashed out much of their critically acclaimed 2016 debut, Light Upon The Lake. “Getting down there was so important because we’ve always used that basement for music. The comfort and familiarity mattered but having Ziyad be a buffer between us was so helpful,” says Ehrlich. With Asrar, songs like “Song For Ty” and “Forever Turned Around” effortlessly came together.

Restlessness is at the heart of Whitney’s resonant and stunning sophomore album Forever Turned Around. As Ehrlich and Kakacek realized life can change almost instantly. Priorities shift, relationships evolve, home can become far away, and even when luck momentarily works out, there’s still that underlying search for something better. Happiness can be fleeting but this album proves that even when it feels like time is turning on its head and there’s either a moment of clarity or crippling doubt, there’s still beauty in figuring it all out.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive 'forest brown' coloured vinyl.

Highly anticipated second album, 1.5 years after their critically acclaimed debut LP. Featuring members of the now-defunct band The Drones. RIYL: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Nick Cave, The Slits, Protomartyr, The Drones, Gang of Four, IDLES.

“I've invented fake news as a genre of music,” Gareth Liddiard observes with a laugh. He's talking about “Maria 63”, the closing track on Tropical Fuck Storm's sophomore LP ‘Braindrops’. The song takes aim at the once-marginalized alt-right conspiracy theories that now seem to be a driving force behind the rise of fascism in global politics. “It may be the most stupid song ever written,” Liddiard jokes. He's wrong, “Maria 63” is emblematic of Tropical Fuck Storm's keen ability to mine the extreme edge of pop culture's periphery for potent musical and conceptual spice.

Tropical Fuck Storm were formed around 2017 in the city of Melbourne, Victoria along Australia's south-eastern coast. The band released their debut long-player A Laughing Death in Meatspace on Joyful Noise Recordings in 2018. Each of the band's four members bring considerable experience to the group. Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin were part of the long-running and critically-acclaimed act The Drones, while Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel have performed in a variety of well-received projects. Perhaps it's that wealth of rock and roll experience that allows Tropical Fuck Storm to so expertly deconstruct and distort the genre's norms.

“Everything we do, we try to do it in a weird way. The whole album is full of weird beats, and just weird shit everywhere,” Liddiard explains. He cites Doc at the Radar Station-era Captain Beefheart as a key sonic touchstone, and Braindrops certainly shares the Captain's penchant for pounding abstract grooves. Tropical Fuck Storm have achieved a uniquely off-kilter sound on Braindrops Liddiard partly credits this to the group's use of unconventional equipment, “We use lots of techno gear to make rock and roll because rock and roll gear is boring, and all sounds like Led Zeppelin.”

Liddiard's own description of Tropical Fuck Storm's sound is nearly as interesting and evocative as the music itself. He describes the LP's title track as “Fela Kuti in a car crash,” and talks of creating a sonic atmosphere that “sounds like chloroform smells” for “Maria 62”. A recurring theme on Braindrops concerns the various ways the human brain can be manipulated and controlled for exploitative gain. The bracing “The Planet of Straw Men” is a study of human behavior inside the social media comments section, a place where otherwise reasonable people are seen gleefully engaging in psychotic chest-thumping rhetoric. Listening to Braindrops is a jarring and exhilarating experience, full of pulsating grooves, dissonant experimentation, and unsettling dystopian plot-lines. Braindrops is an unrelenting work, from an unrelenting musical ensemble. “Tropical Fuck Storm is a full on thing,” Liddiard offers. “Everything we do, we do it to death.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Limited exclusive edition of 500.
• Highlighter Yellow & Electric Blue split-colour vinyl.
• Includes bonus 7” featuring a Missy Elliott cover.
• Numbered.
• Includes download.

Coloured LP Info: Hot Magenta coloured vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Here Lies Man took the music world by storm in 2017 with their self-titled debut positing the intriguing hypothesis: What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat?

Since that time, Here Lies Man has expanded and expounded upon their sound and ideas of heavy riff rock and psych within the ancient rhythmic formula of the clave. The L.A. based band comprised of Antibalas members have toured relentlessly over the past 2 years, while also releasing a second album, You Will Know Nothing and an EP, Animal Noises, both in 2018.

No Ground to Walk Upon is their third album, due in August 2019. It continues with an ongoing concept of HLM playing the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, with each song being a scene. The lead single “Clad in Silver” is the soundtrack snippet of a journey to the imaginary place called home, which can never be arrived at. With every step, the character imagines getting closer, but it is a hallucination that fades in and out of perception.

Their debut album Here Lies Man was very well reviewed and featured in loads of end of year polls. BBC 6 & Classic Rock Magazine deemed it among the year’s best, as well as countless other press outlets singing its praises. 2018’s You Will Know Nothing furthered the band’s reputation for genre-smashing rhythmic experimentation, topping many year-end lists as well as earning features from countless metal and indie rock outlets, plus cover stories in weekly papers. No Ground to Walk Upon is the next step in the band’s rapid ascent to what is bound to be influential upon riff based rock.

“We’re very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs,” explains founder and vocalist/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Marcos Garcia (who also plays guitar in Antibalas) of the band’s sound. “Tony Iommi’s (Black Sabbath) innovation was to make the riff the organizing principle of a song. We are taking that same approach but employing a different organizing principle: For Iommi it was the blues, for us it comes directly from Africa.”

No Ground To Walk Upon also includes an interesting conceptual mathematics to the entire proceedings, a theme begun on the prior album. “There are interludes between each song that are 2/3 to 3/4 of the tempo of the previous song,” Garcia says. “The reason it breaks down to 2 over 3 or 3 over 4 is that everything in the music rhythmically corresponds to a set of mathematical algorithms known as the clave. The clave is an ancient organizing rhythmic principle developed in Africa.”

Garcia and cofounder/drummer Geoff Mann (former Antibalas drummer and son of jazz musician Herbie Mann) recorded the album much like they did their previous releases, at their own L.A. studio on a Tascam 388 8-track tape machine. Additional layers were recorded with former Antibalas keyboardist Victor Axelrod and other contributors in various other locations, all while the band continued its rigorous touring schedule. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: Exclusive colour pressing (purple with orange swirl).
Custom Tote Bag with Band / Dinked / Label Logo On it.
Custom Here Lies Man Patch.
Signed Band Photo.
Hand-numbered.

"Kindness returns with their third full length album titled “Something Like A War”. The album is a culmination of years spent collaborating with the likes of Robyn, Jazmine Sullivan, Seinabo Sey and Cosima among many others. Produced entirely by Bainbridge, the record is a collection of works representing a period of reflection and transformation over the course of 4 years following their second record “Otherness.” Now based in London, the album was recorded in several locations, while Kindness was primarily based in New York during the writing and recording of the album. "

Kindness, who uses they/them pronouns, has remained busy since Otherness, working across several projects: they co-produced five tracks on Solange’s album A Seat at the Table, and contributed production, writing, and vocals to Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound and Negro Swan albums in addition to production on Robyn's latest album Honey. A sought-after DJ, radio host, writer, collaborator, and lecturer on everything from musical craft and heritage to queerness and history, they’ve spent the last several years performing as a DJ at venues across the world, from Palais de Tokyo to the Guggenheim Museum, hosted their own radio show on Red Bull Radio in 2016 and 2017, lectured at the Boiler Room in New Delhi and moderated Robyn’s Red Bull Music Academy lecture at MOMA in New York. They were recently featured in Solange’s Calvin Klein advertisement, shot by Willy Vanderperre, alongside friends Dev Hynes, Kelela and Caroline Polachek.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xDinked Edition LP Info: Exclusive Dinked yellow vinyl.
3 x exclusive signed prints.
Hand numbered edition of 400 only.

2xColoured LP Info: Indies only opaque pink coloured vinyl.

“In this post-industrial, post-enlightenment religion of ourselves, we have manifested a serpent of consumerism which now coils back upon us. It seduces us with our own bait as we betray the better instincts of our nature and the future of our own world. We throw ourselves out of our own garden. We poison ourselves to the edges of an endless sleep.

Animated Violence Mild was written throughout 2018, at Blanck Mass’ studio outside of Edinburgh.
These eight tracks are the diary of a year of work steeped in honing craft, self-discovery, and grief - the latter of which reared its head at the final hurdle of producing this record and created a whole separate narrative: grief, both for what I have lost personally, but also in a global sense, for what we as a species have lost and handed over to our blood-sucking counterpart, consumerism, only to be ravaged by it. 

I believe that many of us have willfully allowed our survival instinct to become engulfed by the snake we birthed. Animated - brought to life by humankind. Violent - insurmountable and wild beyond our control. Mild - delicious.
This is perhaps the most concise body of work I have written to date. Having worked extensively throughout my musical life with dramatics, narrative, and ‘melody against all odds’, these tracks are the most direct and honest yet. The level of articulation in these tracks surpasses anything I have utilized before.”
- Benjamin John Power.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Exclusive numbered edition of 500 units only.
• Exclusive “blood red” coloured vinyl.
• Exclusive tote bag.
• Exclusive Sticker.
• Exclusive print.

Coloured LP Info: Indies only green vinyl.

LP Info: Black vinyl edition.

New York’s B Boys (Andrew Kerr, Brendon Avalos, Britton Walker) find inspiration in the chaos that surrounds them: the aggressive attitude and sonic lawlessness of the city they live, work, and breathe in every day. Their raw, yet meticulous style is characterized by rhythmic complexity, commanding riffs, and introspective lyrics that are as playful and self-aware as they are cutting.

Across two acclaimed releases on Captured Tracks—2016’s No Worry No Mind EP and 2017’s debut full-length Dada—B Boys explore solitude and self-reflection through sharp, high-energy shouts and melodic mediations. Now, the sprightly sarcasm and acerbic commentary continues on the band’s highly anticipated sophomore LP, Dudu. Recorded by Gabe Wax (Deerhunter, Ought, Crumb) at Outlier Inn, and mixed by Andy Chugg (Pill, Pop. 1280, Bambara).

B Boys have toured the U.S. and Europe extensively, supporting acts such as Parquet Courts, Merchandise, Shame, Sunflower Bean, and Thee Oh Sees.

Influenced by The Clash, Wire, and Talking Heads, Dudu finds B Boys picking up where they left off, pondering quotidien grievances while examining the bigger picture. On tracks like “Cognitive Dissonance” and “Automation,” subtle tensions meet agonizing pressure that softly build, then explode. “I Want,” featuring Pill’s Veronica Torres, is a bright, feel-good critique of capitalism and greed.

There’s a lot of noise in the world, but what are we actually saying? On Dudu, B Boys take time to laugh, scream and chant their way through the absurdity of it all.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: Exclusive 180g gold vinyl.
Exclusive Dinked Obi strip.
Hand numbered pressing of 300.

Two sheets to the wind,
Perishable, not tinned,
Two hands the better,
Wet weather and feather.

Wilson Tanner come to shore with a new album of floating melodies, lightly salted. Throwing electroacoustic conventions overboard, Andrew Wilson (Andras) and John Tanner (Eleventeen Eston) recorded this new work aboard a 1950s riverboat with a resourceful array of weatherproof electronic instruments and a long extension lead. These eight compositions pull in a by-catch of maritime folklore; of Siren and Selkie, Seagull and engine oil slick. A change of course from their debut album 69 (Growing Bin Records, 2016), the ambient temperature drops as II casts out to sea in uncertain weather and returns to the safe harbours of Port Phillip Bay.

The seafarers head out to My Gull’s poised optimism. The birds watch but do they listen? By the arrival of Loch and Key, the shoreline has dissolved completely, the boat floating in serene infinity as the rest of the world spins. Conditions soon take a treacherous turn on Killcord Pts I-III - a 12 minute odyssey that battens down the hatches as these sailors eye merciless waves and blinding ocean spray, jointly channelling Berlin-school electronics and sea legs. In the aftermath, the waterlogged bleeps of Idle survey the damage as our parched crew sound the distress signal and ultimately descend into delirium.

Known for navigating individual courses as solo musicians, Wilson and Tanner’s collective storytelling is saturated in detail, buoying between tension and harmony. II modestly stands as some of both artists’ most accomplished material. 

Everyone's favourite diminutive Minneapolian's recent acoustic offering was ripe for the picking. Here Zach Witness injects more than a little dancefloor serviceability into the amazing '17 Days'

Hip-shaking sacrilege of the highest order.

FORMAT INFORMATION

12" Info: Hand Stamped Purple Vinyl

Lekker music served by Chef Aki, Sous Chef Rasputin and Gardemanger Kaschiel.
Sans Amuse-Gueule

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Fresh Candomble dropping early July - enquire within for ket-paced trance, voodoo dance, repair shop funk and soggy Müsli. Club music for basement dwellers and techno pagans everywhere...

Here we go folks! A thumbs up to Les Yeux Orange for the 5th release on their topnotch Good Plus imprint. Yet again, they’ve pulled three fancy and obscure edits out of the hat, and right before summer! On the A side, let the Italian grandpa tell you his story of the Continente Nero and enter into the deep savanna with the floor filler ” Africa ” with its super effective bassline. Surrounded by the wildest animals, let yourself be transported by the mystical Shakuhachi flute ringing through the night ! Then we have ” Samurai “, a crossover song between synth-pop and Hi-NRG à la Bobby Orlando - about the last battle of an ancient Japanese warrior, resulting in a sensual and epic track. Put on your aerobic outfit and dance your socks off! On the flip side, ” Midnight ” will give you goosebumps with its haunting vocals about a monster chasing a freaked out girl! This italo banger will turn the dancefloor into a gloriously cheesy Thriller homage!

Forthcoming Director’s Cut of Kito Jempere’s Sea Monster album on Hell Yeah is filled with gems, and two of them are now getting pressed up on a limited edition run of only 100 7”s.

It will be a special package mastered and cut by Andreas at Schnitstelle, hand written and hand numbered by Andrea Amaducci and including a double sticker in a high quality plastic sleeve.

Russian master Kito Jempere dazzles again with “Uohha!”, which swaggers on lazy drums with expressive vocals conveying a sense of carefree emotion.

“To Marvin” is then a jazzed up number, with keys and trumpets, twisted synths and loose drums all getting you up on your toes.
?
This is a sure-fire secret weapon that you need in your collection. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Super spezial, ultra limited 7" from the Hell Yeah camp, containing two of the special cuts from Kito Jempere's expanded "Sea Monster". Quirk heavy leftfield Balearic with a late nineties sampledelic feel.

Thsi si the debut album by electronic producer BABii, co-produced by Adrian Sherwood (On-U-Sound system). BABii produces incredibly forward thinking electro tinged pop/R&B which features skittering beats and incredibly thick, layered synths with heavy bass with a semi industrial feel to them. The lyrics are dark yet the vocals are sweet. Despite its incredible pop hooks the whole LP drips with an undercurrent of darkness.

BABii wowed SXSW this year playing 8 shows in 7 days and being compared to everyone from Grimes to FKA Twigs and while those comparisons give you a jumping off point they also feel lazy as BABii definitely inhabits her own unique world and Death Waltz Originals are very excited to give you your first dive into it.

“What sets the BABii project apart – the album, the aesthetic, the sonics and the GLOO community – is the uniform attention to detail; the pursuit for perfection, even when the tools to achieve it aren’t automatically to hand.” Loud & Quiet.

“We're swept into BABii's glitzy lair, where the beat is in our bones, the perfectly pitched chimes have infested in our mind, and there's no going back.” The 405.

“It's a sumptuously textured slice of electro-pop, with glimmers of pre-Art Angels (pre-Elon) Grimes in its measured introductory notes and fairy-like vocal” Line of Best Fit.

“These clandestine sessions yielded a thrilling thing: weaving urban electronica and cool, wafting vocals that veer between sombre and sweet.” Aesthetica Magazin.

“Startling, wholly unique electronic pop, her work drifts between art galleries and clubs, shifting context while retaining that vivid voice.” Clash.

“Synths dance around snapping, ultra-tight percussion and vocal chops, generating the ultimate beautiful-meets-banger vibe” Nest.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Numbered edition of 450.
• 180g clear vinyl with white splatter.
• Exclusive Dinked Edition sleeve - Holographic card with white typography and debossed illustration.
• Exclusive Dinked sticker sheet.
• Exclusive Dinked insert.
• Tracing paper obi strip.
• Download card.

Golden Bug drops four slabs of illuminati science on Multi Culti. Designed to illicit rapid brain-change on the downtempo dance floor, this is Chug-lorica of the highest order of pyramid power, an advanced exploration of occult psychedelia, alternate linguistic realities, cosmic triggers to unlock deeper meanings and higher truths. ‘Cosmic Trigger’ features a speech about LSD de-fragmentation, the title referencing Robert Anton Wilson’s vision of mental illumination. ‘Tamba’ reprograms the linguistic cortex, featuring the vocal talents and lyrical codex of Viktoria Wehrmeister. While ‘Yama’ deepens the proceedings to the point where one questions the very foundations of life.

If this all sounds too psychically challenging for a peak time party DJ set, take comfort in the supremely playable acid antics of the ever reliable, Marc Piñol. Subdued ecstatic house, this remix perfectly reflects those rare moments of MDMA-bliss where one’s heart is FULLY open while one’s dignity remains intact. Clearly a producer you can count on when you get high and still want to dance.

Ordained drum-machine funk-monk Krikor smashes Yama into a post-Anthropocene Jamaican dancehall where cyber-dreadlocks connect mankind to ORICOM, the Gaian matrix. To be featured in the rave scene in the upcoming MATRIX feature film starring Keanu Reeves and Richie Hawtin as The AI.

If that package couldn’t sell itself, then the splendid psychedelic frame of artwork that Ventral is Golden created will surely catch eyes and lure in listeners with the inclination to re-align and reach their highest potential as listeners in absolute union with music.

Soul Jazz Records release this stunning new collection featuring music influential to the artist Keith Haring.

The art of Keith Haring is today one of the most recognisable of any visual artists of his generation, defining 1980s New York during an intense period when downtown artists and musicians collaborated like never before. Haring’s musical inspiration took in the punk/dance downtown sounds of clubs like The Mudd Club, underground disco at Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage, as well the early days of hip hop and electro.

The album is released to coincide with the opening of the first major exhibition in the UK of Keith Haring’s work at Tate Liverpool, which runs for the next six months.

Haring’s many friends included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Madonna, Fab Five Freddy, William Burroughs, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono, Grace Jones, Larry Levan, Futura 2000.

The music here includes the work of a number of Haring’s close friends, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yoko Ono, Larry Levan, John Sex and George Condo (The Girls), as well as healthy dose of rare disco, early electro and New York punk/dance tracks.

FORMAT INFORMATION

3xIndies Exclusive LP Info: Indies exclusive edition includes a bonus 7".

2xCD Info: Double CD and 48-page book.

Initial quatities include an exclusive 12x12" art print.

Manchester songwriter Ryan Kennedy returns with his fourth album "The Unforgiving Current". Recorded in and around Tokyo hotel rooms, apartments and studios, the album is a badly lit stroll through Tokyo's winding streets, stopping in only the most questionable bars. Despite its seemingly overpopulated centres, there is often a strange isolation. This Isolation would be the fuel behind "the Unforgiving Current".

After moving to Tokyo early 2018 Kennedy began work on the album. Amidst language and work issues his rosey outlook soon dimmed and what follows is Kennedy's exploration and loneliness in this foreign land. Previous musical similarities may be unearthed but what runs through this record is a vein of (dare I say) mature introspection which sets it apart from previous works.

Tycho are the Grammy nominated electronic music project led by Scott Hansen as primary composer, songwriter and producer. The highly anticipated release of their fifth studio album “Weather” is an exciting progression from their previous output, with most of the new tracks being vocal lead, while still retaining the signature Tycho sound. The sonic shift has been enhanced by the collaboration with exciting new vocalist Saint Sinner, who will be joining the live band following their time in the studio. “Weather” will be available on Mom + Pop Music X Ninja Tune.

Tycho have been remixed by the likes of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Bibio and in turn, have done remixes for Little Dragon, Maggie Rogers and ODESZA.  Recommended if you like… Boards of Canada, Bibio, Bonobo, Jon Hopkins, Mark Pritchard, Com Truise, Ulrich Schnauss

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: Worldwide exclusive pink coloured vinyl.
Exclusive signed 12 x 12” print and hand-numbered inner print.
Limited to just 550 copies.

Indies Exclusive LP Info: 180 gram limited edition clear vinyl exclusive to indie stores.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited gatefold coloured vinyl.

“Well I don’t really like talking to myself, but someone’s got to say it, hell...”

You know this voice. An old friend has returned. It was some years back that you dropped the needle on the record and heard it say, “No, I don’t really wanna die...” Like so many lines you couldn’t possibly have guessed the finish to, it’s now among the flat natural-born good-timin’ faves that you sing along with in the jukebox inside your head. It’s loaded up there along with at least a couple dozen others from Silver Jews, whose classic run was made somehow finite in 2009, when the voice himself, David Berman, announced his retirement from music. Ten years have come and gone since then. Where the time goes, we do not know. What do they say about old songwriters? We don’t know that one either, okay? We’re not good with jokes – we’re just glad that there’s always more songs to be written and sung. That’s what raised up Purple Mountains for all of us, after all.

Yes, Purple Mountains is the new nom-de-rock of David Berman. Purple Mountains is also the name of what will be known as one of his greatest albums – full of double-jointed wit and wisdom, up to the neck in his special recipe of handcrafted country-rock joys and sorrows that sing legendary in cracked and broken hearts. The songs are produced impeccably by Woods’ Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earle, buffed up like a hardwood floor ready to be well-trod upon for an evening of romance and dance. And then…

What is 10 years? What are 50? How is everything anything in the eventual blink of eternity? The songs of Purple Mountains are a potent brew, stitched together from lifetimes, knitting the drift of the years with the tightest lyric construction Berman’s ever attempted. Honesty is archly in the air, but lines of incredible bleakness somehow give way to playful distraction and the hiding of surprises for close listeners. Even still, as the songwriter once wrote, “every single thought is like a punch in the face.” It won’t take long after slapping the record on the platter for you to hear that this is one of THOSE albums. There’s breakup records. There’s apocalypse records. Then there’s Purple Mountains.

The portrait is David Berman’s most to-the-bone yet, very frankly confessing a near-total collapse from the first moment, then delving into the layers of nuance with twin lazers of personal laceration and professional remove. This etches a picture that cries to be understood in the misbegotten country that made everything great about Purple Mountains. America’s fate is that of its treasured icons: the cowboy, the outlaw, the card sharp and the riverboat gambler, who all face simple resignation in the end. There are no perfect crimes. Berman’s poet-thief of so many precious moments, now stripped and chastened, recalls his latest lowest moments in perfect detail, hovering ghostly above the tumescent production sound as it echoes with tragic majesty and the sound-fragments of former glory, evoking the defeated-king era of late Elvis, soutern-fried and sassy still on his countrypolitan way down, and somehow still solid-gold at the bottom.

Berman’s songwriter’s bone’s never been laid more bare, either – if redemption doesn’t come on the lyric sheet, the act of putting these songs into singing, dancing form allows them their finest end – to provide infotainment for others, embodying moments of life and truth via music that elevates with disarming warmth and a reassuring commonality, even as David himself stands outside the communal campfires.

Where are you tonight, America? The things that used to be have slipped away into the darkness without you knowing it, and your children are wandering in a blasted landscape, with only Purple Mountains left to comfort them, and David Berman’s shattered fables for company.

Compiled by Pete Gooding and Mark Barrot. Enchanting Ibizan institution La Torre continues its compilation series with Volumen Tres, an incredible fifteen track release that draws inspiration from the island's hedonistic history.

Features tracks from MAC DEMARCO, MARK BARROTT, LAMBCHOP, TEARS FOR FEARS …

"The future is the past and the past is the future, but when the sun kisses the ocean... there is only now" Mark Barrott.

A secluded gem in Ibiza's now commercial landscape, La Torre is located in Cap Negret, within the picturesque countryside of San Antonio. Nestled away, on a cliff that juts deep into the ocean, La Torre acts a mecca for those seeking the original Ibiza experience.

Picturesque views of the magical Meditteranean sunset intertwine with true Balearic melodies, where like-minded strangers connect with bygone friends. Here is a location that offers an introspective experience, one that calms and soothes the soul of attendees whilst recounting the Ibiza experience of old.

Volumen Tres is compiled by long term friends Pete Gooding and Mark Barrott. Veterans within the Ibizan landscape, the concept behind the compilation is to reflect the true beginnings of the islands heritage. A place of hedonistic discovery, it was in the 1980s that the likes of Paul Oakenfold made their way to the hidden Meditteranean location. Bathed in an air of mystery and enchantment, institutions such as Pikes Hotel were a place of true personal freedom, often frequented by the late Freddie Mercury and enveloped in tales of opulence and indulgence.

This ethos and feeling is precisely what Volumen Tres represents. In this case, out with (most of) the new and in with the old, as the pure Balearic sound is voiced through the selections of Mark Barrott and Pete Gooding. Old records merge with new boundary pushing productions, but all in-keeping with the theme of the true Balearic soundscape.

"These days, Balearic has become a bit of a catch-all term for the euphoric, poolside house tunes you can hear on YouTube channels. But Barrott and Gooding are inspired by Balearic's defining feature set out by its early DJs: its eclecticism. " The Guardian.

The compilation begins with Alsema Dub. The product of Bill Laswell & Jah Wobble 's liquid bass ethnicity, a cooing vocal is complimented by the pulse of trumpets as an ethereal synth runs in the background. Berlin based Neapolitan duo Nu Guinea create 'A Voce 'E Napule , an exotic funk-driven number, whilst Canadian native Pacific Coliseum creates the tropical, emotive Morning at Made's . American Alt Country icons Lambchop provide a feel-good yet bitter sweet anthem in Up with the People , before psychedelic Australians Tamam Shud create Bali Waters , a masterpiece from the cult surf movie 'Morning of the Earth'. Downtempo talents Satoshi & Makoto produce the gently-moving Crepuscule Leger, whilst Mac DeMarco 's On The Level features soothing left of centre vocals and dream-like melodies.

The late English Punk Impressario Malcolm McLaren takes us on an intricate, Asian inspired journey with Obatala , before Mark's re-imagination of the classic Tears for Fears track Head Over Heels ratchets up the drama & bliss with it's widescreen vista. Up next is Trance 's iconic Ambiente , released in Germany in 1984, it marries Eastern Philosophy with Western electronics, before English hauntology talent The Advisory Circle forms a chillingly-beautiful masterpiece with Sundial . American songwriter and composer Richard Torrance provides the groove-laden, percussion-filled Anything's Possible , whilst Swing Out Sister's classic After Hours transports us into the Twilight via it's 80's jazz refrains. The penultimate track comes courtesy of Mark Barrott , who's Mokuso was inspired by his adventures in rural Japan and Tokyo by night, paving the way for the final selection: Colorama's Coloured In Remix of poet & author John Stammers' Idle I'm . Moving, and wholly satisfying, the Londoner rounds off the compilation in style, as we are left pensive in a state of nostalgic musical reflection.

In compiling La Torre Ibiza - Volumen Tres, Mark Barrott and Pete Gooding create a sonic vision of paradise; a utopian declaration of freedom, one that conceptualises their intent through musical selections. Despite times changing, we are left frozen in a soundscape of sizeable proportion, whilst the healing-like nature of the records administer a type of medicine that can not be found elsewhere. We listen, in the present, to the Ibizan soundscape of old, nurtured and soothed in a Meditteranean bliss & beautifully re-framed for the modern world.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xLtd LP Info: Double LP in a gatefold sleeve.

Called out by The Irish Times as “Ireland’s best new rock band” and named as an one of NME's “100 Essential New Artists for 2019," When I Have Fears is the debut album from Dublin, Ireland's The Murder Capital.

Produced by Flood (PJ Harvey, New Order, Foals) the album features both singles from the band so far, "Feeling Fades" and "Green & Blue", as well as the first studio recording of breakthrough track "More Is Less".

An exercise in both darkness and light, “When I Have Fears” only serves to highlight the early ambition in the band's sound. From the post-rock build and breakdowns of the two-part "Slowdance", to the tender, bruised confessional of "On Twisted Ground" and industrial pulse of closer "Love, Love, Love", there's a consistent intensity throughout that marks out The Murder Capital as a band arriving fully formed on their debut album.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Gatefold marbled rust colour version.
Includes download card & lyric booklet.

LP Info: Black vinyl.
Includes download card & lyric booklet.

The combined forces of Steve Davis, Kavus Torabi (Gong/ Cardiacs/ Knifeworld/ Guapo) and Michael J. York (Coil/Teleplasmiste/Guapo) have arrived at no less than a modular driven kosmische colossus of transcendent power enough to drive all talk of green baize firmly into the blue yonder.

With Davis’ modular geometry and ambient structures weaving with Torabi’s keen and skewed sense of melody and York’s various gifts for pipes, drones and fevered abstract – the result is a beguiling tapestry as likely to remind listeners of the countercultural benchmarks of Terry Riley, Cluster and Fripp/Eno as the latervortex-voyages of Emeralds and Seefeel. “The overall sound was pretty accidental” reckons Kavus. “I certainly didn’t expect the music to sound so ecstatic and positive, Without wanting to puncture the mystery, there really felt like an element of magic at play in making this album. For the most part it was incredibly effortless” It was never any secret that Davis - even at the peak of his household name status in the 1980s - was as happy putting a needle on a vinyl record as anything else involving a cue. What’s more - his music obsession took on new bounds after his retirement from sport in 2016, with his DJ partnership with Torabi taking him to festivals and clubs for many a head-spinning rampage, in which the wide-eyed assembled would be as likely to hear Autechre as Black Sabbath.

“In twenty years of making records it’s certainly been the easiest and most enjoyable to make” reflects Kavus. “Now, this may have been partly due to us having no preconceptions or expectations but it wasn’t just that. There was absolutely no conflict, and we spent a lot of time together working on it - in my experience that’s a total f**king miracle” “The personal journey I’ve been on since January 2nd 2018 with Kavus and Mike has been surreal” says Steve. “Probably more so than even the path that unfolded for me in snooker. That was pretty far out but this seems otherworldly!” 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Holographic Sleeve - Dark Matter Transparent Blue.

Indies Exclusive LP Info: Indies Only - Holographic Sleeve - Fireball Orange Vinyl.

The long-awaited fourth full-length by Föllakzoid isn’t merely a recalibration for the band. It is a multidimensional reconsideration of what the process of songwriting, performance, and creating a work of recorded music can be.

Föllakzoid grows via depuration, aiming with each record to fill longer spaces of time with fewer and fewer elements. The creative perspective of the band has always been about unlearning the narrative and musical knowledge that shape the physical and digital formats and conceptions available, both visually and musically in order to make a time-space metric structure that dissolves both the author and the narrative paradigms. “We found our sonic and metric identity even more in these songs than in our previous attempts,” guitarist/singer Domingæ GarciaHuidobro explains.

Unlike past Föllakzoid records, that were done in single takes with the full band, this record took three months to construct out of more than 60 separate stems – guitars, bass, drums, synthesizers, and vocals, all recorded in isolation. Producer Atom TM, who was not present for recording, was then asked to re-organize the four sequences of stems without any length, structural restrictions or guidelines. Those sequences ultimately became the four long tracks that appear on I.

The result of this was a set of songs where neither the band’s, nor the producer’s, structural vision primarily shaped the metric or tonal space shifts, but where both were still subliminally present in each of the parts that form the structure and the frequency modulations that guide them.

“We invite you to join us in sharing the experience of being led by this nonrational, sonic artform and its energy. It is also an invitation to connect once again with your inner master and his intuition, erasing the systematic rationalization that usually follows creative forces when perceived, to guide you on this holographic simultaneous simulation where reality is rooted in,” Domingae added.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Clear vinyl edition

When Francis Lung describes his new album as sounding “like a short Mancunian boy single-handedly trying to incite Beatlemania” he’s really not too far wide of the mark. Released later this Summer, Lung’s much-anticipated debut album ‘A Dream Is U’ is both bold and enthusiastic, a kaleidoscopic journey informed by the greats but also one that is wonderfully enigmatic, the sound of a multi-instrumentalist tying together all manner of influences into one beautifully cohesive album.

Following on from the home-recorded Volumes 1 + 2 EPs, which contained titbits written during his time in Wu Lyf, ‘A Dream Is U’ is the first fully-realised Francis Lung record, a studio undertaking brought to life with producer Brendan Williams (Dutch Uncles, GoGo Penguin), a colourful patchwork of vision and ingenuity. “Before we started recording I knew exactly what the arrangements were in my head” Francis says, reflecting on the time spent devising his new work. "It was kind of my mission to capture everything as it was in my imagination”.
A beautiful amalgamation of instruments, ‘A Dream Is U’ might fit neatly into the classic pop drawer but it comes with all manner of decoration, from violin and viola, to cello and saxophone. Writing for strings for the first time, Francis was inspired by the likes of Michael Brown (The Left Banke) and Robert Kirby (Nick Drake) and the parts are played by two members of the Hallé Orchestra, while the saxophone was played by Manchester’s jazz saxophonist Sam Healy. “He mostly played stuff I'd written for him,” Francis says, “but the solo at the end of The Lie is all him, with me in the studio trying to direct him by jumping around and waving my arms!”

Initially conceived to outline the different stages of a relationship, from heady early excitement to bitter fall-out, the finished product is intact an assortment of sentiments, scattered like puzzle pieces from an overturned box. “The problem with that theme is that it was too cut & dry and unrealistic,” Francis says now. “You can have all of those feelings in one day in no particular order. It’s more human to me that emotions can come at any time, without any real resolution. I wanted the album to reflect that sentiment.”

The new album is opened and led by ‘I Wanna Live In My Dreams’, a dazzling burst of Ronettes-inspired pop music, a love letter to sleeping, but also a song that buries allusions of real-world melancholy under its jubilant exterior, calling to mind the likes of Stephen Merrit, or later-day Elliott Smith, and their ability to shape moments of sadness into something strikingly pretty. “Songwriting is a bit like writing jokes, you have a setup and a knockdown,” Francis says. “But I really, really want to make music that makes people feel better, not worse. So I’m trying to push that line.”

If that introduction was somewhat understated, the rest of the album isn’t afraid to delve into more mosaic territory, pulling in influences as far-ranging as Big Star and The Beach Boys; Guided By Voices, Olivia Tremor Control, Apples In Stereo. It’s not just a collection of straightforward love songs either. Companionship might be the central weight here but it’s presented in myriad forms. ‘Comedown’ for instance, tells a complex narrative of two people’s drug dependency, and the validation they find in each other’s abuse, alongside gentle piano lines and stirring strings, while ‘Up & Down’ is breezier affair on the surface but actually tells a bipolar love story, chronicling the relationship between two lovers with manic mood swings, the track itself swinging between tender verses and a dramatic chorus.

Touching upon the universal themes of addiction, faith, and love in all of its confusion, ‘A Dream Is U’ is a collection of characters and stories that plays out something like a Harvey Pekar comic strip; an obsessive chronicle of daily lives twisted into new shapes by the unique mind and manners of their narrator. With flashes of striking colour and an ever-present wry smile, Francis Lung has created a debut album that drifts between simple acceptance and exuberant yearning for more. “My favourite part is when it talks about escaping to another universe,” Francis says of one song in particular, Unnecessary Love. “Although it’s a doomed and impossible dream, it’s amusing to me that if we survive long enough it could be a real possibility.”

Perhaps the key to the record, in fact, can be found in its closing track. Written on a toy piano found in a charity shop, ‘The Lie’ is a boldly stirring pop song, projecting Francis’ own statement of intent, to find a way through the fogginess of self-struggle, to accept ourselves as we are. “I don’t like shouting all my lyrics,” he says, “but it feels like 'If you could accept yourself you'd be happy' is a good one to shout. I don’t want to oversimplify the solution to anybody’s struggles but I know that learning to accept myself would help me no end.”

At times boisterous and radiant, elsewhere contemplative and brooding, ‘A Dream Is U’ feels like being awake in dreams, like stepping outside of the daily rotation; like shadows leaving their dancing bodies to waltz away to their own tune.

by tom johnson.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indie Exclusive – Limited Edition Pink LP (180 gram).

The Black Keys’ long-awaited ninth studio album, “Let’s Rock”, their first in five years, is a return to the straightforward rock of the singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney’s early days as a band. Auerbach says, “When we’re together we are The Black Keys, that’s where that real magic is, and always has been since we were sixteen.” 

“Let’s Rock” was written, tracked live, and produced by Auerbach and Carney at Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville and features backing vocals from Leisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxson. “The record is like a homage to electric guitar,” says Carney. “We took a simple approach and trimmed all the fat like we used to.”

Rolling Stone named ‘Lo/Hi’ a “Song You Need to Know” and said, ‘the Keys have officially returned, louder than ever’ and the New York Times calls the song ‘the kind of garage-boogie stomp that the band never left behind.’ In the words of the NME, ‘It’s the soundtrack to the type of party that doesn’t exist anymore, but one you still wish you were cool enough to get the invite to.’

Formed in Akron, Ohio in 2001, The Black Keys have released eight studio albums: their debut The Big Come Up (2002), followed by Thickfreakness (2003) and Rubber Factory (2004), along with their releases on Nonesuch Records, Magic Potion (2006), Attack & Release (2008), Brothers (2010), El Camino (2011), and, most recently, Turn Blue (2014). The band has won six Grammy Awards and headlined festivals including Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Governors Ball.

Since their last album together, both Auerbach and Carney have been creative forces behind a number of wide-ranging artists:
Dan Auerbach formed the Easy Eye Sound record label, named after his Nashville studio, in 2017, with the release of his second solo album, Waiting on a Song. Since its launch, Easy Eye Sound has become home to a wide range of artists including Yola, Shannon & The Clams, Dee White, Shannon Shaw, Sonny Smith, Robert Finley, and The Gibson Brothers; it also has released the posthumous album by Leo Bud Welch as well as previously unreleased material by Link Wray.

Patrick Carney has produced and recorded new music with artists such as Calvin Johnson, Michelle Branch, Damns of the West, Tobias Jesso, Jr., Jessy Wilson, Tennis, *repeat repeat, Wild Belle, Sad Planets, Turbo Fruits, and more. He also created the theme music for the Netflix TV show BoJack Horseman with his late uncle, Ralph Carney.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP Info: Heavyweight 140 gram high-performance vinyl.

Ride are back with their second album since reforming — it’s titled This is Not a Safe Place and is out via Wichita. They once again teamed with producer Erol Alkan and mixer Alan Moulder, both of whom worked on 2017’s Weather Diaries, which came together quickly at the end of 2018. The first single is the sparkling “Future Love” which feature Ride’s lush, signature harmonies. They’ve always had a Byrds side to them and that plays out nicely here in a “Twisterella” kind of way. “Future Love is a song about the beginning of a relationship, when everything feels possible,” says the band’s Andy Bell. Listen, and check out album art and tracklist, below.

Nérija are the septet of contemporary jazz luminaries, Nubya Garcia (tenor saxophone), Sheila Maurice-Grey (trumpet), Cassie Kinoshi (alto saxophone), Rosie Turton (trombone), Shirley Tetteh (guitar), Lizy Exell (drums) and Rio Kai (bass). Rooted in friendship, Nérija is a collective whose breakneck shifts in tempo and style rely on a deep understanding of mood, temperament and expression, a solid show of trust that extends beyond the usual bonds between musicians.

Recorded in the boat-shaped confines of London’s legendary Soup Studios and produced by Kwes, the overarching goal with Blume was to simply capture the rawness, warmth, joy and the spirit of their relationship and performance. One of the recording aims was to channel the feel of Teo Macero and Stanley Tonkel’s records with Miles Davis during his Columbia years, thinking “forward” as they did but for this band, capturing the controlled chaos and frame it with a timeless elegance.

Blume is a truly breath-taking collection of compositions that perfectly encapsulates everything Nérija; vibrant, engaging, infectious and truly current. For just over an hour, they take us on a sprawling wonderful journey, arriving at what is a majestic body of work; their personal and collective experiences and inspirations over the last half decade or so.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Indies exclusive heavyweight, crystal clear vinyl with etched side D.

2xLP Info: Black heavyweight vinyl, etched on side D.

Released on October 25th 2019, the new album DRIFT SONGS marks the conclusion of their hugely ambitious 52-week DRIFT Series. During that period, music, film and text pieces are created and published every Thursday as part of the band’s on-going, very public recording process; a unique and visionary space Smith and Hyde have created for themselves to exist within. By the end of the DRIFT series, more new music and film will have been released by Underworld in its one-year duration than in the last fifteen years.

DRIFT SONGS expands and enhances a selection of the recordings the duo have released since they began their audio/visual experiment in November 2018. The album will be released as a single CD, double vinyl and crucially an all-encompassing box-set featuring the music, visuals and text pieces released throughout the entire 52-week DRIFT.

DRIFT SONGS is Underworld’s first album release since 2016’s Barbara, Barbara we face a shining future (“an album full of heart, soul and brilliant noise” The Observer ) and the first physically released music since 2018’s Q award winning collaboration with Iggy Pop, Teatime Dub Encounters (“Born of the friction from a restless need to create… others of their standing may choose the wallowing legacy of safety. These guys do not.” NME ).

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: An impressively on-going, interactive, year-long project from the band culminates in the album's actual release in October. Always keen to push the envelope, the idea behind this is very satisfying.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Gatefold Sleeve, 180g heavyweight limited double coloured vinyl.

LP Info: Gatefold Sleeve, 180g heavyweight double vinyl.

As part of the ongoing celebrations marking 50 years since David Bowie’s first hit, ‘Space Oddity’, and following the recent ‘Spying Through A Keyhole’ and ‘Clareville Grove Demos’ collections, 'The “Mercury" Demos’ are 10 early Bowie recordings captured live in one take to a Revox reel to reel tape machine in David’s flat in spring 1969, with accompaniment from John ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson on guitar and vocals.

The version of ‘Space Oddity’ from the Demos, originally released with edits on the Sound & Vision boxset, is presented here in its true context for the first time. The other nine recordings on the album are all previously unreleased. In addition to Bowie originals, the session also includes the Roger Bunn composition ‘Life Is A Circus’ (which features in an earlier demo version on the ‘Clareville Grove Demos’ set) and the Lesley Duncan composition ‘Love Song’ later recorded by Elton John for his ‘Tumbleweed Connection’ album. David’s own ‘Conversation Piece’ is announced as ‘a new song’ and ‘Janine’ features a short nineteen second section sung to the melody of The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’.

'The ‘’Mercury" Demos’ set will come in a replica of the original tape box and will feature 1 LP, a print, two photo contact sheets and sleeve notes by Mark Adams. The labels of the LP feature the same EMIDISC acetate styling as ‘Spying Through A Keyhole’ and ‘Clareville Grove Demos’ with the song titles in David’s own handwriting.

FORMAT INFORMATION

FREE SHIPPING This item has FREE UK shipping!

Grace describes her sound as one part ABBA, two parts Twin Peaks and beginning her solo career with a flurry of stellar releases including ‘Fangs’ which garnered her a wealth of fans as well as praise from the likes of NME, Clash and The Line of Best Fit and saw her perform shows throughout the UK and Europe.

Grace Lightman will be releasing details of her debut album in the coming months and will play Bluedot festival Jodrell bank, Cheshire on Friday 19th July.

Kelly Lee Owens releases a 12” featuring Let It Go, a track made for her DJ set at Fabric in 2019 and now made available through the Adult Swim Single Series.

In 1999 the band released Ágætis Byrjun (‘A Good Start’), Q magazine deemed Ágætis Byrjun ‘the last great record of the 20th century’. By the end of the year, it had won the inaugural US Shortlist Prize for Artistic Achievement in Music.

This year celebrates the 20th Anniversary of Ágætis Byr-jun, and the band expand their breakthrough album with demo and archive versions of songs from the album, plus never-before-heard newly unearthed material from the time, rare b-sides and the full 95 minute concert played in Reykjavík on the day the record was released.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xDeluxe LP Info: Double heavyweight vinyl. As released June 12th 1999 Original album plus download insert of rarities & live album.
DOWNLOAD INSERT OVERVIEW: The band expand their breakthrough album with demo and archive versions of all songs on the album, plus never-before-heard newly unearthed material from the time, rare b-sides and the full 95 minute concert played in Reykjavík on the day the record was released in 1999.

4xCD Box Set Info: 4 CD discs containing original album, live album and rarities with a soft back book:
CD1: Original Album - as released June 12th 1999
CD2: Live at Íslenska Óperan (includes previously unreleased tracks)
CD3: Live at Íslenska Óperan & Rarities (Live at Íslenska Óperan plus 3 previously unheard and unreleased tracks).
CD4: Rarities

“This is our punk record,” says Ezra Furman, introducing his new album Twelve Nudes, yet another incendiary and inspiring classic from the singer/ songwriter/ guitarist/bandleader. “We made it in Oakland, quickly. We drank and smoked. Then we made the loud parts louder. I hurt my voice screaming. This was back in 2018, when things were bad in the world. The songs are naked with nothing to hide.”

Immediate proof is offered by ‘Calm Down’ (aka ‘I Should Not Be Alone’), the album’s insanely catchy opening track and lead single, bound up in a compact two minutes and 22 seconds. “’Calm Down’ is so desperate, and not what I want to say about the world,” says Furman. “I think we curate our reactions to current news because we’re overwhelmed by how bad it is, and I noticed I was suppressing how bad I truly felt. I wanted music that gave me permission to feel how it felt to live in a broken world, which punk rock does.”

Furman’s preceding album, 2018’s Transangelic Exodus, was “an angry and fearful and pent-up reaction to events too,” he recalls. “But it was a carefully written and recorded version; we took a lot of time with edits and overdubs. I knew I wanted I make this album quickly and not spend time thinking how to play the songs. Twelve Nudes is a ‘body’ more than a ‘mind’ record - more animal than intellectual., And by affirming negativity, it gives you energy, to reject stuff. There’s more space for positivity.”

Far from being defeated by a world in turmoil, Furman’s productivity has only increased the worse things have got - and he’s taken up different disciplines to boot. Between Transangelic Exodus and Twelve Nudes, the 33⅓ imprint published his deeply personal, thoughtful and incisive book on Lou Reed’s legendary 1972 album Transformer, before Furman scored the soundtrack to Netflix’s acclaimed comedy Sex Education (it aired in January 2019), which showcased the tender side of his songwriting.

But all his pent-up energy had to be channelled somewhere: hence Twelve Nudes, which Furman and band recorded in October and November 2019 before the album was mixed by the venerated producer John Congleton (Sharon van Etten, St Vincent, John Grant). Furman says the album has two spiritual heroes – the late great punk rock rocker Jay Reatard, and Canadian poet, philosopher and essayist Anne Carson. “She’s one of my top three living writers,” he says. “Anne had these visions, or meditations, to deal with the intense pain in her life, which she calls ‘nudes’, and similarly these songs are meditations on pain and recognising what’s there if you go digging around in your anger and fear and anxiety. So, my album is called Twelve Nudes.”

The positivity of negativity flows throughout the album, distinguished by sharp, lacerating observations, confessions and proclamations, with Furman the indefatigable cheerleader. “And if you’re really at the end of your rope / No you don’t take the night off/ Too many demons to fight off” he wails in ‘Transition From Nowhere To Nowhere’. The song’s slower pace and becalmed verses underlines Twelve Nudes’ musical remit - less stereotypical punk than raw, raucous rock’n’roll (as Furman points out, The Ramones’ punk classicism included songs influenced by Phil Spector ballads). Check also ‘I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend’ and ‘In America’, shaped respectively by Furman’s love of ‘50s doo-wop and Springsteen, while ‘Trauma’ is molten and leaden like Black Sabbath.

But in ‘Rated R Crusaders’, ‘Thermometer’, My Teeth Hurt’ (surely the first lyrical reference to “dental insurance”) and the 58-second ‘Blown’, punk rock’s flailing energy is alive and kicking. As the pell-mell finale memorably puts it, given our increasingly moribund and morally bankrupt society, ‘What Can You Do But Rock N Roll’?

Furman has long sought out rock’n’roll as a panacea for his ills (from ‘Thermometer’: “I got the fever at a tender young age / I joined society and drank the Kool-Aid”). He now lives in Oakland but he grew up in Evanston, a northern suburb of Chicago: at school, “I’d beat myself up for not being a successful, popular kid. I’d lose my homework, get bad grades: they’d call me a space cadet.” But Green Day’s Dookie album woke him up (“the songs were all about being maladjusted, which I began wearing as a badge of honour”), and Green Day led to The Sex Pistols, “and I was never the same again.”

Fearing for her son’s well-being, his mother bought Furman a book of Dylan songs: “I then thought, I’m going to be a good songwriter.” Lou Reed was another, “devastating” discovery, and from all these influences, Furman’s frayed, emotional brew of garage-rock took shape, backed by bands variously known as the Harpoons, the Boy-Friends and, most recently, the Visions - though for Twelve Nudes, there is no band name. “Right now, I just don’t care,” he declares. “The same as I feel about what gender pronouns people use for me.”

The issue of gender arose after Furman made a splash with his 2013 album Day Of The Dog (the last album he made this quickly, he says). Finally vindicated and verified, he started to publicly dress on the outside what he had been increasing feeling on the inside, with more frankness in his lyrics about sexuality and gender (he calls Twelve Nudes, like Transangelic Exodus, “a spiritually queer record”).

The teen angst he’d experienced, from identity crisis to buried feelings, made Furman the ideal candidate to soundtrack Sex Education, mixing older tracks with new (‘Coming Clean’, ‘Every Feeling’ and a cover of ‘Origin Of Love’ from the musical Hedwig & The Angry Inch. Ezra and band also appeared in one episode, at a school dance).

“This record is political,” says Furman, “but it offers an emotional reaction rather than being specific or partisan.” Furman’s Jewish identity shapes ‘Rated R Crusaders,’ triggered by the Israel/Palestine conflict and its complex web of refugee trauma. ‘Trauma’, meanwhile, seethes with the spiritual malaise brought on by watching wealthy bullies accused of sexual assault rise to power. America, Furman well knows, is balanced on a knife-edge between white male supremacy and the dream of universal opportunity; hence the references to Mexico, slave-owners and US ‘founding father’ Ben Franklin in ‘In America’. As Furman sings, reiterating the spirit of punk rock, and positivity, “Put it all in a two-minute pop song / A really-mean-it-a-lot song for America.”

“One of my goals in making music is to make the world seem bigger, and life seem larger,” he concludes. “I want to be a force that tries to revive the human spirit rather than crush it, to open possibilities rather than close them down. Sometimes a passionate negativity is the best way to do that.”

Or, in the words of the fantastic, rousing ‘Evening Prayer’ (aka ‘Justice’): “If you’ve got the taste for transcendence / Then translate your love into action / And participate in the fight now / For a creed you can truly believe.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Yellow vinyl plus very limited edition fanzine.

In 2014 Young Marco travelled to the islands of Indonesia, visiting several islands within the archipelago including Bali.
The voyage was on invitation by Island of the Gods Records; allowing Marco to im- merse himself in the Indigenous culture that still exists in Indonesia. For Marco it was also a look back to his Indonesian roots, with his late grandfather born and raised in Indonesia.

The brief was to capture the spirit, ambience and atmosphere of the islands as part of the labels ‘Island Explorer’ album series.
The project embodies the ‘east meets west’ approach the label has become known for in regards to cultures colliding. A respectful collaboration between local musicians who have played to their gods, unchanged in thousands of years alongside Marco’s contem- porary expression. They are connected only through the universal language of sound and a mutual willingness to collaborate and experiment.
A number of sessions were arranged- recording gamelan, gong and bamboo musicians from nearby temples. Island instruments and organic sounds meeting Marcos drum machines and synthesizers in a number of improvised jam sessions.

Field recordings were also gathered from Jungles, ocean, wildlife- capturing both the ambient and chaotic side of life in Indonesia.
These sounds and recordings were taken back into Marco’s Amsterdam studio and re interpreted into the Bahasa allbum - a sonic expression that captures the mood and atmosphere of the islands through the eyes and ears of Young Marco.

Almost 5 years after the trip the project is now available!

Cosmic Shift by Swiss based DJ and Producer Lexx aka Alex Storrer, is a smartly crafted blend of styles from start to finish. Soulful sounds of the inner city meet distinct melodies with a longing for an island in the sun.

The Album encompasses Neo Soul, Dub, Pop and hints traces of the Producers twenties as a Hip Hop addict in the golden era of the genre. Collaborators include the Los Angeles based Woolfy and Harriet Brown, Ella Thompson from Melbourne, Jonnny Spencer of Chicken Lips fame and up and coming songstress Asé from Zurich.

After a long list of official remixes for many renown labels and occasional singles, Lexx ultimately felt the urge to tell his own story. It’s intimate, the sound of dawn, of twilight. Right before the night falls.

In 2018, approximately at the same glorious time of the year we’re about to reach (the early days of Summer, what else?), River Yarra released the age-of-content-friendly #Lucky #Boy, his debut EP on Antinote. Since then, the record has been living a happy life of its own, as a collection of four ace dance melodies unfolding at different BPM’s, being played in various environments – from quality warm-up sets for small-scale dancefloors to indie podcast series. Twelve months (punctuated by short but witty mails) later, River Yarra offers an update for his music, with a second set of four ace dance melodies unfolding at different BPM’s (from 88 to 140).

After focusing mainly on human conditions of living in a post post-modernist cultural mayhem, River very logically turns his back to rotting humanity and pays tribute to our next of kin, frogs (unless humans decimate their whole population before their own extinction). Here we are with Frog Mania, here we are. “All hail Yarra, thou shalt be frogking hereafter”. The opening song, Toad Charmer, is a seductive sarabande to bewitch frogs in which the pied piper of Hamelin is Priscilla Queen of the Desert and there’re acid sparkles in the pond. Now that we know what kind of track we’re on, River Yarra makes his program for SS 2019 clear with AMFYBYONZZ: it’s going to be all about tranc-e synths, orchestral hits and amphibian gimmicks – and like Toad Charmer, the lyrics on AMFYBYONZZ are not cluttered up with superfluous phrases: “amphibian” is (the only) word.

On the flip side, the BPM keeps on accelerating, reaching whopping 140 BPM with the soberly named closing song, Prog Frog. But there’s still one tune to go through before reaching Frogmania’s climax… Did I mention how infectious all of these songs are? And Frogz Ov Gondwana is no exception to the rule, channeling the particles of MDMA you may have absorbed into the right corner of your brain with its wild arpeggiators and synthetic howling. Finally, it’s time for Frogmania’s anthem, Prog Frog, an up-tempo ballad through time and space, from frogs’ ancestors from the Devonian to their future incarnation; in other words, a song that ensures Frogmania to become an essential record for any batrachian lover.

Another classic remastered Disco / Cosmic Balearic Classic from Best Record Italy, originally released in 1983 on F1 Team records. This one includes the original versions from the original 12" release plus the special extended mix.

Street Soul Brasil (1987 - 1995) compiled by Augusto Olivani features songs from prominent artists of the era's urban street movement, at their creative epochs.

Part mellow pop, part R&B, adorned by melodic drum machines and hints of national rap, this noteworthy work comprises of ten original tracks fully licensed and extracted from the master tapes for your listening pleasure.
It's a soulful compendium of sounds, memories, and feelings from Augusto's own universe, translated into his first ever compilation under the Hello Sailor Recordings catalog.

Augusto Olivani has been digging through Brazil's forgotten music treasures since a young age.
He is best known for his work as a DJ, digger and producer under his musical alter ego, Trepanado, head of Selvagem (legendary party running for the past 8 years) and captain of his own imprint Selva Discos.

Jazzy Couscous founder Alixkun comes back with a 2nd volume of "Kumo No Muko", 12 Japanese music gems from the 80s exploring Ambient & Synth-Pop atmospheres. It opens with Miwako Saito's "12 No Garnet", a soft, slow paced and dreamy piece of synth-pop. Following are Yoshio Suzuki's "Touch Of Rain" and Ayuo Takahashi's "Mizu Iro No Kagami", both flirting with Jazz, Ambient & New Age influences. Traces of YMO members can be found with Hosono produced Tomoko Yasuno's "Sur La Terra" & Flat Face's "Hibi No Awa", released on Sakamoto's related label. While going through more exotic vibes with Shi-Shonen's "Harvest (Long Size)", Alixkun doesn't forget more chill out ambiances: Toru Hatano's "Kanki" is a singular mind trip led by a guitar solo a la Pink Floyd. The project closes with Mio Fou's "Picasso No Ao", a moody track illustrated by a combination of acoustic guitar and solo piano.

METZ, the widely-adored and delightfully noisy 3-piece punk band from Toronto (ON, Canada), have been laying waste to stages around the globe for over 10 years. During that tumultuous chunk of time METZ, comprised of Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies, and Chris Slorach, have cemented their reputation as one of the planet's most exhilarating live acts and trusted providers of bombastic outsider rock. Along the way, they’ve earned enthusiastic support from The New Yorker, Mojo, NPR, The New York Times, KEXP, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The AV Club, Q, Uncut, Exclaim, and a bunch of others. Referring to the trio's tireless tour regime and unquenchable thirst to bring their music to the people, John Reis (Hot Snakes, RFTC, Drive Like Jehu) once said, “your ambition is really unflattering, chill out.”

They did not listen. Instead, their love of the road and passion to create uncompromising and challenging music remains unwavering and has only grown over time. Their recorded output to date, a cornucopia of pop-inflected noise punk and damaged fuzz anthems, includes 3 critically-acclaimed LPs with Sub Pop, as well as a plethora of limited-edition releases, collaborations, covers, and rarities. Which brings us to Automat, a collection of non-album singles, B-sides, and rarities dating back to 2009, available on LP for the first time, and including the band's long out-of-print early (pre-Sub Pop) recordings.

Included here are the band’s first three 7” singles, recorded 2009-2010 and originally released by We Are Busy Bodies Records; a demo version of “Wet Blanket,” the explosive single from 2012’s METZ; two tracks from the limited-edition bonus single that accompanied preorders of METZ; “Can’t Understand,” originally released in 2013 by [adult swim]; and both tracks from the band’s 2015 single on Three One G.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Loser edition on clear vinyl. Comes with bonus 7".

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited heavyweight blue vinyl, limited to initial pressing.

The Rhythm Method recently announced their debut album How Would You Know I Was Lonely? with first single ‘Sex And The Suburbs’. Described by The Guardian as “a Balearic vision of romance as imagined from a parochial nightclub dancefloor,” it won further attention from publications including Noisey, Dazed, The Line Of Best Fit, Clash, DIY and others.

Formed half a decade ago in a Thameside squat protection scheme intended for professionals but inhabited by the barely-employed, the duo of lyricist/vocalist Joey Bradbury and top-liner/singer-songwriter Rowan Martin turned a summer of FIFA tournaments, cosmic breakdowns and 4pm beers into a series of bizarre, outsider-music iPhone demos that became a Soundcloud, then a band, then a live show and now an album.

How Would You Know I Was Lonely? is a journey through the present – a descent into late 20's, late-capitalist mind-funk; 12 stories of near-romances, yellow label dinners, chemical catatonia and lack-of-identity politics. Its influences are strange and diverse, not always entirely credible or tangible; Scritti Politti, Aswad, Irish Pub karaoke, ITV4, YouTube freestyles, Celtic standards, Golborne Road radios and more than a dose of Rod Stewart.

Pocket symphonies such as 'Sex and The Suburbs', 'Local, Girl' and 'Cruel' sound like the Saturday night playlist from a Quantum Leap FM Radio station – ostensibly pop songs, but ones in possession of a rare intelligence, frankness and deep weirdness. The references may be initially esoteric, but the themes are palpably universal. Opener ‘Salad Cream’, referring to a mid 90’s Heinz campaign, is about creating social demand for yourself via scarcity. ‘Cruel’ is pub-karaoke paean to the spectre of addiction. ‘Single Life’ explores the dark, bleak desperation of romantic dejection, set to sleazy noir funk and muted trumpets. Joey Bradbury's verses could be a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown recording the voice notes of his crack-up, whilst Rowan Martin's choruses ask questions you never thought you'd hear in such hummable form.

Fans and supporters have ranged from spiritual forbearers such Mike Skinner (who produced ‘Cruel’, which also features London electronic pop artist Zoee), Squeeze frontman Chris Difford (who lends a knowing baritone to the chorus of Zone 2 opus ‘Wandsworth Plain’), Elton John and Suggs; contemporaries including The 1975’s Matty Healy (who is responsible for half of the band’s YouTube views), Wolf Alice and Shame; actress and poet Michaela Coel and Denise Welch; highlighting the varied magnetism of the lyrical insight, classic songcraft and inquisitive spirit at the heart of these off-kilter pop tunes.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP Info: Limited to 300 white label units worldwide.

Commemorating 50th Anniversary of the Moon landing (July 20 2019) Axis Records is pleased to announce the release of the album by Jeff Mills on his interpretations of Earth’s Moon.

“There are influences of the Moon we can detect, measure and document as scientific facts. If these are perceived as rational explanations, then it should raise questions about the possibility of other unseen mental and metaphysical connections humans have, not just with the Moon but with all other celestial bodies in and outside this Solar System. On the flipside, as we recognize that our Sun gives us light and a lifespan, what does an even greater force in the Cosmos, perhaps the darkness [or absence of anything] affects us.

If we look at the Moon as a component in a vast configuration of integral connected parts, then an intuitive sense might lead us to a wider understanding about how deeply our relationship lies.

This album and the imagination that helped to produce it should be considered as a proposition with open-endedness and no foreseeable conclusion. It is a chemistry of facts and feelings based on then, now and forever”.

Jeff Mills.

Musique Pour La Danse is proud to present Coil's unreleased soundtrack for the VHS only, pre-internet, sexual education documentary entitled "The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex" released in 1992.

Members for this project are John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Danny Hyde. The OST, to quote John Balance's interview for Compulsion Online, "is [a] slightly new agey, progressive house type thing". Another way to approach it is as a delightful collection of balearic beats, smoking jazz not far removed from Badalamenti's work with David Lynch, somewhat of an ambient house album for your home listening and early morning sunrise dances, Coil style.

Taken from the original masters provided by Danny Hyde, "The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex" features a new sexy edit of the main theme.

Bonuses "Nasa-Arab" and "Omlagus Garfungiloops" are taken from the 1992 CD only "Stolen And Contaminated Songs", both being original versions of the radically reworked (for the OST) "Nasa-Arab 2" and "Exploding Frogs" in order to balance the whole album and extend the listening pleasure. 

Whereas the band’s debut album ‘Popular Music’ was broadly political, the new album takes a more personal approach with beguilingly honest and brave lyrics that are bold in both sound and feeling, whilst also retaining the core DNA of their previous material.

Going on to speak about the album Mez says “A Picture of Good Health is not a collage of work but rather a snapshot of time; our time and the time of those around us. It’s political, but in a personal way. It’s a body of work that explores and examines the bands inner-selves through a precise period; a period that has brought pain, loneliness, blood, guts, single parenthood, depression and the need for survival and love. It is the sense and need for belonging that is the resounding endnote!”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive orange vinyl.