London-based band black midi follow their debut album, Schlagenheim “the most intense and invigorating debut of 2019” (MOJO), with a new 12” featuring “Sweater” and “7-eleven”. Both tracks were recorded with Speedy Wunderground’s DanCarey during the same period that resulted in Schlagenheim, and “Sweater” was the last of the tracks recorded during those sessions. “Sweater” opens with minimalistic instrumentation before bursting with turbulent guitar and percussion. Available for the first time on 12”.

Dry is the debut studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, originally released on Too Pure Records on 30 March 1992. The album was recorded at The Icehouse, a local studio in Yeovil. Critically lauded both on release and retrospectively, the album contains the singles “Dress’ and ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’

Back in print for the first time in almost 20 years, Beggars Archive on behalf of Too Pure Records is pleased to announce the re-issue of Dry on vinyl. The album was remastered by the original producer “Head” and has been replicated to the original version as much as possible. 

Pitchfork – “On her debut, Polly Jean Harvey matched Patti Smith’s incandescence with Bessie Smith’s lasciviousness, outplayed everyone on the British indie circuit, and became an instant star - 9.2”

Beggars Arkive is excited to announce the reissue of Between 10th and 11th, the second album by The Charlatans.

Available on double clear vinyl and double CD, the reissue contains the original album plus remastered tracks from the oft-bootlegged live show from Chicago in 1991, known as Isolation 21.2.91, a holy grail amongst fans.

Between 10th and 11th was originally released in 1992 and feature the UK Top 20 hit (and biggest US single) “Weirdo”, as well as singles “Tremolo Song” and “I Don’t Want To See The Sights”

“A certifiable classic” - PopMatters.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Double clear vinyl.

Limited edition 40th anniversary version of the band’s second and final studio album, pressed on 180g crystal clear vinyl.

Originally released in July 1980 on Factory Records, the album reached number 6 in the UK Charts. In the same year, the album was voted number 1 in NME’s 1980 Albums of the Year poll.

Closer was recorded in March 1980 at Britannia Row Studios in Islington, London. It was produced by the highly praised Martin Hannett whose distinctive production style utilised unorthodox sound recording and technology.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 180g 12” 1LP on Crystal Clear Vinyl.

Sometime in 2006 or 2007, Jason Molina moved from the midwest to London. Separated from his bandmates and friends and never one for idleness, Molina explored his new home with fervor. Sometimes he’d head out on foot, often with no destination in mind. Other times, he’d pick a random tube stop and find his way back home. He’d pick up on arcane trivia about London’s rich history, and if the historical factoids weren’t available — or weren’t quite to his liking — Molina was quite comfortable conjuring his own history. His adoration of The Great American Tall Tales like John Henry and Paul Bunyan’s blue ox Babe stretched across the Atlantic, where he created his own personal Tall Tales. And when he learned of the London Wall’s seven gates (itself a misconception), Molina went ahead and called it eight, carving out a gate just for himself. The eighth gate was Molina’s way into London, a gate only passable in the mind.

Fast forward to 2008, Molina set off on an experimental solo tour through Europe. While in Northern Italy, Molina claimed to have been bitten by a rare, poisonous spider. A debilitating bout of illness ensued. “I was in the hospital here in London,” Molina wrote in a letter. “Saw six doctors and a Dr. House-type guy. They are all mystified by it, but I am allowed to be at home, where I am taking a dozen scary Hantavirus type pills a day that are all to supposedly help — but they make me feel like shit.” There is no record of a single doctor visit, not any prescription record for these medications. It is entirely plausible there was no spider and that whatever was keeping him indoors during this time was entirely self-induced. While at home, he of course wrote songs.

Molina also claimed that during this time, he fed several bright green parrots that would gather in his yard. While often associated with a greyscale sensibility, Molina was oft-clad in a Hawaiian shirt and had, at least in part, selected the name Songs: Ohia for his first project as a nod to Hawaii’s ‘Ohi’a lehua flower. Which is all to say, the tropical element the parakeets brought to those sick days delighted Molina. He made short, crude field recordings of them with his trusty four-track. Only once Molina was officially on the mend and re-exploring the streets of London would he learn that those parrots had their own fabled tale. Back in the 60s, Jimi Hendrix — in a moment of psychedelic clarity — released his pair of lime green ring-necked parakeets from their cage, setting them free into the London sky. Now, their decendents are spotted regularly around certain parts of the city. Or so we’re told.

Eight Gates is the last collection of solo studio recordings Molina made before he passed from complications related to alcoholism in 2013. Recorded in London around the time of the supposed spider bite and Jimi’s supposed parakeets, some of the songs (“Whispered Away,” “Thistle Blue”) are fully-realized — dark, moody textures that call to mind his earlier work on The Lioness. Knowing what we know about those parakeets and their peppered presence on the recordings, one can’t help but think of that colorful tree of birds on Talk Talk’s classic Laughing Stock, certainly a spiritual guide for much of the set. Other songs (“She Says,” “The Crossroads and The Emptiness”) lay in a more unfinished states, acoustic takes that call to mind Molina’s Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go, and still tethered to Molina’s humorous studio banter. You remember how young Molina was, and how weighty this art was for such a young man. On the closer, “The Crossroads and The Emptiness,” Molina snaps at the engineer before tearing into a song in which he sings of his birthday (December 30), a palm reading and the great emptiness with which he always wrestled. It is a perfect closer and, in many ways, the eighth gate incarnate: mythical, passable only in the mind, built for himself and partway imaginary but shared, thankfully, with us.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive 'Shortcake Splash' coloured vinyl!

When Mildlife’s debut album, Phase, was released in 2018 it didn’t so much explode on to the scene as ooze. Their mellifluous mix of jazz, krautrock and, perhaps more pertinently, demon grooves, was the word of mouth sensation of that year among open-minded DJs and diggers searching for the perfect beat.

Their emergence was backed up by European tours that demonstrated a riotously loose-limbed ap-proach to performance that was every bit as thrilling as Phase’s tantalising promise. What was more impressive was how lightly they wore influences that took in Can, Patrick Adams and Jan Hammer Group, while primarily sounding precisely like Mildlife.

By the end of 2018 they’d been nominees for Best Album at the Worldwide FM Awards (World-wide’s Gilles Peterson was a notable champion) and won Best Electronic Act at The Age Music Victoria Awards back home in Melbourne. Their progress post-Phase was cemented with a UK deal with Jeff Barrett’s Heavenly, who released How Long Does It Take? replete with Cosmic doyen Baldelli and Dionigi remixes, while last year they were officially anointed by DJ Harvey when he included The Magnificent Moon on his Pikes compilation Mercury Rising Vol II.

With Automatic, the band have made a step-change from their debut. It’s more disciplined, direc-tional and arguably more danceable. As on Phase, they are unafraid to let a track luxuriate in length without ever succumbing to self-indulgence. The arrangements, tightly structured thanks to Tom Shanahan (bass) and Jim Rindfleish’s fatback drumming, permit space for the others to add spice to the stew, topped off with Kevin McDowell’s ethereal vocals as Mildlife effortlessly glide between live performance and studio songwriting. “The recorded songs kind of become the new reference point for playing the songs live,’ says Kevin. “They both have different outcomes and we make our decisions for each based on that, but they’re symbiotic and they both influence each other. It’s usually a fairly natural flow from live to recorded back to live.”

With the current climate as it is, opportunities to take this album out into the live arena where the band truly come alive, might well be scant, but they are working on ways around this. “We were hoping to visit new places with this album but that’s required a bit of rethink. We have a lot more videos planned for this year and we’ll be doing shows in Australia when things re-open but it’s still all just wait and see for now.” One thing’s for sure, post-lockdown will be one hell of a party.

The centrepiece of Automatic is the title track where the band sound like Kraftwerk and Herbie Hancock on quarantined lockdown in Bob Moog’s Trumansburg workshop. It’s both a departure and quintessentially Mildlife. This is music you can dance to rather than ‘dance music’ and it’s all the better for it.

- Bill Brewster

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: Black heavyweight vinyl with locked groove.

Squid are back with ‘Broadcaster’, the AA-side companion to their recent offering ‘Sludge’. The tracks are getting a limited edition vinyl pressing, released via new label Warp Records, featuring an extended version of ‘Broadcaster’.

‘Broadcaster’ is built around an arpeggiated synth sequence that was conceived during a writing session in a woodland cabin by Arthur whilst the rest of the band were out hiking. As the song develops, guitars, drum machines and delays join the fray, pushing the track into its chaotic and visceral crescendo. All this works as the perfect foil to singer Ollie Judge’s oblique lyrics. Paired with their richly percussive and sonically evolving ‘Sludge’, the quintet not only opens up their sound, but they do so without abandoning the experimentation and playfulness that made them such an exciting prospect when they burst on the scene just over a year ago.

After years spent looking out at landscapes and loved ones and an increasingly unstable world, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have turned their gaze inward, to their individual pasts and the places that inform them, on their second full-length, Sideways to New Italy.

Led by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tom Russo, Joe White and Fran Keaney, the guitar-pop five-piece returned home to Australia after the relentless touring schedule that came following their critically regarded 2018 debut Hope Downs. Feeling the literal and metaphorical ground under their feet had shifted, the band began grasping for something reliable. For Keaney, that translated into writing "pure romantic fiction" and consciously avoiding the temptation of angsty break-up songs, while Russo looked north to a "bizarre place" that captured the feeling of manufacturing a sense of home when his own had disappeared.

The New Italy of the new album’s title is a village near New South Wales’ Northern Rivers – the area drummer Marcel Tussie is from. A blink-and-you'll-miss-it pit-stop of a place with fewer than 200 residents, it was founded by Venetian immigrants in the late-1800s and now serves as something of a living monument to Italians' contribution to Australia, with replica Roman statues dotted like alien souvenirs on the otherwise rural landscape. The parallels to the way the band attempted to maintain connections and create familiarity during their disorienting time on the road was apparent to Russo. "These are the expressions of people trying to find a home somewhere alien: trying to create a utopia in a turbulent and imperfect world."

The record's geographic identity emerged from the band losing their grip on their own, whether that was through the pressure of touring, the dissolution of relationships, a frustrating distance from their daily lives – or some combination of all three – that came from being slingshotted all over the world, playing sold-out headline tours and festivals including Coachella, Governors Ball, Primavera Sound, All Points East, and Pitchfork Music Festival.

The notion of crafting, in Russo’s words, “a utopia of where your heart’s from,” permeates Sideways to New Italy, in which early attempts at writing big, high-concept songs about The State of the World were abandoned in favor of love songs, and familiar voices and characters filter in and out, grounding the band's stories in their personal histories. There’s something comforting, too, in knowing the next time they’re buffeted from stage to stage around the world, they’ll be taking the voices of their loved ones with them, building a new totem of home no matter where they end up.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Loser edition sky blue vinyl.

Barely a year after the release of their hugely acclaimed debut album 'Dogrel', which earned a Mercury Prize nomination and Album of the Year 2019 at both BBC 6Music and Rough Trade record store, Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. have returned with an intensely confident, patient, and complex follow up album. 'A Hero's Death' arrives battered and bruised, albeit beautiful - a heady and philosophical take on the modern world, and its great uncertainty. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited Edition Stormy Blue Vinyl.

2xDeluxe LP Info: 45rpm cut double-LP on 180g black vinyl.
Cut at Abbey Road Studios.
Double gatefold LP.
Comes with 12”x12” photo/lyric book.

Last summer Liam Gallagher joined the list of all-time greats (Paul McCartney, Page and Plant, Nirvana and many more) who have filmed a prestigious MTV Unplugged session. Having missed Oasis’s 1996 session through illness, the show at Hull’s City Hall found Liam fulfilling some unfinished business entirely on his own terms.

Now Liam is set to release the ‘MTV Unplugged’ live album of the show on April 24th.

The show’s electrifying atmosphere is palpable from the very beginning with a phenomenal reaction as Liam takes to the stage with ‘Wall of Glass’. Material from Liam’s solo career such as his personal favourite ‘Once’ and the joyous ‘Now That I’ve Found You’ resonates in this stripped-back format, with his vocal shining alongside a trio of backing singers and string arrangements performed by the 24-piece Urban Soul Orchestra.

Oasis guitarist Bonehead features on performances of ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Stand By Me’, ‘Cast No Shadow’ and Liam’s first ever live vocal performance of the ‘Definitely Maybe’ bonus track ‘Sad Song’. The show concludes on a crowd-pleasing high with an emotive take on the classic ‘Champagne Supernova’.

Liam launches the ‘MTV Unplugged’ album by sharing the new version of ‘Gone’, which was one of the strongest performances of the night. Stripped of the force of the studio recording, ‘Gone’ instead reveals new-found bombastic dynamics and an evocative cinematic atmosphere.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Very limited two colour splatter vinyl.

Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles announces details of his highly anticipated new album Articulation, released on Erased Tapes on 31 July 2020.

‘Articulation’, the lead track and album centrepiece, links the record back to the analogue fluidity and colour of 2016’s Night Melody. The division of varying time signatures, intertwined with a complex structure of notes, creates an expression of a moving structure and conjures a dreamy motorik energy. Ryan Lee West explains, "The title track is about articulation and playfulness with shape and time. Its structure is very machine-like, but I was really interested in how melody and sense of story could develop out of this, and it became an exploration of mathematical structures - patterns and shapes having a conversation. I love that something on paper can appear rigid and calculated, but then take on new meaning based on the context that surrounds it, or how it changes over time."

Articulation (which follows 2018’s Persona) was conceived with a very visual way of thinking, unusual for the London musician and producer. During the writing process Ryan drew structures, shapes and patterns by hand to try and find new ways of thinking about music, giving himself a way to problem-solve away from the computer. The album title references a piece by the avant-garde contemporary composer Györgi Ligeti, though not for its music, but for the non-traditional graphic score that accompanied it.

“I find electronic music is often battling to say something with integrity because technology and production can easily get in the way. I think the goal of a lot of electronic composers is to find a balance between the vision of the idea and the power of possibilities on the computer. With a pen and paper sketch you can compose and rethink ideas without technology getting in the way, so for me it acts as a very helpful tool to refresh the process.” - Ryan Lee West

The idea of using analogue drawings and tools to bolster digital creations can be heard in the structure of the pieces that make up Articulation from the broody techno opener ‘Vibrations on a String’ all the way to the album’s boundless closer ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’. While the anthemic rise and fall of ‘Still Here’ and the beatless ambient meditation ‘Melodica’ evoke a certain nostalgia, ‘Forwardism’ achieves the very opposite by burying its melody within the fast-paced rhythm of its pulsating synths.

Rising out of birdsong heard from his studio window, ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’ has a particular urgency about it and seems to perfectly capture a longing for escape. Built around a simple and repetitive melodic theme, expanding and retracting over the course of its seven-minute odyssey, Lee West explains; “I like the fact that if you say something over and over again in music, then over time it can become something else, something reflective.”

Since the release of Persona, Ryan Lee West has taken his captivating live A/V set to all corners of the world. Last seen live on stage with 17 players of the London Contemporary Orchestra for a sold-out orchestral performance at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in January 2020.

Meanwhile Lee West has kept busy. After contributing an exclusive track titled ‘Them Is Us’ to Adult Swim’s coveted Singles series, he recently shared the beautifully textured solo piano piece Winter’s Lament on this year’s Piano Day. He has also been in high demand as a composer, scoring Charlie Brooker’s much talked about Black Mirror episode Striking Vipers, composing original music for Secret Cinema presents Stranger Things as well as renowned choreographer Alexander’s Whitley’s groundbreaking new work Overflow which was set to premiere at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre this spring.

Articulation will be available worldwide on 31 July, with live activities to be announced as soon as the situation allows safe event planning.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Clear vinyl in screen printed pvc sleeve.
First 500 come with signed postcard.

Joy Division’s debut single, FAC 13, Transmission kicked off the group’s trend for releasing singles that didn’t appear on their albums. This 40th anniversary 12” features remastered audio on 180g vinyl, and the original artwork on heavyweight board with an embossed sleeve.

The second of the group’s three singles, Atmosphere, was originally released as “Licht und Blindheit” in France only with a different B-side, before being released on Factory in May 1980 as FACUS 2. This 40th anniversary 12” single has been remastered and pressed on 180g vinyl and features the original artwork.

Joy Division’s most enduring classic, Love Will Tear Us Apart, was released in June 1980 not long after Ian Curtis’ untimely passing; and become the group’s highest charting single. Named NME Single of the Year 1980, this 40th anniversary 12” has been remastered and pressed on 180g vinyl and features Peter Saville’s iconic original artwork.

'Interzone' is the third full-length album by New York’s electro post-punk duo The Vacant Lots, to be released via Fuzz Club on June 26th 2020. A genre-blending synthesis of dance and psych, 'Interzone' is made for secluded listeners and all-night partygoers, meant for headphones and the club. Uninhibited by the limitations of two people and continuing their mission of “minimal means maximum effect,” The Vacant Lots’ Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen create an industrial amalgam of icy electronics and cold beats with detached vocals and hard hitting guitars.

'Interzone's trance-like opener ‘Endless Rain’ and the kinetic Krautrock stomper ‘Into The Depths’ are followed by scintillating dark disco anthems 'Rescue' and 'Exit’. Side 2 kicks off with 80’s synth-pop track ‘Fracture’ and haunting after-hours minimal wave ‘Payoff,’ while ‘Station’ and album closer 'Party's Over' deal with disillusionment and conquering one’s indifference to make real change. The album creates order from chaos and delves into escapism, isolation, relationship conflicts, and decay. With nods to William S. Burroughs and Joy Division’s song of the same name, “Interzone is like existing between two zones,” Jared says. “Interzone doesn't mean one thing. It can mean different things to different people depending on their interpretation. Working on this album was a constant struggle reconciling internal conflicts with all that’s going on externally in the world. Interzone, in one word, is duality."

On Interzone, the band produced the 8 songs, 30 minutes record and teamed up with long term collaborators Ivan Liechti who designed the album artwork, and Ted Young who engineered the record. Maurizio Baggio mixed the record and contributed additional production and it was mastered by Gianni Peri. The Vacant Lots have released singles with Mexican Summer and Reverberation Appreciation Society, collaborated on their debut album 'Departure' with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, their second album 'Endless Night' with Alan Vega, and most recently on their two EPs, 'Berlin' and 'Exit', with Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe at his studio in Berlin. The group has toured with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Suicide, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Growlers, Dean Wareham, The Dandy Warhols, and Spectrum. 

Laura Marling’s exquisite seventh album 'Song For Our Daughter' arrives almost without preamble or warning in the midst of uncharted global chaos, and yet instantly and tenderly offers a sense of purpose, clarity and calm. As a balm for the soul, this full-blooded new collection could be posited as Laura’s richest to date, but in truth it’s another incredibly fine record by a British artist who rarely strays from delivering incredibly fine records.

Taking much of the production reins herself, alongside long-time collaborators Ethan Johns and Dom Monks, Laura has layered up lush string arrangements and a broad sense of scale to these songs without losing any of the intimacy or reverence we’ve come to anticipate and almost take for granted from her throughout the past decade.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive marble vinyl.

LP Info: Single LP, black 140g vinyl, gatefold packaging.

CD Info: Digipak CD with booklet.

Four years on from the release of her last, critically acclaimed LP, Julianna Barwick returns with “Healing Is A Miracle”, to be released on July 10th on new home, Ninja Tune.

A distinctive meditation on sound, reverb and the voice, “Healing Is A Miracle” is a record built on improvisation and a close affinity to a couple of trusted items of gear, from which she spins engrossing, expansive universes. Additionally, Barwick draws on the input of three collaborators with whom she has nurtured deep friendships with over the years: Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Nosaj Thing and Mary Lattimore; who each gently nudge out at the edges of her organically-evolved sound.

Recorded in the wake of a seismic shift in her life following a move from New York—where she had lived for 16 years—to Los Angeles where she is now based, the title of the record came to her after thinking about how the human body heals itself, of the miraculous processes we pay little attention to: “You cut your hand, it looks pretty bad, and two weeks later it looks like it never happened… That’s kind of amazing, you know?” It’s a sentiment that feels particularly apt for the moment. From there, she conceived of the record’s simple statement title, ran it past a couple of friends, and it was settled. Like with the record itself, and all of her work, it’s about following her gut, and seeing where it takes her.

“Healing Is A Miracle” began life in spring of last year, when Barwick sat down with her vocal looping set-up and began sketching out some ideas for new solo material. “It had been so long since I had done that,” she recalls, “making something for myself, just for the love of it… it was emotional, because I was recording music that was just from the heart, that wasn't for an 'assignment' or project… it brought me to tears a little”.

Part of the joy also came from a small but significant switch up to her recording process: the addition of some studio monitors—a birthday gift from Jónsi and Alex (Somers)—having previously recorded all of her music on headphones. “The first song I remember making with those was the first song on the album, Inspirit.” she explains, “When I added the bass I really felt it in my body, you know, in a way you just wouldn’t with headphones… it was kind of euphoric and fun. I got really excited about making the record in that moment, and I think that really had an impact on the sounds I ended up making.”

Excitement too came from the chance to work with three dream collaborators. Her connection to Jónsi began via producer Alex Somers, when Barwick flew to Reykjavík to record some sessions with him for her 2013 record “Nepenthe”, a trip which would begin a long-standing affinity with Iceland and the people she connected with there. “I think he has the best voice in the world,” she says, “and hearing my voice with Jonsi's is one of the joys of my life.” Nosaj Thing—the highly respected electronic producer and stalwart of the LA scene who has worked with the likes of Kendric Lamar—had gotten in touch to express his affection for her 2011 album “The Magic Place”, and they’d since been trying to find a way to work together. Barwick and Lattimore had struck up a friendship over many years performing live together, and had moved to LA around the same time. Finding herself in the same city as all three for the first time, it felt natural to include them in her process, and added to the feeling of newness, support and friendship she had while producing the record.

Beyond her records, Barwick’s impressive live shows have gained incredible praise over the years from the likes of The Guardian—who described her performance as “exquisite in its eloquence, reflection and compassion” in their 5* review—The New York Times, NPR, and more. She has also supported and performed with an amazing array of artists including Bon Iver, Grouper, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós, Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, Perfume Genius, Mas Ysa, and Nat Baldwin.

Barwick has additionally been involved in some head-turning collaborations over the years. In 2015 she took part in The Flaming Lips’s Carnegie Hall show, performing music from their reimagining of “Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”, alongside Phillip Glass, Debbie Harry, Laurie Anderson and Pattie Smith. That same year she was invited to play two shows with Yoko Ono, one at MoMA (“my favorite thing ever”) and one in Central Park. In 2012 she released a collaborative album with Helado Negro as OMBRE, and has also released a collaborative single with Rafael Anton Isarri, on the super-limited Thesis label, and most recently, the “Command Synthesis” EP, on RVNG Intl. sub-label Commend There, which employed AI to build five tracks that responded to the airborne environment outside a hotel room. In 2019 she teamed up with Doug Aitken on his nomadic art project, and created stunning performances in the Massachusett wilderness.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP Info: Limited edition first run includes a 12"x12" signed artboard print.

Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony. But on its third album, it’s finally speaking out loud. Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. And it all started with them coming home.

By the summer of 2019, the Houston group—bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, guitarist Mark Speer, drummer DJ Johnson—had been on tour for nearly three-and-ahalf years, playing to audiences across North and South America, Europe, and southeast Asia behind its acclaimed albums The Universe Smiles Upon You and Con Todo El Mundo. They returned to their farmhouse studio in Burton, Texas, ready to begin work on their third album. But they were also determined to slow down, to take their time and luxuriate in building something together. Musically, the band’s ever-restless ear saw it pulling reference points from Pakistan, Korea, and West Africa, incorporating strains of Indian chanting boxes and Congolese syncopated guitar. But more than anything, the album became a celebration of Houston, the eclectic city that had nurtured them, and a cultural nexus where you can check out country and zydeco, trap rap, or avant-garde opera on any given night.

In those years away from home, Khruangbin’s members often felt like they were swimming underwater, unsure of where they were going, or why they were going there. But Mordechai leads them gently back to the surface, allowing them to take a breath, look around, and find itself again. It is a snapshot taken along a larger journey—a moment all the more beautiful for its impermanence. And it’s a memory to revisit again and again, speaking to us now more clearly than ever.

Burning deep in Girl Friday's music is an unquenchable will to survive. The LA-based band don't blunt the impact of the themes they work through in their ferocious, knotty rock songs, but they don't let the more harrowing aspects of being alive and young in the 21st century daunt them, either. Dystopian shades of post-punk and noise rock abound alongside abundant optimism on Girl Friday’s arresting debut LP, Androgynous Mary. The world is a hellscape, but the four of them are in it together.

With bold, dramatic guitar lines and tightly wound vocal harmonies, Girl Friday - guitarist Vera Ellen, bassist Libby Hsieh, guitarist Sierra Scott, drummer Virginia Pettis - negotiate the stress and alienation of being sidelined by society. "Does the average man feel like he's on the outside?" goes the beginning of "Public Bodies," a wistful jangle-pop gem that shudders open into a snarling punk coda. Taking cues from boundary-pushers Sonic Youth, Girl Friday favor the rush of jarring turns over the safety of well-defined pop taxonomy. Looking to queer provocateurs like Placebo, they cherish the frisson of incongruous musical elements: "really dark, heavy things mashed up with quite beautiful things, whether that be a distorted guitar line and a sentimental vocal or vice versa," as Ellen puts it. That duality dovetails with the thematic friction running through the album, the alternating despair and hope that intertwine in the fight to survive as disenfranchised people in the US.

Written during a year of personal struggle for all four band members, Androgynous Mary reflects the solace they took in each other -- as a band, but also as a microcommunity and a chosen family. On the record's final song, "I Hope Jason Is Happy," Girl Friday sing in unison: "My head is on your chest / In the end I'll be happy if you do your best / You've got to fight to keep your breath in this world." It's a testament to the power of their bond, and a gesture of solidarity with those listening. Alone, we suffer under the weight of everything designed to keep us down. Together, we stand a fighting chance. Girl Friday place their hope squarely on that chance.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Exclusive Pink/White marble vinyl.
• Hand-numbered edition of 350.
• Exclusive Obi Strip.
• Signed band photo.

Dinked Edition LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Coloured LP Info: Dark green coloured vinyl.

For fans of Khruangbin, Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes, Kamasi Washington, Strut Records, Analog Africa & Soundway.

New eagerly awaited LP from the maverick Kutiman, based on field recordings he made in Tanzania of local musicians, then manipulated, layered and expanded in his home studio. A one of a kind opportunity for a musical trip to the motherland, through the eyes, ears and heart of one of the most fascinating and adventurous musicians in contemporary music.

People have been living around the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro for millennia. One day in 2014 another jeep pulled up, in a rural neighbourhood where many people from the Wachaga nation live, work and play. This jeep contained Ophir ‘Kutiman’ Kutiel, the producer, multi-instrumentalist and filmmaker who is get-stopped-in-the-supermarket famous in his home country despite being terminally shy of the spotlight.

Kutiman carried microphones, video recording equipment and a request for creative collaboration to Tanzania – and he left Wachaga with a set of recordings. Some of these were of everyday sounds and some contained special sounds: school children from the city of Arusha playing drums or the dancers who wore bells to add a percussive element to the movement, like the metal plate in a tap dancer’s shoe.

This fourth studio album is a combination of the material he collected on his 2014 trip with recordings made with saxophonist Shlomi Alon, trumpeter Sefi Zisling and trombonist Yair Slutzki, alongside his own playing and studio wizardry. He was listening to a lot of spiritual jazz during the recording, and in a departure from his usual cut and paste style, played on top of the recordings.

It’s a creative push that has paid off: Horns and synth melodies spiral across borrowed rhythm patterns and chants which provide the bedrock around which Kutiman builds his own musical dwelling, creating new pathways of jazz, psychedelia and circular meditative zone-outs.

Returning home from his trip to the self-organised kibbutz community where he lives in the western Negev desert, he began dipping into the recordings to see how he could use them as a starting point for his own musical and visual explorations.

Fast forward six years, and we have ‘Wachaga’, an audiovisual feast which contains nine tracks and nine kaleidoscopic video pieces, named after the 2.4 million Tanzanians who live mostly on the southern and eastern sides of Mount Kilimanjaro.

He made the video strand of the release over a couple of years. The films are trippy and hypnotic, reflecting the emotions he felt while recording the music. They’re made using vintage analogue techniques and gear including a rare 1980s Fairlight CVI video synthesiser, a Videonics equaliser and a Panasonic mx50 video mixer.

Kutiman might be well-known at home but he’s also internet-famous thanks to his million+ viewed ThruYou series ("Top 50 Inventions of 2009" by Time Magazine) which edited together samples of bedroom YouTube videos from around the world and his Mix The City platform.

He’s well known to music heads for his 2007 eponymous debut, 2016’s ‘6am’ and 2018’s ‘Don’t Hold Onto The Clouds’ alongside co-signs by the likes of Maribou State who featured one of his tracks on the most recent Fabric Live mix or the modern classical solo album he made for Greenpeace last year.

Following the huge buzz built around his Anatolian rock collaboration with Turkish singer Melike Sahin in 2019 ('Sakle Beni'), and the critically acclaimed limited edition 7” record featuring the warm and brassy middle eastern ‘Saluf’ and percussive slow burner ‘Badawee’ was released in February, and another psychedelic jazz-funk EP called 'Layla' was released in April to rave reviews and support from Peter Kruder, John Gomez, Bradley Zero, Dom Servini and Toshio Matsuura to name a few.

Kutiman is now in one of the greatest artistic peaks of his diverse career and Wachagga is the first in a string of releases, which explore Kutiman’s singular vision through a variety of musical lens including melodic techno, ambient electronica and sweeping, motorik jazz. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited edition 180 gram gatefold sleeve SPLATTER vinyl for INDIE STORES ONLY. 300 Copies.

Ltd LP Info: Limited edition 180gram gatefold sleeve BLACK vinyl – 300 Copies.

It is impossible to talk about modern psychedelic music without mentioning Ripley Johnson. As bandleader of Wooden Shjips and half of Moon Duo, Johnson has continually charted new cosmic paths that expand on the language of the genre. With Rose City Band, Johnson’s songwriting and beautiful guitar lines take center stage. While his vocal treatment would be recognizable to any Wooden Shjips fan, the sparseness of the instrumentation lays bare the beauty of his writing. Shimmering guitar lines are free to shine, buoyed by driving rhythms. New to the mix are arrangements and instruments drawn directly from classic country, resulting in songs with more than a hint of twang. Buoyant and joyous, Summerlong is a captivating listen that leaves the listener yearning for more. The record is an ode to freedom, born of a musician stepping out of all routines and whose own liberation is communicated so completely in his music. Summerlong is a record that, taken in its entirety, is an emphatic statement on the songwriting power of Ripley Johnson. Johnson’s joy in every aspect of this album is delightfully infectious.

Rose City Band started purely as a recording project, with Johnson’s role mostly obscured for the self-titled debut album. Released with no promotion, in the style of private press records, it was a liberating, a focus on music without any expectations. With a chuckle, Johnson elaborates, “I always would threaten to my friends that I’m gonna start a country rock band so I can retire and just play down at the pub every Thursday night during happy hour. I love being able to tour and travel, but I also like the idea of having a local band … more of a social music experience.” Freedom from expectation and obligation gave Johnson the space to experiment. The introduction of lap steel, mandolin, and jaw harp enhance Johnson’s lean guitar work with radiant overtones, placing Summerlong more overtly within the country tradition than its predecessor. Work on the album began at Johnson’s home studio in Portland during the summer, but, interrupted by touring, was not be finished until winter. The dark isolation of winter and the pining for summer’s easier days can be felt in the album’s few quieter moments. Summerlong was mixed by John McEntire (Stereolab, Broken Social Scene, Tortoise) at his newly minted Portland Soma Studios and mastered by Amy Dragon at Telegraph Mastering, also based in Portland.

The aptly named Summerlong, born of Johnson’s own fondness for the season, delivers an emotional lift—an expression akin to the joy of getting out there on a warm day, be it gathering for a BBQ, hopping onto a bike, leaping into a swimming hole, or simply reading in a park.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Clear / orange / blue vinyl.

‘A Day in a Yellow Beat’ is Yellow Days’ sophomore record and his first for Columbia. George is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist and self-medicated auteur who has never quite fitted into one style or space. As he readies his new album, his sound continues to warp funky, while his words dig deeper into modern malaise and mental health. It is, as he says, "Upbeat existential millennial crisis music."

On his current musical direction, George explains "I'm trying to brand my own version of ironic dance music full of depressing truths about feeling distant from your friends, or a sense that nothing is worth anything," In particular he's been diving into the '70s: fusion-era works of Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones, the funkier phases of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, and the keyboard wizardry of Don Blackman and Weldon Irvine. He's been staying up until 5 a.m. watching Soul Train on YouTube, and testing his falsetto. ‘A Day in a Yellow Beat’ is a real-time culmination of ideas, however wild they may be.

Having previously released music produced out of his garden shed in surrey, Yellow Days has spent a lot of time writing and recording this current wave of music in LA with a whole host of incredible artists and musicians – many of whom have / still play for the likes of Raphael Saadiq, Frank Ocean, Weldon Irvine, Kanye West. In doing so, George has taken it back to a more traditional way of making music – from hand-picking the collaborators, selecting the perfect studio setting to recording everything on analogue, vintage gear; all of which has vastly enhanced the sound Yellow Days is now capable of creating. By overseeing the production process, George is more in charge of his own fuzzed-out, technicolor vision than ever. "This is really my first record where I can let it fucking all out," he says.

Yellow Days remains at its heart, a project about youth. His career trajectory, which began at a very young age, has been a musical outlet for his teenage years and the complexities of transitioning into adulthood. ‘A Day in a Yellow Beat’ is the culmination of this process to date; a coming of age moment as he commits a wealth of emotions into a vision that projects well beyond his garden shed and onto the global stage. Ever-evolving creatively, George is always thinking of the next steps and where his journey will go, ‘When I become a bit older, maybe I'm not Yellow Days anymore' At which point, he'll most likely find himself leading the house band in a quantum disco at the edge of the universe. But until then, ‘A Day in A Yellow Beat’ is coming, so settle in for the ride.

Kelly Lee Owens' masterful second album Inner Song finds the convention-blurring techno producer and singer/songwriter diving deep into her own psyche—excoriating the struggles she's faced over the last several years and exploring personal pain while embracing the beauty of the natural world. It's a leap in artistry from a musician who burst forth on the scene with a confident, rich sound, and Inner Song is endlessly enticing when it comes to what Owens is capable of.

Inner Song follows the star-making debut of her 2017 self-titled album, a quixotic blend of body-moving beats and introspective songwriting that garnered numerous accolades from the music press. Owens has indeed come a long way from her background as a nurse, since then she has remixed Bjørk & St Vincent, released an indelibly clubby two-tracker, 2019's "Let It Go" b/w "Omen," and teamed up with likeminded auteur Jon Hopkins on the one-off "Luminous Spaces."

Her latest album also comes off of what Owens describes as "the hardest three years of my life," an emotionally fraught time that, in her words, "Definitely impacted my creative life and everything I'd worked for up to that point. I wasn't sure if I could make anything anymore, and it took quite a lot of courage to get to a point where I could make something again." So while the lovely cover of Radiohead's "Arpeggi" might strike some as an unconventional way to open a sophomore effort, to Owens the winding take on the classic tune—recorded a year before work on Inner Song properly kicked off—represents the sort of sonic rebirth that's so essential to Inner Song's aura.

Inner Song was largely written and recorded over a month last winter. As with her debut, Owens holed up in the studio with co-producer and collaborator James Greenwood —and letting loose in the studio and being open to whatever sonic whims emerge was essential to Owens' craftwork. The evocative title of the album is borrowed from free-jazz maestro Alan Silva's 1972 opus, which was gifted to Owens Smalltown Supersound's Joakim Haugland for her 30th birthday: "I'm so grateful for him and his perspectives—he's always thinking outside of the box. Those two words really reflect what it felt like to make this record. I did a lot of inner work in the past few years, and this is a true reflection of that." The hair-raising bass and tickling textures of Inner Song drive home that, more so than ever, Owens is locked in to delivering maximal sonic pleasure—as evidenced by the decision to make the album's vinyl release a sesqui album, or triple-sided album: "I'm still obsessed with frequencies that don't do well on vinyl if they don't have the space."

"The power of conceptualizing who you are has really informed this album," Owens states about Inner Song's essence, and her second album is truly a discovery of self— the latest statement from a fascinating artist who continues to surprise, gesturing towards a rich and varied career to come.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xDinked Edition LP Info: 2LP Exclusive Clear Vinyl.
Bonus Exclusive ‘Hidden’ track Side C.
Etching on Side D.
Signed and Numbered Exclusive 12” Art Print (Design exclusive to Dinked).

2xColoured LP Info: White vinyl edition.

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There, he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.”(Matthew 17:2).

Based out of Toronto, Little Kid’s Kenny Boothby finds himself inspired by this idea of transfiguration - a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state. Far-ranging in both its sonic palette and its subject matter, the band’s forthcoming album, Transfiguration Highway is a record of unusual depth and clarity from a songwriter who has spent the better part of a decade honing his craft and a lifetime building the perspective his songs so deftly express. These are personal songs that look outward, that seek to tie together the bigness of the world and the smallness of the everyday with both subtlety and humility. For years Boothby and Little Kid have been quietly building a devoted following, but their Solitaire debut is a beautifully formed introduction to the wider world for an artist who will undoubtedly be recognized as a uniquely gifted songwriting voice.

Operating since 2011, and now joined by Megan Lunn (banjo, keys, vocals), Paul Vroom (bass & vocals), Liam Cole (drums) and Brodie Germain (drums, guitar, percussion), Little Kid has built a cult audience with a series of idiosyncratic home recordings, self-released in short cassette runs that range from more traditional albums and EPs, to 2019’s Botched Restorations - on which Boothby sold out a run of one-of-a-kind 60 minute cassettes that each contained 10 songs from his discography, chosen by the purchaser and recorded live to tape in his bedroom.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • 180g Clear with Baby Blue, Opaque Orange and Opaque Gold Splatter Vinyl*
• Foil numbered sleeve*
• ‘Le Cycle Liturgique’ A3 folded poster*
• Dinked orange obi-strip*
• Download card
*Exclusive to Dinked Edition

Ltd LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Originally released in 1989. The Enraged Will Inherit the Earth is a musical molotov cocktail that’s a mixture of power chords and virile, virtuous lyrics.

The songwriting is tightly forged and their knack for producing raw pop is at its finest here. The Enraged Will Inherit The Earth is a powerful weapon that didn’t get enough of a user base to make its intended impact. If the question was ever proposed, “can art be a weapon?” I think this album answers with a bold and resounding “yes.”

Including the singles Boy Meets Girl, So What; Should The Bible Be Banned; Keep An Open Mind Or Else & This Nelson Rockerfeller. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: This limited edition set contains the original LP plus a 10 track bonus LP and a bonus 7” with 2 previously unreleased tracks.
Remastered and pressed on colour vinyl with a reworked sleeve by original designer Andy Royston.

Like Psychic TV before them, Crack Cloud have a philosophy, and one that they are not afraid to wear on their sleeves. While their anarchic, phantasmagorical visuals, heavy use of symbology, and seemingly never-ending cast of colourful collaborators have often invited cult comparisons, this really does the collective no justice.

There is no apocalyptic death drive here; no cult of personality; no hierarchy of power. While frontman and lyricist Zach Choy is in many ways the face of the group, the collective is one founded on equality, and in his cryptic lyrical blending of poetics, polemics and personal experience, Choy is truly the mouthpiece of something far larger than himself. Nowhere else is this more apparent than on the album’s first single, ‘The Next Fix.’

What begins as a caustic, claustrophobic account of addiction swells into a sprawling, euphoric hymn as Choy is joined by a choir of seemingly endless celestial voices. Less a cult then; more a church. Listening to this song or watching  its accompanying self-directed video is a truly spiritual experience, and in its building, jubilant movement it offers a glimpse of Crack Cloud’s most vital message: using community to turn adversity into hope. This isn’t just bravado; its a story born of deep, personal experience. Crack Cloud operate on the frontline of Canada’s out-of-control opiate crisis, mobilising and organizing in Vancouver’s harm reduction programmes.

The group themselves have had their fair share of trauma, and the collective offers its members a vital vehicle for rehabilitation and recovery. As the tagline on the album’s back cover makes clear then, this is absolutely ‘based on true shit.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • 180 gram dark green vinyl.
• 7" of 2 unreleased tracks.
• Numbered Edition.
• Gatefold Sleeve.
• Download Code.

Salt-bitten post-punk and ethereal introspection from Brighton's grasshopper (small ‘g’).

The culmination of eight years of playing together, 'SCUTTLE' features nine blistering and beautiful tracks filtered through the well-reverbed ears of Cure producer David M Allen. Ranging from the urgent and growling - as on 'I Think It's Time to Wake Up Now' and live favourite 'Backwards' - to the almost supernatural melancholy of album closers 'Hymn' and 'The Great Unravelling', 'SCUTTLE' is every bit as vital, original, and distinct as the seminal post-punk albums preceding it.

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: LP includes booklet and download code.

Hailing from Melbourne, but with a sound stretching from 60s and 70s afrobeat and exotica to Fela Kuti-esque repetition, the proto-garage rhythmic fury of The Monks and the grooves of Os Mutantes, there’s an enticing lost world exoticism to the music of Bananagun. It’s the sort of stuff that could’ve come from a dusty record crate of hidden gems; yet as the punchy, colourfully vibrant pair of singles Do Yeah and Out of Reach have proven over the past 12 months, the band are no revivalists. On debut album The True Story of Bananagun, they make a giant leap forward with their outward-looking blend of global tropicalia.

The True Story of Bananagun marks Bananagun’s first full foray into writing and recording as a complete band, having originally germinated in the bedroom ideas and demos of guitarist, vocalist and flautist Nick van Bakel. The multi-instrumentalist grew up on skate videos, absorbing the hip-hop beats that soundtracked them -taking on touchstones like Self Core label founder Mr. Dibbs and other early 90’s turntablists. That love of the groove underpins Bananagun - even if the rhythms now traverse far beyond those fledgling influences. "We didn't want to do what everyone else was doing,” the band’s founder says. “We wanted it to be vibrant, colourful and have depth like the jungle. Like an ode to nature."

Van Bakel was joined first by cousin Jimi Gregg on drums–the pair’s shared love of the Jungle Book apparently made him a natural fit – and the rest of the group are friends first and foremost, put together as a band because of a shared emphasis on keeping things fun.

Jack Crook (guitar/vocals), Charlotte Tobin (djembe/percussion) and Josh Dans (bass)complete the five-piece and between them there’s a freshness and playful spontaneity to The True Story of Bananagun, borne out of late night practice jams and hangs at producer John Lee’s Phaedra Studios.

“We were playing a lot leading up to recording so we’re all over it live”, van Bakel fondly recalls of the sessions that became more like a communal hang out, with Zoe Fox and Miles Bedford there too to add extra vocals and saxophone. “It was a good time, meeting there every night, using proper gear [rather than my bedroom setups.] It felt like everyone had a bit of a buzz going on.”

Tracks like The Master and People Talk Too Much bounce around atop hybrid percussion that fuses West African high life with Brazilian tropicalia; the likes of She Now hark to abmore westernised early rhythm ‘n’ blues beat, remoulded and refreshed in the group’s own inimitable summery style. Freak Machine is perhaps the closest to those early 90’s beats, but even then the group add layers and layers of bright guitars, harmonic flower -pop vocals and other sounds to transmute the source material to an entirely new plain.

Elsewhere there’s a 90 second track called Bird Up! that cut and pastes kookaburra and parrot calls as there’s a 90 second track called Bird Up! that cut and pastes kookaburra and parrot calls as an homage to the wildlife surrounding van Bakel’s home 80 kilometres from Melbourne. Oh, and there are hooks galore too–try and stop yourself from humming along to Out of Reach’s swooping vocal melody.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive clear vinyl.

The debut album from Pottery, Welcome to Bobby's Motel, arrives 10th April 2020.

Who is “Bobby,” you ask?

Enter Pottery. Enter Paul Jacobs, Jacob Shepansky, Austin Boylan, Tom Gould, and Peter Baylis. Enter the smells, the cigarettes, the noise, their van Mary, their friend Luke, toilet drawings, Northern California, Beatles accents, Taco Bell, the Great Plains, and hot dogs. Enter love and hate, angst and happiness, and everything in between. Beginning as an inside joke between the band members, Bobby and his “motel” have grown into so much more. They’ve become the all-encompassing alt-reality that the band built themselves, for everyone else. So, in essence, Bobby is Pottery and his motel is wherever they are.

But really, Bobby is a pilot, a lumberjack, a stay at home dad, and a disco dancer that never rips his pants. He's a punching bag filled with comic relief. He laughs in the face of day-to-day ambiguity, as worrying isn’t worth it to Bobby. There’s a piece of him in everyone, there to remind us that things are probably going to work out, maybe. He’s you. He’s him. He’s her. He’s them. Bobby is always there, painted in the corner, urging you to relax and forget about your useless worries. And his motel? Well, the motel is life. It might not be clean, and the curtains might not shut all the way. The air conditioner might be broken, and the floors might be stained. But that’s okay, because you don’t go to Bobby’s Motel for the glamour and a good night’s sleep, the minibar, or the full-service sauna. You go to Bobby’s Motel to feel, to escape, to remember, to distract. You go for the late nights and early mornings, good times and the bad. You might spend your entire life looking for Bobby’s Motel and just when you think you will never find it, you realize you’ve been there all along. It’s filthy and amazing and you dance, and you love it.

The 11 songs on ‘Welcome to Bobby’s Motel’ don’t just invite you to move your body; they command you to. Fusing reckless, manic energy with painstaking precision, the record is part post-punk, part art-pop, and part dance floor acid trip, hinting at everything from Devo to Gang of Four as it boldly careens through genres and decades. The music is driven by explosive drums and off-kilter guitar riffs that drill themselves into your brain, accented with deep, funky grooves and rousing gang vocals. The production is similarly raw and wild, suggesting an air of anarchy that belies the music’s careful architecture and meticulous construction. The result is an album full of ambitious, complex performances that exude joy and mayhem in equal measure, a collection that’s alternately virtuosic, chaotic, and pure fun." 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 'Hot Dog yellow' vinyl.

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Martin Jenkins, more commonly known as the artist Pye Corner Audio, epitomizes Lapsus' commitment to cutting edge sound experimentation. In 2017, he beguiled the electronic music community by releasing the 'Where Things Are Hollow' EP, on Lapsus Records. The Barcelona label is delighted to announce the release of ‘Where Things Are Hollow 2’, consisting of three brand new original cuts and a remix from none other than John Talabot.

'Where Things Are Hollow 2' explores a spectral and hypnagogic terrain, establishing an electronic sound that at times invokes Jenkins’ more dance friendly facet -'Self Synchronize', 'Weather The Storm'– while also offering his familiar iridescent dreamlike ambient textures –'Phase B'– that featured prominently on his first EP. This second EP also includes a remix from John Talabot, unquestionably one of Spain’s most internationally recognised names over the last decade, who exquisitely reimagines 'Resist' -a song from the first EP-, transforming it into a cross between EBM and hypnotic techno. From a graphic design perspective, renowned artists Alex Trochut and Basora have once again collaborated on this project, repeating the formula that made the artwork for "Where Things Are Hollow" such a collector's item.

To follow the astonishing and final installment in the Black Devil story, it seemed fitting to ask two of the deepest and individual of producers to pay tribute to the Black Devil legacy.

The result is a spectacularly immersive release.

Pye Corner Audio is known for his otherworldy take on italo disco and nocturnal explorations into dusty electronica. His version of Berliner Atoll envisions a club scene filmed by Dario Argento, wreathed in smoke, lost in mirrors. Propulsive, dynamic and irresistible.

Abul Mogard excels himself with a gorgeous voyage into the abyss. Nearly 10 minutes of weightless psychedelic exploration. Utterly absorbing and the perfect soundtrack for taking LSD in a flotation tank.

Berlin-based, Swiss singer, multi-instrumentalist and film composer Sophie Hunger will release her seventh studio album - her first in two years - ‘Halluzinationen’ on August 28, 2020 via Caroline International. The album - recorded at Abbey Road Studios in live continuous takes - is produced by MPG UK Producer Of The Year, Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, Fontaines DC), also at the helm for 2018’s ‘Molecules’ which featured 6Music play-listed single ‘I Opened A Bar’.

‘Halluzinationen’ arrives bearing an emphatic German title, as Hunger - still resident in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighbourhood - picks at the creative dependency between loneliness and the imagination. Electing this time around to decamp from Carey’s Speedy Wunderground studio in South London to the august surrounds of Abbey Road’s Studio 2, ‘Halluzinationen’ is suffused with the nervous energy of its continuous live recording technique, with the album captured in sequence just six times over the course of two days. It’s an approach Hunger succinctly identifies as ‘Full risk’.

Sophie Hunger’s six solo albums to date have accrued over a quarter of a million sales, drawing her comparisons to contemporaries including Sharon Van Etten and PJ Harvey, with fans as wide-ranging as Lauren Laverne (who says of Sophie ‘I love this woman’), Steven Wilson (who tapped Hunger to guest on his UK Top 3 album ‘To The Bone’) and unlikely enough, footballing legend Eric Cantona (a long-standing fan of Sophie’s who guested to intone in French on ‘Supermoon’). Sophie made her debut at Glastonbury in 2010 as the first Swiss artist to ever play the festival (since selling out 1,000 capacity venues with ease on the continent), and 2016 saw Hunger also make her - very successful - first outing in film scoring, with her soundtrack for the Oscar & Golden Globe-nominated Ma Vie de Courgette earning her a Cesar nomination to boot.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 12” Heavyweight Transparent ‘Smokey’ Vinyl.
60x60 poster.

LP Info: 12” Heavyweight Black Vinyl.

Music and dancing is one of the last great unifiers that we have. It doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t care about race, sexual preferences, religion or what side of the fence you are on politically. Music chooses you and you just have to submit yourself to its peculiar yet tender headlock! ‘Don’t Diss the Disco’ is about that. It references Studio 54, Grace Jones & Bianca Jagger on a White Horse - but it’s mainly about clubs where we and our friends frequent like ‘Homoelectric in Manchester. This is a song for our kind of freaks and miscreants and the incessant snobbery faced by them for liking good pop music, good disco, genre’s that on the surface might not be deemed cool, but actually save souls. Says ITOP founder Adrian Flanagan (The Moonlandingz/ Eccentronic Research Council/ Adult Entertainment).

Singer Leonore Wheatley adds.
We wanted to capture that sweaty, hazy, manic, exciting mess in a song, that captures those halcyon days of Clubbing in Sheffield & Manchester, that moment the adrenaline kicks in and everyone in the room is your brother or sister.”

Talking about the album, Adrian said:
We recorded it all and produced it all ourselves at Dean’s Bowling green studio in Sheffield, it’s the best thing we’ve done since the last thing we did, which I know sounds unbelievable, but it really is! We also included Katie Mason on this record who sings live with us as a double pronged two headed front person with Leonore - and their voices together work like a harmonious dream. Katie & Leonore have been friends since primary school so you can’t fake that dynamic, it’s unbreakable) .

Leonore adds:
We decided to go deeper into the club realm. We wanted the record and live shows to go hand in hand, bringing the spectators more into becoming part of the performance. Dean Honer who mixed the album and who has worked with everyone from Jarvis Cocker to Britney Spears said:
I like that we have a disco song about fillicide commited by the Queen. (The Tower) I wonder if Meghan and Harry heard our early demo?

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive bubblegum pink vinyl, limited to 500 copies worldwide.

Bing & Ruth, the ever-evolving project helmed by New York composer David Moore, has announced details of a new album, scheduled for release this summer. While on a surface level, Species is an exploration of the sonic possibilities of the Farfisa organ, aided only by a clarinet and double bass (played respectively by founding members Jeremy Viner and Jeff Ratner), the title Species is a nod to both humanity and humility – a devotion to the godly intuition with which we are all endowed, and the humbleness required of us to perceive it. It’s also about suspended time and trance; not just a steady movement from A to B, but as something that flows, meanders and eddies, like water.

Species, and the transcendental state it embodies, was inspired by two recent loves of Moore’s: the desert and long-distance running. Briefly relocating from his New York base to Point Dume, between the Pacific Ocean and the desert, Moore was able to indulge in both passions, which in turn provided stimulus for new work. He says, “I’d found myself in places unfamiliar enough that I could easily lose all sense of direction, size and, more than anything, all sense of time. The music I was making became a kind of reflection of these intentional detachments - and a place to mirror that feeling of trance that had pushed them out in the first place.”

DMA’S are poised to make a major breakthrough with their third album ‘The Glow’ produced by multiple Grammy winner Stuart Price (The Killers, Everything Everything, New Order )at Westlake Studios in West Hollywood.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: RSD stores exclusive tri-coloured vinyl.

When a musical ensemble chooses to self-title an album mid-career, it usually signifies their conviction that they’ve struck upon the motherlode, hit the jackpot, stepped up and generally arrived at a point they’ve always striven for but never quite attained before.

Coming from GoGo Penguin at this stage in the game, it’s quite a bold statement: the instrumental trio from Manchester, England have fielded plaudits and rave reviews for inspiration and originality at every turn since 2013,when they settled on their dream line-up of Chris Illingworth (piano), Rob Turner (drums) and Nick Blacka (bass).

Fusing jazz, classical and electronic influences(amongst others) with a thirst for innovation, they’ve been garlanded as makers of one of the Mercury Prize album of the year (in ’14) and have enjoyed success on record and in the live arena matched by precious few vocal-free groups post-millennium.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Indies exclusive double clear coloured vinyl.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Blue green swirl vinyl.

A rumble on the horizon. Gritted teeth, nuclear fizz and fissured rock. A dab of pill dust from a linty pocket before it hits: the atom split, pool table overturned, pint glass smashed — valley fever breaking with the clouds as the inertia of small town life is well and truly disrupted. Here to bust out of Doledrum, clad in a t-shirt that screams SOCIALISM and armed with drum machine, synth, pedal and icy stare are Working Men’s Club, and their self-titled debut album.

It’s hard to believe that the three fresh-faced music college kids who bounced out of nowhere and onto the 6 Music playlist with the sweet-but-potent, twangy guitar-led ‘Bad Blood’ (Melodic Records) in 2019 are the same band who clattered back there with maddening techno-cowbellpuncher ‘Teeth’ less than half a year later — and that’s because for the most part, they’re not. Having signed to Heavenly and with the hype around them building, underlying tensions came to a boil a mere five days before the band’s all-important first London headline show, and wunderkind frontman Syd Minsky-Sargeant was left high and dry; guitarist Giulia Bonometti had decided to focus on her blossoming solo career, and drummer Jake Bogacki was against the new electronic direction Minsky-Sargeant saw Working Men’s Club taking. (“I guess WMC started off as a bit more guitar-based, tryna copy stuff in our own way, like the Velvets and stuff like that, but I didn’t want it to be that anymore. It became dancier and dancier as I tried to experiment”, he explains.) All that remained of the outfit was Minsky-Sargeant himself, recently recruited bassist Liam Ogburn, and — given the band’s indebtment to wood panelled, community-run venues for an early leg-up — a rather pertinent name. But with staunch determination burning in his belly, Minsky-Sargeant quickly assembled a lineup consisting of himself, Ogburn, and Mairead O'Connor (The Moonlandingz) and Rob Graham (Drenge, Baba Naga) — both of whom he had met at the Sheffield studio of producer Ross Orton (The Fall, M.I.A., Arctic Monkeys) — replaced the live drums with a drum machine, and rush-rehearsed the new setup before going ahead with the show. “If it wasn’t for Sheffield then we probably wouldn’t have played that gig” he says. “I was shitting myself, because I didn’t know what would work or not.” Luckily, something stuck: “After about three gigs with that lineup it was already way better than what we’d had before.” Two original members lighter and three new ones the richer, Working Men’s Club took on a new hard-edge permutation, their shows becoming ever more sweaty, pulsating and rammed to the rafters; their energy raw; their vigour renewed; their interplay as musicians growing ever-more intuitive and elastic. Their eponymous collection of songs is equal parts Calder Valley restlessness and raw Sheffield steel; guitars locking horns with floor-filling beats, synths masquerading as drums and Minsky-Sargeant’s scratchy, electrifying bedroom demos brought to their full potential by Orton’s blade-sharp yet sensitive production.

It was at home in the town of Todmorden in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, feeling hemmed in, that 18-year-old Syd Minsky-Sargeant first began assembling these 10 songs. “There’s not much going on, not much stuff to do as a teenager” he says. “It’s quite isolated. And it can get quite depressing being in a town where in the winter it gets light at nine in the morning and dark at four”. It is this sense of cabin fever, of “thinking that you will never escape a small town in the middle of nowhere” on which the album opens, with the boredom-lamenting and rave-reminiscent ‘Valleys’. In a post-punk talk-sing over an old-skool beat, Minsky-Sargeant begins:

Trapped, inside a town, inside my mind

Stuck with no ideas, I’m running out of time

There’s no quick escape, so many mistakes, I’ll play the long game

This winter is a curse

And the valley is my hearse, when will it take me to the grave?

Fortunately for Syd and a thousand other bored-shitless, dark-dwelling teenagers, the Calder Valley boasts a burgeoning grassroots music scene, chiefly centred around The Golden Lion in Todmorden, and the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge — both of which were instrumental in the early life of the band. “Without those venues we probably wouldn’t have been able to get into playing live music”, Minsky-Sargeant reflects. Working Men’s Club’s first ever gig, at The Golden Lion, was self-booked and self-promoted, landlord Waka having allowed the band to use the 100-capacity room above the pub for free. Even before booking himself onto the stage though, Minsky-Sargeant regularly snuck into the venue to watch the internationally renowned DJs, like Justin Robertson and Luke Unabomber, who passed through its doors. This, combined with the discovery of 808 State, his stepdad’s extensive afrobeat record collection, YouTube videos of Jeff Mills making beats on a Roland TR-909, and a chance festival encounter with Soulwax, provided sustenance and inspiration for Working Men’s Club’s developing sound. Though it is songs almost entirely written and sung by Minsky-Sargeant that appear on the record, he is quick to point out the influence of the other members of his band on the record too; that “everyone that’s been involved in this band, from the old lineup to the new lineup, played on the record, contributed and shaped it in some way, through the phases”, wheedling in and around Minsky-Sargeant’s songs, embellishing them with their own bass, guitar, key or backing vocal parts. And without Orton, “it wouldn’t have been half as good a record.” Working with the producer radically changed MinskySargeant’s songwriting practice — “I tried to replicate what he was doing in his studio in my bedroom, and think more about drum sounds and making them more complicated and messing around with synths and stuff like that. It made me think about more components than just a guitar.”

The songs following ‘Valleys’ come fast and relentless — momentum ever increasing, mission well and truly stated as the frenetic, pew-pewing ‘A.A.A.A’ speeds through to nonchalant existential groove ‘John Cooper Clarke’ — centred around the realisation that yes, even the luckiest guy alive, the Bard of Salford himself, will someday die.

Hard holds hands with soft, and rough with smooth. On washily-vocalled, Orange Juicily-guitared ‘White Rooms and People’, there are simultaneously beautifully blooming flowers and ‘people talking shit about you’, and the hazy, ricocheting ‘Outside’, the gentlest track on the album, flips straight into the tough-as-shit, industrially-geared ‘Be My Guest’, which opens the second half of the record with markedly E. Smithian brio. The opening bars of ‘Cook A Coffee’ are momentarily reminiscent of ‘Bad Blood’, but spiral into direct and uncomfortable eye contact in song-form; a lost Joy Division number from an alternate universe, about taking a dump live on the telly. ‘Tomorrow’ glitches and glimmers, whilst outro track ‘Angel’ moves between psychedelic languidity and hardcore thrash, the album playing itself out on a 12-and-a-half-minute noodle.

It is with war, free-fall, and re-birth already behind them that Working Men’s Club emerge, resilient; inspiration from across breadth of eras, genres and tour-mates merely strata in their very own indie-cum-dance-cum-techno niche in the crag.

Diva Harris, February 2020

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Neon yellow vinyl in an embossed sleeve with neon pantone and laminated logo.

Cassette Info: Clear shell + neon yellow slip-case

Everything changed for The Beths when they released their above mentioned debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealand’s tight-knit music scene, working full-time during the day and playing music with friends after hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their home town, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths’ second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the group’s earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends. Stokes’s writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home.

"If you're at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds,” Stokes says. “We did the same thing. When you're home, you miss everybody, and when you're away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the time.”

With songs like the rambunctious “Dying To Believe” and the tender, shoegazey “Out of Sight,” The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations/They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings on “Dying to Believe.” The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths’ view, is with abundant and unconditional love, no matter how far it has to travel. On “Out of Sight,” she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: “If your world collapses/I’ll be down in the rubble/I’d build you another,” she sings.

“It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, 'wish you were here, wish I was there,’ over and over again,” she says of the time period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths committed themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same time to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could. That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it -- a sentiment we need now more than ever.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: First pressing on tangerine coloured vinyl.
Single sleeve jacket, inner sleeve with lyrics w/ download.

CD Info: 4 panel digipak with clear tray, 16-pg booklet with lyrics and liner notes.

Muzz, the new project of Paul Banks (Interpol), Josh Kaufman (producer/multi-instrumentalist and one third of Bonny Light Horseman), and Matt Barrick (drummer of Jonathan Fire*Eater, The Walkmen, and Fleet Foxes’ touring band),  announce their self-titled, debut album.

Muzz was born out of longstanding friendship and collaboration. Banks and Kaufman have known each other since childhood, attending high school together in Spain before separately moving to New York. There, they independently crossed paths with Barrick while running in similar music circles. They kept in touch in the following years: Barrick drummed in Banks + Steelz and on some of Kaufman's production sessions; Kaufman helped on Banks’ early Julian Plenti solo endeavour; various demos were collaborated on, and a studio was co-bought.

The self-titled debut album, written, arranged and performed by all three, is dark and gorgeous, expansive and soulful. No matter the sonic direction, Muzz goes there effortlessly and with maximum emotional charge.

As the birth of Orlando Weeks’ son drew near, he wanted to try to make sense of an experience that is both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. The result is ‘A Quickening’, an album that tells the story from the point of view of a prospective father-to-be, a figure both vital to the story and yet also somewhat removed, in awe of what the mother goes through and often helpless to do anything about it.

“I was trying to find a course through something that happens all the time, but still feels exceptional,” Weeks says.

A baby is born every minute, and yet the experience of becoming a parent - and the way it promises to change your life - is unprecedented.

Weeks’ voice shimmers as it expresses feelings of love, fear and wonder that are overwhelming but still delicate. Drums trip, woodwind and brass can be heard, piano lines run in and out, vocals layer and guitars are few and far between. This is not the indie rock and roll that some may have predicted.You might think of Talk Talk. You might think of Robert Wyatt. You might think of Radiohead or Bon Iver. You might think of the wonder of Kate Bush. You might think of Lambchop’s late career electronic turn, replacing in that case Kurt Wagner’s Nashville-inflected fragments with Orlando’s chiming and pure delivery, served up by way of South London.

Many of those influences surge and flourish throughout the new single ‘Blood Sugar’. A mesmeric, all-enveloping layer of sound highlighted by choral vocal harmonies. The track includes the line “gone the bell that rung forever… at least as long as I can remember”, a reference to Big Ben which was under repair and had stopped chiming at the time of his son’s birth, Weeks commented; ‘’I couldn’t work out if its silence was a good omen or a bad one.’’ Stranger than that, for much of their time at hospital, Weeks and his partner found themselves in the very same room he was born in.

‘A Quickening’ was created with the help of Weeks’ old friend Nic Nell, who produced, engineered and mixed the album. The pair collaborated on the music that accompanied Weeks’ 2012 graphic novel, ‘Young Colossus’. Nell also runs the label Algebra Records and makes music under the name Casually Here. The album also highlights select performances from members of Weeks’ live band: Caruso (drums on ‘Blame Or Love Or Nothing’ and ‘All The Things’), Sami El-Enany (piano on ‘Takes A Village’ and ‘Summer Clothes’), and Will Petherbridge (the freewheeling solo on ‘St Thomas’’).

In addition to its digital and streaming releases, it will also be available on three physical formats: heavyweight vinyl, CD packaged with a poster, and a limited edition clear deluxe vinyl which will include a signed and hand-finished print. The deluxe vinyl will only be available via Orlando Weeks’ Music Glue store and in select UK independent record stores.

Weeks spent much of his young life as the frontman of Ivor Novello wining band The Maccabees, going on to become a children’s book author in the wake of the band’s disbanding. His first book, ‘The Gritterman’ (2017), came with an accompanying soundtrack and was described by the Financial Times as recalling “Raymond Briggs at his darkest.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

Deluxe LP Info: Limited edition, heavyweight clear vinyl with a signed and hand finished print in a special PVC sleeve and download card.

Hull/Leeds based five-piece bdrmm release their much anticipated debut Bedroom on July 3, via Sonic Cathedral. The 10-track album was recorded late last year at The Nave studio in Leeds by Alex Greaves (Working Mens Club, Bo Ningen) and mastered in Brooklyn by Heba Kadry (Slowdive, Beach House). It’s a hugely accomplished debut and a real step up both sonically and lyrically from their early singles, which were rounded up on last year’s If Not, When? EP. Musically, there are nods to The Cure’s Disintegration, Deerhunter and DIIV, while the band reference RIDE and Radiohead. There are also echoes of krautrock and post-punk, from The Chameleons to Protomartyr, plus the proto shoegaze of the Pale Saints’ The Comforts Of Madness, not least in the cross fading of some tracks, meaning the album is an almost seamless listen. As a result, Bedroom becomes an unexpected and unintentional concept album, running through the different stages of a break-up set against the backdrop of the ups and downs of your early twenties. “The subject matter spans mental health, alcohol abuse, unplanned pregnancy, drugs… basically every cliché topic that you could think of,” reveals frontman Ryan Smith. “But that doesn’t mean they ever stop being relevant. It’s a fucker growing up, but I’m lucky enough to have been able to project my feelings in the form of this band, surrounded by four of the best people I’ve ever met.”

And that band name, in case it needs explaining, is pronounced the same way as the album title. “I never thought I’d get to the stage where I would have to explain it so much,” says Ryan. “We have been pronounced as Boredom, Bdum and my old boss thought we were a ska band called Bad Riddim. We’re all sarcastic cunts, so Bedroom spelt correctly seemed like the perfect title.” He’s right. The perfect title for the perfect debut album.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies Only Green Vinyl.

Over the past couple of years while making their new album, Deerhoof have been asking themselves if there was any music they could create that expressed how our rapidly emerging future might actually feel. The band envisioned an album about people haunted by memory of a lost world and of every failed attempt to save it. People already living outside the system, already having practiced new ways of life required for survival - these hopeful heroes are Deerhoof's inspiration. These are the FTCA. Faithful listeners will recognize a certain alienated but transformational figure who shows up in Deerhoof songs going back to their earliest days. Take the narrator of "The Perfect Me" from 2007's Friend Opportunity: an orphaned but eager soul attempting to entice other wounded wanderers who might lack a home, a clan, a family, a history.

But on FTCA our protagonist is threatened by terror lurking around every corner. Add to that the fact that our 'cast-off queen,' our 'maniac,' our 'terrible daughter' is watching themselves get orphaned in real time, by an older generation in power that would seemingly rather see life on Earth destroyed than let go of archaic systems of capital. Like a lot of the music they have released over the last quarter-century, the Deerhoof of FTCA (Satomi Matsuzaki on bass and vocals, Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich on guitars, and Greg Saunier on drums, vocals and piano) stitches together fragments of 'r&b' and 'classic rock' and transforms them into a new language of revolution, forgoing verse-chorus structures for dream logic and blind intuition. But what makes this album different is its intimacy, the blues riffs and slide guitars are joined by rusty pianos and whispered three-part harmonies.

In this sense, FTCA inverts the formula of Deerhoof's last album, Mountain Moves, which invited a wide community of collaborators to band together in an open celebration of solidarity. The new one, on the other hand, is borne of self-isolation and deprivation. It's the sound of a sparkling, manic musical intelligence being disconnected from a nourishing public and devouring itself inside its own cocoon, attempting metamorphosis. Guitar pedals malfunction mid-take, reverbs chop off mid-tail, drum fills get abandoned mid-phrase. Some musical moments, as gorgeous and touching as anything Deerhoof has ever written, stop short for no apparent reason, giving way to queasy smudges of sound.

Many of the instruments and voices were recorded with nothing more than the built-in mic of a laptop. Harsh splices make no effort to hide the seams. In this way FTCA joins a long and storied lineage of pop records that expose the insular and reclusive nature of the recording process itself. Like Let It Be, There's a Riot Goin' On, or Sister Lovers, this record is its own "making-of." Absence is a central character in the drama. For every heartwarming melody or pile-up of parade drums or shard of loopy guitar noise, there is musical acknowledgement of the toll that constant threat of cataclysm takes on mental health. All funerals remind us that life goes on, somehow. In that time after the end times, it's not only the food systems, energy systems, and political systems that will have to be rebuilt. Myths, stories, and rituals we use to make sense of the world are up for revision, too. This is a record about resilience and the persistence of hope in a future beyond any reasonable justification for it. Like so many young people today, Deerhoof seems to be already living in that future.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: LP on limited Blood Vinyl

Two years ago, the Liverpool-reared singer-songwriter had reached rock’s “stupid club” age (27) and found himself at a crossroads. This graduate of the Macca-founded Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts had released two albums – Sweet Disarray (2014) on a major, Emerging Adulthood (2017) on Communion (launchpad for Michael Kiwanuka, Catfish and The Bottlemen and Bear’s Den) – and had enjoyed solid success. And yet, and yet…

There was good radio support, a couple of banging syncs (Compliment Your Soul made it onto FIFA 14, From Nowhere was on Grand Theft Auto V), a busy international gigging schedule.

“Suddenly I was making a living from music.” But almost without noticing, “I’d gone into the pop world, making very produced, layered tracks, all clocking in at three-minute-30 on the dot… I was a little bit burnt out. It felt like it wasn’t really me.

So time for action. Decisively, impulsively, Dan Croll bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. It was far away, it was sunny, and it was the source of so many of the classic records he loved. He only knew one person there, a musician/podcaster called Danny who’d once interviewed him and said that if he ever fancied coming to LA…. This new album tells the chronological story of Dan's move to LA, finding his feet.

Starting in February 2018, over the next 12 months Croll turned his experiences into 20-odd songs, eventually whittling them down to a solid dozen chapters. Then, in spring 2019, he spent a month with the estimable Matthew E. White in Virginia. Every day the artist, the producer and his crack local players would meet at midday, have lunch and a laugh, then get to it, bringing to life Dan Croll’s songs in the inimitable Spacebomb country-psych-soul style.

With his previous 2 albums he’d needed a full band to perform live his multi-layered indie-pop compositions but for album 3, Dan felt it was time to reconnect with his inner singer-songwriter and with the music that first inspired him - James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Burt Bacharach and more.

Each song tells a story, in narrative order. To pinch a title from one of those great albums he loves, think of this as his greetings from LA. To also pinch the title of a great LA/Hollywood memoir, think of these as postcards from the edge.

So this is Dan Croll’s bold and brilliant, evocative and inventive third album. A record he had to make, a diary of something he hoped would be a new beginning (but that could equally have been a dead end). A dozen songs he knew he wanted to sound stripped back but, at the same time, feel rich and evocative. A lovingly recorded and produced project offering a modern take on older sounds. A third album that, finally, felt like him.

Foat has become a versatile mainstay in UK jazz through an acclaimed series of albums on Jazzman and Athens Of The North, moving from soul-jazz workouts to library music to cinematic, haunting compositions and pastoral acid folk. ‘Symphonie Pacifique’ goes expansive and widescreen, building a lush soundscape using choral textures, harp and tubular bells on the atmospheric ‘After The Storm’ alongside sensual groove-based tracks like the undulating ‘Anticipation’, the album title track and Groove Merchant-channelling ‘Nikinakinu’, all driven by Phil Achille on bass, Eric Young on congas and Moses Boyd’s crisp, flowing breakbeats. Other tracks include a moving tribute to KPM library legend Duncan Lamont on the reflective ‘Lament For Lamont’ and the languid, simmering ‘Island Life’.

The album is a truly international collaboration, recorded analogue and produced by Greg Foat at London’s Fish Factory studios with strings recorded in Edinburgh and choir in Gothenburg. The album was mixed by Mattias Glava at Kungsten Studios in Gothenburg. Cover artwork is based on a painting by early 20th Century Algerian / Parisian artist Henry Valensi.

JARV IS… are pleased to announce their debut album “Beyond the Pale”. This is the first original music from Jarvis Cocker since the “Further Complications” album in 2009.

JARV IS… a band featuring Jarvis Cocker (vocals, guitar, percussion), Serafina Steer (harp, keyboards, vocals), Emma Smith (violin, guitar vocals), Andrew McKinney (bass, vocals), Jason Buckle (synthesiser & electronic treatments) & Adam Betts (drums, percussion, vocals).

JARV IS… formed to play a show at the Sigur Ros “Norður og Niður” festival in Iceland at the very end of 2017.

JARV IS… was conceived as a way of writing songs in collaboration with an audience. As the material they were playing was in a state of flux the band decided to record their live shows so that they could monitor how the songs were developing. After an appearance at the Desert Daze festival in California, Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Beak>) suggested that these recordings could be used as the basis for an album. Overdubs & vocals were added at Narcissus Studios in Neasden, London. Post-production work took place at Jason Buckle’s Place du Big Boss studio in Raynes Park, London. The album was mixed by Craig Silvey at Toast Studios in West London.

The first single from the album “Must I Evolve?” was released in May 2019 & appeared in many “Top 10 Tracks of the Year” lists.

JARV IS… an ongoing live experience because life is an ongoing live experience.

Or, to put it another way:

THIS IS NOT A LIVE ALBUM – it’s an ALIVE ALBUM.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive clear orange vinyl in tip-on gatefold sleeve.

To complete their reissue programme The Blue Nile again worked alongside long term producer/engineer partner Calum Malcolm.

This 2CD deluxe set, features all nine tracks remastered plus a bonus disc featuring four previously unreleased songs plus two extended remixes - over 32 minutes of new music!

Also available for the first time on vinyl (full album,9 tracks, remastered) completing the series of catalogue re-issues.

The Blue Nile hope you fully enjoy them!!

Originally released in May 2010, the critically acclaimed fifth studio album features the now-classics “Terrible Love”, “Bloodbuzz Ohio”, “England”, and perennial show closer, “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.” In addition to the 10 original tracks, the triple LP package includes a third LP which includes tracks never before available on vinyl, including “Wake Up Your Saints,” an alternate version of “Terrible Love”, “Walk Off” and more.

FORMAT INFORMATION

3xColoured LP Info: Triple marbled white & purple/violet vinyl.

Tip-top of our osmosis list is the first quiver of tunes from Brigid Dawson and her newly minted Mothers Network: wise warnings dyed in dark hues, knotted and hard-won torch songs from the edge of a turbulent sea, bittersweet balladry spun in defense against evils familiar and unknown. Lovely though it may seem from a distance, the striation of loss quicksilvered throughout provides weighty balance to her contralto lilt. Those familiar with her harmonic counterpoint from her time in Thee Oh Sees or in OCS know she can belt as well as lullaby but there’s a fresh and smolderingly heavy swing in her step on display here that we mightily dig.

“Ballet of Apes” tapestries together sessions that read like a who’s who from outside our own castle walls - in Australia with Mikey Young (Total Control/Eddy Current Suppression Ring), in San Francisco with Mike Donovan (ex Sic Alps), Shayde Sartin (ex Fresh & Onlys/lifetime ringer) and Mike Shoun (ex Oh Sees/Peacers), and in Brooklyn with instrumental heavy-weights Sunwatchers - and the results are spellbinding. At the focal point of this maelstrom, our lady, as if illumed by candlelight, intones, pleads, consoles - white magic perhaps but it carries with it the anodized tang of blood. This is thrillingly potent stuff and it’s out on Castle Face May 22nd.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: • Exclusive Magenta Coloured Vinyl.
• Exclusive Folded 12 X 24” Poster (Folded / With LP).
• Signed Inner Sleeve.
• Numbered Sleeve.
• 500 Only.

"To Love Is To Live" is the debut solo album from Jehnny Beth from Savages.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: White vinyl.

Following the release of Relatives In Descent, the band’s critically acclaimed headlong dive into the morass of American life in 2017 (featured on myriad “best of” lists, including The New York Times, Esquire, Newsweek, Loud & Quiet and more), Ultimate Success Today continues to further expand the possibilities of what a Protomartyr album can sound like. 

“There is darkness in the poetry of Ultimate Success Today,” says punk legend, founding member of The Raincoats, and friend of the band Ana da Silva. “The theme of things ending, above all human existence, is present and reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Our world has reached a point that makes us afraid: fires, floods, earthquakes, hunger, war, intolerance…There are cries of despair. Is there hope? Greed is the sickness that puts life in danger.”

"The re-release of our first album had me thinking about the passage of time and its ultimate conclusion,” says singer Joe Casey of Ultimate Success Today. “Listening to No Passion All Technique again, I could hear myself hoping for an introduction and a long future, but also being cognizant that it could be ‘one and done’ for us. So, when it came time to write Ultimate Success Today, I was reminded of that first urgency and how it was an inverse of my current grapple with how terribly ill I’ve been feeling lately. Was that sick feeling colouring how I felt about the state of the world or was it the other way around?”

“This panic was freeing in a way. It allowed me to see our fifth album as a possible valediction of some confusingly loud five-act play. In the same light I see it as an interesting mile marker of our first decade of being a band - a crest of the hill along a long highway. Although just to cover my bases, I made sure to get my last words in while I still had the breath to say them.”

“There are exquisite, subtle gifts from other instruments that always heighten the guitar, instead of fighting with it,” explains da Silva. “They help to create a harmonious wall of sound all of its own. This was intentional. Greg Ahee wanted to use different textures other than pedals, and the drone quality of some of those instruments colours the guitar and the whole sound with a warm, rich in reverb, yet all-consuming landscape for Joe Casey’s voice.”

Protomartyr is Joe Casey (vocals), Greg Ahee (guitars), Alex Leonard (drums), and Scott Davidson (bass guitar). Ultimate Success Today was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios, a late 19th century church, in upstate New York and co-produced by the band and David Tolomei (Dirty Projectors, Beach House) with mixing by Tolomei. Featured guest musicians on the album include Nandi Rose (vocals) a.k.a. Half Waif, jazz legend Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax), Izaak Mills (bass clarinet, sax, flute), and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello).

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: 140g transparent blue vinyl with 24"x24" poster, 'zine' booklet and download card.

TONGA, the balloon filled rap, grime and dubstep party by Mike Skinner and Murkage Dave, had been a series of shoobs to remember. Copenhagen to Manchester to Berlin. Brum to Brixton. Usually arriving with a coterie of legendary UK figureheads and gobby upcomers in tow, like Kano, Giggs, Jammer or Jaykae, the pulsating essence of the nights needed to be immortalised. The original plan had been to release a TONGA album. But as night moved to day, and day moved along to night, it… just didn’t happen. Instead, a new mixtape titled None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive steps up to take its place. Recorded between work on his film and accompanying solo The Streets album, it is the unpredictable sonic continuation of those parties. Taking in UK Funky and twilight zone UK rap, and with guest spots ranging from Grammy nominated psychedelia sovereign Tame Impala to cult south London rapper Jesse James, as well as 2019’s key-fiend-friendly drum’n’bass collab with Chris Lorenzo, None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is the most eclectic and highly collaborative collection of songs from The Streets yet. Or as Mike puts it with characteristic distinction: “it’s really just a rap duets album.”


Every track has one if not two guests, who, though underpinned by Mike’s distinctive lyrical flair, usually perform atop a genre or sound not previously explored within the realm of The Streets. “You know that thing where if you wore it the first time round, don’t wear it the second time round? I would never put on Aquascutum at this point in my life. It would be stupid, a pastiche of what I did twenty years ago. For all of us. Whereas now I’m going back and I’m picking things that I didn’t pick before.” The inclusion of, say, Mercury Prize nominated punk group IDLES (who perform what Mike describes as a sea-shanty tinged track inspired by an overnight ferry to Dover) and teenage wünderkind Jimothy Lacoste help ground things firmly in the here and now.


But there are familiar faces of the past too. Birmingham legend, Dapz On The Map, pops up on merky rap track “Phone Is Always In My Hand”. While Rob Harvey, previously of The Music and Skinner collaboration The D.O.T, tunes into pensieve penultimate track “Conspiracy Theory Freestyle”. “The guests had to be into me, as much as I was into them,” jokes Mike, of the featured artist selection process. Really, though seemingly disparate on paper, the acts on the record are connected by their singular talent for “talking about normal stuff.” “All the different things I’ve tried to do, they’re who is doing that now.” “But instead of talking about abstract emotions on this record, I’m talking about things and objects and details.” Couched in those UK and Euro wide experiences with TONGA, this results in tales of hardly partying, but partying hard. The path to excess.


The morning trying to climb in under the curtains as you’re busy putting the world to rights. Like anything that happens between the nightclub and the bus home, there’s as much connection as disconnection in this world; as many new relationships forged as there are trails left behind from the ghosts of previous companionships past. Communication, or lack thereof, plays a huge part in this present-day experience. “One thing I’ve ended up doing is talking about being on my phone,” says Mike. “It was very easy on my first album to say, well: where am I? I’m in a pub. I’m at home. I’m in a betting shop. I’m getting a kebab. It felt fairly straightforward and no one had really written about it. Whereas when making this record, everything now basically happens on your phone.” These dual themes of nightclub and connection land the record in the simple yet eternally complicated prism of human interaction. “You’re ignoring me but you’re watching my stories”, on “Phone Is Always In My Hand”, is a black comedy mantra of our times. Same goes for “every girl has a dude in her inbox talking to himself” on the Oscar #WorldPeace featuring “The Poison I Take Hoping You Will Suffer”. References abound to missed calls (on opening track “Waiting For It To Stop”, Kevin Parker sings, trance like, about neglecting to call someone back) and “five minute” journeys (the kind where you lie about leaving the house).


Despite its humble mixtape beginnings,  None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is a precise and very human body of work from a modern UK music pioneer. Emotionally poignant, full of one liners, club ready. More than anything, it’s exciting – a call back to those fun and responsibility free evenings at TONGA. Yet “the result is much more than I thought it would be. It’s become a real album,” says Mike. And so, as the new decade begins, so too does a new era for The Streets...

Poolside’s first new full-length LP in three years. 'Low Season' marks the first Poolside album to be wholly produced by founding member and visionary Jeffrey Paradise following the departure of co-founding member Filip Nikolic in 2017.

The album – which follows 2017’s breakthrough second LP, 'Heat' - showcases Poolside’s classic daytime disco sound with a wider array of producers, songwriters and musicians. Paradise collaborated with Panama, Ben Browning (Cut Copy), Amo Amo, Psychemagik and various others on crafting the album.

He was also joined in the studio by members of the extraordinarily powerful Poolside live band, including drummer Vito Roccoforte (The Rapture), bassist/vocalist Mattie Safer (The Rapture), percussionist Brijean Murphy (Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls) and saxophonist/keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Casey Butler (Pharaohs). 

Following last year’s release of Here Comes The Cowboy, “his most introspective and refined work to date” (Billboard), Mac DeMarco is pleased to announce two new demo albums; Here Comes The Cowboy Demos, which will be released on April 17th via Mac’s Record Label and distributed by CAROLINE, and Other Here Comes The Cowboy Demos, out April 18th as a Record Store Day Exclusive. Other Here Comes The Cowboy Demos features unreleased recordings from the same sessions that spurred the final album. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Yellow translucent vinyl.

It’s auspicious that Sonic Boom—the solo project and nom-de-producer of Peter Kember (Spectrum, Spacemen 3)—returns in 2020 with its first new LP in three decades. Kember’s drawn to the year’s numerological potency, and this intentionality shines into every corner of All Things Being Equal. It’s a meditative, mathematical record concerned with the interconnectedness of memory, space, consumerism, consciousness—everything. Through regenerative stories told backwards and forwards, Kember explores dichotomies zen and fearsome, reverential of his analog toolkit and protective of the plants and trees that support our lives.

Sonic Boom’s second album and first for Carpark began in 2015 as electronic jams. The original sketches of electronic patterns, sequenced out of modular synths, were so appealing that Stereolab’s Tim Gane encouraged Kember to release them instrumentally. “I nearly did,” confesses Kember, “but the vibe in them was so strong that I couldn't resist trying to ice the cake.” Three years later, a move to Portugal saw him dusting off the backing tracks, adding vocals inspired by Sam Cooke, The Sandpipers, and the Everly Brothers (which he admits “don’t go far from the turntable pile”), as well as speculative, ominous spoken word segments. His new home Sintra’s parks and gardens provided a different visual context for Kember’s thoughtful observations, and he thematically incorporated sunshine and nature as well as global protests into the ten resulting tracks. “Music made in sterility sounds sterile,” he says, “And that is my idea of hell.”

Over the vivid, calculating arps of opener “Just Imagine,” Kember nudges listeners to do as the title suggests. It’s based on a story he read about a boy who healed his cancer by picturing himself as a storm cloud, raining out his illness. “The Way That You Live,” a rollicking drone powered by drum machine rattles and bright chord beds, morphs political distrust into a revolutionary mantra about ethical living. “I try and live my life by voting every day with what I do and how I do it, who I do it with and the love that I can give them along the way,” offers Kember.

An unusually curated gear list accompanies each song, unexpected layers reinforcing the monophonic skeletons. Mystery soundscapes and grinding sweeps were teased from EMS synths, synonymous with and evocative of ‘60s BBC scoring and ‘70s Eno. Pacing basslines oscillating into warbling heartbeats came from a cheap ‘80s Yamaha. A modern OP-1 generated subtle kicks and eerie theremins, while his toy Music Modem—an unused holdover from sessions Kember produced for Beach House and MGMT—finally found its recorded home.

It’s rare to see liner notes where synthesizers rather than humans are credited (other than guest vocal stints from “co-conspirators

FORMAT INFORMATION

Indies Exclusive LP Info: Limited LP comes with foil single sleeve jacket, inner sleeve with lyrics, 12”x12” foil insert with artwork, 12”x19” poster, black vinyl & download – Indies only.

LP Info: Standard LP comes with single sleeve jacket with matte coating, inner sleeve with lyrics, 12”x12” foil insert with artwork, black vinyl & download.

CD Info: Gatefold case, 12pg/6-panel insert with lyrics on front, poster on back.

“Music knows what she wants,” says Moscow-based artist, Kate NV. On Room for the Moon, the lyrical follow up to the buoyant minimalism of 2018’s для FOR, NV follows this muse in fluid expression, harmonizing her lunar lullabies with a starry compositional choreography. NV says, “I always let music express herself without pressure, and with or without voice.”

NV began sketching the music of Moon sometime before для FOR, but the album did not take its full shape until the artist entered a new physiological phase. After trying to make a Buchla synthesizer mirror human imperfections, she was compelled to look past the patch bay and reconnect with her own voice. “I spent almost a year and half sitting, at best, or bending over the table. In the end it, my body rebelled, on some kind of physical level.” No longer concerned with demonstrating a traditional composer’s craft of для FOR, the return to vocal forms first found on her debut album Binasu was liberating and (gasp!) gleeful.

On Moon, NV’s vocals contour through screens of tulle or jars of glitter, the entire collection composed and produced by NV at home and studio spaces throughout Moscow. “I finished this record during the loneliest period of my life,” confides NV, with hints of melancholy, or fabled life lessons, adding even more depth to songs of cheery disposition. Her songs, sung in Russian, French and English, each carry unique features, like ten personas or ten scenes in a play where each character has its own keynote. Room for the Moon was conjured from unlived memories of 70s and 80s Russian and Japanese pop music and film, a 20th century fairy tale suspended in time like a moon torn from a paper sky.

NV is accompanied by long-time music collaborators on Moon: Jenya Gorbunov on bass guitar, Vladimir Luchanskiy on saxophone, and Quinn Oulton on both instruments. Musician Nami Sato’s gentle words lift and lilt over synth for one piece, too. These friendly contributions are in service of NV’s singular vision; the album is personal and particular in its construction. Filled with warm and sweet memories of her own invention, NV says, “these songs are now my closest friends.”

Moon could be made from chiffon ripples, night sky transmissions and long shadows. With each song we enter another chamber of illusion, NV’s vocals tiptoe through one track, toy with riddles on another and try to save time in a polka-dotted pocket. On “Plans,” NV, through some sort of sorcery, created a sax solo using only samples from the Found Sound Nation’s “Broken Orchestra” sample pack. A laugh slips from the sheets of music in “Ça Commence Par” like a misplaced photo. Mallet and marimba converse over mushroom tea on “Du Na.” “Tea” herself borrows melody from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and “Telefon” teases us that “there’s nowhere to hide from the song.” But that’s ok, we’re all invited to the party.

Moon’s cast might make friends with other electric, eclectic, and visionary works of Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Akiko Yano, and Ann Steel. You know the feeling of instant affinity? It’s how you may respond to Room for the Moon. You’ll recognize something strangely familiar and inexplicably attractive, an afterglow of times spent in happy company, imagined or otherwise.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: Exclusive Swirled clear, blue and yellow vinyl.
Kiss-Cut Sticker Sheet (a series of stickers based on Kate's illustrations and the album design).
Numbered sleeve.
Limited 300 pressing.

Presenting Shirley Scott’s deeply personal album, ‘One for Me’ - a defiant tribute to the music she always desired to create but was shrouded by the demands of her vibrant career. Thoughtful curation of the band, tracks, and completely self-funded, this project set off on an innovative trajectory supported by Harold Vick on tenor saxophone and Billy Higgins on drums. Originally released on the revolutionary artist-owned label, Strata-East Records, in January 1975, this unique project will be available to enjoy again on Arc Records from 15th May 2020.

The impetus for this record was a real desire for Shirley to express herself more freely and create something for herself, taking back the power she’d seemingly relinquished throughout her career. Maxine Gordon, Scott’s close friend, and executive producer on the original record, expresses that they often had intimate discussions about how Scott was being told what to play, what to wear, how to look and how to speak in public for many years. Having had enough of these restrictions, she created this record to please no one but herself. As Scott expresses on the back of the original LP sleeve:

“All of the music recorded in this album is both personal and very purposeful to me, because it is the first step toward honesty about what and how I want to play. I’ve done a lot of other albums, a lot of different ways for a lot of different people and now, with the help of the Creator, in whom all things are possible, I have done one for me too.”

Having self-raised funds to make the record, with complete control over the masters, and with her dream band together, Scott recorded at Blue Rock Studio in November 1974. Harold Vick, often referred to as one of the “unsung tenor saxophonists” of his time, was cherry picked to bring Scott’s vision to life. Throughout his career, he released records on Blue Note, RCA as well as performing and recording with a string of legendary artists such as Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin. Completing the dream trio was highly sought out drummer Billy Higgins, who is the most recorded drummer in the history of Blue Note Records, having played on 45 Blue Note albums. The key to their success was that Higgins tuned his drums to fit with the organ’s bass sound which, of course, Scott played with her feet.

Scott was also known as “Little Miss Half-Steps,” a name given to her by tenor saxophonist George Coleman, (who wrote a composition by that name in her honor) - she regularly played with both George & Harold. Coleman is known to have admired Scott’s half-steps (when you play two adjacent keys on the organ or piano) and their close bond and mutual respect is solidified on this record through a track titled ‘Big George’ - specifically written for Coleman.

“Queen of the Organ”, Shirley Scott was born in Philadelphia in 1934 and lived there most of her life until her early death in March 2002 at the age of 67. Having mastered the piano at an early age, Scott switched from piano to organ at the tender age of 21. Scott had a legendary recording career as a leader with 45 albums mainly released on Impulse and Prestige and is often remembered for her work with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Stanley Turrentine. Boasting a thriving career as a musician and composer, Scott progressed to a professor at Cheyney University in her later years. She was a treasured mother and grandmother, and a cherished friend of music scholar, Maxine Gordon, who’s honour it is to collaborate with Arc Records on shining a new bright light on this monumental body of work.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP Info: We're only getting a handful of these so don't snooze!

The Blinders have announced their new album, 'Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath' via Modern Sky UK.

The follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut album, Columbia, released in 2018, the album explores existential despair, mental health and society’s ills in a time of planetary crisis, and is both a riposte to, and commentary on, the rise of populist ideology. Delivering a blistering collection of powerful tracks, Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath is imbued with the visceral energy of IDLES, the twisted melodies of solo-era Lennon and the darkness of the Bad Seeds.

In the shadow of Brexit and the climate crisis, The Blinders return with their unique brand of outspoken anthemicism and a sensational album to rouse awareness and inject vital energy into a bleak 2020. Combined with their blistering live energy, get ready for The Blinders to accelerate furiously into the limelight. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: Exclusive Deep Red vinyl.
Numbered & Signed 12"x12" Art print.
500 only.

Coloured LP Info: Clear vinyl edition.

With “The Prettiest Curse” Hinds shrug off any remaining lo-fi accusations and unveil a widescreen beast of an album, not so much a shift as a quantum leap in their evolution as a band. This is a record positively bursting with life, with the band finally harnessing the full extent of their pop prowess and unleashing songs which sound bigger, bolder, and more complex than anything they have done before. Which isn’t to say they have turned their backs on being Hinds – quite the opposite in fact! Here, they double down on what, precisely, makes them so special – the bright melodies betraying heartbreaking themes of isolation and betrayal, the empowering, don’t mess with us all-girl gang glow - while going even further.

You know how people say that a drop of balsamic vinegar makes strawberries taste more strawberry-ish? Well, on “The Prettiest Curse”, Hinds sound even more Hinds-ish, and marvelously so.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Dinked Edition LP Info: - Exclusive tri-striped vinyl (red, orange and yellow)
- Exclusive 12x12” Double Sided Art Print - signed album sleeve image of band / ‘Exclusive’ print image design (from the artist)
- Bonus green 7” Flexi Disc of Spanish Bombs (The Clash cover)
- Gatefold sleeve (same as other LP versions)

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive light blue vinyl.

Kitchen Sink follows up Shah's Hyundai Mercury Prize nominated 2017 album Holiday Destination which received critical acclaim including AIM Awards 'Independent Album of the Year', a #7 'Album of the Year' from BBC 6 Music and #5 from The Quietus as well as prominent positions in lists from Loud and Quiet and The Line of Best Fit.

With the same ferocious determination and distinct voice Shah now turns her sights closer to home with an album that explores her own story as a woman in her 30's and the societal pressures and expectations that come with that. Jovial and playful at times, unblinkingly daring at others - Kitchen Sink is bursting with Shah’s beloved personality while simultaneously refusing to compromise on the social commentary that she continues to deliver so fearlessly. Once again produced by Shah’s long time collaborator Ben HillIer.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Indies Exclusive LP Info: RSD Stores exclusive Orange LP

After releasing her previous album in 2017, Samantha Crain thought she would never make music again. Instead she found herself trying to work out how to live without the use of her hands, which had become paralysed. However, with a steeliness and concrete determination to at least employ music as a pastime, if no longer professionally, she tasked herself with perseverance in finding her way back to health. And she never gave up. Somehow, the paralysis in her hands eventually abated, and Samantha was able to transfer the music that she had been able to dream up in her head to the guitar and then to record in what she describes as a miraculous “bonus round” to her career.

This new found appreciation and gratitude for still being able to make music professionally can be heard throughout Samantha’s new album, A Small Death. It’s a record that brims with hope and a deft wryness, packed with the sort of melodies and stories that have been warming the hearts of those so familiar with and fond of her work over the years. There are plenty of people who know precisely what this Oklahoman is capable of and they have the records to attest to it. Samantha’s unlikely return to music has an additional chapter - in 2019, after playing a show together, Lucy Rose was so moved by the music she heard coming from Crain on stage that it inspired her to turn a long-held pipe dream into a reality: Rose would launch her own record label, with Samantha Crain’s A Small Death as the first album to be released. 

‘Sun Racket’ is the brand new album from legendary Boston trio Throwing Muses, consisting of Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo and Bernard Georges. The follow up to 2013’s ‘Purgatory/Paradise’ is an outpouring of modal guitars, reverbed shapes, echoey drums and driving bass set behind Kristen Hersh’s well-thumbed notebook of storylines. A ten-song opus of suitably wrought tales set against a wall of sound that’s at once calm and ethereal before building into glorious cacophonous crescendos. When Throwing Muses wrote their last album, they were shattered. Pieces were coming and going, elements repeating and charging the whole. “It sounded beautiful jumping around like that”.

Two-minute songs reappearing as twisted instrumentals or another song’s bridge. They mimicked the effect live which kept them on their toes. Whatever was happening was already over in other words. ‘Sun Racket’ is the opposite. It refused to do anything but sit still. It says, “sit here and deal”. “All it asked of us was to comingle two completely disparate sonic vocabularies: one heavy noise, the other delicate music box. Turns out we didn’t have to do much. Sun Racket knew what it was doing and pushed us aside, which is always best. After thirty years of playing together, we trust each other implicitly but we trust the music more” - Kristin Hersh And so, they continue. Business unusual.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited edition violet vinyl.

Biffy Clyro can announce that their eagerly anticipated new album ‘A Celebration of Endings’ will be released on 15 May. It follows the band’s previous two studio albums – ‘Ellipsis’ (2016) and ‘Opposites’ (2013) – both of which went straight to #1.

The band’s approach to opus eight was simple. Keep things fresh and maintain the wide-eyed wonder of what they do. Surprise themselves and each other. Push things to their furthest extremes. Their first building block in embracing the new was to turn to an old friend. In came Rich Costey, producer of ‘Ellipsis’.

“This is a very forward-looking album from a personal perspective and a societal perspective,” explains frontman Simon Neil. “The title is about seeing the joy in things changing, rather than the sadness. Change means progression and evolution. You can retain everything you loved before, but let’s lose the bad shit. It’s about trying to take back control.”

That idea manifests itself in various ways. On a personal level that might be a relationship which has reached a point where it’s in both parties’ interest to separate. And on a wider scale, it’s about standing up for what you believe in.

Sonically, Biffy Clyro playfully push the outer reaches of their sound to the extreme – often in the case of the same song. Opening track ‘North of No South’ hits hard before finding the space for the Johnston brothers to unleash some soaring Queen-style vocal harmonies, before ‘The Champ’ throws piano, cinematic strings (conducted by Bruce Springsteen collaborator Rob Mathes at Abbey Road) and Biffy’s prototyped jagged rhythms into the mix without ever losing any of its sleekness.

Other songs are far more direct. ‘Tiny Indoor Fireworks’ is the best direct rock anthem they’ve ever written, somehow snappy, melodic and light on its feet while feeling so natural you could imagine it was conceived in minutes. Meanwhile, ‘Space’ is a natural successor from previous lighters-in-the-air highlights ‘Many of Horror’ and ‘Rearrange’. It’s a sincere message of reconciliation for someone you love, and Biffy’s most tender, unguarded moment from the sweet spot of their catalogue.

How can you conclude an album of such esoteric diversity? Biffy launch headfirst into ‘Cop Syrup’. There’s the rush of ‘The Vertigo of Bliss’, a detour into Sub Pop-style grunge and manic shrieks which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Liturgy record. But then it contorts again, first into ethereal orchestration and then with a final burst of violence. It’s an ending to celebrate.

With a creative peak that continues to shoot skyward, Paul Weller releases his 15th studio album “On Sunset” on June 12th on Polydor Records.
On Sunset features ten classic yet modern Paul Weller songs. On Sunset is a soul album. At the same time it’s also an electronic album, an orchestral album, an album packed with masterly pop songs and heart-tugging ballads, and an album filled with touches of experimentalism. It’s also an album that sees Weller taking a rare glance into the rear-view mirror as he speeds into the 2020s. 

Weller started work on “On Sunset” soon after finishing 2018’s masterpiece “True Meanings”. Opening track “Mirror Ball” was from the TM sessions and originally slated as a b-side. Thankfully it was rescued for On Sunset as it’s shimmering opener. 

As ever, Weller retains a rigorous forward-looking focus when it comes to seeking out the best contemporary sounds and music. But lyrically, Weller – back on his old home, Polydor Records for the first time since the Style Council days – is also starting to look back on the past with the insight of age especially on songs like “Old Father Thyme”.

Most of the album sees Weller multi-tasking on various instruments with accompaniment from his regular band - Ben Gordelier appears on all tracks and Andy Crofts on most whilst Steve Cradock pops up with his guitar on 4 songs. An eclectic and sometimes surprising gathering of guests appear on On Sunset including Slade’s Jim Lea contributing violin to the Bonzos-esque “Equanimity”, and Paul’s old Style Council chum Mick Talbot adds his signature Hammond Organ sound to 3 tracks. The beautifully lush “More” features a verse sung by French singer Julie Gros, from the band Le Superhomard (whose album Meadow Lane Park was one of Weller’s favourites of 2019) as well as the return of The Strype’s guitarist Josh McClorey. English folk trio The Staves contribute backing vocals for 3 tracks. Once again Hannah Peel sprinkles her magic over the album with string arrangements and The Paraorchestra were invited to add their expertise to 4 tracks.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: Indies exclusive solid purple coloured vinyl.
Heavyweight gatefold double vinyl.

2xLP Info: Heavyweight gatefold double vinyl.

Deluxe CD Info: Hardback book version with additional tracks.
*Please note additional tracks in Deluxe tracklisting below.