Anchored by evocative melodies and an enthralling lyrical narrative, First Two Pages of Frankenstein signals a thrilling new chapter in the band’s beloved discography. The 11-song album was produced by The National at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York and features guest appearances by Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens.

The follow-up to 2019’s top five hit album I Am Easy To Find, First Two Pages of Frankenstein was initially stalled while lead singer Matt Berninger navigated “a very dark spot where I couldn’t come up with lyrics or melodies at all, and that period lasted for over a year. Even though we’d always been anxious and argued quite a lot whenever we were working on a record, this was the first time it ever felt like maybe things really had come to an end.” Instead, The National “managed to come back together and approach everything from a different angle, and because of that we arrived at what feels like a new era for the band,” according to guitarist/pianist Bryce Dessner, whose bandmates also include his brother Aaron (guitar/piano/bass) as well as brothers Scott Devendorf (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums).

First Two Pages of Frankenstein channels the group’s revitalized chemistry into a body of work that beautifully balances elegant musicality with the National’s more idiosyncratic impulses. Tracks such as “Grease in Your Hair” and “Ice Machines” were road-tested in 2022 before they were recorded, allowing the band to hone the material in real time (another song, “Weird Goodbyes” featuring Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, was released as a standalone track last August). “To me the power of this record has to do with the intentionality and structure of the music meeting with a lot of accidental magic,” says Aaron Dessner.

Swift duets with Berninger on the luminous “The Alcott,” continuing her recent string of collaborations with members of The National on her chart-topping albums folklore and evermore and Aaron Dessner’s Big Red Machine project. The song finds Berninger and Swift inhabiting the roles of a couple attempting to resurrect a troubled relationship, forging a finely drawn story nearly novelistic in scope. “It’s about two people with a long history returning to a place and trying to relive a certain moment in time,” says Berninger. “It’s got the feeling of a last-ditch effort to hold onto the relationship, but there’s a hint of something positive where you can see the beginnings of a reconnection.”

TRACK LISTING

Once Upon A Poolside (feat. Sufjan Stevens)
Eucalyptus
New Order T-Shirt
This Isn't Helping (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
Tropic Morning News
Alien
The Alcott (feat. Taylor Swift)
Grease In Your Hair
Ice Machines
Your Mind Is Not Your Friend (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
Send For Me 

The Smile’s Europe 2022 Live Recordings. The release marks the triumvirate’s momentous debut European 30 + stop tour including illustrious venues such as London Roundhouse and Berlin’s Tempodrom and Primevera Sound, Barcelona.

Performed by Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner - The Smile.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
The Opposite
Thin Thing
FeelingPulledApartByHorses

Side B
The Same
Waving A White Flag
Free In The Knowledge

RIYL: Mercury Rev, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, Deerhunter, Atlas Sound, Stereolab.

Close to five years on from their last transmission, Ulrika Spacek resurface from self-imposed exile with their third album, Compact Trauma, a collection of songs that function as a chance treatise of sorts for our current collective condition. With a title like that arriving at this point in time, it’s tempting to interpret the record solely in the context of the global events of the past few years, but the roots of these ten songs arc back much further in time, charged with their own personalised internal damage.

Mid 2018, approaching exhaustion and feeling increasingly fragile from the stresses of itinerant road life, the five-piece of Rhys Edwards, Rhys Williams, Joseph Stone, Syd Kemp and Callum Brown began work in earnest on the follow up to their second album, Modern English Decoration. Released less than a year earlier and having promoted it constantly in the months that followed, now might have represented a fine moment for the band to take a breath. Yet Ulrika Spacek were not familiar with the concept of slowing down, conditioned by a strong work ethnic and the demands of capricious touring cycles that necessitated more content and at speed. Moving too fast, it was difficult to avoid the hazards up ahead.

The band’s previous albums had both been recorded in KEN, a studio and rehearsal space in Homerton that also doubled as their shared home. As writing for album three began, KEN suddenly became another victim to the indiscriminate violence of gentrification, rendering the project both hub- and homeless. Writing and recording at KEN was then abruptly shifted to a professional studio in Hackney, only the second time they had worked in such conditions, and tensions and logistical difficulties soon became apparent. The enforced switch to an unfamiliar locale would have been discomforting enough, but when allied with the fractures already beginning to splinter through the band, made for an especially frazzled experience. Somehow, a record began to emerge piecemeal from the gloom, though it was one obviously infected with its circumstances.

Trauma, in its myriad forms, is often hard to qualify, even harder to rationalise. When something begins to go wrong, how do you gain perspective? What is a temporary roadblock, and what is unmitigated disaster? In its first phase of life, Compact Trauma was a document of a band striving to perfect an idea while the universe around them seemed to want to shut down. And then, at an impasse of sorts and with a record halfway complete, it suddenly did. If Ulrika Spacek were a band in need of the breaks applying, it was the force of a global pandemic that made it happen. As the world stood still, Compact Trauma was filed away, unfinished and unheard by the wider world, possibly to remain that way forever. And yet, there was to be a second act. If mutability is our tragedy, it's also our hope, clearer days slowly began to emerge as the bad slipped away. The wound, as the saying goes, is the place where the light enters you.

The prolonged break enforced by myriad lockdowns may have separated the group but it also afforded the five time to reflect on what had already been committed to tape.. As the lights came back on and the shutters up, they found themselves drawn back towards Compact Trauma. What they rediscovered was a record that seemed to preempt the shared grief of a global pandemic. Even if the specifics were different, the themes were uncannily similar. Addressing existential freak out, displacement, substance reliance and encroaching self-doubt, these highly personalised songs suddenly took on a wider significance, speaking in part to a bigger narrative.

Opening track, ‘The Sheer Drop’, begins with the line “Homerton is caving in”; ‘It Will Come Sometime’ describes a “liver like a lightbulb and swelling”; and Lounge Angst (an almost perfect description of those maddening lockdown days indoors) laments, ‘seems my friends grew up or left’. The fear and panic is palpable. The lyrics are matched to a soundtrack that oscillates between the febrile and the off-kilter, unconventional song structures and knotty arrangements either spinning the listener in unexpected directions or offering some kind of cathartic release. Take, as example, the aforementioned opener, ‘The Sheer Drop’. A wire-taut exercise in tension-and-release rendered in three parts, a whimsical synth opening giving way to characteristic chiming guitars before a nail biting coda sets its controls for the heart of the sun or the end of the world, whichever comes first. Either way, it’s a hell of a way to reintroduce yourself after a five year absence. ‘If The Wheels Are Coming Off, The Wheels Are Coming Off’ is equally instructive, a lacerating exposition of self-doubt that bursts into ecstatic release at its climax, demanding repeat listens, while ‘Stuck At The Door’ is an 11-minute Pacific North West-style epic that threatens, ‘the worst of it’s to come’. But it’s the title track that might be the true heartbeat of the record. Either addressing itself or some unknown assailant, it begins by demanding that they “take your hands and your head off the table”, while spiralling around a breathless riff fueled by an infectious anxious energy, before changing tact completely and shifting to a lullaby-like finale, concluding with the ominous thought, “compact trauma? Or full blown disaster? I'll be back in an hour (Or so i think)”. It’s a fitting encapsulation of a highly complex record. They could have left it alone, but in coming back to what they knew, Ulrika Spacek found their best work yet.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Sheer Drop
2. Accidental Momentary Blur
3. It Will Come Sometime
4. Lounge Angst
5. Diskbänksrealism
6. Through France With Snow
7. If The Wheels Are Coming Off, The Wheels Are Coming Off
8. Compact Trauma
9. Stuck At The Door
10. No Design

Pozi are the sort of band to tackle the creative cycle of deconstruction and rebuilding with relish. Second album ‘Smiling Pools’ is testament to that. An LP that sees them at their most expansive yet, it follows a gradual swelling of their sound across two EPs proceeding the urgent, self-enforced minimalism of their debut album ‘PZ1’ in 2019.

The trio of Toby Burroughs, Rosa Brook, and Tom Jones quickly established something of a foundational template on that first album: a hyper-skeletal sound palette of drums, bass and three distinct vocals disrupted by Rosa’s churning violins, from which emerged biting social observations and political angst – debut single and angry retort to the 2017 Grenfell tragedy KCTMO still takes pride of place in their live set.

These hallmarks haven’t fully gone away over time but from that urgent energy there has emerged greater confidence and a playful desire to push further out from the loose genre tag of post-punk they were initially saddled with.

“We want our music to evoke a feeling and emotion rather than just being a commentary. I feel that the tracks on Smiling Pools demonstrate that we’re taking our music to a different place and we want to bring the listener along on that journey.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. What You Came For
2. Slightly Shaking Cells
3. Failing
4. Pest Control
5. Somnambulance
6. Through The Door

Side B
7. M6 Toll
8. Heavenly
9. Faulty Receiver
10. Shut Up
11. 24 Deliveru
12. A Walk In The Park

TRACK LISTING

1. I Am Free
2. God Is Love
3. Love Will Free Your Mind
4. Guide My Steps
5. I Surrender
6. Champions
7. Rafael’s Prayer
8. Spirit High
9. Love Is All I Know
10. Dear Lord
11. Safe Within Your Hands
12. Never Feel Fear
13. We Are Gods
14. Faith
15. God Is On Your Side
16. Luminous
17. Free
18. Colour Blind
19. My Light
20. God In Disguise
21. Life We Rent But Love Is Rent Free

TRACK LISTING

1. 4am
2. Hiding
3. Still Waters
4. God’s Will
5. 5am

TRACK LISTING

1. Glory
2. Fear No One
3. Morning Sun
4. Together
5. Higher
6. Jack’s Gift
7. Fight For Love
8. Envious
9. River
10. In The Air
11. The Circle

TRACK LISTING

1. Spirit Call
2. The Lord’s With Me
3. Valley Of The Ocean
4. God Is In Control
5. Power
6. Stronger
7. Fields
8. Soul Inside My Beautiful Imagination
9. Warrior 

TRACK LISTING

1. In The Beginning
2. Run
3. Heal The World
4. Lion
5. The Jungle
6. The Plan
7. Money
8. The Return
9. The Greatest Smile
10. Above The Sky

UGLY is slowthai pulling himself apart and exposing his anxieties of the last couple of years, an acronym for U Gotta Love Yourself. Musically, this new album may show a side of him that people haven’t heard before but he sees it as the fullest picture yet - and attentive listeners will have noticed this musical tendency before. UGLY is about reconnecting with first principles. Plunging into rock music with as much singing as rapping, it is both a striking departure for slowthai and a return to the roots of Tyron Frampton. Recorded in producer Dan Carey’s home studio alongside frequent collaborator Kwes Darko, UGLY is a fluid combination of musicians including Ethan P. Flynn, Jockstrap’s Taylor Skye, Beabadoobee guitarist Jacob Bugden, drummer Liam Toon, and on the dark and woozy title track, his friends Fontaines D.C.

TRACK LISTING

1. Yum
2. Selfish
3. Sooner
4. Feel Good
5. Never Again
6. Fuck It Puppet
7. HAPPY
8. UGLY
9. Falling
10. Wotz Funny
11. Tourniquet
12. 25% Club

As the Nottingham duo's most dancefloor friendly release to date, UK GRIM is an urgent and sage-like look at life, living and the gritty reality of our era. 

Truly the sound of now, not only in terms of the ideas and issues Jason Williamson's strong words invoke, but also thanks to the innovative and immersive production of Andrew Fearn, which on this release has seen the pair collaborate on songs with Jane's Addiction's creative powerhouse, Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro, and with Florence Shaw, the distinct and vital voice at the heart of British band Dry Cleaning. Speaking of the forces that have triggered the poetic protest at the heart of this record, as with their musical forebears like The Clash or The Jam, Sleaford Mods reveal that the outrage they feel is underscored by love for the people and places around them, making ‘UK GRIM’ as much a celebration of individuals and the idealists as it is an attack on ruling classes who pursue their own self-serving agendas with increasing desperation.

“Maybe we are proud of the country. Maybe we are proud to be English,” explains Williamson. “Maybe I’m proud of the horrible grey streets and the shit weather and the stupid fashions I find myself investing in. It’s just that the English we’re proud of being is absolutely nothing like the English the authorities want to try and promote.” Angry yet artful, innovative yet possessing an instinctual energy that irresistibly moves bodies and minds, ‘UK GRIM’ is an erudite electronic vision that truly engages with times that have been anything but 'precedented'.

TRACK LISTING

UK GRIM
D.I.Why
Force 10 From Navarone – Ft. Florence Shaw
Tilldipper
On The Ground
Right Wing Beast
Smash Each Other Up
Don
So Trendy – Ft. Perry Farrell & Dave Navarro
I Claudius
Pit 2 Pit
Apart From You
Tory Kong
Rhythms Of Class

Emotive, break-beat minimalist trio GoGo Penguin are back, with their brand new album “Everything Is Going to Be OK”. Bursting with the optimism of new beginnings, with a new drummer, their new record label, (Sony Records' electronica and classical imprint XXIM Records), and a subtly updated and developed sound, the band are ushering in a more ambient era.

“Everything Is Going to Be OK” is born from a time of turbulence and loss. During an oppressive grieving period, the studio offered the band a sanctuary from real life. The resulting project, given such vibrant life here, draws its strength from a shared understanding and empathy. Life has many great aspects to it and despite the lows, we should be mindful and grateful to celebrate the highs at every turn. Through our hardships, we will emerge stronger - everything is going to be ok.

TRACK LISTING

You’re Stronger Than You Think
Glimmerings
Saturnine
Glow
Friday Film Special
Soon Comes Night
An Unbroken Thread Of Awareness
We May Not Stay
Everything Is Going To Be OK
Last Breath
You’re Stronger Than You Think (Revisit)
Parasite
Sanctuary

Manchester band The Lottery Winners have announced their forthcoming new album ‘Anxiety Replacement Therapy’, which will feature collaborations with Boy George, Frank Turner, and Shaun Ryder.

A mammoth step forward, ‘Anxiety Replacement Therapy’ is on one level a set of 10 absolute anthems (and three interludes from a mystery narrator). These are mass singalongs in waiting from a band who’ve specialised in bringing people together over their previous two albums.

Scratch the surface, however, and there’s a world of empowerment and defiance, tackling subjects such as austerity, as well as of course, anxiety, mental health and its medications, and ADHD. It helps that these messages come wrapped with some of the best choruses you’re likely to hear all year.

“Each of the albums in my collection are a self-help tape for me,” explains singer Thom Rylance. “If I listen to Paul Simon’s Graceland, it’s because I know it’ll put me in a good mood. If I play The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths, it’s because I want to embrace feeling sad. We wanted to present ‘Anxiety Replacement Therapy’ as a self-help tape for anyone playing it.”

The album features guest spots with their friend and previous collaborator Frank Turner on the moving and stirring ‘Letter To Myself’ , as well as Boy George who puts in a bravura performance on the summery ‘Let Me Down’ which recalls the emotional intensity of his work with Culture Club, and Shaun Ryder who brings his freewheeling brilliance on the already incisive austerity anthem ‘Money’, reprising his iconic “Call the cops!” refrain from Happy Mondays’ 1990 classic ‘Step On’.

TRACK LISTING

1. [PLAY]
2. Worry
3. Burning House
4. Money (ft Shaun Ryder)
5. Long Way Down
6. Sertaline
7. [PAUSE]
8. Letter To Myself (ft Frank Turner)
9. Jennie
10. Let Me Down (ft Boy George)
11. Not Alone
12. Anxiety Replacement Therapy
13. [STOP]

‘Thank God! It’s The Dream Machine…’ is the hotly anticipated debut album from The Dream Machine. A self-produced collection of 12 tracks exploring everything from love and loss to angels, dogs and The Devil. Recorded on an 8-track in the winter of 2021 in the bands rehearsal space. The album treads a familiar path of 60’s inspired pop anthems, psychedelic-tinged country, punk, doo wop and everything in-between.

The Dream Machine take their name from ‘Dream Machine’ an invention that recreates hallucinations similar to psychedelics without taking substances with their music being portrayed as enigmatic, mysterious and very psychedelic. Formed in 2021, the band have already gained widespread support including Steve Lamacq, Radcliffe & Maconie and Chris Hawkins on BBC Radio 6 Music, John Kennedy on Radio X, Gary Crowley on BBC Radio Londo, Dave Monks on BBC Introducing in Merseyside as well as repeat plays across Amazing Radio.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lola, In The Morning
2. Tears
3. Children, My England
4. Sweet Mary
5. TV Baby/Satan's Child
6. The Time Around
7. White Shadow Blues
8. Intermission
9. Away For The Summer
10. The Last Temptation
11. Always On My Mind
12. Angel Of The North

7" With Dinked Edition Only:
Side A
Before The Rain
Side B
01. Rama Go

My Soft Machine is a deeply personal body of work; a narration of Parks’ experiences as she navigates her 20’s and the growth intertwined. Explained ever-articulately in her own words below...

“The world/our view of it is peppered by the biggest things we experience - our traumas, upbringing, vulnerabilities almost like visual snow. This record is life through my lens, through my body - the mid 20s anxiety, the substance abuse of friends around me, the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating PTSD and grief and self sabotage and joy, moving through worlds with wonder and sensitivity - what it’s like to be trapped in this particular body. There is a quote from a Joanna Hogg film called the Souvenir, it’s an A24 semi-autobiographical film with Tilda Swinton - it recounts a young film student falling in love with an older, charismatic man as a young film student then being drawn into his addiction - in an early scene he’s explaining why people watch films - “we don’t want to see life as it is played out we want to see life as it is experienced in this soft machine.” So there we have it, the record is called....My Soft Machine.” - Arlo Parks

TRACK LISTING

Bruiseless
Impurities
Devotion
Blades
Purple Phase
Weightless
Pegasus Ft. Phoebe Bridgers
Dog Rose
Puppy
I'm Sorry
Room (red Wings)
Ghost

The Boo Radleys have announced details of a brand-new studio album, as well as the 30th Anniversary reissue of their lauded, landmark 1993 album, Giant Steps. Given encouragement by the tremendous reception of last year’s live return and first album in more than two decades, the three-piece return quickly to release Seeker, the first cut from June’s new long-player, Eight.

Marking perhaps their busiest ever year in 2023, the band makes up for lost time having been missing from the musical map since 1998 prior to reforming in 2021 and releasing their seventh album, Keep On With Falling, last March. Keen to celebrate the past as well as the present, the announcement that Giant Steps, the Creation Records album that, for many, cemented their legacy as one of Britain’s greatest yet unsung bands will delight fans keen to complete their collections.

Cherished, critically acclaimed and confrontational in its genre-ambiguity, the album will re-emerge on vinyl, CD and digital formats later this year.

Bringing their story to the present, The Boo Radleys new single, Seeker, introduces the band’s eighth album, set for release on Fri 9 June 2023 on the band’s own Boostr label. Where last year’s album, joyful in tone yet brooding with heavyweight lyrical themes, came together as an exploration of the isolated ideas of each member, Eight is, according to vocalist and co-songwriter, Sice formed of songs recorded “purposefully to appear together on an album.” Before adding, “There is also a greater depth of integration, which means that it’s more difficult to tell which member of the band the song originated with.”

Reflecting on Seeker, the new album’s opening track, written about leaning on those we trust to share life’s highs and lows, bassist and co-songwriter, Tim Brown says: “This song started out as a three-chord synth pop tune and mutated into a brassy bop courtesy of trumpeter, Nick Etwell. The electric guitar flourishes were added by Louis Smith before Sice added layers of backing vocals which help drive the song along and bring it to its joyful conclusion.”

TRACK LISTING

CD & LP
1. Seeker
2. The Unconscious
3. Hollow
4. Skeleton Woman
5. Sorrow (I Just Want To Be Free)
6. Sometimes I Sleep
7. Swift’s Requiem
8. The Way I Am
9. A Shadow Darker Than The Rest
10. Wash Away That Feeling
11. When I Find It Hard
12. Now That’s What I Call Obscene
13. How Was I To Know

2CD
1. Seeker (Full Version)
2. Skeleton Woman (Extended Version)
3. Sometimes I Sleep (Alternative Version)
4. A Shadow Darker Thank The Rest (Piano Version)
5. The Hollow (Alternative Version)
6. I Won't Be There With You
7. That Ain't A Way Of Life
8. Now I Know
9. All Thing Must Pass - Live At The Cavern 2022
10. Spaniard - Live At The Cavern 2022
11. Find The Answer Within - Live At The Cavern 2022

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The superb Boygenius return, with three of the biggest musical talents in the indie world for the past few years joining together to form the perfect, eagerly awaited debut full-length album. 'The Record' is a beautiful work throughout.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1) Without You Without Them
2) $20
3) Emily I’m Sorry
4) True Blue
5) Cool About It
6) Not Strong Enough
7) Revolution 0
8) Leonard Cohen
9) Satanist
10) We’re In Love
11) Anti-Curse
12) Letter To An Old Poet

A leap of faith reaps extraordinary rewards on ‘Black Bay’, an album of depth, atmosphere and daring from the collective known as Silver Moth. Recorded under unusual circumstances, ‘Black Bay’ is the sound of seven storied musicians yielding to shared goals, a policy of trust in action. Between hushed incantations and molten guitars, 15-minute noise-rock epics and healing psalms, the record is a testament to connectivity and receptivity: to a union of disparate minds committing to something greater than the sum of its parts.

Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, Elisabeth Elektra, Evi Vine, Steven Hill, members of Abrasive Trees, Burning House and Prosthetic Head convened to improvise the album in early 2021, inspired by a Twitter exchange between Abrasive Trees guitarist/songwriter Matthew Rochford, musician Elisabeth Elektra and fellow artist Nick Hudson about the Isle of Lewis. A couple of Zoom meetings would subsequently lead to Rochford, Elektra, Vine, Braithwaite, Hill, drummer Ash Babb and cellist Ben Roberts visiting the dramatic location of Great Bernera’s Black Bay Studios on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where they tracked the songs in just four days: a testament to the musicians’ focused openness to their shared mission and environment.

This is an album of elemental force and evocative poise, its controlled power focused around the ego-free chemistry between the players. By abandoning all certainties, Silver Moth have found something truly special on ‘Black Bay’.

TRACK LISTING

1 Henry
2 The Eternal
3 Mother Tongue
4 Gaelic Psalms
5 Hello Doom
6 Sedna

Recorded entirely on tape in Somerset and Wales late last summer, Drop Cherries marks the very first time that Billie Marten has both written and co-produced (with Dom Monks) one of her records; following critically-lauded 2021 album Flora Fauna, Feeding Seahorses by Hand (2019) and Writing of Blues and Yellows (2016).

Flora Fauna was lavished with praise by the likes of CLASH (9/10), The Line Of Best Fit, Uncut, NME, Dork, The Independent, Gigwise (all 4* reviews) as well as The Sunday Times Culture and DIY in 2021. The record also landed multiple radio playlists at national broadcasters BBC Radio 1 (twice Hottest Record in the World for ‘Creature Of Mine’ and ‘Human Replacement’), BBC 6 Music (including a string of A List records) and Radio X.

The title is taken from a tale she heard from a friend just before she was starting to create songs for the album, and the title track came soon after. It’s a metaphor where the gift of cherries stands for offering someone your love; doing anything you can to make them happy. “Dropping cherries,” she begins, “is such a strong, visceral image that I tried to channel throughout recording in Somerset and Wales, to capture the vibrancy, unpredictability, and occasional chaos one experiences within a relationship.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Idea
2. God Above
3. Just Us
4. I Can’t Get My Head Around You
5. Willow
6. Acid Tooth
7. Devil Swim
8. I Bend To Him
9. Nothing But Mine
10. Arrows
11. Tongue
12. This Is How We Move
13. Drop Cherries

'Council Skies' is the highly anticipated fourth studio album from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. This 10 track album includes the new singles 'Pretty Boy' and 'Easy Now'.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklisting
Side 1
1. I'm Not Giving Up Tonight
2. Pretty Boy
3. Dead To The World
4. Open The Door, See What You Find
5. Trying To Find A World That's Been And Gone Pt. 1

Side 2
1. Easy Now
2. Council Skies
3. There She Blows!
4. Love Is A Rich Man
5. Think Of A Number

Bonus 7”
1. We're Gonna Get There In The End
2. Pretty Boy (Acoustic)

CD Tracklisting
1. I'm Not Giving Up Tonight
2. Pretty Boy
3. Dead To The World
4. Open The Door, See What You Find
5. Trying To Find A World That's Been And Gone Pt. 1
6. Easy Now
7. Council Skies
8. There She Blows!
9. Love Is A Rich Man
10. Think Of A Number
11. We're Gonna Get There In The End

Deluxe CD + Extra Disc Tracklisting
Disc 1
1. I'm Not Giving Up Tonight
2. Pretty Boy
3. Dead To The World
4. Open The Door, See What You Find
5. Trying To Find A World That's Been And Gone Pt. 1
6. Easy Now
7. Council Skies
8. There She Blows!
9. Love Is A Rich Man
10. Think Of A Number

Disc 2
1. Don't Stop...
2. We're Gonna Get There In The End
3. Mind Games
4. Pretty Boy (Instrumental)
5. Dead To The World (Instrumental)
6. Council Skies (Instrumental)
7. Think Of A Number (Instrumental)
8. I'm Not Giving Up Tonight (David Holmes Remix)
9. Think Of A Number (Pet Shop Boys Magic Eye 12" Remix)
10. Pretty Boy (Robert Smith Remix)
11. Council Skies (The Reflex Revision)
12. Flying On The Ground (Radio 2 Session, 08.09.21)
13. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Radio 2 Session, 08.09.21)
14. Live Forever (Radio 2 Session, 08.09.21) 

Elena Tonra isn’t a keen swimmer, but oceans pervade Stereo Mind Game. It’s a matter of distance. Daughter’s third record, the band’s first studio album for seven years, grapples with what it means to be separated, from loved ones and too from yourself.

“Oh it will likely kill me / That I must live / Without you / Because I can’t swim,” Tonra sings, whisper-like, on “Isolation”. It’s a classic Daughter song that basks elegantly in deepest despair. Yet here there’s a sense of something beyond despair too. “I’ll compose myself / I’ll get over it,” Tonra continues. On Stereo Mind Game, Daughter tend to sorrow by fixing it in time. Doing so makes it more real, like the flower – dried, pressed and remembered – on the album’s cover.

Daughter – the trio comprising Tonra, Igor Haefeli and Remi Aguilella – formed in 2010. After releasing two studio albums, If You Leave (2013) and Not to Disappear (2016), and the video game soundtrack Music From Before the Storm (2017), they chose to take some time off. But not before jamming together in Los Angeles, in between a support tour with The National and their first headline shows in South America. It was here that a new album started to germinate.

Over the next couple of years – during which they worked on their own projects, including Tonra’s solo record as Ex:Re – Daughter met occasionally to write together in studios in London, Portland and in San Diego, where Haefeli lived for six months in 2019. The record’s central romantic figure is someone Tonra met out there when she visited from London. They shared a significant connection, but she knew the Atlantic lay between them.

It’s this that she sings about on “Be On Your Way”, a longing but resilient song about an enduring connection that is also undefinable. Where previous Daughter songs mourned old relationships, here Tonra is accepting of whatever the future brings. “A friend said to me recently: just because something ends, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t real,” she says. Haefeli likens the revelation to the pressed flower image: “It’s still there. It still exists. It grew that spring.”

Daughter began recording the album’s twelve songs in earnest in 2021. Haefeli, who lives in Bristol, met with Tonra at Middle Farm Studios in Devon. Aguilella, who is based in Portland, Oregon, recorded his drum parts in Bocce Studio in Vancouver, Washington. Haefeli produced a number of the songs, while Tonra produced “Junkmail”. They co-produced the rest.

The longing to close physical distances – a feeling that only grew during the pandemic – has seeped into many of these tracks. On “Wish I Could Cross the Sea” we hear voice notes from Tonra’s young niece and nephew, who live in Italy. “(Missed Calls)” features another voice note, in which a friend describes a dream. Fed through some modular effects, it becomes glitchy, and haunting. These messages, attempts at connection from loved ones you’re unable to see, “can pull you out of the well”, Tonra says – but only if you pick up the phone.

When you let others in, beauty can arise. Deep feeling comes from the bows of the 12 Ensemble, the London-based string orchestra, who play on many of the album’s tracks. Arranged by Haefeli and Tonra, and orchestrated by Josephine Stephenson, their parts were – fittingly – recorded at The Pool, a space in Bermondsey, south London, which is a former swimming spot. A brass quartet also brings a new sonic warmth to “Neptune” and “To Rage”.

And for the first time, Tonra’s is not a lone voice. On “Dandelion”, which glistens with Haefeli’s chime-like guitars and Aguilella’s rousing drums, Tonra plays call and response with herself. Haefeli leads some vocal lines on the exhilarating “Future Lover”, and on “Neptune”, a choir appears. These vocalists are the string players of the 12 Ensemble. “It’s one of my favourite moments of the record,” Tonra says, “when suddenly, the crowd joins. It’s a very lonely song. But even when I’ve felt the most alone, arms have reached out to me.”

In order to maintain relationships with others, we must first make peace with ourselves. “Party” recounts a significant moment: the night that made Tonra realise she wanted to give up alcohol. It’s a topic she has written about before, but she needed distance to see it clearly. Haefeli borrows her image: “This time you had climbed out of the well,” he says, “and were looking back down.” It’s the song she’s most proud of, and the one that lends its lyrics to the album title (“Some stereo mind game I play with myself”), which refers to the conflicting voices we all have in our heads.

While Daughter’s previous work found power in emotional honesty, Stereo Mind Game welcomes opposing feelings. “It’s about not working in absolutes,” Haefeli says. After more than a decade spent depicting the darkest emotions, Daughter have made their most optimistic record yet.

TRACK LISTING

Intro
Be On Your Way
Party
Dandelion
Neptune
Swim Back
Junkmail
Future Lover
(Missed Calls)
Isolation
To Rage
Wish I Could Cross The Sea

Dreamt up across New York, London and Seoul, With A Hammer sees Yaeji contending with a lifetime’s worth of both societal and self-imposed repression. The resulting 13-track full-length from the producer, vocalist, DJ, visual-artist and creative director is an exploration of shapeshifting sonics - blending Yaeji’s original dance music roots with Korean indie rock, electronica and pop from the ‘90s and early 2000s.

With A Hammer follows Yaeji’s journey as she wades through the murkiness of sorrow and doubt and releases the frenzy of anger, with the help of a metaphorical hammer - Hammer Lee - which she wields to smash the rigid rules, expectations, and barriers that have prevented her from speaking her fullest truth. Through this transformative process she eventually meets the thrilling self-determination and hope that awaits on the other side, and invites her listeners and fans to do the same.

Yaeji enlisted some close friends to join her on the record as features, including British musician Loraine James, up and coming Baltimore singer Nourished By Time, plus NYC-based producers K Wata, Enayet from Yaeji’s extended crew SLINK NYC. Yaeji once again floats back and forth between English and Korean to convey what’s on her heart with the utmost sincerity. It’s in this sincerity, deep care and awareness that Yaeji is seen in the U.S. and Korea as a musical renegade who has carved out her own world that exists in-between the traditional and conventional, the personal and the universal.

After breaking out with her 2017 debut EPs that featured singles “Raingurl” and “Drink I’m Sippin On,” Yaeji featured on Charli XCX’s 2019 album Charli, produced remixes for Dua Lipa, and Robyn, collaborated with the beloved Seoul-based polymath OHHYUK for stand-alone singles “29” and “Year to Year”, headlined her own and festival stages around the world, and launched her bespoke lifestyle webstore JI-MART. Born in Flushing, Queens in 1993, she has roots in Seoul, Tokyo, Atlanta, and New York City, all serving as the backdrop for her singular, hybrid-sound that synthesizes influences of Korean indie rock and electronica, late ‘90s and early 2000s hip hop and R&B, and leftfield bass and techno. With her critically-acclaimed 2020 mixtape WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, she sharpened her vision as a musician who is creatively unbounded by language and geography, leading to collaborations with timeless entities such as PAC-MAN. Named by Pitchfork as one of the “25 Artists Shaping the Future of Music” in 2022, she’s also graced the cover of Crack, The FADER, MixMag, and Burdock, among others, and has been featured in programming at the V&A Museum, Serpentine Gallery, and MoMA PS1. Her highly anticipated debut album, With A Hammer, sees Yaeji excavating her inner world with full force, smashing everything in order to build it back up into the true visions of her dreams.

TRACK LISTING

Submerge FM
For Granted
Fever
Passed Me By
With A Hammer
I’ll Remember For Me, I’ll Remember For You
Done (Let’s Get It)
Ready Or Not
Michin
Away X5
Happy
1 Thing To Smash
Be Alone In This

For fans of: Nick Hakim, John Carroll Kirby, Khruangbin, Bullion, Duval Timothy.

‘Sundown’ is “low-key R&B legend” Eddie Chacon’s soulful, meditative debut for Stones Throw Records. The album was written with and produced by John Carroll Kirby. Eddie Chacon rose to fame in the duo Charles & Eddie, whose 1992 single “Would I Lie To You” was a #1 hit around the world. Chacon returned in 2020 with the album ‘Pleasure, Joy and Happiness’, widely acclaimed by the New York Times, Guardian, and many more.

Soulful, low-key R&B from Eddie Chacon, who soared to fame in Charles & Eddie, and returned in 2020 with the beloved album Pleasure, Joy and Happiness.

Produced by multiple Grammy nominated producer and artist John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Harry Styles, Steve Lacy).

Touring in UK & Europe in Autumn 2022 and May 2023.

One of 15 artists to be featured in The Guardian’s 2023 culture preview.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) Step By Step
2) Far Away
3) Comes And Goes
4) Sundown

Side B
5) Holy Hell
6) Haunted Memories
7) Same Old Song
8) The Morning Sun

Working Men’s Club present their Steel City EP, a 5-track release featuring remixes of tracks from their second album, Fear Fear by some of Sheffield’s most innovative producers: Toddla T, Charla Green, Ross Orton, Diessa and Warp originals, Forgemasters.

Fear Fear was released in July 2022 on Heavenly Recordings, reached #11 in the UK album chart upon release, and saw glowing reviews across Europe and the U.S.

The EP was previously only available on CD which came exclusively with purchases of the album via Bear Tree record shop in Sheffield. Before the end of 2022, these remixes were made available digitally as part of a deluxe edition of Fear Fear and now, this will be the first time the remixed tracks will be widely available on LP. 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1:
1. Money Is Mine (Toddla T Home Sick Remix)
2. Fear Fear (Charla Green Remix)
3. Ploys (Ross Orton Remix)
Side 2:
1. Rapture (Diessa Remix)
2. The Last One (Forgemasters Remix) 

Stretch 'em out and shake off the cobwebs - LCD Soundsystem have returned, in recorded form, from a 5-year hibernation. 'new body rhumba' was written and recorded for the new Noah Baumbach film, White Noise, which is an adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel. It’s classic LCD, all tight and brash, with a coda headed for the second star from the right and straight on 'till morning.

Single-sided 12'' vinyl, mastered and cut at 45rpm by Bob 'Sparklebear' Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, pressed at MPO in France.

TRACK LISTING

A1. New Body Rhumba

3 Feet High and Rising is the debut studio album by hip hop trio De La Soul and was released on March 3, 1989.

It marked the first of three full- length collaborations with producer Prince Paul, which would become the critical and commercial peak of both parties. Critically, as well as commercially, the album was a success. It contains the singles, "Me Myself and I", "The Magic Number", "Buddy", and "Eye Know".

The album title came from the Johnny Cash song "Five Feet High and Rising". It is listed on Rolling Stone's 200 Essential Rock Records and The Source's 100 Best Rap Albums. When Village Voice held its annual Jazz & Pop Critics Poll for 1989, 3 Feet High and Rising was ranked #1. It was also listed on the Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Released amid the 1989 boom in gangsta rap, which gravitated towards hardcore, confrontational, violent lyrics, De La Soul's uniquely positive style made them an oddity beginning with the first single, "Me, Myself and I". Their positivity meant many observers labeled them a 'hippie' group, based on their declaration of the 'D.A.I.S.Y. Age' (Da. Inner. Soul. Yall).

Sampling artists as diverse as Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and The Turtles, 3 Feet High and Rising is often viewed as the stylistic beginning of 1990s alternative hip hop (and especially jazz rap). An absolutely essential slice of Hip Hop history that’s been unavailable for some time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. The Magic Number
3. Change In Speak
4. Cool Breeze On The Rocks (The Melted Version)
5. Can U Keep A Secret
6. Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin's Revenge)
7. Ghetto Thang
8. Transmitting Live From Mars
9. Eye Know
10. Take It Off
11. A Little Bit Of Soap
12. Tread Water
13. Potholes In My Lawn
14. Say No Go
15. Do As De La Does
16. Plug Tunin' (Last Chance To Comprehend)
17. De La Orgee
18. Buddy (with Jungle Brothers And Q-Tip From A Tribe Called Quest)
19. Description
20. Me Myself And I
21. This Is A Recording 4 Living In A Full Time Era (L.I.F.E.)
22. I Can Do Anything (Delacratic)
23. D.A.I.S.Y. Age

Produced by Sean Ono Lennon, Temples’ fourth full-length album takes place in a mystical setting, an impossibly utopic island dreamed up by singer/guitarist James Bagshaw, bassist Tom Walmsley, keyboardist/guitarist Adam Smith, and drummer Rens Ottink. With its resplendent collage of psychedelia and krautrock and time-bending dream-pop, Exotico brings that world to life in crystalline detail, all while exploring an entire spectrum of existential themes: impermanence, mortality, our connection with nature and the wild immensity of the mind. Equal parts cerebral and celestial, the result is a truly immersive body of work, fully affirming Kettering-bred Temples as one of today’s most forward-thinking and endlessly inventive rock bands.

Mixed by Dave Fridmann (Beach House, Spoon, The Flaming Lips) and mainly recorded at Lennon’s studio in upstate New York, Exotico continues the collaboration begun on Temples’ Lennon-produced 2020 single “Paraphernalia.”

Although Temples created portions of Exotico at their home studio back in England, their 12 days of sessions at Lennon’s studio marked a significant departure from the self-contained approach they’d adhered to since their debut album Sun Structures (a 2014 release The Quietus likened to a series of “woozy daydreams that will embed themselves further in with each listen”).

TRACK LISTING

1 Liquid Air
2 Gamma Rays
3 Exotico
4 Sultry Air
5 Cicada
6 Oval Stones
7 Slow Days
8 Crystal Hall
9 Head In The Clouds
10 Giallo
11 Inner Space
12 Meet Your Maker
13 Time Is A Light
14 Fading Actor
15 Afterlife
16 Movements Of Time 

Two-Piers, the label that brought you ‘Pop Psychédélique (The Best of French Psychedelic Pop 1964-2019)’, ‘Garage Psychédélique (The Best of Garage Psych and Pzyk Rock 1965-2019)’ and ‘Music for the Stars (Celestial Music 1960-1979)’ bring you ‘Waves of Distortion (The Best of Shoegaze 1990-2022), a magical journey through the history of the Shoegaze scene from its inception to the current exponents on the scene championing the sound. A perfect introduction to all that is glorious and great about ‘Shoegaze’, and if it takes the listener down a rabbit warren to discover more then job done

‘Waves of Distortion’ brings in some of the OG (original ’gazer) classics – Ride’s peerless ‘Vapour Trail’, Lush’s ‘Sweetness and Light’ from 1990 and Chapterhouse’s ‘Pearl’ from 1991. They are all incredible and timeless tunes. Then there are some others that were never really a part of that other great music press construct, The Scene That Celebrates Itself, in the case of The Telescopes and their fantastic 1991 single ‘Flying’, and Spirea X’s ‘Chlorine Dream’ from the same year – both are indicative of the post-rave psychedelia that coloured everything at the time and fit perfectly within the Shoegaze scene at the time.

Once we get to 1992, there’s a bit of a gap in the chronology as shoegaze was all too hastily dismissed in the country that birthed it, ignored in favour of grunge and then Britpop, the feedback fading away along with the bands that made it. But something amazing happened. when the s-word was used elsewhere in the world, rather than having negative connotations, it was merely a descriptive term. So, the flame was kept burning in the most unlikely places, waiting for everyone else to catch up once again. It’s no surprise, then, that there are bands on this compilation from America (Ringo Deathstarr, Beach House), Australia (Lowtide, Flyying Colours), Sweden (Echo Ladies) and everywhere in between.

Since the turn of the century, successive generations have returned to the sound, taking it to new and exciting places. Thanks to the internet and streaming and listening to music without context the echo got louder and louder. The original scene may have morphed into a myriad of things, from acoustic Americana to ambient techno and post-rock (as evidenced by Mogwai, who appear here with ‘Kids Will Be Skeletons’), but it was only a matter of time before things came full circle. However it was Slowdive’s reunion six years later that finally made people sit up and take notice. There were scores to settle, too. The backlash Slowdive had faced the first time around went beyond mere music criticism into outright hatred. Their return and self-titled album from 2017 somehow managed to be their best yet and one of the finest examples of the genre to date. It brought in yet another generation of fans – the likes of bdrmm and Horsegirl, both included here, weren’t even born when Slowdive first existed, they were discovering them anew.

So, it’s fitting that this compilation begins with ‘Slowdive’s opener, ‘Slomo’. Neil Halstead and Christian Savill’s chiming guitars seemingly awakening from a 22-year slumber as the song gradually comes into focus. This was more than just a rebirth; it was a reaffirmation that this hard to define genre is here to stay.

And that is why we are here now, all these years later, listening to a compilation that joins the dots between all of this stuff, from the beginning to the present day. The beautiful noise that has soundtracked the past 30 years and will continue to do so for many more. 

TRACK LISTING

2LP Vinyl:
A1) Slowdive – Slomo
A2) Chapterhouse – Pearl
A3) Ride – Vapour Trail
A4) Blind Mr Jones – Henna And Swayed
A5) The Telescopes – Flying
B1) Lush – Sweetness And Light
B2) Spirea X – Chlorine Dream
B3) Kitchens Of Distinction – The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule
B4) Pale Saints – Sight Of You
B5) Lowtide – Alibi
B6) Ringo Deathstarr – Kaleidoscope
C1) Horsegirl – Billy
C2) Air Formation – Daylight Storms
C3) DIIV – Taker
C4) Bdrmm – A Reason To Celebrate
C5) Flyying Colours – Long Holiday
C6) Echo Ladies – Overrated – Robin Guthrie Version
D1) Beach House – Lazuli
D2) Mogwai – Kids Will Be Skeletons
D3) Fleeting Joys – Go And Come Back
D4) Ultra Vivid Scene – Mercy Seat
D5) Galaxie 500 – Ceremony

2CD:
CD1
1) Slowdive – Slomo
2) Chapterhouse – Pearl
3) Ride – Vapour Trail
4) Blind Mr Jones – Henna And Swayed
5) The Telescopes – Flying
6) Lush – Sweetness And Light
7) Spirea X – Chlorine Dream
8) Kitchens Of Distinction – The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule
9) Pale Saints – Sight Of You
10) A.R.Kane – Lollita **
11) Airiel – In Your Room **
12) Lowtide – Alibi
CD2
1) Ringo Deathstarr – Kaleidoscope
2) Horsegirl – Billy
3) Air Formation – Daylight Storms
4) DIIV – Taker
5) Bdrmm – A Reason To Celebrate
6) Flyying Colours – Long Holiday
7) Echo Ladies – Overrated – Robin Guthrie Version
8) The Daysleepers – Flood In Heaven **
9) Astrobite – Crasher **
10) Beach House – Lazuli
11) Mogwai – Kids Will Be Skeletons
12) Fleeting Joys – Go And Come Back
13) Ultra Vivid Scene – Mercy Seat
14) Galaxie 500 – Ceremony

** Exclusive Tracks To CD Format

***Although the LP release has been delayed until 17 March, the gig is going ahead on 3rd Feb as planned.***

We are super excited to announce that Nile will be playing an exclusive album launch show at Night & Day on Friday 3rd February. Tickets are only available as part of this bundle. This is sure to sell out so don't snooze.

Following on from 2020's debut album 'Are You Happy Now?', Manchester's Nile Marr returns with Self Care, the first track off his sophomore LP 'Lonely Hearts Killers'.

"I wanted to this one to feel different to my previous album. Songs came out quickerand I mostly recorded it at night in the Mill, I just tried to go with the late night vibe" says Marr.

"I got back into listening to all the bands that made me want to write songs in the first place, like the Lilys and Neil Finn. I guess the whole album was trying to focus on song writing, and because I couldn’t play live during lockdown, I focussed more on song writing rather than ‘I know this works at our live shows', so I feel like this one differs in every wayfrom my previous album".

For fans of Broken Social Scene, Big Star and Elliott Smith

TRACK LISTING

A1 Lonely Hearts Killers
A2 The Rush
A3 Self Care
A4 You Pull Me In
A5 Birdsong
B1 Eyes Like Deer
B2 Skin
B3 Late Night Champion
B4 Two Words
B5 The Easiest Game
B6 Run The Last Mile

Sarabeth Tucek emerges from a decade-long hibernation with a new double-album ‘Joan of All’ under the new moniker SBT – a longtime nickname given to her by the many musicians she has worked with throughout her career.

After retreating from the fevered pace of the record business to concentrate on other creative endeavors, Sarabeth began to piece together the music that would eventually become her most ambitious, personal project yet – the sprawling double-album Joan Of All, which will be released world-wide on 19th May 2023 via her own freshly-minted imprint Ocean Omen.

Sarabeth Tucek officially broke onto the music scene 2003 performing a series of spellbinding duets with Bill Callahan on the acclaimed Smog album Supper. This was swiftly followed by a memorable appearance in the prize-winning Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary DiG! Sarabeth also contributed material to their 2005 EP release, We Are the Radio. One of Sarabeth's compositions covered by the band on that EP, "Seer," would later be retitled and released in 2006 as Tucek's debut single, "Something for You”, which became Steve Lamacq’s Single Of The Week on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Her self-titled debut album produced by Luther Russell and Ethan Johns hit stores the following year and garnered rave reviews in the press, leading her to supporting Bob Dylan and unfaltering support at the BBC.

In 2011, Sarabeth followed up her extraordinary debut with a raw, uncompromising album entitled Get Well Soon, praised as an unflinching meditation on the subject of grief. This release made many year-end lists and the title track was featured on the first season of HBO’s Girls. The new album features lead-off single “The Gift”, as featured heavily on Marc Riley’s BBC 6 Music show, which is taken from the double A-side 7”, “The Gift / 13th St. #2”. Also featured on the album is an entirely different, heavier version of the flip side, entitled “13th St. #1”.

Sarabeth will support the epic Joan Of All with a 18-date tour of the UK May/June 2023, including a BBC 6 Music live session for Marc Riley.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Joan Says/Amber Shade
The Living Rool
Cathy Says
The Gift

Side B
The Box
Work
Make Up Your Mind
!3th St. #1

Side C
Swings
Happiness
Something/Anything
Sheep

Side D
The Tunnel
Unmade/The Dog
Creature Of The Night

The first ever complete overview of Goth culture will be released in 2023.

Finally, after a decade of work, countless interviews and immersing himself into the culture, John Robb's definitive book is a journey far into The Art Of Darkness. The first in-depth book on Goth is a deep dive into the enduring culture and the social, historical and political backdrop that created the space for The Art Of Darkness to thrive.

680 pages with interviews with the likes of Andrew Eldritch, Killing Joke, Bauhaus, The Cult, The Banshees, The Damned, Einsturzende Neubauten, Danielle Dax, Johnny Marr, Trent Reznor, Adam Ant, Laibach, The Cure, Nick Cave and many others, this is a deepdive and walk on the dark side and into the very heartland of Goth.

Every generation has got to deal with the blues - embrace the melancholy. Find a beauty in the darkness, a poetry in sex and death...Whether it’s the Roman love of ghost stories, European macabre folk tales of the Middle Ages, Romantic poets, or the original Gothic tribes sacking the Eternal City, a walk on the dark side has always had its attractions. In the post-punk period, Generation Xerox saw music, clothes and culture come together to create one of the most enduring pop cultures of them all that still resonates to this day..
Goth.
It may have been a retrospective term for a scene that was already thriving, but its back story goes back millennia. The book starts with the fall of Rome and ends with Instagram and Tik Tok influencers, taking diversions through Lord Byron, European folk tales, Indian sadhus, Gothic architecture, Romantic poets, philosophers and idealists before coalescing through the dark end of the Sixties’ youthquake, and then blooming like Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs Du Mal in the post-punk period.

Defying the broken heartland of the post-industrial cities, the semi-forgotten satellite towns and the grim real politic of the Thatcher years, this was a post-punk culture full of dark dance and a death disco. The music soundtracked the style and a Stygian obsidian soundtrack fused the many fragments of culture that had been flirted with in the post-war pop narrative; a darker culture that began to coalesce around the holy trinity of the Doors, the Velvets and the Stooges in the late Sixties before flirting with glam rock, being amplified by punk, exploding as Goth, and then splintering into electronic dance music, industrial, psychobilly and new Goth, before finally filtering through dystopian Hollywood blockbusters, modern literature and throughout the modern world.

In the late Seventies, Goth culture emerged around a clutch of bands who found a new form of beauty in the apocalyptic foreboding, as a new youth tribe took glam rock from the catwalk to the cobbles and onto their own dance floors, creating their own art of darkness.

"This album is about having to focus our collective energies on the small things around that we can control to find joy. A distraction from the larger systemic problems that feel so overwhelming and are so very out of our collective hands... for now...”

Love As Projection is the new album by Frankie Rose, her fifth studio LP and second for Night School following the reissue of her interpretation of The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds. Frankie Rose has forged an enviable musical legacy, from playing with bands like Crystal Stilts and The Vivian Girls but on Love As Projection she takes a bold step into electronic pop production. A sumptuous recorded statement, it dances in ecstasy and broods on the tumult of the western world’s decay in equal proportion. At the heart of the album is glowing, confident songwriting, resplendent in hooks and choruses but still touched with an optimism undimmed.

After spending nearly two decades establishing herself across New York and Los Angeles independent music circles, Rose re-emerges after six years with a fresh form, aesthetic, and ethos. Celebrated over the years for her expansive approach to songwriting, lush atmospherics, and transcendent vocal melodies and harmonies, Love As Projection is a reintroduction of her established style through the lens of contemporary electronic pop. Recorded with producer Brandt Gassman and mixed with long-term collaborator Jorge Elbrecht this is the album Frankie Rose has been building up to her entire career.

More than a rebirth, a refinement, a resurgence, Love As Projection boasts a widescreen scope: a long- form project heavily considered for half of a decade, culminating in the most personal and accessible collection of art-pop that Frankie has ever written. When Rose aims for the pop jugular as in first lead track Anything, the result is unstoppable. A majestic pop song built for radio, it erupts into an irresistible chorus that marries classic epic 80s American pop with the cult effervescence of Strawberry Switchblade “It’s like a prom scene in a John Hughes movie. It’s a hopeful song about abandoning fear even if the world is quite literally on fire.. In the end, at least we have each other,” says Rose. Sixteen Ways further boasts a propulsive, massive chorus, though tempered by a cynicism built in global post-truth, global malaise. “It’s about getting your hopes up, but simultaneously making lists in your head about how it will never work out in your favour.”

The big anthems don’t let up there. On DOA some massive, rolling drums lathered in big mid-80s gated reverb dovetail with a syncopated baseline for the ages as Rose’s vocal sails effortlessly above. The effect isn’t unlike ethereal vocalists Clannad circa Howard’s Way or Enya jamming with Simple Minds in their stadium-conquering heyday. Rose tempers the adrenalin with heart-tugging bittersweet tones and there are plenty of them. Sleeping Night And Day takes its time with an off-the-cuff chorus, swirling around in harmony and chorus-bass. Saltwater Girl picks up the balladeering baton with another nod to album track-mode Switchblade, deep space opening up in the mid-tempo drum track and soupy, digital atmospherics. Album closer Song For A Horse, reimagines modern Pop production a-la-PC Music but shorn of the meta-atmosphere. Pianos, swelling synths, minor keys cut through with major. These moments, also seen in Feel Light offer ballast to the soaring pop choruses. Moments like these are big oceans of emotion to fall into before being led out by Rose into a bright new day.

TRACK LISTING

01. Sixteen Ways
02. Anything
03. Had It Wrong
04. Saltwater Girl
05. Feel Light
06. DOA
07. Sleeping Night And Day
08. Molotov In Stereo
09. Come Back
10. Song For A Horse

Everything But The Girl - aka EBTG - was formed in 1982 by singer-songwriter-musicians Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt. Their debut single was a stark jazz-folk cover of Cole Porter's Night and Day.

Acclaimed for their tender-tough lyrics, Thorn’s unique voice and Watt’s arrangements, they released a string of UK gold albums throughout the 1980s experimenting with jazz, guitar pop, orchestral wall-of-sound and drum-machine soul.

1990 saw their breakthrough in America with the radio hit, Driving. In 1992 their world tour was abandoned when Ben was dramatically admitted to hospital with a life-threatening auto-immune disease from which he nearly died. The story is captured in his acclaimed memoir, Patient.

The pair returned with the million-selling ardent folk-soul of Amplified Heart (1994). The album includes their biggest hit, Missing, after New York DJ-producer Todd Terry’s remix unexpectedly made the leap from heavy club play to global radio success (#2, US Hot 100; # 3 UK Top 40).

It was followed by the sparkling Walking Wounded (1996, #4 UK Album Chart), brimming with sounds and grooves from the mid 90s electronic scene. Spawning four UK Top 40 hits, it became the band’s first platinum album.

After Temperamental (1999), the duo chose to quit on a high. Tracey focused on family life away from the spotlight before returning with a run of solo albums and best-selling autobiographical books. Ben moved into DJing and remixing, and launched the respected electronic label, Buzzin' Fly. He returned to his singer-songwriter roots with a trilogy of solo albums from 2014-2020.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nothing Left To Lose
2. Run A Red Light
3. Caution To The Wind
4. When You Mess Up
5. Time And Time Again
6. No One Knows We’re Dancing
7. Lost
8. Forever
9. Interior Space
10. Karaoke

Riding high on the inexplicable Tech-house adoption of their last release, Talking Drums return with hit number six. This desert island disc finds the family bagging a last minute flight to sunnier climes, where the cocktails are strong and the seas are calm.

On 'Air Ecosse', the crew provide an engine overhaul to a middling slice of Scotch boogie, squeezing maximum thrust out of the new beat-y intro before a bubbling bassline and chiming chords provide some serious uplift. The captain takes the comms for a late deadpan vocal, hinting at a little Pet Shop Boys karaoke prior to touchdown in paradise.

The percussion pals kick off the Birkies on the B side, boarding the bateau with a pair of proper harbour heaters. 'Too Yacht To Handle' bubbles along like Mick'n'Keef in disco mode, oozing grooves under a swooning vocal a la Nicolette Larson. A hazy arrangement lets the music play, indulging the instrumental breaks, soaring synths and subtle delays in true 12" Extended Mix stylee, perfect for peak-time at poolside or la playa.

Dropping the tempo to a sunset strut, 'AORwaves' provides the perfect cool-down, as TD cut back the fat on a forgotten soft-rocker to create a cosmic yacht bomb. Low slung, sleazy and spaced out, this is gonna rock a bar set and beyond.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Oh hello there... what's this sultry little number? Air Ecosse has to be up there with my all-time favourite TD edits, Too Yacht To Handle does exactly what it says on the tin and you can literally feel the sleaze ooze out of AORwaves - in the absolute best possible way. Cosmic after hours tackle at its finest from my favourite percussion posse!

TRACK LISTING

Air Ecosse
Too Yacht To Handle
AORwaves

The 13 track record will be released on 28th April 2023 via Atlas Artists/Parlophone Records. It was produced by the Grammy winning and fellow Compton local, Sounwave.

Angels & Queens - Part I was released back in September, picking up widespread acclaim across the globe. Its release was governed by the band’s desire to push through the release of new recordings this year, and release the record in two distinct chapters. The second chapter now concludes the full album’s tracklisting for a Spring 2023 release.

Angels & Queens incorporates a brand new recording of the band’s seminal debut single, Love & Hate In A Different Time, and songs that have already become staples of the band’s live set; Offering, Glory, and Great Wind.

A Deluxe CD version will also be made available with eight additional recordings, featuring four tracks from the band’s seminal Glastonbury set earlier in the Summer, a BBC Maida Vale session recording of Spanish Harlem, and a Greg Wilson and Che Wilson remix of Love and Hate in A Different Time.

TRACK LISTING

CD / Vinyl
1. Offering
2. The Blind
3. Angels & Queens
4. Taboo
5. To The Moon And Back
6. Professional
7. We Will Remember
8. Remember Me
9. If You Only Knew
10. Love And Hate In A Different Time
11. Glory
12. Great Wind
13.Mama

Deluxe CD Additional Tracks:
14.Love And Hate In A Different Time (Greg Wilson & Che Wilson Remix)
15. Blame (Live At Glastonbury)
16. Great Wind (Live At Glastonbury)
17. Professional (Live At Glastonbury)
18. We Will Remember (Live At Glastonbury)
19. Spanish Harlem (Live From Maida Vale)
20. Bloodline
21. Loyalty Ft. Ashley Sade

Light in the Attic’s Pacific Breeze series has supplied the world’s growing legions of Japanese music fans with an expertly curated selection of the most sought-after City Pop recordings—the mesmerizing and nebulous genre of Japanese bubble-era music of the ‘70s-’80s that encompasses AOR, R&B, jazz fusion, funk, boogie and disco. These familiar sounds are spun through the unique lens of optimistic, cosmopolitan fantasy colored by Japan’s affluence at the time. Much of the music has previously been nearly impossible to acquire outside of Japan and continues to captivate listeners with its unique blend of groove-laden escapism, even birthing wholly new genres such as Vaporwave.

Pacific Breeze 3: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1975-1987 marks the latest chapter in the famed series and features holy grails plus under-the-radar rarities. The collection bursts at the seams to reveal some of the greatest Japanese tracks ever laid to tape, pushing towards the edge of City Pop to reveal glimmers of the next waves of styles to spring forth from the country’s creative minds. The appearance of Pizzicato Five hint at the emergence of Shibuya-kei while the influence of hip hop and electro as an emerging global trend are also evident here through the prevalence of heavier programmed drum beats on tracks such as “Heartbeat” by Miho Fujiwara.

This volume of Pacific Breeze, like its predecessors, is a female-forward offering with many tracks being voiced by women who would become household names in Japan as actresses and pop idols. Their songs here subvert the norm and brim with an innovative spirit that shatters gender roles in favor of sonic transcendence. Techno-pop classics from Susan, Miharu Koshi and Chiemi Manabe sit alongside sublime funk from Atsuko Nina and Naomi Akimoto while Teresa Noda slides into the mix with a sultry reggae jam. The genre span is stretched wider with hypnotic jazz fusion by Parachute and Hiroyuki Namba, a synthesizer fantasy from Osamu Shoji, and magnetic pop by Makoto Matsushita and Chu Kosaka.

Although not front and center, the visionary members of Yellow Magic Orchestra are still very present on Pacific Breeze 3, with Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yukihiro Takahashi taking up producer and musician roles on many of these tracks. Pacific Breeze 3 serves up a captivating musical journey that adds an essential chapter to the iconic compilation series.

TRACK LISTING

Naomi Akimoto - Bewitched (are You Leaving Soon)
Atsuko Nina - Tonkachi
Miho Fujiwara - Heartbeat
Miharu Koshi - Scandal Night
Chu Kosaka - Shirakechimauze
Teresa Noda - Tropical Love
Makoto Matsushita - Business Man Pt. 1
Susan - Ah! Soka
Yukako Hayase - Suiyoubi Madeni Shinitaino
Parachute - Kowloon Daily
Hiroyuki Namba - Tropical Exposition (who Done It? Version)
Pizzicato Five - Boy Meets Girl
Mari Iijima - Love Sick
1986 Omega Tribe - Cosmic Love
Osamu Shoji - Pub Casablanca
Chiemi Manabe – Untotooku

Following on from his top 10 album ‘Seeking New Gods’ Gruff Rhys is pleased to announce his forthcoming soundtrack to the film The Almond And The Seahorse via Rough Trade Records.

The soundtrack will be released as a foil numbered, limited edition double-LP, on yellow vinyl with a fold out film poster.

The 22-track album comprises original songs and instrumental score, all composed by Gruff Rhys. Recorded between 2021-2022 with a host of featured musicians including members of the National of Orchestra Wales, the music features throughout the forthcoming film of the same name, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rebel Wilson and Celyn Jones.

Set for release in early 2023, the film tells the story of archaeologist (Rebel Wilson) and an architect (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and their fight to re-imagine a future after a traumatic brain injury leaves them adrift from the people they love. The title of the film itself refers to the nicknames given to the parts of our brains that lay down new memories and hold on to the old ones.

Tonally, the soundtrack compliments the movie perfectly: the drama of the subject matter and the human relationships is counterbalanced by the film’s wry humour and lightness of touch, and the varied compositions and styles on Gruff Rhys’ score and compositions reflects that. “The soundtrack for The Almond & The Seahorse was recorded largely in pandemic conditions so it was a matter of recording in bursts of possible activity in various friends’ studios, homes and even scout halls as chance permitted. It’s a varied quilt work as a result. “Gruff notes. “As sonic flagpoles I wanted to signify the film’s location in Liverpool and the Wirral by liberally, but hopefully not too obviously, using the Mellotron synthesizer (as famously used in Strawberry Fields by the Beatles & therefore in my mind it represents that great city sonically) and the Cello as a nod to its use by Gwen’s character in the film.”

“I was encouraged by Mike Jones the editor to take things to a more acoustic, emotional and ragged place. That, I hope, roughly explains the trajectory of the recording and how the varied music contained in this record came about. I hope you enjoy this colorful scrapbook of a soundtrack and get a chance to watch the film”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Skyward
The Brain And The Body
People Are Pissed
Layer Upon Layer
Orea

Side B
Joe's Theme
Sunshine And Laughter Ever After
Variation With Strings
Amen
Low Cello
Liberate Me From The Love Song
Love Love Love

Side C
I Want My Old Life Back
Forest Waltz
Dance All Your Shadows To Death
Library To Kiss
Staccato With Cello
Small Talk

Side D
Toni’s Theme
Ffenestr
Penbedw
Arogldarth

The Pale Fountains were formed in Liverpool in 1980 by Mick (as he was then known) Head with Chris McCaffery on bass, Thomas Whelan on drums, trumpeter Andy Diagram and guitarist Ken Moss.

Signing with Virgin in late 1982, this was the first time the music world became aware of the work of singer-songwriter Michael Head.

1985's . . . From Across The Kitchen Table was produced by Ian Broudie, soon to form and redefine sugar-pop with The Lightning Seeds. The album is more unified than its predecessor as it was recorded over a shorter period of time. Lead single Jean's Not Happening is one of the great lost indie gems of the 80s, complete with a powerful string arrangement. The closing song, September Sting, is a joyous slice of scouse-a-billy that points the way clearly to later groups such as The Las.

Near four decades later, Michael Head is adored by his hardcore following and the wider world freshly discovers him as each of his new releases achieves widescale acclaim, whether it be his subsequent band, Shack, or his current outfit, the Red Elastic Band. But The Pale Fountains was where it all began.

This re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1985 Virgin Records UK release with printed inner and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Brilliant follow up to Pacific Street, this record featured the pop classic Jean's Not Happening.

TRACK LISTING

Shelter
Stole The Love
Jean's Not Happening
Bicycle Thieves
Limit
27 Ways To Get Back Home
Bruised Arcade
These Are The Things
It's Only Hard
... From Across The Kitchen Table
Hey
September Sting

The Pale Fountains were formed in Liverpool in 1980 by Mick (as he was then known) Head with Chris McCaffery on bass, Thomas Whelan on drums, trumpeter Andy Diagram and guitarist Ken Moss - Signing with Virgin in late 1982, this was the first time the music world became aware of the work of singer-songwriter Michael Head.

At the time of its release in February 1984, Head described Pacific Street as "like a greatest hits LP, except we haven't had any hits!" It not only showcases the ambition of 80s pop in general, but the very specific singularity of the Liverpool scene, that seemed to add love and (Arthur Lee's) Love to everything recorded. It reflects the swing away from the post-punk and funk of the early years of the decade, aiming for a mellower, bossa-nova influenced pop. It is difficult to understand how tracks such as Unless and (Don't Let Your Love) Start A War were not big hits and are not viewed as standards.

Near four decades later, Michael Head is adored by his hardcore following and the wider world freshly discovers him as each of his new releases achieves widescale acclaim, whether it be his subsequent band, Shack, or his current outfit, the Red Elastic Band. But The Pale Fountains was where it all began.

This re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1984 Virgin Records UK release with printed inner and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Just a really beautiful pop record. So youthful ,romantic and impossibly melodic. It felt like Liverpool had produced a new, young genius.

TRACK LISTING

Reach
Something On My Mind
Unless
Southbound Excursion
Natural
Faithful Pillow Part 1
(Don't Let Your Love) Start A War
Beyond Friday's Field
Abergele Next Time
Crazier
Faithful Pillow Part 2

There was plenty of genuine discontent in Britain at the tail end of the 1970s, and it had little to do with bin strikes or dark rumours about overflowing morgues. In the world of popular music, the most liberating after-effect of the Sex Pistols was that anyone with something to say now felt they could make a 7” single. “Winter Of Discontent” is the sound of truly DIY music, made by people who maybe hadn’t written a song until a day or two before they went into the studio. It’s spontaneous and genuinely free in a way the British music scene has rarely been before or since.

“Winter of Discontent” has been compiled by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, the latest in their highly acclaimed series of albums that includes “The Daisy Age”, “Fell From The Sun” and “English Weather” ("really compelling and immersive: it’s a pleasure to lose yourself in it" - Alexis Petridis, the Guardian). The era's bigger DIY names (Scritti Politti, TV Personalities, the Fall) and the lesser-known (Exhibit A, Digital Dinosaurs, Frankie’s Crew) are side by side on “Winter Of Discontent”. Mark Perry’s Sniffin’ Glue command – “Here’s one chord, here’s another, now start a band” – was amplified by the Mekons and the Raincoats, whose music shared a little of punk’s volume, speed and distortion, but all of its obliqueness and irreverence.

The discontent was with society as a whole. No subject matter was taboo: oppressive maleness (Scritti Politti); deluded Britishness (TV Personalities); gender stereotypes (Raincoats, Androids of Mu); nihilistic youth (Fatal Microbes); alcoholism (Thin Yoghurts); self-doubt and pacifism (Zounds). The band names (Thin Yoghurts!) and those of individual members (Andrew Lunchbox!) had enough daftness to avoid any accusations of solemnity.

“Winter Of Discontent” is the definitive compilation of the UK DIY scene, and a beacon in grim times. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE ONE
1. WHERE WERE YOU? – The Mekons
2. VIOLENCE GROWS – Fatal Microbes
3. THE TERRAPLANE FIXATION – Animals & Men
4. WORK – Blue Orchids
5. SMALL HOURS – Karl’s Empty Body
6. SOMEBODY – Frankie’s Crew
SIDE TWO
1. CONFIDENCE – Scritti Politti
2. DRINK PROBLEM – Thin Yoghurts
3. LOW FLYING AIRCRAFT – Anne Bean & Paul Burwell
4. BROW BEATEN – Performing Ferret Band
5. NO FORGETTING – The Manchester Mekon
6. FAIRYTALE IN THE SUPERMARKET – The Raincoats
SIDE THREE
1. CAN’T CHEAT KARMA – Zounds
2. BORED HOUSEWIVES – Androids Of Mu
3. IN MY AREA (Take 2) – The Fall
4. THE SIDEWAYS MAN – The Digital Dinosaurs
5. ATTITUDES – The Good Missionaries
6. THE WINDOW’S BROKEN – Human Cabbages
SIDE FOUR
1. KING AND COUNTRY – Television Personalities
2. IN THE NIGHT – Exhibit ‘A’
3. NUDES - Performing Ferret Band
4. DIFFERENT STORY – Tarzan 5
5. THE RED PULLOVER – The Gynaecologists
6. PRODUCTION LINE – The Door And The Window

Whether inhabiting the realm of dreams or nightmares, the primordial drive of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs is more powerful than ever and ‘Land Of Sleeper’, their fifth record in a decade of rancour and revelation is testimony to this. Arguably the most potent and assured record of their storied life so far, it’s the product of a band energised and fortified by their individual passions to incendiary effect. After the travails of the two and a half years since 2020’s ‘Viscerals’, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ sees the Newcastle-based quintet not so much reinvigorated as channelling a furious drive which only appears to gather momentum as the band’s surroundings spins on their axis.

For all that the last few years have seen Pigs’ stature rise in the wake of triumphant festival slots and sold-out venues like, this remains a band fundamentally incapable of tailoring their sound to a prospective audience, rather standing alone and impervious as a monument of catharsis.“Certainly for me, writing and playing music is often surprising and revealing, it can be like holding up a mirror and seeing things you didn’t expect to see” reckons drummer Ewan Mackenzie, whose return to the Pigs fray after two albums away marked another big influence on the new record. “For me, the darker tracks on the record hold in common a determination not to lose faith, despite the odds”

The better to unite slumber and waking, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ is no less than an act of transcendence for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion.

'Land Of Sleeper come housed in eye-popping 'Callum Rooney' sleeve art with obi strip and 'Oz' style lyrics poster.

TRACK LISTING

01. Ultimate Hammer
02. Terror's Pillow
03. Big Rig
04. The Weatherman
05. Mr Medicine
06. Pipe Down!
07. Atlas Stone
08. Ball Lightning 

On the one hand, new album Food for Worms calls to mind a certain morbidity, but on the other, it’s a celebration of life; the way that, in the end, we need each other. The album is an ode to friendship, and a documentation of the dynamic that only five people who have grown up together - and grown so close, against all odds - can share.

For the first time, the band are not delving inwards, but seeking to capture the world around them. “I don’t think you can be in your own head forever,” says Steen. A conversation after one of their gigs with a friend prompted a stray thought that he held onto: “It’s weird, isn’t it? Popular music is always about love, heartbreak, or yourself. There isn’t much about your mates.”

It’s through this, and defiance, that the band have continually moved forward together; finding light in uncomfortable contractions and playing their vulnerabilities as strengths: The near-breakdowns, identity crises, frontman Charlie Steen routinely ripping his top off on stage as a way of tackling his body weight insecurities. Everything is thrown into their live show and the best shows of their lives are happening now.

Back in 2018, around debut album Songs of Praise, they were at the vanguard of a transformative scene that changed the underground music landscape in the UK; paving the way for artists soon to come. Then, Charlie Steen suffered a series of panic attacks which led to a tour’s cancellation. For the first time, since being plucked from the small pub stages of south London and catapulted into notoriety, shame were confronted with who they’d become on the other side of it. This era, of being forced to endure reality and the terror that comes with your own company, would form shame’s second album, 2021’s Drunk Tank Pink.

Now they arrive, finally, at a place of hard-won maturity. Enter: Food for Worms, which Steen declares to be “the Lamborghini of shame records.”

Reconnecting with what they first loved about being in a band hotwired them into making the album after a false start during the pandemic. Their management then presented them with a challenge: in three weeks, shame would play two intimate shows and debut two sets of entirely new songs. It meant the band returned the same ideology which propelled them to these heights in the first place: the love of playing live, on their own terms, fed by their audience. Thus, Food for Worms crashed into life faster than anything they’d created before. The band recorded it while playing festivals all over Europe, invigorated by the strength of the reaction their new material was met with. That live energy, what it’s like to witness shame in their element, is captured perfectly on record - like lightning in a bottle.

The album marks a sonic departure from anything they’ve done before. shame have abandoned their post-punk beginnings for far more eclectic influences, drawing from the sharp yet uncomplicated lyrical observations of Lou Reed and the more melodic works of 90s German band, Blumfeld.

They called upon renowned producer Flood (Nick Cave, U2, PJ Harvey, Foals) to execute their vision. Recording each track live meant a kind of surrender: here, the rough edges give the album its texture; the mistakes are more interesting than perfection. In a way, it harks back to the title itself and the way that with this record, the band are embracing frailty and by doing so, are tapping into a new source of bravery.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fingers Of Steel
2. Six-Pack
3. Yankees
4. Alibis
5. Adderall
6. Orchid
7. The Fall Of Paul
8. Burning By Design
9. Different Person
10. All The People

Young Fathers - Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings - announce details of their brand new album Heavy Heavy. Set for release on February 3rd 2023 via Ninja Tune, it’s the group’s fourth album and their first since 2018’s album Cocoa Sugar. The 10-track project signals a renewed back-to-basics approach, just the three of them in their basement studio, some equipment and microphones: everything always plugged in, everything always in reach.

Speaking about the title, the band write that Heavy Heavy could be a mood, or it could describe the smoothed granite of bass that supports the sound… or it could be a nod to the natural progression of boys to grown men and the inevitable toll of living, a joyous burden, relationships, family, the natural momentum of a group that has been around long enough to witness massive changes.

“You let the demons out and deal with it,” reckons Kayus of the album. “Make sense of it after.”

For Young Fathers, there’s no dress code required. Dancing, not moshing. Hips jerking, feet slipping, brain firing in Catherine Wheel sparks of joy and empathy. Underground but never dark. Still young, after some years, even as the heavy, heavy weight of the world seems to grow day by day.

TRACK LISTING

01. Rice
02. I Saw
03. Drum
04. Tell Somebody
05. Geronimo
06. Shoot Me Down
07. Ululation
08. Sink Or Swim
09. Holy Moly
10. Be Your Lady

His most open, honest and vibrant solo record to date, Brothers & Sisters marries the personal and the political but does so in an emotive and uplifting manner. Written against a backdrop of fear and uncertainty, and at a time when those in charge lurched from one disaster to the next mismanagement with increasing regularity, Brothers & Sisters is in fact an incredibly joyous, even spiritual, listen.

With musical contributions from feted Pakistani singer Javed Bashir, British gospel singers Jayando Cole, Keshia Smith, Connie McCall & Adrian Blake and Kaviraj Singh on the santoor it’s a record about bringing people together through art, music and culture.

“To me, this record is a massive ‘Fuck you’ to Brexit,” explains Mason. “And a giant ‘Fuck you’ to anyone that is terrified of immigration because there is nothing that immigration has brought to this country that isn’t to be applauded. Can you imagine what this place would be like without that [immigration]? I mean what would it be like? Cornish pasties and morris dancing?.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mars Man
2. I’m On My Way
3. No More
4. All Over Again
5. The People Say
6. Let It Go
7. Pieces Of Me
8. Travelling Hard
9. Brixton Fish Fry
10. Upon My Soul
11. Brothers & Sisters

‘Cracker Island’ is the eight studio album from Gorillaz, an energetic, upbeat, genre-expansive collection of 10 tracks featuring yet another stellar line-up of artist collaborators: Thundercat, Tame Impala, Bad Bunny, Stevie Nicks, Adeleye Omotayo, Bootie Brown and Beck. Recorded in London and LA earlier this year, it is produced by Gorillaz, Remi Kabaka jr. and eight-time Grammy Award-winning producer / multi-instrumentalist / songwriter extraordinaire Greg Kurstin.

The virtual band exploded onto TikTok gaining over 2.1 m followers in the space of a few months where they continue to innovate, taking virtual characters where no character has been before…

TRACK LISTING

1. Cracker Island (feat. Thundercat)
2. Oil (feat. Stevie Nicks)
3. The Tired Influencer
4. Tarantula
5. Silent Running (feat. Adeleye Omotayo)
6. New Gold (feat. Tame Impala And Bootie Brown)
7. Baby Queen
8. Tormenta (feat. Bad Bunny)
9. Skinny Ape
10. Possession Island (feat. Beck)

London-based Gina Birch began her storied career in music in 1977 when she formed the feminist punk band The Raincoats with fellow Hornsey School of Art student, Ana da Silva. Gina and Ana witnessed an early performance by The Slits and although neither of them knew how to play any instruments, they knew they had to start a band. Just months after they picked up their instruments they were on stage doing their thing around London and the UK in the fledgling and groundbreaking punk rock scene. The Raincoats quickly developed a large and loyal groups of fans and supporters, among them Red Krayola, Swell Maps and Geoff Travis and his new record label, Rough Trade. The Raincoats went on to record 3 albums for Rough Trade that are frequently found on lists of the most important records of the punk rock era and are still name checked as influences by artists today.

Originally, The Raincoats broke up in 1984 but were talked into reforming in 1994 when Kurt Cobain asked them to go on tour in support of Nirvana (sadly, that never happened). With a renewed interest in the band led by Kurt and Kim Gordon, The Raincoats records were reissued with liner notes by Kurt and Kim themselves. Worldwide tours and a brand new 4th album on DGC resulted in 1996. The Raincoats still perform today for special events and have started their own record label, We Three Records, to handle their back catalog.

Gina is a respected painter, a celebrated filmmaker and video director (directing videos for The Libertines and New Order to name a few) and is a mother of 2 wonderful daughters. She has formed and fronted the band Dorothy and The Hangovers.

In September of 2021, Gina released her first ever solo single, Feminist Song, on Third Man Records in celebration of the opening of their brand new London location. Now Third Man release Gina’s brand new and first ever solo full length album, I Play My Bass Loud, recorded by Martin “Youth” Glover from Killing Joke and featuring Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth.

The album was recorded in Berlin By Anton Newcombe , joining him in the studio for this album were Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar), & Uri Rennert (drums) . The band in 2022 have been touring and completed a 34 date tour in North America with Mercury Rev and the Magic Castles which was very successful , with 3 festival appearances in the summer of 2022 in Angers , France , Graz , Austria & Switzerland which were also successful. With this the band went on tour in Europe which started in September 2022 with many sold out shows . .

TRACK LISTING

1) Do Rainbows Have Ends
2) Nothing Can Stop The Sound
3) The Light Is About To Change
4) Fudge
5) Cross Eyed Gods
6) As The Carousel Swings
7) The Mother Of All Fuckers
8) All The Feels
9) Your Mind Is My Café
10) Stuck To Yous

Radical Romantics, the first new album in five-plus years from Fever Ray (aka Karin Dreijer) will arrive on 10th March 2023 via Rabid Records/[PIAS]. In the world of Radical Romantics, Fever Ray presents their struggle with love, or to be precise, the myth of love. Following 2017’s Plunge, Radical Romantics speaks to both the heart and the head, the dance floor and the bedroom. Dreijer is one of pop’s true visionaries, and in their hands, crude and familiar clay is twisted into endlessly beautiful and terrible forms that balance strength with vulnerability, anxiety with safety.

Dreijer first started on Radical Romantics in fall 2019; working in the Stockholm studios built with brother and fellow The Knife member Olof Dreijer after the former completed the last Fever Ray tour in 2018 and the latter returned from living in Berlin. These tracks on Radical Romantics are the first time the siblings have produced and written music together in eight years. Other co-producers and performers include the power duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma, and experimental artist and producer Vessel. Long-time collaborator, Martin Falck, joins Dreijer in creating the all encompassing visual world of Radical Romantics-era Fever Ray.

TRACK LISTING

What They Call Us
Shiver
New Utensils
Kandy
Even It Out
Looking For A Ghost
Carbon Dioxide
North
Tapping Fingers
Bottom Of The Ocean

After two fiery albums, ‘Silence Slowly And Madly Shines’ in 2017 (Alter K) and ‘Private Meaning First’ in 2019 (Vicious Circle / Fatcat Records), France’s The Psychotic Monks have never ceased to impress with their maturity and determination to offer a singular stage and discographic presence.

Although radical, ‘Pink Colour Surgery’’s work is truly accessible to those who immerse themselves in its in depth. One is unceasingly hypnotised, shaken, as their soul flirts dangerously with a furious and oppressive trance. How then the journey becomes addictive, letting yourself slide from one track to another, sometimes struck, sometimes set ablaze with an unexpected epiphany, because its light irradiates us. Live their music is an intimate, sensory experience, the affects of which continue to be felt for a long time afterwards.

Now they announce their third album ‘Pink Colour Surgery’, out 3rd February 2022 via FatCat Records, recorded and produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band - it’s composed in part by improvisations, and is presented as an act of resistance to the ambient violence. Disconcerting at first sight, this new opus operates in the dark, a surgery of ethics which is fleshed out of pink for a staggering metamorphosis. Its very structure takes the listener on an initiatory trip full of secret corners, provided they are prepared to dive into it, to plunge into it.

‘Pink Colour Surgery’ is like a hidden room in a house that we have never entered before, and the possibility of feeling good there is not excluded.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
(Pre-Enter)
Post-Post-
Gamble And Dangle
Side B
(Bird's Part)
Crash
Imagerie
Side C
(88)
Décors
Side D
(Gestures)
All That Fall
Location.memory
(traP S'driB)

Described as an 'iconoclastic entertainer', Montreal born Parisian resident Bernardino Femminielli delivers Before I Die's third release.

This genius cover version of fellow iconoclast Prince was rescued from a near death experience in the bowels of the internet where it would have languished in obscurity if Rik Walker had not flagged its existence to BiD's Jason Boardman.
'O Signe Des Temps' is Bernardino's heartfelt paean to one of the most cherished records in Prince's oeuvre, delivered with style and panache in his native French.

Complimenting Bernardino's original take there are alternative versions on the flip delivered by fellow Parisian and Antinote founder Gwen Jamois aka IUEKE who takes the original into deeper realms with his hefty dub version, amping up the bass and drums and tripping out the vocals - Strong.
Mancunian edit masters Talking Drums close out the set with their first ever remix, a late night steppers delight which transforms the original into a replicant slow dance laced with space dust...

Super limited edition - Full colour sleeve & insert

TRACK LISTING

A. O Signe Des Temps
B1. O Signe Des Temps (IUEKE Remix)
B2. O Signe Des Temps (Talking Drums Remix)

The most live-sounding Yo La Tengo album in years. Times have changed for Yo La Tengo as much as they have for everyone else. In the past, the band has often worked with outside producers and mixers. In their latest effort, the first full-length in five years, This Stupid World was created all by themselves. And their time-tested judgment is both sturdy enough to keep things to the band’s high standards, and nimble enough to make things new. At the base of nearly every track is the trio playing all at once, giving everything a right-now feel. There’s an immediacy to the music, as if the distance between the first pass and the final product has become more direct.

Available on standard black vinyl, CD and on limited blue vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sinatra Drive Breakdown
2. Fallout
3. Tonight’s Episode
4. Aselestine
5. Until It Happens
6. Apology Letter
7. Brain Capers
8. This Stupid World
9. Miles Away

Dutch Uncles, Manchester’s much-revered electro art rock quartet, return with their long-awaited sixth album, True Entertainment (released March 10, 2023 on Memphis Industries).

Taking inspiration from Yellow Magic Orchestra, Prince, Steely Dan, Ennio Morricone, The Blue Nile, Kate Bush and Roxy Music, "True Entertainment behaves like it knows it's been away for some time, and doesn’t apologise for that," jokes vocalist / lyricist Duncan Wallis. "Ultimately, it's written with the mindset that on our sixth album, we’re only in competition with ourselves when it comes to finding satisfaction in our craft."

True to this mantra, True Entertainment bears some of the most delightfully fun Dutch Uncles music to date; paired with some of their most existential and introspective lyrics. What is success? Am I enough? How can I better? (and can I afford to be better?)

The title was a DJ name bestowed upon Wallis by guitarist Peter Broadhead. Wallis, an in-demand DJ and compare in his native city, wrote the acid house and Sign O’ The Times-era Prince-influenced title track when reflecting on the awkwardness he sometimes feels when he’s recognised as the singer in a band while working one of his many public-facing jobs.

While bassist Wallis and bassist Robin Richards remain Dutch Uncles’ principle composers, the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 prompted other members to contribute musical ideas: the result being their most collaborative album to date. This is evidenced further by Henry Broadhead and Neil Wright (live synth player and live guitarist, respectively) stepping up to production duties alongside the band themselves. The album also sees contributions from Anna Prior of Metronomy and Jonathan Higgs of Everything Everything. Henry Broadhead mixed the album with drummer Andrew Proudfoot, and it was mastered by Matt Colton (Pet Shop Boys, Christine And The Queens et al).

True Entertainment is the long-awaited follow up to Big Balloon (2017), an album which spawned three playlisted singles on BBC Radio 6 Music and enjoyed widespread acclaim from the likes of Uncut ("a high flying triumph" 8/10), The Guardian ("its songs barge in with urgency" 4*), The Quietus, DIY, Exclaim!, Q, Under the Radar and many, many more.

TRACK LISTING

True Entertainment
Damascenes
Tropigala (2 To 5)
Poppin’
Exit Row
I’m Not Your Dad
Deep End
In Salvia
End Belief
Dead Letter

Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2 sees the Nashville-based musician step further from the pedal steel and towards centre stage. Released on the evergreen Full Time Hobby label on 14th April 2023, this new collection of tracks is a kaleidoscopic collection of folk, jazz, and pop, cut though with immaculately-rendered songwriting.

Romford to Nashville is hardly the most well-trodden of paths, but for Spencer Cullum it was a way of getting to the essential heart of pedal steel, what was then and remains to this day his musical raison d'être. Growing up in the large East London town brought him early exposure to classic pub rock by way of his father such as Dr. Feelgood and Thin Lizzy, and farther-flung music by way of his mother, such as Talking Heads and Lou Reed. However, it was learning pedal steel from legendary English player B. J. Cole that set him on the path he still walks today. After touring with Nashville-based groups and hearing tales of “seasoned Nashville steel players”, the young musician upped sticks and found a “nice little crowd of weirdos” in his chosen city.

Cullum has always maintained a somewhat silent presence - even now saying “I still want to hide behind my pedal steel in fear” - but 2020 saw him release his debut solo effort, Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection. Despite his project with Jeremy Fetzer, Steelism, showing off more of his talents, never before had he felt the limelight so firmly on him.

Although …Coin Collection’s modus operandi was "a very quintessential English folk record, but with really good Nashville players”, Cullum says of ...Coin Collection 2 that “I wanted to be different. I wanted to try and pull away from wearing my influences on my sleeve… I was trying to pick out ideas that were new to me. You can never escape your musical influences but I wanted them to be more hidden sub-consciously than upfront.” Though you can pick out the odd similarity to other things here and there - The Beach Boys’ Friends LP, perhaps, or The Incredible String Band, or Joni Mitchell - the thing is decidedly Cullum’s own. What’s also reassuring is that there hasn’t been some giant sonic leap from …Coin Collection, rather that the beautifully sun-kissed, English country garden, bees-buzzing-round-lager atmosphere has remained, but complicated, weirded, deepened.

Much in the same way that the album doesn’t wear its influences (Amon Duul II, Skip Spence, Ennio Morricone, Chu Kosaka, Michael Chapman) lightly but rather is steeped in them and toys with them, Cullum brought in a host of guests to turn…Coin Collection 2 loose from being a purely solo effort. Yuma Abe provides fractured, low-register chorus vocals that accentuate the ever-so-slightly mournful air to ‘Kingdom Weather’, released today as a single, while Dana Gavanski provides beautiful harmony lines in ‘What A Waste Of An Echo’. Despite the number of collaborators and players (also including Rich Ruth, Erin Rae, and Caitlin Rose) things never seem too crowded or brimming with too many ideas. Instead Cullum marshalls each moving party expertly.

Indeed, due to Cullum’s languid Romford burr (pitched somewhere between Robert Wyatt and Ray Davies), it only becomes clear when listening closely that some of the lyrics deal with weighty themes like dementia and violence. Cullum says that “I sat for a long time with the songs and wanted to find my own identity”, and …Coin Collection 2 suggests you do the same.

In the same way that Cullum provides the pedal steel undertow of many huge artists’ music - Kesha, Lambchop, and more recently Angel Olsen - the genius in …Coin Collection 2 is in its subtlety, in what it murmurs rather than shouts.

TRACK LISTING

1. What A Waste Of An Echo (feat. Dana Gavanski)
2. Kingdom Weather (feat. Yuma Abe)
3. Green Trees
4. Out Of Focus
5. The Three Magnets (feat. Rich Ruth)
6. Betwixt And Between (feat. Erin Rae)
7. Cold Damp Valley
8. That Same Day Departure (feat. Caitlin Rose) 

David Brewis of the band Field Music releases his debut solo record The Soft Struggles on 24 February 2023. After three albums as School of Language, David Brewis’s next contribution to the ever-expanding Field Music universe is this jazz-inflected acoustic record. It will also be the second album release on Field Music’s newly formed Daylight Saving Records label, intended as the home for the Brewis brothers’ extra-curricular projects.

The Soft Struggles veers away from Field Music’s eclectic palette and instead leans into the luminous spontaneity of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and the breathy, string-laden chamber pop of Colin Blunstone’s One Year. Several of the tracks were built around a single day of live recording at Field Music’s studio in Sunderland, with David’s brother Peter on drums, Sarah Hayes (Admiral Fallow, You Tell Me) on piano and flute and Faye MacCalman (Archipelago) on clarinet and saxophone.

“There’s something a bit magical about a bunch of musicians together in a room being thrown in at the deep end,” says David, “So many of my favourite records were made quickly by musicians sitting a few feet from each other, playing songs they’d never even heard before the session began. That’s what I tried to do with this album. A chord sheet, a set of lyrics, a brief chat about tempo and then, okay comrades, see you at the other side.”

The soft struggles of the songs themselves touch on weariness and loss, disappointments allayed or accepted, anxieties overcome or temporarily elbowed aside, sometimes grasping for romantic, or parental, wisdom, and when wisdom isn’t quite in reach, there are songs of consolation and wry hopefulness.

The album also features contributions from singer Eve Cole, trombones by David Smith and Craig Hissett, saxophones on The Last Day by Pete Fraser, and strings courtesy of regular Field Music collaborators Ed Cross, Jo Montgomery, Chrissie Slater and Ele Leckie.

TRACK LISTING

Can We Put It In The Diary
Surface Noise
Tomorrow
When You First Meet
It Takes A Long Time
Start Over
Keeping Up With Jessica
High Time
The Last Day
The King Of Growing Up

Irish intersectional feminist five piece M(h)aol have announced their debut album 'Attachment Styles' out via TULLE.

Following the release of their debut EP 'Gender Studies', the band hit the ground running in 2022. Gaining a reputation as one of the most sought after live bands of the summer, M(h)aol performed at Primavera, Green Man, Latitude, and End of the Road, toured Europe with Gilla Band and Shellac, and more.

Gracing the cover of Spotify’s Hot New Bands multiple times, and based between Dublin, London, and Bristol, M(h)aol (pronounced male) are formed of Róisín Nic Ghearailt (She/Her), Constance Keane (She/Her), Jamie Hyland (She/Her), Zoë Greenway (She/Her), and Sean Nolan (He/Him).

Today the 5-piece announce their debut album Attachment Styles out 3rd February 2023 via TULLE Collective.

‘Attachment Styles’ is a record about social connection, queerness and healing. When Róisín was writing the lyrics, she used the theory of attachment styles as an overarching theme which is a theory that looks at the impact our inter-familial relationships and society have on how we relate to one another.

With the album, the listener goes on a journey of healing. We start with 'Asking For It', a song that deals with one of the worst things that can happen to someone, then we travel through various stages of self-acceptance and community building with the triumphant ‘Period Sex’. Bassist Jamie produced, mixed, and mastered the album where she wanted to capture the live element, meaning it was recorded in one small room with no headphones, minimal drum mics, and only a PA for vocals.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Asking For It
2. Bored Of Men
3. No One Ever Talks To Us
4. Bisexual Anxiety
5. Therapy
6. Nice Guys
Side B
1. Kim Is A Punk Type Dog
2. Cowboy Honey
3. Femme
4. Period Sex

Mogwai’s groundbreaking debut album ‘Mogwai Young Team’, originally released in October 1997 is to be reissued in February 2023, remastered and refreshed on coloured vinyl, CD and digital. Housed in a gatefold sleeve with original artwork, the sky-blue vinyl will come with a digital download code.

The original recording engineer for the album, Paul Savage, whose production credits include Franz Ferdinand and The Twilight Sad, has remastered the album for this special reissue.

Recorded in what was soon to become Chemikal Underground’s own Chem19 studios by label owner and The Delgados’ drummer Paul Savage (for the princely sum of £1.5000), the sessions were, by the band’s own admission, ‘turbulent, disorganised and hastily mixed’.

TRACK LISTING

Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home
Like Herod
Katrien
Radar Maker
Tracy
Summer (Priority Version)
With Portfolio
R U Still In 2 It
A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters
Mogwai Fear Satan

24 years after its initial release, Mogwai’s iconic second album ‘Come On Die Young’ is to be reissued on coloured vinyl. Presented in a gatefold sleeve with original artwork, the white vinyl will come with a digital download code.

Originally released in March 1999, ‘Come On Die Young’s artwork references The Exorcist and a title scalped from a well-known Glasgow gang slogan. Instead of the cover’s suggested apocalypse-harbouring, pre-millennial assault on the senses however, this second offering from the band was a darkly elegiac – and surprisingly restrained – response to the aural fireworks of their ‘Young Team’ debut from two years earlier.

TRACK LISTING

Punk Rock:
Cody
Helps Both Ways
Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia
Kappa
Waltz For Aidan
May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door
Oh! How The Dogs Stack Up
Ex-Cowboy
Chocky
Christmas Steps
Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist

FKA Happy Meals, Free Love and their music are a conscious study in duality: thumping live tracks and meditational mantras, pop songs and esoteric experiments, acoustic and electronic instrumentation, lyrics in French and English, the Masculine and the Feminine, all side-by-side. Paragons of the cross-pollinating Glasgow DIY scene, their rapturous psychedelic odysseys have been emanating from the city since 2013 via esteemed labels including Night School and Optimo Music. Free Love’s debut EP Luxury Hits was released in 2018 to much critical acclaim (“a groovy fever dream” – Line of Best Fit) and saw them shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year Award (Suzi and Lewis’s third SAY Award nomination in all, following two under the Happy Meals moniker). It was followed in 2019 by the mini-album Extreme Dance Anthems (“music to move both body and mind” – Clash). In 2018 Free Love released a limited-edition vinyl EP, written and recorded on the isle of Eigg as part of Lost Map’s V I S I T ▲ T I O N S residency programme – strengthening a long-standing kinship between the band and the label which has seen them perform live many times at Lost Map events on Eigg and elsewhere.

It leads to the release on Lost Map in 2023 of Free Love’s latest opus INSIDE. Written and recorded at the band’s Glasgow home studio during and after the lockdowns of 2020-2021, and completed just before the birth of Lewis and Suzi’s son Echo in the summer of 2022, its 10 tracks of house-quaking acid pop, celestial drones and yogic devotionals are a by-turns banging and blissed-out meditation on life and death, community and seclusion, worlds both outwith and within. A song about “coming back to the centre after spiralling too far and recognising you’re not the only person wondering what’s going on”, ‘Open The Door’ reaches for the fresh silicon sound of Yellow Magic Orchestra. ‘Stop’ and ‘Golden Goose’ channel the space age pop dreams of Broadcast, while ‘Le Mirage’ and ‘Dans Le Noir’ take influence from 1970s electronic dance music pioneer Patrick Cowley – the former his gay porn movie soundtracks, the latter Cowley’s game-changing hi-NRG productions such as ‘Menergy’ and ‘Megatron Man’. Transportational seven-minute album closer ‘I Become’ sees Free Love borrow lyrics from the first track Lewis and Suzi ever recorded together, ‘Crystal Salutation’. “In doing, we become.”

“The sounds and themes on INSIDE came from the experiments we started working on throughout lockdown in our home studio, FULL ASHRAM CELESTIAL GARDEN,” says Lewis. “Sometimes we’d leave a sound running on loop until little melodies would come in and then that would start to take the form of the track. It has been a weird time for anyone to be making anything creative – to make sense of any reason to it all, we had to position creating music as an essential ritualistic part of our daily existence. We used the studio as a portal and made INSIDE.”

Free Love’s euphoric live show has seen them tour Europe, USA, India and Russia with the likes of The Flaming Lips, Liars and James Holden and The Animal Spirits, with Suzi often tearing through the audience centring the energy in the middle of the room over the live hardware electronics operated by Lewis from the stage turning into a ritualistic communal catharsis. As well as performing their debut Boiler Room live set from their home studio during lockdown, the band remixed music for Django Django and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Le Mirage
2. Open The Door
3. Fight Or Flight
4. All The Same To Me
5. Golden Goose
Side B
1. Dans Le Noir
2. Don’t Stop
3. Stop
4. It’s A Feeling
5. I Become

Mercury-nominated artist Maps, aka James Chapman, presents his fifth studio album, Counter Melodies.

Maps’ music has always embraced melancholia, but with Counter Melodies Chapman has produced an album of upbeat and uplifting dance tracks. The album is a new adventure through the familiar emotional terrain of the Maps sound, while also transporting you to more resolutely optimistic and hopeful places.

TRACK LISTING

Witchy Feel
Heya Yaha
Thru Lights
Psyche
Windows Open
Transmission
Lack Of Sleep
Valentine
Fever Dream
My Love Is Like

A Certain Ratio’s greatest strength has always been their unpredictability. They’ve always moved with gleeful disregard for the boundaries of style and genre, their eye fixed firmly on constant progression. It’s an ethos that’s open-minded over all else, and that’s seen them take everything from experimental electronica to vintage funk, filtered through their own Mancunian lens.

And their latest studio album 1982 is no different in its unpredictable multidimensional nature. It shoots off in every direction, whether via searing Afrobeat, mind- melting jazz breakdowns or moody electronic experiments all with pop hooks and irresistible dance rhythms.

It might be called 1982, but it’s no nostalgia trip, fearlessly facing up to the future and running at it with full speed.

The album follows ACR Loco and EP:ACR in what is turning out to be the band’s most creative period, unmistakably ACR and unmistakably like nothing else.

TRACK LISTING

1 Samo
2 Waiting On A Train
3 1982
4 A Trip In Hulme
5 Tombo In M3
6 Constant Curve
7 Afro Dizzy
8 Holy Smoke
9 Tier 3
10 Ballad Of ACR

A Certain Ratio’s greatest strength has always been their unpredictability. They’ve always moved with gleeful disregard for the boundaries of style and genre, their eye fixed firmly on constant progression. It’s an ethos that’s open-minded over all else, and that’s seen them take everything from experimental electronica to vintage funk, filtered through their own Mancunian lens.

And their latest studio album 1982 is no different in its unpredictable multidimensional nature. It shoots off in every direction, whether via searing Afrobeat, mind- melting jazz breakdowns or moody electronic experiments all with pop hooks and irresistible dance rhythms.

It might be called 1982, but it’s no nostalgia trip, fearlessly facing up to the future and running at it with full speed.

The album follows ACR Loco and EP:ACR in what is turning out to be the band’s most creative period, unmistakably ACR and unmistakably like nothing else.

TRACK LISTING

1 Samo
2 Waiting On A Train
3 1982
4 A Trip In Hulme
5 Tombo In M3
6 Constant Curve
7 Afro Dizzy
8 Holy Smoke
9 Tier 3
10 Ballad Of ACR

The critically acclaimed The Slow Readers Club will follow their 2020 Top 10 album ‘The Joy of the Return’ with the release of their new record ‘Knowledge Freedom Power’ on February 24th, 2023. The Manchester band launch the album by sharing its lead single and title track. Nothing – not despots, pandemics, self-destruction or the rise of the machines–can keep a good band down. So, When The Slow Readers Club hit the studio in early 2022 with producer Joe Cross (Hurts/Courteeners), they battled dark times with a refreshing optimism. The result is ‘Knowledge Freedom Power’ , a sizzling synth-rock beast of a record akin to White Lies, Muse and modern-day Bloc Party, and a rallying cry of emancipation, both stylistically and socially. It’s a righteous punch of the air, a surge towards the future.Frontman Aaron Starkie says, “The world had got so bleak it felt a little indulgent to paint apocalyptic pictures when they were out in the real world. I thought people would probably want to hear more uplifting things, it was my intention to be a bit more positive. There’s still a lot of melodrama in there and it’s still dystopian in places but there’s more positive shades in this record.”

That positivity powers to the fore with the album’s lead single and title track, an instantly addictive hybrid of the band’s new pulsating synth style with their anthemic alt - rock roots. Its streamlined, straight – to – the - point hook highlights the fact that there can be an alternative to a world which is becoming increasingly authoritarian and ignoring the needs of the many in favour of the few. Aaron adds, “Growing up as a council estate kid in Manchester I was very conscious of having a limited horizon and I guess I had a chip on my shoulder and something to prove. It’s that background that inspired both our band name and the album’s title track ‘Knowledge Freedom Power’. It is an exercise in positive sloganeering, a mantra for education as a means of a way out from social and psychological confinement.” As much as the record finds The Slow Readers Club channelling a brighter spirit, there’s no dumbing down of their famously ferocious and insightful lyricism. A beam of hope shines throughout ‘Sacred Song’ : part in the form of a spiritual saviour, but also embracing the power of love as a force for good, something which can also be achieved by the friendship and community spirit infused in ‘Lay Your Troubles On Me’ . Yet a darkness still looms large, whether its within the warmongering satire - and ultimately individual powerlessness – of ‘Seconds Out’ or the steady march of automation over the human workforce on opener ‘Modernise’ ‘Knowledge Freedom Power’ is the band’s sixth album and the latest giant leap in one of the greatest self-made success stories in recent British rock history. Since debuting in 2011 with their eponymous and self - released debut album, they’ve constantly grown in stature leading to sold - out headline gigs including the Manchester Apollo and London’s Scala , shows as guests to Pixies ,Catfish and The Bottlemen and James , as well as festivals stretching from the Neighbourhood Weekender to Mad Cool Madrid.

When lockdown kicked in the same week that ‘The Joy Of The Return’ debuted at #9, The Slow Readers Club reacted to the cancellation of their touring plans by creating a darker, more ethereal set of songs, which they recorded via Whats App and Google Drive and by recording one band member at a time in the studio. The result was ‘91 Days in Isolation’ , which they self-released in October 2020 Knowledge Freedom Power’

TRACK LISTING

1.‘Modernise’
2.‘Afterlife’
3. ‘Sacred Song’
4.‘Lay Your Troubles On Me’
5.‘How Could You Know?’
6. ‘Knowledge Freedom Power’
7. ‘What Might Have Been’
8. ‘Seconds Out’
9. ‘Forget About Me’
10. ‘No You'

A tree may lose its leaves but will continue to grow. For Teleman, the band’s fourth album ‘Good Time / Hard Time’ is their first as a trio and sees them evolve as a force of nature as they navigate new beginnings despite a wealth of experience behind them. Music and lyrical stream of consciousness entwined, the album makes sense of a world in chaos and its words of wisdom are a vital reminder that even when things seem heavy, life is precious.

“Nature can teach us so much about patience and how you can’t control everything - you just have to let things happen as it intends… it’s great therapy,” tells the band’s singer and guitarist, Thomas Sanders whose garden-dwelling and park strolls to the studio have inevitably wormed their way into Teleman’s songwriting. “I was reading about forests and how trees help each other, they don’t survive on their own, they grow together… as a band we’ve now grown into each other as a triangle shape after having been a square for so long.”

With classic Teleman style, ‘Good Time / Hard Time’ is their most dancefloor-friendly record to date. Following the departure of the band’s long-time keyboard player Jonny Sanders to focus on his film and design work, Peter Cattermoul now leads on keyboard duties and Hiro Amamiya slides seamlessly between drum machine, live drums and even the odd keyboard solo as it captures the bounce of choice cuts from their own DJ sets such as Metronomy or the classic disco of Boney M, Giorgio Moroder, early house music and 80s vibes - all the while doused in their trademark blend of uplifting melancholy. “You’ve got to experience the hard times to appreciate the good times in life,” Tom explains. “Most of the songs are about universal things everyone can relate to, the small and simple details about difficult connections and overcoming them.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Short Life
Trees Grow High
Wonderful Times
Easy Now I've Got You
Cherish
Side B
1. Hello Everybody
2. I Can Do It For You
3. The Juice
4. The Girls Who Came To Stay
5. Good Time/Hard Time

Dinked Edition Bonus 7”:
Side A
Somebody Tell Me It’s Alright
Side B
Short Life Demo

‘How Many Dreams?’ is the highly anticipated fourth studio album from Australian three-piece DMA’S. Featuring the singles ‘I Don’t Need To Hide’ and ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’, the record is another step forward for a band on a still upwards trajectory. Partly recorded in the UK with Rich Costey (Sigur Ros, Muse, Foster the People) and Stuart Price (Dua Lipa, The Killers, Madonna) before being finished with Konstantin Kersting (Mallrat, The Jungle Giants) back in their hometown of Sydney, ‘How Many Dreams?’ is designed to be ambitious, a sonically vast landscape; there are songs to rave to, and songs to cry to.

There’s a definite sense of celebration and revolution was brewing within the band on this record. DMA’S exploded onto the scene in 2014 with their debut single ‘Delete’. Since then, the band have released three acclaimed records with their last album THE GLOW (released in March 2020) debuting at #4 in the UK, #1 in Scotland, #2 in Australia. DMA’S have sold out worldwide tours including selling out shows at London’s Alexandra Palace and O2 Academy Brixton, and Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl, and graced the stages on festivals like Reading & Leeds, Glastonbury, Coachella, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, Osheaga, Gov Ball and many more. 

TRACK LISTING

1. How Many Dreams?
2. Olympia
3. Everybody's Saying Thursday's The Weekend
4. Dear Future
5. I Don't Need To Hide
6. Forever
7. Fading Like A Picture
8. Jai Alai
9. Get Ravey
10. 21 Year Vacancy
11. Something We're Overcoming
12. De Carle

Following 2021’s compilation This is Telex, Telex return with a vinyl and CD boxset of their full catalogue of studio albums: Looking For Saint Tropez, Neurovision, Sex, Wonderful World, Looney Tunes and How Do You Dance?

These studio albums have all been remastered and newly mixed by band members Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers, keeping the spirit of the original tracks whilst adding a freshness to produce a definitive version of each album. The boxset is a timeline of the Belgian synthpop trio’s career, from their 1979 debut up to their last studio album How Do You Dance? (2006).

“If you can find a copy of Looking for Saint Tropez – or either of their best ofs – you're in for an electro treat.” - The Guardian

“…Telex’s bubbly energy and club-ready rhythms were just as influential to the first wave of techno and house DJs and producers.” - Pitchfork [This is Telex]

Available on limited edition vinyl and CD box sets. 

TRACK LISTING

VINYL BOX SET TRACKLIST
LP1 Looking For Saint-Tropez (Remastered)
A1 Moskow Diskow
A2 Pakmoväst
A3 Café De La Jungle
A4 Ça Plane Pour Moi
A5 Some Day / Un Jour
B2 Something To Say
B3 Rock Around The Clock
B4 Victime De La Societe
B5 Twist À Saint-Tropez

LP2 Neurovision (Remastered)
A1 A/B
A2 Réalité
A3 Cliché
A4 En Route Vers De Nouvelles Aventures
A5 Tour De France
A6 We Are All Getting Old
B1 My Time
B2 Plus De Distance (More Than Distance)
B3 Euro-Vision
B4 Dance To The Music
B5 Lakelele
B6 Soul Waves

LP3 Sex (Remastered)
A1 Brainwash
A2 Drama, Drama
A3 Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before
A4 Long Holiday
A5 The Man With The Answer
B1 Carbon Copy
B2 Exercise Is Good For You
B3 Dream-O-Mat
B4 Dummy
B5 Sigmund Freud’s Party

LP4 Wonderful World (Remastered)
A1 L’amour Toujours
A2 So Sad
A3 Raised By Snakes
A4 It Could Happen To You
A5 Second Hand
B1 Tell Me It’s A Dream
B2 Vertigo
B3 The Voice
B4 Radio-Radio
B5 Wonderful World

LP5 Looney Tunes (Remastered)
A1 I Don’t Like Music
A2 Temporary Chicken
A3 Spike Jones
A4 Beautiful Li(f)e
A5 Dingo Bells
B1 I Want Your Brain
B2 Baby, When?
B3 Peanuts
B4 Happy End (I Wanna)
B5 Rendez-vous Dans L’espace

LP6 How Do You Dance? (Remastered)
A1 On The Road Again
A2 How Do You Dance?
A3 This Is Your Song
A4 The Number One Song In Heaven
B1 J’aime La Vie
B2 White Noise
B3 Move!
B4 Jailhouse Rock
B5 Do Worry

CD BOX SET TRACKLIST
CD1 Looking For Saint-Tropez (Remastered)
1 Moskow Diskow
2 Pakmoväst
3 Café De La Jungle
4 Ça Plane Pour Moi
5 Some Day / Un Jour
6 Something To Say
7 Rock Around The Clock
8 Victime De La Societe
9 Twist À Saint-Tropez

CD2 Neurovision (Remastered)
1 A/B
2 Réalité
3 Cliché
4 En Route Vers De Nouvelles Aventures
5 Tour De France
6 We Are All Getting Old
7 My Time
8 Plus De Distance (More Than Distance)
9 Euro-Vision
10 Dance To The Music
11 Lakelele
12 Soul Waves

CD3 Sex (Remastered)
1 Brainwash
2 Drama, Drama
3 Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before
4 Long Holiday
5 The Man With The Answer
6 Carbon Copy
7 Exercise Is Good For You
8 Dream-O-Mat
9 Dummy
10 Sigmund Freud’s Party

CD4 Wonderful World (Remastered)
1 L’amour Toujours
2 So Sad
3 Raised By Snakes
4 It Could Happen To You
5 Second Hand
6 Tell Me It’s A Dream
7 Vertigo
8 The Voice
9 Radio-Radio
10 Wonderful World

CD5 Looney Tunes (Remastered)
1 I Don’t Like Music
2 Temporary Chicken
3 Spike Jones
4 Beautiful Li(f)e
5 Dingo Bells
6 I Want Your Brain
7 Baby, When?
8 Peanuts
9 Happy End (I Wanna)
10 Rendez-vous Dans L’espace

CD6 How Do You Dance? (Remastered)
1 On The Road Again
2 How Do You Dance?
3 This Is Your Song
4 The Number One Song In Heaven
5 J’aime La Vie
6 White Noise
7 Move!
8 Jailhouse Rock
9 Do Worry
10 La Bamba-X

Marrying psychedelic pop with folk and a touch of country, 'Earthling On The Road To Self Love' is the sublime debut album by Brisbane, Australia-based artist Baby Cool – the latest side project by Nice Biscuit co-front woman Grace Cuell.

Cuell says of the record, which follows her debut single 'Magic' and tours with Babe Rainbow and The Lazy Eyes: “The songs on this album are deeply sentimental. I have a lot I need to sing about to help me make sense of this earthly pod I have been gifted. If in singing these words out loud, I can help others find solace in knowing that we’re all out here flailing about in the cosmos, then it feels good to me.”

Recorded with Sam Joseph (Family Jordan), the songs on 'Earthling' were brought to life with the help of Jess Ferronato (Nice Biscuit), Nick Cavendish (Nice Biscuit) and Drew Heyden (The Flamingo Jones): "I had such a beautiful community of friends that helped bring this whole thing to life. There was magic and love in every part of the process of creating this album.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) The Sea
2) Mother Luna
3) Altar
4) For Us
Side B
5) Poison
6) Country Song
7) Interlude
8) Magic
9) Daydream

Dinked Edition Flexi-Disc
1) Daydream (Stripped-Back)

Is Willie J Healey your favourite artists’ favourite artist? You better believe it. Alex Turner, Joe Talbot of IDLES, Jamie T and Orlando Weeks are among those who believe, most having come onboard following the Neil Young-meets-The Beatles-meets Elvis Costello charms of his 2020 album ‘Twin Heavy’. And while Willie has largely been the preserve of those in the know, that’s all about to change. When Florence Welch heard his upcoming album ‘Bunny’ via its producer, her friend Loren Humphrey, as well as through YALA! Records co-founder Felix White, she was sufficiently impressed to invite Willie and his band on this autumn’s Florence + The Machine arena tour.

If you’ve already discovered the album’s introductory track, ‘Tiger Woods’, you’ll have had a first taste of why Florence was so won over. It sees Willie dive headfirst into a style of music he has always loved, but that never previously found its way into his own songs. It’s a low-slung, sensual ‘70s-style jam which simultaneously calls to mind Sly and The Family Stone, Philly soul, ‘Midnite Vultures’-era Beck and a little OutKast.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Woke Up Smiling
2. Dreams
3. Tiger Woods
4. Thank You
5. Bumble Bee
6. Black Camaro
Side B
1. Sure Feels Good
2. Chrome
3. Late Night Driving
4. Little Sister
5. Morning Teeth
6. Bumble Bee Reprise
7. Bluebird

The inimitable post-punk icon Brix Smith is held in high regard for her work with The Fall, The Adult Net andThe Extricated, but even after four decades in the game she’s still embracing new musical horizons with characteristic intensity. Since announcing details of debut solo album, her current adventure has been highlighted by NME, Clash and Louder Than War while picking up fresh airplay at 6 Music.

Produced by the Grammy Award winning Youth (The Verve, Jesus & Mary Chain, Killing Joke), Brix’s seemingly effortlessly cool vocals top a mix of power-pop addictiveness, ragged garage-rock riffs and classic grunge melody. Given its explosive energy.

The album was started during lockdown, with Brix and Youth collaborating remotely between her home in London and his base in Spain. She has described the album as sounding like a cross between The Breeders and Hole with an atmosphere that’s “very dystopian California.” It features special guests including Susanna Hoffs from The Bangles and Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama and Shakespears Sister.

TRACK LISTING

1. Living Thru My Despair
2. Fast Net
3. Aphrodite
4. California Smile
5. Changing
6. Black Rainbow Sky
7. Say I'm Ur No.1
8. Valley Girl
9. All My Luv
10. Black Butterfly

RIYL: Folly Group / M(h)aol / The Murder Capital / LIFE / Crack Cloud / Squid / CROWS

Italia 90 release their debut album Living Human Treasure on Jan 20th on Brace Yourself Records. The London based 4-piece have released a number of singles and EPs since their breakthrough and have steadily built a cult following in England and mainland Europe. Italia 90 have received critical acclaim from publications such as DIY Magazine, The Quietus, So Young as well as extensive coverage at BBC 6music - with Steve Lamacq in particular offering continued support. Across the album, tracks from the band’s earliest days (New Factory, Competition) sit side by side with newer tracks, in a breadth of new styles for the band. "We consciously drew on elements from other genres, like new wave, goth rock, post-hardcore, jazz, jungle and ranchera that have inspired us but which we hadn't incorporated into our music previously”.

To record the album, the band decamped to the residential Echo Zoo studio in Eastbourne. With five days booked – far longer than the band had ever recorded for in the past – the whole album was tracked within two days with producer Louis Milburn. For the rest of the allotted time, they explored the nooks and crannies of the building and the bounty of unusual instruments lying around to add mystical textures to the bones of the songs.

Italia 90's songs aim to be timeless. Like the painting on the album’s cover, which shows a crowd of people all facing away from the viewer, the idea of the collective takes precedence over the individual. “I care deeply about the things that I’m singing about,” says singer, Les Miserable, “but I don’t think that it needs to be me that is saying it. I have my point of view, and think that the ideology that I’m forwarding in the songs is correct, and very important, but it’s not important that it’s me saying them. If I did, I would already be contradicting the things that I am saying in the songs.”

This philosophy is the sign of a band going against the grain and stopping to really consider their statements, both musically and lyrically, rather than hopping on trends. Across their debut album, Italia 90 step off the relentless, exhausting hamster wheel and create something fantastic with the abundance of ingredients already here, pointing a different way forwards.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Cut
2. Leisure Activities
3. Magdalene
4. Competition
5. New Factory
Side B
6. The MUMSNET Mambo
7. Funny Bones
8. Golgotha
9. Does He Dream?
10. Tales From Beyond
11. Harmony

DInked Edition Bonus 7":
Side A 7”
1. This Is Not My Fire (exclusive New Song)
2. Ghosts (Japan Cover)
Side B 7”
An Audio Story By Les Miserable And J Dangerous

The Waeve - composed of Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall – release their eponymous debut album on Transgressive Records. Produced by The Waeve and James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Florence & The Machine, Foals, Haim) and recorded in London earlier this year, ‘The Waeve’ is a collection of 10 new tracks from songwriters Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall. Joining creative forces in The WAEVE gave the duo the opportunity to push past their instrumental comfort zones. Many tracks feature Graham on saxophone, one of the first instruments he played as a young musician back in the 80s. First single ‘Can I Call You’ starts as a ballad then morphs into a krautrock-style motorik number with a sprawling Coxon guitar solo. ‘All Along’ features Graham on cittern, a medieval folk lute. Rose plays piano and an ARP 2000 modular synth. The heavy weather all over ‘The Waeve’ recalls the blustery folk rock of Sandy Denny or John & Beverly Martyn, while tracks such as ‘Kill Me Again‘ and ‘Over and Over’ recall the 70s rock of Kevin Ayers or Van der Graaf Generator, almost industrial in places.

TRACK LISTING

1. Can I Call You
2. Kill Me Again
3. Over And Over
4. Sleepwalking
5. Drowning
6. Someone Up There
7. All Along
8. Undine
9. Alone And Free
10. You’re All I Want To Know

In the early 2000s, The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster emerged with a black-hearted blast of frenetic psychobilly, punk and goth that felt like a closing time punch-up between The Birthday Party, The Cramps and The Make-Up. Their lunatic intensity was best captured within their first two albums, 2002’s ‘Hörse of the Dög’ and 2004’s ‘The Royal Society’, both of which remain adored as cult classics to this day by a fanbase still addicted by their visceral, riotous noise rock.

One of the band’s biggest fans is the film director Edgar Wright, who directed the music video for their song ‘Psychosis Safari’ as he was working on his own cult classic, ‘Shaun of the Dead’. The film even featured ‘Mister Mental’ (from ‘The Royal Society’) on its soundtrack. Still a fan to this day, Wright has penned the accompanying liner notes that will feature in all physical versions of the reissue. He writes:

“The aural assault of ‘Celebrate Your Mother’, ‘Chicken’, ‘Giant Bones’, ‘Fishfingers’ and, frankly, the whole fucking album, represents the uniquely combustive togetherness of this band who in 2002 existed paradoxically both within and outside the music scene of the day… Behold an album too fast to live, but too young to ever die. The finest 25 minutes of freak energy one can handle.”

Formed in Brighton on January 1st 2000, The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster went on to release one final record, 2010’s ‘Blood & Fire’, before disbanding. They experienced a rediscovery in 2012 when ‘Chicken’ featured in a Nike campaign, which led to the band reuniting for sold-out shows in London, Brighton and Manchester. 

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Celebrate Your Mother 2:33
2. Chicken 2:47
3. Whack Of Shit 2:18
4. Psychosis Safari 2:52
5. Giant Bones 1:46
Side B
6. Fishfingers 2:07
7. Charge The Guns 1:25
8. Morning Has Broken 2:33
9. Team Meat 2:45
10. Presidential Wave 4:06
"B-Side" Bonus Tracks:
Side A
Alex
Torrential Abuse
Return December
Briefcases For Girls
Sacred Metal
Side B
Turkish Delights Of The Devil
Ho Ha
Palomino's Dream
Lazy Bones
Flag Party

CD Tracklist:
1. Celebrate Your Mother
2. Chicken
3. Whack Of Shit
4. Psychosis Safari
5. Giant Bones
6. Fishfingers
7. Charge The Guns
8. Morning Has Broken
9. Team Meat
10. Presidential Wave

Award-winning Scottish composer Craig Armstrong’s trailblazing 2002 album ‘As If To Nothing’ receives 20th anniversary first-ever vinyl release on Hydrogen Dukebox.

Twenty years on from its original release, Craig Armstrong’s ‘As If To Nothing’ - his electronic/orchestral masterpiece featuring musical heavyweights Bono, Mogwai, Evan Dando, King Crimson and others - is being reissued for the first time on vinyl in a super-deluxe, super-limited edition run via Hydrogen Dukebox.

Remastered at Abbey Road Studios and cut at half-speed to produce a superior sound quality, the release comes completely repackaged with reimagined artwork by award-winning designer Christopher Thomson and there's also a special 'Dinked Archive Edition' version limited to just 500 copies worldwide including a bonus 10" of a newly unearthed track from the original recording sessions.

‘As If To Nothing’, Armstrong’s second solo album following 1998’s ‘The Space Between Us’, is a timeless, groundbreaking record that marries stunning string arrangements, atmospheric electronics and contemporary popular music.

Originally released on renowned UK electronic outfit Massive Attack's label Melankolic, the record captures an enduring mood and sentiment that continues to enchant listeners today, from the stirring opener ‘Ruthless Gravity’ to the euphoric closing of ‘Choral Ending’. Armstrong’s collaborative work with Massive Attack on the 1994 album ‘Protection’ is an influence that can be heard throughout ‘As If To Nothing’:
“It was a very particular time musically within Britain, and the world”, he says. “To be part of the label, Melankolic, and working with Massive Attack, was a unique moment in time. They gave me real freedom to do what I wanted. The album was ahead of its time, I think - it still sounds pure and contemporary.”
“A lot of younger acts have contacted me over the years to say how seminal the album has been to them. One of the great things is that people have never stopped listening to the album. To have it reissued and released on this first-ever vinyl package is a very special thing to me.”

The album features a cast of luminaries including Bono on ‘Stay (Farway, So Close!’), Mogwai on ‘Miracle’ and Lemonheads’ Evan Dando ‘Wake Up In New York’, as well as producer Photek, soul singer David McAlmont, Alpha vocalist Wendy Stubbs, and Antye Greie-Fuchs, and a sample of King Crimson’s ‘Starless’ on ‘Starless II’. Praise for the album at the time of its release included Pitchfork ("Powerfully evocative and serene") and Rolling Stone ("[Armstrong] makes Bono sound like a fallen angel on a majestic remake of "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)".

Through his orchestral writing, electronic compositions and wide-ranging artistic collaborations in classical and film music, Craig Armstrong’s work has received worldwide acclaim. Armstrong is widely known for composing award winning film music, having scored both Hollywood and independent films, from Peter Mullan’s directorial debut 'The Close Trilogy' to the BAFTA, Ivor Novello and Golden Globe-winning award scores for Baz Luhrmann’s 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Moulin Rouge!' and 'The Great Gatsby'.

His film scoring has also featured in many other popular films including 'The Quiet American', 'Orphans', 'Love Actually', 'World Trade Centre', 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age', 'Far From The Madding Crowd', and 'Ray!', with the latter awarded a Grammy for Best Original Score. And several collaborations with Oliver Stone, ‘World Trade Center’ and ‘Snowden’.

The reissue of ‘As If To Nothing’ is a fitting celebration of this exemplary album’s 20th anniversary, and an opportunity to own this key record from Armstrong’s celebrated body of work on vinyl for the first time.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Ruthless Gravity
Wake Up In New York
Miracle
Amber
Side B
Finding Beauty
Waltz
Inhaler
Hymn 2
Side C
Snow
Starless II
Stay
Side D
Niente
Sea Song
Let It Be Love
Choral Ending