“A huge thing for this record was to make it feel as close to our live show as possible,” says Tom Sharkett of W.H. Lung’s latest album. “We didn’t want it to sound live but we wanted to capture the excitement of the live performances.”

This is something that has become paramount to the group in recent years as they have undeniably blossomed into one of the most joyous and arresting live bands in the country. “The reason I’m in a band is to play live music,” says singer Joe Evans. “For me, music is live music. That’s what it’s for, to be played with people.”

The five-piece band, also featuring Chris Mulligan, Hannah Peace, and Alex Mercer-Main, decided to try something new on their third album after two incredibly successful collaborations with previous producer Matt Peel. In order to capture the energy, spirit and dynamism of their live shows, they relocated to Sheffield to work with Ross Orton (MIA, Arctic Monkeys, Working Men’s Club) who was able to harness this side of the band to remarkable effect. “Ross is the Sheffield Steve Albini,” says Evans. “He’s the king of not overthinking it and trusting the process of the art of recording songs. He was always there to stop us fucking around with cerebral stuff and get it down.” Sharkett echoes this too: “He was the exact producer we needed without us even realising. His productions and mixes are bombastic, lively and in your face and that’s exactly what we wanted.”

However, while this album is rooted in a sense of capturing a moment and a sparky liveness, that’s not to say it’s a raw or ragged record. It is still a meticulously composed, delicately layered and pristinely produced piece of work that, in true W.H. Lung style, runs the gauntlet from dance to pop to indie while still capturing that distinctly unique quality that is unquestionably their own. “It was a really big thing for me to realise what made us sound like us on this record,” says Sharkett. “I think the album sounds a lot more confident and self assured because of it. Some songs sound just so much like Lung and I’m really proud of that. I’m not sure we’ve done that as consistently across the other records.”

While the band have drilled deeper into finding their own singular identity, it’s not a record resting on its laurels. It’s a significant leap forward, expanding on their solid foundations while also breaking new ground. “The big difference with this record is its directness in every sense,” says Sharkett. “The songwriting is more upfront. Previously we’d focused a lot on vibe and production as opposed to just writing songs. The overall mission here was to revert to a classic songwriting structure and for the production to come afterwards.”

And so what you have on this record are deeply considered and well-crafted songs, then recorded with blistering intensity in the moment, and then given a touch of experimentation afterwards. Then throw in Orton’s contributions to the band and it’s proven to be a real winning formula. “He brought a real dose of magic to the songs we’d written,” says Sharkett. “And brought an extra bit of wonk and quirkiness each time.”

Such quirkiness is apparent from the opening ‘Lilac Sky’ which very briefly samples a learn to speak Spanish 12” before whirring atmospherics, hypnotic bass, and shimmering synths began to propel the song for launch. “I like it when there’s really clear punctuation at the start of a record,” says Sharkett. “It’s almost like a statement of intent and I wanted something like that, where if people knew the tune they could identify it within the first second.”

It’s also the perfect album opener in more than one way, setting the tone for an album rooted in exploration. “I went out onto Hampstead Heath one day when it was dusk and the sky was mad and I’d just taken some mushrooms,” recalls Evans. “I was thinking: just remember this, this is how things really are. So maybe this track acts like an invocation or a calling for the rest of the album. It’s about listening closely, paying attention, and being overwhelmed with an open heart.”

On ‘Bliss Bliss’ the band almost veer into anthemic indie territory, with its rousing chorus, euphoric lashes of synths and a vocal delivery that is festival headline worthy. “I sang it like I was singing a song I’d forgotten from when I was a teenager,” says Evans of his impassioned performance. It was a fresh approach for the band. “I thought the guitars felt too college rock at first but I just went with it,” says Sharkett. “It’s a completely different style of guitar playing for me and something much more traditional in the indie world but I was enjoying that.”
In many ways this was another foundational song for the LP. “This was the first instance of us writing more traditional songs for the album,” says Sharkett. “It kind of embodies our balance between being a live conventional guitar band and the shiny, synthy side of Lung to me. It feels like the perfect culmination of our experience as a band so far.”

The band’s ability to write more traditional and conventional songs is clearly a skill they’ve taken to with ease, at times there’s an almost Springsteen-like quality – but if he'd ever had an ecstasy period – to tracks such as ‘Thinner Wine’ and ‘Bloom and Fade’. While ‘How to Walk’ was constructed with one thing only in mind: that it would absolutely slay on stage. “I can’t wait to play this live,” says Evans. “We wanted a song to represent our live set, a new big one, and this is it.” Once again it leans towards the anthemic, with its driving, propulsive charge complete with incandescent synths and vocal melodies so irresistible you can already hear them being sung in unison by a crowd.
It’s an incredibly difficult feat to pull off a record that is more rooted in traditional songcraft while also capturing the power of a live performance, as well as pushing sonics into experimental new directions while working with a brand new collaborator. But here the band has managed to do just that.

And the album’s closing song ‘I Will Set Fire To The House’ is a perfect example of such a thing. It’s a song that feels immaculately constructed but also very much alive and of the moment as its radiating synths engulf from the off, and Evans’ vocal is silky but powerful and in perfect symbiosis with Peace’s. It’s a song that captures the endless joys of music playing long into the night. “It may be a bit of a bloody bombastic way to end an album saying ‘and we’ll dance into the sunrise’,” says Evans. “But fuck it.” 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Lilac Sky
Bliss Bliss
Thinner Wine
Bloom And Fade

Side B
How To Walk
Flowers In The Rain
I Can’t Lie
The Painting Of The Bay
I Will Set Fire To The House

‘The Night The Zombies Came is Pixies’ tenth album, if you count their classic 1987 4AD mini LP Come On Pilgrim, and first new music since 2022’s acclaimed Doggerel LP. 13 new songs that find Pixies looking ahead to the most cinematic record of their career.

Songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Black Francis explains:

“Fragments that are related and juxtaposed with other fragments in other songs. And in a collection of songs in a so-called LP, you end up making a kind of movie.”

Druidism, apocalyptic shopping malls, mediaeval themed restaurants, 12th century poetic form, surf rock, gargoyles, bog people, and the distinctive dry drum sound of 1970s era Fleetwood Mac are just some of the disparate wonders that inform the new songs.

For the new album recording sessions the band returned to work with producer Tom Dalgety, who drummer David Lovering refers to as “a fifth Pixie” after producing 2016’s Head Carrier, 2019’s Beneath the Eyrie and 2022’s Doggerel. Early on in the recording process at Guilford Sound studio in Vermont, the band noticed the new songs were dividing into two camps: what they came to call the “Dust Bowl Songs” - country-tinged, ballad-esque numbers such as ‘Primrose’ and ‘Mercy Me’, and on the other side, the album’s furious punk numbers such as ‘You’re So Impatient’ and ‘Oyster Beds’. Only ‘Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)’ keeps its feet in both camps — reminiscent of early 60s Phil Spector, the band hitting the sweet spot between mushy and abrasive, it’s a track that Black Francis allegedly likened to being chased by a swarm of bees.

The Night The Zombies Came sessions also saw Pixies welcoming new bass player Emma Richardson (Band Of Skulls) to the line up; the first British band member to join the group. There’s also an expanded role for guitarist Joey Santiago. After contributing his first-ever Pixies lyrics on Doggerel, for the new record Santiago wrote the words to ‘Hypnotised’ by completing a complex lyrical riddle of sorts, known as a sestina.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1:
1. Primrose
2. You’re So Impatient
3. Jane (The Night The Zombies Came)
4. Chicken
5. Hypnotised
6. Johnny Good Man
7. Motoroller

Side 2:
1. I Hear You Mary
2. Oyster Beds
3. Mercy Me
4. Ernest Evans
5. Kings Of The Prairie
6. The Vegas Suite

In upstate New York, deep in the seam between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Valley, a richly swelling, spellbound sound emerges, eddying and flowing like the local Esopus Creek, or in the slipstream of the grander Hudson river, carrying the flotsam and jetsam of our hopes, dreams, fears. A sound composed of organic and electronic; guitars, keys, brass, strings, woodwind, drums - and a voice of incantations, tapping streams of consciousness that similarly eddy and flow.

Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev’s ninth album ’Born Horses’ spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision begun with skeletal chords and surges of self-reflection, alive to the notions and motions of time and reality somehow both linked to their exalted past whilst quite unlike anything they have created before?’’

Grasshopper:
“When Jonathan and I first met, one thing we bonded over was Blade Runner, both Ridley Scott’s film and Vangelis’ soundtrack: that feel of the past and the future, the haunting noir mood and the romance of the future…Born Horses taps into some of that. Looking back to childhood, to Broadway tunes, to lonesome blues, Chet Baker, Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, records that our parents listened to, but we put a twist into the future. From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert.”

The album title, named after the majestically rippling sixth track ‘Born Horses’, was chosen because its words resonate through the entire record, encompassing the idea of flight (“I dreamed we were born horses waiting for wings”) and the phrase “You and I” that appears at different junctures on the album. This is not the concept of two separate people, but two parts of one self.

Jonathan:
“When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others. I don’t know where the bird came from, but it’s there now, and I don’t question it. It’s just the bird that wants to sing.”

‘Born Horses’ opens with ‘Mood Swings’. A Trumpet, evoking bohemian mariachi and the windswept terrain of the desert prairie, opens up to a dynamic panorama of sound, wandering through and enveloping Jonathan’s intimate recitation, conflating memories and confessions of feelings trapped and unwrapped: “My mood swings come and go as they like / rebellious fickle teenagers, unable to decide.” It establishes ’Born Horses’’ tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of human experience, buffeted by the currents all around us. The flightiness of feelings is further explored by the metaphor of a bird, most clearly in ‘Bird Of No Address’ and the album’s pulsating finale ‘There Has Always Been A Bird In Me’.

More inspiration was provided by the spirits of the art minimalist Tony Conrad and beat poet Robert Creeley, acolytes of progressive thought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo, the city where the band was formed.. Amongst other credentials, Conrad was a member of LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate along with John Cale and a close friend to The Velvet Underground. Creeley was one of the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century as well as an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets.

Grasshopper:
“Tony was a trickster, who loved to shake things up. He knew how to put things together that might not inherently fit but then became something completely new. Robert- the beauty of his sparseness with words, but playful too, and a sense of romanticism. For me, there is also some subconscious echo in ‘Born Horses’ of Patti Smith’s Horses, the nomadic recitations that incorporate poetry into music…. it’s like a tip of the hat.”

Jonathan:
“There are a few unquestionable watermarks of Grasshopper’s studying with Tony Conrad and my own time spent with Robert Creeley. Distilling down lyric and song. Heating up during intense bursts of recording followed closely by long periods of cooling down/ listening to the work and then… un-listening to it. Leaning in to the uncertainty of what is being created. Not by us, but for us. Psychological ‘letting go of the balloon’ distance as perspective. Something we both inherited from Tony and Robert… Stepping in and stepping out of frame.”

“Since our beginning in the mid 1980’s with David Baker through the recording of Born Horses with new permanent members, Woodstock native (pianist) Jesse Chandler and Austrian born (keyboardist) Marion Genser, we’ve celebrated this unspoken trust in the ‘statue already inside the marble’. We didn’t make ‘Born Horses’ by throwing clay on top of clay; we allowed Time to reveal what was always there.”

TRACK LISTING

Mood Swings
Ancient Love
Your Hammer, My Heart
Patterns
A Bird Of No Address
Born Horses
Everything I Thought
There's Always Been A Bird In Me

Longing. Heartbreak. Levity. Joy. Being filled with love for all things. All of these sensations flow at once through Canadian singer-songwriter Tess Parks’ new album, Pomegranate. Re-establishing Parks as the consummate artist-observer against a swirling nouveau-delic backdrop, her third solo album is released via Fuzz Club and was produced by multi-instrumentalist and close collaborator Ruari Meehan, who shared mixing duties with Grammy-nominated engineer Mikko Gordon (The Smile, Gaz Coombes, Arcade Fire).

Though Tess Parks first became widely known for her string of collaborations with Brian Jonestown Massacre mastermind Anton Newcombe, her 2022 solo offering And Those Who Were Seen Dancing left an unforgettable impression with its signature blend of weight, whimsy, and open-heartedness. The New York Times would praise its “confident, enchanting presence”, whilst Exclaim! proclaimed it as a record that “demands to be heard and felt”. Where Dancing retained a fair measure of bedroom-demo charm, this time the canvas is bigger, with Meehan’s arrangements stretching all the way to the horizon. This is the most ambitious and cinematic Parks’ music has ever sounded. Drawing on psychedelic elements in a way that sounds decidedly fresh, the dreamlike atmospheres feel oddly nostalgic and modern at the same time.

The pair are backed on most tracks by band members Francesco ‘Pearz’ Perini – whose piano and organs shine through gloriously on ‘Koalas’ and ‘California’s Dreaming’ respectively – and Marco Ninni, who provides the solid backbone throughout on drums. From a vocal perspective, it feels like Parks pushes her voice to new heights on this album too. Her lyrics are sharp, ever-present, and imbued with strength, depth, and poetic purpose, which shine particularly bright on tracks like ‘Koalas’ and ‘Charlie Potato’. They weave through her flurries of beautiful melodic hooks, featuring sublime choruses and complex, multi-layered harmonic structures, as showcased on ‘Crown Shy’ and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ especially.

On Pomegranate there are also plenty of new experiments and guests introduced. ‘Koalas’, for example, features the spellbinding whistling of Molly Lewis, lending a bittersweet Morricone-esque charm. ‘Crown Shy’ features soaring strings (arranged by Ninni and played by Joe Butler), and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ and ‘Charlie Potato’ are elevated by Kira Krempova’s ethereal flute playing – the latter also accompanied with Wurlitzer piano played by Oscar ‘SHOLTO’ Robertson. The euphoric ‘Running Home To Sing’ and album-closer ‘Surround’ centre the synthesiser for the first time, whilst the piano features more prominently across many of the tracks.

TRACK LISTING

1 Bagpipe Blues
2 California's Dreaming
3 Koalas
4 Lemon Poppy
5 Charlie Potato
6 Crown Shy
7 Running Home To Sing
8 Sunnyside
9 Surround

Exploring late-night, after-hours meditations on sound; ‘Everything Above The Sky (Astral Travelling with Luke Una)’ is a new compilation by the titular DJ, promoter and enigmatic cultural curator. Off the back of the E Soul Cultura phenomena, this compilation comes at a timely point in Luke’s rich career as he soars the heights of playing all over the world. Avoiding any chance of his sound being pigeonholed, Luke has put together a tracklist of songs and music that have a transcendental feel, after coming off the grid, going back to source, outside the city walls .

Music has long been believed to aid out of body experiences and many of us have searched long and hard for a combination of those elusive ingredients that might alleviate some of the monotony of everyday life, our daily routines and obligations, and those things that seem to block us from the spirit of the universe. In this collection, Luke selects music with all the right ingredients in just the right quantities, allowing the listener to engage in an esoteric journey of enlightenment through sound. Being a prolific collector of music, Luke initially delivered enough tracks to compile several compilations, making the licensing process the biggest effort to date for the label. The music moves softly and slowly, never becoming too intrusive, exemplifying the wonderful elevating properties of simple songs played from the heart.

Luke’s Everything Above The Sky manifesto reads, “Astral Travelling in the meadowlands with acid folk, spiritual jazz, around midnight hocus pocus, cosmic psychedelic soul, magical spellbound whirling swirling love songs, Brazilian ballads of light into machine soul gospel utopia dreaming, Balearic bossa, Outer Space ancient African drum, the breath of trees, escaping the big bad modern world, gathering round winter fires, walking amongst the bracken in Padley Gorge in late summer twilight, overlooking the Hope Valley, escaping ego, detaching and finally letting go amongst the stars with the slowly floating people. It’s beautiful beyond. Everything above the Sky”.

Beginning his career as an original Sheffield house young blood in the mid 1980s, Luke’s move to Manchester and partnership with Justin Crawford saw the birth of Electric Chair, a cornerstone cult night in the UK underground club scene. Then came Electric Elephant, a Croatian festival paying homage to their wild eclecticism from Balearic to Brazilian to É Soul, house, disco and techno. Luke’s much loved, long-running Homoelectric night and more recently Homobloc sell out festival for 10,000 souls has been at the forefront of Manchester’s LGBTQ+ cultural landscape. Luke’s Friday evening show on Worldwide FM captured imaginations and became a cult four-hour must-listen monthly journey for fans all over the world. Today, Luke remains, as ever, at the forefront of a changing milieu, pairing the momentous legacy of Manchester’s 80s and 90s scene with the delivery of what today’s club communities need to get down. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. John Martyn - Small Hours
2. Stephen Whynott – A Better Way
3. April Fulladosa - Sunlit Horizon
SIDE B:
1. Sylvain Kassap - Plancoët
2. Manu Dibango - Night In Zeralda
3. Henri Texier - Hocoka Time
4. Nivaldo Orneleas - O Que Ha
5. 808 State – Pacific State (Massey’s Conga Mix)
SIDE C:
1. Magma - Eliphas Levi
2. Homelife - Stranger
3. Michael Gregory Jackson - Unspoken Magic
SIDE D:
1. Dora Morelenboum - Avermelhar
2. Simone - Tudo Que Você Podia Ser
3. Experience Unlimited – People
4. Otis G. Johnson - I Got It
5. Mel & Tim - Keep The Faith
* CD Will Contain Tracks Above + Bonus Tracks

New York trio Sunflower Bean—vocalist and bassist Julia Cumming (she/her), guitarist and vocalist Nick Kivlen (he/him), and drummer Olive Faber (she/her)— will release their new EP, Shake, on September 27th via Lucky Number. The band’s first fully self-produced and recorded project, Shake features some of Sunflower Bean’s heaviest, most immediate, and loudest music to date. Influenced by the doom-laden, heavy metal sound of Black Sabbath the EP is an embrace of rock tropes and excess, and recalls the sonic of the band’s earliest work, Show Me Your Seven Secrets and Human Ceremony.

“Shake was inspired by our first years as a DIY band, the spirit that birthed us and gave us the chance to have this enduring journey together,” Sunflower Bean explain of the EP. “We wrote, recorded, engineered, and produced these songs so nothing was filtered through anyone else’s idea of us. We always felt like rock and roll was a feeling, not a sound. But sometimes there is no subverting it or explaining it. We're now offering it exactly as it occurred to us.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Shake
2. Lucky Number
3. Teach Me To Be Bad
4. Serial Killer
5. Angelica

Grammy nominated Laura Marling is back with her eighth studio album Patterns in Repeat. Now eight albums and 15 years into her career as one of the most acclaimed, prolific and respected songwriters of her generation (Grammy and Mercury Nominated and Brit award winning).

Patterns in Repeat was written following the birth of her daughter in 2023 and finds Laura reflecting on her motherhood experience as well as more broadly diving deeper into her reckoning with the ideas and behaviours we pass down through family over generations.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Child Of Mine
2. Patterns
3. Your Girl
4. No One's Gonna Love You Like I Can
5. The Shadows

SIDE B:
1. Interlude (Time Passages)
2. Caroline
3. Looking Back
4. Lullaby
5. Patterns In Repeat
6. Lullaby (Instrumental)

Compiled by Jason Boardman ( Before I Die Records) Celebrated Manchester club-night curator & record Label Owner , DJ & digger - supreme.

An album of early 1980s Post-Punk era musical bedroom & small studio innovations & DIY Inspirations - Featuring rarely / never heard cuts from that period. Including tracks sampled by DJ Shadow & a singular Post-Punk era back-handed tribute JCC track :-) From Coventry's 2-Tone associated Skeet to Surface Mutants Cabaret Voltaire facilitated Dub & the out-there pastoral Post-Punk spaciness of The Dealers ..A rich vein .

"This is a snapshot of a fertile time in UK music, a time of independent artists, studios, labels & distributors collaborating to do it themselves, sidestepping the majors to take their shot at the big time. It didn't always work out but they made a record and that's what counts. It is a collection of the lost and overlooked - not intended to be a definitive guide to the period but an opportunity to shine a light on the creative output of these artists and share them once again so they can get the recognition they deserve." (Jason Boardman May 2024).

TRACK LISTING

Side 1:
Bally O’Brien - Tell Me Why The Tape Wobbles
Anorexia - Inanimate Objects
Methodishca Tune – LFD
Sprout Head Uprising – I Wish, I Wish
The Four Kings – Disgraceful Version
Swamp Children – Call Me Honey
Cathy La Creme -I Married A Cult Figure
57TH Parallel-Psalm Fifty Seven

Side 2:
Surface Mutants-Train Dub
Khartomb - King Skin (Rough Mix )
The Dealers - Share The World (Part 2)
Skeet - Avril In The Alps
Group Therapy-Arty Fact
Club Of Rome- Bedroom Scenes
APB - Help Yourself
Sirons-Cruise Missile Blues

The Heads’ Simon Price returns to his kandodo project with 'theendisinpsych'; "primitive pieces of psychedelic tuneage+years of wasted time=43 minutes of headphone bliss." It's the follow up to the 2019 collaboration with Wayne Maskell and Hugo Morgan, Kandodo 3 – K3, but this time back in solo-mode. He is now relocated in Northumbria, and has recorded the album himself in his home studio, drawing on his wide collection of music/instruments and the rural environment for inspiration. The new album fizzes and crackles with a verve that will activate the “turn on, tune in, drop out” sense in all listeners… Simon explained the album in a focused/out of focus track by track way… is this Price’s paean to his obsession with Bowie? chamba7 - octave mandolin through fuzz, tambo beat, in praise of Bowie compilations. chamba is malawian weed theendisinpsych - bought a reel to reel tape off ebay in 2005, ('Bowie radio interview tape, USA, 1970, 3 minutes?') then bought a machine to play it on in 2015. Heard the words and laid them onto a fuzzy break bed. Thought it all too relevant to today, prophetic David from his 'hippy' days (not a prophet or a stone age man) fuzzy oceans - played on 1 string spamjo, bouncing echo over 70's drum machine, 'we've fucked the oceans' freefalling - rolling cello and hissing cymbals with vocoder dreams comes with african/stationtostation artwork stylings for the sleeve..pre-apocalypse blues (and pinks), the world isn't going a good way a sumptuous 4 course sonic supper, tuck in.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chamba7
2. Theendisinpsych 
3. Fuzzy Oceans
4. Freefalling

It’s abundantly clear from the first bars of their 5th studio album Through Other Reflection, that this is, and could only ever be, The Soundcarriers. From the enchanting vocal duets of folk-bidden Chanteuses Leonore Wheatley and Dorian Conway; to the precise bass lines of Paul Isherwood and the limber, jazz-cool, Hal Blaine-esque drums of his his co-songwriter Adam Cann; from the fairy-like flutes, 60s-garage guitars and organ sounds pilfered from the archives of exotica - listening to the Soundcarriers resembles a rediscovery of all the most prized, esoteric corners of the 1960s, all bundled up, warped and refracted through the quartet’s astutely modern cultural lens. Channelling Tropicalia, Middle Eastern psychedelic Jazz/Funk, The French Library sounds of Nino Nardini, and a whole host of lavish obscurites beside, Through Other Reflection delivers another sonic adventure from one of the most unique and distinctive voices of British Psychedelia.

After an 8 year wait for their album 4 - 2022’s Wilds - it thankfully didn’t take so long for the follow-up this time round. In many ways, this feels like a companion to Wilds; recording again at their Nottingham warehouse studio, Through Other Reflection retains that same organic glow, all the passions and imperfections of a tightly clipped unit jamming out these living, breathing pop-art nuggets as if straight onto the acetate.”We wanted to keep an air of spontaneity with this album and not get too bogged with the recording process”, explains Cann, “It was more a case of getting the songs as tightly written and arranged as possible first so we could get them down quickly in the studio. It always takes longer than you think”

Less packed with strident pop hooks as its predecessor however, the music of Through… has been given extra licence to breathe, stretch out, and wander more uncharted terrains. While gleaming psych-pop of tracks like ‘The City Was’, or ‘Already Over’ confidently carry on from where they left off, from the album’s 2nd track ‘Always’, the trip becomes a little less predictable. Starting out as a smoky Procol Harum-meets-French-Psych organ ballad, the music drifts, as if of its own accord into an eerie, garage trance that lingers, cycles, and hypnotises, growing ever stranger, reaching ever-further away from its point of conception.

And almost every track on Through Other Reflections holds that outer-body moment, where the band fix themselves on a limber, lysergic groove, lose all grip on time and reality, and melt themselves away into a liquid state of blind euphoria. There are sequences on this record that feel more like rituals than songs, built upon a single hypnotic rhythm which, like the centre of a vortex, pulling everything under its beatific command. Take the finale to ‘What We Found’ for instance, sounding like a ghostly march across the psychedelic moors, or ‘Feel The Way’, where a single athletic drum-loop rises and rises, growing ever more urgent and suspenseful underneath its frantic harpsichords and rasping flutes.

Full of such rich stylisms as these, The Soundcarriers showcase themselves as abstract storytellers par excellence by virtue of their textures and arrangements alone. Resembling Romantic composer Maurice Ravel, but if he had just a four-piece rock band at his disposal, Through Other Reflects is rich with detail; there’s shakers, rattles, clarinets, booming drums; there’s synthesiser swarms, chiming xylophones, vintage organs and experimental Cluster & Eno-esque ambiences. Within all this nuance the music flows like some undisclosed narrative swathed in a magnetic secrecy. “It almost comes across like a story in some ways”, says Cann of the album, “the music is quite sectional with elements of exotica and cinematic type layers, it's a good balance of grooves, tunes and weirdness”. No more is this “epic cinematic feel” heard more proudly than on short instrumental ‘Sonya’s Lament” - its innate, hauntological atmospheres befitting a Peter Strickland soundtrack, or the classics of Lex Baxter, the so-called ‘Founder of Exotica’ himself.

On the other hand, providing a greasier undercurrent to all these bucolic sounds is a leaning towards a more “direct” lyricism referencing more “external concerns. Laying down the first tracks for the album in the wintry gloom of pre-lockdown 2020, and drawing inspiration from time spent in Berlin, Through Other Reflections returns to some of the post-apocalyptic futurism explored in 2014’s Entropicalia - a loose concept album inspired by J.G Ballard’s The Drowned World. “The songs explore a disillusionment with the way things are going particularly after 40 years of neoliberalism”, says Cann, “They follow that folk-song tradition of wanting to escape to an imagined time, but here it’s more urban than pastoral. The first couple of ideas I came up with when doing some music in Berlin and had some time to wander aimlessly. And think the atmosphere seeped in, particularly on The City Was and Already Over.

He continues, “One aspect of the title, ‘Through Other Reflections’ is about synthesis and layers of influence. How things can be filtered through other things and change the perspective. This is something you get in cities as well.” Though, as with everything The Soundcarriers make, “It can mean anything. It also just sounds kind of cool.”

TRACK LISTING

1. The City Was
2. Always
3. Comet 4
4. Behind The Fire
5. Feel The Way
6. Sonya's Lament
7. Already Over
8. What We Found
9. With Us For Now
10. Wider Arcs
11. The Return 

Come Ahead is Primal Scream’s 12th full length record. 11 new songs that find Bobby Gillespie preparing to release some of the most personal songwriting of the band’s career.

The songwriting process for Come Ahead began in 2019. At which point Bobby Gillespie had no idea if he would make another Primal Scream album again. For the first time, the lyrics came before the music. The story came first. Bobby wrote alone, using an acoustic guitar. Ideas flowed fast, in long bursts of inspiration. This process, in tandem with encouragement from producer David Holmes, provided a new way in. Working with Holmes and Primal Scream guitarist Andrew Innes, the Come Ahead sessions were completed between Belfast, London and Los Angeles.

“I'm very excited about this album in a way that you would be making your first record. If there was an overall theme to Come Ahead it might be one of conflict, whether inner or outer. The title is a Glaswegian term. If someone threatens to fight you, you say, ‘come ahead!’ It’s redolent of the indomitable spirit of the Glaswegian, and the album itself shares that aggressive attitude and confidence. They have a word for this up there, gallus. Come Ahead’s quite a cheeky title too.” Bobby Gillespie.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Ready To Go Home
2. Love Insurrection
3. Heal Yourself

Side 2
1. Innocent Money
2. Melancholy Man
3. Love Ain't Enough

Side 3
1. Circus Of Life
2. False Flags
3. Deep Dark Waters

Side 4
1. The Centre Cannot Hold
2. Settlers Blues

After forming on a group trip to Blackpool, Manchester-based quartet Umarells have announced their debut EP 'One More Day' via Fear of Missing Out Records.

The record circles peaks, plummets, and upside-down turns for a front-row seat on the emotional Big Dipper of life. The faded sparkle of the Blackpool seaside trails through five postcards of smouldering indie-rock on the EP.

TRACK LISTING

1. Closer
2. June
3. Ocean
4. You're Not Here
5. One More Day 

The complete uncollected Noise New York studio recordings of Galaxie 500. A twenty-four track chronological journey through rarities and outtakes including never-before-heard songs, from the start of their incendiary career to their final studio session. Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 marks Galaxie 500’s first release of new archival material in nearly thirty years and their most comprehensive collection of unreleased and rare material ever. Produced and engineered by Kramer at Noise New York 1988-1990.

• Complete uncollected Noise New York studio recordings of iconic indie band.

• Features rarities and outtakes, plus first release of new archival material in nearly thirty years.

• Historical photos and liner notes by the band.

TRACK LISTING

1. Shout You Down
2. See Through Glasses
3. On The Floor (Noise NY Version)
4. Can't Believe It's Me
5. Oblivious
6. King Of Spain
7. Jerome
8. Song In 3
9. Crazy
10. I Wanna Live
11. I Will Walk
12. Cold Night
13. Ceremony
14. Never Get To Heaven
15. Maracas Song
16. Victory Garden
17. Blue Thunder (w/sax)
18. Cheese And Onions
19. Fourth Of July (Video Mix)
20. Cactus
21. Moonshot
22. Them
23. Final Day
24. Here She Comes Now

Field Music announce ‘Limits of Language’, their first album of new music for almost four years. Back in 2022, the touring cycle for the ‘Flat White Moon’ album ended with a sense of finality. For the first time since the Mercury-nominated ‘Plumb’ ten years earlier, Peter and David had no plan for what, if anything, would come next. However, after six years of continuation, they were clear that if Field Music was to carry on then it would have to be different, in both sound and scope.

Solo projects followed with 2023 seeing the arrival of David’s quietly-jazzy ‘Soft Struggles’, the playful of electronica of Peter’s ‘Blowdry Colossus’ alongside a limited-issue brass collaboration LP ‘Binding Time’ and the vault-raiding ‘John Monroe EP’, made with original Field Music keyboard player Andrew Moore.

It was these albums that provided fresh impetus for what was to become the new Field Music record. Whilst Peter amassed the instrumental compositions which become ‘Blowdry Colossus’, he was also tinkering with a batch of songs which would form the basis of ‘Limits of Language’, songs which mixed synthesised textures with off-the-cuff flickers of guitar and layers of disorientating found-sound percussion.

These fleshed-out demos included ‘The Waitress of St Louis’, an ode to the now-closed Sunderland café ’Louis’, which featured on the cover of their 2007 album ‘Tones of Town’, and to the Maggiore family who ran this cherished institution.

David’s songs came from a different angle but leant into the same sonic palette and shared the same sense of a past becoming granulated. Album opener, ‘Six Weeks, Nine Wells’ pits the hazy ecstasies of school summer holidays against the fear and foreboding of a child peeking through into an adult world.

‘Limits of Language’ sees Field Music continue with their astonishing, bloody-minded run of releases. A run which equates to an impressive twenty-one “Field Music Productions” in nineteen years as a band. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Six Weeks, Nine Wells
2. The Guardian Of Sleep
3. The Limits Of Language
4. Sounds About Right
5. Absolutely Negative

Side B
1. Curfew In The Square
2. Turn The Hours Away
3. On The Other Side
4. The Waitress Of St Louis’
5. I Might Have Been Wrong
6. Between The Bridges

The expression of hard-fought optimism encapsulates The Good Kind, an album exploring themes of sexuality, relationships, community, and illness. Our Girl’s trademark dynamics permeate the record, from heavy guitars and soaring lead lines to ear worm choruses and intimate vocal moments. Filled with warmth and honesty, The Good Kind is a celebration of determination – of choosing to recommit to what matters, against all opposition. “A lot of the songs are about taking setbacks and turning them into superpowers” says drummer Lauren Wilson.

“I only realised then, when I thought it out loud,” begins singer/guitarist Soph Nathan on ‘Relief’, the first single released from the album, “And I feel better now”. This song is aptly named, invoking a long-awaited exhale – the feeling of finally emerging from a long and lonely period of uncertainty and self-doubt. Beginning with a single airy strum, Nathan’s reverb-drenched guitar attaches itself to Joshua Tyler’s grounding bass chords, as Wilson’s quietly insistent drum beat throws its weight behind Nathan’s words of reassurance: “You’ve gotta see it to believe it/ Well, I see it in you already.”

This song speaks honestly to the life-giving importance of queer community. From the warmth and immediacy of her delivery, Nathan could be comforting a friend. But as ‘Relief’ builds from that cautious opening to a determinedly, driving force, it becomes clear: these aren’t empty platitudes. Nathan believes in you, because she’s learned to believe in herself.

This sentiment is at the heart of The Good Kind, recorded at Rockfield Studios and produced by alt-rock legend John Parish (PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse), Fern Ford (The Big Moon, Prima Queen) and Soph Nathan herself. For Our Girl, it mirrors the long and winding road to their sophomore release, and the lasting rewards of trusting in the process.

All three members recall moments of magic in the studio with Parish and engineer Joe Jones, who embraced the band’s spirit of experimentation and helped them to channel their electrifying live character onto tape. But despite these propelling creative moments, Our Girl struggled to fully realise the album exactly the way they wanted. “The way we work best is so based on feeling, and an instinct when we’re together,” says Wilson. “We see ourselves as a live band: that’s how we began, and where we feel fully realised,” says Nathan. Having not had an opportunity to play the songs live yet, the trio poured hours into making demos and rehearsing the songs, eventually arriving at Rockfield Studios almost “over-prepared”, says Josh. However, having recorded it under time pressure, all three members concluded the two-week session feeling as though some essential component had escaped them.

After hearing the recordings back, “It was the first time that we’ve all been on such different pages,” Nathan says, admitting that she even entertained painful thoughts of abandoning the project. Instead, Our Girl dug deep to reconnect with what had kept them together. It was a conscious decision to recommit to making the music they knew themselves to be capable of. “We all had to rediscover our connection – to the album, and to each other,” Wilson says.

Newly determined, the band spent six weeks with Fern Ford of The Big Moon at her home studio, pulling apart the Rockfield takes and recording more. Nathan recalls her bodily feeling of relief as they reopened and recommitted to the project “I couldn’t quite believe it” says Nathan “I felt a freedom I hadn’t experienced before. Fern really made that space for us and it was a real relief to be able to take the reins together”. With Ford’s help, Nathan took to the production, striving after the warm, comforting sound she’d envisaged. It was new territory for Nathan – but the attempt felt true to Our Girl’s shared ambition and commitment to breaking new ground.

This collaborative process speaks to a wider theme - when choosing to carve out their own creative path, the band leant more on each other, and on friends and other musicians: Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa helped bring the title track ‘The Good Kind’ to life in its early stages, whilst Nathan’s partner and friends including Marika Hackman and Art School Girlfriend joined the rallying cry at the end of Relief. There’s evidently real joy to be found in taking ownership of your own creative vision, and also trusting friends to share that vision with you.

Using songwriting as a processing tool, many of the songs reflect Nathan’s own experiences, expressed with her trademark precision and lyricism. ‘Absences’ is about the frightening “absence seizures” she suffered through childhood, culminating in an epileptic fit at age 17. Such private, often lonely struggles with chronic health issues are a theme of The Good Kind, as well as the moments of solace within them; ‘What You Told Me’ evokes the relief of feeling that weight lift, however briefly.

Through the process of making The Good Kind, Our Girl learned to trust themselves, persevere with the harder path and recognise it as the only one worth travelling. Deciding to chase after the sound they wanted ended up being the most empowering moment of their career thus far, and it paid off: The Good Kind is their most confident, moving and fully realised work yet.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. It’ll Be Fine
A2. What You Told Me
A3. Who Do You Love
A4. The Good Kind
A5. Something About Me Being A Woman

Side B
B1. Relief
B2. Unlike Anything
B3. Something Exciting
B4. I Don’t Mind
B5. Sister
B6. Absences

‘Dreamstate’ is Kelly Lee Owens fourth studio album, due to be released on the 18th October. The new album will be her first released at new label home dh2 - a brand new electronic music imprint at renowned independent label Dirty Hit being spearheaded by George Daniel of The 1975.

There’s an incredible feeling of freedom and escapism found throughout Kelly’s upcoming album ‘Dreamstate’, born from the experience of inner evolution in the aftermath of a break-up. It’s the sound of a person letting loose and letting go while encouraging everyone else to do the same. ‘Dreamstate’ is built on the foundations of collaboration, with producer-writer credits from Bicep, Tom Rowlands from The Chemical Brothers and George Daniel.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dark Angel
2. Dreamstate
3. Love You Got
4. Higher
5. Rise
6. Ballad (In The End)
7. Sunshine
8. Air
9. Time To
10. Trust & Desire

The Last Flight is our version of the story of Amelia Earhart's final, ill-fated journey in 1937. Having successfully navigated over 20,000 miles and 5 continents on her round-the-world trip, her aircraft, the Electra, vanished without trace near Howland Island. Her whereabouts, and those of her navigator, Fred Noonan, remain a lingering mystery to this day.

Rather than focus exclusively on the flight itself, the record is as much an examination of Earhart's remarkable character. She was an extremely rare blend of grace, composure, technical aptitude and a fortitude that the rest of us mere mortals can barely dream of, all enveloped by the soul of a poet. She was possessed of a seemingly unquenchable thirst for life - in her words, 'to find beauty in living... to know the answer to why I’m alive... and feel its excitement every moment'. That thirst for the abundance of life, the sheer joy and privilege of living, long outlasts her disappearance and death. It should serve as an inspiration, almost an instruction, to the rest of us; this record is our attempt to translate that inspiration into music.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Was Always Dreaming
2. Towards The Dawn
3. The Fun Of It
4. The South Atlantic
5. Electra
6. Arabian Flight
7. Monsoons
8. A Different Kind Of Love
9. Howland

Fontaines D.C. announce details of their highly-anticipated fourth album, Romance. Romance is the band’s first album with producer James Ford and is without doubt their most assured, inventive and sonically adventurous record yet. It’s set to build on the success of the Dublin-made, now London-based band’s acclaimed 2022 album Skinty Fia, which reached number 1 in the UK and Irish album charts and saw the band receiving a host of accolades including “International Group of the Year” at the 2023 BRIT Awards.

Heralding Fontaines D.C.’s latest creative (r)evolution is the explosive lead single “Starburster”. Inspired by a panic attack lead singer Grian Chatten suffered in London’s St Pancras station, the song is punctuated by sharp feral intakes of breath. Its propulsive beat and unrelenting lyrics establish self-destruction as fantasy before a brief moment of sobering clarity when the drums fall away and Chatten moves from spitting, almost-rap into an almost-psalm, his baritone rich and dreamy. It’s accompanied by a cinematic music video from director Aube Perrie (Megan Thee Stallion, Harry Styles, The Hives) that captures the song’s cathartic intensity to brilliant effect.

Romance is Fontaines D.C.s most ambitious, expansive record yet, its 11 tracks constellating ideas that have been percolating among Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass), and Tom Coll (drums) since they released Skinty Fia in 2022. These ideas crystalised while touring the U.S. and Mexico with Arctic Monkeys as the five band members shared music and found a throughline with artists that deftly build out their own sprawling creative worlds: the attitude and aesthetic sheen of artists like Shygirl and Sega Bodega, the bolshy sonic palettes of hip hop and heavy metal, Mos Def, A$AP Ferg, OutKast and Korn. They had time apart to build more singular visions for what future music could be: O’Connell went to Spain’s Castile-La Mancha and later became a new father, while Chatten spent time in LA, and Deegan in Paris. They laid deeper roots in London. Each member spent time pushing their boundaries – experimental riffs, chord progressions, and far-flung lyrical references without intentions for a record. After wrapping up the US arena tour in Autumn 2023, they spent a month writing together again, three weeks of pre-production in a North London studio, and a month in a chateau close to Paris, sleeping among studio equipment, completely immersed.

Of the album’s title, Conor Deegan says, “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as (Mercury Prize-nominated debut) Dogrel. The second album (the GRAMMY-nominated A Hero’s Death) is about that detachment, and the third (Skinty Fia) is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”

Expounding on the theme, Chatten recalls Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s anime Akira, where the embers of love develop despite a maelstrom of technological degradation and political corruption around its characters. “I’m fascinated by that - falling in love at the end of the world,” he says. “The album is about protecting that tiny flame. The bigger armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes,” while O’Connell adds “This record is about deciding what’s fantasy – the tangible world, or where you go in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us.”

The sonic evolution of the band, who bared their teeth in early records with antagonistic punk sensibilities, is an ascent into grungier breaks, dystopian electronica, hip-hop percussion, and dreamy Slowdive-esque textures that may surprise fans. The shoegaze touchpoints first pressed on Skinty Fia unfold on Romance like a purpling bruise. But any “retro aesthetic”, as Chatten describes it, is left behind. Reflecting on the impending release, Chatten says, “We say things on this record we’ve wanted to say for a long time. I never feel like it's over, but it’s nice to feel lighter.” The fantasy is felt for better or worse, and Fontaines D.C. welcome either end of oblivion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Romance
2. Starburster
3. Here's The Thing
4. Desire
5. In The Modern World
6. Bug
7. Motorcycle Boy
8. Sundowner
9. Horseness Is The Whatness
10. Death Kink
11. Favourite

Oasis’ debut album ‘Definitely Maybe’ celebrates its 30th anniversary this August. The fastest-ever selling debut in the UK on release, this seminal album marked the point when Oasis became a cultural phenomenon. Including the classic singles ‘Supersonic’, ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol’, its songs sound as fresh and relevant as they did in 1994. Having sold over 6.9 million copies globally, it also sits as the 2nd most streamed album of the 90’s (following Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? at no.1).

New 30th anniversary formats released to celebrate this landmark date include a Limited Edition deluxe 4LP and 2CD featuring including the previously unreleased and discarded original recording session from Monnow Valley along with outtakes from Sawmills Studios plus a demo of Sad Song featuring Liam’s vocal - all recently mixed for this release by Noel Gallagher and Callum Marinho.

LP formats also include a retail exclusive coloured vinyl format – Digsy’s Dinner inspired “Strawberries and cream” pink and white marble 2LP. All versions feature brand new artwork by the original art designer Brian Cannon for Microdot and original sleeve photographer Michael Spencer Jones, plus new sleeve notes.

TRACK LISTING

2LP Tracklisting:
DISC 1
SIDE A
1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Remastered)
2. Shakermaker (Remastered)
3. Live Forever (Remastered)
SIDE B
1. Up In The Sky (Remastered)
2. Columbia (Remastered)
3. Sad Song (Remastered)

DISC 2
SIDE C
1. Supersonic (Remastered)
2. Bring It On Down (Remastered)
3. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Remastered)
SIDE D
1. Digsy’s Dinner (Remastered)
2. Slide Away (Remastered)
3. Married With Children (Remastered

Deluxe 4LP Tracklisting:
DISC 1
SIDE A
1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Remastered)
2. Shakermaker (Remastered)
3. Live Forever (Remastered)
SIDE B
1. Up In The Sky (Remastered)
2. Columbia (Remastered)
3. Sad Song (Remastered)

DISC 2
SIDE C
1. Supersonic (Remastered)
2. Bring It On Down (Remastered)
3. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Remastered)
SIDE D
1. Digsy’s Dinner (Remastered)
2. Slide Away (Remastered)
3. Married With Children (Remastered)

DISC 3
SIDE E
1. Rock 'n' Roll Star (Monnow Valley Version)
2. Shakermaker (Monnow Valley Version)
3. Live Forever (Monnow Valley Version)
4. Up In The Sky (Monnow Valley Version)
SIDE F
1. Columbia (Monnow Valley Version)
2. Bring It On Down (Monnow Valley Version)
3. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Monnow Valley Version)
4. Digsy's Dinner (Monnow Valley Version)

DISC 4
SIDE G
1. Rock 'n' Roll Star (Sawmills Outtake)
2. Up In The Sky (Sawmills Outtake)
3. Columbia (Sawmills Outtake)
4. Bring It On Down (Sawmills Outtake)
SIDE H
1. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Sawmills Outtake)
2. Digsy's Dinner (Sawmills Outtake)
3. Slide Away (Sawmills Outtake)
4. Sad Song (Mauldeth Road West Demo, Nov’ 92

CD Tracklisting:
DISC 1
1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Remastered)
2. Shakermaker (Remastered)
3. Live Forever (Remastered)
4. Up In The Sky (Remastered)
5. Columbia (Remastered)
6. Supersonic (Remastered)
7. Bring It On Down (Remastered)
8. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Remastered)
9. Digsy’s Dinner (Remastered)
10. Slide Away (Remastered)
11. Married With Children (Remastered)

DISC 2
1. Rock 'n' Roll Star (Monnow Valley Version)
2. Shakermaker (Monnow Valley Version)
3. Live Forever (Monnow Valley Version)
4. Up In The Sky (Monnow Valley Version)
5. Columbia (Monnow Valley Version)
6. Bring It On Down (Monnow Valley Version)
7. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Monnow Valley Version)
8. Digsy's Dinner (Monnow Valley Version)
9. Rock 'n' Roll Star (Sawmills Outtake)
10. Up In The Sky (Sawmills Outtake)
11. Columbia (Sawmills Outtake)
12. Bring It On Down (Sawmills Outtake)
13. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Sawmills Outtake)
14. Digsy's Dinner (Sawmills Outtake)
15. Slide Away (Sawmills Outtake)
16. Sad Song (Mauldeth Road West Demo, Nov’ 92)

The highly anticipated follow-up to Thee Sacred Souls's breakout 2022 self-titled debut, ‘Got A Story To Tell’, features 12 all original new songs, a soaring statement of exquisite craftsmanship from this young band from San Diego whose story grows bigger by the day. Recorded and produced by Gabriel Roth at Penrose Recorders, in Daptone’s Riverside, CA studio, and written in the throes of supporting their 2022 album, which was met with significant excitement and major touring that brought them across the world.

What swirls together on ‘Got A Story To Tell’ is an appreciation of decades of soul music, and beyond - a sound and feel that is timeless, lived in, and very much in the now. Album opener “Lucid Girl” champions independent women, set to some of the toughest sounding drums and bass the band has yet to put to tape. “Waiting On The Right Time” slinks with a touch of slow-burning psychedelia. A plea for empathy punctuates “One and the Same,” with Lane singing: “We’re one and the same, I feel one day / We learn to live with each other / In love, not fear / Just for a moment, why can’t we be together.” “On My Mind” is a sweeping orchestration, with Lane navigating the complexities of finding happiness while balancing the good with the bad. The album is punctuated with strings and squelching guitar, trundling piano, pops of conga, horns - it makes for a thrilling, layered listen that rewards with multiple spins. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Lucid Girl
2. Price I’ll Pay
3. Live For You
4. On My Mind
5. Waiting On The Right Time
6. Losing Side Of Love
Side B
7. Somebody Knew
8. My Heart Is Drowning
9. Stuck In The Mud
10. In The Mirror
11. One And The Same
12. I’m So Glad I Found You, Baby

ON MONDAY SEPTEMBER 2ND AT 5PM WE WELCOME THE BUG CLUB FOR AN INSTORE SIGNING SESSION. SO POP IN AND GET A COPY OF THE LP/CD PERSONALLY SIGNED BY THE BAND.

IF YOU CAN'T MAKE IT ON THE DAY WE ALSO HAVE NON-PERSONALISED SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER. 

The way you’re saying it, “prolific” isn’t the right word for The Bug Club. You’ve got to say it with the trademark Welsh lilt and pay due homage to this inimitable band’s origins in the renowned hit factory of Caldicot, South Wales. Do that, and you’re about right with how to summarize a group who’ve released ten singles, two albums, two EPs, three things nobody knew how to describe, and an album under a different band’s name, all since 2021, and while playing 200+ gigs a year.

Initially comprising the songwriting core of Sam Willmett (vocals/guitar) and Tilly Harris (vocals/bass) with Dan Matthew (drums), The Bug Club started plying their trade in 2016. They were signed by UK label Bingo Records in Autumn of 2020. BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley was an early champion, hammering the single, booking the band in for a session as soon as it was allowed, and rightfully praising songwriters capable of singing the whole alphabet in a two-minute song and making it work.

Third LP On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System - their first for Sub Pop - sees the band serve up a beefy slab of their speciality Modern-Lovers-meets-Nuggets garage rock. There’s B-52’s call-and-response fun mixed with AC/DC power chord grunt. Leaning towards fast-paced punk, opening double salvo “War Movies” and “Quality Pints” sets out the stall: duel vocal piss-taking, surreal takes on everyday topics that go full circle and become profound, riffs all day long and then all the next day too. “Quality Pints” deals with the pressing concerns of any conscientious touring outfit, taking to heart the rule of the three R’s as penned by renowned fellow pints fan Mark E. Smith of The Fall. Repetition, repetition, repetition. If it’s that important, which it is, it’s worth saying again. “War Movies” dresses distorted chugging with a comprehensive ‘best of’ list for the genre, with Sam Willmett offering a solo casually chucked out in a way that will make your dad promptly give up any resurgent guitar playing ambitions. And “A Bit Like James Bond” tackles the UK’s sleaziest undercover export at the same time as the embarrassing ego problem that besets much of its population - but it’s only heavy(ish) in the fun, loads-of-riffs sense. 

TRACK LISTING

1. War Movies
2. Quality Pints
3. Pop Single
4. Best Looking Strangers In The Cemetery
5. A Bit Like James Bond
6. We Don't Care About That
7. Lonsdale Slipons
8. Better Than Good
9. Actual Pain
10. Cold. Hard. Love.
11. The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System

Written when Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) was in his early 20s, 'Selected Ambient Works Volume II' gained critical acclaim both upon release and retrospectively (10/10 Pitchfork review, #2 Best Ambient Album of All Time, 4 star Rolling Stone review +more). Aphex Twin and SAW II’s influence continues to grow and take new meaning across generations. Now celebrating it's 30th anniversary, this expanded edition is the definitive version of this seminal record.

TRACK LISTING

1. #1
2. #2
3. #3
4. #4
5. #5
6. #6
7. #7
8. #8
9. #9
10. #10
11. #11
12. #12
13. Blue Calx
14. #14
15. #15
16. #16
17. #17
18. #18
19. #19
20. #20
21. #21
22. #22
23. #23
24. #24
25. #25
26. Th1 [evnslower]
27. Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev

Confidence Man’s third studio album sees the delinquent party starters popify 90's UK rave sounds like no one before. Inspired by a recent move to London, meeting their idols KLF, and becoming immersed in the queer club scene, Confidence Man have taken the ideas of hedonism, ecstasy and losing yourself to the music and distilled them into pure a-grade euphoria.

The record spans the electronic spectrum from breakbeat and trance, to left-field Underworld size techno and the “let’s 'ave it” punk energy of legacy artists like The Prodigy. '3AM (LA LA LA)' follows their hugely successful second album 'TILT', which featured breakout single and festival crowd favourite ‘Holiday’. Staunchly defying trends and bringing Janet, Sugar, Reggie and Clarence along for a helluva good time, '3AM (LA LA LA)' feels bigger, bolder and in some ways brutal, but like, in a hot way. '3AM (LA LA LA)' is a welcome escape from the dull wasteland of modern mediocrity, bringing the weird and wonderful world of Confidence Man to the masses.

TRACK LISTING

1. Who Knows What You'll Find?
2. I Cant't Lose You
3. Control
4. So What
5. Breakbeat
6. Sicko
7. Real Move Touch (Feat. Sweetie Rie)
8. Far Out
9. Janet
10. So Tru
11. Wrong Idea
12. 3am (La La La)

Dance, No One's Watching is an ode to the sacred, yet joyous act of dancing, an album that musically guides you through a night out in the city, from the opening of possibilities as a new evening spans out ahead, to dawn’s final hours as the night comes to a close.

Written during a blistering 2023 which saw Ezra Collective tour the world, and become the first jazz act to win the Mercury Prize, Dance, No One's Watching is a documentation of the many dance floors they encountered. From London to Chicago, Lagos to Sydney, dance and rhythm connect us. These songs are a testament to that spirit.

The album was recorded at Abbey Road studios, where the band was surprised by a group of close friends and family, turning the sessions into a live communal celebration of love, music, and dancing.

Dance, No One's Watching is a record that speaks to the unifying power of dance. Set for release in September 2024, it is a powerful and distinctive addition to a catalogue that continues to blaze a bold new trail in contemporary British music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. The Herald
3. Palm Wine
4. God Gave Me Feet For Dancing (feat. Yazmin Lacey)
5. Ajala
6. The Traveller
7. N29
8. No One's Watching Me (feat. Olivia Dean)
9. Hear My Cry
10. Shaking Body
11. Expensive
12. Streets Is Calling (feat. M.anifest & Moonchild Sanelly)
13. Why I Smile
14. Have Patience
15. Everybody

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds return with new album, ‘Wild God’.

“I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me,” Cave says. “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a masterplan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”

Across ten tracks, the band dance between convention and experimentation, taking left-turns and detours that heighten the rich imagery and emotion in Cave’s soul-stirring narratives. It is the sound of a group emboldened by reconnection and taking flight. There are moments that touch fondly upon the Bad Seeds’ past but they are fleeting, and serve only to imbue the relentless and restless forward motion of the band.

Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis, and mixed by David Fridmann, Cave began writing the album on New Year’s Day 2023. With sessions at Miraval in Provence and Soundtree in London, the Bad Seeds added their unique alchemy, with additional performances from Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).

“Wild God…there’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.” Nick Cave

TRACK LISTING

1. Song Of The Lake
2. Wild God
3. Frogs
4. Joy
5. Final Rescue Attempt
6. Conversion
7. Cinnamon Horses
8. Long Dark Night
9. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
10. As The Waters Cover The Sea

Futurismo proudly present a celebration of the Paisley Underground scene with TWISTED DREAM MACHINE The Paisley Underground / California’s Psychedelic Renaissance: 1982-1986, the next volume in their Altered Vision compilation series.

This collection draws from the neo psychedelic movement that took hold in California during the early to mid 80’s, one that melded the psychedelia, country, garage rock, avant-garde and pop of the 60’s with the DIY ethos of the then burgeoning punk scene, a hypnotic amalgamation of sound that came in staunch contrast to the blown out sonic excesses of the time.

Twisted Dream Machine takes you on a trip from the city to the desert, as the kaleidoscope of noise drifts from the The Dream Syndicate’s Velvet Underground inspired take on Crazy Horse and The Three O’Clock’s chiming baroque powerpop, to Rain Parade’s dreamy Beatlesesque melodies and the Bangles hook-laden Love inspired pop. Also featured are the wondrous sounds of Green On Red, The Long Ryder’s, Game Theory, True West, Thin White Rope and others highly worth your attention. If you are not familiar with some of the bands here, you will surely question how that is possible. The Paisley Underground, if anything, encapsulated a certain musical mindset, an outlook where the past and the future would collide in the moment. This thread would bond the bands, yet each honed it’s own sound in a twisted incarnation of the seeds planted two decades earlier. Whilst the ‘scene’ did remain contained, its influence did in fact spread throughout mainstream culture as the Bangles stuck a chord into the heart of MTV, whilst Prince took inspiration from the movement in his own songwriting and the naming of Paisley Park, as well as signing The Three O’Clock to his label and writing one of the Bangles biggest hits.

As you listen to the tracks on Twisted Dream Machine you will be reminded that there is still music left to discover and inspire, this compilation is aimed to hopefully delight longtime fans, as well as ignite a passion for those new to the bands. The Paisley Underground was the sound of neo psychedelic rock, it was subterranean pop...in the classic sense, it was alternative rock before the term existed, a distillation of the fundamentals present at the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, with a twist. The bands of the Paisley Underground may have been writing out of their own time, but as you listen to them in today’s context these songs should be heard as landmarks, rather than throwbacks. After all, nothing this good should stay underground. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Three ‘O’ Clock - Jet Fighter
2. The Rain Parade - Don’t Feel Bad
3. True West - Lucifer Sam
4. Bangles - Going Down To Liverpool
5. Thin White Rope - Down In The Desert
6. Game Theory - 24
7. The Dream Syndicate - Definitely Clean
8. The Long Ryders - Too Close To The Light
9. Green On Red - Illustrated Crawling
10. 28th Day - Pages Turn
11. The Dream Syndicate - That’s What You Always Say
12. The Pandoras - In And Out Of My Life (In A Day)
13. The Long Ryders - Ivory Tower
14. The Three ‘O’ Clock - With A Cantaloupe Girlfriend
15. Bangles - All About You
16. The Rain Parade - Talking In My Sleep
17. The Three ‘O’ Clock - Her Heads Revolving
18. True West - Shot You Down
19. Wednesday Week - If Only
20. Thin White Rope - Exploring The Axis
21. The Rain Parade - Mystic Green
22. Green On Red - Lost World

Recorded as part of the same daydreaming puzzle as Unwishing Well, Still Clouds at Noon brings out the slowcore/sadcore elements that drift through The Reds, Pinks & Purples’ melancholy catalogue. Donaldson names '90s hometown San Francisco acts such as American Music Club and the more obscure Timco as pivotal to his guitar playing and development as a songwriter, both of which shine bright here. The slower tempo ballads on Still Clouds… often culminate in heavy fuzz drenched codas and showcase the more abstract poetic side of Donaldson’s lyricism. There’s an inherent pop-sensibility always at work though, with ear-worm melodies appearing over intoxicating circular riffs.

Formerly a Bandcamp only digital release, this white vinyl version is remastered and adds two unreleased tracks, one featuring Mark Monnone from Australian pop-legends The Lucksmiths on bass. Edition of 500.

TRACK LISTING

1. All Night
2. Happiness All Around
3. Violent Pictures
4. The Future's Just More Of The Same
5. Walking-Away World
6. Still Clouds At Noon
7. Everything You Ever Loved
8. Walk Through Any Wall
9. The House They Went Past
10. Writing Songs

This is Northumberland songwriter, poet, raconteur and old friend of Piccadilly Records, Peter Alexander Jobson's debut solo album and it's an absolute treat.

Recorded at his home studio and produced by Ben Christophers, the album is an extraordinary collection that blends genres as diverse as country-flavoured psychedelia and cocktail jazz with the spirit of the Northern variety circuit. His vocals answer the question: what if Serge Gainsbourg had been born in the North East of England? Inspirations include Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Scott Walker, blues and country legends like Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, and Northern entertainers of days past like Les Dawson and the great Jake Thackray.

Jobson made his name as bass guitarist and keyboard player in I Am Kloot. After six albums and 16 successful years together the cult trio of Jobson, drummer Andy Hargreaves and singer/guitarist John Bramwell broke up after a final triumphant performance at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the 2016 Meltdown Festival on London's South Bank. I Am Kloot were noted for their distinctive sound, the jazzy swing of Jobson and built a fervent following both in the UK and across Europe, culminating in a Mercury Music Prize nomination for their lavish fifth album, 'Sky At Night' - produced by Elbow's Guy Garvey and Craig Potter in 2010.

Heavily autobiographical in inspiration, the songs on 'Burn The Ration Books Of Love' are deeply rooted in Jobson's lived experience, and in his geographical roots in Northumberland, with its wild, windswept coastline, rugged hills and moors, and extensive agricultural farmland where his family have worked the land for generations.

TRACK LISTING

Holiday (Live)
Mountain
The Night Of The Fire
Taxi Supplies
Go Go
Foolish Boy
Please Please Please
Home
Kesta
Just 'Cause I'm Dead
Burn The Ration Books Of Love

Five Dice, All Threes is a record of uncommon intensity and tenderness, communal exorcism and personal excavation. These are, of course, qualities that fans have come to expect from Bright Eyes, nearly three decades into their career. The tight-knit band of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott tends to operate in distinct sweeping movements: each unique in its sound and story but unified by a sense of ambition and ever-growing emotional stakes. Even with this rich history behind them, these new songs exude a visceral thrill like nothing they have attempted before. Oberst has always sung in a voice that conveys a sense of life-or-death gravity. At times throughout Five Dice, All Threes, you may feel worried for him; other times, he may seem like the only one with the clarity to get us out of this mess. On the self-produced album, Bright Eyes embrace the elusive quality that has made them so enduring and influential across generations and genres, bringing their homespun sound from an Omaha bedroom to devoted audiences around the world. In Oberst’s songwriting lies a promise that our loneliest thoughts and feelings can take on grander shapes when passed between friends, blasted through speakers, or shouted among crowds. This time around, the band invites such like-minded voices onto the record with them, with notable guest appearances from Cat Power (“All Threes”), The National’s Matt Berninger (“The Time I Have Left”), and Alex Orange Drink, the frontman of the New York punk band The So So Glos, who co-wrote several songs and shares a climactic verse in the surging “Rainbow Overpass.” When they hit the studio with Oberst’s longtime bandmates—the multiinstrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis, the keyboardist and arranger Nate Walcott—they opted for a fast-paced approach that drew inspiration from formative influences like The Replacements and Frank Black. They sought textures that burst from the mix like gnarly splashes of paint on a blank canvas; they opted for first takes and spontaneous decisions. Five Dice, All Threes thrashes and squirms and resists classification. In the brilliant expanse of “El Capitan,” they blend a galloping rhythm you might find in a Johnny Cash standard with a swell of funereal horns, shouted vocals, and lyrics that read like a sobering farewell between twin souls. “So they’re burning you an effigy,” Oberst sings. “Well, that happens to me all the time!” For every striking turn in his lyrics, the band knows just how to complement him. On one level, Five Dice, All Threes may be the most fun album in the Bright Eyes catalog, filled with singalong hooks and buzzing performances. And yet, sitting alongside these adrenalized rockers that sound beamed in directly from the garage, you will find contemplative, psychedelic material like the heartbreaking “Tiny Suicides” and “All Threes,” a song whose jazzy piano solo and free-associative lyrics feel totally unprecedented in the Bright Eyes catalog. As per usual, the music comes loaded with subtext that invites deep listening—the signature touch of a band who has always honored the album as its own exalted work of art. In the game of threes, the titular move would indicate a perfect roll. Perfection, however, means something different in the world of Bright Eyes, where our flaws are what grants us authority and finding meaning is only possible if we bear witness to the dark, winding journey to get there. On Five Dice, All Threes, Bright Eyes embrace these beliefs with music that feels thrillingly alive, as if we were all in the room with them, shouting along and gaining the strength to move forward together. It doesn’t just sound like classic Bright Eyes. It sounds like their future, too.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Five Dice
2. Bells And Whistles
3. El Capitan
4. Bas Jan Ader
5. Tiny Suicides

SIDE B
6. All Threes
7. Rainbow Overpass
8. Hate
9. Real Feel 105°

SIDE C
10. Spun Out
11. Trains Still Run On Time
12. The Time I Have Left
13. Tin Soldier Boy

The Daydream Library Series record label has confirmed Thurston’s new full length album Flow Critical Lucidity. The album will arrive in stores on September 20, 2024. Fans of Sonic Youth & Thurston Moore will be delighted to learn that all tracks from the album will be released via vinyl, compact disc & cassette.

Thurston Moore’s forthcoming album, FLOW CRITICAL LUCIDITY is his ninth solo recording. Some of the songs were written & arranged in Europe and The United Kingdom and include lyrical references to their environments and inspired by nature, lucid dreaming, modern dance and Isadora Duncan. The album was arranged at La Becque in Switzerland and recorded at Total Refreshment Studios in London in 2022, and mixed at Hermitage Studios in London with Margo Broom in 2023.

Flow Critical Lucidity comes from a lyric in the single ‘Sans Limites’ and the album sleeve cover art features Jamie Nares’ ‘Samurai Walkman’ — a helmet befitted with tuning forks. Jamie Nares (born in Great Britain) is a life long friend of Thurston Moore from his New York No Wave days and the two have often collaborated in art & music.

SINGLES released surrounding the release of the album: In 2023 Thurston released two singles: the energetic Isadora Duncan inspired ‘Isadora’ with a music video starring Sky Ferreira. ‘Hypnogram’ which the press called “one of the most intensely cerebral cuts Moore has ever released, he blends the more melodic moments of his former band with the layered, heady flourishes of his bassist Deb Googe’s main band, My Bloody Valentine. Emphatically conveying the feeling of dreams, the new material has fans excited for what the American has in store with his next album.” In April of 2024 Thurston shared the stirring Earth Day anthem ‘Rewilding’. The musician delivered chilling lines as he ruminated on the removal of the human hand from nature, “…Don’t stir anything…”. Moore sang about renewal, and a period for friends of the Earth to sleep and realise a natural way by “coralmorphologically dreaming”. The musician said the U.K.’s rewilding movement aspires to reduce human influence on ecosystems.

The Players:
Vocals, Guitar: Thurston Moore
Bass: Deb Googe
Electronics: Jon Leidecker
Piano, organ, guitar, glockenspiel: James Sedwards
Percussion: Jem Doulton
Backing vocals: Laetitia Sadier on ‘Sans Limites’
Lyrics: Radieux Radio, except ‘Shadow’
Recorded in London at Total Refreshment Centre and mixed by Margo Broom

TRACK LISTING

1. New In Town
2. Sans Limites
3. Shadow
4. Hypnogram
5. We Get High
6. Rewilding
7. The Diver
(Bonus Track Included On A Clear Flexi Disc.) – “Isadora (Bedazzled Mix)”

Underground icons completely reinvent their line-up with brass and percussion into a new hot and raw sci-fi sound.

Think Dexy’s Midnight Runners meets Von LMO meets The Flesh Eaters meets the Screamers.

"This album was a self imposed ambitious project for us. Something to kick in the creative flow. The last few years, having been a challenging time in general, felt like a good time for a pivot. The last two albums were so guitar and keyboard centric, I wanted a weird and fun set of parameters for us to work with. I demo’d everything at home on cassette 4 track (harkening back to simpler times) using drum loops, and just had at it 'til I had a pile of “songs”.

Tom and I chose one sound each using synths and created a range of 3 octaves of that sample, then loaded them into Roland SPD-SX samplers and learned the transcribed songs using drum sticks. The idea was to change the way we wrote and to have 4 people along the front of the stage essentially playing percussion. So no guitar, no keys.

As we were recording I kept thinking how the sounds, when paired up, sounded a bit like brass. So, we added a saxophone horn section to round out the horniness of the sound with a bit of reedy bell tones. Thanks to Cansfis Foote & Brad Caulkins on tenor and Baritone saxophones :)

Sort of a Dexy’s Midnight Runners meets Von LMO meets The Flesh Eaters meets the Screamers kinda punk junk.
Poppy and hooky, heavy at times..
Sort of vacuous and maybe a bit sci-fi in sound.
Boneheaded in riff and heady in lyrics.
Recorded at Stu-Stu-Studio by me on 8 track 1/4” tape .
So pretty hot and raw.

Lots to write about today.
A lot of these lyrics were taken from things people said in passing about taking on life right now that stuck with me.
Things that made me reflect.
Things that made me laugh.
Things that made me WTF.

Some folks are kind, genuine & give you love and energy.
Some are greedy manipulative ghouls who hang off your veins.
You must be strong, composed and take care of yourself.
Be self aware and check your mind for cracks.
Learn to relax and be well.
There are moments of beauty and redemption.
Its not all bad news and there’s always hope.
People continue to surprise me one way or another.

Anyhow,
Hope you enjoy and good luck out there."

— John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Look At The Sky
2. Pixelated Moon
3. Drug City
4. Also The Gorilla...
5. Termination Officer
6. Blimp
7. Cochon D’argent
8. Cassius, Brutus & Judas
9. Zipper
10. Lear’s Ears
11. Earthling
12. Plastics
13. Neo-Clone

The Jesus Lizard have returned with 'Rack', their first record since 1998. The album features 11 tracks of brisk guitar rock you haven’t heard since… the last time the Jesus Lizard took over a stage in your town. The Jesus Lizard - vocalist David Yow, guitarist Duane Denison, bassist David Wm. Sims, and drummer Mac McNeilly - have returned with a record teeming with the kind of madness needed to beat down today’s AOR mediocrity and piss-perfect pop drivel alike.

Since their inception in Chicago in 1987, The Jesus Lizard has thrilled audiences all over the planet. The impeccable rocket-thrust rhythm section of Sims and McNeilly was the perfect launchpad for Denison’s jagged yet clean-toned riffing and Yow’s mercurial vocalizations manifesting as everything from panicked citizen, reality escapee or wounded sea mammal. the Jesus Lizard’s fury carried on through six studio albums, two live recordings and a brace of singles and EPs.

On 'Rack', The Jesus Lizard have returned reconstituted, refreshed and positively revving. No tepid, bland tracks to show how they’ve “matured” as songwriters. No inane detours into unnecessary genre exercises.

The Jesus Lizard. They might not be young, but they will never, ever get fucking old.

Nine years on from the release of his seminal GRAMMY, BRIT, Ivor Novello and Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut album 'In Colour', London musician, DJ and producer Jamie xx announces his long-awaited second album 'In Waves'. Across 12 tracks including 'Baddy On The Floor', his joyous summer collaboration with club culture icon Honey Dijon, Jamie xx replicates the emotional crescendos and thrilling volatility of an almost mystical night out and features further collaborations with Robyn, The Avalanches, Kelsey Lu, John Glacier and Panda Bear, Oona Doherty and his The xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim. Created over a four year period ushered in by his much-loved 2020 Essential Mix and peppered with periods of self-reflection, a global pandemic, the blinking reemergence into the strobelight and a newly discovered love of surfing as escapism, it’s an album that's on course to eclipse the heights of its globally acclaimed predecessor.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wanna
2. Treat Each Other Right
3. Waited All Night (Jamie XX Feat. Romy, Oliver Sim & The XX)
4. Baddy On The Floor (Jamie XX Feat. Honey Dijon)
5. Dafodil (Jamie XX Feat. Kelsey Lu, John Glacier & Panda Bear)
6. Still Summer
7. Life (Jamie XX & Robyn)
8. The Feeling I Get From You
9. Breather
10. All You Children (Jamie XX Feat. The Avalanches)
11. Every Single Weekend
12. Falling Together (Jamie XX Feat. Oona Doherty)

Deluxe Edition Bonus 12":
1. F.U. (Jamie XX Feat. Erykah Badu)
2. It’s So Good
3. Do Something
4. LET’S DO IT AGAIN
5. KILL DEM

In 2016, Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis was offered the opportunity of a lifetime: a two-day session working with the great drummer Tony Allen, who he admired intensely for his influential, multi-genre work with the likes of Fela Kuti, Sébastien Tellier and Jeff Mills.

Heading into a smoke-filled, ‘70s throwback studio in Paris, Yannis had expected them to make a nostalgic Afrobeat record. Yet something very different emerged. As the pair quickly established an intuitive telepathy, the music germinated from jams and loops, its varied touchpoints - rock, funk, jazz, dub and more - were complemented by a unique atmosphere of two cultures and creatives colliding, their expression liberated by making music in and for the moment itself.

Joined by Tony’s regular collaborators Vincent Taeger (percussion, marimba), Vincent Taurelle (keys) and Ludovic Bruni (bass, guitar) that first meeting resulted in a handful of near complete songs, which were further developed during a couple of subsequent sessions. But between scheduling issues and Covid restrictions, the recordings were never completed before Tony passed away in April 2020 at the age of 79.

Yannis felt a deep duty to complete the project, not only as a bittersweet way to honour and celebrate his friend, but also because Tony had been so eager to share these songs with the world. The result is the upcoming five-track EP, ‘Lagos Paris London’, under the Yannis & The Yaw umbrella - a project that he plans to return to in the future for further collaborations with inspiring musicians from across the globe.

‘Lagos Paris London’ EP is high-spirited, loose-grooved exuberance completed by the complex rhythms and unhurried style of the man who inspired it. It’s a communion with the past that provides an escape in the present day.

TRACK LISTING

1. Walk Through Fire
2. Rain Can't Reach Us
3. Night Green, Heavy Love
4. Under The Strikes
5. Clementine

If Los Bitchos’ electrifying 2022 debut album Let the Festivities Begin! Was the rowdy build up to the big night out, then Talkie Talkie is the Technicolor explosion of the dancefloor. Made up of lead guitarist Serra, who carries both Australian and Turkish heritage, Uruguayan synth and keytar player Agustina Ruiz, Swedish bassist Josefine Jonsson and British drummer Nic Crawshaw, the group are united by a commitment to having fun. It’s a contagious energy they’ve had no problem transmitting to the world: since the band officially arrived in 2019 with two sell-out 7" singles, they marked themselves as one of London’s brightest bands to watch. Since then, they’ve found a home in beloved indie label City Slang, ripped stages across the most coveted stages the globe over (such as Glastonbury and Coachella, as well as supporting Pavement and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard), and radiated the verve of their personalities and cultures through their exploratory take on rock’n’roll. The London-based quartet’s new album is glistening with charisma, sonic experimentation and a puckish spirit. Named after a fictional club of the same name Talkie Talkie is a late-night paradise brimming with freedom and possibility; a place where partygoers can escape reality in the dance or daydream along to the invigorating soundscapes.

Los Bitchos promise to turn the global indie rock scene upside down in 2024!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hi!
A2. Talkie Talkie, Charlie Charlie
A3. Don’t Change
A4. Kiki, You Complete Me
A5. Road
A6. 1K!
B7. La Bomba
B8. Open The Bunny, Wasting My Time
B9. It’s About Time
B10. Naughty Little Clove
B11. Tango & Twirl
B12. Let Me Cook You

Produced by J Lloyd (Jungle 12M MLs) and James Skelly, What Can I Say After I'm Sorry? ushers in the start of the band's 5th album campaign. The album titled Gary is named after a 8 foot fibre glass gorilla was stolen from a Lanarkshire Garden Centre in early 2023, and since then there has been a campaign to locate him, his rear end was recently found, but his frontage is still missing! Cameo from Everton Football Manager Sean Dyche…

TRACK LISTING

1. Big Star
2. What Can I Say After I'm Sorry?
3. Gary
4. I Like Your Look
5. Nightclub
6. Perfect Me
7. Mothers
8. Cinnamon
9. Slow Down
10. Why Do I Give You The Worst Of Me?

Max Richter presents his 9th studio album 'In A Landscape'. A record about “reconciling polarities"; bringing together the electronic & the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living. "A memoir of the present moment”. In his own words, Max describes the music on the record as being about “connecting or reconciling polarities. the tracks themselves are, as ever, my attempts to figure out how to make sense of our lives in the here and now of our daily life as I experience it.” One of the most influential and acclaimed composers of all time, Max's fusion of classical technique and electronic technology, heard across genre-defining solo projects, countless scores for film, dance, art and fashion, has won him legions of fans world-over, & blazed a trail for a generation of artists.

TRACK LISTING

LP
SIDE A
They Will Shade Us With Our Wings
Life Study I
A Colour Field (Holocene)
Life Study II

SIDE B
And Some Will Fall
Life Study III
The Poetry Of Earth (Geophony)
Life Study IV
Only Silent Words
Life Study V

SIDE C
Late And Soon
Life Study VI
Andante
Life Study VII
A Time Mirror (Biophony)
Life Study VIII

SIDE D
Love Song (after JE)
Life Study IX
Movement, Before All Flowers

CD
They Will Shade Us With Our Wings
Life Study I
A Colour Field (Holocene)
Life Study II
And Some Will Fall
Life Study III
The Poetry Of Earth (Geophony)
Life Study IV
Only Silent Words
Life Study V
Late And Soon
Life Study VI
Andante
Life Study VII
A Time Mirror (Biophony)
Life Study VIII
Love Song (after JE)
Life Study IX
Movement, Before All Flowers

At the start of 2024 BADBADNOTGOOD were brimming with new creative energy. Having just come off a run of one-off international tour dates and a series of sessions for projects with artists Daniel Cesar, Charlotte Day Wilson, reggie, Baby Rose, and Turnstile, the Canadian-trio of Al Sow, Chester Hansen and Leland Whitty were eager to get back into the studio to simply create. The trio called on some of their closest friends and collaborators, BADBADNOTGOOD touring member Felix Fox-Pappas (keys) and a few key-players in the Toronto jazz scene including Kaelin Murphy (trumpet), Juan Carlos Medrano (percussion) and LA musician Tyler Lott (guitar), for an intensive and productive one-week of recording at Valentine Studios in Los Angeles in February 2024. The result of those sessions is the Mid Spiral series, originally released as 3 parts – Chaos, Order and Growth – digitally earlier this year and now collected altogether on a double LP and CD.

The 'Mid Spiral' suites see BADBADNOTGOOD return to their roots of instrumental jazz while once again pushing the boundaries of how they cross pollinate genres, incorporating their love of hip-hop, neo-soul, psychedelic, funk and more. For the sessions, the trio incorporated additional musicians to add more voices of instrumentation, resulting in a deeply collaborative and expansive new sound. As the trio sifted through the weeks’ worth of material, it was clear that three distinct moods emerged, a deeper reflection of where the musicians are within their own personal lives, along with the state of the wider world: Chaos, Order and Growth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Eyes On Me
2. Take Me With You
3. Weird & Wonderful
4. Mid Spiral
5. Last Laugh
6. Your Soul & Mine
7. Playgroup
8. Juan's World
9. Taco Taco
10. Sétima Regra
11. Sunday Afternoon's Dream
12. Rewind Your Mind
13. First Love
14. Audacia
15. Celestial Hands
16. Ways Of Seeing
17. White Light

If you like pop music to keep you on your toes, Amsterdam’s Personal Trainer provide that service fulsomely on their second album. Essentially the project of Willem Smit (working with co-producer/collaborator Casper van der Lans) on record and a band live, Personal Trainer showed a facility for DIY indie-pop exuberance and experiment in sync with 2022’s debut, Big Love Blanket. Now signed to Bella Union, Willem returns re-energised with Still Willing, a multi-faceted album of shining contrasts and spry melodies, bursting arrangements and subliminal sounds, playful lyrics and self-reflection: in short, a pop album executed with dynamism, vim and charm.

As Willem says, this is a record fuelled by its extremes: sometimes energetic and loud, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, always full of hidden pleasures. “When I listen to the records I make, the main thing I hope is that every time something happens on them, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ I like to be taken by surprise like that on a record, to kind of be thrown around.”

Those surprises start at the beginning, where ‘Upper Ferntree Gully’ shows a dreamy side to Personal Trainer before choppy, chunky riffs and electronics take over. Meanwhile, Willem’s anchoring imprint is ever-present: he prefers not to dissect his lyrics, but the title nod to his mother’s birthplace in Australia and opening recording of her voice seed a spirit of warmth and intimacy in the record – the personal in Personal Trainer, perhaps.

In a sharp left-turn, ‘I Can be Your Personal Trainer’ follows with a buoyant swing. The album proceeds with that duality in mind, always Smit’s work yet always fresh, always seeking. In Willem’s description, ‘Cyan’ is “a weird, happy pop track”, chivvied onwards by contributor Nick Bolland’s sax and leavened by vocal contributions from Dutch alt-pop singer Lena Hessels. “With most of this one I was trying to make myself laugh or at least smile,” says Willem. “And then I started to really like it. Somewhere along the process I found something like honesty or something beautiful in it.”

Elsewhere, there’s strutting rock in ‘Round’ and vulnerability in ‘New Bad Feeling’. ‘Intangible’ issues another gearshift, erupting from a rising synth line into spry indie-funk pop, where Willem’s innate melodic instincts light the way into uncharted territory for Personal Trainer. As Willem explains, “I tried to make a song that is something I wouldn’t normally do and experiment with that. I like how it turned out because it’s also probably one of the first instances where I had the chorus first and the other parts later, which rarely happens.”

The plangent sensitivity of ‘Testing the Alarm’ adds playful wordplay (“lallygag in shrubbery”) before live favourite ‘You Better Start Scrubbing’ arrives on album in a joyously abrasive blast of no-wave vigour, its glorious shout-along chorus aided by guest vocals from three members of Dutch alt-rock quintet The Klittens. Finally, ‘What Am I Supposed to Say about the People and their Ways’ signs the album off on a wryly humble note, Willem upholding an inquisitive mindset over the modern bleat of “bleeping know-it-alls”.

Witty, welcoming and winningly melodic, Still Willing is the sound of an instinctive DIY-pop musician favouring think-on-your-feet exploration and intuition over know-it-all premeditation. Willem’s initial intent was to record the album as if live, but he realised that his chemistry with Casper would not be denied. “I felt that we had grown and built a language together. We don’t have to say a lot, but we understand each other well. There was a lot less like trying out stuff and taking stuff away compared to the last one, because it felt like we were on the same wavelength.”

As for how they work together, says Willem, the songs and sounds are assembled in detailed increments. “I write the songs and record most of the stuff, like kind of the skeleton, and then we record drums together. That’s the first step, most of the time. From there, we build. I don’t know much about compressors or weird effects. But Casper knows a lot about that and is really enthusiastic. If I want some part to work better, he’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I have an idea for that.’ And there were times when I would say, ‘Do you feel like playing this part?’ And he just plays it.”

Recorded between home and – says Willem – “places that don’t cost much to record at”, the result is a DIY pop album brimming with ideas and colour. Whereas Big Love Blanket’s experimental sounds included a celery stick snapping, Still Willing features floorboards, doors closing and “no-input mixing”. Alongside Hessels and The Klittens, contributors include drummer Kick Kluiving and (for half of the songs) bassist Ruben van Weegberg, also Willem’s bandmate in the band Canshaker Pi, who numbered Stephen Malkmus among their producers. Most of the percussion comes from Kilian Kayser, and discreet sounds are served by Abel Tuinstra and Otto de Jong.

Willem is the epicentre of the band, which originated from impromptu and exhilarating live shows featuring ever-shifting members of different local bands sharing a bustling stage. The live line-up has solidified somewhat but Willem still welcomes the contrast with his recorded work: “When I make the record, it’s me calling the shots. But I can’t tell everyone exactly what to do every second when we’re on stage. There’s, like, shakers flying around or instruments being thrown all over the place, so I don’t have the capacity to control that. And that’s really exciting to me.”

Big Love Blanket harnessed that energy in 10 excitable pop songs, bright and bracing. Acclaim from Steve Lamacq, Marc Riley, Mojo, Clash, DIY Mag and others followed. Support slots with BC Camplight in 2023 were joyfully received, as was a tour for Independent Venues Week with The Klittens and Real Farmer. Personal Trainer have notched up many festival visits, too, including stop-offs at the End of the Road, Wilderness and The Great Escape. In December 2023, an EP featuring the tracks ‘The Feeling’ (all nine minutes of it) and ‘Babyolifantjes’ (translated: baby elephants) also emerged, recorded with a view to capturing the band’s live form. Soon, Smit and his bandmates will showcase that form with summer festivals including Green Man, Deershed, Truck Festival and Lowlands.

Meanwhile, Still Willing arrives as a fervid expression of Willem’s home-recording and studio methods, tethered to inviting pop instincts and rich with the fertile promise of more to come. Willem doesn’t want to tell you what or how to think about the album but, he says, “It would be awesome if people like it and buy the record, so that I can make another one.” On the strength of Still Willing, he’s fit for the long distance.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Upper Ferntree Gully
2. I Can Be Your Personal Trainer
3. Cyan
4. Round
5. New Bad Feeling

Side B:
1. Intangible
2. Testing The Alarm
3. Still Willing
4. You Better Start Scrubbing
5. What Am I Supposed To Say And Their Ways

Following 2020’s 'Return' and 2022’s 'Sound of the Morning', 'Someday, Now' sees Katy J Pearson’s signature acoustic-led, sweetly-voiced singer-songwriter fare transmuted through the desk of electronic producer Nathan Jenkins, aka Bullion. After a period of burnout, self-enforced exile from music-making, and solo travel, Pearson came back to her practice with clarity of mind and vision. “I knew exactly who I wanted to work with, I knew exactly who my session band were going to be, I knew where I wanted to record. It felt like I was finally calling the shots for myself, and that was so empowering”, she reflects.

Where previous Katy J Pearson records were made with a slower, more piecemeal approach, 'Someday, Now' was rigorously written and rehearsed ahead of time, and laid down efficiently over a couple of weeks at Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, with a band composed of Heavenly label-mates Huw Evans [H. Hawkline, Aldous Harding, Cate Le Bon, and Pearson’s Sound of the Morning and The Wicker Man EP] and Davey Newington [Boy Azooga], along with fellow Broadside Hacks collaborator Joel Burton. It was engineered by Joe Jones [Aldous Harding, Dry Cleaning, Jane Weaver].

TRACK LISTING

1. Those Goodbyes
2. Save Me
3. It's Mine Now
4. Maybe
5. Grand Final
6. Long Range Driver
7. Constant
8. Someday
9. Siren Song
10. Sky

The The’s first studio album of new songs in a quarter century!

The 12 songs on Ensoulment encompasses characteristic topics ranging from love & sex, war & politics, life & death – to the meaning of what it is to be human in the 21st century.

Singer-songwriter Matt Johnson is joined by long-standing THE THE members James Eller (bass), DC Collard (keyboards), Earl Harvin (drums), and Barrie Cadogan (lead guitar). The album also marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who previously worked on landmark THE THE albums Infected (1986) and Mind Bomb (1989). Additional performances include Gillian Glover (backing vocals), Terry Edwards (horns), Sonya Cullingford (fiddle) and Danny Cummings (percussion).

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Cognitive Dissident
2. Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake
3. Zen & The Art Of Dating

SIDE B
4. Kissing The Ring Of POTUS
5. Life After Life
6. I Want To Wake Up With You

SIDE C
7. Down By The Frozen River
8. Risin’ Above The Need
9. Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot

SIDE D
10. Where Do We Go When We Die?
11. I Hope You Remember (The Things I Can’t Forget)
12. A Rainy Day In May

Formed in Bristol, 4-piece LICE have become one of UK experimental rock’s most inventive and ambitious outliers. Their second album ‘Third Time At The Beach’ – a three-part epic exploring our struggle to better understand the world around us – arrives on the 20th September via AD 93. Darting between minimalism, rock, techno and more, it sends us hurtling us through time and space: featuring a cast of astronauts, cavemen and dinosaurs.

This follows LICE’s internationally acclaimed debut album ‘WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear’ (2021). Praised as “exciting, alive, packed with musical ideas” by Financial Times and “a welcome lease of life for British avant-rock that plays with expectation at every turn” by CRACK, it also gained radio support across BBC 6Music, BBC Radio 1 and KEXP. The album led LICE to perform at major festivals including Reading & Leeds, Green Man and End Of The Road, embark on an extensive EU tour supporting Sleaford Mods, and tour across the UK & EU.

‘Third Time At The Beach’’s concept is expressed through three movements. The first (‘Unscrewed’, ‘White Tubes’, ‘Red Fibres’) presents the child being introduced to the world, hammered into shape through prevailing culture, and realising they have reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world. The second (‘To The Basket’, ‘Wrapped In A Sheet’, ‘Scenes From The Desert’, ‘Mown In Circles’) is a disorientating, alien sequence: reevaluating fundamental concepts including money, time, nationhood and language. In the third (‘Fatigued, Confused’, ‘Third Time At The Beach’, ‘The Dance’), the individual embraces these new ideas – granting them a changed understanding of the world, and more agency in the path they take through it.

Everything is always changing in ‘Third Time At The Beach’. The album shifts from lush piano balladry to crushing industrial, and from swampy avant-garde compositions to triumphant rock freakouts. Employing vocal manipulation and field recordings, as well as cutting together studio recordings and home demos, the band produces a spatially elastic, collage-like effect. The album, like the ideas being reached within it, presents a work-in-progress. Lyrically, the record employs a scattershot style to present the experience of learning (or ‘unlearning’). The listener visits ancient civilisations, the Industrial Revolution, outer space and the land of the dinosaurs: encountering mediaeval farmers, silver miners, cavemen, Napoleon and Satan.

Speaking on the record, the band say: “This album’s about trying to understand the world and everything in it: history, science and the way we explain it all to each other. It’s a celebration of feeling confused or intimidated by the processes that shape our lives.”

Of the album’s muscular, agitated lead single ‘Red Fibres’, LICE explain: “This song is about realising you’ve reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world, and feeling confused and frustrated. After visiting some key moments in the history of language, science and the human eye, we arrive at a campsite: where two shipwreck survivors are about to have a fight.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
A1. Unscrewed
A2. White Tubes
A3. Red Fibres
A4. To The Basket
A5. Wrapped In A Sheet

Side B:
B1. Scenes From The Desert
B2. Mown In Circles
B3. Fatigued, Confused
B4. Third Time At The Beach
B5. The Dance

Beloved Spanish indie rockers Hinds are back with their utterly triumphant fourth album, VIVA HINDS. Written by the band’s co-founders, co-vocalists, co-guitarists and co-songwriters Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote, it features their first-ever fully Spanish language songs, as well as first collaborations with the likes of Beck and Fontaines D.C.’s GrianChatten. Recorded in rural France, the album was produced by Pete Robertson (Beabadoobee), engineered by the GRAMMY-nominated Tom Roach, and mixed by GRAMMY-winning engineer Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, Wet Leg).

Shortly after the band made their debut ten years ago, they hit what felt like an insurmountable obstacle – they had to change their name from Deers to Hinds for legal reasons. But, as their fans began to greet them at shows by cheering “¡VIVA HINDS!”, the band soon realized that what initially felt like an ending was actually just the beginning. Fast forward to 2023, and VIVA HINDS was written by Cosials and Perrote after a series of endings. They hit a creative rut after releasing their 2020 album The Prettiest Curse, and their bassist and drummer devastatingly decided to leave the band. They also split with their management team, lost touring revenue due to lockdowns, and were without a label for the first time. But when Perrote and Cosials got together to write again it became clear that their connection, one so special that they call themselves “millionaires in friendship,” would be all they needed to get them through. VIVA HINDS – the most accomplished, sonically adventurous, honest and celebratory record of Hinds’ career – is only the beginning.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hi, How Are You
2. The Bed, The Room, The Rain And You
3. Boom Boom Back
4. Stranger
5. Superstar
6. Mala Vista
7. On My Own
8. Coffee
9. En Forma
10. Bon Voyage

“I want it to feel like you’re right there in the room with us.” And in 10 songs and 40 minutes, Wunderhorse capture the raw power and energy that has set them apart as one of the most formidable live acts of recent years. With rugged hooks, unfiltered noise, and fierce melodic sensitivity, ‘Midas’ rips up the script of traditional second albums and establishes the band as an endlessly addictive and rousing generational talent.

In late 2022, the release of their debut album ‘Cub’ saw singles ‘Purple’ and ‘Leader of the Pack’ dominate radio airwaves. Landmark performances filling Glastonbury’s Woodsies Tent (FKA John Peel Stage) and selling out London’s Kentish Town Forum months in advance were followed by tours with Pixies and Fontaines D.C., signalling the band’s arrival as one of the most prominent and exciting new guitar acts in the UK.

With Grammy Award-winning producer Craig Silvey (The Rolling Stones, The National, Florence + The Machine) on board for their sophomore record, the band looked to do something different. Their goal – in the very same studio that Nirvana put ‘In Utero’ to tape and PJ Harvey recorded the Mercury Prize-nominated ‘Rid of Me’ – was to push themselves outside of their comfort zones.

“There’s absolutely no faking on this record,” ends Slater, “it's not supposed to be perfect; it’s supposed to be a snapshot, even if it is a bit of an ugly portrait. That's how it was then, and that's how you're gonna see it.” And it sounds like you’re right there in the room with them.

TRACK LISTING

1. Midas
2. Rain
3. Emily
4. Silver
5. Arizona
6. Superman
7. July 
8. Cathedrals
9. Girl
10. Aeroplane

By turns devotional, empowering and nurturing, Jon Hopkins’ forthcoming RITUAL is a 41-minute electronic symphony built from cavernous subs, hypnotic drumming and transcendent melodic interplay. Tense, immersive and ultimately triumphant, it is a culmination of themes explored throughout his 22-year career, and acts as the kinetic counterpart to 2021’s Music For Psychedelic Therapy.

A single piece unfolding over eight chapters, RITUAL is personified by depth and contrast. Taking ceremony, spiritual liberation and the hero's journey as inspiration, it taps into an ancient and primal energy.

Featuring long-term collaborators Vylana, 7RAYS, Ishq, Clark, Emma Smith, Daisy Vatalaro and Cherif Hashizume, RITUAL came together within the second half of 2023, but initial seeds were sown in 2022, when Hopkins was commissioned to compose for the stroboscopic Dreamachine experience in London. A project that felt ceremonial from the outset, this shorter piece was the embryo of RITUAL, with Hopkins gaining inspiration from the feeling of intention that is inherent in the Dreamachine space.

RITUAL is both emotionally and sonically heavy, whilst retaining a warm, live feel, where the juxtaposition between softness and intensity forms the core of the whole. So take time, prepare and immerse in RITUAL for 41 minutes of uninterrupted listening: sonic divination of the most potent form.

TRACK LISTING

1. Part I – Altar
2. Part Ii – Palace / Illusion
3. Part Iii – Transcend / Lament
4. Part Iv – The Veil
5. Part V - Evocation
6. Part Vi – Solar Goddess Return
7. Part Vii – Dissolution
8. Part Viii – Nothing Is Lost

Orlando Weeks’ forthcoming new album ‘LOJA’ (Portuguese for ‘store’) was written in both London and Lisbon. Recording began in earnest in January 2023 at the beautiful Chale Abbey Studios with longtime live collaborator Sergio Maschetzko as producer, supported by co-producer and engineer David Granshaw. In its latter stages, Nathan Jerkins (BULLION) contributed additional production and mixing.

Lead single ‘Dig’, featuring Rhian Teasdale (Wet Leg), is 3 minutes of half argument, long worn-out promises being remade and road weary offences being retaken.

The record features a number of other key collaborators including Katy J Pearson, Tony Njoku, Oliver Hamilton (Caroline) and Alejandro Aranda (Scary Pool Party).

The core musical contributions come from long standing live collaborators Sami El-Enany, Luca Caruso, William Doyle and Alexander Painter.
A love letter to his new home, lyrically ‘Loja’ toys with both the fantastical and stark realism. There are sleeping giants in Track 2's 'Best Night' and the final song on the album, ‘Beautiful Place’, tells the story of a beach death.

The novelty of a new city afforded Weeks the opportunity to romanticise his present and reevaluate his past.

The first live performances in over a year will be at Copeland Gallery this June. During a 4 day/night residency, Weeks will preview music from 'Loja' alongside an exhibition of the prints and drawings that are the accompanying visual aspect of the album.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Longing
2. Best Night
3. Wake Up
4. Dig Feat. Rhian Teasdale
5. You & The Packhorse Blues
6. Good To See You

Side B
1. My Love Is (Daylight Saving)
2. Please Hold
3. Sorry
4. Tomorrow
5. Beautiful Place

Fat Dog are the most exciting breakthrough band of the past few years, conjurers of the sort of frenzied and wild live shows not seen in the capital for years and now the creators of ‘WOOF’., a brilliant and mind-bending debut album. A thrilling blend of electro-punk, rock’n’roll snarling, techno soundscapes, industrial-pop and rave euphoria, ‘WOOF’. is music for letting go to or, in the words of frontman Joe Love, “screaming-into-a-pillow music”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Vigilante
Closer To God
Wither
Clowns

Side B
King Of The Slugs
All The Same
I Am The King
Running
And So It Came To Pass

“Writing this album, I opened up my closet, and a skeleton came out.” In a café just around the corner from his Edinburgh flat, Hamish Hawk is contemplating his extraordinary new record, A Firmer Hand. “The thing that links all of the songs is a sense of the unsaid, whether out of guilt, shame, repression, embarrassment, coyness, whatever it might have been. I realised: I am going to say these things, and not all of them are going to make me look good. The album made so many demands, and I just gave myself over to it.”

At this stage, where only a handful of close associates have heard the finished album, Hawk is still unsure of what the reaction might be from fans, critics, even family. He jokes that A Firmer Hand is the first of his records that his parents might not enjoy. “But the fact that it makes me nervous tells me it was the right thing to do.”

It takes only a couple of listens to be sure that it was a risk worth taking. And just a couple more to determine that A Firmer Hand is the best and boldest record Hamish Hawk has delivered to date. “It’s a bit of a coming of age record,” he says. And a record for the ages.

TRACK LISTING

1. Juliet As Epithet
2. Machiavelli’s Room
3. Big Cat Tattoos
4. Nancy Dearest
5. Autobiography Of Spy
6. You Can Film Me
7. Christopher St.
8. Men Like Wire
9. Questionable Hit
10. Disingenuous
11. Milk An Ending
12. The Hard Won

‘Million Dollar Baby’ is Pixey’s most accomplished and ambitious pop project to date, written between her bedroom in Liverpool and studios in London over the course of a year and a half. Self-produced by Pixey herself, alongside Tom McFarland (Jungle, Olivia Dean, Alfie Templeman) and Rich Turvey (Rachel Chinouriri, Blossoms, The Coral), the record follows her journey of self-discovery as an artist and shedding the illusions surrounding it. Combining her love for 90s breakbeats with her pop prowess and skill as a producer, ‘Million Dollar Baby’ samples and interpolates some of her favourite tracks to not only bridge the gap between old sounds and new, but to craft an entirely new sound altogether.

“This album is more than just music to me,” she says, “it’s the final form of years of trying to prove myself. I’ve always felt as if I’m so close to something but never quite there. This is the story the album tells; navigating the perception of myself through the male gaze, whilst also trying to take some power back and form my truest identity. The sentiment of the album is this: the path to fulfilment isn’t a performance for others but instead, is a journey of becoming your authentic self.”

Across her career to date, Pixey has picked up acclaim from The Times, The Sunday Times Culture, Notion, The Forty Five, NME, The Independent, DIY, Dork, The Line Of Best Fit, CLASH and more. She has also received swathes of tastemaker support across national radio at the likes of BBC Radio 1, where she has received a plethora of accolades including Best New Pop, Poppest Record, Future Bop, two Tune Of The Week nods and over 100 plays and 20M impressions across her entire catalogue.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Man Power
2. Million Dollar Baby
3. The Thrill Of It
4. Best Friend
5. Damage
Side B
6. Give A Little Of Your Love
7. Love Like Heaven
8. Bring Back The Beat
9. Oxygen
10. The War In My Mind

Dinked Edition Bonus 7":
SIDE A: MILLION DOLLAR BABY (PIANO VERSION)
SIDE B: OXYGEN (PIANO VERSION)

The Greatest Love follows the British trio’s critically acclaimed #1 selling album Californian Soil, which was released in 2021 and earned the band their second BRIT nomination for Best British Group. Arriving over a decade since the trio first entered our consciousness, the new album is a celebration; the sound of a band laying to rest the past and realising a newfound sense of freedom.

First single House embodies London Grammar’s new trajectory as frontwoman Hannah Reid delivers the uncompromising lyric: This is my place, my house, my rules. Speaking about the single Hannah said, “House is about drawing boundaries around yourself. When I hit my thirties, my mindset shifted, and I no longer felt like a victim of anything – it all felt within my power. I thought, making music should be fun, and we're gonna make that happen.”

Having first formed as teenagers at University, their seminal double-platinum selling debut If You Wait paved the way for what was to become a hugely successful career for the band, the rare longevity of which has firmly rooted London Grammar in British pop culture. Now over 10 years later, the band have sold more than 3 million albums world-wide, with two #1 selling records, 1 billion streams, an Ivor Novello and numerous BRIT Award nominations under their belts.

SPECIAL EDITION SIGNED BY BILLY CHILDISH & TED KESSLER.

BOUND IN LIME GREEN LINEN BOARDS, WITH FOILED TITLES DESIGNED BY BILLY AND HOUSED IN A CUSTOM KRAFT PAPER SOLANDER BOX WITH FOUR-COLOUR INSIDE PAINTING.

THIS EDITION ALSO INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE VINYL AND SIGNED WOODCUT PRINT BY BILLY CHILDISH.

STRICTLY LIMITED TO JUST 500 COPIES.

In 1977, 17-year-old Steven Hamper was a stonemason in the dockyards of Chatham, Kent. His heart, however, beat in sync with the punk rock tremors of the era, seduced by its celebration of amateurism. So, in a gesture of revolutionary defiance, he took a 3lb club hammer and smashed his hand, vowing to never work again. In doing so, Steven Hamper metamorphosed into Billy Childish, a true renaissance man.

Childish has since remained steadfastly true to punk's DIY cred, becoming one of the most recognisable and authentic voices in whichever artistic endeavour he undertakes. He has released over one hundred and fifty albums of raw rock and roll, punk, blues and folk, written many volumes of searing poetry as well as several autobiographical novels. But what he is perhaps best known for in recent years is his painting, for which he is now critically, commercially and internationally feted. He hasn't changed course in any of his disciplines, though. The world just caught up with the sheer volume of his brutally honest work.

To Ease My Troubled Mind is a mosaic portrait collated over a year of interviews with Childish, as well as with close family, ex-girlfriends, bandmembers past and present, friends, foes, collaborators, even his therapist. It is an unflinching, yet frequently spiritual and funny portrait of an artist whose obstacle-strewn upbringing formed the backbone of his work: raised in a broken home and abused as a child, Childish was an undiagnosed dyslexic in remedial class at school who is nevertheless now Britain's most prolific and uncompromising creative force.

The brand-new album by David Gilmour, ‘Luck and Strange’ was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is Gilmour’s first album of new material in nine years. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with ALT-J and Marika Hackman, with lyrics mostly written by Polly Samson, Gilmour’s co-writer for the past thirty years. The album features eight new tracks along with a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers’ ‘Between Two Points’, which sees Romany Gilmour, who performs backing vocals across the album, on vocals and harp. Musicians contributing to the record include Guy Pratt & Tom Herbert on bass, Adam Betts, Steve Gadd and Steve DiStanislao on drums, Rob Gentry & Roger Eno on keyboards and the string and choral arrangements are by Will Gardner. The title track also features the late Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, recorded in 2007 during a ‘Barn Jam’ at David’s house. The album’s cover image, photographed and designed by renowned artist Anton Corbijn, is inspired by lyrics written by Charlie Gilmour for the album’s final song ‘Scattered’.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
Black Cat (Gilmour)
Luck And Strange (Gilmour/Samson)
The Piper’s Call (Gilmour/Samson)
A Single Spark (Gilmour/ Samson)
Vita Brevis (Gilmour)
Between Two Points (Tranmer/Quigley)

Side 2
Dark And Velvet Nights (Gilmour/Samson)
Sings (Gilmour/Samson)
Scattered (D. Gilmour/Samson/C. Gilmour)

For 5 years after they'd swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents' East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination over endless cups of tea, with the music turned down low so as not to wake their sleeping sister. They knew they couldn't play in the same band because they'd argue too much, so they'd describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally they realised that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The rest was not silence, and picking up those conversations again more than 40 years later, William and Jim tell the full story of one of Britain's greatest guitar bands for the very first time - a wildly funny and improbably moving chronicle of brotherly strife, feedback, riots, drug and alcohol addiction, eternal outsiders and extreme shyness, that also somehow manages to be a love letter to the Scottish working-class family.

Fontaines DC, Massive Attack and Young Fathers have announced the pre-order release of an exclusive, limited edition vinyl record in support of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

*The 12” vinyl only release, features material from Fontaines DC, and Massive Attack/Young Fathers, and a ceasefire sleeve design by 3D of Massive Attack. 

The reverse sleeve of the 12” features words written on a hospital whiteboard in Gaza by Doctors Without Borders medic Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila – words which went viral on global social media - depicting the desperation of medical professionals and civilians in Gaza. Tragically, Dr Nujaila was killed in a strike a few weeks later.

"WHOEVER STAYS
UNTIL THE END
WILL TELL THE STORY,

WE DID WHAT WE COULD.
REMEMBER US"

Despite repeated deadly attacks on its staff, medics, surgeons, and aid conveys, Doctors Without Borders volunteers continue to offer critical support to the civilians of Gaza.

Fontaines DC, Massive Attack and Young Fathers have donated their music in full support of the incredible Doctors Without Borders staff working in Gaza today, as a statement for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank, and in solidarity with the Palestinian people living under a brutal military occupation.

Fontaines DC, Massive Attack & Young Fathers will donate 100% of the profits from this promotional venture to Médecins Sans Frontières (UK - charity number: 1026588) emergency operations in Gaza and the West Bank. The total donation is expected to be in excess of £150,000.

3D (Massive Attack) said: "The hourly scenes of horror in Gaza, with hospitals and schools bombed to dust and innocent civilians, journalists and doctors killed in unspeakable numbers has been made so much worse by more than ten weeks of abject political failure.
We're in awe of the Doctors Without Borders medics who place their lives on the line to help innocent civilians in Gaza. The ceasefire EP is a tribute to them, and their incredible ongoing work in truly indescribable circumstances. We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine”

Fontaines DC said: “Fontaines DC join millions across the world in demanding an immediate ceasefire and a permanent end to Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine. Since October, Doctors Without Borders have been on the ground in Gaza, where every human is an IDF target, risking their lives to give vital care to the thousands injured by Israel's indiscriminate attacks on the starving and defenceless. We feel utterly helpless in what we can do at this point however we do hope our small contribution to this record can raise some desperately needed funds for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. Ceasefire Now. Free Palestine”

Natalie Roberts, MSF Executive Director said: “After more than two months of war, Israel’s unrelenting and indiscriminate strikes on Gaza have caused unprecedented and catastrophic levels of civilian harm. Nowhere is safe. Hospitals that are overflowing with the sick and wounded are coming under fire or being raided by Israeli forces, killing doctors, health workers, colleagues. Our teams continue to do what they can without even the basic guarantees of safety. We desperately want to do more, but for that we need an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
Huge thanks to Massive Attack, Fontaines DC and Young Fathers for all their support.”

*Copies have been packed using different combinations of coloured vinyl and sleeves. All orders are selected at random.