After decimating Drake earlier this year with some of the greatest diss tracks to ever grace hip-hop, the GOAT Kendrick Lamar returns for one more victory lap with this surprise release 'GNX'. At this point with Kendrick album, you know what to do - GET ON IT!!!

TRACK LISTING

1. Wacced Out Murals
2. Squabble Up
3. Luther
4. Man At The Garden
5. Hey Now
6. Reincarnated
7. TV Off
8. Dodger Blue
9. Peekaboo
10. Heart Pt. 6
11. GNX
12. Gloria

‘Blindness’ is the vividly realised, clear-sightedly ambitious new album from Irish rock band The Murder Capital. The sound of a band firing on all cylinders that bristles with energy yet intimate and simultaneously expansive. Eleven songs that don’t hang about in terms of grabbing the listener.

TRACK LISTING

1. Moonshot
2. Words Lost Meaning
3.Can’t Pretend To Know
4. A Distant Life
5. Born Into The Fight
6. Love Of Country
7. The Fall
8. Death Of A Giant
9. Swallow
10. That Feeling
11. Trailing A Wing

Since its inception in 2010, A Love from Outer Space (ALFOS) has been a steady presence in the underground music scene, fostering a close-knit community with its regular, transformative dancefloor experiences.

Founded by the late Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston, both highly regarded DJs and producers, ALFOS was born out of a shared love for slower-paced music and quickly became a lasting and adventurous clubbing experience. Initially conceived as a response to the fast-paced mainstream scene, ALFOS took a different approach, maintaining a tempo of no more than 122 bpm.

The club night started in the intimate surroundings of The Waiting Room in North London, where its distinctive musical ethos found an immediate following. Over time, it evolved into a British clubbing institution, expanding to larger venues and eventually reaching an international audience.

ALFOS became known for its eclectic and hypnotic sound, blending everything from kosmische and house to dub and post-punk. The night developed a loyal following, with residencies at London's Phonox and Glasgow's Berkeley Suite, and it has taken its sound to various settings, from the Croatian coastline to the Golden Lion Pub in Todmorden.

Following Andrew Weatherall's passing in 2020, Sean Johnston has carried on the ALFOS legacy. During the pandemic, he launched the A Love from Outer Space Emergency Broadcast System, a series of livestreamed DJ sets that kept the community connected during a challenging time. These broadcasts were crucial in maintaining the ALFOS spirit when live events were paused, attracting a global audience and reinforcing the collective bond of the community.

This upcoming compilation reflects the music that has shaped ALFOS over the past 15 years while also hinting at its future. Compiled and mixed by Johnston, the 19-track album pays tribute to the club night’s rich history and its commitment to pushing musical boundaries forward.

Johnston explains, "The thing about ALFOS is that while we've always had one eye on the past, much of the music we play is forward-looking. This compilation seeks to captures that balance."

The album features a variety of exclusive tracks, including the sought-after Neville Watson remix of The Blow Monkeys and Brioski's "Call 626," alongside a wide range of sounds that both honour the past and embrace the future.

As ALFOS prepares to celebrate its 15th anniversary, its influence remains strong, offering a space for music lovers to come together, slow down, and explore new sounds.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl:
A1. Blow Monkeys - Save Me (Neville Watson's Dub)
A2. Cisco Cisco - If You Want Me (Jay Shepheard Remix)
A3. Bongo Entp. - Drømmen (SIRS Remix)
B1. Darlyn Vlys - Wuzu (Tyu Tribe Remix)
B2. Kimo - Whirl
B3. Discoscuro - Discoscuro
C1. Popular Tyre - Feel Like A Lazer Beam
C2. Class B Band - Repli-can (Edit)
C3. Bal5000 - Bleu Infini
D1. Phil Kieran - Find Love (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
D2. Das Komplex - 89
D3. Brioski - Calling 626 (Edit)

CD:
Disc 1 (Mixed)
1. The Blow Monkeys - Save Me (Neville Watson Remix)
2. Jonny Sender - Zhivago Zhivago
3. Cisco Cisco - If You Want Me (Jay Shepheard Remix)
4. Laars – None
5. Duncan Gray - Gone & Forgotten (feat Dominic Silvani)
6. Secret Circuit - JungleBones (Tiago Mix)
7. Bongo Entp. - Drømmen (SIRS Remix)
8. Feon - Round Earther
9. Darlyn Vlys - Wuzu (Tyu Tribe Remix)
10. Niv Ast - Jungle Marvin
11. Kimo – Whirl
12. Bal5000 - Bleu Infini
13. Discoscuro – Discoscuro
14. Popular Tyre - Feel Like A Lazer Beam
15. Class B Band - Repli-can
16. Phil Kieran - Find Love (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
17. Jazxing, Das Komplex - Neu Nostalgia (Das Komplex Remix)
18. Das Komplex – 89
19. Brioski - Calling 626

Disc 2 (Unmixed)
1. Blow Monkeys - Save Me (Neville Watson's Dub)
2. Cisco Cisco - If You Want Me (Jay Shepheard Remix)
3. Bongo Entp. - Drømmen (SIRS Remix)
4. Darlyn Vlys - Wuzu (Tyu Tribe Remix)
5. Kimo - Whirl
6. Discoscuro - Discoscuro
7. Popular Tyre - Feel Like A Lazer Beam
8. Class B Band - Repli-can (Edit)
9. Bal5000 - Bleu Infini
10. Phil Kieran - Find Love (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
11. Das Komplex - 89
12. Brioski - Calling 626 (Edit)

The Doves are back with their sixth studio album, 'Constellations For The Lonely'.

First emerging in 1998 with the release of their debut, vinyl-only 'Cedar' EP, Doves’ first album, 'Lost Souls' (2000), received both press and award-panel praise, before Number One follow-up, 'The Last Broadcast' (2002) provided the trio with a major breakthrough, offering with the hit singles, "There Goes The Fear" and "Pounding". Straight-to-Number One follow up, Some Cities (2005) and the difficult birth of the much-loved Kingdom of Rust (2009) appeared before an eleven year hiatus came to an end with Number One 'The Universal Want' (2020).  And now five years later the rejuvenated trio of Jez Williams, Jimi Goodwin and Andy Williams return with the epic and hugely anticipated 'Constellations For The Lonely'.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Renegade
2. Cold Dreaming
3. In The Butterfly House
4. Strange Weather
5. A Drop In The Ocean

Side B
1. Last Year’s Man
2. Stupid Schemes
3. Saint Teresa
4. Orlando
5. Southern Bell

Head over here if you want the 'Album Launch Show Bundle' edition.

Pastel are a 5-piece guitar band signed to independent Manchester label; Spirit of Spike Island - Having previously topped the vinyl charts with their debut EP, selling out shows across the UK and being personally chosen by Liam Gallagher to play at his Knebworth shows, their long awaited debut album 'souls in motion' is set to be released on January 17th 2025.

TRACK LISTING

Heroes Blood
Your Day
Dancing On A Pin
Isaiah
Running On Empty
Deeper Than Holy
Gone Too Fast
Leave A Light On (Velvet Storm)
Sunnyside
Escape

Following 'Shadow People' (2018) and 'De Pelicula' (2021) done with Laurent Garnier , The Limiñanas are making their big comeback with their new album entitled 'Faded' , whose first single is 'Prisoner of Beauty' featuring Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream), supporter of the band for years. The French psych-garage duo has also gathered on 'Faded' for duets artists such as Jon Spencer, Bertrand Belin, Rover, Penny, Anna Jean & Pascal Comelade.

TRACK LISTING

1. Spirale
2. Prisoner Of Beauty Feat. Bobby Gillespie
3. J'adore Le Monde Feat. Bertrand Belin
4. Shout Feat. Rover
5. Faded Feat. Penny
6. Catherine Feat. Anna Jean
7. The Dancer
8. Space Baby Feat. Jon Spencer & Pascal Comelade
9. Tu Viens Marie
10. Louie Louie
11. Autour De Chez Moi
12. Degenerate Star Feat. Jon Spencer & Pascal Comelade
13. Où Va La Chance (Françoise Hardy Cover)

On his new album Wasteland, Jim Ghedi has created something huge. Intense, brooding, bold, at times apocalyptic, and remarkably vast. A profoundly bold sonic statement that is some of the most rich, far-reaching and ambitious work that Ghedi has created to date - pushing the boundaries of what folk music can be in 2025.

Wasteland is a record that is unafraid to plunge into the darkness of the modern world and embrace the weirder, edgier and more unnerving moments that come from doing so. It is an album that captures all the enormity of life from the micro to the macro, zooming in on the personal as well reflecting on broader societal issues.

“Wasteland is about the idea of a place once known or familiar that is now broken down and unrecognisable,” says Ghedi. “It’s about exploring the process of watching someone’s surroundings and environment collapse.” And within that you have a lot going on. “It also explores death, personal loss, grief, mental health and how the natural world provides solace and meaning for that loss and how these worlds blur into one another.”

Ghedi has always been an artist that in many ways perfectly encompasses folk music in its purest form but he is also someone that frequently pushes the boundaries of that label and no more so is that apparent than on this record. As like previous albums, such as 2018’s A Hymn for Ancient Land and 2021’s In the Furrows of Common Place, Ghedi uses traditional folk songs as a means to explore contemporary issues via modern and experimentally-leaning music. “With the traditional material on this album I wanted to find songs with content that resonated with me,” says Ghedi. “But also that were based roughly around the north of England.” This is a central underlying theme to the album for Ghedi. The feelings of loss, erosion, and degradation are often most pronounced in working class communities and this was something he wanted to weave in. “It was important to voice and choose material that represented or expressed issues that correlated with things going on around me.”

However, as remarkable as some of the traditional material is, some of the most arresting work on the album is Ghedi’s entirely original compositions. Lead single ‘Wasteland’ is a stunning piece of work that while rooted in an environment being corrupted and broken – “there’s violence on these hills” Ghedi sorrowfully sings, before claiming this is no longer somewhere that can be called home – it is also a stirringly beautiful composition that soars and glides as it opens up, as sweeping strings swoop and in and out of Ghedi’s twangy electric guitar.

The decision to incorporate more fuller sounds, such as electric guitar and huge drums, results in a notable shift and evolution in tone for Ghedi. “The lyrical content needed something more band-driven and loud to deliver them,” he explains. “Incorporating the electric guitar in my songwriting was also a big part of opening the sound up, using drop tunings pushed me to use my voice in a wider range, which forced me to use falsetto a lot which I haven’t previously done before. That then opened the sound up and gave me creative ideas for bigger arrangements and to sonically really push things.”
Recorded over 2 years at Tesla Studios in Sheffield, with David Glover engineering and producing, it also features a wide cast of musicians such as David Grubb (fiddle), Daniel Bridgwood-Hill (fiddle), Neal Heppleston (bass), Joe Danks (drums), Dean Honer from I Monster (synths), Cormac MacDiarmada from Lankum (vocals), Ruth Clinton from Landless (vocals) and Amelia Baker from Cinder Well (vocals).

What Ghedi has done in creating his masterpiece is construct a remarkable space where deeply intimate and personal feelings coexist with reflections on environment, place and society, while also interweaving historical context via traditional songs. Wasteland is as much of a world to explore and exist in as much as it is an album, with Ghedi carving out his distinctly unique sonic language and voice to explore that singular environment.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Old Stones
2. What Will Become Of England
3. Newtondale / Blue John
4. Wasteland
5. Just A Note

Side B
1. Sheaf & Feld
2. Hester
3. The Seasons
4. Wishing Tree
5. Trafford Road Ballad

Saint Etienne take us gently by the hand, to sink deep down through the layers of the after-hours and pull tired minds back from the brink of despair. With The Night all anxieties abate, the wickedness of a quickening mind is slowed to a soft-focus smear, and everything takes on a lofty and agreeable appeal of utter tranquillity.

The Night belongs to a long tradition that begins in the pre-times with one man finding solace in the sound of the wind in the grass or water running over rock, then strolls on through centuries of softening sounds, passing through collage and the music of the new age.

It takes in contemporary somnambulist masterpieces such as Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, the KLF’s Chill Out and Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden. Its architecture is ambient, its lighting low, its surfaces gleaming with infinite possibility. All nocturnal life is to be found here, but though in the basement of the night the dimensions are different. Words take on new meaning, shadows lean ever longer and a lone fox pauses beneath a solitary streetlight on a nameless street, something snatched and held between its beautiful, bladed teeth. Out here anything is possible.

Hectic times breed hectic minds but here there is no such thing as a lonely hour, just the many laminated layers of The Night and all the soothing secrets that lie within.

So easy does it. Slip on in. And breathe.

TRACK LISTING

1 Settle In
2 Half Light
3 Through The Glass
4 Nightingale
5 Northern Counties East
6 Ellar Carr
7 When You Were Young
8 No Rush
9 Gold
10 Celestial
11 Preflyte
12 Wonderlight
13 Hear My Heart
14 Alone Together

“I think this is the best thing we've ever done, it's a proper step up.” It’s immediately clear that the Hull band have broken new ground on Microtonic. “The last album was essentially like a bridge between the two albums,” the band say of 2023’s I Don’t Know. “With that one we knew what we were trying to do but with this one we've fully cracked it.”

Bdrmm’s trademark sound hasn’t disappeared by any means, the band's more guitar-heavy beginnings a blueprint and influence on many of the groups breaking through in the here and now, a time when shoegaze is enjoying its strongest revival since its inception in the 80s, but those guitars are now incorporated into a broader, more expansive and varied sonic palette.

"Microtonic", recorded with long-term band collaborator Alex Greaves, features guest appearances from Working Men's Club and Olivesque of Nightbus.

TRACK LISTING

1 Goit (featuring Working Men’s Club)
2 John On The Ceiling
3 Infinity Peaking
4 Snares
5 In The Electric Field (featuring Olivesque)
6 Microtonic
7 Clarkycat
8 Sat In The Heat
9 Lake Disappointment
10 The Noose

Mogwai’s “The Bad Fire” was recorded at Chem19 studios in Scotland with American Grammy Award winning producer John Congleton (St Vincent, Angel Olsen, John Grant) joining the band in the studio for their eleventh album. A Scottish colloquialism for Hell, The Bad Fire draws inspiration from a series of tough personal moments that the band found themselves in following on from their chart-topping tenth album, As The Love Continues. All vinyl comes packaged in a gatefold sleeve, with MP3 download code and etching. 

TRACK LISTING

1. God Gets You Back
2. Hi Chaos
3. What Kind Of Mix Is This?
4. Fanzine Made Of Flesh
5. Pale Vegan Hip Pain
6. If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others
7. 18 Volcanoes
8. Hammer Room
9. Lion Rumpus
10. Fact Boy

To be released in three formats, this celebratory re-imagining of ‘Va Va Voom’ sees David revisiting Cinerama's remarkable debut, originally released in 1998.

The Deluxe Edition consists of two coloured vinyl LPs and two CDs containing both a full studio re-recording of the original album together with a live recording of the album from August 2023, which can also be viewed on an accompanying DVD.

A Double CD + DVD set contains both these recordings, along with the aforementioned DVD, while a Picture Disc also features the studio re-recording. 

Since the release of 2022’s 'Versions of Modern Performance', “compelling from its first note to its very last” (NME), much has changed for Horsegirl. In the fall of that year, they relocated to New York City, where Penelope and Nora were to attend NYU leading to the first time the trio had written music outside of Penelope's parents' basement. You can hear the push in a new direction by virtue of their new environment, but through this time of unparalleled change, the band turns inward.

Horsegirl returned to Chicago to record in January 2024, finding focus and intimacy in the studio that can only arise when it's simply too cold to step outside. Cate Le Bon led them into new, bright, clear, sonic territories highlighting the inventive nature of these songs. New tools help bring this world to life; violins, synths, and gamelan tiles are all woven into the record. The songs are a testament to experimenting with space and texture while maintaining a pop song at the core. All the while, a confident simplicity brings the band's songwriting ability to the forefront.

It’s hard to imagine any of these songs being written by anyone but Nora, Penelope, and Gigi. Horsegirl write with unanticipated honesty, leading us through scenes of girlhood and youth. These are moments of their lives. The indelible truth is that Horsegirl is a band of best friends; being around them you can see that love in their eyes and it is always a joyous thing to witness. It’s a love that is ever-present in 'Phonetics On and On' as tenderness reverberates back and forth across the recording.

TRACK LISTING

1. Where’d You Go
2. Rock City
3. In Twos
4. 2468
5. Well I Know You’re Shy
6. Julie
7. Switch Over
8. Information Content
9. Frontrunner
10. Sport Meets Sound
11. I Can’t Stand To See You

The concept tying together every last note and lyric of ‘Earth-Sized Worlds’ - the debut album from the London/Oxford self-dubbed ‘Flowerkraut’ collective Mandrake Handshake - is an awfully simple one: ‘Welcome to Space Beach’. A mantra to unite under one aesthetic roof the various creative compulsions of this complex, multi-limbed organism - varying at any one time between 7 to 10 members - it’s an album that conspires the alienating vastness of the cosmos against the warm nostalgias of home. Full of surprise, leftfield turns and closeted experimentations, tape-soaked Brazilian Sambas morphs into Kosmische Kraturock crusades, and shimmering avant-pop electronics melt into sweetened psychedelic bliss… “Welcome to the Spacebeach - the new era of the Mandrake. Here, where the sea joins the sky, and where the trees touch the stars and where we will have you stay a while”.

With news of their biggest UK headline show to date at London’s No90 (Hackney Wick) on February 28th next year, Mandrake Handshake are certainly firing on all cylinders as their debut album release draws ever closer. Having already showcased lead singles ‘Charlie’s Comet’, ‘King Cnut’ and ‘The Change And The Changing’ as they experiment further with their eccentric brand of ‘Flowerkraut’: a hedonistic, brain-frying feast of krautrock, art-pop and psychedelia.

Varying anywhere between 7-10 members - including a dedicated, flamboyant tambourine shaker - their pristine, multi-limbed spectacle of a live show has journeyed up and down the UK and EU in recent times. With multiple headline tours to their name, including a sold-out show at London’s iconic 100 Club and headline slot on the BBC Introducing stage at Truck Festival earlier this year, the group have already ticked off slots at the likes of Wide Awake, Green Man and Manchester Psych Fest, as well as shows with psych-figureheads W.H Lung, Pale Blue Eyes, Triptides and Sugar Candy Mountain, and will embark on a UK tour supporting Del Amitri in December as their profile continues to soar.

With two critically acclaimed EPs already to their name - ‘Shake The Hand That Feeds You’ (released via Nice Swan Records) and ‘The Triple Point of Water’ - Mandrake Handshake’s long list of press champions includes The Independent, The i, NME, Loud & Quiet, Dork, DIY, So Young, The Line Of Best Fit, Rough Trade, Clash, Crackand Guitar World, as well as extensive BBC 6 Music (Deb Grant, Don Letts, Gideon Coe), Radio X (John Kennedy) airplay, and being crowned BBC Introducing Oxford/Buckinghamshire's Band of the Year.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Time Goes Up
Hypsersonic Super-Asterid

Side B
Charlie’s Comet
The Change And The Changing
Lorenzo’s Desk

Side C
King Cnut
Barranmode

Side D
Find The Tree And Dig (Deep)!
Earth Sized Worlds

The War On Drugs, "one of the premier live bands of their generation" (Pitchfork), announce Live Drugs Again, via Super High Quality Records and Transgressive / Canvasback.

Live Drugs Again follows 2020's Live Drugs and represents The War On Drugs at their ragged, righteous best. Bandleader Adam Granduciel comments, "Live Drugs Again chronicles the evolution of these songs from the studio to stages all over the world; documenting our continued growth as a live band. This series ensures that these versions, and some of our favorite moments on stage, will live on." As Consequence so accurately hailed, "it's hard to imagine a musical experience that's more enveloping and uplifting." This is hearing a band at its peak.

TRACK LISTING

Harmonia's Dream
Burning
Old Skin
Come To The City
I Don't Wanna Wait
Pain
Slow Ghost
In Chains
Living Proof
Under The Pressure
I Don't Live Here Anymore

Showcasing whip-smart spikiness remains, and a gorgeous weirdness matched by very few others, it's easy to see why wonk pop 7-piece KEG are one of the most talked about bands of 2024. Soon they'll be THE band of 2025.

Their forthcoming debut album Fun’s Over represents the culmination of KEG's initial forays into life, and as such leaps all over—from the melodic to the demented with all the enthusiasm of a very lively bean salad. Sharp angling guitarwork that would be at home both on a Fugazi or a Wilco record. Cascading synths and drums, pepperings of trombone and lyrics which invite you into a baffled man's brain full of joy and anxiety.

Contrary to the previous releases the album takes its time, allowing Keg to showcase the orchestral leanings of the band, melding textures and battering-ram rhythms, whilst all the time managing to hone their carefully manipulated balance of chaos and order.

Recorded between the studio and home, Keg have refined their DIY approach this time around, producing the record themselves with engineering help from Pozi’s Toby Burroughs and mixed by Connor Simpkins.

Offsetting the braggadocious shredding and bombastic instrumentation the lyrics on the album take a much less cocksure approach—beckoning you into a yearning for suburban living, slightly embarrassing admissions of inadequacy, the feeling of creative failure freeing the imagination, taking pleasure in the mundanity of an unsure mind, bathing for freedom, and just a couple simple love songs. 

Nonesuch releases a deluxe edition of Wilco’s 2004 Grammy Award–winning album 'A Ghost Is Born'. The box set comprises either nine vinyl LPs and four CDs or nine CDs – including the original album, alternates, outtakes, and demos, charting the making of A Ghost Is Born – plus the complete 2004 concert recording from Boston’s Wang Center and the band’s “fundamentals” workshop sessions. It includes 65 previously unreleased music tracks as well as a 48-page hardcover book with previously unpublished photos and a new liner note by Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr.

'A Ghost Is Born' was released commercially on June 22, 2004, debuting at No. 8 on the Billboard chart. The album, which Mehr calls ‘an eclectic array of dark ballads, upbeat pop songs, Krautrock chug, noise rock freakouts, and roots rock abandon,’ was widely acclaimed as one of 2004’s best, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NPR, NME, the Associated Press, The Wire, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and Uncut, among many others. The album earned the band its first Grammy, for Best Alternative Music Album. The album also won a Grammy for Best Recording Package.

For the 'A Ghost Is Born' recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Mikael Jorgensen; Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the band’s previous release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, co-produced the album with Wilco. Leroy Bach left Wilco at the completion of the sessions and the band announced the addition of two new members: Pat Sansone and Nels Cline. Sansone and Cline toured with Wilco to promote A Ghost Is Born and that lineup has remained unchanged since 2004. As Tweedy said to Mehr for his new liner note, “Making that record, and then finding this lineup, that was the start of something – of having a band that can play anything. That’s why, 20 years later, we’re still here and still going.”

Wilco first began sessions for what would become 'A Ghost Is Born' in early 2002 at Chicago’s Soma E.M.S., where they had mixed 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'. Much of the album was tracked live in the studio with O’Rourke and engineer Chris Shaw. They also reunited there with engineer and soon-to-be-bandmate Mikael Jorgensen.

At Soma, the band began sketching out music using Tweedy’s notebooks of lyrics, poetry, and prose. Mehr notes: ‘In between more traditional song tracking, the group would engage in a series of conceptual improvisations in the studio. These musical experiments, broadly known as ‘Fundamentals’… were part of what Kotche said was ‘an attempt to search for a new group identity. To see what we could make this band into.’’

In the fall of 2003, the band relocated to New York to finish recording at Sear Sound. “It seemed like the band needed to get out of Chicago, get out of the working mode they’d been in, and only be thinking about making a record,” O’Rourke told Mehr. There, playing together in the corner of a large studio, the album began to take its final shape.

Emerging from a period of addiction and rehab, Tweedy discussed how he feels about 'A Ghost Is Born' in retrospect. As he told Mehr, “I was worried the album was going to feel like something dark and not me anymore. But the album was ahead of me as a person. It was the part of me that I was trying to preserve – enthusiastic and furious about the world, as well as open and loving. I reached that in the music, before I could get there emotionally on my own.”

TRACK LISTING

9LP & 4CD Box Set/9CD Box Set Tracklist:
A Ghost Is Born
1. At Least That’s What You Said
2. Hell Is Chrome
3. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
4. Muzzle Of Bees
5. Hummingbird
6. Handshake Drugs
7. Wishful Thinking
8. Company In My Back
9. I’m A Wheel
10. Theologians
11. Less Than You Think
12. The Late Greats

dBpm: Outtakes/Alternates 1
13. At Least That’s What You Said (8/13/02 SOMA-Chicago)
14. Hell Is Chrome (10/5/03 SOMA-Chicago)
15. Spiders (Kidsmoke) (9/28/03 SOMA-Chicago)
16. Muzzle Of Bees (7/15/03 SOMA-Chicago)
17. Hummingbird (2/8/02 SOMA-Chicago)
18. Handshake Drugs (11/13/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
19. Wishful Thinking (11/1/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
20. Company In My Back (2/8/03 Hothouse-St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia)
21. I’m A Wheel (August 2002 SOMA-Chicago)
22. Theologians (3/19/03 SOMA-Chicago)
23. Less Than You Think (11/11/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
24. The Late Greats (7/19/03 SOMA-Chicago)
25. Kicking Television (3/18/03 SOMA-Chicago)
26. The High Heat (2/5/02 SOMA-Chicago)
27. Panthers (March 2003 SOMA-Chicago)
28. Diamond Claw (3/21/03 SOMA-Chicago)
29. Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard (June 2002 SOMA-Chicago)
30. More Like The Moon (2/8/02 SOMA-Chicago)
31. Improbable Germany (10/7/03 SOMA-Chicago)

Unstitched: Outtakes/Alternates 2
32. Handshake Drugs (First Version) (6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago)
33. Hummingbird (February 2002 Recorded Live During Tracking At SOMA-Chicago)
34. The High Heat (2/4/02 SOMA-Chicago)
35. Spiders (Kidsmoke) (February 2002 SOMA-Chicago)
36. Diamond Claw (March 2003 SOMA-Chicago)
37. Muzzle Of Bees (October 2003 Sear Sound-NYC)
38. Like A Stone (11/10/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
39. Leave Me (Like You Found Me) (6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago)
40. Losing Interest (11/11/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
41. Old Maid (6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago)
42. Spiders (Kidsmoke) (August 2002 SOMA-Chicago)
43. Panthers (October 2003 Sear Sound-NYC)
44. Muzzle Of Bees (7/16/03 SOMA-Chicago)
45. Diamond Claw (10/9/03 SOMA-Chicago)
46. Losing Interest (7/20/03 SOMA-Chicago)
47. Spiders (Kidsmoke) (October 2003 SOMA-Chicago)
48. The Thanks I Get (6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago)
49. Two Hat Blues (March 2003 SOMA-Chicago)
50. Improbable Germany (January 2002 Pre-Production Loft Session-Chicago)

The Hook At The Wang (Live October 1, 2004 At The Wang Center-Boston, MA)
51. Muzzle Of Bees
52. Company In My Back
53. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
54. A Shot In The Arm
55. Hell Is Chrome
56. Handshake Drugs
57. Jesus, Etc.
58. Hummingbird
59. I’m Always In Love
60. At Least That’s What You Said
61. Ashes Of American Flags
62. Theologians
63. I’m The Man Who Loves You
64. Poor Places
65. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
66. She’s A Jar
67. A Magazine Called Sunset
68. Kingpin
69. The Late Greats
70. I’m A Wheel
71. Via Chicago
72. California Stars
73. Christ For President

Fundamentals (On CD In The LP Boxset)
74. Fundamental 1
75. Fundamental 2
76. Fundamental 3
77. Fundamental 4
78. Fundamental 5
79. Fundamental 6
80. Fundamental 7


2CD Tracklist:
CD1 - A Ghost Is Born
1. At Least That’s What You Said
2. Hell Is Chrome
3. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
4. Muzzle Of Bees
5. Hummingbird
6. Handshake Drugs
7. Wishful Thinking
8. Company In My Back
9. I’m A Wheel
10. Theologians
11. Less Than You Think
12. The Late Greats

CD2 - DBpm: Outtakes/Alternates
13. At Least That’s What You Said (8/13/02 SOMA-Chicago)
14. Hell Is Chrome (10/5/03 SOMA-Chicago)
15. Spiders (Kidsmoke) (9/28/03 SOMA-Chicago)
16. Muzzle Of Bees (7/15/03 SOMA-Chicago)
17. Hummingbird (2/8/02 SOMA-Chicago)
18. Handshake Drugs (11/13/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
19. Wishful Thinking (11/1/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
20. Company In My Back (2/8/03 Hothouse-St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia)
21. I’m A Wheel (August 2002 SOMA-Chicago)
22. Theologians (3/19/03 SOMA-Chicago)
23. Less Than You Think (11/11/03 Sear Sound-NYC)
24. The Late Greats (7/19/03 SOMA-Chicago)
25. Kicking Television (3/18/03 SOMA-Chicago)
26. The High Heat (2/5/02 SOMA-Chicago)
27. Panthers (March 2003 SOMA-Chicago)
28. Diamond Claw (3/21/03 SOMA-Chicago)
29. Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard (June 2002 SOMA-Chicago)
30. More Like The Moon (2/8/02 SOMA-Chicago)
31. Improbable Germany (10/7/03 SOMA-Chicago)


2LP Tracklist:
1. At Least That’s What You Said
2. Hell Is Chrome
3. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
4. Muzzle Of Bees
5. Hummingbird
6. Handshake Drugs
7. Wishful Thinking
8. Company In My Back
9. I’m A Wheel
10. Theologians
11. Less Than You Think
12. The Late Greats

Some called Studio, the project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, “the missing link between The Cure and Lindstrøm,” Pitchfork heard Durutti Column and Can, as the duo’s story became swept up in a loosely developing scene — adjacent first to the label Service (Jens Lekman, The Whitest Boy Alive) and later Sincerely Yours (The Tough Alliance, jj) — and a precursor to the 2010s boom at the axis of electronic and psychedelic music guided by indie greats like Caribou, Four Tet, and Darkside.

'West Coast', their seminal 2006 debut, captured a faraway romanticism of Balearic brushed up against Krautrock, disco, dub, and afrobeat, with pop lyricism lifted from new wave, all made modern by two art school grads in Gothenburg. First pressed in a small vinyl-only run via their own Information label, the album has been notably absent from most streaming services, and the internet’s record of its initial impact is all but fossilized from a bygone blog era, while its sound is simply untraceable to any one moment in music.

Outside of three 7” releases, they’d keep the music to themselves for several more years. In 2005, Hägg remembers, “We got our degrees and were kicked out of our studio spaces so all these recordings were just piled up. A year later we dusted them off and started to deconstruct and assemble them in a more drawn-out fashion.” In the same breadth, they cite DJ Screw, J Dilla, and Joy Division, along with early ‘80s European live DJ sets from the likes of Beppe Loda, Dj Mozart, and Baldelli as reference points. “The anything-goes mentality was very encouraging and was a big cornerstone to the Studio sound,” says Hägg. “But there’s so much more to the picture, we were not that young then and had lots of musical baggage in our suitcases, the new thing was that we finally let it all come through, not bound by any borders that was often the case with music identity in Sweden during the 90s.”

In the afterglow of the record’s 2007 reception, Studio receded from view, clouded behind a mountain of remix requests (including one for Kylie Minogue that saw release) and label bureaucracy. “It’s easy to wish we would have done some proper recordings of our own instead,” Hägg reflects. But both artists, now well into respective careers beyond Studio, have come to peace with West Coast as their most enduring effort together. Lissvik adds, “It serves as a good reminder for me to keep to that decision and promise and to continue exploring and growing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Out There
2. West Coast
3.Origin
4. Life’s A Beach!
5. Self Service
6. Indo

Squid’s new album Cowards is about evil. Nine stories whose protagonists reckon with cults, charisma and apathy. Real and imagined characters wading into the dark ocean between right and wrong.

Cowards is Squid’s most courageous album: simultaneously growing in scope and returning to basics. The band recorded Cowards at Church Studios in Crouch End with Mercury prize winning producers Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. On additional production is longtime shifu and collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums. The record was mixed in Seattle by John McEntire, before being compressed by the rich analogue chain of Heba Kadry’s mastering in Brooklyn, New York.

Squid have come a long way since forming in 2016 as an instrumental jazz band for a monthly night in Brighton. Their debut album Bright Green Field (2021) arrived as the world was starting to open up after the pandemic and they broke into the top 5 in the UK chart. In 2023 they released their sophomore album, the brooding O Monolith, which took the band all over the world and broke new ground that hardly seemed possible years prior.

TRACK LISTING

Crispy Skin
Building 650
Blood On The Boulders
Fieldworks I
Fieldworks II
Cro-Magnon Man
Cowards
Showtime!
Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence)

Deluxe Edition 10" Bonus Tracks:
Phenomenal World
Crispy Skin
The Hearth And Circle Round Fire

Manchester-based poet, writer and producer Antony Szmierek has announced the release of his debut album, Service Station At The End Of The Universe. The past few years have been a wild ride for the artist. Cutting his teeth on the Manchester spoken word scene and gaining notoriety for his seamless flow skewering everything from the hardships of contemporary British life to finding the unexpected beauty in the everyday, it was the 2023 release of his single ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Fallacy’ that kicked off his meteoric ascent. The earworming track soon found its way onto the BBC 6 Music airwaves and led Szmierek to be named an Artist of the Year 2023 by the station. There followed appearances on Later… with Jools Holland, a BBC Radio 1 Maida Vale session, multiple triumphant Glastonbury sets and a flurry of comparisons: to the pavement prose of The Streets, the poetry of John Cooper Clarke if he found himself at the Haçienda, or like Jarvis Cocker for the UK Garage generation.

Yet, with the release of his 2023 indie-influenced EP Poems To Dance To and now his banger-filled, dancefloor-focused debut album, Service Station at the End of the Universe, Szmierek cements his sound as one that is distinctly his own. While the album provides a culmination of the deep dancefloor poetry that began with ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Fallacy’, it also showcases a new side to Szmierek’s writing, producing moments of downbeat, dark poignance. The album produces a cohesive and infectious journey through pop melodic hooks and thumping dancefloor orchestrations.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Service Station At The End Of The Universe
2. Rafters
3. The Great Pyramid Of Stockport
4. Big Light
5. Yoga Teacher
6. Crumb

Side 2:
7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Fallacy
8. Passingthru
9. Take Me There
10. Restless Leg Syndrome
11. Crashing Up
12. Angie’s Wedding

Daft Punk’s second album Discovery, the triumphant 2001 album that spawned anthems such as “One More Time,” “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” and “Veridis Quo” will be re-released in a limited quantity with original Japanese edition artwork by the legendary Leiji Matsumoto on December 12. 

Physical editions will reflect the original Japanese edition, and will include stickers and a Daft Club card, which became a true collectors’ item around its original release.

Rome is the definitive live document of The National. Recorded live (without overdubs) on June 3, 2024 at the architecturally stunning venue Parco Della Musica Ennio Morricone, named for the famed Italian film composer, the 21-track LP showcases scintillating versions of beloved songs like "Bloodbuzz Ohio," "Don't Swallow the Cap," "I Need My Girl," "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness," “England” and "Fake Empire"; plus sharpened readings of recent tracks "Eucalyptus," "New Order T-Shirt," "Tropic Morning News" and the boundary pushing "Smoke Detector."

The double album, mixed by longtime collaborator Peter Katis, spans the band’s 20-plus years of songwriting and reveals how each song has taken on a new life in its live performance. “You have to see this band live” is often said about The National, and now, Rome is the next best thing to actually being there.

Reflecting how the band changes setlists significantly from night to night to cast fresh light on hidden gems from the catalog, Rome is marked by rarities such as show opener “Runaway,” “Lemonworld,” “The Geese of Beverly Road,” “Lit Up” and a tour de force pairing of “Humiliation” from the critically acclaimed album Trouble Will Find Me into Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers’ “Murder Me Rachael.”

The Rome encore features the election anthem “Mr. November,” and, from High Violet, “Terrible Love” and the show-closing fan singalong, “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.”

TRACK LISTING

Runaway
Eucalyptus
Tropic Morning News
New Order T-Shirt
Don't Swallow The Cap
Bloodbuzz Ohio
The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness
I Need My Girl
Lemonworld
The Geese Of Beverly Road
Lit Up
Alien
Humiliation
Murder Me Rachael
England
Graceless
Fake Empire
Smoke Detector
Mr November
Terrible Love
Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks

2nd and final album by a band lost much too early after the death of bassist Jimmy Fernandez. First time on vinyl since 1994.

New vinyl transfer (by Frank Arkwright, Abbey Road) made from original production masters and now expanded to a 2LP set for maximum sonic fidelity.

The God Machine were an alternative rock band who were formed in San-Diego in 1990 and in their short lifespan released 2 highly influential albums on Fiction Records, ‘Scenes From The Second Storey’ (1992) and ‘One Last Laugh In A Place of Dying’ (1993).

Jim Chancellor, head honcho at Fiction writes, “The God Machine are one of the most unknow influencers of what is now known as post rock / metal. Citing praise from as diverse a bunch of artists as Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Mogwai, Converge, and many more”.

Despite receiving glowing reviews for their 2 seminal albums and live performances supporting the likes of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Cramps, The Fall, My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain, the band suffered from falling between 2 stools by being “too indie for the American audience and too rock for the UK audience”.

BBC Radio 1 DJ, John Peel, was a champion of the band and invited them to record sessions in April 1992 and March 1993.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1: The Tremelo Song 4:02
A2: Mama 2:52
A3: Alone 4:48
A4: In Bad Dreams 3:08
Approx: 14:50

Side B
B1: Painless 3:58
B2: The Love Song 3:55
B3: The Life Song 4:41
B4: The Devil Song 5:04
Approx: 17:41

Side C
C1: The Hunter 7:57
C2: Evol 4:06
Approx: 12:03

Side D
D1: The Train Song 4:26
D2: The Flower Song 5:41
D3: Boy By The Roadside 5:50
Approx: 15:57

An underground post-rock classic available on double-vinyl for the first time since 1993.

New vinyl transfer (by Frank Arkwright, Abbey Road) made from original production masters.

The God Machine were an alternative rock band who were formed in San-Diego in 1990 and in their short lifespan released 2 highly influential albums on Fiction Records, ‘Scenes From The Second Storey’ (1992) and ‘One Last Laugh In A Place of Dying’ (1993).

Jim Chancellor, head honcho at Fiction writes, “The God Machine are one of the most unknow influencers of what is now known as post rock / metal. Citing praise from as diverse a bunch of artists as Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Mogwai, Converge, and many more”.

Despite receiving glowing reviews for their 2 seminal albums and live performances supporting the likes of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Cramps, The Fall, My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain, the band suffered from falling between 2 stools by being “too indie for the American audience and too rock for the UK audience”.

BBC Radio 1 DJ, John Peel, was a champion of the band and invited them to record sessions in April 1992 and March 1993.

TRACK LISTING

A1: Dream Machine
A2: She Said
A3: The Blind Man
A4: I’ve Seen The Man
B1: The Desert Song
B2: Home
B3: It’s All Over
B4: Temptation
C1: Out
C2: Ego
C3: Seven
D1: Purity
D2: The Piano Song 

Burial and Kode9’s acclaimed joint 12”, initially released as a Hyperdub webshop exclusive in summer 2024, now available in record stores worldwide, with revised label art and custom sleeve.

TRACK LISTING

A. Burial – Phoneglow
AA. Kode9 - Eyes Go Blank

One of the UK’s most exciting new singer-songwriters and multidisciplinary artists, Clara’s evocative debut album ‘Rift’ navigates the fractured environment of the in-between - those liminal spaces exposed between light and dark, growth and remorse, loss and reclamation. It is a record that makes a strong case for hope, those luminescent silver linings in the dark.

Mann’s music reflects the people and places that have shaped and held her - physically, emotionally, and creatively. Raised in the Lot Valley in rural France before moving to the UK for her teens, these formative years provided her with a deep sense of belonging, identity, and growth. Yet, it is in motion, in placelessness, that Mann feels most at home: “Just the sun above me and my keys and my car.” Her new record is a testament to this state of in-betweenness, inviting you to step into a place that has always existed within yourself.

After releasing her second EP ‘Stay Open’ in 2022, the time and space between then and now has culminated in ‘Rift’, Mann’s first album, which vividly gestures toward the fractures and ruptures that define our lives. Yet, it is more than just an album; it captures the journey and strength it takes to look inward and to move forwards through the pain of it all. Its first track, ‘It Only Hurts’, begins in a place of hopelessness, stemming from the loss of a relationship and, in turn, a future. It is a blank space that stretches out before you, where the landscape is torn apart like icebergs cracking and drifting. But hope remains a beacon of light throughout the album, a lighthouse guiding you across tumultuous waters.

Influenced by artists like Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf, Judee Sill, and Tom Waits, Mann has a deep love and care for songwriting. Her lyrics are vivid and visceral, and her approach to songwriting is not one of purging emotions but rather of composting them—digesting life’s experiences and cultivating them into something meaningful, tangible, hopeful. She is also a talented visual artist, and this often plays an integral role in her songwriting process. Using the intricate and sweeping motion of illustrating with ink, charcoal, and sometimes watercolour, she can evoke thoughts and poetry onto the page, offering a way of making sense of things and to communicate in a way that words alone cannot.

For Mann, the album is a tangible expression of her entire world—a snow globe raised in her palms for the world to see, in all its layers and complexities, containing all her love, relationships, memories, and experiences. It is this sheer transparency that has allowed her to relinquish and accept all parts of herself—the guilt, pain, and beauty of it all—like “swallows in the morning air, circling the dam.” Its truthfulness is its strength, not shying away from the painful experiences of life but embracing them as essential to the human experience and as part of our tapestry.

With ‘Rift’, Clara Mann acknowledges the cracks through which both despair and hope can seep. It is a deeply personal record, yet it is universally resonant, holding the mirror up to herself and to the world around her. It is a record that reflects on embracing our fault lines, navigating the ruptures that can erupt from them and moving forwards, in motion, with a renewed sense of self and aliveness. Mann’s debut album, ‘Rift’ is all of her - her past, her present, her emotions, her experiences - and now, it is for you.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
It Only Hurts 3:14
'Til I Come Around 3:04
Driving Home The Long Way 2:49
Stadiums 3:56
Reasons 2:32

Side B:
Remember Me (Train Song) 3:08
Doubled Over 2:32
Rift 3:15
Oranges 2:52
The Dream 3:37

The Return Of The Loft!

The Loft notched up an impressive list of firsts for Creation Records' artists back in the mid-80s. First Creation band on TV, first to hit the top of the indie singles chart, first to be invited on to a major UK tour and first Creation band to record a coveted BBC radio session - for Janice Long's Radio One show in 1984. Then they split up.

Since that infamous onstage tragedy; splitting up mid-song, at the Hammersmith Palais in front of 3,000 people when on the verge of Big Time indie greatness, the band has reunited. Just as their status as one of the UK's most influential guitar bands of the 80s continues to grow and to influence a host of younger artists, and thirty nine years after that acrimonious split, it seemed the time was right to record their debut album.

Last year, after a sell-out show at London's MOTH club and their heralded appearance at the Glas-Goes Pop festival, the group was invited by BBC 6 Music's 'Riley & Coe' to record its fourth BBC session, at Maida Vale's famous Studio 4. Within 6 months the session was rush released by Precious Recordings of London on glorious ten inch vinyl. Enter Hamburg based, Tapete Records, who, hearing rumours about new Loft material, snapped up the album and signed the band without hearing a single note.

The album was recorded in Hackney in August and produced by Dexys' Sean Read with the original Loft line up of Pete Astor (guitar /vocals) Andy Strickland (guitar), Bill Prince (bass) and Dave Morgan (drums).

This is Music: The Singles, is a compilation album by English alternative rock band The Verve: Richard Ashcroft (vocals), Pete Salisbury (drums), Simon Jones (bass) and Nick McCabe (guitar).

Originally released in November 2004 it featured two non-singles, tracks pulled from the sessions for their third album Urban Hymns, ‘This Could Be My Moment’ and ‘Monte Carlo’.

2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of an album that has never been pressed on vinyl and, under the group’s direction, this long overdue reissue replaces the bonus tracks with the powerful singles from the band’s 2008 reunion album, Forth – ‘Love is Noise’ and ‘Rather Be’ – as well as including their second single ‘She’s A Superstar’ (1992) in its original, full-length, eight-and-a-half-minute form (rather than the five-minute edit). As such, the album now represents the complete story of The Verve’s singles.

Named after the band’s sixth single, the first issued from their second album, A Northern Soul, it brilliantly documents the potency of The Verve’s relatively short but epoch-making journey through the musical cosmos.

On their emergence (when they were known simply as Verve), they were frequently referred to as purveyors of the shoegaze sound, although their output was more expansive, cinematic and genuinely psychedelic than that description implies, as evidenced by their first three non-album singles/EPs, all of which reached the summit of the UK indie charts.

After splitting up for the first time in 1995, they reconvened (with the addition of guitarist and keyboard player Simon Tong) to reach their commercial peak in 1997 with the hugely successful Urban Hymns, which was centred around a brilliantly accomplished suite of songs written by Ashcroft, including the worldwide smash ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, the UK number one ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ and the beautiful and evocative ‘Lucky Man’.

Combustible, intense and highly influential, this stellar journey is finally available on wax, where, in its definitive form, it easily stands comparison with any other singles collection from the last three decades.

TRACK LISTING

LP1 Side A
This Is Music
Slide Away
Lucky Man
History

LP1 Side B
She's A Superstar
On Your Own
Blue
Sonnet

LP2 Side C
All In The Mind
The Drugs Don't Work
Gravity Grave

LP2 Side D
Bitter Sweet Symphony
Love Is Noise
Rather Be

'Temporary' features an incredible roll call of collaborators including Sampha, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Florence Welch, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Alabaster Deplume, Jah Wobble, Yazz Ahmed, Laura Groves, Kamasi Washington, Rickey Washington, Roses Gabor, Jack Peňate, Samantha Morton, Clari Freeman-Taylor and Nourished By Time. Created over four years from 2020 to 2024, 'Temporary' was recorded at Russell’s own west London Copper House studio, alongside sessions in Tottenham, Cumbria, Dorset, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and is set to build on previous acclaimed releases including 2018’s eponymous, Mercury Prize-nominated debut album.

On 'Temporary', Russell reboots his musical DNA: while his music had previously been about rhythm, words and melody in that order, on Temporary he swaps rhythm and melody, the rhythm taking up less space and the melody coming to the fore. Musically some songs are inspired by the sonic thought experiment “what if folk music had ‘gone digital’ in the 80s, just as reggae had?”, while spiritually and lyrically the themes encompass grief and loss. The results – elevated by an intriguing and diverse set of collaborators who sound like the best and freshest versions of themselves – are the most luminous and relaxed compositions of Russell’s career. Every song sounds washed in sunshine and graced by tenderness. More fragile and quieter than previous Everything Is Recorded output, it might be one of the gentlest records ever made about death. In Russell’s own words “making the album was joyous, a way of hallowing life.”

TRACK LISTING

1. October
2. My And Me (feat. Sampha, Laura Groves, Ricky Washington And Alabaster DePlume)
3. Porcupine Tattoo (feat. Noah Cyrus And Bill Callahan)
4. Never Felt Better (feat. Sampha And Florence Welch)
5. Ether (feat. Maddy Prior)
6. Losing You (feat. Sampha, Laura Groves, Jah Wobble And Yazz Ahmed)
7. Firelight (feat. Florence Welch, Berwyn And Alabaster DePlume)
8. The Summons
9. No More Rehearsals (feat. Roses Gabor, Jah Wobble, Jack Peñate And Yazz Ahmed)
10. You Were Smiling (feat. Samantha Morton)
11. Norm (feat. Bill Callahan)
12. Swamp Dream #3 (feat. Clari Freeman-Taylor)
13. The Meadows (feat. Roses Gabor, Kamasi Washington And Ricky Washington)
14. Goodbye (Hell Of A Ride) (feat. Nourished By Time)

Levitate’ is The Fall’s 19th album originally released in 1997 on Artful Records.

It’s the last album to feature two long-time Fall members, drummer Karl Burns and bass player Steve Hanley (whose playing was once described by Smith as the defining element of the group's music).

Following Cherry Red's Limited Edition Triple LP edition, we now present the 2LP edition released on transparent red vinyl for the first time.

The album was initially going to be produced by Keir Stewart and Simon Spencer (who previously collaborated with Smith under the moniker D.O.S.E. on the 1995 single ‘Plug Myself In’).

Most of the recordings took place at Edwyn Collins’ studio in West Hampstead. However, Stewart and Spencer soon fell out with Smith over payments and left after a week, taking most of the tapes with them. The only tracks from these sessions to make the album were “4 1⁄2 Inch" (allegedly edited out of samples of a rehearsal recording), ‘Spencer’, later re-dubbed by Smith as ‘Spencer Must Die’, and ‘The Quartet of Doc Shanley’.

This re-issue was re-mastered by long term Fall engineer
Andy Pearce and features sleeve notes by Daryl Easlea.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1. Ten Houses Of Eve
2. Masquerade
3. Hurricane Edward
4. I'm A Mummy
Side Two
1. The Quartet Of Doc Shanley
2. Jap Kid
3. 4 1/2 Inch
4. Spencer Must Die
5. Jungle Rock
Side Three
1. Ol' Gang
2. Tragic Days
3. I Come And Stand At Your Door
4. Levitate
5. Everybody But Myself
Side Four
1. Powderkex
2. Christmastide
3. Recipe For Fascism
4. Pilsner Trail
5. Everybody But Myself (Live)

‘Buyer Beware’ marks The Men’s fifth collaboration with recording engineer Travis Harrison (Guided by Voices, Built to Spill) who, at this point, is finely attuned to the nuances of the group’s dynamics - Nick Chiericozzi (guitar/vocals), Kevin Faulkner (bass), Mark Perro (guitar/vocals), and Rich Samis (drums). Recording direct to tape, Harrison captures the raw, confrontational fever of their stage shows without sacrificing their introspective undercurrents. The result is undoubtedly their most aggressive album since ‘Leave Home’ (2011), and their most psychedelic since ‘Immaculada’ (2010). But 'Buyer Beware' is no mere return to their roots - The Men have always moved forward while remaining true to themselves. A clarion call for troubled times signaled by its title, ‘Buyer Beware’ finds The Men tackling questions both personal and political, their sound and vision never more primal or apocalyptic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pony
2. At The Movies
3. Buyer Beware
4. Fire Sermon
5. PO Box 96
6. Charm
7. Black Heart Blue
8. Nothing Wrong
9. Control
10. Dry Cycle
11. The Path
12. Tombstone
13. Get My Soul

Defiance, vulnerability, pride and the excuse to let loose are all promised by The Lathums. Under no influence yet emerging into long shadows cast by comparisons to The Smiths and Arctic Monkeys, The Lathums brought light with debut album, How Beautiful Life Can Be in 2021 and shone brighter still on follow-up, From Nothing To A Little Bit More in 2023. The arrival of ‘Matter Does Not Define’, sees the opening credits roll on the four-piece’s third, thrilling season.

‘Matter Does Not Define’ was written by the band, comprised of Moore, Scott Concepcion (guitars, piano and vocals) Ryan Durrans (drums) and Matty Murphy (bass and vocals), in their native Wigan before recording at Kempston Street Studios, Liverpool in the company of long-term creative guide, John Kettle and producer, Chris Taylor. Proving prolific with a 12-song track listing, ‘Matter Does Not Define’ not only follows the band’s chart-topping second album, but their classic indie debut, 2021’s ‘How Beautiful Life Can Be’.

Honesty, hope and heartbreak feature in the poetry-laced music of The Lathums. Everything sung from the heart, four young men from an overlooked town in England’s north gathered as teenagers without ego or expectation and set about changing the lives of the people that gathered round them. From the earliest strains of ‘Fight On’ to the closing chord of ‘How Beautiful Life Can Be’, the words of shy indie icon, Alex Moore, coupled with the chiming riffs of guitarist, Scott Concepcion and restrained rhythmic back bone of drummer, Ryan Durrans and bassist, Matty Murphy, have sought to bring fervor to Saturday nights as much as soothe Sunday mornings. The Lathums have proved themselves to be a band for all times and all people.

TRACK LISTING

1. Leave No Stone Unturned
2. Reflections Of Lessons Left
3. Stellar Cast
4. Heartbreaker
5. Dynamite
6. Unrequited Love
7. No Direction
8. Bitter End
9. Knocking At Your Door
10. The Jester
11. Surrounded By Your Beauty
12. Long Shadows

From the off, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is sonically different from Van Etten’s previous work. Writing and recording in total collaboration with her band for the first time, Van Etten finds the freedom that comes by letting go. The result of that liberation is an exhilarating new dimension of sound and songwriting. The themes are timeless, classic Sharon – life and living, love and being loved – but the sounds are new, wholly realized and sharp as glass. Reflecting on this new artistic frame of mind, Van Etten muses, “Sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's scary, sometimes you feel stuck. It's like every day feels a little different – just being at peace with whatever you're feeling and whoever you are and how you relate to people in that moment. If I can just keep a sense of openness while knowing that my feelings change every day, that is all I can do right now. That and try to be the best person I can be while letting other people be who they are and not taking it personally and just being. I'm not there, but I'm trying to be there every day.”

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is a quantum leap in that direction - Lol Tolhurst.

TRACK LISTING

Live Forever
Afterlife
Idiot Box
Trouble
Indio
I Can’t Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)
Somethin’ Ain’t Right
Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)
Fading Beauty
I Want You Here

The title of Richard Dawson's new album End of the Middle is a suitably slippery contradiction, one that invites multiple interpretations: Middle-aging? Middle-class? The middle-point of Dawson's career? The centre of a record? Centrism in general? Polarisation? The possibility of having a balanced discussion about anything? Stuck in the middle with you? Middle England? Middling songwriting?

End of the Middle is a wonkily beautiful peer into the workings of the family unit, perhaps several generations of the same family: "I wanted this record to be small-scale and very domestic", Dawson explains, "to be stripped back, stark and naked, and let the lyrics and melodies speak for themselves and for the people in the songs". By paring things right back what is revealed is a suite of remarkably poised, oddly elegant, beautiful music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bolt
2. Gondola
3. Bullies
4. The Question
5. Boxing Day Sales
6. Knot
7. Polytunnel
8. Removals Van
9. More Than Real

Produced by longtime collaborator Dan Carey, Glutton For Punishment combines the propulsive, motorik tendencies of gothic stalwarts Depeche Mode, with the lyrical dexterity of PJ Harvey, and the off-kilter rhythms of LCD Soundsystem into a powerful sonic onslaught that is entirely Heartworms. “With my EP, people kind of pigeonholed me into post-punk,” she says. “I was like, ‘Cool, I can do that, but I can also do way more’ – I can do post-punk, but I can also be poppy and catchy, and this album represents that. I think people might be surprised when they hear it.”

Heartworms’ debut EP A Comforting Notion was subject to critical acclaim from the likes of The Sunday Times, Dazed, The FADER, The Quietus, Loud And Quiet, The Line Of Best Fit, So Young Magazine, and many more. The EPs singles were added to the BBC Radio 6 Music playlist following widespread support across the station, as well as spot plays from Radio X’s John Kennedy, and BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders and Gemma Bradley. 

Earlier this year Heartworms supported The Kills in the US, St Vincent in the UK (which included the Royal Albert Hall), and Jack White at London’s Islington Assembly Hall. She also played her biggest headline show to date at a sold out Village Underground in November last year. 

TRACK LISTING

1. In The Beginning
2. Just To Ask A Dance
3. Jacked
4. Mad Catch
5. Extraordinary Wings
6. Warplane
7. Celebrate
8. Smuggler’s Adventure
9. Glutton For Punishment

After nearly 20 years making music, there are few bands who’ve created a canon as determinedly innovative and consistently critically-acclaimed as The Horrors. Emerging as zeitgeist-shaking garage-goths on their 2007 debut ‘Strange House’, before taking a sharp left turn for their Mercury-nominated follow up ‘Primary Colours’, since the beginning they’ve roamed freely between genres. 2011’s ‘Skying’ won the NME Award for Best Album; ‘V’ was heralded as “a triumph” in a five-star Guardian review, while 2021’s pair of EPs - ‘Lout’ and ‘Against The Blade’ - marked a new chapter with their most industrial, uncompromising output yet.

Whilst the end results have changed, however, at their core has always been the same unbending commitment and bloody-minded allegiance to the cause. The Horrors are not and will never be a band that approach the job lightly. They’re musicians who’ll funnel everything they are into the process, at the expense of health, wealth and sometimes sanity. And so, whilst sixth album ‘Night Life’ sees the band once more shapeshift into a new form, with a new sonic outlook and - this time - a new line up, in some ways The Horrors are still as they ever were.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Ariel
2. Silent Sister
3. The Silence That Remains
4. Trial By Fire
5. The Feeling Is Gone

SIDE B
6. Lotus Eater
7. More Than Life
8. When The Rhythm Breaks
9. L.A. Runaway 

RIYL: Richard Thompson, The La’s, The Charlatans, Aztec Camera, Superchunk, The Chills, Felt, The Smiths, Pentangle.

The Tubs' second album, Cotton Crown, sees the Celtic Jangle boyband venture into darker, more personal territory while continuing to hone their highly addictive brand of songcraft. It’s a true level up album which sees the band expand their sonic palette to take in a kaleidoscopic range of influences: everything from soulful pub rock (Chain Reaction) to Husker Du aggression (One More Day) to melancholy sophisto-pop (Narcissist) gets a look in. As Pitchfork noted, The Tubs see jangle as a ‘vast world of moods and muses’ and Cotton Crown sees them continuing to explore this world and creating a distinctly Tub-ular sound in the process.

This is in no small part down to Owen ‘O’ Williams’ vocal performance- often compared to a young Richard Thomson- and his frank, bleakly funny lyric writing. Cotton Crown sees him delve further into his favourite themes of love-psychosis, unsympathetic mentally ill behaviour, and the humiliations of being a musician in London. This time around, however, there’s a palpable sense of risk in his self assessments / confessions. No more so in the track’s closing track Strange- an accounting of the clumsy, intrusive, well-meaning social interactions that took place in the period following the suicide of his mother (the folk singer Charlotte Greig.)  As Williams says: “I’d tried a few times to write a song about it. The result had always seemed either mawkish, simplifying or like I was hawking my trauma. But then this one came out, and it felt right because it looked at something smaller: the weird, unsatisfying, strangely funny ways everyone, including myself, acted after the dust settled.” The album artwork features an image of Williams as an infant being breastfed by Greig in a graveyard- a promotional shot taken around the release of her debut album (the re-issue of which was featured in The Guardian in 2023.)

The essential trick Cotton Crown plays is to offset Williams’ lyrical bleakness with joyous, hook-laden blasts of pop perfection. This is largely down to the guitar work of George Nicholls, who, across the album, effortlessly slips between the virtuoso jangle of Marr, the driving folk-rock of Pentangle and the chorus-heavy hi-fi grooves of contemporary bands like Tops or The 1975. Add to that the breakneck rhythm section of Taylor Stewart (Drums) and Max Warren (Bass)- who attack each song with power-pop ferocity, recalling Guided by Voices at their drunken-yet-tight best- and you’ve got yourself a recipe for indie rock greatness.

The band’s debut ‘Dead Meat’ was a word-of-mouth sensation that saw the band earn accolades from Pitchfork, The Guardian, MOJO, SPIN and more. They even gained some celeb fans: the inimitable Mark Proksch (The Office (US), Better Call Saul, What We Do in the Shadows) starred in the video for their “Round the Bend” single & punk legend Iggy Pop has praised them on his BBC 6Music radio program. Standing in opposition to the UK norm of post punk, and hookless high-minded indie prog, the album was described by Kitty Empire (Observer) as a “shot in the arm for indie rock”. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Thing Is
2. Freak Mode
3. Illusion
4. Narcissist
5. Chain Reaction
6. Embarassing
7. One More Day
8. Fair Enough
9. Strange

You Are The Morning was formed amid personal upheaval in 2021. “I came out as trans to my nearest and dearest,” she says, “Some did not accept me, but some did.” Jasmine got divorced, and a difficult home life meant she was writing while experiencing homelessness and precarious housing, sleeping on friend’s couches and relying on community support. Despite the pain of some of its background, the record is an uplifting look at t4t love. Jasmine describes her first trans romance as the first time she experienced joy in a deep sense, because of her experience of living as a woman.

First single ‘Skin on Skin’ explores the new joy of physical touch. Usually a quick writer, it’s a rare song that grew over time, during which a close connection with a friend began to form. “Sticking to the physical boundaries we wanted to have with each other became increasingly difficult. We were spending lots of time together, then falling in love. This song became a celebration of healing and physical catharsis found through unrepressed queer love.”

Jasmine and her band travelled to L.A. to record at Sound City Studios. It was made across 12 days in a highly collaborative and emotional process, and because Jasmine sees her songs as fluid and ever-changing, the recordings carry that free and spontaneous spirit.jasmine.4.t is supported by an all-trans band, Phoenix Rousiamanis contributes piano and strings, with Eden O’Brien on drums and Emily Abbott on bass. With Jasmine’s voice and songwriting at the centre, the record incorporates a wider cast of voices. ‘Best Friend’s House’ features a chorus including her bandmates, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus (“the girls and the boys”), Saddest Factory Records label-mate Claud, Becca Mancari and E.R. Fightmaster. The song carries the communal spirit of the record’s creation. On the closing track, ‘Woman’, she is backed by the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, a cross-generational group of trans singers who, like Jasmine, use their voice as a source of communal power. The song blossoms from solo performance to wider group catharsis. All the while, Jasmine sings unwaveringly about the power of knowing yourself at a core level: “I am, in my soul, a woman”.

The writing of You Are The Morning pulled from dark moments to tell its story. Surrounded by friends, the recording process was full of light. Through her performances, activism and artistry, jasmine.4.t is ushering in a new dawn.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Kitchen
Skin On Skin
Highfield
Breaking In Reverse
You Are The Morning
Best Friend’s House

SIDE B
Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation
Tall Girl
New Shoes
Roan
Elephant
Transition
Woman

On ‘Sinister Grift’, Panda Bear’s first solo album in five years, Noah Lennox has returned with another statement that feels equally cumulative and unprecedented in his catalog. While his solo records have ranged from starkly intimate expressions of grief to colorful, electronic opuses, his music has never before sounded so warm and immediate. Working in his Lisbon, Portugal home studio with Animal Collective bandmate Josh “Deakin” Dibb, Lennox transforms Panda Bear into something resembling an old-school rock ensemble, playing nearly all the instruments himself and inviting kindred spirits into the process such as Cindy Lee, Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede, and—for the first time on a Panda Bear solo album—each of his Animal Collective bandmates.

TRACK LISTING

1. Praise
2. Anywhere But Here
3. 50mg
4. Ends Meet
5. Just As Well
6. Ferry Lady
7. Venom’s In
8. Left In The Cold
9. Elegy For Noah Lou
10. Defense

‘Never Exhale’ is the sound of a band that hasn’t stopped for a breath. DITZ have toured relentlessly since the release of their first album ‘The Great Regression’. The songs that form their newest offering were written across Europe, often on off days and in borrowed rehearsal rooms.

It could be said that the band treat recording and release of music as an afterthought. Often playing songs live years before their release, tweaking them as they go. The songs on the final record may change before they are ever heard as part of the album.

‘Never Exhale’ was largely recorded at Holy Mountain studios in London during a freezing cold January. The process was frought with obstacles, the original plan, to go and record in Rhode Island, was abandoned when DITZ were offered a support tour with IDLES, although the album was still mixed by the originally intended engineer, Seth Manchester (Model/Actriz, Lingua Ignota, Big Brave). The result is an album hardened by the pressure of its own making. Laboured but not loved.

The album themes reveal themselves more on further listens. The opening gambit taxi man is an exploration into what it would be like to weigh up your impact of the world. The eponymous taxi man could be seen as a St Peter type figure.

Further on the album explores themes of unnecessary hatred and division, Space/Smile and It smells like something died in here, aging, Senor Siniestro and the separation of the physical from reality, The Body As A Structure. It’s political, but ultimately personal. More Genet or Kafka than Orwell or Huxley.

Sonically the album has its roots in the usual DITZ influences, classic noise rock such as The Jesus Lizard or Shellac, or the obtuse post punk of the Fall, but also brings in fresh influences. The closing track Britney, could be compared to Radiohead or Mogwai. Overall the album is a clear development from their first effort. A sign of things to come.

TRACK LISTING

V70
Taxi Man
Space/Smile
Senor Siniestro
Four
God On A Speed Dial
Smells Like Something Died In Here
18 Wheeler
The Body As A Structure
Britney

A kaleidoscopic collection of 10 songs spanning dark but danceable guitar pop, euphoric electro and low-fi introspective ballads. Lyrics explore themes of self-identity and the notion of truth in a bewildering world where our lives are lived increasingly online. A collection of abstract visions that question reality, celebrate love and long for connection. The Slow Readers Club announce the release of their upcoming seventh album, Out Of A Dream following a run of largely sold-out UK & Ireland Tour dates at the tail end of this year.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Technofear
A2 Animals
A3 Little White Lies
A4 Dear Silence
A5 Know This I Am
B6 Boy So Blue
B7 Pirouette
B8 Puppets
B9 Loved You Then
B10 Our Song Is Sung

Enter Now Brightness feels different for Nadia. It is an album, she says, of departure and questioning, that has reminded her how songwriting can be “the most useful thing to do with pain and joy and thoughts and feelings and anger.” That through music we can find great change. “I’m so much better off now that it exists,” she says. “Now feels like a new time.” On this record, Reid moves ever further from her earlier folk inclinations, establishing a sound that is distinctly her own. Enter Now Brightness is a record of poise and great beauty, the sound of a cellular shift, of pain giving way to tenderness and joy. It takes its title from a passage in a book Reid was reading from a line that seemed to call out to her from the page: ‘Brightness entered the study.’ “It was the image of opening the curtain, or turning the light on, or of standing in the wings of a theatre and waiting to go on stage. It’s the idea of life beginning now.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Emmanuelle
2. Cry On Cue
3. Baby Bright
4. Hold It Up
5. Changed Unchained

SIDE B:
1. Second Nature
2. Even Now
3. Hotel Santa Cruz
4. Woman Apart
5. Send It Down The Line

Bartees Strange was raised on fear. His family used scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age, Strange started using scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place, and for a young, queer, black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared. Throughout the record, Strange lays down one difficult truth after another, all over a sonic pastiche of music he loved as a kid. His dad hipped him to Parliament Funkadelic, Fleetwood Mac, Teddy Pendergrass, and Neil Young. Those influences merged with Strange’s interest in hip-hop, country, indie rock, and house, culminating in a record that feels completely original.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
Too Much
Hit It Quit It
Sober
Baltimore
Lie 95
Wants Needs
Side B:
Lovers
Doomsday Buttercup
17
Loop Defenders
Norf Gun
Backseat Banton

Dinked Edition Bonus 7":
Side A:
Like This
Side B:
Pigs Fly

On their debut album Mill On The Hill, Melin Melyn move effortlessly between surf-rock, country, prog-rock and psychedelia with the grace and skill of a band with numerous records under their belt, held together by an efficacious and fantastical thematic principle. Melin Melyn translates to ‘Yellow Mill’ in Welsh, and on this album the Welsh six-piece invite the audience into the world they have quite literally built around them. Mill On The Hill transports the listeners to the utopian ‘Melin Village’, a Seussian world where townsfolk “bask in the beauty of song.”

“Croeso! Welcome, one and all to the magical world of the Mill On The Hill. The yellow mill that sits on top of a hill, looking down on Melin Village and all of its wonderful occupants. Everyone is welcome here.” says Chief Miller Gruff. “Don’t be deceived, this is no ordinary mill. Our duty is to create music inside the mill for all the occupants of Melin Village, and anyone else who’d like to listen. Because, after all, who could imagine a world without music?”

Melin Melyn are more than just a band. They’re world-builders; storytellers absorbing various elements of the increasingly strange times around us and using them to create fables that ruminate on grief, love, and hope.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
Mill On The Hill (Intro)
Vitamin D
Promised Land
Fantastic Food
Dail
Derek

Side B:
Mill On The Hill (Reprise)
The Pigeon And The Golden Egg
18-30
Masterplan
Running On MT
Mill On The Hill (Outro)

For Nottingham quartet Divorce, home is a feeling. Initially meeting as teenagers through the city’s close-knit DIY scene, the band – completed by members Tiger Cohen-Towell (vocals / bass), Felix Mackenzie-Barrow (vocals / guitar), Adam Peter Smith (guitar / synth) and Kasper Sandstrøm (drums) - came together as Divorce in mid-2021, releasing a slew of genre-defiant singles that quickly caught the attention of tastemakers the world over.

Sonically rich and lyrically open-hearted, 'Drive to Goldenhammer' sees Divorce assemble a shelter for themselves amid the chaos and leave the front door open to everyone. This album pays homage to seeking place and home; one of the great human levellers. Much of life feels at odds with this particular need. And to Goldenhammer; you are a reason to keep driving. We will find you again and again!

TRACK LISTING

TBA

Following Wilco’s acclaimed 2023 album Cousin, Wilco revisited unfinished material from these sessions to craft ‘Hot Sun Cool Shroud’. Collaborating again with engineering mixer Tom Schick, the band crafted six tracks that expand on the sound of Cousin. According to Jeff Tweedy, they have “a summertime-after-dark kind of feeling. It starts off pretty hot, like heat during the day, has some instrumentals on it that are a little agitated and uncomfortable, and ends with a cooling breeze.” 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Hot Sun
2. Livid
3. Ice Cream
Side B
4. Annihilation
5. Inside The Bell Bones
6. Say You Love Me

Welcome to ‘KOKO’, Lottery Winners’ most adventurous album, while also home to their most infectious songs yet.

Short for Keep On Keeping On, ‘KOKO’’s 12 captivating tracks include a beautiful ode to friendship, a deliriously catchy duet with Reverend And The Makers’ Jon McClure about being unhealthily obsessed with your ex, a literally escapist chantalong funk anthem, a power ballad featuring Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, a tender song of regret, plus the most uplifting, celebratory songs about panic attacks, ADHD and being expelled from school you’ll ever hear. There’s even a dance routine.

Following on from The Lottery Winners’ third album ART (Anxiety Replacement Therapy) reached No 1 in May 2023, this is set to be another big release.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Superpower
You Again (Feat. Reverend And The Makers)
Panic Attack
UFO
Ragdoll (Feat. Chad Kroger)
Struggling

Side B
Turn Around
Monaco
Three Wishes
Dirt And Gold (Feat. Frank Turner)
The Ceiling (Feat. Shed Seven
Keep On Keeping On

Bonus 7” - Dinked Edition Only
Side A // Letter To Myself (Again)
Side B // Belong (Demo)

Six years after their second album 'Kingdoms in Colour' made them one of the hottest names in electronic music, Hertfordshire duo Maribou State return with their third full length album. 'Hallucinating Love' is worth the wait: it’s ambitious, packed with sublime anthemia, and is injected with restless energy, soaring strings and stunning guest vocals from long-standing collaborator Holly Walker and new friends like MOBO-nominated artist Andreya Triana. It evidences Maribou State’s evolving balance of intimacy and intricacy, as well as their knack for making epic sundown music. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Blackoak
2. Otherside
3. II Remember
4. All I Need
5. Dance On The World
6. Bloom
7. Peace Talk
8. Passing Clouds
9. Eko’s
10. Rolling Stone 

Produced with Mark Ralph, who previously worked with them on their 2013 album 'Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action', the album showcases Franz at their most immediate, upbeat and life-affirming, unashamedly going for the pop-jugular in classic Franz style.

Recorded at AYR studios in Scotland, the 11-songs on 'The Human Fear' all allude to some deep-set human fears and how overcoming and accepting these fears drives and defines our lives.

Ever since their beginnings, throwing illegal parties in condemned Glasgow buildings, Franz Ferdinand have been defined by a fresh, unfading, forward-facing outlook, a transgressive art-school perspective, but with a love of a big song and 'The Human Fear' undoubtedly continues in this tradition; distinct yet new, musically, and creatively it’s a record eager to push forward.

Pretty much all written before they hit the studio, the idea was to have a songbook ready before they started recording and once in the studio it was all quickly executed - a lot of it recorded live with the band in the room and many of the vocals on the album being the original takes.

The first studio album to feature members Audrey Tait and Dino Bardot, the record also sees Julian Corrie step forward to collaborate with Alex Kapranos and Bob Hardy on song writing and creative duties.

A band for whom the aesthetic and style is almost as important as the sound, as ever the importance of this is reflected in the cover artwork which was inspired by Hungarian artist Dóra Maurer’s self-portrait 7 Twists - Maurer’s work appealed because it does exactly what they want from their music: a striking immediacy that is impossible to ignore, but with a depth and vulnerability that bears many returns and satisfactory repetition.

Maybe this is a set of songs about fear, maybe this is a set of bangers from an era-defining band continuing their unquestionably living legacy. Is that something to be afraid of?

TRACK LISTING

1. Audacious
2. Everyday Dreamer
3. The Doctor
4. Hooked
5. Build It Up
6. Night Or Day
7. Tell Me I Should Stay
8. Cats
9. Black Eyelashes
10. Bar Lonely
11. The Birds

Eusexua is a state of being. A feeling of momentary transcendence often evoked by art, music, sex, and unity. Eusexua can be followed by a state of bliss and feelings of limitless possibility. Also used to refer to: ‘The pinnacle of Human Experience’. It is united through any moment in which we are fully embodying ourselves, present in the moment, disconnected from technology, synthesized with those around us. It was moments of Eusexua that birthed 'EUSEXUA' the album, as twigs cites her late nights in the underground techno scene of Prague.

TRACK LISTING

Tracklist TBA

The Prince of Fried has brung forth 12 brand new humdingers: all hummable and lyrically compelling and replete with wah-acoustic guitars and beautiful orchestrations of Mellotron 400 from Liverpool’s Blondest. So inhale the garage fuzz dub of 'R in the Hood'; the mantric powerdrive of 'Four Jehovahs in a Volvo Estate'; the sentimental Pete Burns lamentations of 'In Spungent Mansions'… and who could resist the affectionate micro-trolling of 'Will Sergeant’s Blues'?

Stay cosy, defiant and edgy this autumn with these 12 fruits of FRIAR TUCK.

TRACK LISTING

1. Too Freud To Rock'n'Roll Too Jung To Die
2. You Gotta Keep Your Halfwits About You
3. Four Jehovahs In A Volvo Estate
4. The Dogshow Must Go On
5. 1066 & All That
6. In Spungent Mansions
7. Me And The Jews
8. A Shipwrecked Song
9. Sol Invicto
10. R. In The Hood
11. Done Myself A Mischief
12. Will Sergeant's Blues

Brooke Combe, a rising Scottish singer-songwriter, delves deep into her soulful roots with her new album Dancing at the Edge of the World. This album, produced by The Coral’s James Skelley, marks her most authentic work yet, blending rich, emotive vocals with contemporary soul sounds. Brooke’s music captures the essence of heartbreak, empowerment, and self-discovery, resonating with a broad audience. Dancing at the Edge of the World is a powerful showcase of Brooke's artistry, highlighting her evolution as a leading voice in modern soul music.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Prelude
2. This Town
3. Guilt
4. Shaken By The Wind
5. L.M.T.F.A
6. The Last Time

Side B
1. Pieces
2. If I Could Only Be Yours
3. Lanewood Pines
4. Butterfly
5. Dancing At The Edge Of The World

During the holidays of 2023, Brigid Dawson and I got together at my house in Los Angeles and started transcribing a nice list of songs. Some new some very old that I’ve never been played live ever and put together a holiday set list which we performed two nights in a row at Permanent Records Roadhouse in Los Angeles and did a bit of it at a charity event at the Lodge Room.

Seven tunings later… It was a lot of fun and there was a lot of libation and celebration. We surrounded ourselves with good friends and came up with this charming off kilter set of recordings. I think they capture the casual energy of the evening in the mood of the crowd.

Hope you enjoy.

- JPD

TRACK LISTING

1. Dreadful Heart
2. Golden Phones
3. Ship
4. Make Them Kiss
5. Devil‘s Last Breath
6. I Agree
7. Hounds
8. If II Had A Reason
9. Rescue
10. Burning Bridges
11. I Am Slow
12. What The Driven Drink
13. Memory Of A Cut Off Head
14. The Pool
15. Wait All Night
16. Crime On My Mind
17. Im Coming Home
18. Highland Wives Lament
19. Block Of Ice