There are moments on Drunk Tank Pink where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest. The genius of Drunk Tank Pink is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener Alphabet dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit.Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here, be it March Day’s escalating aural panic attack or the shapeshifting darkness of Snow Day. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelorn Human For A Minute while closer Station Wagon weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soullifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink.

This deluxe edition includes the full tracklist as early demos. These previously unreleased versions tell the story behind the James Ford produced album that cemented the band as one of the most exciting in British music today.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Alphabet
2. Nigel Hitter
3. Born In Luton
4. March Day
5. Water In The Well
6. Snow Day

SIDE B:
7. Human, For A Minute
8. Great Dog
9. 6/1
10. Harsh Degrees
11. Station Wagon

SIDE C:
12. Alphabet (Demo)
13. Nigel Hitter (Demo)
14. Born In Luton (Demo)
15. March Day (Demo)
16. Water In The Well (Demo)
17. Snow Day (Demo)

SIDE D:
18. Human, For A Minute (Demo)
19. Great Dog (Demo)
20. 6/1 (Demo)
21. Harsh Degrees (Demo)
22. Station Wagon (Demo)

Nolan Potter is putting us home recording freaks to shame. We had a year of global pandemic to lay out our grand ideas and the sum total of most artists “quar-riffs” wouldn’t push the constraints of a normal band practice (gosh, remember those?)

Nolan Potter, in the meantime, has quietly painted us a beatific masterpiece that veers from the whimsical to the wigged out, deftly weaving an untamed tapestry of sound all the while archly commenting on the present musician’s predicament - and he did it alone. No drum machine clattering in the background amidst tape hiss and 4 track grime here - this is a fully realized, insanely well played, full on rock record that might even one-up his first LP for us, last year’s excellent Nightmare Forever.

The guy’s got more chops than a beauticians’ college across a wide array of instruments - no small feat, and easily overlooked when you leave the lyric sheet and credits on the dining room table. That the songs travel far, wide, up, down, backwards, and gamely spill out over the 5 minute mark with exceptionally loose interludes and diversions is just another marvel in this carnival of aural delights. It’s a gem of a record!

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. One Eye Flees Aquapolis
2. Stubborn Bubble
3. Gregorian Chance

Side B
4. Holy Scroller
5. Preeminent Minds
6. Music Is Dead

FLEXI:
1. Overture For A Short Film

Born in 1999, Charlie Hickey grew up in South Pasadena, just minutes from Downtown Los Angeles. Raised by two singer-songwriter parents, Charlie’s second language was music since day one. As early as grade school, he was making sense of the world through songwriting, and by middle school he was writing, recording and performing songs that attracted a community of collaborators and could silence a room.

A turning point for Charlie came at around the age of thirteen, when he covered a song by then up-and-coming artist Phoebe Bridgers, who was still in high school herself. The two quickly became friends and collaborators, setting Charlie on an exciting new musical path. Years later, Bridgers introduced Charlie to songwriter, drummer, producer and her bandmate Marshall Vore, who noticed something special about Charlie. The two began writing and recording songs together, and soon Charlie dropped out of school to work on his music full-time.

Charlie Hickey’s first proper single is “No Good At Lying.” The Marshall Voreproduced track introduces us to Charlie’s evocative storytelling and features Phoebe Bridgers on backing vocals. “I’m no good at lying / on my back or through my teeth / but I’m good at dreaming / I can do it in my sleep,” he sings over hushed guitars and a whimsical banjo, searching for truth as his unconscious mind runs wild and bleeds into reality. It’s a slow, quiet, and understated peek to the world of Charlie Hickey, who is barely of legal drinking age, but taps into such universal themes that showcase a wisdom beyond his years and exudes promise for what’s to come

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. No Good At Lying
2. Count The Stairs
3. Two Haunted Houses

SIDE B:
4. Seeing Things
5. Ten Feet Tall
6. Notre Dame

Remixes not from, but of the entire outstanding Khruangbin album, "Mordechai"! Personal as ever, the list of remixers has been hand picked by the band, not simply a whose who of hype and click bait.  All have some connection to the band, sometimes personal friendships, musical connections, or simply mutual musical appreciation. Harvey Sutherland and Ginger Roots have both toured with the band, Kadhja Bonet and Ron Trent had their own mutual fan club going on, Knxwledge sampled "White Gloves" on a recent mixtape, Natasha Diggs and Soul Clap’s Eli’s are recent buddy-ups, Quantic is a mutual friend of Bonobo (crucial in the KB origin story), while Laura is also godmother to one of Felix Dickinson’s kids. 

It would be tiresome to detail each and every mix, but rest assured this is an exceptionally executed project. Bolstered by the sincere and detailed sleeve notes, which journey each artists' relationship with their band, a bit about their musical legacy, and why they were chosen. 

'A good remix is when the remixer's sonic fingerprint is present, without sounding forced. It should feel like its own story, with at least some of the same characters as the original' - Khruangbin state on these highly impressive sleeve notes - and each and every track on the album represents such forethought. Very few remix albums are put together with such love, dexterity and sympathy as this one - so much so it's bound to stand as a masterpiece in its own right, just as many of the classic 'dub' LPs did from Jamaica (an influence the band themself have highly creditted in informed their sound). 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Father Bird, Mother Bird (Sunbirds)
2. Connaissais De Face (Tiger?)
3. Dearest Alfred (MyJoy)
4. First Class (Soul In The Horn Remix)
SIDE B:
5. If There Is No Question (Soul Clap’s Wild, But Not Crazy Mix)
6. Pelota (Cut A Rug Mix)
SIDE C:
7. Time (You And I)(Put A Smile On DJ’s Face Mix)
8. Shida (Bella’s Suite)
 SIDE D:
9. So We Won’t Forget (Mang Dynasty Version)
10. One To Remember (Forget Me Nots Dub)

Kansas City trio BUMMER mirror the absurdity of modern life with a balance of dark humour, dejected nihilism and righteous fury. Their music spills out in torrents of skull-crushing riffs, gargantuan bass and caustic howls delivered at breakneck speed with gleeful abandon.

Following their split 7” with long-time friends The Body, which teased a more focused, lean sound for the group, ‘Dead Horse’ hones BUMMER’s auditory desolation and scathing gaze to laser-point precision.

In eleven short vignettes the quartet lay waste to everything in their path, penning a vitriolic overview of life in the American Midwest, a surprising blend of onestar Trip Advisor review and insightful cultural critique.

“[BUMMER] puts the ‘power’ in power trio as they play a raw and primal form of aggressive music that splits the difference between ‘Bleach’-era Nirvana and the early, primitive thrash of Slayer. It’s aggressive and inyour- face, but doesn’t skimp on melody, making their songs memorable. So, there is power and a bit of precision to what they do. A whole lot of volume, too.” - New Noise Magazine

TRACK LISTING

JFK Speedwagon
Barn Burner (You Boys Quit Whippin’ Those Whips)
I Want To Punch Bruce Springsteen In The Dick
E1M1
Donkey Punch
Juice Pig
Kid Spock
Quadruple ZZ Top
False Floor
Magic Cruel Bus
Rareware

Friends! I am so pleased to announce A Night At The Little Los Angeles - the 4-track version of Sundowner. Recorded at home and in my back shed - aka The Little Los Angeles - in suburban Kansas during the summer and winter seasons of 2017 and 2018. This is quite simply the sound of me alone in a room with a four-track to catch my songs as they fell out of my mouth. When I later went into a proper studio to make Sundowner my goal was to capture the essence of these initial recordings, and here you will now have access to the very essence I was chasing. In many ways, this feels like a proper album to me, as it’s my initial attempt to capture the Kansas sunset and put it into sound, where as Sundower was an attempt of an attempt. I love and am proud of them both, of course, but am happy to - for the first time - share this vulnerable side of my songwriting process with the public. Many of my favorite recordings have been made inside of an artist’s home without regard of the outside world, but instead deep in their own world that they’re creating in real time. And with that - I’d like to invite you into my own little world here and now and ask you to please....step inside of....and spend A Night At The Little Los Angeles! - Kevin Morby

****** Sundowner is Morby’s “attempt to put the Middle American twilight -- its beauty profound, though not always immediate -- into sound.” Released in fall 2020 on Dead Oceans, Morby’s distinctively conversational and reflective writing style was received with open arms and was beloved by fans and critics alike. Pitchfork lauded it as “a vision of the Midwest that feels mythical and enormous.” Sundowner’s vision was further fleshed out in comprehensive features in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Stereogum, The FADER, Vice, Aquarium Drunkard, and more. In addition to traditional music publications, Morby appeared on Adult Swim’s Fishcenter and Office Hours with Tim Heidecker. Morby also made his network television debut on CBS This Morning, where he performed the songs “Campfire” and “Sundowner” as part of a special joint performance with his partner and fellow songwriter Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee.

TRACK LISTING

1. Campfire (4-Track Version)
2. Sundowner (4-Track Version)
3. A Night At The Little Los Angeles (4-Track Version)
4. Wander (4-Track Version)
5. Velvet Highway (4-Track Version)
6. Valley (4-Track Version)
7. Brother, Sister (4-Track Version)
8. Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun (4-Track Version)
9. Provisions (4-Track Version)
10. U.S. Mail (4-Track Version)

Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge are best known for their collaborations with vocalists and MCs, but these two multi-instrumentalists and producers excel in their ability to conjure musical moods with or without vocal accompaniment.

Similarly, the musical legends that these two handpicked to collaborate with across this series are all jazz legends equally at home crafting unadorned compositions as they are collaborating with vocalists.

This 2LP collection presents exclusive instrumental versions of songs originally released on the Jazz Is Dead albums; Roy Ayers JID002, Marcos Valle JID003, Gary Bartz JID006, and João Donato JID007.

More than the previous eight Jazz Is Dead releases Instrumentals JID009 delivers on Adrian and Ali’s original promise of showcasing the music made with their heroes, laying bare the inspired compositions created when different generations of musicians come together to collaborate in the studio. For nearly all of these songs, Adrian and Ali began with sketches and elements of songs that they developed alongside the featured musicians live in Adrian Younge’s Linear Labs studio located in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hey Lover Feat. Roy Ayers (Instrumental)
A2. Oi Feat. Marcos Valle (Instrumental)
A3. Visions Of Love Feat. Gary Bartz (Instrumental)
A4. Aquarius (Why Do You Cry) Feat. João Donato (Instrumental)
A5. Soulful And Unique Feat. Roy Ayers (Instrumental)
B1. Isso É Que Eu Sei Feat. Marcos Valle (Instrumental)
B2. Nao Negue Seu Coracao Feat. João Donato (Instrumental)
B3. Sunflowers Feat. Roy Ayers (Instrumental)
B4. Queira Bem Feat. Marcos Valle (Instrumental)
C1. Day By Day Feat. Gary Bartz (Instrumental)
C2. Gotta Love Again Feat. Marcos Valle (Instrumental)
C3. Forever More Feat. João Donato (Instrumental)
C4. Synchronized Vibration Feat. Roy Ayers (Instrumental)
D1. Viajando Por Ai Feat. Marcos Valle (Instrumental)
D2. Gravity Feat. Roy Ayers (Instrumental)
D3. Não Saia Da Praça Feat. Marcos Valle (Instrumental)
D4. Beauty Feat. João Donato (Instrumental)
D5. African Sounds Feat. Roy Ayers (Instrumental)
D6. A Gente Volta Amanhã Feat. Marcos Valle (Instrumental)

The Forbidden Dance label is marking their first year of existence and with already top-notch names (Vick Lavender, Alton Miller, The Mechanical Man) with the first three releases, they are celebrating the one year mark with another global gem, disco and house finest - Ilija Rudman! Where Wild Horses Go is conveying an unquestionable sense of 80’s electro and synth boogie filled with smooth and heavily reverberated rhythmics drenched in strong snares. Aligned with catchy and spaced-out disco pads, the album is riddled with ever strong analogue elements processed in a light, quirky and summerish way but with enough groove in some tracks easily applicable on the dancefloors in the late hours. Dead Horse Gang is a brainchild music band/brand by Ilija Rudman dedicated to cinematic dance concept laying on the Los Angeles funk attitude, Art Of Noise perception of sound and raw 12-bit grooves making a statement of mid 80’s culture with surf vibe of California summer. “Dead Horse Gang Music is more than music, it’s a way of life, a way of thinking, a path to a maximum freedom of the one, who can accept it.” -Ilija Rudman

TRACK LISTING

A1. Three Four Amazing
A2. We Hold The Light
A3. Your Smile Is Shotgun
A4. Where Wild Horses Go
A5. Demons Race (theme) 
A6. After The Gold Rush
B1. Over The Hill
B2. Broken Home (Lost Son's Diary)
B3. Black Marble
B4. Exodus Theme
B5. Ministry Of Lost Souls (outro Theme)
B6. Riders Of The Secret Gardens

Last spring, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson started to make a record that was like nothing they had made before — an ambient album that would be both a haven from a suddenly terrified world and a heartfelt musical dialogue between two artists who have been friends and collaborators for over two decades. Refuge is an album of profound meditative beauty which offers the listener a much-needed sense of peace and renewal. But while it was recorded in 2020 its roots go back much further — all the way to the start of their friendship and, beyond that, to the shared sounds and ethics of their childhoods.

Devendra grew up in Venezuela while Noah, six years older, is a native of Nevada City, California. But as they got to know each other, they realised that they had a similar history in the New Age subculture of the 1980s: a world of meditation, Eastern music, the Bhagavad Gita and The Whole Earth Catalog. Childhood memories were coloured by the aromas of health food stores and the sound of New Age labels like Windham Hill Records. Noah, whose production and mixing credits include Joanna Newsom and the Strokes, came on board as co-producer of Devendra’s 2005 album Cripple Crow and they have been working together ever since.

It was while making Devendra’s 2019 album Ma that the pair finally decided to make their ambient record. Despite complicating logistics, 2020 created an emotional craving for music with this contemplative, therapeutic quality. Inspired by both memories of the past and the needs of the present, Refuge is an act of companionship and generosity which gives the listener room to breathe. “We’re hoping to create a sense of comfort and coming back to the moment,” Devendra says. “It’s really important to have a little bit of space between us and our anxieties and impulses. What you do with that space is up to you.” Dorian Lynskey May 2021

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Book Of Bringhi
2. A Cat
3. Rise From Your Wave
4. Peloponnese Lament

SIDE B:
5. In A Cistern
6. Into Clouds
7. For Em

SIDE C: 
8. Three Gates
9. Horn In Deep Night
10. Sky Burial

SIDE D:
11. Asura Cave
12. Aran In Repose
13. Lament Return

‘Barn Breaks vol III’, presented by Owlvaro & Hugu, is the latest installment of oddball samples and loops from your favorite globe-trotting Texan trio, and is perfect for any portablist scratch jam or 7” DJ set... The latest in the series, this skipless 7” contains scratch samples from “Mordechai” - band hits, isolated basslines & vocals, guitar notes, keyboard stabs and drum loops - as well as custom “ahhhh” & “fressshh” sounds.

It’s funny cos we was just talking about scratch records and DJ tools the other day in the shop and how maybe they’ve kinda been superceded by Serato and digital DJing as it’s now much easier to line up a load of samples onto your USBs or Serato playlist and scratch till your hearts content… HOWEVER!!!! – you can’t beat that tangible feeling of black wax moving to and fro underneath your skillfully poised fingers and its nice to see hip, cool, tastemaking band Khruangbin reignite the fires of this particular format & style! 

Magic, miracles, ghosts, world leaders; these days it seems there is little left to believe in. Lies outweigh truth and even truth can be dangerous. Raising everyone’s spirits Already Dead – the fourth album and the first for nine years from Willy Mason - explores honesty and deception, anonymity in the digital age, good intentions with unexpected consequences, freedom, colonialism, love, god, and purpose because, its storyteller says, now is the time to restore some much-needed faith.

“Already Dead is a spiritual state to aspire to; it is freedom from the trappings and inhibitions of one’s ego, culture, and mythology. It is freedom and love and freedom to love in the face of death,” tells Willy of the philosophy behind the writing. “It’s about the necessary destruction of one’s mythology; mythology of species, sex, race, nation, self. It’s about the pain and tragedy that comes with such destruction, but also about the freedom, possibility and opportunity for reconciliation; reconciliation with the natural world and with each other.”

Already Dead arrives at a time when certain words must be said. It is a quest for love in a society which fears and discourages it; for truth and justice in a society which prioritises convenience and profit. “I ended up diving so deeply into this record because it felt at the time, like the only way I could hope to do some good for somebody,” Willy says. “All the concern and care I have for people, fear, frustration and sadness, all came pouring out."

Sparkling opener ‘Youth On A Spit’ is one of Willy’s heaviest tracks to date; “I feel no pain I’ve already bled / You can’t kill me I’m already dead,” he taunts, through double-sided declaration of invincibility before embarking upon a biting, bold, and caring tour through the purgatory of life in 21st century North America; reaching for Heaven “The Truth is Love/The Truth is Life/The Truth is Sowing Paradise'', whilst preparing for Hell, “Things we’d do to each other/I’m worried to discover” (Gilded Lie). All the while pleading and appealing to one’s nation as if to a wayward lover; “oh my country/you were born/as a branch from a tree of thorns/of poison apple poison tree/you’ve fallen far but roots run deep” (Oh My Country). Even those considering themselves above suspicion cannot hide: “Wilfully ignorant/a false equivalence/smitten with shame/a pawn in the game” (One Of The Good Ones).

Voyaging across the cracks of a bleak and crumbling landscape, beauty begins to blossom as Already Dead casts new shades of meaning when applied to a society and culture teetering on the edge between reinvention and dissolution. Hope, without promise, develops into its own suspended resolution with ripping album closer ‘Worth It’ and looks towards reaching a definitive destination after the soldiering on of early LPs Carry On (2012) and If the Ocean Gets Rough (2007); “The seed and the sowing/the need and the growing/the hope and the hatred/the faith and the sacred/the thief and the servant/the fazed and the fervent/I Know It’s Worth It”.

After seeing the world on countless tours and supporting independent music communities, Willy’s next move looks to be even greater. “Already Dead captures the feeling of these times and I’m trying to give people encouragement, whatever that may be or look like,” he says. Here lies unquestionable truth; life might be uncertain, but to be Already Dead is just the beginning.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's been a long wait since the last Willy Mason LP but 'Already Dead' perfectly epitomises what we've come to know and love from Willy. Brimming with folky restraint, but imbued with a cinematic intensity, these are cleverly written and brilliantly played earworms.

TRACK LISTING

1. Youth On A Spit
2. You’d Like To Be Free
3. Gilded Lie
4. Reservation
5. Oh My Country
6. Slowslide
7. One Of The Good Ones
8. Outwit The Devil
9. If There’s A Heart
10. Worth It

Private Space, the group’s third album, is a previously untapped vibe at the heart of The Indications. Pushing beyond the boundaries of the funk and soul on their previous releases, Private Space unlocks the door to a wider range of sounds and launches boldly into a world of synthy modern soul and disco beats dotted with strings. It’s an organic, timeless record that’s as fresh as clean kicks and familiar as your favorite well-worn LP.

Developed after being apart for much of the year, Private Space is creatively explosive and delights in upending expectations. Its 10 tracks are both an escapist fantasy and a much-needed recentering after a tumultuous 2020. Throughout, The Indications highlight a collective resiliency – as well as the power of a good song to be a light in the darkness.

Durand Jones and The Indications have long provided the soulful soundtrack for such deep thoughts, both on stage and on your turntable. But as the world slowly resets from the chaos of the past year, Durand Jones and The Indications’ Private Space is arriving at just the right time.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It was always a brilliantly inventive maelstrom of sound emanating from a Durand Jones release, bridging the (admittedly small) gap between funk and soul, but this time sees them broaden their horizons into a wonderfully realised and perfectly weighted groove-laiden disco masterpiece. A stunning and completely essential outing.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Love Will Work It Out
2. Witchoo
3. Private Space
4. More Than Ever
5. Ride Or Die

SIDE B:
6. The Way That I Do
7. Reach Out
8. Sexy Thang
9. Sea Of Love
10. I Can See

Debut album from Dead Nature, the solo project of former Spring King singer and prolific producer (The Big Moon, Calva Louise, Circa Waves, Dream Nails, Genghar, Police Car Collective) Tarek Musa.

Producer and songwriter Tarek Musa has for a long time placed himself at the centre of other artists’ worlds, helping to hone sounds and build scenes through his production work for artists such as The Big Moon, Genghar, and Dream Nails, Calva Louise, Police Car Collective - as well as providing remixes for the likes of Circa Waves. As BBC Radio 1's Jack Saunders noted recently on-air, "we owe a lot to him out here... he's putting the passion from [Spring King] into the future of the alternative music that we love." With Dead Nature, Musa allows himself to step back from his role as architect for others and set about pursuing his own creative impulses.

Throughout Watch Me Break Apart, internal anxieties are made external, and re-purposed into a carnival of multi-coloured, fuzzed-up indie-pop. The strain of social media and a whirlwind news-cycle compound on the album’s cartwheeling title track, pairing thoughts of sleepless nights with isolated imagery (“A car waits at the lights, no one’s in the driver’s seat / In the ocean stands a tree”). "50 Foot Wall" and the paradoxically light-hearted "Hurricane" were both written against the backdrop of a growing climate crisis, and "Ladlands" zeroes in on social and political struggle, the rate at which change is happening, and the reality-warping nature of the echo-chamber.

TRACK LISTING

1. Watch Me Break Apart
2. Hurricane
3. 50 Foot Wall
4. Borrowed Heart
5. Falling Down
6. Red Clouds
7. Rivers
8. Nothing Is Gonna Change
9. Ladlands 

Acid Dad is an American alternative-rock band composed of singer-guitarists, Vaughn Hunt and Sean Fahey, and drummer, Trevor Mustoe. Vaughn first started recording the band in his Bushwick, NY basement releasing singles “Brain Body” and their first EP “Let’s Plan a Robbery.” Appearing live in the New York City rock scene in 2016, Acid Dad quickly moved to a world stage with their self-titled debut album, released by Greenway Records in 2018. During 2020, the band spent their time building a new studio space in Queens, NY, while continuing to independently produce all their own music, art and even building their own guitars.

With a new space and vision, the band produced their second LP, “Take It From The Dead,” set to be co-released in June 2021 by Brooklyn’s Greenway Records and psych powerhouse LEVITATION’s label, The Reverberation Appreciation Society. “Take It From The Dead” features an array of different influences ranging from 90’s neopsych, modern post-punk and 70’s rock-n-roll. Acid Dad has crafted a record that sounds new, yet feels nostalgic. In contrast to their earlier work, they make use of slower tempos and expand their sound to include songs that are both more intricate and more hypnotic. To accompany the new record, the band spent the last year collaborating with video artist Webb Hunt, producing psych and glitch art videos that form a visual counterpart to the dreamy distortions of their sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. Searchin'
2. BBQ
3. RC Driver
4. She Only Eats Organic
5. Good Time
6. Smile You're On Camera
7. 2 Face
8. Djembe

Cult of Dom Keller will release their fifth album, ‘They Carried The Dead In A U.F.O’, on May 21st via Fuzz Club Records. Since 2007 the British band have been leaving a trail of sonic fever dreams, dark psychedelia and experimentalism that beats with a heavy industrial heart and the forthcoming LP sees them conjuring their heaviest and most adventurous work to date. Channelling recent limitations and turning them to their advantage, Cult of Dom Keller found themselves radically altering their creative approach and morphing their sound into a whole new beast. On this LP the band hone in on an industrial noise-rock sound that is pushed to the brink. On 'They Carried The Dead In A UFO', the band said: “We managed to create our most experimental and exciting album to date without being in the same room together. U.F.O. was recorded, mixed and produced by ourselves, meaning we had total control over every noise on the record.

This was the exact record we wanted to make: Experimental and playful; moments of light and pure dark... we wanted to f*ck with the listener and pull them in with moments of beauty and chaos. We hope you enjoy the trip!” Cult of Dom Keller have long been at the forefront of the contemporary British psych scene but their notorious reputation also extends much further afield too. They’ve done several tours around the UK, Europe and US and shared the stage with greats like Roky Erickson, Spectrum, Silver Apples and The Sisters of Mercy, as well as contemporaries like The Black Angels, Fat White Family, Sleaford Mods and Temples.

TRACK LISTING

1) Run From The Gullskinna
2) Lyssa
3) Cage The Masters
4) She Turned Into A Serpent
5) Infernal Heads
6) Psychic Surgery
7) Amazing Enemy
8) Last King Of Hell

Kojaque follows his critically acclaimed cult concept record, Deli Daydreams, with an expansive, urgent debut album. In this landmark debut, Kojaque mines both his emotional interior as an artist, and the external forces of a love triangle barrelling towards chaos. Town’s Dead is a mind-bending, explosive and expansive trip, documenting a tumultuous love triangle that unfolds across New Year’s Eve in a place where gentrification poses as much a threat as the violence of street dealers.

Sonically, the record smashes any previous expectations, stretching an aural palate that leaps from rage to solace, from clattering musical combustions to tender ruminations. The tremendous scope and scale of Town’s Dead demonstrates an artist utterly untethered to assumptions about what a particular voice or genre should be, and instead explores radical musical territory. Dark corners of parks, bedrooms, clubs, streets, and psyches are excavated, and pouring over the rubble is an artist who refuses to conform, unafraid of the vulnerabilities that are exposed when the voice rings true, because there’s just no point in being anything else. Kojaque is part of a new wave of Irish artists flooding the world with blistering and sophisticated literature, film and music - ideas and work that emerged from a social revolution stonewalled by late-stage capitalism. Welcome to that state of mind, where the path less travelled is the only one worth taking.

TRACK LISTING

1. Heartbreak
2. New Year, Who’s This? (Interlude)
3. Town's Dead
4. Wickid Tongues
5. Shmelly
6. That Deep
7. Black Sheep Part I
8. Rover
9. Jinty Boy Blues
10. No Hands
11. Part II
12. Sex N’ Drugs Feat. Celia Tiab
13. Fallin For It
14. Coming Up
15. Casio Feat. Maverick Sabre
16. Curtains 

From the moment she began writing her new album, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Now, at the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world.

Jubilee finds Michelle Zauner embracing ambition and, with it, her boldest ideas and songs yet. Inspired by records like Bjork’s Homogenic, Zauner delivers bigness throughout -- big ideas, big textures, colors, sounds and feelings. At a time when virtually everything feels extreme, Jubilee sets its sights on maximal joy, imagination, and exhilaration.

It is, in Michelle Zauner’s words, “a record about fighting to feel. I wanted to re-experience the pure, unadulterated joy of creation…The songs are about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood. They’re about making difficult choices, fighting ignominious impulses and honoring commitments, confronting the constant struggle we have with ourselves to be better people.”

Throughout Jubilee, Zauner pours her own life into the universe of each song to tell real stories, and allowing those universes, in turn, to fill in the details. Joy, change, evolution—these things take real time, and real effort. And Japanese Breakfast is here for it.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Japanese Breakfast has an uncanny knack to sit right at the intersection of so many genres, while simultaneously defying them all. 'Jubilee' comes across as a celebration, taking the tried and tested sounds of synthpop and soul and fusing them with a wealth of influence from all over the musical spectrum, resulting in a gloriously well produced and uncannily uplifting end product.

TRACK LISTING

1. Paprika
2. Be Sweet
3. Kokomo, IN
4. Slide Tackle
5. Posing In Bondage
6. Sit
7. Savage Good Boy
8. In Hell
9. Tactics
10. Posing For Cars

The band’s most experimental album, Anthem Of The Sun was an unprecedented mix of studio and live recordings stitched together to create a hybrid. More than fifty years later, it remains a pinnacle of psychedelic music. It also marked a departure for the band, as they began to channel their creativity into longer jams on songs like “Alligator” and “Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)” – two live staples of the Dead’s early days. During this period, the band included: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann. The LP features a remastered version of the 1971 mix, mastered by Grammy®-winning engineer David Glasser from the original analog master tapes.

Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records are proud to present a long awaited reissue of Dead Sea Apes & Black Tempest – The Sun Behind The Sun. This re-issue is presented in a reflective Mirri Board reflective outer sleeve. Manchester’s Dead Sea Apes and Godalming’s Black Tempest engage in a mind meld of galactic proportions on this; both band’s first outing on vinyl.

Both entities weave together seamlessly as Grey Alphabets recalls Goblin’s giallo soundtracks, whilst Wilder Penfield pulses with post-punk metal-loid Harmonia kraut vibes. Side 2 is given over to the 25+minute Heliopause - a dubby astral meditation, where Oneida meet Tangerine Dream in an elongated Komische drift. For fans of: Harmonia, Oneida,Goblin, Mogwai, Tangerine Dream.

Copycat Killer is a 12” featuring 4 exclusive new versions of songs from Phoebe Bridgers’ wildly acclaimed Punisher album. Collaborating with arranger Rob Moose (Sufjan Stevens, The National, Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, Jay-Z), these are brand new orchestral arrangements of the songs Kyoto, Savior Complex, Chinese Satellite and Punisher, all given a luscious revamp that is sure to delight any fans of Phoebe’s album and serve as perfect gateway for new listeners into what makes her one of the most special artists of 2020 and beyond.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Kyoto (Copycat Killer Version)
2. Savior Complex (Copycat Killer Version)
SIDE B:
3. Chinese Satellite (Copycat Killer Version)
4. Punisher (Copycat Killer Version)

The shadow that Gary Bartz casts over the last six decades of progressive Black music, and his continued dedication to same, makes him a logical and very welcome contributor to the Jazz Is Dead label. An alto saxophonist steeped in the history and tradition of his instrument who is also restlessly experimental and not prone to purism of any kind, he enjoys both the respect and admiration of his peers and the hero worship of several generations after him – including Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, which inevitably led to Gary Bartz JID 006.

A look at his body of work reveals dalliances with bebop, hard bop, free jazz, spiritual jazz, soul jazz, jazz-funk, fusion and acid jazz, all while resolutely remaining unmistakably Gary Bartz. There's early work with Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner in Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop, work with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, a stint in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and also one with Miles. There's his groundbreaking and highly influential Ntu Troop albums of the early ‘70s and his jazz-funk work including two classic albums with the Mizell Brothers, one of which supplied A Tribe Called Quest with a sample that was smooth like butter. And while on the subject of samples, the Bartz catalog has provided hip-hop and other genres with a rich source of them, and artists who have gone to his well when producing beats also include Black Sheep, Jurassic 5, Casual, RPM, Warren G, Photek, Statik Selektah, Chi-Ali, 3rd Bass, Showbiz, ZTrip, Young Disciples, and many others.

The socio-political content of much of Bartz’s work, particularly during the early ‘70s, is another factor that has captured the attention of and influenced many. He was wide awake to the pressing issues of his day, which sadly haven't changed much in a half-century—long before the term "woke" was ever coined—which adds continued relevance and resonance to albums like the two Harlem Bush Music LPs. Speaking his mind and expressing thoughts and feelings lyrically and vocally were a consistent aspect of his work during this era, but even with all this there's always still a space within Gary's oeuvre for the celebration of simple and beautiful basic truths. “Working with Gary Bartz epitomizes the ethos behind Jazz Is Dead,” says Younge. “He’s a luminary that has contributed so much to music culture, for decades. His musical ability is expanding with age and we’re honored to be a part of his world.”

"Day By Day" brings Bartz full circle by placing him in a more modern context which he contributed to creating in the first place. It takes certain sonic cues from Muhammad's old group, A Tribe Called Quest, while also calling to mind neo-soul a little bit. But the icing on the cake is the unexpected and gorgeous vocal chorus which is like the sun coming out and which once again harks back to an element familiar to Mizell fans. With its propulsive bassline steadily prodding the track along, "The Message" is strongly rooted in classic ‘70s modal jazz and serves as the spiritual and emotional centerpiece of the album. The instrumental interplay and textures would have been perfectly at home on the Black Jazz label even though there's also a certain almost intangible postmodern, 21st century approach to that style, perfectly in keeping with Bartz's well-known tendency to look forward, not backwards.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Spiritual Ideation
A2. Visions Of Love
A3. Black & Brown
A4. Blue Jungles
B1. Day By Day
B2. Distant Mode
B3. The Message
B4. Soulsea

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott descended into a state of mourning. Her plan had been to join her partner, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, as violinist on tour, a privilege rarely afforded since both maintain busy road schedules, and for Truscott, the prospect of spending most of the year in a van wasn’t met with exhaustion so much as exhilaration. At long last, she’d be making a living playing music, no side hustle needed. The cancellation of the tour represented a sidelined dream. Routine was born of this disappointment. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Truscott and Duterte’s collaborative project offers a glimpse of the creative possibilities that can emerge from a state of defeat. Written and recorded over the course of a month in Joshua Tree, Routine’s lush debut EP And Other Things finds the couple trying on new roles. Truscott, who plays bass in Chastity Belt, wrote the bulk of the material and sings on the EP, while Duterte, normally a band leader, used the project as an opportunity to, in her words, “Take the backseat,” as accompanist, producer, and engineer.

Duterte describes the making of the EP as “seamless.” In the mornings, Truscott sat outside of the cabin in the not-yet-blazing sun and worked out chord progressions on guitar while Duterte slept in. Staring out at the horizon, Truscott could see a smattering of houses and the sharp outline of a mountain range, but overall the property felt remote, far removed from home in Los Angeles. On long walks Truscott admired the recently bloomed spring flowers and pondered the legacy of friendships and experiences that made her. “I spend a lot of my time thinking about the people who’ve impacted my life,” she says. “Routine gave me an opportunity to explore those relationships through music.” It was on one of these walks that Truscott began writing “Cady Road,” a contemplative, country-tinged pop song that urges listeners to sit in the discomfort of the present moment. “Relax/ It’s fine/ You don’t have to know this time,” Truscott sings on the chorus, reflecting on the unsuredness that gripped her in those early days of the pandemic. Duterte joins in harmony, giving a song about being alone with your thoughts a collaborative dimension. “In Annie’s songs I hear a yearning for something just out of reach, something unachievable,” Duterte says. “She’s such a great singer, so it felt good to just layer instruments to make her vision for it feel fully fleshed out.” That impulse is heard vividly on “Cady Road,”where an abundant arrangement accompanies Truscott, replete with the spry notes of a banjolele. A true collaboration requires trust, intimacy, and patience, three elements that cohered almost mystically in the process of making this EP.

“Melina is the most calming presence. She’s so good at sitting with silences in a conversation and just observing,” Truscott says. The quality not only makes Duterte a good partner, but also a good bandmate and producer. “Calm and Collected” is a tribute to that enviable ability to maintain serenity amidst the chaos of experience. Though it was written in Joshua Tree, Duterte and Truscott recorded it in the attic of their home in LA, where Duterte set up a studio in the free time afforded by the pandemic. The song is the quietest of the collection, a gentle ode underscored by atmospheric swaths of synth that swaddle the listener. “I think of And Other Things as a series of vignettes,” Truscott says. “We aren’t telling one story here, we’re telling a series of short stories that people can hopefully relate to.” Asked how it feels to offer the EP up to the world during a time of major uncertainty in the music industry, Truscott offers only one word: “Cathartic.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Cady Road
2. Numb Enough

SIDE B:
3. Song 5
4. And Other Things
5. Calm And Collected

When Claud Mintz’s mother finally heard the 13 songs on her kid’s magnetic first album, Super Monster, she asked a concerned question: Just how many people had her 21-year-old dated? From beginning to end, these sparkling pop tunes capture the assorted stages of a relationship’s delight and dejection—the giddy sensation of a first kiss during the beaming “Overnight,” the heartsick longing of a pending rejection during the yearning “Jordan,” the reluctant call for a requisite breakup during the smoldering “Ana.” Claud, though, replied that these songs detailed the phases of only two or three relationships, simply written during them or at various points after they were over.

The debut release on Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records, Super Monster is a vertiginous but joyous coming-of-age reckoning with such young love. Claud sees relationships as games of endless wonder, intrigue, and second-guesses, a roller-coaster thrilling you even when it’s terrifying. If “Gold” turns the tension and indecision of a bad match into an undeniable bit of lithe disco, “That’s Mr. Bitch To You” uses a spurt of righteous indignation to fuse a little soul and emo into one breathless hook. Super Monster is like a compulsive compilation that Claud culled from a lifetime of musical enthusiasms—the arcing alt-rock of ’90s airwaves, the rapturous pop of ’00s chart-toppers, the diligent genre-hopping of modern online life. Claud emerges as the chameleonic mastermind of this mélange, channeling all of love’s emotions into songs so sharp they make even the hardest times feel fun.

Perhaps you are in the throes of one of these romantic moments yourself right now, resentful of a frustrating paramour like Claud during “Pepsi” or indulging in lust like “In or In Between.” Or maybe these songs recall those wild days and tough situations. Incisive, instant, and addictive Super Monster works on either level—to remind us of love’s wild ups and downs or to help us deal with them in real time. In that way, Mom, these songs are about dating, well, everyone.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Beautifully melodic bedroom pop, thumping percussion and shimmering hooks bring the stories of Claud to life. It's no surprise that the first signing on Phoebe Bridgers' Saddest Factory is brilliant, but this is a clever and nuanced indie pop LP, brought with the vitality of youth. Top stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Overnight
2. Gold
3. Soft Spot
4. In Or In-Between
5. Cuff Your Jeans
6. Ana (ft. Nick Hakim)

Side B
1. Guard Down
2. This Town
3. Jordan
4. That’s Mr Bitch To You (ft. Melanie Faye)
5. Pepsi
6. Rocks At Your Window
7. Falling With The Rain (ft. Shelly)

There are moments on Drunk Tank Pink where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest.

The genius of Drunk Tank Pink is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener Alphabet dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit. Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here, be it March Day’s escalating aural panic attack or the shapeshifting darkness of Snow Day. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelorn Human For A Minute while closer Station Wagon weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soullifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.

From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As uncompromising and incendiary as ever, Shame's 'Drunk Tank Pink' takes all of the riotous guitars and pummeling percussion and twists them into a recognisable but refreshing take on their trademark sound. A lot more intricate, elaborate and nuanced, Shame go from strength to strength.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Alphabet
2. Nigel Hitter
3. Born In Luton
4. March Day
5. Water In The Well
6. Snow Day

SIDE B:
7. Human
8. Great Dog
9. 6/1
10. Harsh Degrees
11. Station Wagon

An unparalleled & in-depth artefact of studio projects from the first 10 years of DR.ME studio spanning 560 pages featuring every project we have ever worked on including work for Mick Jagger, The Tate, Domino Records, Tri Angle, Riposte Magazine, Thames & Hudson & Universal. Alongside never before seen posters, record sleeves, identities, books, personal projects & more. Rare behind the scenes photography, exhibitions the studio has both curated and created work for around the world, anecdotes, insights and stories of how certain projects came to pass, rejected and killed work, the definitive DR.ME journey from 2010—2020 all in one place for the first time. 

Soft-spoken with the look of a slightly disaffected 1950s matinee idol, Aaron Frazer possesses a unique voice that’s both contemporary and timeless. On ‘Introducing...’ - his debut solo album produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach - Aaron melds mid-60s soul with Auerbach’s particular sensibilities (‘Over You’), songs with a message in the key of Gil Scott-Heron (‘Bad News’) and uplifting tales of love told through a blend of disco, gospel and doowop (‘Have Mercy’).

The Brooklyn-based, Baltimore-raised songwriter first came into the international spotlight as multiinstrumentalist and co-lead singer of Durand Jones & The Indications but he’s more than a revivalist act. “I didn’t want ‘Introducing...’ to be an exact recreation of an era or a style,” Frazer says. “I’m excited to keep breaking some of the expectations around what exactly I’m supposed to be artistically and musically, or what this scene as a whole can be.” On ‘Introducing...’, Aaron expertly calibrates consciousness-raising and the desire to be enveloped by love.

Where previous records were written in a partial state of turmoil, Aaron’s debut LP shows maturation and range. ‘Introducing...’ is both loving and gracious, critical without losing hope and a showcase of a young artist on a seriously soulful ascent.

‘Introducing…’ features an all-star ensemble including players with the likes of Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Dolly Parton and Charles Bradley.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's something warmingly familar about Aaron Frazer's swinging take on classic Northern Soul, nut imbued with a modern tilt that's not only perfect for the home stereo but would go down perfectly in a late night club-based scenario (remember those?)

TRACK LISTING

You Don’t Wanna Be My Baby
If I Got It (Your Love Brought It)
Can’t Leave It Alone
Bad News
Have Mercy
Done Lyin’
Lover Girl
Ride With Me
Girl On The Phone
Love Is
Over You
Leanin’ On Your Everlasting Love 

Elbow finally release the long awaited b-sides album: 'Dead In The Boot' which brings together b-sides and hard to find non-album tracks from the band's lengthy recording career. The release tells an alternative elbow story beginning with the early years, with tracks like 'None One' from the original 'Newborn' EP in 2000, right up to 'Buffalo Ghosts' from last April's 'Open Arms'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Whisper Grass
2. Lucky With Disease
3. Lay Down Your Cross
4. The Long War Shuffle
5. Every Bit The Little Girl
6. Love Blown Down
7. None One
8. Lullaby
9. McGreggor
10. Buffalo Ghosts
11. Waving From Windows
12. Snowball
13. Gentle As

The fourth release from Jazz Is Dead records features Azymuth, one of the bands in Brazilian history, redefining Popular Brazilian Music. Having released almost 20 albums in their career, Azymuth proves to be a consistent source for an innovative mix of jazz, pop, MPB, and electronic music. Composed and produced by Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad and recorded in the Linear Labs analog studio. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Ao Redor Do Samba
2. Sumaré
3. Cat Jump
4. Fall Afternoon
5. Friendship Samba
6. Apocalíptico Feat Azymuth
7. Pulando Corda
8. Queit Storm 

The breadth, detail and care of Tunng’s Dead Club project is a striking thing. “It’s not just a record, it’s a discussion, it’s a podcast series, it’s poetry, it’s short stories, it’s an examination,” says the band’s Mike Lindsay. Tackling the still near-untouchable subjects - grief, loss, the act of dying, where we go, what becomes of those left behind - death is a taboo beyond all others.

Around the time of Tunng’s sixth album, 2018’s Songs You Make at Night, lyricist Sam Genders found Max Porter’s novel Grief is The Thing with Feathers, and was struck by its power. Its viscerality and rawness and rage. Its beauty and love and connection. He passed Porter’s book around his band members.

For months the six band members discussed the subject at length. That they are such a sizeable band, diverse in opinion and perspective, proved helpful: “When all those things come together that’s what makes it Tunng,” says Genders. “And because the subject of death is so powerful for people in different ways, we talked about the kinds of issues it might bring up, that we might need to be sensitive about.”

Firstly, Dead Club is an extraordinary record; contemplative, intimate and celebratory. It includes collaborations with Max Porter, who wrote two new pieces for the album. It draws on the research the band conducted — nods to the Wari people of Brazil who eat their dead, discussions of consciousness and memory, Genders’ visit to a death cafe in Sheffield, and the Swedish art of Death Cleaning. It touches on personal loss, fear, and humour and sorrow and love.

“Trying to turn this whole concept into an album, into music, without it being too sombre and difficult for people to listen to, that’s been the challenge,” says Lindsay. “We wanted it to be colourful and we wanted it to be kind of uplifting. Although some of it’s a lot darker than I was imagining it originally, I think it’s a thought-provoking and emotional journey; it doesn’t make me feel sad.”

It's also a podcast series, produced by the band’s Becky Jacobs and Sam Genders, speaking to those who work in the field of death: philosophers, scientists, frontline workers, and beyond. Philosophers Alain De Botton and A.C. Grayling discuss cultural attitudes towards death, alongside palliative care physician and author Kathryn Mannix, mentalist Derren Brown, forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black, musician Speech Debelle, and Poetry editor of the New Yorker, Kevin Young. Samples from these discussions in turn appear on the album: Brown’s voice hovers over Fatally Human, Black considers what happens after we die on The Last Day, while on A Million Colours, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib of Tinariwen speaks of the traditions around death of the Tuareg in northern Mali.

There were live events planned of course, collisions of music and readings and art that the band had hoped might prompt conversations about the subject among the audience. Perhaps the hope of this project is not to commandeer grief, to explain it or provide a structure for loss, but to bring a new openness to the subject.

We no longer have the religious script we once had that helped us to deal with death, Genders notes. “And I think a lot of us are struggling to know how to behave around it.” But there are skills we can learn, conversations we can have, cultural baggage we can question, to find an approach that reflects an experience that is “inherently human”, as Genders puts it. “I think in life in general there’s something very powerful in total honesty,” he says. “In being honest about all the different ways that you experience things. Because it’s nearly always the case that you discover everyone’s got the same anxieties, and the same fears, and having the same experiences. And maybe that can be powerful.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Though the idea and the creative process behind 'Dead Club' is significantly different from their usual collaborative approach, it has every bit of the alt-folk charm and bracing mix of electronic and organic instrumentation we saw in 'then We Saw Land' or the brilliant 'Good Arrows'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Eating The Dead
2. Death Is The New Sex
3. SDC
4. Three Birds
5. A Million Colours
6. Carry You
7. The Last Day
8. Tsunami
9. Man
10. Scared To Death
11. Fatally Human
12. Woman

When R.I.P. came crawling out of the sewers of Portland four years ago, their grimy, sleazy Street Doom was already a fully formed monstrosity that quickly infected the minds of everyone it encountered. At the time, none of us expected its depravity to take such fierce hold, and yet, here were are, sheltering in place and/or stealthily creeping through a nightmare dystopia that the 80s sci-fi/horror movies foretold. Dead End is, ironically, a recharge of the band’s sound, bearing influences ranging from John Carpenter films, post-apocalyptic grunge, pro-wrestling attitude and salty lo-fi hip-hop aesthetics to the band’s ferocious heavy metal. During the three years since the 2017 release of their sophomore album Street Reaper, R.I.P. has been busy tightening their sound and their line up while loosening their grip on sanity — touring the west coast with bands like Electric Wizard and Red Fang, and taking Street Doom overseas for the first time for a month long headlining tour of Europe. These years on the road and the addition of a more aggressive rhythm section have allowed the band to fully break free from their influences and deliver on the promise hinted at on their first two releases. For Dead End, R.I.P. worked with legendary producer Billy Anderson, interring onto wax their heaviest and most ambitious album yet. Continuing to move further away from their classic doom influences like Pentagram and Saint Vitus, the band offers a rare blast of originality in a scene rife with formulaic bands. Dead End is a fast and anxious ride where the very idea of doom is put to the test under duress of manic lyrics about death, insanity, and leather, and hook-laden guitar tracks that draw as equally from Nirvana as Black Sabbath.

TRACK LISTING

01. Streets Of Death
02. Judgement Night
03. Dead End
04. Nightmare
05. One Foot In The Grave
06. Death Is Coming
07. Moment Of Silence
08. Buried Alive
09. Out Of Time
10. Dead Of The Night

Some bands struggle to transcend their initial mythos, those stories that introduce them to the public eye. But The Dead C is a notable exception. They appeared in 1986 under a cloud of mystery, their unconventional location (South Island, New Zealand) helping to fuel their erratic sound. Name-dropped through the nineties by groups like Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo, they gained influence and acclaim but never strayed from their original mainlined performing technique, which can sound like chaos to the casual listener.

What kind of a world greets them and their new album Unknowns in 2020? New Zealand culture is better known throughout the world, not to mention a low-virus paradise. Yes, isolated as in the past, but this time for being a nation of efficacy in tackling a public health crisis. But what about the rest of the world? The music of Mssrs. Robbie Yates, Bruce Russell and Michael Morley endures, partially because their errant sounds, once so alienating, now feel like they’ve been made flesh in a large part of the modern day world.

Continuing to delve inwards for inspiration with tin ears towards trends, styles and technique, The Dead C forge onward. Unpolished, dusty and gritty, these three have again taken two guitars and drums, a combo which has less to say than ever, and leave the listener stunned. Unknowns has Morley slurring over spiraling dissemblance, with tracks ricocheting from intense to assaultive to drained, yet consistently magnificent. As reliable as ever, The Dead C are firmly grounded as an unassailable Truth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Grunt Machine
2. Still
3. The Sky Above
4. Glitterness
5. The Field

Ken Kesey’s Ultra Rare 1966 studio recording of the Acid Test with The Grateful Dead originally released in 1966. Legendary documentation of the 1965-66 Bay Area Acid Test scene from 14 hours of the actual trip (recorded in a studio). Lots of amazing mind games and word play with Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs in good form, ad libbed poetry, fractured harmonica solos, tape loops and the Grateful Dead lurking in the background.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ken Kesey
2. Ken Babbs And Harmonica
3. Take Two
4. Bull
5. Peggy The Pistol
6. One Way Ticket
7. Bells & Fairies
8. Levitation
9. Trip X
10. The End

In the winter of 2017 I moved back to my hometown of Kansas City from Los Angeles. The move was sudden and unforeseen, just as I was tying a bow on the writing process for what would become my 2019 album, Oh My God. I bought a Four Track Tascam model 424 off of an old friend to help me get to the finish line, but much to my surprise and excitement, this new piece of equipment in my all-but-bare home didn’t help complete one album but rather inspire another: Sundowner. The new collection of songs came quickly and effortlessly as I did my best not to resist or refine the songs, but instead let them take shape all on their own.

As the songs kept coming I cleared out the crowded shed that was sitting dormant in my backyard and built a makeshift studio before adding drums, lead guitar and piano to complete the demos. Each day I would teach myself basic recording techniques, watching the channels illuminate and pulse as if the machine were breathing, and then emerge in the evenings as the sun was getting low: - around 5:30 in the winter, when the Kansan sunsets look icy and distant, like a pink ember inside of a display case, and 9 o’clock in the summer, when the sunsets are warm and abstract.

Landing back home felt jarring juxtaposed with a life full of chaos and adventure with my band on the road. But at the very least, I was happy to have - for the first time in my adulthood - a place to close the door, with no temptations other than to work on music and reflect on what I had built since I left. It was a new form of isolation, one I had never explored or expected to experience. Not ready to let go of the hand of the California desert, I spent the winter decorating the best I knew how; with mementos from my previous home, cactus and aloe vera and covering the walls in pinewood - immediately earning my house it’s nickname, The Little Los Angeles.

In January 2019 I contacted my friend and producer Brad Cook to help recreate what I had made in my shed. We chose to work in Texas; we wanted to make sure the record was done far away from any coastline, and in the heart of America. Brad played bass and some keys on the album, but beyond that he encouraged and inspired me to play almost everything else. All lead guitar, proper drums (save the drums on “A Night At The Little Los Angeles”), mellotron and what I believe to be the albums secret weapon - a WWII era collapsible and slightly out-of-tune pump organ - were performed by me. We did, however, bring in James Krivchenia towards the end of the session to fill out the percussion. It was an honor to work with him as he built maracas from pecans and played on the floor of the live room, adding flourish wherever he saw fit.

On the last evening of the session, after everything had wrapped, we all climbed on top of an empty water tower on the property, giving us a view in all directions. To the North you could see an endless Texas, with long wisps of cirrus clouds above the desert floor, and to the South there was Mexico, the recent detention camps only a mile beyond, with large cumulus clouds hovering over, bringing us to an ominous pause. To the West, towards the setting sun, the two families of clouds merged, holding the last light of the day in purple and orange. Below, a freight train cut the landscape in half as it whistled in the distance.

Almost as soon as the session wrapped, I was off and away on press trips and then proper tours for Oh My God, which came out in April that same year. Sundowner sat inside of a hard drive back at Sonic Ranch and did not see the light of day, until I found myself, as did the rest of the world, stuck inside their home and in quarantine in March 2020. My second year of touring for Oh My God was cancelled. Brad, Jerry and I worked from our respective homes, sending notes back and forth as we worked alone but together to mix the album, and suddenly, just like that, Sundowner was finished.

Songs, like sunsets, are fleeting, and it’s only due to a willingness and desire to catch them that you ever, if even only for a moment, grab a hold of one. When writing Sundowner, I was lucky to have had the Tascam 424 there to help capture both. Sundowner is my attempt to put the Middle American twilight -- it’s beauty profound, though not always immediate -- into sound. It is a depiction of isolation. Of the past. Of an uncertain future. Of provisions. Of an omen. Of a dead deer. Of an icon. Of a Los Angeles themed hotel in rural Kansas. Of billowing campfires, a mermaid and a highway lined in rabbit fur. It is a depiction of the nervous feeling that comes with the sky’s proud announcement that another day will be soon coming to a close as the pink light recedes and the street lamps and house lights suddenly click on. -- Kevin Morby, Kansas, 2020.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a blessing in a way, that all of the artists we know and love have had a chance to get through some unfinished work sitting around on their hard drives (obviously the circumstances surrounding it are less than ideal..). Here we have a fully fledged gorgous new album from Morby that just wouldn't have been given the attention it deserved had his tour for the last album gone ahead. Thank goodness it got finished, 'Sundowner' is a triumph.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Valley
2. Brother, Sister
3. Sundowner
4. Campfire
5. Wander
SIDE B:
6. Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun
7.A Night At The Little Los Angeles
8. Jamie
9. Velvet Highway
10. Provisions

Into The Labyrinth (1993) is Dead Can Dance’s sixth album, one of their most successful releases, its title a reference to the Greek legend of Theseus going into the Labyrinth to slay the Minotaur. It came when Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard had embarked on more individual personal paths, now writing their songs independent of one another, and on separate continents. Engineered and produced by Brendan at his Quivvy Church studio in Ireland, the album is an audiophile benchmark and also noted for being their first without any guests, instead they played all the instruments.

The 2016 LP version is also a double LP like the original release, but comes with brand new cover artwork and an altered track sequence.

Back in the 80s Dons Savage of Dead Famous People joined her first band Freudian Slips which soon ended so she along with fellow Freudian Slip refugee Biddy Leyland could pursue their own talents. A chance encounter with Flying Nun's spiritual guru, Chris Knox, led to a one-off deal with the label that resulted in a five-song EP, ‘Lost Persons Area’. Moving to London in 1986 the fabled "Flying Nun sound" began making an impact outside New Zealand. The release of near-perfect compilations by The Clean and The Chills except Dead Famous People were a little early for that buzz. Stumbling into a deal with Utility Records, Billy Bragg and legendary manager Pete Jenner. Dons later started singing with new combo, Saint Etienne, her vocals feature on the original version of their cover version hit, ‘Kiss And Make Up’, as well as a cover of Gil Scott-Heron's ‘Winter In America’. Around this same time, Martin Phillipps of The Chills asked Dons requested she sing on ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’. Dons soon returned home to Auckland without an outlet for her music, three decades later Fire tracked her down and the rest is history. Now set to release her new album ‘Harry’, it’s more philosophical than her earlier work. It feels like the right one for a world of apocalyptic pandemic, uncertainty and quarantine. Dons' power over melody and knack for profundity remains unchanged since Dead Famous People's original incarnation. A rare record in a time of musical factionalism and a world divided into camps of willful obscurity and grotesque mockeries of stardom and art, it’s a document of unadorned perfection.

"Bob bought a DFP single which we both really liked, we were drawn to the mystery of the band's name and the melancholy tone of Dons' voice." Pete Wiggs - Saint Etienne.

“There was a sense of excitement that something special was happening." Martin Phillipps – The Chills.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Looking At Girls
A2 Goddess Of Chill
A3 Safe And Sound
A4 Turn On The Light
A5 Dead Birds Eye

Side B
B6 Groovy Girl
B7 The Great Unknown
B8 Dog
B9 To Be Divine
B10 Harry

This is Tolouse Low Trax’s 4th solo album Jumping Dead Leafs.
A 38 minutes exorcism, dionysac sexyness fueled with romanticism, made of mechanical incantations mixed with spectral vocals of forgotten imaginary tribes, words from a physicist (Incomprehensible Image), and mystical breathings… To remind you that music is demanding your soul and body, fully. A master irritator, disclosing this talent all the way, down to every chosen title, for the album itself and all of its components (would you put Milk in Water ?). As repetitive or minimalist music may already make some of you feel nervous, it seems more accurate to talk here about primitive music - notwithstanding a non violent anarchism. But those are only words and vain attempts to attach TLT to a region or a family. Neither the burden of classical European music legacy, which eventually lead to pop music, seemed to interfere with his wild mind, and if it is no surprising to hear Bach in German electronic music, there is here a clear statement that you are out of this sirupy prison… For D.W. is a sorcerer. He’s been empirically learning the speaking of trance with years of touring and experimenting with all kinds of audience and venues, from clubs to museums, from Mongolia to Brazil, from his performances with his bands Kreidler or Toresch to solo ones, sustained by a steady limited set up, as the one used when he’s recording : one MPC, rudimentary synths, few effects and a mixer. No sound engineer on stage as only he knows his secret language… Raw dubmaking, leaning towards
hip hop, indubitably underlining here a significant distanciation from his previous industrial inspirations. The bewitchment of this record is operating with no warning from the very first seconds until the last epiphany of Sales Pitch. He is using his knowledge of techno, psychedelism (Inverted Sea), UK bass (Jumping Dead Leafs), only to bring you out of it. We all tend to be slaves, without even being conscious about it, and a balance must be existing between being a slave and showing off. Mr. Weinrich’s answer is unsettling because it is an utter call to this balance, in our world of black and white and political correctness. There is no morality in music… Don’t expect anything else than an unaccountable liberating immediate experience. Don’t expect any kind of music because you are already in the past or the future… From his recording technique mainly relying on one takes, his adoration of mistakes and jeopardy, to the core essence of repetitive music, it is all hereabout being in the present. No ears no glasses. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Dusseldorf's dance floor Derrida comes correct with his first solo album in six years, providing a little club deconstruction for the fringe DJ and haunted home listener! Frankly, no one sounds like Detlef, and as this LP blazes its hazy trail through warehouse smog, dislocated dubspace and an entirely crepuscular strand of psychedelia, it becomes increasingly clear how much we've missed him.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Inverted Sea
A2. Berrytone Souvenier
A3. The Incomprehensible Image
B1. Jumping Dead Leafs
B2. Milk In Water
B3. Dawn Is Temporal
B4. Pulse Skit
B5. Sales Pitch

A lone pair of footsteps meanders down a street in omaha, into the neighborhood bar and then into a near-imperceptible tangle of conversations – about wars, sleepless nights – a surrealist din pushing against the sound of ragtime. Then, as the background quiets, a line rings out clearly: “i think about how much people need – what they need right now is to feel like there’s something to look forward to. We have to hold on. We have to hold on.”

Thus we enter the fitting, cacophonic introduction to bright eyes’ tenth studio album and first release since 2011. Down in the weeds, where the world once was is an enormous record caught in the profound in-between of grief and clarity – one arm wrestling its demons, the other gripping the hand of love, in spite of it.

The end of bright eyes’ unofficial hiatus came naturally. Conor oberst pitched the idea of getting the band back together during a 2017 christmas party at bright eyes bandmate nathaniel walcott’s los angeles home. The two huddled in the bathroom and called mike mogis, who was christmas shopping at an omaha mall. Mogis immediately said yes. There was no specific catalyst for the trio, aside from finding comfort amidst a decade of brutal change. Sure, why now? Is the question, but for a project whose friendship is at the core, it was simply why not?

The resulting bright eyes album came together unlike any other of its predecessors. Down in the weeds is bright eyes’ most collaborative, stemming from only one demo and written in stints in omaha and in bits and pieces in walcott’s los angeles home. Radically altering a writing process 25 years into a project seems daunting, but oberst said there was no trepidation: “our history and our friendship, and my trust level with them, is so complete and deep. And i wanted it to feel as much like a three-headed monster as possible.”

As a title, as a thesis, down in the weeds, where the world once was functions on a global, apocalyptic level of anxiety that looms throughout the record. But on a personal level, it speaks to rooting around in the dirt of one’s memories, trying to find the preciousness that’s overgrown and unrecognizable. For oberst, coming back to bright eyes was a bit of that. A symbol of simpler times, vaguely nostalgic. And even though it wasn’t actually possible to go back to the way things were, even though there wasn’t an easy happy ending, there was a new reality left to work with.

And here, there is a bleary-eyed hopefulness – earnest, emotive recommitments to love appear on “dance and sing” and “just once in the world.” And throughout, down in the weeds features snippets of oberst’s loved ones speaking, in late-night conversations. The fleeting loveliness of intimate moments punctuates the bleakness of the record’s existential crisis, crackling like lightning bugs illuminating the long night.

Down in the weeds is a distillation of a prolific, enduring canon. It’s immediate and urgent, the product of its creators’ growth across a decade apart, as well as the need to make a record together to find solace from loss. Through deliberate, fearless experimentation in process, the trio made the truest bright eyes sound: the sound of a deep bond, of a band coming home, but also a seamless continuation, like bright eyes never went away. It’s the impossible, sprawling mess of human experience that bright eyes has always sought to put to tape, since the beginning – the sound of holding on. Why now? Why not?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's been far too long since the last Bright Eyes album, and this one shows why we've missed him so much. Beautifully tender melodies, orchestral swoon and soaring crescendos aplenty. This is a new journey for Oberst & crew, but also warmingly familiar.

TRACK LISTING

Pageturners Rag
Dance And Sing
Just Once In The World
Mariana Trench
One And Done
Pan And Broom
Stairwell Song
Persona Non Grata
Tilt-a-whirl
Hot Car In The Sun
Forced Convalescence
To Death’s Heart (in Three Parts)
Calais To Dover
Comet Song

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

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

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

STAFF COMMENTS

Emily says: The international peddlers of smooth, stylish grooves are back, and this time they’ve returned with a slightly revamped sound. They haven’t stopped trawling the globe for sonic inspiration and this could be some of their most eclectic work to date, adding elements of East and West African music to their already diverse sound palette. The vocals are far more present on ‘Mordechai’ than previous albums, but Khruangbin haven’t completely abandoned the deep instrumental format that they started out with. There is plenty of stripped back Cymande style elegance to be enjoyed in tracks like “If There is No Question” and “Father Bird, Mother Bird”. Perhaps one of the prettiest tracks is “One to Remember”, a shimmering dub incarnation of “So We Won’t Forget” which makes for a satisfying self-referential moment. Let’s hope their winning streak endures until they’ve distilled the essence of the entire globe into their singular soundworld.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. First Class
2. Time (You And I)
3. Connaissais De Face
4. Father Bird, Mother Bird
5. If There Is No Question

SIDE B:
6. Pelota
7. One To Remember
8. Dearest Alfred
9. So We Won’t Forget
10. Shida

Love Record Stores Edition available from 9am on Saturday June 20th.
Limited to one per person.

Phoebe Bridgers doesn’t write love songs as much as songs about the impact love can have on our lives, personalities, and priorities.

Punisher, her fourth release and second solo album, is concerned with that subject. To say she writes about heartbreak is to undersell her blue wisdom, to say she writes about pain erases all the strange joy her music emanates. The arrival of Punisher cements Phoebe Bridgers as one of the most clever, tender and prolific songwriters of our era.

Bridgers is the rare artist with enough humour to deconstruct her own meteoric rise. Repeatedly praised by publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Pitchfork, The Fader, The Los Angeles Times and countless others, Bridgers herself is more interested in discussing topics on Twitter, deadpanning meditations on the humiliating process of being a person, she presents a sweetly funny flipside to the strikingly sad songs she writes. Fittingly, Punisher is fascinated with, and driven by, that kind of impossible tension. Whether it’s writing tweets or songs, Bridgers’s singular talent lies in bringing fierce curiosity to slimy and painful things, interrogating them until they yield up answers that are beautiful and absurd, or faithfully reporting the reality that, sometimes, they are neither.

Bridgers pulls together a formidable crew of guests, including the Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, Christian Lee Hutson and Conor Oberst as well as Nathaniel Walcott (of Bright Eyes), Nick Zinner (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Jenny Lee Lindberg (of Warpaint), Blake Mills and Jim Keltner as well as her longtime bandmates Marshall Vore (drums), Harrison Whitford (guitar), Emily Retsas (bass) and Nick White (keys). The album was mixed by Mike Mogis, who also mixed Stranger In The Alps. On the album’s epic, freewheeling closer, “I Know The End,” Bridgers orchestrates wails and horns, drums and electric guitar into a sumptuous doomsday swirl, culminating in her own final whispered roar.

This is Punisher in a nutshell: devastating elegance punctuated by a moment of deeply campy self-awareness.

Debut LP from West London singer songwriter Will Westerman.

Your Hero Is Not Dead is the follow-up to his critically-acclaimed Ark EP. Recorded alongside his close friend and producer Nathan Jenkins (A.K.A. Bullion) at first in Southern Portugal before finishing the process in London, Your Hero Is Not Dead is an album about empathy and compassion, struggle and release, and all the ways we contradict and battle within ourselves. The project is full of supremely crafted, groove-hinged songs about moral, political, and ethical grey areas, that find Westerman attempting to resolve external issues by looking inward.

TRACK LISTING

Drawbridge
The Line
Big Nothing Glow
Waiting On Design
Think I'll Stay
Dream Appropriate
Easy Money
Blue Comanche
Confirmation
Paper Dogs
Float Over
Your Hero Is Not Dead

In 2012 Durand Jones left his small-town in Louisiana, alto saxophone in tow, for the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. “Being a singer was never part of the plan,” Jones admits. But soon enough he found his way in front of a rowdy rock-n-roll band belting out a rambunctious rendition of “Dock Of The Bay,” to a basement full of drunken undergrads. That rowdy band unfolded into The Indications which includes founding members Aaron Frazer (drums, lead vocals) and Blake Rhein (guitar).

Inspired by a handful of dusty and obscure 45s bearing names like The Ethics, Brothers of Soul and The Icemen, The Indications set out to make a record steeped in heavy drums, blown-out vocals, and deep grooves. Gathered around a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder and a case of Miller HighLife, the group spent their Sunday evenings recording into the early hours of the morning. The result is their modern soul masterpiece Durand Jones & The Indications (Dead Oceans/Colemine Records).

With comparisons from Charles Bradley, Lee Fields to Al Green, this young band are now at the forefront of 60’s soul revival. Their sweaty, fiery live shows have earned them a reputation for giving it their all each night which can be witnessed on Durand Jones & The Indications Live Vol. 1. Available for the first time on limited translucent blue vinyl, the album includes tracks from their debut and deep cut soul covers fans have become accustomed

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. I Can’t Do Without You [Live From Bloomington, IN]
2. Make A Change [Live From Bloomington, IN]
3. Can’t Keep My Cool [Live From Bloomington, IN]
4. Groovy Babe [Live From Bloomington, IN]
5. Should I Take You Home [Live From Bloomington, IN]
6. Dedicated To You [Live From Boston, MA]

Side B
7. Now I’m Gone [Live From Boston, MA]
8. Is It Any Wonder? [Live From Boston, MA]
9. Smile [Live From Boston, MA]
10. Giving Up [Live From Boston, MA]

Driving anywhere in Texas can cost you half a day, easy. For example, it’ll take you over four hours just to get from R&B singer Leon Bridges’ hometown of Fort Worth down to Houston, where the psychedelic wanderers in Khruangbin hail from. The state is vast, crisscrossed with rugged expanses of road flanked by limestone cliffs and granite mountains, forests of pine and mesquite, miles of desert or acres of sprawling grassland, all depending on what part you’re in. And it’s all baking under the "Texas Sun" that lends its name to Bridges and Khruangbin’s new collaborative EP.

“Big sky country, that’s what they call Texas,” Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee says. “The horizon line goes all the way from one side to another without interruption. There’s something really comforting about that.”

On "Texas Sun", these two members of the state’s musical vanguard meet up somewhere in the middle of that scene, in the mythical nexus of Texas’ past, present, and future - a dreamy badlands where genres blur as seamlessly as the terrain. It calls equally to the cowboys bootscooting at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, the chopped-and-screwed hip-hop fans rattling slabs on the southside of Houston, the art-school kids dropping acid in Austin, the cross-cultural progeny who grew up on listening to both mariachi and post-hardcore out on the Mexican borders of El Paso. All of these things, overlapping in a multicolored melange, purple hues as vivid and unpredictable as one of the state’s rightfully celebrated sunsets.

A journey through homesick reminiscences, backseat romances, and late-night contemplations, the kind of record made for listening with the windows down and the road humming softly beneath you. Like the highways that inspired it, "Texas Sun" is guaranteed to get you where you’re going -especially if you’re in no particular hurry to get there.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A mild departure for Khruangbin here, enlisting soulful maestro Leon Bridges on vox duties, adding a silky overtone to their nigh-horizontal grooves. A superb, hazy dream of an album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Texas Sun
2. Midnight
3. C-Side
4. Conversion

Have We Met, as Dan Bejar puts it, ‘came together in such a crazy way – all equal parts ecstasy and terror’. Initially conceived (but quickly ditched) as a Y2K album, Bejar was without a clear concept in mind. So he said “fuck it” and let it all rip while brainstorming at home. Culled from years’ worth of saved writing, set aside for projects “beyond music,” and recorded at his kitchen table, Have We Met harkens back to Kaputt-era Dan stringing together lyrics off hand while lounging on his couch. The resulting vocal sound exists in the sweet spot between two Destroyer worlds colliding: hints of the past, more strident Destroyer mixed in with a relaxed, new-aged Crooning one.

No re-recording. No cleaning up. Frequent collaborator John Collins was tasked with the role of layering synth and rhythm sections over a stream-of-consciousness Bejar, as Nic Bragg added ‘completely unexpected and somehow comforting’ three-dimensional, shredding guitar. The Destroyer band-orientated approach was shelved; “The record could have gone on and on, and the mixes kept evolving up until about a day before we sent them off to be mastered, which was also 48 hours before John and his wife went to the birthing centre, where their first child was born; our true deadline!” says Bejar.

Opener ‘Crimson Tide’ is a six-minute journey that takes its rightful place among other Destroyer epics. It welcomes with a sparse rhythm until percolating synths and propulsive bass build and make it all a reality with unsustainable imagery — oceans stuck inside hospital corridors and insane funerals. It’s the sound of a somewhat eccentric and unorthodox recording process laid out and built up by three musicians exploring the depth to which they can take an idea.

On “The Television Music Supervisor,” trickling keys, glitches, and “clickity click clicks” (a variation on the standard Bejar “la da das”) focuses on how those who dictate our relationships with music and media are susceptible to error, a most 21st century concern. Perhaps the most audacious Destroyer track yet, “Cue Synthesizer” steps back to address the rote and often-detached mechanics of music. Up next, the waltzy and woozy centerpiece “University Hill” drifts even further and applies that logic more broadly, insisting “the game is rigged in every direction” and “you’re made of string.”

Thirteen albums in, Have We Met manages to meet somewhere between trademarks and new territory – atmospheric approximations of feeling and place, wry gut-punches of one liners, and the deluge of energy meets a thematic catharsis of modern dread, delivered with an effortless, entrancing directness. But, no need to expound any further. He's got it all spelled out for you in the music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: While still retaining the slightly oddball lounge aesthetic, 'Have We Met' takes all of Destroyer's myriad sounds and skilfully crafts them into an album full of twists and turns, brimming with warmth and rarely overproduced, Bejar is at his creative best.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crimson Tide
2. Kinda Dark
3. It Just Doesn’t Happen
4. The Television Music Supervisor
5. The Raven
6. Cue Synthesizer
7. University Hill
8. Have We Met
9. The Man In Black’s Blues
10. Foolssong

Bill Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. A prime Fay song is a deceptively simple thing which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply. There are ten of these musical haikus on Countless Branches, as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded. For decades now - it’s almost 50 years since he cut his classic albums “Bill Fay” and “Time of the Last Persecution” - songs like these have been Fay’s ambassadors helping rave reviews and endorsements from the likes of Jim O’Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) which led to a huge revival of interest in his music. He had continued to make music almost every day in the intervening decades. For Countless Branches he’s completed new toplines over some of his cache of backing tracks, most of them 20 to 40 years old.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brittle and almost entorely unadorned (safe for a guitar and a guitar at most), Bill Fay's crackling voice soars above these perfectly produced and stunningly stripped back Americana gems. Evocative and stunning, this is a gem in an already hugely influential career.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Human Hands
2. How Long, How Long
3. Your Little Face
4. Salt Of The Earth
5. I Will Remain Here
6. Filled With Wonder Once Again
7. Time’s Going Somewhere
8. Love Will Remain
9. Countless Branches
10. One Life

Deluxe LP Bonus Tracks:
11. Tiny
12. Don’t Let My Marigolds Die (Live In Studio)
13. The Rooster
14. Your Little Face (Acoustic Version)
15. Filled With Wonder Once Again (Band Version)
16. How Long, How Long (Band Version)
17. Love Will Remain (Band Version)

Five years on from the release of their previous record, Austin’s beloved art-rock heroes … And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead return with their tenth album – X: The Godless Void and Other Stories. Expansive yet concise, this album nods to the band’s traditional touchstones – the feral scree of Sonic Youth, Rush’s symphonic anthems, the textured bliss of My Bloody Valentine – while morphing effortlessly into newer forms. The synth-orchestral swell of curtain-raiser “Opening Crescendoes” recalls Hans Zimmer and Tangerine Dream, before “All Who Wander” descends from guitar-soaked high drama into simmering, murky psych. Next up, “Something Like This” offers nods to the ethereal songcraft that defined the sound of the legendary 4AD label, before everything kicks in at full pelt with “Into The Godless Void”, as noisy and thrilling an existential anthem as the band have ever put their name to. And this is just the first four songs… Work on X: The Godless Void and Other Stories began in earnest in 2018, after Keely returned to the band’s hometown of Austin following five years in Cambodia. With a new line-up having recently toured the 20th anniversary of their Madonna album, they’re also reverted to the live format of their earlier years, with Reece and Keely alternating between drums and frontman duties – a musical partnership that dates back to their high school days. Appropriately, it all feels fresh.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Opening Crescendo
2. All Who Wander
3. Something Like This
4. Into The Godless Void
5. Don't Look Down
6. Gone
7. Children Of The Sky
8. Who Haunts The Haunter
9. Eyes Of The Overworld
10. Gravity
11. Blade Of Wind
12. Through The Sunlit Door

Starting with the following year’s Under Wires And Searchlights, they’ve created an explorative body of instrumental work that’s shifted between electronica, dub, minimalism, avant-jazz and ambient music. Along the way they’ve collaborated with the likes of Jah Wobble, remixed Max Richter and Vök and provided soundtracks for art installations and other visual media. They’ve also had their own music remixed by Biosphere and Japan’s Steve Jansen, among others. The new album offers ample evidence of a band in its prime. Marconi Union still sound vital and original, enthused by the possibilities that music has to offer. “We’ve never wanted to repeat ourselves,” states Talbot. “We’ve made ten albums and have been going for 17 years, but it still feels fresh. That’s been so important for us all the way through. We’re looking to do new things all the time” co-founder Richard Talbot says.

Indeed, the exquisite Dead Air bears only a passing resemblance to its 2016 forerunner, Ghost Stations. The trio have dispensed with beats, brass and guest musicians this time around, opting instead for a more intimate and textural approach, a constantly evolving soundworld of tones and sensory impressions. Dead Air also bears little resemblance to the trio’s initial vision for it. “The album we set out to make had far more of a rhythmic element,” explains Talbot, “ but fairly late in the process, we decided to completely change direction.” This is entirely in keeping with Marconi Union’s guiding methodology. Ideas remain fluid throughout the writing process, until Talbot and bandmates Jamie Crossley and Duncan Meadows ultimately settle on what feels right to them.  As such, Dead Air is a sublime testament to their collective instinct.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Marconi Union have been a constant source of pleasure for me here, with their wonderful capability to imbue any sound with all sorts of majestic overtones and euphoric, airy ambience while still retaining a momentum and sense of progression. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

A.M.I.D.
Mossfield 
Imbalance
Permafrost
Fractured
Dead Air
Burned

Feathers is the fifth album by the time Washington, D.C. based rock band Dead Meadow. It was released in 2005 by Matador Records on CD and LP now about to reissued by Xemu Records under license by Matador Records. The upcoming release will be an exact copy of the original double vinyl and CD packages with original art and masters. In addition to the reissue this new product will include a "demo rarities CD' that will be included additionally in both the CD and LP releases. This demo CD will include outtakes from the 2004 recording session as well as demos with different song structure/ arrangements and even a couple tunes that were axed off the final album. The fourth full-length studio album by Dead Meadow, was the first to include an additional guitar player with Cory Shane. Previously as well as for the majority of the band's career the DC to LA transplants have been a power-trio at essence. This departure in line up wasn't the only other noticeable difference the band was also shifting from pure 60's-70's heavy psych sounds to a more gentle and layered new-psych sound almost more influenced by dark Brit-pop and early new wave bands like the Cure and Stone Roses but through their own hazy interpretation. The different approach shocked current fans and gained lots of new ones as well as garnering solid underground praise at a much needed and delicate time of Dead Meadow's career. Revered and as equally hated this divisional record would be a landmark in the band's history and important piece of the puzzle that has kept the boys rocking and relevant. 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1

1.Let's Jump In - 4:20 :
2. Such Hawks Such Hounds - 3:19 :
3 Get Up On Down -5:27

Side 2  

1. Heaven - 6:05 :
2. Eyeless Gaze All Eye Don't Tell The Riverman - 7:04

Side 3

1. At Her Open Door - 5:31 :
2. Stacy's Song - 4:06 :
3. Let It All Pass - 5:20

Side 4

1. Through The Gates Of The Sleepy Silver Door - 2:01:
2. Untitled (Sleepy Silver Door) - 13:42

Track Listing CD1 (Original Album):

1."Let's Jump In" - 4:19 :
2."Such Hawks Such Hounds" - 3:19:
3."Get Up On Down" - 5:27 :
4."Heaven" - 6:05 :
5."At Her Open Door" - 5:31:
6."Eyeless Gaze All Eye/Don't Tell The Riverman" - 7:04:
7."Stacy's Song" - 4:05 :
8. "Let It All Pass" - 5:20 :
9."Through The Gates Of The Sleepy Silver Door" -2:01
10."Untitled" (Hidden Bonus Track) - 13:44 Track Listing

CD 2 (Demos):

1. The Whirlings (Feathers Session) - 4:25 :
2. Let's Jump In (LA Version) - 6:21
3. Stacy's Song (Alternate Mix) - 4:18 :
4. Get Up On Down (Basement Demo - 5:26 :
5. Feathers (Basement Demo) - 2:51 :
6. At Her Open Door (Basement Demo) - 4:53 :
7. Let It All Pass (Basement Demo) - 5:15
8. Feathered Fish (Basement Demo) - 2:08 :
9. Eyeless Gaze All Eye (Basement Demo) - 2:20 :
10. Don't Tell The Riverman (Basement Demo) - 4:29 :
11. Stacy's Song (Basement Demo) - 1:50 :
12. Let It All Pass (Early Version Basement Demo) - 4:30 :
13. Such Hawks Such Hounds (Acoustic Demo) - 3:07

‘Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?’ is what Jennifer Clavin asked herself when she hit a turning point in her life. It’s also the title of the new record from Bleached, Jessie and Jennifer Clavin’s first album written from a place of sobriety. That newfound perspective serves as the guiding force, yielding a courageous, honest and sonically ambitious album. It’s a record about fighting both literally and figuratively for your life - and the clarity born from that struggle.

Writing began in early 2018, both in a Los Angeles practice space and with friends and co-writers in Nashville. Producer Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells) helped open every door to experimentation, wanting to be exploratory while keeping the sound singularly Bleached.

The resulting album is explosive, grappling with the past; its twelve tracks mark some of the sisters’ most visceral, rawest songwriting to date - and some of their best. The work glimmers with inspiration found in touring with the likes of The Damned and Paramore. That arena-ready pop, incisively catchy, was a palpable influence helping to push Bleached’s sound in a new direction.

TRACK LISTING

Heartbeat Away
Hard To Kill
Daydream
I Get What I Need
Somebody Dial 911
Kiss You Goodbye
Rebound City
Silly Girl
Valley To LA
Real Life
Awkward Phase
Shitty Ballet

“Well, this is the largest amount of people we’ve ever had in a room to watch us, so it feels pretty damn special,” Marlon Williams says, sitting down to the piano during the first night of two sold-out shows at the historic Auckland Town Hall. May 25th, 2018 was special in many respects. Williams had returned home to New Zealand to close a 60-date world tour for his new album, Make Way For Love. He shared the stage with his second family, The Yarra Benders, with the two evenings at Auckland Town Hall serving as a fitting cap after having toured the globe together over the course of two album campaigns.

Across the past several years on the road, the Marlon Williams live show has taken on an almost mystical status — not just for Williams’ extraordinary voice, but also for the hypnotic command he has over an audience, his seamless blending of genres, and the effortless, instinctive relationship he shares with his band. Live at Auckland Town Hall showcases Williams at his finest, performing a set that includes songs from his acclaimed self-titled debut album, as well as 2018’s Make Way For Love, and standalone single, “Vampire Again.” The live album also includes previously unreleased covers of Barry Gibb, Yoko Ono, the late Lhasa De Sela, and a Williams live favorite, “Portrait of a Man” by Screaming Jay Hawkins.

Live at Auckland Town Hall captures an artist both early enough in his career to be humbled by the occasion, and developed enough to present a stunning catalogue of music and quality of performance. As Williams’ first official live release, Live at Auckland Town Hall feels sure to enter the canon of great live albums in the years to come, a dazzling snapshot of Marlon Williams’ musical singularity.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Come To Me
2. I Know A Jeweller
3. Everyone’s Got Something To Say
4. Beautiful Dress
5. I Didn’t Make A Plan
6. The Fire Of Love

SIDE B:
7. Is Anything Wrong?
8. Can I Call You
9. Dark Child
10. I’m Lost Without You
11. What’s Chasing You

SIDE C:
12. Party Boy
13. Carried Away
14. Vampire Again
15. Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore
16. Make Way For Love

SIDE D:
17. Love Is A Terrible Thing
18. Portrait Of A Man
19. When I Was A Young Girl

On her sophomore LP, The Best of Luck Club, 26-year-old Melbourne, Australia native Alex Lahey navigates the pangs of generational ennui with the pint half-full and a spot cleared on the bar stool next to her. Self-doubt, burn out, break-ups, mental health, moving in with her girlfriend, vibrators: The Best of Luck Club showcases the universal language of Lahey’s sharp songwriting, her propensity for taking the minute details of the personal and flipping it public through anthemic pop-punk. Lahey’s 2017 debut I Love You Like a Brother encases Lahey’s knack for writing a killer hook and her acute sense of humor delivered via a slacker-rock package and, in a way, The Best of Luck Club picks up where that record left off.

Lahey co-produced the album alongside acclaimed engineer and producer Catherine Marks (Local Natives, Wolf Alice, Manchester Orchestra), and dives headfirst into a broader spectrum of both emotion and sound through polished, arena pop-punk in the vein of Paramore with the introspective sheen of Alvvays or Tegan & Sara. Here, Lahey documents the highest highs and the lowest lows of her life to date. After a whirlwind of global touring in support of breakout debut I Love You Like a Brother, Lahey wrote the bulk of her follow-up in Nashville during 12-hour days of songwriting. There, she found the inspiration for The Best of Luck Clubís concept: the dive bar scene and its genuine energy.”Whether you’ve had the best day of your life or the worst day of your life, you can just sit up at the bar and turn to the person next to you - who has no idea who you are - and have a chat. And the response that you generally get at the end of the conversation is, "Best of luck", so The Best Of Luck Club is that place.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Don’t Get Invited To Parties Anymore
2. Am I Doing It Right
3. Interior Demeanour
4. Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself
5. Unspoken History
6. Misery Guts
7. Isabella
8. I Need To Move On
9. Black RM’s
10. I Want To Live With You

This is Kevin’s opus - a 2LP concept album on spirituality and religion. Throughout his four solo albums and myriad records of various collaboration, Kevin Morby has recognized in his work the ubiquity of an apparent religious theme. Though not identifying as “religious” in the slightest, Morby—the globetrotting son of Kansas City who has made music while living on both coasts before recently returning to his Midwestern stomping grounds—recognizes in himself a somewhat spiritual being with a secular attitude towards the soulful. And so, in an effort to tackle that notion head-on and once-and-for-all, he sat down in his form of church—on planes and in beds—and wrote what would become his first true concept-album: the lavish, resplendent, career-best double LP Oh My God.

“This one feels full circle, my most realized record yet,” he says. “It’s a cohesive piece; all the songs fit under the umbrella of this weird religious theme. I was able to write and record the album I wanted to make. It’s one of those marks of a life: this is why I slept on floors for seven years. I’ve now gotten the keys to my own little kingdom, and I’m devoting so much of my life to music that I just want to keep it interesting. At the end of the day, the only thing I don’t want is to be bored. If someone wants to get in my face about writing a non-religious religious record? Thank god. That’s all I gotta say.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Although Matt and I agree that the front cover of this looks unbelievably like a topless Dom Kozubik, don't let that put you off. 'Oh My God' is a tenderly delivered and perfectly measured slice of indie songwriting. Morby's ear for a tune and perfectly balanced juxtaposition of tender, brittle balladry and uplifting soulful soothe make this one for every collection.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Oh My God
2. No Halo
3. Nothing Sacred / All Things Wild
4. OMG Rock N Roll

SIDE B
5. Seven Devils
6. Hail Mary
7. Piss River
8. Savannah

SIDE C
9. Storm (Beneath The Weather)
10. Congratulations
11. I Want To Be Clean

SIDE D
12. Sing A Glad Song
13. Ballad Of Faye
14. O Behold

The Dead Kennedys released their first single, “California Uber Alles" in 1979, which started a punk rock revolution in San Francisco and means that 2019 is the 40th Anniversary year of this legendary pioneering punk band. The 40th Anniversary campaign officially kicked off in November on Record Store Day’s Black Friday with a limited edition LP of the 1978 Iguana Studios Rehearsal Demos. This LP was so successful that it actually charted on the Billboard Top 200!

The Dead Kennedys were and still are one of the most influential bands in the history of punk rock. They sold a lot of records, but even more importantly, they helped inspire a million people to start punk rock bands, they were the leaders of the revolution! Their lyrics were political in nature, antiestablishment and anti-authority and they always took a stance for First Amendment Rights. Their live shows were always high energy and powerful and that power is evident in the 3 performances included in “DK 40,”which includes all of their classic songs, including “Holiday In Cambodia.” It has been 15 years since the last Dead Kennedys release, but it will be worth the wait. “DK 40” is a must for any fans of the Dead Kennedys and vintage Punk Rock!

TRACK LISTING

CD
Disc 1:
Moral Majority
I Am The Owl
Life Sentence
Police Truck
Riot
Bleed For Me
Holiday In Cambodia
Lets Lynch The Landlord
Chemical Warfare
Nazi Punks Fuck Off
Kill The Poor
We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now
Too Drunk To Fuck

Disc 2:
Skateboard Talk+Intro Noise
Man With The Dogs
Forward To Death
Kepone Factory
Life Sentence
Trust Your Mechanic
Moral Majority
Forest Fire
Winnebago Warrior
Police Truck
Bleed For Me
Holiday In
Cambodia
Let’s Lynch The Landord
Chemical Warfare
Nazi Punks
We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now
Too Drunk To Fuck
Kill The Poor

Disc 3:
Darren’s Mom
Goons Of Hazard
Hellnation
This Could Be Anywhere
Soup Is Good Food
Chemical Warfare
Macho Insecurity
A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch
Forest Fire
Moon Over Marin
Jock-O-Rama
Encore
Stars And Stripes Of Corruption
Second Encore
MTV Get Off The Air
Holiday In Cambodia

LP
Disc 1:
Moral Majority
I Am The Owl
Life Sentence
Police Truck
Riot
Bleed For Me
Holiday In Cambodia
Let’s Lynch The Landlord
Chemical Warfare
Nazi Punks Fuck Off
Kill The Poor
We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now
Too Drunk To Fuck

Disc 2:
Skateboard Talk+Intro Noise
Man With The Dogs
Forward To Death
Kepone Factory
Life Sentence
Trust Your Mechanic
Moral Majority
Forest Fire
Winnebago Warrior
Police Truck
Bleed For Me
Holiday In Cambodia
Let’s Lynch The Landlord
Chemical Warfare
Nazi Punks
We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now
Too Drunk To Fuck
Kill The Poor

Disc 3:
Darren’s Mom
Goons Of Hazard
Hellnation
This Coule Be Anywhere
Soup Is Good Food
Chemical Warfare
Macho Insecurity
A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch

Disc 4:
Forest Fire
Moon Over Marin
Jock-O-Rama
Encore
Stars And Stripes Of Corruption
Second Encore
MTV Get Off The Air
Holiday In Cambodia

“When I was writing these songs, every day I would walk on the beach and I was completely alone and overwhelmed by fear...but then I realized how there really aren’t any rules for who you are, who you’ll become, or who you think you need to be. Eraserland is just that. It’s death to ego, and rebirth to anything or anyone you want to be.”

In December 2017, Tim Showalter was uncertain about his next record and the shape it would eventually take. With no new songs written, he was unprepared for the message he would receive from his friend Carl Broemel, the conversation that would follow, and the album that would become Eraserland. Leading off with standout track “Weird Ways” and his powerful declaration of “I don’t feel it anymore,” Eraserland traces Showalter’s evolution from apprehension to creative awakening, carving out a new and compelling future for Strand of Oaks.

Revived by the support of Broemel and his bandmates, Showalter felt the pressure to deliver songs worthy of musicians he had admired long before and after a 2015 Oaks/MMJ tour. So in February 2018, he spent two weeks alone in Wildwood, New Jersey writing and demoing all of the songs that would eventually comprise Eraserland. And in April, he went into the studio to record with Kevin Ratterman at La La Land Studios in Louisville, Kentucky, and with Broemel, Hallahan, Koster, and Blankenship as his band. Jason Isbell also contributed his Hendrix-esque guitar work to Eraserland, while singer/ songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle provided gorgeous vocals. Every song was recorded live, with all musicians playing together in one room and working to bring Showalter’s ideas to fruition. “I remember sitting next to Tim and Kevin listening to the final mixes with tears rolling down my cheeks,” said Hallahan. “From start to finish, this one came from the heart.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Weird Ways
2. Hyperspace Blues
3. Keys
4. Visions
5. Final Fires
6. Moon Landing
7. Ruby
8. Wild And Willing
9. Eraserland
10. Forever Chords
11. Cruel Fisherman

Durand Jones & the Indications aren’t looking backwards. Helmed by foil vocalists in Durand Jones and drummer Aaron Frazer, the Indications conjure the dynamism of Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, AND the Impressions. Even with an aesthetic steeped in the golden, strings-infused dreaminess of early ‘70s soul, the Indications’ sophomore LP, American Love Call, is planted firmly in the present, with the urgency of this moment in time.

The Indications’ 2016 self-titled debut was the product of friends who met as students at Indiana University in Bloomington, In., recorded for $452.11, including a case of beer. American Love Call, the band’s sophomore LP is instead the record the Indications dreamed of making, fleshed out with strings, backing vocals, and a newfound confidence in songwriting.

Blending a slew of influences from years spent crate-digging, guitarist Blake Rhein says the Indications approach songs in the same way hip-hop producers do, as likely to pull inspiration from ‘70s folk-rock or classic R&B as they are Nas’ Illmatic.

“Did I expect to do this shit once I got out of college? Hell no,” Jones relays, laughing. “Totally not. But this is what God is telling me to do – move and groove. So I’m gonna stay in my lane.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly emotive and smoothly contrasting duo of voices over this classic soul, brought to the modern day with crisp, clean production and the perfectly sunny songwiting Durand Jones has become known for. From mournful, lost-love ballads to swinging, dancefloor ditties, this is yet another mindblowing LP from Jones & co.

TRACK LISTING

1. Morning In America
2. Don’t You Know (feat. Aaron Frazer)
3. Circles
4. Court Of Love (feat. Aaron Frazer)
5. Long Way Home
6. Too Many Tears (feat. Aaron Frazer)
7. Walk Away
8. What I Know About You (feat. Aaron Frazer)
9. Listen To Your Heart
10. Sea Gets Hotter (feat. Aaron Frazer)
11. How Can I Be Sure (feat. Aaron Frazer)
12. True Love

Better Oblivion Community Center is a brand new band comprising the formidable talents of Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, two of the most lauded American songwriters of the past several years. Written and recorded in Los Angeles during the summer of 2018, their self-titled debut album will be released on Dead Oceans in early 2019. The pair first collaborated on Bridgers’ 2017 single, “Would You Rather”, taken from her acclaimed debut album Stranger In The Alps. They teamed up again for a recording of Oberst’s “LAX” in the fall of 2018.

Co-produced by Bridgers, Oberst and long time Oberst/Bright Eyes collaborator Andy LeMaster and mixed by John Congleton, Better Oblivion Community Center features the work of several talented friends, including Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and Carla Azur (Autolux, Jack White) among others.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Better Oblivion provides the perfect stage for the juxtaposition of Oberst's rough husky vocals and Bridgers' smooth, ethereal air. Exactly as beautiful as you'd expect from this duo, tender and innovative, full of wonderful heartbreaking moments and perfectly written, wonderfully delivered bliss.

TRACK LISTING

1. Didn’t Know What I Was In For
2. Sleepwalkin’
3. Dylan Thomas
4. Service Road
5. Exception To The Rule
6. Chesapeake
7. My City
8. Forest Lawn
9. Big Black Heart
10. Dominos

Disguised as the meandering outpourings of vacant thought and activity dialed simultaneously from zero and ten. Formed in the cauldron of a fevered mistake resolute. Surrounded by ignorance, dis-interest, and the attention of the carefully self-selected. Recorded and burned through a thousand galaxies of dust and doubt and endless infinite wonder, transforming both time and space. Forever exiled to the very bottom of the world to reflect on the struggling desperate pile above. Recognizing any contribution as miniscule and insignificant when placed within the greatness of the other, the dominant insolent preening satisfied, continually shouting the pre-eminence of the first world order.

TRACK LISTING

1. Staver
2. Waver
3. Laverl

On ‘The Lillywhite Sessions’, Ryley Walker and the similarly indebted trio of drummer Ryan Jewell and bassist Andrew Scott Young cover Dave Matthews’ infamously abandoned 2001 art-rock masterpiece of the same name, a record where he and his band indulged a new adult pathos and a budding musical wanderlust.

With a delicate rhythmic latticework and vocals that ask you to lean in, ‘Busted Stuff’ recalls Jim O’ Rourke’s golden Drag City days. Emerging from a wall of distortion, ‘Diggin’ a Ditch’ becomes a power trio wallop à la Dinosaur Jr, shaking off existential malaise like twenty-something pals writing rock songs in the garage. Walker’s ‘Grace is Gone’, the most faithful take here, is a testament to his unflagging love for the music that helped make him a musician.

This end-to-end interpretation of youthful fascination is a collective reminder that we are all just kids from somewhere, reckoning with our upbringing the best we can. Walker has stepped through the door long ago opened by the Dave Matthews Band to find a world teeming with musical possibilities. On ‘The Lillywhite Sessions’, he has, in turn, created his own.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As well as being a VERY good follow on the ol' Twitter, Ryley Walker is also a superb chap and undeniably brilliant songwriter and musician. Although the songwriting doesn't really get a look in on this release (it being entirely covers), it is clear that his laid-back style and impeccable vocal performance is only improving. Even if you've never heard this Dave Matthews Band release before, I implore you to hear Walker's take on things. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

Busted Stuff
Grey Street
Diggin’ A Ditch
Sweet Up And Down
JTR
Big Eyed Fish
Grace Is Gone
Captain
Bartender
Monkey Man
Kit Kat Jam
Raven

For years, Phosphorescent’s rise was a steady one: tours got a little better, rooms got a little bigger, and with it the music became more intricate, more ambitious in its recording and arrangement. Then came Muchacho, a juggernaut that to date has sold over 100,000 worldwide, with lead single “Song for Zula” now well over 50 million streams. Now, five years later, Phosphorescent returns with his seventh studio LP, C’est La Vie. Recorded in Nashville at Matthew Houck’s own Spirit Sounds Studio, C’est La Vie reveals a crystallization of what made Muchacho such a breakout — a little sweetness and a little menace, sometimes boot-stomping and sometimes meditative.

A lot of life was lived between these records: Houck became a father (twice), built his studio, escaped New York. And C’est La Vie does have a hefty, career-spanning feel. But there’s a newfound wisdom, too, a deeper well for all that livin’. The magic of Matthew Houck’s music has always been the way he weaves shimmering, almost golden-sounding threads through elemental, salt-of-the-earth sounds. It’s not experimental, exactly, but it’s singular and it’s definitely not traditional. That knack, the through-line across the Phosphorescent catalogue, is front and centre here.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Even just listening to the title track alone gives you a decent impression of quite how stunning this collection is, shining and rich with orchestral instrumentation, heart-wrenching lyrics and twinkling synth pads. Think classic rock with a modern twist, a slightly smaller-scale War On Drugs or a less crap U2. Proper lovely.

TRACK LISTING

Black Moon / Silver Waves
C'est La Vie No.2
New Birth In New England
There From Here
Around The Horn
Christmas Down Under
My Beautiful Boy
These Rocks
Black Waves / Silver Moon

‘Mission Of Dead Souls’: The final performance of Throbbing Gristle before their initial breakup, at the Kezar Pavillion, San Francisco on 29 May 1981. Remastered. Following the release of this album and public statement by Throbbing Gristle of ‘This Mission Is Terminated’ the legend of the band began and influence upon generations started to be felt.

TRACK LISTING

Dead Souls
Guts On The Floor
Circle Of Animals
Looking For The OTO
Vision And Voice
Funeral Rites
Spirits Flying
Persuasion USA
Thee Process
Discipline (Reprise)

Hailed as the new vanguard of indie rock following the breakout success of 2016’s Puberty 2, Mitski returns with Be The Cowboy, via Dead Oceans.

Mitski’s carefully crafted songs have often been portrayed as emotionally raw, overflowing confessionals from a fevered chosen girl, but in her fifth album, Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased before but never so fully present until now—a woman in control.

“For this new record, I experimented in narrative and fiction,” comments Mitski. Though she hesitates to go so far as to say she created full-on characters, she reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.”

In Be The Cowboy, Mitski delves into the loneliness of being a symbol and the loneliness of being someone, how it can feel so much like being no one. Lead single “Geyser” introduces us to a woman who can’t hold it all in any more. She’s about to burst and unleash a torrent of desire and passion that has been building up inside. While recording the album with her long-time producer Patrick Hyland, the pair kept returning to “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room. For most of the tracks, we didn’t layer the vocals with doubles or harmonies, to achieve that campy ‘person singing alone on stage’ atmosphere.”

There is plenty of buoyant swagger on Be The Cowboy, but just as much interrogation into self-mythology. Throughout these 14 songs, the music swerves from the cheerful to the plaintive. Mournful piano ballads lead into deceptively uptempo songs. “I had been on the road for a long time, which is so isolating, and had to run my own business at the same time. A lot of this record was me not having any feelings, being completely spent but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: We aren't the only ones who've been eagerly awaiting a new Mitski album, with the news on this outing being VERY warmly received online, and listening to it, it's no surprise. Forward thinking synth-pop progressions, beautifully balanced song structures and Mitski's unmistakeable vocals. Superb stuff.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Geyser
2. Why Didn't You Stop Me?
3. Old Friend
4. A Pearl
5. Lonesome Love
6. Remember My Name
7. Me And My Husband

SIDE B
8. Come Into The Water
9. Nobody
10. Pink In The Night
11. A Horse Named Cold Air
12. Washing Machine Heart
13. Blue Light
14. Two Slow Dancers

Dead Cross, the SoCal hardcore outfit featuring Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer, Suicidal Tendencies, Misfits), Mike Patton (Faith No More, Tomahawk), Justin Pearson (The Locust, Retox) and Michael Crain (Retox, Festival of Dead Deer), release a self-titled, four-track EP via Ipecac Recordings.

For a limited period both formats include a FREE 4 track 'Remixes' CD bonus disc.

Lump was born of good timing and predestined compatibility. It began when Mike Lindsay – a prolific, Mercury prize-winning producer – was introduced to Grammy-nominated, Brit award-winning singer-songwriter Laura Marling after her show supporting Neil Young in London.

Lump is a heady blend of wonked-out guitars, Moog synths and pattering drums, set against droning, coiling clouds of flutes and voices. The lyrics are inspired by early-20th-century Surrealism and the absurdist poetry of Edward Lear and Ivor Cutler - a bizarre but compelling narrative about the commodification of curated public personas, the mundane absurdity of individualism, and the lengths we go to escape our own meaninglessness.

The composers are keen to stress that LUMP is a creation that passed through them, and they look upon it parentally. It is their understanding that, now it has come into being, LUMP is the artist, and it will continue to create itself from here on. Lindsay and Marling will assist it as necessary.

TRACK LISTING

Late To The Flight [05:36]
May I Be The Light [04:46]
Rolling Thunder [04:29]
Curse Of The Contemporary [04:14]
Hand Hold Hero [05:26]
Shake Your Shelter [05:23]

CD Bonus Disc:
Curse Of The Contemporary (Charles Cave Remix)
Curse Of The Contemporary (Jata Remix)
The Light (IYEARA Remix)
Hand Hold Hero (Ball And Chain Mix - Wrangler)

“I was under a lot of stress because I was trying to make an anti-folk record and I was having trouble doing it. I wanted to make something deep-fried and more me-sounding. I didn’t want to be jammy acoustic guy anymore. I just wanted to make something weird and far-out that came from the heart finally. I was always trying to make something like this I guess, trying to catch up with my imagination. And I think I succeeded in that way — it’s got some weird instrumentation on there, and some surreal far-out words.

I’m lucky enough to have some people who are playing on it who had a big part in shaping the songs and writing with me. Cooper Crain, the guy who engineered it, and played all the synthesizers. And when the flute guy, Nate Lepine came in, that was really something that made it special. The producer was this guy LeRoy Bach. I love LeRoy, he’s a really talented guy. He did the last record too.

And it’s more Chicago-y sounding. Chicago sounds like a train constantly coming towards you but never arriving. That’s the sound I hear, all the time, ringing in my ears.” – Ryley Walker.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Narcotics enthusiast and all-round ledge Ryley takes us on his newest journey into the wilderness with 'Deafman Glance', with the same tender plucking acousticry we've come to know and love, but with the psychedelic element all the more pronounced. Brilliantly progressive and nuanced songwriting with Walker's imitable style.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Castle Dome
2. 22 Days
3. Accommodations
4. Can't Ask Why
5. Opposite Middle
6. Telluride Speed
7. Expired
8. Rocks On Rainbow
9. Spoil With The Rest

Try, if only for a moment, to envision a scenario in which you could still be completely *surprised* by a rock band. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s increasingly rare.

A couple of years ago, A Place to Bury Strangers were in search of a new drummer. Lia Simone Braswell, an L.A. native, had recently moved to New York, and was playing drums in shows around Brooklyn "just to keep her chops up." As it turned out, APTBS bassist Dion Lunadon caught one of those shows and, after seeing her play, was moved to ask her if she’d want to come to a band practice sometime.

"I told some of my friends about it before I met up with them," Braswell says, of the rehearsal that would soon lead to her joining the band. "They told me, 'You’re just gonna have to keep up as much as you possibly can.’"

"To be fair, she had also never seen us live," Lunadon adds. "She didn’t necessarily know what she was getting into."

What she was getting into: For well over a decade now, A Place to Bury Strangers-Lunadon, founding guitarist/singer Oliver Ackermann, and, officially, Braswell-have become well known for their unwavering commitment to unpredictable, often bewildering live shows, and total, some might say dangerous volume. They don’t write setlists. They frequently write new songs mid-set. They deliberately provoke and sabotage sound people in a variety of cruel yet innovative ways. They can and will always surprise you. "When something goes wrong on-stage, a lot of bands will crumble under the pressure," says Ackermann. "We like the idea of embracing the moment when things go wrong and turning it into the best thing about the show."

This April marks the release of Pinned, their fifth full-length and an album that finds them converting difficult moments into some of their most urgent work to date. It’s their first since the 2016 election, and their first since the 2014 closing of Death By Audio, the beloved Brooklyn DIY space where Ackerman lived, worked, and created with complete freedom. "After DBA closed, I moved to an apartment in Clinton Hill," he says. "I couldn’t make too much noise, couldn’t disturb my neighbors. I would just sit there and write with a drum machine. It had to be about writing a good song and not about being super, sonically loud."

There are searing meditations on truth and government-led conspiracies ("Execution"), as well as haunting, harmonized responses to the tensions of our current political climate ("There’s Only One of Us"). It all opens with "Never Coming Back," a frightening crescendo of group vocals, vertiginous guitar work, and Lunadon’s unrelenting bass. "That song is a big concept," Ackermann says. "You make these decisions in your life…you’re contemplating whether or not this will be the end. You think of your mortality, those moments you could die and what that means. You’re thinking about that edge of the end, deciding whether or not it’s over. When you’re close to that edge, you could teeter over."

It’s a clear and honest statement of intent, not just for everything that follows, but for this band as a whole. "As things go on, you don’t want them to be stagnant," Ackermann says. "Being a band for ten years, it’s hard to keep things moving forward. I see so many bands that have been around and they’re a weaker version of what they used to be. This band is anti-that. We try to push ourselves constantly, with the live shows and the recordings. We always want to get better. You’ve got to dig deep and take chances, and sometimes, I questioned that. It took really breaking through to make it work. I think we did that."

They definitely did. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Throbbing bass, snappy distorted vocals and churning, machinated minimal-wave vox and NIN-esque claustrophobic ambience, all held withing a solid and impenetrable shell of gnarly, saturated guitars. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

Single CD/LP
Never Coming Back
Execution
There’s Only One Of Us
Situations Changes
Too Tough To Kill
Frustrated Operator
Look Me In The Eye
Was It Electric
I Know I’ve Done Bad Things
Act Your Age
Attitude
Keep Moving On

Double CD/LP
Never Coming Back
Execution
There’s Only One Of Us
Situations Changes
Too Tough To Kill
Frustrated Operator
Look Me In The Eye
Was It Electric
I Know I’ve Done Bad Things
Act Your Age
Attitude
Keep Moving On
When You’re Alone
The World Dies
She Goes Out With The Devil
Flickering Fly
Punch Back
Delusion Of Time
Now That You’ve Left It All
I Will Follow You

Since their widely-acclaimed self-titled debut album released in 1999 Dead Meadow have released seven studio albums - three via Matador records (Shivering King and Others (2003), Feathers (2005), and Old Growth (2008)) and two live albums which includes Three Kings, a feature length live film and soundtrack. Their unique marriage of Sabbath riffs, dreamy layers of guitar-fuzz bliss with singer Jason Simon’s melodic croon has won over psychedelic pop/rock and stoner rock fans alike and with their new album The Nothing They Need (Xemu Records) the band show that in 2018, they continue to fuse their love of early-’70s hard rock and ’60s psychedelia into their own distinct sound.

The album was recorded in Dead Meadows’ studio/rehearsal space, The Wiggle Room and it celebrates twenty years of the band with eight songs that feature everyone that has been musically involved with the band over the years. Jason and Steve Kille are joined by original drummer Mark Laughlin, Stephen McCarty ( the drummer throughout the Matador years), and current drummer Juan Londono. Cory Shane joins them on guitar for some Feathers era dual guitar interplay.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Woozy, warbling guitars and throbbing bass kicks bolster the psychedelic maelstrom that only Dead Meadow could provide. A wholly mesmerising trip through progressive psychedelia and staggered rock. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

1. Keep Your Head.
2. Here With The Hawk.
3. I'm So Glad.
4. Nobody Home.
5. This Shaky Hand Is Not Mine .
6.Rest Natural
7. The Light.
8. Unsettled Dust

The album, which was originally released in 2016, received praise from The Philadelphia Inquirer, who called it, “Smartly restrained music steeped in the Deep South” and Paste, who said, “With a tingling rasp that screams James Brown and coos Otis Redding, Jones simply has to be heard to be believed on these vintage R&B pleas.” Detroit Metro Times furthered, “Modern soul that pulls with as much power as Lee Fields and Charles Bradley.” Of their debut, the band reflects, “Three years ago we spent every Sunday in our basement with a 4-track tape machine and a goal: record an album inspired by not only the ubiquitous titans of soul music but also the should-have-beens and the never-weres. With that modest target in mind, we released the record and booked one show marking the occasion. The reception we saw was both humbling and invigorating, and what started as a recording project, became a touring unit with larger aspirations.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Boy can these guys sing! Timeless sweet soul music.

TRACK LISTING

Make A Change
Smile
Can't Keep My Cool
Groovy Babe
Giving Up
Is It Any Wonder?
Now I'm Gone
Tuck 'N' Roll

Known for his effortlessly distinctive voice, Make Way For Love marks Marlon's exponential growth as a songwriter. Throughout 11 original songs, he explores new musical terrain and reveals himself in an unprecedented way in the wake of a fractured relationship. While Make Way For Love draws on Marlon's own story, it captures the vagaries of relationships we've all been through: the bliss, ache, uncertainty, and bitterness. Like the best breakup records, Make Way For Love doesn't shy away from heartbreak, but rather stares it in the face, and mines beauty from it. Delicate and bold, tender and searing, it's a mightily personal new step. Make Way For Love was recorded with producer Noah Georgeson and his backing band, The Yarra Benders, in North California's Panoramic Studios after several weeks of pre-production in his native Lyttelton, New Zealand with regular collaborator Ben Edwards. The finished result is an expansive record that moves Marlon several paces from "country" - the genre that's been affixed to him more than any in recent years - with forays into cinematic strings, reverb, rollicking guitar, and at least one quiet piano ballad.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Heartfel odes, tinkling keys and powerful confident guitars weave into an engrossing and confident whole. Superbly written melodies and pitch-perfect production make this a sure-fire winner.

TRACK LISTING

Come To Me
What's Chasing You
Beautiful Dress
Party Boy
Can I Call You
Love Is A Terrible Thing
I Know A Jewller
I Didn't Make A Plan
The Fire Of Love
Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore
Make Way For Love

Shame thrives on confrontation. Whether it be the seething intensity crackling throughout debut LP Songs of Praise or the adrenaline-pumping chaos that unfolds at Shame’s shows, it’s all fueled by feeling. NPR’s Bob Boilen noted, “Of the 70 bands I saw at this year’s SXSW, the band Shame seemed to mean what they played more than any other.”

Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist John Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing The Fall and Wire among its biggest musical influences.

Utilizing both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, Shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barreled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Oceans debut. From “Gold Hole,” a tongue-in-cheek takedown of rock narcissism, to lead single “Concrete” detailing the overwhelming moment of realizing a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated “Tasteless” taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-to-day, Songs of Praise never pauses to catch its breath.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dust On Trial
2. Concrete
3. One Rizla
4. The Lick
5. Tasteless
6. Donk
7. Gold Hole
8. Friction
9. Lampoon
10. Angie

“‘Heron King Blues’ is about the letting go. Each song its own ceremony. The earth, sun and moon. Wingbones. Shadow maps and dream logic. Stoplights. Meat Trucks. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Cocaine. Wild eyed robbers. Hunchbacked derelicts. Broken down angels, Lepers. Gay Lithuanians. Cheaters. Sex. Beggars. Rabid dogs. Sirens. Undertows. Reverse magnetism. Cock fighting. Electric shock therapy. Trick birds. Floods. Ancient Hebrew texts. The Illuminati. Haboobs. Bleach. Expired medicine. Severed tongues. Dragons, Spirit telephones. Bees. Modern Architecture. Electric fences. Dianetics. ESP. Snakes. Poltergeist. Haunted spaces. Crop circles. Demons. Feedback loops. ? “How does one capture lightning in a bottle? You could call me a witness, or better yet an interloper, briefly given the wheel to the mythological ship called Califone. Where others might have attempted to exercise the demons, I chose to let the spirits run wild. We bored under the earth’s surface into its core until we reached the belly of the beast. These aren’t Songs of Love and Hate. This is no Street Hassle. No Main Street here. This is music that was pulled from the abattoir of Chicago rock, tattered and bruised and barely breathing. This is not music for pussies.” - Michael Krassner (Califone, Boxhead Ensemble, The Lofty Pillars), August, 2017

Long out-of-print vinyl reissue of Califone’s third, critically acclaimed full length.

Includes unreleased bonus tracks.

Widely considered to be both The Smiths’ finest work and one of the greatest albums ever made, ‘The Queen Is Dead’ has cast a significant influence over subsequent generations since it was first released in the summer of 1986.

This reissue represents the first time that The Smiths’ back catalogue has been revisited in such a way. The album features several of the band’s finest moments including the title track and ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’, as well as the iconic singles ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ and ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’.

‘The Queen Is Dead’ will be released on digital and streaming formats as well as the following physical formats – all of which feature the 2017 master of the original album:

5LP box – featuring the 2017 master of the album, additional recordings and the ‘Live In Boston’ recording. Housed in lift-off box with 2 double gatefolds and 1 single sleeve pressed on 180g heavy weight vinyl.

Deluxe 3CD / 1 DVD box set – features the 2017 master of the album; additional recordings featuring demos, b-sides and alternative versions; the ‘Live In Boston’ album recorded at the Great Woods Center For The Performing Arts on 5th August 1986; and a DVD featuring the 2017 master of album in 96kHz / 24-bit PCM stereo and ‘The Queen Is Dead – A Film By Derek Jarman’.

2CD – features the 2017 master of the album; additional recordings featuring demos, b-sides and alternative versions.

TRACK LISTING

VINYL BOX SET TRACKLISTING:
LP 1 – Original Album: 2017 Master
Side A:
1. ‘The Queen Is Dead’
2. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’
3. ‘I Know It’s Over’
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’
5. ‘Cemetry Gates’

Side B:
6. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’
7. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’
8. ‘Vicar In A Tutu’
9. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’
10. ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’

LP 2 & 3 – Additional Recordings
Side A:
1. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (full Version)
2. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ (demo)
3. ‘I Know It’s Over’ (demo)

Side B:
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ (demo)
5. ‘Cemetry Gates’ (demo)
6. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ (demo)

Side C:
7. ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ (demo)
8. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ (demo Mix)
9. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (take 1)

Side D:
10. ‘Rubber Ring’ (b-side)
11. ‘Asleep’ (b-side)
12. ‘Money Changes Everything’ (b-side)
13. ‘Unloveable’ (b-side)

Tracks 1-7 And 9 Are Previously Unreleased.
Track 8 Was Released On 7” For Record Store Day.
Tracks 10 And 11 Are 2017 Masters Of B-sides From ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’.
Tracks 12 And 13 Are 2017 Masters Of B-sides From ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’.

LP 4 & 5 – ‘Live In Boston’ – Previously Unreleased
Side A:
1. ‘How Soon Is Now?’ (5.25)
2. ‘Hand In Glove’ (2.58)
3. ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ (3.24)
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ (3.29)

Side B:
5. ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ (3.09)
6. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ (3.34)
7. ‘Cemetry Gates’ (3.01)
8. ‘Rubber Ring/What She Said/Rubber Ring’ (4.17)

Side C:
9. ‘Is It Really So Strange?’ (3.23)
10. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (4.09)
11. ‘That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore’ (4.51)

Side D:
12. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (5.08)
13. ‘I Know It's Over’ (7.39)

Recorded At The Great Woods Center For The Performing Arts On 5th August 1986.

DELUXE 3CD / 1 DVD BOX SET TRACKLISTING: 
CD1 – Original Album: 2017 Master
1. ‘The Queen Is Dead’
2. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’
3. ‘I Know It’s Over’
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’
5. ‘Cemetry Gates’
6. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’
7. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’
8. ‘Vicar In A Tutu’
9. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’
10. ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’

CD2 – Additional Recordings
1. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (full Version)
2. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ (demo)
3. ‘I Know It’s Over’ (demo)
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ (demo)
5. ‘Cemetry Gates’ (demo)
6. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ (demo)
7. ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ (demo)
8. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ (demo Mix)
9. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (take 1)
10. ‘Rubber Ring’ (b-side)
11. ‘Asleep’ (b-side)
12. ‘Money Changes Everything’ (b-side)
13. ‘Unloveable’ (b-side)

Tracks 1-7 And 9 Are Previously Unreleased.
Track 8 Was Released On 7” For Record Store Day.
Tracks 10 And 11 Are 2017 Masters Of B-sides From ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’.
Tracks 12 And 13 Are 2017 Masters Of B-sides From ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’.

CD3 – ‘Live In Boston’ – Previously Unreleased
1. ‘How Soon Is Now?’ (5.25)
2. ‘Hand In Glove’ (2.58)
3. ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ (3.24)
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ (3.29)
5. ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ (3.09)
6. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ (3.34)
7. ‘Cemetry Gates’ (3.01)
8. ‘Rubber Ring/What She Said/Rubber Ring’ (4.17)
9. ‘Is It Really So Strange?’ (3.23)
10. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (4.09)
11. ‘That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore’ (4.51)
12. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (5.08)
13. ‘I Know It's Over’ (7.39)

Recorded At The Great Woods Center For The Performing Arts On 5th August 1986.

DVD:
‘The Queen Is Dead’ On 96kHz / 24-bit PCM Stereo.
‘The Queen Is Dead – A Film By Derek Jarman’.

2CD TRACKLISTING:
CD1 – Original Album: 2017 Master
1. ‘The Queen Is Dead’
2. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’
3. ‘I Know It’s Over’
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’
5. ‘Cemetry Gates’
6. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’
7. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’
8. ‘Vicar In A Tutu’
9. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’
10. ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’

CD2 – Additional Recordings
1. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (full Version)
2. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ (demo)
3. ‘I Know It’s Over’ (demo)
4. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ (demo)
5. ‘Cemetry Gates’ (demo)
6. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ (demo)
7. ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ (demo)
8. ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ (demo Mix)
9. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (take 1)
10. ‘Rubber Ring’ (b-side)
11. ‘Asleep’ (b-side)
12. ‘Money Changes Everything’ (b-side)
13. ‘Unloveable’ (b-side)

Tracks 1-7 And 9 Are Previously Unreleased.
Track 8 Was Released On 7” For Record Store Day.
Tracks 10 And 11 Are 2017 Masters Of B-sides From ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’.
Tracks 12 And 13 Are 2017 Masters Of B-sides From ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’.

Of his 12th studio album and its enigmatic title, Destroyer’s Dan Bejar offers the following:

Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for “The Wild Ones” (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was “Ken.” I had an epiphany, I was physically struck by this information. In an attempt to hold on to this feeling, I decided to lift the original title of that song and use it for my own purposes. It’s unclear to me what that purpose is, or what the connection is. I was not thinking about Suede when making this record. I was thinking about the last few years of the Thatcher era. Those were the years when music first really came at me like a sickness, I had it bad. Maybe “TheWild Ones” speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think “ken” also means “to know.”

ken was produced by Josh Wells of Black Mountain, who has been the drummer in Destroyer since 2012. The album was recorded in its entirety in the jam space/studio space that the group calls The Balloon Factory. However, unlike Poison Season, ken was not recorded as a “band” record, though everyone in the band does make an appearance.

TRACK LISTING

1 Sky's Grey
2 In The Morning
3 Tinseltown Swimming In Blood
4 Cover From The Sun
5 Saw You At The Hospital
6 A Light Travels Down The Catwalk
7 Rome
8 Sometimes In The World
9 Ivory Coast
10 Stay Lost
11 La Regle De Jeu

I Love You Like A Brother is the highly anticipated album from Melbourne’s Alex Lahey. An infectious debut that shines with a rare confidence, I Love You Like A Brother is a riotous record, packed with relatable fuzzpop gems. 

After finishing school, Lahey initially went to university to study jazz saxophone, but unimpressed with “learning music in such a regimented way” she switched to an arts degree. While studying, Alex cut her teeth as a member of cult party collective Animaux, which allowed her restlessly rebellious streak to flourish. Alex began to form the blueprint for her own solo material by writing songs inspired by the two people she considers the greatest songwriters of all time, Dolly Parton and Bruce Springsteen, whilst retaining the punk spirit of her first musical outing. These songs found themselves on her first solo EP, the acclaimed B-Grade University.

The EP included the single. ‘You Don’t Think You Like People Like Me’; a mainstay on Australian radio, landing on triple j’s prestigious Hottest 100 of 2016. The song’s universal tale of rejection took Lahey global - its message, she says, is the flipside of the usual break-up scenario: “Yeah, you’re right. It’s not me. It IS you”. This no-shit-taken attitude forms the backbone of I Love You Like A Brother as evidenced by the uproarious opening track ‘Every Day’s The Weekend’.

Throughout the records’ ten songs, Alex’s lyrics deftly move between wry, often hilarious witticism to heartbreaking poignancy. For every uplifting anthem, such as ‘I Love You Like A Brother’ and the unruly ‘Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder’, there’s painfully relatable tracks like ‘Backpack’ and ‘Awkward Exchange’. Despite the instant pop chops of I Love You Like A Brother, there’s introspection, self-doubt and sense of working out the complexities of growing up in this limbo period between youth and adulthood.

The themes of Alex Lahey’s album might be universal, but it’s the unique approach she takes unpacking them that’s earned her millions of Spotify streams, buzz-worthy showcases at SXSW and festival sets alongside the likes of Flume, The Kills, At The Drive-In and James Blake as well as guesting on tours with Tegan & Sara and Blondie.

TRACK LISTING

1 Every Day's The Weekend
2 I Love You Like A Brother
3 Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder
4 I Haven't Been Taking Care Of Myself
5 Backpack
6 Awkward Exchange
7 I Want U
8 Lotto In Reverse
9 Let's Call It A Day
10 There's No Money

Phoebe Bridgers wrote her first song at age 11, spent her adolescence at open mic nights and busked through her teenage years at farmers markets in her native Los Angeles. By age 20, she’d caught the ear of Ryan Adams, who listened to her perform her song ‘Killer’ in his LA studio, inviting her to come back and record it there the next day. The session blossomed into the three song ‘Killer’ EP, released to much acclaim on Adams’s Pax-Am label in 2015. In the two short years since, Bridgers has toured or played with Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, City And Colour, Violent Femmes, Mitski, Television and Blake Babies among others.

Now Phoebe Bridgers releases her debut full-length, ‘Stranger In The Alps’. From the weeping strings and ‘Twin Peaks’ twangs of opening track ‘Smoke Signals’, to the simple heartbreak of ‘Funeral’ and melancholic crescendo of ‘Scott Street’, ‘Stranger In The Alps’ is a swooningly beautiful record with a gothic heart.

‘Stranger In The Alps’ features guest vocals by Conor Oberst and John Doe.

TRACK LISTING

1 Smoke Signals
2 Motion Sickeness
3 Funeral
4 Demi Moore
5 Scott Street
6 Killer
7 Goergia
8 Chelsea
9 Would You Rather
10 You Missed My Heart

Following on from their self-titled debut album and live show at FLOAT’s Piano Day, Dead Light return with a four-track remix EP, crafting originals ‘Sleeper’, ‘Falling In’ and ‘Trills’ into potent and thoughtful re-imaginings. New FLOAT signing Andrea Belfi joined the duo during their well-received appearance at Piano Day for an improvised performance. He comes back into the fold, opening with his version of ‘Sleeper’, a haunting, driving hymn. It’s vamped with full reverb, wide open spaces and rolls forward with sparse and purposeful drum work. Rafael Anton Irisarri aka The Sight Below twists ‘Sleeper’ into a club-focused anthem - warm synth programming melds seamlessly into the angelic vocals. The textures are lush and the contours soft. Border Community’s Luke Abbott takes the EP once again into another direction, moving away from the A-side’s blissful grandeur and into darker waters. On a glitchy trip hop footing, Abbott’s wearied and sombre take on ‘Falling In’ draws the listener closer into its tensed distortions and synth modulations. Closing the EP, Dead Light do their own remix of ‘Trills’. As if an epilogue, or afterthought to the original, the pair exercise their hand at ambient, reining in the tempo to provide a gently swaying reverie. As the track builds quietly and dreamfully, flowing piano ostinati and strings spill into the canvas to finish.

Dead Cross emerged out of a series of impractical schemes, fallen-through plans and last-minute musical experimentation. Shows were scheduled before a single song was written, fans were formed before even one show was played. The chaos of its creation seems apt; after all, the band is comprised entirely of artists who have thrived playing tightly-coiled turmoil - intelligent dissonance disguised as disorder.

Consisting of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle), Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer, Misfits, Suicidal Tendencies), Justin Pearson (The Locust, Retox, Head Wound City) and Michael Crain (Retox), the impressive, expansive and eclectic list of prior bands collectively played in would be enough to ensure the unyielding ferocity of the music... but a resume isn’t necessary, here. Dead Cross stands on their own, speaking volumes with their multilayered evil-genius vocals, manic guitar riffs and brutal rhythms.

TRACK LISTING

Seizure And Desist
Idiopathic
Obedience School
Shillelagh
Bela Lugosi's Dead
Divine Filth
Grave Slave
The Future Has Been Cancelled
Gag Reflex
Church Of The Motherfuckers

Japanese Breakfast’s ‘Soft Sounds From Another Planet’ is less of a concept album about space exploration so much as it is a mood board come to life.

Over the course of 12 tracks, Michelle Zauner explores a sonic landscape of her own design, one that’s big enough to contain her influences. There are songs on this album that recall the pathos of Roy Orbison’s ballads, while others could soundtrack a cinematic drive down one of ‘Blade Runner’s endless skyways.

Zauner’s voice is capacious; one moment she’s serenading the past, the next she’s robotically narrating a love story over sleek monochrome, her lyrics more pointed and personal than ever before.

While ‘Psychopomp’ was a genre-spanning introduction to Japanese Breakfast, this visionary second album launches the project to new heights.

TRACK LISTING

Diving Woman
Road Head
Machinist
Planetary Ambience
Soft Sounds From Another Planet
Boyish
12 Steps
Jimmy Fallon Big
Body Is A Blade
Till Death
This House
Here Come The Tubular Bells

Recorded in his hometown of Dunedin at the notoriously haunted Chick’s Hotel studio, Kane teamed up with producer Stephen Marr from trip hop group Doprah for Two Hearts and No Brain. The collaborative result is a razor sharp blend of intelligent alt-rock, bearing the signatures of grunge/alt rock swiftly executed with careful, meticulous precision over 11 tracks. Marr’s influence brings a pristine, retro-futuristic sheen which complements Strang’s perfectionist recording style, sharp melody, and verbose lyrical neuroticism. Taking to well-worn subject matter (heartbreak, loneliness, family) with a disarmingly frank scalpel, Strang’s wryly deadpan lines never miss a beat – the results often sardonic, and always captivating.

Two Hearts and No Brain is pure pop genius from start to finish. It’s hard to imagine who else could convincingly fuse fuzzy synths with slide guitar; crunchy chords with chiming vocals in such a kaleidoscopic pop vision. The album’s cover art, featuring a refracted analogue photograph taken of Kane atop of a rocky precipice; echoes the spirit of lean guitar-pop shining through a truly contemporary, innovative lens. His attention to detail shows up the fat slack present in the work of many of Kane’s contemporaries; yet his sound remains emotive and playfully laced with a tongue-in-cheek nostalgia – timelessly old and new in the same breath.

What sets Kane apart from the rafts of DIY indie songwriters is a willingness to push further. Having mastered the lo-fi aesthetic, he’s stretched his already limber songwriting legs and production chops to new unexpected spaces on Two Hearts and No Brain. Kane’s vision of extending his sound far beyond the bedroom promises international touring and releases the world over. With a live show that exhibits his unpredictable and exhilarating command on stage, Kane’s amassed a band of cohorts to execute his vision with arresting impact, sure to charm crowds with his sideways slant of guitar pop.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lagoons
2. Silence Overgrown
3. Not Quite
4. Oh So You’re Off I See
5. See Thru
6. Summertime In Your Lounge
7. My Smile Is Extinct
8. Two Hearts And No Brain
9. It’s Not That Bad
10. Don’t Follow Me (I’m Lost)
11. Good Guy

City Music is the new album by Kevin Morby. Full of listless wanderlust, it’s a collection inspired by and devoted to the metropolitan experience across America and beyond by a songwriter cast from his own mold. As he puts it: “It is a mix-tape, a fever dream, a love letter dedicated to those cities that I cannot get rid of, to those cities that are all inside of me.”

His fourth album, City Music works as a counterpart to Morby’s acclaimed 2016 release Singing Saw, an autobiographical set that reflected the solitude and landscape in which it was recorded. Saw was imagined as “an old bookshelf with a young Bob and Joni staring back at me, blank and timeless. They live here, in this left side of my brain, smoking cigarettes and playing acoustic guitars while lying on an unmade bed.”

And now follows City Music, the yang to its yin, the heads to its tails. It is a collection crafted using the other side of its creator’s brain, the jumping off point perhaps best once again encapsulated by an image. “Here, Lou Reed and Patti Smith stare out at the listener,” explains Morby. “Stretched out on a living room floor they are somewhere in mid-70s Manhattan, also smoking cigarettes.” It finds Morby exploring similar themes of solitude, but this time framed by a window of an uptown apartment that looks down upon an international urban landscape “exposed like a giant bleeding wound.”

TRACK LISTING

1 Come To Me Now
2 Crybaby
3 1234
4 Aboard My Train
5 Dry Your Eyes
6 Flannery
7 City Music
8 Tin Can
9 Caught In My Eye
10 Night Time
11 Pearly Gates
12 Downtown's Lights

Limited to 800 on Black Vinyl. Formed in 2010, The Cosmic Dead are a quartet from Glasgow, Scotland who share their music through good vibes and better vibrations. Known for their improvised, chaos-strewn, Buckfast-smashed-against-the-wall take on space music, they have roamed from Roadburn to Las Vegas, Dundee to Bangalore. Each album is a document of the time and space the group find themselves in, a tangible artefact hewn from a psychedelic continuum orchestrated by The Cosmic Dead. Eccie Bam Yas, E? began life as a more meditative piece than the rocket-fuelled out-rock the band are more associated with.

Spliced and reformed by the band, taken from jams and improvised sets taken from the Rainbowhead recordings in Kyle of Lochalsh, a small village in the North of Scotland near the Isle of Skye. In this remote setting the band recorded a myriad of improvised pieces inspired by their rural surroundings and the material has been scattered across three albums; 'Easterfaust'(2014), 'Rainbowhead'(2016) and 'Eccie Bam, Yas E?'(2017). Beginning with an eldritch drift that roams the stereo field, phasing in an out from another realm, Smash The Sash melts into an electronic rock piece powered by keyboardist Lewis Cook’s analog synth sequence and drummer Julian Dicken’s pummelling drum work.

The cumulative effect reminds the listener of early Krautrock experiments, like first line-up Tangerine Dream playing Tanzmusik with early, rock-band Kraftwerk while epic show-stealer Fleein’ From The Polis brings the stringed instruments centre stage, Bassist Omar Aborida duets with James MacKay’s warped guitar playing to create weaves of sound across a moody rhythm section. Side B opens with Buckfast Aye, a brooding exploration with stereo-panned guitars a-flutter before the band take the listener into a slow-paced burner that brings the group’s psychedelic craftsmanship into play. The set ends with a full on trip. Lynx Africa builds the group’s sound into a space-rock jam that reminds the listener of classic mid-70s Hawkwind or the more long-form music White Hills built their early career on. What’s without question on Eccie Bam Yas, E? is that the group are telepathic in their playing and psychopathic in their purpose. Monorail Music of Glasgow are proud to announce a new imprint with the intention of documenting our global community and the many forms it takes.

The world has finally caught up with Slowdive. A band whose reach goes far beyond just influencing music is back, with their first new album in 22 years.

The album is called ‘Slowdive’ - self-titled in an echo of their debut EP from 1990, and is remarkably direct.

Deftly swerving what co-vocalist/guitarist Rachel Goswell terms “a trip down memory lane”, these eight new tracks are simultaneously expansive and the sonic pathfinders’ most direct material to date.

Self-titled with quiet confidence, Slowdive’s stargazing alchemy is set to further entrance the faithful while beguiling a legion of fresh ears.

TRACK LISTING

1 Slomo
2 Star Roving
3 Don't Know Why
4 Sugar For The Pill
5 Everyone Knows
6 No Longer Making Time
7 Go Get It
8 Falling Ashes

Scotland's favourite space-psych-rock-gods return with a new album 'Psych Is Dead' before heading out on a lengthy UK/European tour including appearances at all the key genre festivals such as Safe As Milk, Wrong Fest, DesertFest, Raw Power Festival and Karma Fest.

Formed in 2010, The Cosmic Dead are a quartet from Glasgow, Scotland who share their music through good vibes and better vibrations. Known for their improv, chaos strewn, Buckfast smashed against the wall take on space music, they have roamed from Roadburn to Las Vegas, Dundee to Bangalore with each album offering a meditative window into a certain time and space.

'Psych Is Dead' is the sixth full length album from the band, the glowing embers of a a few days spent recording in a sweaty Sardinian kitchen overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Soon to be available on LP and CD via Riot Season Records, 'Psych Is Dead' is an aural exploration of their tumultuous universe.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Cosmic Dead have once again opened our minds with an expansive and hazy vision of reality. Chugging guitars and swirling synths mix with thunderous drums and all-round heavy vibes. It's a wonder their hearing is still ok with riffs like this going down.

TRACK LISTING

A. Nuraghe (21:54)
B1. Psych Is Dead (8:23)
B2. #FW (15: 28)

With the industrial textures of their eponymous debut behind them, the fifth album from Dead Can Dance (Aion, released in 1990) is perhaps the most focused and concise of their albums. Predominately recorded at their own studio in Southern Ireland and featuring guest vocals from soprano David Navarro Sust to add to Brendan and Lisa’s opposing yet complimentary styles, the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance are a core influence; an atmosphere amplified by the album’s cover, a section from the Earth phase of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch's triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Dead Can Dance’s fourth album, The Serpent’s Egg (1988), came during a prolific period for the band, being released just four years after their debut. It was also the first they made at their own studio which, according to Brendan Perry, allowed them to continue to grow in “their own self-proclaimed direction”. A minimal yet rather grandiose record which includes fan favourites ‘The Host Of Seraphim’ and ‘Ullyses’, The Serpent’s Egg is a triumph and perhaps the finest example of where Brendan and Lisa’s diametrically different influences are overcome to form a new, almost synaesthetic whole.

Hard Love, Tim Showalter’s latest release as Strand of Oaks, is a record that explores the balancing act between overindulgence and accountability. Recounting Showalter’s decadent tour experiences, his struggling marriage, and the near death of his younger brother, Hard Love emanates an unabashed, raw, and manic energy that embodies both the songs and the songwriter behind them. “For me, there are always two forces at work: the side that’s constantly on the hunt for the perfect song, and the side that’s naked in the desert screaming at the moon. It’s about finding a place where neither side is compromised, only elevated.”

During some much-needed downtime following the release of his previous album, HEAL, Showalter began writing Hard Love and found himself in a now familiar pattern of tour exhaustion, chemically-induced flashbacks, and ongoing domestic turmoil. Drawing from his love of Creation Records, Trojan dub compilations, and Jane’s Addiction, and informed by a particularly wild time at Australia’s Boogie Festival, he sought to create a record that would merge all of these influences while evoking something new and visceral. Showalter’s first attempt at recording the album led to an unsatisfying result—a fully recorded version of Hard Love that didn’t fully achieve the ambitious sounds he heard in his head. He realized that his vision for the album demanded collaboration, and enlisted producer Nicolas Vernhes, who helped push him into making the most fearless album of his career.

TRACK LISTING

1 Hard Love
2 Radio Kids
3 Everything
4 Salt Brothers
5 On The Hill
6 Cry
7 Quit It
8 Rest Of It
9 Taking Acid And Talking To My Brother

First new song from the Straight Arrows since they started working on their new album, rushed out on a super limited 7” to tie in with their Debut US tour, including 7 or so Dates with Thee Oh Sees… theres 120 the band are selling on the road, and we have 180 to sell elsewhere.. Numbered to 180, hand stamped labels and paper sleeves.. this is a stab of punk rock pop scizz that will make your toes tap uncontrollably and your hips shake incessantly.. A real high energy garage blaster, this could be on any of the Teen Shutdowns or Back From The Grave comps, not retro, but reaffirming!! Turn It Off is the first offering from their forthcoming (2017!) new album, get on it!! The b-side is a debut to vinyl, having been one of the lo-fi/ no-fi scorchers from their bonus CD/Cassette that Agitated bust out with the first few copies of their debut album… Yeah!! Where the action is!!!!

‘Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun’: With Dead Can Dance now firmly centred round the core of Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, they released their third album ‘Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun’ in the Summer of 1987, showing both a continued maturity in their sound and rise in their popularity. Recorded during an intense period of musical and personal growth for the band, the album’s eight songs are split equally between the duo with the first half being sung by Brendan and the second Lisa. At the time, Q Magazine described the album as combining “superb voice, ethereal church choirs, sweeping strings and a brochure of ethnic music: Middle Eastern, Indian, Moorish, anywhere but London’s East End where the couple resided.” The album’s cover only adds to the album’s aura of mystery with a haunting photograph of the family grave at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris of famed French biologist François-Vincent Raspail.

‘Garden Of The Arcane Delights’ / ‘The John Peel Sessions’: ‘Garden Of The Arcane Delights’ is the only EP released by Dead Can Dance, coming out in 1984 and acting as a bridge between their first two albums. Its sleeve a sketch by Brendan Perry, depicting “primal man deprived of perception, standing within the confines of a garden containing a fountain and trees laden with fruit... a Blakean universe in which mankind can only redeem itself, can only rid itself of blindness, through the correct interpretation of signs and events that permeate the fabric of nature’s laws.”

This new expanded version sees the EP faithfully pressed on to one piece of a vinyl at 45rpm with a second disc being added, compiling both of the band’s sessions for John Peel, recorded in the same time period.

'Dead To The World' is the long anticipated new studio album in seven years. With this album, mixed by Jay Baumgardner (Bush, POD, Papa Roach, Evanescence), Helmet have once again proven to be one of America's most influential alternative rock bands. Dead To The World comes with heavy guitar riffs, blasting drums and the distinctive voice of front man Page Hamilton. The album is energy at its purest form. Every track adds its unique flavour to mix of hard rock, alternative, metal and punk, showing the world again how versatile a rock album can be.

Dead Light was created after Anna Rose Carter and Ed Hamilton moved from London to a quiet, remote space in the countryside. The migration out of the sprawling metropolis to their new rural refuge was a transition that significantly impacted them both and one that continues to turn and shift under the ambivalence of change, loss and new beginnings.

The reality of this new setting is an apposition between the quaint and serene nature of their new life and the dislocation from the lives, people, places and culture that they left behind; two conflicting sentiments that co-exist in a somehow beautiful, bitter-sweet relationship. Dead Light is the tension between these two states, a textured and imperfect dream world.

Recorded at Pie Corner between September 2014 and May 2016, the eponymously titled debut album from Dead Light is a tender, ambient exploration of hope, escape, tension and isolation. Rooted in traditional instrumentation and a handmade approach to effects and synthesis, Dead Light’s music draws upon classical, ambient, pop and electro-acoustic influences. Waves of melancholy stretch through every track, with slow yet expressive melodies that sing from tape-looped cello motifs and an old close-mic’d piano that Anna’s grandfather gave her, yet the feeling of hope never seems to be far away.

Distant and reflective yet intimate and emotive, Dead Light’s sound is characterised by a plethora of analogue artefacts ranging from tape delays (via daisy chained reel to reel machines), homemade synthesisers, old Russian microphones and 1950s tube pre-amps, as well as contact mics and hydrophones.

Elements of their textured sound can be attributed to their experimentation with treated tape (warped in various ways via prolonged exposure to sunlight, vinegar solutions, microwaves and washing machines), hydrophones (placed in ice trays and allowed to freeze and thaw) and most noticeably, piano preparations (hand-muting strings, screwdrivers, coins, felt, using the soundboard as a plate reverb, etc). Other experimental techniques can be found in ‘Sleeper’, for example, which utilises the layering of looped and treated voice, or in ‘Broods And Waits’ which uses experimental timbres of stringed instruments and drone-like backdrops.

‘Falling In’, the first track they wrote after their escape from London, is a great example of their sound, involving the textural exploration of Anna’s old piano coupled with Ed’s emotive tape treatments and loops.

11 tracks in total, the ‘Dead Light’ album is an exploration of ambivalence, a sonic ethnography that contemplates a personal narrative of transition and identity. Joining the likes of Matt Dunkley, Ben Chatwin and John Matthias, Dead Light’s first album is released on the London-based Village Green label.

TRACK LISTING

Blooms
Slow Slowly
The Ballad Of A Small
Player
Falling In
Sleeper
In Red And Red
Trills
Broods And Waits
Little Blue
Pale Fire
Outpour

A Post-rock staple. Intertwining delayed guitar melodies weave around eac-other, adding layers of simple melodies before bursting into euphoric instrumental bliss. Lengthy solo passages do more to exacerbate the eventual burst of action, heightening the impact and soothing the soul. An absolute unmissable classic.

TRACK LISTING

1. "First Breath After Coma" 9:33
2. "The Only Moment We Were Alone" 10:14
3. "Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean" 8:43
4. "Memorial" 8:50
5. "Your Hand In Mine" 8:16

On ‘Psychopomp’, the debut full length for Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner romanticizes need, knowing precisely how futile it can be, as she howls on the record’s final song, to “cling to your sleeves ‘til they’re like lacerated sails.”

‘Psychopomp’ unspools with an otherworldly rush - it’s skysized dream-pop with substance, moving from the gorgeous euphoric rush of ‘In Heaven’ through the pinwheeling ‘Rugged Country’ and ‘Everybody Wants To Love You’ into the painful longing of ‘Jane Cum’ and ‘Heft’ and the relief of ‘Triple 7’.

Imagine Bat For Lashes or ‘Tango In The Night’-era Christine McVie working in the New York indie-pop scene populated by the likes of Frankie Cosmos and Porches.

‘Psychopomp’ has become one of the year’s most beloved indie-pop records, receiving plaudits from the likes of Pitchfork and NPR.

TRACK LISTING

1 In Heaven
2 The Woman That Loves You
3 Rugged Country
4 Everybody Wants To Love You
5 Psychopomp
6 Jane Cum
7 Heft
8 Moon On The Bath
9 Triple 7

Saskatchewan is how it sounds: A province in the prairies of Canada. Double the size of Germany, but with less than one million residents. Lots of nature, and lots of silence. Perhaps lots of time to fill the silence with natural sounds, too. This is where the quartet The Dead South comes from, and fits perfectly within this description. The debut album "Good Company" revealed the four hatted, hairy and bearded fellas, with singer Nate Hilts as a focal point. The album is a perfect fit to the genres Folk, Neo-Folk and Bluegrass-Folk or even alternative Country with refreshing tunes to it.

With impact, humor and a kind of bold manner of putting words into sound. The instrumentation stays knowingly pure: guitars, cello, banjo, kick drum, mandolin - building the acoustic fundamentals for full lead vocals and harmonies. The first album really was a promise that is now fulfilled with the new release titled "Illusion & Doubt". No doubt the four piece from the prairies has matured. Harmony changes as well as excellent and virtuosic instrumental parts have been added to their incredible energetic, passionate and sometimes surprisingly catchy melodies. But Hilts and company are far from being tame: "We are definitely closer to the Pogues than to Alison Krauss. Unfortunately, we do not possess much of the delicate elegance so we try and bring more energy and entertainment to our side. You could say we are a mix of Nu-folk with a few different styles mixed in between. We tend to add elements of classical, punk, rock, alternative, bluegrass, folk and everything in between." What is sometimes hard to describe, is often better to simply listened to.

The opener 'Boots', starts like a grizzly on ecstasy. After a short quiet prelude, the boots really start to want to dance. Lighted by banjo and guitar and grounded by a stoic cello, Hilts tells a more free-spirited love story: rough, sincere and honest. With the following track 'Every Man Needs a Chew' - the first song the band has ever written - they speed up with the impulsive tact, a squeaky fiddle and some Gypsy Swing components. There is proof of a second great lead singer from Scott Pringle in 'Dead Man's Isle', - a drinking song with a great chorus and bizarre lyrics - a drunken guy expects his dog who is obviously sober to give him a ride home. If that doesn't remind you of The Pogues, then maybe "One-Armed Man', another tipsy party hymn, will. They really feel good in an up-tempo environment, but they can do slower and subtle as well, as you can hear with 'The Good Lord': "This our version of a classic country tune. It is about a husband and wife separated by war. The wife waits pregnant at home wondering if the child will ever meet his father, while the father at war wonders the same thing," says Hilts to this harmonically accommodating, but lyrically vexing song. That's how they like it, and another good example is 'Miss Mary': "The album's title is taken from a line in this song. In classic Dead South fashion, a woman takes too many pills and murders her husband, before she comes to and realizes what she's done" describes Hilts, as their type of humor. The same darkness can be found in the Western-Style of 'Massacre Of El Kuroke' and the gloriously nostalgic 8 minute "Spaghetti Western Ballad", 'Gunslinger's Glory'.

Ryley Walker is pleased to announce his new album, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, coming out August 19th on Dead Oceans. It’s the triumphant follow up to his breakout album, Primrose Green, which earned critical hosannas from the likes of NPR, Village Voice, Uncut, and Mojo and admiration of musicians who had chalked up no shortage of turntable miles in Walker’s life. Robert Plant declared himself a fan – as did double-bass legend Danny Thompson, with whom Ryley embarked on a British tour.

In November 2015, at the end of a ten-month period which saw Ryley play over 200 shows in support of Primrose Green, Ryley decided that he should probably head home. However you wished to measure it, he was surely due some sort of holiday. Although, a holiday was the last thing on Ryley’s mind – and certainly not a holiday in his adopted hometown. After a year spent on the road, all that Ryley could associate with Chicago was the emotional debris he had left behind.

He went into the studio over the Christmas vacation to record Golden Sings That Have Been Sung whose songs were directly wedded to Ryley’s return to Chicago. Some of his formative musical memories had been shaped by the work of pioneering Chicago acts such as Gastr del Sol and Tortoise. “Jeff Parker was the guitarist with Tortoise, and I used to listen to him a lot,” recalls Ryley, who figured that, for the first time in his career, it might be helpful to enlist the services of a producer. With only one person on his shortlist, once again, all roads led back to Chicago.

Ryley had been a long-time admirer of sometime Wilco multi-instrumentalist LeRoy Bach. Back in 2009, still in his teens, he had frequented the improv nights hosted by Bach at a restaurant/gallery space called Whistler. “For me, it was an incredible opportunity,” recalls Ryley, “…because you would sometimes also have Dan Bitney, the drummer with Tortoise, and I’d get to play with these people. I mean, they were twice my age. I’m sure they thought I was annoying at first, maybe some of them still do, but I kind of looked at them like gurus – and to have these old school Chicago heads taking me in was just amazing.”

For Ryley then, the prospect of having Bach produce his album was something of a no-brainer. “It was everything I wanted it to be,” he enthuses. “I would go to LeRoy’s house every other day with a riff, and we would take it from there.” Perhaps more than any other song on the record, the somnambulant sun-dappled intimacies of opening track and lead single “The Halfwit In Me” most audibly bear the imprint of those Whistler sessions.

Golden Sings That Have Been Sung was made for the dewy magic hour when night and day have yet to meet and, as long as the song is playing, you feel might briefly leave the corporeal world with them. This is the music you might imagine the woodland animals making once the humans have left for the night. This is Ryley Walker’s coming of age.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having been one of our end of year favourites in 2015, Ryley Walker had a lot to live up to with this follow-up (obviously he had impressing us in mind). It turns out that this is just as monumental, if not moreso. There is a sense of assurance here, a confidence gained through years of honing his craft. Perfectly sculpted Americana-tinged acoustic guitars are bolstered but never overpowered by frenetic violin slashes, molasses-slow drums perfectly compliment the unhurried and confident instrumentation. Walker and band have got a lot of bettering to do if they'll ever top this, but going on previous form, i'm sure they will. An absorbing and rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

2CD Tracklisting
1 The Halfwit In Me
2 A Choir Apart
3 Funny Thing She Said
4 Sullen Mind
5 I Will Ask You Twice
6 The Roundabout
7 The Great And Undecided
8 Age Old Tale
9 Sullen Mind (Live At SiriusXMU The Loft)

2LP Tracklisting
1 The Halfwit In Me
2 A Choir Apart
3 Funny Thing She Said
4 Sullen Mind
5 I Will Ask You Twice
6 The Roundabout
7 The Great And Undecided
8 Age Old Tale
9 Sullen Mind (Live At SiriusXMU The Loft) - Part 1
10 Sullen Mind (Live At SiriusXMU The Loft) - Part 2

In November 2015, at the end of a ten month period which saw him play over 200 shows, Ryley Walker decided that he should probably head home. The preceding months had been extraordinary. In March, his second album ‘Primrose Green’, emerged to critical hosannas from the likes of NPR, Village Voice, Uncut and Mojo and in the process earning admiration of musicians who had chalked up no shortage of turntable miles in Walker’s life. Robert Plant declared himself a fan, as did double-bass legend Danny Thompson, with whom Ryley would later embark on a British tour. A sprawling tour of the USA around ‘Primrose Green’ presented a perfect chance to workshop ideas for what would eventually become this, his third studio album, ‘Golden Sings That Have Been Sung’.

‘The Roundabout’ represents a symbolic return to Chicago, while other songs are directly wedded to Ryley’s actual return there. Perhaps more than any other song on the record, the somnambulant sun-dappled intimacies of opening track ‘The Halfwit In Me’ most audibly bear the imprint of Ryley’s improvisational sessions with Wilco multi-instrumentalist, Chicagoan and producer Leroy Bach, while ‘Funny Thing She Said’ is an unflinching study of separation set to a shimmeringly supple ensemble performance.

Soft, slo-mo explosions of melody intermittently burst through the distant thunder of the verses on ‘A Choir Apart’. Intriguing, surreal images are meted out by ‘I Will Ask You Twice’, like a malfunctioning slide projector and, perhaps best of all, the stunning finale, ‘Age Old Tale’, which spiders out from an Alice Coltrane-inspired reverie into a sustained rapture that very few artists have managed to achieve.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having been one of our end of year favourites in 2015, Ryley Walker had a lot to live up to with this follow-up (obviously he had impressing us in mind). It turns out that this is just as monumental, if not more so. There is a sense of assurance here, a confidence gained through years of honing his craft. Perfectly sculpted Americana-tinged acoustic guitars are bolstered but never overpowered by frenetic violin slashes while molasses-slow drums perfectly compliment the unhurried and confident instrumentation. Walker and band have got a lot of bettering to do if they'll ever top this, but going on previous form, i'm sure they will. An absorbing and rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

The Halfwit In Me
A Choir Apart
Funny Thing She Said
Sullen Mind
I Will Ask You Twice
The Roundabout
The Great And Undecided
Age Old Tale

“There’s a reason why our relationship with The Dead C is Ba Da Bing’s longest running. It’s not because they are the hardest working band we’ve ever met. It’s not because they are the largest selling band we’ve ever released. It’s not because we’re inspired to support our local music scene. “Yes, there’s definitely a reason... please give me a minute... oh, ok, I got it (just put on this record). Like every time I hear their recordings, I’m reminded that they are one of the greatest rock bands to ever pick up a guitar and attempt to play it wrong. Listening to The Dead C causes me to think differently. It brings up emotions with which I’m otherwise unfamiliar. It strikes to the essence of my being and reveals what otherwise remains hidden. I take solace in knowing that one out of every thirty of you reading this know exactly what I’m talking about.

“On the spectrum of The Dead C’s sound output, Trouble could very well be seen as springing from the same realm as the massive “Driver UFO,” one of the band’s greatest tracks ever, off Harsh 70s Reality. There’s a youthful aggression here, a churning anger, deadened by pounding drone. Much like H70s, this record serves as a gateway drug— if you were ever looking for an album to play to a newbie curious about experimental rock, this would be it. The visceral strength of their performance trembles out of the speakers. The magnificence of their stamina survives each album side.

“We are in a creative highpoint for the trio at the moment. Bruce Russell has just released a captivating solo album on Feeding Tube, while Michael Morley’s solo project Gate just put out a release on MIE. Robbie Yeats has been performing of late as backup for Alastair Galbraith. The fact that there are still means to commute between Lyttelton and Port Chalmers on the South Island of New Zealand means these three can still find time to get together, and allows for what we have here today. And it’s fucking glorious. ’’ - Ben Goldberg, Ba Da Bing.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Fuzzed-out psychedelic drone has never sounded so good. Mesmerising feedback over longform progressive jams, swirling psychedelic solos and wah-wah chords stop and start in a (presumably) calculated but seemingly random manner while Drum fills judder around the stereo field. Progressive rock structure with a noise-drone makeup, one for the headphones.

TRACK LISTING

1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Five
5. Four

Dead Can Dance’s second album, Spleen And Ideal (1985), saw them experiment more with instrumentation, abandoning guitars in favour of cello, trombone and timpani. Widely acclaimed, there was now a richness of unification between voice and music, lyrics and structure, showing they had a concrete sense of the aural ideal they were striving towards. It’s title was taken from Spleen et Idéal, a collection of poems by 18th century French poet Charles Baudelaire.

The 2016 LP version is a repress of the original release.

On their eponymous debut album, originally released in 1984, Dead Can Dance successfully harnessed a “bewitching barrage of sounds, layering grinding guitars and even a dulcimer-like yang chin over a taut wash of percussion. If the range of the group is staggering, then so too is their disciplined economy, no song lasting more than four minutes or degenerating into formless cacophony. With the five group members continually interchanging instruments, only the vocals of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry remain as a constant focus”.

The 2016 LP version is a repress of the original release.

Mitksi’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2014 breakout album ‘Bury Me At Makeout Creek’.

Ask Mitski about happiness and she’ll warn you: “Happiness fucks you.” It’s a lesson that’s been writ large into the New Yorker’s gritty, outsider-indie for years but never so powerfully as on her newest album, ‘Puberty 2’. “Happiness is up, sadness is down, but one’s almost more destructive than the other,” she says. “When you realize you can’t have one without the other, it’s possible to spend periods of happiness just waiting for that other wave.” On ‘Puberty 2’ that tension is palpable: a both beautiful and brutal romantic hinterland, in which one of America’s new voices hits a brave new stride.

“No one else can make shattering sound like such an act of strength.” - Stereogum

“Her songs build a quiet fury with lyrics that pulverize the heart while still making a break-up seem almost beautiful.” - Paste Magazine

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Puberty 2 is very original and distinctive in every sense. A strong element of both mixed electronic riffs and heavy guitars gives it a fierce prominent essence; it’s pieced with authentic and wistful lyrics. Her voice begins as a soft lullaby then builds into this astonishing provoked voice of passion.

TRACK LISTING

Happy
Dan The Dancer
Once More To See You
Fireworks
Your Best American Girl
I Bet On Losing Dogs
My Body’s Made Of Crushed Little Stars
Thursday Girl
A Loving Feeling
Crack Baby
A Burning Hill

Julianna Barwick’s revelatory third album, ‘Will’, is the Brooklyn experimental artist’s most surprising left turn to date. Conceived and self-produced over the past year in a variety of locations, the compelling ‘Will’ departs from the weighty lightness of 2013’s ‘Nepenthe’.

If ‘Nepenthe’ conjured images of gentle fog rolling over desolate mountains, then ‘Will’ is a late afternoon thunderstorm, a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures that sounds ominous and restorative all at once.

‘Will’ comes after Barwick’s busiest period to date in her career following ‘Nepenthe’ - a spate of activity that included playing piano for Yoko Ono, performing at the 25th annual Tibet House Benefit Concert alongside such kindred spirits as The Flaming Lips and Philip Glass, releasing the ‘Rosabi’ EP and delivering a reimagining of Bach’s ‘Adagio’ from Concerto In D Minor.

Her life over the past several years has largely been lived in transit and as such the genesis of ‘Will’ was not beholden to location; Barwick reflects on this cycle of constant motion. “You’re constantly adjusting, assimilating, and finding yourself in life-changing situations.” That sense of forward propulsion is largely owed to ‘Will’s synth-heavy textures, an ingredient she was inspired to add to her vocal loop-heavy formula after demoing a new prototype analogue sequencer for Moog.

Another new wrinkle ‘Will’ introduces in Barwick’s sound: Mas Ysa’s Thomas Arsenault, who lends his richly complex vocals to ‘Same’ and ‘Someway’.

The beguiling, beautifully complicated ‘Will’ is the latest proof yet of Barwick’s irresistibly engaging talent as a composer and vocalist.

Julianna has recently collaborated with Moog and MoMa, lending her prestige as both a musician and artist as a whole.

TRACK LISTING

St. Apolonia
Nebula
Beached
Same
Wist
Big Hollow
Heading Home
Someway
See, Know