Under the guidance of the outrageously talented Ghanaian force of nature Kweku Sackey, aka K.O.G, and the whirlwind of energy that is Jamaican rapper Franz Von, the Zongo Brigade deliver infectious, high-energy West African grooves via Sheffield, drawing on Afrobeat, soul, funk, rock, hip hop and reggae which has fast gained recognition in London and all over the UK.
K.O.G’s signature mix of high-energy songs, raps, operatic vocal effects, along with the hard-hitting patois raps from the spirited Franz Von and a dedicated band of serious musical badmen, has led the band to perform on some of the biggest stages including Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds Festivals and numerous clubs and venues around Europe.

Deeply rooted in stories from Africa, the album draws on love, peace and social issues. K.O.G & the Zongo Brigade’s motto “Unity in Diversity” stems from Kweku’s African origins and also embraces the eclectic mix of nationalities which make up the band.

With a backdrop of unmistakeable African rhythms that include electric brass, thunderous percussion and sharp-edge guitar, ‘Wahala Wahala’ takes possession of the body as the words excite the mind. Racism, rejection, inequality, exile - the subject matter is always serious but the delivery irresistibly upbeat and rhythmic, guaranteed to get the feet moving because in every pain, there is also joy.

TRACK LISTING

For My People
Money
Suro Nipa
Medowo
Imela
Home
Agoro
Dr Mensa
Mona Lisa
Transmission
Mad Up
Wahala
Wonderful Life
Sahara

Audiobooks are pleased to share a remix bundle for their latest single, ‘Friends in the Bubble Bath’, out now via Heavenly Recordings. The release features two remixes by Gabe Gurnsey (Factory Floor) and one each from Welsh songstress Gwenno and Audiobooks’ own David Wrench.

“I love audiobooks, and 'Friends in the Bubblebath' is brilliant,” Gwenno says. “I wanted to create a reflective atmosphere around Evangeline and David's lyrics, to try and compliment the story and that feeling of the party still trying to keep going at 3am, as parties tend to do.”

“It was a real pleasure to be asked to remix Audiobooks’ as I’m a big fan of theirs,” Gurnsey adds. “I wanted to take all that energy they exude vocally and musically and bring it onto the dance floor. I ended up working on two remixes which work side by side, reflecting that chemistry David and Evangeline have in their live performances.”

TRACK LISTING

A1 Gwenno Remix
A2 CBD Bath Oil Version
B1 Gabe Gurnsey's Gamma Ray Remix
B2 Gabe Gurnsey's Blubblebath Remix

“Sometimes it’s hard to say how you feel,” says Jade Vincent. “These songs are vulnerable stories for me to tell — they’re things I couldn’t say out loud. But I found that I could sing them. And then I closed my eyes when they would listen.”

Listening to Vincent’s songs were her partner, the producer/composer Keefus Ciancia, and the DJ and producer/composer David Holmes. Together, Vincent, Ciancia and Holmes make up Unloved, the musical project that evolved out of a late-night Hollywood bar in 2015, released a stunning debut album the following spring, and this year crafted the soundtrack to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s acclaimed new series Killing Eve.

Now Unloved bring us their second full length record Heartbreak, a record emboldened by its predecessor to be more emotionally exposed, more musically, lyrically, and vocally audacious. In the words of Holmes: “We just get together, had a load of ideas, and Jade went off and wrote and wrote. She got deep and deep. She has an amazing story. They are amazing songs. She excelled herself.”

To enter the world of Unloved is to surrender oneself to a great musical immersion, one that seems to occupy the space somewhere between past and present, where thoughts soften and ideas mingle with twisted mancini-esque orchestrations, where music binds the dawn and dark.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Killing Eve, and it's tense atmospheres but dark humour flecked throughout wouldn't have been the same without Unloved's perfect soundtrack. Heartbreak may seem mildly chaotic at first, but brilliantly evocative orchestration and swooning, loungey vibes soon make you foret the chaos before flinging you once again into the fire. A beautifully produced and perfectly balanced filmic masterpiece. And who would have expected any less from this talented bunch?

TRACK LISTING

1 Heartbreak
2 Remember
3 Love
4 (Sigh)
5 Bill
6 Devils Angels
7 Lee
8 Danger
9 Fail We May Sail We Must
10 Love Lost
11 Crash Boom Bang
12 Boy And Girl
13 If

Fronted by Texan native Danny Lee Backwell, Myth Of A Man is Night Beats' fourth studio album, and their second for Heavenly Recordings following the release of Who Sold My Generation in 2016.

While Blackwell has always fed off the musical legacy of his Texas roots—Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Red Krayola, The Black Angels and more paving the way for the the napalm-coated psych-rock headtrip of past albums—Myth Of A Man has him pulling from the surrogate wellspring of Nashville, Tennessee.

It was there that he worked with the eminent Dan Auerbach, and a murderer’s row of battle-worn session musicians—the combined weight of experience that comes from working with every legend from Aretha Franklin to Elvis not lost on Blackwell. “I was just humbled by being accepted,” he explains, “Big hearts all around.”

In short, it’s an album that holds its own next to the classics, less of the bloodshot acid trip of Sonic Bloom (2013) and Who Sold My Generation (2016) here, Blackwell has recalibrated them, slowed them down just enough and allowed them the space to breathe and exist as something new. It’s the same book, just a different chapter. The moody organ comps and slow stroll of the 12-string on “Her Cold Cold Heart” evoke the noxious feeling and hypnotic state of toxic love, the spirit of Bill Withers is flowing through the acoustic guitar and sun-soaked shuffle of “I Wonder,” and string-trimmed ballads like “Footprints” and “Too Young To Pray” evoke the imaginative, cowboy psychedelia of fellow Texan, Lee Hazlewood. “Let Me Guess” with its searing riff and Elevators-esque organ assures us that the scuzzy sound we know and love is alive and well, while “One Thing,” a song about being used and abused—or as Blackwell sharply puts it, “being rolled up and smoked”—has plenty of fuzzed-out guitars to let us know he might just be happy about it.

Written during a particularly destructive period of the band, the album is populated by fallen angels, blood-sucking wanderers, and vindictive lovers—sketches of people the band has surely come across during their cosmic roving through the underground—but the character most present is Blackwell, himself. “Myth Of A Man can be summed up as a personal display of vulnerability and guilty conscience,” he explains, “Destroying the mythos of what it means to live and function in society.” With its bold steps forward, Myth Of A Man serves as both a takedown and reintroduction of the band as we know it—the strongest evidence that you’ll never be able to pin Night Beats down. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Her Cold Cold Heart
2. One Thing
3. Stand With Me
4. There She Goes
5. (Am I Just) Wasting My Time
6. Eyes On Me
7. Let Me Guess
8. Footprints
9. I Wonder
10. Too Young To Pray

It’s a familiar story: fledgling singer does soul-sucking day job in order to fund their real passion during the nocturnal hours. Except Mattiel Brown, Atlanta’s rising star, is a rare exception to this time-honoured tradition: a fulfilled creative by day and night, albeit in different contexts. “It’s like I have two full-time jobs: designer and musician,” she says, humbly hip to her good fortune.

During office hours, Brown works as an ad designer and illustrator at MailChimp, a position she’s enjoyed for four years. “I work with a great video production team, in a great studio. Luckily, they’re a company that encourage side gigs.” Out of office hours, Brown swaps the design studio for the stage, a softly-spoken, chilled-out design nerd turned rock & roll belter, performing bold, vintage soul as Mattiel (pronounced ‘maa-TEEL’).

Brown grew up on a five-acre farm in rural Brooks, Georgia, the only child of a Detroit native. “My mom bought the farm in the early ‘90s. She had – still has – horses, so I learned to ride western-style when I was 6, 7 years-old,” (a skill Brown nods to in her cover art). “We had a vegetable garden and chickens. My mom would sell sheep’s wool and eggs. Before that, she’d been a professional set decorator working on films. She’s a really driven, creative person. I definitely inherited my work ethic from her.”

As an adolescent, Brown delighted in the ‘60s folk and pop of her mother’s limited vinyl collection: Donovan, Peter Paul and Mary, and Joan Baez. As an adult, relocated in neighbouring Atlanta, she’d sing along to the radio on the long drives to work: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Andre 3000, Dylan, Marc Bolan, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Jack White.

When Brown first began jamming with InCrowd, the Atlanta-based song-writing and production team behind her dynamite eponymous debut, she had no real designs on making a whole album and no game plan beyond the fun of “creating something out of nothing.” She said, “That process is always pretty astounding to me, and doing it with other people is even better.” But her producers, Randy Michael and Jonah Swilley, knew a good thing when they heard it: Brown and InCrowd had chemistry.

InCrowd’s founders, both skilled multi-instrumentalists, met in 2014, as session musicians touring with soul man Curtis Harding. Michael – an experienced player who’d co-written with Harding and racked up impressive session spots with the likes of Bruno Mars, and The Next Day-era Bowie – played guitar, while Swilley ¬(producer, writer and performer since age 9 and younger brother of Black Lips bassist Jared) played drums. On the road, they bonded over a mutual love of vintage R&R and ‘90s rap. “We discovered we both loved The Beatles as much as Jay-Z, Dylan as much as the Arctic Monkeys,” remembers Swilley. Back in Atlanta, once the Harding tour had wrapped, the pair formed a band, Black Linen, writing reverb-washed guitar music inspired by Tarantino soundtracks, by way of ‘60s Cambodian psych. Brown knew Michael from his days in The Booze, a popular local act who’d tour with OK Go before their demise. She’d kept track of him, aware that they shared a musical kinship. “[Randy] was the only person I knew who was into the music I was into.” When she reached out, asking to cut a Donovon cover record at Michael’s garage-turned-studio, Toco Electric, he was dubious. “I thought she'd have this little, whispery voice, you know? But she blew me away! She sounded like ‘60s-era Cher doing Dylan or something. I just knew she’d be perfect for the Black Linen stuff.” “We knew immediately that we wanted to work with her,” Swilley concurs. By then, around 2014, InCrowd were deep on a ’50s Leiber and Stoller bend, says Michael: “The Coasters, The Drifters, all that good stuff.” Bored with Atlanta’s “ultra cool” enclaves, they’d built their own scene, says Michael. They’d put on and promote reviews-style gigs, a 12-man strong house band (“our very own Wrecking Crew”) backing various InCrowd vocalists. “We were just making it happen, doing it ourselves.”

In the studio, Michael cut InCrowd records live, no overdubs, feeding everything through a rare analogue Peavey soundboard. “That’s how InCrowd rolls. What you hear on our records is everyone playing and singing together, in the same room, at the same time. We cut it right there, as it happens, and its either magic or its not.”

Mattiel’s process was just so: InCrowd supplied the instrumental compositions – raucous, swinging medleys frilled with organs and brass – while Brown provided vocals and lyrics, the latter often written freestyle, in situ. “That’s where the parallels between music and design really happen,” says Brown. “Your limitations – time, space, expense – push you to be as creative as you can with what you have.”

The resulting collection of songs is a dynamite salvo of retro-inspired rock & soul, from the gun-slinging stomp of “Whites Of Their Eyes,” to the string-laden self-affirmation of “Count Your Blessings,” penned by Brown after a spate of the blues brought on by a period of ill health. “Its a song I wrote for myself to myself, like 'you’re gonna get through this, you’re gonna be okay.'”

Mattiel’s sound might borrow from the past, but their art direction – Brown’s inspiring handiwork, of course – is decidedly forward-thinking, all colour block aesthetics (á la the White Stripes) and artful, design-savvy music videos. “I don’t wanna hit people over the head with like, bell bottoms and long hair and a Jimmy Hendrix outfit,” Brown laughs. “People have seen all that before.”

Mattiel is a “fresh mesh of retro and contemporary,” says Swilley, the latter thanks in large part to Brown’s vision, voice and on-stage energy. “She's very exciting to watch. She doesn't rehearse it or try to emulate anyone; she's just doing own her thing. And she's not fazed by the crowds [as evidenced during their shows to date: a recent, three-date support slot for Portugal The Man]. It’s kind of incredible really, because in person she's pretty chilled and softly spoken, but when she gets on stage...in the last six months, she's really been killing it.”

With a European festival circuit tour scheduled for this summer, Mattiel is no longer Atlanta’s best kept secret. Look out, world.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: This ace debut is an explosion of 60's....ooh: EVERYTHING! Classic, warm, garage riffing, soully melodies but with a huskily honeyed folky voice. And the songwriting is superb!

TRACK LISTING

1. Whites Of Their Eyes
2. Send It On Over
3. Baby Brother
4. Not Today
5. Cass Tech
6. Bye Bye
7. Five And Tens
8. Silver Pillbox
9. Just A Name
10. Count Your Blessings
11. Salty Words
12. Ready To Think

If you’re going to call your band audiobooks, you’d better have some good stories to tell. Stories that should move you and ones to make you move. Stories about real life and surreal life and all that weirdness that you just glimpsed out of the corner of your eye.

Luckily for you, audiobooks really do. The London based duo have developed a unique ability to conjure up magical aural snapshots that wallop you like bong hits. Each of their discombobulating observations comes stretched out over a series of discomfiting oscillations, like messages from the spirit world or pulp fictions found in a box at the end of your road or a crackling pop broadcast from a far away galaxy;

Out there, across the wavelengths or in the musty pages of their books, there’s a girl who’s lost in lust, sat eating mussels on a South Wales beach; there’s an alcohol-fuelled vision of Hell as a family melts down in an airport departure lounge and there’s a carsick dog in the back of your Grandma Jimmy’s car. There’s womanly blood flowing and there’s friends in your bubble bath and there’s some very large pinches of hot salt.

So who’s telling these stories? Who are the people writing these audiobooks?

On the face of it, Evangeline Ling - a 21 year old art student and musician from Wimbledon - and David Wrench - one of the most in demand mixers and producers in modern music, a sometime cohort of Julian Cope and former denizen of North Wales – might seem an unlikely pairing. Yet a chance encounter at a mutual friend’s party just one week after David had moved south to the capital very quickly led to an experimental studio session that’s been going on ever since.

Evangeline: “I’d found myself writing these odd stories as text messages on my phone. They were too short to be proper stories… they were fragments. I’d told David about them when we met and he said, ‘Come into the studio and let’s put them to music.’” David: “It was so perfect – this incredible text message…” Evangeline: “The next day, we started making music. We realised pretty much immediately that what we were doing might just connect. I’m not a technically minded person, musically – David is – but we kind of synced in because we bonded as human beings. We just met and connected; I immediately trusted David. We didn’t really chat about who we are…” David: “Neither of us are any good at small talk so we just got working and it was crazily fast, everything about it. We’ve never spent more than an hour on a track. We go in, we improvise and we either keep it or we don’t. There might be a bit of editing the next day but the creation is done incredibly quickly.” Evangeline: “We’d work on a track and then we’d just sit and do nothing. He’d work on a mix for someone or play some records, I’d have a nap or paint or draw…” David: “The second time Evangeline turned up at the studio she arrived in her pyjamas. She’d come all the way from Wimbledon to east London in a pair of Batman pyjamas.” Evangeline: “I hadn’t slept all night, I’d just had this crazy adrenaline. I knew we were doing something really special and I couldn’t wait to get there. I didn’t have any clean clothes so I just thought, ‘Sod this, I’ve got to go’.”

Stories about audiobooks are as fantastical as the ones they’ve set to music, whether it’s crossing London in bed wear, misheard lyrics accidentally creating perma-tanned Welsh women (Swansea’s “Orange Gina” was once innocently a can of the famous French fizzy pop) or the fact they bonded over a mutual frustration with people who hoard as much as they did shared taste in music.

From their first meeting, Evangeline and David’s friendship has been influenced by the records they flipped through in his newly set up studio in Old Street. Very quickly, the pair found inspiration in music by artists as diverse as Bauhaus, Aphrodite’s Child, Marilyn Manson, Michael Jackson, Flower Traveling Band, the Fall, Faust, Tropicalia and Dory Previn.

Evangeline: “Dory frickin Previn, man.” David: “Her record Mythical Kings and Iguanas is an incredible piece of work; she really was a genius. Lyrically, that’s maybe the closest link to audiobooks.”

If the bracingly honest and often troubled words of Previn helped influence Evangeline’s stories, the music they’re set to comes from an entirely different place. Having developed a kind of psychic musical response to Evangeline’s surrealist texts, David set about soundtracking the weird worlds she was delivering on a daily basis. Much of the resulting music – at times odd, beautiful, unique, hilarious, disquieting, pensive, hypnotic, open, free – is collected together on Now, in a minute! – the mind-bending follow up to the head-turning four track Gothenburg EP and the duo’s first full length album.

Like the band themselves, Now, in a minute! doesn’t do the things that you’d expect. While opener Mother Hen might be a modernist nursery rhyme sat atop skittering proggy electronics, the dual vocals on the tracks Hot Salt and Friends in the Bubble Bath perfectly channel the conflict and contradiction of Don’t You Want Me into something ultra-modern and almost ludicrously addictive. Elsewhere, the primal, gothic drone of Womanly Blood sits like a brooding weather condition until it rips apart thanks to some heavy percussive artillery from Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa (the only other contributor to the record) and Dance Your Life Away sounds like the soundtrack to the kind of inhibition free moonlight voodoo party that you wish your mates had invited you at Glastonbury last year.

David: “With that track particularly, we wanted to emulate that thing Michael Jackson did where he uses sounds really rhythmically to inject an incredible energy into his music… I love it when vocals become their own thing that can’t really be written down.” Evangeline: “And we were listening to a lot of Marilyn Manson in the studio. I find the way he sings very rhythmically really inspiring.”

A band that takes its cues from the King of Pop and the Antichrist Superstar, creates music in daily automatic writing sessions and rides the neon ley lines that connect of the North Wales coast to the psycho-bustle of after hours London are clearly on a very singular path to greatness – a path they’re already someway down, having taken their first footsteps out of the studio and onto the stage for a handful of truly mesmerizing live shows.

Time, then, to welcome these strange superheroes - this inhuman league - into your life. You might not know it yet but the story is already written. It says audiobooks are your new favourite band.

TRACK LISTING

1 Mother Hen
2 Hot Salt
3 It Get Be So Swansea
4 Friends In The Bubble Bath
5 Womanly Blood
6 Grandma Jimmy
7 Dance Your Life Away
8 Call Of Duty Free
9 Period Talk
10 Spooky Algorithms
11 Dealing With Hoarders
12 Car Sick
13 Pebbles

B.E.D is the new collaboration from Baxter Dury, French Dance music pioneer Etienne De Crécy & Delilah Holiday of London punks Skinny Girl Diet. Although they seem strange bed fellows at first, this project provides the perfect fusion of their disparate skill sets. Etienne De Crécy fires up the hardware and lays down tough electro-pop instrumentals, combining the best bits of italo, vintage synth pop and the DFA/John Grant school of digi-cool. Meanwhile in the vocal booth, Baxter Dury is typically engaging, itriguing and disarming with a string of half spoken / half sung confessionals, while Delilah Holiday adds a touch of emotion via kitchen sink balladry, the odd delicate chorus and at least one journey into the classic synthpop deadpan. Recorded between 2017 & the start of 2018 and produced by Etienne De Crécy & Baxter Dury in France, "B.E.D." is another must have release on the mighty Heavenly. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Sick synth pop offering from the hive mind of these three musical misfits. If you like John Grant, Human League or LCD, then this is for you my friends.

TRACK LISTING

1 Tais Toi
2 Walk Away
3 How Do You Make Me Feel
4 Fly Away
5 White Coats
6 Only My Honesty Matters
7 Centipedes
8 But I Think
9 Eurostars

Japanese culture has long since developed a fascination with the cute, the innocent, the throwaway; it’s termed ‘kawaii’, more of a cult than a concept, and it runs through the veins of incoming hyper-animated four-piece Chai.

Hailing from Japan’s Nagoya region, the band formed around identical twins Mana and Kana, before close friends Yuna and Yuuki completed the line up.

Imagine a world dominated by bright colours and squeaky clean plastic, where endless cartoons and guilt-free meal times combine to offer hymns to empowerment, and a rejection of the mundane. Imagine Chai’s electrifying, hallucinatory, but wonderfully real debut mini-album ‘Pink’.

Plugged in to pop culture on a 24/7 basis, Chai practically have modems for stomachs and phone lines for veins. Just the first glitter-strewn belch to eminate from Chai, ‘Pink’ is the kind of guilt-free hyper-pop overdose you’ve waited your entire life to hear. It’s cute, but beneath the surface there’s a whole new world to explore.

TRACK LISTING

Hi Hi Baby
N.E.O
Boyz Seco Men
Horechatta
Fried
She Is Kitty

"It’s about the concepts and stories we invent to understand our experienced reality and feel like we matter somehow, and about the fluid and sometimes contradictory nature of these stories. Like the concept of romantic love, for example. Is this actually a thing? Sometimes it seems so tangible it becomes my whole world, other times I’m convinced it’s just a scam I keep falling for. Both of these sentiments feel equally true at different times. The same with politics and identity. When I’m in the Netherlands I don’t really pay much attention to being “Dutch” or “European”, and I think politicians who focus on a shared Dutch culture are lame at best and dangerous at worst. Then when I’m in the US being Dutch all of a sudden seems to be a huge part of my identity. I guess the point is, whatever idea I have about myself or about love, politics, morality, and anything at all, is so fluid and relative that I’m finding it hard to say that I trust any of my own views, ideas or perceptions anymore. Which sucks, because I really want to find meaning to this life, and it’s hard to find that when you don’t trust any of your own experiences. For example, happiness: I have this Calvinistic idea that in order to achieve happiness, I have to struggle, I have to earn it by overcoming challenges, developing myself, etc. But the end-result will just be the same as if I did nothing: you die and then nothing you’ve done or achieved matters anymore. So does a human life move upwards towards a certain goal, or is it just a chain of random events? And what about our collective history, does it move towards a goal, is there progress, or is it just a random collection of events? I think most people like to think there is progress, both in their personal life as well as in the world at large, that we are working towards being a better more developed person and also towards collectively building a better world. At the same time, we tend to romanticize the past and think everything was better “back in the days”. Something I’ve always wondered is whether these concepts and experiences can be translated from the individual to the masses, and from the psychological to the physical. For example this last sentiment: that the past somehow always feels like it was better in some way than the present. I’m definitely guilty of this on a personal level. When I think about being a kid and growing up, all those memories are kind of covered in a warm and golden haze. You remember the good stuff very clearly, and all those moments when you were just bored sitting in front of the TV or staring at the clock in school waiting for the bell to ring kind of fade away, even though that was probably about 50% of your time being a kid. This same process seems to happen in whole nations, too, where we collectively decide that the past was better than the present and we feel the need to “take back control” or “make something great again” and all that jazz. And the same with romantic love. The minute you’ve broken up with someone and you’ve walked out the door, you start to idealize and romanticize what it was like being in that relationship and forget about all the fucked up thing that came with it. In a way it makes sense to romanticize the past. Maybe it’s one way to feel like the time we’ve spent in this mortal life was worth something, that it wasn’t all bad. We need to be able to tell a story about it, if we encounter a challenge we want to feel like it meant something, it made us grow. Just accepting that some bad shit happened to us for no good reason is hard. It’s pretty impressive how positive and hopeful we are as a species. Just like most of the movies we make always have a happy ending. It wouldn’t feel right if they didn’t. And even in these times, when we’re apparently on the brink of a sixth wave of extinction, climate scientists who say that they are certain the human species doesn’t have much of a future still also say they are sure something will happen or be invented to save us, even if they have no idea what or how. In a way being a tourist is like a condensed version of all these hopes and dreams and disappointments. We went on a road trip in California right after we finished recording in LA and it was pretty fascinating. Like, why do people even go on vacation? I guess for a lot of people it’s a way to escape fixed patterns, to go out and have “real experiences”, to “feel alive”. But then you’re on this road trip and internally you’re still the same old human, who is still plagued by the same insecurities and boredom and is wondering where the nearest bathroom is and are we there yet because it’s so hot in the car and the AC sucks.

And voila, I guess the record is about my personal, mundane, relative and subjective experience of the human condition so far in this life." - Amber Arcades

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It sounds amazing, beautiful nuanced journeys through acoustic balladry and heavier, driven sections, bolstered with those unmistakeable vox.

Now that that's out of the way, how many yellow suits does De Graaf have? Having seen them play, and seen her sporting the exact same costume, it made me wonder how i've never seen one in the wild but would assume that being on tour, she must have a few? You should buy this anyway, it's dead good.

TRACK LISTING

1 Simple Song
2 Hardly Knew
3 Oh My Love (What Have We Done)
4 Goodnight Europe
5 Alpine Town
6 I've Done The Best
7 Self-Portrait In A Car At Night
8 Something's Gonna Take Your Love Away
9 Antoine
10 Where Did You Go
11 Baby, Eternity

Over the last decade, Lanegan and Garwood have worked in tangent on 2013’s Black Pudding as well as on Lanegan’s solo records (Garwood contributed to 2012’s Blues Funeral and 2017’s Gargoyle after which he toured as part of Lanegan’s band). Writing and recording was split between studio collaboration and sharing music between Garwood’s home in London and Lanegan’s in Los Angeles. Elsewhere, technology helped make the duo’s transatlantic working relationships relatively easy.

“Over the years, we’ve recorded together and apart. This time, I started this record alone, with many animals as company,” says Garwood. “It flowed, I set to work and out it came. Our music is instinct, there is not much talking about it, just creating. I think that if you are at peace with your work, and feeling it right, it flows, and can feel ‘easy’. Music isn't meant to be hard. Though sometimes it can burn you to ashes. Making music for a singer, so they can inhabit it with a song means hitting the right soul buttons. There is no hit without a miss. It is a healing record, for us the makers, and for the listeners. It grows natural. We are gardeners of sonic feelings.”

While Black Pudding put Garwood’s mercurial guitar centre stage, With Animals is constructed from a different set of tools. Analogue and dust flecked, it sounds like Lanegan and Garwood have been holed up in a ’60s recording studio while the apocalypse rages outside. Tracks sit on loops that sounds like they’re straight out of There’s A Riot Goin’ On while sparse melodies nod in the direction of British electronic producers like Burial or Boards of Canada. Which is not to say it sounds like any of those things – this is a weird world all of their own design.

The record’s 12 songs are spectral and sinewy, often defined by the spaces in between the sounds. A ghost’s whistle weaves itself around a pulsing single note on Lonesome Infidel; Feast to Famine’s hard luck story floats above a guitar part so strung out and washed with distortion it’s become barely recognisable. It’s soul music for anyone who’s long since left the crossroads.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brimming with morose energy and perfectly measured songwriting, an album from these two veterans was never going to be anything but mindblowing, and here we have it. Lanegan and Garwood have managed to meet perfectly in the dark ether between their two styles and 'With Animals' is every bit the perfect fusion.

TRACK LISTING

1 Save Me
2 Feast To Famine
3 My Shadow Life
4 Upon Doing Something Wrong
5 L.A Blue
6 Scarlett
7 Lonesome Infidel
8 With Animals
9 Ghost Stories
10 Spaceman
11 One Way Glass
12 Desert Song

77:78, the new project from Aaron Fletcher & Tim Parkin, card carrying members of the musical kaleidoscope that is The Bees.

Set to pick up where the Bees left off, the album was recorded at Studio Humbug on the Isle of Wight and musically picks it way from sublime west coast harmonies that recall the frayed beauty of the Beach Boys Smiley Smile , to the ramshackle dub of King Tubby via the playfulness of early Syd Barret. The album will be available on coloured orange vinyl.

“Some musicians and bands definitely have their sound and stick to it, which is fair enough, but that’s just not us. Whenever we’re in the studio we’re constantly inspired to go down different musical paths, which I suppose is why the record we’ve made sounds so diverse. “

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Perfect hazy summer psychedelia, with echoes of 60's classics, imbued with the preceding decades of production knowledge and influences make this ex-Bees side-project more than the sum of it's considerable parts. Brimming with musicality and oozing vibes, this is a summer stormer.

TRACK LISTING

If I'm Anything
Compass Pass
Love Said (Let's Go)
Pour It Out
Papers
Copper Nail
E.S.T.W.D
Chilli
Shepherd's Song
Situations
The Wagon

77:78, the new project from Aaron Fletcher & Tim Parkin, card-carrying members of the musical kaleidoscope that is The Bees, release Chilli, the latest track to be taken from their debut album, Jellies, which is released on Heavenly Recordings on Friday 6th July.

There's just 150 copies of this life affirming 7” featuring the original version of Chilli on the A side and on the flip a brilliantly nuts (and soon to be in-demand) remix by Dubwood Allstars. 

Talking about the track, Aaron said:
"Chilli is just us being the sort of 70’s dirty ol’ roadhouse blues band that we always wanted to be....dressed in double denim and playing in a desert bar where the chilli is hot as rockets."

Here’s a quote from Dubwood Allstars:
"Looking forward to seeing 77:78 ...hope they're as good as when I saw them at The Fillmore in '75, managed to capture this stomping version of Chilli on my Nagra, been in the loft ever since…”

Boy Azooga, the shape-shifting musical mystery tour piloted by Cardiff’s Davey Newington have announced details of the release of their debut album, 1,2 Kung Fu!, on Heavenly Recordings.

A prodigous musical talent, Davey Newington is a young man with a rich musical heritage. One of his granddads was a jazzer who played drums for the Royal Marines. Davey’s dad (violin) and his mum (clarinet) both played, and met, in the BBC National Orchestra Of Wales. Davey himself took up drums at the age of six and also enjoyed orchestral engagement, playing in various Welsh Orchestra’s and Jazz bands as a teenager as well at latterly finding gainful employment playing drums as part of Charlotte Church’s Late Night Pop Dungeon.

Inspired by his art teacher at school who sent him off to town to buy Can’s Ege Bamyasi, taking musical cues from the likes of Sly & The Family Stone, Caribou, Black Sabbath, Outkast, Van McCoy, Ty Segall and The Beastie Boys and with arrangements which carry the wonky tunefulness of The Super Furry Animals they nabbed their name from the 1994 film The Little Rascals.

With a Davey recruiting friends Daf Davies, Dylan Morgan and Sam Barnes to form the Boy Azooga live quartet, an ensemble that swings smoothly from filmic instrumentals to a churning, rave-tinged rock that hints at both Can and their progeny, the Happy Mondays, the band played a number of headline and support shows across the U.K. at the end of last year, including a manic sold-out hometown show in Cardiff at Clwb Ifor Bach almost a year to the day they made their debut in the city at the same venue.

They take their loose-limbed live show on the road later this year and the dates include their own headline shows, support slots with The Magic Gang & Rolling Blackouts and Coastal Fever and an appearance at this year’s Heavenly Weekender at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brilliant work here from Cardiff's newest prodigal talent, Boy Azooga. I have it on good opinion that Davey is a 'Lovely. happy chap' (Graf, 2018), but I can tell you that he is indeed a venerable talent, and deserving of every bit of praise this soaring psychedelic-indie-synthy wonder garners. Fully brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Breakfast Epiphany
2. Loner Boogie
3. Face Behind Her Cigarette
4. Walking Thompson's Park
5. Jerry
6. Breakfast Epiphany II
7. Taxi To Your Head
8. Losers In The Tomb
9. Hangover Square
10. Waitin'
11. Sitting On The First Rock From The Sun

Halo Maud’s first release on Heavenly is a recap of the story so far ahead of an album release later this year – three tracks of this EP originally came out on a Canadian label last year, with the difference that ‘Du Pouvoir’ now features some English lyrics, and ‘À La Fin’ and ‘Dans La Nuit’ cropped up on a La Souterraine compilations in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Maud Nadal has been a member of both Moodoïd and Melody’s Echo Chamber’s live bands, and of course at times there are comparisons to be drawn with MEC, with both teetering on a crystalline peak where extreme joy and despair meet. But if anything Nadal’s own melodies are even more indelible, and her voice turns them into vapour trails.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Hazy harmonies, rolling grooves and insistent percussive workouts form the backbone to Nadal's often haunting vocal flourishes, sometimes falling behind to give the vocals their own space. Perfectly measured and beautifully written immersive indie anthems.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wherever
2. Du Pouvoir/Power
3. Chanceuse
4. Surprise
5. Tu Sais Comme Je Suis
6. De Retour
7. Baptism
8. Fred
9. Je Suis Une Île
10. Proche Proche Proche
11. Dans La Nuit
12. Des Bras

Right as the clock was striking midnight on the last day of the year, King Gizzard issued Gumboot Soup, an entirely new 11-song collection. "Greenhouse Heat Death" and "All Is Known" are microtonal jams that roil and boil like the songs on Flying Microtonal Banana, the metallic "The Great Chain of Being" has the proggy feel of Murder of the Universe, and a bunch of mellow tracks ("Superposition," "I'm Sleepin' In," "The Wheel") could have been warped a bit and slotted right into Sketches of Brunswick East. The rest of the songs are strong neo-psych that would have fit well on the grab bag that was Polygondwanaland; the soft rock "Beginner's Luck" would have been a highlight with its marshmallowy chorus and jabbing guitar solo, and the same goes for the almost funky "Down the Sink," which reveals a loose-limbed side the band doesn't often show. So yes, it's a collection of castoffs and almost-weres, but the amazing thing is that it sounds like a greatest-hits collection made up of songs that are fully realized and played with passion and weirdness, not a half-baked slag heap. In case anyone needed it, Gumboot Soup is yet more proof that King Gizzard were firing all year long on all five cylinders, plus about four more that most bands don't have, and the body of work they created is immensely, intensely, jaw-droppingly impressive.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Though I feel like I might be getting RSI from writing about King Giz, amazingly they've managed to smash out yet another killer LP, full of their trademark hooks and off-kilter psychedelic scree. Once again, a completely realised and cohesive collection comes from the KG camp.

TRACK LISTING

1. Beginner's Luck
2. Greenhouse Heat Death
3. Barefoot Desert
4. Muddy Water
5. Superposition
6. Down The Sink
7. The Great Chain Of Being
8. The Last Oasis
9. All Is Known
10. I'm Sleepin' In
11. The Wheel

If you’re going to call your band audiobooks, you’d better get your stories straight. Evangeline Ling and David Wrench have great stories. Their songs are full of them - discombobulating observations over discomfiting oscillations. There are woozy fly-on-the-wall accounts of boozy art gallery openings and out of body journeys through the capital at night, all stretched out over stuttering, glitchy glam electronics. Managing to be spontaneous and playful yet fully focused, as if driven by some pagan design, audiobooks ride the sharp neon ley-lines that run between the north Wales coast and the grubby heart of after hours London. These songs are Pulp fictions by an inhuman league. They’re our new favourite band. Start following the story now.

From Melbourne by way of Brisbane, Confidence Man are unarguably one of the hottest acts on the planet right now. A portable party that’s levelled dance floors and flattened festival crowds as it’s rolled out across the world, they are a machine custom designed to make you dance and lose your cool.

Without doubt set to be this summer’s most joyously exciting new band, they have to be seen to be believed – upfront there’s a statuesque chap clad only in a pair of nothing-to-the-imagination hot pants next to a woman in a custom designed baby-doll dress and shorts combo while behind them lurk two shadowy mute figures on drums and keyboards, each stripped to the waist and veiled secretively in what look like a satanic beekeeper’s hats made of a material so black, the light seems to fall into it.

If Janet Planet, Sugar Bones, Clarence McGuffie and Reggie Goodchild weren’t a band already you’d be snapping at their heels demanding they form one quick-sharp. Fact is, they are, and on Friday 13th April 2018 they release Confident Music For Confident People, their 11-track debut album for Heavenly Recordings.

The band have already offered a glimpse of what’s in store on Confident Music For Confident People – recent tracks Boyfriend, Bubblegum and Better Sit Down Boy were big and brash and bright as hell, like Dee-Lite tooled up and ready for our berserk modern times.

Confident Music for Confident People sets eleven tales of 21st century ennui to irresistible, irrepressible dance music. The opening lines of Try Your Luck (“I must confess/I’ve been sleeping with your ex/’Cos I heard he was the best/I must confess/I never would have guessed he would get so obsessed… I’m not surprised”) set the tone perfectly for what follows.

Here is a set of songs that take the kind of all-consuming interior monologues that bored, disaffected youth are wrestling with the world over and places them square in the middle of the dance floor before adding call-and-response choruses for good measure – it’s the best collection of perfect pop music you’ll hear all year, the perfect embodiment of the characters that made it that somehow manages to be both wildly ambitious and deceptively simple at the same time.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Don't You Know I'm In A Band' perfectly encapsulates the whole vibe behind Confidence Men, brash, bold and more than a little conceited, they take the stereotypical entitled hilarity of stardom and turn it into a bitingly ironic, brilliantly accomplished synth journey. It's ridiculous, but it's totally brilliant. Heavenly have gone out of their comfort zone on this one, and absolutely smashed it.

TRACK LISTING

Try Your Luck
Don't You Know I'm In A Band
Boyfriend
C.O.O.L Party
Out The Window
Catch My Breath
Bubblegum
Better Sit Down Boy
Sailboat Vacation
All The Way
Fascination

The first single from Blundetto’s forthcoming album sees the French producer collaborate with a true great of Jamaican music, the legendary reggae vocalist Ken Boothe. Enjoy the killer A side on this dinked 7” then flip it over for dub and repeat...

Ken “Everything I Own” Boothe played a significant part in covering Sir Coxsone’s Studio One walls with gold - and goodness knows that label fostered its share of legends. Collaborating with the master, Blundetto could have laid it on thick with heavy production; instead alongside his discreet partner Blackjoy, he created a gorgeous production using the purest of Jamaican music, proving yet again that time has nothing on the suave tones of Mr. Rocksteady.

Following the reissue of his cult 1988 album ‘Tijan Pou Velo’, Heavenly Sweetness decided to continue their collaboration with Guadeloupean musician Edmony Krater and record a new album together, his first one in 30 years!

As an avant-gardist percussionist, singer and trumpet player, Edmony Krater has always worked to develop and promote the gwoka music of Guadeloupe and to feed it with different influences, from jazz to reggae. This approach is again evident on ‘An Ka Sonje ‘ as he merges these influences and sounds to mesmerising effect.

TRACK LISTING

Nou Kontan 
Jouwé Tanbou 
A Pa Jôdi 
Mi Yo Rivé 
An Ba Jouk 
Lagè
Ti Jan Ka 
Donga èvè Sé Neg Mawon 
An Ka Sonjé 
Encore Un Peu

With an insanely prolific year, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard return with their twelfth album, Polygondwanaland to journey into the depths of the mind and the limits of the universe. The Australian 7-piece have made a name for themselves with a steady stream of new material since their inception 2010, blending everything surf rock, prog, soul, folk, metal, garage rock, and even elements of spoken word and cinematic presentation, creating a large buzz and rabid fanbase stretching far across the globe from their Melbourne roots. this album is full of the psychedelic rock outfit's jazz and groove laden jams.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: For all of you who missed out on the Piccadilly Records exclusive beer splattered vinyl version of this, their TWELFTH LP, then here it is brought to you by the wonderful Heavenly records on CD and standard LP. If you haven't heard it yet, then get on it, or they'll have another one out before you get chance.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crumbling Castle 10:44
2. Polygondwanaland 03:32
3. The Castle In The Air 02:47
4. Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet 03:33
5. Inner Cell 03:55
6. Loyalty 03:38
7. Horology 02:52
8. Tetrachromacy 03:30
9. Searching... 03:03
10. The Fourth Colour 06:12

Written entirely in Cornish, Le Kov is exploration of the individual and collective subconscious, the myths and drolls of Cornwall, and the survival of Britain’s lesser known Brythonic language. As one of the language’s few fluent speakers, Gwenno felt a duty to make her second album entirely in Cornish: to create a document of a living language, explore her identity and the endless creative possibilities of a tongue that has a very small surviving artistic output, despite having been around for at least 15 centuries.
She dove deep into research, learning about attempts to protect and progress the language and the role of women throughout Cornish history. When Gwenno considered the legends of sunken Brythonic cities Cantre’r Gwaelod, Kêr-Is, Langarrow and Lyonesse, she knew she had her starting point. These cities evoked her idea of language as its own form of psychological territory, a concept perfectly distilled by the Cornish title for the album, Le Kov – the place of memory.

But Le Kov isn’t really a concept album—the city doesn’t loom that large through these 10 songs, and you don’t need the translation sheet to appreciate the gorgeous, sea-warped psychedelia that Gwenno has created alongside long-term collaborator and producer Rhys Edwards. Evoking the music of her childhood – Brenda Wootton, Alan Stivell, BUCCA – along with Broadcast, The United States of America, White Noise and Serge Gainsbourg, Le Kov is shimmering and tarnished, rust mingled with barnacles, moss entwined with weathered rope. It’s a huge step up from her debut album, Y Dydd Olaf, featuring forlorn piano, crisp drums, and searching synth lines that seem to reach across the horizon. The sounds of the language are similarly gorgeous: “Dha wolow jy yw splann” (“your light is bright”), Gwenno marvels on Hi A Skoellyas Liv A Dhagrow (She Shed A Flood Of Tears).

Sharp-eyed observers will note that that’s also a song from Aphex Twin’s 2001 album Drukqs. “I imagined Richard D. James coming across this ‘long lost Cornish 70s folk rock song’ on vinyl in a charity shop in the city of Le Kov, and stealing the title,” says Gwenno. It’s one of just two songs where she references the city directly. The next is Herdhya (Pushing), a hypnotic song “about the feeling of isolation after the Brexit vote, and realising that you’re stuck on an island—Britain—with perhaps many people who are trying to push society back to a regressive idea of the middle ages that has never existed, and imposing that on everyone else,” says Gwenno. By contrast, Le Kov is “dhyn ni oll” (for us all), a sanctuary city and analogue for the importance of understanding that diverse identities are the foundation of any place.
There’s darkness on Le Kov, but beauty, too. Tir Ha Mor (Land And Sea) is a tribute to Peter Lanyon, the St. Ives school painter who learned to fly a glider plane in order to “get a more complete knowledge of the landscape” where he lived, and died after crashing his aircraft in August 1964. “Marghek an Gwyns was his Bardic name,” says Gwenno. “Rider of the Winds.”
And Gwenno’s playful side shines through, too. Daromres Y’n Howl (Traffic In The Sun) is a low, groovy tribute to Cornwall’s clogged roads in the summertime, featuring Gruff Rhys rapping amid dissonant brass that evoke the angry horns of tourists on the A30. And Gwenno’s favourite song is Eus Keus? (Is There Cheese?). It comes from one of the oldest surviving Cornish phrases: “Is there cheese? Is there or isn’t there? If there’s cheese, bring cheese, and if there isn’t cheese, bring what there is!”

Over the course of making Le Kov, Gwenno reconciled her anxiety over her right to make a Cornish-language pop record, and realised that, in the age of Brexit, isolationism and hostility towards the rich cultures that make modern Britain, it had a wider resonance, too. “This album is a combination of accepting the culture which your parents have valued enough to want to pass on to you, regardless how small, and utilising it in a positive way to try and make sense of the world around you, it’s also about having to accept and respect the nuances that make us all different and discovering that all of our stories share the same truth.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Never one to shy away from walking the roads-less-travelled when it comes to language use (being fluent in both Welsh and Cornish), Gwenno is flying the flag for regional language pride, as well as dominating players around the globe when she puts out a new one. 'Le Kov' is no different, perfectly produced and brilliantly enjoyable.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hi A Skoellyas Liv A Dhagrow
2. Tir Ha Mor
3. Herdhya
4. Eus Keus?
5. Jynn-amontya
6. Den Heb Taves
7. Daromres Y'n Howl
8. Aremorika
9. Hunros
10. Koweth Ker

Sidonie Hand Halford is a Christmas temp at the Post Office in Liverpool, her younger sister Esme is studying English literature at Manchester, and their friend Henry Wade is preparing to sit his A-levels in Halifax next summer. 

From the first jangling sunshine chords on opening track ‘Mango’, Silver Dollar Moments announces itself as a proper piece of indie pop goodness. Then, across 45 minutes, it takes all kinds of turns, into ESG-ish yips and funk, dreamy-arch harmonies, disco synth-pows and stoner bongos, unsettling submerged voices - with all that and more it still flows like a fountain of indie pop, fresh and catchy and altogether.

Maybe one reason it all coheres so beautifully is that The Orielles are a close-knit unit: two sisters and their best mate. “We met Henry at a house party a few years ago,” says Sid. “I mean, it’s a bit lamer than that sounds. It was a friend of our parents, she was having a 40th birthday party, and we went along, and Henry was there too, with his parents.” They’ve been writing songs together ever since, Esme singing and on bass, Sidonie on drums, Henry on guitar. They’ve played live all over the UK as well as Europe and North America, and this year they signed to Heavenly Recordings and headed into Eve Studios in Stockport.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mango
2. Old Stuff New Stuff
3. Sunflower Seeds
4. Let Your Dog Tooth Grow
5. Liminal Spaces
6. The Sound Of Liminal Spaces (edit)
7. I Only Bought It For The Bottle
8. Henry’s Pocket
9. 48 Percent
10. Borrachero Tree
11. Snaps
12. Blue Suitcase (Disco Wrist)

‘Finisterre’ is Saint Etienne’s sixth studio album, first released in 2002.

‘Finisterre’ contains a wide mixture of sounds and styles. The album returned to the inclusion of vocal interludes between songs as last heard on their album ’So Tough’ and a more angular, electronic sound, particularly on tracks such as ‘Action’, ‘Shower Scene’ and ‘New Thing’.

‘Language Lab’ and ‘Summerisle’ recall the ambient style of ’Sound Of Water’, while ‘Stop And Think It Over’ would not have been out of place on ’Good Humor’ or its predecessor ‘Tiger Bay’.

The album sleeve features a photograph of the East London tower block Ronan Point shortly after it collapsed in 1968 with the loss of four lives.

LP with postcard, digital download card, printed inner sleeve. Never before reissued on vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Action
Amateur
Language Lab
Soft Like Me
Summerisle
Stop And Think It Over
Shower Scene
The Way We Live Now
New Thing
B92
The More You Know
Finisterre

‘Sound Of Water’ was first released in 2000 and was developed as Saint Etienne’s ambient and trip hop statement.

The album’s lead single was the sprawling, multi-movement ‘How We Used To Live’, which was not edited down from its 9-minute running length for single release.

Their previous US release ‘Places To Visit’ was clearly the beginning of this new direction. Many of the artists with whom they collaborated on that EP are present on ‘Sound Of Water’.

Finally available on LP since original release. Includes postcard digital download card and printed inner sleeve.

‘Continental’ (1997) was originally released in Japan only, later made available on CD outside of Japan in 2009. This is the first time it has been reissued on vinyl.

It is a compilation that includes previously released material such as the UK hit ‘He's On The Phone’ as well as curios like their cover of the Paul Gardiner/Gary Numan song ‘Stormtrooper In Drag’.

Many of the tracks were recorded during the 'wilderness' years of 1996/97 when the band members worked on their separate projects.

TRACK LISTING

Shad Thames
Burnt Out Car
Sometimes In Winter
Winter Melody
Public Information Film
The Process
He's On The Phone
Stormtrooper In Drag
Star
Down By The Sea
The Sea
Lonesome
Angel

After introducing the wider world to the DIY electronics and sunkissed rhythms of the French West Indies via their first volume, Heavenly Sweetness wow us once again with the mighty Digital Zandoli compilation. Compiled by world renowned French diggers Julien Achard (Diggers Digest) and Nicolas Skliris (Superfly Records) Volume 2 contains twelve new musical weapons for the dancefloor from the French West Indies Zouk scene.
This second instalment kicks off in wall shaking style with the tough beats, sound system bass and zouk/dancehall hybrid of "Ban Di Fwan" by Coco / Fabert, before cooling down via an instrumental of Wach' Da's "Confrontation", a sultry poolside roller with fat synth bass and airy flute riffs. Michel Alibo brings the tonalities of US RnB to his tropical rhythm on the A3, before the B-side brings the soulful sound of Osmose, Juliane's synth-zouk stepper and a loved up romp from Champagn'. Onto the second disc and we get a synth-disco stomper from Jo Star (killer!), Alex Rosa's "Sistern" (file next to your Tabuley Rochereau "Hafi Deo") and the body bending banger "Pou Qui A" by Patrick Nuissier. There's no let up on the heat as we hit the D-side, riding the digitally flipped tradional rhythm of Vik'In's "Tension La Ka Mont", chanting along to the gruff vocals of Joyeaux De Cocotier's funk bomb, a skanking with a smile to Djeminay's dubwise "Sun Plash".
Once again it's an all killer, no filler affair, shining a well deserved spotlight on a forgotten corner of the global music map. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: I was over in Paris recently on a digging mission, and the flea markets, pound bins and second hand stores are swamped with shit zouk records. It's with this in mind that I give Julien and Nicolas my utmost respect for wading through the wasteland to find only the finest cuts from the French West Indies. Volume One was amazing, but this is better! Bon chance!

TRACK LISTING

Coco / Fabert - Ban Di Fwan
Wach' Da - Confrontation (Instrumental)
Michel Alibo - Pou Jaloux
Osmose - Melodi
Juliane - Blanc E Noir (Instrumental)
Champagn' - L’anmou Aw
Jo Star - Demar Moin
Alex Rosa - Sistem 
Patrick Nuissier - Pou Qui A
Vik'In - Tension La Ka Mont
Joyeaux De Cocotier - Pina Colada Coco Loco
Djeminay - Sun Plash

Delusional and hopeful. Loving but injured. Full of vitriol though brimming with forgiveness. Intensely personal yet brutally open. Baxter Dury’s fifth album is both a private meditation into the very real relationship breakdown he experienced over the last year and his most ambitious and biggest work to date.

The album’s opening track is also the portal into Dury’s hazy, anti-wonderland and it comes complete with a guide, “Miami” himself: a foul-mouthed, cocksure ladies man conjured into existence via a heady mix of excess, fatigue and emotional repression. “The guy in the first song is a completely delusional person who thinks he’s a gangster,” explains his creator. The natty charm of Dury’s other records – like his debut Len Parrot's Memorial Lift or the acclaimed Happy Soup – hasn’t been lost, but by collaborating with a full band, producer Ash Workman (Metronomy, Christine & The Queens) and an orchestra, that spirit soars.

Dury recruited several vocal collaborators for the Prince Of Tears’ retinue, illuminating some of the album’s dark corners. Long-term foil Madelaine Hart returns to provide her melancholic yet knowing backing vocals to several songs, Rose Elinor Dougall adds a sinister edge to Porcelain, while Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson enthusiastically chimes in on Almond Milk.

chuffed is how Dury feels – perhaps surprisingly – about this album. “It was really fun to make – except for the pain I had to go through to inspire it,” he grins. “But I really like this record. My old man once said of a friend of mine: ‘Your friend has got pronoia. It’s the opposite of paranoia, it’s when you suffer from thinking everything is too brilliant.’ Well I’ve got a nice case of pronoia at the moment.” So, yeah… your heart hurts, but it is 3am so the sun will be up soon… Behold the Prince Of Tears.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Well, well. Son of Ian Dury of blockheads fame continues his dad's legacy (in a way) by producing bloody good records. This one is even more of his swooning semi-drawl, but with a more refined and melancholic air, brilliantly balanced by a host of well-curated guests. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

1. Miami
2. Porcelain
3. Mungo
4. Listen
5. Almond Milk
6. Letter Bomb
7. Oi
8. August
9. Wanna
10. Prince Of Tears

‘So Tough’ is the second studio album by British band Saint Etienne.

First released in 1993, it is their highest-charting album to date, reaching No. 7 on the UK Album Charts.

The album takes its title from The Beach Boys’ ‘Carl And The Passions - So Tough’ album.

The album was indebted to Sixties classics ‘The Who Sell Out’ by The Who, ‘Smile’ by The Beach Boys and ‘Head’ by The Monkees.

The album was originally intended as a concept album which starts at Mario’s Café in London then travels around the world, however it came to be viewed as a solely London album.

The album cover features lead singer Sarah Cracknell aged 6, taken by her father Derek Cracknell.

TRACK LISTING

Mario’s Café
Railway Jam
Date With Spelman
Calico
Avenue
You’re In A Bad Way
Memo To Pricey
Hobart Paving
Leafhound
Clock Milk
Conchita Martinez
No Rainbows For Me
Here Comes Clown Feet
Junk The Morgue
Chicken Soup

Lit by thunderclaps and lightning, Murder Of The Universe inhabits a sonic landscape of death, decay, ossification, fossilisation, rebirth. It is a place occupied by wandering shape-shifting beasts, bleeding skies, pools of blood, great fires and mushroom clouds; a planet rent asunder by conflict.

A disorientating experience, the album hinges on three distinct sections that rise from larval beds, and whose lyrics should be carved in stone, squeezed from moss, discovered in ancient runes. And all the while a passing cast of characters imbue the tale with both human and non-human emotions.

Snippets of earlier recordings breakthrough collection I’m In Your Mind Fuzz and Nonagon Infinity resurface throughout like ghostly shadow form to haunt their latest sound. In years to come King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will be judged not by their separate albums, but by a body of work where themes, melodies, motifs, riffs and ideas resurface and recur, each album peeling back a layer of the onion to glimpse at past and future alike.

“We’ve always thought of our albums as portals through which you can move from one to the other,” says Stu. “Or maybe each album is a bridge to the next part of the story. Songs sync together, records can be played in loops and past ideas recur or are reprised, and then woven into new textures. These ideas aren’t necessarily contrived though...sometimes these just happen.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another brilliant outing from the King Giz fam. Psychedelic swirling guitars, echoing vocal melodies, impeccable percussive freak-outs and as ever, fist-pumping heavy af grooves.

TRACK LISTING

The Tale Of The Altered Beast
1. A New World
2. Altered Beats I
3. Alter Me I
4. Altered Best II
5. Alter Me I
6. Altered Beast III
7. Alter Me III
8. Altered Beats IV
9. Life / Death

The Lord Of Lightening Vs. Balrog
10. Some Context
11. The Reticent Raconteur
12. The Lord Of Lightening
13. The Balrog
14. The Floating Fire
15. The Acrid Corpse

Han- Tyumi And The Murder Of The Universe
16. Welcome To An Altered Future
17. Digital Black
18. Han-Tyumi, The Confused Cyborg
19. Soy-Protein Munt Machine
20. Vomit Coffin
21. Murder Of The Universe

Well, this is rather nice! A super-limited 12" in a hand stamped and numbered screen printed sleeve.

Artwork by H. Hawkline.

Last Thing On Your Mind and unreleased b side "More Salt".

Recorded in Los Angeles with Samur Khouja, who worked with Huw on his last album, In The Pink Of Condition, the track features Cate Le Bon and Josiah Steinbrick.

Talking about the track, Huw said:

'It waits like the cat who knows it'll eventually get cream. Sits, makes eyes and then sips, always watching, one eye on the washer, the warm smell of fresh china'

The Home Counties are an embarrassing place to come from. The name itself suggests that somehow the rest of Britain isn’t ‘home’, not even London. Saint Etienne grew up in the Home Counties. Here are sixteen new songs they have written about a day in the life of this doughnut of shires that ring the capital, punctuated by bursts of BBC radio to remind you what time it is and all connected by train journeys - main lines, branch lines, commutes, escapes.

The love / hate relationship people have with ‘home’ is particularly acute in the Home Counties. Yet Saint Etienne understand that if you squint, it could be almost utopian.

The album was produced by Shawn Lee of Young Gun Silver Fox, with support from Augustus (Kero Kero Bonito), Carwyn Ellis (Colorama, Edwyn Collins), Robin Bennett (The Dreaming Spires), Richard X (Girls On Top / Black Melody) and long-time collaborator Gerard Johnson (Denim, Yes). It was recorded in Central London. Sarah, Bob and Pete commuted to the studio every day for six weeks.

TRACK LISTING

The Reunion
Something New
Magpie Eyes
Whyteleafe
Dive
Church Pew Furniture Restorer
Take It All In
Popmaster
Underneath The Apple Tree
Out Of My Mind
After Hebden
Breakneck Hill
Heather
Sports Report
Train Drivers In Eyeliner
Unopened Fan Mail
What Kind Of World
Sweet Arcadia
Angel Of Woodhatch

There’s a singer with a voice 50 fathoms deep and the consistency of vitrified teak, who has been known to go to extremes in search of a song. Across continents, over oceans, through multiple time zones. From West Hollywood to... Tunbridge Wells. A long way – but Mark Lanegan knows the directions.

Early in 2016, Mark was at home in Los Angeles, working on some ideas for what might turn into his next album. He wasn’t too thrilled by what he was coming up with. Then he got an email from a friend, an English musician named Rob Marshall, thanking Mark for contributing to a new project he was putting together, Humanist. The pair first met in 2008, when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm supported Soulsavers, who Mark was singing with at the time. Now Rob was offering to write Mark some music to return the favour.

“I was like, Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything?’” Mark recalls. “Three days later he sent me *10 things… !”

In the meantime, Mark had written Blue Blue Sea, a rippling mood piece that he thought might be a more fruitful direction for his new record, and had the idea for a song called First Day Of Winter that felt like an apt closer. “It’s almost always how my records start,” he explains. “I let the first couple of songs tell me what the next couple should sound like, and it’s really the same process when I’m writing words. Whatever my first couple of lines are tell me what the next couple should be. I’ve always built things like that, sort of like making a sculpture I guess. Start with the raw material and let that point me in the direction I want to go. So, once I was pointed in that direction, the music that came from other sources, from Rob, I just went for the ones that helped me build this narrative that I had started already.”

Within an hour, Mark had written words and vocal lines for two of the pieces Rob had cooked up at Mount Sion Studios in Kent and pinged through the virtual clouds to California. Rob's music fitted perfectly with the direction Mark had been pondering: in essence, a more expansive progression from the moody Krautrock-influenced electronica textures of his two previous albums, Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually, Rob Marshall would co-write six of the songs on the new Mark Lanegan Band album. “I was very thankful to become reacquainted with him,” Mark deadpans.

The remainder of the album was written, recorded and produced by Lanegan's longtime musical amanuensis Alain Johannes at his 11 AD base in West Hollywood. Everything was done and dusted within a month, unusually fast by Lanegan’s recent standards. Both Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio unfurled at leisurely pace over several months. But this time Johannes had only a fixed window of opportunity due to his ongoing touring commitments as a member of P.J. Harvey’s band. But Mark was sufficiently happy with the material to move swiftly, a reflection of contentment with his abilities as a singer and writer, which have now produced a huge body of work spanning a period of more than 30 years: whether it be his own solo records, or collaborative recordings with others, or going back to his legendary first band, the Screaming Trees.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Lanegan and band do it once again with this, the brilliant 'Gargoyle'. A more upbeat outlook than previous iterations, channelling the spirit of 60's psychedelia, stadium rock, downbeat folky moments and good ol fashioned songwriting talent. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

Death’s Head Tattoo
Nocturne
Blue Blue Sea
Beehive
Sister
Emperpor
Goodbye To Beauty
Drunk On Destruction
First Day Of Winter
Old Swan

It doesn’t take too long with Volcano to realise that, while all the things that made the band special the first time around remain intact, a noticeable evolution has taken place. It’s there from the outset: the beefed-up beats of Certainty reveal an expanded sonic firmament, one in which bright synth hooks and insistent choruses circle around each other over chord sequences that strike just the right balance between nice and queasy. “If there’s a sense of scale,” says lead singer James Bagshaw, “It was really just a result of implementing a load of things that we didn’t know about the first time around.” Co-founding member and bassist Thomas Walmsley describes a record in which “we discovered a lot as we went along, and the excitement at having done so radiates

One thing you do notice is that it’s harder to spot the influences this time around. It would be disingenuous to evade the psych-pop tag, for sure, but mystical language has been supplanted by something a more direct – and while those influences are still there, it’s no longer possible to pick them out. They’ve been broken down and blended together – fossilised into a single source of creative fuel, so that what you can hear this time around, sounds like nothing so much as Temples. This is the sound of a band squaring up to their potential.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: More synthy than their debut but crucially just as hyper-melodic, Temples bring the magic of a bygone era right into the present with huge aplomb. It's a beautiful thing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Certainty
2. All Join In
3. (I Wanna Be Your) Mirror
4. Oh The Saviour
5. Born Into The Sunset
6. How Would You Like To Go
7. Open Air
8. In My Pocket
9. Celebration
10. Mystery Of Pop
11. Roman God-Like Man
12. Strange Or Be Forgotten

Geelong’s insuppressible King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard release their new album ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’ on Heavenly Recordings - the first of five albums they are set to release in 2017.

Talking about the making of Flying Microtonal Banana, Eric Moore of the band said: “Earlier this year we started experimenting with a custom microtonal guitar our friend Zak made for Stu. The guitar was modified to play in 24- TET tuning and could only be played with other microtonal instruments. We ended up giving everyone a budget of $200 to buy instruments and turn them microtonal. The record features the modified electric guitars, basses, keyboards and harmonica as well as a Turkish horn called a Zurna.”

Shimmering, hypnotic and propulsive and powered along, as ever, by the metronomic beat of two drummers, ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’ takes a subtle musical shift away from the frazzled freak-beat of its predecessor, ‘Nonagon Infinity’. Trance like, in parts clipped and concise yet deeply psychedelic, it reveals yet another musical side to a band seemingly in perpetual motion.

Perhaps one of the most exciting live bands out there right now, they appeared at both Green Man and End Of The Road festivals over the summer as well as playing sold-out London shows at the Electric Ballroom, Moth Club and The Electric during 2016. The band will bring their unrestrained and free-wheeling live show back to the UK in 2017.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: K-Gizzle pull out another brilliant and no doubt in-demand album of angular melodies, psychedelic freak-outs and grooving churns of noise, interspersed with funked-up melodies and brilliantly effervescent indie rock. There really is a bit of everything here, classic rock, jazz, psych, noise. You name it, it's here, and executed to perfection.

TRACK LISTING

Rattlesnake
Melting
Open Water
Sleep Drifter
Billabong Valley
Anoxia
Doom City
Nuclear Fusion
Flying Microtonal Banana

It’s hard to believe that Saint Etienne’s debut album ‘Foxbase Alpha’ turns 25 this year but the good news is that it still sounds as fresh, vibrant and relevant as the day it was released. Often hailed as one of the most important DIY albums of all time, ‘Foxbase Alpha’ became the first long player released on fledgling Heavenly Recordings in 1991 and went on to be nominated alongside ‘Screamadelica’ in the first ever Mercury Music Prize in 1992.

TRACK LISTING

CD1 & LP
This Is Radio Etienne
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Wilson
Carnt Sleep
Girl VII
Spring
She’s The One
Stoned To Say The Least
Nothing Can Stop Us Now
Etienne Gonna Die
London Belongs To Me
Like The Swallow
Dilworth’s Theme

CD2
Kiss And Make Up (Extended Version)
Filthy
Chase HQ
Sally Space
The Reckoning
Speedwell
Parliament Hill
People Get Real
Sweet Pea
Winter In America
Fake 88
Studio Kinda Filthy
Kiss And Make Up (Sarah Cracknell Version)
Sky’s Dead

Splitting their time between Tom Dougall and bassist Maxim Barron’s place in New Cross and Dominic O’Dair’s flat in Walthamstow, where they set up a makeshift studio and laid down the early album demos, Clear Shot began to take shape in the first half of 2015.

Taking inspiration from an esoteric blend – Radiophonic Workshop, Comus, the scores of Bernard Herrmann, John Barry and Ennio Morricone Fairport, COUM, Acid House, Incredible String Band, The Langley Schools Project, The Wicker Man soundtrack and even the direction behind Electric Eden, Rob Young’s book about the development of folk music in the U.K. – by the time they entered Eve Studios in Stockport in October 2015 with producer David Wrench, the band were clear about the direction the album should take.

The result is their most coherent and confident album to date; lushly cinematic, shot through with their most expressive melodies thus far and coated with a ‘sheen’ courtesy of Chris Coady (Beach House, Smith Westerns, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), who mixed the album in LA with some of the reverbs and vocal processors used on Purple Rain, across the 10-tracks strands of ideas appear, sink and re-emerge in an almost modal jazz manner. Clear Shot sees TOY working both in bigger colours and more minutely crafted detail, achieving an altogether higher level of artistry than before.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Toy released two superb records within a year of each other (2012/13) then vanished for 3! They return with by far their best yet: darker, spookier but somehow poppier, this extends their shoegazey take on psych and garage into a much higher realm. Like the House Of Love but with way more going on. Brilliant.

Ryan says: Clear Shot sees TOY working both in bigger colours and more minutely crafted detail, stripping back a little to reveal a bigger picture. This could be their most coherent & confident album to date.

Recorded with Keith Cooper and Andrew McCalla in the band’s home-town of Memphis, the album features artwork by lead vocalist / guitarist Natalie Hoffman.

Nots are still a wild guitar band, but above and below the guitar, bass and drum pound, Alexandra Eastburn's analog synth blurps melodies and nonsense, teasing squiggles of freedom which defy the false grid of modern life.

With Hoffmann on guitar & vocals, Eastburn on synth, Charlotte Watson beating drums, and Meredith Lones steering a solid path through the chaos on bass, Nots are neither content with the smug "stare at your shoes" approach of bands from both coasts, nor an Earth-hugging "we need to get back to nature" hippie copout. There might not be any answers here. That might be the point. Nots have arrived at the next level of their attack with a confidence and a music that lays waste to the wasteland without romantic attachment to a thing.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Channeling the spirit of early punk (distorted backline, shouty singer, 2 minute songs etc) Nots have presented us with a scathing collection of dynamic and vitriolic bursts of noise. Single-string melody lines and broken-speaker distortion back up the hollered vox. Clanging and concise, this is punk-rock for a new generation.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blank Reflection
2. Rat King
3. Cold Line
4. New Structures
5. Cosmetic
6. No Novelty
7. Inherently Low
8. Flourescent Sunset
9. Entertain Me

Oh Dios mio! Madrid racket-makers The Parrots have announced their debut album 'Los Ninos Sin Miedo'. With an album title that roughly translates as 'Children Without Fear,' the band's first full-length comes out via Heavenly Recordings.

The Parrots - Diego García (vocals / guitar), Alex de Lucas (bass) and Larry Balboa (drums) - are a loose-hipped, primordial rock ‘n’ roll band from Madrid who met at university in the city and evolved from the same firmament of like-minded artists, photographers, DJs and musicians that recently spawned the acclaimed band Hinds. (The Parrots’ Diego produced Hinds’ recently released acclaimed album ‘Leave Me Alone’.) 

The band recorded ‘Los Niños Sin Miedo’ in one week last September down by the sea in Cádiz at the studios of much-loved Spanish sound engineer Paco Loco. An idyllic setting conducive to the recording of the album, Paco’s infectious enthusiasm and artistic insight made the process even easier.

TRACK LISTING

1. Too High To Die
2. Let's Do It Again
3. No Me Gustas Te Quiero
4. A Thousand Ways
5. Jame Gumb
6. Casper
7. EA Presley
8. The Road That Brings You Home
9. Windows 98
10. Los Niños Sin Miedo

‘Blood Moon’, M. Craft’s third full length album, is very much a score for seclusion. Inspired by witnessing the titular lunar event twice during his time as a desert resident, ‘Blood Moon’ began life in a studio in nearby Los Angeles as a series of unstructured, experimental piano pieces.

Constructed from those piano recordings with additional percussion from another temporary desert dweller, Seb Rochford (Polar Bear) and occasional orchestration, ‘Blood Moon’ is a stunning fusion of freeform instrumental explorations and properly pure songs.

TRACK LISTING

New Horizons
Blood Moon
Chemical Trails
Afterglow
Midnight
Love Is The Devil
Me And My Shadow
Morphic Fields
Where Go The Dreams
Love Is All

Ultra limited one sided white label 12".

Remix by Mikey Young of Total Control!

Night Beats release their new album ‘Who Sold My Generation’ on Heavenly Recordings. Their third album and first for Heavenly, it follows the release of their self-titled debut in 2011 and ‘Sonic Bloom’ in 2013.

Recorded on old two-inch tape in Echo Park, Los Angeles at the home of producer Nic Jodoin and featuring co-production and guest bass playing from Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, new album ‘Who Sold My Generation’ goes beyond merely being a retreading of well-worn garage / R&B path. Instead it offers a contemporary take on the psychedelic experience, a heady set of hoodoo voodoo songs.

Very much a record in the great Texan musical tradition of acid-drenched outlaw music, ‘Who Sold My Generation’ picks up where the likes of The Elevators or The Red Krayola left off.

Starting out in 2010 as a solid garage rock group, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard followed their collective muse wherever it chose to lead them. For their latest opus, Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, they initially thought it was going to be filled with the darker, heavier material that the band has been playing live of late. But front man Stu Mackenzie soon decided that it was time to put aside the longer, more conceptual pieces and go in a completely new direction.

On previous records King Gizzard has channeled many different sounds: From heavily distorted, kraut-driven rock on their 2014 album I’m In Your Mind Fuzz to expansive, almost jazzy, Dead-like head trips on Quarters! Or as Mackenzie puts it, “I always wanted to be a band where you would expect the unexpected each time, with each album being treated like a different phase.”

Hence, the band’s seventh album was recorded using nothing but acoustic instruments. Mackenzie elaborated on this with: “Acoustic guitars, flute, double bass, fiddle, harmonica, drum kit, clarinet. Whatever we could find really.” The result is a lovely, lilting pop masterpiece that still evokes the same intoxicating exuberance as KGATLW’s most recent work, but with a more pastoral, communal feel to it.

"Their songs are dense, intricately crafted, and most importantly, powerful … King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard don't do predictability.” - Pitchfork”

“King Gizzard are on a dizzying trip to the center of psychedelia, cocooning themselves in spaced-out guitar lines and engorged melodies that demand to be viewed Disney-style, through a dodecahedral prism of light.” – The Guardian

TRACK LISTING

1 Sense
2 Bone
3 Dirt
4 Paper Mâché Dream Balloon
5 Trapdoor
6 Cold Cadaver
7 The Bitter Boogie
8 N.G.R.I (Bloodstain)
9 Time=Fate
10 Time=$$$
11 Most Of What I Like
12 Paper Mâché

Transmitting cosmic narratives and inventive song structures, Fever The Ghost’s sprawling pop saga ‘Zirconium Meconium’ sleekly marries the group’s esoteric tendencies with an inescapable melodicism.

Described by the band as a “collection of songs musically interpreting the third dimensional integration process from the perspective of vital force energy incarnating into the physical world” the album combines interstellar vibrations and a sense of youthful wonder into an unparalleled pop sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. Metempsychosis
2. Rounder II
3. Hinterland
4. Peace Crimes
5. Surf's Up! ...nevermind
6. Long Tall Stranger
7. Maritime Mammals
8. Fathoms
9. 1518
10. Sun Moth
11. Vervain (Dreams Of An Old Wooden Cage)
12. Equal Pedestrian
13. A Friend In Lonely Jesus

From Chester and Ellesmere Port, their name inspired by a sign for the tennis club in Little Sutton, Hooton Tennis Club grew up together and played in a number of bands with improbable names. While studying at various colleges they speedily recorded some songs to upload with no intention of ever being an actual ‘band’ but early demos soon caught the ears of Heavenly Recordings and by September 2014 the band had signed to the label.

Following a UK tour with label-mate H. Hawkline the band entered the studio to start recording their debut album in the early spring of 2015. Inspired by the plug-in-and-play quasi-improvisational approach of Deerhunter and Ariel Pink, the album is the sound of the summer of adolescence slipping into the autumn of adulthood.

Here the wit of Kurt Vonnegut and twisted storytelling of Wes Anderson collide to tell tales of banal jobs, relationships, memorable parties and passing characters. Musically melodic, fragile, wonky, witty, poetic and pop (definitely, defiantly pop) the skewed melodies and oddball narratives combine in perfect symbiotic musical harmony, each song a small burst of sunshine to warm the coldest of hearts. Think Teenage Fanclub, Guided By Voices, Randy Newman, Big Star, Silver Jews – but birthed in northern English towns in the 21st century.

TRACK LISTING

1. Up In The Air
2. I’m Not Going Roses Again
3. P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L. P.I.E.R.R.E.
4. Something Much Quicker Than Anyone But Jennifer Could Ever Imagine
5. Jasper
6. Always Coming Back 2 You
7. Barlow Terrace
8. Spokes
9. Kathleen Sat On The Arm Of Her Favourite Chair
10. Standing Knees
11. …And Then Camilla Drew Fourteen Dots On Her Knees
12. Fall In Luv

In a period of governmental and cultural revolution, former Pipettes front-woman, Gwenno, releases a political concept album inspired by an obscure 1970s Welsh language sci-fi novel, subtly disguised as a blissful kraut-pop record.

Taking its cue, and title, from Owain Owain’s 1976 novel about a dystopian future where the robots have taken over and are busily turning the human race into clones through the use of medication, 'Y Dydd Olaf' blends big themes (including patriarchal society, government-funded media propaganda, cultural control, technology, isolation and the importance of, and threat to minority languages), great tunes, and a real sense of revolution to produce a powerful, politically-charged concept album.

'Y Dydd Olaf' is a political, feminist, brilliantly executed record; and although this particular revolution might not be televised, it certainly will have a great soundtrack.

TRACK LISTING

01. Chwyldro 5:18
02. Patriarchaeth 3:29
03. Calon Peiriant 5:08
04. Sisial Y Môr 5:41
05. Dawns Y Blaned Dirion 1:30
06. Golau Arall 3:31
07. Stwff 4:59
08. Y Dydd Olaf 4:15
09. Fratolish Hiang Perpeshki 4:39
10. Amser 4:45

Lanegan's chief compositional tool on Phantom Radio was his phone – specifically an app called Funk Box. “I didn’t bother to hook up my 909 and 808 this time,” he says, “because the app had ’em. I’d write drum parts with it then add music with the synthesizer or the guitar.” The album grew organically from these synthetic roots, taking in Mark’s ongoing love of Krautrock and also an ’80s new wave show on Sirius satellite radio, his favoured aural companion as he drives around Los Angeles. “They have a few good shows but the ‘80s one in particular I like,” he says. “That’s the music that was happening when I started making music. And although the Trees drew on Nuggets psychedelia, 13th Floor Elevators and Love, we were actually listening to Echo And The Bunnymen, Rain Parade, the Gun Club. A lot of British post-punk. We loved that stuff. I just waited until I was in my late forties before I started ripping it off.”

Lanegan’s generous collaborative spirit sees him deliver an excellent co-write with British guitarist Duke Garwood, with whom he made last year’s dustbowl-desolate Black Pudding, and who now offers the music for I Am The Wolf, a Lanegan signature tune. Mark’s favourite song on the album, meanwhile, is Torn Red Heart, an intensely tender meditation for a broken heart that’s like The Velvet Underground’s Pale Blue Eyes orchestrated by Angelo Badalamenti. He also has a special mention for Floor Of The Ocean, which balances sheer catchiness with a deceptively bleak lyrical reflection on a life lived on the hard shoulder: “Clear eyes, can’t avoid the searchlight/Hope that they don’t find me/Find me where I’m lying.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Harvest Home
2. Judgement Time
3. Floor Of The Ocean
4. The Killing Season
5. Seventh Day
6. I Am The Wolf
7. Torn Red Heart
8. Waltzing In Blue
9. The Wild People
10. Death Trip To Tulsa

The Voyeurs (formerly Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs) return with a brand new single.

Featuring the B-side Orgy # 2, the single was produced by Oli Bayston (Boxed In) and recorded at the Flesh & Bone and The Premises studios in east-London.

Released on 7” and download, the track features on their forthcoming 2nd album, Rhubarb Rhubarb, which is released the following week.

TRACK LISTING

Stunners
Orgy #2

Cherry Ghost return with third album ‘Herd Runners’ on Heavenly Recordings.

For the last couple of years, Simon Aldred has been in a state of wilful musical schizophrenia. Since 2007, Bolton-born Aldred has - to all intents - been Cherry Ghost, a band known for perfecting a kind of widescreen North Western country soul. Yet the third Cherry Ghost album, ‘Herd Runners’, arrives after an extensive period in which Aldred’s own music been pulled in multiple different directions.

Firstly, as a songwriter-for-hire, Aldred has helped nurture the best of nascent British talent (including hugely tipped artists like Sam Smith and Kwabs). Latterly, he produced a set of critically lauded post-midnight electronic love songs under the Out Cold guise. Somewhere in the middle, there’s the small matter of the phoenix-like rebirth of Aldred’s Ivor Novello winning 2007 single ‘People Help The People’ as it went on to chart highly in fourteen different countries in 2010 when it was covered by the teenage singer Birdy.

Far from muddying the musical waters, each of these diversions has only helped sharpen Aldred’s songwriting, providing a major spur for the finest Cherry Ghost album to date. “Exploring different styles has helped my own songs,” says Aldred, “Musicians need to stretch themselves and keep on learning.” · It was that exploration that has helped bring ‘Herd Runners’ to life. Shifting from soaring, symphonic pop (‘Clear Skies Ever Closer’) to melancholic lock-in blues (‘Drinking For Two’) via an almost uncompromisingly hopeful rhythmic shuffle (‘The World Could Turn’), ‘Herd Runners’ is a sublime collection, a reminder of Aldred’s singular skill as a composer; a skill that can twist bitter loss into teary optimism (and back) in less time than it takes to toss a coin.

Lyrically, the album paints Edward Hopper-esque observations of the lives of others. Where previous records would have focused on the gloomy edges of the picture, ‘Herd Runners’ takes something of a longer view. “These songs aren’t as dark as those on previous records. This time round I thought it was important to keep a real empathy for the people I’m writing about.”

Recorded in Sheffield with longterm Richard Hawley collaborator Colin Elliot and mixed in Bath with Dan Austin, ‘Herd Runners’ is ten perfectly crafted tales of heartbreak and hope. That musical schizophrenia is clearly working wonders for Simon Aldred. Long may it continue.

TRACK LISTING

Clear Skies Ever Closer
Don’t Leave Me Here Alone
Fragile Reign
Sacramento
The World Could Turn
Drinking For Two
Herd Runners
My Lover Lies Under
Love Will Follow You
Joanne

Following Jimi Goodwin’s announcement that he’ll be supporting Elbow on their April 2014 UK arena tour, we’re very pleased to reveal details of his debut solo album, ‘Odludek’, which will be released on Heavenly Recordings on Monday 24th March 2014.

This is the first new music release from Jimi since Doves’s Kingdom Of Rust in 2009 so it’s set to be a very special release indeed.

Jimi on Odludek:
“I wanted to make this mad mixtape… the kind you’d pass back and forth with your mates; eclectic as fuck. That’s the way we’ve all discovered music over the years isn’t it? We join our own dots to make it all make sense. As I got into making the record, it felt like I was proving something to myself, making a point that I could do all this on my own. You know — I can play bass, I can play guitar, I can orchestrate. As the methods changed, the original concept stayed intact. It’s me, powering through ideas, kapow kapow, no pause for breath. It’s not trying to be wilfully eclectic; it’s just a reflection of how I schizophrenically devour music.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Everything you loved about the Doves - Jimi is, after all, the main songwriter- but with a more playful, homemade bent. Fantastic.

The album was recorded at home, in the box-room of James's house in Kettering, an end terrace with a blessedly forgiving neighbour. "I'm always apologising to him for the noise, but he says, 'It's not noise, it's music,'" says James. The band aim for Jack Nietzche production on a DIY budget – and succeed. "It's similar to Joe Meek – he used to record vocals in his bathroom in his flat on Holloway Road," says Tom. "The way I see it, there aren't any limitations any more," says James. "If you know what you want to achieve, there's always a way around it."

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Cool as you like psychedelic pop album, with some massive melodies and trippy sounds.

TRACK LISTING

1 Shelter Song
2 Sun Structures
3 The Golden Throne
4 Keep In The Dark
5 Mesmerise
6 Move With The Season
7 Colours To Life
8 A Question Isn't Answered
9 The Guesser
10 Test Of Time
11 Sand Dance
12 Fragment's Light 

Toy’s swirling, psychedelia, Krautrock indebted debut album arrived almost exactly 12 months ago.

Dan Carey sits at the controls once again on ‘Join The Dots’, released via Heavenly Recordings.

As with their debut, ‘Join The Dots’ was recorded mostly live with Carey at the helm, although increased studio time has enabled the band to experiment more with Carey’s laboratory of effects and pre-amps, and embellish the tracks with overdubs.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: As good, if not better than their superb debut. And you can't say that too often! A much more powerful, physical record, but with those shogazery melodies still intact.

TRACK LISTING

1. Conductor
2. You Won’t Be The Same
3. As We Turn
4. Join The Dots
5. To A Death Unknown
6. Endlessly
7. It’s Been So Long
8. Left To Wander
9. Too Far Gone To Know
10. Frozen Atmosphere
11. Fall Out Of Love

Album standout "We Sleep On Stones" is given the rework treatment by San Fran label Stones Throw affiliate Mr Chop & features Heliocentrics Malcolm Catto on drums and Jake Ferguson on bass. Comes backed with a once-in-a lifetime cover of Ce Ce Peniston’s uber-hit "Finally".

Mark Lanegan has teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood to release Black Pudding via Heavenly Recordings.

Lanegan, never one to shy away from unique collaborations, has previously worked with Isobel Campbell, Greg Dulli and as a member of The Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age and Soulsavers. "Duke Garwood is one of my all time favorite artists," said Lanegan. "Working with him has been one of the best experiences of my recording life." Lanegan and Garwood met a few years ago while playing on the same bill and Garwood was a frequent opener on Lanegan's recent European tour.

Garwood has often been described in the press as Lanegan's "spiritual cousin across the Atlantic waters." He has been widely praised as a master bluesman, with The Quietus saying "The combination of Garwood's murmured vocals and the sound he gets out of his guitar - which ranges from a rolling, loose finger-picking to shuddering howls of feedback - has a hypnotic effect" and The Mirror dubbing him as "London's leading exponent of the wheezy broke-down blues."

Black Pudding was recorded at Pink Duck Studios in Burbank, California by Justin Smith (Tegan & Sara, The Hives) and mixed by his Queens of the Stone Age associate Alain Johannes.

Texas native John Pena began writing and performing under the Heavenly Beat guise in the latter part of 2009. John emerged from his bedroom after months of leisurely paced recording with a couple of tracks that would become his first release on Captured Tracks in the form of the 7 inch single “Suday”. Being influenced by nothing in particular has payed off as many have had trouble pinning the sound down as anything other than “immaculately arranged and paced” and “attractive music for attractive people”. Thus again proving that just because you’ve heard a song by The Cure or Neil Young doesn’t mean you have to ape it shamelessly to gain wide acceptance. Shortly after the release of “Suday” Heavenly Beat released the A side “Faithless” for their forthcoming 2nd single, igniting not only the blog world but the interest of the uninformed few who might have missed “Suday”. By paying homage to no one but himself, John Pena’s band has become one to watch in 2012.

“Heavenly Beat is the solo project of Beach Fossil’s John Pena, described in a super-adept pun by Oh My Rockness as ‘piña colada pop.’ Pena sings about being hurt inside and out, but the party drums and guitars suggest only good times. The perfect song is a little of both.” The Fader.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: Noticably different from his work in Beach Fossils, Jon Pena shows us what he's made of. Songs like Faithless just trigger super-8 movies in my head of people running into waves and it just looks like the most fun ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lust
2. Messiah
3. Faithless
4. Tolerance
5. Elite
6. Talent
7. Hurting
8. Tradition
9. Presence
10. Influence
11. Consensual

The Head and the Heart came together in the summer of 2009, during frequent visits to the open mic night at Conor Byrne in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood.

Californian Josiah Johnson and Virginia-native Jonathan Russell formed the core songwriting partnership, before adding keyboardist Kenny Hensle. Kenny, then 21, had packed up his piano and moved up to Seattle from California to pursue musical score-writing. Charity Rose Thielen, violin and vocals, had just returned from a year of studying and playing music in Paris. Drummer Tyler Williams moved from Virginia after Jon sent him the demo of Down in the Valley, relocating across states to be a part of this. Finally, Chris Zasche, was bartending at Conor Byrne and mentioned one day that he'd be happy to play bass for the nascent band. It all felt right: The Head and the Heart was born.

The band entered Seattle's Studio Litho in early 2010 to record these songs that had been kicking and twisting in the catalytic development of their live show. Recorded by Shawn Simmons at Studio Litho and Steven Aguilar at Bearhead Studio, the band was selling burned copies in handmade denim sleeves at local shows within a few weeks. Self-released in June 2010, the debut album helped build an impressive head-of-steam for the band through the second 1/2 of the year, gaining fans at influential Seattle station KEXP, local record shops (a consistent top 10 seller for Easy Street and the #1 album of 2010 at Sonic Boom), and venues up and down the west coast.

For the 2011 re-release of the album, Sounds Like Hallelujah has been re-recorded, live favorite Rivers and Roads has been added, and the album has been re-mastered.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cats And Dogs
2. Coeur D’Alene
3. Ghosts
4. Down In The Valley
5. Rivers And Roads
6. Honey Come Home
7. Lost In My Mind
8. Winter Song
9. Sounds Like Hallelujah
10. Heaven Go Easy On Me

Bonus Tracks:
11. Chasing A Ghost (Live)
12. Josh McBride (Live)
13. River’s And Roads (Live)

Originally released in 1994, "Tiger Bay" was Saint Etienne's third long player and their second Top 10 album.

It took the group into a new place by mixing traditional folk melodies with modern electronica. They worked with Underworld, Shara Nelson, Stephen Duffy, arranger David Whitaker, and Birmingham neo-dubsters Original Rockers to create a windblown but lush record, echoing its oil painting cover.

The album has been remastered by the band and expanded to 2 discs.

The second disc contains 7 previously unheard bonus tracks including an abandoned sequel to "Mario's Cafe" called "Black Horse Latitudes" (set in the evening, in a Tufnell Park pub), and the perky "Wedding Of Stacy Dorning" which looked forward to the sunshine pop of 1998's "Good Humor".

The Deluxe Edition comes in luxurious packing with an expanded booklet featuring extensive sleevenotes from the band's original PR Robin Turner.

"Infini" is a beautiful CD recorded recently in France, but done with the same spiritual undercurrents of 70s independent jazz vocal work from the USA. Anne Wirz sings in both English and French, and she's drawing here on some great inspirations -- material from Sathima Bea Benjamin ("Music"), Herbie Hancock and Mark Murphy ("Maiden Voyage"), Michel Legrand, and Carlos Garnett ("Mother Of The Future") as well as some of her own great compositions too! Backing is by a small combo that includes the mighty John Betsch on drums, plus piano, Fender Rhodes, bass, and a bit of harp, all recorded with a nice sense of warmth and soul, in the manner of other recent contemporary classics on the Heavenly Sweetness label.

Another fantastic track from Ilya! Imagine a fusion of David Axelrod and Norman Connors epic production sounds mixed with a lush downbeat feel and a torch song / 60s style easy listening vocal. Mmmm! Their own remix on the flip is more cinematic and mostly instrumental, with a more leftfield feel.