Coney Island Baby is the sixth solo studio album by Lou Reed, released December 1975 in the US, and in January 1976 in the UK, by RCA Records. The album has been described as "perhaps the most romantic album of Reed's career". Many of the album's songs were inspired by and dedicated to Reed's girlfriend and muse at the time, a trans woman named Rachel Humphreys but Coney Island Baby is "as much a love letter to Rachel as it was to the nostalgic Coney Island of the mind." 

"wry, yet heartfelt and admirably understated country-folk songs".

Quarantined in the sleepy San Pedro neighborhood of Vinegar Hill, on the same harbor-adjacent street where Charles Bukowski, antifolk stalwarts Herman Dune, turned those Covid-induced anxieties inward and emerged from with the new full-length LP Notes From Vinegar Hill. There’s something for everyone on this record - folksy rockers, Bakersfield twang, Big Pink-style Americana, 70s AM Gold, and rough-hewn Cold Turkey guitar stomps. The songs speak of the suffocating claustrophobia of isolation and fear, the anguish of being an immigrant in a country where policies harden by the moment, but also of the beauty of California, the ocean, and a quiet life with three black cats that turned the heart of a Scorpio toward felines 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Herman Dune perfectly toes the line between gritty folk ballads and full Americana, injecting a wry wittiness and crust groove to the perfectly played anthemic southern rock. A superb melting pot of American influence, and a great listen.

Running the anything goes travelling warehouse rave "Fusion mes Couilles" Emma DJ and Ishaq have created a unique situation with their party series in Paris. The two have been able to do what not many have, which is create a party environment strictly on their own terms, with no outside influence, no pandering to agents or the trends of the day and no outside money rearing its head trying to influence. This endeavor is no small feat considering the oversaturated and bland nitelife climate over the last years in the city. The result of their hard work, has been a large scale dedicated fanbase that trust them, hands down.

Over these years both Emma DJ and Ishaq had been working independently on their own productions as well, with Emma DJ recently releasing a slew of tapes in a hyperactive, machine gun manner, while Ishaq makes his first appearance on wax here.
On the "Fusion" split lp we get four tracks from Emma DJ on the a-side and four tracks from Ishaq on the b-side...both artists bring their unique takes on modern dance music on each side of the record from gnarled acid, to tweaked IDM, to broken techno, or ADD chopped guitar loop beats, this is a truly unique release documenting the sound of the top crew in the Paris underground.
Artwork licensed from NYC street photographer Richard Sandler

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Always a ballsy move putting such an iconic image on your sleeve but this split LP earns its stripes within the first minute of the opener. Growling sequences, fractured drum machines and industrial idents are presented in fresh and original ways, switching up the techno blueprint for 2020.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Emma DJ - More Is More Euphoric
A2. Emma DJ - Fuzmec
A3. Emma DJ - Stratocaster
A4. Emma DJ - Vector
B1. Ishaq - Mantis Ale
B2. Ishaq - Shutdown Spitface
B3. Ishaq - Forest Manned Wolf
B4. Ishaq - Snowtop

10 track collection of previously unreleased demos of all songs from the third studio album by PJ Harvey – To Bring You My Love – from 1995. Includes demo versions of the singles ‘Down By The Water’, ‘C’mon Billy’ and ‘Send His Love To Me’. Audio has been mastered by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering under the guidance of longtime PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish. Features brand new artwork with previously unseen photos by Maria Mochnacz.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl:
Side A
To Bring You My Love - Demo
Meet Ze Monsta - Demo
Working For The Man - Demo
C’mon Billy - Demo
Teclo - Demo

Side B
Long Snake Moan - Demo
Down By The Water - Demo
I Think I’m A Mother - Demo
Send His Love To Me - Demo
The Dancer - Demo

CD:
To Bring You My Love - Demo
Meet Ze Monsta - Demo
Working For The Man - Demo
C’mon Billy - Demo
Teclo - Demo
Long Snake Moan - Demo
Down By The Water - Demo
I Think I’m A Mother - Demo
Send His Love To Me - Demo
The Dancer - Demo

"Rid Of Me" was PJ Harvey's second album, circa 1993, but her first for Island Records.

The set features the same line-up as the "Dry" sessions (Polly doing vocals, guitar, violin, cello and organ, Stephen Vaughan on bass and Robert Ellis on drums, vocals and harmonium), but the extra money shows in the much slicker production to the album's predecessor. Recorded by Steve Albini, this forceful sophomore effort veers from hoarsely quiet to ferociously looming in one beat.

Reissue is faithful to the original recording and package, cutting by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering under the guidance of Steve Albini.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Rid Of Me
Missed
Legs
Rub ‘Til It Bleeds
Hook
Man-Size Sextet

Side B
Highway ’61 Revisited
50ft Queenie
Yuri-G
Man-Size
Dry
Me-Jane
Snake
Ecstasy

Vinyl reissue of 1993 collection of demos written and recorded at Polly Harvey’s home in 1991-1992.

It includes eight demos of songs from the album, Rid of Me, released earlier in that year along with six demos of additional songs.

Reissue is faithful to the original package, with vinyl cutting by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Rid Of Me 3:42
A2 Legs 3:47
A3 Reeling 2:59
A4 Snake 1:56
A5 Hook 4:31
A6 50FT Queenie 2:48
A7 Driving 2:38

B1 Ecstasy 2:56
B2 Hardly Wait 2:48
B3 Rub 'Til It Bleeds 5:10
B4 Easy 3:16
B5 M-Bike 2:43
B6 Yuri-G 3:53
B7 Goodnight 4:17

11 track collection of demos of all songs from the debut studio album Dry by PJ Harvey, available for the first time since 1992, and previously unreleased as a standalone album.

Features brand new artwork with previously unseen photos by Maria Mochnacz.

TRACK LISTING

LP
Side A
Oh My Lover (Demo)
O Stella (Demo)
Dress (Demo)
Victory (Demo)
Happy And Bleeding (Demo)

Side B
Sheela-Na-Gig (Demo)
Hair (Demo)
Joe (Demo)
Plants And Rags (Demo)
Fountain (Demo)
Water (Demo)

TONGA, the balloon filled rap, grime and dubstep party by Mike Skinner and Murkage Dave, had been a series of shoobs to remember. Copenhagen to Manchester to Berlin. Brum to Brixton. Usually arriving with a coterie of legendary UK figureheads and gobby upcomers in tow, like Kano, Giggs, Jammer or Jaykae, the pulsating essence of the nights needed to be immortalised. The original plan had been to release a TONGA album. But as night moved to day, and day moved along to night, it… just didn’t happen. Instead, a new mixtape titled None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive steps up to take its place. Recorded between work on his film and accompanying solo The Streets album, it is the unpredictable sonic continuation of those parties. Taking in UK Funky and twilight zone UK rap, and with guest spots ranging from Grammy nominated psychedelia sovereign Tame Impala to cult south London rapper Jesse James, as well as 2019’s key-fiend-friendly drum’n’bass collab with Chris Lorenzo, None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is the most eclectic and highly collaborative collection of songs from The Streets yet. Or as Mike puts it with characteristic distinction: “it’s really just a rap duets album.”

Every track has one if not two guests, who, though underpinned by Mike’s distinctive lyrical flair, usually perform atop a genre or sound not previously explored within the realm of The Streets. “You know that thing where if you wore it the first time round, don’t wear it the second time round? I would never put on Aquascutum at this point in my life. It would be stupid, a pastiche of what I did twenty years ago. For all of us. Whereas now I’m going back and I’m picking things that I didn’t pick before.” The inclusion of, say, Mercury Prize nominated punk group IDLES (who perform what Mike describes as a sea-shanty tinged track inspired by an overnight ferry to Dover) and teenage wünderkind Jimothy Lacoste help ground things firmly in the here and now.

But there are familiar faces of the past too. Birmingham legend, Dapz On The Map, pops up on merky rap track “Phone Is Always In My Hand”. While Rob Harvey, previously of The Music and Skinner collaboration The D.O.T, tunes into pensieve penultimate track “Conspiracy Theory Freestyle”. “The guests had to be into me, as much as I was into them,” jokes Mike, of the featured artist selection process. Really, though seemingly disparate on paper, the acts on the record are connected by their singular talent for “talking about normal stuff.” “All the different things I’ve tried to do, they’re who is doing that now.” “But instead of talking about abstract emotions on this record, I’m talking about things and objects and details.” Couched in those UK and Euro wide experiences with TONGA, this results in tales of hardly partying, but partying hard. The path to excess.

The morning trying to climb in under the curtains as you’re busy putting the world to rights. Like anything that happens between the nightclub and the bus home, there’s as much connection as disconnection in this world; as many new relationships forged as there are trails left behind from the ghosts of previous companionships past. Communication, or lack thereof, plays a huge part in this present-day experience. “One thing I’ve ended up doing is talking about being on my phone,” says Mike. “It was very easy on my first album to say, well: where am I? I’m in a pub. I’m at home. I’m in a betting shop. I’m getting a kebab. It felt fairly straightforward and no one had really written about it. Whereas when making this record, everything now basically happens on your phone.” These dual themes of nightclub and connection land the record in the simple yet eternally complicated prism of human interaction. “You’re ignoring me but you’re watching my stories”, on “Phone Is Always In My Hand”, is a black comedy mantra of our times. Same goes for “every girl has a dude in her inbox talking to himself” on the Oscar #WorldPeace featuring “The Poison I Take Hoping You Will Suffer”. References abound to missed calls (on opening track “Waiting For It To Stop”, Kevin Parker sings, trance like, about neglecting to call someone back) and “five minute” journeys (the kind where you lie about leaving the house).

Despite its humble mixtape beginnings,  None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is a precise and very human body of work from a modern UK music pioneer. Emotionally poignant, full of one liners, club ready. More than anything, it’s exciting – a call back to those fun and responsibility free evenings at TONGA. Yet “the result is much more than I thought it would be. It’s become a real album,” says Mike. And so, as the new decade begins, so too does a new era for The Streets...

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's been a few years since the last Streets album proper, but even though 'None Of Us...' is technically a 'Mixtape' (I still don't particularly understand that when it's neither mixed, nor on a tape), it has all of the cohesive drive and thematic intensity you'd expect from a fully formed and sequenced LP. Not to mention the host of superb guests sprinkling the credits, or the superb songwriting and groove we've come to expect from Skinner. A triumph.

TRACK LISTING

1 Call My Phone Thinking I'm Doing Nothing Better With Tame Impala
2 None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive
3 I Wish You Loved Me As Much As You Love Him
4 You Can't Afford Me
5 I Know Something You Did 
6 Eskimo Ice
7 Phone Is Always In My Hand
8 The Poison I Take Hoping You Will Suffer
9 Same Direction
10 Falling Down
11 Conspiracy Theory Freestyle
12 Take Me As I Am

Here’s the thing…Sports Team are a band of six singular characters who have been variously described as one of the most raucous, electrifying and chaotic acts in the UK. Today the band announce their debut album Deep Down Happy. The highly anticipated record, out on 3rd April, follows the acclaimed EPs, Winter Nets and Keep Walking!, and is their first release on the legendary Island Records label.

Sports Team came up on the back of word of mouth live hype, drawing round the block queues to chaotic early gigs at The Five Bells and Moth Club before releasing any music. Recording their first EP (Winter Nets) in a converted Timberyard in Hammersmith, the band have consistently set themselves apart from the acts they came up playing with, showing an intoxicating ambition, and their debut album Deep Down Happy, looks set to deliver on all bold claims, and confirm their place at the head of a group of young guitar acts.

Talking about the record charismatic frontman Alex Rice says: “I don’t think we were conscious of doing it but the album maps the journey of moving in together in Harlesden, moving back to home towns to sleep on floors for 18 months, then coming back to London, weighing up whether being in a band with your mates, being young in London is still the best thing in the world. I think it probably is.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Ace raucous indie-pop, London based six-piece Sports Team finally release their debut album after a plethora of singles, and it doesn't disappoint. Spiky indie guitars, furious driving rhythms and off-kilter melodies.

TRACK LISTING

Lander
Here It Comes Again
Going Soft
Camel Crew
Long Hot Summer
Feels Like Fun
Here’s The Thing
The Races
Born Sugar
Fishing
Kutcher
Stations Of The Cross

Last year Swiss savant, deep digger, production whizz and superstar DJ Lexx put a spell on us with his superb debut LP, "Cosmic Shift". Filtering disco, dub and Balearic through the shimmer of heat haze, he soundtracked a particularly toasty Piccadilly summer, and now returns on a remix tip to bring on the spring. 
The party starts with Phantom Island natives Kejeblos, who transform "Wave" into a hard hitting but sophisticated bit of deep house which references vintage Prescription, summer of love euphoria and Italo House in the best way possible. Closing out the A-side is an extra scorching Balearic-dub mix of lead single "Too Hot", perfect for poolside coolers and daytime DJ sets. Flip it and we fall deeper into the dub with Second Circle-man Androo bringing the On-U vibrations to "Universal Prayer". Trippy tape fx and occasional burts of melody ride a moody digital groove right into the witching hour, persuading even the most straight edge to take a sip of the tribal brew. On the B2 it's the turn of another acclaimed psychonaught, boogie shaman Eirwud Mudwasser who transplants the Black Ark to Alexandra Park for a ultra dubby rockers mix of "Too Hot". Lastly Lexxy brings us the bonus with the fretless bass, dreamy keys and heartswelling beauty of "Expanding Happiness", a moment of light in these dark times.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Wave (feat Ella Thompson - Kejeblos Remix)
A2. Too Hot (feat Woolfy - Red Hot Mix) 
B1. Universal Prayer (Androo Rework)
B2. Too Hot (feat Woolfy - Eirwud True Rocker Version)
B3. Expanding Happiness

Ron Morelli's "Laughter Taker" is taken off the "Disappear" LP from 2018. Now the label owner enlists a crack squad of remixers for a super limited, highly collectable LIES outing!

Noise makers Mick Harris (Scorn, Fret), Parrish Smith and Overlook are called in to demolish and demonize the track starting with Mick Harris cataclysmic hurricane on side B, Parrish Smith's fast paced hi-tech-booty jam on side B and Overlook concluding proceedings with a pitch black event horizon populated with ghostly choirs and sinister energy.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Hold onto your underpants pop pickers! Big Ron's poised waiting to rip 'em clean off yer buttcheeks the cheeky scoundral! A rip-roaring noize fest for the muscular dancefloor inhabitants. Scared me shitless.

TRACK LISTING

A. Mick Harris
B1. Parrish Smith Remix
B2. Overlook Remix

"Singer-songwriter" is a frustratingly confining term; to truly understand exactly just how confining, look no further than the recorded works of Simon Joyner, an artist whose work consistently transcends the narrow parameters of genre classifications and record shop bin cards. Though his music has always honoured, reckoned with-wrestled with-the tradition set forth by his songwriting forebears (Cohen, Van Zandt, Ochs, Dylan, Reed to name a few), Joyner can always be counted on to defy expectations; as a lyricist, melodicist, and arranger, Joyner likes to keep us on our toes.

Everything delivered from Rollo Doherty and co. up to now has a straight-down-the-line, effortlessly huge quality” – DIY.

“The one band everyone is raving about… A very very special band” – Huw Stephens.

‘When We’re Still’ is the latest EP from ISLAND, which follows the four piece’s debut album ‘Feels Like Air’, released in 2018. The EP features a selection of tracks that show a remarkable sonic development and usher in a new era for the band, taking the driving, anthemic and atmospheric nuances of their signature sound to glorious new heights. Speaking about ‘When We’re Still’, ISLAND stated: “With this EP, we wanted to write songs that, for us, were best enjoyed still. Songs to listen to while just thinking. The EP sandwiches brand new material alongside much older tracks like ‘Lyra’, which was the first song we ever wrote as a four’

TRACK LISTING

A

1. Just That Time Of The Night
2. All In My Head
3. She
4. Lyra Side

B

1. Just That Time Of The Night (Instrumental)
2. All In My Head (Instrumental)
3. She (Instrumental)
4. Lyra (Instrumental)
5. Lyra (2014 Demo)

Alongside a killer long player from label mainstay Lexx, Phantom Island treat us to a new solo effort by Zurich based Drummer and Multi Instrumentalist Domi Chansorn. He is best known for playing in and producing numerous Swiss bands like Fai Baba or Evelinn Trouble. Everything you hear was written, played, sung, arranged, produced, recorded and mixed by Domi Chansorn. With "Strawberry Moon" he has created a timeless psychedelic Pop-Opus which takes the listener on a trip to another sphere. The aforementioned Lexx pops up on remix duties, dropping a typically Balearic mix combining dub swelter, open hearted melodies and an irresistible day time disco groove.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Strawberry Moon
B1. Strawberry Moon (Instrumental)
B2. Strawberry Moon (Version By Lexx) 

Stanley Brinks is joined by The Wave Pictures for their fifth album together; and their first since 2015’s “My Ass”. That’s not to say either have been slacking in that time, both are notoriously prolific: The Wave Pictures have turned out 5 albums and Brinks 7 since they last came together in the studio. Stan arrived at the studio with several CDs worth of unrecorded songs on a balmy North London night and instructed The Wave Pictures to pick out some favourites to jam during the following three nights of recording sessions.

To anyone familiar with Stanley Brinks' huge discography - more than 100 albums - it might sound more raw in a way, less sophisticated than some of his other recordings. It's still rich in jazzy sounds and original structures however, the songs looser and full of playfulness, with the lyrics carrying the essence of the songs. Tequila - the drink - was obviously the inspiration for the album. While writing, and while recording. Stanley Brinks was born in Paris, France, in 1973. He studied a bit of biology and worked as a nurse for a while. Half Swedish, half Moroccan, strongly inclined to travel the world, he soon began spending most of his life on the road and developed a strong relationship with New York. By the late 90s he’d become a full time singer-songwriter – André Herman Düne – as part of three piece indie-rock band, Herman Düne.

Several albums and Peel sessions later and after a decade of touring Europe, mostly with American songwriters such as Jeffrey Lewis, Calvin Johnson and early Arcade Fire he settled in Berlin. The early carnival music of Trinidad became a passion, and in the early 21st century he became the unquestioned master of European calypso, changing his name to Stanley Brinks. Under this moniker he has recorded more than 100 albums, collaborated with the New York Antifolk scene on several occasions, recorded and toured with traditional Norwegian musicians, and played a lot with The Wave Pictures.

The Wave Pictures are David Tattersall, Franic Rozycki and Jonny ‘Huddersfield’ Helm. Formed in 1998 when Franic and David lived in a village called Wymeswold, the band played with several drummers until Jonny became a permanent member in 2003 replacing Hugh J Noble. In the beginning the band learned to play together by covering Jonathan Richman songs but soon David was writing lots of original material. They have since released six studio albums to critical acclaim and played numerous sessions on BBC 6 Music, Radio 1 and Xfm. Interest generated from these recordings has enabled The Wave Pictures to play shows all over the world with artists including Jeffrey Lewis, Darren Hayman, Stanley Brinks, Freschard and Herman Düne. 

TRACK LISTING

A1) Song Of Siggi
A2) Living Without You
A3) Like A Fool
A4) Underwater
A5) Like A Song
A6) Tequila Island
B1) Sober In Barcelona
B2) Vermut
B3) Gin In Me
B4) Four Times We Kissed
B5) Little Irene

A meditative and endlessly turning clutch of songs, She Keeps Bees' Kinship reasserts the band's elegant power in a stream of loss and regeneration. Death, birth, both personal and in reflection of Earth itself emerge through Jessica Larrabee's focused, empowered voice. With their first album in four years, She Keeps Bees peels away their distorted guitars and fills the void with hypnotic organ, keyboards, strings, a tight bed of drum grooves, and a direct lyricism full of with wisdom and intention.

Stealing time out from a promotional photo shoot, Van McCann glances out into an unforgiving English North Sea, battling the coastal breeze to light a cigarette. In a few, short weeks and 10,000 miles from here, the singer and songwriter of Catfish and The Bottlemen will look from the stage and see the mid-summer paradise of Tasmania’s South Pacific coastline, trading isolation and brooding cloud for the thunder of another jet-set, live performance in searing heat. The signs weren’t there for Catfish and The Bottlemen to be a band of extremes, yet they seem to throw that precise silhouette, almost without intention.

Tumbling into 2019 by headlining festival stages on the other side of the world, McCann (vocals, guitars), Johnny Bond (guitars), Robert ‘Bob’ Hall (drums) and Benji Blakeway (bass) take a huge gulp of air before their homecoming and the start of another new chapter. Catfish and The Bottlemen’s 2019 new album release follows 2014’s platinum-certified debut, The Balcony and 2016’s gold, number one follow-up, The Ride. Companion to the release of their third album is the anticipation, if not vocal impatience, of their waiting fans and the knowledge within the band that it represents a likely escalation of the successes of the last three years. Three years in which they’ve seen sales of one million albums and, in 2018 alone, nearly a quarter of a million UK fans experiencing them play live.

Practically of no fixed abode, the band has toured constantly since their formation, now over a decade ago. Hotel rooms, tour buses, airport lounges and live venues are home, with the band’s roots seemingly indeterminable. McCann is extensively quoted saying that his band’s isolation in the fast lane of emotive, youthful alternative rock is thanks to their conscious plot to ‘think inside the box’. While typical chaos swirls around an in-demand, arena-filling rock band, that uncharacteristically strategic starting point for the journey remains their pivot. When judged fairly from distance, Catfish and The Bottlemen are a natural reaction to an age of perpetual identity-crises, fruitless cravings for elusive individuality and the ‘curation’ of everything from shoes to breakfast cereals. They’ve proved that simplicity isn’t, as it turns out, a sin or the safest route to take.

Freed from opinion and expectation, young music fans flock in their tens of thousands to see and hear the band in concert, exercising joyful release, in communion, as the rest of the world appears to fight with itself on the outside. Four years on, a new Catfish and The Bottlemen record could never sound like The Balcony. The band's activities supporting their debut album quickly brought festival main stages and US late night television appearances. The Ride propelled them further into UK sell-outs at Don Valley Stadium, Wembley Arena, Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park and Cardiff Castle. Significantly, it also invited more quality time with global fans on tours to the USA, South America, Australia and Japan. Some of McCann’s youthful restlessness on record, a distinct and endearing awkwardness as he approached relationships with friends and lovers, was destined to evolve with each, giant step.

The first snapshot of a new album, ‘Fluctuate’, performed throughout summer 2018, teased out a lean, refreshed version of everything Catfish fans find so easy so to love. McCann performed what sounded like a personal diary entry and he sang it to them, about them, for them and with them. They, typically, soon started to sing every word back. What had changed, subtly, was the cool, open air in which the song was allowed to hang, McCann’s rhythmic delivery in each verse pinned to the bass and drums, saving the collective push for a supercharged chorus. It’s a progression that remains satisfyingly inside the box.

Catfish and The Bottlemen went it alone for near to a decade, before their guerrilla tactics (throwing demos on numerous stages and jamming them under car windscreen wipers) and relentless gigging paid off. “We’ve still been unsigned for longer than we’ve been signed,” says McCann, seemingly never allowing himself to forget the self-initiated activity of their formative years, despite living in the new reality of being a platinum-selling, arena-filling young front man. In person, he’s a character of kind humility, contrasting the magnetic image of the hip-swinging, black-clad front man that makes thousands of fans sway effortlessly to his every, energetic move. You get the feeling that he’d do it all again, no matter how long it took, to get Catfish and The Bottlemen to where they are now.

There are no red carpets for the band (they tried desperately to delay their arrival at the 2016 Brit Awards to avoid the frenzy), no tabloid-stirring relationships or ostentatious shows of excess. It’s not restraint; it’s the private life of four friends getting on with the jobs their fans have afforded them the privilege to get done. As McCann stares out into the endless sea on a windswept promenade he’s far from the voracious desire of his audience, one which easily finds affinity with him and reaches out for personal connection. Yet the scene is dramatically poised. It’s the very definition of the calm before the storm.

TRACK LISTING

Longshot
Fluctuate
2All
Conversation
Sidetrack
Encore
Basically
Intermission
Mission
Coincide
Overlap

Who'd have thought that the inclusion of drummer Budgie (Palmolive left to join The Raincoats) and production by UK reggae master Dennis Bovell could've transformed The Slits' freeform punk thrash of 1977 / 1978 into the totally awesome dub-punk-funk mash up you hear here by 1979! Mixing unavoidable hooks, minimalist arrangements and exuberant vocals with a rough street smart style, "Cut" remains as fresh and innovative today as it did back then. Includes their classic tracks - "Typical Girls", "Newtown", "Shoplifting", "Love And Romance", "So Tough" etc. Not to be missed!!

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: TThe Slits untamed, naive and totally wonderful thrash of 1977 was unrepentantly unhindered by the ability to play their instruments. Two years later their sound had been transformed by their having some idea of what they were doing, but certainly not enough to spoil things, only to enable them to express themselves as they had always wanted, adding reggae rhythms and vocal styling into the post punk mix. Their joyful insolence was undimmed - "Shoplifting" extolls the virtues of free stuff ("Ten quid for the lot? We pay fuck all!"), "Typical Girls" deals with lazy gender constraints, "Instant Hit" Keith Levene's drug use, "So Tough" Sid Vicious and John Lydon's antics and "F.M." radio news indoctrination - it is only the method of delivery that differs. And what delivery it is! The songs are amazing, with Ari Up's flat wild German delivery completely perfect and completely unforgettable.

Announcing a reissue of The Oh Sees - The Cool Death of Island Raiders
We here at Castle Face are not afraid to get our shins dirty mucking around in the stacks and we’re well aware of an out-of-press gap of Oh Sees releases right before 2006 when we started the label with Sucks Blood. We’re rectifying that and first among these is The Cool Death of Island Raiders, a particularly dusty gem that we think merits another look.

Kicking off the record with what should have been the hit of the summer that year but for the hard C in the title, "The Gilded Cunt" seems to clearly preface Oh Sees’ later psych skewed pop sensibilities. At the time it was an obvious jam and I recall being floored by its shuffling beauty. Chirping birds, gently lapping tempos and the nascent harmonization of Bridgid Dawson and Dwyer detail what I consider to be a definitive highlight of their early quiet period of the band. The tree hangs heavy with Patrick Mullins’ handiwork, manning the musical saw, drums, and an assortment of home made electronics. It seemed a bit radical to be so quiet about it but the tunes are total earworms among the assorted drones, cut up bits of tape noise, and mellow front porch vibes, and the whole thing hangs together in a lovely hand-made way, helped in no small part by Dave Sitek’s production (he would later work on Master’s Bedroom as well). “

We flew Brigid out a fresh woman and literally sent her home on a plane with a trash bag of her clothes” says John. Evidently the whole record was accidentally erased at some point right around when the photo on the back of the jacket was taken, which makes it all the more remarkable that the result sounds so casually and confidently careworn. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Gilded Cunt
2. The Dumb Drums
3. Turn Offs
4. Losers In The Sun
5. Drone Number One
6. Island Raiders
7. Cool Death
8. Broken Stems
9. We Are Free
10. Drone Number Two
11. You Oughta Go Home

The sprawling 25-track affair features unreleased Michael Jackson vocals on the track "Don't Matter To Me," a song which appears to be built around previously unreleased music: Paul Anka is listed as a co-writer on the track. Scorpion also included appearances from Static Major, TY Dollah $ign and Jay Z. On "That's How You Feel," Drake samples Nicki Minaj's song "Boss Ass Bitch" and Future appears on "Blue Tint." No I.D., DJ Premier, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Tay Keith, Boi-1da, and Murda Beatz are among the producers credited on the album.

Spring King’s second album. A Better Life is both a stunning evolution from their 2016 debut, Tell Me If You Like To, and a primal, joyous, generational demand for no less than a better world. For the first time in their six-year existence, the Manchester four-piece have fully collaborated, a band no longer looking to the talismanic Tarek Musa (vocals/drums) for the central sound. A thundering procession of party-hard anthems from the newly invigorated, sonic northern powerhouse!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a pretty good week for the punk revival isn't it? First with Idles' second outing and now this sleek thumper from Macc's own Spring King. Snapping snare drums and roaring overdrive pedals overlaid with two-part harmonies bound to get even the most staunch of heads bobbing. Brimming with attitude and the skills to back it up.

TRACK LISTING

1. Static - Intro
2. Animal
3. Ready For War
4. Let's Drink
5. Paranoid
6. The Hum
7. Lightning - Interlude
8. Us Vs. Them
9. Echo Chamber
10. No More
11. Radioactive!
12. Have You Ever Looked Up Into The Sky?
13. Thicker Skin
14. Thunder

Twain is the solo project of Mt. (Mat) Davidson, a tender and evocative singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Virginia. Having previously worked with the likes of The Low Anthem, The Deslondes and Spirit Family Reunion, Mt. Davidson started to write and self-record under the name Twain in the mid-2000s.

His songs and sounds and his remarkable stage presence, whether solo or with his trio, steadily gained devoted listeners throughout the US indie-folk-circuit. Now BB*Island release his first official album and Europeans will be able to catch his live magic for the first time when he performs solo on the upcoming April dates with Courtney Marie Andrews.

New York City by way of Miami, Alex Suarez delivers his debut lp the eight track "Autogolpe" for L.I.E.S. Autogolpe, is a term for military coup initiated by a dictator to take control of an existing government and Suarez uses this loose idea to create the range of emotions associated with said act. Musically he expands on his prior releases for Bank and Primitive Languages as heavy industrialized sonic beatings sit next to somber passages; oil drum slow beat tribal clangers provide a back drop for screams shooting out of the dark. Musically it paints a distorted picture of world in decline, an exile from another land and arrivial to anothers in chaos or the clinging hope of something better on the other side.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Gloomy and dystopic, Alex Suarez' debut LP muses on military coups, offering hissing ambient pieces, abrasive industrial workouts and polyrhythmic techno snarlers over the course of eight impactful tracks.

TRACK LISTING

1. American Motels 
2. Encantada 
3. Opened Cell 
4. The Mountains Are Crying 
5. The Seventh Sister 
6. Simbiotico 
7. False Prophets 
8. Disgust 

Gris-de-Lin is a singer/songwriter & multi-instrumentalist from Bridport, Dorset. Her music is a heady mix of post-rock, blues and alt-folk peppered with warped electronics; the songs are narrative and lyrical. Gris-de-Lin's debut album 'Sprung' was recorded in a nursery school, and saw her playing virtually all of the instruments herself - from guitars and synths to drums and saxophone. Working with producer/engineer Chris Hamilton (Squarepusher / Torres / Kite-Base) she also drafted in Rob Ellis (P.J.Harvey / Anna Calvi) to play drums on several tracks.

Gris-de-Lin has also been working with other artists including Tungg, The Duke Spirit, Joe Gideon & Jim Sclavunos (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds/Sonic Youth) and Berlin-based artist Gemma Ray. She also composes music for television and film.

Gris-de-Lin (a name inspired by a character from Turkish folklore - a wise bird that could speak!) grew up in the West Country, with parents who were big into the folk and world music scene. After years in London her heart lured her back to the sea. Bridport, where she's now based, is a quirky place with a dramatic coastline, a hearty pub-culture and a thriving arts scene for a small town. Local festivals embrace the mundane (hats, onions, cider!) while eccentricity is celebrated too. It's proved an inspiring place to be for songwriting and getting back to nature.

TRACK LISTING

1. Your Ghost
2. Birthday
3. The Kick
4. Muhammad Ali
5. Sprung
6. Reprise
7. Dead Wife
8. Russian Korg
9. Marching Band
10. I'm The King
11. Underground

Ahead of their UK and European tour dates, we are excited to announce the release date of ‘Feels Like Air’, the debut album from ISLAND, out via Frenchkiss. The band will also play a very special headline show at London’s iconic KOKO venue on 23rd May. Following two acclaimed EPs and a busy 12 months establishing themselves as ones-to-catch on live circuits across the UK and Europe, the band have built a reputation as one of 2017’s most important break out acts. 

Drawing on influences from their shared love of artists like Fleetwood Mac, Kings of Leon, War On Drugs and Grizzly Bear, ‘Feels like air’, with its hook-filled anthemic choruses and inventive drumming, is a body of work two years in the making. This is a band that has spent time carefully honing their craft, so as to capture the sound and energy of their live performances.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ride
2. Try
3. The Day I Die
4. Something Perfect
5. Interlude
6. Horizon
7. Moth
8. We Can Go Anywhere
9. God Forgive
10. Feels Like Air
11. Lilyflower

Third album from Liverpool born singer-songwriter Alex Highton. Rather than the acoustic bucolic musings of "Woodditton Wives Club" ("a masterpiece," according to Heaven Magazine in Holland, "World class," said the Guardian) or his disconcerting take on existence that was "Nobody Knows Anything" ("Sufjan Stevens like audacity....4 Stars" Mojo Magazine"), his new album expands his sound into a something much more complex and sonically adventurous.

As a kid his time was split between his native Liverpool and Florence, Italy, after his parents' divorce. Liverpool has a musical heritage that is impossible to escape but it was during the summers, whilst devouring his Dad's amazingly eclectic record collection , that his musical education began, taking in everything from Talking Heads & Penguin Cafe Orchestra to David Ackles & Bowie. He lost his twenties to bad decisions and then struggling through some kind of breakdown, he started to take songwriting seriously. The songs he wrote (part therapy / part love letter his new life) formed the basis of his debut album, a record replete with tales of rural S&M, mental, emotional and economic collapse, and ultimately salvation through love and family. For the new album Alex locked himself away in the studio with producer/multi instrumentalist Jonathan Czerwik, and started putting together the songs that would fill "Welcome To Happiness".

In their downtime they discussed artists they loved and would inform the new album - Can, The Flaming Lips, Beck, Prince, Steely Dan, Bon Iver, Serge Gainsbourg, Here We Go Magic, The Beach Boys, Bowie, Neu, tons more..."We threw all this stuff into the pot and just said 'let's see what happens'. Witness "Benny Is A Heartbreaker" reminiscent of Hot Chip & Talking Heads with it's electro beats and slick grooves and "Love Is Enough", referencing David Ackles & Luis Bunuel but sounding like something cooked up by Luke Temple and ELO. 

“The brash clangor of pre-SST Sonic Youth, the tricky time signatures of math rock demigods Battles and the wonky iridescence of Deerhoof and tUnE-yArDs (the latter two have shared producer Eli Crews with Palm). - Pitchfork 'Shadow Expert EP' review.

“Palm’s unpredictable songs prove there’s still room for boundary-pushing in rock” FADER.

On Rock Island, their second LP, Palm produces evidence of a distinct musical language, developed over time, in isolation, and out of necessity. On the island, melodies are struck on what might be shells or spines. Rhythms are scratched out, swept over, scratched again. Individual instruments, and sometimes entire sections, skip and stutter. There is the sense of a music box with wonky tension or a warped transmission in which all the noise is taken for signal.

Like other groups so acclaimed for their compulsive live show, Palm has been burdened by the constant comparison between their recorded material and their touring set. On Rock Island, they render this tired discussion moot, using the album form to present that which could never be completely live, reserving for performance that which could never be completely reproduced.

Despite appearing behind the instruments typical of rock music, Palm trades in sounds of their own making. On these songs, one of the guitars and the drum kit are used as MIDI triggers, producing an index that can be combed through later and replaced with new information. The percussion is sometimes augmented so as to suggest a multiplication of limbs. The strings are manipulated to choke, crack, and hum like other instruments, or other bodies, might.

Working again with engineer Matt Labozza, the band spent the better part of a month in a rented farmhouse in Upstate New York. With the benefits of time and space, Palm recorded the various elements piecemeal, only rarely playing together in groups larger than two or three. While some members tracked, others holed up in the next room, experimenting with quantization, beat replacement, and other methods borrowed from electronic music. Even accounting for the many labors that brought them to be, these materials seem produced by an organic logic. Their complex friction forms a habit of thought, scores a network of grooves on the floor of the mind.

This is music with dimensionality. Sonic objects are deployed, developed, and dissected in various states of mutation. The listener flits about between the field and the lab. The tone is warm in a way only the sun could make, the pace as forceful and as variable as a gale. Whether one locates Rock Island in a sea or in a refinished attic (as in Greg Burak’s album cover), whether one escapes to there or is banished, its psychic environs are charted clearly enough. Only at this remove from the mainland can we sense the conditions necessary for such a strange species of sound.

TRACK LISTING

1 Pearly
2 Composite
3 Dog Milk
4 Forced Hand
5 Theme From Rock Island
6 Bread
7 Colour Code
8 Swimmer
9 Heavy Lifting 

Revival Beach, the eighth LP from Canada's The Burning Hell, highlights the musical diversity of the band, shifting from jangly garage rock to 50s ballads, rembetika-tinged instrumentals, waltzes, and delicate, tiny bedtime songs.

Copeland brings the (schizoid, neon, frenetic) noise for his newest LP on L.I.E.S. Kicking things off with the juddering lo-fi stomp of 'Convoy', pushing hi-passed snares and delayed synth squeals through the mincer and ending up with some mechanically recovered heat, slavered liberally atop a solid foundation of mealy kicks and shuffled hats. 'Qualified' continues where we left off where vox are concerned, taking the mean voice of a hundred robots and gating them with some brutal sample & hold abstractions. In case this wasn't enough of thematic giveaway, bit-crushed synths fire off like lasers into the neon-lit heavens, turning the casual romp through the dystopian wilderness into a climactic white-knuckle boss-fight. 
Moving further along, and 'Doggy' presents the first indication of rhythmic convention, with lithe bass fragents flickering over a classic four-to-the-floor percussive backdrop before pulling out the flicker-machine once again to heavily treat the melodic overtones into a brittle amalgam of crystalline pulses and terse filter cuts. 
'Ultimo' veers into lite grime territory with sqelchy digital synths weaving their way around the cut-up vocal snippets and tinny flanged cymbals (it would sound great blaring out of a nokia speaker on the back of the 168). Brilliantly futuristic but with nods to everything that has secured its passage up to this point. Copeland has always pushed the boundaries, and this is no different, it just so happens that his boundary pushing has veered squarely into the wonky lo-fi house/techno/misc zone I find so appealing. RIYL Opal Tapes / Cloudface / SNES.  

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brilliantly eccentric soundtrack to futuristic mishaps, last-life white-knuckle gaming and dusty sampler glitches. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

1. Convoy
2. Qualified
3. Chinatown
4. Doggy
5. Oopsy Dazee
6. Following The Man
7. Ultimo
8. From The Hip
9. Flipper
10. Copacabana
11. Big Wheel
12. Larry Of Acadia 

Enter, Aquilo.

The duo Tom Higham and Ben Fletcher share their debut album 'Silhouettes'. From the outset, the title track is a resplendent and delicate balance of bass, strings and angelic sweeps, constructing harmonic monoliths before breaking them down into their constituent parts. It is this sort of constructive insight that changes the tracks from their individually stunning building blocks into a breathing lenticular construction, layered, deep and multi-dimensional. 

'Almost Over' begins with a stunning organic synth swell, before being joined by pitch perfect vocals and a softly tickled piano riff, adding weight to the airy and inauspicious beginnings before blooming into a full-force orchestral odyssey. 

'Never Seen You Get So Low' beginning with the words 'Slow Down' is perhaps the most apropriate beginning for a piece wholly constructed from 80bpm beats, gloriously emotive Rhodes and two-part harmonies. A graceful and triumphantly constructed slice of hopeful melancholic writing, and following this with the stunning  'Low Light' ; Shining delayed guitars and throbbing bass, topped with heavenly vocal refrains and soaring arepggios. 

As the album moves on, it becomes clear that Higham and Fletcher have a delicate and unique sound, mournfully visceral, triumphantly hopeful and resolutely beautiful. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful collection of delicately balanced instrumentation, mournful but hopeful vocals and heart-wrenching orchestral interludes. A brilliant introduction, and a band to watch out for.

Life as and RnB revelation, hip hop saviour and meme sensation can get pretty tough, and our man Aubrey isn't afraid to admit that. His fourth album finds him in peerless form, switching effortlessly between the lovelorn balladeer, blinged up hustler and laid back superstar. Laying his smooth, soulful and ever so slightly robotic flow over production from 40, Nineteen85, Maneesh Bidaye, Kanye West and Jordan Ullman, Drake topped the chart for the majority of the year, working his way into everyone's ears with the Timmy Thomas sampling "Hotline Bling". 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Keep The Family Close
A2. 9
A3. U With Me?
A4. Feel No Ways
A5. Hype
B1. Weston Road Flows
B2. Redemption
B3. With You FT. Partynextdoor
B4. Faithful Ft. Pimp C & DVSN
B5. Still Here
C1. Controlla
C2. One Dance Ft. Wizkid & Kyla
C3. Grammys Ft Future
C4. Childs Play
C5. Pop Style
D1. Too Good Ft. Rihanna
D2. Summers Over Interlude
D3. Fire & Desire
D4. Views
D5. Hotline Bling (Bonus)

Beach Baby will release their much-anticipated debut album, 'No Mind No Money', on September 2nd. The band will be supporting Beaty Heart around the US in September, before playing their own series of headline dates across Europe Additional festival slots are still to come at Reading & Leeds and Festival Number 6, with across-the-board support at Radio 1, 6Music, Radio X and Spotify. Captured vividly across ‘No Mind No Money’, London four-piece Beach Baby have built up a tightly-sealed, vaguely surreal world of their own. Beach Baby’s touchstones have now evolved to include seminal acts on both sides of the Atlantic –from Parquet Courts and Mac DeMarco to Ariel Pink and cult lo-fi artist Cleaners From Venus. They each supported themselves throughout this creatively-intense period with make-ends-meet jobs, which included working in burger joints, ‘charity muggers', and - in perhaps the oddest of odd jobs - working as a script reader for production companies like Icon.

The aptly-titled ‘No Mind No Money’ touches frequently on those less-glamorous uncertainties of post-campus life: apathy, escapism, and the distance between your own future and the iconic bands or movies you grew up on. “One of the best new bands in Britain” Sunday Times Breaking Act. “Make no mistake, Beach Baby have every means of triumphing in the big leagues” DIY. “Captures the best of several genres – post-punk, baggy, shoe gaze, grunge –without sounding like a mess” Guardian. “That aching, inexplicable magic of college innocence is all here” Stereogum. “You’ll fall for this London foursome” i-D

After years of hard graft, releasing a number of thunderous and catchy songs, and constant touring supporting the likes of Slaves, Wolf Alice and Courtney Barnett, Spring King’s journey has only just begun as they release their debut album Tell Me If You Like To.

The new album was recorded and produced by lead singer, drummer and songwriter, Tarek Musa. It features their breakthrough track City, energetic single Rectifier, and this, their newest release The Summer which showcases the band’s ability to pen huge festival-worthy anthems.

Previous album 'Evergreen' has sold 250k adjusted units worldwide

New album includes Tove Lo feature and co-write with Lorde. Following Huw Stephens (sitting in for Annie Mac) Radio 1 premiere, and additional pick up across Radio 1, 6 Music, Beats & Radio X.

ASK IN STORE ABOUT OUR EXCLUSIVE TICKET BUNDLE PREORDER OFFER!!!

Whipping up a frenetic, fun-filled brew of surf pop and garage rock, this Manchester quartet have been creating quite a stir with a handful of great 7" singles and high octane live shows over the last few months.

"Tell Me If You Like To", is their debut album and it's choc full of garage-punk gems (including their three 7" single tracks) as you'd expect - think The Ramones covering The Beach Boys, OD-ing on Haribo's!
"the most promising band of 2016" (NME)

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Rousing and anthemic rock from the sunny shores of Manchester. Gnarly hooks and 3-part harmonies permeate the churning rhythm section. Pounding, triumphant punk-tinged rock and roll. A superb outing from Spring King, and if only an insight into what's to come, a bright future is ahead. Great stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. City
2. Detroit
3. Who Are You?
4. It's So Dark
5. Take Me Away
6. Demons
7. Rectifier
8. Tell Me If You Like To
9. The Summer
10. Heaven

Bonus Tracks - Deluxe CD Only
11. Let's Ride
12. Better Man
13. Mumma
14. They're Coming After You
15. Let's Ride - Live At Maida Vale

Catfish & the Bottlemen’s second album The Ride, mostly produced in LA by Dave Sardy is a collection of bold and riffing pop songs that verge on the anthemic.

“I feel like the last album was the support band, or even the soundcheck and this one’s the headliner,” says charismatic frontman Van McCann.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Glistening pop-rock anthems a plenty on this newest release from Wales' Catfish and The Bottlemen. Driving and heartfelt odes to love and loss underpinned by shimmering production and emotive instrumental performances, impeccable vocal harmonies float atop the main vocal lines before the distortion kicks in, and breaks it all down into pulsing, grooving rock territory. Everything you'd come to expect, and more.

TRACK LISTING

1 7
2 Twice 
3 Soundcheck
4 Postpone
5 Anything
6 Glasgow
7 Oxygen
8 Emily
9 Red
10 Heathrow
11 Outside

Ariel Sharratt and Mathias Kom are more commonly known to the music-listening public as two-fifths of The Burning Hell. Here, they present to you a collection of songs more suited to intimate gatherings than the stadium stages and cruise ships on which they are accustomed to performing.

The masterpiece that is Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’ was originally released on Friday 3rd June 1977. He recorded the ‘Exodus’ album in exile in the UK, having escaped an assassination attempt in Jamaica.

‘Exodus’ transformed Marley’s career. A recording of extraordinary creative maturity, the album resonated with audiences around the world. In the UK alone in stayed on the chart for 56 consecutive weeks and included three massive hit singles. Bob Marley was established as the Third World’s first superstar, a legacy that survives thirty years after the album’s release.

TRACK LISTING

1. Natural Mystic 3:28
2. So Much Things To Say 3:08
3. Guiltiness 3:19
4. The Heathen 2:32
5. Exodus 7:40
6. Jamming 3:31
7. Waiting In Vain 4:16
8. Turn Your Lights Down Low 3:39
9. Three Little Birds 3:00
10. One Love / People Get Ready 2:52

'Catch A Fire' was the major label debut for Bob Marley and the Wailers, and it was an international success upon its release in 1973. Although Bob Marley may have been the main voice, every member of the Wailers made valuable contributions and they were never more united in their vision and sound. All the songs were originals, and the instrumentation was minimalistic in order to bring out the passionate, often politically charged lyrics. Much of the appeal of the album lies in its sincerity and sense of purpose - these are streetwise yet disarmingly idealistic young men who look around themselves and believe they might help change the world through music. Marley sings about the current state of urban poverty ("Concrete Jungle") and connects the present to past injustices ("Slave Driver"), but he is a not a one-trick pony. He is a versatile songwriter who also excels at singing love songs such as his classic "Stir It Up." Peter Tosh sings the lead vocal on two of his own compositions - his powerful presence and immense talent hint that he would eventually leave for his own successful solo career. More than anything else, however, this marks the emergence of Bob Marley and the international debut of reggae music. Marley would continue to achieve great critical and commercial success during the 1970s, but 'Catch a Fire' is one of the finest reggae albums ever. This album is essential for any music collection.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Concrete Jungle 4:12
A2 Slave Driver 2:53
A3 400 Years 2:45
A4 Stop That Train 3:55
A5 Baby We've Got A Date (Rock It Baby) 3:56
B1 Stir It Up 5:32
B2 Kinky Reggae 3:36
B3 No More Trouble 3:51
B4 Midnight Ravers 5:09

‘Foam Island’, the third studio album from Darkstar, is a beautiful contemporary electronic pop album that deals with powerful themes of ambition and hope against the odds in the 21st Century.

Since their early dancefloor 12”s on Hyperdub from 2008 and through two vocal-led albums in 2010 and 2013, Darkstar have been an influential force in the UK’s electronic scene.

During trips to visit family in Northern England, founder members Aiden Whalley and James Young noticed a change in the area’s social atmosphere. This climate began to increasingly influence the duo’s writing sessions and they began a three month project of documenting this by talking to local young people in nearby Huddersfield. The lyrics and the sound palette for ‘Foam Island’ were shaped by the people and emotions they encountered and their recordings of interviewees’ speech have been compellingly woven into the tracks.

For fans of Jon Hopkins, Zomby, Four Tet, Mount Kimbie, Roisín Murphy, Actress, Floating Points.

Guardian New Band of The Day: ‘’What would Michael Jackson sound like if he worked with Disclosure? Like this... Dornik's is arguably the first decent UK version of a particular strand of sophisticated hi-tech studio-polished black American dance music since Loose Ends and 52nd Street.’’

London-based singer and producer Dornik never went after the spotlight, but the spotlight found him anyway. The quiet spoken Croydon native was content for years to stay behind the drumkit, drumming for popstars on tour and keeping his own bedroom-recorded, sun-streaked electronic love songs a secret. “It was just a private hobby,” he says now. “I never saw myself as a frontman.” It was while on tour with Jessie Ware that she heard his demos, and immediately knew he’d be right at home alongside her on PMR, the home of forward-thinking, leftfield pop. If it wasn’t for her, the world might never have stumbled across this hidden gem. Dornik made his first appearance on the musical landscape back in 2013, with the bubbling electronic soul of “Something About You.” Over the course of the next two years, he followed this with “Rebound,” “On My Mind” and “Second Thoughts”: groove-led jams that focus around his percussionist obsession with creating addictive rhythms. 

TRACK LISTING

01. Strong
02. Blush
03. Stand In Your Line
04. Shadow
05. Second Thoughts
06. Mountain
07. Chain Smoke
08. Something About You
09. Drive
10. On My Mind

Years before Amy Winehouse garnered international attention with 'Back To Black', the sassy soul singer put herself on the UK music map with her 2003 debut, 'Frank'. Nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, the record glides along on the subtly jazzy production of Salaam Remi, which allows Winehouse's expressive voice, strongly influenced by Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, to shine, particularly on the downbeat 'Stronger Than Me', "Take The Box" (which made it onto Gilles' "Worldwide 2" compilation), the powerful 'You Sent Me Flying', and the sultry 'I Heard Love Is Blind'. It's an impressive debut, fusing soul with jazz, hip hop, reggae and Latin flavas, all topped off with her distinctive soul-jazz vocals. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Stronger Than Me 3:54
A2.1 You Sent Me Flying 6:50
A2.2. Cherry
A3. Know You Now 3:03
A4. Fuck Me Pumps 3:20
A5. I Heard Love Is Blind 2:10
A6.1 Moody's Mood For Love 3:28
A6..2 Teo Licks
A7. (There Is) No Greater Love 2:08
A8. In My Bed 5:17
B1. Take The Box 3:20
B2. October Song 3:24
B3. What Is It About Men? 3:29
B4. Help Yourself 5:01
B5.1  Amy Amy Amy 13:16
B5.2  Outro
B5.3  Brother
B5.4  Mr Magic (Through The Smoke) 

To many, Lady Lamb is an enigma. Her songs are at once intimate and unbridled, both deeply personal and existentially contemplative. Aly Spaltro is a fearless performer who can command a pitch black stage with nothing more than her voice. Yet, when the band bursts in and the lights come up, what began as a demonstration of restraint shifts seamlessly into an emphatic snarl.

On her newest work, After, Spaltro explores dualities further - giving equal attention to both the internal and external, the before and after. Her most palpable fears and memories are on display here, with a familiar vulnerability even more direct than her last effort. After boasts driving rhythms, bold melodies, candid lyricism, and a growling sonic stamp that is all her own.Spaltro’s formative years were full of change – moving houses, cities, and countries every three years until she landed in her family's home state of Maine. It was here that Spaltro found her voice among thousands of films at Bart & Greg’s DVD Explosion, an independent rental store in the small coastal town of Brunswick. During the day Spaltro would rent movies to the locals. At night she would lock up, pull out her 8-track recorder, and create songs completely uninhibited by musical conventions, learning to play and sing as she hit record. These creations brought forth nearly one hundred recordings, twelve of which were carefully curated and fully realized on her 2013 full-length studio debut Ripely Pine (released on Ba Da Bing! Records).

Ripely Pine garnered praise for its lyrical intricacies, emotive vocals, and often unpredictable musicality, introducing Spaltro as a formidable new artist. In between tours, Spaltro returned home, focusing with laser-like intent on writing, arranging, and demoing the songs on After. These new works - which found Spaltro co-producing with her Ripely Pine partner Nadim Issa at his Brooklyn studio, Let 'Em In - are sonically vibrant, with an assertive use of grit and brightness. Thematically, they provide direct insight into Spaltro’s rumination on mortality, family, friendships, and leaving home. There are many songs on After that explore themes of a much larger scale. In 'Heretic' Spaltro sings of a childhood UFO sighting in Arizona. In 'Batter' she dies in a plane crash, while in 'Spat Out Spit' she questions whether she was even born at all. Alternatively, in 'Billions of Eyes' Spaltro can "only see into her suitcase," her mind simultaneously present and wandering as she "gnaws [her] way back home." The tender and sparse 'Ten' delves into her mother’s childhood diary, giving the listener a clear view throughout into some of Spaltro's warmest memories of her loved ones. Ripely Pine was marked by an undeniable passion and confidence, but where it sometimes lacked in personal narrative and directness is where After shines. The last line on After encompasses the self-assurance of the work as a whole, stating "I know where I come from." This theme is a constant throughout After, as Spaltro seeks to allow the listener to move in closer than ever before, to reflect on the past with grace, and envision the future with fervor. Spaltro invites us to contemplate the dualities that make us human, encouraging the celebration of both fear and love: internally and externally, before and after.

HOW BIG
For Florence Welch, the success of her first two Florence + the Machine albums Lungs (2009 – Album of the year, Brit Awards 2010) and Ceremonials (2011) meant five years of back-to-back recording, promoting and touring. Lungs ran straight into the making, promoting and touring of the Grammy-nominated Ceremonials, an album written while on the road and recorded straight after coming off tour. The shows were getting bigger, the hair redder, the success wider and wilder.

HOW BLUE
A pop star at 21, with two international hit albums behind her, Florence discovered that in giving seven years to her music, some elements of real life had been left by the wayside. Coming back from tour and moving out of her mother’s Camberwell home, Florence re-engaged with normal life: going out, falling in and out of love, and simply trying to learn how to look after herself outside of the hermetic bubble of life of the road. And so the new Florence, and her songs, started to swim into focus.

HOW BEAUTIFUL
The result is 'How Big How Blue How Beautiful', a collection of songs, written and recorded over the course of 2014. Produced by Markus Dravs (Björk, Arcade Fire, Coldplay) with contributions from Paul Epworth, Kid Harpoon and John Hill, the third album by Florence + The Machine is live-sounding, tune-rich, unhinged in all the right places and powerful in all the best ways. In voice and, ultimately, outlook Florence has never sounded better.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ship To Wreck
2. What Kind Of Man
3. How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
4. Queen Of Peace
5. Various Storms & Saints
6.Delilah
7. Long & Lost
8. Caught
9. Third Eye
10. St Jude
11. Mother

Sea Island is a collection of new material composed and recorded over the past two years. While many of these compositions were performed live extensively prior to recording, others were constructed in the studio and are being heard for the first time here.

Musically, the album represents a range of compositional approaches. Murky, densely textured depths of sound are explored with subtle pulses and pings woven within, contrasted with composed or improvised moments of acoustic instrumentation making a move into the foreground. Certain tracks on Sea Island such as album opener Ahull make rhythm their focus by exploring subtle polyrhythms and investigating colliding moments of repetition and variation.

Though staunchly electronic at its core, instruments such as vibraphone and piano make appearances, and layers of live musicality, improvisation and detail appear in the looped and layered beds of manipulated sound recordings.

A varied cast of players appear in the loscil “ensemble”, some familiar collaborators from the past such as Jason Zumpano on rhodes and Josh Lindstrom on vibraphone, and others new to the mix such as Fieldhead?s Elaine Reynolds who provides layered violin on Catalina 1943, and Ashley Pitre contributing vocals on Bleeding Ink. Seattle pianist Kelly Wyse, who collaborated with loscil on his 2013 edition of piano-centric reworks Intervalo, performs on the tracks Sea Island Murders and En Masse.

From Llandudno, North Wales, this four piece is fronted by outspoken and charismatic frontman Van McCann, release their debut ‘The Balcony’ on Island Records / Communion.

Includes the singles ‘Fallout’, ‘Kathleen’ and ‘Cocoon’. Produced by Jim Abbiss, the man behind critically acclaimed releases by Arctic Monkeys, Adele and Kasabian.

Ellis Island Sound are Pete Astor (The Loft, Weather Prophets, Wisdom Of Harry) and David Sheppard (State River Widening, Snow Palms).

‘Regions’ is the duo’s third album since their inception and it has already been described as “Afro-Krautrock” and “Teutonic High Life”.

It is possible to detect the influence of Jean Bosco Mwende or King Sunny Ade’s guitars, along with polyrhythmic ensemble force of Fela Kuti’s Africa 70 and T-Funk-period Talking Heads.

Sometime Radiohead collaborator John Matthias adds vocals to five tracks, coming on like an opiated James Brown channelling Damo Suzuki.

TRACK LISTING

Nairobi / Koln
So Much Water Close To Home
Intro, Airborne, Travelling
We Do Not
Offices At Night
Floating Home
The Letting Go
Herr Ya Ya
Schwitters In Lakeland
Worlds Ahead
Ubu Goes To Town

The fact that Joel Thibodeau’s slender, winsome voice is at once so comforting and so unsettling might be the greatest of his many strengths. Reed-thin but sturdy, youthful but somehow ageless, its deep benevolence is also slightly eerie, and the way he gently walks the line between intense feeling and contemplative remove lets him sing from a timeless place where he evokes the beauty of vanished people and places, sweetness too profound for words, loss too great for tears.

Like Nico’s, Jimmy Scott’s, or Phil Elverum’s, Joel’s is a voice that demands its own sonic and lyrical world, and with ‘Island Intervals’, his third record as Death Vessel (and second for Sub Pop), we're treated to the sound of him finding a rich and strange new home among new friends in Iceland who probably saw him as a long-lost relative.

For his first album since 2008’s acclaimed ‘Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us’, Joel traveled to Reykjavík on an invitation from Sigur Rós singer Jónsi and producer Alex Somers, where they spent three months together conjuring an album that’s both a song cycle and a window into a mysterious and singular landscape.

‘Island Intervals’ wraps Joel’s voice and furtive guitar in sounds that evoke not so much a band playing as elemental forces of earth and water; Pete Donnelly (The Figgs, NRBQ), Samuli Kosminen (Múm) and Thorvaldur ‘Doddi’ Thorvaldsson assist Somers in creating a rich and multi-layered world that sounds, at times, like a well-tuned forest sighing and bending in a gale, or the deep cracks and booms of a glacier calving its way to the sea. Jónsi also joins Joel on vocals for the track ‘Ilsa Drown’.

‘Island Intervals’ lives in the spaces between running away and letting go, and finds its author embracing a life whose most solid, real moments loom and vanish, like a range of mountains that emerges from a bank of low clouds, and just as suddenly slips away.

TRACK LISTING

Ejecta
Velvet Antlers
Triangulated Heart
Mercury Dime
Ilsa Drown (ft Jónsi)
Island Vapors
We Agreed
Loom

“Muscle Shoals”, which debuted at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, is the beautiful and unique film which tells the story of FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. Located in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, they are the birthplace of some of rock 'n' roll's and soul’s most iconic songs. Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Alicia Keys, Paul Simon, and many more recorded at the studios, and they're all represented on the soundtrack by some of their most recognizable hits as well as a never before heard track from Alicia Keys. This collection embodies the magical spirit of the area and legacy it forged. It's the perfect companion to the film and a wonderful window into Muscle Shoals.

TRACK LISTING

1. Arthur Alexander - You Better Move On
2. Jimmy Hughes - Steal Away
3. Percy Sledge - When A Man Loves A Woman
4. Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)
5. Etta James - Tell Mama
6. Clarence Carter - Patches
7. Wilson Pickett - Hey Jude
8. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird
9. The Staple Singers - I'll Take You There
10. Jimmy Cliff - Sitting In Limbo
11. Traffic - (Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired
12. Paul Simon - Kodachrome
13. Alicia Keys - Pressing On

USM and Island Records now complete the Back To Black Nick Drake vinyl reissues set with this lovingly represented new press of his debut album.

Originally released in 1969 'Five Leaves Left' was largely overlooked by critics and music fans at the time - a fate that was to befall his subsequent two studio albums. Unfortunately, Nick Drake didn't live to see his reputation as one of the finest singersongwriters Britain has ever produced develop. Nevertheless, 'Five Leaves Left' is now widely regarded as one of the most significant debut albums of all time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Time Has Told Me
2. River Man
3. Three Hours
4. Way To Blue
5. Day Is Done
6.  ' Cello Song
7. Thoughts Of Mary Jane
8. Man In A Shed
9. Fruit Tree
10. Saturday Sun

Taking the boom of British bass culture and marrying it to the sweet slickness of classic American R&B, AlunaGeorge - aka Aluna Francis and producer George Reid - drop their eagerly awaited debut album ‘Body Music’.

If you fell in love with the duo after 'You Know You Like It' on underground imprint Tri Angle, then you'll also love 'Body Music'. Citing the Neptunes and Timbaland as influences, AlunaGeorge producer Reid also packs the duo's sound with UKG (fresh from their 'White Noise' Disclosure smash), footwork and electro-pop touches, creating the perfect backing for Francis's sweet and saccharine Aaliyah-meets-Lily Allen style vox.

Like Disclosure's 'Settle', 'Body Music' is packed with catchy choruses and big pop hooks, providing us with an antidote to the X-Factor balladeer blandness and electro-brostep-folk nonsene that's clogging up the charts at the moment. A joy!

TRACK LISTING

1. Outlines
2. You Know You Like It
3. Attracting Flies
4. Your Drums, Your Love
5. Kaleidoscope Love
6. Bad Idea
7. Diver
8. Lost & Found
9. Best Be Believing
10. Superstar
11. Just A Touch
12. Body Music
13. Friends To Lovers
14. This Is How We Do It

They say you know you're getting old when the policemen look like they've only just left school. The same adage could be said about bass music producers Disclosure, who don't look old enough to be growing the facial hair they've both been displaying in pics recently. However, looks can be deceiving as the brothers Lawrence (Guy and Howard) have been quietly getting on with transforming the state of UK dancefloors and even the pop charts over the past three years with a series of quality originals and remixes. After several years of mid-tempo, click-track driven electronic house music (yawn) holding sway in clubs, Disclosure have finally bring us the light at the end of what seemed like a never-ending tunnel of bland smoooothness. With inspiration taken from 90s UK garage, 2-step and rave, and given a new twist, the pair have brought a bit of life back to the dancefloor - the beats are up a few BPMs, the tracks swing, the guest vocalists (Sam Smith, AlunaGeorge, Eliza Doolittle, Edward Macfarlane, Jamie Woon, Jessie Ware, London Grammar, Sasha Keable) aren't autotuned, all the tracks have proper pop choruses that can sing along to etc. 'Settle' (with its rather unsettling sleeve image) is the perfect combination of tough-enough bass music and pop-garage - the perfect summer album! - PJ

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. When A Fire Starts To Burn
3. Latch Album Version (Feat. Sam Smith)
4. Disclosure F For You
5. White Noise Album Version (Feat. AlunaGeorge)
6. Defeated No More (Feat. Edward Macfarlane)
7. Stimulation
8. Voices (Feat. Sasha Keable)
9. Second Chance
10. Grab Her!
11. You & Me Album Version (Feat. Eliza Doolittle)
12. January (Feat. Jamie Woon)
13. Confess To Me (Feat. Jessie Ware)
14. Help Me Lose My Mind (Feat. London Grammar)

Nightlands is the solo project of The War On Drugs’ bassist and multi-instrumentalist Dave Hartley, and ‘Oak Island’ is the follow-up to his 2010 Secretly Canadian debut ‘Forget The Mantra’.

Each distorted, silver-voiced melody is wrapped in the sounds of 70s AM gold - plucked acoustic guitars, trumpets, dulcimers and hand percussion. In using these pop touchstones, the songs become something close to memories, the faded feelings that tide in and out of you when conjuring the past.

Harley is a major player and sideman in Philadelphia’s Fishtown scene that has produced The War On Drugs, Kurt Vile, Purling Hiss.

TRACK LISTING

Time & Peace
So Far So Long
You're My Baby
Nico
So It Goes
Born To Love
I Fell In Love With A Feeling
Rolling Down The Hill
Other Peoples Pockets
Looking For Rain

The waist-coat loving quartet are back with their second studio album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Babel
2. Whispers In The Dark
3. I Will Wait
4. Holland Road
5. Ghosts That We Knew
6. Lover Of The Light
7. Lovers Eyes
8. Reminder
9. Hopeless Wanderer
10. Broken Crown
11. Below My Feet
12. Not With Haste

Of Monsters and Men began as the solo project of Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir however it quickly grew with the additions of friends Ragnar “Raggi” Þórhallsson (co-singer/guitarist), Brynjar Leifsson (guitarist), Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson (drummer), Árni Guðjónsson (piano/accordion player) and Kristján Páll Kristjánsson (bassist)

Crafting epic songs inspired by their amazing homeland, fairy tales and personal history, the band went from battle of the bands winners to the breakthrough act at this year’s Iceland Airwaves and SXSW festival. The bands self-released, first single ‘Little Talks’ to date has sold an impressive 400,000 copies and received 3 million views on YouTube.

Of Monsters and Men continue to make waves among fans and tastemakers alike. ‘My Head is an Animal’ has already enjoyed huge success in Iceland and Europe. Mirroring that feat in America ‘My Head is an Animal’ entered the iTunes alternative chart at #1 and album chart at #2 however went on to top the album charts one week later. And in Germany the album debuted at #4 on their official album chart.

Along with a penchant for crafting rising epic pop numbers ‘My Head is an Animal’ has beautifully delicate moments and signal a fully-fledged band destined to win the hearts of musical lovers worldwide.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: A stern bit of icelandic pop right here, it's a bit folky but they manage to turn humble folk into a collection of sing-out-loud anthems. It's brilliant!

TRACK LISTING

1. Dirty Paws
2. King And Lionheart
3.Mountain Sound
Slow And Steady
5.From Finner
6. Little Talks
7. Six Weeks
8. Love Love Love
9. Your Bones
10. Sloom
11. Lakehouse
12. Yellow Light

Love her or hate her, you can't deny that La Roux has come up with some super-catchy electro-pop tunes this year. "Quicksand" is another one that's sure to make a run up the charts. With snapping 80s electro-dance beats, a dirty bassline and a big hooky chorus, this has 'hit' written all over it.

There are actually three Christmas Islands: one off the coast of Australia, one in the Pacific Ocean (which also goes by the name Kiritimati), and one whose incredible self-titled debut album is on In The Red. Hailing from sunny San Diego, California, Christmas Island plays music that on the surface is happy and poppy. There is a dark undercurrent to their brand of lo-fi pop punk - it is joyous and almost twee while secretly depressed and deeply disturbed. Citing Tronics, Urinals, Television Personalities, The Clean, Versatile Newts, and The Fall as influences, Christmas Island is Beach Boys-style, sunny Southern Californian pop by way of the late 70s / early 80s UK DIY scene.

The Tavistock five piece return with their second album, recorded and produced in New York by none other than Mark Ronson. "Welcome To The Walk Alone" shows the Rumble Strips in a much more widescreen light than their previous offering with parping brass toned down and the FILMharmonic orchestra of Prague drafted in by Owen Pallet (The Arcade Fire, Final Fantasy) to fill this album with incredible cineramic textures and epic arrangements.

Taken from The Rumble Strips forthcoming album "Welcome To The Walk Alone". This song has been a staple of the band's live sets over the last 12 months. Produced by Mark Ronson and arranged by Owen Pallet.

Hot on the heels of 1997's "Portishead" album, "Third" has a lot to prove in order to reclaim fans of "Dummy" 14 years down the line. The last 10 years seems to have been well spent amassing a whole new trove of influences to draw upon, making sense of their choice of acts at the All Tomorrow's Parties weekend. Boris, Ladytron, Kling Klang and Om have replaced valium-slow Isaac Hayes samples and vinyl scratching as reference points this time around, while primitive synthesizers and Adrian Utleys' take on the US drone rock movement dominate on many tracks. Lead single, "Machine Gun" is something of a curveball, taking no prisoners with its' juddering avant-electro update of "Blue Monday"'s drum pattern before the mood settles with the introduction of chanteuse Beth Gibbons. For those who enjoyed the Beth Gibbons "Out Of Season" album from 2002, there are similar forays into chilly nu-folk. While there's little point in wondering whether this will have the same impact as either of its predecessors, one thing is for certain, they haven't let the grass grow under their feet.

TRACK LISTING

Silence 5:01
Hunter 3:59
Nylon Smile 3:20
The Rip 4:31
Plastic 3:31
We Carry On 6:28
Deep Water 1:33
Machine Gun 4:46
Small 6:47
Magic Doors 3:32
Threads 5:48

Scooping glorious chunks out of their own 'Bay Area' harmonies with addictively wilful grooves of chiming guitar, bass and drums, Rogue Wave lay down the blueprint for forthcoming album "Asleep At Heaven's Gate", on this 7" single.

"Rid Of Me" was PJ Harvey's second album, circa 1993, but her first for major label Island. The set features the same line-up as the "Dry" sessions (Polly doing vocals, guitar, violin, cello and organ, Stephen Vaughan on bass and Robert Ellis on drums, vocals and harmonium), but the extra money shows in the much slicker production to the album's predecessor. Recorded by Steve Albini, this forceful sophomore effort veers from hoarsely quiet to ferociously looming in one beat.

If "Dry" was raw and "Rid Of Me" tight and slick, then 1995's "To Bring You My Love" moves further away from PJ Harvey's debut album, offering a fuller electro-acoustic sound from her expanded nine-piece band (more if you count all the instruments Harvey plays herself). The outfit shift effortlessly between solo voice and guitar to a full on collage of sound that rips right through you. Includes the brilliant "Down By The Water".

TRACK LISTING

1. To Bring You My Love 5:32
2. Meet Ze Monsta 3:29
3. Working For The Man 4:45
4. C'mon Billy 2:47
5. Teclo 4:57
6. Long Snake Moan 5:17
7. Down By The Water 3:14
8. I Think I'm A Mother 4:00
9. Send His Love To Me 4:20
10. The Dancer 4:06

This is very much a complimentary release to the critically acclaimed "Year Zero" and the latest remix album from Trent Reznor since his last effort, 2000's "Things Fall Apart". This time around Reznor 'reached out to heroes, friends and strangers' whos efforts are compiled on these releases. Remixes are of tracks taken from the "Year Zero" album and featured remixers include Phones (Paul Epworth), Ladytron and Stephen Morris (Joy Division/New Order).

New single from the Manchester based rockers Nine Black Alps. Taken from their forthcoming album "Love Hate"; "Bitter End" is a powerful yet melodic three-minute pop song drawing influences from the likes of The Lemonheads, Nirvana and Blind Melon.

After self-releasing several well-received singles, Tindersticks became darlings of the mainstream British and alternative American press with the 1993 release of their eponymously titled debut album. Moving from classically-tinged ballads, chaotic rockers with plenty of cacophonous dissonance, and simple, yet captivating pop gems, the band proved that an album with twenty songs could maintain a consistent vision without becoming repetitive. Where their contemporaries were often direct and to the point, Tindersticks were obtuse and leisurely, crafting dense, difficult songs layered with literary lyrics, intertwining melodies, mumbling vocals, and gently melancholy orchestrations. Essentially, the group filtered the dark romanticism of Leonard Cohen, Ian Curtis, and Scott Walker as filtered through the bizarre pop songcraft of Lee Hazlewood and the aesthetics of indie rock and with each successive record, the band upped the orchestral ante without compromising melody, subtlety or mood. This double CD contains 25 of their BBC In Session recordings made between 1993-1997, selected by the band. The artwork was designed by Stuart Staples and sleeve notes written by David Boulter.

This is a split LP by two fun noise makers from opposite sides of the world. Paradise Island is the side project of Jenny Hoyston, lead singer of Erase Errata (Kill Rock Stars). PI was created as an outlet for her musical experimentations ranging from electronic blips and bleeps to acoustic soulful yearnings. Dada Swing is comprised of Noisy Pig, Manuela, and Nino all hailing from Rome, Italy. Dada Swing are world tour animals and have performed with The Gossip, Erase Errata, Numbers, XRBRX, and many more.

Three years on from her debut "Frank" and all the acclaim she got back then, 2006 sees Amy Winehouse back at the centre of media attention with its follow up, and especially inspirational new single "Rehab" which kicks things off here too. Bracketed in with the nu-soul singers back then, Amy always had more of a jazz edge to her songs, and especially her voice which sounded like it should be coming from a 50-year-old black American singer, not a skinny white Londoner. With "Back To Black" she takes a trawl through the sound of 60s soul, girl group pop and the kind of laid back torch song crooning favoured by the mafioso of old, all given a totally modern twist by her smart confessional lyrics. This all comes backed by The Dap-Kings and features lush orchestration too, with production by Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi. ESSENTIAL!!!

TRACK LISTING

Rehab 3:34
You Know I'm No Good 4:17
Me And Mr Jones 2:33
Just Friends 3:13
Back To Black 4:01
Love Is A Losing Game 2:35
Tears Dry On Their Own 3:06
Wake Up Alone 3:42
Some Unholy War 2:22
He Can Only Hold Her 2:46
Addicted 2:45

Debut UK release from Australian singer-songwriter Josh Pyke. "Middle Of The Hill" is a rather lovely rambling pop song, with an endless stream of cute, funny story-telling lyrics about his childhood, that Josh reels of hardly pausing for breath.

Whether or not you believe he was raised by pheasants following his birth in 1904 as his Myspace page purports, a glimpse of the refined, debonair and charismatic Luke Toms leads you to think he may just believe it himself. Equally influenced by Hercule Poirot (moustache, pre war fascination) as Freddy Mercury (moustache, consummate showman) and with a Bowie-esque performance on this hazily rich new single "Peace By Myself", Toms really is quite unlike any other singer songwriter in the UK today.

Another stunning single taken from the album of the same name. Delicate guitars and a gorgeous voice that's part Jeff Buckley, part John Martyn and part Elliott Smith.

The twelve tracks featured here were chosen by Polly herself, and span her career from early versions of songs from "Dry" to songs from her seventh album "Uh Uh Her" which was released in 2004.

Called "The Outsider" beccause he has never fitted into any particular clique, DJ Shadow's new album is eclectic as ever. There's songs with samples and songs with no samples. There's very dark stuff and very light stuff. Fast and slow. Simple and complicated. Vocal and instrumental. Hip hop, blues, crunk, soul, hardcore punk, psyche, breaks - it's all here, making for another satisfying stew of sounds. Guest vocalists include Kasabian's Sergio Pizzorno & Christopher Karloff, Q-Tip & Lateef The Truth Speaker, The Heliocentrics (Malcolm Catto and pals), Chris James (Stateless), David Banner, Christina Carter (Charalambides), Phonte Coleman (Little Brother) and many more.

The first single to be taken from their "Under The Iron Sea" LP.

John's debut solo album from 1967 has been digitally remastered from the original master tapes and now comes complete with the previously unreleased bonus track "She Moved Through The Fair". The enhanced booklet also contains sleevenotes by John Hillarby.

Nine Black Alps release at last their hugely anticipated debut album. The product of their LA recording sessions with Beck and Elliot Smith producer Rob Schnapf, "Everything Is" includes their long deleted debut single "Cosmopolitan" along with recent singles "Shot Down" and "Not Everyone".

Having already gained an underground following with his US releases on Hollywood Basic, his own Solesides label and via the ultra-hip Mo' Wax imprint, the arrival of the 1995 recorded (hence the tenth anniversary deluxe edition reissue) and 1996 released "Endtroducing..." saw DJ Shadow gain plaudits across the globe. With his crate diggers magpie-like sample finding ability, Shadow took hip hop's blueprint of building breaks from old records to another level, creating an often psychedelic, tripped-out, but still funky selection of instrumental tracks that totally reinvigorated the 'trip hop' scene and inspired many artists who followed. Our (and so many others') record of the year for 1996, "Endtroducing..." still sounds as fresh as ever in 2005!

Digitally remastered with bonus tracks, "Farewell To A Poor Man's Son" and "Breakfast In Mayfair", enhanced packaging and extra sleeve notes.

His third and final studio album is a fittingly stark and sombre collection of songs, featuring just guitar and voice (bar a piano on one track). Shorn of the usual lavish arrangements, the songs lose none of their lustre, instead the songs themselves are pushed to the fore. A magnificent swansong.

TRACK LISTING

Pink Moon
Place To Be
Road
Which Will
Horn
Things Behind The Sun
Know
Parasite
Free Ride
Harvest Breed
From The Morning

The second single to be taken from the eagerly anticipated second album by Brighton's finest.

This 1970 debut is surely one of the most accomplished in pop history, marking the young singer songwriter out as more than another folkie. Jazzy instrumentation and sweeping string arrangements give the record a sumptuous feel that is undermined by the brooding melancholy of "Fruit Tree", "Way To Blue" and the haunting, magisterial "River Man". A classic that has reached such disparate souls as Elliott Smith, Paul Weller, Terry Callier and Gilles Peterson.

TRACK LISTING

Time Has Told Me 3:56
River Man 4:28
Three Hours 6:01
Day Is Done 2:22
Way To Blue 3:05
'Cello Song 3:58
The Thoughts Of Mary Jane 3:12
Man In A Shed 3:49
Fruit Tree 4:42
Saturday Sun 4:00

The classic 60s group Nirvana get the remastered treatment with bonus material and enhanced packaging.

First time on CD, this classic 60s group's rare third album is remastered with enhanced packaging.

Fairport Convention are rightly regarded as the greatest band to originate from the British folk rock scene of the 60s. Over the course of their first three albums they shaped a new, unique style by drawing on traditional folk tunes and contemporary American songs as well as the songwriting talents of Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Ian Matthews. A crucial change had taken place since the release of their debut album when Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny (known as Sandy) joined the band. Sandy Denny was the greatest female folk singer of her generation and "What We Did On Our Holidays" opening song "Fotheringay" is a Denny classic - her achingly beautiful and penetrating vocal adding an extra dimension to a band already overflowing with talent. 1969's "What We Did on Our Holidays" is one of their finest albums with its mix of traditional folk songs, their best self-penned songs to date and wonderful cover versions of Dylan and Joni Mitchell tracks.

Debut album from the hotly-tipped duo of Imogen Heap and Guy Sigsworth, AKA Frou Frou. Sigsworth has produced and made music with loads of people, including Bjork, Madonna, Bomb The Bass and Talvin Singh amongst others. He provides a 2002 mix up of musical styles (electronica, downbeat, breaks drum 'n' bass etc) for Imogen Heap's folk-soul vocal to weave in and out of. This CD is the Moby "Play" or Goldfrapp "Felt Mountain" for 2002 - perfect sofa music! Lastly, sorry there's no MP3 clip to listen to - the CD has an enhanced section of visual content, which means none of our PC recording systems work when you put the CD in! Doh!

Six years after his groundbreaking debut LP "Entroducing", Josh Davis (AKA DJ Shadow) is back with the follow up. This is everything you want from a DJ Shadow LP - crazy B-boy breaks cut ups, sublime hip hop instrumentals, oddball samples, quirky downbeat and leftfield rock weirdness. This is a totally epic LP.

One of the greatest rock bands of all time with their classic debut. Now remastered with eight rare bonus tracks, full of youthful vitality and a sense of invulnerability, listen to Kossof on "Goin' Down Slow" to get a real idea of what blues-rock guitar is all about.

There are influences of Van Der Graaf and Gentle Giant in this 1977 Swiss bands only release. Hints too of Magma and Gong but from the eerie H.R.Giger take on the "Isle of the Dead" to the epic closing track, the 23 minute "Empty Bottles" there is always something to enjoy on this real prog rarity, one well worth discovering.

New album from Trent Reznor. Includes an Adrian Sherwood / Mark Stewart produced track, and a cover of "Metal" by Gary Numan.

Brand new album from Bono and the boys, back to playing straight forward rock songs.