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

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

Sons of Kemet returns in 2021 with their new album Black To The Future. The follow up to 2018’s Mercury Prize nominated breakout release Your Queen Is A Reptile. This is their 4th record, and 2nd on impulse! Compared with ”Your Queen is a Reptile”, this album has featured vocalists and more of an emphasis on fuller compositions and arrangements. Guest artists include Kojey Radical, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Joshua Idehen, D Double E.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Oooft! Just what was lacking from this year, Sons of Kemet delivering the goods with 'Black To The Future'. Featuring vocals on this album adds an extra something special, definitely a firm favourite of mine for 2021.

TRACK LISTING

1. Field Negus Feat. Joshua Idehen
2. Pick Up Your Burning Cross Feat. Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid
3. Think Of Home
4. Hustle Feat. Kojey Radical
5. For The Culture Feat. D Double E
6. To Never Forget The Source
7. In Remembrance Of Those Fallen
8. Let The Circle Be Unbroken
9. Envision Yourself Levitating
10. Throughout The Madness, Stay Strong
11. Black Feat. Joshua Idehen

The Black Keys release their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

Auerbach says of the album, “We made this record to honor the Mississippi hill country blues tradition that influenced us starting out. These songs are still as important to us today as they were the first day Pat and I started playing together and picked up our instruments. It was a very inspiring session with Pat and me along with Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton in a circle, playing these songs. It felt so natural.”

Auerbach says of Delta Kream’s first single ‘Crawling Kingsnake’: “I first heard [John Lee] Hooker’s version in high school. My uncle Tim would have given me that record. But our version is definitely Junior Kimbrough’s take on it. It’s almost a disco riff!” Carney adds, "We fell into this drum intro; it's kind of accidental. The ultimate goal was to highlight the interplay between the guitars. My role with Eric was to create a deeper groove."

The music from northern Mississippi, which came to life in juke joints, has long left an imprint on the band’s music, from their cover of R.L. Burnide’s ‘Busted’ and Junior Kimbrough’s ‘Do The Romp’ on their debut album, The Big Come Up; to their subsequent signing to Fat Possum Records, home to many of their musical heroes; and to their EP of Junior Kimbrough covers, Chulahoma.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crawling Kingsnake
2. Louise
3. Poor Boy A Long Way From Home
4. Stay All Night
5. Going Down South
6. Coal Black Mattie
7. Do The Romp
8. Sad Days, Lonely Nights
9. Walk With Me
10. Mellow Peaches
11. Come On And Go With Me

In many ways, DJ Black Low’s debut album, Uwami, shows the signs of an artist’s first offering in any musical genre. Showcasing fluency in a broad range of styles and stuffing a number of ideas to the record’s brim is the 20 year-old producer’s attempt to both introduce himself to a wide listenership and stamp a recognizable sound in their minds. In other ways, somewhat out of the young South African producer’s control, Uwami goes against the grain. The album comes at a time when South African electronic music is being fundamentally disrupted. Amapiano, the electronic music movement which first gained popularity with a small, core group of followers, now dominates the mainstream. Well-known and pervasive, amapiano borrows from a diverse palette of musical styles which are popular in South Africa’s largely Black townshipsjazz, kwaito, dibacardi, deep and afro house among them.

Instead of pandering to the seemingly insatiable local appetite and growing global penchant for amapiano though, on Uwami DJ Black Low seeks out the limits of the sound du jour and tries to stretch them. On his solo productions, he uses the samples and compositional norms that make amapiano hits the bedrock on which to experiment and improvise. With collaborators, DJ Black Low improvises within the boundaries of listener-friendly grooves. The sound he creates has foundations of what could easily have progressed into captivating amapiano songs on their own. But he uses improvised but structured electronic percussion and distortion sounds to drive the tracks in a particular direction. What remains is something like a deconstructed amapiano.

For a young producer living in the townships of the greater Pitori area of South Africa’s Gauteng province, there were few avenues available for Radebe to pursue a career in music. His trajectory shows the vulnerability of this pursuit. “I had started producing in 2013 and it so happened that I lost my equipment in 2014. I couldn’t afford to buy equipment. In 2017, a friend of mine who had been making music found a job and decided to quit music. He gave me his equipment and I was able to start producing again. That’s when I started getting back to it. I tried to pick up where I had left off, with hip hop and commercial house but I found that amapiano was the popular music. I liked it, so I started producing it.”

TRACK LISTING

1. DJ Black Low & Hapas Music Feat. DJ KS & Patna “Jaiva Low”
2. DJ Black Low & Tap Soul Feat. Licy Jay & Eto “Emcimbinii”
3. DJ Black Low Feat. DJ Saxo Boy “9 Days”
4. DJ Black Low & Kapzela Feat. Licy Jay & MLG “Emonate Oe Bethela D Vosho”
5. DJ Black Low “Downfall Revisit”
6. DJ Black Low “Stiwawa Quitter”

CD Version Also Includes:

7. DJ Black Low & Mr Perfect Feat. DJ Labengwa “Alone In A Dark”
8. DJ Black Low Feat. DJ Labengwa Licy Jay & Menate Entertainment “Sbone (Vocal Mix)”
9. DJ Black Low Feat. DJ Labengwa “Down The Road (Original Mix)”
10. DJ Black Low “Vula Vala”
11. DJ Black Low “60 Days No Sleep”

Black Spiders – Those Trusted And True Sons Of The North Are Back. “We knew the new album had to be special. We’ve been away for a while. The first album was a straight shot, the second on the rocks, with this new one we had to kick down the brewery doors!” Pete Spiby. Back in June of 2017, Sheffield rock beasts Black Spiders waved goodbye to an army of loyal fans with some sonically charged shows before retreating into the shadows. And then, in November of last year, with the world in the grips of the Coronavirus pandemic and after a long year of very little fun from out of the silhouettes they returned with ‘Fly In The Soup’, the first new Black Spiders music in 6 years.

Exactly the feel-good shot in the arm the world needed, while we await that other vaccine. The seeds of the Black Spider return were actually planted last summer, when singer and guitarist Pete Spiby began taking to guitarist Ozzy Lister to start writing new material and before they knew it, they had amassed the best part of 40 songs in a very short period of time which they whittled down. And then the pandemic hit. “It’s certainly been a strange process, in unfamiliar territory,” explains Pete. “We started to look at how we could do it given the restrictions and not only that, but we had to replace our original drummer too. For us and probably most other bands, we would usually take a riff or song idea to a rehearsal and thrash it out ‘till we either had something or it ended up in the song graveyard! This time around we couldn’t do that, so myself, Ozzy and on occasion Adam Irwin (bass player) started to send ideas back and forth until we had something to work with in GarageBand. We got to a point where we had enough song ideas with basic structure to go into a studio. It was at this point when we had to look for a new drummer.” With former drummer ‘Tiger’ Si Atkinson unavailable to play, with a week or two of grooming, the band took a chance on Planet Rock DJ Wyatt Wendel to occupy the drum stool. “I've never joined or worked with a band in this way EVER,” laughs Wyatt. “2020 certainly made it surreal. “A Pete/Ozzy writing session at the beginning of the year had produced some promising results, but it felt like barriers were popping up everywhere,” explains bassist Adam Irwin. “We started talking about how we could use technology such as GarageBand to help, and slowly but surely the song writing gathered pace. It was time to hook up with our old producer Matt Elliss and try these new songs out in the studio.

"Heading into the studio to record songs we’d written but never played together, with a drummer that we’d never met, is one of the stranger experiences I’ve had while being in a band. Thankfully, Wyatt has turned out to be an excellent addition, who despite his faults (loud, southern) has fit right into the 3 band dynamic. Covid has made life really tough for so many of us in our industry. And yet, this new way of song writing has been liberating, this is the most consistent and prolific we’ve ever been, and I am immensely proud of this album.”

Against all of the odds, Black Spiders have crafted an album that features 13 tracks of high-energy, feel-good rock n’roll contrasted by demonic doom that despite the disjointed, isolated way it was recorded. It sounds like a band, firing on all cylinders. “We had to dig down deep to pull out some gems and what would we want from Black Spiders,” questions Pete. War, vengeance, mental health, death, conservation & climate change, where are we from? Relationships, friendships, our flaws. Where are we going? Alien life and Mother Earth - some of which made the record.” Kicking off with the aforementioned ‘Fly In The Soup’ single, this 3rd ST long-player wastes no time in grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and dragging you through an album where good times, hooks and riffs are not in short supply, but the doom-drenched likes of ‘Wizard Shall Not Kill Wizard’ and the psychedelic groove of album closer ‘Crooked Black Wings’ give us an album of many moods and dynamics and a reason to be cheerful in 2021. And why does the album have no title? “It wasn’t hard picking a title for the album, as we decided that the focus should be on the band, not the album title, so we decided not to have one. Let the music do the talking....

TRACK LISTING

1. Fly In The Soup
2. Stabbed In The Back
3. Wizard Shall Not Kill Wizard
4. Back In The Convent
5. Give Em What They Want
6. Good Times
7. Death Comes Creepin
8. Nothing Better
9. Rock And Roll
10. Free Ride
11. No Luck No Bones
12. Down To The River
13. Crooked Black Wings

The Black Bones story is born out of a shared obsession for crate digging, collecting, and the playing of weird and wonderful music. Their releases so far have manifested in a highly-sought series of seven psychedelic disco 12”s - picking up numerous Record of the Week plaudits on the way. This considered curation and skill for pulling together far-flung sounds fully informs their first original material. These four bold and adventurous club cuts are a thrilling mix of straight-up house sounds, new beat, industrial, dub, sleaze and all the other good shit that comes with low-lighting and a heavy sound system. Kicking off with the full throttle 120 bpm of ‘ABTS’ - the duo take you straight to the ‘floor with one of the wildest rides we’ve heard in some time. ‘Denied’ pulls us in to darker territory - chest pummelling bass, ominous high-pitched warnings and a chuggy acid throw-down finding us once again lost in that 5am dance floor fog. Over on the flip and ‘Punghi’ combines a hypnotic groove, dubbed out FX, percussion and a tripped-out Eastern breakdown. One for the more adventurous DJs and dance floor! The EP is closed by 'Gabi’ which sounds like minimal gone maximal with an insane industrial switch-up. Enough words! As always, Black Bones let the music do the talking and this ambitious debut can quickly find itself shelved alongside the records that have fuelled their lifelong obsession.

TRACK LISTING

1. ABTS
2. Denied
3. Punghi
4. Gabi

It's almost as if after naysaying for 25 years, GY!BE have proven that the car is indeed on fire, and resolutely driverless, resulting in one of their most unhurried and jubilant offerings yet. There are moments of spine-tingling beauty, coated in a lacquer of hazy field recordings and snappy militaristic percussion.

As with a lot of their releases (including my “favourite album in the world ever”, Lift Yr Skinny Fists….), the pieces here are crafted from a number of sections and listed in parts, leading to a cohesive and developmental audio narrative, lurching from shadowy glitched shortwave radio noise to crashing waves of orchestral chaos. There are very few moments where you aren't overcome with emotion, it's as bold and as beautiful as anything they've ever done, and has rare moments of true joy. An unendingly superb outing, and a brilliant return for one of the greatest bands around.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There’s a lot to be stressed about isn’t there? The ongoing climate crisis, an unprecedented pandemic and a worrying spate of governmental and social trends all coalescing into a time of undeniable reflection. It seems like GYBE would fit right in then, with cars on fire (and the lack of drivers therein) and the suchlike being canonically, their bag.

It might come as a surprise then, that while the classic themes of corruption, capitalism and greed are sewn into the fabric of this Canadian dectet, the accompanying music in this case is (to these ears), wilfully jubilant.

You’ll have to bear with me on the track titles, because much like the actual titles of confirmed ‘Best Album In The World’ (Barry, 2000 - present), ‘Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven’, the tracks here are broken down into their constituent parts, and named individually, and sequentially.

We kick things off with the first side of the 12” for you vinyl folk or what I believe they call ‘Track One’ for the CD crowd. ‘A Military Alphabet…’ begins with the newly fired up shortwave radios (for any of you that don’t listen to Set Fire To Flames a lot / at all, a brilliantly immersive and perfectly transportive collage of found sound and radio hiss), and slowly morphs into a similarly textural swell of strings and slowly trembled guitar. It’s really very reminiscent of the growing militaristic stomp of ’09-15-00’, the introductory piece from their last LP before their long Hiatus, ‘Yanqui U.X.O’, and is an undeniably necessary dipping of the toes before the full-spectrum swell and spine-tingling weight of the rest of the piece kicks in. It’s on the final movement of this 20-minute opus that carries all of the weight of the previous, bringing with an almost unbelievable levity. It’s an ode to a lost world, and a mournful but resigned grasp at the vestiges of a crumbling society.

‘Fire At Static Valley’ (the first piece from the 10”, or ‘Track 2’) is a shimmering, minor-key walk through the crumbling ruins, with tenderly strummed guitars and the ever-present strings both pulled and plucked, lending a sense of airy ambience and momentum to the rumbling bass boom, and culminating in a nigh-dissonant treble-heavy scree. It’s beautiful and mournful in equal measure, perfectly offsetting the uncharacteristic jubilance of the opener’s final movement before beginning our next selection of radio chatter and crackling hiss.

‘Government Came’ begins once again with the whirring crackle and oscillating drone of shortwave radios before a towering bass boom rises from the riotous audio throng. This is soon joined by a noticeably majestic sounding distorted guitar and monolithic percussive swells, drenched in reverb and delay, and alternating between barely noticeable melody and barely noticeable anything else. It’s not long before this characteristic unease lifts into a cathartic and intoxicating melodic counterpoint, rising into what is possibly the thickest wall of sound I’ve ever heard from them (and I’ve heard a LOT), and ending in organic panned sweeps of breathy instrumentation (didgeridoo?), and meandering guitar.

We end with the stunning ‘Our Side Has To Win (For D.H)’, an undeniably atmospheric number, rich with incidental harmonics and a perfectly balanced suggestion of exultation and resignation. Slow chord changes gently growing over a background of flickering strings and shimmering pizzicato.

It’s an album that takes their rightful anger of the early years, their moments of latent melodicism and tentative unease and brings them into one entirely cohesive and triumphantly essential album. A stunning, devastating return for one of the greatest bands of all time.

TRACK LISTING

12a [20:22] A Military Alphabet (five Eyes All Blind) (4521.0kHz 6730.0kHz 4109.09kHz) / Job’s Lament / First Of The Last Glaciers / Where We Break How We Shine (ROCKETS FOR MARY)
12b [19:48] “GOVERNMENT CAME” (9980.0kHz 3617.1kHz 4521.0 KHz) / Cliffs Gaze / Cliffs’ Gaze At Empty Waters’ Rise / ASHES TO SEA Or NEARER TO THEE


10a [5:58] Fire At Static Valley
10b [6:30] OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.)

Following a series of records with Thrill Jockey (including the sensational Seasonal Hire with Steve Gunn), the Black Twig Pickers return to the VHF mothership to continue their charming and original take on old time and Appalachianinspired string band sounds. Together since 2001, and a continuous presence in the music’s true home of Southwest Virginia, the Twigs represent the actively working evolution of the traditions—learning songs from other locals, playing dances at the Floyd Country Store, etc—without retroartifice or nostalgia.

The ragged-but-right performances and recording (and Sally Ann Morgan’s perfect cover design) sit at the ideal intersection of DIY / “underground” and local string-sound values. On Friend’s Peace, the band travels a range of styles, from the lovely harmony on the trad-classic “Moonshiner” to the racing fiddle / guitar / banjo on the “Money Musk” medley. Mixed in with the traditional songs are several perfectly-placed original tunes, including Mike Gangloff’s keening “Cara’s Waltz” and Isak Howell’s solo guitar spotlight on “Barnswallow.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Grand strings, plucked banjo and soaring vocal harmonies coalesce over traditional country ballads and southern folk songs, presenting a dynamic but comfortably familiar sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. Moonshiner
2. Money Musk/Icy Mountain/Tommy Hawk
3. Cara's Waltz
4. Sheets Of Rain, Streams Of Sun
5. Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?
6. Roan Mountain Sally Ann
7. Knight On The Road
8. Barnswallow
9. St. Valentine's
10. March Elliston Joy
11. Dan Friend's Piece

‘Written & Directed’ is Black Honey’s second album. It follows their outstanding self-titled debut released back in 2018 when the world that surrounded the Brighton fourpiece looked and felt like a very different place. Black Honey however are still the bad-ass, truly original band they have always been, they’ve just graduated from the intriguingly anomalous newcomers to becoming one of UK indie’s most singular outfits. They've travelled the world and released a Top 40 album; graced the cover of the NME and become the faces and soundtrack of Roberto Cavalli's Milan Fashion Week show; smashed Glastonbury and supported Queens of the Stone Age, all without compromising a shred of the wild, wicked vision they first set out with.

It's now time for the next instalment of their story – ‘Written & Directed” – which see’s Black Honey deliver one, very singular, message – a 10 track mission statement that aims to unashamedly plant a flag in the ground for strong, world-conquering women. For fierce frontwoman and album protagonist Izzy B. Phillips – it’s the most important message she could send to inspire her cult-like fanbase and fill the female-shaped gap that she felt so acutely when she was growing up and discovering rock music for the first time.

Written throughout 2019 and recorded in fits and spurts between touring, ‘Written & Directed’ is drenched with a hedonistic, anything-goes attitude. It’s also the most full-throttle collection of music that Black Honey have ever-written – egged-on by their run of shows supporting long-term friends and collaborators Royal Blood. Exploring everything from womanhood, to identity and power, it’s an album that revels in the rich history of pop culture, throws a wink to its rock-and-roll heroes, but ultimately (and in true Black Honey fashion) it stands on its own two feet.

With a typically hyper-visual world referencing grindhouse cinema, kitschy pulp films and a flip-reverse of female cinematic representation all primed to unfurl and explode around them, 'Written & Directed' is the sound of Black Honey strapping in and saddling up, of harnessing their quirks, and, as the Phillips has always hoped, riding them joyously into the sunset.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Black Honey return, bringing more of their scathing guitars and pummeling rhythms, pitch-perfect vocals and psychedelic grooves. A superbly singable and dynamic coalition of energy and politicism in one hugely enjoyable package.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Like The Way You Die
2. Run For Cover
3. Beaches
4. Back Of The Bar
5. Believer
6. I Do It To Myself
7. Disinfect
8. Summer '92
9. Fire
10. Gabrielle

The purveyors of 'Urban Country", Morton Valence release their dark 7th album on legendary UK label Cow Pie, established in 1978 by BJ Cole. ’Black Angel Drifter’ is an album of unorthodox ’country’ music and unlike anything you’ve heard before. This, the seventh studio offering from Urban Country duo Morton Valence (Anne Gilpin and Robert ‘Hacker’ Jessett), started life as their experimental side-project back in 2016. Notwithstanding more recent events, 2016 was quite a year, and whilst the band were preoccupied with other ventures Black Angel Drifter would bide its time. Fast forward to 2020 - a year that will unquestionably go down in the annals of history - and ‘Black Angel Drifter’s extraordinary sentiment could not resonate louder.

Legendary UK country label Cow Pie Ltd’s - established in 1978 by BJ Cole and Hank Wangford - sensibilities were especially tweaked and they were convinced it was time this spectacular album finally got the airing it has always deserved, remastered and repackaged for a new era. The album features ten tracks. From the explosive intro of ‘Skylines Change / Genders Blur’, coming at you like the illegitimate lovechild of The Jesus and Mary Chain and Ennio Morricone, to the down-at-heel ‘Black-Eyed Susan’, replete with sweaty priest and bullwhips, Morton Valence also flirt with the blues on ‘Sister Pain’, deliver sorrowful, divine love songs like ‘The Visit’ & ’Hymn Four’ and breathe fresh discordant life into the late 80s Bob Dylan classic, ‘The Man with the Long Black Coat’. As antithesis to a no regrets-type torch song, ‘If I Could Start Again’, where a man recounts his misspent life from a prison cell, could have been penned by Merle Haggard. The unrelenting ‘Trail of Tears’ is more akin to late-70’s Martin Rev robotics than anything ever created on a guitar. Alongside Gilpin and Hacker, Alan Cook’s sublime pedal steel guitar is omnipresent throughout the album. ‘Black Angel Drifter’ is an alt-country album that puts the rulebook through the shredder and starts again, set to put Urban Country on the map and give UK Alt-country an authentic new voice of its own, a voice that is genuinely original, new and exciting

TRACK LISTING

01 Skylines Change
02 Black Eyed Susan
03 Sister Pain 04 The Visit
05 The Man In The Long Black Coat
06 If I Could Start Again
07 Trail Of Tears
08 Lead On
09 Hymn
10 Crickets 8am

Dies Occidendum is a mythical voyage across fog-laden, scorched earth terrain from the original friar of dark hip hop, Dj Muggs the Black Goat. Known and revered as the sonic mastermind behind both Cypress Hill and his own Soul Assassins imprint, here Muggs sheds the MCs and presents his latest dark-soaked productions as an illuminated manuscript of sorts; a fully immersive, instrumental soundtrack to the mysterious Dies Occidendum. No one wields the Excalibur of sonic darkness quite like Muggs. Combining ingredients of psych rock, gypsy folk with modern elements of trap, forged together under layers of his signature sonic grime, Muggs has created yet another blueprint for the utmost sonic menace and macabre. The Renaissance is upon us. Long live King Muggs.

ABOUT DJ MUGGS:
One of the original architects of dark hip hop in the early ’90s, DJ Muggs helped craft a singular sound that blended darker sensibilities of psychedelic rock and hip hop in a unique way that influenced many in its wake. As the primary producer of legendary rap group Cypress Hill, Muggs’ productions and sonic sensibilities are unmistakable and deeply revered by the truest of hejkvgads. Muggs’ own MC round-robin imprint, Soul Assassins has been home to countless productions, laying sonic drop cloths for everyone from Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Chuck D, GZA, Mobb Deep to MF Doom, Freddie Gibbs, Roc Marciano and Mach-Hommy.

TRACK LISTING

1 Incantation (2:15)
2 The Chosen One (3:03)
3 Nigrum Mortem (4:07)
4 Liber Null (3:41)
5 Alphabet Of Desire (2:12)
6 Subconscious (2:42)
7 Veni Vidi Amavi (1:48)
8 Anointed (2:23)
9 Anicca (2:57)
10 Transmogrification (5:16)

Born from the Brixton Windmill scene that has seen the likes of black midi, Squid, Fat White Family and Shame rise to prominence, Black Country, New Road now take up the mantle and release their debut album.
The seven piece kick off proceedings with the aptly titled “Instrumental”, a maelstrom of sounds and influences including the post-rock mastery of Slint, the Klezmer style folk of Beirut and dapples of free-jazz improvisation.
Throughout the album’s six tracks those themes continue along with a simmering sense of drama and intensity. The best example of this occurs on the monolithic last track “Opus”, clocking in at just over 8 minutes it locks the listener in with a sprawling sonic soundscape of plateaus and troughs that recalls the mighty Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
For The First Time is an ambitious and intelligent album that stands out as one of the best debut releases of 2021.

TRACK LISTING

1. Instrumental
2. Athens, France
3. Science Fair
4. Sunglasses
5. Track X
6. Opus

The Black Keys release Brothers (Deluxe Remastered Anniversary Edition), an expanded version of their watershed 2010 multi-platinum, Grammy-winning sixth studio album via Nonesuch Records, on which the record is newly available throughout the world. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Brothers will be re-released with three added bonus songs: ‘Keep My Name Outta Your Mouth’, ‘Black Mud Part II’, and ‘Chop and Change’. It will be available in three formats: a 7” box set, a 2-LP set, and a CD. This will be the first in an annual series of archival releases from the band.

Brothers, originally released on May 18, 2010, was largely recorded at the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. It was a career breakthrough for The Black Keys, receiving critical praise and earning three Grammy Awards, for Best Alternative Album, Best Rock Performance, and Best Recording Packaging for Michael Carney’s design. Upon release, Rolling Stone hailed the album ‘a masterpiece’, and Uncut named them ‘one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands on the planet’.

TRACK LISTING

Everlasting Light
Next Girl
Tighten Up
Howlin' For You
She's Long Gone
Black Mud
The Only One
Too Afraid To Love You
Ten Cent Pistol
Sinister Kid
The Go Getter
I'm Not The One
Unknown Brother
Never Gonna Give You Up
These Days
Chop And Change*
Keep My Name Outta Your Mouth**
Black Mud Part Ii**

* Previously Released On The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

** Previously Unreleased

The Choice is Yours is one of the most celebrated 12” releases of the early 1990s. The story of why is told on this 7” - the first official release on this format (and, technically, the first UK release in any format except as a B-side). The original version, here on the flip, is a fine track in its own right, and is the version you’ll find on the seminal ‘A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ album. Built around elements from Johnny Hammond’s oft-sampled ‘Big Sur Suite’ from 1974 and incorporating snatches from Iron Butterfly and the Bar-Kays, it’s a truly original, witty track that showcases Dres’ deft wordplay and the group’s way with a hummable hook.

However, what made the song legendary was the reworked version called ‘The Choice is Yours (Revisited)’, here on the A-side. It more or less rebuilds the track from the foundations and, accompanied by an iconic and acclaimed video, is for many the definitive version. It’s the soundtrack to many a hyped club night, a track that could ignite the audience in the same way that Onyx’s ‘Slam’ would a couple of years later. It weaves together vocal stabs from Sweet Linda Divine with a propulsive bassline from McCoy Tyner that seems like a significant step forward in the jazz-sampling era of hip-hop. Widely quoted, referenced and even covered in music ever since, this is a classic that punches well above its weight.

TRACK LISTING

The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)
The Choice Is Yours

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 27TH FROM 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Debut solo album by Pulp vocalist and musician Jarvis Cocker, originally released in the UK on 13 November 2006. This album has been out of print for some time.

Limited run. Pressed on split colour green vinyl, includes etched 7” of ‘C**ts Are Still Running The World’.

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 27TH FROM 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.


Further Complications is the second solo album by Jarvis Cocker, originally released in the UK on 18 May 2009. This album has been remastered for RSD.

Limited run. Pressed on white vinyl – includes etched 12” of ‘You’re In My Eyes (Disco Song)’.

Black Heart Lullabies is a collection of of rarities, B-sides and bonus material featuring tracks such as To The End, Still Running, Something That Remains and Sparks which are all previously unreleased and Heroes In June which was only ever available in the US and France.

TRACK LISTING

Dark Therapy
Dying
Heroes In June
Sober
Bleed
Silence On The Radio
I Don’t Belong Here
I Am Awake
To The End
Strangely Drawn
From The Deep
Still Running
Ondine
Falling Flame
All Tomorrow Brings
God’s Guest List
When I See Red
Something That Remains
Atom
Sparks

The music of Black To Comm is as powerfully intoxicating as it is subtly unnerving. The solo project of shapeshifting German producer and sound artist Marc Richter, his mastery of sonic manipulation is matched only by his astounding clarity of vision.

Following the acclaimed ‘Seven Horses For Seven Kings’ released just a year ago, ‘Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens’ applies Richter’s wild imagination to an exploration of the human voice, standing as some of his most immediate and affecting music to date.

Each of his phantasmagoric works is meticulously constructed from an omnivorous array of smudged samples and other sonic detritus, painstakingly collected by Richter from across the history of recorded music or his immediate environment and altered into beguiling new shapes. Sound sources seem tantalizingly familiar and yet often just out of reach, flickering at the edges of the subconscious.

TRACK LISTING

Gustav Metzger As Erwin Piscator, Gera, January 1915
Stolen Androgens
Oocyte Oil
Gepackte Zeit (für Hanne Darboven)
Rataplan, Rataplan, Rataplan (Arms And Legs Flying In The Air)

Black Sheep – and their 1991 'A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing' album - were definitely an outlier in the Native Tongues fold. They were raunchier and more playful than their peers which, given that those peers were A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Jungle Brothers, is really saying something.

'Strobelite Honey' catches that difference perfectly, leaning heavily on a pair of 1980 disco samples rather than the jazz of their brethren, and taking a somewhat less chivalrous approach to women. 'Strobelite's slender but fun narrative sees rapper Dres up in the club and fooled by the lights – approaching a girl he likes the look off but backing off when they reveal she's not what he expected. Charmed, we're sure.

Dres and his partner Mr. Lawnge were always willing to push boundaries, and that extends to the often confusing labelling of the various remixes of this choice single. 12"s dropped with the 'No We Didn't Mix', 'Yes We Did Mix' and 'Maybe We Did Mix' (not to mention a separate 12" of House mixes).

The last and best of these accompanied the original version on the now-rare 1991 7", as it does here. The 'Maybe We Did Mix' adds urgent horns - almost like the buzzing of a bee - and a new beat to completely reconfigure the sound into something much more of its era. It's a reminder of when remixes were about much more than the same beat with different rappers.

TRACK LISTING

Strobelite Honey (Maybe We Did Mix)
Strobelite Honey (The Original)

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

Sea blue vinyl.

“One of music’s most perfect and unheralded rock outfits” – Magnet Magazine John Andrew Fredrick has written and released seventeen the black watch albums of sparkling, literate, jangly-distorted indie rock since the LA band’s inception in 1988 (as well as four works of comedic literary fiction and one book on the early films of Wes Anderson). For this record Fredrick had the idea of letting producer-friends Scott Campbell, Rob Campanella (producer for The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beachwood Sparks, Dead Meadow) and Andy Creighton be his band and record the album. “I have had, I think, too much control, musically speaking, in the past.’ Fredrick says, “And the thought of experimenting this way was really thrilling.” The result was far from a failure, in fact this approach may have yielded TBW’s best album in years.

"The Creation band Alan McGee never signed!"--Stereoembers “Should’ve become a household name a long time ago” – USA Today "Bright but with dark undercurrents, brainy but not pretentious, the music here on the new album from The Black Watch is proof that some Americans have a knack for this sort of thing. Full of big and bold music, The Gospel According to John is a record of luminous beauty in spots."--A Pessimist is Never Disappointed “Sounds like the holy union of Guided By Voices, The Wedding Present and any number of New Zealand pop heroes. In other words, it sounds truly indie: immediate, honest and just-enough lovingly rough” – Buzzbands L.A.

TRACK LISTING

1) Julie 2
2) Crying All The Time
3) Brilliant Failures
4) Twisted Thinking
5) Red Dwarf Star
6) The
Personal Statement
7) Mind You Now
8) Hodophobia
9) One Hundred Million Times Around The Sun
10) Anywhere/ Everywhere
11) Julie
12) What I Think
13) Technology

A unique compilation of tracks from blind blues musicians who left remarkable musical legacies in the face of incredible adversity. Featuring many legendary guitarists including Blind Blake, Reverend Gary Davis, Blind Willie McTell and Blind Willie Johnson

A remarkable phenomenon in the history of the blues was the vast contribution made by blind musicians, whose legacy left a lasting impact on American music to this day. From ‘The Father Of The Texas Blues’ Blind Lemon Jefferson to slide guitar evangelist Blind Willie Johnson, this Rough Guide highlights the blind blues pioneers who, against all the odds and in the face of incredible adversity, were responsible for a musical revolution.

The image of the blind bluesman is undoubtedly one of the most iconic and meaningful themes in the history of the blues. A diverse selection of tracks ranging from upbeat rags and gospel tunes to earthy blues. Highlighting the incredible contribution made by blind blues musicians that has left a lasting mark on the history of American music . Includes hidden gems by artists shrouded in mystery. Following on from the success of other blues titles in the Rough Guide range. A must-have album for blues guitar enthusiasts. Lovingly remastered using pioneering restoration techniques

TRACK LISTING

Blind Blake - He’s In The Jailhouse Now
Teddy Darby - Lawdy Lawdy Worried Blues
Blind Boy Fuller - Truckin’ My Blues Away No. 2 (Take 2)
Blind Lemon Jefferson - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
Sonny Terry - Harmonica Stomp
Blind Joe Reynolds - Third Street Woman Blues
Blind Joe Taggart - Religion Is Something Within You
Blind Willie McTell - Stomp Down Rider
Reverend Gary Davis - The Angels Message To Me
Willie Walker - South Carolina Rag (Take 2)
Blind Willie Johnson - Nobody’s Fault But Mine
Blind Roosevelt Graves - Crazy About My Baby
Blind Gussie Nesbit - Pure Religion

Max Graef and Julius Conrad are Ratgrave. ‘Rock’ is their second album - ongoing transmissions of Electronic P- Fusion from Earth. It follows a stellar debut on Funkineven’s imprint Apron. The duo’s sound palette draws inspiration from 80s funk, soul, rock and electronic but through a contemporary lens from two versatile multiinstrumentalists.

In their own words: “Rock is the essence of energy and vibration we felt in different styles of music, almost like a parallel component connecting all things we like. In the process of recording the new album we kept coming back to this essence no matter what style the original idea was. There was the raw and brutal energy of Jazz-Rock, a lot of video game influences that somehow adhered this essence just as well as quieter Pop and Psychedelic passages that we recorded. Among other things we absorbed a lot of heavy music during the time of the recording like Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Frank Zappa or Jimi Hendrix and realized while writing our own music how much impact they had even on quieter songs. This is why ‘Rock’ felt like the perfect title although the music ranges from P-Funk and Spiritual Jazz to various styles of Pop and beyond.” 

Max Graef has previously collaborated with Glenn Astro on records for Ninja Tune and both artists have previously released on Tartelet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: The perfect combo of funk/jazz/pop/electronic/balearic to transport you back to the 80s. These tracks would make legendary TV intros/title sequences, an ace mixture of all those genres and it works so well. Get your funk on!!

TRACK LISTING

Escobar
Theme From Metronome
World Aid
Instant Toothpaste
Eternal Breeze
Yurok
4 Benz
Dibidai
Rock
Bleeding To Death
Sturf
Alright
Mutti Hat Gekocht

The third album on Black Focus continues the South London tradition but this time in the form of one of the originators: a triple OG, Steve Spacek. Spacek recently released a solo record through Alexander Nut’s imprint Eglo, dBridge’s Exit Records as Blackpocket, following on from his work with Ninja Tune under the Beat Spacek moniker and collaboration with Mark Pritchard as Africa HiTech on Warp. He’s also made formative work with legendary artists J Dilla, Raphael Saddiq, Q Tip and Common and made early drum & bass tunes with his brother dBridge. It’s an incredible career resume and an honour to be releasing this new work.

‘Houses’ sees Spacek return to his Detroit influences, with house music at the heart of this record as its foundation but as with all Spacek’s releases, it transcends genre and focuses more on swing, melody and feeling. There are elements of soul, jazz and R&B interlaced within the DNA of his electronic music, alongside his signature falsetto vocals. The entire project was produced using iPhone and iPad apps, an approach Steve champions and feels liberated by using technology to join the past with the present.

Describing the project his own words: “It’s been well overdue for me to be releasing some 4/4 House vibes! This music has been a big part of my musical journey from dot. Mainly from two angles. The first is, of course, the early rave scene in London and the UK in general, with all its early iterations. Techno from the D, acid, (happy) hardcore, what we use to call dub house (pre jungle), coming into Garage and Balearic to name a few. The other angle is the music production angle: I’ve always used the basic 4/4 template as a means of being able to learn a new piece of recording equipment. Whenever I get any new beat making hardware or software, I’d always make a house beat. I find it the easiest music to make and have always joked about how I can knock up a house beat in 10 minutes! Well now I have an LP’s worth to share! Taken a tad longer than 10min but hey ;) Enjoy.”

TRACK LISTING

Rawl Aredo
Waiting 4 You
Where We Go
Tell Me
African Dream
Songlife
Higher Place
Single Stream
Love 4 Nano
Bright Eyes Rev *
Yu Used To Love *
Me *
Who Cares *
Child Insperation *

* = CD Bonus Track

Nas' 1994 debut "Illmatic" is rightly hailed as a paragon of underground hip-hop, a turning point in East Coast rap's development, and one of the all-time greatest debut albums in general. Though Nas' artistic legacy is without question, it was not always the case; if Nas had flourished during the mid-90s, he had stumbled clumsily while transitioning into the 00's. After achieving universal praise via Illmatic and commercial success with its' follow-up It Was Written, Nas' next few releases were considered inconsistent and lackluster compared to the critical one-two punch they followed. During this time period he had abandoned the socially-conscious and philosophical topics that made him a critical darling in favor of more commercially viable gangsta rap. Though he maintained a chart presence for much of the late-90s, review scores began to dwindle, and his status among the hip-hop community was thrown into question. This would change in 2001 with the release of Nas' fifth studio full-length, which made the effort to re-establish him as a legitimate artist. Eschewing the pop-friendliness he'd found success with, Nas instead opted to return to the underground style he came up in, with tracks about American politics, ghetto life, and social upheaval. Perhaps sensing this need to return to his roots, he titled the album "Stillmatic", a clear and present reference (and sequel of sorts) to Illmatic.

The ploy worked perfectly; Stillmatic was hailed by critics as a stunning comeback, and a brilliant return to form, earning rave reviews from rap outlets such as The Source and HipHopDX as well as from more mainstream publications as The Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. Praise was heaped upon the complexity and introspective nature of Nas' lyrical content, the top-tier production from veterans like Large Professor, DJ Premier, L.E.S., and Trackmasters, and hard-hitting guest appearances from AZ, Mary J. Blige, and Amerie. Stillmatic would see release on December 18th of 2001, right as Nas was caught in the middle of a highly publicized feud with fellow New York rapper Jay-Z. As such, the record features one of the feud's most intense apexes in the form of its second track "Ether", a ruthless Ron Browz-produced diss track. A response to Jay-Z's own diss "Takeover", "Ether" savaged the Brooklyn-native, accusing him of brown-nosing to get ahead, of plagiarizing earlier rappers such as Notorious B.I.G. and KRS-One, and dismissing his street cred. To this day "Ether" is considered one of the best and most potent diss tracks ever recorded, a major turning point in the Nas/Jay-Z feud, a standout among the already critically acclaimed Stillmatic, and is even credited with boosting Jay-Z's career by proxy. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Stillmatic (The Intro)
A2. Ether
A3. Got Ur Self A…
A4. Smokin'
B1. You're Da Man
B2. Rewind
B3. One Mic
B4. 2nd Childhood
C1. Destroy & Rebuild
C2. The Flyest (feat. AZ)
C3. Braveheart Party (feat. Mary J. Blige & Bravehearts)
C4. Rule (feat. Amerie)
D1. My Country (feat. Millenium Thug)
D2. What Goes Around (feat. Keon Bryce)
D3. Every Ghetto (feat. Blitz)

“What Black Lips do so well is tease the horror out of wholesomeness and recast golden-age rock’n’roll in a strange, discomforting light” Pitchfork.

“Cosmic country that comes strutting off a dusty back porch with gritted teeth” Consequence Of Sound.

It’s country music but not as we know it which begs the question: Have these Bad Kids of 21st Century rock ’n’ roll finally grown up on their ninth studio album? Are they at peace with themselves? Have they made a record their parents could listen to? The Black Lips new album ‘Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart’ continues to flick the middle finger to one and all. This ain’t another gaggle of bearded southern sons fleeing their collective suburban upbringings and collegiate music education. There aren’t the usual clichés about drinking, honkytonks, and heartbreak. These are, after all, the same Black Lips who rescued the waning garage punk subgenre by not sounding or dressing their musical predecessors. They also dug contemporary hip-hop and punk and actualized themselves Like so many dramatic moments in the Black Lips career, ‘Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart’ was born out of crisis. The band’s stylistic evolution through decades of prolific touring and recording took them where no garage punk band had gone before - huge venues, network television shows, and major music festivals. Here Black Lips are at their grimiest, most dangerous and equipped with the best collection of songs since the aughts. Skidding onto the asphalt in a shower of sparks, they roll on with an unapologetic southern-fried twang, pacing the beast, every now and then dropping a psycho howl into the rubber room madness lurking underneath the truckstop fireworks. This ain’t your granny’s country album. And conversely this ain’t your mama’s Black Lips.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Just as the thigh-slapping hoedown starts, it fades away into rich psychy rock and swinging blues riffage. Black lips have always been one of the most distinctive bands that start with 'Black___' (of which there are A LOT), and 'In A World That's Falling Apart' provides a feelgood alternative to that exact scenario. Turn it up and don't stress. Black Lips got this.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hooker Jon
2. Chainsaw
3. Rumbler
4. Holding Me Holding You
5. Gentleman
6. Get It On Time
7. Angola Rodeo
8. Georgia
9. Odelia
10. Dishonest Man
11. Locust
12. Live Fast Die Slow

20-year-old jazz prodigy Jamael Dean’s debut is the latest edition on Stones Throw Records. ‘Black Space Tapes’ is co-produced, compiled and sequenced by Carlos Niño, internationally celebrated producer, composer, arranger and DJ. At age 15, Jamael played with Kamasi Washington on his 2018 album ‘Heaven And Earth’ and toured as part of Thundercat’s trio. Jamael’s music reflects the dual influence of his contemporaries in the Los Angeles scene and that of jazz ancestors including Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and soul jazz drummer Donald Dean - who is also his grandfather.

TRACK LISTING

Akamara
Adawa
Kronos
Akamara (Remix)
Olokun
Emi

Montreal-based Common Holly (Brigitte Naggar) appeared a few years back with the surprisingly accomplished debut album, Playing House. Holding fast to the honesty of her debut, her impending follow-up is a look outward, a submergence into the dark and the dissonant with consolation found in harmony and humour. Like a ticking internal monologue, the nine labyrinthian yet catchy tracks observe the complexities of mental health, the precarity of life and the challenges of finding strength in the face of grave misunderstanding.

For fans of Cat Power, and Jessica Pratt.

Across their six official albums, Editors have achieved major success internationally, selling 2.6M albums worldwide, racking up Mercury nominations, multiple platinum and gold records, No 1s in the UK, Belgium and Netherlands and Top 10s right across the rest of Europe. The album includes 13 of the band’s biggest songs alongside three brand new tracks, including the title track ‘Black Gold’. The album cover was shot by award winning photograper Nadav Kander and designed by Tom Hingston (Massive Attack, Young Fathers, Nick Cave).

TRACK LISTING

‘Black Gold’
(LP/CD)
Frankenstein
Papillon
Munich
Sugar
Hallelujah (So Low)
An End Has A Start
Upside Down
Bullets
Ocean Of The Night
No Harm
Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors
A Ton Of Love
Magazine
The Racing Rats
Black Gold
No Sound But The Wind

‘Distance: The Acoustic Recordings’
(Deluxe 2CD Edition Only)
Violence
Walk The Fleet Road
Blood
Let Your Good Heart Lead You Home
Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors
Fall
Two Hearted Spider
Distance

Originally released in April 2003, Mute/BMG announce the long awaited vinyl reissue of the much sought after ‘Black Cherry’. Unavailable for many years, the album will be pressed on 140g Purple vinyl with an exclusive 12” x 12” art print.

‘Black Cherry’ will be the first of a series of limited edition Goldfrapp vinyl releases.

'Black Cherry’ still builds on their trademark experimental edges from their debut ‘Felt Mountain’ and that force is every bit as evident and not a shred less relevant. On first hearing, the driving basslines of 'Train' or 'Strict Machine', or the playfully, joyously sexual 'Twist' seem a world away from some of ‘Felt Mountain’s’ atmospherics. From the heartbroken beauty of the title track and the inordinately sensual, disturbed purr of 'Deep Honey' to the sonic whirlpools of 'Tiptoe', ‘Black Cherry’ reinforces Goldfrapp’s siren–like ability to suck you into other realms.

TRACK LISTING

Crystalline Green
Train
Black Cherry
Tiptoe
Deep Honey
Hairy Trees
Twist
Strict Machine
Forever
Slippage

The story’s almost over. A year on from the release of their first album, Here Lies The Body – a busy 12 months in which there was a Christmas album, a live album, countless shows and sessions – they have decided it’s time to part ways.

The goodbye comes in song: the final release, the brand new single Cut To Black, which serves as an epilogue to Here Lies The Body. The 7” vinyl single, is released by Rock Action and features an exclusive b-side with download.

TRACK LISTING

A - Cut To Black
B- Song On Song

Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble – featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children's Choir), and dancers (members of Chicago youth dance company Move Me Soul). Where Future Unfolds is a live capture of the ensemble's epic debut at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory on the West Side of Chicago. Recalling the spirits of Phil Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Eddie Gale's Black Rhythm Happening, Archie Shepp's Attica Blues, and Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the album presents an inspired, innovative & immediate intersection of gospel, jazz, activism & 808 breaks.

…about Damon Locks… Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist, musician, and deejay. Known for decades of different projects in Chicago’s underground music scenes, Locks’s CV starts in the late 1980s with the band Trenchmouth (which featured Fred Armisen on drums) and is highlighted by work with The Eternals (coled by Trenchmouth bandmate Wayne Montana), Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, collaborations with Nicole Mitchell, Ben LaMar Gay, and many others. In recent years Locks has traversed almost every media discipline… including sound/animation work using unheard Sun Ra recordings from Experimental Sound Studio’s archive (with Terri Kapsalis, Wayne Montana, and Rob Shaw); various collaborations with contemporary dancers & choreographers including Onye Ozuzu, Ayesha Jaco (of Move Me Soul), and Anna Martine Whitehead (on presentations & workshops with the Detroit Justice Center); participating in artist residencies at The New Quorum in New Orleans (alongside Nicole Mitchell, Lisa E Harris, Wadada Leo Smith, and others); teaching work with incarcerated artists for the Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville maximum security prison; and producing album artwork for several International Anthem releases, including Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings, Irreversible Entanglements, and more.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Statement Of Intent / Black Monument Theme
A2. Sounds Like Now
A3. Solar Power
A4. Rebuild A Nation
A5. Which I Believe It Will
B1. Which I Believe I Am
B2. The Colors That You Bring
B3. The Future?
B4. Power
B5. From A Spark To A Fire

Italy's Really Swing 12” series opens a new chapter here with the first release from Capinera, the brand new project from Leo “Almunia” Ceccanti and Gianni Apicella - if you know those names, you know you can expect deep Balearica, hints of jazz and flagrant Gilmour-isms. 
The two tracker opens with the frankly sublime "Black Flower", a fireside concoction of Methany-style acoustic guitars, detailed percussion and a stoned groove perfect for summer evenings and simple times...and if that didn't sound good enough, the dreamy vocal puts the cherry in your lambic. On B-side beauty "Into The Woods" we move even further into Methany territory with delicate guitars enjoying a snake hipped 5/4 while the gentle bossa rhythm dances into the sunset. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Black Flower
B1. Into The Woods

The Black Keys’ long-awaited ninth studio album, “Let’s Rock”, their first in five years, is a return to the straightforward rock of the singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney’s early days as a band. Auerbach says, “When we’re together we are The Black Keys, that’s where that real magic is, and always has been since we were sixteen.” 

“Let’s Rock” was written, tracked live, and produced by Auerbach and Carney at Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville and features backing vocals from Leisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxson. “The record is like a homage to electric guitar,” says Carney. “We took a simple approach and trimmed all the fat like we used to.”

Rolling Stone named ‘Lo/Hi’ a “Song You Need to Know” and said, ‘the Keys have officially returned, louder than ever’ and the New York Times calls the song ‘the kind of garage-boogie stomp that the band never left behind.’ In the words of the NME, ‘It’s the soundtrack to the type of party that doesn’t exist anymore, but one you still wish you were cool enough to get the invite to.’

Formed in Akron, Ohio in 2001, The Black Keys have released eight studio albums: their debut The Big Come Up (2002), followed by Thickfreakness (2003) and Rubber Factory (2004), along with their releases on Nonesuch Records, Magic Potion (2006), Attack & Release (2008), Brothers (2010), El Camino (2011), and, most recently, Turn Blue (2014). The band has won six Grammy Awards and headlined festivals including Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Governors Ball.

Since their last album together, both Auerbach and Carney have been creative forces behind a number of wide-ranging artists:
Dan Auerbach formed the Easy Eye Sound record label, named after his Nashville studio, in 2017, with the release of his second solo album, Waiting on a Song. Since its launch, Easy Eye Sound has become home to a wide range of artists including Yola, Shannon & The Clams, Dee White, Shannon Shaw, Sonny Smith, Robert Finley, and The Gibson Brothers; it also has released the posthumous album by Leo Bud Welch as well as previously unreleased material by Link Wray.

Patrick Carney has produced and recorded new music with artists such as Calvin Johnson, Michelle Branch, Damns of the West, Tobias Jesso, Jr., Jessy Wilson, Tennis, *repeat repeat, Wild Belle, Sad Planets, Turbo Fruits, and more. He also created the theme music for the Netflix TV show BoJack Horseman with his late uncle, Ralph Carney.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having always epitomised the fuzzy groove-led party vibe, it's no surprise that their latest is the most danceable and head-nodding instalment yet, but here it is. Bluesy, sleazy and heavy but crisp and beautifully presented. Black Keys do it again!

TRACK LISTING

1. Shine A Little Light
2. Eagle Birds
3. Lo/Hi
4. Walk Across The Water
5. Tell Me Lies
6. Every Little Thing
7. Get Yourself Together
8. Sit Around And Miss You
9. Go
10. Breaking Down
11. Under The Gun
12. Fire Walk With Me

black midi -- Georgie Greep (vocals/guitar), Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (vocals/guitar), Cameron Picton (vocals/bass), and Morgan Simpson (drums) -- have a dynamic energy, playing as a musical unit that’s constantly in a state of flux and development.

Schlagenheim was recorded with Speedy Wunderground producer Dan Carey, who the band praises for his quick, unfussy approach. black midi laid down eight of the record’s nine tracks in just five days. The process was one of refining and rebuilding tracks around the initial structures. Five hour jams would sometimes yield a riff that then became a few bars of a song. As anyone who’s been lucky enough to catch black midi live over recent months will testify, black midi’s songs are slippery creatures.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Much like the fervour that accompanied Battles' 2007 outing 'Mirrored', Black Midi have managed to make an indefinable and thrilling collection of angular post-punk, avant math-rock and percussive glitch without so much as a glance into their stylistic forebears. Singular in artistic scope and as forward thinking as they come, they are sure to have a loyal and enthusiastic following through their use of unexpected rhythms and off-piste stylistic flair.

TRACK LISTING

953
Speedway
Reggae
Near Dt, Mi
Western
Of Schlagenheim
Bmbmbm
Years Ago
Ducter

Sometimes, a mystical, life-changing connection can be closer than you think. In 2017, Grammy Award-winning guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada had recorded some instrumentals in his Austin studio, and he started looking around for a vocalist—he knew a lot of singers, but he wanted something different. He reached out to friends in Los Angeles, in London, but nothing seemed right. Meantime, Eric Burton had recently made his way to Texas. Born in the San Fernando Valley, he grew up in church and then got heavily involved in musical theater. He started busking at the Santa Monica pier, where he brought in a few hundred dollars a day and developed his performance skills. Burton traveled through the Western states before deciding to settle down in Austin—setting up his busking spot on a downtown street corner, at 6 th Street and Congress, for maximum exposure.

A mutual friend mentioned Burton to Quesada, saying that he was the best singer he had ever heard. The two musicians connected, but Burton took a while to respond (“My friends were like ‘Dude, you’re an idiot, you need to hit that guy back!’ “) Finally, he called Quesada, and started singing to one of the tracks over the phone. “I loved his energy, his vibe, and I knew it would be incredible on record,” he says. “From the moment I heard him on the phone, I was all about it.” The results of that inauspicious beginning can now be heard on the self-titled debut album from Black Pumas, the group that Quesada and Burton assembled, which has become one of the year’s most anticipated projects. Described as “Wu-Tang Clan meets James Brown” by KCRW, Black Pumas were the winner of Best New Band at the 2019 Austin Music Awards.

Quesada has a storied reputation from playing in bands like Grupo Fantasma and Brownout, accompanying artists from Prince to Daniel Johnston, and producing such acclaimed projects as 2018’s Look At My Soul: The Latin Shade Of Texas Soul. For the tracks that kicked off this project, though, he had a different direction in mind. “I was looking for somebody with their own identity,” says Quesada, “who liked Neil Young as much as Sam Cooke.” Burton’s taste, range, and experience proved to be exactly what Quesada was seeking. “We just take to the same kind of music,” he says. “I listen to East Coast hip-hop, old soul music, folk music. When Adrian sent me the songs, it was like I had already heard them before. We were on the same wavelength from the get- go.”  The first day they got together in the studio, they recorded the dusty funk that would become the Black Pumas’ first two singles, “Black Moon Rising” and “Fire.” Quesada had written the music for “Black Moon Rising” on the day of the 2017 solar eclipse, and Burton took that concept and ran with it. “Right away, the hair stood up on the back of my neck,” says Quesada. “I knew, ‘This is it—this is the guy.’ ”

Burton sensed the potential, as well. “When I saw that Adrian played with Prince and had a Grammy,” he says, “that he was a serious, respected artist, I knew that I would do my best not to squander that. If you can do it on the street, for a long time, without making yourself crazy, you can do it with a guy who’s won a Grammy.” The duo also knew that they didn’t want their sound to be too retro or imitative. “We didn’t want to just do throwback soul and pretend that hip-hop never happened,” says Quesada, nothing that it was listening to Ghostface Killah that initially triggered him to start writing this material. “It had to feel sincere coming from us. I have a certain aesthetic in the studio, Eric has a voice that evokes a certain era, but I don’t think we reference that too directly.” “Adrian has had the time and the interest to really dive into a specific sound, to recreate something he heard on a Motown record,” adds Burton. “And because of that specific knowledge, he provides an interesting sandbox for me, whose background is in theater, to do something super-unorthodox—to be an art student and play with all the colors I have, but to put it on something that’s more familiar to listeners’ ears.”

With Black Pumas having evolved from an idea to a session to an album, they decided to put a band together and see how this music sounded live. They booked a residency at C Boys (a sister venue to Austin’s famed Continental Club), initially playing every Thursday for a month. “We only rehearsed twice, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into,” says Quesada. “But with the first show, we knew it was unique, special—the chemistry and fire were there immediately. And what Eric could do as a frontman was like nothing I’d ever seen.”  As word got out, the C Boys shows turned into a local phenomenon (“the hottest party in town,” according to the Austin American-Statesman), with lines around the block despite the fact that the band had only released one song. The reaction to the group’s recent South by Southwest appearance helps explain the mania—the Chicago Tribune called Burton’s performance “a whirlwind of movement and gesture,” while Rolling Stone, in naming Black Pumas “One Of The 30 Best Bands We Saw In Austin,” wrote that “the hometown six-piece’s grooves were funky in a thick, viscous way, oozing out in ambitious jams that wandered into heady territory without meandering” and praising Burton’s “tireless, charismatic energy.”

The other, unexpected result of the C Boys residency was that Burton presented more of his own songs to help fill out the set, which led Black Pumas into new territory. “Eric had all these other songs based on other styles, going back into what he was doing when he was busking,” says Quesada. “It was a real spark that we could huddle around him and his songs, too, and get a real sense of what our sound was.” In fact, the final song recorded for Black Pumas was “October 33,” a tense, pleading ballad by Burton. “I didn’t feel like we had the right last song,” says Quesada, “we needed something with more of Eric on guitar. I said ‘I want to put down one more, do you have anything?’ and he texted me back exactly what I was imagining—it was almost unspoken.”

Quesada and Burton both return, over and over, to this almost mystical connection they felt from the beginning. It’s this sense of common purpose, of shared vision, that gives Black Pumas its focus and power—and that points to great things ahead. “It’s so seamless, it’s like we’re musical brothers to some degree,” says Burton. “It feels so easy to meld together that what’s most important for us now is to continue to look for new sounds—to make sure we’re feeding ourselves the knowledge to continue to evolve. Every time we get together, it’s better than the last time.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful groove-led juxtaposition of classic soul and simmering low-key funk, brimming with tenderly plucked guitars and phased Wurlis, all working their way around the momentum-filled majesty of Burton's perfectly fitting vocals. Stunning stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1 Black Moon Rising
2 Colors
3 Know You Better
4 Fire
5 OCT 33
6 Stay Gold
7 Old Man
8 Confines
9 Touch The Sky
10 Sweet Conversation

Bonus CD
(Recorded Live At Arlyn Studios – Austin, TX)
1. Black Moon Rising
2. Colors
3. Fire
4. Eleanor Rigby

Fantastic album from the acclaimed guitar and drum, Delta blues-infused rock duo from Akron, Ohio, The Black Keys. The album takes a few listens to get into - mainly down to the fact that the songs are, in general, quite understated rather than big catchy blues numbers, that grab you on first listen, but you're bored of within a week. You imagine that if Jack White could possibly get himself off the rock 'n' roll treadmill he'd love to kick back and make albums like this!!! A swaggering blues rock masterpiece!!

TRACK LISTING

1. When The Lights Go Out
2. 10 A.M. Automatic
3. Just Couldn't Tie Me Down
4. All Hands Against His Own
5. The Desperate Man
6. Girl Is On My Mind
7. The Lengths
8. Grown So Ugly (Robert Pete Williams)
9. Stack Shot Billy
10. Act Nice And Gentle" (Ray Davies)
11. Aeroplane Blues
12. Keep Me
13. Till I Get My Way

Raw, soulful blues-rock from this duo from Akron, Ohio. This is the awesome second album (their first in the UK) from Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney. With a stripped back guitar, drums and vocal line up this is top notch blues, set apart by Auerbach's distinctive fuzz guitar. Recommended.

TRACK LISTING

1. Thickfreakness
2. Hard Row" (lyrics By Dan And Chuck Auerbach)
3. Set You Free
4. Midnight In Her Eyes
5. Have Love Will Travel (Richard Berry)
6. Hurt Like Mine
7. Everywhere I Go (Junior Kimbrough)
8. No Trust
9. If You See Me
10. Hold Me In Your Arms
11. I Cry Alone

Originally released in 1973, Black Pearl’s overall sound is the epitome of cool, orchestral funk / dramatic styles of the 1970s (e.g. “Next Stop LA”, “Collect”, “Oh! Militia”, “Choctaw”, “Black Pearl”, and “Blue Shadow”). Also featured are several more romantic, laid-back, emotive pieces such as “Miraculous Dream”, “Tryst”, “Sunny Monday”, “Melody and Lace”, “Monochrome”, “No Return”. Not to mention a couple of surprise solo honky-tonk piano jaunts – “The Vamp” and “Night of the Garter”.An eclectic mix that is sure to pique anyone’s interest. The album was produced by Alan Parker and Alan Hawkshaw, who is perhaps best-known for composing “The Champ”, which has been widely sampled and emulated by hip hop artists.“Library records are a collection of little one-minute pieces for soundtracks recorded by session musicians for movies, TV, student films, whatever. I don’t actually know the story behind when, why, or where they were made but…there were a bunch of different labels that made them [and still probably do], and I was on the hunt for any recorded between 1969 and 1976. They all have random song titles like “Bouncy Strut” with descriptions like “hard-driving beat with percussion.” So imagine how much funky shit is on them. For me, De Wolfe Music was the best.”– Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz of the Beastie Boys 

TRACK LISTING

01. Next Stop L.A.
02. Miraculous Dream
03. Collect
04. Tryst
05. Sunny Monday
06. Oh! Militia
07. The Vamp
08. Night Of The Garter
09. Choctaw
10. Melody And Lace
11. Black Pearl
12. Blue Shadow
13. Monochrome
14. No Return 

Black Mountain’s Stephen McBean turned 16 way back in 1985. And yet, until just two short years ago, McBean had lived his entire adolescence and adult life without a proper driver’s license, that first and most coveted ticket to personal independence. When he did finally take the wheel in 2017, he essentially became a 48-year-old Sixteen Year Old, blowing out the doors off the DMV like a pyrotechnics display at a W.A.S.P. gig. Black Mountain’s new album, Destroyer, named after the discontinued single-run 1985 Dodge Destroyer muscle car, is imbued with all that wild-ass freedom and newfound agency (and anxiety and fear) that comes with one's first time behind the wheel. McBean, welding mask pulled over his Alan Watts beard, has even been rebuilding a 1985 Destroyer in his step-dad’s garage all spring — building it from its frame, putting in weekends of work to have this beast ready for sunnier days. And wouldn’t you know it: when the Destoyer's engine gives its deep snarl and the stereo rattles with Metallica's $5.98 EP, McBean is fully in the driver’s seat.

Destroyer is structured around that first time behind the wheel of a hot rod. The fat, charging “Living After Midnight” riffs of opener “Future Shade” is, according to McBean, “Straight outta the gates. FM radio cranked.” He ain’t kidding. The song, and all of Destroyer for that matter, seems to exist at that crucial nexus of the early-to-mid 80s Los Angeles when a war between punk and hair metal was waged. Black Flag’s My War tried and failed to keep the peace. But in the trenches, some hybrid ghoul was beginning to form in bands like Jane’s Addiction and White Zombie. The heavy extended player “Horns Arising,” with its Night Rider vocals and golden, climbing Blade Runner synths, is a fill-up at a desert gas station just in time to see a UFO hovering near a mesa. . And other songs, like The serpentine “Boogie Lover” is a cruise down the Sunset Strip. You pull into The Rainbow Bar & Grill to take the edge off. Doesn’t matter what year it is, Lemmy’s there in flesh or spirit. To continue the teenage theme, there’s also a sense of to these cuts — “High Rise” is a foray into Japanese psych, rounding the bend to a careening, youthful sense of discovery, while “Closer to the Edge” feeling like falling in love with Yes (Remember how good they were for a minute there in your youth?). “Licensed to Drive” would easily be the most exhilarating and dangerous ripper on a titular film’s soundtrack, a dose of heavy right before the muscle car’s wheels fly off going 100 mph on the freeway.

Shacked up in his rehearsal space, McBean found an old chair in an alley, spray painted Producer on the back and pressed record. Friends from the endless rock’n’roll highway were invited over and 22 songs were brought to life. And while some were laid back into shallow graves to dig up once again at a later date, the remaining skeletons were left above ground — given organs, skin, eyes, and the opportunity to grow their hair real long and greasy. Some of these zombie hesher jams were sent on a journey to Canada where longtime band member Jeremy Schmidt, slipping on the Official Collaborator satin jacket, had at them with his legendary synth arsenal. As he added long flowing robes, sunglasses, driving gloves and medallions, the undead songs began to transform into the new breathing creatures that make up Destroyer. Schmidt’s work with these songs was the needed transformative glue for this new era of Black Mountain.

Coming off his newfound automotive freedom, McBean also saw some personnel shuffling within Black Mountain. Both Joshua Wells and Amber Webber have retired their Black Mountain Army uniforms while Arjan Miranda paid his outstanding membership dues and rejoined. New members include Rachel Fannan (Sleepy Sun) and Bulgasem (Dommengang & Soft Kill) plus other familiar names like Kliph Scurlock (Flaming Lips), Kid Millions (Oneida), and John Congleton (St Vincent, Swans) take a turn in the shotgun seat. Collectively, there’s a renewed vitality to Black Mountain on Destroyer — a seasoned, veteran of heady hard rock that’s found new, young muscles to flex and roads to explore.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: On their 5th album, psych rockers Black Mountain go big. Less psych, more rock, Destroyer might be their most powerful and driving album to date.

TRACK LISTING

1. Future Shade
2. Horns Arising
3. Closer To The Edge
4. High Rise
5. Pretty Little Lazies
6. Boogie Lover
7. Licensed To Drive
8. FD’72

Black Peaches follow up their acclaimed 2016 debut with a dazzling display of musicianship on their explosive new album Fire In The Hole.

“Black Peaches existed inside me before I was aware of it,” says the band’s Rob Smoughton, also known as a member of Hot Chip and Scritti Politti. “It’s the culmination and continuation of the music I love. I started to notice how Brazilian rhythm, funk, soul, classic country and pop were all combining in the music I was writing, and I looked for other band members to join me to bring it alive.”

And he found other members to bring that combination alive in Susumu Mukai, Charlie Michael, Nick Roberts and Thomas Greene. Together they released 2016’s acclaimed Get Down You Dirty Rascals and now return with an album that continues to throw genres together with all the seamless grace of a seasoned cocktail maker but free of the postured affectations associated with such moves.

Black Peaches are a place where genres collide and musical eras meld. On their second album the band has absorbed all the tropical sounds, glistening melodies and funk-ridden grooves into a sound that is truly their own. “I wanted the combination and layering of our influences to be organic,” says Smoughton. “To create Black Peaches music. To take the ideas from the first record further into our own place.”

The result is a record that skips with the vibrancy and buoyancy of a band still in love with the idea of bringing their record collection to life, but the band now understand themselves as much as the music that inspires them and have created something new and refined.

Given the eclectic styles rooted in the make-up of the band, to enter into the world of Black Peaches is often to feel like one is flying from country-to-country with each new song. For Smoughton this musical traversing is a key part of the experience of the band. “I find the combination of mythology, history and geography to be romantic and I want our music to elicit the same thrill. I think the album conjures up the adventure of moving from one place to another; from Spain into Northern Africa, where North America tips into the South. Narratively the songs inhabit a place between the conscious and subconscious - between dreams and waking life.”

This globetrotting sonic voyage creates a sense of the unknown in the record, where each track exists as a new and unpredictable path. This is all done under the mission of creating a record that is capable of pure musical transcendence. “I really believe that music has the ability to transcend and move people emotionally and spiritually,” Smoughton says. “Our music is not about the separation between musician and audience but about the space in between.”

Yet the album also works on an intuitive and physical level. On top of its narrative of the world between the conscious and the subconscious, it is also simply a collection of songs to make you dance and move. Whether it’s the Delta blues influenced strut of “Lemonade”, the “slinky and naughty” dance floor pounce of “The Black Peach Boogie” or the Afro-Brazilian skip of “Cuatro Berimbau.”

Perhaps the most emblematic song of all when it comes to capturing the essence, power and groove of the album is the title track “Fire in the Hole”. “It comes from a phrase that miners would shout it to warn others that they had charged an explosive,” Smoughton says. “It’s to tell you something is about to explode. In this case it’s about being unable to resist the urge to dance. About giving over to rhythm and sound.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Cuatro Berimbau
2. Lemonade
3. Fire In The Hole
4. Barracuda
5. The Black Peach Boogie
6. Spice Route
7. Pillars Of Hercules

Bonus Dinked 7”
Side A
Bad Luck
Side B
Dub Peach Boogie

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2019 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

1000 only - soundtrack from much loved cult episode of ‘black mirror’.

first time on vinyl, bespoke artwork from butcher billy, includes ltd edition poster art print. 2lp red vinyl. “a brilliant take on star trek homages, gaming and toxic geekery” the guardian // the emmy nominated soundtrack from the much-loved emmy winning episode of black mirror. daniel pemberton’s score for black mirror’s ‘uss callister’ is available for the first time on vinyl with bespoke artwork from butcher billy and limited-edition poster art print. taken from the first show of the show’s fourth season, it’s the ‘star trek’ episode when a gifted programmer becomes frustrated with his job and creates digital clones of his co-workers for his own dark adventures in space. the ivor novello award winning, golden globe award and multi bafta nominated and acclaimed composer shifts effortlessly between symphonic and electronic instrumentation. “a brutal star trek scenario that’s half comedy, half indictment of silicon valley leadership” the verge // “one of hollywood’s most sought-after composers” screen daily.

Weezer return with their newest proper outing since 2017's 'Pacific Daydream' (aside from the 'Teal Album', a covers LP from earlier this year). Sporting the trademark Cuomo riffs and smooth punky two-chord battery, Weezer have never failed to write anthemic, catchy pop songs and the black album is no different. Perfectly produced and brilliantly written, this continues to show that the band remain as relevant today as they ever have. Full of an indeterminate amount of riffs and imbued with an energy few bands can fathom after being around for so long. Classic Weezer. 

TRACK LISTING

1. "Can't Knock The Hustle"
2. "Zombie Bastards"
3. "High As A Kite"
4. "Living In L.A."
5. "Piece Of Cake"
6. "I'm Just Being Honest"
7. "Too Many Thoughts In My Head"
8. "The Prince Who Wanted Everything"
9. "Byzantine"
10. "California Snow" 

Cardinal Fuzz and Lovers & Lollipops are proud to bring to you the new magnum opus from Black Bombaim titled 'Zone Of Resident Bodies'. Black Bombaim approached their latest creation with the mindset of pushing the boundaries of their musicianship by working with three different electronic composers in three unique recording settings -an old workers auditorium, a huge empty space on the postal office building and on a reverberation room on the university of engineering. Working with Jonathan Saldanha, Luís Fernandes, Pedro Augusto helped Black Bombaim break free of the constraints of a band in a recording studio as each new recording environment and composer brought new textures and ambiance to the music created. It really is rather special to hear.

“this is an amazing album of collaborations that I am sure has taken the participants outside of their respective comfort zones to produce a set that is innovative and explorative. You really will need to hear it all to fully appreciate its strength and breadth because it is outside those zones of familiarity where true expression can flourish… and flourish it certainly does here.” Psych Insight.

Through his output both as a sound artist and through his eclectic Dekorder record label, Black To Comm (Marc Richter) has established himself as a singular voice of new music. His Thrill Jockey debut, "Seven Horses For Seven Kings", is Richter’s most direct and visceral to date.

A relentless sonic explorer, he approaches the studio as his instrument, using sampling, analogue production and digital manipulation to sculpt audio fragments into surprising new shapes. Samples from Richter’s contemporaries like German composer Nils Frahm are bent and compounded with elements of early recorded music and medieval song, creating pieces that transcend time and genre. Richter blurs the lines between organic instrumentation and digital production to the extent that the two become inseparable.

"Seven Horses For Seven Kings" was completed during a particularly prolific period for Richter. Working on a broad range of commissions since his last album - from writing for film and theatre works to composing for art installations, apps and sleep music - generated a flurry of new ideas and influences. Extensive touring would equally come to inform a key shift in Richter’s music, simulating the raw, unpredictable energy of live performances on record. While rhythm has been largely absent from previous Black To Comm releases, here the music seems totally bound to it. The album’s breathtaking pace drives Richter’s music to new levels of intensity.

'Black To Comm is... like an abandoned museum of late-Twentieth Century instruments whose exhibits are still running at half power.' - New Yorker

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Pulsing doom-laiden ambience, rickety industrial echoes and foreboding strings form the backbone to Black To Comm's most evocative and absorbing work to date. Stunning stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Asphodel Mansions
A Miracle No-Mother Child At Your Breast
Lethe
Ten Tons Of Rain In A Plastic Cup
Licking The Fig Tree Threshold
Fly On You
Double Happiness In Temporal Decoy
If Not, Not
The Deseret Alphabet
Semirechye
Rameses II
Angel Investor
The Courtesan Jigokudayu Sees Herself as A Skeleton In The Mirror Of Hell

Caspar Brötzmann Massaker’s masterful second album from 1989 - remastered.

The power trio’s blunt force execution is directed by Brötzmann’s explosive and exquisite six string conjuration. Channeling Hendrixian vibrations, mixed with hard German industrial atmosphere.

TRACK LISTING

1. Die Tiere
2. Hunter Song
3. Bohmen
4. Mute
5. Templehof
6. Black Axis

Features Shadow Of Your Love – recorded in December 1986, one month before the Appetite sessions, as a trial recording session which resulted in Mike Clink getting the producer gig, and Move To The City (1988 Acoustic Version) which was taken from the GN’R Lies sessions.

TRACK LISTING

Shadow Of Your Love
Move To The City (1988 Acoustic Version) 

Formed in Chicago, IL in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album Gish in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993’s 4x multi-platinum Siamese Dream and 1995’s 10x multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Following the release of Adore, Machina/The Machines of God, and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, the group’s original lineup disbanded in 2000. Singer/guitarist Billy Corgan reformed the group in 2005, enlisting various collaborators for Zeitgeist, Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, Oceania, and Monuments to an Elegy. 

Released only in Japan in 1997, this collection of live and demo tracks—available for the first time on vinyl—is a must for Rage Against The Machine fans! Includes fiery versions of “Take The Power Back” and “Bombtrack,” covers of N.W.A.’s “Fuck Tha Police” and Public Enemy’s “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos” (with Chuck D on lead vocals) and tracks from the band’s original 1991 demo tape.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1 Bullet In The Head (live)
2 Settle For Nothing (live)
3 Bombtrack (live)

SIDE B
1 Take The Power Back (live)
2 Freedom (live)
3 Intro (Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos) (live)
4 Zapata's Blood (live)

SIDE C
1 Without A Face (live)
2 Hadda Be Playing On The Jukebox (live)

SIDE D
1 Fuck Tha Police (live)
2 Darkness
3 Clear The Lane

Being released this November as part of Record Store Day’s sister Black Friday event is a faithful repress of the 12” version of The Breeders’ Safari EP, complete with Shinro Ohtake’s 1983 charcoal drawing Nairobi VIII adorning its cover. Originally released in April 1992, sandwiched between their first two albums (Pod and Last Splash), The Breeders’ Safari EP came at a time when Kim’s Pixies commitments were winding down and her new band were on the cusp of releasing a platinum-selling album.

Their first record to feature Kim Deal’s twin Kelley, the EP was recorded in two studios with the bulk coming from a session in New York, which provided an early version of ‘Do You Love Me Now?’, ‘Don’t Call Home’ and a cover of The Who’s ‘So Sad About Us’. The title track, ‘Safari’, was recorded separately in London by Kim, Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jon Mattock (Spacemen 3 / Spiritualized).

Black Velvet is a celebration of Charles Bradley, lovingly assembled by his friends and family at Dunham/Daptone Records. Though chronologically the material spans Charles' entire career, this is no anthology, greatest hits or other shallow rehashing of the songs that already made him famous. Rather, this album is a profound exploration through the less-travelled corners of the soulful universe that Charles and his longtime producer, co-writer and friend Tommy "TNT" Brenneck created in the studio together over their decade-long partnership.

It features new songs recorded during the sessions from each of his three albums, heard here for the very first time in all their scorching glory: "Can't Fight the Feeling," "Fly Little Girl" and the heart-wrenching single "I Feel a Change"; hard core rarities like his funk-bomb duet with LaRose Jackson, "Luv Jones," the psychedelic groover, "(I Hope You Find) The Good Life" and the ever-illusive alternate full band electric version of "Victim of Love"; sought-after covers of Nirvana's "Stay Away," Neal Young's "Heart of Gold" and Rodriguez's "Slip Away"; and the title track "Black Velvet," a stirring Menahan Street Band instrumental to which Charles was never able to cut a vocal.

Charles was truly a transcendent singer who led a remarkable life, overcoming unimaginable adversity to achieve great success and international acclaim very late in his life. What was really special about him and made him different from everybody else in the world was how he understood his pain as a cry for universal love and humanity. He felt that if he loved enough—if we all loved each other enough—we could take away the world’s pain and sadness. That is why he jumped off the stage and literally tried to hug everybody he could. It's why he took such great care of a mother that had abandoned him. It's why he sang and danced like a lunatic. It's why he screamed like an eagle. And that's why we love him.

Black Velvet is a celebration of his life, and is destined to join Charles' first three albums alongside the cannon of essential soul records for the ages.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Black Velvet is a summary of everything that was great about Charles Bradley, his strong compelling vocals and passion is etched into all his music and this album ties it all together as a celebration to him and his legacy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Can’t Fight The Feeling
2. Luv Jones
3. I Feel A Change
4. Slip Away
5. Black Velvet
6. Stay Away
7. Heart Of Gold
8. (I Hope You Find) The Good Life
9. Fly Little Girl
10. Victim Of Love (Electric Version)

Bursting out of the ether in 2014 with their squalling guitars, vivid colours and cinematic vignettes, there’s no other British band out there quite like Black Honey. Having spent the last four years perfecting the indie game, everything you think you know about them and their unique surrealist world is about to be wonderfully shaken up as they prepare to release their hugely anticipated debut album. With contradiction at every turn, it’s an album that celebrates being human, in all its different forms and by doing so, will touch the hearts of everyone that hears it. We’ve already heard ‘Bad Friends’ earlier this year, but with the exception of 2016’s ‘Hello, Today’ (the track that saw the band become a household name at Radio 1), and the 2017 closer ‘Dig’, the album is made up of entirely new music with 9 brand new songs on offer. Album opener ‘I Only Hurts The Ones I Love’ – which you can listen to now – is a fascinating Garbage-flavoured meander that sets the tone for the record brilliantly. From there, there’s stone cold classic ‘Wasting Time’, Lana Del Ray nodding slow-burner ‘Blue Romance’ and disco-pop Trojan horse ‘Midnight’ – to name just a few. However, across the entirety of the record, you can always feel the bare bones of front lady Izzy B Phillips diary scribbles are just around the corner as the varying tracks switch between chart-headed bangers and scuzzy, industrial David Lynch inspired strangeness. It’s the weird and wonderful mind of Philipps - her lovable but villainous, Milky-Bar-kid-meets-Debbie Harry persona – that you find very much at the heart of ‘Black Honey’. An open sufferer of both dyslexia and ADHD, she’s a huge advocate for self-expression without limit and has relied hugely on her band – Tom Dewhurst (drums), Tom Taylor (bass) and Chris Ostler (guitar) – to channel everything that comes from her obsessive and dizzyingly creative head and bottle it into music. The album as a result is ultimately a collage of chaos, shot straight at the heart – honest, inspiring and deeply infectious.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Only Hurt The Ones I Love
2. Midnight
3. What Happened To You
4. Bad Friends
5. Blue Romance
6. Crowded City
7. Hello Today
8. Baby
9. Into The Nightmare
10. Dig
11. Just Calling
12. Wasting Time

Leeds-based Menace Beach return with news of their third album 'Black Rainbow Sound', which is due out August 31st via Memphis Industries.
New album Black Rainbow Sound is the band's first new material since early 2017’s Lemon Memory, and after a self-imposed break from tour duties, the album exhibits a profound shift in their sound, whilst still mainlining the blasts of noise, visceral power, and timeless pop songsmithery of their previous releases.

Unlike the bands previous records, Black Rainbow Sound came to life in the bands studio, where Liza Violet and Ryan Needham built dense late-night orchestrations from drum machines, synthesizers, loops and guitar noise, before being ripped apart and reimagined by the full Menace Beach cast at The Nave studio in Leeds with co-producer Matt Peel (Eagulls).

Never ones to shy away from an intriguing collaboration, Black Rainbow Sound contains songs featuring Brix Smith of The Fall, and Brix and the Extricated. “The synchronicity of the universe just forced us and Brix together. The very day l finished reading her biography she played us on her BBC 6music show along with a wonderfully out-there monologue of how the song made her feel. I said thanks, we got chatting and it went from there. She’s a burning comet of positive energy”.

On Black Rainbow Sound, Menace Beach continue to explore their own unique aesthetic, venturing much further into a colourful world of bizzaro no-wave analogue synths and static drenched electronic euphoria, which they have been circling for some time.

Lustrous, dizzying, and bursting with cacophonous vintage electronics - the sounds on Black Rainbow Sound act as an otherworldly backdrop for the album's enigmatic lyrics to play out. Celestial conversations, night terrors, love, anti-love, good vs evil, light vs dark, friendly crows, death, depression, and teenage tongues and are all here to absorb; the more introspective topics often hidden in plain sight atop celebratory choruses, and melodic hooks.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Menace Beach go all cosmic on their latest, 'Black Rainbow Sound'. We get clicking CR-78's, throbbing distorted bass and blipping, sample & hold sine waves enriched with heavy guitars and woozy, shimmering vox. Properly lovely.

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Rainbow Sound
2. Satellite
3. Crawl In Love
4. Tongue
5. Mutator
6. 8000 Molecules
7. Hypnotiser Keeps The Ball Rolling
8. Holy Crow
9. Watermelon
10. (Like) Rainbow Juice

Limited edition of 500. First time limited edition vinyl reissue of an extremely rare and unique teenage real people psych garage private press album from 1982 . It’s so damn off the radar rare and elusive that it even eluded the writers of the Acid Archives book. Here’s the inside word on it directly from the pioneering record collector and front man of New Yorks Endless Boogie; Paul Major: The first time I heard this record I had to vigorously punch myself in the face to make sure I wasn't dreaming it up. It's real. K.S. Ratliff comes on like a blast from a lost world, a maverick small town flash from high school kids in some alternate Kentucky utterly isolated from any scene and untainted by even the slightest stink of music biz disease. Real people.

This is the soundtrack to the film "No More White Presidents"
“Black Meteoric Star - No More White Presidents” is a multi layered abstract film that I, a White, recently out Trans-Woman completed in January of 2017. For the film I developed what I am calling the “flash film” technique. Initially it was a structural device similar to the chance operations used by composers such as John Cage to get out of the practice of creating “slick” edits or “moves” predetermined by overarching institutionalized aesthetic norms. However, as I worked with it I began to discover that the technique, although certainly “experimental”, has more kinship with craft techniques I have practiced such as beading, knitting, weaving and braiding. Although on the surface it could simply be a long form music video for my Black Meteoric Star project it is in fact a complex of evocative and energetic themes gathered around the necessity for abolition and reparations.

The themes that are “braided” or “beaded” together include a repetitive meditation on death, an assessment of global capitalism as so overburdened by the karma of the triple legacies of slavery, land theft/genocide and imperialism that it can no longer function, an invocation of several of the Orishas prominent in the Regla Lukumi tradition and an exploration of my emerging Trans-Feminine identity. The intention of the film is to open up a territory for exploration and interpretation around our current predicament, allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusions about the specific details and possible solutions, both individually and through discussions with others.

Tenth studio album from legendary US 'Americana' band The Jayhawks & a first on the 'Legacy Recordings' label. 

Produced by main-man Gary Louris, alongside John Jackson & Ed Ackerson @ Flower Studios, Minneapolis. Co-writers include:- Dixie Chicks, Jacob Dylan, Emerson Hart (Tonic), Ari Hest, Scott Thomas, Carrie Rodriguez & more... 

First new album from Alan Sparhawk’s Black Eyed Snakes in 17 years.

Starting abruptly, mid-downbeat, the Black-Eyed Snakes' new release opens up like walking into the room where the grit and groove has already been rolling, for who knows how long. In 1999 and 2001, the Snakes released two full-length recordings that would lay the foundation and frame to what would become a unique and dynamic live force. Their shows are legendary - a chaotic swirling stomp, based on the most primitive elements of electric blues and punk. The band has become a wide regional favorite, playing festivals and bars and multiple tours in the US, UK, and Europe, sometimes opening for artists like Wilco and T. Model Ford.

The new record, "Seven Horses" is the culmination of a simple but visceral path cut with blood, sweat, loud guitars, and dancing. Singer/guitarist Alan Sparhawk, who is also in the band Low, howls through the squelch and bash, sometimes to rally the congregation as on "Church Song" and sometimes the voice of pleading despair as on "Don't Kick Me Out." Influenced by legends like The Staple Singers, John Lee Hooker, Fred McDowell, and Ali Farka Toure, the songs jump out of the speakers raw and heavy, inviting the listener to pull up a chair, sit in with the band and let the blues flow through them.

TRACK LISTING

1. Walkin'/Talkin' Blues
2. Church Song
3. Losing Water
4. Pony
5. Seven Horses
6. Alright Boys
7. Don't Kick Me Out
8. Return Of Halfstick
9. Out Of My Head

The franchise goes one cut deeper as Parasols AKA Ali Renault and Antoni Maiovvi team up on this dark as hell during an eclipse set of grime soaked grease sleazers. Parasols throws forth two sharp as blades numbers with a guest appearance by the one and only Unit Black Flight with his first ever remix. Antoni Maiovvi closes things with something from the vaults, the 808 and sub bass sleekness of Shivers, remixed by Black Metal EBM overlord Equitant. Guaranteed nightclub nightmares as we put on the gloves one more time…

TRACK LISTING

1 Body Parts
2 White Shadow
3 Body Parts (Unit Black Flight Remix)
4 Shivers
5 Shivers (Equitant Remix)

It's the end of a busy and stressful year for Sheffield / Liverpool electronic pioneers, Black Beacon Sound. Having released a 7" every month for the whole of 2017 (or thereabouts), with each one being released digitally, with extra content (and each one featuring a remix by an undeniably talented producer), they have decided to make all of these superb remixes available on a drool-inducingly beautiful double 12" emblazoned with their eye-catching and iconic logo and sleeve design. 

It's a beautiful package in itself, but focusing on that is obviously doing an injustice to the superb work put in by all the producers to create this mindblowing excercise in cohabitational production and community-minded collaboration. 

We kick things off with the glitched hip-hop aestetics and stoner haze of the Mad Wash rework of Zen The Sharpshooters' 'Every Lil' Bit', bringing the hot-boxed haze and relaxing the muscles before The Fire Beneath The Sea's 'Error Correction' sees a pitch-bent funked-out remix, grounded with insistent shuffled hi-hats and wah'd out guitars, before the legendary Galactic Funk Milita's festival vibe is chopped into a syncopated latin stomp for a rubberlips rework. 

On the flipside, David J Boswell's haunting electro-folk goes full dubstep in the more than capable hands of the forward-facing electronic euphorics of Liverpool electronic virtuoso, Afternaut before Denham Audio bring forth a clattering industrial fractalisation of Hang Syem's 'Frontier J'. 

The following track is possibly my favourite on the compilation (but with enough material on here to keep even the most diverse of tastes more than happy, I expect yours will be different), and comes from Sheffield wunderkind, Yak. Snappy percussion and perfectly measured electronic stabs bring a disphoric syncopation to the already excellent 'Wicked Sound' by Grievous Angel. 

Onto the final side now, (the last being blank for you to admire the gorgous sky-blue marbling) and R. Lyle takes Apta's 'Tides' and breaks it down into a simmering futuristic haze of reversed reverbs and hazy throbs, before the arshaw remix of my personal favourite release of the lot, in Bemp's 'Minotaur', culminating in a psychedelic propulsive stomper, courtesy of the aforementioned Yak and YAKONA. A match made in heaven. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Black Beacon have culminated their journey in a fittingly epic and ridiculously efficacious summary of their dedication to the independent music industry with this stunning double LP. A journey in every sense of the word, and a superb flipside to their already mindblowing releases.

TRACK LISTING

1. A1. Every Lil' Bit (Mad Wash Refixture)
2. A2. Error Correction (atdhe Remix)
3. A3. Dance Floor Grinder (Rubberlips Remix)
4. B1. No Colours (Afternaut Remix)
5. B2. Frontier J (Denham Audio Remix)
6. B3. Wicked Sound (Yak Remix)
7. C1. Tides (R. Lyle Remix)
8. C2. Minotaur (Arshaw Remix)
9. C3. Viggy (YAKONA Remix)

Dark wave techno / goth / electro-punk business here from Poison Arrow on the seductively named Pleasure District. A-side tracks, "If You Don't Love Me" and "Casa Show" both pair skeletal drum machines with gothy, pitch black female vocals and eerie metallic washes. A little Chris & Cosey, a little Massive Attack and a little Tropic of Cancer all thrown into one heady, black eye-linered muse.

Side B sees two remixers, Konrad Black and Razor take turns on the lead track. KB keeps "If You Don't Love Me" deeply in the sex dungeon, soaked in amyl nitrate and scarily carnal. Meanwhile, the Razor dub of said track sees it strung out into a highly taut bubbler, smothering the vocal in tape delay and allowing the various elements plenty of room to make their impact.

Causing an immediate stir around Piccadilly HQ this afternoon this is a beautifully dark and arresting record and one that should more than stand the test of time. Highly recommended! 

The long overdue 6th album by Black Moth Super Rainbow. "Panic Blooms" is a fucked up and bleeding account of depression and the shadow side of human frailty, full of gorgeous warped melodies that exist as their own genre, somewhere between late 90s Warp Records, dub, and chopped and screwed codeine drip. It’s not drug music, it’s dragged music, oozing through the muck of the present moment, past mutating the present, demon melodies filtered through the vain search for light. This is why Pitchfork claimed BMSR mastered the balance between the grotesque and beautiful. Spin hailed their “consistently great records of mind-altering, sugar-coated, vocoder-heavy psychedelic pop.” Stereogum saluted their “excellent haze.” Encoded in a syrupy fog, TOBACCO’s lines stab with more ferocity than ever before. From the first track, the knives are out and slashing with chimerical violent imagery: mouths bleeding from razor blades stashed in tangerines and the ominous sensation of feeling haunted. There are sunset curses and diseased plants, sunburn fevers and doomsday downgrades, pink apocalyptic suns and sinister omens. It’s reminiscent of the phrase used to describe surrealism: as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.

TRACK LISTING

1. Panic Blooms
2. Baby's In The Void
3. Rip On Through
4. One More Ear
5. Bad Fuckin Times
6. New Breeze
7. Aerosol Weather
8. June July 28
9. Bottomless Face
10. Permanent Hole
11. To The Beat Of A Creeper
12. We Might Come Back
13. Harmlessly
14. Backwash
15. Sunset Curses
16. Mr No One

Far Out Monster Disco Orchestra returns with "Black Sun", its second full-length album of 100% original, unadulterated disco sophistication, featuring all three original members of pioneering Brazilian jazz-funk trio Azymuth, a full orchestra with arrangements split between Arthur Verocai and Azymuth’s late maestro Jose Roberto Bertrami; plus members of the legendary Rio funk group Banda Black Rio.

Since its critically acclaimed self-titled debut album in 2014, the FOMDO imprint has released a string of remixes by some all-time greats of dance music, including John Morales, Theo Parrish, Mark Pritchard, Marcellus Pittman, Andres, Dego, Volcov, Kirk Degiorgio and Al Kent. To huge effect in clubs and festivals around the globe, some of the more recent remixes teased the new album material, which for the first time, is presented in its original, soul-heavy incarnation, alongside instrumental versions highlighting the album’s stunning arrangements and compositional brilliance.

Far from a throw-back - with disco music firmly entrenched in the modern club vernacular - Black Sun is ecstatic dance music at its finest.

TRACK LISTING

Step Into My Life
Black Sun
Flying High
Give It To Me
The Two Of Us
Walking Bass (In The Street)
Where Do We Go From Here
Step Into My Life (Instrumental)
Black Sun (Instrumental) 
Flying High (Instrumental)
Give It To Me (Instrumental)
Where Do We Go From Here (Instrumental)

The Kills’ eponymous debut mini album ‘Black Rooster’, originally released in 2002, has been reissued for the first time.

The mini album was recorded on an 8-track at Toe Rag Studios by Liam Watson, except ‘Dropout Boogie’ which was recorded during a live performance at Paint It Black.

TRACK LISTING

Cat Claw
Black Rooster
Wait
Dropout Boogie
Gum

Once again, I heard the announcement, got excited and (not so patiently) waited. I guess I should be grateful that the time between announcement and release is exponentially smaller with most of Constellation's releases, this one even more so. Godspeed You! Black Emperor have returned for the first time since 2015's 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' with the monolithic behemoth that is 'Luciferian Towers'. From the very first moments of 'Undoing A Luciferian Towers' we get the richly evocative post-apocalyptic tremolo they've become so well known for, which slowly and purposefully grows, turning and writhing into a twisted mass of spine-tingling euphoria and tentative glimmers of light. I'm not entirely sure how reasonably simple chord changes can become such overwhelming tectonic shifts, but the evidence is plain for all to see, all encompassing darkness takes it's hold before bursting out into a repeated melodic refrain, soaring above the unearthly drone.

 As we move into the spellbinding trio of 'Bosses Hang' (parts 1-3) we start with a shuddering violin double-stop, shortly joined by a powerfully distorted, soaring single-note guitar riff, rising into a cataclysmic chaos that only GYBE can achieve. It is both meditative and overwhelming, and a whole world of contrasting adjectives reserved for bands that deserve them. Part two once again takes this quiet-loud formula but swaps out the reasonably lucid quiet section for a more unwieldy bowed maelstrom, keeping the soaring crescendo constrained within the confines of atonal chaos. Once again, a testament to the balance required to keep up this sort of fine-tuning of musicality and disarray, whilst retaining the spine-tingling highs of which we've become so fond.

 Fam_Famine once again hints at the repeated phrase suggested throughout this whole collection, with swells of string pushing through the fragmented patchwork of simmering drone below, glimmering glimpses of hope in an otherwise damned existence, acting as a superb counterpoint to the resolutely melancholic and stunningly beautiful closer of 'Anthem For No State'. Soaring tremolo weighted by off-kilter melodic bursts remind me in no small way of the (admittedly less frequent) glimpses of sunshine in 'Sings Reign Rebuilder', brought to earth with the static hum of the stunning Hiss Tracts LP, 'Shortwave Nights'.

Comparing GY!BE to anyone else is in essence, fruitless. This is where it came from, and this is a concise and spine-tingling distillation of everything Godspeed ever were, and have recently become. It's a breathtaking and transportative wonder, brimming with melody, but balanced with an unmistakeable experimentation that only GY!BE can pull off. Stunner.

TRACK LISTING

1 Undoing A Luciferian Towera
2 Bosses Hang
3 Fam/Famine
4 Anthem For No State

Blackest Ever Black presents "Sleep Heavy", the debut album of broken-hearted, downtempo R&B/street-soul and supremely atmospheric, introspective electronics from Jabu: a trio comprised of vocalist / lyricists Alex Rendall and Jasmine Butt, and producer Amos Childs. The group was born out of Bristol’s Young Echo collective: an ecosystem unto itself which has birthed and nurtured a number of other notable soundsystem-rooted projects and artists to date including Kahn & Neek, Sam Kidel, Ishan Sound, Ossia, Asda, chester giles (the title Sleep Heavy comes from a giles poem) and Killing Sound (Childs with Kidel and Vessel).Jabu’s previous 7” singles, though arresting, barely hinted at the level of accomplishment and emotional heft that Sleep Heavy delivers.

It’s a future Bristol classic with a universal resonance, with songs that are highly personal but deeply relatable, and tripped-out, time-dissolving sound design that both haunts and consoles. It is, first and foremost, a meditation on grief, on loss, making sense of separation and death; but it also looks forward to what might come after the aftermath: healing, acceptance, the chance to begin again.Childs is one of the most gifted producers of his generation and his work here, grounded in hip-hop but floating free, is a thing of sustained wonder: crepuscular, melancholic – funereal, at times – subtly psychedelic and heavily dubwise, but always concise and purposeful. Stitched together from deep-dug and beautifully repurposed samples, it draws on influences from US R&B to Japanese art-pop minimalism – Mariah to Mariah Carey, if you will – and a rich seam of underground UK soul, boogie, DIY/post-punk, library music and lovers rock; refining and reconstituting these inputs into powerfully immersive, emotionally ambiguous soundscapes as eloquent and engaging as they are understated and bottomlessly mysterious.

TRACK LISTING

1:Let Me Know
2:Tomb
3:Get
4:Fool If
5:Bones
6:On
7:Searc
8:Wounds
9:Which Way
10:Lay You Down
11:Give Listen: 

Shining sounds from the dawn of the Sun Ra Arkestra. "El is A Sound of Joy" was recorded in 1956 and appeared the following year on the very first Saturn LP, Super-Sonic Jazz. Incredible is the fact that saxophonist Charles Davis, here providing the soulful baritone anchor line (counterpoint to Ra's formidable left hand), remains in the front-line of today's Sun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen. Shuffle swing breakdown jets leisurely, casually, masterfully, painting lush, post-modern impressions of ancient future worlds, of space, of time … of Chicago's elevated trains … Reaching for the sky, for Joy …. The “Joy” coda dovetails magically into the intro theme of "Black Sky And Blue Moon," before downshifting into another dimension of romantic outrospection. We follow The Nu Sounds, aka Cosmic Rays, on a faraway journey to the land of late-50s Chicago singing groups, the Arkestra supporting with quiet grace, pulsing in Nubians of Plutonia mode. An uncanny blend of antique blackness and bright satellites, ethereal voices perfectly in tune; thanks to Ra's disciplined coaching (plus Modern Harmonic's expert re-mastering), their sweet dynamics and exact harmonics are crystal clear. Flute solo from Marshall Allen. Hearts swelling like the full moon, ripening in the darkness to the point of bursting.

Bit of a different format this time for BBS, with their latest outing coming on a FULL 12" of pleasure. The Persons Of Technologically Unidentified Status (POTUS) smash it with a sextuplet of throbbing techno, airy house and all-round danceable vibes.

'Ghetto Trump' mixes up a throbbing percussive backline with a repeated sliding sine wave, growing into the introduction of robotic snippets and ever-increasing percussive intensity. It's the classic house drum loops that really place this in the realms of classic Detroit fare, but remains brilliantly satisfying throughout. 

'Trump Dat' brings the acid with a snarling 303 and thudding kick taking the lead before introducing rapidly chopped vox from the man himself, a-la cassetteboy's infamous political mash-ups. It's a dancefloor number if ever there was one, with the BPM never dipping below a respectable 130. 

As we flip over, we get the slightly more spacey (but reassuringly driven) 'American Carnage', with crushed rhythmic single-note synth excursions growing with a grain-delayed percussive line backing it up with ever-expanding force before phasing into a militant, acidic outro. Then it's on to the foery closing duo of 'Feel My Trumpin' Bass' and 'Trump That Body', with the former's cinematic scope and kaleidoscopic intensity being nicely mellowed with the game OST vibes of the latter. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A bitingly conceived selection, full of stunning dancefloor moments and impeccably constructed rhythmic fire. Get it while it's still here folks!

TRACK LISTING

A1: Ghetto Trump
A2: Trump Dat
A3: Beat The Box, Trump The Box

B1: American Carnage
B2: Feel My Trumpin' Bass
B3: Trump That Body 

Two years on from the end of The Stooges, Iggy returned, older, wiser and perhaps a little more world weary. The Idiot is his debut solo album and the first of two LPs released in 1977 which Pop wrote and recorded in collaboration with David Bowie. Style-wise the album sits nicely alongside Bowie’s Berlin period albums, gone is the raw proto-punk of The Stooges, instead we have fractured guitar sounds and discordant keyboards, and whereas previously his vocals were delivered with a defiant snarly, he instead adopts his now trademark baritone drawl.

Released less than a year after "The Idiot", "Lust For Life" is a return to the sloppy, sleazy, blues-y, swagger of the Stooges. Though the record is, again produced by David Bowie, he takes much more of a backseat musically, allowing for Iggy Pop to take center stage in his return to form. An absolute classic from this total legend.

Oxbow's first album in over 10 years. Over the 30 years of Oxbow's operations, no one has come comfortably close to classifying the Bay Area group. This could arguably be the result of Oxbow's ongoing evolution, but accurately describing any particular phase of the group's seven-album career is no easier than describing the broader metamorphic arc of their creative path. This is especially true with their seventh album Thin Black Duke , where Oxbow's elusive brand of harmonic unrest has absorbed the ornate and ostentatious palate of baroque pop into their sound, pushing their polarized dynamics into a scope that spans between sublime and completely unnerving.

Atlanta’s valiant punks Black Lips release their first album in three years, Satan’s graffiti or God’s art?, on Vice Records. Produced by Sean Lennon at his studio compound in upstate New York throughout 2016, the album is the group’s most musically evolved to date, while still staying true to their original blistering take on fuzzy, dirty rock n roll.

TRACK LISTING

01 Overture: Sunday Mourning
02 Occidental Front
03 Can’t Hold On
04 The Last Cul De Sac
05 Interlude: Got Me All Alone
06 Crystal Night
07 Squatting In Heaven
08 Interlude: Bongo’s Baby
09 Rebel Intuition
10 Wayne
11 Interlude: E’lektric Spider Webz
12 We Know
13 In My Mind There's A Dream
14 Lucid Nightmare
15 Come Ride With Me
16 It Won't Be Long
17 Loser’s Lament
18 Finale: Sunday Mourning

Adrian Younge calls The Electronique Void an academic album, by which he means it is both instructional and informational. The science of love, its formulas and if-then constraints, causal relationships and observable properties, is best taught experientially, but learning it hurts so, so bad. Music, especially electronic music, reliant as it is on abstraction and unrepentant as it is about hijacking your physiological responses to tempo and rhythm and dynamics, is a way to get there without going through it. Electronic music as practiced and developed by pioneers like Dick Hyman and Raymond Scott and Wendy Carlos is precise and intentional. In making his first electronic album, Younge took his cues from them, reminding a contemporary audience what a synthesizer, deep in its heart, really could be. This study of how music crafted with synthesizers can tap into raw human emotion is sure to excite long-time fans of Younge as well as devotees of electronic music. Adrian Younge now presents what is sure to be one of his most sought after instrumental releases, The Electronique Void: Black Noise Instrumentals

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Noise (Interlude)
2. The Night
3. Fly Away
4. Systems
5. The Concept Of Love
6. Voltage Controlled Orgasms
7. Linguistics
8. Black Noise
9. Patterns
10. Suicidal Love

LOS ANGELES – In 1996, The Afghan Whigs were fresh off the worldwide success of Gentlemen. They had toured the world, graced magazine covers, television performances, major festivals, the works. However, their follow up album would not be Gentlemen II. It would be a pivot and a full public display of the growth and maturity of Greg Dulli’s songwriting.   

Released in the spring of 1996, Black Love was the Afghan Whigs’ fifth studio album overall. The music was inspired by lead singer Greg Dulli’s idea to make a film noir movie. Although the film was never made, it did help inform the album’s dark tone and fuel songs like the singles “Honky’s Ladder” and “Going To Town.” The album opener, “Crime Scene Part One” was inspired by the screenplay for “The Million Dollar Hotel,” while “Blame, Etc.” reflected on the troubled life of Temptations singer David Ruffin.  

This 20th Anniversary edition includes nine previously unreleased recordings. Among the standouts are acoustic versions of “Going To Town” called: “Go To Town” and “Crime Scene Part Two.” Also included is a demo for “Faded,” which closed the original album, as well as a solo piano cover of the New Order classic “Regret.” The unreleased material also highlights the band’s creative process with “Mick Taylor Jam” and “Wynton Kelly Jam.”

"Black Beauty, Miles Davis At Fillmore West", was recorded on April 10, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, when Davis performed as the opening act for the Grateful Dead. The recording took place shortly after the release of Miles’ classic album Bitches Brew. The album was released in 1973, originally in Japan only. "Black Beauty", a true jazz-rock album, captured one of Davis’ first performances at a rock venue during the early stages of his electric period. At the concert, he led his band (saxophonist Steve Grossman, bassist Dave Holland, keyboardist Chick Corea, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and percussionist Airto Moreira) through one continuously performed set list.
The songs in the band’s set list were as followed: “Directions”, “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down”, “Willie Nelson”, “I Fall In Love Too Easily”, “Sanctuary”, “It’s About That Time”, “Bitches Brew”, “Masqualero”, “Spanish Key”, and “The Theme”. They were performed as one continuous and uninterrupted piece of music, a practice Davis had begun in 1967. He later explained in his autobiography that performing these kinds of long musical suites without breaks allowed more space for improvisations in concert.

The original Japanese booklet is included in this vinyl package.

TRACK LISTING

Directions
Miles Runs The Voodoo Down
Willie Nelson
I Fall In Love Too Easily
Sanctuary
It's About That Time
Bitches Brew
Masqualero
Spanish Key/The Theme

The borders between London’s musical tribes have always been porous. For Yussef Kamaal, the sound of the capital – with its hum of jungle, grime and broken beat – has shaped a selftaught, UKtipped approach to playing jazz. In the states, the genre’s longrunning to-and-fro with hip hop – from Robert Glasper to Kamasi Washington – has reimagined it within US culture. On Black Focus, Yussef Kamaal frame jazz inside the basssaturated, pirate radio broadcasts of London.

Taking inspiration from the anything-goes spirit of ‘70s jazzfunk, on albums by Herbie Hancock or the Mahavishnu Orchestra, it’s a loose template with plenty of room to experiment. The pair, made up of Yussef Dayes and Kamaal Williams (aka Henry Wu), have had little in the way of formal training. Instead, their musical tastes – and approach to playing – are indebted to Thelonious Monk’s piano as much as the drum programming of Kaidi Tatham.

“It's all about the drums and the keys,” Williams says. “Not to take anything from anyone else, but that's where it all originates from: the chords, the rhythm of the chords and the drums.” Born out of a oneoff live session to perform Williams’ solo material for Boiler Room, it soon became a project in its own right. Coming together as Yussef Kamaal, they played a series of live shows where little more than a chord progression would be planned before taking to the
stage.

Bringing that unspoken understanding to the recording sessions (engineered by Malcolm Catto of The Heliocentrics), the unplanned, telepathically spawned grooves retain the raw energy of their live shows. “It's not so much about complete arrangement, it's more about flow,” Dayes says. “A lot of the tracks are just made spontaneously – Henry will be playing two chords, I'll fill in the groove and we'll just leave the arrangement naturally.” Both hail from South East London, crossing paths in 2007 as teenagers playing their first pub gigs around Peckham and Camberwell. Dayes drums for cosmicallyinclined, afrobeat outfit United Vibrations, while Williams – on top of drumming and playing keys in different incarnations over the years – has made waves with his solo, synthdraped house 12"s for muchfêted labels like 22a and Rhythm Section.

Moving in the same circles but never playing together previously, rhythm underpins an innate musical understanding. As Williams explains, “The way we approach it is all about the energy and the feeling. We just get in there and we feel it out.” Drawing influence from all corners of London’s shapeshifting musical makeup, the sound of Black Focus is distilled – or focused – down to the core interlock between drums and keys.

STAFF COMMENTS

David says: The purists might argue that this isn't strictly jazz, I'm happy to argue back. It might use elements of broken beat and house on its journey but jazz is the final destination.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Black Focus
A2. Strings Of Light
A3. Remembrance
B1. Yo Chavez
B2. Ayla
B3. O.G.
B4. Lowrider
B5. Mansur's Message
B6. WingTai Drums
B7. Joint 17

On this debut EP from Sydney's Cop Envy, the producer comes roaring out of the starting gates with a screeching combo of slow-mo acid and analogue techno. 'BGFT' could easily be tucked away in a Drexciya album somewhere, resonant 303's squeal out a mid-range bass pattern while grainy hi-hats smash out burning strips of saturated fire. 'Inner Another' is a bit more of a minimal affair, percussion loops layering over each-other before rising into a cacophony of sycopated alternate hits, hypnotic groove growing to boiling point before a perfect single-note melody rides the waves perfectly, giving just enough pitched rhythm to keep things moving.  The B-Side jumps straight back into the heat with 'Handle Broker', an echoing and rousing space-acid stormer, as effective and hypnotic as ever, before finishing on the Manse Edit of BGFT, a frantic industrial take on the original track. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A hot and saturated acid trip through space, resonant 303 basslines and skittering analogue drums fly through the cosmos, multiplying into a frenzy of overdriven atmospheres and pitch-perfect percussion.

TRACK LISTING

A1 BGFT 6:05
A2 Inner Another 5:12
B1 Handle Broker 5:26
B2 BGFT (Manse Edit) 6:20

"You Know What It’s Like" is an album for inbetween days, and occupies inbetween states: plain-speaking pop, disorientated by dub. Psychedelic folk delivered with (post-)punk economy. Drifting in space while still tethered to the ground. Astral tones blurred with earth sounds: wood, bone, breath, skin, dirt. Ending and beginning, dying and becoming. Longing for adventure and an unquiet life. Struggling to get out of bed. This is Carla dal Forno’s debut solo album, following time in cult Melbourne group Mole House and an earlier association with Blackest Ever Black as a member of F ingers and Tarcar. Her voice is an extraordinary instrument: both disarmingly conversational and glacially detached. It has something of the bedsit urbanity of Anna Domino, Marine Girls, Antena, or Helen Johnstone - stoned and deadpan - but it can also summon a gothic intensity that Nico or Kendra Smith would approve of. This voice is the perfect embodiment of dal Forno's emotionally ambiguous songs: their lyrics rooted in the everyday, observing and exposing a series of uncomfortable truths. This voice asks difficult questions of singer, subject, and sung-to. And of course there are no simple answers. Singles "Fast Moving Cars" and "What You Gonna Do Now?" weigh up claustrophobia against loneliness, inertia against acceleration, doubling down versus taking off; the title track acknowledges the provisional nature of love and 'real' intimacy, then decides to brave it anyway. By the time we arrive at the startlingly sparse "The Same Reply", the impermanence of all things is something that can no longer be tolerated, and the sense of dejection is absolute. The vocal-led pieces are interspersed with richly evocative instrumentals, like Eno’s "Another Green World" reimagined in shades of brown and blue. Smothered in tape-hiss and reverb, the seasick synthesizer miniatures "Italian Cinema" and "Dragon Breath" channel the twilit DIY whimsy of Flaming Tunes and Call Back The Giants. "DB Rip"'s drum machine and bassline are pure Chicago house, but then its dark choral drones nod to Dalis Car's dreams of blood-spattered Cornwall stone. "Dry The Rain" drinks from a stream of eldritch, home-brewed moon musick that runs through Coil, In Gowan Ring, Third Ear Band, even the Raincoats’ Odyshape, and into the woods.

TRACK LISTING

1:Italian Cinema
2:Fast Moving Cars
3:DB Rip
4:What You Gonna Do Now?
5:Dry In The Rain
6:You Know What It's Like
7:Dragon Breath
8:The Same Reply 

Banda Black Rio's 'Maria Fumaca' is one of the strongest Brazilian samba-disco-funk-soul-fusion albums of all time. It was voted No. 38 in the Top 100 Brazilian Albums Ever in Rolling Stone Magazine, Brazil. This official Mr Bongo re-issue comes complete with replica original artwork.

Banda Black Rio were formed in 1976 by the late Oberdan Magalhães in Rio de Janeiro. They revolutionised black instrumental music at the time with their Brazilian re-interpretation of soul, jazz, funk and disco grooves, inspired by the likes of Tim Maia and reminiscent of Kool & The Gang and Earth, Wind & Fire during their most on-point period of the 1970's. 'Maria Fumaca' is the groups first album, originally released by Atlantic in 1977 and a record that bought the group worldwide fame.

The title track is a real stand-out for us and a long term firm favourite. 'Miss Cheryll', more of a disco / AOR jam, was released by RCA UK in 1980 as the track become popular within several London scenes.

Blackest Ever Black presents a new vinyl edition, and the first CD edition, of Af Ursin’s 2005 masterpiece 'Aura Legato'. Af Ursin is the alter ego of Finnish autodidact composer / improviser Timo van Luijk. His work is rooted in the use of acoustic instruments (wind, percussion, strings), but his special sensitivity to the timbral qualities of each instrument, and his deft blurring of them, results in a sound-world that is mysterious, amorphous and hallucinatory, full of suggestive shadows, creaks and whispers. Informed by years of intensive listening to various types of free music, exploratory drug use and especially the “irregular organic forms” of the Belgian countryside where he resides, van Luijk’s process begins always with pure improvisation: music played in an intuitive, sensual way, without the employment of conscious technique. He performs and overdubs each instrumental component himself, and out of this process micro-structures and loose arrangements emerge: the piece becomes an improvised composition. Over time he has evolved his own richly poetic musical language, full of allusions to drone, acid folk, classical, Musique concrète and jazz, but beholden to none. 'Aura Legato' is one of van Luijk’s darker and more acutely psychedelic offerings: a work of profound interiority, but one that also conjures images of old Europe and fin-de-siècle decadence – dabblings in Thelema, the fog of the opium-den – and has earned comparisons to Third Ear Band, Nurse With Wound, Mirror and HNAS. Fully remastered and housed in die-cut sleeve with gold detailing and individually hand-glued labels.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rêverie En Mineur
2. Capsule Détachée
3. Tableau Fluide
4. Aphanes

First official reissue of this essential Zamrock album, painstakingly restored, remastered and pieced together from multiple copies of the incredibly rare original album. Contains extensive booklet with never before published photos, an overview of the Zamrock scene, and the history of Peace and Black Power. The Boyfriends, from Kitwe’s Chamboli Mine Township, supplied the founding members for Zamrock’s most famous band, WITCH, and kick started one of Zamrock’s best bands, Peace. Their sole Zamrock entry, 'Black Power', recorded at Malachite Film Studio circa 1973/4 and issued circa 1975, sounds like nothing else in the Zamrock canon: a lost message drifiting from the flower power era, imbued with a fiery Zambian voice. Essential garage Zamrock / soul / funk: the first official reissue of the celebrated band’s one and only album.

“The musical style that became known as Zamrock came to embody the economic despair that followed the 1973-1974 oil crisis, which flung Zambia into recession and exacerbated a wide range of social tensions. Much of Zamrock also captured the controversy of wider politics in Africa and the world. Perhaps the finest example of this is Black Power by The Peace”. - The Guardian 

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Power
2. I Have Got No Money
3. This Is The Time Now
4. I Need Mercy
5. Peaceful Man
6. Umbwalawa Ne Chamba
7. I Don’t Know
8. Get On The Way

As one of the most iconic and influential albums in music history ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’ still sounds as powerful and unique as ever, 37 years since the original release.

The Sex Pistols defined a generation and captured a feeling within the nation that simply no one else could of. The band created a truly distinctive sound and ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’ impact and influence still strongly resonates with musicians, artists and people to this day.

This release has used the original master tapes from the 1977 recording sessions thought to be lost for many years. Now thankfully rediscovered, the tapes have been remastered, for the very first time, by Tim Young under direction from original producer Chris Thomas.

Sex Pistols - NMTB is now released on 180g heavyweight vinyl as part of the Back To Black series. 

A unique synthesis of time-dilating folk-jazz romanticism, brittle chamber dub and plasmic post-techno electronics, "Tarquin Magnet" is Australian artist Tarquin Manek’s first full solo release on Blackest Ever Black, but by no means his first contribution to the label: he is one half of Tarcar (with Carla dal Forno) and a member of F ingers (with dal Forno and Sam Karmel), while his track "Not Missing You" features on the BEB compilation "I Can’t Give You The Life You Want". Manek has been busy elsewhere, too: he released "Th Duo", an LP made under his LST alias, on Another Dark Age earlier this year. The disturbed and enchanted environments of "Tarquin Magnet" are the result of improvisation, domestic field recording and fastidious editing; for all its rough textures and strange juxtapositions, this is masterfully mixed and arranged music, its deep spatial dynamics and higher dub logic powerfully apparent. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Sassafras Gesundheit
2. Fortunes Past
3. Fortunes Begun
4. Perfect Scorn
5. Blackest Frypan

Forming in New York in 1981, "Goo" was Sonic Youth's major label debut when it was released by DGC in June 1990. An important stepping stone in bringing underground 'alternative' rock to mainstream America, the band were also instrumental in Nirvana signing to Geffen the following year. Probably best known for the single "Kool Thing", sung by bass guitarist Kim Gordon, a 4 star review in Rolling Stone hailed the record as 'a brilliant, extended essay in refined primitivism.' The album's other key tracks are "Tunic (Song For Karen)", a tribute to the late Karen Carpenter, and "Dirty Boots".

TRACK LISTING

1. Dirty Boots
2. Tunic (Song For Karen)
3. Mary-Christ
4. Kool Thing
5. Mote
6. My Friend Goo
7. Disappear
8. Mildred Pierce
9. Cinderella's Big Score
10. Scooter + Jinx
11. Titanium Exposé

In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of this iconic album, Jagjaguwar are proud to present the ‘Black Sheep Boy: Anniversary Edition’, a 3CD / 3LP set combining Okkervil River’s classic ‘Black Sheep Boy’ album and its counterpart the ‘Black Sheep Boy Appendix’ with an all new unreleased album entitled ‘There Swims a Swan’: fullband recordings made six months prior to the release of ‘Black Sheep Boy’ which illuminate the album’s roots in the traditional American songbook. Featuring beautiful, emotional readings of songs popularized by such artists as Washington Phillips, Lead Belly, the Louvin Brothers and Roscoe Holcomb, ‘There Swims A Swan’ takes the listener on a trip through the songs that inspired the band’s Will Sheff while composing ‘Black Sheep Boy’ and reads like a run-through of that album’s themes.

‘Black Sheep Boy’ is celebrated for its album artwork as well as its music, and the Anniversary Edition collects that artwork in a meticulously reworked package, combining every previous element of William Schaff ’s imagery with a large new piece by Schaff depicting an updated ‘Black Sheep Boy’. The release also includes lengthy liner notes by Sheff walking the listener through the circumstances surrounding the album.

For Okkervil River fans (the most high-profile of whom was recently revealed to be President Barack Obama, who included ‘Down Down The Deep River’ on his 2015 summer playlist), the Anniversary Edition is a loving, comprehensive, richly expanded presentation of a record many consider to be one of the band’s best. For those new to the band, this might be the best place to start, the first step on a long road, the opening to a forest you can get lost in.

Marking the 30th Anniversary of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Transformers The Movie comes this collector's edition, double vinyl package including two etched, coloured vinyl LPs in a Transforming gatefold sleeve. LP1 is pressed on red vinyl and etched with the Autobot logo, while LP2 is pressed on purple vinyl and etched with the Decepticon logo. The gatefold sleeve completely "transforms" all four sides from an Autobot themed jacket to a Decepticon themed jacket. This original 1986 cult classic, remastered and re-imagined, has never sounded or looked better! Transformers, There's More Than Meets The Eye!

TRACK LISTING

The Touch
Instruments Of Destruction
Death Of Optimus Prime
Dare
Nothin's Gonna Stand In Our Way
The Transformers Theme
Escape
Hunger
Autobot / Decepticon Battle
Dare To Be Stupid 

Small Black’s third full length release, written and recorded at their Brooklyn home studio, nicknamed 222, showcasing a band still evolving and embracing the unpredictable.

After a year of recording the band enlisted mixer Nicholas Vernhes (War On Drugs, Deerhunter) of Rare Book Room Studio to help complete the record.

‘Best Blues’ finds the band in their sweet spot: the smoky intersection of considered and vulnerable songwriting and loose, almost nonchalant ambience. The addition of piano flourishes, trumpet (Darby Cicci of The Antlers), hidden acoustic guitars and Kaede Ford’s ethereal vocals provide new dimensions to the band’s already expansive sonic palette.

Cut-to-the-chase rippers ‘Back At Belle’s’ and ‘Checkpoints’ embody and build on the group’s signature gritty yet focused electronic sound. While more pastoral tracks such as ‘Between Leos’ and ‘XX Century’ - skeletally based on recorded improvisations - find the band painting a more nuanced, assured aural portrait. The repeating of the line “twentieth century” on closer ‘XX Century’ serves as a coda for the album, offering a simple summation of what ‘Best Blues’ intent has been from the opening Casio stab: an attempt to re-examine the past but also one to let it go.

“Another sparkling gem of widescreen, starry-eyed synthpop from a band who’ve been crafting such gems for years.” - Stereogum

TRACK LISTING

Personal Best
No One Wants It To Happen To You
Boys Life
The Closer I Look
Big Ideas, Pt. 2
Back At Belle’s
Between Leos
Checkpoints
Smoke Around The Bend
XX Century

It’s been the most spectacular of journeys, from a place in time when John Grant feared he’d never make music again, to winning awards, accolades and Top 20 chart positions, collaborating with the likes of Sinead O’Connor, Goldfrapp and Elton John, as well as a Best International Male Solo Artist nomination at the 2014 BRITS Awards.

Now comes Grant’s third album, the invitingly titled Grey Tickles, Black Pressure, a veritable tour-de-force that further refines and entwines his two principal strands of musical DNA, the sumptuous tempered ballad and the taut, fizzing electronic pop song. There are newer musical accomplishments across its panoply of towering sound, like the title track’s new steely demeanour, while the ominous drama of “Black Blizzard” echoes both John Carpenter and Bernard ‘Black Devil Disco Club’ Fevre’s beautiful and icy synthscapes. The contagious, gleeful “You And Him” marries buzzing rock with a squelchy electronic undertow, while orchestral drama swathes the bad-dreamy “Global Warming” and the album’s gorgeously aching widescreen finale “Geraldine”.

Grey Tickles, Black Pressure was recorded in Dallas with producer John Congleton (St Vincent, Franz Ferdinand, Swans) - coincidentally the same state of Texas where Grant nailed his 2010 solo debut Queen Of Denmark in the company of Denton’s wondrous Midlake. After that landmark return, which MOJO made its album of 2010, 2013’s Pale Green Ghosts was made in Icelandic capital Reykjavik (where Grant has lived ever since), which entered the UK Top 20 in its first week and ended up as Rough Trade Shop’s Album of the Year 2013, The Guardian’s No.2 and in MOJO and Uncut’s Top Five). Such recognition, iced by years of sell-out shows across Europe and a recent US tour as special invited guest of the Pixies, should allow the notoriously self-critical and insecure Grant the passing thought that Grey Tickles, Black Pressure will deservedly cement his reputation as the most disarmingly honest, caustic, profound and funny diarist of the human condition in the persistently testing, even tragic, era that is the 21st century.

“I do think the album’s great, and I’m really proud of it,” he says. “I wanted to get moodier and angrier on this record, but I probably had a lot more fun making it.” He cites “amazing” session keyboardist Bobby Sparks, “who really funked things up,” as part of that fun; likewise a month of Dallas sunshine “after a brutal dark winter in Iceland. And there was a lot of laughter.”

That said, fun isn’t the first ingredient you’d expect when you know the roots of the album title. “‘Grey tickles’ is the literal translation from Icelandic for ‘mid-life crisis’, while ‘black pressure’ is the direct translation from Turkish for ‘nightmare’,” Grant explains, an unusually gifted linguist (he’s fluent in German, Russian and now tackling Icelandic).

Nevertheless, there are plenty of positive streaks in Grey Tickles, Black Pressure. Grant, for one, is in fabulous voice throughout and has moved on from the specific subject matter that shaped both previous albums (though the concept of love always figures into the mix). “Disappointing” – featuring vocal guest Tracey Thorne – is an exuberant tribute to new love, against which Grant’s favourite Saturday Night Live comediennes, Russian artists and “ballet dancers with or without tights” pale in comparison. The album’s other two guests are vocalist Amanda Palmer and former Banshees drummer Budgie.

But the end result is indeed a moody, angry record, laced with levering humour and wounded pathos, yet as dark as Reykjavik in February. It starts and ends with spoken word snippets called, simply, “Intro” and “Outro”, both taken from the same Biblical quote (from 1 Corinthians 13) regarding the divinity of love that young John was taught in church. In between are 12 songs that document the reality of love on planet Earth, corrupted by “pain, misunderstandings, jealousy, objectification and expectations,” as Grant puts it.

The album’s last two songs are among its finest. “No More Tangles” fights against co-dependency “with narcissistic queers,” he sings, through the metaphor of hair care products. “It’s about not apologizing for who you are and not putting up with unnecessary bullshit from people who do not care about you”. But in “Geraldine” (as in the late Geraldine Paige, “one of freakiest, strongest, coolest actresses I’ve come across”), Grant’s latest actor-inspired song is Grant’s chance to ask her if she too had to “put up with this shit” that life dishes out.

So Grant still manages to keep fighting the good fight, and writing his way out of trouble with another fantastic record. “I want to continue to challenge myself,” he says. “To keep collaborating, to get the sound or the direction that will take me where I need to go. To keep taking the bull by the horns.” 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Lush, deep production bringing throbbing electronics further to the fore, which when married to Grant's enormo ballads and hilarious lyrics, make this John's most complete album yet.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Grey Tickles, Black Pressure
3. Snug Slacks
4. Guess How I Know
5. You & Him
6. Down Here
7. Voodoo Doll
8. Global Warming
9. Magma Arrives
10. Black Blizzard
11. Disappointing
12. No More Tangles
13. Geraldine
14. Outro

We live in dangerous times. We are blinded by control vectors that separate us from reality. And The Black Dog returns with a viral antidote: an album of de-programming material which they’ve called "Nether/Neither".

This record continues the work they started with "Further Vexations" and "Radio Scarecrow". Burroughs was right: we are now living in a world that is nothing short of a total information war. We are neither one thing nor another, endlessly on the fence in the face of an onslaught of disinformation. Non-linear hypermedia systems are openly used to control us, their operation being totally exposed, mocking our impotence, yet complete in their power. We are all proles now; all are expected to maintain a mental state of "Neither/Neither", of uncertainty and inaction. Even in a world where anyone can be an instant expert on any subject in a single click, we find that all our knowledge is a mere replay of someone else’s script.

We are surrounded and occupied by systems of platitude generation that are empty and self-referential. All is surface and all is hollow. From the Tories’ election propaganda to David Icke, they’re all the same, all meaning filtered to nothing by a lack of substance, science and humanity. Falsehood becomes reason, no matter how ridiculous the proposition. They stand for nothing so they can have no questions to answer.

False prophets and the modern day snake oil salesmen parade their viral vampirism, grasping for our time, money and headspace. Even our ridicule becomes fuel for their trade as they turn ignorance and psychopathic exploitation into received wisdom and public opinion. Ask any sideshow psychic; repeat, pure Barnum bunkum enough times and you can seize the psychology of the masses. Rumours become truth then they become action and policy that in the cold light of the day make no-sense at all. No one’s sure where they heard it but they have. The spectral offer of change, which actually sustains the stasis of confusion. They spin us on a ball of confusion we live on continues to turn and as long as they have us in a state of "Neither/Neither" they will always maintain control. Fight Back! 

TRACK LISTING

01. Non Linear Information Life
02. Phil 3 To 5 To 3
03. Neither/Neither
04. Phil 0114
05. Control Needs Time
06. Them (Everyone Is A Liar But)
07. Shut Eye 08. The Frequency Ov Thee Truthers
09. BOOKS
10. Self Organising Sealed Systems
11. Commodification
12. Phil Vs David
13. Platform Lvl 6
14. Hollow Stories, Hollow Head
15. MK Ultrabrite

D'Angelo's debut album breathed new life into the mid-90s soul / R&B scene, taking inspiration from 70s soul classics, but reinvigorating the sound with hip hop swagger. Recorded using vintage instruments the album ushered in the more organic neo-soul sound, moving away from the crisp electronics of the late 80s / early 90s new jack swing era. Includes the smash hit "Brown Sugar" (has there been a better love song to Mary J?), a cover of Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'", or the bluesy "Shit, Damn, Motherfucker". A perfect after hours soul seduction album.

This is the first time 'Brown Sugar' has been reissued since 2006!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Brown Sugar 4:22
A2. Alright 5:15
A3. Jonz In My Bonz 5:56
B1. Me And Those Dreamin' Eyes Of Mine 4:46
B2. Shit, Damn, Motherfucker 5:14
B3. Smooth 4:18
C1. Crusin' 6:28
C2. When We Get By 5:48
D1. Lady 5:47
D2. Higher 5:27

'Voodoo' hit store shelves on January 25th 2000, just a few weeks after the New Year celebrations to end them all. But the first great album of the new millennium was born in the 1990s, and its muggy grooves capture the sound of premillennial anxiety. The album is the product of perfectionism, obsession and paranoia. 1995’s debut 'Brown Sugar' had already strategically positioned D’Angelo - born Michael Eugene Archer and Virginia-raised to a Pentecostal preacher father - as the next Hendrix-like deity in black music, after Prince and maybe Lenny Kravitz. But since its release, D’Angelo had become distracted by weed and weightlifting, he’d been shaken by the deaths of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious BIG and debilitated by sophomore pressure. In the interim he’d fathered two children, switched managers and jumped to a new record label.

Though inspired by the birth of his children and trips back to Virginia, 'Voodoo'’s roots are in 1960s, 70s and 80s funk and soul; a nostalgic nod to the ideas and inventions of black music trailblazers powered by avant-garde hip-hop and jazz-influenced rhythms. D’Angleo’s aim, he said, was to reclaim R&B. He wanted to be like Sly Stone, George Clinton and Al Green. And most of all, he wanted to be like Jimi Hendrix. Where does a potently focused young man go to remake 'Electric Ladyland'? New York’s Electric Lady studios, of course: in the same rooms in which Hendrix and Stevie Wonder reinvented music decades earlier, and on the same equipment too. In an era in which soul musicians were obsessing over all things synthetic, D’Angelo was looking to the warm sounds of the past. Electric Lady’s Studio C became D’Angelo’s brand new creative laboratory.

TRACK LISTING

Playa Playa
Devil's Pie
Left & Right
The Line
Send It On
Chicken Grease
One Mo' Gin
The Root
Spanish Joint
Feel Like Makin' Love
Greatdayndamornin' / Booty
Untitled (How Does It Feel)
Africa

“Hear what happen now! Me and me friends had a kinda thing like the jukebox was our sound system and we’d use our lunch money to play the baddest tunes on the jukebox. We were aided and abetted by a kinda dodgy little shop keeper cause we were kids and we were in the rum bar punching the juke box when we weren’t supposed to be allowed!! So we were breaking all the rules” - Ossie Thomas

Breaking rules from the outset Ossie Thomas had furthered his childhood fascination with music while still attending Oberlin High School and many more rules would be broken when together with Phillip Morgan he set up the Black Solidarity label in 1979 on Delamare Avenue deep in the heart of Kingston.

For this latest reissue from the label, Black Solidarity turn their attention to singer Robert Ffrench. Later to have the massive hit 'Bun And Cheese' with Clement Irie, this collection brings together Ffrench's solo work in the mid 80s.

TRACK LISTING

1. Joker Family
2. Radication
3. Mr Babylon
4. Single Life
5. Problem Is A Cry
6. Bad Boy Posse
7. Rebel Girl
8. The Favourite
9. Cut Eye Cut Eye
10. Me Raggamuffin
11. A Dance Without A Deejay
12. Mother In Law
13. No Modelling*
14. Shock We A Shock*
15. True True Loving*
*CD Bonus Tracks

180gm heavyweight black vinyl edition of Black Holes & Revelations; Muse’s fourth studio album, which charted at number 1 in the UK album chart on release in 2006. Featuring the singles; Supermassive Black Hole, Starlight, Knights of Cydonia, Invincible, Map of the Problematique. 

‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ is Black Sabbath’s fifth studio album. It was produced by the band and Tom Allom and recorded at Morgan Studios in London in September 1973.

For the first time in their career the band began to receive favourable reviews in the mainstream press, with Rolling Stone calling the album “an extraordinarily gripping affair,” and “nothing less than a complete success.”

The artwork reflects the original release, from the cover to the printed inner sleeve.

180g vinyl includes a copy of the album on CD.

TRACK LISTING

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
A National Acrobat
Fluff
Sabbra Cadabra
Killing Yourself To Live
Who Are You?
Looking For Today
Spiral Architect

‘Master Of Reality’ is the third studio album by Black Sabbath.

Released in July 1971, it is widely regarded as their most sonically influential work - the foundation of doom, stoner and sludge metal.

The last Black Sabbath album to be produced by Rodger Bain.

180gm vinyl includes a copy of the album on CD.

TRACK LISTING

Sweet Leaf
After Forever
Embryo
Children Of The Grave
Orchid
Lord Of This World
Solitude
Into The Void

‘Black Sabbath’ is the eponymous debut studio album by Black Sabbath. Released in 1970, the album reached number 8 in the UK Albums Chart and number 23 in the Billboard Charts.

Based around the band’s live set, it was recorded in a 12 hour session in October 1969 and is regarded by many as one of the most significant albums in the development of heavy metal.

In 1989 Kerrang ranked Black Sabbath as number 31 in their 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums Of All Time.

180gm vinyl includes a copy of the album on CD.

TRACK LISTING

Black Sabbath
The Wizard
Behind The Wall Of Sleep
N.I.B.
Evil Woman, Don't Play Your Games With Me
Sleeping Village
Warning

It’s a cliché because it’s true - the greatest records are timeless. Black Mountain’s self-titled debut album is just such a record. It is a new classic rock, with reference points arcane and clear, its sound fresh, unfamiliar and irresistible.

The work of a small collective of musicians operating from Vancouver, Canada, far from any industry buzz but firmly in the eye of their own storm of creativity, Black Mountain’s debut album was, of course, a beginning, but it also marked an ending. Begun as the fourth album for Jerk With A Bomb, the 4-track bedroom project turned non-rock band led by Stephen McBean that preceded Black Mountain, the songs grew from skeletal sessions cut by McBean and Josh Wells and honed on the road in empty North American clubs along with Amber Webber. “We’d lay down the bed tracks, the guitars and drums,” remembers McBean. “Matt [Camirand, bass] joined, and we changed the band name after a dream of how life could be different in the B section between Black Flag and Black Sabbath. Josh’s roommate Jeremy [Schmidt, keys] was lurking about. We asked him if he wanted to add some synth bleeps or whatever. He came back with all these orchestrated keyboard parts, and we said, ‘Oh, you should probably join the band now.’”

The album’s initial success saw the band take to the road, leaving their Vancouver enclave for stages across the world. “It felt like there was a real explosion of excitement at shows,” remembers McBean. “We wouldn’t write setlists, we’d just feel the energy in the room and call things out, jamming on songs like ‘No Hits’ and ‘Druganaut.’ It was a good time for live rock & roll: DJ booths were being transformed back to drum risers, people were digging 20 minute heady jams and there were bands like Comets On Fire and Oneida out there who we felt kinship with. I was into Faust and Amon Duul but had no idea of the scene of modern bands doing that stuff. And then we met those bands, and it was cool. And then we went on tour with Coldplay… and the adventures continued.”

Savour the compact, spacey brilliance of that cosmic, heavy and subtle debut album, expanded now with a raft of delicious bonus tracks scavenged from the Black Mountain Army archives.

Both the 2CD and 2LP packages come with foil print.

TRACK LISTING

Modern Music
Don’t Run Our Hearts Around
Druganaut
No Satisfaction
Set Us Free
No Hits
Heart Of Snow
Faulty Times
Druganaut (Extended Remix)
Buffalo Swan
Bicycle Man
Behind The Fall
Set Us Free (Demo)
Black Mountain (Demo)
No Satisfaction (UK Radio)
It Wasn’t Arson

‘Paranoid’ is the second studio album by English rock band Black Sabbath. Released in September 1970, it was the band’s first LP to top the UK Albums Chart.

It is often regarded as one of the most quintessential and influential albums in heavy metal history.

Contains the title track, which was their only Top 5 single.

180gm vinyl includes a copy of the album on CD.

Agitated's favourite album that they didn’t release in 2014 was the amazing bulldozer of australian rock and roll driven by HITS. "Hikikomori" was released in Australia and France, Agitated asked to do a single, a proper old fashioned 7" single. HITS obliged, and the track "Loose Cannons" (from the album) was chosen as the a-side, with the unreleased studio version of Big Black Car.

Both songs recorded with Radio Birdman /New Christs' Rob Younger at the desk. Loose Cannons kicks out your speaker dust with a sound that can only be from Australia, loud guitars, riffs a-plenty, hi energy rock and roll with killer vocals. and then theres "big black cars" on the flip, a previously released live version blew peoples ear offs, this studio version is even more proof that rock and roll action from Australia is superior to all!

The story and history of Nine Black Alps is forever etched in UK grunge-rock folklore. 2014 however was the year when they released their 5th album ‘Candy For The Clowns’. Signed to the newly formed Leeds label Hatch Records, the album was a far more distorted and rockier affair that harked back to the likes of Everything Is and Love/Hate.

With core members Sam Forrest (vocals, guitar), David Jones (guitar), James Galley (drums, vocals) and bass player Karl Astbury, the band retained their distinctive and energetic sludge, grunge-rock sound albeit with a tighter and more dynamic style. ‘Candy for the Clowns’ was praised by the likes of Rock Sound, Classic Rock and Drowned in Sound, while 6 Music and XFM championed singles such as ‘Novokaine’ at radio.

For a band 12 years into their career ‘Live from The Wishing Well’ marks their first ever live album. Set for release on 4th May it features a full length Nine Black Alps performance captured on 14th December 2013.

The show, taking place at Gorilla in Manchester was a special concert to celebrate 10 years since the band formed. Nine Black Alps ran through a set that covered the full breadth of their career from early singles 'Shot Down' and 'Unsatisfied' to recent releases like 'Supermarket Clothes'.

At just under an hour in length, the album showcases the band's fiery live sound with no production trickery and even features a special guest appearance by ex-bass player Martin Cohen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Burn Faster
2. Forget My Name
3. Don't Forget To Breathe
4. Not Everyone
5. Buy Nothing
6. Ironside
7. Patti
8. Just Friends
9. Supermarket Clothes
10. Ilana Song
11. Bitter End
12. Heavier Than Water
13. Unsatisfied
14. Be My Girl
15. Get Your Guns
16. Shot Down

When everything is post-post-post-post something older and better where do the exceptions go? When the sci-fi 20’s ‘Urban’ might as well be the atomic 50’s ‘Race’, when R&B has no blues and hiphop is a boom bip with a shorty, a hoe, it’s off to the street corner we go… where does a group like Young Fathers, who ‘pick'n'mix from the popular music sweety shop and fly no flags and swear allegiance to no country’ (© - 100 interviews with the group in 2014) - where do they go?

They have to go to the place where Beck makes a sandwich with The Beach Boys and Captain Beefheart, where Faust and The Fall tango. In Rock and Pop you are allowed to pretty much be yourself. If you are a blue and green eyed boy from Brixton with the sallowest of white skin you can become the epitome of crystalised soul, itself. It swings both ways. So… Young Fathers are breaking out of the ghetto. Fuck these constrictive selling boxes.

For the purposes of this mission, this album, this 'White Men Are Black Men Too', is rock and pop. And hip hop, too No, you don’t box in the R&B Hits 2003 generation that easily. This sticker is only for the business. The listeners can decide for themselves.

The sounds are closer on this album, closer to your ears. It sounds as if you are in the room during the recording, possibly experiencing a little existential trauma, but not enough that you don’t notice an earworm hook when you hear one. These hooks, they stay with you. ‘Is that what they mean by pop’? you ask yourself. Could be, Madonna, could be. There are less words than before. Why, for fuck’s sake? Where is the hip hop? It slides in, like a reverse version, a negative, of the hip hop blueprint of eight verses and a sweet, female wail of a hook (while comedy rapper number 6 mutters ‘uh huh, uh huh’, you know, keeping it real). But YFs lob raps into songs that morph into sung verses then back into the tune, with no respect, none! for the law.

These are grown men, battle fit and in their prime. There are no celebrations of dole queue theatre, no fake politics - there’s no need. YFs are right there in the middle of the question: what is your ID? Why claim to speak for a dispossessed white or black class or group or generation? When you can only ever speak for yourself.

When they chant ‘nigger nigger nigger’ the group are singing their enemy’s song (and you can all sing along) - it’s not a war cry, it’s the off switch, the left hand turn in the ignition, the pop-hiss of deflation. No more war, motherfucker. The tension is sexual, tuneful, it’s only fun about to kick off.

TRACK LISTING

Still Running
Shame
Feasting
27
Rain Or Shine
Sirens
Old Rock N Roll
Nest
Liberated
John Doe
Dare Me
Get Started

A1. Still Running
A2. Shame
A3. Feasting
A4. 27
A5. Rain Or Shine
A6. Sirens

B1. Old Rock N Roll
B2. Nest
B3. Liberated
B4. John Doe
B5. Dare Me
B6. Get Started