Black Marble hummed to life in the fall of 2012, switched on by the early aughts New York City synthwave revival. Today, fourteen years on and seven releases later, Chris Stewart continues to make records hunched over machines that warm to the touch when turned on and need to be coaxed to stay in tune. His albums, written, recorded, and delivered solely by Stewart, remain singular visions, with songs that seek to convey a diffuse pastiche, now shaped by a desire to wrap the whole thing in a message that speaks to where he’s been and where he wants to go.

His latest vision, 'Life in Small Spaces', sees Stewart comment on the music industry and his role within it, reflecting on how underground music has changed over time, and how a blueprint for keeping things simple and being true to oneself is the only ideal for living in this complicated landscape.

Stewart's desire to span time with his ideals intact shows up in the songwriting, which retains the project’s pop-sensibilities while adding new tricks to the bag. 'Life in Small Spaces' trades walls of synths for more guitar, drawing on early American left of the dial college radio staccato guitar lines recalling Pylon, The Necessaries, and R Stevie Moore, and live drum samples, a nod to Wire’s simple metronomic style. Stewart explains the reason for the change as a way to “create this chime-y hypnotic quality. Like a radio dial that is between two stations.”

Visually, 'Life in Small Spaces' features Stewart alone on the cover in a sparse room, surrounded with an eruption of confetti — an image that reflects a self-contained world that may appear small, bleak and cluttered, but is fully his own. A fitting frame for a record that embraces limitation as a form of clarity, and one that tells the story of choosing a simple life, giving up stability and comfort for an existence of bold and engaging connections. This further reflects Black Marble’s confidence in not only his artistry, but the community that has grown and evolved around the project over the years. “['Life in Small Spaces'] is what I want to talk about as an artist. It's where I am at this exact moment and I know I'm not alone in how I feel.”

This sentiment isn’t a disclaimer. It’s the point. 'Life in Small Spaces', with its introspective lyricism disguised neatly within Black Marble’s radiant musicality, is an earnest analysis of the pressures that shape artists. It is an invitation to accept and consciously agree to a more minimal lifestyle for the sake of creative expression and freedom, and to never need to compromise your values for the tempting illusion of success.

TRACK LISTING

1. It Always Comes to Me
2. Jim Carol New Year 
3. Anything 
4. Get Back Up 
5. Other Man's Dream 
6. Guess 
7. LifeWithout
8. Missing History 
9. Panopticon Calls 
10. Picture When 
11. Sonny Boy

Black Bones are back from some nocturnal digging, coming through with another stellar 4-tracker of remakes and edits from their extensive private stash.

It’s bat shit crazy, incessantly grooving and infectious as hell. The perfect fodder for leftfield club fReAkZ…

Limited, hand-stamped vinyl 12".

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: More left-of-centre tweakers and frazzlers for the club goths and drug-chug crazies. Nice to see Transglobal Underground get a rep on the last track! Anyone got any PCP?

TRACK LISTING

a. poisoned
a. barundi
b. gggg get busy
b. bashung

Companion 10" to the recent, superb LP Sampler from The Belfast duo...

After showcasing their broad and boisterous tastes on a series of super limited edits 12's, plus original releases on labels like Touch Sensitive, Hoga Nord, Duca Bianco and Optimo Music, we finally have a fully formed suite of original cuts which take us on a journey through Black Bones' varied and vivid vibrations.

On "Barrios & Barricades", BB deliver two powerful drug-chug delights. The kind of peak-time industrial funk-outs that have soundtracked infamous, strobe-lit joy factories over the decades from Chicago's Medusa's, Ghent's Boccaccio or Optimo's legendary Sundays at The Sub Club.

Yes, it's that good - but stictly for tha freakz! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Currently dominating our weird shit and drug chug section with a leather-clad stranglehold and a mischievous glint in their eye, Black Bones roll out two more joints of sonic BDSM magic.

TRACK LISTING

A. Barrios & Barracades
B. Cruising

When Chris Stewart set out to write and record his third album as Black Marble, he was newly living in Los Angeles, fresh off a move from New York. The environment brought much excitement and possibility, but the distance had proved too much for the car he brought along. With it out of commission indefinitely, he purchased a bus pass and planned his daily commute from his Echo Park apartment to his downtown studio, where he began to shape Bigger Than Life. The route wound all through the city, from the small local shops of Echo Park to the rising glass of the business district, to the desperation of Skid Row. The hurried energy of the environment provided a backdrop for the daily trip. When Stewart finally arrived at his studio, he’d look through his window at the mountains and the sky, seeing the beauty that makes L.A. unique — the same beauty his fellow commuters, some pushed to the edge of human endurance, had seen. That was the headspace he was in when he began to map out the syncopated drums and staccato arpeggiation of Bigger Than Life, an ode to his new condition and a shimmering synth-pop response to its cacophony.

“The album comes out of seeing and experiencing a lot of turmoil but wanting to create something positive out of it,” Stewart explains. “I wanted to take a less selfish approach on this record. Maybe I’m just getting older, but that approach starts to feel a little self-indulgent. So with this record, it’s less about how I see things and more about the way things just are. Seeing myself as a part of a lineage of people trying to do a little something instead of trying to create a platform for myself individually.”

As with every Black Marble album, Stewart recorded, produced, and played everything you hear on Bigger Than Life using entirely analog gear, though the process was new. This time around, he wrote everything on his MPC and sequenced it live to his synths — only using the computer to record, not to create. “I try new approaches every time, which helps me stay engaged but also its kind of a trick I play on the creative side of my brain,” Stewart says. “Keeping one side of my mind busy on organizational creativity I think frees up the other side where the inspirational creativity comes from.”

TRACK LISTING

Never Tell (4:17)
One Eye Open (4:43)
Daily Driver (3:54)
Feels (4:42)
The Usual (1:35)
Grey Eyeliner (3:32)
Bigger Than Life (3:54)
Private Show (4:41)
Shoulder (4:12)
Hit Show (1:36)
Call (3:43) 

On Fast Idol, LA-based Black Marble reaches back through time to connect with the forgotten bedroom kids of the analogue era, the halcyon days of icy hooks and warbly synths. Harmonies are piped in across the expanse of space, and lyrics capture conversations that seem to come from another room, repeat an accusation overheard, or speak as if in sleep of interpersonal struggles distilled down to one subconscious phrase. At the same time, percussive elements feel forward and cut through the mix with toms counting off the measures like a lost tribe broadcasting through the bass and tops of a basement club soundsystem.

Melodies roll with the fizz and charm of Jacno and phrases repeated are electric torchlight ballads sung after hours in William Gibson’s San Francisco. ‘Somewhere’ opens in sombre herald, before dropping into a fast freeway tempo; the glassy synths and crisp beats cut through the anxious moods on ‘Bodies’ and ‘Try’ sits in a lineage with cult bands like Asylum Party. ‘The Garden’ is a journey through a post-apocalyptic cityscape, earthed by the pulse of a drum machine whereas ‘Ship To Shore’ could be a lost Oppenheimer Analysis B-side, and the album’s closer ‘Brighter and Bigger’ catches a sentiment like The Dadacomputer has learned to feel emotions. He captures the loneliness of Ray Bradbury’s atomic-era sci-fi and the apocalyptic but revolutionary spirit of Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil, as in ‘Preoccupation’, the beating heart of the album, which conjures ambivalent scenes of an empty world and the comfort to be found in a
shared humanity.

Emerging from the early 2000s New York synth scene, Black Marble carried on the tradition of early synthwave pioneers like Martin Dupont and Modern Art who repurposed synths once reserved for expensive studios and stadium rock superstars. Seeking to channel this spirit, Black Marble recalls the gauzy tape wow and flutter of The Membranes and the warbling VCO of Futurisk, carrying on a sound that seeks to channel the future while imprinting residue of the past.

TRACK LISTING

01. Somewhere
02. Bodies
03. Royal Walls
04. Try
05. The Garden
06. Say It First
07. Streetlight
08. Ceiling
09. Ship To Shore
10. Preoccupation
11. Brighter And Bigger

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

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)

Formed in Paris, this trio who draw on influences from classic rock bands of the past thirty years, relocated to Manchester 'to check out the place where many of the best Rock'n'roll bands and attitudes come from'! This is there debut release.