Grammy-winning rock duo The Black Keys are back with their 13th studio album, 'No Rain, No Flowers'. 'No Rain, No Flowers' delivers an eclectic sound shaped by the energy and spirit of the band’s wildly popular Record Hangs— dance parties where Auerbach and Carney take turns spinning rare, but truly potent cuts from their impressive collection of vinyl 45s for baying crowds of longtime fans and new converts alike. More than two decades into their career, The Black Keys consistently continue to create music on their own terms, fueled by instinct, passion, and a refusal to settle. 'No Rain, No Flowers' is a testament to the band’s deep commitment to their craft and their enduring creativity.
The band’s Dan Auerbach said: ““This whole album was really labored over with a lot of love. We hope you feel that.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Who doesn't love a bit of Black Keys eh? Spirited bluesy throb and snappy garage rock, this time with a rich seam of poppy euphoria and stadium rock grandiosity. Huge news.

TRACK LISTING

1. No Rain, No Flowers
2. The Night Before
3. Babygirl
4. Down To Nothing
5. On Repeat
6. Make You Mine
7. Man On A Mission
8. Kiss It
9. All My Life
10. A Little Too High
11. Neon Moon

Black Rainbows is a musical project inspired by the objects and artworks collected by Theaster Gates at the Stoney Island Arts Bank in Chicago. Situated at the Great Grand Crossing neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side, Stoney Island Arts Bank is a cathedral to Black Art, a curated collection of Black archives comprising books, sculpture, records, furniture and problematic objects from America's past. As well as being a site for archive, the Arts bank is also a place for convening. Bailey Rae attended The Black Artists Retreat there in 2017 and performed in the space.

Wide ranging in it's themes, Black Rainbows' subjects are drawn from encounters with objects in the Arts Bank. Taking us from the rock hewn churces of Ethiopia, to the journeys of Black Pioneers Westward, from Miss New York Transit Queen 1957, to how the sunset appears from Harriet Jacobs' loophole.

Black Rainbows explores Black femininity, Spell Work, Inner Space/Outer Space, time collapse and ancestors, the erasure Black childhood and music as a vessel for transcendence.

The project will be released in various iterations - live performances, books, visuals, lectures, exhibitions, and more.

Sonically, the album is a multi-genre mix of the progressive R&B, neo soul sound that will be familiar to fans but it also contains rock, jazz and electronic elements.

The album was produced by S.J. Brown and Corinne Bailey Rae.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Spell, A Prayer
2. Black Rainbows
3. Erasure
4. Earthlings
5. Red Horse
6. New York Transit Queen
7. He Will Follow You With His Eyes
8. Put It Down
9. Peach Velvet Sky
10. Before The Throne Of The Invisible God

The seventh studio album from the mighty Black Lips is finally back on vinyl, part of a series of Fire re-issues celebrating 20 years of the legendary garage rock gurus from Atlanta, Georgia. Featuring fan favourites such as ‘Boys in the Wood’ and ‘Funny’, this is an essential slice of Black Lips history. The band convened at Dunham Studios in New York to record initial tracks with Dap Kings music director Tommy Brenneck (Cee Lo, Charles Bradley), then decamped to Nashville to record several songs with Patrick Carney of The Black Keys producing, finally rounding out the album with a couple of songs co-produced with lifetime Lips recording collaborator, Ed Rawls. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Drive-By-Buddy
A2 Smiling
A3 Make You Mine
A4 Funny
A5 Dorner Party
A6 Justice After All
Side B
B1 Boys In The Wood
B2 Waiting
B3 Do The Vibrate
B4 I Don't Wanna Go Home
B5 Dandelion Dust
B6 Dog Years

Among the Never Setting Stars is the debut LP from Dorset based artist Matthew Shaw. Following a series of cd & cdr releases on various labels as well as home made art editions and a 7" ep on Sonic Oyster Records. The album contains six ambient pieces with each title being a lead into the mood the music takes on. Each title forming a poem across the lp. The artwork is a painting By Brian Catling (RA) titled Transi.

The painting deals with some of the same themes, life, death, and renewal moving in cycles. “His music delves deep in Hidden Reverse traditions, incorporating specific environmental soundings of occult landscapes into beautiful drone works that advance the oracular/hallucinogenic English underground tradition.” David Keenan These warm, melancholy undulations interfere with each chord’s gravitational pull, creating tonal fata morgana and melodies that may or may not not be there: a state similar to meditation where she is neither asleep nor awake. All said, it will take you places.” Charlie Frame, The Quietus Limited to 250 copies pressed on 180 gram Galaxite Stone coloured vinyl. The album includes a download code featuring three additional tracks not featured on the LP.

The National Association of Satanic Advancement and Blackest Rainbow proudly present the new L.P. from Andrew Liles - OTHER WORLDS OTHER MONSTERS.

An oscillating disc of polyvinyl chloride rammed with space age messages and toe tapping tunes for all intergalactic warriors, time travellers, damaged droogs and rusty replicants.

A further instalment in Liles' massive MONSTER series with themes, incidental music, bridging songs, interludes, zaps, zings, shooting stars and fizzing rockets created as imaginary soundtracks for imaginary Sci-Fi films. Musical interpretations on a ‘intergalactic’ theme influenced by a vast array of space-age TV shows and movies from yesteryear, aliens, androids, interplanetary travel and universes yet to be discovered. The tracks cover a vast amount of ground including austere orchestral pieces, vocoders, cheesy 80’s soundtracks, 70’s synths, bleeps and bloops and much, much more.

Narration comes from Alex Jako and Melon Liles.

The amazing front cover comes from Graham Humphreys (the revered British designer and illustrator responsible for some of the best film posters of the 1980’s including Evil Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street and album covers for The Cramps and The Lords of the New Church).

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

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

The last few years have been a rollercoaster ride for brothers Brooke Blair and Will Blair. In 2013 they scored Jeremy Saulnier's brutal revenge thriller Blue Ruin. Saulnier had been a longtime friend, and Blue Ruin also starred their brother Macon, as the slightly incompetent Dwight, looking to enact his revenge.

2015 saw the composers, actor and director reunited for the excellent and perhaps even more brutal Green Room.

This year, they've scored two new films for Netflix. Macon Blair's hilariously bloody I Don't Feel at Home In This World Anymore, and Small Crimes which has just premiered this past month.

Before these two latest projects, they worked on to score Logan Sandler's 2016 dramatic thriller Live Cargo. A dark monochrome thriller weaving together a plot of struggling relationships, child loss and the dark world of human trafficking. The Blairs worked closely with director Logan Sandler to capture the tone and texture of a particularly depraved way of life in the Bahamas. Violin bows were were used to resonate old piano strings, metal fans and acoustic guitars. Church organs and a small chamber choir provided a hymn-like chordal foundation. Distant lap steel guitars and accordions suggest somber melodies and slightly detuned vintage synths including an ARP 2500 and a mellotron create a sense of disorientation and uneasiness.
This vinyl edition is a co-release between Blackest Rainbow and Wayfind Records, the Blair's new label.

Andrew Liles releases another instalment in his ongoing Monster series and his fourth record for Blackest Rainbow. Monstrous Medical Mishaps (Horrendous Hospitals and Disastrous Dentistry) is a medically themed album. Many of the rhythm tracks used on the recording were constructed from an array of meticulously crafted samples garnered from an assortment of medical and dental instruments being tapped, scraped and plucked.
As with all Liles releases, this L.P. covers a huge and unpredictable musical landscape ranging from leftfield electronica and twisted beats through to the unfathomably bizarre.

Open your mouth and say "arrrrgh!"
Stunning cover art comes from Zeke Clough, known for electronic music's most shockingly morbid and detailed sleeve art, whose twisted designs came to define the aesthetic of the groundbreaking Dubstep label Skull Disco.

Jagjaguwar and Death Waltz Recording Company are proud and excited to release a true masterpiece into the world with the soundtrack to Panos Cosmatos' 'Beyond The Black Rainbow'. Posited as a "lost film" of the 1980s, the film is inspired by classic dystopian fiction and the obscure SF movies you used to see on the shelves of the local video store when you were a kid. As such, the brilliant soundtrack by Sinoia Caves - aka composer Jeremy Schmidt - blends seamlessly amongst its influences of Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, and of course John Carpenter, with the latter's mark heard on the oppressive synth percussion of the main titles and the catchy melodies heard throughout.

Schmidt’s score is many things – haunting, uncompromising, intense – but is always a fascinating listen. While the seemingly retro-modernist sound is almost its own genre now, the music doesn’t come across as an imitation, and instead stands on its own as a genuinely original work. Using familiar elements such as the mellotron and the processed vocal samples, Schmidt puts it in that 70s-80s aesthetic and then builds a beautiful and terrifying score with those tools. Simply put, 'Beyond The Black Rainbow' is an astounding piece of work and must not be missed. Do you read me?

The Death Waltz Recording Company version is exclusive to Europe and housed inside a super glossy Stoughton tip on (Casebound) sleeve complete with an Obi strip and sleevenotes From Jeremy Schmidt.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Forever Dilating Eye
2. Elena's Sound-World
3. Run Program: Sentionauts
4. Arboria Tapes- Award Winning Gardens
5. 1983- Main Titles

Side B:
6. 1966 - Let The New Age Of Enlightenment Begin
7. Sentionauts II

'Dark Pool' is the new studio album from Black Rain, the project’s first in 18 years. Produced in New York City by Stuart Argabright, Black Rain’s founder and figurehead, 'Dark Pool' is a work of hard-edged sonic fiction rooted in cyberpunk's quintessential neo-noir cityscape / dataspace but projecting into a farther future of biotechnological advancement and alienation. Partly inspired by the writings of Philip K. Dick protégé K.W. Jeter (particularly 1996’s 'Edge Of Human', which picked up where Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner left off), and Paolo Bacigalupi’s 2009 novel The Windup Girl, a vision of 23rd century Thailand plagued by genetic and economic terrorism, 'Dark Pool’'s humid dystopia is also acutely Ballardian in its vision of manmade and natural worlds encroaching upon each other: a vivid psychogeography of half-submerged high-rises and hidden jungle laboratories.

Stuart Argabright first landed in New York in 1978. By day, he worked as a landscape gardener for the upscale likes of Rock Hudson and Bob Dylan, while at night involving himself in all manner of subcultural activity. He co-founded seminal no wave minimalists Ike Yard (whose early 1980s work has been cited as an influence by the likes of Kode9, Young Echo and Silent Servant), collaborated with the late Rammellzee in futurist hip-hop outfit Death Comet Crew and as Dominatrix scored a bona fide club hit with the downtown electro classic ‘The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight’ (1984).

In 2013 Black Rain released an EP of live recordings, 'Protoplasm', on BEB. Three of the EP’s four tracks appear here on 'Dark Pool' in radically revised and expanded form: the stuttering ribofunk of ‘Endourban’ is now anchored by ominous string pads faintly redolent of Argabright’s labelmates Raime, while ‘Data River’ revisits the accelerated beat-stream of 'Black Rain'’s 1996 album Nanarchy, and the low-slung ‘Protoplasm’ has evolved into a sprawling, syncopated techno epic - the sound of red dawn rising on an illegal replicant rave. A further seven new productions feature. ‘Burst’, its title perhaps a nod to Sogo Ishii’s 1982 biker gang saga Burst City, harks back to the scrap-metal-banging brutalism of 'Black Rain' mk.1; ‘Xibalba Road Metamorph’, the album's angry, anguished centrepiece, externalises the sadness and self-loathing of Jeter’s oppressed post-human workforce. ‘Night In New Chiang Saen’ reimagines dub as the viral product of one of AgriGen’s morally suspect scientific initiatives in The Windup Girl, before ‘Who Will Save The Tiger?’ calls upon spidery, Metalheadz-esque breakbeats and wailing guitar drones to summon a 23rd century Ark. Vocals (on 'Profusion' and 'Profusion II') from Zoe Zanias (Keluar), and a brief spoken intervention from Sean Young (who of course played Rachel in Blade Runner) are simply the most audible manifestations of a dejected feminine presence that haunts the entire album. For all its textual references, 'Dark Pool' is a visceral and straight-talking affair: its bodyhammer rhythms and brooding sound design require no explanation for their impact to be felt.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dark Pool
2. Profusion I
3. Watering Hole
4. Endourban
5. Burst
6. Xibalba Road Metamorph
7. Data River
8. Night In New Chiang Saen
9. Protoplasm
10. Profusion II: Fallofthehouseofagodofbiomechanics
11. Who Will Save The Tiger?

Shade Grown is the new studio LP from Vermont psych folk rulers, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder. Their first studio jam for Blackest Rainbow, something we've been keen to do for a while now after our previous live release for the duo. Shade Grown drops just in time for their November/December EU/UK tour, which judging by this LP, you won't want to miss out on.

The record features MV & EE channelling some spaced out tones with various incarnations of The Bummer Road, the more free cosmic jamming back up unit they venture out with from time to time. This personnel this time round reads as a who's who of talent in the current psych/folk underworld... Jeremy Earl (Woods/Woodsist), Herbcraft, Rongoose, Carson 'Smokehound' Arnold, Doc Dunn, Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower Corsano Duo) and Muskox. You're in for a treat of lunar blues, psych folk, and free form outer limit jammin'.

We're keeping this release strictly analogue. No download, no streaming. Vinyl only, like the good old days. Pressed in an edition of 600 copies package in a full colour sleeve with insert.

Black Twig Picker and Pelt member Mike Gangloff self released the fantastic Poplar Hollow in an edition of only 200 copies earlier this year, and upon seeing it sneak out we instantly got excited to hear it with the potential for a vinyl edition. And hell, what we heard we loved, and are real pleased to drop it on glorious vinyl for the masses! Poplar Hollow perfectly blends his other projects together, merging experimental sounds with traditional American folk and roots music. Comprising of Mike performing vocal/banjo/violin duties, he brings a new eclectic and at times psychedelic vibe to much of this record. Poplar Hollow is a record unlike any I have heard recently, Gangloff is a truly individual force in the American scene, and this record further cements that status.

Pressed in an edition of 500 copies on 180 gram vinyl including a download of the album. Packaged in a sleeve featuring the inimitable eye popping art of Jake Blanchard.

Brand new record from Glen Steenkiste, founding member of Silvester Anfang and their more recent incarnation Sylvester Anfang II. Currently Glen is also frequently collaborating with his fellow Anfang member, Ernesto Gonzalez (aka Bear Bones Lay Low) in their free-drone project Gonzalez & Steenkiste. But whilst being active in these projects he still finds time to craft his own music.

'Sint-Denijs' is his second solo full length vinyl release following his 'De Gek' lp for Kraak Records from 2010, and several great cassette and CDR releases for fantastic labels like Funeral Folk, Sloow Tapes, Audiobot and SicSic Tapes. Since his previous record on Kraak, Steenkiste has been getting more and more interested in sustained tones, foreign melodies and longer compositions. On this new record he draws influences from early Minimalism and old folk music and with the use of harmonium, bowed banjo, electric tampura and analog synth he creates probing intense sounds that try to undo notions of time and place.

Steenkiste's music is like taking an endless shower of sunbeams, warm, comforting and mind-altering. Music that makes time stand still and focuses on shifting details and textures, but massive in sound and presence. This record is pressed in an edition of 500 copies on 180 gram virgin vinyl including a digital download coupon.

It's been quite some time since a full length solo Ben Nash release, and it's finally here, and so,what different from his more psychedelic folk drones he showcased way back on 'The Seventh Goodbye'. Probably best left for Ben to explain this one for you... "I recorded this new full-length record during downtime from playing with Chora and after a long break from recording any solo music. Having become somewhat disillusioned with the process of overdubbing conventional “physical” instruments repeatedly in my solo work I have spent a lot of time experimenting with different ways of inputting, manipulating and arranging sound electronically, both in a variety of computer based environments and also using an Apple iPad. This release is the first in a series that will document these experiments. All sounds on the album stem from and are sequenced within Yamaha’s TNR-I app with some minimal mix processing in Logic" - Ben Nash, Camberwell Green, September 2011. Edition of 250 copies pressed on heavy weight black virgin vinyl.

New full length 3 track album from Brooklyn based sound artist David Suss and his Millions project, whose had previous releases on Baked Tapes, Abandon Ship and Peasant Magik. Three long form tracks of futuristic spaced out fuzzy mind blazers for star gazers. These three tracks churn you brain with its whirring and buzzing, putting you into a trance-like state. Housed in minimal colour sleeves. Limited to 50.

Collaboration with Dylan Nyoukis on Blackest Rainbow - damaged tape loops, deranged vocals, howls and swoops of windy feedback, and its a bit funky too... Limited edition of 100 copies in hand numbered sleeves.