Blondie in Camera 1978 is richly illustrated with photographer Martyn Goddard’s most famous images of Blondie. Taken during their breakthrough year, these pictures have graced magazines, newspapers, promotional campaigns, posters and even the ‘Picture This’ single cover and the Best of Blondie album cover. Blondie’s rise to the mainstream surface punctuated the late ’70s with a raft of unforgettable New Wave hits.

The genre-mashing classic ‘Heart of Glass’ along with the likes of ‘Hanging on a Telephone’ and ‘Picture This’ were as zesty and fresh-faced as the young band members, who soon found superstardom as their singles landed and the strength of their attitude began to resonate. When Goddard travelled to New York in ’78 with an assignment to photograph lead-singer Debbie Harry, he couldn’t have imagined that Blondie’s songs and his images would soon become permanent fixtures on the cultural landscape. This is the ultimate treasure trove for fans of one of the world’s biggest bands. 

Of all the independent record labels of the 1980s, él was the most singular and exciting. él only existed for a few short years and yet paradoxically - given its modest commercial success - was hugely influential. For writer Jonathan Coe, one of the label’s many devotees, él was ‘Britain's great musical secret’.

This ‘best of’ compilation LP, curated by label supremo Mike Alway himself, will remind the world of the greatness of él. The secret is out…

él was created in 1984 by Alway, a mercurial A&R man for Cherry Red signing outstanding artists like Everything But the Girl, The Monochrome Set and Felt. Alway briefly co-ran Blanco Y Negro (an offshoot of WEA) but was soon constrained by the conservativism of the commercial music sector and left to set up his own label. él was once described as ‘the most innately English record label there has ever been’ and yet the look and the sound of the label achieved global reach.

Always ‘hands on’ approach was to take complete control of the philosophy of the label’s releases and even the titles of songs in the manner of pop impresarios of the past. Alway became a curator, selecting, shaping and overseeing the records issued on él. He employed songwriters proficient in classical pop techniques such as Nicholas Currie (AKA Momus) and Philippe Auclair (AKA Louis Philippe) who issued their own records while writing, arranging and performing for other él artistes. Great musicians such as Simon Turner (AKA The King of Luxembourg), Dean ‘Speedball’ Brodrick and producer Richard Preston completed the picture.

él had a unique musical flavour, eschewing rock music for 1960s bubbelgum, chamber pop, European chanson, Latin rhythms and film scores (see in particular the work of Marden Hill). The label was decidedly un-macho and key artists such as Would Be Goods, Anthony Adverse and Bad Dream Fancy Dress examined the modern world through the female gaze. Alway saw él as a celebration of elegance and beauty: ‘a pop world beyond leather jackets and jeans’.

The fantastic visual style of the label, adopting the aesthetics of high fashion, art photography and pop graphics was created by Alway with photographers Nick Wesolowski and Pete Moss and designer Jim Phelan. The él ‘look’ was so strong that one UK music paper even reviewed the records simply on the basis of the sleeves!

él was critically acclaimed in the UK and popular in America and mainland Europe but in Japan had a profound effect, directly influencing the Shibuya-kei phenomenon that included Pizzicato Five, Kahimi Karie and Cornelius.

The Rubens Room accompanies the book Bright Young Things by Mark Goodall (Ventil) the first publication to tell the fascinating story of the music found on The Rubens Room.

Mike Alway writes in his sleeve notes that ‘él was the joy of my life. It was monumental’.

With The Rubens Room, we can all share that joy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Louis Philippe - Anthony Bay
2. Louis Philippe - Like Nobody Do
3. Louis Philippe - Guess I'm Dumb
4. Louis Philippe - Touch Of Evil
5. Louis Philippe - If You're Missing Someone
6. Anthony Adverse - Now Listen
7. Anthony Adverse - Ulysses And The Siren
8. The King Of Luxembourg - A Picture Of Dorian Gray
9. The King Of Luxembourg - The Rubens Room
10. The King Of Luxembourg - Smash Hit Wonder
11. Would-Be-Goods - The Camera Loves Me
12. Would-Be-Goods - Velasquez & I
13. Would-Be-Goods - Cecil Beaton’s Scrapbook
14. Marden Hill - Curtain
15. Marden Hill - Oh Constance
16. Marden Hill - The Execution Of Emperor Maximillian
17. Bad Dream Fancy Dress - Choirboys Gas
18. Bad Dream Fancy Dress - Where Have All The Schoolboys Gone?
19. Bad Dream Fancy Dress - Lemon Tarts
20. The Monochrome Set - Jet Set Junta (Single Version)
21. Always - Thames Valley Leather Club
22. Always - Park Row
23. Momus - John The Baptist Jones
24. Momus - Paper Wraps Rock
25. Simon Fisher Turner - Umber Wastes

By the late 90s the independent music scene in San Diego, CA had become synonymous with noisy, post-hardcore bands that were pushing the boundaries of what it meant to be punk. Camera Obscura cut their teeth on the angular and abrasive sounds of Antioch Arrow, Clickatat Ikatowi, and Heroin, and incorporated synths and electronics to create their own dark, jarring, experimental rock sound. ‘To Change the Shape of an Envelope’, released in 2000 on Troubleman Unlimited, was their only LP. The album runs the gamut sonically with dark, high energy songs like “Twenty-Five Diamonds” and “Sarasota”, the early industrial sounds of “Something About a Nightmare”, and the shoegaze influenced “Cinematheque”.

FFO: The Faint, The VSS, and Clickatat Ikatowi.

TRACK LISTING

Trigger System
Cinematheque
Theory On Sex As An Art Form
Sarasota
Twenty-Five Diamonds
Aeronautical
Sound
Something About A Nightmare

Clark has expanded his score for Naqqash Khalid’s award-winning debut feature film ‘In Camera’, into a mesmerising new album. Containing timeless synth instrumentals like ‘Running Dreams’, a bittersweet cover of the Carpenters / Sonic Youth classic ‘Superstar’, and the first single, epic, rising builder ‘Green Breaking’, it’s a deeply rewarding listen.

Further honing his experiments in sound as subconscious vernacular, Clark’ original score was created in close collaboration with director Naqqash Khalid, whereby music and picture become an inextricable whole. Evoking the modern malaise, thematically ‘In Camera’ fits perfectly alongside Clark’s last two albums ‘Playground In A Lake’ and ‘Sus Dog’, also marking a new addition to his formidable canon of soundtracks.

“I knew from the outset I wanted to work with an artist and have the soundtrack not be something that acts in support of the film, not as an aid or crutch, but be this whole new layer of writing – a layer of storytelling that is in a dialogue and dance with the images and characters on-screen, and going further. So much of making a film is about articulating something inarticulate in collaboration with other people; You’re building something with someone where there are no words – and in doing so, in going on a shared journey together, you invent your own language. This soundtrack feels like another character – like an extension of the film’s atmosphere and interiority, Chris has drawn out something that felt like it’d always been lurking, waiting, under the surface of the film.” Naqqash Khalid

“I loved how precise Naqqash wanted everything to be. Precise but also extremely keen to hear suggestions and not flinch at curveballs. The palette needs to become laser focused through a period of free play and experimentation. Using my vocals but abstracted in a way that tonally matched the film was the most unique challenge. I was going to just include the cues, which are all on there, but got far too into recording new stuff that fitted the tone and emotion of the film. The record has a very distinct colour/feel. It’s drenched in muted joy/dark euphoria.” Clark 

TRACK LISTING

1. Green Wash
2. Green Breaking
3. Superstar
4. Bleeding Building
5. Running Dreams
6. It's 450
7. Probe
8. Bo
9. Head Phone Hospital
10. Sensual Dismay
11. Aden Murmur
12. Captive Bliss
13. Vending Machine/Portal
14. Non Specific Interview
15. Tangent Cloak 1
16. Tangent Cloak 2
17. Exhausted
18. Green Blood
19. Blue Blood
20. Blood

Look to the East, Look to the West, the new album by Camera Obscura, is a revelation. The Tracyanne Campbell-led outfit, reuniting with producer Jari Haapalainen (Let’s Get Out of This Country, My Maudlin Career), have crafted an album that simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved them for decades while also being their most sophisticated effort to date.

It is also the most hard-fought album of Camera Obscura’s career. Following the 2015 passing of founding keyboardist and friend Carey Lander (to whom the penultimate track “Sugar Almond” is addressed), the band went into an extended hiatus. They remained in contact, but their status was uncertain until they announced their return, having been invited to perform as part of Belle & Sebastian’s 2019 Boaty Weekender cruise festival, along with a pair of sold-out warm-up shows in Glasgow. Donna Maciocia (keys and vocals) joined founding members Kenny McKeeve (guitar and vocals), Gavin Dunbar (bass), and Lee Thomson (drums and percussion) for those shows and has since become a regular songwriting partner of Campbell’s.

Recorded in the same room where Queen wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Look to the East, Look to the West feels big, a widescreen reframing of Camera Obscura’s sound that, paradoxically, saw the band go back to basics there are no string or brass arrangements, with more emphasis placed on piano, synthesizers, Hammond organ, and drum machines, and, perhaps most strikingly, the group have dropped the veil of reverb that characterized their previous albums. The tinges of country and soul that give Camera Obscura’s baroque take on pop music its bittersweet edge have never been more apparent guitars shimmer into the distance, keys haunt, and Campbell’s voice searches for the heart, reflecting on love, loss, and the passage of time.

Lead single “Big Love” relishes in the space between country rock and prog, a pining break-up anthem featuring the soaring pedal steel of Tim Davidson. It’s a Nashville Sound heartbreaker, tackling the complexity of wanting to rekindle a bad relationship with Campbell’s uncanny ability to render the past: “It was a big love, she said / That’s why it took ten years to get her out of her head,” she begins.

“We’re Going to Make It in a Man’s World” was co-written with Maciocia for filmmaker Margaret Salmon’s 2021 film Icarus (After Amelia). (Salmon, in turn, shot Look to the East, Look to the West’s cover photography featuring Fiona Morrison, who was on the cover of Camera Obscura’s debut, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi.). Ironic and sincere, the two navigate the reality of being women in the music industry, somehow floating over Davidson’s pedal steel and Maciocia’s keys. “The Light Nights” is a swooning song propelled by a western shuffle and killer guitar, striking a balance between a particularly good honky-tonk joint’s jukebox and a lost gem of California pop music waiting to be discovered in a 7” bin.

Look to the East, Look to the West is the sound of a band that has grown more confident in its sound and purpose than ever. It is Camera Obscura at their best and most evocative, an album that completely rearranges the listener’s emotional core, leaving them sad and exhilarated at the same time. Camera Obscura’s catalog is replete with songs people point to as life-changing, songs that will stick with them all their lives. Look to the East, Look to the West has 11 of them; take your pick. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Camera Obscura return! After the sad passing of Carey Lander, it's hard to imagine how the band could continue but 'Look To The East...' takes all of the latent melodicism and swooning choruses and strips them back to a fairly minimalist backbone. There are moments of the cinematic intensity and wistful grandiosity of their previous work but it's a much more emotionally wrought, fickle affair, and all the more beautiful for it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Liberty Print
2. We’re Going To Make It In A Man’s World
3. Big Love
4. Only A Dream
5. The Light Nights
6. Sleepwalking
7. Baby Huey (Hard Times)
8. Denon
9. Pop Goes Pop
10. Sugar Almond
11. Look To The East, Look To The West.

"Let's Get Out Of This Country" is the album of maturity, the album of a group that has a solid international position and a third album that will immortalize them. It was recorded in Sweden and produced by Jari Haapalainen (Ed Harcourt, The Concretes), and with it, Tracyanne Campbell and company made the definitive leap with their arrangements, energy, harmonies and composition. Some of the musicians that recorded the strings had recently toured with Brian Wilson and Arthur Lee & Love. The album's collaborators incl- ude Victoria Bergsman from The Concretes, Britta Persson and members of Swedish groups like The Tourettes, Laakso and Speedmarket Avenue. And we get "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken", "Tears For Affairs", "Razzle Dazzle Rose" and "Let's Get Out Of This Country" to confirm this. And of course, they toured the entire world, were heard on "Grey's Anatomy", and then signed to 4AD.

TRACK LISTING

01 Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken
02 Tears For Affairs
03 Come Back Margaret
04 Dory Previn
05 The False Contender
06 Let’s Get Out Of This Country
07 Country Mile
08 If Looks Could Kill
09 I Need All The Friends I Can Get
10 Razzle Dazzle Rose

"Underachievers Please Try Harder" is the album on which Stuart Murdoch continued showing his support for the band with the cover photo; the album produced by Geoff Allan (Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, The Delgados, Arab Strap And Belle & Sebastian); the album that quickly surpassed 100,000 copies sold, a number that causes a bit of vertigo nowadays; the album that put them at the top of indie lists in the United States, and that was included on an episode of our beloved "Gilmore Girls".

TRACK LISTING

01 Suspended From Class
02 Keep It Clean
03 A Sisters Social Agony
04 Teenager
05 Before You Cry
06 Your Picture
07 Number One Son
08 Let Me Go Home
09 Books Written For Girls
10 Knee Deep At The National Pop League
11 Lunar Sea

With the band’s tenth anniversary in their viewfinder, CAMERA release “Prosthuman”, their fifth studio album. As befits an age in which realities can change in the blink of an eye, from one day to the next, the Berlin band never tire of changing themselves, their music or personnel.

As Karlheinz Stockhausen noted: “New methods change the experience. New experiences change man.”

Taking this as their lead, Michael Drummer (the drummer) and CAMERA surprise us once more on “Prosthuman” as they reinvent and reformulate their sound without sacrificing the project’s identity which has matured over the past decade. Less surprising is the fact that some record stores give CAMERA their own section, alongside Krautrock pioneers like NEU!, Can and La Düsseldorf. “Emotional Detox”, the predecessor to this album, was distinguished by the presence of two keyboard virtuosos (Steffen Kahles and CAMERA founder member Timm Brockmann). Finding replacements for “Prosthuman” was, as Michael Drummer stresses, “a difficult process.” The two keyboardists had – in different creative periods – formed the backbone of a band structure otherwise prone to fluctuations. Decisive input came from an unlikely source: Tim Schroeder, who first teamed up with CAMERA as a performance and video artist on their six-week tour of the USA in 2017.

Over the course of various jams and recording sessions, he was able to offer ample proof of his synthesizers skills. Alex Kozmidi, a musician and composer with a flair for experimentation, completed the triumvirate on guitar, with Michael Drummer adding his own guitar riffs here and there. Change and friction can be useful allies in pursuit of creativity, something to which Drummer has grown accustomed as the only ever-present member of CAMERA. The pleasures and pain of isolation – suddenly a mass phenomenon in pandemic times – are well known to the quasi frontman of the group. Over the years, he has spent many hours alone or with a shifting cast of co-musicians in the band’s basement studio, beneath a former factory site in a less than hip southern district of Berlin. Virus-induced social distancing and quarantine measures that came into force during the recording process (June 2019 to June 2020) thus posed no great challenge.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's always a delight when something hits the shelves from Bureau B. This time sees Camera revisiting their familiar heady kosmische groove, albeit with different staff. Drummer and Schroeder here perfect the warmingly organic duality of synthesiser and live percussion, resulting in a fluid but cohesive build and release narrative and a hypnotic, rhythmic nod.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1.Kartoffelstampf
2.Alar Alar
3.Prosthuman / Apptime
4.Überall Teilchen / Teilchen Überall
5.Freundschaft

Side B
1.El Ley
2.Schmwarf
3.A2
4.Chords4 / Kurz Vor
5.Harmonite

Exclusive Dinked Bonus 12”:
A2 – Lloyd Cole Remix
Schmwarf – The Telescopes Threw A Way Through Experimental Health Version
Alar Alar – Love-Songs Remix
Prosthuman – Extnddntwrk Remix (Andrew Robert Lindsay Fearn Of Sleaford Mods)
Freundschaft – Dead Skeletons Planet Book Remix (Ryan Van Kriedt, Henrik Björnsson)

Started as the so called 'Krautrock Guerrilla' in 2012, six years later the Berlin combo Camera are releasing their fourth full-length album. Customarily associated with the likes of NEU! and La Dusseldorf it is time to allow Camera to break free of the krautrock tradition and accept that they are very much doing their own thing now. Motto: "It's not repetition, it’s discipline"

TRACK LISTING

1. Gizmo
2. Patrouille
3. Ciao Cacao
4. Himmelhilf
5. Cosm
6. Pacific One
7. Nicenstein
8. Super 8
9. Feuerwerk

The beat hammers like the pulse of a pair of lovers on the run from a gang of racist thugs - the sound is manic, but from it speaks a seemingly insurmountable inner strength. This arch of tension is home to Camera. The Berlin band is rightly compared with icons of seventies Krautrock such as Neu! and La Düsseldorf, with a tight and driving sound, yet they are still somehow unpredictable. Hardly any other band understands how to mutate tiny musical nuances into volcanic eruptions like they do. Camera is a motor running at full throttle, where an explosion could occur at any second. Once you have embarked on this crazy journey, you will be fascinated by the alternating current somewhere between a flash flood and roller coaster running off the rails. The cascades of sound convey a blurry image of a boundless desire to revolt, with each blink of an eye threatening to end in purgatory, yet it is damned near indestructible.

Michael Drummer is the ethereal Indian paleface who pummels his drums at every show as if we're in the midst of a 17th Century incarnational ritual. In Steffen Kahles, who hails from the world of film music, he has found the musical partner he needed to enrich the tribal kraut beat with diverse motifs and bold sounds. On the third Camera album "Phantom of Liberty", we hear the clever use of playful sounds such as synths that beam us back into the Commodore 64 computer games of 1984; or slightly cranky keyboard pads, as if created by deliberately manipulating the speed of an old tape machine. With "Phantom of Liberty" Camera show that they have become more mature and complex without losing any of their tremendous energy.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: This third album from Berlin trio Camera continues along a similar, if slightly more meandering, Kraut-rock path as their previous releases, a path already well trodden by the likes of Neu! and La Düsseldorf. The scope of their sound has expanded this time around though, and along with the pummelling drums and motorik rhythms we expect, there are a whole host of keyboard experiments going on: fluid synth washes, spacey swooshes, bleeps and squiggles. At times it sounds like they're soundtracking an 80s computer game, and at others the eerie electronics would be the perfect backdrop to a sci-fi movie. They've definitely upped their game on this album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Affenfaust
2. Fröhlichkeit
3. Festus
4. Nevernine
5. Ildefons
6. Reindenken / Raus
7. Tjamahal
8. Tribal Mango

Krautrock, that perennial badge of hipness. The ultimate honorary title for repetitive music, as played by Camera. In fact, the Berlin band's penchant for playing without permission in underground stations or other public places (in the gents at the Echo awards ceremony) has seen them dubbed "Krautrock Guerilla". Camera are not seeking to emulate the sound of older Krautrock bands, in any case. Nor have they been listening incessantly to NEU! or Can.

"Perhaps we just have the same angle of approach" suggests keyboard player Timm Brockmann, "we start playing and simply go with the flow." Motorik-driven, energetic stretches laced with psychedelic overtones rise up from keyboards, drums and guitars, much as they did for the pioneers of German Krautrock some forty years ago. On the back of "Radiate!", their debut album in 2012, Camera extended their range to Russia and the USA.

Whilst "Radiate!" was entirely the product of studio improvisation, "Remember I Was Carbon Dioxide" sees Timm Brockmann and drummer Michael Drummer revisit and revise jams supplemented by various different guitarists and other guest musicians, exploring the possibilities of the studio as a reflection loop. Without losing sight of their overriding impulse to improvise-which is, after all, the essence of Camera.

‘Desire Lines’ - an album born of life and experience; a record with something to prove. This time Camera Obscura decamped to Portland, Oregon to work with producer Tucker Martine, who has added so much to the music of R.E.M., The Decemberists and Sufjan Stevens previously. The band also brought in Neko Case and Jim James from My Morning Jacket to contribute vocals. The result is a big, gorgeous pop record that sounds like it means it.

You'd be hard-pushed to find an album with as many well-crafted, supremely catchy pop songs as this. Original yet soothingly familiar, these tunes manage to break your heart and take you to the top in equal measure. They're written and sung by Tracyanne Campbell and there can't be a sweeter, more believable voice in pop right now. It's like she's your best friend, singing in your ear, but what she's singing is the pages of her diary! This is actually Camera Obscura’s 4th album, but the others just led up to this one; this is the one where they’ve distilled their thing. The production’s perfect too: Concrete’s producer Jari Haapalainen perfectly capturing the old-school indie classicist vibe. Every song's a gem, there's not one duffer, but the gorgeous slowie "James" and the euphoric, horn-driven "Honey In The Sun" deserve a special mention. Mancunian legend Paul Morley's a massive fan too: that's good enough for me!

TRACK LISTING

1. French Navy
2. The Sweetest Thing
3. You Told A Lie
4. Away With Murder
5. Swans
6. James
7. Careless Love
8. My Maudlin Career
9. Forests And Sands
10. Other Towns And Cities
11. Honey In The Sun

Originally written for a one off live performance to accompany Dziga Vertov's classic 1929 Russian silent film 'Man With A Movie Camera', some of these tracks ("Evolution", "All Things"), and their 70s free-jazz inspired style went on to become the backbone of the "Everyday" sessions. Finally J Swinscoe and Co have gone into the studio and recorded the tracks (live) for this proper soundtrack LP.

"Let's Get Out Of This Country" is a master class in intelligent, melodic 'retro-modern pop'. Producer Jari Happalainen (The Concretes, Ed Harcourt) has shaped a cohesive collection of classic songs which are, at turns upbeat ("If Looks Could Kill"), downbeat ("Country Mile"), hooky ("I Need All The Friends I Can Get") and epic ("Razzle Dazzle Rose").

Camera Obscura are a seven piece from Glasgow, who started releasing records in the late 90s on the Andmoresound label. Afer a year of touring and recording, they've now released the follow-up to their Geoff Allen (Arab Strap, Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian) produced debut album, and the single "Eighties Fan" which was produced by Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian. On "Underachievers, Please Try Harder" they've broadened their sound by bringing in new organs and a Fender Rhodes piano, and trying out 12-string acoustic, banjo and autoharp on some tracks, even utilising a Stylophone.

These Texans were really amongst the first bands to explore the stoner rock ethos by mixing largely instrumental tracks with drugged up, spaced out, psychedelic dope anthems. Jesus Acedo's guitar playing is a major highlight (Hendrix / Page / McLaughlin blurred with Ravi Shankar). Zepplinesque rhythms, phasing and mescaline visions where layered ghost voices meet monstrously drugged riffs offset against giant peals of progressive keyboard while submerged vocals fight to grope their way through.

New project from Jeff Kelly, songwriter of cult psych prog outfit Green Pajamas, joined here by new member Laura Weller. Goblin Market continues Jeff's fascination with pre-Raphaelite painters, poets and Victorian writer Christina Rossetti and the music is an inspired blend of acoustic acid folk with winsome prog-psychedelic elements and utilises as lyrics the poetry of Lizzie Siddal, Rossetti and Emily Bronte.