Two classically trained musicians from vastly different traditions, MD Pallavi and Andi Otto came together to create a jewel of a record in ’Songs for Broken Ships’ and Multi Culti have whipped up a stunning remix package for it featuring Simone de Kunovich, Auntie Flo, Peter Power, Kaleema and more.

Hailing from Bangalore, trained in Hindustani music and poetry since childhood, MD Pallavi’s beautiful voice makes an elegant companion to cellist / composer / producer Andi Otto’s idiosyncratic and unconventional style. Andi’s music has featured on labels such as Shika Shika and Pingipung (which he co-runs and curates) and, of course, Multi Culti, who released his previous album ‘Bow Wave’ which featured his first collaboration with Pallavi.

While the heart of "Songs for Broken Ships" showcased the duo's unique meld of cross-cultural folktronica and acoustic ballads with MD Pallavi's poetic Kannada verses at the core, "Remixes from the Clouds” reframes these elements for a vast spectrum of electronic listeners and club go-ers.

An ethereal hypnotic techno re-interpretation of ‘Prayer to the Cloud’ from Italian producer Simone de Kunovich. Scottish ambient maestro and mushroom aficionado Auntie Flo's ecstatic reinterpretation of "Clockshop". Multi Culti veteran downtempo wizard Peter Power's organic and earthy rendition of "Prayer to the Cloud." The mystic sounds of Kaleema breathing new percussive life into "Clockshop". The package concludes with a 'prayer-a-pella' version of "Prayer to the Clouds", spotlighting MD Pallavi's vocals in their purest form, for DJs and producers seeking to slather their rhythms with spiritual voice.

The Multi Culti imaginarium also present an expanded digital package that includes mixes from Hannah Lee, Bliz Nochi & Emil Jourjou, Migramara, and Poligra. In the words of Shawn Christopher: "people from all nations, dancing together." Celestial harmony, one 12” at a time.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Prayer To The Cloud - (Simone De Kunovich Remix)
A2. Prayer To The Cloud - (Peter Power Remix)
A3. Prayer To The Cloud (Prayer-a-Pella)
B1. Clockshop - (Auntie Flo Remix)
B2. Clockshop - (Kaleema Remix)
B3. Clockshop - (Album Version)

Making their debut appearance on Steel City Dance Discs, Clouds, an irrefutable powerhouse of sound consisting of Liam Robertson and Calum Macleod, exercise their intensely unapologetic musical personality with their latest venture with Mass Hysteria, for SCDD040.

The Scottish duo have become recognized for their heavenly balance of euphoric soundscapes, ladened with break-neck percussion, ecstasy-induced melodies and rupturing drum patterns. All of these highly characteristic elements are found in Mass Hysteria; an EP that highlights the hard-edged nature of Clouds’ ever-evolving style.

Mass Hysteria is a five-piece project that is nothing short of atomic. Typically energy-fueled, the duo coordinate a masterful blend of hard-hitting, four-to-the-floor basslines: a seemingly perfect marriage for an EP that sets the listener deep into a cosmic whirlwind of electronic emotions.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: It seems like each week we're treated to another wreckin' ball of techno destruction from Australia's Steel City Dance Discs. You might remember Scottish duo Clouds from Soma or Turbo. Hardware heavies that do not fuck about. "Mass Hysteria" is a proper slammer, designed for huge aircraft hangers and complicated lazer arrays.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Phoenix Crash
A2. Plastyx
A3. Proper Vanquisher
B1. Fate Curve (Hysteria)
B2. Crested Flair 

Joni Mitchell’s second album Clouds is BPI certified gold and won the 1969 Grammy (her first of nine) for Best Folk Performance. Originally released 1st May 1969, all tracks were written by Mitchell and the album features a self-portrait as it’s artwork.

Featuring ‘Chelsea Morning’, ‘The Fiddle and the Drum’ and one of Mitchell’s best known songs ‘Both Sides, Now.’

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Tin Angel (2021 Remaster)
Chelsea Morning (2021 Remaster)
I Don't Know Where I Stand (2021 Remaster)
That Song About The Midway (2021 Remaster)
Roses Blue (2021 Remaster)
Side B
The Gallery (2021 Remaster)
I Think I Understand (2021 Remaster)
Songs To Aging Children Come (2021 Remaster)
The Fiddle And The Drum (2021 Remaster)
Both Sides, Now (2021 Remaster)

The Mars Volta - Que Dios TeMaldiga Mi Corazon (acoustic album of The Mars Volta) After the successful worldwide release of the studio album "The Mars Volta", the band also releases the album as an acoustic album. The harmonic album "Que Dios TeMaldiga Mi Corazon".

The Mars Volta plays a similar game: it is subtly subversive – end- lessly inventive, but never at the cost of the song. Many of the same val- ues that made The Mars Volta’s previous albums so ground-breaking, so acclaimed, are still present here, but they are employed in different, adroit ways. The Caribbean rhythms that powered their blistering earlier records still flourish across The Mars Volta – they aren’t the foreground now, but they ripple underneath each of these tracks.

Similarly, the big rock moves and proggy complexities of their landmark releases have given way for more sonic subtlety, for immediacy and directness. But while The Mars Volta shies away from Grand Guignol flourishes, it remains a dark, power- ful and affecting listen, mature and deeply satisfying in its restraint.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blacklight Shine  (acoustic)
2. Graveyard Love (acoustic)
3. Shore Story (acoustic)
4. Blank Condolences  (acoustic)
5. Vigil (acoustic)
6. Que Dios TeMaldiga Mi Corazon (acoustic)
7. Cerulea (acoustic)
8. Flash Burns From Flashbacks (acoustic)
9. Palm Full Of Crux (acoustic)
10. NoCaseGain (acoustic)
11. Tourmaline (acoustic)
12. Equus 3 (acoustic)
13. Collapsible Shoulders (acoustic)
14. The Requisition (acoustic)

Breaking a decade of omertà, The Mars Volta reawaken from their lengthy hiatus with an eponymous track that radically reshapes their paradigm. Formed by guitarist/composer Omar Rodríguez-López and singer/lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, The Mars Volta rose from the ashes of El Paso punk-rock firebrands At The Drive-In in 2001.

On a mission to “honour our roots and honour our dead”, The Mars Volta made music that fused the Latin sounds Rodríguez-López was raised on with the punk and underground noise he and Bixler-Zavala had immersed themselves in for years, and the futuristic visions they were tapping into.

The albums that followed were one-of-a-kind masterpieces, their songs of breath-taking complexity also possessing powerful emotional immediacy. After the group fell silent, a legion of devotees (including Kanye West) kept up an insistent drum-beat for their return. Now – a year after La Realidad De Los Sueños, a luxurious 18-LP box-set compiling their back catalogue, sold out its 5,000 print run in under 24 hours – the duo are back, accompanied this time by founder bassist Eva Gardner, drummer Willy Rodriguez Quiñones and keyboard-player Marcel Rodríguez-López.

This song shakes loose some of The Mars Volta’s long-standing shibboleths and the dizzying, abrasive prog stylings of earlier albums absent. Instead, The Mars Volta pulses with subtle brilliance, Caribbean rhythms underpinning sophisticated, turbulent songcraft.

This is The Mars Volta at their most mature, most concise, most focused. Their sound and fury channelled to greatest effect, The Mars Volta finds Rodríguez-López’s subterranean pop melodies driving Bixler-Zavala’s dark sci-fi tales of the occult and malevolent governments. Distilling all the passion, poetry and power at their fingertips, The Mars Volta is the most accessible music the group have ever recorded.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blacklight Shine 
2. Graveyard Love 
3. Shore Story 
4. Blank Condolences 
5. Vigil 
6. Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazon
7. Cerulea 
8. Flash Burns From Flashbacks 
9. Palm Full Of Crux 
10. No Case Gain 
11. Tourmaline 
12. Equus 3 
13. Collapsible Shoulders 
14. The Requisition

Landscape Tantrums Lost for two decades, the recent rediscovery of Landscape Tantrums the first attempt at recording the music that would become The Mars Volta’s De-Loused In The Comatorium revealed an important and hitherto missing chapter in the group’s evolution. Selfrecorded by Omar (assisted by Jon DeBaun) at Burbank’s Mad Dog Studios within a head spinning four days, Landscape Tantrums captures De-Loused in somewhat embryonic form, though much of what would make The Mars Volta’s debut album such an electrifying, sublime experience was already in place: the fearless invention, the fusion of futurist rock elements and traditions from outside of the rock orthodoxy, the sense of virtuosity working in service of emotional effect. From a distance, The Mars Volta must have seemed as if they were on a high when they walked into the studio to record what they expected to be their debut album (“I didn’t think of it as demos or a dry run,” Omar says). The group had recently played the Coachella festival to rave reviews, a vindication of the quixotic risk Omar and Cedric had taken, quitting At The Drive In to lead such an uncompromising musical proposition.

Their debut EP, Tremulant, had similarly signalled their singular vision, and been rewarded with similarly positive feedback. But the truth was that The Mars Volta entered Mad Dog in tatters, scarcely believing anything other than failure lay within their reach. They’d recently lost their bassist, Eva Gardner, and parted ways with keyboard play Ikey Owens. Tensions were brewing with drummer Jon Theodore, too himself a replacement for founding drummer Blake Fleming Omar questioning Theodore’s commitment to the group. And sound manipulator Jeremy Michael Ward’s drug problem had gotten so far out of hand that he’d been sent to rehab, and wouldn’t return until two days into the Landscape Tantrums. The pressure upon Omar was intense, and it began to manifest in the form of physical and emotional breakdowns. His art was his life, but now he began to wonder if it was actually going to kill him. Under such heavy manners, miracles occurred at Mad Dog. Surely that’s the only way to describe the music contained on Landscape Tantrums, as Omar fashioned early versions of Inertiatic ESP, Drunkship Of Lanterns and Eriatarka that rivalled the Rick Rubin produced versions that ended up on De- Loused for intensity, precision and immediacy, as Cedric delivered a powerfully intimate reading of Televators, and as a bare bones version of the group sketched out the peaks of what would become their debut masterpiece in barely half a week, on a shoestring, and believing they wouldn’t last long enough to see it hit the shelves. Listening to Landscape Tantrums now, with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge of what these songs will become, one notices Cedric has yet to fully find the voice that will lend The Mars Volta their devastating authority, that Eriatarka will evolve even further under Rick Rubin’s watch, and that the lyrics to De-Loused’s climactic chapter, Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt, have yet to be penned. But one also notices how lithe the group sound here, how hungry, and one appreciates the raw edge that Rubin would later polish to a venomous sharpness. More than mere historical curiosity, Landscape Tantrums is an essential text for the dedicated Mars Volta aficionado, and a breathtaking album in its own right.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) [Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium]
2. Son Et Lumière (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)
3. Inertiatic ESP (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)
4. Drunkship Of Lanterns (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)
5. Eriatarka (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)

Side B
1. This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium) 
2. Televators (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)
3. Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)

The Bedlam In Goliath Received wisdom has it that to toy with the occult is to enter into a Faustian pact that will bite you on the ass somewhere down the line. Magic, myth and sorcery had been recurrent themes within The Mars Volta’s output for some time and served as the dominant motifs for their previous full length, Amputechture.

So it was almost inevitable that, at some point, luck, kismet, karma, serendipity whatever you want to call the metaphysical forces that exert hidden influence upon our mortal world would visit the group and enact some kind of payback. Whatever debts the group had accrued came due with The Bedlam In Goliath, the group’s fourth full length, and an album whose creation was, in every sense of the word, cursed. The production of the album was regularly scuppered by technical problems that erased whole takes from their computer hard drives, a phenomenon Omar’s in studio right hand man Rich Costey an experienced producer/engineer in his own right found impossible to explain.

Meanwhile, Omar’s home studio flooded and was plagued by severe electrical problems, and at least one member of the engineering staff working on the album quit the sessions after suffering a psychotic episode. At the time, all this accumulating bad juju was ascribed, by the more superstitious members of The Mars Volta, to a ouija board Omar had reputedly pur chased while travelling in Jerusalem and gifted to Cedric upon his return. What is certain is that Omar returned from his travels with tapes of field recordings he’d made in Jerusalem, from his wanderings around the city’s Jewish, Muslim and Christian quarters, which were later mixed into the track Soothsayer, a mystical epic elevated by strings.

Amputechture Beneath the technical flash, the fury, the fearless creative brinkmanship of the first two Mars Volta albums lay a potent seam of the blues, an existential vexation that powered every twist and turn of Omar and Cedric’s imaginations. That mournful vibe would come to the surface of the group’s third full-length Amputechture, a simmering/blistering set that was unquestionably the group’s darkest yet. There was no overarching theme here, no interlinking concept binding the songs together, though Cedric concedes that, lyrically, the album was influenced “by a lot of stuff I was going through, a really bad break-up and a lot of other crazy stuff, and trying to put that feeling into the record.”

But Amputechture – its name another of the late Jeremy Michael Ward’s invented words – was no downbeat bummer. Opener Vicarious Atonement might’ve been a deliciously gloomy, slow-burning thing, capturing Cedric in delirious duet with Omar’s swooning guitar lines, accompanied by squalling saxophone by Adrian Terrazas-Gonzales and dream-frequency fuckery by the group’s new sonic manipulator, former At The Drive- In member Paul Hinojos. But second track Tetragrammaton swiftly set pulses racing, an epic-in-miniature and containing more ideas within its 16 minutes than most bands manage over an entire career, its proggy, complex guitar figures tessellating in infinite configurations and converging as if conforming to mathematical formulae from another reality.

TRACK LISTING

Vicarious Atonement
Tetragrammaton
Vermicide
Meccamputechture
Asilos Magdalena
Viscera Eyes
Day Of The Baphomets
El Ciervo Vulnerado

Frances The Mute was no De-Loused Part Two. For one thing, the band’s configuration had changed, in the most painful way. Shortly before the release of De- Loused, sound manipulator and founder member Jeremy Michael Ward passed away, a wound Omar says the group never recovered from. But even though his inspired fucking- with-the-sonic-parameters is absent from Frances The Mute, his spirit and influence can still be determined, the album’s concept derived from a diary Ward had encountered in his day-job in repossession.

“Jeremy picked up lots of interesting stuff when he was a repo man,” remembers Cedric. “Weird things, including this diary, He let us read it a bunch of times. It was by a guy who’d been adopted and was searching to find his real parents. It was very surreal, it didn’t make much sense – the guy might’ve been schizophrenic – but it was very inspiring. It felt like how certain music helps you escape your boring every-day life. The names and scenes in the diary directly inspired these songs.” Some of the tracks pre-dated De-Loused, having their origins in early demos Omar recorded at the duo’s Long Beach home Anikulapo, songs such as The Widow and Miranda The Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore. Cedric had heard these jams in their embryonic state and began working in his mind on what he could bring to them. “I was attracted to The Widow like you would be to a lover, right?” Cedric remembers. “I sang over it with Omar while we were touring De-Loused in Australia on the Big Day Out, like, ‘Okay, I’ve got something for this.’” A potent ballad, laden with emotional crescendos and evoking the epic drama of Ennio Morricone – an effect aided by an elegiac trumpet part performed by Flea – The Widow would become The Mars Volta’s first song to chart on the Billboard Top 100, capturing the album’s potent sorrow and widescreen sprawl in miniature. Indeed, the lush sound of the album, the depth of detail and breadth of instrumentation, belies its grungy roots. Having tasted the luxury of Rick Rubin’s mansion, Omar veered in the opposite direction when recording Frances, cutting the album in what he describes as “a shithole... Basically a warehouse with one little air conditioner on its last legs, awful wiring and a console you couldn’t rely on. We were there night and day – I would literally lock engineer Jon DeBaun in there. He slept on a mattress in the vocal booth.”

A considerably more complex and ambitious album than its predecessor – four of its five tracks lasted over ten minutes in length, with its closing epic Cassandra Gemini spanning over half an hour – Frances The Mute wasn’t recorded “live” by an ensemble, but with the individual musicians coming into the “shithole” and recording the parts Omar had scripted for them separately. “They had to have absolute trust in me,” Omar remembers, “Like actors trust their director.” In addition to the core band – now fleshed out with incoming bassist Juan Alderete, and Omar’s brother Marcel on keyboards and percussion – the album featured guitar solos from John Frusciante, saxophone and flute by future member Adrian Terrazas-Gonzales, a full string section, and piano played by Omar’s hero, salsa legend Larry Harlow. “It was a childhood dream come true,” Omar says. “We recorded with him in my hometown in Puerto Rico, and my father flew in to watch the session. Larry was a perfect gentleman, and a very lively spirit.” The album’s fevered intensity infected even the staid string section, Cedric remembers. “When they performed the part on Cassandra Gemini, ’25 wives in the lake tonight’, one of the guys in the orchestra played so hard he broke his bow, this real old, antique bow. And you could see his ‘classical’ side come out – like, ‘I broke this playing a fuckin’ rock song??’ He was pissed off. But I was like, ‘Fuck yeah, man, that’s on the record! You’ve got to realise things like that are cool.’” The album also features field recordings of “the coqui of Puerto Rico” during the opening minutes of Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore. “We took a page out of the Grateful Dead’s book there,” laughs Cedric. “They recorded air. We recorded fuckin’ frogs in Puerto Rico.”

‘The Path Of The Clouds’, Marissa Nadler’s ninth solo album, is the most stylistically adventurous, lyrically transfixing, and melodically sophisticated collection of songs in her already rich discography. Gripped by wanderlust while suddenly housebound at the start of the pandemic in 2020, Nadler escaped into writing and came back with a stunning set of songs about metamorphosis, love, mysticism and murder. Blurring the line between reality and fantasy and moving freely between past and present, these 11 deeply personal, self-produced songs find Nadler exploring new landscapes, both sonic and emotional.

While she’s always been a brilliant guitarist, Nadler challenged herself to expand her palette for ‘The Path Of The Clouds’, experimenting with synthetic textures that make the album feel untethered from time and space. A majestic grandeur sweeps through songs such as ‘Elegy’, shooting the listener into the stratosphere as synths swirl and entwine with Nadler’s celestial mezzo-soprano. Nadler also learned to play piano during the pandemic’s isolation and she composed many of the songs on the album on keys rather than guitar, which further contributed to their exploratory feel. These songs are unmistakably Marissa Nadler’s, but they sound free to go places she’s never gone before.

Nadler tracked the skeletons of the songs at home and then sent them to some choice collaborators, including experimental harpist Mary Lattimore and Simon Raymonde, the Cocteau Twins bassist and her Lost Horizons collaborator. Multiinstrumentalist Milky Burgess, having recently worked on the soundtrack to the film ‘Mandy’, adds intricate melodic power throughout the album. Jesse Chandler, Nadler’s piano teacher (as well as a member of Mercury Rev and Midlake), plays winding woodwinds and plaintive piano to luminous effect. Fellow singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle contributes a slinky guitar solo on ‘Turned Into Air’, while Black Mountain’s Amber Webber steps in as a vocal foil to Nadler, a ghostly apparition in the distance of ‘Elegy’.

Seth Manchester, known for his work with Lingua Ignota, Battles and Lightning Bolt, mixed the album at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Manchester added dimension to the songs’ atmospheric beauty with screeching feedback and distorted guitars. Stripped of the ethereal reverb that often swaddles her resonant vocals, Nadler’s delivery now stings and pierces with newfound immediacy and confidence.

As a songwriter, Nadler is as direct and urgent as she has ever been. There’s no coded language amid the bleak lows and exalted highs of songs like ‘Elegy’, ‘Lemon Queen’ and ‘Storm’. Memories are painted with highly detailed imagery and Nadler, also a visual artist, uses that eye not only to tell a story but to transport the listener there.

‘The Path Of The Clouds’ showcases the power of an artist at the peak of her powers nearly 20 years into an acclaimed career as a songwriter and singer. Coming a long way from the spare dream folk of her earlier work, she has remained inspired and continues to evolve, open to new ideas and directions.

TRACK LISTING

Bessie Did You Make It
The Path Of The Clouds
Couldn’t Have Done The Killing
If I Could Breathe Underwater
Elegy
Well Sometimes You Just Can’t Stay
From Vaport To Stardust
Storm
Turned Into Air
And I Dream Of Running
Lemon Queen

La Realidad De Los Sueños means “the reality of dreams” – and there is no title more fitting for this unbelievable box-set. This represents a dream come true for the many, many loyal fans of progressive alternative rock giants, The Mars Volta, across the world.

Working intensely with Omar Rodríguez-Lopéz, Clouds Hill has brought out an all-encompassing and wonderfully designed vinyl box-set.

The box-set, limited to 5000 copies worldwide, includes 18 LPs (180 grams, black vinyl). 

The vinyl only set, (there are no CDs, downloads, or streaming) contains the following albums (remastered specifically for vinyl) and products: - Tremulant EP - De-Loused In The Comatorium - Frances The Mute - Amputechture - The Bedlam In Goliath - Octahedron - Noctourniquet - Landscape Tantrums (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium) - A Plague Upon A Hissing Children & Eunuch Provocateur (Unreleased Version From The De-Loused In The Comatorium Session) on double etched vinyl - A book of exclusive behind the scenes photography - 2 pins

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1 - Side A 1. Cut That City / 2. Concertina

Disc 1 - Side B 1. Eunuch Provocateur

Disc 2 - Side A 1. Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) [Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium] / 2. Son Et Lumière (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium) / 3. Inertiatic ESP (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium) / 4. Drunkship Of Lanterns (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium) / 5. Eriatarka (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium) / 6. Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)

Disc 2 - Side B 1. This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium) / 2. Televators (Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium)

Disc 3 - Side A 1. Son Et Lumière / 2. Inertiatic ESP / 3. Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)

Disc 3 - Side B 1. Tira Me A Las Arañas / 2. Drunkship Of Lanterns / 3. Eriatarka

Disc 4 - Side A 1. Cicatriz ESP / 2. This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed

Disc 4 - Side B 1. Televators / 2. Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt

Disc 5 - Side A 1. Cygnus....Vismund Cygnus / 2. The Widow

Disc 5 - Side B 1. L' Via L' Viaquez

Disc 6 - Side A 1. Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore

Disc 6 - Side B 1. Cassandra Gemini

Disc 7 - Side A 1. Tarantism

Disc 8 - Side A 1. Vicarious Atonement / 2. Tetragrammaton

Disc 8 - Side B 1. Vermicide / 2. Meccamputechture

Disc 9 - Side A 1. Asilos Magdalena / 2. Viscera Eyes

Disc 9 - Side B 1. Day Of The Baphomets / 2. El Ciervo Vulnerado

Disc 10 - Side A1. Aberinkula / 2. Metatron / 3. Ilyena

Disc 10 - Side B 1. Wax Simulacra / 2. Goliath / 3. Tourniquet Man / 4. Cavalettas



Disc 11 - Side A 1. Agadez / 2. Askepios / 3. Ouroborous

Disc 11 - Side B 1. Soothsayer / 2. Conjugal Burns

Disc 12 - Side A 1. Since We've Been Wrong / 2. Teflon

Disc 12 - Side B 1. Halo Of Nembutals / 2. With Twilight As My Guide

Disc 13 - Side A 1. Cotopaxi / 2. Desperate Graves

Disc 13 - Side B 1. Copernicus / 2. Luciforms

Disc 14 - Side A 1. The Whip Hand / 2. Aegis / 3. Dyslexicon

Disc 14 - Side B 1. Empty Vessels Make The Loudest Sound / 2. The Malkin Jewel / 3. Lapochka

Disc 15 - Side A 1. In Absentia / 2. Imago / 3. Molochwalker / 4. Trinkets Pale Of Moon / 5. Zed And Two Naughts

Disc 15 - Side B 1. Vedamalady / 2. Noctourniquet

Disc 16 - Side A 1. Eunuch Provocateur

Disc 17 - Side A 1. A Plague Upon Your Hissing Children

Disc 18 - Side A 1. Mr. Muggs

Disc 18 - Side B 1. Mr. Muggs

Matador Records is excited to announce the release of a three-song shaped picture disc commemorating the 25th anniversary of Pavement’s 1995 album Wowee Zowee. The special disc, cut in the shape of the speech bubble found on the cover of Wowee Zowee, features the tracks “Sensitive Euro Man” and “Brink of the Clouds/Candylad” that first debuted on Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels, the expanded edition that was released on CD in 2006, and will be available on vinyl for the first time via Matador Records globally. Limited to a one-time press of 3,000 copies.

TRACK LISTING

Sensitive Euro Man
Brink Of The Clouds/Candylad

Ride handed the entirety of their highly acclaimed 6th studio album, ‘This Is Not A Safe Place’, to mysterious London act Pêtr Aleksänder, who stripped the songs back to just the vocals and added their customarily beautiful string arrangements, keys and synth textures beneath them.

The results take Ride deep into the neo-classical / ambient territory that a couple of the remixes of their previous album hinted at.

TRACK LISTING

R.I.D.E.
Future Love
Repetition
Kill Switch
Clouds Of Saint Marie
Eternal Recurrence
Fifteen Minutes
Jump Jet
Dial Up
End Game
Shadows Behind The Sun
In This Room

Martin Rev is best known as one half of the seminal duo Suicide (with Alan Vega). Listening to his solo albums, it becomes clear that Rev was responsible for the group’s music. Suicide mirrored the reductive and radical traits of the contemp- oraneous punk scene that was in the process of emerging, but their electronic, minimalist form of language was so unique, so innovative, that they would become a major influence on the likes of Daft Punk, Air and Aphex Twin. Alongside his work with Suicide, Martin Rev continued as a solo artist, releasing his eponymous debut album in 1980 on New York’s Infidelity label. Rev’s early solo excursions can be traced back to the original ideas which can be found – in modified form – in Suicide songs: as instrumental versions which have been texturally enriched, like a familiar figure which has nevertheless taken on a completely new existence.

Clouds of Glory
His second solo effort, was released on the French label New Rose in 1985, although the recordings on Clouds Of Glory actually dated back to the earlier part of the decade, following on from the Suicide sessions for the duo’s second album. Martin Rev remembers: “Clouds of Glory was produced from visual and musical sketches I had in mind which then coincidedwith an invitation by Marty Thau, previously Suicide’s manager, to take advantage of studio time he had accumulated from other projects. The essence of my ideas was then realized in the studio. Clouds was started in 1981 and completed in 1984 when additionalstudio time was made possible to complete it, based on the offer by New Rose Records.” In spite of Clouds Of Glory having been recorded with the sameequipment as the Alan Vega / Martin Rev Suicide album, it occupies a completely different space, evoking the solemnity of religious music through its underlying meditative tone. “I look now upon the album as part of a personal journey into the frontier of music; a process which is never ending in its revealing of possibilities to satisfy my musical aspirations.”

TRACK LISTING

1 Rocking Horse (5:45)
2 Parade (6:45)
3 Whisper (4:04)
4 Rodeo (6:37)
5 Metatron (6:25)
6 Clouds Of Glory (6:22)

In 2009 instrumental rock music experienced a new peak. Codes In The Clouds, the English quintet of Ciaran Morahan, Stephen Peeling, Jack Major, Joe Power and Robert Smith had found a firm place in this vast growing scene, spearheaded by the likes of Mogwai and 65daysofstatic — whom CITC supported live. With their harmonious and blissful sound they weaved guitar melodies, liable to explode any minute. Now Codes In The Clouds celebrate their tenth anniversary with the first vinyl edition of their seminal debut album Paper Canyon.Completed under the experienced eye of Justin Lockey (Minor Victories, The Editors, Yourcodenameis: Milo, The British Expeditionary Force) and with the vinyl master cut by legendary engineer Barry Grint (Radiohead, Oasis, Kate Bush) at Alchemy, London, Paper Canyon has lost none of its original urgency; at once energetic and charming, always surprising and unpredictable.

Bassist Joe Power recalls; “Paper Canyon was recorded in the late summer of 2008 over 5 days in Doncaster. The days in the studio were long, but working with two perfectionists in Justin and James Lockey you knew that the long days were going to be worth it.

Looking back on the process now, the memories that stand out are the endless shouts of “tune up!” after every take, the nearby café that offered “bottomless toast” with every breakfast (challenge accepted). Above all else, I think what stands out the most when reflecting on this record and listening to the tracks now is how young we were. This album could only have been written by people just entering their 20’s.

It has been great going through all the songs, the demos and the videos from that time and we’re really excited to finally have the album released in the format for which it was designed.”

TRACK LISTING

A 1. Fractures
A 2. Don't Go Awash In This Digital Landscape
A 3. Distant Street Lights
A 4. We Anchor In Hope
B 1. You Are Not What You Think You Are
B 2. The Distance Between Us

A highly personalised sociopathic gem delivered as a futuristic rewriting of how music works, a melodious breeze with a tail wind of venomous din. A ten-track album, her tenth studio set.

Enveloping the juxtaposition of the concept of ‘dark sunshine’, a brooding solo record creating with friends to expand her off-kilter sonic vision; a squally, squeaky mix of discordant beauty.

Feedback and phasing gyrate from simply strummed normality, imagine Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine cranking up a Dylan couplet. Messing with both extremes of the sonic spectrum: atonal and arrhythmic, a unique sound and a glorious return to form for one of alternative rock’s true innovators.

“Sometimes the most subversive thing I can do musically is adhere to standard song structure, sometimes the creepiest chords are the ones we’ve heard before, twisted into different shapes, and sometimes a story is lived a thousand times before we can ride it like a roller coaster. Nothing wholly unfamiliar is gonna make you look twice. When you can describe a record as being “deceptively” anything, you’re hinting at the sociopathic nature of music. Something I love. Imagine truly buying your own sunshine and charm, but also your darkness and violence; the two sides of your psychology showing each other off in relief. Songs can do that...we can’t, really. Darkness we’ve seen.” Kristin Hersh, July 2018.

“She's still as powerful a presence as she ever was.” Pitchfork

“The prodigious output and commitment to quality is pretty staggering, but then Kristin Hersh is a very, very special musician.” The Quietus.

TRACK LISTING

1. LAX
2. No Shade In Shadow
3. Halfway Home
4. Fox Point
5. Lethe
6. Loudmouth
7. Gin
8. Tulum
9. Breathe In
10. Lady Godiva

Fourth release on Kutiman's own record label Siyal Music. In the era of the brand, Kutiman is an anomaly. A musician who’s a video artist who’s a producer who’s an animator who’s also the unwilling star of one of Israel’s most successful recent documentaries, his every record contrasts with whatever it was that came before. But that’s fundamental to his appeal: no one, not even him, really knows what to expect next. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Don’t Hold On To The Clouds is no different, which means it’s like nothing he’s ever done. Most artists would acknowledge this by working under pseudonyms, but Kutiman is – yes, you’ve guessed it – different again. Kutiman’s upcoming LP Don’t Hold On To The Clouds is comprised of just four tracks -- the shortest of which, ‘Lucid dream’, still clocks in at almost eight minutes - it orbits within reach of, among other styles, Ambient, Electronica, Minimal and New Age, but refuses to settle on merely one. The A-Side features the airy ‘Behind the noise’ and ‘Unknown’, reeling the listener into a deep and meditation. Flip it over to the B-Side and you’ll find ‘Mineral’ and ‘Lucid dream’ inducing an ethereal state. This new record is unusual to Kutiman’s typical style, revealing his love for the sounds of Terry Reilly, Moondog, Alice Coltrane and William Basinski. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Behind The Noise 10:40
2. Unknown 08:21
3. Mineral 09:41
4. Lucid Dream 07:40

The Starless Room is the debut solo album by Gallon Drunk mainman and PJ Harvey cohort James Johnston.

The Starless Room - The results are a revelation, and not just for James Johnston. Vast in its scope, visceral, intimate and instinctive - " I just followed whatever triggered an emotional response in me".

The Starless Room represents a remarkable distillation of both his lyrical obsessions and prodigious, arguably under-acknowledged talent. Suitably, it's the title track that encapsulates the romantic sweep of the record best, with its star at his most intense and Sebastian Hoffman's string arrangements at their most ambitious. For James Johnston, however, the greatest pleasure of all is a simple one: the songs' slow tempos, "Something I adore, like a lot of the Isaac Hayes or Ray Charles albums that I love. It almost feels like I'm listening to someone else's record." But it's not. It's James Johnston's debut solo album, The Starless Room. Like he said, it feels just right.

James Johnston - As well as playing with Gallon Drunk, James Johnston has spent considerable time working with others: A mid 90s spell as a touring guitarist in The Bad Seeds led to a full role in Nick Cave's band between 2003 and 2008, and he's performed regularly with other iconic acts, including Lydia Lunch, Faust, and, currently, PJ Harvey, on whose The Hope Six Demolition Project Johnston appears. But if it sounds like he's softened on this album, he argues powerfully otherwise. "The band's records have quite an earthy feel, but in a way this is rawer, more focused and direct, musically and emotionally. The last Gallon Drunk record's my favourite, and it was certain elements of that which I really wanted to take further, to strip away the dissonance and anger, to reject the more familiar sounds in order to free it all up again. So the instrumentation is very different, led by piano and voice, and the overall sound is lush yet intimate. Overall it's far more reflective of me, both as a person and the sort of music I actually listen to."

" It felt right, and when that happens, you just go with it," says James Johnston of his decision, well into a third decade as frontman of Gallon Drunk, to record The Starless Room, his unexpectedly sumptuous, long-awaited, debut solo album. Over eight albums, Gallon Drunk have carved out a reputation as a savage live act whose work has increasingly revealed a bold sophistication, growing from the psychotic fury of 1991's You, The Night… And The Music up to 2014's epic The Soul Of The Hour. A solo album by their co-founder, though? That had somehow never come to pass. Especially one this lavish.

"It wasn't something I'd really considered before," Johnston admits, and even now he appears a little startled by the turn events have taken. "But that's where the writing was going. I've always poured all my ideas into Gallon Drunk, but we'd done two great records in fairly quick succession, and I really didn't want to repeat myself, so I was writing in a different way, one that didn't feel like it would work as Gallon Drunk. The moment the decision was made to go ahead with a solo album it freed a lot of things up for me, letting it go somewhere different without any constraints or expectations."

The Starless Room is distinguished by its grandeur and romance as much as its refreshing musical approach.

As well as playing with Gallon Drunk, Johnston has spent considerable time working with others: a mid 90s spell as a touring guitarist in The Bad Seeds led to a full role in Nick Cave's band between 2003 and 2008, and he's performed regularly with other iconic acts, including Lydia Lunch, Faust, and, currently, PJ Harvey, on whose The Hope Six Demolition Project Johnston appears.

Given the licentious nature of much of his previous work, that this newly mature, refined sound is indicative of Johnston's character may be unforeseen. His influences, however - "Big Star's Third, John Cale's 70s albums, Lee Hazlewood, Nina Simone, that sort of thing" - remain much as they were, if arguably employed with a new, more thoughtful perspective. Furthermore, his considered approach is indicative of a man with a musical education, both formal and informal.

Suitably, it's the title track that encapsulates the romantic sweep of the record best, with its star at his most intense and Sebastian Hoffman's string arrangements at their most ambitious. For Johnston, however, the greatest pleasure of all is a simple one: the songs' slow tempos, "something I adore, like a lot of the Isaac Hayes or Ray Charles albums that I love. It almost feels like I'm listening to someone else's record." But it's not. It's James Johnston's debut solo album, The Starless Room. Like he said, it feels just right.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Heartfelt anthems ruminating on life and love, existence and everything inbetween. Slow string swells and bombastic build-ups fade into mournful piano territory, all driven along by Johnston's heartfelt crooning vocal delivery. Sensitive soaring rock equally at home in the front room or belting out over a stadium PA.

TRACK LISTING

1. I'd Give You Anything
2. St. Martha's
3. Starless Room
4. Cold Morning Light
5. Dark Water
6. Frozen Time
7. Heart And Soul
8. The Light Of Love
9. Let It Fall
10. When The Wolf Calls

Pink Floyd Records continue the reintroduction of the Pink Floyd catalogue on vinyl for the first time in over two decades with the next three titles. Special care has been taken to replicate the original packaging. Mastered by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman, they will be pressed on 180gram vinyl for optimum sound quality. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: This soundtrack LP is unique in the Floyd canon in that quite a West Coast flavour pervades. Gilmour does usher in his epic, amped-up slide sound, notably on "Childhood's End", but the rest is a glorious mixture of early-70's hippy vibes and songs.

British duo Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker have risen to star status lately on the English acoustic scene, earning last year’s Best Duo award from the BBC Folk Awards and across-theboard praise for two self-released albums, most recently ‘Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour’, with its lush single ‘Silverline’.

Clarke and Walker release a new EP, ‘Through The Clouds,’ via Rough Trade, featuring a handful of the best tracks from their small catalogue, rearranged anew. ‘Through The Clouds’ is meant as an introduction to the duo; in addition to ‘Silverline’ it features a new, stripped-down version of ‘Done’ (ballads on opposite sides of love and loneliness), an alternate mix of the spooky Shirley Collins cover ‘Hares On The Mountain’ and the original album version of ‘The Tangled Tree’, a brilliant showcase of Clarke’s vocal range and expression.

While The Guardian anointed them “chamber folk” (they certainly cut their teeth in that thriving part of the UK music scene), Clarke is an unusually compelling singer, sharing more in common with Sandy Denny, Gillian Welch, or even Nina Nastasia and Laura Marling, than your usual staid folk artist. Walker is a prodigiously talented guitarist and arranger and the two of them are engaging and often funny in a live setting where, in addition to their own songs, they choose covers brilliantly, from Denny, to Jackson C Frank, to Nina Simone, to death-obsessed traditional ballads.

Clarke and Walker will be recording their Rough Trade debut album for an Autumn 2016 release, with an eye toward bringing bigger, more modern arrangements and production to their beautifully-wrought songs and Clarke’s tremendous voice.

“Clarke and Walker stand out due to their originality… Impressive.” - The Guardian

“A bold success” - The Telegraph

Excellent scuzz and buzz from the wondrous town of Geelong in Victoria, Australia!! A new track from each of these bands: the Frowning Clouds play the almost perfect 60s styled pop smothered in a sheen of fuzz, while the Living Eyes dish out a swift one-two knockout with some of their hummable garage styled thwack! Both these bands have new albums on the horizon, both bands are part of the almost unstoppable wave of killer new Australian underground. Limited edition of 200 only on white vinyl.

Codes In The Clouds, the quintet of Morahan, Peeling, Smith, Major and Power from Dartford, Kent have found a firm place in the vast growing instrumental rock scene. With their harmonious and blissful sound they weave guitar melodies, liable to explode any minute. If you still can’t imagine intense music without vocals then you will be surprised how easily these boys will let you forget this prejudice. Energetic and charming at once, surprising and unpredictable at all times.

October 18th, 2010 will see the release of a remix album entitled "Paper Canyon Recycled" featuring the likes of Paul Mullen (The Automatic), Tom Hodge, Maybeshewill, Worriedaboutsatan, Machinefabriek and Library Tapes – not to mention contributions from label mates Rival Consoles and Nils Frahm. "Paper Canyon Recycled" stemmed from an open call, giving fans and fellow artists the opportunity to submit a remix of CITC’s 2009 debut album release "Paper Canyon". The band received over 100 track submissions. The skills of one particular entrant, Brighton-based producer and musician Guy Andrews (iambic), impressed the band so much that they have invited him to produce their next studio album at Brighton Electric in September.

The debut offering from Todd and Tim Tobias, Clouds Forming Crowns is a fully evolved project of intuitive song writing, enigmatic vocals, built on a foundation of gifted veteran musicianship and crafted production. Tim, fresh off a five year stint with venerated Guided By Voices, shares production / songwriting credits with his talented brother Todd, who produced GBV's last three albums and solo work for Robert Pollard. Evoking a multi-coloured narrative, the album saunters from the big picture harmonics of songs like "Wish Hound" into the dark uninhabited corners of "Minus Drivers". All the while, the peculiar lyrics and grafted melodies of this album, ironic, humorous and pensive, draw comparisons to not just the best of GBV's discography, but also to more direct indie rock outfits such as Neutral Milk Hotel.