Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What’s the point of living if we’re not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday’s new album 'Bleeds', an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that—like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band’s highlight reel so far—thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession.

'Bleeds' is not only the best Wednesday record—it’s also the most Wednesday record, a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman—founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist—credits Wednesday’s tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that’s been both rewarding and relentless. “'Bleeds' is the spiritual successor to 'Rat Saw God', and I think the quintessential ‘Wednesday Creek Rock’ album,” Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened its trademark sound, how they’ve refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. “This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like,” she said. “We’ve devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out—and I feel like we did.”

Just like 'Rat Saw God', one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, 'Bleeds' came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who’s been recording the band since 'Twin Plagues'. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates—Xandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake “M.J.” Lenderman (guitar)—worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism—not only its tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman’s masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. Every image or scene is filtered through Hartzman’s agile, writerly brain. The particulars deemed essential all contain revelations about Hartzman’s specific obsessions and vulnerabilities, about the fragmented way she processes the world. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else’s.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reality TV Argument
2. Bleeds
3. Townies
4. Wound Up Here (By
Holdin On)
5. Elderberry Wine
6. Phish Pepsi
7. Candy Breath
8. The Way Love Goes
9. Pick Up That Knife
10. Wasp
11. Bitter Everyday
12. Carolina Murder Suicide
13. Gary’s II

In 1993 Canadian composer John Oswald was invited by Phil Lesh to transform historical recordings of the Dead into something new, along the lines of what they had attempted in their 'Anthem of the Sun' album.Oswald chose to focus on the 'Dead’s Dark Star', which, over the courseof a quarter century, they had expanded and transformed in myriad waysin live performances. Oswald was given access to the Vaults, whereover the course of a month, with the guidance of the Dead's resident archivist Dick Latvala, he collected 105 performances, which throughthe following year he formed, folded, fondled, and finessed into a kaleidoscopic unstuck-in-time documentary of the Grateful Dead in someof their most psychedelic, symphonic, and rocking excursions— asingular 110-minute fantasy performance.

Here it is, Deadheads, the ultimate 'Dark Star' is now on vinyl. Deluxe audiophile pressing cut in Toronto under the watchful ears of John Oswald. Elaborately printed packaging in a heavy duty triple gatefold jacket includes liner notes by musicologist Rob Bowman featuring interviews with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Robert Hunter plus six"time maps" which chart the source concerts of Dark Star.Music performed by The Grateful Dead (c) Grateful Dead Productions Inc. & Ice Nine Publishing Inc. Taken from over 100 performances of 'Dark Star' recorded between 1968 and 1993. Built, layered and "folded"to produce one large, new re-composed 'Dark Star'.John Oswald is best known as the the creator of the music genre Plunderphonics, an appropriative form of recording studio creation which he began to develop in the late sixties. This has got him in trouble with, and also generated invitations from major record labels and musical icons. Meanwhile, in the í90ís he began, with several commissions from the Kronos Quartet, to compose scores for classical musicians and orchestras, the latest of which is an orchestral work,commissioned by the BBC, combining aspects of The Beatles, Gyˆrgy Ligeti, and Terry Riley. He also improvises on the saxophone in various settings, dances, and is a successful visual artist, best known for the chronophotic series Stillnessence

Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be. Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends - Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes - have grown Shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them. Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, Shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero. “This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art - they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.” Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.

Stamped throughout with Shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. Casting a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice. Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for Shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says. The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over. “I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, Shame have never sounded better.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Cutthroat
2. Cowards Around
3. Quiet Life
4. Nothing Better
5. Plaster
6. Spartak

SIDE B
7. To And Fro
8. Lampião
9. After Party
10. Screwdriver
11. Packshot
12. Axis Of Evil

Dead Blue repressed on Wrecking Light Records. Written, recorded and mixed by the sea in England, the finishing touches were made in London. The album chronicles the arrival of a young woman in a new city and explores love, loss and deceit. It’s a dark tale of someone out of their depth, looking for beauty and equilibrium but being dragged down by dark forces that she can’t control. All songs were written and performed by Tessa Murray and Greg Hughes. The album was mixed by Greg Hughes and mastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound. Reviewed highly in Q Magazine Mojo and Uncut.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lost Boys
2. Currents
3. Bad Country
4. Crooked Fingers
5. Skimming
6. Down With Heaven And Hell
7. Downtown
8. The Fixer
9. Dreamhorse
10. Night Walk
11. River's Edge

Castles in Space presents the first ever vinyl release for Mordant Music’s landmark 2006 release “Dead Air”. Remastered for vinyl with all new artwork from Admiral Greyscale.

“Dead air” is what broadcasters are supposed to avoid at all costs, what continuity personnel are employed to plug up with pleasantries. Mordant’s fascination with that lost figure, the TV announcer, led them to track down Philip Elsmore, whose warm, soothing tones will be recognizable to anyone who grew up in the UK in the 1970s from his work for ITV regional franchises like Tyne Tees and Thames. The duo persuaded Elsmore to come out of retirement and provided continuity for Dead Air, his reassuring voice applied to an increasingly bizarre series of utterances, from "apologies for the sundry glitches… in the meantime, keep your nerve" to “the following contains graphic scenes of a strobing magpie's wing" to “keep sporing in the nessst”. Near the end, Elsmore declares that "Mordant Music will be back once the dust has settled with more vague unpleasantness.”

“A mild sense of apprehension is actually far more acute than out-and-out drama,” says Greyscale. “It’s everyday, what the Mordant virus feeds on.”
“Musty” is a big Mordant buzzword. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Transmission Start Up
2. Post-Apocalypse Listings
3. Plant Room
4. Interdependent Authority
5. Thames Over Nijmegen
6. Malcolm's Driven Me Wild
7. We Are The Mean
8. Man On A Spool
9. Expendable Productions
10. The Black Crush
11. No Harvest
12. Read Between The Raster
13. Obituaries
14. Cirrhosis Of The Booth
15. Survival Ltd.
16. Winding Ourselves Into The Ground
17. Proof-Read By Spores
18. Germoir
19. Fallen Faces
20. Tosaki Closedown
21. Dead Air: Side One (Remastered)
22. Dead Air: Side Two (Remastered)
23. Dead Air: Side Three (Remastered)
24. Dead Air: Side Four (Remastered)

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (also known as Trail Of Dead) is an American band best known for their wild, energetic live shows. The main members of the band are Jason Reece and Conrad Keely, who alternate between drumming, guitar and lead vocals, both on recordings and live shows. Since their formation in 1994, they have released ten studio albums, including IX from 2014. During the time of these recordings, the band also featured Autry Fulbright II on bass and vocals and Jamie Miller on drums and guitar.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. The Doomsday Book
2. Jaded Apostles
3. A Million Random Digits
4. Lie Without A Liar
5. The Ghost Within
6. The Dragonfly Queen
7. How To Avoid Huge Ships

Side B
1. Bus Lines
2. Lost In The Grand Scheme
3. Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears
4. Sound Of The Silk

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (also known as Trail Of Dead) is an American band best known for their wild, energetic live shows. The main members of the band are Jason Reece and Conrad Keely, who alternate between drumming, guitar and lead vocals, both on recordings and live shows. Their eighth studio album Lost Songs was originally released in 2012 and its lyrics are themed around war, tyranny and apathy, no unfamiliar grounds for the band. It features 12 tracks and four additional bonus tracks; “Skywhaling”, “Mountain Battle Song”, “Verschollene Songs” and “Idols Of Perversity”. Just like several predecessors, the album was produced by Chris “Frenchie” Smith, who worked with Meat Puppets, Jet and The Dandy Warhols amongst others.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Open Doors
2. Pinhole Cameras
3. Up To Infinity

Side B
1. Opera Obscura
2. Lost Songs
3. Flower Card Games
4. A Place To Rest

Side C
1. Heart Of Wires
2. Catatonic
3. Awestruck
4. Bright Young Things

Side D
1. Time And Again
2. Skywhaling
3. Mountain Battle Song
4. Verschollene Songs
5. Idols Of Perversity

Alternative Tentacles proudly welcomes Dead Bob to the family with their brand new 7”, "Some Bodies / We Are The Humans"! Hailing from Vancouver Island, Canada, Dead Bob is the solo project of John Wright—legendary drummer of the now-retired punk rock powerhouse NoMeansNo. In this new incarnation, Wright is joined by Colin MacRae, Byron Slack, Ford Pier, and Kristy Lee Audette, reimagining two incredible covers to mark his reunion with the label that helped launch his legacy. He didn’t have to look far for the track “Some Bodies,” originally a NoMeansNo song from their 1985 release You Kill Me. This new version starts with rich vocal harmonies in the call back to the original a cappella intro and builds into an explosive reworking of the classic—with Audette’s powerful vocals along with bold horn arrangements driving it into new territory. The song loses none of its original intensity, instead gaining new layers and depth. NoMeansNo fans will be thrilled. On the flip side, "We Are The Humans" is a complete reimagining of Kraftwerk’s "We Are The Robots". In the age of AI, the track feels more relevant than ever with the new title and chant. The guitar and bass work is front and center, reminding listeners why John Wright's incredible songwriting legacy endures to this day. There’s a reason we say: Play it loud. With Dead Bob, John Wright and company do what few have managed since NoMeansNo’s retirement— honoring that stylistic past while boldly forging their own path forward. NoMeansNo fans, rejoice: a worthy successor has arrived and their name is Dead Bob.

TRACK LISTING

1 Some Bodies
2 We Are The Humans

Dom Salvador, the unassuming godfather of Brazilian soul music, has left an indelible mark through his unique fusion of jazz, soul, funk, samba, and Brazilian rhythms. His legacy continues with 'Dom Salvador JID024', produced by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The album honors Salvador’s pioneering sound, continuing the vibrant dialogue between Brazilian and American music and inviting listeners to experience his rich, groundbreaking style.

TRACK LISTING

1. OS ANCESTRAIS
2. NAO PODEMOS O AMOR PARAR
3. DEBAIXO DA PONTE
4. AS ESTACOES
5. MUSICA FAZ PARTE DE MIM
6. MINHA MELANINA
7. SAFIRA

Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen – guitar/Ellen Brekken – bass/Ivar Loe Bjørnstad – drums. having gone from strength to strength through albums since their 2011 debut Shoot!, gathering respect from both rock and jazz camps, sharing big stages with the likes of John McLaughlin and Black Sabbath, and being equally comfortable on jazz and rock stages. With the hypnotic title track, the spacious ballad Four Candles and generally a more varied mood, Ding Dong. You´re Dead. is the trio´s most dynamic album to date. That said there´s still enough solid and creative riffing here to satisfy the headbangers, as well as the jazzheads, as they further explore the free and open landscapes most notably started with their Black Stabat Mater album and continued with Smells Funny.

TRACK LISTING

1. Leo´ Flash Return To The Underworld
2. All Flights Cancelled
3. Ding Dong. You´re Dead.
4. Gimbal
5. Magic Moshroom
6. The Art Of Being Jon Balkovitch
7. Four Candles

After more than a decade of music-making, Durand Jones & The Indications have blossomed as a unit and are basking in their successes. On their aptly titled new album, 'Flowers', The Indications unfurl their true colors — embracing all their roots and influences, maturation and confidence, and share them with the world.

Since forming in 2012, the road has taken The Indications from those origins at Indiana University, Bloomington to the global stage, selling out shows across Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand to the West Coast— where DJI has a strong following among the lowrider and vintage soul enthusiasts.

For as far as Durand Jones & The Indications have come, 'Flowers' grew from the desire to return to their roots in a Bloomington basement, a space where they first found camaraderie in gritty funk and Southern soul that would inspire their self-titled debut. Pulling sonically and spiritually from each of the group's previous releases and solo work, Flowers is the next stage of DJI's inspired soulful discography. DJI are not only accepting their flowers, but indulging in their sweet and sexy fragrance.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jones returns for another of his super-smooth soul time capsules that ooze modernity while paying obvious tribute to the roots of the sound (There's more than a little Gaye here). 'Flowers' is full of beautifully sanguine melodies and perfectly produced instrumentals, all topped by Jones saying 'Love' and 'Baby' loads. What more could you want.

TRACK LISTING

1. Flowers
2. Paradise
3. Lovers' Holiday
4. I Need The Answer
5. Flower Moon
6. Really Wanna Be With You
7. Been So Long
8. Everythin
9. Rust And Steel
10. If Not For Love
11. Without You

“From the moment she began writing her new album, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Now, at the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world.

Jubilee finds Michelle Zauner embracing ambition and, with it, her boldest ideas and songs yet. Inspired by records like Bjork’s Homogenic, Zauner delivers bigness throughout - big ideas, big textures, colours, sounds and feelings. At a time when virtually everything feels extreme, Jubilee sets its sights on maximal joy, imagination, and exhilaration. It is, in Michelle Zauner’s words, “a record about fighting to feel. I wanted to re-experience the pure, unadulterated joy of creation...The songs are about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood. They’re about making difficult choices, fighting ignominious impulses and honouring commitments, confronting the constant struggle we have with ourselves to be better people.”Throughout Jubilee, Zauner pours her own life into the universe of each song to tell real stories, and allowing those universes, in turn, to fill in the details. Joy, change, evolution - these things take real time, and real effort. And Japanese Breakfast is here for it.”

TRACK LISTING

1.Pay Your Way In Pain
2.Down And Out Downtown
3.Daddy’s Home
4.Live In The Dream
5.The Melting Of The Sun
6.Humming Interlude 1
7.The Laughing Man
8.Down
9.Humming Interlude 2
10.Somebody Like Me
11.My Baby Wants A Baby
12.…At The Holiday Party
13.Candy Darling
14.Humming Interlude 3

'Don’t Die Before You’re Dead', the anticipated new third album from AJ Tracey, via his own label, Revenge Records. The record, which has been in the making for over three years, marks a major moment in AJ’s career—his return from a self-imposed hiatus and a reaffirmation of his place at the pinnacle of UK music. AJ Tracey stands as one of the most influential voices in the UK music scene. His commitment to artistic innovation and authenticity has garnered him a dedicated global fanbase.

With a title as bold as 'Don’t Die Before You’re Dead', the album delves into themes of ambition, resilience, and living life to the fullest—core values that have defined AJ’s journey from Ladbroke Grove to the top of the UK rap scene. It’s a matured sound from the West London-hailing creative, and lyrically, a moment for AJ to show his growth and development over his career.

It's a body of work that not only showcases his evolution as an artist but also continues to push the boundaries of UK music. The album features last year’s viral hit ‘Joga Bonito’ and ‘Crush’ featuring Jorja Smith, which swiftly climbed the UK charts. The track, a nostalgic ode to young love and British culture, reintroduced AJ’s signature genre-blurring style and further cemented his status as a pioneering force in UK rap. AJ Tracey has numerous Brit Award nominations, a prime-time performance on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, and a catalogue of chart-topping hits under his belt. His triple-platinum single Ladbroke Grove became the top-selling independent single of 2019, and his versatility has been showcased in collaborations with the likes of Jorja Smith, Stormzy, Headie One, and Aitch. Known for his relentless innovation and ability to shape UK music culture, AJ Tracey continues to define what it means to be an independent artist at the highest level.

TRACK LISTING

TBA

Celebrate Grateful Dead's 60th Anniversary with a collection of the band's "Gratest" hits, available for the first time on 1LP and as a 1CD. 

TRACK LISTING

1. CASEY JONES
2. FRIEND OF THE DEVIL
3. BOX OF RAIN
4. SUGAR MAGNOLIA
5. TRUCKIN’
6. SCARLET BEGONIAS
7. FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN
8. ESTIMATED PROPHET
9. TOUCH OF GREY

In dark and difficult times, the music of Barney Lister and Kojo Degraft-Johnson lifts us up. As MRCY, the production and vocal duo are confronting the many crises of modern life with a fresh sound full of punchy instrumentation, enveloping orchestration and lyrical honesty. On their latest project, 'VOLUME 2', Barney and Kojo deliver emotive music that surprises as much as it comforts, referencing timeless sounds as much as a sense of the cutting edge. Channeling soulful vocal melody alongside afrobeat polyrhythms, jazz soloing and driving, distorted grooves, tracks like 'Man' address the challenges of modern masculinity, while standout number 'Fear' drives a message that encourages us to fight the terror we might feel about the state of the world with optimism.

Following the acclaimed release of their 2024 debut project 'VOLUME 1', which saw the duo nominated as Rising Stars at the Rolling Stone Awards and named as one of DIY’s Class of 2025, MRCY returns with vital music that addresses the complexities of being alive today. “We’re trying to extinguish fear with optimism and worry with love,” Barney says. “'VOLUME 2' breaks the mould to present a bigger picture of who we are – something with angst, surprises and more guts. The main feeling of the project is that the world is fucked but let’s dance through it.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Angels
2. Wanna Know (Ontario)
3. Man
4. Sierra
5. Flicker
6. Wandering Attention
7. Fear
8. More Than You Are Now

Consisting of at least one song from every show featured in the Grateful Dead's 60-CD boxed set, this compilation will take you on the ultimate, concise road trip with the Dead. Featuring music from such classic Dead venues as Winterland, Red Rocks, the Spectrum, the Frost, the Fillmore East, and so many more, this compilation demonstrates the majestic heights the Dead hit at their 20 most essential concert venues.

TRACK LISTING

1. THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA (5/13/78)
2. ALTHEA Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT (3/14/81)
3. PLAYING IN THE BAND Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY (3/16/73)
4. HARD TO HANDLE Fillmore East, New York, NY (4/25/71)
5. WHARF RAT Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY (9/16/87)
6. DOIN' THAT RAG Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA (6/5/69)
7. MY BROTHER ESAU Frost Amphitheatre, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (8/20/83)
8. DEAL Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA (5/12/91)
9. SCARLET BEGONIAS Greek Theatre, University Of California, Berkeley, CA (7/13/84)
10. TOUCH OF GREY Greek Theatre, University Of California, Berkeley, CA (7/13/84)
11. FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN Greek Theatre, University Of California, Berkeley, CA (7/13/84)
12. LAZY LIGHTNING> Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI (8/23/80)
13. SUPPLICATION Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI (8/23/80)
14.  ATTICS OF MY LIFE Boston Garden, Boston, MA (10/3/94)
15. ESTIMATED PROPHET Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO (8/12/79)
16. EYES OF THE WORLD Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO (8/12/79)
17. BROWN-EYED WOMEN Winterland, San Francisco, CA (3/20/77)
18. TRUCKIN'> Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN (7/15/89)
19. SMOKESTACK LIGHTNIN’Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN (7/15/89)
20. BIG BOY PETE Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA (11/21/85)
21. BIRD SONG Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA (9/15/72)
22. LET IT GROW Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA (5/1/81)
23. BLACK MUDDY RIVER Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA (12/27/89)
24. DAYS BETWEEN Capital Centre, Landover MD (3/17/93)
25. NOT FADE AWAY> Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY (2/24/71)
26. GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD FEELING BAD> Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY (2/24/71)
27. NOT FADE AWAY Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY (2/24/71)

Who were the first punks? Do The Damned have more of a shout than The Sex Pistols? The Stooges or Ramones? Gregg Deal, the acclaimed visual and performance artist behind his new project Dead Pioneers, is making a claim that Indigenous Americans were the first real punks.

Gregg Deal is an artist and activist and a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Much of his work includes exhaustive critiques of American colonialism, society, politics, popular culture and history. With this work - including paintings, murals and performance art - Deal critically examines issues within Indian country such as decolonisation, stereotype and appropriation. He has exhibited his work at cultural centres nationally and internationally.

Deal suggests that the overarching theme of the Dead Pioneers self-titled album is “an introduction to the band itself.” Created with a DIY disposition and the “love of a scene that saves lives,” they reel off a roll call of marginalised groups and protected characteristics: “Indigenous rights, Black rights, Brown rights, Asian rights, Gay rights, Trans rights, Workers rights and beyond…” This is central to their identity and focus, saying that “with a North American Indigenous person as the vocalist, being unapologetically upfront on the social, political and cultural side of things doesn’t seem necessary, but paramount to the overall tone of the band.”

This self-titled debut, coming in at a lithe 22 minutes, with only one of the twelve tracks exceeding three minutes, is almost over before it begins, but covers a huge amount of ground in that time. Musical touchstones are varied, ranging from Black Flag and The Minutemen via Suicidal Tendencies and Rage Against The Machine through to La Dispute or IDLES. Thematically, as much as sonically, it channels the taut energy and directed rage of Fugazi or Henry Rollins at their peak.

Spoken word interludes serve as connections between songs as well as linking back to Deal’s extensive art career. Tracks such as lead single ‘Bad Indian’ uses humour as a way into complex, knotty themes and has the lines, “A woman once asked me my Indian name and I said ‘It’s Gregg.’ She was so disappointed she was like ‘no it has to be Red Eagle, or two Rivers,’ ‘or Greyskull’ I said. ‘Yes, wait, is that for real?’ ‘No, no,’ I said without her realising my brief but generationally relevant He-Man joke, the kind of joke that would tell her while Indian, I’m also having an American experience too.”

The band is made up of guitarists Josh Rivera and Abe Brennan, drummer Shane Zweygardt and bassist Lee Tesche (who is also lead guitarist for Algiers), with Gregg Deal on vocals. For the creation of the album, the songs were written together, “all bringing something to the table and working through it, just the excitement and desire to write,” with most of the lyrics contributed by Deal. “We are together in all we do. Our process is one of unity and no ego. Obviously, I wouldn’t be here without them. The shared vision is paramount to making this work properly.”

“I see the existence of Dead Pioneers as an extension of my own visual and performance art work,” concludes Deal. “Having used spoken word in my practice, this is a new medium that is not just satisfying as an artist, but empowering to unapologetically say the quiet things out loud.”

Regardless of who was really punk first, Dead Pioneers are here now, continuing to ask questions and stand up for the voiceless. And in a post-Albini world, perhaps such a sense of integrity is more important than ever?

TRACK LISTING

1. Tired
2. We Were Punk First
3. Moving Day
4. The Punchline
5. Bad Indian
6. The Art Of Savagery
7. Rage
8. Dreamcatcher
9. World Up My Ass
10. This Is Not A Political Song
11. Doom Indian
12. No One Owns Anything & Death Is Real

From the very beginning, fans have fallen in love with Jensen McRae for the sharp, evocative and clear-eyed songwriting. McRae songwriting is vulnerable, yes, but it’s also powerful for not holding back. Now, 'I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!' delivers McRae’s evolution from a promising young artist to a bona fide songwriter and star. "The most profound choices of my life,” says McRae, “have often felt like things I did before I was ready to do, and I had to grow into them.” 'I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!' is about what follows when you have withstood what you thought might crush you. It’s about meeting your limits and learning what you’re capable of. “I connected with the idea that I could've easily collapsed beneath the weight of what happened to me, but I didn't. I didn't even know it,” she says, “but I was bulletproof the whole time."

Born and raised in LA, Jensen McRae has studied and made music for most of her life. She attended Grammy Camp in high school and graduated from USC’s Thornton School of Music with a degree in Popular Music. McRae’s debut album, 'Are You Happy Now?', was written mostly when she was just 21, and was the first step in developing her now-devoted fanbase. 'Are You Happy Now?' navigates identity from its deepest foundations – life as a young, bi-racial Black and Jewish woman – to its most personal musings – do I trust you, do I trust myself. McRae’s trust in herself has borne out on multiple occasions, most recently and maybe most famously in the form of 'Massachusetts'. McRae posted a solo verse and chorus, little more than a piece of a demo, and it caught fire online. Covers, duets, and an avalanche of new fans followed, and McRae capped the moment with a finished version and a summerlong tour supporting Noah Kahan.

'I Don’t Know How but They Found Me!' takes McRae’s now-considerable powers and hardwires them for mass appeal. Stealth single 'Savannah' is one for the yearners. The pulsing, country-adjacent song immediately brings the best of Phoebe Bridgers to mind, with McRae singing in an acrobatic whisper over a feather light acoustic guitar. By the time 'Savannah' hits its crescendo, it’s crystal clear McRae is an artist with her own singular power, as piano layers with guitar and McRae delivers a series of scathing indictments with grit and conviction: "You swore you'd raise our kids to end up just like you / well you're a false prophet / and that's a goddamn promise." Meanwhile 'Let Me Be Wrong' is a bona fide anthem, a “buoyant ode to rejecting perfectionism.” Built once again on a simple vocal and acoustic guitar, 'Let Me Be Wrong' builds step over step in its defiance; guitars layer, drums pick up the pace, and McRae makes space for everyone’s mistakes. When McRae growls “fuck those girls got everything” it’s a punch of both power and vulnerability, begging to be shouted in unison the biggest possible crowd.

The unusual title of her second album is taken from a line in McRae's favorite film, Back to the Future. A key protagonist survives a hail of bullets, and the image resonated with McRae because, she said, she often feels a connection to some future self guiding her decisions, especially in times of crisis. It also inspired the album’s cover, as McRae stands in a custom fireman’s coat with the job’s official marks and symbols stitched alongside abundant ones of herown. The effect caught her off-guard; “I was surprised how emotional it made me to be in the fire coat,” she says, “forced to stand still, stand powerfully. I could feel myself becoming a symbol of my own hero’s journey." If Are You Happy Now? was her coming of age, 'I Don't Know How But They Found Me!' is Jensen McRae all grown up.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Rearranger
2. I Can Change Him
3. Savannah
4. Daffodils
5. Let Me Be Wrong
6. Novelty
7. I Don't Do Drugs
8. Tuesday
9. Mother Wound
10. Praying For Your Downfall
11. Massachusetts

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

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THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 14th.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 14th.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 14th.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 14th.

‘PO$T AMERICAN’ is the second full-length album by Dead Pioneers. Written in February and recorded in July, it pre-empts the 2024 American election but wraps up the fears and frustrations as eloquently and, crucially, humorously as the band’s 2023 self-titled debut.

“Currently, we are amidst the gross existence of capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy and the many oppressive forces that have come to inform everything around us,” says vocalist and songwriter Gregg Deal. “The title ‘PO$T AMERICAN’ informs a collective disenfranchisement and disillusionment to the so-called American dream, while moving forward with hope of a desired designation of unity outside those that would use us for their own capitalistic power grab.”

The aural palate is broadly the same, but it feels expanded, stronger somehow: drawing on the confrontational writing of Rage Against The Machine, the unapologetic voice of Chuck D and Public Enemy, the storytelling of Johnny Cash, the evolution of IDLES and punk stalwarts including Black Flag, Rollins Band and Dead Kennedys.

Overall, the resulting feeling across the new album is one of cautious optimism: “Although we didn’t expect the political relevance to become more relevant, we have no illusions to the American dream, or to where we seem to be going. But we have hope that we can get to a better place for people to have what they need.” It is an album that speaks to and for this precise time and place; that perhaps could not exist at any other time. It is an album for now.

Dead Pioneers emerged as a dynamic extension of vocalist Gregg Deal’s performance art, seamlessly blending music with critical cultural commentary. Rooted in the same themes of identity and resistance that define his visual work, the band’s sound acts as a powerful platform for addressing the complexities of Indigenous experience.

Deal harnesses the raw energy of punk and alternative influences to challenge prevailing narratives, using lyrics that provoke thought and evoke emotion. Just as his performance art confronts the legacies of colonization and systemic marginalization, Dead Pioneers - completed by Josh Rivera and Abe Brennan on guitars, bassist Lee Tesche (Algiers) and drummer Shane Zweygardt - engages audiences in a visceral dialogue about survival, resilience, and reclamation of voice.

This musical endeavour not only amplifies Deal’s artistic vision but also creates a space for collective expression and solidarity, inviting listeners to reflect on the intersections of culture, history, and identity in a contemporary context. Through Dead Pioneers, Deal continues to assert that art, in all its forms, can be a powerful vehicle for activism and change.

“Being embarrassed to be a white American has never been a bigger visceral, laugh filled, joy than when I’m listening to Dead Pioneers. If you think truth needs a great soundtrack… look no further than Dead Pioneers.” - Shepard Fairey

“Dead Pioneers is one of one. Injecting new life into punk rock with an indigenous perspective and an important message. They are beautiful people and great musicians and we can’t wait to go on tour with them as soon as possible!” - The Interrupters

“Imagine if the fucking Vikings or the Mayflower never made it across the Atlantic and One Mocassin’s grandkids electrified the lute his ancestors found in the rubble of the Mayflower that crashed on the rocks. There would be no Minutemen or Fugazi, only DEAD PIONEERS!” - Jeff Ament, Pearl Jam

TRACK LISTING

A.I.M.
PO$T AMERICAN
My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit
Animal
Pit Song
The Caucasity
Mythical Cowboys
Dead Pioneers
White Wine
Juicy Fruit (Ode To Chief Bromden)
STFU
Bloodletting Carnival
Love Language
Fire And Ash
Working Class Warfare
Untitled Spoken Word No. 2

Hyldon, Brazil’s highly revered vocalist, musician and producer, has partnered with Adrian Younge to create a new psychedelic soul album, 'HYLDON JID023'. The duo, highly inspired by Hyldon’s seminal work in the ‘60s and ‘70s, revisits’ the spirit of this epoch while creating a modern-day classic. Hyldon’s unique voice and lyrical depth, combined with Younge’s innovative analogue production, ensures this album will not be forgotten. JID023 is one of the last recordings featuring Hyldon’s long-time collaborator and friend, the late drummer Ivan “Mamao” Conti of Azymuth.

Hyldon, a musical pioneer and early contributor to the “Black Rio” movement is a genius in synthesizing the sounds of MPB, Tropicália and Black American R&B. His unique voice, coupled with his rich arrangements and laid-back grooves set him apart from the contemporaries of the time. In ’75, his remarkable debut album, Na Rua, Na Chuva, Na Fazenda changed the sound of Brazil forever. Hyldon’s earnest and experimental approach in creating that album served as the inspiration for Younge’s production on the new JID023.

Months before Mamão's untimely passing, Adrian Younge and Hyldon invited the legendary drummer to join them at Younge’s Linear Labs studio in Los Angeles. Mamão and Hyldon shared a rich musical history — Azymuth, Mamão’s group, served as the rhythm section for much of Hyldon’s work, including his iconic 1975 LP, Na Rua, Na Chuva, Na Fazenda. Their goal was ambitious: to craft an album that would stand alongside Hyldon’s finest achievements, one that would captivate fans who love his unique blend of psychedelic and soulful “Música Brasileira.” The result is nothing short of remarkable.

“Producing a Hyldon album was a dream come true. I’ve studied his catalogue for so many years and highly respect the way he mixed the sound of The Beatles, with that of Marvin Gaye and Tim Maia. I’m still enamored by the fact that he is even a better singer now than he was, in what many deem, his prime. Also, we greatly miss our dear friend and contributor Mamão, the late drummer of Azymuth. We dedicated this album to his memory, and we wish he could have had the chance to hear the finished album.” – Adrian Younge

Songs such as 'Olhos Castanhos' evoke the ethereal nature of The Beatles 'Strawberry Fields' as the mellotron flutes and Hyldon’s vulnerable performance captivates our hearts. Mamão’s gritty and funky drumming on 'Nhanderuvucu (The Creator of God)' showcase what made him a leading pioneer in Brazil’s samba funk scene. Apart from the remarkable drumming, multi-instrumentalist Younge accomplishes the unthinkable by playing every other instrument on JID023. The experimental fusion of horns, analog synthesizers and acoustic instrumentation on songs like 'Viajante de Planeta Azul' take listeners on a funky journey to the blue planet; a fictional space that Hyldon lyrically describes with passion and conviction.

'Hyldon JID023' is an unexpected, yet remarkable addition to the canon of Brazilian Music. Hyldon’s emotional resonance, coupled with Younge’s sophisticated production and Mamao’s outstanding drumming make this a standout album within the deep catalogue of Jazz Is Dead. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Viajante Do Planeta Azul
2. O Cacador De Estrelas
3. Olhos Castanhos
4. Jenipapo Robot
5. Favela De Rio De Janeiro
6. Verao Nacalifornia (Summertime In California)
7. Um Lugar Legal
8. Nanderuvucu (The Creator God)

Scowl is a band that sounds exactly like their name implies. Venomous, fierce, antagonistic. A sneer not to be crossed. Over the last five years, the Santa Cruz, California, band has firmly planted their flag in the hardcore scene with their vicious sound and ripping live show, sharing stages around the world with Circle Jerks, Touché Amoré, and Limp Bizkit, and filling slots at prominent festivals like Coachella, Sick New World, and Reading and Leeds. But with their new album, 'Are We All Angels' (Dead Oceans), Scowl is aiming to funnel all that aggression through a more expansive version of themselves. Much of 'Are We All Angels' grapples with Scowl’s newfound place in the hardcore scene, a community which has both embraced the band and made them something of a lightning rod over the past few years. Standout single 'Not Hell, Not Heaven' outright rejects the narratives cast onto them by outsiders. “It’s about feeling victimized and being a victim, but not wanting to identify with being a victim,” explains vocalist Kat Moss. “It’s trying to find grace in the fact that I have my power. I live in my reality. You have to deal with whatever you're dealing with, and it ain’t working for me.” The band breaks from a sense of disassociation to seek deeper connections on 'Fantasy'. “It’s incredibly challenging to try to balance my love for the scene while also feeling, in some spaces, extremely alienated and hated,” Moss says. “‘Fantasy’ is about feeling like I don't know how to connect with these people anymore, because I have shelled myself away so hard.” The album ends in a philosophical place on the closing, titular track, 'Are We All Angels', asking questions like, “Is this all there is?” and ultimately putting it on the listener to decide. “It’s about the personal struggle between good and evil. It doesn’t matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ you are, there are systems that will try to rewrite your narrative no matter what you actually do,” explains Moss, noting that punctuation on 'Are We All Angels' has been deliberately omitted in an attempt to leave the statement open-ended.

'Are We All Angels' is the highly anticipated follow-up to Scowl’s debut, 2021’s 'How Flowers Grow', a 16-minute primal scream over punishing riffs. But amidst the pounding chaos, it was the record’s sonic outlier, a cleaner interlude called 'Seeds to Sow', that, true to its name, planted the seed for what was to come for the band. “It kind of laid out this destiny for us, and I feel like now we’re fulfilling that,” says drummer Cole Gilbert. The band continued to expand their sound on 2023’s widely acclaimed 'Psychic Dance Routine' EP, incorporating more pop hooks and favoring gentler singing over heavy screaming, paving the way for what would come next. Scowl’s growth got a huge boost from producer Will Yip (Turnstile, Title Fight, Code Orange, Balance and Composure), who broadened the band’s scope. “Will would say, ‘Everything you have here is correct, but it’s in the wrong place,’” says Gilbert. Moss adds: “Will really helped restructure a lot of the material. Some songs he tore apart to make more space for the really good hooks and choruses.” But even through this more eclectic approach, Scowl loses none of their edge, and still manages to convey the anger and frustration that lies underneath. They are deeply committed to carrying the ethos of punk and its sense of community. “Hardcore and punk have sculpted how we operate, what we want to do as a band, and how we participate,” says guitarist Malachi Greene. “At our core, we are a punk and a hardcore band, regardless of how the song shifts and changes.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Special
2. B.A.B.E.
3. Fantasy
4. Not Hell, Not Heaven
5. Tonight (I’m Afraid)
6. Fleshed Out
7. Let You Down
8. Cellophane
9. Suffer The Fool (How High Are You?)
10. Haunted
11. Are We All Angels

Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills, the record sees front-woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner pull back from the bright extroversion that defined its predecessor 'Jubilee' to examine the darker waves that roil within, the moody, fecund field of melancholy, long held to be the psychic state of poets on the verge of inspiration. The result is an artistic statement of purpose: a mature, intricate, contemplative work that conjures the romantic thrill of a gothic novel.

'For Melancholy Brunettes' follows a transformative period in Zauner’s life during which her 2x GRAMMY nominated breakthrough album 'Jubilee' and her bestselling memoir Crying In H Mart catapulted her into the cultural mainstream, delivering on her deepest artistic ambitions. Reflecting on that success, Zauner came to appreciate the irony of desire, which so often commingles bliss and doom. “I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted,” she says. “I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.” The plight of Icarus and other such condemned ones lends 'For Melancholy Brunettes' its most persistent theme, the perils of desire. Like light dispersed, its spectral parts take the album’s characters through cycles of temptation, transgression and retribution. On 'Orlando in Love' — a riff on John Cheever’s riff on Orlando Innamorato, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo — the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren’s call, his 69th canto (even in the lofty realm of classical myth Zauner has a soft spot for innuendo). 'Honey Water' plumbs the quiet rage of a woman married to an unfaithful man, watching him cede again and again to lust like a base insect perpetuating its own demise.

Sadness is indeed the dominant emotional key of this record, but it is sadness of a rarified form: the pensive, prescient sadness of melancholy, in which the recognition of life’s essentially tragic character occurs with sensitivity to its fleeting beauty. Zauner finds space enough inside it for glimmers of hope. They are the consolations of mortals that poets before her have called out to and that poets after will continue to rediscover: love and labor, and though they run like tonic resolutions through the record’s many episodes, they sound most saliently on its final song, 'Magic Mountain', an engagement with Thomas Mann’s famous novel of the same name. For her, making any work feels like scaling a mountain, but from the perch of 'For Melancholy Brunettes', she surveys the future.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a wonderfully satisfying thing to hear Michelle Zauner's songwriting in a more hi-fi recording, with her effortless mastery of melody and tension coming through even more beautifully. That's not to say her previous outings haven't been astounding, but to have such a talented songwriter so wonderfully presented in widescreen is something to behold.

TRACK LISTING

1. Here Is Someone
2. Orlando In Love
3. Honey Water
4. Mega Circuit
5. Little Girl
6. Leda
7. Picture Window
8. Men In Bars
9. Winter In LA
10. Magic Mountain

'Let's Get Free' was the debut studio album by hip-hop duo Dead Prez, originally released in 2000. Critically acclaimed upon its release, 'Let's Get Free' was called a "return to politically conscious rap" and, "the most politically conscious rap since Public Enemy"; the duo's messages also earned them favorable comparisons with Brand Nubian, The Coup, Def Jef and X-Clan. The album's lyrics, performed in front of sparse beats are startlingly direct, militant, and confrontational. M-1 and stic.man excoriates the media, the music industry, politicians, and poverty, and urge their target audience to study socialism and ideas of black power. Rolling Stone gave the album four stars and lauded its equation of "classrooms with jail cells, the projects with killing fields and everything from water to television with conduits for brainwashing by the system".

TRACK LISTING

1. Wolves (Intro)
2. I'm A African
3. They School
4. Hip-Hop
5. Police State (feat. Chairman Omali Yeshitela)
6. Behind Enemy Lines
7. Assassination
8. Mind Sex
9. We Want Freedom
10. Be Healthy
11. Discipline
12. Psychology
13. Happiness
14. Animal In Man
15. You'll Find A Way
16. It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop (feat. Tahir And Peoples Army)
17. Propaganda
18. The Pistol (feat. Maintain Of Illegal Tendencies) (feat. Maintain Of Illegal Tendencies)

On 'Dead Channel Sky', Clipping texture-map the twin histories of hip-hop and cyberpunk onto an alternate present where Rammellzee and Bambaataa are the superheroes of old; where Cybotron and Mantronix are the reigning legends; where Egyptian Lover and Freestyle are debated endlessly, and Ultramag and Public Enemy are the undeniable forefathers; where the lost movements of 1980s and the 1990s are still happening: rave, trip-hop, hip-house, acid house, drum & bass, big beat—the detritus of a different timeline, the survivors of armed audio warfare. Clipping are no strangers to sci-fi: two of their records were nominated for Hugo Awards (one of science fiction’s top literary prizes), and a novella spun-off from their music was nominated for a third. On 'Dead Channel Sky', Clipping’s co-conspirators include everyone from the guitarist Nels Cline, to their labelmates Cartel Madras, rapper/actor Tia Nomore, and wordsmith Aesop Rock. Diggs is known for intricate lyrics and rapid-fire rapping, and the tracks that Snipes and Hutson build in the background are no less complex. All of the above serves to give us a glimpse of an adjacent possible present, where hip-hop and cyberpunk are one culture.Binary stars are often perceived as one object when viewed with the naked eye. Like those twin sun systems, it’ll take some special equipment and some discerning attention to pull the stars apart on this record. As Diggs barks on the fire-starting 'Change the Channel': Everything is very important!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A blazing new transmission from raucous noise-hop electronic powerhouse, Clipping. Startling political and societal discourse atop snaps of industrial glitch and roaring, hi-nrg acid. A hell of a return.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Dominator
3. Change The Channel
4. Run It
5. Go
6. Simple Degradation (Plucks 1-13) (with Bitpanic)*
7. Code 8.Dodger
8. Malleus (with Nels Cline)
9.Scams (ft. Tia Nomore)
10.Keep Pushing
11."From Bright Bodies" (Interlude)*
12.Mood Organ
13.Polaroids
14.Simple Degradation (Plucks 14-18) (with Bitpanic)*
15.Madcap
16.Mirrorshades Pt. 2 (ft. Cartel Madras)
17."And You Called" (Interlude)*
18.Welcome Home Warrior (ft. Aesop Rock)
19.Ask What Happened

*CD-only

Dead Pioneers vocalist, nationally known Indigenous artist of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, Gregg Deal, started this project as an extension to a performance piece titled “The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy”. With the intent to create original music for this performance piece, the Dead Pioneers was born! Working closely with guitarist Josh Rivera and drummer Shane Zweygardt, Gregg tried to form something over the Covid lockdown. Original music from Shane and Josh got things flowing, but things clicked when Gregg met Lee Tesche, lead guitarist for Algiers, at an art residency in Florida and became Dead Pioneers bassist. The Dead Pioneers first single Bad Indian was born! Heavily influenced by Gregg’s Indigenous voice, this gave enough information to begin forming songs and the overall sound of Dead Pioneers. Later adding guitarist Abe Brennan to the crew while recording their first self-titled LP at The Blasting Room in Fort Collins, CO. Dead Pioneers is rooted in creating and performing a sound heavily influenced by the punk aesthetic with an edge built on a First Peoples perspective and not afraid to tackle hard political and social issues, standing in solidarity of Indigenous rights, Black rights, Brown rights, Asian rights, Gay rights, Trans rights, Workers rights and beyond. From original songs to spoken word with punk riffs, Dead Pioneers was created with a love of music, a love of art, love of a scene that saves lives as well as the DIY disposition of just figuring it out and seeing what happens."

Celestial Echo returns with a divine new release to kick off what will be a strong 2025, highlighting two iconic tracks from West Virginia’s 'The Swan Silvertones'. This 7-inch vinyl features the dancefloor hitter, 'If You Believe Your God Is Dead, (Try Mine),' backed with the soul-soothing 'He's Sweet I Know.'

Originally recorded during their golden era in the early 70s, this has to be some of the funkiest gospel to ever be pressed, once it’s in your record bag, it wont be leaving in a hurry.

Now reissued on 7-inch vinyl for the first time in years, this release features carefully remastered audio and presented in a freshly designed sleeve with updated original labels, it’s a must-have for fans of gospel and soul.

Pressed and distributed by Prime Direct Distribution—buy or cry!

TRACK LISTING

A1. If You Believe Your God Is Dead (Try Mine)
B1. He’s Sweet I Know

Once again channelling the rawness of the North East coast, Pit Pony return with their second album 'Dead Stars'. Set to release on Clue Records / EMI North, the album sees the band meld a myriad of influences from 50s doo-wop to heavy rock while frontwoman Jackie Purver navigates the complexities of modern life. A broader and more ambitious, but yet wholly cohesive follow up to their debut album 'World To Me', 'Dead Stars' promises to reveal infinitely finer details with each listen.

Fiercely honest, Jackie’s lyricism portrays an intense duality and a vulnerability that is instantly relatable. Turning inwards to explore notions of motherhood, imposter syndrome and getting older, while simultaneously outwards through commentary on the cost of living, polluted water, the constant sell on social media and the ‘off menu’ Starbucks coffee obsession.

With the band citing the recent influences of 'Blue Weekend' and 'Skinty Fia' alongside the likes of Can and the soundtracks of Ennio Moriconne, mastering engineer Christian Wright (Wolf Alice, Fontaines D.C., Pigs x7) proves the perfect fit with Chris McManus (Blank Studios) heading up recording & production. Sonically, Pit Pony remain loyal to their roots, noting the influence of regional titans Nadine Shah and The Futureheads and with the “ENGLISH ACCENT god damn it” reminder on PJ Harvey’s Uh Huh Her in mind, Jackie Purver stays true to her accent.

'Dead Stars' sees Pit Pony deliver an expanded but yet more balanced and personal conception of their craft. Garth Purver explains that the band were aiming for a more rounded and complete record “that showcased multiple sides to us but hung together as one piece of work rather than a collection of separate tracks.” While Andrew Jones mentions how the band “encouraged each other to pull on those strands and incorporate more of our personal taste in the sound”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Beautifully dynamic, soaring rock and roll with more than a nod to post-punk and garage, resulting in something that's wholly immersive and undeniably raucous while being thoroughly tender and contemplative at points too. Wonderfully produced, impeccably written and performed too.

TRACK LISTING

1. At Dawn
2. Well Well
3. This Love Of Mine
4. Something In The Water
5. Cut Open
6. Stagnant Pool
7. No Shame
8. Vacancy
9. Waves
10. Dead Stars

At 88 years of age, the Ghanian highlife and afrobeat pioneer Ebo Taylor travelled to the US for the very first time to perform at the now iconic Jazz Is Dead concert series, selling out venues across the country. It was during this time that Ebo recorded a psychedelic afrobeat album alongside Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad. This mind-blowing collaboration is one that could not have been anticipated by Ebo fans worldwide and will surely satisfy connoisseurs of classic West African funk. “Collaborating with Ebo Taylor is a bucket-list accomplishment. For me, it is the equivalent of working with musical genius Fela Kuti, because of how much I have studied both of their work and influence on the genre of Afrobeat. Seriously, recording the genius to analog tape while highlighting the raw recording styles of 1970s Africa is a dream I never thought could come to reality! It was also great to work with Ebo’s son, Henry Taylor, who is a true musical force in his own right.” – Adrian Younge.

The swirling horns and gritty guitars heard on Ebo Taylor JID022 are reminiscent of his seminal seventies recordings that made him one of Africa’s most prolific and revolutionary artists of all time. Recorded inside of Younge’s Linear Labs studio, this album captures polyrhythmic percussion and twangy, fuzzed out guitars that prove that rhythm is key. The ensemble of Ghanian background vocalists emanates a uniquely spiritual sound that takes the listener back to Ebo’s prime. However, one of the most exhilarating components to this album is Ebo’s signature approach to vocal stylings. His heartfelt lyrics about love, peace and spirituality echo nearly a century of experience and wisdom. Songs such as “Beye Bu, Beye Ba” demonstrate how God provides for his people as songs like “Kusi Na Sibo” teach life lessons on gratitude. This is an afrobeat classic that stands as a true highlight in the canon of Ebo Taylor’s undeniable catalog and a crown jewel in the Jazz Is Dead library.

TRACK LISTING

Get Up
Obra Akyedzi
Kusi Na Sito
Obi Do Wa (If Someone Loves You)
Nsa A W'oanye Edwuma, Ondzidzi
Beye Bu, Beye Ba
Feeling

On ‘Psychopomp’, the debut full length for Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner romanticizes need, knowing precisely how futile it can be, as she howls on the record’s final song, to “cling to your sleeves ‘til they’re like lacerated sails.”

‘Psychopomp’ unspools with an otherworldly rush - it’s skysized dream-pop with substance, moving from the gorgeous euphoric rush of ‘In Heaven’ through the pinwheeling ‘Rugged Country’ and ‘Everybody Wants To Love You’ into the painful longing of ‘Jane Cum’ and ‘Heft’ and the relief of ‘Triple 7’.

Imagine Bat For Lashes or ‘Tango In The Night’-era Christine McVie working in the New York indie-pop scene populated by the likes of Frankie Cosmos and Porches.

‘Psychopomp’ has become one of the year’s most beloved indie-pop records, receiving plaudits from the likes of Pitchfork and NPR.

TRACK LISTING

1 In Heaven
2 The Woman That Loves You
3 Rugged Country
4 Everybody Wants To Love You
5 Psychopomp
6 Jane Cum
7 Heft
8 Moon On The Bath
9 Triple 7

'First Time / Alone', Greg Mendez’s new EP and first release with Dead Oceans, came together in late summer and early fall of 2023; the songs here appear in the order in which they were written, recorded straight to four-track in the small spare room of his West Philadelphia apartment. It’s a four song arc, a spectral passageway, one brief and fluid body of work that hangs together from the mournful opening of 'Mountain Dew Hell' to the pitched-up vocals on 'Pain Meds', a tiny song floundering in the enormity of grief. The experience of listening through is like waking up from a half-remembered dream, a shadow in the corner of the room, a strange solitude, a temporal New York autumn with gray skies and naked trees. But while the release is sparse and spontaneous, it’s tactile and consuming, a glimpse into the beautiful, lonely worlds that live in the core of a Greg Mendez song.

'First Time / Alone' is the inverse of his 2023 self-titled album, a meticulous and labored-over collection of songs that went on to become a surprise slowburn success. Mendez has released music in various capacities across 15 years living in Philadelphia and New York, but the self-titled was what propelled him to a wider attention, a critical breakthrough on best-of lists from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Paste, and more. That forward momentum came to a quick halt following an intensive surgery on his right wrist in the summer of 2023 – a four-month purgatory of bad TV, canceled touring, and physical therapy ensued, a painful stretch of boredom leaving Mendez unable to play guitar. 'Mountain Dew Hell' and 'First Time', the funereal A-side of the EP, are time capsules of that fever-dream; 'Alone' was the first song Mendez wrote once he was able to play guitar again. Likely none of the songs would have existed as-is if Mendez’s right hand hadn’t been out of commission, but they’re artful in their directness and simplicity. He initially thought he would need to refine them, building them out to the same scale as self-titled, but the more he returned to the work, the more it felt complete and true as-is.

Mendez is an intuitive songwriter, melodies channeled through ether, a storyteller who across his catalog has chronicled vivid violence and instability – a wallet chain to the head, a crack house arrest, the misdeeds from addiction that hang around like a ghost of past lives – but it’s threaded together with love songs, too, with odes to friendship, true dedication, the things that can buoy one through the worst. Mendez has a habit of noticing those things, of finding the light, exacting poetry from even the bleakest, shit-caked situations. In his songs there is an innate ability to balance grit with gentleness, cruelties rewritten through preternatural sweetness, a heart thrumming unendingly, confidently, through the dark. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Mountain Dew Hell
2. First Time
3. Alone
4. Pain Meds

For Greg Mendez, reflection doesn’t mean a static image in a mirror, or even a face he recognizes. It’s more a kaleidoscopic mirage, where paths taken shapeshift with the prospect of paths untread, and the subconscious merges with the intentional. On his self-titled new album, the Philadelphia-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist investigates the shaky camera of memory, striving to carve out a collage that points to a truth. But there isn’t a regimented actuality here; instead, Mendez highlights the merit in many truths, and many lives, and how even the hardest truths can still contain some humor.

While this is technically Mendez’s third full-length album, his back catalog boasts an extensive range of EPs and live recordings. He’s a prolific and thoughtful songwriter, understanding the joy in impulse, and shying away from the clinical sheen of overproduction. 2017’s  ̄\ _(ツ)_ / ̄' and 2020’s 'Cherry Hell' garnered acclaim for their quiet, lo-fi urgency, exploring themes of addiction and heartbreak with an intentional, authentic haze, and it’s this approach that has solidified Mendez as a staple in the DIY community for years.

Greg Mendez was written in fragments, some stretching across more than a decade, with Mendez reworking old ideas and arrangements, and others blossoming much more recently. The weight of time––and perhaps the
anxiety in running out of it––clouds the album, as Mendez prods at some painful experiences from his childhood and early adulthood. The common thread connecting the characters is their evident imperfections, and the various degrees of damage they cause, both knowingly and unknowingly. But where do we draw the line between a good person and a bad person? For Mendez, it’s never been that easy.

Greg Mendez is an intimate dialogue between the chapters we’ve experienced, and how they can inform the reality we perceive. It’s a reminder that we are constantly shifting, ever-changing selves and that if we ruminate too long, we may find ourselves stuck in the seriousness of it all. Here, Mendez allows us to take the time to notice what happens outside of the framework we may have built for ourselves, and the beauty that can occur when we finally do.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rev. John / Friend
2. Shark's Mouth
3. Cop Caller
4. Maria
5. Goodbye / Trouble
6. Sweetie
7. Clearer Picture (Of You)
8. Best Behavior
9. Hoping You're Doing Okay

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8AM ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 30TH).

This is the 20th anniversary edition. First time on vinyl. Red vinyl. 

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8AM ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 30TH).

This Limited Edition 7" vinyl picture disc celebrates the anniversary.The single became a UK #1 hit in March 1985, and was, notably, also the frst UK #1 for the record production team Stock Aitken Waterman. 'You Spin Me Round...' reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1985, becoming their highest-charting US single release.The single also reached #1 in Ireland, Germany, Canada and Switzerland, #2 in Italy, peaked at #3 in Australia and Belgium and #4 in The Netherlands. A truly worldwide hit! 'You Spin Me Round...' has charted highly twice since the single's original 1984 release. In 2003, an ofcially endorsed remix as part of the "Evolution" 'hits collection' release, reached #23, whilst the original version reached #5 in 2006, when re-released following Pete Burns' memorable appearance on "Celebrity Big Brother".'You Spin Me Round...', which has been voted as one of the greatest pop records of all time on countless polls, achieved Platinum status in the UK and has been streamed more than HALF-A-BILLION times!

TRACK LISTING

You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)
Misty Circles

Jazz Is Dead announces another offering of top-shelf recordings taking listeners on a journey through the funky sounds of Ghana all the way to down to the psychedelic soul and samba of Brazil. Produced by label founders Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Jazz Is Dead Series 3 features new analog recordings from living legends Ebo Taylor, Hyldon, Dom Salvador, Antonio Carlos e Jocafi, Carlos Dafé, Joyce e Tutty Moreno as well as an unreleased LP from The Midnight Hour: Lost Tapes.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. MORENO - THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
2. 0S ANCESTRAIS - DOM SALVADOR, ADRIAN YOUNGE & ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD
3. AMOR ENFEITICADO - CARLOS DAFÉ & ADRIAN YOUNGE
4. OBI DO WOA (IF SOMEONE LOVES YOU) - EBO TAYLOR, ADRIAN YOUNGE & ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD

SIDE B
5. MENINA DO TORORO - ANTONIO CARLOS E JOCAFI, ADRIAN YOUNGE & ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD
6. VANÁ ETÊ - JOYCE E TUTTY MORENO & ADRIAN YOUNGE
7. VIAJANTE DE PLANETA AZUL - HYLDON & ADRIAN YOUNGE
8. ATLAS - ADRIAN YOUNGE

Reunited shoegaze outfit Slowdive spent 2016 in the studio recording their first album in over two decades. The self-titled album followed two years of successful live shows. The band split up in 1995 after being dropped from the Creation label, but achieved cult success in the years between then and 2014, when they reformed. This comeback album was their first since 1995’s 'Pygmalion', which the band never actually toured when it was originally released. The world has finally caught up with Slowdive. The band whose reach goes far beyond just influencing music returned to stardom with their first top 20 record which has gone on to sell 32k to date in the UK.

TRACK LISTING

1. Slomo  
2. Star Roving  
3. Don't Know Why
4. Sugar For The Pill 
5. Everyone Knows    
6. No Longer Making Time   
7. Go Get It     
8. Falling Ashes

For the first time in almost a decade, brothers Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith grace the cover of a Dawes record. It’s just the two of them this time, and as such, Oh Brother marks a distinctive new chapter for the California rock band one that is both introspective and accessible, all while maintaining their beloved sense of sincerity.

Oh Brother steers Dawes decidedly forward, honouring 15 years of Taylor and Griffin’s musical relationship, as well as the next era of their band. Each of the nine songs began with just Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums. They initially tracked each one live together, before adding in additional instrumentation and collaborating with touring guitarist Trevor Menear in the studio. Additionally, Oh Brother is the first record the brothers have co-produced, working alongside longtime friend Mike Viola.

At this point in the Goldsmith’s career, Dawes has cemented itself as one of the most earnest, no-bullshit musical acts out there. They’re a band that can move seamlessly between folk rock, piano ballads, and

sprawling jams while maintaining both an immediately recognizable sound and a freedom from expectations. Even as the Goldsmith brothers navigates new chapters in their personal and professional lives, Oh Brother shows how they remain creative, ambitious, and inspired what it means to be lifers in a band together.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Mister Los Angeles
2. Front Row Seat
3. Still Strangers Sometimes
4. Surprise!
5. House Parties

SIDE B
6. King Oft He Never-Wills
7. The Game
8. Enough Already
9. Hilarity Ensues

Vinyl reissue of the debut album from Icelandic art-rock project Dead Skeletons. Originally released on 11/11/11 via Anton Newcombe’s A Recordings label, ‘Dead Magick’ has come to be seen as one of this generation’s definitive neo-psychedelic works and had an almost cult-like reverence attached to it. Tours around the UK, EU and USA, major international festival dates and critical acclaim soon followed the album’s release, and it also helped to catalyse a burgeoning underground psych scene to whom ‘Dead Magick’s occult sonic belligerence became a crucial and highly-lauded touchstone. A twelve-track masterclass in “transportative far-out guitar hymnals” (The Quietus) and "a psychedelic battle cry" (The Guardian), the ‘Dead Magick’ double album was an exercise in spiritual rock’n’roll drones shaped by primitive fuzzed-out guitars, repetitive vocal mantras, distorted organs and crashing percussion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dead Mantra
2. Om Mani Peme Hung
3. Kingdom Of God
4. Psychodead
5. Get On The Train
6. Dead Magick I
7. Ask Seek Knock
8. Ljósberinn
9. Live!/Lifðu!
10. When The Sun Comes Up
11. Yama

THE PLAIN TRUTH==
we drifted through it, arguing.
every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.
we sat down together and wrote it in one room,
and then sat down in a different room, recording.
NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?
and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.
the sun setting above beds of ash
while we sat together, arguing.
the old world order barely pretended to care.
this new century will be crueler still.
war is coming.
don’t give up.
pick a side.
hang on.
love.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There are very few things I can say about GYBE that I haven't said already. they're one of my favourite bands, and they're superb. When it comes to the music however, 'NO TITLE...' takes a little bit more of a turn towards the catastrophic post-apocalyptic dread and screeching cathartic wall-of-noise side of GYBE. As ever, it's a transformative experience.

TRACK LISTING

1. SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS
2. BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD
3. RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD
4. BROKEN SPIRES AT DEAD KAPITAL
5. PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
6. GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS

Five Dice, All Threes is a record of uncommon intensity and tenderness, communal exorcism and personal excavation. These are, of course, qualities that fans have come to expect from Bright Eyes, nearly three decades into their career. The tight-knit band of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott tends to operate in distinct sweeping movements: each unique in its sound and story but unified by a sense of ambition and ever-growing emotional stakes.

Even with this rich history behind them, these new songs exude a visceral thrill like nothing they have attempted before. Oberst has always sung in a voice that conveys a sense of life-or-death gravity. At times throughout Five Dice, All Threes, you may feel worried for him; other times, he may seem like the only one with the clarity to get us out of this mess.

On the self-produced album, Bright Eyes embrace the elusive quality that has made them so enduring and influential across generations and genres, bringing their homespun sound from an Omaha bedroom to devoted audiences around the world. In Oberst’s songwriting lies a promise that our loneliest thoughts and feelings can take on grander shapes when passed between friends, blasted through speakers, or shouted among crowds. This time around, the band invites such like-minded voices onto the record with them, with notable guest appearances from Cat Power (“All Threes”), The National’s Matt Berninger (“The Time I Have Left”), and Alex Orange Drink, the frontman of the New York punk band The So So Glos, who co-wrote several songs and shares a climactic verse in the surging “Rainbow Overpass.”

When they hit the studio with Oberst’s longtime bandmates—the multiinstrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis, the keyboardist and arranger Nate Walcott—they opted for a fast-paced approach that drew inspiration from formative influences like The Replacements and Frank Black. They sought textures that burst from the mix like gnarly splashes of paint on a blank canvas; they opted for first takes and spontaneous decisions. Five Dice, All Threes thrashes and squirms and resists classification. In the brilliant expanse of “El Capitan,” they blend a galloping rhythm you might find in a Johnny Cash standard with a swell of funereal horns, shouted vocals, and lyrics that read like a sobering farewell between twin souls. “So they’re burning you an effigy,” Oberst sings. “Well, that happens to me all the time!”

For every striking turn in his lyrics, the band knows just how to complement him. On one level, Five Dice, All Threes may be the most fun album in the Bright Eyes catalog, filled with singalong hooks and buzzing performances.

And yet, sitting alongside these adrenalized rockers that sound beamed in directly from the garage, you will find contemplative, psychedelic material like the heartbreaking “Tiny Suicides” and “All Threes,” a song whose jazzy piano solo and free-associative lyrics feel totally unprecedented in the Bright Eyes catalog.

As per usual, the music comes loaded with subtext that invites deep listening—the signature touch of a band who has always honored the album as its own exalted work of art. In the game of threes, the titular move would indicate a perfect roll. Perfection, however, means something different in the world of Bright Eyes, where our flaws are what grants us authority and finding meaning is only possible if we bear witness to the dark, winding journey to get there. On Five Dice, All Threes, Bright Eyes embrace these beliefs with music that feels thrillingly alive, as if we were all in the room with them, shouting along and gaining the strength to move forward together. It doesn’t just sound like classic Bright Eyes. It sounds like their future, too.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Conor Oberst's voice is as distinctive as his compositions, so there would really be no point pretending to anyone that there is something radically different going on here, but the distinctive folky swing of Bright Eyes' work, collectively is as on point here as it's ever been. Broad strokes of clashing guitar and frantic perucssion tempered with a basecoat of reflective minimalism.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Five Dice
2. Bells And Whistles
3. El Capitan
4. Bas Jan Ader
5. Tiny Suicides

SIDE B
6. All Threes
7. Rainbow Overpass
8. Hate
9. Real Feel 105°

SIDE C
10. Spun Out
11. Trains Still Run On Time
12. The Time I Have Left
13. Tin Soldier Boy

'Hole Erth', Chaz Bear’s eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi, is the genre shapeshifter’s most unexpected and bold vmove to date, with Bear diving headlong into rap-rock, Soundcloud rap and Y2K emo. The album blitzes anthemic pop-punk next to autotuned, melancholic rap – two genres that inform one another now more than ever before - and packs in the most features ever on a Toro y Moi album.

A sense of nostalgia sneaks its way into almost every Toro y Moi release, but angst is an emotion that Bear has never intentionally explored the way he does here. Tracks like 'Tuesday' channel a specific, yet forever-relatable sense of adolescent unease. A distorted guitar riff leads into a repeating chorus that conjures misunderstood teenagers singing aloud, maybe too loud, while riding bikes through American suburbs. This foreboding can also be heard on 'HOV', though not without poking some fun with lines like “Romance is so cold / My advice? To bring a coat.”

Bear has the energy, but is acutely aware that his energy isn’t forever. At a time when the internet is blending multiple genres into one at an increasingly rapid pace, Bear accomplishes the rare feat of keeping up with the contemporary alternative listener. Constantly changing, evolving and experimenting is the heart of Toro y Moi, and on 'Hole Erth' Bear challenges but also reclaims himself, embracing the myriad sounds and eras that formed him, while crashing new worlds together

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's always been an unknown element to Toro Y Moi's music, with his diverse sound palette always beautifully fluid, but on 'Hole Erth' we get a move into directions previously unvisited. It's got an echo of Princess Nokia's about-turn into emo-rap on the non-sequiteur 'A girl In Red' but with a more languid, euphoric remnant of Toro Y Moi's core sound. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Walking In The Rain
2. CD-R
3. HOV
4. Tuesday
5. Hollywood (feat. Benjamin Gibbard)
6. Reseda (feat. Duckwrth And Elijah Kessler)
7. Babydaddy
8. Madonna (feat. Don Toliver)
9. Undercurrent (feat. Don Toliver And Porches)
10. Off Road
11. Smoke (feat. Kenny Mason)
12. Heaven (feat. Kevin Abstract & Lev)
13. Starlink (feat. Glaive)

Across the last 15 years, Ryan Gustafson of The Dead Tongues has emerged as one of modern folk’s most distinct voices. As idiosyncratic and spectral as the songs have sometimes been, Gustafson has always tied his visions and verses to the kinds of hooks you tuck away like talismans, pulled out in case of emergency. Dust, Unsung Passage, Desert: The Dead Tongues’ albums remain some of the more compelling and curious works in their field on this side of a century. The latest edition to The Dead Tongues’ catalog, the song-centric and magnetic Body of Light and the discursive and wonderfully elliptical I Am a Cloud, is 16 complete tunes split across interweaving and disparate albums.

The albums feature performances by Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Bon Iver), Mat Davidson (Twain), Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), Joe Westerlund (Califone, Megafaun), Jeff Ratner (Bing and Ruth), and more. Gustafson wanted to dedicate the studio time to not just recording songs but also making something new, with new improvisations.

The two albums, released digitally as distinct standalone releases, join together in the physical format as a beautiful, deluxe, double album. The 2LP package features a meticulously embossed cover, and gorgeous custom inner-sleeves for each album.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Tentative piano, slow slide guitars and swooning folky balladry, The Dead Tongues present a double whammy of two albums packaged together into the sonically beautiful, stunningly packaged duo of Body Of Light / I Am a Cloud.

TRACK LISTING

Body Of Light:
Body Of Light
Dirt For A Dying Sun
Dreamer
Fading Away
Daylily
Moonshadow
Wolves
Big Nothing
Hard Times, Sore Eyes

I Am A Cloud:
Lightning
I'm A Cloud Now
Formations
A Bridge
Where Love All Happened
Letters Of Returning
Even Here, Even Now

Cassandra Jenkins is quite simply one of the best songwriter-storytellers currently making music. Hers is a specific and singular corner of the Great American Songwriters, artists like David Berman, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy and Sufjan Stevens. They’re artists connected by a sense of immediacy, not just in the writing – which is precise, evocative, brutal at times, pitch-back funny right when you need it – but by their delivery, by the way they sing with an immersive, total belief that carries you through their songs. These are the artists and songs that sneak up and really live with us forever, and on My Light, My Destroyer, Jenkins joins their ranks.

What’s most remarkable about My Light, My Destroyer is it captures an artist at an exciting leap in her evolution. So much about the album feels of-a-kind with its predecessors; field recordings and found sound permeate, narrative songwriting crashes into heady, swirling compositions. Jenkins sings with what can only be described as a powerwhisper (think Sufjan Stevens, Annie Lennox, Margo Timmins or YHF-era Tweedy), her vocals up close and intimate but subtly confrontational. But it all feels bigger here, more finely honed, bolder and richer than her previous work and than her peers. Born and raised in New York City, Jenkins has been touring and performing since she was a child, self-releasing her early recordings before releasing breakthrough An Overview on Phenomenal Nature in 2021. On My Light, My Destroyer, many of the songs are devoted to specific feelings, and to really getting inside those feelings as opposed to getting inside a narrative arc. Lead single “Only one” is one example, as Jenkins’s asserts that a moment, or a song, can be wholly myopic; it can embody a singular feeling, and provides no answers.

Songs like Devotion, Delphinium Blue, Clams Casino, Echo, and Only One, speak to the liberating quality of focused observation, even to the point of disillusionment. “There’s this idea about disillusionment that I’ve held onto,” she says. “I really appreciate disillusionment as a process to discover new, unexpected outcomes. We let go of expectations this way. Expectations hold us back. It’s easy to focus on jadedness or disappointment but I actually see it more as freedom.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is definitely something otherworldly about Cassandra Jenkins' newest LP, with her airy melodies and deep instrumentation bringing to mind jazzy downbeat classics like Air's Moon Safari or Massive Attack's Mezzanine. With Jenkins' indescribable ability to segue seamlessly between genres however, it ends up far away from either of those two. A beautiful, whimsical ode to life in the city, and a great listen to boot.

TRACK LISTING

1. Devotion
2. Clams Casino
3. Delphinium Blue
4. Shatner’s Theme
5. Aurora, IL
6. Betelgeuse

“Into The Blue is the clearest portrait of who I am as an artist. It’s me through and through,” says multi-instrumentalist Aaron Frazer. A daring blend of soul, psychedelia, spaghetti western, disco, gospel and hip-hop, Into the Blue represents the impressive range of Frazer’s sonic talents. Frazer maintains the unmistakable falsetto and classic songwriting he’s known for, but plants Into the Blue firmly in the now with a hip-hop mentality at its core, weaving together genres and production techniques to form something new.

Into The Blue was conceived, like so many classic records, out of actual heartbreak. Frazer moved cross-country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and embarked on a journey that’s reflected in the album’s themes of grief, loneliness, and searching for healing. “Into The Blue really means heading into the unknown. That has been the last year of my life and I’m still in the blue,” Frazer explains. “But there are also songs here that celebrate love and the giddiness of a new relationship and all that. That’s part of a breakup to me, processing the whole thing, remembering the things that were right as much as the things that were wrong.”

Frazer wrote on every track and played several live instruments on the album. The title track, “Into The Blue”, is a haunting, resolute anthem, combining cinematic strings and tough-as-nails breakbeats as Frazer heads west. “Here I go, to a place where the broken heart knows,” he sings. “It’s all I can do. Back into the blue.” “Payback” is an explosive dancefloor heater, featuring shimmering tambourines and driving bass lines. Northern soul drums meet snarling fuzz guitar, hurdling towards its epic conclusion.

The album features moments of towering arrangements, recalling David Axelrod and Ennio Merricone, balanced by rawness, incorporating iPhone recordings and one-take vocals. For Into the Blue, Frazer enlisted Grammy-winner Alex Goose as coproducer, known for his crate-digging samples and collaborations with hip-hop artists like Freddie Gibbs, Madlib and Brockhampton. Frazer also experimented with samples for the first time on a record, drawing from unexpected sources like 90s R&B group Hi-Five. Though Into the Blue is born out of heartbreak, Frazer hopes it leaves listeners with a sense of optimism. “You know, you can still laugh on a day when you’re grieving,” he says, “there’s no peaks without valleys,” he says, but Into The Blue sees Aaron Frazer at new heights.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful, swinging selection of psychedelic ballads and shimmering poppy numbers. The title track is a particular delight, bringing to mind Morricone as much as it does Morcheeba or Khruangbin. A perfectly produced melting pot.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) Thinking Of You
2) Into The Blue
3) Fly Away
4) Payback
5) Dime Feat. Cancamusa
6) Perfect Strangers

Side B
7) Time Will Tell
8) I Don’t Wanna Stay
9) Play On
10) Easy To Love
11) The Fool

For Remixes JID020, the label has tapped a few of their favourite contemporary artists and producers to offer their own take on the music of Series 2. The album features a variety of dynamic personalities with remixes from London based artists Shabaka Hitchins and Theon Cross, New York tastemaker Melanie Charles, LA based produces Bei Ru, Brazil's DK Nyack, Detroit based producer Tall Black Guy, Bay Area producer Mophono and the LA based house duo L.O. & Diisko.

The album earns its place in the Jazz Is Dead catalog as it further celebrated the spirit of collaboration amongst artists young and old. What unites these DJs, producers and musicians with the Jazz Is Dead ethos is their unbent dedication to remaining true to their own vibe and sound all the while preserving the energy and feeling of the original recordings.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tony Allen - Don't Believe The Dancers (Mophono Remix)
2. The Midnight Hour - Phoenix (Theon Cross Remix)
3. Katalyst - Reflections (Bei Ru Remix)
4. Jean Carne - Black Rainbow (Melanie Charles Remix)
5. Henry Franklin - African Sun (Shabaka Hutchins Remix)
6. Lonnie Liston Smith - Love Brings Happiness (Tall Black Guy Feat. Kaidi Tatham Remix)
7. Garrett Saracho - Altitude (L.O. & Diisko Remix)
8. Phil Ranelin & Wendell Harrison - Running With The Tribe (DJ Nyack Remix) 

Khruangbin’s fourth studio album, A La Sala (“To the Room” in Spanish), is an exercise in returning in order to go further, and doing so on your own terms. It continues the mystery and sanctity that is the key to how bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, Jr. and guitarist Mark “Marko” Speer approach music. If 2020’s Mordechai, the last studio LP Khruangbin made without collaborators, was a party record that enhanced the band’s musical reputation far and wide, then A La Sala is the measured morning after. It’s a gorgeously airy record completed only in the company of the group’s longtime engineer Steve Christensen, with minimal overdubs. It’s a window onto the bounties powering Khruangbin’s vision, a reimagining and refueling for the long haul ahead. A La Sala scales Khruangbin down to scale up, a creative strategy with the future in mind.

The trio’s collective musical DNA, the years spent constructing it in Houston’s local-meets-global cultural stew, ensures the band continues to sound like no one but itself. A cascade of crisp melodies emanates from Marko’s reverb-heavy electric, dancing gently around Laura Lee’s minimalist almost-dub bass triangles, while DJ’s drums serve as the tightened-up pocket and unwavering dance-floor on which all this movement takes place. Yet there’s a freshness to A La Sala’s instrumental interactivity, less concerned with getting further out than going deeper in, a profound desire to celebrate the world’s external wonders. Where prior albums strived towards music’s polyglot edges, such inquiries now sound like beloved intimacies. Here, Khruangbin’s sonic touch-points — whether spaghetti-western film scores (on “Fifteen Fifty-Three”), West African discos (on “Pon Pón”), G-funk fantasias (“Todavía Viva”), living room dancing moments (the first single, “A Love International”), or even ambient found-sounds (on “Farolim de Felgueiras and throughout the album”) — are ingrained characteristics. This is who they are! Unique and huge (and growing), ambitious and driven.

Khruangbin’s aspirations and commitment to playful creativity even extends to A La Sala’s vinyl packages, of which there will be seven distinctive covers and color-sets. Designed by the band using Marko’s multitude of travelog photos, the images are windows from the band’s living room onto a set of daydreams, scenes of impossible skies, external glances that illuminate what is going on inside. Each cover image comes with a matching color vinyl. These too are all about looking out and looking back, in order to better look ahead.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The inimitable Khruangbin bring us another slice of beautifully rendered, loungey ambient jazz. Swimming with atmosphere and as perfectly performed as you'd expect from the Texan trio. Beautifully evocative and warmly hazy instrumental business.

TRACK LISTING

1.Fifteen Fifty-Three
2.May Ninth
3.Ada Jean
4.Farolim De Felgueiras
5.Pon Pón
6.Todavía Viva
7.Juegos Y Nubes
8.Hold Me Up (Thank You)
9.Caja De La Sala
10.Three From Two
11.A Love International
12.Les Petits Gris

What more is there to say about this seminal album? A masterpiece o f tight, political American punk rock and a cornerstone album in any punk or hardcore collection.

Originally released in September 1980, ‘Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables’ has been certified Gold by the BPI and continues to be discovered and rediscovered by young and old alike.

Presented here on 180gm vinyl for the first time, this edition re - unites the album with the large poster that accompanied or iginal pressings, and also contains two 7” sleeve reproduction prints.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE ONE
1. KILL THE POOR
2. FORWARD TO DEATH
3. WHEN YA GET DRAFTED
4. LET’S LYNCH THE LANDLORD
5. DRUG ME
6. YOUR EMOTIONS
7. CHEMICAL WARFARE

SIDE TWO
1. CALIFORNIA UBER ALLES
2. I KILL CHILDREN
3. STEALING PEOPLE’S MAIL
4. FUNLAND AT THE BEACH
5. ILL IN THE HEAD
6. HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA
7. VIVA LAS VEGAS

CMAT is the stage name of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, a global pop star who lives in Dublin with her grandparents, where she is currently recovering from an AliExpress addiction. Her influences include Dory Previn, John Grant, Paris Hilton, XTC and KFC.

TRACK LISTING

Nashville
I Don't Really Care For You
Peter Bogdanovich
No More Virgos
Lonely
Groundhog Day
Communion
Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)
2 Wrecked 2 Care
Geography Teacher
I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!
I'd Want U

The temptation to mythologize Bill Fay can be overwhelming; Fay was, for decades, as prolific as he was under-appreciated. Fay’s unsung-hero status has changed slowly, steadily, on the order of almost twenty-five years. With each new album comes new hosannas and evangelizers — Jeff Tweedy, Kevin Morby, Adam Granduciel and Julia Jacklin, to name just a few.

The Bill Fay Group, in particular, is Fay’s most significant collaborative work; he records as a member of a larger group here, and the result summons a grander sonic scale, an elegent counterweight to Fay’s instincts for the understated. Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow brings to bear the galactic qualities of early rock, the intricacy of jazz improv, and Fay’s earthy folk magic.

Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow has a patchy release history: recorded between 1978 and 1981, it was not released until 2005, when it appeared on CD with limited streaming and no vinyl companion. A 2006 reissue brought the album onto vinyl but with a truncated sequence and nine song missing. Now, finally, Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow arrives in full worldwide. Available on streaming services worldwide and pressed to a double-album vinyl edition, it features the album’s original 22 songs and includes rare and previously unseen photographs from Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow’s original recording session.

In the words of Gary Smith and Rauf Galip, missing Bill Stratton, and abbreviated from the forthcoming album notes:

We chose five songs to record as finished pieces: Life, Spiritual Mansions, Cosmic Boxer, Strange Stairway, Isles of Sleep, all recorded in two studio sessions. We sent them out to try and get a record deal. There were few really independent labels back then and Punk was in the record labels’ ears. No deal.

And now, Dead Oceans who have a lot of faith in Bill’s music wants to re- release the ‘Tomorrow’ album. A double vinyl package. Is there any more unreleased music for the fourth side? Of course. So, we’ve been opening old boxes, finding CDRs, cassettes, a musical archaeological dig. This is our choice from all the music we found.

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1 SIDE A:
1. Strange Stairway
2. Spiritual Mansions
3. Planet Earth Daytime
4. Goodnight Stan
5. Tomorrow Tomorrow And Tomorrow
DISC 1 SIDE B:
1. Just A Moon
2. To Be A Part
3. Sam
4. Lamp Shining
5. Turning The Pages
6. Love Is The Tune
7. After The Revolution
8. Jericho Road
9. Strange Stairway (Demo)
10. Birdman (Bonus Track)

DISC 2 SIDE A:
1. Life
2. Hypocrite
3. Man
4. Cosmic Boxer
5. We Are Raised
6. Isle Of Sleep
DISC 3 SIDE B:
1. Coming Down
2. Hypocrite (Demo)
3. Spiritual Mansions (Demo)
4. Cosmic Boxer (Alternate Version)
5. The Coast No Man Can Tell (Bonus Track)
6. Man (Take 1)
7. When We Set Sail (Bonus Track)

Dead Elvis is the debut studio album by British band Death in Vegas, which was originally released in 1997. It featured a blend of musical genres, but most of the tracks are mainly based in dub and electronic dance music. This was the only Death in Vegas album to feature original member Steve Hellier. A limited vinyl run of Dead Elvis was released in 1997 but didn't feature the complete album. The complete Dead Elvis album, including the singles "Dirt", "Rocco" & "Rekkit" is now for the first time available on vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. All That Glitters
2. Opium Shuffle
3. GBH

Side B
1. Dirt
2. Rocco
3. Rekkit

Side C
1. I Spy
2. Amber

Side D
1. Rematerialised
2. 68 Balcony
3. Sly

The newly reformed Soup Dragons release their frst single in 30 years. The double A- side 7" single features two new tracks; LOVE IS LOVE and NO
MUSIC ON A DEAD PLANET which features the B52's legendary Fred Schneider. The single is released by Last Night From Glasgow on coloured vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

1. No Music On A Dead Planet
2. Love Is Love

Khruangbin’s series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Across five releases, this series ignites both sides of Khruangbin’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances. Closing out this collection, Live at Sydney Opera House is a double LP of front-toback Khruangbin. Here, career-spanning songs like “A Calf Born in Winter”, “Maria También”, “So We Won’t Forget”, “Shida” and “Friday Morning” arrive in their full interplanetary glory, recorded at one of the most celebrated venues on earth, the Sydney Opera House.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Continuing on from the striking visual aesthetic of the rest of the Khrangbin Live series, 'The Pink One' sees K-Bin performing a set of songs, perfectly at the legendary Sydney Opera House and here you too can feel like you were there. Lovely stuff.

THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2023.

Everything Is Alive, Slowdive’s 5th record, is exactly what the title suggests: an exploration into the shimmering nature of life and the universal touch points within it.

While there are parts of this record that could sit neatly next to the atmospheric quality of 1995’s Pygmalion; everything is alive also manages to break down the boundaries of what’s come before it. Spanning psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating 80’s electronic elements and John Cale inspired journeys, the album lands immediately as something made for 2023 and beyond.

For a genre that is often thought of as divisive, and often warrants introspection, here Slowdive show their craft as the masters of it by pushing it outwards, beyond the singular; the end result being a record which feels as emotional and cathartic as it is hopeful.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: When Slowdive returned in 2014, there was a real sense of jubilation and satisfaction that the shoegaze legends were finally getting their well deserved dues and plaudits. However in the years following their return, the world's landscape changed significantly. Not just on a global scale, but also on a personal level for members of the band. 'everything is alive' was born during a heavy period of grief, which can be felt on the closer “The Slab” - a visceral and overwhelming wall of sound that you just want to crawl into for solace and to escape the troubles of the world.
Despite these moments of sadness, there is real artistry in the way Slowdive manages to reflect on the human experience and how we navigate it throughout our lives. This in turn results in an absolute marvel of a record, with some of Slowdive's best work to date. Opener “Shanty” is an all-consuming shoegaze epic of colossal proportions, whilst the gorgeous “Prayer Remembered” is an atmospheric slice of ambient perfection that harks back to Slowdive's 1990 debut EP. The dreamy ”Alife” swirls amongst Rachel Goswell's ethereal vocals, which is then followed by the stripped back and vulnerable delivery of Neil Halstead on the exquisite and delicate “Andalucia Plays”. Then there's “Kisses”, the album's most 'pop' moment but also one of its best. Finally, we have the woozy headiness of “Skin In The Game” and the synth led and almost post-rock “Chained To A Cloud”, both of which just further emphasise the greatness of 'everything is alive'.
With 'everything is alive', Slowdive are well and truly full of life. Whilst their 2017 self-titled felt like a celebration of their legacy, the poignancy and beauty of 'everything is alive' feels like Slowdive never left and we hope they stay with us forever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Shanty
2. Prayer Remembered
3. Alife
4. Andalucia Plays
5. Kisses
6. Skin In The Game
7. Chained To A Cloud
8.. The Slab

Review from 2009:
"Horehound" is the first album to be recorded and released via Jack White's new Third Man studios and record label in Nashville, TN. Those of you who came along to our screening of their awesome 'From The Basement' show will already know what to expect from this four piece. If you missed out, well, with a line up that consists of Dean Fertita from Queens Of The Stone Age, Greenhornes and Raconteurs fella "Little" Jack Lawrence, vocals courtesy of Alison Mosshart from The Kills and the sickeningly talented Mr Jack White on drums, you can pretty well guess what direction this album is gonna take - cool as f**k bluesy rock'n'roll!

Review from 2010:
Baton down the hatches! The Dead Weather are back. The Nashville-based 4-piece have announced plans for the release of their sophomore album "Sea Of Cowards". The band exploded onto the music scene early last year with a stunning debut that combined the furious talents of members Jack White (vocals/drums), Alison Mosshart (vocals/ guitar), Jack Lawrence (bass/drums) and Dean Fertita (guitar/organ). "Horehound" was an exhilarating and electrifying introduction to the band, a gritty blues-driven dirge rock masterpiece that hit the UK charts at #14 upon its release in July 2009. Now, less than a year later, the follow-up is ready to be unleashed.

Kevin Morby writes (and records, and imagines) at an almost incomparable clip, and his most recent album, This Is A Photograph, studies life, time and mortality through myriad lenses. It’s a dynamic, buoyant record on big, heavy themes, so it only makes sense that Morby found he wasn’t quite done with it on its completion. More Photographs (A Continuum) finds new nooks, corners and vantage points. “If This Is A Photograph is a house that you have been living inside of,” says Morby, “then More Photographs is, perhaps, the same home just experienced differently. As if you, its inhabitant, have taken a tab of something psychedelic and now, suddenly, you’ve replaced your eyeglasses with kaleidoscopes.”

Here, Morby returns to his landmark album’s bottomless themes with new wisdom, new imagination, and the winking, looping callbacks that tie his full body of work together in uniquely special ways. “Everything you once thought was familiar,” he continues, “suddenly appears differently, shifting shapes, color and sonic landscapes.” “Five Easy Pieces Revisited” captures the same moment from Bobby’s point of view; “This Is A Photograph II” takes a similar tact, revisiting its predecessor from a different angle. “Triumph” explores more of the myths and deaths that surround Memphis, TN, this time inspired by Big Star’s Chris Bell. And “Kingdom Of Hearts” arrives as an origin story to both This Is A Photograph and its new companion.

“With every collection of songs,” says Morby, “I feel I must cast them out of me before moving onto the next project, and here I knew that what I had begun with This Is A Photograph was not finished. Releasing this collection is my tying a bow on that time and place in my creative life.” With a luxurious nine tracks – three re-imaginings and six brand new songs – More Photographs (A Continuum) is prequel, sequel and primer to an already rich and generous record from one of our most luminous modern songwriters.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: I'm a big fan of Kevin Morby, so when I saw that he was continuing to create music in the same sound world as last years' 'This Is A Photograph', I was delighted. More washes of blissful guitar, euphoric harmonies and rich slide swells. More gold from Kevin Morby.

TRACK LISTING

1) This Is A Photograph II
2) Triumph
3) Bittersweet, Tennessee
4) Going To Prom
5) Lion Tamer

SIDE B
6) A Song For Katie
7) Five Easy Pieces Revisited
8) Mickey Mantle’s Autograph
9) Kingdom Of Broken Hearts

Bright Eyes’ Christmas Album begins with a piano, flute, ambient noise, and musical saw-driven version of “Away in a Manger,” helping weed out casual Christmas music enjoyers, but all too tempting for the most devout of Conor Oberst’s disciples, who originally learned that the warmth of the holiday season is trumped only by its potential for melancholy back in 2002 with the original Saddle Creek release. Oberst and a small army of friends at his house proceed to jamboree through Christmas classics like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” and “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” Holiday cheer, when delivered with Oberst’s trademark tremble, sounds more like a lament than it does hymns of ecclesiastical joy. But the spirited listener will find that the fragile, homespun, and somewhat blinkered vibe that permeates the album sets itself apart from the bog-standard, less sonically humble offerings of the holidays, and, both strangely and satisfyingly, is probably more aligned with the true spirit of the season.

TRACK LISTING

1) Away In A Manger
2) Blue Christmas
3) Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
4) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
5) The First Noel
6) Little Drummer Boy
7) White Christmas
8) Silent Night
9) Silver Bells
10) Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
11) The Night Before Christmas

Originally released in the fall of 2003, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place was a watershed moment for Explosions In The Sky, and a landmark album for underground and experimental music. Its iconic sound would become a touchstone in film and television as it inspired a generational sea change towards introspective art rock in lieu of traditional orchestral scores.

Artfully remastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place Anniversary Edition is packaged in a stunning triple gatefold with restored and expanded original artwork, housed in a heavyweight slipcase. Exquisitely pressed onto colored vinyl for the first time ever, this is the soundtrack to our everyday lives in full panoramic wonder.

TRACK LISTING

1. First Breath After Coma (9:34)
2. The Only Moment We Were Alone (10:14)
3. Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean (8:43)
4. Memorial (8:50)
5. Your Hand In Mine (8:17)

Legendary Tacoma, Washington mathcore/hardcore/metal band Botch’s final EP An Anthology of Dead Ends was originally recorded in 2002, serving as a swan song sending off one of heavy music’s most inventive groups. Now, the band’s final EP is set to be re-issued on Sargent House over 20 years after its original release. Their monstrous concoction of metal, noise, indie rock guitar trickery, and depth is on full display. This is a last will and testament to the group's drive and intent, cementing their legacy as one of the untouchable greats, already having influenced many a group.

Bassist Brian Cook, guitarist David Knudson, drummer Tim Latona, and vocalist Dave Verellen formed Botch in 1993, eventually becoming one of the most significant bands of their time. Their final show was June 15, 2002, the same day as the original release of An Anthology of Dead Ends. The members would go on to play in These Arms Are Snakes, Minus the Bear, and Russian Circles, among others, with acclaim for the band coming mostly post-breakup. Over 20 years since they played their final show, Botch are reuniting for select dates across the US throughout the end of 2023.

TRACK LISTING

Spaim
Japam
Framce
Vietmam
Afghamistam
Micaragua

Toro y Moi’s ‘Sandhills’ is both a tender love letter to Chaz Bear’s hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, and a poignant, bittersweet acceptance that one can never really go back home. Recalling Sufjan’s ‘Seven Swans’ or Karen O’s soundtrack work for ‘Where The Wild Things Are,’ these loping folk-pop songs are themselves a sort of Saturn return, reminiscent of Bear’s first handmade CD-Rs as Toro y Moi. Bear gave them out to friends in the earliest days of the moniker, the releases stuffed in the Case Logic visor of their cars, and each listen brings a little more of that detail to life: the mall after which ‘Sandhills’ is named; the teenaged friends spending aimless hours there, full of big ennui and bigger dreams; the late-capitalist decline and empty big box stores of Sandhills today. Chaz Bear, Toro y Moi, is now a globally beloved indie[1]pop icon. But ‘Sandhills’, with its banjo and lap steel flourishes and its wide-eyes wonder, concedes that you never quite totally rid yourself of those adolescent blues. You might just, if you’re lucky, develop better mechanisms (or delusions!) with which to handle them. ‘Sidelines’ tells the tale of aesthete putting himself through the high school football gauntlet. And the title track has subtle allusions to growing up a Black art kid in the American South: “saved again by calamine/ another bite/ this happens time to time/ i’m spotted white/ maybe it’s just where i’m from/ i always had my guard up/ but hypocrites keep strollin in/ and rubbin on my shoulder”. Even the closing novelty track “Said Goodbye To Rock n Roll” has all the makings of a Chris Stapleton hit if you just to squint a little. Clear eyes, full hearts, sweet jams, can’t lose. Lyrically deft and deceptively heartbreaking, ‘Sandhills’ may be a brief pit stop between grand statements from Bear, but it’s brimming with rust, guts, big moods and love.

TRACK LISTING

1) Back Then
2) Sidelines
3) Sandhills
4) The View
5) Said Goodbye To Rock N Roll

Instrumentals JID019 captures the musical alchemy produced at the Linear Labs Studio by producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. These instrumental recordings encapsulate the spirit of the Jazz Is Dead concert and recording series, celebrating the African-American art form known as jazz through improvisation, musical collaboration and authentic cross-generational and cross-cultural communication.

TRACK LISTING

1. Come As You Are
2. Love Brings Happiness
3. Black Rainbows
4. The Summertime
5. Love Can Be
6. People Of The Sun
7. My Mystic Life
3 .blackrainbows
8. Cosmic Changes
9. Black Love
10. Visions

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at The Fillmore Miami’ features performances by Toro Y Moi and Khruangbin.

Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” Mitski says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have, after I die, so that I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will continue to shine that love long after she’s gone. Listening to it, that’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.

“This is my most American album,” Mitski says about her seventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. In this album, which is sonically Mitski’s most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem to be introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star.

The album is full of the ache of the grown- up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything, and everyone, is crying out, screaming in pain, arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning us and then rejecting us. To love this place — this earth, this America, this body — takes active work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Mitski turns her considerable talents away from the confessional intensity and jagged production of 2018's 'Be The Cowboy' and brings us her own unique version of country music. Full of wry confessionals, intimate diarising and her unmistakable, beautiful vocals.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
01 Bug Like An Angel
02 Buffalo Replaced
03 Heaven
04 I Don’t Like My Mind
05 The Deal

SIDE B:
06 When Memories Snow
07 My Love Mine All Mine
08 The Frost
09 Star
10 I’m Your Man
11 I Love Me After You

Everything Is Alive, Slowdive’s 5th record, is exactly what the title suggests: an exploration into the shimmering nature of life and the universal touch points within it.

While there are parts of this record that could sit neatly next to the atmospheric quality of 1995’s Pygmalion; everything is alive also manages to break down the boundaries of what’s come before it. Spanning psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating 80’s electronic elements and John Cale inspired journeys, the album lands immediately as something made for 2023 and beyond.

For a genre that is often thought of as divisive, and often warrants introspection, here Slowdive show their craft as the masters of it by pushing it outwards, beyond the singular; the end result being a record which feels as emotional and cathartic as it is hopeful.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Hallelujah! The Kings and Queens of Shoegaze return with a beautiful record which feels like everything you'd want from a new Slowdive LP. It ticks all the boxes. Everything they've done rolled into one blissed-out dream. It's brilliant!

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Shanty
2. Prayer Remembered
3. Alife
4. Andalucia Plays
SIDE B:
5. Kisses
6. Skin In The Game
7. Chained To A Cloud
8.. The Slab

The long-awaited reissue of The Dead Tongues' beloved third album, Unsung Passage, a profound reflection on the emotional architecture of love, loneliness, and life at large.

The Dead Tongues is songwriter Ryan Gustafson's long-evolving vehicle for a beautifully fractured vision of folk, country, blues, and cosmic American rock, and Unsung Passage is a first-person reckoning with the things Gustafson, a chronically peripatetic adventurer, has seen enough to sing about. The ten remarkable tracks of Unsung Passage are long-distance distillations of events lived and places seen and pondered and ultimately poured into reflective anthems for our harried times.

During "Like a Dream," a gentle gallop of grinning harmonica and trickling guitar, Gustafson explores the balance of existence from a hillside vantage. He sees the curveof the earth while pondering his need for a paycheck, a moment that eternally pits the banal against the beautiful. "The Broken Side of People Everywhere" is a gorgeous love song written with the wisdom of someone who knows that nothing is forever or perfect, that there's no real risk in a life where everything ends, anyway. There are meditations on mortality and devotion (the flute-laced dream "My Other"), on money and temporality (the banjo trot "The Giver"), and on impermanence and acceptance (the achingly gorgeous "Pale November Dew").

This isn't Gustafson's idle speculation about life and the world: these are the realizations of a restless mind, of a songwriter who sings "this old town ain't gonna watch m edie" and means it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Won't Be Long
2. Ebb And Flow
3. Pale November Dew
4. My Other
5. Like A Dream
6. Unsung Passage
7. The Broken Side Of People Everywhere
8. Thunder And Crash
9. TheGiver
10. Clip Your Wings

Reissue of the 2011 album Tao of the Dead by American alternative rock band ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead. First time available on vinyl since its release year. Features a replica of the original comic book insert. Tao of the Dead is their seventh album. The band stripped down to its core four-piece lineup for the record, deviating from the past two records that featured a filled-out six-piece band. This resulted in a stripped-down record with heavy emphasis on guitar. It’s a two-part record, each side with a specific musical tuning; Part One in D and Part Two in F. The album can be listened to as 16 different movements or two lengthy tracks. Part One: Tao Of The Dead is split into eleven tracks, whereas Part Two: Strange News From Another Planet is five songs combined into one. Lead singer Conrad Keely described the album's composition; "It's the way I listened to albums when I was a kid, seeing as some of my favorite records were Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Yes' Relayer and Close to the Edge... I always liked listening to records that were just a continuous piece, like an orchestra or a symphony."

TRACK LISTING

1. The Wasteland
2. Know Your Honor
3. Introduction: "Let's Experiment"
4. Spiral Jetty
5. Rule By Being Just
6. Pure Radio Cosplay
7. Weight Of The Sun (Or The Post-Modern Prometheus)
8. The Ship Impossible
9. Summer Of All Dead Souls
10. Strange Epiphany
11. Pure Radio Cosplay (Reprise)
12. Cover The Days Like A Tidal Wave
13. Racing And Hunting
14. Fall Of The Empire
15. Ebb Away
16. The Fairlight Pendant

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at RBC Echo Beach’ features performances by Men I Trust and Khruangbin.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Next up in the Khruangbin 'Live At' series and it's a banger. Side A is a lovely slice a dreamy indie pop from shop faves Men I Trust, whilst the flip side has Khruangbin heading for the stratosphere in a funk fueled dub rocket - mega stuff!!

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Men I Trust: Sugar
2. Men I Trust: All Night
3. Men I Trust: Seven
4. Men I Trust: Show Me How
5. Men I Trust: Say Can You Hear

SIDE B:
1. Khruangbin: Dern Kala
2. Khruangbin: Lady And Man
3. Khruangbin: Evan Finds The Third Room
4. Khruangbin: White Gloves

The Dead C’s trio of albums in the middle of their harsh 90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century.

This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks more blaring than ever.

Coming after the monster that was Harsh 70s Reality, and its evil twin, Clyma Est Mort, this album has always confounded even soi-disant Dead C fans. Side one documents the discovery of the analogue synthesizer coupled with field recordings from the basement of Willowbank, Koputai’s “most stately” home. Side two emerged spontaneously to cassette on stage at the “fabled” Empire Tavern—and it still sounds like stripping the breathable atmosphere from an already-depleted biosphere.

The Dead C’s trio of albums in the middle of their harsh 90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century.

This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks more blaring than ever.

The Dead C on The White House, now including bonus track “Breakdown/World”: “Recorded in the winter of 1994, sessions were accompanied by snow, an infrequent but always super-exciting event in downtown Dunedin. Mainly if not entirely recorded direct to REVOX B77, just like The Clean’s Oddities. Our version of Led Zepp IV with no ‘Stairway’, as recorded by the Meat Puppets in a K-hole. Originally M&D by Matador, this is as major label as we got. Mere pseud post-grunge sell-out moves-ah.”

The Dead C’s trio of albums in the middle of their harsh 90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century.

This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks for blaring than ever.

How does one follow up one of the most immediately revered noise rock releases of all time? Definitely not by spending ten times the money and time recording their next release and doing a bloated double album. Tusk (now including bonus track “There Is Something To Be Gained”), The Dead C record, is uncompromising and unrelenting. Here’s a band enjoying more attention than they ever got before, and they launch their new album with a long, ominous percussive rattle. Tusk digs into the thought bubble that formed via Operation Of The Sonne and The White House, sharpens the edges and reveals some of their greatest broken progressions and vicious feedback. The band is at their performative peak, staking their ground with an amp covered in dirt

TRACK LISTING

1. Plane
2. Head
3. Tuba
4. Half
5. Imaginary
6. Tusk
7. There Is Something To Be Gained

Leeds band Thank return with new single ‘Torture Cube’, the first track to be taken from an upcoming double A - side 7” “ Torture Cube / Dead Dog In A Ditch ”, out via Yard Act’s Zen F.C label on 21 July.

“Torture Cube / Dead Dog In A Ditch” is a slab of guitar fury filtered through Nine Inch Nails’ industrial metal and Full of Hell’s blunt - force hardcore plus a healthy dose of humour fed by one too many nights soundtracked by donk pranksters Lobsta B and DJ Fingerblast.

Speaking on the release, vocalist/guitarist Freddy Vinehill - Cliffe says, “This was our first time in the studio with our friend and Leeds avant - metal legend Steve Myles on drums, and like a lot of our peers it marke d a return to honing tunes in a grotty rehearsal spot rather than writing remotely. The result feels like it has that pent up, fraught, fidgety energy of our first EP, combined with the more ambitious arrangements we started to experiment with on our debut LP ‘Thoughtless Cruelty’. Personally, I think it’s quite good actually.”

Thank formed in 2016 out of Leeds’ notorious DIY collective, CHUNK. Over the next half - decade they gained acclaim for the EPs ‘Sexghost Hellscape’ and ‘Please’, toured in mainland Eu rope, and caught the attention of heavy hitters like Idles with their combination of anxious disco grooves and harsh noise freakouts.

Thank become the latest in a string of artists to release via Yard Act’s Zen F.C. label, following on from the likes of Nu ha Ruby Ra, Baba Ali, Benefits and Yard Act themselves all of who’s 7” broke into the UK vinyl singles charts and Sheffield’s one man rave collective Acid Klaus who’s Step On My Travelator LP was released in November 2022.

TRACK LISTING

A. Torture Cube
AA: Dead Dog In A Ditch

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited- edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at Radio City Music Hall’ features performances by Nubya Garcia and Khruangbin.

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.

TRACK LISTING

1. Firewall
2. Shell Games
3. Jejune Stars
4. Approximate Sunlight
5. Haile Sellassie
6. A Machine Spiritual (In The People’s Key)
7. Triple Spiral
8. Beginner’s Mind
9. Ladder Song
10. One For You, One For Me

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mirrors And Fevers
2. I Will Be Grateful For This Day
3. Trees Get Wheeled Away
4. Drunk Kid Catholic
5. Spent On Rainy Days
6. The Vanishing Act
7. Soon You Will Be Leaving Your Man
8. Blue Angels Air Show
9. Weather Reports
10. Seashell Tale
11. Bad Blood
12. Amy In The White Coat
13. Devil Town
14. I’ve Been Eating (For You)
15. Happy Birthday To Me (February 15)
16. Motion Sickness
17. Act Of Contrition
18. Hungry For A Holiday
19. When The Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass Again
20. Entry Way Song
21. It’s Cool, We Can Still Be Friends

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Clairaudients (Kill Or Be Killed)
2. Four Winds
3. If The Brakeman Turns My Way
4. Hot Knives
5. Make A Plan To Love Me
6. Soul Singer In A Session Band
7. Classic Cars
8. Middleman
9. Cleanse Song
10. No One Would Riot For Less
11. Coat Check Dream Song
12. I Must Belong Somewhere
13. Lime Tree

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.

TRACK LISTING

1. Jejune Stars (Companion Version)
2. Firewall (Companion Version)
3. When You Were Mine
4. Approximate Sunlight (Companion Version)
5. A Machine Spiritual (The People’s Key) (Companion Version)
6. Beginner’s Mind (Companion Version)

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Nunca Seré Feliz Otra Vez (Companion Version)
2. The Vanishing Act (Companion Version)
3. Soon You Will Be Leaving Your Man (Companion Version)
4. Blue Angels Air Show (Companion Version)
5. I Will Be Grateful For This Day (Companion Version)
6. Motion Sickness (Companion Version)
7. I Won’t Ever Be Happy Again (Companion Version)

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Clairaudients (Kill Or Be Killed) (Companion Version)
2. Middleman (Companion Version)
3. Coat Check Dream Song (Companion Version)
4. (Companion Version)
5. I Must Belong Somewhere (Companion Version)
6. Napoleon’s Hat (Companion Version)
7. Wrecking Bal

You heard them first on Brown Acid “The Thirteenth Trip”. We are very excited to present to you the full unreleased recordings from this amazing band from Detroit. Master Danse was formed in late 1973 in Detroit, Michigan when drummer Tom Riss and bassist Cary Fletcher, formerly of the Detroit band Licking Stick, went looking for a new guitarist/lead vocalist and jammed with John Giaier, who had most recently played in the band Crawdad. The three musicians hit it off immediately, and a new power hard rock trio was born. 
In 1973, Detroit was clearly “Rock City”, featuring such local icons as Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, Ted Nugent, and Mitch Ryder, and the high energy punch of Master Danse reflected this proud heritage. Unfortunately, this union would only last one year, and by the end of 1974 the power rock trio known as Master Danse had disbanded. What was left for posterity were only two live reel to reel recordings and one promo 45 single. Some forty-seven years later, the 45 found its way onto the internet and a small cult following of audiophiles was born, people who appreciate the raw power and high energy of early ‘70s rock. Bands like Master Danse and others from this era were riding the wave of transition from the pop rock sound of the ‘60s to an edgier sound that would eventually lead to metal and punk music.

With the help of modern-day tape restoration techniques, the two live recordings were restored, and together with the 45, the best versions of the eight songs that have survived the decades are featured on this album. Although recorded live forty-eight years ago on a two-track stereo tape recorder, you can still feel the power of Giaier’s Marshall stack, Fletcher’s twin Acoustic 360 amps, and the relentless attack of Riss’ Ludwig drums. So, sit back and enjoy. Rock on!

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1. Detroit City
2. Givin' In
3. I. O.U.
4. Sunday Morning
Side Two
1. Train To Love
2. We're Not Alone
3. Feelin' Dead
4. En Route To Fame

It’s only fitting that Khruangbin’s first ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at Stubbs’ features performances by Kelly Doyle, Ruben Moreno, The Suffers and Robert Ellis and Khruangbin.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Kelly Doyle: Woman Trouble
2. Ruben Moreno: At The Trailride
3. The Suffers: Don’t Bother Me
4. Robert Ellis: Nobody Smokes Anymore
5. Khruangbin: Blind Man Can See It / (It’s Not The Express) It’s The Monaurail
6. Khruangbin: Bin Bin
Side B:
1. Khruangbin: Friday Morning
2. Khruangbin: Number 4
3. Khruangbin: People Everywhere (Still Alive

DEAD SEA APES are back with a passion to deliver their most essential and cohesive album to date. Formed in 2009, DEAD SEA APES have become a fixture of the psych scene, sharing stages with the likes of Part Chimp, The Heads, Acid Mother Temple and Mugstar while producing a distinctive body of work, ranging from psychedelic punk to experimental dub, from freeform jams to constructions of loops and drones. Following a slew of collaborations and split releases, REWILDING sees them return to a power trio of Brett Savage (guitar), Jack Toker (bass) and Chris Hardman (drums). From the chaotic blast of opener ‘Denialist’, beaming out like a maniacal emergency broadcast, through to the monolithic pounding of the title track, REWILDING is unrelenting, taking in blown-out guitar wails and jet black psych noise while the irrepressible rhythm section moves from claustrophobic motorik beats to a thunderous rolling juggernaut. These blackened pearls have been recast and refined over the course of the past three years, strung out deeper than the night and now embodying our present uncanny, disorienting times, as we emerge into an altered world to find Mother Nature reasserting herself while the human madness intensifies, locally and globally. Savage and uncompromising, this is DEAD SEA APES at their most direct and visceral. 

The original album, newly re-mastered by GRAMMY®Award-winningengineer, David Glasser, using Plangent Processes from the original analog 2-track tapes, recorded live by Owsley “Bear” Stanley. The Grateful Dead's first true archival album, Bear's Choice, was lovingly produced as a tribute to Pigpen shortly after he passed by none other that the Dead's original soundman and benefactor, Owsley Stanley, aka Bear. Drawing from live shows recorded three years earlier by Bear at the Fillmore East in New York City, Bear's Choice captures the Dead at an essential moment of their history, as they were about to record Workingman's Dead (and shortly thereafter, American Beauty), and were transitioning into becoming Americana pioneers, while never losing touch with their psychedelic improvisational roots. Three of the eight songs on the album are sung by Pigpen, with Side 1 being the definitive example of early Acoustic Dead, and Side 2 being electric blues and rock & roll, with Pigpen leading the charge on both tracks on the second side. This has been re-mastered by David Glasser using Plangent Processes from the original analog 2-track tapes recorded live by Bear and has never sounded better.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1. Katie Mae
2. Dark Hallo
3. I’ve Been All Around This World
4. Wake Up Little Susie
5. Black Peter

Side Two
1. Smokestack Lighnin’
2. Hard To Handle

Durand Jones’s Wait ‘Til I Get Over is a memoir and a love letter. It is the story of Jones’s life, his growth and revelations, the wisdom of his hometown and the wisdom he could only gain once he left. In it, he writes through Hillaryville’s contradictions: the pristine beauty and the ragged roads; his teenage desire to leave and his adult desire to honor his tangled roots; the plantation history and the ups and downs of the Black community that made homes of this reparation town. “Hometowns have a way of keeping a part of you,” says Jones, “and if I’m making something young-me would be proud of, Hillaryville is a big part of that.” Jones finds something transformative in his memories there and the life he has led since, ultimately claiming and embracing his whole self.

The result is vulnerable, personal, touching on Jones’s relationship to church life, to his mother, to his queerness, to his worth. “I wish I could tell my younger self ‘you don’t have to stick to the dreams people have for you,’” says Jones, “’you can dream bigger. You are more than capable, you are more than able. I think about some nerdy punk kid in the rural south who needs to hear that now.’” Wait ‘Til I Get Over does exactly that.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jones' solo endeavour here shows echoes of the deep American Soul his 'Durand Jones & The Indications' project is rich with, but filled with a warm, excited, and mildly chaotic jubilance. There are uplifting moments of gospel euphoria and brittle, soulful minimalism but always with Jones's impeccable songwriting style and unmistakeable voice.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gerri Marie
2. The Place You’d Most Want
To Live (Interlude)
3. Lord Have Mercy
4. Sadie
5. I Want You
6. Wait Til I Get Over
7. That Feeling
8. See It Through (Interlude)
9. See It Through
10. Someday We’ll All Be
Free (feat. Skypp)
11. Letter To My 17 Year Old Self
12. Secrets

Despite their rapid success and recognition, De La Soul continued to prove themselves as one of the most original, authentic and creative groups in hip-hop, with the release of their sophomore album, De La Soul is Dead on May 14, 1991.Featuring once again, the production of visionary producer Prince Paul, their second album further fanned the flames; landing on charts around the world, receiving a five-mic rating in The Source and securing Gold status by the RIAA. To this day, the project is considered one of the groups best albums to date, having left fans with several certified classics like, "A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays", "Ring, Ring, Ring (Ha Ha Hey)" and "Keepin' the Faith". Another absolutely essential slice of Hip Hop history that’s been unavailable for some time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Oodles Of O's
3. Talkin' Bout Hey Love
4. Pease Porridge
5. Skit 1
6. Johnny's Dead AKA Vincent Mason (Live From BK Lounge)
7. A Roller Skating Jam Named "Saturdays"
8. WRMS' Dedication To The Bitty
9. Bitties In The BK Lounge
10. Skit 2
11. My Brother's A Basehead
12. Let, Let Me In
13. Afro Connections At A Hi 5 (In The Eyes Of The Hoodlum)
14. Rap De Rap Show
15. Millie Pulled A Pistol On Santa
16. Who Do U Worship?
17. Skit 3
18. Kicked Out The House
19. Pass The Plugs
20. Not Over Till The Fat Lady Plays The Demo
21. Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)
22. WRMS: Cat's In Control
23. Skit 4
24. Shwingalokate
25. Fanatic Of The B Word
26. Keepin' The Faith
27. Skit 5

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

100 % New original songs done by the psychedelic french garage duo The Liminanas & german-french music composer David Menke for the forthcoming Arte documentary "Thatcher's Not Dead" dedicated to Margaret Thatcher. The only physical edition done is the this Double LP for the Record Store day. 

TRACK LISTING

A1 - Snatcher – Feat. Oliver Howlett
A2 – Downfall – Part.1
A3 – Not Our War
A4 – Heritage
B1 – Bright Future
B2 – The Iron Lady
B3 – Master Plan – Feat. Oliver Howlett
B4 – Don’t Be A Traitor Feat. Oliver Howlett
B5 – Fuzzy Thatcher
B6 – She Had To Be Believed
B7 – War
C1 – Broken Dreams – Feat. Oliver Howlett
C2 – Num Confrontation
C3 – Chaos
C4 – Business As Usual
C5 – Revolting
D1 – Tears Don’t Lie
D2 – Way Of Her Cross
D3  - Ambiguous Memories
D4 – Downfall Part.B

A gorgeous and gripping portrait of Fenne’s last two years, Big Picture was pieced together in an effort to self-soothe. Tracked live in co-producer Brad Cook’s North Carolina studio, the album delineates the phases of love and becomes a map of comfort vs claustrophobia. Though its creation took place amid personal and global turmoil, the ruminative yet candid Big Picture is Fenne’s most cohesive, resolute work to date, both lyrically and sonically. “This isn’t a sad album — it’s about as uplifting as my way of doing things will allow,” she says. “These songs explore worry and doubt and letting go, but those themes are framed brightly.” With confidence and quiet strength, each track provides an insight into Fenne’s ever-changing view of love and, ultimately, its redefinition — love as a process, not something to be lost and found.

While the album was written alone in Fenne’s Bristol flat – a fact intentionally reflected in its compact sonic quality – Big Picture was transformed from a solitary venture into a unifying collaboration during the recording process when she was joined by her touring band, Melina Dutere of Jay Som (mixing), Christian Lee Hutson (guitar and co production), and Katy Kirby (vocals). Notably, these 10 songs are Fenne’s first and only to have been written over the course of a relationship; 2018’s On Hold and 2020’s Breach both confront the pain of retrospection, saying goodbye to a love that’s gone. Big Picture does the exact opposite — rooted firmly in the present, it traces the narrative of two people trying their hardest not to implode, together. “This album is an observation of the way I think about love, the self[1]examination that comes with closeness and the responsibilities involved in being a big part of someone else’s small(er) world,” summarizes Fenne. “It was written in a place of relative emotional stability – stability that felt unstable because of its newness, but also because of the global context. 2020 was the year of letting go, but we’d all already let go of so much and nothing felt like mine anymore. Writing always did, though, so that’s what I chose to do.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1) Map Of Japan
2) Dawncolored Horse
3) Lights Light Up
4) 2+2
5) Superglued
SIDE B:
6) Henry
7) Pick
8) In My Own Time
9) Red Deer Day
10) Half Finished

A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/ vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet’s new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album’s ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman’s voice slicing through the din.

Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It’s not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void – somehow – you see everything.

The songs on Rat Saw God don’t recount epics, just the everyday. They’re true, they’re real life, blurry and chaotic and strange – which is in-line with Hartzman’s own ethos: “Everyone’s story is worthy,” she says, plainly. “Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating.”

But the thing about Rat Saw God - and about any Wednesday song, really - is you don’t necessarily even need all the references to get it, the weirdly specific elation of a song that really hits. Yeah, it’s all in the details – how fucked up you got or get, how you break a heart, how you fall in love, how you make yourself and others feel seen – but it’s mostly the way those tiny moments add up into a song or album or a person.

TRACK LISTING

01. Hot Grass Smell
02. Bull Believer
03. Got Shocked
04. Formula One
05. Chosen To Deserve
06. Bath County
07. Quarry
08. Turkey Vultures
09. What’s So Funny
10. TV In The Gas Pump

In a long and emotionally exhausting year of being inside (alone, in my case,) I have found myself thinking about mirrors. How to avoid spending too much time in them, most days. Taking inventory of the real, physical self is difficult work, work that I’m not entirely opposed to but work that became immediately more treacherous for me when I had to witness the very real toll that time, modern anxieties, isolation, and boredom were taking on me. It was easier, it seemed, to spiral into a not-so-distant glorious past, to use memory as a tool of both excitement and healing. But, speaking of excitement, I like to stumble towards a band with no agenda, no purpose, uncovering sound almost on accident. This is how I first heard Wednesday. The band came to me and I don’t remember how, or why. They simply arrived, as if we’d been traveling toward each other our whole lives.

I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone soaked into my summer of 2020, and in sound, in spirit, in central concerns and the execution of them, it took me back to an era before the current era, which I’d needed at the time. The past can feel less hellish than the present if we are, sometimes, not fully honest with ourselves. There is the trick of nostalgia that I spend a lot of time playing with in my own writing, and somewhat tormented by in my own living. The very real idea that nostalgia is both a useful tool and also a weapon if it isn’t paired with something that approaches a type of rigorous honesty.

But if I may go back to all of these ideas of nostalgia and our old, tricky, past selves that are, indeed, a part of the house of bricks that make up our present self, what I also hope you, listener, might adore about this album is the exact moment at the start of “The Burned Down Dairy Queen” when Karly sings I was hiding in a room in my mind / and I made me take a look at myself. Because if you, like me, have been avoiding mirrors – both metaphorical and real – this is where the album becomes a lighthouse, echoing bright across the darkness of my otherwise dark and empty chambers.

So much of these songs meditate on the past in far less romantic ways than I have found myself meditating on the past, and I was desperate for the recalibration that this album provided. So, yes, the songs are good. You will maybe roll down your windows on a comfortable day on the right stretch of road in a warm season and turn the volume up when “Birthday Song” gets good and loud and singalong-able. You might sit atop a rooftop at night, closer to the moon than you were on the ground, and let “Ghost Of A Dog” churn and rattle you to some nighttime realization that you couldn’t have had in silence. But, even on top of all of this, on top of all the pleasures and the mercies that the sounds on this album might afford. I hope and think, too, that it will remind anyone who listens that we are a collection of many reflections. All of them deserving patience. —Hanif Abdurraqib

TRACK LISTING

1) Twin Plagues
2) Handsome Man
3) The Burned Down Dairy Queen
4) Cliff
5) How Can You Live If You Can’t
Love How Can You If You Do
6) Cody’s Only
7) Toothache
8) Birthday Song
9) One More Last One
10) Three Sisters
11) Gary’s
12) Ghost Of A Dog

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone is Wednesday’s second full length album & first as a full band. The Asheville, NC quintet (guitarist/ vocalist Karly Hartzman, lead guitarist Daniel Gorham, pedal steel guitarist Xandy Chelmis, bassist Margo Schultz & drummer Alan Miller) maximizes the dark dissonance of a three guitar attack to highlight the emotionality of Hartzman’s bell-clear vocals & wisps of half-recalled memories & literary references that make up her lyrics.

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone’s eight songs meld elements of shoegaze, grunge, indie pop & southern American culture into a uniquely personal style of modern rock music that resonates with power & tenderness. The ever-darkening & deepening of Wednesdays’ sound on I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone owes a debt of influence to The Swirlies, Arthur Russell, Red House Painters, Tenniscoats, Ana Roxanne, Acetone, & their continued collaboration with MJ Lenderman (who lends backing vocals to the songs “Billboard” & “November”).

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone was recorded at Hartzman’s home with engineering assistance from her roommate Colin Miller. The depth & clarity of the recordings balance the distorted volume of Wednesday’s live performances with the intimacy of Hartzman’s voice. Her words hold the center of the chaos, unobscured by the power of the band. Hartzman describes her lyrics as “attempts to access old personal memories & do them justice through prose, with inspiration from the writings of Richard Brautigan, Flannery O’Connor, David Berman & Tom Robbins, & movies like Steel Magnolias.”

TRACK LISTING

1) Fate Is…
2) Billboard
3) Love Has No Pride (Condemned)
4) Underneath
5) November
6) Maura
8) Coyote
9) Revenge Of The Lawn

PLAY DEAD release a career-spanning anthology, a CD digipak with sixteen of their most essential tracks plus a ten-track limited-edition blue vinyl LP (Inner bag with unseen photos and notes by Adi Vine)

Between 1980-1985 they grew into one of the UK’s leading post-punk bands with regular indie chart hits and a large loyal live following. They built up through exposure from three John Peel sessions, extensive gigging (with UK Decay, Sex Gang Children, Killing Joke, The Cult and more), subsequently headlining UK and EU tours in their own right and landing a live spot on the UK’s top music TV programme, The Tube. 

TRACK LISTING

Burning Down
Isabel
Sin Of Sins
Sacrosanct
Time (cd Only)
Chains (cd Only)
Propaganda
Pale Fire (cd Only)
Gaze (cd Only)
This Side Of Heaven
Shine
Witnesses
Conspiracy (cd Only)
Company Of Justice (cd Only)
Break
The Tenant

On the one hand, new album Food for Worms calls to mind a certain morbidity, but on the other, it’s a celebration of life; the way that, in the end, we need each other. The album is an ode to friendship, and a documentation of the dynamic that only five people who have grown up together - and grown so close, against all odds - can share.

For the first time, the band are not delving inwards, but seeking to capture the world around them. “I don’t think you can be in your own head forever,” says Steen. A conversation after one of their gigs with a friend prompted a stray thought that he held onto: “It’s weird, isn’t it? Popular music is always about love, heartbreak, or yourself. There isn’t much about your mates.”

It’s through this, and defiance, that the band have continually moved forward together; finding light in uncomfortable contractions and playing their vulnerabilities as strengths: The near-breakdowns, identity crises, frontman Charlie Steen routinely ripping his top off on stage as a way of tackling his body weight insecurities. Everything is thrown into their live show and the best shows of their lives are happening now.

Back in 2018, around debut album Songs of Praise, they were at the vanguard of a transformative scene that changed the underground music landscape in the UK; paving the way for artists soon to come. Then, Charlie Steen suffered a series of panic attacks which led to a tour’s cancellation. For the first time, since being plucked from the small pub stages of south London and catapulted into notoriety, shame were confronted with who they’d become on the other side of it. This era, of being forced to endure reality and the terror that comes with your own company, would form shame’s second album, 2021’s Drunk Tank Pink.

Now they arrive, finally, at a place of hard-won maturity. Enter: Food for Worms, which Steen declares to be “the Lamborghini of shame records.”

Reconnecting with what they first loved about being in a band hotwired them into making the album after a false start during the pandemic. Their management then presented them with a challenge: in three weeks, shame would play two intimate shows and debut two sets of entirely new songs. It meant the band returned the same ideology which propelled them to these heights in the first place: the love of playing live, on their own terms, fed by their audience. Thus, Food for Worms crashed into life faster than anything they’d created before. The band recorded it while playing festivals all over Europe, invigorated by the strength of the reaction their new material was met with. That live energy, what it’s like to witness shame in their element, is captured perfectly on record - like lightning in a bottle.

The album marks a sonic departure from anything they’ve done before. shame have abandoned their post-punk beginnings for far more eclectic influences, drawing from the sharp yet uncomplicated lyrical observations of Lou Reed and the more melodic works of 90s German band, Blumfeld.

They called upon renowned producer Flood (Nick Cave, U2, PJ Harvey, Foals) to execute their vision. Recording each track live meant a kind of surrender: here, the rough edges give the album its texture; the mistakes are more interesting than perfection. In a way, it harks back to the title itself and the way that with this record, the band are embracing frailty and by doing so, are tapping into a new source of bravery.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Oh boy, I've been HANKERING for this one! The third outing for shame, 'Food For Worms' has been declared by the band as "the Lamborghini of shame records" and we'd be hard pressed to argue with that. From the anthemic combo of 'Adderall'/'Orchid', to the psych-wail of 'Six-Pack' and the beautiful 90s emo tinged closer 'All The People', shame recapture that unbridled excitement that we all felt and fell in love way back in 2016 - stellar stuff!

TRACK LISTING

1. Fingers Of Steel
2. Six-Pack
3. Yankees
4. Alibis
5. Adderall
6. Orchid
7. The Fall Of Paul
8. Burning By Design
9. Different Person
10. All The People

London group The Tubs return to Trouble In Mind with their hotly anticipated full-length album entitled “Dead Meat”. The band were formed in 2018 from the ashes of beloved UK post-punk band Joanna Gruesome by former members Owen 'O' Williams and George 'GN' Nicholls. By incorporating elements of post-punk, traditional British folk, and guitar jangle seasoned by nonchalant Cleaners From Venus-influenced pop hooks and contemporary antipodean indie bands (Twerps/Goon Sax, et al).

“Dead Meat” is resplendent in hi-fidelity strum & thrum, incorporating fleeting elements of post-punk and indie jangle, but the group’s penchant for trad British folk & Canterbury folk-rock takes a noticeable, caffeinated step forward. Echoes of Fairport Convention’s decidedly English chime cross swords with singer Owen Williams’ lyrics directing Bryan Ferry’s “thinking man’s libertine” persona into a more dolorous outlook. Many songs (like “Round The Bend” and “Duped”) soar with an urgent strum under Williams’ acerbic lyrics, recalling a younger fiery Richard Thompson. They languish in an aching, bitter resignation (of both the situations described & the protagonist’s place in it), particularly near the album’s second half. Others like the previously released “I Don’t Know How It Works”, “Two Person Love” and “Illusion” (re-presented here as “Illusion Pt. II” and all rerecorded from their original 7-inch versions) up the urgency, implying that the journey for the person described in each tune is not over & may be even more desperate than before. The band has never been tighter & more dynamic, often imperceptibly ratcheting up the tension, an extra guitar strum overdubbed, a barely audible organ/synth cranking under a chorus or bridge, or unexpected backups from current Ex-Vöid (and ex-Joanna Gruesome) vocalist Lan McArdle. The Tubs are poised to take over your stereo - there’s no point in resisting.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Urgent, energised and utterly compelling debut from Joanna Gruesome offshoot; a motorised, razor sharp fusion of chiming guitars, folk stylings and punk fire that might just owe a lot to Hüsker Dü. Or, even if it doesn't, it scratches the same buzzsaw pop itch. "Wretched Lie", which closes the LP, is a nailed on classic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Illusion Pt. II
2. Two-Person Love
3. I Don’t Know How It Works
4. Dead Meat
5. Sniveller
6. Duped
7. That’s Fine
8. Round The Bend
9. Wretched Lie

Long time in the making but good things always come to astral travellers as transatlantic soul mates Dead Sea Apes and The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol are joined together on black vinyl for the first time. Two artists that for over the last ten years (& longer) have spent their lives creating music that defies easy categorizations – psych rock / kraut rock /minimal / maximal /avant /free are phrases that only give you fleeting glimpses of what each artist represents. What we do know is that via a sprawling range of sound that is always uncompromising these two artists have pushed each other into a stunning realm of alchemy. The Dead Sea Apes create a hypnotic pulsing sound that weaves an ecstatic line starting from a raw minimal buzz and hum that takes in eastern modes and entrancing minimalism. The music is at once dissonant and hypnotic, rich with unfurling drones that dynamically ebb and flow as a searching interplay between instruments slowly emerges from a sparse open field and builds with the tension of a looming thunder storm. The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol recording is a live recording from the farmland in Richmond this year when Mr Cardinal Fuzz journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean to have his brain well and truly fried by these Ottawa Acid Punks. For this show TBWNIS was expanded to a 9 piece with the addition of Saskatoons Christopher Laramee (Shooting Guns, Wasted Cathedral, The Switching Yard..) and Mrs.Carol Lane (Resin Scraper / Beld). TBWNIS emerged to play as the Sun set over the never-ending Horizon and the Mozzies came out to play – And proceeded to lay down a barrage of high energy, free flowing ecstatic blues – like an endorphin spike into your cortex that felt like your head was sandwiched between the amplifiers as wave after wave of unrelenting free flowing orgasmic energy exploded within. Take note I was on some home made cookies that had me well and truly blasted as I merged with the universe and the vibrations emitting from the stage – it was a good place. 500 pressing – Black Vinyl with a Brett Savage Sleeve design based on the famous and much loved Bootleg label - TAKRL Love and thanks to Mike Coulis for all the efforts in putting on the live show and recordings

Originally released on 2nd May 2011, Mick Harvey’s sixth studio solo album Sketches From The Book Of The Dead is being reissued on clear vinyl, alongside 2013’s Four (Acts of Love), with Delirium Tremens and Intoxicated Women set to follow later in 2023.

Sketches From The Book Of The Dead is Mick Harvey's first fully self-penned album; the 11-track album was recorded and mixed with David McCluney at Atlantis Sound, Port Melbourne with additional recording at Harvey's own Grace Lane music room. The record sees Mick Harvey (playing most of the instruments) joined by Rosie Westbrook on double bass and J.P. Shilo on accordion and violin, with Xanthe Waite contributing occasional ethereal backing vocals. Containing an extraordinary investigation into a rarely scrutinised area of the human condition, Sketches From The Book Of The Dead is a truly unique piece of work.

TRACK LISTING

A1. October Boy
A2. The Ballad Of Jay Givens
A3. Two Paintings
A4. Rhymeless
A5. Frankie T. & Frankie C.
B1. A Place Called Passion
B2. To Each His Own
B3. The Bells Never Rang
B4. That's All, Paul
B5. How Would I Leave You?

A native of Los Angeles, Henry Franklin came of age while the city was producing a crop of exciting jazz talent. Frankin’s lasting impact on jazz can be evidenced by the long list of legends who sought him out for tours and recording sessions, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Humphrey, Freddy Hubbard, & Pharaoh Sanders to name a few. Franklin’s solo output is best remembered for his two solo outings with the Black Jazz label- “The Skipper” & “The Skipper At Home”. Together, they form one of the most compelling diptychs in the entire post-bop canon. Recognised by his peers and contemporaries, Franklin’s entry for Jazz Is Dead gives the living legend his flowers and recognises the contributions The Skipper has made as one of jazz’s most influential heartbeats.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: The imperative jazz-revival series continues in earnest. Henry Franklin updates crucial material from "The Skipper" and "The Skipper At Home", aided and abetted by Ali Shaheed Muhammad & Adrian Younge. A tour de force of modern jazz expression!

TRACK LISTING

1. Karibu
2. The Griot
3. People's Revolution
4. Memories Lost
5. Feedback
6. Café Nero
7. African Sun
8. A Song For Sigrid

Founded in 2014, Katalyst Collective has never been one for labels. Rather than strictly a live act, they’ve acted as an incubator for a fresh crop of local talent, helping hone the voices and talents of individual members, while collectively advancing like a phalanx. Each ‘Kat’ writes their own solo material, and everyone contributes and works together on each project, feeding off the communal energy. Leading to the group’s upping collaboration for Jazz Is Dead, Katalyst has poised themselves as the next breakout stars of Los Angeles’ rapidly expanding Jazz universe - a small army of creative firebrands, each burning more brightly together.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Avenue
2. Daybreak
3. Corridors
4. Summer Solstice
5. Juneteenth
6. Dogon Cypher
7. Reflections