Before he became known as "the Lou Reed of gay porn," J.D. Slater was deep in the New York punk scene. That restless, experimental streak carries straight through into Elbow Deep in the Hoopla, a collection of previously unreleased scores for three Club Inferno films that finds him diving headfirst into the loop-based sampling techniques that were reshaping electronic music at the time. The results are hypnotic with 'Grand Fuck' pulling in unexpected Gregorian chant textures, 'Stallion Funk' grooves with a slow, sinewy lurch, and 'At Arm's Length' drifting into cold, brooding atmosphere. A strange, acid-laced and trance-inducing wonder.

TRACK LISTING

At Arms Length
Menace
Hand Over Fist
Fear
Stallion Funk
Scooter My Daisyheads
Hands In
At Arms Length (2nd Movement)
Tantricks
Grand Fuck
Hand Out
Coda"

Released in 2001, Elbow's debut album 'Asleep In The Back' introduced one of Britain’s most influential bands, featuring fan favourites including 'Newborn', 'Scattered Black And Whites', 'Powder Blue' and 'Asleep In The Back'. Across its atmospheric and emotionally rich track list, the Mercury nominated album established the bands signature sound and remains a landmark British album of the 2000s. To mark its 25th anniversary, the album is pressed on 2LP marbled blue vinyl for National Album Day.

TRACK LISTING

1. Any Day Now
2. Red
3. Little Beast
4. Powder Blue
5. Bitten by the Tailfly
6. Asleep in the Back
7. Newborn
8. Don't Mix Your Drinks
9. Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)
10. Coming Second
11. Can't Stop
12. Scattered Black and Whites

The EP features last year’s one-off release ‘Adriana Again’ alongside three brand new and unheard tracks.

Guy Garvey describes the EP as “finishing something for the band in lots of ways. We are having more fun in the studio than ever before. Craig’s on fire as a producer, Pete and Alex are the coolest rhythm section working and Pot’s unpredictable rhythm guitar has started working its way into such a soulful and accomplished place. The words are all stories from my past, sometimes joyful, often dark, but all of it exciting and mostly true. It feels like we’re having another go on the Waltzers after hours.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Dis-Graceland 463-465 Bury New Road
2. Adriana Again
3. Timber
4. Sober

elbow return with their tenth studio album, ‘AUDIO VERTIGO.’ Recorded throughout 2023 at the band’s home studios, Migration Studios in Gloucestershire, The Dairy in London and mixed at the band’s facility at Blueprint Studios, Salford, the album marks a significant step change for the group following 2021’s ‘Flying Dream 1’.

In the words of lead singer and lyricist Guy Garvey, ‘AUDIO VERTIGO’ was built from ‘gnarly, seedy grooves created by us playing together in garagey rooms’ and is both more direct and sonically varied by purpose that its predecessor.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Elbow bring us their comfortingly familiar but sonically surprising 'Audio Vertigo', a perfect mix of the melodic leanings and swooning choruses that have won us over so many times over the years, and a more gritty garage-rock scuzz. Jagged drums and frantic percussion give way to Garvey's beautifully emotive vocals and airy guitar stabs. A welcome return for a beloved band in perfect control of their craft.

TRACK LISTING

1. Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years
2. Lovers’ Leap
3. (Where Is It?)
4. Balu
5. Very Heaven
6. Her To The Earth
7. The Picture
8. Poker Face
9. Knife Fight
10. Embers Of Day
11. Good Blood Mexico City
12. From The River

Elbow release their much anticipated ninth studio album, ‘Flying Dream 1’. 

Like most bands I imagine, Elbow spent lockdown in isolation, writing and exchanging musical ideas remotely. These 'little love notes' as Guy calls them formed the basis of the LP and the band finally convened at the empty Brighton Theatre Royal to perfect, perform, and record the songs.

 For the most part, it's an album about love and relationships, family and friends. Things that have been brought sharply into focus for many people over the last 18 months. And Guy's lyrics are as wonderful as ever: poetic, romantic, nostalgic but never cloying.  

There are no big anthems here, instead we're treated to lush melodies and delicate instrumentation, twinkling keys, brushed drums and Guy's soothing tones, even the inclusion of clarinets, saxophones and backing vocals are done with subtlety and grace, adding depth without stepping too far out of the lulling mood. It's a wonderfully understated album that feels somehow fitting for these strange times. 40 odd minutes of calm, amidst the turmoil and anxiety of the world. 

Beautiful.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Flying Dream epitomises that dreamy, melodic sound we've come to know from Elbow, and is full of the spine-tingling euphoric moments that have peppered albums of recent years. Lead single 'Six Words' is classic, beautiful melodic fare and is echoed throughout the rest of this collection. A worthy addition to any collection.

TRACK LISTING

Flying Dream 1
After The Eclipse
Is It A Bird
Six Words
Calm And Happy
Come On, Blue
The Only Road
Red Sky Radio (Baby Baby Baby)
The Seldom Seen Kid
What Am I Without You

‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ was recorded in Real World Studios and at the band’s facilities at Blueprint Studios, Salford. As with previous albums, the million selling ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ and platinum follow up ‘build a rocket boys!’ it was produced by the band’s keyboardist Craig Potter. The making of ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ saw the band take a new approach to writing and recording. Previously songs were mostly developed by the band as a whole but this new album sees individual members and subgroups take the lead on several tracks.

‘Honey Sun’ was written and recorded at home by guitarist Mark Potter, his brother Craig wrote the music for ‘Real Life (Angel)’ and bassist Pete Turner built ‘Colour Fields’ using apps on his iPad. The first track to be heard from the album, ‘Fly Boy Blue / Lunette’ was developed by drummer Richard Jupp alongside Pete and Mark whilst both Guy and Craig were away from the studio.

The album features several guests including the Hallé Orchestra (‘Manchester’s oldest band’ as Guy affectionately calls them) with Pete McPhail, Tim Barber, Bob Marsh and Kat Curlett adding brass to selected tracks and tour mate and long term friend Jimi Goodwin of Doves adding backing vocals on ‘New York Morning’.

Despite the changes in approach musically and lyrically ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ contains many familiar elements for fans of the band. Early taster ‘Fly Boy Blue / Lunette’ harks back to debut single ‘Newborn’ in its step change melody and rhythmic shift mid song whilst ‘New York Morning’, the first single proper from the album, carries at its centre the type of life affirming refrain that run through elbow songs from ‘Scattered Black and Whites’ from their debut to ‘Open Arms’ from ‘build a rocket boys!’.

Sharp eyed elbow watchers will also note the presence of ‘Charge’, which was performed live during the band’s last run of UK arena shows during the ‘build a rocket boys!’ campaign in December 2012. The song demonstrates that elbow retain an ability to deliver the darker side of human nature that echoes the likes of ‘Little Beast’ and ‘I’ve Got Your Number’ from earlier albums.

Familiar themes return, the welcoming of old friends, the mourning of past loves and, as Guy would say ‘some of the big and little, positive and negative, life experiences that any group of men approaching forty can expect’.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Blue World
2. Charge
3. Fly Boy Blue / Lunette
4. New York Morning
5. Real Life (Angel)
6. Honey Sun
7. My Sad Captains
8. Colour Fields
9. The Take Off And Landing Of Everything
10. The Blanket Of Night

"Asleep In The Back" was the debut album from Elbow, originally released in 2001 to huge critical acclaim and reaching number 14 in the UK charts. The album was nominated for that year's Mercury Music Prize which of course they would go on to win in 2008 for "Seldom Seen Kid". "Asleep In The Back" is home to many timeless tracks which remain firm fan favourites and make up a good proportion of their live shows now, including the singles "Powder Blue", "Red" and "Newborn" and the epic "Scattered Black And Whites". 

TRACK LISTING

1. Any Day Now
2. Red
3. Little Beast
4. Powder Blue
5. Bitten By The Tailfly
6. Asleep In The Back
7. Newborn
8. Don't Mix Your Drinks
9. Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)
10. Coming Second
11. Can't Stop
12. Scattered Black And Whites

Elbow finally release the long awaited b-sides album: 'Dead In The Boot' which brings together b-sides and hard to find non-album tracks from the band's lengthy recording career. The release tells an alternative elbow story beginning with the early years, with tracks like 'None One' from the original 'Newborn' EP in 2000, right up to 'Buffalo Ghosts' from last April's 'Open Arms'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Whisper Grass
2. Lucky With Disease
3. Lay Down Your Cross
4. The Long War Shuffle
5. Every Bit The Little Girl
6. Love Blown Down
7. None One
8. Lullaby
9. McGreggor
10. Buffalo Ghosts
11. Waving From Windows
12. Snowball
13. Gentle As

‘Giants of All Sizes’ was recorded at Hamburg’s Clouds Hill Studio, The Dairy in Brixton, 604 Studios in Vancouver and Blueprint Studios in Salford with additional recording taking place at various band member’s home studios spread across Manchester. As with their previous four studio albums, ‘Giants’ was produced and mixed by Craig Potter. Guests across the album include Jesca Hoop, The Plumedores and South London newcomer Chilli Chilton.

Guy Garvey describes the album as “an angry, old blue lament which finds its salvation in family, friends, the band and new life.” It is a record that lyrically takes in moments of deep personal loss whilst reflecting its times by confronting head-on the spectres of injustice and division not just in the UK but across the world. It is a record that could only have been made in the 21st Century.

Given such bleak, if ultimately redeemed, subject matter, it is also, perversely, the most relaxed record which elbow have made in some time. On ‘Giants of All Sizes’, each band member extended their usual process of working on demos alone and followed their vision to its conclusion rather than, as Craig Potter puts it, ‘taking the edges off things to find compromise’. In tandem with this, they returned to playing live in the studio, encouraged to experiment with the banks of analogue equipment at Clouds Hill in Northern Germany, giving songs a looser, more live feel.

The result is the most starkly dynamic record from the band in recent times, “Sonically unabashed”, as Guy would have it. Whilst album closer ‘Weightless’ has the gossamer melodies and communal harmonies for which the band have latterly been known, this album echoes earlier elbow work at times whilst also breaking new ground.

‘White Noise White Heat’ is motorik, metal machine soul driven by a vocal that is rage incarnate, ‘Doldrums’ mixes John Carpenter with The Plastic Ono Band to brilliantly disturbing effect and ‘On Deronda Road’ hitches stark bass beats and glitches to an ad-hoc choir. ‘Empires’ delivers dark resignation via an insidious melody and ‘Seven Veils’ continues the subversion by inverting the perception of elbow as a band for lovers into a band for haters, a double-barrelled fuck-you song par excellence. ‘The Delayed 3:15’ marries mariarchi guitars to jazz dynamics, Morricone via Buddy Rich, and ‘My Trouble’ is a clockwork, analogue shuffle housing a delicate melody that builds over the course of the song into a fragile monolith to the power of love.

Lead track, ‘Dexter & Sinister’, released on 10” ahead of the album, encapsulates the whole. A seven-minute musical journey that blends deep bass grooves, sudden keyboard stabs, dislocated piano and guitar runs and soul stylings then abruptly shifts gear, parts the storm clouds and takes wing, flying towards the heat of the sun. It is the soundtrack for these ‘hope free, faith free, charity free days’, a denial of the divine and a reconciliation, two songs in one song, two emotions for one emotion, human, fragile and brilliant like the album which it opens.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dexter & Sinister
2. Seven Veils
3. Empires
4. The Delayed 3:15
5. White Noise White Heat
6. Doldrums
7. My Trouble
8. On Deronda Road
9. Weightless

Their fourth studio album, "The Seldom Seen Kid" is a welcome return from the band, driven by a thunderous riff that reminds listeners of Elbow's love of the heavy as well as the delicate. Produced by keyboard player, Craig Potter, the album is the follow up to 2005's universally acclaimed "Leaders Of The Free World". The lyrical core of "The Seldom Seen Kid" sees Guy Garvey address the key questions of life. Over the 11 tracks the big themes of love and loss become the central focus of an album that sees Elbow, a band universally recognised for their musical ability and innovation, stretch their sonic template further than ever before. We move from the sparse electronica of "Starlings" through the flamenco influenced "The Bones Of You" to the Zeppelin-esque rock of first single "Grounds For Divorce". They even make space for a song described as " a Bond theme, if Bond were from Bury"(!) and a duet with the brilliant Richard Hawley. Blending the intimate with the epic, this could be their best record yet!

TRACK LISTING

1. Starlings
2. The Bones Of You
3. Mirrorball
4. Grounds For Divorce
5. An Audience With The Pope
6. Weather To Fly
7. The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver
8. The Fix - Elbow, Richard Hawley
9. Some Riot
10. One Day Like This
11. Friend Of Ours
12. We're Away