After years of writing, wandering, and starting over, Evan Dando returns with 'Love Chant', the first Lemonheads studio album of original material in nearly two decades. Long in the works and shaped by shifting geographies and a cast of trusted collaborators, it’s a bold, melodic reaffirmation of one of alternative rock’s most distinctive voices.

Now based in Brazil, where much of the album was recorded, Dando’s relocation in recent years has offered a quiet shift in perspective — a chance to reset, reconnect, and finally bring these songs into focus. The result is a record that sounds both fresh and familiar: rooted in the hallmarks of The Lemonheads’ best work, yet expanded by years of lived experience and new surroundings.

'Love Chant' was produced by Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Apollo Nove, it draws together old friends and new allies. J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), Juliana Hatfield, and Tom Morgan rejoin the fold, alongside producer Bryce Goggin (Pavement, Antony and the Johnsons), Nashville’s Erin Rae, John Strohm of the Blake Babies and Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond. Adam Green of cult New York favourites The Moldy Peaches also contributes as co-writer on the loose-limbed country detour 'Wild Thing'.

Over the past few years, The Lemonheads’ influence has only deepened. Artists like MJ Lenderman, Courtney Barnett and Waxahatchee have all covered Dando’s songs, praising the emotional clarity, melodic instinct, and wry intimacy that define his writing. That resonance across generations makes 'Love Chant' feel like more than a return — it’s a reminder of what made this band matter in the first place.

TRACK LISTING

1. 58 Second Song
2. Deep End
3. In The Margin
4. Wild Thing
5. Be-In
6. Cell Phone Blues
7. Togetherness Is All I'm After
8. Marauders
9. Love Chant
10. The Key Of Victory
11. Roky

Minimal and nuanced, 'Diary of a Candle' is a consoling, melodic suite from acclaimed experimental composer, musician, and producer Faten Kanaan. On this album Faten uses counterpoint as a narrative tool to create music that is mysterious, smudgy, and deeply melodic. From the repetitive structures of modern minimalism and early music/baroque influences - to more languid textural ebbs and tides, there's a warmth in her use of synthesizers that gives her work a curiously timeless feel. Composing intuitively, her music creates its own world - one that isn't easily categorised.

'Diary of a Candle' is punctuated with tender woodwinds and richly-layered strings, touched by the hazy atmospheres of 1970s/1980s films. Its understated heart-on sleeve romanticism follows the rhythm of nature: it bends in the breeze, drifts through the air, and settles on the ground. The ambiance is not an escapism, but the re-focusing of a lens through which humans are no longer the protagonists. Instead, a landscape's intimate details become the central figures.

With the sparseness of Hiroshi Yoshimura's 1982 album 'Music for Nine Post Cards' as a starting-point influence, Faten's music exudes a wistful yet hopeful sentiment, honouring moments of beauty in the world around us. Some of the album titles are inspired by East-Asian rites and folkloric superstitions, often related to nature.

All music written performed and mixed by Faten Kanaan and mastered by Heba Kadry.

TRACK LISTING

1. Afternoon
2. Celadon
3. Tsukumogami (Sensu)
4. Book Of Changes
5. Supercore
6. Acorns
7. Soseol
8. Alcoyana-Capri
9. Scene For A Wooden Room
10. Sondol Baram
11. Barjees
12. Naming The Cloud (Version 2)

Black Lips return with a brand-new studio album, 'Season Of The Peach', a 40-minute rock and roll odyssey, tripping through DIY genres where garage rock meets new wave pop, and disgruntled country shakes hands with epic western soundtracks. The 14-track album captures the energy and spirit of early Black Lips while simultaneously applying new approaches to songwriting.

The album is a musical merry-go-round, a journey featuring road-weary tales from the underbelly of a lights-out America. It’s bookended by 'The Illusion' parts one and two: a barroom quest for hope, fear, and hate, thwarted at each turn by a sense of resignation, “you reach for the sky / but it’s an illusion.” Elsewhere, 'Wild One' plays out like a Morricone romp through another day in Hell. A mantra for the hungover, a skin-crawling lament in praise of the wild at heart.

'Tippy Tongue' sees Black Lips take on 60s girl group soul, like The Shangri-Las and Ronettes infiltrated by Jayne/Wayne County, paying homage to Buddha Records. Meanwhile, 'Kassandra' has a guitar sound scrubbed clean for a Sunday, chiming its way through ever-spiralling salvos like The Chocolate Watchband with Zappa on vocals. 'Zulu Saints' is an upbeat country honk, a good-time brush with bravado, peppered with Cole on an incredulous radio phone-in show, looking for black-eyed peas and winning big on the slot machines.

For the recording sessions they holed up in the bucolic surroundings of drummer Oakley’s new Sound At Manor studio in the Catskills (the first album recorded there since Oakley built the studio in 2020). In this idyllic setting, the band disconnected from city life and committed their music to analogue tape, part of their quest to embrace spontaneity and capture the energy of a live Black Lips show on record.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Illusion Part Two
2. Zulu Saints
3. Sx Sx Sx Men
4. Wild One
5. So Far Gone
6. Judas Pig
7. Kassandra
8. Baptism In The Death House
9. Until We Meet Again
10. Tippy Tongue
11. Happy Place
12. Prick
13. Hatman
14. The Illusion Part One

Released alongside their new album 'Season Of The Peach', 'Bebop Armageddon (Detours & Offcuts From Season Of The Peach)' is a wild companion piece: a collection of demos, alternate versions, and sonic misadventures dragged from the edges of the Lips’ recent sessions and committed to wax for the real heads.

If 'Season Of The Peach' is the full-colour hallucination - part garage rock fantasia, part scorched-earth Americana - 'Bebop Armageddon' is its ragged, magnetic shadow. These 14 tracks take a more deranged route through the same terrain, offering up mutant sketches, beautiful wreckage, and freak-scene detours that rumble with raw charm and chaotic invention.

There are alternate mixes (‘Kassandra’), demo versions (‘Judas Pig’, ‘Zulu Saints’), and woozy reimaginings like ‘The Illusion Pt. 1 (dream mix)’. There are brand-new diversions too - ‘Colt 44’ (featuring King Khan) rattles forward like a freight train threatening to derail, while ‘Satan’ and ‘Back To Kiev’ offer up scorched psych, barroom gospel, and haunted front-porch melodies in equal measure.

All tracked to analogue tape at Oakley Munson’s Sound At Manor studio in the Catskills, Bebop Armageddon captures the spirit of the sessions in raw, unmannered form. No clean lines. No retakes. No gloss.

This is the chaos underneath the polish - the cuts that wouldn’t behave.

TRACK LISTING

1. Kingdom Come
2. Colt 44 (ft. King Khan)
3. Step Back Old King Cole
4. Gunnin'
5. Bound For Rodeo
6. Zulu Saints (Demo)
7. Sx Sx Sx Men (Remix)
8. Back To Kiev
9. The One
10. Satan
11. Back With The Breeze
12. Judas Pig (Demo)
13. Kassandra (Alternate Mix)
14. Gunnin Demo (Instrumental)
15. The Illusion Pt. 1 (Dream Mix)

Whitney K returns with ‘Bubble’, his first album for Fire Records and follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed ‘Hard To Be A God’. Whitney K continue his migrant mind games, summoning up a series of intriguing characters, littered with everyday foibles and fantasies.

Along the way, he pens a journal of possibilities as he travels further into transient America, touching on everything from bar room chatter, rumour and distortion to misinformation, daydreams, misunderstanding and self-realisation; with anecdotes lifted from the paperback in his back pocket and his half-forgotten past.

‘Bubble’ is a 13-part cerebral mystery that unravels on songs that bring to mind the gruff sentimentality of the late Kris Kristoferson, Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’, Eels at their most troubled and the American Gothic sketches of David Ackles; the perfect soundtrack for a Raymond Carver book club.

TRACK LISTING

1. Heaven
2. Something Strange
3. Jolene
4. Freud Estate
5. TV Dreaming
6. The Ocean
7. Sunshine2
8. Beetlejuice
9. Morning After
10. Apocalypse Rock
11. We'll See
12. Rosy
13. Lately

Delving into the Great American Songbook of Howe Gelb, 'Sandworms' is a new collection that rephrases and rephases the legacy of Giant Sand across generations. This release offers bold reinterpretations from Water From Your Eyes, Deradoorian, Jesca Hoop & John Parish, Lily Konigsberg, Holiday Ghosts, Ella Raphael, Monde UFO, The Golden Dregs, and Gently Tender.

The ever-present Giant Sand and their one-man cerebral traveller, Howe Gelb, are anchored by a reputation for idiosyncratic storytelling. A “natural storyteller,” Gelb’s multifarious musical delivery adds an enduring sense of wonder as he extols the virtues of happenstance. This collection celebrates the esoteric and singular journey Giant Sand have taken, through alt-country, jazz, lo-fi experiments, and beyond, while their legacy is reimagined here by a new generation of artists paying tribute to their lasting influence.

Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes, known for their stoner humour, fatalistic undercurrents, and art-pop flair, bring a delicate balance of punk riffing and dream-pop escapism to 'Warm Storm', first heard on Giant Sand’s 'Ramp' (1991). Whitney K takes on 'Happenstance' (from 1994’s 'Glum'), unravelling its existential puzzles with a whispering baritone that recalls the hushed intensity of Leonard Cohen.

Drifting further into orbit, Angel Deradoorian reinterprets 'Center Of The Universe', the title track from the band’s 1992 album, transforming its desert-fried rock into a spaced-out Sun Ra-paced drama. Elsewhere, 'Yer Ropes', a jaw-dropping highlight from 'Glum', is taken on by The Golden Dregs, blurring sentimentality and relationship mismanagement into something truly strange and moving.

A special collection for both long-time fans and the newly curious, 'Sandworms: The Songs of Howe Gelb and Giant Sand' is released via Fire Records and includes liner notes from Dave Henderson (Mojo).

TRACK LISTING

1. Jesca Hoop & John Parish - But I Did Not
2. Lily Konigsberg - Shiver
3. Water From Your Eyes - Warm Storm
4. Whitney K - Happenstance
5. Deradoorian - Center Of The Universe
6. Gently Tender - Forever And A Day
7. The Golden Dregs - Yer Ropes
8. Holiday Ghosts - New River
9. Ella Raphael - A Hard Man To Get To Know
10. Monde UFO - Who Am I?

In the madrigal-strewn world of neo folk-psychedelia, the queen of drones holds court…In this late teen decade, as green men are burnt, resources dwindle and naturalists plunder for authentic Englishness, the hunt for the grail-like 'Silver Globe' continues. Back in 2014, the story was first whispered; A mythical jaunt set to a motorik rhythm, played out in an overgrown forest of ideas: Jane Weaver’s ‘The Silver Globe’ was a conceptual delicacy – “a synth-ridden post-apocalyptic prog-pop opus based on tightly embroidered, non-linear recurring themes inspired by esoteric stories, cosmic imagery and re-filtered past experiences”. Since those heady beginnings, our heroine has time travelled to darker times and been celebrated for her glorious ‘Modern Kosmology’ (top album of 2017, here, there, everywhere).

TRACK LISTING

1. The Silver Globe
2. Argent
3. The Electric Mountain
4. If Only We Could Be In Love
5. Don’t Take My Soul
6. Cells
7. Mission Desire
8. Stealing Gold
9. Arrows
10. Your Time In This Life Is Just Temporary

Legendary indie travellers Half Japanese return with their new album 'Adventure'. The prolific outsider combo, helmed by the ever-optimistic Jad Fair, delivers a heartwarming set of upbeat sonnets celebrating the power of love, affection, and maturity.

More than 50 years since Jad and his brother David emerged from their lo-fi bedroom in Uniontown, Maryland, USA, Adventure takes the latest incarnation of the band down new and more refined avenues. Recorded in London at Vacant TV and produced by Jason Willett and Jad, Adventure presents a more pristine and polished canvas for Jad to expand upon. The addition of Euan Hinshelwood to the sonic palette, with saxophone, harmonica, and piano, creates a smoother backdrop for the band’s less lubricated sound.

'Lemonade Sunset' is an ode to the world of wonder, a spacious overture built with melancholy in mind but relishing the positivity of life. By contrast, 'Step On Up' revolves around a glorious rising piano motif that hints at Steely Dan if they were high on energy drinks and spinach rather than their usual tipple. It’s a light-hearted evocation of the good times.

'Magnificent' is a homage to living in the present tense, powered by the bittersweet saxophone, with a glorious piano-led sub-melody offsetting Jad’s positivity: “magnificently magnificent,” no less. Elsewhere, ringing percussion and sharp arrangements provide Jad with a sturdy and far reaching soundtrack to lament over. 'Adventure' sees Half Japanese covering new ground, with Jad’s considered soliloquies set in a sumptuous setting.

The lineup for Half Japanese on Adventure includes Jason Willett (bass, keyboards), Gilles-Vincent Rieder (drums, percussion), John Sluggett (guitar, piano, bass), Mick Hobbs (guitar), Euan Hinshelwood (guitar, saxophone, piano, harmonica), and Jad Fair (vocals, percussion). Sadly, longstanding member Mick Hobbs passed away last year.

TRACK LISTING

1. Beyond Compare
2. Step On Up
3. Meant To Be
4. Possibilities
5. Things
6. That's Fate
7. Adventure
8. The Summer Of Love
9. Stars Don't Lie
10. Lemonade Sunset
11. Magnificent
12. Blame It On Your Smile

20th anniversary 2xLP reissue of 'Flags Of The Sacred Harp', a transcendent masterpiece of free-folk, gospel-drone, and psychedelic Americana. A re-imagining of traditional hymns and anthems from the original American songbook that was first published in 1844. This long-awaited repress revives a landmark recording of collective improvisation and spiritual exploration and includes bonus downloads of archival tracks and unreleased live recordings.

Imagine The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sweet Nuthin’ fed through a spirit glass; a super slow incantation haunted by the ghosts of the band’s 40 transient members. Mystical folkisms cluster as the songs come in and out of focus and their improvisational slew matures. Recorded at Supreme Reality studios in Portland over the summer of 2005; Tom Greenwood had just returned to the City following a few years of touring and began recording over several marathon sessions.

Formed in 1994, Jackie O-Motherfucker is an ever-morphing collective nudging the American experimental scene, drawing from a variety of subgenres including folk from around the world, drone, free jazz, psychedelia, and noise rock.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nice One
2. Rockaway
3. Hey! Mr. Sky
4. Spirits
5. Good Morning Kaptain
6. Loud And Mighty
7. The Louder Roared The Sea

Having penned over 200 songs in the last six years, The Reds, Pinks and Purples release a collection of tracks previously unreleased on physical format that continues to romanticise the wonders and woes of the world.

With song titles that read like chapter sub-heads for a post-Douglas Coupland novella, ‘The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed’ takes The Reds, Pinks and Purples central orator Glenn Donaldson through the turmoil of small talk and everyday water cooler moments with a fine sense of pathos and irony.

Set to a soundtrack that swerves between the dark days of Television Personalities and Byrdsian twang to the Jarvis Cocker-styled rhetoric and vocal tenderness of ‘Richard In the Age Of The Corporation’ with hints of everything from Husker Du’s fuzzed splendour to the chiming majesty of The Chameleons it’s an empowering listen.

The pathos and irony of the glorious track ‘The World Doesn’t Need Another Band’ sets out the band’s store, it’s a measured and quietly outspoken rant at lacklustre opposition peppered with a gorgeous guitar break. Meanwhile, ‘I Only Ever Wanted To See You Fail’ rumbles with an Eddie And The Hot Rods pre-punk riff before dissolving into a tale of self-doubt and remorse, bemoaning others’ good luck. ‘Toxic Friend’ is from the book of the TVP’s Daniel Treacey with an upbeat chorus that smacks of all that was good in old school indie in a hail of fuzzy logic and guitars.

From humble beginnings as a home recording project, The Reds, Pinks and Purples has blossomed into a sporadic live unit with tours on both sides of the Atlantic and appearances at Pitchfork Fest London and Woodsist Fest as well as support slots for indie legends such as Destroyer, Guided By Voices, and The Feelies.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A lovely selection of pieces that haven't ever been available on a physical format from one of our favourite psychedelic jangle-pop outfits, and most prolific songwriters. It's always a hit and miss affair, the ol' B-sides compilation, but if anyone can sidestep that, it's the RP&P. A great, stylistically fluid collection.

TRACK LISTING

1. The World Doesn’t Need Another Band
2. I Only Ever Wanted To See You Fail
3. A Figure On The Stairs
4. Slow Torture Of An Hourly Wage
5. Trouble Don’t Last
6. You’re Never Safe From Yourself
7. Your Cult Is On Fire
8. My Toxic Friend
9. Your Taste Makes You Strange
10. Marty As A Youth
11. What’s The Worst Thing You Heard?
12. No One Absolves Us In The End
13. Richard In The Age Of The Corporation
14. There Must Be A Pill For This

Rekindling the near-perfect pop for which they’re famed, the single focusses on the light and dark balance of their impending new album ‘Love Chant’ that will be released on Fire Records this Fall. Beautifully ill-balanced, ‘Deep End’ and ‘Sad Cinderella’ traverse the highs and lows of life, perfectly illustrating Evan Dando’s esoteric musical taste.

‘Deep End’ is a churning riff monster with light-the-blue-touch-paper guitar breaks by J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, a compulsive fist-in-the-air piece of timeless punk pop, the perfect soundtrack for bumming a cigarette. Cowritten with Australian sparring partner Tom Morgan of Smudge and featuring Juliana Hatfield, it signals a return down under for the band with several antipodean live dates scheduled this May.

Meanwhile, the flipside is straight out of the Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris songbook; a cover of the late, great Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Sad Cinderella’, it’s a song for the romantics, a tearjerker that could have made its way onto Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’, or any aching George Jones opus; filled with regret and remorse, it’s a beautifully brittle duet between Evan and Juliana Hatfield.

So, two slices of the born-again Lemonheads; a mature phoenix rising from the ashes of this legendary band who’ve been away way too long.

TRACK LISTING

1. Deep End
2. Sad Cinderella

Genre-bending Tropical Fuck Storm present their highly anticipated fourth album, ‘Fairyland Codex,’ on their new label home Fire Records. Recorded with co-producer Michael Beach at the band’s Dodgy Brothers studio in Nagambie, Australia, the songs on ‘Fairyland Codex’ immerse us in the chaos of a fateful landslide, picking out the characters that litter the impending collapse of society.

Acidic, acerbic, anarchic; Tropical Fuck Storm's command of wordplay, undercut by snarling guitars, pulsing rhythms, and explosive salvos, populates a hinterland between light and dark. The vocal interplay between Liddiard and the soaring harmonies of Kitschin and Dunn creates a teetering balancing act that’s intensified by the frantic narratives that evolve from their collective psyche.

Tropical Fuck Storm formed when guitarist and vocalist Gareth Liddiard and bassist and vocalist Fiona Kitschin’s previous band, The Drones, went on hiatus in 2016. Joined by guitarist, keyboardist, and vocalist Erica Dunn and drummer Lauren Hammel, the group has released a string of critically acclaimed albums and gained a reputation for their incendiary live shows.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Tropical Fuck Storm return, bringing with them a storm of off-kilter guitars and near-atonal jangles, resulting in an album that is as comfortingly weird as it's predecessors but that branches out nicely into avant pop, jazz and (dare I say it) near radio-friendly melodicism.

TRACK LISTING

1. Irukandji Syndrome
2. Goon Show
3. Stepping On A Rake
4. Teeth Marché
5. Fairyland Codex
6. Dunning Kruger's Loser Cruiser
7. Bloodsport
8. Joe Meek Will Inherit The Earth
9. Bye Bye Snake Eyes
10. Moscovium

On her debut album, Lucy Gooch stays true to her electronic foundations, while incorporating more acoustic instrumentation and digging deeper into her folk roots through songwriting. But at the heart of Lucy’s music is her rapturous vocal, with which she has experimented more than ever over the course of her first full-length.

Many of the pieces on ‘Desert Window’ started out as vocal improvisations from which she pulled a narrative. Taking cues from the incantatory chanting found in middle English poetry such as ‘The Names of the Hare’, as well as the prescient imagery in contemporary works like ‘The Hearing Trumpet’ by Leonora Carrington (1974). “To a larger extent, this became an experiment in placing my voice in a more narrative way, while remaining oblique,” Gooch explains.

While her previous work could be compared to drawn-out landscapes punctuated with moments of romance and radiance, this album feels grounded in materiality and the everyday. Gooch’s voice is at times strident, while elsewhere restrained and broken. “I lost connection to my voice and then had to rediscover it, which was exhilarating. There were these bursts of energy where I’d be messing around and occasionally stumble upon something”. There are hushed melodies and exhausted squalls, creating dissonance and space.

The result is an atmospheric balance between Kate Bush and Cocteau Twins harmonies, Vangelis major chords, and a juxtaposition of folk ambience reminiscent of the offset madrigals of The Third Ear Band and Italian cult film composers Goblin. It is a complex and elegant album, an all-consuming series of songs that reach into jazz, electronica and classical song construction.

TRACK LISTING

1. Like Clay
2. Night Window (Part One)
3. Night Window (Part Two)
4. Keep Pulling Me In
5. Jack Hare
6. Clouds
7. Our Relativity
8. Desert Window

Seattle drone-rock titans Earth release their latest live document, 'WEM Dominator (Live in London NW1, 2016)', an unrelenting display of the band’s seismic force, recorded during their performance at London’s KOKO in 2016. Sharing the bill with legendary heavyweights Neurosis, Earth delivered a set of hypnotic intensity, crushing volume, and towering, glacial beauty.

For over three decades, Dylan Carlson and his ever-evolving ensemble have been crafting tectonic soundscapes that defy convention, forging a path between meditative drone and colossal doom-laden riffs. 'WEM Dominator' is an album of mesmeric modal patterns, it’s a recording that captures the trio’s intricate, slowly evolving euphoria in a period when their experimentation swerved through endless possibilities. From the creeping grandeur of The 'Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull' to the ominous crawl of 'Even Hell Has Its Heroes', the album presents Earth at their most immersive and powerful.

This record reasserts Earth’s mastery of atmosphere and weight, where every note feels tectonic, and silence itself becomes an instrument of crushing tension. It is a hypnotic, stripped down sonic symphony embracing influences as wide ranging as the Velvet Underground, Terry Riley and La Monte Young, a visceral slow-motion reading of the original sound that inspired Sun O))) and the generation that followed.

The lineup of this performance was Dylan Carson (guitar), Jodie Cox (baritone guitar) and Adrienne Davis (drums), it was recorded live at KOKO, London on November 7th 2016 and is mixed and mastered by Mell Dettmer at Studio Soli in Seattle.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull (Live In London NW1, 2016)
2. There Is A Serpent Coming (Live In London NW1, 2016)
3. Descending Belladonna (Live In London NW1, 2016)
4. Even Hell Has Its Heroes (Live In London NW1, 2016)
5. High Command (Live In London NW1, 2016)

A double LP package from Bardo Pond, combining two of their super rare jam volumes on vinyl for the first time. A further edition in this celebrated series, ‘Volume 4’ and ‘Volume 5’ feature more freeform improvisational pieces from the hypnotic Philadelphia outfit.

Capturing the raw essence of the band, whose fearless exploration blurs the lines between structure, chaos, melody and noise. Bardo Pond's music traverses space rock, acid rock, post-rock, shoegaze, noise, Krautrock and psychedelia.

‘Volume 4’ hails from self-released sessions recorded in January 2002, its five tracks include the supremely tripped out heaviness of ‘K2’ and the balance-shifting ‘New Drunks (Revisited)’ with Isobel Sollenberger’s exquisite and, frankly, quite disturbing vocal. They’re shorter interrogations of sound by Bardo terms, almost succinct in their mesmerising riffage and off-kilter arrangements.

By contrast, ‘Volume 5’ consists of two lengthy mantras recorded between 2000 and 2004 and released as the tape spool spiralled out. ‘FUFO’ sounds like Cluster unravelling with Merzbow mixing, a post-industrial slew of hypnotic proportions, while ‘Monarch’ begins as a Current 93-like neo-folk mood piece before evolving into a wailing slice of drone-drenched Americana by way of a Velvets’ jam.

“We were pushing improvisations as far as we could. It was glorious having the studio. The more that our heads were spinning after a session, the better we knew that session would sound when we listened back. We were getting together two nights a week, usually three or four hours working on material and songs and the other half the time letting loose. Volumes 4 and 5 gather together some of these improvisations, and one early song that we felt like doing.” Adds Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond.

TRACK LISTING

1. Take What You Need
2. K2
3. New Drunks (Revisited)
4. Pangolin Dance
5. Narmada
6. Fufo
7. Monarch

Deradoorian (Decisive Pink, Dirty Projectors) returns with ‘Ready for Heaven’, dealing with heaven and earth, damnation and salvation. It is a classic forty-minute set of inquisitive pop songs, blessed with a lightness of touch and a sharp focus that can’t help but charm the listener. It conjures up some last, faint afterglow of the old belief that an electronic, programmed beat can smash itself - and you - into another, more egalitarian consciousness

It is a remarkable fact that this bold and open-hearted record is made by one person, working alone. Repeatedly reworking the songs until they were complete is a painstaking process that generated an energy and space where Angel Deradoorian could indulge in the arcana of her artform. “I love the production more than the songwriting. [...] In fact, I don’t even feel like a songwriter at times, I feel like someone who is just inspired by so much music. And I want to try it all out! Like Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Mingus, or ESG and Silver Apples, or making weird krautrock and industrial music. I love dub, and Sly and Robbie. I love the productions of those records and the collective energies released by their creators in the studio. It’s just a weird thing to do it by yourself!”

Engaging with past musical glories helps deal with a major theme of this album; the awful nature of the world around us. Deradoorian: “This album is partly about watching humanity erode. It’s about mental struggle, and it’s avowedly anti-capitalist. I mean; would we have all these identity labels we have to live by, if we didn’t live in a capitalist world?”

A lot of the lyrical content deals with the struggle to be a human being in the modern world, and the determination to keep on keeping on. But even when a darker mood informs a track, as with ‘Hell Island’ or ‘Digital Gravestone’, there are arrangements that seduce and hooks that ensnare.

We are dealing with a world where there is too much chaos to cut through and where human connections are burnt dry. ‘Ready for Heaven’ is an avowedly human response to the world we find ourselves in, and Deradoorian uses every ounce of her reserves of wit and knowledge to create a source of comfort and solace for the listener.

TRACK LISTING

1. Storm In My Brain
2. Any Other World
3. No No Yes Yes
4. Digital Gravestone
5. Set Me Free
6. Golden Teachers
7. Purgatory Of Consciousness
8. Reigning Down
9. Hell Island

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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.

Legendary postmodern, post punk, post human, past caring collective Mekons return with a brand-new album for 2025. Their first release on Fire Records, ‘Horror’ a collection of songs written in late 2022 but providing a horribly prescient reflection of the world in its current miasma and how we got here.

‘Horror’ looks at history and the legacies of British imperialism with mashed up lyrics set against a typically eclectic sound that amalgamates everything from dub, country, noise, rock & roll, electronica, punk, music hall, polka and you can even take your partner for a nice waltz on ‘Sad And Sad And Sad’. The roots of their global sound reflect their nomadic journey through time and space from Leeds to California in the West and Siberia in the East and is woven into the fabric and intricacies of their song creation…

Sounding like The Chills and R.E.M circa the I.R.S Records years, ‘Mudcrawlers’ sees just about the whole band joining Jon Langford on vocals speaking of Irish famine and refugees journeying to Wales. ‘War Economy’ shivers in the cold of such Boroughs spiked one-liners: “Clinical coercion will not achieve dominance!” Sounding like its straight off a Jenny Holzer neon sign (she of Abuse Of Power Comes As No Surprise), it’s held together by a disgruntled swaggering riff that underpins an explosion of disquiet.

Meanwhile, Rico takes the lead on the maliciously luscious ‘Fallen Leaves’ an appalled and appalling Hammer Horror take on climate breakdown reminiscent of Rolling Thunder Dylan, that recalls The Pogues at their most introspective, its Celtic twilightism augmented by Susie Honeyman’s keening violin as the dying sun sinks down and the river Styx flows on in the pitch black night.

Almost 50 years in the making, these Mekons continue to astound, their sound, sentiment and method of delivery blended to perfection by bass player and studio wizard, Dave Trumfio. The Mekons are Jon Langford, Sally Timms, Tom Greenhalgh, Dave Trumfio, Susie Honeyman, Rico Bell, Steve Goulding, and Lu Edmonds.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Western Design
2. Sad And Sad And Sad
3. Glasgow
4. Fallen Leaves
5. War Economy
6. Mudcrawlers
7. A Horse Has Escaped
8. Private Defense Contractor
9. Sanctuary
10. Surrender
11. You're Not Singing Any More
12. Before The Ice Age

The Nightingales return with ‘The Awful Truth’, a modern mutant music hall interpretation of the day’s news, a haunting jolt into realism narrated with all the angst of an insistent, slightly dishevelled late-night newscaster. Following the widely celebrated Stewart Lee-narrated King Rocker film in 2020, the curtain has finally been raised on the magic of the “long serving punk/alternative rock volunteer” (The Quietus). As pertinent as ever, The Nightingales release a poignant tirade on modern times heralded, quite rightly, as ‘The Awful Truth’.

Opening cut, ‘The New Emperor’s New Clothes’ is an upbeat immersive eruption with a thumping percussive piano holding proceedings in order; think the Velvets meet Fairport Convention in a crowded boozer, still waiting for their man. ‘Same Old Riff’ recalls Bowie’s ‘Queen Bitch’ rekindling the class war struggles and throwing sharp focus on the national unrest in the summer of 2024.

Robert Lloyd’s acidic one-liners trace the collapse of modern society, retaining the harmonious warble of a veteran pub crooner infected with the growl and grouse of The Fall, Nick Cave and at times Beefheart reincarnated.

In the early 80s they enjoyed cult status as darlings of the credible music scene and were championed by John Peel, who said of them – “Their performances will serve to confirm their excellence when we are far enough distanced from the 1980’s to look at the period rationally and other, infinitely better known, bands stand revealed as charlatans.” Their time has indeed come.

The Nightingales are Robert Lloyd, Andreas Schmid (Faust) on bass, Fliss Kitson (Violet Violet) on drums and guitarist, James Smith (Damo Suzuki).

TRACK LISTING

1. The New Emperor's New Clothes
2. Same Old Riff
3. The Gates Of Heaven Ajar
4. The Men, Again
5. The Best Revenge
6. Just Before
7. Warm Up
8. Joyce
9. All Smiles
10. The Limpest Bark
11. The Princess And The Piss Artist
12. Giddy Aunt
13. The Morning After Mouth

Acclaimed composer (A Scanner Darkly, Before Midnight, Hit Man) and musical maverick Graham Reynolds releases his debut solo album for Fire Records.

Pressed on limited edition purple/white splatter vinyl and housed in a deluxe Die Cut ‘Mountain’ Sleeve with a DL card.

“The quintessential modern composer” The Independent.

A socio-geographic trip along the sierra in your mind, standout title track ‘Mountain (Part 1)’ is filled with romantic orchestral sweeps conjuring up an image of a vast landscape disrupted by a singular peak, while ‘…Part 2’ takes a more jagged path, traversing an angular ridge before steadying itself into a piece of Hermann-esque Hitchcock. ‘Mt Monadnock’ in New Hampshire is namechecked, while the ‘Enchanted Rock’ (a thunderous Einstürzende Neubauten-like reawakening of the senses played out on Graham’s signature booming orchestral drum) stands just outside of Austin, Texas, Reynolds’ home-base for over 30 years.

Composed and performed by Graham Reynolds, with contributions from his rotating cast of musical compadres, the album was produced and mixed by mysterious English duo Peter Talisman. There are surprises throughout the album as Austin neighbour Jad Fair (Half Japanese) pops up with backing vocals along with Italian chanteuse Marta del Grandi whose evocative words on ‘Linger In Silence’ spark a wonderful re-awakening of the exquisite seven-minute stand-out ‘Prophet Harmonic’.

“This album is personal. It starts with Monadnock, the first mountain I ever climbed, up in New England. The first side ends with Enchanted Rock, the first mountain I climbed in my adopted state of Texas. And, though I’ve been releasing music for my whole adult life, this is the first time I’ve had real label support for something of my own, unattached to a film or other media. So, in a way, oddly, it’s my first real solo album” Graham Reynolds.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Monadnock
A2 The Lost Weekend
A3 Great Western
A4 Long Island Sound
A5 Prophet Harmonic
A6 Enchanted Rock
B1 Caretaker Of Kings
B2 Mountain Part 1
B3 Mountain Part 2
B4 Linger In Silence Feat. Marta Del Grandi
B5 The Lost Weekend (Revisited)
B6 Splendor Falls

‘Moonlight Concessions’ goes back to basics, a return for Throwing Muses to their esoteric off-kilter best courtesy of Kristin’s pin-sharp sketches and their suitably abrasive musical arrangements. The album follows their acclaimed ‘Sun Racket’ from 2020, a heady set filled with tough and tender tales spiked with surreal imagery.

Produced by Kristin Hersh at Steve Rizzo's Stable Sound Studio in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ is a collection of snippets from everyday life writ large - think Raymond Carver Short Cuts, overheard conversations, recounted happenings and telling one-liners, all sewed together to illustrate the times as they slowly mature, fully peppered with original Muses’ vim and vigour.

‘Drugstore Drastic’ is a kerbside soliloquy caught en route to a more alluring rendezvous. Built on a brisk acoustic strum with a guitar sub-melody underpinning proceedings, it’s an unfolding tale of social awareness from a blurred sub-conscious. ‘Summer Of Love’ began as a bet with a guy for a dollar that revolved around the idea that the seasons don’t change us. The album opener, it’s a haunting baroque overture, bowed and brooding. ‘Libretto’s strings offset the acoustic ambience, the hot and cold of longing at the very heart of it, a thematic driver filed with warmth in a safe haven lubricated by tequila.

Written in the differing South Coast environs of The Gulf Of Mexico and Southern California, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ pulls from the star clusters that light both, generating optimism and hope in varying degrees. Hersh explains, “In New Orleans the stars look greenish-blue, as it’s below sea level and swamp-lit. But on Moonlight Beach, they glow icy white. All these songs were written in these two glowy places, which helped our sonic technique find itself.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Guttoral baritone guitar passages and drunkenly staggering drum loops sit beneath the Shellac-adjacent instrumental harmonies and Hersch's distinctive, perfectly engaged vocals. Hazy, half-remembered fever dreams, rendered by a unique musical voice.

TRACK LISTING

1. Summer Of Love
2. South Coast
3. Theremini
4. Libretto
5. Albatross.
6. Sally's Beauty
7. Drugstore Drastic
8. You're Clouds
9. Moonlight Concessions

Monde UFO follow the celebrated ‘7171’ album with a trip to the mysterious ‘Flamingo Tower’. In the shadows of the Los Angeles bustling music scene, the enigmatic collective led by visionary Ray Monde create a trance-like fusion of psychedelia and avant jazz, mantra-like evocations, brash moody ambience and passages reminiscent of long-lost library music.

Magnifying Monde UFO’s idea of musical chaos, their early sonic escapades into off-kilter exotica is now elevated with sweeping atmospheric waves of sound inspired by an eclectic brew of Arto Lindsey, Khan Jamal’s ‘Drum Dance To The Motherland’, Keith Hudson, Milford Graves, Marion Brown, Don Cherry and Lennie Tristano.

Cast deep into number theory with occasional quasi-religious touchstones, ‘Flamingo Tower’ bustles with background sounds overlaid with intimate melodies conjuring plenty of suitably strange illusions; a synthetic orchestra plays baroque pop, a guitar is set to auto destruct and Ray Monde’s hushed vocals carry a bracing narrative. It’s an evocative album, one for the heavy music nerds, sprinkled with ear candy and proliferated by mysterious numbers which litter the song titles.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gambled House We're Wiping Fire (psalm -1)
2. Sunset Entertainment 3
3. Samba 9
4. Old Town Pollution
5. Ave Tascam (psalm 0)
6. 119
7. Il Mortificanto
8. No Sight Screening
9. Devil Food Cake
10. Solitaire
11. Psalm 3

‘Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs’ is a Martin Phillipps passion project. A dedicated reimagining of his earlier unreleased songs that became his artistic farewell, a lasting legacy, and a reminder of his huge, underappreciated talent. The album has been finalised for release with the love and support of his band, family and friends.  

As the subject of an undulating life and times movie – The Chills: The Triumph And Tragedy Of Martin Phillipps – Chills’ singer, songwriter and main motivator, Martin Phillipps spent the last decade releasing studio and live albums while careering into his sixtieth year with typical gusto.

Amid such momentum, Martin was stilling digging through old tapes, searching for the foundations that resulted in global rapture in 1987, an overnight success that took a mere seven years to ignite. These early songs and musings were revisited, revised and finally put to record. As such, ‘Spring Board’ is the final chapter of The Chills, immeasurably significant output.  

‘Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs’ is alarming, personal, brittle and at times hopelessly upbeat. This is a man casting his mind back on an esoteric career that led to nothing short of cult status; someone rediscovering his roots, his innermost thoughts, hopes and fears. 

The Chills are Martin Phillipps, Oli Wilson, Erica Scally, Callum Hampton and Todd Knudson. ‘Spring Board’ features contributions from Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans, Elroy Finn and Split Enz, Crowded House alumni Neil Finn, Tiny Ruins’ Hollie Fullbrook, Manics producer Greg Haver, Troy Kingi, Shona Laing, Tami Neilson, Dianne Swann (Everything That Flies) and Purple Pilgrims’ Clementine Valentine.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dolphins
2. Learn To Try Again
3. If This World Was Made For Me
4. Juicy Creaming Soda
5. I'll Protect You
6. And When You're There
7. Declaration
8. Stay Longer
9. Slime
10. Steel Skies
11. Jellyhead
12. Such Self Pity
13. Meet My Eyes
14. Bad Eggs
15. Lion Tamer
16. The Other
17. Since You Left Me
18. Watching Old Home Movies
19. I Saw Your Silhouette
20. I Don't Want To Live Forever

Following on from her formative debut ‘Adolescence’, Thala releases her remarkable new album ‘Avalanche’ on Fire Records. As 2023’s EPs revisited painful chapters in her life, ‘Avalanche’ offers a more focussed worldview, tackling more mature matters of the heart. Drawn to the cerebral emotion of early 90s shoegaze and indie rock, these are songs to live by. This is pop music that blossoms from verse to chorus much like Sharon Van Etten, with piercing soundscapes by way of Ethal Cain and Wolf Alice.

A reawakening, full of positivity and purpose from the everyday thrall of life. ‘Avalanche’ sees Thala caught in that moment when indie confidently explodes into soaring panoramic rock, a coming of age statement and a strident evolution from her previous work. Opening cut ‘1st of the year’ is a heady slice of realisation that everything’s not going to work out as planned and is an outpouring of emotion which reveals a darker side to her music.

It sets the scene for a cathartic awakening; Thala is a performer living life’s rich adventures and rolling with its punches; ‘don’t want u to die’ is an honest parable filled with modern-day melancholy, it’s a liberating piece of indie rock that surges with dramatic heft and is executed with pinpoint precision; ‘spit it out’ is a cursory chronicle of revenge served cold, while ‘tongue-tied & starry-eyed’ (featuring Communion artist Sfven) is the understanding that sometimes you just have to move on. Thala takes us on her personal trip as ‘drive song’ slides into a somnambulant plea with vintage Cure-like chiming guitars while ‘body to you’ raises the ante with a gloriously triumphant chorus of “it’s alright, it’s alright”.

TRACK LISTING

1. 1st Of The Year
2. Body To You
3. Don't Want You To Die
4. Drive Song
5. Spit You Out
6. Sinner
7. Sleep Paralysis
8. Tongue-tied & Starry Eyed Feat. Sfven
9. It’s Good
10. Avalanche

Rats on Rafts descend further into the brooding wasteland on their new album ‘Deep Below’, a darker, slower, eroded sound from the Rotterdam band. Highlighting different shades within the monochrome landscape compared to their previous, more colourful albums: they dive deeper into their psyche, questioning our relationships with nature, religion and each other. Echoes of The Cure, Cocteau Twins and Slowdive seem present yet so many different influences make up an album that only they could create. It sees Rats on Rafts coming of age whilst raising their heads from the underground.

Forever drifting into new territory, ‘Deep Below’ is certainly their darkest and most cohesive work to date. True to their analogue recording process, the tape machines, reverbs, echoes and vital new ingredients: the Soundcraft 1s mixing desk (Used by Lee Perry) and the eerie sounding Eminent String Ensemble synth all amplify the authentic sounds of the 1980’s without sounding like a relic.

‘Japanese Medicine’ is a haunting minor chord piece driven by debris of icy chiming guitars, galloping drums and waves of lush synths. lyrically it gathers memories of teenage friendship, littered with cigarettes, life-changing records, punctuated with the dark thoughts and the demons they summon up. Though the band have kept the songs relatively slow-paced and sparse, deeper ruminations of mortality and alienation creep through the cracks. ‘Nature Breaks’, the most propulsive song on the record, thematically locks into this notion, as Fagan meditates on human impulse in the face of abject survival, and how those situations often unlock one's true self.

You may conclude Rotterdam’s Rats on Rafts relationship with the past is complicated. ‘The Moon Is Big’ (2011) ‘Tape Hiss’ (2015) and ‘Excerpts From Chapter 3’ (2021) are truly gripping analog timestamps of a band refusing to give in to the supposed ‘progress of the world’ instead forging their own way each time. ‘Deep Below’ is Rats on Rafts’ most minimalist work since their 2011 debut. Where the latter album was fuelled by a brash bravado, these recordings meditate on sentiments of doubt, loss, and ageing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Afterworld
2. Japanese Medicine
3. All These Things
4. Hibernation
5. Voiceprint
6. The Day Before
7. Deep Below
8. Nature Breaks
9. Sleepwalking 

Focus On Nature is the new studio album from celebrated post-psyche singer songwriter Nick Saloman and his band The Bevis Frond. Seventy-five minutes of glorious melodies that span 60s psych, English folk, Seattle art-punks The Wipers, the buzzsaw pop of Dinosaur Jr and Hendrix-esque explorations. There’s always an element of playful Englishness to their music.

Heavily influencing the likes of The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Elliot Smith, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr, the cult icons have produced another off-kilter mix of melodic piano-led melancholy, acoustic ruminations, scratchy garage rock with a punky edge and full-on guitar histrionics.

Like its much-praised predecessor, ‘Little Eden’, the new record studies the world’s weariness but fills out a bigger canvas; fast food and global warming, broken hearts and long gone nights out, everyday immortality and being God’s gift all share space. It’s like Townshend at his most thematic; Big Star in all their acoustic glory, perfectly balancing the punky garage rock combo who end up running on ‘Empty’ with Gilmour breaks that elevate it all to grandeur.

“Still mixing pop, punk and psych to giddy effect.” The Guardian

“Self-reflection is twinned with a rueful survey of the current state of the nation.” Uncut

TRACK LISTING

1. Heat
2. Focus On Nature
3. God's Gift
4. Vitruvian Man
5. A Mirror
6. Leb Off
7. Here For The Other One
8. Happy Wings
9. Empty
10. Wrong Way Round
11. Mr Freds Disco
12. Jack Immortal
13. Hairstreaks
14. Maybe We Got It Wrong
15. Brocadine
16. Big Black Sky
17. The Hug
18. I Can't Breathe
19. Hung On A Wire

‘Car Button Cloth' is an extraordinary affair of musical and emotional extremes, a soundscape spanning “the most beautiful piano-led mourning in the history of the broken heart” that switches into perky jangle-pop for fleeting moments and contains the ultimate self-deprecating classic ‘The Outdoor Type’, penned by Smudge cohort Tom Morgan, as well as a cover of the bluegrass standard ‘Knoxville Girl’ and ‘If I Could Talk I’d Tell You’ co-written with The Vaselines’ Eugene Kelly. All bases are covered.

To further unravel where Evan’s head was at during the period of its creation, this deluxe double album comes with a record of exquisite and typically eclectic scene setting covers that occupied B-sides and alternative format versions, plus other super rare offcuts, live takes and remixes. A diet of Volcano Suns, Glen Campbell, The Jacobites, The Sir Douglas Quintet and Whitney Houston influenced Evan’s thinking and added further colour to an album that remains something of a Dorian Gray-style masterpiece. The first side of extras is rounded off with the never before released ‘Arise’, originally set for the remake of Great Expectations and later realised as Rancho Santa Fe on solo album ‘Baby I’m Bored’.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1 It's All True
A2 If I Could Talk I'd Tell You
A3 Break Me
A4 Hospital
A5 The Outdoor Type
A6 Losing Your Mind

SIDE B
B1 Something's Missing
B2 Knoxville Girl
B3 6ix
B4 C'Mon Daddy
B5 One More Time
B6 Tenderfoot
B7 Secular Rockulidge

SIDE C
C1 If I Could Talk I’d Tell You (Single Version)
C2 The Outdoor Type (Remix)
C3 Pin Yr Heart
C4 Balancing Act
C5 Galveston
C6 Arise

SIDE D
D1 Keep On Loving You
D2 It’s All True (No Drums)
D3 Losing Your Mind (Live Acoustic Version)
D4 How Will I Know (Acoustic)
D5 I Don’t Want To Go Home
D6 Fade To Black
D7 Live Forever

From a long-forgotten trunk; two extended jams, twin slabs, circa 1989. Continuing Fire Records’ series of classic remastered albums from Royal Trux, ‘Hand Of Glory’ is released on silver vinyl.

This bad-ass black, white and blue magic is a kind of Burial Dub… or so preached the sleeve of ‘Hand Of Glory’ on its original release in 2002. Legend has it, the two sides of this 40-minute gem were recorded between 1985 and 1989. The resultant mountain of creativity from where they hail were inevitably left under a scuzzy sofa as life and a career that ebbed and flowed over nine albums. Royal Trux became an inspirational tipping point for everyone from Pavement & Sonic Youth to the Black Keys, Kurt Cobain, The Avalanches & Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. “I urge and encourage you to enter the harmolodic multiverse of their music.” Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip

‘Hand Of Glory’ is not like their other albums but then again none of their albums are alike, it’s a two-faced masterpiece. Side one’s ‘Domo Des Burros’/‘Two Sticks’ is on par with Beefheart’s sprawling ‘Troutmask Replica’. It plays out in 19 minutes, sounding like it was laid down on Warhol’s sofa in The Factory; like Dylan’s sprawling ‘Desolation Row’ with, background squalls, interruptions and both Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema’s overlayed stream of consciousness peeping through a multi-layered backdrop. It’s just staggering.

“Royal Trux were nothing if not fearless.” Pitchfork

Side two’s ‘The Boxing Story’, a loose homage to William Burroughs, moulds and morphs from tape to tape, a multi-speed soundtrack, while the dynamic duo press pause, guitars ring, occasional melodic lines arrive and evaporate. Lou Reed’s pastoral ‘Metal Machine Music’ could perhaps be recognized as an older and perhaps less challenging sibling.

A two-sided masterpiece featuring two wayward pieces of creative genius.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Domo Des Borros (Two Sticks)

Side B
B1. The Boxing Story - Electric Boxing Show
B2. The Boxing Story - Four Kings
B3. The Boxing Story - Golden Lament
B4. The Boxing Story - Pots And Pansy
B5. The Boxing Story - K-9 To The Core

1992’s ‘Untitled’ brought the band’s third album that re-cemented the duo once again as the progenitors of the “lo-fi” genre. This breakthrough set transitioned "The Trux" into a never ending all-inclusive rotating cast of musicians. Continuing Fire Records’ series of classic remastered albums from Royal Trux, ‘Untitled’ is released on white vinyl and features updated monochrome and silver artwork.

As unpredictable as ever, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema shook off the next level layering and noise of ’Twin Infinitives’ to embrace the history of rock ‘n’ roll in all its deformed grandeur. Utilizing their ever present mind set of macro-inclusivity, they allowed the subconscious "radio stations" of their lives to infiltrate, lead, and dictate. Culling from their collective minds and memories twisted tunes that touched them. After the blood rush of their much-hailed avant-garde masterpiece ‘Twin Infinitives’ (1988), this eight-song opus added to the lo-fi genre that originated on ‘Twin Infinitives’.

On ‘Untitled’ Hagerty uses his 5-string blues roots and hails rock’s twisted potential, while Herrema slurs and snarls in ecstasy. They sound like they’re locked in a fourth-floor boudoir at the Chelsea Hotel; bottles clink, an album clicks on its run-out groove, the band plays on. In the mix are the characters and casualties of the 90s, a roll call of swaggering misfits. These aren’t superficial sketches, the Trux cut much deeper than that…

“‘Junkie Nurse' isn't just about addiction; it's about the twisted hope that even the most broken people can somehow mend others, even when they're falling apart themselves." Jennifer Herrema, Royal Trux.

With ‘Untitled’ Royal Trux justifiably increased their coterie of convicted followers, becoming the cult heroes for a transgressive generation, and the Rosetta Stone for male/female duos (ie:The White Stripes, The Kills etc... ) over the years inspiring everyone from The Silver Jews (David Berman) & Sonic Youth through to melodic blue-eyed soulsters like Hot Chip - “I urge and encourage you to enter the harmolodic multiverse of their music.” Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip

“Royal Trux were nothing if not fearless.” Pitchfork

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Air
A2. Move
A3. Hallucination
A4. Junkie Nurse

Side B
B1. Sometimes
B2. Lightning Boxer
B3. Blood Flowers
B4. Sun On The Run

First time on CD for this incendiary live set of greatest hits of The Bevis Frond circa 1998.

Featuring over an hour’s worth of prime Frond, it mixes the bittersweet melodies of Nick Saloman’s much-covered ‘Lights Are Changing’ and ‘He’d Be A Diamond’ with fuzz fuelled riffs and masterful solo-ing. Played as a power trio with Saloman enlists his long-time associate and former Hawkwind bass player Adrian Shaw, and Andy Ward, former drummer with 70s prog giants Camel. With a staggering ten-minute rethinking of Love’s come down anthem ‘Signed DC’ closing the show. This set also includes culled cuts from their debut ‘Miasma’ through to the groundbreaking ‘New River Head’ and beyond into the 90s.

TRACK LISTING

Hole Song #2
Maybe
Love Is
New River Head
Stoned Train Driver
Lights Are Changing
Red Hair
He'd Be A Diamond
Well Out Of It
Stain On The Sun
The Wind Blew All Around Me
Signed DC.

Vanishing Twin furthers their exploration of decidedly experimental territories with Afternoon X. Crafted with a playful balance of humour and rigour, with each member embracing the role of the multi-instrumentalist and process, over outcome.

Following a series of line-up changes, Vanishing Twin is now the tightly honed collective of singer and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Lucas, drummer Valentina Magaletti (Holy Tongue, Tomaga, Moin) and bassist Susumu Mukai (Zongamin). Harnessing the diverse touchstones of its members; Lucas’ left-field song-craft, Magaletti’s singular approaches to experimental percussion, and Mukai’s long history in the production of electronic music, the band has refined a hypnotic sound at the juncture of minimalism, kosmische, post-punk, and dream-laden, psychedelic pop.

These eight fluttering abstractions, culled, collaged, and built upon from a vast constellation of instruments, samples, and unclaimed sources. Lucas employs her voice as an instrument and a generator of raw sound, weaving surreal imagery and uncanny juxtapositions amongst the dance and propellant drive. From infectious grooves of the album’s title track and the constrained minimalism of “Subito”, to the ambitious heights of pieces like ‘The Down Below’ and Lazy Garden, which unfurl a psychedelic avant-gardism on the scope and scale of David Axelrod and Scott Walker.

Vanishing Twin embark upon a new multifaceted journey that collectively culminates as the bands most forward-thinking and groundbreaking release to date.

TRACK LISTING

1. Melty
2. Afternoon X
3. Brain Weather
4. Lotus Eater
5. Marbles
6. The Down Below
7. Lazy Garden
8. Subito

Ella Raphael is blessed with an amazing voice, filled with warmth and emotion; it’s engaging, like an old friend telling tales and spinning stories. Mad Sometimes is her debut album, release via Fire Records.

Brought up in London, surrounded by sound, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Etta James, while encountering Queen, The Beatles and the Stones from her Dad’s collection, Ella’s musical journey continued in Australia where she met many other musicians, and ended up sailing with would-be pirates, singing in the bow of their boat and deciding that music was the path for her. Charmed by the music she has discovered on further travels across the US and Europe, she refined that eclectic mix, adding Love, Serge Gainsbourg, Karen Dalton, Vashti Bunyan, Catherine Riberio And Alpes, the original masters of Tropicalia, exotic 50s guitars and the more esoteric sounds of The Beatles.

Writing outdoors, freedom has always been a virtue to Ella, penning songs that are at once aching and brittle, then elated and celebratory; she has perfected a sound that’s as wide-ranging as her influences and experiences, music that’s as beautiful as its surroundings, using the intricacies and subtle nuances of sound to channel both light and dark into her music.

On her first LP, the sound comes from a stylish mix of lap steel, mandolin, guiro, congas, synthesisers, a shruti box and stringed instruments played by Ella, Eyal Samson, Uzi Ramirez, Ron Ephrati, Guy Mintus and Amir Sadot.

TRACK LISTING

A1. See You Through
A2. Mad Sometimes
A3. Let The Light In
A4. Good Eyes
B1. Tangled Love
B2. All In
B3. Late
B4. Somber
B5. Outro

‘Memorial Waterslides’ is the debut album from MEMORIALS, the duo consisting of Verity Susman and Matthew Simms (previously of Electrelane and Wire). This is an otherworldly, surrealist pop record that is both timeless and timely, displaying a rare mix of classic songwriting and avant-garde attitudes.

MEMORIALS create panoramic pop that draws on both the familiar and the strange, while also treading new ground. With their playful and experimental style, combined with a love of good tunes, they sit comfortably alongside Broadcast, Portishead, Arthur Russell, The Velvet Underground, Yo La Tengo and Tortoise.

The album is awash with imagery evoking a lost future, a veiled present and a daydreamed past, each song playing a role in creating a swirling, widescreen atmosphere, the listener taken along for the ride. Produced entirely by the two of them, the sound of the record was inspired by the reel-to-reel tape experiments they first played around with onstage as they began to develop their multi-layered recordings for live performances as a duo.

Following their acclaimed 2023 soundtracks ‘Women Against The Bomb’ and ‘Tramps!’, a European tour with Stereolab (they’ve been called “Stereolab’s evil twin”) and a new music commission from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Verity and Matthew arrived at MEMORIALS in reverse, escaping their soundtracking day jobs to create cosmic journeys through the garden shed into psychedelic rock, far-out folk and wild analogue electronics.

“Exciting and unpredictable” The Guardian.

“Everything you’d expect from a duo adept in the strange and esoteric, while also in thrall to pop music’s melodic bent.” The Quietus.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Acceptable Experience
A2 Lamplighter
A3 Cut It Like A Diamond
A4 Name Me
A5 Memorial Waterslide II

Side B
B1 Book Stall
B2 False Landing
B3 Horse Head Pencil
B4 I Have Been Alive
B5 The Politics Of Whatever

Originally released in 1982, ‘They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles’ was the influential band’s third album. A collection of singles, demos, outtakes and rarities that was intended to mark the band's breakup in 1982, had they not got back together again so soon. This 2024 reissue comes with faithfully restored artwork, from one the album’s original hand painted sleeves.

The record features ‘David Hockney's Diaries’, ‘The Boy In The Paisley Shirt’ and ‘Psychedelic Holiday’. With the formidable Daniel Treacy at its core, Television Personalities remain one of new wave’s longest serving and seminal artists, with a career spanning over three decades. The indie pop visionaries have influenced many people across the industry including Pavement, The Lemonheads, Fat White Family, MGMT and Creation Records’ Alan McGee.

“Its scope is incredible, its ambition outstanding and its heart damn near broken.” Melody Maker.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Three Wishes
A2. David Hockney's Diary
A3. In A Perfumed Garden
A4. Flowers For Abigail
A5. King And Country
A6. The Boy In The Paisley Shirt
A7. Games For Boys

Side B
B1. Painter Men
B2. Psychedelic Holiday
B3. 14th Floor
B4. Sooty's Disco Party
B5. Makin' Time
B6. When Emily Cries
B7. The Glittering Prizes
B8. Anxiety Block
B9. Mysterious Ways 

The brand-new solo album from The Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, released in tandem with his memoir. Make It Right is a commentary between literal and metaphorical ruminating – a dialogue between memoirist and musician - a vulnerable, more reflective Wynn than previously heard.

‘Make It Right’ features notable contributions from Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Vicki Peterson (The Bangles), Chris Schlarb (Psychic Temple), Emil Nikolaisen (Serena Maneesh), Linda Pitmon (The Baseball project) and a cast of dozens.

“I wrote and recorded these songs in tandem with working on “I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True,” my memoir which comes out on Jawbone Press the same week as “Make It Right,” my first solo album since 2010. With each chapter, I would get ideas for songs inspired by the deep dive into my past and vice versa. The reflections became intertwined after a while, a mutual commentary between literal and metaphorical ruminating. It was a dialogue between the memoirist and the musician, a one-man Q&A, a gentle volley in the tennis court of my mind. 40-love, game, set and match.”

Although ‘Make It Right’ isn’t autobiographical, it begins with Santa Monica - the city and boulevard where he was born and concludes with “Roosevelt Avenue”, the main thoroughfare of the Queen’s neighbourhood in New York City that he calls home today.

TRACK LISTING

Santa Monica
Make It Right
What Were You Expecting
You're Halfway There
Making Good On My Promises
Cherry Avenue
Then Again
Madly
Simpler Than The Rain
Roosevelt Avenue

Vanishing Twin’s seminal LP, The Age Of Immunology, receives a Ltd edition pressing on Yellow vinyl, paired with matching sleeve art. As essential take on psych-pop futurism and a must for fans of Broadcast, Sun Ra and Ennio Morricone.

Establishing the band as innovators in their field, the record was declared “a masterpiece” by The Line Of Best Fit, while The Quietus asserted Vanishing Twin as “one of the most original and exciting acts of the moment”.

This was the group’s first LP for Fire Records, at the time of recording the band’s evolving lineup consisted of songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Lucas, drummer Valentina Magaletti, bassist Susumu Mukai, synth/guitar player Phil MFU and visual artist/film maker Elliott Arndt on flute and percussion.

The album was produced by Lucas in a number of non-standard, non-studio settings. ‘KRK (At Home In Strange Places)’ summons up the spirit of Sun Ra’s Lanquidity and Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio and was simply recorded on an iPhone during a live set which crackled with psychic connectivity on the Croatian island of Krk. The magical Morricone-esque lounge of ‘You Are Not an Island’, the blissed-out Jean-Claude Vannier style arrangement of ‘Invisible World’ and burbling sci fi funk ode to a 1972 cult French animation, ‘Planète Sauvage’, were all recorded in nighttime sessions in an abandoned mill in Sudbury.

TRACK LISTING

1. KRK (At Home In Strange Places)
2. Wise Children
3. Cryonic Suspension May Save Your Life
4. You Are Not An Island
5. The Age Of Immunology
6. Magician’s Success
7. Planète Sauvage
8. Backstroke
9. Invisible World
10. Language Is A City (Let Me Out!)

Bonus Tracks: Download ONLY
1. The Age Of Immunology (Version)
2. Magician’s Success (Live)
3. Backstroke (Live)
4. Language Is A City (Let Me Out!) (Live)
5. You Are Not An Island (Version)
6. Cryonic Suspension May Save Your Life (Extended Life Version)

Originally released in 1990, Royal Trux’s ‘Twin Infinitives’ is being re-issued in all its (yet to be translated) alien glory, by Fire Records. A dismantled overture that sprawls out over two records, an avant-garde masterpiece that was the spark for Drag City Records and generations of new sound seeking musicians.

Hailed in the same immortal breath as Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’, the Velvets’ at their frenzied peak and Ornette Coleman at his most avant-garde, the duo of Pussy Galore’s Neil "Michael" Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema recorded ‘Twin Infinitives’ while imbibing all kinds of mind-altering substances to create an inadvertent blueprint for what the duo was building with moog’s, guitars and melodicas to name a few ingredients.

It is the legendary second album from the masters of the genre mashup - long before “genre mashups” even existed. Arguably, the term “mashup” was coined to describe what Trux, as they subconsciously scrolled through the radio stations of their lives.

The album’s chaotic sound and offbeat construction laid the foundations for a string of Royal Trux albums that spiralled between genres, tunings, and noise. Through the 90s they would re-invent the rock ‘n’ roll ethic, straddle alien surf music, re-align boogie rock, not to mention 80s hair metal, and confound critics by their wildly meandering and courageous rites of passage.

Remastered as part of a career spanning catalogue deal with Fire Records. The infamous and influential duo of Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty will be delving into the archive with a comprehensive reissue series, unearthing the vaults and revisiting what made them such a compelling benchmark for their contemporaries and imitators. Reawakening their prolific output within a new monochrome vinyl series covering 1988-1993, they begin with their seminal deconstructed rock masterpiece Twin Infinitives.

“Sounding like a subway ride inside a television inside an earthquake inside the end of the world and a pounding death rhythm of apocalyptic now.” Pitchfork

TRACK LISTING

Disc One
A1 Solid Gold Tooth
A2 Ice Cream
A3 Jet Pet
A4 RTX-USA
A5 Kool Down Wheels
B1 Chances Are The Comets In Our Future
B2 Yin Jim Versus The Vomit Creature
B3 Osiris

Disc Two
C1 (Edge Of The) Ape Oven
D1 Florida Avenue Theme
D2 Lick My Boots
D3 Glitterbust
D4 Funky Son
D5 Ratcreeps
D6 New York Avenue Bridge

Restored ‘Original Gold Sleeve Edition’ on classic black vinyl. An intense neo-psychedelic gem that journeys through serenity before collapsing into its own itchy comedown. A glorious amalgamation of discordant psyche, Lou Reed hustle and Gospel surrealism. A kaleidoscopic blueprint for everything that followed, with lovingly restored artwork. Spacemen 3's second album is a remarkable departure from the band's 1986 debut, Sound Of Confusion. Reduced to a trio (guitarists / keyboardists Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember, Jason "Spaceman" Pierce, and bassist Pete Bassman), Spacemen 3 makes an asset out of the newfound lack of percussion, giving The Perfect Prescription a considerably less rock-oriented sound with much more open space in its varied, subtle arrangements.

“Like taking an acid bath in the dungeon of the mind.” Pitchfork.

TRACK LISTING

1. Take Me To The Other Side
2. Walkin' With Jesus
3. Ode To Street Hassle
4. Ecstasy Symphony
5. Feel So Good
6. Things'll Never Be The Same
7. Come Down Easy
8. Call The Doctor
9. Soul 4
10. That’s Just Fine 

The third album of powerfully vivid songwriting from Marina Allen. Beautifully orchestrated, highly melodic and delivered with unrivalled lyrical perspective. Across two acclaimed records, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter has ripened a rare harvest, but her third studio album is an arrival home.

Taking fragments and stories from Marina’s past, Eight-Pointed Star deftly weaves together a new future, in what feels for all the world like a glittering, clear-eyed modern classic of alternative folk and Americana. For fans of Aldous Harding, Fiona Apple and Waxahatchee.

Ineffable and timeless, this collection of songs holds a curiosity that’s as open to you as you are to them. Compared to the soaring and swelling compositions of Allen’s second album Centrifics or the innocent tranquillity of Candlepower, the world of Eight Pointed Star is more deeply addressing and open-armed. It favours a type of soul-searching that doesn’t dwell in complications, and is open to answers. Rolling guitars rise and fall with the canyons and dust is kicked-up from the red scarred earth. Allen’s vocals pure and crystalline whilst the instrumentation is rich and bursting with brightness. You can hear contentment radiating from the music, with Chris Cohen’s production offering a full-band affair.

Allen’s affection runs deepest for singers who in her words can really sing, from The Roches to Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsom to Meredith Monk. But these influences vanish like ghosts in the attic when she starts to sing herself. Allen has a voice that stands up to the canon – inimitable – and it’s never sounded more resolute than it does here.

TRACK LISTING

A1 I'm The Same
A2 Deep Fake
A3 Red Cloud
A4 Swinging Doors
A5 Bad Eye Opal
B1 Easy
B2 Love Comes Back
B3 Landlocked
B4 Between Seasons

On Gut Buster, Yosa Peit spawns fleshy sonic escapades, a swarm of vigorously processed vocals and soulful bass, set to a backdrop of visceral percussive structures. Full of roguish curiosity, the record is cast with an air of lo-fi experimentation, but with a platinum glint of pop sensibility. Peit’s second album grapples with the destructive force of modern consumption, Gut Buster is an anti-capitalist battle cry that syntheses intimacy and hostility; a surrealist-punk affirmation and a testament to Peit’s singular vision and unique approach.

The free-ranging sound of Yosa Peit recalls the intense arrangements of a cyber-era Prince with the surrealist tones of Arthur Russell and early Björk. At the album’s core, “World Eaters” unleashes scorching guitars in search of humankind’s end, “I was born on a planet, I got hungry and I ate it.”

Even in the face of planetary doom and personal obstacles, Yosa evokes our propensity for mischief, humor and pleasure. “bb moon” processes sound solely from her bass into wicked oblivion. “CALL ME,” a song about friendship, chews up it’s anthemic melody into a gnarled strut worthy of an A$AP Rocky production, while “HAD3S” urges us to find balance, nodding to the mystical fuzz of Prince. Yosa’s work has been called “personal, punk, poignant, deep” yet her genre-defying production, as textured as it is catchy, escapes definition.

Gut Buster takes that collective playground for creation to planetary reaches, congregating friends from Berlin, Cologne, and New York’s fuzzy musical underbelly: Employee, Funkycan, Gerry Franke, Glenn Astro, Nauker, Paingel, Tbz, and UCC Harlo. The record was mixed by Brainfeeder affiliate Benjamin Vukelic in Portland and Jan Brauer in Berlin.

“Glitchy yet supple, the broken beats and warped abstractions are wholly unpredictable yet deliciously odd, like an esoteric mashup of Bjork, Aphex and Laurie Anderson” Electronic Sound.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Twixx
A2 Had3s
A3 Tower Flower
A4 Dnuora Kool
A5 Shelly
A6 Call Me
Side B
B1 World Eaters
B2 Aol Slyt
B3 Bb Moon
B4 Nbp
B5 Alma
B6 Portimao
B7 Look Around
B8 Pepper Plane
B9 Gut Is God (Gate Of Discord)

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

Recorded 25 years into their career, Giant Sand’s 25th album is a gorgeous and much-celebrated collection of perfectly-crafted, personal songwriting from Howe Gelb. With the exception of one or two wonderfully abrupt and perfectly placed outbursts, it’s a gentle rollercoaster traversing the inner thinking of the why’s and wherefores of whatever, a meditation on time and the ageing process.

Musing on the record, Howe Gelb explains “On this LP I show off an acquired appreciation for the simple lyric. Kinda haiku at times, like flamenco verse, or the blues. I can focus more as it’s obvious there’s only so much time left – that has a production value all its own.”

Highlighting their eclectic and esoteric career, this reissue celebrates the band’s magnificent, long and winding career. This deluxe reissue features restored artwork and newly penned liner notes from MOJO’s Dave Henderson.

Giant Sand have been the primary outlet for the stylistic curveballs and sun-damaged songcraft of singer-songwriter Howe Gelb. In four plus decades he’s managed to reinvent rock, country, blues, punk, garage, lo-fi, jazz, gospel, avant-garde noise and flamenco gypsy music with his impressionistic imagery and expansive observations of the world.

“An album full of heart, soul, and wit, this music confirms that no one does quite what Howe Gelb can do with such remarkably innate grace and feel” AllMusic.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Fields Of Green
A2 Chunk Of Coal
A3 The Last One
A4 Monk's Mountain
A5 Spellbound
A6 Ride The Rail
A7 Lucky Star Love
B1 Thin Line Man
B2 No Tellin'
B3 Brand New Swamp Thing
B4 Erosion
B5 Time Flies
B6 Better Man Than Me
B7 Love A Loser

Celebrating 25 years since the release of Giant Sand’s legendary ‘Chore Of Enchantment’, the panoramic masterpiece that was the turning point for the classic line-up featuring seasoned songwriter Howe Gelb and latter-day Calexico members Joey Burns and John Convertino from 1999.

Filled with mind-bending one-liners, customary offbeat instrumentation, echo fields and hazy horizons; ‘The Chore Of Enchantment’ is a songbook of Howe Gelb’s greatest songs. The high level production by the legendary Jim Dickinson, PJ Harvey foil John Parish and acclaimed singer/songwriter/producer Kevin Salem, a tour-de-force of Gelb’s unique oeuvre.

Highlighting their eclectic and esoteric career, this reissue celebrates the band’s magnificent, long and winding career. This 2xLP deluxe reissue features restored artwork and newly penned liner notes from MOJO’s Dave Henderson.

“A beautiful, emotionally complex album.” The Quietus.

Giant Sand have been the primary outlet for the stylistic curveballs and sun-damaged songcraft of singer-songwriter Howe Gelb. In four plus decades he’s managed to reinvent rock, country, blues, punk, garage, lo-fi, jazz, gospel, avant-garde noise and flamenco gypsy music with his impressionistic imagery and expansive observations of the world.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Overture
A2 (Well) Dusted (For The Millenium)
A3 Punishing Sun
A4 X-Tra Wide
A5 1972
A6 Temptation Of Egg
A7 Raw
B1 Wolfy
B2 Shiver
B3 Dirty From The Rain
B4 Astonished (In Memphis)
B5 No Reply
C1 Satellite
C2 Bottom Line Man
C3 Way To End The Day
C4 Shrine
D1 Astonished (In Tucson) (Bonus)
D2 Dusted (In Tucson) (Bonus)
D3 Shiver (In Tucson) (Bonus)
D4 Punishing Sun (In Tucson) (Bonus)
D5 Bad (Not Good) (Bonus)

Recalibrating her singular journey in the British musical landscape with her most open-hearted, direct and intimate collection of material yet. Love In Constant Spectacle evokes spectacular imagery and distills the artists’ vision in its purest form, elevating her inimitable sound and poetic vision to new heights.

Recapturing the melancholy of her early work whilst propelling it forward, she sketches scenes as we watch new colours, shapes and languages emerge and fill the frame. Love In Constant Spectacle sees her take measured steps towards a vivid, dreamlike record, that offers resolve in the face of life’s inevitability.

The foundations of Weaver’s sound are still evident – lush motorik drums, pulsating bass, custom modded synths and exotic fuzz pedals - but the stream is awash with scrabble piece poetry and Letraset lullabies leading to lush escapism, the free abandon that you’d associate with free jazz and the avant-garde. But, as determined and visionary as Weaver might be, Love In Constant Spectacle wasn’t executed without assistance. Here we find a long mooted unison with Jane’s first ever producer, John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding), who has shared Weaver’s process in the surrounds of Rockfield Studios and Geoff Barrow’s Invada studio.

Love In Constant Spectacle is otherworldly, it is both intimate yet distant, a surrealist interpretation of the foundations that make us human – the stories and landscapes it paints are habitats of their own. A voyage into undisclosed pastures, it’s a heartfelt manifesto from an artist that continues to boundlessly evolve with each chapter in her career.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: We're big fans of Jane & co. here at Piccadilly, and 'Love In Constant Spectacle' takes everything we've known and loved from previous releases; her rich melodic thread and progressive instrumental leanings, and injects the pieces with perfectly extracted DNA from jazz, 60's psychedelic pop and art-rock.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Perfect Storm
A2 Emotional Components
A3 Love In Constant Spectacle -
A4 Motif
A5 The Axis And The Seed
Side B
B1 Is Metal
B2 Happiness In Proximity
B3 Romantic Worlds
B4 Univers
B5 Family Of The Sun

The Lemonheads’ long-awaited return, a slice of perfect pop, with a grittier Evan Dando at the helm.

Playing all the instruments on the lead track, the new single was recorded and produced by Apollo Nove in São Paulo, Brazil.

Evan is currently working on the first Lemonheads songs since 2006.

This limited seven-inch is backed with another piece of carefully selected outsider pop, a cover of Eugene Kelly’s (Vaselines and Eugenius) bittersweet ‘Seven Out’, on which Evan is joined by Jeff Berg on bass and Erin Rae on backing vocals.

Monde UFO, LA-based duo of Ray Monde and Kris Chau, are a monochromatic sunset for the senses. A sonic journey through psychedelia, space rock and jazz. A cosmic space where Spacemen 3 meets Vanishing Twin, by way of Sun Ra. 7171 perfectly embodies the framework of lo and hi-fi sounds which have helped define the band. Included in this expanded package is Four Songs, Monde UFO’s radical interpretation of Fugazi’s music, housed for the first time on LTD 7” with new artwork.

In a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, on 7th Street, Ray Monde began writing songs on an old Yamaha church organ for a project that eventually became Monde UFO. Utilizing the organ as a bass, alongside keyboards and a drum machine, he began making demos on a four-track cassette recorder. Heavily influenced by the musician Sandy Bull, sonically landing in a similar no-man's land of Worldly Jazz and Psych Folk. Monde experimented with the themes mostly of meditation and UFO lore.

In time Ray moved in with the artist Kris Chau. With little crossover in musical tastes, they exclusively started listening to jazz, ambient and new age music in the house. Increased interest in sound baths and experimental music led to seeing music in a different light. Envisioning something that would sound like Don Cherry making a record with Yo La Tengo. ‘7171’ is an amalgam of influences, interpretations and otherworldly sounds channeled through genre bending experimentation.

This expanded edition of ‘7171’ includes the sought after ‘Four Songs’ EP, a reimagining Fugazi’s early classics, songs that take on a life of their own, lost amongst the haze and sugar sweet psych. Ray Monde explains, "Long Division was one of my favorite tracks off 'Steady Diet of Nothing' the first Fugazi record I ever owned; more than ever, it also feels truly poignant in the times we live in.Version 2 is our interpretation of Version from ‘Red Medicine’, my favorite Fugazi Record.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
A1. Cosmic Trigger
A2. Lowered Shelf
A3. A Pale Horse In Roswell 1947
A4. Weathered Underground
A5. Vallee
A6. SAXXAS
Side B:
B1. Amalgamated
B2. Black Triangles
B3. Lying On The Ground
B4. Solar Consiousness

4 Songs EP 7"
Side A:
A1. I'm So Tired
A2. Long Division
Side B:
B1. Version
B2. Cashout

Bas Jan return with a polished and poignant collection of perfectly-crafted pop songs that retains their authentic indie edginess. ‘Back To The Swamp’ is a heady tussle between their incorrigible DIY ethics and new responsibilities.

Serafina Steer, Charlotte Stock, Emma Smith and Rachel Horwood cast an examining eye over modern times, lost love, Tarot intuition and long days in an everyday swamp. Awash with lush chorale effects, orchestral hewn loops, pin sharp electronic beats and sublime harmonies. Back To The Swamp is filled with thought-provoking stories, it’s a reflective worldview. It’s a polished and poignant collection of perfectly-crafted pop songs that retains their authentic indie edginess.

These new studio recordings feature more accomplished pop production; filled with cerebral one-liners that pluck at the senses. And, there’s a nod to an eclectic mix of influences; The Pet Shop Boys, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kate Bush, Heaven 17 and Jon Hassell by way of Brian Eno.

Witches, Tarot readings, road signs, Salt-N-Pepa namechecks and a river all cried out, welcome to the swamp…

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1 At The Counter
A2 No More Swamp
A3 Credit Card
A4 Ding Dong
A5 Margaret Calvert Drives Out
SIDE B
B1 Back To The Swamp
B2 Singing Bar
B3 Cried A River
B4 Tarot Card

On new EP twotwentytwo, indie riser THALA continues to embrace vulnerability, summoning long-buried emotions to colour her ardent love for lyricism amid psych-tinged ‘90s indie soundscapes. Filled with potent songwriting and coming-of-age anthems straight from the heart, these everyday love stories surrender to life’s insecurities. Evoking the soundscapes of Slowdive and Deerhunter, whilst recalling the widescreen pop of boygenius and Snail Mail.

Recorded in London and Berlin earlier this year, twotwentytwo follows the release of ‘In Theory Depression’, THALA’s first EP on Fire Records. Spanning six tracks, it builds on its predecessor’s fearless lyricism, excavating deep-set feelings of loss, pain, desire and conflict against luminous production and addictive melodies. Following rammed appearances at SXSW and The Great Escape, and having picked up the attention BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, THALA shows no signs of slowing down…

Blissful guitars and evocative crescendos permeate THALA’s unique vision of dreampop, reveling in soaring choruses and intimate storylines. On its surface, twotwentytwo boasts a kind of glorious emotive draw - you’d be forgiven for mistaking any one of these tracks as a backdrop to any teen-angst drama. However, while THALA wants her songs to feel nostalgic, it’s the complexity of her songwriting that sees her modern compositions really resonate and she is keen to stress her lyrics can be interpreted in numerous ways.

And therein lies the heart of this release - a cathartic, wildly empowering, self-explorative from a future indie heartbreaker at her gutsy best.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
A1 It Was You
A2 I Know When You Care
A3 Windowsill
Side B:
B1 Honey
B2 Twotwentytwo
B3 Ferris Wheel

‘Architecture Of Language 1979-1982’ is a four disc CD bookback set with excerpts from the Pere Ubu scrapbook 75-82, written by David Thomas, including historical photos. It features the ground-breaking ‘New Picnic Time’ described by one critic as the “scariest album ever recorded”. Plus ‘The Art Of Walking’ featuring Mayo Thomson of Red Crayola, ‘Song Of The Bailing Man’ and a further CD of glorious out-takes and oddities, ‘Architectural Salvage’. This release features Ubu approved notes and memorabilia.

Reinventing rock music from the ground up, Pere Ubu are equally at ease with Sun Ra and The Monkees, Glen Campbell and The MC5, Can and The Raspberries, they are the white Funkadelic.



“Inspired, invigorating, confounding, disturbing…” Rolling Stone.

As vital as ever, no band before or since has ever sounded like Pere Ubu - period.

TRACK LISTING

Disc One - New Picnic Time
1 The Fabulous Sequel (Have Shoes Will Walk)
2 49 Guitars And One Girl
3 A Small Dark Cloud
4 Small Was Fast
5 All The Dogs Are Barking
6 One Less Worry
7 Make Hay
8 Goodbye
9 Voice Of The Sand
10 Kingdom Come
Disc Two - The Art Of Walking
1 Go
2 Rhapsody In Pink
3 Arabia
4 Misery Goats
5 Young Miles In The Basement
6 Loop
7 Rounder
8 Birdies
9 Lost In Art
10 Horses
11 Crush This Horn
Disc Three - Song Of The Bailing Man
1 The Long Walk Home
2 Use Of A Dog
3 Petrified
4 Stormy Weather
5 West Side Story
6 Thoughts That Go By Steam
7 Big Ed's Used Farms
8 A Day Such As This
9 The Vulgar Boatman Bird
10 My Hat
11 Horns Are A Dilemma
Disc Four - Architectural Salvage
1 Humor Me - Live
2 The Book Is On The Table
3 All The Dogs Are Barking (alt Mix 4)
4 Arabian Nights
5 Tribute To Miles
6 Horses (alt Mix 3)
7 Rounder (alt Mix 1)
8 Not Happy
9 Lonesome Cowboy Dave

10th anniversary clear, black and white splatter vinyl reissue of 'Peace on Venus' by Bardo Pond, Philadelphia's foremost purveyors of psychedelic rock. Includes ‘Kali Yuga Blues’, a true behemoth of a song and a shining example of the band’s ecstatic intensity.

Delving deep in to their subconscious to bring it to the conscious, the band’s 2013 effort dazzles, with their gift for heavy riffs laced with soaring vocals and swathes of sound. Bardo Pond has the outward specifications of a rock band but the rivers that converge into the band's oneiric flow have their headwaters in the outlands of ecstatic jazz, free noise and the avant-garde.

The recording process of ‘Peace On Venus’ used the principle of the Quintessence, which is a principle cited by the 16th Century physician Paracelsus, who noted: "Nothing of true value is located in the body of a substance, but in the virtue thereof, and this is the principle of the Quintessence, which reduces, say 20 lbs. of a given substance into a single Ounce, and that ounce far exceeds the 20 lbs. in potency. Hence the less there is of body, the more in proportion is the virtue thereof."

“Obviously, Bardo Pond are the greatest band in the world” Vice.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Kali Yuga Blues
A2 Taste
A3 Fir
B1 Chance
B2 Before The Moon

Italian singer songwriter Marta Del Grandi returns with ‘Selva’, her most intricate and shimmering effort yet, a refined devotional suite of astute pop that flows effortlessly, uniting emotional complexity, divine organic arrangements with a sci-fi finish.

If her debut ‘Until We Fossilize’ showed all the qualities of Marta’s unique approach, tip-toeing between Laurel Canyon dust, Lynchian etherealism and dramatic Morricone scores, ‘Selva’ delves deeper into the undergrowth, showcasing an ambition to deliver a whole new universe, her own ecosystem, where the strength of her voice alone is the pillar to build on.

Beams of choral light radiate and permeate each track, with layered vocal drones creating a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures, as almost to guide us hand in hand across Marta Del Grandi’s enchanted universe. The ambition is blinding and the outcome is here to prove it: 12 songs of sprawling ethereal pop that is vivid, immense and fully illuminated.

“Ultimately compels with its detached, lynchian ambience.” ALLMUSIC

“Bucolic yet often emotionally complex, her songwriting – patching electronic synths against ambient elements, with a touch of modern classical – taps into areas that go beyond words.” CLASH.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Mata Hari
A2 Eye Of The Day
A3 Chameleon Eyes
A4 Snapdragon
A5 Marble Season
A6 End Of The World Pt.1
Side B
B1 Two Halves
B2 Polar Bear Village
B3 Good Story
B4 Selva
B5 Stay
B6 End Of The World Pt.2

“The songwriter that helped kick off indie rock as we know it" NPR…

Remixed and remastered under the supervision of Martin Phillipps, this expanded edition of The Chills’ debut album is reissued for the first time in over 35 years. The newly mixed edition features additional rarities and unreleased tracks from The Chills vaults, along with brand new reimagined artwork by Martin Phillipps and a host of additional liner notes.

Originally produced by Mayo Thompson (Pere Ubu/Red Krayola) and featuring standout tracks ‘Wet Blanket’, ‘Night Of Chills Blue’, this extended 18-track edition includes much-lauded tracks from the era, such as ‘House With A Hundred Rooms’ and the awesome ‘Party In My Heart’.

Part of the 80s extraordinarily vibrant and innovative independent music scene in New Zealand, The Chills became flag bearers, taking the Dunedin sound, as championed by the Flying Nun label, to the world. Long recognised as one of New Zealand's most influential bands, Brave Words is a shining example of their unique sound and has been praised as a masterpiece by critics and fans alike.

“‘Brave Words’ may well be The Chills' finest album.” AllMusic.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Push (Remastered)
A2 Rain (Remastered)
A3 Speak For Yourself (Remastered)
A4 Look For The Good In Others And They'll See The Good In You (Remastered)
A5 Wet Blanket (Remastered)
A6 Ghosts (Remastered)
Side B
B1 Dan Destiny And The Silver Dawn (Remastered)
B2 Night Of Chill Blue (Remastered)
B3 16 Heart-Throbs (Remastered)
B4 Brave Words (Remastered)
B5 Dark Carnival (Remastered)
B6 Creep (Remastered)
Side C
C1 The Oncoming Day (Remastered)
C2 I Think I’d Thought I'd Nothing Else To Think About (Remastered)
C3 House With A Hundred Rooms (Remastered)
Side D
D1 Party In My Heart (Remastered)
D2 Living In A Jungle (Remastered)
D3 Rain (Alternate Instrumental Version - Remastered)

This is what a living legend looks and sounds like” Rolling Stone.

The Chills reissue their celebrated early singles compilation, this 24-track expanded version of Kaleidoscope World gathers together tracks from the ‘Dunedin Double’ compilation, live recordings, ‘Doledrums’ single and the band’s seminal ‘Pink Frost’.

The collection also contains ‘The Lost EP’, with early takes on their groundbreaking ‘Submarine Bells’ album, alongside the aching ‘I Love My Leather Jacket’, perfectly illustrating the rollercoaster ride of Martin Phillipps and The Chills as portrayed in the award film The Triumph And The Tragedy Of Martin Phillipps.

“Singer/guitarist Martin Phillipps’ group was at the forefront of the extraordinary little guitar-pop scene in New Zealand in the early ’80s.. Kaleidoscope World is the major document of their early era.” Pitchfork

Part of the 80’s extraordinarily vibrant and innovative independent music scene in New Zealand, The Chills became flag bearers, taking the Dunedin sound, as championed by the Flying Nun label, to the world. Long recognised as one of New Zealand's most influential bands, Kaleidoscope World is a definitive artifact from Martin Phillipps’ groundbreaking project.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Kaleidoscope World
A2 Satin Doll
A3 Frantic Drift
A4 Rolling Moon
A5 Bite
Side B
B1 Flame Thrower
B2 Pink Frost
B3 Purple Girl
B4 This Is The Way
B5 Never Never Go
B6 Don't Even Know Her Name
B7 Bee Bah Bee Bah Bee Boe
Side C
C1 Whole Weird World
C2 Dream By Dream
C3 Doledrums
C4 Hidden Bay
C5 I Love My Leather Jacket
C6 The Great Escape
Side D
D1 Oncoming Day (Early Version)
D2 Dan Destiny And The Silver Dawn (Unplugged)
D3 Martyn’s Doctor Told Me
D4 I'll Only See You Alone Again
D5 Green-Eyed Owl (Live)
D6 Smile From A Dead Dead Face (Live)

Vanishing Twin furthers their exploration of decidedly experimental territories with Afternoon X. Crafted with a playful balance of humour and rigour, with each member embracing the role of the multi-instrumentalist and process, over outcome.

Following a series of line-up changes, Vanishing Twin is now the tightly honed collective of singer and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Lucas, drummer Valentina Magaletti (Holy Tongue, Tomaga, Moin) and bassist Susumu Mukai (Zongamin). Harnessing the diverse touchstones of its members; Lucas’ left-field song-craft, Magaletti’s singular approaches to experimental percussion, and Mukai’s long history in the production of electronic music, the band has refined a hypnotic sound at the juncture of minimalism, kosmische, post-punk, and dream-laden, psychedelic pop.

These eight fluttering abstractions, culled, collaged, and built upon from a vast constellation of instruments, samples, and unclaimed sources. Lucas employs her voice as an instrument and a generator of raw sound, weaving surreal imagery and uncanny juxtapositions amongst the dance and propellant drive. From infectious grooves of the album’s title track and the constrained minimalism of “Subito”, to the ambitious heights of pieces like ‘The Down Below’ and Lazy Garden, which unfurl a psychedelic avant-gardism on the scope and scale of David Axelrod and Scott Walker.

Vanishing Twin embark upon a new multifaceted journey that collectively culminates as the bands most forward-thinking and groundbreaking release to date.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Vanishing Twin take all the best elements of easy listening and psych-pop and wraps them in a veil of mystery and woozy unease. It's got gothic charm, but it's also got a litany of perfectly written hooks and masterfully crafted atmospheres. Yet another giant leap forwards for a brilliant band.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Melty
A2 Afternoon X
A3 Brain Weather
A4 Lotus Eater
A5 Marbles
Side B
B1 The Down Below
B2 Lazy Garden
B3 Subito

The genre-defying Welsh group define their vision with a breath-taking new album, Islet’s ‘Soft Fascination’ is an ecstatic experience in music, an explosion of emotion subsumed in sound. The album is filled with high energy cadence and meditations on collective joy, a balancing act underpinned with glorious melodies and Emma Daman Thomas’ evocative vocals that swirl in the symphonic surf. Self-produced, and with instruments recorded live with few overdubs, the effect is direct, it veers from the upfront and immediate to the spacious and challenging.

The first half is intentionally fast, intense, almost relentless. The second half is more spacious, as the album unravels and becomes more hazy. There is excitement and fascination and a willingness to show a lack of restraint in realising it, traversing hailstorms, hedgerows, broken promises and poisoned prayers; constantly breathing real life all in. Featuring standout singles: the pulsating ‘Euphoria’, the liberating flow of energy on ‘River Body’ and the recurring conundrum of choice of ‘Hat Person’, ‘Soft Fascination’ is an album of rare beauty.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Euphoria
A2 River Body
A3 Sherry
A4 Flailing
A5 Hat Person
B1 An Open Door
B2 Woolgathering
B3 Lemons
B4 Sleepwalker In A Fog
B5 Discipline
B6 Kits

‘Elistism For The People 1975-1978’ is a four-disc ‘bookback’ set featuring excerpts from the Pere Ubu scrapbook 75-82, written by David Thomas, including historical photos. It features the seismic debut album ‘Modern Dance’, it’s follow up ‘Dub Housing’ and ‘The Hearpen Singles’ and the incendiary ‘Live At Max’s Kansas City’. The set collects the bracing and brilliant Pere Ubu in their earliest incarnation, with the devasting one-two knockout blow of 1978 studio bookends.

“The Modern Dance is one of the first and greatest art-rock records.” The Guardian

Reinventing rock music from the ground up, Pere Ubu are equally at ease with Sun Ra and The Monkees, Glen Campbell and The MC5, Can and The Raspberries, they are the white Funkadelic.

“Harsh and willfully ugly, yet always mindful of certain rock & roll imperatives: a solid beat, snappy lyrics and engaging themes” Rolling Stone

As vital as ever, no band before or since has ever sounded like Pere Ubu - period.

TRACK LISTING

Disc One - The Modern Dance
1 Non-Alignment Pact
2 Modern Dance
3 Laughing
4 Street Waves
5 Chinese Radiation
6 Life Stinks
7 Real World
8 Over My Head
9 Sentimental Journey
10 Humor Me
Disc Two - Dub Housing
1 Navvy
2 On The Surface
3 Dub Housing
4 Caligari's Mirror
5 Thriller!
6 I, Will Wait
7 Drinking Wine Spodyody
8 (Pa) Ubu Dance Party
9 Blow Daddy-o
10 Codex
Disc Three - The Hearpen Singles
1 30 Seconds Over Tokyo
2 Heart Of Darkness
3 Final Solution
4 Cloud 149
5 Untitled
6 Street Waves
7 My Dark Ages
8 Modern Dance
9 Heaven
Disc Four - Manhattan: Live At Max's Kansas City 1977
1 My Dark Ages
2 Heaven
3 Sentimental Journey
4 Over My Head
5 30 Seconds Over Tokyo
6 Life Stinks

Kristin Hersh’s new album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all-consuming strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking; an elegant piece of personal reportage, a home movie caught in time.

Previously, the juxtaposition of light and dark has been essential to the drama of Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE, but this solo set is something of a departure; more inward looking, quieter but outspoken, underpinned by background noise for ambience and awkwardness.

“Passion sounds less angry, more grateful, I think,” Kristin muses, “sweeter, sadder. And somehow, no less alive… over car engines and rain in New England and whistling ducks and wind chimes in New Orleans, it all sounds wistful to me.”

‘Clear Pond Road’ is a life-affirming statement, a further part of the jigsaw, a very personal memoir, from street signs to snapshots; a late blossoming and coming-of-age from a true icon of independence. The record is both intimate yet expansive, written largely within the confines of Hersh’s home, making the proceedings ever more personal.

“Few artists understand the intensity of living one’s art like Hersh” The Guardian

“A fearless rock innovator” New York Times.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Bewitched Reruns
A2 Ms Haha
A3 Dandelion
A4 Constance Street
A5 Thank You, Corner Blight
Side B
B1 St. Valentines Day Massacre
B2 Reflections On The Motive Power Of Fire
B3 Eyeshine
B4 Palmetto
B5 Tunnels

‘Jump Into Love’ is the new album from Half Japanese, true DIY noise-rock royalty, led by the ever-effervescent Jad Fair. It’s a meeting of minds, a coming together from the world’s favourite indie-alt-rock outsiders. Atypically out there and off-kilter, the album wears its heart on its sleeve through a cascade of new, dark and brooding songs from the band who would be king. Loved by Kurt Cobain, Daniel Johnston, Penn Jillette and outsiders everywhere, Half Japanese continue their quest for answers; creating a soundscape for a post-zombie land where bells chime and it’s OK to say “Yes”.

It’s another adventure; series 20 from an introspective parallel world where the super prolific Jad Fair cogitates on life, love, giants, the possessed and even bigger issues that simply swell the brain. Musing on the writing process, Jad explains “I feel a need to do music and do song writing. It's something I really miss when I'm not doing it. There's a certain amount of tranquillity that's obtained from the fact that you can be working on songs each day. I think you use that certain portion of your brain that is otherwise not used.

I kind of kind of prefer using it than not using it.” Half Japanese currently includes Jad with John Sluggett, Gilles-Vincent Rieder, Mick Hobbs and Jason Willett, a veritable who’s who of DIY indie culture. ‘Jump Into Love’ was recorded at Tempo House, Baltimore, Russian Recording, Bloomington Indiana, Studio de la Trappe, Donneville France and la Casamurada, Tarragona Spain. The album was mixed by long time Half Japanese sparring partner Jason Willett at his home in Baltimore, Maryland.

TRACK LISTING

A1 It's OK
A2 We Are Giants
A3 True Love Will Save The Day
A4 Listen To The Bells Chime
A5 Jump Into Love
A6 The Answer Is Yes
B1 Shining Sun
B2 This Isn't Funny
B3 Step Inside
B4 Here She Comes
B5 Shining Stars
B6 Zombie World

Rising artist THALA finds strength in her vulnerability on new EP In Theory Depression. After forging a path in hazy, lo-fi indie, this forthcoming release is home to her sharpest, boldest songwriting yet, rendering these deeply personal explorations of self in vivid, ‘90s influenced indie-rock, and looming, psych-inspired walls-of-sound.

Recalling the tangled indie-rock of Holly Humberstone, Soccer Mommy, and Phoebe Bridgers, and underpinned by spiky, surging guitars, the songs unearth tenderness, even as they rage.

In Theory Depression marks the artist’s most introspective writing yet, but as much as the lyrics excavate from hidden depths, they’re often paired with widescreen, cinematic-sounding melodies. It brings to mind both the dazzling soundscapes of Mazzy Star, the witty bite of Liz Phair, and the subtle punk influences of Juliana Hatfield, who also spins the genre’s more relentless strains into snarling and bittersweet alternative pop.

THALA has just wrapped up a joint UK tour, alongside showcases at Austin’s SXSW and with Brighton’s Great Escape festival also on the horizon. Having already won the backing of BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, Wonderland Magazine and Clash, THALA’s ascent is only set to continue.

TRACK LISTING

A1 You Had 2
A2 Curtain Call
A3 Easy Out
B1 Are You Thinking Of Me
B2 Sink
B3 In Theory Depression

‘Dream From The Deep Well’ is the new album from celebrated Irish singer songwriter Brigid Mae Power. Recognised as a purveyor of dreamier pop with folky leanings, this new album is a departure; a unique marriage of traditional stylings and very modern melodies; a breath-taking soundtrack which underpins her gorgeous vocal.

Filled with personal tales of offspring and grandparents, the lovelorn and the lost, it’s the essence of re-imagined folk music, from the traditional intro and outro that act as bookends. It’s folk music, but not as we know it. In these ever-confusing and often annoying times, Brigid brings us modern folk for modern folk, with her evocative vocal, doubling back on itself with strings, steel guitar, horns and mellotron adding to its baroque loveliness. It’s waving back at her rootsy past, daubing new colours on a much-loved canvas. ‘Dream From The Deep Well’ is a new visionary beginning from a gifted songwriter.

Elsewhere, there’s the lovelorn longing of her version of Tim Buckley’s ‘I Must Have Been Blind’, alongside a moving tribute to the late Ashling Murphy, a 23-year-old Irish primary school teacher and traditional Irish musician who was attacked and killed while jogging along the Grand Canal just outside Tullamore, County Offaly. It's a harrowing story, delivered with overwhelming compassion. In the best tradition of old school folk music, it opens up a pressing issue to a wider audience.

It's an album that’s politically primed and socially aware; a broadside for us all, this is Brigid Mae Power’s most complete album yet.

“Her haunting voice, an instrument that raises the everyday to a near-mystical realm.” The Guardian.

“The Irish singer-songwriter flits between past and present; between traditional and modern forms; between the heaven in her voice and the earthbound epiphanies of her words.” Pitchfork.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
A1 I Know Who Is Sick
A2 Counting Down
A3 Maybe It's Just Lightning
A4 I Must Have Been Blind
A5 The Waterford Song
A6 Ashling
Side B:
B1 I'll Wait Outside For You
B2 Dream From The Deep Well
B3 I Don't Know Your Story
B4 Some Life You've Known
B5 Down By The Glenside

Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV are Decisive Pink - Ticket To Fame is their highly anticipated debut. After teasing the single ‘Haffmilch Holiday’ the duo amassed a rapturous response, with The Guardian calling it “a space-age-dancefloor swoon that brings to mind Kate Bush’s Waking the Witch” and the New York Times highlighting the single as “substantive and thoroughly hypnotic”. On their first LP they do not disappoint, calling on Kate NV’s experimental pop leanings and Angel Deradoorian’s taste for atmosphere and otherworldliness, Decisive Pink have created a playful and abstract album designed for escape and enchantment.

Electronic pop at it’s finest, the debut points to the fact that life is a puzzle, but you can still get a lot from living it. ‘Destiny’ is a smart take on the nature of belief, built on a question-and-answer format, where Angel plays a role as the seer, and Kate the enquirer. The poppy beat is reminiscent of Talking Heads’ ‘The Great Curve’, from Remain in Light. There again, it could be a sinister take on Will Powers’ ‘Kissing with Confidence’. The synth squeaks, squelches and toots sound like the timid affirmation of the initiate.

Ticket to Fame is also unashamedly romantic in atmosphere and tone. Romance is to be found in the simple pleasures, such as listening to a blackbird on the instrumental ‘Rodeo’, where warm synths, a melancholic guitar pattern and hissing rhythm combine with some vocal snippets to form a soothing contemplation. Then there is ‘Ode to Boy’; a perfect pop track. The walking into the room of “more than just an ordinary boy” (doubtless “drunk with fire”) allows a set of initially different, and shortened synth patterns to build to a glorious affirmation of the power of love.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Haffmilch Holiday
A2 What Where
A3 Ode To Boy
A4 Destiny
A5 Potato Tomato
Side B
B1 Cosmic Dancer
B2 Rodeo
B3 Interludé
B4 Dopamine
B5 Voice Message

Originally released in 1996, Come’s third album ‘Near Life Experience’ was the sound of a band heading into new territory, refining their dense mix of hypnotic noise-rock, blues and rock’n’roll song-writing. Lovingly remastered, this new version features three incredible bonus tracks ‘Prize’, ‘Strike’, ‘Hurricane II’ stemming from the same era, additional liner notes and photographs.

After Come's seminal 1994 release ‘Don't Ask Don't Tell’, bassist Sean O'Brien and drummer Arthur Johnson left the band to pursue other careers. Remaining members Chris Brokaw and Thalia Zedek recorded Near Life Experience with two different rhythm sections: one half of the album was recorded with drummer Mac McNeilly of the Jesus Lizard and Bundy K. Brown of Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol, the other half recorded with Kevin Coultas and Tara Jane O'Neil of Rodan and The Sonora Pine. Other contributors to the album included Edward Yazijian from Kustomized and Jeff Goddard from Karate, both rock bands hailing from Boston, MA.

The title of the album resulted from "a slip of the tongue, as Zedek states, she "was telling someone [she had] had a 'near life experience,' but meant to say near death experience. Chris [Brokaw] was cracking up at the imagery of that. Thus, the phrase was chosen as the album's title.
"Near-Life Experience is heavier, and at the same time prettier, than Come has ever sounded." CMJ New Music Monthly.

“Come is a re-energized, even more powerful band than they used to be, and Near Life Experience is their most concise and affecting release yet.” All Music.

Zedek and Brokaw might have compensated the loss of band members by recruiting new blood but the reward was huge, ‘Near Life Experience’ is Come’s most cinematic, diverse and accessible album.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
A1 Hurricane
A2 Weak As The Moon
A3 Secret Number
A4 Bitten
A5 Shoot Me First
Side Two
B1 Walk On's
B2 Half Life
B3 Sloe-Eyed
B4 Prize
B5 Strike
B6 Hurricane II

Expanded 30th anniversary re-issue of The Lemonheads’ classic 1993 album. The breakthrough record that took American alt rock global and catapulted Evan Dando into the hearts of a generation. With a wealth of unreleased demos, alternative versions and rarities - including covers of Victoria Williams, Buddy Holly and The Flying Burrito Brothers plus The Lemonhead’s take on the Cole Porter standard ‘Miss Otis Regrets’.

In the 90’s Evan’s Lemonheads produced hit after a hit, a string of super cool singles: ‘Big Gay Heart’, ‘Into Your Arms’, ‘It’s About Time’, and ‘The Great Big NO’. Pure genius filling the radio waves and taking the stage... Some 30 years on; Evan is still knocking that song writing thing out of the park and ‘Come On Feel The Lemonheads’ sounds as fresh and perky as it ever did. Amid the hits on the original record are stencils and outlines for yet more magical music and now this deluxe edition adds a second disc of demos and acoustic versions, plus a host of one-offs from sessions and compilations that add further colour to the myth and how it was created.

There’s the in-demand combo lovingly covering Victoria Williams’ ‘Frying Pan’ from her ‘Sweet Relief’ album, which is joined by an eclectic set of flipsides and out-takes, like their version of original garage punk nugget ‘Little Black Egg’ by The Nightcrawlers, Evan’s homage to Gram Parsons on the winsome ‘Streets Of Baltimore’ and Buddy Holly’s melancholy ‘Learning The Game’. Evan knows a good song when he hears it, as ‘Come On Feel The Lemonheads’ certainly proved.

TRACK LISTING

Disc One
Side A
A1 The Great Big No
A2 Into Your Arms
A3 It's About Time
A4 Down About It
A5 Paid To Smile
A6 Big Gay Heart
A7 Style
A8 Rest Assured
Side B
B1 Dawn Can't Decide
B2 I'll Do It Anyway
B3 Rick James Style
B4 Being Around
B5 Favorite T
B6 You Can Take It With You
B7 The Jello Fund ( + Lenny - Hidden Track)
Disc Two
Side C – Alternative & Acoustic
C1 Big Gay Heart (Demo)
C2 Being Around (Alternative)
C3 Into Your Arms (Acoustic)
C4 Down About It (Acoustic)
C5 Deep Bottom Cove
C6 Acoustic Rick James Style
C7 It's About Time (Acoustic)
Side D – Covers & Curiosities
D1 Miss Otis Regrets
D2 Learning The Game
D3 Little Black Egg
D4 Streets Of Baltimore (Acoustic)
D5 Frying Pan
D6 He's On The Beach
D7 Favorite T (Live In Session)

‘Mercy Of The Crane Folk’ is the beautifully accomplished second album from Athens GA’s Immaterial Possession. A theatrical soundscape littered with subconscious flashbacks, retro keyboard flurries, wandering Morricone-esque guitar and dreamy Sumac-like harmonies.

Featuring the ethereal eerie dream pop of former artist commune residents Cooper Holmes and Madeline Polites, with drummer John Spiegel and Elephant 6 descendant Kiran Fernandes (keyboards, clarinets, flutes). Additional contributions come from drummer Jon Vogt who can be heard on ‘Mercy Of The Crane Folk’ and ‘Birth Of Queen Croaker’.

It’s a haunting and immersive trip into the inner psyche of these nomadic soothsayers; a psychedelic dance party from a half-lit underground world; breathlessly eerie and all consuming; a salubrious sojourn that sounds like nothing else. Filled with a kind of peculiar optimistic uncertainty that any quest to make sense of a drowsy recollection of simpler and far better times would have; ‘Mercy Of The Crane Folk’ is soft and serene summoning up a fanciful folkloric place where, undoubtedly, the mysterious crane flock prosper.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
A1 Chain Breaker
A2 Mercy Of The Crane Folk
A3 To The Fête
A4 Medieval Jig
A5 Siren's Tunnel
Side Two
B1 Current In The Room
B2 Ancient Mouth
B3 Cypress Receiver
B4 Birth Of Queen Croaker
B5 Red Curtain

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

Josephine Foster's stunning collaboration with Jason Ajemian. Back on vinyl for the first time in over 16 years, this special edition features liner notes from former Chicago reader journalist Peter Margasak and new artwork. A 'remarkable... terrifyingly beautiful nightmare' of new folk, circa 2004. A minimal serenade for austere times; an off-kilter romance of voice and instrument compared to the brevity of early Bjork, featuring Fosterís fragile, hushed vocal, straight from old weird America, brought to life by way of Ajemian's bowed bass and effects, with a nod to the traditional English folk of yore in its construction.

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

Lovingly re issued on double vinyl for the first time since 1998. Come's final chapter sees Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw at their peak, refining their incredible blend of dissonant blues and cathartic noise-rock heightened by the intricate guitar dual-play and the added melody that permeates the songwriting. Includes full album download and new liner notes.

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

Available for the first time on vinyl since 1976, pressed on silver wax and featuring a limited edition foil embossed sleeve with extensive liner notes. Crosscut Saw sees the reformed Groundhogs with second guitarist Dave Wellbelove, sparring with the legendary Tony McPhee."Musically I'd gone back to the basics," McPhee told Sounds, the addition of a doodle of synth and a second guitarist notwithstanding. As a result; "Riffs galore permeate." (AllMusic). A suitably explosive prog-pleasing follow up to 1992's 'Who Will Save The World' and 'Hogwash' rekindling the fire of the blues in a new, heavy progressive setting, all set for a new guitar-powered age.

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

The seminal album from Half Japanese back on Limited edition Orange vinyl and featuring updated artwork and liner notes from Jad Fair and producer Kramer. This is the Zen of Half Japanese, of prolific songwriter Jad Fair; wide-eyed crooner, humorous raconteur and spontaneous storyteller. A genre-bending romp through the mind of the man, originally released in 1989 in a purple patch for the group, preceded by "Music To Strip By" and "Charmed Life". "Half Japanese were a song machine," attested Pitchfork, while AllMusic saw this album as a collection of "humorous lo-fi rock'n'roll hit singles."

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

Double vinyl release of Jazz Butcher favourites, oddities, unheard alternate versions + a live radio session from LA's KCRW - many of which have never been on vinyl. Features extensive liner notes and exclusive artwork. The compilation gathers a raft of indie chart hits, plus a host of truly eclectic Butcher tunes from his early Glass recordings through his time at Creation. ìThe Jazz Butcher is one of the most brilliant incisive pop writers that Britain has produced since the glory days of Ray Davies and Pete Townshendî Alan McGee, Creation. This collection compiles an essential alternative world view, tracing pop culture through the kaleidoscope of the ë80s and beyond, filled with a unique brand of wit and wisdom.

Death and Vanilla return with ‘Flicker’, presenting their unique pop music that defies categorisation. Housed in a beautifully austere post-ironic de-constructed sleeve; ‘Flicker’ is a modern reflection on these difficult times. World crises notwithstanding, they return reborn, re-arranged and revitalised after assimilating dub reggae, the motorik spirals of Can, the modal meander of Philip Glass and The Cure’s dreamier pop sounds; plus the twice removed symphonic ambience of Spiritualized and Talking Heads under heavy manners from Brian Eno. By osmosis their period of transition since 2019’s much darker ‘Are You A Dreamer?’ has hatched new eclectic electronica anthems riddled with melody lines, and layered for lush love.

Forming in Malmö, Sweden, Death And Vanilla gravitated towards vintage musical equipment; from vibraphone, organ and mellotron, to tremolo guitar and Moog synthesisers. Soaking up soundtracks from the 60s and 70s, listening to library music, kosmiche, French Ye-ye pop and 60s psych, Marleen Nilsson, Anders Hansson and Magnus Bodin were fashioned by the city’s austere industrial past and flat pack present, and all in the shadow of the Orsesund Bridge that links their dreamworld to mainland Europe and a darker reality.

Death And Vanilla at once sound like everything is possible; but nothing else at all. There is a flicker of hope for everyone.

“Deploying vintage instruments in their quest for melancholic utopia.” - Electronic Sound

“Baroque pop through a dreampop filter.” - The Guardian.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's hard to define exactly what Death and Vanilla do. It's deeply psychedelic but rooted in classic songwriting, taking familiar progressions and twisting them into perfectly produced fever dreams. 'Flicker' has a ton of melody, is warm and brooding but remains resolutely listenable, and endlessly fascinating.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Out For Magic
A2. Baby Snakes
A3. Find Another Illusion
A4. Perpetuum Mobile
Side B
B1. Looking Glass
B2. Mercury's Rising
B3. Fearless
B4. Transparent Things
B5. Perpetuum Reprise

Limited edition red vinyl reissue with DL card of the agit pop four-piece’s second album, Baby U Know. A heady collision of Raincoats-esque indie and ESG-paced rhythms fed through a kaleidoscopic pagan folk filter. The follow up to their critically acclaimed 2018 debut Yes I Jan, this release is a wordy slice of state-of-the-art social commentary wrapped in a perfectly-balanced soundscape that veers from funky minimalism to baroque dream pop.

With a hint of Ari Up styled vocals backed by a harmonious chorus of concern touching on everything from incantations, essential causes and systematic shopping, all underpinned by a raking violin and bewitching electronic hum.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Progressive Causes
A2 Sex Cult
A3 All Forgotten
A4 My Incantations, Herbs & Art Have Abandoned Me
A5 Vision Of Change
Side B
B1 Shopping In A New City
B2 You Have Bewitched Me
B3 Baby You Know
B4 Too Good To Be True
B5 Profile Picture – OTO Version

“Obviously, Bardo Pond are the greatest band in the world” VICE

Super rare recordings from 2002 and pressed on vinyl for the very first time. The third in the band’s series of limited-edition releases showcasing jam sessions and other miscellany. Like Fugazi on acid, a rage for the Velvets, a mantra with real purity of tone.

Somewhere between the ‘Dilate’ album in 2001 (“a combination of Kyuss and Spacemen 3” NME) and ‘On the Ellipse’ in 2003 ("Nowhere is feedback more melancholic, more emotive, than that fashioned by Bardo Pond” Brainwashed), Bardo Pond transcended into a mantra-like, multi-layered, cross-dimensional, wah wah powered nirvana.

In some circles, they say, spaceships wafted them away and they only returned some-time later, mind-altered and bedraggled, ears ringing. But that is the stuff of supposition.

As we already know, there is no ‘off’ switch on Bardo Pond, they are never knowingly unplugged. Indeed, the modal evolution of their sound continues unabated.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Sifaka
A2 Ecstasy Dub
Side B
B1 Lomand
Side C
C1 Tanked
C2 Trimurti
Side D
D1 Blue Turban 

Faten Kanaan's fifth LP Afterpoem is a mysterious, smudgy, bittersweet, and uniquely playful album. Deeply melodic, it continues her poignant exploration of counterpoint as a narrative tool.

From the repetitive structures of modern minimalism and early music/baroque influences - to more languid textural ebbs & tides, there's a warmth in her use of electronic instruments that gives the album a curiously timeless feel. Composing intuitively, her music has often been described as 'strange', mostly because it creates its own world - one that isn't easily categorised.

The album's title refers to the haze of a poem's intended meaning being abstractly fleeting and barely graspable. Glistening threads of understanding still touch us - the poetry becoming intimately personal, and no further literal explanation is needed.

"I find pleasure in music as a language that nudges and hints. There's a potential that lives in things left unsaid... meanings drifting in and out of focus... hovering like spirits. It's a romantic and earnest album... of yearning for lost places and people, while still looking out at the world with tenderness and humour".

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Instantly transporting you to a ancient, medievalesque world - Kanaan's palette of manipulated strings, harpsicord, organ and such like conjures up vivid images of places and times you've never experienced. Its intensely absorbing music for solitary listening. Shut the curtains, light a candle and get totally engrossed. Just no animal sacrifice please - leave that to the ancients.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Fin Août, Début Septembre
A2 Trenchcoat
A3 Ard Diar
A4 Ebla
A5 Florin Court
A6 Snowing
A7 Domari's Lamp
Side B
B1 Votive
B2 La Smorfia
B3 Castling
B4 Falconers
B5 Cascando
B6 Storm Signal

Neutral Milk Hotel‘s explosive 1996 debut, On Avery Island, receives the deluxe reissue treatment with a yellow and red vinyl 2xLP press, complete with revised artwork and cut at 45RPM.

Jeff Mangum’s songs are cryptic and crazed, his ideas fast and furious, and together they force the home-recording concept out of the basement and into a brave new world, a fuzzy masterpiece of experimental lo-fi recording.

Full of rapid-fire wordplay with true and heartfelt experimentation, both ambitious and eclectic, it’s not hard to see why this has been such an influential album.

Part of the fabled Elephant 6 collective, Neutral Milk Hotel won over many a music critic with this cult classic. The band are recognized as one of the most influential alternative acts to come out of the mid-90s and sowed the seeds for everything from anti-folk to the likes of Arcade Fire, Caribou and even Franz Ferdinand

TRACK LISTING

Side A (45RPM)
A1 Song Against Sex
A2 You've Passed
A3 Someone Is Waiting
Side B (45RPM)
B1 A Baby For Pree
B2 Marching Theme
B3 Where You'll Find Me Now
Side C (45RPM)
C1 Avery Island/April 1st
C2 Gardenhead/ Leave Me Alone
C3 Three Peaches
Side D (33RPM)
D1 Naomi
D2 April 8th
D3 Pree-Sisters Swallowing A Donkey's Eye

‘Barefoot On Diamond Road’ is the third album from Dutch singer/songwriter Amber Arcades. A record of engaging maturity, filled with slow motion builds and epic lifts that elevate it to dizzying heights.

Immersed in an all-consuming wall of sound, ‘Barefoot On Diamond Road’ is like My Bloody Valentine gone acoustic, it shouldn’t work but it does; it’s a juxtaposition of textures, from skittery, uneasy dancefloor beats to symphonic kosmische, a baroque pop tapestry side-stitched with cellos and harps with a plaintive steel guitar echoing in the distance.

Conceived remotely with original sparring partner Ben Greenberg (Danny Elfman, Depeche, Ryley Walker) in New York and Annelotte in Amsterdam. It’s a coming of age set in a new town with a new positivity underpinning her, as ever, beautifully crafted and highly personal observations on life, love and how it all should or could work.

“This record really reveals parts of me and my relationship with being a musician and making music. It’s like a reckoning, more in the moment, realizing how important it is to do things for the right reasons and how that can change your process into one that embraces what exists, including yourself.”

Amber Arcades’ new album ‘Barefoot On Diamond Road’ marks a new phase for a highly respected musician.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Amber Arcades' third album sees Annelotte de Graaf eschewing to some degree the woozy acoustic balladry of the brilliant 'European Heartbreak' for a much more electronic influenced sound, with fractured pads and grand percussion working their way underneath De Graaf's hypnotic vocals. It's a new direction, but couldn't be any more appropriate a development for a musician of her calibre.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Diamond Road
A2 Odd To Even
A3 Contain
A4 Water Stains
A5 Life Is Coming Home
Side B
B1 Through
B2 True Love
B3 Just Like Me
B4 I'm Not There
B5 You Could Never Let Me Down

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

TRACK LISTING

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

Part of a series of Fire re-issues celebrating 20 years of the legendary garage rock gurus from Atlanta, Georgia. This 2017 record features a musically evolved Black Lips, who still stay true to their original blistering take on fuzzy, dirty rock n' roll. God’s Art or Satan’s Graffiti features guest contributions from Yoko Ono was produced by Sean Lennon throughout 2016. During the recording, the band isolated themselves from the outside world, infusing the album with a focused liveliness similar to the spirit that brought them together in the first place. On Satan's graffiti or God's art? founding members Cole Alexander and Jared Swilley teamed with former guitarist Jack Hines (who played in the group from 2002-2004) and additions Oakley Munson on drums and Zumi Rosow on saxophone. A sonically captivating document that is as creatively unhinged as it is precisely executed, one of the rawest and most expansive albums in the band's storied history.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Overture: Sunday Morning
A2 Occidental Front
A3 Can't Hold On
A4 The Last Cul De Sac
Side B
B1 Interlude: Got Me All Alone
B2 Crystal Night
B3 Squatting In Heaven
B4 Interlude: Bongo's Baby
B5 Rebel Intuition
Side C
C1 Wayne
C2 Interlude: E’lektric Spider Webz
C3 We Know
C4 In My Mind There's A Dream
Side D
D1 Lucid Nightmare
D2 Come Ride With Me
D3 It Won't Be Long
D4 Loser's Lament
D5 Finale: Sunday Morning

Sixth full-length album from the gurus of Atlanta’s “flower punk” movement, from the heady daze of 2011 – finally back on vinyl and part of a series of Fire re-issues celebrating 20 years of the legendary garage rock gurus from Atlanta, Georgia. Arabia Mountain was recorded between Brooklyn and Atlanta in 2010, and with the collaborative assistance of celebrated producer Mark Ronson, Lockett Pundt of Deerhunter, and a human skull with a microphone jammed into it. “I was already a fan of the Black Lips coming into it and I definitely didn’t want to f**k up anything,” Ronson told Rolling Stone…and f**k up he did not. The production tests the limits of modern amplification, harkening to the full, meaty sound of The Stooges’ Fun House or Lola Versus Powerman by the Kinks. Unapologetic southern-fried twang, crunching through the gears with flowers blossoming everywhere. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Family Tree
A2 Modern Art
A3 Spidey's Curse
A4 Mad Dog
A5 Mr. Driver
A6 Bicentennial Man
A7 Go Out And Get It
A8 Raw Meat
Side B
B1 Bone Marrow
B2 The Lie
B3 Time
B4 Dumpster Dive
B5 New Direction
B6 Noc-A-Homa
B7 Don't Mess Up My Baby
B8 You Keep On Running 

The follow up to the widely successful ‘Good Bad Not Evil’, the 2009 album is a perfect amalgam of their high-end live shows and subculture songwriting, meshed tightly to the Lips’ distinctive howl. Finally back on vinyl and part of a series of Fire re-issues celebrating 20 years of the legendary garage rock gurus from Atlanta, Georgia. Rolling Stone, Spin, Filter, Magnet, Stop Smiling, The Fader, Anthem, Paste, and The NY Times-approved garage rock veterans’ trashy psyche pop gem. Unapologetic southern-fried twang, crunching through the gears in a haze of psychedelia. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Take My Heart
A2 Drugs
A3 Starting Over
A4 Let It Grow
A5 Trapped In A Basement
A6 Short Fuse
A7 I'll Be With You
Side B
B1 Big Black Baby Jesus Of Today
B2 Again & Again
B3 Old Man
B4 The Drop I Hold
B5 Body Combat
B6 Elijah
B7 I Saw God 

The classic third album from the Black Lips, originally released in 2005 and now back on vinyl and part of a series of Fire re-issues celebrating 20 years of the legendary garage rock gurus from Atlanta, Georgia. 16 tracks of grimy and chaotic punk, scuzzy and raw, and catchy as hell.

“Their strongest effort to date.” All Music
"The band at their trashy best; more melodic but every bit as psychotic. If The Royal Trux had listened to the Troggs instead of the Rolling Stones, they might have recorded this album. This baby is a masterpiece. Unapologetic southern-fried twang, crunching through the gears in a blitz of grimy bravado. Their music twitches with an engaging, wired vigour." ★★★★ Uncut. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Sea Of Blasphemy
A2 Can't Dance
A3 Boomerang
A4 Hippie, Hippie, Hoorah
A5 Not A Problem
A6 Gung Ho
A7 Everybody's Doin' It
A8 Feeling Gay
Side B
B1 Take Me Home (Back To Boone)
B2 Gentle Violence
B3 She's Gone
B4 Fairy Stories
B5 Dirty Hands
B6 Workin'
B7 Punk Slime
B8 Empassant

The debut album from post-folk travellers Immaterial Possession, a quartet, half of whom came from an artist commune and half who were card-carrying Elephant6 alumni. ‘Immaterial Possession’ is a rich tapestry of a record, a gorgeous, melodious return to a time when influences co-habited freely and whatever was close at hand made the music of the day.

All set to Syd Barrett-era Floyd and Nico with haunting lines, it’s perfectly tinged with gamelan harmonies, evocative Spanish guitars and xylophone. Exuding mystical symbolism; they wear luscious threads, they’re part of something/anything; perhaps a neo-modern-folk commune of artists in search of a canvas to stretch out over their juxtaposed influences.

Immaterial Possession was conceived by Atlanta natives, Cooper Holmes and Madeline Polites, who met while living together at an Atlanta artist commune that was integrated into the DIY music, theatre, and arts scene. Some years later the duo moved to the neighbouring musical town of Athens, GA. They were soon joined by seasoned drummer, John Spiegel, and eventually fulfilled with multi-instrumentalist Kiran Fernandes (keyboards, clarinets, flutes) - descendant of the Elephant 6 Collective scene.

It’s eastern, it’s eerie dream pop, it’s spacious and ethereal… A perfectly wild trip, and where it ends is immaterial.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Midnight Wander
A2 See Through Stars
A3 Tropical Still Life
A4 In The Loom
A5 Phase One
B1 Bosphorus Brine
B2 Circle Of Bells
B3 Rising Moons
B4 Accidental Summoning
B5 Phase Two
B6 Nightcap

Bending scuzzy boundaries, ‘Good Bad Not Evil’ is a coming-of-age garage rock classic record. Full of hedonistic delinquent anthems, the fourth studio album from Atlanta punks Black Lips reaches it’s 15 year anniversary. This deluxe edition includes unearthed photos and new liner notes from Jared Swilley and King Khan. The second disc features B-sides and rarities including ‘Cruising’, ‘I Wanna Dance With You’ and ‘Leroy Faster’. ‘Good Bad Not Evil’ perfectly encapsulates the disillusionment of the mid-00s America, slammed between warehouse parties, DIY generator shows and scattered party pics, which was recorded in a little house in Atlanta that had been converted into a studio called the Living Room. Referencing Shangri-Las in the title, this is where their knack for garage gems met Motown; with bass heavy grooves (later remixed by Diplo), a certified country twang and unabashed bravado. Instant hits like ‘Veni Vidi Vici’, ‘Cold Hands’, ‘Bad Kids’ and ‘O Katrina!’ immediately became Black Lips staples. This was a band caught in the eye of the storm, the touring continued, the parties didn’t stop, this was a band bending the scuzzy boundaries of their chosen genre. The record was hailed by the likes of Pitchfork, who proclaimed, “Black Lips are a go-to band for vintage lo-fi freaks, and their raucous live shows have helped them cross over outside of crusty dive bars. ‘Good Bad Not Evil’, however, is the record where naysayers, disinterested friends and acquaintances, people on the street, and anyone else within earshot has to sit up, shut up, and listen.” …and, shut up and listen they did.

Debut from genre-defying producer, Yosa Peit. Laurie Anderson meets Bjork; Prince overlapped with Arthur Russell and the hum of Blue Velvet, with jarred and splintered ambient production reminiscent of Aphex Twin. ‘Phyton’ gets a special expanded edition via Fire Records, featuring unreleased tracks; ‘Tyrann’, a live version of the haunting album track ‘Serpentine’ and end of the night lament, ‘Rise’.

‘Phyton’ is a conundrum with its own humour and beauty amid the electronica soundtracking; it’s a record that’s defied genre categories when first released on Tax Free Records two years ago. Yosa’s ascension from singer to producer is now complete.

“In my head I was making a movie,” Yosa told No Wave magazine, “I dreamed up a Coen Brothers’ movie scene for a few tracks.” The result is a haunting, provocative sound; a soundscape where songs merge and splinter, a trip that’s never predictable.

"The production is super fresh" Holly Herndon.

“Warped lo-fi meets glitchy electronica and pop” The Vinyl Factory.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Precious Lies
A2 Serpentine
A3 Anthy
A4 Curls
A5 Leaf I
B1 Serious People Chuckle
B2 Elephant
B3 Leaf II
B4 Lin
B5 New Stars
B6 Palm Tree Antenna
B7 Tyrann

Download Extras:
1. Serpentine (Live Bonus)
2. Rise (Bonus)

Jane Weavers experimental ensemble in collaboration with Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah, Fenella returns with a hallucinogenic excursion into ambient textures and hypnagogic drones on new album ‘The Metallic Index’. Taking further steps into their combined compositional universe with this follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed Fehérlófia album.

Loosely based on a genuine story accounting the short-lived abilities of a young psychic nurse in 1920’s London, Fenella’s niche muse justifies this celebratory return to vinyl but not once does it fall into the supposed tropes of staid hauntological-plunderphonics which repeatedly come to muddy our thirsty streams. Fenella make spirited melodic progressive pop music that pulsates with the same magnetism that fans of Jane Weaver's own The Silver Globe and Modern Kosmology have come to expect and hold closely.

Handcrafted using a generous archive of some of the best vintage equipment in the country (partly recorded at Soundgas studios in Darkest Derbyshire) the sound structures you hear at the heart of this album form the basis for Fenella's best work yet, while the individual spectral vocalisations and ethereal electronics that circle the room capture this trio's return, as peripheral visions, in full-phantasmic bloom.

"A sonic exaltation and refinement of craft, going further into the realms of atmospheric abstract cosmology blissfully morphed with the mythopoetic" The Quietus.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Pulsion (Nurse On Train)
A2 Instituts Métapsychique
A3 "A Young Girl Of Medium Height"
A4 Hexagonal Table
A5 Telekinetoscopes
Side B
B1 Shadow Apparatus
B2 The Metallic Index
B3 Lilacs Illuminate In Indigo
B4 After The Visions
B5 Stellar In Spectra
B6 Are They With You? (The Final Chord)

Josephine Foster's peculiar 2000 home recorded debut There Are Eyes Above is an essential introduction to her music that’s unfolded now for over two decades. Released for the first time on vinyl, this limited edition 10-inch pressing comes packaged with brand new artwork and is adorned by one of Josephine’s illustrations.

Lo-fi and unaffected by tradition or commercialism these initial recordings are sepia-tinted, folk-art music with powered by uke minimalism; it’s outsider music that still doesn't fit in.

Just 30-minutes caught in time before her 2001 follow up Little Life - this humble first incarnation includes here for posterity super personal lullabies and a glimpse into her songwriting evolution. It’s music from an era that only exists in your mind, with a bow to Tin Pan Alley for good measure.

This super rare collection, originally only released on CDR and sold at shows, remains an essential part of the curious oeuvre of this unique songwriter and singer.

“A dissonant soprano and lyrics about benevolence and old-time faith, Foster expertly weaves ancient and modern” The Guardian.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
One Hundred Songs I Sing
Emily Told Me
Teeter Totter
Little Life
I Am A Guest In Here
Side B
Robber Song
Hey Matthew
There Are Eyes Above
Godcake
Yippee I'm Leaving
Two Not One

“Gelb's semi-surreal observations lace things together perfectly.” UNCUT

Filled with loud and lucky abandon; heady steady and direct singalongs for the heart in constant turmoil. Giant Sand’s esoteric journey to ‘Heartbreak Pass’ is an exotic journey through hails of Youngian guitars, off-the-cuff jazz piano rounds and beautiful alt-country yearning. While containing only new songs for this album, this feels like a greatest hits and as such is a perfect entry point for Giant Sand neophytes. Fire Records give ‘Heartbreak Pass’ a long overdue repress on white vinyl, with new liner notes and updated artwork.

There’s a roll of the tongue, a couplet and some convolution underpinning Giant Sand’s 2015 opus ‘Heartbreak Pass’. So the story goes, so legend has it, a mere 30 years into their career, almost ten years ago, Giant Sand were regrouped and, for a fleeting second, someone made sense of it all (the words, the genre swapping sound, the roll call of friends and accomplices, the majesty of polar opposites attracting).

On ‘Heartbreak Pass’ the result from this lengthy travelogue is a memoir filled with trinkets exchanged along the way. Sure, the Arizona desert is there, gritty and unforgiving but Howe's one-man-band is joined by a throng of well-wishers, this time around including Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Grant-Lee Phillips and Ilse DeLange (Common Linnets), The Voices Of Praise Choir, oft-time collaborator John Parish, Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, Maggie Bjorklund on pedal steel, Italian singer/songwriter Vinicio Capossela and many more. It’s an album that travels far and shows its road weariness in places but it’s a celebration in all its ragged glory.

In his original sleevenotes Howe pondered the fact that “The album is roughly broken into three volumes - loud and lucky abandon; heady steady and direct (Gelb's vision of Americana); and the heart in constant turmoil and something about a transponder.” He summarised: “I can't recommend it, nor do I regret it. It's been one life split into two.”

TRACK LISTING

A1 Heaventually
A2 Texting Feist
A3 Hurtin' Habit
A4 Transponder
A5 Song So Wrong
A6 Every Now And Then
A7 Man On A String
B1 Home Sweat Home
B2 Eye Opening
B3 Pen To Paper
B4 House In Order
B5 Gypsy Candle
B6 Done

Released on gold vinyl, ‘The Coincidentalist’ and ‘Dust Bowl’ are two discs of Howe Gelb filled with randomness and happenstance, a typical treasure trove spanning all genres from alt country to Cohen-esque grandeur. They traverse, unflinchingly, his chameleon-like repertoire. This deluxe re-issue includes ‘Dust Bowl’ on vinyl for the very first time, with the records housed in a gatefold sleeve featuring updated artwork and liner notes.

‘The Coincidentalist’, originally released in 2013, features a raft of friends and collaborators including Bonnie Prince Billy, Andrew Bird, M. Ward, Steve Shelley, and Jason Lytle of Grandaddy with John Parrish on mixing duties. Ever the focal point of Giant Sand and Gelb releases, the Arizona Desert serves as a key inspiration for the record, animating the baron landscape with stories of those that have navigated them. Praise for the release was not short, with AllMusic proclaiming that it’s “one of Gelb's most realized efforts; despite its relaxed, airy presentation, it's musically and lyrically provocative, as poetic, strange, and mysterious as the desert itself."

The accompanying collection ‘Dust Bowl’ is a personal sketchbook of songs, a more stripped back set than it’s counterpart. Featuring everything from the country blues of ‘Porch Banjo’ and ‘John Deere’, to off-kilter piano ballads like ‘The Old Overrated’ and ‘Reality Or Not’ and the deconstructed desert pop on ‘Forever And A Day’ and the fragile ‘Man On A String’. ‘Dust Bowl’ is an insider’s view of Howe’s songwriting craft, a unique insight into the man himself.

“‘Dust Bowl’ was primarily for fans that have followed me for a while. ‘The Coincidentalist’ is for the friends of the fans.” Howe told Under The Radar. While Nightlife magazine reported that; “Without warning, the Giant Sand frontman and polymorphous countryman dropped this compilation of house recordings via Bandcamp… At a time when so much harmless, soulless folk resonates, Howe Gelb is a mandatory point of reference for any fan of the genre.”

TRACK LISTING

A1 Vortexas (feat Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy)
A2 Left Of Center
A3 Running Behind
A4 The 3 Deaths Of Lucky (feat. KT Tunstall)
A5 Unforgivable
A6 Instigated Chimes
B1 The Coincidentalist (feat. Andrew Bird)
B2 Triangulate
B3 Picacho Peak
B4 An Extended Plane Of Existence
B5 Looking That Way
C1 Dust Bowl
C2 Porch Banjo
C3 Lost Love
C4 Man On A String
C5 Reality Or Not
C6 John Deere
C7 Windblown Waltz
D1 Redelivery Blues
D2 Forever And A Day
D3 Plane Of Existence
D4 A Coffee Song
D5 The Old Overrated
D6 Mystery Spot
D7 Blink Of An Eye

The Black Lips return with their 10th studio effort ‘Apocalypse Love’, scorched with their trademark menace, it cryogenically mutates all recognised musical bases; it spins yarns about vintage Soviet synths, Benzedrine stupors, coup de’ tats, stolen valor and certified destruction, all set against a black setting sun. Since the turn of the decade the band have transformed from austere country pioneers, into a set of Lynchian surrealists, hellbent on recalibrating the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Singer and saxophonist Zumi Rosow muses, “It’s a weird dance record, one that reflects the moment that the world’s in right now…”

‘Apocalypse Love’ is an album that emanates from a dive bar jukebox in the back of your mind; with a playlist that bends between tub thumping doom-glam, Plastic Ono singalongs, cocktail-shaken space age pop, Morricone reverberations and lo-fi outsider acoustic-punk, with mariachi horns, theremins, drum machines and harmonies filtering through the infectious melodies. Stand-out number ‘Among The Dunes’ is an amorphous platform-heeled anthem, a signature sax-fuelled stomper filled with trippy swagger. While opener ‘No Rave’ proffers a hypnotic locked groove, with Cole Alexander’s trademark snarl delivered over a sulphurous wall of distorted hedonism, a dystopian anthem for an apocalyptic manifesto. Meanwhile, the twisted exotica of ‘Whips Of Holly’ with its silver screen façade is like the soundtrack to a classic Theda Bara vamp-fest. As the band venture into their third decade, ‘Apocalypse Love’ is proof that The Black Lips show no sign of slowing down…

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: 10th album from Atlanta outfit Black Lips, 'Apocalypse Love' is a self-proclaimed "weird dance record" - and I'm inclined to agree. It's scuzzy, twisted and has a strange but also sincere innocence to it - like a school disco in the Red Room from Twin Peaks.

TRACK LISTING

A1. No Rave
A2. Love Has Won
A3. Stolen Valor
A4. Lost Angel
A5. Whips Of Holly
A6. Apocalypse Love
A7. Operation Angela.
B1. Crying On A Plane
B2. Sharing My Cream
B3. Among The Dunes
B4. Tongue Tied
B5. Antiaris Toxicaria
B6. The Concubine 

LA-based musician Marina Allen’s spectacular debut proper, and follow up to last years acclaimed 18 minute mini-opus, ‘Candlepower’.

‘Centrifics’ is a joyful collection of observations and questions about the self, the world, and how they interact. Awe-inspiring reflections accompany mesmerizing melodies while Allen’s extraordinary range and depth of singing showcases a wide array of influences from Karen Carpenter to Karen Dalton, from Joanna Newsom to Fiona Apple, from Cate Le Bon to Waxahatchee, via Meredith Monk and the New York avant-garde.

Produced, engineered and mixed by Chris Cohen. Co-engineered by Jonny Kosmo.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Celadon
A2 Getting Better
A3 Or Else
A4 Smoke Bush
A5 Superreality
Side B
B1 New Song Rising
B2 Halfway Home
B3 My Stranger
B4 Foul Weather Jacket Drawing
B5 Gardiner's Island

Heady with hooks and unforgettable melodies, gliding on deeply danceable grooves, always with Air Waves’ innate compassion, concision and uncanny pop sense shining throughout. A masterpiece that’s beautifully simple, instantly accessible and entirely addictive. Featuring Cass Mccombs, Skyler Skjelset (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Luke Temple, Brian Betancourt (Hospitality, Sam Evian), Rina Mushonga, Frankie Cosmos, Lispector, David Christian, Ethan Sass, and Ben Florencio.

‘The Dance’ has waited three years to see the light of day and it comes to us now, blinking, smiling in the widening light of 2022 feeling more needed and necessary but also more joyous than ever before. It’s both a snapshot of these songs as they were recorded but crucially, in the intervening time those songs have had additional arrangements crafted by Nicole, created remotely and virtually, with a few like-minded collaborators. The result is simultaneously Air Waves freshest, most spontaneous yet finessed album yet.

Nicole Schneit released their first independent album in 2009 under the Air Waves moniker, a name inspired by a Guided By Voices song - subsequent albums like 2010’s ‘Dungeon Dots’ (which featured a guest vocal from fellow Brooklynite Sharon Van Etten), 2015’s ‘Parting Glances’ and 2017’s stunning ‘Warrior’ crystallised Schneit’s vision of loose-but-focused, convivial but startling pop. ‘The Dance’ continues that trajectory but finds Schneit opening up their music to a more fluid sense of space and movement, while keeping their lyrical eye between the personal and the political, from the specific to the universal with a haiku-like directness and suggestion.

You won’t find a better soundtrack for the solidarity, strength, romance and movement we all need right now than ‘The Dance’ - Air Waves’ best album yet.

TRACK LISTING

A1. The Roof (feat. Luke Temple & Rina Mushonga)
A2. The Dance
A3. Star Earring (feat. Lispector)
A4. Alien (feat. Cass McCombs)
B1. Black Metal Demon (feat. Frankie Cosmos & Merce Lemon)
B2. Treehouse
B3. Wait
B4. The Light
B5. Peer Peer