The idea for this album is centred around Cole's childhood. 2014 Forest Hills Drive is the address of his childhood home in Fayetteville, NC - which he bought back this year - coincidentally also in 2014. The record title celebrates this; and the album tracks centre around various times in his life: growing up, chasing his dreams and fame, and coming full circle to realize none of that matters - and rather family / friends and being able to come home is what counts.

TRACK LISTING

"Intro"
"January 28th"
€�"Wet Dreamz"
"03' Adolescence"
"A Tale Of 2 Citiez"
"Fire Squad"
"St. Tropez"
"G.O.M.D."
"No Role Modelz"
"Hello"
"Apparently"
"Love Yourz"
"Note To Self"

Forest Swords (aka electronic producer/composer Matthew Barnes) returns. Having spent the past few years working as an in-demand composer and sound designer – writing music for ballet, film and video games – 'Bolted' was recorded over the last twelve months in Barnes’ home city of Liverpool. His ad hoc studio in a former vehicle and munitions factory (with connections to shadowy guerilla artists The KLF) became a gateway for him to explore, using a combination of hardware, software and tape machines to mould and sculpt a sound world for the album.

Across its 11 tracks he dives deeper into his unique sonic vocabulary (including personal samples of Neneh Cherry and the late Lee Scratch Perry) to weave together a set of tracks that sounds equally muscular and bleak, haunting and euphoric. While his previous album – the acclaimed 'Compassion' released in 2017 – saw Barnes toy with widescreen technicolour, the world of ‘Bolted’ is tightly wound, taught, with a sense of aching urgency like never before.

Recommended if you like… Aphex Twin, Björk, Oneohtrix Point Never, Andy Stott, Boards of Canada, Burial, Massive Attack.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Crystalline synth stabs and soaring melodies, gritty post-industrial soundscapes lightened with Barnes' unfaltering ear for sound. It's like OPN listened to a bit of yacht rock and fancied a few melodies amongst the clattering FM madness. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Munitions
2. Butterfly Effect
3. Rubble
4. Night Sculpture
5. Caged
6. Tar
Side B
1. The Low
2. Chain Link
3. Hjope
4. End
5. Line Gone Cold

Once the listener has set the needle down on the record and heard for themselves the intimacies and impressionism, abstraction and unfiltered emotion found in ‘The Forest In Me’, Xylouris White’s fifth album release (and first since 2019’s ‘The Sisypheans’), one may wonder what was the mood of the room in which this music came to be. Only three people can say for sure, and even then...

Guy Picciotto: “In late 2019, we had begun taking steps to working on new material. In a haphazard fashion, Jim and I started tracking drums in my basement, cutting them up into shapes with no set landing in mind. Some of it we sent to Giorgos in Crete - he responded with his lyra and his lute. Without intention we had initiated a process that would soon become more ruthlessly mandated by the world events that separated and isolated us to three corners of the globe in the following year.”

Giorgos Xylouris: “Every harmonic is a fallen tree trunk that I climb over. I’m stepping in muddy waters in the woods or coming to a clearing - that is part of the journey I take whether I am playing music with an audience or recording alone. It’s a journey around the forest of my inner self. That’s how I see it.”

Jim White: “I ended up in the pandemic in rural Australia on care duty and then back in Melbourne alone in a house with an imminent, ultimately very long lockdown.”

Giorgos: “The past several years created a very particular situation that none of us had ever lived through, in such seclusion in our homes and within ourselves. In the isolation I found other wrinkles/folds in my inner being. That helped create this music, as did the unusual way we went about recording.”

Jim: “The night before the curfew I acquired some mics from a studio and bought an interface. And learnt to record. And tracked. George tracked in Crete. Guy, in New York, helped assemble the structures and find combinations.”

Giorgos: “So every note, every phrase, every instrument came from in and around our inner forests.”

Guy: “On previous projects our customary way of working was to be in one room all together; an inward facing triangle of instant communication leading to marathon sessions from which we would build an archive from which to sculpt the records, finding the binding lines that connected the statements we were trying to make.”

Giorgos: “Using whatever instruments I had with me in the studio at home, in the silence I discovered things I hadn’t had the peace to uncover previously. I saw that music isn’t static, moving only in its usual ways within the parameters of its centrifugal force–it can move a long way further in other directions.”

Guy: “With this record we still had that stash to draw from but now we were also adding material composed from this enforced new geometry; this different, wider triangle where we each assumed different roles than we had previously with writing, engineering, arranging all mixed up like finger paints.”

Giorgos: “While we were recording, I noticed that the music had a certain solitude about it, both from the title and from inside. That led us to find more music from within that we had not yet discovered.”

Jim: “The idea emerged, naturally nourished and nourishing a record with none of our usual angles and themes, no verbal language, no angst nor sudden dynamics, a more subtle structure. And we found ‘The Forest In Me’.”

TRACK LISTING

Second Sister
Latin White
Seeing The Everyday
Missing Heart
Tails Of Time
Night Club
Forest In Me
Red Wine
Underworld
Witnessed By Angels
Memories And Souvenirs
Long Doll

‘To The Forest To Live A Truer Life’ is a deluxe LP with fully artworked custom design inner sleeve. All copies come with a poster insert designed by YoshimiO. Jacket design by lauded Japanese designer Ooido Syoujou.

YoshimiOizumikiYoshiduO is comprised of YoshimiO (Boredoms, OOIOO) and modular synthesist izumikiYoshi.

YoshimiO uses the piano as her primary instrument here for the first time, alongside her singular voice. Her every move is bent, stretched, and mutated by IzumikiYoshi’s modular synthesizer into cascades of brightly colored waves and dotted constellations of sound.

YoshimiO, previously known as Yoshimi P-We, is a founder and drummer for Japanese rock band Boredoms, vocalist and multiinstrumentalist of OOIOO, and a member of supergroup Free Kitten alongside Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon.

IzumikiYoshi is a highly regarded synthesist, having contributed synthesizer, sampler, and programmed midi instruments on Boredoms classics ‘Vision Creation Newsun’ and ‘Super æ’.

YoshimiO worked as a session player and vocalist on The Flaminig Lips’ acclaimed album, ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’, which was named after her.

TRACK LISTING

1. YofuyO
2. YO Me
3. YoY 7
4. OmimiO
5. YosunnyO
6. Sun19
7. Mini YO
8. Niminya
9. Mull
10. 1.yoO
11. 33yOng

Long lost and much sought after Private Press from Western Massachusetts band Forest. A distinctive Acid-Jazz / crossover AOR / Soul sound, think Mother Earth jamming with Tim Buckley. This re-issue comes with 6 previously unreleased tracks. Forest was a rarity at the time in a band that consisted of two drummers, Gary Stevens and Bob "Rox" Girouard . The band was a well seasoned touring band who shared the bill with the likes of The Fabulous Rhinestones, The James Montgomery Band, Zonkaraz to name a few. The album covered various styles from blues to acid-jazz with the aim of securing a major record deal. Many of Forest’s alumni have gone on to highly successful careers in music: Jim Kimball relocated to Nashville to work alongside Faith Hill and Reba McIntyre, Bill Holloman with Danny Gatton, The Gatlin Brothers, Nile Rodgers and Chic, The Fab Faux and Bruce Springsteen, and Wes Talbot founded a music production library called The FRESH Music Library.

TRACK LISTING

1. Findin' My Way Back Home
2. I Can't Live Without You
3. Fly Away
4. Nice Guys And Fools
5. Go On Away
6. Only Who You Know
7. Blue-Eyed Lady
8. Crazy Days
9. Chasing Dreams
10. I Need Love
11. The Long Wait
12. Give It Up
13. Lady Luck
14. Love Ya

On the back of 2017’s Come Play The Trees and 2019’s superb Stunning Luxury Snapped Ankles return with the utterly brilliant Forest Of Your Problems.

Growing out of the bohemian East London art performance scene the band have previously cited influences as diverse as Fela Kuti, Morris dancing, Old Norse texts, Jean Luc-Godard, and Lightning Bolt. Whilst playing warehouse and squat parties the self-confessed “forest folk” kept their identities secret by taking to the stage in shamanistic costumes, ghillie suits being the attire of choice in the past. A few line-up changes later and this still mysterious band continues to baffle and enthrall in equal measure.

On their third album Snapped Ankles descend from the trees once again but the forest is not what it once was, the ancient woodland of Come Play The Trees is now awash with filthy money and gentrification. With guitars set to stun and synths in tow, the four piece tells the story whilst getting your feet shuffling and your body moving.

“Rhythm is our business, and it’s time to get down to business!” is their mantra throughout Forest Of Your Problems and they thoroughly oblige with tribal beats, propulsive kosmische grooves, electronic pulses, and raucous half-spoken / half screamed post-punk vocals.

Imagine a paganistic brew of Goat’s woodland psych, Can’s motorik beats, Gang Of Four’s punk-funk and Mark E. Smith’s snarling vox riding over the top of it all. The forest has a new soundtrack, it’s time to get down there and dance to the beat.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: A perfect amalgamation of 70's post punk, Fall-esque ramblings, tribal beats and driving Krautrock grooves. We like!!!

Barry says: Snapped Ankles are back! Their first two outings went down super well in the shop, and this latest offering moves even further down the post-punk wormhole, but maintaining their bang-on dedication to a riff. It's a delicate mix, balancing the rawkous fire of their previous LP's while maintaining a cohesive audio narrative but is pulled off with aplomb here.

TRACK LISTING

1. A1. Forest Of Your Problems
2. A2. The Evidence
3. A3. Shifting Basslines Of The Cornucopians
4. A4. Undilated Lovers
5. A5. Susurrations (In The Forest)
6. B1. Rhythm Is Our Business
7. B2. Psithurhythm
8. B3. The Prince Is Back
9. B4. Xylophobia
10. B5. Forest Of Your Problems (Outro)

Lydia Ainsworth’s 3rd album, Phantom Forest, introduces a lush, complex dream world that the singer, composer, and producer created and inhabited largely on her own. She produced all the songs, and wrote and performed everything on the self-released collection outside of a re-imagined cover of Pink Floyd’s “Green is the Color” and 2 other tracks (“The Time,” “Give It Back To You”), which started as instrumentals written by Survive’s Kyle Dixon (who composed the Stranger Things soundtrack with his bandmate Michael Stein), to which Ainsworth wrote melodies and added lyrics. Ainsworth, who’s relocated to Los Angeles from Toronto since 2017’s Darling of the Afterglow, explains that the collection revealed itself to her “as a play taking place in Mother Nature’s vanishing home,” aka Phantom Forest, and that she’s singing from 3 perspectives: herself, Mother Nature, and Greek Chorus.

For instance, of the album’s opener, “Diamonds Cutting Diamonds,” she explains: “The Greek Chorus sets the scene, narrating and offering direction on how to enter Phantom Forest. It’s my hope that the listener will imagine the narration to be directed to them as well, as they begin the journey of the album.” You’ll get a sense of this from the collection’s edenic cover art and the playful, pastoral video for the album’s first single, “Can You Find Her Place.” Its inspiration came from Ainsworth’s love for Italian Renaissance painter Botticelli’s 15-century masterpiece “Primavera,” an allegorical representation of the burgeoning fertility of the earth in spring. She notes: “The video features the Greek gods of the painting in a choreographed Baroque style dance.”

Keeping with the personal feel of the collection, her sister Abby Ainsworth directed the clip. In line with the classical and historical depths of Phantom Forest, Ainsworth, who holds a Masters Degree in film scoring composition from NYU and studied composition as an undergrad at McGill, notes that although the album might be considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. “Even if I’m dealing purely with synths,” she says, “The songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so I’ve included my string arrangements on ‘Tell Me I Exist’ and ‘Can You Find Her Place.’ I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on ‘Edge of the Throne,’ ‘The Time,’ and ‘Floating Dream,’ and wove those live elements into my programmed elements.” Phantom Forest is a beautiful, vast collection that mixes the historical and the hands on, with hooks about the apocalypse and people obsessively using face-recognition software to see what paintings their face match with, in search of some kind of connection. It’s a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but that can also exist on a purely emotional plane. In all cases, it asks that you listen, and take some kind of action. 

TRACK LISTING

1.Diamonds Cutting Diamonds
2 Tell Me I Exist
3 Can You Find Her Place
4 Edge Of The Throne
5 Kiss The Future
6 The Time
7 Give It Back To You
8 Floating Dream
9 Green Is The Color

Two LPs and four singles in, WEIRD OMEN still evade direct comparisons to … anyone. Descriptions abound: “Primitive garage, a deluge of trash brass, reverb, and fuzzzzz”, “a crypto-hypnotic garage trance, blending ‘60s tones and psychedelic neo-garage”, and “France’s strangest garage-psych-rock trio - comprised of guitar, sax, and drums. Lost somewhere betweenThe Cramps and The Kinks”. For sound-alikes, you might look to Morphine and James Chance and the Contortions, but all this tells you is that while Weird Omen has influences like everybody else does, their sound is their own. There’s a helluva pedigree here too: King Khan & the Shrines , Bee Dee Kay & the Roller Coaster, Lost Communists, Limiñanas, We Are Not Indians, Escobar, Anomalys… Balancing between a gloomy psychedelic atmosphere and fast-paced punk energy, Weird Omen manage to make some new with the old, imposing their own unique style. Refusing to succumb to one genre only, the band bravely blends garage, exotica, rockabilly, and psych.The lineup is straightforward, if unusual; a storming rhythm section comprised of drummer Remi Pablo and guitarist Sister Ray and what can only be described as a lead baritone saxophonist, Fred Rollercoaster. Weird Omen defies the current trends of garage; or more exactly, builds upon its foundations to make something completely different out of it. 

TRACK LISTING

01. A Place I Want To Know
02. Wild Honey
03. Please Kill Me
04. Earworm
05. Surrealistic Feast
06. Collection Of Regrets
07. The Goat.
08. Trouble In My Head
09. Out Of My Brain
10. I Will Write You Poetry

Forest Bathing, or Shinrin-yoku, is a term that means “taking in the forest atmosphere.” It was developed in Japan during the 1980s and has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine.

“Taking in the forest atmosphere” became the inspiration for A Hawk and A Hacksaw’s newest album. Their forest bath of choice is the Valle De Oro National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. This new album features ten original compositions by Heather Trost and Jeremy Barnes. The opening track “Alexandria” features Barnes on the Persian Santur, an ancient hammer struck dulcimer, and Trost’s string and woodwind melodies. The composition evokes the long trader’s route between what is now Bulgaria and the wealthy cities of Istanbul and Alexandria.

The band has always had a bird’s eye view of this part the world— looking for the connections between places and even eras: a belief in the power of music to reach across borders and unite. The band is based on the idea of collecting music and inspiration through travel. They are not of a place, but their music evokes places along a route. This is not urban music. It’s rural: songs of the woods and roads where there are no sidewalks or street lamps to light your way.

While the bulk of the music heard on this record is played by Barnes and Trost, they do have some incredible guest performances, namely the clarinet virtouso Cüneyt Sepetçi, from Istanbul, Hungarian cimbalom master Unger Balász, and closer to home, Chicago trumpeter Sam Johnson, Deerhoof’s John Dieterich and Noah Martinez, of the band Lone Piñon.

TRACK LISTING

1. Alexandria
2. A Broken Road Lined With Poplar Trees
3. A Song For Old People / A Song For Young People
4. The Shepherd Dogs Are Calling
5. Night Sneaker
6. The Magic Spring
7. The Sky Is Blue, The Desert Is Yellow
8. Babayaga
9. The Washing Bear
10. Bayati Maqam

Forest Swords, aka acclaimed Merseyside-based producer Matthew Barnes, returns with his eagerly anticipated new full-length record.

“Compassion" engages with an uncertain world we’re experiencing, distilling it into a unique sound territory: Barnes' exploration of the mid-point between ecstasy and frustration, artificial and human feels timely and affecting. The result is an assured, compelling body of work, tying together the ancient and future: weaving swathes of buzzing digital textures, field recordings, clattering beats and distorted jazz sax with fizzing orchestral arrangements.

"Like many, with all that's been going on since I started making the record, I've struggled to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel," says Barnes, "so I realised there's some sort of power in trying to create our own instead. I'm inspired by the ways we're communicating now, for better or worse, and thinking about new channels we can distribute ideas. The idea of looking for flexible future ways of expression and language, that bends to our needs quicker, really excites me”. Barnes launched the record with a unique experiment in new ways to disseminate music, personally sending album tracks through messaging app WhatsApp to anyone who asked.

The album shifts from 'The Highest Flood's skeletal bounce to 'Panic's claustrophobic paranoia; the rapturous hyperballad 'Arms Out' to the windswept and cinematic ‘Knife Edge’, navigating through the orchestral glitch of 'War It' to decaying jazz thump of ‘Raw Language’. The album is equal parts disorienting and immersive, balancing bold sweeping gestures and crumbling textures; tracks seemingly disintegrating and reassembling at points across the album. Blending both digital and specially recorded brass, strings and vocals, Barnes's processing never truly makes it clear what's new or old, sampled or unique, constantly blurring and toying with the line between digital and acoustic.

There will also be a variety of multidisciplinary projects set to run through his Dense Truth umbrella over the coming year: collaborations across dance, performance, film and music. Previous Forest Swords projects include devising and scoring contemporary dance piece ‘Shrine’, composing for the ‘Assassin’s Creed’ video game, collaborating with Massive Attack on their new music, and scoring the first movie made entirely with drones – 'In The Robot Skies’ – which debuted at the BFI London Film Festival.

Central to this enthralling world is “Compassion", an album that's as weighty as it is vulnerable, sculpting the most striking parts of his previous work into something that feels urgent and necessary, and cementing Barnes as one of the UK's most significant electronic artists and composers.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: I’ve always had a soft spot for Forest Swords paranoid, rhythmic soundscapes. That the emotion that inspires Matthew Barnes' music is born of his view of the current political situation, the brooding angularity hung on its sparse frame is hardly surprising. An uneasy marriage of analogue and electronic fragments, shot through, reflecting the world situation perhaps, with a germ of hope.

TRACK LISTING

War It
The Highest Flood
Panic
Exalter
Border Margin Barrier
Arms Out
Vandalism
Sjurvival
Raw Language
Knife Edge

In the space of four tripped out releases, Forest Jams have established themselves as the go-to label for any long travelling, genre staddling space cadets in search of sounds from beyond. Originally an edit-only affair, after three psychedelic dancefloor spectaculars from Albion, Spaziale and Mori Ra, the imprint switched things up and invited Basil & Rogers to take us on a kaleidoscopic voyage into the furthest regions of the live disco universe with an EP of their own compositions. Now, chief starman Elleorde bursts through earth's atmosphere and drops into orbit around that great mirrorball in the sky with four tracks of wormhole disco, cosmic funk and starry-eyed Balea-rock. Elleorde was born 3 years ago at Camp Cosmic, an anything-goes music festival in a Swedish forest that's recently been transferred to the countryside of Germany. Elleorde's debut record shares the same themes as the festival - with a combination of time travel, the cosmos, space journeys, sunsets on exotic planets, and love in space. The set opens at warp speed, blazing through the night sky on rapid fire sequences and a roaring 4/4 rhythm. Thick wah guitar licks and squelching bass bubble up with a wormhole churn, building the dancefloor density before that Spanish guitar and whistled melody harness the bright sun in Morricone's spaghetti sky. The tempo drops for "My Cosmic Partner", an astral love song alive with solid bass, chiming West Coast guitars and buzzing synth-work. Standing firm with a foot in both the disco and rock camps, this seventies style masterpiece wears its flares with flair, letting that hair drift in the solar winds. Over the corner and we find Elleorde firing up the hyperdrive with the steely beat of "Europa From Mars", an intergalactic boogie bomb complete with stomping bass, dreamy keys and more laser fire than a Death Star trench run. Finally, "Some Piece Of Love" finds Elleorde flying at full tilt, blasting his way through the electrodisco singularity thanks to Bobby O styled bass, noodly vocoder and a properly proggy chord progression. Summoning Tantra, Chilly and Patrick Cowley into Seth Brundle's Telepods, the UK producer manages a flawless gene splice to create the perfect space disco entity. So, with no more delay, step in to the time travel machine, "Open Wide and Eat the Future".

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Making like the Silver Surfer, Forest Jams continue to harness the power cosmic here, inviting unknown UK producer Elleorde to deliver four tracks of searing space disco goodness. Falling somewhere between Tantra, Morricone, Seals & Croft and Cerrone, this intergalactic spectacular glitters like C-Beams near the Tannhäuser Gate.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Black Talon
A2. My Cosmic Partner
B1. Europa From Mars
B2. Some Piece Of Love

New EP of seven new tracks, from Austin Texas Psych Rock band.

It follows their album Indigo Meadow (2013) where once again The Black Angels proved themselves the undisputed avatars of contemporary psychedelic rock, simultaneously exalting the genre’s kaleidoscopic past as they thrust it further into the future. the band brought new focus to their wide-ranging songcraft, the righteous riffs and dogmatic drones gaining increased power as they fuel a more expansive emotional terrain. A 21st century trip as transcendent as any in the canon.

“Imagine tossing bands from the pantheon of American psychedelia like The Electric Prunes, Count Five, 13th Floor Elevators and The Seeds into your blender, adding a splash of Sabbath and a dollop of early Soundgarden or Mudhoney, and you’ve got Austin’s The Black Angels.” Associated Press.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sunday Evening
2. Tired Eyes
3. Diamond Eyes
4. The Flop
5. An Occurrence At 4507 South Third Street
6. The Executioner
7. Linda’s Gone

Four years of slow-burning success on from the rolling primal rhythms and joyous arpeggios of his 2010 debut album 'Holkham Drones', Luke Abbott makes a bold return to the Border Community with his sublime second album offering ‘Wysing Forest’.

Named after the Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire who hosted Luke as their first ever musician-in-residence over a six week period during the winter of 2012, the album comprises a series of improvised live recordings, edited and compiled after a period of after-the-act reflection into one rapturous movement. The finished article’s 52-minute duration may have been chopped into nine track-sized chunks for its official album release, but this is most definitely an album which is greater than the sum of its parts, designed to be listened to in one immersive go.

“‘Wysing Forest’ has a very particular arc to it an the tracks only make sense in the context of that arc,” Luke explains. “Structuring the album to work as a whole was quite a challenge, almost more of a challenge than making the music, but I think I’ve ended up with something that has a kind of internal logic.” And though only a pair of tracks - ‘Free Migration’ and ‘Highrise’, together forming the subtle peak that marks the mid-point of the album - approach ‘Holkham Drones” idiosyncratic lumpen danceability, it is thanks to Luke’s perfectly judged elegant transitional dynamics that neither piece - although as dancefloor-directed as anything he has ever done before - feels out of place amongst the album’s more mellow moments.

Hailing from Stockholm, couple Linnea and Joel Edin, aka The Forest & The Trees are a striking addition to the canon of quintessential bittersweet indie-pop to emerge from Sweden in recent years. Creating delicately crafted songs, their work showcases a talent for combining playful melodies with the perfectly balanced harmonies of their vocals.

Drawing on the music they listened to as teenagers, bands like Popsicle, The Cardigans and The Cocteau Twins, has driven their sound to develop precision, while retaining a balance of the carefree and complex. Such a middle ground was hard to find, so despite early plans to produce the record themselves, they eventually decided to bring in Johannes Berglund, who'd previously worked with The Radio Dept. Shout Out Louds and The Knife, seeking some necessary objectivity. “We’ve been acquainted with Johannes for a few years and we totally love the work he’s been doing. So we asked if he wanted to mix our single “Putting Down the Gun” which he did and we were so pleased with the result,” they explain. “It felt like he really understood what we wanted and could help us with that final push. He really works with his gut and puts so much feeling into his mixes - we’ve been very lucky to get to work with him.”

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Classic albums from the early days of Thrill Jockey.

Originally released in 1996/1998 - these have been out of print on vinyl for nearly a decade.

Both albums are being re-issued and will be sold as a 4xLP set.

‘Flemish Altruism’ will feature new/updated artwork.

Both will include download coupons for the first time.

A Minor Forest recently reunited and played a very well received show in San Francisco (with a Bay Guardian cover story)

The band will tour the US in April & May of this year.

Limited to 60 copies for the UK and Ireland.

TRACK LISTING

Flemish Altruism
...But The Pants Stay On
Bill's Mom Likes To Fuck
Ed Is 50
So Jesus Was At The Last Supper...
Jacking Off George Lucas
Speed For Gavin
Perform The Critical
Straw Transfer
Dainty Jack And His Amazing Technicolor Cloth Jacket
Beef Rigger
The Loneliest Enuretic

Inindependence
The Dutch Fist
Erik's Budding Romance
Look At That Car, It's Full Of Balloons
... It's Salmon!
The Smell Of Hot
Michael Anthony
Discoier

Forest Fire’s electrifying new full-length with a focus on mature singer-songwriter pop writing and instant-classic hooks.

Recommended for fans of The Velvet Underground, Television, Pink Floyd as well as contemporaries The Walkmen and Phosphorescent.

This is the band’s second album, after 2008’s Survival, which garnered some great critical responses and made several top 10 lists.

“A general air of beat-poet cool and a careless articulacy to the lyrics that heightens the impression of the band as quintessential SoHo bohos” - The Guardian.

“These are songs of the most universal of human themes… the battle between the darker side of human instinct and angelic purity” - Drowned In Sound.

The Black Lips take "Back From The Grave" style garage punk frenzy to such extremes of slavering cacophony that they border on experimental noise rock at times. This is their fabulous second album from 2004.

Seemingly from the romantic epoch, strangely untouched by postmodernity, from the snowy John Bauer forests just under the Polar circle. Someone, or something, making sounds of loneliness on dew-covered harps of spider web. One for fans of Flaming Lips etc.

TRACK LISTING

1. Out In The Streets
2. Just One Day
3. I Like Your Dreaming
4. Vivienne
5. We Can Go Away
6. In The Forest
7. Soon Be Over
8. Always Your Love

"Trials" is the second album by Shady Bard. Telling the story of a village ravaged by fire, the new songs fuse cinematic instrumentation and vivid imagery to create textured symphonic pop with explosive postrock crescendos. Founded in Birmingham six years ago, by the band’s main songwriter and musical director Lawrence Becko, Shady Bard quickly built a cult fanbase through a series of limited edition, handcrafted releases and unique live performances.

Their debut album, "From The Ground Up" was released in 2007 on Static Caravan, winning the band critical acclaim in all areas of the media. A release in Japan on XTAL Records followed and things went truly international when MTV chose the song "Treeology" to soundtrack their global climate awareness campaign. Meanwhile in the US, ABC was quick to pick up on the album’s heartfelt, cinematic songs and began to feature tracks regularly on their Emmy and Golden Globe-winning drama, Grey’s Anatomy, gaining shady bard a new worldwide fanbase. Lawrence (vocals, piano, guitars, saxophone) who was born in London and raised in Athens, Greece, explains: ‘Our first album sounds very British to me but "Trials" is much more inspired by my mediterranean childhood… there are songs about forest fires, earthquakes, volcanoes, the sea…’ 

From the gentle, unassuming piano opening of "Trials", to the melodramatic pop of "Volcano!", "Daphne" and "Night Song", and the explosive flamenco of "Trials (Part III)", the songs are inspired in part by the devastating forest fires in the Peloponese in 2007. Surging from the symphonic "Plan B" and "Lava Waltz", to the solemn, hymn-like epilogue, "In Memoriam", the album charts a journey through interweaving narratives and themes, soundtracked by latin beats, textured strings, drunken choirs and triumphant brass.

Lawrence is joined by Jasmin Hollingum (violin, French horn, vocals) who crafts the band’s detailed handmade packaging and mercandise; Aidan Murphy (guitars) whose classical guitar and effects create the evocative, cinematic motifs and soundscapes which underpin the songs; and Alex Housden (cello), who is also the band’s undisputed tour Scrabble champion. The line-up is augmented to a six-piece with the addition of Sophie Barnes on trumpet and Nick Gosling on drums.

"Down The Hillside" is the debut solo album by Nine Black Alps' Sam Forrest. In spring 2008 Sam took time off to write and record a semi-acoustic album in his house in York, England. With the exception of backing vocals courtesy of singer-songwriter Hayley Hutchinson and drums by Alan Leach, all of the instruments were played and recorded by Sam which lend the album a stripped-back lo-fi atmosphere a world away from the hard rock sounds of Nine Black Alps.

Broken Sound bring us this double A-side single from Brooklyn's finest lo-fi alternative rock / folk act; Forest Fire. Taken from the band's forthcoming album "Survival", this 7" single is a perfect collectable precedent to the album's release and includes two of the finest and most instantly recognisable tracks from the set. This release will not be available digitally, it is strictly vinyl-only.

Seemingly out of nowhere comes this 'best of year' challenger from Sacramento's Ganglians. Fusing the unhinged avant-outer-ethereal qualities of Panda Bear with the perfect pop of the Beach Boys and a wide-eyed-dreamy surround-sound hi-gloss, this is an astonishing all encompassing album that's gonna amaze everyone that hears it. It's probably been best described by the band themselves, 'this album is pure naive headphone acid pop to drive to, at least that's what was going through our heads.' - Ganglians. Totally recommended!!!

Tracklisting
1. Something Should Be Said
2. Voodoo
3. Lost Words
4. Candy Girl
5. Valient Brave
6. The Void
7. To June
8. 100 Years
9. Crying Smoke
10. Modern African Queen
11. Try To Understand

This five track EP was recorded at the same sessions as Guillermo Scott Herren's critically acclaimed album "Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian", and contains three brand new tracks, as well as two radical reworkings of tracks from that set. As with the LP, these cuts wrap beats around psychedelia, mixed with avant-rock, hiptronica, hip hop, beats wonky grooves and beyond. Unlike "Everything She Touched..." however, the tracks here move beyond micro ideas and are fleshed out into full length tunes.

Absolutely stunning debut album of ambient electronic space rock from a frighteningly young three-piece from South London - their first full release, having had an early version of album track "The Tinderbox" included on the Type Records "Free The Future" compilation. Having met at school, Sam Purcell, Josh Rothberger and Karl Jawara started experimenting with various musical instruments and sounds using software and basic recording equipment, inspired by the music they were into and with the aim of creating their own wall of sound. After 14 months they emerged with something they were sufficiently happy with to allow it to be heard by others, and ultimately that brings us to the present day - an eight-track, 45-minute debut that is comparable to any in this field in recent times. Our Sleepless Forest's music is multi-layered, complex and dense, yet dedication and attention are rewarded as the intricate slow-build melodies are revealed beneath the feedback, crackle and hiss. Reminiscent at times of the likes of Loscil or even Radiohead's more out-there moments but on the whole avoiding the predictable comparisons associated with music of this genre, this is an album that simply has to be heard.