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.

The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette is a 1969 album by American rock band the Four Seasons. Member Bob Gaudio teamed up with Jake Holmes to create a psychedelic concept album which adjusted the band's stylings to the changing times of the late 1960s. Reissued for RSD 2024

Phenomenal soul/funk 2-sider which has deserved a repress so badly. "Bi-Centennial - 1976" has been comped on the fourth volume in the "Can You Feel It" compilation series. The flip side, "Love One Another", was featured on "Countdown To... Soul 2". Now available on a good old 45 RPM single re-issue.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bi-Centennial - 1976 (feat. Speckled Rainbow)
2. Love One Another (feat. Speckled Rainbow)

There’s long been a growl festering in the West, an earthen rumble fed by tectonic tension, acrid smoke, and sun-parched air. The brew has boiled over lately, a pressure-cooked chaos that can no longer be contained. The growl has grown to a howl.. the howl is at the door. Few are as ready to meet the madness head on as Frankie and the Witch Fingers. On ‘Data Doom’ the band hurtles the listener head first into the wood-chipper of technological dystopia, systemic rot, creeping fascism, the military-industrial profit mill, and a near-constant erosion of humanity that peels away the soul bit by bit. With a fuse lit by these modern-day monstrosities the band seeks to find salvation through a thousand watt wake-up of rock n’ roll exfoliation.

After tearing through the tender heart of the Midwest, Frankie and the Witch Fingers found themselves clamped down on the fried edges of Los Angeles, carving out a niche that’s equal parts molten tar pit teardown and cataclysmic careen. Following releases on Hypnotic Bridge, Let’s Pretend, and Permanent, the band landed between the twin barbs of Greenway and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, a perfect fit for their frenetic blend of rhythmic whiplash and sonic soul shake. Anchored by songwriters Dylan Sizemore and Josh Menashe, the band has kept a rotating door of friends and collaborators moving through their midst over the past few years, coalescing post-pandemic into a symbiotic stage beast that’s become the beating heart of their new album, ‘Data Doom’. Bassist Nikki “Pickle” Smith and drummer Nick Aguilar have been road-hardened and readied over the last year, laying the groundwork for the new record’s 300 pounds of pummel and propulsion.

That heft was hurtled onto tape in the band’s Vernon, CA studio space. The locale let the city’s grit creep into the crevices of their new record, a wild swing at the sternum that hits the listener like an adrenaline shot to the heart. Wiping away the haze of stoned-ape psychedelics that permeated their opus ‘Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters’… the band favors an asphalt assault of rock, riff, and amphetamine rhythm. As they’ve wound out of the last phase, their sound, over a series of singles, has begun to thicken and throb. It’s coalesced into a darker strain that ingests the explosive impulses of gas-crisis-era proto-punk, the rhythmic insistence of 70’s German Progressives, and the elasticity of funk fusionists alike. They’ve welded their arsenal of influences to a chassis of nail-bitten bombast that drives ‘Data Doom’ into the midst of the maelstrom.

The band has shared bills with Kikagaku Moyo, Ty Segall, Oh Sees, Cheap Trick, and ZZ Top, churning their stage-side scorch into household recognition — burning through a barrage of multicolored vinyl pressings and sparring with indie heavyweights for Billboard chart positions. ‘Data Doom’ looks to cement that status, a sinewy slab cut on the stone of social collapse and licking the blade in anticipation of what’s to come. “Never name the darkness itself,“ intones Sizemore, but the darkness is already here, embedded in every moment, inextricable from the capital, sabbatical, sustenance, and solace of the modern age. ‘Data Doom’ is the elixir and the exorcism, it’s the reformation rendered in rock ’n roll.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Data Doom' is a wonderfully weird melting pot of freak-out psych, angular guitar riffery and Frankie And The Witch Fingers' own brand of wry politicism. This is classic Frankie fare, but with the volume and weirdness turned up to 11. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Empire (7:31)
2. Burn Me Down (3:08)
3. Electricide (3:35)
4. Syster System (6:18)
Side B:
5. Weird Dog (3:58)
6. Doom Boom (4:10)
7. Futurephobic (3:39)
8. Mild Davis (4:46)
9. Political Cannibalism (4:26)

Death Is Not The End sub-label 333 hit again with a reissue of a rarely encountered piece of prime UK digi, courtesy of Franklyn Bernard aka Frankie B - mixed at Fashion's A Class Studio in Clapham, and released on the Ital Stuff label in early 1986.

Frankie B began his recording career with producer Bert Douglas, first releasing on his Reggae City label in 1984 with the No More Tears 7" under his birth name Franklyn Bernard. In 1985 he then linked up with Ital Stuff - a production team consisting of three brothers who also helmed the Sweet & Bitter Band. Operating a small eight track studio in the basement of their house in Balham, Ital Stuff had recently been responsible for putting together and laying down the backing track to Dixie Peach's classic Pure Worries, released on the Jah Tubbys label in 1985. Upon playing Pure Worries to Frankie he was immediately inspired to lay down his own vocal on the track, which too features Dixie Peach contributing vocal harmonies - it was recorded late 1985 and mixed down along with a ferocious dub side at South London's A Class Studio, eventually seeing release in early 1986.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Speaker-tweakin', UK digi dub from 1986 and a true sound system joint that's remained deliciously illusive until now. One of only two records by the producer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pressure Me
2. Dub Pressure

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

"ZAM, the Double-Album underground breakout release from Los Angeles Psych heavyweights Frankie and the Witch Fingers, completely out of print since its initial release in 2018. This is the record fans have been asking for. RSD Exclusive 2xLP color vinyl edition of 5000. New Artwork featuring RSD exclusive Mirror/Reflective Jacket Artwork & Bonus Flexi 7"" with an unreleased demo. 24"" x 24"" double sided full color poster. RSD Hype Sticker on Shrink. Proudly reissued by Greenway Records. Mirror Red & Chrome Wide-Spine Jacket Double 12"" - A/B on Black Smoke & C/D on Red Smoke Vinyl Poly-Lined Inner Sleeves Unreleased Demo Flexi 7"" Double Sided 24""x24"" Poster"

"This album is about having to focus our collective energies on the small things around that we can control to find joy. A distraction from the larger systemic problems that feel so overwhelming and are so very out of our collective hands... for now...”

Love As Projection is the new album by Frankie Rose, her fifth studio LP and second for Night School following the reissue of her interpretation of The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds. Frankie Rose has forged an enviable musical legacy, from playing with bands like Crystal Stilts and The Vivian Girls but on Love As Projection she takes a bold step into electronic pop production. A sumptuous recorded statement, it dances in ecstasy and broods on the tumult of the western world’s decay in equal proportion. At the heart of the album is glowing, confident songwriting, resplendent in hooks and choruses but still touched with an optimism undimmed.

After spending nearly two decades establishing herself across New York and Los Angeles independent music circles, Rose re-emerges after six years with a fresh form, aesthetic, and ethos. Celebrated over the years for her expansive approach to songwriting, lush atmospherics, and transcendent vocal melodies and harmonies, Love As Projection is a reintroduction of her established style through the lens of contemporary electronic pop. Recorded with producer Brandt Gassman and mixed with long-term collaborator Jorge Elbrecht this is the album Frankie Rose has been building up to her entire career.

More than a rebirth, a refinement, a resurgence, Love As Projection boasts a widescreen scope: a long- form project heavily considered for half of a decade, culminating in the most personal and accessible collection of art-pop that Frankie has ever written. When Rose aims for the pop jugular as in first lead track Anything, the result is unstoppable. A majestic pop song built for radio, it erupts into an irresistible chorus that marries classic epic 80s American pop with the cult effervescence of Strawberry Switchblade “It’s like a prom scene in a John Hughes movie. It’s a hopeful song about abandoning fear even if the world is quite literally on fire.. In the end, at least we have each other,” says Rose. Sixteen Ways further boasts a propulsive, massive chorus, though tempered by a cynicism built in global post-truth, global malaise. “It’s about getting your hopes up, but simultaneously making lists in your head about how it will never work out in your favour.”

The big anthems don’t let up there. On DOA some massive, rolling drums lathered in big mid-80s gated reverb dovetail with a syncopated baseline for the ages as Rose’s vocal sails effortlessly above. The effect isn’t unlike ethereal vocalists Clannad circa Howard’s Way or Enya jamming with Simple Minds in their stadium-conquering heyday. Rose tempers the adrenalin with heart-tugging bittersweet tones and there are plenty of them. Sleeping Night And Day takes its time with an off-the-cuff chorus, swirling around in harmony and chorus-bass. Saltwater Girl picks up the balladeering baton with another nod to album track-mode Switchblade, deep space opening up in the mid-tempo drum track and soupy, digital atmospherics. Album closer Song For A Horse, reimagines modern Pop production a-la-PC Music but shorn of the meta-atmosphere. Pianos, swelling synths, minor keys cut through with major. These moments, also seen in Feel Light offer ballast to the soaring pop choruses. Moments like these are big oceans of emotion to fall into before being led out by Rose into a bright new day.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Love As Projection takes all of the sheen of 80's synth pop and injects it with a modern take on songwriting and structure, with the IDIB brand of melodic, euphoric electronica clearly an influence. It's both warmly nostalgic and beautifully written, as evocative as you'd ever want.

TRACK LISTING

01. Sixteen Ways
02. Anything
03. Had It Wrong
04. Saltwater Girl
05. Feel Light
06. DOA
07. Sleeping Night And Day
08. Molotov In Stereo
09. Come Back
10. Song For A Horse

Bubbling up from the psychedelic tar pits of L.A., Frankie and the Witch Fingers have been a constant source of primordial groove for the better part of the last decade. Formed and incubated in Bloomington, IN before moving west to scrap with Los Angeles’ garage rock rabble, the band evolved from cavern-clawed echo merchants to architects of prog-infected psych epics that evoke a shift in reality. After a stretch on Chicago/LA flagship Permanent Records the band landed at yet another fabled enclave of garage and psychedelia - Brooklyn’s Greenway Records, now working in tandem with psych powerhouse LEVITATION and their label The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the groups latest effort is dually supported by a RAS / Greenway co-release. After years of searching for the specific alchemy that would tear open the cosmos, they found the formula with the addition of Shaughnessy Starr on drums in the summer of 2018. They began a new cycle and tripped into tip-on double gatefold territory, flesh-ing out their lysergic impulses into a monolith of sound that closes in from all sides. The band reached new levels of grandiosity and utilized every minute to manifest their psych-soul Sabbath in four dimensions, spilling psychic blood on a populace ready and eagerly waiting. Yet, as expansive, inventive, and immersive as any studio album might be, the band is born for the stage. As their live prowess caught the ears of some legends in their own right, the band practically lived on the road last year with stints opening for Oh Sees, Cheap Trick and ZZ Top. Along the way the constant pulpit of the stage would form ZAM into a transformative experience while plotting their next permutation of space and time. That transformation, Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters... (repeated infinitely,) rises like a Phoenix from the road tar, van exhaust, and ozone crackle of amps in heat. Once off the road it was recorded in just five blistering days. Though, while the tour may have hammered the album into shape and brought about a wind of change, those changes stretched to the band itself as well. In the wake of the tour the band’s longtime bassist Alex Bulli made his exit, with the majority of bass parts on the album being written and played by multi-instrumental magician Josh Menashe with occasional pitch in from songwriter Dylan Sizemore. Stripped to their core the band has created their most ambitious work to date, an album that takes the turbulence of ZAM and crafts it into a beast more insidious and singular than anything in their catalog. Moving forward, the band has taken on new blood. Completing their lineup, Nikki Pickle (of Death Valley Girls) will join them working the new album out roadside on bass. A new horizon of Frankie and the Witch Fingers draws near and we’re all set to follow them into the unknown.

TRACK LISTING

1. Can You Hear Me Now?
2. Activate
3. Simulator
4. Reaper
5. Urge You
6. Sweet Freak
7. Where's Your Reality?
8. Cavehead
9. Michaeldose
10. MEPEM...

Several things happened before a warm day when I met the four members of Frankie Cosmos in a Brooklyn studio to begin making their album. Greta Kline spent a few years living with her family and writing a mere 100 songs, turning her empathy anywhere from the navel to the moon, rendering it all warm, close and reflexively humorous. In music, everyone loves a teen sensation, but Kline has never been more fascinating than now, a decade into being one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation. She’s lodged in my mind amongst authors, other observational alchemists like Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti, but she’s funnier, which is a charm endemic to musicians.

Meanwhile Frankie Cosmos, a rare, dwindling democratic entity called a band, had been on pandemic hiatus with no idea if they’d continue. In the openness of that uncertainty they met up, planning to hang out and play music together for the first time in nearly 500 days. There, whittling down the multitude of music to work with, they created Inner World Peace, a collection of Greta’s songs changed and sculpted by their time together. While Kline’s musical taste at the time was leaning toward aughts indie rock she’d loved as a teenager, keyboardist Lauren Martin and drummer Luke Pyenson cite “droning, meditation, repetition, clarity and intentionality,” as well as “‘70s folk and pop” as a reference for how they approached their parts. Bassist/guitarist Alex Bailey says that at the time he referred to it as their “ambient” or “psych” album. Somewhere between those textural elements and Kline’s penchant for concise pop, Inner World Peace finds its balance.

The first order of business upon setting up camp in Brooklyn’s Figure 8 studios was to project giant colorful slides the band had made for each track. Co-producing with Nate Mendelsohn, my Shitty Hits Recording partner, we aimed for FC’s aesthetic idiosyncrasies to shine. The mood board for “Magnetic Personality” has a neon green and black checkerboard, a screen capture of the game Street Fighter with “K.O.” in fat red letters, and a cover of Mad Magazine that says “Spy Vs. Spy! The Top Secret Files.” On tracks like “F.O.O.F.” (Freak Out On Friday), “Fragments” and “Aftershook,” the group are at their most psychedelic and playful, interjecting fuzz solos, bits of percussion, and other sonically adventurous ear candy. An internal logic strengthens everything, and in their proggiest moments, Frankie Cosmos are simply a one-take band who don’t miss. When on Inner World Peace they sound wildly, freshly different, it may just be that they’re coming deeper into their own.

Inner World Peace excels in passing on the emotions it holds. When in the towering “Empty Head” Kline sings of wanting to let thoughts slide away, her voice is buoyed on a bed of synths and harmonium as tranquility abounds. When her thoughts become hurried and full of desire, so does the band, and she leaps from word to word as if unable to contain them all. As a group, they carry it all deftly, and with constant regard for Kline’s point of view.

Says Greta, “To me, the album is about perception. It’s about the question of “who am I?” and whether or not the answer matters. It’s about quantum time, the possibilities of invisible worlds. The album is about finding myself floating in a new context. A teenager again, living with my parents. An adult, choosing to live with my family in an act of love. Time propelled us forward, aged us, and also froze. If you don’t leave the house, who are you to the world? Can you take the person you discover there out with you?”

- Katie Von Schleicher

TRACK LISTING

Abigail
Aftershook
Fruit Stand
Magnetic Personality
Wayne
Sky Magnet
A Work Call
Empty Head
Fragments
Prolonging Babyhood
One Year Stand
F.O.O.F.
Street View
Spare The Guitar
Heed The Call

Night School is proud and excited to team up with Frankie Rose to reissue her much loved interpretation of The Cure’s masterpiece Seventeen Seconds.

Pressed on Dark Red Transparent Vinyl with new, artist approved artwork, Frankie Rose’s Seventeen Seconds is the art of the cover album done right. "Since I already think it's a perfect record, I tried not to reinterpret too much and stick to similar sounds as the original, but with a twist.”

Dark Red Transparent Vinyl Pressing of 600.

TRACK LISTING

A Reflection
Play For Today
Secrets
In Your House
Three
The Final Sound
A Forest
M
At Night
Seventeen Seconds

The follow up to Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Liverpool was released in 1986, produced by Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson the album was top ten all over the world

The album features the singles Rage Hard, Warriors of the Wasteland and Watching the Wildlife.

The debut album by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was released in 1984 after the runaway success of the singles Relax and Two Tribes. It had orders of over a million copies and went straight in at number one in the UK album chart.

Produced by Trevor Horn, it was seen as a ground-breaking release and helped define pop music production in the eighties.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Well…
The World Is My Oyster
Snatch Of Fury (Stay)
Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Side Two

Relax (Come Fighting)
War (And Hide)
Two Tribes (For The Victims Of Ravishment)

Side Three

Ferry (Go)
Born To Run
Happy Hi
Wish (The Lads Were Here)
Including The Ballad Of 32

Side 4

Krisco Kisses
Black Night White Light
The Only Star In Heaven
The Power Of Love
Bang

Bubbling up from the psychedelic tar pits of L.A., Frankie and the Witch Fingers have been a constant source of primordial groove for the better part of the last decade. Formed and incubated in Bloomington, IN before moving west to scrap with Los Angeles’ garage rock rabble, the band evolved from cavern-clawed echo merchants to architects of prog-infected psych epics that evoke a shift in reality. After a stretch on Chicago/LA flagship Permanent Records the band landed at yet another fabled enclave of garage and psychedelia - Brooklyn’s Greenway Records, now working in tandem with psych powerhouse LEVITATION and their label The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the groups latest effort is dually supported by a RAS / Greenway co-release.

After years of searching for the specific alchemy that would tear open the cosmos, they found the formula with the addition of Shaughnessy Starr on drums in the summer of 2018. They began a new cycle and tripped into tip-on double gatefold territory, flesh-ing out their lysergic impulses into a monolith of sound that closes in from all sides. The band reached new levels of grandiosity and utilized every minute to manifest their psych-soul Sabbath in four dimensions, spilling psychic blood on a populace ready and eagerly waiting. Yet, as expansive, inventive, and immersive as any studio album might be, the band is born for the stage. As their live prowess caught the ears of some legends in their own right, the band practically lived on the road last year with stints opening for Oh Sees, Cheap Trick and ZZ Top. Along the way the constant pulpit of the stage would form ZAM into a transformative experience while plotting their next permutation of space and time.

That transformation, Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters... (repeated infinitely,) rises like a Phoenix from the road tar, van exhaust, and ozone crackle of amps in heat. Once off the road it was recorded in just five blistering days. Though, while the tour may have hammered the album into shape and brought about a wind of change, those changes stretched to the band itself as well. In the wake of the tour the band’s longtime bassist Alex Bulli made his exit, with the majority of bass parts on the album being written and played by multiinstrumental magician Josh Menashe with occasional pitch in from songwriter Dylan Sizemore. Stripped to their core the band has created their most ambitious work to date, an album that takes the turbulence of ZAM and crafts it into a beast more insidious and singular than anything in their catalog. Moving forward, the band has taken on new blood. Completing their lineup, Nikki Pickle (of Death Valley Girls) will join them working the new album out roadside on bass. A new horizon of Frankie and the Witch Fingers draws near and we’re all set to follow them into the unknown.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Activate
2. Reaper
3. Sweet Freak
4. Where's Your Reality?
5. Michaeldose

SIDE B
1. Can You Hear Me Now?
2. Simulator
3. Urge You
4. Cavehead
5. MEPEM...

Close It Quietly is a continual reframing of the known. It’s like giving yourself a haircut or rearranging your room. You know your hair. You know your room. Here’s the same hair, the same room, seen again as something new. Close It Quietly takes the trademark Frankie Cosmos micro-universe and upends it, spilling outwards into a swirl of referentiality that’s a marked departure from earlier releases, imagining and reimagining motifs and sounds throughout the album. The band’s fourth studio release is a manifestation of their collaborative spirit: Greta Kline and longtime bandmates Lauren Martin (synth), Luke Pyenson (drums), and Alex Bailey (bass) luxuriated in studio time with Gabe Wax, who engineered and co-produced the record with the band. Recording close to home— at Brooklyn’s Figure 8 Studios— grounded the band, and their process was enriched by working closely with Wax, whose intuition and attention to detail made the familiar unfamiliar and allowed the band to reshape their own contexts. On opener “Moonsea,” an unaccompanied Greta begins, “The world is crumbling and I don’t have much to say.” Take that as a wink and a metonym for the whole album, as her signature vocals are joined by Alex’s ascending bassline and Lauren’s eddying synths, invoking a loungey take on Broadcast or Stereolab’s space-disco experimental pop. There’s much more than “not much” to say here, and it's augmented and expanded by experimentation with synth patches, textures, and other recording nuances courtesy of Wax. As the lineup has solidified into the most permanent expression of full-band Frankie Cosmos, the bandmates have felt more comfortable deviating from their default instruments and contributing bigger-picture ideas to continue pushing the sound forward.

The band’s closeness and aesthetic consistency freed its members to take more risks, notes Luke: "Everything will sound like Frankie Cosmos because Greta has such a distinct voice (literally and figuratively). We have so much latitude to experiment with the instrumental music, and this time around we really took advantage of that." Without losing any intimacy of prior albums, Close it Quietly is different, is outer. The album functions as a benign doppelganger, a shadow self of past releases; where other Frankie Cosmos records shine brightest looking inward, Close it Quietly refracts the self into the world, and vice versa, miraculously echoing Thoreau’s assertion that “when I reflect, I find that there is other than me.” Reflection--and refraction--isn’t tidy. “Flowers don’t grow/in an organized way/why should I?” Greta sings on “A Joke.” Growth isn’t linear. Change happens in circles. While recording the album, Alex says, “I closed my eyes a lot.” Stand in the sun, listen to Close it Quietly, and do the same.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Frankie Cosmos deliver a whimsical but meaningful journey through indie-pop, jangling and melodic but with a beating heart of seriously solid songwriting and a stunning musicality. Encompassing aspects of late-90's grunge and shimmering pop-punk, 'Close It Quietly' will be on the player for some time to come. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Moonsea
Cosmic Shop
41st
So Blue
A Joke
Rings (On A Tree)
Actin' Weird
Windows
Never Would
Self-destruct
Wannago
I'm It
Trunk Of A Tree
Last Season's Textures
Even Though I Knew
UFO
Marbles
Did You Find
A Hit
With Great Purpose
This Swirling

New York-native songwriter Greta Kline has shared a bounty of her innermost thoughts and experiences via the massive number of songs she has released since 2011. Like many of her peers, Kline’s prolific output was initially born from the ease of bedroom recording and self-releasing offered by digital technology and the internet. But, as she’s grown as a writer and performer, devising more complex albums and playing to larger audiences, Kline has begun to make her mark on modern independent music. Her newest record, Vessel, is the 52nd release from Kline and the third studio album by her indie pop outfit Frankie Cosmos. On it, Kline explores all of the changes that have come in her life as a result of the music she has shared with the world, as well as the parts of her life that have remained irrevocable.

 Frankie Cosmos has taken several different shapes since their first full-band album, 2014’s Zentropy, erupted in New York’s DIY music scene. For Vessel the band’s lineup comprises multi-instrumentalists David Maine, Lauren Martin, Luke Pyenson, and Kline. The album’s 18 tracks employ a range of instrumentations and recording methods not found on the band’s prior albums, while maintaining the succinctly sincere nature of Kline’s songwriting. The album’s opening track, “Caramelize,” serves as the thematic overture for Vessel, alluding to topics like dependency, growth, and love, which reemerge throughout the record. Although many of the scenarios and personalities written about on Vessel are familiar territory for Frankie Cosmos, Kline brings a freshly nuanced point of view, and a desire to constantly question the latent meaning of her experiences. Kline’s dissonant lyrics pair with the band’s driving, jangly grooves to create striking moments of musical chemistry.
Vessel’s 34-minute run time is exactly double the length of Frankie Cosmos’ breakout record, Zentropy, and it is an enormous leap forward. Typically, albums by artists at a similar stage in their careers are written with the weight of knowing that someone is on the other end listening. Yet, despite being fully aware of their ever-growing audience, Kline and band have written Vessel with a clarity not muddled by the fear of anyone’s expectations. Vessel’s unique sensibility, esoteric narratives, and reveling energy lace it comfortably in Kline’s ongoing musical auto-biography.

 Vessel was recorded in Binghamton, New York with Hunter Davidsohn, the producer and engineer who helped craft Zentropy and Next Thing, and at Gravesend Recordings in Brooklyn with Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader. It features contributions from Alex Bailey (formerly of Warehouse, and now part of the live configuration of Frankie Cosmos), Vishal Narang (of Airhead DC), and singer/songwriter Anna McClellan, all of whom have played on bills with Frankie Cosmos and collaborated on-stage with the band. The final mixes were done by Davidsohn, and the album was mastered by Josh Bonati. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Inventive chord progressions, hummable choruses and an innate understanding of melody, Kline is amongst the most bafflingly capable and intensely talented songwriters out there. Highly recommended.

TRACK LISTING

1. Caramelize
2. Apathy
3. As Often As I Can
4. This Stuff
5. Jesse
6. Duet
7. Accommodate
8. I'm Fried
9. Hereby
10. Ballad Of R & J
11. Ur Up
12. Being Alive
13. Bus Bus Train Train
14. My Phone
15. Cafeteria
16. The End
17. Same Thing
18. Vessel

The ever-reliable Soundway come more than correct this week with a vinyl only DJ 12" featuring two mega re-edits of GIANT Afro dancers from Steve Monite and Tabu Ley Rochereau. Now a firm favourite in many a DJ's record bag, Nigerian disco-boogie king Steve Monite's hit "Only You" (featured on Soundway's recent "Doing It In Lagos" compilation), is given a rework by Sofrito's own Frankie Francis. Frankie switches up the arrangement, boosts that pinging bassline and adds a little extra club thwomp to deliver a definitive dance floor mix of this Afro-disco bomb. Sublime synthlines, impassioned vocals and insane space echo fly at you from all sides as this masterpiece unites the club in bass-led ecstasy. On the B-side, Nick The Record teams up with Idjut Boys' Dan Tyler to take on "Hafi Deo" - a beautiful taste of breezy tropical Congolese pop from Tabu Ley Rochereau. Dubbing out most of the vocals, tweaking the arrangements and adding the requisite amount of tape delay, Nick and Dan reshape this proto-house scorcher in time honoured fashion. Imagine hearing Boyd Jarvis and Shep Pettibone back to back in a Congolese jungle - ace!

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Soundway's biggest dance floor heaters get the edit treatment here, with Frankie Francis turning up the heat on Steve Monite's synth disco smasher, and Nick (The Record) and Dan (The Idjut) offering a classic dub mix of loved up afro winner "Hafi Deo".

TRACK LISTING

A. Steve Monite - Only You (Frankie Francis Disco Jam Mix)
B. Tabu Ley Rochereau - Hafi Deo (Nick The Record & Dan Tyler Re-Edit Dub)

After spending years as a major presence in Brooklyn’s thriving music scene, Frankie Rose relocated to her familial home of Los Angeles for 18 months with the intention of establishing yet another moment in her storied indie rock métier. Gradually, she found herself short on sleep, funds and optimism.

Towards the end of her time spent in Los Angeles, Frankie reached out to Jorge Elbrecht (Tamaryn, Gang Gang Dance, Violens) and began sketching what became the basic outline of what felt like a new album. Then, rather fortuitously, Frankie ended up back in Brooklyn with the realization that "in the end, I’m on my own. I have to do these things on my own." The months that ensued meant basically working with no budget and finding ways to record in-between days. This time enabled Frankie to experiment musically with a variety of people that ultimately changed the way she worked.

The result of this existential odyssey is Cage Tropical, Frankie’s 4th album. It is awash with vintage synths, painterly effects pedals, upside down atmosphere and reverberating vocals. It evokes a new wave paranormality of sorts that drifts beyond the songs themselves. "My references aren’t just music," says Frankie, "I love old sci-fi. They Live is one of my favorite movies ever, same with Suspiria. 80’s sci-fi movies with a John Carpenter soundtrack, with silly synths – that makes it into my file, to the point that I’ll write lyrics incorporating that kind of stuff. It’s in there."

Beginning with the shimmery, cinematic and percussive sparkling of the album’s opening track "Love in Rockets," the song’s refrain of "a wheel, a wheel of wasting my life: a wheel, a wheel of wasting my time" immediately alludes to those darker circumstances that led to the creative origins of Cage Tropical. "It’s all essentially based on what happened to me in Los Angeles and then a return to Brooklyn," says Frankie. "Misery turned into something good. The whole record to me is a redemption record and it is the most positive one I’ve made"

"I feel like I am finally free from worrying about an outcome. I don’t care. I already lost everything. I already had the worst- case scenario. When that happens, you do become free. In the end, it’s about me rescuing myself via having this record."

TRACK LISTING

1. Love In Rockets
2. Dyson Sphere
3. Trouble
4. Art Bell
5. Dancing Down The Hall
6. Cage Tropical
7. Game To Play
8. Red Museum
9. Epic Slack
10. Decontrol

For their 12th release, Fasaan Recordings has dug deep into the techno underground of Malmö to find Frankie Twilight and her drum machine anthems. Not your usual techno producer, the woman behind this Alan Vega-esque alias does not subscribe to any genre definitions. Having played in a Berlin-based punk band as well as acting as resident DJ at a members only 78 rpm jazz club, it's a total understatement to say her tastes are diverse. A quick skwizz at the sleeve suggests a hardware fascination, and the feverish live jams which form the base of these tracks comes off as raw and undiluted. Sometimes they are weighted down with the moody blues of numbing synth chords, like on "My Opal Gems" and "Coral Desires". Sometimes they're frying in the squelch of a classic acid bath, like on "Dizzmol". All the while, the deranged funk of her playful rhythm patterns will see you crawling towards a concrete basement after sunset, contorting your body to fit your limbs into the grooves or sulking in a corner breathing in all of its gothic glory.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Returning after the success of the stellar Free Arts Band EP, Fasaan keep things wild and wavey courtesy of Swedish DIY freak Frankie Twilight. Marshalling her hardware army right into the witching hour, Frankie drops the best synth-goth-freak-funk EP of the year so far.

TRACK LISTING

1. Olympia
2. Dizzmol
3. My Opal Gems
4. Coral Desires 

Taken from Powell’s upcoming album Sport, the Frankie/Jonny 12” contains two tracks of signature Powell style but with the added luxury of vocals from Jonnine Standish of the lauded minimal electronic duo HTRK.Powell belongs to a very small pool of dance artists whose music is a style in itself.” Resident Advisor

“The whole thing is a giddy mess, slathered in squelchy bass synth, broken-Bontempi drumming, drunken-bumblebee arpeggios, and even gnarly hard-rock guitar riffing, just because.” Pitchfork

“Class A wind-up merchant and new beta techno mutant, Powell bends expectations to the fullest with a remarkably emotive, hook-riddled and tumultuous debut album called Sport for the original rave mongrels at XL.” BOOMKAT

The band continue to ignore the lure of lucre and bright lights and remain steadfastly in Sunderland, opening their own record store in the city’s redundant Tourist Office bringing much heralded impetus to the creative heart of Sunderland and it’s many like-minded souls. Amongst the artist who have supported their venture and played recently are The Vaccines, Franz Ferdinand and James Bay.

‘Decency’ follows 2013’s ‘The Days Run Away’ and sees the band continue their uncanny knack for conjuring up moments of introspective beauty whilst encapsulating the band’s ideals, both socially and politically. The pop suss that flowed through previous releases still reigns but ‘Decency’ embellishes those hooks and melodies creating some of the band’s best work to date.

Recorded at the tail end of last summer at Leeds’ Suburban Homes studio with MJ (Hookworms) at the controls, ‘Decency ‘ also sees Futurehead Ross Millard on extra-curricular duty with guitar and vocal artistry making his recording debut as a fully-fledged Heartstring.

TRACK LISTING

Peterborough Dogs
Decency
Think Yourself Lucky
Save It For Tonight
Money
Hate Me Like You Used To
Berlin Calls
Balconette
Someday Anna
Just Not In Love
Not For Pleasure
Knife In My Back

We were all knocked out by the Frankie Rose and the Outs album from 2010 but are you ready for the new Frankie Rose? – her transformation into a wholly other kind of pop, the reverie and revelation of 'Interstellar', an album that floats free of its maker’s history.
 
So, out with the reverb of the Frankie Rose and the Outs, (and her previous bands) and in with something altogether more glittering and shivering. Interstellar is the confident swagger of a singer and auteur fully aware of how to build the simplest of pop moves into aching, full-blown melodramas, how to grab hold of an emotion and ride its darker waves.

Highlights include "Know Me" a gorgeous piece of widescreen pop, dreamy and driving at the same time and “Night Swim” whose clean, big hooks bring to mind the best of mid-80’s pop – The Smiths, New Order -- without sacrificing any of Frankie's unique melodic style.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Completely different from her super debut, but in its own way just as compelling. This is shoegazey, slightly wonky, deep 'n' doomy, romantic pop.

LP - ONE COPY ONLY!

"Frankie Rose And The Outs" is the debut album from ex-Vivian Girl Crystal Stilt, and Dum Dum Girl Ms Frankie Rose.

Frankie, with her former bands, has been at the forefront of a scene that mixed the sounds of lo-fi garage, big reverb-drenched Phil Spector-produced 60s girl groups, the noise aesthetic of the Jesus And Mary Chain with a touch of Velvet Underground and a strong DIY ethic to create a sound that’s influenced a new generation of bands around the world.

On her new group’s self-titled Memphis Industries debut, Frankie Rose And The Outs have their heads in the clouds a bit more than Rose’s previous projects.

Listening to the ghostly golden oldie grooves of songs like "Candy" and the pedal-pounding "That’s What People Told Me", it’s as if the Cocteau Twins and Shangri-Las made a split album with the help of a time machine and a freshly-acquitted Phil Spector.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Riding on the current wave of cute 60s bubblegum sounds ala Best Coast comes Frankie Rose's new band. Lo-fi meets Spector-esque reverb meets JAMC's noise aesthetics, and hits now!

Abs says: Includes a gorgeous version of Arthur Russell's "You Can Make Me Feel Bad".

TRACK LISTING

1. Hollow Life
2. Candy
3. Little Brown Haired Girls
4. Lullabye For Roads And Miles
5. That's What People Told Me
6. Memo
7. Must Be Nice
8. Girlfriend Island
9. You Can Make Me Feel Bad
10. Don’t Tred
11. Save Me

Mysterious debut album by Frankie Sparo, helped out by various members of the Constellation circle. Angular guitars, skittish electronics and throaty vocals create an album which is vaguely sinister and paranoid at times, smoky and languid at others.