Founding member of POND.

Over five albums fronting GUM, not to mention the nine he’s made as co-leader of psych cosmonauts Pond, Watson’s restless imagination has treated us to some of the most sonically diverse explorations of the past decade. On Saturnia, however, these visions have coalesced into the richest, but also the most coherent work of Watson’s career to date.

When you’ve got the ability to merge any combination of sounds and moods that pop into your head, there’s a temptation to cram everything you can into each second of tape. The lesson for Watson this time was to realise that sometimes you have to strip away a great idea for the benefit of the song.

Opener “Race to the Air” provides the perfect curtainraiser. Soaring into view like a gigantic interplanetary craft, it takes in a sparkling vista of cosmic disco all robo grooves and quivering strings, while “Would It Pain You to See?”, perhaps one of the most surprising songs on the album, is a glistening slink of sensual R&B.

Indeed, one of the most rewarding things about Saturnia is how the songs pivot and change unexpectedly throughout, beginning as one thing before launching off into a completely different stratosphere.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Music Is Bigger Than Hair
2. Real Life
3. Saturnism
4. Would It Pain You To See?
5. Fear Of Joy
SIDE B:
1. Race To The Air
2. Muscle Memory
3. Argentina
4. In A Glasshouse (With No Light)
5. It Lies A Lifetime

THE TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERA GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH, THE TIMES, IRISH TIMES, ROUGH TRADE, MOJO, CLASH, ROLLING STONE, UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEARFrom award-winning musician and composer Warren Ellis comes the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum. FEATURING AN INTRODUCTION BY NICK CAVE'Warren has turned this memento, snatched from his idol's piano in a moment of rapture, into a genuine religious artefact.'NICK CAVE'Such a mad, happy book about art and music and obsession. I'm so glad I got to read it.

It made the world feel lighter.'NEIL GAIMAN'In praise of meaning-rich relics and magical things. Totally heartwarming project.'MAX PORTER'A unique study of a fan's devotion, of transcendence and of the artistic vocation - it's got depth and great warmth. It's a beautiful piece of work.'KEVIN BARRYI hadn't opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013.

The last person to touch it was Nina Simone, her saliva and fingerprints unsullied. The idea that it was still in her towel was something I had drawn strength from. I thought each time I opened it some of Nina Simone's spirit would vanish.

In many ways that thought was more important than the gum itself. On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag.

The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, a conduit that would eventually take Ellis back to his childhood and his relationship with found objects, growing in significance with every passing year. Nina Simone's Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality.

It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love. 'This is such a beautiful f*@king book. Thank you, Warren.

I highly recommend this motherf*@ker.'FLEA'A beautifully written book about the power of music and objects. I powered through it in two days.'COURTNEY BARNETT'A moving, inspiration insight into a beautiful mind.'JIM JARMUSCH'The year's most eccentric and joyful musical memoir.'DAILY TELEGRAPH (Books of the year)'[Nina Simone's Gum] is a metaphor for [Ellis'] creativity - the blossoming of a small idea into something bigger and bolder - but also a journey inside the impulsive, improvisatory mind of Warren Ellis, his passions, obsessions and superstitions.' OBSERVER'[A] beautiful, strikingly idiosyncratic book - part memoir, part essay, part conceptual art project, all testament to humans at their strangest and best . .

. [Ellis] sees signifiance where others might not.'MOJO'A glorious piece of object fetishism . .

. Marvel as Ellis' collection of eccentric personal mementos morphs into a celebration of the intangible wonder of music.'UNCUT'Wonderful.' THE TIMES'The most peculiar book I've ever read.' CRAIG BROWN, MAIL ON SUNDAY'Delightful . .

. A joy from start to finish.' BIG ISSUE'A joyous work full of love, connection, creativity and gratitude.' THE SPECTATOR'Completely charming and joyful . .

. glorious.' LA REVIEW OF BOOKS'Beautiful . .

. remarkable.' NEW EUROPEAN

GUM aka Jay Watson is a multi-instrumentalist, founding member of POND and touring member of Tame Impala. Gum’s solo debut album was originally released in 2014 and has now been newly remastered by tour mate Kevin Parker. Delorean Highway is a collection of 10 songs, described as “paranoid pop songs, mostly about falling in love and all of the things that he thinks are going to kill him”. ‘Delorean Highway’ is the first track off the album of the same name, inspired by a dream Gum had of driving through the desert in the silver car from Back to the Future, before taking off into the night. In the real life, Gum can’t drive, but he has seen Back to the Future and it’s fair to say he does look a little bit like Doc. The second single, ‘Growin’ Up’ was unleashed onto willing ears towards the end of 2013 and taps into every emotion that the name would suggest – a sense of paranoia, doubt, fear, honesty and hopefulness.

TRACK LISTING

1. Delorean Highway
2. Growin’ Up
3. The Sky Opened Up
4. Misunderstanding
5. Summer Rain 
6.21st Century Radiation
7. Pink Skies
8. Living And Dying
9. Day Of The Triffids
10. Can’t See Past My Eyes

GUM aka Jay Watson is a multiinstrumentalist, founding member of POND and touring member of Tame Impala. Gum’s 2015 album Glamorous Damage has been newly remastered by tour mate Kevin Parker. ‘Glamorous Damage,’ is a warped comb running thru the shiny blonde hair of pop and disco. Produced and mixed by GUM and mostly recorded at home, the album is at times reminiscent of the elastic robo-glam of Prince, the sci-fi waves of Chrome, early Eno experimentalism and a love of Beach Boys melody. In 2015 ‘Glamorous Damage’ was critically acclaimed by the likes of Pitchfork, NME and Stereogum and featured on the longlist of the 2015 Australian Music Prize. Glamorous Damage features lead single ‘Anesthetized Lesson.’

TRACK LISTING

1. G.U.M
2. Anesthetized Lesson
3. Glamorous Damage
4. Notorious Gold
5. Elafonissi Blue
6. Television Sick
7. New Eyes
8. R.Y.K
9. Science Fiction
10. Ancients
11. Greens And Blues
12. She Never Made It To Tell
13. Carnarvon 

Do you remember when Rock was young? Do you remember when Rock was fun? It seems some folks still do cuz some bad bad Bananas did a heist on the Buddha vault, lifted the hooks from Shakin' Street, & opened up the Joey Johnny Dee Dee Tommy throttle and let 'er rip.

Five years on from their debut album of stompin' Bubblegrunge covers of Garage Rock staples by Paul Revere, The Monkees, Chocolate Watch Band, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Flipper et al ("Pebbles 2000" on Agitated Records, folks) the five-piece from the western shores of Granadaland return with a new album of all-original hip-shakin' nuggets to make your feet move and your head spin!

That's right! That's right! 14 tasty trips tailor made for rock'n'roll radio ...plus 4 hidden midget gems of post-punk junk for ya ta chew on" ...Plus 4 hidden Midget Gems of Post-Punk junk for ya ta chew on!

It's greasy! It's freaky! It's insane! ...and never forget: "Bubblegrunge Music Is The Naked Truth". For fans of having a good time, all the time! Stack up your heels and party Hard with these hardcore funsters.. 

TRACK LISTING

Hang Out! Hang Loose!
She's Got E.S.P.
Kandy On The Korner
U Got Shakin?
Green Eyed Monster
Uber Ella
Happy Happy Happy

Pinky & Purple
Bubblegrunge Gal
Hey Hey Girl
Get Off Tha Road
Juiced!
Whoa! Maria!
Deep Fix

London-based Gum Takes Tooth’s hyper-kinetic and unique approach evolved via drum-triggered electronics, manipulated to achieve a dynamic, rhythmically driven and flagrantly unclassifiable fury that flirts with both speaker-ripping psych-rock pyrotechnics and synapse-shredding  acid house deliverance whilst stubbornly avoiding any of the trappings or clichés of either. ‘Arrow’ - their third album and first for Rocket Recordings, is both a portrait of their home-city in an increasingly alienating age, and a travelogue for an everyday journey involving battles for both time and space - searing and visceral yet suffused by melancholy and elegiac atmosphere. Mapping out a landscape in which the influences of Coil, Warp Records, The Knife and Lightning Bolt are alchemically transformed into an innovative and pulverising onslaught, ‘Arrow’ is also the band’s more intensely personal record yet, dealing as the band’s Jussi Brightmore notes with “Ever more omnipresent and vacuous global tropes cementing economic inequality, nervous amnesia and being as complicit as anyone else in all that” Yet there’s plentiful hope for the future, and never more than on the album’ title-track: “The Arrow’ is so called because it flies in a straight line or arc but it never repeats its structure, or goes back on itself” - and thus, a singularly appropriate metaphor for Gum Takes Tooth themselves. Mavericks to the last, perpetual square-pegs and a band intent on forging onward to break all or any paradigms before them, creating a collection of kinetic anthems to battle everyday oppression - a work of machine-driven mania with its very human heart on its sleeve. 

TRACK LISTING

01 Cold Chrome Hearts (5:11)
02 The Arrow (7:21)
03 No Walls, No Air (7:01)
04 Slowly Falling (3:11)
05 Apogee (0.51)
06 Borrowed Lies (7:59)
07 Dream Circle - Cloud Cycle (1:08)
08 Fights Physiology (5:03)
09 Seizure (1:43)
10 A Still Earth (6:46)
11 House Built Of Fire (8:04)

Fraser A Gorman arrives on our shores with a bagful of cool, funny, heartfelt and super-infectious tunes, on debut album 'Slow Gum.' Although a core member of fellow Melbourner Courtney Barnett's Milk! Records label troupe and close pals and collaborator with King Gizzard and the Lizzard Wizzard, Gorman cuts a dash entirely his own.

He drinks deep from the well of wayward folk contemporaries such as Bill Callahan and Cass McCombs, while also genuflecting to heroes such as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Its lackadaisical charms bely Gorman's wryly affecting way with a lyric, however, as he sings tongue in cheek couplets over gorgeous slide guitar twangs and early offbeat melodies.

Fraser A Gorman has achieved a great deal in the past 12 months firmly establishing himself as one of Australia’s most promising rising talents. His captivating songwriter abilities and charismatic live performances have secured his place on some of Australia’s most loved festival bills including Meredith, Falls, Queenscliff Port Fairy and Boogie. He has also supported the likes of Mark Lanegan, First Aid Kit, Tex Perkins, Gary Clarke Jr., Wanda Jackson, You Am I and Simone Felice.

TRACK LISTING

Big Old World
My Old Man
Book Of Love
Shiny Gun
Broken Hands
Mystic Mile
Never Gonna Hold You (Like I Do)
We're All Alright
Dark Eyes
Blossom & Snow

Hot Club de Paris mark their eagerly-awaited return in 2010 with a brand-new 6 song EP entitled “With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work?” (A phrase generously loaned by acclaimed British poet Matthew Welton). Still operating with their usual punk-rock ethic and still proudly flying the flag for British DIY, Hot Club are now self producing and recording themselves in their Liverpool rehearsal space.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Scouse three piece Hot Club De Paris return with this superb collection of acrobatic, articulate pop songs, neatly packaged into a limited edition 10" in a hand numbered sleeve.

With over thirty albums Hartford has an impressive discography and "Gum Tree Canoe" is a gem - a collection of some of Hartford's most endearing performances backed by an all-star crew of acclaimed instrumentalists including Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas.