Newly signed to Heist or Hit (Westside Cowboy, Her’s, Nature TV), Georgian's debut EP 'Crackled Grounds' reads like an anthology in the vein of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. These aren’t just songs, but scenes, self-contained worlds that glimmer with strange detail before dissolving into mirage. “We recorded on a farm just north of Amsterdam” states James. “It gave us space and focus and helped us channel the Western feel we wanted to impress upon the tracks. Arno gave us lots of pedal board options and guitar choices. Those things in particular helped us fine-tune the sound we were chasing.” The resulting collection chronicles the ups and downs of existence and blooms with natural imagery. ‘Strike a Wound’ seethes with revenge. The slow attack on the guitars has the onomatopoeic effect of enacting each blow. ‘Crackled Grounds’ conjures an apocalyptic wilderness that wouldn’t be out of place on the ‘Kill Bill’ soundtrack. ‘Medusa’ is a parable of strong women overcoming obstacles and jolts with the energy of those early Johnny Cash Sun recordings. ‘Gardens’ lingers on the awkward tenderness of running into a long-lost lover; while ‘Californian Jeans’ pays homage to denim as talisman, armour, and second skin.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crackled Grounds
2. Medusa
3. Gardens
4. Californian Jeans
5. Strike a Wound
6. Soleil

Newly signed to indie heavyweights Heist or Hit (Westside Cowboy, Her’s) EP two: ‘Marionette’ has been produced by Daniel Fox (Sprints, Melts, Psychotic Monks, Naked Lungs, Nerves, Ronan Group) and it’s set to be seminal. A set text for future musicians with aspirations of innovation. “The theme of the marionette is present throughout each song, involving some aspect of a power struggle and a lack of control within oneself.” Opener ‘Chocolate’ bounces in on a synth line as slippery and hyperactive as anything Aphex Twin ever cooked up. Crispy offbeat electronic cymbals play counterpoint to atonal guitars and pugilistic drumming before the track dry-wretches its way into a nauseating cacophony of euphoria. It’s a tale of crippling social anxiety and a preference for an unflattering, lonely reality. The muted guitar pluck in the intro to ‘Crows’ is the sonic equivalent of biting one’s nails. An anxious, involuntary tic that speaks to the theme of guilt, especially surrounding digital culture: “children can watch what they please, just with viewer discretion.” The track lurches between textures, weaving themselves in and out of focus. Guitars blare like sirens, interrupting paranoid urban centres at 2am, while the bass sounds like the inside of an insomniac’s head on day four of a REM drought. The metallic intent of ‘Discipline’ squats on the chest as though Steve Albini is your sleep paralysis demon. The pain of accountability spews from the industrial regularity of the beat, apt to the narrative of a soldier coming to terms with the lies that made him commit atrocious, violent acts. EP closer ‘Servant’ starts like a Spectrum loading screen. Dial-up modem-coded, it pauses for moments of white-noise-vomit and existential bloops. Fitting for a more abstract take on the idea of the power struggle filtered through religious imagery and self-awareness of one’s own actions, coupled with an inability to exert control over them. The band pile on the textures with sadistic glee until the evil is exorcized and the modem melts. Connection severed. Across the EP, vocalist Joseph has a tendency to hyper-fixate on themes of control and unhappiness. Creating rooms in which doom and isolation ricochet. Not that it’s all bad news “we like to think that by shedding light on the negative, it commands a sense of hope.” Influenced as much by the liminal-space horror and uncanny dread of Silent Hill as the existentialist theatre of The Twilight Zone or the absurdity of Twin Peaks, they occupy a space between unease and impulse. Makeshift Art Bar are not a band interested in being liked. They’re a band interested in being necessary. There’s so much eating and drinking in their work that multiple listens simply don’t satisfy; something new reveals itself on each return visit. Audacious. Idiosyncratic. Vital. A young band carrying identity, defiance and an uncompromising vision as if it isn’t a rare cargo.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chocolate
2. Crows
3. Discipline
4. Servant

Brighton quartet ladylike sign to cult label Heist or Hit (Her’s, Westside Cowboy) and announce their debut EP 'It’s A Pleasure Of Mine, to Know You’re Fine'.

The EP delicately treads the tightrope between folk and post-rock - evidence of the particular kind of quiet the four-piece inhabit: Natural, controlled, and brimming with a subtle euphoria, it speaks to renewal, growth and repair. The quartet — Georgia Butler (vocals, guitar), Spencer Withey (vocals, guitar, synth), James Ely (drums), and Archie Sagers (six-string bass) serve their folk rare: raw and pastoral, but with a side of textural, atmospheric builds directly wired into the tensions of the modern world. It’s a formula that has gained them slots at Green Man; Left Of The Dial; The Great Escape; and Dot To Dot, plus support slots with Ugly, Mary in the Junkyard and Lime Garden.

After soft-launching the idea of starting a project together at End of the Road, the band’s initial practices took place in a recital room on a brutalist university campus. A setting that, on the surface, is wildly at odds with the rural authenticity of their sound. Pause and look, however, and the campus may have seeped its way into the architectural structures of their songs, with an emphasis on functionality, honesty, and the incorporation of rougher textures and exposed materials. The alchemy lies in the band’s ability to marry those spaces, and when raw elements meet modernity, they absolutely soar.

The band’s debut EP was recorded with producer Ali Chant (Aldous Harding, Perfume Genius, PJ Harvey). It captures the quiet urgency that has always been ladylike’s hallmark. Across four tracks, they explore cycles renewal, and the beauty of persistence, finding poetry in English idioms and the banality of the mundane.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's definitely a sort of post-rock leaning here from ladylike, with woozy guitars and growing reverb swells dancing around brittle melodicism and tentative wisps of melody before plunging into a pool of reverb and skittering snares. I get a little reminder of Daughter in there as well as Cate Le Bon and a good dose of instrumental rock.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Burning Heather
2. Rome (in Progress)
3. Mountains
4. Burning Heather (continued)

Side B
1. Fresh Linen
2. Sour Carol, I

Newly signed to indie heavyweights Heist or Hit (Westside Cowboy, Her’s, Nature TV), MLEKO ramp up the emotional velocity with their debut EP: 'The Feast of St. Perpetua'. Recorded at Low Four Studios by Samuel William Jones (Maruja, Robin Richards) every song carries the dissonance of beauty and violence, sincerity and sarcasm, collapse and uplift. On ‘As It Goes’ Whirledge’s vocals splinter between detachment and despair, dragging the listener through the detritus of young adulthood, where direction is a rumour and hope has all the authenticity of a spam email. The tension-and-release continues with ‘Gub Rock’. The murky, semi-apocalyptic bass line drives the track onwards with an uncanny unease while Whirledge calmly orates: “as I tie myself to rocks and fill my pockets full of gravel.” From all the industrial sludge and drone-adjacent art-rock emerges ‘Tom’s Tune’ which, in a flagrant disregard for genre boundaries, bounces in on a bubble of plucked neo-folk guitar before attending its own MLEKO-sanctioned exorcism. “I reverberate around in echo-chambers now” screams Whirledge, a line destined for tattoos & nihilistic t-shirts. ‘Lego Sex’ “As a young boy, Rory was caught with ‘Lego sex’ written into his YouTube search history. At his 21st birthday, this story was told. After prompts from the band, Rory put pen to paper and ‘created’ a suspiciously detailed legophilic character who did not grow out of this interest. The song was to be told from this perspective, detailing the anguish stemming from the unfuckable figurines and preference for plastic over flesh - an unwavering grin”. Unfortunately, lines such as “cock blocked from my block cock” didn’t make the final cut. The song is not commentary. It is entirely separate, isolated from the unforgiving outside. Leave him to his lego sex. Just let him watch his lego sex. ‘Denouement’ brings the EP full circle, calling back to musical motifs established in ‘As It Goes’. It’s here that the part pagan ritual, part art school thesis meltdown draws to a close. “The children all weep for their denouement and these obscene, violent scenes, splitting the night like a silent dream.” utters Whirledge in the final line of this black mass.

TRACK LISTING

1. Denouement
2. Lego Sex
3. Gub Rock
4. As It Goes
5. Tom's Tune

Announcing their signing with indie heavyweights Heist or Hit (Westside Cowboy, Her’s, Nature TV), Manchester/London ‘Slacker Folk’ seven-piece The Slow Country return with new 7" double A-sided single ‘In The Mud / Firing Line’. With the help of producer Bill Ryder-Jones, ‘Firing Line’ sees the band wholeheartedly level up their distinctive blend of folkish indie and maximalist rock. Recalling early 2000s big band ensembles like Broken Social Scene and The National, on ‘Firing Line’, melodic delicacies seamlessly interweave with brazen extroversions - like a ripping solo played on a guitar owned by Peter Green, gifted to Ryder-Jones by Noel Gallagher himself. Above all, ‘Firing Line’ showcases the exuberance of seven distinct personalities tightly bonded by friendship and curiosity, surging forwards toward an unknown future. Like a book you treasure as much for the smell of the paper as for the words on the page, theirs is a sound that feels nostalgic and newly claimed, suspended somewhere between past and present in a fictive place called The Slow Country. Garnering a reputation for intimate storytelling and grandiose tug-of-war arrangements from a series of self-released singles, the band have already amassed multiple plays on BBC Radio 6Music (New Music Fix, Indie Forever, Craig Charles), a Radio X live session (John Kennedy), and backing from the likes of So Young, DIY, Notion, Pretty Green, Spotify, Apple Music and Rabbit Baby. Anticipating live dates in the spring, including twin ‘homecoming’ headlines in London and Manchester (the band are firmly rooted in the independent scenes of both cities) they are continuing to build on an impressive run which includes tour dates with Floodlights, The Last Dinner Party, Opus Kink, Pem and Picture Parlour, plus festival spots at The Great Escape, Truck and Wilderness. Featuring artwork once again by artist Hugo Winder-Lind (Radio Anorak, The New Eves), created in direct response to the tracks, vocalist/guitarist Charlie Smith elaborates on ‘Firing Lines’, and working with Bill Ryder-Jones: ”To me, Firing Line is about anxiety, depression and self-pity, and the repetitive lifestyle they can create. When those feelings hit, they almost feel like an act of violence against oneself. When you’re in the throes of anxiety and depression, you don’t notice the beauty in the world around you. We wanted to highlight this through the juxtaposition between the blunt lyrics and the (hopefully) epic music that surrounds them. This is a big reason why there are so many melodic moments in the song, and the strings and piano play such a big role. Bill gave us the time and encouragement to express ourselves more freely on the track, helping us give the song its emotional core. It was a pleasure to see him work with our violin player Miren, he’s incredibly subtle and natural in his production which just allows you to really open your playing.”

TRACK LISTING

1. In The Mud
2. Firing Line

Updating their trademark hazy sound to something a little brighter, bolder, and more solid, cruush embark on their new phase with intentionality at the core-trialling producers, stripping the old sound for parts, and arriving at tracks that are purposely more direct. Allied to this is a perkier presentation-taking in and celebrating a ‘90s MTV’ style, timely, given the recent news of the purely music focused TV channels in their stable’s demise.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Tasty new single from Manchester's very own Cruush. Moving away from their previous gazey output, Cruush stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of fellow scene-mates Westside Cowboy, Shaking Hand and Rude Films to further cement the exciting waves currently happening in Manchester's music scene. Plus, we have signed copies - MEGA!!!

TRACK LISTING

1. Rupert Giles
2. Great Dane

Many bands promising uniqueness write a bum cheque. Her’s, not only offer individuality, distinctiveness and originality, but an entire world brimming with fully realised characters and sounds. Where romance fades, bromance remains and like a pair of matching monogrammed bathrobes hanging side-by-side, it’s rare to find a partnership so loveably kitsch and destined to belong together as Stephen and Audun. Stories and characters emerge throughout the collection, revealing an off-kilter world of atmospheric slacker pop, instilled with voyeuristic humour. A collection of all their early singles, and a few new tracks thrown in for good measure, Her’s channel the surreal and the sublime through a twist of tropical technicolour. Each song its own little microcosm of oddness. Intricately windy, bendy guitars are flung around a tight drum machine clatter to deliver a genuine indie classic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dorothy
2. Cool With You
3. Marcel
4. Cop Theme
5. Speed Racer
6. Medieval
7. What Once Was
8. You Don't Know This Guy
9. I'll Try

One of the most free spirited and inspired indie rock debuts our island has seen for a while, Her’s had seemingly AAA backstage access to styles and eras that made home in their mutant retro-futurist sound. There was always something instantly charismatic about Stephen and Audun which proved pivotal in shooting their jangly, oddball pop into the major leagues. Luminous guitar lines, tremulous dissonant vocals and an arsenal of gorgeous melodies, the collection tilts from rock to bossa nova, surf to garage, 50s ballad to indie classic. Through laughter and art, Her’s take us away from the strife of everyday life and into a world that’s a surreal reflection of our own, built from the detritus of novelty items in junk shops, bargain bin b-movies and late-night cop shows. Under the facade and strange world of characters and humour there lies a deeper undercurrent, this approach is one of the subtle reasons Her’s stand apart and through this vehicle their messages still have the potential to shift perceptions.

TRACK LISTING

1. Harvey
2. Mannie's Smile
3. If You Know What's Right
4. Carry The Doubt
5. Low Beam
6. Breathing Easy
7. Blue Lips
8. She Needs Him
9. Love On The Line (Call Now)
10. Don't Think It Over
11. Under Wraps

Door-to-door heartbreak salesmen Nature TV peddle an elixir of jangle indie & melancholic yacht rock. Having amassed a catalogue of seven EPs – each a branch of perennial, lovelorn dream-pop folded through classy sonic interior decoration & swift compositional turns – debut album 'Unlucky for Some' continues the theme of heartbreak in high-fidelity. Like few others, Nature TV are able to missile misery at your dopamine receptors via compositions so rich they should have trust funds. It’s an almost impossible tightrope walk that only the most agile of songwriters can sustain. The result is their cleanest and leanest collection to date. An LP that hums with meticulous attention to detail yet feels as woozy as taking downers in a hot tub. An indie-jangle party band at the height of their powers, except the party has ended and they’ve been tasked with soundtracking the cleanup. Someone passed out in a patio chair barley clutching a smartphone, cigarette butts mushed into empty cans, a door pulled off its hinges, the pool now semi-septic, rain streaming down the windows, and everyone has work in the morning.

FFO Real Estate, Ducktails, Glitter Party.

TRACK LISTING

1. One Step Forward
2. Aways It Goes
3. Helpless And Hoping
4. Simple Dog
5. My Life
6. Lesley
7. Travelling Girl
8. Lay Low
9. Meds
10. Staying For The Weekend
11. Late Night
12. Secret Sisters
13. Subtle Treasures

“The psychedelic grooves of early 90s Madchester” – SPIN

“A nebulous, Gang Gang Dance-esque track, ‘Phone Home From The Edge’ is pretty killer whichever way you slice it” – The Stool Pigeon

“Wondrous dance-punk” – Pitchfork

Best Behavior is the debut UK release from Brooklyn, NY’s Dinowalrus, fronted by visual artist and sometime guitarist of Titus Andronicus, Pete Feigenbaum, and backed by Max Tucker and Liam Andrew.

Best Behavior features a meticulous attention to song-structure, production and listenability - an experiment in pushing their interests in krautrock, house music, post-punk and psychedelic rock into their most condensed, vocal-driven, danceable, hooky and coherent form, without losing the unique mad-cap ambience and instrumental playfulness of their earliest material.

Starting with the punchy opening staccato organ stabs of “The Gift Shop”, Best Behavior expresses the subtle optimism of Dinowalrus finding direction and focus, and also the energy brought about by new band-mates and collaborators. Meticulously written, but not over-thought and over-conceptualized: a welcoming point of entry into the band’s unique psychedelic world and historical roadmap. This is the band on its best behaviour.

While the band’s approach has evolved greatly as a result of their stylistic and personnel changes, their musical DNA has remained the same— the band used the exact same palette of analogue synth, guitar, sampler, drum machine (and occasionally sax) sounds in making this album. While their more free-form and noise influenced debut drew inspiration from the feral urban excitement of early 80s NYC no-wave dance music, the new record turns the clock forward and latches onto a few tricks and beats from the acid house phenomenon over here in the UK, finding new crossovers between psychedelic rock and dance music; reopening a strange, fun and vibrant chapter in music history that never quite reached American shores.

Dinowalrus draw heavily on the chemically enhanced beats, bass and organ textures of The Charlatans, and even Stone Roses in places; but also retains their essential spacey Hawkwind, Eno, Bowie, Can and Sonic Youth allusions on the deeper album cuts. Mid-period New Order plays a significant influence as well.

With Primal Scream’s Screamadelica hitting its 20-year anniversary, now is an especially good time for an American band to attempt to bring guitar music and rave together again. And New York, often thought of as American’s most cosmopolitan and European city culturally, is the perfect environment for a rock band like Dinowalrus to be making such a unique appropriation of all things Manchester, Glasgow, Berlin and Ibiza- giving Brooklyn indie kids a new beat with which to dance.

In a contemporary context, Best Behavior, mediates nicely between the futuristic psychedelic synth-pop of Gang Gang Dance, Teengirl Fantasy, and Neon Indian, and the tried-and-true Anglophilic jangle-rock of Wild Nothing and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Gift Shop
2. Phone Home From The Edge
3. Beth Steel
4. Rico
5. Twenty Seven Club
6. What Now
7. Radical Man
8. Burners
9. Riding Eazy

Hailing from Los Angeles, California, Letting Up Despite Great Faults is the sonic diary of founding member, Mike Lee.

A blissful mix of lo-fi, shoegaze and indie rock, the ‘Paper Crush’ mini-album is their first release in the UK. Already with a full length and TV exposure under their belts in the US, their 2009 release was met with unanimous critical acclaim, garnering rave reviews from the likes of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Exclaim!, and countless indie music blogs.

Judging by the rapidly growing number of fans being left smitten by Letting Up’s brand of “dreamy indie pop that boys want to make and girls want to fall in love with” (TheNewMusic.net), their new 2011 release ‘Paper Crush’ should make a similar impact.

TRACK LISTING

1. Repeating Hearts
2. Sophia In Gold
3. Teenage Tide
4. I Feel You Happen
5. Aurora
6. Helium

‘Fragments’ is the brand new EP from Bournemouth band, Rapids! Written in the band’s cramped and claustrophobic rehearsal space during the Winter of 2010, ‘Fragments’ perfectly soundtracks the daily struggle of life in a sleepy coastal town. With its gushing honesty and striking maturity, Rapids! prove with this EP that they are strong candidates for people's Ones To Watch lists in 2011

‘Fragments’ is the sound of a band discovering its true identity; peeling back layers of bouncy math-pop beats and angular guitar hooks, leaving at its core a body of work that swirls with deep intensity and primal emotion. Musically, ‘Fragments’ scrapes and slides like tectonic plates between the glistening melodies of Foals and the raw drive of The Joy Formidable, whilst frontman Matt Holliday emits powerful and heartfelt declarations that leave you feeling like you’re sat in a self-help group with The National’s Matt Berninger taking register.

The band recorded in three separate studios during the making of the EP, keen to perfect their newly formed sound. The job fell on the shoulders of producer/mixer Dave Eringa (Manic Street Preachers, Idlewild) to collect up the fragments and blend them into one. As the name suggests, each song breaks away into its own bundle of fiery angst. But it’s when pieced back together that ‘Fragments’ reveals its true force, with each peak and trough taking you on a journey through a troubled mind.

TRACK LISTING

1. Littleblood
2. House Of Sand And Fog
3. Statuesque
4. Comets
5. Nameless / / Faceless

Recorded throughout the spring of 2010 by frontman and first time producer Martin Colclough, "Lifeline" is the album that everybody believed The Answering Machine could make. A departure and a knowing deviation from the sound that established the band on 2009’s angular debut "Another City, Another Sorry", "Lifeline" is a unique, intelligent and diverse LP. Stylistically extensive, the album clicks between moments of post rock magnificence to glitch-driven programming; at once inhaling a varied catalogue of influences and exhaling a body of work that will top End of Year polls.

After working with producers from London and New York, writing songs in Tokyo, demoing in sky scrapers and honing ideas in Brooklyn, it became obvious that ‘home’ was the perfect place to pull "Lifeline" together. The cliché goes that record producers are the so-called ‘fifth member’ of the band but Manchester’s The Answering Machine decided to keep things simple and opted for an actual member of the band to produce their second album. After several successful remix projects, frontman Martin Colclough decided to step up to the role. What followed was not an expensive studio, engineers or remote location; instead the band opted for their underground practice room in the city centre. From six feet under they emerged with their lifeline.

While journalists stalked the streets murmuring buzz words and hailing the new ‘Manchester scene’ The Answering Machine were hard to find. They were in fact below the city campaigning for change, creating a record that is far removed from people’s expectations of them, peeling all the layers of what journalists and fans had deemed them to be and avoiding being caught up in any industry onslaught on their city. They stand alone and by doing so have rediscovered themselves, their identity and uncovered a new sound. Central to this regeneration has been the acquisition of a number of vintage synths passed down from the Factory Records band Repetition. These, along with pump organs and acoustic guitars, opened up a new and more collaborative way of writing for the band.

There are no gimmicks, stories or press angles for The Answering Machine on their second album campaign. This is because what the band have created and achieved is truly remarkable and therefore the ONLY thing worth writing about. Musically eclectic, textural and complex, lyrically sophisticated, honest and striking "Lifeline" is a very special record; the first great record of 2011. It documents a band reborn, a band who have taken the model of Radiohead and The Beatles before them, determined to make a record that sounds nothing like their last. They have succeeded with a grace and elegance all of their own.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Sadly, The Answering Machine have decided to call it a day, but they bow out in style with the release of the Limited Edition vinyl version of this album.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Little Navy
2. Lifeline
3. Animals
4. 3 Miles
5. Romantic And Square
6. Anything Anything
7. Hospital Lung
8. Rules
9. Video 8
10. So Alive
11. The End

Pomegranates formed in 2006 and have so far self recorded and released 2 EPs and 2 full length albums in the US. Debut album "Everything is Alive" brought the band to the attention of the US tastemakers. KEXP and WOXY, among others, fell for the band’s quirky and charming blend of pop rock, and listeners followed suit, blogging the band up to #11 on Elbo.ws blog aggregate. The band also caught the attention of their peers. Artists such as French Kicks and Islands responded to Pomegranates’ dynamic live set by inviting them out on the road. "Everybody, Come Outside!" is a step up sonically and musically for the band. It’s an album of shimmering and dreamy indie pop, channelling influences that range from Talking Heads and Brian Eno, to French Kicks and Fela Kuti. Pomegranates enlisted the mixing services of TJ Lipple (Aloha, MGMT, Headlights) who has brought the band’s huge vision to fruition and helped create a magical explosive indie pop record.