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"

“Pure psychotropic madness.” A screaming head on fire penetrated my chest, jolting me from the universal plane back to earth.” Guitarist/Singer/Sonic Alchemist Dave W’s vivid fever dream ignited The Revenge of Heads on Fire, WHITE HILLS’ latest release, which harnesses the energy of ferocious, hedonistic rock with blissful passages of dark ambience.

Exploring themes of mortality, transformation and rebirth, the band reveals a spiritual depth unparalleled in previous works. The roar of fire, swirling of oceans and hallucinogenic visions can be heard throughout the 75-minute journey. From the intrepid prelude “The Instrumental Head” to the closing punk blaze of “Eternity”, the album ebbs and flows, smoldering and seething in the middle with the 21- minute mammoth opus “Don’t Be Afraid”.

“’Don't Be Afraid’ alone makes this an essential listen for fans of contemporary psychedelia.” -All Music.

The Revenge of Heads on Fire consummates Dave W’s prototype for the 2007 release on Rocket Recordings, Heads on Fire, later picked up by Thrill Jockey. Six rediscovered songs accompany re-mixed versions of the original material, fulfilling the master arch of the pyre lit long ago. Recorded during the band’s tumultuous early years, the music vibrates with the energy and volatility of a sonic boom. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Instrumental Head
2. Radiate
3. Inoke Tupo
4. Oceans Of Sound
5. Speed Toilet
6. Is This The Road
7. VTDS
8. Don’t Be Afraid
9. Vision Of The Past, Present & Future
10. Silent Violence
11. Eternity

As has often been noted, psychedelic music can involve causal links between getting out of it and getting into it. Conversely, expansion of consciousness can be found by heading deep into the roots that a band explores, and journeying to the centre of their inspiration.

Thus, a curious paradox is attained, whereby the traditional elements of an outfit’s sound are superseded by them blasting their core vibrations into unchartered territory. Such is the case with the new opus from third-eye visionaries Hills, a dizzying journey that traverses through the band’s origins and beyond to new dimensions.The Gothenburg-based Hills are entering their ninth year of existence, in which they’ve released two full-length albums, the second of which, ‘Master Sleeps’ saw a vinyl outing on Rocket last year.

Part of a rich scene in their homestead also including friends and Rocket Recordings label mates Goat, they form the new chapter in a tradition of Swedish psychedelia that found its origins in late-’60s and early ‘70s freakouts and mind-melts by the likes of Baby Grandmothers and Älgarnas Trädgård - not to mention the unholy trinity of Pärson Sound, International Harvester and Träd Gräs och Stenar - before being developed by the likes of The Spacious Mind and Dungen in the last two decades. These inspirations make their mark on ‘Frid’ by journeying inward, via mantric repetition and hip-shaking pulsations as on the ten-minute monolith, ‘ Och Solen Sänkte Sig Röd’, yet they can also lurch into the unknown via the fuzz/wah odysseys of the aptly monikered ‘National Drone’ and the ceremonial exhortations of the closing ‘Death Will Find A Way.’As they also showed recently at a rare and spellbinding appearance at Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia, Hills have landed on a rich and intoxicating sound that sidesteps the cliches and humdrum stylistic foibles that often plague modern-day psych, in the process breathing new life into an approach that can sometimes seem in danger of appearing redundant through lack of imagination.

‘Frid’, their most out-of-mind and out-of-sight effort to date, crystallises everything that makes these Scandinavian satyrs stand out from the global herd; adventurous experimentation and fearless hallucinatory intensity, rendered with brass-knuckle fortitude. The end result is 38 minutes that translate into a feast for seasoned crate-diggers and fresh-faced converts alike. There is, indeed, gold in these here Hills.

TRACK LISTING

1) Kollektiv (4:44)
2) National Drone (7:47)
3) Anukthal Is Here (5:53)
4) Milarepa (3:02)
5) Och Solen Sänkte Sig Röd (10:52)
6) Death Will Find A Way (4:46)

New York’s WHITE HILLS are the opposite of a comet. They suck up an explosion of energy on the surface of the earth; from spirituality, from adrenaline, from the history of synthesized electronic music, from substance use, from philosophy, from friends and enemies alike, from MOTHER FUCKING ELECTRICITY and they focus it into a blinding beam of energy which they reflect back out into the void and this beam is a message. It is a statement which reads: “FUCK YOU. WE ARE HERE. WE ROCK, THEREFORE WE ARE.” -John Doran, The Quietus. October 2020 brings the release of Splintered Metal Sky, the long-awaited new installment in the ever vast musical cannon of WHITE HILLS. The album takes the listener on a post-punk, psychedelic ride fueled by industrial-strength fuzz and propelled by powerful beats where songs weave in and out of each other to imitate the rhythm of the city the band calls home. Splintered Metal Sky is about oscillation and evolution. It’s metamodern music looking at human existence in relation to technology and the hyper-driven architectural reshaping of a city. The music was largely inspired by the drone and roar of machinery pulsing through New York City, which is in a never-ending state of demolition and reconstruction. Dave and Ego took to the streets, gathering field recordings of sounds from the subway, drills, jackhammers, people in parks, traffic, mayhem and the occasional silence.

These recordings were then manipulated and constructed into rhythmic lines that were used as the basis for songs. The music, mixing noise with disciplined beat, embodies the paradoxical nature of the city: the grimy littered dead end alley just steps away from the sleek luxury skyscraper; the half eaten chicken bone being devoured by a rat on the subway tracks just beneath the glittering facade of the Chrysler building; the endless milling about of the 8 million people who call this slab of land home on their way to and from everywhere and nowhere. Informed by industrial innovators Einstürzende Neubauten and SPK, the avant garde post-punk of Tuxedomoon and the dub-electro of Cabaret Voltaire, the album vibrates with the energy of a sensually feral, raw beast.

TRACK LISTING

1/Midday Memory
2/Now Manhattan
3/a:CoNSTRUCT, B:CoNSTRUCT C:CoNSTRUCT (features Synth And Samples By Jim Coleman And Ambient Guitar By Jim Jarmusch)
4/Digital Trash
5/No Fear
6/Honesty
7/Rats
8/Morning Memory 9/Illusion 

Following on from RW Hedges Pop debut 'The Hunters in the Snow'.. this one takes place in The American West of 1877 the year the phonograph was invented.

Constructed in RW's studio 'The Chalet' a get away full of books and fairy lights out in a field in a no man’s land. RW & Luca Nieri sat around bonfires and wrote lyrics written on big spools of paper.

As per last time Luca Nieri produces and RW Hedges directs the songwriting further towards his influences of 1930's Hollywood. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Havent Seen Her In A While
2. Deep In The Valley
3. Girl In The Story
4. Trail Of The Setting Sun
5. Old Missouri
6. My Dearest
7. Down To Venezuela
8. Sure Enough
9. Prairie Moon
10. The Westerners 

All We Are are Guro Gikling from Norway (vocals, bass), Luis Santos from Brazil (guitars) and Richard O’Flynn from Ireland (drums/vocals). It hasn’t escaped them that the world seems to be spiraling into a period of darkness and through their music; they want to say it’s ok not to belong and it’s ok to feel different.

The resulting Sunny Hills is an irresistibly danceable, dark yet uplifting record about what it means to be alive right now and the power of friendship and togetherness in a world intent on driving us apart.

The artwork echoes this sentiment, the band explain “it shows an old house sandwiched between two large buildings under development. The woman who owned the house refused to sell to a number of developers including Donald Trump. She resisted for years while the developers even bought the space above the house. She finally won the case and stayed there for a further decade until her death. Before that, she watched Donald Trump’s casino fail and close its doors. There is a feeling of powerful resistance in this story that we relate to along with a real sense of defiance and eventual victory against a bigger power.”

Whilst political, Sunny Hills also documents the emotional rollercoaster the three-piece have been on in the past two years. Their adopted city Liverpool affected the album as well, it’s “an immigrant city with a proud history of welcoming everyone” they state, it’s also a singularly radical and resistant city and the band see a parallel between today’s climate of alienation and fear and the era of Thatcher.

Political, poetic, danceable and affirming - for all the proud citizens of nowhere, All We Are give you Sunny Hills.

TRACK LISTING

1. Burn It All Out
2. Human
3. Animal
4. Dance
5. Down
6. Dreamer
7. Youth
8. Waiting
9. Punch

'Hey daddy-o, I don’t wanna go down to the basement,’ spat some lanky bespectacled dope once a long time ago. Trust Burnt Hills to wait until he was long enough dead to afford the opportunity to not have to. Holed-up at the Helderberg House in Albany, NY, these cuddly middle-aged monsters of tuff, levitational, psychedelic thug punk swirliness have made an avant-rock legend of their agoraphobia. They played out a few times over the years – Bard College, NY; Weirdo Records, MA; Ron Schneiderman’s Festival Of Endless Gratitude back during the heyday of that ‘New Weird America’ boom; the legendary Elevens show in Northampton, MA – but their collective heart has remained between four breeze-blocked walls, surrounded by the washing machine, some DIY tools, a wall of 4×12 cabs loud enough to be heard four streets away and an occasional Monday night party crowd, every member of which knows how utterly blessed s/he is to be there witnessing this glorious band take flight.

When the party’s not there, the band still is – pretty much every Monday for the past 10+ years now – doing it purely for its own reward. Real goose bump shit. Golden Lab feels no smugness in having witnessed this thing in action seven times now (and sat in on one unforgettable occasion). Rather a sense of longing that the rest of the right thinking world could be afforded the same opportunity. But then, isn’t it the inaccessibility that makes it so special?

Live At The Low Beat does much to disprove that theory. The show presented on this LP, recorded to digital handheld recorder and mastered in Manchester, UK by Dom Tanner, took place at a local eatery regularly frequented by the band (the restaurant boasts bottles of BH founder Jackson Wingate’s homemade ‘Flipped Out Records Habanero Death Sauce’ on its tables) on December 4th 2014. It was the first of what, it has been decided, will be an annual Burnt Hills performance outside the basement. Nine of the ten full-time members of the band were in attendance on this night (guitarist Panda was absent) and it’s safe to assume that they were all pretty well smoked, fed and oiled by the time they took to the stage as it doesn’t take long for shit to really fly. Close to 50 minutes in total, this is the most savage, raging, oblivion-bound Burnt Hills set yet committed to wax.

There’s a whole bucketload of sensitive noodling amidst the chaos – along with the obligatory shred – but it’s, of course, the six-guitar pile-up that really takes this crescendo-obsessed troupe of suburban weirdos into the ‘Lord take me now!’ zone. As with the prior two Burnt Hills releases on Golden Lab, we feel blessed to be the label putting this out into the world. In an edition of just 250 copies with stunning psychedelic splurge art by Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura guitarist Dylan Hughes, this is gonna fly far and fast. Grip one while ya can.

'Glitter Glamour Atrocity' is a snapshot of the band in the midst of an incredible burst of creativity, and was recorded during the same sessions that produced 'Heads On Fire' and 'Abstractions & Mutations'. Sonically, it is radically different from anything else coming out of the New York underground at the time, and it set the template for the singular concoction of heavy psychedelic music, krautrock, and a worship of pure sound they have explored in different variations ever since.

Throughout the album the band explores themes of greed, misinformation, war, hypocrisy and their outcomes within the world’s political and economic systems, presenting these weighty topics with the same air of mystic understanding that underpins their music. Glitter Glamour Atrocity includes the song “Under Skin Or By Name,” the longest running staple in the band’s live set, which the band performed in the acclaimed film Only Lovers Left Alive at the request of director Jim Jarmusch. It is one of only two performances in the movie, which is enamored with the music making process and record collector culture.

Following the mood-setting intro track and the meditative bombast of “Under Skin or By Name,” WHITE HILLS settle into the sparse groove of “Spirit of Exile,” an expression of a desire to live apart from a culture that one does not fit into. These songs glow with the burning vitality and passion of free thinkers trapped in the waning years of the Bush administration. Those sentiments are perhaps most compellingly expressed on “Love Serve Remember,” a warped, surreal vision of life after 9/11 seen through the eyes of someone who witnessed the event first-hand, interspersed with a brilliantly edited speech by Bush himself in which he admits “I was a threat to the United States.”

Glitter Glamour Atrocity was recorded with the first iteration of the trio line-up with Dave W on vocals, guitar, synthesizers, and sound collage, Ego Sensation on bass and vocals, and Bob Bellomo on drums. It was recorded at Bellomo’s studio in Passaic, NJ, and produced by Dave W.

TRACK LISTING

01. Air Waves
02. Under Skin Or By Name
03. Spirit Of Exile
04. Distance
05. Somewhere Along The Way
06. Long Serve Remember
07. Passage
08. Glitter Glamour Atrocity

After a SXSW that resulted in national coverage on NBC Rock Center, Fuse News, and Rolling Stone, a US tour with Alabama Shakes, as well as three sold-out headline London shows earlier this year, Houndmouth have confirmed the release of their anticipated debut album, ‘From The Hills Below The City’ on Rough Trade.

Houndmouth are comprised of four musicians from New Albany, IN, across the river from Louisville (hence ‘From The Hills Below The City’) - Matt Myers (guitar / vocals), Katie Toupin (keyboard / vocals), Zak Appleby (bass / vocals) and Shane Cody (drums / vocals) spent the past year building a passionate following in their hometown and touring with Alabama Shakes, The Lumineers, Grace Potter, and Drive-By Truckers.

“Houndmouth is a great young band,” testifies Patterson Hood of the Truckers. “They ‘brought it’ each and every night. They were extremely popular with our fanbase and our band. I look forward to hearing what they do next.”

The 12 original songs on ‘From The Hills Below The City’ are packed with tales of down-on-their-luck drug runners, casinos, riverboats, recession-era scraping, and more.

All members of Houndmouth sing, “leading with individual character and harmonizing in saloon-choir empathy,” writes Rolling Stone’s David Fricke, and their songs have a looselimbed swing, anchored by a sturdy rhythm and a cagey melodic sensibility.

White Hills newest and most energized recording to date is bursting with raw energy packed into their most concise songs to date. Fear not long time White Hills fans, there is still loads of killer guitar work and fuzzed out psychedelia on 'Frying on this Rock. The album opens with an under five minute scorcher and closes with a 15 minute track that reminds us why space rock gatekeepers like Julian Cope were very early supporters. The end result, Frying on this Rock, is an invigorating deep space rock album. An album that is at once able to channel the energy born of a collective anger into a swirling psychedelic, brutalizing musical statement that mainlines the thrill of defiance straight to the listener’s heart.

“...White Hills have established themselves as some of America’s foremost proponents of fuzz-driven space rock... Its latest effort H-p1 expands upon the the legacies of Hawkwind, Can, and early Tangerine Dream with synapse-frying deepspace epics” - SF Weekly; “A darkly hypnotic mix of churning guitar, distant vocals and swirling synth drones, this record conjures a riff-heavy psychedelic vibe that picks up where the Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3 left off. Far out.” - Los Angeles Times.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: More epic fuzz-psyche onslaughts from the current leaders of the pack, the White Hills. Molten guitars and a pummelling rhythm section, create a swirling wave of noise taking space rock to new dimensions.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pads Of Light
2. Robot Stomp
3. You Dream You See
4. Song Of Everything
5. I Write A Thousand Letters (Pulp On Bone)

Matt Eades formerly of the bands Brubaker and Performance (managed by Paul Gallagher) met Danny Cawley (Alf and Delia, Hector's House) in the Autumn of 2002 through a mutual friend. Danny had returned to Manchester after spending some time in London and Brighton, and brought back with him some songs and ideas he wanted to develop. Matt was also looking to get back into music after some time off, so the pair began writing and playing music together. "Hit The Hills" is their second album.

Overdue reissue of Heads on Fire, the out of print second album by New Yorks White Hills. Since this release their first for Rocket the band have gone to release several very highly regarded albums for Thrill Jockey. Ever changing and always striving to push the envelope, White Hills album Heads on Fire finds the band playing a heavier style of spacerock. Relentless and punishing, the album kicks off with the spacey swirl of the song ‘Radiate’ and ends with the speedladen blast of the track ‘Eternity’. Along the way, a mesmerising blend of growlling fuzz / wah guitar, pounding bass, sprawling synth, and chaotic drumming doses one’s head three sheets to the wind.

Whether it be the mere one minute track ‘Return of Speed Toilet’ or the 26 plus minute ‘Don’t Be Afraid’, the listener will be taken on ride through a world that is all encompassing from beginning to end. The band started in New York as a solo project by Dave W. Since then it has turned into a trio, with Ego Sensation (bass) plus various drummers which has included Kid Millions of Oneida fame. Like Oneida, White Hills also share a love for a hard rock stripped of its bombast, their heavier, dirtier, earthier influences contend with airier atmospheres while combining steadiness with spacious soaring guitars, these heads are always on fire!

TRACK LISTING

01. Radiate
02. Oceans Of Sound
03. Return Of Speed Toilet
04. Visions Of The Past, Present And Future
05. Don’t Be Afraid
06. Eternity

Hallelujah The Hills is one of the most admirably devoted, unconventional bands to have come out of Boston in recent years. Boston has likewise been waiting for them as demonstrated by packed shows and regular accolades from the Boston Phoenix (where they are now up for an award for Best New Band) and the Boston Weekly Dig. The band's line-up of bass, drums, cello, Moog, trumpet, melodica, sampler and plenty of guitars grants them the space to expand and contract as their melodies and arrangements see fit. Think of them as the sonic equivalent to Willy Wonka's ferry ride, seemingly random yet utterly precise, first drifting along a chocolate river with a gentle lulling sound then hurtling you into the unknown with a thundering danger until you arrive somewhere entirely new, a fantastic destination full of wonder. Unlike some of their anthemic peers, Hallelujah The Hills find solace in the space between their crashing crescendos and choral peaks and that's a subtle strength of the band. It grants the songs a great diversity, from amped-up campfire sing-alongs to sombre ballads.