A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and
artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that!

The duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in 1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of WHERE to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here – a tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.

The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. SimonReynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby Milk Snatcher
2. W.O.G.S
3. One Way Mirror
4. Up

Precocious Neophyte is the shoegaze/dreampop project of South Korean singer songwriter Jeehye Ham.

After gaining recognition both in the Korean indie scene and abroad as vocalist/guitarist of Vidulgi OoyoO (shoegaze/post rock) and guitarist of JuckJuck Grunzie(noise/psychedelic), Ham relocated to Chicago where she began experimenting with home recording. In 2019, she released an EP comprised of intimate acoustic compositions under the name Sophysoon.

With Home in the Desert, Ham embraces the solitary action and lo-fi aesthetics of home recording to create a fuzzier, more expansive sound, inspired by the organized noise of bands she grew up with in Korea's indie scene. Home in the Desert, written and recorded in her apartment between 2021-2022, developed out of Ham's attempts to envision how skeletal guitar lines might sound when performed live at ear-splitting volumes by a full band. “I never expected that I would make loud music again, but one day I took my guitar out and started jamming on my own.“

As its title suggests, Precocious Neophyte's debut release negotiates the impossible longings for perpetual spaces and times of home. In doing so, Ham fills unstable distances with what KEXP calls "ethereal vocals and soaring melodies," and cradles the insecurities of isolation in overdrive warmth and many layers of distorted guitars.

TRACK LISTING

1. From My Tiny Room
2. My Electronic Idol
3. Traveler
4. AIWA
5. Yasik (Midnight Meal)
6. Girls On The Bed
7. Korean Lesson 7 At Home (Where Is Michael?)
8. Golden Eyes
9. Dreaming Alone Or Together (Bonus Track)
10. My Electronic Idol (Alternative Mix)

It’s two years since CONNECTIVITY (2021) smashed into the top 40 and debuted at #1 in the UK download chart, propelling the fiercely independent voice of GRACE PETRIE from critics’ choice to the main stages of major festivals across The UK and Ireland, Australia and Canada.

For a seasoned road dog who spent almost 15 years clocking up tours with the likes of Billy Bragg, Frank Turner and Hannah Gadsby, the COVID lockdowns were like a cage for Petrie and when restrictions lifted, she hit the road harder than ever, armed with her most searing and successful record to date, and determined to make up for lost time. Sell-out headline tours across the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand followed, with audiences from Melbourne to Toronto mesmerised by the ferocity of her socially urgent lyricism and the barnstorming power of her live show. But travelling the globe hasn’t diminished her laser focus on the political issues plaguing the UK, with two more Prime Ministers, endless blunders and evermore division seen since she last swapped microphone for pen and paper.

Now the songwriter is back - stronger, older and a whole lot angrier than ever before. As right wing ideologues trade in suspicion and cynicism, tearing communities apart against a backdrop of crumbling public services, the ordinary folk of Britain continue to suffer the consequences of corruption and individualism.

From within this maelstrom of despair comes BUILD SOMETHING BETTER - the new, uncontainable album from Grace Petrie.

Recorded raw and unflinchingly with folk-punk legend Frank Turner in the producer’s seat, BUILD SOMETHING BETTER is a return to blistering protest form for Britain’s most relevant political songwriter, a decade after being hailed as “a powerful new voice”, (The Guardian) and “a millennial’s Billy Bragg” (Huffington Post). In a world that seems to make less sense than ever, these are songs made to both holler along to from the crowd barrier and to tear up with on a lonely latet night train. A record for everyone whose broken heart beats for, and whose boots stomp in time with, the hope a brighter tomorrow.

“An effervescent charm-bomb of a performer” - The New Yorker.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Best Country In The World
2. The House Always Wins
3. King And Country
4. Meanwhile In Texas
5. Next Episode Starts
6. Start Again
7. Earthwire
8. Cynicism Free
9. If I Were To Outlive You
10. English Culture
11. Fixer Upper

After a five year hiatus Luke Slater reanimates his L.B. Dub Corp alias for a dynamic, vocal-led ode to the club featuring Robert Owens, Paul St. Hilaire, Miss Kittin and more.

Slater is responsible for some of the most enduring electronic music of the past 30 years, including his grandiose ambient techno project The 7th Plain and the trailblazing machine funk of Planetary Assault Systems. He debuted the L.B. Dub Corp alias in 2006 as an outlet for a broader, looser kind of club music. His third LP the name, ‘Saturn To Home’ also marks his first appearance on Dekmantel.

The result of more than a year’s exacting work, here we find Slater reflecting on his formative influences and funnelling them into eight incisive tracks that range from the feverish passion of ‘Your Love’s infectious chord stabs to the star-scraping breakbeat techno of ‘Only The Good Times’ via the smoky soundsystem tendrils of ‘Golden Star’ and the elastic drums and mutant synth funk of ‘Krank’. As well as celebrating the intersectionality of club culture and the vibrant vocals of his invited guests, it’s also the first time Slater has committed his life-long love of playing drums onto a record — just listen to the sizzling rhythmic tension of ‘Cloak And Dagger’ and you’ll instantly understand where he’s coming from.

From every syncopated groove to the spine-tingling rush of the melodic hooks, Slater tells the story of his life in music, which means his life overall, without ever being stuck in the past.

TRACK LISTING

Saturn To Home Ft. Kittin
You Got Me Ft. Robert Owens
Your Love
Golden Star Ft. Baal Mortimer
Only The Good Times
Krank
No Trouble In Paradise Ft. Paul St. Hilaire
Cloack And Dagger

Hello and welcome to Cult Value, the new album from Manchester-based band Oort Clod, released by Safe Suburban Home in the UK and Repeating Cloud in the US this April. We are very excited to introduce this mercurial and unique collection of songs. The album includes garage stompers such as “#7”, off-kilter indie whining like the title track “Cult Value”, perfect indie pop songs like ‘Car Talk’ and much more.

Featuring members of Unpaid Intern, the Hipshakes, Jeuce and the Early Mornings, Oort Clod was originally conceived by songwriter Patrick Glen as a fluid project with shifting members. Over the course of pandemic-era practices above the empty Peer Hat pub (the epicentre of DIY music making in Manchester) the current line-up solidified. In 2021 Oort Clod released a split E.P. with fellow Manchester band Priceless Bodies, pursuing a darker and more experimental sound. The EP received international airplay including BBC6 Music and KSFX.

After playing gigs with bands like Porridge Radio, Jeffrey Lewis, and Garden Centre and even more practices above the Peer Hat, Oort Clod have mounted up once more to make Cult Value.

The album’s sound is hard to pin down but it is Oort Clod’s most accessible and complete work so far. The band finds common ground in the alternative rock bands of the 1980s and 1990s, the post-punk and indie bands on Flying Nun Records and trashy compilations of post-British Invasion 60s garage gems like Nuggets. All of which come through, warped by Oort Clod’s particular sensibility, on this record made at Delicious Clam studios in Sheffield under the watchful eye of Ed Crisp. You’ll even get their cover of ? &the Mysterians “96 Tears”—rated the best ever cover of the song by the Blanketing Covers podcast, beating Jonathan Richman, Aretha Franklin, the Stranglers and Suicide (this actually exists, honestly).

So there you have it the short and sweet lowdown on the new album Cult Value by Oort Clod. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as they did making it and spread the good word as you see fit. Good luck in your endeavours and take care.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Lake
2. #7
3. Car Talk
4. Cult Value
5. Politicians' Eyes
6. AC Greed
7. Paper Cuts
8. Wrong Attention
9. 96 Tears
10. Imagination
11. Inner Rat

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.

Cathartic avant-rock, literate DIY folk & experimental composition exploring displacement, love, climate change, belonging & the places we call home - RIYL Jim O’Rourke, Richard Youngs, This Heat, Richard Dawson, Flying Nun.

‘Real Home’ is the new album by the Manchester-born, London-based artist Kiran Leonard. His sixth album proper (not including innumerable tour-only CD-Rs and short-run cassettes), since his precocious debut in 2013, ‘Real Home’ finds Leonard invigorated by inspiration and experience, making passionate, literate, and mercurial music that explores displacement, love, memory, climate change, connections to home and more.

Encompassing songs recorded after moving to South London, ‘Real Home’ reflects on ideas of belonging and domesticity through folkloric, stream-of-consciousness songwriting. Across nine tracks, Leonard traces lived impressions of the household and the city, expressing sentiments of dislocation, alienation and stasis, but contentment too.

Infusing the avant-rock effervescence, terraced dynamics and visionary lyricism of his music with what he defines as a greater sense of openness, Leonard is as versatile, fervent and imaginative as ever on ‘Real Home’, yet his music is somehow more intimate, affecting, and acutely expressive. Shaped by dual considerations of simplicity and formalism, ‘Real Home’ is by turns beautiful, allusive, and ruminative, an album on which Leonard considers what his songs have resembled in the past and what they mean now.

In recent years, Leonard has crafted eloquent chamber music inspired by the likes of James Joyce and Clarice Lispector (‘Derevaun Seraun’), responded to contemporary politics and communication breakdown in the digital age (‘Western Culture’), and compiled solo works and ensemble recordings for a longform ode to Jonas Mekas and to one of Leonard’s enduring themes; home (‘Trespass On Foot’).

On ‘Real Home’, Leonard reiterates this abiding thematic focus yet ascends to new, different heights, in music of cathartic delicacy and dissonance where all the myriad dimensions of his work to date seem to crystallize.

There are sinuous songs about struggle and defying the pace of city life through drift and diversion (‘Pass Between Houses’), stirring songs of intense feeling and crescendo, described as a form of speculative detective fiction (‘Theatre for Change’). There are touching solo piano ballads (the title track), symbolic contentions with carbon capture and climate change (‘Utopia of Bog’), modes of experimental minimalism (‘Void Attentive’), and other profuse feats of compositional range, embroidered with wild tendrils of narrative and lyrical depth. A record to pore over, and get lost in.

Exemplifying the vast aesthetic scope of Leonard’s music, lead single ‘My Love, Let’s Take The Stage Tonight’ is inspired by country lodestar Hank Williams, Russian poetry and a late period love poem by William Carlos Williams. Yet for Leonard, the song signals a sense of accessible materiality, and is the product of a more linear approach to writing songs:

“My imitation of the great Hank Williams, in spirit if not in substance…This is one of the best efforts on Real Home at a song-as-object. Looking at it now I realise I was trying to write a song that made itself known as a song to the listener, and I wonder whether that’s crucial if you want a song to transcend its context. And that this is either accomplished through a total openness – by being inviting, by laying the tricks of the song out plain to see, as Williams and his many ghostwriters did so well – or by adopting a knowing aloofness, positioning oneself against the listener but letting it be known that that’s what it’s doing. In this song I try both, but mostly the former: as in, I wanted to write a song where every line follows on from the next.”

Imbuing the endlessly elaborate and inventive qualities of his music with a newfound streak of candid, clear-cut melodicism, Leonard has reached a special place in his artistry, on a record that feels familial, and expresses closeness. Assembled with affiliates including Lauren Auder, Otto Willberg, Jasper Llewellyn (caroline), Tom Hardwick-Allan (Shovel Dance Collective), Magda McLean (caroline, The Umlauts), Alex Mckenzie (caroline, Shovel Dance Collective), Isabelle Thorn (Dear Laika) & more, the recording process had a significant influence on the subject matter of ‘Real Home’, in sessions defined by close-knit camaraderie and artistic eccentricity:

“The theme of the home obviously recurs throughout the record; the album was mostly recorded in domestic spaces with friends, and the name of the album is Real Home. I like the qualifier ‘real’, like you’re getting past the cloak of the word and towards the thing-itself…[also] nearly all the percussion in this record was recorded on items from my dad’s shed (jam jars, sandpaper, blocks of wood, etc). Real home record!”

‘Real Home’, like anything by Kiran Leonard, is a record of dazzling multiplicity. Yet it’s a companionable prospect with a central premise; a collection of songs where listeners old and new can find a home. An album led by a scene; of Leonard standing at the threshold, ready to welcome you inside.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pass Between Houses
2. Theatre For Change
3. Real Home
4. Treat Me A Stranger
5. Utopia Of Bog
6. Void Attentive
7. My Love, Let's Take The Stage Tonight
8. The Kiss
9. He Had Always Led

Midway through At Home, Dog Unit’s debut album, at the end of the record’s fourth earworm in succession, there’s a pause for breath. It’s the first time the music has come to a halt since the LP began — the first time this ribbon of sound has been cut, after twenty-plus minutes of motorik groove, nagging riff, and insistent hook — and as a result, it also serves as perhaps the clearest indicator yet that At Home is more than just a collection of individually wound super-melodic instrumental rock songs; it’s a suite of music precision-engineered for a single sitting, complete with resting stops, signposts and tiny diversions in just the right places along the way.

Anyone who’s seen Dog Unit live won’t be surprised by what that pause signifies: indeed, this knack for world creation has been the band’s MO since their inception in 2019, writing and performing music designed to arc over the course of an uninterrupted hour, with the four Londoners’ musical idiosyncrasies combining for just the right recipe: Henry Scowcroft and Sam Walton on guitars that alternate between howling feedback and poised melodicism, James Weaver, a pop-dub bass maestro whose minimalist style reveals a genius for conciseness, and motorik drummer Lucy Jamieson, the most reliable timekeeper this side of an atomic clock. Together, on stage or on record, there’s a sense that this isn’t four musicians, but one 16-limbed creature guiding its listeners on an undulating journey of sleek modernist wonder, like a bullet train scything beautifully through Japanese countryside.

That half-time pause on At Home might be the album’s most noticeable breath-point, but on closer listening, moments like that are dotted all over the album, and this focus on flow, aiming to make the entirely instrumental record sing, is 100% played-for. “On tour last year, we road-tested two or three new songs that had a really strong sense of where in an hour-long gig or on an imagined album they should sit,” explains Sam of At Home’s gestation. “Once those tent-pole tracks were finished, and once we had a blueprint for the structure of the as-yet unwritten album, we realised the rest of the music could kind of be written to order: we knew we needed an opener to side two and a midway breather, for example, and a sort of ‘closing credits’ song, and a climactic moment near the end that led from civility to menace.

“And because we’d already made those plot decisions, we knew what to write, which keys to write in, how long each song should be, etc, to make sure everything flowed from start to finish as well as possible — we were just answering our self-imposed briefs.”

Over the course of 2023, then, Dog Unit enacted their meticulous plan, writing and recording in the studio while trying out newly written parts of At Home at their Servant Jazz Quarters live residency. Each time at the intimate Dalston bar, the band tweaked and perfected their new material in front of a curious audience who grew into a cult following, drawn to an unorthodox live show in which a boiler-suited band, seated in horseshoe formation, played straight through for a gloriously intense unbroken hour of music.

In short, At Home is Dog Unit’s first major statement. That statement may be wordless, but it’s also sonically and conceptually articulate: here are four friends and native Londoners making an album in their home city that’s custom-built to feel enveloping, warm and transporting as listeners wend their way through its running order. Put simply, with this debut record of all-encompassing world-building, Dog Unit are inviting you to lap up those tunes, bathe in those washes of sound, and yes, even revel in those pauses — ultimately, they want you to feel At Home. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A stunning, spellbinding mix of math-rock intricacy, post-rock groove and indie pep. Dog Unit's music is endlessly evolving, but pulls you into each segment within moments of them starting, effortlessly pulling your ears along without a hitch. It's a brilliantly crafted and beautifully hearty noise.

TRACK LISTING

1. Concrete Barges On The Banks Of The Thames
2. Lab Coats
3. When Do We Start Fighting?
4. We Can Still Win This
5. In A Magic World, Then Yes
6. John X Kennedy
7. Consistent Effort
8. The Dogs Are Barking Again 

Another guaranteed party starter double sider from the Homehitters - these 2 club monsters knock it out of the park!

TRACK LISTING

1. Usher - Yeah
2. Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz - Get Low 

Consisting of Colorado-based singer-songwriters Josephine Foster and Andy Bar, then later David Pajo of Slint and Tortoise, The Children’s Hour released one studio album (2003’s SOS JFK) and supported Billy Corgan’s Zwan on a tour of North American arenas before parting ways. Going Home is a collection of unreleased material that might have constituted a second album at the time, a beautiful reminder to the world of their passionate, low-key and refined indie rock style.

TRACK LISTING

1. Leader Soldier
2. Dance With Me
3. Bright Lights
4. Rainbow
5. Adoption Day
6. Anna
7. Wyoming
8. Going Home 

As the first single off the EP, ‘High Tones’ is an ode to festival season and getting drunk in the blissful chaos, then jumping in the van and driving home with the noise still ringing in your ears. It’s a funky bop of a song complete with a riotous video filmed at London’s famous Rivoli Ballroom. ‘Whatstheuse’ sees the band return to Cornwall where they busked in their early days, reflecting on their growth, whilst ‘Find My Way Around’ saw the band embody quirky characters in a music video that can only be described as ‘Wes Anderson meets Peep Show’ with an optimistic track that saw their social media channels boom.

Cassia’s indie-pop contemporaries Kawala, collaborate on ‘Circular Motion’. Cassia and Kawala’s collaboration came about after the two bands met at Barn on the Farm during the summer of 2022, and a couple pints in, the bromance started to blossom. A writing session later, the resulting track is everything you’d come to expect from two of the UK’s most feel-good bands- rhythmic and understated with bright toplines and harmonies, working together in synergy for a track that is an instant classic.

‘Circular Motion’ is the fourth piece of Cassia’s eclectic new puzzle and a key element of the ‘Home Soon…’ EP. A sonic collage of their recent expeditions to new writing locations and experiences with new collaborators, the EP artwork is based upon an everyday fridge that you would find in a busy kitchen, covered in magnets, postcards, pictures and anything fun collected over time giving insight into the bands touring life, travels and where the EP songs were written.

Rob shares: “Summed up, the EP is based around life cycles. I feel that l always struggle to cope with chapters drawing to a natural close because it forces me to change what is comfortable, it is just a natural response of mine and so these songs act as an outlet for me, some tracks reminded me of the positive outcomes that come off the back of change, whilst some songs were jotted down during a painful switch of reality.” As they prepare for another year filled with new music, live shows and festival appearances, Cassia’s party is alive and kicking once again.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Find My Way Around
A2. Circular Motion
A3. Gamma Rays
B1. Whatstheuse
B2. High Tones

Svaneborg Kardyb are Nikolaj Svaneborg – Wurlitzer, Juno, piano and Jonas Kardyb – drums, percussion a multi award winning duo from Denmark, with a fast-rising international reputation and with an NPR Tiny Desk concert – number one on many artist’s wish lists - in the bag before even the release of their Gondwana Records debut album Over Tage last November.

Their beautiful, exquisite compositions draw on Danish folk music and Scandinavian jazz influences, resulting in a joyful melding of beautiful melodies, delicate minimalism, catchy grooves, subtle electronica vibes, Nordic atmospheres and organic interplay. All of this and more shines through on their NPR session, first broadcast in May 2022 on YouTube. But of course, not everyone watches YouTube and so here, emastered for vinyl and download, is a strictly limited to 1500 vinyl, four tracker - At Home (An NPR Tiny Desk Concert) featuring bespoke artwork from Gondwana Records’ Daniel Halsall.

Here is what Kara Frame had to say for NPR, “Svaneborg Kardyb's Tiny Desk (home) concert was recorded in the countryside of Djursland, Denmark. "You have to drive for a while on a gravel road, and then you come to a lovely old house surrounded by hills and a stream on one side and a very flat landscape on the other, where you can see 10 miles away," the band wrote to us, describing the location of the shoot. It's this place that inspired Svaneborg Kardyb's second album, Haven (or "garden" in English). "Haven celebrates places we like to be," the duo said.

The Danish jazz duo is composed of Nikolaj Svaneborg on the Wurlitzer, synthesizer and piano, and Jonas Kardyb on drums and percussion. Their instrumentation set-up is untraditional, with the drums and keys facing each other, a position that they play in on stage just as they do in Kardyb's kitchen and living room here. They open up their set with the title track from Haven, which begins with a quiet melody over an effervescent loop. The sound mimics the shimmy of leaves in the breeze.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. Haven
A2. Et Lite Øyeblikk Bare
B1. Orbit
B2. Terrassedør

A stunning social history of British rap and grime by one of the nation's foremost cultural chroniclers. 'A stunning exploration of a genre, a movement and a world. It's every bit as lyrical as the rap Ekpoudom has documented.'CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, author of Queenie'Illuminating and intimate.

Ekpoudom's prose is rhythmic and deft but also crackles with joy. I know I'll be reading it for years to come.'CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, author of Small Worlds'A rousing, inspiring, often breathtaking history that reads with the flow of a magnificent novel. Ekpoudom is one of the very finest chroniclers of black British culture.'MUSA OKWONGA, author of One Of Them***I met people who never quite fit in where they were supposed to, who found solace, salvation and meaning in these sounds, these words.

Something is happening in Britain, trembling the tracks as it unfolds. Recent years have borne witness to underground genres leaking out from the inner cities, going on to become some of the most popular music in the nation. In this groundbreaking social history, journalist Aniefiok Ekpoudom travels the country to paint a compelling portrait of the dawn, boom and subsequent blossoming of UK rap and grime.

Taking us from the heart of south London to the West Midlands and South Wales, he explores how a history of migration and an enduring spirit of resistance have shaped the current realities of these linked communities and the music they produce. These sounds have become vessels for the marginalised, carrying Black and working-class stories into the light. Vividly depicted and compassionately told, Where We Come From weaves together intimate stories of resilience, courage and loss, as well as a shared music culture that gave refuge and purpose to those in search of belonging.

Ekpoudom offers a rich chronicle of rap, identity, place and, above all, the social and human condition in modern Britain. ***'A landmark work that will undoubtedly shape conversations about not just UK rap and grime, but British music for years to come.'YOMI ADEGOKE, author of The List'Phenomenal - this is the book we've all been waiting for. Like the heroes he chronicles, Ekpoudom acts as torchbearer, his book a beacon, for the story that follows..'GUY GUNARATNE'Essential .

Home Is Where make anxiety-riddled but cathartic rock songs about the apocalypse. the whaler—the Palm Coast, Florida quartet’s ambitious and exhilarating sophomore full-length—is a concept record about getting used to things getting worse. Across 10 interconnected but self-contained songs, the album captures the desensitization and disorientation of tragedy becoming mundane. the whaler, produced by Jack Shirley (Joyce Manor, Deafheaven) at Atomic Garden in Oakland, CA, marks an unmistakable new chapter for frontwoman Brandon MacDonald’s songwriting, subverting the expectations left by her band’s 2021 debut LP I Became Birds for something equally resonant, but darker and more expansive. While the whaler paints a bleak picture of a world in an endless state of collapse–of ruined utopias and desperate people faking normalcy–there’s a humanity-affirming undercurrent throughout that screams to break free.

TRACK LISTING

1. Skin Meadow
2. Lily Pad Pupils
3. Yes! Yes! A Thousand Times Yes!
4. Whaling For Sport
5. Everyday Feels Like 9/11
6. 9/12
7. Daytona 500
8. Chris Farley
9. Nursing Home Riot
10. Floral Organs 

Recorded in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, UK, December 1976. Private session. Previously unheard. Available in digital format and limited edition CD.

The amazing lost Dean, Miller, Pyle private tapes from 1976: featuring the very first recorded meeting of these three extraordinary pioneering talents of British Jazz/Rock, performing four magical co-composed pieces, none of which have ever been issued in any form.

This session was originally intended to be released on Mike King's highly regarded Reel Recordings label. Sadly, Mike passed away before the project was completed and consequently the session has instead sat on a shelf of the esteemed British jazz collector and historian Philippe Renaud for the past decade. UNTIL NOW.

Album includes extensive notes by Philippe and renowned Canterbury music expert Aymeric Leroy.

Original mastering by Mike King. additional mastering by Matt Parker.

TRACK LISTING

1. Molly's Mild
2. Pilgrim's Hope
3. Crack Le Whip
4. Tea, Kettle, Stout

Remastered version of ‘Home Cooking’, the album that cemented Yoda as a versatile producer and not just a deejay. It now serves as a snapshot of the jazz and soul scene at the time with artists like Nubya Garcia, Eva Lazarus and Theon Cross going on to break out. Recorded between his own studio and the world-famous Abbey Road, ‘Home Cooking’ keeps one foot in the Hip-Hop old school with collaborations and the return from Jungle Brothers and Boston bastion Edo. G. Two key singles have been remixed for a bonus 7”. ‘Roxbury’ featuring Nubya Garcia and Edo. G has been given the golden treatment by the legendary Double Dee & Steinski while ‘London Fields’ featuring Joel Culpepper is reworked by label mates The Still Brothers. 

TRACK LISTING

London Fields Feat. Joel Culpepper
Thornton Heath Feat. Omar
Rising Brook Feat. Eva Lazarus
Kingswood Feat. Andrew Ashong
Abbey Road Feat. Nubya Garcia Theon Cross & Henry Wu
Roxbury Feat. Edo G & Nubya Garcia
Soweto Feat. Scarface Manolo
Hither Green Feat. Joel Culpepper & Baby Bam
Afrika Feat. Jungle Brothers
Croxley Green
Eastville Feat. Eva Lazarus
Boundary Gardens Feat. Andrew Ashong….
Roxbury Double Dee & Steinski Remix
London Fields Still Brothers Remix

Teenage Tom Petties is a slacker indie punk band split between Wiltshire, England and Portland, USA. Created by vocalist and guitarist Tom Brown, (also of the jangle pop duo Rural France), Teenage Tom Petties features Jim Quinn on bass, Galen Richmond and James Brown on guitar, and Jeff Hamm on drums.

The band’s first album, Teenage Tom Petties (2022), a collaborative release by U.K. label Safe Suburban Home and U.S. label Repeating Cloud, is a low-fi, DIY recording inspired by Brown’s early love of bands like The Lemonheads, Descendents and Guided by Voices.

“I wanted the first album to sound like some shitty tape you might find in the foot-well of a car—your brother’s buddy’s band. So the nostalgic/suburban theme kind of follows—a lot of the songs address teenage emotions.”

The bands second full-length release, Hotbox Daydreams (2023)—also from Safe Suburban Home and Repeating Cloud—extends the narrative of the first, introducing a more cynical perspective as it wrestles with the impending adulthood of your twenties. Hotbox Daydreams also ups the ante, production-wise; the full line-up came together to record with Bradford Krieger at Big Nice Studios in Providence, R.I.

“The fuzz is really important to me. If a recording is too perfect or fully realized, people can’t fill in the gaps in their head,” Brown says. “So I was a little apprehensive about going into a proper studio for that reason. But it was a revelation!”

Teenage Tom Petties will be doing a short tour in England to celebrate the release of Hotbox Daydreams this coming November, with shows in Leeds, Manchester, and London. In the meantime, Brown is perfecting his Claymation skills to create short videos for the album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Trigger’s Broom
2. Stoner
3. Hotbox Daydreams
4. Find Me
5. Swingball Summer
6. Bad Hire
7. This Ones On You
8. Dipshit
9. I Got It From Here
10. Deathtrap

It has now been repressed for the 1st time, this 2023 pressing is limited to 500
copies on transparent 10" eco-vinyl with unique colour swirls. Zero 7's debut album 'Simple Things' sold over a million copies and was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and the band as Best Newcomer at the Brit Awards. The album featured singers Sia, Sophie Barker and Mozez. 'When It Falls' followed with the same guest vocalists along with Danish singer Tina Dico. Their third album 'The Garden' was nominated for a Grammy Award with singers Jose Gonzalez and Sia. Two further albums 'Yeah Ghost' and a best of 'Record' completed their time with Atlantic Records.

TRACK LISTING

1. Home (Alternative Mix)
2. Somersault (Danger Mouse Remix Ft. MF DOOM)

Don Cherry's downtown Paris funk masterwork produced in 1985 by Ramuntcho Matta and originally released by Barclay in France only, finally gets a worldwide release on Wewantsounds. The album features French post punk muse Elli Medeiros (Stinky Toys, Elli & Jacno), avant garde poet Brion Gysin and cult Senegalese drummer Abdoulaye Prosper Niang (from the mythical group Xalam). Newly Remastered, the album is augmented by five bonus tracks culled from Matta's vauts and including the superb "Kick" featuring Gysin.

TRACK LISTING

1. Call Me
2. Treat Your Lady Right
3. Butterfly Friend
4. I Walk
5. Art Deco
6. Rappin' Recipe
7. Reggae To The High Tower
8. Alphabet City
9. Bamako Love
10. Kick (Single Version) [feat. Brion Gysin]
11. Rappin' Recipe (Instrumental)
12. Benoego
13. Initiation (Demo)
14. Treat Your Lady Right (Bim Bam Bom)

This 1962 live engagement at the Village Gate marked Sonny Rollins' first recorded collaboration with Don Cherry. Presented here are three performances never before issued on vinyl, taped in stereo and with brilliant sound quality.

Sonny Rollins: tenor saxophone
Don Cherry: cornet
Bob Cranshaw: bass
Billy Higgins: drums

Live at the Village Gate, New York, July 28, 1962

TRACK LISTING

Home, Sweet Home
Solitude
Lover

Soundtrack to the brand new feature-length concert documentary “Home Again: Carole King Live In Central Park,” which presents musical icon Carole King’s triumphant May 26, 1973 homecoming concert on The Great Lawn of New York City’s Central Park before an estimated audience of 100,000. Home Again: Carole King Live In Central Park provides an inside view of a generational talent at her prime, performing one of the biggest and most momentous concerts of her career in the city where she was born.

TRACK LISTING

1. Beautiful
2. Been To Canaan
3. Way Over Yonder
4. Smackwater Jack
5. Home Again
6. Sweet Seasons
7. It’s Too Late
8. Fantasy Beginning
9. You’ve Been Around Too Long
10. Being At War With Each Other
11. That’s How Things Go Down
12. Haywood
13. A Quiet Place To Live
14. You Light Up My Life
15. Corazón
16. Believe In Humanity
17. Fantasy End
18. You’ve Got A Friend

Crazy Horse has always been a band that was meant to be. Formed in the late 1960s as rock & roll was beginning to take a turn into the '70s, the band (Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot and Danny Whitten) had started playing with Neil Young, and, though they didn't know it then, were going to make history for 50-plus years. And while it is no surprise that Crazy Horse has continued on that quest, it is an exciting continuation of their storied career that the group is releasing ALL ROADS LEAD HOME on March 31, 2023. It is a statement of power and purpose on what rock & roll bands can accomplish as the decades pass and musical growth continues. In so many ways, Crazy Horse exists as a party of one in the way they have created something so uniquely original and completely within their own world.

ALL ROADS LEAD HOME is an album born out of pure inspiration as well as social necessity. Molina, Talbot and Lofgren kept recording their original songs, each with other musicians and in various locations during the pandemic years. They were forced to change from working as a trio with Neil Young, and used that opportunity to see what their new individual configurations would lead to. And, of course they led home. The three Crazy Horse members each recorded three songs apart and with different musicians, and by challenging themselves to see what they could do, all arrived at a wondrous consensus of unforgettable music. Crazy Horse has never made an album like this before.

Neil Young also includes "Song Of the Seasons,” a live solo version of the song from the album BARN with Crazy Horse, as a sign of solidarity with the band of brothers he has shared the stage and studio with since 1969.

In a world that is constantly changing and can swing from deep challenges to glorious creations in a way that feels never-ending, the songs of ALL ROADS LEAD HOME are a map of both where we've all been and where we might be going. In the end, the songs are a reminder of not only the gift of music, but just as important, the gift of friendship. Long may they run.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rain (Billy Talbot)
2. You Will Never Know (Nils Lofgren)
3. It’s Magical (Ralph Molina)
4. Song Of The Seasons (Neil Young)
5. Cherish (Billy Talbot)
6. Fill My Cup (Nils Lofgren)
7. Look Through The Eyes Of Your Heart (Ralph Molina)
8. The Hunter (Billy Talbot)
9. Go With Me (Nils Lofgren)
10. Just For You (Ralph Molina)

This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It's more than a social history: it's a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens . .

. Why do we dance together? What does dancing tells us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? Whether it be at home, '80s club nights, Irish dancehalls or reggae dances, jungle raves or volunteer-run spaces and youth centres, Emma Warren has sought the answers to these questions her entire life. Dancing doesn't just refract the music and culture within which it evolves; it also generates new music and culture.

When we speak only of the music, we lose part of the story - the part that finds us dancing as children on the toes of adults; the half that triggers communication across borders and languages; the part that finds us worried that we'll never be able to dance again, and the part that finds us wondering why we were ever nervous in the first place. At the intersection of memoir, social and cultural history, Dance Your Way Home is an intimate foray onto the dancefloor - wherever and whenever it may be - that speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move.

"Home Decor", the sixth full length album from New York born, Los Angeles based ambient / jazz / downtempo musician Danny Scott Lane, drops on WRWTFWW. 500 copies worldwide, housed in a heavy 350gsm sleeve with an artwork from 3D virtual designer Lucas Barbuzzi.

Danny Scott Lane’s heartwarming 10-track affair is its very own kind of nostalgia-tinted modern chill out music, a silky cocktail of 80s synths and exotica seduction gently carried by Matt Elliot Gooden’s sensuous saxophone. Dare we say ambient smooth jazz? Add hints of italo, minimalism, and fusion, and you there you have it: "Home Decor", a perfect soundtrack for cozy situations, one last drink on the balcony, strolls by the beach, relaxing, thinking back, possibly even gardening and cooking something delicious.

Highlights such as "Champagne Spill", "Baby’s First Balcony" and "Twin Bed" are not to be missed and should allow for a bit of (well-deserved) breathing in the tumultuous times the world is going through. "Home Decor", indeed a rare gem to soothe the mind, body and soul.

- For fans of ambient, smooth jazz, minimalism, exotica, saxophone, comfy pleasures, slow cooked meals, and seducing cocktails.

- Limited edition vinyl of Danny Scott Lane’s sixth full length album featuring saxophone by Matt Elliot Gooden and an artwork by 3D virtual designer Lucas Barbuzzi.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Louche and languid modern jazz with a seriously sensuous vibe throughout. Almost hinting at vapourwave but with much more stable context. Bit of a masterpiece that's bound to escape the mainstream. Gerronit!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Champagne Spill
A2. Baby's First Balcony
A3. Hurry Out
A4. Whose Oasis
A5. One Left
B1. A Window Let The Breeze
B2. Cube
B3. Miracle
B4. Twin Bed
B5. Fold

Black feminist punk band Big Joanie have announced their upcoming second album 'Back Home', set for release on Daydream Library Series in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the US.

The brand new album 'Back Home' follows on from last month's one-off single 'Happier Still', and the release of their 2020 single ‘Cranes in the Sky’, a cover of Solange Knowles released on Jack White’s Third Man Records. Recorded at Hermitage Works Studios in North London, 'Back Home' was produced and mixed by Margo Broom (Goat Girl, Fat White Family) and features violin courtesy of Charlotte Valentine of the experimental art rock project No Home, who recently collaborated with the LA-based artist SASAMI. 'Back Home' is a dramatic leap forward for the band; the band build on their tightly knit, lo-fi punk formula to bring forth a collage of blazing guitars, down tempo dance punk, and melancholic strings that evoke the full depth of the band’s expansive art punk vision. The album title references a search for a place to call home, whether real or metaphysical. “We were really ruminating on the idea of a home and what it means,” explains Stephanie. “It’s about the different ideas of home, whether that’s here in the UK, back in Africa or the Caribbean, or a place that doesn’t really exist; it’s neither here nor there."

The band worked with multidisciplinary artist Angelica Ellis to design the striking embroidered cover art, which is a depiction of Chardine’s nephew at the barbers. The artwork is a reference to the embroidered wall hangings popular in Caribbean homes post-Windrush that were a callback to the homes they left behind. The album’s strength lies in the band’s bold and varied new sound. Album opener ‘Cactus Tree’ is an eerie, gothic folk tale that tells the story of a woman waiting for her lover while a wall of euphoric harmonies and screaming feedback roll in the background.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Big Joanie are back! This time forging on from their blistering debut, 2018's 'Sistahs' to an ever more ferocious and thematically diverse follow-up. Drawing influence from all over the musical spectrum, 'Back Home' is an accomplished and hugely enjoyable slice of art-rock tinged post-punk.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cactus Tree
2. Taut
3. Confident Man
4. What Are You Waiting For?
5. In My Arms
6. Your Words
7. Count To Ten
8. Happier Still
9. Insecure
10. Today
11. I Will
12. In My Arms (Reprise)
13. Sainted

This all analog promenade through the seminal 1968 album by Gram Parsons' International Submarine Band is widely regarded as the record that launched the country-rock movement and was the first album to spotlight Parsons' charismatic vocals and visionary songwriting. Cut all analog from the original mono masters!

TRACK LISTING

Blue Eyes
I Must Be Somebody Else You've Known
A Satisfied Mind
Folsom Prison Blues/That's All Right
Knee Deep In The Blues
Miller's Cave
I Still Miss Someone
Luxury Liner
Strong Boy
Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?

Oslo-based four-piece Legs 11 return to Beatservice Records with their third studio album, serving seven beguiling tracks on the delightfully off-kilter 'Welcome Home'.

Comprising of deviant players Sigmund Floyd, Torstein Dyrnes, Nils Tveten, and Audun Severin Eftevåg, Legs 11 have been Beatservice mainstays since making their label debut back in 2016. Fusing a disparate blend of esoteric sounds that include synth-pop, post-punk, new wave, house and more, the quartet journey from the murkiest depths into the pop-leaning stratosphere, taking in all manner of mind-altering detours along the way. Throughout their production journey, they've revelled in the unexpected, and 'Welcome Home' masterfully continues this aberrant trajectory.

Kicking things off in energetic mood, the new wave swagger of 'Flawless Logistics' dives deep into late-night rave abandon, Unhinged vocals and throbbing synth bass drive the cut through a futurist landscape of stripped rhythms and sinister tones before an atmospheric sax solo rises in to augment the searing lyrical message. Casting a critical eye on consumer-driven culture and mercenary musical forms, the vital composition is at once an unmissable social commentary and an irresistibly floor-filling groove.

Next, the glistening synths and sing-along vocals of 'Coup' saunter over bouncing bass notes and crisp machine drums. Acid licks rise in to add thrust to the club-primed groove while brooding pads and sultry spoken words meander through the sonic space. Elegantly sashaying into post-punk swirls, the hallucinatory swagger of 'Sax Consensual' bursts with theatrics. Seductive dart across the hyper-atmospheric backing track of pointed instrumentation, with glassy synths and fizzing drums joined by an evocative sax solo to vividly conjure late-night moods.

'Into The Darkness' bubbles with sinister intent, as striking bass and stripped rhythms charge through nocturnal synths, the serrated vocals purposefully projecting through the powerfully vivid subterranean mist. Maintaining the floor-focused tempo, 'This Is Your Home' sees sleazy vocals soar across an alien landscape. Distorted toms drive the groove as mysterious swirls and metallic textures fizz across the off-world horizon. Growling bass arrives alongside a searing sax lead as the endlessly-morphing rhythm undulates and evolves.

'The Crawley Within' sees darkly suggestive vocals enveloped by ominous synths and snarling acid licks, the determined rhythm steering the sparsely-woven instrumentation across alien topography as sensual whispers permeate the groove as the music undulates to an aberrant climax. Finally, completing a strikingly coherent collection, 'fuckboi' brims with attitude, with unhinged synths joined by growling rhythm guitar as the erotically-charged vocals project the steamiest of post-club invitations.

This is entirely unique work from Legs 11. Deviant, potent, and fiercely energetic, each track is propulsive enough to ignite dancefloors while embodied with more than enough profundity for headphone immersion. Utterly compelling.

TRACK LISTING

1. Flawless Logistics
2. Coup
3. Sax Consesuel
4. Into The Darkness
5. This Is Your Home
6. The Crawley Within
7. Fuckboi

DR. MYSTERY marks her debut release with Ono. "Far From Home" is an eight-track album that glides across the dreamscape of another world. DR. MYSTERY’s world, set in the future, exploring sounds that excite the mind and body, underpinning an eclectic take on leftfield techno.

DR. MYSTERY’s talent to traverse the intersections between dreams and reality through sonics, positions her as an electric producer who is only just at the beginning of her journey. Ono wishes to capture this moment in a way that feels special, they have handmade 300 sleeves for the "Far From Home" vinyl out of old record sleeves and screen-printed the artwork onto them. Therefore each sleeve is bespoke and one of a kind.

Landing inna indeed exotic and alien dreamscape. The first two, quite classic Detroit / electro influenced tracks quickly morph into a cybernetic-trip-pop masterpiece entitled "Petrichor" which sounds like if Portishead transmitted from Saturn. Peppered drum hits, ethereal vox and wavy synths decorate much of the remaining duration; as DR. MYSTERY drifts between hydroplaning electro and jarring mainframe kinetics. It's a seductive and immersive trip with a great deal of continuity, simplicity and sentiment holding the whole thing together. Like much of Ono's cherished discography, it's a leftfield, DIY epic which belies its underground ethos and aesthetic. Fully endorsed by us all here at Picc HQ it's great to see Ono back in action for 2023!

All tracks written, produced & mixed by DR. MYSTERY
Mastered by Nick Sinna at Hidden Sounds
Artwork by Dr Mystery, Michael Holland
Screen-printed by Luste Silkscreen Studio in Riga

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: For newcomers to Ono this is a quintessentially great entry point. Custom sleeves, screen printed artwork, featuring a truly underground artist - all aspects that the Michael Holland-directed label has celebrated over its many years of inception.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dialog That Needs Your Attention 04:24
2. Gaia 06:00
3. Petrichor 05:08
4. Zukunft 02:33
5. Opulence 04:22
6. Avalanche 04:24
7. Far From Home 05:11
8. Antares 03:41

Festive re-working of this classic football anthem, in time for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, which features England & Wales amongst others. 

New long awaited album from bis, Systems Music For Home Defence.

The forthcoming single "Lucky Night" would not be out of place in a sweaty Ibiza dance club and maybe the bands most infectious track since "Eurodisco" itself.

TRACK LISTING

1.  Lucky Night 
2.  Shopping For Tattoos 
3.  Headaches 
4.  Irrelevant Disco 
5.  (I Don't Think We're) Falling In Love 
6.  The Safe Routines 
7.  Stress 
8.  (I Got My) Independence 
9.  We Do Structures 
10.  You're Drunk, Go Home 
11.  The Lookback 
12.  The Who's Who Of What

This expanded collection is the definitive version of The Ladies Home Tickler. An essential historical document for the new and lifelong NWW follower. Classic tape cut ups, radio sludge, surrealism and abstract chaos. The birth of NWW, a project that is now in its 5th decade. Recorded back 1980, the NWW line-up for these recordings was: Steven Stapleton: Record player, cassette machine, noise. Jim Thirlwell: Bass, ergonomic jack plug, Wasp. William Bennett: Guitar, Wasp.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1:

A. Registered Nurse (The Second Coming/Come Organisation)
B. BONUS TRACK- Nana Or A Thing Of Uncommon Nonsense

Side 2:

A. Back, Sack And Crack (Oxymoron Version, Automating Vol 1/United Dairies
B. BONUS TRACK – Human, Human, Human…

Side 3:

A. Duelling Banjo’s (Hoisting The Black Flag/United Dairies)
B. BONUS TRACK – Wisecrack

Side 4

A. Registered Nurse (Tickler Version)
B. BONUS TRACK – Monsanto Moon Perfectly And Loving Remastered By Andrew Liles. 

Nikolay Sunak launches his own imprint to release lost or previously unreleased music. "Home Video Winter" sees dark synth lines converge on refracted drums to create a shermy and ketty night club experience that's bound to appeal to drug-aidled youth and hardcore warehouse dwellers.

It's sister track "Home Video Entertainment" adopts a similar aesthetic, utilizing niggly stacato acid and blurred vox loops and turning up the fog to maximum haze. 

Flipping the script entirely however (and the reason we got excited about the record in the first place, if we're honest); is the unobstrusive B2, "Run And Cry, Baby" which is an understated yet really quite epic electro-disco number. New additions to the genre are often feverishly collected, but I can't help think this number might go unnoticed for due to it's lack of obvious Italo / Manctalo / electro-disco alligances or branding. Making this your go to secret weapon for amyl-popping dancefloors! 

 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Check that "Run & Cry, Baby" track out for a popper-huffing, electro-disco anthem that's delightfully under-the-radar. Turn heads, excite beards and move hips all at once!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Home Video Winter
B1. Home Video Entertainment
B2. Run And Cry, Baby

RE:WARM 012 is a double AA side 12” with remixes of two of the most talked-about tracks from the compilation, Fug – From Little Seeds We Grow & Bobby Lee & Mia Doi Todd – Walking With Trees. None other than 4hero & A Mountain of One were on remix duties for these two wonderful tracks.

For the A-Side 4hero take the wonderfully laidback style of the original track by Fug – From Little Seeds We Grow and turn in a full-on tearjerker. The strings and orchestration on this remix are reminiscent of some of our favourite 4hero moments from over the years. The Drums shuffle along nicely with Jess Williams voice perfectly complimenting this take on the track. This one is set for summer glory by any standard.

Flip this over to the AA side for the complete analogue journey that is A Mountain of Ones spaced out dubs of Bobby Lee & Mia Doi Todd - Walking with Trees. Mo & Zeben take this track by its scruff and give it a full-on tropical overhaul using crazy old fashioned dub techniques, stringing it out into a low end slow motion house dub ready for sun-drenched moments with sand between your toes and the smell of sun lotion on the breeze.

‘Home, before and after’ is Spektor at her most inspired and opens with the recently released ‘Becoming All Alone’, a surrealist ballad with a majestically swelling arrangement that comes alive. The album possesses her most palpable New York atmosphere in years, which is fitting as it was recorded in upstate New York, where it was produced by John Congleton and co-produced by Spektor.

The Russian-Jewish-American singer, songwriter and pianist first achieved commercial success with the RIAA Gold-certified breakthrough ‘Begin To Hope’, which included the singles ‘Fidelity’, ‘On The Radio’, ‘Better’ and ‘Samson’. Spektor’s fifth and sixth albums ‘Far’ (2009) and ‘What We Saw From The Cheap Seats’ (2012) both debuted at #3 on the Billboard album chart. She has performed at The White House as well as on Broadway and Saturday Night Live, and has contributed to many projects spanning film, television, and music including ‘The Hamilton Mixtape’.

TRACK LISTING

01 Becoming All Alone
02 Up The Mountain
03 One Man’s Prayer
04 Raindrops
05 SugarMan
06 What Might Have Been
07 Spacetime Fairytale
08 Coin
09 Loveology
10. Through A Door

Iconic singer Mavis Staples is an alchemist of American music, and during her 70+ year career one of her most beloved musical moments was her riveting performance in Martin Scorsese’s film’ The Last Waltz,’ performing “The Weight” with The Band, a moment that forged a life-long friendship between her and Levon Helm.

Staples came to Woodstock, NY to perform as part of Helm’s renowned Midnight Ramble series, and the ensuing concert—available now for the first time on the rousing new ANTI- Records release Carry Me Home—would mark a personal high watermark for both artists. Captured live in the summer of 2011, Carry Me Home showcases two of the past century’s most iconic voices coming together in love and joy, tracing their shared roots and celebrating the enduring power of faith and music. The setlist was righteous that night, mixing vintage gospel and soul with timeless folk and blues, and the performances were loose and playful, fueled by an ecstatic atmosphere that was equal parts family reunion and tent revival. Read between the lines, though, and there’s an even more poignant story at play here. Neither Staples nor Helm knew that this would be their last performance together—the collection marks one of Helm’s final recordings before \r\nhis death—and listening back now, a little more than a decade later, tunes like “This May Be The Last Time” and “Farther Along” take on new, bittersweet meaning. The result is an album that’s at once a time capsule and a memorial, a blissful homecoming and a fond farewell, a once-in-a-lifetime concert—and friendship—preserved for the ages. Staples and the night’s soulful crew of backup singers handle the vast majority of the vocal work here, but it’s perhaps album closer “The Weight,” which features Helm chiming in with lead vocals for the first time, that stands as the concert’s most emotional moment.

"It never crossed my mind that it might be the last time we’d see each other,” says Staples. “He was so full of life and so happy that week. He was the same old Levon I’d always known, just a beautiful spirit inside and out.”

"My dad built The Midnight Rambles to restore his spirit, his voice, \r\nand his livelihood,” says Helm’s daughter, Amy, who sang backup \r\nvocals with her father and Staples at their performance. “He’d risen back up from all that had laid him down, and to have Mavis come sing and sanctify that stage was the ultimate triumph for him.”

TRACK LISTING

1. This Is My Country 
2. Trouble In My Mind 
3. Farther Along 
4. Hand Writing On The Wall 
5. I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free 
6. Move Along Train 
7. This May Be The Last Time 
8. When I Go Away 
9. Wide River To Cross 
10. You Got To Move 
11. You Got To Serve Somebody 
12. The Weight

Firmly one of today’s essential artists, Venezuelan/Guatemalan-American singer-songwriter KAINA announces her new album titled ‘It Was A Home’ that is slated for release on March 4th via City Slang. In celebration, the beloved artist shares her smoldering new single, “Anybody Can Be In Love”, along with an enchanting companion video. Directed by Weird Life Films, the visual brings to life KAINA’s whimsical world inspired by the quintessential Mr. Rogers TV series. “Anybody Can Be In Love” embodies the sentiment of authentically accepting love in its various forms. ‘It Was A Home’ will showcase KAINA’s stunning new artistic direction, the result of her own personal evolution and newly found sense of self, while maintaining roots in her signature sound. The album will include features from beloved artists such as Sleater-Kinney, Helado Negro and Sen Morimoto.

Born in Chicago to immigrant parents, KAINA creates generational music that surpasses borders and speaks to a far-reaching community of people that grew up in between languages, cultures, regions, and genres. KAINA has been catapulted to the forefront of a new wave of artists transforming the music landscape through deep representation. Her previous projects, the 2016 EP sweet asl. and her debut 2019 album Next To The Sun, cemented KAINA as a critically acclaimed artist and established her cult following. The projects showcased her signature sound that is lined with a sweet-hearted optimism, devastating authenticity and one that she uses as a means to uplift and build community. She has previously collaborated with Saba, The O’My’s, Sen Morimoto, and through multidisciplinary work around Chicago with various organizations.

“’Anybody Can Be in Love’ is about letting go and accepting love when it comes to any sort of relationship, romantic or platonic. I’ve seen myself and my close friends miss out on a really great moment we’ve wished for or a great relationship because we’re so fixated on getting hurt or being fearful. ‘Anybody Can Be in Love’ is a little reminder to keep it simple and enjoy the moments you’ve been waiting for. Sonically, I wanted the track to sound very psychedelic and dreamy. Almost like love is taking over and you’re just losing yourself in a moment. It was a pleasure working on this with first time collaborator Biako along with Sen Morimoto and longtime bandmate Michael Cantella on bass.” - KAINA ON “ANYBODY CAN BE IN LOVE”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Kaina's soulful vocals ride beautifully atop a background of swooning loungey percussion and rich rolling bass. We get 60's psychedelia, eastern influenced grooves and hazy downbeat stagger. It's a beautiful and wonderfully written collection, and a constantly evolving gem.

TRACK LISTING

1. Anybody Can Be In Love
2. It Was A Home
3. Good Feeling Ft. Sen Morimoto
4. Sweetness
5. In My Mind
6. Ultraviolet Ft. Sleater-Kinney
7. Come Back As A Flower
8. Blue Ft. Helado Negro
9. Casita
10. Apple
11. Friend Of Mine
12. Golden Mirror

Unfathomably fast and futuristic music here from this Icelandic talent who takes cues from VTSS, Kisloty (Schacke, Rune Bagge etc) and others to create a highly energized form of modern techno that’s monstrously reactive, hyper-charged and specialist engineered for maximum impact.

The lead track, “I Wanna Go Home” references Arthur Russell’s iconic vocal line as it charges through at break neck speed complete with rattling 303s; a full frequency demolition ball that occasionally pauses to offer bursts of light through this rampant hard-techno romp. “Wool” deploys metallic shards, some granulated vox manipulation and this big ‘WOO’ sample – a battle cry for the technoid soldiers out post-4AM doing battle with the speaker stacks.

“Electric Ppl” might just be the most restrained out of the whole bunch as it’s ricocheting, bucking groove feels like you’re holding a snake by its tail. “Toilet Roll" shudders and judders with electrical energy; its rolling machine-code low-end puncturing the cerebrum incessantly as atmospheric washes and mangled vox swirl overhead. More words are merely superfluous – get this beast on the turntable and witness it’s powers! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Chest beating, stadium-blasted techno that's ever-so virgin on gabber. Closer listens however reveal a poise, sophistication and technological know-how that puts Bjarki right at the front of the pack. This is expert electronic music, regardless of the high tempos. Almost like what Sophie did for 'hyper pop', Bjarki is doing for 'hyper techno'. I love it - if not for the sole reason that it made Darryl nearly shit himself when played on the shop system!

TRACK LISTING

A1. I Wanna Go Home
A2. Woo!
B1. Electric Ppl
B2. Toilet Rush

The home of a host of indie disco classics with its noir atmospheres and vivid storytelling – qualities that saw the record inspire recent, generation-capturing movie Giddy Stratospheres which takes its name from The Long Blondes’ iconic single – the Sheffield band’s first album managed that rare trick of capturing the 2000s zeitgeist while leaving a timeless artistic mark for the ages.

Featuring of the aforementioned ‘Giddy Stratospheres’, ahead of the new deluxe edition’s release a remastered version of song, along with the track ‘Never To Be Repeated’,’ are being released today as a new digital single boasting brand new artwork painted by The Long Blondes’ frontwoman Kate Jackson. They are available now via all good streaming services.

Initially inspired by the frisson of the indie disco – now, fittingly, a classic of low lit dancefloors everywhere – ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ is The Long Blonde's sophisticated calling card. A swirl of razor sharp guitars and vivid storytelling, waltzing melodies and burning vocals, the Sheffield band's 2000s single fizzes with dancing, desire and the most stylish sing-a-long you'll ever hear.

The anniversary edition of ‘Someone To Drive You Home’, which was originally released in November 2006 and was produced by Pulp member Steve Mackey, comes as a limited edition, double gatefold LP and features the original record, plus 11 additional tracks that the band used on B-sides.

TRACK LISTING

LP1 Tracklisting
Lust In The Movies – Remastered
Once And Never Again – Remastered
Only Lovers Left Alive – Remastered
Giddy Stratospheres – Remastered
In The Company Of Woman – Remastered
Heaven Help The New Girl – Remastered
Separated By Motorways – Remastered
You Could Have Both – Remastered
Swallow Tattoo – Remastered
Weekend Without Makeup – Remastered
Madame Ray – Remastered
A Knife For The Girls – Remastered

LP2 Tracklisting
Five Ways To End It – Single B-Side
Fulwood Babylon – Single B-Side
The Whippet Fancier – Single B-Side
Who Are You To Her? – Single B-Side
Never To Be Repeated – Single B-Side
All Bar One Girls – Single B-Side
I'm Coping – Single B-Side
Last Night On Northgate St – Single B-Side
Platitudes – Single B-Side
Melville Farr – Single B-Side
The Unbearable Lightness Of Buildings – Single B-Side

Since 2006 Maybeshewill have released four full-length albums of towering, cinematic instrumental music. After a decade long career that saw them tour across four continents they bowed out in 2016 with a sold out show at London’s Koko. Having reformed briefly in 2018 at the request of The Cure’s Robert Smith for a show at Meltdown Festival, 2021 sees the band return with their first new material since 2014’s Fair Youth. Having worked on ideas separately in the intervening years, it was the sketches of music that would become ‘No Feeling is Final’ that pulled the band back together. Building on the songs that they felt needed to be heard, together. ‘No Feeling is Final’ was born from a place of weary exasperation. From the knowledge that we’re living in a world hurtling towards self-destruction. We watch as forests burn and seas rise.

As the worst tendencies of humanity are championed by those in power; rage, fear, greed and apathy. We see every injustice, every conflict, every catastrophe flash up on our screens. We stay complacent and consume to forget our complicity in the structures and systems that sustain that behaviour. As the world teeters on the edge of disaster, we sigh and keep scrolling, the uneasy feeling in our stomachs eating away at us a little more each day. However easy it would be to switch off and pretend all is lost, there’s no choice but to remain engaged. To set that feeling of hopelessness aside and use the fear and frustration as fuel to make something positive. ‘No Feeling is Final’ is a message of hope and solidarity. It’s a story of growing grassroots movements across the world that are rejecting the doomed futures being sold to us, and imagining new realities based on equality and sustainability.

It’s a reckoning with the demons in our histories and a promise to right the wrongs of the past. It’s a plea to take action in shaping the world we leave for future generations. It’s a simple gesture of reassurance to anyone else struggling in these troubled times: “Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Continuing and building on the self-sufficient, do-it-yourself ethos that has been core to their existence, ‘No Feeling is Final’ was once again recorded and produced by bassist Jamie Ward, and released on the bands own Robot Needs Home Collective Label, in collaboration with close friends Wax Bodega (North America), New Noise (Asia) and Birds Robe (Australasia).

TRACK LISTING

01. We’ve Arrived At The Burning Building
02. Zarah
03. Complicity
04. Invincible Summer
05. The Weight Of Light
06. Refuturing
07. Green Unpleasant Land
08. Even Tide
09. The Last Hours
10. Tomorrow

More than a decade after first emerging as the voice of a generation in Tory Britain, Grace Petrie stands out as one the most important songwriters working in the UK today. Exploding onto the folk scene in 2010 with the low-fi acoustic guitar/vocal release Tell Me a Story, Petrie quickly attracted attention with her polemical folk anthems, acerbic lyricism and open-hearted performance style. Support slots for the likes of Billy Bragg and Emmy the Great soon followed, with the Guardian declaring her “a powerful new songwriting voice”. The 2010s were spent relentlessly touring and, responding to the evermore dramatic political landscape, Petrie released five DIY albums of protest music in seven years. But it was the 2018 release of Queer As Folk which catapulted Petrie from cult status to mainstream attention. Both in production and songwriting, the record was a clear graduation, with rave reviews across the folk press calling it ‘probably the most intelligently crafted album you’ll hear this year - ****’ (R2) and commenting, ‘she’s the urgent, pulsing, compassionate talent this world desperately needs’ (The Observer). Lead single Black Tie, a tender reflection on growing up queer and framed as a tear-jerking letter to her teenage self about the happier future that lies ahead, has deservedly become an anthem for queer audiences of all ages, with over 150K views on Youtube and over 600K streams on Spotify alone. The New Yorker gave a glowing live review that hailed Black Tie as ‘a new gay anthem’, and Petrie as ‘a sort of butch lesbian Billy Bragg’. UK festivals from Cambridge Folk to Glastonbury’s prestigious Acoustic Stage recognised her as a top flight artist and her debut Australian tour in Spring 2020 culminated in sold-out shows in Melbourne and Sydney. …It was all going so well! The coronavirus reached Sydney just as Petrie’s tour did and, after a mad dash for an early flight home, she spent the next year and a half - the longest period of her adult life - in one place, unable to commune with others through music in the way that was innate to her since childhood. From out of this chaos comes “Connectivity”, an album built from the reflections of what humanity means in a world struggling against division and destruction. Glued to one place for the first time, this is a record made firmly out of Petrie’s comfort zone: slowly, intricately, and over many close-up, painstaking months: the audience and all its comfort stripped away, and the songwriter that lies beneath the performer exposed. The result is the most honest collection of songs she has ever shared. It promises to be Petrie’s most personal - and yet most universal - album to date. ‘She offers hope and solidarity, born out of absolute conviction and with no trace of empty sloganeering….this wake-up call is one to be both welcomed and wholeheartedly embraced.’

TRACK LISTING

1. Storm To Weather
2. We’ve Got An Office In Hackney
3. Great Central Way
4. No Woman Ever Wants To Be A Muse
5. The Last Man On Earth
6. Galway
7. Romance Addict
8. Haul Away
9. Technicolor
10. IKEA
11. Some Days Are Worse Than Others
12. The Losing Side 

Kokoroko return with this exclusive double A side vinyl of 'Baba Ayoola' and 'Carry Me Home' released via Brownswood Recordings. Both singles achieved huge support upon digital release by BBC Radio, BBC 6 Music, 1Xtra, Afropunk, Clash, Rolling Stone France & NPR.

'Baba Ayoola' was written as a tribute to the grandfather of the band's alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi and is 'an invitation to celebrate life'. Whilst 'Carry Me Home' was inspired by conversations with the masterful Dele Sosimi, whose technical ability in bridging the gap between the West African afrobeat sound of his roots, and the London energy of his upbringing, has directly informed the ever-impressive capabilities demonstrated by London's eight-piece collective, Kokoroko. Lively, and capturing that colourful hustle n bustle of the capitol; it’s a great double A-side to propel this band forward. Looking forward to a Manchester appearance soon guys!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Baba Ayoola
AA1. Carry Me Home

This new gift from Dacus, her third album, was built on an interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, VA. Many songs start the way a memoir might—“In the summer of ’07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS”—and all of them have the compassion, humour, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’s ability to use the personal as portal into the universal.

“I can’t hide behind generalizations or fiction anymore,” Dacus says, though talking about these songs, she admits, makes her ache. That Home Video arrives at the end of this locked down, fearful era seems as preordained as the messages within. “I don’t necessarily think that I’m supposed to understand the songs just because I made them,” Dacus says, “I feel like there’s this person who has been in me my whole life and I’m doing my best to represent them.” After more than a year of being homebound, in a time when screens and video calls were sometimes our only form of contact, looking backward was a natural habit for many.

If we haven’t learned it already, this album is a gorgeous example of the transformative power of vulnerability. Dacus’s voice, both audible and on the page, has a healer’s power to soothe and ground and reckon.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: While 'No Burden' and to a lesser extent 'Historian' dealt with undoubtedly serious events with a certain levity, 'Home Video' hits as hard as is possible while still retaining Dacus' melodicism and wit. 'Thumbs' gives me genuine shivers every time I hear it, and the rest of the LP isn't far behind. An absolutely stunning LP, again vying for high up the Barry EOY list.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hot & Heavy
2. Christine
3. First Time
4. VBS
5. Cartwheel
6. Thumbs
7. Going Going Gone
8. Partner In Crime
9. Brando
10. Please Stay
11. Triple Dog Dare

The band’s much-loved debut has been meticulously remastered at Abbey Road studios and will be released on double vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with gold foil print. Additionally, the album comes with five previously unreleased tracks recorded during the original sessions, details of which can be found in the track-list below.

Fusing the most fragile and graceful end of the folk music spectrum to the most luminous properties of cinemascope rock, Gracious Tide, Take Me Home used a smorgasbord of instruments (guitars, violin, mandolin, piano, synths, glockenspiels, even a kalimba) to paint a variety of beautiful vistas, from the ambient ‘Ships In The Rain’ to the galloping ‘A Kingdom’, from the six-minute layers of ‘The Places We Call Home’ to the skeletal 73-second finale ‘Not Going Back To The Harbour’. There’s always been a compelling drama to Lanterns On The Lake; the way the opening track ‘Lungs Quicken’ shifts from dreamy restraint to a full-blown crescendo indicated the true power at their fingertips.

Lanterns On The Lake formed in 2008 combining a group of friends who had all played in various bands on the local music scene. Hazel Wilde (vocals, guitar), Paul Gregory (guitars, electronics) and Ol Ketteringham (drums, piano) still comprise the core of the band whilst previous members Adam Sykes (vocals, guitar) and Brendan Sykes (bass) departed prior to the second album.

Hazel commented at the time that. “A lot of lyrics were inspired by me and Paul moving back to the coast [between Tynemouth and North Shields], where I grew up, after we’d been living near the city centre. They’re also memories of growing up here, the feeling of homesickness, and stories of people around us and of the sea. The title Gracious Tide, Take Me Home seemed to sum up all the themes.”

There might be a vein of sadness through this music - ‘Ships In The Rain’ was inspired by a local fisherman who went missing at sea, and ‘A Kingdom’ was inspired by the book letters sent home by WW2 soldiers – but there is just as much hope in ‘Keep on Trying’ and ‘You’re Almost There’, where fear and insecurities are banished by self-belief; “the feeling that you’re going places,” as Hazel says. Mirroring the sentiment of the album title, ‘I Love You, Sleepyhead’ and ‘Places We Call Home’ draw on the comfort and security of home, friendship and memory.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lungs Quicken
2. If I've Been Unkind
3. Keep On Trying
4. Ships In The Rain
5. A Kingdom
6. The Places We Call Home
7. Blanket Of Leaves
8. Tricks
9. You're Almost There
10. I Love You, Sleepyhead
11. Not Going Back To The Harbour
12. The Watchhouse And The Daughter
13. Sapsorrow
14. You Need Better
15. My Shield
16. Not Going Back To The Harbour (High Tide Version)

Fifth studio album by the American musician, produced by pop producer and long-term collaborator Jack Antonoff and featuring the single 'Pay Your Way in Pain'. 'I was inspired by the classic records of the '70s. Stevie, Sly, Stones, Steely Dan, Chords, Groove. The days when sophisticated harmony and rhythm didn't sound heady - they just sounded, and felt good. Lots of guitar. But warm sounds, not distortion and chaos. Hopefully a turn nobody will see coming' - Annie Clark.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Daddy's Home' mixes Clark's keen, rawkous production aesthetic with an undeniable nod to 70's rock, and displays an ongoing mastery of her craft.

TRACK LISTING

CD Tracklisting:
01. Pay Your Way In Pain
02. Down And Out Downtown
03. Daddy’s Home
04. Live In The Dream
05. The Melting Of The Sun
06. Humming Interlude 1
07. The Laughing Man
08. Down
09. Humming Interlude 2
10. Somebody Like Me
11. My Baby Wants A Baby
12. …At The Holiday Party
13. Candy Darling
14. Humming Interlude 3

Vinyl Tracklisting:
The Interlude Tracks Are Not Credited On The Vinyl, Although The Interludes Do Still Appear On The Disc Itself
01. Pay Your Way In Pain
02. Down And Out Downtown
03. Daddy’s Home
04. Live In The Dream
05. The Melting Of The Sun
06. The Laughing Man
07. Down
08. Somebody Like Me
09. My Baby Wants A Baby
10. …At The Holiday Party
11. Candy Darling

The Home Current

Danish musician resident in Luxembourg, The Home Current has released music on labels such as Polytechnic Youth, Castles In Space, Modern Aviation, Woodford Halse and Static Caravan. His album Civilian Leather made it onto Electronic Sound's Top 30 electronic album list for 2019. Remixer and vinyl DJ supporting acts including The Orb, Dreadzone, Autechre, Primal Scream and The Shamen, including slots at Roskilde and Distortion festivals.

Lonely Mountain Records

Independent Record Label established 2019, to release the finest electronica, ambient, psych and all things in between. Sister company to Independent Records store Eclipse Records, Walsall

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This latest Home Current offering follows on thematically from the superb Cylinder Moses (the first release for Lonely Mountain records), and sees Jensen joined by a few familiar collaborators. It's a brilliantly produced and typically diverse ride through downbeat electronica, flickering glittery disco and psychedelic nu-rave. It's a beguiling and gorgeous distillation of everything that makes Jensen's music so singular, and so brilliantly enjoyable.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Little Feelings
A2 Ku’damm Blues
A3 Mexico (feat. Visage Pale)
B1 Just Before Your Love
B2 Final Logic
B3 Aquamarine (feat. Oliver Cherer)
C1 Make Me
C2 Mornings In Loud
C3 Romford Street Scene
D1 Partial Attention
D2 Airbed Pops
D3 The Coyote Kiss

For the past couple of years the Disciples label has been exploring the early tape archives of Warren Defever aka His Name Is Alive, a wealth of home recordings that he amassed whilst growing up in suburban Michigan, prior to signing to 4AD in the late 1980s.

These records have charted the development of their sound over 3 roughly chronological volumes - All The Mirrors In The House in 2019, Return To Never in 2020, and we're now bringing the trilogy to a close early in the new year with third and final volume, Hope Is A Candle.

Pressed once again as a limited edition clear vinyl LP with no banding and a printed inner sleeve with sleevenotes by Mike McGonigal (author of books on My Bloody Valentine, Galaxie 500 and noted for his publications Chemical Imbalance, Yeti and Maggot Brain), alongside beautiful photos from the Defever family album, the whole package designed by Studio Tape Echo. Please note the first two LPs are now sold out and we don't expect this latest volume to be in stock for very long.

Alongside the LP there is also a 4CD boxset that anthologises the whole series. A disc for each album in the trilogy, plus a bonus disc which collects together the best tracks from a series of mail order cassette companion volumes that Defever compiled to go alongside each LP - 6Teen OK, Return Versions and Ghost Tape EXP, and a 36 page book. This is also limited to 1000 copies worldwide and won't be re-pressed. 

TRACK LISTING

A1 Princess
A2 Either
A3 Coldless
A4 Liadin
A5 Disappear
A6 Never
A7 Pass

B1 Nearby
B2 Salendro
B3 Porter
B4 Still
B5 Halo
B6 Insiders

For Rhye’s Michael Milosh, the home is the center of creativity and community. It transcends conventional understandings of walls, stairs and hardwood floors. A culmination of a wayfarer’s journey, the home is a balm for a restless spirit, a place to simply be.

For much of his life, the Canadian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has wandered, decamping in Toronto, Montreal, Thailand, the Netherlands, Germany and Los Angeles at varying times. Since the meteoric rise of Rhye’s 2013 debut “Woman”, he’s mostly lived on the road, playing between 50 and one hundred shows a year. But over the last couple of years something changed. On the heels of some major life changes, including a new relationship, Milosh yearned for a more permanent space. ‘It's this idea of creating a safe place that's not just conducive to creativity, but one that’s truly an anchor point from which to make art and be creative’ he says.

That longing was fulfilled in August of 2019 when Milosh and his partner Genevieve happened upon the perfect place in Topanga. It had been on and off the market for two years as the owner sought the perfect buyer, one who would carry on its creative tradition. ‘She did this ceremony somewhere on the property where she was trying to call in the right people, and apparently we came the next day,’ Milosh explained. ‘The right kind of home presented itself to us, and we presented ourselves to it. It was like a union between us and the home.’

Written throughout 2019 and early 2020, recorded at Milosh’s home studio, United Recording Studios and Revival at The Complex, and mixed by Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, Interpol, My Bloody Valentine, U2, The Killers), “Home” is familiar in its synthesis of propulsive beats, orchestral flourishes, piano ruminations and sultry, gender-nonconforming vocals, but never have they sounded more cohesive or alive.

‘I'm always trying to always accomplish musical goals that are connected to the way I listened to and interact with music as a child,’ Milosh says. The sentiment also underscores a broader, less obvious, but no less important theme echoed through his new record: No matter where life takes us, we can always go home. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Rich, soulful grooves mix beautifully with perfectly played instruments and Milosh's smooth silken vox. It's a heady combination and falls in the dream zone between soul, synth-pop and groovy electronica. Beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Come In Closer
3. Beautiful
4. Safeword
5. Hold You Down
6. Need A Lover
7. Helpless
8. Black Rain
9. Sweetest Revenge
10. My Heart Bleeds
11. Fire
12. Holy
13. Outro

Let's talk about denial.Let's talk about self-awareness.Let's talk about romantic idealism.And let's talk about pop music.Let's talk about Terry Hall and his strange relationship with all of these things: about his ability to create life-affirming pop music and about the fact that his exceptional gift was recognised by a long line of his peers before, finally, Terry Hall could no longer ignore it either.Let's talk about the album where the penny finally dropped.A record which believes in the dream of perfect love despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.Let's talk about 'Home', the first solo album by Terry Hall. Twenty-six years have elapsed since the original release of 'Home', but this Record Store Day sees its long overdue debut on vinyl.It might have been the first album which saw Hall step forward from a group identity, but 'Home' was Hall's ninth in various guises since the emergence of The Specials' self-titled LP in 1979.It had taken Hall a while to find his feet as a songwriter.With Jerry Dammers so prolific in that regard, Hall found himself in a strange position at the end of that group's collective lifetime.The Specials had made him a pop star, but he didn't feel like one.By the release of Fun Boy Three's second album 'Missing' (1983), the competition was Wham!, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club.Nothing wrong with any of those, but Hall would see himself staring back from the pages of a magazine alongside all the aforementioned names and experience what he called "a total cognitive disconnection". 'Home', then, was the culmination of a long process which saw Terry Hall separate his lack of love for the job of pop star from his adoration for pop itself.In solving that conundrum, it sounds like a weight has been lifted from Hall.Like a code has finally been cracked.Somehow emblematic of that process is the album's lead single 'Forever J', a song that Hall had started writing about his wife Jeannette almost a decade previously, but only finally came together when Hall presented it to the album's producer Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds) as the sessions got under way.Alloyed to a disarmingly beautiful chorus, this ticker-tape flurry of unguarded intimacies might just be the most perfect pop song of an era that wasn't exactly lacking in competition ñ and although it didn't crack the top 40 at the time, it cemented the affection in which an emerging generation of proficient popsmiths held him: Jarvis Cocker did his own remix of the song and Damon Albarn sang Hall's praises at every opportunity.In commencing the record, 'Forever J' sets the tone for what follows on the remainder of 'Home'.Yes, it's a solo album, but the engine of these performances is a stellar "house" band comprised of Craig Gannon (The Smiths, Aztec Camera, The Bluebells), Les Pattinson (Echo & The Bunnymen) and Chris Sharrock (The Icicle Works, The La's). This illustrious roll call is one that extends to the songwriters with whom Hall collaborated on the record.Co-written by Nick Heyward, 'What's Wrong With Joy' is a synergy of seeming incompatible components: its life-affirming power pop livery freighting a cargo of self-doubt ("I've got a bag full of promises I can't keep/And a hundred reasons why I don't sleep") and good intentions ("All I wanna do is make your dreams come true") to the affections of anyone who hears it.Andy Partridge steps forward to share the credit on 'Moon On Your Dress" and 'I Drew A Lemon': the latter a rebuke to the man who will never love her the way our lyrical protagonist pledges to; the former a longtime favourite among fans of both Hall and XTC for the sanguine self-deprecations that manage to captures something of both artists' relationship to the world around them. And, of course, if you have Ian Broudie manning the console, it would be obtuse not to write a song or two together.With a friendship dating back to the early days of The Specials (the young Broudie saw Hall's pre-Specials outfit The Coventry Automatics open for The Clash in 1978) the measure of the pair's chemistry stretches beyond Broudie's production role to encompass two of the album's indisputable highlights.Featuring the unforgettable couplet, "If ifs and ands were pots and pans, you'd be a kitchen", 'You' sees its protagonist trying to persuade his subject to see in him what he sees in her.The other Broudie co-write on 'Home' will need no introduction to most pop fans.'Sense' is the song which gave its name to The Lightning Seeds' second album, giving the group their third top 40 hit in 1992.The version sung here by Hall though benefits from the Sharrock's pugnacious Keith Moon-isms and, of course, the buccaneering fretboard work of Craig Gannon. It's Gannon, too, whose fingerprints can be found on a clutch of other songs which give a little more back with each repeated play.'Home' may have emerged in the era that saw the term 'Britpop' enter the cultural lexicon, but there's a fragrant melodic classicism at the heart of Gannon and Hall's collaborations that can also be found in the work of Hall's "other" 80s songwriting vehicle The Colour Field, with its nods to French chanson.It's there on 'Forever J' and it's also abundant on Hall/Gannon originals like 'No No No' and 'I Don't Got You'. And yet, for all of that, there's something about Hall's voice that is, to quote the latter song, "as English as the weather".You can hear it all over 'Home', and it works both to the advantage of this album and the listener.Like the expression of the man staring at you on the sleeve, there's an outward sense of reserve in these performances which belies the lyrical tensions hinted at in many of its songs.Hall's marriage was coming to an end when 'Home' was recorded, but these songs are manifestly the work of someone who still believes in happy ever after.Just about.They're also the work of someone who has come to an accommodation with his relationship to pop.To coin a neologism, you might say that this was the record where our hero finally learned to "own it".And if your love of great pop mirrors that of Terry Hall, 'Home' is a record you might also consider owning.

Romare—real name Archie Fairhurst—returns with his new album “Home”, marking his 3rd on Ninja Tune and first full length album since 2016’s critically acclaimed “Love Songs: Part Two”. It follows the recently released ‘Gone / Danger’ 12”, his most direct dancefloor record to date, which Resident Advisor described as “An engrossing eight minutes of cinematic house music”.

Romare’s music has always sat comfortably in both the dancefloor world and a more relaxed environment, “Home” being no exception. With euphoric, uplifting moments on ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Heaven’ through to more meditative and melancholy moments on ‘Deliverance’. “For me, the sweet point in music is when happy and sad come together” comments Fairhurst, “when they meet in the middle, that’s what I try to create”.

The release of “Home” comes after a lifetime of being on the move for Fairhurst, he spent his childhood travelling constantly with his family as his parents moved around the world for work, before finally settling in the UK. This nomadic lifestyle would continue with his burgeoning career as a musician taking him off touring the world (playing over 150 shows in the last 2 years alone). Which brings us to “Home”, The new album marks a new chapter in Fairhust’s life with a move out of London to the countryside and starting a family, a move which has “given me peace and quiet” he comments. The new addition of his own home-built studio adds to this feeling of being content and settled, having worked from various bedroom studios in the past.

Shifting from themes of love and romance on “Love Songs: Part Two”, “Home” explores spirituality, identity and belonging. “Identity and a sense of belonging is something I've been searching for more since becoming a father,” he explains, “growing up I was always around lots of people from different backgrounds, my own identity sometimes felt lost”. It see’s Fairhurst pull from the more unusual records in his collection for inspiration, delving into american gospel and traditional irish folk through to country, religious hymns and classical (with a special nod to composers Thomas Tallis and Vaugn Williams). “I always want to explore different sounds and genres from different countries and backgrounds” comments Fairhurst. During the past few years Fairhurst has moved away from purely sample based music, developing his use of instruments in his music and experimenting with different tools, both old and new. These tools include a vintage organ he found in a local charity shop, his dad's old 12-string guitar, re-assembling his childhood drum kit from the 90’s and a tape player which allowed him to start sampling from cassette tape.

The album artwork, created by Fairhurst himself, uses a collage technique consisting of black and white cut-out images. “In this artwork each cut-out resembles an artist or group sampled in the album”, comments Fairhurst.

TRACK LISTING

Gone
Dreams
Sunshine
The River
Deliverance
High
You See
Heaven
Home

The Blinders have announced their new album, 'Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath' via Modern Sky UK.

The follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut album, Columbia, released in 2018, the album explores existential despair, mental health and society’s ills in a time of planetary crisis, and is both a riposte to, and commentary on, the rise of populist ideology. Delivering a blistering collection of powerful tracks, Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath is imbued with the visceral energy of IDLES, the twisted melodies of solo-era Lennon and the darkness of the Bad Seeds.

In the shadow of Brexit and the climate crisis, The Blinders return with their unique brand of outspoken anthemicism and a sensational album to rouse awareness and inject vital energy into a bleak 2020. Combined with their blistering live energy, get ready for The Blinders to accelerate furiously into the limelight. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Something Wicked This Way Comes
2. Forty Days & Forty Nights
3. Lunatic (With A Loaded Gun)
4. Circle Song
5. I Want Gold
6. Interlude
7. Mule Track
8. Rage At The Dying Of The Light
9. From Nothing To Abundance
10. Black Glass
11. In This Decade

An autobiographical album about break ups, the record is tender, honest and frequently funny. Darren set an 8 track, acoustic rule for the record. Everything sounds warm, close and intimate. Darren’s own love-worn, London voice is joined on every song by the sweet antipodean tones of Hannah Winter and Laura K, recording artists and songwriters themselves with Common or Garden and Fortitude Valley. When Darren Hayman made his debut in 1997 with the acclaimed indie band Hefner his lyrical remit was the broken hearted.

His early songs told the story of the lonesome and lost, and broken dreams of love on the back streets of London. After Hefner, Hayman’s palette grew to include a unique take on place and memory. In the early 2000s he wrote a trilogy of albums around the history of Essex. In 2012 he made an instrumental album describing the tranquillity of Lidos. In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. His most recent record, 12 Astronauts, tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon. Darren is continually obsessed with the idea of what songs can be, and the stories they can tell. As he explains, “With projects like Thankful Villages, I became interested in what a record could be, using field recordings, interviews and songs to make sound collages. I wanted to return to the stricter art of song writing and try and make the twelve best compositions I could.

I wanted to make useful songs, words that could be comfort, not just thoughts that would depress.” The songs for Home Time were written over a three-year period but recorded quickly, and with love, in Darren’s home. Home Time is a fragile, subtle slice of prettiness. Wrap it around you. Three digital singles will be released; ‘I Tried and I Tried and I Failed’, a song about the endless, circular nature of being human, ‘I Was Thinking About You’, a song about the uncontrollable nature of memory and how it continues to haunt us even when we consider the long buried, and ‘The Joint Account’, about how when trying to negotiate matters of the heart and mind, it is sometimes the physical objects that anchor us down in the mire.

TRACK LISTING

A1) Curl Up
A2) I Was Thinking About You
A3) Because We Were Impossible
A4) I Am The Noise
A5) I Want To Get Drunk
A6) I Tried And I Tried And I Failed

B1) I Love You, I Miss You, Come Back
B2) Dinosaur Plate
B3) The Joint Account
B4) Kissing A Cloud
B5) A Girl That I’m Seeing
B6) Wrap Yourself Around Me

In the making of their new album Darkness Brings The Wonders Home, Smoke Fairies drew inspiration from mysteries both real and imagined: sea monsters, flocks of crows taking flight in extravagant formation, strange creatures dwelling in the mud near their new South London abode. With their mesmeric vocal presence and starkly poetic lyrics, singer/multi-instrumentalists Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies embed all that odd magic into songs that speak to the realities of modern times—isolation, insomnia, an overall unease with the state of the world—and ultimately uncover an unlikely sense of hope.

“Times of darkness are when people are often the most imaginative,” says Davies in reflecting on the album’s title. “It helps you to see all the wonders of the world you hadn’t noticed before—the things you’ve been blind to because you’ve been on autopilot for so long.”

Produced by Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Black Angels, The Shins), Darkness Brings The Wonders Home merges Smoke Fairies’ musings and meditations with a decidedly guitar-driven sound, the duo’s unearthly harmonies endlessly floating atop lead-heavy riffs. Over the course of a rigorous month-long session in Seattle, Smoke Fairies adopted a purposely intimate approach to achieving that singular sonic tone.

‘We spent a long time trying to fathom the direction we wanted to take on this album. At times the options seemed overwhelming, but as new songs started to form we realized we needed to take them back to our core sound – our interplaying guitar parts’ says Davies. “So then we had to really step up and do it ourselves, without relying on a band to fill anything in, which was quite a challenge—physically, mentally, everything.”

While Smoke Fairies initially intended to return to the earthy folk of early work like 2011’s Through Low Light and Trees, the duo soon found themselves assuming a new boldness in their guitar style and, in turn, pushing into much wilder terrain. In doing so, Blamire and Davies spent much of their time perusing the guitar shop near Ek’s chosen studio, experimenting with countless guitars and amps to augment the album’s sonic palette. “It was like being in a sweet shop, getting to try all these guitars we’d normally never be able to afford,” says Blamire. “We ended up making friends with guitars we never thought to use before, like this weird vintage Kay that sounded great but was so hard to play—to the point where there were days when our fingers were bleeding, or we had blisters in places you didn’t even know you could get them.”

Opening with “On the Wing,” Darkness Brings The Wonders Home quickly proves the power of matching that pummeling guitar work with Smoke Fairies’ finespun songwriting. With its woozy intensity and spellbinding rhythms, the song also introduces one of the album’s most prominent themes: the often-futile attempts at true connection at a time when the most impetuous behavior tends to prevail. “When we were little my brother wrote a poem about waking up and finding he’d changed into a swan overnight, with feathers growing out of his arms,” says Blamire of the song’s inspiration. “To me that’s an interesting metaphor for how people can grow into becoming quite flighty, where they’re never really able to settle in one place or with one person.”

An album deeply informed by aberrations of nature, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home delves into a different kind of fascination on “Out of the Woods”—a song sparked from Smoke Fairies’ study of the overgrown pond behind their house. “There’s something magical about all these weird things living out there in the mud,” says Blamire. “We started to project onto that, like the idea of something unexpected and good coming from the mud of your emotions.” Another song attuned to the fear of the unknown, the hypnotically ominous “Chew Your Bones” mines inspiration from the titular beast of Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent and from a local urban myth involving a character called The Croydon Cat Killer. “For years people thought someone was going around killing cats—they put a proper police force on it and everything, and then realized it’s just foxes,” Davies notes. “I’d also recently read an article about how some people feel uncomfortable with the idea of bringing kids into the world at the moment,” she adds, “We needed to write about the growing feeling that the world is on the verge of real change, there is the sense that there is this scary, unknown future lurking just beyond us ’.

Despite its many wanderings into otherworldly territory, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home remains rooted in real-life anxieties, particularly on tracks like the fluttering and urgent “Don’t You Want to Spiral Out of Control.” “The modern way of interacting around love seems too empty to me—it feels like it makes us into much colder people than we ever were before,” says Blamire. “It’s like we’re missing that spontaneity, the ability to bind together over something more than an image on a screen. That song came from wanting to just shake people and go, ‘don’t you want to spiral out of control again? Don’t you want to just let loose?’”

Throughout Darkness Brings The Wonders Home, Smoke Fairies adorn their observations with so many exquisite flourishes: the swinging melodies and elegant shredding of “Elevator,” the girl-group harmonies and spiky riffs of “Disconnect,” the delicate tension between taut guitar lines and swooning vocals on “Chocolate Rabbit.”

For Smoke Fairies, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home signals a strengthening of the inextricable bond they’ve forged through the years. “So many of the songs are about these feelings of disconnection, but the irony is that Jessica and I have each other, and that means so much more than any of the other relationships that come and go,” says Blamire. And because of that connection, the two found the courage essential for bringing such an emotionally trying album to life. “I think what we’re attempting to show is that, in all this chaos that’s so tumultuous and overwhelming, there are always ways to change your perspective,” says Blamire. “Making this album, we conquered so many worries and doubts and felt so much stronger at the end—we went right into the darkness, and somehow brought something incredibly positive out of it.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Smoke Fairies follow up 2015's 'Wild Winter' with this chunky, grunge-tinged opus. Swimming guitars and those unmistakable vocals soar over a groove-led background, showing influence from both gothic rock and 70's progressive, 'Darkness Brings The Wonders Home' does exactly that, and with aplomb.

TRACK LISTING

1. On The Wing
2. Elevator
3. Disconnect
4. Coffee Shop Blues
5. Left To Roll
6. Out Of The Woods
7. Chocolate Rabbit
8. Chew Your Bones
9. Don't You Want To Spiral Out Of Control?
10. Super Tremolo

With a career spanning nearly four decades, Kim Gordon is one of the most prolific and visionary artists working today. A co-founder of the legendary Sonic Youth, Gordon has performed all over the world, collaborating with many of music’s most exciting figures including Tony Conrad, Ikue Mori, Julie Cafritz and Stephen Malkmus. Most recently, Gordon has been hitting the road with Body/Head, her spellbinding partnership with artist and musician Bill Nace. Despite the exhaustive nature of her résumé, the most reliable aspect of Gordon’s music may be its resistance to formula. Songs discover themselves as they unspool, each one performing a test of the medium’s possibilities and limits. Her command is astonishing, but Gordon’s artistic curiosity remains the guiding force behind her music.

It makes sense that this “American idea” (as Gordon says on the agitated rock track “Air BnB”) of purchasing utopia permeates the record, as no place is this phenomenon more apparent than Los Angeles, where Gordon was born and recently returned to after several lifetimes on the east coast. It was a move precipitated by a number of seismic shifts in her personal life and undoubtedly plays a role in No Home Record’s fascination with transience. The album opens with the restless “Sketch Artist,” where Gordon sings about “dreaming in a tent” as the music shutters and skips like scenery through a car window. “Even Earthquake,” perhaps the record’s most straightforward track embodies this mood; Gordon’s voice wavering like watercolor: “If I could cry and shake for you / I’d lay awake for you / I got sand in my heart for you,” guitar strokes blending into one another as they bleed out across an unstable page. Front to back, No Home Record is an expert operation in the uncanny. You don’t simply listen to Gordon’s music; you experience it.

TRACK LISTING

Sketch Artist
Air BnB
Paprika Pony
Murdered Out
Don’t Play It
Cookie Butter
Hungry Baby
Earthquake
Get Yr Life Back

Peter Jefferies, a living legend of New Zealand underground music, from his seminal bands Nocturnal Projections and This Kind Of Punishment, to his collaborative efforts in bands such as Plagal Grind and Two Foot Flame, is perhaps best known for his solo work on masterpieces such as The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World (1990) and Electricity (1994), as well as numerous other albums of his singular songcraft.

Grapefruit is proud to be releasing Jefferies’ latest, Last Ticket Home, which leaves the station early in his career when The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World left off and takes us on a guided tour of a fascinating side street via rare singles, both released and unreleased, radical live interpretations, and a wealth of never released material dating from 1991-2019. Last Ticket Home redefines Jefferies’ artistic journey, giving us a song cycle narrative which scorches, blisters and eventually heals on its relentless, ragged way home.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crossover
2. Lassitude
3. Guided Tour
4. Wined Up
5. Westgate Exit
6. Ghostwriter
7. Electricity (Live)
8. World In A Blanket (Live)
9. Cyclone Dawn
10. Fallaway
11. Last Ticket Home

Brandon Williams’ second full-length record as Chastity, Home Made Satan , is a new direction for the Whitby, Ontario-native. It’s an emotional and political concept album from the perspective of a young man who’s spent too much time alone, inside, isolated from the world. It’s about fear, and radicalization; an intense meditation on youth and extremism in an increasingly irrational and violent Western World.

Williams, who produces all his own music, set out to create something with a strong cinematic nature. “It’s so visual to me,” he says. “I’m scoring this picture I have, and trying to get it as close to people’s ears as it is in my mind.”

The new songs are gothier and poppier than ever, recalling ‘80s staples like The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Home Made Satan’s got “a bit more eyeshadow” than 2018’s genre-bending shoegaze-meets-post-hardcore Death Lust , and it’s got pop-punk hooks for days. Home Made Satan , with its lines about commies and American masochism and the Christian right, is meant to sing along to.

And when you do, you’ll mostly be singing about America. About hyper alienation and xenophobia, about the people who don’t have access to community, how people get stuck in their own worlds and become afraid of what’s outside.

“It constantly feels like America is falling apart,” Williams says, and that affects the whole world.

TRACK LISTING

1. Flames
2. Dead Relatives
3. Spirit Meet Up
4. Sun Poisoning
5. Anxiety
6. Last Year’s Lust
7. Bliss
8. The Girls I Know Don’t Think So
9. Still Feel The Same
10. Strif

A couple of years on from dropping an era-defining masterpiece, "A Seat At The Table", Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter and visual artist Solange Knowles is back on Piccadilly shelves with her new album "When I Get Home". The album is an exploration of origin. It asks the question how much of ourselves do we bring with us versus leave behind in our evolution. In order to answer this, Solange returned to Third Ward Houston, packing the short sonic vignettes with blasts of rim-rattling bass, clattering dirty south percussion and her trademark jazz flecked vocals. Reading like a journey through the city streets to the show, "When I Get Home" serves the varied sounds of street performers, muscle cars, barbers and cook outs - even enjoying a brief flirtation with Jamaica on the stand out "Binz", before getting back on Texan track. Written, performed, and executive produced by Solange, this is a new chapter in her artistic development.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: The iconic vocals of Solange grace us again with her new release, When I Get Home. Her emotion and warmth exude from each track and make us realise we had a Solange-shaped void to fill these past three years. Binz, Way to the Show and Stay Flo are on heavy repeat for me, again and again.

Emily says: Solange siphons the essence of jazz, contemporary R&B and psychedelic soul into her latest offering. Abandoning predictable pop structures, each track develops through a series of short lived motifs and dissolves effortlessly into the next. An album of dazzling minimalist soul which is best listened to in its entirety!

TRACK LISTING

1. Things I Imagined
2. S McGregor (interlude)
3. Down With The Clique
4. Way To The Show
5. Can I Hold The Mic (interlude)
6. Stay Flo
7. Dreams
8. Nothing Without Intention (interlude)
9. Almeda
10. Time (is)
11. My Skin My Logo
12. We Deal With The Freak’n (intermission)
13. Jerrod
14. Binz
15. Beltway
16. Exit Scott (interlude)
17. Sound Of Rain
18. Not Screwed! (interlude)
19. I’m A Witness

Transcendental tape loops and bedroom ambient dream states from the teenage mind of Warren Defever aka His Name Is Alive. ‘All The Mirrors In The House’ is the first of three projected releases of very early works by the Detroit-based savant, prior to signing to 4AD in the late-1980s.

With help transferring ageing cassettes and annotating the results from Shelley Salant of Tyvek, the unearthed results are revelatory - a gorgeous sequence of gently decaying tone float made with an incredibly primitive DIY set up.

As Defever recounts in the liner notes: “By age ten, I had a tape recorder and was using it to capture the sounds of nearby lakes, thunderstorms, and my older brother’s LP collection played at the wrong speeds. As a teenager, I got deep into all kinds of music - punk, new age, blues - and played bass in the high school jazz band, as well as studying Bach chorale harmonization and counterpoint. My first album consists of rhythm tracks made of loops of the next door neighbour raking leaves and shoveling the driveway with echoey guitars and vocals with lyrics about ghosts.”

Innersleeve essay and interview by Mike McGonigal, the founder of Chemical Balance magazine and YETI publishing and the author of acclaimed books on My Bloody Valentine and Galaxie 500.

For fans of Eno’s Ambient series, William Basinski, Kranky Records.

His Name Is Alive has had over a hundred releases since their first cassette in 1986. His Name Is Alive spent 13 years recording for the legendary label 4AD and sold over 100,000 records, toured the world, received gold and platinum records for soundtracking Tom Cruise’s nervous breakdown in the movie ‘Jerry Maguire’ and collaborated on two short films with famed animators the Quay Brothers and name-checked by David Bowie as one of his favourite artists.

Warren Defever continues to live and work in Detroit - he has recently recorded ‘Universal Eyes’ for Lower Floor Music and is one of the engineers heading up Third Man’s recently opening mastering studio.

TRACK LISTING

Piano Rev
Lliadin
Something About Hope
All The Mirrors In The House
Because Piano
Rememory
Tape Sound
Guitar Rev
Fine As Feathers
Reflection Pool
Equally Divided
Tape Slow
Outside The Window
Echo Lake
F Choir

Back in 2017 we stumbled across an incredibly rich source of jazz-centric breaks and ‘golden era’ hip hop vibes courtesy of Philadelphia’s Mahatma X. So taken were we with their ‘A Mobtown Suite Vol. 1’ that we did the decent thing and issued a vinyl pressing which became a word of mouth hit and led to our quickest ever vinyl sell out. If you were locked into ‘Volume 1’ we’re confident that this follow up is really gonna take you to the next level. As with its predecessor, it takes the beat-tape format as its launching pad, showcasing the prodigious talents of producer MALK (winner of Norman Records ‘Album of the Year 2018’ for his solo offering ‘Death From A Love’) and his Philly crew. ‘Vol 2’ is a perfectly judged smorgasbord of sound with Mahatma’s distinctive cut and paste methods allowing sounds to bump/morph into each other as the group throw jazz, broken beats, world music, hip-hop, soul and funk into their punk-inspired anything goes collage of sound. So buckle up for a rollercoaster 24 tracks over two sides of wax (or CD). From the opening “How d’you do?” of lead track ‘Jaguar’ you’ll be taken on a fresh and furious sonic trip, deep into the hyperreal world of Mahatma X, and on reaching the extraordinary closer ‘Baby Boomers’ there’s only one thing left to do - hit that repeat button! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Mahatma X returns with more dreamy hip-hop jazz beats, locking down their distinguished style. Soulful sampling at every twist and turn, Mobtown Suite Vol. 2 takes you on a journey through it all. Essential listening!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Jaguar
A2. Embrace
A3. Rada
A4. On Going
A5. Potpourri
A6. Fluff Piece
A7. Aperitif
A8. Tanqueray
A9. Sixty Minutes
A10. Bmore Knights
A11. Chaos And The CBD
A12. Rickert

B1. Naked Cops
B2. Rupt
B3. Zuuuuu
B4. TeeVee
B5. Got To Be Born Again
B6. Another Side
B7. News At 6
B8. Freezing
B9. Fuzzing In
B10. The $
B11. Shadow
B12. Baby Boomers

Hannah Cohen has arrived home. From the title of Hannah Cohen’s new album to the depth and beauty of the music, the Woodstock, NY-based singer-songwriter’s third album ‘Welcome Home’ displays a new level of confidence and comfort with the many creative tools at her disposal. Cohen’s remarkably evocative voice is surrounded by dreamy, swooning incantations, from the rippling ‘This Is Your Life’ and the slowburning, forthright statement of ‘All I Want,’ to the soul swagger of ‘Get In Line’ and dramatic vocal leaps of ‘Wasting My Time’.

TRACK LISTING

This Is Your Life
All I Wanted
Dissolving
Holding On
What's This All About
Old Bruiser
Get In Line
Wasting My Time
Return Room
Build Me Up

In the 1970s reggae music burst forth from its birthplace of Jamaica and took over the world. Who would have ever thought that one of the first outposts it captured on its way to global domination would be an unlikely city known mostly for its Brahmin heritage and blue-collar brawlers as well as for violent racial polarization? Boston, Massachusetts was the first region in the US to really 'get' reggae, adopting it as early as 1973 when the city’s huge student population turned the lowbudget Jamaican B-flick 'The Harder They Come' into a midnight cult classic.

The city would gain a reputation as a key market for any international reggae act trying to gain a foothold in America. But besides being early enthusiasts and advocates for the music, Bostonians would also become bountiful producers of reggae as well, with a network of clubs, singers and musicians coalescing to form an organic Boston roots scene: A scene that would yield acts as varied as Zion Initation (a solid, spiritually-inclined Rasta band), to the I Tones (an ambitious, multiracial group that set a new standard for pop success), and even reaching across New England to embrace the Vermont-based Lambsbread (a latter-day reggae reincarnation of the legendary African-American proto-punk trio Death, later made famous by 2013’s revivalist documentary A Band Called Death').

Boston-based music journalists / historians Noah Schaffer and Uchenna Ikonne have teamed up with Cultures of Soul to compile an overview of some of the most crucial cuts to emerge from Boston during the height of the reggae boom in the 1980s. Formatted on CD or 2LP set both configurations come with a 28¬page book documenting the rich history of this music scene with in-depth analyses and photos of the reggae artists involved. Almost all of this music is reissued for the very first time, including rare gems such as Danny Tucker’s “Our Father’s Land,” Zion Initation’s “Think About It,” I Tones’ “Love is a Pleasure” and Lambsbread’s “Two Minute Warning” are sure to delight both roots connoisseurs and newcomers to the genre, and open up a time tunnel to a little-known golden age of American reggae, and an even less-known scene that facilitated the expansion of the music into an international phenomenon. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: If movies are to be believed (and I did do 13 secs of Demographic research) Boston is entirely made up of Irish Americans wearing flat caps and letterman jackets. Improbably, alongside the entire Dropkick Murphies discography, the people of Southie were also America's early adopters of reggae, birthing the wealth of local artists and labels covered here. Wicked smart...

TRACK LISTING

A1 I Tones - Love Is A Pleasure
A2. Danny Tucker - Take Us Home
A3. Danny Tucker - Changes
A4. Danny Tucker - Our Father's Land

B1. Zion Initation - Think About It
B2. Zion Initation - Jah Light
B3. Zion Initation - Conquering Lion
B4. Zion Initation - Burning

C1. Zion Initation - Got To Love Jah Jah
C2. Healin' Of The Nations - Without Your Love
C3. Healin' Of The Nations - Nations, Unite (Peace Across The Land)
C4. Healin' Of The Nations - Love Is The Answer

D1. Lambsbread - Country Girl
D2. Lambsbread - Two Minute Warning
D3. Lambsbread - International Love
D4. Errol Strength - Errol's Love
D5. Errol Strength - Oh What A Saturday Night 

Following the Ramones 40th anniversary reissues campaign; the first three albums by Ramones will be reissued on vinyl with the remastered audio from the 40th anniversary releases. 1977 saw Ramones release two great albums in the same year, and Leave Home was the first to be released in January of that year, as the follow-up to their eponymous debut album. This 30-minute opus of buzzsaw rock introduced fans to classics like “Pinhead” “California Sun,” and “Swallow My Pride.” This release will feature the 2017 audio from the Leave Home 40th Anniversary Edition – remastered by original Leave Home album engineer/mixer Ed Stasium.

Animal Collective’s 2004 critical breakthrough, Sung Tongs, is being re-released on the band’s own label, My Animal Home. Sung Tongs generated critical acclaim upon its release and was featured in year-end best-of lists of the decade. They continue their pursuit of a new psychedelia. Their wild path has taken them from cramped concrete basement shows and forest floor singalongs to immersive installations at the Guggenheim and performances to millions on national television.

Ramones second album, Leave Home, is to be reissued to mark its 40th anniversary.

Rhino will release two versions of the album on July 21. The 3CD /1LP version contains two different mixes of the album, a remastered version of the original and a new 40th anniversary mix by original engineer/mixer Ed Stasium, along with a second disc of unheard recordings and a third comprising an unreleased live show recorded in 1977 at CBGBs. The newly remastered original version will also be released as a single CD. Both titles will be available via digital download and streaming as well.Originally released in January 1977, this 30-minute opus of buzzsaw rock introduced fans to classics like “Pinhead” “California Sun,” and “Swallow My Pride.”

This 1CD version features a remastered version of the original stereo mix.

TRACK LISTING

Remastered Original Mix

1. “Glad To See You Go”
2. “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”
3. “I Remember You”
4. “Oh Oh I Love Her So”
5. “Carbona Not Glue”
6. “Suzy Is A Headbanger”
7. “Pinhead”
8. “Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy”
9. “Swallow My Pride”
10. “What’s Your Game”
11. “California Sun”
12. “Commando”

Following the success of last year’s 40th anniversary edition of the Ramones’ debut album comes a deluxe version of the group’s follow-up, Leave Home. Originally released in January 1977, this 30-minute opus of buzzsaw rock introduced fans to classics like “Pinhead” “California Sun,” and “Swallow My Pride.”

The deluxe edition will be produced in a limited and numbered edition of 15,000 copies worldwide and comes packaged in a 12 x 12 hardcover book. In addition to the music, the set also features stories about the band by legendary former manager Danny Fields, as told to renowned music scribe Michael Azerrad, as well as details about making the album by Stasium . The first disc features two different mixes of Leave Home, opening with a remastered version of the original stereo mix. The highlight is the new 40th anniversary mix of the full album, created by Stasium from the original multi-track tapes. The second disc is overflowing with more than two dozen rare and unreleased recordings. It begins with rough mixes for 15 tracks recorded for Leave Home at Sundragon studio in New York. The final disc features an unreleased recording of the band’s concert at CBGB’s on April 2, 1977

The Home Counties are an embarrassing place to come from. The name itself suggests that somehow the rest of Britain isn’t ‘home’, not even London. Saint Etienne grew up in the Home Counties. Here are sixteen new songs they have written about a day in the life of this doughnut of shires that ring the capital, punctuated by bursts of BBC radio to remind you what time it is and all connected by train journeys - main lines, branch lines, commutes, escapes.

The love / hate relationship people have with ‘home’ is particularly acute in the Home Counties. Yet Saint Etienne understand that if you squint, it could be almost utopian.

The album was produced by Shawn Lee of Young Gun Silver Fox, with support from Augustus (Kero Kero Bonito), Carwyn Ellis (Colorama, Edwyn Collins), Robin Bennett (The Dreaming Spires), Richard X (Girls On Top / Black Melody) and long-time collaborator Gerard Johnson (Denim, Yes). It was recorded in Central London. Sarah, Bob and Pete commuted to the studio every day for six weeks.

TRACK LISTING

The Reunion
Something New
Magpie Eyes
Whyteleafe
Dive
Church Pew Furniture Restorer
Take It All In
Popmaster
Underneath The Apple Tree
Out Of My Mind
After Hebden
Breakneck Hill
Heather
Sports Report
Train Drivers In Eyeliner
Unopened Fan Mail
What Kind Of World
Sweet Arcadia
Angel Of Woodhatch

This six-song, half-hour LP the band’s affecting a more rural, lonesome-sounding tone and a moodier, more deliberate pace; the more traditional feel meshes well with Anton Newcombe's twisting of country-gospel lyrical clichés into rock & roll attitude. 

TRACK LISTING

1) The Way It Was 
2) Mansion In The Sky 
3) Reign On 
4) The Godspell According To A A Newcombe 
5) All Things Great And Small 
6) Arkansas Revisited

The Wedding Present release a four track instrumental EP called ‘Home Internationals’ on the El Segell del Primavera record label.

‘Wales’ is taken from The Wedding Present’s recent and critically acclaimed album ‘Going, Going...’ while the other three tracks have been specially written and recorded for this release.

David Gedge was inspired by the challenge of writing a number of instrumental tracks for ‘Going, Going...’ and decided to use ‘Wales’ as the starting point for an EP of further instrumental pieces.

Freed from the restriction of a lyrical narrative the music frequently becomes more experimental and delves deeply into David’s love of pop, rock and film scores for inspiration.

“Going, Going... is a remarkable album. A joy from start to finish” - Louder Than War.

The EP was also inspired by the ‘Home Internationals’ which was an annual football competition between the United Kingdom's four national teams: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (the last of whom competed as Ireland for most of the competition's history).

It started in 1883 and is the oldest international football tournament in the world. The competition ended in 1983 after 100 years.

TRACK LISTING

Scotland
Northern Ireland
England
Wales

Hazel English is a 25-year-old Oakland-based artist who makes beautifully blurry indie-pop music powered by transcendent melodies and caked in layers of Californian sunshine and redolent reverb.

She finds herself something of a scene queen amidst the burgeoning jangling happenings of the Bay Area, which count the likes of her producer Jackson Philips aka Day Wave amongst it ranks, as well as kindred spirits like Craft Spells and Hot Flash Heat Wave, to name but a few. Despite the fun being had locally, Hazel describes her music as, “Transportive. It makes you feel like you’re in a different place”.

A very literal example is the title track, which charters the bittersweet abandon of her runaway journey from her native Australia to her new adopted home in an near-cinematic narrative. She’s drawn comparisons to everyone from Alvvays and Pains Of Being Pure At Heart to touring partners Ride, while her soaring, hypnotic, vocal arrangements have been likened to everyone from Grimes to Diiv.

Noah Lennox, a.k.a. Panda Bear, a.k.a. one-fourth of the founding members of Animal Collective, has had a far-from-quiet few years since the release of his fourth solo record, 2011’s Tomboy. Since the breakout success of 2007’s universally-adored Person Pitch, each new Panda Bear release is a highly anticipated event, and with a high-profile Daft Punk collaboration later, that’s more the case than ever. But if the title of his fifth solo album as Panda Bear seems to portend certain doom, think again.

Taking his inspiration from 70s dub duo albums like King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown and Augustus Pablo Meets Lee Perry & the Wailers Band, Panda Bear prefers to frame his latest work as less of a battle and more a collaboration. “I see it [as] more comicbooky, a little more lighthearted” he says. “Like Alien Vs. Predator”. Young Prayer is the second full length solo album by Panda Bear. It was recorded in Panda Bear’s childhood home in 2002 by Deakin and further produced by the mysterious Animal Collective brothers known as Come Winter. It was originally released in 2004 on Paw Tracks as PAW2.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Untitled 1
2. Untitled 2
3. Untitled 3
4. Untitled 4
5. Untitled 5
Side 2
1. Untitled 6
2. Untitled 7
3. Untitled 8
4. Untitled 9

At the beginning there were two of them - Avey Tare and Panda Bear - banging drums and tweaking synths in their bedrooms, singing strange and sometimes heartbreaking songs about imaginary friends and childhood pets. Carried along by washes of squalling feedback, the music was noisy, and it was weird, but it was, at heart, pop music. This was the start of Animal Collective. For fifteen years Dave Porter (Tare), Noah Lennox (Bear), Brian “Geologist” Weitz and Josh “Deakin” Dibb have been rewriting the musical map, their line-up and aesthetic shifting with each astonishing release as they continue their pursuit of a new psychedelia. Their wild path has taken them from cramped concrete basement shows and forest floor singalongs to immersive installations at the Guggenheim and performances to millions on national television. So where now from here? Hollinndagain is the third full length collection of songs by the band. This time including members Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist. It is a document of songs that were performed live in the first half of 2001. The first 3 are from an on-air performance on WFMU, and the latter four are from live shows around NYC and on their first tour with Black Dice. No studio recordings were ever made with the exception of Lablakely Dress, which originally appeared on Danse Manatee. It was originally released in a limited edition of 300 handpainted LPs on St. Ives Records (a Secretly Canadian imprint). It was then reissued in 2006 by Paw Tracks as PAW12.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. I See You Pan
2. Pride And Fight

Side 2
1. Forest Gospel
2. There's An Arrow
3. Lablakely Dress
4. Tell It To The Mountain
5. Pumpkin Gets A Snakebite 

Ever-evolving, Bing & Ruth is steered by composer David Moore, a pianist from Kansas and graduate of New York’s school of Jazz and Contemporary Music at the New School.

Their line-up has transmuted from the eleven-strong line-up that created debut album City Lake (“A stunning, humble record built on traditions we all understand, yet, somehow feels dizzyingly new.” – The Quietus) to a cast of seven for 2014’s Tomorrow Was The Golden Age (“One of the finest leftfield releases of the year.” – Pitchfork).

With No Home of the Mind, the ensemble has been streamlined to five and, after a year of heartfelt composition and with everything meticulously rehearsed in advance, the whole album was recorded in two days and in the fewest takes possible. An attempt to recreate the immediacy of classic session-style musicianship, where one-take recordings were a standard to keep costs down, No Home of the Mind explores piano’s percussive qualities alongside running woodwinds, warbling tape delays and splattered upright bass lines that stare out with a wide-eyed transcendence, taking so-called “classical” music to new limits.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful suite of brittle modern-classical drones and twinkling piano, crafted together with subtlety and grace. A startling and riveting journey, filled with moments of tentative meditation and glimmers of pure joy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Starwood Choker
2. As Much As Possible
3. Scrapes
4. Chonchos
5. The How Of It Sped
6. Is Drop
7. Form Takes
8. To All It
9. Flat Line/Peak Color
10. What Ash It Flow Up

Brendan Canning is the co-founder of the Toronto supergroup Broken Social Scene that includes members of Metric, Do Make Say Think, Stars and the Grammy-nominated Feist. One of the most enduring and influential alternative bands of the 00s, Broken Social Scene’s ‘You Forgot It In People’ defined the ‘indie rock’ era and paved the way for Canadian acts like Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade. Canning’s third solo album, ‘The Home Wrecking Years’, is his first release with a full band since Broken Social Scene’s 2010 release ‘Forgiveness Rock Record’. The album is released on Arts & Crafts and marks Canning’s first solo album release since 2013’s ‘You Gots 2 Chill’. While that record had been crafted solo in his living room, ‘Home Wrecking Years’ features a few other musicians helping fill out the sound. This includes fellow Broken Social Scene members Sam Goldberg and Justin Peroff, as well as former Stills keyboardist Liam O’Neil.

TRACK LISTING

Book It To Fresno
Vibration Walls
Keystone Dealers
Hey Marika, Get Born
Once I Was A Runner
Nashville Late Pass
Work Out In The Wash
Money Mark
Sleeping Birds Like
Lasers
Baby’s Going Her Own
Way

Two tracks lifted from Gil's classic 1971 album 'Pieces Of A Man' back to back on A BGP 45. With its angry, spoken word vocal 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' went on to inspire the likes of Public Enemy decades later, while the track's low-slung funk groove has always made it a dancefloor favourite. On the flip 'Home Is Where The Hatred Is' is a jazzy soul / funk anthem with some of the best lyrics Gil ever wrote. 

TRACK LISTING

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Home Is Where The Hatred Is

When you hear a band with something different about them, something unique, that rare and precious quality, the shock of the new, you just know.

Barcelona’s Seward are extraordinary. A four-piece that don’t go in for typical song structures that captivate one minute with a heart-tugging melody, before collapsing into thrilling noise the next. They ascend from delicate acoustic beauty to dissonant chaos, from atmospheric samples to scrunching wreckage.

Second Two: Chapter Home for Naim Records (home of the Mercury Prize-nominated Eska) is a stunning work of art. A record to get lost in. These are unconventional, original songs that ditch the tired verse-chorus-verse structure but trigger the same addiction cravings that the best pop music can.

It’s the follow-up and third part of a trilogy of albums that began with 2011’s Home: Chapter One and continued with 2014’s Home Was a Chapter Twenty Six. Mixed and mastered by regular collaborator Matt Pence (Midlake, American Music Club, John Grant) at his Denton, Texas studio The Echo Lab, it’s their definitive album. Second Two: Chapter Home encompasses so much and demands to be heard in its entirety.

They call their music ‘free song’. It’s a new appellation for a new musical age, a determination to avoid using those same genre names that haven’t changed for decades.

They’re a band borne from live performance. They thrive upon it. Their recordings always aim to capture the feeling of playing live. You can hear the room, the air. The sense of space; the tension and electricity.

Seward have picked up plaudits from music sites Line of Best Fit and A New Band A Day, performed for John Kennedy’s XFM show and picked up a growing host of fans from stellar live performances at SXSW in the States, the UK’s Great Escape festival, Vive Latino in Mexico, Exit in Serbia, Sziget in Hungary, Pohoda in Slovakia and Spain’s Primavera Sound. Seward prefer to let their music breathe. They haven’t opted for the usual online portals to get their music out there. To hear their album, you need to buy it.

Seward are your new favorite group. And they’re about to begin their most momentous chapter yet. Time to turn the page and make your own discovery.

TRACK LISTING

1 – Sesame
2 - So Too Soon
3 – Life
4 - Sweet Kick
5 - A Summer
6 - This Amount
7 - 1° 1ª
8 - Question Marks
9 - Capture Spirals [CD Bonus Track]

Southport-raised, London-based 19 year old singer, songwriter and producer Holly ‘Låpsley’ Fletcher releases her debut album ‘Long Way Home’ on XL Recordings.

The twelve track album features new versions of her previous acclaimed releases ‘Hurt Me’, ‘Falling Short’, ‘Painter’ and ‘Station’, as well as brand new single ‘Love Is Blind’. Sitting somewhere in the intersection of the Venn diagram that includes Adele, Rosie Lowe and James Blake in the outer circles.

‘Long Way Home’ documents a turbulent time in Låpsley’s life - a period in which she revelled in her new-found music career as it took her from Liverpool to London to Los Angeles and back again. “It’s an autobiography of my emotions and events over the past year,” she says. “Everything that’s happened, I’ve channelled in some way into a song - whether that’s the theme of a long distance relationship, or something that he’s said, or the way that I’ve felt, or an argument. I only revisit the memories of that relationship when I go into the studio. I think it’s helped me, to be able to collect everything for those moments when I’m writing. I think that’s what’s driven this album.”

Låpsley’s determined views on her own production have ensured her involvement in every element of these songs, a fact that in the early days seemed to confuse many of the producers she met. “They didn’t want to listen to me,” she says, “or they think a girl’s just there to add a top line, or they come to the table with ideas already. Straight away if I come in to a studio and someone says ‘I’ve written something for you’, then I’ll just walk out. I don’t care. I’m not there for that.”

For the bulk of ‘Long Way Home’ she worked with XL’s in-house producer Rodaidh McDonald. “This album wouldn’t be how it is if it wasn’t for Rodaidh,” she says. “He’s at the top of the thank yous.” There were two tracks recorded with Paul O’Duffy, a producer she admired because “the way that he thinks is different to anybody else. He’s not tainted by a commercial idea, it’s so creative and beautiful and what I aspire to be like in the future.”

TRACK LISTING

Heartless
Hurt Me
Falling Short
Cliff
Operator (He Doesn’t Call Me)
Painter
Tell Me The Truth
Station
Love Is Blind
Silverlake
Leap
Seven Months

Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork!!!! After her highly-acclaimed debut Strange Cacti landed in the hands of listeners, it became very obvious the special presence Angel Olsen offered to listeners. She had a fresh edge to her sound, a warm and wonderful range, and a level of skill and charm out of this world. Obviously, fans ate it up. And now here we are, a mere 2 years since her initial Bathetic release—the original cassette version of Strange Cacti. The release of Half Way Home is something everyone has been excited for. We've always wanted to see and hear what Angel brings out through her music. Half Way Home is a continuation of her elegance brought forth.

TRACK LISTING

Acrobat
The Waiting
Safe In The Womb
Lonely Universe
Can't Wait Until Tomorrow
Always Half Strange
You Are Song
Miranda
The Sky Openend Up
Free
Tiniest Seed

Texan soul singer Leon Bridges releases his debut album 'Coming Home' on Columbia Records. Produced by Austin Jenkins and Josh Block of White Denim, the album features the previously released tracks 'Better Man', 'Coming Home' and 'Lisa Sawyer'. Inspired by 60s soul sounds, and specifically the legendary Sam Cooke, Bridges pays homage to the the classic era of soul. One for fans of Truth & Soul, Daptone, Amy Winehouse, Aloe Blacc etc.

TRACK LISTING

01. Coming Home
02. Better Man
03. Brown Skin Girl
04. Smooth Sailin
05. Shine
06. Lisa Sawyer
07. Flowers
08. Pull Away
09. Twistin' & Groovin
10. River"

Dark Bird Is Home, the fourth album from The Tallest Man On Earth, doesn’t feel like it came from one time, one place, or one tape machine. The songs and sounds were captured in various countries, studios, and barns, and they carry a weather-worn quality, some dirt and some grit.

Early in Dark Bird, toward the end of the opening track, we hear other voices and sounds backing Kristian Matsson’s own. One of them, later credited in the liner notes with Angel Vocals, shows up several times throughout the record, adding new color to the familiar palette. And so the story grows and expands. That first song has horns and a piano, keyboards, synthesizers, and other modern noisemakers . . . and by track two you’ve got The Tallest Man on Earth as full-throttle rock and roll.

While Dark Bird is The Tallest Man at his most personal and direct, deeper and darker than ever at times, it’s also an album with strokes of whimsy and the scent of new beginnings — which feels fresh for The Tallest Man on Earth, and well timed. Reliably, the melodies and arrangements are sturdy and classic, like old cars and tightly wound clocks. The lyrics and their delivery are both comforting and alarming, like tall trees and wide hills.

The other musicians and layers on this recording put a wide lens on familiar themes. Fear and darkness, sleep or lack of it, dreams in the dark and in the light. Moving, leaving, going. Distance and short stops, long straight lines, temporal places. More hopefully, a grateful nod to a traveling partner, a healing mind. Maybe a little forgiveness needed. Definitely some things to forget.

TRACK LISTING

01. Fields Of Our Home
02. Darkness Of The Dream
03. Singers
04. Slow Dance
05. Little Nowhere Towns
06. Sagres
07. Timothy
08. Beginners
09. Seventeen
10. Dark Bird Is Home

“the band has an intimate urgency that uncrosses arms and impels involvement, and their sound invokes the Band if they had Dirty Projectors' skewed sense of song structure." PITCHFORK.

"This is the part of the song when we come together." Adam Schatz's voice rings out in the flickering candlelight of Manhattan Inn. Last summer, he began a monthly series in the Greenpoint bar's piano-anchored back room, built to bring his friends together to play music. And Schatz – who plays in Man Man and Father Figures, co-produces Winter Jazzfest, founded Search & Restore, and has wielded his saxophone on numerous stages and on recordings for bands like Vampire Weekend (see "Diane Young) and Those Darlins – has a lot of friends. But on this warm summer night, the man that energizes so many NYC scenes stood on a piano bench, gazing somewhere only he could see, and declared his own: "There's no before. There's no after. There's only this." This is Landlady. The song was "Above My Ground," a disarming sing-along anthem and a wide window into Schatz – the songwriter, the multi-instrumentalist, the vocalist.

Over the past three years, Landlady has evolved alongside its busy leader, self-releasing Keeping To Yourself in 2011 and solidifying into a striking five-member lineup that includes Mikey Freedom Hart (Sinkane, Albert Hammond Jr., Bleachers), Ian Chang (Son Lux, Matthew Dear, Father Figures), Ian Davis, and Booker Stardrum. Landlady’s new album and Hometapes debut, Upright Behavior, is out this summer. "I've never heard music that hit my heart and my brain quite like this," said Hometapes co-founder Sara Padgett Heathcott, who discovered a kindred spirit in Schatz and a gateway to timelessness in Landlady's music. "Paul McCartney, Je Lynne, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Sly Stone, maybe even Frank Black – these are the names that echo around the canyon that Schatz walked me into with a few rough recordings sent to me last year." A chance meeting of the two at SXSW, where Schatz joined Akron/Family and Matthew E. White on stage at Hometapes' Friend Island event, evolved into a mission to share Landlady's music and the universe that surrounds it.

"Landlady are that rare band where the notion of genre seems downright laughable," wrote I Guess I'm Floating after seeing Landlady's multiple knockout performances at SXSW, which included a special performance of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass at Hometapes' Eighth Annual Friend Island. The band, including special guests like Kelly Pratt (Arcade Fire) and Jared Samuel (Sean Lennon) vividly recreated the classic album, bringing the spirit of Schatz's Manhattan Inn series to Texas for a temporary-yet-eternal moment.

TRACK LISTING

01. Above My Ground
02. Dying Day
03. Girl
04. Under The Yard
05. The Globe
06. Upright Behavior
07. Maria
08. Fine
09. Washington State Is Important
10. X-Ray Machine

In the wake of their 2011 album "Strange Hearts", the three members of Secret Cities branched off in different directions. Charlie Gokey delved into Roy Orbison's ballads about losers in love while becoming a civil liberties attorney in Washington, D.C. Alex Abnos locked in to New Orleans soul masters like King Floyd & Dr. John as he became a journalist in New York City. And Marie Parker became a teacher in the band's spiritual home of Fargo, North Dakota.

Having met at band camp and on an internet message board, the trio had made music together for nine years without ever living together in the same city. After recording two albums and a handful of singles via email, they decided it was finally time to enter a real studio where they could play and record together in real time. They chose San Francisco's Tiny Telephone studio, where Jay Pellicci manned the controls for a week-and-a-half of the most spontaneous, democratic, and visceral recording of their lives. They emerged with Walk Me Home, an album that finally reflects their live chemistry and their diverging lives and musical tastes.

"The bass is dewey. The harmonies are starlit. The theremin is ripe…The racket they're able to muster together in the process is enough to set them apart from the pack." PITCHFORK.

TRACK LISTING

01. Purgatory; 2:17
02. Bad Trip; 2:24
03. Paradise; 4:24
04. The Rooftop; 2:26
05. Interlude; 1:49
06. Thumbs ; 3:28
07. Playing With Fire; 3:50
08. Walk Me Home; 3:46
09. The Cellar; 4:04
10. Interlude 2; 1:36
11. It ’s Always Summer; 2:45
12. It ’s Always Winter; 3:42
13. Sun Enclosure; 3:30

Innovative Leisure enlist a couple of young guns to remix some of the standout tracks from Nosaj Thing's 2013 LP "Home". First up Kyle Hall (or to give him his full name, Kyle Motherfucking Hall) brings some of that classic Motor City sound to the table with his remix of "Try". A buttery smooth bassline wriggles around at the bottom end, with big first wave techno pads for company in the mids. Add some scuzzy Detroit hats into the mix and you've got the makings of a classic son! On the flip, Suffolk's own Gerry Read reworks "Light #3" into a lo-fi tech-house burner with the occasional ravey vocal sample and some massive pads at the climax. This lad is defo on one to watch status.

It's been three years since the release of Nosaj Thing's highly acclaimed debut album, 'Drift' (Alpha Pup), which topped countless Best Of Year Lists, but 2013 will mark a new chapter for the 27-year-old producer, musician and DJ from Los Angeles. With a new album, label and imprint (Timetable) for Innovative Leisure, Home marks the first time Nosaj has incorporated guest vocalists.

Having remixed and worked with the likes of The XX, Flying Lotus, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beck and Kendrick Lamar, it was time to incorporate a few collaborations of his own with Toro Y Moi and Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead) providing ethereal vocals for two of the tracks on 'Home'. The rest of the album is rounded with Nosaj's signature cinematic soundscapes that explore the space from where 'Drift' left off.

Six more tracks by The Coolest Band In The Tri-State Area. Daniel DiMaggio is living in the big city now and as the driving force behind Home Blitz, he keeps the rhythms crazier and the feelings more nervous than ever, having fully adopted the restless jangle of Hoboken '81, the working-class anger of London's East End in the mid '70s and the starry-eyed wonder of the Sunset Strip in '78. If they align most closely with the sort of bespectacled guitar pop-in-the-wake-of-punk that gave rock critics the chills way back when, it's because that's where the heart of this music resides, the thrill of excavation and discovery of an era before one's own, the one that speaks to you the most clearly. There is real love in these songs, five new originals and a reverent cover of Game Theory's "Rolling With The Moody Girls."

In Stoke’s All The Young, we find a band for a generation that's lying twitching on the floor, wailing out for a hit of heady, heavy r 'n' r. Formed by the Dooley brothers, All The Young are - frontman Ryan Dooley, bassist Jack Dooley, drummer Will Heaney and guitarist David Cartwright.

"The thing is, I can understand as much as anyone right now why there's been a lull in proper guitar tunes," states Ryan. "People have been waiting for something bigger to come along. When there’s a lull it made me want it more and fuelled the hunger for it." It's with that same faultless drive, determination and ambition that All The Young burst into the world with an album of brick-breaking powerhouse sounds, brought into catastrophic dimensions by none other than rawk royalty GGGarth Richardson, the man responsible for classic albums from Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Biffy Clyro. A fitting collaboration for a band whose whole manifesto chimes with the age-old tale of the lads from a nowhere town, singing about something better than what's outside their door.

All The Young are readying their own day of reckoning, with a genuine moment of perfect anthemia.

TRACK LISTING

1 Another Miracle
2 Today
3 The First Time
4 New Education
5 The Horizon
6 Quiet Night In
7 Chase
8 Here To Stay
9 Arcane
10 Welcome Home

Few records make such an instant impression as 'Home Again', the debut album by Michael Kiwanuka. Immersing the listener in a sound that is both modern and at the same time as familiar as the classics, it manages to strike the balance between being contemporary and somehow utterly timeless.

“I just wanted to make a record that, when someone puts it on, it takes them to a certain place,” says the 25-year-old north Londoner. “I wanted it to have the lush-sounding instrumentation and feel of older records, to be warm and peaceful and put the listener in this little world, which is rich with vibes and sounds and colours.”

For Kiwanuka, key musical touchstones include Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Shuggie Otis, Roberta Flack’s 'First Take', Bill Withers’ 'Live At Carnegie Hall' and D’Angelo’s modern soul landmark 'Voodoo'. Citing the latter album in particular as Exhibit A in refuting suggestions that his listening tastes are rooted exclusively in the 1970s, Kiwanuka calmly shrugs off any “retro” accusations that might be levelled at his music.

“The truth is there was no intention behind any of it,” he states. “There was no intention for my voice to sound old. The songs come out like they do because I like the sound of stuff like that. I didn’t start writing songs to get a record deal. I wrote songs to express myself and they ended up sounding old.”

Moreover, given the fact that he was born in 1986, to Kiwanuka’s impressionable young ears, even the music of the past was fresh to him. “To me, those records sounded new,” he says. “Growing up, I didn’t have records at home. I didn’t even know any Beatles albums. For me, it was all completely brand new music, even though it was recorded decades ago.”

Born in Muswell Hill to Ugandan émigré parents, Michael Kiwanuka was brought up in a home from which music was largely absent, with his first introduction to rock (Nirvana, Radiohead) arriving at the same time as he began to hang with the skater kids in the north London suburb during his early teenage years. Later coming across a soul compilation album given away with a music monthly, he was enthralled by the sound of Otis Redding’s studio talkback discussions with his engineer while recording an outtake version of '(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay'. From this point on, he resolved to make music that sounded raw and authentic.

As a guitarist, however, the session work that Kiwanuka managed to find in his early career as a musician was entirely in the urban genre, notably with Bashy and Chipmunk. While he says he learned much from these experiences, it chiefly taught him that his musical passions lay elsewhere. “My head was in other music,” he admits, “so this was just a means to get there. It forced me to try and write my own songs because I didn’t feel this other stuff in my heart.”

Though deeply into soul and jazz, he found real inspiration in the cross-pollination of the two styles with folk in the music of Bill Withers. “Bill Withers was very rootsy and earthy,” he points out, “but people branded him as a soul singer. To me, he was a folk artist. So that encouraged me to keep going, ‘cause I didn’t know where I would fit in as a black guy with an acoustic guitar.”

In beginning to perform on the acoustic circuit around London, Kiwanuka quickly attracted interest and made connections, not least with his current manager who in turn garnered the attention of Communion Records, the label that in 2011 released the singer’s first two acclaimed EPs, 'Tell Me A Tale' and 'I’m Getting Ready'.

Both of these EPs - as with 'Home Again' - were produced by Paul Butler (The Bees) in his vintage equipment-stuffed basement studio at his house in Ventnor on the Isle Of Wight. Together the pair played almost every instrument to be heard on the album, with Butler’s remarkably intimate, detailed productions - adorned with everything from flute to brass to sitar to aching strings - perfectly matching Kiwanuka’s visions for his songs. “The way we made the record was very modern,” the singer points out. “There was loads of editing. We manipulated it to get exactly what we wanted.”

From the opening bars of the stirring 'Tell Me A Tale', it is instantly clear that 'Home Again' is a very special album. While its more upbeat characteristics are embodied in the Prince Buster-like loping of the lovelorn but irresistibly catchy 'Bones' and the rolling soul groove of 'I’ll Get Along', elsewhere it proves itself to be a record of real stripped-down beauty. In 'I Won’t Lie', with its gospel-infused echoes of The Staples Singers, Kiwanuka offers something akin to a modern spiritual, while in 'Rest' he turns in a tender “love lullaby” and in 'Always Waiting', he blends classical elements with the confessional intimacy of Roberta Flack.

It is with the title track of 'Home Again', however, that Michael Kiwanuka feels the record’s sounds and themes are ultimately encapsulated. “That’s the song that really for me ties everything together,” he says. “It’s one of the earliest songs I wrote for the album and even though I progressed and changed stuff in the studio, it was the one I could never throw away. Like a lot of them, it’s a hopeful song. I use home as the metaphor for contentment and peace within.”

Other parts of the record, on the other hand, find Kiwanuka struggling for peace of mind and using his songs as a form of self-empowerment, not least in the soulful 'I’m Getting Ready', the darker, unburdening 'Any Day Will Do Fine' and the self-explanatory 'Worry Walks Beside Me'. “It can really paralyse you, if you worry too much,” the singer admits. “I do tend to overthink things. All of these songs are me talking to myself, really. Trying to encourage myself to believe.”

TRACK LISTING

Tell Me A Tale
I'm Getting Ready
I'll Get Along
Rest
Home Again
Bones
Always Waiting
I Won't Lie
Any Day Will Do Fine
Worry Walks Beside Me

Wide Sea are a four piece family band of three brothers, the Rallas, and their cousin on drums. They presently live in Kilburn, North West London, where they travelled to in 2009 from their home near Frankfurt in Germany, literally seeking a new life and an outlet for their music they couldn’t find in their homeland. Lead singer Arthur was an Edwyn Collins fan and they sought him out. Their beautiful songs and harmonic sensibilities so impressed Edwyn and Seb, his studio side-kick, that they recorded an album with the band, and this is their debut single. The album, by the same name, follows in November.

TRACK LISTING

A: A Place To Call Home
B: London Nights

A scene (of sorts) defining compilation of major proportions, Woodsist has consistently released great record after great record, 2010 in particular has vintage stamped all over it because of the new Woods album, the Moon Duo album, and now this comp snapshots a label in its ascendancy: exclusive tracks from Fresh And Onlys, Woods, Run DMT, Moon Duo, Skygreen Leopards, Nodzzz, Ducktails, Art Museums, City Center, The Mantles, Alex Bleeker, and Cause Co-Motion.

'It's true - the sons and daughters of Homestead, Xpressway and first-wave Drag City (et al.) are now making good music. The 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s are all there, bound together by shitty tape machines, reverb and easy chord changes, but melody is back and so is the joy of jamming a perfectly mangled pop song. "Welcome Home" might hit some new kids the way Human Music or Nuggets did back in their day. In any case, it’s one of those rare compilations you can play straight through and over again'. - Glenn Donaldson.

Real Ones are the latest, and arguably greatest, export from the burgeoning conveyor belt of musical talent currently flowing from Bergen, Norway. You'll hear the zany joy of The Flaming Lips, the cocooning otherworldly warmth of alt-country lynchpins Wilco, with the universal thoughts and perspectives of The Band. Ultimately, you'll hear Real Ones, and that's one glorious world to find yourself floating in. 'Richly melodic, psychedelic-tinged pop' - The Guardian. 'Psychedelic folk-pop with nods to Wilco, Flaming Lips and The Band' - Clash.

Collaborating once again with legendary producer Rick Rubin (Johnny Cash, Tom Petty), "Home Before Dark" is a vivid 12 track masterclass in compelling songwriting and the follow up to 2005's highly acclaimed "12 Songs". "Home Before Dark" features twelve original songs written by Neil Diamond and was recorded in Los Angeles with guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench (from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers), along with bassist/acoustic guitarist Smokey Hormel and guitarist Matt Sweeney. Highlights on the album are many, including the stunning lead single "Pretty Amazing Grace" and a striking duet with the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines on "Another Day (That Time Forgot)".

"There's No Home" is the second full-length formal release from Jana Hunter. Recorded over two consecutive weeks in fall 2006 at a friend's home in Houston, TX (known locally as 'feagan house'), the album features Hunter writing, playing and producing throughout. As extroverted as Hunter's previous release "Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom" was introverted, "There's No Home" focuses on community involvement. While Hunter plays most of the instruments herself, she's aided and abetted here by her brother John (Inoculist, Dethro Skull), John Adams (Fatal Flying Guilloteens) and Matt Brownlie (Bring Back The Guns), among others.

Emerging from the Albini-endorsed Tsuji Giri, Saul's approach to his craft is all consuming. On this, his second solo EP, he fleshes out his absorbing avant garde folk with layers of electric guitar, vocals and drums. If "Signs 1" has a haunting claustrophobia and "Cuts" aches with frustration, that's because Saul feels comfortable building up his songs alone, surrounded by a variety of instruments, in his dusky Manchester flat.

"Feels Like Home" is Jessica's fourth full length album, and is the most refined example of her musical vision to date. Jessica combines folk acoustic guitar, droning guitar, gossamer vocals and piano filgrees to create a lush, mysterious world. Beautiful stuff!

This is the seventh album from Home. It's an album about f**king. They wrote nearly 50 songs on the subject, which were whittled down to 20 and recorded in a marathon three day weekend recording blitz. Chris shared drumming duties with Sean, while everyone switched up instruments as needed. The wide stylistic differences between the writers bleed across song borders and gelled into an overall sound that is difficult to categorize but easy to recognize as fu*k-friendly. The very sweet dudes in Oneida took an interest and offered to release it in their corner of Jagjaguwar, Brah Records; Home graciously accepted.

Luke Hirst is a 17 year old songwriter hailing from his hometown of Bradford. Influenced by the likes of Elliot Smith , Alfie & Muse, Lukes aim is simple, write great songs and take them onto the live circuit. "Rock'n'Roll Begins At Home" is Luke's first release after his debut single "Changing Lanes" was released on Heliotone Records in December 2004. US Indie Magazine 'Losing Today' reviewed the single and had this to say 'I couldn't honestly recommend a better way to spend quarter of an hour of my life other than in the company of this EP... A star in the making, don't rule against it.' And this EP is equally as good. Three beautifully crafted, dramatic pop songs.

A carefully crafted album that Laymen Terms have been working towards for their entire career. It's an easy blend of delicately picked and evocative acoustic musing with a driving, impassioned and melodic guitar sound, perfectly complimented Andy Tanner's warm and wistful vocals. Should give them the break they deserve.

The worthy follow up to last year's excellent "Drunken Lullabies" effortlessly picks up their trad-Irish influenced punk baton and runs with it at exuberant velocity. Their brash Pogue tinted punk rock hoedown is usefully interspersed with the now staple heartfelt ballads, giving you just enough time to get some breath back into your burning lungs before you're cudgelled into a frenzied dancing again. Acetylene party music.

An early classic from Dylan, featuring many a classic.

Chris Smither is a fine singer, a superb finger-picker with an enviably clean sound who manages to make a sound that is remarkably like a slide guitar, he's hard to pigeohole a mix of blues, alt.country and latter day troubadour. "Train Home" presents seven new Smither originals ranging from the delicate melodies of "Outside In" and "Confirmation" to the bluesy stomp of "Call Time". The four cover songs are wonderfully eclectic: highly original remakes of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" and Richie Furay's "Kind Woman" along with two long-time crowd-pleasers from his live shows, Mississippi John Hurt's "Candy Man" and Dave Carter's "Crocodile Man".

Taken from their forthcoming album "I Dreams And Visions", "Home" is a three-minute pop song that merges classic American alt.rock: Pixies, Sonic Youth and Pavement with a distinctive British flavour.

From the opening number "Snap Out Of It" you'll know you're onto a winner with Attention! Featuring members of three successful emo bands (The Stereo, The Gloria Record, New End Original), Attention has forged and polished their own dynamic and exciting brand of emo which is set to eclipse their previous work. Perhaps the reason JT (vocals, guitar), Jeremy (Bass), David (drums) and Erik (guitar, vocals) have made such strides in such a short time is because they have been able to draw from past experiences and learn from previous mistakes. "Say What You Mean What You Say" is a classy debut from an emo band that are sure to please any fan of the genre.