BadBadNotGood is the talented young quartet of Matthew Tavares on keys, Chester Hansen on bass, Alex Sowinski on drums & Leland Whitty on saxophone. They formed and became inseparable friends at Humber College's Music Performance program in 2011 and have been on a critically acclaimed, rule bending musical journey ever since. BBNG took the music world by storm with their 2014 LP, 'III', a brash yet refined record of angular jazz improvisations, lush ballads, krautrock and futuristic hip-hop tinged rhythms which led to a couple years of touring the world and collaborating with some of the best and brightest artists around the globe.

The boys are back with the new album 'IV', their most impressive and highly anticipated project yet. IV continues their forward thinking progression, sounding something like a jam session in space between Can, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, Weather Report, Arthur Russell and MF DOOM.

With tracks like "Time Moves Slow" featuring haunting vocals from Sam Herring of Future Islands, the syncopated groove of "Lavender," a collaboration with Montreal based producer Kaytranada, the rumbling fusion build of "Confessions Pt. II" featuring Colin Stetson on the bass sax, "Love" which is highlighted with smokey left field raps from Mick Jenkins and the epic chords of "Speaking Gently", 'IV' is an exploration in post-genre virtuosity.

TRACK LISTING

1: And That, Too
2: Speaking Gently
3: Time Moves Slow Feat. Samuel T. Herring (Future Islands)
4: Confessions Pt Ii Feat. Colin Stetson
5: Lavender Feat. Kaytranada
6: Chompy's Paradise
7: Iv
8: Hyssop Of Love Feat. Mick Jenkins
9: Structure No. 3
10: In Your Eyes Feat. Charlotte Day Wilson
11: Cashmere

When Sean Cimino and Isom Innis were getting ready to work on what would become Acid Star, the full-length debut of their syrupy electronic rock group Peel, they started by tapping into the music that they liked as kids - That is, the music they gravitated toward before they had "any taste or judgment," as Innis puts it - The results are an album that swirls dancemusic paint onto a rock canvas - Inspired in part by genre-bending Creation Records bands like Primal Scream and Madchester groups like Happy Mondays, Acid Star gives a modern spin on a classic formula.

TRACK LISTING

Y2J
Climax
Manic World
In The Sedentary
OMG
Acid Star
Pavement
Cycle
Mall Goth
The Cloak

For the last 15 years, Allah-Las have alchemically melded surf rock washes with folk rock jangle and rock, building up their lauded music podcast, Reverberation Radio, and record label, Calico Discos, in the process - But a lot has changed since Matthew Correia (drums/vocals), Spencer Dunham (bass, guitar, vocals), Miles Michaud (guitar, organ, vocals), and Pedrum Siadatian (guitar, synth, vocals) first bonded over psych rock vinyl in the back room at Amoeba Records in the late ‘aughts.

Zuma 85 signals the start of a new era for Allah-Las, and finds the band reinventing itself in defiance of the algorithmic categorization and robotic sterility. Recorded in the midst of the shift from the Old World to whatever branch of reality we're on now, it's a return, too: The album will be released October 13th on their own label, Calico Discos, in partnership with Innovative Leisure, which released early defining statements like Allah-Las (2012) and Worship The Sun (2014).

TRACK LISTING

The Stuff
Jelly
Right On Time
GB BB
Hadal Zone
Fontaine
Pattern
Sky Club
La Rue
Dust
Zuma 85
Smog Cutter
The Fall

L.A.’s De Lux are a post-disco, dance-punk DIY duo that sound like they could have come out of 1979 or 1982 just as easily as the present.

"Love Is Hard Work" is a continuous 29 minute recording and something that Sean Guering from De Lux has been wanting to make for a while…'Before De Lux, I used to write long songs, but never really finish them. Written and recorded in mid-2021 for two months, it felt like a breeze to make "Love Is Hard Work" because I had been thinking and talking about it for so long. Influenced by a lot of artists from '79-'82, like Peter Gordon, Electric Mind, Evans Pyramid or Dizzy K, the track is intended to feel like a continuous flow of dance music. Instead of a stream of consciousness in lyricism, this is more of a stream of consciousness in instrumentation and song writing; where ideas flow from one to the other without too much thought.'

Unapoletically joyous and bountiful throughout, it ventures through electro-disco, boogie and synth-pop moods with an assured optimism and radiance. Sunny melodies, yearnful vox, powerful drums - it's got everything you need to keep you powered up whehter listening in the car, at home or in the club. An adventerous prospect executed with a sincere love for all forms of dance music. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Is Hard Work 

The Fooler is both a clue and a red herring. The Fooler is the observed and the observer, narrator and subject, truth and lie. The Fooler is the shadow and reflection of a city the artist knows sufficiently well to wander with his eyes closed, and a place which very possibly never even existed. The Fooler is not so much an unreliable narrator as a constantly shifting perspective. The Fooler is the new album by Nick Waterhouse, and it's a lot. Recorded by Mark Neill (Black Keys; Los Straightjackets; Dave Cobb) in Valdosta, Georgia, it's a song-cycle of sorts, the arc of the album telling a tale of a city and its denizens.

The result is a record that offers up new riches and fresh perspectives with every spin. From the hidden corners of 'Hide & Seek' and the roadhouse soul of 'Play To Win' to the primitive, attitudinal, chugging two-chord thrill of 'Late In The Garden', it builds inexorably to the drama of the title track and pulsing roll-and-rock of the final pay off, 'Unreal, Immaterial'. Play it once and it sounds immediately like a collection of great songs. Play it again - and you will - and it feels like a novel or film slowly unveiling its secrets, kaleidoscopic in its narrative complexity. "Especially during this record, I started just becoming what Allen Ginsberg called a pure breath,\" says the artist. "I was becoming pure breath with my ideas."

TRACK LISTING

1. Looking For A Place 
2. Hide And Seek 
3. (No) Commitment 
4. Play To Win 
5. Was It You 
6. Late In The Garden 
7. The Problem With A Street 
8. Plan For Leaving 
9. Are You Hurting 
10. Was The Style 
11. The Fooler 
12. Unreal, Immaterial

A decade ago, journalists, fans, critics, and audiophiles alike were wont to compare Nick Waterhouse to his predecessors. And it was a convenient way to categorize an artist that has since proved uncategorizable—he had a voice that balanced somewhere between Van Morrison and Ray Charles, an aesthetic that caught the attention of style reporters at GQ, an ambitious production vision that stood out among the lo-fi rock and alternative bands of the zeitgeist. He was also disarmingly earnest in his own influences—citing artists like Mose Allison and Them as early inspiration. But now, coming off of his searching, intimate, self-titled album of 2019 and bringing us “Nick Waterhouse Live at Pappy & Harriet’s; In Person from the High Desert” it’s clear that comparisons, of any kind, no longer suffice in 2020.

TRACK LISTING

1. Some Place
2. Straight Love Affair
3. It's Time
4. LA Turnaround
5. Black Glass
6. Don't You Forget It
7. Raina
8. El Viv
9. Say I Wanna Know
10. Wreck The Rod
11. Katchi
12. I Feel An Urge Coming On
13. Dead Room
14. Pushin' Too Hard
15. Sleeping Pills
16. (If You Want) Trouble
17. This Is A Game
18. Some Place (Reprise)

Hanni El Khatib, the definitive purveyor of visceral, blues-wracked, punk-spiked, soulwarped, knife-fight rock n’ roll who artfully blends serrated guitars with his love for hiphop, releases his fifth album FLIGHT, produced by and recorded with long-time friend Leon Michels (El Michels Affair, Lana Del Rey, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, and Eminem).

From 2010 until 2017, when he released his previous albums, there was the usual cycle that consumes most working musicians: make an album, tour it, return home, rinse and repeat. And with it came the predictable pitfalls that ensnare too many artists - It is a dream until that one night when it isn’t any longer, and despite his gratitude for his fans, El Khatib found himself wracked by depression and anxiety. It became readily apparent that if he didn’t make drastic changes to his lifestyle, there might not be a life to speak of. So he quit drinking, stopped touring, and took an indefinite hiatus from the studio. But eventually, the desire to create songs slowly returned.

What would eventually become El Khatib’s fifth studio album, the virtuosic but characteristically raw FLIGHT, began as spontaneous experimentation. The finished result is a rollicking sampledelic opus that recalls the beautiful chaos that the Dust Brothers created on Paul’s Boutique and Odelay. It’s the type of thing that Dilla and Madlib would’ve created if they had come up on The Cramps.

TRACK LISTING

1. CARRY
2. GLASSY
3. ALIVE
4. COLORS
5. STRESSY
6. ROOM
7. LEADER
8. GEM
9. HARLOW
10. DUMB
11. HOW
12. DETROIT
13. PEACE

Live and on record, the Tijuana Panthers are a great band. You could say garage, punk or surf while describing their sound, but they're harder to pin than that. The truth is that they write classic songs that don't depend on tropes from any genre. They craft perfect pop and deliver it with energy and immediacy. However, the real magic of this band is in their weirdness. Behind their picturesque portraits of daily life is an aching despair. This subtle contrast creates an eerie tension between the ideal, the real and the surreal. You suddenly realize they're not the happy-go-lucky beach boys you tried to pin them as, but more akin to sexually frustrated soda jerks in a David Lynch film. And this all makes sense with the fact that they come from Southern California's shadier city of Long Beach, not exactly the fun in the sun that California dreamers might expect. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Path Of Totality
2. First Date
3. 710
4. Little Pamplemousse
5. Owl Eyes
6. End Of My Rope
7. Garbage Person
8. I Don't Mind
9. Generation Singular
10. TV People
11. Different Side Of Town
12. You Died
13. Rat Tail
14. Friday Night Baby

One particular year, not too long ago, American singer Claude Fontaine was awash in a grey London fog that matched the fog and grey in her own too-recently broken heart, stumbled into Honest Jon’s. It was there she first heard those old Studio One and Trojan and Treasure Isle reggae and rocksteady and dub records as well as the bossa nova, tropicalia and the musica popular brasileira that adorn the record bins and walls of the legendary London record store, and found herself under a spell. Because she loved those records so much, she decided to make a valentine to this special music that called out to her like no music had done before. She went to Chet Baker’s legendary old studio in Hollywood – singing her own love songs with Jane Birkin-style elan and with a foundation of musicians that helped define both genres - guitarist Tony Chin (King Tubby, Lee Perry, Jackie Mittoo, Max Romeo, Sly & Robbie), bassist Ronnie 'Stepper' McQueen of Steel Pulse, and Ziggy Marley drummer Rock Deadrick, as well as Braziloan drummer Airto Moreira (Miles Davis, Astrud Gilberto, Chick Corea, and more), Now Again Records guitarist Fabiano Do Nascimento, Sergio Mendes percussionist Gibi Dos Santos and Flora Purim bassist Andre De Santanna.

'I hope this record will transport people,' says Claude Fontaine. 'I wanted it to feel like those lost records, like it got lost in the bottom bin of some world music store in London because that’s how I felt when I walked in to that record store. I wanted it to be its own world.'

TRACK LISTING

1. Cry For Another
2. Hot Tears
3. Little Sister
4. Love Street
5. Play By Play
6. Pretending He Was You
7. I'll Play The Fool
8. Strings Of Your Guitar
9. Footprints In The Sand
10. Our Last Goodbye

Nick Waterhouse returns with a new self-titled album: a true powerhouse of a record filled with his distinct California surf-rock infused swaggering soul. The songs are personal, intimate, and direct. Brisk, self-contained and catchy as hell, producer Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart) has helped to distill the ‘Waterhouse Sound’ to deliver a rich, raw, brawny, muscular album that’s heavier and more confrontational than anything Nick has made before, yet malleable enough for listeners to suffuse their own life stories into the mix.

TRACK LISTING

1. By Heart
2. Song For Winners
3. I Feel An Urge Coming On
4. Undedicated
5. Black Glass
6. Wreck The Rod
7. Which Was Writ
8. Man Leaves Town
9. Thought & Act
10. El Viv
11. Wherever She Goes (She Is Wanted)

In October 2016, Snoop Dogg took to Instagram to preview a new song that includes a sample of BADBADNOTGOOD's "Lavender" featuring their fellow Canadian beatsmith, Kaytranada. The internet pounced on the track that addresses the police killings of black men in the United States, with coverage from Fader and Fact Magazine to Complex, XXL Mag and Pitchfork and more. Now Snoop Dogg's long-awaited Nightfall Remix is being released on BADBADNOTGOOD's LA based label Innovative Leisure. The satirical video for the track drew the ire of US President Donald Trump, who complained on twitter about Snoop Dogg’s “failing career”, and threatened him with jail time.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Possibly the best combination of artists on this 12" release, Badbad, Snoopy and Kaytranada. The dream team. Lavender was one of my favourite songs off the IV album so this is a clear winner, that baseline I could listen to for days, politically charged and brilliant lyrically - this is a good un'!

As Mother Jones recently put it: "Nick Waterhouse embodies effortless hipster cool. On this vibrant third album, the California soul shouter does his usual thing with grand flair, drawing heavily from early-'60s R&B, among other groovy sources, yet never sounding like a nostalgia act. Swinging from first note to last, Waterhouse combines swaggering but good-natured vocals, tough beats, often with a Latin tinge, soul-jazz embellishments such as Hammond organ, and rousing, gospel-influenced tunes that would make Ray Charles smile." LA Turnaround is the third single from the third album and pressed on wax with the previously unreleased duet called I Cry.

45 release only - Includes previously unreleased 'I Cry' - Limited to 500 copies worldwide.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Another classy soul infused single from Nick. If you knew nothing about him, you'd swear this was recorded in a garage somewhere in the mid 60s rather than in 2017!

Hanni El Khatib’s first idea for his Savage Times project was to do something he’d never done before. Instead, he ended up doing …well, everything he’d never done before. He’d be playing new instruments, writing in unfamiliar new ways, opening himself up to an unrelenting stream of ideas and dedicating himself totally to pure musical instinct. And the result? 19 best-of-the-sessions songs, as well as the kind of creative revelations that only happen when you quit looking around and start looking ahead.

Originally, he’d hoped to explode the lingering idea that he was simply a blues-rock guitar player, but that’s why Savage Times touches on everything from garage rock to punk to disco, hip-hop and even some unexpected solo-guitar self-portraiture. But on the way, he also exploded his own idea of what he could do—even maybe who he was, or would be. Savage Times was an experiment as well as an experience, that touched on some of the most personal, social & political elements to date.

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby's OK
2. Gonna Die Alone
3. Born Brown
4. Paralyzed
5. Miracle
6. Mangos & Rice
7. Come Down
8. No Way
9. Mondo And His Makeup
10. Gun Clap Hero
11. Black Constellation
12. So Dusty
13. Till Your Rose Comes Home
14. Hold Me Back
15. Savage Times
16. 1AM
17. Peep Show
18. This I Know
19. Freak Freely

Nick Waterhouse, the rhythm & blues fanatic who combines an uncanny old-school sensibility with a charged, contemporary style, is set to release his third album ‘Never Twice’ on Innovative Leisure. As ever he is inspired by the over-modulated sound of vintage R&B, invoking the back-alley thrills of New Orleans, Detroit, and Memphis in their heyday, using old school values to hone a new sound.

Having earned his stripes producing garage-rocker Ty Segall and the Allah-Las as well as releasing the critically acclaimed albums ‘Time’s All Gone’ and ‘Holly’, Nick Waterhouse’s latest album ‘Never Twice’ is a culmination, intensification, and realization of everything he’s been developing throughout his career. Catchier and loaded with more hits than its predecessors,

 Nick’s new LP is at the same time harder hitting, more rhythmic, more harmonic, more diverse, and more adventurous than both those albums. A cool and elegant post-post-modern cocktail of 1950s r&b and club jazz, mixed with 1960s soul and boogaloo, and shaken with a minimal contemporary sensibility, ‘Never Twice’ finds the artist taking his time, refining his vision, and speaking with new authority.

Nick Waterhouse has come a long way and it looks like he may have just painted his masterpiece.

BadBadNotGood is the talented young quartet of Matthew Tavares on keys, Chester Hansen on bass, Alex Sowinski on drums & Leland Whitty on saxophone. They formed and became inseparable friends at Humber College's Music Performance program in 2011 and have been on a critically acclaimed, rule bending musical journey ever since. BBNG took the music world by storm with their 2014 LP, 'III', a brash yet refined record of angular jazz improvisations, lush ballads, krautrock and futuristic hip-hop tinged rhythms which led to a couple years of touring the world and collaborating with some of the best and brightest artists around the globe.

The boys are back with the new album 'IV', their most impressive and highly anticipated project yet. IV continues their forward thinking progression, sounding something like a jam session in space between Can, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, Weather Report, Arthur Russell and MF DOOM.

With tracks like "Time Moves Slow" featuring haunting vocals from Sam Herring of Future Islands, the syncopated groove of "Lavender," a collaboration with Montreal based producer Kaytranada, the rumbling fusion build of "Confessions Pt. II" featuring Colin Stetson on the bass sax, "Love" which is highlighted with smokey left field raps from Mick Jenkins and the epic chords of "Speaking Gently", 'IV' is an exploration in post-genre virtuosity.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: These guys never cease to amaze me, whilst also making me wish I'd have stuck it out at music school and studied Jazz. I can't get enough of this one, the production is perfect and they couldn't have chosen better people to collaborate with.

TRACK LISTING

1: And That, Too
2: Speaking Gently
3: Time Moves Slow Feat. Samuel T. Herring (Future Islands)
4: Confessions Pt Ii Feat. Colin Stetson
5: Lavender Feat. Kaytranada
6: Chompy's Paradise
7: Iv
8: Hyssop Of Love Feat. Mick Jenkins
9: Structure No. 3
10: In Your Eyes Feat. Charlotte Day Wilson
11: Cashmere

Holy Fuck took the world by surprise around 2005 because there was just nothing like them—a hardcore thrift-store found-object punk band with a relentless commitment to rhythm and a sense for atmosphere better matched to a close encounter of the third kind than a simple rock concert. Think Einstürzende Neubauten re-inspired by Fela Kuti with Brian Eno working as keyboard tech and every channel on the mixer set to max power.

Checking into a “proper” studio, rather than the barn in rural Ontario where most of Holy Fuck’s records were made, Congrats was recorded by the same lineup that recorded Latin (2010). As they worked, they discovered that Congrats was a process of refining things both physically and philosophically. Their ad hoc arsenal of low-budget hi-tech toys has been streamlined and the result is the moment when Holy Fuck take the chaos and craziness (and charm) that have always been at the heart of their band and not so much control it as concentrate it.

Now they’re heavier, wilder, leaner, sharper, more daring and more unpredictable than ever before, on fire with the power of inspired outsiders like Suicide, Silver Apples, Can, Mission of Burma or the Monks or even Sun Ra whose pursuit of his own kind of musical purity is exactly what Holy Fuck are after.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Following on from 2010's 'Latin' was never going to be an easy task, and though it may have taken them 6 years, Canadian noise/psych/electronic wonders Holy Fuck have smashed it with this one. Furthering the brash and abrasive electronic scree we have come to know and love from them, this is an expansion in every direction. Brutal, uncompromising but reassuringly familiar : elements of psych rock are woven within the groans and distorted blanket of nose. Whispers of melody surface only to be buried beneath electronic miscellany and resonant drones. A triumphant return to the fray for Holy Fuck, and a stunning development of their already venerable musical palette.

Gossamer is Evan Reiner, the LA based producer, guitarist, synth musician and field recorder whose debut full-length 'Automaton' is released on cult independent label Innovative Leisure.

Influenced by hip hop, hardcore and jazz guitar, he developed an interest in electronic music while a student at the Berklee School of Music. He began to study movie sound and foley artistry. Pouring sand across cymbals or using spent shells from a gun range for percussion gave him a whole new vocabulary, and he found further inspiration in artists from Ai Weiwei to Maya Duren to Stanley Kubrick to Delia Derbyshire. 

For 'Automaton' Reiner began making field recordings in the tunnels under Pasadena’s Devil’s Gate Dam, on a trip in Japan, under a bridge in downtown LA or to California’s Ansel Adams Wilderness area. At home he would “make accidents happen” with recorders, samplers, guitar and analogue synthesizers.

'Automaton' is a precise and gentle dreamscape with an ambient atmosphere that recalls Gas, Boards of Canada, Vangelis, and Brian Eno and Jon Hassell’s album 'Fourth World'. For fans of Caribou, Four Tet, Boards Of Canada, Burial.

TRACK LISTING

1. Thoughtform
2. Print
3. 3d Relief
4. Okuma
5. J Cruise
6. Off World
7. Truax
8. For Sleep

John Barrett returns with his second full length for LA label Innovative Leisure as Bass Drum of Death. Elevating Bass Drum of Death from the scrapheap of garage rock challengers fighting for attention, 'Rip This' is BDoD’s most impressive record yet, combining the best elements of the American rock underground with a raw approach that’s original and exciting.

Bass Drum of Death’s appeal has always transcended the band’s roots in the local Oxford, Mississippi touring circuit where John Barrett first cut his teeth. Since his debut 7-inch on Fat Possum back in 2008, he’s realised this potential again and again, most notably with his genre-bending collaboration with Odd Future’s Mellowhype and a slot on the infamous Vinewood Boulevard radio station on the GTA V videogame. But it’s with 'Rip This' that Barrett has really hit his stride.

The process has been markedly different throughout. For previous albums 'Bass Drum of Death' (Innovative Leisure, 2013) and 'GB City' (Inflated Records, 2011), Barrett wrote all the material himself at home and recorded it on a basic GarageBand setup. This time around, he enlisted drummer Len Clark as a fulltime member and collaborator and UMO bassist Jacob Portrait as producer. Over a two-week stint at Prairie Sun Studios in Sonoma County, California the trio created the first BDoD studio album.

TRACK LISTING

1: Electric
2: Left For Dead
3: For Blood
4: Everything's The Same
5: Sin Is In 10
6: Black Don't Glow
7: Burns My Eye
8: Lose My Mind
9: Better Days
10: Route 69 (Yeah)

Worship The Sun is an apt title for the second album from the LA-based group Allah-Las, the follow-up to their self-titled 2012 debut.

When The Distillery, the all-analogue studio in which their eponymous debut album was recorded closed its doors for the final time, Los Angeles’ Allah-Las could easily have forgone their sound and turned to a non-descript location to record their follow up. Yet Worship The Sun is a continuation in the band’s authentic West Coast vibe – staying true to their homegrown dwellings it was laid down in numerous locations across LA.

“We’ve had great experiences touring; we've been influenced by new environments and we’re always digging for new records, books, art and inspiration but there’s always a bit of anxiety as well,” tells drummer Matthew Correia. “We’ve skirted the law a few times, gotten out of some tight situations and luckily emerged unscathed; touring has given us a real appreciation for time at home.”

Worship The Sun is exciting and evocative, revealing the maturity of a band no longer starting out but working at the top of their game. If you’ve been waiting for more of that warm hazy sunshine goodness, well brace yourself for warmer climates, the outlook is good and it goes to show that you can take the band out of LA but can’t take LA out of Allah-Las.

TRACK LISTING

1. De Vida Voz
2. Had It All
3. Artifact
4. Ferus Gallery
5. Recurring
6. Nothing To Hide
7. Buffalo Nickel
8. Follow You Down
9. 501-415
10. Yemeni Jade
11. Worship The Sun
12. Better Than Mine

CD Bonus Tracks:
13. No Werewolf
14. Every Girl

It all started over a year ago with the caption “Mindblowing psychedelia from Thailand” - the Youtube video that accompanied this headline on the Dangerous Minds website was exactly that. Here was a group of Thai musicians being filmed parading through a remote village hundreds of miles away from Bangkok playing some of the heaviest psych known to mankind out of a crazy homemade soundsystem.

Six months after that first encounter with Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band, a Los Angeles music producer named Josh Marcy used Facebook and interpreters at his local Thai restaurant to get in contact with the band and inquire whether they’d be interested in having him travel to their town to record their music for a global audience. At first the band was naturally suspicious, but through subsequent interactions the group’s leader and namesake Khun Narin (also known simply as “Rin”) warmed to the idea of having Marcy come visit.

Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band’s membership is always in rotation and spans several generations, from high school kids to men well into their 60s. A standard engagement has the band setting up at the hosting household during the morning rituals, playing several low-key sets from the comfort of plastic lawn chairs occasionally working in a cover version of a foreign classic while the beer and whiskey flow freely.

Now Innovative Leisure bring us the debut release from Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band, whose music is described by Dangerous Minds as "indescribably beautiful psychedelia". This recording features the band playing a traditional three-stringed lute and using effects pedals, distortion and digital delay, with Fender pickups installed into the lutes' hardwood bodies. It combines heavy psychedelia with rock and electrically modified traditional instruments.

Recommended for fans of William Onyeabor, Ravi Shankar, Os Mutantes, Jimi Hendrix, Mulatu Astatke, Buena Vista Social Club, Ry Cooder, Tinariwen etc. 

Videos of Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band have been featured in The Wire, the blog of globally renowned experimental radio station WFMU, and the popular technology and culture website Boing Boing.

Jim-E Stack has come a long way. Born and raised in the culturally rich environs of San Francisco, the now Brooklyn-based artist born James Harmon Stack cut his musical teeth as a jazz drummer, but it wasn't until he entered the world of solo production at the age of 16 that he found the freedom necessary to write and record how he wanted.

Following time spent in New Orleans, James moved to New York in summer of 2012, and started the slow process of sketching, refining, and developing the diverse tracks that would make up his captivating LP. In every corner of Tell Me I Belong, you can hear an artist who equally reveres classic jazz musicians like John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner, experimental pioneers like Steve Reich, Detroit techno greats Omar-S and Robert Hood, and contemporary boundary pushers Arca, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Actress. “More so than anything, it’s really on some personal shit,” says Stack. “The time period between leaving San Francisco and moving to New York was a tough time for me, and the music is kind of a reflection of that, the feeling like you don’t belong.” The music may speak about a kind of alienation, but it also abundantly offers the chance of collective experiences in the form of hard-hitting dancefloor jams. That fearless juxtaposition is the lifeforce of Tell Me I Belong..

TRACK LISTING

01. Somewheres
02. Run
03. Below
04. Reassuring
05. Everything To Say
06. Is It Me
07. Out Of Mind
08. Ease Up
09. Without
10. Wake

BadBadNotGood is a young supremely talented trio of musicians made up of Matthew Tavares on keys, Chester Hansen on bass, and Alex Sowinski on drums. Since their inception at Humber College’s Music Performance program in 2011, the three have challenged the rule book on improvised instrumental music and taken jazz tradition into the future.

With early champions including acclaimed BBC broadcaster Gilles Peterson and Tyler, The Creator who helped fuel their discovery with a series of live jams that instantly went viral and dubbed them the “Odd Trio”, the band released their first EP BBNG in June 2011 to wide praise. The marriage of jazz virtuosity and hip hop source material offered a fresh take on the traditional “standard” applied to hip hop classics by taking on choice cuts from the golden era rap cannon and writing inspired arrangements for them instead of one-dimensional covers.

Now, the inseparable friends are prepping to release their biggest project to dateIII on prodigious young label Innovative Leisure, a highly-anticipated project ushering in the group’s newest explorations which are proving to be limitless.

TRACK LISTING

1. Triangle
2. Can’t Leave The Night
3. Confessions (feat. Leland Witty)
4. Kaleidoscope
5. Eyes Closed
6. Hedron
7. Differently, Still
8. Since You Asked Kindly
9. CS60

Nick Waterhouse’s art springs from a simple idea: everybody wants to be somebody else. One of his heroes, Van Morrison, got his start covering Bobby Bland, whose own musical idol was Nat “King” Cole. In Waterhouse’s view, emulation is a journey; you never truly succeed, but as the singer, guitarist and songwriter puts it, “You become something on the way there.”

Nick was born in 1986 and grew up in Huntington Beach, known predominantly for UFC, commercial surf culture, and tanning salons. He established his musical sensibilities in the middle of the burgeoning southern California Psych-Garage scene (Burger Records, Ty Segall, McHugh’s Distillery studio). Waterhouse explored the idea of potential on his breakthrough single, “Some Place,” a beautifully lean, propulsive track recorded at all-analog studio the Distillery and self-released in 2010 on his own Pres label.

It’s clear from this material that Waterhouse is in the midst of his own becoming. He isn’t the type to let ecstasy take over, like Van Morrison, or to drawl away in a consummately laid-back register, like Mose Allison. In the tension between his wry lyrics and crisp arrangements, you hear the expression of a worldly skeptic who’s also—when it comes to his art—a sanctified believer. Whoever it was that Nick Waterhouse wanted to be matters less now; these days, he just sounds like himself.

“Think music ain’t what it used to be? Then you haven’t heard Nick Waterhouse. His jumped-up take on 1950’s rhythm ‘n’ blues is the real deal.” GQ

"A timeless talent for spirited rock and rhythms that anyone can appreciate. He draws from the classic sound of ‘50’s American pop with a distinctive voice of his own, shouting and growling with infectious vigor.” NPR

"Waterhouse is definitely a star.” LA TIMES

"The music sounds like a party in full swing, each instrument playing exactly what is needed.” CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Between the chattering keys, bomping saxes, gorgeous guitar tones and the bandleader’s voice—which slides effortlessly from cool quaver to feral howl - the end result is undeniable.” SPIN

Crystal Antlers have returned to their roots as an agile power trio of singer/bassist Johnny Bell, drummer Kevin Stuart and guitarist Andrew King and signed with high-powered L.A. independent Innovative Leisure to release their new album Nothing Is Real.

The band have accrued plenty of stories in a short space of time: their debut 7” was funded by a friend who also happened to be a bank robber; they completed the FYF Fest tour in a veggie-oil powered school bus, which got them on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

Nothing Is Real is Crystal Antlers going beyond the beyond, with songs that rattle and ricochet from desolation to delirium. Opener “Pray” sounds like what would have happened if Black Flag’s Greg Ginn had produced the first Psychedelic Furs single; “Persephone” and “Anywhere But Here” match the desperate, relentless rhythm of the Wipers with the inside-out guitar melodies of the Pixies, “Licorice Pizza” recalls lost cult-punk heroes like the Flesh Eaters or the Embarrassment. On Nothing Is Real, you’ll feel as much as hear echoes of bands like Wire, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., especially on the bleak closer “Prisoner Song”— bands who knew beauty and noise could be the same thing. And for the first time ever on a Crystal Antlers recording there are also drum machines, synths and even 4/4 drum beats.

“Crystal Antlers aren’t really about making some shit we’ve heard before, but they do take notice of some important touchstones: powerful organ runs, ragged vocals and an ability to turn even relatively short songs into something that sounds beyond epic.” THE FADER

“Merging psych, garage, lo-fi, prog, and countless other influences, the group easily maintains consistency despite a complete inability to be pinned to any specific movement or trend.” PITCHFORK

TRACK LISTING

1. Pray
2. Rattlesnake
3. Licorice Pizza
4. We All Gotta Die
5. Paper Thin
6. Persephone
7. Anywhere But Here
8. Don't Think Of The Stone
9. Wrong Side
10. Better Things
11. Prisoner Song

Allah-Las met while working in an LA record store, but they became a band in an even more rare and special space – a Californian basement, dug out somewhere between the mountains and the beach. They began gigging shortly after their inception in and around Los Angeles in the later part of 2008. It wasn’t until three years later that they would find the proper environment to record their first single ‘Catamaran’ / ‘Long Journey’ which now bookends their upcoming self-titled release.

These are the kind of songs that bounce between London and Los Angeles, the kind of thing that could have come from Mick Jagger or Arthur Lee or both at once, with crystalline guitar and slo-mo drums that recall the way the waves take big bites of the beach at night.

This is mystery music from the strange and ancient-modern California fringe.

Allah-Las are a reflection of a reflection, a band that is psychedelic not because of reverb or shredding through pedals but for their simple way their songs seem to extend to infinity.

TRACK LISTING

1. Catamaran
2. Don’t You Forget It
3. Busman’s Holiday
4. Sacred Sands
5. No Voodoo
6. Sandy
7. Ela Navega
8. Tell Me (What’s On Your Mind)
9. Catalina
10. Vis à Vis
11. Seven Point Five
12. Long Journey