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INNOVATIVE LEISURE

Peel

Acid Star

    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

    Allah-Las

    Zuma85

      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 

      Nick Waterhouse

      The Fooler

        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

        Nick Waterhouse

        Promenade Blue

          Nick Waterhouse takes the colour blue as his hue of choice on Promenade Blue. In Nick’s musical and lyrical world, blue is a refraction of his life and memories — evoking the endless tours, marathon recording sessions, and highs and lows of success he’s experienced in his decade-long career; conjuring romances that were doomed, loves that lingered, and hope for future days of parity and partnership; summoning spirits of people who have gone but permeate his mind forever. That’s the world of Promenade Blue — one that is vivid and magnetic, buoyed by both light and density due to Nick’s newfound collaboration with producer Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, The Bees, St. Paul and the Broken Bones). It’s not Gatsby’s New York in the 1920s, it’s Waterhouse’s California in the 2020s... but as anyone who’s ever listened to a Waterhouse record knows: time, though clearly pegged to the dawn of this new decade, is a more malleable concept. In no uncertain terms, Promenade Blue represents Waterhouse’s finest hour as a writer and bandleader — leveraging the musical partnerships he has built over many years to put something forth that is so fully realized and felt that it sparkles beatifically, reverberating with energy, heart, creativity, and vibe from start to finish.

          For fans of: Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, Leon Bridges, Nathaniel Rateliff, Jon Batiste, Charles Bradley, Lee Fields, JD McPherson, Van Morrison, Ty Segall, Allah-Las, Michael Kiwanuka, St. Paul and the Broken Bones

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Place Names
          2. The Spanish Look
          3. Vincentine
          4. Medicine
          5. Very Blue
          6. Silver Bracelet
          7. Proméne Bleu
          8. Fugitive Lover
          9. Minor Time
          10. B. Santa Ana, 1986
          11. To Tell

          Nick Waterhouse

          Live At Pappy & Harriet's: In Person From The High Desert

            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)

            Jonah Yano

            Souvenir

              Meet Jonah Yano, the Toronto based singer, songwriter, whose journey into music began with recording music using his cellphone in 2016. Having played piano and guitar as a child, it wasn’t until Yano moved from Vancouver to Toronto in 2016 that he began putting his songs online, catching the eyes of Toronto’s thriving local music scene. Spending the next couple of years obsessively songwriting and practicing vocals, and learning technical skills, he collaborated with Toronto duo MONEYPHONE on the 2018 song “On Lock” which became an underground success. Shortly after, Yano released his first solo single “Rolex, the Ocean'' with producer Joseph L'etranger. Once he began writing his full EP, he was introduced to frequent collaborators BADBADNOTGOOD, who are featured on the EP’s title track, “nervous.”

              Yano’s work has garnered praise in major music publications like The Fader, Billboard, Complex, and Exclaim and the attention of Virgil Abloh and Gilles Peterson along with millions of streams on Spotify and Apple Music. Most recently, Yano released a highly praised cover of the Majestic’s “Key to Love (Is Understanding)” also with BADBADNOTGOOD, finding himself in the natural position of writing the feature length album, 2020’s souvenir. Following a highly acclaimed 2019 which included the release of an EP nervous, collaborations with BADBADNOTGOOD, MONEYPHONE, and Nono; industry praise from The Fader, Billboard, High Snobiety, NME, KCRW and Exclaim — it’s not a stretch to say Jonah Yano’s highly anticipated debut feature album souvenir took a lifetime to make. Yano’s souvenir, mixes his soulful, genre blurring vocals with searing, personal lyrics. With collaborations from talents like BADBADNOTGOOD, Monsune and Jacques Greene, souvenir touches on themes of family separation, healing, and reconciling with the past.

              With each track delving into Yano’s personal history, the album tells the story of his parents separation and absence of his father from his life through the perspective of each of his family members. Following the separation of his parents in 1998 in Hiroshima and subsequent move to Vancouver, Yano spent years with very little connection to his father beyond occasional calls and birthday presents. Having not seen each other in 15 years, Yano visited his father in Nagato in the fall of 2019 with the goal of making sense of their complicated relationship through music. Both being avid musicians, Yano then incorporated some of his father’s earlier recordings into his own, while making peace with their past. The result — the album’s final track, “shoes,” featuring his father Tatsuya Muraoka and written by him about a pair of shoes he purchased for Yano as a child. Most of the track was recorded live at some point in the 1990’s in Hiroshima, with Yano’s own vocals filling gaps between his father’s vocals. Recording the album in Tokyo’s Red Bull studios, a log cabin in Nagato, Toronto’s Studio 69, and his own home — the intensely personal album incorporates Yano’s unique sound with a deeply relatable concept, making it the natural follow-up to an already impressive catalogue.

              TRACK LISTING

              DISC 1
              1. Poor Me
              2. Anywhere
              3. Delicate
              4. Congratulations, You're In First Place
              5. Monarch
              6. Stones (tokyo)
              7. Echo
              8. Strawberry!
              9. What I Can Do To Help
              10. Shimonoseki Interlude
              11. Shoes (feat. Tatsuya Muraoka)

              Hanni El Khatib

              Flight

                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

                The Buttertones

                Jazzhound

                  Before settling in to make Jazzhound, their most extravagant, ambitious, and fully realized album to date, the Buttertones had to face the hounds of real life. Prior to a headlining summer tour in support of Midnight in a Moonless Dream, a fiery blast of an album capturing the band at their purest distillation, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Modesto had a sudden and serious medical scare involving his eye, requiring emergency surgery. He lost half his vision (it will hopefully return with a future operation), and the tour had to be cancelled. Music took a backseat for the time being gave us some perspective on our health says bassist Sean Redman,the fact that we have to look after ourselves and one another first, or else the music just cant happen Cobin, Redman, and vocalist/guitarist Richard Araiza have been playing together for seven years now, having first come together for a self-titled debut in 2013; along with London Guzman on sax and keys, they’ve come to establish themselves as one of L.As tightest groups, conquering stages from Coachella to Tropicalia. 

                  TRACK LISTING

                  1. Phantom Eyes
                  2. Denial You Win Again
                  3. Rise And Shine
                  4. Fade Away Gently
                  5. Dirty Apartment
                  6. Bebop
                  7. Blind Passenger
                  8. Velour
                  9. Infinite Tenderness
                  10. Jazzhound

                  Tijuana Panthers

                  Carpet Denim

                    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

                    Nick Waterhouse

                      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)

                      Sultry R&B solo artist Harriet Brown is back with a new batch of fully-realized future funk, a slow-burning dispatch from a dayglo dance floor. The Los Angeles by-way-of-the Bay artist honed his musical chops in church, the birthplace of so many soulful sirens. His first project, "New Era EP" came out in 2014, setting off a firestorm of critical and fan adulation. Who was this bowl cut rocking, falsetto dropping, shiny suit man? He followed up with a bombastic debut album, "Contact", an expertly crafted, extraterrestrial soul rumination on the ways we fail to connect, restart, and try again. It was also a transitional album. Made between the Bay and LA, it’s about the electricity of new connections, the distance of old friends. "Mall Of Fortune" is his second full-length album, an airtight meditation on anxiety, paranoia and indecisiveness – decision paralysis and the free-flowing guilt that follows. The bowl cut is gone, but the shine is intact.

                      TRACK LISTING

                      1. Window Shopping
                      2. Retail Therapy
                      3. Shower Up, Saddle Up
                      4. Outerworld (feat. Felicia Douglass)
                      5. Method
                      6. Cinnamon Sky
                      7. Holy Place (Shinin')
                      8. When You Call My Name (feat. Ana Roxanne)
                      9. Driver's Seat
                      10. Hardwalkin'
                      11. Bag Away
                      12. Paper
                      13. Man
                      14. Take Your Time With Me

                      The Molochs

                      Flowers In The Spring

                        First, let’s meet back up with the Molochs—you remember them, right? Their America’s Velvet Glory was the earliest burst of light and energy to hit in 2017, an album of electrified rock ‘n’ roll like Dylan and Lou Reed by a band named after the Ginsberg-ian glutton god who demanded the sacrifice of all things good and pure. But now it’s 2018 and Moloch himself is fatter and happier than ever, so the Molochs couldn’t just make another record. After Glory showed the world who they were, they needed to make an album that showed what they could do.

                        So Flowers In The Spring is where the Molochs worked harder, thought harder and fought harder to be the kind of band that the times demand: “I like to think the world just needs some good solid songs out there,” founder Lucas Fitzsimons says. “It’s simple. It’s not easy … but it’s simple.” America’s Velvet Glory, their first-ever record for L.A.’s Innovative Leisure label, had sparked their first-ever U.S and European tours, first-ever festival sets, first-ever international press and more. (Top music mag Mojo even said they’d made one of the year’s best albums—“Any year!”) Follow-up Flowers bloomed almost exactly a year later at Long Beach’s Jazzcats studio between December of 2017 and January of 2018, where Fitzsimons and longtime band member Ryan Foster had recorded Glory.

                        By the time they’d returned, they had a slate of songs that had come to Fitzsimons in flash moments, written on nerve-wracking transcontinental flights or on isolated nights in an L.A. apartment, captured at once in bursts of insight or rescued from almost-abandonment in discarded notebooks. As on Glory, inspiration from Syd Barrett, Dylan, Nikki Sudden and kindred spirit Peter Perrett of the Only Ones was at work, but the Molochs are endlessly (appropriately?) ravenous when it comes to things to read and listen to and learn from. On Flowers they’d refine and recombine their sound, working in that long tradition of poets who cover (or discover) themselves in pop songs. “To Kick In A Lover’s Door” blows Flowers open with the wit and precision of the Go-Betweens, and “I Wanna Say To You” draws more from some of Creation Records’ dreamiest dreamers than it does from any esoteric 60s howlers. “Flowers In The Spring” and “Pages Of Your Journal” could be two lost Kinks singles from two different Kinks eras—that Ray Davies-ian venom stays the same, of course—and the charming/disarming “Too Lost In Love” makes feeling down sound like cheering up, just like the Clean did.

                        Yes, they do have their first-ever string section here, and that could confuse some people. (“People go, ‘Wow, it sounds more mature.’” says Fitzsimons. “What kind of boring shit is that?”) But Flowers isn’t a grown-up album or a show-off album or a break-up album or a just-had-to-make-another-album album because the Molochs don’t pick targets that tiny. Love and disgrace and life and death blur and bleed into each other, but at the core of Flowers is a story about standing against the inhuman by being more human, however messily honest that needs to be. (Or like Fitzsimons sings at the end of the record: beware that “determination by a whole / to destroy the human soul.” Funny how that comes in a song where he claims he can’t explain everything that happens to him, because he sort of just did.) So consider their new Flowers In The Spring a meticulously plotted counterattack against all things Moloch-ian, with clear, concise, immediate, undeniable, simple, direct pop songs, says Fitzsimons, each sharpened enough to cut through anything it touched.

                        TRACK LISTING

                        1. To Kick In A Lover's Door
                        2. I Wanna Say To You
                        3. A Little Glimpse Of Death
                        4. Shadow Of A Girl
                        5. Flowers In The Spring
                        6. Pages Of Your Journal 7. First Time I Saw You
                        8. And She's Sleeping Now
                        9. Too Lost In Love
                        10. Wade In The Water
                        11. (She Glows)
                        12. All The Things That Happen To Me

                        The Buttertones

                        Midnight In A Moonless Dream

                          The first word of the album says it all: 'Bang!' On their new album Midnight In A Moonless Dream the Buttertones dig deep and discover something dark. Where their previous album Gravedigging played like the soundtrack of a good spaghetti-western heist movie, Midnight moves to the dark cityscapes of '70s New York and tells the story itself - a perfect and intricate crime executed by a crew of professionals under cover of night; a biting sound befitting of CBGB's while staying true to their LA roots. There are echoes of Suicide and Bauhaus, nods to the spirit of sax and violence that powered the Deadbeats. Midnight is music made for dancers but also for doomed romancers that will appeal to fans of The Cramps, The Gun Club, Car Seat Headrest, Black Lips, King Tuff, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall,
and Parquet Courts. Released on Innovative Leisure, the LA label that also brought you the Allah-Las, BADBADNOTGOOD, Hanni El Khatib, Nick Waterhouse, and more.

                          For fans of The Cramps, The Gun Club, Car Seat Headrest, Black Lips, King Tuff, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Parquet Courts

                          TRACK LISTING

                          1. At The Dojo
                          2. Baby C4
                          3. Midnight In A Moonless Dream
                          4. Old Nick's Still Got It
                          5. Winks And Smiles
                          6. Don't Cry Alone
                          7. Jungle
                          8. Darling, I Need Time But Don't Really Know Why
                          9. You And Your Knife
                          10. Brickhead
                          11. Eros

                          Holy Fuck

                          Bird Brains

                            Bird Brains is a four song collection from Holy Fuck, recorded live at various studios over the past few years. They represent the ongoing creative process of a band whose members live in different cities (in both Canada and the US) yet insist their music should be a collaborative process. These four songs aim to capture the raw energy of four people, not apart as bedroom producers, but together as a spirited exchange of ideas, a dynamic interaction that comes from years of friendship. While Bird Brains was largely self-produced, a few very talented Engineers/Producers aided greatly in that process, including Shawn Everett (John Legend, Warpaint, Alabama Shakes), who recorded the song "Chains" at The Banff Centre for the Arts, and David Wrench (Caribou, FKA Twigs, The XX) who mixed the song "New Dang". The cover image was designed by long time friend Seth Smith, visual artist, film maker, and musician from Nova Scotia. As the band describes, "the image is quite gross and beautiful, natural and artificial all at the same time, which we feel best represents how we hear our music."

                            Badbadnotgood

                            Lavendar (Night Fall Remix) Feat. Kaytranada And Snoop Dogg

                              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'!

                              Nick Waterhouse

                              LA Turnaround B/w I Cry

                                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

                                Never Twice

                                  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.

                                  Classixx

                                  Faraway Reach

                                    'Faraway Reach' casts Classixx's young-but-nostalgic melodies and sublime chords in a more mature, restrained light, albeit no less lively and bright. Establishing themselves as producers of note on their debut LP (Pitchfork called them “great songwriters, too”), 'Faraway Reach' delivers powerfully smooth and soulful jewels that are still decidedly their own - the Classixx signature is one that can’t be traced. Their love of plaintive voices and disco-inspired grooves is as evident as ever, but this time around everything is a bit bolder, the cast is bigger, the melodies distilled into a higher potency - it’s all just as good, but better. “On the first record, we wanted to include only people that were our friends, and have it be really personal…” David begins, a thought Blake finishes: “This time we wanted to make a record with a lot of different kinds of vocals, to see if we could be the common thread.”

                                    The album traverses locales, vocalists and inspirations. It's a fitting movement for the duo, from Venice beach to the mountains of South Africa and everywhere in between - a Faraway Reach


                                    Holy Fuck

                                    Congrats

                                      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

                                      Hanni El Khatib

                                      Moonlight

                                        On his 2011 debut Will The Guns Come Out, Hanni El Khatib tried something he’d never tried before—making a bedroom-style recording of his stripped brand of rock‘n’roll mostly for the sheer joy of making it. For his ferocious 2013 follow-up Head In The Dirt, he tried something new again, enlisting Dan Auerbach as a producer.

                                        But after Head In The Dirt’s release and almost a year of relentless touring, Hanni knew he needed to go past ‘unpredictable’ all the way to ‘unprecedented.’ He needed isolation, time and the chance to experiment. So after 30 days locked in hand-picked L.A. studio The Lair, the result is the album Moonlight—the rarest and most welcome kind of album, made at that perfect point in life where confidence, experience, and technique unite to help an artist do anything they want.

                                        That’s why it starts with a song that sounds like a Mobb Deep beat under a Suicide-style synth drone and ends with an ESG-meets-LCD Soundsystem gone italo-disco song about life and death. That’s why it collides crushing crate-digger drumbeats that’d be right at home on a Can LP or an Eddie Bo 45 with bleeding distorto guitar, bent and broken barroom piano and hallucinatory analog flourishes.

                                        "Engine-revving dose of filthy, leather-clad blues." - NME

                                        "A shit-kicking garage greaser with badass hooks." - SPIN

                                        "Stripped- down garage rock with crunching guitars and kiss-off cockiness." - GQ

                                        "This is desert-burned blues rock boosted by punk, soul and hip-hop" - ROLLING STONE

                                        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

                                        Khun Narin

                                        Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band

                                          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

                                          Tell Me I Belong

                                          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



                                          De Lux

                                          Voyage

                                            LA’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 2013. Founders and multi-instrumentalists Sean Guerin and Isaac Franco didn’t meet so much as simply appear to each other, sometime before high school ended and after learning to correctly fall off skateboards began. Even at age 18, however, it was the kind of connection that had been years in the making.

                                            From lead track “Better At Making Time,” De Lux roars through Psychedelic Furs or Duran Duran-style pop (“Love Is A Phase”), delivers shouts and whispers like James Murphy at his most frantic (“Make Space”), sinks into Eno-esque moments of bliss (“On The Day”) and rockets through the agit-funk David Byrne-style rave- up finale “Sometimes Your Friends Are Not Your Friends.” And this is all from the first-take—they never re-record, says Sean. If they don’t perfectly catch that beat as it happens, they let it go. That’s probably why Voyage sounds as wild and alive as it does. Just like on that surprise recording “Better Making Time,” you’re not hearing a band come together. And just like how they met, you’re hearing a band appear.

                                            FOR FANS OF: Daft Punk, Television, Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, Poolside.

                                            “Wowowwowow! That was my reaction the first time I heard De Lux. It’s got a tropical post punk flavor reminiscent of the Talking Heads.” KCRW

                                            “They have some resemblance to Talking Heads and The Rapture... and my prediction is that they are the next revelation in the Los Angeles scene.” POOLSIDE

                                            Nick Waterhouse

                                            Holly

                                              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

                                              Nosaj Thing

                                              Home - Kyle Hall / Gerry Read Remixes

                                                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.


                                                Crystal Antlers

                                                Rattlesnake / California

                                                  7" vinyl picture disc featuring C.R. Stecyk III hubcap on side A and palm trees on side B.

                                                  “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

                                                  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

                                                  Hanni El Khatib

                                                  Head In The Dirt

                                                    Hanni El Khatib is back with his second album ‘Head In The Dirt’ produced by Dan Auerbach of the Grammy Award-winning band The Black Keys. Hanni El Khatib’s breakout debut ‘Will The Guns Come Out’ led to all kinds of success – not least having his music licensed to HBO and Showtime television series, and adverts for Nike and Captain Morgan. In 2012, however, he showed up to record his second album with just the clothes on his back — no guitar, no fancy almost-finished demos, and only about three weeks time to get from start to finish. While on tour, he'd met Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys in a Paris bar. After some whisky, they decided to partner up in Auerbach’s Nashville studio. The idea was to erase everything Hanni had become comfortable with and to make an album out of only raw instinct and inspiration. The result is ‘Head In The Dirt’, in which Hanni El Khatib makes the entire history of rebel music his own over eleven tracks. There are cut-to-the-bone rhythm ‘n’ blues songs (‘Save Me’) and overcranked Stooges-style stompers (‘Family’). There are bottomless Black Sabbath riff-outs (the back half of ‘Pay No Mind’) and dubbed-out garage rock tunes (‘Nobody Move’) that call up the spirits of the Clash and the Equals. His ‘Low’ is just one Andre 3000 remix away from a club anthem, ‘Penny’ is a stick-in-your-head pop hit, and ‘Sinking In The Sand’ is a freak-out headbanger.

                                                    Classixx

                                                    Hanging Gardens

                                                      Classixx’s debut album on Innovative Leisure brings together their signature blend of shimmering melody, disco and house into a stunning and surprising full length.

                                                      Described as “consistently impressive” (Prefix Mag) and as “remixers that can turn anything into a slice of summer bliss”, (Pitchfork), Classixx is Michael David and Tyler Blake, childhood friends from LA who began recording together in 2007. One of the world’s most acclaimed DJ duos, Classixx are master selectors, and there’s a kinship between their choices as DJs and their original works, drawn from a palette of similarly pop-minded melancholics like Fleetwood Mac, Prince, and Alan Braxe.

                                                      Following their breakout single ‘I’ll Get You’ with acclaimed remixes for Phoenix, Holy Ghost, Mayer Hawthorne, Groove Armada, YACHT, Major Lazer, Gossip and more, for the last two years Classixx have been honing their debut album ‘Hanging Gardens’. No ordinary dance record, ‘Hanging Gardens’ features vocals from Active Child, Nancy Whang, Sarah Chernoff of Superhumanoids, Jeppe of Junior Senior and Jessie Kivel of Kisses. Tyler and Blake play a number of instruments on the album, from guitar and piano to analogue synth and Central American drums.

                                                      At once beaming, breezy and wistful, ‘Hanging Gardens’ is truly a child of Classixx’s LA home.

                                                      Tijuana Panthers

                                                      Semi-Sweet

                                                        From Long Beach, California, the Tijuana Panthers are a garage band with a difference. On Semi-Sweet, they inject high-octane rock ‘n’ roll sounds with the sun and surf vibes of their hometown.

                                                        Semi-Sweet is a colourful journey through at least four decades of offbeat music that’s straight from the heart. The beach-punk harmonies of “Tony’s Song” recall the relentless energy of The Wipers, while “Father Figure” left-turns toward the kind of complicated jangle-pop of New Zealand’s Verlaines. “Push Over” is like some kind of Howard DeVoto demo that suddenly splits into a Mickey Baker guitar line, and “Juvy Jeans” is pure my-daddy-was-a-New-York-Doll teen-punk thrill. Of course, the surf guitar they built their band on is still surging along, and it’s on moodier tracks like “Baby On Board” and “Forbidden Fruit” that we get an idea of their development, while their reverent cover of Nerves’ “One Way Ticket” joins the dots between the power pop band and their descendants.

                                                        With Semi-Sweet, Tijuana Panthers join Innovative Leisure’s eclectic roster, which includes psychedelic garage band The Allah-Las, instrumental hip-hop artist Nosaj Thing, punk outlaw Hanni El-Khatib, and dance-pop sensations Classixx.

                                                        Nosaj Thing

                                                        Home

                                                          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.

                                                          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


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