Keyboardist and composer Carl Moore originally wrote, recorded and pressed only 100 (!) copies of these tracks, grabbing a quick moment of studio time during a tour of Japan in the early 1980s. Moore’s purple patch saw him becoming peers with artists such as Phyllis Hyman, Jean Carn, Janet Jackson and ‘The King of Gospel’, James Cleveland.

Carter Lake is an energetic 2 minutes 30 second blast of pure dance floor joy, that looks back at carefree days, teenage love and love lost. Moore’s voice soars, and showcases his love for the powerful stylings of jazz and gospel. On the flip, Must Be The Beat sees him explore very different textures and could easily be a long lost Prince recording found in the vaults in Paisley Park. Sounding like something jammed late at night, this one is perfect for the afterhours when there are 30 sweaty dancers left on the floor at 5am that just don’t want to go home!

This is the first release on Sweet Free Association, a new label founded by Sam Don, the DJ and curator responsible for the recent lovers rock and UK soul comps For The Love of You and Just A Touch. Born out of the wish to find another way of sharing ‘the fruits’ from his Free Association radio show and parties, these impossibly rare disco tracks are now available to a wider audience for the first time, as the vast majority of the original copies have been long lost.

Mastered at The Carvery, the lo-fi recordings have been skilfully lifted by Frank Merritt to sound big in the club, while retaining the original charm in the sound that made the tracks stand out to Sam in the first instance.

TRACK LISTING

Carter Lake
Must Be The Beat

This self-produced fifth studio album follows 2020’s Mercury nominated Spook the Herd. Its nine songs are existential meditations examining life’s possibilities, facing the hand we’ve been dealt and the question of whether we can change our individual and collective destinies.

Singer and songwriter Hazel Wilde has no doubt that motherhood fundamentally shifted her perspective. “Writing songs requires a certain level of self-indulgence, and songwriters can be prone to dwelling on themselves,” she says. “Motherhood made me aware at having a different stake in the world. I’ve got to believe that there’s a better way and an alternative future to the one we’ve been hurtling towards. I’ve also got to believe that I could be better as a person, too.”

Mixed by the band’s guitarist Paul Gregory, in the bedroom of his home in North Shields, there is a sense of time and place that runs deep throughout this record. Given some of its themes, a biting irony is found in an entire previous version of the record being discarded. Mental health struggles and personal problems in the band had a big impact on how the initial version took shape. “Despite trying everything we could to make it work we reached the point where we just had to stop” Wilde explains. Drummer Ol Ketteringham parted ways with the band, something Wilde says was “heartbreakingly difficult as we were and still are extremely close”.

The band scrapped nearly a year’s worth of work, regressing to song demos with just Wilde performing with a single instrument as they began again with Radiohead’s Philip Selway joining the album sessions on drums. “Philip brought an energy to the songs that reignited our belief in them,” says Wilde. “Within a few weeks we had a whole other version of the album and things felt very different,” Wilde continues. “We had changed the destiny of the record.”

It’s a heartening idea. Despite the difficulties in its genesis, Versions of Us is the most empowering album yet from the band. In exploring whether we can change fate or are doomed to repeat the same mistakes in life, this powerful collection of songs ultimately alights on hope. 

TRACK LISTING

1 The Likes Of Us
2 Real Life
3 Vatican
4 String Theory
5 Thumb Of War
6 The Saboteur
7 Locust
8 Rich Girls
9 Last Transmission

Mouche (real name Tim Karmouche) returns to Australian label Research Records with another full-length of imaginary soundtracks, instrumentals and sun-kissed digital jazz. Active on the Melbourne scene in projects such as Crepes/The Murlocs/Swazi Gold/Dreamin' Wild, Tim's first album Live From The Bubble arrived back in 2020 as an ode to his aptly named studio space - The Bubble.

Lake Songs builds on those same atmospheres, showcasing the inward-looking craft of his one-man band. Cicada field recordings and light keys open proceedings, reflecting the warmer side of 80s new age, though before long we're introduced to a variety of stylistic shifts incorporating elements of cosmic funk, lounge and library-style compositions. There are traces of Steve Hiett, Max Groove or even the recently re-discovered Ronald Langestraat, though the strength of Mouche's talent for harmony shines through on its own level.

Shifting between moods yet reflecting an overarching sense of positivity, listening through the ten tracks gives off a real sense of place, though time is somewhat irrelevant. The warm climate and sandy beaches of Australia seem eternally embodied in 'Juice' or 'Crystal Water'. Perhaps where Live From The Bubble was dedicated to the very studio that birthed it, Lake Songs is dedicated to the vast land that surrounds it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Silence On Lake Purity
2. Swans In The Night
3. Crystal Water
4. Swamp Thing
5. Forest Solitude
6. Juice
7. The Neighbourhood
8. Race Against Time
9. After All
10. Sweet Rain

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 22ND ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.



IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 24TH).



Pete Kember (Sonic Boom/Spacemen 3) and Simeon Coxe of legendary '60s electronic innovators Silver Apples came together to create this brilliant EP in 1998. It was released the following year on Space Age recordings. The numerous electronic instruments and oscillators used by Pete and Simeon invoke a timelessly purist electronic aesthetic, occasionally augmented by the presence of additional musicians Will Carruthers, Iain Worrall and Alf Hardy, who add bass, drums and yet more layers of electronics to the mix Now, to mark 25 years after its inception, this highly lauded and sought after recording is being repressed in 180g heavyweight silver vinyl.

Höga Nord Rekords kindly welcomes Teecwa back to the label, following up his last full length-album “Beyond the Altai” with “Elysian on Moon Lake”. He is still exploring the intersections between house, electro, techno and dub and once again he manages to harness the analogue electronics in his machines to produce modern psychedelia.

“Elysian On Moon Lake” is rawer, less airy and not as sparkling as his last album. This is a tighter, and slightly darker experience than Teecwa’s previous work, maybe caused by being in quarantine for extensive time during production, letting some of the dreaminess aside for the harsher reality in a pandemic world. Still, you get a mind-altering experience in a lot of tracks since the album starts off in a lighter tone than how it later develops. Switching from the A to the B-side works as a rite of passage going from dusk to night; the sun rays through the blinders are replaced by neon light dancing on the walls and ceiling.

Regarding the dramaturgy of “Elysian On Moon Lake”, this album has movielike qualities; a well-directed piece from the opening impact and setup through the confrontational part where intensity builds up to the climax in “Hythmdoser” to the cooling down effect of the peaceful closer “Celestial Trails”. The trip eventually ends up in a safe and happy place after the cathartic finale.

This is not a just collection of songs, this is an album made to experience in full length without interruptions. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Never, There. Was
A2. Tropic Notations
A3. No Lies To Her Fire
A4. Hunting Lights
B1. Solar City
B2. Welcome Dystopia!
B3. To Reach Apogee
B4. Hythmdoser
B5. Celestial Trails

Holiday at The Secret Lake is the highly anticipated debut album from Manchester three-piece Cold Water Swimmers. 10 tracks, 10 songs from the first 3 years of the band's existence.

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

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

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

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

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

TRACK LISTING

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

Recently uncovered high quality soundboard recording of the Stooges' famous final show with their original lineup and with bassist Dave Alexander, playing Fun House in full just before release. An unearthed gem in Stooges history.

The apocryphal tale of the Stooges performance at the Goose Lake festival has been told countless times over the past five decades. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence or what ever you choose to fill in the blank, absolutely spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note on stage. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of the Stooges.

But what if that simply...wasn't the case? What if you could prove otherwise? Well, it'd be the proto-punk equivalent of having an immediate, on-the-scene, man on the street report of all those folkies booing Dylan's electric set at Newport in '65. Irrefutable evidence of what ACTUALLY went down.

Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse amongst other tasty analog artifacts of the same era, the 1/4" stereo two-track tape of the Stooges complete performance at Goose Lake on August 8th, 1970 is the Rosetta Stone for fans of this seminal band.

Not only is this the last ever performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the ONLY known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory.

Would you believe that...Alexander actually DID play bass on this occasion? Or that, despite a handful of flubs, he manages to hold his own? Especially on the bass-led songs "Dirt" and "Fun House"? Does Iggy provoke the crowd to tear down festival barriers? Did the powers that be pull the plug on the Stooges? So many questions are answered only to have more arise.

Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the performance, Live at Goose Lake: August 8th 1970, is the rare release that literally rewrites the history of these Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE 1
1. Intro
2. Loose
3. Down On The Street
4. T.V. Eye
5. Dirt

SIDE 2
1. 1970 (I Feel Alright)
2. Fun House 3. L.A. Blues

It’s strange – not to mention fundamentally disconcerting - to live through turbulent times. Yet as many feel like the world is slipping out of control, artists are enlivened as they seek to make sense of the shifting sands. Hazel Wilde of Lanterns on the Lake is now a songwriter necessarily emboldened. On Spook the Herd, the band’s fourth record, her voice and preoccupations rise to the fore like never before. In tandem, the band break new ground on a set of songs that are direct and crucial.

Wilde does nothing less than dive headlong into the existential crises of our times. Beginning with the record’s title - a pointed comment at the dangerously manipulative tactics of ideologues - its nine songs turn the microscope to issues including our hopelessly polarized politics, social media, addiction, grief and the climate crisis.

The world is brought into focus, but Wilde’s style is not declarative. She also proves herself a songwriter possessed of a rare talent for finding the personal contours to contemporary issues, fully inhabiting them to make them real. Recorded as live where possible, the band’s natural touchstones of gauzy dream-pop and monumental post rock still float in the air, but listening to Lanterns on the Lake now feels like actually sitting in the corner of the room as they play. As guitarist and producer Paul Gregory says of approaching their fourth album, “There was a sense of release in terms of what kind of music we felt we could make. The idea of what kind of band you’re supposed to be really disappeared. It was great; you felt you could do whatever you like.”

TRACK LISTING

1. When It All Comes True
2. Baddies
3. Every Atom
4. Blue Screen Beams
5. Before They Excavate
6. Swimming Lessons
7. Secrets & Medicine
8. This Is Not A Drill
9. A Fitting End

LAKE are an experimental-pop ensemble centered around the songwriting partnership of wife/husband duo Ashley Eriksson and Elijah Moore. LAKE's musical kindling is unusual for a band whose genesis was rooted in the punk and indie community - before signing to legendary K Records (for their 2nd album Oh,The Places We'll Go, 2008) Calvin Johnson apparently couldn't believe a band from the Olympia underground would be so keen on reinterpreting the music of mainstream pop acts from a bygone era. LAKE has since converted him, and many more, to a re-sensitized appreciation of big musical ideas, which are non-cynical, joyous, inviting.

Whitney make casually melancholic music that combines the wounded drawl of Townes Van Zandt, the rambunctious energy of Jim Ford, the stoned affability of Bobby Charles, the American otherworldliness of The Band, and the slack groove of early Pavement. Their debut, Light Upon the Lake, is due in June on Secretly Canadian, and it marks the culmination of a short, but incredibly intense, creative period for the band. Formed from the core of guitarist Max Kakacek and singing drummer Julien Ehrlich, to say that Whitney is more than the sum of its parts would be a criminal understatement. The band itself is something bigger, something visionary, something neither of them could have accomplished alone.

Ehrlich had been a member of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, but left to play drums for the Smith Westerns, where he met guitarist Kakacek. That group burned brightly but briefly, disbanding in 2014 and leaving its members adrift. Brief solo careers and side-projects abounded, but nothing clicked. Making everything seem all the more fraught: both of them were going through especially painful breakups almost simultaneously, the kind that inspire a million songs, and they emerged emotionally bruised and lonelier than ever.

Whitney was born from a series of laidback early-morning songwriting sessions during one of the harshest winters in Chicago history, after Ehrlich and Kakacek reconnected - first as roommates splitting rent in a small Chicago apartment and later as musical collaborators passing the guitar and the lyrics sheet back and forth. “We approached it as just a fun thing to do. We never wanted to force ourselves to write a song. It just happened very organically. And we were smiling the whole time, even though some of the songs are pretty sad.” The duo wrote frankly about the break-ups they were enduring and the breakdowns they were trying to avoid. Each served as the other’s most brutal critic and most sympathetic confessor, a sounding board for the hard truths that were finding their way into new songs like “No Woman” and “Follow,” a eulogy for Ehrlich’s grandfather.

In exorcising their demons they conjured something else, something much more benign—a third presence, another personality in the music, which they gave the name Whitney. They left it singular to emphasize its isolation and loneliness. Whitney is named after Whitney, a muse they created as a songwriting conduit—a phantom third member of the band. Says Kakacek, “We were both writing as this one character, and whenever we were stuck, we’d ask, ‘What would Whitney do in this situation?’ We personified the band name into this person, and that helped a lot. We wrote the record as though one person were playing everything. We purposefully didn’t add a lot of parts and didn’t bother making everything perfect, because the character we had in mind wouldn’t do that.”

In those imperfections lies the music’s humanity. Whilst they demoed and toured the new songs, they became more aware of the perfect imperfections of the songs, and needing to strike the right balance, eventually making the trek out to California, where they recorded with Foxygen frontman and longtime friend, Jonathan Rado. They slept in tents in Rado’s backyard, ate the same breakfast every morning at the same diner in the remote, desolate and completely un-rock n roll San Fernando Valley, whilst they dreamt of Laurel Canyon, or maybe The Band’s hideout in Malibu, or Neil Young’s ranch in Topanga Canyon.

The analog recording methods, the same as used by their forebearers, allowed them to concentrate on the songs themselves and create moments that would be powerful and unrepeatable. “Tape forces you to get a take down,” says Kakacek. “We didn’t have enough tracks to record ten takes of a guitar part and choose the best one later. Whatever we put down is all we had. That really makes you as a musician focus on the performance.” The sessions were loose, with room for improvisation and new ideas, as the band expanded from that central duo into a dynamic sextet (septet if you count their trusty soundman). And that’s what you hear – Whitney is the sound of that songwriting duo expanding their group and delivering the sound of a band at their freest, their loosest, their giddiest.

Classic and modern at the same time, they revel in concrete details, evocative turns of phrase, and thorny emotions that don’t have exact names. These ten songs on Light Upon the Lake sound like they could have been written at any time in the last fifty years. Ehrlich and Kakacek emerge as imaginative and insightful songwriting partners, impressive in their scope and restraint as they mold classic rock lyricism into new and personal shapes without sound revivalist or retro. Whitney arrive as a fully formed gang of outsiders, their album rich in the musical history of the classic bands of the 60s and 70s who, like Whitney, were greater than the sum of their parts. “I’m searching for those golden days.” sings Ehrlich, with a subtle ripple of something that sounds like hope, on the track “Golden Days”. It’s a song that defines Whitney as a band. “There’s a lot of true feeling behind these songs,” says Ehrlich. “We wanted them to have a part of our personalities in them. We wanted the songs to have soul.”

TRACK LISTING

1 No Woman
2 The Falls
3 Golden Days
4 Dave's Song
5 Light Upon The Lake
6 No Matter Where We Go
7 On My Own
8 Red Moon
9 Polly
10 Follow

Two years on from the critically acclaimed Until The Colours Run, Lanterns On The Lake return with their third full-length record Beings. It marks another leap in the band’s development as they expand their range, pushing the envelope of their signature atmospheric rock and scaling new heights of absorbing song-craft.

Work on Beings began in February 2014, hard on the heels of successful tours of Europe and North America. It proved to be a productive period. “The ideas came effortlessly and in abundance,” vocalist Hazel Wilde says of the writing process. “At first we had no expectations, no prescribed ideas of how we wanted the songs to turn out. We were just writing and playing together because that’s what we’d always done.”

This was made possible by their setup, working in splendid isolation; writing, rehearsing and recording in their Newcastle rehearsal room meant the results were undiluted by outside influence. Imaginatively produced and mixed by guitarist Paul Gregory, it’s also his experience that helped yield such compelling results. This allows Beings to move seamlessly from airy, chiming beauty to dense, forbidding soundscapes - sometimes in the same song - while still feeling like the product of a cohesive unit, retaining the band’s spark. “We wanted it to be more raw,” Wilde says of the record. “At its darkest points, we wanted it to feel like you’d dived into the deepest part our dreams and were taking a look around. At its lightest we wanted it to feel like you were coming up for air.”

Opening song ‘Of Dust and Matter’ strikes just such a balance. The band’s most sinister moment yet, it prowls out of a burble of radio static and feedback, propelled by ominous piano chords as its menacing pulse builds to a tumbling climax of almost discordant, warped guitar parts and the fractured drumming of Ol Ketteringham. “In my greatness I vowed to destroy all I am,” Wilde sings. “It brings out the best in me.”

It’s an interesting early lyric, and it soon becomes apparent that this is a braver, more headstrong Lanterns on the Lake, a band now less about floating on water than racing across land, eager and with points to prove. Often their melancholy necessarily turns to action. “Fractured lives like faultlines, unto the breach my friends if you will” is Wilde’s call to arms on ‘Faultlines’, a critique of austerity, as the band turn in a cavalry charge with her voice as the clarion call.

Wilde's lyrics also shudder with evocative and often surprisingly dark imagery in songs that attempt to understand the world around her, built from charged moments of universal insight. “There is a sense of the need to connect to something; the need to find meaning,” she says of the material. “There’s such frustrating injustice in the world, yet this feels like a time of disconnection where we’re encouraged to celebrate the shallow side of culture. This record carries that sense of yearning for something greater.”

This gives Beings immediacy, depth and resonance as it touches on community, love, culture, politics and self-examination, and our own place and limitations within each. “I want to walk with the brave, give me a good day, I want to feel human” Wilde sings on the graceful ‘I’ll Stall Them’, exploring the importance of connection, kinship and reconciliation.

Beings is the engrossing product of a band operating in total harmony to the point where their music creates its own idiosyncratic world whilst also distilling outside concerns into it. The horizons open to Lanterns on the Lake are now as broad as the sweep of these beautiful songs.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Starker, darker but still really beutiful, the Lanterns'third is an engrossing listen.

New EP of seven new tracks, from Austin Texas Psych Rock band.

It follows their album Indigo Meadow (2013) where once again The Black Angels proved themselves the undisputed avatars of contemporary psychedelic rock, simultaneously exalting the genre’s kaleidoscopic past as they thrust it further into the future. the band brought new focus to their wide-ranging songcraft, the righteous riffs and dogmatic drones gaining increased power as they fuel a more expansive emotional terrain. A 21st century trip as transcendent as any in the canon.

“Imagine tossing bands from the pantheon of American psychedelia like The Electric Prunes, Count Five, 13th Floor Elevators and The Seeds into your blender, adding a splash of Sabbath and a dollop of early Soundgarden or Mudhoney, and you’ve got Austin’s The Black Angels.” Associated Press.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sunday Evening
2. Tired Eyes
3. Diamond Eyes
4. The Flop
5. An Occurrence At 4507 South Third Street
6. The Executioner
7. Linda’s Gone

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2013 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

A four-way split featuring the cream of London's vibrant indie scene. The 12" EP, limited to 1000 pressings, includes the acid-fried rock of Gross Magic, the scuzzed-up pop of The History Of Apple Pie, an ethereal, ambient take from Echo Lake and a grunge pop anthem from Novella. This 12" is a repressing of the original sold-out 2011 release.

LIMITED TO 500 COPIES IN THE UK

TRACK LISTING

A1. Gross Magic - Yesterdays
A2. The History Of Apple Pie - Tug
B1. Echo Lake - Burial At Sea
B2. Novella - Santiago

Great new album from Woodsist's flagbearers: Woods, and there's a damn fine bio to go with it too... 'The distance between 2007's "At Rear House" and 2010's "At Echo Lake" may at first seem only semantic, but it more properly represents a move from akind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. Over the past few years, Woods has established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outré company of vocalist / guitarist / label owner Jeremy Earl's Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics.

"At Echo Lake" feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here - the opening - "Blood Dries Darker", the euphoric "Mornin' Time" is so lush that lesser brains would've succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns, but "At Echo Lake" is more "Fifth Dimension" than "Notorious Byrd Brothers", nowhere more so than on "From The Horn", a track as beautiful in its assault on form as "Eight Miles High" or Swell Maps' "Midget Submarines". But despite the instrumental innovation the album heralds G. Lucas Cranes psychedelic tape work on "Suffering Season", guest musician Matthew Valentine's harmonica and modified banjo / sitar on "Time Fading Lines", "At Echo Lake" is all about the vocals. Woods' secret weapon is the quality of Earl's voice, absorbing the naïve style of Jad Fair, Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while rethinking it as a discipline and a tradition. Here he is singing at the peak of his powers, in a high soulful style bolstered by heavenly arrangements of backing vocals. "At Echo Lake" feels like the transmission point for teenage garage from the past to the future. Deformed by contemporary experiments, bolstered by magical traditions, it's the sound of now, right here, "At Echo Lake". - David Keenan, Glasgow, March 2010.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blood Dries Darker
2. Pick Up
3. Suffering Season
4. Time Fading Lines
5. From The Horn
6. Death Rattles
7. Mornin' Time
8. I Was Gone
9. Get Back
10. Deep
11. Til The Sun Rips

Another indie-Balearic crossover album from Sweden's Service imprint, this is  lushly produced, blissful pop, all shoegazer meloncholy but with an MOR sheen. Studio dude D.Lissvik has mixed up a sound that's tuneful like Crepes, but with a gently grooving bottom end : streamlined rhythms (shades of St. Etienne) and wistful, lovelorn melodies create a cozy, hypnotic quality that pulls you in. There's some fantastic songwriting here, (similar to those other Scando masters Radio Dept. and Magnet)  but a more recent comparison would be with a softer, slightly adrift  Empire Of The Sun, or on the dancier numbers maybe Pheonix's first album.  For me though, this goes right back (via The Field Mice, of all people!?)  to 4AD and late 80s UK shoegazing. Combining that with such a gorgeous, smooth production is a winning combination. Recommended.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Dream-pop goes (fantasy) mainstream! Anyone remember The Frazier Chorus?!

Swan Lake is the new band featuring Daniel Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes). "Beast Moans" is Swan Lake's debut record featuring, among other things, beast moans, starling voices, cobra hi hats and arpeggiating pianos. The songs are great weaves, showcasing the famous and very distinctive songwriting styles of the trio.

Black Cat Music are a new four piece on Lookout Records and they have a rock and rolling way with a riff that's hard to ignore.