Glasgow’s Cloth announce their return with new music by way of a 4 track EP and their first release for their new label Rock Action Records. “Lucid” is resplendent yet brooding, offering airy dream-like, haunting vocals over dark guitar riffs and resonating percussion - a perfect moment of minimal alternative rock. Guitarist Paul Swinton says ”It was the first song we wrote for the EP and it felt like it set a tone for where we should go with the other songs - somewhere darker and bigger. The song is about being wrapped up in a situation you feel you have no control over then realising you do have the ability and agency to change things for the better.” This physical EP is a limited pressing and is available on ice blue coloured 12" vinyl and includes download code.

It will appeal to fans of The XX, Cocteau Twins, Beachhouse and War Paint.

TRACK LISTING

1. Old Stories
2. Lucid
3. Low Sun
4. Sidecar

First time on LP for 5 songs from last year’s acclaimed Uwami CD. Blazing a new trail in amapiano. First pressing of debut LP sold out before street date. Features new song “Gijima”. DJ Black Low burst on the international scene last year with Uwami, a collection of his early, downright avantgarde amapiano work. The young producer and DJ makes electronic music that sounds like nothing else: glitchy and fierce while smooth and soulful, all under the rubric of South Africa’s most-exported dance music movement to date. Now comes Uwami II, which features the rest of the tracks from the acclaimed debut plus a new song “Gijima.”

The Pretoria, South Africa-based artist has more work in the pipeline as we present these inimitable songs for the first time on vinyl. The song “Gijima” is a previously unreleased track Black Low chose to include in this collection as cremates more work at a furious pace. Quotes : “This is essential listening from a 20 year-old star.”—Resident Advisor Best Tracks of 2021 // “Uwami keeps an adventurous spirit at its core and pushes far beyond genre conventions in the process.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A 1.

1. Alone In A Dark (4:54) [+ Mr. Perfect Feat. DJ La Bengwa]
2. Sbono (Vocal Mix) (6:10) 
3. Down The Road (Original Mix) (4:53) [feat. DJ La Bengwa]

Side B

1. Vula Vala (5:24)
2. 60 Days No Sleep (5:43)
3. Gijima (Vocal Mix) (4:07) 

The second Albini recorded and engineered Low album, 'Things We Lost in the Fire' features such hits as 'Sunflower' and 'Laser Beam'.

“Measuring out grief and resilience with a steady hand, these are the best songs of Low's quiet career." - Mojo [9/10].

“Low's original stark minimalism has gradually given way to a broader sonic range, without sacrificing their strangely accessible otherness." - Wire.

“Low have always sought to make music that can both swell the heart like a gospel tune and capture the amplified absence of a funeral parlour. It's difficult to imagine a more perfect expression of their vision than this." - NME.

Low Hummer are a fast-rising six piece from Hull that write about their life in deepest darkest East Yorkshire and their place in a world of consumerism and bad news stories sold as gospel. Daniel, Aimee, Steph, Jack, John and Joe came together from the far corners of the city’s tight knit DIY community, established a regular rehearsal home in iconic DIY venue The New Adelphi Club and set about honing their righteous, danceable garage rock before announcing themselves in late 2019 and introducing the world to Low Hummer - this band of misfits from a town left behind.

“Scuzzed out indie with lashings of synths, their post-punk leaning songwriting has a surreal pop instinct running through it” – Clash.

“Brilliant new garage rock… classic garage rock sounds that join with post-punk fury.” – Gigwise.

“Its really charming. Great.” Laura Snapes (The Guardian / Pitchfork - For 6 Music Roundtable).

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Take Arms
Don’t You Ever Sleep
I Choose Live News
Never Enough
Sometimes I Wish (I Was A Different Person)

Side B
The Real Thing
Human Behaviour
I Tell You What
Commercials
The People, This Place

NOT FOR SALE ONLINE - See Instore for ordering details...

14th January 2022 marks the 45th anniversary of David Bowie’s 1977 album LOW, and to celebrate Parlophone Records is proud to announce release details for a limited edition orange vinyl.

The album featured the hit single "Sound and Vision" and reached number 2 in the UK album chart. This release will only be available through physical bricks and mortar stores, no online retail. 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1:
Speed Of Life
Breaking Glass
What In The World
Sound And Vision
Always Crashing In The Same Car
Be My Wife
A New Career In A New Town
SIDE 2:
Warszawa
Art Decade
Weeping Wall
Subterraneans

Jerry Teel - guitar, harmonica, vocals (The Chrome Cranks, Knoxville Girls, Big City Stompers, etc).
Jon Spencer - guitar (Blues Explosion, Pussy Galore, Five Dollar Priest, etc).
Russell Simins - drums (Blues Explosion, etc).
Lisa Wells - bass.

Hung Far Low" is the fifth and final studio album by New York noise rock band The Honeymoon Killers, originally released in 1991 and is now remastered in order to achieve the extreme sound desired for this band.

The Honeymoon Killers recorded this album picking up 2/3 of the nascent Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Low Life are a rock band from Sydney, Australia.

THE RECORD: Low Life’s 3rd LP is called From Squats to Lots: The Agony and the XTC of Low Life.

NOTES ON HOW TO LISTEN TO AGONY AND XTC OF LOW LIFE:

1. Some records hit you with an instant impression of timeless brilliance, and Low Life’s Dogging is one of those records, what the wise call “an instant classic”.

2. From Squats to Lots: The Agony and the XTC of Low Life is more like their second album Downer Edn (read Edition), a little more withdrawn, a little more textured. Complex. Rich. Which is to say: you’re going to need some time with it.

3. Some show, some grow. Low Life have done both. This one is a grower. Spend some time with this one. It’s got that nuanced flavour. Don’t guzzle. Sip. Savour.

4. Sip it, and sense the recurring brilliance of Mitch Tolman’s lyrics, exploring the usual territory of gutter life, lad life, punk life, low life. The dirge. Disgust and shame in white Australia. Council housing, bills piled to the neck, substance abuse and rehabilitation, the fallen lads and lasses who stood too close to the flame, loss and loneliness, from squats to lots. Un-Australian gutter symphony.

5. There is a celebration of resilience and that’s a central theme of this record and a time like ours needs a record like Agony & XTC. Low times are coming through, but if you’re low they won’t get to you.

6. Iggy Pop’s Bowie produced studio rock masterpieces ‘The Idiot’ and ‘Lust For Life’ are important reference points to the 3rd album sounds of Low Life. Here comes success!

7. ‘The Agony and Ecstasy’ is a 1985 novel by Irving Stone about the life of Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo. Stone wrote another novel about the single eared painter Vincent Van Gogh called ‘Lust For Life’. This synchronicity hit me.

8. Iggy and the Stooges are a pretty safe reference for Low Life (and all good rock music). Iggy and the Stooges are a low life’s Michelangelo, but solo Iggy like Lust for Life is a better reference for this particular incarnation of Low Life, which is to say they are studio rock albums.

9. Bowie later referred to this period of his life as profoundly nihilistic. But Iggy looked at it as the period of his life that saved him from an early grave. This confrontation is Low life lore.

10. Let’s stick to this, because there’s something about this era of Bowie that makes sense with Low Life’s new album, particularly Low. One should never miss the Low in our new album from Low Life. Producer and studio boss Mickey Grossman has the ear for the Low, and he has carved out a little statue of David right here.

11. Mickey’s ears are recording, mixing and producing the best of Sydney, most notably the Oily Boys Cro Memory Grin. A great companion record to this one. Use Agony & XTC AFTER Oily Boys. Not on an empty stomach, and don’t try to operate heavy machinery (bobcat, bulldozer etc).

12. The relationship between Low Life and Sydney hardcore should not be understated, but it also shouldn’t guide how to listen to Agony & XTC. This is not austere, disciplined music.

13. Think, like, if Poison Idea were given the kind of studio time and budget as Happy Mondays. You wouldn’t play it to a teenager. It’s not for children. This is a mature flavour, one for the adults who have had to contend with failure and hardship, medical bills and disappointed family members, betrayed lovers and worrisome growths, police brutality and tooth decay, humiliating bowels and collapsed septums, detoxing and drying out, for those who have seen themselves as corrupted and putrid and unloveable, for those who endure all of this and aren’t willing to lie down and cop it sweet: Low Life are still here and they ain’t going nowhere

TRACK LISTING

1. Agony Intro
2. Agony & XTC
3. Collect Calls
4. Real Man
5. Still Here
6. CZA
7. Conversations
8. Hammer And The Fist
9. Epitaphs
10. Harmony
11. Moments
12. Agony Outro

Geese are a band that begins and ends in Brooklyn, as a project between friends to build a home studio out of a basement.

Their debut album, ‘Projector’ (from which this single is taken), is born from the same ambition: make music by any means necessary. The songs were recorded with sneakers as mic stands and blankets draped over the amps, all within the afternoon following a school day, up until they ran the risk of noise complaints. 

TRACK LISTING

A - Low Era
B - Smoke In Japan

The Oscillation’s continuing journey into the centre of the mind and beyond shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. Indeed, new album "Untold Futures " is less a consolidation of all that we’ve come to love and expect from the cosmic explorers and more a leap forward into an upcoming reality. Redefining the possibilities of altered states through audio stimulation, “Untold Futures” finds The Oscillation at their most daring and breathtaking.

A multi-layered assault on the senses, this is an unexpurgated experience for the seasoned connoisseur and unspoiled novice alike. Its power is felt in the multi-layered dissonance and undying throb of “Dilated Mind”, the metaphysical possibilities that beat at the heart of metronomic pulses of “Forever Knowing” and the face-melting attack of “The Inner Void”. “Heart Of Nowhere” is a mantra for the profane, while the dissonant beauty of “Obscured” realises re-birth and resurrection.

Revelatory in its brilliance and an intersection between the individual self and the collective unconscious, this is music to fuel the inner technology of the mind. Veering between krautrock edginess, droning medicated tones and noise driven no wave fuzz, The Oscillation recalls the music of Neu! and Tangerine Dream and Loop interpreted with an eye on Pil’s dubbed out punk funk, Miles Davis’ experimentalism and Spacemen 3’s strung out blues rock.

Beginning in 2007, when DC Recordings released the debut “Out Of Phase”, The Oscillation have released many albums and EPS both self released and with labels (Fuzz Club and Hands In The Dark and Cardinal Fuzz). Recent releases include the mutant kosmiche techno of “U.E.F”, the pounding and otherworldly “Wasted Space” from 2018 and the epic exploration of the inner landscapes with “Droneweapon”. Now The Oscillation return with a new face-biting album questioning our strange relationship with reality as “Untold Futures”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Wild, incendiary, chest-beating psych rock that shoots off the stage like a flamethrower. Roaring with wobbly feedback and howling like a banshee for its entire duration. Unmissable!

TRACK LISTING

Untold Futures
1 Dilated Mind
2 Forever Knowing
3 The Inner Void
4 Heart Of Nowhere
5 Obscured

Ambient Version LP (DInked Edition)
Obscured (ambient)
The Inner Void (ambient)
Dilated Mind (ambient)
Heart Of Nowhere (ambient)

To celebrate its ten-year anniversary, Fuzz Club Records are reissuing The Underground Youth’s 2011 ‘Low Slow Needle’ EP on 10” vinyl with remastered audio. ‘Low Slow Needle’s hauntingly minimal, neo-psychedelic melancholy provides a more lo-fi snapshot of the now-Berlin-based band’s earlier days – when The Underground Youth was more of a DIY solo endeavour for Blackpool-born musician Craig Dyer, as opposed to the much-adored, full-band, international touring force that it is now. Looking back on ‘Low Slow Needle’, Dyer said: “The EP was recorded in September 2011, I had just returned to the UK from St. Petersburg where Olya [now drummer in The Underground Youth] and I had just got married.

Olya had to stay in Russia to finalise her paperwork before we would move into our first home together in Manchester. It was a difficult time, being apart after just getting married, and so I distracted myself by working on these songs that would become the Low Slow Needle EP. It was sort of my love letter to that period, looking back and also looking to the future. I worked closely with mine and Olya's friend in St. Petersburg, Daria Xenofontova, who gave her beautiful voice to my words and featured on three of the most popular songs on the EP, 'Midnight Lust', 'Addiction' and 'Blue'. These three songs still remain popular with our fans, who still request we play them live to this day.” When compared with the cinematic folk-noir heard on the band’s tenth album, the newly-released ‘The Falling’ (2021), what we find here captures a more stark and stripped-back The Underground Youth as the project was about to come out of its embryonic phase: “All five tracks were recorded in my bedroom and I really wanted to strip back the sound, to give a romantic feel of that period for me. To consider it 10 years on, it feels like the beginning to the next step of the journey, my life in Manchester with Olya, making contact with Casper at Fuzz Club and signing up with the label (this came just after the release of Low Slow Needle) and us putting together the first incarnation of TUY's live band (again this followed the release of the EP). So, in a way, this record marked the end of the first era of The Underground Youth, and in doing so, paved the way for the next.”

TRACK LISTING

1) Midnight Lust
2) On Your Screen
3) Addiction
4) Blue
5) Witchcraft

Something special for the pill goths and gloom crew as Low Standard Deviation deliver some maximally dark and manic minimal wave on Bunker. A fine example of the Dark Wired Sound, this eight track outing is times slightly reminiscent of Siouxsie and the Banshees or Joy Division, though sung through old and charming, slightly dissonant 'Samba' melody lines in keeping with the artist's Brazilian heritage. Detuned guitars, fuzzy drum machines, distorted vocals and bloodless synth sound abound on this bedsit masterpiece.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Transformation
A2. Um Dia
A3. Seguirei Adiante
A4. Tortura Electronica
B1. Stalker
B2. Ja Se Passou Foi Mais De Um Ano
B3. La Declaracion De Helsinki
B4. Em Algum Passado

Focusing on their craft, staying out of the fray, and holding fast their faith to find new ways to express the discord and delight of being alive, to turn the duality of existence into hymns we can share, Low present HEY WHAT. These ten pieces—each built around their own instantaneous, undeniable hook—are turbocharged by the vivid textures that surround them. The ineffable, familiar harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker break through the chaos like a life raft. Layers of distorted sound accrete with each new verse - building, breaking, colossal then restrained, a solemn vow only whispered. There will be time to unravel and attribute meaning to the music and art of these times, but the creative moment looks FORWARD, with teeth.

HEY WHAT is Low's thirteenth full-length release in twenty-seven years, and their third with producer BJ Burton.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Hey What' follows on nicely from 'Double Negative', continuing the dedication to avant-noise drone tempered with the majestic vocal accompaniment of Parker and Sparhawk. This time they move the sound forwards with a clever and unique mixture of that shadowy drone and the more pop-focused melodies of their early work. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

White Horses
I Can Wait
All Night
Disappearing
Hey
Days Like These
There's A Comma After Still
Don't Walk Away
More
The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)

Instrumental beat record from multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer and hip-hop DJ Stimulator Jones, curated with Stones Throw founder Peanut Butter Wolf. Follow up to his debut album, ‘Exotic Worlds and Masterful Treasures’, featuring break out hit ‘Soon Never Comes’. 

‘Low Budget Environments Striving For Perfection’ is comprised of atmospheric hip-hop beats, mainly using a Yamaha SU700. Focussed and singular in style, direction and execution yet occupying a suitably stoned, hazy and liminal area which gives way to psychedelic day dreams amd optimistic moods.

Stimulator Jones counts Billie Eilish as a fan - she has posted his track ‘Soon Never Comes’ multiple times on her socials. For fans of Dan Kye, Matt Martians, DãM-FunK, Mndsgn, Jitwam, DJ Harrison, Swarvy, Butcher Brown etc.

Artwork by illustrator Adam Castle. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Super chill syncopated beats and lo-fi instrumental hip-hop business here from Stimulator Jones, swinging between glitchy cut-up scratches and scattered MPC swing. It's a brilliantly psychedelic and brilliantly constructed set of gems.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Essence
2. Dungeon Master
3.Chill & Sip
4. How Much You Care
5. Icy Altitudes
6. Heat Index
7. Blowin Gold
8. Flow Speed
9. Errybodyguh
10. Ecstasy Ride
11. Grover Chop
12. Thunderball
13. Figueroa
14. Watermelon Slices
15. Rhythm Ace
16. Peaceful
17. Spirit (JD)
18. Vague Vibes
19. Quarantine
20. Side Step
21. Useless Trees
22. Sun Rays
23. Juju

Summer has arrived and with it our first club release in ages, a high energy burner by KΣITO from Tokyo, Japan. We are more than excited to welcome this talented MPC finger drummer Keito Suzuki to fiery post-lockdown dance floors. He draws inspiration from the South African Gqom and percussive music, and in his own stately way he merges big room intensity with an experimental explosion of weirdness. Expect bare bones techno, full of earworm hooks. Tolouse Low Trax and Kӣr complement this record with a bunch of psychedelic remixes, creating a great balanced journey.

TRACK LISTING

Kannon Yu
6th Street
Manget
Ao Zora
6th Street (Kӣr Remix)
Kannon Yu (Tolouse Low Trax South Atlas Remix)

Comes with digital download code.

These tracks were recorded by Kevin Low and Fiona Carlin in Kevin’s bedroom in Gayfield Square, Edinburgh, in 1986. Me and my dad, Kevin, dug out a huge bunch of his tapes over the lockdown (about 80 of the them at first). Some were…better than others, however, the Gayfield Square demos were the pick of the lot. Previously Kevin and Fiona were part of the Post Punk / indie band ‘Wild Indians’, whose first release “Stolen Courage” had come out in 1983 – released on Flexi Disc via the Edinburgh fanzine Deadbeat. Throughout the mid-1980s they performed across Edinburgh’s clubs, including at the Hoochie Coochie Club (name checked on track 7), where they played alongside bands and close friends Pop Wallpaper and Visitors. The band went on to release two 12” singles, “Love of My Life” in 1984 and “Penniless” in 1986.

After the band broke up Kevin sold his guitar amp and 7inch collection, Fiona her saxophone and they went out and got themselves a Yamaha RX-5 drum machine, Yamaha QX7 sequencer and a Yamaha DX-100. These bedroom tracks are the fruits of their first venture with this hardware, combining their experimentation with synthetic sounds (mostly the DX-100’s famous pre-sets) with a post-punk vocal style.

These eight tracks are also, in part, the fruit of the “Enterprise Allowance scheme” - a policy venture of Margaret Thatcher’s UK government that gave unemployment claimants access to an extra £40 to top up the basic dole money. Following Thatcher’s election victories in 1979 and 1983, the policy sought to reduce the figures of mass unemployment which hung over Britain well into the 1980s. This policy, according to Kevin, helped to keep up the credit payments. He notes that, “when Fiona and I turned up at the DHSS office with the sure-fire money-making plan of making a business as a ‘song-writing’ duo they signed us up. However, I still think they thought we said, sign writing as they were filling out the form.”

Kevin and Fiona stopped making music together shortly after these tracks were recorded so unfortunately, they never saw the light of day…until now!

Fiona went on to work in Film and Television sound. Kevin became a photographer, working mostly in theatre. He is now an artist/painter working in Glasgow.

TRACK LISTING

1. Change Of Heart
2. Nothing Else Will Ever Be The Same
3. Your Love
4. Kylie
5. Lonely When You Go
6. Miracle Town
7. Hoochie Coochie
8. Locked Out Of Love

In many ways, DJ Black Low’s debut album, Uwami, shows the signs of an artist’s first offering in any musical genre. Showcasing fluency in a broad range of styles and stuffing a number of ideas to the record’s brim is the 20 year-old producer’s attempt to both introduce himself to a wide listenership and stamp a recognizable sound in their minds. In other ways, somewhat out of the young South African producer’s control, Uwami goes against the grain. The album comes at a time when South African electronic music is being fundamentally disrupted. Amapiano, the electronic music movement which first gained popularity with a small, core group of followers, now dominates the mainstream. Well-known and pervasive, amapiano borrows from a diverse palette of musical styles which are popular in South Africa’s largely Black townshipsjazz, kwaito, dibacardi, deep and afro house among them.

Instead of pandering to the seemingly insatiable local appetite and growing global penchant for amapiano though, on Uwami DJ Black Low seeks out the limits of the sound du jour and tries to stretch them. On his solo productions, he uses the samples and compositional norms that make amapiano hits the bedrock on which to experiment and improvise. With collaborators, DJ Black Low improvises within the boundaries of listener-friendly grooves. The sound he creates has foundations of what could easily have progressed into captivating amapiano songs on their own. But he uses improvised but structured electronic percussion and distortion sounds to drive the tracks in a particular direction. What remains is something like a deconstructed amapiano.

For a young producer living in the townships of the greater Pitori area of South Africa’s Gauteng province, there were few avenues available for Radebe to pursue a career in music. His trajectory shows the vulnerability of this pursuit. “I had started producing in 2013 and it so happened that I lost my equipment in 2014. I couldn’t afford to buy equipment. In 2017, a friend of mine who had been making music found a job and decided to quit music. He gave me his equipment and I was able to start producing again. That’s when I started getting back to it. I tried to pick up where I had left off, with hip hop and commercial house but I found that amapiano was the popular music. I liked it, so I started producing it.”

TRACK LISTING

1. DJ Black Low & Hapas Music Feat. DJ KS & Patna “Jaiva Low”
2. DJ Black Low & Tap Soul Feat. Licy Jay & Eto “Emcimbinii”
3. DJ Black Low Feat. DJ Saxo Boy “9 Days”
4. DJ Black Low & Kapzela Feat. Licy Jay & MLG “Emonate Oe Bethela D Vosho”
5. DJ Black Low “Downfall Revisit”
6. DJ Black Low “Stiwawa Quitter”

CD Version Also Includes:

7. DJ Black Low & Mr Perfect Feat. DJ Labengwa “Alone In A Dark”
8. DJ Black Low Feat. DJ Labengwa Licy Jay & Menate Entertainment “Sbone (Vocal Mix)”
9. DJ Black Low Feat. DJ Labengwa “Down The Road (Original Mix)”
10. DJ Black Low “Vula Vala”
11. DJ Black Low “60 Days No Sleep”

OK SPIRIT is a new label founded by N.I.B., Kilian Paterson and DJ Neewt. The Frankfurt trio get on message from the off, opening their account with a wild range of contemporary dancefloor adventures prompted by sonic shaman Bear Bones, Lay Low. On the A-side, title track 'Voces De Humo' is an epochal 17 minute journey from the Belgium based producer, twisting searing waveforms and vivid distortion around tribal rhythms in a typically lysergic fashion. The B-side belongs to the remixers, and DJ Plead kicks it off with a growling EBM / Industrial version complete with scattering, almost DnB rhythms, sacred frogs and scorched frequencies. The B2 sees the track taken on a different tack as TNC6 heads for the undergrowth with the humid and transcendental "Needles In The Heart Mix", a ceremonial stunner with a late break into wild rave breaks.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Voces De Humo
B1. Voces De Humo (Dj Plead Belly-Roll Mix)
B2. Voces De Humo (TNC6 Needles In The Heart Mix)

This is Tolouse Low Trax’s 4th solo album Jumping Dead Leafs.
A 38 minutes exorcism, dionysac sexyness fueled with romanticism, made of mechanical incantations mixed with spectral vocals of forgotten imaginary tribes, words from a physicist (Incomprehensible Image), and mystical breathings… To remind you that music is demanding your soul and body, fully. A master irritator, disclosing this talent all the way, down to every chosen title, for the album itself and all of its components (would you put Milk in Water ?). As repetitive or minimalist music may already make some of you feel nervous, it seems more accurate to talk here about primitive music - notwithstanding a non violent anarchism. But those are only words and vain attempts to attach TLT to a region or a family. Neither the burden of classical European music legacy, which eventually lead to pop music, seemed to interfere with his wild mind, and if it is no surprising to hear Bach in German electronic music, there is here a clear statement that you are out of this sirupy prison… For D.W. is a sorcerer. He’s been empirically learning the speaking of trance with years of touring and experimenting with all kinds of audience and venues, from clubs to museums, from Mongolia to Brazil, from his performances with his bands Kreidler or Toresch to solo ones, sustained by a steady limited set up, as the one used when he’s recording : one MPC, rudimentary synths, few effects and a mixer. No sound engineer on stage as only he knows his secret language… Raw dubmaking, leaning towards
hip hop, indubitably underlining here a significant distanciation from his previous industrial inspirations. The bewitchment of this record is operating with no warning from the very first seconds until the last epiphany of Sales Pitch. He is using his knowledge of techno, psychedelism (Inverted Sea), UK bass (Jumping Dead Leafs), only to bring you out of it. We all tend to be slaves, without even being conscious about it, and a balance must be existing between being a slave and showing off. Mr. Weinrich’s answer is unsettling because it is an utter call to this balance, in our world of black and white and political correctness. There is no morality in music… Don’t expect anything else than an unaccountable liberating immediate experience. Don’t expect any kind of music because you are already in the past or the future… From his recording technique mainly relying on one takes, his adoration of mistakes and jeopardy, to the core essence of repetitive music, it is all hereabout being in the present. No ears no glasses. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Dusseldorf's dance floor Derrida comes correct with his first solo album in six years, providing a little club deconstruction for the fringe DJ and haunted home listener! Frankly, no one sounds like Detlef, and as this LP blazes its hazy trail through warehouse smog, dislocated dubspace and an entirely crepuscular strand of psychedelia, it becomes increasingly clear how much we've missed him.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Inverted Sea
A2. Berrytone Souvenier
A3. The Incomprehensible Image
B1. Jumping Dead Leafs
B2. Milk In Water
B3. Dawn Is Temporal
B4. Pulse Skit
B5. Sales Pitch

It’s been a decade since Rhode Island’s The Low Anthem released their breakout second LP 'Oh My God, Charlie Darwin'. The album trawled a sombre and indelible beauty from America’s troubled waters, and struck a deep chord with listeners. The band’s 2008 self-released version of the disc spread like wildfire via word-of-mouth audience response, eventually attracting the attention of Bella Union and Nonesuch Records. Oh My God, Charlie Darwin was licensed, remastered, reissued and traveled the globe, sweeping the DIY minded Low Anthem along with it. From the ragtag house show hopping, MySpace friending, bar gigging circuits to the venerated stages of Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk Festival, and the BBC.

“At first we were pushing the album out into the world, but then at some point we passed a threshold where the album took over, and started pulling us along on its ride,” the group’s co-founder Ben Knox Miller said. “Suddenly we were trying to keep up with it.”

A brief survey of late-2000s American popular culture offers no immediate clue as to why an earnest, and largely acoustic folk-rock album would so dramatically rise up from America’s underground - and perhaps no-one was more surprised by this than the band itself. “We definitely worked hard, and we had a lot of luck, but the response was overwhelming,” Miller observed.

TRACK LISTING

1. Charlie Darwin
2.To Ohio
3. Ticket Taker
4. The Horizon Is A Beltway
5. Home I’ll Never Be
6. Cage The Songbird
7. (Don’t) Tremble
8. Music Box
9. Champion Angel
10. To The Ghosts Who Write History Books
11. OMGCD
12. To Ohio (Reprise)

Hailing from Ireland, Bobby (originally from Liverpool) and Billie (Bosnian born) from the ephemeral Low Sea compose music that flows like a serpentine river through the uncanny valley. Indeed, the owls are not what they seem—but even such blatant allusions can’t sketch an intuitive image of the sound-scapes woven by this intriguing dyad.

This is the duo’s third album having released a mini album on Lefse and a narcotic synth pop album on Dell’Orso and this album further extends their insular grey disco sound.

Low Sea’s woozy, gothic take on coldwave synthpop remains intact on Portals, but this time out moving from the shadows to the light of city nights. Intricately layered melodies shimmer and then pick up energy, as Billie’s unique beguiling voice sings of loss and triumph, loneliness and euphoria.

As with the last album there is a track mixed by the legendary Stephen Hague (Propaganda/ Pet Shop Boys), the final song All Living Creatures.

‘’There are just not enough superlatives in the English language for that matter to describe how good this band are’’
- Dan Hegarty, RTE2FM

‘’the most glorious dark – hewn pop songs – the perfect mix of heart and ice’’ NME.

TRACK LISTING

1) I Feel Uneasily Loved
2) Turn Away
3) Hunting For Your Shadow
4) Hanged Man
5) Sleeping
6) Mizar
7) All That Fall
8) Underground Disco Of Tehran
9) All Living Creatures

In 2018, Low will turn twenty-five. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker—the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonies have always held the band’s center—have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music’s most steadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkest emotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its first quarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbook favorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release its most brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) album ever: Double Negative, an unflinching eleven-song quest through snarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in the brightest pop song of Low’s career.

To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietly energetic and adventurous producer who has made records with James Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recent years while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver’s home studio, April Base. Burton recorded Low’s last album, 2015’s Ones and Sixes, at April Base, adding might to many of its beats and squelch and frisson beneath many of its melodies.

This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garrington knew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds, to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, “a hip-hop guy” could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write and rehearse at home in Duluth, Minnesota, they would often head southeast to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, arriving with sketches and ideas that they would work on for days with Burton. Band and producer became collaborative cowriters, building the pieces up and breaking them down and building them again until their purpose and force felt clear. As the world outside seemed to slide deeper into instability, Low repeated this process for the better part of two years, pondering the results during tours and breaks at home. They considered not only how the fragments fit together but also how, in the United States of 2018, they functioned as statements and salves.

Double Negative is, indeed, a record perfectly and painfully suited for our time. Loud and contentious and commanding, Low fights for the world by fighting against it. It begins in pure bedlam, with a beat built from a loop of ruptured noise waging war against the paired voices of Sparhawk and Parker the moment they begin to sing during the massive “Quorum.” For forty minutes, they indulge the battle, trying to be heard amid the noisy grain, sometimes winning and sometimes being tossed toward oblivion. In spite of the mounting noise, Sparhawk and Parker still sing. Or maybe they sing because of the noise. For Low, has there ever really been a difference?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Never one to shy away from a new direction, the ridiculously superb Low return with their most shadowy electronic affair yet. Bathed in distortion and rich, saturated ambience, it's a testament to their skill as songwriters and their overwhelmingly familiar 'Sound' that this still comes across as one of the best releases of their career. Mindblowing stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Quorum
Dancing And Blood
Fly
Tempest
Always Up
Always Trying To Work It Out
The Son, The Sun
Dancing And Fire
Poor Sucker
Rome (Always In The Dark)
Disarray

The four studio albums ‘Low’, ‘‘Heroes’’, ‘Lodger’ and ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’ have not been available as standalone vinyl LPs for over 25 years and this is the first time on vinyl for Stage (2017), which has 5 additional tracks to the original 1978 double LP release including The Jean Genie and Suffragette City.

The powerful reach of Bowie's masterpiece, the first part of the much feted 'Berlin Trilogy' created with the aid of Brian Eno, is still being felt strongly almost 30 years on. Air's wonderful four hour Essential Mix began with this album's opener "Speed of Life", Q Magazine rated the album #14 in it's Greatest British Albums Ever, and Pitchfork, the New Testament for the New Indie generation, recently decreed "Low" as the #1 album of the 1970's. Side A (or tracks 1-7 for those more familiar with the CD format) are classic Bowie ("Sound and Vision", "Be My Wife"), although dealing with the unfamiliar and slightly darker topics of lethargy, depression and estrangement, highlighting Bowie's overcoming of his cocaine addiction. Over on Side B the album's true colours really come through - four ambient tracks, originally rejected for the soundtrack to "The Man Who Fell To Earth" (the source of Low's iconic cover image), which see Bowie pay homage to Can, Neu! and Eno himself. The word 'timeless' was invented for such moments as these.

Low in High School is Morrissey’s first studio album since 2014 and was recorded at La Fabrique Studios in France and in Rome at Ennio Morricone’s Forum Studios. The record is produced by Joe Chiccarelli (who has worked with Frank Zappa, The Strokes, Beck and The White Stripes to name a few). Morrissey’s talent for combining political statements and beautiful melodies is more prevalent than ever on Low in High-School, capturing the zeitgeist of an ever-changing world.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Morrissey's new album is brimming with the sort of melancholy jangles and clever chord structures of yesteryear, but coupled with wry and ardent policism, a bit of conga and some flamenco stuff too. Lots of sounds, all worked into songs.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Love I’d Do Anything For You
2. I Wish You Lonely
3. Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up On The Stage
4. Home Is A Question Mark
5. Spent The Day In Bed
6. I Bury The Living
7. In Your Lap
8. The Girl From Tel-Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel
9. All The Young People Must Fall In Love
10. When You Open Your Legs
11. Who Will Protect Us From The Police?
12. Israel

Music From Memory continue to cook up the heaters here, beaming onto your deck with a remix disc inspired by that curious and crucial Afro-Belgian LP. The odd combination of electronic elements, rubberised grooves and the sunbaked flavours of the mother continent took us all by surprise when it dropped a couple of months back - bounding out the speaker like a long, lost twin of Zazou, Biyake & CY1 with just a little extra oddball rating. Now the dons of the 'dam invite a veritable who's who of contemporary production druids to work their body moving magic on a bunch of "Criola" originals. Swedish drum fiend Prins Emanuel kicks us off with a suitably percussive reinterpretation of "KWEI!!", cycling through chanted vocals and pinging synths over an irresistible blend of circular rhythm elements and breezy bass. Next up Holland's afro-cosmic wunderkind comes up to the plate with a "Turtle Maraca" remix of "Intermezzo B" perfect for a memorable night of chicken limbo and lysergic marinade. Picking up where he left off on "Rigola", Dazion stretches the OG into a proper cosmic roller, surrounding the psychedelic flute refrain with shamanic drums, hypnotic sequences and a deep and earthy kick drum. Second Circle's most recent recruit, Androo continues his fine run of early form with an astrally inclined kosmische mix dripping in otherworldly dub elements. The slow and sensual drum pattern holds it down from top to bottom, creating more than enough space for echo drenched guitars, delicate mallets and smooth synths to enjoy an ear pleasing threesome. Flipping the disc we're dropped into the dark and sticky domain Detlef calls home, coming face to face with a transportative Tolouse Low Trax mix of "Veronika". Slicing and dicing the emotive vocals and soft-goth guitars over a typically lopsided groove, the German makes us move...slowly. Mechanical, packed with soul and slow enough to lock your shoulders into a right good roll, it's another eyeball licking masterpiece from Dusseldorf. As we reach the B2 we take a break from the remixes in favour of an unreleased version of "Veronika 02" with about 4 tons of extra electronic bass banged under it - holy heft it's muscular. Finally, Dutch electro chief Interstellar Funk delivers a slow moving sci-fi rendition of "Intermezzo 2" which drifts through the deadzone dodging growling synth stabs and static space junk to the tripped out patter of a rippling rhythm track.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: MFM revisit the madcapped magic of "Criola" with a star studded remix package perfect for the more open minded dancefloors of the world. Dig in for Afro-cosmic strollers, deep space rollers, mechanical soul and subbed up dub. A perfect accompaniment to the original, with more than enough retweak to turn the dancefloor inside out.

TRACK LISTING

A1. KWE!! (Prins Emanuel Remix)
A2. Intermezzo B (Dazion's Turtle Maraca Remix)
A3. Funyaka (Androo's Romantic Dub )
B1. Veronika (Tolouse Low Trax Remix)
B2. Veronika V02
B3. Intermezzo 2(Interstellar Funk Remix) 

Les Graciés is a collaboration in the truest sense between Paris-based sound artist Gaël Segalen and Deepblak co-founder Afrikan Sciences. Segalen’s experiments in electroacoustic sound met the wider world this year via a debut LP for Erratum, an arresting work that showcases her ability to merge hypnotic murk ala Angus MacLise with the hard concréte of Parmegiani & Reibel. Segalen’s IHearU imprint / organization is a platform for her various doings, including psychogeographical audio works and multi-media collaborations, as well as servicing as a reference point for other contemporary female artists working across various mediums. Eric Douglas Porter aka African Sciences has been deconstructing and re-building forms of contemporary Black music since the mid-2000’s, through releases on Deepblak (the label he co-runs with Aybee) and PAN. His musical universe is one of warping cadences and celestial melody, referencing the bold work of percussionists like Milford Graves & Art Jenkins, the dissonant chords of Motor City Techno and stripped back essence of early Chicago House matched with broken Hard Bop sentiments: all tied together with an aesthetic that sits somewhere between Sun Ra’s omniverse, Jean Giraud Mœbius and Dogon cosmology. Together as Le Graciés, Segalen and Porter make a wholly unclassifiable strain of music that, while containing recognisable elements of each individual's work, also creates a third entity in the process, which can be heard to stunning effect on their forthcoming debut LP "Low Doses" for Firecracker Recordings.

• 2xGatefold LP from Les Graciés
• Strictly limited vinyl
• Silkscreened artwork by Al White & House Of Traps

TRACK LISTING

A1. Salubrious
A2. Symetric Relatives
B1. Pan
C1. Compoly
C2. The Entry Dance
D1. The Reign After
D2. Low Doses

Warehouse is a five piece band from Atlanta, GA. The band formed while many of its members were attending school for various useless degrees. Taking inspiration from the 1980's Athens, GA scene (Pylon, R.E.M., The B-52's) and having a mutual taste for bands like Stereolab and Abstract Expressionist visual art, they quickly took on a post-punk style characterized by the spidery and interlocking guitar riffs of Alex Bailey and Ben Jackson, filled by the effortless drums of Doug Bleichner and the agile racing bass riffs of Josh Hughes. The full and textural sound provides a unique body for vocals, added by Elaine Edenfield, whose lyrics can be described as sidewinding and oblique, oscillating quickly between melodicism and contrary roughness, using vocals as more of a physical tool of expression than as a glossy harmony to the sound. Warehouse can be described as breathlessly fast-paced, conveying a deep sense of desired intensity and emotionality. Warehouse's first album Tesseract was self-released in 2014 and later re-released under Bayonet Records. Their new album super low is more concise continuation of Tesseract, while still carrying the prior album's organic and wildly sprawling nature. Largely written in a notorious punk house that was torn down to build a parking garage, the album was finished in a new environment: across from a food mart called super low. The title connotes stark change, but it also hints at the additional psychological undertones of the album's meaning, to move down into more darkly subconscious and deeply endogenous areas of yourself in order to work through them and out. Also contrastingly literal, it denotes Warehouse's self-evident, uncontrived and rough-around-the-edges nature. 

TRACK LISTING

01 Oscillator
02. Exit Only
03. Simultaneous Contrasts
04. Arbitrarium V
05. Super Low
06 Reservoir
07. Long Exposure
08 Modifier Analog
09 Audrey Horne
10. Garden Walls

First time on vinyl.

"In 2004 The Maharajas returned with one of the best garage albums of the past few years and as some sort of a special x-mas present they now come up with a brandnew one, called 'A third opinion'. Well, many of you 'representatives of the good taste' might ask if those swedes can keep up the high standard of 'Unrelated statements' and we can just tell you that there's no need to worry at all, they surely can. This album is a true classic, a monster of a record, honestly. Once again they deliver a superb mixture of wylde sixties influenced fuzz stompers and moody folk ballads that will guide you through the exciting world of garage-music of the last four decades. Their songwriting is absolutely outstanding, which especially their slower tunes show impressively. If you love the Strollers, Backdoor Men, Chesterfield KIngs, you don't need a 'third opinion' to buy this record. Just believe us and get blown away by the magic sounds of The Maharajas. "    

The Low Anthem return from an extraordinary five-year journey with Eyeland, an unprecedented collection of multi-dimensional future folk crafted with uncommon vision and emotional depth. The Providence, RI-based band’s fifth full-length recording, Eyeland began as a “vague and rather abstract” short story by co-founder/singer/guitarist Ben Knox Miller, based around the “sonic mythology of a moth’s dreams.”

The tall tale became real life as Low Anthem immersed themselves in the creation of their own Eyeland Studios, developing Providence’s once obsolete Columbus Theatre into an innovative and in-demand recording space and live concert venue. Eyeland proves a prism of the album’s inner themes, refracting Miller and co-founding drummer/multi-instrumentalist Jeff Prystowsky’s sonic escapades into a full-blown Möbius strip of music and meaning. Low Anthem’s lofty aspirations and creative capriciousness resonate throughout songs like “The Pepsi Moon” and “Behind The Airport Mirror,” their elegiac arrangements and lyrical frankness marked by shimmering ambience and a hauntingly defiant tension. Psychedelic in the truest sense of that overused word, Eyeland is a perspective-shifting musical experience at once elliptical and intangible yet still precise and powerfully personal.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Eyeland
2. Her Little Cosmos
3. The Pepsi Moon
4. Ozzie
5. Waved The Neon Seaweed
6. Behind The Airport Mirror
7. In The Air Hockey Fire
8. Wzgddrmtnwrdz
9. Am I The Dream Or Am I The Dreamer
10. Dream Killer
11. The Circular Ruins In Euphio

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

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

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

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

Recording of Disappears performing David Bowie’s classic 1977 album ‘Low’ in its entirety, mastered by Sonic Boom. Limited-edition orange vinyl, housed in a stunning see-through PVC sleeve, complete with the tracklisting on a sticker, as an homage to the original.

The band ran through the album twice on November 22 last year as part of a concert series entitled Bowie Changes, which featured several Chicago-based musicians reinterpreting the Bowie catalogue to mark the opening of the ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibition at the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art. “Naturally we chose the hardest one,” jokes guitarist/singer Brian Case. They succeed by being faithful to the original, while turning it into something that sounds very much like a Disappears record. The seven regular songs on the first side are buzzing and muscular, injected with steroids by the ferocious rhythm section of Noah Leger (drums) and Damon Carruesco (bass). However, it is the more avant-garde songs on the B-side that are the revelation. Stripped of Eno’s EMS Synthi AKS and Minimoogs, ‘Warszawa’ becomes an intense battleground between Brian and Jonathan van Herik’s treated guitars, ‘Subterraneans’ swaps saxophones for Rother-esque kosmiche curlicues and ‘Weeping Wall’ builds to an appropriate and fearsome (Berlin) wall of noise. It’s stunning.

We first met Brian when his old band The Ponys played a Sonic Cathedral show back in 2006. He formed Disappears a couple years later, and the band have since released five albums through venerable Chicago indie label Kranky, the most recent, ‘Irreal’, coming out last January. They were also recently namechecked in Kim Gordon’s book ‘Girl In A Band’, thanks to her ex-Sonic Youth bandmate Steve Shelley being Disappears’ drummer for a time. In 2013 we got them to record a cover of Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans-Europe Express’ for a long sold-out split 7”, but with ‘Low: Live In Chicago’, they have excelled themselves.

Disappears are: Noah Leger: drums/tank drum Jonathan van Herik: guitar Damon Carruesco: bass/vocals Brian Case: guitar/vocals Recorded and mixed by: Mike Lust Mastered by: Sonic Boom. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Speed Of Life
2. Breaking Glass
3. What In The World
4. Sound And Vision
5. Always Crashing In The Same Car
6. Be My Wife
7. A New Career In A New Town
8. Warszawa
9. Art Decade
10. Weeping Wall
11. Subterraneans

Legendary instrumental trio Dirty Three will boldly break cover in February 2012 with a remarkable new album, 'Toward The Low Sun', on Bella Union records.

'Toward The Low Sun' is the product of the most ceaselessly creative period in the band’s career, in which Jim White, Mick Turner and Warren Ellis have relentlessly made music in different permutations and locations around the globe. No other Australian band has ever impacted on international music in such a subversive fashion. This is a band that exists within itself and outside of itself, generating a massive (and massively influential) body of work.

Mick lives in Melbourne where he has built his own studio space, developed a fine reputation as a visual artist and released the Blue Trees album alongside the occasional Tren Brothers release. Jim is based out of Brooklyn but endlessly tours the world, recording and/or performing with the likes of Cat Power, Bonnie Prince Billy, Nina Nastasia and PJ Harvey. Warren resides in Paris, though is regularly to be found touring with the Bad Seeds and Grinderman or working with Nick Cave on soundtracks for such films as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition and The Road. He recently made his acting debut in the film Médée Miracle, alongside Isabelle Huppert.

Dirty Three’s live appearances over the past few years reflect the band’s standing on the international stage. All Tomorrow’s Parties invited them to curate a three day event in the UK, and the band has also played at ATP festivals in Japan, Australia and the USA.

However, all of this frantic creativity and activity is now merely an exotic backdrop to the release of the new album Toward the Low Sun. A return to the mothership was inevitable. There is a certain magic that can only be invoked when these three elements are brought together. Nothing else sounds like the Dirty Three. They are one-off phenomena. As Warren Ellis says: “There is a dialogue within the group that we are all still keen to explore”.

Toward The Low Sun is not a cosy, nice-to-be-back, return to the comfort zone. There is an energy and a raw excitement evident from the first electrifying opening moments through to the album’s finale. In Warren’s words, “Dirty Three has always been about the way we play together and feed off each other. We wanted this one to be a return to the more improvised and instinctive approach of the earlier recordings”. And indeed Toward The Low Sun sounds like a first ever recording, a punk avant-garde art-jazz record! And for all their incredible music of the past, the Dirty Three have never seemed more relevant.

Toward The Low Sun is produced by Casey Rice and Dirty Three and was recorded in Melbourne at Head Gap studios and mixed at Sing Sing.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: The return of the Australian instrumental trio, 'Toward The Low Sun' is a highly emotive avant-garde album - you can almost feel the baking hot Antipodean sun. Excellent as always!

Finn is German singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and fashion designer, Patrick Zimmer who splits his time between Hamburg and London, where he recently found a new home with cinematic music label Erased Tapes – a conceptualist with the voice of Leonard Cohen on helium. Born in 1977, yet combining influences that span decades, Finn had to wander through a playground of electronica and low-fi recordings to get here. His third album "The Best Low-Priced Heartbreakers You Can Own" shows a surprisingly mature and cohesive collection of haunting and mesmerizing songs as a result from his consequential musical progression. Finn lived, recorded and produced the album over the course of seven months in the catacombs of an old 14th century church underneath the streets of St. Pauli. With this release, Patrick Zimmer prescribed himself a concept album.

Athens, Georgia trio The Low Lows return to Europe in February to promote their new single, "Elizabeth Pier". The title track is taken from their forthcoming album, "Little Tigers". Backed with B-side "Raining In Eva", and the video for "Dear Flies, Love Spider". Their debut album "Fire On The Bright Sky" was released in October. It's a radiant, desperate prom-night of a record, in which stark southern sweetness gives way unexpectedly to great storms of guitar noise. Sheets of dissonance and singer P.L. Noon's arcing wail conjure Galaxie 500 or "Electr-O-Pura" era Yo La Tengo, while bright walls of country narcosis à la My Morning Jacket crumble into climactic, stomping feedback and lush, sad balladry.

The Low Frequency In Stereo release their third album "The Last Temptation Of...", making music that sounds fresh, inspired and focused. Recorded on analogue equipment to get the classic room sound and mixed down on digital to keep the natural sounds on the mood and instruments. Some call it lo-fi post-rock, some call it The Low Frequency In Stereo sound. Some other critics mention bands like Can, Neu and Jesus and the Mary Chain when listening to the bands music.

“From the ominous, post-punkish pulse and clang of opener ‘Monkey’, to the decidedly punky frustration of ‘Everybody’s Song’ and the unapologetic riffing of ‘California’, ‘The Great Destroyer’ pushes the band's sound on to thrilling new vistas” - The Guardian

Formed in 1993, Low are a trio from Duluth, Minnesota comprised of guitarist/vocalist Alan Sparhawk, percussionist/vocalist Mimi Parker and bassist Zak Sally.

Initially garnering attention as leaders of the ‘90s slowcore movement, Low went on to develop a sonic repertoire that incorporated pop, R&B and dissonant rock ‘n’ roll. With this kind of storied history, most people thought they had Low pegged. But then they turned in ‘The Great Destroyer’.

The band’s seventh full-length album, ‘The Great Destroyer’ is fascinating in that it blends the band’s austere melodies (‘On the Edge Of’, ‘Silver Rider’) with an aggressive guitar onslaught (‘Monkey’, ‘Everybody’s Song’) and even melds Low’s varied styles together into a single song (‘When I Go Deaf’).

Co-produced by Low and David Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev), ‘The Great Destroyer’ was a welcome surprise and, in the end, a rock ‘n’ roll revelation.

TRACK LISTING

Monkey
California
Everybody’s Song
Silver Rider
Just Stand Back
On The Edge Of
Cue The Strings
Step
When I Go Deaf
Broadway (So Many People)
Pissing
Death Of A Salesman
Walk Into The Sea

From the ashes of Buried Alive and Carry On comes Terror. Holy shit!!! This lot have to be one of the best hardcore bands going into 2003 totally up yer arse mayhem.

Lovely majestic, piano-led songs on this debut album from Bolton band Mazeppa. The album tracks range from intense, emotive songs with sweeping strings to heavier tracks with percussive drumming and keyboard riffs.

If you like Small Brown Bike, Hot Water Music or The Get Up Kids then you'll love Hunter Gatherer. From Athens, Georgia this is a brand new set of songs from this fine emo-punk band. The twin guitar leads play sophisticated and subtly powerful riffs and the dual vocals are unusual but work well.

“Despite the commerce involved, we hope you will consider this our gift to you. Best wishes.” - Low

Low’s eight song 1999 release ‘Christmas’ collects five seasonally-themed originals by the band and covers of ‘Little Drummer Boy’, ‘Blue Christmas’ and ‘Silent Night’.

Of the originals here, one (‘If You Were Born Today’) was released backed with ‘Blue Christmas’ as a 7” single in 1997 on Wurlitzer Jukebox and another (‘Taking Down The Tree’) was released in 1998 on a compilation by the Dutch VPRO radio station. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: "Just Like Christmas" is a sublime pop song with sleigh bells that give it a sprinkling of festive cheer without coming across all "Now That's What I Call Christmas"!

TRACK LISTING

Just Like Christmas
Long Way Around The Sea
Little Drummer Boy
If You Were Born Today
Blue Christmas
Silent Night
Taking Down The Tree
One Special Gift