All rejoice! A new Toy Tonics artist graces the label! Brazilian DJ, vinyl collector, party promoter, and style aficionado Martha Pinel has joined the family.

Originally from Rio de Janeiro, where she is a well-established DJ and a prominent figure in the lifestyle scene, Martha also resides in Berlin, where she became friends with the Toy Tonics crew.

She is the creator of Assembleia, a celebrated party in Rio de Janeiro known for its laid-back and unpretentious atmosphere. Assembleia has also become a Carnival sensation, hosting unforgettable annual editions that are now a highlight of the season. In Brazil, she is also known as the co-founder of the Croma project, where fashion and music merged to revolutionize Rio de Janeiro's alternative scene. She has been featured on the cover of GQ Brazil, which named her one of the '13 artists giving voice to the generation that is changing the world.'

Martha has been DJing worldwide at festivals such as KALA Festival, Paris Fashion Week, DGTL, and Boiler Room. She has made a name for herself in the diggers scene, sharing the stage with DJs such as Hunee, Antal, Yusu, Sam Ruffillo, Prins Thomas, and many others.

Martha is passionate about discovering music daily and crafts dynamic, non-linear sets that play with the audience's emotions. Known for her bold approach, her sets are always powerful and brimming with personality. They seamlessly blend ethnic musical influences with cutting-edge productions from Brazil and beyond, incorporating African and Middle Eastern sounds, space disco, Italo disco, Balearic beats, house, and its subgenres.

Martha Pinel's debut EP, "Real Rio", was born during a moment of rediscovery in her hometown, Rio de Janeiro, after spending a long time abroad. This project is a celebration of that reconnection, capturing the city's most authentic and visceral aspects-a place where beauty and chaos coexist, with dramatic highs and lows.

In the track "Uber Moto," Martha reflects on the urban phenomenon of app-based motorcycles, which have become a symbol of the city.

"Espírito de Estado," on the other hand, is a track that embodies the spirit of the Carioca Carnival, the greatest party in the world.

Finally, "Assim" offers a personal reinterpretation of Marcos Valle's classic Estrelar. In this track, Martha and Gabto leave their mark on this Brazilian music icon, reflecting on the concept of Body Culture-it's often said that it's impossible to walk along Ipanema Beach without noticing the Carioca cult of the body.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: A huge coup for Toytonics getting Brazilian cultural icon Martha Pinel on board. Thankfully she lives up to her hype with three iconic tracks for the label.

TRACK LISTING

A1) Espirito De Estado
A2) Assim (w/ Gabto)
B1) Uber Moto
B2) Uber Moto (Lipelis Remix)

'Standing Where It All Began - Singles and B-Sides 2012-2025' is a collection of twenty deep cuts and rarities by beloved North East power-pop quartet Martha. The band had the following to say about the release: "It's been cool going back to these recordings and reflecting on the journey we've had together as a band. There are simply loads of songs on this record- our first double LP, including old favourites from the early days, various b-sides, and other stuff too (including a previously unreleased Lemonheads cover). It's almost all material that is out of print on vinyl, as well as a couple of songs that have never been released on vinyl before. The collection has been lovingly re-mastered by the brilliant Dave Williams (Eight Floors Above, Ottawa, Canada).

We felt it would be fitting to use the remastered version of the first song we ever recorded and released, '1978, Smiling Politely' as the de-facto 'single' to promote this collection. It's a song inspired by Audre Lorde, that we still love, but it's one that has never been available on streaming platforms before. We hope these recordings offer something interesting for the newer marthaheads to get stuck into, and will be an enjoyable trip down memory lane for the people who were there standing with us when it all began".

TRACK LISTING

1. 1978, Smiling Politely
2. Gretna Green
3. Standing Where It All Began
4. 1848, Yawning Discreetly
5. The Ballad Of Lucy Connor (Part 1)
6. Sycamore
7. Lost Without You
8. 1967, I Miss You, I'm Lonely (Original Recording)
9. Clatty Harriet
10. Bad Mood (Cheeky Cover)
11. The Historian
12. Dom Kan Inte Höra Musiken (Masshysteri Cover)
13. Six Men Getting Sick Six Times (Mendable)
14. The Winter Fuel Allowance Ineligibility Blues
15. Fix My Brain (Marked Men Cover)
16. My Heart Is A Drummer (Allo Darlin Cover)
17. Dreaming Out Loud (Tenement Cover)
18. A Praise Chorus (Jimmy Eat World Cover)
19. Crush (Jimmy Eat World Cover)
20. Alison's Starting To Happen (Lemonheads Cover)

Celebrating 20 years of Martha Wainwright, the stunning debut album that introduced the world to one of the most distinctive voices of her generation.

Featuring standout tracks like ‘Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole’ and ‘Factory’, the album is a fearless statement of raw emotion and poetic songwriting.

Across its deeply personal and beautifully crafted songs, Wainwright’s signature blend of folk, rock and unfiltered lyricism shines.

TRACK LISTING

Far Away
G.P.T
Factory
These Flowers
Ball & Chain
Don't Forget
This Life
When The Day Is Short
Bloody Mother Fucking
Asshole
TV Show
The Maker
Who Was I Kidding?

A bruising and shadowy return to form from original Smashing Pumpkins members Jimmy Chamberlin, James Iha, and Billy Corgan. Recorded in the immediate aftermath of their 33- song concept album, ‘Atum’, 'Aghori Mhori Mei' harkens back to the band’s early 90’s canon; where guitars, bass, drums, and spiking vocals ruled.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Does this sound like early Smashing Pumpkins? No, not really - we still get the finely produced, synthy stomp that now seems typical of Monuments To An Elegy or Cyr BUT we also get segments brimming with the storming fuzzed-out thrust and grungy quiet-loud tenderness of their early years. For me, the best Pumpkins LP in at least a decade.

TRACK LISTING

1. Edin
2. Pentagrams
3. Sighommi
4. Pentecost
5. War Dreams Of Itself
6. Who Goes There
7. 999
8. Goeth The Fall
9. Sicarus
10. Murnau

ATUM is a rock opera presented in three acts by inimitable American rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. The album tells an epic interplanetary story set in the not-too-distant future, though the songs themselves respectively stand on their own in the Pumpkins pantheon. This is the final installment in a concept album trilogy, which began with 1995’s Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness and then continued with 2000's Machina/The Machines of God. The album features three original members of the band - William Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin - as well as longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder. Corgan had been developing the idea for the rock opera for years, and the pandemic gave him the time off the road to meticulously complete it in the grandiose way he had intended.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness is one of my favourite albums of all time, it's impossible not to be excited by this epic culmination of the trilogy that includes that and 2000's also-excellent Machina (Machines of God). A huge, expansive collection, spanning the Pumpkins' wide tonal palette.

TRACK LISTING

1. Atum
2. Butterfly Suite
3. The Good In Goodbye
4. Embracer
5. With Ado I Do
6. Hooligan
7. Steps In Time
8. Where Rain Must Fall
9. Beyond The Vale
10. Hooray!
11. The Gold Mask
12. Avalanche
13. Empires
14. Neophyte
15. Moss
16. Night Waves
17. Space Age
18. Every Morning
19. To The Grays
20. Beguiled
21. The Culling
22. Springtimes
23. Sojurner
24. That Which Animates The Spirit
25. X Ray
26. Pacer
27. In Lieu Of Failure
28. Cenotaph
29. Harmageddon
30. Fireflies
31. Intergalactic
32. Spellbinding
33. Of Wings
34. Audio Story

Durham indiepop-punks Martha return with their fourth album, and it might just be their best one yet. With their endlessly radiant hooks dialled up to maximum setting, paired with another heart-rending and relatable lyric sheet that reflects on the universal scars of the pandemic years, Please Don’t Take Me Back is the work of a band in the form of their life. It’s also an instant classic - one that’s both smartly prescient and warmly addictive. Recorded at Nottingham’s JT Soar by ‘Bad’ Phil Booth (The Cool Greenhouse, Rattle, Grey Hairs), Please Don’t Take Me Back is a timely collection of deliciously catchy pop songs about ‘resisting the feeling that the good days are behind us’.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: If they were to make another Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, then the developers wouldn't need to look any further for their soundtrack! Capturing that late 90s/early 00s pop-punk essence, Martha's 'Please Don't Take Me Back' treads the line of delivering catchy chewy choruses and nostalgic tinged riffs, whilst also managing to keep themselves sounding fresh. No mum, it was never 'just a phase'...

TRACK LISTING

1. Beat, Perpetual
2. Every Day The Hope Gets Harder
3. Please Don't Take Me Back
4. Irreversible Motion
5. Baby, Does Your Heart Sink?
6. F L A G // B U R N E R
7. Neon Lung
8. Take Me Back To The Old Days (Reprise)
9. Total Cancellation Of The Future
10. I Didn't Come Here To Surrender
11. You Can't Have A Good Time All Of The Time

New 7” from Durham indie, pop, punks Martha! ‘Please Don't Take Me Back’ is a song about refusing to let rose-tinted glasses distort your visions of the past. The b-side features a rough and ready cover of 'My Heart is a Drummer' by beloved Australian/English indie-pop legends Allo Darlin, who Martha supported at their first ever London gig back in 2012. Recorded at JT Soar, Nottingham. Produced by 'Bad' Phil Booth and mixed by Phil along with Rich Collins and Rob Newman Mastered by Dave Williams.

TRACK LISTING

Please Don't Take Me Back
My Heart Is A Drummer

‘Something Good Will Happen’ marks another defiant chapter for MarthaGunn, who consistently prove they are worth their weight in gold through honest and conscientious song-writing, partnered with pristine pop melodies that have caught the attention of tastemakers CLASH, Independent, Dork, The Line of Best Fit, BBC Introducing Track of The Week and John Kennedy (Radio X). This is the sound of a band ever evolving their euphoric sound, where nuanced production and kaleidoscopic samples lift them into the stratosphere.

If there’s one goal MarthaGunn want to achieve with their music, it’s connection. Whether it’s Abi giving a voice to her contemporaries via her Songwriters Circle on Instagram live, where she invites her favourite songwriters for a Q&A about their process, guests including Another Sky, Katy J Pearson, Willie J Healey, Flyte and Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, or setting up a virtual tour in light of having shows cancelled and playing a special live set including a locally sourced cover - her and her band want to remind people that they’re not alone and that, at end of the day, we’re all human and we all have that in common.

“I want to connect with people. The beautiful thing about songs is that you don’t have to know someone, but you can connect with them through the same song without saying anything. I want this album to be able to help people in some way, and give people courage to leave a situation they know isn’t right for them, or for the other person. To go after the person they love and to know no matter how bad things may seem, it’s just a chapter. Things always get better.”

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Undone
2. Caught Up & Confused
3. Giving In
4. It’s Over
5. Raising Hell

Side 2
1. Lost In The Moment
2. Minute Of My Time
3. I Had To Let Go
4. Holding The Fire
5. See You Again
6. The Nights Are Long 

Funny thing about kicking: it’s one of the first and last things we do. In the womb, a fetus kicks to announce an immanent arrival. Meanwhile, laid out on a stretcher, the dying man is “still kicking” up until his final moment, when the last thing he kicks is the bucket. All through life we take our kicks: teenage kicks, modern kicks, kicks in the gut. These days, with the worldwide rise of fascists, demagogues, abusers, and hypocrites, the kick we feel most often comes while we’re down.

From their sudden and deliberate first chord on Love Keeps Kicking, beloved British punk collective Martha announce their intent to kick back. Across 11 tracks, these daughters and sons of Pity Me, England, show that, while our world might be in spiral, there is still plenty worth fighting for. In many ways Love Keeps Kicking is a breakup record, with each song inhabiting different parts of the process. “This year blew my world apart” sings guitarist/vocalist Daniel Ellis on album opener “Heart is Healing.” With lush vocal harmonies (and one of the best riffs in Martha’s discography) “Healing” explores the uncomfortable period between love’s end, and when the heart is ready to move on.

Elsewhere, the opening chords of “Orange Juice” (arguably the best song Martha have written to date) echo the kicking of it’s narrator’s heart, as they suddenly realize with fearful clarity that their longtime relationship is ending. “I didn’t know it then, but you were falling out of love with me / It’s a new development in the plan / a painful change in circumstance,” Nathan Stephens-Griffin sings, wringing out the imminent meaning in each word. Ending just as it begins, “Orange Juice” is Martha at their most heartbreaking, hitting a tender, bittersweet, middle ground between Paul Westerberg and the Pastels as Stephens-Griffin confesses “I don’t know what to do now.”

But while many songs are openly about romantic breakups, most could just as easily about the pain of seeing the world swing dramatically towards the far right. As Pitchfork noted in their glowing review of 2016’s Blisters in the Pit of My Heart, Martha explore the “intersections of reality and emotionality.” For a band whose identities are political whether or not they want them to be, daily life in 2018 is often a kick in the teeth. On Love Keeps Kicking, this vulnerability becomes one of Martha’s greatest strengths. Again and again, the band lovingly gives voice (all four voices) to lives lived on the edge: institutionalized children (“Mini Was a Preteen Arsonist”), outcasts (“Wrestlemania VIII”), lovesick demonologists (“Love Keeps Kicking”), and feminist sci-fi writers (“Lucy Shone a Light On You: The Ballad of Lucy Connor Part II”). These are the people Martha celebrate, reminding them (and us) that love might not be there now, but it’s still kicking.

Maturity in punk is often code for “boring”. Sometimes that’s true, but if Love Keeps Kicking illustrates anything, it’s the importance of growth in a stunted world—of knowing how to love what you have, and how to celebrate the loves you’ve lost. Martha have already made a case for themselves as this generation’s Buzzcocks (if not this generation’s Clash), and with Love Keeps Kicking fans will likely find themselves discovering even more about the band to love. Because even if the world’s going to shit, love keeps kicking.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Channelling the spirit of late 90's skate/pop-punk Matt and I have been rinsing a bit of late, Martha have a singular talent of bringing the chord sequences and progressions of American frontrunners firmly into British territory with a wry, anglican wit and a warmingly Northeastern accent. Snappy drums and soaring, fuzzy thrashed guitars condensed into three-minute bursts of energy and optimistic glee.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Heart Is Healing
2. Sight For Sore Eyes
3. Into This
4. Wrestlemania VIII
5. Mini Was A Preteen Arsonist
6. Love Keeps Kicking

SIDE B
1. Brutalism By The River (Arrhythmia)
2. Orange Juice
3. The Void
4. Lucy Shone A Light On You
5. The Only Letter That You Kept

Martha Wainwright releases a wonderful new studio album, ‘Goodnight City’, on [PIAS]. It’s the follow up to her acclaimed 2012 release ‘Come Home To Mama’.

‘Goodnight City’ features 12 brand new songs produced by Thomas Bartlett (Surfjan Stevens, Glen Hansard) and longtime producer Brad Albetta. It recalls the emotional rawness of her debut album, much of it encapsulated by the captivating lead track ‘Around The Bend’ and her extraordinary voice.

“Making ‘Goodnight City’ was the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” Martha admits. “Thomas (keys), Brad (electric / bass), Phil Melanson (drums) and I would sit in a circle and work out arrangements for these vividly different songs. Recording them live with very few overdubs the focus remains on the integrity of the song and our ability to play together as a band.”

Martha wrote half the songs on the album while the other half were written by friends and relatives: Beth Orton, Glen Hansard, Rufus, Wainwright, Michael Ondaatje and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs.

“Because these writers know me and because I was able to personalise these songs by changing things here and there, I made them feel as if I wrote them myself,” Martha explains. “Somehow they wonderfully reflect my life and I am so thankful to the other artists for writing them.”

‘Goodnight City’ was recorded in Montreal. Last year Martha and Lucy Wainwright Roche released ‘Songs In The Dark’ as the Wainwright Sisters.

TRACK LISTING

Around The Bend
Franci
Traveller
Look Into My Eyes
Before The Children Came Along
Window
Piano Music
Alexandria
So Down
One Of Us
Take The Reins
Francis