This is technically not a break-up album, but it’s also not not a break-up album. This is Albertine, carrying the flame of a bright love that - at the moment - doesn’t have a home.

“The outcome is an album heavier and more brooding than The Sticky Fingers. I experimented a lot with different singing styles. Sometimes I’m close and intimate with the microphone; other times I am belting it out. I always recorded my vocals alone, often at night, in our shared studio space in a very unattractive suburb of Berlin”

TRACK LISTING

1. Girl Missing
2. Motherless Universe
3. Stand Near Your Fire
4. Blue Lagoon
5. Rose Of Jericho
6. Paris
7. Reflection
8. Cocoon
9. On My Mind
10. Diving

Chinese American Bear is a C-pop duo, currently based in Seattle, who create eclectic bilingual (English/Chinese) ear candy. Composed of married couple Bryce Barsten and Anne Tong, the pair make music that blends Chinese mando-pop and the Western indie pop canon, writing songs that flit between English and Mandarin, capturing a spirit of cross-cultural joy and longing, that is often poignant while never losing its sense of fun.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Kids Go Down (孩 ŭ�们的时光)
2. Magic Number (魔 Ƴ�数字)
3. Yummy Yummy Yummy (好吃好吃)
4. Feelin' Fuzzy (毛绒绒的感觉)
5. Love You (爱你)
6. Heartbreaker (伤心情歌)

SIDE B
1. Pink Strawberries (粉红草莓)
2. Bear Day (熊的日 ŭ�)
3. Float On Baby (宝 ȴ�_随风摇摆)
4. Weekend In Chinatown (唐人 ȡ�周末)
5. Take Me To Beijing (一起回北 ĺ�)

The duo, comprised of Joey Bradbury and Rowan Martin, admit the perception of the band has at times been "Marmite. Earnest to the point of cringe"- but the band's 2019 debut left an indelible mark on the UK independent scene and their influence can be traced across London. Publications such as The Guardian, Dazed, Dork, i-D, Loud + Quiet all championed the band early on comparing them to artists like Pet Shop Boys and Squeeze. The Rhythm Method return with a vastly different sound, and in their words a "cohesive masterpiece". The new album, produced by Bill Ryder-Jones and featuring Aoife Power of When young, is the first time they have recorded music in a proper studio, and is influenced by a "desire to live up to one’s potential,  making sure there’s no regrets on the deathbed". The Rhythm Method have been hailed by everyone from Mike Skinner to Michaela Coel.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1. Just A Boy’s Game
A2. I Love My Television
A3. Nightmare
A4. Dean Martin
A5. Have A Go Heroes

SIDE B
B1. Curse
B2. Please Don’t Die
B3. Peachy
B4. Black & Blue

The irresistible rush that comes from listening to Sparkling’s music is intoxicating. The Cologne-formed trio’s second album We Are Here To Make You Feel is a glimmering widescreen world where emotions are writ large, the group dealing in rousing choruses, twinkling synth toplines and an incessant desire to keep things propelling forward at pace. “We Are Here To Make You Feel is an album about the importance of expressing your emotions” the group say. “It’s about love in every kind of way. Love for your friends, lovers and family. It’s a reminder to tell your loved ones that you love them. On this record, we wanted to say that in the most honest and straightforward way possible.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. We Are Here To
Make You Feel
2. Hey Hey Hey
3. I Love You So
4. I Get Sad So Easily
5. One Day

SIDE B
1. I Want To Go To France
2. Here For A Reason
3. It’s All Fine
4. Don’t Let Go
5. I Feel So High (With You By My Side)

Girl Ray, the three-piece comprising Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss, release their much anticipated third album, Prestige, on 4th August 2023 via Moshi Moshi.

Co-produced by Grammy Award-winning producer, Ben H. Allen (M.I.A, Gnarls Barkley, Christina Aguilera, Deerhunter) along with the band’s singer and songwriter Poppy Hankin, Prestige takes the shambolic charm of their debut, Earl Grey (2017), and the indiefied R&B of 2019’s Girl, and injects it with a booster shot of Hi-NRG eighties disco pop.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I knew right away that 'Up' was Girl Ray, with their instrumental stylings and distinctive vocals shining through the decidedly different overarching audio narrative, which is DISCO! Bright Chic-esque guitar stabs and echoic Linn drums, atop atheltic basslines and excitable skittering hi-hats. Classic Girl Ray, perfectly infused with a neon streak.

TRACK LISTING

01. Intro
02. True Love
03. Up
04. Everybody’s Saying That
05. Love Is Enough
06. Hold Tight
07. Begging You Now
08. Easy
09. Tell Me
10. Wanna Dance
11. Space Song
12. Give Me Your Love

A tree may lose its leaves but will continue to grow. For Teleman, the band’s fourth album ‘Good Time / Hard Time’ is their first as a trio and sees them evolve as a force of nature as they navigate new beginnings despite a wealth of experience behind them. Music and lyrical stream of consciousness entwined, the album makes sense of a world in chaos and its words of wisdom are a vital reminder that even when things seem heavy, life is precious.

“Nature can teach us so much about patience and how you can’t control everything - you just have to let things happen as it intends… it’s great therapy,” tells the band’s singer and guitarist, Thomas Sanders whose garden-dwelling and park strolls to the studio have inevitably wormed their way into Teleman’s songwriting. “I was reading about forests and how trees help each other, they don’t survive on their own, they grow together… as a band we’ve now grown into each other as a triangle shape after having been a square for so long.”

With classic Teleman style, ‘Good Time / Hard Time’ is their most dancefloor-friendly record to date. Following the departure of the band’s long-time keyboard player Jonny Sanders to focus on his film and design work, Peter Cattermoul now leads on keyboard duties and Hiro Amamiya slides seamlessly between drum machine, live drums and even the odd keyboard solo as it captures the bounce of choice cuts from their own DJ sets such as Metronomy or the classic disco of Boney M, Giorgio Moroder, early house music and 80s vibes - all the while doused in their trademark blend of uplifting melancholy. “You’ve got to experience the hard times to appreciate the good times in life,” Tom explains. “Most of the songs are about universal things everyone can relate to, the small and simple details about difficult connections and overcoming them.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Teleman release their latest outing for stalwart indie label, Moshi Moshi and it includes all of the latent melodicism and note-perfect production we've come to know from Teleman, but this time with a bit more of an emphasis on the danceable rhythms and rolling bassy licks we heard on 2018's 'Family Of Aliens'.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Short Life
Trees Grow High
Wonderful Times
Easy Now I've Got You
Cherish
Side B
1. Hello Everybody
2. I Can Do It For You
3. The Juice
4. The Girls Who Came To Stay
5. Good Time/Hard Time

Dinked Edition Bonus 7”:
Side A
Somebody Tell Me It’s Alright
Side B
Short Life Demo

The Wave Pictures, industrious and prolific as ever, return on Thursday 18 November with ‘This Heart Of Mine’. Following two albums in 2018, ‘Brushes With Happiness’ and ‘Look Inside Your Heart’, this is the first track to be made available from their new double album ‘When The Purple Emperor Spreads His Wings’, due for 2022 release.

Formed over twenty years ago by Franic Rozycki and David Tattersall in Wymeswold, Leicestershire, and joined by Jonny ‘Hudderfield’ Helm since 2005, The Wave Pictures have released over twenty albums of their own, along with exciting side projects such as garage rock supergroup The Surfing Magazines, several albums with Stanley Brinks, and Dave’s recent guitar contributions to Billy Childish albums, with whom they also collaborated on their 2014 album ‘Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon’. Across these varied releases, accommodating Dave’s free flowing fountain of songwriting, The Wave Pictures have shown their deep affection for rock and roll, blues, jazz, classic rock, and of course Dave’s legendary love of good guitar solo.

With a nuance of autumn, ‘This Heart Of Mine’ references time and space travel & memory all rolled into one. Musically inspired by classic Neil Young, ‘This Heart Of Mine’ witnesses The Wave Pictures going full-on country and features cowboy harmonica from Dominic ‘Hotdog’ Brider, Franic Rozycki on mandolin, alongside Dave Tattersall’s gentle acoustic guitar strum.

TRACK LISTING

A1. River Of Gold
A2. Back In The City
A3. French Cricket
A4. Never Better
A5. Blink The Sun
B1. Samsun
B2This Heart Of Mine
B3. Douglas
B4. Jennifer
B5. Smell The Ocean
C1. I'd Be Doing Anything
C2. Hazel Irvine
C3. Don't Forget Me
C4. Winter Baby
C5. Flight From Destruction
D1. When The Purple Emperor Spreads His Wings
D2. Never Let You Down
D3. Dale It's A Damn Shame
D4. Walking To Wymeswold
D5. Secret Messages

Comprised of Betamax and fellow Comet is Coming member Danalogue, Soccer96 is a new project of spiritual combat music to steady us through the stormy changes of the outer world. Co-written with a wealth of modern talent (The Colours That Rise, Tom Herbert, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Simbad and Rozi Plain), it's an exhilarating sugar rush of electricity and rhythm. Spontaneously combustible and channeling a kind of aggressive alchemy between man, machine and instrument: it captures the spirituality of jazz and the progressive nature of electronica whilst never comfortably sitting in either genre for too long.

The hybridization between jazz and electronica recalls acts like Flying Lotus, Squarepusher and Autechre; with the kinda hypercoloured sparkle of Hudson Mohawk or ED DMX's more out-there productions. It's urgent, it's fresh, it's ambitious; it's now!

TRACK LISTING

1 Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds
2 Speak More Of Love
3 Crystal Pyramid
4 Yesterday Knows Me
5 Adrenaline
6 Underwater Cities
7 Gatekeepers
8 Triple Helix

Not all new starts offer a fresh beginning.

While it might seem branching out with a solo album after a decade in a band would provide that clean start, in reality, more time must pass before the real change, movement and progress can occur. “With the last record (Now That I’m a River, 2018), I didn’t really know what I was doing - I just wanted to make something that felt like me,” reflects Charles, as he prepares to release his second solo album YES.

Out went major keys, swampy reverb, gloomy imagery and the kind of layered production which characterised Now That I’m a River. In their stead - lyrics of joy, minor keys, and a direct, stripped back approach Watson had always shied away from. “I think it’s about having the confidence to be myself,” he says. “The confidence to simplify things, to strip back where I would have added more, to be more direct.”

In addition, Watson was buoyed by the positivity directed at certain songs from Now That I’m a River - the title track, particularly. “I felt like I had been hiding for so long, behind reverb, behind certain effects and tricks, and that was a hang-up from when I was in Slow Club,” he explains. “And now, I’ve arrived at a place of not wanting to carry my insecurities on to a record. I want to project the purest form of what I want to say. I feel like I’ve come so far in the space of two albums and can already see I’m not the person I was when I was writing this album, just as I’m no longer the person I was when I made the first album. This record is the start of untangling all of those feelings and stepping forward.”

Alongside his solo career, Charles is known for his work as one half of the band Slow Club and as a member of the garage-rock super group The Surfing Magazines. In recent years Charles has worked as a composer, writing the music for acclaimed Netflix & Channel 4 production 'Feel Good' which led to the show's creator, Canadian comedian Mae Martin, becoming a fan. Charles has also recently composed the score for 'Youngstown', the forthcoming indie feature film from director Pete Ohs (Everything Beautiful is Far Away) due for release in late 2021.

TRACK LISTING

1. Figure Skater
2. All My Mountains
3. Reared In The West
4. I Was Sent Here To Love You
5. Afghan Hound
6. Spectator Sports
7. Beauty Contest
8. Going Places
9. It Must Be Night
10. People Run Towards People

Cologne trio SPARKLING announce ‘This Is My Life / Das Ist Mein Leben / C´est Ma Vie’ EP via Moshi Moshi Records (Anna Meredith, Du Blonde, Girl Ray).

Hailing from a city that birthed the likes of Krautrock, and with LCD Soundsystem’s Al Doyle and Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard on production reins for their upcoming EP, SPARKLING’s remarkable progression continues, having originally formed during their time studying at University and Art School in Cologne, where they developed a reputation live in their homeland for hot, heady and sweat-drenched club-room sets.

A move to London followed, where they soon worked with Stereolab’s Andy Ramsay on their debut LP ‘I Want To See Everything’; a jagged, quick-witted set of ten pop-flecked post-punk tunes, breaking them out of Germany and attracting widespread support across the BBC Radio 1 (Jack Saunders) and BBC 6 Music (Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq) airwaves, as well as an invitation to play at SXSW.

Arriving ahead of their EP release in spring 2022 and subsequent live run, lead track ‘C’est Ma Vie’ is the sort of irrepressible hands in the air indie anthem that defies resistance. A song about self-doubt and regaining self-confidence, it’s cathartic in its sense of unashamed grandiosity and positivity in contrast to the twin troubles of the pandemic and Brexit that the group have drawn influence from. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A

A1. C'est Ma Vie
A2. Not The Right Place

SIDE B

B1. Feelings
B2.Wir Träumen

Bumps Per Minute is a full-throttle reinvention of the traditional fairground dodgems, from Mercury Award-shortlisted composer, producer and musician Anna Meredith. The music is part of the DODGE installation, which can be experienced until 22nd August at Somerset House.

For Bumps Per Minute, Meredith has collaborated with BAFTA-winning sound artist Nick Ryan to design a bespoke tracking technology so that every thump, bump and swerve of the 18 dodgems around the track can trigger a separate composition. This results in a kind of ultimate shuffle where high octane music and ideas compete for airtime and each performance is unique. The installation will occur approximately every hour at DODGE through the day/evening.

The idea for Bumps Per Minute came about when the composer was thinking about what might be a more pandemic friendly replacement for the ice rink at Somerset House where she has her studio. The idea grew from there and now this summer DODGE is taking over the main courtyard at Somerset House, featuring a full smorgasbord of Yinka Ilori designs, DJs, food, drink and of course, dodgem rides.

Bumps Per Minute: 18 Studies for Dodgems features full-length individual musical identities of all 18 dodgems – each one a bold and distinct musical track in its own right as well an intro and outro track (voiced by comedian Rob Broderick).

The key to both the dodgems themselves and the release is a user ‘driven’ triggering and shuffling of the material. Meredith encourages the listener to ‘take the driving seat’ and jump from one track to another, mirroring the real dodgem ride, shuffling and curating their own listening experience via the virtual interactive dodgems page or their preferred listening platform.

Bumps Per Minute: 18 Studies for Dodgems explodes out of the starting gate with Meredith’s uncategorisable sound and signature energy, combining fairground wildness with a healthy dose of the nostalgic electronics of old school gaming.

On the composition, Meredith says “I approached writing these 18 tracks like little exercises, making identities that are bold, playful and characterful but without beats, percussion or any acoustic elements and relying on my skills to create melodic and harmonic based energy”. She continues “they’re also less about musical development than my orchestral work or material in my studio albums, these tracks are only themselves and unapologetically so, and that freed me up to unleash some pretty bonkers ideas, knowing it’s about these bold switches - like a sort of musical Whacky Races…"

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I'm not going to pretend that this isn't an unhinged selection of neon synth stabs and video-game soundtrack influenced fairground music, because that's absolutely what it is but I would also be amiss if I didn't say it's also wildly inventive, heavy af and undeniably brilliant. What madness.

TRACK LISTING

A1 START ENGINES
A2 BPM 100
A3 BPM 144
A4 BPM 108
A5 BPM 178
A6 BPM 62
A7 BPM 124
A8 BPM 112
A9 BPM 130

B1 BPM 200
B2 BPM 72
B3 BPM 104
B4 BPM 131
B5 BPM 110
B6 BPM 109
B7 BPM 101
B8 BPM 194
B9 BPM 155
B10 BPM 107
B11 STOP ENGINES 

The universality of music can mean different things to different people. For Albertine Sarges – Berlin-based musician and producer – it’s a vessel that she uses for self-exploration and growth, never more so than on her new album The Sticky Fingers.

The Sticky Fingers has its roots in the south of the German capital – Albertine grew up in Kreuzberg during the fall of the Berlin Wall and records in nearby Neukölln - but from there its branches shoot out to take in feminist theory, musings on bisexuality, gender stereotypes, depression and mental health. These topics fall under the ever-shifting veneer of Albertine’s chameleonic pop motifs: from Viv Albertine-inspired post-punk and kaleidoscopic dream-pop to quiet-loud guitar squall and Merrill Garbus-reminiscent vocal acrobatics.

With her debut, Albertine Sarges demonstrates yet again her versatile musical talents, creating her very own world, a world in which community and open discourse count. The Sticky Fingers is an album that fights for your attention. It’s an album with twists and turns, emotional peaks and troughs and lyrical themes that are at once intensely close to their author’s own life, yet also universal and able to connect on a much broader level – something that is the mark of all great pop music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Airy melodies and crisp percussion form into a driven but weightless collection of perfectly progressive melodies and perfectly formed vox. Happily floating between the grooving punk of Courtney Barnett and the Kosmische synth soundscapes of the International Teachers of Pop.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Free Today
A2 The Girls
A3 Beat Again
A4 Oh My Love
B1 Stille
B2 Fish
B3 Post Office
B4 Rollercoaster

It’s one thing to take the drone rock of your debut album in an entirely new direction but quite another when the result is an ambitious 30 track three-part album.  

But that’s what London collective Moderate Rebels have done on their biggest project to date, the opus ‘If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right’. Fearless in their refusal to be pigeonholed, they touch on everything from driving rhythmic repetition, discordant guitar fuzz and hazy psychedelia, to late 60s-indebted folk and lilting melodic hooks, via twinkling piano ballads, drum machine rigidity and playful synth pop.

The album touches on the progressive works of Phil Spector, Fripp & Eno and Syd Barrett, the transcendental pop of Spiritualized, St Etienne and Stereolab, and the wry humour of 80s Pet Shop Boys. But it comes stamped with the group’s own inimitable identity.

TRACK LISTING

LP 1
1. Information Research Department
2. Higher Than The Hierarchy
3. Perfect Grey Day
4. Amo Amas Amat
5. The Penultimate Truth
6. Hug Me 'Til You Drug Me
7. These Are The Good Times
8. Forever Tomorrow Today
9.Vesica Piscis
10. Odds Be Never
LP 2
1. Every Cheat You Meet Sings Love Songs
2. Stay Frosty
3. Iconomachy
4. Trickster Gods
5. Neu Romancer
6. Don't See It, Don't Say It
7. Painballers' Anthem
8. Based On An Untrue Story
9. You Don't Want To Know What I Think
10. In A Hundred Years
LP 3
1. Swim The Crocodiles
2. You & Your Shadows
3. Suntory Breakfast
4. The Bad Sleep Well

5. The World Inside
6. The Body Electric
7. Peacekeepers
8. Remember, Caesar...
9. Ministry Of Love
10. Sol Invictus

It’s one thing to take the drone rock of your debut album in an entirely new direction but quite another when the result is an ambitious 30 track three-part album.  

But that’s what London collective Moderate Rebels have done on their biggest project to date, the opus ‘If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right’. Fearless in their refusal to be pigeonholed, they touch on everything from driving rhythmic repetition, discordant guitar fuzz and hazy psychedelia, to late 60s-indebted folk and lilting melodic hooks, via twinkling piano ballads, drum machine rigidity and playful synth pop.

‘If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right’ will be released in three ten track parts in 2021, part one being released on Moshi Moshi on 30th April 2021.

The album touches on the progressive works of Phil Spector, Fripp & Eno and Syd Barrett, the transcendental pop of Spiritualized, St Etienne and Stereolab, and the wry humour of 80s Pet Shop Boys. But it comes stamped with the group’s own inimitable identity.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Swim The Crocodiles
2. You & Your Shadows
3. Suntory Breakfast
4. The Bad Sleep Well
5. The World Inside
6. The Body Electric

Side B
1. Peacekeepers
2. Remember, Caesar...
3. Ministry Of Love
4. Sol Invictus

A new Soccer96 album is a chance for Danalogue (Dan Leavers) and Betamax (Maxwell Hallett) to return to something of a spiritual creative home. Between them, the keyboardist and drummer have become synonymous with the thriving London jazz scene and, in their mind-bending incarnation as the astral synths-and-drums pairing, they’ve traversed stylistic worlds. Over nearly a decade, the duo have metamorphosed from a DIY outfit whose rough-edged recordings hit with a punk spirit, to cosmic dreamers that use sound to travel the reaches of the mind.

“The record is inspired by the idea of humanity’s ever-increasing entanglement with technology and artificial intelligence, balancing fears and moral concerns with the possibilities of evolution’s next phase".

TRACK LISTING

1 Enter The Vortex
2 Prelude To The Age Of Transhumanism
3 Psychic Mechanics
4 Dopamine Ft. Nuha Ruby Ra
5 Entanglement
6 Red Skies Of The Anthropocene
7 Sitting On A Satellite Ft. Salami Rose Joe Louis
8 Use Music To Kill
9 Perfect Dystopia
10 Telepathic DNA
11 Interplanetary Meditations
12 Carry Us Home 

It’s one thing to take the drone rock of your debut album in an entirely new direction but quite another when the result is an ambitious 30 track three-part album.  

But that’s what London collective Moderate Rebels have done on their biggest project to date, the opus ‘If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right’. Fearless in their refusal to be pigeonholed, they touch on everything from driving rhythmic repetition, discordant guitar fuzz and hazy psychedelia, to late 60s-indebted folk and lilting melodic hooks, via twinkling piano ballads, drum machine rigidity and playful synth pop.

‘If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right’ will be released in three ten track parts in 2021, part one being released on Moshi Moshi on 30th April 2021.

The album touches on the progressive works of Phil Spector, Fripp & Eno and Syd Barrett, the transcendental pop of Spiritualized, St Etienne and Stereolab, and the wry humour of 80s Pet Shop Boys. But it comes stamped with the group’s own inimitable identity.

TRACK LISTING

Side A

1. Every Cheat You Meet Sings Love Songs
2. Stay Frosty
3. Iconomachy
4. Trickster Gods
5. Neu Romancer

Side B

1. Don't See It, Don't Say It
2. Painballers' Anthem
3. Based On An Untrue Story
4. You Don't Want To Know What I Think
5. In A Hundred Years

Lunar Tredd – Fimber Bravo’s first album on Moshi Moshi since the much acclaimed Con-Fusion – tells the tale. The highlife fusion of You Can’t Control Me resonates in the wake of the global Black Lives Matters protests. There is fire in these impactful clarion calls to resist oppression, recognise strength in resilience and fight against the corruption of power.

Bravo’s been a constant collaborative force - as his time as leader of 20th Century Steel Band, as musical director of Steel ‘n’ Skin, and appearances with everyone from Sun Ra Arkestra to Hot Chip, shows. Lunar Tredd reflects the influence of the music handed down to him by “ancestors” . Helped by an enviable cast of friends and collaborators, Fimber has shifted those touchstones to create something that sounds resolutely like the here and now.

Those friends that appear on Lunar Tredd, include Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip and The Horrors’ Tom Furse; The Invisible drummer Leo Taylor and Senegalese percussionist, Mamadou Sarr dropping in on rhythm duties, while there are also appearances from Susumu Mukai aka Zongamin, the brilliant Kora player Kadialy Kouyate, vocalist Cottie Williams, Vanishing Twin’s Catherine Lucas, and production from Lapo Frost and Ghostpoet producer Shuta Shinoda. Some, like Zongamin and Williams go way back with Fimber, other connections are newer, but all have quickly become part of the London-based musician’s musical family.

Indeed, Fimber never loses sight of where he’s come from on LUNAR TREDD - even as he looks to where he might go next. As a musician, he’s still finding new creative peaks nearly 50 years after he began.

TRACK LISTING

1. Can’t Control We
2. Can’t Control Me
3. Hiyah Man
4. Call My Name
5. Santana’s Daughter
6. Singo
7. Caribbean Bluez (In The Shadow Of Windrush)
8. F. Pan Landing
9. Coming Home
10. Lunar Tredd
11. Tabli Tabli
12. Woonya Waa

It’s one thing to take the drone rock of your debut album in an entirely new direction but quite another when the result is an ambitious 30 track three-part album.

But that’s what London collective Moderate Rebels have done on their biggest project to date, the opus ‘If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right’. Fearless in their refusal to be pigeonholed, they touch on everything from driving rhythmic repetition, discordant guitar fuzz and hazy psychedelia, to late 60s-indebted folk and lilting melodic hooks, via twinkling piano ballads, drum machine rigidity and playful synth pop.

‘If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right’ will be released in three ten track parts in 2021, part one being released on Moshi Moshi on 30th April 2021.

The album touches on the progressive works of Phil Spector, Fripp & Eno and Syd Barrett, the transcendental pop of Spiritualized, St Etienne and Stereolab, and the wry humour of 80s Pet Shop Boys. But it comes stamped with the group’s own inimitable identity.

TRACK LISTING

1. Information Research Department
2. Higher Than The Hierarchy
3. Perfect Grey Day
4. Amo Amas Amat
5. The Penultimate Truth
6. Hug Me 'Til You Drug Me
7. These Are The Good Times
8. Forever Tomorrow Today
9. Vesica Piscis
10. Odds Be Never

Dancers can always be sure of one thing with Chen Moscovici – a.k.a. Moscoman – a certain unpredictability and energy will always define the music he serves up. As well as having a background in indie and rock, he plays house, acid, techno, dark disco, synth, all from a more alternative angle. For that reason, he is a regular at wide-ranging but iconic places like Space in Miami, Berghain’s Panorama Bar, Glastonbury and Pacha Ibiza.

2020 sees the release of Moscoman’s long awaited second LP.

In the studio Moscoman has always switched up from one release to the next: raw and rugged machine disco, melodic techno and wonky house on past record labels Because, Life And Death, Greco-Roman/City Slang and his own label Disco Halal. Time Slips Away shows Moscoman stay true to his roots, while exploring new sonic textures with more direct themes. The forthcoming LP also sees him collaborate with artists Tom Teleman, Vanity Fairy, Wooze, Niki KiniandNuphar.

Moscoman says of the album: “The best way to describe the album overall is a feeling of ‘happy sad’. It’s inspired by the highs and lows of my touring life–the amazing gigs, the shitty ones, the opportunity to see the world vs the crazy traveling schedules and lack of sleep.”

Next to all this, Moscoman continues to focus on building his Disco Halal label. It is a place where artists like Simple Symmetry, Red Axes, Trikk and Auntie Flo have all freely expressed themselves. Like Moscoman's own approach to music, it is an unrestricted label that never fails to subvert and surprise.

TRACK LISTING

1. Time Slips Away
2. What Do We Care Feat. Tom Sanders (Teleman)
3. Wish I Was In Tokyo
4. Eyes Wide Shut (feat. Wooze)
5. Maker Breaker Faker Taker
6. Myths Still Exist (feat. Niki Kini)
7. Sense Of Time
8. Turning Tides (feat. Vanity Fairy)
9. Back And Again
10. Natural Born Losers (feat. Wooze)
11. Violet Candy
12. Golden Hours (feat. Nuphar)

Kiran Leonard is a 22 year old musician from Saddleworth, Greater Manchester. Debut album proper Bowler Hat Soup (2014) and follow-up Grapefruit (2016) were both recorded at home, with Kiran playing virtually every instrument himself. Dervaun Seraun (2017), a concept album in five movements inspired by five pieces of literature and arranged for piano, strings and voice, was an ambitious departure from his usual sound.

Western Culture now sees him return to the signature sound of his first two records, yet marks a huge sonic progression thanks to the involvement of his venerable live band on record for the first time, as well as being the first to have been made in a professional studio (Old Granada Studios in central Manchester). Please read on for Kiran's statement on the record, discussing the themes within.

I like the phrase “WESTERN CULTURE” very much because it is a resounding clang from a hollow vessel, connoting so much (grandeur; authority; hostility) without possessing a concrete meaning in of itself. What does ‘western culture’ consist of? This question changes shape depending on who is speaking: e.g., ’culture’ is constantly evolving and autonomous, rapidly reacting to and altering the present in which it unfolds, but is simultaneously regarded as something static and possessed, corresponding roughly to ‘tradition’ or ‘heritage’, something people can call on when the world seems precarious and alien and antagonistic. And so very often when we talk about culture, we reveal our personal conceptions of world events and of what is to be done.

"“WESTERN CULTURE” — these heavy phrases without substance are of great importance because they are easily manipulatable agents with the potential to sustain great impact on the real world. Not every issue stems from language, and sometimes we allow our discourses to replace real things, which belittles violence and misunderstands the very real violence that phrases inflict. But I wanted to write about the relationship between the two, and show how a lot of very real brutality is distorted and justified by how we choose to depict it.

"In part, then, it is a response to brutality. We seem inundated by a brutality beyond our comprehension: the kind of nationalisms and capital, and the brutality of not knowing. The latter is particularly damaging because it is so difficult to oppose what you can’t understand/articulate. I wrote this record about all this not because I wanted the real world to be eclipsed (that is; I didn’t want to self-absorbedly change a problem of violence into one of self-expression) but because I don’t understand any of this, and the struggle to depict the world and lived experience in a more truthful way is waged discursively.

"Process of understanding; process of recognising perspectives beyond your own, and the historical, political forces of imbalance that engender them. I am interested in where songs might fit into all this; I think that it might be a valid means of approaching an articulation of violence, but I also suspect there is something totally absurd about the whole venture."

TRACK LISTING

1. The Universe Out There Knows No Smile
2. Paralysed Force
3. Working People
4. An Easel
5. Legacy Of Neglect
6. Now Then
7. Unreflective Life
8. Shuddering Instance
9. Exactitude And Science
10. Suspension 

In 2014 I was invited to perform at a residency commemorating the re-opening of Manchester Central Library. I wrote a piece in five movements for voice, piano and string trio and called it “DEREVAUN SERAUN”. Each movement is written about a different piece of literature, exploring the value I see in each work and the impression it has made on me, and there is nothing more to it than that. The pleasure of books – of good verse and stories and ideas – is a very simple thing, and I felt that some lofty unifying theme for the entire piece would be a betrayal of that belief.

I think that when a work resonates with you it is an instinctive response to something. You can be taught to understand a challenging book, but not to feel affection for it; I think a lot of conversation around art, especially around literature, sometimes forgets this. In my experience, the art I like the most, irrespective of its 'difficulty', is the art I can advocate most directly and plainly, and about which I can say: “I read this piece and now I do not read or think in the same way that I did before”, or: “This is a story that I could not explain to someone; I do not understand it word-for-word, yet I feel like innately I understand the whole, and that the whole spoke to me”. This is a piece about five books that I like and why I like them

TRACK LISTING

1. Could She Still Draw Back
2. Living With Your Ailments
3. A Particle Of Flesh Refuse The Consummation Of Death
4. The Mute Wide-Open Eye Of All Things
5. The Cure For Pneumothorax 

Girl Ray, the North London three-piece comprising 19 year-olds Poppy Hankin (guitar/vocals), Iris McConnell (drums) and Sophie Moss (bass), was formed two years ago when the band were still just 16 years old and in a twist of fate as symbolic as it was bittersweet, ‘Trouble’, their first single for Moshi Moshi was recorded on what would have been their final day of school.

A band whose songs document the dramas of adolescence with a wit and wistfulness far beyond their years, Girl Ray are the sound of that uncertain period in everybody’s life when the rest of it starts to loom large, when feels are felt more intensely than ever before, and when every decision seems like a fork in the road on your way to adulthood. Being a teenager is a crucible of heightened emotions and transformative confusion from which the ‘real’ you will ultimately emerge, having fallen in love (and out again), outgrown friendships you thought would last forever, and changed in ways you never thought possible. What you typically won’t emerge with, however, is a debut album as richly evocative of the experience as ‘Earl Grey’.

Recorded with their friend (and now touring guitarist) Mike O'Malley over two "intense and insane" weeks at Ramsgate's Big Jelly studios, Earl Grey is a record of invention and ambition, whose delicate, sun-dappled melodies dance around the inside of your skull like a flickering zoetrope of memories - some fond, others less so.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: It's crazy that the 3 women in Girl Ray are only 19 years old! The themes may be gloriously youthful but the playing is anything but! You could call it C86 era retro indie but that's doing them a bit of a disservice, as the unusual arrangements and lovely melodies make this a unique, fresh and totally now record. This is buoyant, charming, charismatic pop music!

TRACK LISTING

1. Just Like That
2. Monday Tuesday
3. Stupid Things
4. Don't Go Back At Ten
5. Cutting Shapes
6. Preacher
7. A Few Months
8. Earl Grey (Stuck In A Groove)
9. Where Am I Now
10. Stupid Things (reprise)
11. Ghosty
12. Waiting Ages

Hot Chip front man Alexis Taylor pares everything back to just piano and voice for an intimate record of new songs, reinterpretations of his own writing, and a selection of favourites both well-known and unheard before by other artists. Recorded at Hackney Road Studios by Shuta Shinoda, Piano invites the listener to be privy to a very private recital, with Alexis’ vocal and piano captured live and up-close, preserving each beautiful moment.

“The idea with this record was to choose songs of my own and others' that were personal to me and to document live performances which were intimate and unadorned. I wanted to reduce everything to the barest elements, record a great piano well and do as little as possible to the recordings eq or effects-wise. The mood created on the record is pretty different from that on other records I have been involved with. It feels like a special place to be able to go to."

“After it was completed 'Piano' struck me as a sort of gospel record in places - albeit an atheist's gospel album, if that's possible. 'In The Light of the Room', Elvis's 'Crying In The Chapel', the hymnal 'I Never Lock That Door', and the miracle-referencing 'So Much Further To Go' - they have that feel to them for me lyrically and musically. But the Miracles in 'So Much Further' are Smokey's as much as anything Biblical, and the reference to both silence and music filling the air reflects the album’s observations about absence, loss, repair and surrender to love and sound. The song is one I was really happy with when I first wrote it partly because it offered some mystery to me - I didn't fully understand it. After a close friend and collaborator passed away during the making of this record - actually someone who I had asked to contribute small string parts to it - I felt I understood it all too well:

'Life a miracle - a miracle that's hard to bear'”

TRACK LISTING

01. I’m Ready
02. So Much Further To Go
03. Crying In The Chapel
04. Without Your Name
05. In The Light Of The Room
06. Lonely Vagabond
07. Repair Man
08. Don’t Make My Brown Eyes Blue
09. I Never Lock That Door
10. Just For A Little While
11. Don’t Worry

The art of songwriting has been the driving force behind Brilliant Sanity, the process of crafting of the immaculate pop song, the dogged pursuit of the perfect hook. The result is an album that appears fastidiously and impeccably made, but also charged with joy.

Now a four-piece made up of singer and guitarist Tommy Sanders, his brother Jonny on synths, Pete Cattermoul on bass and Hiro Amamiya on drums, the process of touring has honed Teleman into a spectacular live act and brought about the decision to record the new record in a very live and spontaneous way.

Six months were spent in a rehearsal space in Homerton, working on the songs written by each band member, with Sanders’ own songwriting forming the core of the album. “I don’t know if other bands do this,” says Tommy Sanders, “but in our rehearsal room we had a white board, and for each song we’d write the chords up on the white board, write the structure out. We’ve got different colour pens and stuff. It’s very professional.”

With lyrics written on the road ‘when you’re sitting on a tour bus for eight hours just looking out the window’, Brilliant Sanity shows Sanders as an accomplished and distinctive lyricist, with a passion for the music of words themselves and an eye for the singular image.

In Dan Carey’s Streatham studio, the songs’ structure changed little, but it was Carey’s suggestion that they choose core synthesiser sounds — the Mellotron, the Roland Jupiter, the Korg Trident — to help define the aesthetic of the album. Sanders talks of their time in the studio, of their collective obsession with the Vietnamese restaurant across the street, of how they would set the mood for recording each song using a series of coloured lights, and of how, in breaks from recording the band would go out on the roof and gaze at the moon through Carey’s telescope, “It had,” he says, “a very calming and settling influence.”

“Sometimes,” he says, “a record can take itself a bit too seriously. So it’s good to have a bit of a lighthearted side. It’s good just to enjoy making it, for your own sake — because if you’re enjoying making the songs then other people are going to enjoy listening to them.”

TRACK LISTING

1 Dusseldorf
2 Fall In Time
3 Glory Hallelujah
4 Brilliant Sanity
5 Superglue
6 Canvas Shoe
7 Tangerine
8 English Architecture
9 Melrose
10 Drop Out
11 Devil In My Shoe

For all its atmospheric diversity, Anna Meredith’s ‘Varmints’, released on Moshi Moshi, is held together by her expert understanding of dynamics. “Pacing is a physical thing,” she explains. “I can feel when stuff has to happen in a track. I knew I wanted ‘Varmints’ to end privately but start confidently, have moments of privacy and moments of power and build. I love writing a build - my friends talk about ‘the Meredith Build’! I love the feeling of ‘get on board, we’re building up now!’ Even if you’re dancing at a club, there’s an amazing transparency to a build.”

Aside from sharing bills with Anna Calvi, James Blake and These New Puritans, Meredith’s dizzying CV includes being Composer In Residence for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, writing a piece for MRI scanner, soundtracking Prada’s Spring / Summer 2015 campaign, symphonies created for nursery children, music for park benches in Hong Kong and sleep-pods in Singapore.

With propulsive beats, delicate vocals and whispering melodies, "The Quiet Earth" is another melancholic slice of Trophy Wife’s “ambitionless office disco”. The band’s meticulous yet restrained production highlights the fragility of Jody Prewett’s vocals against Kit Monteith’s defiant drums and Ben Rimmer’s echoing keys.

Backed by the majestic "White Horses", where glimmering vocals offset the stunning violin and sparse rhythms before pulsating bass lines melt into the track, the song documents the misplaced sense of clarity you feel just before a comedown, the simultaneous feelings of invincibility and vulnerability. Trophy Wife’s new single delivers on the initial promise "Microlite" showed and hints at what the future holds for them.

The band’s sound and aesthetic is informed by influences as diverse as Studio, Polmo Polpo, The Notwist, Hank Marvin and Tortoise. These influences can not only be heard in the band’s music and production, but also echoed in their artwork, photography and videos – all facets of which the three band members contribute to equally.

TRACK LISTING

A: The Quiet Earth
AA: White Horses

Signals are a band from LA comprised of 3 beautiful boys: Jon Gray, Bill Gray, and Jacob Cooper. The three have played together since 2005, but are most well known for all being former members of the spazz-punk band The Mae Shi.

The Mae Shi’s debut album, "HLLYH", was released in February 08 to critical acclaim – ‘They’ve mastered the emergent micro-genes of the 21st century, from jerk-pop to bitpop, and twisted them further into out and out sound ventures. Eureka indeed.” (9/10 NME). Two years on, the energy and excitement that was abundant as TMS is now, rather brilliantly, being channelled into the noise of Signals.

TRACK LISTING

Silver Fish
What Dreams

Hot Club de Paris mark their eagerly-awaited return in 2010 with a brand-new 6 song EP entitled “With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work?” (A phrase generously loaned by acclaimed British poet Matthew Welton). Still operating with their usual punk-rock ethic and still proudly flying the flag for British DIY, Hot Club are now self producing and recording themselves in their Liverpool rehearsal space.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Scouse three piece Hot Club De Paris return with this superb collection of acrobatic, articulate pop songs, neatly packaged into a limited edition 10" in a hand numbered sleeve.

An arresting vocal, held in heartbreaking solitude by a brittle framework of sounds, "Diamonds On A Boat" is the astonishing debut single from "Samuel & The Dragon". Samuel's voice is an effortless confession, calling down the line amid James Cameron's ambient mix of the organic and electronic; a warm but isolated sound of the city.