Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides, is thrilled to announce the signing of the eagerly anticipated debut album by London singer-songwriter and renowned DJ Iraina Mancini. Iraina’s singular pop vision will be known to regular listeners of 6 Music, where her singles ‘Undo The Blue’, ‘Deep End’, ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Do It (You Stole The Rhythm)’ have all been enthusiastically embraced. Iraina's obsession with music stretches back into her early childhood, much of which was spent absorbing her parents’ collection of old 45s, in particular her dad’s Northern Soul records – an alternative education which meant that, by her early 20s, she was a familiar presence in the DJ booth at many discerning London club nights. Her love of French ye-ye, British freakbeat, Brazilian bossa nova, soul, and Turkish psych will be well-known to regular listeners of her Soho Radio show.

Having always sung from a young age, Iraina embarked on a string of collaborators such as Jagz Kooner (Sabres Of Paradise), Sunglasses For Jaws (Miles Kane) and Simon Dine (Paul Weller, Noonday Underground) which truly saw her find her metier as a songwriter, conjuring melodies that stand shoulder to shoulder alongside her impeccable influences. Iraina describes her first single for Needle Mythology ‘Cannonball’ as “a celebration of that moment when you meet someone you really fall for and it knocks you for six. It can be a bit scary, but you’ve just got to go with what your intuition is telling you.”

Written with Simon Dine, the vertiginous heart-in-mouth abandon of the song perfectly mirrors the circumstances that brought it into being. Iraina cites Jacqueline Taïeb’s 1967 single 7h du Matin as an early inspiration for the song: “There’s such a great energy about that song. Her vocal is amazing and all those stops and starts that grab your attention.”

“This is an artist I absolutely love, one of our rising stars at 6Music.“ Lauren Laverne BBC 6Music.

“Iraina seizes on the best aspects of the past, blurring those impeccable 60s and 70s influences with a touch of modernity.” Clash.

“Full of femme fatale poise and swooning chanteuse flourishes.” The Times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation)
2. Sugar High (Saint Etienne Remix)

Following its unanimously acclaimed expanded reissues of Robert Forster’s first two solo albums Danger In The Past and Calling From A Country Phone, Needle Mythology Records is proud to announce the long-awaited remastered reissue of Robert’s 1994 'I Had A New York Girlfriend' now retitled as 'Beautiful Hearts'. The album saw Robert tackle a diverse array of his favourite songs from other composers – among them Mickey Newbury’s “Frisco Depot”, Martha & The Muffins’ “Echo Beach”, “Alone” by Heart and Guy Clark’s “Broken Hearted People" Having had three decades to reflect on the record, Robert took this chance to revisit the album’s title and artwork. I Had A New York Girlfriend had been an eleventh-hour decision, a line taken from the Modern Lovers song “Old World”. The working title had always been Beautiful Hearts, a phrase borrowed from another song, “For Those” by Tindersticks. With the old title gone, the artwork – a New York street scene – no longer made sense. “So in its place,” explains Robert, “comes a contemporaneous photograph of me conducting a set of musicians crashing into the album’s opening cut ‘Nature’s Way’. Well… that’s the fantasy.”

First time on vinyl for this remastered deluxe reissue.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nature’s Way
2. Broken Hearted People
3. Echo Beach
4. Tell Me That Isn’t True
5. 2541 6. Anytime
6. Locked Away
7. Look Out Here Comes Tomorrow
8. Alone
9. Bird
10. Frisco Depot
11. 3am

The 'Directors' Cut' re-issue, featuring revised tracklisting and previously unreleased material. Originally released in 1996, Warm Nights repositioned Robert’s standing as one of the great songwriters of the post-punk era. Robert recalls that producer Edwyn Collins “got the [intended] sound of the album completely: a dry low-end groove pitched somewhere between Creedence Clearwater Revival and Willie Mitchell’s early ’70s Hi Records work.” Towards the end of the sessions some complications arose – and it’s these complications that Robert has seized the chance to remedy for this new release of Warm Nights. “It was Edwyn’s idea,” explains Robert, “to bring in a three-piece brass section – it fitted some of the songs beautifully, but it was in the mixing of the brass and the effect it had on the running order that things got complicated, [resulting in] two changes to the album that have been bugging me for 25 years.” Finally, Robert can sleep easy. The revised edition of 'Warm Nights' sees the inclusion of the brass version “Fortress” and the addition of "Half The Way Home” (a song that Robert rashly demoted from the original album and is here for the first time on vinyl).

TRACK LISTING

1. I Can Do
2. Warm Nights
3. Cryin’ Love
4. Snake Skin Lady
5. Loneliness
6.Jug Of Wine
7. Fortress (Brass Version)
8. Half The Way Home
9. On A Street Corner
10. I’ll Jump

Iraina’s singular pop vision will be known to regular listeners of 6 Music, where her singles ‘Undo The Blue’, ‘Deep End’, ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Do It (You Stole The Rhythm)’ have all been enthusiastically embraced. Iraina's obsession with music stretches back into her early childhood, much of which was spent absorbing her parents’ collection of old 45s, in particular her dad’s Northern Soul records – an alternative education which meant that, by her early 20s, she was a familiar presence in the DJ booth at many discerning London club nights. Her love of French ye-ye, British freakbeat, Brazilian bossa nova, soul, and Turkish psych will be well-known to regular listeners of her Soho Radio show. Having always sung from a young age, Iraina embarked on a string of collaborators such as Jagz Kooner (Sabres Of Paradise), Sunglasses For Jaws (Miles Kane) and Simon Dine (Paul Weller, Noonday Underground) which truly saw her find her metier as a songwriter, conjuring melodies that stand shoulder to shoulder alongside her impeccable influences.

Iraina describes her first single for Needle Mythology ‘Cannonball’ as “a celebration of that moment when you meet someone you really fall for and it knocks you for six. It can be a bit scary, but you’ve just got to go with what your intuition is telling you.” Written with Simon Dine, the vertiginous heart-in-mouth abandon of the song perfectly mirrors the circumstances that brought it into being. Iraina cites Jacqueline Taïeb’s 1967 single 7h du Matin as an early inspiration for the song: “There’s such a great energy about that song. Her vocal is amazing and all those stops and starts that grab your attention.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Deep End
2. Cannonball
3. Sugar High
4. Undo The Blue
5. Do It (You Stole The Rhythm)
6. My Umbrella
7. Shotgun
8. What You Doin’ [featuring Miles Kane And Kitty Liv]
9. Need Your Love
10. Take A Bow

Needle Mythology reissue a special expanded album edition of Finn, the album released by New Zealand’s most celebrated musical siblings Tim and Neil Finn to acclaim both from critics and long-time fans who had followed the pair’s work since their time in together in Split Enz. This is the first time Finn has received a vinyl release.

Released in close collaboration with Tim and Neil, the newly-expanded Finn comes with an entire album The Finn Demos, which gathers together ten songs from 1989’s legendary Murchison St sessions, remastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. Convening at Neil’s new Melbourne apartment with a view to making an album together, Tim and Neil embarked on an intensely productive period, writing several songs that would briefly result in Tim joining Crowded House for the resulting Woodface album.

Assisted by the late Paul Hester on drums, the demos capture a host of songs that would go on to be played in arenas around the world in their newborn state: ‘It’s Only Natural’, ‘Catherine Wheels’, ‘Weather With You’, featuring a whole extra verse and the previously unreleased ‘Four Stepping in 3/4 Time’.

For this release, long-time fan and collaborator on Neil’s 7 Worlds Collide project, Ed O’Brien (Radiohead) contributed liner notes, hymning the album’s “heavy” beauty and its “elemental energy.” Featuring brand new artwork designed by Needle Mythology’s James Gosling, the expanded Finn features newly-unearthed images of Tim and Neil taken by Darryl Ward during the sessions for the album. For this release, Tim and Neil have also shared the “listening notes” submitted by the brothers’ parents – something they would do for every song their sons wrote.

For Finn, Tim and Neil enlisted the services of Tchad Blake, whose “feel”-based approach brought out the best in the brothers, who played every instrument on the record. Writing about the record for Mojo at the time, David Hepworth characterised Finn as a “warm and loose record” that hardcore fans would undoubtedly “adore”.

Originally released on Parlophone Records, Finn spawned an unlikely top 30 hit, the mesmerising semi-improvised psych-rock fan favourite ‘Suffer Never’.

The expanded double album edition of Finn has been cut at Abbey Road by Miles Showell and pressed on 180g vinyl at The Vinyl Factory.

Of this release, Needle Mythology co-founder Pete Paphides says, “As a life-long fan of the Finn brothers’ music in all its incarnations, I’m grateful that Tim and Neil have given us the opportunity to re-present their work to the world in a manner that befits the magic of these sessions. The experience of hearing these songs emerge from the speakers at Abbey Road is one I’ll never forget.”

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1
SIDE 1
1. Only Talking Sense
2. Eyes Of The World
3. Mood Swinging Man
4. Last Day Of June
5. Suffer Never
6. Angel’s Heap
SIDE 2
1. Niwhai
2. Where Is My Soul
3. Bullets In My Hairdo
4. Paradise (Wherever You Are)
5. Kiss The Road Of Rarotonga
DISC 2
SIDE 1
1. Catherine Wheels (Demo)
2. Prodigal Son (Demo)
3. Four-Stepping In 3/4 Time (Demo)
4. There Goes God (Demo)
5. It’s Only Natural (Demo)
SIDE 2
1. Weather With You (Demo)
2. Strangeness And Charm (Demo)
3. Four Seasons In One Day (Demo)
4. In Love With It All (Demo)
5. How Will You Go (Demo)

Butcher Boy’s ‘You Had A Kind Face’ is the tenth release from the acclaimed Needle Mythology label. The album an anthology of songs by the revered Glasgow band originally released between 2007 and 2017. Butcher Boy released three albums of literate, melodic pop songs, none of which were released on vinyl, before returning in 2017 for a stand-alone EP Bad Things Happen When It’s Quiet. Gathering together songs from all of these releases, vinyl copies of You Had A Kind Face also come with a seven-inch made up of three brand new songs including the new single 'Dear John'.

Long-time fan of Butcher Boy, the author John Niven has written a devastatingly beautiful complement to the songs on You Had A Kind Face drawn from his own early memories of pacing the same Irvine streets where the band’s songwriter John Blain Hunt spent his formative years. The images used for this anthology are all taken from a series of 1979 photographs by John Walmsley capturing the new town landscape of Wester Hailes in South-East Edinburgh. Now in his 70s, Walmsley was so taken with Butcher Boy’s music that he assented to the use of previously unseen photographs for You Had A Kind Face.

For Needle Mythology founder Pete Paphides, the release of You Had A Kind Face is the culmination of a love affair that began back in April 2009, when Butcher Boy’s second album React Or Die was about to come out. “It was as close to an out-of-body experience as I’ve had listening to music in my adult life,” he recalls. “I was working for The Times back then, I called my editor on Monday morning and told her that we had to make this our album of the week. And the other thing I remember was that I was so nervous writing my review, the way you would be nervous writing a letter declaring your feelings for someone with whom you had fallen in love. Because I had.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE 1
1. When I'm Asleep
2. There Is No-One Who Can Tell You Where You've Been
3. Helping Hands
4. Sunday Bells
5. The Day Our Voices Broke
6. Storm Warning In Effect

SIDE 2
1. I Know Who You Could Be
2. Carve A Pattern
3. You’re Only Crying For Yourself
4. Bad Things Will Happen When It's Quiet
5. This Kiss Will Marry Us
6. Every Other Saturday

“The Obvious I would sound unutterably pretty even as an instrumental album. But once you factor in a voice whose purity has elicited comparisons to Robert Wyatt, Mark Hollis and Dean Wareham, the effect is something akin to hearing a ghost transmitting from a machine of its own making” - Pete Paphides.

‘The Obvious I’ is the second album from Ed Dowie and is the second new master release from Needle Mythology. In 2017, Ed released his feted debut album ‘The Uncle Sold’, leading The Quietus to hail him as a “bold and starry-eyed visionary”, The Skinny to praise his “beautiful… stolen snapshots of glimpsed futures and lost pasts.” and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction made the record one of their albums of the year. Now, four years on, Ed is to return with an album that will surely find him new followers alongside longtime fans such as Lauren Laverne, who described its predecessor as an “absolutely extraordinary” achievement.

Adhering to Kraftwerk’s maxim about achieving the maximum emotional impact by the most minimal means 'The Obvious I' marks a pronounced evolution from Dowie’s earlier music. Co-produced by pioneering British experimental musician and sometime member of Polar Bear “Leafcutter John” Burton what ultimately emerged from these efforts – and what reveals itself with successive plays – is a beguiling process of alchemy. Each song from The Obvious I is the culmination of a beautiful process of distillation. A crystal extracted from chaos. Tumult distilled into lullaby. “My biggest battle,” says Ed Dowie, “was to ask myself how I can make something that reflects the turbulence of this period without adding to it.” By that metric, and several more, The Obvious I is no small triumph.

TRACK LISTING

1. Then Send Them
2. The Obvious I
3. Red Stone
4. How Light I
5. Number Eight Wire
6. Under The Waves
7. Dear Florence
8. The Island
9. Robot Joy Army

Pre-order the album for a chance to win one of 10 test pressings and signed lyric sheets!

Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides, is proud to announce the very first release of brand new music on the label. ‘In Memory Of My Feelings’ is the result of a one-off collaboration between Catherine Anne Davies and Bernard Butler. The album was recorded over writing and recording sessions covering a four year period, but amounting to just fifteen days in total. Prior to the creation of the record, the two had never met. There are ten songs featured in total on ‘In Memory Of My Feelings’.

Key tracks include the unearthly end-of-days address The Breakdown, the triumphant four-to-the-floor excoriations of Sabotage (Looks So Easy) and the luxuriant glam ache of No More Tears To Cry. Work on In Memory Of My Feelings was completed in 2014, but extraneous commitments forced Catherine and Bernard to postpone its release indefinitely. Of the record Butler says: “I’d got used to the idea that the record might never emerge. Occasionally, I’d listen to it on my headphones if I was on the bus, I always had the same thought, “I wish I could go to a record shop and buy this.” Davies adds: “For me, the best thing is that we still don’t know each other that well. The songs were the conversation.” Catherine is best known for her work as The Anchoress. Her debut album Confessions Of A Romance Novelist was released to widespread critical acclaim in 2016 and was named amongst the Guardian critics’ Albums of the Year, earned her the Best Newcomer prize at the PROG Awards and was also named HMV’s Welsh Album of the Year.

Since then she has played in the touring line-ups of Manic Street Preachers and Simple Minds. The second Anchoress album is scheduled for release early next year. Bernard Butler is a founding member of Suede, with whom he co-wrote and performed two era-defining albums. He then went on to enjoy top ten success with McAlmont & Butler and as a solo artist before focusing on writing and production work with artists such as Bert Jansch, The Libertines, Duffy, Teleman and Texas.

All vinyl copies of In Memory Of My Feelings come with a specially-recorded seven-inch single featuring a rearranged version of album track The Patron Saint Of The Lost Cause (retitled The Patron Saint Of Harmonia) and a stunning, pared-back version of Madonna’s Live To Tell. Of the latter, Butler says, “When I was 16, Live To Tell allowed me to join the dots in songwriting between True Blue and The Queen Is Dead.” Davies adds: “I don’t know what Madonna wrote it about, but the resonances in a post-#metoo world are impossible to miss.”

The songs are also featured on the CD and download versions. The artwork for In Memory Of My Feelings was the result of a collaborative process between Catherine Anne Davies, Bernard Butler and the acclaimed Belgian photographer Eva Vermandel, whose work is featured in the collections of the V&A and National Portrait Gallery. Vermandel’s work echoes aspects of the record itself: the relatively formal manner of the duo’s collaboration and the uncertainty that surrounded the outcome of the recording sessions.

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1

SIDE 1

1. The Breakdown
2. Ten Good Reasons
3. Sabotage (Looks So Easy)
4. In Memory Of My Feelings
5. I Know

SIDE 2
1. Judas
2. No More Tears To Dry
3. The Waiting Game
4. The Patron Saint Of The Lost Cause
5. F.O.H.

DISC 2

SIDE A

1. Live To Tell

SIDE B

1. The Patron Saint Of The Lost Cause (Harmonium Version)

2020 sees the thirtieth anniversary of the album that launched the solo career of sometime Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster. Upon its release ‘Danger In The Past’ met with universal acclaim from critics, even drawing comparison with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ in some quarters. To mark this milestone, Needle Mythology will be reissuing expanded versions of both Danger In The Past and its 1992 successor ‘Calling From A Country Phone’. The re-release of these albums comes on the back of an incredible 2019 for Forster, in which he released an acclaimed studio album Inferno and received unanimous five star reviews for G Is For Go-Betweens Vol. 2, the second in a trilogy of box-sets gathering Go-Betweens studio albums and previously unreleased live recordings and outtakes. Forster himself has been fully involved on this expanded reissue contributing new liner notes and newly unearthed photographs. For Danger In The Past, Robert recorded in Berlin with an illustrious ensemble that included Bad Seeds alumni Mick Harvey (producer, multi-instrumentalist), Hugo Race (guitar) and Thomas Wydler (drums). BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe, described the record as "a beautiful, confident solo debut.” Of these new remasters, Needle Mythology co-founder Pete Paphides says, “The remastering (from Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios) has dramatically revealed a depth and physicality to these recordings that casts new light on Robert’s intentions for these records. 

TRACK LISTING

CD/LP:
1. Baby Stones
2. The River People
3. Leave Here Satisfied
4. Heart Out To Tender
5. Is This What You Call Change
6. Dear Black Dream
7. Danger In The Past
8. I've Been Looking For Somebody
9. Justice
10. The Land That Time Forgot
11. Falling Star (Original)

Bonus 7”:
1. The Land That Time Forgot
2. Falling Star (Original)

2020 sees the thirtieth anniversary of the album that launched the solo career of sometime Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster. Upon its release ‘Danger In The Past’ met with universal acclaim from critics, even drawing comparison with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ in some quarters. To mark this milestone, Needle Mythology will be reissuing expanded versions of both Danger In The Past and its 1992 successor ‘Calling From A Country Phone’. The re-release of these albums comes on the back of an incredible 2019 for Forster, in which he released an acclaimed studio album Inferno and received unanimous five star reviews for G Is For Go-Betweens Vol. 2, the second in a trilogy of box-sets gathering Go-Betweens studio albums and previously unreleased live recordings and outtakes. Forster himself has been fully involved on this expanded reissue contributing new liner notes and newly unearthed photographs. For Danger In The Past, Robert recorded in Berlin with an illustrious ensemble that included Bad Seeds alumni Mick Harvey (producer, multi-instrumentalist), Hugo Race (guitar) and Thomas Wydler (drums). BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe, described the record as "a beautiful, confident solo debut.” Of these new remasters, Needle Mythology co-founder Pete Paphides says, “The remastering (from Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios) has dramatically revealed a depth and physicality to these recordings that casts new light on Robert’s intentions for these records. 

TRACK LISTING

CD/LP:
1. Atlanta Lie Low
2. 121
3. The Circle
4. Falling Star
5. I Want To Be Quiet
6. Cat's Life
7. Girl To A World
8. Drop
9. Beyond Their Law
10. Forever &Time
11. Lonely Boy
12. Brookfield 1975

Bonus 7”:
1. Lonely Boy
2. Brookfield 1975

Ian Broudie’s beautiful solo debut Tales Told becomes available for the first time ever on vinyl and vinyl replica CD. The album was recorded in Liverpool during a series of sessions with members of The Coral and The Zutons.

On its original release in 2004, Tales Told marked a departure from Ian’s previous work with The Lightning Seeds. Instead, Ian stripped his songwriting to its bare fundaments, drawing on personal events in his life to create an album of tender, lovelorn ruminations. Ian is best known for his work with The Lightning Seeds, whose debut single Pure heralded a run of well-loved hits which included Sense, The Life of Riley, Marvellous, Lucky You, Change and You Showed Me.

With The Lightning Seeds, Ian was also responsible for the multi-platinum single Three Lions, which in 2018 made chart history when it enjoyed its fourth spell at number one – the most enjoyed by the same artist. Ian’s role in the history of Liverpool’s music scene over the last 40 years is impossible to overestimate. Since joining the founding line-up of Big In Japan, alongside Holly Johnson, Bill Drummond, Jayne Casey and Budgie, Ian went on to work on the first three Echo & The Bunnymen albums, collaborated with The Wild Swans’ Paul Simpson in Care, produced albums by The Pale Fountains and Shack and also the first three albums by The Coral.

TRACK LISTING

1. Song For No One
2. Whenever I Do
3. He Sails Tonight
4. Smoke Rings
5. Got No Plans
6. Always Knocking
7. Tales Told
8. Lipstick
9. Super Cinema
10. Home From Home
11. Something Street
12. Broudie's Blues
13. Home From Home (Band Version)
14. Song For No One (Demo)
15. Shifting Sands
16. Something Street (Early Version)