French avant-garde performance artist and songwriter Sarasara releases her third album, ‘Elixir’.

Though consistently creating and experimenting - in 2022 she penned a tribute EP to Serge Gainsbourg - ‘Elixir’ marks her return to the album format following 2019’s ‘Orgone’. An audio manifesto for the angry and disenfranchised, the new LP is fierce, honest, and combative.

‘Elixir’ is brewed from a variety influences and experiences and, as Sarasara tells us, “it contains different ingredients; some dark magic and alchemy, some anarchism, a couple of drops of 70’s indie horror film essence, a lot of feminism, a bit of punk and rock, some suffragettes vibes, some black leather, a lot of anger and revolt, some activism, and as always a lot of selfexamination and thinking time.”

The albums potent mix of cultural ideas fuses with dark industrial synths and gothic atmospherics to shape her intoxicating, cinematic sophisti-pop. Enthralling, groove-laden compositions recall the likes of David Bowie and Jehnny Beth, but Sarasara found more influence in political writers; Bell Hooks, the distinguished professor of race and class, Pierre- Joseph Proudhon, a French socialist, and the first person to declare himself an anarchist, and Édith Thomas, the French novelist and bisexual pioneer of women’s history, among others. She continues; “I am not sure I can explain what inspired it musically. It was written in different places, cities and countries even, and over a long period of time. It still feels like a bit of a mess to me. I can’t make sense of it just now and it will probably have to be reflected on in the future. I just know I was tired of being called an electronic artist, because that’s not who I am. I like to experiment, but I don’t want to be put in that box. I like old book smell and writing with pens, I like to play with words and dictionaries and analogue things.”

TRACK LISTING

Poison
As Above, So Below
Warrior
When The Stars Align
The Call
The Horrible Things
Human Design
In My Waters
Creatures Of Habit
Elixir

As one of Iceland’s most successful exports, singer-songwriter Ásgeir has spent the time between his record-breaking debut (now celebrating its 10th anniversary) and today pushing the boundaries of his textured, thoughtful brand of folk-pop. On October 28th he’ll release his long anticipated fourth album ‘Time On My Hands’ via One Little Independent Records.

‘Time On My Hands’ sees Ásgeir in a state of self-reflection and experimentation, having spent much of the last few years in his home and in the studio deeply engrossed in writing, recording, translating and producing. On this album he’s entered new realms of composition, sensitively layering acoustics with electronics and brass. As with some of his previous work, most notably 2017’s ‘Afterglow’ and 2020’s ‘Bury The Moon’, Ásgeir plays with euphoric and choral elements of electronic pop music while keeping a tight grasp on the introspective, vocal-lead style of the acoustica that made him famous.

Across the LP shuffling jazz drums crack through the layered production beneath them, distant saxophone adds emotional emphasis and, amidst it all, Ásgeir’s singular, pure voice weaves narratives that recall the sparse and dark roads of his Icelandic hometown.

It opens with the assured relaxation of its title track and ‘Borderland’ where subtle instrumental flourishes colour vibrant lyricism and elevated vocals. It’s clear from the beginning that the collection is built around visuals of glacial scenery as Ásgeir soars above an icy terrain of enchanting melodic soundscapes with cinematic lucidity.

A strong breeze carries us into full flight with ‘Snowblind’, a track that boasts an unforgettable climatic arrangement and heftier beats. ‘Vibrating Walls’ is melancholy in its delivery, while ‘Blue’ is light and crisp. The towering strides of ‘Giantess’ build steadily, exploring a haunting and powerful mythological allegory. It’s on tracks like this, and the retrospective ‘Like I Am’, that one can fully appreciate the beauty of Ásgeir’s lyrics, worked into English from their original Icelandic with his brother Steini and Pétur Ben. As has become traditional for them, much of the album is also inspired by the writing of Ásgeir’s father, celebrated poet Einar Georg Einarsson.

Gorgeous ballad ‘Waiting Room’ and the hypnotic, propulsive ‘Golden Hour’ work together like hazy memories of carefree, simpler times; walking by lakes, forests and countrysides, reflecting on the past, and things that might’ve been different. Album closer ‘Limitless’ philosophizes on our individualist need to consume and the insignificance of our daily struggles in comparison to the scope of the wider universe. It asks the listener to allow themselves to see things from a different perspective, while spacey ambience is littered with satellite-like synth embellishments.

The extended time that Ásgeir had to work on the material gave him space to venture into different synth sounds, he tells us; “There’s a synth repair guy that works at the studio and there’s a lot of vintage synthesizers that come through there. We bought an old Memorymoog off him while recording the album and I used it on many of the songs. I wrote Vibrating Walls on a Korg PS-3100. Korg Delta has always been one of my favourite synths and it was used on a few tracks. I use my voice as the bass sound in Golden Hour, I got the idea after listening to Rank and File by Moses Sumney”.

The rolling landscapes aesthetic of the record was inspired by Ásgeirs own relationship with music over the last two years, consuming mostly while he was running outdoors, or while on long drives. He says that “some of the albums or music that stand out from that time were Caribou’s album Suddenly, Caroline Polichek-Pang, Dijon, Altopalo, Big Thief, Michael Kiwanuka, Sault, Ethan Gruska, Blake Mills and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. This music probably has something to do with how the record came out, combined with earlier influences.”

‘Time On My Hands’ was recorded in Studio Hljóðrit where Ásgeir has always recorded, working closely with producer Guðmundur Kristinn Jónsson, he also recorded some of it at home. Ásgeir plays the bulk of the instruments himself but also invited the likes of drummers Nils Törnqvist and Kristinn Snær Agnarson, and the brass trio Samúel Jón Samúelsson, Kjartan Hákonarson and Óskar Guðjónsson as well as Pétur Ben to add the occasional percussion or guitar.

As ruminated on in ‘Borderland’, the whole album asks us to allow ourselves to glide over borders, both the physical, the ones we put up ourselves, and those between reality and imagination. It’s about freedom, the desire for adventure, and taking flight to escape isolation, as well as appreciating the natural wonders that surround us every day.

TRACK LISTING

1. Time On My Hands
2. Borderland
3. Snowblind
4. Vibrating Walls
5. Blue
6. Giantess
7. Like I Am
8. Waiting Room
9. Golden Hour
10. Limitless

'Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and collaborator; the mighty Ásgeir returns with highly anticipated third album ‘Bury The Moon’. The Icelandic artist returns to his folk roots for lead single ‘Youth’ written in collaboration with his admired poet father, the song documents his childhood growing up in his small Icelandic town, unburdened by worry and full of unbridled joy. The stunning new track swells with horns and hushed acoustic guitars, Ásgeir’s unmistakable honey-soaked vocal soaring across weaving instrumental melodies, culminating in a anthemic peak that exudes nostalgia. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Imagine the gorgeous vocal prowess and melodic inclination of the great John Grant, mixed with a more meditative folky instrumental focus, and you're something close to the swooning beauty of Asgeir. It's a triumph of an album, and absolutley enhanced by the duality of the English / Icelandic versions.

TRACK LISTING

Pictures
Youth
Breathe
Eventide
Lazy Giants
Overlay
Rattled Snow
Turn Gold To Sand
Living Water
Until Daybreak
Bury The Moon

Mercury-nominated singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams releases a ‘soundtrack album’ to a brand new novel by best-selling author Laura Barnett, that follows the life of a fictional singer. Greatest Hits, the hotly-anticipated follow-up to Barnett’s novel The Versions of Us, was published in June 2017 and now the brand new album by Kathryn Williams – Songs from the Novel Greatest Hits, is released.

Over a decade since The Magic Numbers landed in the Top Ten with their double platinum-selling debut album, Michele Stodart takes temporary leave of the band she formed with her brother Romeo in order to release her second solo album, ‘Pieces’, on One Little Indian.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Former magic number pulls out a wistful collection of Americana-tinged soulful anthems. Understated tales of longing and pain, grand instrumentation springing from a solo acoustic guitar, and Stodart's trademark pitch-perfect vocals. Recommended.

TRACK LISTING

Come Back Home
When Is It Over?
Once In A While
Just Anyone Won’t Do
Oh By & By
Ain’t No Woman
Something About You
Will You Wait
Over The Hill

‘Magnificent Ram A’ is the follow up to DiLego’s 2012 album, ‘Western & Atlantic’, which won an Independent Music Award for ‘Best Roots/Alt Country Album’.

“New York City’s emerging folk-twang songsmith, Don DiLego, is alt-country’s next poster boy” - Rolling Stone.

“’Drive Like Pirates’ could well be your new favourite song of the week” - Chris Hawkins, BBC 6Music.

“A record that hangs together like a star spangled cosmic nudie suit. This is country ‘cool’” - Americana UK.

TRACK LISTING

Karma King
A Wishful Poem
Drive Like Pirates
I’m On Fire
Go Pack Your Suitcase
Up In Smoke
Don’t Bury Me Alive
The West Side Oak
Running In Place With A Desperate Heart
Idiot Heart

Recorded by Wild Palms in the same self-built Manor House studio where they made their 2011 debut ‘Until Spring’, new album ‘Live Together, Eat Each Other’ is a lusciously layered offering of hazy experimentalism and off-kilter alt pop, that follows in the auspicious lineage of Beach House, Cocteau Twins and TV On The Radio.

Half a decade in the works, ‘Live Together, Eat Each Other’ packs a lifetime’s worth of experience into 13 tracks, alongside a painstaking approach to recording that beams out of its shimmering glitches and collaged soundscapes. “Because we redid the songs so many times, and sat with them so long and went through so many transformations in terms of layering, it was kind of like the songs had eaten themselves and been regurgitated as something else,” explains Lou of the album’s title. “It seemed like the whole thing was this weird process of consumption and reconstitution. The time it took seemed to allow for a kind of gestation, or fermentation, period. It gave time for influences to bond and stick to each other. Things were made, smashed up into fragments and reformed repeatedly until we couldn’t really remember what it’d been before and it was just what it was. Darrell [the band’s guitarist and Saatchi approved artist]’s artwork followed the same trail as well, collage, re-working, painting, and blotting.”

‘Live Together, Eat Each Other’ is released through One Little Indian Records. The album was produced by the band’s bassist Gareth Jones and Liam Howe (Lana Del Rey, FKA Twigs) who was drafted in to coproduce and fine tune the record.

TRACK LISTING

You Could Be Better (Intro)
Ennio
Again No
Rainmaking (Interlude)
A Is For Apple
100 Cymbals
Flowers (Interlude)
Lance And Candice
Hungry-Mouthed Hunting Dogs
Temper Gold
Open Window (Interlude)
Nothing
Feathers (Pts 1 & 2)

Following on from the success of her critically acclaimed ‘Incitation’ EP, Olga Bell is back with new album ‘Tempo’, released via One Little Indian Records.

“Grand compositional ambitions and a dynamic voice... the arty, adventurous edge of pop” - The New York Times

“For those uninitiated, Bell’s work lies somewhere between an industrial night at Berghain and a cyborg performing at Carnegie Hall.” - Dummy

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Encompassing aspects of outsider-pop, synthwave and electronic soul, 'Tempo' confounds expectations of the singer songwriter. Quirky off-kilter rhythms and textures permeate the whole endeavour , rapidly switching from acid pulse-wave stabs to glitched out snares and clave hits. Like a medley of all the electronic tropes of the last 20 years, but distilled into a cohesive and concise representation of modern electronic music culture. This is a capable and sparkling outing, and at no point feels too far from comfort. Like hopping between ten different parties of ten different varieties, each playing different music, and loving each and every minute.

TRACK LISTING

Power User
Doppio
Randomness
ATA
Regular
Zone
Ritual (ft. Sara Lucas)
Your Life Is A Lie
Stomach It
America

One Little Indian release composer, producer and performer Olga Bell’s ‘Incitation’. The mini album follows Bell’s acclaimed 2014 song cycle and album, ‘Krai’, which was described by The New York Times as, “at once a folkloric study of her homeland and a contemporary exercise in electronic production” and was included in The Quietus’ Albums Of The Year.

Bell’s newest offering is a collection of deeply personal, urgent songs with her voice once more at the helm of her singular production. This time, “a kind of personal violence is the main force at work,” she says of the mini album, “but it’s more of a brawl with fear than something shell-shocked or confessional. The emotional language of Incitation recognizes that while fear can be brutal, even crippling, it is also a necessary force for change and, perhaps most importantly, not a permanent state. Its remedy is simple: action.”

Born in Moscow and raised in Alaska, Bell is now based in Brooklyn where she makes original music, remixes and videos under her own name. She also makes dance music with British musician Tom Vek as half of Nothankyou. From 2011 to 2013 she toured as a vocalist and keyboardist with Dirty Projectors and Chairlift and is currently at work on her third full-length album, set for release in early 2016 on One Little Indian.

A prodigious classical pianist as a child and teenager, Bell graduated from the New England Conservatory before moving to New York City to pursue electronic composition and songwriting. In 2009 composer Osvaldo Golijov and soprano Dawn Upshaw selected Bell for a workshop and concert of new works by contemporary composers at Carnegie Hall. In 2011 she received a Jerome Fund Grant from the American Composers Forum to aid in the completion of her first large-scale composition, ‘Krai’, which was released as an album in 2014 after a sold out premiere at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

TRACK LISTING

Incitation
Rubbernecker
Pounder I
Pounder II
Goalie

Do You Love the Sun is the first new Scud Mountain Boys album since Sub Pop released the critically acclaimed Massachusetts in 1996.

After being out of contact for many years, original Scud Mountain Boys band members Joe Pernice (vocals, acoustic and electric guitars), Stephen Desaulniers (vocals, acoustic guitar, bass) and Bruce Tull (electric guitar, lap steel, pedal steel) returned to the scene in late 2011, playing an almost-impromptu reunion in Cambridge, Mass. Soon after, the band announced more shows and reissued The Early Year, a compilation of their first two albums Pine Box and Dance the Night Away. Do You Love the Sun fulfills the promise of a full-fledged recorded comeback. Their latest offering features Pernice’s inimitable marriage of graceful vocals and a resigned tone that the NME (in a 9-outof- 10 Massachusetts review) once described as “the golden voice of the damaged, regret oozing from every word like wounded honey… rendering glorious the utter inevitability of failure.” Though the band was initially lumped in with the alt-country scene helmed by Son Volt, Wilco and the hordes of other disciples of Hank Williams, the Scud Mountain Boys have always taken their inspiration as much from hooky ’70s AM-radio pop as from the dirty country road of Johnny Cash.

For the legions of Scud Mountain Boys fans that have been holding out hope for a followup to the brilliant Massachusetts, Do You Love the Sun is a welcome ten-track return from a band that has been away for too long.

TRACK LISTING

1. Do You Love The Sun
2. Double Bed
3. Crown Of Thorns
4. Learn To Love Him
5. The Mendicant
6. Orphan Girl
7. She Falls Apart
8. Theme From Midnight Cowboy
9. Drew Got Shot
10. You're Mine

Parisian émigrés Underground Railroad return with a brand new album ‘White Night Stand’, a record that finally strikes the keynote of what the band are all about.

Across its 11 songs, produced by the band in London's Stamford Hill, guitars explore and meander, circling the biggest melodies of the band's career so far. It's intense and amped, touching and subtle at points and hugely tuneful, taking in early Radiohead and Liars as well as the beloved American alt rock bands that made the three fall in love with music in the first place.

There are moments of fitting intensity. Most notably 'Seagull Attack', the album's crescendo centrepiece, that clocks in at over nine minutes with its hypnotic repetitive guitar cascade. Then there's the distinctly Radioheadesque 'Ginkgo Biloba', another album highlight.

Further inspiration across the album came from ‘Twin Peaks’ and David Lynch, with Marion naming 'The Black Widow', 'The Orchid's Curse', and 'Traces To Nowhere' after episodes of the show, and 'Yellow Suit' in reference to his 'Blue Velvet' film.

TRACK LISTING

1. 8 Millimetres
2. We Were Slumbering
3. The Black Widow
4. The Orchid’s Curse
5. Russian Doll
6. Yellow Suit
7. Ginkgo Bilboa
8. Lucky Duck
9. Seagull Attack
10. Traces To Nowhere
11. Rude Awakening

Dan Sartain return’s with his album "Lives", recorded at Toe Rag studios with Grammy award wining producer Liam Watson.

'Brooding with the latent threat of a flick knife’s spring' - NME, 'Like a roughneck Chris Issak, Sartain digs into an often over-looked strand of 50s tremolo rock'. - The Guardian.

TRACK LISTING

1. Those Thoughts
2. Doin’ Anything I Say
3. Bohemian Grove
4. Prayin’ For A Miracle
5. Walk Among The Cobras IV
6. Atheist Funeral
7. Ruby Carol
8. Bad Things Will Happen
9. Voo-Doo
10. Watcha Gonna Do?
11. I Don’t Wanna Go To The Party
12. Yes Men
13. Touch Me