Manchester-based producer salute makes vibrant, heart-on-sleeve electronic music,blending ecstatic and melancholy feelings.

Equally comfortable with using samples and original vocals, their tracks draw fromvarious styles of bass music.

Early material such as 2015’s ‘Gold Rush’ EP and 2016 mini-album, ‘My Heart’,blended R&B and hip-hop elements with production inspired by artists like HudsonMohawke and Rustie.

After the artist relocated from Vienna to England, subsequent releases like the‘Condition’ trilogy and 2023’s ‘Shield EP’ have been more exuberant and clubfriendly, and more overtly inspired by UK garage and future house. 

Taking a more collaborative approach, the new album features vocals and productionfrom a groundbreaking array of artists, such as Rina Sawayama, piri, Empress Of, Disclosure, Karma Kid, Sam Gellaitry, Léa Sean, LEILAH and Nakamura Minami.

TRACK LISTING

Start
Saving Flowers (with Rina Sawayama)
Reason (with Karma Kid)
Lift Off! (with Disclosure)
Maybe It's U (with Sam Gellaitry)
Go! (with Á

The iconic cover of For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) features a ‘Twelve-Pound Cannon’ from the 19th Century. The band still incorporate cannons into their live set to deafening effect.

To honour AC/DC’s 50-year reign as the world’s greatest rock and roll band, the band’s catalogue will be available as gold coloured vinyl LPs. Each of these limited edition LPs comes with an album-specific 12”x12” print featuring new AC/DC 50 artwork, suitable for framing. 

The Austrian producer has created a dynamic back catalogue, moving through RnB, dubstep, dance, hip-hop, even jazz and gospel. New EP "Shield" brings a once again elevated sound.

The EP is a cocktail of UK dance and electro-pop featuring Filipino born, London based artist No Rome, and the pensive yet euphoric closer “Feels Like My Hands Are On Fire”, with salute’s own vocals featuring on the track, co-produced by George Daniel of The 1975.

Recommended if you like… DJ Seinfeld, Interplanetary Criminal, Logic1000, TSHA, Sammy Virji, Daphni

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Feel good, high energy luminosity from Manchester-based, rising star salute. Pop sensibilities with high gloss, futuristic production. A future classic one feels...

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Run Away With You
2. Peach

SIDE B
1. Wait For It
2. Feels Like My Hands Are On Fire

Composer, trumpeter, producer, DJ and founder of Gondwana Records, Matthew Halsall has always worn many hats. But at the heart of everything that he does Halsall is first and foremost an artist and a musician. A trumpeter whose unflashy, soulful playing radiates a thoughtful beauty and a composer and band-leader who has created his own rich sound world. A sound that draws on the heritage of British jazz, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, as well as world music and electronica influences, and even modern art and architecture, to create something uniquely his own. A music that is rooted in Northern England but draws on global inspirations.

Salute to the Sun is his first album as a leader since Into Forever (2015) and marks the debut of his new band. A hand-picked ensemble featuring some of Manchester’s finest young musicians: Matt Cliffe flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert harp, Liviu Gheorghe piano, Alan Taylor drums and Jack McCarthy percussion as well as long-time Halsall collaborator, bassist, Gavin Barras who has been at the heart of Halsall’s bands for over a decade. For Matthew it was important to have a band based locally and able, pre-Covid, to meet and play each week, and who also performed a sold-out monthly basement session at Yes in Manchester. The album draws energy from these sessions and inspiration from themes and ideas that have inspired Halsall through the years (on albums such as Oneness, Fletcher Moss Park and When the World Was One) ideas of ecology, the environment and harmony with nature.

“I feel Salute to the Sun is a positive earthy album. I wanted to create something playful but also quite primitive, earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. I was listening to lush ambient field recordings of tropical environments such as jungles and rainforests and found myself drawn to percussive atmospheric sounds which replicated what I was hearing (bells / shakers / chimes / rain sticks) and I started to experiment with more wooden percussive instruments such as kalimba and marimba”.

TRACK LISTING

Harmony With Nature
Joyful Spirits Of The Universe
Canopy & Stars
Mindfulness Meditations
Tropical Landscapes
Salute To The Sun
The Energy Of Life

The follow up to the critically acclaimed 'Tuned To Love', The Loose Salute are back with an album of splendid, rueful charm - a triumph of heart and soul. The music is still wearing it's bubblegum heart on its sleeve but it's bruised, tougher, wiser. Produced and recorded by Pritpal Soor fresh from Anna Calvi.

Opener 'It’s A Beautiful Thing' captures the band’s spirit in one song. A swoonful, melody-cut diamond that chases down that elusive dream, a hymn to battling through that manages to be both crestfallen and hope filled.

One side of 'Getting Over' is all about celebrating much loved influences, West Coast, Beach Boys, Nashville, they're all there, but they venture further afield and conjure authentic Delta Boogie in 'Sister Corita', an almost Bolan-esque stomp on 'Run Out Of Morning' and the folky Fairport shuffle of 'Perhaps She’ll Fly'.

But all boast the detailed, original stamp of McCutcheon’s eclectic arrangements. Pedal steel is joined by south of the border trumpets as well as the charm of a Germanic chamber ensemble string section, all lending the album a warm, sumptuous production, while never staying into the saccharine.

These are songs of experience. McCutcheon's affectionately wry take on regret and consolation litter his lyrics A warm open-heartedness, but cut with a clear-eyed acquaintance of life’s dead ends.

At the album’s heart is a clutch of outstanding ballads. From the achingly bitter-sweet snapshots of 'Happy I Don’t Count' and 'This Is Love' to the killer closer 'That’s What You Said'. Deceptively sharp glimpses into tense affairs, hotel room mutiny and morning-after regret. 'Hermosa' even manages Nashville swing tied up to a wry tale of mutual S&M manoeuvring. Surely a first.

It's no small thing to make bubblegum pop for adults. Escapist, catchy tunes shot through with everyday blues. Dignity and depth. And always a faith in the mystical power of friends and The Boogie to keep bad times at bay.

TRACK LISTING

1. It's A Beautiful Thing
2 Run Out Of Morning
3 Hermosa
4 Perhaps She'll Fly
5 Happy I Don't Count
6 This Is Love
7 Sister Corita
8 The Three Of Us
9 So Out Of Time
10 That's What You Said

Lush, swirling organ then gentle acoustic guitars usher in this softly sung gem that piles into epic mode with a bit of shoegazery drone thrown in for good measure. Like a low-fi Thirteen Senses but with just as good songs, this is yearning, powerful stuff.