Enter Shikari are a rock band from St Albans, UK. In 2020, they released their sixth album - Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible - which also gave them their sixth album to debut in the UK Album Chart top 5. Frequently collecting Best Live Artist awards, Enter Shikari’s seventeen-year career thus far has seen them rise from teenagers touring the UK grassroots venues, to festival main stages and arena headliners worldwide.

It was in the Spring of 2022 that the band descended to the coastal town of Chichester, and a delipidated farmhouse, to rebuild their studio setup and capture their renewed momentum on record. Using only solar power to track the album–in what Reynolds says was to “bring back some sense of naivety” – the life-giving properties and Technicolor palate of A Kiss For The Whole World were made real. Reynolds continues: “Back to basics. This band - my best friends - bundled into an old farmhouse, miles away from anywhere.

Off-grid, and ready to rediscover ourselves. This album is powered by the sun, the most powerful object in our solar system. And I think you can tell. It’s a collection of songs that represent an explosive reconnection with what Enter Shikari is. The beginning of our second act”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
01. A Kiss For The Whole World X
02. (pls) Set Me On Fire
03. It Hurts
04. Leap Into The Lightning
05. Feed Yøur Søul
06. Dead Wood

Side B
01. Jailbreak
02. Bloodshot
03. Bloodshot (Coda)
04. Goldfĭsh ~
05. Giant Pacific Octopus (i Don’t Know You Anymore)
06. Giant Pacific Octopus Swirling Off Into Infinity…

Acclaimed Brit quartet Hundred Reasons return with album number five ‘Glorious Sunset’ (their first studio album in fifteen years). The path to the first Hundred Reasons album in a decade and a half may well have taken many detours for the Aldershot quartet as lives, roles and responsibilities diverged but ultimately their route back to one another came as something of a natural process. The creative urge seemingly never left the band - Colin Doran (vocals), Larry Hibbitt (guitar, vocals), Andy Gilmour (bass), Andy Bews (drums) – and their first sessions back together became less about re-capturing the magic of their previous four studio albums, or addressing unfinished business, and more satisfying a growing urge to be creative together once more. They set about fanning the flame of a spark that was never truly extinguished, aiming to capture spontaneity in its rawest form, and later hone and perfect their work with the band’s own Larry Hibbitt on production duties. Consequently, Glorious Sunset is as vivid, exciting and as fresh a collection as they have ever produced - distinctly Hundred Reasons and full of fire. Lead singer Colin Doran says of the first writing session; “I came away from that session not just feeling closer to the other guys, having not seen them for some time, but thinking the music was f****** awesome. We all looked at each other and knew it was a go.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Glorious Sunset
2. New Glasses
3. It Suits You
4. Replicate
5. Done
6. Right There With You
7. Insultiment
8. So So Soon
9. The Old School Way
10. Wave Form

Russell Marsden and Emma Richardson first started writing songs together in their teens after meeting at school in their Southampton hometown. Forming Band of Skulls 17 years ago with drummer Matt Hayward, they went on to make five acclaimed studio albums together. Now, the pair have temporarily stepped away from Band of Skulls to focus on a new musical project they’ve been dreaming about since their earliest songwriting days.

The album covers the full breadth of human emotions, mining deeply into songs about human connection, vulnerability, loss, change, love, identity and forgiveness – as well as the future and hope. It’s vast in scope, something magnified by its grandiose cinematic feel that leans towards the soaring jazz arrangements of the 40s and 50s. The album’s strings were scored and directed by Tom Edwards, who had worked with Band of Skulls previously when he’d reimagined several of their songs. “When Tom sent back the first song, ‘Outsider’, it was a jaw-dropping moment for us to see what he’d done with it,” Emma says. “We challenged him to take inspiration from the incredible composers and arrangers from the 40s and 50s jazz era such as Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins. Russell and I have always loved those records and the string arrangements from that time always stagger us and Tom got this entirely. What he did with the strings, time and time again blew us away.”

Nostalgia is another theme running throughout the album. The pair sight a Portuguese word  ‘Saudade’ which refers to the nostalgic feeling of longing for something that’s passed and is no longer around, but also looks forward with hope to the possibilities of the future. “This concept played on our minds,” Emma says, thinking the idea could be the thread which ties the album’s songs together. It’s seen well on ‘Mama’, which sees a character singing with nostalgia about memories from childhood and realising the love they had then will shape their own future. ‘Oh Forgiveness’ looks back on a difficult past but finds catharsis in looking forward and ‘That’s What Other People Do’ sees a couple finding a connection by revisiting memories from the past.

The album began to be put together just prior to lockdown; it was written and recorded in a new, home studio built in Russell’s basement. The studio was named Snook after John Snook who built the house in 1838. With the two playing almost all the instruments between them for the very first time.

The Snook studio freed the pair from time constraints and enabled them to perfect their songcraft and production. For the first time, Russell produced the album. “It was something that I always really had an interest in and always wanted to do,” Russell explains. “The situation kind of forced me to just do it – there was no way of meeting up with anybody or working with anyone else. We’d worked with some amazing producers in the past – Richard X, Gil Norton, Nick Launay and Ian Davenport. I’m grateful for the time I got to spend working alongside such talented people, yet it felt like I had them looking over my shoulder when I started work on my debut production. I spoke to Ian during the process, and I confessed, ‘I’m going to take on the role of producer “and he was like, ‘Oh, I always thought you’d do that Russell,’ which was actually very reassuring.”

Whilst this project is very much separate from Band of Skulls, it is still very much “running alongside” what the duo are doing now, according to Emma. “We wanted to look back to those records which have always inspired us, records with a strong songwriting duo like Nancy and Lee, Simon and Garfunkel. They created their own self-titled, self-contained sonic world and we wanted to do that with this album.

“We also wanted to celebrate our own songwriting partnership. We’re very proud of these songs and we hope they stand up for us forever. If someone wants to know what we can really do when writing a song, this album should be the place to look. We’re so proud of everything we’ve achieved.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Outsider
2. One More Question
3. Beautiful Love
4. Closer Together
5. Lonely Hearts
6. Mama
7. Oh Forgiveness
8. Sideways
9. That’s What Other People Do
10. Water
11. There Goes The Moon
12. Why Do You Have To Be So Beautiful

Tradition, community and the rugged ways of the island life: it all soaks into Hold Fast by Colin Macleod, his first album for SO Recordings. From the plangent, spacious Americana of the string laden opener Queen of the Highlands to his heartfelt love letter to home This Old Place, Hold Fast tells the tale of a man returning to the island where he was born after trying to make it in the world. Contrasting parts — Springsteen-style widescreen rock on The Long Road and Sleep, introspective acoustic folk on Made of Stone and 33 (one of two tracks on the album featuring Sheryl Crow) — contribute to a poignant whole.

And although it may sound like a story culled from Macleod’s own experience, being a singer songwriter who indeed left his tight-knit island community in search of glory, it is a work of fiction. It just happens to be fiction embedded in truth. "The stories in this album are a culmination of a mis-spent youth. Although the tales are fictional, there not a million miles from the truth, or from my own story, but hopefully more of a cautionary tale. What goes on in the shadows of an island? what happens when the summer light is replaced by long winters? Beautiful places often have a sorry tale to tell, but also a community to help pick you up if you fall by the roadside. This album is the story of one such journey. " - Colin Macleod

TRACK LISTING

1. Queen Of The Highlands
2. The Long Road
3. Warning Signs
4. Old Soul*
5. Sleep
6. Made Of Stone
7. 33*
8. Runaway
9. Looking For God
10. This Old Place