With 'But Remember What You Have Had', Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.

TRACK LISTING

1. But Remember What You Have Had

"In the drear of Covid I was drawn back to the memory of the AIDs pandemic of the 1980/90s which, in comparison, was invisible and unimportant to governments and most people. No restrictions or lockdowns back then, instead mockery and the threat of prison islands. Having been perceived as high risk in both situations, and weirdly not having died in either, I felt like I had cheated the odds. And I needed a lie down.

In the studio the old sounds of loud electric guitar, ping pong delays, juddery reverbs summoned me back. Piano songs shifted from the baroque acoustics of my previous record Deciduous Eccentric (2019), swooping back thirty years to the days of Kitchens of Distinction. Smudged saw tooth rock, sprinkled with a light icing of gaze, and smothered in the usual sour voice looking for answers, only to find phantasms, map rooms, breathing apparatuses, exorcists.

In bed, the dreams and memories commingled. In bed the old writers languished: Marcel Proust wheezing his asthmatic way through tiresome exquisiteness, Truman Capote driving his pencil through the heart of those he loved. The names of hateful viruses, the names of the1980sdead(what if they hadn't died? what then?),the emergence of an elderly minotaur, blind from years in his maze, brought out to graze the fields and ponder. What the fuck was all that illness and dying about? Sighing with Hans Castorp up the Magic Mountain, where time stagnates, where life limps along, where winter is endless, and each day an empty bed fresh for the next ghost. Imagine us gone. Yet somehow we live. It's quite the task. Time for a lie down. Time to recuperate. A convalescence."

Patrick Fitzgerald, Swiss born, Irish bred, Manchester schooled, London educated, has been making records since the 1980s, notably as singer and bassist in sort- ofshoegaze band Kitchens of Distinction. Since then he has released six solo albums as Stephen Hero, one as Fruit in 1997, and worked with Heidi Berry (Lost Girls), Paul Frederick of The Family Cat (The April Seven), and Yves Altana (Oskar's Drum). This latest album was made at home in his home studio by himself. He thought he had retired from music, but it turned out he had retired instead from a parallel career of working in medicine.

TRACK LISTING

Christopher And His Kind
Imagine Me Gone
A Fingertip Apart
Hard Mask
Leave To Be Gone
Somehow We Live
The Map Room
Blind Minotaur
Never Let Me Go
Exorcist Silhouette

Numero’s Hottest Sounds Around trio gathers castaway late ’70s grooves from across the Greater Antilles. Stan Chaman’s Trinidadian Semp concern delivered Wilfred Luckie’s wobbly 'My Thing' and the Hamilton Brothers’ calypso-disco smash 'Music Makes The World Go 'Round' in 1978. Across the sea, Frank Penn’s G.B.I studio tracked Stephen Colebrook’s Doobies-inspired 'Stay Away From Music' for the cruise ship curious. All three are housed in a custom Numero sleeve inspired by Edward Seaga’s Caribbean music manufacturing and distribution powerhouse WIRL (West Indies Records Ltd.)

TRACK LISTING

1. Shake Your Chic Behind
2. Stay Away From Music

Geographic Music are proud to announce the expanded soundtrack to Graham Eatough’s Fringe First award-winning stage adaptation of David Keenan’s 2017 cult novel, This is Memorial Device. Written by Stephen Pastel and Gavin Thomson (formerly of Glasgow band Findo Gask and The Pastels’ resident soundman), the soundtrack comes across as a third iteration of the book, establishing a whole new angle on the myth of Memorial Device through reworked home recordings from the era and expanded versions of music originally scored for the theatre production.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I admit to the fact that I wasn't particularly knowledgeable about Keenan's Novel and the surrounding books, or Memorial Device's brilliant social media presence. There's a lot to love about the project without the music, but the music itself is frighteningly brilliant. Woozy modern-classical drones and string pulls beneath gorgeous, uplifting spoken word. It's all brilliant, but I particularly can't wait for the LP.

TRACK LISTING

1. Introduction To Why I Did It
2. We Have Sex
3. Occluded By Chemistry
4. The Most Beautiful House In Airdrie
5. Square Peg In A Black Hole
6. I Started Painting Landscapes
7. What Is A Memorial Device?
8. Chinese Moon
9. Footsteps In The Snow
10. Lights Out For Forever
11. The Morning Of The Executioners

Cylene II is the new materialization of the collaboration between François J. Bonnet & Stephen O'Malley, initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then, taking form in a myriad of contexts ranging from common practice to recording sessions, concerts and tours.

Cylene II bears witness to these different contexts, offering a multifaceted sound signature developed on different occasions (artist residencies in La Becque, Switzerland and Modena, Italy, live performance excerpts, a studio session at INA-GRM Studios in Paris).

The epic opening track "Four Rays (Anti Divide)" welcomes, for the first time, other musicians — in this case a wind quintet — expanding the duo's sonic palette without betraying the fundamental component of their music, namely the driving of sonic energy. Elsewhere, Bonnet and O'Malley propel the energy between themselves, extending the singular climate that has characterized their musical development over the past five years. Among their minimal presentation of tones and resonances, as glacial harmonic intersections slowly elevate with massive physicality to an orchestral degree, new refinements become evident: the music's relationship to silence, and a brightening of the fine metallic edge glowing at its core.

For the listener, Cylene II is a sound that reaches from the deep and scales up to the far firmament in its careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul. A séance of sorts for all who witness it, whether playing or listening.

TRACK LISTING

1. Four Rays (Anti Divide)
2. Rainbows
3. Vulcani Di Fango
4. Ghosts Of Precognition
5. Troisième Noire
6. La Ronde

For Fans Of: Elliott Smith, Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens.

In 2019, Stephen Steinbrink discovered a short YouTube video of a street magician who approaches a highschooler walking home in Barstow, California. “Here, let me show you my idea,” he says, as he places a quarter on the kid’s hand. The magician performs some relaxed flourishes, and the coin vanishes. In silence, the kid stares at his hand at the nothing where there once, indisputably, was something, until his wonder finds a single word: “Cool.” The title of Disappearing Coin, the new album from Oakland songwriter Stephen Steinbrink, comes from this short clip. “When I look at it now,” he says, “I relate to the kid, who’s obviously uneasy in his body, and going through the experience of being a teenager in the early 2000s growing up in a bleak desert town like I did. I also relate to the coin, an inanimate disc of possibility. And I relate to the magician, an absurd facilitator of sending what is tactile and concrete into the wispy conceptual realm.” “I’ve watched it probably a hundred times,” he says. “It cracked me up but also blew my mind open the feeling of wonder I experienced watching this video became a guide as I navigated new ways of staying in the realm of what’s both real and magical.”

Following the 2018 release of Utopia Teased, Steinbrink completed an apprenticeship in the nearly-lost art of Stained Glass, becoming a glazier at a studio that over three years, fully restored the enormous 90-year-old windows in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. He committed to his Buddhist study, beginning lay monastic training before the process was thwarted by the pandemic. He dove deeper into music production for other artists, engineering two albums by Boy Scouts released on Anti- Records in 2018 and 2021. Steinbrink delighted in the way these pursuits pulled at the thread of ego’s tapestry and decentralized him from his craft, allow ing him to embody a new role as a creative caretaker engaging in practices that felt communal and restorative.

“As I slowly began writing for myself again, I tried to imbue my new songs with this sense of playfulness and wonder I felt while exploring these other interests.” He says. Feeling unlocked from the pressures of perfection that he often felt in his earlier work, creating Disappearing Coin felt buoyant and healing. “The album feels like an integration of all of my past musical selves zeroing in on the present,” Steinbrink explains, “I felt free to explore new ways of writing, through different perspectives, experimenting with fictional songwriting, visual archetypal language, and total collaboration.” This “total collaboration” was a joyous new venture after years of solo performing and recording.

The album can be seen as a 42 minute session of show and tell, the manifestation of Steinbrink repeating the mantra of “Here, let me show you my idea” to himself over and over. Disappearing Coin is at once a welcome return for the veteran Steinbrink and the debut of a totally new artist, one who has found a new path to himself with new goals of openness, curiosity, and self-acceptance.

“Recalls the magic pop purity of Arthur Russell...its minimalism manages to feel enlightened and transformative.” PITCHFORK.

“Melodic and self-assured. Steinbrink delivers his knotted lyricism with a smooth lilt. STEREOGUM.

TRACK LISTING

01 Opalescent Ribbon
02 If There's Love In Your Heart
03 Cruiser
04 Nowhere Real
05 Pony
06 Glitch Eternity
07 Step's Disappearing Coin
08 Cruiser (Reprise)
09 Cool And Collected
10 Comedy
11 Who Cares
12 Poured Back In The Stream
13 Addicted To A Dream
14 Nowhere Real (Reprise)

Does Spring Hide Its Joy is an immersive piece by composer Kali Malone featuring Stephen O’Malley on electric guitar, Lucy Railton on cello, and Malone herself on tuned sine wave oscillators. The music is a study in harmonics and non-linear composition with a heightened focus on just intonation and beating interference patterns. Malone’s experience with pipe organ tuning, harmonic theory, and long durational composition provide prominent points of departure for this work. Her nuanced minimalism unfolds an astonishing depth of focus and opens up contemplative spaces in the listener’s attention.

Does Spring Hide Its Joy follows Malone’s critically acclaimed records The Sacrificial Code [Ideal Recordings, 2019] & Living Torch [Portraits GRM, 2022]. Her collaborative approach expands from her previous work to closely include the musicians Stephen O’Malley & Lucy Railton in the creation and development of the piece. While the music is distinctly Malone’s sonic palette, she composed specifically for the unique styles and techniques of O’Malley & Railton, presenting a framework for subjective interpretation and non-hierarchical movement throughout the music.

Does Spring Hide Its Joy is a durational experience of variable length that follows slowly evolving harmony and timbre between cello, sine waves, and electric guitar. As a listener, the transition between these junctures can be difficult to pinpoint. There’s obscurity and unity in the instrumentation and identities of the players; the electric guitar’s saturation timbre blends with the cello’s rich periodicity, while shifting overtone feedback develops interference patterns against the precise sine waves. The gradual yet ever-occurring changes in harmony challenge the listener’s perception of stasis and movement. The moment you grasp the music, a slight shift in perspective guides your attention forward into a new and unfolding harmonic experience.

Does Spring Hide Its Joy was created between March and May of 2020. During this unsettling period of the pandemic, Malone found herself in Berlin with a great deal of time and conceptual space to consider new compositional methods. With a few interns left on-site, Malone was invited to the Berlin Funkhaus & MONOM to develop and record new music within the empty concert halls. She took this opportunity to form a small ensemble with her close friends and collaborators Lucy Railton & Stephen O’Malley to explore these new structural ideas within those various acoustic spaces. Hence, the foundation was laid for Does Spring Hide Its Joy.

In Kali’s own words: “Like most of the world, my perception of time went through a significant transformation during the pandemic confinements of spring 2020. Unmarked by the familiar milestones of life, the days and months dripped by, instinctively blending with no end in sight. Time stood still until subtle shifts in the environment suggested there had been a passing. Memories blurred non-sequentially, the fabric of reality deteriorated, unforeseen kinships formed and disappeared, and all the while, the seasons changed and moved on without the ones we lost. Playing this music for hours on end was a profound way to digest the countless life transitions and hold time together.”

Ideologic Organ is pleased to present Kali Malone’s Does Spring Hide Its Joy as a triple LP set of around two-hours duration. Mastered by Stephen Mathieu and cut at Schnittstelle Mastering, the record is pressed in perfect sound quality by Optimal in Germany. The album is packaged in a heavyweight laminated jacket with full-color printed inner sleeves, and also available as a three-hour triple CD and in all digital formats.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A stunning set of long-form drone and drifting oscillations on Editions Mego offshoot Ideologic Organ. It's a perfect home for Malone's hypnotic instrumental dialogue, and the perfect landscape for O'Malley & Railton's guest appearances. A grand and uncompromising work of sound design beauty.

TRACK LISTING

3xCDs
Disc 1 - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V1 (01:00:25)
Disc 2 - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V2 (01:00:54)
Disc 3 - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V3 (01:00:15)

3xLPs
1A - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V1.1 (21:05)
1B - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V1.2 (18:50)
2A - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V1.3 (20:30)
2B - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V2.1 (20:12)
3A - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V2.2 (18:08)
3B - Does Spring Hide Its Joy V2.3 (22:43)

After an absence of 13 years Stephen Fretwell has announced news of his long-awaited third album, Busy Guy, released via Speedy Wunderground. Described by Fretwell as “a song cycle of sorts,” the album examines the seasons of a life, exploring fatherhood, grief and rebirth, with Fretwell’s trademark eloquence and wit.

Busy Guy was produced by Fretwell’s close friend and Speedy Wunderground label boss, Dan Carey. They recorded the whole thing one hot July afternoon in just two hours. “I was so fired up, I just rattled off the songs,” Fretwell says. “I assumed it was the run-through, but Dan said he thought we’d got it.” The next day, Carey assembled “a palate of sound” involving keyboards and an electric guitar. “Dan said, ‘I’m just going to react to the songs over the next few hours’, and that’s the finished record, besides some cello.” The album title was also Carey’s idea. Fretwell explains: “Years ago, Dan asked why I always carried a copy of The Guardian, a notebook and a pen when all I did was go to the pub. I said: if you go to the pub at 11am with a newspaper, a notebook and pen, you look like a busy guy rather than a pisshead. It became a joke between us. The joke too is that I didn’t do any music for years.”

The album was recorded at Dean Street Studios in Soho, not far from where Fretwell now lives, and London looms large on the record, in titles like ‘Oval’ and ‘Embankment’: stops on the Tube, and urban images shimmer as Fretwell captures a city full of pride and secrets. He wrote most of the lyrics for Busy Guy sitting in the British Library, “taking the songs to pieces and reassembling them, refining the words, thinking about the stories.”

And what stories. From the album’s opener, ‘The Goshawk and the Gull’, a wintery lament shot through with foreboding, the album moves through characters and scenes, from shorelines to collapsing buildings, looping in its callbacks with panache. Fretwell is a seasoned craftsman, and this is an album that sneaks up on you; that hunts you in the listen. The themes of the record are heavyweight – the breakdown of a relationship, lost love, lost family, guilt, yearning – but there is boldness in the delivery that provides uplift to the emotional heft. Several of the songs have colours for their titles: ‘Orange’, ‘Green’, ‘Pink’, ‘Copper’. They hit like a series of fever dreams.

There are moments of visceral delight, of ripeness and fullness in nature – blood, milk and honey, peaches and almonds – all set against the backdrop of the slow-burn of long-term love. Fretwell is a true poet with his imagery – taking us on a tour of the universe as he tries to conflate the experience of loss and love on a major scale, yet never wanting to assume grandeur, always dancing that fine line between statement and question. He takes us right up into the cosmos, to “moon craters” and “crazed constellations” (‘Green’), to religion’s saints and angels, and right back slap-down down to earth again – in the grotesque detail of horseflies twitching in last night’s wine glasses, and the fridge-cold lagers the narrator of ‘Pink’ has brought for the beach: a peace offering, but also an opt-out.

Summer features heavily on the record, but also not-summer, a desire for summer, and, ultimately, a resignation to time passing, to the approach of spring. ‘Almond’ features Spanish guitar flares – hints of heat, of holidays past. The coast also plays a big part, no doubt due to it being the setting for much of Fretwell’s recent life in Brighton, and seabirds as well as sea animals duck and dive through the lyrics, offering levity in the album’s darker moments. There are wry takes on urban life, on white privilege, on satisfied songbirds, and never quite settling into middle-class family life.

These relaxed tones, combined with the bright energy of ‘Copper’ break into the harder beats of ‘Almond’, where “the sun tries, but it can’t get through” and summer starts to lose all its shine and expression itself seems under threat. “A love song is croaking,” he sings. ‘Almond’ tells the story of a relationship, from meet-cute to heartbreak, packed in a bittersweet little nutshell. “‘Almond’ dips in and out of a relationship I had over 20 years, from fumbling around in a doorway to having a child,” says Fretwell. Words weave and tangle in the album’s latter songs, a mind and life unravelling, a descent to the gut-punch moment, spelled out in the album’s final song, ‘Green’.

But it’s not an ending so much as the beginning of the cycle all over again. While Busy Guy acknowledges tragedy, it is also punctuated with hope. The narrator of ‘Embankment’ might beg for his body to be dragged from the water, but his heart is still beating. Busy Guy is a record that dips into darkness but ultimately shines in its own light. A record that symbolises a waking up. A fresh start. A newness that bears the weight of the past but uses it to great effect.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's a certain indescribable organic feel to the way 'Busy Guy' is produced, it's not that the instrumentation isn't beautifully recorded (it is) or that the sounds don't fit together perfectly (they absolutely do), but the gorgeous intimacy of the pieces and the unhurried stagger to every piece on show gives it the languid, swooning feel of a folk record with the melodic appeal of classic rock. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Goshawk And The Gull
2. Remember
3. Embankment
4. Oval
5. The Long Water
6. Orange
7. Pink
8. Copper
9. Almond
10. Green

Traditional Techniques, Malkmus’ third solo LP without the Jicks (or Pavement), is new phase folk music for new phase folks, with Malkmus as attuned as ever to the rhythms of the ever-evolving lingual slipstream. It’s packed with handmade arrangements, modern folklore, and 10 songs written and performed in his singular voice. An adventurous new album in an instantly familiar mode, Traditional Techniques creates a serendipitous trilogy with the loose fuzz of the Jicks’ Sparkle Hard (2018) and the solo bedroom experiments of Groove Denied (2019). Taken together, these three very different full-lengths in three years highlight an ever-curious songwriter committed to finding untouched territory.

Malkmus took on Traditional Techniques as a kind of self-dare. Conceived while recording Sparkle Hard at Portland’s Halfling Studio, Malkmus had observed the variety of acoustic instruments available for use. The idea escalated within a matter of weeks into a full set of songs, and shortly thereafter into a realized and fully committed album. When he returned to Halfling, Malkmus drew from a whole new musical palette--including a variety of Afghani instruments - to support an ache both quizzical and contemporary. The resulting Traditional Techniques is expansive and thrilling. Alongside gorgeous folk music, there are also occasional bursts of flute-laced swagger, straight-up commune rock (“Xian Man”), and mind-bending fuzz.

Centred around the songwriter’s 12-string acoustic guitar, and informed by a half-century of folk-rock reference points, Traditional Techniques is the product of Malkmus and Halfling engineer/arranger-in-residence Chris Funk (The Decemberists). Additionally, Matt Sweeney (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Chavez) plays guitar throughout.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Malkmus returns, bringing with him a healthy line-up of shimmering folky ballads and swooning angular acoustic guitar work. Ranging from hypnotic drones and soul-affirming melodicism to jaunty, swaggering grooves and all topped with Malkmus' unmistakeable vocals. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

1. ACC Kirtan
2. Xian Man
3. The Greatest Own In Legal History
4. Cash Up
5. Shadowbanned
6. What Kind Of Person
7. Flowin’ Robes
8. Brainwashed
9. Signal Western
10. Amberjack

Stephen Mallinder, co founder and frontman of the iconic Cabaret Voltaire, has returned with his first solo album in over 35 years: Um Dada. Laced with leftfield house and cut up sound collages, Um Dada is a melding of energies that are an exercise in simplicity and motion. Sincere, playful realism that beckons your body to move, always reminding you to never take yourself too seriously without forfeiting your agency.

While steering Cabaret Voltaire through the 1980’s, Mallinder was already busy piecing together his first solo album entitled “Pow Wow”, which would help define Mallinder’s interest in the more leftfield electro sounds shaping England at the time. It was this diverse and abstract hybrid that helped inspire generations of artists and musicians through steeping raw machine funk within the whimsical and absurdist ideology.

Since the release of “Pow Wow” in 1982, Mallinder continued his pioneering work with Cabaret Voltaire, as well as recording and touring with his electro projects Wrangler, Creep Show, Hey Rube, Kula, and Cobby & Mallinder. In addition to his non stop schedule in electronic music, his professional life as a journalist, broadcaster, producer and now a professor of Digital Music & Sound Art at the University of Brighton, has lead Mallinder to a unique point in his career. Most in his position would be caught up in rosy retrospection, but Mallinder himself says, “There’s too much digital finger licking right now; every thought and desire at the turn of a dial... well a click of the mouse. And there’s a giddy, false nostalgia about the analogue past. Sorry to burst your bubble but the truth of history is more mundane: practical, pragmatic...Um Dada is about ‘play’ cut and paste, lost words, twisted presets, voice collage, simple sounds things that have been lost to technology’s current determinism. Let the machines talk to each other, let them dance .. they lead, we follow.”

Um Dada opens up with the exact machine led surrealism that Mallinder recommends in “Working (You Are)”. A thick, stripped back dance floor groove provides the ideal foundation for Mallinder’s eccentric vocal cuts. The frisky chops present an almost twisted irony, subtly bringing to mind the role we’re all forced to play as just another cog in the ever grinding capitalist machine of life. Yet, somehow, the listener is left feeling optimistic. A prime example of simplicity at work. Tracks such as “Satellite” give a skillful illustration of Mallinder’s adeptness with his musical expertise while preserving his core historical context as only simple reference. The underlying bassline and percussion, coupled with the floating melodies and airy vocal refrain disclose the vulnerabilities of love and loss without a hint of irony or nostalgia.

Um Dada is mischievously idealist, however never loses touch with reality. Offering structure while simultaneously dismantling any and all preconceptions. The spirit of sincerity that sustained Cabaret Voltaire’s lengthy career is abundantly present within founder Stephen Mallinder’s journey through his own whimsical utopian consciousness and staking claim to an identity that is solely his own.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: One of the most singular voices in English electronica returns for his first solo album in over 30 years. 'Um Dada' encompasses everything we love about Mallinder and while his most recent collabs (Creep Show with shop favourite John Grant was a particular highlight) clearly showed his influence, it's great to hear his own sound, undiluted and unadorned, and switching effortlessly between a huge range of influences and sounds.

TRACK LISTING

CD
1. Working (You Are)
2. Prefix Repeat Rewind
3. It’s Not Me
4. Um Dada
5. Satellite
6. Colour
7. Flashback
8. Robber*
9. Hollow*

*Bonus Tracks

LP
A1. Working (You Are)
A2. Prefix Repeat Rewind
A3. It’s Not Me
A4. Um Dada
B1. Satellite
B2. Colour
B3. Flashback

The rumours are true: the secret electronic album that Stephen Malkmus has been telling everyone about sees the light of day through Domino. But Groove Denied is not a full-blown plunge into EDM or hiptronica. In fact, there aren’t any purely instrumental tracks on the album. Every song is precisely that: a song, featuring Malkmus staples like an artfully askew melody and an oblique lyric. Groove Denied is Stephen playing hooky from his customary way of going about things, jolting himself out of a routine. As Malkmus commented, “It’s fun to mess with things that you’re not supposed to.”

The first taste of Stephen’s new groove can be sampled today, with the release of single ‘Viktor Borgia’, and its accompanying video starring Stephen alone in a dance club. The title playfully merges the name of the comedian-pianist and the ruthless dynasty of Italo-Spanish nobles. With its stately melody and the almost-English-accented vocal, the coordinates here are early Human League or even Men Without Hats. “I was thinking things like Pete Shelley’s ‘Homosapien’, the Human League, and DIY synth music circa 1982,” says Stephen, adding “and also about how in the New Wave Eighties, these suburban 18-and-over dance clubs were where all the freaks would meet – a sanctuary.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's bloody brilliant this, with hints of post-punk garage and most of all 80's synth, Malkmus clearly shows his wealth of influence on 'Groove Denied', swinging from snappy grunge to 70's psychedelia without batting an eyelid. Though the diversity in sound shines through, it's not without the Malkmus charm, with his vocal prowess shining through the stylistic patchwork.

TRACK LISTING

Eins
01. Belziger Faceplant
02. A Bit Wilder
03. Viktor Borgia
04. Come Get Me
05. Forget Your Place

Zwei
06. Rushing The Acid Frat
07. Love The Door
08. Bossviscerate
09. Ocean Of Revenge

“Get It Up For Love” is an all time balearic classic. Written by Ned Doheny (whose uncle, Daniel Day Lewis's character in 'There Will Be Blood' was based) it's appeared on more comps than we can count. This version from 1974, was the first cover version. It went on to be recorded by Tata Vega, the Average White Band and of course, Ned himself on his second album, 'Hard Candy'.
Original 7” copies exchange hands for between £50 and £100.
Stephen's version is, dare I say it? as good as, if not better, than Ned's. A bit faster, a bit funkier but could still soundtrack any number of Adriatic sunsets and, as if that weren't enough,  it's coupled with the full-length album version on the flip.
Diplomats Of Soul is a new subsidiary of Expansion aiming to reissue hidden gems that you never knew you needed.

TRACK LISTING

1. Get It Up For Love (Album Version)
2. Get It Up For Love

Stunned with grief in the months following the Ghost Ship fire, Oakland-based Stephen Steinbrink ate LSD daily, bought a synthesizer, and locked himself in his shipping container studio, refusing to sleep for days as he wrote and recorded what would become Utopia Teased, as a means of working through his overwhelming feelings of cynicism and loss.

Recorded in between stints touring as a member of Dear Nora, and then as a touring member of Girlpool, Utopia Teased is Stephen Steinbrink's followup to his critically acclaimed 2016 album Anagrams. Unlike the pristine production of Anagrams, on Utopia Teased Steinbrink embraces the rough edges, as he shifts his focus from the craft of production to the art of processing and capturing his experiences with honesty. He explains, “I was driving the preamps a little too hard, mixing down to tape, bouncing back to the computer, and repeating the process over and over again. I wanted it to reflect how fried my brain felt at the time, totally pulverized. The songs just poured out of me, it hardly felt like work to make them up. It was like turing on a spigot. I don’t write often, maybe once or twice a year, but when I do, a lot comes out..”

“Empty Vessel” and “Maximum Sunlight” both sung from perspective of residents of Tonopah, Nevada, were written to accompany a book about the town, by Steinbrink's friend Meagan Day. The sparse imagery on “Empty Vessel,” ostensibly about a semi-transient lock-picking truck driver, feels at least semi-autobiographical as Steinbrink sings “You're 31, you don't believe in anything…If you don't stop moving you'll never get hurt.” His evocative lyrics continue to intrigue on “Maximum Sunlight” as he sings “Sleeping through the night in the drained pool / I said I love you to a fool” from the perspective of a 30-year-old alcoholic ATV enthusiast.

Much of his outlook on life is captured on the elegiac waltz “Zappa Dream,” (originally written and recorded by his friend Rosie Steffy) on which he sings, “Dreams are so fucked up / Even the really good ones…Would it be such a bad thing / To be finished with living?...Everyone preserves a myth / Guards it like a bone / You see it in your lover's eyes / But never in your own…There is a magic on this earth / In cats and clouds and cars / For everything that you call "real" / Was once the dust of stars / Yeah you have been a river rock / And a drop of rain / And with any bit of luck / You'll be those things again / Are you in love with your life or a dream / Or just overwhelmed/ Wondering what this could possibly mean?” At the close of the, too-little-too-late acoustic narrative “Mom”, guest vocalist Melina Duterte of Jay Som joins him in conjuring a memory of listening to extraterrestrial radio, drifting asleep in a suburban Phoenix Wal-Mart parking lot. The album’s heartbreaking closer “I’m Never Changing Who You Are” continues Steinbrink’s recollection of his adolescence, asking an unnamed family member “Will you try to love more than you did?” while soberly accepting his reality.

In an interview with North of the Internet, Steinbrink recalled a video he came across on his phone, which was taken the day after the fire, “It sent me spiraling and thinking, it’s almost been a year. Nothing really felt actual those weeks, and I could only only react to the future at a remove because the horror of everything was inescapably tying me to the present. The idea of doing laundry or driving across the bridge to San Francisco to work was too abstract, so I just didn’t do it. I hardly did anything. Two days after the fire I woke up, walked to P.’s porch and sat there for hours alone and cried without a jacket on until the sun started going down. Geese were flying across power lines at dusk and I took a video of them on my phone. I imagined one of the birds was my friend.” In the same interview, he goes on to share some insight provided by a friend he reached out to when trying to finalize the album: “Finishing the thing puts a limit around something that comes from an infinite well; this is uncomfortable.” True.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bad Love 
2. I Wanna Be Free 
3. A Part Of Me Is A Part Of You 
4. Empty Vessel 
5. Maximum Sunlight
6. Zappa Dream
7. Coming Down
8. Mom
9. In Another Kind Of Dream
10. Become Sphere
11. You Could Always Leave 
12. I'm Never Changing Who You Are

Modesty and plain good manners might prevent them from saying so themselves, but the fact that Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks have thrived, rather than simply endured over 17 years and delivered six albums of buzzy, sub-cultural significance, constitutes an impressive legacy. The challenge with album number seven is one that any successful band with integrity faces: how to safeguard that legacy and hold on to their identity without rehashing old ground (unthinkable), and also say something meaningful while (crucially) having fun doing it?

Meeting that issue head on in the run up to The Jicks’ seventh record involved some “navel gazing”, according to singer, songwriter, and guitarist Malkmus and not only in terms of what it means to be releasing music in 2018. If, like him, you’re a voracious consumer of all kinds of culture and feel the need to interact with it, rather than just react, then inevitably “there’s a world that prompts you to put your best foot forward”. With Sparkle Hard Malkmus, Mike Clark (keyboards), Joanna Bolme (bass) and Jake Morris (drums) do exactly that. And they hit the ground running – on air treads.

It’s light ’n’ breezy, head-down heavy, audacious, melancholic and reflective, goodtime and bodacious, and it pulls off the smartest trick: it’s both unmistakeably The Jicks and – due to the streamlining of their trademark tics and turns, plus the introduction of some unexpected flourishes (Auto-Tune, a fiddle, guest vocalist Kim Gordon, one seven-minute song with an acoustic folk intro) – The Jicks refashioned. If 2014’s Wig Out At Jag Bags balanced the lengthy prog workouts of Pig Lib with Mirror Traffic’s sparky pop moments, then Sparkle Hard bears less obvious direct relation to what’s come before. It also has turbocharged energy and enthusiasm by the truckload.

Malkmus started writing Sparkle Hard in 2015. He’d upgraded his home-recording equipment and bought some electronic drums and had been working on the Netflix series Flaked (he penned the incidental music and the end theme song). Demos were done in one day in April of 2017 and then in May, The Jicks started recording at a new studio in Portland called Halfling, which is managed by multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk of The Decemberists, who produced the album.

Self-indulgent escapism has never been The Jicks’ bag, but on Sparkle Hard, the reality of modern life sits closer to the surface, communication cutting to the chase whether it’s a proto-punk grind or a back-porch country duet doing the talking. A cleaner burn for dark and complex times.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Classic slacker vibes, double tracked vocal flourishes and more acoustic balladry make up the backbone of Malkmus' output, but this one takes the elements previously laid and fleshes them out into tender but beautiful statements of melody and rhythm. More full-on heavy moments are tempered with their ability to reduce things when needed ; the bass/guitar scree in 'Shiggy' serving as a perfect example of a wholly accomplished concept, executed with style.

TRACK LISTING

Cast Off
Future Suite
Solid Silk
Bike Lane
Middle America
Rattler
Shiggy
Kite
Brethren
Refute
Difficulties / Let Them Eat Vowels

After ten years of touring and secluded home recording, Stephen Steinbrink has cataloged several albums worth of gorgeous melody and quotidian dread in his stark, minimal pop. Yet the songs on his latest, Anagrams, beautiful yet unflinching portraits of addiction and mental illness are captured in his most meticulous and high-fidelity production to date. While one might expect the record to be a final destination, a tidy hi-res apex of all his journeying, the album's particularly varied styles and sincere lyrical uncertainty portray a search that still continues.

"Lately writing songs almost makes me feel like I'm losing it, like I keep digging up and re-burying the same old bone. I tried to continue unpacking these forgotten images and memories, except this time without placing any subjective meaning on them, or any expectation of personal growth to occur after. Maybe it's silly to expect the process of making art to be a clarifying act."

Stephen's artistic trajectory can be considered nomadic in the obvious sense: when not incessantly touring Europe and the U.S. in the last two years, he spent his stationary moments writing in California, Arizona and Washington. Most of his previous recordings were the product of self-engineered experiments, culminating in 2014's Arranged Waves, an unabashedly digital tableau of subdued, heartbreaking pop. Now, Anagrams finds him chasing melodies in the polished largesse of a proper studio.

Anagrams was intensely recorded over 2 years at UNKNOWN, a retrofitted analogue studio in a lofty, de-sanctified church in the secluded island town of Anacortes, Washington. Assisted by engineer Nicholas Wilbur and featuring performances by members of Mt. Eerie, LAKE, and Hungry Cloud Darkening, Steinbrink's songs gracefully inhabit the vastness of the space in which they were recorded, effortlessly gliding between glacial grunge lurches, lush country movements, and succinct power pop.

The most ambitious of Stephen's pop songcraft, Anagrams is ultimately an unpacking of identity. "I don't care about continuing in a tradition of songwriters, and I rarely intentionally self-identify as one. I always wonder if my most recent song is the last one I'll ever write. I try to be more concerned with being open, to imagine myself as a rock or a wrapper or nothing at all. Whenever I can get close to that state of mind the songs come easy, but it seems arbitrary, almost like they would've existed with or without me. I think it's a noble pursuit, to try to be nothing." An effort, ongoing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Absent Mind
2. Building Machines
3. Psychic Daydream
4. Impossible Hand
5. What Identiy?
6. Canopy
7. I'm Turning Inside Out
8. Dissociative Blues
9. Anagrams
10. Black Hole / We Don't Say Anything
11. Shine A Light On Him
12. Next New Sun

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

"A World Of Peace Must Come is his masterpiece. That was fantastic." - Brian Wilson
"'Be Still' is the only song I've ever heard that made me want to be a better person." - Brian Barr, The Seattle Weekly

"The only other artist as pure as him is Captain Beefheart." - Bill Bentley

Stephen John Kalinich was born in Endicott, New York and grew up in Binghamton. In his early teens, he stared writing poems and articles about World Peace. He first came to California around 1964, fell in love with it, and promptly transferred from Harper College in upstate New York to UCLA.

Kalinich found himself immersed in the vibrant anti-War culture of late 60’s California, often writing songs and poems against the War. He found a musical partner and kindred spirit in Mark Lindsey Buckingham. They cut a demo for a track called "Leaves of Grass," inspired by the famous Walt Whitman poem "Leaves Of Grass", and Kalinich started taking demos around.

In the mid 60s, it was either at Brother Records or while pumping gas that Kalinich first met the Beach Boys. He hit it off with Brian, Carl and Dennis right away. As the first artist signed to the Beach Boys new label Brother Records, Carl Wilson produced a record for him. His first songs that saw release were "Little Bird" and "Be Still," which he wrote with Dennis and were released on the Friends album. His relationship with Dennis would lead to a number of further collaborations and Kalinich / Dennis Wilson co-writes, including: 20/20 - "All I Want To Do," Hawthorne, CA - "A Time to Live in Dreams", Pacific Ocean Blue - "Rainbows," and Bambu - "Love Remember Me.”
A World of Peace Must Come was recorded at various LA studios and Brian's house in Bel-Air in 1969. The tapes were promptly lost, not to be heard again until our discovery of them in 2008. Following the CD-only reissue in that year, this is the first time this timeless snapshot of an era and an ethos will be available on vinyl for Record Store Day 2014.

New album from ex-Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus and his band The Jicks.

The album was produced by the band (Stephen Malkmus, Joanna Bolme, Jake Morris and Mike Clark) and Remko Schouten (the Dutch soundman of Pavement fame) in a studio in rural Ardennes with ‘a farmhouse vibe’.

In the words of Stephen Malkmus, "‘Wig Out At Jagbags’ is inspired by Cologne, Germany, Mark Von Schlegel, Rosemarie Trockel, Von Sparr and Jan Lankisch, Can and Gas; Stephen Malkums imagined Weezer/Chili Peppers, SIc Alps, UVA in the late 80's, NYRB, Aroma Charlottenburg, inactivity, Jamming, Indie guys trying to sound Memphis, Flipper, Pete Townsend, Pavement, The Joggers, The NBA and home life in the 2010's..."

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: Malkmus displays his songwriting prowess again, following a similar formula to 'Mirror Traffic', Hazy guitar-rock and clever twists and turns make for an excellent listen.

'Mirror Traffic' is the new Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks album, recorded at LA’s Sunset Sound Studios and at the home of the album’s producer, Beck.

With the question of a Pavement reunion having been triumphantly answered last year with an Ono-esque “YES”, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks return with their most energized set to date. These 15 songs range from hard-rocking political commentary (“Senator”), to touching, winsome folk (“No One Is”), to virtuosic but melancholy and contrite kiwi pop (“Stick Figures In Love”). The lyrics are as curious as ever but more meaningful than they have been since 'Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain'. “This record,” concedes Malkmus dryly, “is relatively approachable.”

As the first producer to work with Malkmus since Pavement, Beck has drawn out a set of performances that ring with clarity and inventiveness. Gone are the long guitar workouts and jams that marked the last couple Jicks albums, replaced with a sharply defined focus and more colorful depth of field. With nearly half the tracks clocking in under three minutes, 'Mirror Traffic' flashes by with a lightness of touch; a decision that band and producer found easy to take: “Beck & I were both burned out on the heavy rocking style,” says Malkmus, “and playing to the strengths of a melody felt like the way to go.”

First two responses from bigshot journalists who got early copies were, word for word:
1) “I’m so psyched, this is the most Malk thing in years”
2) “I respect his right to make any record he wants, but this is the album that me and a lot of other people have waited 10 years for.”

For someone who has occasionally enjoyed a reputation for throwing ideas into the air and seeing where they land, 'Mirror Traffic' is a confident, heartfelt, direct record. Ease into the seat and enjoy the ride.

Catwalk calls from a Creole Camelot; Sir Stephen’s more Boy London than Boy Bayou. Like the well-lit fitting room of a United Colors of Benetton store in Milan, “By Design” is consumer-cool counter culture, if the counter’s a denim bar that only takes gold Amex. Like the pool on the roof of a luxury hotel in Tokyo, “By Design” is Starck-er than stark, wetter than wild, and deeper in the shallow end. Like a Kuwakuba runway during Paris fall fashion week, “By Design” is baggy on Agynes, mixxy on Moss, jammin’ on Gemma. It’s so down it’s beat, so after-hours its early afternoon, so oversized there’s room for two. Made by design with the finest materials - rayon and on, cashmere and cream, and 100% silky Silk. Yeah, boy. Well, that's what 100% Silk say, we think this sounds like a quartet of Inner City Detroit house B-side dubs. Kevin Saunderson gon' get paid.

"For The Ghosts Within" is a new collaboration between Robert Wyatt, saxophonist / composer Gilad Atzmon (currently a main player in Ian Dury’s Blockheads) and violinist / composer Ros Stephen. A song cycle featuring jazz standards such as "Lush Life", "In A Sentimental Mood" and "Round Midnight", "For The Ghosts Within" places Wyatt’s voice (and whistling) amid the seductive drama of string quartet and Gilad’s beautiful saxophone playing. The trio also take on Robert’s own song - the classic "Maryan" from his 1997 album "Schleep", plus covers of Chic’s "At Last I Am Free" (previously recorded for Rough Trade in the early 80s) and Louis Armstrong’s "What A Wonderful World" - a possible future Xmas number one!

After three albums, critical recognition of the post-Pavement career of Stephen Malkmus has suffered; such was that bands legacy on alternative rock music. Of late, a vocal appearance on the "I'm Not There" soundtrack album has helped underline his unique lyrical style and bring his ever boyish vocal to a fresh audience. Refining the scattergun approach to acid rock, folk, prog and bubblegum that characterized the Pavement sound and subsequent three as Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, "Real Emotional Trash" ranks alongside "Wowee Zowee" and "Terror Twilight" as a wonky, woozy 'heads' record. "Hopscotch Willy" and "Baltimore" touch musically and lyrically on the 60s folk-rock tradition. Over ten minutes, the title track jumps from Fairport Convention, Television and Grateful Dead. No doubt taking a cue from Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs, Malkmus indulges his penchant for guitars of all description; electric, acoustic, delayed, distorted, doubled, detuned and often wailing simultaneously in all directions. As much as the songs are undoubtedly from the pen of Malkmus, this is definitely a proper band effort. The bottom end crunch supplied by Janet Weiss (formerly Sleater Kinney) and bassist Joanna Bolme provide ballast and direction, ensuring the album will rock you to the soles of your battered Converse.

For his second album after splitting indie-gods Pavement, Stephen Malkmus sets his controls for the heart of the seventies! Eschewing conventional flabby white boy blues rock cliches for a tighter sound more reminiscent of the Groundhogs (long time Piccadilly faves) and Captain Beefheart, Malkmus adds a dash of folk-rock and some ace krautrock synth sounds to his inimitable skewed pop aesthetic. Initially less accessible than his debut, repeated listens reveal "Pig Lib" to be just as rewarding as those more 'musical' later Pavement offerings.