Released in early 2019 on the Spanish label Elefant Records, "Meadow Lane Park" was the debut album by Avignon-based Christophe Vaillant under his new entity, Le SuperHomard. Undoubtedly dreamlike and enchanting, hailed by critics both in France and abroad, and by Paul Weller (who invited the group on his entire European tour), the musician laid the groundwork for a new artistic direction. Originally from Brisbane, Maxwell Farrington left Australia in 2013, travelling to the United Kingdom and then France. After Marseille and Toulouse, he moved to Saint-Brieuc and took part in the formation of Dewaere, a noise quartet bathed in 90s influences. Maxwell's vocals bring a poppier and warmer touch. Christophe and Maxwell met during a joint concert at La Boule Noire, on the MaMA Festival in 2019. During his band's sound check, the Australian performed an a capella version of a song by American composer Burt Bacharach. This lead to an engaging conversation between the two musicians, who discussed their common passion for Lee Hazlewood, Scott Walker and Frank Sinatra. We find this elegance again reiterated throughout these compositions – in the orchestral pop, the subtle arrangements, the velvet singing voice. "Once" is a four- handed collaboration. Recording began in February 2020, ending within a short distance of the New Year. "Once" is a journey, both near and far, where everyone will find a safe haven.

TRACK LISTING

1. We, Us The Pharaohs
2. North Pole
3. Free Again
4. Lights & Seasons
5. Love
6. La Mesa Motel (Feat. Max Meser)
7. Good Start
8. Oysters
9. Hips
10. Happening Again
11. Big Ben (Feat. Evelyn Ida Morris)
12. Tonight

Originally released in 1995, "A Life Full of Farewells" is The Apartments' third album. Released only two years after the legendary "drift", this hushed album filled with melancholy ballads once again displays the writing talent of Peter Milton Walsh. Over a quarter of a century later, these majestic compositions, these silky arrangements, this delicate pop engage us with new emotions. Here the nuances are subtle and the musician's demons seem for a time abandoned, leaving room for a new serenity. Reaching full musical maturity, "A Life Full of Farewells" 'is a centerpiece of Australian discography, now unearthed and released for the very first time in vinyl format. Australian vinyl mastering legend, Don Bartley, who also mastered the original 'A Life Full of Farewells' CD, mastered the album for vinyl. Also features a guest appearance by Chris Abrahams from The Necks.

Based in Sydney, Peter Milton Walsh and his band, The Apartments, are acclaimed by critics and fans alike all over the world. Peter Milton Walsh formed The Apartments in Brisbane, 1978, and left Australia for New York a few years later, and relocated to England when The Apartments were signed by Rough Trade. But before leaving Australia, Walsh was sought out by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, of Brisbane's most critically adored band, The Go-Betweens. Having been offered an 8-album deal by Beserkley Records, Forster and McLennan asked Walsh to join The Go-Betweens as their fourth member in late 1978. The union was, however, short-lived, as the deal with Beserkley fell through. Grant McLennan famously said of their different personalities, "Walsh is night, we are day. We're sun, he's rain." In and Out of the Light is a classic Apartments album, with songs, lines and melodies coming back to you long after the music has stopped playing. The album came together in a new way for The Apartments. Recording began in Sydney, at the end of winter of 2019. Working a few hours a day, one or two days a week, the album was finished in the summer, with the final mix completed the day before coronavirus lockdown hit Australia in 2020.

Peter Milton Walsh and bass player Eliot Fish worked with producer Tim Kevin in his Marrickville studio in Sydney, while French Apartments, Natasha Penot and Antoine Chaperon, recorded their parts in various studios in France. English drummer Nick Allum worked in London. In and Out of the Light (their 7th studio album) again features Chris Abrahams from The Necks on piano. The vocal and piano for We Talked Through Till Dawn were recorded live in one take with Peter singing as Chris played piano. Miro Bukovsky, who played on No Song, No Spell, No Madrigal, again plays flugelhorn and trumpet. In 2015, The Apartments surprised fans by re-emerging -after over a decade of silence-with No Song, No Spell, No Madrigal, an album that saw a new audience drawn to The Apartments music. By year's end, readers and critics of French music magazine Magic named No Song, No Spell, No Madrigal #1 Album of the Year. Five years later, In and Out of the Light is the highly anticipated album that will once more appeal to existing fans and new ones as well. The Apartments exquisite instrumentation and beautiful harmonies and Peter Milton Walsh's impressionistic storytelling work together beautifully on In and Out of the Light. Here are eight songs to get lost in-for a day, for a week, for a lifetime.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pocketful Of Sunshine
2. Write Your Way Out Of Town
3. Where You Used To Be
4. What's Beauty To Do
5. Butterfly Kiss
6. We Talked Through Till Dawn
7. I Don't Give A Fuck About You Anymore
8. The Fading Light

Emily Jane White's new album juxtaposes a heavy melancholy with an intimate touching lightness through her singular alto voice backed by orchestral percussion, soaring strings, heavy guitars, a choir of voices, and an overall cinematic presentation of dynamic songwriting.

Ten songs, all written in minor keys, present a deepening storm of melody that offers the hopeful ray of Emily's voice as the waves of rhythm crash and dance around her. Her voice is the listener's guide, a steady and reassuring presence as they march through eerie landscapes, caverns of reverb, church organs and synthetic arpeggios. The occasional samples of birds, insects, and thunder mix with the blend of electronic and acoustic instruments, a subtle reminder of the necessary link between the fate of our ecology and the moral use of technology.

"Many Nights" is Motorama's fifth and is a mix of gothic Balearic beats and jangle pop guitars with the lyrics about transcenden?e and surreal worlds, influenced by Arthur Rimbaud and Alexander Blok. Ten songs are structured around a few instruments with the simple melodies and grooves, inspired by Soviet New Wave scene, the cinematographic electronic music of Eduard Artemiev, New Zealand kiwi pop and African percussion arrangements.

Laish, from Brighton, are piloted by the mesmeric Danny Green, a master of captivating confessionals and a thoroughly engaging front man. His glorious voice ranges from the angelic, to a plaintiveness echoing Robert Wyatt, to deeper Kurt Wagner-esque tones. New album, Time Elastic, brims with ultra-cool, classic songwriting and bestows a superbly developed and playful record, full of surprises. A bold step forward, presenting a songwriter at the height of his powers.

Formed by Vladislav Parshin (of Motorama), in Rostov-On-Don, in 2010, the band became known in Russia for it’s experimental instrumentation, minimalist approach to the music and existential, spiritual lyrics in Russian language. Utro took the blueprint from Soviet bands, post-punk bands from Germany and UK and pushed it way further, using just drums, percurssion, synth bass, synthesizers, and voice. In 2015 Uto announced "We don’t use guitars anymore, we play live drums, synth bass and different keyboards."

R. Missing is the enigmatic music project of New York based vocalist Sharon Shy and musician Toppy.previously known as The Ropes. Unsummering, the first release under their new moniker R. Missing, expands on The Ropes' previous palette of Morrissey tinged lyrics and darkwave, but manages to be even more isolated lyrically than their famously nihilistic previous work, fully embracing complete detachment. Musically, fraught guitar and synth textures paint an image of an unstable world, held together only by tightly quantized electronic drum beats.

Danny Green, aka Laish, is set to release his third album via Talitres. A set of twelve songs that span the spectrum of gentle fingerpicked acoustic guitar ballads, through to more robust art-rock jams. Laish’s plaintive tenor - rich, deeply textured and affecting - takes centre stage as he sings honest, self-reflective songs of relationships failed and survived.

Danny formed the band Laish in Brighton in 2008 and became part of the Willkommen Collective (Sons of Noel and Adrian, The Leisure Society, Rozi Plain). Laish have released two records, their eponymous debut (2010), and Obituaries (2013, Folkwit Records), both recorded by Green at his home. 

TRACK LISTING

1 – Vague
2 – Learning To Love The Bomb
3 – Love On The Conditional
4 – Song For Everything
5 – The Last Time
6 – My Little Prince
7 – Pendulum Swing
8 – Wrote Of Freedom
9 – Rattling Around
10 – Gambling
11 – We Haven’t Made Any Money
12 – Isolation

Since their first self-produced album "Horse" in 2008, Motorama have gone their own melodious seamless way. From their Russian port city of Rostov-on-Don, they have carved out their identity and a niche on the musical scene as travels, journeys, landscapes and encounters have helped them forge ahead with a global outlook. "I always try to have it all recorded uncut, in one breath, and have it thus enhanced in its delicate rugged beauty. As I have figured it out, demos sometimes and even often happen to sound better than the actual records to be released", Vladislav Parshin - vocals and guitar - revealed to Magic magazine in February 2015.

As expected, the fourth upcoming album 'Dialogues' is no exception to that rule. As to the distinctive melodies, harmonies and lyrical texts, everything has just gone with the flow day after day in a do-it-yourself fashion that the band have been drawing on, up to the oldie but goodie Tascam Portastudio home recording mastered in a few short weeks. With 'Dialogues', let's talk about an addictive pop music floating on a raft of wondrous melancholy, rocked by breathtaking lyricism, heady keyboards and a muffled but dancing bass. Let's go explore the great outdoors via these compositions that take us on a trip.

Originating from Normandy, France and now based in Marseilles having lived for spells in Brighton, Bristol and Brussels, the itinerant composer / multi-instrumentalist Yann Tambour (aka Stranded Horse) began recording in 2001 under the name Encre, a project combining samples of strings, piano and voice. Following a series of album and EP releases under that name and having returned to his original instrument, the classical guitar, Yann started to experiment with the kora, building his own lighter, more compact versions of the instrument. Marrying this with his singular approach to the singer/songwriter mode, Stranded Horse (formerly Thee, Stranded Horse) came into being in the mid-noughties. Yann's instrument-building endeavours continue - his most recent creation being a chromatic kora with harp levers, made out of keno wood, maple and formica christened the 'formikora'.

'Luxe' is the third Stranded Horse album after 'Humbling Tides' (2012) and 'Churning Strides' (2007), With five of its nine songs sung in English and the rest in French, the ensemble arrangements hinted at on 'Humbling Tides' find full bloom on 'Luxe'.

Micah P. Hinson was born in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, into a strict Christian fundamentalist household. He began to experiment with music upon moving to Abilene, Texas in his teens. In the relative isolation of this town, he became immersed in the local music scene. In 2003, he teamed up with the Texas collective the Earlies which provided a lush backdrop for Hinson’s winsome tales of love, loss and regret, before releasing solo albums for Sketchbook, Jade Tee and Full Time Hobby. 'Micah P. Hinson and the Nothing', his first release on Talitres, is a collection of songs Micah wrote before a terrible van accident he had on the Spanish highway in 2011.

Unsure if or when his arms would ever work properly again, Micah began listening to demos he has made before he went on that Spanish trip. The songs took a different light and he began sending them off to people around the world (The Twilight Sad, his Belgium Quartet, his Texan side-kick, T. Nicholas Phelps) and with their help he began to create a record without the use of his arms. Soon after this, Micah was invited to go and record in Santander, Espana, at Moon River Studio. For two weeks and two days, Fernando 'Mac' and Micah realized what was to become "Micah P. Hinson and The Nothing", working with an astounding array of local musicians, sitting behind the trap set, standing beside the upright bass, holding a viola, or tumbling away the tympani.