BIOGRAPHY BY IRVINE WELSH
I discovered the Beta Band, like I discovered a lot of great music, basically through eventually surrendering to the enthused urgings of a mate who was cooler than me. He continually evangelized about the EP’s. I was lost to the concert hall and firmly ensconced on the dancefloor by then and highly resistant, but quite taken by the idea that a band would bring out extended plays rather than singles. When I did check them out, I was instantly smitten by their originality and power.

The band, therefore, were pivotal for me in terms of my own musical journey, in that they represented a gateway back into indie guitar music, which I’d basically given up since becoming obsessed with rave and acid house.

The Beta Band were definitely a band for the cool cognoscenti- like my buddy- the ones you make a bit of a tit of yourself trying to convert quite straight boring people to.

The emotions they induced were a kind of throwback to school days when you were very pompous and prescriptive about what you liked, and derisive towards non believers. It’s a testimony to the power of the music that they could take me to the raw state of the younger man.

I took it personally that they didn’t hit the mainstream commercial base. At least two of the three albums they made deserved quadruple platinum status. Hot Shots II and Heroes to Zeros are permanently lodged very high in my top one hundred albums of all time.

So, the return of the Beta Band has me moving into the same mode of immature, adolescent anticipation. Everyone should have the Beta Band albums and EP’s in their collection. It still kind of annoys me - in fact it bugs the shit out of me - that most of them don’t.

And that really is something. 

TRACK LISTING

A1 Dry The Rain
A2 I Know
A3 B + A
B1 Dogs Got A Bone
B2 Inner Meet Me
B3 The House Song
C1 The Monolith
C2 She's The One
D1 Push It Out
D2 It's Over
D3 Dr. Baker
D4 Needles In My Eyes 

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

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Reissue of the 1983's classic "Messages From The Stars" by British Electronic Funk outfit, The RAH Band.

Released in 1983, "Messages From The Stars" by The RAH Band—AKA multi-instrumentalist and producer Richard Anthony Hewson—emerged as a modest club hit, peaking at number 42 on the UK charts. Four decades later, the song has been rediscovered and revered as a cult classic, transcending time and generations. This reissue celebrates The RAH Band’s pioneering sound and the track’s unexpected rise from obscurity to international acclaim, largely thanks to devoted selectors and fans who never let it fade away.

Created on a Roland SH5 synthesizer in Hewson’s home studio, the track’s iconic vocals, spontaneously delivered with playful innocence by Hewson’s then-wife Liz, proved to be a masterstroke, with her warm, conversational tone giving the track an authentic charm. The interstellar lyrics, cosmic synth-line and funky bassline combined are addictively catchy, undoubtedly contributing to the track's success as a crossover boogie-funk classic.

The RAH Band’s resurgence owes much to DJs like DāM-FunK and Martin Iveson (Atjazz), who introduced "Messages" to new audiences in the ‘90s and ‘00s. DāM-FunK recalls discovering the track in the late '90s and making it the centrepiece of his sets, with crowds demanding repeat plays during his iconic Funkmosphere nights in Los Angeles. Fast-forward to 2019, “Messages” was selected as the opening track on pop superstar Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonded’ radio show and playlist, fuelling the track's viral explosion on TikTok in 2020 and sparking a relentless, enduring internet popularity that continues to this day.

Hewson, now in his eighties and residing quietly near the Sussex coast, continues to create music every day in his garage-turned-studio, using the original vintage gear that once brought "Messages From The Stars" to life. Enjoy this slice of space-disco history, where messages from the past have made their way to the present.

Hello, Do you read me?
I have a message
A message from the stars

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Totally essential for any disco / boogie lover. High quality reissue of the 1983's classic "Messages From The Stars" by British electronic funk outfit, The RAH Band.

TRACK LISTING

Messages From The Stars (Long Wave Mix)
Messages From The Stars (Astro Mix)
Messages From The Stars (Short Wave Mix)

Dive into the cosmic grooves of Nebulous, the 8th album by UK's most enigmatic library music composer, to be released on digital and vinyl in January 2025. This 9-track odyssey takes The Natural Yogurt Band’s signature sound to an even richer galaxy with keyboardist Huw Rees aka The Oracle, who adds warped organs and electric pianos over gritty drum breaks and electric pulses, echoing the raw energy of space's farthest reaches—ideal for jazz heads seeking a unique listening experience.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: More from the singular psychedelic jazzers Natural Yoghurt Band. Rolling out their own peculiar blend of library-informed, instrumental grooves. There's elements of exotic and lounge amonst the lysergic jams.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Projections
A2. Altered States
A3. Bio Morphic Patterns
A4. Messages
A5. Nebulous

B1. Perception
B2. Poly Morph
B3. Existence
B4. Dimensions

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

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Electric on the Eel: August 29th, 1987 brings the first Eel River show to vinyl. Co-produced by Bill Graham Presents and the Hog Farm, this show lent an air of familiarity not always present in the urban setting Jerry usually played in. With their quintessential band in tow – Gloria Jones, John Kahn, David Kemper, Jacklyn LaBranch, and Melvin Seals – fans traveled across the country to see JGB in the heart of the Emerald Triangle. Limited edition of 4,000 pressed on Orange Sunshine vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)
2. Forever Young
3. Get Out Of My Life Woman

Side B
1. Run For The Roses
2. And It Stoned Me
3. My Sisters And Brothers

Side C
1. Deal
2. The Harder They Come

Side D
1. I Shall Be Released
2. Think
3. Evangeline

Side E
1. Gomorrah
2. Let It Rock

Side F
1. That Lucky Old Sun
2. Tangled Up In Blue

Sourcing rare records to reissue can involve meticulous research and years of digging, but then occasionally, Lady Luck smiles upon you

We probably would have never heard of the Medium Wave Band if Gary from Mr Bongo hadn't known Wolverhampton-based record dealer, Steve Ward. Whilst offering Gary some records for sale, he remembered he had a spare copy of an old 7" single that he thought Gary might like. Steve didn't know much about the release, and it had never sold on Discogs. Looking at the record itself, it was minimalist in appearance and information, there wasn't much to go on other than that it was from the Birmingham area. The mystery drew us in...

The A-side, 'So Tender', is a late-night, jazzy slow-jam, with beautifully sultry, soulful female vocals which sounded vaguely familiar. On listening to the B side, 'Games (Instrumental)', you are rewarded with a superb example of Britfunk / independent UK jazz- funk . The pulsating, bass- led dancefloor groove and sensibility is a sound reminiscent of productions usually found on labels such as Elite, but the 7" was not released on a label, it was a private press by the band themselves. So who are the enigmatic The Medium Wave Band?

After some fruitful internet digging and correspondence, we got the answers. The band lineup featured Elliot Browne on guitar (lead & rhythm), Ron Lyseight on guitar (rhythm), Andrew Proverbs on keyboards, Tony Peart on drums, Paul Snook on bass, Linton Levy on saxophone, and surprisingly, the beautiful vocals we had been enjoying were those of Jackie Graham, aka the hugely successful UK vocalist, Jaki Graham . Maybe best known for her pop hit with David Grant, 'Could It Be I'm Falling In Love', but also featuring on the cult classic track 'Fire In My Heart' by Escape From New York.

Influenced by artists and bands including George Benson , Ronnie Laws , Weather Report, George Duke, Azimuth and Chick Corea to name a few, the guys booked into a studio near the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham and recorded the two tracks that make up this 7". Only 200 copies of the original 7" were ever pressed and were sold mostly in Birmingham at Summit Records by the band's friend DJ Frenchi, as well as at live shows. Despite its limited distribution channels, the record received solid support from fans and those in the music industry, including Morgan Khan of the influential record label, Street Sounds. DJ and journalist, Lindsay Wesker, reviewed the release and this led to the band travelling to London for several radio interviews. They played live shows across the country, including at the prestigious Ronnie Scott's in London, and supported both Shakatak and Weapon of Peace in Birmingham.

Thanks to all those involved bringing this release into fruition and for solving the mystery behind a wonderful Britfunk and UK soul record that could have otherwise been lost in the mists of time.

TRACK LISTING

So Tender
Games (Instrumental)

A trio of Kansas City soul sweepers, from the sprawling midwest burg’s storied Cavern, Damon, and Forte concerns. Bump and the Soul Stompers’ 1970 sweet soul double sider 'I Can Remember' was a tail pipe-dragging, low rider classic in the making, had it ever been released. A few years later Jerald “Bump” Scott took his new group to Cavern’s subterranean confines to cut the group harmony masterpiece 'Living In The Past', but remained unissued prior to Numero’s discovery of the Cavern tapes. As disco was cresting at the top of the next decade, Sharon Revoal tracked her James Brown meets James Bond stepper 'Reaching For Our Star' - the last 45 released on Marva Whitney’s peerless Forte label.

TRACK LISTING

1. Strange Happenings
2. Living In The Past

Deluxe Box Set Features 417 Previously Unreleased Performances, Newly-Mixed Recordings And Liner Notes by Elizabeth Nelson.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s return to touring that in 1974. Featuring all professionally recorded shows from the artist’s 1974 performances backed by The Band, the collection will be available as a deluxe box set across 27 CDs. The 1974 Live Recordings offers fans 417 previously-unreleased Bob Dylan live tracks – including 133 recordings newly mixed from 16-track tape, and every single surviving soundboard recording – along with new liner notes by journalist and critic Elizabeth Nelson.

The ethereal third album from Texas’s slowcore first wavers. A lethargic, sparse, and autumnal album, 'The Golden Band' is where The American Analog Set developed the courage to drive 40 KPH on the autobahn. Issued on Emperor Jones in 1999, this 25th anniversary Numero edition has been remastered from the original tapes and flawlessly reproduced in a gorgeous tip on sleeve. When are you quitting the scene?

TRACK LISTING

1. Weather Report
2. Good Friend Is Always Around
3. It's All About Us
4. A Schoolboy's Charm
5. The Wait
6. New Drifters I
7. New Drifters II
8. New Drifters III
9. New Drifters IV
10. Golden Band
11. I Must Soon Quit The Scene
12. Will The Real Danny Radnor Please Stand?

JKriv’s long out-of-press Bukom Mashie Rework gets a king-size reboot in this tasty 7 Inch package with a fresh new acid dub! J’s original 8 min opus is nipped and tucked in all the right places to make for a streamlined A-side stomper, and a brand new version on the flip, with a tastefully reimagined arrangement, punctuated with spicy 303 acid lines and live flute performed by the inimitable Domenica (of Underground System). Big summer banger alert!

TRACK LISTING

A1. JKriv 7 Inch Mash
B1. JKriv Acid Dub Feat. Domenica

"At the frayed bottom-edge of Indiana – just a moderate bike ride north of Louisville, Kentucky – multi-instrumentalist, artist and songwriter Ryan Davis’’ Americana-noir soundwaves have been emanating for years in a myriad of forms. As driving force for the lauded State Champion, long-running member of Tropical Trash, administrator of the esoteric and excellent Cropped Out festival, and lone proprietor of the Sophomore Lounge label, Davis lays down his first proper ‘solo’ release with Dancing On The Edge, a rich, 2LP tapestry of tunes that absolutely glows over seven expansive cuts. It’s a pure collage of modernity and heritage.

After a period of introspection spent re-immersing himself in his drawing & painting practice, as well as his newfound delvings into instrumental music, Davis’ sea change was imminent. “I wasn't sure I would ever make another record of ‘song’ songs,” he says, “but last year I started writing again and it eventually took the shape of the record at hand. I worked painstakingly hard on the material. It felt virtually impossible to complete for a bulk of the time I spent trying to enter into it, but the process pulled me out of a strange place. I was eventually able to live inside of the songs enough to understand the world within them – to ultimately help shape them into what I understood them to be.” Indeed, there’s a load of inspiration captured in the grooves with Ryan’s unfiltered, folk-traditioned approach to poetic twists-of-tongue meeting head on with sublime instrumentation.

TRACK LISTING

1. Free From The Guillotine (08:22)
2. Learn 2 Re-Luv (06:03)
3. Flashes Of Orange (09:56)
4. Bluebirds In A Fight (07:07)
5. Junk Drawer Heart (06:25)
6. A Suitable Exit (09:20)
7. Bluebirds Revisited (03:57)

62 years of music, loves, losses, long summer days and longer, darker nights are vividly recalled by ‘our greatest living songwriter’, Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band as he plays out flickering scenes from his life on new album, Loophole.

12 evocative and autobiographical songs to be accompanied by the written word as Michael Head prepares his memoirs for release with an autobiography with Nine Eight Books. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Dear Scott's mellower sibling picks up where our record of the year left off, with the stunning Shirl's Ghost, and meanders beautifully through Mick's usual magical worlds before ending on his ages old, but hitherto not recorded, lost classic, Coda. Mick's only gone and smashed it again. As the maestro himself would undoubtedly say: Is Right!

TRACK LISTING

1 Shirl's Ghost
2 Ambrosia
3 Ciao Ciao Bambino
4 Tout Suite!
5 The Human Race
6 You Smiled At Me
7 A Ricochet Moment
8 Connemara
9 Merry-Go-Round
10 You're A Long Time Dead
11 Naturally It's You
12 Coda

7" - Exclusive To Dinked Edition
Side A
1. Connemara - Acoustic (Live From Hebden Bridge)
Side B
2. Tour Suite! (Live Acoustic From Hebden Bridge)

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 22ND.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 22ND.

The Stanford Family Band release their debut EP "For Your Listening Pleasure". Fronted by the captivating lead vocals of Elliot Stanford, the EP's six songs capture a vintage pop aura whilst retaining a fresh indie and garage rock edge.

Offering a sound which journeys through bittersweet memories, nostalgia, and the warmth of sunlit days, The Stanford Family Band have started to make a name for their unique sonic approach - drawing inspiration from iconic acts such as The Beach Boys and The Modern Lovers, built around complex four-part harmonies and irresistibly memorable melodic hooks.

Speaking about the EP, Elliot Stanford (lead vocals, piano, guitar and songwriter) said: "When we were first signing with Goo, we really had no idea what we would release or how it would end up looking. We have a lot of songs, old and new, some of which have been floating around for many years. In the end we just really wanted to put out a body of work that really encapsulates everything we are about! We love big dramatic songs and arrangements, but at the same time, a little cheeky country/garage rock beat has always tickled us so we just really wanted to capture everything that we love in one concise record. It’s been an absolute pleasure to work on this with our friend Harry Hayes (Producer) and we are mega proud of how it all came together!"

Having already garnered tastemaker press coverage and a whole host of radio play, The Stanford Family Band have quickly started to gain critical acclaim. This EP showcases the outfit’s uncanny ability as songwriters, creating memorable, charming and beautifully constructed melodic tracks.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Your Chair
A2. Make My Day
A3. Sweep The Floor

Side B
B1. Love Me A Bit
B2. Nothing Like Something
B3. On My Holiday

Band Of Nowhere is a new constellation project by Juanjo Sánchez, together with other collaborators with whom he had previously worked. It is worth mentioning Bob Drake on drums, former member of the legendary formation Thinking Plague (also on Hail, 5UU's, The Science Group) who has also mastered the project from their studio in the Midi-Pyrénées and also to mention the guitarist Jordi Cabayol (Camino al Desván) both Juanjo and Jordi began their career in a significant band of Barcelona of the early eighties, such as Entr'acte.

The becoming of Juanjo Sánchez would take him to other latitudes as a member of Alondra Satori and without losing the lighthouse of his city, he would collaborate with other outstanding musicians such as Quicu Samsó (Koniec, Macromassa).

The fluidity and chromaticism of his previous album Gonza Magilla is still perceived in here, but in a much more electrified way with guitars that are sometimes expansive, other times exuberant wrapped up with contagious synthesizer modulations and very marked rhythms. The production and especially the arrangements are fantastic with those special presences of synthesizers that are not common around here.

Its original improvisation and experimentation is skilfully adjusted by Juanjo Sánchez, giving a much more playful result with unexpected combinations, very much in continuity with a certain European Art Rock such as Aksak Maboul, Etron Fou, Zamla,The Work or the mischievous resonances of The League of Gentlemen; all this mapping the sound transit, to an unpredictable and vibrant non-place.

Housed in it's original hand made artwork with the little upgrade twist of silk-screen printing textured grey cardboard and including a insert colour with photos and text provided by Juanjo Sánchez.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Calling All Beginners
Fleeing To The Poles
Ashes
Rouler Ma Bosse
Sunday Machinery

SIDE B
Lucid Dreams
Twisted Maze
Rolla Bolla
Chinese Forecast

In the early '60s, four friends from Liverpool formed a band. But this is not the 'fab four' story we know . .

Mary, Sylvia, Valerie and Pamela - also known as The Liverbirds - were one of the world's first all-female rock'n'roll bands. At an early gig, backstage at the Cavern Club, a young John Lennon told them that 'girls don't play guitars'.

But they took that as a challenge. Despite the early scepticism, they won over tough crowds, toured stadiums, recorded two hit albums, and played with the Kinks, Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry - all in the space of just five years. Now, the two surviving members of the band tell their incredible story in full for the first time - capturing a lost era of liberation and rock'n'roll, as they thrived in the vibrant Merseybeat music scene and formed a friendship that has endured through the decades.

Dave Matthews Band’s first album in four years, largely written throughout the pandemic, is as much a reflection on the current times as an urge to find common ground. The twelve-track album was recorded with producer Rob Evans in studios throughout Seattle, Charlottesville, and Los Angeles. “Monsters” was produced by longtime collaborator John Alagia. “'Walk Around The Moon' touches on my children, the futility of our struggles as a human race, gun violence, love, modern political discourse, gratitude.” - Dave Matthews

TRACK LISTING

1. Walk Around The Moon
2. Madman’s Eyes
3. Looking For A Vein
4. The Ocean And The Butterfly
5. It Could Happen
6. Something To Tell My Baby
7. After Everything
8. All You Wanted Was Tomorrow
9. The Only Thing
10. Break Free
11. Monsters
12. Singing From The Windows

The long awaited official reissue of ‘She Wants’, one of the first UK street soul singles originally released in 1985 by The NM Band.

The NM Band was an alias for UK lovers' rock band Natural Mystic, responsible for a number of hits in the late 70’s and early 80’s most notably ‘Runaway Love’ and ‘Groove Rocking’. They released a string of acclaimed reggae LPs and toured extensively throughout the UK, but by 1985 wanted to try something away from their trademark roots reggae sound. Influenced by the availability of affordable hardware the band set about fusing reggae and soul using an Akai drum machine, Yamaha DX7 and Roland sound module. ‘She Wants’ is one of the forebearers of UK street soul, raw machine drums paired with an incredibly soulful vocal from Ashley Sommers. The band created their own imprint Mixdown to release the single, but it slipped under the radar, despite strong radio play from Choice FM and the then pirate station Kiss. The 12” is backed with dub version ‘She Wants (More)'.

A 140gram pressing in 3mm spine black disco sleeve with metallic sticker designed by Bradley Pinkerton.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Phwwoooarr! Isle Of Jura really know how to treat us. Unearthing and repressing this absolute GEM of a street soul jam from The NM Band. Rich with the duo's reggae heritage but exercising those (then modern) drum machines and FM synths with all the excitement that new equipment brings! A true holy grail.

TRACK LISTING

She Wants
She Wants More

The highly sought-after Japanese disco funk soundtrack from 1977 featuring the cream of the Tokyo scene gets officially reissued for the first time outside of Japan. The ‘imaginary’ soundtrack to the adventures Of Kindaichi Kosuke, the cult detective book series by writer Seishi Yokomizo is on many DJ want-lists. Arranged by soundtrack master Kentaro Haneda and featuring a mysterious group of the best 70s Japanese Funk musicians, the album is pure undiluted Disco Funk. This reissue is the album's first official release outside of Japan. Remastered from the original tapes, it features artwork by renowned illustrator Ichibun Sugimoto, OBI strip and a 4 page insert with a new introduction by Anton Spice Writer Seishi Yokomizo is an institution in Japan. He could be compared to Agatha Christie with his series of novels based on the adventures of detective Kosuke Kindaichi. The fictional character was born in 1946 with Yokomizo's first novel in the series and solved mysteries until the late 70s under Yokomizo's pen before the death of the writer in 1981. Kindaichi is a peculiar character. He is a sort of goofy, yet scrupulous detective, not dissimilar to Columbo, and has become legendary in Japan over the decades. Yokomizo's novels have been a prime source for film and TV scenarios, so when, in 1977, Japanese label King Records decided to record a concept album based on the Kindaichi novels, it made complete sense. The writer was slightly surprised though. As he wrote on the back of the LP sleeve "When I first heard an album was being made based on my novels, I felt very strange. I could understand if my novels were turned into films and then soundtracks were recorded based on these films. But this time, the music created was directly inspired by my novels. I felt very intrigued, yet very excited." The concept album was arranged by pianist Kentaro Haneda, a key TV and film composer who has worked on many anime films and is also famous outside of Japan for composing the music for the video game 'Wizardry'.

For "The Adventures Of Kindaichi Kosuke" album, he assembled a supergroup of some of the best Tokyo funk and City Pop musicians. The long list includes jazz pianist Hideo Ichikawa who played on the 1971 'Joe Henderson In Japan' album, Jun Moriya (ds), who is on Joe Hisaichi's cult 'Wonder City Orchestra' album, Tadaomi Anai (perc) who played with Disco singer Eri Ohno, Koji Hadori (tpt) who's featured on Haruomi Hosono's "Pacific" album. Also present on the album are Takeru Muraoka (sax) who plays on many Tatsuro Yamashita cult albums including "For You" and "Spacy", Kimiko Yamauchi (koto) who's on Akiko Yano's landmark "Japanese Girl" and, last but not least, Koji Yamaguchi (fr horn) who plays on Yazuaki Shimizu's "Kakashi" album Together they lay the funk on ten instrumentals filled with pur disco and funk breakbeats, making the album one of the highly-coveted Japanese LPs on international cratedigger scene. This reissue which Wewantsounds is delighted to officially put back on the market, features OBI strip and a four page insert faithfully reproduces the original artwork plus audio remastered from the original tapes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Kindaichi Kosuke No Theme
2. Yatsuhakamura
3. Kamen Butoukai
4. Honjin Satsujin Jiken
5. Gokumontou
6. Akuma No Temariuta
7. Meirosou No Sangeki
8. Akuma Ga Kitarite Fue Wo Fuku
9. Mitsukubitou
10. Inugamike No Ichizoku

Scott Hepple and the Sun Band are a Psychedelic Rock Band from Newcastle, UK. The band favours a 60's/70's sound, with influences including Neil Young, Black Sabbath, The Beatles and Ty Segall.

Debut album 'Ashes to Wildflowers' was recorded analogue with Maximo Park's Duncan Lloyd, and was mastered by the renowned Chicago-based engineer Carl Saff (Sonic Youth, Ty Segall, J Mascis).

"The album's main theme of reincarnation goes hand in hand with the production" Scott says. "I wanted to produce the overdriven raw analogue sound that was rife in the late 60's/early 70s, which is where I take alot of my inspiration from".

The first single 'Letting Go' was released in January, followed by 'Nobody Else (Is Gonna Do It For You)' in April. On the run up to their headline UK and European album tour in Autumn/Winter, the band are supporting acts such as Love, Teke Teke, Nice Biscuit, GIFT and Ghost Woman. In June 2023, they performed at Third Man Records in London.

TRACK LISTING

1. Letting Go
2. Warm Night
3. Nobody Else (Is Gonna Do It For You)
4. Caligula
5. Leisure Cruise
6. Spirit Animal
7. Hair Of The Dog
8. Wildfires
9. Chosen

Frontier’s Edge is the new EP by the fiery, energetic and genre-defying group The Budos Band.

After a two-decade run with the legendary Daptone Records, Frontier’s Edge is the first new music from the group on the new label, Diamond West Records — run by The Budos’ saxophonist Jared Tankel and guitarist Tom Brenneck.

The Budos Band’s departure from Daptone was on good terms; the split from their long-time home base was an organic result of the band’s evolution.

“It’s just a natural growth,” Brenneck says, admitting: “We’re going further away from the sound of Daptone and into territory they probably wanted to stay away from.”

As a result, Frontier’s Edge finds the group hungry, passionate and primed to charge into their next epoch newfound sense autonomy within the collective. “We’re a powerhouse in the studio; we can produce ourselves,” Brenneck says proudly of a long process of self-containment. “I take the helm, but the band, they know what they want.” As expected from The Budos Band, Frontier’s Edge resists analysis; it represents the band as they are: a contained explosion. You don’t pick apart Frontier’s Edge; you feel it all at once.

“Somehow, we wrote six songs in two days,” says The Budos’ drummer, Brian Profilio. “Tom was able to take what we were doing and put it together in a cohesive manner.”

Whether this is your first rodeo with The Budos Band or you’ve been following them throughout their two-decade run, Frontier’s Edge contains their musical universe Afrobeat, Ethiopian music, proto-metal, any number of other streams in microcosm.

Dime the volume and behold The Budos.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Tasty little EP from The Budos Band, 'Frontier's Edge' has everything you'd come to expect from these genre-wizards. A little bit of jazz, some desert psych and plenty of tasteful improvisation, this is definitely worth checking out!

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Frontier’s Edge
2. Devil Doesn’t Care
3. KRITN
SIDE B
4. Crescent Blade
5. A Passage To Ashinol
6. Curled Steel

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

The seminal album from Half Japanese back on Limited edition Orange vinyl and featuring updated artwork and liner notes from Jad Fair and producer Kramer. This is the Zen of Half Japanese, of prolific songwriter Jad Fair; wide-eyed crooner, humorous raconteur and spontaneous storyteller. A genre-bending romp through the mind of the man, originally released in 1989 in a purple patch for the group, preceded by "Music To Strip By" and "Charmed Life". "Half Japanese were a song machine," attested Pitchfork, while AllMusic saw this album as a collection of "humorous lo-fi rock'n'roll hit singles."

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

2-LP set of legendary Scottish rockers Travis’ entire performance of The Invisible Band captured at the final night of the 20th Anniversary tour in their hometown concert of Glasgow in May 2022. Pressed on 180-gram clear vinyl and housed in a gatefold jacket featuring exclusive photography from the tour.

Another two deepfunk/soul tracks from Benjamin Robinson of Coco and Ben fame's tape archive. You might be forgiven for thinking is 45 is unreleased, but there is only enough copies of the original small hole pressing out there to count on one hand.

'Thumping For You' is a hypnotic floaty soulful funk banger with that catchy guitar that reminds you right away of the Coco and Ben connection, and the loose vibe just hits the dancefloor.

Brandon's song keeps the hypnotic loose vibe going for the flip, I can see me late night dancing to this one outside in the hills this summer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Thumping For You
2. Brandon's Song

In the last decade many early recordings of Somalia's Funk, Soul and Disco scene have been reissued, finding their way into the vinyl collections of music fans outside the Somali community, as well as radio and streaming playlists. But this record is different. 'The Berlin Session' by Dur-Dur Band Int. is not a reissue; it is the first new studio recording by a full group from Somalia since the country's golden era of music ended three decades ago. 'The Berlin Session' captures a historic reunion which took place in Germany's capital in 2019: Dur-Dur Band Int. together with legendary singers Xabiib Sharaabi (who lives in exile in Sweden), Cabdinuur Alaale (from Djibouti) and London-based Fadumina Hilowle. Previously heard on reissues such as the Grammy-nominated compilation 'Sweet As Broken Dates', these are living representatives of a distinct era. There may be over three decades between the original and new recordings but 'The Berlin Session' is proof that Somali music is hot, funky and alive - again.

TRACK LISTING

Wanka Helaa
Riyo
Hasha Geel
Heeyaa
Duurka
Love My Love
Sallal
Jija Love

Liverpool legend Michael Head (Shack, The Strands, Pale Fountains) returns with a stunningly beautiful double A-side single. "Velvets In The Dark" is a gorgeous conversational swooner in the style of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talking", whilst the flip, "Koala Bears" has an almost jazzy flavour and slips into (Bacharach and David's) "Close To You" as made famous by The Carpenters! Strange, inspired magic from a bygone time, these two tracks perfectly complement one another: two evocative little stories done justice by the prettiest finger-picking, warmest horns and the classiest of arrangements. All in all, a little gem.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: This is a beautiful, stand alone single, unavailable anywhere else and a good old fashioned double A side too. Both songs are absolutely beautiful but then that's a given where Mick is concerned.

THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2022.

PICCADILLY RECORDS EXCLUSIVE: 
For a limited period only, buy either the CD or vinyl you’ll get an exclusive 14 track CD bonus disc, 'Live At Strathaven'.

Finding that luck, love and letting things roll works out for him just fine, Michael Head leads his Red Elastic Band into a fresh chapter with optimism and some of the best music of his career, releases his, Bill Ryder-Jones-produced album, Dear Scott.  

Revered by heavyweight songwriting peers and discovered by new generations of discerning listeners, all enraptured by the fruits of Head’s winding, 40-year career, the Liverpool singer-songwriter enters a new age of creativity and collaboration with Dear Scott. Promising to be a shimmering jewel cast by the minds and hearts of Merseyside’s finest musicians, the 12-track album is dusted with both Ryder-Jones’ artistry and the heavyweight musicianship of The Red Elastic Band, which Head found had ‘stepped up’ following almost a year apart, forcing him to dig deeper himself.

Of slipping back into writing and recording in 2021, Head continues: “After being apart for a while, I went for a walk on the beach with the band and it was beautiful, literally and personally. Rehearsals followed and it clicked into place, with one thing leading to the next. It’s very much the ethos we’re working by, keeping things simple, but keeping the momentum. I’d met Bill a few times and he’s a lovely guy. Once we knew he was interested in producing the album we didn’t need to think about it again, it just progressed and became a completely natural thing.”

Dear Scott refers to novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose debt-ridden, down-and-out years captured the imagination of Head, specifically a postcard Fitzgerald addressed to himself upon checking in at Hollywood’s infamous Golden Age retreat, The Garden Of Allah Hotel. Head explains: “A decade after being the king of the jazz age, Fitzgerald arrived unfashionable and sober, ready to conquer Hollywood. His agent with a sense of humour booked him into The Garden Of Allah, where writers, movie stars and even Stravinsky sometimes lived. He famously picked up a postcard on checking in and addressed it to himself.”

The postcard read: Dear Scott, How are you? Have been meaning to come and see you. I have living at the Garden Of Allah. Yours Scott Fitzgerald

Head states that the formation of The Red Elastic Band in 2008 began with ‘whoever was available at the time’, primarily as a vehicle for live performance, producing one, previous album in 2017’s Adiós Señor Pussycat. The band has since developed into a cohesive, mutually-supportive and permanent line-up, with Phil Murphy on drums, Tom Powell on bass, Danny Murphy on guitars and Nathaniel Cummins on guitars and backing vocals being the musicians taking on the world in 2022 alongside Head. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Dear Scott is a masterpiece. Twelve perfect songs with melodies to die for and words that feel like scenes from a film condensed into poetry. Michael Head is the Liverpudlian genius renowned for his classic pop songs from “Thank You” and “Jean’s Not Happening” through to “Comedy” and “Meant To Be”. Forty years making music and he’s just made his joint best LP, one that if you’re into guitar based pop music you’d be daft to ignore.

It’s not always been like this. In a career buffeted by personal problems and dodgy deals it has taken the arrival of erstwhile Coral guitarist Bill Ryder Jones, a fellow Merseysider and huge fan, to draw the very best out of Mick. Bill has helped create what feels like a greatest hits LP but made up of brand new songs. There’s jangling indie pop, jazz, mystical folk, roving psych pop and even a splash of bossa, taking us right back to Mick's days as a teen star in the Pale Fountains! As I mentioned, each track is a short story or mini movie touching on the kindness of strangers, old Hollywood dreams, the futility of war, Liverpool trips, Love from afar and even a murder in gangland made wild and funky on album highlight “Gino And Rico”.

The tunes themselves are proper ear worms and the album is designed as an old fashioned two sided listen. Side 1 has six perfect pop songs, hit after hit, but flip it over and you’re whisked off into what almost feels like a song suite, interspersed as they are with towering strings, mad interludes (each track has contrasting parts that surprise and amaze) and psych rock guitar; it’s bewildering but oh so beautiful and it grows and grows with every listen. The record starts off neat but slowly expands into the stratosphere only to end on a heavenly lullaby, melancholic and magical.

Mick’s other great album, Waterpistol, was loved by all at Piccadilly nearly 30 years ago. That we’re here again all these years later is bizarre and brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Kismet
A2 Broken Beauty
A3 The Next Day
A4 Freedom
A5 American Kid
A6 Grace And Eddie
B7 Fluke
B8 Gino And Rico
B9 The Grass
B10 The Ten
B11 Pretty Child
B12 Shirls Ghost 

Enriched with plenty of scene and period colour from British pop from the 1960s to the present, "Dreamworld" tells of all the ups and downs of a legend who once ironically (but quite rightly) described himself in an interview as the "Godfather of Indie Pop".

Love Record Stores Edition, limited to one per person.


Heavenly Recordings reissue of this hidden gem from Liverpool duo The Sand Band. Originally released in 2011 on Deltasonic, it's a collection of beautifully textured home studio recordings. Wonderful, warm, melodic songs for fans of Michael Head, Shack, The Coral.

Finding that luck, love and letting things roll works out for him just fine, Michael Head leads his Red Elastic Band into a fresh chapter with optimism and some of the best music of his career, releases his, Bill Ryder-Jones-produced album, Dear Scott.  

Revered by heavyweight songwriting peers and discovered by new generations of discerning listeners, all enraptured by the fruits of Head’s winding, 40-year career, the Liverpool singer-songwriter enters a new age of creativity and collaboration with Dear Scott. Promising to be a shimmering jewel cast by the minds and hearts of Merseyside’s finest musicians, the 12-track album is dusted with both Ryder-Jones’ artistry and the heavyweight musicianship of The Red Elastic Band, which Head found had ‘stepped up’ following almost a year apart, forcing him to dig deeper himself.

Of slipping back into writing and recording in 2021, Head continues: “After being apart for a while, I went for a walk on the beach with the band and it was beautiful, literally and personally. Rehearsals followed and it clicked into place, with one thing leading to the next. It’s very much the ethos we’re working by, keeping things simple, but keeping the momentum. I’d met Bill a few times and he’s a lovely guy. Once we knew he was interested in producing the album we didn’t need to think about it again, it just progressed and became a completely natural thing.”

Dear Scott refers to novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose debt-ridden, down-and-out years captured the imagination of Head, specifically a postcard Fitzgerald addressed to himself upon checking in at Hollywood’s infamous Golden Age retreat, The Garden Of Allah Hotel. Head explains: “A decade after being the king of the jazz age, Fitzgerald arrived unfashionable and sober, ready to conquer Hollywood. His agent with a sense of humour booked him into The Garden Of Allah, where writers, movie stars and even Stravinsky sometimes lived. He famously picked up a postcard on checking in and addressed it to himself.”

The postcard read: Dear Scott, How are you? Have been meaning to come and see you. I have living at the Garden Of Allah. Yours Scott Fitzgerald

Head states that the formation of The Red Elastic Band in 2008 began with ‘whoever was available at the time’, primarily as a vehicle for live performance, producing one, previous album in 2017’s Adiós Señor Pussycat. The band has since developed into a cohesive, mutually-supportive and permanent line-up, with Phil Murphy on drums, Tom Powell on bass, Danny Murphy on guitars and Nathaniel Cummins on guitars and backing vocals being the musicians taking on the world in 2022 alongside Head.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Kismet
A2 Broken Beauty
A3 The Next Day
A4 Freedom
A5 American Kid
A6 Grace And Eddie
B7 Fluke
B8 Gino And Rico
B9 The Grass
B10 The Ten
B11 Pretty Child
B12 Shirls Ghost 

Band on the Wall Recordings unveil its fourth release from The Singles Club, their 7" series supporting a selection of Manchester most exciting rising artists.

Following support from the likes of Jamie Cullum (BBCR2), Jazz FM & more, Manchester keyboardist, composer and producer Matt Wilde steps up with his debut physical release, having spent much of his early years laying the foundations of his musical development through workshops at Band on the Wall.

A truly feel-good slice of musical goodness centred around Matt's lyrical, virtuosic and jazz-leaning keys, 'Every Story / Pivot' delivers wondrous blends of hip-hop and jazz elements.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: More goodies from Band on the Wall label as they bring the fourth instalment in the series of Manchester artists, Matt Wilde provides the most easy going jazz I've heard in a while, it's laid back, harmonious and uplifting. I can't recommend this enough, go go go n listen right now.

TRACK LISTING

1. Every Story
2. Pivot

Recorded exactly two years after acclaimed visual artist and songwriter Terry Allen’s masterpiece Lubbock (on everything), the feral follow-up Smokin the Dummy is less conceptually focused but more sonically and stylistically unified than its predecessor it’s also rougher and rowdier, wilder and more wired, and altogether more menacingly rock and roll.

Following the 1973 Whitney Biennial, in which songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen and fellow iconic artist Horace Clifford “Cliff” Westermann both exhibited, Allen maintained a lively long-distance correspondence and exchange of artworks and music with Westermann, whose singular and highly influential art he admired enormously. In a February 1981 letter to his friend and mentor, written shortly after the late 1980 release of his third album Smokin the Dummy, while he and his family were living in Fresno, California, Terry explains the genesis of the album title: Westermann died shortly after receiving this letter, enclosed with a Smokin the Dummy LP, the minimalist black jacket of which Allen suggested that Cliff fold into a jaunty cardboard hat if he didn’t like the music. That response was unlikely, since Westermann loved Terry’s music, calling his debut record Juarez (1975) “the finest, most honest and heartfelt piece of music I ever heard.”

The Panhandle Mystery Band had only recently coalesced during those 1978 Lubbock sessions, Lloyd Maines’s first foray into production. Through 1979, they honed their sound and tightened their arrangements with a series of periodic performances beyond Allen’s regular art-world circuit, including memorable record release concerts in Lubbock, Chicago, L.A., and Kansas City. Terry sought to harness the high-octane power of this now well-oiled collective engine to overdrive his songs into rawer and rockier off-road territory.

His first album to share top billing with the Panhandle Mystery Band, Dummy documents a ferocious new band in fully telepathic, tornado-fueled flight, refining its caliber, increasing its range, and never looking down. Alongside the stalwart Maines brothers co-producer, guitarist, and all-rounder Lloyd, bassist Kenny, and drummer Donnie and mainstay Richard Bowden (who here contributes not only fiddle but also mandolin, cello, and “truck noise theory,” the big-rig doppler effect of Lloyd’s steel on “Roll Truck Roll”), new addition Jesse Taylor supplies blistering lead guitar, on loan from Joe Ely (who plays harmonica here). Jesse’s kinetic blues lines and penchant for extreme volume were instrumental in pushing these recordings into brisker tempos and tougher attitudes. Terry was feverish for several studio days, suffering from a bad flu and sweating through his

clothes, which partially explains the literally febrile edge to his performances, rendered largely in a perma-growl. (By this point, he was regularly breaking piano pedals with his heavy-booted stomp.) Like the album title itself, the songs on Smokin the Dummy ring various demented bells. The tracks rifle through Terry’s assorted

Obsessions especially the potential energy and escape of the open road, elevated here to an ecstatic, prayerful pitch and are populated by a cast of crooked characters: truckers, truck-stop waitresses, convicts, cokeheads, speed freaks, greasers, holy rollers, rodeo riders, dancehall cheaters, and sacrificial prairie dogs, sinners seeking some small reprieve, any fugitive moment of grace.

A reigning deity of a certain kind of country music since the mid-70s.
– The New York Times.

The kind of singular American artist who expresses the fundamental weirdness of his country. – The Wire.

TRACK LISTING

A1. The Heart Of California (for Lowell George)
A2. Cocaine Cowboy
A3. Whatever Happened To Jesus (and Maybeline)?
A4. Helena Montana
A5. Texas Tears
B1. Cajun Roll
B2. Feelin Easy
B3. The Night Café
B4. Roll Truck Roll
B5. Red Bird
B6. The Lubbock Tornado (I Don't Know)

On his manifold fourth album, acclaimed songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen contemplates kinship the ways sex and violence stitch and sever the ties of family, faith, and society with skewering satire and affection alike. Bloodlines compiles thematically related but disparate recordings from miscellaneous sources both theatrical and historical: two songs written for plays; two full-band reprises of selections from Juarez; the irreverent hellfire-hitchhiker-on-highway ballad “Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy” (featuring Joe Ely); and the poignant eponymous ode to the arteries of ancestry and landscape (the debut recording of eight year-old Natalie Maines, later covered by Lucinda Williams).

Since 1970, when they met in Allen’s studio in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, one of songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen’s great foils and friends was the sometimes cantankerous but always brilliant art critic and writer Dave Hickey, with whom he sparred on topics musical, visual, and beyond (and to whom this reissue is dedicated in memoriam, in the wake of his passing in 2021.) Hickey, a fellow Texan paddling against the currents of the hermetic New York centric art world, was an accomplished songwriter in his own right, and

he and Terry pushed each other to refine their respective practices. In 1983, the two were thick as thieves brothers in blood and Hickey’s wry but big-hearted presence haunts the history and periphery of Bloodlines, the album Terry released in June of that year.

Hickey’s commercial doubts notwithstanding, critical recognition was not in short demand. In a 1984 review of Bloodlines, the L.A. Herald Examiner called Allen “one of the most compelling American songwriters working today … making the most unique art-pop of our time,” elsewhere comparing him not only to Moon Mullican and Jerry Lee Lewis, but also to the Velvet Underground and Philip Glass (probably the first time that unlikely quartet ever appeared together in one sentence). In 1983, against all odds, such sentiments were growing in underground prominence, as Allen’s records gained a fanatical word-of-mouth following they weren’t easy to find in those days.

Recorded piecemeal at Caldwell Studios in Lubbock, in sessions spanning August 1982 through January 1983, Terry self-released it, like all his previous records, on his own Fate Records imprint. Despite his frustration with the protracted timeline and some anxiety about the correspondingly higher budget, the production on Bloodlines courtesy, once again, of master guitarist Lloyd Maines is slicker, cleaner, and more dynamic than prior efforts, and it reached a broader audience than ever before. UK label Making Waves reissued it in 1985, facilitating semi-reliable European distribution for the first time as well as a 1986 UK tour, on which the great BJ Cole filled in for Lloyd on pedal steel.

No veteran country songwriter sounds more attuned to the national mood. His songs still feel like little guidebooks for staring down a harsh universe.
– The Washington Post

It has always been a fool’s errand to frame Allen in terms of other artists there was nobody like him before he showed up, and the subsequent 40 years have been equally light on plausible peers. – Uncut

TRACK LISTING

A1. Bloodlines (I)
A2. Gimme A Ride To Heaven Boy
A3. Cantina Carlotta
A4. Ourland A5. Oh Hally Lou
B1. Oh What A Dangerous Life
B2. Manhattan Bluebird
B3. There Oughta Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California
B4. Bloodlines (II)

Finding each other amidst the more soulful side of the Manchester club scene, Lovescene can do it all. Able to both go big – as show-stopping early performances at Manchester International Festival and We Out Here Festival proved – and revel in the heady after-hours of the likes of Salford underground hub The White Hotel, new Band on the Wall-released 7” is a devastating encapsulation of the collective’s multiple personalities.

Suits You/Overnight (Dancefloor Mix) comes out hot on the announcement of the group’s debut album out in the Spring and is an irresistibly rich mix of velvet RnB, groove-laden soul and driving floor filler. The group deliver both in widescreen opulence, a direct link to their name which comes from band leader and vocalist Pop Roberts’ love of cinema.

“Good song writing should affect the viewer/listener in the same way a classic scene in a film should - the details in tone, wording and the emotion of the performance are everything” she says. “We’ll always strive to capture that in our music.”

Suits You adds to the canon of RnB torch ballads in its lament over unrequited love. It sees Roberts’ vocal soar high over gently rolling percussion, murmuring low-end and comparatively bolder guitars and keys that pull the track between hushed sadness to more heart-rending grief.

Flip side Overnight (Dancefloor Mix) sees Dub Phizix pop up with a guest engineer spot as the hook from the group’s original 2020 tune turns into a sultry, house-inflected party starter. “I played it at a few parties and the response was so good it just made sense to give it over to the dancefloors!” Roberts says. “We were even more pleased that Dub Phizix was up for mix engineering it - he's the king of beats and we respect his exceptional ears and advice.”

The split is the third release on the Band on the Wall 7” series, and a tantalisingly glimpse of one of Manchester’s most exciting new groups.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Suits You
B1. Overnight

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of The Band’s fourth studio album, ‘Cahoots’. On December 3, Capitol/UMe will release the newly remixed and remastered album in variety of formats to celebrate this iconic and influential album.

‘Cahoots’ was the fourth studio album, and last album of original material for four years.

The front cover painted by New York artist/illustrator Gilbert Stone Back cover features a photograph portrait of the group by Richard Avedon.
Features guest vocals from Van Morrison (on “4% Pantomime”)

TRACK LISTING

Life Is A Carnival
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Last Of The Blacksmiths
Where Do We Go From Here?
4% Pantomime
Shoot Out In Chinatown
The Moon Struck One
Thinkin’ Out Loud
Smoke Signal
Volcano
The River Hymn

Strut present the 1973 Egyptian jazz classic, 'Egypt Strut' by Salah Ragab and Cairo Jazz Band.

Inspired by a concert in Cairo by Randy Weston in 1967 encouraging PanAfrican unity, drummer Ragab, Eduard “Edu” Vizvari, a Czech jazz musician, and Hartmut Geerken of Goethe Institut vowed to create Egypt's first jazz big band. Following the Arab-Israeli war, Ragab became a Major in the Egyptian army and had unparalleled access to the military's 3000 musicians spanning Upper and Lower Egypt, along with a wide range of instruments. Part of the barracks were christened the Jazz House and, following a crash course in jazz history by Geerken, the Cairo Jazz Band was born, playing their first concert at Ewart Memorial Hall at the American University in 1969. Further inspired by Sun Ra & His Arkestra's first visit to Egypt in 1971, Ragab recorded an album for the Egyptian Ministry Of Culture a year later, entitled ‘Egyptian Jazz’, later released as 'Egypt Strut', a perfect fusion of jazz with Arabic modes with tracks referencing Islamic festivals, Egyptian landmarks and friends and family dear to Ragab. The Wire’s Francis Gooding summarises the album as “esoteric African American Egyptianism and radically spiritualised modal jazz taken up by Ragab as the tool for a form of mystical Egyptian nationalism – a triumphalist military jazz, angled in Ra-like fashion towards the Gods of the New Kingdom.”

The vinyl album is released in its original Prism Music Unit artwork and is packaged with the original house bag designs. CD version includes extra unreleased tracks and a 24 page booklet featuring unseen photos and extensive liner notes by Francis Gooding (The Wire).

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Oriental Mood
A2. Dawn
A3. Mervat
Side B
B1. Ramadan In Space Time
B2. Kleopatra
B3. Neveen

The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were recorded at the September 1979 MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy) benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE 1
1. Prove It All Night
2. Badlands
3. The Promised Land
4. The River

SIDE 2
5. Sherry Darling
6. Thunder Road
7. Jungleland

SIDE 3
8. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
9. Born To Run
10. Stay

SIDE 4
11. Detroit Medley
12. Quarter To Three
13. Rave On

Band on the Wall's latest 7" release is from producer, musician & DJ Contours. Known for applying his own percussive dexterity, his sound is placed within the intersection of House, Jazz, Broken-Beat and percussive experimentation. Double A-side 'The Programme / Conga Quinto (Dub)' is the latest in an ongoing sonic evolution for Contours, having released music on labels including Rhythm Section, Tru-Thoughts, Anma Records, in turn receiving praise from the likes of Gilles Peterson, Mr Scruff, Alex Nut and Bradley Zero.

The Programme is a woozy mix of sunset synths, squelchy bass, crisp propulsive hi-hats and snare-led rhythms. The sound has a depth you can sink into, yet the skittering beats add levity and a club-leaning energy to the track. Conga Quinto (Dub) shares a similarly twilight plane. This time it draws on the Latin aspect of Contours' influences, with the titular congos offering a loose, earthy foundation into which Burford inserts the track's jutting melodies and sharp interjections of sound.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Just what we needed in the shop, Contours hazy deep-house beats with jazz intertwined is refreshingly new. We are loving Band On the Walls releases from the series The Singles Club. Hot stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Programme
2. Conga Quinto (Dub Version)

Band on the Wall Recordings is excited to present the first release from The Singles Club; a body of new work for 2021 that celebrates the artistic practice and far-reaching talents of one of its favourite artists and one of the hardest working musicians to grace the Band on the Wall stage.

Second year participant of Gilles Peterson’s Future Bubblers scheme and rising vocal talent, Mali Hayes is a jazzy-nu-R&B type neo soul artist, who has received personal endorsements from the likes of Jamz Supernova, Gilles Peterson & Jamie Cullum.

“A really great new British female vocalist from Manchester… She's got a real un-flashy kind of approach which I really like. Kind of a milder Jill Scott / Erykah Badu, definitely one to watch. We'll be hearing a lot more from her I'm sure!” – Jamie Cullum, BBC Radio 2

"I was fortunate enough to play demo's on my shows here at the BBC by Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. All premiers. And this is another one I think I'm gonna be proud of in a few years. Remember the name, Mali Hayes” – Gilles Peterson

A rising star in a flourishing Manchester music scene, jazzy-nu-R&B type neo soul artist Mali Hayes steps in a new direction for The Singles Club. Calling on past sounds, she breathes new life into previous work, combining vibrant real-life stories with honesty and soul, resulting in a release that is refreshing, infectious and dynamic. The lead track ‘Forgive You’ is a collaboration with fellow Future Bubblers participants, Medikul & Cult Architect.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Two stunning tracks from Mali Hayes fresh off the new Band on the Wall Recordings label, if this is a sample of what’s to come then we’re in for a treat. Soulful hazy-jazz which is good for the soul, mind and body.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Forgive You
B1. Come Closer

BREAKAWAY” by Steve Karmen was originally released on United Artists in 1968 following a successful advertising campaign for the Pontiac car, for which the ‘jingle’ had been written, featuring the slogan “Breakaway In A Wide-Trackin’ Pontiac”. Karmen extended the 30 second track with fills and breaks building the energy and excitement and creating the perfect dance track for the highly charge Casino Ballroom where it exploded in 1974.

Jimmy Radcliffe ad-libbed a new and impassioned vocal for the singles plug-side, but – to this day – it is the thrilling instrumental that rules the dance floor. Although associated with Wigan Casino, “Breakaway” was originally spun by DJ Colin Curtis at Blackpool Mecca under the imaginative title “Black Ship To Hell” (The Wigan Casino Years by Tim Brown). Today, over 50 years on, it has lost none of its energy and appeal and remains a favourite oldie and guaranteed floor-filler. 

TRACK LISTING

A. Breakaway (Part I)
B. Breakaway (Part II)

From their genesis as members of the Venus club in-house band in the early 70s, Hailu Mergia and the Walias Band were at the forefront of the musical revolution during an era where modern instruments and foreign styles superseded the traditional fare to become the staple sound of Ethiopia. No one would argue that the Walias were the trailblazing powerhouse of modern Ethiopian music. They were the first band to form independently without affiliation to a theatre house, a club or a hotel; unprecedented and risky as they had to raise all funding for expenses by themselves including buying equipment. They were the first to release full instrumental albums, considered to be commercially unviable at the time. They opened their own recording studio, with band members Melake Gebre and Mahmoud Aman doubling as technical buffs during sessions. They were also the first independent band to tour abroad. In short, they were the pioneers every band tried to emulate; some more successfully than others. Odds are, any Ethiopian over the age of 35 who had access to TV or radio by the early 90s, will instantly recognize the sound of Walias. What is not a given is, how many would actually identify the band itself.

Barely a day went by without hearing the Walias either in the background on radio or as an accompaniment to various programs on TV. This Tezeta album, the band’s second recording, released in 1975, is one of those that have been impossible to find for nearly three decades. Sourced by Awesome Tapes From Africa and expertly remastered by Jessica Thompson, its unique and funky renditions of standards and popular songs of the day are so quintessentially Walias, flavorful and evocative. Hailu's melodic organ, unashamedly front and center in every track, makes even the complex pieces accessible. Profoundly engaging; it's an immersive trip down memory lane for those of us getting reacquainted with it, while also an enthralling and gratifying experience for fresh ears.

TRACK LISTING

01. Tezeta 04:30
02. Endegena 05:00
03. Zengadyw Derekou 03:40
04. Gumegum 04:26
05. Nefas New Zemedie 03:34
06. Atmetalegnem Woi 03:39
07. Mestirawi Debdabe 04:36
08. Ou-Ou-Ta 03:23
09. Aya Belew Belew 04:24

Plastic Ono Band was the debut solo album by John Lennon. Released on December 11th 1970, John and Yoko had started writing and demoing at Abbey Road (EMI Studios) in the summer, with recording sessions during September/October

After the break-up of The Beatles that year, John and Yoko embarked on a period of self-reflection and experimentation, with the results that the songs and sessions for Plastic Ono Band were heavily influenced by his immersion in Arthur Janov’s primal therapy. John was able to find emotional depth and honesty within himself that few artists had ever done before, with John saying to Rolling Stone “now I write all about me and that’s why I like it. It’s me.” . The result is perhaps the most honest and emotionally raw album that anyone has ever released, let alone someone who was one of the four most famous musicians on the planet. With a small core band comprised of just Ringo Starr on drums and old friend Klaus Voorman on bass, co-produced by Phil Spector, the album peaked at 8 in the UK charts and 6 in the USA. It has come to be regarded by many as John’s finest solo work and has continued to grow in stature and reverence and has often featured in various Best Of lists through the years since. 

Released on the same day was Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band album, the couple regarding the release as a pair of albums rather than two entirely separate projects, albeit of course it not achieving the same sort of coverage or chart success as John’s.

Coming as this does hot on the heels of last year’s much loved and well-reviewed “Gimme Some Truth” set and “Imagine” before that, the audio has been completely remixed from the original studio tapes as part of the ongoing John Lennon Ultimate Mix series. The aim for this mix process is to achieve three things: to remain faithful and respectful to the original recordings; to ensure that the sound is sonically clearer overall and to increase the clarity of John’s vocals. As Yoko says, “it’s about John” and this new mix shows that it is his voice that brings the biggest emotional impact of the album.

TRACK LISTING

2LP
Side A: The Ultimate Mixes Album And Singles
Mother
Hold On
I Found Out
Working Class Hero
Isolation

Side B: The Ultimate Mixes Album And Singles
Remember
Love
Well Well Well
Look At Me
God
My Mummy’s Dead

Side C: The Ultimate Mixes/Out-takes Album And Singles
Mother / Take 61
Hold On / Take 2
I Found Out / Take 1
Working Class Hero / Take 1
Isolation / Take 23

Side D: The Ultimate Mixes/Out-takes Album And Singles
Remember / Rehearsal 1
Love / Take 8
Well Well Well / Take 2
Look At Me / Take 2
God / Take 27
My Mummy’s Dead / Take 2

MSB tracks have been the foundation for some of modern hip-hop's most successful beats; their music has been sampled by the likes of Eminem, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, 50 Cent, Curren$y, to name a few.

Menahan Street Band, a veritable supergroup of some of today's most prolific songwriters, arrangers, and producers return with this beat-forward, cinematic masterpiece.

Their unique brand of instrumental soul has not only been the foundation for some of modern hip-hop's most successful beats, it has also become the perennial soundtrack and veritable vibe-generator for countless parties, art shows, and restaurants throughout NYC and abroad.

While this album carries the aesthetic torch that MSB has skillfully woven into the tapestry of their DNA, it also delves deeper into the experimental, exotic sounds that fill many of the coveted Sound Library and Soundtrack LPs of the late sixties and early seventies - an amalgamation of moog synths, electric pianos, drum machines, and a bevy of analog instrumentation, that ebb and flow in lush swells of Morriconian grandeur.

TRACK LISTING

1. Midnight Morning
2. Rainy Day Lady
3. The Starchaser
4. Silkworm
5. Cabin Fever
6. Rising Dawn
7. Glovebox Pistol
8. Queens Highway
9. Snow Day
10. Parlor Trick
11. The Duke
12. Stepping Through Shadow
13. Devil's Respite
14. There Was A Man

2020 features music from some of our favourite artists and closest friends on the new Manchester scene. The Covid-19 pandemic has placed a colossal strain on the music industry. 2020 has been created with a vision of providing financial support for Manchester artists and Band on the Wall, with all proceeds split 50/50.

Featuring hand-picked tracks, contributed by artists whose music spans neo soul, jazz, afro-electronic and more, 2020 is an eclectic discovery of inspired and curated sounds; a shining light on the emerging talent of Manchester’s live music scene.

"Band on the Wall is more than just a building, it is an idea and a passion for great music that is born from the diverse communities of Manchester and beyond; and an organisation designed to celebrate those who make music for the sake of making music rather than money or celebrity. In the first half of 2020 we, and many of the creators we work with, had to stop what we were doing and while activity initially stalled, it was clear that it would be impossible for the artists to stop creating and for us to stop celebrating their music. Therefore, the idea was born to help support our local creative partners and ourselves by producing this ‘memento’ of this incredibly strange year.

Encapsulating this music on this disk reminiscent of this time, produced this year by young people who couldn’t stop making music if they tried, and despite not being allowed to perform in public, is our way of still saying thank you to them, and that we are all still here. Thanks for supporting." Gavin Sharp, CEO, Band on the Wall

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: A gorgeous collection of tracks compiled from emerging Manchester artists, featuring some of my personal favourites Katbrownsugar and Porij. 2020 has hit the music industry hard and this charity release helps artists and venues during this difficult time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Honeyfeet X Werkha - You Go To My Head (rewerked)
2. Mali Hayes - Oceans Ft Layfullstop
3. Secret Night Gang - Don't Mess With My Heart
4. Agbeko - There Is A Jungle (Live)
5. Porij - Closer
6. Lovescene - To The Side
7. Skeltr - Lojong
8. Contours - Northbound
9. Cervo - Reaching
10. Katbrownsugar & Al Turnbull - Jungle
11.Yemi Bolatiwa - Troubled Living
12. Shunya - The Clay & The Sculpture
13. Lieko Quintet - Black Lake
14. MSC Big Band - Grown Ups (Live) 

This release features a selection of some of our favourite songs, from some of the most memorable shows, to have been recorded as part of the Band on the Wall archive.

These tracks represent our commitment to celebrating the diversity and excellence of music created by remarkable people from across the world. All tracks were performed at Band on the Wall and very kindly contributed by the artists for release on this CD, which has been produced to support the venue and our ongoing mission to promote and celebrate the great music of many cultures, during this challenging year.

As 2020 has become a defining year for all of us who work to bring people together to celebrate live music, for us this represents not only the journey we have been on over the last ten years, but also helps to define our future commitment to this amazing music.

A special thanks to the artists, labels and management that have helped assemble this wonderful collection of tracks, recorded live inside Band on the Wall between 2009 – 2014. All sales proceeds will be split 50/50 between the artists and Band on the Wall.

Live from Band on the Wall is the second release on Band on the Wall’s new in-house imprint, Band on the Wall Recordings and follows the release of last month’s 2020 – a fundraiser compilation to support emerging Manchester artists.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Missing live music? Band on the Wall Manchester's iconic institution has released live tracks will take you right back to the atmosphere of being at a gig. We will be there again! Support venues and live music with this fundraising release.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gregory Porter - On My Way To Harlem
2. Jazzanova - Boom Clicky Boom Klack
3. Dele Sosimi - Lady
4. Charles Bradley - I Believe In Your Love
5. Kirsty Almeida - Cool Down Rewind
6. Azymuth - Club Morocco
7. Snarky Puppy - Strawman
8. Yellowjackets - Why Is It
9. Hafdis Huld - Oldest Friend
10. Bugge Wesseltoft - Singing 

Stage Fright is the third studio album by Canadian American group the Band, released on August 17, 1970. Engineered by Todd Rundgren and Glyn Johns, it features two of the group’s best-known songs, “The Shape I’m In” and “Stage Fright”, both of which showcased inspired lead vocal performances (by Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, respectively) and became staples in the group’s live shows.

TRACK LISTING

1. The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show
2. The Shape I’m In
3. Daniel And The Sacred Harp
4. Stage Fright
5. The Rumor
6. Time To Kill
7. Just Another Whistle Stop
8. All La Glory
9. Strawberry Wine
10. Sleeping

Tramp fans certainly remember the name Nolla Mainor whose band Nola & The Soul Rockers contributed their song "Reach Down & Get It" for the second volume in the Feeling Nice series. This is her other 45, equally rare and for some people this two sider beats the quality of The Soul Rockers disc.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Is A Song
2. Ease It To Me

Enrique Rodríguez and the Negra Chiway Band group have an instantly powerful and unique sound that is reminiscent of the ensembles of Sun Ra and his Arkestra as well as Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, one that channels the righteous spirits of Alice Coltrane, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and McCoy Tyner together with a stunning Latin rhythmical and new consciousness and percussive energy. Added to this are elements of the Samurai film soundtracks of Akira Kurosawa, Popol Vuh’s musical spirituality (especially their work with film director Werner Herzog), Tibetan Buddhism and over-blowing chants, all combining to give a truly unique new sound.

Enrique Rodríguez is a composer, percussionist, keyboardist and producer from Santiago, Chile, whose work shows many similarities with the music featured on Soul Jazz Records’ recent collection ‘Kaleidoscope - New Spirts Known and Unknown’, featuring new forward-looking jazz artists including Mathew Halsall, Theon Cross, Emma-Jean Thackray and Makaya McCraven.

Like all these artists, Rodríguez’s work is a progressive and experimental fusion of earlier influences that combine into a new and definitely 21st Century ground-breaking sound that, on account of its South American setting, give the group its truly unique feeling. Hypnotic modal piano riffs, powerful brass and flutes, an army of Latin percussion instruments and addictive vocal chants all combine in this powerful mix of radical 60s Afro-centric jazz, Eastern spirituality and cosmology and Latin American rhythmical movement.

TRACK LISTING

Dónde?
Descenso
Vindakalla-Welukan (Autoconfrontación)
No Quiero Seguir Así
Acabar De Conocerse
Paso Firme
Dónde? (Alt. Take)

"A split-screen maelstrom of Fela Kuti, Led Zep, Morricone, psych and dub" The Budos Band - MOJO - Rising - August 2019 Celebrating 15 years from the release of their debut album, Daptone's Royal Court from Staten Island delivers a truly epic collection of new material that finds the group further bridging the gap between the farfisa-fueled Ethio-Funk stylings of their early recordings, with the psychedelic, Sabbath-inspired hellfire of late. “In some ways, itʼs reminiscent of our first two albums The Budos Band and Budos II,” says Tom Brenneck. “We branched off on Burnt Offering and Budos V. Now, weʼre still moving forward.

You can play these songs on the dance-floor. We knew the horns had to stand out too. Thinking about hip-hop allowed us to put the bounce back into The Budos.” This is evident from needle drop to final rotation. Heavy drum breaks, reminiscent of the B-Boy approved grooves of their early output reign supreme, setting the stage for the pulsating, hallucinatory wall of organ, menacing horns, and rugged guitar riffs to permeate your soul - leaving the listener in a rhythmic wash of Budonian rapture. Long in the Tooth represents the culmination of a 15-year journey by a band that has consistently carved its own distinct path through the grooves of history.

TRACK LISTING

1 Long In The Tooth
2 Sixth Hammer
3 Snake Hawk
4 Dusterado
5 Silver Stallion
6 Haunted Sea
7 The Wrangler
8 Gun Metal Grey
9 Mierda De Toro
10 Budonian Knight Renegade

Iconic and iconoclastic Texan songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen’s heartbreaking, hilarious new album, his first set of new songs since 2013’s Bottom of the World, features the full Panhandle Mystery Band, including co-producer Charlie Sexton (Dylan, Bowie, Blaze), Shannon McNally, and Jo Harvey Allen; mainstays Bukka Allen, Richard Bowden, and Lloyd Maines; and co-writes with Joe Ely and Dave Alvin. The connections to Melville’s masterpiece are metaphorical and allusive, as elusive as the White Whale. The masterly spiritual successor to Lubbock (on everything), Just Like Moby Dick casts its net wide for wild stories, depicting, among other monstrous things, Houdini in existential crisis, the death of the last stripper in town, bloodthirsty pirates (in a pseudo-sequel to Brecht and Weill’s “Pirate Jenny”), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the “American Childhood” suite), a vampire-infested circus, mudslides and burning mobile homes, and all manner of tragicomic disasters, abandonments, betrayals, bad memories, failures, and fare-thee-wells.

Just Like Moby Dick, his first set of new songs since 2013’s Bottom of the World, takes its title from the archetypal monster of American literature and the American imaginary. (Coincidentally—or not—his label Paradise of Bachelors also takes its name from a Herman Melville story.) “Memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights,” Melville writes, and for most of the novel, Moby Dick himself remains hidden, haunting Ahab as a crystalline monster of fathomless memory, a terrible fever dream from the depths. The whale remains a specter on Allen’s record too, appearing explicitly only in the briny final line of the last song “Sailin’ On Through,” and on the artist’s Side D vinyl etching and CD insert drawings, where he lurks menacingly beneath the roiling seas of Thomas Chambers, the 19th-century maritime painter whose floridly freaky nautical scenes adorn the album jacket.

RIYL: David Byrne, Guy Clark, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Silver Jews, Sturgill Simpson, Townes Van Zandt.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Houdini Didn't Like The Spiritualists
A2. Abandonitis
A3. Death Of The Last Stripper
A4. All That's Left Is Fare-Thee-Well
B1. Pirate Jenny
B2. American Childhood I: Civil Defense
B3. American Childhood II: Bad Kiss
B4. American Childhood III: Little Puppet Thing
C1. All These Blues Go Walkin' By
C2. City Of The Vampires
C3. Harmony Two
C4. Sailin' On Through

Recorded in November 2018 at Ballintubbert House, Ireland, “a few pay grades above what we're used to!”, the alien construction of Ballintubbert and its corridors help to navigate Girl Band’s cataclysmic sound within a world of its own.

“In many ways the idea behind the album was to make an audio representation of the house.“ And this enigmatic manor becomes Girl Band’s sonic playground: to place yourself within a space, and to work with that space harmoniously. Dan continues, “We recorded all the drums twice: once on the landing and once in the cellar” -The Well of Souls- “and during production we could actually cut in between both these sounds”. The Talkies vacillates between being big, ambient, and atmospheric to suddenly terribly intimate and up close.

The Talkies is living, breathing, in a continual state of metamorphosis. It encompasses everything there is to love about Girl Band while simultaneously causing an exciting level of discomfort. The moaning and sawing guitars, atonal blankets of sound, abstractive lyrical repetition, chugging snare and ascending/descending snakes and ladders noise-rock guitar deliver something that is so distinctively Girl Band.

…Eregenis. Album closes to steady breathing. It drips with catharsis, slow and mindful and purging over the familiar key and darkly syncopated grooves which closes the door to Girl Band’s sonic universe and brings ‘The Talkies’ to its first and final silence.

TRACK LISTING

Prolix
Going Norway
Shoulderblades
Couch Combover
Aibophobia
Salmon Of Knowledge
Akineton
Amygdala
Caveat
Laggard
Prefab Castle
Ereignis

Lou Clarke and the All-Scars Band

Lou Clarke spent most of the 70's not of this Earth, a greatly formative time for him and those around him. The intervening period was spent retrospectively constructing a back catalogue of music to rival even the most seasoned of 'straight to charity shop' vinyl ghosts.

The All-Scars are a collection of well-trodden troubadours from a variety of Mancunian haunts who've generously come together to present these songs in something close to their original form as once might have been heard.

The 'Greatest Hits' album is a preventative measure precluding necessary high standards for a second work. All of the tracks have been taken from the future back catalogue including the upcoming demand avoidant '4th Album'.

Informed by New Orleans, built in Manchester, songs to drink dance or drown to.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Encompassing all the best gloomy moments of Nick Cave and the sozzled pub-rock of the Pogues, but drawing in perfectly measured elements of jazz, lounge and classic rock, Clarke et. al. perfectly soundtrack our austere political climate with wry, tipsy tongue-in-cheek commentary and damn good music to boot. Great stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Configure Your Life 02:59
2. Anyman 04:39
3. Blue Eyes 03:13
4. Down Again 04:05
5. My Beautiful Girl 03:17
6. Intoxicated Man 02:53
7. Run Deep 03:36
8. Co-Dependency Suicide Blues 03:25
9. Walking 02:55
10. I Got Nothing 02:43
11. Wrung Out 02:43

Entirely self-produced, the band has reiterated their favourite elements of the 70s legacy of the Afro-Latin psychedelic music of Colombia and Peru, interpreting it through the context of modern day Amsterdam. The output is a No Wave groove all its own, rooted in a deep love of champeta, Palenque, psychedelic cumbia, chichi, classic afrobeat and pic soundsystem culture.

Since the release of their successful “Down In The Basement EP” on Soundway Records in early 2018, the band have found themselves on a hectic touring schedule - not to mention being involved in other exciting side projects. Following stints with Turkish psychedelic folk rock group Altin Gun, and touring with the re-formed 70s Zamrock outfit W.I.T.C.H., Nic Mauskovic also teamed up with Dutch neo-psychedelic artist Jacco Gardner to form the “cinematic Balearic disco” duo of Bruxas (released by Dutch institution Dekmantel) - and together, he and Jacco mixed The Mauskovic Dance Band debut album in Lisbon.

Constantly in demand for live shows - not only does The Mauskovic Dance Band’s music flourish on stage particularly in a club, this time it was made in one. The album was recorded in the storage space of Amsterdam’s Garage Noord, a recent addition to the scene but already a favourite amongst clubgoers for its forward-thinking programming. Its industrial yet intimate nature permeates the album, lending it a pulsing, hypnotic and hazy atmosphere.

Heavily championed by DJs and tastemakers, they were selected by Gilles Peterson for the Brownswood Bubblers Thirteen compilation and nominated for Track of the Year at the Worldwide Awards in London. But 2019 marks the year to deep dive into the “percussione and spazio” sound of The Mauskovic Dance Band.

TRACK LISTING

Drinks By The Sea
Space Drum Machine
Same Heads
Dance Place Garage
Alto In Vacanza
Late Night People
Percussione & Spazio Sounds
It’s The Wrong Goodie

In 2018, Ty Segall’s Freedom’s Goblin hit with a watershed feeling. A feeling like, how much longer will rock albums like this even exist? An epic epoch double-LP that took the heroic arc of Ty’s populist masterpiece Manipulator and wadded it up into a much more aerodynamic (and harder-hitting) ball (or 20-sided D&D die), FG was also the continued work of the Freedom Band, Ty’s crew of choice since 2016. Storming the world playing songs from throughout his catalog in a series of ecstatic setlists, they sought freedom for themselves and the audience, even it if was just one night of emancipation from world’s numbing chill. Then they went and did it again the next night!

An all analog production, recorded live on stage at Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles by Steve Albini (via mobile unit onto two-inch tape!) and mixed with Steve in Chicago at Electrical Audio, Deforming Lobes witnesses the blunt-force traumpact of The Freedom Band in full effect, updating (and upending) numbers from Melted, Emotional Mugger, Twins, Manipulator, $ingle$ 2 and Self-Titled. From the start, the “Warm Hands” suite shows the growth of the group since recording the original version for the 2017 Self-Titled album—the jam has a new life all its own, and the band explores every song with similar unrestrained curiosity, never forgetting the collective experience they’re sharing. The feeling between audience and band at Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom on those January nights was its own special thing; here, the band is somehow even more front and center, making Deforming Lobes the first wholly original statement from The Freedom Band and bookending the Goblin experience with a fuck of an exclamation point.

A year-plus later, another rock album exists—but what’s to be done with the guitar? These guys did everything they could get away with to a certain degree of (well-focused) depravity. Maybe now it’s time for a transition, away from live band rawk into whatever, who knows? But before you grieve your speculative future loss too hard, you really oughta get Deforming Lobes.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: By all accounts, Ty Segall are one of the most dominant forces in live music around today, and this perfectly captures the energy and visceral heft of this momentous experience. Grooves are stretched out and worked around, turning a simple riff into a multi-layered tapestry, rich with distortion and so huge you can almost feel the sweat dripping off the stage.

TRACK LISTING

1 Warm Hands
2 Squealer
3 Breakfast Eggs
4 The Crawler
5 Finger
6 They Told Me Too
7 Cherry Red
8 Love Fuzz

Arguably one of the most acclaimed and loved bands of the past 20 years, by both fans and their musical peers alike, The Beta Band formed in St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1996. Innovative and singular, their unique musical and aesthetic approach to everything they did set them far apart from their musical contemporaries. Together for a relatively short period of time, the three albums and three EPs they released between 1996 and 2004 would nonetheless help define them as one of the most exciting and cherished bands of their generation.

“Heroes to Zeros” is the third and final studio album by The Beta Band released in 2004. It was mixed by famed producer Nigel Godrich and rose to number 18 in the UK charts.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Assessment
A2. Space
A3. Lion Thief
A4. Easy
A5. Wonderful
A6. Troubles
B1. Out-Side
B2. Space Beatle
B3. Rhododendron
B4. Liquid Bird
B5. Simple
B6. Pure For

Arguably one of the most acclaimed and loved bands of the past 20 years, by both fans and their musical peers alike, The Beta Band formed in St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1996. Innovative and singular, their unique musical and aesthetic approach to everything they did set them far apart from their musical contemporaries. Together for a relatively short period of time, the three albums and three EPs they released between 1996 and 2004 would nonetheless help define them as one of the most exciting and cherished bands of their generation.

Released in 1999, the album “The Beta Band” followed the critically acclaimed compilation “The Three E.P.'s” (1998). With high anticipation for The Beta Band, the band originally planned to record the album in four separate continents, but financial constraints slimmed the recording locations down; however, the album was still recorded in a variety of locations and pulling inspiration from sources as diverse as Jamaican reggae, Disney's movie “The Black Hole” and Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

The band also originally intended the album to contain a bonus disc of two long form ambient pieces, ‘Happiness and Colour’ and ‘The Hut’, both of which lasted over 20 minutes and represented the band's desire to "make a record of sound as a description for something like happiness, where a distinct first part gives way to a distinct second part”. However, the band and label ultimately decided to remove these tracks from the album prior to release.

TRACK LISTING

A1. The Beta Band Rap
A2. It's Not Too Beautiful
A3. Simple Boy
B1. Round The Bend
B2. Dance O'er The Border
B3. Brokenupadingdong
C1. Number 15
C2. Smiling
D1. The Hard One
D2. The Cow's Wrong

Bonus EP/CD: A. Happiness And Colour / B. The Hut

2CD Edition Features The Same Tracks In The Same Order.

Arguably one of the most acclaimed and loved bands of the past 20 years, by both fans and their musical peers alike, The Beta Band formed in St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1996. Innovative and singular, their unique musical and aesthetic approach to everything they did set them far apart from their musical contemporaries.

Together for a relatively short period of time, the three albums and three EPs they released between 1996 and 2004 would nonetheless help define them as one of the most exciting and cherished bands of their generation. 

TRACK LISTING

Champion Versions EP
A1. Dry The Rain / A2. I Know / B1. B + A / B2. Dogs Got A Bone

The Patty Patty Sound EP
A. Inner Meet Me / B. The House Song / C. Monolith / D. She’s The One

Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos EP
A1. Push It Out / A2. It’s Over / B1. Dr. Baker / B2. Needles In My Eyes

CD Features The Same Tracklist In The The Same Order.

2CD edition in 3-panel digipack with a 16-page poster booklet.

Arguably one of the most acclaimed and loved bands of the past 20 years, by both fans and their musical peers alike, The Beta Band formed in St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1996.

Innovative and singular, their unique musical and aesthetic approach to everything they did set them far apart from their musical contemporaries. Together for a relatively short period of time, the three albums and three EPs they released between 1996 and 2004 would nonetheless help define them as one of the most exciting and cherished bands of their generation.

After acquiring the Beta Band’s catalogue last year, Because Music will reissue their releases, starting on September 14th with a double CD Best-Of compiling all their best hits and a live show recorded at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire (London) in 2004.

Because Music will also celebrate at the same time the 20th anniversary of their 1998 compilation ‘The Three EPs’ by releasing a deluxe vinyl edition gathering in a slipcase the EPs ‘Champion Versions’, ‘The Patty Patty Sound’ and ‘Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos’ with remastered tracks and coloured vinyls. 

TRACK LISTING

CD1
1. Dry The Rain
2. Inner Meet Me
3. She’s The One
4. Dr. Baker
5. It’s Not Too Beautiful
6. Smiling
7. To You Alone
8. Squares
9. Human Being
10. Gone
11. Broke
12. Assessment 
13. Easy
14. Wonderful
15. Troubles
16. Simple

CD2 – Live At The Shepherds Bush Empire
1. It’s Not Too Beautiful 
2. Squares
3. Inner Meet Me 
4. Simple
5. She’s The One
6. Easy 
7. Dr. Baker 
8. Dry The Rain 
9. Quiet
10. Broke
11. Assessment
12. Dog’s Got A Bone 

Perhaps not words we all find ourselves uttering on a daily basis, but then the esteemed singer is far from your average joe stuck in the day-to-day grind of an average job…

‘I Love My Job’ is the first album release in 5 years from the former Inspiral Carpets and Lovers lynch-pin and his current outfit: The Tom Hingley Band.

Arriving as the follow-up to his remarkable double album ‘Sand’ & ’Paper’ (released in 2013, with Pledge Music), the THB’s latest effort is an equally ambitious outing of vision and voice. On ‘I Love My Job’, Hingley and co. seek to offer a snapshot of the political revolution, anger, and aggression that have formed the backdrop for him, and us all, over the last three years.

Using the freedom of expression and amplification to communicate with the masses that is gifted to those in the job that Hingley finds himself in (though is so often shied away from by many of his musical contemporaries), ‘I Love My Job’ sees the singer using his platform to both shout to the heavens and put the world to rights. Someone has to right?

Getting it all of his chest, the record is very much a rejection and reaction to the here and now, with Hingley providing a loquacious outpouring of his own pure emotion, as well as socio-political commentary of wider contemporary issues that grip the current world, all wrapped up in 11 tracks of unbridled rock’n’roll….

“Nasty People” is a short sharp snap at the cowardly trolling culture that has developed and dominates the online realm, whereas the recoil of ‘Bullet’ is a revenge song that sees Hingley take direct aim at the convicted paedophile and Lost Prophets frontman Ian Watkins along with those who would use their power for acts of such despicable evil. “Beggar’s Hand” decries the shameful homelessness that plagues the streets of Manchester under the current government, whereas “White Sheep” is a song for those who feel oppressed by the corporate world of ‘too big to fail banks’ and utility companies in which extortion and profit at the expense of innocent consumers are business of the day.

But on a more personal level, there’s an outpouring of emotions in tribute to the sounds and loved ones who have inspired Hingley throughout his life. “Introduction” glistens with the chimes with bells to honour the many lost souls that have departed over the past few years, not least his own mother and sister-in-law who he also pays homage to on “Black Light”:

TRACK LISTING

1) Introduction
2) Black Light
3) Glory Days
4) Toy
5) Bullet
6) Beautiful Girl
7) Beggars Hand
8) Prodigal Son
9) Nasty People
10) White Sheep
11) Shining For Somebody Else

As two of the UK’s finest exponents of traditional song, Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy’s rich, distinctive and authentic voices have engaged new audiences and admirers across two generations. Between them, they have three prestigious Mercury Prize nominations, an MBE each for services to English music and have both been presented with BBC Folk Singer of the Year awards, as well as innumerable other accolades. Eliza recently embarked on her most ambitious project yet by recording and touring with the 12 piece Wayward Band, a 12-piece. The resulting album, ‘Big Machine,’ garnered both acclaim and more Radio 2 Folk Awards nominatiions in 2018 (‘Best Group’ and ‘Best Album’).

Although they have recorded independently and together on many occasions over the years, ‘Gift’ (2010) was Norma and Eliza’s first duo release, produced by Eliza. The album went on to pick up Best Album and Best Traditional Track at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

The remarkable new album, ‘Anchor,’ produced by Neill MacColl and Kate St. John, was recorded in their English home town of Robin Hood’s Bay and features an eclectic and beguiling collection of both traditional and contemporary songs. Amongst the 11 tracks we find Norma leading on Tom Waits’ ‘Strange Weather’ and ‘The Beast in Me’ by Nick Lowe. Trad Arr. ‘The Elfin Knight’ sees Eliza supported by Norma, Martin and extended family, ‘Lost in the Stars’ is a wonderful take on the Kurt Weill classic, while ‘Shanty of the Whale’, also featuring guest vocals of Martin Carthy, is a track written by KT Tunstall inspired by the singing of the Watersons, now come full circle in mutual respect and admiration.

A Danny Krivit and Harvey favourite, as sampled by J Dilla and Glenn Underground - a dubby disco cover of the Gamble & Huff penned O’Jays classic. Also featuring on Kenny Dope's amazing "Disco Heat" compilation and receiving plenty plays at Mancusso's legendary Loft parties.

This sound was later pioneered by the likes of Arthur Russell and Larry Levan, and is especially present throughout the Sleeping Bag records catalogue. Replica original 7” artwork, official Mr Bongo reissue, mastered from our original DAT copy.

Soundway Records presents “Down In The Basement”, the debut EP from The Mauskovic Dance Band - a heady, tropical blend of cumbia, Afro- Caribbean rhythms and space disco, resulting in a vibrant hypnotic groove destined for bustling dancefloors. The Mauskovic Dance Band is the brainchild of the Amsterdam-based producer and musician, Nicola Mauskovic. A seasoned drummer, he finds himself constantly in demand - as part of Turkish psychedelic outfit Altin Gun, a recent tour with the revival of Zambian legends W.I.T.C.H., and a worldwide tour with psych-pop artist Jacco Gardner, with whom he then went on to form the dance-oriented duo Bruxas (released on Dekmantel).

Throughout this hectic schedule Nic still found time to begin studio experiments that would eventually lead to several 7” singles, released on Swiss label Bongo Joe Records in 2017 under the name “The Mauskovic Dance Band”. Following this, he tapped long-time collaborators Donnie Mauskovic (vocals, keys, effects), Em Nix Mauskovic (guitar, synth, percussion), and Mano Mauskovic (bass) to make the jump from record to stage. Soon they caught the ear of fabled underground Cumbia producer Juan Hundred, who left his home on a Caribbean island to join the band on drums.

With each band member of varying heritage, the group draws inspiration from diverse genres: primarily Afro-Colombian styles such as champeta, palenque, cumbia and the pic soundsystem culture, as well as the Afro-Disco and No-Wave scenes in their current base of Amsterdam. The city’s hotbed of underground producers has also brought an electronic edge to the band, with vintage drum machines and synthesizers effortlessly melding with Afro-Latin rhythms and slick guitar riffs to create a contemporary sound rich with cultural influence.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: The Mauskovic Dance Band providing all the tropical disco grooves, bright and zesty this is the exact sort of twelve inch to get the Summer vibes in full swing. Take a listen and float to a faraway island of your choice, ahhhhh.

Produced by Giles Martin for this year’s universally heralded ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Anniversary Edition releases, the album’s new stereo mix was sourced directly from the original four-track session tapes and guided by the original, Beatles-preferred mono mix produced by Giles’ father, George Martin. Praised by fans and music critics around the world, The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Anniversary Edition is 2017’s most celebrated historical music release and an ideal gift for Beatle People here, there, and everywhere.

Live album from Bob Dylan & The Band, originally released in 1974, documenting their American tour. A 21 song double album, pressed on black vinyl with download code insert. 

TRACK LISTING

Side One

1. "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" 02-14 (evening) 4:15
2. "Lay Lady Lay" 02-13 3:14
3. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" 02-13 3:27
4. "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" 01-30 New York City 3:51
5. "It Ain't Me, Babe" 02-14 (evening) 3:40
6. "Ballad Of A Thin Man" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:41

Side Two

7. "Up On Cripple Creek" (Robbie Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 5:25
8. "I Shall Be Released" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:50
9. "Endless Highway" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 5:10
10. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 4:24
11. "Stage Fright" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 4:45

Side Three

12. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" 02-14 (evening) 4:36
13. "Just Like A Woman" 02-14 (evening) 5:06
14. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" 02-14 (evening) 5:48
15. "The Shape I'm In" (Robertson) 02-14 (afternoon) 4:01
16. "When You Awake" (Richard Manuel, Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 3:13
17. "The Weight" (Robertson) 02-13 4:47

Side Four

18. "All Along The Watchtower" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:07
19. "Highway 61 Revisited" 02-14 (evening) 4:27
20. "Like A Rolling Stone" 02-13 7:09
21. "Blowin' In The Wind" 02-13 + 02-14 (afternoon) 4:30

Beautiful and evocative and recorded in his home-town of Liverpool between March 2016 and June 2017, the album is the culmination of four years of hard work. Equal to his finest moments, Adiós Señor Pussycat will undoubtedly only further cement his reputation as one of this generations greatest songwriters.

Since a self-imposed hiatus in 2008, Michael Head has been working with a fluid concept of an ever-rotating band format to provide a flexible platform for the range of his new live and recorded works.

‘Under the guise of Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band in 2013, they released their sought-after debut EP, Artorius Revisited, and followed this with a double A sided 7”, Velvets In The Dark / Koala Bears in 2015.

A soulful and poetic genius, fate, bad luck and circumstance and often conspired to deny him his rightful dues. Loved and lauded by fellow artists and critics alike, he started out in the early 1980s with The Pale Fountains, with whom he recorded a brace of acclaimed albums, Pacific Street (1984) and …From Across The Kitchen Table (1985). He subsequently formed Shack with his brother John and went on to record five albums over almost twenty years including the much loved and acclaimed Waterpistol and HMS Fable in 1999 which saw the band briefly flirt with chart success and hailed from the cover of the NME as “our greatest songwriter”

He also released, what is often regarded as his classic album, The Magical World Of The Strands under the name of Michael Head & The Strands in 1997, and with Shack currently on hiatus he has been performing under the Red Elastic Band guise for the past few years.

The album features the following musicians:
Michael Head - Vocals & Acoustic Guitar
Steve Powell - Electric & Acoustic Guitars
Phil Murphy - Drums
Tom Powell - Bass Guitar
Nina - Piano
Dan Rogers - Electric Guitar
Rod Skipp - Cello
Dewi Tudor Jones - Violin
Helen Tonge - Viola
Martin Smith - Trumpet
Andy Diagram - Trumpet
Simon James - Saxophone
Steve Powell, Joanne Head, Phil Murphy, Mary McCombs - Backing Vocals
Michael Head, Phil Murphy, Karina Townsend - Percussion

TRACK LISTING

1. Picasso
2. Overjoyed
3. Picklock
4. Winter Turns To Spring
5. Workin' Family
6. 4&4 Still Makes 8
7. Queen Of All Saints
8. Josephine
9. Lavender Way
10. Rumer
11. Wild Mountain Thyme
12. What's The Difference
13. Adios Amigo

Focused around the songwriting talents and production skills of Jo Dudderidge and Adam Gorman and the rhythmic driving force of enigmatic drummer Nick Vaal, The Travelling Band have been quietly honing what Marc Riley described as "Mancunian Americana".

The resulting album mines a rich seam of influences, with key album track 'Last Night (I Dreamt of Killing You)' and the grungy 'Wasted Eyes' highlighting the band's love of American indie rock, but still with that Mancunian twist nodding to Elbow and I Am Kloot. 'Mopping Forwards' draws on their time spent in East Nashville and the almost Satie-like melancholic ballad 'Loser' belies the darker turn that Jo and Adam's lyrics have taken.

TRACK LISTING

Moments Like Switches
Wasted Eyes
Into The Water
Mopping Forwards
Loser
Unlike You
Last Night (I Dreamt Of Killing You)
Out Of The Water
Failure Is A Bastard
Leftover Lines

When Darren Hayman (Hefner) and Emma Kupa (Standard Fare/Mammoth Penguins) decided to make a duets record, we knew the results would be great, but we didn’t expect them to be THIS great. Gathering together a rhythm section consisting of Michael Wood (Whoa Melodic/Singing Adams) on bass and Cat Loye (Fever Dream) on drums, The Hayman Kupa Band create brash, bold and effortlessly melodic power pop. Sharing writing duties and sometimes singing each others words, lines are blurred and creativity explored in a wonderfully exuberant collection of songs.

The album, recorded in 3 days, is an exploration of relationships and, at its heart, it’s the sound of a friendship being made. Darren explains further: It’s only happened a few times but just once or twice I have seen someone on stage and thought, “I want to be in a band with them.” But I thought it the first time I saw Emma playing with her magnificent and under-rated band Standard Fare. I met her properly a little later in Sheffield when we played together. Before the gig I said I was suspicious of bands that wore hats. She wore a hat on stage. They say imitation is a form of flattery and I was glad that I noticed when I wrote the song “Boy, Look at What you Can’t Have Now” that it sounded like the sort of thing Emma might write. I covered up my theft by asking her to sing on it. When we were recording the song I suggested that we should write a whole album of duets. Musicians suggest things like this all the time because they are stupid or drunk. A few months later Emma told me she had started writing the album. This is what Emma does; she says something then does it. I race to play catch up. The songs were written over 3 weekends at her house and mine. Co-writing is something I’m not used to. It’s very intimate and me and Emma became friends through the process. Emma’s lyrics are sharp and precise whereas mine are more metaphoric. We talked about relationships and that’s what the album is about. It’s about our fears and paranoias and the search for trust and love. We deliberately swapped lines and genders so the narrative is never truly that of traditional duets. We wanted a band to make the album and chose Michael Wood and Cat Loye. 

TRACK LISTING

A1) Let’s Do Nothing
A2) No More Bombs
A3) Red Petal
A4) Over’s Now Overdue
A5) We Can Get By
A6) Do You Know

B1) A Tent Of Blankets
B2) Draw The Line
B3) My Right Arm
B4) Pretty Waste Of Time
B5) Reach Out
B6) Then We Kissed

Pioneering English traditional folk powerhouse, Eliza Carthy, first assembled the Wayward Band in 2013 in order to explore and celebrate her long and varied career in folk music; 'the last truly underground music scene'.

To do this Eliza put together a team of hugely talented people from across the UK, and set out on the road to promote her 'Best Of' compilation, 'Wayward Daughter,' which coincided with a biography of the same name. Since then, the band has become a festival favourite, and Eliza has been awarded the MBE for services to folk music. Eliza and the Wayward Band loved playing together so much it seemed natural and inevitable, as well as characteristically ambitious, that this 12-piece would set about recording an album. Early in 2016 they did just that. 'Big Machine' is the result and the renowned Real World and Rockfield Studios are where it all happened.

The material represents a healthy slice of everything good that is happening in traditional music now, across a sparkling spectrum of sound. The album features three contemporary songs; Eliza's own 'You Know Me' about the migrant crisis and notions of hospitality (featuring MC Dizraeli), a powerful cover of Ewan Maccoll's Radio Ballad 'The Fitter's Song' (at the behest of Peggy Seeger - and the song which inspired the album title) and an affectionate reworking of 'Hug You Like a Mountain' (Rory MacLeod), re-imagined here as a duet with Teddy Thompson.

There are also several examples of the Broadside ballad collections housed in Chetham's Library in Manchester given a new twist with music by Eliza and the band. This follows an acclaimed programme Eliza presented for Radio 4 about the Manchester Ballads last year, covering everything from songs about and caused by domestic abuse ('Devil in the Woman,' 'Fade and Fall (Love Not)'), to love of the seafaring life ('The Sea'). Added to that a couple of searing instrumentals, a song about dying from custard poisoning and a heartbreaking traditional ballad 'I Wish that the Wars were all Over' (performed live with the band onstage in Real World Studios' Studio One and featuring Irish superstar Damien Dempsey), and you begin to get the picture.

A very Big picture, a Big Machine firing on all cylinders. 'Big Machine' is one of Eliza Carthy's most adventurous and accomplished works to date -- and given that Eliza is the most passionate and groundbreaking English traditional singer of her generation, 'Big Machine' is an album you really won't want to miss.

‘Band Of The Future’ is Ausmuteants’ fourth album and probably their best to date.

The band’s previous albums have been released in the US on Goner Records and they last toured the US in support of their previous album ‘Order Of Operation’ in 2014.

Ausmuteants are not the band of the future or the past. Ausmuteants are just a band. Not punk, new wave, hardcore, boogie, darkwave, oi, hyphenaterock or pet rock. Not drug users and not straight edge. Ausmuteants are regular dudes practising the sound of things falling apart.

TRACK LISTING

Silent Genes
I Hate You
New Planet
Coastal Living
Cross Eyes
Spankwire
Music Writers
Band Of The Future
Mr Right
Come Home With Me
Liars
Stuck
Struck By Lightning
Calculations

Recorded in Wales, Los Angeles, and Somerset this is Mercury and Brit nominated McRae's 7th studio album, and is the follow up to 2013's critically acclaimed "From The Lowlands".

Featuring his international band, this new album of soulful alternative Folk/Americana has been garnering rave reviews.

**** MOJO "A dark triumph"
**** Q Magazine "finds real beauty in despair"
8/10 UNCUT, "a thrilling air of doom...beautiful" 

TRACK LISTING

1. The High Life
2. The Dogs Never Sleep
3. Christmas Eve,1943
4. Expecting The Rain
5. Let Me Grow Old With You
6. We Are The Mark.
7. My Desert Bride
8. Lover, Still You.
9. Hoping Against Hope

Bringing together both of Josephine Foster and the Victor Herrero Band’s Spanish albums in one place, with a previously unreleased track. Anda Jaleo was originally released in 2010. Federico Garcia Lorca's popular folk song collection "Las Canciones Populares Espanolas" was banned under Franco's dictatorship and today the music survives but marginally within the Spanish sub-conscious.

Taking their cue from Lorca and La Argentinita's infectious 1931 recording of the songs, Josephine Foster and her partner Spanish musician Victor Herrero arranged the poetically rich collection for their acoustic band, formed while living in the Grenadine Sierra. Anda Jaleo is the band's live recording of "Las Canciones"; a visceral celebration of the persistence of popular anonymous song.

This new edition includes an additional track not featured on the original release, an interpretation of ‘Sones de Asturias’. La colección de "Canciones Populares Españolas" recopiladas y armonizadas por Federico García Lorca fue censurada en tiempos de Franco, y hoy en día la música sobrevive aunque de una manera vaga en el subconsciente del pueblo español. Inspirados por la contagiosa grabación de las canciones de Lorca y La Argentinita de 1931, Josephine Foster y su compañero el músico español Víctor Herrero han arreglado esta poética y rica colección para su banda acústica , formada mientras vivían en la sierra de Granada. Anda Jaleo es la grabación en directo de su versión de "Las Canciones"; una celebración visceral de la canción popular anónima y su persistencia. Following from Anda Jaleo, Josephine Foster and the Victor Herrero Band created a superb follow-up entitled Perlas (Pearls). It is a jewel of a collection, with songs and poems selected by Josephine herself, gathered from dusty old scores and brought vividly to the present with warm performances full of flesh-and-blood emotion. Made with a variety of stringed instruments and simple percussion, the songs were recorded live in the studio on to analogue tape by Paco Loco in Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain. Foster breathes new life into timeless traditional melodies, drawing from the Spanish-folk traditions of Castile, the Basque, Santander and the Costa Brava.

TRACK LISTING

Anda Jaleo:
1. Los Cuatro Muleros
2. Los Pelegrinitos
3. Las Morillas De Jaen
4. Anda Jaleo
5. Las Tres Hojas
6. Los Mozos De Monleón
7. Sevillanas Del Siglo XVIII
8. Los Reyes De La Baraja
9. El Cafe De Chinitas
10. Zorongo
11. Nana De Sevilla
12. Sones De Asturia……

Perlas :
1. Puerto De Santa Maria
2. Sangre Colorada
3. Cuando Vienes Del Monto
4. Cuatro Pinos
5. Peregrino
6. Dame Esa Flor
7. En Esta Larga Ausencia
8. Abenámar
9. Perlas
10. Brillante Estrella

If you’ve followed The Phantom Band throughout their career to-date then you’ll know two things of the Glaswegian six-piece: feast often follows famine, and you should never accept them merely at face value. Just as two wildly singular, diverse albums in Checkmate Savage and The Wants sprung up one after another between 2009 and 2010, before a period of quiet (solo projects notwithstanding), so the group’s more direct third record released in June 2014 - Strange Friend – more art-rock than rock-art – comes followed by seven tracks cut largely from the same recording sessions at Chem 19 in Blantyre, in the form of Fears Trending.

Lauded last spring pretty much across the board, Strange Friend’s instant hit to the senses was the sound of a band pulling a thread tight through their naturally wandering creative tendencies and affecting a sense of positivity, even amidst quiet doubts over living in a world simultaneously hyper-connected and disconnected through the internet. For those who saw through the likes of ‘Clapshot’s’ irrepressible anti-anthem swell, though, Fears Trending is a resounding confirmation that the band’s recent recording sessions also bore out something of a darker hue.

“Maybe it's the evil twin of Strange Friend,” comments guitarist Duncan Marquiss. “They're stranger friends, oddball vestiges and hybrids.” Chief vocalist Rick Anthony agrees, pointing out that although Fears Trending merely came about as an anagram of their third record’s title, its connotations ring true, with a greater focus on themes of online isolation that they pawed at previously. “The reference is obviously there,” Marquiss explains. “Maybe it reflects our wariness of communications technology just now – which paradoxically seem to alienate people from themselves. We're all swamped with information so I question whether the band would necessarily want to add to the clickstream.”

Certainly the tone of the record matches this apprehension; the opening ‘Tender Castle’ – one of just two tracks, alongside ‘Spectrelegs’, that date back before the Strange Friend sessions – runs on in, imbued with the band’s recently heard gusto, yet quickly swivels on a tumbling floor of murmuring electronics and cautious intonations, setting the scene for some of the band’s weightiest music yet. There are familiar tropes here; the aforementioned ‘Spectrelegs’ introduces itself by way of a wavering electronic organ, Iain Stewart’s drumming is never less than forthright and punchy, stomping through ‘Local Zero’ with accustomed vigour. But then there are songs like the ominous slow-build tumult of ‘Black Tape’, and the poignant final track ‘Golden Olden’, which sees the band in some-part return to the Scottish folk routes that partly informed their first record (cult Scottish folk favourite Alasdair Roberts also appears on opening track ‘Tender Castles’.) “If Thomas Pynchon was asked to write the screenplay for Young Guns 3 I hope this song would be the soundtrack,” Marquiss reflects.

‘Denise Hopper’ differs again, taking on a melodic structure whipped up as though on an Estesian gust across Turkey, Anthony’s vocal rising and falling in its oscillating breeze. Delivered with steeliness beyond the usual dry wit that’s occasionally hinted at within the group’s usual off-kilter meanderings, the track cracks and breaks amidst a storm of guitar detritus. “That melt down at end could be one of my favourite Phantom Band moments on record to date,” Marquiss comments.

It’d be too broad to call Fears Trending the dark side to Strange Friends’ light. The playful intricacies and deviations of The Phantom Band remain and, after all, the album was recorded at the same time as its sister. “I think it's more about the atmosphere than the writing process that splits the two albums” Anthony reflects. “I guess there was a desire with Strange Friends to come back with no baggage attached and release a record that seemed really straight to the point. This record is straight to the point too but it's just that it's making a different point.” So it goes with The Phantom Band, a group forever changing, each new evolution more often than not a prescient for what’s to come.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tender Castle
2. Local Zero
3. Denise Hopper
4. Black Tape
5. Spectrelegs
6. The Kingfisher
7. Olden Golden

The Budos Band return with 'Burnt Offering'; a wild, booze-fueled ride of hazy riffs and take-no-prisoners horn lines that summons the occult - an evolved sound for this mighty 10-piece band sparked by their love of Black Sabbath and Pentagram.

'Burnt Offering' was recorded live in the studio, engineered and produced by Tom Brenneck, a founding member and guitarist in The Budos Band who runs Dunham Records and Studios. It was written at the band’s longtime Staten Island studio, where they’ve gathered for weekly rehearsals for over fifteen years. The haunting album cover was created by drummer Brian Profilio, a NYC public school art teacher.

The new album is dripping with the psychedelic sounds of early heavy metal fused with the tight-knit propulsion of Fela Kuti. “The Sticks” kicks off with a snarling riff seamlessly doubled on bass and guitar and unfurls into sludgy breakdowns and searing guitars.

The Free Fall Band are five very young timeless pop creators bursting with melody and sublime choruses, hailing from Mataró, a village north Barcelona.

‘Elephants Never Forget’ was the band’s debut album, produced by Miqui Puig and released on LAV Records. The record sums up The Free Fall Band perfectly: echoes of The Beatles, Jonathan Richman, The Shins, The Zombies… fun and emotion in equal measure, carefully assembled arrangements and a youthful image.

2013 put them at the forefront of Spanish pop, thanks to landmark moments such as their performance at the Primavera Sound Festival and supporting Rodriguez in Barcelona. They also released their first step on El Segell del Primavera, an EP with covers of The Strokes, Violent Femmes, New Order, Booker T. & The MGs and Jonathan Richman.

And now their second album arrives. It’s called ‘The Münster Sights’ and shows the band in another level: the songs reflect a band that have been playing and growing as musicians. The album was produced by Darren Hayman (he used to play in Hefner and has a long and amazing solo career) and engineered by Giles Barrett (from London popsters Tigercats), a perfect choice for The Free Fall Band as they’ve long been fans of both musicians. As a result ‘The Münster Sights’ sounds richer and fatter than their previous efforts and contains such great numbers as ‘Fontana’ and ‘I Want To Know’.

TRACK LISTING

I Want To Know
City Of Raleigh
Fontana
Look At Me Run, Dear
Lonesome Cowboy, Solitary Peggy Sue
Oh, What An Awkward Day
By Your Window
Every Man
The Barbershop
A Friend’s Homecoming
The Münster Sights

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

The Further Navigations EP is a continuation of the themes which informed The Memory Band album On The Chalk (Our Navigation Of The Line Of The Downs) also released on Static Caravan. Featuring remixes from Belbury Poly and Grantby and a brand new Memory Band track the EP draws inspiration from the ancient "lost road" that is the Harrow Way. The choice of collaborators are two producers who have had a profound impact on The Memory Band sound in different ways, but both bring to the fore the cinematic elements of Stephen Cracknell's approach to traditional music. In the decade since The Memory Band began one of its greatest contemporary influences has been the fine collection of work released by the Ghost Box label, in particular the Belbury Poly aka label boss Jim Jupp. Spectral, haunting and yet vibrant and knowing his work has established Jupp as a truly English original, making some of the essential electronic music of the new century. For "Hobby Horse" Belbury Poly takes the blueprint from the Memory Band's version of the traditional funeral march "When I Was On Horseback" transforms it by speeding it up, flicking the swing setting and produces something that sounds like David Munrow making music for schools on analogue synthesisers. Grantby aka Dan Grigson has a mysterious history, famed for the Timber EP and tracks for labels such as Mo-Wax in the mid ‘90s, his work defined and exceeded trip-hop and garnered a loyal international underground following who spoke of him as an English version of DJ Shadow. Memory Band leader Stephen Cracknell worked alongside Grigson on a one or two of those early recordings and when Grigson withdrew from music after an ill-starred move to Creation Records, Cracknell moved to focus on his own projects which lead to The Memory Band. Recently Grigson returned to music, working on music for film and television music before returning to remixes and production. Here Grantby takes the traditional ballad "As I Walked over Salisbury Plain" leads it into the military zone and the result is "The Ballad Of Imber Down" named after the "lost village" of Imber upon Salisbury Plain, from which its inhabitants were evacuated by the Army during the Second World War only to learn that after the War that it had been decided the village would remain the property of the military and that they could never return again. Their ultimately doomed campaign to return has itself passed into legend.The Memory Band original "Walk Along It" is a hymn to majesty of walking in the open air. It borrows heavily from the anonymous and haunting version of the traditional English tune The Lincolnshire Poacher, broadcast from a shortwave numbers station and believed to be operated by the British secret services.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. The Memory Band & Belbury Poly - Hobby Horse
2. The Memory Band - Walk Along It
Side 2:
3. The Memory Band & Grantby - The Ballad Of Imber Down

Re-released for the first time since 1974, this is the sequel to the classic 1973 ‘Bongo Rock’, which became a foundation of rap and popular music, up to the present day. This LP has been sampled by Bentley Rhythm Ace, Fatboy Slim, Macy Gray, Group Home and Koushik.

The Incredible Bongo Band is a blend of many multi-talented people. Jim Gordon is one of the featured musicians. Ringo Starr has said "Jim is one of the finest drummers in the world". Gordon composed 'Layla' in association with Eric Clapton. King Errisson is one of the best percussionists in the world, having contributed to the Jackson Five and most other Motown hits as well as touring with Diana Ross
.
Perry Botkin Jr. is a writer, musician and producer of the highest order who received an Academy Award nomination for "Bless the Beasts and the Children" and produced groups such as as The Letterman, Vanity Fair and Ed Ames. Micheal Viner formed The Incredible Bongo Band to be a musical forum for himself and his friends. The Bongo Band has picked up ideas from a multitude of greats ranging from Harry Nilsson to Ringo Starr and Mike Deasy, who played with Elvis Presley for many years, made a large contribution to this album.

TRACK LISTING

Kiburi
When The Bed Breaks Down I'll Meet You In The Spring
Sing,Sing,Sing
Pipeline
Wipe Out
Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley Your Tie's Caught In The Zipper
Topsy Part I, Topsy Pat II, Topsy Part III
Sharp Nine
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Got The Sun In The Morning And The Daughter At Night
Ohkey Dokey

"These shows will astonish you. I had tears of joy in my eyes". This was the standout line from a Five Star review by The Guardian newspaper of the live shows by The Magic Band - a collection of extraordinary musicians drawn from the lineups that were brought together over the years by the legendary Captain Beefheart. Tribute bands and ghost bands are usually a decidedly poor relation to the real thing, but The Magic Band are different, as the tracks on this album prove. Recorded at the UK shows during 2004, the material bursts with new life, and the band achieve a near-impossible task - not just playing the notes as they are on the records (hard enough in itself in some cases) but playing them convincingly enough to send a sold-out London audience into ovation after ovation. These are the players who were inducted into the Captain's secret musical universe, and who transformed his unique ideas into works of unfathomable and inimitable beauty, and live in 2005 they did that same thing again.

The Free Fall Band are five very young timeless pop creators bursting with melody and sublime choruses. They appeared out of nowhere three years ago from the Maresme. They quickly gained recognition: finalists of the Demoscópicas de Mondo Sonoro or at the Villa de Bilbao (where they were the winners of the Pop Rock category in 2011) azzaldia de Donosti, Faraday, popArb… a series of achievements that led them to record their debut album, produced by Miqui Puig and released on LAV Records (co-released with Buenritmo).

The record sums up The Free Fall Band perfectly: echoes of The Beatles, Jonathan Richman, The Shins, The Zombies…fun and emotion in equal measure, carefully assembled arrangements and a youthful image.

2013 has put them at the forefront of national pop, thanks to landmark moments such as their performance at the Primavera Sound Festival and supporting Rodriguez in Barcelona. Before the year is out they will play at BAM and will also take part in the Primavera Sound Touring Party that will take them all around Spain.

This next step is a mini album of covers (their first record on El Segell Del Primavera) that includes covers of The Strokes, Violent Femmes, New Order, Booker T & The MGs and Jonathan Richman.

Their second album is planned for the beginning of 2014.

TRACK LISTING

‘Love Vigilantes’ (New Order)
‘The Modern Age’ (The Strokes)
‘When We Refuse To Suffer’ (Jonathan Richman)
‘Green Onions’ (Booker T & The M.G.s)
Violent Femmes Medley

Originating in New York City, Talking Heads drew inspiration from funk, rock, classical minimalism, and African rock to create one of the most individual and stimulating bands to emerge from New Wave. Lead by Byrne’s whimsical, esoteric lyrics and the bands intricately layered polyrhythmic textures, Talking Heads found international fame and went on to become ranked in Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Artists of All Time’ (2011).

Originally released in 1982, the double live LP ‘The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads’ features the original quartet in recordings from 1977 and 1979, with the second album consisting of their expanded 10 piece line up that toured with the band throughout 1980-81. The release includes the cult hits ‘Psycho Killer’, ‘Life During Wartime’ and ‘Take Me To The River’.

Following her hugely successful run as curator of London’s Meltdown Festival, this album continues an astonishing bout of creativity for Ono, who is celebrating her 80th birthday with major museum retrospectives around the world, her 10th #1 hit on the Billboard Dance charts, a sequel to her instruction book Grapefruit, winning "Digital Genius" MTV O Award, and spearheading the activist effort against fracking in her home state of New York. A career retrospective book will be published by Genesis in Autumn followed by reissues of her '60s-80s albums in 2014.

“My new album comes at a very special time for me. The energy I have right now, and the desire to continue to make as much great work as I can, is really moving me forward all the time. This album is the culmination of a lot of ideas I’ve been having over the last few years and I feel proud to release it at such an exciting time of my life."

Take Me To The Land Of Hell was recorded in New York and produced by Yoko, Sean Lennon and Yuka Honda. Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band includes members of Cornelius and Cibo Matto, plus – special guests for this album – tUnEyArDs, ?uestlove, Lenny Kravitz, Nels Cline and Andrew Wyatt. The album includes remixes by Mike D & Adrock and Keigo "Cornelius" Oyamada.

OK, hands up who remembers the album, ‘Fuchsia’ from 1971? Hands-up who loves the mix of acid-folk, progressive rock, strings and songs? Yeah, me too.

Me and My Kites are a new band, from Sweden.

Why is that relevant? They are named after a song on Fuchsia's album, which must say something about their influences and, on their first-ever single, it’s all the more appropriate as Fuchsia's original lead singer Tony Durant wrote and now sings a new version of Fuchsia's song 'The Band' on the a-side (remember those?) of this new 7” on FdM’s Regal Crabomophone label.

The b-side is dedicated to Kevin Ayers, and is an extended version of the Me And My Kites song, Isis’ Adventure, from the band’s new album, ‘Like A Dream Back Then’)

I hope you like it.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Band (written By Tony Durant) 3:15
2. Isis’ Adventure (written By David Svedmyr) 3:30

Stagecoach is a pop rock band from the south of England, with a smashing debut album and UK tour coming in May. Huw Stephens span their single 'Map To The Freezer' exhaustively on both his Radio 1 shows. He then invited the band to play the BBC Introducing stage at Reading & Leeds 2010, before naming Stagecoach one of his BBC Introducing acts of the year. In February 2011 the band recorded a live Radio One session at Maida Vale. You may have heard Stagecoach on BBC One's ‘Gavin and Stacey’ Christmas & New Year specials. Channel 4 also used them on season 2 of ‘Skins’. Two of the band’s tracks feature on the international trailer for this year’s breakout British comedy ‘Killing Bono’. The band recently toured with friends Johnny Foreigner, Glaswegian rockers Twin Atlantic and opened for Jimmy Eat World. With a handful of singles and ep's released through indie labels Alcopop! and This Is Fake DIY the first full length album (produced by Rory Attwell) is due early 2013.

For fans of: Johnny Foreigner, Pavement, Fight Like Apes, Wilco, Los Campesinos, Prefab Sprout Big melodic gutsy slacker pop!

TRACK LISTING

1.) Work! Work! Work!
2.) Action
3.) 56K Dial Up
4.) A New Hand
5.) Threequel
6.) Kings Resolve
7.) First And Last
8.) Nothing Leads You Astray
9.) We Got Tazers
10.) I’m Not Your House
11.) Video Shop

Releases by Stephen Cracknell and his acclaimed project The Memory Band have always lent themselves to journeys and landscape: dream-like stumbles through stony megaliths, wintry climbs along snow-covered hills, drunken dashes through sun-splashed fields with a summer love. Their records have always been more pre-occupied with external narratives than internal emotions. But perhaps never before quite as literally as on adventurous new album On The Chalk (Our Navigation of the Line of the Downs), a beguiling musical tribute to a mythical ancient pathway crossing a Southern England shrouded in mystery and withered by time.

Made of eleven songs spread across haunting horn noises, crackles, drones, blissed-out beats and tender piano melodies, this fourth studio album marks the tenth anniversary of one the most invigorating and much loved folk acts around, a group described by NME as “a disorientating, drugged-up soundtrack for the 21st Century… genuinely beautiful.” And speaking of monumental journeys, it’s been quite a road to this moment for Cracknell and his ever evolving cast of collaborators.“I’ve had a decade of marginal poverty, nice trips and the company of wonderful dreamers,” laughs the mercurial composer, formerly seen fronting much loved outfits The Accidental and Balearic Folk Orchestra. “The idea with this record was it to be sort of a road trip along a mythical track way, an irreverent and episodic journey across a landscape inundated with history and the marks of change and transformation, some striking and immediate, others slow and imperceptible.”

He may as well be describing his own sounds to be found in On The Chalk… – for every jaw-dropping shimmer of harp or arresting moment of reed organ, there’s an avalanche of clever quiet detail to be unearthed, with cinematic overtones that recall his Wicker Man touring soundtrack that Cracknell has taken to fields everywhere from Glastonbury, Green Man to a castle in Jersey.Cracknell says: “There’s been a real revival of interest lately in old roads and green lanes, in literature, art and film. This has run parallel to so much of the renewed interest in folklore and folk music. One supposedly ancient trackway that I'd hear referenced again and again was the Harrow Way, which stretched from the Straits Of Dover all the way to the west country by an overland route on chalk ridgeways. I grew up in a place supposedly along its route.”What followed was a period of extensive research, digging deep into his own past and the World around him, listening to a strange combination of traditional folk-songs and seminal British landscape music such as Chill Out by acid house pranksters the KLF, tracing old roads and creating ambient recordings on site for use on the album. ”It was all a lot of fun, running round the country playing at psycho-geography,” recalls Cracknell. “Like the landscape that inspired it, it’s an album that at times is dark and imposing and at others more peaceful and serene.”Recorded in the songwriter’s home studio in East London (“an empty schoolroom overlooking a park… quite a peaceful place for London, really”), this is an album by a group who, like their subject matter, have changed and grown over time, but remain every bit as vital as ever.

Debut single from French 3-piece electronic garage band, The Jimi Ben Band. Based in Lille, France, they came to our attention having played with Thee Spivs. We strongly suggest you YouTube the video to experience the full majesty and psychedelic majesty of the band.

Once upon a time, Jimi Ben found himself lost in the jungle. He had been wandering in South East Asia for years and could find no way out. One night he was cruising for dirt and love, he got struck by sexedelic visions emerging from the red lights of go-go bars. An inner baboon voice told him: “Jimi ! Bad is good for you. Why don’t you set up a Rock’N’Roll band ?”. That’s exactly what he did. Back in his hometown (Stockton, Northern France), he was taught by long time friend Ricky Love how to play power chords on a guitar and recorded a first LP demo on a 4 tracks tape recorder in his kitchen.In December 2009, Johnny Boom (drums) joined Ricky Love (bass, vocals) and Jimi Ben (vocals, guitars) for their first show and further DIY tape recordings (Monkeys In Da House EP – 2011). Mainly influenced by American Garage bands, 60’s British Beat groups, Surf Music, Punk Rock and New Wave, these slackers like it rather cheesy, danceable and fun. The Jimi Ben Band started as a lo-fi garage trio. Since then, they have performed about 40 shows in France and Belgium and developed a degenerate style based on energy, coconut vocals and great amounts of reverb. They have made it quite clear that they wanted nothing but having girls dancing at gigs.

In a decade which has seen a wide ranging and fruitful revival of interest in folk music, Stephen Cracknell's The Memory Band has established itself in that fine English tradition of slightly schizophrenic projects pointing in several directions at once which manage to find their place in the ever exciting independent music scene, popping up at several influential moments and though the marvels of technology finding audiences all around the world.

From the outset The Memory Band has embraced change and for its third album, "Oh My Days", the ever-fluid line-up of The Memory Band has shifted once more, with a fresh emphasis on rhythm courtesy of the powerhouse team of bassist Jon Thorne from Lamb and drummer Tom Page of Rocketnumbernine, as well as an all-new vocal frontline featuring Jess Roberts, Jenny McCormick, Hannah Caughlin and Liam Bailey (whose debut album is out on Poyldor later this year). Sam Carter, winner of this year's Horizon award at the Radio 2 Folk Awards, plays and sings on a number of songs, while there are contributions from names new and old; Nancy Wallace, Dot Allison, Sam Genders on vocals, guitarists John Smith and Pete Greenwood, bassist Jonny Bridgwood, string players Quinta, Rob Spriggs, Jennymay Logan and Laura Moody, Sarah Scutt on accordion and recorder, and Serafina Steer on harp.

"Oh My Days" is a warmly-textured, delicately-balanced blend of the best elements from its predecessors. Low-key electronic pulses and loops purr away gently beneath material that radiates a quiet strength, having expanded its palette to embrace soul, gospel, Laurel Canyon rock and country blues alongside the folk and jazz elements of the earlier albums. It's a beautifully-poised piece of work, with the usual handful of inspired covers – Sandy Denny's "By The Time It Gets Dark", Graham Bond's "Love Is The Law" and Jeff Alexander's "Come Wander With Me" (from the TV series The Twilight Zone) – nestling amongst ten originals, several of which are already live favourites.

The Straw Bear Band is the main focus of attention for Dominic Cooper - member of the Owl Service collective and inhouse graphic designer for the Rif Mountain label (of which he is also a co-founder). The Straw Bear Band play a kind of 'garage-folk'; stripped down, raw, earthy, and concerned with the darker, more grim aspects of our aural heritage. During a break from recording their second album (a mammoth 26-track concept album which is an A-Z of songs about British eccentrics), the band cut these 2 sides in the studio of producer/multi-instrumentalist Gerry Diver (best known for his work with Lisa Knapp). The songs are both traditional re-workings, and both are elevated to new levels from any previous recorded versions. A Lyke Wake Dirge is performed as a driving, chorus-led stomp-fest, while Nottamun Town is presented in a stark, angular arrangement which suits the dream-like lyric perfectly - the portentous percussion and Diver's wild, bewitching violin used to stunning effect.

The band are named after a folk festival which takes place in the town of Whittlesey where Dominic Cooper grew up. Each year since at least the mid-19th century, a man dressed as a straw bear visits all the ale-houses in the town to entertain the patrons before being torched in a breathtaking finale (sadly, this event has lost much of it's charm since the intervention of health and safety executives).

For fans of Alasdair Roberts, The Owl Service, Cath & Phil Tyler.

‘No man is an island’ wrote John Donne, but what about bands? Well, they’re probably not islands either, but like most things in life, you need exceptions to prove the rule. That’s why it was so remarkable when The Phantom Band, with their legion of musical references, still managed to sound quite unlike anyone else when they released "Checkmate Savage" in 2009, a debut that earned mass critical applause and made them the cult success of the year. Twelve months later, they’re still in a movement of one, and their follow-up, "The Wants", looks set to cement their reputation as one of the most inventive and vital units at work today.

If "Checkmate Savage" was the product of a band mulling over the human race’s inexorable slide into oblivion, then its follow-up found them turning feral and heading for the hills to ride out the storm. Holing up in Chem19 (Chemikal Underground’s studio in the wastelands of Blantyre), The Phantom Band immersed themselves in a primordial soup of influences before emerging six months later, emaciated and squinting in the pallid sunlight, cradling "The Wants": a nine-track musical folly and the soundtrack to their own personal apocalypse.

Charged with creating a second album more or less from scratch and in situ - an album upon which their creative and material survival depended - they contracted a virulent strain of cabin fever and promptly set sail into the mouth of madness. Keyboardist Andy Wake elaborates: 'As you know, The Phantom Band was built on the site of an ancient Indian burial ground, so every time we record it's like an emotional exorcism. It's painful, prolonged, confusing; at times it's hard to tell what's happening outside of this other-world'. Guiding them through this tortuous birthing process was the chimerical figure of Mungo Bang, 'a spiritual adviser of sorts who came highly recommended. He also added vibes'.

Their madness had method, because a lot came out in the mix: a forest of tuned percussion, poly-rhythmic group vocals, fuzz guitars and medieval electronics. Musical inspirations included David Lynch and John Carpenter soundtracks, German kosmische music of the 70’s, Tom Waits, digidub rhythms, R&B harmonies, doo-wop and rock'n'roll. Lyrical inspiration emerged from lycanthropy, vampires, doppelgangers and the Salem witch trials. That’s also Teenage Fanclub’s Wurlitzer organ you can hear on "Everybody Knows It’s True", alongside a host of other instruments, both homemade and hard-bought. Various bits of furniture, wood, a toy drum machine, some home-made drum triggers and FX pedals (aptly named the Phantosizer), shelvaphones, a dulcimer and the studio fire extinguisher - all had roles to play on the final recording. 'Sink [Greg Sinclair] appeared at rehearsal one day with what looked like a body bag containing at least one corpse. It turned out to be a full size vibrophone with all the trimmings', explains Wake. If any more evidence of creative initiative was required, the album opens with the sound of a baliphone being sawed into tune in preparation for a take.

The end product represents a major leap forward for the band, a sound more of their own. Juxtapositions are more apparent – arcane folk melodies and gothic lyrical imagery straddle vintage analogue synths and primitive drum machines. 'Where Checkmate Savage was varied, we've intensified those elements, because we've got no reason to be subtle with them', says Wake. 'It's much more concentrated, more skilfully executed and with more decoration. It’s "Checkmate Savage" - On Ice'.

The Phantom Band was pulled together from all four corners of Scotland, settling on Glasgow as PB HQ. Duncan Marquiss (guitar), Gerry Hart (bass), Andy Wake (keyboards), Rick Anthony (vocals) and Greg Sinclair (guitars) are a volatile cabal of creative contradictions: a disorientating amalgam of music, art and performance that defies categorisation and provides an object lesson in how to forge something distinct and unique from well-worn sources. "Checkmate Savage" won plaudits from the mainstream music press and the indie blogs alike, finding famous fans in Peter Buck and comic artist Frank Quitely, while the influential music emporium Piccadilly Records named it their album of the year. Their new album may be "The Wants", but what do The Phantom Band want for? 'Survival. For this album to lead to another after it, that's all. We think it's better than the last one, and if anyone agrees with us then brilliant, they can hop aboard. Those who disagree can hop aboard too, but they're sailing at the stern'.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: The mighty Phantom Band return with a superb follow up to their debut album, which was our Album Of The Year in 2009. "The Wants" picks up where "Checkmate Savage" left off adding more and more layers to their already complex sound. It's less motorik than their debut, but still with their distinctive pulsing rhythms at the heart of it. There's more analogue synth action and knob twiddling going on this time around and on each listen, you're plunged deeper into their world.
The first band to get a Piccadillly Album Of The Year in consecutive years? The competition is pretty stiff this year, but it's definitely in the running.....

TRACK LISTING

1. A Glamour
2. O
3. Everybody Knows It's True
4. The None Of One
5. Mr. Natural
6. Come Away In The Dark
7. Walls
8. Into The Corn
9. Goodnight Arrow

While it has only been 18 months since Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band's self-titled debut, they have traveled what feels like thousands of miles. "Where The Messengers Meet" is in real time, an expansion of the sound of the band's eponymous debut. They take the same frantic and skewed elements and stretch them out, giving them room to breathe and blossom.

Thematically, "Where The Messengers Meet" is an exercise in contrasts: the delicate and gentle, the dark and furious. Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band collects powerful compositions into one cohesive whole held together with lush production and a haunting atmosphere. They are imperceptibly inching away from an angular style influenced by Modest Mouse and Wolf Parade, instead incorporating an epic sound recalling both the modern masters such as Arcade Fire, and classic pioneers, like Pink Floyd.

Ralfe Band are based around the talents of British songwriter Oliver Ralfe. Here they have created a magical, inventive and atmospheric soundtrack, with enchanting melodies and beautiful instrumentation including piano, guitars, mandolin, accordion, strings, brass and electronic elements.

From Fluxus and performance-art pioneer and Two Virgins to chart-topping dance-music heroine(inspiring punk rock along the way), Yoko Ono has been an innovative and influential force on music and art, while simultaneously campaigning for peace on the world's stage. At 76 years young, Yoko continues to kick ass. "Between My Head And The Sky", a career-defining album made with her new Plastic Ono Band. The record is a gorgeous, mind-melting blend of styles, restating and sharpening themes while plunging into the always-mysterious future. Band includes Keigo 'Cornelius' Oyamada and his band members Yuko Araki and Shimmy Shimizu, Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda (of Cibo Matto) as well as NYC improvisers Erik Friedlander, Shahzad Ismaily, Michael Leonhart, Daniel Carter and Indigo Street. Raw rockers, electronic pulse glimmers, dark late-night improvisations and heart-breaking elegiac ballads- Yoko takes a variety of textual approaches on this beautifully balanced collection of work. A career-defining album by one of contemporary culture's reigning geniuses.

From their first gig in April 08, The Hayley Faye Band have garnered a loyal following. This debut single features two tracks: "Babysleepmode", which is driven by a propulsive snare drum beat and the upbeat stomp of "Kings And Queens", with both tracks being defined by Hayley's distinctive, charismatic vocals and perceptive lyrics.

Creating your own genre of music is not for the faint hearted and this is exactly what this album uncompromisingly sets out to do. Despite strong influences from the Mediterranean and the Middle East, it admirably keeps its feet firmly on the ground of Manchester and British Indie. Following in the footsteps of British bands Asian Dub Foundation and Transglobal Underground, the album layers exotic sounds like darbuka, saz and bouzouki over a strong, driving back beat. From electric guitar to the haunting Turkish çümbüş, each song holds small surprises from the unusual array of instruments arranged with loving attention to detail.

A mixture of Darwish's songs in English and modern rearrangements of Turkish and Kurdish songs, this album successfully fuses lyrics in English, Turkish and two Kurdish languages. Anatolian folk songs, some thought to be over 300 years old, sit comfortably next to some of the most biting English lyrics to have been written in recent times. The whole album has a meaningful weight to it but never becomes trite or pompous like so many of its world music counterparts.

The country and eastern sound is both uplifting and adventurous, never more exemplified than in the stomping cover of Dolly Parton's classic song "Jolene". Every listen reveals a new detail from the many intricate layers that go together to set this album in a world of is own. With anthemic and poetical comments on immigration and the Iraq war it is firmly set in the 21st century but the breathtakingly original mixture of languages and sounds from east and west takes you to a world where the only borders really are in your mind.

Limited 7" from this hot Sydney three piece, bursting on to the music scene with a fuzzed out guitar sound, the simplicity of a three piece format and the haunting vocals of Sarah Kelly. This is distorto dream pop, that reminds me of Juliana Hatfield and Lush a bit too. Sisters Sarah and Lizzie Kelly form the core of the band and record with the addition of a boy drummer / vocalist.

This is Anticon co-founder Sole's official follow up to 2005's "Live From Rome" LP, and first release with his new band, Skyrider. It's the label's finest hip hop album since Sage Francis' classic "Personal Journals" way back in 2002. In some ways, this is a record of return - a return to rhyming for one, particularly the complicated rhyme schemes that marked Sole's early work, a return driven by his seeming, but not actual, discordant love of both Lord Byron and Lil' Wayne. It's a record where the lovely analog of "Shipwreckers" (where Sole jacks the hook from the Guy Debord film Refutation Of All Judgements) comfortably co-habits with the grinding, anthemic opening track "A Sad Day For Investors".

"Wake Of The Dying Sun King" is the second full-length of epic meditative drone from this South Western Virginia collective. Like Pelt (with whom it shares several members), Spiral Joy Band uses mostly acoustic instruments to create slow, building pieces rich with human detail. The steady rolling of multiple Tibetan bowls, bowed and struck gongs, hypnotic fiddle, sruti box, and other instruments are recorded live in continuous performances that frequently stretch beyond an hour per piece. The performance aspect is key to Spiral Joy Band's aura - the variations in approach, force, etc. with which each tone is played, and the clear, open recording (mostly in Blacksburg's Glade baptist church) highlight the subtleties of the music.

A new Joanna Newsom record already? Don't rub your eyes and ears just yet —it's 'just' an EP. But with all new arrangements and performances of two already-classic Joanna songs and the debut of a brand-new song, it's a solid short-play record at least — and another inspiring slice of Newsom at best! The EP was performed by Joanna's road-tested band: Kevin Barker, Neal Morgan, Dan Cantrell and Ryan Francesconi, with Joanna Newsom singing and playing her harp. Recorded and mixed in its entirety by Tim Green at The Plant Studios in Sausalito, California, it's an all-new, live and lively look into the world of one of today's fastest-growing young artists. Both formats feature "Colleen", "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie" and "Cosmia".

One of the most enigmatic, mysterious, and defiantly anti-commercial groups to emerge from the New York loft scene during the 90s, the No-Neck Blues Band formed in 1992 around a consistent core of multi-instrumentalists who have stubbornly and admirably insist on individual anonymity. Incorporating elements of folk, drone, psychedelia, free jazz, noise, and just about everything else, NNCK have nevertheless carved out a distinctive sound from complementary and disparate component elements. "Letters From The Earth" was NNCK's first digital output and is a document of their first ever outdoor Orthodox Easter concert in 1996. This double CD outputs 111 or so minutes worth of this group's dizzying array of sonic blattage, cable disruption, tribal tranceadelics and trip or drone aesthetic.

Folks, you don't need to buy any records by My Morning Jacket, Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev anymore, Seattle's Band Of Horses have combined all three and only gone and made one of the albums of the year! These are huge, emotive, yearning songs. The sound is reverb-drenched and lonesome: enormo guitars chime whilst Ben Bridewell whacks out his vocals like Perry Farrel's little, lost brother. OK, they sound very similar to M.M. Jacket, but there's a directness here that's exhilarating. The whole record flows, but there's some absolute anthems lurking amidst the drift and echo. It's a towering, beautiful thing.

TRACK LISTING

The First Song
Wicked Gil
Our Swords
The Funeral
Part One
The Great Salt Lake
Weed Party
I Go To The Barn Because I Like The Monsters
St. Augustine