The title of Richard Dawson's new album End of the Middle is a suitably slippery contradiction, one that invites multiple interpretations: Middle-aging? Middle-class? The middle-point of Dawson's career? The centre of a record? Centrism in general? Polarisation? The possibility of having a balanced discussion about anything? Stuck in the middle with you? Middle England? Middling songwriting?

End of the Middle is a wonkily beautiful peer into the workings of the family unit, perhaps several generations of the same family: "I wanted this record to be small-scale and very domestic", Dawson explains, "to be stripped back, stark and naked, and let the lyrics and melodies speak for themselves and for the people in the songs". By paring things right back what is revealed is a suite of remarkably poised, oddly elegant, beautiful music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is no predicting what Dawson will do next, a collaboration with a Finnish metal band? A 45-minute one-song gig? It's all fair game in Dawsonland (Newcastle), as is going back to his roots a little and crafting something that's as mundane as it is beautiful. Small scale stories of working class life, karaoke and love drenched in his unique sensibilities. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bolt
2. Gondola
3. Bullies
4. The Question
5. Boxing Day Sales
6. Knot
7. Polytunnel
8. Removals Van
9. More Than Real

Welcome to Jaakko Eino Kalevi’s garden of earthly delights! Chaos Magic is the Finn’s wildest statement yet – a double-album of elemental pop and baroque electronics that plots a thrilling course through the Jaakko universe, drawing on cosmic jazz, dub reggae, neon synthpop, tender ballads and psych-rock nirvana, the whole thing laced with melody and mystery.

Largely written and recorded by Jaakko in his new home of Athens, Chaos Magic features musical contributions from Alma Jodorowsky, Jimi Tenor, Faux Real, Yu-Ching Huang and John Moods, as well as artwork by Flaminia Veronesi and illustrations by Vilunki 3000.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There really is no way to narrow down Jaakko Eino Kalevi's music into genre, there is a propulsive edge to all of it but the propulsion ranges from drenched, Balearic groove to dusty minimal-wave percussion and swooning pop.

‘I’m Not Here’ inhabits the shaggy, world-weary mode of Alex Izenberg’s favorite 1970s artists, folks like Harry Nilsson, John Lennon, Randy Newman, and Lou Reed.

Recorded at Tropico Studios, produced by Izenberg and Greg Hartunian in Los Angeles, CA, the album’s swelling string and woodwind arrangements - courtesy of collaborator Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors - bring to mind the technicolour sweep of Van Dyke Parks.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ivory
2. Gemini Underwater
3. Egyptian Cadillac
4. Breathless Darkness
5. Broadway
6. Our Love Remains
7. Ladies Of Rodeo
8. Sorrows Blue Tapestry
9. Juniper & Lamplight
10. Sea Of Wine

Cold Brew is a posthumous collection of instrumental rock music from Sam Mehran recorded in Los Angeles between April and May 2018. Compiled under the guidance of Sam’s father, Abbas Mehran, and curated by Sam’s friends Nicholas Weiss and Katie Wagner, it’s the first time that Sam’s solo music will be released under his own name.

Sam recorded over one hundred songs for Cold Brew, a selection of which are presented here in their original form, without any additional production or remixing. Cold Brew was always intended to be an instrumental album, driven by effortlessly hooky guitars, warm, golden sound, and puckish attitude. Using dry, driving sonics without much reverb or washy ambience, it’s informed by rock’s history but not reverent towards it.

Hen Ogledd - the quartet consisting of Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington - take a deliberately organic and natural approach on their second album ‘Free Humans’, out on Weird World.

Inspired as much by ABBA as the work of 12th Century mystic-composer-naturalist-visionary Hildegard von Bingen, touched equally by the spirits of radical philosophical plumber Mary Midgley and PC Music star Hannah Diamond, as quiet as the paintings of Agnes Martin yet bombastic like a Werner Herzog documentary... it’s an album of seamless, glorious contradictions.

Tackling themes of love, friendship, Gaia theory, sewers, the nature of time, human stench and the thrills of wild swimming, it’s remarkable that, given the intense collision of influences and wide-ranging ideas at play, ‘Free Humans’ somehow coheres into a marvellous whole.

TRACK LISTING

Farewell
Trouble
Earworm
Crimson Star
Kebran Gospel Gossip
Remains
Paul Is 9ft Tall (Marsh Gas)
Space Golf
Time Party
The Loch Ness Monster’s Song
Flickering Lights
Bwganod
Feral
Skinny Dippers

Following a four-year silence, enigmatic LAoutsider Alex Izenberg presents his sophomore album ‘Caravan Château’ via Weird World / Domino.

Recorded largely at Tropico Beauty with Greg Hartunian (Young Jesus) and Derek Korat, and with the help of a handful of collaborators including Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear), Jonathan Rado (Foxygen, Whitney, Lemon Twigs), Ari Balouzian (Tobias Jesso Jr) and others, Izenberg creates songs that are easy to adore but hard to define. Izenberg’s sharp songs are the bait that first brings you into ‘Caravan Château’ but that deliberate ambiguity is what brings you back repeatedly, hoping to tease out the riddles of being inside these stunning tunes.

TRACK LISTING

Requiem
Sister Jade
Anne In Strange Furs
Disraeli Woman
Saffron Glimpse
Dancing Through The
Turquoise
Bouquets Falling In The
Rain
December 30th
Lady
Revolution Girls
Caravan Château

Within A Western Circular lies an exciting and varied crew of guest artists including MF DOOM, Samuel T. Herring (Future Islands), Sudan Archives, and Laura Groves, all contributing vocals to his rich, dexterous compositions. These collaborations are the by-product of several years of writing and producing. Recently, he’s appeared extensively on the debut albums by Sudan Archives (writing the lead single, 'Confessions', no less) and Nilüfer Yanya (contributing seven songs), alongside work with Celeste, and another writer and production credit on Jessie Ware’s Devotion.

An album that’s been in the works for the past half-decade, A Western Circular is a bold, reflective piece that directly relates to Archer’s personal experiences of life and death, centered on one particular week where they breathed with equal intensity. The record’s themes of greed, love and loyalty all relate back to that specific time. Inspired by author John Fante, A Western Circular is a spiritual voyage through life’s pushing and pulling: finding beauty in the rough, sadness in the bright. Ostensibly, it’s a poignant reflection on the duality of the human condition.

On the record, Archer has uncovered new depths and forged an invigorating singular sound - supple and multi-layered, honouring his acoustic heritage and influence, while building a sonic universe that commands contemporary references to everything from Frank Zappa to Yasuaki Shimuzu, Robert Wyatt to Arthur Russell.

TRACK LISTING

Western Circular
Scarecrow
Last Sniff With MF DOOM
Killing Crab
The Boon With Samuel T. Herring
Cheater With Sudan Archives
Cures & Wounds
Decades With Samuel T. Herring & Laura Groves
Ugly Feelings (Again)
Worse Off West

Finnish psych-pop voyager Jaakko Eino Kalevi returns with a new release called ‘Dissolution’ via Weird World. Never one to repeat himself, these seven songs come from a sparkling new constellation in the Kalevi universe as he draws deep for a set that explores the cosmic implications of a life being well lived. On this release, Jaakko teams up with the Berlin- based Taiwanese singer Yu-Ching Huang; as he sings in his native tongue, she responds: “I won’t make contact / I enter the limit state.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Finland's king of psychedelic curveballs, quirky Balearic and off kilter synth jams returns with 'Dissolution', continuing his groove heavy journey into absurdist pop but with deeper emotional connection and a richer sound than ever before.

TRACK LISTING

Out Of Touch
Dissolution
I Am Looking Forward
Uutiset
The Source Of The Absolute Knowledge
The Search
Conceptual Medierranean (Part 2)

Weird World welcome Hen Ogledd and their new record, ‘Mogic’.

Founded by Richard Dawson and harpist Rhodri Davies, with the addition of Dawn Bothwell and Sally Pilkington, Hen Ogledd’s meaning comes from the Welsh name for The Old North.

‘Mogic’ is Hen Ogledd’s third album (their first for Weird World) and their most surprising and accessible work yet.

“You might expect folk musicians Richard Dawson and Rhodri Davies to come up with some haunting oddity - but this is a fist bumping bit of electropop” - The Guardian (Tracks Of The Week)

TRACK LISTING

Love Time Feel
Sky Burial
Problem Child
First Date
Gwae Reged E Heddiw
Dyma Fy Robot
Tiny Witch Hunter
Transport & Travel
Welcome To Hell
Etheldreda

In this age of constant connectivity, switching off has become one of the great luxuries of modern life and it’s one of the reasons Jaakko Eino Kalevi has called his new album ‘Out Of Touch’. He explores what he calls this “essential, blissed out” state on his second album for Weird World as he meditates, in classic Jaakko fashion, on the merrygo- round of the daily grind.

TRACK LISTING

China Eddie
Emotions In Motion
Outside
This World
Ballad Of A Cloud
Night Chef
Conceptual Mediterranean (Part 1)
People In The Centre Of the City
Fortune Cookie
Lullaby

******** are re-releasing their first and final record ‘The Drink’.

‘The Drink’ is a twelve-track album addressing a duo’s contemporary and indifferent existence in The West. ******** are comprised of Ailie Ormston, who works in a kitchen and Ω, one half of the partnership Edinburgh Leisure.

********’s vision of the world is portrayed through “rudimentary bass and de(con)structive guitar” (Neil Cooper). With hacked drum machines and preprogramed keyboards, they create compositions that complement their lyrical content, itself demonstrating a harsh and contemptuous reality. The album presents a series of theatrically characterised scenarios; universal summaries of the day-to-day; habitual and excessive; promising and disparaging.

Recorded during a six-month period and originally released solely on YouTube, the album itself addresses new modes of working and an interest in musical versatility.

Being unrehearsed, unknowing and capable of compromise are key to the ******** ethos, with an emphasis on changing the form of each song to suit different performative environments. Authorship and individualism are discouraged; preciousness of ownership is challenged. 85% honest, 15% misquoted; 100% sincere.

You will find them in the pub. Drink the dark, depressive drink.

“I’m a huge fan of ********!” - Saul Adamcweski, Insecure Men / ex-Fat Whites

“******** are the future” - Rosy Bones, Goat Girl

“Like having a pint with Brass Eye. One of my favourite albums, ever.” - Liam Ramsden, Mellah

TRACK LISTING

The Drink
I’m A Zookeeper (Not A Goalkeeper)
Trish
Kinderpunsch
Bowling Green
Practical Song (aka The Logical Song)
Signs Of Life In The Computer
Comedian
Readymade
Schweppes Bitter Lemon
Scottish Water
Doberman

Xenoula is Romy Xeno. Romy spent her early years in South Africa where she was influenced by the elemental songs of nearby villagers and the (tranquil) rhythms of nature. Here she developed an introspective affinity with flora and fauna rather than with man and machines.

Teaming up with producer Sam Dust aka LA Priest, whose recent work includes his own debut solo album as well as Connan Mockasin collaboration Soft Hair, Xenoula’s songs are adorned in a chameleon-like coat of shape shifting sonic textures and glide over an energetic core of ground shaking rhythm.

TRACK LISTING

Chief Of Tin
Luna Man
Cyan Water
Caramello
Dawn Bunny
She Ghosts
Honey Priest
Alauda
Deer Ron
Leyline Ogres
Tororoi

“A crack team of physicists, leather-workers, synchronised swimmers, sausage-sellers, professional wrestlers and computer games-designers assembled in a remote cleft of the Tyne Valley to portray a community fraying at the edges, eaten from the inside by some fearful sickness, searching for answers in the all the wrong places,” says Dawson of the new video. “Matt Stokes is a fabulous video artist. I've loved his work ever since seeing 'The Gainsborough Packet' almost ten years ago now. I'm very happy that we were able to work together to present to you the first song from the album Peasant. It is only one panel of a larger mural. I hope you will enjoy and find something to take from it.”

No listener to Dawson’s earlier music has ever discerned a lack of artistic ambition. Whether they got on at the last stop - the 4 track Tyneside-Trout-Mask-through a-Vic and Bob-filter of Nothing Important - or earlier in the journey, with The Glass Trunk’s visceral song cycle or The Magic Bridge’s sombre revels, devotees of his earlier recordings will be at once intrigued by and slightly fearful of the prospect of a record that could make those three landmark releases look like formative work.

Peasant is that album. From its first beguilingly muted fanfare to its spectacular climax exploring a Dark Ages masseuse’s dangerous fascination with a mysterious artefact called the Pin of Quib, it will grab newcomers to Dawson’s work by the scruff of the neck and refuse to let them go until they have signed a pledge of life-long allegiance.

Driven forward by exhilarating guitar flurries, Qawwali handclaps and bursts of choral ferocity, Peasant’s eleven tracks sustain a momentum worthy of the lyrics’ urgent subject matter. Dawson describes the themes of these songs as “Families struggling, families being broken up by circumstance, and - how do you keep it together? In the face of all of these horrors that life, or some system of life, is throwing at you?” The fact that these meticulously wrought narratives all unfold in the pre-mediaeval North Eastern kingdom of Bryneich - “any time from about 450AD to 780AD, after the withdrawal of the Roman Empire”- only makes their contemporary relevance more enduring and vital.

Dawson’s objective was to create “A panorama of a society which is at odds with itself and has great sickness in it, and perhaps doesn’t take responsibility – blame going in all the wrong directions”. But encountering Peasant’s captivating sequence of occupational archetypes (‘Herald’, ‘Ogre’, ‘Weaver’, Scientist’), listeners might find themselves wondering if these multitudes could somehow be contained with one person - surely we all have a ‘Shapeshifter’ and a ‘Prostitute’ within us?

TRACK LISTING

Herald
Ogre
Soldier
Weaver
Prostitute
Shapeshifter
Scientist
Hob
Beggar
No-one
Masseuse

Weird World introduce Los Angeles’ Alex Izenberg and his debut album, ‘Harlequin’.

‘Harlequin’ may be Izenberg’s debut album proper but it also marks the culmination of over five years of highly prolific writing and recording under a variety of pseudonyms.

‘Harlequin’ is almost a study in distraction - a restless, feverish dream sequence which variously invokes Scott Walker’s obtuse, off kilter worlds of sound, Simon and Garfunkel’s psychedelic yet practical string arrangements, the vaudevillian pomp and preening of Wild Beasts’ early material and Grizzly Bear’s pastoral early steps. All this is cut through with moments of total silence, patches of noise, found sound and countless dynamic leftturns and moments of non-sequitur.

TRACK LISTING

The Farm
Grace
Libra
Archer
Hot Is The Fire
Changes
To Move On
A Bird Came Down
The Moon
Waltz Of The Roots
People

Soft Hair are Connan Mockasin and Sam Dust (LA PRIEST / Late Of The Pier). Their eponymous debut album is due for release via Weird World.

The album’s recording took place over five years amongst the pair’s solo careers and outside lives. After the dispersion of Late Of The Pier, whom Connan supported on tour in 2009 (the first time the two met), Sam travelled in the Far East, Africa, Europe and elsewhere, spending time inventing his own instruments, producing and directing and re-emerging as LA PRIEST in 2015 with debut solo album ‘Inji’.

Connan meanwhile released the albums ‘Forever Dolphin Love’ and ‘Caramel’ and toured the world extensively, working with artists such as James Blake, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Vince Staples.

The songs on this album were written and recorded in a wide array of locations, using methods that neither Mockasin nor Dust had used previously, developed by the pair from the start of its creation. As a result the record gives the listener a view into an exotic world with a blend of familiar, unfamiliar and unconventionally attractive sounds.

How To Dress Well - AKA Tom Krell - releases his fourth album, ‘Care’, via Weird World / Domino.

Written by Krell, mixed by Andrew Dawson (Kanye West, fun.) and featuring co-production from Krell alongside Jack Antonoff, Dre Skull, CFCF and Kara- Lis Coverdale, ‘Care’ is a sensual, dazzling alt-pop tour de force.

‘Care’ is the next step in the evolution of Krell’s sound, which began with his first critically-lauded album, ‘Love Remains’, in 2010 and continued up through his widely acclaimed previous album, ‘What Is This Heart?’, released in 2014.

TRACK LISTING

Can’t You Tell
Salt Song
What’s Up
Lost Youth / Lost You
The Ruins
Burning Up
I Was Terrible
Anxious
Time Was Meant To Stay
Made A Lifetime
They’ll Take Everything You Have

Silicon is Kody Nielson, a songwriter, producer and visual artist from Auckland, New Zealand, formerly of cult Flying Nun band The Mint Chicks, a group he started with his brother Ruban - now of Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

‘Personal Computer’ is a seductive electronic pop record that pits Nielson’s brilliant soul, funk and disco influenced songwriting against a backdrop of extra-terrestrial noir sonics, calling to mind the varied likes of Flying Lotus, Panda Bear and Portishead in the process.

TRACK LISTING

1. Personal Computer
2. Cellphone
3. Sumarine
4. God Emoji
5. Burning Sugar
6. Little Dancing Baby
7. I Can See Paradise
8. Love Peace
9. Blow
10. Dope

Finnish songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and tram driver Jaakko Eino Kalevi follows up on the global exposure of his essential Beats In Space release with a glorious LP of oddball pop songs-not-songs. Vivid, sensual and technicolour, the self titular LP sees the musician meld elements of disco, new wave, R&B, house, dub, pop and prog into a record that’s adventurous, original and full of charm. "JEK" opens the LP in emotive synth-soul form before fan favourite "Double Talk" bathes us in drifting new wave beauty. "Deeper Shadows" fuses pastoral prog melodies with a slick Timbaland style R&B groove and dub production, while "Say" and "Night At The Field" update "More Songs About Buildings And Food" for the modern listener. On "Mind Like Muscle", Destroyer, The XX and John Cale get nice and intimate in Jaako's mind, before he takes a leaf out of Ariel Pink's book for "Don't Ask Me Why". The final three tracks on this kaleidoscopic listening experience take in the leftfield disco of Arthur Russell, Laurie Anderson experimentalism and Jean Michel Jarre's "Souvenirs De Chine" to round off a career defining LP.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Jaakko Eino Kalevi's output has drawn comparison with Aerial Pink's, but that would be a little misleading. There is irony in the music, but not just that; he undeniably loves the crisp, faultlessly crafted blend of soft rock, electronic pop and Euro-disco he is affectionately sending up. Perhaps it wouldn't be Finnish if it weren't shot through with a hint of melancholy, but that only adds to its strange charm.

TRACK LISTING

JEK
Double Talk
Deeper Shadows
Say
Mind Like Muscle
Night At The Field
Don’t Ask Me Why
Room
Hush Down
Ikuinen Purkautumaton Jännite

'The Hum' comes eighteen months after the band’s debut album Pearl Mystic – a record that steadily went on to become one of 2013′s most impactful breakout statements. Even more ferocious and uncompromising than its predecessor and yet more melodic and focused than the band have ever recorded, The Hum further cements the band’s status as a vital force in British independent music.

'The Hum' takes the blueprint of 'Pearl Mystic' – proto-punk, garage rock, Washington DC hardcore, 80’s British spacerock – and further stamps it with the band’s seal. Leaner, meaner and more propulsive thanks to the muscular playing of new drummer JN, the record boasts both the most straight-up punk song the band have written to date in eviscerating opener ‘The Impasse’ (“we wanted it to sound like Suicide if they had a full band”, explains MJ) and moments of patient, widescreen beauty only hinted at previously.

“We were writing Pearl Mystic to an audience in the same way your diary has an audience”, says guitarist SS. “It’s written to one but if no one ever reads it that’s not a big deal. This time round though we knew we had a really clear audience, so The Hum is really about different freedoms and constraints – with Pearl Mystic the possibilities were almost too vast, this time around we had a much clearer idea of what the record should be like and that became freeing because we didn’t need to worry about its direction so much.”

That word “free” is a good way to approach The Hum, a record that could only be made by a band in total command of their personality. “It’s like that bit on Fugazi’s Instrument documentary where Brendan Canty says that a jam they’ve got sounds ‘good, but not Fugazi’ ”, says MJ – “we sound more like Hookworms rather than anyone else on this record.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Hookworms formed around a love of DC hardcore and an appreciation for the psychedelic things in life, blending these influences to mutually beneficial effect, marrying the colour and exoticism of psych-rock to the directness and energy of punk, robbing the former of a tendency to pretention and the latter of a tendency to being formulaic. Following 'Pearl Mystic' was never going to be an easy task, but our cross-Pennine cousins have been more than equal to the challenge; with 'The Hum' they have added depth, variety and texture to their power, without losing an atom of potency. There are drone-wash interludes for sure (“iv”,”v’, “vi”), there is buoyant, riotous pop (“Tokyo Radio”), but all the while, lurking predator-like behind the edgy dreaming and MB’s patient, repetitive bass, vocalist MJ’s demons are waiting to explode screaming into life, careering the vehicle vehemently, euphorically upward.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Impasse
2. On Leaving
3. Iv
4. Radio Tokyo
5. Beginners
6. V
7. Off Screen
8. Vi
9. Retreat

Rising up from the bed of the River Tyne, a voice that crumbles and soars, steeped in age old balladry and finely-chiselled observations of the mundane.

Richard Dawson is a skewed troubadour at once charming and abrasive. His shambolically virtuosic guitar playing stumbles from music hall tunesmithery to spidery swatches of noise-colour, swathed in amp static and teetering on the edge of feedback.

His songs are both chucklesome and tragic, rooted in a febrile imagination that references worlds held dear and worlds unknown.

New album ‘Nothing Important’, released by Weird World, hypnotises from its tender dark whispers to its wild screams, an unparalleled voice in today’s over-preened and manufactured music world.

TRACK LISTING

Judas
Nothing Important
The Vile Stuff
Thomas

Melody’s Echo Chamber is the name given to the work of Paris-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Melody Prochet. Possessing a penchant for wild-eyed psychedelia, homespun motorik rhythm and an effortless flair for the sort of melodic classicism redolent of chamber song, Prochet is at once both an aficionado of pop’s outer limits and off-kilter to its expectations.

Melody’s Echo Chamber was recorded between Perth (with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker) and her grandparents’ beach house in Cavalière in France. With her smoky, sensual voice and romantic presence, Prochet embodies a distinctive kind of elegance and bold sense-of-self long associated with France’s more notable musical exports. But as much as her national identity runs through the fibre of the eleven tracks that make up Melody’s Echo Chamber, there’s worldliness at play too; a looking beyond the fringes of personal experience to trawl through Europe’s art pop lineage – kraut, space-rock, dream-pop, electronica - in a way that’s as much cinematic in its scope as it is musical.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: If you like Tame Impala you will love this, although the sound is similar, this is cleaner and prettier. More than fitting for Melody's vocals.

TRACK LISTING

I Follow You
Crystallized
You Won't Be Missing That Part Of Me
Some Time Alone, Alone
Bisou Magique
Endless Shore
Quand Vas Tu Rentrer?
Mount Hopeless
Isthatwhatyousaid
Snowcapped Andes Crash
Be Proud Of Your Kids

How To Dress Well is the stage name of songwriter and producer Tom Krell.

His debut album ‘Love Remains’ was widely praised for both its conceptual strength and immediate emotional resonance, and saw Krell credited with having given birth to a new, narcotized strain of R&B that has since spawned a host of imitators.

Now we see him pull back the curtain on a whole new body of work with his new album ‘Total Loss’, released on Weird World and co-produced by Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, King Krule).

STAFF COMMENTS

Philippa says: Following his Tri Angle LP outing, How To Dress Well is back with more of his post-R&B, slow-fi, synthwave-tinted melancholic pop.

TRACK LISTING

‘Total Loss’
When I Was In Trouble
Cold Nites
Say My Name Or Say
Whatever
Running Back
& It Was U
World I Need You, Won’t Be Without You (Proem)
Struggle
How Many?
Talking To You
Set It Right
Ocean Floor For Everything