A year ago Darren lost a friend to cancer. Amazing Things is an album about death which isn’t morose, slow, or quiet. Instead, it is packed with joyful, melodic guitars and some of Darren’s prettiest tunes. It is sometimes very sad, but also heartfelt, loving, and rewarding.

Darren recorded the album almost entirely solo and this time he has dug deep into his primary instrument, the electric guitar, creating a sound that is rich in tone and texture.

Darren Hayman is a British songwriter best known for his work with late 90s band Hefner, but has since made more than 20 albums dealing with astronauts, the English Civil War, William Morris, Lidos, and Thankful Villages. He lives in South London with his dog.

TRACK LISTING

01 Nobody You’d Know
02 Amazing Things
03 Teenage Guitar
04 Something Beautiful
05 Clean White Page
06 Do Whatever You Want
07 Hearts Been Broken Before
08 All The Toys
09 It’s Gotten Quiet Round Here
10 Somebody Good Thinks I’m Good

Silver biplanes are Tim Vass (one half of Razorcuts - the Creation-signed indie pop darlings) and Vanessa Vass (singer of Radcliffe jangle pop favourites the Melons). "A Moment In The Sun” is the debut long player by silver biplanes, a melodic indie band based in Bedfordshire, England. The band features wife-and-husband team Vanessa Vass and Tim Vass alongside drummer Rob Scott and the album is the pinnacle of a musical career which has previously seen Vanessa and Tim release songs on no fewer than 30 different labels between them! The band are lifelong fans of the highways and bi-ways of music and the album draws upon a wide range of influences. It’s a heady mix of choruses, hooks and catchy tunes in which you’ll hear traces of psychedelia, post-punk, krautrock and more. Tim was bassist and lyricist in cult indie band Razorcuts, co-writing all of their songs. Razorcuts releases regularly featured in the higher reaches of the independent charts throughout the late 80s and included two top five albums recorded for the famous Creation label. Both albums were reissued in sellout deluxe vinyl editions in 2020. Razorcuts continue to appear on numerous compilations and their influence is often cited in books and internet articles. Tim has also played in Red Chair Fadeaway, Dandelion Wine and the Forever People. Vanessa was the singer in 90’s indie band The Melons who are probably best remembered for their two legendary live sessions on Mark Radcliffe’s Radio 1 show. The Melons released 6 singles and were regularly featured in the British music press.

TRACK LISTING

01. Parallel World
02. Breaking The Grey
03. Searching For Your Name
04. Songs That Don't Exist
05. The Stars Align
06. UAS 29396
07. No Better And No Worse
08. All Fools' Day
09. Fairground Rocket Ride
10. Deliver The Dawn
11. Think Again
12. There's A Party

Library Music: Volume One is a sixteen track double LP collecting the North London drone pop band’s 7” singles, one-offs and compilation tracks spanning the first 14 years of the group’s existence. It includes synth pop, indie fuzz and moody motorik workouts, alongside pastoral folk sketches, dubby electronics and the occasional drone experiment. More immediate than their stretched out and slow-burning recent album tracks, the music here is taken from limited vinyl releases, album bonus tracks and music for compilations on labels as diverse as Bezirk Tapes, Second Language, Modern Aviation, and Concrete Tapes as well as the band’s current home, Where It’s At Is Where You Are.

The compilation is a happily cohesive document of an inventive band that rarely stand still for long. The band says, “We wanted to gather all our early, scattered work before we move on to our next album, to remind ourselves (and others) of some of the poppier and less characteristic things we’ve done. We’ve always felt a lot more relaxed and freer making one off things for people – it’s a chance to try things that might otherwise be daunting on a full record”.

Always a prolific group this is by no means an exhaustive collection, the title giving a clue to how much more they have left to share. “We have been introduced to loads of bands that we love initially through non-album compilations – Broadcast, The Chills, Stereolab, Piano Magic, Flying Saucer Attack amongst others – we wanted to add our own to that (admittedly slightly daunting) lineage.” The Leaf Library are formed around the core group of singer Kate Gibson, former Saloon and Singing Adams guitarist Matt Ashton, guitarist SJ Nelson, drummer Lewis Young and bass player Gareth Jones. They have released three studio albums (Daylight Versions, About Minerals and The World Is A Bell) as well a number of electronic and experimental albums and EPs, remix compilations and long form tracks. They have also released five Monument CDRs; an on-going series of experimental solo and side projects on their Objects Forever imprint. The band have collaborated with musicians as diverse as Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele, singer Ed Dowie, noise group Far Rainbow and string collective Iskra Strings, and have provided music for a number of exhibitions, films and performances. A collaborative album with Japanese artist Teruyuki Kurihara is due in late 2022 on the Mille Plateaux label. 

TRACK LISTING

01 Agnes In The Square
02 Goodbye Four Walls
03 City In Reverse
04 Walking Backwards
05 Soundings
06 Diagram Loop
07 The Greater Good
08 Losing Places (ISAN Remix)
09 A Stone In Water
10 Architect Of The Moon
11 Tired Ghost
12 The Still Point
13 Wave Of Translation
14 Badminton House
15 Tranquility Bass
16 A Gap In The Trees 

In their relatively brief lifetime, between 1996 and 2002, Hefner enjoyed an incredibly productive four-album, multi-EP career. Their beautiful, concise, intelligent songs earned a fiercely loyal, cult audience and the long-term support of legendary DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded innumerable sessions. Originally released in 2001, their final album, Dead Media, found Hefner reaching out and taking risks. Keen to break free of their indie-folk roots, they cocooned themselves in a home studio with broken analogue synthesizers, antique drum machines and battery-powered amplifiers.

The band’s naivety and guile produced some curiously engaging music, with frontman Darren Hayman’s precise, economic, poetic dissections of quotidian romance draped over awkward, fuzzy beats: something like Cat Stevens covering Warm Leatherette. Dead Media caused confusion at the time and ultimately lead to the band’s break up. However, the songs like ‘Junk’, ‘The Night’s Are Long’ and ‘When The Angels Play Their Drum Machines’ are among Hayman’s most adult and affecting essays and stand out among the finest of Hefner’s achievements. Tracks: 1 Dead Media 2 Trouble Kid 3 Junk 4 When The Angels Play Their Drum Machines 5 Union Chapel Day 6 China Crisis 7 Alan Bean 8 Peppermint Taste 9 The Mangle 10 The King Of Summer 11 The Nights Are Long 12 Treacle 13 Half A Life 14 Waking Up To You 15 Home

TRACK LISTING

1 Dead Media
2 Trouble Kid
3 Junk
4 When The Angels Play Their Drum Machines
5 Union Chapel Day
6 China Crisis
7 Alan Bean
8 Peppermint Taste
9 The Mangle
10 The King Of Summer
11 The Nights Are Long
12 Treacle
13 Half A Life
14 Waking Up To You
15 Home

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2020 RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY AS PART OF THE AUGUST 29TH DROP DAY AT 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Double pack coloured vinyl 7".4 track compilation of covers of the James Bond themes of Dame Shirley Bassey.Indie heroes pay tribute to Bond and Bassey just two weeks after the release of the 25th James Bond film.David Gedge (the Wedding Present) teams up with Louise Wener (Sleeper) on the unused Thunderball theme; Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.The Left Outsides provide an atmospheric, pastoral, psychedelic take on Diamonds Are Forever.Darren Hayman (Hefner) re-imagines Goldfinger with his own chorus of Bond girls.DJ Downfall and Theoretical Girl's icy cool synthpop Moonraker will please fans of Ladytron, Black Box Recorder and Flying Lizards Tracks : 01 Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - David Gedge & Sleeper.02 Diamonds Are Forever - The Left Outsides.03 Goldfinger - Darren Hayman.04 Moonraker - DJ Downfall & Theoretical Girl

Canadian musician Woodpigeon, a.k.a. Mark Andrew Hamilton, has emerged from a brief hiatus to release his sixth full-length. Merging the best of John Grant with Avalon era Roxy Music, Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night, and a nod towards Kanye West’s Yeezus, the sounds are transposed to a largely acoustic setting feeding off influences from his travels across the globe. This is a record about rhythm and sex and sadness. Previous Woodpigeon LPs have been epic affairs about falling in love with the interplay between choirs and symphonies, guitars and voices. This one narrows things down to the finest point, because so often less is so much more. As Hamilton points out: “It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever made.”

He released his first four albums Songbook, Treasury Library Canada, Die Stadt Muzikanten and Balladeer via End of the Road Records, with Thumbtacks and Glue following via Fierce Panda. T R O U B L E features Woodpigeon’s current line-up of Mark Andrew Hamilton alongside Daniel Gaucher on percussion, Colin Edward Cowan on bass, and Annalea Sordi-McClure on keys. Guest appearances on the album come from David Thomas Broughton and Mary Margaret O’Hara. Before this release, Hamilton had all but quit music following a messy heartbreak. He wandered the earth for two years, particularly inspired by time in Istanbul; “during the riots, no less - when you're particularly bummed out, getting tear gassed every day is a good distraction”. Finally returned to Canada, he re-located to a collective house in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side and continued working on new material. It was freeing to write without any real rules. Many of the songs don’t follow typical formats and chord structures but rather fold in upon themselves in a cyclical way, patterns indirectly inspired by music he heard in Turkey and Argentina. “It’s almost mortifying to be so honest and direct”) initially confused the other players with their unusual structures. Inspired by reading-up on personal hero Roy Orbison, who spoke of throwing out the rulebook of what a pop song should be, Hamilton thought; “I've already quit music, so I might not even make these songs into anything other than things I play for myself… so let's just see where they go on their own.” The songs were so different from anything that he had done before that Hamilton even toyed with changing the name to create a new beginning, a fresh start. Despite being under the same Woodpigeon moniker, T R O U B L E is a huge step forward and the finest album of a storied career.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fence
2. The Falling Tide
3. Devastating
4. Canada
5. No Word Of A Lie
6. Faithful
7. Picking Fights
8. Sovkino
9. Whole Body Shakes
10. The Accident
11. Rooftops