Rise Up Singing! feat Paul Weller is the new single... It’s a collaboration between Miles-WONDERFULSOUND-Copeland, Dr Robert & Paul Weller. It is a spiritual call to arms coming out of this period of lockdowns

"Miles had this demo which I worked on a bit, added a guide and sent it to Paul who instantly got the vibe, it’s great to be working with him again”, says Dr Robert and this sets the tone for the rest of the LP... Sketches, grooves in a style of Miles’s old band The Superimposers bounced around to the Monks Road family. Miles Continues... “when we were doing The Superimposers we were always influenced from old records, so this is how I write. With the calibre of musicians involved in Monks Road I knew we could make these initial demos sparkle & shine.”

The resulting track album is a timeless, mellow, soulful cinematic classic that rewards repeated listening and pops up with some wonderfulsounding surprises along the way... Enjoy!

Monks Road Social Is a band in the loosest sense of the word. It’s more a celebration ofmusical talents and friendships - new and old. The line up may vary but the heartland soul remains. The ethos is in the word Social. A gathering once a year of musicians and producers with simply the goal of making the best music they can within the parameters set for that particular record.

TRACK LISTING

A Side: Rise Up Singing
B Side: Rise Up Singing (Instrumental)

Waiting Rooms is the sophomore album from Samantha Whates. A follow-up to 2011`s self-released, Dark Nights Make For Brighter Days. Produced in parallel to Whates` partnership with Josienne Clarke as PicaPica - who are signed to Rough Trade. Waiting Rooms finds the singer / songwriter working with Wonderfulsound. Extending a relationship that began with her contributions to the London imprint`s Monks Road Social project.

Most songs are conceived while we are in transit. At the beginning, or end, of a journey to somewhere, with someone. Anticipating, dreading, dreaming of, hoping, waiting for change. Whates` ambitious aim was to record in the surroundings where such thoughts take root. Live, on location, no overdubs. Traveling to the waiting rooms of a Victorian ferry terminal, Great Ormond`s Street Hospital, disused prison cells - haunted by the buzz of their former occupants - and train stations - both operational, or Grade 2-listed and closed to the public. The sessions involving a collective of seventeen friends - on acoustic and electric guitar, cello, clarinet, double bass, harmonica, lute, percussion, piano - prepared or otherwise - shruti, and viola. With recordings confined, due to spacial and locational logistics, to arrangements of between two and five players. It wasn’t possible to get a piano on that boat to the Isle Of Bute, or down into Loughton Tube after midnight.

Whates` songs on Waiting Rooms concern themselves with folk. Everyday stories, here performed in everyday places. Old Coat is a winter of romance-gone-wrong remembered. The protagonist of Sometimes Something seems overwhelmed by the aches of love, and life. Dark Waters finds them trying to come to terms with self, and self-loathing, and the salvation that can come from the heart of another. Sailors is a metaphor for all those in fragile but determined vessels afloat on the seas of chance. Guilty is bruised by spiteful slights. The Rehearsal, a blues harp skiffle shuffle dedicated to mistakes, apologies, and the need to start over. Daylight Savings, appropriately autumnal. I Love My Life both opens and closes the album. The first take, a defiant statement. The second, a slow, sad but hopeful waltz. Whates` voice is magical throughout. Flights of angelic improvisation, with a touch of Joni (Mitchell) in the high notes. Committing to tape unique recordings, that more than anything set down in a studio, capture a moment in time. Pieces full of memories. Not just those penned in the lyrics, but also of the space, the architecture, the high-ceilinged reverb, the strip-lighting hum. The performance. Passing trains. The journey there and back.

TRACK LISTING

1. Love My Life (fast)
2. Cinema Song
3. Old Coat
4. Sometimes Somethings
5. Dark Waters
6. Sailors
7. Daylight Savings
8. Dylan's Truth
9. Guilty
10. The Rehearsal
11. Love My Life (slow)

Following on from RW Hedges Pop debut 'The Hunters in the Snow'.. this one takes place in The American West of 1877 the year the phonograph was invented.

Constructed in RW's studio 'The Chalet' a get away full of books and fairy lights out in a field in a no man’s land. RW & Luca Nieri sat around bonfires and wrote lyrics written on big spools of paper.

As per last time Luca Nieri produces and RW Hedges directs the songwriting further towards his influences of 1930's Hollywood. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Havent Seen Her In A While
2. Deep In The Valley
3. Girl In The Story
4. Trail Of The Setting Sun
5. Old Missouri
6. My Dearest
7. Down To Venezuela
8. Sure Enough
9. Prairie Moon
10. The Westerners 

Caught somewhere between the rain-drenched streets of Manchester and the sun-beaten deserts of America lies Nev Cottee’s third album Broken Flowers. A deeply cinematic, string-soaked album rich in atmosphere and brooding ambience. Its origins however, began in India, with Cottee trying to leave rainy-city heartbreak behind.

“I hate the English winter. Really can't stand the grey days. So I shipped out to India in January 2016. I found a place and set up a simple studio to demo out there”. Rising at dawn each day the ideas began to flow and quickly enough 20 new songs began to take shape, “Maybe the new surroundings helped - getting out of my comfort zone, getting away from all the shit one accumulates at home".

The songs, even in sparse demo form, captured the plaintive tone of Cottee’s vocals slowly unfurling in emotional waves - the gentleness reminiscent of Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce but with the rich warm resonance of Lee Hazelwood. Cottee then took the songs to Wales to work with previous collaborator and producer Mason Neely (Lambchop/Edwyn Collins). Neely brought in some classical musicians, “cut away the flab” and pushed the songs to their extremes - the producer's intuitions and abilities clearly trusted by Cottee, “On the album notes it says 'Mason: Sounds' and that's him in a nutshell. He brings so much to the table and gives the album it's sonic identity - I can't give him a bigger compliment than that.”

Whilst the finished album hums with quiet beauty - dense swirls of ambience hanging in the air as elevating strings cascade through - there’s also a darkness, “Although I recorded during the day this is a night time record. It’s dark and introspective. I find that juxtaposition hugely creative. The night in India can be quite a foreboding place. Me and a mate would make late night excursions inland - into the heart of darkness. Not quite Apocalypse Now but enough to take you out of any semblance of comfort. We saw some strange things, weird village ceremonies, people biting snakes' heads off... the songs represent a physical and mental journey.” 

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Mojo have likened Nev to a bedroom Ry Cooder, and you can see what they mean on this album. The songs have a sparse, atmospheric, desert soundtrack feel, albeit drenched in rainy city melancholy. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Asunder
2. Open Eyes
3. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
4. Be On Your Way
5. Nobody's Fool
6. Tired Of Love
7. When The Night Comes
8. The House Where I Live
9. City Lights