RIYL: the Dead C, Birchville Cat Motel, Skullflower, heat exhaustion, feeling of confusion and self-recrimination et al. …aka A Bunker Intimation Vol. 1. And what have they built down there? A remodel in 40 minutes at half-time, the group temporarily slimmed and tuned to a different gait, a shifting of pulses, delay, moving air; the sound of the room and the body, of the body in the room; a room fogged as emphysemic lungs where indistinct translucent ooze lines its walls, possibly of paranormal origin, possibly of nocturnal transgression alone. The reality - as it ought - is occluded from view. Not necessarily the IFWM unit you might assume, but most certainly one of the many versions they've always been. And not so much a new beginning as an alternative diversion through the abyss. Indexe'e: aka Index For Working Musik. Onwards, inwards.

TRACK LISTING

1. Church Normal
2. Half Leib II
3. W1 Sprokla
4. Frucht Keller

Mark Hodkinson grew up among the terrace houses of Rochdale in a house with just one book. Today, Mark is an author, journalist and publisher. He still lives in Rochdale but is now surrounded by 3,500 titles, at the last count.

No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. It's about the schools, the music, the people - but pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors that led the way and shaped his life. It's about a family who didn't see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who taught Mark the power of stories.

It's also a story of how writing and reading has changed over the last five decades.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: This is a fantastic book. A beautifully written tale of growing up in a northern town in the 70s and 80s and discovering the power of books and music. There's also a lovely thread running through the book of Mark's relationship with his grandad. Maybe it resonated so much with me as I'm of a similar age, but I think regardless of when or where you grew up, this is a really wonderful read.

‘Minsky Rock Megamix II’ takes its own fearless journey through the heart of the ‘Fear Fear’ album; on its way, it samples snatches from each of the album’s tracks and places them into glimmering new musical surroundings, all pinned to a constant metronomic beat that turns the whole thing inside out to create one streamlined, super-heavy whole.

Over twenty-three (cosmic) minutes, the track finds the pulse of ‘Fear Fear’ and follows it onto the dancefloor. Within this new mix, fragments of familiar tracks are twisted out of shape before being reborn with pounding Nu Beat basslines, Blackburn rave stabs and tweaking acid riffs that curl around minimal electro rhythms in a seamless mix.

Vocals are taken out of their original context and cut & pasted into a new stream of consciousness, forming their own manic hallucinations.

The result is an utterly mesmerising trip that feels like stumbling across a 21st century Detroit pirate radio station in full joyous flow.

‘Minsky Rock’ is the brainchild of Working Men’s Club frontman Syd Minsky-Sargeant and producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys / M.I.A.). They previously remixed the band’s self-titled debut album.

12” vinyl with etching on Side B.

TRACK LISTING

Minsky Rock Megamix II

Working Men’s Club present their Steel City EP, a 5-track release featuring remixes of tracks from their second album, Fear Fear by some of Sheffield’s most innovative producers: Toddla T, Charla Green, Ross Orton, Diessa and Warp originals, Forgemasters.

Fear Fear was released in July 2022 on Heavenly Recordings, reached #11 in the UK album chart upon release, and saw glowing reviews across Europe and the U.S.

The EP was previously only available on CD which came exclusively with purchases of the album via Bear Tree record shop in Sheffield. Before the end of 2022, these remixes were made available digitally as part of a deluxe edition of Fear Fear and now, this will be the first time the remixed tracks will be widely available on LP. 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1:
1. Money Is Mine (Toddla T Home Sick Remix)
2. Fear Fear (Charla Green Remix)
3. Ploys (Ross Orton Remix)
Side 2:
1. Rapture (Diessa Remix)
2. The Last One (Forgemasters Remix) 

Unbeknownst to its members, Index For Working Musik was born on an evening in late 2019 amidst the discovery of a collection of faded b&w photocopies that had been marinating on the floor of a urine-alley in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. An assortment of sacred and profane imagery were crumpled amongst an essay on early Christian hermits, entitled Men Possessed by God, the meaning of which was enticingly vague. Received together, they planted the seeds for a new endeavour. Though Max Oscarnold and Nathalia Bruno were already engaged in a creative ping-pong of sorts, the results to this point had only totaled a 30 min long ½ inch tape containing one track and four interludes. They needed a page and they needed ink, and they needed a place and it needed energy. Suddenly by chance or divine intervention, their experimental venture had been given form and direction.

Back home in London’s cursed smog, they moved themselves and their 8-track studio into a basement in E8, where the project’s gravitational pull gained strength, quickly developing into an unexpected collective with the incorporation of drummer Bobby Voltaire, double bass player E. Smith and guitarist J. Loftus. As the world shifted around them and the Plague Years followed, it became increasingly clear that they were not going to leave that small basement room. The scarcity of light or outer world presence was less a limitation, instead the main tool at hand, allowing the recording to stretch for boundaryless days in architectural isolation, and forcing them to make straight forward free guitar music, adopting a ‘first thought, best thought’ approach.

The result of this period became a collection of music they were to name Dragging the Needlework for the Kids at Uphole, to be released via Tough Love on 17th February. 35 minutes of repeat phrased guitars, slow-clipped drums and dulcet vocals where the recurring landscape is the desert. Reel-to reel-loops of Afghan music compete with the found sound overlays of voices recorded at the queue of the pharmacy and drum machines borrowed from Spanish heroes, channelling both far-off climes and snippets from a closer reality. It’s a strange psychic brew, built of imagined mysticism and domestic realities, of fever dreams and days that stretched into weeks of months.

What was sparked by that discovery in the Gothic Quarter was actually a realisation that what they were looking for was with them all the while, buried as it was in piles of voice memos and recorded guitar feedback. Men Possessed By God they may be not: it was self-possession that was to guide their way in the end.

“Life, despite all its destructive changes, remains indestructibly powerful and joyful.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Wagner (04:54)
2. Railroad Bulls (02:54)
3. Athletes Of Exile (02:!4
4. Narco Myths (0:22)
5. Ambiguous Fauna (02:44)
6. Isis Beatles (03:52)
7. Palangana (03:09)
8. 1871 (02:41)
9. Chains (03:18)
10. Petit Committee (02:27)
11. Habanita (04:15)

After the haunting My Name Is Safe in Your Mouth (2018) and the dramatic, synth-loaded Who the Power (2020), Liela Moss’ new album Internal Working Model bristles with frustration at our disconnected culture but also – crucially – burns with a desire to reconnect – in her own words: “We see the beneficiaries of the status quo suppress realness and wellbeing by selling you a banal alternative that upholds their agenda. I want to add to the firepower to burn that old house down.”

With Moss’ expressive voice leading the way over fractious synth backdrops, the result is at once tense and tender, timeless and timely; determined to plug into positivity wherever it can be found. Personal and expansive, galvanic and inquisitive, it’s an album that sees the modern world’s mess through open eyes but isn’t willing to stop there: it wants to seek out solutions, source the potential in other ways of being and seeing.

TRACK LISTING

1 Empathy Files
2 WOO (No One's Awake)
3 Vanishing Shadows
4 The Wall From The Floor
5 Ache In The Middle
6 New Day
7 Come And Find Me
8 Welcome To It
9 Love As Hard As You Can

Songs created in the shadow of terror and loss, but that crackle and pop with defiance Fear Fear is a record made for agitating and dancing, for heart and soul, for here, now and tomorrow. It’s a record that explores juxtaposition; that of life and death, acceptance and isolation, environment and humanity, hope and despair, the real world and the digital world. That top to bottom rigour, the complete vision is what makes the second album from Working Men’s Club such a stunning and unique achievement.

Their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, released in summer 2020, was the sound of singer and songwriter Syd Minsky-Sargeant processing a teenage life in Todmorden in the Upper Calder Valley. He was 16 when he wrote some of those songs, now 20, he had to get up and out of the Valley. “The first album was mostly a personal documentation lyrically, this is a blur between personal and a third-person perspective of what was going on.” Fear Fear documents the last two years. Yes, there is bleakness – but there is also hope and empathy. “I like the contrast of it being happy, uplifting music and really dark lyrics. It’s not a minimal record, certainly compared to the first one. That’s because there’s been a lot more going on that needed to be said.”

Making the busy feel finessed and the dreadful feel magical – Fear Fear manages those feats, and then some. Or, as Syd Minksy-Sargeant puts it: “We just set out to make the best-sounding album we could.”

Fear Fear was produced by Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, MIA, Tricky) and recorded at Orton’s studio in Sheffield.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Working Men's Club return for one of the most anticipated follow-up LP's around. This time sees them treading similar ground to the post-punk indebted debut debut, but imbued with a more dancefloor friendly groove. It's a heady mix, and one that stands as the perfect follow-up for a band at the peak of their game.

TRACK LISTING

1 19
2 Fear Fear
3 Widow
4 Ploys
5 Cut
6 Rapture
7 Circumference
8 Heart Attack
9 Money Is Mine
10 The Last One

Following the recent release of 'X', the first new music from Working Men’s Club since their acclaimed self-titled debut was released in the autumn of 2020, the band share remixes from Paranoid London and Minsky Rock.

A side project of Syd from the band and producer Ross Orton, the Minsky Rock remix channels the energy of the primetime Detroit electro of Aux 88 or Cybertron while Paranoid London, the duo made up of Quinn Whalley and Gerardo Delgardo, turn in a bubbling 303 drenched acid workout.

TRACK LISTING

A1. X Paranoid London Remix
A2. X Minsky Rock Remix

B1. X Paranoid London Remix (Instrumental)
B2. X Minsky Rock Remix (Instrumental)

X is the first new music from Working Men’s Club since their acclaimed self-titled debut was released in the autumn of 2020, the album was the band’s perfect statement of intent, X is the delivery, the message, the action.

X rides on a sustained attack and gives way to a glorious synth heavy release of a chorus that’s just biding its time for a summer of discontent and dancing. This is the sound of your new favourite band hitting their stride. Count the days ’til you can see them in a field or in a club again.

Self-produced by Syd Minsky and once again mixed by Ross Orton, Y? is a synth heavy assault which picks up where X left off before venturing off into deeper acid-laced territory.

TRACK LISTING

A.X
B.Y

Heavy South African cut, unearthed by Dene from LCT, All about the massive title track ''Got My Magic Working''...

The origins of Amajika is a tale of two worlds colliding at the perfect moment and begin in KwaMushu Township outside Durban. Here would be where a young Tu Nokwe would set up a school to help teach other aspiring youngsters like herself in music, dance and acting. This would become known as the Amajika Youth and Children’s Art Project and would be run from the Nokwe home, a common hangout for artists at the time. Some boast 2000+ pupils going through this program while others claim it wasn’t more than a backyard dance group, but for the lucky group of kids that were members in the mid 80s it would be their chance at stardom.


It was during these years that a young aspiring playwright and musician Mbongeni Ngema had come across Tu and her group of gifted youngsters at the Nokwe family home. Although he was touring extensively at the time with the plays Woza Albert and Asinamali, the latter which eventually ended up on broadway, he would spend any time off from the tour with Tu and her dance troop. After being inspired by the American group New Edition, Mbongeni envisioned Amajika as the South African answer and decided to bankroll a studio session.


The session would take place in a private studio in Durban.The release of the first single would follow very shortly. The lead track, Tomati-So is a fun swinging groove over some basic programmed drums. The song is dedicated to Tu Nokwe sings of her unique style and kind heart. On his next tour Mbongeni would take the remaining masters with him to the US and had the track remixed. Although it never materialized in a release States side he did return with the remixed tape and release it in South Africa the following year. Much like Tomato So the song was an ode and would be dedicated to the man who was making all their dreams come true. Got My Magic Working sings of going overseas and being a star on Broadway and TV and the man who is making it all happen. All these true predictions are sung on top of a groovy acid bass by a clearly matured troop of artists.


During these years of working with Amajika, Mbongeni became very impressed with the exceeding talent of one of the members and decided to cast her in his upcoming musical Sarafina. The other children also wanted to be a part of the Broadway show but not everyone would get a role. This would be the end of Amajika as the next years would be dedicated to creating success on the musical stage. The growing kids that formed Amajika became young adults and pursued their own careers after the fact. Tu Nokwe would leave the country to return years later as the wife of Shaka Zulu on the big screen. To this day she is still very active both on stage and screen while Mbongeni is still writing and adding to the South African Musical Theatre catalog.


Fast forward 30 years from the original release to a smokey club where ESA hears Got My Magic Working played by Rush Hours Store’s own Bonnefooi. Instantly he inquires about the track from his homeland and feels it a perfect addition the repertoire of the Afro Synth band he is quietly cooking up. The band’s instrumental take ended up as the B side on a mysterious and limited white label released by Rush Hour in early 2020 but quickly sold out.


Here you have compiled the two title tracks from original Amajika singles along with the instrumental version by ESA’s Afro Synth Band for The complete Amajika experience, past to present. 

TRACK LISTING

Amajika - Got My Magic Working
Amajika - Tomati So
Esa's Afro-Synth Band- Got My Magic Working (Dub Mix)

‘Working With God’ is the new studio album from Melvins, featuring the 1983 line-up of Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover and Mike Dillard. This is the first time the trio have recorded together since ‘Tres Cabrones’.

‘Working With God’ is Melvins’ 28th (yes, 28th) full-length studio release and their first since 2018’s ‘Pinkus Abortion Technician’.

The band have been one of the most lauded hard rock bands to have helped develop the Grunge and Sludge scenes.

The new album is one of their most melodic and playful records - not just another ‘metal’ record, this will translate easily to hard rock and even mainstream rock fans as well.

The songs on the album are originals except for their take on Harry Nilsson’s classic ‘Fuck You’ and the well-known ‘Good Night Sweetheart’ that finishes off the album.

TRACK LISTING

I Fuck Around
Negative No No
Bouncing Rick
Caddy Daddy
Brian, The Horse-Faced Goon
Boy Mike
Fuck You
The Great Good Place
Hot Fish
Hund
Goodnight Sweet Heart

We're super excited to be able to get our hands on some of these limited edition version of this fantastic book. 

This edition features an exclusive 7" single - Angel (part 1) b/w Angel (part 2) - from Piccadilly favourites Working Men’s Club. They blew us away with their live shows last year and we can't wait for their debut album. 

You may have heard Angel in all its 12 minute glory in WMC’s legendary live sets. Here’s the studio version, produced by Ross Orton, split over both sides of a 7”.

Heavenly was already a state of mind. Seemed like the right time to make it something really special. We were all deeply immersed in music that we loved. None of us could believe our fucking luck, really. (Jeff Barrett) 

It was thirty years ago today - or thereabouts - that Heavenly came to be. In celebration of this big ol’ birthday comes Believe in Magic - a chronicle not only of Foxbase Alpha, Working Men’s Club and 28 of the releases in between that got the label to where it is today, but also of the haircuts, nights down the pub, pencil-eraser-carvings, cheese toasties, acid houses, Sunday Socials and lost Weekenders - Yorkshire and otherwise - that are as much a part of its story. 

As Jeff Barrett puts it at the beginning of the book, if there’s a continuous theme that runs through all of this, I think it’s that everything comes down to conversations with people about music. It might seem like it all starts with someone on one side of the counter who is selling you something, or someone writing excitedly in a magazine telling you about a band you need to hear, but I don’t think I’ve ever really seen things as one-way transactions. It’s more an ongoing dialogue, one that never really stops and helps to build up this growing soundtrack to our lives, something that’s passed from one person to another. That’s really the ever-present thread. That’s why we still believe in magic. 

Though we are three decades distant from The World According to Sly and Lovechild, lineup changes, ups, downs, and a good few office cleanups under the label’s belt, the Heavenly firm continue not to believe their fucking luck; at still being here, keepin’ on keepin’ on doing what they love, and at being able to pass all of this - then, now, and next week - on to you. 

Believe in Magic is a fully illustrated history of one of the most colourful and exciting independent British record labels; a label responsible for creating satellite communities of fans around the country and at all the major festivals.
After several years working at Factory and Creation, Heavenly Recordings was set up by Jeff Barrett in 1990 as the acid house revolution was in full swing; early releases set the tone and tempo for the mood of the decade to come - their first release was by perhaps the most revered acid house DJ of them all, Andrew Weatherall; and this was quickly followed by singles from St Etienne and Manic Street Preachers. 

Heavenly was always different to other labels; more of a 'club' with a defiant spirit of inclusiveness, and in 1994 they set up The Heavenly Social, which alongside the Hacienda, became perhaps the most famous club in recent British history, where the Chemical Brothers made their name. 

Over nearly 200 releases in thirty years Heavenly have consistently produced some of the most exciting music across all genres - dance, acid house, singer-songwriter, psych-garage - and this book collects rare photographs, ephemera, artwork into a celebration of a label that is, alongside Rough Trade and Factory, one of the most beloved institutions on the independent landscape. Running though the book are thirty stories, mostly told in the form of oral history by artists like James Dean Bradfield, Flowered Up, Beth Orton, Doves and Don Letts, which capture the presiding personality of the label, its bands and the people associated with its success. 

A rumble on the horizon. Gritted teeth, nuclear fizz and fissured rock. A dab of pill dust from a linty pocket before it hits: the atom split, pool table overturned, pint glass smashed — valley fever breaking with the clouds as the inertia of small town life is well and truly disrupted. Here to bust out of Doledrum, clad in a t-shirt that screams SOCIALISM and armed with drum machine, synth, pedal and icy stare are Working Men’s Club, and their self-titled debut album.

It’s hard to believe that the three fresh-faced music college kids who bounced out of nowhere and onto the 6 Music playlist with the sweet-but-potent, twangy guitar-led ‘Bad Blood’ (Melodic Records) in 2019 are the same band who clattered back there with maddening techno-cowbellpuncher ‘Teeth’ less than half a year later — and that’s because for the most part, they’re not. Having signed to Heavenly and with the hype around them building, underlying tensions came to a boil a mere five days before the band’s all-important first London headline show, and wunderkind frontman Syd Minsky-Sargeant was left high and dry; guitarist Giulia Bonometti had decided to focus on her blossoming solo career, and drummer Jake Bogacki was against the new electronic direction Minsky-Sargeant saw Working Men’s Club taking. (“I guess WMC started off as a bit more guitar-based, tryna copy stuff in our own way, like the Velvets and stuff like that, but I didn’t want it to be that anymore. It became dancier and dancier as I tried to experiment”, he explains.) All that remained of the outfit was Minsky-Sargeant himself, recently recruited bassist Liam Ogburn, and — given the band’s indebtment to wood panelled, community-run venues for an early leg-up — a rather pertinent name. But with staunch determination burning in his belly, Minsky-Sargeant quickly assembled a lineup consisting of himself, Ogburn, and Mairead O'Connor (The Moonlandingz) and Rob Graham (Drenge, Baba Naga) — both of whom he had met at the Sheffield studio of producer Ross Orton (The Fall, M.I.A., Arctic Monkeys) — replaced the live drums with a drum machine, and rush-rehearsed the new setup before going ahead with the show. “If it wasn’t for Sheffield then we probably wouldn’t have played that gig” he says. “I was shitting myself, because I didn’t know what would work or not.” Luckily, something stuck: “After about three gigs with that lineup it was already way better than what we’d had before.” Two original members lighter and three new ones the richer, Working Men’s Club took on a new hard-edge permutation, their shows becoming ever more sweaty, pulsating and rammed to the rafters; their energy raw; their vigour renewed; their interplay as musicians growing ever-more intuitive and elastic. Their eponymous collection of songs is equal parts Calder Valley restlessness and raw Sheffield steel; guitars locking horns with floor-filling beats, synths masquerading as drums and Minsky-Sargeant’s scratchy, electrifying bedroom demos brought to their full potential by Orton’s blade-sharp yet sensitive production.

It was at home in the town of Todmorden in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, feeling hemmed in, that 18-year-old Syd Minsky-Sargeant first began assembling these 10 songs. “There’s not much going on, not much stuff to do as a teenager” he says. “It’s quite isolated. And it can get quite depressing being in a town where in the winter it gets light at nine in the morning and dark at four”. It is this sense of cabin fever, of “thinking that you will never escape a small town in the middle of nowhere” on which the album opens, with the boredom-lamenting and rave-reminiscent ‘Valleys’. In a post-punk talk-sing over an old-skool beat, Minsky-Sargeant begins:

Trapped, inside a town, inside my mind

Stuck with no ideas, I’m running out of time

There’s no quick escape, so many mistakes, I’ll play the long game

This winter is a curse

And the valley is my hearse, when will it take me to the grave?

Fortunately for Syd and a thousand other bored-shitless, dark-dwelling teenagers, the Calder Valley boasts a burgeoning grassroots music scene, chiefly centred around The Golden Lion in Todmorden, and the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge — both of which were instrumental in the early life of the band. “Without those venues we probably wouldn’t have been able to get into playing live music”, Minsky-Sargeant reflects. Working Men’s Club’s first ever gig, at The Golden Lion, was self-booked and self-promoted, landlord Waka having allowed the band to use the 100-capacity room above the pub for free. Even before booking himself onto the stage though, Minsky-Sargeant regularly snuck into the venue to watch the internationally renowned DJs, like Justin Robertson and Luke Unabomber, who passed through its doors. This, combined with the discovery of 808 State, his stepdad’s extensive afrobeat record collection, YouTube videos of Jeff Mills making beats on a Roland TR-909, and a chance festival encounter with Soulwax, provided sustenance and inspiration for Working Men’s Club’s developing sound. Though it is songs almost entirely written and sung by Minsky-Sargeant that appear on the record, he is quick to point out the influence of the other members of his band on the record too; that “everyone that’s been involved in this band, from the old lineup to the new lineup, played on the record, contributed and shaped it in some way, through the phases”, wheedling in and around Minsky-Sargeant’s songs, embellishing them with their own bass, guitar, key or backing vocal parts. And without Orton, “it wouldn’t have been half as good a record.” Working with the producer radically changed MinskySargeant’s songwriting practice — “I tried to replicate what he was doing in his studio in my bedroom, and think more about drum sounds and making them more complicated and messing around with synths and stuff like that. It made me think about more components than just a guitar.”

The songs following ‘Valleys’ come fast and relentless — momentum ever increasing, mission well and truly stated as the frenetic, pew-pewing ‘A.A.A.A’ speeds through to nonchalant existential groove ‘John Cooper Clarke’ — centred around the realisation that yes, even the luckiest guy alive, the Bard of Salford himself, will someday die.

Hard holds hands with soft, and rough with smooth. On washily-vocalled, Orange Juicily-guitared ‘White Rooms and People’, there are simultaneously beautifully blooming flowers and ‘people talking shit about you’, and the hazy, ricocheting ‘Outside’, the gentlest track on the album, flips straight into the tough-as-shit, industrially-geared ‘Be My Guest’, which opens the second half of the record with markedly E. Smithian brio. The opening bars of ‘Cook A Coffee’ are momentarily reminiscent of ‘Bad Blood’, but spiral into direct and uncomfortable eye contact in song-form; a lost Joy Division number from an alternate universe, about taking a dump live on the telly. ‘Tomorrow’ glitches and glimmers, whilst outro track ‘Angel’ moves between psychedelic languidity and hardcore thrash, the album playing itself out on a 12-and-a-half-minute noodle.

It is with war, free-fall, and re-birth already behind them that Working Men’s Club emerge, resilient; inspiration from across breadth of eras, genres and tour-mates merely strata in their very own indie-cum-dance-cum-techno niche in the crag.

Diva Harris, February 2020

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: It's perhaps unsurprising that a band from the Calder Valley on the edge of the Pennines draws on influences from both sides of the hills. Todmorden’s WMC have done just that, splicing the synth led sounds of 80s Sheffield with doomy Mancunian post punk stylings to create a forward thinking monster of a debut album. The acidic synths and pulsing beat of album opener “Valleys” encapsulate the claustrophobia of growing up in a small town and the smothering intensity is maintained through the industrial clatter of “A.A.A.A.”. With its funk fuelled grooves, nonchalant vocals and bitter sweet chorus, “John Cooper Clarke” could easily be an undiscovered classic from early Factory days. As side one draws to a close, the mood is lifted with the choppy guitar groove of “White Rooms and People”, and on “Outside”, it feels like they’ve escaped the town for sun kissed wide open spaces. Side two reverts to pounding industrial grooves and distorted guitars on “Be My Guest”. “Tomorrow” marries monotone vocals with a super catchy chorus while “Cook a Coffee” takes a cheeky snipe at a certain TV presenter. “Teeth” is aimed squarely at the dancefloor with its relentless synth stabs interwoven with doomy guitar riffs and “Angel” brings the album to a triumphant close: Jangling guitars and crashing cymbals over a driving rhythm that morphs into a sprawling psychedelic wig-out.

They set out to make a dance record that wouldn’t be pigeonholed as a dance record. I think they’ve nailed it.

TRACK LISTING

1 Valleys
2 A.A.A.A.
3 John Cooper Clarke
4 White Rooms And People
5 Outside
6 Be My Guest
7 Tomorrow
8 Cook A Coffee
9 Teeth
10 Angel

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.

Working Menís Club hotly anticipated, self-titled debut album was due to drop this June, now, for reasons obvious to most of us, it is due October. Looking at the blank space left by the postponement, 18 year old wonderkid frontman Syd Minsky-Sargeant decided to utilise his free time, in lockdown, and capitalise on the creative momentum the band has garnered. The result is a 21-minute continuous ëMEGAMIXí that simultaneously acts as a taster and a condensed electronic reworking of parts of the album. ìOur album would have been released today but we had to push the release back due to Covid. It doesnít feel like a particularly apt time to be self promoting anything at all however we wanted to give something to the people who pre-ordered the album on what would of the original release date,î says Minsky-Sargeant. ìInitially it seemed a bit of a crazy idea to go and remix an album we've just made that isn't even out yet. But once we got into it we were like, ëlet's fucking go for ití. One could of course argue that crazy ideas are whatís needed in such crazy times but, in reality, what has been produced is less of a chaotic and scatterbrain idea and more a coherent artistic statement in line with the bandís perpetual forward momentum. Minsky-Sargeant teamed up with the bandís producer Ross Orton - under the moniker ëMinsky Rockí, a recently started project under which they recently completed a Jarvis Cocker remix - and the pair worked remotely to create the unique reimagining. ìRoss has a studio in Sheffield and I have a bit of one at home. So I would play a synth part and then send him the file over and he'd put it into his computer and then bring it up on a shared screen. I could see his interface and we'd mix it like that. It was like being in the same room.î The result is a ìreinterpretation rather than a remixî says Minsky-Sargeant. Over its seamlessly flowing duration, as it unfurls in hypnotic and infectious grooves - teasing snippets of songs as they weave in and out - the mix plays out like a classic 12î extended mix. Albeit one that takes on different forms and explores new terrain altogether. ìIt takes a number of parts of the album but different versions [and edits] of the songs,î he says. ìI've played new parts on more or less everything. Some tracks I've taken out the guitar parts and re-done them with synths or replaced bass lines with synths.î Thereís something of a northern lineage that can be traced here too, in that the 12î band remixes were something of a mainstay of Manchester bands like New Order and A Certain Ratio, and in a similar spirit, WMC are a new young band pushing, and crossing, the boundaries of where guitar and electronic music can interlink and overlap. ìIt's free flowing and electronic, rather than sounding like a band,î Minsky-Sargeant says of the mix. ìIt gives an insight into what the record is like, as well as the future of the band, but itís also something totally exclusive. It's very much its own thing.î

Madding crowds may have found their bounce to the beat of ‘Bad Blood’s post-punk groove but Working Men’s Club will defy all expectation with their eagerly anticipated follow-up. Forcing backs off the wall and deeper onto the dancefloor, electric stomper ‘Teeth’ possesses enough bite to set pearly whites on edge and induce a wildly ecstatic feeling that’s anything but comfortable.

“It is a metaphor,” teases the band’s singer, guitarist and beat-maker, Sydney Minsky-Sargeant. “It could be about going insane or what you see, what you think you feel inside, a lot of things… put through a drum machine… basically we just want to confuse the fuck out of people, in a good way!”

For Syd, alongside fellow Club members Giulia Bonometti, Jake Bogacki, and recently recruited bassist Liam Ogburn, the last 12 months has seen the 4-piece buckle up for a meteoric rise that’s been a hell of a ride; “Signing to Heavenly was a big deal for us,” offers Jake. “We’ve worshiped the label and its bands for a long time so it’s nice to be part of the family. It’s a culture; we’re all running in parallel.”

Like hopping aboard Willy Wonka’s psychedelic boat trip through their own funked-up factory, ‘Teeth’ puts the ‘itch’ into glitch and urges everyone to embrace the rave. Recorded with producer Ross Orton (The Fall, Roots Manuva, M.I.A, Arctic Monkeys) at his Sheffield recording studio, between a brothel and Fat White Family’s base, the vibrations of ‘Teeth’s chatter cut like fork lightning across a fog-filled Hope Valley. As the needle hits the groove, its threatening cowbell and motoric Techno beat buzzsaws Syd’s Mark E mantra, “I see grit in your teeth,” whilst a drum machine and frenetic guitars reinforce the party vibe. “We’re definitely a dance band,” Syd affirms. “If you can make someone move that’s a big thing.” Jake agrees; “When you can convince a person to subconsciously dance without understanding why, it’s a religious feeling and taps into this primal instinct.”

Shapeshifting through the band’s collaborative writing process, ‘Teeth’ offers an epic fusion of the band’s broad repertoire of influences from godfathers of early Techno, Stingray to Thelonious Monk’s jazzy piano riffs - not to mention LCD Soundsystem or Delta 5 bounce. “It works because there’s a conflict of what we each want from it,” Jake tells. “It’s like tectonic plates and that friction causes an earthquake. When we meet in the middle, ‘Teeth’ is what comes out.” Reworked from Syd’s electronic-heavy demo, laid-down at his Todmorden home through synthesizers and drum machine, the track’s climactic shakedown ignites a love of Detroit House, Acid House, Afrobeat and Cuban rhythms from his DJ beginnings and stepdad’s influence. “I’ve always been into Nigerian 70s funk, like William Onyeabor,” Syd tells. “It’s happy, jolly, danceable; I don’t think my own lyrics are that happy - but it’s not just about that. It’s about how great music can make people dance.”

Capturing moments to write, whether walking through woods, splitting crisp packets open at the local pubs around their northern hometowns or between chapters of reading Hunter S. Thompson and Sylvia Plath, Working Men’s Club put the groove first, unafraid to rear the wise heads on their younger shoulders. "We’re brought together by the fact we care about being 100% ourselves,” reveals Giulia. “We sing and talk about what needs to be said, to put it out of our minds and bodies. Music is an outlet, a medium to communicate.” Aspiring to the lyrical greats John Cooper Clarke, Lou Reed, Ian Curtis, Glen Campbell and Townes Van Zandt, the band first bonded over back catalogues rather than passing trends. “You should never deny your influences; you do things your own way,” suggests Syd. As for politics? “Bands like Squid, Black Midi, us, Orielles; we’re taken seriously, but aren’t politically adverse for sake of it,” Jake says. “Essentially, the country’s fucked and not enough of us are talking about it. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re a political band, but we’re not gonna, not talk about it.”

TRACK LISTING

A
1 Teeth
2 Teeth (Extended Mix)

B
1 Teeth (Gabe Gurnsey Remix)
2 Teeth (Gabe Gurnsey Dub)

Marie Davidson’s new album turns the mirror on herself. "Working Class Woman” is the Montreal-based producer’s fourth and most self-reflective record: it’s a document of her state of mind, of operating within the spheres of dance music and club culture. Drawing on those experiences, as well as an array of writers, thinkers and filmmakers who’ve influenced her, Davidson’s response to such difficult moments is to explore her own reaction to them and poke fun. 

The sound of "Working Class Woman” is more direct than any of her previous outings. She still mines the same influences, from Italo disco, to proto-techno and industrial, but leadens them with a gut-punching weight, making for a record that’s more visceral than any she’s released before. Industrial heaviness is balanced by Davidson’s spoken text - rather than spoken word, which she sees as a distinct tradition - dark, textured soundscapes are counterweighted by statements that carry a more darkly humourous edge than before, making observations on both aspects of club culture as well as more oblique critiques of the modern world. It’s something that’s encapsulated in the driving momentum of lead single "So Right", which matches pared back lyrics with a melodic bassline and bright synths, her words sketching out a euphoric feeling that chimes with the music.

Building on the dancefloor-minded trajectory charted by her previous record "Adieux Au Dancefloor” (Cititrax / Minimal Wave), which drew praise from the likes of Pitchfork, The Fader and Resident Advisor, and opened up her sound to a new, wider audience, earning support from peers such as Nina Kraviz and Jessy Lanza. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Your Biggest Fan
2. Work It
3. The Psychologist
4. Lara
5. Day Dreaming
6. The Tunnel
7. Workaholic Paranoid Bitch
8. So Right
9. Burn Me
10. La Chambre Intérieure

Working for a Nuclear Free City have never been too concerned with genre. Since their debut release almost a decade ago they have danced around the constraints of genre, eschewing predictability and expectation in the process by creating a body of work dictated by invention and momentum.

Their latest release is no exception although, like much of their previous work, whilst it is difficult to pinpoint it is not lacking in stylistic coherence, “When putting the record together I was trying make something cohesive in some way.” Says one of the group’s founding members, Phil Kay.

The end result is an expansive, pop-tinged, experimental album that can be as propulsive as it can be restrained, bringing to mind artists as diverse and brilliant as Beck and Brian Eno to the Super Furry Animals.

The situations and inspiration around the record have been rather hodgepodge, “I listen to the radio most of the time, stations that play pretty diverse things, or I put things on shuffle a lot - mainly just trying to take the decision making process out of what I choose to listen too” Kay says, whilst also stating that the environments in which the record were created were just as all over the place, “I move around a lot so all the tracks are from different areas. Some from back in Manchester, a few from here in London, a couple I recorded in LA up in the Hollywood hills in Jennifer Anniston’s old apartment.” This geographically vast record was also done over a period of time too, making it a continent-spanning record that has had years’ worth of thoughts and ideas funnelled into it, “It was recorded over such a long period of time that each track has its own distinct memories for me.” Kay says of the process.

The title of the album What Do People Do All Day? Has a dual meaning, as Kay points out, “I was writing a kids book at the time so had loads of Richard Scarry books lying around. I think we hit on the title as it of course reminds you of Scarry and puts you in that playful territory but the second meaning of it is about the mundanity and futility of life, so there's that juxtaposition. It was supposed to be this loose concept album about peoples lives or various snapshots of people lives. The songs also all seem to relate to these imagined characters and their lives - perhaps a days in their lives”

As a result the songs vary enormously and when discussing what some of the individual tracks are about, Kay paints a picture of a little universe of strange tales and stories, one song is about “Media and politics and bullshit and living in a city and everyone wired up and concrete and adverts and too much noise” whilst others are about: “A girl who dreams of killing her boss, quitting her mundane job and living in a magazine”; “The heir to Blackpool Pleasure Beach who turns it into a Vegas-style resort, makes millions, moves to Venice beach and turns it into Blackpool” and “Teenagers getting stoned in a park in suburbia and discovering a secret portal”. As illustrated by these unique and vast narrative situations, it’s an album with huge scope and one that has set out to be as lyrically ambitious as it is sonically. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Bottlerocket
2. Ordinary People
3. Run
4. Euphone
5. Stop Everything
6. Cassetteboy's Theme
7. Going Nowhere
8. New Day
9. Good As Gold
10. Lindow
11. Turned To Tight
12. Blunderland
13. What Do People Do All Day
14. Leaving

Drag City Records release the new album by Alasdair Roberts & Friends, entitled ‘A Wonder Working Stone’. A collection of varied new epics, Alasdair’s latest is by turns metaphysical, cosmological, phantasmagorical, topical, personal and universal. This is Alasdair’s most ambitious, fully-realized work to date (an extraordinary claim following the incredible excursions made on his recent releases ‘Spoils’ and ‘Too Long In This Condition’).

‘A Wonder Working Stone’ continues Alasdair’s long-standing love affair and deeply creative interaction with the traditional music of his native Scotland (and beyond), offering an idiosyncratic and nuanced radicalization of that tradition. Indeed, he questions the very notion of ‘tradition’ in the modern age, with songs addressing topics such as mortality (as ever), life, love, sex, faith and history.

The arrangements of ‘A Wonder Working Stone’ are dense with the music of friends, realizing the lifeblood of community, and throughout the album, they are presented with raucously cinematic flair. In the middle of it all, Roberts delivers his unique ‘scordatura’ finger style guitar and distinctive tenor vocals with the backing of a core group of among Glasgow’s finest musicians - Ben Reynolds (electric guitar), Shane Connolly (drums), Rafe Fitzpatrick (fiddle, rap), Stevie Jones (bass) and with special guest vocals from Olivia Chaney, as well as appearances from many other fine players on strings, brass, flute and accordion, all of which edify and expand the musical world of Alasdair Roberts and all those friends who listen.

“Alasdair Roberts writes new songs that seem to be hundreds of years old. He also sings songs that are hundreds of years old but sound like they were written yesterday. He is the most exciting young musician currently working within the folk tradition of these islands and is, in my opinion, a kind of genius. […] ‘A Wonder Working Stone’ shows the artist moving forward again […] to add to a body of work that is both crucial and beautiful” - Robin Robertson, author of ‘The Wrecking Light’, shortlisted for the 2010 TS Eliot Prize For Poetry

‘A Wonder Working Stone’ is the eighth acclaimed album from Alasdair Roberts, and his second with ‘& Friends’, following 2010’s album of traditional songs, ‘Too Long In This Condition’.

The music of Alasdair Roberts straddles the border between contemporary pop music and traditional folk music, drawing new listeners from both sides of the divide, as well as commentators from the scholarly realms.

Eighteen months after releasing his first ever solo album, Ray Davies is back with what promises to be one of the best albums of his incredible career. While last year's "Other People's Lives" was a lifetime in the making, this new album happened relatively quickly. Recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, "Working Mans Café" features 12 stellar songs written by Ray Davies and co-produced with Ray Kennedy. They assembled a crackerjack band of top musicians who breathe life into a wonderful collection of songs. The 12 new songs are vintage Ray Davies and bear all the hallmark classic musical and lyrical insights we have come to expect from him. The album is infused with a transatlantic sound befitting Ray's close ties to the American south coupled with his well respected Englishness. From the first upbeat notes of the lead track "Vietnam Cowboys", it is clear Ray has never sung better. "Working Mans Café" is a wistful, humorous and poignant look at today, just what we have come to expect from one of Britain's greatest songwriters. Highlights are many and include the Preservation Jazz Hall sway of "Morphine Song", the painful longing of "Imaginary Man" and the haunting emotion of "One More Time".

Epic, intelligent, melodic, groove-based and atmospheric - this is the sound of Working For A Nuclear Free City. Descendents of "Fools Gold" era Roses, Spiritualized and The Beta Band, Working For A Nuclear Free City represent the best of Manchester's new experimental underground.

Great debut album from Bone-Box. Sleazy swamp blues mixed with a lazy alt-country groove. Recommended!