Label Review. 

Contains the remastered albums Winds Of Change, The Twain Shall Meet, Every One Of Us, Love Is, & Winds Of Change (Mono) plus 10 bonus tracks. Esoteric.

Our Overview. 

Eric Burdon And The Animals came together in December 1966 when the original Animals had ground to a halt. Vocalist Eric Burdon recruited Vic Briggs (guitar, piano), John Weider (guitar, violin, bass), Danny McCulloch (bass) and Barry Jenkins (drums) to form a new group which changed direction away from raucous Rhythm and Blues and embraced Psychedelic rock and the influences of the emerging counter-culture. Signing to MGM Records in the USA (where he became based) and teaming up with producer Tom Wilson (also famed for his work with Bob Dylan, The Mothers Of Invention and The Velvet Underground), the band’s debut single “When I Was Young” released in April 1967 was a powerful statement, featuring Weider’s violin and Briggs’ fuzzed guitar, becoming a hit in Europe, Australia and the USA. The B-side of the single “A Girl Named Sandoz” was a psychedelic ode to the Swiss pharmaceutical company which developed LSD.

The follow-up single, “San Franciscan Nights”, issued in August 1967, came hot on the heels of the band’s famed appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 and would be the band’s biggest hit, breaking the top twenty in the UK, Europe and the USA. The band’s debut album, ‘Winds Of Change’ was issued in October 1967 and featured the singles “San Franciscan Nights” and “Good Times”, along with an inventive cover version of The Rolling Stones “Paint It Black” and the psychedelic rockers “Yes, I Am Experienced” (a tribute to Burdon’s friend Jimi Hendrix) and “It’s All Meat”.

The album ‘The Twain Shall Meet’ was recorded in December 1967 but not issued until May 1968 and featured two further singles, “Monterey” and “Sky Pilot (Parts One & Two)”. Incredibly 1968 would see a further two album releases by the group in the USA and Europe; ‘Every One Of Us’, recorded in June and issued in August of that year, was a fine album which saw Zoot Money join the band on organ and piano, but inexplicably the album failed to gain a release in the UK. By the time of its release, Vic Briggs had departed to be replaced by Andy Summers (later with The Police) on guitar. This line-up recorded the double album ‘Love Is’ in Los Angeles in October 1968, issued only as a single LP in the UK, which featured imaginative cover versions of “River Deep Mountain High”, “Ring Of Fire” and Traffic’s “Coloured Rain”. Released in December 1968, it was to be the final album by the group. Burdon remained in the United States and joined forces with the group War in 1969.

Tracklisting:

Disc One: Winds Of Change / Poem By The Sea / Paint It Black / The Black Plague / Yes, I Am Experienced / San Franciscan Nights / Man – Woman / Hotel Hell / Good Times / Anything / It’s All Meat / When I Was Young / A Girl Named Sandoz / Ain’t That So / Gratefully Dead / Anything (Single Version)

Disc Two: Monterey / Just The Thought / Closer To The Truth / No Self Pity / Orange And Red Beams / Sky Pilot / We Love You Lil / All Is One / Sky Pilot (Part One) (Mono Single) / Sky Pilot (Part Two) (Mono Single) / Monterey (Mono Single Version)

Disc Three: White Houses / Uppers And Downers / Serenade To A Sweet Lady / The Immigrant Lad / Year Of The Guru / St. James Infirmary / New York 1963 –America 1968 / White Houses (Single Version)

Disc Four: River Deep, Mountain High / I’m An Animal / I’m Dying, Or Am I? / Ring Of Fire / Coloured Rain / To Love Somebody / As The Years Go Passing By / Gemini / The Madman (Running Through The Fields) / River Deep, Mountain High (Single Version)

Disc Five: Winds Of Change / Poem By The Sea / Paint It Black / The Black Plague / Yes, I Am Experienced / San Franciscan Nights / Man – Woman / Hotel Hell / Good Times / Anything / It’s All Meat

Label Review. 

2020 album. Singer songwriter. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

JUNO award winning Canadian folk-pop artist Rose Cousins is a vital part of the thriving East Coast Canadian music scene and she is interested in the juxtaposition of things. Her new album, ‘Bravado’ peers behind the kinds of doors we tend to leave closed, [for better or worse, or both]. It is the sound of a heart trying to open. It is a bold swagger, a vulnerable facade. 

'Bravado' is a record for those who struggle with loneliness and those wishing they had more time alone. It’s for those attempting to make their hearts go in more than one direction and those trying to make it go in just one. It’s for those who present a version of themselves to the world that doesn’t quite match how they feel inside. It’s for those who feel misunderstood or unseen. It’s for those who have a hard time saying what they feel, who hide or can’t let themselves off the hook. It’s for those asking, “is this it?” and questioning if the character they play in the movie of their lives is authentic or just a role they’ve accepted. It’s for those who have a hard time asking for help and for those desperate for and terrified of change.

“I think about how we're so disconnected. I get sucked into my phone and forget to go for a walk because of this sense of obligation that I have that convinces me to get as much work done as possible. It feels like we’re not connecting in person as much as we used to and that we may be the loneliest we've ever been. We're missing what's actually happening, like, the earth being on fire. We get caught in the spin of comparing our lives to social media depictions, false standards of a good life. I’ve been thinking about how we must be getting close to a breaking point."

For Cousins, this chapter is a personal and professional metamorphosis. She is in the producer chair, applying her years of experience, trusting her own ear and pulling thoughtfully from her network of talented colleagues.

‘Bravado’ is an exploration of self-worth and an investigation into the nuances of our tough exteriors - why we act brave while feeling afraid, how we appear impressive while privately questioning our worthiness, how confidence shares space with shame.’

Cousins’ last project, ‘Natural Conclusion’, received much acclaim, including a Grammy nomination, a JUNO nomination for Songwriter of the Year, and 3 wins at the East Coast Music Awards. Rose’s songs have appeared on Grey’s Anatomy, Supergirl, Reign, Nashville, and others. She has shared stages with heroic songwriters such as Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jann Arden & Ron Sexsmith.

Tracklisting: The Benefits Of Being Alone / The Expert / The Agreement / The Fraud / The Time Being (Impending Mortality Awareness Society) / The Din / The Return (Love Comes Back) / The Swimmer (To Be An Old Man) / The Lullaby (My Oldest Love) / The Benediction (A Good Woman) / The Reprise (The Benefits Of Being Alone) / The Truth (It’s Just Emotion)

Label Review.

2020 album. World.

Our Overview.

The trailblazing Indian-American, Sunny Jain is internationally recognised as a musician with a distinct and recognisable sound and his new album ‘Wild Wild East’ encompasses myriad facets of Jain’s identity both as a first-generation South Asian-American and as a global musician, from his own family’s immigration story to his eclectic musical upbringing. “Sunny Jain is no purist... he hasn’t been shy about pulling his experiences as a first-generation Indian American who studied jazz at Rutgers and listens to modern dance-pop into his music.” - Washington Post

Sunny is recognised as a lead voice in the burgeoning movement of South Asian-American jazz musicians.The dhol player, drummer, and composer’s seven albums have all received international acclaim for their "groundbreaking synthesis" ( Coda Magazine ), as he brings together the ancient sounds of his cultural heritage, America's greatest original art form and a host of other sounds.

In recasting the immigrant steeped in the courage to leave a familiar homeland for a new beginning as the modern-day cowboy and cowgirl, Jain sources musical inspiration from the scores of Bollywood classics and Spaghetti Westerns, Indian folk traditions, jazz improvisation, and rollicking psychedelic and surf guitar styles. Wild Wild East is an album rooted in the contemporary American soundscape, singing in a new voice, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Founder and bandleader of global party band Red Baraat, performing at Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD Festival, and the White House under Obama. Sunny has drummed with Peter Gabriel, Norah Jones, Dewey Redman, Martha Wainwrite, Vijay Iyer, and Tongues in Trees.

Tracklisting: Immigrant Warrior / Wild Wild East / Osian / Red, Brown, Black / Aye Mere Dil Kahin Aur Chal (Remembrance) / Aye Mere Dil Kahin Aur Chal / Baaghi / Blackwell / Hai Apna Dil To Aawara / Maitri Bhavanu

Label Review. 

2020 album. Johnny Lynch plays his unique brand of folk and electronica. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Pictish Trail’s new album ‘Thumb World’ is bold, weird, wild, wired, sonically luxurious yet never losing touch with its DIY-‘til-I-die roots, and is a voyage to the outer rings of Johnny Lynch’s mind at its darkest, funniest and most inventive – a plugged-in, fuzzed-out, fucked-up contemplation on, as he puts it, “life repeating and gradually degrading, the inevitable cyclical nature of things, and the sense of their ultimately being no escape.”

Expect alien abductions, thumping beats, Trump-haired pigs, paternal panic, astronaut sex, bad acid trips, worse hangovers, lashings of distortion and a lot of anthropomorphic thumbs. “Our opposable thumbs are the things that separate us from most other animals on Earth,” Pictish explains, of the fat digit symbolism, “they are also the things that we use to swipe on screens, to separate ourselves from our normal lives, but which in turn trap us within an artificial reality.”

Produced and mixed by Rob Jones, featuring string arrangements from Kim Moore and drumming from Alex Thomas (Squarepusher, Anna Calvi, Air), Thumb World is Pictish Trail’s most collaborative album to date. An audio-visual dialogue with Swatpaz, AKA Scottish artist Davey Ferguson – the man behind the Turbo Fantasy series and an entire episode of cult TV phenomenon Adventure Time – furnished Johnny with not just a graphic aesthetic for the album, but even helped him to shape the sound of the finished record. “I sent Davey a work-in-progress mix of the album,” Johnny says, “he came back with sketches in which he had reimagined Thumb World as an 80’s arcade game. Some of the songs are centered around specific visual images, inspired by Davey’s sketches.”

Tracklisting: Repeat Neverending / Double Sided / Pig Nice / Lead Balloon / Fear Anchor / Slow Memories / Bad Algebra / Heart Eyes / Turning Back / Thumb World

Label Review. 

2020 album.  Also available on CD, and Deluxe CD.

Our Overview. 

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Grammy Winning, former frontman of Black Sabbath and solo vocalist and songwriter “The Prince Of Darkness” Ozzy Osbourne is releasing his first studio album in almost a decade ‘Ordinary Man’.

'Ordinary Man' was recorded in Los Angeles and features Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan on bass, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith on drums, and producer Andrew Watt on guitar. Beyond the core band, 'Ordinary Man'  features a who’s-who of Ozzy riends and collaborators including Elton John, Post Malone, and Tom Morello.

Of the new project, Ozzy said in a press release: 

"It all started when [daughter] Kelly comes in and says “do you want to work on a Post Malone song?” My first thing was “who the fuck is Post Malone?!” I went to Andrew’s [Watt] house and he said we will work really quick.

"After we finished that song, he said ‘would you be interested in starting an album.’ I said ‘that would be fucking great, but now I am thinking I don’t want to be working in a basement studio for six months! And in just a short time, we had the album done. Duff [McKagan] and Chad [Smith] came in and we would go in and jam during the day and I would go work out the songs in the evenings.

"I previously had said to Sharon I should be doing an album, but in the back of my mind I was going ‘I haven’t got the fucking strength…’ but Andrew pulled it out of me. I really hope people listen to it and enjoy it, because I put my heart and soul into this album.”Ozzy added that ‘Ordinary Man’ is “quite possibly the most important album I have done in a very long time.” He also claims that the album is “a gift from my higher power.” ‘Ordinary Man’ is the follow-up to Ozzy’s 2010 solo LP ‘Scream’.

“It all just came together,” OZZY explains of the guest stars. “Slash is a dear friend of mine, as is Elton. When I was writing ‘Ordinary Man,’ it reminded me of an old Elton song and I said to Sharon, ‘I wonder if he would sing on it?’ We asked and lo and behold, he agreed and sings and play piano on the song.”

Tracklisting: Straight to Hell / All My Life / Goodbye / Ordinary Man (feat. Elton John) / Under the Graveyard / Eat Me / Today Is The End / Scary Little Green Men / Holy For Tonight / It's A Raid (feat. Post Malone)

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Glaswegian formed quintet Spinning Coin release their second album, ‘Hyacinth’, via Geographic. This is indie music from its bowl haircuts to its dirty Converses. The two songwriters in the band have their different strengths. Jack Mellin draws more from the spikier end of things, with Tin sounding like a slightly less ramshackle Josef K song, while Sean Armstrong tends towards the more straight forwardly melancholic end of indie.

Throughout Hyacinth, there is joy in spades, but also melancholy, and a checked fury, threading the group’s political vision through their reflections on the personal and the interpersonal. Jack explains that the new songs “are about the need for love in an often very unloving world. Trying to find a balance of some kind between feelings of apathy, negativity, detachment and action, positivity and oneness.” Whilst Mellin’s songs were more pointedly political on Permo, here he has built more complexity into his writing. Elsewhere, Rachel contributes her first song to a Spinning Coin release, in the form of the beautiful “Black Cat”.

Hyacinth was recorded during a few days, by Peter Deimel at Black Box Studios in France, while the group were on a summertime tour. It was an idyll, a restorative respite. That carries through to the album, there’s a sense of society and collectivism at the heart of these pop songs, and a commentary on the optimism of the will, no matter how bleak things can get. Ultimately, on Hyacinth, the Spinning Coin ethos stays true to itself, as Sean expands about the experiences and the motivations behind the new music: “It’s trying to connect with other people on a human level, doing something that we love, and trying to embrace the unknown.”

A brave step forward, ‘Hyacinth’ is an album full of poetry, light and warmth of heart and presents a band holding nothing back. ‘Hyacinth’ registers a number of changes for the group since their debut album ‘Permo’ in 2017: personnel changes, geographical changes, a new context, an ever-changing world outside.

Tracklisting: Avenues of Spring / Feel You More Than / World Right Now / Get High / The Long Heights / Despotic Sway / Ghosting / Laughing Ways / Black Cat / Soul / Trader / Never Enough / Slips Away / It’s Alright / Thing Of The Past

Label Review. 

Contained here is some super deep 'Northwestern Soul' including three cuts making their inaugural spins 50 years after they were put to tape. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

‘Pacific Northwest Juke Box’ is a treat for the ears and contains some blinding rare and unissued Pacific Northwest floor fillers! While soul music might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the music of the Pacific Northwest, Salem Oregon’s Garland Records was churning out high quality hip shakers along with their reels of garage & psych. Contained here is some super deep “Northwestern Soul,” including three cuts making their inaugural spins 50 years after they were put to tape. From the politically powerful “Freedom Train,” a pleasantly less polished version of a Motown staple, to a pair of energetic takes on some Bobby Blue Bland steamers. Some seriously unique takes on soul classics paired with some soul could’ve beens. CD includes two bonus cuts not available on the LP!

With Sundazed Music’s acquisition of the Garland Records catalog you’re in for a tidal wave of great garage rock, pysch, soul, and even some country. Here with Pacific Northwest Juke Box, you’re treated to floor fillers and even a couple for holding your special person close.

True to form for BeatRocket’s Garland Records collections is the abundance of original material. Sixties Salem Oregon was about as musically diverse as they come and BeatRocket is sorting through the Garland reels to prove it!

Tracklisting: Freedom Train - White Feather / Just One Time - Cornucopia / Reach Out I’ll Be There - Morning Reign / Findin’ My Own Kind Of Song - Crystal Teardrop / I Can’t Understand - DART / Mr. Love - Prince Charles & The Crusaders / Don’t Cry No More - DART / Dorchester Summer - Crystal Teardrop / Any Day Now - White Feather / It’s Alright - Baldwin Brothers / Lead Me On - DART / But It’s Alright - Morning Reign / Ticket To Denver - Baldwin Brothers

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Pat Metheny’s ‘From This Place’ features ten compositions by Metheny, who is joined by his long-time drummer, Antonio Sanchez, Malaysian/Australian bassist Linda May Han Oh, and British pianist Gwilym Simcock as well as the Hollywood Studio Symphony conducted by Joel McNeely. Meshell Ndegeocello (vocals), Gregoire Maret (harmonica), and Luis Conte (percussion) are special guests on ‘From This Place’, Metheny’s first album of new material since 2014’s Kin (←→). Metheny, Simcock, Oh, and Sanchez begin an extensive international tour in 2020.

“From This Place is one of the records I have been waiting to make my whole life. It is a kind of musical culmination, reflecting a wide range of expressions that have interested me over the years, scaled across a large canvas, presented in a way that offers the kind of opportunities for communication that can only be earned with a group of musicians who have spent hundreds of nights together on the bandstand,” says Metheny.

Over the course of more than three decades, guitarist Pat Metheny has set himself apart from the jazz mainstream, expanding and blurring boundaries and musical styles. His record-setting body of work includes twenty Grammy Awards in twelve separate categories and in an amazing streak was the only bandleader to win Grammy Awards for seven consecutive releases; a series of influential trio recordings; award-winning solo albums; scores for hit Hollywood motion pictures; and collaborations and duets with major artists like Ornette Coleman, Steve Reich, Charlie Haden, Brad Mehldau, and many others. Oh, and David Bowie.

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Surrender Your Poppy Field’ is the new album for a new decade having release 3 albums in 2019, from the long-running and prolific American indie rock band - whose lineup has changed several times throughout the bands history - led by singer-songwriter Robert Pollard.

The new album will span 15 tracks. Starting off the year with a 100-song marathon in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, Robert Pollard set a mighty high bar for Guided By Voices in 2020. Following three acclaimed and stylistically distinct full-length albums in 2019, ‘Surrender Your Poppy Field’, is a head-spinning tour de force: a bit of everything… plus more! And hands down the most adventurous GBV album ever.

There are lo-fi four-track tape recordings, there are songs recorded with a single microphone in a basement, there are big studio fully-produced hook-laden pop songs, and there is a LOT in between.

Seemingly, the guiding concept of ‘Surrender Your Poppy Field’ was to make the songs sound as different from one another as possible: sudden shifts in mood, tempo and rhythm, unexpected chord progressions, false endings and codas, string orchestrations, mysterious voices… It’s an exhilarating and dizzying trip to an inventive world of strange characters: Andre the Hawk, Queen Parking Lot, the Cul-de-Sac Kids, the Hard Hitter, the Steely Dodger, the Stone Cold Moron, A Man Called Physician, A Man Called Blunder...

Not content with their usual mastery of the 4 P’s (punk, pop, prog, psych) Professor Pollard pushes the envelope on Poppy Field, and continues to redefine GBV from a myriad of angles. Anyone who thinks that he’s gotten complacent after 105 albums hasn’t been paying attention! Don’t miss out.

Speaking to Rolling Stone Magazine, Guided by Voices' Robert Pollard said of their new record, "I think Wizard of Oz came to mind when it was first conceived. I did a five-song EP about four or five years ago under the name Sunflower Logic and we included a mock catalog for the label name we used, Pink Banana Records. In it there are 50 or 60 fake band names with titles for 45s, EPs, albums and compilations and one of the songs was "Surrender Your Poppy Field". It stuck and I decided to give it a real home on a Guided by Voices album."

Tracklisting: Year of the Hard Hitter / Volcano / Queen Parking Lot / Arthur Has Business Elsewhere / Cul-de-Sac Kids / Cat Beats a Drum / Windjammer / Steely Dodger / Stone Cold Moron / Physician / Man Called Blunder / Woah Nelly / Andre the Hawk / Always Gone / Next Sea Level

Label Review. 

2020 album. Metal. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Creating ‘No Absolution’, old-school thrash metal revivalists, Finnish four-piece Lost Society spent two-and-ahalf- years finding their ultimate metal manifest, combining all the grit that has made them respected in the heavy community and padding in years of experience touring with the likes of Exodus and playing some of Europe’s biggest stages including Download Festival 2019.

Singles from the album - “No Absolution”, “Deliver Me” and “Into Eternity” (feat. Apocalyptica) have found a massive receptive audience and with the release of this album, Lost Society take their rightful place at the top table of heavy music. The band worked with fellow Finnish musician Joonas Parkkonen to co-write and produce several tracks on the new record while mastering was done by Svante Forsback (Rammstein, Volbeat, Ville Valo).

Following their appearance at Download 2019 in the UK, Lost Society have released three hugely successful singles - No Absolution, Deliver Me and Into Eternity, with global streaming figures over 1 million. This is their 3rd album. Promo teams retained in UK and Europe to secure Print, Radio, Online with substantial specialist airplay in UK, DE, FI, SE, US for the 3 singles released so far. European tour dates in Summer 2019.

Tracklisting: No Absolution / Mark Upon Your Skin / My Prophecy / Deliver Me / Into Eternity feat Apocalyptica / Artificial / Nonbeliever / Blood On Your Hands / Worthless / Pray For Death / Outbreak (No Rest For The Sickest)

Label Review.

2020 album also avaialble on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Five-piece indie rock band from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Lanterns On The Lake new studio album, ‘Spook The Herd’ combines dreamy indie rock with luscious melodies and poignant storytelling.

It’s strange - not to mention fundamentally disconcerting - to live through turbulent times. Yet as many feel like the world is slipping out of control, artists are enlivened as they seek to make sense of the shifting sands. Hazel Wilde of Lanterns On The Lake is now a songwriter necessarily emboldened. On ‘Spook The Herd’, the band’s fourth album, her voice and preoccupations rise to the fore like never before. In tandem, the band break new ground on a set of songs that are direct and crucial.

Wilde does nothing less than dive headlong into the existential crises of our times. Beginning with the record’s title - a pointed comment at the dangerously manipulative tactics of ideologues - its nine songs turn the microscope to issues including our hopelessly polarised politics, social media, addiction, grief and the climate crisis.

The world is brought into focus but Wilde’s style is not declarative. She also proves herself a songwriter possessed of a rare talent for finding the personal contours to contemporary issues, fully inhabiting them to make them real. Recorded as live where possible, the band’s natural touchstones of gauzy dream-pop and monumental post rock still float in the air but listening to Lanterns On The Lake now feels like actually sitting in the corner of the room as they play. As guitarist and producer Paul Gregory says of approaching their fourth album, “There was a sense of release in terms of what kind of music we felt we could make. The idea of what kind of band you’re supposed to be really disappeared. It was great; you felt you could do whatever you like.”

The band is composed of Hazel Wilde, Paul Gregory, Oliver Ketteringham, Bob Allan and Angela Chan.

Tracklisting: When It All Comes True / Baddies / Every Atom / Blue Screen Beams / Before They Excavate / Swimming Lessons / Secrets & Medicine / This Is Not A Drill / A Fitting End

Label Review. 

2020 album. Pop. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

‘Cape God’ will be the fourth studio release from iconoclastic pop darling Allie X - Canadian singer, songwriter and visual artist, aka Alexandra Ashley Hughes - and includes collaborations with Troye Sivan and Mitski. ‘Cape God’ is the follow-up to 2018's Super Sunset, which Nylon praised as the enigmatic artist's "most open effort yet, a semi-fictionalized account inspired by falling in love and her life amidst all the L.A. glitz and glamour.

Allie say of her new album: “In early 2018, I saw the documentary that started my journey to write this record. It’s an HBO doc called “heroine: cape god”. Though I’ve never done junk and don’t plan on trying it, in an abstract way I found myself relating to the film’s young interviewee’s. I’ve never spoken much publicly about this, but during high school, I was in and out of the hospital with physical illness. Often debilitatingly sick. To say it shaped my adolescence is an understatement.

“In multiple ways I related to the characters I saw in the documentary. Going into these feelings I had as a teenager was the perspective I chose to write this album from. It happened very naturally and without much thought - it became “Cape God”. I would say Cape God is a liminal space I created to explore my repressed feelings and perhaps create a different outcome. While in cape god, you are in limbo. you stay there until you die or come to life and while you are there you are somewhere in between.....”

The first single ‘Fresh Laundry’ was released in September 2019 and coincided with a series of tour dates supporting the likes of Charli XCX and MARINA across the US, UK and Europe.

Tracklisting: Fresh Laundry / Devil I Know / Regulars / Sarah Come Home / Rings A Bell / June Gloom / Love Me Wrong Ft. Troye Sivan / Super Duper Party People / Susie Save Your Love Ft. Mitski / Life Of The Party / Madame X / Learning In Public

Label Review. 

2020 album (Afghan Whigs). Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Despite a career that has lasted for over 30 years, Greg Dulli, frontman of The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers hasn’t released a solo album, until now. ‘Random Desire’ started in the aftermath of the last Whigs record, 2017’s ‘In Spades’, which Pitchfork named one of the best rock records of the year, hailing it as a “heavy, menacing work of indie rock majesty…thrilling and unsettling.” Drummer Patrick Keeler was about to take a short sabbatical to record and tour with his other band, The Raconteurs. Dulli’s longtime collaborator, bassist John Curley went back to school, and there was the tragic death of the band’s guitarist, Dave Rosser.

In response, Dulli returned to his teenage bedroom roots, finding musical inspiration via the model of one-man-band visionaries Prince and Todd Rundgren. The Los Angeles-by-way-of-Hamilton Ohio native wrote nearly every part of the record from piano lines to drums to bass riffs. As always, the music came first and the lyrics were completed later. Recording and writing way stations included his home in Silver Lake, the village of Crestline high up in the mountains above San Bernardino, and New Orleans. But the bulk was finished amidst the arid beauty and stark isolation of Joshua Tree (at the studio of engineer Christopher Thorne). Dulli handled most instrumentation, but an all-star cast of characters appear across the track-listing including The Whigs’ guitarist Jon Skibic and multi-instrumentalist Rick G. Nelson, Mathias Schneeberger (Twilight Singers), pedal steel wizard, upright bassist, and physician Dr. Stephen Patt, and drummer Jon Theodore (Queens of the Stone Age, The Mars Volta).

Clocking in at a lean 37 minutes, Random Desire is a clinic put on by a veteran master operating at the height of his powers, offering evidence of the hard-fought and weary wisdom learned from setbacks and victories alike. A lucid, confident and self-assured document of the songs of experience, the perils of existence, and the possibilities that offer themselves anew with each breath. Another death and rebirth from an outlaw who has seen it all and somehow lived to tell.

Tracklisting: Pantomima / Sempre / Marry Me / The Tide / Scorpio / It Falls Apart / A Ghost / Lockless / Black Moon / Slow Pan

Label Review. 

63 tracks featuring Charlatans, Ocean Colour Scene, Saint Etienne, Lush, Spiritualized, Boo Radleys, Swervedriver, Slowdive, Sundays, Manic Street Preachers, Spacemen 3, The La’s and many more.

Our Overview. 

Following on from the compilations ‘C86’, ‘C87’, ‘C88’ & ‘C89’ comes ‘C90’, Cherry Red Records successful series of compilations charting the development of the UK indie music scene. Over a decade since punk rocked the British musical scene to its foundations and caused an eruption of independently produced records, the scene and a new generation of figurehead artists began to let ambition in and head overground, playing to increasingly large crowds, working with bigger budgets and selling more copies, finding a footing in the UK’s Top Forty, venturing into the USA and, ultimately, creating a mainstream audience now primed for credible, guitar-tinged pop. Meanwhile, an underground revolution in clubland began to push towards the commercial same space, resulting in an inevitable fusion of songcraft and dancefloor aesthetics.

‘C90’ captures perfectly the moment these tribes began to coalesce. From the opening, club-friendly rendition of The Charlatans’ “Polar Bear” to The La’s knowingly backward looking “Timeless Melody” and all in-between, this is the sound of a scene dropping the raincoats, dropping acid and aiming for domination. 1990 was the start of a new decade when the Indie scene was dominated by Madchester and the arrival of Shoegaze and with nods towards grunge and what would become known as Britpop, plus hints of a proto-laddism peering out from between the cracks in a post-Smiths aesthetic, the sound of 1990, it could be argued, set the tone for the remainder of the decade.

‘C90’ is a snapshot of a unique moment in time. A piece of history. The sound of a country putting the hard-biting 1980s behind it, embracing the Daisy Age and looking to move forwards.

Tracklisting: 

Disc One: Polar Bear - The Charlatans / Sway - Ocean Colour Scene / Perfume - Paris Angels / The Storm - World Of Twist / Only Love Can Break Your Heart - Saint Etienne / It’s On - Flowered Up / Get Higher - Moonflowers / My Rising Star - Northside / Wonderment – Thousand Yard Stare / Thoughtforms - Lush / Anyway That You Want Me - Spiritualized / Swansong - Boo Radleys / Juggernaut Rides – Swervedriver / Avalyn I - Slowdive / Half-Life, Remembered – Pale Saints / Something More (Ambient Version) - Chapterhouse / Can’t Be Sure – The Sundays / She Sings Alone – See See Rider / Please Let Me Go – The Popinjays

Disc Two: New Art Riot - Manic Street Preachers / Aim - Ned’s Atomic Dustbin / Pop Song - Th’ Faith Healers / Beam Me Up – New Fast Automatic Daffodils / To Kill A Slow Girl Walking – The Telescopes / Welcome To Dead Town – The Seers / Listen - Honey Smugglers / Seems To Me - Milltown Brothers / Big City (Waves Of Joy) (Demo) – Spacemen 3 / I Fell In Love Last Night – Heavenly / Sean Connery – James Dean Driving Experience / Take - Raintree County / Noah’s Ark – Brighter / Amnesia – Something Pretty Beautiful / Earthwheel - Sandkings / If I Could Shine - The Sweetest Ache / Mad As Love - Greenhouse / Crazy Mixed Up Kid - Mousefolk / These Things Happen – Action Painting! / Strange - All Over The Place / I Know - Bark Psychosis

Disc Three: Timeless Melody – The La’s / Highrise Love – The Darkside / Everything About You – My Jealous God / Sleep - Eternal / Potboiler - Penelope’s Web / Dead Like You – The Steamkings / Twenty-Fifteen – The Sunflowers / Beside The Sea – The Kennedy Pill / Little Valley Town - Jane From Occupied Europe / Sunday Never Comes Around – Po! / Good Morning – Jane Pow / Learning To Keep My Mouth Shut - How Many Beans Make Five / Lovesville Usa - Montgomery Clifts / She Made Everything Groovy – The Ogdens / Out Of My Mind – Avo-8 / Darkest Blue – Gentle Despite / My Heart Is Where My Home Is - The Chrysalids / When I Find You – Little Red Schoolhouse / Nothing In Your Heart – Life With Patrick / What Is More Than Life – Horse Latitudes / I Really Do Love You Penelope – Hey Paulette / Missing You – The Ammonites / Cheat On Me – The Emotionals

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

The writer of classics “Since You’ve Been Gone”, “You Can Do Magic”, “New York Groove”, “So You Win Again”, “No More The Fool”, “Liar”, Russ Ballard releases his new album ‘It’s Good To Be Here’. Although this album was originally released in 2015 in very small quantities, Russ has re-worked the tracks for its proper release. His own first hit record was “God Gave Rock and Roll to You” (memorably turned into a global mega-hit by Kiss) with his band Argent in 1974, but his songs have been recorded by everyone from Rainbow to Hot Chocolate to America to Elkie Brooks to Three Dog Night and many, many more.

However, with this album, ‘It’s Good To Be Here’, Russ has saved some absolutely stunning material for himself – and also reworked those incredible era-defining classics “Since You’ve Been Gone”, “You Can Do Magic” and “New York Groove”. Packed with rockers and ballads alike, this album is blessed with the casually-worn but unerring musicality that underlines everything that this prolific songwriter does. This is the tenth Russ Ballard album and it showcases not only his uncanny way with melody and lyrics, but also his more thoughtful side. With this album he proves that the flame burns as brightly as ever; Russ Ballard may well say that ‘It’s Good To Be Here’, but a songwriter of such a calibre will never truly disappear, and his evergreen songs will play on forever.

Tracklisting: My Awakening / Time Machine / Kickin’ The Can / Annabel’s Place / Wasted (The Last Ride) / Colliding / Tidal Wave / The First Man That Ever Danced / The Misunderstood / Proud Man / New York Groove / Since You Been Gone / You Can Do Magic.

Label Review. 

2020 album

Our Overview. 

Julian Cope’s new album ‘Self Civil War’ heaves with unrest and the spirit of 2020. Pure Cope: compelling earworms of barbarian intelligence, crammed with songs that reach deep inside you, each possessed of its own micro-worldview, ‘Self Civil War’ showcases Cope’s songwriting at its most searching since ‘Jehovahkill’. Road-testing the zeitgeist with kitchen sink psycho-dramas like “A Dope on Drugs”, “Your Facebook, My Laptop” and “Billy”, ‘Self Civil War’ also showcases the insightful heroic ballads “Einstein”, “You Will Be Mist” and “The Great Raven”. In typical Cope style, the 13 songs of ‘Self Civil War’ brim with sound effects, enormous orchestral arrangements, timeless uprisings of Ur-folk and hefty near-Krautrock anthems.

It’s the first release in Cope’s ‘Our Troubled Times’ series, and he says it is “a fine temporary refuge from our daily bombardment by media luvvies and fuckhead world leaders who take us all for idiots.” Julian has now been carving his own unique brand of rock for 40 years now, starting with his band The Teardrop Explodes and further pop success on his own with the likes of “World Shut Your Mouth” and “Trampoline”. He quit major label acceptance in the 1990s and has since forged his own path with his label and website Head Heritage, releasing albums whenever he feels like it and pursuing his other passion as an antiquarian.

Tracklisting: That Ain’t No Way To Make A Million / A Cosmic Flash / You Will Be Mist / The Great Raven / Berlin Facelift / Immortal / Einstein / Billy / A Dope On Drugs / Your Facebook My Laptop / Requiemfor A Dead Horse / ‘Self Civil War’ / A Victory Dance

Label Review. 

1970 debut solo album remastered with his two solo singles for Reprise on CD for the first time: Heavy Heart, No Way Out, Beasts Of Burden, Uganda Woman. Esoteric.

Our Overview. 

Peter Green made his name in the original line-up of Fleetwood Mac and his acclaimed guitar playing and writing graced several albums and a succession of hit singles before he departed the group in 1970. He embarked on the recording of his first solo album only a month after leaving Fleetwood Mac, enlisting the assistance of Zoot Money (keyboards), Alex Dmochowski (bass), Nick Buck (organ) and Godfrey Maclean (percussion).

‘The End of the Game’ is an entirely instrumental affair, quite different in feel from Green’s work with Fleetwood Mac. Released to very little fanfare, unjustly so as it was an imaginative work with Green’s instantly recognisable guitar playing. Essentially the album was edited together from one lengthy studio jam The following year saw the release of a single “Heavy Heart” which received some airplay and saw Green perform the song on Top of the Pops. A collaboration with Nigel Watson followed early in 1972 for Green’s final single for Reprise Records, “Beasts of Burden”. He then promptly disappeared before his late 1970s comeback, acquiring mystique and legend along the way.

This new and expanded Esoteric Recordings edition has been newly remastered from the original Reprise master tapes, with the four single sides appearing on CD for the first time. It also features a booklet with new essay and an exclusive interview with Zoot Money on the making of the album.

Tracklisting: Bottoms Up / Timeless Time / Descending Scale / Burnt Foot / Hidden Depth / The End Of The Game / Heavy Heart* / No Way Out* / Beasts Of Burden* / Uganda Woman*

*Previously unreleased on CD.

Label Review. 

2020 album. Blues. Also available on standard CD and Black Vinyl.

Our Overview. 

“Sonny Landreth is probably the most underestimated musician on the planet, and also probably one of the most advanced.” Eric Clapton 

The Louisiana slide guitar icon Clyde Vernon “Sonny” Landreth will be releasing his new studio album, ‘Blacktop Run’ via Provogue/Mascot Label Group. ‘Blacktop Run’ follows his previous Grammy nominated album ‘Recorded Live In Lafayette’ (2017) and his back-to-back Blues Music Awards for Best Guitarist and Best Blues Album for ‘Bound by the Blues’ (2015).

His groundbreaking work has long mixed familiarity with experimentation, and his latest ten-song collection stretches from hard-edged electric instrumentals to wistful acoustic ballads. The project’s range is the fruit of a renewed collaboration. Producer RS Field– who helmed Landreth’s trio of breakout albums – joined the six-stringer and co-producer Tony Daigleto to finish the record.

 “His brilliance and creative energy recharged us,” Landreth said of reuniting with Field.Most of the tracks were recorded live at famed Dockside Studios on the Vermilion River south of Lafayette, LA. “We came up with new and better ideas, and that’s what you want,” he added. “It couldn’t have gone better.” 

After two Grammy nominations, multiple appearances at Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival and wide-ranging acclaim from fellow players and fans worldwide, Landreth is looking forward to playing the new material live. “It’s all about telling the story,” Landreth says, “and as long as I can find my way up that path, I’m all in.” As the songwriter’s narrator sings in the title number of Blacktop Run, “A new day is dawning and I have never felt so alive.”

Tracklisting: Blacktop Run / Lover Dance With Me / Mule / Groovy Goddess / Somebody Gotta Make A Move / Beyond Borders / Don’t Ask Me / The Wilds Of Wonder / Many Worlds / Something Grand

Label Review.

2002 album remastered. Two bonus discs with additional studio material and demos. DVD features Making of documentary. Plus 100 page book. Kscope.

Our Overview.

The much anticipated deluxe edition of the iconic album by the British legends of experimental rock Porcupine Tree. Featuring remastered stereo and 5.1 surround sound mixes, additional studio recordings, a disc of unreleased demos and a new feature length Lasse Hoile directed documentary on Blu-ray.

This new deluxe version of In Absentia provides an unrivalled insight into the context of the seminal album. The first CD features Steven Wilson’s 2017 remaster, which has considerably less compression and limiting for a more dynamic listening experience. The second CD includes all of the additional finished studio recordings the band made during the period. “Collapse (intro)”, “Drown With Me”, “Chloroform”, and “Meantime” were all recorded during the album sessions in New York, while “Futile” and “Orchidia” come from the post-album promo-only Futile EP. Radio edits of “Trains”, “Blackest Eyes” and “Strip the Soul” are also included. The third CD comprises over 70 minutes of demos recorded at Wilson’s home studio during the two years leading up to recording the album. Many of the selections differ from the final versions, with additional sections, alternate lyrics, and different arrangements. Also included are demos of three songs that were not subsequently recorded by the band, all released here for the first time: “Imogen Slaughter”, “Watching You Sleep”, and “Enough”. The Blu-ray features the new master of the original stereo mix, the 5.1 surround sound mix created in 2003 by legendary engineer Elliot Scheiner, plus the audio from the second CD, all in high resolution audio. It also boasts a new 109-minute feature length documentary film directed by Lasse Hoile, chronicling the making of the album with interviews and archive footage.

The 100-page deluxe hardback book is filled with exclusive content, including photography by Lasse Hoile, Carl Glover, Richard Barbieri and John Blackford from the recording sessions, subsequent tour and more, extensive biographical liner notes and track-bytrack commentary by Stephen Humphries, artwork drafts, and handwritten notes and lyrics. This deluxe reissue of Porcupine Tree’s best-loved album follows the release of Steven Wilson’s fifth solo album, To The Bone, which soared into the UK Album Charts at #3 and #2 in the German album charts and led to a sold-out tour including 3 shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Meanwhile Gavin Harrison is enjoying success touring the world with both King Crimson and The Pineapple Thief after performing on the latter’s latest album Dissolution, keyboardist Richard Barbieri recently released a box set collection of pieces Variants, and Colin Edwin issued the latest studio album with his band O.R.k., titled Ramagehead, featuring Serj Tankian of System of a Down.

Tracklisting:

CD 1: 2017 Remaster: Blackest Eyes / Trains / Lips Of Ashes / The Sound Of Muzak / Gravity Eyelids / Wedding Nails / Prodigal / .3 / The Creator Has A Mastertape / Heartattack In A Layby / Strip The Soul / Collapse The Light Into Earth

CD 2: Collapse Intro / Drown With Me / Orchidia / Chloroform / Futile / Meantime / Blackest Eyes (Radio Edit) / Trains (Radio Edit) / Strip The Soul (Video Edit)

CD 3: Demos: Drown With Me / Trains/ Imogen Slaughter/ Watching You Sleep/ The Creator Has A Mastertape/ Heartattack In A Layby/ Strip The Soul/ The Sound Of Muzak / Gravity Eyelids/ Enough / Wedding Nails / Blackest Eyes

CD 4: Documentary Film: The Making Of ‘In Absentia’ (109:45): 2017 Remaster 5.1 Mix: Blackest Eyes / Trains / Lips Of Ashes / The Sound Of Muzak / Gravity Eyelids / Wedding Nails / Prodigal / .3 / The Creator Has A Mastertape / Heartattack In A Layby / Strip The Soul / Collapse The Light Into Earth / Drown With Me / Choloform / Futile

Label Review. 

2020 album also availble on CD and Black Vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Sightless Pit may be a new name in heavy music but its members are some of the most groundbreaking artist of the genre. Lee Buford (The Body), Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota) and Dylan Walker (Full Of Hell) recorded their debut ‘Grave Of A Dog’ at Machines With Magnets with Seth Manchester (The Body, Lightning Bolt).

Fans will recognise immediately Buford’s singular percussion and production, Walker’s venomous howl and Hayter’s virtuosic voice. The three share a bleak vision ofexistence and a willingness to follow each other into the musical abyss.

Sightless Pit are a group of expansive ideas, extensive experience working together and shared vision. Over the course of the eight tracks the trio reflect the extremes and emotional weight of their world view through elegiac dirges, driving beats and explosive crescendos. Together, three strong voices unite to create a work of remarkable clarity of expression of enormous sorrow, futility and, most of all, beauty.

“Some of the most captivating heavy music around right now.” - Rolling Stone

“A wild experiment that somehow works” - Decibel Magazine

“Grindcore, hardcore, and death metal meet within their music to produce something feral and unknowable... There’s just something about them, a reason that they’ve been met with such accacclaim and fervent fandom.” - Pitchfork

Tracklisting: Kingscorpse / Immersion Dispersal / The Ocean of Mercy / Violent Rain / Drunk On Marrow / Miles Of Chain / Whom The Devil Long / Sought To Strangle / Love Is Dead, All Love Is

Label Review. 

2020 album. Former member of Silver Mt. Zion. Constellation. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Rebecca Foon, the composer and musician behind Saltland and Esmerine (and former longstanding member of Silver Mt. Zion) presents a new album entitled ‘Waxing Moon’. While best known as an incomparable cellist crafting textural soundscapes and instrumental chamber-rock in the aforementioned projects (and more recently recognized for her creative and organisational work as cofounder of Pathway To Paris), this new collection of songs finds Foon emphasizing piano and voice with striking intimacy and elegance, showcasing a captivating evolution in her always resplendent songwriting.

The climate crisis has profoundly framed Foon’s political and artistic life for many years now, and ‘Waxing Moon’ finds her writing and singing her most arrestingly direct yet poetic words, tapping universal and personal heartbreak in both despair and hope. With ‘Waxing Moon’, Rebecca sets side the Saltland moniker - her electronically-tinged string-centric project from the past five years - to release this more personal new work under her own name.

The album’s ten songs are predominantly minimal and delicate, immersive and hauntingly beautiful - with vocal-driven tracks booked-ended by piano-based instrumentals, along with one up-tempo guitar-driven number (“Wide Open Eyes”) that closes out Side One. While piano figures most prominently on the record, Foon continues to play cello on several tracks, complemented by gentle touches from a close coterie of musical guests including Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) and Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson) on acoustic and electric basses, Sophie Trudeau (Godspeed You Black Emperor) on violin, Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes) on electric guitar, and Patrick Watson as co-vocalist on the dreamlike “Vessels”. ‘Waxing Moon’ is Rebecca Foon’s first eponymous release: a sublimely stunning, bracingly intimate, glimmeringly full-hearted new chapter in her celebrated musical catalogue.

Tracklisting: New World / Pour / Another Realm / Ocean Song / Wide Open Eyes / Waxing Moon / Dreams To Be Born / Vessels / This Is Our Lives / New World Reprise

Label Review. 

2020 album. Acoustic covers. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

A very special album from the newly inaugurated Steve Harley Acoustic Band. ‘Uncovered’ includes interpretations of nine painstakingly chosen songs created in many instances by peers and contemporaries of Steve, those with shared histories and some that he admired from afar. These are songs with heft and honesty that have always connected and resonated within him; this is material that he’s always wanted to perform and may even wish he’d written!

This diverse collection of Harley’s interpretations is in some ways an almanac rather than just a set of great tracks: Steve’s links with some of the song-writers go back to the very start of their careers: Bowie in Beckenham; Dylan throughout his early teens; Cat Stevens/Yusuf and Paul McCartney, both massive early influences. Added into the mix are two songs from Steve’s own incredible catalogue, reworked from the originals: “Love, Compared With You” which now boasts a newly-composed third verse, plus “Only You”, played Live for several years, but recorded here for the first time.

The band that performs this collection features Barry Wickens on viola, violin and acoustic guitar, Oli Hayhurst on double bass, Tom Hooper on percussion and the Roots Music Legend, Martin Simpson, on guitar. Steve also sings a duet with the amazing Scottish singer, Eddi Reader. The recording sessions for ‘Uncovered’ were a joy; full of passion, virtuosity and grit. As Steve says, “I was roaring with stamina and passion when I went in to sing the final versions. Sang all 11 in one and a half days. The hunger and desire to perform was almost primitive. Matt Butler (engineer) has recorded my voice up-close and unaffected. I sing out - but seem mostly restrained.”

Tracklisting: Love Compared With You (Your Eyes Don’t Seem To Age) / Absolute Beginners / Ae Fond Kiss / Emma / How Can I Tell You? / I’ve Just Seen A Face / Out Of Time / Lost Myself / Only You / Star Of Belle Isle

Label Review.

2020 debut album. Iamthemorning. Kscope. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Following the success of four highly-praised albums with IAMTHEMORNING, the award winning Russian lyricist, singer and co-songwriter Marjana Semkina (also known as Mariana) releases her spellbinding debut solo album, ‘Sleepwalking’ - featuring Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater), Craig Blundell & Nick Beggs (Steven Wilson) and the St. Petersburg Orchestra “1703 - described by The Independent as “an adorable ethereal presence... Her vocals are beautiful too, haunting and ghostly”.

Characterised by her composed and unique voice, complex melodic lines and poetic lyrics with literary references, Semkina has often compared favourably with Kate Bush. The new material draws from the IAMTHEMORNING soundscape but exists fully in Marjana’s world; a compelling mixture of alternative folk, pop, drama, beauty and emotionally purging lyrics. A blend akin to the darker folk of Aldous Harding, Marissa Nadler, Sumie and Florist.

To aid the recording of Marjana’s vision for ‘Sleepwalking’, she invited renowned keyboardist, drummer and bassist Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater), Craig Blundell and Nick Beggs (Steven Wilson), as well as the St. Petersburg Orchestra “1703” and frequent collaborator Vlad Avy. The album artwork refers to Semkina’s love for classical art, unifying photography with the 17th-Century Vanitas movement; a genre of still-life painting that includes objects symbolic of death’s inevitability and the transience and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures, exhorting the viewer to consider mortality. The album’s music echoes the questions posed by the artwork, it is stripped down to raw emotion: no sugar-coating, no filters, just creative thought caught in the moment.

Marjana has performed with IAMTHEMORNING on two European tours in support of their acclaimed fourth studio album ‘The Bell’, first in support of Riverside in September and second of The Flower Kings in December 2019. She also performed a solo show earlier in the year with Anathema’s Vincent and Daniel Cavanagh & also with IAMTHEMORNING at London’s prestigious Bush Hall. Semkina has been cast in the limelight of modern alternative music, as IAMTHEMORNING won Album of the Year at the Progressive Music Awards with ‘Lighthouse’, and by winning both Woman of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year in the 2016 Prog Magazine readers’ poll.

Tracklisting: Dark Matter / Am I Sleeping Or Am I Dead ? / Turn Back Time / Invisible / How To Be Alone / Ars Longa Vita Brevis / Skin / Everything Burns / Lost At Sea / Mermaid Song / Still Life

Label Review.

1978 album. Nigerian Fuji. Soul Jazz Records.

Our Overview.

For those in tune with Fuji music in the 1980s, the names, Kollington Ayinla would be remembered as amongst the names that dominated the scene and this release is the first in Soul Jazz Records’ new series of vinyl-only Afro funk / Afro beat exact-replica, super rare albums that were previously only ever released in Nigeria.

The series starts with Kollington Ayinla’s celebrated 1978 album ‘Blessing’, a rare lost classic of Nigerian Fuji music, featuring Ayinla’s sharp political lyrics together with his new band Fuji ’78. ‘Blessing’ blends the heavily percussive style of Fuji music with a stunning array of modern instruments, including synthesizers, Bata drums and guitars, to create one of the most forward-thinking and heavily danceable sounds ever to come out of Nigeria - a highly successful mixture of profound Fuji rhythms and Fela Kuti-style Afrobeat.

Kollington Ayinla ranks alongside his friend and competitor Ayinde Barrister as the two most important artists to dominate Fuji music from its inception in the 1970s through to the 1990s by which time it had grown to become one of the most popular dance genres in Nigeria.

At the start of the 1980s Ayinla started his own record company, Kollington Records, to release his music and remains to this day an extremely prolific artist, having recorded over 50 albums, most of which have never been released outside of Nigeria.

Tracklisting: E Ye Ika Se / Oromo Adie Fo / Ko S’Ohun Tan O Le Fi / Gberaga / Adio Shile / Won Ti Gbe Oye Fun Mi / Pataki L’Omo / To Ba Jisoro Mi / Engineer Olatunji / Iya Suna / Odun Titun De / Ao Toro Emi Gesa Fun Enia / Ki Aiye Ma Gbagbe Mi

Label Review.

Career Spanning Best Of. Includes brand new track Darkest Hour Of The Night. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Teenage Wildlife’ is a career spanning release from Northern Ireland alternative rock band Ash who formed in in Downpatrick, County Down in 1989 by vocalist and guitarist Tim Wheeler, bassist Mark Hamilton and drummer Rick McMurray.. The album shares its title with the documentary which depicted ASH’s rise from local school heroes to all-conquering band that topped the charts with their debut album 1977, ‘Teenage Wildlife’ traces the band’s recording career from exuberant debut Jack Names The Planets through to Buzzkill and Annabel from 2018’s top twenty album Islands. 

 ‘Teenage Wildlife’ also includes a brand new song “Darkest Hour Of The Night” alongside thirteen Top 40 singles amid an array of the band’s recorded history; breakthrough single “Girl From Mars”, Top 5 smash “Goldfinger”, the breathtaking “A Life Less Ordinary”, Ivor Novello-winning “Shining Light”, and live anthems “Burn Baby Burn” and “Orpheus”. 

The 19 track collection of rarities includes a version of The Buzzcocks’ classic “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” (featuring Coldplay’s Chris Martin), the eternal “Teenage Kicks” and the collections infamous title track.

Perfectly encapsulating the highs, lows and debauchery of the band’s initial breakthrough, the ‘Teenage Wildlife’ inner sleeve features the brilliant acerbic tor documentary script by the late Steven Wells.

Tracklisting:

Double CD: A Life Less Ordinary (#10 UK Charts) / Arcadia / Kung Fu / Cocoon / You Can’t Have It All / Girl from Mars (#11 UK Charts) / All That I Have Left / Wildsurf / Binary / Uncle Pat / Shining Light (#8 UK Charts) / Starcrossed / Buzzkill / Return of White Rabbit / Goldfinger (#5 UK Charts) / Envy / Sometimes / Coming Around Again / Darkest Hour of the Night (new single) / Burn Baby Burn / Dare to Dream / Annabel / Clones / Machinery / Oh Yeah (#6 UK Charts) / Projects / Confessions in the Pool / True Love 1980 / Angel Interceptor / Jesus Says / Petrol / End of the World (Radio Edit / Orpheus / Walking Barefoot / Jack Names the Planets / Twilight of the Innocents

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on CD, Black vinyl, Clear vinyl, and Gold vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Metal legends Anvil spit out their 18th studio album ‘Legal At Last’ in 2020. When it comes to virtues such as endurance, unconditional commitment and a thoroughly down-to-earth attitude, Anvil are the measure of all things. Like few other metal acts, the band have earned their laurels of blood, sweat and tears. Since their 2009 documentary film ‘The Story Of Anvil‘, which revealed the unvarnished truth about the music industry, the world has been aware that the day-to-day life of most musicians doesn’t consist of MTV Awards, Grammy ceremonies, red carpets, champagne and caviar but mainly of energy-sapping tours de force with little sleep, junk food and meagre earnings. Yet these difficult conditions have made Anvil what they are today: a band that stands solid as a rock in the turbulent waters of a musical genre that produces like no other music by fans for fans. So drummer Robb Reiner refers with a sense of justified pride to Anvil’s latest release ‘Legal At Last’ simply as “one more Anvil album”.

Yet their new album is very special to Anvil: “Legal At Last is mainly about two things,” Reiner explains. “We celebrate the legalisation of the Anvil bong because Canada changed its marijuana laws last year, which means we no longer sail close to the wind all the time. That’s why the album title announces that Anvil are legal at last. Our fans have always known that, but the public at large treated us like criminals for a long time.” Guitarist and lead singer Steve “Lips” Kudlow adds: “Legal At Last is our way of telling the public: ‘It’s okay, Anvil are okay, you’re allowed to like us at last!’”

Tracklisting: Legal At Last / Nabbed In Nebraska / Chemtrails / Gasoline / I’m Alive / Talking To The Wall / Glass House / Plastic In Paradise / Bottom Line / Food For The Vulture / Said And Done / No Time

Label Review. 

2020 album. Roots rock. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

No one forgets the first time they saw Tami Neilson - the Canadian born, New Zealand based country & soul, award winning singer songwriter. She can hush a room with an original song that channels the hurting spirit of Patsy Cline or the sensuality of Peggy Lee, or bring the audience to its feet on a rockabilly raver.

She’s an artist with real range, whose powerful voice can take on big ballads, golden-age country, heartfelt Gospel, soul-infused R&B, Western swing, even old-style rock ‘n’ roll. Tami encompasses them all and is a personality-powered cyclonic force of nature in stylishly retro attire, long lashes and a stacked-high beehive. Of her new album’s title, ‘CHICKABOOM!’, Tami explains, ‘I wanted to write an album of punchy little songs, popping firecrackers that, when stripped back to nothing but a guitar, percussion and two voices, would still go boom!’

The new collection brings much personal and family history to the table. Tami grew up performing across North America with the Neilson Family Band, working alongside greats such as Johnny Cash, Tanya Tucker, and Kitty Wells. Subsequently, Tami fell in love with a New Zealander, moved to the bottom of the world and began her solo career without the support of the family.

Her early records saw her in a self-created territory between mainstream country and alternative country, with awards in New Zealand for albums that added breadth to her ‘country singer’ label: Best Female Artist, Best Country Album, Best Country Song, an APRA Silver Scroll (songwriting) award and Album of the Year nominations. Her ‘Dynamite!’ album of 2014 received rave reviews in Britain’s MOJO and the Guardian named it a Top 10 Best Country Music Album. Tami’s songs appeared on the Netflix series Wanted and the terrestrial TV series Nashville. Tami Neilson’s singing and writing is too big to contain, as HMV Canada noted: ‘There are singers and then there is Tami Neilson, for whom the word singer just isn’t big enough.’

Tracklisting: Call Your Mama / Hey, Bus Driver! / Ten Tonne Truck / Queenie, Queenie / You Were Mine / 16 Miles of Chain / Tell Me That You Love Me / Any Fool With A Heart / Sister Mavis / Sleep

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Brooklyn, New York based post-punk band Bambara - twin brothers Reid and Blaze Bateh, singer/guitarist and drummer respectively and bassist William Brookshire - have been evolving their midnight-black noise into something more subtle and expansive ever since the release of their 2013 debut ‘Dreamviolence’. That process greatly accelerated on 2018’s ‘Shadow On Everything’, their first for New York’s Wharf Cat Records and a huge stride forward for the band both lyrically and sonically.

The first thing that strikes you about ‘Stray’, Bambara’s fourth - and greatest - album to date, will be its pulverizing soundscape. By turns, vast, atmospheric, cool, broiling and, at times - on stand out tracks like ‘Sing Me To The Street’ and ‘Serafina’ - simply overwhelming.

However, ‘Stray’ is not merely another, better entry in a catalogue full of darkly thrilling, blistering experimental rock-via-punk. Rather, early on in its conception the band made the decision to experiment with new compositions and song structures. The resulting addition of backing vocals from Drew Citron (Public Practice) and Anina Ivory- Block (Palberta) create a hauntingly beautiful contrast to Bateh’s drunken baritone on tracks like ‘Sing Me To The Street’, ‘Death Croons’ and ‘Stay Cruel’, while the Dick Dale-inspired guitar riffs on ‘Serafina’ and ‘Heat Lightning’ and the call-and-response choruses throughout the album showcase Bambara’s ability to write songs thatimmediately demand repeat listens.

These are just a few of the changes that reveal this album to be the monumental step forward that it is. Here Bambara finally sound like they’ve locked into what they were always destined to achieve, and the effect is nothing short of electrifying.

“Beautifully dynamic nightmare” - NPR

“One of my favourite things I finally saw for the first time at South By this year” - Steve Lamacq

“Very few artists these days make rock and roll as threatening as Bambara” - Loud And Quiet

“An abrasive, awesome ripper” - Treble

Tracklisting: Miracle / Heat Lightning / Sing Me to the Street / Serafina / Death Croons / Stay Cruel / Ben & Lily / Made for Me / Sweat / Machete

Label Review.

2020. Pop punk.

Our Overview.

If there’s one thing for certain, it’s that the Philly-based pop-punk outfit, The Wonder Years put their entire souls into each body of work they release. So if you can’t get enough of The Wonder Years then this should be right up your alley! The guys have announced their new acoustic album ‘Burst & Decay (Volume II)’ will be released on February 14, 2020 and will feature, yep you guessed it, acoustic re-worked tracks from their back catalogue.

Nearly three years ago, some of their most popular songs like ‘There, There’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Cave In’ were taken to crushing new heights on the first edition of the groundbreaking Philly band’s first acoustic EP, ‘Burst & Decay’. They were only just getting started.

Produced and engineered by Ace Enders (The Early November), ‘Burst & Decay (Volume II)’ truly takes this stripped-back The Wonder Years experience to an entirely new level. The new release features stunning string arrangements from Little Kruta String Quartet and guest vocals on ‘We Look Like Lightning’ from Alex Maniak of the band Shortly.

LP pressed on white vinyl.

Tracklisting: Washington Square Park / We Look Like Lightning / I Wanted So Badly to be Brave / Passing Through a Screen Door / It Must Get Lonely / Cul-de-sac / Hoodie Weather

Label Review.

1989 album. Contains a green vinyl LP, digipak CD, three 7 inch picture discs, a coke bottle, deck of cards, prescription notepad, drumstick pens, pins, guitar picks and band aids, all housed inside a leatherette satchel. Also available on CD and Vinyl.

Our Overview.

The biggest commercial success of the most notorious rock band of all time is being released in a 30th Anniversary Edition: Motley Crue’s 1989 album “Dr. Feelgood’ featuring demos, picture discs, pens, badges and more. 2019 has seen not only the release of Motley Crue’s critically acclaimed biopic ‘The Dirt’ - the film sparked a renewed interest in the band, with sales, streams and downloads of their back catalogue soaring as a result - but also marks the 30th anniversary of the album ‘Dr. Feelgood’, their biggest commercial success, the band’s fifth studio album was originally released on September 1, 1989, and featured Crue classics including which contains band classics such as ‘Kickstart My Heart’, ‘Without You’, ‘Same Ol’ Situation’ and the title track.

Bassist Nikki Sixx says: “After feeling robbed of a number one album with ‘Girls Girls Girls’, the band was hell-bent on topping ourselves on every level. 

“Bringing in Bob Rock to produce and push us musically and lyrically was just what the doctor ordered. The band was clean, lean and sober and this album has some of our proudest work.”

The anniversary edition will feature the full album along with studio demos, with the deluxe edition containing the album on ‘coke bottle green’ vinyl, CD, three 7-inch picture discs, a doctor’s bag, a prescription notepad, a deck of playing cards, a pair of drumstick pens, pin badges and guitar picks.

Tracklisting:


T.n.T. (Terror ‘n Tinseltown) / Dr. Feelgood / Slice of Your Pie / Rattlesnake Shake / Kickstart My Heart / Without You / Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S.) / Sticky Sweet / She Goes Down / Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away) / Time for Change / Dr. Feelgood (Demo) / Kickstart My Heart (Demo) / Without You (Demo)

Picture discs Tracks:

“Dr. Feelgood” Side A: Dr. Feelgood (Demo) Side B: Dr. Feelgood

“Kickstart My Heart” Side A: Kickstart My Heart (Demo) Side B: Kickstart My Heart

“Without You” Side A: Without You (Demo) Side B: Without You

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Back with his third album ‘In This Town You’re Owned’ is British, Americana award winning artist Robert Vincent. “People say you should just stick to music and keep your opinions to yourself” says Robert, “but I find that entirely the opposite of what songwriting should be, but we should be the ones that are bothered by what goes on in society.” The album was produced by Brit Award winning Ethan Johns – who has won acclaim for his production work with, amongst others, Paul McCartney, Ray LaMontagne and Laura Marling.

Robert Vincent deals in hard truths and easy melodies, furthering the tradition of classically crafted songwriting asking the difficult questions about everyday emotions. “I’m just really interested in the human condition and how people react to things.” ‘In This Town You’re Owned’ is Vincent at his most contemporary, and with a bigger scope of vision than ever before. The new record is his most ambitious work to date, the 9-minute-long “The End Of The War”, with not a second wasted. “There’s a life” Vincent sings, “at the end of the war”, suggesting a light at the end of the tunnel of our present moment.

Faith, and lack of faith, is one of the central themes of the record. “ “Kids Don’t Dig God Anymore” ... wasn’t necessarily about God” Robert explains, “but in the old days people grew up with faith – now it doesn’t seem to be there anymore, so I start to wonder what there is now. I’m not particularly religious, but what’s gone out the window is people being less spiritual.” Elsewhere, in the strident, unexpectedly soulful ‘The Ending’, he declares “Love has a way of mending, nobody knows the ending”.

Though Vincent’s tastes are eclectic and his influences many, the Americana circuit continues to provide support and inspiration for him as an artist - “it’s nice to have a family and have a home, in itself it’s priceless – it can be quite lonely being a musician.” And crucially, Robert Vincent continues to knuckle down and hunker away at his craft - “I feel like I’m missing a trick if I don’t write every day because every day you’re different. Constant movement, constantly writing as much as you can so you’re capturing different light and shade.”

Tracklisting: This Town / My Neighbour’s Ghost / The Kids Don’t Dig God Anymore / The Ending / Conundrum / Husk of a Soul / I Was Hurt Today but I’m Alright Now / The End of the War / If You Were You / Cuckoo

Book Review.

Included in this issue: Mandolin Orange, Rhett Miller (Old 97s), Aaron West and The Roaring Twenties, Chris Shiflett, Wilco, Shovels & Rope, Frightened Rabbit, Laura Stevenson, Chadwick Stokes (Dispatch), Grand Ol' Opry, High Fidelity, The best record stores in America, and much more!

Our Overview.

No Depression started its life as a quarterly print magazine in 1995, fueled by its founding editors’ passion for alt-country music and long-formjournalism. Over the course of its first print run, it helped solidify the importance of Americana and roots music on the national stage. In the years since, No Depression has developed a robust web publication, publishing long features, honest criticism, and weekly columns in addition to its wealth of community-driven content. In 2015, to celebrate the publication’s 20th anniversary, the FreshGrass Foundation brought it back to print as a high-end, ad-free, quarterly journal focused once again on longform music journalism.

Festival season starts in earnest in the spring, but of course live music happens all year round. This issue of No Depression will explore all facets of the live music experience. We’ll compile the most important roots music festivals and go behind the scenes at some legendary venues. Additionally, stories will look at the challenges that live music curators and attendees face and dig into how roots musicians transform their recorded music into live presentations. Included in this issue:  Mandolin Orange, Rhett Miller (Old 97s), Aaron West and The Roaring Twenties, Chris Shiflett, Wilco, Shovels & Rope, Frightened Rabbit, Laura Stevenson, Chadwick Stokes (Dispatch), Grand Ol' Opry, High Fidelity, The best record stores in America ... And so much more!

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on Vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

‘Mercy’ by New York band The Men is their eighth album and while they have always been genre-morphic and unpredictable, here they have truly done something new as a band. For the first time since forming, they have now created three straight records with the same lineup, and the result is a sound that feels developed and continuous despite running the gamut of mood, in true Men fashion. Having this lineup stability has allowed the band to deepen and finesse the sounds they were exploring on 2017’s ‘Drift’ and produce tracks that have a unique and distinct voice.

‘Mercy’ takes the listener on a cinematic journey throughout its seven tracks, beginning with the soothing but lonesome country rock opener “Cool Water.” This track, like many on the record, feels timeless, illustrating the band’s ability to write songs you are convinced you’ve heard before on the B-side of your favourite record from the ’70s. You are then pulled into its longest song, the 10-and-a-half minute psychedelic blues rock opus of “Wading in Dirty Water.” The band explore some new territory on ‘Mercy’, and they also revisit the Suicide-style sound they have been working on for a while through ‘Drift’ and also with one of their side projects Dream Police, resulting in the highlight “Children All Over the World,” a song that could stand next to any classic rock hit but with The Men’s unique artistic savvy. It wouldn’t be a contemporary Men record without a total fuzzed-out stomper a la their Open Your Heart-era sound, and this record’s offering, “Breeze,” shows the band’s complete command of this urgent and pulverizing style.

Tracklisting: Cool Water / Wading in Dirty Water / Fallin’ Thru’ / Children All Over the World / Call the Dr. / Breeze / Mercy

Label Review. 

2020 album. Psych pop. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Montreal psych-pop group Elephant Stone will release their sixth full-length, ‘Hollow’, on Fuzz Club Records. It arrives following their 2016 LP, ‘Ship Of Fools’, and a number of recent side-projects and collaborations, such as the Acid House Ragas project and new band Mien with members of The Horrors and The Black Angels.

The first Elephant Stone record made in frontman and sitarist Rishi Dhir’s own Sacred Sounds studio, ‘Hollow’ is an ambitious, dystopian sci-fi concept album which he says is inspired by The Who’s ‘Tommy’, and the Pretty Things’ ‘S.F, Sorrow’. Rishi says: “There are a lot of unhappy people out there who are trying to find a way out. They are looking for meaning and something to believe in… or nothing to believe in. We all want the same thing but are trying to achieve it in different ways. With this in mind, I set forth writing a song-suite telling of a world of unhappy souls who have lost connection with each other.”

From Side A (‘The Beginning) though to Side B (‘The Ending’), the story told through Elephant Stone’s renowned garage-psych alchemy takes place immediately after mankind’s catastrophic destruction of the Earth and what happens when the same elite responsible for the first world-destroying climate disaster touch down on New Earth, a recently-discover planet sold with the same life of prosperity as the one they’d just destroyed. As soon as the chosen few step off the Harmonia ship built for the journey, it’s clear that all is not what it seems and humanity appears destined to make the same mistakes: “The storyline touches upon the plundering/poisoning of their home, the elite, demagogues, false idols, the truth as seen by children, and, ultimately, the fight for the survival of their species.”

Tracklisting: Hollow World / Darker Time, Darker Space / The Court And Jury / Land Of Dead / Keep The Light Alive / We Cry For Harmonia / Harmonia / I See You / The Clampdown / Fox On The Run / House On Fire / A Way Home

Label Review.

2010 album with 10 bonus tracks. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

In February 2010 the late, legendary musician, poet and author Gil Scott-Heron released his thirteenth - and last - studio album. First conceptualised in 2005 and ultimately produced by XL Recordings head Richard Russell during New York recording sessions that commenced in January 2008, ‘I’m New Here’ was Scott-Heron’s first album in thirteen years and found him sounding as vital, boundary-pushing and insightful as ever before.

On the tenth anniversary of ‘I’m New Here’s release XL Recordings release an expanded version of the album. In addition to the original album, the ‘I’m New Here’ 10th Anniversary Edition features twounreleased tracks - a cover of Richie Havens’ ‘Handsome Johnny’ and a previously unheard Scott-Heron song ‘King Henry IV’ - as well as a selection of other recordings from the original ‘I’m New Here’ sessions that were only previously available on a rare, vinyl only deluxe version of the album.

A note on the recordings from album producer Richard Russell: “Ten years ago I was in the midst of recording ‘I’m New Here’ with Gil. There was a lot more to the experience than it was possible to process at the time, and there was some great material that never made it onto the album.

“Our cover of ‘Handsome Jonny’ was the last recording Gil and I made on the last day of the last session for ‘I’m New Here’, at Clinton Studio in Hell’s Kitchen, NY, on September 19, 2009.

“Gil had introduced me to the original version of the song, explaining how Richie Havens had performed it in his opening set at Woodstock some forty years earlier, and we added it to a list of material we were considering for the album.

“In the end we recorded some of these songs, like Bobby Blue Bland’s ‘I’ll Take Care Of You’, Bill Callahan’s ‘I’m New Here’ and Robert Johnson’s ‘Me and the Devil’, and didn’t get round to someothers, including Joy Division’s ‘Disorder’.”

Tracklisting: On Coming from a Broken Home (Pt. 1) / Me and the Devil / I’m New Here / Your Soul and Mine / Parents (Interlude) / I'll Take Care of You / Being Blessed (Interlude) / Where Did the Night Go / I Was Guided (Interlude) / New York Is Killing Me / Certain Things (Interlude) / Running / The Crutch / I've Been Me (Interlude) / On Coming from a Broken Home (Pt. 2) / Handsome Johnny / King Henry IV / Piano Player (Intro) / Home Is Where The Hatred Is / Winter In America / Winter In America Jazz (Interlude) / Is That Jazz / A Place To Go (Interlude) / My Cloud

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

The former member of Tangerine Dream (1985-1990) Paul Haslinger, has dropped ‘Exit Ghost’, an immersive and adventurous travelogue. Paul is a man who knows how to build tension, hold moods, illustrate contempt, lies, passion and pleasure; He can create fear, loathing and love - he’s been unlocking the nuances of such emotions in a hugely successful career as a TV and film soundtrack composer (‘Halt And Catch Fire’, ‘Underworld’ and the Golden Globe-nominated ‘Sleeper Cell’).

‘Exit Ghost’ is his long thought out opus, a moment caught in time, flicking through reference points, taking an ethereal excursion that permeates musical genres as it becomes awash with intricate sounds and cross-pollinating rhythms. Built originally from the warmth of his grand piano ‘Exit Ghost’ resonates with purity and power, from an eerie and evocative between world, that’s at once expansive and rolling, then intoxicating and suffocating in equal measures; modern composition at its most uplifting; cerebral, celebratory, intense and beautiful. “The soul searching in connection with this record was extensive. Finding places of resonance, giving a colour to your memories. It was more challenging because it’s not somebody else’s narrative. Finding the core of your own story can be the most difficult task of all.”

Created over the span of eight years and filled with literal and personal references, the album itself is a testament to the search - a quest filled with hints, particles and suggestions. Paul says: “I’ve never been happy staying in one particular school of musical thought. The fun has been turning things on their heads, to try something you were not supposed to do.”

Tracklisting: The Faltering Sky / Intrinsic / Room 3 / Exit Ghost / Valse I / August 2-22 / Berlin 86-11 / White Sun / Mayerling / FernDell

Label Review.

2020 album. Post punk. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Dutch band The Homesick have made a record impregnated with impressions that still fit neatly under the pop umbrella. The album title’s nod to Scott Walker - “the big exercise” is a phrase pulled from a passage in Walker’s biography ‘Deep Shade of Blue’ - isn’t an aberration either: straddling pop sonority and the cacophonous fringes is something well worth aspiring. ‘The Big Exercise’ and the bands first for Sub Pop - finds the group keenly second-guessing their core chemistry as a live unit, imbuing their angular post-punk workouts with baroque elements such as piano, acoustic guitar, percussion and even clarinet.

“It’s the opposite of trying to translate recorded music to the stage,” guitarist Elias Elgersma comments. “We were already playing these songs live for quite some time, so for this album, we wanted to unlock the potential of these songs further in the studio.”

Opening track ‘What’s In Store’ was in part inspired by bassist Jaap Van der Velde’s unprompted deep dive into the world of national anthems, making his own attempt to conjure a similarly timeless melody. The song seamlessly bleeds into the chivalrous prance of ‘Children’s Day’ and the fragmented ‘Pawing’, righteously encouraging Erik Woudwijk’s nimble, cerebral drumming to become the band’s driving force. The headstrong wanderlust of ‘The Big Exercise’ is fitting, given The Homesick’s exodus as a small-town Dutch band ready to trot the world.

Contrary to the quest for belonging, roots and provenance found on their debut album ‘Youth Hunt’, the band’s creative trajectory is now dictated by a sense of otherness and imagination. The sharp contrasts are ever-present; the music’s new sonorous depth is underpinned by wry meditations on family ties, alternate realities and commonplace encounters.

As the band’s chief lyricists, Elgersma and Van der Velde deliberately keep each other in the dark, allowing the syntax of words and music to entangle in surprising - sometimes delightfully absurd - ways. ‘I Celebrate My Fantasy’, for example, summons a mirage of creeping pianos, sylvan clarinet flourishes and cartoonish sprawls with mock-paranoia, as Elgersma documents a macabre vision he had duringa mild case of sleep paralysis.

True to the band’s method of holding the more mundane, fleeting moments under a magnifying glass, closing track ‘Male Bonding’ pulls a wide range of movements out of the top hat: the album’s rare heavy burst is promptly mediated by almost medieval-sounding prog rock-flirtations.

Tracklisting: What’s In Store / Children's Day / Pawing / I Celebrate My Fantasy / Leap Year / The Small Exercise / The Big Exercise / Focus On The Beach / Kaïn / Male Bonding

Label Review. 

2020 album. Singer songwriter. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Christopher Paul Stelling is a guitar virtuoso, a NYC based folk singer- songwriter and a touring troubadour. Simply put, Christopher Paul Stelling is a one-man powerhouse of roots music. His new album ‘Best of Luck’ was produced by Grammy award winning musician-producer, Ben Harper who comments “It’s not Americana or alt anything, it’s really just soulful folk music”. 

The album’s title, ‘Best Of Luck’, mirrored perfectly the emotional landscape in which it was created. “Depending on how you say it, it can either be a blessing or a dismissal,” Stelling says. “And that was exactly the point I was coming to with myself, my career as an artist, as a friend and as a person.”Harper and Stelling met a few years back when Harper invited Stelling to open a series of shows. “Ben gave me a true gift back then,” Stelling says. “I’d been on the road for a long time and he put me onstage in front of his fans. He took me to the Beacon, The Ryman, Massey Hall, all these legendary rooms. Just to see that what I could do would even translate in spaces like that was revelatory.” 

When Harper talks about his admiration for Stelling, “A guy that can play any instrument from any country and play it with real feeling. He crosses genres but manages to respect them; he is a folk singer with an unusual soulfulness. He understands where this music comes from and why it’s remains so essential. Of all the record’s I have produced, this is one I’m most proud of”. 

Tracklisting: Have To Do For Now / Lucky Stars / Trouble Don’t Follow Me / Until I Die / Made Up Your Mind / Blue Bed / Something In Return / Hear Me Calling / Waiting Game / Goodnight Sweet Dreams

Label Review. 

2020 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

After a hiatus of 6 years, Grammy-winning and BRIT and Mercury-Prize-nominated artist La Roux aka.Elly Jackson returns with her first new album since 2014’s ‘Trouble In Paradise’ is released on her own label Supercolour Records, entitled ’Supervision’ and is her third studio album . 

From the cover to the contents, this is unequivocally the album Elly Jackson always wanted to make a claim that with some artists might ring alarm bells, but in this instance simply means that ‘Supervision’ sounds precisely, unmistakably, gloriously like La Roux. 

Debut self-titled album (2009) sold over 6 million singles worldwide. Chart: UK #2 (Platinum) / US #70 / Top 40 in Australia (Gold), Austria, Belgium, Canada, Ireland (Platinum), Norway, New Zealand Second album, ‘Trouble In Paradise’ (2014) landed La Roux her second top 10 record in the UK. Chart: UK #6 / US #20 / Top 40 in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Norway, New Zealand Has collaborated with the likes of Tyler The Creator, Skream, Kanye West, and Major Lazer 

Tracklisting: 21st Century / Do You Feel / Automatic Driver / International Woman Of Leisure / Everything I Live For / Otherside / He Rides / Gullible Fool

Label Review.

2020 album. Kscope. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Godsticks open 2020 with their new and most accomplished studio album, ‘Inescapable’. Their mix of heavy rock, progressive and alternative metal with a dynamic range of angular riffs and emotional depth will leave listeners reeling. The band’s sound has refined over their releases on Kscope, beginning with the technically astounding metal on ‘Emergence’ to the more industrial and progressive-influenced ‘Faced With Rage’. Now, with ‘Inescapable’, the band have channelled their energy and technical ability into the melody, phrasing and vocal performance, allowing emotion to take centre stage.

It is perhaps Charles’ vocals that have undergone the biggest change on Inescapable, largely as result of working closely with Kscope. Charles sings with more emotion and realises his ability to sing in higher registers, producing his best vocal performance to date. The band also invited the gifted TesseracT vocalist Daniel Tompkins to record vocal harmonies for lead track “Denigrate”, adding an extra layer of aggression and energy to one of the more powerful songs on the record.

This edition of ‘Inescapable’ is presented as a digipack CD complete with a 12-page booklet featuring lyrics and additional photography. Godsticks are supporting the new material beginning in April with a UK tour followed by summer festival bookings.

‘Inescapable’ was produced by James Loughrey (Skindred) and recorded at the famed heritage Monnow Valley studio. The striking new artwork incorporates the album’s exploration of self-worth and insecurities.

“The new studio album from the progressive purveyors of heavy rock and alternative metal Godsticks have such a strong identity and so many ingenious riffs” Metal Hammer

Tracklisting: Denigrate / Victim / Relief / Surrender / Numb / Change / Breathe / Time / Resist

Label Review. 

2006 live album from Chris Robinson and Rich Robinson (Black Crowes) also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

After a long hiatus that lasted for much of the first half of the 2000s, Chris and Rich Robinson started to reunite the Black Crowes in 2005, but before the full-fledged reunion really took flight, the siblings took off on a 2006 tour billed as Brothers of a Feather and releasing an album of the same name. 

Compiled of highlights from their three-night stint at the Roxy in Los Angeles, Brothers of a Feather does distinguish itself from the growing list of official live Black Crowes-related projects just by its intimate nature: hearing the brothers Robinson alone (it’s not quite acoustic, since Rich often plays an otherwise unadorned electric) is unique and surprisingly revelatory, illustrating that both Chris and Rich can be sensitive interpreters when stripped down to the bone. But even if there are many soft, almost folky moments -- including a good cover of John Martyn’s “Over the Hill,” Rich’s solo spotlight “Forgiven Song,” and a winding version of “Driving Wheel” -- there’s plenty of grit and good vibes here, best heard on the roaring opener, “Hosehead,” and a down-n-dirty “Darling of the Underground Press.” 

Most of Brothers of a Feather works a middle ground between the ruminative and the rowdy, whether it’s on a beautiful reading of Lowell George’s “Roll Um Easy” or an epic take on their own “Thorn in My Pride,” which proves that they can find a new spin on their old warhorses. And that sentiment applies to Brothers of a Feather as a whole: it’s familiar in its sound yet fresh in its approach and certainly worth a listen for Black Crowes fans, no matter if they’re hardened hardcore fans or fans who are a bit less dedicated yet no less enamored of the Robinsons’ old-time rock & roll. Never before available on vinyl. 

Tracklisting: Horsehead / Cursed Diamond / Over The Hill / Magic Rooster Blues / My Heart’s Been Killing Me / Forgiven Song / Someday Past The Sunset / Roll Um Easy / Cold Boy Smile / Driving Wheel / Leave It Alone / Polly / Darling Of The Underground Press / Thorn In My Pride

Label Review.

2020 EP also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Critically acclaimed artists Khruangbin and Leon Bridges are releasing their collaborative EP ‘Texas Sun’. Driving anywhere in Texas can cost you half a day, easy. For example, it’ll take you over four hours just to get from R&B singer Leon Bridges’ hometown of Fort Worth down to Houston, where the psychedelic wanderers in Khruangbin hail from. The state is vast, crisscrossed with rugged expanses of road flanked by limestone cliffs and granite mountains, forests of pine and mesquite, miles of desert or acres of sprawling grassland, all depending on what part you’re in. And it’s all baking under the Texas Sun that lends its name to Bridges and Khruangbin’s new collaborative release.

“Big sky country, that’s what they call Texas,” Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee says. “The horizon line goes all the way from one side to another without interruption. There’s something really comforting about that.

”On ‘Texas Sun’, these two members of the state’s musical vanguard meet up somewhere in the middle of that scene, in the mythical nexus of Texas’ past, present, and future - a dreamy badlands where genres blur as seamlessly as the terrain. It calls equally to the cowboys boot scooting at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, the chopped-and screwed hip hop fans rattling slabs on the southside of Houston, the art-school kids dropping acid in Austin, the cross-cultural progeny who grew up on listening to both mariachi and post-hardcore out on the Mexican borders of El Paso. All of these things, overlapping in a multi-coloured melange, purple hues as vivid and unpredictable as one of the state’s rightfully celebrated sunsets.

A journey through homesick reminiscences, backseat romances and late night contemplations, the kind of record made for listening with the windows down and the road humming softly beneath you. Like the highways that inspired it, ‘Texas Sun’ is guaranteed to get you where you’re going - especially if you’re in no particular hurry to get there.

Khruangbin and Leon Bridges are critically acclaimed artists with extensive coverage in print and online, including the New York Times, NPR, FADER, four Grammy nominations (Leon Bridges), The New Yorker, Washington Post and Pitchfork, among many others.

Tracklisting: Texas Sun / Midnight / C-Side / Conversion

Label Review.

2012 live album and concert film.

Our Overview.

Prolific collaborator and solo artist Steven Wilson, a four-time Grammy nominee, multi-instrumentalist, producer and founder member of Porcupine Tree, released ‘Get All You Deserve’ in 2012. Directed by long-time visual collaborator Lasse Hoile, the concert film was shot in Mexico City during the ‘Grace For Drowning’ Tour. This 3-disc release captures the spectacular live experience that Wilson and Hoile created for the tour, with the original concert film in high-definition on Blu-Ray, and the concert audio on two CD’s. Released just one month after his highly successful fifth solo album ‘To the Bone’.

‘Grace For Drowning’ - Wilson’s second solo album, following 2009’s exceptionally well-received ‘Insurgentes’ - saw tremendous support from the press, who have remained loyal to him ever since. The album tour was his first ever solo tour, and for it he assembled a virtuoso band featuring Marco Minnemann (drums), Nick Beggs (bass), Theo Travis (flute and sax), Adam Holzman (keys) and Niko Tsonev (guitars) to accompany him. The shows immersed fans in a rich sensory experience: rear speakers provide surround-sound effects, giant screens to show off Lasse’s films made specifically to accompany these songs, and cutting-edge lighting designs giving texture to each song. ‘Get All You Deserve’ captures one of the highlight shows from the tour, recorded at a sold-out Teatro Metrop litan in Mexico City and features songs from Wilson’s first two solo albums.

This 3-disc version of ‘Get All You Deserve’ is presented in an 8-panel digipack packaging complete with an 8-page booklet featuring extra photography.

“an immersive, ambitious project that demands repeated spins” MOJO

“Prog rock wrung dry of nostalgia, perfect not for drowning but immersion” ROLLING STONE

Tracklisting: No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun / Index / Deform To Form A Star / Sectarian / Postcard / Remainder The Black Dog / Harmony Korine / Abandoner / Like Dust I Have Cheated From My Eye / Luminol / Veneno Para / No Part Of Me / Raider II / Get All You Deserve / Intro ( Citadel ) / No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun / Index / Deform To Form A Star / Sectarian / Postcard / Remainder The Black Dog / Harmony Korine / Abandoner / Like Dust I Have Cheated From My Eye / Luminol / Veneno Para / No Part Of Me / Raider II / Get All You Deserve / Outro ( Litany )

Label Review. 

2020 album. Folk/country. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Canadian folk and country singer/songwriter William Prince returns with his second album ‘Reliever’ via Glassnote Records. For his eagerly-awaited sophomore album, William begins with single word, Reliever, which informs a collection of exceptionally rendered explorations of what, who and how peace is found. Relievers come in all forms; for Prince, it is song. With its emphasis on words and confidently unfussed accompaniment, Reliever puts Prince’s gift for sparking powerful emotions of both personal and communal relevance at the fore. A masterclass in skilful simplicity, Reliever works a generous and profound kind of magic.

Prince’s influences and references, from the gospel of his childhood to the pantheon of classic outlaw country singers, baseball and the great beyond, shape Reliever into a collection that approaches the big questions with humility and curiosity. At the edge of the ocean, between father and son, from stranger to lover, the album flows through the places and moments where real connections and healing happen. With the transformational power of letting go in songs such as “Always Have What We Had” and “Leave It By The Sea” to the all-consuming blaze of love in “The Spark,” Reliever finds many paths to the heart. 

The complicated emotions that charge idealisms and realities of fatherhood are a central theme throughout Reliever. “I want to live to the second last day that my children do, selfishly so I can see them through” Prince sings on “That’s All I’ll Ever Become,” a sentiment of seismic love and dedication. “Wasted,” another album standout, echoes this purest unconditional love inwardly, to the child who is told he is loved no matter which path he chooses, and outwardly, to the listener, who is gently – and directly – spurred not to take this shuffle for granted. 

To make Reliever, Prince reconvened with producers Dave Cobb in Nashville and Scott Nolan in Winnipeg, the team behind his JUNO Award winning debut and subsequent Glassnote Records reissue, Earthly Days. With the song “Breathless,” which found audiences worldwide and reached the B List at BBC’s Radio 2, Earthly Days introduced Prince’s poignant philosophy and rich baritone to the world. Prince’s trajectory from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, Canada, to opening for Neil Young, has seen the relative newcomer find esteem and career-changing opportunity wherever he performs.

‘Reliever’ is a series of pieces for healing. Alleviation. As the definition states, something that allows for relief from pain, discomfort or distress. I’ve been told my songs allow people to let out their hurt; reminiscent of bloodletting. Reliever takes aim at the moments where we as human beings feel we aren’t enough.Prince won a Juno 2017 Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year for his debut album Earthly Days. 

Tracklisting: The Spark / Wasted / Reliever / Always Have What We Had / Old Souls / That’s All I’ll Ever Become / Leave It By The Sea / Lighthouse / The Gun / Heaven And Hell / Great Wide Open

Label Review.

2020 album. Americana.

Our Overview.

Houston favorite, singer-songwriter Matt Harlan is a troubadour of the first degree, bringing his handcrafted songs to stages across his home state of Texas, the USA and Europe. Matt crafts sociopolitical narratives with an artist’s eye (“What We Saw”) and a poet’s elegance (“Mountain Pose”). His seamless new collection ‘Best Beasts’ spotlights a rapidly rising songwriter growing exponentially with each track. Political unrest maps the landscape.

“Best Beasts became much more political than I imagined,” Harlan says. “Everything I started to write ended up being about current events. The theme throughout the record is me trying to makes sense of our crazy world today.” Harlan frequently delivers keen insight with an everyman’s grace. “Another bad day, another scene that makes no sense,” he sings on the album’s poignant closing track, “Another Bad Day.” “Another angel on the fence/but maybe it’s the morning star/Another bad day/you know I tried to shake it loose/and find a different point of view/pretend the sky’s not falling.” “I understand things better when I separate myself and tell stories from someone else’s perspective,” Harlan says. “Narrative songs are like a gel-cap around medicine. Listeners can feel the same emotions even if they don’t know there’s something in a song that they might not agree with. We all have to deal with the world. We have that in common.”

Harlan’s vivid vignettes frequently feature blue-collar everymen struggling for purchase of their own hard-won happiness (“Heavy Steel,” “K&W”), which they occasionally find (“Mountain Pose,” “Catching On”). And there are pauses for reflection (“Like Lightning [Way Out of Town],” “Somebody Else”). “I hope folks can understand the issues from both sides,” the 37-year-old Houston native says. “I think these songs are about the changes and struggles we all face in one way or another. So that means they had to cover some ground I’ve never had to tread before but other people find themselves walking daily.”

“‘Best Beasts’ in the simplest sense can be filed under folk or singer-songwriter recordings. But Harlan on this record takes his biggest instrumental swing. He’s just subtle about it. So there’s the obligatory voice (and his is an achingly expressive one, yet conversational and never prone to excess) and guitars, but also colors of violin, banjo, keyboards, accordion, pedal steel guitar, cello, dobro… . The sound beautifully meets Harlan’s lyrics, growing in grandiosity when needed, receding to the background when a song is better served by simple silence. Andrew Dansby - Houston Chronicle

Tracklisting: What We Saw / Catching On / Gemini Blues / K & W / Heavy Steel / Low Pressure / Somebody Else / Like Lightning / Darla Mae / Mountain Pose / Gravity / Best Beasts / Another Bad Day

Label Review. 

Official release recorded 19th December 1974 featuring songs from his first two solo albums. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Bryan Ferry needs little introduction as the smartly attired singer and instrumentalist who not only was the head honcho in Roxy Music from 1972-82 but also ran a solo career initially concurrently with his main band. His debut solo album ‘These Foolish Things’ was released only one month before Roxy’s third: ‘Stranded’ at the end of 1973. The following year Ferry issued a second album: ‘Another Time Another Place’, again prior to another Roxy LP. Bryan used these two albums to expressly record cover versions and before Christmas 1974 he performed songs from both albums at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

The setlist consists of fan favourites including the likes of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “The ‘In’ Crowd”, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, and “I Love How You Love Me” and spans his influences from the 30s, 40s and 50s, including the records that shaped him growing up and throughout his formative years. The recording of this show is now being made available officially for the first time.

Tracklisting: Sympathy For The Devil / I Love How You Love Me / Baby I Don’t Care / It’s My Party / Don’t Worry Baby / Another Time, Another Place / Fingerpoppin’ / The Tracks Of My Tears / You Won’t See Me / Smoke Gets In Your Eyes / A Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall / A Really Good time / The ‘In’ Crowd / The Foolish Things

Label Review.

2020 album. Indie.

Our Overview.

Terry Ohms is back with a new album almost a year to the date after his wonderfully eclectic ‘Terryfirma’. This time around, with ‘Cold Cold Shoulder’, Terry gives us eight stretched out, guitar-dominated tracks. Terry Ohms is the alter ego of Birmingham, Alabama native Wes McDonald – or maybe it’s the other way around. After spending time in their individual musical worlds and influences, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins, or where the rhythmic reach of one extends and the melodic ambitions of the other continues.

Led by Mr. Ohms shape shifting vocals, the songs on ‘Cold Cold Shoulder’ get pushed around by soulful and sizzling guitar that is at once tight and loose. There are keyboards and bass lines hung over drum grooves. A Corvette-station wagon of sounds smoothly swing and berate on ‘Cold Cold Shoulder’. As for the songs, Ohms offers a variety of occupants that inhabit the same spirited borough.

‘Cold Cold Shoulder’ is Terry Ohms’ eighth release. Terry Ohms is the alter ego of Wes McDonald, who was the singer/guitarists for Vulture Whale and The Ohms, and is currently the drummer for dream-psych-rock outfit, People Years. With the second full length album in as many years, McDonald looks to be plowing full steam ahead with this Terry Ohms guy. He’s been making records under one moniker or another since the year 2000. With a history of giving musical norms and predictable progressions the ole’ cold cold shoulder, he still manages to deliver a damn good song time and again. McDonald has a sharp tongue and a keen and playful musical sensibility that informs his music with power and personality. And as Terry Ohms, who is stretched out, settled in and here to stay for awhile, ‘Cold Cold Shoulder’, more than any of his previous records, satisfies and strikes as singular and meant to be.

McDonald engineered, produced and played all the instruments on ‘Cold Cold Shoulder’ at Terry’s House in Birmingham, AL. He also designed all the artwork and made all the sandwiches.

Tracklisting: King Of The Mountain / Rock Of Gibraltar / What Do You Mean, What Do I Mean? / IMO JSYK BTW / All In The Past / Where You Comin From / Making The Most / That Song

Label Review. 

2020 album. Jazz vocal. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

American singer and songwriter of what she calls Vintage Pop Kat Edmonson has a story to tell. It’s a story for all those who dream of a different path in life, and you can hear it on her upcoming 2020 recording ‘Dreamers Do’. With a sweetly mellifluous soprano echoing Blossom Dearie’s lighter-than-air approach as well as her gift for evocative songwriting, Kat Edmonson is a rare artist who embodies the spirit of the past while remaining resolutely au courant. 

The album explores the shared human struggle around daring to dream and it illuminates a range of emotional and psychological consequences that can happen along the way.  A question gets raised in Kat’s vulnerable original, “Too Late to Dream”: “Are the messages we receive as children about following our dreams relevant through adult life?”  The album is a mix of Edmonson’s original songs and re-imagined Disney songs from the mid-twentieth century and takes place over the course of one, sleepless night.

Her unusually charming and seamless blend of old and new has garnered attention on “NPR Tiny Desk Concerts”, “Austin City Limits”, and “A Prairie Home Companion”. The album blends original compositions and reimagined mid 20th century classic Disney songs, and tells a story which takes place over the course of one sleepless night. Dreamers Do follows the release of 2018’s ‘Old Fashioned Gal’. 

Tracklisting: A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes / Go to Sleep / In a World of My Own (With Duchess) / Night Walk - Interlude / When You Wish Upon a Star / The Parlor - Interlude / Chim Chim Cher-Ee/ This Old House - Interlude / Someone’s in the House / Carlyle - Interlude/ Very Good Advice/ Too Late to Dream/ A Little Night Music? - Interlude / All I Do is Dream of You / Be Careful How You Wish / The Second Star to the Right / The Age of Not Believing (feat. Bill Frisell) / Morning - Interlude / What a Wonderful World/ A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes (Reprise)

Label Review. 

2020 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

British post punk trio Shopping return with their new album ‘All Or Nothing’, a record that speaks about commitment, leaps of faith and tests of courage. With their new album "All or Nothing" Shopping take a big leap into a vibrant and punchy production style that is closer to pop than anything they've ever done. The album has been produced and mixed by Nick Sylvester (Deerhoof) and it is a true expansion of the band's sound, adding synths and odd rhythms to their most accessible melodies and lyrics yet. While a few songs on the album nod to their angular late 70s punk beginnings, this is much more of a radio-ready pop record than you might expect.

“A lot has happened in our personal lives since we last recorded and we knew this album was going to reflect that exciting and scary feeling that comes with change, heartbreak and personal evolution,” the band explain.

Their previous album ;The Official Body’ was named by Pitchfork as one of the "Best Rock Albums of 2018," with an 8.1 rating. Since their last record the band are now spread across the globe with Billy in LA and Andrew and Rachel in Glasgow and the songs were written in a two-week intensive period while they were all together. 

Tracklisting: Trust In Us / Initiative / Follow Me / No Apologies / For Your Pleasure / About You / Lies / Expert Advice / Body Clock / All Or Nothing

Label Review. 

2020 album. Nuclear Blast. Also available on 2CD, Vinyl, Picture Disc and 2CD+Blu-ray. 

Our Overview. 

The Brazilian Thrash Metal icons Sepultura are back with their 15th album ‘Quadra’. While quickly establishing themselves as leaders of the second wave of Thrash already in the late eighties, to this day they never came even close to stagnation. ‘Quadra’, their mighty new undertaking, is proof of a will unbroken, a thirst unquenched and a quality so staggeringly high it’s a wonder this band doesn’t implode. Now three albums deep into what may very well be their strongest incarnation yet – uniting the talents of old-school members Andreas Kisser (guitars, vocals) and Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. (bass), vocal force of nature Derrick Leon Green (vocals) and drummer Eloy Casagrande – Sepultura are an unleashed power to be reckoned with, uniting bucketloads of experience and youthful vigour in a totally revived way.“

On ‘Quadra’, we felt the urge to revisit that old thrash feeling of ‘Beneath the Remains’ or ‘Arise“,’ only seen through the eyes of today,” says Andreas Kisser. “Add to that the tribal percussion, the orchestral elements, the choirs, the melodies and the clean vocals and you get a thorough run-through of our entire career, backed by a very contemporary approach.” Fuelled by an energy almost uncanny for a band that has been active for so long, Sepultura storm through a contemporary thrash monument, backed by sublime melodies, a very eerie atmosphere and a fiendishly high level of technicality. Kisser is appreciating these compliments, still maintaining his very down to earth approach. “We don’t heed the past and we don’t try to be preoccupied by the future too much,” he shrugs. “We’re in the now, trying every day to make Sepultura a little bit better. That’s what keeping us strong.”

Tracklisting: Isolation / Means To An End / Last Time / Capital Enslavement / Ali / Raging Void / Guardians Of Earth / The Pentagram / Autem / Quadra / Agony Of Defeat / Fear Pain Chaos Suffering

Label Review.

2020 album. Folk (ex-Trembling Bells).

Our Overview.

Alex Rex is the nom de guerre of Alex Neilson- drummer to some of the most innovative musicians on the international underground including Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Shirley Collins, Jandek and Current 93 and he is releasing his new album ‘Andromeda’ an album which is a game of emotional snakes and ladders. It’s the product of two years spent in therapy, the gym and on Tinder. It opens with the voice of folk legend Shirley Collins in ”Song of Self Doubt” – a sparse assemblage of spoken words layered on bright chimes and birdsong. And from there we wander down corridors of cruelty, recklessness and recrimination.

Alex has synthesised the agonised self-invention and charismatic death-drive of these artists into his solo vehicle- abandoning the Folk Rock pomp of his previous band Trembling Bells for something darker and wilder. Following the critical acclaim of two previous albums- Vermillion and Otterburn- Rex is back with his most raw and adventurous album yet:' Andromeda'.

Featuring a consolidated line up of long-time collaborator Rory Haye, with Audrey Bizouerne (Rev Magnetic/ Bill Wells) and Georgia Seddon (Mike Heron/The Incredible String Band) along with guest appearances from Shirley Collins and Stevie Jackson, Andromeda is a gut-punch to the brain. Self loathing has never sounded so sexy.

Tracklisting: Song Of Self Doubt / Handful Of Hair / I Am Happy / Funeral Music For Alex Rex / Oblivion / Cowards Song / Rottweilers / Alibi Blues / Haunted House / The Uses Of Trauma / Im Not Hurting No More / Pass The Mask

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Rock & also roll band from Orange County, California, Super Whatevr - brain child of Styler McKee - are releasing their 12 song new album ‘don’t you want to be glad?’ is bursting with nervous energy, buoyant rhythms and earworm melodies. It's taken the Californian songwriter a long time to get to this place. When his parents' marriage unraveled, the cascading effects permeated virtually every piece of McKee's psyche, resulting in one of the darkest periods of his life. At times, the personal and spiritual growth ultimately found on Super Whatevr's sophomore LP don't you wanna be glad? seemed completely out of reach.

Produced by Courtney Ballard (Good Charlotte, Waterparks), the 12-song album follows the band’s 2017 ‘Good Luck’ EP and 2018’s ‘Never Nothing’ in both in time and theme. Composed as a linear narrative tracing McKee’s path from unrest to inner peace, ‘don’t you wanna be glad?’ calls back lyrical elements from Super Whatevr'sprevious albums to create as cohesive and deeply personal record as the duo - McKee and drummer Chase Vernon - have ever made. “This album is about the pursuit of joy,”McKee adds. “I had to spend time deconstructing what it is that makes me glad.”

“‘yours truly.’ is about my personal pursuit of happiness,” says Super Whatevr lead vocalist Skyler McKee. “I am singing to myself, like hey Sky, you literally pushed out bad relationships and are slowly forgetting the past trauma, why are you still not happy? I learned that there is more to emotional growth than just cutting off toxic people, it takes healing those wounds in order to be genuinely glad.”

“I used to have to say I was happy,” admits McKee. “But now I actually am.”

Tracklisting: better. / yours truly. / so am i. / sober. / i wanna be cool. (feat. Lost Boy) / unhealthy. / eternity complex. / life (i want u). / everything's new, / everything hurts. / wesleepwedream. / holy anxious. / melancholyism.

Label Review.

2020 album. Americana. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Bad For You’ marks a time of growth for The Steeldrivers, a turn towards an edgier sound than previous recordings. This is the fifth SteelDrivers studio album, made up of all-new original material, and recorded in Nashville, TN at The Butcher Shoppe.

The group continues its rich musical progression, conjuring music drenched in soul, blues, bluegrass, R&B, country, and rock ‘n’ roll. If the “blend of soul and slink, blues and country, mountain coal and red dirt,” as Peter Cooper characterised their sound, is timeless, the SteelDrivers have delivered another new classic. Fiddle-player, songwriter, and singer Tammy Rogers aptly describes the “realness, rawness, and edge” in the band’s sound.

The eagerly-awaited album features eleven new songs, ten of which were co-written by Rogers, whose spirited and soulful voice and fiddle playing have been a hallmark of the band’s hard-driving sound throughout its existence. It also marks the band’s debut recording with Kelvin Damrell, the singer and guitarist who joined the band in early 2018. Few bands are as aptly named as the SteelDrivers: steel is known for its remarkable strength, but also for its resilience, and the same is certainly true of the SteelDrivers, as they have proven time and again.

Tracklisting: Bad For You / The Bartender / 12 O’Clock Blues / I Choose You / Falling Man / Forgive / Glad I’m Gone / Innocent Man / Mama Says No / Lonely And Being Alone / When A Heart Breaks

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

‘Dream Interpretation’ the latest album from Kazuya Nagaya is rooted in Buddhist (Zenzhu) philosophy and sensibilities unique to Japan. Concurrently, his work and interests are also contemporary and traverse a broad spectrum of cultures. Singing bowls, bronze bells and gongs resonate through the mindful layers of Japanese percussionist and ambient producer Kazuya Nagaya’s music. In Zen Buddhism, bells are believed to wash away the cares of the mortal world, as the listener follows the resonance of the bell into the silence and stillness within all beings. It is a penetration into the depths of one’s self.

Nagaya started out to pursue his talents in literature and is also an award-winning writer and a connoisseur on Japanese Literature, Buddhist Folktales and Zen Philosophical Works. These interests breathed life into his music, and the sensibilities and philosophical views which he developed during his literary years are now reflected in most of his music today. He spends half the week teaching courses at his University in Tokyo, and the other half composing and writing in his home in the Japanese Alps, where he resides with his wife, and many adopted cats and dogs. ‘Dream Interpretations’ was composed at a difficult time in Nagaya’s life. While he worked, he listened closely to the sound of the knocking that reverberated from the paths of his unconsciousness and transformed that into music. In other words, this music is his dream interpretation.

Says Kazuya: “There is one thing I have known all along. Someday I will have to face the messages from my unconscious. I will have to decipher their meaning and change my life accordingly. The messages from my unconscious are like a knocking on the door of my mind. For many years the sound reverberated, but I paid it no attention. There are dreams that I still remember. Although it has been decades since I had those dreams, they continue to pulsate, circulating their pellucid blood, vital and fresh as if dreamt just last night”.

Tracklisting: Thanatos / Mother Wading in the River / Dream Interpretation I / Tibetan Philosopher / Wolfman’s Dream / Dream Interpretation II / Heathen / The Book of Sunken Memory / Dream Interpretation I (Old Theatre Mix)

Label Review. 

Four albums 1967-1969 plus 7 bonus tracks. BGO.

Our Overview. 

The Box Tops were an American band who formed in Memphis in 1967 and their frontman was 16 year old Alex Chilton. They had instant success when their debut single “The Letter” went to No.1 in their home country and also scored in the UK making the Top 5. The young group traded in what was then called “Blue-eyed soul”, a term still in use today to described white singers tackling black soul. The first album which was un-imaginitvely titled after their first two singles and just contained covers as their management was unconvinced of the songs that Chilton was writing at the time. Most of their material was written by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.

They had another big smash in 1968 with “Cry Like A Baby” which was also the title of their second album. Their success began to dry up after this although they had one more big hit in 1969 with “Soul Deep”. Band members began to leave and by early 1970 having realised they had been fleeced and disrespected by managers, agents and tour promoters during their short career, Alex Chilton split the group but that didn’t stop their label Bell from issuing more singles from unreleased material. Chilton would go on to form Big Star who although failed to make an impact at the time are now revered as one of the early “Power Pop” groups.

Tracklisting.

Disc 1: The Letter / She Knows How / Trains & Boats & Planes / Break My Mind / Whiter Shade Of Pale / Everything I Am / Neon Rainbow / People Make The World / I’m Your Puppet / Happy Times / Gonna Find Somebody / I Pray For Rain / Cry Like A Baby / Deep In Kentucky / I’m The One For You / Weeping Analeah / Every Time / Fields Of Clover / The Letter / Trouble With Sam / Lost / Good Morning Dear / 727 / You Keep Me Hanging On / The Door You Closed To Me / Georgia Farm Boy / Take Me To Your Heart / Come On Honey / You Keep Tightening Up On Me

Disc 2: Choo Choo Train / I’m Movin’ On / Sandman / She Shot A Hole In My Soul / People Gonna Talk / I Met Her In Church / Rock Me Baby / Rollin’ In My Sleep / I Can Dig It / Yesterday Where’s My Mind / If I Had Let You In / Soul Deep / I Shall Be Released / Midnight Angel / Together / I’ll Hold Out My Hand / I Must Be The Devil / Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March / (The) Happy Song / Ain’t No Way / I See Only Sunshine / Rock Me Baby / King’s Highway / Since I Been Gone / Lay Your Shine On Me

Label Review.

2020 album. Soul / R&B. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Son Little, the musical nom de plume of LA’s Aaron Earl Livingston, has announced his new album ‘Aloha’ which blends classic soul and old-school R&B into a timeless swirl fueled by gritty instrumental virtuosity and raw, raspy vocals. Recorded at Paris’s iconic Studios Ferber with producer Renaud Letang (Feist, Manu Chao), aloha is Little’s first album to be recorded with an outside producer. The result is his boldest, most self-assured statement yet. It’s an ambitious work of vision and reflection, and an ecstatic testament to the freedom that comes from trusting the currents of life to carry you where you belong.

“Letting go can be a scary prospect,” says Son Little. “But there’s beauty in it, too. Everything you leave behind opens up space for something new in your life.”

That was certainly the case with his new album, ‘Aloha’, his third studio album. Recorded at Paris’s iconic Studio Ferber, the entire project was an exercise in letting go, in ceding control, in surrendering to fate. While Son Little still plays nearly every instrument on the album himself, he put his songs in the hands of an outside producer for the first time here, collaborating with French studio wizard Renaud Letang (Feist, Manu Chao) to create his boldest, most self-assured statement yet.

Equal parts vintage and modern, the collection blends classic soul, old-school R&B, and adventurous indie sensibilities into a timeless swirl fuelled by gritty instrumental virtuosity and raw, raspy vocals. It’s an ambitious work of vision and reflection, to be sure, but more than that, it’s an ecstatic testament to the freedom that comes from torching the map and trusting the currents of life to carry you where you belong.

Tracklisting: Hey Rose / About Her. Again. / Mahalia / Bbbaby / Suffer / That’s The Way / 3rd Eye Weeping / Don’t Wait Up / Belladonna / O Clever One / Neve Give Up / After All (I Must Be Wrong)

Label Review.

1988 album.

Our Overview.

The Mancunian alt-rave rockers and legends of the late 80s indie music scene, the Happy Mondays are re- releasing ‘Bummed’. Like many an influential album in rock history, the cultural significance of Happy Monday’s ‘Bummed’ the bands’ second album, was apparent to precious few listeners upon its first release on 5 November 1988. Within a decade or two, ‘Bummed’ would be hailed as one of the best records of the 80s, often by the self-same publications that had slated it back in the day - a harbinger of the seismic shift about to take place in British popular music, away from the squeaky-clean, corporately ordained pop-radio fodder which had increasingly dominated the charts since punk and back towards the more aggressive, unruly and experience-hungry urges which had always pulsed through rock & roll. This album is on vinyl for the first time since its original release. Features the singles ‘Wrote For Luck’ and ‘Lazyitis - One Armed Boxer'.

This is nasty, nightmarish music delivered with a lascivious leer by Shaun Ryder, a hallucinatory accidental poet portrayed on the album's garish cover as some kind of harlot put out to pasture. Decadence has rarely sounded as dangerous as it did in the hands of the Mondays and this is where they reveled in that debauchery, pumping out stiff psychedelic funk as Ryder spat out rhymes of luck, lazyitis and fat lady wrestlers. Hannett’s bright, brittle production amplifies everything, creating a swirling hyper-reality that's almost a sonic black hole sucking everything into its vortex -- slide guitars, sound clips from "Performance," maniacally looped drum machines, Beatles melodies, drums that are pushed to the front of the mix so it all is a relentless assault, from the ears down to the loins. As jagged and lacerating as all this is, there's a sense of evil glee, that the Mondays want to drag you down to their level, but there's no sense of seduction here; you're either with them or not, as ‘Bummed’ is music for after you've already succumbed to the dark side.

Tracklisting: Country Song / Moving In With / Mad Cyril / Fat Lady Wrestlers / Performance / Brain Dead / Wrote For Luck / Bring A Friend / Do It Bett

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

In the making of their new album ‘Darkness Brings The Wonders Home’, Smoke Fairies drew inspiration from mysteries both real and imagined: sea monsters, flocks of crows taking flight in extravagant formation, strange creatures dwelling in the mud near their new South London abode. With their mesmeric vocal presence and starkly poetic lyrics, singer/multi-instrumentalists Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies embed all that odd magic into songs that speak to the realities of modern times—isolation, insomnia, an overall unease with the state of the world—and ultimately uncover an unlikely sense of hope. Produced by Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Black Angels, The Shins), Darkness Brings The Wonders Home merges Smoke Fairies’ musings and meditations with a decidedly guitar-driven sound, the duo’s unearthly harmonies endlessly floating atop lead-heavy riffs. Over the course of a rigorous month-long session in Seattle, Smoke Fairies adopted a purposely intimate approach to achieving that singular sonic tone.

“Times of darkness are when people are often the most imaginative,” says Davies in reflecting on the album’s title. “It helps you to see all the wonders of the world you hadn’t noticed before—the things you’ve been blind to because you’ve been on autopilot for so long. We spent a long time trying to fathom the direction we wanted to take on this album. At times the options seemed overwhelming, but as new songs started to form we realized we needed to take them back to our core sound – our interplaying guitar parts’ says Davies. “So then we had to really step up and do it ourselves, without relying on a band to fill anything in, which was quite a challenge—physically, mentally, everything.”

While Smoke Fairies initially intended to return to the earthy folk of early work like 2011’s ‘Through Low Light and Trees’, the duo soon found themselves assuming a new boldness in their guitar style and, in turn, pushing into much wilder terrain. In doing so, Blamire and Davies spent much of their time perusing the guitar shop near Ek’s chosen studio, experimenting with countless guitars and amps to augment the album’s sonic palette. “It was like being in a sweet shop, getting to try all these guitars we’d normally never be able to afford,” says Blamire. “We ended up making friends with guitars we never thought to use before, like this weird vintage Kay that sounded great but was so hard to play—to the point where there were days when our fingers were bleeding, or we had blisters in places you didn’t even know you could get them.”

For Smoke Fairies, ‘Darkness Brings The Wonders Home’ signals a strengthening of the inextricable bond they’ve forged through the years. “So many of the songs are about these feelings of disconnection, but the irony is that Jessica and I have each other, and that means so much more than any of the other relationships that come and go,” says Blamire. And because of that connection, the two found the courage essential for bringing such an emotionally trying album to life. “I think what we’re attempting to show is that, in all this chaos that’s so tumultuous and overwhelming, there are always ways to change your perspective,” says Blamire. “Making this album, we conquered so many worries and doubts and felt so much stronger at the end—we went right into the darkness, and somehow brought something incredibly positive out of it.”

Tracklisting: On The Wing / Elevator / Disconnect / Coffee Shop Blues / Left To Roll / Out Of The Woods / Chocolate Rabbit / Chew Your Bones / Don’t You Want To Spiral Out Of Control? / Super Tremolo

Label Review. 

2020 album. Indie. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Alt pop, London based four piece Gengahr announce their much anticipated return with their third full-length album, ‘Sanctuary’, released via Liberator Music (part of The Mushroom Group). More expansive and ambitious than ever before, Sanctuary is the experimental alt-pop band’s finest body of work to date, a DIY triumph which welcomes old friend Jack Steadman of Bombay Bicycle Club as producer, adding his distinct brand of symphonic sparkle to Gengahr’s complex, layered sound and pushing the band further into all-out pop territory than they’d ever dared stray before. Recorded at the brand new Propagation House way out in Bude in Cornwall, the album also recaptures the magic that old school friends Felix Bushe, John Victor, Hugh Schulte and Danny Ward felt when they were making their debut. 

With mixing from the hugely in-demand Nathan Boddy (James Blake, Nilufer Yanya, Shame), additional production from John Victor and engineering from A Dream Outside’s engineer James Bragg, Sanctuary is vibrant, intoxicating, intimate and alive; the product of friends having a good time and seizing control of their own destiny. 

Tracklisting: Everything & More / Atlas Please / Heavenly Maybe / Never A Low / Fantasy / You’re No Fun / Soaking In Formula / Anime / Icarus / Moonlight

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Constantly creative, Marc Almond’s new album ‘Chaos and a Dancing Star’ was made in collaboration with producer, songwriter and pianist Chris Braide, who also worked on Marc’s 2015 album ‘The Velvet Trail’. The title informs many of the album’s themes, and impermanence is also a recurring topic. It emerges in various forms: mortality in “Black Sunrise” and “Dust”, as well as saying farewell and leaving a legacy in “Cherry Tree” and “When The Stars Are Gone”. The jaunty “Slow Burn Love” provides light amongst the darkness, with its hope of finding an ever-lasting love rather than one that’s “over before you blink your eyes” - a counterpoint to Marc’s common premise that love inevitably proves to be a disappointment.

Inspired by writing in Los Angeles, Marc Almond also added some Americana to the album. Referencing the famous cemetery to the stars with which it shares its name, “Hollywood Forever” addresses suicide and the passing of the Golden Age. Meanwhile, “Chevrolet Corvette Stingray” is an unemotional, fetishistic love song about cold sociopathic beauty. All but beauty and love is meaningless and without it we are nothing. “Lord Of Misrule” features not only Almond’s fervent voice but a flute courtesy of Jethro Tull legend Ian Anderson and a searing guitar solo part of a characteristically larger-than-life anthem. Marc notes, “It’s probably fair to say that I wrote “Lord of Misrule” with Ian in mind as I’ve always thought there was a touch of pagan mischief about him. It’s a kind of alternative Christmas song.”

“I wanted to write romantic apocalyptic love songs and set the songs in the fatal end of days settings with a touch of mystic paganism yet hopelessness,” says Marc. “It reflects the out-of-kilter world in which we find ourselves living today. Crows are a symbolic recurring theme on this record. When their eyes turn blue their life is coming to an end. Maybe it is the end of days for all of us, and perhaps this is something we should acknowledge.”

An iconic and influential figure with a career that spans almost 40 years and more than 30 million sales, Marc Almond has enjoyed a fresh renaissance in recent years. 2017’s retrospective ‘Hit & Pieces’ saw him return to the Top 10 of the album charts, and it was followed by the critically acclaimed ‘Shadows and Reflections’ set, which became the highest-charting solo album of his career so far. He also reunited with David Ball to say goodbye to Soft Cell with an emotional sold-out show at London’s O2.

Tracklisting: Black Sunrise / Hollywood Forever / Chevrolet Corvette Stingray / Dust / Slow Burn Love / Fighting A War / Cherry Tree / Chaos / Dreaming of Sea / When the Stars are Gone / Giallo / Lord of Misrule / The Crows Eyes Have Turned Blue

Label Review.

2020 album. Synth pop. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Mystic Familiar’, is the Baltimore based experimental composer and electronic- music iconoclast Dan Deacon’s new album. And it is the result of years of obsessive work, play and self-discovery. It’s at once his most emotionally open record and his most transcendent, 11 kaleidoscopic tracks of majestic synth-pop that exceptionally expand his sound with unfettered imagination and newfound vulnerability.

Since 2015’s ‘Gliss Riffer’, Deacon has branched out into an array of collaborative projects including film scores to Rat Film, HBO’s Well Groomed, ESPN’s 30 for 30: Subject to Review; collaborating with the NYC Ballet’s resident choreographer Justin Peck, LAPhil and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

While fulfilling, these projects lacked Dan’s singing voice. In the midst of that whirlwind of activity, he returned whenever he could to a personal oasis⁠—the songs that would become ‘Mystic Familiar’, informed by all these collaborations but built from within. Deacon’s writing took an exploratory new direction developed with therapeutic practices of self-compassion and mindfulness, daily prompts from Brian Eno’s deck of Oblique Strategies and the use of meditation. These techniques produced songs that paint life as a psychedelic journey brimming with bliss and disruption, darkness and light.

It’s a vulnerable shift in a songbook abundant with characters, metaphors, and modulations. This voice-focused album is also the first record in which each song was built around one central concept—the ‘Mystic Familiar’, a supernatural other being that we carry with us everywhere in our head, which only we can hear and with whom we live our lives in eternal conversation.  

Tracklisting: Become A Mountain / Hypnagogic / Sat By A Tree / Arp I: Wide Eyed / Arp II: Float / Away / Arp III: Far From Shore / Arp IV: Any Moment / Weeping Birch / Fell Into The Ocean / My Friend / Bumble Bee Crown King

Label Review. 

1970 album. Standard Edition. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Celebrating its 50th Anniversary, ‘Thank Christ For The Bomb’ by the Groundhogs is reissued with bonus tracks on CD. A hugely influential album cited as the embryo for punk, grunge and beyond. Featuring epic 1970 concepts from this far reaching trio much praised by Underworld’s Karl Hyde, Captain Sensible, Stephen Malkmus and a host of others. ‘Thank Christ For The Bomb’ is a visionary tale of cold war fear, alienation and everyday drama.

“This is a masterpiece!” sang the New Musical Express at the time. A thinking man’s rumination on alienation, the album is a game of two halves; side one tackling the thermo nuclear threat while side two traces riches to rags alienation in everyday London. Also featuring Radio 1 sessions and live versions of key tracks including a lengthy take of “Soldier” recorded for the BBC’s In Concert series. The first of a trio of ground-breaking albums that steered the band from the Blues into a heavier, more prog-based rock and a true reflection of their much-praised live sound.

Tracklisting: Strange Town / Darkness Is No Friend / Soldier / Thank Christ for the Bomb / Ship On The Ocean / Garden / Status People / Rich Man, Poor Man / Eccentric Man.

Label Review.

2020 live album and film. Ruf Records.

Our Overview.

The great Chicago bluesman Luther Allison lived by a simple philosophy that he was happy to share: “Leave your ego, play the music, love the people”. Now, twenty-three years after Luther’s passing, the great man would surely be proud to find that his ferociously talented son is sworn to the same mission, bringing soul-soaked, all-guns-blazing blues to audiences who need it more than ever.

‘Songs From The Road’ is a live snapshot so raw and real that hearing it feels like hanging off the security barrier of Dortmund’s Musiktheater Piano club when Bernard and his crack-squad band hit town last October 23rd. With an A-list crew on-hand - and a dynamic mix from industry legend Jim Gaines - this immersive recording catches every last flash of virtuosity, bead of sweat and drop of atmosphere.

Since he embarked on his acclaimed solo career with 1990’s ‘The Next Generation’, Bernard’s studio catalogue has been heavy with highlights, and that night in Germany, every fan in the house got something off their wish-list. This prolific songwriter reminded us that his recent output is his strongest to date, with five cuts from last year’s acclaimed ‘Let It Go’.

With Bernard leading the lineup on vocals and searing lead guitar, backed by Dylan Salfer (guitar), George Moye (bass), Mario Dawson (drums) and Jos James (sax/percussion), this is a live band whose chemistry lets them stretch out and shake up these classic songs.

Tracklisting:

CD1 : Night Train / Stay With Me Tonight / You’re Gonna Need Me / I Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind / Call Me Momma / Feels Kinda Funny / Cruisin For A Bluesin / Same Ole Feeling / Let’s Try It Again / Meet Me Half Way / Backdoor Man / Something’s Wrong / Slide Master

CD 2: Stanky Issues / Night Train / Stay With Me Tonight / The Way Love Was Meant To Be / I Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind / Call Me Momma / Feels Kinda Funny / Cruisin For A Bluesin / Same Ole Feeling / Let’s Try It Again / Meet Me Half Way / Backdoor Man / Storms Of Life / You’re Gonna Need Me / Something’s Wrong / Slide Master

Label Review.

30 tracks. Blues. Jasmine.

Our Overview.

Smokey Hogg was one of the most prolific and best-selling Blues artists of his era. This collection gathers together 30 of this post-war Texas blues and country blues musicians’ greatest recordings including the hits that made him so famous.

‘Smokey’ Hogg was an old-school Texas Blues guitarist and pianist who moved to the West Coast after WWII and had a couple of good R&B chart hits with a smooth piano Blues sound, alongside his dozens of country-style, guitar based records. His down-home delivery and eccentric sense of timing sounded old-fashioned in an era of frenetic Jump-Blues party music and the polished Blues-ballads of Percy Mayfield and Charles Brown but Smokey had ten prolific years as a recording artist, with his songs appearing on more than 20 different labels.

“Good Morning Little School Girl” and “Long Tall Mama” were the Top 10 hits that established him and both are featured here. Hogg was one of the stars of Jukeboxes and made a phenomenal number of recordings until his death in 1960. His records do stand up and still sound, in the main, fantastic up to 70 years after they were recorded. Includes fully detailed liner notes.

Tracklisting: Too Many Drivers / Unemployment Blues / Hard Times / My Christmas Baby / High Priced Meat / Golden Diamond Blues / (I Wonder) Where Did My Boogie Go? / Little School Girl / Long Tall Mama / Suitcase Blues (Lowdown Blues) / Nobody Treats Me Right / What’s On Your Mind? / Restless Bedroom Blues / Who’s Heah / Misery Blues / You Gotta Go / Going Back To Texas / Worryin’ My Life Away / You Won’t Stay Home / I’m So Lonely / Up Today - Down Tomorrow / Dirty Mistreater / Angels In Harlem / Size 4 Shoe / Highway 51 / Keep A-Walkin’ (Take 1) / Baby Don’t Leave / Up And Down / Train Whistle / Dark Clouds

Label Review.

1987 compilation of early recordings and Peel Sessions. This edition expanded to include all early singles plus unreleased material.

Our Overview.

British electronica band, The Beloved - founded by core member Jon Marsh - although more renowned as a 90s dance/electronica pop act, with hits like “Sweet Harmony”, “Hello” & “The Sun Rising”, The Beloved began in 1983 as a 4-piece guitar-based band. Two John Peel Sessions in 1985 were followed by 4 independent singles on the now-defunct Flim Flam label.

Their debut album ‘Where It Is’ was a compilation of these initially released as a vinyl LP in October 1987. The album was then released on CD in 1988 as an expanded edition, which now sells in excess of £100 on Discogs. Step forward to 2019. All the audio has been remastered from the original analogue tapes, by John Davis at Metropolis Studios, & is to be reissued with a 2nd disc containing previously unreleased demo tracks. At the time the material was recorded, the band comprised: Jon Marsh (Vocals/Keyboards), Steve Waddington (Guitars), Tim Havard (Bass) & Guy Gausden (Drums); sonically similar to peers on NME’s seminal C86 compilation.

The first 3 singles were produced by New Order’s studio engineer Michael Johnson, ‘Forever Dancing’ by the band themselves. CD1 is as per the original CD album with the addition of 3 tracks released on singles but not included on the CD, ‘Saints Preserve Us’, ‘Having Fun’, & the Stephen Street remix of ‘Forever Dancing’. It now comprises a virtual facsimile of all released singles. CD2 comprises 16 tracks. 3 were previously available on a limited edition 7” with the vinyl album of ‘Where It Is’, 2 were alternate versions of songs on CD1 (from the original vinyl single releases) and there is a 7” version of “Forever Dancing”. The remaining 10 tracks are completely unheard/unreleased demos from 1983-1987. Packaging wise, the release will be foil blocked digipack contain a 16 booklet with sleeve notes, photos & posters chosen by the band.

Tracklisting: A Hundred Words / Slow Drowning / In Trouble And Shame / This Means War / If Only / Let It Begin / Saints Preserve Us / Righteous Me / A Kiss Goodbye / If Pennies Came From Heaven Could Karl Marx Have Been Mistaken? / Forever Dancing / Surprise Me / Having Fun / Forever Dancing / If Only ‘88 / Disc 2: The Flame ‘83 / The Last Detail / Grin / Disgrace / Privacy (Sometimes) / The Flame ‘84 / Seppuku Glory / Falling On My Face / Each & Every Time / The Last Detail / Righteous Me / Forever Laughing / If You Ever Change Your Mind / On The Fence / Forever Dancing / If Only ‘87

Label Review. 

2020 debut album. Indie. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Squirrel Flower - the moniker of Ella O’Connor Williams - releases ‘I Was Born Swimming’, her debut album, on Full Time Hobby Records. The album’s title was inspired by Williams’ birth on August 11th 1996 - the hottest day of the year - born still inside a translucent caul sac membrane, surrounded by amniotic fluid. Throughout the 12 songs, landscapes change and relationships shift. The album’s lyrics feel like effortless expressions of exactly the way it feels to change - abstract, sad and hopeful.

Squirrel Flower’s music is ethereal and warm, gushing with emotional depth that the listener can step into like a warm bath. The band on ‘I Was Born Swimming’ plays with delicate intention, keeping the arrangements natural and light. The album was tracked live, with few overdubs, at The Rare Book Room Studio in New York City with producer Gabe Wax (Adrienne Lenker, Palehound, Cass McCombs). The musicians were selected by Wax and folded themselves into the songs effortlessly.

At the heart of the album lives Williams’ massive, haunted vibrating voice and melancholic, soulful guitar. The sounds expand and contract over diverse moods, cutting loose on the heavier riffs of “Red Shoulder.” “‘Red Shoulder’ is a song about destabilization and dissociation,” explains Williams. “Something soft and tender becomes warped and sinister, turning into sensory overload and confusion. How can something so lovely turn painful and claustrophobic? The song ends with a heavy and visceral guitar solo, attempting to reground what went awry.”

Williams comes from a deep-rooted musical family tree. Her grandparents were classical musicians who lived in the Gate Hill Co-op, an artistic cooperative from upstate New York that grew out of Black Mountain College. Ella’s father, Jesse Williams, spent most of his life as a touring jazz and blues performer and educator, and lends his bass playing to the album (listen for his smooth solo on “Headlights”). Growing up in a family of hard working musicians fostered a love of music and started Williams down her own musical path. As a child, Williams adopted the alter ego of Squirrel Flower. A couple of years later, she began singing with the Boston Children’s Chorus while studying music theory and teaching herself to play the guitar.

Tracklisting: I-80 / Red Shoulder / Slapback / Eight Hours / Headlights / Honey, Oh Honey! / Seasonal Affective Disorder / Home / Street Light Blues / Rush / Belly of the City / I Was Born Swimming

Label Review. 

2020 album also available on CD.

Our Overview.

The new album from Canadian songwriter Dan Bejar aka Destroyer ‘Have We Met’, as Dan puts it, “came together in such a crazy way - all equal parts ecstasy and terror.” Initially conceived (but quickly ditched) as a Y2K album, Bejar was without a clear concept in mind. So he let it all rip while brainstorming at home. Culled from years’ worth of saved writing, set aside for projects “beyond music” and recorded at his kitchen table, ‘Have We Met’ harkens back to ‘Kaputt’-era Dan stringing together lyrics off hand while lounging on his couch. The resulting vocal sound exists in the sweet spot between two Destroyer worlds colliding: hints of the past, more strident Destroyer mixed in with a relaxed, new-aged Crooning one.

No re-recording. No cleaning up. Frequent collaborator John Collins was tasked with the role of layering synth and rhythm sections over a stream-of-consciousness Bejar, as Nic Bragg added “completely unexpected and somehow comforting” three-dimensional, shredding guitar. The Destroyer band-orientated approach was shelved; “The record could have gone on and on, and the mixes kept evolving up until about a day before we sent them off to be mastered, which was also 48 hours before John and his wife went to the birthing centre, where their first child was born; our true deadline!” says Bejar.

Opener ‘Crimson Tide’ is a six-minute journey that takes its rightful place among other Destroyer epics. It welcomes with a sparse rhythm until percolating synths and propulsive bass build and make it all a reality with unsustainable imagery - oceans stuck inside hospital corridors and insane funerals. It’s the sound of a somewhat eccentric and unorthodox recording process laid out and built up by three musicians exploring the depth to which they can take an idea.

On ‘The Television Music Supervisor’, trickling keys, glitches and ‘clickity click clicks’ (a variation on the standard Bejar ‘la da das’) focuses on how those who dictate our relationships with music and media are susceptible to error, a most 21st Century concern.

Perhaps the most audacious Destroyer track yet, ‘Cue Synthesizer’ steps back to address the rote and often-detached mechanics of music. Up next, the waltzy and woozy centrepiece ‘University Hill’ drifts even further and applies that logic more broadly, insisting “the game is rigged in every direction” and “you’re made of string.”

Thirteen albums in, ‘Have We Met’ manages to meet somewhere between trademarks and new territory - atmospheric approximations of feeling and place, wry gut-punches of one liners and the deluge of energy meets a thematic catharsis of modern dread, delivered with an effortless, entrancing directness. No need to expound any further - he’s got it all spelled out for you in the music.

Tracklisting: Crimson Tide / Kinda Dark / It Just Doesn’t Happen / The Television Music / Supervisor / The Raven / Cue Synthesizer / University Hill / Have We Met / The Man in Black’s Blues foolssong

Label Review.

This album is Acid Jazz's tribute to an eccentric, a charmer, an unsung Sixties hero who still has soul. Includes solo tracks and some that he produced. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Carnaby Street Soul West Coast Vibes’ plays homage to English songwriter, musician, producer and A&R man. The character that is Graham Dee has lived one heck of a life, from surviving the blitzing of East London during WW2 to playing with Pink Floyd and Jimmy Page - Graham has done it all and this compilation hopes to look back at the story of his life through music.

Dee was the A&R at Atlantic Records, signing artists and producing their songs plus playing on sessions that included pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. One of his tracks, ‘A Love I Believe In’, narrowly missed being a Number 1 after Tony Blackburn proclaimed the single as his Record Of The Week, only for Blackburn to be playing the flip side, ‘The Bitter With The Sweet’.

Around this period Graham was working with the likes of Georgie Fame, Elkie Brooks and Mike Berry to name just a few and even filled in for the absent Syd Barrett on somePink Floyd shows. He eventually parted company with Atlantic after he damaged studio equipment whilst practising pistol fast draws and purchasing a hunting bow and accidentally firing it, flooding the office and terrifying the staff.

A lot of the tracks signal specific moments in Graham’s life that involve a lot of these stories. The stories provide the context for the tracks and this spreads a certain spirit throughout the compilation. Now in his seventies, Graham Dee is still writing, recording, performing and releasing solo records.

Tracklisting: Graham Dee - Another Night Alone / Graham Dee - Sampaguita / Maxine - A Love I Believe In (Horn Version) / Mike Berry - Soul Ride (Ascete Mix) / Graham Dee - Carrie / Graham Dee - Cheatin’ On Love / Graham Dee - As Long As I’m Close To You / Lenny White - Can’t Stop Thinking About Girls / Mick’s Bunch - I Just Wanna Be Your Friend / Tony Rivers - Tomorrow’s Children / Razor - It’s A Hard Way But It’s My Way / Graham Dee - Somethin’ Else

Label Review.

2020 album.

Our Overview.

Prophet is the high-spirited machine funk alias of Anthony Butler, originally from Louisiana. The electro-funk musician from the San Francisco area, who until his debut Stones Throw album in 2018, had only released an obscure private-press LP called ‘Right On Time’ (1984, Treasure Records) a holy grail among boogie / funk vinyl collectors, which to this day has a dedicated cult following. After its release, Prophet disappeared for over 3 decades until Stones Throw’s founder Peanut Butter Wolf, a long-time fan, met him by chance encounter.

His first album on Stones Throw, ‘Wanna Be Your Man’, was co-written and co-produced by Mndsgn. Peanut Butter Wolf introduced Prophet to Mndsgn, and together they came up with ‘Wanna Be Your Man’ released on Stones Throw in 2018. The album was praised in publications including Vice, Q, and Mixmag, with Loud & Quiet calling it ‘not only a fondly stitched together photo album of funk’s heyday but an important release in its own right.’ Tyler, The Creator was also a fan, and remixed the title track into the song “Peach Fuzz”.

Whereas 'Wanna Be Your Man' was a collaboration with Mndsgn, 'Don’t Forget It' is entirely self-produced. Working on his own allowed Prophet to further explore his sound palette and whittle down over a hundred songs to 16 for this record. ‘Don’t Forget It’ is an album full of soul ballads and upbeat funk tracks.

Tracklisting: Intro / Don’t Forget It / Be the One for You / In My Ear / Do You Think / Think About It / Human Like / Game to Make Love / I Don’t Care / I Am I Is / Come on / Hard / Diamond Ring / Never the One for Me / Don’t Cry / Whatever / So Much Love

Label Review. 

2020 album. Country/Southern Rock. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

‘The Unraveling’ is the acclaimed Georgia based alt-country outfit Drive-By Truckers’ 12th studio album and their first in more than three years - the longest gap between new Drive-By Truckers albums. ‘The Unraveling’ refers to the US collapse at the hands of the Trump Administration. The titles of the LP’s nine tracks, such as “Thoughts and Prayers”, “Babies in Cages”, and “Awaiting Resurrection”, further drive this theme home. The songs are among Drive-By Truckers’ most direct and pointedly provocative, tackling the myriad horrors of our new normal through sincere emotion and unbridled heart.

“The past three-and-a-half years were among the most tumultuous our country has ever seen,” co-founding member Patterson Hood remarked in a statement, “and the duality between the generally positive state of affairs within our band while watching so many things we care about being decimated and destroyed all around us informed the writing of this album to the core.” He continued:

“While a quick glance might imply that we’re picking up where 2016’s AMERICAN BAND album left off, the differences are as telling as the similarities. If the last one was a warning shot hinting at a coming storm, this one was written in the wreckage and aftermath. I’ve always said that all of our records are political but I’ve also said that ‘politics is personal’. With that in mind, this album is especially personal.”

Assisting Drive-By Truckers on the record are guests like The Shins’ Patti King, violinist/string arranger Kyleen King (Brandi Carlile), and North Mississippi All-Stars’ Cody Dickinson. It was recorded at the famed Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis by Grammy-winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) alongside longtime producer David Barbe.

Tracklisting: Rosemary with a Bible and a Gun / Armageddon’s Back in Town / Slow Ride Argument / Thoughts and Prayers / 21st Century USA / Heroin Again / Babies in Cages / Grievance Merchants / Awaiting Resurrection

Label Review. 

1989 debut album remastered with 19 bonus tracks. 12x12 package with 48pp book. Also available on CD, Vinyl, and Triple Vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

London, in 1989 was a thrumming, restless, vibrant city that much like today, pulsed defiantly against a backdrop of increasing political doom, rocking to the joyful noise of culture leaping across boundaries, radically reordering itself. Rents are low. Soho hums to the chatter of poets, vagabonds and petty sex tourists drinking in the same elixir of possibility. The divisions between the queens of Old Compton and mods and punks of Carnaby Streets look huge but feel slight. A spirit of multiracial unity permeates the air. New York hip-hop and Chicago house continue their euphoric colonisation of nightclub culture.

Amid this maelstrom, Neneh Cherry emerges, capturing the entire, giddy rumble of this rolling community street culture in one record, ‘Raw Like Sushi’. With no interest in genre, Raw Like Sushi upsets and inverts everything you thought you knew about how pop can work, at its brightest and most effective. Widely regarded as one of the greatest debut albums of all time, born halfway between ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ and ‘Boy In Da Corner’, ‘Raw Like Sushi’ was ready to escort you right to the centre of its dancefloor, dripping hot sweat under a mirrorball at 3am – and its particular magic remains just as potent today.

The album features five of Cherry’s biggest singles – including the worldwide smash hit single “Buffalo Stance” as well as hit singles “Manchild” produced by Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja, “Kisses On The Wind”, “Heart” and “Inna City Mamma”. It also features rare mixes of key tracks by Massive Attack, Arthur Baker, Smith N Mighty, and more.

Track Listing.

CD 1: Original album

Buffalo Stance / Manchild / Kisses on the Wind / Inna City Mamma / Love Ghetto / Heart / Phoney Ladies / Outre Risque Locomotive / So Here I Come / My Bitch / Heart (Its a demo)

CD 2: Extras

Buffalo Stance (Sukka Mix) / Buffalo Stance (Electro Ski Mix) / Buffalo Stance (1/2 Way 2 House) Remix - Arthur Baker / Buffalo Stance (Nearly Neue Beat) Remix - Arthur Baker / Buffalo Stance (Kevin Sanderson’s Techno Stance Remix One) / Manchild (Old School Mix) / Manchild (Massive Attack Remix) / Manchild (Massive Attack Bonus Beats) / Manchild (Smith N Mighty Remix) / Manchild (Smith N Might More Bass - Less Vocal Style)

CD 3: Extras

Inna City Mamma (Re-recorded Extended Version) / Inna City Mamma (Cold Blooded Remix) / Kisses On The Wind (12” Spanish Mix) / Kisses On The Wind (David Morales ‘A Little More Puerto Rico’ mix) / Kisses On The Wind (Dynamic Duo + Latin Rascals Mix) / Kisses On The Wind (Lovers Hip-Hop Extended Version) / The Next Generation (Rap One Mix) / The Next Generation (Sub-Woofer Mix) / Heart (Club Mix)

Label Review. 

2020 album (Everything But The Girl). Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Completing a compelling trilogy of albums since his late-flowering return to solo songwriting and singing six years ago, Ben Watt releases his fourth LP, ‘Storm Damage’ and with it a new sound and fervency. “I needed a fresh approach,” says Watt. “The album came out of an intense period of personal anguish and political anger. Sometimes repeating yourself musically feels disrespectful to the sharpness of your feelings. You have to search for a new way to capture the energy.”

Across four decades Ben has maintained a committed forward-looking course, from the ardent echo-drenched folk of his early solo work with Robert Wyatt, through seventeen years as musical mainspring and co-lyricist in the best-selling Everything But The Girl with Tracey Thorn - and ten at the helm of his smart electronic label Buzzin’ Fly - to his recent moving non-fiction and mid-life solo albums, the award-winning ‘Hendra’ (2014) and ‘Fever Dream’ (2016).

New album ‘Storm Damage’ is no exception. Sonically adventurous, lyrically detailed and engaged, the album - written and produced by Watt - is a personal journey through anxiety and change cut through with an insistent defiance. “My closest half-brother died unexpectedly in 2016, only four years after my half-sister,” he says of events surrounding the album’s origins. “I got stuck for a year, angry inside and angry at the political world casually detonating around me. I felt half powerless, half driven. When the songs finally came, some were dark, yes, but there is always room for light. Always. I just tried to put that across.”

Sonically the album forgoes the acclaimed twin-guitar approach of its two predecessors, and boldly shifts focus onto - in Watt’s words - “a future-retro trio” of upright piano, double bass and hybrid acoustic-electronic drums, set against a half-lit backdrop of lone analogue synths, spiralling echo spins and impressionistic ‘found sounds’ adapted from online public-domain recording archives. Low’s Alan Sparhawk makes a guest appearance on electric guitar and harmony vocal.

Tracklisting: Balanced On A Wire / Summer Ghosts / Retreat To Find / Figures In The Landscape / Knife In The Drawer / Irene / Sunlight Follows The Night / Hand / You’ve Changed, I’ve Changed / Festival Song

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Mackenzie Scott - who has spent the 2010s making boundary pushing pop music under her Torres moniker - has chosen to call her fourth album, and first release on Merge Records, ‘Silver Tongue’. Named after a person whose words are so potent that they cause the people and beings around them to vibrate ‘Silver Tongue’ is a full-scale realization of the world Scott has created over Torres’ last few albums.

Even when singing in more subdued tones, Scott’s voice is fervent, her lyrics stirring and unyielding as she draws from both the divine and the everyday. It’s also the first Torres record produced solely by Scott. After having shared production duties on her first three albums, the latter two alongside PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis, she found the process liberating: “I made exactly the record I want, and it feels very ‘me.’” says Mackenzie.

‘Silver Tongue’ fastidiously chronicles the impulses that make up desire from the dreamy first blushes of infatuation through the slightly terrifying wonder that accompanies connection with another. In between, Scott wrestles with the highs and lows of what “being in love” might mean over heady guitars and swirling synths. While potent vocal hooks punctuate songs like the sparkling “Dressing America,” which combines New Wave glitter with hovering frustration, and the brooding “Good Grief,” which gently pokes at the idea of fetishized sadness, the knottiness lurking underneath reflects Scott’s real time processing of her emotions while making the record.

‘Silver Tongue’s’ musical world is vast and at times seemingly infinite. Edge-of-the-world synths add gravity to the vulnerability of “Two of Everything,” and refracted guitars offer a gnarled counterpoint to Scott’s increased determination at the end of “Last Forest.” On “Gracious Day,” one of Torres’ most forthright love songs, Scott’s voice hovers over a starlit landscape in a way that transcends the mundane and enters the otherworldly as she sings. Torres’ music has long navigated the space between the physical and the metaphysical, and ‘Silver Tongue’ faces that conflict head-on, examining the ways in which the actions of others can stir up deep-seated feelings and seemingly alter the space in which one exists.

Tracklisting: A Good Scare / Last Forest / Dressing America / Records of Your Tenderness / Two of Everything / Good Grief / A Few Blue Flowers / Gracious Day / Silver Tongue

Label Review.

2020 album also availble on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

When Minneapolis USA, synth-pop Poliça’s Channy Leaneagh fell off her roof while clearing ice in early 2018, she smashed her L1 vertebrae and battered her spine, leaving her in a brace with limited mobility for months. Yet Poli.a’s fourth album, ‘When We Stay Alive’, is not about one debilitating accident. It’s about the redemptive power of rewriting your story in order to heal and reclaiming your identity as a result.

‘When We Stay Alive’ possesses a new confidence in its sound, reflected in its fierce, determined songs and anchored by the heavy synths and punctuating beats of Poliça co-founder and producer Ryan Olson. Over the last several years Olson and Leaneagh have widely collaborated withmusicians from all over the world: both with Bon Iver; Leaneagh individually with Boys Noize, Lane 8, Sasha, Leftfield and Daniel Wohl; Olson with Swamp Dogg in addition to countless musicians from the Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s 37d03d collective. As a result, ‘When We Stay Alive’ features one of the largest musical casts of any Poliça record to date.

To create the album, Olson brought his favourite collaborators into his studio for all-night sessions. He’d then send Leaneagh the files to write lyrics to while recovering at home, which she’d record alone or with engineer Alex Proctor. Drummers Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu coloured the songs with a new approach - drastically changing the rhythmic dynamic from previous efforts by creating an indistinguishable hybrid of live and electronic instrumentation - and bassist Chris Bierden provided a melody-laden low end as well as more layered backing vocals than ever before.On Poliça’s first three albums, Leaneagh focused on restructuring the world and her relationships within it. On ‘When We Stay Alive’ she realises the power in restructuring her inner self. The album’s title references the idea of moving forward through life - our experiences, both good and bad - and what happens next with the strength we find. “I had been living unconsciously in past trauma,” Leaneagh says. “I don’t want to deny something happened - this is not about repression - it’s about taking the power back from the past, holding the power in the present, and creating a new story for myself.”

Tracklisting: Driving / TATA/ Fold Up / Feel Life / Little Threads / Be Again / Steady / Forget Me Now / Blood Moon / Sea Without Blue

Label Review. 

1981 album remastered with 16 bonus tracks and DVD containing videos, Top Of The Pops appearances and more! 

Our Overview. 

Kim Wilde became an overnight sensation back in 1981 courtesy of the worldwide success of her single “Kids In America”, which offered a very British twist on the new wave energy and glamour of Blondie. The follow-up “Chequered Love” replicated the UK Top 5 success of the first single and her debut album cashed in on this early success. The songs on the album were all written by Kim’s father, the successful 1950s rock and roll singer Marty Wilde, and her younger brother Ricky Wilde and most of the music was played by the then current line-up of the symphonic rock band The Enid.[2] Production duties were fulfilled by Ricky Wilde. The cover portraits were taken by renowned British photographer Gered Mankowitz.

‘Kim Wilde’ was released by Mickie Most’s label RAK Records along with her next two albums: ‘Select’ (1982) and ‘Catch As Catch Can’ (1983). All three albums are reissued by Cherry Red Records, all with an extra disc of b-sides and remixes plus a DVD with BBC appearances.

Tracklisting.

Disc 1: Water On Glass / Our Town / Everything We Know / Young Heroes / Kids In America / Chequered Love / 2-6-5-8-0 / You'll Never Be So Wrong / Falling Out / Tuning In Tuning On / Shane* / Boys* / Water On Glass (7" version) / Tuning In Tuning On (7" version)

Disc 2: Kids In America [Luke Mornay Remix]+ / Chequered Love [Matt Pop Extended Version]+ / Water On Glass [Eddie Said & Luke Nutley Extended Version]+ / Kids In America [Popfidelity Allstars Remix]+ 5. Chequered Love [Matt Pop Alternative Mix]+ 6. Water On Glass [Project K: Project Kim]+ 7. Kids In America [Neutrophic Remix]+ 8. Kids In America [D-Bop’s Bright Lights Mix] 9. Kids In America [Popfidelity Allstars Instrumental]+ 10. Chequered Love [Matt Pop Instrumental]+ 11. Water On Glass [Eddie Said & Luke Nutley Instrumental]+ 12. Kids In America [Luke Mornay Instrumental]+

+ Exclusive new remixes for 2020

Disc 3: DVD (PAL) Promo Videos: Kids In America / Chequered Love. 'Kim At The BBC': Kids In America [On Top Of The Pops] 4. Chequered Love [On Top Of The Pops] 5. Water On Glass [On Top Of The Pops] 6. Kids In America [On Top Of The Pops - TOTP’s Christmas Party] Bonus Footage: Chequered Love [Unedited ‘Shower Version’]*

* Previously unreleased

Label Review.

2020 album also availble on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Synth electro-pop pairing Pet Shop Boys are releasing their new album entitled 'Hotspot'. The bands 14th studio album 'Hotspot' was mostly recorded in Hansa Studios, Berlin, and mixed in The Record Plant, Los Angeles. It was produced and mixed by Stuart Price and features ten brand new Tennant/Lowe tracks including the single “Dreamland” featuring Years & Years, which was released in September. ‘Hotspot’ follows Pet Shop Boys’ 2016 album ’Super’, which featured single “The Pop Kids” and appeared on Rolling Stone‘s 20 Best Pop Albums of 2016 list.

One of the songs, “Burning the heather”, features Bernard Butler on guitar and was recorded at RAK Studios in London. Pet Shop Boys say: “We’ve written much of our music over the last ten years in Berlin and it was an exciting experience to work on this album in the legendary Hansa studios there and add a new dimension to our sound.” The album is the last instalment of the trilogy of PSB albums produced by Stuart Price, following “Electric” in 2013 and “Super” in 2016.

The band have also announced a tour of the U.K. and Europe for May and June 2020. The tour, dubbed Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live, kicks off May 1st at Berlin’s Mercedes Benz Arena and includes stops in London, Glasgow and Stockholm. More worldwide dates will be announced soon.

Trackisting: Will-O-The-Wisp / You Are The One / Happy People / Dreamland (Featuring Years & Years) / Hoping For A Miracle / I Don’t Wanna / Monkey Business / Only The Dark / Burning The Heather / Wedding In Berlin.

Label Review. 

Massive career retrospective with 13 CDs, 52pp book, and 7 inch single. All six albums (on CD and vinyl picture discs) with 4 discs of live material including radio sessions and acoustic sets. 2 discs of b-sides, remixes and rarities and one disc of demos, out-takes and oddities. Also available as a 'best of' on CD and vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Formed in 1993 in Oxford, UK, originally comprising Gaz Coombes (vocals, guitar, sideburns), Danny Goffey (drums) and Mick Quinn (bass), within two years they had a contract with EMI and took the pop world by storm with their debut album ‘I Should Coco’ and their big hit “Alright”. They gained credibility with their stunning musicianship coupled with songwriting and arranging chops that far belied their age (Gaz was still a teenager when they hit big in 1995). They had racked up 5 consecutive UK Top 10 hits by the time of their acclaimed second album ‘In It For Money’ released in 1997. With this record they continued to find the balance between classic pop/rock songwriting and excellent musicianship whilst still selling huge amounts of records.

They were largely a British phenomenon although they gained a big following in Australia and New Zealand and were able to tour Europe to sizable audiences too. The USA sadly remained out of reach probably due their fairly rigid ‘English’ sound. As their career continued into the 2000s they started to experiment with different sounds while still writing great pop songs. Their audience was becoming more selective and after a cool response to their sixth album ‘Diamond Hoo-Ha’ in 2008 they called a break and Gaz went solo maintaining critical respect with his output which blended electronic sounds into his musical palette.

Now in control of their back catalogue the band have reformed and this ‘best of’ is a fantastic reminder of their classic tunes! For the dedicated fan they have produced a very deluxe box set which contains a trunk load of rarities.

CD/LP1 'I Should Coco': I’d Like To Know / Caught By The Fuzz / Mansize Rooster / Alright / Lose It / Lenny / Strange Ones / Sitting Up Straight / She’s So Loose / We’re Not Supposed To / Time / Sofa (Of My Lethargy) / Time To Go

CD/LP2 'In It For The Money': In It For The Money / Richard III / Tonight / Late In The Day / G-Song / Sun Hits The Sky / Going Out / It’s Not Me / Cheapskate / You Can See Me / Hollow Little Reign / Sometimes I Make You Sad

CD/LP3 'Supergrass': 'Moving / Your Love / What Went Wrong (In Your Head) / Beautiful People / Shotover Hill / Eon / Mary / Jesus Came From Outta Space / Pumping On Your Stereo / Born Again / Faraway / Mama & Papa

CD/LP4 'Life On Other Planets': Za / Rush Hour Soul / Seen The Light / Brecon Beacons / Can’t Get Up / Evening Of The Day / Never Done Nothing Like That Before / Funniest Thing / Grace / La Song / Prophet 15 / Run

CD/LP5 'Road To Rouen': Tales Of Endurance (Parts 4, 5, & 6) / St. Petersburg / Sad Girl / Roxy / Coffee In The Pot / Road To Rouen / Kick In The Teeth / Low C / Fin

CD/LP6 'Diamond Hoo Ha': Diamond Hoo Ha Man / Bad Blood / Rebel In You / When I Needed You / 345 / The Return Of... / Rough Knuckles / Ghost Of A Friend / Whiskey & Green Tea / Outside / Butterfly

Extras (Tracks to be announced)

4CD set: Live (5 hours of previously unreleased, career-spanning performances: radio sessions, full live shows and acoustic sets).

2CD set: Remixes, B-sides, acoustic versions and other rarities.

1CD set: Demos, out-takes and oddities (all previously unreleased).

7" single: Caught By The Fuzz / Richard III 2020 Remixes.

Label Review. 

CD1: Sam Cooke (mono) (1958) / CD2: Encore (mono) (1958) / CD3: Tribute To The Lady (mono & stereo) (1959) / CD4: Hit Kit (mono) (1959) / CD5: The Wonderful World Of Sam Cooke (mono) (1960)

Finally, the first official collection of his early years, 'The Complete Keen Years' collects Sam Cooke’s early body of work as a secular artist after a glorious six-year run fronting the Soul Stirrers. His voice had become the dominant force in the gospel sales prior to the release of "You Send Me" and "Summertime". He was destined to become a major force in pop just as he had been in gospel. While this newly re-mastered collection includes standards and hits that had been associated with artists who came before Sam Cooke, Sam’s fresh approach made the repertoire his own and helped shape his own song-writing skills in a very tangible way. Within this period, Sam Cooke defined himself as a voice ahead of his time.

His album debut 'Sam Cooke' (self-titled, also known as 'Songs by Sam Cooke') was released in 1958, 'Encore' followed quickly. They were absent of any Sam Cooke originals and the cover of 'Encore' depicted Sam swinging with jazz musicians behind him, an honest depiction of what was in the grooves of the LP within. Cooke’s 1959 album 'Tribute To The Lady' is just that, a tribute to Billie Holiday, a/k/a ‘Lady Day.’ This session was recorded in stereo and reimagines Billie Holiday’s catalogue as Sam’s own. 'Hit Kit', also released in 1959, is a collection of his hits from this period, most of which were originals. Cooke’s fifth album from this prolific time, 'The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke' contains the original hit recording of "(What A) Wonderful World", from his last session for Keen.

Sam Cooke found his voice not by imitating popular singers but, rather, by his own singular interpretations of songs made notable by others. The thoughtful essay by Michael Corcoran that is included with this collection underscores this fact and suggests that 'Tribute To The Lady' specifically offers an essential look at how Sam Cooke found his voice: "Like Lady Day, Sam had a pretty voice too honest to be cute, sending the words on paper through a spiritual journey before coming out of a mouth fluent in both sorrow and triumph. But he didn’t sing songs her way. Sam Cooke put every note in a place all his own."

Tracklisting. 

Disc 2: Encore: Oh, Look At Me Now / Someday / Along The Navajo Trail / Running Wild / Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive / Mary, Mary Lou / When I Fall In Love / I Cover The Waterfront / My Foolish Heart / Today I Sing The Blues / The Gypsy / It's The Talk Of The Town

Disc 3: Tribute To The Lady [Mono & Stereo]: God Bless The Child / She's Funny That Way / I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues / Good Morning Heartache / T'aint Nobody’s Business (If I Do) / Comes Love / Lover Girl (Man) / Let's Call The Whole Thing Off / Lover Come Back To Me / Solitude / They Can't Take That Away From Me / Crazy She Calls Me

Disc 4: Hit Kit: Only Sixteen / All Of My Life / Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha / Blue Moon / Win Your Love For Me / Lonely Island / You Send Me  / Love You Most Of All / (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons / Little Things You Do / Let's Go Steady Again / You Were Made For Me / Lonely Island (single version) / Win Your Love For Me (stereo) / Almost In Your Arms (Love Song From "Houseboat") (stereo) / Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha (stereo) / Little Things You Do (stereo) / Only Sixteen (stereo) / Let's Go Steady Again (stereo) / With You (stereo) / Ee-I-Ee-I-Oh aka Ee-Yi-Ee-Yi-Oh (stereo)

Disc 5: The Wonderful World Of Sam Cooke: (What A) Wonderful World / Desire Me / Summertime (Part 2) / Almost In Your Arms (Love Song From “Houseboat”) / That's Heaven To Me / No One (Can Ever Take Your Place) / With You / Blue Moon / Stealing Kisses / You Were Made For Me / There I've Said It Again / I Thank God / Steal Away (album version) / Deep River / One Hour Ahead Of The Posse / Ee-I-Ee-I-Oh aka Ee-Yi-Ee-Yi-Oh / So Glamorous / Steal Away (single version)

Label Review. 

2020 album. Doom jazz. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

German darkjazz cult band Bohren & Der Club of Gore have announced their new album ‘Patchouli Blue’ It’s the group’s first new album in six years and their ninth overall. The band have built a loyal international fanbase on the back of their trademark ‘Doom Jazz’ sound and count musical icons such as Mike Patton and Stephen O’Malley among their fans. Strictly instrumental, this band and their sound have the healing power to survive these hectic modern times.

In a statement the band said “Dear friends of music where hardly anything happens, BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE is happy and proud, to announce their new album. You may have already given up hope, but miracles happen: PATCHOULI BLUE - instrumental, slow, uneventful - as always. Love it, hate it, listen to it.”

The current roster of band members in Bohren & der Club of Gore’s German outfit include Christoph Clöser (saxophone/piano/Fender Rhodes electric piano/vibraphone), Robin Rodenberg (bass guitar/double bass) and Morten Gass (synthesizer/mellotron/organ/Fender Rhodes electric piano/8-string bass/vocoder). Bohren & der Club of Gore’s Patchouli Blue, released courtesy of IpecacRecordings and it’s the band’s follow-up to 2014’s Piano Nights, and the outfit’s fifth album to arrive via the San Francisco-based label.

The band played two sold out shows in London’s Round Chapel recently (2019) and will tour the UK again in 2020.

Tracklisting: Total falsch / Verwirrung am Strand / Glaub mir kein Wort / Patchouli Blue / Deine Kusine / Vergessen & Vorbei / Sollen es doch alle wissen / Tief gesunken / Zwei Herzen aus Gold / Sag mir, wie lang / Meine Welt Ist schön

Label Review. 

2020 album. Singer songwriter. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

‘Skeleton At The Banquet’ is the new album from two-time Grammy award winning singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Gill Landry. Landry was originally from Louisiana and started out as a busker on the streets of New Orleans before becoming a contributing member of the band Old Crow Medicine Show with whom he recorded 4 albums and toured from 2004 to 2014. He’s released 4 solo albums to critical acclaim, featuring such artists as Laura Marling, Brandi Carlile, Klara Soderberg (First Aid Kit) and Karen Elson among many others. Landry has toured extensively internationally in his own right, and has also supported Mumford & Sons, Brandi Carlile, Ben Harper, Laura Marling, Ben Howard and Bruce Hornsby.

‘Skeleton At The Banquet’ is Gill Landry’s fifth studio album and the follow-up to 2017’s Love Rides A Dark Horse (Loose/ATO). “This album is a series of reflections and thoughts on the collective hallucination that is America,” he says. “With a love song or two thrown in for good measure. I wrote it from within the refuge of a small flat, in a small village in western France where I spent last summer. I found it to be a good place for seeing the forest through the trees, so to speak.” The album was recorded and produced in Los Angeles by Gill and Seth Ford-Young (Tom Waits, Edward Sharpe). It features Landry on vocals, guitars, pedal steel, keys & harmonica, Seth Ford-Young on bass, Josh Collazo on drums, Stewart Cole on trumpet and Odessa Jorgensen on violin.

Tracklisting: I Love You Too / The Wolf / A Different Tune / Nobody’s Coming / The Refuge Of Your Arms / The Place They Call Home / Angeline / Trouble Town / Portrait Of Astrid (A Nocturne)

Label Review. 

28 tracks. This new compilation has identical tracklist to the last one from 2008. New artwork. BMG. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

The Dave Clark Five for a brief period in early 1964 were seen as genuine competitors to The Beatles when their single “Glad All Over” knocked the Mop-tops “I Want To Hold Your Hand” off the top spot in the UK. The follow-up “Bits And Pieces” just fell short of the No.1 spot but after this the band from Tottenham didn’t trouble the upper echelons of the chart until “Everybody Knows” in 1967. However, the “DC5” were chart regulars throughout the 1960s not only in the UK but in the USA too where the band were undoubtably bigger.

Although the group were signed to EMI Columbia in the UK and Epic in the USA, bandleader and drummer Clark was a shrewd businessman as well who negotiated not only production credits but also ownership of the band master recordings. Since the band split up in the early 1970s, their tracks have only been available on a handful of occasions and in the CD age only in 1993 and 2008 has a greatest hits album been briefly available, licensed to major labels. And now they are available again, hopefully the rest of the DC5’s output will finally get reissued on CD and vinyl.

Tracklisting: Do You Love Me / Glad All Over / Bits And Pieces / Can’t You See That She’s Mine / Everybody Knows (I Still Love You) / Don’t Let Me Down / Any Way You Want It / Wild Weekend / Catch Us If You Can / Because / I Like It Like That / Reelin’ And Rockin’ / Over And Over / Come Home / You Got What It Takes / Try Too Hard / Everybody Knows / I’ll Be Yours My Love / Nineteen Days / Look Before You Leap / ‘Til The Right One Comes Along / All Night Long / Good Old Rock ‘N’ Roll (Medley) / Sha-Na-Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye / Here Comes Summer / Put A Little Love In Your Heart / Everybody Get Together / Universal Love

Label Review. 

The show in Moscow on 28th May 1979 with Ray Cooper was broadcast on BBC radio in the UK. This release is taken from the original broadcast masters, which have been remastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering. Official. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Heavily bootlegged over the years, this show from 1979 is finally getting an official release from the master tapes. The tour came two years after Elton John announced his retirement from the road citing burnout and exhaustion. It was a stripped-down show in support of his new album ‘A Single Man’; he was backed only by percussionist Ray Cooper. It was a commercially disappointing release, but it became the first Western pop album officially released inside the Soviet Union. This came at a time when the Soviet government was slowly lifting cultural restrictions and it led to John becoming one of first major Western pop stars, following Cliff Richard, to tour the country.

The set featured a cross-section of songs from John’s entire career, including “Daniel,” “Candle in the Wind,” “Skyline Pigeon” and “Take Me to the Pilot.” Russian authorities made the mistake of telling him not to cover the Beatles’ “Back In The U.S.S.R.,” so of course he played it at every show!

Tracklisting.

Disc 1: Daniel / Skyline Pigeon / Take Me To The Pilot / Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time) / Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me / Goodbye Yellow Brick Road / Candle In The Wind / I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Disc 2: Funeral For A Friend / Tonight / Better Off Dead / Bennie And The Jets / Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word / Crazy Water / Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)-Pinball Wizard / Crocodile Rock-Get Back-Back In The U.S.S.R.

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Yorkston / Thorne / Khan - James Yorkston (guitar/nyckelharpa/vocals), Jon Thorne (doublebass/ vocals) and Suhail Yusuf Khan (sarangi/vocals) - release their third album, ‘Navarasa: Nine Emotions’.

At the heart of YTK’s transporting new album is the subcontinent’s navarasa; the nine (nava) emotions or sentiments (rasa) of the arts, and each song on YTK’s new album is connected to one of these emotions.

A bricolage of diverse cross-cultural elements is apparent across the trio’s creations. James Yorkston weaves in Scottish folk, sangster and literary strands. Jon Thorne is grounded in jazz and groove. What the New Delhi-based, eighth-generation hereditary musician Suhail Yusuf Khan brings to this feast of pulses and cycles is northern Indian classical, light classical (thumri, for example) and Sufi devotional musical and literary forms. What binds these diverse musical strands together is, in James’ phrase, “a dark happiness.”

Tracklisting: Sukhe Phool / The Shearing’s Not for You / Thumri Bhairavi / Westlin’ Winds / Song for Oddur / The North Carr / Twa Brothers / Waliyan Da Raja / Darbari

Label Review.

2020 album. Jazz.

Our Overview.

For his new record, Pierre Genisson honours the legacy of the one known as the ‘King Of Swing’ and his worldwide successes: Benny Goodman, the incomparable jazz clarinetist who rose to become the pre-eminent swing bandleader of the 1930s, with an empire that launched many an act.

Both composer and conductor, born in Chicago, Illinois, the clarinettist shared his musical life between jazz and classical music: He was the first to perform jazz music with black musicians in the famous Carnegie Hall in 1938.

Though we know most of his jazz standards, he also contributed a lot to the development of the classic clarinet repertoire: for instance he distinguished himself performing Aaron Copland’s Concerto, Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs or Bartók’s Contrasts.

Bringing together these emblematic works with unforgettable hits like ‘Sweet Georgia Browne or the irresistible ‘Sing, sing, sing’, Pierre Genisson makes Benny Goodman’s star shine brighter and, alongside the brilliant musicians of the BBC Concert Orchestra, proves once again the extent of his talent.

Tracklisting: Sing, sing, sing (with a swing) / Concerto for clarinet, strings and harp: I. Slowly and expressively / Concerto for clarinet, strings and harp: II. Rather fast / Chicago / Prelude, Fugue and Riffs: I. Prelude / Prelude, Fugue and Riffs: II. Fugue / Prelude, Fugue and Riffs: III. Riffs / Sweet Lorraine / Ebony Concerto: I. Allegro moderato / Ebony Concerto: II. Andante / Ebony Concerto: III. / Moderato con moto /Stompin’ at the Savoy /Sweet Georgia Brown

Label Review. 

2020 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Canadian indie rockers Wolf Parade - Dan Boeckner, (Handsome Furs) Spencer Krug (Frog Eyes) and Arlen Thompson - release ‘Thin Mind’, the group’s fifth album for Sub Pop. ‘Thin Mind’ has sci-fi, post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives interwoven throughout. These themes emerged while working at Risque Disque, which Boeckner jokingly describes as a Dutchman’s failed utopia, a problematic structure with a post-apocalyptic vibe: the studio is housed in a stone barn hand-built by the Dutchman in the middle of the woods, using local materials and based on his memory of a building he loved growing up in the Netherlands

.‘Thin Mind’ finds the core members of Wolf Parade working as a trio, as they did on past albums ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ and ‘At Mount Zoomer’, with songwriting duties evenly split between singers Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug.

Every moment spent gazing at our screens is oversaturated with content, an ever-accelerated news cycle conditioning our ever-decreasing attention spans. The struggle to stay present, and to foresee a clear, sustainable future, feels very real. Wolf Parade address this phenomenon head-on with Thin Mind, the band’s 5th full-length and second to be produced by John Goodmanson (Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Unwound). 

“Thin Mind refers to the way that being around too much tech has made our focus thin,” says keyboardist Spencer Krug. “It’s opening one more page, scrolling one more thing,” adds guitarist Dan Boeckner, “and the weird, sort-of hollow automaton feeling that you get from it.”

“This record is very personal, but at the same time, we’re all coming from the same place of a general sense of anxiety,” says drummer Arlen Thompson. “How do you deal with the constant barrage of having your opinions swayed by all these different actors when you don’t know who they are or what their purpose is? There is no normal anymore.” 

'Thin Mind' marks a return to the original power trio of Dan, Spencer, and Arlen, following multi-instrumentalist Dante DeCaro’s amicable departure from the group in 2018, after the conclusion of their world tour supporting Cry Cry Cry. 

The album includes ‘Forest Green’, ‘Julia, Take Your Man Home’ and ‘Against the Day’, which features a rare co-vocal performance from Boeckner and Krug.

The 10-track release was recorded by John Goodmanson at Risque Disque on Vancouver Island, BC, mixed by Goodmanson at Bogroll Studios in Seattle, WA and mastered by Noah Mintz at Lacquer Channel Mastering in Toronto, ON.

Vinyl format includes digital download card.

Tracklisting: Under Glass / Julia Take Your Man / Home / Forest Green / Out of Control / The Static Age / As Kind as You Can / Fall Into the Future / Wandering Son / Against the Day / Town Square

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Iconic and iconoclastic Texan songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen’s heartbreaking, hilarious new album ‘Just Like Moby Dick’, 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.

The deluxe tip-on gatefold 2×LP package features lyrics, color labels, high-res Bandcamp download code, three sides of music, and a fourth-side vinyl etching artwork by Allen. The gatefold CD edition includes a six-panel lyrics insert with different artwork by Allen.

Tracklisting: Houdini Didn’t Like the Spiritualists / Abandonitis / Death of the Last Stripper / All That’s Left Is Fare-Thee-Well / Pirate Jenny / American Childhood I: Civil Defense / American Childhood II: Bad Kiss / American Childhood III: Little Puppet Thing / All These Blues Go Walkin’ By / City of the Vampires / Harmony Two /Sailin’ On Through

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Long-running cinematic rock band Caspian don’t want you to call their fifth album ‘On Circles’ a “redemption,” a “comeback,” a “rise from the ashes,” or any of the other sentiments that emerge when bands return from nearly five years of silence. Instead, this majestic collision of post-rock, metal, shoegaze, electronics, noise and ambient music is an existential meditation, an acceptance of the cyclical nature of both life and career.

Produced by Will Yip (Code Orange, Defeater, Quicksand, Turnstile), ‘On Circles’ marks the most organic writing and recording sessions in Caspian’s 15-year history. Together for four weeklong songwriting sessions, the band (joined by propulsive new drummer Justin Forrest), opted for music gleaming with visceral impact instead of over-thought tangles, over-arching concepts and drawn-out crescendos ‘On Circles’ is an art-rock record swirling with fourth-world saxophones, dubby textures and 7/8 rhythms. The albums two epics, “Division Blues” and “Ishmael,” feature apocalyptic cello from Jo Quail (Myrkyr, Winterfylleth, Poppy Ackroyd). The wistful “Nostalgist” features vocals from Pianos Become The Teeth vocalist Kyle Durfey.

For the first time, each track is meant to stand alone. “They’re just songs that we got together and wrote over the course of a year while trying to have a good time and reclaim whatever it is that’s simple about all of this,” says Jamieson. “Don’t get me wrong, we kicked our own asses constantly and stayed up staring at the ceiling thinking about song structures all night for a year … but being free from the yolk of having our music relentlessly try to answer the un-answerable was emancipating and humbling.”

Tracklisting: Wildblood / Flowers of Light / Nostalgist (feat. Kyle Durfey) / Division Blues / Onsra / Collapser / Ishmael / Circles on Circles

Label Review. 

The set includes both studio LPs The Honeycombs (1964) and All Systems Go (1965), presented here in their original mono versions produced by Joe Meek. Also on these discs are the non LP b-sides and more. Also includes their third LP In Tokyo (1966), a live recording. Also the Japan only singles recorded at Nippon Columbia Studios and the solo singles from guitarist Martin Murray and lead singer Denny D’ell. RPM.

Our Overview. 

Originally called The Sheratons, The Honeycombs were formed in late 1963 and they were spotted only a few months later by aspiring songwriters Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley who would go on to become prolific and successful hit makers for the likes of The Herd, Petula Clark, Sacha Distel, Frankie Howerd (the theme song for his film Up Pompeii), Engelbert Humperdinck, Horst Jankowski, Eartha Kitt, Little Eva, Lulu and Matthews Southern Comfort.

Their song “Have I The Right” was recorded by indie producer Joe Meek who accentuated the stomping drums on the track and it was released by Pye Records. Helped along by the fact that The Honeycombs drummer Honey Lantree was a woman, which in 1964 was news, the song sped to No.1 in the Summer of that year. Further hits were hard to come by but the group recorded two albums and a brace of singles before the group finally called it a day in 1967. This new package is the most comprehensive collection of this mid 60s British Beat group yet issued. Definitely worth snapping up!

Tracklisting.

Disc 1: Please Don't Pretend Again / Colour Slide / Once You Know / Without You It Is Night / That's The Way / I Want To Be Free / How The Mighty Have Fallen / Have I The Right? / Just A Face In The Crowd / Nice While It Lasted / Me From You / Leslie Anne / She's Too Way Out / It Ain't Necessarily So / This Too Shall Pass Away / Hab’ ich das Recht? (Have I The Right?) / Du Sollst Nicht Traurig Sein / (Please Don't Pretend Again) / Is It Because? / I'll Cry Tomorrow / Eyes / If You've Got To Pick A Baby / I Can't Stop (45 version) / Something Better Beginning / I'll See You Tomorrow / Can't Get Through To You / That's The Way (Live)* / Colour Slide (Live)* / Hab'ich Das Recht? (Have I The Right?) (instrumental)*

Disc 2: This Year, Next Year… / Not Sleeping Too Well Lately / I Can't Stop / I Don't Love Her No More / All Systems Go / Totem Pole (Instrumental) / Emptiness / Ooee Train / She Ain't Coming Back / Something I Gotta Tell You / Our Day Will Come / Nobody But Me / There's Always Me / Love In Tokyo / If You Should / My Prayer / Who Is Sylvia? / How WIll I Know? / It's So Hard / I Fell In Love / That Loving Feeling / Should A Man Cry / I Don't Love You No More* / I Can Tell (Something's Up)* / Tell Me Baby* / Somewhere Along The Way*

Disc 3: Colour Slide (Live) / I'll Go Crazy (Live) / She's About A Mover (Live) / There's Always Me (Live) / Wipe Out (Live) / Lucille (Live) / If You Should (Live) / Have I The Right? (Live) / Goldfinger (Live) / Kansas City (Live) / My Prayer (Live) / What'd I Say (Live) / Goldfinger (Instrumental) / Santa Claus Is Backin’ To Town / Silent Night Holy Night / Hurricane (Instrumental) / Music Train (Instrumental) / Time* / White Sands From The Ocean* / I Know What I Want (Martin Murray solo) / Goodbye My Baby (Martin Murray solo) / It Breaks My Heart (Denny D’Ell solo) / Better Use Your Head (Denny D’Ell solo) / A Woman Called Sorrow (Denny D’Ell solo) / The Night Has A Thousand Eyes (Denny D’Ell solo)

*Previously unreleased

Label Review. 

2020 album. With Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai), Tracyanne Campbell (Camera Obscura), Kris Drever (Lau), Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand), Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian), Pictish Trail, Emma Pollock (Delgados), Karine Polwart, Rick Redbeard (Phantom Band), James Yorkston, Phyllis King (Ivor Cutler's longtime companion and collaborator) and Robert Wyatt. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Citizen Bravo - AKA Matt Brennan music artist and researcher from Nova Scotia, Canada - and Raymond MacDonald - Scottish saxophonist and composer - and a host of friends from the crème de la crème of Scotland’s music scene present ‘Return To Y’Hup: The World of Ivor Cutler’, a celebration of the life and work of an artist of unrivalled musical and poetic vision.

The underlying concept of the album was to resurrect the mythical island of Y’Hup - a territory which Ivor Cutler dreamt up and described throughout his early recordings. Here, theisland has been populated with distinct Scottish voices alongside new arrangements of Cutler’s music.

Featuring a large number of high-profile guest artists including Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai), Tracyanne Campbell (Camera Obscura), Kris Drever (Lau), Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand),Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian), Pictish Trail, Emma Pollock (Delgados), Karine Polwart, Rick Redbeard (Phantom Band) and James Yorkston. Visiting the island as distinguished guests aretwo English vocalists, Phyllis King (Ivor Cutler’s longtime companion and collaborator) and living legend Robert Wyatt.

‘Return To Y’Hup’ is therefore an effort to summon Cutler’s imagined world and populate it with inhabitants, an ensemble who reflected the richness and diversity of Scotland’s contemporary musical landscape. Since all the featured artists on this album are self-avowed fans, they arguably also represent Cutler’s cultural descendants.

As well as the artists previously mentioned, the album also includes Sarah Hayes (Admiral Fallow, You Tell Me), Rachel Sermanni, Zoe Graham, Duglas Stewart (BMX Bandits), Heather Leigh, Adam Stafford, Future Pilot AKA, Megan Airlie, Limelight Ensemble, Chris Thomson, Kapil Seshasayee, Jo Mango and Anna Miles.

The vinyl format is pressed on ‘blue marble’ effect vinyl.

Tracklisting: Here’s A Health For Simon / Latitude And Longitude (ft Phyllis King) / Size Nine And A Half (ft Emma Pollock) / Mary’s A Cow (ft Malcolm Benzie) / Instance The Yam (ft Alex Kapranos) / Pickle Your Knees (ft Karine Polwart) / Gravity Begins At Home (ft Rick Redbeard) / A Cowpuncher And A Bird (ft Zoe Graham) / Boo Boo Bird (ft Heather Leigh) / Vitamin P (ft Duglas T. Stewart) / Green Rain (ft Sarah Hayes) / A Tooth Song (ft Adam Stafford) / Sh Chi (ft Stuart Murdoch) / Women Of The World (ft Tracyanne Campbell) / A Real Man (ft James Yorkston) / Yellow Fly (ft Kris Drever) / Shoplifters (ft Future Pilot AKA vs. Stranded Astronaut) / The Path (ft Stuart Braithwaite) / Muscular Tree (ft Megan Airlie and Limelight Ensemble) / Who Tore Your Trousers James (ft Rachel Sermanni & Chris Thomson) / I Got No Common Sense When I Stand On An Open Cart (ft Kapil Seshasayee) / I Believe In Bugs (ft Jo Mango) / Good Morning! How Are You? / Shut Up! (ft Pictish Trail) / Out Of Decency (ft Robert Wyatt) / Beautiful Cosmos (ft Anna Miles)

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Atlanta-based underground rock provocateurs Black Lips are releasing their new album ’Sing In A World That is Falling Apart’ a record full of their signature sound of deceptively soulful, intelligent songwriting.

’Sing In A World That is Falling Apart’ is country music but not as we know it which begs the question: Have these Bad Kids of 21st Century rock ’n’ roll finally grown up on their ninth studio album? Are they at peace with themselves? Have they made a record their parents could listen to? Boasting an unapologetic southern-fried twang, the twelve track collection marks the quintet's most pronounced dalliance with country music yet, with a clang and harmony that is unmistakably the inimitable sound and feel of the Black Lips. While the songcraft and playing is more sophisticated, Black Lips were determined to return to the raw sound that marked their early efforts.

The Black Lips new album ‘Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart’ and new single ‘Gentleman’ both continue to flick the middle finger to one and all. This ain’t another gaggle of bearded southern sons fleeing their collective suburban upbringings and collegiate music education. There aren’t the usual clichés about drinking, honkytonks, and heartbreak. These are, after all, the same Black Lips who rescued the waning garage punk subgenre by not sounding or dressing their musical predecessors. They also dug contemporary hip-hop and punk and actualised themselves.

Like so many dramatic moments in the Black Lips career, ‘Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart’ was born out of crisis. The band’s stylistic evolution through decades of prolific touring and recording took them where no garage punk band had gone before – huge venues, network television shows, and major music festivals.

Here Black Lips are at their grimiest, most dangerous and equipped with the best collection of songs since the aughts. Skidding onto the asphalt in a shower of sparks, they roll on with an unapologetic southern-fried twang, pacing the beast, every now and then dropping a psycho howl into the rubber room madness lurking underneath the truckstop fireworks.

This ain’t your granny’s country album. And conversely this ain’t your mama’s Black Lips.

Tracklisting: Hooker Jon / Chainsaw / Rumbler / Holding Me Holding You / Gentleman / Get It On Time / Angola Rodeo / Georgia / Odelia /Dishonest Men / Locust / Live Fast Die Slow

Label Review. 

2020 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Wire have announced details of a new album ‘Mind Hive’ via the band’s own label pinkflag. The band’s seventeenth studio album sees the definitive post-punk group continue a run of stellar releases, showcasing a band on peak form 40 years into their hugely influential career.

The first glimpse of Mind Hive comes with lead single “Cactused,” one of Mind Hive’s resoundingly pop moments, which premiered today at Pitchfork. Colin Newman’s vocal is wide eyed and wired, with Lewis’ smooth backing vocals thickening the plot. Matthew Simms’ effects-heavy guitar work creates a bright web of noise, with the song’s stop/start moments providing a series of precise energy bursts.

Since their inception Wire have maintained a reputation for creating music that stretches the rock form whilst simultaneously editing it down to its essence. With their gift for crafting songs that perfectly balance experimentation and accessibility, Wire were recently hailed by the Quietus as “one of the most consistent British bands of all time." Yet Wire exhibit little inclination to look back or trade on past glories, rather they remain resolutely focused on producing music which is smart, vital and defiantly modern. 

‘Mind Hive’ is the group’s first newly recorded material since 2017’s stellar Silver/Lead. That album garnered rave reviews (“Some of the best tunes they’ve done” – The Guardian) and career best sales. Yet, if Silver/Lead set the bar pretty high, ‘Mind Hive’ seems to have no problem vaulting over it – a supremely confident album featuring some of the band’s most upbeat moments of recent years. 

Wire’s back catalogue is of course studded with influential epoch defining works. Last year saw the reissue of their ground-breaking first three albums: ‘Pink Flag’, ‘Chairs Missing’ and ‘154’. These were voted amongst the top reissues of the year (Rolling Stone at no.10, Uncut at no.12 and Select at no.3). And now ‘Mind Hive’ arrives at a time when Wire are being cited as an influence by yet another generation of bands. They are also the subjects of a career spanning feature documentary called People in a Film due for release late 2020 (details here). 

Quite how a group that has been operating for such a long period is still able to produce such exciting and essential work is difficult to understand. And yet here we are; ‘Mind Hive’ is the most masterful 35 minutes of post-punk you will hear this year.  

Tracklisting: Be Like Them / Cactused / Primed and Ready / Off The Beach / Unrepentant / Shadows / Oklahoma / Hung / Humming

Label Review. 

2020 album. Real World. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Les Amazones d’Afrique the all-female collective of West African musicians, is a creative force that embraces international voices; sweet, strong harmonies that summon the rights of women and girls; and a meltdown of heritage and new gen talent. They were formed in Bamako, Mali, in 2014 by three renowned Malian music stars and social change activists - Mamani Keïta, Oumou Sangaré and Mariam Doumbia - and the collective has since expanded to involve many female artists from across Africa and the diaspora.

While their cause - campaigning for gender equality and eradicating ancestral violence - is worthy enough in itself, their musical creative expression is equally powerful. Richly melodic and far-ranging, it blends pan-African styles and collaborative harmonies withgritty, contemporary pop and the Congotronix-style production of legendary producer Doctor L (aka Liam Farrell).

Their debut album, ‘République Amazone’, featured guest contributions from the likes of Angélique Kidjo and Nigerian singer-songwriter Nneka and caught the attention of President Obama, who included one of the songs in his 20 favourite tracks of 2017. In 2020 they release their follow-up album ‘Amazones Power’, on which familiar voices like Mamani Keïta and Rokia Koné appear alongside a younger generation of singers who represent the exciting new sound of modern Africa.

Tracklisting: Heavy (Niariu, Boy-Fall, Jon Grace) / Love (Mamani Keita) / Smile (Niariu & Ami Yerewolo) / Queens (Rokia Kon.) / Smooth (Mamani Keita) / Dreams (Rokia Kon.) / Timbuktu (Mamani Keita & Amadou Demb.l.) / Red (Rokia Kon.) / Rebels (Nacera Ouali Mesbah) / Dogon (Mamani Keita & Amadou Demb.l.) / Fights (Fafa Ruffino) / Sisters (Kandy Guira) / Power

Label Review. 

2020 album. Astral folk. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Astral folk outfit Bonny Light Horseman - comprised of Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman - are releasing their debut self titled album. The timeless qualities of traditional tunes can carry us across oceans and eons, linking us not only to the past but to each other as well. It was under the banner of those eternal connections that the trio of Bonny Light Horseman came together. From Wisconsin festival fields and a German art hub to a snowy upstate studio and everywhere in between. On the album the band are mixing the ancient, mystical medium of transatlantic traditional folk music with a contemporary, collective brush. The resulting album, Bonny Light Horseman, is an elusive kind of sonic event: a bottled blend of lightning and synergy that will excite fans of multiple genres, eras, and ages.

“This record is about timeless humanity,” Johnson says. “These 500-year-old lyrics are so deeply applicable. ‘The Roving’ could be the plot of an ’80s teen movie: ‘I had a wild summer with this awesome girl then she broke my heart!’ How incredible is it that as humans we still just want to love and have sex and feel sad and fight? It’s ancient music that feels, emotionally, right now. It’s thoroughly modern.”

Each musician brought their own musical ideas to the rehearsals and the direction toward traditional songs from the British Isles emerged quickly. “I think it’s fair to say we are all inspired by traditional music in different ways,” Mitchell says. “We wanted to rework old songs but not in a ‘research project’ way. The emotions, the feeling of momentousness, the openness—even the chords being in open tuning—we wanted everything to be wide open. It was very healing to delve into these old stories and images that have existed for so long that you can rest in them.”

From the first chords of the eponymous song “Bonny Light Horseman,” the band’s desire to create emotional intensity in open spaces is clear. Mitchell’s voice rises with a fevered energy over a mournful strum, and the song comes off as a lament that’s at once sad-eyed and hopeful. “Deep in Love” began as a Fruit Bats sketch, but after Kaufman recognized its uncanny (and unplanned) similarity to a certain traditional tune, the song took on new life at the hands of the band. Other numbers like “The Roving” and “Black Waterside” feature newly-written choruses sung in harmony—a fresh take on the typically chorus-less ancient ballad form. “Jane Jane” chimes along with a Johnson/Mitchell call-and-response refrain like some forgotten nursery rhyme; “Lowlands” sees Mitchell’s silvery verses cutting through the instrumental’s understated dynamics; and the record-closing duet “10,000 Miles” balances the sadness of leaving with the warmth of requited love.

Nowhere on Bonny Light Horseman does the music feel staid, or burdened from the too-tight fit of a stuffy Renaissance collar. This is colorful, textured work: a lush and loving ode to the past with one eye fixed on the present. Not once did the band feel burdened by the errand of a too-faithful homage, instead reveling in a sense of freedom to take leaps and liberties as they saw fit.

“The folk singer Martin Carthy once said, ‘You can’t break these songs that are hundreds if not thousands of years old; you’re not gonna hurt them by messing with them,’” Mitchell says. “The songs feel like ours, but they’re not ours. We worked on them and they feel like an authentic expression of us, but we’re also reenacting ritual.”

Tracklisting: Bonny Light Horseman / Deep In Love / The Roving / Jane Jane / Blackwaterside / Magpie’s Nest / Lowlands / Mountain Rain / Bright Morning Stars / 10,000 Miles

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

The Norwegian-born Kaya Wilkins—under her artist moniker Okay Kaya is releasing her sophomore album ‘Watch This Liquid Pour Itself’. In Okay Kaya songs, her world looks a lot like ours - Netflix, jetlag, vegan peanut butter and chocolate ice cream, lonely bowls of ramen, diet trends. But unlike ours, each of these vibrates and shimmers with deeper, darker meaning, with existential dread and desire for understanding.

Through Norwegian-raised New Yorker Kaya’s dreamy soft-focus lens, the language of Twitter memes becomes modernist poetry as her breathy contralto voice sings lines like, “If you don’t love me at my guttural sound, you don’t deserve me at my guttural sound.” This is Sade for nihilists.

On the opening track of her new record, ‘Watch This Liquid Pour Itself’, from Jagjaguwar, she sings, “I used to fight the feeling, always let it win.” As she transforms these feelings, defeats, and victories into songs, the lyrics often involve pools of sweat, oceans and other forms of wetness - but Okay Kaya’s world is not one of renewal andrebirth… it’s not water at all, actually. “It’s more like bile,” Kaya says, “It’s what comes out in the purge.” In these songs, Kaya swims through her melancholy and anxiety - not as a way of cleansing herself but as an understanding of their depths.

Initial LP pressing on Coke Bottle Clear coloured vinyl.

Tracklisting: Baby Little Tween / Ascend and Try Again / Insert Generic Name / Overstimulated / Psych Ward / Gutteral Sounds / Asexual Wellbeing / Popcorn Heart / Mother Nature’s Bitch / Hallelu Ya Hallelu Me / Symbiosis / Givenupitis / Helsevesen / Stonethrow / Zero Interaction Ramen Bar

Label Review.

2020 album. Singer songwriter. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf is becoming one of the most important songwriters of his generation. His songs are tuneful vignettes of small moments and big hearts. Few artists are storytellers as deft and disarmingly observational as Andy Shauf. The Toronto-based, Saskatchewan-raised musician's songs unfold like short fiction: they're densely layered with colourful characters and a rich emotional depth.

On his latest, ‘The Neon Skyline’, Shauf intertwines stories of a group of friends who frequent a local dive bar, and through them, makes poignant observations about human nature with a novelist’s detail and melancholic humour. The songwriting is down to earth, yet sophisticated and inventively melodic. ‘The Neon Skyline’ is a creative leap for this already acclaimed artist.

For ‘The Neon Skyline’, Shauf chose to start each composition on guitar instead of his usual piano. He says, "I wanted to be able to sit down and play each song with just a guitar without having to rely on some sort of a clever arrangement to make it whole." The resulting album finds its immediacy in simplicity. Like he's done throughout his career, Shauf wrote, performed, arranged, and produced every song on ‘The Neon Skyline’, this time at his new studio space in the west end of Toronto. Over the course of a year-and-a-half, Shauf ended up with almost 50 songs all about the same night at the bar. Though paring down his massive body of work to a single album's worth of material was a challenge for Shauf, the final tracklist is seamless and fully-formed.

Tracklisting: Neon Skyline / Where Are You Judy / Clove Cigarette / Thirteen Hours / Things I Do / Living Room / Dust Kids / The Moon / Try Again / Fire Truck / Changer

Label Review.

1994 album. Rock.

Our Overview.

British group East Village are one of the great lost bands. Along with other legendary bands like Big Star and The Action, who also failed to fully stamp their mark whilst active, East Village made pop music that was timeless, but out-of-step with the musical environment around them. And now are re-releasing “Hotrod Hotel’ their 1994 singles collection.

Originally named Episode Four, the band was formed in the mid-1980s by brothers Martin and Paul Kelly in the sleepy Buckinghamshire market town of Princes Risborough just forty miles to the west of London. They were soon joined by Johnny Wood (guitar/vocals) and Spencer Smith (drums) and by 1986 they had forged their brilliant, classic pop sound and recorded their first release, the "Strike Up Matches" EP, which has gone on to become one of the most sought after releases of the C86 era.

By 1987 they had renamed themselves East Village and relocated to London where they recorded two EPs for Jeff Barrett's Sub Aqua label. The band gigged extensively through 1988 and 1989, including tours with The House Of Love and McCarthy. The 1989 collapse of Sub Aqua left the band without a label, but they recorded their debut album using money loaned by Bob Stanley, and were soon re-united with Jeff Barrett on his new Heavenly label, releasing their classic single "Circles." Just as interest in the band was building East Village played a sold out show at the New Cross Venue in South London only to end the set by splitting up on stage.

The album that followed, "Drop Out" (1993), was mixed and released posthumously on Heavenly and has gone on to be hailed as a classic of its genre. The years that followed saw East Village gain a cult status amongst fans of indie music and prices of original pressings rose rapidly as demand outweighed supply. A singles compilation, "Hotrod Hotel," was released to great acclaim by Summershine in 1994, and now we're very happy to facilitate its first, long overdue, vinyl release. 12” Vinyl Packaged in a classic 60s-style heavy tip-on jacket & includes a fold-out insert with note.

Tracklisting: Her Fathers Son / Precious Diamond Tears / Cubans In The Bluefields / Strawberry Window / Break Your Neck / Kathleen / Back Between Places / Vibrato / Here It Comes (original version) / Freeze Out (original version) / Violin / Go And See Him

Label Review.

German electronic music composer.

Our Overview.

Highly respected German electronic music composer Ulrich Schnauss, the Berlin producer who merges the textural layering of shoegaze with rhythm-savvy U.K. techno beat mining is releasing a career spanning retrospective seven CD box set ‘Now is a Timeless Present’ encompassing key works from the past two decades. The German electronic composer will be selecting fundamental music from his back catalogue.

At once uplifting and otherworldly, the music of Ulrich Schnauss utilizes multi-layered synthesizers to map out an aural escape route from the trappings of a reality limiting our imagination. Born in Kiel in 1977, Schnauss developed a love of electronic music from a young age. He explains, ‘I’ve always used making and listening to music as a way to escape – putting on headphones is a way to leave reality behind for a while, reminding oneself of the 'possibility of the possible' - regardless of how hopeless or dystopian the current state of things may appear to be.' Inspired by the alternative guitar bands of the late 80s and early 90s as well as Acid House and early electronica, Schnauss began developing his own distinct sonic palette. Melding delicate dream-pop sensibilities with ecstatic electronic excess and defying the constraints of music genre boundaries.

After a move to Berlin in the late 90s, Schnauss felt confident enough to begin releasing ‘little electronica pieces’ under his own name - 2001s 'Far Away Trains Passing By'. Four further studio albums have followed since then: ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’ (2003), ‘Goodbye’ (2007), ‘A Long Way to Fall’ (2013) and ‘No Further Ahead Than Today’ (2016). In addition, Schnauss has continuously produced and released music under various pseudonyms and in collaboration with other artists. He’s a prolific remixer and a member of the last Tangerine Dream Line Up picked by the late Edgar Froese.

Ulrich has taken the opportunity to remaster his entire back catalogue to be released on his own Scripted Realities label. The two most recent of the albums, ‘A Long Way To Fall’ and ‘No Further Ahead Than Today’ have both been extensively reworked.

The set also contains an 18-track compilation of outtakes, demos and fragments, including a cover version of Scott Walker’s ‘It’s Raining Today’ and Ulrich’s version of Bach’s ‘Prelude And Fugue No1 in C Major’, with 14 of the 18 tracks being unreleased. Each album’s artwork has also been refreshed.

This release makes Ulrich’s music available again after an 18-month period. These seminal electronic albums still sound contemporary and fresh.

Contains the albums ‘Far Away Trains Passing By’, ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘A Long Way To Fall - Rebound’, ‘No Further Ahead Than Tomorrow’ and ‘Now Is A Timeless Present (Outtakes, Demos & Fragments)’, with a total of 73tracks across seven CDs.

Tracklisting: Knuddelmaus / Between Us And Them / Passing By / Blumenwiese Neben Autobahn / Nobody’s Home / Molfsee /Brooks Was here / Sunday Evening In Your Street / Suddenly The Trees Are Giving Way / A Lie For Breakfast / Nothing Happens In June / As If You’ve Never Been Away / A Million Miles Away / Crazy For You / Wherever You Are / Gone Forever / On My Own / A Letter From Home / Monday - Paracetamol / Clear Day / Blumenthal / In All The Wrong Places / A Strangely Isolated Place / Never Be The Same / Shine / Stars / Einfeld / Here Today Gone Tomorrow / A Song About Hope / Medusa / Goodbye / In Between The Years / Love Forever / Look At The Sky / For Good / Her And The Sea / Broken Homes / Like A Ghost In Your Own Life / A Long Way To Fall / I Take Comfort In Your Ignorance / A Forgotten Birthday / The Weight Of Darkening Skies / Borrowed Time / Ten Years / A Ritual In Time And Death / Melts Into Air / Love Grows Out Of Thin Air / The Magic In You / Thoughtless Motion / No Further Ahead Than Today / Wait For Me / New Day Starts At Dawn /Water Under The Bridge / Negative Sunrise / Illusory Sun / First Bridge (2003) / Attraktor 1 (2000) /Attraktor 2 (2000) / Attraktor 3 (2000) / Stars Demo (2004) / Memory Lane (2003) / Einfeld (Demo 2005) / Second Bridge (2003) / It’s Raining Today (2008) / Third Bridge (2003) / Today’s Hopes Gone Tomorrow (2019) / Ein Feld Fur Ecki (2017) /Fourth Bridge (2003) / Shine (Longview Version 2008) / Fifth Bridge (2003) / Prelude And Fugue No 1 in C Major (2016) /Last Bridge (2003) /Surrender Bittersweet (2018)

Label Review.

2020 debut album. Shoegaze / Dream Pop.

Our Overview.

ThunderStars are releasing ’Number Stations’. The shoegaze/dream pop band from Austin TX formed in the fall of 2018, and marks the return of longtime Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos multi-instrumentalist, Erik Kang (vocals, guitar, keys). The group’s sound is dreamy and psychedelic, blending the blissful drift of Slowdive with the more spacious elements of Low and the shimmering euphoria of Cocteau Twins, which earned them some airplay on DKFM shoegaze radio early on. Their new album runs the gamut from driving, post-punk influenced numbers to more open dirges and daydreams. It’s a gorgeously engaging way to begin a year of music.

ThunderStars came together when Steven Bednarski (drums) posted a random thought about creating a band to use a phrase that was coined by his toddler during a traumatic trip to the hospital. This “art out of chaos” theme has hung over the band since its inception...After their second live show, ThunderStars bassist, Omar Richardson, was assaulted outside the venue, which resulted in a concussion and subsequent trip to the ER. This incident was covered extensively in Austin news.

On the eve of a week-long recording session, the primary studio engineer had a family emergency and had to cancel the project. Rather than scrap the time, lodging and airfare that was already committed, ThunderStars made the decision to track the album in a storage unit. The whole album was recorded by the band and longtime Kang collaborator, Sean Gardner (through an interface borrowed from a big box music retailer). Gardner, who was initially brought in to track auxiliary guitars on the record, became the key producer/engineer on the project. The end product of this recording session is Number Stations, a hazy mix of 90’s Creation bands with clear artifacts from Kang’s time on the road and Gardner’s keen ear for production.

Tracklisting: Appalachian Spring Break / Oceans / Not That Far / Ride / Sleepyhead / Riptide / Oscar

Label Review. 

1967 album. Sundazed. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

The hits kept on coming from heroic Dallas five piece rock band The Five Americans with their third longplayer, 1967’s ‘Progressions’. The members of Five Americans first met in Durant, Oklahoma at South-eastern Oklahoma State University in 1962. Under the leadership of lead guitarist, Mike Rabon, they formed a group called the Mutineers. The band played local beer joints and frat dances until the summer of 1964, when Mike suggested that they go to Dallas to try and make enough money to pay for tuition for the following fall semester. With the onslaught of the "British Invasion" by bands with strange sounding names, the group also took on a new handle. They were not bugs or beasts of any kind, they were simply, Five Americans.

Both ‘Zip Code’ and ‘Evol-Not Love’ careened up the charts as The Five Americans squared off on live stages throughout the Deep South with artists such as the Doors and Jefferson Airplane and more than held their own against the best American rock ‘n’ roll had to offer! Pressed on Limited Edition Gold Vinyl.

‘Progressions’. is an exciting combination of sunshine pop, bubblegum and folk rock with psychedelic undertones makes Progressiosns by The Five Americans a true time capsule of those special 60s sunshine days. Similar in style to their previous two albums, but with noticeably more psych influences. The Five Americans' third release, is their most well crafted album reminding us on the Monkees. Fans of sunshine pop interested in something more “matured” by this groovy Dallas garage combo should definitely start with Progressions.

The Five Americans were most famous for their song, "Western Union", which reached number five in the U.S. Billboard chart and was their only single to chart in the Top 20. In five short years the Five Americans sold millions of singles and albums. "Western Union" still gets airplay on oldies radio on average of 5000 times per month in the U.S. and Canada, and as of January of 1998, Western Union achieved the one million mark in airplay according to BMI, Broadcast Music INC.

Tracklisting: Stop-Light / Con Man / Black Is White - Day Is Night / (But Not) Today / Come On Up / Zip Code / Rain Maker / Sweet Bird Of Youth / Evol-Not Love / Somebody Help Me / Call On Me

Label Review. 

2020 debut album. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

October Drift’s debut album, ‘Forever Whatever’ is a cathartic collection of tracks encompassing themes of loneliness, fear and ultimate positivity, and builds on the solid foundation that they have built over years of touring and writing to cement themselves as an important and powerful new presence. Their label, Physical Education’s Justin Lockey says of their signing; “October Drift are one of those bands... there’s maybe a handful at best in every generation of guitar bands. They’re the band who will put their entire soul into every show, every time. They’re the band that just go their own route regardless of what every fucker else is listening to, or name dropping that they’re listening to. An unashamed British guitar band who just do their own thing outside of whatever scene is cool at the moment. I fucking love bands who do that, which is why I made their record and wanted them on Phys Ed Recs. It seemed like the perfect place for this.”

An immersive wall of distortion envelopes the powerful fragility of frontman Kiran Roy’s vocals, while he paints a verbal landscape of introspection, despair and hope amid a sonic palette that evokes both the driving, spacious absorptivity of My Bloody Valentine and the poetic, visceral honesty of Nick Cave’s lyricism. “It’s a song about trying to keep your head above the water,” says Kiran of the song “Losing My Touch”. “It was written at a time when everyone around me seemed to be moving on with their lives and I was stuck in the same place. Its basically about the fears of getting older and underachieving, but trying not to let it get to you and even staying optimistic in spite of those fears”. With influences as varied as The National, Radiohead, Interpol and Nick Drake, their heavy, pop-inflected rock is delivering a rejuvenating injection of fresh blood to the genre.

Tracklisting: Milky Blue / Losing My Touch / Oh The Silence / Cinnamon Girl / Naked / Cherry Red / Forever Whatever / Don’t Give Me Hope / The Past / Just Got Caught

Label Review.

2020 album. Rock.

Our Overview.

Bristol based post-punk four-piece with noise-rock, no-wave and free-jazz elements Repo Man are releasing their latest album ‘I Can Live With It If You Can, Son’. The noiseniks comprising of Bojak (vocals/ sax/violin), Ant Brown (bass), Liam McConaghy (guitar) and Jesse Webb (drums). ‘I Can Live With It If You Can, Son’ is their third album, following 2015’s ‘Minesweeping’ and the first recording to feature new recruit Webb (also of GNOD/The Final Age./Anthroprophh).

It represents the band both at their rawest and most expansive. Rep Man are reshaping 'rock groop' sturm-und-clang into subnormal forms, son-of-Oldham vocal slurries, oozing Free sax splatter and shards of punishing guitar bliss. From the clanging fuzzed out sonic whirl of ‘Low Pursuit’ dissolving into the death waltz jig of ‘May I Interject’, to the lyrical puzzles and bubbling synth rotor of ‘Asexual and Spineless’ and the languid menace of the title track, “I Can Live With It If You Can, Son” shows Repo Man hurtling further into respective streams of noise and compositional acuity. This culminates in ‘Moaty’ - free-form ambient jazz smashed open by the band at their heaviest. Building on their fierce live reputation - ‘I Can Live With It If You Can, Son’ displays an uncompromising clarity.

“This is real free form rock n roll...a must have album; an LP of sonic aural dyslexia. A true gem.” - Monolith Cocktail

Tracklisting: Low Pursuit / May I Interject / Asexual & Spineless / Shallow Matthews / Evan The Runt / Paid For Hands / I Can Live With It If You Can, Son / Moaty / Bozo Pretension (Bonus Track) / Repo Pop (Bonus Track)

Label Review.

2020 album. Folk/blues.

Our Overview.

Fatboy Wilson and Old Viejo Bones is a new project from acclaimed Brooklyn folk and blues musicians Samoa Wilson and Ernesto Gomez. Their self titled debut album features five brand new original songs as well as inventive interpretations of a wide range of folk songs.

Samoa Wilson is widely regarded as one of the best blues, jazz, and folk singers in New York City. The New York Times calls her singing “sweet, effortless, old-timey” and Nat Hentoff has called her style “the essence of unaffected musical storytelling.” Wilson grew up with music in her family, and began singing jug band music, early jazz and blues with her uncle Jim Kweskin at a young age. Ernesto Gomez, originally from Union City, NJ, has been writing songs and playing blues harmonica and guitar for a number of years with his band the Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blues. His influences are broad and include Cuban, Mexican, and rap music along side classic blues sources. Gomez was schooled by the late blues great Carolina Slim and Down Home Radio has called him “an authentic blues man”.

Fatboy Wilson and Old Viejo Bones seamlessly blends the original and the traditional. The down home traditional songs speak easily to the listener, and their original songs present a strong realisation of contemporary songwriting in a traditional style.

Tracklisting: I’ve Been Treated Wrong / It Don’t Hurt Nobody / Black Snake / Single Girl, Married Girl / Don’t You Make Me High / Show Me The Way To Go Home / Ballad Of Luis Reyes / Ridgewood Blues / Hand Me Down My Walking Cane / Floating Bridge / Tell Me That You Love Me Baby / Epitaph

Label Review.

2020 album. Rock. Also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Four piece Scottish acclaimed experimental rockers Vukovi have come racing out of the blocks since getting together in September 2010 and now Vukovi are back with heir new album ‘Fall Better’. Although they’ve been keeping themselves busy since the release of their widely-praised self-titled debut album in 2017 with storming sets at 2000 Trees, The Pit stage at Reading and Leeds, Y Not Festival, Slam Dunk, TRNSMT and more, plus support tours that include PVRIS, Set It Off and ONE OK ROCK, Vukovi focused their energy throughout 2018 on writing and recording their second full length studio album - ‘Fall Better’. The new album is full of the Riotous and energetic rock jams the band are notorious for.

The band say about the album “This album is our therapy and we hope it’s gonna help a lot of people as well. I wanted to do a concept album, but actually pulling one off is another thing, so we sort of met in the middle for this album using the intro and interlude to stamp out a solid futuristic theme. Album three might be the one to take the leap and actually do a full concept.”

With a fun and quirky introduction, ‘Fall Better’ sets us up for a fast and crazy ride with a cheeky parody of a radio recording. After which You are greeted with a mixture of dirty bass and guitar riffs, strong and fierce vocals courtesy of lead vocalist Janine Shilstone, and powerful and upbeat tracks, reminiscent of a pop/punk/rock fusion, that at times echoes influences of Paramore, Evanescence and even Sia. ‘Violent Minds’ throws you in at the deep end, it’s  a song that grips you tightly and pulls you in. ’Play With Me’ injects an electro-pop melody into a cool dancetrack I can easily see being popular in clubs. Whereas ‘ White Lies’ has a steadier tempo that builds into a softer paced number in comparison. The album is an exciting mix that we are more than sure fans and future fans will adore.

"Their songs are bundling balls of energy, swathed in assured songwriting and deep "production that belies their age – just six months together as a band. And, sure to aid them to no end, there’s so much melody filling up their tracks that they bulge like Augustus Gloop’s waistband." Chris Cope The Scotmans On the Radar

"They're a four piece kicking out some powerful riffs and some equally heart felt lyrics. They are a phenominal band live". Ally McCrae Radio 1 BBC

Tracklisting: 17359 / Violet Minds / Aura / C.L.A.U.D.I.A. / Behave / Play With Me Cos I Can Take Me / Verify Your Worth / All That Candy / I’m Sorry / Where Are You / White Lies / Run/Hide

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on vinyl, and deluxe vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

“Everything Else Has Gone Wrong” is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the British band’s acclaimed number 1 charting, Mercury Music Prize nominated fourth album, ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ released back in 2014.

The new album was largely recorded out in the US alongside Grammy Award winning producer John Congleton (St. Vincent/Sharon Van Etten/War on Drugs). It features the band’s euphoric new single, “Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You)”. The video was directed by Louis Bhose, the band’s old touring keyboardist who has quickly become the go-to director for countless artists in recent years (Michael Kiwanuka & Tom Misch, Lewis Capaldi, The Big Moon, Loyle Carner). It was shot out in Ukraine.

Speaking of the record’s title, vocalist/guitarist Jack Steadman explains: “This is an album for anyone who’s ever turned to music in a time of need. It’s about the solace one can get from listening to music or playing music. For me personally it’s about the frustration of not being able to express myself to others, of leaving conversations feeling dissatisfied and misunderstood. Music’s the way I’m able to truly express myself”.

Bombay Bicycle Club have continued to grow, develop and evolve since the release of their debut album, “I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose”, back in 2009 when they signalled their arrival as young teenagers. Rarely in recent years has there been a British guitar band who have the craft and ability to avoid categorisation whilst uniting hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe. With an innate ear for melody and invention, the four-piece are a very welcome return to the fold just as British guitar music makes a timely renaissance.

Tracklisting: Get Up / Is It Real / Everything Else Has Gone Wrong / I Can Hardly Speak / Good Day / Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You) / I Worry Bout You / People People / Do You Feel Loved / Let You Go / Racing Stripes

Label Review. 

2020 album with 7 bonus tracks. Also available on Vinyl, and Double vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. A prime Fay song is a deceptively simple thing which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply. There are ten of these musical haikus on ‘Countless Branches’, as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded.

For decades now (it’s almost 50 years since he cut his classic albums ‘Bill Fay’ and ‘Time Of The Last Persecution’), songs like these have been Fay’s ambassadors helping rave reviews and endorsements from the likes of Jim O’Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) which led to a huge revival of interest in his music. He had continued to make music almost every day in the intervening decades. For ‘Countless Branches’ Bill Fay has completed new toplines over some of his cache of backing tracks, most of them 20 to 40 years old.

Tracklisting.

Disc 1: In Human Hands / How Long, How Long / Your Little Face / Salt Of The Earth / I Will Remain Here / Filled With Wonder Once Again / Time’s Going Nowhere / Love Will Remain / Countless Branches / One Life

Disc 2: Tiny / Don’t Let My Marigolds Die / The Rooster / Your Little Face (Acoustic Version) / Filled With Wonder Once Again (Band Version) / How Long, How Long (Band Version) / Love Will Remain (Band Version)

Label Review. 

1990 debut album remastered with 15 bonus tracks: Unreleased demos and their one Peel Session from 1989. Also available on Vinyl and Double Vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

On the eve of a post-Thatcherite Britain, the Pale Saints, alongside the likes of Lush, Ride and Slowdive, were ushering in a new wave of British indie. They found in 4AD a perfect home for their music - an exciting and undeniable meld of noise and dream-pop.

Their debut album, ‘The Comforts Of Madness’, didn’t disappoint, now standing as one of the best of its era. Pitchfork placed it in their Best 50 Shoegaze Albums Of All Time, saying, “There’s a restless urgency, particularly when the volume swells and the rhythms intensify. That energy not only keeps [it] vital, it emphasizes Pale Saints’ inventiveness, how they channelled softness and rage into something distinctive.”

Tracklisting.

Disc 1: Way The World Is / You Tear The World In Two / Sea of Sound / True Coming Dream / Little Hammer / Insubstantial / A Deep Sleep For Steven / Language of Flowers / Fell From The Sun / Sight Of You / Time Thief

Disc 2: Sight Of You (Original Woodhouse Studio Version) / Way The World Is (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / Language of Flowers (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / You Tear The World In Two (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / Fell From The Sun (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / A Deep Sleep For Steven (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / Time Thief (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / Sea of Sound (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / Insubstantial (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / Little Hammer (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / True Coming Dream (Woodhouse Studio LP Demo) / She Rides The Waves (John Peel Show Version) / You Tear The World In Two (John Peel Show Version) / Way The World Is (John Peel Show Version) / Time Thief (John Peel Show Version)

Label Review. 

2020 album. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Recorded in Nashville with a slew of special guests including Robert Randolph, Marcus King, and Roosevelt Collier, the new album from G Love and Special Sauce, ‘The Juice’ is diploma-worthy. “I’ve been in the game a long time, but I’ve always considered myself a student,” says G. Love. “Finishing this album with Keb Mo’ felt like graduation”.

Co-produced and co-written with Grammy-winning icon Keb Mo’, it’s an electrifying collection, one that tips its cap to more than a century of blues greats even as it offers its own distinctly modern pop spin on the genre and solidifies his place in music history as a genre-bending pioneer with a sound The New York Times described as “a new and urgent hybrid” and NPR called a “musical melting pot”.

G. Love’s lyrics are both personal and political here, artfully balancing his appreciation for the simple joys in life with his obligation to speak out for justice and equality, and his performances are suitably riotous and rousing to match, with infectious call-and-response hooks and funky sing-along choruses at every turn.

Easy as it is to succumb to cynicism these days, the songs on ‘The Juice’ refuse, insisting instead on hope and determination in the face of doubt and despair. “I’ve never been the kind of guy who thinks he’s going to change the world with his guitar,” reflects G. Love. “But maybe I can write the kind of songs that give strength and encouragement to the people who are out there doing the work to make this planet a better place. Those are the people I want to lift up with my music”.

Tracklisting: The Juice (feat. Marcus King) / Soulbque (feat. Roosevelt Collier) / Go Crazy (feat. Keb’ Mo’) / Shake Your Hair / Fix Your Face / She’s the Rock / Diggin’ Roots (feat. Ron Artis II) / Shine on Moon (feat. Keb’ Mo’) / Birmingham (feat. Robert Randolph & Keb’ Mo’) / Drinkin’ Wine / The Juice (Reprise)

Label Review. 

2020 album. With CD insert. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Five years on from the release of their previous record, Austin’s beloved art-rock heroes And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead return with their tenth album: 'X: The Godless Void and Other Stories'. Expansive yet concise, this album nods to the band’s traditional touchstones – the feral scree of Sonic Youth, Rush’s symphonic anthems, the textured bliss of My Bloody Valentine – while morphing effortlessly into newer forms.

The synth-orchestral swell of curtain-raiser “Opening Crescendoes” recalls Hans Zimmer and Tangerine Dream, before “All Who Wander” descends from guitar-soaked high drama into simmering, murky psych. “Something Like This” offers nods to the ethereal songcraft that defined the sound of the legendary 4AD label, before everything kicks in at full pelt with “Into The Godless Void”, as noisy and thrilling an existential anthem as the band have ever put their name to. And this is just the first four songs.

Work on “X: The Godless Void and Other Stories” began in earnest in 2018, after vocalist/guitarist Conrad Keely returned to the band’s hometown of Austin following five years in Cambodia. With a new line-up having recently toured the 20th anniversary of their Madonna album, they’re also reverted to the live format of their earlier years, with Jason Reece and Keely alternating between drums and frontman duties – a musical partnership that dates back to their high school days. Appropriately, it all feels fresh.

Tracklisting: The Opening Crescendo / All Who Wander / Something Like This / Into the Godless Void / Don’t Look Down / Gone / Children of the Sky / Who Haunts the Haunter / Eyes of the Overworld / Gravity / Blade of Wind / Through the Sunlit Door

Label Review.

2020 album. Ripley Johnson of Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo. Also available on Coloured Vinyl.

Our Overview.

The Rose City Band release their eponymous album which was produced and recorded by Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo), and mixed by Chris Cohen (Captured Tracks, Deerhoof), the album finds its niche in the hazy sonic landscape of private press country and psych records, and alongside artists like Relatively Clean Rivers, Jim Sullivan, Kenny Knight, and countless other explorers of the pastoral underground.

Says the band in a statement “The band was aiming to capture a timeless, natural sound, not quite of the present, past, or future, but phasing in between the consciousness of now and the stoned dream-state of the eternal. Sort of a back porch jam just as the shrooms are starting to kick in. Handmade and human, but also cosmic and transcendental. The goal is to let the music speak for itself and hopefully find a weird and wonderful audience somewhere out there.”

Tracklisting: Rip City / Wide Roll / Me and WIllie / Wandering Feeling / Rivers of Mind / Fear Song / Fog of Love

Label Review.

2020 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Producer and club-informed forward thinker Londoner Georgia Barnes’ sophomore album, ‘Seeking Thrills’, is a musically daring story of hedonism, self-discovery and, above all, the transcendental power of the dancefloor. ‘Seeking Thrills’ is a sharply paced and fascinating album, packed with injections of lightness and fun, pared with rich, bubbling melodies that makes listening to it an experience that takes you into the party, through electro-pop into R&B, and back again. Her deep, brooding reflections carry us through euphoria, heartache and melancholy but always with the memory of the good times. Georgia is reminding you of the altitude of your last real thrill, and when we turn the record on, we’re there again, aching for more.

Heavily inspired by Chicago House and Detroit Techno of the early 80s, Seeking Thrills fuses analogue club sounds with solid pop songwriting and showcases Georgia's lifelong love affair with the drums.

The North West Londoner has been on a long, dazzling journey since the release of her critically acclaimed debut album in 2015. Her first self-titled collection of percussive, punk-inflected pop songs was lauded by The Guardian, Vice, The FADER and others - but nobody predicted the about turn she would make when she returned with two rough-hewn diamonds of house music in 2019.

Tracklisting: Started Out / About Work The / Dancefloor / Never Let You Go / 24 Hours * / Mellow (ft Shygirl) / Til I Own It / I Can’t Wait / Feel It / Ultimate Sailor / Ray Guns / / The Thrill (ft Maurice) / Honey Dripping Sky / * = CD / LP digital download card only

Label Review. 

2020 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Sunderland, UK based indie/art rock trio Field Music’s new release is ‘Making A New World’, a 19 track song cycle about the after-effects of the First World War. But this is not an album about war and it is not, in any traditional sense, an album about remembrance. There are songs here about air traffic control and gender reassignment surgery. There are songs about Tiananmen Square and about ultrasound. There are even songs about Becontree Housing Estate and about sanitary towels.

The songs grew from a project for the Imperial War Museum and were first performed at their sites in Salford and London in January 2019. The starting point was an image from a 1919 publication on munitions by the US War Department, made using ‘sound ranging’, a technique that utilised an array of transducers to capture the vibrations of gunfire at the front. These vibrations were displayed on a graph, similar to a seismograph, where the distances between peaks on different lines could be used to pinpoint the location of enemy armaments. This particular image showed the minute leading up to 11am on 11th November 1918 and the minute immediately after. One minute of oppressive, juddering noise and one minute of near silence. “We imagined the lines from that image continuing across the next hundred years,” says the band’s David Brewis, “and we looked for stories which tied back to specific events from the war or the immediate aftermath.” If the original intention might have been to create a mostly instrumental piece, this research forced and inspired a different approach. These were stories itching to be told.

The songs are in a kind of chronological order, starting with the end of the war itself; the uncertainty of heading home in a profoundly altered world (‘Coffee Or Wine’). Later we hear a song about the work of Dr Harold Gillies (the shimmering ballad, ‘A Change Of Heir’), whose pioneering work on skin grafts for injured servicemen led him, in the 1940s, to perform some of the very first gender reassignment surgeries. We see how the horrors of the war led to the Dada movement and how that artistic reaction was echoed in the extreme performance art of the 60s and 70s (the mathematical head-spin of ‘A Shot To The Arm). Then, in the funk stomp of ‘Money Is A Memory’, we picture an office worker in the German Treasury preparing documents for the final instalment on reparation debts - a payment made in 2010, 91 years after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. A defining, blood-spattered element of 20th Century history becomes a humdrum administrative task in a 21st Century bureaucracy.

LP format pressed on 180g transparent red vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with digital download code. Field Music will tour ‘Making A New World’ throughout 2020.

Tracklisting; Sound Ranging / Silence / Coffee Or Wine / Best Kept Garden / I Thought You Were Something Else / Between Nations / A Change Of Heir / Do You Read Me? / From a Dream, Into My Arms / Beyond That Of Courtesy / A Shot To The Arm / A Common Language Pt 1 / A Common Language Pt 2 / Nikon Pt 1 / Nikon Pt 2 / If The Wind Blows / Towards The Hospital / Only In A Man’s World / Money Is A Memory / An Independent State

Label Review.

Rosemary Clooney, James Darren, Charlie Byrd Trio, George Benson & Al Jarreau, Curtis Stigers, Rita Coolidge and more. Also available on CD+.

Our Overview.

Founded by Carl Jefferson in 1973 following the success of his hugely popular Jazz Festival, Concord Jazz has established itself as one of the finest jazz imprints in the world, home to legends the likes of Art Blakey, Ray Brown, Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Stan Getz and Mel Torme, and more.

Over the years since, the label has witnessed development of jazz music from classic to contemporary, joined by acclaimed vocalists and instrumentalists from big band to swing, blues to R&B, Bossa-Nova to soul - ‘Concord Jazz: Rhythm Along The Years’ hopes to capture a glimpse of this shiny page of musical history with a selection of its extraordinary recordings.

UHQCD - Playable on any CD player. Also available on 24-Karat Gold-Edition and 180 Gr. Audiophile LP (17th Janusry 2020).

Tracklisting: The Days Of Wine And Roses / A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square / It’s A Wonderful World / Let It Rain ( with Patti Austin ) / No More Blues / All The Things You Are / Carinhoso / We’re All Alone / Ain’t Misbehavin’ / Corcovado (Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars) / In A Mellotone / Falling In Love With Love / Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing / Route 66 / The Shadow Of Your Smile / Every Time We Say Goodbye

Label Review. 

Two shows issued for the first time. Recorded 12th January & 3rd October. Also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

The legendary folk/jazz/roots performer Leon Redbone was a “Wanderer between the worlds”. No other words can describe the musical work of the 1949 in Cyprus born Leon Redborne. Best known for his interpretations of music from the depression times, Blues, Ragtime, Folk and the Tin Pan Alley era and on top his remarkable singing style. His music is a reminder of how novel a figure he cut at the time: a sly anachronism singing ragtime, country and Delta blues in dark glasses and a Panama hat.

‘Live In Bremen’ features both concerts which took place in the same year, 1977 in Bremen in Northern Germany and show two different kinds of Leon Redbone. Whilst at his first concert at the “Glocke” he was accompanied by tuba player Jonathan Dorn, the other concert at the “Post-Aula” was a solo concert, pure and simple. Both concerts are electrifying through his unique performance, the combination of Blues and influences from Folk-Jazz. 

Strange in the first place the music develops into charming recordings from a special entertainer that he was. He sings, yodels, murmurs and hums and knows to fascinate his fans with his warm and outstanding voice. A must have for every fan of traditional and not commonplace music. Now both concerts are now officially released on CD for the first time.

Tracklisting:

LP 1 - Bremen, Glocke, 12th Jan. 1977: Champagne Charlie / I Ain’t Got Nobody / Ain’t Misbehavin’ (I’m Saving My Love For You) / Has Anybody Seen My Gal / Big Time Woman / My Walkin’ Stick / Diddie Wa Diddie / Polly Wolly Doodle 

LP 2 - Bremen, Post-Aula, 3rd Oct. 1977: Nobody Knows But Me / Diddie Wa Diddie / When I Take My Sugar To Tea / I Ain’t Got Nobody / Champaign Charlie / Ain’t Misbehavin’ (I’m Saving My Love For You) / Polly Wolly Doodle / Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Label Review. 

Compiling the 2 vinyl releases (Electronic Musik EARS165LP & Pictures of Purple People EARS166LP). For the very first time the most complete collection of Marc Bolan’s mid-1960s recordings. Easy Action.

Our Overview. 

For the very first time the most complete collection of Marc Bolan’s incredible early 1960s years. Compiled from tapes originally stolen from Marc & Gloria’s home and recently repatriated. Features some tracks with legendary John’s Children (the band Marc joined for about 3 months) plus solo outtakes of material used for singles in 1965. “Jasper C Debussy” features top session musicians of the time Nicky Hopkins & John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin). This was due to be the follow up to the 1965 single “Hippy Gumbo” but failed to get a release at the time. Includes the complete acoustic demos from 1966 remastered. Includes the very rare tracks recorded as Toby Tyler early in 1965. “Reality” & “A Soldiers Song” are included on an album for the very first time ever, having only ever been released for the very first time on 7” single in 2016. Many of the later acoustic demos give more than a nod towards the sound of the Tyrannosaurus Rex material that would be recorded and produced by Tony Visconti a year or so later.

Tracklisting. 

1. The Wizard (unused stereo mix) 19th November 1965
2. Beyond the Rising Sun (unused stereo mix) 19th November 1965
3. The Third-Degree 3rd June 1966
4. Hippy Gumbo 25th November 1966
5. Misfit 25th November 1966
6. Jasper C. Debussy
7. The Lilac Hand Of Menthol Dan (Dan The Sniff)
8. Misfit #2 (different drum mix)
9. Jasper C. Debussy #2 (Echo on voice)
10. Hippy Gumbo #3 (different vocals /mix)
11. Desdemona #1 single mix (2.27)
12. Midsummer Night’s Scene #1 single mix (2.35)
13. Sarah Crazy Child (2.29)
14. Sally Was An Angel (instrumental) (3.11)
15. Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith (instrumental) (2.43)
16. Desdemona #2 (alternate lyrics) (2.27)
17. Hippy Gumbo (2.38) (Bolan vocal)
18. San Francisco Poet (1.43)
19. Gloria (The Road I’m On) (2.47) as Toby Tyler
20. Blowin’ In The Wind (Take 6) (2.41) as Toby Tyler
21. Reality (1.48)
22. Song For A Soldier (1.18)
23. Observations (Basic Track) (2.17)
24. Black and White Incident (1.43)
25. Jasmine 49 (2.25)
26. Cat Black (1.20)
27. You Got The Power (1.48)
28. Eastern Spell (1.27)
29. Charlie (1.54)
30. I’m Weird (1.18)
31. Pictures Of Purple People (2.19)
32. Horrible Breath (1.44)
33. Mustang Ford (1.39)
34. Hot Rod Mama (2.35)
35. Observations #2 (2 pianos) (2.13)
36. The Perfumed Garden of Gulliver Smith (1.53)
37. Hippy Gumbo #2 (1.53)

Label Review. 

12 track highlights from the box set. Includes 3 new mixes from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, 3 new mixes from Delicate Sound Of Thunder, 3 tracks from Knebworth 1990, 2 unreleased studio recordings from The Division Bell and a 1994 tour rehearsal track. Also available on vinyl.

Our Overview. 

Following on from 2016’s ‘The Early Years 1965-1972’ mega box set, comes a second collection of unreleased and cleaned up material from Pink Floyd, one the world’s biggest bands. This box covers the underrated final act of the bands long and storied career when guitarist David Gilmour assumed the helm following the departure of founder member Roger Waters. This period also saw the return of keyboardist Richard Wright who had left the band in 1981 while drummer Nick Mason remained the only member to have been in the group from the very beginning. For some, the outlay required for the big box may be too much - however the band have prepared a special single CD / double LP compilation featuring highlights from the set.

Tracklist.

1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5) [Live at Knebworth 1990] [2019 Mix] (new 2019 mix)
2. Marooned Jam (Unreleased 1994 Recording) (previously unreleased)
3. One Slip (2019 Remix) (new A Momentary lapse of Reason 2019 mix)
4. Lost For Words (Tour Rehearsal 1994) (previously unreleased)
5. Us And Them (Live, Delicate Sound Of Thunder) [2019 Remix] (new 2019 mix)
6. Comfortably Numb (Live at Knebworth 1990) [2019 Mix] (previously unreleased)
7. Sorrow (2019 Remix) (new A Momentary lapse of Reason 2019 mix)
8. Learning To Fly (Live, Delicate Sound Of Thunder) [2019 Remix] (new 2019 mix)
9. High Hopes (Early Version) [Unreleased 1994 Recording] (previously unreleased)
10. On The Turning Away (2019 Remix) (new A Momentary lapse of Reason 2019 mix)
11. Wish You Were Here (Live at Knebworth 1990) [2019 Mix] (previously unreleased)
12. Run Like Hell (Live, Delicate Sound Of Thunder) [2019 Remix] (new 2019 mix)

Label Review.

2019 album. Rock.

Our Overview.

With ‘Coma To Coma’, United Waters, the Brooklyn, New York based band continues even further down the road of the perfect melded song. Fronted by Brian Sullivan, of 2000s noisemongers Mouthus, the bands fourth album is a sonic experience where chords drip and flow into each other at a pace equal to honey at 35 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s this viscosity that sets United Waters apart from any other band that engages in the song-form.

Achievement obtained not by the newest pedals or computer effects, but by playing slightly out of this dimension. It’s a sound completely unique yet a sound you knew existed without ever having heard it before. The song-form transfigures into a new body that reveals new energies with subtle lines of force. ‘Coma To Coma’ takes that new body and refines it even further than their previous records. Imagine the painter Francis Bacon sonically slicing and transmogrifying the songs on Lindsey Buckingham’s Law And Order and you will begin to orient yourself to the sound of ‘Coma to Coma.’

Track Listing: Summer Your Eyes Out / Harbor And Rail / See No Globe / Who Will Sing Your Name / Arrowheads / Hydras Again / Isotopes / Home Fires / Snow Days

Label Review.

2019 album with The SWR Big Band And Strings.

Our Overview.

Paul Carrack has enjoyed a lengthy career - as a member of bands Ace, Squeeze and Mike & The Mechanics and is probably one of Britain's most enduringly successful singer/musicians, working with stars such as Sting, Elton John, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Simply Red and B.B King to name a few on his musical CV - Paul Carrack's voice is probably recognised by many who don't know his name.

’Christmas With Paul Carrack, the SWR Big Band And Strings’ is a selection of Christmas songs which have been recorded over the years, the most recent being at The London Playhouse 2018. Includes original orchestrations by some of Europe’s finest musicians and includes many Christmas favourites.

Track Listing: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas / Christmas Opening (Medley) / Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer / Thinking About You (This Christmas) / White Christmas / Let There Be Peace On Earth / Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! / What A Wonderful World / Silent Night / Winter Wonderland / Jingle Bells / Sleigh Ride / Santa Claus Is Coming to Town / Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree / The Man With The Bag (Everybody’s Waitin’ For) / Go Tell It On The Mountain / This Christmas (Hang Up The Mistletoe) / The Christmas Song / Silver Bells / When A Child is Born (Soleado) / Dimensions In Blue