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After a ten-year absence that left a palpable void in the hearts of millennial emo kids, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK are finally back-and yes, it"s everything we hoped for. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World feels like coming home: a dizzying, emotionally articulate blast of guitar-laced pop-punk that reminds us why this band meant so much in the first place. It"s a sonic time machine, sure, but it never gets stuck in the past. Instead, it builds on it-older, a little bruised, but somehow more alive. Justin Pierre"s voice still wobbles gloriously between a scream and a sigh, only now it carries the weight of experience, not just anxiety. Rather than reinventing themselves, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK double down on what they"ve always done best: big hooks, bigger feelings, and that perfect tightrope walk between chaos and control. Tracks like "Particle Physics" (with Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy) and "Your Days Are Numbered" (featuring Mat Kerekes of Citizen) channel the kind of clarity that only comes after surviving your own worst years. In a world drowning in lazy nostalgia, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is a rare and welcome return that feels less like a reunion and more like a long-overdue continuation.

Infoline proudly presents a compilation of tracks by Deo Cadaver on double 12' inch vinyl LP! Active from 1987 to 1993, Geneva-based trio Deo Cadaver stood at the vanguard of Switzerland’s electronic body music scene. Formed at just 17 years old, the group drew early influence from the visceral intensity of acts like The Young Gods, Front 242, Laibach, and Skinny Puppy—but quickly forged a sound and performative presence entirely their own. Their live shows became infamous: loud, theatrical, and uncompromising. Covered in grey-green clay and fake blood, suspended from chains, or locked in cages wired with sensors, projections, and video monitors, Deo Cadaver unleashed chaotic storms of samples, distorted drum machines, live percussion, and seismic basslines. At the center stood a vocalist whose voice and energy pushed the limits of physical endurance. Despite their undeniable force, Deo Cadaver remained largely unknown beyond their immediate circles. “There was no support structure—barely any venues, press, or labels for what we were doing,” they reflect. “Apart from our parents and a few community associations, we were completely on our own.” The internet, still confined, offered no relief. Connections were built face-to-face, and tapes were copied by hand. Still, the band found kinship in the Swiss experimental collective MXP, alongside other likeminded outliers pushing electronics beyond the dancefloor. Their spirit was one of invention, defiance, and independence.
While Belgium reveled in its New Beat wave and the UK fell into euphoric ecstasy, Deo Cadaver raged in the shadows—loud, isolated, and ahead of their time. This compilation finally brings their work into the light: a long- overdue snapshot of an uncompromising force from the margins of EBM history

John Calvin Abney rises again from the Oklahoman prairies with his latest album Transparent Towns. The ten songs focus on how we remember, and ultimately accept, though he is not always certain the memories we carry adequately mark the moments that make us. "This record is wrapped around the passage of time, whether or not we can trust the memories that we swear on, how we forgive ourselves and others as seasons turn, and how we define what is important as we roll the boulder back up the hill," Abney says of Transparent Towns. "We build these routines and live our stories, we rely on our histories and our memories - spoken and recorded. Now, we're relying on copies of copies, memories of memories, all packed like sardines into our phones, and we're losing the ability to tell our own stories. I have to constantly remind myself, as well as redefine what matters at the end of a day." Transparent Towns is the seventh studio album for Abney, and his first since 2022's Tourist, which he crafted after spending the pandemic as an itinerant writer. In contrast Abney penned most of the album's 10 tracks during a period of introspection and convalescence while recovering from vocal cord surgery in 2023. The time to himself - "I didn't sing for nearly a year, and after surgery, I couldn't talk for a month, and couldn't sing for over three months," he says, left him contemplating how to trace his experiences in the silence. The album's title track is Abney's take on the inaccessible past, witnessing loss and grief through the years, damning the "days we let go left unsaid", and accepting the uncontrollable circumstances we are sometimes placed in. "The troubles and the joys exist vibrantly in your memory, but you're wondering if you remember correctly," Abney remarks. "I've sometimes had this sort of confusion between memory and dreams - you crafted this ideal in your head of how things were or might be, in order to soften the blow of a harsher reality." The places we inhabit dictate how our memories form, and for Abney, there is one place to which he is constantly drawn: Oklahoma. Although he was born in the biggest little city in America, Reno, Nevada, he grew up learning guitar and piano in Tulsa, playing bars and DIY spaces from Norman to Stillwater. His affinity for the land that raised him is evident in the production of Transparent Towns. Abney self-produced the record, tracking most of it at Cardinal Song outside of Oklahoma City, with Michael Trepagnier handling mixing and engineering. The band was comprised mostly of Sooner State musicians too, along with Lydia Loveless and John Moreland contributing harmony vocals. His signature vulnerable voice and lyrical handiwork comes through in each of the songs, along with his penchant for alternative pop melodies set against colorful chords and subtle soundscapes. Having toured for years backing up artists like Moreland, Wild Child, Ben Kweller, and S.G. Goodman, Abney embraces a lead role again, as he presses forward with the loving lament and defiant joy throughout Transparent Towns, calling us to leave behind the pressures we place on our ourselves and recognize that just because there is an ending, it doesn't mean it's the end.

Human Leather have always been a ferocious live act, unbelievably loud for a 2 piece. Their gigs are often an overwhelming wall of sludge, howls and amphetamine-addled drums, with spectators flying joyously around the pit. Previous recordings did full justice to the impact of the live show; however, the second helping is something else. On Here Comes the Mind, There Goes the Body the sludge is still present, rising, and lapping at your ankles, but there's a new clarity showing off exactly how f*cking good those riffs are. There are ear worm riffs for days, shout along vocals that roar, shriek and reform into a Greek chorus, drums that thump you repeatedly in the chest and then the whole thing vanishes in just under 30 minutes, leaving you bruised, deafened and with Some Questions about your life. Squint your ears a bit and you'll hear the influences of bands like Karp, Torche and Big Business but they're thrown into a much crustier stew. The lyrics span a variety of political issues, not limited to the landed gentry, global warming and consumerist harbingers of doom. Importantly the songs are also not afraid to discuss class issues (unlike many political bands who you suspect have a much sturdier security net). While this could easily feel preachy, every line is delivered with the knowing wink of the underdog and good humour (I am going to smile every time I think of "clod damn" or "QVC Hands" staring up at me from the lyric sheet), and the vibes are as they've always been in difficult times - "we know we're fucked, tonight we mosh, tomorrow we march". And what is the point of a revolution you can't dance to? Speaking of dancing, the final track features an honest-to-god dance beat, acid squelches and disembodied vocal samples, pointing to an alternative universe in which Human Leather are a heavy electroclash band. Here comes the record of the year, bring what is left of your eardrums. You didn't need that body anyway

Honey Bane is back, with a new studio album, currently in the making, and this RSD exclusive! Honey Bane's first vinyl release in 40 years. A repressing/remastering of her debut single, 'Violence Grows', which Bane wrote and recorded at just 14 years old with her first band, Fatal Microbes, originally released on Small Wonder. Pressed on "bruised" black and blue colour vinyl. Features Honey's latest incarnation of the title track, 'Violence Grew' as bonus.

Tin Fingers takes on a darker, melancholic direction on their second full album. Felix Machtelinckx' weeping vocals, preaching, searching, and trying to understand God, form the leitmotif. With rich melodies, haunting piano sounds, improvisations, first takes and no overdubs, Tin Fingers is searching for pureness and keeping things human and simple. The band is playing together intuitively, without a computer, without ego, just for the sake of music

The creation of the album was very fluent and spontaneous. Singer Felix wrote the backbones of the songs and the lyrics on acoustic guitar and piano. He wanted to have songs ready in order to be able to record and write arrangements fast. With an eye for details but without overthinking, keeping the ideas fresh. 'I wanted to stay in love with the music.' he explains. 'It needed to go fast, very fast, in just two weeks the entire album was recorded and ready to be mixed.'

In the studio, the band especially focused on picking the right mood rather than playing the right notes.

They were fed up with working on a computer for many hours, overthinking production choices, and adding instruments on top of each other as if they were Lego blocks. This time they decided to work in a more traditional way, going for first takes, jams, and essentially working with analog gear. No computers, no screens, no distractions. Only four humans in a studio trying to make a sound together by keeping things spontaneous and raw. They said goodbye to perfection and worked towards an unfinished product, a snapshot.

Tin Fingers also didn't want to sound like any other artist on this record. They decided not to listen to music during the sessions, and to never express ideas by referencing other bands. Just before the studio session, however, bass player Simen Wouters broke the rules and shared Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's, I See Darkness. Its dark and searching sound ended up inspiring the band unmistakably.

Once the recording was finished, the band decided to keep the volatile rhythm going and asked reputable NYC-based mixer and producer D. James Goodwin to finish the job. Goodwin, known for his analog folk productions with a real American punchy sound but a tender touch, proved the right man for the job. He opened up the songs and kept things poetic, minimal but impressive.

Indie exclusive Peak Edition on Orange & Black Swirl Vinyl, in a gatefold cover + poster.



It's spring of 2023 in the North Carolina Piedmont, and songwriter and singer M.C. Taylor - leader of the band Hiss Golden Messenger - is feeling alive. Joyful. Eternal, he might say. For the Grammy-nominated musician, whose albums have traced an internal path through adulthood, fatherhood, spirituality, and depression for well over a decade, this is something new. "The tunes on Jump for Joy were composed in free moments throughout 2022, a year during which Hiss was on the road more or less constantly," explains Taylor. "And perhaps because the post-pandemic energy out in the world felt so chaotic and uncertain, I found myself thinking a lot about the role that music has played in my life and how exactly I ended up in the rarefied position of leading a band and crew all over the globe through dingy graffiti-scrawled green rooms, venerated music halls, dust-blown roadside motels.

Sometimes playing in front of 5,000; sometimes 200. Sleeping sitting up. Laughing until my stomach hurts. Not being able to fall asleep at 3 a.m. in some anonymous bed because my mind is spinning with anxiety or depression or adrenaline, or because my ears are still ringing. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, then robbing Paul to pay Peter back. Over and over again. It's an outlaw life but one, I'm coming to realize, that makes me happy." The songs that make up Jump for Joy - the sharpest and most autobiographical that Taylor has written under the Hiss name - read as a sort of epistolary, postcards between the present-day songwriter and his alias Michael Crow, a teenaged dreamer very much like Taylor himself, who trips his way through the 14 tunes that make up the record. In this way, Jump for Joy is a meditation on a life lived with art, and the ways that our hopes and dreams and decisions bump up against_ and, with a little bit of luck, occasionally merge with real life. "Creating this character became the way that I could explore these vulnerable, tender moments that were so decisive in my life, even if I didn't know it at the time," explains Taylor.

Produced by Taylor and engineered by longtime Hiss compatriot Scott Hirsch over two weeks in the late fall of 2022 at the fabled Sonic Ranch studio in Tornillo, TX, just a short walk from the Mexican border, Jump for Joy dances with joyful, spontaneous energy that feels like a fresh chapter in the Hiss Golden Messenger oeuvre. Taylor is accompanied throughout the album by his crack live band: guitarist Chris Boerner, bassist Alex Bingham, keyboardist Sam Fribush, and drummer Nick Falk, a collection of musicians that have helped make Hiss Golden Messenger's live performances legendary affairs

Press Quotes:

Rock Hard 8.5/10: "...noch ausgereifter und dürften sich endgültig als eine feste Größe im britischen Prog Metal etablieren. Das Nebeneinander von modernen und traditionellen Elementen funktioniert ganz wunderbar... Eine der positivsten Überraschungen des Prog-Jahres 2025!"
"...even more mature and should finally establish themselves as a permanent fixture in British prog metal. The juxtaposition of modern and traditional elements works wonderfully... One of the most positive surprises of the prog year 2025!"

Metal Hammer 4.5/7: "Insofern gehört auch LEGACY zu den tiefschürfenden Statements einer modernen Band, die voll im Zeitgeist ist."
"In this respect, LEGACY is also one of the profound statements of a modern band that is fully in tune with the zeitgeist."

Legacy 13/15: "Diese Band ist manifestierte Kreativität, die dazu dient, den Geist mit Glück zu erfüllen. So viel Schönheit ist schon bemerkenswert. Dieses Werk ist wahrlich ein Vermächtnis, welches den Prog in ein neues Zeitalter führt und in der Musikwelt seine Spuren hinterlassen wird."
"This band is manifest creativity that serves to fill the spirit with happiness. Such beauty is truly remarkable. This work is truly a legacy that will lead prog metal into a new era and leave its mark on the music world."

eclipsed 8/10 (#2 in eclipsed Radar Top 20): "Die erzeugten Stimmungen - die mit den eine dystopische Zukunft beschreibenden Texten korrelieren - machen „Legacy" vielmehr zu einem Bauch-Album, das mit Atmosphäre punktet und einem bei jedem Durchlauf besser gefällt. ...Durchweg tolle Melodien, starker Gesang und abwechslungsreiche Gestaltung der Songs. ...Es ist ein moderner Kopfhörer-Traum, den Ihlo hier abgeliefert haben."
"The moods created—which correlate with the lyrics describing a dystopian future—make "Legacy" more of a gut-pumping album, one that scores with atmosphere and grows more likable with each listen. ...Consistently great melodies, strong vocals, and varied songwriting. ...It's a modern headphone dream that Ihlo have delivered here."

saitenkult.de 9/10: "Mit ´Legacy´ legen IHLO den Grundstein zu ihrem eigenen Vermächtnis. Ein Werk, das in die Zukunft strahlt und zugleich im Hier und Jetzt überwältigt."
"With 'Legacy,' IHLO lay the foundation for their own legacy. A work that radiates into the future and simultaneously overwhelms the here and now."

theprogspace 10/10: "Ihlo’s growth since their beginnings has been nothing short of spectacular, and to witness how far they’ve come is inspiring. After listening nonstop to ‘Legacy’, it is really hard for me to realize that it is just their second album (!). It is so well produced with its raw energy and depth. It is truly cementing their career, carving out a big bold name within the best of the best in the prog metal universe."

metal-heads.de: "Ein interessantes Prog-Werk haben IHLO da erschaffen."
"IHLO have created an interesting prog work."

moshpitpassion.de: "Manchmal hört man einen Song und weiß sofort: Das hier wird etwas Besonderes. Genau so wirkt „Replica“, die neue Single von IHLO. …macht deutlich, wie weit sich die Band seit ihrem Debüt entwickelt hat. Die Atmosphäre ist dicht, die Dynamikwechsel kommen plötzlich und hart, und der Breakdown bringt eine rohe Härte mit, wie man sie von IHLO in dieser Form noch nicht kannte. Und trotzdem bleibt alles stimmig, melodisch und emotional aufgeladen."
"Sometimes you hear a song and know immediately: This is going to be something special. That's exactly how "Replica," the new single from IHLO, feels. ...makes it clear how far the band has evolved since their debut. The atmosphere is dense, the dynamic shifts are sudden and harsh, and the breakdown brings a raw heaviness never before seen from IHLO. And yet everything remains coherent, melodic, and emotionally charged."


Press Quotes:

Rock Hard 8.5/10: "...noch ausgereifter und dürften sich endgültig als eine feste Größe im britischen Prog Metal etablieren. Das Nebeneinander von modernen und traditionellen Elementen funktioniert ganz wunderbar... Eine der positivsten Überraschungen des Prog-Jahres 2025!"
"...even more mature and should finally establish themselves as a permanent fixture in British prog metal. The juxtaposition of modern and traditional elements works wonderfully... One of the most positive surprises of the prog year 2025!"

Metal Hammer 4.5/7: "Insofern gehört auch LEGACY zu den tiefschürfenden Statements einer modernen Band, die voll im Zeitgeist ist."
"In this respect, LEGACY is also one of the profound statements of a modern band that is fully in tune with the zeitgeist."

Legacy 13/15: "Diese Band ist manifestierte Kreativität, die dazu dient, den Geist mit Glück zu erfüllen. So viel Schönheit ist schon bemerkenswert. Dieses Werk ist wahrlich ein Vermächtnis, welches den Prog in ein neues Zeitalter führt und in der Musikwelt seine Spuren hinterlassen wird."
"This band is manifest creativity that serves to fill the spirit with happiness. Such beauty is truly remarkable. This work is truly a legacy that will lead prog metal into a new era and leave its mark on the music world."

eclipsed 8/10 (#2 in eclipsed Radar Top 20): "Die erzeugten Stimmungen - die mit den eine dystopische Zukunft beschreibenden Texten korrelieren - machen „Legacy" vielmehr zu einem Bauch-Album, das mit Atmosphäre punktet und einem bei jedem Durchlauf besser gefällt. ...Durchweg tolle Melodien, starker Gesang und abwechslungsreiche Gestaltung der Songs. ...Es ist ein moderner Kopfhörer-Traum, den Ihlo hier abgeliefert haben."
"The moods created—which correlate with the lyrics describing a dystopian future—make "Legacy" more of a gut-pumping album, one that scores with atmosphere and grows more likable with each listen. ...Consistently great melodies, strong vocals, and varied songwriting. ...It's a modern headphone dream that Ihlo have delivered here."

saitenkult.de 9/10: "Mit ´Legacy´ legen IHLO den Grundstein zu ihrem eigenen Vermächtnis. Ein Werk, das in die Zukunft strahlt und zugleich im Hier und Jetzt überwältigt."
"With 'Legacy,' IHLO lay the foundation for their own legacy. A work that radiates into the future and simultaneously overwhelms the here and now."

theprogspace 10/10: "Ihlo’s growth since their beginnings has been nothing short of spectacular, and to witness how far they’ve come is inspiring. After listening nonstop to ‘Legacy’, it is really hard for me to realize that it is just their second album (!). It is so well produced with its raw energy and depth. It is truly cementing their career, carving out a big bold name within the best of the best in the prog metal universe."

metal-heads.de: "Ein interessantes Prog-Werk haben IHLO da erschaffen."
"IHLO have created an interesting prog work."

moshpitpassion.de: "Manchmal hört man einen Song und weiß sofort: Das hier wird etwas Besonderes. Genau so wirkt „Replica“, die neue Single von IHLO. …macht deutlich, wie weit sich die Band seit ihrem Debüt entwickelt hat. Die Atmosphäre ist dicht, die Dynamikwechsel kommen plötzlich und hart, und der Breakdown bringt eine rohe Härte mit, wie man sie von IHLO in dieser Form noch nicht kannte. Und trotzdem bleibt alles stimmig, melodisch und emotional aufgeladen."
"Sometimes you hear a song and know immediately: This is going to be something special. That's exactly how "Replica," the new single from IHLO, feels. ...makes it clear how far the band has evolved since their debut. The atmosphere is dense, the dynamic shifts are sudden and harsh, and the breakdown brings a raw heaviness never before seen from IHLO. And yet everything remains coherent, melodic, and emotionally charged.

Press Quotes:

Rock Hard 8.5/10: "...noch ausgereifter und dürften sich endgültig als eine feste Größe im britischen Prog Metal etablieren. Das Nebeneinander von modernen und traditionellen Elementen funktioniert ganz wunderbar... Eine der positivsten Überraschungen des Prog-Jahres 2025!"
"...even more mature and should finally establish themselves as a permanent fixture in British prog metal. The juxtaposition of modern and traditional elements works wonderfully... One of the most positive surprises of the prog year 2025!"

Metal Hammer 4.5/7: "Insofern gehört auch LEGACY zu den tiefschürfenden Statements einer modernen Band, die voll im Zeitgeist ist."
"In this respect, LEGACY is also one of the profound statements of a modern band that is fully in tune with the zeitgeist."

Legacy 13/15: "Diese Band ist manifestierte Kreativität, die dazu dient, den Geist mit Glück zu erfüllen. So viel Schönheit ist schon bemerkenswert. Dieses Werk ist wahrlich ein Vermächtnis, welches den Prog in ein neues Zeitalter führt und in der Musikwelt seine Spuren hinterlassen wird."
"This band is manifest creativity that serves to fill the spirit with happiness. Such beauty is truly remarkable. This work is truly a legacy that will lead prog metal into a new era and leave its mark on the music world."

eclipsed 8/10 (#2 in eclipsed Radar Top 20): "Die erzeugten Stimmungen - die mit den eine dystopische Zukunft beschreibenden Texten korrelieren - machen „Legacy" vielmehr zu einem Bauch-Album, das mit Atmosphäre punktet und einem bei jedem Durchlauf besser gefällt. ...Durchweg tolle Melodien, starker Gesang und abwechslungsreiche Gestaltung der Songs. ...Es ist ein moderner Kopfhörer-Traum, den Ihlo hier abgeliefert haben."
"The moods created—which correlate with the lyrics describing a dystopian future—make "Legacy" more of a gut-pumping album, one that scores with atmosphere and grows more likable with each listen. ...Consistently great melodies, strong vocals, and varied songwriting. ...It's a modern headphone dream that Ihlo have delivered here."

saitenkult.de 9/10: "Mit ´Legacy´ legen IHLO den Grundstein zu ihrem eigenen Vermächtnis. Ein Werk, das in die Zukunft strahlt und zugleich im Hier und Jetzt überwältigt."
"With 'Legacy,' IHLO lay the foundation for their own legacy. A work that radiates into the future and simultaneously overwhelms the here and now."

theprogspace 10/10: "Ihlo’s growth since their beginnings has been nothing short of spectacular, and to witness how far they’ve come is inspiring. After listening nonstop to ‘Legacy’, it is really hard for me to realize that it is just their second album (!). It is so well produced with its raw energy and depth. It is truly cementing their career, carving out a big bold name within the best of the best in the prog metal universe."

metal-heads.de: "Ein interessantes Prog-Werk haben IHLO da erschaffen."
"IHLO have created an interesting prog work."

moshpitpassion.de: "Manchmal hört man einen Song und weiß sofort: Das hier wird etwas Besonderes. Genau so wirkt „Replica“, die neue Single von IHLO. …macht deutlich, wie weit sich die Band seit ihrem Debüt entwickelt hat. Die Atmosphäre ist dicht, die Dynamikwechsel kommen plötzlich und hart, und der Breakdown bringt eine rohe Härte mit, wie man sie von IHLO in dieser Form noch nicht kannte. Und trotzdem bleibt alles stimmig, melodisch und emotional aufgeladen."
"Sometimes you hear a song and know immediately: This is going to be something special. That's exactly how "Replica," the new single from IHLO, feels. ...makes it clear how far the band has evolved since their debut. The atmosphere is dense, the dynamic shifts are sudden and harsh, and the breakdown brings a raw heaviness never before seen from IHLO. And yet everything remains coherent, melodic, and emotionally charged."


Press Quotes:

Rock Hard 8.5/10: "...noch ausgereifter und dürften sich endgültig als eine feste Größe im britischen Prog Metal etablieren. Das Nebeneinander von modernen und traditionellen Elementen funktioniert ganz wunderbar... Eine der positivsten Überraschungen des Prog-Jahres 2025!"
"...even more mature and should finally establish themselves as a permanent fixture in British prog metal. The juxtaposition of modern and traditional elements works wonderfully... One of the most positive surprises of the prog year 2025!"

Metal Hammer 4.5/7: "Insofern gehört auch LEGACY zu den tiefschürfenden Statements einer modernen Band, die voll im Zeitgeist ist."
"In this respect, LEGACY is also one of the profound statements of a modern band that is fully in tune with the zeitgeist."

Legacy 13/15: "Diese Band ist manifestierte Kreativität, die dazu dient, den Geist mit Glück zu erfüllen. So viel Schönheit ist schon bemerkenswert. Dieses Werk ist wahrlich ein Vermächtnis, welches den Prog in ein neues Zeitalter führt und in der Musikwelt seine Spuren hinterlassen wird."
"This band is manifest creativity that serves to fill the spirit with happiness. Such beauty is truly remarkable. This work is truly a legacy that will lead prog metal into a new era and leave its mark on the music world."

eclipsed 8/10 (#2 in eclipsed Radar Top 20): "Die erzeugten Stimmungen - die mit den eine dystopische Zukunft beschreibenden Texten korrelieren - machen „Legacy" vielmehr zu einem Bauch-Album, das mit Atmosphäre punktet und einem bei jedem Durchlauf besser gefällt. ...Durchweg tolle Melodien, starker Gesang und abwechslungsreiche Gestaltung der Songs. ...Es ist ein moderner Kopfhörer-Traum, den Ihlo hier abgeliefert haben."
"The moods created—which correlate with the lyrics describing a dystopian future—make "Legacy" more of a gut-pumping album, one that scores with atmosphere and grows more likable with each listen. ...Consistently great melodies, strong vocals, and varied songwriting. ...It's a modern headphone dream that Ihlo have delivered here."

saitenkult.de 9/10: "Mit ´Legacy´ legen IHLO den Grundstein zu ihrem eigenen Vermächtnis. Ein Werk, das in die Zukunft strahlt und zugleich im Hier und Jetzt überwältigt."
"With 'Legacy,' IHLO lay the foundation for their own legacy. A work that radiates into the future and simultaneously overwhelms the here and now."

theprogspace 10/10: "Ihlo’s growth since their beginnings has been nothing short of spectacular, and to witness how far they’ve come is inspiring. After listening nonstop to ‘Legacy’, it is really hard for me to realize that it is just their second album (!). It is so well produced with its raw energy and depth. It is truly cementing their career, carving out a big bold name within the best of the best in the prog metal universe."

metal-heads.de: "Ein interessantes Prog-Werk haben IHLO da erschaffen."
"IHLO have created an interesting prog work."

moshpitpassion.de: "Manchmal hört man einen Song und weiß sofort: Das hier wird etwas Besonderes. Genau so wirkt „Replica“, die neue Single von IHLO. …macht deutlich, wie weit sich die Band seit ihrem Debüt entwickelt hat. Die Atmosphäre ist dicht, die Dynamikwechsel kommen plötzlich und hart, und der Breakdown bringt eine rohe Härte mit, wie man sie von IHLO in dieser Form noch nicht kannte. Und trotzdem bleibt alles stimmig, melodisch und emotional aufgeladen."
"Sometimes you hear a song and know immediately: This is going to be something special. That's exactly how "Replica," the new single from IHLO, feels. ...makes it clear how far the band has evolved since their debut. The atmosphere is dense, the dynamic shifts are sudden and harsh, and the breakdown brings a raw heaviness never before seen from IHLO. And yet everything remains coherent, melodic, and emotionally charged.

*Long overdue reissue of the first album by The Hanging Stars to coincide with their tour support slot with Edwyn Collins – initial 300 copies come with 12 x 12 print*

“In late-Sixties California, the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers combined traditional country music with hippy rock to great success. The influence lingered and whatever cultural relevance it has this is a delightful, transporting listen” – The Times 4/5

London-based psych-folk outfit The Hanging Stars re-release their much-loved debut album Over the Silvery Lake on Crimson Crow. Blending folk pastoralism with swampy 60s Americana, they sound like the missing link between the California desert sun and the grey skies of London Town. The album was recorded between LA, Nashville and Walthamstow, with each of these vastly different places leaving an indelible mark on the songs.

Now signed to the Loose Records label and fronted by London-based songwriter, singer and guitarist Richard Olson (The See See, Eighteenth Day of May), The Hanging Stars are essentially a loose collective of people who weave together a blissed-out psychedelic tapestry. The rest of the core band is made up of Sam Ferman on bass and Paulie Cobra on drums, Horse on pedal steel and Patrick Ralla on banjo, guitar. They jam rather than write and hang out rather than rehearse, harnessing a kind of tipsy euphoria resplendent with luscious arrangements and glorious vocal harmonies.

During 2015, prior to this album’s original release the band released two critically acclaimed singles via The Great Pop Supplement (both of which also appear on the album). “Golden Vanity” was premiered by The Line of Best Fit who said; “you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just unearthed a rare deep cut from the late 60s/early 70s boom of psychedelia infused Americana” and “The House on The Hill” was described by The Guardian as; "a hazy, desert-dream of a song, nicely sharpened with steely-eyed guitars, Mersey-laced harmonies and just a whiff of the Gun Club”.

There are a number of allusions to nature and the weather on the album, borne in part out of the contrasting surroundings in which it was produced. The band’s fascination with Americana led them to record some of the material Stateside, laying down some of the parts at Battle Tapes Studios in Nashville (Lambchop, Paperhead), as well as at Vision Quest Studios in Los Angeles with Rob Campanella. His work with The Quarter After, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beachwood Sparks The Tyde, and GospelbeacH was a perfect match to capture their sound and they even had San Franciscan legend Chrystof Certik step in on lead guitar for a couple of tracks.

Following the LA recordings, a trip to the Californian desert provided the core notion of what they wanted to produce - a shard of light that they clung on to whilst recording the rest of the album in the significantly more rain-soaked atmosphere of Walthamstow, London, under the watchful eye of Brian O'Shaughnessy at Bark Studios (The Clientele, Comet Gain). As the band explained at the time: “Ultimately we hope you can hear both the sand and the rain in this record.”

The Hanging Stars place themselves firmly as part of a long folk tradition encompassing European and North American influences – as a continuation rather than a pastiche of these styles. This is the sound of a band really coming in to their own, fully formed and in no doubt of their vision. With Over the Silvery Lake they succeeded in producing a record, which has the country, blues and folk traditions at its heart.

Pop-punk veterans Teenage Bottlerocket are primed to release their new LP Ready to Roll, the band's first full length for Pirates Press Records. "This time around, there was no big concept, no pressure. We just wrote songs that felt good to play," explains bassist Miguel Chen. "That freedom brought something fresh. It reminded us why we started doing this in the first place. The vibe is all about reconnecting with the joy of making music together. "The band returned to The Blasting Room in Fort Collins, CO, with Andrew Berlin behind the board & Jason Livermore overseeing the final master. "The Blasting Room is like home for us," says Miguel. "Working with Andrew and Jason is always a smooth ride-they know how to pull the best out of us." Fans got their first taste of what's to come via the lead single "She's the Shit." Ray Carlisle wrote the song for his wife Rachel, who he says "loves to give me a hard time-she rolls her eyes when I rock out in front of the mirror, makes fun of the music I love, and calls me an old man when I bring up movies she's never seen. And I totally love her for it." As for the song, Ray says, "It kicks the door open. It sets the tone for the whole record-fast, catchy, and not taking itself too seriously. Just the way we like it." This back to basics approach carries through the album, making it equally satisfying for longtime fans & newcomers alike. "Whether it's your first TBR album or your tenth," says Miguel. "There's something here for you." It's packed with everything you'd expect from TBR with a few surprises the band think you'll love - including a couple of songs where Miguel steps up to the mic for his first-ever lead vocals! "We're lucky to still be here, making music with our best friends, and connecting with people who get it," sums up Miguel. "Ready to Roll is exactly what it sounds like-we're stoked, and, in a way, we're just getting started."

Pop-punk veterans Teenage Bottlerocket are primed to release their new LP Ready to Roll, the band's first full length for Pirates Press Records. "This time around, there was no big concept, no pressure. We just wrote songs that felt good to play," explains bassist Miguel Chen. "That freedom brought something fresh. It reminded us why we started doing this in the first place. The vibe is all about reconnecting with the joy of making music together. "The band returned to The Blasting Room in Fort Collins, CO, with Andrew Berlin behind the board & Jason Livermore overseeing the final master. "The Blasting Room is like home for us," says Miguel. "Working with Andrew and Jason is always a smooth ride-they know how to pull the best out of us." Fans got their first taste of what's to come via the lead single "She's the Shit." Ray Carlisle wrote the song for his wife Rachel, who he says "loves to give me a hard time-she rolls her eyes when I rock out in front of the mirror, makes fun of the music I love, and calls me an old man when I bring up movies she's never seen. And I totally love her for it." As for the song, Ray says, "It kicks the door open. It sets the tone for the whole record-fast, catchy, and not taking itself too seriously. Just the way we like it." This back to basics approach carries through the album, making it equally satisfying for longtime fans & newcomers alike. "Whether it's your first TBR album or your tenth," says Miguel. "There's something here for you." It's packed with everything you'd expect from TBR with a few surprises the band think you'll love - including a couple of songs where Miguel steps up to the mic for his first-ever lead vocals! "We're lucky to still be here, making music with our best friends, and connecting with people who get it," sums up Miguel. "Ready to Roll is exactly what it sounds like-we're stoked, and, in a way, we're just getting started."

When NYC-based experimental dance punks Guerilla Toss, active since 2011, were in Vermont recording their new full-length album You're Weird Now, frontwoman Kassie Carlson would prepare what she called 'punk lunch': a communal meal made by raiding the studio fridge for whatever was left and assembling a sandwich from the most random ingredients imaginable. Regularly joining punk lunch were two legends from their own corners of the weird music world: Stephen Malkmus (Pavement, The Jicks) and Trey Anastasio, Phish guitarist and owner of The Barn; the recording studio where Guerilla Toss were making You're Weird Now, with Malkmus in the producer's seat. Engineer Bryce Goggin, who has worked with Malkmus since Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and Ben Collette, Phish's longtime engineer at The Barn, were also part of the crew. While the idea of the guy from Phish and the guy from Pavement sitting around with Guerilla Toss, congenially assembling sandwiches from random foodstuffs dug up from the depths of a studio fridge, might seem absurd, it also makes total sense. Because really, if there's any band that serves as the natural bridge between slacker punks who saw Pavement way before you did, wild-eyed wooks who've seen Phish more times than you ever will, and even the eccentrics in '90s drip following former GT tourmates Primus-it's Guerilla Toss. A band so imaginative and unapologetically themselves, they're basically the real-life manifestation of a utopian, post-snob world where all musical ideas are worthy of expression and everyone is welcome. You're Weird Now powers this message. Guerilla Toss' fifth album and second for Sub Pop is a hugely creative and joyful statement about the joy of creativity. With You're Weird Now Guerilla Toss reclaim the word "weird" for everyone brave enough to let their freak flag fly and stay true to their artistic vision no matter what-a way riskier act than it's ever given credit for, and one that requires a certain amount of serene self-confidence that it takes time and effort to cultivate and sustain. And they do so with the enthusiastic support of their musical predecessors: a standout moment arrives with "Red Flag to Angry Bull," which builds to a campfire sing-along-worthy outro featuring Malkmus and Carlson duetting over a chatty, classically Phish-y (there's really no better word for it) solo from Anastasio. The band hopes the message of You're Weird Now will resonate not only with music heads but anyone who struggles with feeling weird in a world where it will always be hard to be different. At the end of the day, it's all about the spirit of punk lunch: there's room for everyone because music is for everyone. "Everyone loves and appreciates music," says Carlson. "If you don't like music, you're kind of an asshole." That's not weird-that's just true.

Gothenburg/Malmö-based post rock power trio Barrens return with Corpse Lights, the band's second full-length release following their critically-acclaimed 2020 debut Penumbra. Five years in the making, Corpse Lights sees Barrens strike a breathtaking balance between light and dark, beauty and brutality. Corpse Lights, Barrens' sophomore album, is somehow deeper, richer and headier; imbued with an alluring compositional patience that serves as unspoken testament to the combined creativity of the trio in their element, as something so much greater than the sum of its parts. Recorded and produced by Kristofer Jönson, who also helmed Penumbra, and mixed and mastered once again by Cult of Luna's Magnus Lindberg, shimmering synthesizers and sprawling guitars lead the charge propelled by exhilarating drums and percussion but Corpse Lights also finds Barrens using space, silence and atmosphere as another instrument if not as another band member entirely. `Corpse Lights' is the name given to the folk belief that small coloured lights often appear near the home of someone about to die, leading them along the path to their eventual resting place. Often considered to be evidence of the soul leaving the body, the concept of corpse lights embodies Barrens' approach to creating music as a cathartic release; not just writing music because they want to but because they have to. Their writing process is one of joy, light and release as much as it is dark, heavy and tense. The result is Corpse Lights, a collection of nine pieces that guide us through five tumultuous years of highs and lows, of loves and losses and victories and defeats without ever needing to say a word. FOR FANS OF Mono, PG.LOST, Caspian, Mogwai, This Will Destroy You, Russian Circles, Pelican, Scraps Of Tape, God Is An Astronaut. Vinyl is a gatefold, the sleeve comes with metalic ink

Gothenburg/Malmö-based post rock power trio Barrens return with Corpse Lights, the band's second full-length release following their critically-acclaimed 2020 debut Penumbra. Five years in the making, Corpse Lights sees Barrens strike a breathtaking balance between light and dark, beauty and brutality. Corpse Lights, Barrens' sophomore album, is somehow deeper, richer and headier; imbued with an alluring compositional patience that serves as unspoken testament to the combined creativity of the trio in their element, as something so much greater than the sum of its parts. Recorded and produced by Kristofer Jönson, who also helmed Penumbra, and mixed and mastered once again by Cult of Luna's Magnus Lindberg, shimmering synthesizers and sprawling guitars lead the charge propelled by exhilarating drums and percussion but Corpse Lights also finds Barrens using space, silence and atmosphere as another instrument if not as another band member entirely. `Corpse Lights' is the name given to the folk belief that small coloured lights often appear near the home of someone about to die, leading them along the path to their eventual resting place. Often considered to be evidence of the soul leaving the body, the concept of corpse lights embodies Barrens' approach to creating music as a cathartic release; not just writing music because they want to but because they have to. Their writing process is one of joy, light and release as much as it is dark, heavy and tense. The result is Corpse Lights, a collection of nine pieces that guide us through five tumultuous years of highs and lows, of loves and losses and victories and defeats without ever needing to say a word. FOR FANS OF Mono, PG.LOST, Caspian, Mogwai, This Will Destroy You, Russian Circles, Pelican, Scraps Of Tape, God Is An Astronaut. Vinyl is a gatefold, the sleeve comes with metalic ink, the Periastron edition is transparent "white" Vinyl

"Bite Reality", das neue Album des New Yorker Indie-Duos Cafuné, präsentiert die Band sowohl musikalisch als auch textlich in einem konfrontativeren Umfeld. Das Ergebnis ist ein selbstproduziertes Album über digitale Erniedrigung, das zweischneidige Schwert der Realitätsflucht und das Bedürfnis, sich von Menschen und Gefühlen zu lösen, die einem nicht guttun. Cafunés Sound bewegt sich zwischen traditionellem, wohltuendem Dream-Pop und Indie-Rock, die beiden Protagonisten teilen eine Liebe für ihre Vorbilder Two Doors Cinema Club. Der Song "Tek It" aus ihrem Debütalbum "Running" (2021) ging viral und steht heute bei - über alle Versionen hinweg - bei über 1 Milliarde(!!) Streams.

Deaf Club continues their scathing indictment of society with their second full-length album, being released on Southern Lord and Three One G: We Demand a Permanent State of Happiness. Fast wit and faster blast beats are mainstays of the band, but there is also a sense of growth. This is their strongest songwriting yet, incorporating more hooks and good old-fashioned moments to mosh while staying as weird as ever. Raygun guitar riffs and unexplainable sounds abound. Justin Pearson, Brian Amalfitano, Scott Osment, and Jason Klein excel at inciting emotion in the face of apathy and voicing disgust amid a world rapidly burning.

Transparent green vinyl. After an uncomfortably long five-year hiatus-likely spent arguing about time signatures, chord progressions, and who forgot to bring snacks to rehearsals-Glutton is finally back. The beloved (by at least a few people) trio is ready to unleash their questionable wisdom upon an unsuspecting world with their upcoming album: "Skiva heter Vishnu!" On their latest outing, Glutton boldly ditches vocals (likely realizing that nobody was really listening to their lyrics anyway) and commits fully to an instrumental format. This time around, it's only guitar, bass, and drums-because who needs keyboards or vocalists when you have enough distortion pedals and élan? Guitarist Eirik Orevik Aadland (Spurv), bassist Ola Mile Bruland (Actionfredag, Jordsjo), and drummer Jonas Eide Hollund (Mt. Mélodie) clearly didn't bother to consider commercial viability while crafting this sonic oddity, delivering tracks like "Hallux Valgus," "Orkensur," and "Rematusenogennatt" with absurd seriousness and delightfully misplaced confidence. Expect a reckless fusion of punk attitude, jazz complexity, and prog rock pretentiousness, presented with complete sincerity and zero self-awareness (well, almost zero). Each track is carefully constructed to give the illusion of a band deeply serious about their art, while simultaneously admitting that they may have no idea what they're doing. Whether you're a sophisticated music connoisseur with an ear for complexity, or just someone who enjoys pretending to appreciate weird music, Glutton's latest record promises to be precisely the type of organized hotchpotch you didn't realize your life was lacking. "Skiva heter Vishnu!" - because of course it does.

Sticking a dirty thumb in the eye of fate, our third collaboration sees this marrow deep family malarky turn official as Pace Yourself teams up with YS’s own imprint ERF REC for a split release. As if our status as minor celebrities and footnotes of the underground could level off no further: the unification no one asked for is here. Sticking it to the man, handing your arse to ya on plate; cauterising infected suburban minds world over.

Burn is the second YS album and written as a direct follow-up album to Brutal Flowers. If their first album was an exercise in the incremental, a construction of poise and patience, Burn, should be taken way the fuck at it’s word: it quite literally finds catharsis in twisted reverse. Birthed out the malignant kick found in deconstruction and chaos. Evil twin, psychotic younger sibling, call it what the hell you like. It might take you a moment to get the lay of the land in this darkly mutated world. Like a bug eye’d native first confronted with a zippo, the hit is radical and instant: a new way for the world to go up in smoke.

Splice the Seattle slacker scene with the spliffhead soundsystem culture of the 90s Bristol trip-hop scene, then cross-breed that with the DIY optimism and glee in creation found in the cut-and-paste worlds of skate, graffiti and hiphop, now run that through the skitzo basement mind of John.T. Gast and you’re close to the kind of scorched earth and spiked suburbia that birthed Burn.

Dunno quite what YS have been ingesting of late but this massively twisted LP touches on a host of gloriously fucked totemic underground sources while not sounding much like any of them. It has the ballsy swagger and hard flipping of the script as Massive Attack’s seminal Blue Lines. Indeed, the eponymous album tracks sound similar - the opener ‘Burn’ is like a hard nosed jammed out redux of ‘Blue Lines’. Getting into a kind of slow-spinning overdubbed maximal euphoria ending with mumbled downer vocals, struggling to conceal their tongues in their cheeks there’s an air of paranoia and proto-conspiracy theory. It’ll leave you scratching your head, feeling like you’ve stepped into a New World Order governed by a cacophony of drop outs, dope fiends and apocalyptic stoners. A cracked out world somewhere between Richard Linklater’s movie Slacker (1990) and Marc Singer’s Dark Days (2001).

The rest of the album parts like a tongue on a wine glass: Smith and Mighty, Bandulu, ambient Luke Slater records, Wah Wah Wino, Nurse with Wound, Land of the Loops, Placid Angels, Adrian Sherwood, Urban Tribe and DJ Shadow can all be heard in momentary splatters - but Burn like other works by YS, is its own ritual beast. ‘Moth’, a track which has been knocking about the underground deejai circuit for many moons, is a real raw chopped and screwed slice of stoner erotica that reeks of obsession and unrequited desire. Elsewhere, on tracks like ‘Switch’, ‘Trying’ and ‘Drift’ the throughline from Brutal Flowers can be heard. Underneath the driving heavy gravity the trademark emotional intimacies of YS linger: eternal recurrence, ghosts of static and shortwave, worn memories of the playful and painful sort. The brief moments where flashes of orchestral ambience get out from underneath the swagger are so pure, personal and unguarded that for a moment they leave you completely lonesome. In the album’s closer ‘End’, you can hear the fleeting promise and DIY possibilities of an analogue world and embers of ash that flutter in its wake: where it seemed, for a brief moment, that collective of DJs, engineers, rappers, graffiti artists and skate crews were emerging from the streets, giving the middle fingers to the system, before just as quickly disappearing back to the doldrums of obscurity. ‘End’ is a bittersweet ode to early soundsystem culture, MCs and pirate radio - an out of step time where for a moment the underdogs and weirdos seemed to be kicking on the door of something bigger.

A veritable teenage doof suite dosed with desire, claustrophobia and deviance. Burn is a good old howl at the moon: lonely, raw, and out for blood; basement style exegesis at its best. A thump to the gut, a stud through your blood. A dubbed-to-death classic straight out of the annals of nowhere. A perfect post card from oblivion. A bleak, bold and personally ferocious vision of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

This is everything that record collectors skip dates for. Fuck the scene and keep that shit underground. That’s what it is all about. Know what I mean, if you do? You’re in…

Matt Watts (1987–2024) was born in Philadelphia, in the USA. He recorded his first songs along the banks of the Missouri River in Montana when he was 15, touring the north-western states extensively as a young troubadour. He arrived in Belgium at the tender age of 19 and grew into a full-fledged singer-songwriter that combines a profound respect for the folk tradition with contemporary influences.

His solo album, Songs from a Window, was released in 2014 by Starman Records and received glowing praise in the press.

Matt Watts played dozens upon dozens of shows in the Benelux, often together with Stef Kamil Carlens and Nicolas Rombouts. While his predecessor Songs from a Window was a true solo album, How Different It Was When You Were There includes personal stories by Watts that have been subtly seasoned with wonderful musicians such as Nathalie Delcroix, Bjorn Eriksson, Geert Hellings (Stanton, Guido Belcanto), Maarten Moesen (Guido Belcanto), and bassist and this album’s producer, Nicolas Rombouts (formerly with Dez Mona, Stef Kamil Carlens, The Colorist, Guido Belcanto, and many others).

One of the highlights of this album, which truly showcases Matt Watts’ awakening, is “Many a Friend Too Kind”: a fabulous duet with Stef Kamil Carlens. Watts also performed in Zita Swoon Group’s production, The Ballad of Erol Klof. Sadly, Matt Watts passed away in June 2024.

MORE QUOTES

“Watts, who washed up in Belgium, sings his personal, poetic lyrics in a high, whispering voice that immediately brings Nick Drake to mind.” 4/5 **** (De Standaard)

‘This is an album full of sincere sentiment and stimulating, evocative stories in fine songs that have been beautifully coloured by Watts and his band, and on which he brings the narrative aspect to the fore more than ever.’ (daMusic)

‘Sensitive songwriter, exceptional storyteller... Introverted, dark, more country, less Nick Drake.’ (OOR)

‘This is real, raw, authentic. Well done, Matt, very well done.’ (Keys And Chords)

‘And no matter how young Matt Watts may be, the singer/musician writes timeless songs reminiscent of those by David Blue and John Martyn...’ (Rootstime)

‘Matt knows how to strike that chord in the same way as Cohen, which immediately moves you. From the beginning to the end of this record.’ (Gigview)

‘A singer-songwriter who believes in simplicity (not a note too many), but grabs you by the scruff of the neck from the start and confronts you with the painful beauty of romance.’ (Luminous Dash)

‘Let's be honest here: Belgium has simply become too small for an album like “How Different It Was When You Were There”. Song material of this calibre deserves a much, much wider audience!’ 4.5***** (ctrl.alt.country)

Australia's powerhouse Hammond Organ trio Cookin' On 3 Burners serve up a heavy double-sider, offering DJs and collectors a taste of what's to come from their first studio LP in six years, due October 2025. With a 27-year legacy in the global funk and soul scene, CO3B have earned praise from the likes of Dusty Groove, Wax Poetics, and Rolling Stone Australia, and boast over 2 billion streams worldwide — thanks in part to their breakout hit "This Girl" (Kungs remix).

Side A – Cookin' The Books
A gritty, upbeat Hammond-led instrumental cooked low and slow in the heart of Melbourne's funk scene. It's all business up front — deep pocket drums, greasy organ licks, and guitar work that snaps and struts. No vocals, no fat — just a raw funk workout that's ready for the crates.

Side B – Give a Little Bit More (feat. Stella Angelico)

A classic-feeling, mid-tempo soul joint with a message that cuts deep. Longtime collaborator Stella Angelico delivers a powerful vocal performance about generosity, empathy, and turning things around when it matters. With uplifting lyrics, smooth horns, and a groove that nods to vintage 45s, this one lands straight in the heart — timeless, spiritual, and soul-drenched.

Captured live to tape at Soul Messin' Studios using vintage gear, the record oozes warmth and authenticity. Supported with airplay from Craig Charles (BBC6) and limited to just 500 copies on black vinyl in a Soul Messin' Records disco sleeve, this 45 is a must-stock item for funk, soul, and groove-focused retailers.

FFO: The Meters, El Michels Affair, Menahan Street Band, Quantic, Daptone Records

Introducing the Evil B-Side Twins — A New Era from Yazzus & DJ TOOL

Two of the most unpredictable forces in the underground are colliding at full velocity: YAZZUS and DJ TOOL are proud to launch Evil Twin Rekords — a label and collaborative project born from the wildest corners of their shared sonic imaginations.
Under the moniker The Evil B-Side Twins, the duo are setting out to warp time and space through a blazing fusion of trance, gnarly breaks, and techno rhythms. Their sound? Think hyper-speed rave transmissions beamed in from another galaxy — distorted basslines, and acidic euphoria intersecting 90’s psychedelic textures as they soundtrack a playful, alien-friendly universe. It’s high-energy, no-rules, evil as hell club music with a space-age edge. And their debut EP Relentless Spirit delivers just that.
Four rave-ready ‘in your face’ anthems, breaking the boundaries of modern electronic music. A collision of catchy grooves, iconic motifs from the old school trance world and mental melodies that you won’t forget easily.
Evil Twin Rekords isn’t just a label. It’s a wormhole into a sound that’s too futuristic, too feral, and too fun to fit into anyone’s algorithm. Expect inter-dimensional anthems, and records that feel like they’ve been smuggled from the B-side of a black hole.

This is rave culture turned inside out — full-throttle, unapologetically weird, and always one step ahead. From the UK to Scandinavia let the band expand your horizon and welcome you to the Evil Era. Listen without prejudice.

The artwork is a specially commissioned portrait of the twins, hand painted by friend and collaborator Ryo Koike, known for his eerie, whimsical fantastical style. Throughout his visual ident, he provides an imaginative window into the twins’ cosmos and beyond.

Everything Is Recorded, ist das musikalische Kollaborationsprojekt von XL-Recordings Chef Richard Russell. Auf dem Album "Temporary" sind zu hören u.a. Sampha, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Florence Welch, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Alabaster Deplume, Jah Wobble, Yazz Ahmed, Laura Groves, Kamasi Washington, Ricky Washington, Roses Gabor, Jack Penate, Samantha Morton, Clari Freeman-Taylor und Nourished By Time. "Temporary" entstand im Verlauf von vier Jahren in Russells Londoner Copper House Studio und während einiger zusätzlicher Sessions in Tottenham, Cumbria, Dorset, Los Angeles und Las Vegas Es schließt an die vorangegangenen Releases wie das 2018 für den Mercury Prize nominierte Debüt an. Auf dem neuen Album erfährt Russells musikalische DNA allerdings ein Reboot: Sein Cut & Paste Approach reicht in die Zeit vor Sampling-Helden wie The Bomb Squad und Prince Paul zurück bis hin zu Innovatoren wie Steve Reich, Robert Rauschenberg und William S. Burroughs. Während Russells Musik bislang geprägt war von Rhythmus, Worten und Melodie - in ebendieser Reihenfolge - tauschen zwei Aspekte diesmal ihre Rollen. Der Rhythmus tritt zugunsten der Melodie in den Hintergrund. Musikalisch ist "Temporary" vom Gedankenexperiment "what if folk music had "gone digital" in the 80s, just as reggae had?" geleitet, während sich in spiritueller und lyrischer Hinsicht vieles um Trauer und den Verlust von Freunden, Familienmitgliedern und Kollegen dreht. Im Ergebnis stehen leuchtende und gelassene Kompositionen, auch dank der faszinierenden und vielfältigen Gästeliste, die "Temporary" mitbringt. Die fragilen, zärtlichen und stillen Tracks liefern vielleicht eines der sanftesten Alben, die je über den Tod geschrieben wurden. "Das Album zu machen, war erfüllend, eine Art, das Leben zu heiligen", so Russell. "Temporary" ist die erste reguläre Veröffentlichung von Everything Is Recorded nach über vier Jahren. In der Zwischenzeit war Russell allerdings nicht untätig. Via Soundcloud und Bandcamp erschienen zuletzt "Summer Solstice", "Autumn Equinox", "Winter Solstice" und "Spring Equinox", die alle mit einer Reihe von Gastmusikerinnen und -.musikern im Rahmen ausgiebiger Jams an jeweils nur einem Tag entstanden. Mit der Schauspielerin und Regisseurin Samantha Morton tat er sich zum Duo Sam Morton zusammen, welches sein Debüt "Daffodils und Dirt" veröffentlichte. Für Peter Gabriels Comeback-Album "i/o" produzierte Russell den Song "Four Kinds of Horses".

Los Angeles trio Faetooth sophomore album Labyrinthine is a deeply felt exploration of emotional weight: grief, memory, uncertainty, and the quiet work of growing around your own wounds. Following the band's 2022 debut Remnants of the Vessel, which introduced the band’s signature blend of heaviness and mysticism, Labyrinthine pushes further inward. True to its name, the album winds through a maze of feeling and form, where meaning is never handed over easily. It’s rooted in self-discovery through disorientation, the idea that understanding comes not from escape, but from getting lost. Ari May (guitars and vocals), Jenna Garcia (bass and vocals), and Rah Kanan (drums) manage to stay grounded in the immediate in parallel with fantasy themes of the band's namesake. Labyrinthine holds space for this contradiction; tenderness and intensity, restraint and release. The band's self-branded “fairy doom” sound fits between shoegaze, doom, and grunge. It isn’t just texture; it’s a framework for navigating the unsaid. Like the myth that inspired its title, Labyrinthine doesn’t end in victory, but in confrontation—not with escape, but with the Minotaur. Only here, the Minotaur isn’t a monster. It’s something quiet and more familiar: unresolved feelings, old memories, and sadness that refuse to stay buried. The album winds like a maze, sometimes heavy, sometimes hushed, always intentional. Faetooth isn’t chasing catharsis. They’re creating space to reflect, to feel, and maybe to get a little lost along the way.
Artist quote: "White Noise" emerged from a diary entry, and is a relentless and intense reflection on inner turmoil. We’re often drawn to the familiar, even when we don’t realize we’re reaching out for it. It is an emotional upheaval, carrying harsh truths that weigh heavily on the heart. Guitarist, Ari May mentions, “Performing the song always takes me back to a specific place, even if just for a moment.”
“Riffs and melodies brimming with loneliness and longing… this band’s incantations affect my mood the whole day after listening.” — The Sleeping Shaman
“Bringing otherworldly hazy doom goodness… dreamy clean vocals, echoing harsh vocals, entrancing riffs, meditative shoegaze melodies.” — Nine Circles
“Slow, lumbering behemoths of great weight… couched in a melancholy atmosphere and explosions of crushing heaviness.” - Where Strides The Behemoth

Los Angeles trio Faetooth sophomore album Labyrinthine is a deeply felt exploration of emotional weight: grief, memory, uncertainty, and the quiet work of growing around your own wounds. Following the band's 2022 debut Remnants of the Vessel, which introduced the band’s signature blend of heaviness and mysticism, Labyrinthine pushes further inward. True to its name, the album winds through a maze of feeling and form, where meaning is never handed over easily. It’s rooted in self-discovery through disorientation, the idea that understanding comes not from escape, but from getting lost. Ari May (guitars and vocals), Jenna Garcia (bass and vocals), and Rah Kanan (drums) manage to stay grounded in the immediate in parallel with fantasy themes of the band's namesake. Labyrinthine holds space for this contradiction; tenderness and intensity, restraint and release. The band's self-branded “fairy doom” sound fits between shoegaze, doom, and grunge. It isn’t just texture; it’s a framework for navigating the unsaid. Like the myth that inspired its title, Labyrinthine doesn’t end in victory, but in confrontation—not with escape, but with the Minotaur. Only here, the Minotaur isn’t a monster. It’s something quiet and more familiar: unresolved feelings, old memories, and sadness that refuse to stay buried. The album winds like a maze, sometimes heavy, sometimes hushed, always intentional. Faetooth isn’t chasing catharsis. They’re creating space to reflect, to feel, and maybe to get a little lost along the way.
Artist quote: "White Noise" emerged from a diary entry, and is a relentless and intense reflection on inner turmoil. We’re often drawn to the familiar, even when we don’t realize we’re reaching out for it. It is an emotional upheaval, carrying harsh truths that weigh heavily on the heart. Guitarist, Ari May mentions, “Performing the song always takes me back to a specific place, even if just for a moment.”
“Riffs and melodies brimming with loneliness and longing… this band’s incantations affect my mood the whole day after listening.” — The Sleeping Shaman
“Bringing otherworldly hazy doom goodness… dreamy clean vocals, echoing harsh vocals, entrancing riffs, meditative shoegaze melodies.” — Nine Circles
“Slow, lumbering behemoths of great weight… couched in a melancholy atmosphere and explosions of crushing heaviness.” - Where Strides The Behemoth

Los Angeles trio Faetooth sophomore album Labyrinthine is a deeply felt exploration of emotional weight: grief, memory, uncertainty, and the quiet work of growing around your own wounds. Following the band's 2022 debut Remnants of the Vessel, which introduced the band’s signature blend of heaviness and mysticism, Labyrinthine pushes further inward. True to its name, the album winds through a maze of feeling and form, where meaning is never handed over easily. It’s rooted in self-discovery through disorientation, the idea that understanding comes not from escape, but from getting lost. Ari May (guitars and vocals), Jenna Garcia (bass and vocals), and Rah Kanan (drums) manage to stay grounded in the immediate in parallel with fantasy themes of the band's namesake. Labyrinthine holds space for this contradiction; tenderness and intensity, restraint and release. The band's self-branded “fairy doom” sound fits between shoegaze, doom, and grunge. It isn’t just texture; it’s a framework for navigating the unsaid. Like the myth that inspired its title, Labyrinthine doesn’t end in victory, but in confrontation—not with escape, but with the Minotaur. Only here, the Minotaur isn’t a monster. It’s something quiet and more familiar: unresolved feelings, old memories, and sadness that refuse to stay buried. The album winds like a maze, sometimes heavy, sometimes hushed, always intentional. Faetooth isn’t chasing catharsis. They’re creating space to reflect, to feel, and maybe to get a little lost along the way.
Artist quote: "White Noise" emerged from a diary entry, and is a relentless and intense reflection on inner turmoil. We’re often drawn to the familiar, even when we don’t realize we’re reaching out for it. It is an emotional upheaval, carrying harsh truths that weigh heavily on the heart. Guitarist, Ari May mentions, “Performing the song always takes me back to a specific place, even if just for a moment.”
“Riffs and melodies brimming with loneliness and longing… this band’s incantations affect my mood the whole day after listening.” — The Sleeping Shaman
“Bringing otherworldly hazy doom goodness… dreamy clean vocals, echoing harsh vocals, entrancing riffs, meditative shoegaze melodies.” — Nine Circles
“Slow, lumbering behemoths of great weight… couched in a melancholy atmosphere and explosions of crushing heaviness.” - Where Strides The Behemoth

"Paloma mensajera" (featuring members of New Juggler Sound / Laghonia) shows the shift that was taking place within Peruvian rock away from psych and hard rock which had predominated during the early 70s. The style adopted by Grupo Amigos (and other bands and artists during this period) highlights the influence of soft rock, UK, US and Latin American folk rock and, above all, the desire to keep the melodic greatness of The Beatles alive. This reissue includes bonus tracks and extensive liner notes. DESCRIPTION "Paloma mensajera" (featuring members of New Juggler Sound / Laghonia) shows the shift that was taking place within Peruvian rock away from psych and hard rock which had predominated during the early 70s. The style adopted by Grupo Amigos (and other bands and artists during this period) highlights the influence of soft rock, UK, US and Latin American folk rock and, above all, the desire to keep the melodic greatness of The Beatles alive. The positive reception albums by artists such as We All Together, Telegraph Avenue and Zulu garnered between 1972 and 1975, marked a change of paradigm and in preferences within the Peruvian rock scene. Eclecticism gained new ground, to the detriment of the sectarian and orthodox, while melody grew more present and visible, moving away from the progressive experimentation that typified underground Peruvian rock up to the beginning of the 70s. For their first single on MAG, included on this reissue, the band adopted a formula in which Beatles harmonies converged symmetrically with folk motifs. 'Dirty Girl' was a hit on the radio. A full album followed but only a fairly small number of copies of the album were pressed, which seems to have been the main reason for omitting it from the historical accounts of Peruvian rock music from the late 90s onwards. In "Paloma mensajera" all compositions were penned by the group, after several years during which cover versions were a staple. Some of the musical resources that the band had at their disposal in terms of composition and arrangements are striking and even surprising, considering that they were a debut band, whose members were under the age of 20. The arrangements included the clever use of a Moog synthesizer which had just arrived at the MAG studio. The success achieved by the Beatles tribute performances played by the members of Grupo Amigos for decades have eclipsed the songs that Edmundo, Andrés Da Ros and Simón Ames composed with youthful enthusiasm and energy between 1972 and 1973 to the point where they have almost been forgotten. This re-release of "Paloma mensajera" should help rectify this major injustice. It includes bonus tracks and extensive liner notes.

**ON LTD SPLATTER VINYL** First time available on vinyl! With bonus tracks and unreleased material! The Sultans formed in 2000 and were John Reis / Slasher and Tony DiPrima and at times also Andy Stamets / Black Flame (Rocket From The Crypt’s ND) and Dean Reis / Black Velvet (Mannequin Piss, Spider Fever, The Heartaches, Los Dug Dugs). Shipwrecked was the bands second album and was released only on CD in 2004.

It was hailed as a “power-pop meets ’70s punk classic” by Virtual Underground Press and “…a masterpiece of the form...essential” by the Cleveland Call And Post. This reissue is a labor of lust with maximum attention to detail in resurrecting these masters from their deteriorated, analog state. The result is a louder, thicker and even more bristling slab of triumphant rock ’n’ roll. Everything on this reissue cuts deeper and breaks the digital glass into razor sharp shards and then shits on the 1s and 0s. Treble Magazine says. “It is the perfect soundtrack to your post-breakup life: fourteen songs about heartache, shame, trying to move on, regrets and just plain old hate. (And by the by, hate has never sounded as good as this)”. Added to the original are four bonus tracks, one being a cover of The Dils “Blow Up” and another the never released “Out Of Focus”. Shipwrecked was the last record at Drag Racist (Hot Snakes, RFTC, etc) before it shuddered its doors for good.

Love & Rage, the brilliant 2024 debut album from London Queercore trio Shooting Daggers turned many heads with its jaw dropping depth and melody as well as blinding energy, feminist fury and angst. It has to be said that the band are not just bashing it out here. The playing is knockout and the vocals in particular are a standout. Singer Sal proving that she can do hard and fast and cool and melodic with equal aplomb. Add in some really inventive vocal arrangements and harmonies, and you have a band that is pushing that hardcore envelope big time. 2nd edition in Pink vinyl, full colour single outer sleeve, with a full colour printed inner sleeve, with an exclusive A4 poster included as well as a full download code. `Shooting Daggers may well have already made 2024's finest punk album'- Metal Hammer 'a ferocious brand of self-styled queercore punk rock that takes no prisoners' - Kerrang. 'a truly empowering album' - Noizze.

Das von Kritiker:innen gefeierte niederländische Elektronik-Duo, Weval (bestehend aus Harm Coolen und Merijn Scholte Albers) ist mit seinem lang erwarteten neuen Album, „CHOROPHOBIA“, auf dem Ninja Tune-Sublabel Technicolour zurück!

Als es darum ging, ihr viertes Album, „CHOROPHOBIA“, zu produzieren, stellten sich Weval ihren Ängsten. Obwohl Harm Coolen und Merijn Scholte Albers seit ihrer 2013 veröffentlichten Debüt-EP, „Half Age“, in der Dance-Szene verankert sind und mit ihrer fünfköpfigen Band Festivalbühnen wie Nuits Sonores, Lowlands, Primavera, Best Kept Secret, Pukkelpop und DGTL Amsterdam bespielten, haben sie sich aktiv davon entfernt, als Floorfiller-Act bekannt zu sein. Doch als die beiden vor kurzem über den Begriff Chorophobie stolperten - was so viel bedeutet wie Angst vor dem Tanzen -, beschlossen sie, sich der Ironie hinzugeben und aus ihrer Komfortzone herauszukommen. „Bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatten wir immer mit einer ‚Zuhör‘-Mentalität an unseren Platten gearbeitet.“, sagt Harm über die Herangehensweise beim zweiten und dritten Weval-Album („The Weight“ von 2019 und „Remember“ von 2023), „und uns wurde klar, dass wir während unserer gesamten Reise als Produzenten Angst davor hatten, Tanzmusik zu machen.“.
Der Sprung ins kalte Wasser hat zu Wevals bisher extrovertiertesten Tracks geführt. Während sie diese neue Richtung bereits mit der groovigeren „Night Versions“-EP von 2024 für Technicolour angedeutet hatten, erforderte das Loslassen ihrer Hemmungen eine geduldige künstlerische Entwicklung. „Wir wollten uns auf eine Art und Weise engagieren, die sich noch immer befreiend und wahrhaftig anfühlt.“, erklärt Harm und fügt hinzu, dass die Bezeichnung als Dance-Album sich nicht nur wie eine Kehrtwende anfühlt, sondern sie auch von den Grenzen und Klischees bestimmter Kategorien befreit.

12-song PINOT NOIR RED VINYL LP, limited to 500 Copies! Not many people realise that The Damned have produced a fine array of songs with melodic, harmonic and rhythmic sophistication; with a depth of imagination and atmosphere. They spearheaded British punk, and yet diverse musical influences went into the crucible: UK and US psychedelia, Canterbury prog rock, and even classical and filmic musical influences abound. Now, with the return of drummer Rat Scabies the line-up is the same as that which produced many of these songs - with Monty on keys. Monty Oxymoron has played keyboards with The Damned since 1996, has written songs for the band, and played with Captain Sensible and Dr Space Toad before that. He is a retired psychiatric nurse and trained in art psychotherapy. Monty is keen on "free improvisation" and plays in and around Brighton where he lives. Monty has an almost impossibly eclectic collation of his music on Bandcamp, his YouTube channel, and shares ideas on various subjects on his Substack page (under his "real" name: Laurence Burrow.)

World Of Echo announces the reissue of two remastered albums by Japanese guitarist and songwriter Naoki Zushi, 1988’s Paradise, and 2005’s III. Two classics of Japanese psychedelia, both Paradise and III were originally released on Org Records, the imprint of Shinji Shibayama of acid-folk group Nagisa Ni Te, with whom Zushi has guested on second guitar for decades. Both intimate and expansive, rich with revelatory songwriting and blasted, sky-scouring guitar, these reissues return these albums to print for the first time since the 2000s. It’s the first time III has been officially released on vinyl, with an extra, previously unreleased track, “Under The June Moonlight.”

Recorded in Kyoto’s Townhouse Studios in mid 1987 and released in limited-to-500 vinyl pressing in 1988, Paradise emerged from a scene in Kansai, Japan that was embracing the idiosyncracies of 1970s singer-songwriters, the soaring solos of early seventies psychedelia, and the DIY impulse of 1980s post-punk. While Zushi’s musical history stretched back to the early eighties – he was a founding member of Jojo Hiroshige’s noise outfit Hijokaidan – he found his feet with groups like Hallelujahs, whose dream-pop collection Niku O Kuraite Chikai Wo Tateyo was recently reissued by Black Editions, and Idiot O’Clock.

Paradise appeared two years after that Hallelujahs album and share much the same membership – Zushi’s backing band on several of the songs includes Shibayama on drums and Ken-Ichi Takayama (aka Idiot) on electric guitar, though just as often, Zushi plays all the instruments himself. The coordinates here are wide-reaching – you can hear the volume and intensity of Neil Young & Crazy Horse (on “Hallelujah: Left Side” and “Paradise: Midday”), the slow-motion magic of Galaxie 500, the idiosyncratic spirit of The Only Ones, all mixed up with tender guitar miniatures and stumbling garage-psych-pop moves.

Seven years later, after the transitional album Phenomenal Luciferin, Zushi released III. Perhaps his masterpiece, it’s already been bootlegged on vinyl, but this reissue is the real deal. The album was recorded at Studio Nemu over seven years, and sees Zushi backed by Shibayama (bass) and Masako Takeda (drums), his erstwhile bandmates in Nagisa Ni Te. By this stage, Zushi had started to really stretch out, and many of the songs on III swoon languorously, taking their sweet time to say what they need to say. It’s rich with lovely, melancholy songs, in a similar realm to bandmates Nagisa Ni Te, of course, but you can also hear traces of everything from Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs, through seventies private press loner folk, to the slow-burn meanderings of the likes of early Low or Damon & Naomi.

When interviewed by Shibayama in the mid-nineties, Zushi said of Paradise, “it was a sort of collection of songs that had meant something to me up to that point… it was my paradise. I wanted to create paradise.” That’s something Zushi achieves on both of these albums – visionary Japanese psychedelia, en route to paradise. - Jon Dale







g Under The June Moonlight vinyl only bonus track

Comet Dust Red Vinyl. Jason Molina war ein Künstler, der nicht gerne zurückblickte. Während seines gesamten Lebens und seiner Karriere als Singer-Songwriter trieb ihn ein rastloser und sich ständig weiterentwickelnder kreativer Impuls voran, der seinen Fokus auf das Wesentliche richtete. Seine unermüdliche Kreativität und Arbeitsmoral trugen Früchte. In seinem kurzen Leben erreichte Molina das, wonach die meisten Musiker streben: einen Sound, der sofort wiedererkennbar ist, sich aber selten wiederholt. Von den Ufern des Eriesees in seiner Heimatstadt Lorain, Ohio, bis hin zu internationalen Bühnen mit seinen Bands Songs: Ohia und Magnolia Electric Co. spielte Molina sein umfangreiches Repertoire an geheimnisvollen, romantischen, stürmischen und monumentalen Songs, die gleichzeitig innovativ und in der amerikanischen Tradition verwurzelt waren. Er tüftelte ständig an seinem Sound, seinem Image, seiner Band und seinem Zuhause, um seine Muse zu befriedigen. Ein Tenor-Gitarre spielender Außenseiter. Ein liebeskranker Lo-Fi-Indie-Rocker. Ein trauriger Slowcore-Barde. Ein Pionier des Roots-Rock des 21. Jahrhunderts. Ein kanonischer Songwriter des Mittleren Westens. Jason Molina hat seine kreative Flagge in all diesen Bereichen gehisst - um seinen Anspruch zu markieren, um zu zeigen, wie weit er gekommen war, und um eine Spur wertvoller Talismane zu hinterlassen. Mit ,I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina" - benannt nach einer Zeile aus Molinas Song ,Lioness" - würdigen Run For Cover Records und eine Gruppe befreundeter Künstler den bleibenden Einfluss des Songwriters. Die Compilation mit Molina-Covers wurde von einigen der visionärsten Singer-Songwritern der Gegenwart eingespielt, darunter MJ Lenderman, Hand Habits, Horse Jumper of Love, Sun June und viele mehr, und enthält einzigartige Interpretationen von Molina-Fan-Favoriten und weniger bekannten Stücken aus seinen Soloalben und weniger bekannten EPs. Das Ergebnis ist eine unverwechselbare Liebeserklärung, eine oft atemberaubende Gesamtdarbietung generationenübergreifender Talente, die einem der begabtesten, aber unterschätzten amerikanischen Songwriter Tribut zollen.

Nu-hardcore quintet, Bodyweb, are the sound of someone’s nervous system on the verge of breakdown—hyperactive, tormented and unflinchingly vulnerable. Born out of the Leeds hardcore scene, they’re a shape-shifting alloy of jagged emotion and precision chaos. What began as late-night jams between Louis Hardy (Higher Power, Big Cheese, Fate) and Ben Jones (Pest Control) eventually mutated into train_wreck_simulation, a debut EP filled with frantic breakdowns and nu-metal swag that felt like the soundtrack to a digital exorcism. The final piece of the puzzle came from Hardy’s estranged childhood friend, pq. His twisted samples and synthetic textures are haunted and disturbed, injecting cyberpunk soul into hardcore flesh. Contorting through several iterations in the following years, the band absorbed Luke Thompson (Stiff Meds) on drums, filmmaker Tom Hobson on guitar and Naomi Macleod (Empire State Bastard) on bass, and laid down their first collective offering. deadwired is due out on Flatspot Records later this year. Bodyweb's second EP is a violent thesis on connection and pain that sends Hardy’s unfiltered vocals through heaven and hell. Four overstimulating tracks run a gamut of styles and influences from Slipknot to Björk, constantly lane-switching between dizzying heaviness, ambient soundscapes and brain-burrowing hooks. Entirely self-produced, deadwired upgrades the sonic formula laid down on the last record and raises the question: what else could exist in Bodyweb’s twisted roadmap? Nothing seems impossible. What seems important, however, is retaining the rawness in a style that can often turn sterile. “We still wanted it to sound very human. It had to be well produced but not cold and lifeless.” shares Hardy. “We didn’t use a click track. All guitars were real amps with microphones. We tried to make everything as real and raw as possible, we recorded using all the same gear we use when playing live too to really capture the energy of how it feels when we jam together." ‘Deadwired’ is a snapshot of violent implosion. Four ADHD-fuelled transmissions from the edge of spiritual collapse. It drags metallic hardcore through glitched-out ambience to confront ego death, generational trauma, and the violence of being alive. On stage, Bodyweb don’t just perform, they purge. Raucous live electronics meld with digitally contorted guitars. Breakbeats meet breakdowns—no backing track in sight. Bodyweb enable a collective catharsis. Mosh, dance, dive, scream, heal. A physical therapy session screamed into the void.

In the spring of 2020, Ben Cook _ a.k.a. Young Governor, Young Guv, or just Guv _ was holed up in the New Mexico high desert, his U.S. tour having been abruptly covid-cancelled during a southwest swing. He and his bandmates were living moment to moment in something called an Earthship, a solar-rigged adobe structure sustainably constructed with, among other things, recycled bottles and tires. And out there in the serene vastness, as a short ride-it-out stint turned into a nine-month sojourn, Ben was writing music, slowly, little by little, mostly at night while the others slept. By the New Year, almost in spite of himself, he had created a new album, two new albums actually, and through the ordeal he was forever changed. In a place he never expected to be, under circumstances no one could have predicted, and in the face of physical isolation, emotional desolation, and existential dread, Ben created GUV III & IV, a collection of songs dedicated and testifying to the eternal healing power of love _ how to find it in the world, in others, and most importantly, in himself.

Wishbone Ash reigned supreme through the 1970s — centered on inspired musicianship, joyful spirit and inventive songs. Their concerts were uplifting and their recorded work sublime. Argus remains a stunning high point in the band's startling repertoire. Argus was a 1972 tour de force, a hard-rocking masterpiece that has gone on to have a huge impact on rock bands moving forward. If you've never heard Argus, you've surely heard music that it inspired.

The British quartet's trademark harmony guitars became a touchstone for many: Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Opeth, and Lynyrd Skynyrd have all acknowledged an Ash influence, and tracks such as Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town," Maiden's "The Trooper," and even Steely Dan's "Reeling in the Years" all have twin-guitar moments that hark back to Argus. But Wishbone Ash were different from the start. They were never strictly a hard rock band; their soaring vocal harmonies and musical grandeur placed them close to progressive rock.

But they weren't strictly prog either: They had no keyboards, no real classical influence and weren't into side-long suites. Their roots were in the blues, and their calling card was twin lead guitars in harmony (played in the original lineup by Ted Turner and Andy Powell). Even the hardest Ash rockers — like "Blowin' Free," the most famous track from Argus — had an ethereal touch. They could rock the big stages, but they did it with subtlety and grace. This is reflected perfectly in the classic album sleeve by prog-associated designers Hipgnosis: The front cover shows a Greek sentry — the "argus" of the title — staring off into the distance. It's a mythic, old-world kind of image until you look closely at the back cover, and see that he's heralding the arrival (or perhaps watching the departure) of a spaceship.

Two worlds colliding. Exactly what the band and album were all about. By the time of Argus, Wishbone Ash were stars in England and cult heroes among Anglophiles in the US. What made Argus a step forward was its flow of moods. The songs don't run together, but there's an emotional connecting thread from the album's somber beginning to its heroic end. The band insisted at the time that lyrics were something of an afterthought: Shortly after its release, main lyricist Martin Turner told NME that he wrote them mainly to fit the mood of the music: "The music that was coming out was very English, very medieval, and the lyrics had to reflect that." Added Powell at the time, "The expression comes out in the guitars. We wouldn't play it if it didn't express something." Now, Analogue Productions has applied all of its vaunted craft and technical expertise to make this epic album shine! Two 45 RPM LPs pressed on virtually silent 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings make the remastered audio sparkle. Quieter lyrical sentiments and softer musical passages are rendered precisely, while majestic riffs and fist-waving anthems fully reveal the energy of the music! Argus isn't just another rock record — it's a journey through a sonic landscape rich with depth, emotion and technical prowess. It's the album that solidified Wishbone Ash as masters of twin guitar harmony. Discerning audiophiles will find Argus an essential addition to their record collection. It's a masterclass in sound engineering that fully captures the intricate interplay of dual guitars with pristine clarity and a warmth that only analog recordings can provide.

With two critically acclaimed compilations already under his belt, DJ / collector miche returns to Mr Bongo with the third instalment of his With Love series. Testament to his ever-expanding taste, Volume 3 isn’t just a subs bench call-up from the past compilations, it’s an evolution and progression casting the net deeper and wider than before.

Keeping true to the series, but with some fresh surprises along the way, this carefully curated compilation is a celebration of soulful, independently released music from across the globe, and the amazing (often unsung) musicians and vocalists that made these sublime records.

Across the third volume, miche explores a jazzier side of his tastes. “The deeper I went, the more I found myself gravitating towards jazzier music - not leaving soul behind, but following that same feeling into new territory”, he explains. Tracks like the gliding jazz funk found on Late Nite Music Band’s ‘Sundance’, or the glorious jazz-soul number ‘In Flight’ by Spectrym are shining examples of this.

That defining soulful thread of previous volumes is still in full effect throughout this latest edition. “There’s a healthy dose of impossible-to-find soul gems that have that unmistakable, heartwarming feel. Tracks like John Simmons' 'Ain't Nothing Like The Love', which I've adored ever since Zaf Love Vinyl played it, sit perfectly alongside records like Le Cop and New Way”, states miche.

The addition of some top-tier Turkish music showcases another side to his ever-broadening taste. Nükhet Ruacan's 'Gölge' is something unique, a floaty Brazilian-inspired gem recorded in Turkey and not what you’d typically expect from Turkish records of this era. 

It also wouldn’t feel right to leave out a stop in Brazil, with miche looking to the work of Carlos Bivar whose track 'Amargo Amar' carries that undeniable groove of samba-funk from Rio.

Spreading the With Love message far and wide the series has led to miche DJing across the globe, “from batucada sessions in Timisoara, to all-night sets in a club in Beijing, and even an eight-hour Root Down With Love stage takeover at We Out Here festival, joined by Danilo Plessow, Jeremy Underground, and of course, my mentor and buddy Rainer Trüby.”

Volume 3 then, carries that message even further. It’s an eclectic but intentional collection, built for the music lover who wants to discover something new. Working just as well as a soundtrack to cook dinner to, as it does keeping a packed dancefloor moving into the small hours.

"Los Angeles-based ska-punk band The Interrupters have just released Live In Tokyo! via Hellcat Records. The live record, produced by guitarist Kevin Bivona, is taken from the band"s 2019 performance at Tokyo"s Summer Sonic Festival in support of their latest album, Fight the Good Fight (2018). The past few years have been pivotal for The Interrupters. Fight the Good Fight debuted #1 Heatseekers, #5 Current Rock, and #5 Current Alternative Album on the Billboard charts. The lead single, "She"s Kerosene" charted #5 at Alternative Radio in US, #1 Alternative in Canada, and #1 Rock in Canada making The Interrupters the first female-fronted band with an Alternative Radio hit since No Doubt. The follow-up single, "Gave You Everything" charted #19 at Alternative Radio in US, and #2 Rock in Canada. In addition, the band made their US TV debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and were featured as iHeartRadio"s On The Verge Artist (Fall 2018)"

First time vinyl reissue, expanded and deluxe double gatefold 140g double vinyl, remastered audio with restored artwork and fresh liners written by Paul Hillery (Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours)
Alan James Eastwood's glorious Seeds is a certified folk-funk lost-classic.

But who was Alan James Eastwood? He had never hit the big time and commercial success eluded him. By the mid-1970s, his musical career was pretty much over and he was almost unknown except among deep heads, amongst whom he would gain cult status.

Original copies of the 1971 vinyl release of Seeds exchange hands for high sums, if you can find one. This expanded 2LP contains an extra record, collecting 9 rare non-album singles and is presented in a gatefold sleeve complete with freshly commissioned liner notes courtesy of Paul Hillery (Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours).

With the long overdue deluxe reissue of this prized artefact, we hope to finally shine a light on the unheralded genius of Alan James Eastwood. RIYL Nick Drake, Rodriguez, Richie Havens.

Alan James ‘Bugsy’ Eastwood was a renowned musician and singer who came to prominence in the late 1960s with The Exception, an unsung but excellent band from Birmingham. The Exception released many singles, the first featuring friend Robert Plant on tambourine, before an album, The Exceptional Exception. However, by this time, Bugsy was feeling constrained and restless; he left the band within weeks of the release.

Having vanished from the scene, he was honing a deeper, introspective edge to his songwriting. His demos found their way to the sound engineer and producer Mike Cooper at Pan Music Studios in Denmark Street. Loving what he heard, Eastwood soon entered a recording session with Cooper. The session was just Alan, his guitar and harmonica and - by all accounts - it was remarkable. With the songs, the voice and such an exceptional talent, it was hard to go wrong. Says Mike: "We had John Hawkins do the big string arrangements and Richard Hewson arranged the string quartet. We overdubbed the orchestrations on Alan's original session recordings, adding Chris Karan on tabla and various percussion. We considered re-recording the vocals but found that the magic on that original session was so exceptional overdubbing would not be as good as the atmospheric 'live' performance."

Mike and Alan viewed each track as a different entity, giving the album a diverse sonic palette. Assessing each song individually, they decided which would be suitable for each arranger. Top-flight session musicians were added to the roster to complete the sound, with Byron Lye Fook (father of musician Omar) on drums, bassist Mike Ward, Brian Pickles on marimba and jazz drummer Chris Karan on tabla and percussion. Recorded in a matter of days in Pan's small 8-track studio, they carefully added overdubs, rhythm sections and four string sessions arranged by Hawkins, with Hewson's arrangements recorded at Trident Studios.

Seeds was Alan James Eastwood's debut solo album – indeed, his only solo album - and was originally issued on President in 1971. It melded Eastwood’s impressive rock sensibilities with a folk thread to superb effect. His arresting voice - its deep, rough-hewn soulfulness - coupled with gorgeous string-drenched backing, make this a phenomenal listen. It really is a great 70s singer-songwriter record - with touches of acid-folk and folk-funk throughout.

It opens with "She's Getting Married In August", a mellow tune with Richard Hewson's strings arranged around Alan's straightforward guitar structure. Up next, the joyous, sun-dappled guitar and strings workout "Evenin' Rain" glides by before the fragile, accordion-enhanced "Les Papillons" breezes out of the speakers. The bluesy "Zeena" follows, featuring vocals and acoustic guitar and showcasing Eastwood's effortless harmonica. Starting out as a ballad, "Virgin Morn" builds with soaring strings and gospel-tinged backing vocals from Marilyn Powell and jazz singer Josephine Stahl. The A-side closes with the title track, "Seeds". With a chugging mid-tempo beat, soulful vocals and a beautiful Bacharach-esque string arrangement, it truly is stop-you-in-your-tracks spectacular.

Side B opens with "Crystal Blue", gilded by Lye Fook's marimba, lush gospel-esque backing vocals and handclaps. Eastwood's acoustic guitar begins "Lady Carole", which starts as a bluesy ballad and builds with more string arrangement, lifting the track to another height. A towering highlight of epic proportions, "Lotus Child" is a true masterpiece of arrangement. It opens with simple yet stunning do-do-dah vocal harmonies blended with John Hawkins's strings, bass lines and rhythmic beats, forming a vibe very much in conversation with the sounds coming from LA's Laurel Canyon. Next up, the heartwarming "Last Prayer", dedicated to Alan's first and last love, contains a melancholic vocal with a wistful string-drenched arrangement that would sit comfortably in a Federico Fellini score. Bringing the album to a close, "Hymn For Today" is a melodic raga with tabla, strings and a soft-psych feel. Eastwood's prophetic whisper - "I am real. At last, I am real" - profoundly hits home.

Kicking off the extra disc is the sparsely funky and country-tinged "Boston", released as the flip to the astonishing "Seeds". Next up are the two tracks that comprised Alan’s debut solo 7" single from 1968. The laconic, Bobby Charles-esque "Blackbird Charlie" evidences a real depth and charm in Eastwood's songwriting whilst the starkly brilliant flip, "My Sun", was a horizontal, atmospheric folk-tinged soundtracky precursor to his later work on Seeds.

In 1972, two further standalone singles followed. The first was the evergreen flute-driven folk-funk bomb, "Closer To The Truth", backed by the funky blues of "Strange News". The second, a deeply moving Havens-inspired "Moonchild" - rightly fawned over to this day - was flipped with "Red Shoe Truckin'", a groove-infused track. Eastwood also paired up with Marilyn Powell for a single produced by Powell's partner, Mike Cooper. Under the name Eastwood & Powell, they released their staggering rendition of "Beautiful", a rock-blues-pop song arranged by Ivor Raymonde and written by Carole King. Over on the flip, a funky Eastwood original "Opal Blue Sunday" lurked. This is not to be overlooked.

Over the years, Alan remained active on the music scene, but problems with alcohol and health complications from diabetes severely impacted his career. He spent his latter years living in London until his untimely death from heart failure on 25 October 2007, just one day before his 62nd birthday and without his music having received the real acclaim it so dearly deserved.

This deluxe reissue, spellbinding from beginning to end, should hopefully go some way to rectifying this tragic fact. Mastering for this special double vinyl edition was overseen by Be With regular Simon Francis and it was cut by the esteemed Cicely Balston at Abbey Road Studios to be pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry. The original artwork has been lovingly brought back to life at Be With HQ, with the addition of passionately written liner notes specially for this landmark reissue by none other than Paul Hillery.