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A huge part of this exploratory new era was Aaron Dessner, who produced Light Sleeper. His isolated cabin studio Long Pond, in Hudson Valley, was once Bess' desktop background, but she never thought she would end up star-gazing on its veranda and noodling away on the same instruments used by her heroes, not to mention a certain pop star... The immediate trust between the pair clicked the moment Atwell walked through the doors of the iconic recording space; Dessner showed her around and then promptly left her alone to play on the many instruments at the heart of her favourite The National songs. As Atwell puts it, they seemed to speak the same musical language. "I trust his ear and I knew we had the same vision" she says.

Handcrafted and spaced out minimal grooves by LOWRIS - DJ W!ILD - PRAYMOND & ABÉ.

Soul Jazz Records’ new Secret Superstar Sounds brings together a wealth of incredibly catchy tunes from late-70s/early-80s British groups that you have probably never heard of! Powerpop mixed together a love of lyrical and melodically beautiful 60s pop and garage sounds, together with the energy and attitude of 70s punk. Almost completely out of kilter with the fashions of the day (punk, new wave and post-punk) these bands managed to fall between the musical cracks at almost every step of the way – leaving them practically unknown to all but a few.

Inspired by the D-I-Y messaging of bands like The Desperate Bicycles, Sniffing Glue fanzine and early UK punk labels like Stiff, Chiswick and Rough Trade, these bands chose mainly to go into a studio and make their own private press/D-I-Y records themselves – then try to work out everything else (promotion, marketing, etc) afterwards. As mainly outsiders to the mainstream music industry, and usually unable to make any inroads into it, save for sending their own record to John Peel, most of these bands fell at the first hurdle.

These records remain both beautifully crafted 3-minute musical gems, and long-lost micro-histories of an essentially hidden genre.
Featured bands here include The Squares, The Meanies, The Monitors, Plummet Airline, Tours, Gobblinz, Krypton Tunes and more. Most of these records were self-published D-I-Y releases made in very limited-editions and were often the only tracks ever released by these groups.

Canadian bowed guitarist and multi-instrumentalist C. Diab announces his fifth album Imerro, out February 16th, and presents the trip-infused lead single 'Lunar Barge'.

(Real name) Caton Diab creates soundscapes that evoke the spectacular wilderness of his childhood home in northern Vancouver Island. Incorporating experimental textures, folk overtones and tape manipulations, C. Diab uniquely finds the unseen spaces in-between, and fittingly dubs his creations "post-classical grunge". Imerro explores new sonic realms and is the culmination of a sound world that Diab has built up since the critically acclaimed 'No Perfect Wave' (2016, Injazero) and subsequent releases 'Exit Rumination' (2018), 'White Whale' (2020) and 'In Love & Fracture' (2021). The Wire calls it "ambient music in the best sense - music for living, which can be both non-invasive and immersive...epic"

Imerro was recorded in late July and August of 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, BC, during the summer's unprecedented second "heat dome", which saw temperatures soaring to over 40 degrees. Recorded with regular collaborator and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart, the pair journeyed by boat to the studio to a place with minimal distraction with a plan of "simple ecstatic improvisation." Diab explains: "I wanted to place myself in a space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music 'shows its face' as you move along. I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play."

For us, this is a top five all time tune in the soul reggae canon and maybe Leroy Smart's best ever. An early one for Mr. Smart, this is the first cut of one of his most classic tunes, recorded in 1972 for producer Gussie Clarke and originally released on the early Tuff Gong label via Wailers' associate Alan 'Skill' Cole. If you're like me and you've listened to the original Tuff Gong 45 a million times, you may have noticed that the dub version was mixed from a different vocal take, with some lyrics not on the A side coming in to the dub mix. This alternate vocal take is also the one partially used for the 1979 remix cut on a heavily overdubbed rhythm. We had always desired to hear this other take in its original form, so naturally then we had to get the great Mr. Clarke to dig this one out of his archives to hear it as it should be. In comparison to the original released cut, it's a more spare take sans the opening harmonizing, and the lyrical changes give the tune a more pleading and less stubbornly declarative mood. For the B-side version we have an alternate mix again, which is actually the one Big Youth deejays over for his tune "Pride & Joy Rock." Consider this release a prime example of DKR's "never too much of a great thing" philosophy.

Previously unreleased; four track 12" with two different vocal takes, each w/ dub. Comes in Bond Export company sleeve.

Another cold case solved! One of DKR's early victories was finding a tape of the drum & bass cut of the legendary dubplate 'Rocks & Mountains.' Rumor had said the artist was the Mighty Travellers, but this didn't really add up chronologically or audibly. More astute listeners mostly agreed the artist was likely the Majesterians, a little recorded group who had made a couple other records for Taxi circa 1980. When we first issued the song on a 10" back in 2011, even Sly himself couldn't recall for sure who sang the tune. Like with other 'mystery' projects which we eventually came to realize, we never gave up digging on this one. There were two mysteries at work here - one, confirming the identity of the group, and two - finding the other cut of the tune, which features fuller instrumentation and a different vocal take. Both cuts were around on dubplate circa '80/'81, and the latter cut can be heard ever so briefly in the infamous UK "Sound Business" documentary film from '81. In the course of a mere 13 years, both questions came to be solved - we obtained a pretty clean plate cut of the fuller mix, and we confirmed the identity of the group. The Majesterians were a vocal trio consisting of Everton Dacres, Roderick Perkins and Paul Mitchell. While the latter two gentlemen don't seem to have done much otherwise, we are sure the roots heads and hopefully all DKR followers know Everton Dacres, who made some fine roots music in the 1970s prior to fronting the Majesterians. We spoke to Everton and he confirmed 'Rocks & Mountains' was their tune, cut in Channel 1 at a Taxi session featuring a host of other artists. Indeed, these were the heady days of 1980 with Channel 1 booked round the clock for locked-in sessions, with the Taxi Gang and the Roots Radics laying down future classic after future classic. All that said, we're happy to re-present this tune now with not only proper accreditation, but also both known mixes and the drum & bass mix in improved fidelity over its previous issue.

In the madrigal-strewn world of neo folk-psychedelia, the queen of drones holds court…In this late teen decade, as green men are burnt, resources dwindle and naturalists plunder for authentic Englishness, the hunt for the grail-like Silver Globe continues. Back in 2014, the story was first whispered; A mythical jaunt set to a motorik rhythm, played out in an overgrown forest of ideas: Jane Weaver’s ‘The Silver Globe’ was a conceptual delicacy – “a synth-ridden post-apocalyptic prog-pop opus based on tightly embroidered, non-linear recurring themes inspired by esoteric stories, cosmic imagery and re-filtered past experiences”. Since those heady beginnings, our heroine has time travelled to darker times and been celebrated for her glorious ‘Modern Kosmology’ (top album of 2017, here, there, everywhere).
“A full-scale leap into the cosmic void of contemporary space rock” The Quietus

“As a child of the 1970’s I can thank my friends’ brothers for their space rock record collections and concept album sleeves that I would spend hours looking at, then my first love for Kate Bush followed by a heavy dose of disco and synth pop. I guess ‘The Silver Globe’ is just a subconscious inspired imprint of those things that have never left me, married with an accidental viewing of a vintage Polish sci-fi film that was so bizarre I couldn’t stop thinking about it and so it became my muse...” Jane Weaver. Set the controls…

Berlin-based French-Irish multimedia artist Zoe Mc Pherson levels up on their third full-length "Pitch Blender", mangling years of experience DJing and performing live into a tight set of cybernetic soundsystem experiments that flicker between the rave and the art space.

Cast your mind back to February 2020 for a moment, when Mc Pherson released their last album "States of Fugue". The world seemed less tangled somehow, and yet Mc Pherson's precision-engineered fusion of exploratory sound design and visceral club pressure seemed to hint at a cataclysmic event none of us were really expecting. Only a few weeks after its release the world changed forever, and the majority of us were grounded - forced to consider our lives and the movement (or lack thereof) surrounding us. The philosophy of this extended time period is welded into the bones of "Pitch Blender", Mc Pherson's supple third album. They have learned plenty in the last two years, and infuse all of that anxiety and spiky emotionality into a spread of tracks that sound as powerful in headphones as they do over a well-tweaked soundsystem, soldering vocals, environmental recordings and instrumental flourishes to unpredictably pneumatic, cybernetic beats.

Anyone that's caught one of Mc Pherson's energetic live performances over the last few months will have an idea of what "Pitch Blender" is made of. They're an artist who's somehow able to match the raw energy of post-punk and no-wave music with the brain-altering potential of the best experimental club tracks, vocalizing an incongruous post-lockdown reality over beats that sound as if they're in a permanent state of flux. 'On Fire' splutters to life in a frenetic patter of drums that blur into oddly soothing hoover sounds, snaking lysergically towards a drop that's teased constantly, and never comes. We're forced to wait until 'The Spark' for that, fighting through choppy, pitch-mangled guitar and rolling beats until a gruesome kick drum forces its way through the psilocybin mists and heaving Bristol-inspired bass clonks. Backed up with just the inverted traces of recognizable breaks, this vigorous pulse lies at the heart of "Pitch Blender", the driving force that powers Mc Pherson's sound even when it's only hinted at.

'Blender' is the moment where Mc Pherson show their full hand, using crackling sound effects, ghost vocals and uneven rhythms to build a textural landscape that's so evocative you can almost taste it. Squealing modular synth effects sound like gameshow buzzers being triggered in another dimension and propel the track forward - it's club music, just about, but Mc Pherson's motivation is world-building, and their world is colorful, abstract, and dizzyingly surreal. "Obsolete user," their voice echoes over driving airlock kicks. But they take a swift left turn with 'Lamella', reducing the kinetic club rhythms to a longing simmer and letting loose with powerful vocals, intoning with robotic, gender-fluxed intensity. On 'Wait', New York City's clacking crosswalk signal - already an effective club track on its own - is transformed into a reminder to slow down, juxtaposed with booming sub-heavy kicks, acidic synths and effervescent percussion that rattles in time with the vibrations. It's foley rave, built for pure psychedelic intensity to blur the line between real life and sonic fiction.

One of the album's most galvanic tracks, 'Power Dynamics' curves a double-time rhythm around breathless HQ sound design squiggles until it hits a polyrhythmic crescendo, striking a queasy balance between rave hedonism and ritualistic hand drum energy. It all builds towards eerie closing track 'Outside' that acts as an important wind down, spotlighting Mc Pherson's ability to operate outside of the rhythmic spectrum, using cinematic scrapes and flickering neon synths to create music that's tense but never terrifying. The track feels like the end credits of a particularly bewildering movie - something between the cyberpunk dystopia of "Ghost in the Shell" and the vivid, sky-scraping beauty of "Koyaanisqatsi". Mc Pherson has managed something special with "Pitch Blender": mashing together genres with rare focus, and sharpening their engineering skills to a fine point, they've concocted an antidote to contemporary malaise - a wakeup call that's begging us to loosen our limbs and move.

CADAVER, one of Norway's first and most influential death metal bands, has carved a distinctive path through the annals of extreme music. Formed in 1988 in Fredrikstad by Anders Odden (guitar/vocals) and Ole Bjerkebakke (drums/vocals), the band emerged from the ashes of their earlier black metal project, Baphomet. Their vision blended thrash and death metal with progressive influences from bands like Voivod and the chaotic insanity of Napalm Death, forging a sound that defied conventions. In 2024, Anders Odden delved deep into CADAVER 's history, unearthing unreleased material that offers a fascinating glimpse into the band's formative years. Before signing with Earache Records in 1992, CADAVER had worked on what would eventually become their second album, ...In Pains. During this period, they recorded raw and unpolished versions of many tracks in the same studio where Hallucinating Anxiety was born. These early recordings featured working titles that were later changed, and among them was a song titled "Maltreated Mind Makes Man Manic," which was never completed at the time. Anders revisited these hidden gems at Studio Tomb, located in Råde, Norway—the very place where CADAVER was first formed. With the old lineup reunited for this session, they finished the additional recordings necessary to bring their original vision to life. The result is Hymns of Misanthropy, a newly completed album from 1991 that will finally see the light of day through Listenable Records in April 2025. This release showcases CADAVER's unique approach to extreme music and highlights their previously underappreciated influence on the early Norwegian black metal scene. With Hymns of Misanthropy, listeners can experience a raw and powerful chapter of CADAVER's history, demonstrating once again that they were never just a typical death metal band. Instead, they remain an ever-evolving force that consistently pushes the envelope of what extreme music can achieve.

Extending the melodious and mad, three-decade story of Super Furry Animals projects by adding another bombastic and beautiful chapter, Huw Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Daf Ieuan and Guto Pryce reconvene to announce the release of their second album, Pando.

Meeting every pummelling motorway mile with the beat of their psychedelic-soul-house blend since the release of their debut, Official UK Breakers Album Chart No.1 album, DK.01, in late 2023, Das Koolies’ energetic return to festival fields, intimate venues and service station shopping has affected no distraction from their mission. Committing to more time on the road at the same time as sharing rich spoils from the studio, Das Koolies include Newport, Nottingham, London and Manchester in their live plans. Determinedly exploring capability and ambition, the band’s continued, restorative return to wired and wonderful, man-and-machine-based music, following years of psych-folk-rock experimentation as four Furries, hasn’t meant forgetting the past. Som Bom Magnífico’s tour story, combining wistful and weary memory, rests the band’s case.

Taking on the lead lyrical and vocal role, Daf Ieuan, says: “Hindsight and rose-tinted glasses. It’s a song about a time when it was normal to order a veggie breakfast in hotels as a concession to a healthier life style, then following up by requesting to see the ‘Breakfast Wine Menu’. As Lou Reed sang: "Wine in the morning!".
Everyone should live like that for a while. Could be for a couple of days or a couple of decades. We’ve never laughed so much, but never again.”

Extending the melodious and mad, three-decade story of Super Furry Animals projects by adding another bombastic and beautiful chapter, Huw Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Daf Ieuan and Guto Pryce reconvene to announce the release of their second album, Pando.

Meeting every pummelling motorway mile with the beat of their psychedelic-soul-house blend since the release of their debut, Official UK Breakers Album Chart No.1 album, DK.01, in late 2023, Das Koolies’ energetic return to festival fields, intimate venues and service station shopping has affected no distraction from their mission. Committing to more time on the road at the same time as sharing rich spoils from the studio, Das Koolies include Newport, Nottingham, London and Manchester in their live plans. Determinedly exploring capability and ambition, the band’s continued, restorative return to wired and wonderful, man-and-machine-based music, following years of psych-folk-rock experimentation as four Furries, hasn’t meant forgetting the past. Som Bom Magnífico’s tour story, combining wistful and weary memory, rests the band’s case.

Taking on the lead lyrical and vocal role, Daf Ieuan, says: “Hindsight and rose-tinted glasses. It’s a song about a time when it was normal to order a veggie breakfast in hotels as a concession to a healthier life style, then following up by requesting to see the ‘Breakfast Wine Menu’. As Lou Reed sang: "Wine in the morning!".
Everyone should live like that for a while. Could be for a couple of days or a couple of decades. We’ve never laughed so much, but never again.”

Legendary shoegaze band Chapterhouse will share their first ever recordings on a new EP, White House Demos, released via Sonic Cathedral on May 9.The four tracks were laid down at The White House studio in Weston-super-Mare on January 15, 1989, when the band were only four gigs old. "They were the first songs we wrote as a band," says the band's singer and guitarist Stephen Patman. "At the time our live set consisted of Stooges and '60s garage-psych cover versions which we mixed with these original songs." The tracks weren't included on 2023's career-spanning Chronology boxset because they had been forgotten about - until the intervention of Slowdive guitarist Christian Savill. He and Patman worked together in an office in Reading as their respective bands were starting out and he says the demo remains "their best record"."When the boxset was released, Christian got in touch and reminded me of these demos and how much he loved them," says Stephen. "He was probably the first person I gave a cassette copy to. He still rehearses and records at The White House and was going in for a session the following week, so I asked if he could ask the owner/engineer Martin Nichols to check if he still had them in his archive. Thankfully he did." Of the four tracks that make up the EP, `Ecstasy' has appeared in various versions and permutations on Chapterhouse compilations over the years, but never in its full eight-minute glory; a much later version of `Guilt' was included on the band's 1991 debut album and shoegaze classic Whirlpool; a version of `Die Die Die' was also included with that album on a bonus 12", and remained part of the band's live set for a while. The stunning `See That Girl', however, has never been released before. With 36 years of distance, it sounds like something of a lost classic, and the White House Demos as a whole feel like a brief moment in time captured forever.

Für Superfans und Neugierige ist dies der von der Band kuratierte Einstiegspunkt und gleichzeitig das karriereumspannende Best-Of-Album der einzigartigen Rilo Kiley, die in den 2000er Jahren eine ganze Generation geprägt und den Indie-Rock nachhaltig geprägt haben. Nach langer Abwesenheit meldet sich das Quartett aus LA mit ausgestreckten Armen wieder zurück. "That's How We Choose To Remember It" umfasst all ihre Key-Songs, darunter "The Execution Of All Things" (2003), "The Moneymaker" (2007), "Silver Lining" (2007) und das durch die TV-Serie "Grey's Anatomy" populäre "Portions For Foxes" (2005). Die neue Sammlung feiert die Musik, die vielen von uns so am Herzen liegt. Auf Rilo Kiley, ihre Wiedervereinigung und die nächste Generation von Zuhörern, die diese Band genauso lieben werden wie wir.

- "The directness of Rilo Kiley’s storytelling aims straight for the heart." - Pitchfork

Underground hip-hop icon and Miami rapper Pouya kicks off 2025 with his seventh studio album, Suicidal Thoughts in the Back of the Cadillac, Pt. 3 - serving as an unofficial spiritual successor to his 2024 album, THEY COULD NEVER MAKE ME HATE YOU. After a successful run as direct support to $uicideboy$’ Grey Day 2024 Arena Tour, it’s clear that Pouya has cemented himself among the top artists from the alternative / cloud-rap scene from the mid 2010s. With a rabid fan base primarily built from the ground up, and without the flashy mainstream features or press looks, Pouya has established himself as a staying power in a lane that typically sees artists rise and fall in accordance with today's modern attention span. Continuing to super-serve his fans, Pouya will be embarking on a nationwide tour in North America in 2025.

Hey, hard rock and metal fans—ready for another classic, early ‘90s album that never before made it to vinyl here in the States? Did we hear you say “Yeah!?” Then may we present Tyketto: Don’t Come Easy! This is another great, rockin’ record that got lost in the grunge craze that swept the music industry, and, just like our recent reissue of Wildside’s Under the Influence, it’s the debut release from a band that should have blown up much bigger than they did. You no doubt remember their single “Forever Young;” but the rest of the album offers melodic hard rock of the highest order, especially on tracks like “Burning Down Inside” and the power ballad “Standing Alone.” Excellent vocal work from former Waysted frontman Danny Vaughn, too. Remastered for vinyl by Mike Milchner at Sonic Vision…teal with white swirl vinyl, complete with printed inner sleeve!

I’m Sad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Fake It Anymore is the best, sharpest, briefest, and fourth record from Paper Castles, the band fronted by Jericho, Vermont’s Paddy Reagan. In one way, it’s a simple and modest collection of nine fuzzy guitar-led pop songs. The title, a play on the iconic scene from Network (written by Paddy Chayefsky), can be clocked as nothing more than that at first glance, playful. But like the music behind it, Reagan thinks you can sit with the title if you want.

I'm Sad as Hell... was tracked by Benny Yurco (Michael Nau, Lily Seabird, Robber Robber) in a little over eight hours across two days, a testament to the quartet’s perfection of these songs on stage, and to Yurco’s comfortable Little Jamaica Recordings in Burlington.

Tompkins and Mangan lock into a wonderful foundation for Kitz’s lolling guitar lines on “Clean + Organized,” while on “Avalon,” the band sings harmony for the most ironic line in the waltz (“We don’t really want company”) before their instruments explode into technicolor. “Lying Here” showcases PC deftly navigating washed out verses and tight knit, twangy choruses, all in a tidy, under-three minute package.

Lyrically, Reagan is at his finest: playful and savage, biting and beautiful. Double entendres and clever wordplay abound—a line like “it's not the ideals but the high heels that’ll make you a man” from “Modern Myth” will make you wish John Prine was still around to hear it. On “Name Changer,” when Reagan sings “I’ll never change my name again / Got a real good handle and I don’t want to give it in,” what kind of “handle” is he referring to? I’d like to think Elvis Costello would smile at most lines in the Attractions rave-up “Content Creator.”

How many albums virtually upend a genre? And how many erstwhile bluegrass bands top a contemporary jazz chart?! The answer to these questions, is, one, very few, and two, only Béla Fleck & the Flecktones! Their second album, 1991’s fancifully entitled Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, did indeed top Billboard’s contemporary jazz albums chart and scored a couple of Grammy noms. But more importantly, this record really made explicit the Flecktones’ bebop leanings, as they devised the term “Blu-Bop” to describe their unique fusion of bluegrass and jazz. Stylistic whiplash has never felt so good or sounded so sweet; check out their warm, instrumental wizardry on chestnuts like “Michelle” and “The Star Spangled Banner”…and don’t miss Béla’s banjo power chords on “Turtle Rock!” We had Mike Milchner at Sonic Vision remaster this classic for vinyl for maximum fidelity, and gave it a repress in cobalt blue vinyl limited to just 900 copies. Essential!

The Bottle Rockets’ 1994 record The Brooklyn Side ranks right up there with Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne in the pantheon of alt country albums…yet it has NEVER seen a widespread release on vinyl. We hooked up with original producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel and mastering engineer Scott Hull to score the original tapes and create an all-analog release of this legendary record…but we didn’t stop there. We’ve also added six bonus tracks to flesh out this 2-LP Expanded Edition, winding up with the track that started it all, Brian Henneman’s “Indianapolis.” Reissued with the full consent and cooperation of the band!