Search:our home

) Mark Peters releases a second solo album Red Sunset Dreams on September 16. The follow-up to his hugely acclaimed debut Innerland, which was one of Rough Trade’s albums of the year when it came out in 2018, it features a number of guest musicians, including former One Dove singer and songwriter Dot Allison and pedal steel legend BJ Cole. Like its predecessor, Red Sunset Dreams is an album about an imaginary landscape. Whereas Innerland was an introspective psychogeographic trip inspired by Mark’s move back to his hometown of Wigan and the memories it stirred up, Red Sunset Dreams looks outwards, across the Atlantic to the United States of America, but very much through a UK prism; a representation of the subconscious Americana that’s buried deep in our collective psyches. The result is an incredibly evocative trip through the landscapes of old Western movies, exploring their links with the North West of England while touching on wider themes such as isolation, freedom and dementia. Sonically, it builds on the palette of the previous record with instrumentation equally inspired by the ascendant ambient Americana movement and classic country-rock. As a result it ends up somewhere between Acetone’s peerless I Guess I Would, Diamond Head-era Phil Manzanera and the dusty instrumentals on the second disc of David Sylvian’s 1986 classic Gone To Earth.Mark has spent the four years since Innerland recording and releasing Destiny Waiving, his third collaboration with Ulrich Schnauss, and recently followed up 2020’s new Engineers recordings (the ambient perambulations of Pictobug) with a reissue series of the band’s much sought after early albums. He has recently put a brand new band together and will be playing a series of live shows following the release of Red Sunset Dreams.

Freestyle's run of reissues continues with the sought-after 1983 UK electro-funk of State of Grace's Touching the Times getting a freshly remastered 12" cut!

State of Grace were a trio formed at the start of the 80s, releasing a handful of singles between 1981 and '84. As SoG's David Inglesfield recalls, "in early 1982 we recorded 4-track demos of 'That's When We'll Be Free', 'Touching the Times' and a third song. When we played them to Mike Collier, who'd released our first single for his Flamingo label, he offered us a contract on the spot and licensed the finished tracks to for release on the PRT label"

Having released 'That's When We'll Be Free' in late 1982, 'Touching the Times' landed on 12" and 7" formats in early summer 1983. "For the demos, we'd used a TR-808 for the drums, and we kept the 808 for the final version of 'That's When We'll Be Free'", Inglesfield continues, "but for the full version of 'Touching the Times' we decided to use a Linn LM-1 for the drums. The keyboard sounds were from a Roland Jupiter 8, Roland SH-2 and Fender Rhodes"

Touching the Times was recorded at The Bridge studio near Putney Bridge, then mixed at The Sound Suite in Camden. "At the time, we were into the Sloane Ranger upper-class English look" says Inglesfield "and for the photo shoot for the original picture sleeve, we wanted an aristocratic type interior, and Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire was selected for this purpose."

The updated centre label image on our reissue shows State of Grace's Adrian & Pat Thomas, and David Inglesfield, in the Camden Mews outside The Sound Suite - located just a short walk from Freestyle's home in Kentish Town.

There is a moment on Sides, the new album from Richmond, Virginia-based duo Lean Year, in which a hospital room floor is filled with white chrysanthemums. This imagery, based on an opiate-induced hallucination experienced by vocalist Emilie Rex's mother as she recovered from surgery, is a perfect encapsulation of the band's second album: dreamlike and beautiful, yet burdened with cold, stark reality. Sides is a harrowing journey through realms of grief and memory, a meditation woven into a tapestry of synth pads, woodwinds, and Rex's instantly recognizable voice. The duo of Rex and Rick Alverson - who also works as a film director (The Mountain, Entertainment, The Comedy) - originally set out to write an album about conflict, but during the writing and recording process, they were confronted with a number of personal tragedies. Alverson lost both of his parents in rapid succession, Rex's mother received a cancer diagnosis, and the couple's beloved family dog, Orca, died. These events transformed the album into an exploration of loss - an attempt at processing the painful, complex, and private emotions that bubble to the surface when confronted with death. "We thought we'd do a concept album called Sides where we could reflect on all of the division in the world, and some in our own families, but then COVID transformed everything / everyone, and we suffered our own specific losses. The record became about loss and grief," Rex explains. "In this way, the title Sides was still appropriate: our individual grief and collective grief, the margins of before and after, the act and feeling of during and enduring. It felt like straddling a threshold between two opposing sides - the moment before conflict and the moment after it passes, life and death, the act of living and the memory of the act. Grief feels like a contention between what you knew and what you now know, and often both feel real and unreal at once." Sides - produced by Alverson alongside Erik Hall (In Tall Buildings) and featuring contributions from Elliot Bergman (Nomo, Wild Belle) and Joseph Shabason (Destroyer, The War on Drugs) - as a distinctly cinematic quality, perhaps due in part to Alverson's other career. Moments of jazz, slowcore, and dirgelike R&B find their way into the sorrowful, ambient suite, lulling the listener into a state of calm while the lyrics speak of ghosts, childhood, and mortality. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, Sides succeeds in mastering a balancing act between pathos and pop. Each song is indelible and haunting, with melodies that have the kind of broad appeal reminiscent of Karen Dalton, Aldous Harding, and FKA twigs.

Opening with the buzz of a smartphone on vibrate, First Hate’s sophomore album Cotton Candy launches to life with “Someone New,” a synth-driven statement of intent. The Danish duo’s charged songs are rooted in a recognizable universe, but traverse a wide array of genre experiments and pop detours. Cotton Candy follows the quest of its protagonist stumbling through a crumbling world, winning and losing lovers, swinging from extreme highs to hopeless lows. The title alludes to transience and ecstasy, the surge of a sugar rush before nausea sets in, the way cotton candy dissolves into nothingness leaving only sticky fingers. Throughout, the productions glitter with synthetic detail and hypermodern finesse, effervescent but elusive. “Life is a rollercoaster and we’ve ridden the ups and downs.” During the recording sessions, a collage of Copenhagen musicians flowed through the studio. First Hate is a fixture of the city’s creative community, but ultimately exists in their own sphere, carving a niche as parallel universe pop stars, embracing sweet and bitter, risk and reward: “Sometimes the ones who love you most are the ones who hold you back.” Anton and Joakim grew up in Copenhagen and met when they were 15 through common friends on the street where they lived. “I didn’t enjoy being home so I used to stay at my friend Jakob's basement in an old church on Willemoesgade street,” says Wei. “His mom was the priest. She baptized Anton at age eight during his Jesus phase when he demanded a late baptism from his atheist parents. Jakob was friends with Elias who lived up in Anton’s end and they introduced us to each other. One summer my parents finally married after 20 years of dating. Joakim moved in for two weeks and we accidentally trashed the apartment while they were on their honeymoon. Later on Jakob, Elias, and two other friends, Dan and Johan, formed the band Iceage. Watching our friends’ growing success was a catalyst in creating our own project. At that point everybody in our friend group was making punk music, so the most punk thing we could think to do was start a pop duo.” The First Hate catalog comprises more than nine years of work, including their 2017 cult classic, A Prayer For The Unemployed, a collaborative album Dittes Bog, two EPs and several singles. All of the recordings are self-produced, until they are ready to be finished in the studio. “We have sort of a twin alliance. Like couples finishing each other’s spaghetti at restaurants, we finish each other’s music. Having people enter this sacred mix has been such a pleasure.” On stage Anton and Joakim embody the contrasting yet complimentary energies of yin and yang: Joakim pushing buttons, steering the ship, working synths and samplers with harmonious calm, while Anton’s body bullets around the stage, pounding out his kinetic dance moves. The name Anton means fragile flower, an apt metaphor for his stage presence. A fragile flower shooting through concrete. To behold a performer who consistently delivers such intense live performances is a rare pleasure. “Live means love. When everything is right. When we meet the audience heart to heart. Then the planet spins even faster.” First Hate has performed over a hundred shows across Europe, Asia, the U.S., and Russia, both as headliners and alongside fellow Copenhagen acts Iceage, Lust For Youth, Communions, Soho Rezanejad, Trentemøller and Grand Prix. “We are on a quest of love, yes it’s as cheesy as that.”

Tape

Spirit Fest is an underground avant-pop supergroup (for those of us that feel the weight of each member’s individual power), made up of Saya and Takashi (Tenniscoats), Markus Acher and Cico Beck (Notwist), and Mat Fowler (Jam Money). They have steadily been crafting and solidifying a beautifully surreal world since their inception in 2016. Their independent artistic selves have been stripped back to their rawest forms, and they then have become a centralized being. The building blocks used are made with materials that have already started to decompose. It’s familiar, but also “kind of off”. Their sounds become a part of our collective consciousness. Spirit Fest is more than a band. It’s an idea that we can all participate in. A spirit we can all conjure. The freedom and space they give is a gift. This is an invitation into a freedom we can all experience. But first, you have to follow suit, rid yourself of your preconceived ideas and become your rawest form.

Moone Records bring you Spirit Fest’s first live album entitled, “Live at Import Export”. Here are some words Markus Acher shared about this show and the tour surrounding it:

“In 2021 Spirit Fest went on a summer tour to Italy which ended at our favourite alternative venue in Munich, called Import Export. Italy had been like heaven, Through mountains and tunnels with a soundtrack by Morricone, Yo La Tengo and Teenage Fanclub we drove from Autogrill to Autogrill and played outdoor-concerts at welcoming places. Although our dear friend Mat, who is an important part of Spirit Fest couldn‘t come, we felt like a real band and there were many evenings, when the moment and the music, the heart and the hand became one. We visited the tower of Pisa and had the best ice-cream. And the food of course! Another drive + another tunnel and then a last concert in Munich. A new song by Saya about Fuchur from the „Never Ending Story“. Saya‘s singing on Takeda No Komoriuta stopped time. So moving. I will never forget this tour and I am happy, there is a recording of the Import-export concert and Caleb from Moone Records made this beautiful tape from it.” - Markus Acher

Recorded live at Import Export, Munich, on June 27, 2021 by Noel Riedel

"The prolific band returns with a brief and seething left-turn: a furious homage to the scummiest, crustiest hardcore of the early ’80s". (Pitchfork)

"Brain stem cracking scum-punk recorded tersely in the basement of my home. After a notoriously frustrating eon, the knee-jerk song path was aggressive and hooky. This is an homage to the punk bands we grew up on—the weirdos and art freaks that piqued our interests and pointed us on the trail head to here / now. Bad times make for strong music is something I agree with. I would say that is evident by the past few years of output from the underground. Transmissions have been all over the map: scanning…searching...sweeping out in the darkness looking for a foot hold.

OSEES A Foul From represents some of our most savage and primal instincts. Fight or flight. And the importance of a sense of humor in the darkest hour. Nothing wrong with keeping it snappy in the meantime. For fans of Rudimentary Peni, Crass, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Screamers, Abwärts, Stooges and all things aggressively tilted towards your face. You can lean back but don’t flinch…it’s a brief foray into the exhausting pogo pit, so stiffen your back and jerk with your knees. Enjoy." - John Dwyer

The funky French duo is back with a new 7 inch!
Once again, DjeuhDjoah & Lieutenant Nicholson push the boundaries of the traditional "French song" to make the world dance. Two funky electronic flow, ready to electrify clubs worldwide. Our two
"chansonniers" are the leaders of "Afropeanité" and the Creolity.
The song "Pas si vite" champions deceleration and positivity during our complex period.
"Caipirinha" is a soft tribute to Bossa Nova, the dream of hot and sweet destination in a cold winter.
Recorded at « Le Triangle des Bermudes » the home studio of Lieutenant Nicholson, produced and mixed by him with a electro analog sound dear to them. Horns, live drums, percussions and vocal choir were recorded at Bastille village at the label basement, even during the pandemic…

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Drumming Up Trouble, the first release of previously unissued music by Alvin Curran on the label. Collecting works recorded between 2018-2021 and a side-long epic dating back to the early 80s, as the title suggests, Drumming Up Trouble focuses on a hitherto almost unknown aspect of Curran’s encyclopaedic and omnivorous musical world: his experiments with sampled and synthesised percussion. As Curran’s wonderful, wildly sweeping liner notes make clear, his fascination with drumming belongs to the radical investigation of music’s fundamental elements that has marked his output since the beginnings of MEV, who aimed (as he says in a recent interview) to return ‘in some collective way to a non-existent start time in the history of human music’. Whatever kind of music our proto-human ancestors played, he writes, ‘drums were front and centre in the mix. Drums rule!’

In a paradox typical of Curran’s approach, Drumming Up Trouble interrogates this most ancient dimension of music with contemporary technology. On the first side, we hear recent pieces performed using the sampling software and full-size MIDI keyboard setup Curran has refined since the 1980s. Two of them are wild real-time improvisations, primarily utilising an enormous bank of hip-hop samples. Building from polyrhythmic layers of drum machine fragments to wild cacophonies of clashing vocal samples, scratching, and frantic pitch shifting, these energetic and at times hilarious pieces occupy a space somewhere between John Oswald’s Plunderphonics, Pat Thomas and Matt Wand in the Tony Oxley Quartet, and the propulsive Kudoro/Grime fusion of Lisbon’s Príncipe label. They are improvisations are accompanied by two austere, minimal compositions realised in collaboration with Angelo Maria Fallo: ‘End Zone’ for orchestral bass drum and high oscillator, and ‘Rollings’, where a snare roll is gradually stretched and filtered by digital means into ‘floating electronic gossamer’.

The incredible breadth of Curran’s output makes it pretty unlikely that a listener familiar with his work would be surprised to find it branching out in a new direction. But no degree of familiarity with his work can really prepare for side B’s epic and bizarre ‘Field it More’. It’s perhaps best to let the maestro describe this unhinged and infectious offering in his own words: ‘It features an 8 bar funky minimal riff à la James Brown, played on synth and an-out-of-tune piano, synced to a pre-paid patch on the Roland drum machine. Over this is laid a heavily processed track of the voices of dancer Yoshiko Chuma and movie-maker Jacob Burckhardt discussing an upcoming performance of theirs at the Venice film festival, capped by a track of my playing an increasingly out of control blues over the top of all of the above’. Only Pekka Airaksinen’s Buddhas of the Golden Light comes to mind as a reference point that might even vaguely compare to this wild home-brew of drum-machine funk, mad improvisation and squelching electronics, which eventually dissolved into a massive, layered cluster. Ancient and modern, synthetic and human, hysterical and rigorous, Drumming up Trouble is 100% Curran.

Joseph Thomas Escovedo, better known as Coke Escovedo, was an American percussionist who played in several genres, including jazz fusion, R&B, and soul. Escovedo played with great names such as Cal Tjader and was a member of Santana and Azteca.

In 1976 he released his second solo studio album Comin’At Ya!, which counts 11 Latin rooted tracks and was produced by the synthesizer pioneer Patrick Gleeson, who also did several successful soundtracks and worked with greats such as Herbie Hancock. The album features vocals by Courtial singer Errol Knowles and also a guest performance by tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. The album became highly influential and was sampled many times, including by Eric B. & Rakim, MF Doom and Moby amongst others.

Sometimes a band grows so exponentially from one record to the next, it’s almost jarring. Hell Fire has already established themselves as the preeminent masters of a new hybrid breed of Bay Area thrash and NWOBHM in just a few short years, but their fourth album Reckoning is the type of ascendance that truly sets a band apart.

Reckoning is their Master of Puppets, their Number of The Beast, their Defenders Of The Faith. From the very first notes of the album opening title track, you can feel a vital new energy and inspiration to their music. To say Hell Fire used the recent global downtime to dig within and fully refine their sound would be an understatement. It truly is a reckoning.

“This album is every aspect of our band amplified to its maximum potential,” says singer/guitarist Jake Nunn. “This is the record we've always wanted to make, and it feels like we're just getting started,” guitarist Tony Campos adds. “We wanted to push ourselves musically and capture some of our frustrations, anger, loneliness, and rage over being locked inside and dealing with life during a global pandemic in the days when no one really knew how to navigate,” says drummer Mike Smith.

With no touring on the horizon in 2020, the band hunkered down and recorded nearly a full album in preproduction home demos. “I set up a little studio in my garage to record guitar, bass, and vocal tracks,” Campos says. “While Mike bought an electronic drum set and we demoed every song so we were more prepared going into the studio.” Each of them found themselves practicing more on their own and ironing out every last detail and nuance before finally being able to once again play in a room together.

The band’s heightened professionalism also brings in guest bassist Matt Freeman (of Rancid and Operation Ivy fame) on the album after original bassist Herman Bandala departed the band amicably during the initial writing process. New bassist Kai Sun joined Hell Fire in Fall 2021. Reckoning was recorded and mixed at Atomic Studios in Oakland, CA with Chris Dugan.

The title track kicks things off with a slight nod to the layered melodies of acoustic and harmonized guitars of Metallica’s “Battery” before the band rips into its signature galloping guitar picks, soaring harmonies and blistering rhythms. It’s an anthem and a gauntlet thrown down with Nunn’s shimmering screams and guttural howls while dueling guitar solos and Smith’s relentless double bass drum shuffle bring home the point that Hell Fire is born anew. “Medieval Cowboys” hearkens to the epic attack of Iron Maiden’s Powerslave with glistening melodies and complexly interwoven musical shifts that showcase exactly how tight and precise the band has become. “Addicted To Violence” is blistering thrash and “Thrill Of The Chase” soars with rich harmonies while both songs lyrically reflect hard truths the band faced in isolation. The lush acoustic based ballad “A Dying Moon” shows the band effortlessly stretching out in new directions. “It Ends Tonight” is an epic anthem served as a mission statement to the band’s return wherein arpeggiated riffs, squealing pinch harmonics, group chant vocals and Smith’s octopus-armed beats will have legions raising their fists in the air in salute.

“It’s somehow the heaviest and most melodic work we’ve done, and I’m proud of the discipline it took,” Nunn says. “It’s a wild thing.”

"Art is awe, art is mystery expressed," writes Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. "Art is somatic, even if it is experienced cerebrally. It is felt." The central mysteries of Smith's ninth studio album, Let's Turn it Into Sound, have to do with perception, expression, and communication: How can we communicate when spoken language is inadequate? How do we understand what it is we're feeling? How do we translate our experience of the world into something that someone else can understand? For Smith, a self-described "feeler," the answers are inspired by compound words in non-English languages, translation, sculptural fashion, dance, butoh, wushu shaolin, and other forms of sensory and somatic experience. Just like fashion uses lines, shapes, colors, textures, and silhouettes to communicate on a sensual level separate from the conscious mind, Let's Turn it Into Sound strives to use sound to communicate what words alone cannot. "The album is a puzzle," Smith says. "It is a symbol of receiving a compound of a ton of feelings from going out into a situation, and the song titles are instructions to breaking apart the feelings and understanding them." The energized "Is it Me or is it You" comes from traversing the gaps between how you see yourself and how another might see you, through a filter of their own projections. The hushed sense of revelation that brackets "There is Something" refers to the feeling of walking into a room and being subconsciously aware of the dynamic present. All the while, Smith interprets these feelings through sound. This auditory interpretation process, driven by earnest curiosity, led Smith to record some thoughts and questions that popped up along the journey in Somatic Hearing_a booklet which accompanies the album. Over three frenzied months, recording alone in her home studio, Smith allowed herself to pursue new experiments to accompany her usual toolkit of modular, analogue, and rare synthesizers (including her signature Buchla), orchestral sounds, and the voice. She created a new vocal processing technique, and gave herself permission to pursue a pacing that felt intuitive, rather one that followed typical song structures. She walked around in the windiest season with a subwoofer backpack and an umbrella, listening to the low end of the album amidst 60mph gusts. She listened to herself, and, in doing so, to an inner community which suddenly opened to her. Underlying the album is a dynamic relationship between what Smith describes as six distinct voices, each a multifaceted storyteller. By acknowledging these characters, she was acknowledging her whole being: the woven plurality of self, the complex process of noticing and resolving inner conflicts, and the joy of finding harmony in flux. "I started to feel so embodied by all of these characters. This is all the felt, unsaid stuff my inner community wants to communicate but it doesn't have the English language as its form of communication, and so this album was a form of giving space to let it talk and not judge it and just let it play." By not adhering to expected song structures, each song feels even more like a conversation, with each character getting to express themselves in full.

"Art is awe, art is mystery expressed," writes Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. "Art is somatic, even if it is experienced cerebrally. It is felt." The central mysteries of Smith's ninth studio album, Let's Turn it Into Sound, have to do with perception, expression, and communication: How can we communicate when spoken language is inadequate? How do we understand what it is we're feeling? How do we translate our experience of the world into something that someone else can understand? For Smith, a self-described "feeler," the answers are inspired by compound words in non-English languages, translation, sculptural fashion, dance, butoh, wushu shaolin, and other forms of sensory and somatic experience. Just like fashion uses lines, shapes, colors, textures, and silhouettes to communicate on a sensual level separate from the conscious mind, Let's Turn it Into Sound strives to use sound to communicate what words alone cannot. "The album is a puzzle," Smith says. "It is a symbol of receiving a compound of a ton of feelings from going out into a situation, and the song titles are instructions to breaking apart the feelings and understanding them." The energized "Is it Me or is it You" comes from traversing the gaps between how you see yourself and how another might see you, through a filter of their own projections. The hushed sense of revelation that brackets "There is Something" refers to the feeling of walking into a room and being subconsciously aware of the dynamic present. All the while, Smith interprets these feelings through sound. This auditory interpretation process, driven by earnest curiosity, led Smith to record some thoughts and questions that popped up along the journey in Somatic Hearing_a booklet which accompanies the album. Over three frenzied months, recording alone in her home studio, Smith allowed herself to pursue new experiments to accompany her usual toolkit of modular, analogue, and rare synthesizers (including her signature Buchla), orchestral sounds, and the voice. She created a new vocal processing technique, and gave herself permission to pursue a pacing that felt intuitive, rather one that followed typical song structures. She walked around in the windiest season with a subwoofer backpack and an umbrella, listening to the low end of the album amidst 60mph gusts. She listened to herself, and, in doing so, to an inner community which suddenly opened to her. Underlying the album is a dynamic relationship between what Smith describes as six distinct voices, each a multifaceted storyteller. By acknowledging these characters, she was acknowledging her whole being: the woven plurality of self, the complex process of noticing and resolving inner conflicts, and the joy of finding harmony in flux. "I started to feel so embodied by all of these characters. This is all the felt, unsaid stuff my inner community wants to communicate but it doesn't have the English language as its form of communication, and so this album was a form of giving space to let it talk and not judge it and just let it play." By not adhering to expected song structures, each song feels even more like a conversation, with each character getting to express themselves in full.

Wardown, the emotive and experimental project from Technimatic's Pete Rogers, releases second LP on Blu Mar Ten Music

Where the debut Wardown album was a diary of smeared memory, musically recounting the author's childhood home and his subsequent feelings of dislocation from it, Wardown II expands on the themes of nostalgia and focuses on our collective reactions to a promised future that remains undelivered.

Using aural scraps from that most optimistically futurist period, the 1950s & 1960s, Wardown weaves them into an uneasily dreamy, bittersweet commentary on postmodern nostalgia. The album veers between otherworldly, euphoric harmonies and pumping, mechanical incantations of promises for a new age.

BLACK VINYL REPRESS

ITS 25 YEARS Since the first Heads album was released.. .so.. for 2021..Rooster has decided to get the album back in print on vinyl.. but changing the artwork. With some silver foiling and bordering, the single sleeve has been boosted to a sweet gatefold, Rooster also got the Radio 1 sessions from the time remastered, and re-cut along with the huge b-side to their Television 7” “Jellystoned Park”.
So there you have it, a double vinyl silver jubilee reissue of a fantastic debut album!

From the original reissue sales notes:
“The Heads had self-released a couple of 7"', and then Cargo Uk's inhouse label Headhunter UK got to release a further 7", and then the Debut album in 1996. Amidst a world suffocating in Britpop smarm, the Heads cut a timely swathe with their unkempt rock psychedelique. The album contained 10 tracks of guitar driven, amp destroying rock, with cues taken straight from the US underground, Stooges, MC5, Mudhoney, Pussy Galore, early Monster Magnet too but with a disitinctly British stamp, some of the drone and fuzz from Loop / Spacemen 3, some of the attitude of the Fall, Pink Fairies and Walking Seeds and overlaid with the spaced rock of early Hawkwind. It was obvious that the four members of the Heads were music obsessives. The debut album was recorded at Foel studios (owned by Dave Anderson from Hawkwind) and engineered by Corin Dingley, it was mastered by John Dent at LOUD.”


We’ve asked for some new appraisal of the Heads for the Silver Jubilee edition from good friends....

Stewart Lee February 2021
“The Halley's Comet victory orbits of historic heavy artefacts from Detroit, like The Stooges or The MC5, leave grateful onlookers aghast. But, hidden away in Bristol, The Heads are still with us now, our homegrown acid-garage godfathers, an ongoing thirty-two year old concern with a back catalogue arguably more consistent than the super-dense psyche-rock groups that inspired them. The Heads arrived fully formed and have spent three decades becoming more like themselves, a musical black hole that sucks in all surrounding matter. I love The Heads “

Phil Alexander February 2021
“The Heads make music for freaks in the know. If you were there in 1996, you’ll know just what that means…

Back then, they were gloriously out of step with the pop-cheese of the time and geezerly lumpiness of Britpop. Theirs was an altogether different take on music – a take inspired by the glorious burn-out of the ‘60s, the sonic overdrive of the ‘70s and the axis of joy created by the combination of excess volume and repetition.

We could name-check some inspirations and kindred spirits: The Stooges, Hawkwind, Floyd, Loop, Sabbath, Amon Düül II, Spacemen 3, Walking Seeds, Mudhoney, Monster Magnet among them... But in all honesty, The Heads have always existed in a world of their own, surfacing as and when the mood takes them, before returning to their subterranean rehearsal room to jam their way through yet more mind-altering riffs and mood-altering rhythms.

Relaxing With The Heads is their first defining statement. It is also possibly their most straight-forward release, the sound of a band attempting to find structure in their playing rather than abandoning themselves to their wildest impulses. That would come later…

And yet, 25 years on, this album blasts forth like few records from that time, its slacker charm welded to super-fuzzed riffs that propel its 10 tracks ever onwards. Righteous is probably the only word for it…”

Just 100 copies pressed – make sure to book your place for this unforgettable journey.

Celebrating our tenth release, First Cut delivers the label’s first split release. Like the arbitrary scheduling of our hometown Dublin’s bus system, it took a while for these tracks to appear – and then they all came at once!

Tr One drops ‘Fold’, a rousing house track, led by insistent piano keys and tough drums, while on ‘Crash2’, Lerosa delivers a wonderfully sub-aquatic electro-techno jam. Bringing the listener back to earth with a driving bass and powerful rhythm is Giles Armstrong’s ‘Deep is For Dopes!’

Rose City Band is celebrated guitarist Ripley Johnson. A prolific songwriter, Johnson started Rose City Band to have an outlet to explore songwriting styles apart from Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo, where he is often not the lead songwriter. Rose City Band allowed him to follow his musical muses as they greet him and not be bound by the schedule of bandmates and demands of a touring group. Stepping out from behind the psychedelic haze that envelops his other output, Rose City Band"s lean yet richly textured arrangements lay bare the beauty of his songcraft. On Earth Trip, Johnson reveals more of himself than ever before, coloring the project"s country-rock twang with a melancholic, wistful undertone. It charts a journey of personal growth and introspection with surprising honesty, from pining for summers spent with friends to meditations on space, stillness and the splendor of the natural world. It continues Rose City Band"s celebration of summer warmth and the great outdoors, seen from a new vantage point, and with newfound appreciation for the freedom and joy that nature provides. Earth Trip was written during a period of sudden shocks and drastic lifestyle changes for Johnson. Forced to cancel extensive touring plans for 2020, the guitarist found himself home for an extended period for the first time in years. No longer in constant motion, he was able to experience and enjoy the simple pleasures of home life, of being in one place: hikes in nature, bathing outside, and waking with the dawn. Forming new connections to his surroundings, from tending to a garden to sleeping out under the stars, Johnson found hope and healing in a more mindful relationship with the natural world. Themes of recalibration and finding personal space are equally mirrored in Earth Trip"s lean production. Recorded at his home studio in Portland and mixed by Cooper Crain (Bitchin" Bajas, Cave), Johnson makes deft use of space while experimenting with new sonics. Shimmering pedal steel, woozy harmonica melodies, and stately piano enhance the album"s introspective tone without ever clouding arrangements. Psychedelic elements that nod to Johnson"s other projects and influences still appear throughout, but hover at the edge of perception, a subtle halo adding colour and texture to Johnson"s songwriting rather than taking centrer-stage. He elaborates: "I told Cooper I was trying to capture that feeling when you take psychedelics and they just start coming on - maybe objects start buzzing in the edges of your vision, you start seeing slight trails, maybe the characteristics of sound change subtly. But you"re not fully tripping yet. He got the idea right away and his mix really captures that feeling." Johnson"s lithe guitar playing throughout treads a fine line between country and cosmic, taut melodies spiralling out into long reverb trails or free-form solos buoyed by a breeze, radiating summer warmth. Through its daring honesty and masteful arrangements, Earth Trip cements Johnson"s place as a singular songwriter of inimitable skill. It"s message of mindfulness and our interconnectedness to the environment expands on a long country and blues music tradition that draws a symbiotic relationship between storyteller and the land, capturing the beauty of the natural world while also emphasising our responsibility in preserving it for future generations

A real gem for collectors and fans of PINK FLOYD. On this double LP, world stars of rock history have joined hands to bow down to one of the greatest bands in music history with their versions of the legendary work "THE WALL". The complete THE WALL album interpreted by IAN ANDERSON, ADRIAN BELEW (King Crimson), ALAN WHITE (YES), RICK WAKEMAN (YES), ROBBY KRIEGER (THE DOORS), STEVE LUKATHER (TOTO), BILLY SHERWOOD (YES), TOMMY SHAW (STYX), DWEEZIL ZAPPA and many more.

UK label Dawn State continue their hot streak this summer with further eclectic moods for the dance floor and beyond. On the tools for the fifth outing on the label is KIDWHO, a blossoming talent who through the last years whilst enduring the pandemic found light by burying himself in his studio experiencing new creative flows. The “Warez House” EP varies in tastes, similar to the highs and lows of the times that just passed us by.

Diving into the deep end is the title track, “Warez House”, loopy and hypnotic, swaying between shades of low end leaned house and techno. Off kilter synths and pads maneuver their way around the driving force of the track. “It came together layer by layer, eventually turning into a dense (and at times, unruly!) groove. A final touch
of atmospherics from an old Roland ROMpler and the track was done - bar a generous helping hand in mixdown from Joel Kane (who also turned out a heads-down dub version which might make an appearance!).”

Leaning in a more hazy direction is the blissful cruiser, “Leploop Lagoon”, a deep and emotive vibe crafted especially for the early mornings. A sophisticated deep house energy from the talented producer. “‘Leploop Lagoon’ is the oldest track on the EP, a cleaned-up version of a rough jam I made around four years back. It takes its name from the Leploop, a quirky semi-modular analogue groovebox of sorts, hand-built in Italy. A very unique and unpredictable machine, it’s on bass duties here as well as providing some percussion sounds via the MPC sampler.”

On the flip side lies “Spectral Pattern”, and it packs a certain punch. The rolling arrangement converses in harmony with icy hi-hats that flash in and out teasing the energy, all of the elements having space to breathe and work their magic.“‘Spectral Pattern’ came together quickly one very productive weekend in the studio last year. It developed from the bass sequence, which comes from a Yamaha TG-33, an unassuming 80s digital synth known for its glassy mix of ROM samples and FM tones - very New Age sounding, or 90s computer game soundtracks. But when you strip it back to basics, it punches hard in the low-end.”

Slipping on to the B side is a five minute transcendental trip, offering yet another series of textures to this otherworldly EP. The final track “At Least We Hav Music” is an ethereal soundscape waiting to be explored, wandering amongst ambient realms throughout. “The label was keen to include an ambient track on the release, and I wanted to record something specially for them. At first I had in mind something droning and melancholic, but after a few experiments with cassette
loops and reverb pedals this was the one that stood out. It was recorded during one of the lockdowns, and I guess I needed to create something that sounded more hopeful than brooding. I messaged DS boss Tom Haus with a rough version, and we went on to have a grumble about the gloomy state of things, locked-down in our respective cities and missing friends, family, activities… At some point I wrote ‘at least we have music’ - and almost as soon as I had sent it I knew I had found the track’s title. I’m very lucky to have had my home studio as a refuge through the long months of lockdown, and I’m honoured to have the chance share some of my output from this period on this record.”
KIDWHO fitting the Dawn State ethos to a tee here as they set up shop for what looks to be another fantastic release. “Each of these tracks came about in quite different ways. Like many creative people, I had moments of struggle during the pandemic, where the lack of variety and day-to-day stimulation lead to periods of writer’s block, and so I used those times to focus on smaller, more manageable projects such as making synth patches, recording sounds and and throwing together short loops in my samplers for later use. A number of
these short loops eventually laid the foundations for title track ‘Warez House’. Big thanks to Dawn State, Joel Kane, El Choop and everyone else who has helped make this happen.” -

KIDWHO

There's something perversely fabulous about the thought of this warped masterwork wandering into 60,000 unsuspecting British homes in 1973. Faust's second-and-a-half album hit the shops to celebrate their signing to the nascent Virgin Records, who were looking to take advantage of the zeitgeist for German music at that time. Undeterred by the fact the band's unwillingness to engage with the commercial landscape had seen them dropped from Polydor, Branson and co cooked up a suitably spectacular marketing strategy, selling the LP for 49p, the bargain price of a single. Shoppers flocked in their thousands to grab a copy, raced home and then spent the next forty five minutes checking their tracking, banging the speakers and blowing the needle, all to no avail. Do not adjust your set - This is Faust.

The Paranoid Style album begins with an elegy for the radical, tragic Pop Art titan Barney Bubbles and ends with a revved-up cover of Rosanne Cash's peerless "Seven Year Ache." Throughout the ten songs in-between, Elizabeth Nelson weaves together stories about figures like Steve Cropper, P.G. Wodehouse, and Doug Yule. She visits her hometown and ponders Jack Kerouac's house in her childhood neighborhood. She laments the loss of David Berman and Adam Schlesinger, and duets with Patterson Hood from the Drive-By Truckers on an infectious tribute to John Prine. She ponders the desecration of the music industry and drinks her beer in a tavern and sings the working gal's blues. Loaded with vivid detail and memorable riffs, it proves what in-the-know critics have been saying for years: Elizabeth Nelson is one of our best songwriters. Also Available From The Paranoid Style: Rolling Disclosure LP.