Search:ov

Australian artist Indigo Sparke has signed to Sacred Bones and announced a new release date for her debut album, echo, now due May 21st. To celebrate, she has shared a video for the album's latest single "Everything Everything."

Of the song, Sparke says "I wrote this song not long after coming back from a magical castle in Italy where a group of us had been making music and soaking in the golden honey days. I met a beautiful human Shahzad Ismaily who had discovered I also write poetry. One night around midnight he called across the castle and asked me to come over and speak some of my poetry over an instrumental track he had recorded. The only thing he asked me to do was to sing a line or so if I felt it. That song was dog bark echo. He invited me back to NYC and I was living in his empty spare room in Brooklyn briefly. I borrowed this little parlour guitar of his and completely fell in love. I just sat in that room for hours and days playing around and just laying next to the guitar looking at the ceiling thinking about life and death and the poetry of it all. How life and death will hold us up to light. How grief ripens inside us

all and we all decay and everything changes and flies away. I remember feeling this liberating sense of freedom and melancholic nostalgia. It was so hot and the wind almost blew through from a different dimension or plane. I guess the song came through from that place too. It just came out. I can almost still feel that time on my skin, or in my breath."

Indigo Sparke brings her deeply personal lived experiences to her music, highlighting the spaces between the polarity of softness and grit. Pulling from her experiences of addiction, of healing, of queerness, of heartbreak, of joy, of connection, of the softness and of the grit alchemizing it all into tenderness through her music, she conjures up a myriad of feelings that is undeniably potent.

echo was co-produced by Sparke, Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker and Andrew Sarlo.

Australian artist Indigo Sparke has signed to Sacred Bones and announced a new release date for her debut album, echo, now due May 21st. To celebrate, she has shared a video for the album's latest single "Everything Everything."

Of the song, Sparke says "I wrote this song not long after coming back from a magical castle in Italy where a group of us had been making music and soaking in the golden honey days. I met a beautiful human Shahzad Ismaily who had discovered I also write poetry. One night around midnight he called across the castle and asked me to come over and speak some of my poetry over an instrumental track he had recorded. The only thing he asked me to do was to sing a line or so if I felt it. That song was dog bark echo. He invited me back to NYC and I was living in his empty spare room in Brooklyn briefly. I borrowed this little parlour guitar of his and completely fell in love. I just sat in that room for hours and days playing around and just laying next to the guitar looking at the ceiling thinking about life and death and the poetry of it all. How life and death will hold us up to light. How grief ripens inside us

all and we all decay and everything changes and flies away. I remember feeling this liberating sense of freedom and melancholic nostalgia. It was so hot and the wind almost blew through from a different dimension or plane. I guess the song came through from that place too. It just came out. I can almost still feel that time on my skin, or in my breath."

Indigo Sparke brings her deeply personal lived experiences to her music, highlighting the spaces between the polarity of softness and grit. Pulling from her experiences of addiction, of healing, of queerness, of heartbreak, of joy, of connection, of the softness and of the grit alchemizing it all into tenderness through her music, she conjures up a myriad of feelings that is undeniably potent.

echo was co-produced by Sparke, Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker and Andrew Sarlo.

Main Phase returns for a second full-length EP on Shall Not Fade's hugely successful sublabel, the bass-oriented Time Is Now. The Copenhagen native is fresh from an appearance on Danish leftfield label Petrola 80 and can otherwise be found heading ATW records with another Time Is Now regular, Interplanetary Criminal. He serves up a tasting menu of the most quintessential sounds in UKG across Buss It EP.

The title track is understated, sparse but tense using sparing Ragga vox that build to a crescendo, wobbling over into "Our Style" - expect space age FX drawn out over mutant inflections in another textbook eyes down cut. Cheeky bassline garage energy is brought in "Creepin", while teasing breaks and dirty south hip-hop in the vocals.

Looking to the infamous early years of garage on the B-side, "Freaky" channels those classic Ghost releases in its sub-heavy intent, spicy snare and catchy vocal hooks. The EP is closed out with the expansive, gut-wrenching wobbles of "Misdemeanour", accentuated with a highly intricate two-step rhythm.

Blue Chemise documents the hermetic soundworld of Australia's Mark Gomes. 'Daughters of Time' follows 2017's brilliant full-length 'Influence on Dusk,' released in micro-edition on Gomes' own Greedy Ventilator imprint. It is an elegiac set of vignettes recorded straight to dictaphone with minimal post-production. These pieces function in a manner akin to Loren Connor's evocative 'airs,' conjuring poignant, intangible senses of longing and nostalgia then disappearing well before overstaying their welcome. Regarding their genesis, Gomes points to a quote from Australian artist Robert Hunter: "It's like I'm external to them. They develop their own assertion and character; their becoming finished is a thing they decide themselves. It's unexplainable."

Over three decades as the unassuming but pivotal figure behind some of Scotland’s most iconic pop, Jim McCulloch steps out of the shadows and onto centre stage with his debut solo album. The former Soup Dragon perfects his mastery of songcraft on When I Mean What I Say, released on Violette Records on 21 May 2021.
Lush and textured, delicate and intriguing, When I Mean What I Say is immersed in the melodic tapestries of Laurel Canyon but rooted in Jim’s life in his hometown of Glasgow. Written in Donegal’s wild Atlantic coast and recorded pre-Lockdown in Glasgow’s downtown Gorbals district, the warmth of the album’s classic pop and its lyrical openness transports the listener to an emotional and harmonic timelessness far from 2020’s claustrophobia.
Jim: “Violette Records are kindred spirits in the music world. Their ethos, aesthetic and generosity of spirit chime with me. Once I had finished the album, they were the only record company I sent it off to-the only record company I thought could do it justice.”

Classic funk / soul LP from 1977 repressed by Unidisc, Canada for 2021.

Gruff Rhys releases his new album ‘Seeking New
Gods’ through Rough Trade. This is Gruff’s
seventh solo album.
‘Seeking New Gods’ was recorded following a US
tour with his band and mixed in LA with superstar
producer Mario C (Beastie Boys).
The album concept was originally driven to be the
biography of a mountain, Mount Paektu (an East
Asian active volcano). However, as Gruff’s writing
began to reflect on the inhuman timescale of a
peak’s existence and the intimate features that
bring it to mythological life, both the songs and the
mountain became more and more personal.
“The album is about people and the civilisations,
and the spaces people inhabit over periods of
time. How people come and go but the geology
sticks around and changes more slowly. I think it’s
about memory and time,” he suggests of ‘Seeking
New Gods’ meaning. “It’s still a biography of a
mountain, but now it’s a Mount Paektu of the mind.
You won’t learn much about the real mountain
from listening to this record but you will feel
something, hopefully.” - Gruff Rhys

Domino are immensely proud to announce the signing of my bloody
valentine, with new physical editions of the band’s seminal catalogue
being made available. ‘Isn’t Anything’ and ‘loveless’ have been
mastered fully analogue for deluxe LPs and also mastered from new
hi-res uncompressed digital sources for standard LPs, with each
being made available widely for the first time ever. Fully analogue
cuts of ‘m b v’ will also be available on deluxe and standard LPs
globally for the first time.
my bloody valentine, the quartet of Bilinda Butcher, Kevin Shields,
Deb Googe and Colm Ó Cíosóig, are widely revered as one of the
most ground-breaking and influential groups of the past forty years.
During an era in which guitar bands denoted, at best, a retroclassicism, not only did my bloody valentine sound unlike any of their
contemporaries, the band achieved the rare feat of sounding like the
future.
The second my bloody valentine album, ‘loveless’, was released in
1991. Musically, it took an unexpected leap forwards, standing ahead
of anything released at the time. Shields and the band moved further
towards a music of pure sensation, creating textures and tones that
could be felt as much as heard; with ‘loveless’ the band created an
album that overwhelmed the senses. ‘loveless’ is widely considered a
flawless whole and rightly regarded as a masterpiece; a 1990s
equivalent to ‘Pet Sounds’, ‘In A Silent Way’ or ‘Innervisions’, a record
constructed by exploring the edges of what a recording studio is
capable of. It is a record best experienced as a whole, in one sitting -
a listening experience like no other and unmatchable in its sonic
brevity.

Joviale is a multidisciplinary artist from North London making otherworldly, immersive music that plays with “minimal textures, killer interjections and vocals that are equal parts restraint and rage.” (The Times) Looping these high vocals with heady, emotional chords, they weave a screen around the listener, pulling them into chaptered, strangely sweet variations of the artist, divided out across albums, and designed to generate a performative atmosphere, both on stage and through the recording.

For their forthcoming EP Hurricane Belle NEVER SEVEN, spring 2021, Joviale combines warm sensual exposure with a flash of teeth, as the fictional Hurricane Belle whirls onto the scene, an embodiment of the “sense of electric and spiralised chaos” erupting from the artist’s centre. Hurricane Belle is a Champion that was inspired by Peter Shenai’s “Hurricane Bell” experiment, in which he cast brass bells modelled on the five stages of Hurricane Katrina. Industrial, insatiable and metallic, Hurricane Belle is embedded in the album not only through sound, but also through sight; the first single of the project, Blow, will be accompanied by a self-directed video, reflecting Joviale’s increased interest in the visual arts, and in building multisensory experiences. As written in the accompanying prose for the album, “Let yourselves into my breath, my rhythm and my core. Take pleasure in the whiplash of this collection.”

2019 saw the release of the artist’s debut EP Crisis, in which Joviale wielded narrative and storytelling to build a dreamy, silk-wrapped universe across songs such as Dreamboat, and Taste of the Heavens. As with Hurricane Belle, Crisis was created in collaboration with the producer Bullion, and it has been widely supported by press, including interviews in The Face and Coeval, and features in Dazed, Line of Best Fit, Guardian, The Times, Fader, Crack and Clash, among others. The EP also merited radio support from Huw Stephens on BBC Radio 1, Jamz Supernova on BBC 1xtra, Selector FM, Matt Wilkinson on Beats 1, Tom Ravenscroft, Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music, Dan Alani on Reprezent, and Worldwide FM, among others.
Joviale belongs to a generation of artists with a strong sense of collaborative, interdisciplinary practice. The artist leans into this skill-sharing, research-led community, valuing project-based work that allows for the development of concepts related to visual and sound culture. This is reflected in them having recently directed a video for Laura Groves, as well as running a bi-monthly radio show on NTS over a period of twelve months. They carry a deep interest in the connection between the arts, ecological sciences, and semi-fictive encounters, as well as the wider London scene. In 2019, The Face described Joviale’s sound and aesthetic as “building the London artist a loyal fan base”, an effect that encompasses their involvement in the city’s music circuit; Joviale built a reputation for their live shows before releasing any official music. They have played support shows for artists that include Celeste, Zsela, Kate Tempest, Nilufer Yanya, Babeheaven, Kindness, and Westerman, and, in 2019, Joviale sold out their first headline show at Folklore, Hackney.

Freedom is the debut EP from South East London vocalist + DJ Ell Murphy for Shall Not Fade sub-label Time Is Now. The EP sees Ell collaborating with 5 acclaimed producers in the UKG scene; DJ Crisps, Stones Taro, Highrise, Picasso & Tuff Trax; each one hand-picked by Ell to bring their unique production style to the release; and made entirely during lockdown over the past year, working remotely with the producers based in Rotterdam, Australia, Japan & London.

Every Dunbarrow album has a hauntingly classic sound of, in the band’s own
words, “an eerie rawness.” But their third album feels like you’ve discovered a
mysterious half-century old recording tucked away in a decrepit abandoned
mansion. Perhaps there’s a note attached, begging its courier to beware. Alas,
whoever possessed the tape apparently never survived. ...that is to say, it feels like there’s a solemn
story to this album, not just in the
lyrics, but in the sound itself. Much like
the eponymous debut of Black Sabbath,
the band uses subtle sound effects to
dramatically set the scene for its mostly
clean tones and masterful use of open
space for which the band has become
known. But unlike their first two albums,
this one does see the band branching
out just a bit into heavier, more distorted
guitars. The result is a much more
in-your-face sound, while retaining the
Haugesund, Norway quintet’s masterful
proto-metal sound.
The album opens with the sound of falling
rain as Lønning and Eirik Øvregård’s
guitars seep into the speakers like
funereal bells and haunted drones on
“Death That Never Dies.” Drummer Pål
Gunnar Dale slams down three snare
beats as bassist Sondre Berge Engedal
slinks in harmony over it all. Andersen’s
crisp vocals paint a bleak picture of
dark perdition until the band slips into
a swaggering piano-led coda reminiscent
of “Sabbra Cadabra.” The 7-minute
psychedelic folk masterpiece “Turn In
Your Grave” is the album centerpiece,
replete with mournfully shimmering
Mellotron and bleak folkloric lyrics. Its
hypnotically spinning guitar notes and
old European parlando-rubato singing
hearken to dark early Steeleye Span with
a sinister edge. “In My Heart” perfectly
showcases the band’s penchant for folk
based, yet head-banging riffs that break
with tradition that has stilted modern
heavy music.
“I think with this record, we have managed
to create our own unique sound
with its own Dunbarrow tag,” says the
band. With that sound comes the perfect
artwork: A cover illustration from the
early 1900’s by artist Harry Clarke from
his work for Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of
Mystery and Imagination.

Let’s celebrate Claudio Coccoluto with a special reprint of the 20th
Anniversary Edition vinyl of the international hit “Belo Horizonti” by The Heartists, aka Claudio Coccoluto & Savino Martinez.
The release includes the remastered original extended version and the
exclusive 20 Anos remix. “Belo Horizonti” was originally released in 1996 on Atlantic Jaxx Records and subsequently licensed to VC Records (Virgin). The Original version, a mix of over 12 minutes, found Claudio struggling at the time to find a record label to sign it for release without cutting the original mix short. It was only thanks to Basement Jaxx and their independent label that it was released with the original 12 minutes intact and further remixes by the likes of Basement Jaxx and DJ David Morales. “Belo Horizonti” has often featured as the choice of soundtrack for celebratory football goals and is often played by the most respected and renowned djs in the world today during their live dj sets at peak time. Over the past 20 years Belo Horizonti has also appeared in numerous compilations around the world. An unforgettable success for all fans!

Mi Conga es de Akokan is built on the Conga de los Hoyos rhythms from Santiago de Cuba. Saxophones and trombones alternate with vocals imploring the listener to dance over intensely syncopated percussion, leading to a melodic flight by the masterful trumpeter Reinaldo "Molote" Melian. The horns re-enter, and the Orquesta takes off to soaring heights of rhythmic intensity and sophistication.

La Guajira is a slow country rhythm told by the tres guitar and percussion onto which horns and strings add slinking, narcotized harmonies. Pepito tells a sensual tale of romance with a girl from the country "la guajira", which slowly builds in intensity over soneos, coros and mambos until all parts interlock in a lugubrious climax.

Locked in a 486 glow, lightblink machines nightlight, being enters lighttime limelight. The long nineties already distending, the Major midbloats, crowds throng superclubs- strobelit honeys on a podium in Ibiza already blasted a stratosphere away from mildewed badflats, emphysemic parlours, the fug of week old washing drying slowly on the rad. Ach we’ll hang it out in the morning fire another joint of badhash and turn that tape over. We are being Here. beings disconnected, shut ins, psychick worriers, long walks to and from clubs, mostly dark, always raining, or mizzling anyway, lug bigbrick machines into cabs and Venue, setup and playing live and right now from the lounge lobby at Sativa, down the stairs from the caustic, twitching thrashpit being sits, being works. Dole sludge, shirking class zeroes, scoff pizza rolls w salad cream, that headchef gaffer never reckoned you’d graft at the potwash, a slick fur of rotfood dish slop residue right to the elbow, absolutely bowfin. Rumours of other places, people, scenes, tapes sent and emissaries return, invites to get trains, overnightbus south to London. being brought water to the ‘wells in South London and monthly emissions snaked out into the world, into badflats elsewhere where gowched couch tatties sprawl and the being burrowed deep into memories.. Tea is toast and sandwich spread and endless crisps as the binbags pile high in the backyard, the being blinks, it’s a twilit morning and it’s time to go to bed.

The always affordable Wanted series returns this week with another set of beautifully presented, expertly selected comps covering a variety of genres. Here we have a set of overlooked and under the radar Hip Hop heaters including the lyricism and flow of De La Soul, Bubba Sparxxx and RZA & GZA from Wu Tang Clan and the production talents of Pete Rock, Jazzy Jeff and Timberland. Beats to make your head nod til your neck snaps.

Germany’s Peter Grummich has been releasing his twist on House and Techno over the past two decades via the likes of Shitkatapult, Kompakt, Spectral Sound, Mule Musiq and of course his very own Innerbird. Here though we see Peter deliver his latest works via Bengoa’s fledgling B2 Recordings, which sees him experimenting with some outboard classics like the classic Casio RZ-1 drum machine and the Roland JX8P synthesizer to create a raw, old school feel.

Opening the package is title-cut ‘Onions’ the ‘Lee Anderson Endless Summer Mix’, laid out over eight minutes with hazy stab sequences, dusty drums and a chugging low-end drive while squelching acid licks subtly work their way into the latter stages of the for composition. ‘Hello Rave’ follows next on the flip-side, bringing airy dub chords, metallic stabs and gritty analogue percussion into the limelight for a groove-driven workout. ‘Basement Memories’ then rounds things out, this time bringing dynamically evolving, intricate drum patterns, resonant bleeps into focus atop and an underlying dubbed out aesthetic.

In the follow up to her staggering psychedelic jazz debut, 'Things That Grow', we are delighted to see Cara Stacey's return to Kit Records. Here she teams up with Peruvian flautist Camilo Ángeles, pushing further into the liminal space between classical, jazz and traditional South African music.

Recorded live over a day in Cape Town, 'Ceder' presents a narrative in turns soothing, shrill, euphoric, dissonant, serene - unfurling like a labyrinthine soundtrack to some foreign planet; a landscape sparse and desolate, yet somehow teeming with life.

Recommended if you like the hauntingly isolated Western soundtracks of Bruce Langhorne, Keith Jarrett's serpentine piano playing or the fantastical terrains of Rashad Becker.

With this fifth release on the catalogue's main series, we continue to care about rising talents and extend to new musical borders. Siwei is an Antwerp based producer who made his specialty to blend ambient and techno with moody waves of distortion and fidgeting modular patterns.

The A side takes you on an industrial tinged techno trip while the other takes the direction of beat science, and the dark side of dub. A1 feels like a head-on charge in a dusky and smokey room. It starts with a rolling bassline, introducing the full-on energy of a mighty steady kick drum stomping over howling pads. An ambitious track to lose oneself and the ordinary sense of time.

B1 is in the lineage of far-out dub explorations and forward-thinking dance experiments. This fractured cutting-edge aesthetic blends ideally with the reverberating synths and the eastern vibe of the lead melody. B2 is an epic broken beat stepper, a secret game for adults, with cinematically engineered sci-fi synths and a ruthless palette of sounds. It's not just dreadful, but also playful, thrilling for the mind, challenging for the body.

Be With is delighted to present Jorge López Ruiz’s El Grito (Suite Para Orquesta De Jazz), eternal Argentinian magic released on CBS in 1967 that must be one of the most sought-after South American jazz LPs.

Living in Buenos Aires in the 60s, driven by creative impulse and rage Jorge López Ruiz used music as his platform to protest the Argentine military dictatorship: “I could never stand dictatorships, to be told how you have to think, what you have to do. Nor did I endure discrimination”.

A young López Ruiz had appeared on a television panel alongside writer, politician and philosopher Arturo Jauretche, criticising the Onganía dictatorship. Jauretche told López Ruiz “Now say it with music”. This was the deep inhale that lead to El Grito, literally “The Scream”. As López Ruiz later explained “Jauretche urged me that my protests should not remain in words and acquire the consistency of a work… but it was not so much what he told me but how he told me, what prompted me to make the work take shape, first in a live concert and then in a recording”.

As the police and military began resorting to kidnapping, torture and summary executions to quiet dissent, with depressing inevitability the artist community and their work were a particular target of the increasingly brutal regime. El Grito was banned not long after it was released and the majority of original copies were unceremoniously destroyed.

The work of a genius artist living under an opressive dictatorship, erased by the government of the time, this is buried treasure in every sense and it’s been a rare record for over 50 years. But it isn’t just being hard to find that has pushed up the prices of those few original copies that survived, this is a foundational record in the development of jazz in South America.

El Grito (Suite Para Orquesta De Jazz) is a showcase for Jorge López Ruiz’s skills as a composer and arranger as he leads a virtuoso orchestra of the likes of Mario Cosentino (alto sax), Baby López Furst (piano), Pichi Mazzei (drums), Gustavo Bergalli (trumpet), Oscar López Ruiz (guitar), Arturo Schneider (flute) and Jorge López Ruiz himself plays double bass on the fourth and fifth movements.

As the album’s sub-title explains, The album is a Jazz orchestra concept suite. Five movements, to be heard as a whole, that end where they begin.

“When I wrote it there was no history of a cyclical work in jazz. But I didn't notice that, I needed to express something and I did it. At that time they told me I was crazy, that such a thing was very difficult to do. But hey, I like challenges”.

Yet this is not challenging jazz. There are certainly avant garde, free jazz flourishes, but the hard bop characteristics make this a very accessible album: easy to listen to without being easy listening. López Ruiz’s love of film brings a definite cinematic feel.

The title movement opens the album in bombastic style. “El Grito” grabs you by the lapels and refuses to let go. Raw then controlled, it’s by turns stabbing then soothing, with rage weaved in and out of the elegant styles. “M.A.B. = Amor” is our favourite here. With a tense introduction and a patient build, a gentle sax sweeps in to lift everything up to meet the serene piano and soft drums. Elegantly paced, it moves back and forth between deep contemplation and a more urgent call and response between strings and horns. A near-eight-minute, slow motion marvel.

The second side eases in with the beautifully-titled “Hasta El Cielo, Sin Nubes, Con Todas Las Estrellas” (“Up To The Sky, No Clouds, With All The Stars”) a relatively brief mid-tempo piece featuring López Ruiz’s insistent bass notes high in the mix, and again blending the sublime with the emotive with its wild horns and tight rhythm section.

It’s followed by “Tendré El Mundo” (“I Will Have The World”) which also leads with hypnotic bass, but this time swifter, driven by crashing drums, rapid horn conversations and effortlessly cool piano flourishes. Rounding out the suite, “De Nuevo El Grito” (something like “The Next Scream” or “The Scream Renewed”) is a stylish closer. Whilst López Ruiz’s bass shifts the track along, the horns and piano are more restrained, yet no less stunning.

This Be With edition of El Grito sounds sensational, if we do say so ourselves. Working with audio from the original analogue tapes, the vinyl mastering chops of Simon Francis are on full show here in what he considers to be some of his best ever work for Be With. Pete Norman’s cutting skills have made sure nothing is lost. The tortured artwork has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to helping this revered work find a rightful place in every protest art collection.

Originally released as a 12” single in 1982, ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ was the final record from Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist and producer Freddie Thompson’s Panaché band. Built around a fully cleared sampled bassline from ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ plays out like a summertime stroll through New York in the early 80s. The streets are full of excitement, but as the lyrics, written by vocalist Denise Williams (not to be confused with Deniece Williams of ‘Let’s Hear It For The Boy’ fame) make it clear, they’re dangerous as well.

Thirty-nine years later, Isle of Jura is proud to present the first official 12” reissue of ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’. A cult classic from the disco-rap era, the reissue includes the original vocal and instrumental versions of ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ plus a Jura Soundsystem special version with additional live percussion.

Originally made up of Freddie, his wife, the singer Debra Thompson and keyboardist Douglas Glover, Panaché formed at the behest of a local disco DJ, Carl Nelson. In the wake of Chic’s early singles, Carl felt a French name would give Freddie a competitive edge. “He explained it to us that it was a French word for style and elegance. Panaché, a step above chic,” Freddie reflects.

Business minded, Freddie formed his own label, Roché Records and joined SIRMA - The Small Independent Music Manufacturers Association. “It was very hard for the independent manufacturers to get airplay and distribution at the time, so we all came together,” he remembers. Through SIRMA, Freddie met Joe and Sylvia Robinson from Sugar Hill Records, who several years later, let him sample ‘The Message’ for ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’.

In 1979, Panaché scored some radioplay when they covered ‘Not On The Outside’ by ‘60s D.C R&B group The Moments. Emboldened, they brought onboard backing vocalists and recorded their only album. This Is Panache saw the band blurring the boundaries between soul, jazz-funk and disco and become a sought after collectible.

By 1982, Debra had stepped back, and one of Panaché’s backing singers was center stage, Denise Williams. “Denise was good with writing poetry,” says Freddie. "She had one called ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’. It was about the unrest that was going on in the city at the time. I thought I could do something with that.”

After releasing ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ in 1982, Panaché quietly moved from center stage to behind the scenes. Over the last thirty-nine years, Freddie has continued to work in the music industry as a session musician and producer. “As soon as we stopped trying to become stars as Panaché, we became busy working in the industry,” Freddie laughs.

Having already explored the archives of a number of overlooked Greek composers, Into The Light is now turning its attention to the uncharted territory of Greek film soundtracks of the 70s and 80s - a boom period for mystical, transcendental arthouse cinema in Greece.

GOST: A Spiritual Exploration into Greek Soundtracks (1975-1989) is a passion project from the Greek filmmaker and composer Yannis Veslemes, that took years of engagement, exhaustive research and persistence. The collection features a mixture of rare, hard-to-find and previously unreleased material from musicians and composers including Yannis Kostidakis, Thesia, Dimitris Papadimitriou, Michalis Christodoulides, Stamatis Spanoudakis, Haris Xanthoudakis, Vangelis Katsoulis and Charlotte Van Gelder . All material is accompanied by detailed linear notes from the curator Veslemes, explaining the stories behind the tracks and the movies they first featured on.

The compilation celebrates the inventiveness and experimentation of Greek soundtrack composers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, by presenting a surprising mixture of musical hybrids that bridge the worlds of electronic and acoustic music, and compositions that bring together Western and Eastern musical traditions, in uniquely idiosyncratic ways.

Originally released in 2008 on Mr C’s and going for over £80 a throw, the band’s excellent funky debut 45, remastered for maximum dancefloor appeal. The stellar stand-out cut from the band’s 2010 album ‘The Outsiders Are Back’ was released on Luaka Bop. Think Curtis Mayfield with Fela’s horns and a percussion backing set to self-destruct; a spine tingling anthem, no less.

Cut with Willie Tee’s Gatur Records’ flipside that goes for £250 minimum. An organ-led, brass-powered groove from the New Orleans’ soul legend, originally released in 1972 A deep, soulful croon with an enveloping rhythm and a euphoric lift, remastered from the original sound files for added soul.

A symbol for quality techno music going back 15 years, Jay Lumen makes his solo EP debut on Drumcode.

A dance music journeyman with over 70 releases and a quality imprint Footwork Audio to his name, Jay Lumen’s solo debut EP on Adam Beyer’s label is richly deserved. The artist has been in standout form recently, most notably contributing ‘Galactic Rainbow’ to A-Sides Vol.10, one of the highlights of the compilation. We got our first taste of Lumen on Drumcode way back in 2012 when he teamed with Gary Beck for the rhythmic gem ‘Lotus’. Nine years on, his next EP offering doesn’t disappoint.

‘Returning’ is marked by crushing drumlines and shuffling beats, before gradually building into an emotional chord driven cut that looks hopefully towards the future. ‘Mind’ contrasts this perfectly, a loopy monster that rolls for days, evoking a distinct old skool spirit.

Speaking about the title track, Lumen explains: “I wrote ‘Returning’ when I was in a period of really missing techno and the party community. The physical contact with people at events, as well as on the streets and at venues before the shows. Hugs and interactions. I can already imagine playing this at the first open air after lockdown as the sun sets. This track is about the reunion and happiness we’re all going to share.”

Lux' is what we use to measure the intensity of light as we perceive it, when it's hitting or passing through a surface.

The first track, that gives the EP its name, embodies exactly that - the fluctuating, ever-changing nature of light; from fragile and fleeting to overwhelming and powerful. 'Lux' kicks off with warm synths creeping in, like rays of sunlight breaking through the clouds. Dreamy crescendos take you for a ride and build up until they melt into a comforting blanket of piano chords, accompanied by a propelling hi-hat pattern that will make you want to move. The track is hopeful, the start of a journey, with compelling break downs, industrial rhythm elements and powerful build-ups such as the one to the final section, dominated entirely by its fusion between techno-beat and dance-feel.

Next up is 'Odyssee'. An unapologetic track that picks up the pace. Kicking off boldly with harmonic tension and enticing drum sounds, it's hard not to surrender to the rich and fast-moving soundscape. Proud drums meet steel sounds and tentative piano figures, all glued together by the driving beat, determined to get to the next stop of this lifelong voyage. Striking accents, in the form of short-lived breaths or staccato bass lines take you through a labyrinth of growing gritty synths. A track that easily leads you through space and time and makes it feel like the most natural thing in the world. We're greeted with standalone bright and sparkly synth movements as 'Phoenix' rises and wraps us in warmth. Gently, like raindrops, a rhythmic pattern starts dripping in. Definition, like in many of his other works, blends rhythmical sounds that couldn't be more different into one, making them sound like they were never meant to exist unless next to each other. The track is a symbiosis of modern and classical sounds, lets us bathe in analogue warmth but always rolls along with digital precision.

'Phoenix' starts softly and ends in roaring flames: in a repetitively enchanting party, fabricated out of dark, pumping beats and gritty synths. 'Raven', the final of the four tracks and the lead single (released alongside the Jonas Ratshman remix just 1 week ago), intrigues with chants and empowerment just as much as with its determination and fragility. Falling from the highest heights, Raven lets you rediscover who you are when you hit the ground. Carried by a throbbing four-on-the-floor kick drum and covered in a synth-haze that is hard to resist, you'll float along, fall and rise with the everlasting wave-like movement of human existence.

Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin includes pop standards penned by
America’s legendary songwriting duo George and Ira Gershwin.

As Willie tells it: “Ira and George Gershwin were just fantastic writers. They wrote some of the greatest songs ever. The Gershwin songs have been here for many, many years. When I was just a small guy, I remember hearing all these great Gershwin songs and they’ll be around forever because great music like that just does not go away.”

Among the 11 Gershwin classics recorded by Willie Nelson for the album are two duets: “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off” with Cyndi Lauper and “Embraceable You” with Sheryl Crow.

Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin debuted at number one on the Traditional Jazz and Top Jazz Albums Billboard charts, becoming Nelson’s third album to top the latter. Meanwhile, it reached number fourteen in Top Album Sales and reached number forty in the Billboard 200.

Now available as a limited edition of 1000 numbered copies on transparent red vinyl, including an insert + Willie Nelson on Music On Vinyl catalogue insert.

Riley Downing (The Deslondes) sat down one day and decided he wanted to record a song or two for a simple 45. The Deslondes had been on a hiatus for a while and Downing had the creative itch to put something down on record. He had been in contact with his bandmate John James Tourville and they decided to work on a split 7” with a friend.
The recording session felt like a breath of fresh air and the communion of talented musicians produced more songs than expected. Downing left the session energized and continued to record and trade demos with Tourville. Downing and Tourville decided that there were enough ideas to make an album. There were not going to be any rules and nothing would be discarded. All notes and lyrics would be considered. ‘Start It Over’ is the result of that creative effort. An album where each song was crafted with a different idea in mind. Some of the songs are more nostalgic than others and some were just written for good oldfashioned fun. There is a romantic quality in each song. One song might help someone get through a hard time while one song might contribute to a good time. One song might bring up memories of a better time or just get you far enough down the road to start over.
LP pressed on Sea Glass & Turquoise coloured vinyl

Certain Sound Records and Montener the Menace are proud to finally release the first single from his highly anticipated second album "Anyone Home?"

Montener has recruited Wounded Buffalo Beats on production duties who’s looped a fantastically pitched vocal-sample over some hard, head nodding drums to set the scene for the wonderfully enlisted, all-star line-up to go berserk over.

The world-renowned guests include - Wordsworth, Rah Digga, Masta Ace & Fatlip as "High Noon" sees the gang of notorious outlaws trading smoking hot verses, swaggering into your local saloon, oozing with finesse as six-shooters still smolder in their holsters and their Stetsons pulled low.

This is one of the best cross-Atlantic collaborations Hip Hop has seen to date and is a fantastic choice for the initial lead single from the upcoming album.

"High Noon" is out April 2nd via Certain Sound Records and is accompanied by a fantastic Western influenced, animated video by the super-talented animator - Taylor Bowen which can be found below:


The Struggle - the 2nd single taken from his highly anticipated album -
Anyone Home?

Once again Montener enlists a heavy ensemble of guests featuring
Stones Throw alumni, Guilty Simpson, UKHH veteran, Micall Parknsun
& Artifacts emcee, El Da Sensei.

The Struggle sees the four emcees
perform their vocal acrobatics in unrivalled style as their rhymes
reverberate over a smooth, neck-snapping slab of vintage Boom Bap -
eerily reminiscent of the rich, classic sound of the Mid-90’s. JL Beats has
created a timeless beat here with DJ JabbaThaKut providing the world-
class cuts to round the track off in superb style.

“Its gonna make a great impact on the scene, just what we need, when we need it most” - Skinnyman

Backed by members of the David Nance Group, Rosali (Long Hots, Wandering Shade, Monocot) wades through the emotional mire with infectious, earworm melodies led by her luminous voice. With their rich, raw instrumentation, these rock ballads sound like the resilience discovered in facing one’s darkest moments, the assurance of the calm and clarity that comes after the storm. As she sings on the second track, “Bones,” “Through the darkness of the field / I walk through without yielding / To the rest of the feelings / I’m carrying.” With her confident song craft, Rosali illustrates the ability to push through, moving toward something greater without being destroyed by the weight of trauma.

Engineered by James Shroeder and featuring Kevin Donahue (Simon Joyner), James Shroeder (Simon Joyner, DNG, Connor Oberst), David Nance, Noah Sterba, Colin Duckworth, and Daniel Knapp, the album was recorded in ten days and the raw immediacy of the music is palpable across these ten tracks. Added adornment was contributed by Philadelphia's Robbie Bennett (War on Drugs) on organ and keys, and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Jonathan Fire Eater, Muzz) makes a percussion cameo on “Whisper,”which was tracked at Philly’s Silent Partner Studio, where No Medium was mixed by Quentin Stoltzfus (Mazarin, Light Heat). The open creative collaboration elevated the songs, resulting in the exciting, vibrant sound of the album.

Rosali wrote the bulk of these songs in January of 2019 while on a self-imposed two week residency in the hills of South Carolina. Alone in an old farmhouse, she experienced supernatural events and faced her own demons in the deepest darkness. Perhaps as a result, there is a boldness that permeates the album, a daring vulnerability in both the lyrical themes and their musical accompaniment. Rosali says, “I approach guitar playing the same intuitive way I sing, which is profoundly spiritual for me. Where words fail, the guitar becomes the conduit for raw feelings, providing a direct connection to them. I’m constantly working on being fearless in my work, which means showing the rough side, the mistakes along with the triumphs.”

While writing No Medium, Rosali was inspired by harmonographs—swinging pendulums that create beautiful illustrations of the mathematics of music—considering how the mind, too, creates images through song. She imagined herself as the swinging pendulum—“a body suspended from a fixed point” (Encyclopedia Britannica), governed by the forces surrounding her. She thought about the pendulum’s relationship to time, movement, and even its use in divination practices. The album’s title, lifted from Charlotte Brontë’s, Jane Eyre, resonated with this vision: “I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other.” With the multiple meanings of “medium”—as middle ground, a term for psychics, and as the material of artistic expression—No Medium felt like the appropriate name, describing how the self is shaped by the patterns of life .

The influences for the sound of No Medium reflect this pairing of assured vulnerability, in the stylistic coherence of Bob Dylan’s Desire, the tender delivery in Iain Matthews’ Journey From Gospel Oak, the strut and swagger of Bowie’s Hunky Dory, the ambition and beauty of Gene Clark’s No Other, and the playful catharsis of Harry Nilsson’s Nilsson Schmilsson. The Richard and Linda Thompson-esque album opener “Mouth,” places Rosali within both a physical and emotional space. “East of the river I was travelling on / watch me lie, undone / rest me in a forest, overgrown / until I am free of all that I’ve known,” she sings. There is movement, both within a cityscape, and in her outlook on love. Speaking of her thought process when writing the song, she says, “I imagine confidently walking away from the past, toward a new approach to love and intimacy to achieve a closer relationship with myself.”

In “Pour Over Ice,” Rosali explores her relationship with alcohol and her former reliance upon it as a social lubricant to quell her social anxiety, an energizer to keep moving, a means to cope and self-medicate, and most addictively, to lure out her wild side as a free flowing, good time girl. While drinking helped her through some shitty times, it eventually got the upper hand and became an insatiable hole within. She says, “The ‘you’ in the song is really me, talking to that component of myself struggling with drinking and self-sabotage, caught up in the cycle, and all the bad choices I made.” She sings, “Maybe I didn’t care enough / or can’t remember / chasing small pleasures / making fire from embers.” Rosali wanted her lead guitar on this track to simultaneously sound like a slow motion car crash propelling her through the day, and the sound of a gnawing hunger for something more.

Rosali’s alliance with the Omaha musicians that orbit David Nance Group (including Nance himself) came about while on a Long Hots / DNG tour in the summer of 2019. Great friendships formed and one night after playing in Detroit, Dave suggested they be her backing band. The pairing was effortless and natural, and in November of the same year, they were recording No Medium in a basement in Omaha.

Jess Cornelius first began writing the songs that would comprise Distance after moving from Melbourne, Australia to Los Angeles. At the time, she was excited to start fresh after several years as the primary songwriter in the band Teeth and Tonuge. But the distance she addresses over the album is hardly a geographical one. Instrad, Distance finds a deft songwriter analyzing the space between society’s expectations for her and her own dreams, the illusion of the love and reality of disappointment, and a past she is ready to let go of and a future she could have hardly imagined.

Distance documents a songwriter in the pursuit of living life on her own terms. As Cornelius puts it, “A lot of the rEcord was about me deciding to continue this nomadic lifestyle of being a musician. People would ask ne if I was going to have a family and lot of the songs are about me being ok with no pursuing that path. It was about coming to terms with the choice I had made.. And then two years later, I’m knocked up and married! I couldn’t have imagined that”

Cornelius gave a first taste of Distance with “No Difference,” released last year, which was featured by NPR’s All Songs Considered as well as Paste Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, Hype Machine and Uproxx, who called it “a striking stateside introduction.”

On new single “Kitchen Floor,” Cornelius maps the space between the bedroom and the front door over a Roy Orbison tinged rave-up, lamenting the coming pain: “This is gonna be a hard one.” Its accompanying video, the first in a series in which she plays a familiar female character trope, was filmed by Cornelius and her partner on an iPhone at 5am in Los Angeles so they wouldn’t encounter any people. “I have a weird fascination with Hollywood Blvd — it’s such a grotesque place most of the time,” says Cornelius. “But I knew we’d have the chance to experience it deserted and empty, and it was like a different place. I’d been watching a lot of ‘last human on earth’ apocalypse-type films. Mostly, the concept behind the clip was to have this character just owning it. There are so many things pregnant women are not ‘supposed' be doing, like having casual sex with strangers. There’s a loneliness, too, that I wanted to get across in the clip, but ultimately she’s in a state of friendliness with herself and the world.”

Pioneers of the British music scene, ‘Blackest Blue’ will be the band's 10th studio album in a discography that spans three decades. 2020 saw Morcheeba unable to tour or perform live, which gave Skye Edwards & Ross Godfrey “time to write songs and really get to hone them,” as Godfrey puts it. “There weren’t so many pressures so we could really take our time getting the songs right,” adds Edwards.

The result of this time is a refined 10 track album that fuses previous incarnations and sound of the band - such as downbeat, chill, electro-pop & soul - into one cohesive record that dives deep into the soul of the band’s genre-mashing musical heritage. As usual, the band didn’t approach the album with any pre-conceptions, and instead created an organic journey that represents everything great about Morcheeba.

Edwards’ lyrics are primarily focused on positivity and overcoming personal adversity that lies within. ‘Sounds Of Blue’, is a stunning cut that puts Skye Edward's sultry vocals to the forefront, floating high above an ethereal backdrop.

The album includes features with Duke Garwood (known for his work with Mark Lanegan, amongst others) and Brad Barr (The Slip, The Barr Brothers). “

Morcheeba’s global reach is impressive, taking them to every corner of the world . Their signature chilled electronic/organic sound has been border-hopping ever since the London-based band emerged as a household name. The past year has been one of introspection for the duo, as they take stock of their renewed global fan base and look forward to being able to play the new album live in the not too distant future. “This was the first time since I was a teenager that I’d spent a year off the road and I enjoyed the tranquility, although I missed playing my guitar in far off lands,” says Godfrey.

Orange and black. Fire and ebony. Fury and pride. Wearing its signature colors proudly and raising its exclamation point high, Impulse! Records was the go-to label for music that harnessed the searching and political stand-taking of the Sixties. Launched in 1961, Impulse grew to become an inherent part of the era’s velocity as well as its volume, pulling jazz into the age of Black Power, Afrocentricity, and Spiritual Expansion. In its balance of tradition and transition, it bridged the golden age of jazz, that brief window from the late Fifties to the Seventies when players representing every jazz era were alive and active—from Louis Armstrong to Albert Ayler, from the legends of lore to a new generation of energy players. Impulse treated all its musicians as innovators, revolutionaries even—from swing and bebop, to free and Afrofuturist. The performances on Impulse Records: Music, Message and the Moment draw their staying power from a wide embrace of styles and sounds, as well as a tight focus on a historic moment when the promise of change was in the air and the message of racial harmony was in the music. Today that music has lost none of its relevance: the promise still deferred, the message still on time.

“John Andrews is picking flowers from each corner of his life and
presenting you with an unusual bouquet. His imaginary band ‘The
Yawns’ are back! Third time’s a charm. In hockey terms, they call it a
‘hat trick’ and you know who’s always wearing a ratty old hat? John
Andrews. Three years in the making and we have Cookbook, the third,
and most colorful record from your favorite New Hampshire based
craftsman.
“Unknowing folks usually assume he lives in New York City or
Los Angeles but confer with John for five minutes and if he’s in the
right mood he’ll talk your ear off about the granite state and the old,
seedy colonial barn where he’s tracked his records with his weird and
wonderful friends.
“Take a listen to his previous effort, 2017’s Bad Posture. It was the
grassroot slacker’s pie in the sky. His head was stuck in the past. He
probably excessively listened to ‘Cripple Creek Ferry’ and he most
likely wasn’t keeping up with household chores. Time moves on,
but just look at him now! All grown up yet likely still feeling those
growing pains. After a few more years of traveling we now have
Cookbook, fresh out the oven…phew! About nine or ten new tracks,
but who’s really counting?
“The lyrics are simple and endearing, inspired by mid-century love
songs. His inspirations are all across the board. If his subconscious
was a bootleg taper, life would be the show.
“At any rate, it doesn’t sound like a record made in New
Hampshire, but make no mistake, this is a dyed-in-the-wool Yawns
record, refreshingly straightforward yet full of character. It’s less of a
crowded honky tonk, and more of an empty, poignant speakeasy. You
can finally relax indoors after a weary day out in the cold. Have you
ever seen that painting of dogs playing poker? It might as well be what
they were listening to as the bulldog pushed his chips forward.”

AL presents the first musical collaboration between Hamburg based Asmus Tietchens and Japanese artist Miki Yui, operating out of Düsseldorf for almost 20 years now. Highly respected and hugely influential artist Asmus Tietchens first made his mark on the electronic music scene in the late 1970s, whereas Miki Yui debuted her sonic settings in1999.

Their first joint album NEUES BOOT envelops the listener with a poetic sound sensibility and a conceptual clarity which was processed and passed back and forth between their individual studios in Hamburg and Düsseldorf.

Asmus Tietchens: After Stefan Schneider suggested to release a Yui-Tietchens album on his TAL imprint Miki and I quickly developed some ideas towards our eventual collaboration. We agreed upon an ongoing mutual exchange of material. We have both been very familiar with each other's music for a long time and we found our individual approach towards sound design to be uniquely compatible. We do not use our electronic tools in order to merely achieve the maximum of technical possibilities, but to illustrate aesthetic necessities. This entails a deliberate reduction and refined perception of the sonic characteristics of the material. Only this approach enabled us to fully realise the complete spectrum of the sounds and noises we were working with in order to construct this New Boat. Each and everyone of my treatments is e x c l u s i v e l y based on a track supplied by Miki. I added no new sound sources. Naturally the spatial and temporal dimensions of the source material were thus altered. These transformations are exactly what makes our collaboration special and unique. Very early on we had agreed on New Boat as a working title and a guiding light . Of course in the beginning we had no idea where this New Boat might take us. Now we do know. After several months of ship-building the boat has now set sails for new sonic horizons. Ahoi!

Miki Yui: The title of the album as well as the individual tracks have been inspired by conversations with Asmus. When we had a chat after one of his concerts, he told me about Kōdō, the Art or the Way of the Scent. It is a 8th century Japanese incense ceremony. Very frequently the names of Japanese incense sticks are derived from natural themes, e.g. Bairin is the plum grove, the scent of the first blossom heralding the end of winter. This poetry, the ephemeral nature of the world reminded me of Kigo, words from a Haiku (a form of Japanese poetry), which reference a particular season or a natural phenomenon. So I chose the names of the individual pieces from Kigo as if The Boat was exploring nature whilst sailing through the seasons. Only in retrospect I realised that the titles combined create this poem:

Early spring a hazy view in the night (Oboro)
Plum groves (Bairin)
Over a Dayfly (Kagerou)
A Milkyway (Amanogawa)
Dawn (Akatsuki)
Art of fragrance (Kōdō)
On fragile thin ice (Usurai)

21 Number Ones is celebrating it’s 15th Anniversary in 2021 and it will be available on vinyl for the first time! The album features 21 of GRAMMY Award-winning superstar Kenny Rogers’ number one hits including “The Gambler”, “Through The Years”, “Lady” and many more! Rogers sold over 120 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling male artists of all-time according to the RIAA, with one Diamond album, 20 Platinum albums and 11 Gold. He recorded 24 No. 1 hits, 12 No. 1 albums and 25 Top 10 country albums. Miraculously, he charted a song within each of the last seven decades. His music has always crossed boundaries, with singles and albums finding frequent success on the Country, Top 40, and Adult Contemporary charts, and in a few instances, on the R&B and Christian charts.

Repress

Chris Liberator and Darc Marc with some classic Acid Techno over 3 trax, with "Acid Music Has Come To Set You Free" already causing mayhem in the acid community with it's subversive anti-system mantra. "Heart Of The Underground" is pill-popping fizzy Acid Techno, whilst "Something Dark This Way Comes" goes for a more atmospheric and menacing vibe.

The Black Keys release their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

Auerbach says of the album, “We made this record to honor the Mississippi hill country blues tradition that influenced us starting out. These songs are still as important to us today as they were the first day Pat and I started playing together and picked up our instruments. It was a very inspiring session with Pat and me along with Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton in a circle, playing these songs. It felt so natural.”

Carney concurs, “The session was planned only days in advance and nothing was rehearsed. We recorded the entire album in about ten hours, over two afternoons, at the end of the “Let’s Rock” tour.”

Auerbach says of Delta Kream’s first single ‘Crawling Kingsnake’: “I first heard John Lee Hooker’s version in high school. My uncle Tim would have given me that record. But our version is definitely Junior Kimbrough’s take on it. It’s almost a disco riff!” Carney adds, "We fell into this drum intro; it's kind of accidental. The ultimate goal was to highlight the interplay between the guitars. My role with Eric was to create a deeper groove."

The music from northern Mississippi, which came to life in juke joints, has long left an imprint on the band’s music, from their cover of R.L. Burnide’s ‘Busted’ and Junior Kimbrough’s ‘Do The Romp’ on their debut album, The Big Come Up; to their subsequent signing to Fat Possum Records, home to many of their musical heroes; and to their EP of Junior Kimbrough covers, Chulahoma.

Formed in Akron, Ohio in 2001, The Black Keys, who have been called ‘rock royalty’ by the Associated Press and ‘one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands on the planet’ by Uncut, are guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney. Cutting their teeth playing small clubs, the band have gone on to sell out arena tours and have released nine previous studio albums: their debut The Big Come Up (2002), followed by Thickfreakness (2003) and Rubber Factory (2004), along with their releases on Nonesuch Records, Magic Potion (2006), Attack & Release (2008), Brothers (2010), El Camino (2011), Turn Blue (2014) and, most recently, “Let’s Rock” (2019), plus and a tenth anniversary edition of Brothers (2020). The band has won six Grammy Awards and a BRIT and headlined festivals in North America, South America, Mexico, Australia, and Europe.

‘Voyager’, the seventh album from Current Joys, rattles with the
live-wire feeling that’s thrummed through all of Rattigan’s previous
releases: quavering, scream-itself-hoarse vocals and selfinterrogation via song. But here, that bristling, sentimental rock ‘n’
roll cacophony is overlaid with a soundtrack orchestra guiding it
along. It’s an odyssey, a grand-sounding journey of self-discovery
spread across sixteen tracks.
Part ekphrasis, part personal, it’s Rattigan learning new ways to
understand his own feelings and identity while inspired by the
highly-stylized, striking storytelling of filmmakers like Alfred
Hitchcock, Terrence Malick, Agnès Varda and Andrei Tarkovsky.
‘Voyager’ is unlike anything Current Joys has released before.
On his new album, Rattigan eschews lo-fi home recordings for a
full band and recording sessions at Stinson Beach Studios. As a
vocalist/drummer in his other band Surf Curse, Rattigan had finally
opened up to the possibility of working in a professional studio.
It’s all held together by the fervour of Rattigan’s creative process.
He believes in the premonitory power of music and he latches onto
the song ideas that strike him in the moment, propelled by an
abstract existentialism or burst of feeling more than anything else.
It imbues ‘Voyager’ with an intensity and intimacy - with the sense
that you’re getting to hear, all at once, the disparate parts that
make a project - or person - into a sprawling, cinematic whole.
Similar to Tame Impala or Mac Demarco in their early days,
Current Joys is singular and with a fanbase that extends far
outside of traditional indie fans. The band managed to establish an
indie and mainstream audience while flying under the radar of
DSPs and nearly all other industry levers. They are one of the first
indie bands to have their place fully created and cemented by
TikTok.
Double LP packaged in a gatefold sleeve

A reissue of the 2016 demo tape by New Orleans band
Special Interest, who combine elements of no wave,
glam and industrial music. First time vinyl pressing with
bonus track, new sleeve designed by Studio Tape Echo
and 8 page risographed zine insert.
Four of the tracks here are raw early versions of songs
that would appear in slightly more refined form on their
debut album, 2018’s ‘Spiralling’. The other four pieces
are unique to this release, including a cover version of
Italian new wave band Chrisma, raging opener
‘Disease’, the over-saturated shoegaze-punk of ‘ATC’
and comedown lament ‘I’ll Never Do Ketamine Again’.
The band’s second album ‘The Passion Of’ (2020) was
widely acclaimed and appeared in many album of the
year lists. It was recently followed by a companion
album of remixes on Boy Harsher’s Nude Club label,
with all profits going to NOLA charity House Of Tulip.
“A blistering vision of punk as possibility.” - Pitchfork
“Members Alli Logout (vocals), Ruth Mascelli (synth and
drum machine), Maria Elena (guitar), and Nathan
Cassiani (bass), together manage to make their
instruments and vocals sound like a fight for our
existence.” - The Quietus
Recorded and mastered by Jasper Denhartigh at Bird
Island Recording March-May 2016. Originally selfreleased on cassette in 2016. Cut by Beau Thomas at
Ten Eight Seven. All songs by Special Interest except
‘Black Silk Stalking’ written by Chrisma.
Black vinyl in 3mm spine reverse board sleeve with 8-
page risographed zine, digital download card and
sticker.

Buzzing new Glasgow five-piece VLURE release their hotly anticipated
debut 7” ‘Shattered Faith’ via London-based label Permanent Creeps
Records.
Bursting onto the scene at the dawn of 2020, VLURE introduced
themselves to the world with a live audio/visual performance of their
phenomenal track ‘Desire’, captured in beautiful cinematography from
the loading bay of their Glasgow studio space. Blurring the lines between
live electronics, jarring guitars and the performance sensibilities of their
post-punk contemporaries, the video offered a keyhole view into their
captivating live shows.
Combining synth laden hooks, heavy club influenced rhythms and
emotionally confronting lyrics, VLURE have already seen support from
the likes of So Young and Wax Music praising their life affirming, intense
and enigmatic live performances.
Recorded between the halls of a deconsecrated church in the heart of
the Scottish Borders, the self-produced ‘Shattered Faith’ is an indulgent,
genre bending coming of age anthem influenced by the rhythms,
repetitions and euphoric hooks of Glasgow’s thriving afterparty and club
scene with an angular post-punk foundation. Speaking on the track the
band explain: “We wanted to create something that felt at home on the
dancefloors that we all found ourselves on growing up, yet still equally at
home in the sweat-filled venues that the band was conceived in. At its
crux, ‘Shattered Faith’ is about self-empowerment. It’s the
disillusionment with where you are and what you’ve been given. It’s lying
on your kitchen floor at 3am realising who you truly are and finding
power in that - it’s a new lease of life. We believe that, if they want to find
it, there is something for everyone in this song.”
“There is nothing comparable - this is a new era of musically skeletal
human showmanship” - So Young Magazine
“Urgent, destructive and completely absorbing. Brutalist in form -
unyielding, massive-sounding, distinctive - their atmospheric, yearning
mood is overflowing with inclination and exposed tenderness -
vulnerable and exasperated. They pound the door down with every inch
of blood, sweat and tears in their vessels” - Wax Music
“This is post-punk, but not as you might familiarly expect” - Little Indie
Blogs
“One of Scotland’s most exciting new bands” - Tenement TV

On 16th April 2021, three years to the day since producer Tim Larcombe and I began work in the studio, my debut album will be
released independently on our label EKT Records.

spell_hope is about finding the hope, the way forward, the light in dark places, the order in chaos, the things that are most
important. It is about creative freedom. Not compromising on integrity and originality, and resisting the shortcuts, the temptation of

an easier road. It is about reaching that end goal, that unstoppable ambition. The power we all have within us to change things, to
make things happen. To keep running even after our legs tell us to “stop!”.

The track list adventures from realms of the organic to the electronic, modern to classic, the understated to the overtly dynamic.
Brimming with an inadvertent frankness which I realised more fully after the event of recording (much of the time when I write I let
my subconscious do the talking), these songs comprise a journal, in words and melodies, of my life up to this point…

“Towers” was written at the piano back in 2013, in the moment I resolved to leave my university course behind in favour of the path
that has led me to writing this now - a song I have since been determined would end up on my first record. “Stronger Heart” at the
first sense of heart-break. “Plans” at my first sense of true partnership. “Stones”. “Big Bad Thoughts”, “Small Things” and “Spell
Hope” reactions at various points to the difficulties and destitution of my chosen career piling on top of other issues (- we all have
‘em right?), over time challenging my determination and mental stability.