quête:second death

Nas King's Disease II Album Following the Grammy Award winning album, King’s Disease, the king returns to his throne with the second coming, King’s Disease II. The star-studded project offers tacit game on life, love, and loss, uplifting through action and lived experience in a way only Nas can. This is a body of work for the fans, for the day 1’s that contributed to the legacy. Alongside the decorated production savant, Hit-Boy, Nas remains rooted in lyrical prophetism while proving that he constantly reinvents the wheel. The sequel to last year’s King’s Disease features Ms. Lauryn Hill, Eminem, EPMD, Hit-Boy, Charlie Wilson, YG and more.

Deluxe Eco Vinyl LP with 16 page lyric booklet! London slowcore band deathcrash have announced their new album Less, due March 31st via untitled (recs). Recorded at the UK's most remote studio in the Outer Hebrides, Less follows their critically acclaimed 2022 album, Return with a statement in reduction that turns out to be as powerful and potent as it is tender and introspective. "The mission statement was to be super minimal," says deathcrash singer Tiernan Banks. "Just simple and beautiful guitar parts and to be really bare. To be...less." Swiftly following Return, the band initially had no plans to make a full length. "The last thing we felt like doing was making another album," says bassist Patrick Fitzgerald. "It was like, 'let's do this little EP that's aesthetically quite different and pared down'." Less was always planned to be a statement in reduction but it soon became apparent that the songs the band were writing were significant, personal and, despite the intentions to strip things back, bigger. "As time went on, we started putting much more emotional weight into it and it became more important to us," says Banks. The result is a record that is as powerful and potent as it is tender and introspective, with arrangements that manage to feel refined yet detailed and with a deep emotional resonance at the core of the record. Banks' voice shifts from hushed whispers to guttural screams, one minute tapping into the kind of fragile beauty that artists like Elliott Smith managed so well, on tracks such as 'Duffy's' before unleashing a doom metal growl in thundering unison with the band on 'Empty Heavy'. The record has confirmed early press support from a number of UK publications, including a 4-page print feature in Loud & Quiet, a feature in Line of Best Fit, and early indications of support from Stereogum and a number of other U.S. publications too. A radio campaign will also be run for the second single 'Duffy's' and we expect support from BBC 6 Music, Apple Music and other tastemaker stations

After releasing "Precipice Fantasy Part I" in October 2022, Koudlam delivers the second part of his album.

The first part is a salvo of meteorites where the artist uses, as usual, standardised pop motifs to better disrupt them, and always without deviating from the ultimate melody, chanted to trance.

The second part is an instrumental and contemplative record, a kind of music for an uncomfortable yoga session, that of a tourist who dreamed of climbing Everest but who no longer has the strength to get out of Kathmandu's underworld.

Koudlam thus delivers the soundtrack of summits and precipices. Or rather the path between the two, sinuous, vertiginous, always on the edge of the blade.

Red Vinyl

ASSASSINS did what many bands do: they grabbed a moment out of the air and slammed it onto tape machines and hard drives with relentlessness, cunning, and an attitude.
It was in Chicago, mid 2000’s, and though there was energy in the music scene, it wasn’t coalescing into anything you could use as a heading in the musical encyclopedia. Drag City, Thrill Jockey, Bloodshot, Tortoise, Andrew Bird, 90 Day Men – amazing labels and bands, but discrete and siloed and separated by boundaries that weren’t very real.
In the midst of that complicated morass, ASSASSINS generated a collection of songs that became the album YOU WILL CHANGED US. And it did.
There was confidence built into the fabric of the project: 5 members, 2 singers, massive synced video walls and samples streaming from laptops swirling in three dimensions around the stage. They could go from subtle atmospheric moments to a gargantuan wall of sound instantly. It was hard to do- months in cold practice rooms troubleshooting sections of songs or reworking synthesizer patches put the band through a self-imposed boot camp. And it brought them together as a sort of hive-mind focused on one thing: that these songs could connect. They could cut through the noise and share a state of mind with other human beings.
And it worked. Those early shows were mind bending. It was fun, loud, drunken, and rewarding- that time together, before the record deal, before the tragic let down of being traded and gobbled up by the major label system. The years after that got more difficult, more complicated, more human.
Leading us here: the musical journey of the Assassins has ended. With the up-coming release of their second and final album THE YEAR THAT NEVER CAME, we finally get to hear, and feel, the final statements of their inspiring chemistry.
In July of 2021, founding member, songwriter and singer Joe Cassidy unexpectedly passed away. THE YEAR THAT NEVER CAME is the culmination and end point of a collaboration that started in the early 2000’s with a chance meeting and excited conversation with Aaron Miller at a gig in Chicago. Quickly joined by David Golitko on keyboards, Merritt Lear on vocals and guitar, and Alex Kemp on bass.
It was Miller who saw Joe Cassidy’s song writing in a new context. Cassidy had been known for his beautiful, post- pop inflected BUTTERFLY CHILD, a thoughtful, regal project where Joe’s emotions could soar. Miller saw a different context for that voice- not dreamy, but immediate, not just hopeful, but demanding. He took Joe’s open hand and suggested that it could be a fist, raised in the air, with a crowd of other people doing the same.
At the time of his death legendary composer and songwriter Jimmy Webb (who wrote such hits as ‘Wichita Lineman and MacArthur Park) said Joe ‘was a creative and generous producer but, more importantly, he was a creative and generous friend.’
With the release of THE YEAR THAT NEVER CAME, this band, this relentless creative force, has to finally relent. No one in the band could see a future ASSASSINS that doesn’t include Cassidy. So in one last act of will, for the love of their friend, they did the rigorous work of finishing the songs that they had started together for the second album.
Assassin’s obsession with the notion of time, from YOU WILL CHANGED US to THE YEAR THAT NEVER CAME, flows from the most natural question we all have to ask ourselves: what do I do now? Because: how we react today to life’s unpredictability - that is the tomorrow we build for ourselves.

If you were smart enough to get your grubby paws on the first Scrap Metal compilation, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you’re in for with our second installment. Featuring long-lost gems from ultra-rare 45s and private press singles—plus one previously unreleased banger—Scrap Metal 2 maintains a steady NWOBHM course. Packed with infectious outliers and supremely talented one-and-done metal warriors from the crucial British movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s (and some killer American obscurities inspired by them), this collection delivers all the fist-pumping, riff-mongering and flashy solos of heavy metal’s golden age. As always, every track has been officially licensed and every artist gets paid. As a late entry into the NWOBHM sweepstakes, JJ’s Powerhouse was formed in Merseyside, England, by guitarist Jon “J.J.” Cox with members of his previous band, Quad. Much like the opener to the original Scrap Metal comp, you can hear early Metallica coursing through this legendary ripper. Coincidentally, this ultra-rare 45 was released in ’83, the same year as Kill ’Em All. Taking their name from a 1978 sci-fi novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Welsh super troopers Storm Queen reveled in animal-print clothing and flying Vs. The Motörhead-meets-Priest anthem “Raising the Roof” is the flipside to their only single, which the band self-released in 1982. Led by guitarist Dave Morse, Storm Queen’s earliest lineup included bassist Bryn Merrick (RIP), who would go on to join The Damned. Roaring out of Birmingham, England, in 1975, Jameson Raid palled around with fellow Brummies Black Sabbath and named themselves after a failed 19th century attack that helped kick off South Africa’s Second Boer War. Their three-song 1979 debut featured the infectious “It’s a Crime,” which comes across like a deadly hard-glam version of Budgie. Still fronted by vocalist Terry Dark, they’re going strong as of 2022. A.R.C., a punky proto-metal group from the UK, released the boozy single “Home Made Wine” b/w “The Chase” in 1979 and—as far as we know—were never heard from again. They’re not to be confused with a gang of Tolkien enthusiasts also called A.R.C., who released two NWOBHM singles in the early ’80s and actually were heard from again. Nonetheless, the A.R.C. we have here was led by a thirsty lad named Klaus Brunnenkant, who liked to rock n’ roll all night and party every day. Both sides of Metropolis’ sole single bear the legend, “Unauthorized duplication shall result in getting your ass beat.” This San Jose metal squad released their only single in 1986 and dedicated it to Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, who had recently been killed in a bus accident. “The Raven” is the serpentine NWOBHM- and Edgar Allan Poe-influenced flipside to “Time Heals Everything,” and yeah, you can hear the guitars going out of tune on the solo, but that’s part of the charm. Of the two dozen or so metal bands that have called themselves Prowler over the years, we’re pretty sure this particular Prowler is the only one from San Diego. These dudes take a thrashier approach than most of the bands here on Scrap Metal 2: “Temporary Insanity” strikes a deft balance between early Anthrax and early Testament, with just enough hard rock swing to keep it from getting overly staccato. Self-released in ’86 as the band’s only single, the song is the flip to “I Love It.” Not much is known about Christian Steel beyond this: They put out their only single in 1983, which boasted “Need Your Love” as the flip to “I Don’t Want To.” The former, included here, sounds kinda like a dizzy, more metallic version of ’70s Jersey rockers Starz, who famously influenced the likes of Mötley Crüe, Poison and Twisted Sister. Ohio guitarist/vocalist Marty Soski’s career dates back to at least 1969 with the Inside Experience track “Be On My Way,” which we unearthed for our own Brown Acid: The Third Trip. This time, we’ve got a monster Soski cut that he recorded under the name Black Rose. Released in 1982, the absolutely smokin’ “Sidewinder” was the A-side on the band’s sole single. The main riff isn’t far off from Y&T’s major-label banger “Mean Streak,” which was released the following year. When Dark Age titled their 1987 album The Youngest Metal Band in the World, they weren’t even sort of kidding. Legend has it that “Star Trippin’,” which was released as a single a year earlier, was written by guitarist CJ Rininger when he was just 12 years old. His brother Dave, the vocalist, was two years younger. Old photos of the band—complete with pineapple haircuts—seem to bear this story out. Either way, the song is pure flash metal, conjuring Sunset Strip sleaze all the way from Ohio. By now, all you heads know Los Angeles magic men Sorcery from their storied appearance in—and soundtrack for—the death-defying Ozploitation flick Stunt Rock. What we have here in “Whales” is a previously unreleased track from the same 1978 recording sessions. It’s a little bit Zeppelin, a little bit prog, and a whole lotta thundering riffage. Why this languished in the vaults for so long is anyone’s guess. Better late than never!

If you were smart enough to get your grubby paws on the first Scrap Metal compilation, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you’re in for with our second installment. Featuring long-lost gems from ultra-rare 45s and private press singles—plus one previously unreleased banger—Scrap Metal 2 maintains a steady NWOBHM course. Packed with infectious outliers and supremely talented one-and-done metal warriors from the crucial British movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s (and some killer American obscurities inspired by them), this collection delivers all the fist-pumping, riff-mongering and flashy solos of heavy metal’s golden age. As always, every track has been officially licensed and every artist gets paid. As a late entry into the NWOBHM sweepstakes, JJ’s Powerhouse was formed in Merseyside, England, by guitarist Jon “J.J.” Cox with members of his previous band, Quad. Much like the opener to the original Scrap Metal comp, you can hear early Metallica coursing through this legendary ripper. Coincidentally, this ultra-rare 45 was released in ’83, the same year as Kill ’Em All. Taking their name from a 1978 sci-fi novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Welsh super troopers Storm Queen reveled in animal-print clothing and flying Vs. The Motörhead-meets-Priest anthem “Raising the Roof” is the flipside to their only single, which the band self-released in 1982. Led by guitarist Dave Morse, Storm Queen’s earliest lineup included bassist Bryn Merrick (RIP), who would go on to join The Damned. Roaring out of Birmingham, England, in 1975, Jameson Raid palled around with fellow Brummies Black Sabbath and named themselves after a failed 19th century attack that helped kick off South Africa’s Second Boer War. Their three-song 1979 debut featured the infectious “It’s a Crime,” which comes across like a deadly hard-glam version of Budgie. Still fronted by vocalist Terry Dark, they’re going strong as of 2022. A.R.C., a punky proto-metal group from the UK, released the boozy single “Home Made Wine” b/w “The Chase” in 1979 and—as far as we know—were never heard from again. They’re not to be confused with a gang of Tolkien enthusiasts also called A.R.C., who released two NWOBHM singles in the early ’80s and actually were heard from again. Nonetheless, the A.R.C. we have here was led by a thirsty lad named Klaus Brunnenkant, who liked to rock n’ roll all night and party every day. Both sides of Metropolis’ sole single bear the legend, “Unauthorized duplication shall result in getting your ass beat.” This San Jose metal squad released their only single in 1986 and dedicated it to Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, who had recently been killed in a bus accident. “The Raven” is the serpentine NWOBHM- and Edgar Allan Poe-influenced flipside to “Time Heals Everything,” and yeah, you can hear the guitars going out of tune on the solo, but that’s part of the charm. Of the two dozen or so metal bands that have called themselves Prowler over the years, we’re pretty sure this particular Prowler is the only one from San Diego. These dudes take a thrashier approach than most of the bands here on Scrap Metal 2: “Temporary Insanity” strikes a deft balance between early Anthrax and early Testament, with just enough hard rock swing to keep it from getting overly staccato. Self-released in ’86 as the band’s only single, the song is the flip to “I Love It.” Not much is known about Christian Steel beyond this: They put out their only single in 1983, which boasted “Need Your Love” as the flip to “I Don’t Want To.” The former, included here, sounds kinda like a dizzy, more metallic version of ’70s Jersey rockers Starz, who famously influenced the likes of Mötley Crüe, Poison and Twisted Sister. Ohio guitarist/vocalist Marty Soski’s career dates back to at least 1969 with the Inside Experience track “Be On My Way,” which we unearthed for our own Brown Acid: The Third Trip. This time, we’ve got a monster Soski cut that he recorded under the name Black Rose. Released in 1982, the absolutely smokin’ “Sidewinder” was the A-side on the band’s sole single. The main riff isn’t far off from Y&T’s major-label banger “Mean Streak,” which was released the following year. When Dark Age titled their 1987 album The Youngest Metal Band in the World, they weren’t even sort of kidding. Legend has it that “Star Trippin’,” which was released as a single a year earlier, was written by guitarist CJ Rininger when he was just 12 years old. His brother Dave, the vocalist, was two years younger. Old photos of the band—complete with pineapple haircuts—seem to bear this story out. Either way, the song is pure flash metal, conjuring Sunset Strip sleaze all the way from Ohio. By now, all you heads know Los Angeles magic men Sorcery from their storied appearance in—and soundtrack for—the death-defying Ozploitation flick Stunt Rock. What we have here in “Whales” is a previously unreleased track from the same 1978 recording sessions. It’s a little bit Zeppelin, a little bit prog, and a whole lotta thundering riffage. Why this languished in the vaults for so long is anyone’s guess. Better late than never!

Electronic duo Pale Blue return to Crosstown Rebels with ‘No Words’, the second single from their forthcoming album ‘Maria’, with remixes from DJ Tennis and Perel.

Italians Do It Better founder Mike Simonetti and Silver Hands’ Elizabeth Wight’s rich and storied careers within the electronic realm and beyond only elevated further with the launch of their Pale Blue project in 2015, unveiling a series of critically acclaimed releases via Simonetti’s 2MR imprint with plaudits including Pitchfork, FACT and Resident Advisor, to name just a few. Having provided the first look into their forthcoming album on Crosstown Rebels entitled ‘Maria’, scheduled for release on the label later this year, the pair return to open March with the second single from the project, ‘No Words’ - accompanied by remixes from DJ Tennis and Perel.

Detailing the backstory to the record, Simonetti notes both upcoming single ‘No Words’ and the majority of the tracks on the duo’s forthcoming album project were made on the exact synths used to create Jaydee’s iconic 1993 hit, ‘Plastic Dreams’.

Guided by a captivating bassline accented by Wight’s charming vocals, which flutter amongst the mix, ‘No Words’ is a hooky and compelling production that ebbs and flows across its near five-minute duration with effortless ease, capturing the playful nature alluded to by Simonetti. Life and Death head honcho DJ Tennis’ remix arrives next, veering down a hazy yet absorbing path as crisp organic drums and engrossing melodies form around the vocals and journey through light and dark textures.

The B-side of the record belongs to DJ/producer, vocalist and DFA Records favourite Perel, offering a cosmic dive through spacey synths, skittering bleeps and pops, and tough kicks across her take on the production - before distorting and warping the vocals and shifting the emphasis on the ever-evolving electronics across her ‘Dub Version’.

"Denial” and "Anger" are the first and second movements in Michael Leonhart’s, The Normyn Suite #1: (Soundtrack to the Five Stages of Grieving), which is both a requiem and celebration, inspired by the life and death of Leonhart’s 15-year-old dog, a female mini dachshund named Normyn.

Suite #1 first appeared on the Michael Leonhart Orchestra 2022 album "The Normyn Suites" (Sunnyside Records) and was inspired by “The Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle,” a model introduced by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. “The Five Stages of Grief” is a critically acclaimed study on how humans handle loss.

For Leonhart's suite in five parts, he expands the MLO’s live performance palette of brass, woodwinds and strings to include choir and found percussion over gritty breakbeat drums from Nick Movshon. Leonhart shares, “I wanted ‘Denial’ and ‘Anger’ to have an emotional tension and raw quality, almost a whiplash effect..."
The Normyn Suites is an elegy; to listen is to spend time in that space of loss, reckoning, questioning, and mourning. At the same time, though, with each note, each phrase, we are propelled back into life,” reflects author Alexandra Horowitz in the stirring liner notes.

Remastered reissue of “We Are Urusei Yatsura” (originally released in 1996), with bonus vinyl of unreleased demos and B-sides

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the founding of Glasgow “Geek Rock” band Urusei Yatsura
– Double Clear-Vinyl Reissue of 1996 Album
In the days before “landfill” indie, and in rebellion against a developing Britpop orthodoxy, there were some weird but melodic bands coming of age outside London that drew inspiration from the US underground and the sparkly retro-futurism of Japan. Primitive guitar noise with art rock leanings, post punk DIY and fanzine culture. The best known of these bands was maybe Urusei Yatsura; “noisy stars”, named in honour of Rumiko Takahashi, legendary manga creator.

Back in 1996, after several increasingly well-received 7’s, the band travelled to Leamington Spa to record their debut album with John Rivers, producer of Swell Maps and Glasgow scene godparents, The Pastels. The resulting album won the group legions of new fans and gained them their first Independent #1 chart placing, alongside peers Ash and Super Furry Animals.

“These were fertile years in Glasgow, a scene with no name, no single sound, where the magic thread tying everyone together was words and works so personal, they couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else’s. ‘We Are Urusei Yatsura’ is a cascade of ‘why not?’ thinking. The way ‘Phasers on Stun’ spirals into ‘Sola Kola’; the sunburned 23-second improv at the end of ‘Pachinko’; the slack-echoing strings of the outro to ‘Road Song’ sprayed with the shrapnel of toy electronics. Pure pop magic, Ren & Stimpy on upstairs, ray-guns, Ian’s homemade walkie-talkie speaker, a beatbox, all sealed with a “Talking Tina” doll’s emphatic endorsement: “I love it”” – Nick Soulsby

The vinyl-only double LP set comprises the original 1996 album recorded by John Rivers, accompanied with an extra disk of unreleased demos, rare singles and B-sides which have not been available since the 90’s. It documents the time leading up to the release of the LP and the singles that came from it, capturing the development, lost pop moments and essential experiments from the eccentric and joyful Glasgow band. The cover has been completely remixed using archive
photos and artwork from the time, with new interviews and extensive notes. The release marks 30 years since the official birthday of the band, 9/3/93.

“When I drove the transit van that took them down to Leamington Spa to record their first proper LP, there was a sense of quiet, assured anticipation. I couldn’t wait to hear it and when I came back a couple of weeks later to pick them back up, I remember so clearly when they played it from the van’s tape deck. Fergus and Graham were hunched over, focusing intently on what they wanted to change about the mix. The reverb wasn’t right or something. Maybe they didn’t like how high the vocals were in the mix. I said to them, you’re listening to the details, but missing what is most important–this is a fantastic record! It was. It is. It is a fantastic record. They were a brilliant live band and I am so lucky to have been able to have been there to see their formation.” – Alex Kapranos.

Ukrainian blackened death/doom metal offensive 1914 continue to reflect the gruesome tales of World War I, its soldiers’ fate, their death, fear and feats to be never forgotten, and unleash their new opus, Where Fear and Weapons Meet, on October 22nd, via Napalm Records. Its eleven tracks of pure historic harshness follow up to the band’s sophomore full-length, The Blind Leading the Blilnd (2018), and debut, Eschatology of War (2014), both highly acclaimed amongst critics, and create a sophisticated variety of massively brutal blackened death metal accented by dramatic and realistic audio soundscapes and disquieting melodies spiced with the approach of sludge and doom! Blurb IG#1: "After their highly acclaimed previous records, blackened death/doom metal unit 1914 again faces the cruelty of World War I on its third opus Where Fear and Weapons Meet . The first single “...And a Cross Now Marks His Place” already marks an absolute highlight, as this massive outburst features none other than Paradise Lost icon Nick Holmes, whose pervasive delivery matches with 1914 ’s mastermind Hptm. Ditmar Kumarberg’s (9. Westpreußisches Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 176) vocal harshness." Blurb IG#2: Blackened death/doom metal frontrunners 1914 return with their third inexorable opus, the new studio album Where Fear and Weapons Meet. On this masterpiece of pure harshness, 1914 again reflects the gruesome tales of World War I without making any compromises. Second single “Pillars of fire”, that deals with The Battle of Messines in 1917, starts with an atmospheric introduction that draws the listener deep into the album theme and erupts into a massive blackened death/doom outburst shortly after. Blurb IG#3:Since 2014, Ukrainian blackened death/doom metal visionaries 1914 have told the gruesome tales of World War I and are now ready to face the fiery depths again on their third attack, Where Fear and Weapons Meet. Third single “FN .380 ACP#19074” breaks in with heavy guitar lines and thunderous black metal drumming like a blaze of gunfire and reflects the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife 1914 in Sarejevo, an event that caused the outbreak of World War I.

The lyrics of the tracks of "IV:LETVM" revolve around death, war, forces of nature and superstition as well as rituals. This consistently heavy lyrical content is matched by the instrumental brutality of the nine tracks. The quartet from Giessen in Hesse presents itself on its new album exclusively martial, destructive, and evil. Song titles like 'War Dreams Of Itself', 'Lessons Of Darkness', 'Certain Death', 'Suffering' or 'Sadness' point the way ¬– no coincidence that the band’s official logo consists of an axe and a mace. DEPRAVATION cultivate a resounding style mix of black and death metal with a crust side to it, which is served fiercely and lingers bitterly. Exactly this is what the group is after since their first release "I:PRAEDICTVM" in 2012 succeeded by "II:MALEDICTVM" one year later. Following 2020's "III:ODOR MORTIS", "IV:LETVM" marks the second album for LIFEFORCE RECORDS. After more than ten active years, in which split records with ANCST and SLOWLY WE ROT were released, DEPRAVATION enter the scene without the pretense of following current trends or living up to any particular genre. "IV:LETVM" is the expression of diverse musical influences and above all one thing: relentlessly extreme. "IV:LETVM" was recorded at Red Tape Company by Simeon Lauber in Gießen. Nikita Kamprad (Der Weg Einer Freiheit/Ghost City Recordings) is responsible for mixing and mastering.

DOUBLE BLACK LP : 2 x 140 G Black Vinyl , Sleeve & 2 x Heavy Weight Printed Inner with UV Gloss Finish

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

2 x Solid White LP, 5mm spine Sleeve UV Gloss Finish, 2x Heavy Weight Printed Inner Sleeve UV Gloss finish, marketing sticker.

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

Erstpressung auf pinkem Vinyl. "Breaking The Balls Of History" ist das insgesamt zehnte Album von QUASI, das am zehnten Februar, zehn Jahre nach ihrer letzten Platte, erscheint. Drei Zehner, was sich mit den dreißig Jahren deckt, die sie zusammenspielen. Sam Coomes und Janet Weiss sind zu Ikonen des pazifischen Nordwestens geworden, und QUASI hat sich immer so beständig angefühlt - ihre dauerhafte Freundschaft so generativ, ihre Energie unendlich, jedes Album rauer und eingängiger und wilder und lustiger als das letzte. Aber wir haben uns geirrt, QUASI jemals für selbstverständlich zu halten. Eine Zeit lang dachten sie, dass das komplizierte "Mole City" von 2013 ihr letztes Album sein könnte. Sie würden mit einem großartigen Album abtreten und weiterziehen. Dann, im August 2019, krachte ein Auto in Janets Haus und brach ihr beide Beine und das Schlüsselbein. Dann kam ein tödlicher Virus über uns, und niemand wusste, wann oder ob Live-Musik, wie wir sie kannten, jemals wieder würde stattfinden können. "There's no investing in the future anymore", erkannte Janet. "The future is now. Do it now if you want to do it. Don't put it off. All those things you only realize when it's almost too late. It could be gone in a second." Während des Lockdowns standen die Straßen von Portland still, Flugzeuge verschwanden, wilde Tiere tauchten auf. Und mit der ausgelöschten Normalität kam ein unerwartetes Geschenk: ununterbrochene Zeit, Stunden am Tag, um Kunst zu machen. QUASI konnten nicht auf Tournee gehen, also hatten sie eine Idee: Sie taten so, als wären sie auf Tournee und spielten jeden Tag zusammen. Jeden Nachmittag verschanzten sich Sam und Janet in ihrem winzigen Übungsraum und kanalisierten die Verwirrung und Absurdität dieser fremden neuen Welt in Songs. Sie beschlossen, dass sie die Songs live und gemeinsam aufnehmen würden, um einen Moment einzufangen. Das unglaubliche Ergebnis dieser Sessions ist "Breaking The Balls Of History", aufgenommen in fünf Tagen und produziert von John Goodmanson. Hier sind zwei Künstler*innen in ihrer Blütezeit, jede*r ein menschlicher Fundus an musikalischem Wissen und Erfahrung, völlig unverwechselbar in ihrem Songwriting und Sound. In der QUASI-Form wird die Band alchemistisch noch größer als die Summe ihrer Teile. Mitten in einem katastrophalen sozialen und politischen Moment haben sie exquisite, melodische Songs geschaffen, die vor Wut, wildem Humor und Intelligenz nur so sprühen, angetrieben von einem großen, zerschundenen, pochenden Herzen. "A last long laugh at the edge of death", singt Sam zu Beginn des Albums, und dieser fröhliche Trotz - der genauso gut der Logbuch-Eintrag unserer Gegenwart sein könnte - gibt den Ton für die kommenden Songs an. Es klingt düster, und das ist es auch, weil es sich dem Moment stellt. Aber es ist auch eine Platte, die vor Energie, Vergnügen und Freude nur so strotzt.

RED APPLE MARBLE VINYL REPRESS.

Everything changed for The Beths when they released their debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealand’s tight-knit music scene, working full-time during the day and playing music with friends after hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their home town, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths’ second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the group’s earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends. Stokes’s writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home.

"If you're at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds,” Stokes says. “We did the same thing. When you're home, you miss everybody, and when you're away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the time.”

With songs like the rambunctious “Dying To Believe” and the tender, shoegazey “Out of Sight,” The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations/They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings on “Dying to Believe.” The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths’ view, is with abundant and unconditional love, no matter how far it has to travel. On “Out of Sight,” she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: “If your world collapses/I’ll be down in the rubble/I’d build you another,” she sings.

“It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, 'wish you were here, wish I was there,’ over and over again,” she says of the time period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths committed themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same time to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could. That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it -- a sentiment we need now more than ever.

2023 repress of Low Life's second album from 2019 on coloured vinyl, in a single LP sleeve with insert. Colour effect is a seafoam green smear with a transparent base. Arriving with an aura of anticipation, 'Downer Edn' (read: Edition) feels like a collective document of the band's timeline since their unforgettable debut `Dogging'. Recorded over two years and mixed in 2018 by Mikey Young (Total Control / Eddy Current Suppression Ring), `Downer Edn' sees the core trio of Mitch Tolman, Cristian O'Sullivan and Greg Alfaro expand their ranks to a five piece. Dizzy Daldal and Yuta Matsumura of Oily Boys & Orion were brought in to reinforce the thick wall of guitars, freeing Tolman up as a dedicated front man for live duties. The hours of studio work have resulted in the band sounding more confident and fully realised, reaching and finding a sound that was perhaps unattainable 5 years prior. However, lurking behind the bigger vision and polished production, `Downer Edn remains a dark blast of an album. Expansive and cohesive, yet shimmering and rough; something they can be proud to call a definitive statement. As far as Australian punk is concerned, Downer Edition not only shatters the boundaries applied by that descriptor, it does so with the lushest attack conceivable. The visceral pounding of melodies throughout the album transforms their inspirations; desperation, neuroses, trauma, survival, hooliganism, violence, hope, rejuvenation, and their hometown of Sydney's full architectural and social scope - from a realm of intangibility to the very, very tangible. Unified on `RBB,' ruminating on `92', chasing the escape on `Rave Slave,' and unwillingly defiant on `Warrior,' Downer Edition reaches past the wild ride of Dogging - this truly is the album that Low Life have been threatening to make for nearly a decade. Released in conjunction with Goner Records in the USA and Cool Death in Australia.

MEMORIAM needs no introduction ‐ they are living legends of Old School Death Metal. Not only because the former fields of activity of the Brits belonged and still belong to the pioneers of UK Death Metal, but because they managed to follow their master plan more than precisely. MEMORIAM has built up their own loyal fan base over the past
seven years and developed its own musical identity. It would certainly have been easy for them to just follow the old paths, but the true art of the band is that they never deny their origins, but gradually incorporate something new ‐ with every album a few new nuances and facets are added.

The sheer speed of their creative output shows how consistently MEMORIAM follow this path: Following the initial success of the HELLFIRE DEMOS trilogy, MEMORIAM signed with Nuclear Blast in 2016. The band went on to release FOR THE FALLEN (2017), THE SILENT VIGIL (2018) and REQUIEM FOR MANKIND (2019) ensuring within a very short time that MEMORIAM were firmly established among loyal Death Metal fans. This wassupported by dozens of concerts, which have taken the band from selected club shows to major festival appearances (e.g. Hellfest, Wacken, Summer Breeze, Graspop). Following the success of this initial trilogy, MEMORIAM switched to the young label Reaper Entertainment. The album TO THE END, the first of a new trilogy, was released in 2021. The second album of the trilogy, RISE TO POWER, will be released in early 2023.

RISE TO POWER will not only once again offer an atmospherically dense Dan Seagrave cover, the war theme stylized on it also runs through Karl Willetts’ lyrics: With 'Never Forget, Never Again (6 Million Dead)' about the Holocaust and the, unfortunately, more than current 'Total War' about the war in Ukraine, Karl is more political than ever. "I am
writing 'our burden and shame' instead of 'their' as I believe it is our collective responsibility to ensure that something like the Holocaust never happens again. I feel that it is my responsibility as a frontman and lyricist to write about the things that I feel are important," explains Karl. MEMORIAM transforms aggression and grief into
uncompromising Death Metal energy. Also musically the mentioned above development process continues.

While the opener still serves the essential Death Metal groove, MEMORIAM becomes more variable with each additional song and keeps adding new dynamics into their Old School Death Metal sound ‐ from brutal grooves ('Annihilation's Dawn') via doomy‐melodic parts like in 'I Am The Enemy' up to aggressive Nordic riffing like in 'Total War'. RISE TO POWER is an extremely varied album, as Karl confirms: "That's Scott's style, he comes from a different generation than Frank, Spike and me. He brings in influences from bands I haven't even heard of. It gives us the balance between old and new, and it works pretty well for us.” (Thomas Strater)

Waxwork Records is proud to present the Us Original Motion Picture Soundtrack featuring a score by composer Michael Abels. Us, released in March 2019, is an original nightmare written, directed and produced by Academy Awardr-winning visionary Jordan Peele (Get Out). Set in present day Santa Cruz on the iconic Northern California coastline, the film, starring Oscarr winner Lupita Nyong'o and Black Panther's Winston Duke, pits an ordinary American family against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves. A blockbuster that earned raves from critics and audiences alike, Us earned more than $250 million at the worldwide box office to become one the highest grossing R-rated horror films of all time, buoyed by an unexpected and innovative soundtrack and by a groundbreaking, terrifying original score by Abels. Us marks the second collaboration between composer Abels and Peele, who first worked together on Peele's 2017 Oscar-winning horror film, Get Out. For the Us score, Abels explored themes of duality and discord. "Sonically, what defines 'scary' is the unfamiliar," Abels says. "It is the things that we can't place, and that we don't expect, that take us to that place of fear. We wanted to really strike terror into the audience." Central to the score was the opening track, an anthem for the doppelgängers, known in the film as The Tethered. Abels hit on the idea of using choral elements. "Jordan really loves the sounds of voices, and the human voice is an incredibly expressive instrument that anyone can relate to," Abels says. "The anthem sounds a little like a march of people preparing for battle, like an uprising maybe, but the sounds are not in a recognizable language. In other parts of the film there are vocal effects, just these strange sounds. They're designed to really freak people out." Abels featured a 30 person choir, a third of them children, in the "Anthem," and implemented Eastern European instruments, violins, percussion and a virtual instrument called a Propanium drum. "It makes this trashy metal sound, but you can also play melodies on it," Abels said. "The Propanium drum has a sound that's both otherworldly but not electronic or like science fiction. It's a sound you can't quite put your finger on, which is why it works well in this film." Also included on the soundtrack is the 1995 hip-hop hit "I Got 5 On It" by Luniz and the stand-out track "I Like That" by Janelle Monáe. Abels also helped with a new arrangement of the Luniz hit, which is featured on the soundtrack as the 'Tethered Mix from Us'.



































[xi] 35 I GOT 5 ON IT (FEAT. MICHAEL MARSHALL) [TETHERED MIX FROM US] - LUNIZ

Obvurt is a death metal band from Quebec city, Canada. The band's name stands for obvert ( to oppose) and Hurt ( to wound ). This trio was formed in 2020 with Philippe Drouin (ex Unbreakable Hatred) Olivier Pinard (Cryptopsy, Cattle Decapitation) and Samuel Santiago. Following the aftermath of a terrible motorcycle accident, Philippe was left unable to play guitar and had to learn from scratch to play left handed. this remarkable recovery inspires the title and lyrical concept throughout the album.

Cacophony is the second Rudimentary Peni album. Released after the band returned from their first hiatus following a series of personal events that changed the band forever. The thirty track LP keeps turning heads 34 years after its release. Far from writing another “Death Church” the band embarked on a truly bizarre quest - to record an album based on the life and writings of horrors absolute king H.P. Lovecraft. A dense cacophony of total free songwriting. Dark, gothic, intricate, unexpected head-scratching punk. The short bursts of music twist and turn at every corner - the vocals are part classic Blinko and part spoken word, the guitar is full of distorted awkward tones and the very inventive bass and drums are locked together creating a truly unique album. Cacophony is the benchmark of outsider Punk and the influence and cult nature of this album grows with every passing year. This reissue stays close to the original version, with Nick Blinko’s incredible cover art, including a 11” x 11” 8-page lyric booklet.