quête:some truths

Debut solo album from the former frontwoman of The Total Bettys. Olive Green colored vinyl, comes with Download Card. Recommend If You Like: Tancred, Adult Mom, Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy Maggie Gently is a San Francisco-based indie songwriter with a fondness for wild schemes and intimate gestures. Her identity as a queer woman is important to her and the community she creates and participates in. Maggie Gently’s music is melody-driven and heartfelt — a big-city indie rock fascination with an unmistakable emo accent. Her songs are about how making decisions for your own mental health can feel like a matter of survival. Peppermint peers around the edges of trauma for a new glimpse at what growth could look like. With songs about eternal questions of commitment and love and the terrifying possibility of being vulnerable and known, this album is about trusting something enough to let yourself get swept away. The nine songs that make up Peppermint reinforce empowering truths that can be hard to internalize or say out loud. As an artist, Maggie finds inspiration in Meg Hayertz’ “Make It, Mean It” tarot-focused guided meditations, lesbian romance novels, and the Enneagram, almost as much as fellow bands like Snail Mail, Lala Lala, and Clairo. “’Steady’ is a sun-kissed ode to rebirth, driven by sweet acoustic melodies and Maggie’s soaring serene harmonies. As steady drums and shimmering synths join the mix for the chorus, the track gains a sense of resolute hope, as if emerging from the dark of winter into the light of spring.”

"bit by bit" is the first full-length release from Toronto-based singer-songwriter Evan J Cartwright. This self produced album from the go-to drummer/collaborator (The Weather Station, U.S. Girls, Brodie West) presents a highly singular songwriting vision that combines existential lyrics with masterful musicianship. Steeped in jazz melodicism, Cartwright’s trumpet-like phrasing mixed with contemporary composition presents an eclectic art song performed by an artist that could perhaps be best described as a post-modern Chet Baker. Deep poetic observations on love and time paint an affecting picture of an artist reflecting on life’s universal truths. Visual in nature, "bit by bit" places its audience within a world of musical leitmotifs extracted from field recordings of bells and birdsong. Collected during years of touring, these sounds evoke extant spaces beyond that which the music inhabits. The use of this source material in its unaltered form evokes the feeling of a technicolour European film at one moment and then, as the extrapolated melodies are meticulously translated into electronic tone bank sequences, a modernist setting the next. One carillon melody is used as the basis for a wealth of the album’s musical material before its origin is finally revealed by the chiming of bells in the last seconds of the album. The result is a fragment of space between the constructed world of the musical compositions and the candid world of documentation, inviting the listener to ponder whether those two worlds are distinct or whether the songs and music are not simply “field recordings” themselves. Throughout "bit by bit" Cartwright drops staggering revelations hiding in plain prose that often involve the contemplation of time. In I Don’t Know he states “if I only trusted time / then I would wish it all away” and nearing the album’s end he opens impossibly blue with the phrase “the impossible truth of time”, playfully inserting a pregnant pause before the word time. A drummer’s fixation, to be certain, the album’s recurring theme of time is eclipsed only by Cartwright’s contemplation of human relationships. Here he elaborates on some of the album’s subjects: “Many of the lyrics circle, and try to give a name to the illegible space between human beings. “i DON’t know” celebrates the fact that we will never truly understand what love is. Its message is one of assurance. It says that we can never really touch love, and that is ok. “and you’ve got nobuddy” refers to life’s great tragedy: that we are unable to read each others’ experiences, and in reaction to this, we separate ourselves.” The entirety of "bit by bit" is a continuous work. There is seldom a clear demarcation of where one piece ends and another begins and when this does occur, it is done crudely, as if someone is flipping through a series of broadcasted channels. At times words are sliced right out of their lines and replaced by pure tones. This is both a comical interpretation of censorship and a reminder that there are things in life that will forever remain unseen and illegible. In fact, this statement lies at the centre of the LP and although hidden beauty does reveal itself through repeated listenings, "bit by bit’s" eccentric world remains just out of reach — an imaginary second story room viewed from a crowded city street.

Bobby Oroza puts his desire for the profound on wax with his sophomore album Get On The Otherside. Musically, he has updated the formula we were introduced to on the first record. But lyrically, songs are bravely rooted in the more complicated, ubiquitous inner tangles of life like self-examination and coming to terms with the vastness of the human experience. With Coronavirus bringing the world to a halt, Bobby-a father and husband-had to do something. No tours to play or studio time to fill, Bobby found himself back in the construction yard, doing blue-collar work to provide for his family. "I was super grateful for the work-a lot of my colleagues didn't have an option like that," Bobby admits. More than a few personal hardships forced him to acknowledge and work through some brutal truths. And what came of it? Well, for one, this new record Get On The Otherside which pretty well describes what Bobby's been through: He had to demolish his ego, his old ways of thinking, and his tried approaches to anchor into a refreshed perspective with new understandings. As Bobby tells it, "I had to do some real self-searching, come to terms with what was wrong, and how much of it I was responsible for." So how does this translate to the new album? Moments of clarity as to where the real value in life lies on "I Got Love," encouraging numbers like the title track "The Otherside", and declarations of self actualization on "My Place, My Time." Even the more straightforward love songs are outside the box lyrically like "Sweet Agony" and "Loving Body." If you have never had the pleasure of catching one of Bobby's live shows you may have no idea that he is a maverick on the guitar. He lets us in on a little of that on "Passing Things" with a solo that possesses the same restrained and space that his lyrics do. As we'd expect, the songwriting still has that raw, direct edge to it. But an evolution has taken place. There are new points of view on familiar territory which in Bobby's words "For me to love, I needed to take a bigger view of love. One with less ego and more empathy" really hold true. The result is a record with Bobby's new found humility on full display and a message of encouragement to anyone who is struggling and can't see a way out. It still may be hard to nail down and define Bobby and his sound. He's no one thing more than the other. But what he's showing us now, on Get On The Otherside, is that we can also label him a soulful, philosophical optimist. Someone who can say a lot with a little, and who wants us all to know that it's us that has to do the hard lifting to truly live a life in love-both with the world and with yourself.

Angel Olsen covers “Something On Your Mind,” while Karen Dalton’s version is found on the flip.
The latest release in Light in the Attic’s 7" Covers Series.
Artwork by Los Angeles-based fine artist Robbie Simon.
Pressed at Third Man Pressing. Non-Returnable.
Didn’t you see, you can’t make it without ever even trying? — Dino Valenti, lyrics from “Something On Your Mind”
Light in the Attic is honored to be releasing Angel Olsen’s gorgeous cover of Karen Dalton’s moving interpretation of ‘Something On Your Mind,’ a song that enduringly underscores the unspoken thoughts, painful truths and buried emotions between people and within oneself. Thematically, the song is universal and resonates as much with listeners today emerging from a post-pandemic world as it did for Karen Dalton when she first recorded it in 1971 for her second and final studio album, In My Own Time. “‘Something On Your Mind’ for me is about letting yourself face something that keeps setting you back,” says Angel Olsen, who has come to the forefront of Karen Dalton appreciators around the world, both in her contribution of this new interpretation and as the voice of Dalton’s personal journals in the recent documentary, Karen Dalton: In My Own Time. As part of the latest installment of LITA’s long-running cover series, Angel’s cover is found on the a-side, while the flip includes Karen’s 1971 version.
Previous singles in Light in the Attic’s Covers Series includes musician, poet, and author Leslie Winer collaborating with Manchester-born composer Maxwell Sterling on a truly gorgeous cover of Tim Buckley’s 1967 forlorn love song “Once I Was,” Bill Callahan & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy covering Johnnie Frierson’s beautiful and inspiring tune “Miracles,” BADBADNOTGOOD with Jonah Yano covering “Key To Love (Is Understanding)” by Milwaukee’s funk/soul pioneers Majestics, Charles Bradley & the Menahan Street Band covering Sixto Rodriguez, Mac DeMarco covering Haruomi Hosono’s “Honey Moon,” and Iggy Pop with the Zig Zags transforming Betty Davis’ dirty funk into a heavy Sabbath grind, amongst many others.

SPICE singer Ross Farrar speaks of the band’s ambition to forge a sort of aesthetic patois: a mode of expression as strikingly regional as it is recognizable. Last year’s self-titled debut, released in the depths of the pandemic, fully achieved this goal, distilling decades of North Bay punk and post-hardcore into an urgent, artful set of emotive unrest. Their latest single, A Better Treatment b/w Everyone Gets In, further refines the group’s singular mix of weathered melody and abrasive poetics, equal parts bracing, bruised, and cryptic.

“A Better Treatment” began as a song about a friend who died but through the turmoil of collaboration transformed into something more macroscopic and opaque, blurring the boundary between hopeful and defeated (“I thought loving someone would cure my self-hatred”). Bass and drums build against walls of guitar while the violin threads its own melancholy within the noise; Farrar is blunt about the intention: “The violin is an instrument of death you know.”



“Everyone Gets In” is both poppier and more pained, an anthem for angst aging into the reverie of regret: “We lose our strength / along the way / we lose each other / the funeral sways.” The tempo sways too, gradually slowing to an anxious crawl before finally revving back into a storm of shimmering guitar and splashing drums, fighting against the dying of the light. It’s music of raw truths and
rejected pedestals, storied but unswerving, a revolt against the great regress: “and my / my time is spent / adoring seasons / that I / I never should’ve.”

SPICE singer Ross Farrar speaks of the band’s ambition to forge a sort of aesthetic patois: a mode of expression as strikingly regional as it is recognizable. Last year’s self-titled debut, released in the depths of the pandemic, fully achieved this goal, distilling decades of North Bay punk and post-hardcore into an urgent, artful set of emotive unrest. Their latest single, A Better Treatment b/w Everyone Gets In, further refines the group’s singular mix of weathered melody and abrasive poetics, equal parts bracing, bruised, and cryptic.

“A Better Treatment” began as a song about a friend who died but through the turmoil of collaboration transformed into something more macroscopic and opaque, blurring the boundary between hopeful and defeated (“I thought loving someone would cure my self-hatred”). Bass and drums build against walls of guitar while the violin threads its own melancholy within the noise; Farrar is blunt about the intention: “The violin is an instrument of death you know.”



“Everyone Gets In” is both poppier and more pained, an anthem for angst aging into the reverie of regret: “We lose our strength / along the way / we lose each other / the funeral sways.” The tempo sways too, gradually slowing to an anxious crawl before finally revving back into a storm of shimmering guitar and splashing drums, fighting against the dying of the light. It’s music of raw truths and
rejected pedestals, storied but unswerving, a revolt against the great regress: “and my / my time is spent / adoring seasons / that I / I never should’ve.”

For Andy and Edwin White, the brothers behind Orlando’s Tonstartssbandht, a song is a living, breathing thing. Through constant touring, the Whites’ songs both take shape and change shape, becoming something a little different every night as they explore the possibilities inherent within them. With time, attention, and intention, these songs—long, languid, full of open musical questions and temporary answers—become distinct objects, and the process begins again. On Petunia, Tonstartssbandht’s 18th album and second for Mexican Summer, they bring us to the earliest moments of this process, showing off a barn full of hatchlings already decked with splendid plumage. Using little more than a 12-string guitar and a drum kit, Andy and Edwin weave together the gentle headiness of Laurel Canyon and the sweaty pacing of Cologne; like a gyroscope, its constant motion produces the illusion of stillness—and that stillness gives it a sense of intimacy and introspection, something that’s further illuminated by the new emphasis placed on the brothers’ vocals. It allows the quiet wisdom of the lyrics—what Andy self-deprecatingly calls “generic broad platitudes that I still think resonate when I say them”—to slip in almost unnoticed, delivering their emotional truths while preparing a feather bed for you to collapse into. “All roads will lead to the heart of town, when you’ve been running too long,” he sings in the album’s opening moments. “Being at peace only slows you down, but you’ve been running so long now.” If Petunia feels like a journey in the direction of peace, that, too, is a reflection of how it was made—the entire thing was written and recorded in Orlando in 2020, rather than pieced together in spurts over the years. This is an album built on level ground that shows what can happen when the artistic environment is stable, even while the world’s environment is anything but. Petunia is not Tonstartssbandht’s definitive statement on these songs, because how could it be? But it is a portrait of Andy and Edwin White at home in Florida, an artfully staged landscape rich in detail, its winding passages and airy environment waiting to be explored.

Ever since the release of their acclaimed debut EP P'eau (2018) these Mechelen-based musicians have been honing their craft in songwriting and production, building a new home studio to record future material while also expanding from a three-piece to a five-piece ensemble. By adding singer/percussionist Stefan De Graef (Psychonaut) and guitarist/singer Sander Rom (L'Itch) to their ranks, HIPPOTRAKTOR have become a more versatile outfit able to employ a broader palette of sounds, taking the band's earlier instrumental prog metal sound to new heights. Taking notes from the best moments in contemporary progressive and post metal, HIPPOTRAKTOR capture the awe-inspiring power of nature_from the delicacy of the first falling leaf to the massive cosmic energy of the sun. By combining the big, catchy riffs and the rhythmical prowess of Gojira with the relentless but equally groove-loaded complexity of Meshuggah, Meridian delivers an overwhelming experience of sound, presenting the listener with sentiments that are recognisable, but with an intensity that seems larger-than-life. "Meridian finds its origin in everyday moods, taken out of context and morphed into a stylised version that re- flects the dreamer in me," explains main songwriter and guitarist Chiaran Verheyden. "It tells the story of someone who's lost in a world too massive to comprehend, and seeks answers in places where none can be found. Meridian was written as an attempt to distillate what I felt but couldn't put into words." As the main vocalist in the group, finding these words was the job of Stefan De Graef, who carried over his fascination for philosophy and religion from his other band Psychonaut. "Meridian tells the story of a solitary wanderer on the Earth in the absence of other beings," explains Stefan. "Without anyone to share knowledge and history with, the protagonist is forced to create his own truths and stories about the nature of life, consciousness and the universe. The protagonist begins to personify and deify his surroundings, assigning sentience to the trees, the mountains, the wind, the waters etc. for they are his only companions in this desolate world." Essentially, Meridian is an exploration of the evolutionary theory of naturism, which was put forth by German scholar Max Mu"ller in the 19th century, and which argues that religion finds its origin in the deification of the forces of nature by early human beings. By juxtaposing this sociological theory with seven tracks that unfailingly conjure images of the earth, sea and sky, HIPPOTRAKTOR have created an analogy that enlarges the imaginative quality of their music to (literally) epic proportions. Combining the best of prog, groove and post-metal, Meridian comprises an incredible ride for fans of soaring hooks, technical riffing and earth-shattering breakdowns. Limited bluegreen-grey single colour vinyl edition, gatefold! FOR FANS OF Meshuggah, Periphery, Cloudkicker, Intronaut, Animals As Leaders, Gojira, Skyharbor, Psychonaut

Michael Mayer’s latest EP, Brainwave Technology, comes at you purposeful, stealthy and sly. It’s a glorious left turn for the redoubtable producer, one that sees his typically lean and lithe productions buffed to a metallic, futurist sheen. There’s a gleam in the eyes of tracks like “Brainwave Technology” and “Alpha” that speaks of serious fun, of the intersection of the pleasure zone and the frontal lobe.

“Brainwave Technology” itself is informed by Mayer’s deep dive into the thorny terrain of artificial intelligence, transhumanism and posthumanism. Inspired by reading German philosopher Richard David Precht, Mayer found himself heading down the “proverbial rabbit hole,” as he describes it, “watching hours of YouTube material by self-proclaimed prophets of these ‘inevitable’ changes to come.” Never one to be taken in by the egotist’s dance, Mayer’s cynicism about the whole endeavour is tempered, a little, by the deeper questions that these figures gesture towards: “Is it really an evolutionary step that man and machine become one? Or is it rather a marketing plot by Silicon Valley billionaires?”

On “Brainwave Technology”, Mayer plays the charlatans at their own game, turning their logic against them by exposing the fruitiness of their ‘visions’. “I chose irony as my sword with which I chopped off some quotes from some of those batshit crazy prophets and self-promoters,” he explains of the drooling psychobabble he drops in the track’s lacuna. There’s a sense of humour here – how could you not laugh at these hungover egotists? – but there’s levity too, a sense that Mayer’s using sound to expose the contradictions and double-speak at the heart of these half-formed ideas. It’s a Burroughsian tactic, to slice into the heart of the voice to see what hidden truths surface.

It was Burroughs, too, who once said that “when you cut into the past, the future leaks out”; Brainwave Technology cuts into the logic of the futurologist to leak out the messiness of modern reality. On “Alpha” and “Gamma”, Mayer seems to conjure up the stark, ominous music that’d soundtrack a science fiction reinterpretation – or preinterpretation – of our modern malaise, all funereal wreaths of electronic noise and clatterboxing beats. As the EP resolves with “Device For The Young At Heart”, Mayer’s questions are piling up: “Do we want to become immortal and live on as a download? Do we really give up on Earth and put all our effort into colonising Mars?” There are no answers, of course, but plenty of imaginings-to-be. Brainwave Technology soundtracks both dystopian and utopian possibilities of what could come next.

Brock Van Wey returns as Earth House Hold and his third full album under the alias, continuing to explore the furthest influences of Ambient-infused, deconstructed Deep House in all its varying elements.

“...from the second I descended those stairs, lived it for myself, and the events that followed, I knew my life had changed forever. A life that brought with it a beauty as infinite as its pain”.

Daybreak Basements and Broken Hearts explores a new aspect of Brock’s early Deep House influences, one that meticulous followers of this guise would have been patiently trying to guess since his last outing in 2018. If Brock’s debut Earth House Hold album (When Love Lived, 2012) took the grooves and danceability from Deep House, and his second, (Never Forget Us, 2018), highlighted the powerful progression of vocals and melodies, then Daybreak Basements and Broken Hearts continues to build on the many aspects and inspirations of the Deep House genre, with a raw, dirty and somehow deeper take on the sound that Brock grew up with many years ago.

Brock’s signature vocals once again provide the narration and backbone to an album that is designed to progress; from its patient and spacious beginnings to its energetic and emotional closing chapters. Reverberating synths fill cavernous spaces as basslines rumble, bringing a darker, more abstract, early-morning vibe to an album born from a place of both reflection, and personal experiences.

“This is a house album in the purest sense of the word - just as much as the furthest thing from one that ever existed. As much a deconstruction of what deep house means as an attempt to reconstruct a time, and a life, it built.”

Limited Coke Bottle Green vinyl, 250 copies only for the UK. Any future pressing will be on black vinyl. Massage feature Alex Naidus from Pains At Being Pure At Heart. Recorded by Lewis Pesacov (Fool’s Gold, Foreign Born, Peel’d). Massage was supposed to be low-stakes, no big deal "anti-ambition," as Andrew Romano, guitarist and vocalist, put it. The L.A.based jangle-pop group's first album, 2018's Oh Boy, was a sweet and simple weekend warrior's affair, or more specifically, an every-other-Monday one, as the band members gathered to bash out songs that offered messy but heartfelt tribute to their chosen heroes: The Feelies, the Go-Betweens, Twerps, Flying Nun. For Romano, not taking things too seriously is a dead-serious affair: “Nothing kills the kind of music we want to make faster than the sense that a band is trying too hard,” he says. The kind of music Massage makes sunny, bittersweet, tender is less a proper genre than a minor zip code nested within guitar pop. Take a little "There She Goes" by the La's, some "If You Need Someone" by the Field Mice; the honey-drizzled guitars from The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love," a Jesus & Mary Chain backbeat, and you're almost all the way there. Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop whatever you call it, pushing too hard scares the spirit right out of this sweet, diffident music, and Massage have a touch so light the songs seem to form spontaneously, like wry smiles. Still, on their sophomore effort, Still Life, they manage to take a quantum leap forward in songwriting, production, and depth, all somehow without seeming to try. These 12 deft songs are full of late-summer sunlight and deep shadows, pained grins and shared jokes, shy declarations of love and quietly nursed heartbreak. Still Life resurrects a brief, romantic moment in the late-'80s, right after post-punk and immediately before alt-rock, when it seemed like any scrappy indie band might stumble across a hit. When Andrew Romano and Alex Naidus first met in 2007, Naidus had just joined a band with his friends Kip Berman and Peggy Wang that was about to stumble into many of them. When Naidus finally left Pains for L.A. in 2013, two hit albums and a few world tours later, he started playing with Romano to recapture the no-stakes, suburban-garage joy of making music for its own sake. It was "friendship incarnate," Naidus remembers. The other members came from within the friend circle Gabrielle Ferrer (keyboard/vocals) is Romano's sister-in-law, Michael Felix (drums) is one of Naidus’ best friends, and David Rager (bass) is a childhood friend of Felix’s. When Felix moved to Mexico City in early 2020, Naidus’ wife, Natalie de Almeida, stepped in. The result is the finest batch of songs they've ever produced. From Naidus' velvet-lined JAMC tribute "Half A Feeling" to Ferrer's Let It Be-era Replacements-tinged lament "The Double" to Romano's "In Gray & Blue," these are gold-standard indie-pop gems from emerging masters of the form. Still Life glows with the sincerity and unfakeable warmth of the era they so lovingly channel. Like the best Gin Blossoms chorus you still remember, the songs on Still Life stir big, pure emotions, but beneath them, uneasy truths about adulthood linger, just below the surface. Maybe the exact mix of ringing guitars and two-part harmonies can chase those feelings away, or redeem them, for at least a minute or three. Massage won't stop trying.

There has always been a Reggae inuence in the music of El Michels Affair. From their cover of "Hung Up On My Baby" done in a Reggae style, to the general sound and approach that permeates Leon's production style. While recording Bailey's 2020 Ekundayo album, they did some straight forward reggae tunes inspired by different eras alongside some modern R&B tracks that would t more comfortably next to Frank Ocean than Jacob Miller. It is this same notion that old and new can live so comfortably together that birthed the idea of Ekundayo Inversions. Traditional dub came out of reggae in the late 60s and early 70s when pioneers like King Tubby and Lee Perry started taking the multi track recordings of songs and running them back through the board adding effects and additional instrumentation. These recordings are called "dubs" or "versions" and are typically instrumentals with ourishes of vocals from the original tracks. El Michels decided to use the blueprints left behind and make something using the inuences of today. He wound up straying so far from the traditional format that it didn't seem right to use the word `Dub', hence Ekundayo Inversions. All the songs are tied together by WhatsApp messages between Leon and Liam that perfectly narrate the story of this record and their working relationship. One of the highlights on Ekundayo Inversions is a guest appearance from the legendary Lee "Scratch" Perry on the "Ugly Truth" version. L$P switches between singing and talking, proclaiming his powers one minute and playing with the track's title the next. On "Awkward take. 2" Leon takes one of the most experimental songs from Ekundayo and actually straightens it out. A track that once seemed to be oating in space has now been anchored by the addition of drums and bass. "Faded", a version of "Paper Tiger", is given the full EMA treatment with the addition of emotive horns over an uncomfortably sparse rhythm track peppered with Liam's voice drenched in delay and echo. "Champions" features a verse from Black Thought of The Roots and halfway through, El Michels sends the rhythm section 50 years back. At the end of the day, Ekundayo Inversions is a testament to how strong the original songs are. Whether they're in a R&B style, reggae style, stripped down to their bare bones, or loaded with production, the songs will move you.

A Colourful Storm presents Seance, a new set of songs by Maxine Funke.

Following a productive recording period beginning with Silk (2018) and ending with Forest Photographer (2020), Seance marks a remarkable levitation of Funke’s tender, softly spoken songcraft first documented on Lace (2008) and Felt (2012) into new creative heights. Folksong confessionals with the burden of memory. Ghostly confines, murmurs from the cracks. Soil, blood and skin. The beauty and mundanity of the everyday.

The voice of Funke is a distinctive instrument, one which perfectly elucidates her sometimes confessional, at other times deeply inward allusions to love, loss, joy and disquiet. Lyrics grounded in observation and adventure (“Eyeballs, asphalt, grass clippings, peppercorns”) unravel into uneasy truths daubed in self-consciousness and forbidden desire (“I’m not shy / There's just a sparkle in your eye and I don't feel right”). The simplest things can be the most difficult to express.

Opener ’Fairy Baby’ and ‘Homage’ are sensuous and probing, celebrating new beginnings while cautiously closing old chapters. ‘Quiet Shore’, a seven-minute reverie of guitar strum and poetry, conjures spirits long forgotten and shines as Funke’s first solo foray into longform songwriting. A perfect accompaniment to the album’s centrepiece, ‘Lucky Penny’, a euphoric, entrancing rush foreshadowing the delicate dreamspeak still to come.

An assertive, visionary recording by one of New Zealand’s most extraordinary voices, Seance is a lover’s lament, a revealing of self and a secluded wander through fields of enchantment.

Following their last release, The Day Before Halloween_an imaginative, distorted-synth-driven concept album_Atmosphere returns with a refreshing new project, simply titled WORD? Steering back toward their signature sound, the album further highlights producer Ant's undeniable talents as the project leans into the classic boom-bap aesthetic, bringing a unique energy out of Slug's wisdom, wit and delivery. From onset, WORD? proves to be every bit an exercise in refining and advancing their craft as it is a harkening to earlier work. That is, while their releases have grown more broodingly cinematic, and increasingly concerned with the human condition and mortality, WORD? manages to reintroduce moments of levity and lightheartedness throughout, an approach seldom heard on their albums of late. From album opener "Fleetwood," with its razor-sharp snares and warm fleshy bassline, to the resonant melody of "Clocked", there are strong hints of Atmosphere's nascent years within the sound. Meanwhile, songs like "Woes", "Strung" and "Vanish" cheerfully make light of daily hardships, but they're more likely to be remembered for making listeners want to bob their heads and sing along. With Slug and Ant directing the course, the album plays like a joyride through a range of experiences and emotions, with an extensive cast of special guests hopping in and out along the way, including Evidence, Muja Messiah, Musab, Nino Bless, Nikki Jean, Anwar HighSign, BlackLiq, Sa-Roc, Haphduzn, Lateef the Truthspeaker, Aesop Rock, and the late MF DOOM (RIP). The result is a project that feels like it came from the era or, perhaps more fittingly, the mindset that created albums like God Loves Ugly, Seven's Travels, or the popular Sad Clown series, while sounding as polished and perfected as more recent albums like Mi Vida Local or Whenever. Ultimately, WORD? pairs the breadth of Atmosphere's talents with the beauty of their growth, all while showing they still have a lot of fun in the process and don't mind letting the listener in on the fun as well.

LIMITED 180GM OPAQUE ORANGE VINYL.

BUFFET LUNCH are a Scottish group who make it their mission to craft satisfyingly imperfect pop songs filled with imagery and humour.The group’s elementary parts are Perry O’Bray (Vocals/Keys/Guitar), Neil Robinson (Bass), John Muir (Lead Guitar) & Luke Moran (Drums), united by a shared love of music on the ABBA-to-Beefheart axis.

These four ricochet between Glasgow and Edinburgh, creating music that bristles with DIY spirit and upbeat wonkiness. Their tracks are vigorous excursions, meandering into clattersome terrain as often as hiking up into the breezy, melodious foothills.The desire to lead the listener along a curious tale helps tie things together, showcasing a lyrical playfulness that pins down their puzzle of sound.

Having been an active band for a few years, playing regularly north of the border with like-minds such as Irma Vep, Robert Sotelo and Kaputt, Buffet Lunch spent early 2020 working on the follow-up to their two EPs on Permanent Slump.The fruits from such labour bore out as the band’s debut album ‘ThePower of Rocks’, out may 7th on UpsetTheRhythm.

‘ThePower of Rocks’ was recorded in a Crofters cottage/studio on the banks of Upper Loch Fyne in Argyll, over four nights and five days at the beginning of March 2020, before Covid-19 made itself such an ongoing concern. Back then four people could occupy the same space and make music, lunch and dinner together. Days fell into a pattern of long sessions and long meals.The album came together as a luminous mix of Buffet Lunch’s live chestnuts, some sparky recent songs and some new material entirely written and recorded in situ. All tracks were recorded by Neil Robinson acting as the in-house engineer.

As the seriousness of the virus and talk of national lockdowns developed - there was a feeling of anticipation more than fear in the air, but being holed up in cottage in a wild corner of Scotland surrounded by snowy mountains still took on an apocalyptic feel, albeit an apocalypse where the band were safe and overdubbing vocals. After leaving the cottage, reality (as it must) set in and finishing the album became a more remote task.

Over the following months, an extended period of listening awarded the recordings a deeper realisation, as they bounced between band members computers. Perry also started writing on his Casio keyboard and collaborated on a couple of songs (‘Ten Times’ & ‘Ashley’s New Haircut’) with Jayne Dent (of electronic music project Me Lost Me), drawing on her ethereal singing voice as a counterpoint to his own more ‘spoken’ vocals on the album. These gauzy, dreamlike tracks were then sent to other members of Buffet Lunch to add their respective parts, creating evocative new dimensions to close each half ofthealbum with.

The Power of Rocks’ rattles along like a short-story collection, exploring a variety of narratives. When it comes to the music itself, Perry describes their approach as “see what happens” but admits to a preference for simple synth melodies, plenty of percussion, and prickly guitar-parts. ‘Red Apple’ opens the album with a dizzy swagger, guitars and keyboard notes swirling in forays whilst its lyric tackles notions of social bravado. ‘Orange Peel’ follows equally serpentine with its blattering tune and jagged, yet jolly melodic twists.The themes across the album are wide-ranging and personal, from irritation with out of touch politicians (‘Pebbledash’), to love letters to seaside living (‘Bladderwrack’), to even the frailty and confusion of old age (‘Said Bernie’, ‘It Helps to Know’). Title track ‘ThePower of Rocks’ is an ode to the power of nature sunk within a rolling wave of cheery jangle. “Do you believe in the power of rocks when the sun is too hot on your face?” sings Perry as the song zigzags with consequence. ‘He Wore Two Hats’ sports similarly bop-worthy riffs and addictive nods as it deals with its story of savvy man who’d bitten off more than he could chew.

Buffet Lunch’s debut album accomplishes a lot in its brief 38 minutes. It stuns and startles, intrigues and entwines, drawing the listener further into its characterful world. When asked about any intent posed with this debut record Perry confides that “we hope people can hear the joy the band had making the album and the curiosity and frustration that went into the writing. There was no process or design, but there is detail, and deliberateness in our wish to explore and create.” It’s this attentive focus alongside a keen sense of humour that really sets Buffet Lunch apart, with ideas darting wilfully to and from the poignant truths at hand.

Teenage Fanclub release a limited-edition double A side 7” ahead of their tenth studio album, Endless Arcade, released via their own label PeMa in the UK/Europe and Merge in the US.

The 7” vinyl features an edit of current single ‘Home’ (version only available on vinyl on this release) and previous single ‘Everything is Falling Apart’

Endless Arcade follows the band’s ninth album “Here”, released in 2016 to universal acclaim and notably their first Top 10 album since 1997; a mark of how much they’re treasured. The new record is quintessential TFC: melodies are equal parts heart-warming and heart-aching; guitars chime and distort; keyboard lines mesh and spiral; harmony-coated choruses burst out like sun on a stormy day.
Endless Arcade was virtually finished by the time lockdown was announced, bar the odd tinker under the engine hood. For the track ‘Home' It seems timely, given how everyone has had to stay home under lockdown, the track typifies TFC’s relaxed groove, culminating in Raymond’s peach of a guitar solo. Norman’s search for ‘home’ could be literal: after all, he’s been living in Canada for the last 10 years. But it’s also figurative.

In the 1990s, the band crafted a magnetically heavy yet harmony-rich sound on classic albums such as “Bandwagonesque” and “Grand Prix”. This century, albums such as “Shadows” and “Here” have documented a more relaxed, less ‘teenage’ Fanclub, reflecting the band’s stage in life and state of mind, which Endless Arcade slots perfectly alongside. The album walks a beautifully poised line between melancholic and uplifting, infused with simple truths. The importance of home, community and hope is entwined with more bittersweet, sometimes darker thoughts - insecurity, anxiety, loss.

The Tipping Scale is a gorgeously sung cycle of songs that mix deeply personal lyrics with universal themes; Kinlaw is a smart, conceptual writer, one not afraid to explore deep emotions like loss, regret, and confusion, alongside strength, identity, and change. She explains that The Tipping Scale is an ideal metaphor for the record, the idea of an ever-present slipping in and out of change, and an acceptance of this kind of change. On it, she unravels intimate memories and tries to learn from them. As you listen to her songs and decode her words, you realize she's not just building songs, she's also creating a home_where painful thoughts of the past can exist within the present_as well as an entirely new, unflinching universe. This universe she created is not metaphorical_it's, in fact, very real. Kinlaw, who often works with gesture and movement as a writing tool, found The Tipping Scale unifying her multidisciplinary practice. She found it by building a real world. As she wrote, with the goal of finding human entry points for storytelling that felt authentic and honest to her practice, she often saw the music relating to motion. "I would start with a gesture and let it build into something until a memory attached itself to it," She explains. "The memory would become a story and the story would reveal itself as something important that needed to be expressed in this album." This works, too, for the lyrical process, where harder and less smooth gestures would represent consonants, and smooth, flowing movements would become vowels. She found the same thing happening with melodic lines and key changes. This is a record that jolts between the corporeal and the psychological, drawn from a flailing body, anchored by inconvenient truths. RIYL: Choir Boy, Jenny Hval, Kate Bush, Boy Harsher, Caroline Polachek, Black marble, Julia Holter, Grouper

Bastard Jazz is proud to present the sophmore solo album by one of the gems of the New Zealand underground soul scene, Isaac Aesili. Woven through electronic soul, with threads of jazz, funk, R&B and house music, Isaac's 'Hidden Truths' is the stylistic unification of all his previous projects (Karl Marx, Funkommunity, Sorceress) into a dazzling and diverse body of work. Three years in the making, its depth is clear from the first listen, and is peppered with some of New Zealand's finest soul and jazz musical talent, including two stunning female feature vocalists from New Zealand; Ladi6 and Rachel Fraser.

The album opens with an ominous instrumental 'Mirror' setting a dark a tone for the album the start, shimmering with shades of Dilla swing snapping over metallic chords and a graceful trumpet solo that enters midway through. Wild feat. Ladi6' is a heavy downbeat future soul joint with stratospheric synths layered over driving beats that build alongside the elegant vocal weavings of New Zealand's first lady of soul, Ladi6, while 'Player' sees Isaac's unique vocals tell a tale of dangerous seduction within a synth funk-driven dancehall cum house music that feels like the Gap Band on a tropical vacation. 'Jungles' is a deep, native and ocean-like soundscape that begins with syncopated synths and beats that collide dramatically into a frantic, sweeping synth outro, followed up by'Realms' , an intricately crafted song that has sonic elements from techno-house that are other-worldly accompanied by live drums that flip after the breakdown into a swinging conclusion of the album's first half.

'Run Every Way' is an epic percussion-driven electronic blues that begins with a vocal chorus from Isaac that could just as easily be interpreted lyrically as a warning about climate change as it could an expression of the inner-self, while "Refugee" is also a heavily percussion orientated joint that fuses romantic classical strings with otherworldly synth stabs and Isaac's haunting vocals moving climactically into a tender coda conclusion. "Rain Gods" feat. Rachel Fraser is a heavenly pathway into Rachel's luxurious vocals with clever lyrics merging the soaring synths and looped bassline into a short yet memorable chorus'and 'Steps' is classic Isaac Aesili production including deep Rhodes chord changes, a knocking beat with layers of percussion, synths and horns providing a warm emotive accompaniment to Isaac's vocals. 'Last Minute' is a simple yet sophisticated jewel of space and time that concludes the vocal tracks of the album in a proper soulful style, and 'Maureen' rounds out the album as an expressive instrumental outrolude that features Isaac's trumpet.

Isaac Aesili is an Internationally acclaimed solo artist and the producer and creative force behind Funkommunity, Sorceress and Karlmarx. Isaac's original productions have been supported internationally by DJs such as Gilles Peterson (BBC Radio 6 Music), Benji B (BBC 1), and Lefto (Belgium, Worldwide FM). His trumpet playing features on many collaborations including 'Layer' by Julien Dyne (Wonderful Noise/BBE) and 'Midnight in Peckham' by Chaos in the CBD (Rhythm Section). A world-renowned musician on both trumpet and percussion, Isaac is a member of the Lord Echo band. His music fuses Soul, Funk, Jazz, Afro and Latin styles with R&B, Hip Hop and Electronic music. Isaac's much anticipated sophomore solo album "Hidden Truths" is out on Bastard Jazz (NYC) in 2020.

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Under pseudonym "Jean Eon,' Johnny Quinn Alston is the artist behind the project _ - / _ EON, a performance endeavor born out of an intense personal and familial experience in 2011.

_ - / _ EON is a portrait of the various manifestations of energy throughout the wide span of time and space we inhabit, from human experience to multidimensional mystery, as well as a peek into the many emanations that eternal power can create.

Jean Eon is merely a human form attempting to channel what bits of existential mystery he can interpret into sensual experiential form. He aspires to be as comfortable as possible with existence as a flawed, but striving, human being, and is not to be confused with the immortal and cosmically balanced EON itself.

_ - / _ EON is larger than Jean, and the EON is also you, we, and everything in between. We are all already avatars of the EON, and this project makes an attempt to shape truths of the great æther from which we are carved and will presumably* return to, however bittersweet or glorious that eternal promise may be.

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* do we ever really die

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The music released under NEW YORK TRAX 08 results from physical expression as . _ - / _ . EON focuses on channeling physiognomy over dictation. The EP explores pre-existing textural combinations discovered and rescued from stone as opposed to built step by step.

The initial inspiration for this EP arose from driving past randomly unfolding rural scenes. A majority of . _ - / _ . EON's resulting work similarly gravitates towards a series of landscapes discovering each other rather than 'arrangements' played on repeat.

In the back of your head, you know those blinking aircraft warning lights on towers, but how mysterious and ominous they look before you discover what they really are On the surface, this project represents the sound of being struck by the sight of something for the first time, and the ominous, transfixing, thrill of not knowing what it is.