The Lemonheads' first record in 10 years!
Covers album - Includes versions of Nick Cave, Yo La Tengo, The Bevis Frond, Eagles and more.
Extensive world tour over the 12 months, including Europe, USA and Asia. Banana scented scratch & sniff vinyl sleeve!
'The Lemonheads are no strangers to a cover, the grunge-pop heroes perfect the art.' NME
The Lemonheads follow up the critically acclaimed 'Varshons' from nearly ten years ago with another eclectic collection of covers.
Produced by director Matthew Cullen and mastered by Howie Weinberg (Beastie Boys, Nirvana, The Ramones), their tenth studio album brims with the slowly-matured vocal of Evan Dando as he lures a host of personal faves to his melodic lair. He really has become one of the great expressive singers of our time.
What they said about Varshons:
'Gram Parsons, Wire, and GG Allin: You'd be hard pressed to find three more disparate rock acts, yet on 'Varshons' they all sound like the Lemonheads - boppy, overcast alt-rock delivered at a fast clip and sung in a whiskey tenor.' Pitchfork
'Varshons 2' is a hokey jukebox filled with unique versions of Yo La Tengo, Nick Cave, The Bevis Frond, NRBQ, The Eagles, Paul Westerberg, The Jayhawks, Lucinda Williams and John Prine.
Like Hank Williams slumped in his car between gigs, strumming and hollering, reasoning and weeping, humming it on over, Evan and his Lemonheads make every tune their own.
November 5th, 2018 would have been Charles Bradley's 70th birthday. In celebration of his extraordinary life, Daptone imprint Dunham Records is proud to announce the release of his fourth and final album, Black Velvet. Black Velvet is a celebration of Charles Bradley, lovingly assembled by his friends and family at Dunham/Daptone Records. Though chronologically the material spans Charles' entire career, this is no anthology, greatest hits or other shallow rehashing of the songs that already made him famous. Rather, this album is a profound exploration through the less-travelled corners of the soulful universe that Charles and his longtime producer, co-writer and friend Tommy "TNT" Brenneck created in the studio together over their decade-long partnership.
It features new songs recorded during the sessions from each of his three albums, heard here for the very first time in all their scorching glory: "Can't Fight the Feeling," "Fly Little Girl" and the heart-wrenching single "I Feel a Change"; hard core rarities like his funk-bomb duet with LaRose Jackson, "Luv Jones," the psychedelic groover, "(I Hope You Find) The Good Life" and the ever-illusive alternate full band electric version of "Victim of Love"; sought-after covers of Nirvana's "Stay Away," Neal Young's "Heart of Gold" and Rodriguez's "Slip Away"; and the title track "Black Velvet," a stirring Menahan Street Band instrumental to which Charles was never able to cut a vocal.
Charles was truly a transcendent singer who led a remarkable life, overcoming unimaginable adversity to achieve great success and international acclaim very late in his life. What was really special about him and made him different from everybody else in the world was how he understood his pain as a cry for universal love and humanity. He felt that if he loved enough—if we all loved each other enough—we could take away the world's pain and sadness. That is why he jumped off the stage and literally tried to hug everybody he could. It's why he took such great care of a mother that had abandoned him. It's why he sang and danced like a lunatic. It's why he screamed like an eagle. And that's why we love him.
Black Velvet is a celebration of his life, and is destined to join Charles' first three albums alongside the cannon of essential soul records for the ages.
Tompkins Square present the debut full-length by Welsh multi-instrumentalist, Gwenifer Raymond. Hailing from Cardiff and now residing in Brighton in the South of England, Raymond began playing guitar at the age of eight. Tompkins Square released her debut 7" on Record Store Day.
In Gwenifer's own words :
When I was about eight years old a pretty formative thing happened to me ... my mum bought me a cassette tape of Nirvana's Nevermind. Being so young I'd had no real interest in music prior to that, but I did have a 'My First Sony' cassette player that I used to listen to audiobooks. Anyway, I put the tape in, pressed play, and what I heard blew my little 8 year old mind. I don't know what it was about that wall of sound that so captured me, but I spent many hours hyperactively running around the house with headphones on, volume at full blast, and Nevermind on repeat. It was either for Christmas or my birthday that year, that I asked for a guitar.
I spent all my teenage years playing either guitar or drums in various punk and rock outfits around the Welsh valleys, but around that time I was also getting seriously into older stuff, Dylan, The Velvet Underground and the like. Through those cheap compilation CDs you could get then, I found that a common influence amongst these guys was pre-war delta and country blues, as well as Appalachian music. Eventually I stumbled upon Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Roscoe Holcomb, and they became the holy trinity of musicians I so wanted to able to play like. Eventually, I tracked down a blues man in Cardiff who could teach me and it was in studying these guys that I was introduced to John Fahey and the whole American Primitive thing.
I've always loved being in bands and the sonic chemistry it produces, but at the same time it's always a bit of a compromise that those sounds in my head have to pass through and be translated by someone else's. Sometimes it can be for the better, but sometimes not so much. American Primitive was the first time it had occurred to me that you didn't really need anything more than one solo instrument to fully express yourself, especially when those feelings and moods refuse to be articulated in words, sometimes it's a mystery to yourself what it is you're expressing. I still play in hard rock and punk bands and love to wail and hit my guitar with a complete lack of any subtlety or nuance, but in the end I think that all these things are really part of a circle, feeding back into itself. It's all just a lineup of strange mutations.
Southern Lord Is Excited To Bring Forth The Debut Album By Los Angeles-based Rock Trio, The Primals, Founded By Current And Former Members Of Darkest Hour, The Explosion, Dead To Fall, And More.
All Love Is True Love, The Primals' Debut Album, Features Ten Infectious Tracks Produced By John Reis (rocket From The Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes) And Completed With Cover Art By Laura K. Giron.
Fans Of Wand, Ty Segall, Nirvana, And The Pixies Are Especially Recommended To Tune In.
he band's first full-length, All Love Is True Love, will see release on September 7th, the label this week sharing the first single, 'Fortune & Sons.' 'Fortune & Sons' Now Streaming
About the track the band note, ''Fortune & Sons' is one of the heaviest songs on the record. Though the album offers a plentiful dose of dynamic variety, we wanted to kick you off with a ripper.'
The Primals is comprised of vocalist/guitarist John Henry (vocalist for Darkest Hour), bassist Chad Fjerstad (formerly of Dead To Fall), and drummer Andrew Black (formerly of The Explosion). The band's fuzzy execution is equal slabs ripping guitar heaviness and infectious pop sensibility. Concocted by a seasoned group of thrashers with a historical backbone in D.C. punk community. The disintegrated spirit of grunge rises from the ashes, revitalized in a new light.
A seminal album of the 1980s DC Punk sound, the album was the first to feature drummer Dave Grohl, who replaced Stax for the album, and stayed with the band until they disbanded in 1990. This was the first ever album the now world famous musician ever played on.
Since disbanding, several incarnations of Scream have reunited/resurfaced for tours and recordings since. Members of the band went on to form countless other influential acts, including Nirvana, The Foo Fighters, Wool, Queens of the Stone Age, Goatsnake, The Suspects, and others.
Southern Lord is proud to be chosen to reissue Scream's everlasting 'No More Censorship' album. The band found the original multi-track tapes and Southern Lord had them baked/prepped for a remix at Grohl's 606 Studio. The new mix sounds vital and intense; the entire packaging, layout, and design are completely different from the original, including unreleased photos of the band during that era.
Scream was formed in 1981 by vocalist Peter Stahl, and brother Franz Stahl on guitar, Skeeter Thompson on bass, and Kent Stax on drums. The next few years would see the addition of second guitarist Robert Lee Davidson and keyboard player Bobby Madden, following three LPs through Discord Records — "Still Screaming" (1983), "This Side Up" (1985) and "Banging the Drum" (1986) — Scream's 'No More Censorship' was released via reggae label RAS Records in August 1988.
On the back of their acclaimed debut album which was shortlisted for BBC 6 Music 'Album of the Year', The Hempolics release their latest ofering for a Record Store Day 2018 exclusive on limited editon 12' vinyl. On the A-side John Holt's version of 'Riding For A Fall', a song originally released by the Tams, is given the full Hempolics treatment featuring a power-ful vocal from Nubiya Brandon. On the fip-side is a reinterpretaton of Nirvana classic 'Come As You Are' but with an original Hempolics riddim drenched in atmospheric dub. Both songs come with an instrumental so the soundsystems can get their own players involved.
Absolutely fabulous'
Shaun Keaveney, BBC6
Absolutely one of the best reggae acts in the UK right now.'
Chris Hawkins, BBC6
Super special'
David Rodigan, BBC1Xtra
In 2017, the musical term electronic' is nearly obsolete given the ubiquity of computerized processes in producing music. Even so, the prevailing assumption is that musicians working under this broad umbrella must be inspired by concepts equally as electrified as their equipment. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has demonstrated in her still-blooming discography that this notion couldn't be further from the truth, and that more often than not, rich worlds of synthesized
sound are born from deep reverence of the natural world. Smith (who by no coincidence, cites naturalist David Attenborough as a contemporary muse) has embodied such an appreciation on
The Kid in as direct and sincere a way as possible by sonically charting the phases of life itself.
The album, which punctually follows up her 2016 breakthrough EARS, chronicles four defining cognitive and emotional stages of the human lifespan across four sides of a double LP.
The first side takes us through the confused astonishment of a newborn, unaware of itself, existing in an unwitting nirvana. Smith's music has always woven a youthful thread befitting of the
aforementioned subject. Here she articulates it in signature fashion on the track An Intention,' which serves not only as a soaring spire on The Kid, but on her entire output. There is playfulness here, but it's elevated by an undertone of gravity into something compelling and majestic that is fast becoming Smith's watermark. The emotional focus of side two is the vital but underreported moment in early youth when we cross the threshold into self awareness. The subject is profound enough to fill an entire album, but rarely makes its way into a single track, indicating Smith's ambition to broach subtler and deeper subjects than the average composer. This side offers up another highlight in the form of In The World But Not Of The World' which serves its subject well with epiphanic, climbing strings and decidedly noisy textures over a near-Bollywood low end pulse.
Side three emphasizes a feeling of being confirmed enough in one's own identity to begin giving back to the formative forces of one's upbringing, which is arguably the duty that all great artists
aim to fulfill. This side ends with the exploratory album cut Who I Am & Why I Am Where I Am' recorded in a single take without overdubs on the rare EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer. This humble
piece of sound design serves as a contrast to side four's verdant orchestral moments, all written and arranged for the EU-based Stargaze quartet by Smith herself. This final side represents a
return to pure being, the kind of wisdom and peace that eludes most of us until the autumn of life. On To Feel Your Best' this concept is voiced in the bittersweet refrain one day I'll wake up
and you won't be there' which Smith intended to be a grateful acknowledgement of life rather than a melancholy resentment of loss. The song has both effects depending on the mood of the
listener, and both interpretations are equally moving.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith belongs to an ilk of modern musicians who are defined by their commitment to creating experiential albums despite the singles-oriented habits of modern listeners,
and here she represents her kind proudly. The subjects on The Kid are not simple to convey, and yet through both emotional tone and lyrical content, Smith does just that. There is a similar
gravity to both birth and death, and rarely is that correlation as accurately and enthusiastically mapped as it is here.
Alan Watts, another logical inspiration of Smith's, once expounded that people record themselves to confirm their own existence, and as such, echoes and resonance are reminders that we are alive. You're not there unless you're recorded,' Watts muses, if you shout, and it doesn't come back and echo, it didn't happen.' The Kid speaks to this idea directly. As Kaitlyn Aurelia
Smith explores her existence through music, she guides us in gleefully contemplating our own.
Lithuanian Alex Krell rides the new wave of deep and dark techno straight into the Sodai fold, delivering a comprehensive and cohesive four track EP for Gardens Of God's respected imprint.
Enticingly deep and dubby, title track Parallel Seduction sets the tone with a rumbling bass and reverbing stabs. Optyx picks up the pace, with driving percussion and shimmering synth soundscapes. The subtle distortions of Wiemar are next up, conjuring a deep brooding atmosphere. Lastly, Knocturne is expertly crafted for the dancefloor leaving us fully immersed in a flawless EP.
' I find it difficult to finish tracks, so most of mine are made in just one session' Alex reveals. 'I also avoid listening to electronic music when spending time in the studio, because with all those sounds stuck in your head it's hard to keep your originality.'
Alex Krell is a DJ, producer and petrolhead who lists Led Zeppelin, Nirvana and Queen as his influences. Now living in the capital, Vilnius, his background enhances his productions with a uniquely dark and earthy energy that makes his techno stand out from the crowd and proves he is one to keep a close eye on.
Macro has released albums by two of techno's greatest live acts, KiNK and Elektro Guzzi. It would have been a shame if the two didn't exchange their special skills on each other's killer material. And that's just what they did: KiNK remixed "Atlas" into a tranced-out, peaktime world-domination slammer of pure euphoria. Elektro Guzzi let the snares smack and the pads build up on "Vodolaz" into nirvana. Dream team double pack: nothing better to let the sun shine through the summer of 2015. Even at night.
