Cerca:the prick

Sumer Is Icumen In is Quentin Thirionet's (Dhavali Giri, Pairi Daeza) debut album. Still, his musical escapades are vast and varied, based almost entirely on improvisation and live recordings, of which he occasionally distributes tapes without further information. Elusive to categorization and identification, unwilling to fix his musical activity under a stable pseudonym, his projects have ranged from gypsy jazz guitar swings, French traditional songs from Auvergne, and various experimental collaborations. Increasingly closer to electronic instrumentation, he crafted what Belgian label KRAAK presents here as Maibaum, his first ever solo output. As the title goes, this may be a maypole on which his multicolored sonic visions spring about.

Former rope access worker and currently a farmer of organic greens, Thirionet lives up to these lines of work as a musician. He assembles precisely what seems like a subtle balance between high manmade structures and soft fertilized soils; a high voltage pylon placed in a biotic landscape. It's all an even blend, spontaneous and steady, but this contraption comes from profound considerations. "I chose these tracks among many others," says Quentin, "because I heard the melodies all the time in my mind, and because I cried while playing them without really understanding why."
Armed with nothing more than a blackbox, a sequencer, a freeze pedal, and a tape player, Thirionet orchestrates a vivid rite of polished futures. At times reminiscent of Hans-Joachim Roedelius' enveloping arrangements, Maibaum's ambiances rely on mild repetitive patterns subsequently textured by prickling sprouts, mechanic dislocations and revamps that stoke and brighten the stirring motions. Jim O'Rourke's I'm Happy and I'm Singing comes to mind in terms of its detailed and prismatic nature, but Sumer Is Incumen In has its particular narrative. It's a tale of regeneration, of spring's delicate procedures and allure, a celebration of gracious and fortunate junctions between nature and machinery.

The album unfolds like a massive engine being made flesh to drift along the ether of a sultry land. The terrain turns pleasant and fertile in the title track; the colors and melodies of May start to unravel. Chromatic columns rise and define the scenery's depth of field breeding a synesthetic stream between crystal lights and warbling organisms. Grande Albero Buono Magico Uoma's brisk kaleidoscopic arpeggios sound like scanning a tree's litmus foliage. Then Ciguri takes us back to the foggy swamp of the beginning but is suddenly lit by an insect’s labyrinthine roundabout. The Jeweled Grid is a poem Quanta Qualia's lustrous metallic voice recites as a report of the album's phenomena. "Shiny revelations jump out. Pearls of thought flicker about." Images from within that distill to swirl around among us. The thicket dissolves as the album concludes calmly in Le Concept De Chien N'aboie Pas. Swaying under sieved solar light, leaves and branches tingle until the winds grow weak. All the warm creatures gathered along the way, and all those who danced around the maypole's splendid equilibrium now withdraw, folding up small to foster rebirth once again.

José Badía Berner

Kaycie Satterfield leans into the endless, prickly change inherent in life. So when the guitarist and singer-songwriter broke her wrist in 2020 and was entirely unable to play her instrument for months, she had no choice but to embrace change. “Guitar is my main source of continuity,” she says. “So I had to learn how to think outside of my current conventions and to work with limitations.” On one hand, she needed to figure out how to write and play with one hand tied behind her back. But the fact that around the same time she had to go through four moves and a breakup meant she'd have to make peace with far more drastic change. And rather than be stuck in dated patterns and stories, Satterfield was newly determined to tell her own story her own way. The resulting album, Rosie (due July 12th via Earth Libraries), is a glistening slice of indie rock that bolsters Satterfield’s impeccable songwriting with a new perspective and rich, synth-driven production.

Two Italians step into the Bordello. Both are armed. Their weapons of choice? The synthesizer sounds of italo, new beat and wave. LVCA and Otis have been raised on the sounds of their homeland, adopting its analogue sound while adapting it to their own style. The result is a brooding mix of addictive lines and vocoder fire.

“Ritmo Electronico” opens with a steel-edged snare driving smeared synths through the city dusk, robotic lyrics menace this sleazy neon-stained scene of cracked mirrorballs and flaring machines.

Listeners are pulled into the underbelly of A Promise In The Cold Night with the murky “Tanzen”. Alex Vincent’s words are shrouded in glitch, bright burbling bars and a clean clap offering a path of light to help the listener navigate their way. The true coldness of the night arrives with the stabbing keys of “Synthesised Emotion”. Through a haze of hi-hats, an electrical smoke of blacks and greys fizz with juddering volts as passions pour through cable and wire. That haze grows thick in the close. Through a mist of distortion, a “Sphere Of Light” penetrates. Pin-pricks of percussion are dowsed in aquatic tones before a syrup of static is poured across proceedings, lost vocals ghost in this fog of bending bodies and forms.

Within the first few seconds of the opening song on Australian troubadour Peter Bibby's latest album, we get an unvarnished look at the man behind the music as he observes the late-night scene of a local watering hole with increasingly bleary eyes:"No one seems to want to talk to me / 'cuz I'm the arsehole, probably." Indeed, that lovable ambivalence is at the heart of Drama King, Bibby's fourth studio album for Spinning Top Records. The project was produced by first-time collaborator Dan Luscombe (The Drones, Amyl and the Sniffers) and mixed by White Denim's Josh Block a frequent collaborator with Leon Bridges. An artist who has been celebrated as inherently working-class and wholeheartedly independent, Bibby comes by this caution honestly, having cut his teeth in the rough-and-tumble underground rock scene centered around Perth's Hyde Park Hotel in Western Australia. Bibby's affable personality has gotten him plenty of mileage as a live act. He's toured the U.S. with Pond and performed at the infamous open mic night at Pappy and Harriet's in the California desert. He's also taken the stage at international festivals such as Laneway, Falls, All Points East, South by Southwest and South Africa's Rocking the Daisies while notching his fair share of rowdy headlining shows.

Deluxe 180g vinyl. Art Edition LP includes set of six 12”x12” art cards.



The follow-up to Kee Avil's acclaimed 2022 debut Crease: "A stunning debut" (The Quietus); "A whiplash style of uninhibited exploration" (The Wire); "Kee Avil's debut is a force" (Foxy Digitalis); "A work of Frankensteinian wonder" (Electronic Sound); "A tightly coiled, finely wrought vision of avant-pop" (Exclaim); "A debut of fiendish creativity" (Bandcamp Album Of The Day / Albums Of The Year) Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk… and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences. There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements - guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past." Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months - a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts. Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. - jj skolnik

repress !

Following acclaimed singles from Powell, Blood Music, Shit & Shine and Prostitutes, the next release from Diagonal is a landmark. It marks both the London label's first full-length album release, and the return of abrasive and furiously funky hip-hop deconstructionists Death Comet Crew, one of the most quietly influential underground acts to emerge from the creative melting pot of 1980s New York.

Ghost Among The Crew documents the group's return to studio operations for the first time since the 80s, as well as their first ever full-length studio album. It's a remarkable trip: a consolidation of their early feral disassemblies of hip-hop and electro, but also broader in scope, chewing up and spitting out fragments of soul, jazz fusion, punk and industrial music.
Death Comet Crew were founded in New York City in 1983 by Stuart Argabright, a founder member of post-punk/industrial mavericks Ike Yard and the mind behind Dominatrix and later Black Rain. Their sound, then as now, was a singular proposition: urban in mood, exploratory, often compellingly danceable, yet confrontational. It emerged from the interweaving talents of the group's varied members: guitarist Michael Diekmann (of Ike Yard), bassist Shinichi Shimokawa (later of Black Rain) and Nick Taylor aka DJ High Priest, frequently joined by the late, great hip hop artist and graffiti writer Rammellzee. Having recorded two studio EPs - 1985's At The Marble Bar (featuring Rammellzee) and its follow-up Mystic Eyes - the group disbanded barely a year after forming. They left behind a reputation for their incendiary live performances, several recordings from which were gathered on crucial 2004 compilation This Is Riphop.
The musical climate that first birthed Death Comet Crew was one of fertile cross-pollination of styles. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the seeds of modern day urban musics - hip hop, punk and post-punk, no wave - were taking root in the streets of recession-struck New York City. Argabright recalls dancing at the downtown Mudd Club around 1980 to a bold mixture of styles, with DJs cutting from synth-pop and post-punk to funk, soul and early hip-hop: Bowie and James Brown next to Run DMC, Ultravox and Gary Numan. Indeed, the names of his New York contemporaries operating around the same time - the likes of Liquid Liquid, Run DMC, Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Russell, ESG, Swans, Sonic Youth, Bill Laswell and more - have since been inscribed in modern music history.
With previous projects Dominatrix and Ike Yard having recently become inactive, in 1984 Argabright formed Death Comet Crew as a means of exploring new sonic avenues. He'd been experimenting with tape, recording and procesing the sounds of his surrounding environment and dialogue from films and TV. Joined by Shimokawa, Diekmann and Taylor, and using drum machines, turntables, spidery guitar and bass, the group assembled a scrambled collage of rhythms and sampled voices. Their live performances were, in Argabright's words, "aurally violent, sharp-edged, downright lacerating", hacking gleefully away at hip hop and electro's rhythmic frameworks. Rammellzee joined the group to vocal 1985 debut EP At The Marble Bar; his MC turn on highlight 'Exterior Street' is all the more remarkable for having been entirely freestyled in the studio. When Death Comet Crew reformed in 2003 for a string of live shows, he continued as an active member of the group, touring and working with them during the recording of Ghost Among The Crew, until he sadly passed away in 2010.
After reforming, Death Comet Crew began writing and recording new material. Now, following on from their just-released Galacticoast 12" through Citinite, Ghost Among The Crew - its title a homage to Rammellzee - hones the group's abrasive early experimentations while tripping into bold and astrally minded new territory. Alongside the core quartet of Argabright, Diekmann, Shimokawa and Taylor are new voices, including Rapscallion (a friend of Rammellzee's), Jessica 6/Hercules & Love Affair singer Nomi Ruiz, and Carolyn 'Honeychild' Coleman. Its eight tracks are steeped in the impulsive spirit of electric Miles and the deep space romances of Sun Ra, and possessed of an enigmatic yet undeniable pop edge. But equally they're pricked with urban paranoia and dread, traits that have long been hallmarks of Argabright's musical projects.
'Me Czar Of The Magyars' opens the album in a twist of tension like the turning of a ratchet. Its taut electroid shudder is paired with machine gunned cymbal hits and a voice telling of "wormwood and opium dens" - the sound of being teleported from everyday city streets into the astral plane, where every sensory input is heightened and the promise of danger or pleasure lurks unseen around every corner. Later, Coleman's lyrics pay tribute to Rammellzee on the sci-fi funk of 'Deep Space Woman'. 'Let The Clubs Ring' melts lounge bar organs and frazzled guitar into freakishly unstable shapes, while 'Drag Racing' matches its title, rocketing along frantically atop clattering drums. 'Moons On Titan's Seas' is halfway interlude pause for rest, like an exotic cocktail in a bar orbiting some as-yet-undiscovered new world. These varied strands are somehow all summarised in album closer 'Ignition Spark', which sets Ruiz's vocals alongside Taylor's and Argabright's. The zone the trio inhabit in this final track exists in perpetual push-pull between contemplation, memory, intrigue and violence, a decisive opening of a new chapter in Death Comet Crew's history.

As with all Diagonal releases, the initial vinyl pressing will be packaged in unique, specially designed artwork.

Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk—and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences. There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements—guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past." Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months—a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts. Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. — jj skolnik.

Following the force of their introductory singles 'Tabernacl' and 'St Agatha', the band return with an invitation to explore their landscape of violent poetry and gothic propulsion to the fullest extent yet. Prepare to be lulled under their spell once more with the slow-burn of forerunning single, 'Remoter Heaven'.

Produced by long-time collaborator Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard's Tom Rees. It begins in a dream state of hypnotic repetition that mounts in intensity, with vocalist Jack Shephard presiding over it all with his distinctive, poetic drawl. His protagonist is revisiting a memory of the pain inflicted by a thorn as a child; "I was awake with feeling", he confesses, before the song takes on the momentum that feels like a triumph over the numbness attendant to adulthood.

Of the track, Shephard shares: "I liked the idea of writing a very simple narrative to a big, epic song - something as modest as the story of a child playing in some flowers and then bursting into tears when a thorn pricks their leg. The words are an ode to that sensitivity we embrace when we are young. Then, when we become adults, we insist on subjugating all of that wonderful, absurd rage."

'Remoter Heaven' follows on from 'Tabernacl' and 'St Agatha' which earned Slate rave write-ups and support from publications including NME, CLASH, So Young, DIY, Buzz Magazine, The Most Radicalist and more, as well as early radio plays from the likes of Huw Stephens and Steve Lamacq on BBC 6Music, Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music 1, John Kennedy on Radio X and Jack Saunders on BBC Radio 1.

Dombrance is back with a colourful new EP on Discolypso featuring two new songs and remixes from a stellar cast, including Francois K, Lindstrom,

Dombrance has been described by The Sunday Times as a 'French Jarvis Cocker with a bushy moustache and flares'. He is a musical maverick who last year released his debut full-length album and performed relentlessly across the globe from Glastonbury Festival to Downtown Los Angeles, a set before Underworld at Tropico Festival in Mexico and many more.

‘Bayrou’ is a politician who had to leave the government barely after entering it after being indicted for embezzlement of public funds. It’s a timeless electronic disco sound with sugary chords and glistening arps that bring cosmic warmth to the retro-future beats. ‘Cope’ is a politician who disappeared suddenly from circulation after publicly mistaking the price of a ‘pain au chocolat’. The fantastic tune is a prickly seven-minute disco odyssey with pulsating synth sequences and crunchy percussion. It’s twitchy and edgy and perfect for peak time.

First to remix is the legendary Francois K, who flips ‘Cope’ into a psychedelic wonder that navigates in different directions and through several genres that will make dancers lose their minds. Scandi-disco king Lindstrom then comes through with an exotic remix of ‘Bayrou’ that makes you imagine a cocktail pool party filmed by David Lynch.

Zurich bass guitarist and composer Martina Berther is known for her delicious basslines in experimental rock outfits Ester Poly and AUL. On this solo debut, she conjures something utterly unique from her instrument.

'Bass Works' showcases Berther's talent and ingenuity across 12 startlingly varied one-take compositions. Taking root in improvisation, the collection unfolds like a playbook of strange and beautiful techniques.

Voided melodies, harmonics and surfaces that prickle and collapse in solitude and wonder; Berther's bass is a Geiger counter, etching the contours of abandoned landscapes and forgotten languages.

Recommended if you like the alien transmissions of Éliane Radigue, Mica Levi, Olivier Messiaen.

Very limited vinyl pressing, 500 copies, housed in a full colour sleeve & printed inner sleeve & download. CD in a 4 panel digipack with a 4 page lyric booklet. New Heavy Sounds are always on the lookout for new bands that are looking to push the boundaries of what is considered as inhabiting the ‘heavy’ or ‘metal’ spectrum’. Stuff that pricks up the ears, a bold new voice within a maelstrom of genres and sub-genres. We believe we have found such a band. New York-based GUHTS (pronounced ‘guts’) declare themselves to be an ‘avant-garde post-metal project, delivering larger than life sounds through, deeply emotional music’. We are thrilled to be able to deliver that statement in the form of their debut album ‘Regeneration’. By their own admission, GUHTS' musical style is influenced not only by iconic metal bands like Gojira, Cult of Luna, YOB and Deftones, but more unconventional acts like Bjork, Subrosa, Isis, Julie Christmas, and even PJ Harvey. It’s undoubtedly heavy, with a strong feminist streak, it’s cathartic and weighty, a formidable debut for such a new band. Founded in 2020 as a passion project by Scott Prater (Witchkiss), and Amber Burns (Witchkiss) and then Dan Shaneyfelt (Black Mountain Hunger), GUHTS became its members’ main focus following the release of their first EP 'Blood Feather' which itself received rave reviews from the likes of Decibel Magazine, Invisible Oranges, The Obelisk, Cvlt Nation, and more. Brian Clemens Sleaping Dreaming) & Daniel Martinez (Nefariant) joined GUHTS in 2022 and the band swiftly started booking tours and making plans to record 'Regeneration'. Since then GUHTS have been steadily making a name for themselves with their powerful live performances., sharing stages with the likes of Yob, Cave in, Marissa Nadler, plus appearances at the Maryland Doom Fest, Crucial Fest and Ohio Doomed and Stoned Fest. ‘Regeneration’ is set to cement their status as one of the coolest and most interesting bands on the scene. Of the album, vocalist Amber says. "Regeneration" symbolizes the power of self-renewal, often overlooked. Embracing it means shedding old layers and welcoming new beginnings. Without this, life stagnates and is “sustaining”. Through regeneration, change becomes empowering, allowing new facets to emerge. It's a courageous, transformative process, inspiring others to overcome fear and embrace change. The album embodies the human spirit's resilience and capacity for growth. Musically ‘Regeneration’ is a powerful and intense series of songs, topped off by some seriously powerhouse and expressive vocal performances. It’s slow-moving chords, moving like sheets through sludge. High guitar lines above, ranging from piercing and shimmering to nasty. Drums pound but not without groove. There are strings, pianos and synths widening the palette. Atmospheric sludge, Metalgaze, maybe, but there’s also that link to the New York Noise lineage from The Velvets and Sonic Youth, becoming a type of post-hardcore in the process, while gaining a connection to metal partly due to the sheer heaviness. A raft of creative experimentation that pushes beyond the realm of post-metal. And then of course, the very first thing that hits you is Amber Gardner's unbelievable, hypnotising vocals - as scary as a banshee while also intimate and persuasive. Amber means it for sure and almost dominates the proceedings. Her lyrics are eclectic, thoughtful. Immersed in women's narratives frombooks like "Women Who Run With the Wolves" or works like "On Our Best Behavior" by Elise Loehnen. Amber advocates stepping beyond comfort zones, believing it's transformative for individuals and vital for Earth's future. Hokey occult rock it is not. In short ‘Regeneration’ is a bold and startling debut, that will reward and enthral listeners the deeper they delve into its many layers.

Make Your Own Meaning continues to convey its unique techno message with a new statement of intent from label head Lurka. The artist has been busy of late and continues to be on a roll with another fascinating four tracker that genuinely serves up some original sounds and rhythms. 'Trip' gets things underway with organic percussive patterns stacked up over drilling bass to make for a prickly groove. 'Airlock' is similar but darker and heavier and 'Sick Flips' keeps the nimble feel going with dancing perc, rigid synths and scratchy sound effects all coalescing over broken drum patterns. Last of all is another dense, busy and multi-layered melange of tiny percussive sounds, synths and clipped rhythms that will make any floor move.

The latest release from the acclaimed Live From Austin, TX series of releases from the vaults of the award-winning PBS Austin City Limits TV show. Guided By Voices are one of indie rock s most loved and prolific bands. On their 2004 farewell tour they performed one of their final concerts on Austin City Limits. Recorded on live on 24 tracks, this special 2CD set features 30 songs from their entire performance. Many of the songs were never aired on the TV broadcast.

You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds.

"It's pop music, basically." That "basically" qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020's Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer.

"Fame" seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper's trademark. "Build a Bridge" pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto.

On "Sub," Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It's festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! is about looking out for one another."

You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds.

"It's pop music, basically." That "basically" qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020's Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer.

"Fame" seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper's trademark. "Build a Bridge" pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto.

On "Sub," Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It's festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! is about looking out for one another."

Founded in 1971, Matumbi was among the earliest and best British reggae bands. They did, however, also record under different guises, including The 4th Street Orchestra. In their acclaimed Rough Guide to Reggae, Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton rate this album (and its counterpart Leggo! Ah-Fi-We-Dis) as "the best showcase for Matumbi's talents". This release marks the first LP reissue of this genuine UK roots-monument since 1976.

Original member Dennis 'Blackbeard' Bovell (of LKJ and Dub Band fame) knew the local sound system-scene like the back of his hand and most tracks on Ah Who Seh? Go Deh! were initially cut as exclusive 'specials' for his own Jah Sufferer sound system and for fellow soundmen. Hardly anyone hearing these tunes at reggae parties or would have guessed they didn't originate in Kingston but were recorded in London. And neither did many who bought the records when they were released a few years later. That's hardly surprising, as the material Bovell & Co churned out could easily compete with the toughest output of their Jamaican counterparts. A splendid version of the 1970 Kingstonians smash "Singer Man" is the most familiar tune here. But it's the band's own outstanding, heavyweight roots tunes like "Jah Chase Dem" or "Za-Ion", their versions popping up later in true sound system style for maximum impact, that will have reggae fans prick up their ears.

Ah Who Seh? Go-Deh! is available as a limited edition of 750 individually numbered copies on orange coloured vinyl.

Like a winding system of trails and paths cutting through a digital forest-scape, M. Sage's Paradise Crick is shaped by time. Full of wonder and charm, designed patiently and from a rich, curious mulch of synthesized and acoustic sound, the versatile American artist and magic realist's new suite of music is an imaginary destination and a pastoral fantasy that envisions the natural and fabricated worlds as one. Matthew Sage is a musician, intermedia artist, recording engineer and producer, publisher, teacher, partner, and parent. Assembling a sprawling and idiosyncratic catalog of experimental studio music between Colorado and Chicago since the early 2010s, recent highlights include The Wind of Things (Geographic North, 2021), an ensemble-recorded expression of bow-splashed nostalgia, and the four seasonal albums of Fuubutsushi, the improvisatory ambient jazz quartet he formed with friends from afar in 2020. Sage renders projects with nuanced velocity and a completist sensibility _ when it's finished, it's done _ which is what makes Paradise Crick, his debut for RVNG Intl., a compelling outlier. Sage first staked his tent in Crick's conceptual campground five years ago from his home studio in Chicago (he's since returned to Colorado, home to the mountains and prairies often personified in his work). He had just read Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, a kaleidoscopic reflection of pastoral America's shifting identity by way of magical fishing sojourns. Inspired by that feeling, of getting lost but finding oneself in through the outdoors, he amassed over seventy demos documenting a fictional soundtrack for camping. Pull up to this park, and the sign might read, "Welcome to Paradise Crick. Fire Danger Is Low." The sequence, pruned down to thirteen tracks, courses the dewy mornings, afternoon hikes, and firelit nights of a weekend expedition. While Sage is not a filmmaker, he views the method of making this album as a similar form of world-building via structure, narrative, formal elements, and editorial refinement. Contrasted with his collaborative craft, here he is a sole auteur reclined in total autonomy, able to improvise scenes and implement special effects at will. A parallel precedent for such unchecked imagination in the M. Sage canon is A Singular Continent, his 2014 album that tilted its compass to a faraway land. Where Continent built its world layering samples as composition, Paradise Crick deploys a balance of accessible song structures with experimental instrumentation and sound design. Speckled with harmonica, autoharp, chimes, penny whistle, voice, hand percussion, and other mysteries, Crick's texture is treated as a sensorial adventure; the swamps gurgle, the lakes glisten, and the valleys breathe in robust HD. The rhythms are loose and buoyant, bursting with a few `kick and snare' moments shaped by Sage's lifelong love for drumming and headphone prone electronic music. Crick bumps more than most anything he's done before; crackling static pulses and lush vibrations reveal an intrinsic groove, a hidden beat map. In the landscapes of Paradise Crick, science and magic co-exist, 5k boulders and midi frogs share the frame with real-life memories of Midwest camping trips and the desire to feel extra human in a digitized space. Sage strived for "nature in the holodeck" but couldn't help leaving fingerprints in the simulation, and it's these traces of spirit and character that give Paradise Crick its strange allure. The album's bubbling sense of play, melody, and timbre takes cues from left-field electronic lineage; synth pioneers like Tomita and Raymond Scott up through the more expressive pop tendencies of Woo, Stereolab and the Cocteau Twins, and into contemporary composers like Sam Prekop. The album's vocabulary is uncomplicated; the gestures are sweet and inviting, intended to lull the listener. As much as Sage continues to be an experimentalist by nature in his work, with Paradise Crick, he spins a narrative. Not necessarily a concept album, but rather an invitation to take off for a weekend. That's the modus operandi down here in the Crick, we stretch out. M. Sage's Paradise Crick will be released May 26, 2023 in LP, CD, and digital editions. A portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Earthjustice, the premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.

Erasures Neukompositionen aus dem 'The-Neon'-Klangkosmos - voller Liebe, Verständnis und Positivität, jetzt auf schwarzem Vinyl.

Coherence is overrated. Especially if keeping things hazy, and not smoothing away all the rough edges, and allowing all the seeming contradictions to find their own unique harmony with each other in their own time can result in the heady magic of Lock Eyes & Collide, the second EP from South London-based quintet Moreish Idols. Across these four tracks, Moreish Idols deal in tangles of hyper-melodic guitar, sleepy-eyed murmurs glowing with unassuming poetry, blossoms of wise saxophone, rhythms that pulse and purr to their own inarguable logic. You could spend days trying to define what exactly it is they are doing over these fifteen or so minutes, but you’d be wiser to just lose yourself within Lock Eyes & Collide’s laser-guided twists and turns.

Pulling into focus. They passed tracks from initial collaborative song-writing sessions along to Dan Carey, who signed Moreish Idols to his Speedy Wunderground label and produced their first release on the label, the Float EP, in the summer of 2022 (they’d released a pair of self-released 7”s before lockdown). Restless, jerky, jagged and rhythmically centred, many of Float’s energetic pleasures bore the influence of their earlier flirtation of post-punk, but the ruminative When The River Runs Dry spelled deeper treasures lay within, while the erratic, wonderful Speedboat spoke to Moreish Idols’ essential gift for mystery. Lock Eyes & Collide is something else altogether, though – a looser constellation of ideas, a clearer hint of the group’s future.

The elements that compose the EP – swooning tremolo guitars, prickly melodic riddles, erudite saxophone improvs, loose and flexible rhythms – make perfect sense together, on vinyl if not on paper, sounding like Watery, Domestic-era Pavement one second and some bucolic Canterbury Scene prog the next, but always, always like Moreish Idols most of all.

The future that is undefined is limitless. If Lock Eyes & Collide captures Moreish Idols’ present, what do they see in their future? “If we’d just made Float II for our second EP, people would be, ‘Oh, they’re the band that does that,” says Tom. “I’m so glad we’ve made this weird alter-ego of our first EP; now we feel we can do whatever we want.”

Sniffany & The Nits are a deranged, genuinely troubling punk band
from London featuring members of Joanna Gruesome, Ex-Void and
The Tubs. Their debut album, ‘The Unscratchable Itch’, is released
via PRAH Recordings.
Drawing a through line between the British post-punk of The Fall and
the new wave of insolent hardcore typified by bands like Lumpy &
The Dumpers, The Nits have developed a knack for writing unhinged
punk earworms.
But it’s Sister Sniffany, and her singular lyrical and performance style,
who elevates the band beyond the sum of their influences. Her lyrics
inhabit the same world as her “macabre, visceral” (It’s Nice That)
cartoons - a world of hidden humiliations, girl abjection, crumpled
lager cans, clam chowder and lumpy, over-stuffed dollies.
Over the course of ‘The Unscratchable Itch’, Sniffany ventriloquises a
cast of pathetic, unbalanced characters: A secretarial administer tails
her Casanova husband to a suburban swingers party: “I can smell
him from here: a mix of Vaseline, foot cream and Stella beer.” A poor
old grandmother’s glasses fog up as she chastises her
granddaughter: “You self-entitled selfish little twat! / Left me to die in a popcorn-walled flat! / Spotty little smelly little prick! / Making your poor grandmother sick!”
But these characters aren’t detached, impersonal creations. As
Sniffany explains: “In Sniffany & The Nits I like to exorcise and exhibit
the deeply shameful parts of myself that I see as the toxic aspects of
my own femininity.” These are confessional songs about love
addiction, jealousy, possession, self-loathing and “egg smashingfury.” Though occasionally they are literally just about Sex & The City, red-pilled incels or grandmothers. O Williams (drums), Max ‘Wozza’ Warren (bass) and Matt Green
(guitar) have been entrenched in the UK DIY scene for years, having
played in the aforementio ned bands, as well as countless others.
Warren also runs the influential left-field label Gob Nation - a home
for ‘egg punks’ across the country. As such, the band veer between
atonal no-wave guitar assault, straight-up hardcore, goth/anarcho or
whatever takes their fancy, while remaining identifiably Nit-like.
Always grounded by a pounding, pogo-ing rhythm section, The Nits
provide the perfect backdrop for Sister Sniffany’s wild, relentless live
performances.