Buscar:the wall

’Angelo lost his shit over it. Aaliyah’s 3rd favourite track of all time is on it. David Bowie rocked up with it to a TV interview, declaring it “the most exciting sound of contemporary soul music”.

In 1996, Lewis Taylor released his self-titled masterpiece. A true modern classic, it’s an album that was years ahead of its time. Forget 25 years ago, it could easily have been made in 2021. An effortless blend of neo-soul, sophisticated pop, smart grooves and laid-back white funk, it enjoyed rapturous reviews from critics and music legends alike. But the album never managed to make an impact and given what was likely a token vinyl release at the time, the original records have long since been near-impossible to find. Lewis Taylor’s Lewis Taylor remains a holy relic for some and criminally unknown to most.

Lewis Taylor’s impeccable influences created a dazzling sonic palette: the LP as a whole suggests the visionary brilliance of Prince; the vocal stylings evoke the yearning power of Marvin Gaye; the effortless guitar playing shares the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix; the haunting tones conjure Tricky; the innovative production and engineering invite comparisons to studio mavericks like Todd Rundgren and Brian Eno; the multi-layered, complex harmonies flash on Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson; the dark, drama is reminiscent of both Scott Walker and Stevie Wonder; the complex arrangements create textures and moods with the feel of Shuggie Otis on Inspiration Information; the bold experimentation is akin to progressive artists like Faust and Tangerine Dream; the atmosphere is in conversation with Jeff Buckley’s Grace… and we could go on. That might all sound like marketing hyperbole, but not as far as Be With is concerned. It is a genuine wonder how an album this good could’ve passed so many people by.

But despite all the reference points, the similarities are really only skin-deep because the album sounds truly original. It occupies its own distinct, strange universe that feels dark and brooding one moment, bright and joyous the next. Ultimately, Taylor sounds like Taylor.

Although you wouldn’t know it from the credits, the album wasn’t the work of Lewis alone. Sabina Smyth gets an executive producer credit on the original sleeve, but in fact she worked with Lewis on the production and arrangements, did a lot of the backing vocals and she co-wrote Track, Song, Lucky and Damn with Lewis.

Lewis clarified all this in a Soul Jones interview with Dan Dodds in 2016. He explains how not giving Sabina the credit she was due at the time was an unfortunate consequence of where his head was at and he’s now trying to set the record straight.

Together they created an exquisite and sensually-charged record, with a freshness to the writing that makes the songs catchy, melodic-yet-deep and sometimes even funky. The music is predominantly guitar-led and a mixture of organs and synths, live drum loops and electronic percussion make for a sort of modern soul backing orchestra.

On the surface the album is gorgeously laidback, but beneath the lush, sometimes slick, production there’s a murkiness in the seriously gritty funk/hip-hop instrumentation. Lewis Taylor can be a claustrophobic listen. Even its one-word, often seemingly throw-away track titles add to the sense of unease. In its most positive moments, there’s still a sense that things aren’t quite right. The magic comes from this compelling tension.

The languid, strutting “Lucky” is a sensational opening statement. Sinuous electric guitar winds around the shaking percussion with a killer bass line rattling your bones, and Lewis’s voice is sublime. Its six-and-a-half unhurried minutes manage to distill the work of Marvin, Al Green and Bobby Womack because yes, it’s *that* good. Up next is the tough, dusty drum and jazzy, unsettling psych-guitar workout of “Bittersweet”. Aaliyah described it the “perfect song”, which says it all. By turns loping and soaring, tightly coiled and blasting free, 25 years on its discordant, swaggering majesty still sounds like future R&B.

The swinging, blue-eyed funk of “Whoever” oozes sophisticated sunshine soul for hazy days before “Track” sweeps in. The music tries to lift us up, beyond the reach of the vocals trying to drag us back down as Taylor sings “my mood is black as the darkest cloud”. The spare, dubby electro-soul of “Song” closes out the first half of the album with barely contained dread as it creeps towards the lush, synth-heavy coda.

The smouldering “Betterlove” eases us into the second half, coming on like a languorous response to the call of “Brown Sugar”, before sliding into the shuffling, softly-rocking “How”. Somehow the remarkable “Right” manages to both warm things up and smooth things out even more. Taut yet luxurious, it’s definitely not wrong.

“Damn” was to have been the album’s title track and you might also be able to hear its influence on D’Angelo’s Voodoo, maybe most obviously in the chaotic closing moments of “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”. Building to a screeching wall of noise that suddenly cuts dead, “Damn” sounds like the natural end to the album, with the celestial a cappella “Spirit” serving as a heavenly reprise.

When it came to the sleeve, art director Cally Callomon heard Taylor’s music as “sideways off-camera glances at a plethora of influences he had” and wanted to interpret that visually: “I went off into night-time London to see if I could find his song titles in off-beam low-fidelity photographs. I even found a shop called Lewis Taylor”. With a slide for each of the album’s ten tracks, nine of them are on the inner sleeve and the slide for “Damn” makes the front cover. It should’ve been the album’s title, but concerns over distribution in the US scuppered this.

One of UK soul’s most fascinating artists, Andrew Lewis Taylor is an enigmatic figure and a hugely under-appreciated talent. A prodigious multi-instrumentalist who got his start touring with heavy blues/psych outfit the Edgar Broughton Band, he released two albums of psychedelic-rock as Sheriff Jack before Island signed him on the strength of a demo alone. But Taylor was destined to be one of those artists unable (or unwilling) to be pigeonholed and despite the best efforts of Island’s publicity department the music never sold in the quantities it needed to or deserved to. Island eventually let him go in the early 2000s and in June 2006, Lewis Taylor retired from music.

Typical for the mid-90s, this CD-length album was squeezed onto a single LP for its original vinyl release. Simon Francis’s fresh vinyl mastering now spreads out the ten tracks over a double LP so nothing is compromised. And as usual, the records have been cut by Pete Norman and pressed at Record Industry. The original artwork has been restored at Be With HQ and subtly re-worked to work as a double.

This sprawling psychedelic soul opus really is a forgotten should-be-classic. We know that there are those of you who know, and as for the rest of you, we’re a bit jealous that you’re getting to hear Lewis Taylor for the first time.

Concentric Records presents Radiant, the third compilation of its introductory release trilogy. Featuring music by ASWA, HOLOVR, Max Loderbauer, Petre Inspirescu, Supply, The Waves, William Selman, the album evokes luminous, iridescent and ethereal sonic spaces - a journey that overcomes struggles, spinning upward towards the light.

The album opens with calm, bright and assertive tonalities, evoking mental spaces prone to exploration and wondering. Molecular textures and real-world sounds bring us closer to an intimate and physical sphere, a voice. Ultimately everything dissolves into a synthetic domain of acid-like washes, in a cinematic sense of departure.

MAX LODERBAUER has been an active engineer, producer, and musician across four decades. He first came to notice in the late ‘80s as a member of Fischerman’s Friend. Known then as Daimler Max, Loderbauer’s associates included Stephan Fischer and Tom Thiel, as well as producer Thomas Fehlmann. Once the group went dormant, Loderbauer and Thiel established Sun Electric; one of the leading sources of entrancing downtempo and ambient techno through the ‘90s. During the 2000s and 2010s, Loderbauer collaborated in numerous settings, including NSI with Tobias Freund, Chica & the Folder with Paula Schopf, and Moritz von Oswald Trio with Vladislav Delay and Moritz von Oswald. Loderbauer was partly responsible for some of the most progressive and experimental electronic music released during these years. In 2011, he and contemporary Ricardo Villalobos assembled Re: ECM, a project that involved radical transformations of ECM label recordings by the likes of Bennie Maupin, Christian Wallumrød, John Abercrombie, and Arvo Pärt. More recently he consolidated the collaboration with Ricardo Villalobos via the Vilod project, and with Samuel Rohrer and Claudio Puntin as Ambiq - both described as ‘a fertile patch of inspiration, shaking up the principles of minimal techno with the loose, expressive qualities of jazz’. The album opening track - ‘Harmonic’ - feels like a glowing dream. Composed of stunning electronics in a polychromatic, blinding and shimmering light; harmonious interwoven melodies calmly wind down invoking a serene mental state and grounding peace.

WILLIAM SELMAN was the very first artist ever approached by Concentric Records prior to the label’s birth, back in 2018, following his defining release ‘Musica Enterrada’. A musician and multimedia artist currently based in Portland, Oregon, his work employs analogue and digital synthesis techniques, live percussion and instrumentation, and his own rich field recordings to create compositions and sound art focused on the ideas of place and environment. Selman's recent works have been released on Mysteries of the Deep and Hausu Mountain.

PETRE INSPIRESCU is an extremely versatile composer. As co-founder of the legendary RPR Soundsystem together with Rhadoo and Raresh, he mostly produced club-ready, heavily textured takes on tech-house and minimal techno. In 2015 he released his first album on Mule Musiq, considered a significant departure from his previous work, scoring piano, strings and woodwind instruments for the first time, resulting in a set that sat somewhere between ambient and neo-classical. Since then, he continued to explore further sonic territories, adding in vintage synthesizers and occasional nods to dub techno, resulting in melodious sequences of musical movements that relate to the work of classical composers, American minimalists and ambient legends. ‘The Garden’ is a dreamy, intimate and nature inspired composition, recorded in his home studio in Ibiza sometime in the Summer.

DJ and producer SUPPLY (youngest so far on the label) was born and raised in Gießen, within sight of the skyscrapers of Frankfurt am Main, and has been living in Berlin since 2017. Musically socialised through hip hop, he found his connection to electronic music produced in Chicago and Detroit in the 90s by moving to FFM in 2013. For almost 6 years he has hosted his own events in his hometown. His productions connect the dots between hip hop, retro futuristic movie soundtracks and techno, he recently released on YAY Recordings. ‘Inhale / Exhale’ was created during a time of stress and mental tension, partly self-inflicted, partly result of my surroundings, as it turned out in retrospect. The track tries to capture a moment of taking a deep breath by releasing that tension for a moment. I came up with the first sketch one night around 4am, the final arrangement found its way onto a C60 Chromoxid Cassette - inhale - exhale.’ - Supply

THE WAVES is a post-punk and synthwave-inspired project led by Maayan Nidam, that places her vocals at its front and centre. As a musician obsessed with sound and the technology behind its creation, her workflow places a strong focus on the studio environment. Triggering chain reactions between guitar pedals, drum machines, modular synths and acoustic instruments, generating sounds in unpredictable ways. Drum machines keep a steady groove as to give support to an array of guitars and synthesisers, all topped with The Waves own, mostly unmasked, lyrics and voice. ‘Hold On’ was written by Maayan during the 2020 pandemic as she dived deeply in studio work in Berlin. Her lyrics are featured as part of the art print insert, and have became a central statement to the LP and its narrative - the power to hold on and break through.

Jimmy Billingham's HOLOVR project has racked up various releases on some of the most forward-thinking electronic music labels over the past few years, including Firecracker Recordings, Likemind, Further Records, Opal Tapes and his own Indole Records. Though best known for melodic, drifting acid techno and electronica, he's equally at home crafting textured ambient soundscapes. HOLOVR's deeply emotional synth passages and pads will take you on a journey into the outer. 'Melancholy of Time came out of a period exploring ways of producing and recording outside of the grid-based structures that I was previously working with. I wanted to strip it back to what I often find to be the emotional core of a piece of electronic music - ebbing and flowing synth pads - but to push and pull it a bit to create a slight disjointedness, unpredictability and shop-worn texture, as if it's coming apart and fraying, yet retaining a sonic clarity. I recorded it live using looped and layered synth phrases, underpinned by a layer of hiss and pin-prick textures. I find reflections on time and its passing to be a recurrent feature of my work, both in a more straightforward way of harking back to music of a certain period or pieces of equipment but also in a more abstract sense of creating a feeling where time doesn't matter - a deep feeling of now; that escape that you find in music and other ecstatic experiences. Though of course we’re always in - and running out of - time, and hence the melancholy.’ - Jimmy Billingham

Hailing from the German underground scene, ASWA aka Attila Fidan has an intricate, hypnotic style of electro, techno and ambient. Coming from visual arts and not primarily a trained musician, Attila produces under various and multiple monikers: ‘I never really start out knowing which moniker the track will be made under’. Since 2017 he runs a boutique Berlin label named ‘Tape Archive’. ‘Dust Palace’ is a synthetic piece that resonates with a cinematic vastness, closing the LP in an uplifting tone that evokes new departures and new beginnings.

Susanna is now releasing a live album of covers with a unique history. Recorded in Oslo and Asker (Norway) in 2019 and 2020
right before the pandemic hit, Live by Susanna and David Wallumrød is a collaboration by the Norwegian and her cousin David, also a prolific musician, whose seeds were unknowingly sown over 20 years ago.“We played a lot together in our childhood and youth, being cousins, growing up in the same small town Kongsberg,” says Susanna. After being highly active musicians for many years, they decided to do a concert together in 2017, at a tiny cocktail-bar concert series in Oslo. It was so much fun they decided to do some more shows. They did, and out of this came Live. The songs on Live are the same covers Susanna and David played together 20 years ago, with a few new additions. They are instantly recognisable classics by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris and Tom
Waits, played in the way Susanna and David know best - voice and keys. Pure, simple, and stunning. David Wallumrød is one of Norway’s most used piano/keyboard-players, he has participated on over 150 albums and been a regular member in the bands of artists like Knut Reiersrud, Odd Nordstoga, Jonas Alaska, Band of Gold and Torun Eriksen. He has his own band called Spirit in the Dark. Susanna is the woman behind Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, a creator of bold, original and enrapturing music, capable of
building worlds to lose yourself in and collaborator with artists such as Jenny Hval and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Alongside this Susanna has also long been an interpreter of other people’s works, from AC/DC to Dolly Parton, Joy Division to Henry Purcell. Susanna has an ability to transform these works into music that sits comfortably next to her own work while never losing what made the original - and the original composer of the song - so special.

Imbued with the grit of vintage country music and the grace of gospel, Leah Blevins’ debut album is a scrapbook of sorts, a collage of feelings and memories from a decade spent working in the big city of Nashville while missing the small town she left behind. “It’s a timestamp of my twenties,” says the Sandy Hook, Kentucky, native. “Here are all the stories and all the experiences from that decade. Here are all the mixed emotions I’ve felt about things I’ve gone through and people I’ve met along the way.” First Time Feeling turns tribulations into what Blevins calls “bundles of triumphs,” which lend weight to her well-observed lyrics and gravity to her soulful vocals. “It’s about coming into womanhood, but it’s more than just a coming-of-age story. It’s me discovering that I’m capable of writing a song on my own. I’m capable of staying sober. I’m capable of all these things that once felt so far out of reach. Within those walls these songs had to be unapologetically honest.” Or, as she puts it on the bluesy opener “Afraid,” “Have you ever been afraid, with nowhere to hide? Scared of nothing, but you’re running inside?”
. “I want people to find something relatable within these ten songs. But for me they’re a reminder that all the pain that I went through—which isn’t that different from the pain every human goes through—it’s all mine. By making this album, I’ve taken it, I’ve owned that pain, I’ve made it mine, and I’ve wrapped it up with a bow on top.”

Erased Tapes debut. Wait, what? How? Anyone who has seen
the trail blazing sonic pioneer live will know Nils likes to
deadpan a joke. Graz is in fact the first studio album he
recorded for the label back in 2009, that somehow remained a
secret… until now.

Nils Frahm has quietly changed the musical landscape,
reincarnating the centuries old figure of a pianist-composer for a
new generation of music fans. As Nils’ word-of-mouth popularity
grew and grew, so did the pop-culture profile of his instrument. He
founded Piano Day with a team of like-minded friends in 2015 to
help that process, some years releasing an album of piano
recordings to celebrate one of humankind’s greatest inventions.
Graz is one such record; an unheard snapshot of a young Nils
recorded at Mumuth, the University of Music and Performing Arts
Graz, in 2009 as part of the thesis Conversations for Piano and
Room produced by Thomas Geiger, which received an award in
the Classical Surround Recording category at the 127th AES
Convention in New York.
Whilst at the time it was decided to keep the grand piano
recordings from the Graz sessions locked away and instead focus
on his close mic’ed, dampened piano explorations which would
become his acclaimed studio album Felt in 2011, two of the pieces
— most notably Hammers — lived on as part of his live set, and
were expanded on and re-recorded as part of his breakthrough
2013 record Spaces (a collage of field recordings from concerts
which broke the Fourth Wall and included audience coughs). Over
his mercurial career, Nils has pushed and pulled at the boundaries
and parameters of his prolific work like that. He’s physically
changed his piano (the softened prepared strings of Felt) played
with a modified body (Screws recorded with 9 fingers and a broken
thumb) played with scale (Solo recorded on the 3.7 metre high
Klavins M370) and with the different layers of formats (last year’s
Tripping with Nils Frahm nested his studio setup inside a live
performance, concert film and live album). Now with Graz he has
found the final frontier for play: time itself and his own discography.
Graz is a moment of time at the very beginning of Nils’ quiet
revolution. The essential genius is already evident; the harmonic
language of classical, and the immediacy of jazz. Nils seems to
pull down each idea moment by moment, gently, to not scare away
the muse. He describes: “sometimes when you hear a piano, you
might think it’s a conversation between a woman and a man. At
the same time, it can hint at shapes of the universe and describe
how a black hole looks. You can make sounds that have no relation
to anything we can measure.”

Contemporary hard driven Jazz Funk from the north of England. Bee To The Flower, initially released under the influence of Newcastle’s finest Warr
Thompson in a much slower and kind of stepped down version has been rearranged and recorded again by the band expressly for Tesla Groove Internation
at the Loft Studios. We have been on this project for a long while and the biggest thing we blame covid for is the goddamn delay it forced into t
development of artistic projects, of which the physical final release is only the latest of the steps. Driving (and very creative) basslines, a beautiful and almo
psychedelic Fender Rhodes intercalate with a vibrafone played with such a mastery I could only remind of thegreat Pharoah Sanders at the time of h
performances with Lonnie Liston Smith and Nathaniel Betties, one of the greatest afro percussionists of all times. All of this on such a hitting drumming I ju
can’t wait to fire it out of a proper soundsystem. Created in 2011 by north-east based Dave Wilde and Chris Jelly, the original jazz/funk fusion sounds of th
seven piece Newcastle based band have carved a niche as some of the finest exponents of the genre in the UK. The band has given exciting dance induci
live performances up and down the country, at Band on the Wall, Hoochie Coochie and many more, supporting the likes of Craig Charles, Roy Ayers an
Lonnie Liston Smith along the way. New material has been in the making for quite a while, but after the enforced lockdown, King Bee are ready to release th
latest recordings at long last. Worth waiting for.

"The definition of a hidden gem" - John Peel / "The world seems finally to be catching up to Leslie Winer, whose startling intelligence and singular vision shine through her copious recording life." - Max Richter / "She might just be the coolest woman on the planet!" - Boy George "When I Hit You - You'll Feel It" is a 16-track anthology that celebrates the extraordinary work of musician, poet, and author, Leslie Winer. The collection spans Winer's three-decade-long musical career: from her groundbreaking solo work in the early '90s to her latest inspired projects. Featuring musical contributions from Jon Hassell, Helen Terry, Jah Wobble, Renegade Soundwave's Karl Bonnie, and others, the collection also spotlights Winer's diverse collaborations, unearths previously-unreleased recordings and was newly remastered by the GRAMMYr-nominated engineer John Baldwin. The album includes a new interview with Winer, captured by the compilation's co-producer, acclaimed author and critic Wyndham Wallace. Rounding out the package is an insightful essay by the award-winning writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei and an original cover collage by the renowned British photographer and artist, Linder, featuring photography by Mondino, and design by designer Christopher Shannon. Musician, poet, iconoclast, model, artist, enigma. Leslie Winer is many things. She grew up in Boston with a voracious appetite for music and the written word and embraced the city's lively jazz and folk scene in the '70s. Moving to New York for art school, she formed an unlikely friendship with writer and artist William S. Burroughs and lived on-and-off with Jean-Michel Basquiat. In London, where Winer began her musical ventures in earnest, she was a regular at Leigh Bowery's underground club Taboo, where she met many of her collaborators, including filmmaker John Maybury, Kevin Mooney (of Adam and the Ants), and Boy George. Winer's striking looks also attracted fashion designers and photographers. Throughout the early '80s, she was an in-demand model-appearing in campaigns for Valentino, Christian Dior, and Yohji Yamamoto, and serving as a muse for a young Jean-Paul Gaultier, who later dubbed Winer "the first androgynous model." She posed for Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and Pierre et Gilles, and graced the covers of The Face, French and Italian editions of Vogue, and Mademoiselle. But music was Winer's true passion and, at the turn of the '90s, she would unknowingly help invent the massively popular genre known today as trip-hop. On her debut, Witch, Winer masterfully blended the uninhibited sampling of early hip-hop with dancehall basslines and programmed beats, while weaving mesmerizing - and coolly-detached - spoken-word vocals into her ambient tracks. It was unorthodox in the most delicious ways. While Witch was finished in 1990, it wouldn't be released for three years, due to the whims of Winer's label. By the time the album saw the light of day (released under the pseudonym "c"), trip-hop was gaining mainstream traction via acts like Portishead, Massive Attack, and Madonna. Although Winer eventually gained wider acknowledgment (prompting the NME to give her the dubious distinction of "The Grandmother of Trip-Hop"), Witch initially went sorely unnoticed. Winer continued to record, undeterred by the elusive nature of mainstream success in the modern music business. Her network of inspired collaborators continued to grow and expand, yet her influence remained largely a secret except to those in the know, such as Grace Jones and Sinead O'Connor, who would cover her songs. In the modern era, one is hard-pressed to find an artist who continues to push the creative envelope as much as Winer does. And yet, three decades after her revolutionary debut, her work remains just as startling and fresh.

• “Choctaw Ridge” explores a new country sound, one that emerged at the end of the 60s in the wake of Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode To Billie Joe’, a shock number one hit in 1967. When singers like Gentry, Jimmy Webb, Michael Nesmith and Lee Hazlewood moved from the south to Los Angeles to make it in the music business, they were not part of the Nashville in-crowd and they forged a new direction.

• ‘Ode To Billie Joe’ was the tip of the iceberg, and its success helped a bunch of singers and storytellers to emerge over the next three or four years. Some of the tracks on this collection bear that song’s stamp more clearly than others: Sammi Smith’s moody ‘Saunders’ Ferry Lane’ had a similar mystery lyric, and Henson Cargill’s ‘Four Shades Of Love’ is a portmanteau, with one (or possibly two) of the theoretically romantic situations ending in death.

• Suddenly, character sketches of southerners became a lot more rounded – women didn’t have to stay home, or take abuse at the office, and darkness wasn’t only found at the bottom of a bottle. Storytelling is the link between all of the songs on this collection. We have cautionary tales about what could happen to someone who heads for the bright lights and doesn’t make it, ending up in the grasping hands of ‘Mr Walker’ (Billie Joe Spears), or on the ‘Back Side Of Dallas’ (Jeannie C Reilly), or on a mortuary slab in the case of the songwriter with the ‘Fabulous Body And Smile’ (Robert Charles Griggs). And there are stories about wanting to go home – Nat Stuckey’s ‘What Am I Doing In LA?’ and Charlie Rich’s ‘Feel Like Going Home’ – and others from Ed Bruce and Lee Hazlewood, who know that their home isn’t home anymore.

• The tracklist and fulsome sleeve notes have been put together by Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) and Martin Green (Smashing, The Sound Gallery), who have been collecting these records for decades.

• The voices are resonant and relatable, and the productions take in the best of what pop had to offer in the late 60s and early 70s. Before the factionalism between smooth pop-conscious Nashville and the hedonistic ‘outlaws’ made it look inward again, this was a golden era for an atmospheric, inclusive and progressive country music. It began on the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.

Double vinyl on blue and orange transparent vinyl in gatefold sleeve with download code.

 Former bIG*fLAME singer and bassist Alan Brown returns with his long term solo project The Great Leap Forward, releasing a powerful and trademark new album ‘Revolt Against An Age Of Plenty’. 

Vigorous, scintillating and life-affirming, this 13-song album sees Brown reach a milestone birthday, as explored in 'Can You Kanreki?’ - the Japanese concept of second childhood and re-birth. Then there are the trademark political and social vignettes, such as the title song of the album 'Revolt Against An Age Of Plenty' – railing against mass consumerism and media control; the wistful 'dEBRA 2021' (a re-working of the bIG*fLAME classic 'Debra'); and the ascerbic 'It's A Wonderful Lie' – a scathing attack on the lack of openness, honesty and humility of our political leaders.

Brown featured on the legendary and influential C86 NME cassette as singer and bassist with Manchester agit-post-punk trio bIG*fLAME, and recorded nine John Peel sessions for BBC Radio One in the 1980’s with bIG*fLAME (4), The Great Leap Forward (2), A Witness (2) and Inca Babies (1). 

Formed by Brown following the disbandment of bIG*fLAME in 1986, The Great Leap Forward is essentially a solo project in which Brown writes all songs and lyrics, and plays / programs all instruments on recordings.

The style and sound is more melodic and accessible than bIG*fLAME, but still with overtly political lyrics and a socialist / humanist ethos: incisive political and social commentary layered over sharp yet melodic guitar pop – and with a touch of electro and humour thrown in for good measure…
Stuart Maconie, writing for NME, summed up the band's sound: "First there's the jagged guitar melodics, sweet but never tacky. Then there's the ferocious rhythmic drive. But best of all there's the stylish and witty use of found voices...snatches and snippets of speech and propaganda that are integral to the songs."

Little wonder that as with McCarthy, The Great Leap Forward were loved by a young James Dean Bradfield.

Brown writes- “This album is the culmination of four year's writing, and it has a much more varied approach than previous releases. Whereas previously I've concentrated on a political approach, this album takes a wider view of the world. Of course I still provide the trademark political and social vignettes - how could I not - such as the title song of the album 'Revolt Against An Age Of Plenty' – named after a collection of works by the English writer Jack Common in which I rail against mass consumerism and media control; the wistful 'dEBRA 2021' (a re-working of the bIG*fLAME classic 'Debra'); and the ascerbic 'It's A Wonderful Lie' – with what I think is a scathing attack on the lack of openness, honesty and humility of our political leaders.

Fugitive is Dave Wallace, who started producing in 1991 as Rave Doctor. But as the hardcore sound started to take shape, he shifted to his alias Mad Dog for Underdog Recordings, where he created numerous anthems.

Wackelkontakt are the trio that currently spearheads the Jerusalem scene, playing music that's precise yet eclectic, cruel and abrasive even when vulnerable. An unholy mixture of trap, industrial, experimental and power electronics. Wackelkontakt have already made a global mark with the sensory overload of their live multimedia performances and the scintillating presence of frontwoman Tomer Damsky AKA MC Slice, backed by Eyal Lally Bitton (electronics, visuals, scenography) and Marco Milevski Tomasin (drums and electronics). Wackelkontakt's wildly eclectic approach, bound by an impossibly consistent sound, is a direct result of the band living a minute away from The Old City's Damascus Gate and recording in the ultra-orthodox neighbourhood of Me'a She'arim; Jerusalem is present in the music, not in the shape of touristic exotica but in a sense of conflict, paranoia and isolation. The lyrics are equally contradictory, schizophrenic and chaotic. Emotional manipulation clashes with a desire to shake and be shaken, to allow oneself to become sucked as far as possible from self-loathing. When self-reflection arises it is bitter, ridiculous, pathetic, interweaving with philosophical texts lifted directly from the likes of Deleuze & Guatarri, Foucault, Artaud, WJT Mitchell and others.

The classic 1991 album remastered and expanded with rare and previously
unreleased tracks. Extensive liner notes by band biographer Keith Cameron.
A landmark of the grunge era.
By going back to basics with ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge’, Mudhoney
flipped conventional wisdom. Not for the first time - or the last - they would be
vindicated. A month after release in July 1991, the album entered the UK
album chart at Number 34 (five weeks later, Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ entered
at 36) and went on to sell 75,000 copies worldwide. A more meaningful
measure of success, however, lay in its revitalisation of the band, casting a
touchstone for the future. The record is a major chapter in Mudhoney’s
ongoing story, the moral of which has to be: when in doubt, fudge it.
The album began at Music Source Studio, a large space equipped with a 24-
track mixing board - downright futuristic, compared to the 8-track setup that
birthed the band’s catalytic 1988 debut, ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’. The Music
Source session quickly turned into a false start when the results, in guitarist
Steve Turner’s words, “sounded a little too fancy, too clean.” Lesson learned,
the band went primitive and got to work at Conrad Uno’s 8-track setup at Egg
Studio. Named after the cartons pasted on the walls in an optimistic attempt
at sound-proofing, Egg boasted a 1960s vintage 8-track Spectra Sonics
recording console, originally built for Stax in Memphis.
So it was that, in the spring of 1991, Mudhoney made ‘Every Good Boy
Deserves Fudge’. The resulting album is a whirlwind of the band’s influences
at the time: the fierce ‘60s garage rock of their Pacific Northwest
predecessors The Sonics and The Lollipop Shoppe, the gnashing posthardcore of Drunks With Guns, the heavy guitar moods of Neil Young, the
lysergic workouts of Spacemen 3 and Hawkwind, the gloomy existentialism
of Zounds and the satirical ferocity of ‘80s hardcore punk. The quartet’s
special alchemy meant these fond homages never slid into pastiche.
Ultimately, ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge’ epitomised the best of
Mudhoney: here was a band reconnecting with its purest instincts and, in the
process, reinventing itself.
This 30th Anniversary edition, remastered by Bob Weston at Chicago
Mastering Service, stands as testimony to the creative surge that drove them
in this period. The album sessions yielded a clutch of material that would
subsequently appear on B-sides, compilations, and split-singles. This edition
includes all those tracks and a slew of previously unreleased songs,
including the entire five-track Music Source session.

Dead Nature, the solo project of former Spring King singer and prolific producer (The Big Moon, Calva Louise, Circa Waves, Dream Nails, Genghar, Police Car Collective) Tarek Musa, is announcing the release of debut album Watch Me Break Apart, and sharing the video for new single “Hurricane”. It follows the boisterous, sky-high indie-pop dramatics of recent single “Red Clouds”, which drew support from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Clash, DIY, Dork, The Line of Best Fit, NME, The Independent, and The i Paper.

Producer and songwriter Tarek Musa has for a long time placed himself at the centre of other artists’ worlds, helping to hone sounds and build scenes through his production work for artists such as The Big Moon, Genghar, and Dream Nails, Calva Louise, Police Car Collective - as well as providing remixes for the likes of Circa Waves. As BBC Radio 1's Jack Saunders noted recently on-air, "we owe a lot to him out here... he's putting the passion from Spring King into the future of the alternative music that we love." With Dead Nature, Musa allows himself to step back from his role as architect for others and set about pursuing his own creative impulses.

Throughout Watch Me Break Apart, internal anxieties are made external, and re-purposed into a carnival of multi-coloured, fuzzed-up indie-pop. The strain of social media and a whirlwind news-cycle compound on the album’s cartwheeling title track, pairing thoughts of sleepless nights with isolated imagery (“A car waits at the lights, no one’s in the driver’s seat / In the ocean stands a tree”). "50 Foot Wall" and the paradoxically light-hearted "Hurricane" were both written against the backdrop of a growing climate crisis, and "Ladlands" zeroes in on social and political struggle, the rate at which change is happening, and the reality-warping nature of the echo-chamber.

Guro Gikling from All We Are sings backing vocals across the whole album, except for Hurricane which Jess Allanic from Calva Louise appears on.

Dead Nature, the solo project of former Spring King singer and prolific producer (The Big Moon, Calva Louise, Circa Waves, Dream Nails, Genghar, Police Car Collective) Tarek Musa, is announcing the release of debut album Watch Me Break Apart, and sharing the video for new single “Hurricane”. It follows the boisterous, sky-high indie-pop dramatics of recent single “Red Clouds”, which drew support from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Clash, DIY, Dork, The Line of Best Fit, NME, The Independent, and The i Paper.

Producer and songwriter Tarek Musa has for a long time placed himself at the centre of other artists’ worlds, helping to hone sounds and build scenes through his production work for artists such as The Big Moon, Genghar, and Dream Nails, Calva Louise, Police Car Collective - as well as providing remixes for the likes of Circa Waves. As BBC Radio 1's Jack Saunders noted recently on-air, "we owe a lot to him out here... he's putting the passion from Spring King into the future of the alternative music that we love." With Dead Nature, Musa allows himself to step back from his role as architect for others and set about pursuing his own creative impulses.

Throughout Watch Me Break Apart, internal anxieties are made external, and re-purposed into a carnival of multi-coloured, fuzzed-up indie-pop. The strain of social media and a whirlwind news-cycle compound on the album’s cartwheeling title track, pairing thoughts of sleepless nights with isolated imagery (“A car waits at the lights, no one’s in the driver’s seat / In the ocean stands a tree”). "50 Foot Wall" and the paradoxically light-hearted "Hurricane" were both written against the backdrop of a growing climate crisis, and "Ladlands" zeroes in on social and political struggle, the rate at which change is happening, and the reality-warping nature of the echo-chamber.

Guro Gikling from All We Are sings backing vocals across the whole album, except for Hurricane which Jess Allanic from Calva Louise appears on.

The Ember, The Ash is 鬼 from Unreqvited’s post blackened death metal project that explores the heavier, darker, deeper and weirder sides of the DSBM genre. "Throughout all of Unreqvited’s manifestations, 鬼’s roots in post-hardcore ring out in the form of bright, building riff-walls that welcome the dawn of a new day. More of a DSBM artist through his general emotional intensity that escapes the prison of despair, Unreqvited becomes a candle in the depths of darkness. Surely, there needs to be a place to store overwrought feelings in order to arrive at a place of hope, and that’s where The Ember, The Ash comes in. 鬼 has added the new band to his list of rock and metal ventures, and it is arguably the gloomiest yet. While his songwriting still very much mimics the building of a staircase, it is one that aims steadily downward to the pits instead of upwards to the heavens." - INVISIBLE ORANGES

Obey Cobra features Kate Wood, Steve O Jones, Rory Coughlan-Allen, Gareth Day, Ian Coote and Rosemary Swan.

Over the past three years the band’s reputation as a formidable live force has grown following gigs with the likes of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Bob Log III, Hey Colossus and Acid Mothers Temple amongst many more.

Their debut album Oblong is an exceedingly potent blend of ethereal psychedelica, doom and punk with adept flourishes of noise rock, electronics and improv.

Recorded at Foel Studios and Coach House Sessions the album has been specially remastered for vinyl release on Box Records by Sam Grant (Richard Dawson, Du Blonde, Hen Ogledd, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs).

The album is completed with songs Sunflowers, Dim Break, Behind The Wall Of Sleep and Wunsch which align the lysergic psychedelics of Velvet Underground with the bewitching magic of Chelsea Wolfe and the mythical atmospherics of SunnO))).


The breadth of genres and sounds Obey Cobra explore across the course of Oblong is breathtaking, every song projecting the enchanting assuredness of a unique and captivating band.

When Glen Campbell walked onstage at the Troubadour on West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip on August, 19, 2008, he was even more iconic than the legendary venue that birthed The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Elton John, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. 'Performing a stunning mix of songs embedded in our DNA (“Rhinestone Cowboy,” “Galveston”) and unexpected jewels from Lou Reed (“Jesus”), Foo Fighters (“Times Like These”), Tom Petty (“Walls (Circus),” “Angel Dream”), Paul Westerberg (“Sadly Beautiful”) and Green Day (“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”), Campbell is in fine voice and demonstrates on more than one song his dexterity, tone and emotional transparency on guitar. With a band that includes four of his children, session and live veterans from Beck, Jellyfish, Jane’s Addiction, Murphy’s Law, D Generation and Danzig, it was a night of music that explored the commonalities of genres, country-tinged arrangements and how good live music feels. RADIO: BBC Radio 2 Play, Chris Country Premiere, Absolute Country, Downtown Country, Smooth Country PRESS: Country Music Publications TW: 19.7K, FB: 339K, IG: 12.5K Available as a standard CD jewelcase and 2-disc vinyl.

Clear Vinyl

These Hidden Hands return after a 4 year hiatus with a new two track EP featuring Zanias, titled, ‘Shackles.’

The group builds upon their previous work embodied in These Moments Dismantled, in juxtaposing brutal futuristic electronic compositions with delicate female vocals. The A side, ‘Shackles,’ confronts the listener with a wall of distorted bass elevated to soaring heights with swarms of aggressive cimbasso and horn blasts shifting between harmony and dissonance, while the voice of Zanias waxes and is eclipsed by the enormity of the wall of sound. The music itself stands on the edge of the limits of the dancefloor. The flip side, ‘Change of Tide’ sees the duo explore a deeper, faster tempo murky soundscape of future-dnb also permeated by Zanias’s hypnotic voice.

Limited crystal clear vinyl. Artwork by Jesse Draxler.

For this 1969 recording Wolfgang Dauner expands beyond his more typical jazz settings, introducing psych and eastern raga touches with the fuzz guitar and sitar of Siegfried Schwab. The trippy ‘Sun Is Rising’, aka ‘Take Off Your Clothes to Feel the Setting Sun’, is perhaps the highpoint of Dauner’s short-lived Oimels band. Side B’s ‘A Day In The Life’ reworks the Beatles cover into a minimalistic masterpiece. Previously released in edited form on an impossibly rare 1970 MPS single, this release now features the full length 3:56 version on the A side.