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Forest Swords' debut album 'Engravings' is back in print on vinyl and CD for the first time in years, newly remastered by Rashad Becker with previously unheard bonus tracks exclusive to this edition.

Created by electronic producer and composer Matthew Barnes, and originally released via Tri Angle Records, 'Engravings' received instant acclaim from the likes of Resident Advisor, Pitchfork, The Guardian and saw Barnes take his hypnotic live show across festivals like Sonar, Glastonbury, Unsound and Le Guess Who.

While much of British electronica is defined by its inner cities, 'Engravings' was recorded in Barnes' hometown on the banks of an ancient river in Merseyside, the album's earthy, organic soundscape reflected the landscape and climate: all silt and sandstone, woodlands and wind, with the ghosts of Liverpool's pop music and clubbing history echoing in the near distance.

The album was a prototype for a sonic vocabulary Barnes has expanded on over the next few years: in critically acclaimed studio albums ('Compassion' and 'Bolted' via Ninja Tune), collaborations with Massive Attack and Neneh Cherry, remixes for the likes of Bjork, as well as commissions for video games, ballet and film scores - of which he has carved a career as an in-demand composer and sound designer.

'Engravings' is a snapshot of an artist confidently defining their own language: a piece of work that distills influences like dub, ambient, rave, post-rock and psychedelia into an ancient-futurist musical vision that feels timeless and vital.

Formed in 1992, Boris boldly explores their own vision of heavy music, where words like "explosive" and "thunderous" barely do justice. Using overpowering soundscapes embellished with copious amounts of lighting and billow smoke, Boris has shared with audiences across the planet an experience for all five senses in their concerts, earning legions of zealous fans along the way. This is the first-ever and particularly-anticipated official vinyl release of Boris's essential 2000 album, Flood. The album was originally released in Japan, only on CD. Delivered in four equally important movements, Flood is simultaneously delicate, dense, undulating, devastating, emancipating, hypnotic and triumphant. Each season of the album has its own sense of place, best revealed listen-by-listen. With the album, Boris broaden their vision of musical possibility, with a notable and imaginative influence from visionary American minimalist Steve Reich, weaving in prog, drone and slowcore into a multifaceted symphony. There simply has never been another piece of music like Flood.

This is a dance floor killer mash up destined to rock any radio airwaves and equally any dance floor. The classic Marvin Gaye vocal on top of this familiar funk rap groove, works well in a synergy like it could have been recorded back in the day, like it sounds now in the millennium. Limited edition 300 copies.

There is a kinetic energy that binds drummer and producer Karriem Riggins and singer-songwriter, rapper, and producer Liv.e, the spark that happens when instinct meets flow and spirit finds rhythm.

Their collaborative debut as GENA (short for “God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” and loosely inspired by Gina from Martin), The Pleasure Is Yours feels like a playful, soulful conversation between two kindred improvisers: Liv.e’s smoky, unpolished vocals glide through Riggins’ warm, percussive universe. Rooted in jazz, soul, and hip-hop, Liv.e brings a raw, experimental approach to R&B, while Riggins known for his work with Common, Erykah Badu, The Roots, Madlib, and his close kinship with J Dilla, extends his lifelong dialogue between jazz improvisation and beat science.

Together they create a world that’s analog and ethereal, percussive and poetic, bridging eras without settling in one, the sound of two artists finding a new shared language rooted in rhythm, vulnerability, and exuberance.

Pressed on 180g vinyl, the album comes in an embossed sleeve and is avaible in red and black splatter.

There is a kinetic energy that binds drummer and producer Karriem Riggins and singer-songwriter, rapper, and producer Liv.e, the spark that happens when instinct meets flow and spirit finds rhythm.

Their collaborative debut as GENA (short for “God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” and loosely inspired by Gina from Martin), The Pleasure Is Yours feels like a playful, soulful conversation between two kindred improvisers: Liv.e’s smoky, unpolished vocals glide through Riggins’ warm, percussive universe. Rooted in jazz, soul, and hip-hop, Liv.e brings a raw, experimental approach to R&B, while Riggins known for his work with Common, Erykah Badu, The Roots, Madlib, and his close kinship with J Dilla, extends his lifelong dialogue between jazz improvisation and beat science.

Together they create a world that’s analog and ethereal, percussive and poetic, bridging eras without settling in one, the sound of two artists finding a new shared language rooted in rhythm, vulnerability, and exuberance.

Pressed on 180g vinyl, the album comes in an embossed sleeve and is avaible in red and black splatter.

‘Confession' is an album of quiet upheaval. An album about closeness that arrives late and unexpectedly. About stability rubbing up against desire. About the way friendship can suddenly tilt into something charged — and how that charge unsettles everything around it. Where earlier work often observed from a distance, Confession turns inward. The voice is closer, warmer, less shielded. “This wasn’t the album I intended to make,” says Carla dal Forno. “I originally wanted something veiled and abstract, but I realised I couldn’t hide behind abstraction — the songs only worked when I leaned into emotional truth.”

This is dal Forno’s fourth LP, written and recorded over several years in a small country town, in a studio housed inside a partially abandoned hospital. Long corridors, humming lights, emptied rooms — a place built for care and waiting, now quiet enough for thoughts to echo. That stillness shapes the record: intimate, watchful, unadorned. “I live in a small country town that offers a stillness my life didn’t previously have,” she explains. “In that quiet, feelings I might’ve ignored in a busy city grew loud.” Dal Forno sings plainly and conversationally, with an emotional precision that sharpens the everyday into something quietly unsettling.

The album moves through paired states: going out and staying in, wanting and withholding, devotion and distraction. Domestic calm set against private unrest. A long-held relationship offers safety and routine, while a newer connection opens emotional fault lines — longing, jealousy, fantasy, self-exposure. “At the heart of the album is a friendship that became emotionally charged in an unexpected way,” dal Forno says. “That shift brought daydreaming, jealousy, tenderness, confusion, self-awareness — and eventually acceptance.”

The drama here is internal, incremental, lived. Musically, Confession feels lighter on its feet than its subject matter suggests. Melodic basslines anchor the songs while guitars, harmonies, and gently off-kilter rhythms move around them. There’s a looseness, even a playfulness — “like the sensation of tension lifting once you finally admit something to yourself,” as dal Forno puts it. The album traces a subtle arc: attraction blooming where it shouldn’t; obsession quietly taking hold; fantasy overtaking reality; clarity arriving slowly, sometimes painfully. Visually and emotionally, Confession returns to modest spaces: backyards, beds, night streets, overgrown paths. “The record exists in that contrast,” dal Forno reflects. “Peaceful surroundings, unsettled interior.”

Like all of dal Forno’s work, Confession resists clean conclusions. It doesn’t moralise desire or romanticise restraint. Instead, it lingers in the in-between — where love is stable but not total, where yearning teaches as much as it hurts, where solitude becomes a form of care. Plain-spoken but emotionally complex. Rooted and restless. Held together by bass, breath, routine, weather. An album about admitting what you feel —and living with what that admission changes.

MEMORIALS jump off the waterslides and head above the clouds with their stunning second album, ‘All Clouds Bring Not Rain’. The duo of Verity Susman and Matthew Simms (formerly of Electrelane and WIRE) locked themselves away in a studio in a barn secluded deep in the woods in southwestern France and re-emerged with a beautiful, unusual record that is both melodic and unconventional. For such an ambitious album it’s striking that it was written, performed, recorded and mixed solely by the two of them. Sounding like an unearthed classic, MEMORIALS twist their influences into their own unmistakable sound. Imagine Nico singing with Can produced by David Axelrod and you’re somewhere in the right ballpark.

The record draws inspiration from a wide range of music including folk, dub, post punk, experimental tape music, 60s soul, garage rock, 70s spiritual jazz and Canterbury prog. This attention to detail in their sound meant finding several other studios to get what they needed to record with, including a harpsichord at 4AD’s studio in London and a vibraphone and vintage Leslie speaker in Stereolab drummer Andy Ramsay’s studio Press Play. Verity’s distinctive, unadorned singing is a focal point of the record, moving from tender to wild. Her vocal melodies quickly become earworms, providing the tuneful heart around which the songs’ more unorthodox elements are arranged, which is where Matthew’s unconventional approach to recording and production comes to the fore. With their adventurous arrangements, classic songwriting skills and innovative production techniques, MEMORIALS have created another mesmerising listen that’s accomplished and compelling in its unique approach yet remains dizzyingly immersive - just like their acclaimed live shows.

One of the most innovative and ambitious albums ever made, Genioh Yamashirogumi’s Ecophony Rinne is a sonic masterpiece featuring over 200 musicians that expanded the limits of what music and sound could do.

Before Akira there was Ecophony Rinne. Originally released in 1986, Ecophony Rinne is a four-part symphony of “ecological music” by Geinoh Yamashirogumi that married ancient tradition with technological innovation, and changed the way we listen to music in the process.

Half-speed mastered at Abbey Road by Miles Showell, Time Capsule’s high-tech analogue reissue is the first to reproduce composer Ōhashi’s ground-breaking “Hypersonic Effect” theory on vinyl, cutting frequencies beyond the realm of human hearing into wax to capture the full spectrum emotional impact of this extraordinary work.

Founded by genius polymath Tsutomu Ōhashi aka Shoji Yamashiro, Geinoh Yamashirogumi is a shapeshifting collective of over a hundred members from across disciplines. Rejecting professional musicianship, Ōhashi cultivated an ethos where neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, journalists, engineers and students could critique society through artistic expression and pursue their research in ethnomusicological performances that spanned global traditions, Eastern spirituality and Western classical form.

Ecophony Rinne represents the pinnacle of this vision - an expansive orchestral suite made with over 200 musicians that channeled Ōhashi’s thinking about mankind’s relationship with nature, and fundamental questions of life, death and rebirth.

Here pipe organ synths made from sampled Tibetan horns sit alongside field recordings from Central African forests, Buddhist mantras circle dummy head microphones, Javanese Jegog percussion ensembles pulse like verdant ecosystems, and the acoustics of temples, caves and landscapes are conveyed in the mix. Weaving together culture, nature and technology, it is a record that vibrates with the polyphony of life on Earth.

But Ecophony Rinne was not only musically innovative. Noticing the difference between vinyl and CD versions of the album where digital reproduction limited the sound, Ōhashi developed a theory of “Hypersonic Effect”, determining that ultra-high frequencies above 20khz can impact human perception even if they are inaudible. At once a physical and a psychological experience, to listen to Ecophony Rinne is to feel music differently.

The rest is history. After its release, Ōhashi was approached by director Katsuhiro Ōtomo to produce the soundtrack for Akira, the work for which Geinoh Yamashirogumi is best known. Emerging from the shadows at last, Ecophony Rinne was its transcendental blueprint, reissued in its most complete hypersonic form on vinyl for the first time.

Rather than describe nature, Ecophony Rinne embodied it. Rather than reflect culture, Ecophony Rinne defined it. Rather than explore technology, Ecophony Rinne changed it. As a work of art, it is more relevant than ever. You won’t have heard anything like it.

Making his first appearance on Flat White Records, NYC’s Malik Hendricks arrives with Stretching, a four-track EP that leans comfortably into the grey space between Deep House and Techno. Across three original cuts, Hendricks delivers warm, hypnotic, and quietly confident sounds that are unmistakably his own.

Rounding out the release is a remix from London-based, Spain-born producer Beringei. Known for his broken-beat excursions, Beringei with a 4x4 workout that still carries his unmistakable percussive touch, proving that even when stepping outside his usual lane, his identity remains firmly intact.

With previous releases on respected imprints like Eglo, Darker Than Wax, and Phuture Shock Muzik, Hendricks arrives in trusted company, thus making it an easy call to hand him the reins for our 15th release.

Born in the ’80s and raised in the ’90s, Malik Hendricks is a product of transatlantic club culture, drawing inspiration from Detroit’s futurism, New York’s grit, and the UK’s rhythmic experimentation. A DJ for over a decade, he approaches music with an almost academic curiosity, seeing the dancefloor as a shared space for cultural exchange.

Recently, his work has caught the attention of heavyweights like Eli Escobar, Byron the Aquarius, James Bangura, and Roy Vision, all stepping in to remix his material. With Stretching, Hendricks continues to prove that subtlety, craft, and groove still go a very long way.

Early DJ Support from: Shy One, LDLDN, Louise Chen, Dam Swindle, LTJ Bukem, Christophe Salin, Franck Roger, Jazzanova, Mr Redley, Last Nubian, Glenn Davis, Seven Davis Jr, Stonie Blue, Stu Clark (WOLF), Adriatique, Marco Weibel, Mr Ties, Tereza, Cottam, Joyce Muniz + MORE

For our second record, we would like to introduce you to Fonos, after quality releases on labels like Workbench, doeasy & Agaric's imprint " WEARE ": he joins Goldmin Music.
Keep it raw. Keep it underground. Play quality Music and play it on vinyl... is Federico Pedron alias Fonos's state of mind and that's far enough to introduce him !!
Freshly made with analog synthesizers, grooveboxes which bring this awesome warmness & analog imperfection this 4 Tracker Vinyl perfectly illustrates Federico's music.


Feedbacks:

Patrick Bateman: dub mix of "youknow" is pretty cool, thanks !
Jakob Seidensticker ( Wareika ): nice mood, big sound, well done, love it !
Tom Dazing: Downtown is a bomb, thanks !
Agaric: Far out stuff from a far out talent - dope house tracks
Alejandro Mosso: i'm not

Ian Simmonds presents his new album "The right side of kind" on Goldmin Music. Ian Simmonds is one of the most creative Nu-Jazz/Downtempo producers of the last 20 years.
Although these words can't describe his music properly as the man is always looking for an innovative sound that could cross the boundaries of musical styles. The Welsh-born found his inspiration in music from all over the world and his songs don't only express one clearly defined feeling. They are more of a subtle mix of emotions that let the listener interpret it his way. As Ian said himself: "I think there's a lot of beauty in melancholy". For example, he spent over a year living in a castle in Germany to record his last album " The Burgenland dubs" in a solitary atmosphere where he could really think, breathe, make a plan. That's the point, Ian is always re-thinking things over, looking for a new source of inspiration which results in a constant evolution. He had the chance to collaborate both with amazing musicians like Goldfrapp and electronic music heads like Mathias Kaden, Soulphiction, Krause Duo..

The process of making this mini-album “anaiis & Grupo Cosmo” was truly life-altering for me. It changed my approach to making music and really brought me back to the roots of what creation is about. I went to Salvador for a month-long artist residency in February 2020 and during that time, I not only fell in love with Brasil’s culture and music, but I also wrote “Toda Cor” with the wonderful Luedji Luna. A few years later, I reached out Biel who’d co-produced “Estrela Acesa” with Sessa to see if they’d be interested in re-developing “Toda Cor” with me. They were enthusiastic and we fully reproduced the record in December, remotely. The connection between us all was electric and it felt like there was a collective enthusiasm for creating more together so I flew out to Brasil in April 2023 to continue this exploration. The beauty behind this record really lies in the experience of making it. We all stayed together in Biel’s house in Ilhabela for a week with Cabral, who co-produced the record with us and plays bass. We would go to the beach, eat communally, share stories, be around the kids, but then spend most of the days creating and jamming together. Each day we would record our songs live to tape, not a computer in the room. By the end of the week we had this album. It was refreshing to make music in this way. The music and approach really held us in that moment and gave us a chance to create freely, in a big moment of transition in our lives in a way that truly embraces imperfection, spontaneity, just very human.

There’s no direct English translation for the word “hiraeth”. In the Welsh language, it describes a form of longing for an intangible something, somewhere or someone that no longer exists. Sofie Birch and Antonina Nowacka draw on the concept to guide their second collaborative album, a suite of vulnerable, open-hearted improvisations and reflections that attempt to grasp an image of the past that’s chimeric, dissolving almost as soon as it materializes. The duo’s process follows the same distant beacon; unlike Languoria, their critically acclaimed debut, Hiraeth is, at heart, an acoustic record, informed by in-person improvisations with voices and string instruments that gesture to an era before computers, AI and DAWs. It’s just as lush, but Hiraeth is warmer and more muted than its predecessor.
Nowacka and Birch conceived the album in the wake of a slew of collaborative live concerts, spurred on by serendipitous improvisations and an interest in paring down their setup. Unsound arranged a retreat in Sokołowsko, an idyllic village nestled in the verdant hills of Southern Poland, close to the Czech border. Sokołowsko surrounds a large ruined sanatorium that’s rumored to have inspired Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, and has long been a magnet for artists. The two took the opportunity to rethink their approach completely, arriving with just a guitar, a zither and a portable Nagra reel-to-reel machine. Recording directly to tape, they sketched out ideas with just their voices and instruments, reflecting their surroundings without being distracted or mediated by modern technology.
“We wanted to get away from screens as much as possible,” says Birch, “to bring to the world something vulnerable and honest. Without advance preparation, every day we went out into the open air, finding places to sit, during sunset or the midday sun. We discovered new tunings on our instruments, picked up a melody, and started the machine, playing over
and over till we got a take.” In the autumn, they met again in a Copenhagen studio, sparingly and carefully layering old synths and organs to add more depth without muddying the mix.
Both Nowacka and Birch sing throughout, their voices threading the acoustic instruments and tangling with each other, almost becoming one. But it’s the environment of Sokołowsko, “the birds and the light, even the wind playing against the harps,” that’s woven into the music’s lining. Affected by time spent meditating and in nature, as well as the fact that Birch was pregnant whilst recording, the album feels alive and remarkably present. Even the sound quality of the tape machine gives Hiraeth a tactile, organic quality, as Nowacka puts it, “like being in a warm bath.”

They still have the raw recordings from Sokołowsko on old reels, physical souvenirs of their time spent making music in a “habitat for intuitive songs, a little ecosystem, alive and spirited.” The outmoded gear and remote setting helped the duo disengage from the modern world for a few moments and imagine an existence that’s been lost to time and nominal progress. With digital technology receding into the background, Nowacka and Birch had space to make “intuitive connections with frequencies and people,” as Birch explains. Hiraeth is a testament not to nostalgia, but to the power of kinship.

Gravity Pleasure's inaugural release is a rippling compilation of womxn, trans, and non-binary artists and
collaborators that invites listeners into an aqueous paraworld of fluid resistance and sonic kinship. Across 21 tracks from the likes of Yetsuby, Flora Yin Wong, Felisha Ledesma, Ursula Sereghy, tibslc, and more, Water Bodies spans a post-genre miasma of ethereal mermaid music, cathartic flows, and glistening sibilants. Inspired by a poetic prompt from Lou Croff Blake, each track is an exquisite message in a bottle of deep diving emotionality. Pulling from a wide range of musical perspectives – field recording, lovesick ballads, shimmering downtempo, post-party comedown, and percolating ambient – the compilation contains multitudes yet maintains deep sentimental coherence. Like a wave crashing in slow motion, each artist sonifies possible ways of being, insisting on the porous, the interdependent, and the deep and unruly. Water Bodies reminds us that home is a body made of water, to which we all belong.


Credits Curated by Ashlynn White & Madelyn Byrd
Artwork by Dre Roelandt
Layout by Madelyn Byrd Mastered by Estle
Distributed by Rubadub
Published by Gravity Pleasure ❊ GP01 ❊ 2025

Gnod's now twenty year journey through spiritual and audial exploration has been driven by relentless curiosity, magpie irreverence and a fierce countercultural imperative, their project has always refused to acknowledge all or any rules and boundaries, internal or external. The latest adventure of this band may never have been intended to celebrate their two-decade anniversary, but in true Gnod fashion by, what began as a trip into a residential studio setup in Hellfire Studios with producer John `Spud' Murphy (Lankum, Black MIDI, Caroline) for six days, resulted in more potent material than anyone bargained for. The end result has been three studio albums to be released over the next year. "This trilogy revealed itself to us in the studio" says Paddy. "We were hoping to get a good album out of the session and lo and behold we got three of the fuckers. It's interesting that we did pretty much capture the full spectrum of the Gnod sound across all three". In fact, this intrepid first instalment of the `Chronicles Of Gnowt' trilogy covers an alarming amount of sonic territory all on its own. Driven as always by the power of repetition as well as Gnod's alchemical marriage of the maximal and the minimal, this album is imbued with a vivid focus that's testimony to the chemistry of the sessions, coupled with a detailed and spacious production from Murphy that brings out the psychedelic sound worlds of the band in vivid colour. This is a travelogue which delves into pastoral tranquillity (as on `Three Trees Parts 1&2') just as adeptly as expansive Earth-tinged riff monoliths (`All Tunnel No Light') and just as formidably as the closing epic `Ekstasis' - a hallucinatory vista where kraut-tinged experimentalism meets Swans-style intensity. Yet all the while, truly sounding like no one but Gnod.

New pressing on black vinyl (500 units). Following the recently released and highly praised Trees 50th Anniversary box set on Earth Recordings, Trees reissue their debut album ‘The Garden of Jane Delawney’as a standalone release. It’s now over fifty years since Trees’ formation, a band who helped define ‘Acid Folk’, creating a sub-category in the lexicon of record dealers and music critics alike. “When we are talking about psych folk or acid folk, we are really talking about music like this by Trees” Stuart Maconie, BBC6 Music. Trees first album, ‘The Garden of Jane Delawney’ (1970) snuggles nicely into contemporary nu-folkies’ idea of the genre, and shares some of the pastoral-whimsy that characterised The Incredible String Band or Donovan, offset by some stunning interpretations of traditional material and Bias’ own songs. The record includes readings of ‘Lady Margaret’, ‘Glasgerion’, the old standard ‘She Moved Thro’ The Fair’, and the extended fade of the group’s own ‘Road’, presage the explosive instrumental duelling that would come to characterise the follow up album, ‘On The Shore’. // “The music’s arcane power remains intact” Mojo. // “A fantastic band” Record Collector. // “Spectacular” Uncut. // “Sublime” Shindig. // Timeless” Prog. // “It’s these two original albums that stand as pinnacles of form” The Wire. // Track listing: A1. Nothing Special A2. The Great Silkie A3. The Garden of Jane Delawney A4. Lady Margaret B1. Glasgerion B2. She Moved Thro' The Fair B3. Road B4. Epitaph B5. Snail's Lament

Originally released on CD in Japan in 2003, as a love letter & thank you to his Japanese fans. Recorded at home, produced, engineered & mixed by Matthew Sweet (bass, guirars & vocals) with the classic ‘Girlfriend’ era lineup of Ric Menck (drums), Greg Leisz (guitars) and the genius electric lead guitar of Television’s Richard Lloyd. The sleeve art is by renowned artist Yoshimoto Nara. In the liner notes, Sweet describes the album's title as an attempt at reverse English: "If I did it correctly, the title should seem a little strange or wrong, but still meaningful! The true definition is supposed to be a 'love you' life, one devoted to loving someone or something, even life itself!"

“an excellent modern guitar pop album, filled with great hooks and harmonies and irresistible ringing six-strings”
Allmusic

“Kimi crackles with Girlfriend‘s energy, as Lloyd and Sweet’s guitars provide antagonistic foils as they did more than a decade before on cuts like “Tonight We Ride.”
Rolling Stone

Siren Selector launches its mixtape series with a companion release to Remy Solar’s - ‘Heavy Terrain’ cassette.

“Jamaican music grows in rings like an old tree. From a core of early riddims, the genius of Studio One, versions of original basslines and melodies evolve over time New releases of the same tune follow each other through the 70s, 80s, 90s, into this millennium. Generations of the same family. And then there’s the unreleased versions, the frontier dubs built strictly for sound systems, held close by those who got them and only gradually circulated into the wider audience of selectors and collectors. These are the ones where the bass is heavier, the echoes more mind- bending, the effects wilder and the drums harder. Older sound followers tell stories of how these dubs defined dances, flattened opponents in clashes, inspired a dozen rewinds. Younger followers remember these tales and pass them down. These dubs are folklore.

Who knows how many such versions there are in the vast worldwide archives of Jamaican music? Not me. But as a little taster of a lifetime’s musical journey you can open your ears right now to a few moments: Lacksley’s Castell’s “Unkind”, transported from the sprightly riddim which underpinned it on his Princess Lady album and reengineered into a thunderous version of Ras Michael’s None A Jah Jah Children; “Deceivers” by the Heptones, stripped back into something simultaneously ethereal and bathyspheric; Keith Hudson’s “I’m No Fool” emerging from a pressure cooker of bass and drum; Jah Lloyd’s “Black Moses”, busting down walls with its epic echo and siren opening.

I started collecting these dubs in the late 90s. We were going to Shaka at the Rocket, Aba Shanti in the Arches, then Imperial Gardens. Entebbe somewhere off Mare Street. Iration Steppas in Kingsland Road, Jah Tubby’s in the Rec. We were doing our own parties at the time in east London, Bohemia Place, then Trenz, Dungeons, the old social services office by London Fields. Building up a sound, taking it on the road, crew sitting on the speaker boxes in the back of a Mercedes 508. Under the stars or in warehouses with sweat dripping from the ceiling, lugging crates and amps across fields or up flights of stairs, stringing up boxes under bridges, in car parks or on roundabouts. Waiting for the moment to drop the dubs.

This tape is dedicated to my crew and all the music providers and anyone who also knew or wants to know these moments.“

Fifty Physical Copies - 60 mins - No digital

There's a tendency in metal to mistake aggression for honesty, volume for depth. To confuse the performance of darkness with its actual weight. Hidden Fires Burn Hottest, the new album from San Francisco-based post-black metal band Bosse-de-Nage, sidesteps this entirely. It’s the group’s most fully realized work yet, precisely because it refuses to be pinned down.

Bosse-de-Nage have been working with The Flenser for over fifteen years. They were one of the first bands the label ever partnered with and have the longest active relationship in the label's history. But unlike most bands who build momentum through constant touring and visibility, Bosse-de-Nage has largely existed apart from the music world's usual machinery. They've evolved on their own terms, in relative isolation, allowing the work to develop without outside pressure or influence. What began rooted in black metal anonymity has mutated into something that actively defies categorization. The aggression is still there, but it's no longer the point. Hidden Fires Burn Hottest finds the band treating emotions like physical objects, feelings with spatial properties. “No Such Place"" describes a space that can't exist but does anyway, somewhere between thought and location. ""Immortality Project"" examines infinite possibility not as promise but as problem, endless options collapsing under their own weight. These songs don't use metaphor to describe emotion. They make emotion into something you could theoretically touch.
Tracked by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Oathbreaker) at Atomic Garden East and mixed and mastered by Richard Chowenhill of Agriculture, Hidden Fires Burn Hottest was years in development, with some tracks beginning in 2018.

The long writing process offered time that most records don't get. Time to live with ideas, revise endlessly, to let structures settle. For the first time, lyricist Bryan Manning wrote everything in advance, creating a surplus to pull from rather than working under deadline pressure. The difference shows.
Coming off Further Still, an album built on constraint and economy, Bosse-de-Nage sought the opposite: sprawl, strangeness, fewer rules. Space for ideas to develop without rushing them. Dynamics that move through quiet as much as noise. Presence earned through atmosphere instead of volume. The record even includes ""Mementos,"" which might be considered the first love song the band has ever written.

Nothing here coheres into a theme. These are pieces pulled from low moments and private feelings made public through sound. The band has never been interested in positivity, in music that resolves cleanly or offers comfort. But bleakness doesn't mean humorlessness. There's something darkly funny running through much of it, even when it shouldn't be.
Hidden Fires Burn Hottest doesn't explain itself. It just insists: what you feel is as real as what you can see."

Mildred have announced their debut album Fenceline (out 24 April via Memorials of Distinction / Dog Day Records), they have also shared the Nick Roberts directed video for lead single ‘Fish Sticks’. Speaking of ‘Fish Sticks’ and the album, Mildred say: “Fish Sticks is a song of scenes from two worlds. Conversations with your boss. Acute workplace mediocrity. Riding home and eating fish sticks with your friends. For UK audiences, a fish stick is a fish finger, ideally Alaskan-caught cod. The song comes packaged in Fenceline, an album about conversations with old friends, little cousins, ceaseless piles of dust in your crumbling duplex, loves and theologians and their books. Fencelines mark two places but belong to neither. Neither nor, either or.”
Ahead of Fenceline, at the end of last year Mildred released their debut twin EPs mild and red, an insatiable collection of songs birthed before Mildred even knew they were a band. Arriving purposefully on the scene in that gentle, approachable Mildred way, the EPs picked up support from The Guardian, The Line of Best Fit, Uncut (‘We’re New Here’), The New Cue, Clash, DIY and more. Mildred is a band from Oakland, CA of four equal parts. They don’t have a lead singer, no one person writes the songs. The songs that make up Fenceline come together as a group with their genesis sprouting from any one of their members - Henry Easton Koehler (vocals, guitar), Jack Schrott (vocals, guitar), Matt Palmquist (vocals, bass, woodwinds) or Will Fortna (drums, production) - each time.

The songs are often wrestled from the lead writer by the other three, a lyric might have been mumbled absentmindedly for a few days before one of the other three grabs at it. Summed up neatly by Clash “imagine if Pavement went Americana and you’d be close”, Mildred make music that is pure and poetic, gently addictive and never overwrought. The lyrics for their songs are written largely alone and often draw from their own individual lives and experiences but there’s a shared something there. “It makes sense when common threads emerge” they say, “because we do things together a lot as friends: cook, laze about on a weekend, listen to an album, go walkabout, read, go see movies etc.
Strikingly literal or intriguingly oblique, Mildred have a remarkable way with lyrics that lodge themselves in your head softly but with such determination that they begin to feel like shimmering memories from your own life. Fenceline is a collection of songs that you want to hold close and delve into, and yet play to everyone you know.