Search:what so not

hat do you get when you mix about a dozen musicians (including members of The Animals & The Police) with a lot of drugs? An acid psych opus!
What do you get when you package it in a prefab jacket with stock Christmas
art and a festive title? Total confusion! We hypothesize that if you take enough
drugs you may think this private press treasure is a holiday album...but we’re
not so sure.

Celebrating 10 years since his first album, Tom Williams releases his most
eclectic project to date. ‘Follow The Leader’ represents a departure from
his previous output, and is comprised of a collection of songs which
comment on pre- and post-lockdown life, providing beautifully crafted
snapshots of modern Britain.
Having released six studio albums to date, Tom Williams has built a passionate
fanbase of discerning music lovers since his first album, Tom Williams & The
Boat’s ‘Too Slow’ ten years ago.
His 2017 album ‘All Change’ was voted by BBC 6 Music Recommends as one of
their Top Ten Albums Of The Year, and his last album 2019’s ‘What Did You Want
To Be?’ which was produced by Tim Rice-Oxley, was described by The Guardian
as “surging, vintage pop-rock” and championed extensively by Jo Whiley at BBC
Radio 2, Steve Lamacq and Lauren Laverne at BBC 6 Music, Huw Stephens at
Radio 1, Q Magazine and Clash. ‘Follow The Leader’ signifies a departure from
Williams’ previous output.
Self-produced, the album boasts rich orchestral sounds and full band performances, mixed with claustrophobic drum machines, synthesizers and deep sub
bass sounds.

For the Perth group, creativity and production hasn’t stopped in 2020. Despite
much of this year’s tour plans being put on pause, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have used their time off road to continue preparing themselves for the release of their fourth studio release, and an eventual blistering return to stages
around the world with a heavy-hitter of an album primed for the live space.
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have already given fans an early taste of the forthcoming SHYGA! era, with ‘Mr. Prism’ in August. The creation of SHYGA! The
Sunlight Mound, especially off the back of 2019’s huge LP And Now For The
Whatchamacallit, came together in a different environment for McEwan and
the results speak to the band’s evolution and McEwan’s evolution as a songwriter.
“For the first time in a long time I was home without any tours booked, no
work, no deadlines and I felt free to create. My writing process became ritualistic; every morning starting with a small walk to the local bottle shop at 11am
and writing whatever flowed, allowing myself to design in all styles without
boundaries, and not trying to theme the album early on. I haven’t had the luxury of writing this way since the first record, which I spent almost a year working
on. It felt like I was myself again, creating without opinion or constraints. I was
gliding through weeks with a day seeming to pass.

A beautiful, deep and personal techno document by Mr. G who is talking the international language of musical expression (spoken and understood by everyone). Expressing his feelings and emotions via his sonic frequency philosophy on probably his most versatile release to date, a 12 track album on Childhood records This is the first time we hear Mr. G diving deep into the soundscapes and deeper dancefloor cuts on this album recorded during the global pandemic.

It's marking a change in his musical vocabulary without losing his rough and raw energetic expressions. It's telling a story of forgotten places and dreams of the future. Dreams that pay tribute to the past, critical of the present, and still give hope for what's to come. Always rough and raw, the outstanding sonic frequency design on THE FORCED FORCE IS NOT THE TRUE FORCE will let you dive deeply into a more articulate and sophisticated musical language of Mr. G, while the man still keeps what we all love him for: his genuine distinct rhythms and seductive grooves that he has been sharing with the world for so many years!. --- The album is pressed DJ friendly on 3 x 180g 12'' vinyl and includes a download code. ---

Here’s some things you should know about Larry: His legs are long. His heart is true. His heroics are unmatched. Leaky faucet? Stolen bike? Trouble with your math homework? Fear not! Larry is here and he’s got what it takes to ease your troubles. We can’t keep this green guy away from a good cause! The song Long Legged Larry details 3 instances where Larry’s valiance shines.Draftsman and renowned amphibian consultant Jeremy Fish created the artwork, and helped visualize Larry in the form of a beautiful plush toy with sick shorts and a big beard. Furthermore - visionary Rob Shaw has captured some of this frog’s finer moments through the magic of stop-motion animation in a music video available right now for your viewing pleasure.

There’s liberation on the dance floor in the songs of Matthew Urango – glimpses of revolution that glimmer beneath the disco ball. “I want my music to bring people together,” says the Californian pop innovator, best known as Cola Boyy. “Because standing together is our best chance at fighting this shit show.” The shit show in question is a broken, brutal system the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist has witnessed up-close. Urango was born with spina bifida and scoliosis in Oxnard, California: a town in which almost 30,000 are estimated to live in poverty. Prosthetic Boombox, his eagerly awaited debut album, might at first glance seem a joyous confetti-burst of pop eclecticism, engineered to sound like “scanning between stations on a car radio, landing on all these different sounds and styles” as Urango puts it. Dig deeper, though, and you’ll discover a simmering sense of rebellion. “The working class are injured, struggling to pay rent and struggling to put food on the table,” he says. “I want to represent that.” Prosthetic Boombox
achieves that goal in a thrilling flurry of inventive indie, funk and soul: take Urango’s car radio analogy, place it in a time-travelling Delorean with Prince in the passenger seat, and you’re half-way there.

Look no closer than Prosthetic Boombox’s euphoric opener, the Avalanches-assisted ‘Don’t Forget Your Neighbourhood.’ The track – which Urango says mixes “the Beach Boys, French disco, house keys and ragtime piano, kinda like the Cheers soundtrack!” – ends with lyrics urging listeners to “fight for your town with your fist closed, strike it and make it more than just a memory.” It’s a reminder that the working classes need to “turn our fists against our oppressors instead of each other,” he explains. After that emphatic introduction comes a horn-laced funk wig-out titled ‘Mailbox’ – a song that gives Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia a run for its Studio 54-themed money, featuring rising Londoner JGrrey. Elsewhere, ‘Song for the Mister’ ventures into smooth R&B territory, before ‘Roses’ – a collaboration with Myd of Ed Banger fame – offers a bouquet of bustling disco guitars and infinite bisous of Connan Mockasin’s band drops in on the immaculate ‘Go the Mile’. Urango saves his most introspective moment for the album’s starry closer. ‘Kid Born in Space’, a cosmic collaboration with MGMT frontman Andrew VanWyngarden, sees the artist reflect on what he once had to overcome as a disabled person of colour. “I see them looking down on my dreams of being,” he sings tenderly. “I hear them making fun of my voice, but I keep on moving forward, I refuse to live in anyone else’s shadow.” Prosthetic Boombox, on this subject, is more than an album title – it’s a statement of intent.

“The message of my music is that our class is exploited, oppressed and murdered on the daily. That’s not right, and the system that enables that deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth,” he says. “The only way that happens is if we’re united. That’s the point of my music – to relate to people and unite them.” And what unites more than raucous, irresistibly danceable pop? Prosthetic Boombox is a riot of joyous grooves and catchy hooks for good reason. “I want to reach and spread my message to as many people as possible. You can’t do that if you’re some obscure motherfucker, you know?” he laughs. Don’t bet on him being an “obscure motherfucker” for long.

The International Feel label is back from an extended meditation. Well-rested and with a cornucopia of new ideas and records, IFeel is happy to announce the debut album from Charlie Charlie as the starting shot. „Little Things“ is the brainchild of Gabriella Borbély alias Bella Boo and Jens Resch better known as Chords. Born on a beach in Southern California instead of their hometown Stockholm, it is exactly what you would hope for such a record to be: pop music that is informed by hippie or counter culture and by a Balearic ethos (hence the International Feel address) that is free of blinkered definitions. In equal parts, the duo’s ten songs take the listener through honey dripping r&b, while respelling that certain Californian recording studio sound aesthetic, revisit vintage yacht rock and pop tropes as well as they are reflecting dance music influences in a broken, yet gold framed mirror. Most of all, it’s like a day dream that you don’t want to end. To quote our Italian friends from Edizioni Mondo: good listening experience!

Band info:
Charlie is Gabriella Borbély – also known as Stockholm's deep house virtuoso Bella Boo. Charlie is Jens Resch – also known as prodigious producer/musician Chords. The two Charlies met on a beach in Southern California and immediately decided to write a song together.
That first track was built on the sampled sounds of a rusty drainpipe. Charlie fired up a dusty ARP Odyssey and played a woozy solo over the drainpipe beats, then the other Charlie did the same, using that same legendary 70's analogue synth. When they realized the two separately recorded solos played together in perfect harmony, they knew they had to keep heading down their newly found, shared musical path.
Charlie & Charlie have since continued making music together, describing their common process as liberating, free-flowing, genre-less. "Little Things", their debut album, is made up of tracks recorded in Los Angeles and Stockholm, using that very same ARP as well as pianos, electric guitars and machines like the Prophet 6, the Juno-106 and the Syncussion SY-1. Vocal contributions come from the Charlies themselves as well as friends like Mapei and Julimar Santos.

oracle and audioMER. are honoured to announce the release of a new LP; Reading the City with music by oracle, Laszlo Umbreit & Mira Sanders.

In 2019 oracle invited artist Mira Sanders to interact with their practice through her writing. Due to the corona crisis, their shared working time couldn’t happen in the planned way:

“The writing project was originally planned as an exchange while travelling together one week on the Buratinas boat, navigating on the canals and rivers starting from Brussels. Due to the sanitary conditions with the Covid19, the trip together could not be realised or at least was complicated.

Instead of seeing the situation as an obstacle, I saw it as an opportunity to travel with them from afar. Me, living outside the city and them, inside. My question was ‘how, through their voices echoing with the urban spaces, will I imagine the city’s everyday life?’. Because one of the things that oracle’s practice does is to offer ways to perceive and encounter the city and its inhabitants.

For the texts I was inspired by the recordings oracle sent me every day during one week. Besides that, the book Invisible Cities written by Italo Calvino gave me a way of structuring my imagination.” – Mira Sanders

Following this artistic exchange and during a collaboration with sound artist Laszlo Umbreit, the idea of the record Reading the City was born. The existing recordings and the written sci-fi episodes by Mira Sanders functioned as a source of inspiration for the electronic sound composition Places, infiltrated by the original voices and city soundscapes. The recordings of the texts From Afar reflect oracle’s playful and spontaneous way of interacting with their given environment. From Afar is an invitation for the reader to immerse in the city while being in movement. Each track on this side has its own identity or colour, often in relation to what Mira’s text evoked, but this also happened in an empirical way, by trial and error.

Places is a composition in movement, following the idea of interaction with imaginary cities but regularly coming back to a presence of the workshop’s raw documentary sound. While being a carefully edited piece, it tries to keep a certain sense of immediacy and improvisation through semi-random dropping of heterogeneous sound materials in the timeline. Accidents are welcome. The arc drawn by the journey through different “places” is an interpretation of what can happen inside (and outside) when experiencing the oracle practice: being around them, imagining what was felt at different moments in the street, from a distance, preparing the itinerary in the city beforehand, talking about what oracle could be as a record and if it can exist outside the moment it happens.

The first release in what will be an ongoing three-part series, Part I features nine tracks for bass guitar and tenor saxophone. Part II, an exploration of a slightly larger, more sonically diverse musical world will feature string quartet and voice. Finally, Part III will collaborate with choreographer Siobhan McKenna, who alongside Nick will develop a percussive movement work that seamlessly intertwines with the musical work.

“My aim is to create music that is sonically and musically atypical whilst still belonging to an accessible contemporary scene. Each project, album or ‘part’ will set out to explore a single ensemble or group of instruments. In the case of Part I, that ensemble is hollow body bass guitar and tenor saxophone. “ - Indigo (Nick Roder)

The Indigo project itself was inspired by Saxophone & Bass Guitar by Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, which prompted Nick to write an album of music for the same type of ensemble. Having only just purchased a bass guitar for a different project, the instrument was still very new to him.

“I was curious to see what I would write with my self-imposed rule of not being able to overdub material, and further, how my limitations as a relatively green bass guitarist would influence the writing of the material. A strong focus on harmonic movement and melodic material was where I eventually found my happy place.”

The result is a phenomenal debut. Burrowing into the space between it’s sparse instrumentation and dulcet tones, Part I is the realisation of a minimalist and concise vision of what a symbiotic relationship between two instruments can yield.

About Indigo
Indigo is the moniker and ongoing project of Melbourne-based composer and arranger, Nick Roder. The Indigo project was conceptualised in 2020 and focuses on deep sonic exploration of little-heard ensembles in a contemporary space.

Since 2018, Nick has been composing soundtracks for video games including The Invisible Hand, Roadwarden, N1NE: Splintered Mind, This Dead Winter and Miska. Nick has also played in art-rock ensemble, Tulalah, exploring sonic textures, combining contemporary jazz/rock with chamber sounds. The modular ensemble released The Flood (Equinox Recordings, 2015) and The Question (Independent, 2017).

Dissolution Sessions' is the first release by art punk rockers The Imbeciles since their well received eponymously named debut album earlier this year. The six-track EP
features a new band line up - and a different sound. 'We've slimmed down from a meandering, vegan, six member prog rock combo, to a tight-knit, guitar-led, steakeating 4-piece,' says lead Imbecile, Butch Dante. 'The guitar sound is fuzzy punk beast-master AF, and we like it.'
The band had originally gone into the studio earlier this year to record a radio session for 6Music. That ended up being cancelled because of the pandemic crisis. 'We
were there anyway so we started riffing on some new songs and everything came together real fast,' continues Butch. The result is three new songs and three new
versions of tracks that first appeared on the album. 'The music is still weird; but everything just gets to the point faster,' he adds. "You can hear that energy in 'Yes I
Am'; it's the sound of a band having fun being creative again after a difficult year.'
That particular new track is a Foo fighters/STP/Stooges-style banger, but played on Imbeciles terms - one note leads and guitar scrapes, with off beat stabs and a pop
punk drum track that pulls the whole together. And the overall vibe of the EP is a NSFW hybrid of 1979 London punk (Skids and Ruts), with second guitar stolen from
eighties Echo and Bunnymen and a leavening of Bauhaus art rock.
'Sunday Leaguer' was inspired by Butch's love of English football. The song is both a banging punk celebration of the beautiful game, and a lament to the gaping hole left
in peoples' lives when Coronavirus forced the cancellation of all football in March. As well as the Premier League, MotD and other football staples, the song also
celebrates the unsung legends of amateur Sunday League football. Dante, a Crystal Palace fan, enlists Palace's Holmesdale Fanatics on the track, who are heard chanting
'Eagles', while the video for the song pays tribute to the club's mascot, Keya, who sadly passed away this summer.
Charlie Conkers makes his debut on the EP as the band's drummer. 'He's young, good looking, and talented. It's quite annoying, actually,' Butch says. New lead guitarist
Stan Moseley makes a sideways move into the band from his previous role as The Imbecile's chief engineer and co-producer - the producer role now being occupied by
music legend, Youth, with whom the band has just started working on a new album, to be released in 2021.
'Having Youth involved as producer and co-writer is the most dope thing that has ever happened to the band,' says lead singer and bass player Kip Larson. 'Everyone is in
a super positive, hyper creative place right now and we can't wait to see what we come up with.'
So what about the name, Dissolution Sessions? Was it a nod to the pandemic, or a reference to the band breaking up and reforming again with its new members?
Neither, according to Butch. 'Kip was super hung over at the session. too many Dos Equis, yo. Hence: Dissolution Sessions.'

In 1979 as a 15-year-old Eddie Piller was perfectly placed to be at the epicentre of the Mod revival. An inquisitive passion
for music, a family connection to Mod royalty The Small Faces, and an attitude that saw him travelling his home city, then
the country and then the world to take in the sounds that were emerging. In the years since, Piller has been a legendary
figure within the music industry setting up and continuing to own the ground-breaking Acid Jazz label, signing multiplatinum artists such as Jamiroquai and The Brand New Heavies collaborating on compilations with Martin Freeman and as
an award winning broadcaster even setting up his own Totally Wired Radio station. In The Mod Revival he looks back at the
movement that set him on his way.
• Mod is a sixties youth movement original built on sharp clothes, American soul music and nights on the town, that has never
really died. The originals added young British groups to their likes and then moved on, but their influence echoed on
through the 1970s in Northern Soul clubs, and in the sixties influenced bands of the pub rock era. When punk arrived, it was
supposed to sweep away the past, but instead the Sex Pistols were covering the Small Faces. The Clash brought in Mod DJ
Guy Stevens to produce London’s Calling, The Buzzcocks sounded closer to the Hollies than The Ramones and in The Jam’s
Paul Weller there was a musical and sartorial nod to the past of The Who, The Beatles and pop art arrows.
• Weller had spent the 1970s becoming obsessed by mod and saw punk as having a similar youthful energy to the era he had
missed by being born a decade too late. For others Weller’s style proved an inspiration, and as the Jam broke through in late
1978, they saw a wave of bands follow in their wake, and they themselves influenced others to form their own groups. But
there were other things. In bleak late 70s Britain the glorious optimism of the 1960s looked bright and shiny, and as it was
only a decade or so in the past, it was easy to pick up original records, clothes and books for pennies, and as you bought
these you met other like-minded souls who did the same. For those a little too young for punk, it was a community of gigs,
scooters, clothes, bands and records, and for many it developed on through.
• Eddie never stopped being a mod and has a unique perspective having now lived through four decades of being intimately
involved in the music that has emerged from the mod scene. In this part two double vinyl edition (Part 1 and its CD
equivalent reached #14 in the UK compilations charts) Ed guides us through some of his favourite music from the scene. He
guides us through a plethora of bands whose influences include The Who, The Kinks and the Jam, to sixties soul and R&B,
those with an eye on psychedelia. The records have a vitality and a certain stylish swagger to them, that marks them out as
mod. In the deluxe booklet, Piller has written a 5000 word note describing what it meant to him and has granted access to
his own scrapbooksfrom his many years of gig-going from which pages and memorabilia are reproduced.
• Eddie Piller’s Mod Revival is a personal appraisal from the founder of The Modcast, on what the mod explosion of the late
70s and 80s means to him…

Whispers And Sighs is the final studio album by the late David Olney,
beloved folk songwriter’s songwriter, in collaboration with Anana Kaye, a
young Eastern European powerhouse taking Americana by storm.
If the futile longing to reach back through memory and grasp what is in the
past could be set to music, it would sound like Whispers and Sighs. Over the
course of 13 tracks, David Olney and Anana Kaye manage to craft a journey that
amounts to far more than just another Americana album.
And while it’s hard to escape the seeming cosmic significance of the album as
posthumous Olney release, at no point does this create the air of morbidity;
rather, it lends the project a bittersweet ambiance. Within Whispers And Sighs
is an undeniable reminder that David Olney’s extraordinary legacy can never
fade, while Anana Kaye’s star grows deservedly brighter by the day.

Since making her debut with the 2011 album Weightless, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Becca Stevens has tested the limits of musical identity, mining everything from jazz to Irish folk to indie-rock in her striving for complete and authentic expression. In her latest musical endeavor—the five-track EP WONDERBLOOM and a soon-to-follow full-length of the same name—the North Carolina-bred, Brooklyn-based artist again defies all expectation, this time dreaming up a groove-heavy, dance-ready sound infused with elements of pop and funk and R&B. But despite its brighter textures and uptempo rhythms, WONDERBLOOM finds Stevens achieving a profound complexity in her lyrics, ultimately redefining what’s possible in creating music that elevates and edifies. Centered on the captivating vocal presence she’s showcased as a member of David Crosby’s Lighthouse Band, WONDERBLOOM telegraphs an unabashed joy that Stevens partly attributes to the project’s production. In a bold new turn for her musical career, Stevens co-produced and co-engineered WONDERBLOOM alongside Nic Hard (Snarky Puppy, Ghost-Note, The Church), overseeing every aspect of the recording and claiming a sense of agency that had long eluded her in the studio. “Nic and I were truly working as equals and trusting each other to get the job done, and it was an incredibly empowering experience for me,” she says. In another major departure, Stevens purposely brought a communal sensibility to the making of WONDERBLOOM —an undertaking that resulted in more than 40 musicians contributing to the album, including Vulfpeck guitarist Cory Wong, Jacob Collier, and all of her Lighthouse bandmates (i.e., keyboardist Michelle Willis, Snarky Puppy bandleader Michael League, and David Crosby himself).

'Triage' offers a rare look inside of the songwriter. This album finds Rodney Crowell introspectively looking for answers and for healing, resulting in what he has called his most personal record yet. This new collection of songs was written during the great political, environmental and economic upheaval that has marked recent years. The noise of that chaos encouraged Crowell to look inward for solace and answers. The result is this series of songs that contend with these themes, but approaches them from a place of healing, love and solution. That they are being released while we find ourselves walking through a global pandemic, is a gift of perfect timing.

From their genesis as members of the Venus club in-house band in the early 70s, Hailu Mergia and the Walias Band were at the forefront of the musical revolution during an era where modern instruments and foreign styles superseded the traditional fare to become the staple sound of Ethiopia. No one would argue that the Walias were the trailblazing powerhouse of modern Ethiopian music. They were the first band to form independently without affiliation to a theatre house, a club or a hotel; unprecedented and risky as they had to raise all funding for expenses by themselves including buying equipment. They were the first to release full instrumental albums, considered to be commercially unviable at the time. They opened their own recording studio, with band members Melake Gebre and Mahmoud Aman doubling as technical buffs during sessions. They were also the first independent band to tour abroad. In short, they were the pioneers every band tried to emulate; some more successfully than others.
Odds are, any Ethiopian over the age of 35 who had access to TV or radio by the early 90s, will instantly recognize the sound of Walias. What is not a given is, how many would actually identify the band itself. Barely a day went by without hearing the Walias either in the background on radio or as an accompaniment to various programs on TV.

This Tezeta album, the band’s second recording, released in 1975, is one of those that have been impossible to find for nearly three decades. Sourced by Awesome Tapes From Africa and expertly remastered by Jessica Thompson, its unique and funky renditions of standards and popular songs of the day are so quintessentially Walias, flavorful and evocative. Hailu's melodic organ, unashamedly front and center in every track, makes even the complex pieces accessible.
Profoundly engaging; it's an immersive trip down memory lane for those of us getting reacquainted with it, while also an enthralling and gratifying experience for fresh ears.

Virtually unknown recording outside Ethiopia.
Documents Mergia & Walias legendary early period.
Follow-up to reissue of hugely popular seminal Ethiopian instrumentals LP Tche Belew (ATFA012)

Cassette-only, released in 1975 on the band’s in-house label to fund their record store.
Beautifully-rendered instrumentals of classic Ethiopian standards.

John R. Miller is a true hyphenate artist: singer-songwriter-picker.
Every song on his thrilling debut solo album, ‘Depreciated’, is lush with
intricate wordplay and haunting imagery, as well as being backed by a band
that is on fire.
One of his biggest long-time fans is roots music favourite Tyler Childers, who
says he’s “a well-travelled wordsmith mapping out the world he’s seen, three
chords at a time.” Miller is somehow able to transport us to a shadowy honkytonk and get existential all in the same line with his tightly written compositions. Miller’s own guitar-playing is on fine display here along with vocals that
evoke the white-waters of the Potomac River rumbling below the high ridges
of his native Shenandoah Valley.
‘Depreciated’ is a collection of eleven gems that take us to John R. Miller’s
home place even while exploring the way we can’t go home again, no matter
how much we might ache for it. On the album, Miller says he was eager to combine elements of country, blues, and rock to make his own sound. He wanted
‘Depreciated’ to conjure references to recently lost heroes like Prine, Walker,
and Shaver without sounding derivative.
Miller has certainly achieved his own sound here with an album that is almost
novelistic in its journey not only to the complicated relationship Miller has with
the Shenandoah Valley but also into the mind of someone going through transitions. “I wrote most of these songs after finding myself single and without a
band for the first time in a long while,” Miller says. “I stumbled to Nashville and
started to figure things out, so a lot of these have the feel of closing a chapter.”

Makèz have come a long way since they first sneaked into Amsterdam’s studio 80 at the age of 17 to hand over their demos to Dam Swindle. Those demos led to their debut EP ‘Different planets’ on Heist in 2019 which gained major support from artists like Seth Troxler and Chez Damier. Quickly after, they signed two records on New York based label Let’s Play House. Fast forward two years, and here we are: the release of their debut album “City of all”.

"City of all” shows an admirable level of sophistication and matureness and effortlessly bridges genres across its 13 tracks. You can feel the amount of thought that has been put into this record, with songs happily blending into each other as Makèz submerge themselves in their concept of accidental encounters, inclusiveness and what it means to live in a city like Amsterdam.

On “City of all”, Makèz bring together all the musical influences they’ve picked up in their life as music fans, clubbers and art students. The jazz-funk of opening track “The entrance” feels breezy, casual almost, like the freeform rhythms that are played in a jazz club during soundcheck. That energy also oozes from “Not so different”, which features the smooth vocals of LYMA. There’s a hint of the house-meets-R’n B vibe that made Anderson .Paak the star that he is now. The song is brilliantly funky and shows the songwriting and arrangement talent of Makèz, who cleverly use pop & soul cues to create one of the album’s highlights.

What follows is 4 cuts ranging from the syncopated Balearic funk of “Orbit”, the strings of album title track “City of all”, the organ-led jam “Gonna getya" and the downbeat “Sonder”. Allysha Joy -best known for performing in Melbourne Hip Hop collective 30/70 - is featured on the deep and jazzy cut “Looking up”. If Makèz and Allysha are all looking up, it’s clear they’re seeing the same thing. These kindred spirits perfectly complement each other on this track, where the deep bass, warm harmonies and jazzy percussion prove to be a perfect foundation for Allysha’s rhymes.

Is it an album all about jazz and soulful tracks to listen to at home? Far from that. There’s a nice bit of dance floor-oriented tracks, where the distorted filter funk of “Roselane” featuring Fouk proves to be a highlight along with what is arguably the heaviest cut of the album: “Bent with funk”.

In an EP context, these house tracks would surely do their work, but they really come to life in this album format. No compromise has been made to storytelling and the house tracks all play their part while still standing their ground as powerful club tracks. It’s the expert production and smart arrangement that gives this album its casually funky feel. On “City of all”, Makèz showcase their remarkable talent for writing an album that goes to so many different places, but most of all, just really feels like home.

Enjoy the music,
Maarten & Lars

Reissue for John Joseph’s own all-star group 2017 debut album

At its purest, there is little that can match the visceral thrill and empowering spirit of hardcore. As front-man of New York City hardcore kings Cro-Mags, this is something John Joseph knows very well, and with Up In Arms, he and his Bloodclot compatriots deliver a furious collection that hits hard on every level. "In this band we're doing what each of us have always done: give it our all," he states plainly. "We work hard, and we have a lot to say. Look around the planet - people are fed up with the corrupt ruling class. They destroy the planet and kill millions for profit, and the formula for our response is simple: Anger + applied knowledge = results. Don't just bitch. Change it."

The results reflect the roots and passions of the individual members. Danzig/Murphy's Law guitarist Todd Youth was the first piece of the puzzle. "We've always talked about doing this record together, Todd had songs written and I had notebooks full of lyrics. In late September 2015, I went out to LA to do a triathlon and injured my calf muscle, so I couldn't race, and Todd said he could get some studio time. So, we went in and cut the demo. While there are things we may perceive as a negative in our lives, in fact the universe has a bigger plan, and that experience ultimately resulted in the record." Having been friends with Queens Of The Stone Age and Danzig powerhouse drummer Joey Castillo for three decades, the two musicians had long admired each other's work, and their collaboration has been a long time coming. Following Castillo's suggestion of bringing in Nick Oliveri (Queens Of The Stone Age/The Dwarves) to handle bass duties, the lineup was complete. The songs that comprise Up In Arms manifested after the quartet plugged in and let the music speak for them. "We didn't decide to try to play anything, these are the songs that happened when we started jamming, and I love this band because there are no egos involved. Our goal is to make the best music possible, period. I love it when those guys contribute with melodies, etc., and I've even helped with some of the arrangements. Because we all think alike, our lyrics deal with the issues of the day, and that makes for better songs."

Every track on Up In Arms lives up to the rallying cry of the album's title - the bursts of high energy hardcore act as the perfect accompaniment to Joseph setting his sights on injustice and the seemingly endless flaws of the contemporary world. The breakneck thrashing of "Slow Kill Genocide" is an anthem for everyone sickened by those responsible for "killing the planet and all its inhabitants through industry and war. They're fucking maniacs and must be stopped." The suitably titled "Manic" attacks with bared fangs, Joseph making it clear that you can only push someone so far before they will react with violence - a call to arms for the disenfranchised who want tomorrow's world to be better than today's. Tracked at NRG in Los Angeles, the raw, old-school production that leaps out from the speaker comes courtesy of producer Zeuss (Hatebreed, Revocation), and the record was mixed by Kyle McAulay at NRG. From the moment the opening title track explodes to life, it's clear that everyone involved is having a blast and playing from the heart, and that this is no frills / no bullshit music at its most passionate - every song evoking mental images of utter chaos in a heaving mosh pit.

For anyone approaching the album for the first time, Joseph has only this to say: "Turn the volume way the fuck up!" And with plans to tour everywhere, Bloodclot will be getting in a lot of faces in 2017 and beyond. "We are already writing material and the next album is in the works. But, for now, all we want is to hit the stage to support 'Up in Arms', and every single night leave every ounce of ourselves up there."

A little over a year ago, Nathan Williams found himself back in San Diego, writing what would eventually become Hideaway, his seventh album as Wavves, in a little shed behind his parents’ house. It was also the place where he made some of his earliest albums, before he became known for his uncanny ability to write songs that sneered at the world while evoking pathos, sympathy, and a deep understanding of how sometimes we’re our own worst enemies, and that can be okay. Williams’ return to his childhood home was not just a symbolic attempt at jumpstarting creativity. It came as a result of a series of major life changes. A decade ago, Williams released King of the Beach on the maverick indie label Fat Possum. The album was a cocky collection of pop punk gems that catapulted him into the public consciousness, eventually prompting a jump from Fat Possum into the major label system, where he released two albums before becoming disillusioned by the lack of creative agency available to him. In 2017, Williams self-released You’re Welcome on his label, Ghost Ramp. Now, Williams has returned to Fat Possum with a barbed collection of anxious anthems that grapple with the looming sense of doom and despair that comes with getting older in an increasingly chaotic world. “He’ll always skew toward the Bart Simpson character,” says Matthew Johnson, founder of Fat Possum. “But that does not mean that he doesn’t have some commentary, and once in awhile, it’s totally spot on.” Across its brief but impactful nine tracks, Hideaway is about what happens when you get old enough to take stock of the world around you and realize that no one is going to save you but yourself, and even that might be a tall order. The album features Williams’ most universal and urgent songs yet. “Honeycomb” lopes along sunnily, as Williams sings affecting lines like “I feel like I’m dying, it’s cool, it’s great, just pretend I’m okay.” His directness is shocking, and proof that Williams is the kind of songwriter who can capture pain and uncertainty with resonant brutal force. “It’s real peaks and valleys with me,” Williams says. “I can be super optimistic and I can feel really good, and then I can hit a skid and it’s like an earthquake hits my life, and everything just falls apart. Some of it is my own doing, of course.” It’s this self awareness that permeates each of Hideaway’s songs, marking them each as mature reckonings with who he is. After realizing the material he’d been working on in the hideaway was starting to take shape, Williams, along with bandmates Stephen Pope and Alex Gates workshopped the songs in a series of now-abandoned studio sessions, before linking up with musician and producer Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio to help fully realize their new songs.

You may know Rodrigo Amarante already. You may have heard "Tuyo," his theme tune to the Netflix drama Narcos, or the Little Joy album, recorded with Fab Moretti and Binki Shapiro, you might have noted his name among the credits on songs by Gal Costa, Norah Jones and Gilberto Gil; or perhaps you saw him play live with Brazilian samba big band Orquestra Imperial, or with Rio rockers Los Hermanos; you really should have heard his debut album, Cavalo, released in 2014. You may think you know Rodrigo Amarante already, but Drama, his second solo album, is going to introduce a whole new level of confusion to the mix.

Drama is purposefully caricatural, cinematic; "As biased as memory". It flows as an arch, playfully deceiving, like a tale. The ominous opening number gives you a hint that things might not be what they appear, and clues are hiding in plain sight. "Projection,

attachment, deception: that is Drama." The sunny upbeat start of "Maré", with a nearly childish opening melody, echoes something less naïf: "The tide will fetch what the ebb brings". The beat helps you move past. "Tango" sounds like falling in love on the dance floor, warm and tropical, it celebrates companionship, while perhaps pleading for it, yearning. "Tara," meanwhile, feels like something Astrud Gilberto might have sung at the height of bossa nova’s global popularity, with the twist of the big-band-era muted horns on the chorus, nearly self-deprecating, as if mocking such idealized infatuation.

Drama closes with the piano on "The End." To live is to fall. After all the emotional upheavals the singer has put his cast through, is this some kind of farewell to this mortal coil? "Everything Furthers." says Amarante. "Whispering, you get louder like that, people respond better to an invitation," and adds: "Staring at the absurd while remaining kind, being open to the gifts of confusion; that's why we create these tools that are stories and songs, to help us see each other."

Five-time ARIA award-winning producer, songwriter and artist, Nick Murphy announces the highly anticipated new album from his Chet Faker project, Hotel Surrender. In a return to making music that simply felt good, Nick Murphy revived his acclaimed billion streaming Chet Faker project in October 2020 after a six-year hiatus. The culminating result is Hotel Surrender: a self-produced, self-written 10-track LP that reintroduces the swaggering bass lines and electrifying melodies that made fans fall in love with Chet Faker the world over

A limited edition of 500 copies on white vinyl. First ever reissue of Alternative TV's "Action Time Vision", compiled in 1980 and featuring the group's 7"es from 1977 to 1979. Including bonus track "You Bastard" and new liner notes by ATV singer Mark Perry, the founding editor of punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue.

What Mark Perry says:
"It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Punk turned my world upside down! In July 1976, after hearing and seeing the Ramones, I went from just another music fan, avid reader of the NME and Melody Maker, to become editor of punk's premier fanzine, Sniffin' Glue. It was almost an instant success and by December 1976, through our no nonsense approach, our position as the 'punk Bible' was assured. But it was never enough for me. As I saw the initial punk explosion subside into a succession of third-rate copycats, I wanted to have a go myself.

My first attempt at forming a band was in late '76. We called ourselves the 'New Beatles' and it ended after a couple of rehearsals. It wasn't until I met guitarist Alex Fergusson, a mate of Sounds writer Sandy Robertson, in early 1977, that I started putting together some more interesting ideas for a band. I worked on a bunch of lyrics and, pretty quickly, Alex had put tunes to them. Eventually calling ourselves Alternative TV, we had our first rehearsals at Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Studios in March '77.

That initial line-up was just me singing and Alex on guitar, with Genesis P-Orridge helping out on some bass and drums. We did ask Gen to join fulltime, but he decided against it and stuck with Throbbing Gristle. After more rehearsals, we played our first gig at the Nottingham Punk Festival in May 1977, joined by Mick Smith on bass and John Towe (ex-Generation X) on drums.

I started thinking about doing a record almost from the start because, by this time, I was running the Step Forward record label with Miles Copeland, who was also to become the band's manager. It seemed like a natural move to put out my own record, but it instead ended up on Deptford Fun City, another of Miles' labels. Before that actually happened, we made a slight detour by recording a demo for EMI. They didn't want to sign us, but we did end up with the tapes…"

Album Description BROS VOL 2 takes you on a technicolor journey via your ear drums. The eclectic flavours of VOL1 are taken to new heights. The musical scope is wider, and the worldly sonics more exotic. The power pop refrains sink their hooks deeper, the sly musical jokes sell out harder and the hard charging grooves really pack a wallop. BROS make music that is fun and colourful, the way it's supposed to be. Bio After boldly displaying their full musical range on the 2016 debut album Vol. 1, BROS—aka The Sheepdogs’ Ewan and Shamus Currie—return with Vol. 2, an endlessly surprising new 13-track collection that’s something akin to a party thrown by your friends with the best record collection. Recorded over a two-year span with producer/engineer Thomas D’Arcy in Toronto, BROS sought to expand their scope on Vol. 2 by inviting a host of collaborators, from a horn section and tabla drummer, to Sheepdogs guitarist Jimmy Bowskill (on a range of instruments he doesn’t normally play) and even their father Neil Currie on piano. The results contain something for everyone, from the Tropicalia-inspired “Sunflower” and the smooth jazz of “Clams Casino,” to the lowdown funk of “Never Gonna Stop” and the vintage AM radio homages “Crazy Schemes” and “You Love This Song.” With Vol. 2, the combination of visually evocative instrumentals and finely crafted Pop and Soul nuggets is now undeniably BROS’ trademark sound, one that’s utterly distinct from The Sheepdogs’ arena-ready, guitar-fuelled rock. As a pure studio creation, the album not only displays the Curries’ dynamic creative bond, but also their playful sense of humour and easy-going relationship, something that can’t often be said of fraternal musical partnerships. So as we all wait patiently to return to bars and concert halls, BROS Vol. 2 is here to provide the perfect soundtrack for whatever you happen to get up to within your bubble, just as long as the intention is to have some fun. For Fans of: The Sheepdogs, Dan Auerbach, The Doobie Brothers, The Allman Brothers Band, Eric Clapton, The Band, The Black Crowes

If you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, what happens with the realization that they’re no good for you? When you try to help, try to leave, try and move on, but they won’t let you change and won’t let you go?

Lipstick Jodi’s More Like Me is this raw experience explored and expressed in their national debut album on Quite Scientific. The three-piece outfit from Grand Rapids, Michigan’s layered and complex synth-pop sound is highlighted by the vocals of lead singer Karli Morehouse, which are alternately haunting, triumphant, sorrowful, and make you want to dance around your bedroom punching the air and singing at the top of your lungs.

Cold crushed electronics and tape noise by iDEAL faithful, Altar of Flies, returning to his native Swedish label with a 3rd album of possessed and unsettling tonal abstraction and psychoacoustic isolationism.

Known to the reaper as Mattias Gustafsson, Alter of Flies is the Mjölby-based sound artist’s most prolific alias, responsible for dozens of tapes and LPs for Chondritic Sound and White centipede Noise beside his trio of turns for iDEAL since the mid ‘00s. ‘Bortom Reven’ sticks closely to what he does best, conjuring bleakly depressive atmospheres ripe for inhabitation by the harder-to-please followers of North European ambient and industrial musicks, with an alchemic application of field recordings, tape loops, and primitive oscillators that vividly brings his thoughts into the dark light.

‘Bottom Reven’ is perhaps reflective of a certain, ascetic and isolated Swedish characteristic, enacting solitary rituals that better connect Altar of Flies with his environment, or simply entertain him during long, cold, dark nights. With hints of CMvH’s EVP and John Duncan’s searching shortwave radio textures to ‘Hur regn uppstår,’ and more ruptured reception of scrambled ether voices in ‘Terapimusik,’ alongside the title track’s worn-out nub of intrigue, and the damp basement clangour of ‘Under vår livstid’; its not one for those who get shook by the sight of their own shadow, but a real treat for listeners of a lonelier disposition who get off on the sound of the house creaking at night.

As one half of Red Axes, Dori Sadovnik could perhaps already stake a claim as one of the most prolific men in electronic music. A natural artist, Sadovnik is the sort of musician who never stops recording, a creator ahead of a consumer, well-adapted to a frenetic lifestyle.

This particular impulse has been funneled into a project known as Kapitan, an already expansive collection of tracks clocking in anywhere between 130 and 150 beats-per-minute.

As for a home, it just so happened that DJ Tennis, friend, collaborator and founder of Life and Death, was processing similar instincts, borne out of his love and association with the nineties heyday of IDM, pioneered by labels such as Warp and Rephlex.

“I don't really know what led me there but I had a feeling that I needed to be in the mountains”, explains Sadnovik. “I'm not a nature guy, nor do I feel particularly spiritual, but I was always struck by the harmony of it all. Everything is in the mix.”

This all-encompassing, blissful philosophy is deeply felt throughout this journey, a fluid blend of analogue and digital sounds rendered as organic as the landscape that inspires the album. Interlocking rhythms evolve into unexpected chamber pieces and bubbling acid lines blossom into rave psychedelia on opening tracks such as ‘Weird Day’ and ‘Flowers’, progressing to the sound of ‘Takak’, which inspires meditations on enormous bass weight, as mantras creep in from the surrounding forest of sound.

In the album’s second-half, this sincere sense of awe expands further still. Centrepiece tracks ‘In The Valley’ inspires a true sense of wonder and transcendence, complex rhythms blending with wide-eyed reverence. ‘Smile’ is trippy and innocent while ‘Elleven’ crackles with whispering energy over whiplash breakbeats. Concluding with ‘Heart’, Sadnovik reduces the pace to a stepping, heavy rhythm, commanding a deep sense of respect for the untamed wilderness that has served as such a unique muse.

Thirty years after his disappearance, Miles Davis, both the man and his character, is still a subject for debate and controversy. And haven’t we heard that before with all artists? But when it comes to the importance of his contribution to music in the 20th century there is only unanimity.

Everyone says, sure, he was the greatest trumpeter. Other opinions are that he left the world of jazz behind him in 1965. It’s also said he was the catalyst of every decade from 1949 to 1989; that he revolutionised jazz, and brought it out of the ghetto; that he buried jazz; that he was the most important musician of his century... Each of those statements has its share of truth. Whichever way

you look at him, he remains a major figure in jazz and in 20th century music overall. Miles surpassed (or at least equalled) the importance of both Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington for the simple reason that he addressed not only the jazz world but all worlds of music, and that he created (among other things) a fusion of the spheres people knew as jazz, blues, rock and pop, and spoke to every audience, either in turn or collectively.

There was a dinner at the White House during which a perfectly respectable lady, married to a politician no doubt, asked Miles what he did for a living. With some annoyance Miles replied, “Well I’ve changed music five or six times, so I guess that’s what I’ve done ... now tell me what have you done of any importance, other than be white? [...] You tell me what your claim to fame is.” The provocative tone in Miles’ words lifted the veil over his refusal to be hassled, his revulsion against America’s treatment of Black people, and Miles’ awareness of his own importance in the world of music. Even when speaking, Miles maintained the art of synthesis.

In the beginning – this was 1944 – there was a concert in St Louis, Missouri where Miles heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie for the first time. “Man, that shit was terrible, I mean Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie ‘Yardbird' Parker, Buddy Anderson, Gene Ammons, Lucky Thompson and Art Blakey, all together in one band [...] that shit was all up in my body and that’s what I wanted to hear [...] and me up there playing with them.1” Miles was 18, he’d been playing trumpet for years and now he knew that this was what he wanted to play, and nothing else: to play with Bird! A year later he’d turned 19 and he was in New York, where he learned it all, up there alongside Bird and Dizzy.

Rock ‘n’ roll is often hard to define, or even to find, in these
fractured musical times. But to paraphrase an old saying,
you know it when you hear it. And you always hear it with
The Wallflowers. For the past 30 years, the Jakob Dylanled act has stood as one of rock’s most dynamic and
purposeful bands - a unit dedicated to and continually
honing a sound that meshes timeless songwriting and
storytelling with a hard-hitting and decidedly modern
musical attack.
That signature style has been present through the
decades, baked into the grooves of smash hits like 1996’s
‘Bringing Down the Horse’ as well as more recent and
exploratory fare like 2012’s ‘Glad All Over’.
But while it’s been nine long years since we’ve heard from
the group with whom he first made his mark, The
Wallflowers are silent no more. And Dylan always knew
they’d return. “The Wallflowers is much of my life’s work,”
he says simply. That life’s work continues with ‘Exit
Wounds’, the brand-new Wallflowers studio offering. The
collection marks the first new Wallflowers material since
‘Glad All Over’.
‘Exit Wounds’ is an ode to people - individual and
collective - that have, to put it mildly, been through some
stuff. “I think everybody - no matter what side of the aisle
you’re on - wherever we’re going to next, we’re all taking a
lot of exit wounds with us,” Dylan says. “Nobody is the
same as they were four years ago. That, to me, is what
‘Exit Wounds’ signifies. And it’s not meant to be negative at
all. It just means that wherever you’re headed, even if it’s
to a better place, you leave people and things behind, and
you think about those people and those things and you
carry them with you. Those are your exit wounds. And right
now, we’re all swimming in them.”

“Montreal’s genre-defying post-rock combo BIG|BRAVE could very well be the most noteworthy recent heavy curiosity to come out of the city in recent years.” - NOISEY

“…combines elements of Björk, Neurosis and Sunn O))) into a cohesive whole; but this whole is an ever evolving and challenging sonic mass.
- THE QUIETUS

Minimalism and instinct, structure/freedom and meticulous timing form the cornerstones of their precise, rhythmical sound.
Lyrically, the album explores the weight of race and gender, endurance and navigating other people’s behaviours, observation and protest. The band further comment “this album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while finding individual worth within this reality.”
This time featuring the core trio Robin Wattie, Mathieu Ball and Tasy Hudson, for their most collaborative record they’ve made so far. The band elaborate “having cut our teeth in very different musical backgrounds respectively, our intuitions vary, which has an interesting effect on our individual approaches and ears.”
For this record, BIG | BRAVE once again made the trek down to Rhode Island to record with Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. They remark “we fully trust his instinct as an engineer and his creative output, getting to experiment with textures, concepts, layers, and with pretty much every single recorded sound, the process of making records with Seth is an absolute journey and pleasure.”
With the initial seeds planted in 2012, with no other goal than simply experimenting with the instruments in their possession, Robin Wattie and Mathieu Ball started writing subtle ambient/minimalistic folk songs together. When long time friend Louis Alexandre Beauregard joined on drums, the goal still remained to play as tranquil as possible. After an incident where Wattie’s acoustic guitar broke, and having borrowed a friend’s electric as a replacement, larger amps that Ball had in storage from previous bands started to get incorporated to the outfit. Now with amplitude as a compositional tool, BB never lost interest in the power of minimalism and fragility. It became clear that loud volume would become just as effective as the lowest possible ones and the juxtaposition of both would become something BB still uses as their main MO to this day.
After self-releasing Feral Verdure in 2014, the band had the opportunity to open for Thee Silver Mt Zion in Montreal QC. After which, Efrim Manuel Menuck found something meaningful in the members and the band and invited them to open on future shows with Mt Zion and with Godspeed! You Black Emperor.
In 2015, the band entered the studio with Menuck and recorded “Au De La”. With no home for the record, they decided to take a chance in writing to Southern Lord. As luck would have it, Greg Anderson happened upon their email among hundreds and responded. Since then, the band has had a home with Southern Lord Records. (Along with Au De La, Southern Lord has released Ardor in 2017, A Gaze Among Them in 2019 and VITAL in 2021).
After Beauregard’s departure in 2018, the band traveled down to Rhode Island with Loel Campbell on drums to make a first record with Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. After the album’s release, with Campbell unable to tour, Tasy Hudson joined the ranks and the band spent most of the year touring their 2019 album “A Gaze Among Them”.
In 2020, the core trio of Ball, Wattie and Hudson once again made the trek down to Machines with Magnets to record their 5th LP “VITAL”.
Since their inception, the band has had many honours and privileges of touring a number of times in North America and Europe with bands such as Sunn O))), MY DISCO, The Body, Thou, Primitive Man and Thee Silver Mt Zion.

Second release of the year already from the party music people of Abstrack. This time, it’s Brussels based artist Strapontin whose original production is on the menu, with re interpretation from several gifted companions. The multitude here is no excuse for genericity or easy recipes, rather a fertile playground for toying around with a wide range of vibes and moods.

Matches is a poetic, sensual spoken-word piece. The song feels like a flower about to blossom, though with plenty of hybrid DNA in it. In the end it leaves the way wide open for further emotions to get through. And they do.

Sasnal Park is the emotion of wander : looking for something forever, but for what? The drums make you believe that you found it but they turn out to be a mirage, and so does every tangible element of the track. A beautiful journey in the end even if you don’t know where you’ve been.

Family Diner … no ambiguity this time : a mystical roller as dark as it is trippy. Or maybe more trippy. Either way, not sure you can resist dancing to this one played out loud. Lose yourself to screaming halfway through, but only to fall back well rooted in those dancing feet afterwards.

On the flip, remixers put it where they’re expected to : A Strange Wedding takes the wandering “Sasnal Park” on the Edge of trancy club music, closer to the roots of Abstrack parties.

Feon turns the belter “Family Diner” into a road roller : sirens and massive subs engage into a memorable fist fight.

And home man Vidock choses the very dreamlike “Matches”, adding quite a touch of dancefloor but not removing one inch of dream.

Pink Sweat$ has finally arrived with the unveiling of his highly anticipated debut album, PINK PLANET via Atlantic Records. PINK PLANET is a 16-track testament (plus 2 bonus tracks) to the Philadelphia rising superstar’s sonic abilities, luring in fans with ballads about his highs and lows, many successes and a heart-warming number from Pink along with family members. For his heartwarming debut, production credits include D Mile (Lucky Daye, H.E.R.), John Hill (Khalid), Rogét Chahayed (Drake, Miguel) and Michael Keenan.




PINK PLANET CD and vinyl will be available on 9th July. “Pink Planet is about love, it’s about inclusivity, and it’s about creative freedom. “As an artist you should have the ability to make whatever music feels good to you, and that’s what I tried to do with this album. Top to bottom, I’m giving a glimpse into my creative world; and I hope there’s a little something for everybody in it.” – Pink Sweat$




The new album includes eight brand new songs alongside six stellar tracks released in 2020 as THE PRELUDE EP, a token to fans adjusting to a new landscape surrounding the pandemic. His debut embodies a world that we aren’t living right now, with a purpose to heal and gift fans with a stellar project that speaks to listeners’ daily experiences. PINK PLANET further includes such captivating tracks as “Icy,” “17,” and the powerful “Not Alright,” all joined by official music videos streaming now at YouTube.




In 2021, Pink Sweat$ welcomes the year with a brand new remix to “At My Worst” featuring Kehlani, along with today’s release of his debut album, Pink Planet. Ultimately, Pink Sweat$ makes a statement by unapologetically bringing love to the forefront.

At the time of its release, in early 1978 Chinese Restaurant' showed a certain impact. It was recorded between London and Milano, during the second half of 1977. The results were not really punk rock, but post punk' or even some sort of proto post punk' would be adequate. It is something more in the direction of bands such as Ultravox!, Stranglers and Suicide rather than Sex Pistols and Ramones, due to the use of electronic keyboards, obsessive rhythms, tense harmonies, and scratching vocals emerging from generally dark sound textures. Chinese Restaurant' was definitely ahead of its time, especially in terms of Italian rock. Chrisma had their own authentic glory and the minimum we can do is to celebrate it with a beautiful sacred vinyl' reissue.

This is a pure labour of love, not only is Daniel Vangarde a musical legend, he created, produced and wrote, (together with his musical partner Jean Kluger) acts like Gibson Brothers, Ottawan and La Compagnie Creole, he’s also the father of Thomas “Daft Punk” Bangalter, one of Mighty Mouse’s musical heroes.

Mighty Mouse reveals: I loved the original, and wanted to keep the energy of it in my remix. I kept a lot of the music parts and added a few synth elements and re did the drums to support what was already there. It was much fun, and a little nerve racking. When I got the stems it was like a history lesson and I could hear where Daft Punk must have got some of their influence from, just listen to those vocoders!
I got the seal of approval from Daniel too, as he said…“It did put a great smile on my face too! congratulations, the remix is really good.

The remixer understood the spirit and energy of the music, this is rare.” Now, talking about a compliment!

Mighty Mouse’s mind was blown at this point, so we are excited to bring you this masterpiece in 12” format!

Grouplove announce surprise release of their fifth studio album, This Is This, featuring lead single “Deadline” - celebrated with a live performance of the single on CBS’ The Late Late Show with James Corden.
“We hope this album gives people the permission to fucking scream or headbang or punch walls,” says Grouplove. “It's important to stay emotional. The whole rainbow is important. If we just live in the light blues, are we really alive? I'm not. I need to feel it all.”

Following their GRAMMY-nominated album Healer, This Is This was produced by Grouplove and collaborator Ricardo Acasuso – with additional songs produced by Dave Sitek (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and Malay (Frank Ocean). The album was written and recorded during the global pandemic, fueled by all the upheaval and hardship of the past year. Recording this album proved both cathartic and powerfully creative for Grouplove, the sound of five friends finally letting go of all the anxiety, sadness, and frustration they’ve all had to endure.

Grouplove is: Hannah Hooper, Christian Zucconi, Andrew Wessen, Daniel Gleason, and Benjamin Homola.

In view of the immense Black Lives Matter mobilisation in reaction to the murder of George Floyd and the comparatively meagre societal reaction to the attack in Hanau, the question arises: How come our society does not show the same empathy and solidarity towards its own fellow citizens with Kurdish, Turkish, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Afghan migrant backgrounds or members of the Roma and Sinti?

How limited is our postcolonial discourse if we are unable to address the racist exploitation of those who repair our cars, deliver our parcels or harvest our asparagus?

It’s all a sham. Shake it off like a biometric photograph. Shake off that false consciousness. The Black Diaspora is a transatlantic lie invented by music curators and journalists. Embrace this nuanced return to structures and superstructures, to articulations and historical constellations as analytical tools.

Allow me to dampen your expectations. This is not the sound of decolonisation. This is no compilation of BLM protest songs. This is no celebration of Black emancipatory struggles. You will not be able to play this at your hip post-pandemic house party. This will not go down well with your woke friends. This is music for the square in the room. For that reluctant BAME/Person of Color repelled by your fetishisation of the African-American experience.

This is music for gated communities. This is Fehler Kuti singing of class relations, not of identities and positionalities. This is Fehler Kuti resisting.

Listen to these songs of infrastructure and appraisal of the welfare state. Join me in mourning the broken promises of prosperity for all. Send that “Ausländer“ of your mind to heaven. Colonialism fucked you up. Platform Capitalism is keeping you in chains. Are we to unionise all human and non-human workers at Amazon? Will modernity always have that "forever nigger“? What about those dispossessed field hands harvesting your asparagus?

All is lost. The system is rigged. Because all histories, gestures and identities have been absorbed into this late capitalist apparatus we call diversity. It can integrate anything and anyone. It made me. It is the price of the ticket. And it is unable to challenge its own premise of an atomised society. As if you and I had so little in common.

They will try and help you. They will build a museum for your history and a scholarship program for your future. I warn you. Don‘t let them give you a name. Resist appellation. Don’t get that German passport. Don‘t eat asparagus.

Fehler Kuti, Spring 2021

All songs by Julian Warner. Produced by Markus Acher and Tobias Siegert.

Markus Acher – drums, percussion, backing vocals Micha Acher – sousaphone, trumpet Cico Beck – synthesizer Jenny Bohn – backing vocals Pacifico Boy – vocals Katja Kobolt – spoken word Theresa Loibl – bass clarinet, backing vocals Sascha Schwegeler – steeldrum, kalimba, percussion, backing vocals Tobias Siegert – bass, synthesizers, percussion, backing vocals Julian Warner – piano, memotron, vocals

recorded and mixed by Tobias Siegert at Minga Records, july – december 2020 mastered by Moritz Illner at Duophonic

Cover art and photography by Andreas Neumeister. Layout by Sascha Schwegeler.

Fehler Kuti “Professional People” is part of the same multiverse as “The History of the Federal Republic of Germany as told by Fehler Kuti und die Polizei”. A production by Julian Warner. In cooperation with Münchner Kammerspiele. Funded by the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich. Released by Alien Transistor.

Greetings to the new generation of ‘Hip-Hop’ and ‘Shake Your Butt’ music. The man behind ‘Timeless Funk’ ain’t exactly no ‘Spring Funky Chicken’, yet he is still the ‘Funkiest Soul’ to rock this here nation.
Rufus Thomas is the Soul King and Grand Daddy of Funk; as his generation knew him then, as we know him today.

In the beginning, the ‘Power of the Most High’ said: ‘Let it be funky’. Then there was Rufus.
Rufus Thomas was born in 1917 in a small town outside of Memphis, Tennessee. At the age of ten he became a tap dancer. In the 1930s, Rufus worked professionally at the infamous Palace Theatre, Memphis, TN, as M.C., performing comedy and dance routines.

During the early 1940s, Rufus began his singing career. He also continued his M.C. acts at various notable nightclubs and theatres, for amateur nights. He was then considered to be a triple threat: dancer, comedian and singer! The notables he crossed hands with in those days were B.B. King, Bobby Bland and Johnny Ace. In the 1950s Rufus became one of the ‘Hip-pest’ DJs in Memphis TN W.I.D.A. radio station and is affiliated with the company to this day. He was quoted as saying ‘I’m young and loose and full of juice’. At those times he recorded ‘Bear-Cat’ for Sun Records, their first R&B hit for the label.
All-right ‘Kiddies,’ now I take you into the light of Rufus in the 1960s. When most of us were on our way to our happy existence, Rufus was already 30 years in the entertainment circuit. He was affiliated with STAX Records. With daughter Carla Thomas, he gave STAX their first hit, the duet, ‘Cause I Love You.’ Rufus’ world famous hits continued under this label, pouring songs out such as ‘Memphis Train,’ ‘Can Your Monkey Do The Dog,’…

The foregoing is merely a scratch on the surface of a remarkable man, who has dedicated most of his life to the entertainment business. It’s kept short and sweet so you know what you are dealing with.
Rufus was quoted as saying, ‘I ain’t a star, I don’t want to be a star. Stars have a habit of falling. I’m like the moon. Clouds may come and cover it occasionally, but it’s always there, and always shining. It’s just sometimes you don’t see it for a while but it’ll be back.’

If it wasn’t for Rufus, Soul Music would be missing one of its loudest sons. If he didn’t exist, somebody

Continued over…

would have to get up and invent him. And Funk? The man practically invented the stuff with James Brown.
Now at the age of 75 ‘The Oldest Teenager Alive’ check him out on this recording of ‘Timeless Funk’. We’ll agree and leave you with this note: Rufus is the ‘Moon’ that brought us what was ‘Funky’ then to what is ‘Funky’ now. So let us get ‘Buck Wild’ on the Funky side of things

Big Country’s sixth studio album, ‘The Buffalo Skinners’ was originally released in 1993. The self-produced, impassioned explosion of rock roundly delivers on pulling this band's working-class masculinity, love of full-throated guitar and sense of political and social outrage together in one rousing, melodic, lyrical onslaught.
Featuring the singles ‘Alone’ and ‘Ships’, along with fan favorites ‘What Are You Working For’ and “We’re Not In Kansas”, these relying on a heavier guitar sound than their previous album, the pace rarely lets up throughout, taking in the anthemic `The One I Love' and the outraged “The Selling of America” before it all ends on the angry, science-gone-wrong, cloak and dagger horror tale of “Chester's Farm”.
The original vinyl version of the album only had a limited pressing and was only one 1 vinyl. This new deluxe version has been split across 2 vinyl for optimum sound quality and also features some b-sides and rare tracks on side 4.
The package is a 6mm spine gatefold sleeve and 2x 180gm Heavyweight Black Vinyl with sleeve notes written by guitarist Bruce Watson.

Snapped Ankles return to the forest, but it's not as they left it. Trees planted in neat rows. A well-ordered monoculture with access roads and heavy machinery. The smell of greenwashed money in the air. There's no sign of the ancient woodland they emerged from on debut album, Come Play The Trees. And it's far cry from the gentrified East London they found themselves hawking on Stunning Luxury. All is not well in the face of progress. Welcome to the Forest Of Your Problems. Even among the famously close-knit woodwose community there are factions forming. Meet The Business Imp, The Cornucopian, The Nemophile and The Protester. Each with their own motivations and belief systems. Their own sense of injustice: contradictions, anxieties and guilt. There are woodwose who have risen to the top in the boom and bust world of real estate and hedge funds. Grab what you can before the next crash. Others find euphoria in the absolute conviction that wealth and technology will see us through this. There are those with their recycling in order, who are well-versed in the prospect of imminent ecological and economic collapse, burying themselves in vegan cookery and extensive international holiday itineraries. And there's an increasing number angry at the state of the world, ready to take to the streets and the trees in an attempt to force real change. Forest Of Your Problems runs the gamut of modern woodwose emotions. In this neat human approximation of the forest, it's an increasingly knotted affair. Despite all of this, Snapped Ankles haven't lost their innate ability to make you want to move your feet - their Teutonic forest rhythms are still shot through with post-punk lightning. Whether they're exploring those opportunities which might arise when a Nigerian prince emails out of the blue on 'The Evidence', or referencing the crooked woodwose attempting to go straight on 'Rhythm Is Our Business', this is music to lose your inhibitions to. The moments of pure elation on 'Shifting Basslines Of The Cornucopians' are worth the admission price alone - "It's a great time to be alive!" ...apparently. Snapped Ankles outsider status has always allowed them to hold a mirror up to society. Now the boundaries are not so clear. In the four years since Come Play The Trees was released, their cult has flourished. Previous album Stunning Luxury saw the band invited to play the BBC 6 Music Festival and a KEXP session on the back of a sold-out UK tour which culminated with two nights at Village Underground in London. As those who have witnessed the shamanic ritual of their live shows will attest, they are a truly unique, communal experience. Forest Of Your Problems will see the woodwose bring their ancient forest rhythms and high-wire, multi-media live act to ever bigger stages - including Camden's iconic Roundhouse in October.

Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie, alongside solo artist and Savages vocalist Jehnny Beth, presents this stunning debut solo project collection - exploring loss, miscommunication and emotional inarticulacy that a married couple experience as they realise that their relationship is breaking down.



‘Utopian Ashes’ draws on the tradition of country soul classics, such as Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris’s ‘Grievous Angel’ and George Jones and Tammy Wynette’s ‘We Go Together’, to deal with the heavy realities of love turning sour. It’s an album for people who have dealt with the inevitable sadness that comes with age and acknowledged the realities of life. There is no sweetening of the pill, but it does achieve what should be the goal of all good art: to make us feel less alone. And while it’s not autobiographical, it channels heartfelt truth from the songwriters’ own experiences.



In addition to Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth, the album features Johnny Hostile (bass) alongside Primal Scream trio Andrew Innes (guitar), Martin Duffy (piano) and Darrin Mooney (drums).

Blue Vinyl
Lynch protégé and Twin Peaks sound designer Dean Hurley coaxes an incredible puzzlebox of atmospheres and mood pieces on this killer contribution to our Documenting Sound series, now remastered and pressed on vinyl for what is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most cinematic and neon-lit instalment in the series. Like a
smudged and overdubbed copy of the BoC Maxima tape, with added iridescence.
Across almost 40 minutes we transition from aerosolised synths to romantic chromatics, thru to Nurse WIth Wound-style severed rhythms and fading glimmers of hope, ‘Concrete Feather’ epitomises Dean Hurley’s prized knack for nuanced instrumental story-telling in the finest and most engrossing style we could imagine. Against the backdrop of the Hollywood film industry that has primed us for as long as we can all remember, the music spans a panorama of lush, mirage-like choral pads and starry flickers thru to gloaming
nightmare sequences and screwed drums, while touching on some of the dankest synth tones this side of his ‘Anthology Resource’ volumes or indeed his soundtrack work for Twin Peaks: The Return. It’s full of dread and a slowly unfolding sense of tragedy.
“Having a regular practice of recording is probably the single most important element to my craft. It’s a way of dropping indiscriminate mile markers while constantly moving forward in time without ability to pause.
Over the years, working for David Lynch taught me a great deal about this and the concept and importance of experimentation. I’ve found myself clinging to those lessons during this time and using them as tools for both productivity and balance. His notion of experimentation is a simple one, yet incredibly profound. It was one of the very first words I heard him say during our initial meeting, and I never stopped hearing the term daily over the subsequent 13 years working together. An ‘experiment’ can provide a legitimate mental back-entrance into the act of creation. It can position an approach toward discovery as opposed to effort, and eliminate the thought that one needs to ‘will’ something into existence. It also aids in calming the judgmental
side of a brain from stepping on/interfering with expression…after all, experiments are not about success or failure, they’re simply about learning. In the Lynch school of thought, multiple experiments then become firewood…and with firewood, one can not only build but actually sustain a fire…even turn it into a multipleacre blaze or more.
Dean Hurley