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Caroline No’s 3rd album was built around a set of songs I was writing in the summer of 2019. I built the songs around real events, but looped these narratives into stories from song histories. The result is like an intersection of Brill building characters such as Carole King and Neil Sedaka with the bedroom fanaticism of historical music projects like Virgin Insanity.

After a year of playing the songs live in various formations, we aimed to record in the Australian summer. We knew Jim was going to be in Melbourne, and soon after he arrived in Australia, we met at Mick’s studio. Nick and Mick engineered, with Ian on bass, Jim on drums, Mick, Dee and me on guitars, and Dee and me singing. The sense of intuitive knowledge and performance was exhilarating as we played. We spent two days in the studio, and when we listened back later, it seemed a compelling representation of what had happened, captured live.

The band on this album are artists I grew up with. We were friends first, and engaging with the material, there was no formal structure to follow. Our interpretive approach meant the songs grew from simple structural frames and narrative poetics into full sonic landscapes, engaging across pop, folk, psychedelia and improvisation. Caroline No became - for this iteration - a shifting sonic space tied to intimacy, musical conversation and relationship, expressed in an open improvisatory way. The sound of the record is the result of trust, responsiveness and mutual knowledge.

The name Caroline No was an imaginary character through much of the work, arising from the Beach Boys’ melancholic paen to encountering a past lover who has cut her hair off. My idea was for Caroline No to become the locus for an ongoing composition project where I would write back into songs' history the perspective of patriarchal song’s subjects.

This is a recuperative project of easeful making; attempting reclamations of lost narratives, exploring love, loss and the psychedelic of the everyday.

Caroline Kennedy, January 2022, London

There is a tendency within modern electronica to pigeonhole and categorise, to package music into easily digestible formulae. In direct revolt comes Dutch artist Satori and his new album Dreamin’ Colours, released globally April 22nd, 2022, on renowned imprint Crosstown Rebels. Recorded at the esteemed Sonic Vista Studios in Ibiza, the nine-track LP has been greatly anticipated off the back of its proceeding’s singles: Yellow Blue Bus ft. Laska, Lalai ft. Ariana Vafadari and most recently Gin Song.

An ethereal, swirling body of work, Dreamin’ Colours is rich in texture, colour and imagination. Satori stretches himself out through languorous, mystical explorations of both the digital and the analogue elements of music, the result a beautifully conspired collection of world music, steeped in electronic and Balkan roots, and straddling a multitude of genres from blues and indie electronic to opera, folk and beyond.

Colourful Dream begins proceedings, taking the form of a gently-building opener. From the pluck of a guitar string to hypnotic flute-like elements, we soon arrive at the enchanting world of Lalai ft. Ariana Vafadari. Recorded in a four-hundred-year-old water well, it showcases the transcendent sound with which Satori has become best known, meandering through rustling hats and tribal-like drum patterns whilst the dulcet tones of Ariana shimmer softly throughout.

Tuti ft. Kalima takes on a harder edge, with gritty drum patterns opening into melancholic chords early on. Kalima’s vocals add an emotive touch to the piece, paving the way for Moj Dilbere: a euphoric cut that feels tribal and reflective in one.

We land at a similarly ethereal soundscape on The Gin Song ft. Mybaby, as star-like synths pulse alongside punchy percussion before Yellow Blue Bus ft. Laska takes its place. It begins with real-life ambience, made up of sounds recorded live in Ibiza as a bus passes and birds chirp merrily in the background. This swiftly gives way to a guitar-flecked bassline, opening neatly into the vocal offerings of both Satori and Laska.

Troublemaker ft. El Mundo retains an inherent melodic quality, progressing through poignant strings and whispering kick-hat combos. Powerful and poignant, the mesmeric sounds of Ora Dea and Moshe meander subtly into Lonely Boy (Redux) ft. Hugo Oak. The closing saga brings things to a wonderfully subdued finish, rounding off the album on a wholeheartedly calming note.

Although raised in the Netherlands, where commercial electronic music is of course king, on Dreamin’ Colours it is undeniably Satori’s Balkan heritage that layers his production with dreamy, ethereal, Eastern European influences. The album’s overriding voice lies in his exultant celebration of Eastern European music, weaving vibrant threads of its earthy, melodic, rhythmic sounds into his thick musical tapestry. Written during the pandemic and driven by the ache of separated love, the album is, Satori says, his most personal yet.

From holding down an eighteen-month residency at Heart, Ibiza to having nearly four-hundred-thousand listeners on Spotify each month, Satori is a truly worldwide artist in today’s electronic music scene. Having been championed by Damian Lazarus early on in his career, he has emerged as a must-see live act for fans from all corners of the globe. November 2021 marked the start of his USA tour, where his Maktub concept adorned some of the country’s most iconic clubbing institutions, whilst his discography speaks for itself, with a plethora of acclaimed releases on labels including Crosstown Rebels, Sol Selectas and DGTL Records to name a few. As Dreamin’ Colours introduces him to an ever-growing audience, Satori remains one of the most exhilarating, untamed and truly authentic forces in music.

Started in 2019, still motions is a Post Rock band from Phoenix, Arizona. The idea behind the music is to harbor emotions and feeling through sounds, creating stories for the listeners without words. still motions released their first record, Mirrors, in May, 2020 and quickly caught the attention of the scene. It was named a top 10 release of 2020 by multiple music outlets, and received numerous outstanding reviews. The band aims to follow up this effort with their upcoming record, syn?the?sis, out Summer 2022.

‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ is a sprawling album exploring the deepest elements and possibilities of Big Thief. To truly dig into all that the music of Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchik, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia desired in 2020, the band decided to write and record a rambling account of growth as individuals, musicians and chosen family over four distinct recording sessions.

 In Upstate New York, Topanga Canyon, The Rocky Mountains, and Tucson, Arizona, Big Thief spent five months in creation and came out with 45 completed songs. The most resonant of this material was edited down into the 20 tracks that make up ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’, a fluid and adventurous listen.

 The album was produced by drummer James Krivchenia, who initially pitched the recording concept for ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ back in late 2019 with the goal of encapsulating the many different aspects of Adrianne’s songwriting and the band onto a single record.

 The attempt to capture something deeper, wider and full of mystery points to the inherent spirit of Big Thief. Traces of this open-hearted, non-dogmatic faith can be felt through previous albums but here on ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ lives the strongest testament to its existence.

Growing up in the Californian sprawl and the vast suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, Caleb Dailey largely dismissed the country and western music that surrounded him. Instead, he was drawn to independent rock, experimental zones, and other genre-defying forms, which led him to create skewed rock music with Bear State and establish the “minimal art label” Moone Records with his brother Micah Dailey in 2013. But in the early half of the 2010s, Dailey began to hear things differently. Drawn into the left-of-center works of artists like Gram Parsons and Blaze Foley, a more idiosyncratic take on country, folk, and roots music began to swirl in his imagination.

Wandering into the form’s cowboy chords and lonesome scenes, Dailey found himself wondering what his own country album might sound like. The result is his debut solo album, a collection of covers called Warm Evenings, Pale Mornings; Beside You Then. Produced by John Dieterich of Deerhoof, Keiko Beers, and Dailey himself, it’s a melancholy charmer, rooted in traditional ideas but free roaming in its scope. Laced with synths, pedal steel, acoustic guitars, and commanded by Dailey’s full and woozy voice, it owes as much to the busted waltzes of Lambchop and the homespun lo-fi folk of Little Wings (whose Kyle Field appears on the album via a spoken intermission) as it does to the songwriters and performers who provide its source material, which include Parsons, Foley, Elvis Presley associate Chips Moman, steel guitarist Buddy Emmons, and others.

“The subversive nature of country music isn’t as much at the surface as some other genres,” Dailey says. “But the deeper down the ‘country hole’ I went, the more I wanted to be part of it. It is truly a strange world.”

The hands of Dailey and his collaborators, which includes a wide roster of DIY experimentalists like James Fella of art punks Soft Shoulder, Jay Hufman (Gene Tripp), Lonna Kelley of Giant Sand, Japanese DIY hero’s Koji Shibuya and Tori Kudo, Nicholas Krgovich, Markus Acher of The Notwist, and more, that strangeness is accentuated. Dailey doesn't aspire to retro Nashville fetishism or sanctioned notions of “realness” so much as a genuine outsider authenticity. Take his version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” for example: a highlight of the record, it pairs familiar genre signifiers like pedal steel and guitar strums with warbled synths. Then there’s his read of “Dreaming My Dreams,” originally made famous by Waylon Jennings (who also did time in the Arizona desert), which morphs from a mournful ballad into a wash of far-off sonic noise.

The attention here is on the songcraft itself, with Dailey inhabiting these songs and turning them inside out to reveal unexpected tenderness and playfulness.

Recorded at home with an acoustic guitar and 4-track, Dailey began open correspondences with his collaborators, who fleshed out ideas and added touches, often working with skeletal frames before Dieterich and Dailey shaped it into a cohesive whole. “John is the reason this album exists,” Dailey says. “He sculpted all these parts together in such an otherworldly way. He is truly a magician.” Deeply allergic to insincerity, Dailey avoids any trace of irony. He’s created a cohesive gem out of disparate parts, uniting Americana songcraft with experimental disassemblage. From this bric-à-brac, he’s made something touching and beautifully strange.

Vinyl LP pressing. 2014 release, the second album from the British singer who has worked with the Slits, Ian Brown, Jamie T. and others. She is also the daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook. Produced by Prince Fatty, TWICE sees Hollie's obvious love of Reggae joined by other influences including Bond-like strings, Brazilian percussion, dark Disco and shades of Giorgio Moroder. She is joined on the album by Dennis Bovell, Omar, George Dekker and Winston Francis.

Lost somewhere between the mysterious alleys of 70s Istanbul and the scorching sun and crystal blue sea of Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Şatellites self-titled debut album is set to be released on Batov Records on April 1st.

The Şatellites’ sound shimmers between traditional Turkish folk and instrumentation, ethereal psychedelic guitar leads and groovy dance floor baselines. The resulting concoction of songs draws on cross continental influence yet at its core is a desire to illuminate the vivid qualities of classic Turkish music, honouring the Anatolian folk and psych artists from this golden era of music. From the funky disco beat of Disko Arabesque to the celestial lead guitar in Yağmur Yağar Taş Üstüne, the band add fire and flair to time-honoured pieces of Turkish music giving them new meanings. Covering important tracks such as female singer Kamuran Akkor’s track Olurmu Dersin, and musician and guitarist Zafer Dilek’s Yekte, the album covers an array of original pieces of different musical styles and sounds, that once have and continue to flow out of Turkey. The band boasts six members; Ariel Harrosh (Bass) Lotan Yaish (Drums), Yuli Shafriri (Vocals), Tsuf Mishali (Keys and Synths), Tal Eyal (Percussion) and Itamar Kluger (Diwan saz, both electric and acoustic, electric baglama, Greek 4 double string bouzouki). They came together some years after band leader Itamar Kluger discovered the saz whilst travelling the Kaçkar mountains in Turkey’s eastern region. The saz being a long necked, plucked stringed instrument native to the rural areas of the country, which remains an integral part of Şatellites’ union, and plays predominance throughout the bands’ album and music.

In the same way the guitar was electrified in the 1930s, the electrification of the saz in the 1960s led to an explosion of rock music dredged in middle eastern influence, a musical genre fittingly called “Anatolian Rock” and based on the principles of Anglo-American and psychedelic rock music, yet incorporating the style, rhythm, and scales of traditional Anatolian folk music.

As such, throughout the creation of the album, the band conceived the idea of intertwining differing elements such as the groove of funk, the rhythm of disco, and reverb of psychedelic, with traditional middle-eastern rhythm and structure, opening up the wealth of Turkish music to the western world, so that anyone and everyone can relate to something from the album. With that said, Şatellites emphasise that their music is not fundamentally Turkish music, on the contrary, they merely try to sound as close to the genre as possible. Their sole aim is to honour this amazing culture and to present it to the world in a more accessible and attainable form.

Since their debut 45 back in 2019, Night Owls have consistently taken the bar up a notch re-imagining classic funk & soul with a Jamaican twist. With eight sold out 45’s in a span of three years and regular airplay on BBC6, KCRW and more, we’re happy to announce this much anticipated LP “Versions” comprising all their groove filled singles to date. This all-star production team comprised of Dan Ubick (The Lions, Connie Price and the Keystones, De La Soul) on Guitar & Percussion, Blake Colie (Arise Roots,The Lions, Hollie Cook) on Drum Kit, Dave Wilder (The Lions, Ziggy Marley, Macy Gray) on Bass, and Roger Rivas (The Aggrolites, Jason Mraz, LBDA) on Organ & Piano, team up with many of today’s top soul singers to bring their signature take on beloved chart topping hits and deep cuts. Featuring vocalists Afrodyete (Breakestra),Terin Ector (Orgone), Durand Jones (The Indications), Malik “The Freq” Moore (The Lions),Alex Désert (Hepcat,The Lions), Jesse Wagner (The Aggro- lites), Jamie Allensworth (Jungle Fire), Sy Smith (Macy Gray, Sheila E.), Chris Dowd (Fishbone), John Arthur Bigham (Fishbone, Soul of John Black), Kevin Sandbloom, Kendra Morris and Destani Wolf (Matisyahu,The Pharcyde), each track was carefully selected by producer Dan Ubick to match the featured vocalists strength resulting in a heavy soul and dub infused LP that surely won’t want to leave your turntable!

All Away Lou is the new band from Lou Hanman; a 40 something, queer, English woman living in Philadelphia, PA, still playing punk rock three decades in because it's fun and she needs it! The force behind UK punk favourites Caves & Flamingo 50. Lou emigrated to the US 6 years ago to pursue music full time, touring & recording drums, bass, guitar for the likes of RVIVR, Mikey Erg, Thin Lips, Katie Ellen, Queen of Jeans, Worriers. After a significant songwriting drought, the pandemic and a break from touring gave Lou the space to focus on her own musical output and spend some time recording at Headroom Studios in her current hometown of Philadelphia, PA with Kyle Pulley and Jackie Milestone. While she records everything herself, All Away Lou is very much a band, and an opportunity to get loud, sweaty and rock out as soon as the possibility arises. The name simply comes from never feeling at home, always away. She had felt the culture shock of moving to the states from the UK (especially of the political landscape after November 2016) and a breakup that underpinned the realization that life was not turning out the way she had hoped. Lyrics on the record reflect this point in Lou’s life: the need to return to a feeling of “home” and have the courage to change her mind, take a new path and not settle for things that didn’t feel right. All Away Lou will be taking the album on the road with dates in the UK & Ireland supporting Jeff Rosenstock & Fresh in April 2022.

The Sub Pop debut by ever-evolving art-punk band Guerilla Toss, who have done prior releases with DFA, Tzadik, NNA Tapes and Feeding Tube Records. This album follows a 2020 Sub Pop Singles Club release.

Past releases have received great reviews, including acclaim from The Needledrop, Stereogum (Best EPs Of 2019) and more.

Dig deep enough inside yourself - start treating your body as your sanctuary rather than your enemy - and eventually you’ll find yourself blooming right back out into the sun. That’s the transformation Guerilla Toss trace on their newest album ‘Famously Alive’, their effervescent Sub Pop debut. After a decade sprinkling glitter into grit, building a reputation as one of the most ferociously creative art-rock groups working, the upstate New York band have eased fully into their light. This is Guerilla Toss at their most luminescent - awake, alive and extending an open invitation to anyone who wants to soak it all up beside them.

Singer and lyricist Kassie Carlson, multi-instrumentalist Peter Negroponte and guitarist Arian Shafiee wrote ‘Famously Alive’ at home in the Catskills during the pervading quiet of the pandemic year. The uncertainty of COVID-19 lockdowns and the total disruption of routine forced Carlson to negotiate with herself in new and challenging ways. “You have to be with yourself all the time during the pandemic,” she says. “I had to figure out a way to manage my anxiety. The pandemic was hard, but it helped me get comfortable inside my own body. My peace of mind came out of being thrust into the deepest shit. This album is all about being happy, being alive, and strength. It’s meant to inspire people.”

‘Famously Alive’ finds Guerilla Toss coming into the fullness of their power, celebrating their prismatic idiosyncrasies from a place of optimism and abundance. It is a joyous album, equal parts bizarre, accessible and fun.

The Sub Pop debut by ever-evolving art-punk band Guerilla Toss, who have done prior releases with DFA, Tzadik, NNA Tapes and Feeding Tube Records. This album follows a 2020 Sub Pop Singles Club release.

Past releases have received great reviews, including acclaim from The Needledrop, Stereogum (Best EPs Of 2019) and more.

Dig deep enough inside yourself - start treating your body as your sanctuary rather than your enemy - and eventually you’ll find yourself blooming right back out into the sun. That’s the transformation Guerilla Toss trace on their newest album ‘Famously Alive’, their effervescent Sub Pop debut. After a decade sprinkling glitter into grit, building a reputation as one of the most ferociously creative art-rock groups working, the upstate New York band have eased fully into their light. This is Guerilla Toss at their most luminescent - awake, alive and extending an open invitation to anyone who wants to soak it all up beside them.

Singer and lyricist Kassie Carlson, multi-instrumentalist Peter Negroponte and guitarist Arian Shafiee wrote ‘Famously Alive’ at home in the Catskills during the pervading quiet of the pandemic year. The uncertainty of COVID-19 lockdowns and the total disruption of routine forced Carlson to negotiate with herself in new and challenging ways. “You have to be with yourself all the time during the pandemic,” she says. “I had to figure out a way to manage my anxiety. The pandemic was hard, but it helped me get comfortable inside my own body. My peace of mind came out of being thrust into the deepest shit. This album is all about being happy, being alive, and strength. It’s meant to inspire people.”

‘Famously Alive’ finds Guerilla Toss coming into the fullness of their power, celebrating their prismatic idiosyncrasies from a place of optimism and abundance. It is a joyous album, equal parts bizarre, accessible and fun.

A transcendental journey that takes in meditative musical mantras, sprawling tenor sax improvisation and mesmeric percussion, the new album byWork Money Death(the group that backed ATA artist Tony Burkill on his 2017 debut record of the same name) seeks to reinterpret the sound of artists such as Pharoah Sanders & Alice Coltrane over two tracks: the brooding tension of A-Side"Dusk"and the sanguine & uplifting"Dawn"on the B-Side.Titled "The Space In Which The Uncontrollable Unknown Resides Can Be The Place From Which Creation Arises", this new LP was conceived and recorded by Tony Burkill and Bassist Neil Innes during the spring/summer of 2020.

A stalwart of the Leeds music scene for the best part of 3 decades, Tony Burkill had maintained a low profile nationally, choosing to favour continued study and development on the instrument over attainment of success or recognition within the music industry. With his debut release on ATA in 2017 he impressed audiences with his powerful and gutsy approach to improvisation. Also featuring on the record are Drummer Sam Hobbs (The Electric Doctor M and Producer of Matthew Bourne's Moogmemory), Bassist Neil Innes (The Sorcerers, The Lewis Express), Pianist Adam Fairhall (Nat Birchall) and Percussionist Pete Williams (The Sorcerers, The Lewis Express).

Originally conceived as a large scale group performance of a single extended piece "The space in which the uncontrollable unknown resides, can be the place from which creation arises"was written by Tony and Neil through a series of extended improvisations similar to the extended meditation sessions that both musicians practice. These sessions enabled a state of flow through which Tony's compositional approach to improvisation yielded meaningful melodic fragments that would be returned to and developed in a way similar to someone returning to the mantra.

Heiko Voss has earned near mythical status as a torchbearer for the emotional, deeply felt and quietly radical style of electronic music. The blissed-out radiance of his Kompakt Pop single, “I Think About You” remains one of the label catalog highlights and a stellar run of collaborative singles as Schaeben & Voss; others might know him for his stewardship of the excellent, much-underrated Firm imprint. But with his new album, 3:30 Minutes To Live, released by Michael Mayer’s label Imara, Voss returns after a long silence with a beautiful collection of songs that hymn heartbreak with a lusciously melodic touch.

There is something definitive and newly confident in 3:30 Minutes To Live that has it feeling like a real statement of intent if compared to his earlier releases. “Although it’s not, 3:30 Minutes To Live feels like my debut album,” Voss reflects. “All releases before were more song sketches or electronic dance tracks.” Bunkering down in Teary Eyes Studio, Voss worked up somewhere between thirty and forty sketches of songs, which he whittled down to the twelve collected here, all of them situated in a unique space, but very much in accord with Voss’s defining aesthetic, which he describes as “indie pop music with a lot of guitar, electronic elements and a great love for melancholic ‘80s synth-lines.”

Voss is sensitive to both variety and consistency – 3:30 Minutes To Live sits together as an assured, vibrant collection of pop songs, but it’s marked by all kinds of surprising incident, like the guitar solo that erupts out of “This Is My Life”, or the acoustic guitar-led melancholy of the closing “This Summer”. It’s all borne of the alchemy of the studio process and the intimate romance of music-making. “If you constantly feel a little bit like you’re in love while writing and producing your music – simply because of the sound of the synth flowing warmly and gently through the room, or because the sequence of notes awakens something in you, or even a randomly arising groove in the loop of a guitar lick makes you shout, ‘Ha!!’ – then it usually becomes a beautiful song,” Voss nods. “Those moments make me happy.”

There’s also a delicious tension between the push of the music, its melodic lushness and gliding, ballerina-like movement, and the darker currents that pull through Voss’s lyrics, inspired by a “short, dramatic and toxic love affair.” This may read like familiar terrain for a pop album, but the way Voss weaves language through both the extra-linguistic joys of music and the inarticulate speech of the heart somehow allows for direct communication that is simultaneously plain-spoken and deeply profound. “Say It” is a simple, devastatingly effective plaint of alienation; “She Wasn’t Lonely” a simple portrait of everyday living set to chiming, clacking guitars, the music in the bridge taking astral flight as the titular character ‘lets herself go.’

A smart and sharp collection of songs that captures you with its gorgeous melodicism just as it blindsides you with its aching heart, 3:30 Minutes To Live is Heiko Voss at his most assured and open-hearted best.

Heiko Voss hat sich als Fackelträger einer emotionalen, von ganzem Herzen kommenden und nicht auf den ersten Blick radikalen Spielart von elektronischer Musik einen nahezu mythischen Status erarbeitet. Das schiere Glück, welches seine Kompakt Pop-Single "I Think About You" aus dem Jahr 2003 immer noch ausstrahlt, macht sie nach wie vor zu einem der Highlights des Label-Katalogs, wo sie neben einer ganzen Reihe hervorragender Singles als Schaeben & Voss steht; andere kennen Heiko vielleicht durch das tolle und vielfach unterschätzte Label Firm, für das er zusammen mit Thomas Schaeben verantwortlich war. Mit seinem neuen Album “3:30 Minutes To Live”, das am 4. März 2022 auf Michael Mayers Label Imara erscheint, kehrt Voss nun nach einer langen Pause mit einer wunderschönen Sammlung von Songs zurück, die den Herzschmerz – getragen auf den Schwingen unwiderstehlicher Melodien – ausgiebig besingen.

“3:30 Minutes To Live” kommt mit einer gehörigen Portion Überzeugung und Selbstbewusstsein daher, was im Vergleich zu seinen früheren Veröffentlichungen wie ein bewusstes Statement wirkt. "Obwohl es das nicht ist, fühlt sich ‘3:30 Minutes To Live’ wie mein Debütalbum an", meint Voss. "Alle meine vorherigen Veröffentlichungen waren eher Song-Skizzen oder elektronische Dance-Tracks."

Im Teary Eyes Studio arbeitete Voss zwischen dreißig und vierzig Songskizzen aus, die er auf die zwölf hier versammelten Songs reduzierte, die alle ihren eigenen Raum einnehmen, dabei aber sehr gut mit Voss' übergeordneter Ästhetik harmonieren, die er als "Indie-Pop-Musik mit viel Gitarre, elektronischen Elementen und einer großen Liebe für melancholische 80er-Jahre-Synthies" beschreibt.

Voss ist sowohl für Abwechslung als auch für Konsistenz empfänglich - “3:30 Minutes To Live“ ist eine selbstsichere, lebendige Sammlung von Popsongs, die aber auch von allerlei Überraschungen geprägt ist, wie dem Gitarrensolo, das aus “This Is My Life” herausbricht, oder die von einer Akustikgitarre getragene Melancholie des abschließenden “This Summer”.

Das alles ist entstanden aus der besonderen Alchemie des Studioprozesses und der intimen Romantik des Musikmachens. "Wenn du beim Schreiben und Produzieren deiner Musik ständig das Gefühl hast, ein bisschen verliebt zu sein – einfach weil der Klang des Synthesizers warm und sanft durch den Raum fließt, oder weil die Notenfolge etwas in dir weckt, oder sogar ein zufällig auftauchender Groove im Loop eines Gitarren-Licks dich ein 'Ha!' ausrufen lässt – dann wird daraus meist ein schöner Song", nickt Voss. "Diese Momente machen mich glücklich."

Es entsteht eine besondere Spannung zwischen dem positiven Elan der Musik, ihrer melodischen Verschwendungssucht, den gleitenden, Ballerina-artigen Bewegungen und den dunkleren Strömungen, die durch Voss' Texte ziehen, die von einer "kurzen, dramatischen und giftigen Liebesaffäre" inspiriert sind. Das mag sich wie ein vertrautes Terrain für ein Pop-Album anhören, aber die Art und Weise, wie Voss die Sprache sowohl durch die nonverbalen Elemente der Musik als auch durch den nicht artikulierten Ausdruck des Herzens verwebt, ermöglicht eine Art direkte Kommunikation, die gleichzeitig ausgesprochen klar und trotzdem tiefgründig ist. “Say It" ist eine erschütternd einprägsame Anklage von Entfremdung; "She Wasn't Lonely" ist ein einfaches Porträt des alltäglichen Lebens, untermalt von klappernden Gitarren, in dem die Musik einen astralen Flug unternimmt, während die Titelfigur sich "gehen lässt".

“3:30 Minutes To Live“ ist eine kluge und scharfsinnige Sammlung von Songs, die den Zuhörenden mit ihren wunderschönen Melodien fesseln, aber auch mit einer Menge schmerzenden Gefühlen konfrontiert. Ein Album, auf dem Heiko Voss ganz bei sich ist und Euch dabei mehr als nur sein Herz öffnet.

While previous albums, most notably Leland and Minutes of Sleep (2014) as well as two albums released as one half of the duo Aris Kindt (most notably the stellar Swann and Odette from 2017) have relied on singular thematic and narrative drives that were often of a personal, collaborative, or hermetic in nature, Thresholds is an album that aspires to sonic universality and the presentation of a fully formed psychoacoustical world. That being said it is not an “album of ideas”. Inspired by the ecological and political upheavals of the present and the role of speculative thought as an avenue of global transformation Thresholds is the work of a mature artist fully in control of his powers. Both expansive and nuanced the album widens the aperture of the affective possibilities of the electronic assemblage; themes skip from one track to the next, elevating and informing each other in tangible fields of abstract figuration. The titles, while often heady, concisely allude to strategies implicit in the construction and arrangement of the works: Cut Up, within the context of the album, is exactly that. Luck Takes a Step juxtaposes stately synths with just the right touch of playful fluctuation and latent atonality. The title track itself is a knotted mass of uncertainty and propulsive beats the breakdown of which is a nervous series of fits and starts that resonate not just within the track but as the fulcrum of the entire album: the threshold of our Threshold: “…we are caught up in our own original transversals of time to the point of dissolution, and that which remains a part of the contrivance of ourselves is ultimately that which crosses the threshold and is somehow, miraculously, reconstituted on the other side of it. Because it is via the threshold that we can best observe the conditions of experience as lived even as we cross to the other side of understanding, rejoining the ancient equilibriums of which we, in our depths, are comprised.” (From the liner notes)
No track overstays its welcome and with the help of standout vocalist Eliana Glass, and instrumentation by Dave Harrington (Darkside with Nicolas Jaar), Mark Nelson (Pan American), Will Shore, Greg Paulus and Gareth Redmond, and mixed by Phil Weinrobe, the result is a dizzyingly pure inward gaze that is first and foremost an album about connection.

I was invited to perform in Melbourne, Australia. It happened thanks to my dear old friend Mick Glossop, who made the suggestion to Sophia Brous, at the time the curator of a music-festival called Supersense' at the Melbourne Arts Centre in summer 2015. In addition to the solo performance I'd planned, Sophia proposed an additional collaboration or session performances with some of the other participating musicians. I had never been very happy in performing public sessions". I've always tried to first look for a conceptual approach, and my wife, Ilona J. Ziok, came up with the idea of performing some Ash Ra Tempel classics. That's when the idea for an Experience' was born. I decided that pieces from the second and third Ash Ra Tempel albums Schwingungen' and Seven Up' (both from 1972) would be most appropriate for a group performance with Ariel Pink, Shags Chamberlain and Oren Ambarchi. We conversed by email, and much to my surprise, they all claimed to be very familiar with this music. ... It felt a bit like pushing at open doors - or, to put it another way - it felt like being welcomed with open arms. We finally met in Melbourne for a relaxed afternoon rehearsa

Johnny Marr started his career with The Smiths, beginning an amazing history as one of the most influential songwriters and guitarists in British independent music. His subsequent creative journey has seen him at the heart of The The, Electronic, Modest Mouse and The Cribs, as well as working with such names as The Pretenders, Talking Heads, The Avalanches, and the musician and composer Hans Zimmer - with whom he recently recorded the score and soundtrack for the forthcoming James Bond film, No Time To Die, including the title track created with Billie Eilish.

In the wake of his time leading The Healers, Marr’s solo career has given rise to three UK Top Ten albums - The Messenger (2013), Playland (2014) and 2018’s Call The Comet, and he will be returning in February with his most expansive work to date, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4. It was created during the long, uncertain period that followed the arrival of the UK’s first lockdown, when his focus was pushed into both his interior life, and evoking the emotional states of others. “It’s an inspired record, and I couldn’t wait to get in and record every day,” he says. “But I had to go inwards.”

The upcoming album reflects his multi-faceted past, but takes his music somewhere startlingly new. “There’s a set of influences and a very broad sound that I’ve been developing - really since getting out of The Smiths,” he says. “And I hear it in this record. There are so many strands of music in it. I think it’s the most ambitious solo record I’ve done.”

"Shelter of Bones was recorded over a three-year period from 2019-2021. “The pandemic allowed me to take my time, and really think about how I want the songs to come across,” reflects Patlansky.
“In many ways I tried to keep the sound from past albums that I’ve become known for in my arrangements and song writing, but definitely took some different turns along the way. I’ve always seen a record as a time capsule of where an artist is in a particular time of their lives.""
For Patlansky, Shelter of Bones covers a three- year period of many ups and downs, and, as a result, the South African guitarist believes the process has been a very interesting journey. Patlansky will support the album with a nationwide UK tour from March 31– April 12 with special guest Arielle. "

Ellise is a singer, songwriter, and producer based in Los Angeles. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Ellise grew up on her dad’s classic rock and her Iranian mom’s traditional Arabic music while her own taste skewed poppier, influenced by the sounds and sights of the Y2K era. After graduating high school early to pursue music full time, she moved to Los Angeles, where she spent several years honing her craft in the studio before beginning to work in earnest on her debut album, Chaotic, alongside regular collaborator Micah Gordon.

Written almost entirely by Ellise herself, the record has a distinctive point of view wrapped in some of pop’s sleekest and most thrilling sounds, inspired by the music she’s surrounded herself with over the past two years (think Ariana Grande, Lorde, Dominic Fike, Lana Del Ray, Amy Winehouse, and Fat Joe). Standout songs like “Bubblegum Brain,” “Princess,” and “Zipper Lips!” present Ellise’s blueprint as both expertly produced pop and highly intelligent ruminations on love, loss, and what it’s like to feel flawed in a world that often demands perfection. Chaotic is certainly a product of a confident young artist steeped in pop’s richest stock, but also a singer and songwriter whose clear-cut vision is imprinted on each of the album’s songs.

Fronted by brothers Peter O'Doherty and Reg Mombassa, Dog Trumpet have been playing, writing and recording their
music since the early 90s. Reg and Pete were founding members of iconic Australian band Mental As Anything, who hit
the charts around the world with “Live It Up”. The band made a mark with their left field mix of music, art, video and
humour and leading eventually to ARIA awards and induction into the Hall of Fame in 2009.

Recorded and produced by Peter at home in his 'South Road' studio, the brothers have created an inventive and original
body of work distinguished by an eccentric and offbeat harmonic warmth and melodic drive propelled by Reg's
distinctive slide guitar and Peter's elegant acoustic guitar and mandolin. Their poetic, yet at times absurdist lyrics are set
against a sonic backdrop that could loosely be described as a meld of rock and roll, psychedelic folk, country and semiabstract blues.

Released in 2007, “Antisocial Tendencies” was their fourth album, and features “Antisocial Tendencies”, “Shadows”,
“Two Blue Birds” and “Once Too Often”.

Fronted by brothers Peter O'Doherty and Reg Mombassa, Dog Trumpet have been playing, writing and recording their
music since the early 90s. Reg and Pete were founding members of iconic Australian band Mental As Anything, who hit
the charts around the world with “Live It Up”. The band made a mark with their left field mix of music, art, video and
humour and leading eventually to ARIA awards and induction into the Hall of Fame in 2009.

Recorded and produced by Peter at home in his 'South Road' studio, the brothers have created an inventive and original
body of work distinguished by an eccentric and offbeat harmonic warmth and melodic drive propelled by Reg's
distinctive slide guitar and Peter's elegant acoustic guitar and mandolin. Their poetic, yet at times absurdist lyrics are set
against a sonic backdrop that could loosely be described as a meld of rock and roll, psychedelic folk, country and semiabstract blues.

Released in 2010, “River Of Flowers” was their fifth album, and features “Buttons Undone”, “Mr Alcohol And Mrs
Marijuana”, “Great South Road” and “The Wilson Home For Crippled Children”.

Fronted by brothers Peter O'Doherty and Reg Mombassa, Dog Trumpet have been playing, writing and recording their music since the
early 90s. Reg and Pete were founding members of iconic Australian band Mental As Anything, who hit the charts around the world
with “Live It Up”. The band made a mark with their left field mix of music, art, video and humour and leading eventually to ARIA
awards and induction into the Hall of Fame in 2009.

Recorded and produced by Peter at home in his 'South Road' studio, the brothers have created an inventive and original body of work
distinguished by an eccentric and offbeat harmonic warmth and melodic drive propelled by Reg's distinctive slide guitar and Peter's
elegant acoustic guitar and mandolin. Their poetic, yet at times absurdist lyrics are set against a sonic backdrop that could loosely be
described as a meld of rock and roll, psychedelic folk, country and semi-abstract blues.

Released in 2013, double album “Medicated Spirits” was their sixth album, and features “Speed Of Light”, “Made In the World”,
“Bored Wife” and “Ray Davies And The Kinks”.

Fronted by brothers Peter O'Doherty and Reg Mombassa, Dog Trumpet have been playing, writing and recording their
music since the early 90s. Reg and Pete were founding members of iconic Australian band Mental As Anything, who hit
the charts around the world with “Live It Up”. The band made a mark with their left field mix of music, art, video and
humour and leading eventually to ARIA awards and induction into the Hall of Fame in 2009.

Recorded and produced by Peter at home in his 'South Road' studio, the brothers have created an inventive and original
body of work distinguished by an eccentric and offbeat harmonic warmth and melodic drive propelled by Reg's
distinctive slide guitar and Peter's elegant acoustic guitar and mandolin. Their poetic, yet at times absurdist lyrics are set
against a sonic backdrop that could loosely be described as a meld of rock and roll, psychedelic folk, country and semiabstract blues.

Released in 2020, “Great South Road” is their seventh album, and features “Wallpaper”, “Gravity”, “You’ve Heard It All
Before” and “Oversea And Elsewhere”.

Many of you will be aware of the band Homegrown Syndrome (we released the single a few years ago). They were also known locally as Homegrown Funk & the band Memphis that put out one extremely rare two sider. A party Side 'Shake and Rock' flipped with a top of the rung ballad 'Inside My Love', it has everything collectors want, Rarity & Quality so sells for 500+ all day long, below Robert Garcia gives us the history....

"Memphis" were members of the Memphis based group "Home Grown Funk." Home Grown Funk was also known as "Homegrown Syndrome," a controversial name bestowed to them. Before heading to LA they gigged all over Memphis. Some of the members were from an earlier 70s group called "Brothers Unlimited" and had earlier ties during the 60s with the "Memphis Invaders" (a peaceful civil rights activist group).

With aspirations of pushing Homegrown further, a few members including Jerry Jones made the move out west. It was LA 1977 when they were introduced to Ike Tuner through a mutual friend "Ricky G". It was a casual meetup. Then one night Ike had his son Ike Jr. go check them out while performing at the Soul Train hangout spot "Maverick Flats". Ike Jr. praised their performance to Ike and he had them come out to his Inglewood studio. The group walked into the studio with a funky track already playing and that's when Jerry Jones improvised this opportunity and started singing. Ike then turned and said… "Who is that singing?" Jerry said, "Thats me." Then Ike replied " YOU BIG MUTHAF***A! You could be my new Tina." From that point the group cut bunch of tracks with Ike over the years up until they're feature on his 1980 album "The Edge."

In 1981 Perry Kibble (Keyboardist for Taste Of Honey) was at "Concerts In The Park" and heard Home Grown Funk performing. He linked up with the group and got them a deal with Arista. During this time they recorded their hit track " Confrontation." Perry suggested that the group change their name because he didn't want another group with the work "Funk" in it and hence "Homegrown Syndrome." They also use the Arista studio to cut an unreleased acetate with tracks "Got the love" and "Party Vibes" soon to be reissued on ATON.

Around the same time they were introduced to a fella named Roger Green. Green asked the group to come over to his home studio to cut the track "Inside My Love." Upon naming the record Roger Green suggested to go by "Memphis" since they were all from there. This record was eventually pressed in 1982 as small run becoming extremely hard to find.

Words by: Robert Garcia

Many of you will be aware of the band Homegrown Syndrome (we released the single a few years ago). They were also known locally as Homegrown Funk & the band Memphis that put out one extremely rare two sider. A party Side 'Shake and Rock' flipped with a top of the rung ballad 'Inside My Love', it has everything collectors want, Rarity & Quality so sells for 500+ all day long, below Robert Garcia gives us the history....

"Memphis" were members of the Memphis based group "Home Grown Funk." Home Grown Funk was also known as "Homegrown Syndrome," a controversial name bestowed to them. Before heading to LA they gigged all over Memphis. Some of the members were from an earlier 70s group called "Brothers Unlimited" and had earlier ties during the 60s with the "Memphis Invaders" (a peaceful civil rights activist group).

With aspirations of pushing Homegrown further, a few members including Jerry Jones made the move out west. It was LA 1977 when they were introduced to Ike Tuner through a mutual friend "Ricky G". It was a casual meetup. Then one night Ike had his son Ike Jr. go check them out while performing at the Soul Train hangout spot "Maverick Flats". Ike Jr. praised their performance to Ike and he had them come out to his Inglewood studio. The group walked into the studio with a funky track already playing and that's when Jerry Jones improvised this opportunity and started singing. Ike then turned and said… "Who is that singing?" Jerry said, "Thats me." Then Ike replied " YOU BIG MUTHAF***A! You could be my new Tina." From that point the group cut bunch of tracks with Ike over the years up until they're feature on his 1980 album "The Edge."

In 1981 Perry Kibble (Keyboardist for Taste Of Honey) was at "Concerts In The Park" and heard Home Grown Funk performing. He linked up with the group and got them a deal with Arista. During this time they recorded their hit track " Confrontation." Perry suggested that the group change their name because he didn't want another group with the work "Funk" in it and hence "Homegrown Syndrome." They also use the Arista studio to cut an unreleased acetate with tracks "Got the love" and "Party Vibes" soon to be reissued on ATON.

Around the same time they were introduced to a fella named Roger Green. Green asked the group to come over to his home studio to cut the track "Inside My Love." Upon naming the record Roger Green suggested to go by "Memphis" since they were all from there. This record was eventually pressed in 1982 as small run becoming extremely hard to find.

Words by: Robert Garcia

As songwriters we spend a lot of our lives trying to bottle up a feeling into a song, and often, the biggest feelings, the best ones... the complicated, detailed, messy, incredible ones... just aren’t going to fit. Line by Line is our recognition of that... of how one song just isn’t enough to capture it all, but how we’re just going to keep writing, futilely and lovingly, anyway". - JP Saxe ABOUT JP SAXE Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter, JP Saxe always finds a way to cut beyond the surface, tapping into a deep connectivity with universal emotion and human experience. His powerful duet with Julia Michaels titled “If The World Was Ending,” led to his late-night TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last November. JP and Julia also performed the song while quarantined for The Late Late Show With James Corden. Idolator proclaimed the song ‘packs a strong emotional punch,’ and PEOPLE Magazine praised the song as a “beautifully stripped back piano ballad.” JP has also amassed fans at The FADER, following his single “Women Who Look Like You”, featuring rapper Guapdad 4000. In February, JP released his anticipated six-track debut EP, Hold It Together. TIME Magazine praised the project for “exploring the weird – sometimes lovely – sometimes painful – emotions that bubble up in relationships” and included “3 Minutes” off the EP in their ‘5 Best Songs of the Week’ roundup. Over the last year, JP completed a nationwide summer/fall tour with Noah Kahan and joined Lennon Stella on her European tour.

MOMENTS LIKE THESE, THE NEW ALBUM FROM SUBWAY SECT, PRODUCED BY MICK JONES AND FEATURING THE 1981 SUBWAY SECT LINE-UP, VIC GODARD WITH SEAN MCLUSKY, CHRIS BOSTOCK, JOHNNY BRITTON, & DC COLLARD and guest appearances by MICK JONES, PETE WILLIAMS, TERRY EDWARDS and SIMON RIVERS. Sukhdev Sandhu runs a publishing imprint Texte und Töne in New York.

The LP, the imprint's first, is also the first-ever Subway Sect record to come out in the States. (Perhaps unsurprisingly: they did have a song called U.S. Cunts!) It's been produced by Mick Jones of The Clash. (A White Riot '77 reunion of sorts.) ‘There’s a certain element of unspoiltness about the whole thing and that’s what really appealed to me about it.’
Mick Jones MOJO ‘This is Vic reflecting on a lifetime in the music business. It sounds like a record that he had to make and is perfect for now. When I was a kid, I used to make up my fantasy punk band with members from different bands and they almost always
contained Vic Godard and Mick Jones. The songs are as good as it
gets and with Mick Jones producing and playing piano, what more do
you need?’ Jim Reid, Jesus and Mary Chain ‘The Subway Sect story is one of the strangest, and therefore one of the best. Vic Godard indicated ways that pop should go. He dropped hints, left clues. It is all there.’ Kevin Pearce ‘Vic's always walked his own path. He's a model of independence.

No wonder that he's recorded for some of the best UK independents
(Rough Trade, el, Postcard). Years ago, when I was writing a book
about nocturnal London, he took me on a postal round with him, all
the while telling me funny stories about some of the prog rock
aristos whose mail he delivered, and enthusing about the latest hip
hop and bhangra he was listening to.

Asked by Time Out to write an essay about my favourite Londoner, I wrote it about Vic. Now, in summer 2021, I'm very happy to help release Moments Like These. It's about thinking back and thinking forward, about walking your own path. It's got soul, swagger and swing. Vic Godard: always onward!’ Sukhdev Sandhu ‘It was an accident really as Sukhdev wanted to put What's the Matter Boy out until I told him I'd just recorded a new LP. I'd been in discussions with loads of record labels but they all wanted to get my back catalogue digital rights and weren't into the idea of putting out a new LP. I thought it was on course to be my 2nd lost album until the phone calls with Sukhdev.’ Vic

At the center of Dadub's SA020 lie the myths of the ancient Greek goddess Demeter - her search for daughter Persephone, the drink at the Eleusinian Mysteries ceremonies in her honour, and the fungus which gave the drink its psychoactive properties. The opening track is 'Mistresses March', a thumping narrative of Demeter's search for her abducted daughter Persephone. At the fundament lies a test of a new generation VST - 'Diachronic' - which is used to manage audio samples. The textures which merge during the near 12-minute march scrape and plummet, raining down upon the ominous marching band beat. This is an odyssey, unhappy and unflinching. Based on the handmade modular synth system from Nicola Buono and Lino Monaco, the representation of ceremony drink 'Kykeon' is on one hand a flowing narrative and on the other a demonstration of intense artistic scrutiny: a perfect, unremitting thud. There is, at five minutes, a subtle key pattern, light but not impermanent under the cacophony of chaos. This is indicative of the ceaseless self-examination. Little details, significant differences. Powered by a sound and groove generator invented by Daniele de Santis (Grün), 'Ergot Kernel' is a chemical cauldron. It's a beat continuously emerging from the undergrowth; an imperious column rising; a train ploughing on, coursing through an arid landscape. Conversely, the atmosphere is bright, full of electricity and warmth, with moisture descending. Dadub's SA020 is a journey through a Greek myth, with textural magnificence and technological innovation.

His partnership with the label has already resulted in a collaboration with Modern Heads, as well as one of the first entries in the Monad series, and now a fascinating new EP that showcases his talent for testing the limits of perception.
Alistair Wells is a producer whose current work is synonymous with a kind of benevolent intensity: he excels at sculpting tonally rich and percussively complex tracks that seem to both enlighten and confront. Under his most well-known alias as Perc, he has established a deep roster on his Perc Trax label to carry out a similar-minded program, and has built up a formidable arsenal of EPs and singles in the wake of enigmatic LPs like 2011's Wicker & Steel. His 'eclectic-yet disciplined' methodology practically guaranteed he would eventually come into the orbit of Stroboscopic Artefacts. His partnership with the label has already resulted in a collaboration with Modern Heads, as well as one of the first entries in the Monad series, and now a fascinating new EP that showcases his talent for testing the limits of perception.

The ominously titled opener "Death of Rebirth" - a title hinting at some form of hellish repetition - starts things off with a sense of dark premonition. Yet, in signature Perc style, that aura of uneasiness beckons listeners to explore further rather than to flee from it: in this context, the reliable 4/4 kick drum throb is the only means of orienting oneself or angling through a glassy and metallic labyrinth where foreign objects conspire to make previously unimagined percussive noises. "Negative Space" is a variation upon this theme of trying to maintain focus within a foreign environment bristling with strange enticements and potential dangers: with the kick pattern from the previous pice still acting as a trusty guide, new sound forms arise at every turn: a novel sort of hybridized piano / gamelan tone, a shuddering assembly line, and snaking delay feedbacks. Like dub music meant to be listened to in a hall of mirrors, "Negative Space" induces a heady feeling of multiplying realities.

The closing "Ma", if translated into Japanese, can mean "space / pause" and thus acts as a nice complement to "Negative Space." However, this massive, side-long audio force field dispenses with the previous tracks' steady pulse, and suggests a rigorous act of ritual contemplation taking place in the midst of phenomenal chaos and challenging blows to the body. "Ma" succeeds in modernizing the industrial-era rhythmic invocations of artists like Z'ev, achieving an almost classical solemnity without sacrificing Perc's usual love for cleverly maniuplated electricity. Altogeher, 'Ma' is an eye-opening, ear-infliltrating statement that will warp your understandings of time and space in a most exquisite way.

ARIA & BET nominated rapper and artist Tkay Maidza has announced the highly anticipated follow-up to 2020's Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2 (The Needle Drop's #1 EP of the Year). Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3 is the final act of Tkay's EP trilogy. Featuring eight new songs produced by long-time collaborator Dan Farber. To coincide, Tkay has dropped the new single 'Cashmere' and its dreamy, pollen-filled video directed by Jasper Soloff (Tinashe, DJ Khaled) today. 'Cashmere' and its smooth R&B is a satisfying counterbalance to its bombastic predecessors 'Kim' and 'Syrup'.

The Blind Date Party hosted by Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
and featuring AZITA, Matt Sweeney, Alasdair Roberts, Matt Kinsey,
Sean O’Hagan, Bill MacKay, George Xylouris, Dead Rider, David Pajo,
Mick Turner, Meg Baird, Ty Segall, Emmett Kelly, Cory Hanson, Six
Organs of Admittance, David Grubbs, Cassie Berman, Cooper Crain and
Sir Richard Bishop happened online in the autumn and winter of 2020 -
2021 but the party planning dated back to the spring of 2020.
 Stuck at home, with no gigs in the foreseeable future, Bill, Bonnie and
Drag City needed an outreach program to keep themselves busy, not to
mention sane. In the absence of any company or anything on the
calendar, playing songs they loved was an idea; playing with people they
loved, the desire. And making it fun - so pairing someone with someone
else having no say in the matter, the essence of the blind date, was the
plan. Favourite songs were chosen; players from around the Drag City
galaxy were messaged. Pretty soon, songs were flying back and forth -
music in the air.
 By autumn, the songs started to appear online: Bill and Bonnie singing a
song by someone they loved and admired; each song cut by another
artist they loved and admired, then sent to Bill and Bonnie to provide the
finishing touches. The spotlight pointed in every direction each week:
toward the singers and writers who’d originally played the songs (Yusuf
Islam, Hank Williams Jr., Dave Rich, The Other Years, Billie Eilish,
Steely Dan, Lou Reed, Bill Callahan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Wyatt,
Lowell George, Johnnie Frierson, Air Supply, Will Oldham, Leonard
Cohen, David Berman, Iggy Pop and John Prine), toward their featured
collaborators, the artists whose artwork adorned each digital single and
videos made by still more collaborators.
 Like the best parties, it turned out to be everything and more than they’d
even hoped for. So many more people were involved in the process that
would on the page here. Suffice to say, making records over the years
has required a broad sense of community and an always-surprising mix
of independence and unity, inspiration and utility. Some of the best
memories are those where as many of our folks as possible were
together in one place at one time. The Blind Date Party was one of
these, maybe the most improbable one yet. It’s for everyone who’s here
and it’s in the name of everyone who’s gone but will never go and will
always live with us here. This album will too.

The Blind Date Party hosted by Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
and featuring AZITA, Matt Sweeney, Alasdair Roberts, Matt Kinsey,
Sean O’Hagan, Bill MacKay, George Xylouris, Dead Rider, David Pajo,
Mick Turner, Meg Baird, Ty Segall, Emmett Kelly, Cory Hanson, Six
Organs of Admittance, David Grubbs, Cassie Berman, Cooper Crain and
Sir Richard Bishop happened online in the autumn and winter of 2020 -
2021 but the party planning dated back to the spring of 2020.
 Stuck at home, with no gigs in the foreseeable future, Bill, Bonnie and
Drag City needed an outreach program to keep themselves busy, not to
mention sane. In the absence of any company or anything on the
calendar, playing songs they loved was an idea; playing with people they
loved, the desire. And making it fun - so pairing someone with someone
else having no say in the matter, the essence of the blind date, was the
plan. Favourite songs were chosen; players from around the Drag City
galaxy were messaged. Pretty soon, songs were flying back and forth -
music in the air.
 By autumn, the songs started to appear online: Bill and Bonnie singing a
song by someone they loved and admired; each song cut by another
artist they loved and admired, then sent to Bill and Bonnie to provide the
finishing touches. The spotlight pointed in every direction each week:
toward the singers and writers who’d originally played the songs (Yusuf
Islam, Hank Williams Jr., Dave Rich, The Other Years, Billie Eilish,
Steely Dan, Lou Reed, Bill Callahan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Wyatt,
Lowell George, Johnnie Frierson, Air Supply, Will Oldham, Leonard
Cohen, David Berman, Iggy Pop and John Prine), toward their featured
collaborators, the artists whose artwork adorned each digital single and
videos made by still more collaborators.
 Like the best parties, it turned out to be everything and more than they’d
even hoped for. So many more people were involved in the process that
would on the page here. Suffice to say, making records over the years
has required a broad sense of community and an always-surprising mix
of independence and unity, inspiration and utility. Some of the best
memories are those where as many of our folks as possible were
together in one place at one time. The Blind Date Party was one of
these, maybe the most improbable one yet. It’s for everyone who’s here
and it’s in the name of everyone who’s gone but will never go and will
always live with us here. This album will too.

Renowned Finnish jazz innovator and band leader Iro Haarla takes a detour towards progressive rock Iro Haarla Electric Ensemble to release their debut album in October Known for her large number of works in the field of acoustic free jazz, Iro Haarla is a notable Finnish pianist, composer, arranger and band leader. Now, having inked a deal with Finnish cult label Svart Records, Haarla takes an eye-opening sidestep towards progressive rock. Her new band consisting of renowned Finnish musicians, Iro Haarla Electric Ensemble weaves a vastly colourful world of sound around Haarla’s peculiar melodies, and welcomes us to new sonic territory: a vibrant world where black music influenced rhythms, acoustic instruments, analog synthesizers and spacelike, valiant electric guitars converge. In her long career as one of the most distinctive creative powers in modern scandinavian jazz, Haarla’s history includes both the works with her past life partner Edward Vesala (d. 1999) and an extensive repertoire of her own innovative solo works, recorded for the renowned ECM Records. For What Will We Leave Behind - Images from Planet Earth Haarla has put together a band whose musical expression is strong and profound. The rhythm of the music lies in the dynamic hands of bass player Ulf Krokfors and drummer Aniida Vesala, and together with Sami Sippola’s (Hot Heroes) responsive tenor saxophone and Finnish rock legend Jukka Orma’s (Sielun Veljet) imaginative ability to dive into new dimensions with his electric guitar, What Will We Leave Behind grows into an unforgettable experience for both prog rock and jazz enthusiasts. Out on the 29th of October 2021, the Iro Haarla Electric Ensemble debut is a homage to nature - our common planet and home. Inspired by nature, the album is also a cry for help in the age of natural disasters and depletion of natural resources around us. “I admire nature’s grand beauty, which arises from extreme phenomena and the battle for survival. The thread of life is unbroken”, Haarla says. Each album track portrays a place on Earth: between the humane opening track The Song We Loaned From Our Children and the hopeful closing track What Will We Leave Behind? vibrates a variety of soundscapes from lakesides, oceans, glaciers and rainforests, all the way to the winds and rumbles of mountains and man-made cities. Adding even more depth to the musical themes and landscapes, the album’s cover art was picked up from environmental art pioneer Teuri Haarla’s photo collection.

"‘Arise, Dan Sartain, Arise’, the latest studio album by America’s infamous rock ‘n’ roll troubadour Dan Sartain, will be released by One Little Independent Records. Made up of thirteen wickedly wisecracking, vintage surf-rock bangers, this concise and classic record incorporates everything that’s made Dan Sartain the genres favourite underdog over the last two decades.
Seeped in obsidian black humour with tracks like ‘Glasses Houses’, ‘Rooster In The Henhouse’ and ‘I Heard Laughing’ ruthlessly calling out those who would slight him while also riding the hard line of self-awareness, the biting witticism of these tracks pair wonderfully with the playful tone of Sartain’s slick-back dark doo-wop. Elsewhere on the likes of ‘True Love’ and ‘Fires and Floods’ the crooner gets a chance to flex his punk muscles, pushing the guitars further into distorted territory taking the late 50s garage-rock influence via the late 70s in much the same way The Ramones and The Damned did. But we’re transported right back again when Sartain slows down for ballad standouts such as ‘Kisses In The Morning’ and ‘Personal Injury Law’. Throughout ‘Arise, Dan Sartain, Arise’ searing surf guitars intertwine with beautifully haunted organ jabs, with rhythms pulled straight from saloon bars way out west, and cheeky wink-to-the-camera lyrical whimsy."

Debut studio album by legendary American singer/songwriter/artist. Originally released on November 10th 1975 by Arista Records. When she emerged Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan. Produced by John Cale with a Robert Mapplethorpe cover - a raw combination of poetry, shamanistic chant and rock ‘n’ roll thrills.

Germany-based metal band OBSCURA launch trilogy concept on stunning new album “A Valediction”. The group’s first (sixth overall) album for Nuclear Blast pivots on many fronts. Advanced, elegant, and yet refreshing, “A Valediction” sums up past endeavors effortlessly as it gazes with purpose and conviction into the future. OBSCURA are fan-renowned and critically acclaimed for challenging and then expanding upon norms. From “Cosmogenesis” (2009) through “Diluvium” (2018), the band flourished and made significant progress in a musical genre unprepared for a creative shot of German invention. “A Valediction” spearheads OBSCURA into a new era of extreme metal.

Guitarist/vocalist Steffen Kummerer founded OBSCURA in 2002. Early on, he set out to improve, redefine, and push forward. Under his self-label creation, the Bavarian released debut album “Retribution” (2006), followed by heavy touring throughout Europe. Word quickly spread that a brand-new band from the south of Germany was on the rise. Buzz lead to a deal with U.S.-based Relapse Records. The first record out was “Cosmogenesis”. In Europe, Metal Hammer Germany awarded the album 6/7 while in the U.S., “Cosmogenesis” hit the Billboard charts at #71. The cross-continental praise and fevered momentum landed OBSCURA on high-profile tours in Europe, North America, and Japan.

When follow-up “Omnivium” arrived in 2011, they upped their chart success (Billboard #11; Media Control #14), received more accolades from publications like Terrorizer, Rock Hard, and Decibel, had another massive round-world tour cycle, while enhancing and making progress on their clever brutality. OBSCURA further developed their sound on “Akróasis” (2016). Moored by jaw-dropping tracks like ‘Sermon of the Seven Suns,’ ‘Ode to the Sun,’ and the title track, “Akróasis” elevated OBSCURA to the highest levels of international renown, having climbed up the Billboard charts (#5) as well as earning top marks in Rock Hard (8.5/10), Metal Hammer Germany (6/7), and Revolver (4/5). The Germans toured the world yet again, playing over 100 shows in support of “Akróasis”.

OBSCURA’s most significant accomplishment was, however, just around the corner. The final part of a tetralogy, “Diluvium” (2018), fiercely pursued OBSCURA’s multi-album transformation into musical innovators and metal powerhouses. Music videos for the title track, ‘Emergent Evolution’ and ‘Mortification of the Vulgar Sun,’ in concert with a substantial interest in virtuosic, forward-thinking metal, posited OBSCURA in the good graces (yet again) of the worldwide press in addition to rocketing up, for the very first time, the official album charts in Germany (#58) and Switzerland (#93). The Germans also topped out at #3 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart with “Diluvium”.

OBSCURA‘s stats have been impressive: Twenty years active; six highly prized albums; over 600 shows on four continents. Worldwide fan and press engagement—the videos for ‘The Anticosmic Overload,’ ‘Akróasis,’ and ‘Diluvium’ have over 4.5 million views—is only getting stronger the longer OBSCURA continue to offer up and interact with (via play-throughs and member/gear spotlights) their very captive audience. This is only the tip of Kummerer’s custom ESP guitar, however. A Valediction finds OBSCURA turning the page to a new chapter in the band’s evolution. A year in the works, the songwriting sessions followed a new approach, where the framework was relaxed, allowing new inspirations, imagining, and opportunities to arise. Songs like the opening epic ‘Forsaken,’ the '80s-tinted ‘When Stars Collide’ (featuring Soilwork/The Night Flight Orchestra frontman Björn Strid), the brutal groove of ‘Devoured Usurper,’ the ethereal artistry of ‘Heritage,’ and the fleet-fingered title track benefitted compositionally (refined structures) and aesthetically (more dynamism) from OBSCURA’s restyled songwriting stratagem.

OBSCURA wrote, recorded, and finalized “A Valediction” during the pandemic. The stipulations of working during this time allowed OBSCURA to work cross-country, tracking each respective part—drums, guitar, and bass—in national studios across The Netherlands, Austria, and Germany. Once the pieces were completed, the recordings were shipped off to award-winning producer Fredrik Nordström and Studio Fredman (In Flames, Architects) in Gothenburg, Sweden, where Kummerer and Münzner completed vocals and acoustic guitars using custom-built ENGL amps. Nordström was also tapped to mix and master. The final result is a deeper, heavier, yet more rounded production.

Lyrically, “A Valediction” is layered in structure and meaning. The word ‘valediction,’ by definition, deals with goodbyes and farewells. In a way, this is auf wiedersehen to the four-part album series while also addressing complex topics of Kummerer’s personal life. Instead of obscuring issues of loss, death, and abandonment in metaphor and allusion, the German laid bare his torment across songs like ‘Forsaken,’ ‘Solaris,’ ‘In Unity,’ ‘The Neuromancer,’ and ‘In Adversity.’ But for every line of desperation, he also offers positivity. Indeed, new beginnings—physical, emotional, or environmental—can provide light in the darkness. Lauded artist Eliran Kantor (Testament, Helloween) was brought on board to visualize the leitmotif. The bronze-themed colourway Kantor used exemplifies OBSCURA’s resistance to individual and sonic corrosion.

In 2021, OBSCURA will lighthouse their musical prowess, thematic complexity, and lyrical ambition on “A Valediction”. The group continue to be a beacon for change. No doubt OBSCURA’s new stats will amaze, but what they’re focused on is the release of “A Valediction” and then taking it on the road. Several high-caliber tours of Europe, North America, and Asia are planned through to 2023, with routes are in the works for the band to visit Australia, South America, and beyond. Truly, there is no band quite like OBSCURA. “A Valediction” proves that persistence, perseverance, and enterprising minds can achieve anything. Welcome to the next level!

Clear History are a scorching post-punk trio from Berlin who make a big deal out of little things, sometimes vice versa.

Pressing of 500 copies worldwide on 180GM black vinyl.

Clear History’s debut mini-album is entitled 'bad advice good people' and will be released by Upset The Rhythm on November 5th. The six songs here cast a huge net across themes of raucous opposition, identity, closeness, gifting and exploding cars. They are a full-hearted call to arms from a stubborn Aries concerned with wasting time and energy. With such rapport for the touchstones of danceable post-punk (ESG, Kleenex, Gang of Four) Clear History are proud hi-hat botherers, bounding along with the plummy bassline, joining the dots whilst thinking to the beat. This debut documents the tantalising first sparks from a band intent on holding up a magnifying glass to the sun.

Their influences include correct grammar, Rihanna & ‘The Waiting Room’ by Fugazi. They make muscular songs about intimacy whilst dreaming of an extravagant breakfast the day after the rapture. What will the dance floors look like over there? What music will ring true and make the people move? Clear History are giving this their full atttention!

This is a super-limited strictly 1000 copy one-off only edition pressed on white coloured vinyl of this in-demand Trees Speak classic debut album.
When the band Trees Speak, coming out of nowhere, released an exclusive one-off 100-pressing white label 45, described as CAN/NEU! meets LIQUID LIQUID, it sold out so quickly (in less than 30 min) that Soul Jazz Records decided to release their album almost immediately.
Soul Jazz Records rarely release new music but found the music of TREES SPEAK’s album ‘OHMS’ so stunning and to have so many elements of music that they admired that they felt compelled to release it.
The group Trees Speak are from Tucson, Arizona and create new music that sounds like GERMAN KRAUTROCK meets NO WAVE/POST-PUNK and PSYCH ROCK – music for fans of CLUSTER, TANGERINE DREAM, CAN, NEU!, SILVER APPLES and early KRAFTWERK.
The album ‘OHMS’ sounds at times like a tripped out & moody JOHN CARPENTER/GOBLIN/MORRICONE soundtrack that seamlessly segues into propulsive, ‘motorik’ Krautrock instrumentals loaded with fuzzy, hypnotic mellotron, synths and analogue effects, as well as elements of ART ENSEMBLE free jazz, and all at times reaching a kind of post-rave psychedelia. More recent comparisons would include BEAK and GHOST BOX who draw upon similar themes and styles.
Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz plus musicians from the Tucson, Arizona scene such as Giant Sand, XIXA and James Hunter. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing information and data in Trees and plants – using them as hard drives – and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.

Mystery Jets announce that their sixth studio album ‘A Billion Heartbeats’ will be released on 27th September on Caroline International. The band also release ‘Screwdriver’, the first single to be taken from the album.

Screwdriver is an uncompromising look at the rise of the rebranded alt-right in the UK, built around a powerfully positive message: "Fight them with love / then the world will be ours".

Lead singer Blaine Harrison says of the song, “Screwdriver is about the mechanics of intolerance. Looking back at times of economic instability in history, we see how easily deep chasms grow in society and the population seeks change wherever it is most convincingly promised. Conflict arises as cultures and belief systems clash, unwilling to accept one another’s place in society, because we are fed the rhetoric that our neighbours are those responsible for our problems: then inevitably nationalism once more raises its ugly head above the parapet. But whereas political agendas fuel divisiveness, music unites and reminds us of all that we have in common. The message of Screwdriver is not a pessimistic one - because perhaps faced with confrontation we can find understanding, and even maybe learn how to listen to, and love one another.”

Each room of the house in the video is a metaphor for the different sections of society in the UK. It wraps around the narrative of the song, that in order to overcome adversity, you have to “Fight Them With Love”. The visual showcases the song’s inherent message, clashing aggressiveness with tenderness, and culminates in showing after anger, we can always come together through love.
All great albums start from a unique perspective. But try a window on the Strand, in an abandoned office block, overlooking the kind of political upheaval London hasn’t seen in a generation. Blaine Harrison was living as a property guardian right around the corner from Trafalgar Square when he found himself witness to an entire year of protests. Every weekend from January 2017 on, people were marching for a different cause: "In the space of six months it was Black Lives Matter, the huge ‘Our NHS’ march, Unite for Europe," he recalls. "Then the solidarity sleep-out organised by Help Refugees, where we slept in Whitehall for the night... The protestors would wake me up in the morning. I’d just walk down and join in.”

Over the course of that year, Mystery Jets' sixth long-player, A Billion Heartbeats, was born. "This album wasn’t about making pointed opinions,” says Blaine. “It was about being a mirror for what’s going on, reflecting back the way people are feeling.” By turns tender and fierce, abstract and full of classic rock energy, A Billion Heartbeats achieves a balance of passion, fear and hope. Amid the colourful cavalcade of rich harmonies, heavy guitars and rallying cries, the album’s essential message - about personal responsibility, and the power in becoming engaged. In a sense, it's not just their "state of the nation” record but their “state of a generation” record too.

We increasingly hear from musicians that music should be an escape these days - that there’s enough suffering in the world, enough misery on the news, without writings songs about it too. A Billion Heartbeats makes all that sound like a bit of a cop-out. These are songs of protest that get the heart racing in joy; high on hope, and serious in their message. Proof, basically, that music speaks louder than words.

First new release from Lizard Music in over two decades Since their hiatus, band members have joined Wilco, become the musical director for Cat Power, been a featured guest on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and worked with artists including Lana Del Rey, Brian Wilson, The Monkees, and more! Available on CD, Digital, and double-LP What Lizard Music says about Arizone! This collection of buzzy, whirly pop songs from a parallel dimension is a testament to Martin Short, Martin Sheen, Sheena Easton, Tina Turner, and Tiny Tim. Arizone! is better than discovering never-before seen discs for a View-Master. Arizone! is the sound of four old friends who spent their formative years playing music, traveling, and learning about the world, reuniting after a 25 year hiatus to compare notes and wound up with a one-way ticket to Arizone! Lizard Music began in Atlantic Highlands, NJ in 1989 when high school friends Mikael Jorgensen and Erik Paparozzi started learning and writing songs with a four-track. They pillaged their parents' record collections and discovered the musical universes of The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, XTC, James Brown and The Meters. In the fall of 1990, Lizard Music (named after the book by Daniel Pinkwater) was hired to be the backing band for David Peel and The Lower East Side at the recently-closed Brighton Bar in Long Branch, NJ, which would serve as the unofficial home base for the band for the next five years.

Over nearly 20 years, Howlin Rain may have become the quintessential independent American rock ’n roll band: a steam-spitting Hydra of cranked guitars, kicking asphalt dust through a kaleidoscoping travelogue of desert motels and dives, volleying forth transmissions of sci-fi poetry from the blacktop veins of this cracked and aching country.

Now, in America 2021, capping these strangest and sorest of times, the band returns with The Dharma Wheel, a six-track, 52-minute dive into a joyous fantasy realm of exaggerated present.

“I wanted The Dharma Wheel to be a portal from our everyday world, the one from which you stand on hard ground and hold the album in your hands and peer into the artwork, and into another universe,” says songwriter, guitarist and vocalist, Ethan Miller. “You enter into that universe with your eyes and ears and mind and take a ride through free-form meditation on these ideas — from big, fundamental concepts about our existence right down to the grease that rolls down the arm of a pulp novel killer as he eats a gas station hot dog in an old Dodge in an alleyway.”

Lyrically, Miller has completed his evolution into a mushroom-plucking Whitman of the West, singing outlandish tales in a topographic blend of Humbead’s Revised Map of the World and an inverted U.S. where downtrodden bodhisattvas roam the back streets and moonless country roads.

“Down in Florida swamps, run by nature’s law, standing in the water, Eden gone. Two men loading rifles, beasts making time, they shot a boy from an orange tree and watched the colored birds take flight, watch the colors as they soar and dive.” — ‘Under the Wheels.’

The band, Jeff McElroy (bass, backing vocals), Justin Smith (drums/percussion, backing vocals) and Dan Cervantes (guitar, backing vocals), again sounds hardwired into Miller’s vision, building tracks that swagger and sway in response to his verse. Lending a hand this time around is the legendary Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue) on violin, and the endlessly inventive Adam MacDougall (Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Circles Around the Sun) on keys.

Songs were shaped via the blast furnace of endless gigs, then recorded often mere hours after the band slipped the stage.

“The captured sonic fact about this record is that it’s the sound of a band that rehearsed this material a lot and put a ton of work into its construction and was on the road a lot and recorded on days off in the tour schedule,” Miller says. “In some cases we were on stage on Saturday night playing these songs at quarter-to-2 in the morning and by Noon the next day we were sipping coffee in the studio playing them for the machine.”

Rivera’s violin is the first sound heard as the album dawns on the instrumental “Prelude.” Soon, the band joins, twirling the theme into a psychedelicized awakening. “Don’t Let the Tears” brings the boogie, with MacDougall’s madcap synth work and wah-wah guitars showering 70’s glitter upon a parquet dance floor of the mind. “Under the Wheels” and “Rotoscope” center the album with taut, compositional epics populated by murdering drifters and fuzz pedal explosions. The blue hour comedown of “Annabelle” meditates upon the weariness of lost love, with Rivera again amping the heartache via her violin strings.

“In the evening the trains go by, and shake the dust from dirty walls, sometimes I feel like a spider in an old mason jar, who threatens only convex light from down the hall. I’ve been lost to the world since the photos of the black hole, landed on my desktop screaming, perhaps the all and nothing all-in-one is just too much to take, for particles and matter that never found their way.” — ‘Annabelle’

The record closes with the 16-minute title track, a multi-movement suite which cycles from Crazy Horse-meets-Traffic jams through colossal, mass-moving funk stomp, eventually cresting and washing into a sing-along gospel lament.

The Dharma Wheel is an album of great depth, and one steeped in good vibes: a rich, glistening world of the ultra-vivid. As illustrated in Arik Roper’s cover art, the grand dharmachakra has been set in motion, churning off the California coast.

“We were trying to build a world big enough that the imagination won’t go soft on you after just a few listens and where our love for this music, and music in general — along with a good dose of audacity — create a magic carpet ride through the world of The Dharma Wheel,” Miller continues. “In pursuing that I think we also managed to make a record that has a lot of joy in it: the joy of playing music, the joy of experiencing music, the joy of storytelling and poetry, the kind of singular joy and extended ecstatic moment that only a real ‘band’ can express in just that way.”

And it’s this joy, this exuberance and dedication to the lines of cosmic expression — all centered in the exalted art of the everyday — that constructs the heart of the record. At its core, The Dharma Wheel is the triumph of a working band, a transmission from a never-paused before arriving for our strange, bruised, spectacular now.”