Suche:human beast

The dogs bark and the heavy-metal caravan tears through everything in its path. What lies ahead is a twisting, high-voltage journey for anyone with a taste for contemporary sound, and this record offers no lukewarm sightseeing, no pre-retirement indie pop-rock playlist drift. You'll have to learn to dance off-beat, wringing out every neuron before the final rinse. Drink your sweat, not your tears, and burn off the bitterness: that's the intended destination of the trip. This monstrous album has a computer where its heart should be. Three humans are wired into it: Michel Cloup, Manon Labry and Julien Rufié. Layer after layer, they've fed this sandpaper-and-digital-custard mille-feuille. On the menu, heaped and hurtling by the wagonload, the beast is stuffed with screams, laughter, melodies, noise: a frantic feast. It even leaves you wondering who's driving whom. Who seized control? The flesh? The printed circuits? Michel as a Titanic-'n'-Roll conductor? Julien and Manon as demolition apostles? Doesn't matter. For now, it rips, it saws, it strafes, it smashes, without pause. Rock debris_post or not_grumbling Parmentier-pop mash, white-hot hip hop spinning out, electro-disco-kraut fissuring, furious new French chanson: everything shoves its way into the blender. The real free world is here. Michel veers between naïve chants of dwindling hope, barking tsunamis of black fury and other delights, recounting the world in full 360 degrees as well as the twenty metres outside his front door. As ever, he speaks of himself, of us, speaks a lot, speaks too much. The intensity barely drops below the danger line; even the lows are stratospheric. Foot to the floor, calmly. In the thick of it, you'll wander room to room through the small theatre of France's grand political tragicomedy (David, Goliath and Godzilla), the consultation chamber of our disappointments (2027), the community repair shop of our hopes (Catharsis), the literary gym (The Poison, The Antidote), the torture room (H&M, with old Toulousain comrade Fredo Nonstop), the nightclub in flames (Shame, RIP), the electronic shooting gallery (Maria, Background Noise), the XXL confessional (For Whom? For What?) before ending in the Munch Room, the chamber of the primal scream (SISRAHTAC). "In the end, there are no words left. It howls, it howls, and it doesn't stop."

Just when you thought Kevin Richard Martin's music couldn’t go any slower, lower or deeper, Sub Zero emerges. A slow-motion excavation of drug-tech, dub, dreamy noise and frozen ambience, the album gradually mutates into hypnotic pulsations and melodic melancholia. It is arguably Martin’s most striking release to date under his given name.


Originally released digitally on Bandcamp only in the depths of winter 2022, amid the final year of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine, this desolate epic went on to become KRM's best-selling digital album on the platform. With persistent demand for a vinyl pressing and a full DSP release from fans, Martin thought the time was right for Sub Zero to finally surface in its full glory: remastered and paired with fresh new artwork.


Unnervingly, the album is as beautiful as it is solemn, as glacial as it is relentless, and as subtle as it is terrifying. A trip into a sonic abyss, with a tour of a philosophical void, it’s to my ears, KRM’s most seductive work yet, and also his most emotionally resonant. Martin expertly balances tear-jerking motifs with heavier than hell rhythmic weight. With its melodic fog, eternal drones and eerie atmospherics, the peripheral throb of distant kick drums, the heartbeat punctuation of cavernous subs and the snowstorm blizzard of fuzz absolutely envelopes the mind, whilst crushing the soul.


In terms of lineage, Sub Zero might recall a more paranoid Porter Ricks, a dystopian GAS, or a brutally dubbed-out Pan Sonic. Most fitting, however, is its kinship with the deepest dub terrain Martin previously explored on In Blue, The Bug’s acclaimed 2020 collaboration with Dis Fig for Hyperdub, where he obsessively probed subaqueous pulses and low-end modulations.


Sub Zero is possibly the most minimal, desolate, and deviant dub record yet released on Martin’s PRESSURE label. It marks the point at which dub disappears into its own effects trails. Dub music capturing frozen moments in time. Dub as an addictive painkiller, that sounds both sacred and ocean deep.

Fetter’s Body of Noise erupts at the threshold between ravey hypnosis and avant-pop experiment, slithering through the hinterlands of unconscious desire. Nine shape-shifting tracks conjure haunted landscapes where beauty refuses clarity and dancefloor logic warps underfoot. Vocals swoon, drift, and demand—stacking into fragments that multiply and weave through saturated pulses and shimmering, snarling synths.

Opening track "Like a Rose" traces a dreamer’s transition into the unstable physics of a perplexing but familiar dream world, where they gradually become lucid. “Beast” follows up humming with shadowed urgency, threading a path through self-sabotage and metamorphosis. “Spathiphyllums” drifts a while in a lush lostness, aching for something new before fracturing into wild, cathartic collapse. Side B’s “Do I Exist? (D.I.E)” and “The Longing” spiral into existential wonder, searching for a human origin story—both personal and collective—against a backdrop of uncertainty, while “Headache” thrusts forward as an absurd and insistent manifesto to stay the course and harness one’s own power within the madness.

Body of Noise is crafted not only for sweating bodies in motion, but for distorting time and opening psychic portals, where surrender becomes strategy and uncertainty transforms into ecstatic navigation. Rooted in all-hardware improvised production and shaped by Fetter’s years of boundary-blurring visual and performance art, their debut LP feels alive and in flux. Reminiscent of a spectral pop chorus trapped in a loop of broken machinery, or a lost broadcast from a dancefloor in a parallel realm, Body of Noise is a journey into chaos, transformation, and a bold refusal to be contained.

About Fetter:
Fetter makes clubby self-destructing noise pop to dance and weep to. Oscillating between ethereal and pounding, their all-hardware, largely improvised live sets take listeners through a foggy wilderness of saturated rhythms and menacing synth lines, a golden voice guiding the way through. Fetter is the stage moniker of multimedia artist Jess Tucker. Their performances take place in clubs as well as galleries, often incorporating video, installation, and interactive performance art elements to create other-worldly surrounds of mesmerizingly unhinged bodies and faces.

This 15-track album features the original score composed by Nicolas Godin (of AIR) for Fire of Love, the Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Sara Dosa in 2022 (available for streaming on Disney+), as well as original music inspired by the film.



Fire of Love tells the extraordinary love story of fearless French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, who died as spectacularly as they lived, capturing some of the most breathtaking footage ever recorded of their greatest passion: volcanoes.

2025 Repress

DJ Koze might be one of the world's best producers, but above all he's a DJ, and it's his DJ ear that governs. J
ust as in a great set, so with his releases: 'Seeing Aliens' came out of nowhere, a big buzzing beast of a track, to announce that Koze was back on the scene and prime everyone for the coming album, knock knock.
But now that Koze has your attention, it's time to remind everyone what's most important about club music, pull things back, take a turn to the left, and get deep into the groove.

Thus 'Pick Up': the second single from knock knock is 100% pure groove, doubly so in the extended 12' version.

In a sense it's incredibly familiar - it is essentially a filter disco record, very close to something you could imagine coming out of Paris around the turn of the millennium. But of course, this is Koze. Nothing is normal or familiar in his world, and he's taken this most foundational of clubland staples into new territory. Flipping amples of Gladys Knight & the Pips 'Neither One Of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)' and Melba Moore's 'Pick Me Up, I'll Dance', it creates something completely airborne, shot through with emotions such as gods must feel: not quite explicable to the human mind but strong enough to knock you off your feet. In its way it's absolutely as powerful as 'Seeing Aliens', but it comes in like the proverbial iron fist in a glove of velvet.
The flip, a ten-minute new track, 'The Love Truck' is a big contrast again. If 'Pick Up' is giddy flight,
'The Love Truck' is woozy floating. Its sharp, clicking percussion recalls 2000s minimal techno, but this time absolutely nothing is generic. The long, intense, on-and-off bass tones, the flickers of birdsong, the pure voices slipping in backwards as if from the future... it's all like the most blissful dream, and culminates in a coda so subtle yet so beautiful it's like ever time you've ever seen the sun rise and thought 'I never want this to end', all the while understanding deep down that the fleeting nature of the pleasure is also what give it its power. But of course, being created with that consummate DJ's ear, it's also full of the thrill of wondering what Koze has in store next.

‘Oh, baby, this is where it gets good.’ - Zaphod

The last ever BBC radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy makes its vinyl debut! Materialising in the lavish packaging style of the preceding five series (Primary Phase, Secondary Phase, Tertiary Phase, Quandary Phase and Quintessential Phase) the Hexagonal Phase will make its presence known to all humanity on heavyweight Neon Geen vinyl! First broadcast in 2018, the Hexagonal Phase is based on Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing…, the first - and, to date, only – official sequel to Douglas Adams’s original book series. This is also the first ever publication of the original radio edits of the Hexagonal Phase, as heard on their original Radio 4 broadcast. Arthur Dent and friends are thrown back into the Whole General Mish Mash in a rattling adventure featuring Viking Gods and Irish confidence tricksters, taking in a rare glimpse of Eccenrica Gallumbits and a brief but memorable moment with The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
Starring John Lloyd as The Book, with Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Geoff McGivern as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod, Sandra Dickinson as Trillian/Tricia McMillan, Samantha Béart as Random and Jim Broadbent as Marvin, with a guest cast including Jane Horrocks, Lenny Henry, Jon Culshaw, Mitch Benn, Ed Byrne, Toby Longworth, Professor Stephen Hawking and many more, with music by Philip Pope. Adapted, Directed and Co Produced by Dirk Maggs, based on the novel And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer, with additional material by Douglas Adams.

Presented on 3 x 180g heavyweight neon green vinyl, and
presented in illustrated wallets inside a rigid, bound 20 page book,
including a perspective sleeve note by Geoff McGivern and a
concluding overview of the series’ development by Jem Roberts,
Adams’s official biograph

You’re home just in time for tea.’ - Fenchurch

The ultimate 1999 Death Metal masterpiece on limited edition 12" picture disc!

Double LP pressed on transparent red vinyl with black marbles. In Dying Light: The Beast, you step back into Kyle Crane's skin, but he's no longer the man he once was. Years of experiments have left him torn between fragile humanity and a monstrous power that he can barely control. Every light, every shadow, every choice feels dangerous. The forests and ruins of Castor Woods don't just set the stage, they breathe, they watch, and they punish the reckless. This is survival stripped to the bone, where horror is not just outside, but inside you. Olivier Deriviere's powerful and capturing score for Dying Light: The Beast doesn't just accompany Crane's journey, it is his voice. Sometimes it whispers in empty rooms, fragile and broken, sometimes it roars with distorted rhythms and pounding drums when the Beast takes over. Between silence and sound, the music pulls you deeper into Kyle's fractured soul, making every step and every heartbeat part of the story. It's not just a soundtrack, it's the echo of a man losing, and maybe finding, himself.

Red Vinyl. Soul of Anubis is a power duo formed in 2010 from the North of Portugal. Their music is a blast on stage with a ferocity of sound that goes from thrash to sludge, capturing doom and post-metal at same time, performing energetic and contagious live acts. "Ritual" represents the passage from life to death and rebirth into a new cycle. During these last years, we have lost beloved ones, we have lost the freedom to breathe, we have lost some companionship and we had to fight to lift our souls back on trial. In Egyptian mythology, Ra, God of the Sun, goes down to the underworld every night to help the dead cross to the other world and ensure that a new dawn would happen. So, "Ritual" is a memorial to our beloved ones who passed away, speaks for the mental struggle that everyone has to face to overcome their demons and glorifies the victory of rebirth. As we have our demons, this is our ritual to cross our pathway.n. So, "Ritual" is a memorial to our beloved ones who passed away, speaks for the mental struggle that everyone has to face to overcome their demons and glorifies the victory of rebirth. As we have our demons, this is our ritual to cross our pathway.

Soul of Anubis is a power duo formed in 2010 from the North of Portugal. Their music is a blast on stage with a ferocity of sound that goes from thrash to sludge, capturing doom and post-metal at same time, performing energetic and contagious live acts. "Ritual" represents the passage from life to death and rebirth into a new cycle. During these last years, we have lost beloved ones, we have lost the freedom to breathe, we have lost some companionship and we had to fight to lift our souls back on trial. In Egyptian mythology, Ra, God of the Sun, goes down to the underworld every night to help the dead cross to the other world and ensure that a new dawn would happen. So, "Ritual" is a memorial to our beloved ones who passed away, speaks for the mental struggle that everyone has to face to overcome their demons and glorifies the victory of rebirth. As we have our demons, this is our ritual to cross our pathway.

“The album explores the duality between nature and mankind, and the blurred line where we become both the executioner and the victim. I’ve always felt this inner struggle, the pull between instinct and reason, between animality and humanity. This album reflects that ambivalence: an intimate journey where I allow myself to be consumed by my contradictions in order to be reborn. It’s a cry, a waking dream where we shed our masks to become whole again. I blend wildness with tenderness, fury with poetry — because deep down, I’m an animal who dreams, and a man who roars.” Sébastien Tellier

Die Rückkehr von DOZER - Drifting In The Endless Void, ein glühendes, dröhnendes und wummerndes Werk! Gegründet in der verschlafenen Stadt Borlänge, Schweden, führten DOZER die erste Welle des europäischen Stoner/Desert Rocks an, eine beeindruckende Fusion aus Proto-Metal, Riff-Rock und Punk, die als Antwort auf den sonnengetränkten Fuzz und die tektonische Wucht der amerikanischen Bands Kyuss und Fu Manchu entstand. Mehr als ein Jahrzehnt nach ihrem letzten Album sind Dozer wieder aufgewacht und melden sich mit einem leidenschaftlichen, wummernden Album zurück. Drifting in the Endless Void ist eine Gravitationsmasse, vollgepackt mit dichter Instrumentierung, arena-tauglichen Melodien und kontemplativer Zurückhaltung. Dozer bringen immer noch die stürmischen Grooves, die langjährige Fans erwarten, aber sie beziehen auch massiven Sludge, fuzzigen Doom, raumgreifende Grooves, Psychedelik mit geröteten Augen und alles, was sich sonst noch in den riesigen kosmischen Weiten findet mit ein. DOZERSs Rückkehr in die musikalische Landschaft, welche sie mitgestaltet haben, ist Grund genug zum Feiern, aber das explosive Spiel und die feurige Zielsetzung machen Drifting in the Endless Void zu einem wirklich unverzichtbaren Erlebnis.

Fetter’s Body of Noise erupts at the threshold between ravey hypnosis and avant-pop experiment, slithering through the hinterlands of unconscious desire. Nine shape-shifting tracks conjure haunted landscapes where beauty refuses clarity and dancefloor logic warps underfoot. Vocals swoon, drift, and demand—stacking into fragments that multiply and weave through saturated pulses and shimmering, snarling synths.

Opening track "Like a Rose" traces a dreamer’s transition into the unstable physics of a perplexing but familiar dream world, where they gradually become lucid. “Beast” follows up humming with shadowed urgency, threading a path through self-sabotage and metamorphosis. “Spathiphyllums” drifts a while in a lush lostness, aching for something new before fracturing into wild, cathartic collapse. Side B’s “Do I Exist? (D.I.E)” and “The Longing” spiral into existential wonder, searching for a human origin story—both personal and collective—against a backdrop of uncertainty, while “Headache” thrusts forward as an absurd and insistent manifesto to stay the course and harness one’s own power within the madness.

Body of Noise is crafted not only for sweating bodies in motion, but for distorting time and opening psychic portals, where surrender becomes strategy and uncertainty transforms into ecstatic navigation. Rooted in all-hardware improvised production and shaped by Fetter’s years of boundary-blurring visual and performance art, their debut LP feels alive and in flux. Reminiscent of a spectral pop chorus trapped in a loop of broken machinery, or a lost broadcast from a dancefloor in a parallel realm, Body of Noise is a journey into chaos, transformation, and a bold refusal to be contained.

About Fetter:
Fetter makes clubby self-destructing noise pop to dance and weep to. Oscillating between ethereal and pounding, their all-hardware, largely improvised live sets take listeners through a foggy wilderness of saturated rhythms and menacing synth lines, a golden voice guiding the way through. Fetter is the stage moniker of multimedia artist Jess Tucker. Their performances take place in clubs as well as galleries, often incorporating video, installation, and interactive performance art elements to create other-worldly surrounds of mesmerizingly unhinged bodies and faces.

Originally released in 2010, "The Body"s All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood" is a watershed album that changed the landscape of heavy music. Buoyed by the eclectic cast of musicians, from the undeniably potent collaboration with The Assembly of Light Choir as led by now longtime The Body collaborator Chrissy Wolpert, to guest contributors that include members of Dead Times, Fang Island, Lichens (aka Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe), Human Beast, and many more. The album"s singularly bleak, yet beautiful atmosphere not only set the tone for The Body"s career in breaking the mold, but set a new standard for what extreme music could do.

Originally released in 2010, "The Body"s All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood" is a watershed album that changed the landscape of heavy music. Buoyed by the eclectic cast of musicians, from the undeniably potent collaboration with The Assembly of Light Choir as led by now longtime The Body collaborator Chrissy Wolpert, to guest contributors that include members of Dead Times, Fang Island, Lichens (aka Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe), Human Beast, and many more. The album"s singularly bleak, yet beautiful atmosphere not only set the tone for The Body"s career in breaking the mold, but set a new standard for what extreme music could do.

Transparent Red Vinyl

Produced by Dynazty themselves and mixed by Swedish pioneer Jens Bogren, Game of Faces takes you on a journey exploring the essence of the human mind and existence with lyrical themes such as self-discovery, spiritual death, rebirth and re-invention.
Formed in 2008, Dynazty has over the years evolved from its humble beginnings rooted in the Scandinavian Hard Rock scene into now being a powerhouse and formidable force to be reckoned with on the top shelf of the modern melodic metal scene.
Career milestones include the 2020 chart breaking album The Dark Delight, certified for gold status in the bands home country Sweden and neighbours Finland. With single tracks Heartless Madness reaching platinum status and Presence of Mind featured in DC comics and HBO’s Peacemaker series.
Tours in recent years together with bands like Sabaton, Powerwolf, Battle Beast, Pain and Kissin Dynamite has showcased and established the band on the European continent as one of the most prominent live acts of its generation. Fast forward to August 2024 where Dynazty concluded an extensive run of European summer festivals with releasing a new song, Devilry of Ecstasy as a precursor and first taste of a yet unannounced new album

Sub Pop and Pissed Jeans mark 15 years of King of Jeans, Pissed Jeans' thunderous third album, with a fresh clear-vinyl pressing, limited to 1,000 copies. If 2005's Shallow was Pissed Jeans coping with moving out of their parents' homes, and 2007's Hope for Men their initial reaction to the mechanical lifestyle of a wage-earner, King of Jeans is their formal and uneasy acceptance of adulthood, by way of one hell of a rock record. Working with renowned producer Alex Newport (who holds a Fudge Tunnel pedigree and has worked with such luminaries as At the Drive-In, The Locust and Sepultura), Pissed Jeans have pushed further into the raw, minimal core of heavy rock music with King of Jeans. Masters of the mundane, beasts of the banal, high priests of the humdrum: these four, white, male high school graduates hardly look further than their own appendages for artistic inspiration, content to execute their own brand of brash and heavy punk music in the Joe Carducci-approved standard rock formation of guitar, bass, drums and vocals. From simple minds and simple fabrics comes this King of Jeans. And there can be only one.

After navigating the labyrinthine musical chambers of their 2023 modern exotica album 'Palace Of A Thousand Sounds', Reno. Nevada’s Whatitdo Archive Group has returned with their first-ever holiday offering—venturing into the darker side of Christmas folklore with their new ice-cold 45, 'Wild Man'. Drawing inspiration from a global archetypical myth of the same name, Whatitdo Archive Group examines the ancient story of the Wild Man—the hairy, half-human, half-beast that stalks the shadows of humanity’s shared primeval past. The myth of the Wild Man is a folktale that goes by many names: The Yeti of the Himalayas, the Bigfoot of North America, and, of course, Krampus of Eastern Europe—a yuletide beast with a reputation as a child-devouring "Anti-Claus" who now finds himself the subject of Whatitdo’s latest musical exploration.

‘Wild Man’ gives us a glimpse into the band’s newest sonic direction. With a heavy rhythm section carried by Alexander Korostinsky’s driving bass line, the sticky wah-guitar of Mark Sexton’s L-5, and the acrobatic lines of the Wurlitzer electric piano, “Wild Man” revels in the spiritual jazz flavors of Pharoah Sanders and grooves hard like the classic soul-jazz stylings of Ramsey Lewis. Much like the Krampus myth itself, 'Wild Man' is meant to weave an ominous spell over any Christmas cocktail party long after the kids have gone to bed. Hear the warning for yourself in the song’s haunting chant: "You better watch out for your life, when the Wild Man comes in the night".

But mythology isn’t abandoned on the B-side. The band takes the traditional English folk melody 'Greensleeves' and reimagines it through the musical lens of Ethio-jazz. Recorded live at the Archive Group Studios, the track exudes a dark, roomy atmosphere, drenched in unease and mystery courtesy of the wandering electric piano dancing above the hypnotic rhythm section and mesmeric groove of the distant Batá drums. This fresh reimagining taps into the ancient, cross-cultural lineage of the "Green Man" myth, a pagan symbol of rebirth and the power of the natural world, further blurring the lines between holiday cheer and the primal, elemental forces enshrined in our collective cultural memory.

After the band’s 'Palace Of A Thousand Sounds' was named 2023’s "Best Library Record" by PopMatters Magazine, their new 'Wild Man' 7” capitalizes on the same creative process that shaped their last record, while now exploring new conceptual territory. By drawing inspiration from archaic global folklore and again utilizing their peculiar recording techniques, W.A.G. has crafted a truly unique holiday offering that unearths the darker, more primal undercurrents of the Christmas tradition. The 'Wild Man' 7" is released as part of the Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club, pressed on snow-white bio-vinyl and limited to 300 copies.

The two separate double vinyl sets are now available that correlate to the triple CD released earlier this year. TMTCH stumbled into existence onstage at the Alternative Country Festival, Electric Ballroom, Camden on Easter Sunday in 1984; after a long afternoon busking and drinking in a Hammersmith subway. They knew three chords and a hundred songs all of which sounded a bit the same, a frenzied skiffle that was exciting to jump around and drink snakebite to. If they thought about longevity at all, a lifespan of 40 days seemed most likely. It's forty years later and they are still running. Since those early days, and without much of a game plan other than always stepping onward, TMTCH have released around 20 albums plus many side projects, bootlegs, curios and an unknown number of T shirts. They've toured constantly, whether in dingy pub backrooms or Grand Ballrooms and Festival Stages. From Cairo to Reykjavik and all points in between, the TMTCH roadshow has shambled and thrilled through the decades, always passionate, always literate, occasionally dishevelled. Forty years of recording has spawned a vast back catalogue, well represented here by songs from each album, style and era; a tapestry of human stories and vibrant characters. So there are the fast sprints like early folk hoedown 'Ironmasters', the frantic shanty 'Raising Hell' and the amphetamine punk blues of 'Going Back to Coventry'. Then there are the waltzing folk ballads, from their impassioned version of the anti war standard 'Green Fields Of France' to the bitter regret of 'The Bells' and the righteous testimony of 'Our Day'. Elsewhere there are anthems galore; 'The Crest' a swirling gaelic chant, 'Rosettes', a fast marching assault of drums, fiddles and mandolins; historical epics such as 'Ghosts Of Cable Street', 'Shirt of Blue' and 'The Colours'; romantic ballads like the wistful 'Parted From You' and 'Island in The Rain'. All the eras are here; from the wiry lo fi of the first album, through the eighties into full blown MTV ready multi trackers with vast charging drums; the initial simplicity of their recipe deepening and darkening. And then on through the nineties, noughties and tens; always the double pronged vocals drifting between harmony and unison, always the celtic, folk and country tones vying for attention, the emotive fiddle, the top end mandolin above the thundering rhythm section. On through bouffant hair, spiky hair, dyed hair, thin hair and hats; on through Grunge, Baggy, Madchester, Rave, Britpop. On through the Miner's Strike, Poll Tax, New Labour, Iraq and Brexit. On through marriage, children, loss and revival. Forty years at the working end of rock and roll is a feat achieved by very few bands. It requires tremendous chemistry, a deep catalogue; both panoramic and miniature, a vital and irrepressible energy, all of which is on resplendent display in this sprawling 3 disc compilation. But most of all it requires an intense resilience, something that TMTCH possess in spades. Forty years on the run; was ever a band so aptly named?

2024 Reissue

The second album of songs resulting from the collaboration between Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld was released in 2016, three years after the celebrated debut with "Still Smiling". Often the nature of collaborations is fleeting, usually not involving a sequel; in this case, however, we are faced with the evident settling of a bond, human and artistic, that is no longer occasional but has reinvented itself to explore other territories and will not stop there either. The album cover is inspired by the famous 1533 painting by Holbein the Younger, "The Ambassadors": a work celebrating an official visit, a meeting between two friends, the pride of their gazes still strong despite time, distance, despite everything. Teho and Blixa return with an album of new songs, sung in German, English and Italian. "Nerissimo" is the superlative of black in Italian and there is something rather black about the music on this album. Not in the sense of dark, an adjective often used to define certain sounds, but just as it happens with the colour black, which contains all other colours, so this music contains a multitude of possibilities."Nerissimo" is also the title of the track in English that opens the album and closes it, as if between two parentheses, in Italian. A temporal passage between languages that links Rome and Berlin, where the album was recorded, ever more intimately. A crossing of the last three years of work together for Teho and Blixa. This record is also a nocturnal story of apparitions, of colours that disappear from the world just by naming them, of aeroplane flights with the lights off in the cabin, of objects whose symbolism represents the passions and interests of the two artists (starting with the objects reproduced on the cover); a sort of tale through objects, continuous movements and the discovery of sounds, even random ones. Sounds intercepted in the space of these three years and which ended up on the disc as interferences that challenged the structure of some songs, resulting in their adaptation to the invasion of foreign sound bodies. "Nerissimo" does not only contain songs but also features experimental tracks, such as "Ulgæ", in which the lyrics explain, like a subtitle, the sounds that follow one another in a story.

One True Pairing, auch bekannt als Tom Fleming, ehemaliger Songwriter, Sänger und Multiinstrumentalist von Wild Beasts, veröffentlicht sein zweites Soloalbum 'Endless Rain' am 25. Oktober 2024 über Domino.

Aufgenommen in Dublin im Jahr 2022 mit Produzent John 'Spud' Murphy (Lankum, black midi, caroline) in den Hellfire Studios in Dublin, bekräftigt "Endless Rain" mutig Flemings künstlerische Vision - mit einem herbstlichen, suchenden und oft erhebenden Album, das von den Einflüssen traditioneller Musik, Klassik und Noise-Rock geprägt ist. Flemings langjähriger Kollaborateur Josh Taylor-Moon arrangierte, produzierte und spielte auf dem Album, ebenso wie Cormac MacDiamarda von Lankum und Eleanor Mylor von Percolator. Klanglich ist "Endless Rain" ein ehrgeiziges und weiträumiges Album, das sich deutlich von Flemings bisherigem Werk abhebt. Das Album enthält die bereits veröffentlichten und hochgelobten Singles "Frozen Food Centre", "Mid-Life Crisis" und "Be Strong".
Flemings Songs haben sich stets mit Ideen rund um Männlichkeit auseinandergesetzt - die traurige und verführerische Musik von Wild Beasts unterlief die akzeptierten Rollenbilder junger Männer aus dem Norden. Nun älter und weiser, nutzt "Endless Rain" diese Basis, um neues Terrain zu erkunden, tritt einen Schritt zurück, schaut tiefer und verwendet die neu gewonnenen Erfahrungen, um etwas völlig anderes zu erschaffen.

Hailing from the southern edge of Finland, BATTLE BEAST were founded in 2008 and soon established themselves with their trademark of pure crunching riffs, high screams, blistering solos and strong choruses. “I thirst to go further as a human being and the music on this album represents a part of the ongoing spiritual journey - that's what I tend to I call it - which is my road onward. Music-wise the songs have been expanded to a wider area as an effort to call out emotions close to those I myself had during the times of birth of these songs,” commented guitarist & vocalist Anton Kabanen about »Unholy Savior«. “Like always, I wrote songs about the series "Berserk", as well, and the reason behind writing songs about that particular series is that I can strongly relate to that, especially to certain characters and to their way of thinking and feeling,” Anton adds.

2024 Reissue

Limited Clear w/ Silver Splatter vinyl. 15 years after the band's debut album was release, Sargent House is set to do a special anniversary re-issue with updated artwork and limited-edition clear w/ silver splatter vinyl with Silver/Red foil jacket available. Upcoming tour dates include multiple festival appearances and a UK/EU headline tour in August. 12th Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 13th Manchester Gorilla, 14th London Underworld, 15th Bristol ArcTanGent. For Fans of Fu Manchu / Melvins. This the debut is being repressed. Red Fang is the formation of long time friends and collaborators Bryan Giles (Last of the Juanitas, Party Time), Aaron Beam (Dark Forces, Lachrymator), David Sullivan (Party Time, facedowninshit, Shiny Beast) and John Sherman (Party Time, Bad Wizard, Trumans Water, All Night). Unleashed on New Year's Eve of 2006 in Portland, Oregon, Red Fang stormed out of the gates, introducing a sweaty, seething basement to a new kind of unforgettable fist-pumping, beer-chugging rock music. Since that night, the band has continued with the same intensity, energy, and intimacy to quickly become a touring juggernaut, playing shows all over the US with bands like The Melvins, Big Business, and The Sword, to name just a few. Residing somewhere between Black Flag and Black Sabbath, Red Fang recall a time when rock was more urgent and horrifying. Synthesizing a variety of heavy music influences into their own distinct musical identity, the band easily shifts from barn-burning punk to mid-tempo, hyper-distorted bass destruction all while maintaining a cohesive sound. Red Fang create gigantic rock songs that are easy to listen to (not easy listening, mind you) and qualify the simultaneous usage of both the thinking and the banging head, which are usually mutually exclusive. Their instrumentation is fluid and effortless, and the vocals are delivered melodically and forcefully, with enough rasp and effect saturation to fit nicely within the music. Paired with elemental imagery, the lyrics are immense and satisfying without any pretense.

Sect have a lot on their minds. With the release of their brand new single, New Low and the promise of Plagues Upon Plagues, the follow up full-length to 2019’s Blood of the Beasts, Sect explore the intersection of issues which have cascaded over us for the last five years, the “plagues” of the title referring to the literal pandemic, and the metaphorical plague of the political state and the rise of fascism.

Comprised of an international cast of stellar musicians, who cut their teeth in a formative moment of political, cynical, antagonistic extremes, Sect unites Scott Crouse (Earth Crisis, Tooth & Claw) & Jimmy Chang (Undying, Catharsis) - guitars, Steve Hart (Day of Suffering, Mania For Conquest) - bass, Andy Hurley (Fall Out Boy, Racetraitor) - drums and Chris Colohan (Cursed, Unwell) - vocals. They released No Cure For Death in 2017 and Blood of the Beasts in 2019.

Plagues Upon Plagues opens with the bereft waves of “No Uncertain Terms”, a side of the band we haven’t seen before. Vocalist Chris Colohan describes this album as “a funeral rather than a trial”, the activism of previous releases fading to sorrow and grief.

Lead single New Low follows with the advent of marching drums, a funereal procession for the world we hoped to build. There’s frantic horror on the album too, with the track “Drowning in Sorrows” taking a look at the ways in which we numb ourselves as a society. “#ForeverHome” is a bitterly angry track about how people used animals for both narcissistic virtue signalling and one-way comfort in the pandemic, and abandoned them en masse just as selfishly when social life came back. Speaking to their straight-edge principles and how that continues to feed into their songwriting, Chris says, “the only kind of straight edge songs I’m interested in writing are dynamic ones that address human realities that you don’t have to be straight edge to engage with.”

On Plagues Upon Plagues, Sect pierce through the veil of complacency, forcing listeners to confront uncomfortable truths about the fragility of our world. The band wields their sonic arsenal like a prophetic warning and with raw vocals and uncompromising lyrics, they confront the harsh realities of existence in these tumultuous times. As society teeters on the brink of chaos, Sect's cold hard statement resonates with an urgency that cannot be ignored.

New Jackson marks his long awaited follow-up to 2017’s From Night To Night with its successor OOPS!... POP for long-time collaborators Permanent Vacation. A concise triumph in techno pop, its 9 tracks elevate his signature electronic sounds into anthemic new heights.
David Kitt is a prolific sonic polymath who’s enjoyed a colourful career making whatever he likes.
While releasing music under a vast array of aliases and collaborations for close to two and a half decades, New Jackson has remained his irregular home since 2011 for when ‘at one with the machines’. It offers a kaleidoscopic window into his love of dance music, and on his debut album under the alias From Night To Night (released in 2017 on Dublin’s All City label) he unfurled his singular vision; a dilated suite of nocturnal soul coaxed from his beloved electronic equipment with songwriter’s nous, sonically etched as blunted whispers coalesced from the dusky billows of Dublin bay. Further EPs and singles followed, alongside a beloved live show he toured globally, plus detours with his critically-lauded Garies duo (with Lumigraph) and a David Kitt solo album.
In the time since his New Jackson debut, he’s slowly distilled his studio methodology to help mine the true core of his musical self. Within this experimentation, he has stumbled upon the bounty that is OOPS!... POP, his most direct and euphoric body of work to date. Recorded across the span of five years and three different countries, Kitt has managed to transform his beloved alias into a leaner beast, tightening the screws around arrangements and songwriting to inspire an album sonically effortless in demeanour and spontaneously playful in structure and form. Aided by a stacked cast of collaborators including Rita Lynn, Donnacha Costello, Riche “Jape” Egan, Yenkee, Kean Kavanagh, Margie Jean Lewis, Meg Cronin and Fehdah, it bears the hallmarks of the studio albums of yesteryear in its dynamism and gratification while drawing on his rich bouquet of influences across a century of recorded music.
Opener SI SI SI lulls you in with its smothered vocoder’d croons and patient groove, BURNT DEEP next yields a surprising deep house turn, lit gently with casual hedonism. LIKE rewires the playbook entirely, shuffling along its minimal 80’s boogie groove with a cheeky grin, before lead single OUT OF REACH further mines the golden pastures with its glorious stuttering techno power-pop fit with that anthemic chorus. DAY IN SHOCK digi-dubs around the wonderful vocal turn of Fehdah in purest heads-down manner, then THE OK HOLE and STROBE both descend the psychedelic wormhole of anaesthetised breaks and electro with its entranced dancefloor gaze. I WANNA BE ADORED, the Madchester anthem from The Stone Roses, is then surprisingly reimagined as a lost kraut-pop robo sung classic while WITH THE NIGHT AT OUR FEET is our climactic conclusion, a mechanised symphony of dual proportions; a humane core of angelic harmonies chugging along in electro rhythm before soaring strings take us on our way.
New Jackson’s oeuvre, indeed David Kitt’s musical world, is vast; OOPS!... POP then might just be his opus across it all, a towering achievement of soaring catharsis in melody and song that soundtracks the most direct transmissions from his heart to yours

Returning to the action and spectacle that have captured moviegoers around the world, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts take audiences on a ‘90s globetrotting adventure with the Autobots and introduce a whole new faction of Transformers – the Maximals – to join them as allies in the existing battle for earth. It's the seventh instalment in the Transformers live-action film series. Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, the film was released in June 2023. The soundtrack was in hands of Jongnic Bontemps, who gave the film a new sound. The score also features a reimagining of familiar musical compositions from the earlier movies by Steve Jablonsky. Bontemps felt his goal was influencing the score from the first five films directed by Michael Bay, but as the movie takes place after the events of Bumblebee (2018), which deviated from the timeline of the original films, he also needed to provide new fresh music. During the soundtrack's production, different musical styles were experimented with. However, Bontemps said they quickly realized that ""an organic, orchestral, emotional score, that sound we are all familiar with, and has such a deep history, goes a long way for we as the audience to connect with these robots."" Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Expanded Edition) is available as a limited edition of 500 individually numbered copies on Autobots Red (LP1) vs Decepticons Purple (LP2) coloured vinyl. The vinyl edition features 5 bonus tracks and it includes a 4-page booklet with liner notes by the director, composer, and music executive of Paramount."

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts by Jongnic Bontemps, released 29 March 2024, includes the following tracks: "Autobots Enter", "More Than Meets the Eye", "Museum Heist", "Fallen Hero" and more.

This version of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts comes as a 2xLP. This release comes with (a) Booklet.

The vinyl is pressed as a red disc. Another vinyl is pressed as a purple disc.

The Silence of the Perfect Dark is the debut release by The Silence, a project formed by Ophidian and Eye-D as an outlet for all things dark, brooding, funky and dirty. This special vinyl edition features eight of the tracks from the album that outline some of the many musical directions you'll be hearing The Silence exploring in the near future. Highly recommended if you like music slightly unsettling.

Close your eyes and merge into Benedikt Frey’s 'Fastlane'. Imagine sitting in the driver’s seat of a an automobile, one with exceptional horsepower and torque, as you stare out the windshield at the red light, warping in fata-morgana a mile down the road. It’s a straight-away, a black top with two lanes, and against your better judgment you decide to floor the gas. No hesitation in your muscle, your ankle or the ball of your foot, which you now realize is some kind of universal pivot, the first point of contact fusing your body with the will of machine. In this moment you’re in awe that you, a human, an animal, grew from pond scum into something so advanced as to engineer this thing, a mechanical beast capable of overwhelming power and exhilaration. But you also feel a seductive dread, an outside force diverting you from caution toward a dangling carrot of curiosity, asking yourself, ‘How far can I take this thing?’ The dread, now a constant, is numbed, equalized by an adverse intoxicating gratification. You feel both sensations in real time, however, rather than take responsibility for yourself, friends, family and innocent bystanders, you cement your foot to the floor and lean your head back. Noise around you fades to mute. Smell the benzene-scented air, feel the wind on your face, the menacing vibration of the vessel you control beneath you and every grain of asphalt under its tires. This mile has now lasted an eternity and you’ve left your body for some objective view, as if watching climax of a film. Past the point of no return, you embrace abandon and lean into fate. The film becomes slow motion, a crawling pace so mesmerizing you convince yourself of an option to eject yourself from this madness, but as you finally let go of your last morsel of fear, you run the red light head-on into the nucleus of a fantastic glistening sculpture of torn metal, glass, oil, broken dreams and heartache. 'Fastlane' may be just drum machines and synthesizers if you’re timid, but listen harder and know the catastrophic reality of existence, a wreckage so gruesome we dare not rubberneck, but afterall it is our nature to stare.

The collaboration between Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void somehow seemed inevitable. Both artists having seen their releases published by Editions Mego, individually carving out idiosyncratic voices in the worlds of extreme, abstract electronic music. With Full-On, Lewis and Void explore and assimilate the very edge of their individual practice where a unique collaborative interface allows two voices to combine and morph into a third voice.


Lewis and Void play ping pong with the conversation of sounds, generating ideas and bouncing them off each other, simultaneously encouraging the other to go further with their ideas opening up an opportunity to engage with previously unexplored terrain. Guitars, synths, euro rack modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are folded in a playful unification with a propensity to tease, explore and extract new ideas and shapes, sometimes brutal, sometimes playful.

Trust was also a compositional tool allowing instinct to freely move on any aspect of the sound and space. This sound/feeling/instinct/association let this wild and wonderful material grow organically into something new.

The result of this exploratory interplay are 17 intense miniatures reveling in the process of unadulterated experimentation and whimsical interplay, not just between the humans, but the machines themselves. United in an endless series of sonic U-turns, this daring duo intertwine pop and noise whilst also bringing together visions of tender techno and forthright ambient.

The various zones which manifest from all this reveals vocals shifting in mysterious ways, dust drenched beats churning limpidly and devilish string loops navigating a disorientating domain. The experience of listening to Full-On is to be confronted with a range of ideas resulting in a platter of emotions. A place where beauty and the beast collide with the impulsive and outright weird. What a wonderful world.

Stoned Part I was the first self-released album from lost soul phenomenon Lewis Taylor. His third album proper, it was initially released on his own label Slow Reality in 2002 and it's been licensed to Be With for this long-awaited double LP release, its first ever vinyl edition. The songs are varied, hook filled and outstanding. Beloved by his legions of diehard fans, it's nothing short of a masterpiece.

After parting ways with Island, and without a label deal, Lewis went back to his home studio and began to record Stoned Part I in 2001. Co-written and co-produced with longtime collaborator Sabina Smyth, Lewis sings and plays all the instruments on this beautiful, emotional and very human album. It represents Lewis at his most accessible and finds him in the middle ground between his two Island releases. In some ways, Stoned Part I distills the best of his musical sensibilities. The flawless production is dense, layered and very early-2000s slick. The bottom end is thick, funky and sexy.

The complex, proggy-soul of title track "Stoned" opens the album and instantly captivates. Deep swinging funk with truly sweet soulful vocals, complemented by wah-wah guitar and swelling acidic synths. As Lewis himself told us, the ad libs at the end of the track were a nod to Paul McCartney at the end of "Hey Jude". Fan favourite "Positively Beautiful" has shades of Curtis and Marvin; its richly layered harmonies propelled by a simple, metronomic click-track that gives way to a more fully fleshed beat for the magnificent coda.

The slow, sweeping majesty of "Lewis IV" is all moody atmosphere, featuring dense, richly textured music and heavenly multi-tracked harmonies. The stop-you-in-your-tracks incredible "Send Me An Angel" could have been a huge AM radio hit, beautifully crafted sophisticated soul-pop songwriting in the vein of the very best Sade records. Yep! *That good* The smooth, psychedelia-lite "Til The Morning Light" is a gorgeous, sun-dappled love song, layered with Lewis' distinctive honey drenched vocals and, again, the type of record you could've easily heard all over the radio at the time of initial release.

The remarkable, wide-eyed "Shame" packs so many shifting styles into one song, it has to be heard to be believed. Opening in a laconic, breezy style, not unlike a Dallas Austin or Rodney Jerkins produced R&B hit of the day, it morphs into a heavy psych-soul Soulaquarians wig-out (the solo bearing an uncanny resemblance to Carlos Santana’s on "She’s Not There") before elegantly sliding into string-assisted symphonic soul and then back around again. And again. Sheer brilliance. The sublime, gentle head-nod funk-soul of "When Will I Ever Learn" (Part 1) is a strikingly well-turned-out tune, a neat, sweet bass-driven guitar-soul jam that ensures our jaw won't be leaving the floor anytime soon. "Lovin’ U More" sounds like a classic turn-of-the-century Neptunes production, the likes of which they'd lay on for JT BITD. A Latin-tinged groover with more than a little Nile Rodgers-driven slick funk stylings, it's yet another instant Lewis bomb with those gorgeous harmonies and chart-friendly irresistible key-changes to boot. Another indisputable (non-)HIT!

The funky seductive swagger of "From The Day We Met - Part II" opens the final side of wax, giving way to the gigantic buzzing synth-funk beast "Lovelight", a track so insouciantly mighty it should have been a massive hit for someone. Wait, what's that? Robbie Williams covered it? Ah, OK, well, I guess that says something about the effortless pop genius contained within. Containing a seemingly unnoticed nod to Kraftwerk’s "Computer World", it's Lewis's favourite song on the album. It's easy to hear why: "Sabina’s production totally nails it. I love the restraint and the subtlety, and that mixture of warmth and sweetness from the singing against the slightly cold, yet beautiful airy-ness of the backing track." To close this phenomenal album, the twisted electronic soul of "Sheneverdid" marries Lewis's beautiful falsetto to his virtuoso playing and an easy-cum-ominous musical backdrop. Stunning.

Simon Francis’s vinyl mastering, approved by Lewis himself, presents the eleven tracks over a double LP so, as ever, it sounds sensational. The records have been cut by Cicely Balston at Air Studios and pressed at Record Industry. Allow Lewis Taylor to get you Stoned.

A legend. Electric. Transformative. The greatest of all time. There’s no superlative that
Richard Pryor hasn’t already earned, and with good reason. From the very start, his voice was
both singular, truly unmatched, and plural, containing multitudes. In a breath, he embodies a
full swath of humanity, dropping his audience into the raucousness of Hank’s Place,
becoming everyone from the streetwise handyman to the lecherous farmers, beautiful black
Irma who loved to tell people to kiss her ass to Weasel who spent all the time he wasn’t
signifying on negging potential marks. He dances between pimps Coldblood and Smooth,
dips into the persona of Tarcy the cop, and transforms into tight-lipped Jesse, the basketball
beast. In another, he paints an entire scene-within-a-scene with “Prison Play.” He’s everyone
(a not uncomfortable feature of his existence: having grown up Black in a Jewish tenement
in an Italian neighborhood, he jokes that the general attitude among the local toughs was
“Get him! He’s all of ‘em!”), everything, everywhere. Along the way, Pryor punctuates every
laugh with a jab, sharply rebuking all the social ills that seek to divide and conquer, all the
filthy, inhumane -isms that offend the senses (or rightly should). And he does it all while
assuring his audience they have nothing to fear from the Black man—except his thoughts.

Never one to pull inventive punches, Left Coast electronic music producer Dave Aju reassembled this notorious cast of characters for a remarkably fitting album package made during one of the most strange times our world has ever faced in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. While things were essentially shutdown, reopened, cycle-repeat worldwide, and every other species in mother nature's kingdom temporarily rejoiced while humans remained still in their caves, Aju and The Invisible Art Trio, his formidable if not-seen-in-a-minute musical team behind such underground anthems as "Be Like the Sun", went to work in the final days of the glorious G-Son studios in Atwater Village LA to record this LP.

Indeed, the same four/five walls and vocal booth that saw the Beastie's iconic Check Your Head and Hello Nasty come to life, became the birthplace of Glossolalia, Aju's fifth studio album and appropriately impressive seven-song set. As always, myriad musical styles and influences are strung together and boldly combined here, to the degree that drawing comparisons or attempting genre references feels futile. There are, however, clear visceral expressions of political provocation, hope and anger, fear and joy laid over twisted yet dedicated grooves in a lockdown era where Aju's imaginary collective dance floor feels in the temporary absence thereof and bizarro sixth-world unification strategy of recording every song's lyrics in complete non-languages aka total gibberish, feels right at home. Even the vocal guests join in the literal chant here, granting us diverse spell-casting and sensual nonsensical lyrical lines over tech-funk mother lodes, before closing the otherworldly proceedings with a powerful grand finale tribute to the US of A's proud boys-in-blue in the wake of George Floyd's very public assassination.

Equal parts timely anti-establishment and uplifting call-to-action, Glossolalia serves as a decidedly coarse yet crucial reminder of the possibilities in collaborative and devoted noise-making, booty-shaking, and alternative world-building during greater global disarray - beyond stylistic, nationalistic, and linguistic dividing lines. An overtly universal and unifying message liberating us from any fixed cultural identities and thus differences, to instead just focus on how the music delivers and we physically respond, together, as the foundation. Perhaps also an inspired response to the talking heads in every corner of the world's media, spewing useless and politically-tainted mouth data at us amidst these turbulent times.

2022 Repress

After a few nice but largely unnoticed 12"s for lower-profile labels, Dürerstuben is ready to make a serious maneuver, and Pampa is pleased to provide them with the proper platform. The Sheets of Rane EP is the Berliner duo's most sophisticated statement yet, imbuing cold programmed sounds with a glowing human touch and a penchant for melody. A1 'Gscheids Planet' unfolds with a deceptive intro, click-clackety downtempo stomps and crunchy snares beneath a tender vocoder coo, just when some muted guitar plucks crescendo into a burst of robo-synths. Although three minutes have passed, only now does the song reveal its true nature, a summery tune with rich synths that billow in the wind. Then, as its title indicates, 'Haeckles Kosmos' further explores Dürerstuben's fascination with the unlimits of outer space. This star system in particular has a very tropical flair, punctuated with bouncy parallel fifths straight out of the Italo Orient. In between movements, the duo makes some brief non sequiturs into piano balladry, the kind that force a smile (and a record deal) out of DJ Koze. Finally, venturing even further into jacking territory, 'Freiherr in der Wall' hinges upon syncopated, sometimes faltering beatbox rhythms, a swaggering bassline and fluttering arpeggiation. Coupled with hand-played chords, this is a prime example of how Dürerstuben can tame the beast machine and let irregularities be strengths. If you can get down with Metro Area, Zapp, Tensnake, and yes, even Survivor, then pick this one up.

Special 10th Anniversary Edition In Brown Card Artboard Sleeve With Additional Lyric Print Insert

Slowdive singer and songwriter’s third solo album, which was originally released in November 2012. It is a stunning record and one which, upon its release, underlined the claims that Neil was one of the finest and most underrated British songwriters of recent times. It’s also a very special release in the Sonic Cathedral catalogue; the shoegaze label licensed the record from Jack Johnson’s Brushfire imprint for the UK and Europe and it was the start of a relationship that also gave us the Black Hearted Brother album in 2013 and, ultimately, brought about the reformation of Slowdive in 2014. But Palindrome Hunches is a very different beast. Both stately and understated, this moody and mesmerising collection of peculiarly British folk songs was made with the Band of Hope, a Wallingford, Oxfordshire based collective consisting of Ben Smith (violin), Drew Milloy (double bass), Paul Whitty (piano) and Tom Crook (guitar). Together with producer Nick Holton, banjo player Kevin Wells and backing singer Aimee Craddock, they recorded the album to tape over a few weekends in the music room of their local junior school. “At first we were going to record in a studio, but everything seemed too clean,” said Neil at the time. “We just went through the songs and recorded them live without very much rehearsal. We wanted to be spontaneous and simple and to keep the little mistakes that sneaked in.” This goes a long way to explaining the album’s humanity and intimacy, and also why it has had a quiet life of its own over the past decade, gradually growing in stature alongside Neil’s more high-profile activities with Slowdive; copies of the 2012 original and even the 2017 repress currently fetch up to triple figures on Discogs. The stunning opener ‘Digging Shelters’ was used to devastating effect in the posthumously released James Gandolfini movie Enough Said – a fitting home for a song that rubs shoulders here with ruminations about love and loss such as ‘Tied To You’ and ‘Spin The Bottle’ and, on ‘Wittgenstein’s Arm’, an Austrian pianist who had his right arm amputated in World War I and lost three of his brothers to suicide. The wordplay of the title track is almost light-hearted in comparison; “I wanted to write a song that was the same forwards and backwards, but it didn’t quite work out,” explained Neil, adding that he also chose ‘Palindrome Hunches’ for the album’s title because “I like the idea of things being reversible”. A couple years later, by reforming his old band, he proved that. And now, ten years on, it’s the perfect time to rewind to this understated, underrated classic. Side A 1 Digging Shelters 2 Bad Drugs and Minor Chords 3 Wittgenstein’s Arm 4 Spin The Bottle 5 Tied to You Side B 1 Love Is a Beast 2 Palindrome Hunches 3 Full Moon Rising 4 Sandy 5 Hey Daydreamer 6 Loose Change. Praise for Palindrome Hunches on its original release: ““Nope, it ain’t shoegaze as it's been codified and re-codified. But why be disappointed in someone following his muse to a logical conclusion when that path was always the one he walked on?” – Pitchfork An exquisite set of dark folk music” – The Times “Draws from the same understated, reflective well as John Martyn” – MOJO “‘Tied To You’ doesn’t merely evoke Nick Drake but withstands the comparison – evidence of the songs’ quality” – Financial Times “Halstead’s songs breathe the sort of honesty and goodness that’s harder and harder to find in the iTunes age” – The Independent “Given the chance, they could be songs that continue to enchant for many years to come” – The Line Of Best Fit

Unholy Black Metal from the Holy Land, drenched in Middle-Eastern tones and mystique! An invocation of thousands of years of Darkness! Hailing from the urban Israeli settlement called Ma’ale Adummim in Israel, Arallu is a five-piece Black/Death Metal act that has been around the metal underground for twenty-five years. The band got the name Arallu from the Mesopotamian mythology, as it is the name of the underworld kingdom ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal and the god Nergal, where the dead are judged. Arallu’s music revolves around the traditional ancient Middle Eastern melodies of fellow countrymen Melechesh, the high speed savagery of bands like Angelcorpse and Absu, and the atmospheric feel of legendary acts like before mentioned Melechesh and Absu. In 2019 the band had released the record called “En Olam”, and that opus has solidified Arralu’s already known talent to the underground extreme metal community. “Death Covenant” is the band’s seventh full-length studio offering and the album offers the listeners a very stunning infusion of occult Black Metal music with the ancient Sumerian and Middle Eastern sound. The riffs found in here will satisfy the listeners with its frenzy of melodic tremolo picked riffs that is intertwined with some eerie folk instrumentation. The elements in the guitar department, thrown in with a few folk instruments such as a saz and a darbuka, reveals how the band had successfully stripped metal down to its core and added a personal touch of their own special flair. them and it provides that extra punch and low-end heaviness to the overall outcome of Arallu’s music. It basically lies steadily beneath the guitars as it backs them up with some thick lines that give a more deep feel to the strings and dispenses an ominous atmosphere to the tracks. The drum section also catches the audience’s attention with a variety of destructive pummeling double bass blasting to some Middle Eastern tribal drumming that helps a lot in terms of keeping the atmosphere intact. The record is filled with high-pitched piercing shrieks and screams which create a dark and raw soundscape. These vicious shrieks are sometimes jacked up with some uncanny backing vocals that tie together the brutality of extreme death and Black Metal music to the ancient Middle Eastern scales of the material. “Death Covenant” also parades the band’s strongest production to date in their twenty-five years of existence. Arallu had created a menacing and atmospheric beast in this style of metal with their release of “Death Covenant”. These Israelis had put out a savage album that is hardly comparable to its predecessors.

Sasu Ripatti, now sporting the new "Ripatti Deluxe" moniker, presents his very own abstract take on early rave and happy hardcore. "Speed Demon" marks the first release on Ripatti's newly launched label "Rajaton".

The Finnish word ”raja” has multiple meanings. It could refer to a ”border”, ”limit”, ”boundary”, or even ”capacity” if understood broadly. It feels that ”border” is the first interpretation that comes to mind when the word is met in isolation of additional context. It often includes political energy of some sort. Or perhaps it’s just this particular point in time that leads the mind into such field of thought.

As the Dutch author Rutger Bregman notes in his book Human Kind – A Hopeful History, the real trouble with people began when the first person had the idea of drawing a line on sand and claiming ownership of the area on their side. The concept of physical borders was born.

Naturally, there are mental borders, as well. Think about all the things you shut out because they’re ”not for you”. They are numerous and we do it all the time. The issue is not to stop that, but to recognize when to let new things in, even if they’re not commonplace. Mental borders might often be easier to rewrite than physical ones, but the challenge remains a real one.

That’s where the derivative form ”rajaton” comes to play. By simply adding the ”-ton”, all borders, limits, boundaries and capacities are lifted in an instant. We have something ”borderless” instead, and are thus free to expand our thinking.

One could argue that the word ”rajaton” implies not the removal of borders but instead their very non-existence at large. How will our mind work when the concept of borders doesn’t even enter the conscious thought?

Mental borderlessness is a truly fascinating concept. A maximalist array of opportunities and potential ideas enters the picture – one which is also limitless, unlimited, sans boundaries, and also without a danger of being depleted. It’s an all-existence of multitudes where hierarchy also starts to deteriorate, giving way to a new form of full understanding without judgement.

Music is one fine place for such thinking, especially when thinking about the role of the listener. Occupying a much more active position than is generally recognized, the listener can greatly benefit from borderless thinking, and thus help to enhance the collective perceived significance of any given body of work. When there are no boundaries, the interpretation remains unchained and honest.

Basically it was all already said by the late revolutionary jazz pianist Burton Greene: ”Borders are boring!”