Pop & Rock News

What happens when an abrasive rock trio trades guitars for synths, cranks up the beats and leans into the everyday anxieties of simply being a functioning human in the 21st century? The answer is Uneasy Laughter, the sensational second Sub Pop release from Los Angeles-based Moaning. Vocalist/guitarist Sean Solomon, bassist/keyboardist Pascal Stevenson and drummer Andrew MacKelvie have been friends and co-conspirators amid the fertile L.A. DIY scene for more than a decade. They are also immersed in other creative pursuits - Solomon is a noted illustrator, art director and animator, while Stevenson and MacKelvie have played or worked behind the boards with acts such as Cherry Glazerr, Sasami and Surf Curse. On Uneasy Laughter, they've tackled challenges both personal and universal the only way they know how: by talking about how they're feeling and channeling those emotions directly into their music. "We've known each other forever and we're really comfortable trying to express where we're at. A lot of bands aren't so close," says MacKelvie. Adds Solomon, who celebrated a year of sobriety during the Uneasy Laughter sessions, "Men are conditioned not to be vulnerable or admit they're wrong. But I wanted to talk openly about my feelings and mistakes I've made." Moaning's 2018's self-titled Sub Pop debut featured songs mostly written in practice or brought in already complete by individual band members. It garnered acclaim from Pitchfork, Stereogum and Los Angeles Times, who observed, "Moaning craft anxious music for an increasingly nervous local scene." But Uneasy Laughter is a collaborative breakthrough which significantly brightens Moaning's once claustrophobic sound, again abetted by producer/engineer Alex Newport (At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, Melvins). The trio points to first single "Ego," which features a costume-heavy video directed by Ambar Navarro, as an embodiment of this evolution. Solomon admits Uneasy Laughter could have gone in quite another direction had he not gotten sober and educated himself on such core subjects as gender and mental health. "I did a lot of reading in the tour van - authors like bell hooks, Mark Fisher, and Alain de Botton, all really inspired me. I don't want to be the person who influences young people to go get high and become cliche tragic artists," he says. "What I'd rather convey to people is that they're not alone in what they think and how they feel. 'Ego' specifically and the album overall is about those themes - letting go of your bullshit so you can help other people and be present." "We want to be part of a community," he adds. "I wrote online about being sober for a year, and I had kids from all over writing and asking for advice. One of them said, 'For the first time I can remember, I didn't drink last night.' I thought, for once, maybe we did something besides sell a record. That's a win. That's incredibly exciting."

Otherworldly beat science from the currently vibrant
Washington DC underground.
The heavily processed MCing of NappyNappa weaves in and out
of the skewed electronics and stuttering percussion of Patrick
Cain.
Loosely affiliated with the Future Times crew and featuring
contributions from Dolo Percussion (aka Max D).
In the duo’s own words “a collaborative experiment in liberated
sound, vision, and performance,” Model Home orbit in their
own universe, with glimmers of light from distant galaxies
refracted in their sound.
Some moments are reminiscent of DJ Screw, MF Doom or a
mangled dub sound system cassette that’s been left in the sun
for too long, the grainy collage backing tracks closer to the sick
Midwest drones of Aaron Dilloway than any modern beatmakers
but this is implicitly its own thing.
The spirit of free improvisation pervades the tracks, a sound
evolving from two artistic sensibilities bouncing off each other
without a set plan and creating a third pathway to unknown
worlds.
‘One Year’ compiles tracks from 8 different self-released
mixtapes made during an intense initial 12 month period of
musical activity that birthed the project.
Approached with the same archival sensibility that Disciples has
brought to albums-that-never-were from Black Lodge, Bogdan
Raczynski and His Name As Alive but with the idea of creating a
framework to present an underground NOW sound. A
Jamaican-style ‘showcase’ album for these outliers from the
District of Columbia.
Although without sonic precedent it somehow makes a kind of
perverse sense that these sounds have emerged from the same
place that birthed Dischord Records and Trouble Funk.
LP in reverse board sleeve with full colour printed inner sleeve
and digital download card.

For their first album in 5 years, Zelienople turns on the current time with a record of low key decaying songs wrapped in hypnotic, driving rhythms.

The Chicago based trio is back with a stunner of an underground pop album. Their most reverb heavy bombast is gone in favour of pure earth bound intimate tunes that feel like they summon the spirit of the late Mark Hollis. Shrouded tribal percussion and rippling vocals are at the forefront, while looped atmospheres echo in the distance.

Since the release of their last album, vocalist Matt Christensen has been known for pouring his soul out in countless bandcamp releases of singer/songwriter, experimental and ambient offerings. It's hard to keep up with him, but one can't but to admire the dedication and extremely high quality of it all. Mike Weis on the other hand is less prolific, but has become a focused student of Korean Shaman and Buddhist music, often performing in zen based percussive rituals when he's not involved in side projects of improvisational music. Brian Harding is perhaps the most anonymous of the three, yet he is the steady, grounding element on bass that keeps them as one. Together, they create a beautifully realised own voice that feels especially close on their new album. Hold You Up is like a slow walk through a withering world, though one with a sense of refuge. This is music with heart - navigating darkness through light.

Two-time Mercury Prize nominee Ghostpoet (aka Obaro
Ejimiwe) follows up 2017’s acclaimed 'Dark Days +
Canapés’ with a record which couldn’t feel more prescient - a
dystopian snapshot of the universal unease and anxiety we feel
as we enter into this new decade (in lockdown mode!), an
uncertain future distilled across these 10 vital tracks.
 The first single ‘Concrete Pony’ is the perfect entry point to the
record - bluesy, gritty and foreboding and accompanied by an
incredible video, with its distinctly Lynchian feel, surreal and
beautifully cinematic.
 Written, arranged and produced by Ghostpoet, the album
incorporates a myriad of sounds and styles anchored by the altrock sonics of his last two records and a nod to the likes of
Massive Attack who he provided guest vocals for a couple of
years ago. It also features guest vocals from an eclectic mix of
artists; Art School Girlfriend, Skinny Girl Diet’s Delilah
Holiday, SaraSara and Katie Dove Dixon.
 The artwork is a stunning recreation of the famous gothic
painting ‘The Nightmare’ by Fuseli with Obaro as the stricken
woman.

Limited Edition! Mit "See My Girls" veröffentlichen die Tindersticks auf City Slang am 07.02.2020 eine neue 4-Track EP, die weltweit auf 2.000 Stück limitiert ist. Begleitet wird die EP von einem Video zum Titeltrack, das von Stuart A Staples von Tindersticks und seiner Tochter Sidonie Osborne Staples, die kürzlich einen Masterabschluss in Fine Arts gemacht hat, gedreht wurde. Die EP enthält einen Radio Edit von "See My Girls", eine instrumentale Dub-Version des Titels, und zwei neue Songs - die von David Boulter verfassten Instrumentals "A Street Walker's Carol" und "Blood And Bone" mit Sidonie als Lead-Gesang. Die EP ist ein Fortführung von Tindersticks' 2019er Veröffentlichung "No Treasure But Hope".

'A Winged Victory For The Sullen' is the first installment of the new collaboration between Stars Of The Lid member Adam Wiltzie and L.A. composer Dustin O'Halloran. The duo agreed to leave the comfort zone of their home studios and develop the recordings with the help of large acoustic spaces, hunting down a selection of 9ft grand pianos that had the ability to deliver extreme sonic low end.

Other traditional instrumentation was used including string quartet, French horn, and bassoon, but always juxtaposed is the sound of drifting guitar washed melodies. The recordings began with one late night session in the famed Grunewald Church in Berlin on a 1950's imperial B?sendorfer piano and strings were added in the historic East Berlin DDR radio studios along the River Spree. One last session on a handmade Fazioli piano in a private studio on the Northern cusp of Italy, before the final mixes took place in a 17th century villa near Ferrara with the assistance of Francesco Donadello. All songs were then processed completely analogue straight to magnetic tape.

Their secret to harvesting new melodic structures from the thin air of existence was for the duo to push themselves to dangerous territory, realising that clear thinking at the wrong moment could stifle the compositions. The final result is seven landscapes of harmonic ingemination. In 'Requiem For The Static King Part One' ? created in memory of the untimely passing of Mark Linkous ? they have taken the age-old idea of a string quartet and then shot it out of a cannon to reveal exquisite new levels of sonic bliss.

Of the 13 minute track 'Symphony Path?tique', Wiltzie says 'after almost 20 years of struggling to create interesting ambient drone music, I feel like I have finally figured out what I am doing'. Notable guest musicians include Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, as well as Erased Tapes label comrade Peter Broderick on violin. A Winged Victory For The Sullen is not a side project ? it is the future of the late night record you have always dreamed of. A Major release for Forte, Non exportable.

Bassist- and Composer "Charles Mingus" is one of the most radical figures in American music. Throughout the ’50s, he worked as a sideman with legendary players Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and more. In the ’60s, he gained recognition as a bandleader, often followed by controversy for making strong-minded statements in the press about race, politics and stodgy music critics. While Mingus received many honors posthumously as well as during his career, perhaps his greatest achievement was transcending the restrictive label of jazz. The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady is without question Mingus’ magnum opus. Originally released on Impulse! in 1963, the album broke new ground in both genre-defying composition and innovative recording techniques. A six-part suite with dramatic shifts in mood and tempo, The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady features the three-way brass dialogue of trumpets, trombone and tuba, swooping reeds and awe-inspiring rhythm section. Balancing delicate Spanish modes and Ellingtonian themes, the ensemble breaks into a divine cacophony of group improvisation on par with free jazz giants like Ornette Coleman or Cecil Taylor. In his best-known essay, “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung,” Lester Bangs praises, “the experience of the first few listenings to a record so total, so mind-twisting, that you authentically can say you’ll never be quite the
same again. Black Saint and The Sinner Lady did that, and a very few others. They’re events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm.”

This long out-of-print vinyl release has been carefully remastered from the original master tapes.

Ltd. 1000 W/W One Green & One Blue Vinyl.

In the latest of a series of albums that have mirrored the exceptional story of the band itself, Cornershop return with a new album ‘England Is A Garden’ on March 6th 2020 on Ample Play Records. It is an album that strides in an upbeat fashion, to deliver a full listening experience, bringing songs of experience, empire, protest and humour, steeped in the way only Tjinder Singh would come with.

Listen to a first taste of the album now, ‘No Rock: Save In Roll’, that is to say that there is not one without the other, that rock, for all its focus on death is the saviour of life.

The anvil here is music itself, and a celebration of Tjinder’s birth place - The Black Country, which also gave birth to heavy metal that has gone on to influence the world to dirty rock, whether the streets are lined with pylons or palm trees, the Black Country has allowed us to see things differently.

So the sound here goes back to Englands’ Midlands with two thumbs up to the feeling of hearing heavy metal from the back of a stage, as we all ride on and await the female backing vocals of our song to come in.

Ltd. 1000 W/W One Green & One Blue Vinyl.

In the latest of a series of albums that have mirrored the exceptional story of the band itself, Cornershop return with a new album ‘England Is A Garden’ on March 6th 2020 on Ample Play Records. It is an album that strides in an upbeat fashion, to deliver a full listening experience, bringing songs of experience, empire, protest and humour, steeped in the way only Tjinder Singh would come with.

Listen to a first taste of the album now, ‘No Rock: Save In Roll’, that is to say that there is not one without the other, that rock, for all its focus on death is the saviour of life.

The anvil here is music itself, and a celebration of Tjinder’s birth place - The Black Country, which also gave birth to heavy metal that has gone on to influence the world to dirty rock, whether the streets are lined with pylons or palm trees, the Black Country has allowed us to see things differently.

So the sound here goes back to Englands’ Midlands with two thumbs up to the feeling of hearing heavy metal from the back of a stage, as we all ride on and await the female backing vocals of our song to come in.

Fuzz has abandonment issues. Abandoning expectation. Abandoning
reservation, consummation, resignation and trite dictation.
Instinct is all there is when it comes to the divination of
harsh salvation. Segall, Moothart and Ubovich are exploring
all the blank-ations of what will be, or has always been, Fuzz II.
Tried and true methods mixed with tongue-twisting, teeth-shattering,
seizure-inducing stabs at the norm. Who knows... maybe
that's wrong. Maybe it's all done. Played out. Maybe it's not for
want of new but for lack of old. But probably not. Bathe in the
heat wave that is Fuzz, and regret nothing in the time freeze. Necessity
is the mother of creation; and devolution stakes its claim
in the past as it continues to bind itself to the future.
San Francisco, Los Angeles, heaven, hell, lunar fields, subterranean
hallucinations, traffic jams, sleepless days, hazy nights,
recollection or blind reflection. It is all there and so should be
you. 2015 and 2016 will bring a new surge of slime, fuzz and
otherwise bittersweet concoctions of earthly lettering. It will be
heavy, chaotically controlled, softly serpentine and blindingly
barbaric. To translate the auditory from ethereal to saliva-
soaked semantics is to shatter a promise as it's made. In the
meantime, Ty, Charles and Chad walk on. It is what it is. Just
like everything else. And if you don't know, now you know.
This message brought to you by In The Red Educational
Services... as it was before and is it will be again.

"Headland" is a collective of Australian musicians that
compose, record and perform soundtrack music for surf films in
various forms. The group leader is Murray Paterson, an old
surfer himself, who in between wrangling two red-headed boys,
finds time here and there to record bits and pieces of guitarbased
music. Mostly he heads to Nashuaville where his longtime
colleague from a previous life in arts education, Les Dorahy,
has set up a small recording studio in the old Booyong General
Store, situated in the Byron Bay Hinterland. Whenever friends
visit their part of the world, they drop past and join in.

Most of the music remains instrumental but this new album is a collection of songs. One of Murray’s comrades from his days with Tex Perkins and The Dark Horses is Joel Silbersher. Joel has been a longtime Headland collaborator–playing bass and guitar–but while recording material for the new album, vocal melodies kept finding
their way into Murray’s instrumentals. Soon there seemed enough of a coherent lyrical theme to build an album around.

There’s a song about installing a dishwasher. There’s one about
a soccer ball filled with blood, and one from the point of view of a
lizard. The topic of love among the elderly gets a look in, and
there’s a drone called Face in the Sky, which is about a face in
the sky.

There is some nice instrumentation touches here too with cello
(Tahiti Jones), pedal steel (Danny Widdicombe), double bass
(Melissa ‘Curly’ Hunt), violin/melotron (Amanda Brown – GO BETWEENS), percussion (Luke Peacock) and organ (Whitey White) fleshingout the core band of Paterson, Silbersher, accordionist Les
Dorahy and drummer Brock Fitzgerald.

During the recordings, a good friend of the band, Australian rock legend Spencer P. Jones sadly departed. One of his melodies and lyric was dovetailed to a Paterson instrumental and Ode to Death Trip became an emotional tribute to mark his passing. A couple of other covers appear on the album. There is a surprising, acoustic rendition of Motörhead’s Deaf Forever and a version of John Sebastian’s Darlin’ Be Home Soon. This last is a relic from 2007 when following a hard drive meltdown at Nashuaville, the only remaining recording of a late night jam was an unedited headphone mix. It seems though, it was impossible to exclude this from the collection.

There’s still enough of the spacious Australian land- and seascapes to satisfy fans of the previous Headland albums (sound/track 2013, Cosy 2015, True Flowers from this Painted World 2017), journeys through a sonic architecture centred around the motion of the ocean and it’s meeting with the coastline. But a narrative of loss and longing sits on the surface here: Silbersher’s voicing is an emotive thread that breaches at all the right times.

There are references to the likes of Alex Chilton, Nick Drake and Daniel Lanois but Christian Pyle (Prawn & Spanner Studio) brings a sensitivity to the mix so that any references float rather than reveal themselves in bold relief. What Rough Beast marks the development of an ensemble and documents a sense of meaning embedded
with the tone of place. File under Salty.

Here Lies Man took the music world by storm in 2017 with their self-titled debut positing the intriguing hypothesis: What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat

Rough Trade named Here Lies Man in their prestigious Top 10 Albums of 2017. BBC 6 & Classic Rock Magazine deemed it among the year's best, as well as countless other press outlets singing its praises.

This June, the L.A. band comprised of Antibalas members quickly follow their auspicious debut with the even more thoroughly realized album You Will Know Nothing. Its 11 tracks expand upon the band's exploration of heavy riff-based rock and psych within the ancient rhythmic formula of the clave.

We're very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs,' explains founder and vocalist/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Marcos Garcia (who also plays guitar in Antibalas) of the band's sound. Tony Iommi's (Black Sabbath) innovation was to make the riff the organizing principle of a song. We are taking that same approach but employing a different organizing principle: For Iommi it was the blues, for us it comes directly from Africa.'

Sonically, on You Will Know Nothing the dynamic range is thicker, crisper and more powerful. It glistens as much as it blasts. The songs are even catchier, more anthemic, and the production reflects that of a band truly come into its own. Lyrically, it's an equally more conceptualized effort that reflects upon states of being and consciousness — a driving force that carries throughout the words and moods of all of the band's releases, interconnected to their trancelike music. Here Lies Man have honed their sound and their focus, and soon, you will truly know Nothing.

We wanted to go deeper with the sonic experience,' says Garcia. Even though it sounds more hi-fi than the first record, it was important that it didn't sound too polished.'

While You Will Know Nothing certainly maintains its gritty grooves, there's an interesting conceptual mathematics to the entire proceedings. There are interludes between each song that are 2/3 to 3/4 of the tempo of the previous song,' Garcia says. The reason it breaks down to 2 over 3 or 3 over 4 is that everything in the music rhythmically corresponds to a set of mathematical algorithms known as the clave. The clave is an ancient organizing rhythmic principle developed in Africa.'

We dove deep into the texture of the music, beyond the groove and the riff,' says HLM cofounder and drummer Geoff Mann (former Antibalas drummer and son of jazz musician Herbie Mann.) Although something might sound like one instrument, there are subtle layers shifting through. It's definitely a headphone album.'

Garcia and Mann recorded the album much like they did the debut, at their own L.A. studio on a Tascam 388 8-track tape machine. Congas were later recorded by percussionists Richard Panta and Reinaldo DeJesus. Then, Garcia went to NY to record interludes with former Antibalas keyboardist Victor Axelrod. Mixing took the most time in order to find the proper sonic space for each layer of musical detail, with first album engineer Jeremy Page mixing the drums and the band tackling the remainder while also juggling a hectic touring schedule.

Here Lies Man has already spent much of early 2018 on tour, with dates supporting Antibalas and Fu Manchu as well as a headlining trek through the EU & UK. Many summer festival dates and headline tours await later in the year as Here Lies Man continues its infectious charge onward.

*** BACK IN ON GOLD COLOURED VINYL***

What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat? In short, that’s the underlying vibe to the self-titled debut by Here Lies Man. The L.A. based quintet is founded and conceptualized by Marcos Garcia of Antibalas, bringing his erudite experience of West African rhythms and music to the more riff-based foundations of heavy rock. The results are an incredibly catchy and refreshing twist on classic forms, without sounding forced and trite like some sort of mash-up attempt. Here Lies Man merges and expands musical traditions organically, utilizing the talents of drummer Geoff Mann (son of jazz musician Herbie Mann) and a host of skilled musicians to make Garcia’s vision a reality.

“The repetitive guitar figures that happen in Afrobeat music are
very close to heavy rock guitar riffs,” Garcia explains. “ This music is based on the clave. It’s the musical algorithm that the rhythms revolve around. It's what gives it integrity and provides the basis for the musical conversation that's happening. I knew I wanted it to be psychedelic and heavy, and I wanted to be expanding on a musical tradition rather than pretending to be creating something new.”


And that expansion is the brilliant, hazy, psychedelic, hook-laden 8-song masterwork Here Lies Man, available on LP, CD and download on April 7th, 2017 via RidingEasy Records. (Written by Dave Clifford).

JON SPENCER, THE BLUES EXPLOSION MAN who put the BELLBOTTOMS on BABY DRIVER! The Top Cat who spread the
Secret Sauce in BOSS HOG! The Rockabilly Right-Hook from Heavyweight Outlaws HEAVY TRASH! The Swank-Fucking Master of PUSSY GALORE!

Jon Spencer is back! Often imitated, never duplicated, the original NYC underground-rock legend returns from the wilderness with twelve red-hot hits, each more powerful than the last!

This is Garage Punk for Now People! A wizard’s brew of rhythm & blues and subversive dance grooves, weaponized with sci-fi skronk and industrial attitude, calibrated for the Revolution, a Molotov cocktail of sound guaranteed to destroy any post-modern hangover!

Pulsing with energy, clanging with excitement, and dripping with radioactive soul and raw emotion, Jon Spencer opens up his heart like never before, exploring man’s modern condition with caustic guitars and outerworld crooning, asking and answering the musical question, “Is it possible to torch the cut-throat world of fake news and pre-fab, plastic-coated teen rebellion with the power of rock’n’roll?”

THE ANSWER IS YES! SPENCER SINGS THE HITS!

This is the truth serum America has been craving, the beginning of a rock’n’roll rebellion that takes no prisoners and puts the squares on ice!

Recorded and mixed with Bill Skibbe at the Key Club in Benton Harbor, MI. Featuring the talents of Sam Coomes (Quasi, Heatmeiser) and M. Sord (M. Sord). On tour in the Europe in Autumn 2018!

Los Angeles has often been described as a dream factory'--both a mecca where dreamers converge to pursue long-held aspirations, and a topography of hallucinogenic contradictions: enchanting tangerine sunsets diffused by smog, crystal-clutching spiritualists mingling with deep-pocketed narcissists, rows of scenic palms competing with garish billboards for commuters' attention. It was against this backdrop that the four members of La Luz--singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland, drummer Marian Li Pino, keyboardist Alice Sandahl, and bassist Lena Simon—conceived of Floating Features, the band's third studio album. For this, their most ambitious release yet, La Luz consulted landscapes both physical and psychological. References to dreams abound on Floating Features. Loose Teeth' catalyzes nightmare fuel into a propulsive, intentionally-disorienting collision of honeyed harmonies and Takeshi Terauchi-esque jet-streams of distorted surf guitar. Mean Dream' unsurprisingly mines dreamstate imagery, and the lyrics and melody for Walking Into the Sun' actually came to Cleveland During a particularly-vivid night of deep sleep. Looming over the album's Coterie of surreal figures (gargantuan cicadas, a monstrous Creature,' The Sun King, aliens, the titular Lonely Dozer') is the magnificent Greed Machine,' a skulking, insatiable engine of consumption-NathanaelWest's business of dreams' fearsomely manifested. Only La Luz could conjure up Floating Features' Leone-on-LSD vibes, and the album finds the L.A. band at the height of their powers--golden rebels in a golden dream.

On December 7th Erased Tapes present 'Fallen Trees' - the new album by singular talent and literal force of nature Lubomyr Melnyk - known as 'the prophet of the piano' due to his lifelong devotion to his instrument.

The album release coincides with Melnyk's 70th birthday, but despite the autumnal hint in its title, there's little suggestion of him slowing down. Having received critical acclaim and coheadlining the prestigious Royal Festival Hall as part of the Erased Tapes 10th anniversary celebrations, after many years his audience is now both global and growing. The composer is finally gaining a momentum in his career that matches the vibrant, highly active energy of his playing.

Cascades of notes, canyons and rivers of sound: there's something about his music that channels the natural world at its most awe-inspiring. In 'Fallen Trees' the connection with the environment continues, taking its cue from a long rail journey Melnyk made through Europe. Glancing out of the window as the train passed through a dark forest, he was struck by the sight of trees that had recently been felled. 'They were glorious,' he says. 'Even though they'd been killed, they weren't dead. There was something sorrowful there, but also hopeful.' That sense of sadness touched by optimism infuses the album, too: rarely has Melnyk made music so shot through with melancholy and regret, but which sounds so rapt, even radiant.

Drawing comparisons with Steve Reich and the post-rock group Godspeed You, Black Emperor!, Pitchfork praised his 2015 album 'Rivers And Streams' for it's 'sustained concentration and ecstatic energy'. That energy is present in 'Fallen Trees' too, but at points the tone is quieter, the mood darker and more wistful. At points elsewhere on the album, despite being rooted in the wonders of the natural world, there's a kaleidoscopic quality in the fractal flurry of notes and the broad spectrum of colour they summon.

Critics have detected the influence of Ravi Shankar and other Indian styles in Melnyk's music, along with the insistent, repetitive textures of minimalist pioneers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Melnyk himself cites his debt to the American composer Terry Riley, particularly the legendary 1964 work 'In C', which he says 'opened the world for me'. But he adds that if you listen carefully, you'll also be able to hear the lilting contours of traditional Ukrainian folk music.

Hey there, human kids,
lift your face out of the feed trough and pluck that feculence from your ears. Hark! A sonar blip from beneath the pile of bodies. Boop, blip ughhh…. People churning like a boiling swamp. Man, this din is nauseating.

The screen flickers for the first time this year with a transmission from two months in the future: “the internet has deemed guitar music dead and you are free to do whatever the fuck you like ….long live the new flesh!”

This album is Soundcloud hip-hop reversed, a far flung nemesis of contemporary country and flaccid algorithmic pop-barf. No songs about money or love are floating in the ether. Just memories, echoes, foggy blurs Blip-blop goes the scope Heavy funk Dystopia-punk canons Lonnnnng jams Bloated solos dribbling down your caved-in chest.

Human cattle like a beef avalanche, right on your burned out face hole. Spider legs fuzz crawling in your brain. Lots of curse words for your mom. You’ve gotten the over-population blues, so let’s have some art for art’s sake. What else are you gonna do?
Stare at the sky? Please…

50 carbon copies of you look back at you as you walk the streets. Take a breath, you’re going to need it. Take drugs, you’re going to need those just to stand in line at the air and water reclamation center soon enough. There’s no fruit, buddy. You’re at the bleak-peak. They will squeeze you till you’re all squeezed out.

For fans of fried prog burn out, squished old-school drool, double drums, lead weight bass, wizard keys (now with poison), old-ass guitar and horrible words with daft meanings.

If you don’t like it then don’t listen, bub. Back to the comments section with you! Easy Over and out - John Dwyer.

*** VINYL REPRESSED AND IN STOCK ***

In a city full of brilliant people with dead-end jobs and dampened by bitter-cold winters, playing music offers a cheap outlet. Protomartyr’s taut, austere rock was incubated in a freezing Detroit warehouse littered with beer cans and cigarette butts and warmed, feebly,by space heaters. Short songs made for short practices, and the band learned quickly not to waste time. Despite the cold, Protomartyr emerged with a sound that is idiosyncratic but relatable, hooky but off-kilter.

Protomartyr’s economical rock elicits comparisons to possible antecedents like Pere Ubu or The Fall as well as local contemporaries like Frustrations or Tyvek (whose frontman Kevin Boyer played bass in an early iteration of Protomartyr). Singer Joe Casey’s dry declarative snarl serves as a reliable anchor, granting his bandmates — guitarist Greg Ahee, drummer Alex Leonard and bassist Scott Davidson — the opportunity to explore textures and reinforce the rhythm section. This is never more apparent than on the band’s sophomore LP and Hardly Art debut, Under Color of Official Right. Where 2012’s No Passion All Technique favored comparatively straightforward punk structures, Under Color takes a more exploratory approach. “Tarpeian Rock” places punk vitriol against a minimalist backing and “Scum, Rise!” casts shadows with guitars that alternately chime and clang.

The cheap outlet, crafted by cold hands in a poorly insulated practice space has, perhaps unwittingly, become a model of Motor City efficiency. And, more than that, it’s produced a stunner of a sophomore album.

*** VINYL REPRESSED AND INSTOCK ***

This October marks the release of The Agent Intellect, Protomartyrs third and finest work to date. Named after an ancient philosophical questioning of how the mind operates in relation to the self, it’s an elegant and often devastating display of all that makes Protomartyr so vital and singularly visceral an outfit. Over the course of several months, Greg Ahee waded through more than a hundred song fragments until he reached the bottomless melodies of “I Forgive You” and “Clandestine Time”, the inky depths of “Pontiac ’87” and titanic churn of “Why Does It Shake?” Lyrically, Casey is at his most confident and haunting. He humanizes evil on “The Devil in His Youth,” and, amid the charred pop of “Dope Cloud,” he reassures us that nothing—not God, not money—can or will prevent our minds from unraveling until we finally fade away. We are no one and nothing, he claims, without our thoughts. It’s a theme that echoes through the entirety of the record, but never as beautifully as it does on “Ellen.” Named after his mother and written from the perspective of his late father, it’s as romantic a song as you’re likely to hear this or any year, Casey promising to wait for her on the other side, with the memories she’s lost safely in hand.

We all know the type: prolific bands that commit every loose thought, stray idea and 90-second song fragment to tape. Bands that pay no attention to little inconveniences like "release cycles" or "self-editing," and instead decide that quantity equals quality, creating a discography more labyrinthine, imposing and-ultimately-exhausting than the cast of creatures in a sci-fi novel.

Here is why none of that applies to THEE OH SEES. Because each of the dozen-plus albums they've released since 2004 possesses a distinct personality and represents a different point along the path of JOHN DWYER's slow transformation from auteur of woozy, bare-bones four-track psychedelia to goggle-eyed garage rock marauder backed at long last by a band that both shares and stokes his singular vision. Because drop a needle on any record and-to their great credit-it takes several songs before you're convinced it's Thee Oh Sees.

The seasick hundred-bottles-of-rum shanty "What the Driven Drink," from 2007's delirious Sucks Blood exists in a different galaxy than the rollercoastering "Chem-Farmer" from last year's Carrion Crawler/The Dream; the doomy doo-wop of "Blood on the Deck" hardly seems like the product of the same band that delivered the yelping "Ruby Go Home" in 2009. And the band that made last year's engrossing Putrifiers II seems like a distant cousin to the one delivering Floating Coffin-arguably the most varied and textured Oh Sees record to date. Chalk some of the group's cunning chameleonic ability to Dwyer's fifteen-year resume.

The driving force behind such beloved and sonically disparate bands as Coachwhips and Pink and Brown, Dwyer's increased fidelity to Thee Oh Sees and only Thee Oh Sees is evidence of a newfound sense of purpose and focus. Where once Dwyer used to funnel his divergent artistic ideas through a host of different channels, lately he's been finding ways to make all of those impulses function within the framework of Thee Oh Sees-who have in turn grown closer and tighter and sharper with each eye-popping, jaw-dropping live show.

That sense of unity is palpable throughout Floating Coffin, the next chapter in the story of Thee Oh Sees, the one where they fix their fury against the onrushing night. It's another blistering demonstration of Thee Oh Sees greatest trick: they're the only prolific band who doesn't put out records often enough.

A gnarlier, heavier side of band with some juicy synth smoochie action joining the party ? Packaged with drawings by Matt Brinkman and cover photo by John Dwyer.

*** LAST REMAINING COPIES ON COLOURED VINYL ***

In The Red is happy as a pig in shit to announce the debut release by the Ty Segall Band. The Ty Segall Band is Ty Segall (obviously), Mikal Cronin, Charlie Moonheart and Emily Rose Epstein. While Segall has released many incredible solo releases, Slaughterhouse marks the first that he recorded with his touring band. For this album (it's only ten inches, but you get two!) the band recorded with Chris Woodhouse at the Hangar, turned their amps all the way up, set their fuzz pedals on obliterate and commenced to kick ass and take names. Seriously, this record will melt your face. All of Segall's usual psych-pop sensibilities are present but Slaughterhouse adds the full-throttle, go-for-the-throat bombast that the band delivers in the live setting. The fuzz riffs, bratty howl and Cro-Magnon bashing culminate with a feedback freakout that's clearly the only sensible way to end a workout of this magnitude.

Some of the best thrills of the Internet music revolution is the ability to find extremely rare music with great ease. But even with such vast archives to draw from, quite a lot of great songs have gone undiscovered for nearly half a decade, particularly in genres that lacked hifalutin arty pretense. Previously, only the most extremely dedicated and passionate record collectors had the stamina and prowess to hunt down long forgotten wonders in dusty record bins — often hoarding them in private collections, or selling at ridiculous collector’s prices. Legendary compilations like Nuggets, Pebbles, ad nauseum, have exhausted the mines of early garage rock and proto-punk, keeping alive a large cross-section of underground ephemera. However, few have delved into and expertly archived the wealth of proto-metal, pre-stoner rock tracks of Brown Acid: The First Trip.

Lance Barresi, co-owner of L.A.-cum-Chicago shop Permanent Records has shown incredible persistence in tracking down a stellar collection of rare singles from the 60s and 70s for the 11-track compilation. Partnered with Daniel Hall of RidingEasy Records, the two have assembled a selection of songs that’s hard to believe have remained unheard for so long.

"I essentially go through Hell and high water just to find these records,” Barresi says. “Once I find a record worthy of tracking, I begin the (sometimes) extremely arduous process of contacting the band members and encouraging them to take part. Daniel and I agree that licensing all the tracks we're using for Brown Acid is best for everyone involved.” Rather than simply bootlegging the tracks, when all of the bands and labels haven’t existed for 30-40 years or more, tracking down the creators gives all of these tunes a real second chance at success.

“ All of (these songs) could've been huge given the right circumstances,” says Barresi. “But for one reason or another most of these songs fell flat and were forgotten. However, time has been kind in my opinion and I think these songs are as good now or better than they ever were."
Brown Acid: The First Trip opens with the slithering buzzsaw guitars and hard-rock howl of Zeke’s’ “Box”, a monster that gives Blue Cheer a run for their leaden blues. Snow sways into “Sunflower” with a touch of Steppenwolf’s swagger and wind-in-their-hair wildness. Elsewhere, Zebra proves they were “Wasted” with a soul-inflected groove, while Bob Goodsite leans in on his wah-wah and phaser pedals, determined to out-Hendrix Jimi himself on “Faze.” Raw Meat’s “Stand By Girl” serves up a fierce, stomping riff intercut with Iron Butterfly style operatics. Bacchus kicks out a hostile sounding boogie, demanding to “Carry My Load.” Josefus caps it all off nicely with a hooky power-pop meets Bob Seger System meets Lollipop Shoppe anthem with the undeniably catchy chorus, “hard luck — keep truckin’!”

It’s a solid set of unknown hits you can’t believe failed to connect back in their heyday due to various unfortunate circumstances. But now in 2015, Brown Acid: The First Trip gives these long-lost gems their well deserved moment to shine.

Following the success of last year’s ‘Twelve Nudes’, Ezra Furman returns with ‘Sex Education
OST’, songs from Season 1 and 2 of the hit Netflix TV show.
 When the makers of the hit Netflix series ‘Sex Education’ told Ezra Furman, “We want you to
be the Simon & Garfunkel to our The Graduate,” they clearly recognised a kindred spirit. Who
better to articulate all that awkwardness and alienation than Furman?
 ‘Sex Education’ is about Otis Milburn, a socially awkward high school student who lives with his
sex therapist mother, Jean. In Season 1 Otis and his friend Maeve Wiley set-up a sex clinic at
school to capitalise on his intuitive talent for sex advice. In Season 2, as a late bloomer Otis
must master his newly discovered sexual urges in order to progress with his girlfriend Ola
whilst also dealing with his now strained relationship with Maeve. Meanwhile, Moordale
Secondary is in the throes of a Chlamydia outbreak, highlighting the need for better sex
education at the school and new kids come to town who will challenge the status quo.
 The ‘Sex Education’ soundtrack gathers the original songs that Furman composed for the first
series and the brand new second series, whilst adding tracks featured on the show that can be
found on prior Furman albums such as ‘Perpetual Motion People’ and ‘Transangelic Exodus’.
Lining up alongside older cover versions of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘I Can Change’ and Melanie’s
‘The Good Book’ is a new rendition of ‘Devil Or Angel’, The Clovers’ doo-wop jewel from 1956.
It all adds up to a bumper 19-track set of Furman’s trademark enthusiastic emotional catharsis.
 “Making music for a TV show was a new experience for me,” she says. “As a fan of many a
high school comedy, for example The Breakfast Club and 10 Things I Hate About You, I knew
how fun the music can be, and also how emotional. I wanted to rise to the challenge.”
 Furman and her band recorded the new songs in between sessions for a “loud punk record,”
namely the exhilarating ‘Twelve Nudes’, released by Bella Union in 2019. “I decided I’d use the
Sex Education project as a place to put my tenderness, my sadness and longing,” she says.
“The soft teenage feelings that every adult knows continue long after high school ends.”
 For the first series, Furman was supplied with an extensive description of the show and the
episode scripts. For the second series, she says, “They trusted us completely. They were like,
‘you know what to do’. I try to imagine what’s going to be on screen as a jumping-off point,
but they don’t need songs that fit, they need songs of a high quality, that come from a real
place. That’s why they wanted me, I guess. Also, I guess they noticed an exuberant
vulnerability. I lay all my feelings out there.”
 Given Furman’s personal experience at high school, having been closeted with regard to
gender and sexuality, she wasn’t method-acting for a second. The new songs allowed her to
reconnect to that past but also the present, as teenager and adult. ‘Amateur’, for example. “I’m
an amateur in my heart, and the show is about amateurs,” she says. “About bodies not yet
fully formed, and hearts not yet hardened to the world.”
 Songwriting, Furman concludes, “is a way of keeping tabs on what I care most about, the
purest stuff, the matters of the heart that don’t expire. It’s what matters to teenagers, and
revisiting the teenage perspective has been oddly centering for me. It’s a reminder of what’s
important, and the emotional dramas that persist through life.”
 LP includes digital download code.

Gareth Reynold’s debut album, Riddled With Disease is a delightful dip into the observational comedy that Gareth carefully constructs every night on stage. Whether he’s tackling deep societal conversations like racism, the AIDS epidemic or his cat named Jose, Gareth delivers spirited tales through a cynical lens in his album, Riddled With Disease.

British guitarist Rob Luft returns with Life Is The Dancer, his second album following acclaimed debut Riser (2017). With the same line-up Life Is The Dancer confirms all the praise and promise of an artist of the moment and commands attention for its brilliance and originality. Rob Luft is a superstar in the making - a virtuoso, a band-leader, a composer of vibrant, original music and a captivating communicator. Life Is The Dancer is an eagerly awaited and anticipated release from a future star.

Kids Like Us finds The Grahams exploring balmy and graceful dream pop, 50's mod-influenced garage-rock energy, 60's and 70's style groovy guitars, and an explosive Morricone-esque cinematic intrigue to great effect. Along with the late and celebrated Richard Swift, the record is also co-produced by Dan Molad (Lucius, Elizabeth & the Catapult, The Wild Reeds). The resulting album embraces the American songbook and finds the band swathed in a musical time warp when Brian Wilson, Nancy Sinatra, Dusty Springfield, The Ronettes and Diana Ross & The Supremes ruled the airwaves. The five piece band, led by married couple Alyssa and Doug Graham, will be touring the UK and EU for 6 weeks starting on release day. The album marketing campaign is significant and includes worldwide marketing by WMA, separate US and UK press and radio campaigns (Scream is doing radio and press in the UK, the US radio campaign targets AAA Radio starting early March), and robust advertising campaigns supporting loads of content; 5 videos have been released to date with a 6th coming by album release date.

Hear Current Joy's tear through a live set of fan favorites recorded last winter at Kilby Court in Salt Lake City, Utah. This 14 track double LP is the first time one of Current Joys' visceral live performances has been captured for vinyl and released digitally online. The four-piece plays full-band arrangements of Current Joys classics like "Blondie." "Kids," and "My Motorcycle" as well as a new unreleased track "Altered States.â€

Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible' is an ambitious, inspiring piece of work that poignantly reflects Enter Shikari's legendary career rise to become one of the biggest and most exciting bands the UK has ever seen. Following 5 seminal albums, of which 4 have been Top 5, Nothing Is True...' is produced by frontman Rou Reynolds, and is Shikari's most visceral and eclectic album to date; a soundtrack to our tumultuous world, a record for everyone who's filled with frustration but hasn't lost the capacity for hope.

Following last year’s release of Here Comes The Cowboy, “his most introspective and refined work to date” (Billboard), Mac DeMarco is pleased to announce two new demo albums; Here Comes The Cowboy Demos, which will be released on April 17th via Mac’s Record Label and distributed by CAROLINE, and Other Here Comes The Cowboy Demos, out April 18th as a Record Store Day Exclusive. Other Here Comes The Cowboy Demos features unreleased recordings from the same sessions that spurred the final album.

VINYL version of the success-record "Alive And Feeling Fine" of Belgium’s finest LOST FREQUENCIES! PRESS PLAY!

It was Lost Frequencies’ summeresque signature sound that took the world by storm in 2015, but it’s his versatility that made him stand tall amongst the top dance music players since. He showed as much through 2016 album ‘Less Is More’ and he does so again with his second artist album: a double-sided world of wonder called ‘Alive And Feeling Fine’.

Featuring various of his most notable productions yet, the first part of ‘Alive And Feeling Fine’ juggles a host of known hits (e.g. ’Crazy’, ‘Recognise’, ‘Melody’, ‘Truth Never Lies’) with several previously unreleased tracks, including collabs with the likes of Mokita and Throttle. Side two is a bonus collection, featuring deluxe mixes, Tomorrowland edits and esteemed remixes of tracks from the likes of Armin van Buuren, Estelle & Kanye West and The Rasmus. The result is a fully fledged, 23-track masterpiece that not only spotlights the Belgian superstar’s production prowess in full, but also one that was created with his new Lost Frequencies Live tour in mind, which will see him take the stage alongside a band and vocalist.

West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She's continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body's relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her most recent full-length, The Mosaic of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself. "I guess in one sentence, this album is my expression of love and appreciation for electricity," says Smith. While writing and recording, she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers. Not a dancer by any traditional definition, she taught herself improvisatory movement realizing flexibility, strength, and unexpectedly, a "visual language" stemming from the human body and comprised of vibrational shapes. Understood as cymatics, as Smith says, "as a reference for how frequencies can be visualized," much like a mosaic. Smith describes her first encounters with this mosaic; "the inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other...My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday...into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself." As it has arrived, in a completed state, The Mosaic of Transformation is a holistic manifestation of embodied motions. Smith's signature textural curiosity that fans have grown to adore pivots naturally into a proprioceptive study of melody and timbre. Airy organ and voice interweave with burbling Buchla-spawned harmonic bubbles. "The Steady Heart" quivers to life, peppering blasts of wooden organ between winding vocal affirmations. As with a body, moving one portion requires a balance and counterbalance; here, subtle tonal twitchy signals fire in conjunction with coiling arias to create a mesmeric core. When the beat arrives at the midway mark, a swooping and jittery waltz, a sense of stasis in motion, a flow state, is sonically achieved. As soon as it syncs, it disappears back into the swirling ebbs of electric force. Other tracks stray into more ruminative physical realms. "Carrying Gravity" is built around string-like pads that expand and contract like a solar plexus, becoming taught and then loose. If the record could be summarized in a single movement, it is the 10-minute closing suite, a rapturous collage called "Expanding Electricity." Symphonic phrases establish the piece before washes of glittering electric peals and synthesized vibraphone helix into focus. Soon, Smith's voice grounds it all with an intuitive vocal hook, harmonized and augmented by concentric spirals of harp-and-horn-like sounds. Smith's music doesn't capture a specific emotion as much as it captures the joys of possessing a body, and the ability to, with devotion and a steady open heart, maneuver that vessel in space by way of electricity to euphoric degrees.