Heavenly HHV Records 91 Items

Bristol-based songwriter Katy J Pearson - formerly one half of sibling indie-pop duo Ardyn - released her second solo album ‘Sound Of The Morning’ in 2022 on Heavenly. Like her 2020 debut ‘Return’, it was produced by Ali Chant (who worked on Yard Act’s fantastic debut) in addition to Speedy Wunderground genius Dan Carey.

On their third studio full-length, Mildlife link microcosmic personal meaning with a macro view from on high. Chorus is the sound of singular entities coalescing into a wondrous whole. It’s harmonious togetherness and celebratory symbiosis. And it’s the band’s ultimate statement of their borderline mystical unity, their unified theory of groove.

“Chorus is about a coming together of disparate elements. Not in some sort of utopian aesthetic where everything works perfectly, but in the natural flow and state of things,” shares the band’s Jim Rindfleish. “It’s about cosmic compatibility and chemistry: what makes things work? Not just what makes the band work, but what makes good music, art or love? It’s the rhythm of nature”.

Following 2020’s Automatic and 2017’s Phase, Chorus arrives as Mildlife’s most optimistic record, serving as a sonic testament to the band’s unwavering adoration for the beguiling realms of 70s psychedelic and cosmic sounds. Delve deeper, and you’ll unearth Polish jazz, Italo disco and a sprinkling of contemporary electronic sounds. Chorus is the dance of an expanding and contracting universe - its groove is forever and always, cyclical and evolving. In its most human moments, the album luxuriates in the velvety embrace of Tomas Shanahan’s bass lines, Halliwell’s luminous guitar riffs, Kevin McDowell’s hushed and alluring vocals, Rindfleish’s intricate percussive tapestries and the spiritual rhythms of regular collaborator Craig Shanahan. Swept up in the chorus, the lines between individual and ensemble blur.

“It’s knowing that all the pieces of our own puzzles can slot neatly into a bigger one.” says Shanahan. Such a creative revelation is the band's growing assurance in their vocal prowess. On the band’s previous albums, McDowell's voice stood as the predominant lyrical conduit, but on Chorus all members have a moment of expression, highlighting their own choral visions, forging a new unified openness and humanity to the their sound. “We had this idea that we wanted to create a kind of disparate ecosystem of living things,” continues Shanahan. “We liked the idea of creating a small metaphor of moving through space. You see moments of things and sounds that may not emerge again, until everything around you starts to unify.”

Chorus might be an album of individual tracks, band members and experiences, but it’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s microscopic particles forming new minerals or overlapping time signatures folding in on themselves in generative creation. With the release of Chorus the band has once again opened a portal to their singular realm of rhythmic communion. Step into the flow.

5-track EP featuring remixes of Fear Fear tracks from some of Sheffield’s most innovative producers - Toddla T, Charla Green, Ross Orton, Diessa and Warp originals, Forgemasters.

The EP was previously only available on CD which came exclusively with purchases of the album via the Bear Tree record shop in Sheffield. This will be the first time the remix tracks have been widely available and today the band have also shared the ‘Money Is Mine’ remix which sees Toddla T set the track to a full on klonking two step rhythm.

Toddla T said of the remix: As the original version stank of Sheffield, I wanted to do something that I would be itching to play in a set back home, particularly at Kabal or if I wasn't in attendance something that I know Winnie or Pipes would draw for which was made for the dance-floors of Sheffield.

Songs created in the shadow of terror and loss, but that crackle and pop with defiance Fear Fear is a record made for agitating and dancing, for heart and soul, for here, now and tomorrow. It’s a record that explores juxtaposition; that of life and death, acceptance and isolation, environment and humanity, hope and despair, the real world and the digital world. That top to bottom rigour, the complete vision is what makes the second album from Working Men’s Club such a stunning and unique achievement.

Songs created in the shadow of terror and loss, but that crackle and pop with defiance Fear Fear is a record made for agitating and dancing, for heart and soul, for here, now and tomorrow. It’s a record that explores juxtaposition; that of life and death, acceptance and isolation, environment and humanity, hope and despair, the real world and the digital world. That top to bottom rigour, the complete vision is what makes the second album from Working Men’s Club such a stunning and unique achievement.

Limited edition for Record Store Day 2022.

Tresor (Treasure) is Gwenno Saunders’ third full length solo album and the second almost entirely in Cornish (Kernewek). Written in St. Ives, Cornwall, just prior to the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and completed at home in Cardiff during the pandemic along with her co-producer and musical collaborator, Rhys Edwards, Tresor reveals an introspective focus on home and self, a prescient work echoing the isolation and retreat that has been a central, global shared experience over the past two years. The wider project also includes a companion short film made on Super 8, written and directed by Gwenno in collaboration with Anglesey based filmmaker and photographer Clare Marie Bailey.

Tresor diverges from the stark themes of technological alienation in Y Dydd Olaf (The Final Day) and the meditations on the idea of the homeland on the slyly infectious Le Kov (The Place of Memory). Accessible and international in outlook, peppered with moments of offbeat humour, Le Kov presented Cornish to the world. The impact of Le Kov was resounding, providing for the Cornish language an unprecedented international platform that saw Gwenno touring and headlining in Europe and Australia, and supporting acts such as Suede and the Manic Street Preachers. Her performance of ‘Tir ha Mor’ on Later with Jools Holland was a triumph, and the album prompted wider conversations on the state of the Cornish language with Michael Portillo, Jon Snow, and Nina Nannar. After Le Kov, interest in learning Cornish hit an all-time high, and the cultural role of the language was firmly in the spotlight.

Red-leather-clad and pitchfork-wielding in a playful nod to Grant Wood’s celebrated painting of 1930, Mattiel’s Mattiel Brown and Jonah Swilley proffer songs which ponder the American everyday of the 2020s as they serve up an album tasting more like home than ever before. ‘Georgia Gothic’, a magic third in Mattiel’s run of full-length albums, was shaped by time spent together on the road touring the first two albums- it is this newfound sense of intimacy between Mattiel’s members that enabled the writing of ‘Georgia Gothic’ not as two separate musicians, but rather as one creative entity. And it is precisely the forging of Mattiel’s distinct musical identity that ‘Georgia Gothic’ signals; its members guiding each other ever-homewards not just in a geographical or sonic sense, but spiritually, too.

Clear vinyl.

Mr Maserati showcases two decades of Baxter Dury’s idiosyncratically louche music, a universe of late-night London meet-ups, shuffling basslines and comedown disco tunes, all run through with a wry bleakness and sweet love of humanity. Mr Maserati collects tracks from across Dury’s six albums, plus a new song D.O.A.

“I don’t really think I warrant a ‘best of’ album,” says Dury. He’s wrong, though, and the selection here is stellar: the oldest song, Oscar Brown, is a wistful spooky slice of pop that can somehow put you in mind of The Carpenters and Spiritualized and haunted arcade games and a rotten sadness at the heart of England; a couple of years later we’ve got Cocaine Man, with its grim-sweet singalong chorus, a signature Dury surrealist wide-boy monologue and a half-submerged hook that does sound a bit like the Bloodhound Gang; Leak At The Disco, a provincial horror story from 2011’s Happy Soup, opens with Club Tropicana birdsong and a sweet guitar pulse and ends, after a shitty Chiswick night out, with Apocalypse Now helicopters; there’s the sinister bontempi-ish serenade of Palm Trees, and the poignant, daft and tender Oi; last year’s Carla’s Got A Boyfriend is funny and sexy and sad, with some of Dury’s finest lyrics and a frankly lovely Balearic Chris Rea guitar twang. What riches we have here! Baxter Dury’s career has snuck up on us: he’s quietly built a back catalogue of absolute beauties.