2010s Vinyl 395 Items

Pixel Passion is the album I've been wanting to create ever since I began writing electronic music. It's my love letter to 80s synth music and early 90s video game culture. I wanted to imprint an original sound that would be my own and create nostalgic imagery in the listener without any pretense. It's been a long and very rewarding 8 months. I hope you enjoy! Extras: cut-out sleeve with printed inner-sleeve, flood print

Morningside is the debut album from London five-piece Swimming Tapes, who have garnered comparisons with Real Estate and Belle & Sebastian for their dreamy brand of nostalgic indie. The record arrives following long-term worldwide support across press, radio and streaming services. A headline UK tour in April 2019, as well as sets at tastemaker festivals Live At Leeds and Hit The North come ahead of the greatly anticipated album release.

Almost four decades since it’s domestic release, Karen Marks’ 1981 single Cold Café has finally reaped it’s deserved international credit to become one of Australia’s most recognised minimal wave recordings. Efficient Space now showcases the Melbourne artist’s brief but entire discography, including two previously unheard demos, all produced with experimental synthesist Ash Wednesday (The Metronomes, Modern Jazz, Thealonian Music). A rarity in the then male dominated industry, Marks found her footing in music, first through rock journalism and then in band management. Formally of Adelaide, newly arrived synth-punks JAB (Johnny Crash, Ash Wednesday and Bodhan X) approached her for representation, subsequently contributing tracks to seminal 1978 snapshot Lethal Weapons and playing the Crystal Ballroom’s opening night.

“It’s taken a long time for me to feel good about myself,” says Andreya Triana of the journey
to her third album. “As a musician, as a woman, it’s difficult getting to that space. It’s really
wonderful where you reach that time of having more good days than bad.”
That sense of celebration is what drives ‘Life In Colour’, Andreya’s most confident, instinctive
and heartfelt work to date; a record that celebrates love, freedom, independence and
womanhood.
“‘Life In Colour’ is about stepping into my womanhood and being like ‘OK, I know this space.
Let me try some s**t. I know it’s going to be hard but I know it’s going to be OK’. I just
wanted to put some good energy out there.”
The first taster of that sweet release was teased with lead single ‘Woman’ - a soulful pop
anthem of self-love, tracking Andreya’s life from awkward teen to mighty queen, from
memories of heartache and trauma to triumph.
“You know when you’re feeling so uncomfortable in yourself and you just want to be
swallowed up into a hole in the ground?,” Andreya recalls of her youth. “This is about moving
on from being a victim to a place of strength, to feeling like a superhero.
“Anyone who has gone through difficult times like I have, should know that it’s absolutely
possible to get to a good place. It doesn’t define who you are or your future. You have to
fight like hell every day to move forward but anything is possible. We’re all full of so much
goodness. Don’t lose sight of that.”
The lyric video is a tribute to Andreya’s mother, grandmother, the strong females of her life
and the many sacrifices that women make day-to-day, generation after generation.

Synthetic Flower Fields is probably a future classic in modern Synthwave / Italo / Disco, released on the notorious label Sunlover Records.

Bongo Joe calls this "trans-pop-kraut". More infos are on the way.

This is the regular LP version with 14 tracks. Please be aware of the limited double LP edition with 20 tracks that we offer.

An album title with not one, but two exclamation marks, meaning something akin to “what a palaver”as it primes the listener for songs like “Cinemascope”. Themes such as personal injuries (“Ich bin cool”), betrayal (“Mes copines”), personality deficiencies brought on by drug abuse (“Methedrine”), rage (“Hass-Satellit”), inflated opinions of oneself (“Brezel says”), suicide (“Le Spleen”), grief (“Dancing with a memory") and souls in torment ("Elektroschocktherapie") are presented in widescreen format in and often in the most entertaining fashion.

Françoise Cactus apparently once said of herself: "I am a linguistic artist who can live with the laughs". Which says it all really, although Stereo Total’s penchant for wordplay is not in evidence in all of the lyrics on this record. Many tracks here echo the rather more sombre, desperate songs she wrote for her first band "Les Lolitas". Nevertheless, the anarchic humour which we have come to associate with Stereo Total resurfaces on compositions like "Keine Musik" and "Einfach".

Musically, this Stereo Total disc, their twelfth, cannot be readily aligned with anything at all. If earlier albums resonated with influences from chanson, trash or disco to punk, rock’n’roll and NDW (German New Wave), Stereo Total have now arrived in their very own musical universe which pays no heed to stylistic devices, reminiscent of “rien de tout”. What we can say: Françoise Cactus excels in the art of 8-track cassette recording, thus creating an extraordinary sonic experience. Brezel Göring draws on his favoured array of instruments more likely to be found in the hands of children in households where a musical education is not on the agenda: plastic baby organ and dreadful mouse piano, accompanied by home-made guitars glued together by less than gifted artisans.

1. Stereo Total continue to make electronic music with flea market Casio sounds which fly in the face of what is generally accepted to be electronic music. Each musical instrument could probably be translated into social coordinates and in this sense, the tools of Stereo Total’s trade speak an unequivocal language.

2. Stereo Total continue to play LoFi garage rock music which makes a mockery of all the masculine clichés associated with guitars. When Françoise Cactus plays the drums, the rhythms of feminism, anti-professionalism and subversive dilettantism come to the fore.

Any attempts to pigeonhole Stereo Total are destined to fail. In the words of Flann O'Brien: "When shall we ever see their like again?"

A word to our younger readers: Stereo Total began making music before the internet existed, before the Euro, before Germany reunited and before there were even bands or music. They will probably still be playing when all that has been consigned to the dustbin of history. The group comprises Françoise Cactus, who spends her time as a radio presenter, author and artist between band sessions, and Brezel Göring, a man whose very choice of stage name was motivated by a desire not to be taken seriously by music and art scribes.

When they began making music together, they made it their mission to disrupt rules, to destabilize ideas. They may not have thrown European harmonic structure or 4/4 time out of the window, but they have certainly asked questions of every other aspect of musical and lyrical techniques. Lines like "you look good from the back", "love as a threesome", "I am naked", "I’m the young gigolo with a smoker’s lung " and "sex complex" are designed to repel serious music lovers whilst shocking them with sound engineering which falls well below the standards of mainstream listeners.

When I Get Home is the new album from Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter and visual artist Solange Knowles. This release represents the next phase in Solange's evolution as an artist, and is the follow up to her critically acclaimed 2016 album A Seat at the Table. The album is an exploration of origin. It asks the question how much of ourselves do we bring with us versus leave behind in our evolution. The artist returned to Third Ward Houston to answer this.

When I Get Home was written, performed, and executive produced by Solange, and includes contributions from Tyler, the Creator, Chassol, Playboi Carti, Standing on the Corner, Panda Bear, Devin the Dude, The-Dream, and more. It also features samples from Third Ward's own Debbie Allen, Phylicia Rashad, poet Pat Parker, and Scarface.

This HHV exclusive violet vinyl edition is limited to 200 copies. The double LP deluxe version of this album is limited to 500 in total.

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2019! Rogue Cat Sounds focus on purveyors of Wonk, with a Golden Pop pedigree, Soul Mekanik, AKA Danny Spencer and Kelvin Andrews. Folk whose musical CV takes in UK Acid House classic, Ride The Rhythm, Candy Flip, remixes for Lisa Stansfield, Mary J. Blige, and Aretha Franklin (to name just three of several hundred). Writing and producing for Robbie Williams. Complete with Maurice Fulton Remix & a beautifully designed sleeve.

Midnight Embassy is a ping­pong project by songwriter Angela Aux and producer Sam Irl. During nightly sessions and on walks together, the two artists have created a palette of timeless tracks and futuristic sculptures from pop music flotsam. Like if two archive junkies had synchronized their sketch collections and notebooks so that the different genres and decades seem to effortlessly swirl through each other: Dub, Folk, Beatnik literature, Afrobeat & Electronica. Aux & Irl celebrate a gentle escapism, both cosmopolitan and aloof. This island mentality sparkles unobtrusively through all five tracks of the debut EP. No fireworks, no illuminated advertisements, no selfie thunderstorms: they come at dusk, set shimmering beacons and disappear on a reverberation trail behind the curtain of the night.