2010s 255 Items

‘Silver Eater’ sees Grace work in collaboration with longtime mentor and co-writer, Patrick J Pearson as well as Ben Baptie (Moses Sumney, Young Fathers, Puma Blue, Lady Gaga) who produced the album.

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.

Mikko Singh has been living different musical lives from the start. With »Cloud Formations«, his third album under the Haleiwa moniker, Singh eschews the guitar-dominated sound of his first two LPs for lush but grainy texturality. Inspired by bands and songwriters like Animal Collective, Real Estate and the late Jay Reatard, »Cloud Formations« is a hopeful record whose experimental approach to rock music calls to mind the experimental pop of Morr Music label mates like Sequoyah Tiger or even Stereolab’s motorik-driven post-rock. It’s a fusion of fuzzed-out sounds, washed-out sentiments and far-out songwriting - perhaps the only shoegaze record you can actually take along to the beach.

Mel Williams, Larry Davis, Peggy Woods, Arthur Wright & His Orchestra, Jackie Day, The Brilliant Korners, Wally Cox, Jimmy Bee, Gene & Gary, Vernon Garrett, Johnny Copeland, The Other Brothers, Mary Love, Z.Z. Hill

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

“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.

Heavyweight WHITE vinyl, Gatefold sleeve, black paper inner bag, 12’ x 24’ insert (folded in half), download card

Bear’s Den are back with their third studio album ‘So that you might hear me’, recorded across Seattle and set for release in April.

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.

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2019! EP on marbled vinyl + CD. At a nailbiting media event in January 2019, Mooneye's 'Thinking About Leaving' was announced as the winner of Studio Brussel's De Nieuwe Lichting.

The debut album from Brooklyn's The Depreciation Guild sees its first repress since
2009. The 10th anniversary blue vinyl repress is a limited edition RECORD STORE DAY
release out on April 13, 2019 available at participating record stores.
Mixing a collage of guitars, drums, fuzzy electronics and heartfelt lyrics, In Her Gentle
Jaws has always been a surprisingly seemless mix of laptop pop and shoegaze. The
fuzzed-out, reverb-drenched melodies draw influences from shoegaze guitar walls, dreampop highs, and the rigidity of electronic rhythms with the use of an 8-bit Nintendo soundcard. The modified entertainment system is used to compose a crushing backdrop of
rhythmic, synthetic elements.
The Depreciation Guild was founded by Kurt Feldman, who has been active in the
Brooklyn music scene since 2007. As drummer and member of The Pains of Being Pure at
Heart, Feldman often pulled double duty while keeping up with and touring in two bands
simultaneously. When the heavy tour schedule subsided, Feldman turned his focus to
production having a hand in the mixing and engineering on several high profile indie
releases (DIIV, Chairlift, No Joy and Kristin Kontrol).

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.

"Britain wasn’t on its own in having a thoroughly miserable 1973: O Lucky Man! and Badlands both found a great year to premiere, while Watergate brought America to a new low. But America didn’t still have back-to-backs and outside bogs. Tens of thousands of Britons remained housed in wartime pre-fabs and sub-standard dwellings. The bright new colours of the post-war Festival of Britain and Harold Wilson’s talk in the 60s of the “white heat of technology” now seemed very distant as strikes, inflation, and food and oil shortages laid Britain low. What had gone wrong? And what did pop music have to say about it?

With perfect timing this album soundtracks Britain on the brink of chaos. It includes lost masterpieces (Phil Cordell’s ‘Londonderry’), gritty singles by the new names of the early 70s (Mungo Jerry’s ‘Open Up’, David Essex’s ‘Stardust’) and forgotten gems by some of the biggest names of the previous decade, now struggling to make themselves heard (the Kinks’ ‘When Work Is Over’, the Troggs’ ‘I’m On Fire’).

Sometimes the approach was tongue-in-cheek (the Strawbs’ ‘Part Of The Union’), other times it was the sound of sheer frustration (Mike McGear’s ‘Kill’), and occasionally it was angry enough to incur the wrath of special branch (Hawkwind’s banned ‘Urban Guerilla’). Mostly the sound of these records evokes the feeling of nights in with only candles to light the house and TV closing down at 10pm: the empty spaces of Adam Faith’s ‘In Your Life’; the fuzz guitar minimalism of Ricky Wilde’s ‘Hertfordshire Rock’; Climax Chicago’s alternative lifestyle-musing ‘Mole On The Dole’.

Compiled by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, “Three Day Week” follows on from their highly acclaimed “English Weather”, “Paris In The Spring” and “State Of The Union” compilations. It amplifies the noise of a country which was still unable to forget the war, even as it watched the progressive post-war consensus disintegrating. We hear shrugs and cynicism, laughter through gritted teeth, melancholy, and a real anger that would rise to the surface with punk a few years later.

This 180g clear vinyl LP with deluxe gatefold sleeve features two extra tracks."

Powerhouse vocalist Alanna Royale and her band
bring some sides that burn like a piece of that
famous Nashville hot chicken. A-side 'Go' will light up
the output meters on many a DJ mixer, from the
opening hits to the sinewy bass line snaking around a
rhythm section that is bound to make a body move.
B-sides are ever so often the hidden gems, and on
this 45, 'I Know' is bound to have a big share in the
fans of this release. Foreshadowing the forthcoming
groove, the Motown-esque entrance drum fill opens
the door and then the horns step in and never leave
the room. Produced by Kelly Finnigan and mixed by
the team at Transistor Sound we are pleased to have
this release join a growing list of fine recordings from
the Transistor Sound label.

The debut full- length album from Lafawndah, ANCESTOR BOY, releasing on 22nd March 2019 via her own label imprint CONCORDIA, is a bracing statement of intent, heralding an artist unbound in scope, scale, and intensity. It simply must be heard. The debut full- length album from Lafawndah, ANCESTOR BOY, releasing on 22nd March 2019 via her own label imprint CONCORDIA, is a bracing statement of intent, heralding an artist unbound in scope, scale, and intensity. Having in her prior self-titled and TAN EPs upturned geography, in ANCESTOR BOY Lafawndah digs deep to unravel geology, mining emotions of the deep pastand future. The album's physicality is elemental; its memory, mineral. It is a becoming- of- age story for a people yet to come, created out of a need to find the others. In the middle of the album's sonic and lyrical onslaught is the desire to share the uncertainties of growing up when you don't belong anywhere. Crafted with the aid of fellow travelers Nick Weiss, ADR, and L-Vis 1990, ANCESTOR BOY's maximalism- it's overflow of detail, of feeling, of ideas-serves to amplify a frequent lyrical motif: the sensation that one body, one lifetime, isn't big enough for what you're feeling. The record is pregnant with memories shared across more than one mind, recalling the storytelling antagonisms of Nina Simone at her most strident and unpredictable. Inresponse, the rhythmic aggressions of her music have grown even more determined and psychedelic, drawing a line in fire between Jimmy Jam's turnt industrialism on Control and the furious unease of Red Mecca-era Cabaret Voltaire. With a palate equal parts chrome and dirt, ice and depth, Lafawndah's finesse with song architecture imbues the LP with an uncanny addictiveness: anthems loaded with trap doors. ANCESTOR BOY imagines a pop music that is neither imperial nor local, but a freedom of movement; a residue, perhaps, from the album's nomadic creation between Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, London, and Paris.