2010s 221 Items

British trip-hop pioneers Morcheeba return with their first new album in over five years. The band have released 8 albums that have sold in excess of 10 million records in their career. 'Blaze Away', their positivity-packed ninth album, marks both a fresh start in its organic approach and a return to the joyous genre-mashing of their early days, with featured guests Roots Manuva and Benjamin Biolay. There was no template for its ten, extraordinary, future-facing songs, no self-imposed limits on style, no themes to be adhered to or rules in place to break.

Morcheeba’s global success is no surprise. Their melting pot sound has been border-hopping ever since the London-based band emerged from the mid-’90s trip hop scene that made them a household name. They’re about to embark on what’s shaping up to be their biggest world tour yet, taking in headline shows and festivals globally, and debuting new tracks from their upcoming record, as well as playing classics to the delight of their global fan base.

This release comes with and insert.

Alone in the world, we find ourselves. Inside ourselves, we find something to share with the world.

The Essential John Moods, a solo album in all senses of the word, is what Jonathan Jarzyna of Fenster found in himself during a summer spent hiking along the Iberian coast, and he now wants to share it with you. A mini-guitar on his back and a copy of GarageBand on his phone allowed Jarzyna to record songs each evening as he arrived in a new town after a long day traveling by foot. (He did, admittedly, add live drum tracks and some additional instrumentation back in Berlin.) The album preserves this peripatetic feeling, each song relating to the next as one city or village relates to its neighbor, its unique situation contrasting with the shared architectural vernacular. Blipping instrumental interludes (“Trainride,” “Pontevedra,” “Coastal Way”) even capture the disordered, delirious feeling of transit hubs and the sleep-bleared mystery of waking on an unfamiliar road.

“I just came alive completely” are the first words Jarzyna murmurs on “New Spring,” invoking the spirit of the album. He speaks not of the liveliness of manic activity, but the heightened, tender sensitivity of presence. It’s a fullness of living captured by the transition from the lush, jangling groove of “The Weight” to the spacious contemplation of “Pawns.” The dreamy echo of the 60s’ and 70s’ soft rock and folk troubadours suffuses the album, and the organ-soaked “Where In The World” even has a psychedelic tinge. But the overall effect is quite contemporary, from the back-of-the-nightbus lounge funk of “Take It Home” (featuring an amazing turn from arch-crooner Sean Nicholas Savage) to the mournful cupboard jazz of “Almost Gone.” “Dark Wall” sounds like a honkytonk ramble alongside a robot tentatively learning to play lap steel. “Leap of Love,” an early album highlight, passes over the listener in shimmering waves, a love song which remains a mystery even to its creator.

In the meditation tape coda “Relax Your Foot,” Jarzyna selects the perfect sample to encapsulate The Essential John Moods’ hopeful receptivity: the late Professor Carl Sagan reminding us that “despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.”

All songs written and performed by FADE
Produced by FADE, Joel Ferguson, and KIP
Mixed by FADE, James Harris, and Joel Ferguson
Mastered by Clay Jones
Recorded at Planet Sunday Studios

Album Artwork by Alessandra Myers
EP Press Photos by Rachel Resterhouse

Produced by Jesse Mac Cormack & Helena Deland
Engineering and Mixing by Jesse Mac Cormack

Alexandre Larin - Guitar
Francis Ledoux - Drums

Artwork by Crystal Zapata

This project is funded in part by FACTOR, the Government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.

Hailing from Ireland, Bobby (originally from Liverpool) and Billie (Bosnian born) from the ephemeral Low Sea compose music that flows like a serpentine river through the uncanny valley. Indeed, the owls are not what they seem—but even such blatant allusions can’t sketch an intuitive image of the sound-scapes woven by this intriguing dyad.

This special edition contains the CD with a 56-page A4 harback book.

November sees the release of Merrie Land, the second album from The Good, The Bad & The Queen, a band comprising of Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon, Tony Allen and Simon Tong. The Good, The Bad & The Queen began life as the acclaimed 2007 album of the same name, a heartfelt tribute to London described by The Observer in a 5 star review as –“One of the most surprising and magical records for which Damon Albarn has ever been responsible”.

The record traced a journey from the English music hall tradition to West Africa and Afrobeat, zigzagging through the West Indies and its reggae and dub, back to England and London's punk scene, all the while taking in a strand of British beat music from the '50s right through to Britpop. The result was a record specific to a place and mood but with a background that was geographically wide-ranging.
Now the four musical storytellers are back with a new studio album titled ‘Merrie Land’.

Produced by Tony Visconti and The Good, The Bad & The Queen was completed in London and Wales this year, during the current ongoing period in which the UK is preparing to leave the European Union, ‘Merrie Land ’is a questioning good-bye letter, a series of observations and reflections on Britishness in 2018. Even though it has been over 10 years since the band last released a record, the timing could not be more apt – there could not be a more perfect band to untangle the optimism, disorientation and confusion in the atmosphere today.
With ‘Merrie Land’, the band taps into a creative symbiosis of past and future, drawing inspiration from their shared glittering musical histories and wrapping the hybrid results in a brilliantly postmodern yet thoroughly British package.

The album sees the band’s focus move beyond London with a beautiful and hopeful paean to the Britain of today - an inclusive Britain - and the possibilities of the future. In the band’s own words, Merrie Land is a ten song lament of Anglo-Saxosentialism marking the reluctant end of a relationship, and about picking up the pieces and seeing what can be salvaged. The band set a beautifully muted palette and lustrous finish to bring out a mood that is bruised yet unapologetically defiant and optimistic, and carries the underlying message: we will survive.
In times of metaphysical trauma, the people need to forge ahead and wear armour. Here it is, set to the mood music of a nation about to be broken yet undefeated.

black flood print inside. synthwave

A Day at United. The name practically says it all. An album recorded in a single day. No rehearsals. No second takes. Just Mocky and friends. Some instruments. Some songs Mocky sketched in the week leading up. Oh yeah, and a recording studio. United Recording, in fact.

11 tracks with influences trip hop, Arabic music, soul or delta blues, whose proposals give rise to a lively psychedelism and an ardent shamanism. An experimental album of a rare eclecticism of the unclassifiable Dutch trio My Baby.

Over the course of the last two decades, Detroit-based duo ADULT. (Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller) have released six albums and nineteen EPs and singles across some of our favorite labels: Mute, Ghostly International, Thrill Jockey, Clone Records, Third Man Records, and their own label, the revered Ersatz Audio.