Indierock | Alternative CD 421 Items

super-deluxe box set comes complete with a hardback book containing in-depth liner notes from respected journalist Tim Barr, archive photographs, a Big Country poster and postcards housed in a wallet. Stuffed corners

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

Lives Outgrown is the debut album by Beth Gibbons featuring 10 beautiful new songs recorded over a period of 10 years, the album was produced by James Ford & Beth Gibbons with additional production by Lee Harris (Talk Talk).

Lives Outgrown is, by some measure, Beth’s most personal work to date, the result of a period of sustained reflection and change — “lots of goodbyes,” in Beth’s words. Farewells to family, to friends, even to her former self. These are songs from the mid-course of life, when looking ahead no longer yields what it used to, and looking back has a sudden, sharper focus.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

with hype sticker

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

Look no further than the forest and wetlands of southern Ontario to find Avem. A bubblegum punk rock band with songs about birds and human lived experiences as told through the perspective of birds. The subject matter may seem as crazy as a loon, but their infectious sound will have you bopping along instantly.

Aspidistrafly, the Singaporean duo comprising April Lee and producer Ricks Ang, return with Altar of Dreams, their first studio album in a decade.

While their last album A Little Fable introduced the world to their bucolic and wispy brand of folk songwriting, Altar of Dreams sees the duo – also the founders of Kitchen. Label – harness their experiences over the past decade to create a wholly new and inspired vision. In this new and third album, they drew upon a rich palette of shapes, sounds and movement: straddling between the visionary photography of Serge Lutens and Dora Maar, 80s Japanese ambient pop, musique concrète and the mournful strings of Béla Bartók.

The world in which Aspidistrafly once inhabited was foggy and awash in faded memory. A feeling of being suspended in time felt inescapable with each listen. In Altar of Dreams, the fog is clearing up. At nine songs under 35 minutes, the album possesses all the defining hallmarks of Aspidistrafly – poetic lyricism, cosmic introspection, lush strings, surrealism, tenderness and texture. But what was once seemingly inscrutable has now been explored with astounding clarity, the duo maneuvering through a space-time continuum with delicate leaps.

‘How To Find A Marblewing’, the opening track, is a heady sound collage of early internet sounds, film, anime, and chopped-and-screwed 90s J-pop. It’s a presence deeply embedded throughout the record, a method Lee describes as “a form of environmental/tape treatment”.

The compositions glimmer with sincerity, addressing all at once destruction, mystery, uncertainty, hopes and dreams. The resulting music is backed by an opulence only possible with a line-up of guest musicians. ‘The Voice of Flowers’ is stirring in its balance of flute, clarinet, tenor saxophone and piano, bolstered by a string quartet. Kitchen. Label artist haruka nakamura features on the track alongside Kyo Ichinose (who arranged the strings for the album) and wind instrumentalist Araki Shin.

‘Interlude: Chrysalises and Larvae’ takes the heavy path downward, adopting its name from the 1973 surrealist odyssey The Hourglass Sanatorium. It leads into ‘Companion to Owls’, a gothic pop paean to mortality inspired by the Book of Job.

Before the namesake centrepiece of the album, another interlude arrives in ‘A Ceremonial Ode’, both of which were stirred by a series of regal Shiseido ads from the 1980s starring model Sayoko Yamaguchi. ‘Altar of Dreams’ is haunted by the lucid dreams that once provided escapism for Lee. Its tranquility belies a simmering tension, just as how a lucid dream would offer control in the face of the unknown. “In one of them, I was floating in a vast darkness safe and secure, and then I fell into a turbulent mirage where I willingly allowed myself to be swept away further and further from reality, hoping that I would never wake up,” she says. “Needless to say I did, and ended up writing this song on one of these dead nights.”

If the title track replicates the feeling of falling deep into that spiral, ‘Silk and Satins’ is a direct analysis of the phenomenon. Warped frequencies collide with nature and television sound effects – the latter sourced from 80s Singaporean horror series Mystery – within an inter-dimensional music world. The track was made with featured artist Sugai KEN, whose own work is an endless scroll of intoxicating found sounds.

‘Quintessence’, the sweeping closing track, distills all the elements scattered across the album into a coda that beautifully refuses to resolve. At first an exercise in guitar looping, the song was then written without a beginning and end in mind. “I’d like to think of it as poetry that’s sung,” says Lee.

In Altar of Dreams, Aspidistrafly are renewed and hopeful. They’ve emerged from a decade spent reframing the world they see through vivid dreams and memories. Now, it’s all yours to experience.

Another Thought was the first collection of Arthur Russell’s music to be released after his death in 1992. Released on CD by Point Music in 1993 it marked the beginning of nearly 30 years of work to let the world hear the enormous archive of unreleased recordings Arthur left behind. Be With revisits this first compilation for a new gatefold double vinyl version and a triple-fold digipak CD re-issue. This is the only place where you can hear some of Arthur’s most recognisable music, like the title track Another Thought, A Little Lost, This Is How We Walk On The Moon, Keeping Up and the woozy disco of In The Light Of The Miracle and My Tiger, My Timing. Though technically a compilation, the whole of Another Thought comes together as a consistent, coherent, wonderful album. Thanks to Janette Beckman for helping reproduce her iconic photograph of Arthur in his newspaper boat hat for the new vinyl sleeve. And thanks also to Tom Lee for giving permission to include his liner notes from the original CD booklet, together with Arthur’s lyrics. Another Thought is absolutely essential for even the most casual Arthur Russell collection. In fact it’s essential for any fan of non-obvious pop music.

Arctic Monkeys and War Child UK are proud to announce the release of ‘Arctic Monkeys - Live At The Royal Albert Hall’ on December 4th 2020. All proceeds from the album will go to War Child UK to help fill what could be up to a £2 million deficit they are facing in 2021, caused by the devastating impact of Covid-19 on their fundraising. These funds are urgently needed to support those who are worst hit by the virus.

Recorded at the start of the band’s ‘Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino’ tour, ‘Arctic Monkeys -Live At The Royal Albert Hall’, features 20 of the band’s finest moments to date.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

Includes booklet.

Alto Fuero are a duo from France currently residing in Brussels, cartoonesque sounds and spasmodic rhythms intertwined with traditional folk-inspired spellbinding chants, their trance-inducing music could be read as post-folk; their energetic and mind-melting live performances are experienced as the soundtrack to near-future gatherings in the ruins of our modern world. "Live Rec" is a compilation of lives excerpts between 2022 and 2023.

Vinyl seems unplayed. With insert

On june 9th 2023 Capitane Records will re-issue the 20th Anniversary of Adam Green's Friends of Mine. For fans of Green and his band The Moldy Peaches, it may be hard to believe that it has been twenty years since those early days of the 2000s when the indie rock world was set ablaze by a new generation of artists, composers, and songwriters. Within what felt like only a few months, bands like The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Libertines, and The Moldy Peaches, provided indie music audiences with fresh iterations and interpretations of the rock and roll canon, with influences that included both standard bearers like The Velvet Underground, Television, The Stones, The Doors, The Stooges, Leonard Cohen, The Modern Lovers, and Bob Dylan, and also more recent artists like Beck, Daniel Johnston, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Will Oldham, Pavement, and The Silver Jews. The results varied between straight up rock and roll and punk rock with a songwriting, folk-inspired, consciousness. Gone were the ripped-up jeans and flannels of yore. Tight trousers and leather jackets ruled the day.

It was on the heels of the success of his band The Moldy Peaches (who signed along with The Strokes to Rough Trade Records in 2001 and subsequently toured alongside them) that Adam Green wrote and recorded Friends of Mine, the seminal album that would define a new direction in his career. Diverging from the home-recorded, 8 track-analog framework of his previous albums, Green adopted what then seemed like a distinctly hi-fidelity sound, complete with a full band, crooning vocals, and a string section (with arraignments by Jane Scarpentoni). Friends of Mine drew on the work of Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker, and Frank Sinatra, while its lyrical content felt as if derived from symbolist poetry and the surrealism of Brecht and Dylan. The result was something altogether new, a record that could feel both touchingly sad but also sardonic, satirical, louche, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Songs like "Jessica" would become anthems to a new generation of young indie rock fans both in the United States and Europe.

Capitane is proud to release Friends of Mine as a double LP, with a second disc of outtakes, B-sides, and live versions. This deluxe edition features notes on the songs by Green, a text which provides new insights into his often cryptic lyrical methodology along with anecdotes from the days when these songs were composed. Also featured is a conversation between Green and Dan Myers (producer), Steven Mertens (bass player), Matt Ramono (drummer) and Larissa Brown White (Adam's manager at the time). The five old friends do a deep dive into the production of Friends of Mine, as reflect more broadly on that bygone era. The 2023 edition of Friends of Mine is a testament to an artist and an album that stand the test of time.

“Acid Mammoth” was recorded late 2016 – early 2017 at Descent Studio while drums were recorded at Wudsound Studio. The album was initially released digitally in October 2017 via Bandcamp and introduced us to the beloved Doom scene. This album has a really special place in our hearts because it represents the birth of Acid Mammoth. It is our coming together and it bears the enthusiasm of our first ever recording. More raw and more monolithic in its essence than the albums that followed, “Acid Mammoth” is a doom metal album with lots of heart and tremendous excitement. Three years after its initial release, the time has come for its physical release in both vinyl and CD by Heavy Psych Sounds Records, with a killer new artwork by Branca Studio.