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For their fifth long player, Tite return with a sound that is familiar in its use of distortion, drive, echo and swirling melodies, but refreshed with an embracing of vocal hooks and harmonies, often absent in the world of psyche and shoegaze. It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine: ‘Asylum Harbour,’ named for a maritime safe-haven, symbolizes resurfacing from the darkness of 2022-2023 and the pandemic. (Band leader) John Treanor says the album reflects a journey out of a dark place, focusing on voices and harmonies over layers of fuzz. ‘The record marks, to my mind, a further evolution of the band with the voice(s) becoming a main feature rather than being used as another instrument.’” Jammerzine: “The term ‘shoegaze’ gets thrown around more and more, to the point that it’s beginning to become an assembly line genre, with Tite, and ‘I’m Not Like That’ we get a solid progression of original music with a true purpose. That purpose is to inspire.”

Over atmospheric instrumentation expanded by cinematic structure and pacing, Pearlty presents Knifeplay somewhere between dream-pop influenced shoegaze and lofty slowcore, never fully committing to one or the other in its insistence on creating an immersive, organic world.

Originally released in 2019, Knifeplay’s vivid debut Pearlty documents songwriter Tj Strohmer’s expressions of early adulthood in what he describes as “the journey from innocence to experience.”

Written during a time of immense inspiration, Strohmer was able to peel himself away from detached nihilism, uncovering the physicality and therapeutic powers of songwriting. Newly emboldened by this discovery and the talented community surrounding him, Strohmer channeled this revelation into his work, taking Knifeplay from a bedroom experiment that merely wrote songs to a more substantial project with a purpose.

Pearlty’s various climactic passages, like those heard on the impressionist album opener “Tears”, envelop listeners in textured walls of distorted guitar and noisy breakdowns, a distinct hallmark of shoegaze – but Knifeplay’s compositions go far beyond such conventions.

Also featured are downtempo compositions – such as the tribute track “Angel” – that call on a range of influences, from grunge to lofi pop, all the way back to slowcore. Layers of Strohmer’s falsetto lilt adorn the songs with another dimension of sentimentality, while rounding out the sonic vastness of the group’s emotionally enrapturing style, lending impressive depth to the band’s debut full-length.

Here we have the third LP by the excellent Guy Hamper Trio, featuring James Taylor on Hamond organ, and Guy Hamper on guitar (sometimes called Childish) and what a first-class LP this is! 'Instrument of Evil' in particular has a very eerie vibe. We asked the man himself what was the inspiration for it? G.H. The track is the sequel to '7% Solution', which featured on the last Guy Hamper Trio LP (with Thee Headcoats standing in as rhythm section). A 7% Solution being the amount of morphine Dr Watson administered to Sherlock Holmes. For 'Instrument of Evil' I took Sherlock Holmes' later designation of his syringe as "an Instrument of Evil". This is originally a quote from the bible- "Wicked men do at times reject God's purpose for the state, transforming the good of civil government into an instrument of evil." Point of interest: Morphine addiction happens to tie in with another aspect of the song. In the section that nods to Elmer Bernstein's main title theme to the film of the book The Man With the Golden Arm, in which the main character is also a morphine addict. Another ingredient - we added six-string bass to that section in tribute to Jet Harris - he formerly of top group The Shadows, who recorded a great version of Bernstein's classic. To top it all off the record sleeve references the fine graphics of the great Saul Bass. The track also features contributions from Tom Morley (trumpet) and Anna Jordanous (sax) . Both Were a pleasure to work with. My job at the wheel is to basically make a playground and let Jamie, Anna and Tom loose in it with very little direction, apart from pointing out the swings and location of the roundabout. I told Tom "you're a Spanish trumpeter stood on a hill in Spain." For Anna, I think we said "go low and nasty." Other titles are taken from early poetry chapbooks I made in my youth. 'The First Creature is Jealousy' and 'Dog Jaw Woman' being examples. The title 'Incense Rising From a Censer' comes fromDostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, a book I really recommend....

As Patois Counselors close in on a decade of existence, they are back to confirm their standing as one of America’s most consistently forward-thinking rock units. Although it’s been an entire presidential term since the Counselors acclaimed sophomore album The Optimal Seat came out, Bo White’s group hasn’t been lying fallow. Over the last few years, the seven-person line-up has been busy writing, recording and gigging, resulting in Enough: One Night at the Daisy Chain, a live-in-the-studio document captured in Brooklyn while on tour. Released at the beginning of 2024, Daisy Chain works splendidly as both a greatest hits primer and a forthcoming album teaser. Alas, the teasing is over with the arrival of Limited Sphere, the third album from Charlotte, NC’s Patois Counselors. Once again, Ever/Never steps up to the plate to demonstrate their confidence in this hard-working crew. In most contexts, a septet band configuration signals either a jazz ensemble or a mishmash of madcap noise. Beholden to no rules, Patois Counselors pluck from a selection of tactics as needed. Even augmented by extra players, each member reinforces their specific role, performing exactly what is needed for the track at hand. White’s post-modern muse needs plenty of room to stretch out and breathe and the big band spreads out the tent as far as it will go. White’s songs are rife with earned skepticism, sly asides and deft twists of tongues and licks. The manner in which the little details accumulate into the structure of the whole keeps the listener engaged. In other words, this is pop music for benevolent, discerning brainiacs, but regular people can dig it too. For Limited Sphere, Patois Counselors relax their grip on the tense post-punk that they mastered long ago. Songs like “Fountain Of UHF,” “Serious Rider” and “Ranking Set” still touch on this style, but now White’s voice shares the air with woodwind instruments that add even more depth and texture to his songs. The effortlessly groovy, vaguely loungey “Marge Attack” conjures fond memories of early Stereolab, while “Return To Sensitivity” evokes the magic hour of twilight, insects buzzing and zipping through dusky sky. Foregrounding the haze and mist in these songs, you can detect traces of Eno’s Another Green World in Limited’s atmoSphere, particularly on the closing “Cathy Music.” For their third proper album, Patois Counselors have crafted another seamless set of songs for practical fantasists and head-in-the-clouds cynics. The sphere outlined here may be limited, but the boundaries have been expanded significantly. —Erick Bradshaw

There are songs that makes friends with anyone and do great at parties, doling out compliments left, right and center. And then there are those songs that just don’t seem to fit in, songs that knock over glasses and makes awkward comments to the host as they stubbornly refuse to adapt and adjust to whatever larger setting you needed them to work in; these are songs that seemingly insist on remaining outside your control no matter how many stylistic or production tricks you try to pull.

Usually, for a band such songs eventually fall by the wayside, are left behind or butchered for parts a few years later. But sometimes quite a few of them show up at the door, at the same time, unruly & ready to shake things up a bit. Sometimes there is trouble.

These are the songs that makes up Neigh!!* Not merely a companion piece to last year’s Yay!, not a collection of B-sides or simply leftovers from that same period, but a reaction, a party for those not invited to parties, consisting of troubled, sometimes weirdly clothed outcasts that refused to go away and instead languidly found their place in the post-plague world while the tunes from Yay! were being pampered and sing-along’ed by band and fans alike.

So, then, it’s not a Nay! These songs care not that the band didn’t notice their potential at first. They know who they are, what their purpose is and what they’re capable of. They proudly wear their ‘lo-fi/no-fi’ and ‘recorded in rehearsal room/home studio’ as embroidered patches on jackets you only now realize are pretty cool. Granted, they had a tough upbringing, some of them come from broken homes and they learned the hard way to ‘Turn a frown upside down’, but here they are, together + strong!

Neigh!! is an album of ‘songs that won’t fit on an album’ – the non-concept of all concepts – a home for strays and runaways perhaps, but more importantly a bunch of tunes Motorpsycho are finally happy with, that found their purpose and now have a home: songs that the band are proud to finally being able to present to the world.

- Dr. Th. Kneipp

A sense of destiny hangs over Sentir Que No Sabes, Mabe Fratti’s fourth solo-credited album released in a five year span. Her work has always possessed a finely tuned sense of drama capable of expressing a range of emotional states, and across this new album, she conveys the struggle to process various relationships or situations–and the actions that come next. Sentir Que No Sabes is urgent and clear, poppy, generous and approachable, while showcasing a considerable emotional hinterland. It is also, as Fratti is quick to mention, “groovy.”

Written and recorded with her partner, multi-instrumentalist, and co-composer Héctor Tosta (I.La Católica, Titanic), Sentir Que No Sabes is the result of an intense, detail-oriented process. Fueled by a new confidence gained in their collaborative project, Titanic, and its critically acclaimed 2023 LP, Vidrio, the two hunkered down in the familiarity of their studio (aka Tinho Studios) to bash out the initial sonic coordinates of her new record. “We talked and talked, and discussed ways of playing and recording, until things became inevitable,” Fratti explains. “We recorded a bunch of demos at our home studio and that meant we had a lot of time to re-edit and experiment. We really dug in. We were super focused on detail.” Tosta also took up the controls as producer and arranger-in-chief for all additional instruments. The album was later completed at Willem Twee Studios in Den Bosch in the Netherlands, and Pedro y el Lobo Studios and Soy Sauce Studios, in Mexico City.

For the final studio recordings, the pair were joined by drummer Gibran Andrade and trumpetist Jacob Wick to fill out and expand on Tosta’s percussion and brass arrangements. This small group of friends were able to work quickly and openly, and without fear: a testament to the exhaustive groundwork put in at Tinho Studios.

Sentir Que No Sabes is a record full to the brim with a modern pop sensibility, invoked by the sort of magpie spirit that ensnares anything it can find, repositioning sounds for the here and now. The keys and melody on the melancholy “Pantalla azul” (“Blue screen error”) transport us back to the glossy mid-1980s.

The lyrics, for their part, have a stop-start quality to them, and hint at the small, incremental emotional taxes we pay through just living our lives. They circle around the music like birds waiting to swoop. There is something of the spiritual in all of Fratti’s work that expresses itself in a form of yearning: she looks to new horizons while personal dramas find themselves internalized, contextualized, and then dealt with through metaphor.

So what to make of Sentir Que No Sabes? High gloss Pastoralism? The sound of a city-bound, post-post modern soulscape? No matter the emotions evoked, it's the work of an artist coming into their own, and creating a benchmark record.

Most of the writing of Naima Bock's second album, Below A Massive Dark Land, was a solitary affair. It may not sound like it - it's made up of strong, purposeful arrangements with a huge host of musicians, filled with cradling space and warm light. This will also come as a surprise to anyone who has seen Naima perform in the time since the release of her 2022 debut Giant Palm, which was undoubtedly a communal experience. But there's power in the solitary, too. Giant Palm was arranged with collaborator Joel Burton, but going this one alone in search of something that was truly hers, Naima found she was capable of more. "After me and Joel stopped working together", she remembers, "it was an impossibility to even fathom doing arrangements myself but then I started learning violin and it was possible". Finding that she could go it alone was incredibly powerful for Naima: "I think I needed it, to be able to feel proud of something". Beyond the writing process, however, the record is not a stark, stripped back affair. Below_ still has the majesty that made Giant Palm so remarkable. Having tugged the first record down from the skies and spreading it across the earth, Naima finds a newfound vocal power and confidence born from hundreds of hours on stage, and the music sounds fuller, more tangible, and no less enveloping. This can be heard on the album's lead singles: "Kaley" feels fresh and surprising in its rug-pull choppiness but is distinctly Naima in its swinging, jubilant choruses. The accompanying "Further Away" takes a different tack, drawing you in with its simplicity. Finally, the hazy, luxurious beauty of "Feed My Release" draws on the sepia-toned traditions of The Roches, John Prine and Loudon Wainwright III and imbues them with the kind of stark confessional songwriting of Mount Eerie. These are ambitious, rich arrangements that reach deeper and darker lyrically than Giant Palm. Below a Massive Dark Land was predominantly produced by Jack Osborne (Bingo Fury) and Joe Jones, and recorded at The Crypt in north London, with additional production and arrangement by Oliver Hamilton (caroline, Shovel Dance Collective) and Naima herself. Six of the tracks on Below_ were mixed by Jason Agel, with the remainder done by Osborne and Jones. The album was mastered by Kevin Tuffy.

"The contributions Black women have made to the growth of rock & roll cannot be overstated, from the genre’s beginnings to the present day. Embracing this legacy, world renowned poet jessica Care moore and prolific performer Steffanie Christi’an have joined forces to form We Are Scorpio, an explosive new project blending rock & roll with poetry. A leading voice of her generation, moore has performed on stages across the globe, written acclaimed books and plays, and recorded her poetry with artists like Common, Nas, Jeezy, Karriem Riggins, Jeff Mills, Roy Ayers, Jose James, and more. Her latest foray into music is We Are Scorpio, a unique take on modern rock sparked by chemistry with fellow Detroit native Christi’an and encapsulating an undeniable Black femme punk energy. Joining a long line of Detroit artists who spoke truth with force across genre and gendered borders, the duo is now unveiling its self-titled debut album. With unapologetic vocals and rapid-fire poetics occupying the same space as head-banging guitar riffs, the collection features appearances by talented artists like Talib Kweli, Sada Baby, Divinity Roxx, Niko Is, and Militia Vox. Expansive but intimate, We Are Scorpio delves into parts unknown with fiery purpose."

You’ve Changed Records presents a special limited edition first-ever vinyl pressing of Julianna Riolino’s debut EP “J.R.”. Previously available only through digital channels, J.R. predates her 2022 breakthrough full-length “All Blue”, feted by the New York Times, Pitchfork, Uncut, and NPRs Mountain Stage, among many, many others, as well as Julianna’s stint in Daniel Romano’s Outfit. For the most part, J.R. omits the county, americana, and folk influences heard on All Blue though there is a shock of recognition in the always surprising power and pure tone of her voice. Rich in melody and early confidence, Julianna Riolino here draws from classic girl-group pop and contemporary indie while establishing a characteristic song-writing template of interpreting foundational texts and iconography to portray uniquely personal experiences and emotional truths. “It’s like it’s who you are before you grow more” she says of J.R. now. It’s an important step in the formation of an important and thrilling artist, and one of today’s greatest singers.

Glow White/Black Dot Vinyl.The year 2020 sure wasn't the most ideal time to form a band, especially for a group of musicians who never played together before. But for New York rock quintet GIFT, this strangest of periods was the auspicious backdrop for a bold new sound - a dizzying blend of early shoegaze, classic `90s alternative rock and even modern pop.Indeed, that GIFT emerged somewhat fully formed on their 2022 debut album Momentary Presence was a testament to the creative possibilities laying deep within. Now, Illuminator, their Aug. 23 debut album for revered New York independent label Captured Tracks, is the long-awaited payoff of GIFT's ever-growing musical and human chemistry. And while nods are apparent to label forerunners such as Beach Fossils, DIIV and Wild Nothing, GIFT are shepherding those elements into wondrous new vessels for the present moment - sleek, often danceable and frequently mesmerizing.GIFT - vocalist/guitarist TJ Freda, multi-instrumentalists Jessica Gurewitz and Justin Hrabovsky, drummer Gabe Camarano and bassist Kallan Campbell - are firmly enmeshed in the New York scene as talent buyers, photographers, DJs, audio engineers, art directors and, in the case of Campbell, an owner of the beloved Brooklyn DIY venue Alphaville.GIFT introduced Illuminator with "Wish Me Away," their first new song in the 18 months since the debut. With its earworm guitar lines, propulsive rhythms, riveting vocals and mind-expanding aural flourishes, "Wish Me Away" is the perfect sonic springboard from Momentary Presence to where GIFT are going next. It's also a potent reminder that you can still preserve that twinkle in your eye even when you feel like everything's slipping away.On songs such as "Light Runner", "Going In Circles" and "Destination Illumination," Freda demonstrates a newfound confidence and versatility, embracing pop music as a vehicle. The relentless, often painful dance of love has never sounded as exhilarating as on "Going in Circles," while the strident tone poem "Water in...

"The contributions Black women have made to the growth of rock & roll cannot be overstated, from the genre’s beginnings to the present day. Embracing this legacy, world renowned poet jessica Care moore and prolific performer Steffanie Christi’an have joined forces to form We Are Scorpio, an explosive new project blending rock & roll with poetry. A leading voice of her generation, moore has performed on stages across the globe, written acclaimed books and plays, and recorded her poetry with artists like Common, Nas, Jeezy, Karriem Riggins, Jeff Mills, Roy Ayers, Jose James, and more. Her latest foray into music is We Are Scorpio, a unique take on modern rock sparked by chemistry with fellow Detroit native Christi’an and encapsulating an undeniable Black femme punk energy. Joining a long line of Detroit artists who spoke truth with force across genre and gendered borders, the duo is now unveiling its self-titled debut album. With unapologetic vocals and rapid-fire poetics occupying the same space as head-banging guitar riffs, the collection features appearances by talented artists like Talib Kweli, Sada Baby, Divinity Roxx, Niko Is, and Militia Vox. Expansive but intimate, We Are Scorpio delves into parts unknown with fiery purpose."

"Indonesian rock trio Voice Of Baceprot (vob) have had to weather many challenges after they decided to carve a career in music. With the lack of music-related facilities in their village of Singajaya in Garut, West Java, they had to practically build their own modest practice studio. And they could only get a gig in the nearest city of Garut, three-and-a-half hours away. They had to face more significant adversities, namely the stigmas and unsolicited suggestions regarding religion and decency directed at them.

"You must remember that we come from a village where many see women as inferior to men. After completing high school, we did not have a lot of options. It was either work at home or for a relative at a convenience store. Or marry someone our parents choose," vocalist/guitarist Marsya recalls. It is a mindset that has survived from one generation to the other, even to this day. Hence, garnering support from even their family members became an uphill battle. ""No wonder only the three of us managed to come this far when you consider that VOB started with 15 members in 2014!"" drummer Sitti exclaims.

With all the setbacks that have come from all directions for an extended period, it is no surprise that they have played a massive part in developing VOB's character as a band and as individuals. Rather than dampening their spirits, however, they have moulded the trio to become stronger. "We have become rocks now. Hardened, rigid, and stiff due to all the doctrines in our minds. But through music and our friendship, we became fully aware that they must be cut through and broken regardless," Marsya explains. And from the trials and tribulations that they have had to suffer, VOB chose to name their debut album “Retas”. In Bahasa Indonesia, ""retas"" is ""a body of igneous rocks that breaks through by cutting through other rocks"". It epitomises how the band see themselves: igneous rocks, the end product of the socio-economic challenges that have shaped them into who they are now. ""Retas"" is a collection of songs that embody their solid determination to break free and carve out their path as a band, as musicians, and as independent women. With Ntrl guitarist Coki Bollemeyer at the helm as producer for the newer songs on the album, “Retas” comprises nine tracks, including album focus track “Age Oriented”, fan-favourite “What’s the Holy (Nobel) Today?”, “The Enemy of Earth is You”, instrumental track “Kawani”, and four previous singles that they have released since 2018, including their breakthrough single “School Revolution” and the smash hit “God, Allow Me (Please) to Play Music”. ""We really enjoyed making this album, thanks in no small part to Coki. His support and appreciation towards the hard work we put into the process have made a huge difference. It gave us the energy and confidence to give our very best,"" Marsya acknowledges. Most of the songs have roots since VOB were still in middle school, each immaculately capturing their emotional responses to the variety of experiences they have gone through, transcribed and transformed into a combination of lyrics and melodies feeding off of raw energy and passion. Focus track ""Age Oriented"" is a protest song aimed towards age restriction that they once had to endure because they were playing rock music at such a young age. The piece lays bare their anger as tight and heavy riffs roar atop Sitti's groovy thumping beats and Widi's dexterous basslines. “More often than not, we were told it was ‘inappropriate and too soon’ and we ‘did not have enough experience’. There is a partiality towards age being the main benchmark to determine the merit of one’s artistic work. It meant the young must wait until they reach a certain age deemed worthy of independence to show their true potential,” Marsya remarks. The role of vocal director Irvan Natadiningrat has also become more significant in developing VOB's trademark sound. Take What's the Holy (Nobel) Today?"" for example. Irvan suggested the inclusion of the dramatic marching chant in the song. This powerful addition could make it the anti-war anthem for the modern generation. "The Enemy of Earth is You"" addresses the negative impacts of climate change. Never in their wildest dreams would they expect massive natural disasters to affect their village. Were they simply a show of might by nature's customary dynamics? Or are we, as human beings, to blame for our greed, ignorance, and narcissism? Writing instrumental “Kawani” felt fresh and intriguing for VOB. They had a unique opportunity to express their enthusiasm for Sundanese music, which they likewise hold in high regard. "In Sundanese, 'Kawani' means courage. This song represents the bravery with which we girls have refused to be treated as something ‘sweet and beautiful’. We are greater than that. That courage is reflected in the rhythms' dynamic quality. We may appear to be serene and unruffled, yet we can abruptly change into something else that is challenging to control,” according to Sitti.

A sense of destiny hangs over Sentir Que No Sabes, Mabe Fratti’s fourth solo-credited album released in a five year span. Her work has always possessed a finely tuned sense of drama capable of expressing a range of emotional states, and across this new album, she conveys the struggle to process various relationships or situations–and the actions that come next. Sentir Que No Sabes is urgent and clear, poppy, generous and approachable, while showcasing a considerable emotional hinterland. It is also, as Fratti is quick to mention, “groovy.”

Written and recorded with her partner, multi-instrumentalist, and co-composer Héctor Tosta (I.La Católica, Titanic), Sentir Que No Sabes is the result of an intense, detail-oriented process. Fueled by a new confidence gained in their collaborative project, Titanic, and its critically acclaimed 2023 LP, Vidrio, the two hunkered down in the familiarity of their studio (aka Tinho Studios) to bash out the initial sonic coordinates of her new record. “We talked and talked, and discussed ways of playing and recording, until things became inevitable,” Fratti explains. “We recorded a bunch of demos at our home studio and that meant we had a lot of time to re-edit and experiment. We really dug in. We were super focused on detail.” Tosta also took up the controls as producer and arranger-in-chief for all additional instruments. The album was later completed at Willem Twee Studios in Den Bosch in the Netherlands, and Pedro y el Lobo Studios and Soy Sauce Studios, in Mexico City.

For the final studio recordings, the pair were joined by drummer Gibran Andrade and trumpetist Jacob Wick to fill out and expand on Tosta’s percussion and brass arrangements. This small group of friends were able to work quickly and openly, and without fear: a testament to the exhaustive groundwork put in at Tinho Studios.

Sentir Que No Sabes is a record full to the brim with a modern pop sensibility, invoked by the sort of magpie spirit that ensnares anything it can find, repositioning sounds for the here and now. The keys and melody on the melancholy “Pantalla azul” (“Blue screen error”) transport us back to the glossy mid-1980s.

The lyrics, for their part, have a stop-start quality to them, and hint at the small, incremental emotional taxes we pay through just living our lives. They circle around the music like birds waiting to swoop. There is something of the spiritual in all of Fratti’s work that expresses itself in a form of yearning: she looks to new horizons while personal dramas find themselves internalized, contextualized, and then dealt with through metaphor.

So what to make of Sentir Que No Sabes? High gloss Pastoralism? The sound of a city-bound, post-post modern soulscape? No matter the emotions evoked, it's the work of an artist coming into their own, and creating a benchmark record.

Baby Blue & Halloween Orange Vinyl.In their decade-plus together, the four-piece_Julia Shapiro (guitar, vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar, vocals), Gretchen Grimm (drums, vocals), and Annie Truscott (bass, vocals)_have created a resonant body of work. Live Laugh Love is a natural continuation. Against the bizarre backdrop of the past few years, Chastity Belt remained a supportive space for the members to grow and experiment, drawing on the ingredients most essential to their process since the beginning: authenticity and levity. Recorded over three sessions in as many years (January 2020, November 2021 and 2022), the focus became more about enjoying their time together in the studio than making it feel like work. Their ease and familiarity with engineer Samur Khouja in LA, who also recorded their last album, made for a particularly enjoyable process. Once completed, they returned to renowned engineer Heba Kadry who mastered the album.Album opener "Hollow" sets the tone with a gently driving rhythm while guitar layers stream like sun rays through an open car window. A warmth radiates through Shapiro's voice, even while grappling with feeling lost and stuck. "The older I get," Shapiro says of the lyrics, "the more I realize that I might just always feel this way, and it's more about sitting with the feeling and accepting it, rather than trying to fight it." That wisdom seems to anchor Live Laugh Love. Chastity Belt has never shied from navigating the spectrum of difficult emotions, and an existential thread weaves throughout the subject matter. And yet the songs feel more grounded than ever; there's a sense of quiet confidence and self-assurance that comes with being less numb and more present. Facing discomfort takes more fortitude, after all.Live Laugh Love finds the members in their prime as musicians. Their parts trace intricate patterns over one another, but there's room to breathe between the layers. Everyone contributes to the writing, sometimes switching instruments, and for the first time, all four mem...

Shortly after Jacob Diamond unassumingly self-released his first record, he found himself touring the world - first with art-pop outfit Methyl Ethel, then with singer-songwriter Stella Donnelly. Upon returning, the sharp, avant-pop songwriter moved from Perth, where he had started out at open mics on school nights, to Melbourne where he found a burgeoning scene of like-minded artists to collaborate and build confidence with. He would go on to join Camp Cope, Julia Jacklin, Courtney Barnett, Phoebe Go and Angie McMahonon stages around the country.

Now signed to Dalliance Recordings (Francis of Delirium, Gia Margaret, Highschool, lilo),Jacob is re-leasing his stunning new album Yes Angel this August. With contributions from Julia Jacklin and Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint), he’s refined his expression into nine remarkable songs through three years of painstaking assembly.

A study in space, each song on Yes Angel is also a setting. Themes of self-love and discovery settle like dust over simple, beautiful performances. Of the album, Jacob says, “I set out to make something confident, intimate, beautiful and alive. I wasn’t confident I could do what I set out to do, so Yes Angel will always be meaningful to me because I did it. Making it taught me to trust my instincts. Recording the album’s most challenging song ‘icuicry’ with producer and Fremantle icon Brod Madden-Scott epitomised this change in me: the song meanders and has a poem in the middle (or a ‘Ted Talk’, as Brod called it) so it needed a delicate touch, but I did what I have the tendency to do and went big. It had a big finish that was almost insecure - as if the song wasn’t enough without a show-stopping finale. But after version 38 or whatever, Brod sent through a mix with a note attached: ‘I just stripped it all back’. It was perfect. Nothing fussy. I immediately knew it was right because I trusted the relief and joy I felt. The song was enough exactly as it was and, as its author, I too was enough. This trust guided the rest of the process.

”Reminiscent of Arthur Russell and Vini Reilly, Jacob’s singular voice and sparse guitar stylings give ache, shape and atmosphere to his songs, allowing tinges of synth and drum machine to push through like flecks of light at their edges. Yes Angel excitingly feels both intimate and alien, perhaps due to being recorded as close to home as Fremantle and as faraway as Joshua Tree. Either way, it stands as a testament to the value of continuing to search for your own voice. Featuring singles ‘New Museum’, ‘Bay of Fleas’ and ‘That Meant The World To Me’, Yes Angel is a revelation. When you allow this music to take you with it, it settles into the heart.

Following a series of meditative explorations in the form of the Singularity Zone series of releases, The Oscillation have returned with a new sense of vigour and purpose. Refreshed and re-energized, the result is The Start Of The End, an album that casts more light and shade than ever before to create a mood of hope and re-birth.

At once warm and welcoming, The Start Of The End is an album quite unlike anything that The Oscillation have ever released before. Fuelled by optimism and taking stock of what’s good about life and what needs to be jettisoned, the record is a result of spiritual and physical re-charging and cleansing.

Leaving the claustrophobic environs of the big city for a more bucolic backdrop, the change in location has left a profound mark on Demian Castellanos, the creative force behind The Oscillation. Where the exorcism of dark emotions of previous album Untold Futures left Castellanos wondering if he’d ever make music again, his new surroundings stirred something within him.

“When I made my new home, I allowed myself time to do nothing for a while,” says Castellanos, “and I then started some new songs without worrying about them being on an album. I just wrote with the mindset to put out something positive.”

He continues: “I did a lot of reflecting on the past and really wanted to change something in myself, but not knowing how and thinking that a lot of people must be feeling the same way.”

Recalling the creation of The Start Of The End, Castellanos says, “Writing and recording in an environment where I had little contact with people, no hanging out or partying or even having conversations was very interesting.”

The result is an album that’s recognisably the work of The Oscillation while pointing to a variety of new directions. Be it the celestial majesty of the title track, the melodic infusions that drive opening track ‘War On The Mind’ or the pulsing grooves underpinning ‘Faraway’ and ‘Body Electric’ or even hypnotic repetition at the heart of ‘Mantra’ and ‘The Eternal’, this music brimming with zeal and confidence. And to crown it all, closer ‘Sovereign’ is akin to communing with angels.

The Start Of The End is a line in the sand and one that points to a better tomorrow.

Crack Cloud’s new album Tough Baby is both a clarion call and a life-manual for the listener. Unsurprisingly, it is a record with purpose and resolve. Nothing is wasted. Sometimes the music feels deliberately compressed, the essences extracted and bottled into an overpowering cordial, as on ‘115 At Night’, which sounds like an ‘80s Van Halen track being squeezed into another shape. And it’s difficult to see how a track like ‘Virtuous Industry’ can hold itself together, such are the sonic hoops it jumps through. The sharp angles and hook-laden guitar lines that were once seen as a trademark sound are less in evidence. Last track ‘Crackin Up’ does nod back to earlier releases with a booming beat and guitars that snag, like wool on barbed wire. Tough Baby contains music to think to, music with which to educate, agitate and organise. Zach Choy: “The name Tough Baby is an allusion to our Planet. To our Culture. And to our Selves.” It’s made to remind us that whilst we are all in the gutter to some extent, some of us are looking at the kerb.

You’ve Changed Records presents a special limited edition first-ever vinyl pressing of Julianna Riolino’s debut EP “J.R.”. Previously available only through digital channels, J.R. predates her 2022 breakthrough full-length “All Blue”, feted by the New York Times, Pitchfork, Uncut, and NPRs Mountain Stage, among many, many others, as well as Julianna’s stint in Daniel Romano’s Outfit. For the most part, J.R. omits the county, americana, and folk influences heard on All Blue though there is a shock of recognition in the always surprising power and pure tone of her voice. Rich in melody and early confidence, Julianna Riolino here draws from classic girl-group pop and contemporary indie while establishing a characteristic song-writing template of interpreting foundational texts and iconography to portray uniquely personal experiences and emotional truths. “It’s like it’s who you are before you grow more” she says of J.R. now. It’s an important step in the formation of an important and thrilling artist, and one of today’s greatest singers.

When Man Man released its last album, "Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In Between," frontman Honus Honus (née Ryan Kattner) was in a state of unrest, oscillating between hope and cynicism. Perhaps fittingly, the album dropped during the pandemic, a time at which we could all relate. But, much like that bizarre turn of events, the ennui now seems so distant to Man Man. A revived sense of purpose washes through Man Man's new album, Carrot on Strings, radiating a mix of calm and confidence. Kattner always embodied a wild-man pied-piper vibe: his melodic, unhinged art-rock was at once intriguing and angsty. He was so alluringly creative that you went along with it, even if you were never sure where Man Man would take you. Carrot on Strings is no less inventive, but its ethos is radical in context of the band's two-decade career. "When I was younger, I would feed off of chaos. I would, you know, be upset and get drunk and smash chairs," Kattner explains. "Now those chairs are in my head: It's less of an outward projection, more of an interior monologue." The name "Carrot on Strings" came to Kattner while experimenting with the sound of someone munching on the vegetable, which you can hear in the cacophonous, similarly named song. It alludes to how success always seemed to dangle uncertainly before him, often just out of reach. But listen intently and you'll hear a more content Kattner finding an uneasy peace: "Life, as far as I've known it, has always been side hustles. Would it be great if I could go into a studio and record for a year without figuring out how to finance it? Yeah, it would be," he says. "But ultimately, I need to keep making music because art is an extension of my psyche. It's how I have learned to translate the palpitations of my heart. Simply put, I'd go insane without it." Growing up as a multiracial Hapa kid (half Filipino, half white) with a father in the U.S. Air Force, Kattner lived an itinerant childhood that included a few pivotal years in Germany, where he honed in on an appreciati...

Riyl: Orange Juice, Sarah Records, early Creation, Mary Chain, C86, Lush. Tlv168lpxx repress edition of 300 copies on pink vinyl. The first run sold out very quickly so a small repress has been ordered. The Umbrellas are four renegade romantics crafting irresistible indie pop hymns. The band’s self-titled 2021 debut album became a breakout moment, winning critical praise and sparking an international tour. Follow-up LP ‘Fairweather Friend’ goes a step further – absorbing the sonic attack of their live shows, it balances this with studio finesse, allowing the San Francisco four-piece to become the band they’ve always aspired to be. It's a record overflowing with highlights. The candyfloss melodies of introductory track ‘Three Cheers!’ are matched to an impactful percussive punch; ‘Say What You Mean’ finds The Umbrellas working with total confidence, letting the song ride out to its chiming conclusion, four voices working in precision. ‘When You Find Out’ offers rotating notes of guitar punctuated by a vocal that pushes past angst to accept a world full of hope. A lean 10 track affair, it grasps towards beatific pop while fuelled by a sense of risk, and the precision that comes from long months on the road. The Umbrellas coalesced around a group of musicians who would frequent legendary San Francisco record emporium Amoeba Music. Singer and guitarist Matt Ferrera links with bassist Nick Oka, while Keith Frerichs is the powerhouse drummer. A chance encounter with Morgan Stanley singing karaoke at a Fourth of July party cemented the line-up around an avowed thirst for melody. “All of us love really earnest pop songs,” Nick points out. “I guess we got to a point in our lives where we wanted to be genuine.” Playing shows at San Francisco’s vital DIY redoubt Hit Gallery, The Umbrellas would share line-ups with local heroes such as April Magazine and Cindy. Recording their debut album across a two-day spell at Matt’s parents’ house, the results won a devoted cult following. Yet the experience of touring bonded them tightly and allowed the volume to tick up a little higher, and higher, and higher. “I think we got tired of people saying, oh you’re so much louder than I thought you’d be!” laughs Matt. “Our early recordings are sweet and earnest… and we wanted it to be louder.” Kicking off sessions in November 2022, the band used an ad hoc space Matt created in his basement, working across a four-month period. Sessions were a little more relaxed in terms of timescale than their debut, but The Umbrellas were incredibly focussed on the project. “We gave ourselves more space for this album,” says Keith. “We wanted time to sit on the songs, and really work on them.” Allowing their live dynamic to bleed out on tape, The Umbrellas are at once more physical and yet also more controlled on their new album. Take opening track ‘Three Cheers!’ – the peppy, sun-soaked rush masks a barbed lyric, courtesy of Nick Oka. “It’s a pseudo-political song about power struggles that occur in a job situation, or a friend group. It’s an observational song.” ‘Toe The Line’ has an unkempt, rollicking sense of energy, the playful relationship analogy of the lyric pushed to the speed of light by Keith’s ultra-fast punk drumming. ‘When You Find Out’ meanwhile epitomises their unified, egalitarian way of making music – with The Umbrellas, each voice counts. “It sounds different from any song we’ve ever written together,” says Morgan. “It shows how much we’ve grown. Trust helps us to build the songs. It’s definitely a team effort.” It's also a record of ambition. ‘Say What You Mean’ stretches past the four-minute mark, the viola performance informed by Estonian minimalist composer Arvo Pärt. ‘Gone’ was the first song attempted for the new album, and the last they actually finished, endless re-writes transforming it into a manifesto of control and release. Taken as a whole ‘Fairweather Friend’ is a bold indie pop triumph, crafted with purpose and attention. Taking their time over each note, the four-piece have strengthened their songwriting, adding depth and assurance while unlocking their potential. Some bonds last a lifetime – The Umbrellas are ready to capture your heart.

To address the weight of the world without speaking of weariness. To march thesong to breathlessness but loosen your grip when the band wanders. To tell allyour secrets but shield your loved ones from vulnerability. To dress up in thecharm and temptation of the pop song but maintain a core of peculiarity, of asingle voice trying to navigate this world. This is the project of the Spatulas.Think of the few songwriters who know they're the only ones in the world whocould write their songs. The ones who sing in the confidence that the songcouldn't exist without them: Peter Jefferies, Jenny Mae, Ron House, HeatherLewis. Jonathan Richman? Put Miranda Soileau-Pratt and the Spatulas on thislist.All eleven songs on `Beehive Mind' share a percussive, unshadowed presence,a steady, clear-voiced clop. Every note on the record is a little bit sad on its ownbut then they're organized in a way that you don't actually notice. Credit this tothe band's skill_Jon Grothman, Lila Jarzombek, Kyle Raquipiso and MirandaSoileau-Pratt all play with no limits and they all play with profound ease. Thesongs breathe in warmth and patience, they are immediate and sweet. And thenthey start to meander. The guitar skitters with the deliberate unpredictability of awild animal. Parts repeat and reset with the obsessiveness of an anxious mind.The lyrics open doors to unexpected scenes of lovers, family, and violence.This is all intentional: "I need to play music and listen to music as a form oftherapy," explains Soileau. This means safety, this means encouragement, thismeans trauma, this means hard questions. Only a band so comfortable at themargins, only a band so capable, only a band so trusting can achieve all this.Miranda Solileau-Pratt wrote the first Spatulas song in 2020, while living inOregon. Since that time, the band has released two cassettes and toured theUnited States. Members of the Spatulas have also played in The Blimp, HoneyBucket, Hot Gum, and Meerkaz. The band has shared stages...

"I was in a dream, but now I can see that change is the only law." With a credo adapted from science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, an album title from a collection of metaphysical poetry, and an expansion in consciousness brought on by personal crisis, guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland learns to embrace a changing world with unconditional love on News of the Universe, the new full-length from California rock band La Luz. News of the Universe is a record born of calamity, a work of dark, beautiful psychedelia reflecting Cleveland's experience of having her world blown apart by a breast cancer diagnosis just two years after the birth of her son. It's also a portrait of a band in flux, marking the first appearance for drummer Audrey Johnson and the final ones from longtime members bassist Lena Simon and keyboardist Alice Sandahl, whose contributions add a bittersweet edge to a record that is both elegy for an old world and cosmic road map to a strange new one. But is there any band in the world more suited to capturing the chaos of change in all its messy beauty than La Luz? Formed by Cleveland in 2012, La Luz is beloved for their ability to balance bedlam and bliss, each new record another fine-tuning of the band's mix of swaggering riffs with angelic vocals borrowed from doo-wop and folk; a band so reliably great that it makes the huge step forward in confidence and sheer musicality that is News of the Universe all the more formidable. Cleveland, also a writer and painter, has developed into a truly original songwriter with her own canon of haunted psychedelia. Yet if Cleveland has spent years writing songs about ghosts, what lurks in the shadows of News of the Universe is nothing less than death itself. "There are moments on this album that sound to me like the last frantic confession before an asteroid destroys the earth," says Cleveland. The powerful sense of openness that permeates News of the Universe is at least partially due to the fact that it is a record made entirely by women-from the performing, writing, and producing all the way through to the recording, engineering, and mastering. Working with producer Maryam Qudos (Spacemoth), the all-female environment allowed Cleveland to feel safe tapping into difficult places and expressing hard emotions women are socialized to suppress. Unashamedly vulnerable, unabashedly feminine, and undeniably triumphant, News of the Universe is another knockout record from a band so reliably great that it has perhaps led people to overlook how pioneering La Luz really are: women of color in indie music forging their own path by following their own artistic star into galaxies beyond current musical trends, always led by an earnest belief in the cosmic power of love and a great riff. Never is that more true than on News of the Universe, which might be La Luz's most brutal record to date but also their most blissful.

Nick Llobet (they/them) was ready to throw in the towel. Llobet, who grew up in South Florida, learned to play guitar at a very young age, dabbling in everything from classical, blues, classic rock, and flamenco. They'd spent much of their early 20s searching for their voice as an artist and as an individual, as well as for a musical community Llobet would eventually move to Brooklyn, but after three years of looking for a hopeful artistic breakthrough, they spent much of their time in seclusion, consumed by social anxiety and imposter syndrome-and they were considering abandoning songwriting completely. One day, while commuting through Penn Station en route to their partner's family home in Virginia (that would also lead to the crucial purchase of a secondhand Tascam cassette recorder), they noticed Patti Smith sitting alone, waiting for a train. The typically shy Llobet decided to approach the icon, who was, in turn, delighted to see that Llobet was carrying a guitar. At the end of their interaction, Smith offered some parting wisdom: "She wished me luck and said, 'Practice hard, Nick.'" Llobet took her advice to heart, and this chance encounter kicked off a personal and artistic rebirth. They started performing as youbet, a play on their last name, and began "changing [their] vision for what a song could be." youbet's debut, Compare & Despair, a delightful gem of a record that showcases Llobet's propensity for freewheeling whimsy and emotional intensity. In May 2019, inspired by a song-a-week writing group that produced Compare & Despair, Llobet started a second club in which contributors would upload that week's song to a private Bandcamp. Invigorated by this small musical collaboration, the feedback, and the accountability, Llobet wrote 18 songs throughout the duration of the club, twelve of which became Way To Be. After this songwriting marathon, Llobet spent 2020 focusing on instrumental guitar work and political engagement. By the summer of 2021, they were ready to revisit the Way To Be tracks. Over the next year-and-a-half, Llobet worked on the record relentlessly, refining the lyrics, recording, and arrangements from their apartment. Llobet self-produced Way To Be and describes the process as an enormous, labor-intensive undertaking that felt akin to "making a whole film." Along the way, Llobet was joined by collaborators, including Julian Fader (Ava Luna), Adam Brisbin (Buck Meek), and Daniel Siles. Across Way To Be's 12 delightfully off-kilter tunes, Llobet uses wordplay and tongue-in-cheek humor to obliquely explore dysfunctional relationships, regret, self-confidence or the lack thereof, queerness, and self-discovery. Fuzzy at the edges and filled with playful, kinetic arrangements, Way To Be is a bridge into the entrancing world of youbet. You won't want to leave.

Named after one of the basic rhythms of Cuban folk music and drawing on influences from across the globe, Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin are quite simply a world unto itself. Comprised of three childhood friends, Daido, Yuta and So, who reconnected during the coronavirus pandemic, Cho Co Pa initially emerged as a playful way for the three 23-year-olds to pass the time. Tapping into their youthful connection, they created a sound that exudes confidence and curiosity, a homage to the masterful world of YMO’s and Happy End’s Haruomi Hosono, rooted in the trio’s own idiosyncratic experience of the present. Recorded at home and promoted on hugely popular DIY TikTok videos, their debut album Tradition is a technicolour exercise in armchair travelling – a kind of lockdown exotica for the housebound whose nostalgic flights of fancy are laced with a sense of whimsical melancholy for the lost freedoms of youth. Referencing everything from Afro-Cuban percussion to lo-fi beats, Buddhist spirituality to trap, each member of the band brings different musical inspirations to the table. Latin American and Middle Eastern styles sit adjacent to a fascination for the electronic music of Aphex Twin, Dorian Concept, Underworld and Daft Punk. At times, the music verges on acid pop bliss, at others, it grooves with the instrumental funk sensibility of Badbadnotgood. “In the first place, when I create a song, my goal is to transport the listener to a mysterious place,” vocalist Daido explained in a recent magazine interview. Using lyrics as another sonic texture in the composition of ideas, Cho Co Pa paint beguiling sonic postcards of far-flung moods across 12 highly original tracks. Marrying the organic and the electronic on rhythmically sophisticated compositions like ‘Chichibu’ and ‘Watatsumi’, it is on the album’s standout track ‘Gandhara’ that the experimental sound of Cho Co Pa comes to the fore. Referencing the ancient city of Gandhara through which Buddhism made its way from India to China, the track is a vocoder-trap-inspired, Udu drum-driven pop jam that lilts with unmistakable Balearic flair. If that’s difficult to imagine, then know simply that ‘Gandhara’ sounds like nothing else on this side of Saturn. Even Daido seemed surprised by the outcome: “I feel like we were able to create something that exceeded our abilities. That was huge!” Hugely popular in Japan, with festival appearances lined up alongside Badbadnotgood at Asagiri Jam in October, it's safe to say the success of Tradition has taken Cho Co Pa by surprise. Released digitally in July 2023, Tradition will get a full international vinyl release in January 2024. You won’t have heard anything like it.

Available on ltd edition Eco mix vinyl, with only 250 copies pressed. Includes download.

We’re delighted to bring you the latest full length from London psych heads The Confederate Dead.

‘As an artist, one of the most extraordinary gifts is the ability to convert life's experiences and emotions into music, transmuting pain into beauty, tragedy into art. With our latest album, 'Flamingo', we embarked on this creative journey. The inception of this project dates back to 2022, a year marked by a period of separation that was both challenging and transformative. 'Flamingo' is not just an album; it is a voyage through the labyrinth of heartache and healing. Each track resonates with the overarching theme of the album, yet each presents a unique interpretation of it. Every song echoes the same meaning, the same core narrative, but from a different emotional lens.’ Butchy Davy (The Confederate Dead)

‘“Flamingo by London’s psychedelic indie band The Confederate Dead flows by like a strange dream. Each song flows differently, shifting the dreamy images into another direction. Thoughts of The Black Angels, the Fuzz Club catalogue and genres from shoegaze to garage pop and back to good old psych rock fight a confusing fight for my attention. In the end it appears that this struggle will never truly be decided. The Confederate Dead is their own beast, and a great one at that.

Theirs is a sound that oozes confidence and grandeur, presented like a big name would. and there is no reason why The Confederate Dead would not dream big, they have the chops, the songs, the looks, the only thing standing in the way of moving up might be their dark brooding undertones and their refusal to do a cool thing twice.

Because the most powerful thing about Flamingo is its versatility. The album is like a box of assorted chocolates, the one you can’t get enough of because each song is delicious and sweet in its own way. So, indulge yourself, have a chocolate, or ten…before you know it the album is over, and you’ll press play again.

After 20 years of living on the road in different places, Six Organs of Admittance had returned home to Humboldt County - a far country, to some, but still part of the world through which creatures of all kinds are moving through and contributing to. And some of them are human. Alone together - forming connection and exchange out of thought and expression - no different from the people on the other side of the Redwood Curtain. It was there, where Six Organs had long ago emerged, in the name of everything cycling, of circles that spiral concentrically and remain unbroken, the new music was conceived. In moments, it was as if the future had somehow wrapped around 360 degrees; elsewhere, the systems and patterns inside the writing and recording only became evident later - like a recognition that cumulus and nimbus clouds which passed through the sky the day before contained familiar shapes. Informing the songs accordingly as he went, Ben picked up on modes both musical and lyrical, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance. Almost marinating in it as a way of life. Working on the music and the vocals, then spending some time with them while stepping away from them. Walking the dog and coming back to them Time is Glass is made of that kind of time. Alone time. Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the background. Sweet and spiny, "The Mission" sings its purpose, before turning abruptly to the orchestral rumble of "Hephaestus": rural industrial psychedelia, ecosystem goth, synths arcing to lift a helplessly earthbound community into the firmament above. Winding almost imperceptibly back into song with "Slip Away", the time of the record becomes clear, moves fluidly, relaxed but aware, from event to event. People and things coming around again. The intuit, passing through wormholes and time, sounding deep then dissolving into the universal. The acoustic sounds ringing, layered suddenly, then clear again. Explosions of a new kind of distortion. Ecstatic melodies. Communing. The space of a day. The space of a season. Time is Glass, and Six Organs of Admittance is here and will be here, again.

Superb 45 featuring two Hammond-led instrumentals!We caught up with Mr Guy Hamper for an insightful Q&A_ Q: What a cracking single this is! 'Instrument of Evil' in particular has a very eerie vibe. What was the inspiration for it?A: The track is the sequel to '7% Solution', which featured on the last Guy Hamper Trio LP with Thee Headcoats standing in as rhythm section. A 7% Solution being the amount of morphine Dr Watson administered to Sherlock Holmes. For 'Instrument of Evil' I took Sherlock Holmes' later designation of his syringe as "an Instrument of Evil". This is originally a quote from the bible: "Wicked men do at times reject God's purpose for the state, transforming the good of civil government into an instrument of evil." Point of interest: Morphine addiction happens to tie in with another aspect of the song. In the section that nods to Elmer Bernstein's main title theme to the film of the book The Man With the Golden Arm, in which the main character is also a morphine addict. Another ingredient - we added six-string bass to that section in tribute to Jet Harris - he formerly of top group The Shadows, who recorded a great version of Bernstein's classic. To top it all off the record sleeve references the fine graphics of the great Saul Bass. Phew!Q: The track features contributions from Tom Morley (trumpet) and Anna Jordanous (sax). What's it like working with them?A: They are great and easy to work with. I basically make a playground and let them loose in it with very little direction, apart from pointing out the swings and location of the roundabout. I told Tom "You're a Spanish trumpeter stood on a hill in Spain." For Anna, I think we said "go low and nasty." Q: On the flip side you have 'Incense Rising From a Censer'. A very evocative title for an evocative track. Do you have lyrics in mind for this for a possible later release?A: No lyrics have sprung to mind as yet - but it's always possible. The title is from The Elders observation in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, a b...

For the current album the SIDEWALK SURFERS leave the cracked asphalt of the hometown skatepark behind them for good and present instead a doomy soundtrack to a road movie and a class struggle. With 12 songs that capture the dark spirit of the times and still celebrate the last sip from the Calippo Cola, you can go on tour with confidence. That's how sure Kinzi, Dom, Pecko and Kiwi have never been so confident in their work. For that the five of them sleep in a 90cm bed. At least the pizza machine makes up for everything.

If 2022’s The Children Of Scorpio was the debut album that turned people onto the world of Project Gemini aka Paul Osborne, Colours & Light is the body of work that will be buried deep into their hearts. It is a majestic album, bringing together the worlds of folk rock, psych soundtracks and hazy cinematic funk. A growing confidence and ease emanate from the writing and production of this sophomore LP, bolstered by the reception to his standout debut. “It’s a more layered and diverse record” Paul mentions, “with a more outward-looking, global sound, born out of the records I was listening to and the musicians I was lucky enough to collaborate with”. It feels relaxed yet self-assured, with a kaleidoscope of sounds that twist together in a mesmerising fashion. The theme of the album developed naturally through the lyrics Paul began writing. A creative process both plagued and fed by insomnia, nourished by relationships, entwined in emotions, nights out, nights in and the after-effects on the human condition. Relatable themes yet seen through the prism of a soundscape that takes in many a different culture and scene. From acid folk to psych-funk, Francophile elements to Anatolian and Eastern inspirations, all interlocking and rotating as one. Drawing inspiration from those he admires, Colours & Light radiates with collaborations. The title track, which tips its hat to a live 1973 TV version of Pentangle’s ‘Wedding Dress’, features the folk rock, guitar brilliance of Jack Sharp from Wolf People/Large Plants. Elsewhere, two tracks are blessed by the sultry, smokey French vocals of Gloria’s Wendy Martinez, ‘Extra Nuit’ and ‘Entre chien et loup’. The former echoes Paul's love of classic French psych-pop from the late ’60s and early ’70s and artists such as Laurance Vanay, Calcium, Leonie, and Serge Gainsbourg. Martinez's sublime vocal work nestles perfectly within Paul's psych-folk-funk productions, as her Gloria partner, Alexis Morel (aka Kid Victrola) sprinkles a dose of entrancing guitar line magic on proceedings. The list of collaborations extends further with Raz and Markey Funk, drummer Tony Coote and percussionist Paul Elliott all featuring. Regular collaborator and underground icon Barrie Cadogan (Little Barrie) returns along with Bert Page from The Cromagnon Band, who between them provide a hit of whacked-out, fuzzed-up country guitar and Moog madness respectively on ‘Lost In The Woods (Bacchanal)’. Rounding off the record Paul’s daughter, Olivia Osborne, supplies the keyboard intro on the penultimate track ‘Twilight’. Dorian Conway from The Soundcarriers (whose bandmate Paul Isherwood returns on mixing duties) then layers echoing heavy flute parts to magically capture the psychedelic sunrise images brought to mind. Balancing light and shade on this record, there is beauty and tension all wrapped up in Paul’s vivid and visceral, storytelling gift.

If 2022’s The Children Of Scorpio was the debut album that turned people onto the world of Project Gemini aka Paul Osborne, Colours & Light is the body of work that will be buried deep into their hearts. It is a majestic album, bringing together the worlds of folk rock, psych soundtracks and hazy cinematic funk. A growing confidence and ease emanate from the writing and production of this sophomore LP, bolstered by the reception to his standout debut. “It’s a more layered and diverse record” Paul mentions, “with a more outward-looking, global sound, born out of the records I was listening to and the musicians I was lucky enough to collaborate with”. It feels relaxed yet self-assured, with a kaleidoscope of sounds that twist together in a mesmerising fashion. The theme of the album developed naturally through the lyrics Paul began writing. A creative process both plagued and fed by insomnia, nourished by relationships, entwined in emotions, nights out, nights in and the after-effects on the human condition. Relatable themes yet seen through the prism of a soundscape that takes in many a different culture and scene. From acid folk to psych-funk, Francophile elements to Anatolian and Eastern inspirations, all interlocking and rotating as one. Drawing inspiration from those he admires, Colours & Light radiates with collaborations. The title track, which tips its hat to a live 1973 TV version of Pentangle’s ‘Wedding Dress’, features the folk rock, guitar brilliance of Jack Sharp from Wolf People/Large Plants. Elsewhere, two tracks are blessed by the sultry, smokey French vocals of Gloria’s Wendy Martinez, ‘Extra Nuit’ and ‘Entre chien et loup’. The former echoes Paul's love of classic French psych-pop from the late ’60s and early ’70s and artists such as Laurance Vanay, Calcium, Leonie, and Serge Gainsbourg. Martinez's sublime vocal work nestles perfectly within Paul's psych-folk-funk productions, as her Gloria partner, Alexis Morel (aka Kid Victrola) sprinkles a dose of entrancing guitar line magic on proceedings. The list of collaborations extends further with Raz and Markey Funk, drummer Tony Coote and percussionist Paul Elliott all featuring. Regular collaborator and underground icon Barrie Cadogan (Little Barrie) returns along with Bert Page from The Cromagnon Band, who between them provide a hit of whacked-out, fuzzed-up country guitar and Moog madness respectively on ‘Lost In The Woods (Bacchanal)’. Rounding off the record Paul’s daughter, Olivia Osborne, supplies the keyboard intro on the penultimate track ‘Twilight’. Dorian Conway from The Soundcarriers (whose bandmate Paul Isherwood returns on mixing duties) then layers echoing heavy flute parts to magically capture the psychedelic sunrise images brought to mind. Balancing light and shade on this record, there is beauty and tension all wrapped up in Paul’s vivid and visceral, storytelling gift.

Inimitable post-rock outsiders A Burial At Sea return with `Close To Home', a soaring sonic love letter to the places and people that shaped them, the collective's first new music since the eponymous debut full-length in 2020, `Close To Home' is a breathtaking evolution of their unique, brass-led blend of shoegaze, math-metal and blissed out afro-jazz that draws inspiration, influence and insight from the rich Gaelic cultural heritage of their Irish homeland. First making waves in 2018 with unbridled bombastic creativity of `_And The Sum Of Its Parts' EP, A Burial At Sea turned the traditionally austere post-rock frown upside down. Quickly catching the attention of like-minded, international genre-benders And So I Watch You From Afar (asiwyfa), This Will Destroy You ,Caspian and Some Become Hollow Tubes (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), the band subsequently spent months on tour in support, honing their incendiary craft and gaining a loyal fan base across Europe in the process. Despite being landlocked by forces outside of their control, A Burial At Sea continued their adventure by looking inwards to produce `Close To Home': a staggering refinement of the band's already singular instrumental sound. The confidence, experience and sheer musical assuredness behind this album renders any generic labels of post rock immediately obsolete. `Close To Home' proves without a doubt that A Burial At Sea are indeed more than the sum of their parts; positioning the band on the crest of a truly progressive wave of uplifting, anthemic post-rock.

The four-piece - Julia Shapiro (guitar, vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar, vocals), Gretchen Grimm (drums, vocals), and Annie Truscott (bass, vocals) - have created a resonant body of work. Live Laugh Love is a natural continuation. Against the bizarre backdrop of the past few years, Chastity Belt remained a supportive space for the members to grow and experiment, drawing on the ingredients most essential to their process since the beginning: authenticity and levity. Recorded over three sessions in as many years (January 2020, November 2021 and 2022), the focus became more about enjoying their time together in the studio than making it feel like work. Their ease and familiarity with engineer Samur Khouja in LA, who also recorded their last album, made for a particularly enjoyable process. Once completed, they returned to renowned engineer Heba Kadry who mastered the album. Album opener "Hollow" sets the tone with a gently driving rhythm while guitar layers stream like sun rays through an open car window. A warmth radiates through Shapiro's voice, even while grappling with feeling lost and stuck. "The older I get," Shapiro says of the lyrics, "the more I realize that I might just always feel this way, and it's more about sitting with the feeling and accepting it, rather than trying to fight it." That wisdom seems to anchor Live Laugh Love . Chastity Belt has never shied from navigating the spectrum of difficult emotions, and an existential thread weaves throughout the subject matter. And yet the songs feel more grounded than ever; there's a sense of quiet confidence and self-assurance that comes with being less numb and more present. Facing discomfort takes more fortitude, after all. Live Laugh Love finds the members in their prime as musicians. Their parts trace intricate patterns over one another, but there's room to breathe between the layers. Everyone contributes to the writing, sometimes switching instruments, and for the first time, all four members sing a song. It's never been more apparent that they are creative siblings, cut from the same belt. "We've been playing music with each other for over a decade," says Shapiro, "so it really does feel like we're all fluent in the same language, and a lot of it just happens naturally." "Laugh" seeks in the balm of friendship, aware of the anticipatory nostalgia that hits during a good time that you're already missing before it's gone; the heavier guitar tones on "Chemtrails" streak ominous chord progressions over Grimm's precision timekeeping, lamenting memories that won't fade easily. During a transitional time, Truscott came across a note in their phone that read, "it's not hard all day, just sometimes," which inspired a poignant line in the chorus of "Kool-Aid," their first song as lead vocalist on a Chastity Belt recording. Another standout, "1-90 Bridge" shines with a silvery melody that soars as Lund belts one of the most resounding moments on the album: "Tell your girlfriend she's got nothing to fear/I'm set in my head/My body's a different story." The track "Blue" saunters nonchalantly with a wink; you can almost hear Shapiro's smile as she sings "Faking it big time/So I can hit my stride/Man, it feels good to be alive," channeling early Chastity Belt channeling early '90s before channeling the late Elliott Smith in a spiral of distortion and insight: "Don't get upset about it/It's gonna pass/Tell all your friends about it/They're gonna laugh." "We have such a strong sense of each other's musical inclinations" says Lund. "I think this allows for a lot of playfulness...we can kinda surprise each other, like a good punchline would."

The Trip is the first solo album by N'Zeng, better known as Sébastien Blanchon. It has to be said that he hid behind his (hollow) nose to sniff out the right projects (ex Le Peuple de l'Herbe, member of Entourloop). His nose is hollow, but not for the trumpet, and yet it's with this instrument that he started out. And he reinvents it, giving it a subtle place on this musical road trip we call The Trip. A journey open to all, with no tolls and no filters, apart from the cinematic filter of this lover of original soundtracks and trip hop. Beautiful images flash before our eyes, and in our ears, the smooth voice of Charlotte Savary (Wax Tailor). An album, a very good trip for lovers of Portishead, Gorillaz, and well-felt scratches in the form of controlled skids. He's making a name for himself as N'Zeng, with his smooth arrangements.

N'Zeng's father played trumpet with his grandfather in the Feurs brass band in the Loire department. When he arrived in Saint Etienne, young Sébastien started out with a cornet à pistons at the Conservatoire. His teacher at the time, Marcel Heyte, had won a prize in Paris at the same time as a certain Maurice André.

His father took lessons in orchestral conducting, accompanying the offspring's budding musical career, which included a course at the Festival de Cuivre in Monastier-sur-Gazeille, where he met the soloists of the Radio France orchestra. A new awareness, a new confidence: off to Lyon, not for a soccer derby, but to "beef up his game". In 1997, he was awarded a gold medal for trumpet by a unanimous jury at the Conservatoire National de Lyon.

Lyon, capital of the Gauls, was the starting point for N'Zeng, who went on to become a member of the group Le Peuple de l'Herbe. 15 years later, with several successful records to his credit, a concert in 2003 at the Transmusicales with Beth Gibbons (Portishead), and a Victoire de la Musique award, it was time for N'Zeng to move on to other things.

Arrival in the City of Light, the place where dreams come true. Nzeng's dreams are not only sonic, but also visual, for Sébastien is not only a friendly presence and a talented musician, but also a cinephile. His knowledge of music theory, acquired during his years at the conservatory, enables him to tackle music for pictures.

He created a soundtrack for the cult film Alien - The 8th Passenger, and worked with musician Rone (collaborating with Baxter Dury) and his bandmates from Le Peuple de l'Herbe, composing 2 tracks for the soundtrack of Virginie Despentes's hard-hitting film "Baise-moi". On the album "Hollywood Hustlers", with the group "Mustang Force", he pays tribute to the soundtracks of Lalo Shiffrin, Ennio Morricone... The album is also well received by the critics. He conducts the arrangements and orchestrations for the Degiheuga Orchestra, and composes the original music for the Hôtel Bellevue dance show, another success!

2019 sees the birth of "The Trip" project. On this record, no masks, but a female voice, that of Charlotte Savary (Wax Taylor), laid on a carpet of strings. With this musical voyage, trip hop takes pride of place, with a balance between the body of the instruments and the mechanics of beatmaking.

There's no getting off track on this well-balanced record, with its silky orchestrations. N'Zeng accompanies us elegantly, with his trusty trumpet as GPS, here used subtly. The album cover is a photograph taken by Sébastien Blanchon's mother, in 1973, a year when Saint Etienne was about to become French champion for the 7th time.

Inimitable post-rock outsiders A Burial At Sea return with `Close To Home', a soaring sonic love letter to the places and people that shaped them, the collective's first new music since the eponymous debut full-length in 2020, `Close To Home' is a breathtaking evolution of their unique, brass-led blend of shoegaze, math-metal and blissed out afro-jazz that draws inspiration, influence and insight from the rich Gaelic cultural heritage of their Irish homeland. First making waves in 2018 with unbridled bombastic creativity of `_And The Sum Of Its Parts' EP, A Burial At Sea turned the traditionally austere post-rock frown upside down. Quickly catching the attention of like-minded, international genre-benders And So I Watch You From Afar (ASIWYFA), This Will Destroy You ,Caspian and Some Become Hollow Tubes (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), the band subsequently spent months on tour in support, honing their incendiary craft and gaining a loyal fan base across Europe in the process. Despite being landlocked by forces outside of their control, A Burial At Sea continued their adventure by looking inwards to produce `Close To Home': a staggering refinement of the band's already singular instrumental sound. The confidence, experience and sheer musical assuredness behind this album renders any generic labels of post rock immediately obsolete. `Close To Home' proves without a doubt that A Burial At Sea are indeed more than the sum of their parts; positioning the band on the crest of a truly progressive wave of uplifting, anthemic post-rock.

The Umbrellas are four renegade romantics crafting irresistible indie pop hymns. The band’s self-titled 2021 debut album became a breakout moment, winning critical praise and sparking an international tour. Follow-up LP ‘Fairweather Friend’ goes a step further – absorbing the sonic attack of their live shows, it balances this with studio finesse, allowing the San Francisco four-piece to become the band they’ve always aspired to be. It's a record overflowing with highlights. The candyfloss melodies of introductory track ‘Three Cheers!’ are matched to an impactful percussive punch; ‘Say What You Mean’ finds The Umbrellas working with total confidence, letting the song ride out to its chiming conclusion, four voices working in precision. ‘When You Find Out’ offers rotating notes of guitar punctuated by a vocal that pushes past angst to accept a world full of hope. A lean 10 track affair, it grasps towards beatific pop while fuelled by a sense of risk, and the precision that comes from long months on the road. The Umbrellas coalesced around a group of musicians who would frequent legendary San Francisco record emporium Amoeba Music. Singer and guitarist Matt Ferrera links with bassist Nick Oka, while Keith Frerichs is the powerhouse drummer. A chance encounter with Morgan Stanley singing karaoke at a Fourth of July party cemented the line-up around an avowed thirst for melody. “All of us love really earnest pop songs,” Nick points out. “I guess we got to a point in our lives where we wanted to be genuine.” Playing shows at San Francisco’s vital DIY redoubt Hit Gallery, The Umbrellas would share line-ups with local heroes such as April Magazine and Cindy. Recording their debut album across a two-day spell at Matt’s parents’ house, the results won a devoted cult following. Yet the experience of touring bonded them tightly and allowed the volume to tick up a little higher, and higher, and higher. “I think we got tired of people saying, oh you’re so much louder than I thought you’d be!” laughs Matt. “Our early recordings are sweet and earnest… and we wanted it to be louder.” Kicking off sessions in November 2022, the band used an ad hoc space Matt created in his basement, working across a four-month period. Sessions were a little more relaxed in terms of timescale than their debut, but The Umbrellas were incredibly focussed on the project. “We gave ourselves more space for this album,” says Keith. “We wanted time to sit on the songs, and really work on them.” Allowing their live dynamic to bleed out on tape, The Umbrellas are at once more physical and yet also more controlled on their new album. Take opening track ‘Three Cheers!’ – the peppy, sun-soaked rush masks a barbed lyric, courtesy of Nick Oka. “It’s a pseudo-political song about power struggles that occur in a job situation, or a friend group. It’s an observational song.” ‘Toe The Line’ has an unkempt, rollicking sense of energy, the playful relationship analogy of the lyric pushed to the speed of light by Keith’s ultra-fast punk drumming. ‘When You Find Out’ meanwhile epitomises their unified, egalitarian way of making music – with The Umbrellas, each voice counts. “It sounds different from any song we’ve ever written together,” says Morgan. “It shows how much we’ve grown. Trust helps us to build the songs. It’s definitely a team effort.” It's also a record of ambition. ‘Say What You Mean’ stretches past the four-minute mark, the viola performance informed by Estonian minimalist composer Arvo Pärt. ‘Gone’ was the first song attempted for the new album, and the last they actually finished, endless re-writes transforming it into a manifesto of control and release. Taken as a whole ‘Fairweather Friend’ is a bold indie pop triumph, crafted with purpose and attention. Taking their time over each note, the four-piece have strengthened their songwriting, adding depth and 2 assurance while unlocking their potential. Some bonds last a lifetime – The Umbrellas are ready to capture your heart.

The female-led discodelic soul band Say She She, named as a silent nod to NileRodgers (C'est chi-chi!: It's Chic!"), release their sophomore album `Silver' on theheels of an epic break-out year that grows brighter by the day.The three strong voices of Piya Malik (El Michels Affair staple feature, and formerbacking singer for Chicano Batman), Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya GazelleBrown front the band.This harmonizing trio was formed in a classic New York taleof friends that met by following the music: the downtown dancefloors, through theLower East Side floorboards and up to the rooftops of Harlem.`Silver' wasentirely written and recorded live to tapeat Killion Sound studio inNorth Hollywood earlier this year and produced by Sergio Rios (of Orgone).Whilethese analog recording techniques help root Say She She's sound in a bedrock oftonal warmth that only tape can achieve, it is also their process of cutting the trackin the moment and capturing the magic of communal creativity that has seen theirsound described as"a glorious overload of joyful elation and spiritualelevation" (MOJO)and"infused with the wonky post-disco spirit of early'80s NYC" (The Guardian).Silver, the element, is known as the metal of self-confidence and the mirror of thesoul. With that, the16-song double-LPprojects not only their growth in writingwith confidence, but also reflects a deeper exploration into their punk-chic, femme-forward sensibility.Ultimately,`Silver' oozes with quirk and adventure and embraces themultifaceted nature of what it means to be a modern femme.The She She'sfully embrace their role as beauticians, actively reminding people of the inherentbeauty in the world. They skillfully employ double entendres and humor toencourage open dialogue and fearlessly address important matters that demandattention.

Two and a half decades into a career that's never delivered the stardom forecast by legions of champions, John Hiatt has settled into a niche that's about as comfortable as a maturing singer-songwriter could ask for. No longer a major-label priority, Hiatt has hooked up with the stalwart folk label Vanguard for his 15th release. Crossing Muddy Waters adroitly captures Hiatt's comfort and confidence. Not so much blues as blusey, Crossing Muddy Waters features 11 new Hiatt compositions, half of which feel instantly familiar. The rambunctious "Lift Up Every Stone" sounds a little like some of Tom Waits's more accessible recent efforts, while "Take It Down" is a love-lost lament that's as heavy as a foggy evening. Crossing Muddy Waters was cut in three days and features only two accompanists--the uncommonly sympathetic Davey Faragher and David Immerglück. Just goes to show that Hiatt moves just fine when he's not dragging a lot of added weight and heavy expectations behind him.

King Gizzard AND THE Lizard Wizard is a band of eclectic psych-rock juggernauts that continually deliver albums that push the envelope. As part of the band’s bootlegger series in which the group gives the public free rein to release selected works, we are happy to present a Salton-Sea Exclusive of Polygondwanaland. The group's 12th studio album is arguably one of their finest works. The record takes listeners on a cerebral 45 minute journey compromised of astonishing instrumentation, expansive production, and beautifully creative storytelling. This is album is truly meant to be listened to from start to finish and we say this with confidence, that once it starts, you won’t want it to stop."

Spirit is the second album by Danish-French Emile, otherwise known from the acid rock band The Sonic Dawn. On this new solo effort, Emile unfolds a new and exciting side of his songwriting. Each song ebbs and flows effortlessly with a great sense of purpose, always centered around Emile’s voice and masterful, mainly acoustic guitar playing. He is backed by a small ensemble of selected musicians and blackbirds singing the sun down. The lyrics reflect an unpretentious cosmic consciousness, simply marveling at existence as it is. Spirit about connection with our surroundings, with nature and the universe. There is beauty in transformation too, Emile reminds us. Spirit is a different album from a different singer-songwriter. It is both surrealistic and easy to understand, accomplished and untamed, light and heavy — like the passing of time.

Spirit is the second album by Danish-French Emile, otherwise known from the acid rock band The Sonic Dawn. On this new solo effort, Emile unfolds a new and exciting side of his songwriting. Each song ebbs and flows effortlessly with a great sense of purpose, always centered around Emile’s voice and masterful, mainly acoustic guitar playing. He is backed by a small ensemble of selected musicians and blackbirds singing the sun down. The lyrics reflect an unpretentious cosmic consciousness, simply marveling at existence as it is. Spirit about connection with our surroundings, with nature and the universe. There is beauty in transformation too, Emile reminds us. Spirit is a different album from a different singer-songwriter. It is both surrealistic and easy to understand, accomplished and untamed, light and heavy — like the passing of time.

Spirit is the second album by Danish-French Emile, otherwise known from the acid rock band The Sonic Dawn. On this new solo effort, Emile unfolds a new and exciting side of his songwriting. Each song ebbs and flows effortlessly with a great sense of purpose, always centered around Emile’s voice and masterful, mainly acoustic guitar playing. He is backed by a small ensemble of selected musicians and blackbirds singing the sun down. The lyrics reflect an unpretentious cosmic consciousness, simply marveling at existence as it is. Spirit about connection with our surroundings, with nature and the universe. There is beauty in transformation too, Emile reminds us. Spirit is a different album from a different singer-songwriter. It is both surrealistic and easy to understand, accomplished and untamed, light and heavy — like the passing of time.

Pozi are the sort of band to tackle the creative cycle of deconstruction and rebuilding with relish. Second album Smiling Pools is testament to that. An LP that sees them at their most expansive yet, it follows a gradual swelling of their sound across two EPs proceeding the urgent, self-enforced minimalism of their debut album PZ1 in 2019. The trio of Toby Burroughs, Rosa Brook, and Tom Jones quickly established something of a foundational template on that first album: a hyper-skeletal sound palette of drums, bass and three distinct vocals disrupted by Rosa"s churning violins, from which emerged biting social observations and political angst - debut single and angry retort to the 2017 Grenfell tragedy Kctmo still takes pride of place in their live set. These hallmarks haven"t fully gone away over time but from that urgent energy there has emerged greater confidence and a playful desire to push further out from the loose genre tag of post-punk they were initially saddled with.

You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds. "It's pop music, basically." That "basically" qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020's Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer. "Fame" seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper's trademark. "Build a Bridge" pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto. On "Sub," Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It's festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! is about looking out for one another."

You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds. "It's pop music, basically." That "basically" qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020's Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer. "Fame" seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper's trademark. "Build a Bridge" pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto. On "Sub," Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It's festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! is about looking out for one another."

Born on Staten Island to an Italian/Puerto Rican family with strict religious beliefs, Becca Mancari spent much of her childhood wrestling with issues of identity and belonging. When she set out on her own, Mancari followed the wind from Appalachia to Arizona, from south Florida to India, drifting in search of purpose and community. She eventually found both in East Nashville, where she garnered widespread acclaim for her strikingly honest songwriting and moving performances. Her debut Good Woman was a critical smash, praised by NPR and hailed as one of 2017's best by Rolling Stone. Her songs racked up millions of streams, which helped land Mancari dates with the likes of Margo Price, Natalie Prass, and Julien Baker, among others. On top of her solo work, Mancari also teamed up with Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard and songwriter Jesse Lafser to form Bermuda Triangle, which earned similarly glowing reviews as they performed sold-out headline shows across the country.Despite all her success, the relentless pace of life on the road left Mancari little time to grapple with the trauma of her past, nor absorb any new challenges arising in her present. So, in 2019, Mancari decamped to friend and producer Zac Farro's home studio to set about constructing her sophomore album, a record that would balance unflinching self-examination with intoxicating grooves and infectious instrumental hooks. The two worked to capture the vast majority of the album themselves in Nashville before relocating to Los Angeles for finishing touches with GRAMMY-winning engineer/producer/mixer Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, Tegan and Sara).The result is The Greatest Part. Propelled by an airtight drum groove and lacerating guitar line, hypnotic opener "Hunter" finds Mancari singing to a ghost from her past, promising, "You're never gonna track me down / You're never gonna find me out," her crystalline voice floating effortlessly above the distorted maelstrom brewing below it. Like much of the album, it's a song of defiance and self...

Melody As Truth founder Jonny Nash returns to action with his first solo album in four years.

Over the course of eleven mesmerising tracks, Nash points the compass gently inwards, casting aside any conceptual frameworks in favour of exploring an imaginative and idealised “personal folk music” that combines elements of traditional acoustic music with the producer’s richly immersive interpretation of ambient, a sound he has been developing for well over a decade.

From the smudged acid-folk bliss of ‘Theories’ and ‘Eternal Life’, to the layered acoustic guitars of ‘All I Ever Needed’ and the delay-soaked, Durutti Column-esque ‘Light From Three Sides’, a wide variety of musical textures weave their way throughout the album.

Point of Entry is much more than a mere ‘guitar album’ – it draws on a rich and diverse palette to achieve its purpose. The delicate saxophone work of ambient-jazz contemporary Joseph Shabason swells on ‘Ditto’ and ‘Light From Three Sides’. Cascading piano lines ripple through the crystal clear sonic waters of ‘Face of Another’, whilst echoes of Nash’s work with Gigi Masin and Young Marco as Gaussian Curve appear in the dancing synth sequences of ‘Ditto’ and ‘Golden Hour’. Nash’s reverb-laden voice also appears for the first time since 2016’s critically acclaimed Exit Strategies, used delicately throughout the album to conjure up a world of dusk and golden light.

Combining the delicate human touch and naivety of earlier Melody As Truth releases with widened scope and vision, Point Of Entry is arguably Nash’s most complete work to date – an album that’s as much a statement of his “personal folk” vision as a future ambient classic.

Opaque Red Vinyl.By early 2020, Kayleigh Goldsworthy had finally figured out who she was. The long-time hired-gun musician from Syracuse and based in south Philadelphia, who had spent a decade backing up the likes of Dave Hause, Bayside, Frank Iero, and others, was ready to commit fully to a solo career of her own work. The day after New Year's Day 2020, Goldsworthy started recording her second solo LP, seven years after her debut Burrower, with Will Yip at Studio 4 outside Philly.Then everything changed. The job and life Goldsworthy had pursued since her teen years was ripped away: tours, shows, studio time, even band practices and writing sessions, all gone. Along with those went away a hard-won sense of self. All those things that had given Goldsworthy the confidence and push to believe in herself and her work disappeared."I had figured out who I was," says Goldsworthy, "then this whole thing happened, and I had to figure out who I was again."These are the conditions that created Learning To Be Happy, a story of undoing and becoming that begins at what Goldsworthy thought was the end: that assuredness and strength of January 2020. This story unspools over a thrilling, winding saga of scrappy, arena-ready pop rock, charged pop punk, and acoustics-and-piano balladry. The LP's 10 tracks are often heavy and sometimes dark, but always relentlessly confident and hopeful, threaded through with the sort of bruised optimism that rewards all those who do the difficult work of wrestling with what it means to be happy.

Five years after the release of their last studio album, legendary UK musical institution, Soft Machine, return with a brand new CD/LP, Other Doors. Boasting new material and two numbers drawn from their extensive historical repertoire, Other Doors finds the band on their usual fiery form.

Featuring John Etheridge (guitars), Theo Travis, (saxes, flutes, Fender Rhodes piano, electronics), Fred Thelonious Baker (Fretless bass), John Marshall (drums), Other Doors also features two guest appearances from long-serving bassist Roy Babbington, who retired from the band in 2021.

Other Doors was recorded at Temple Music Studios, a facility owned by the late Jon Hiseman during July and August 2022. It’s a location of which the band is particularly fond, explains John Etheridge. “Working at Jon Hiseman’s studio was special, especially with Ru Lemer who is a brilliant engineer. He’s fantastically quick and that’s very good as we record mainly live in the studio. It’s come out really well and I think it sounds great.”

That ability to work quickly on takes as an ensemble has resulted in a fresh-sounding series of top-flight performances whose typically knotty and sometimes complex themes frequently give way to explosively discursive improvisations. As Theo Travis observes, “The interesting thing about recording free improvisations is you're not playing to a plan or a grid or a blueprint, so you don’t know what's coming, and you don't know what's coming until it's gone. At which moment you're thinking about the next thing.”

The album is brimming with that fast-moving creativity including the title track, whose outline was initially composed by John Etheridge in the Lake District during 2021’s lockdown. Crooked Usages’ ’ slow-weaving machinations and the prowling inquisitiveness pursued during Fell to Earth are similarly imbued with a dextrous yet melodic bite that defines much of the band’s approach. Within this framework, John Etheridge’s supple interrogations across the fretboard’s range coupled with Theo Travis' tightly focused sax and flute alongside his impressionistic keyboard washes encompass a musical language that can be as cerebral as it is emotionally direct.

The Visitor at the Window, The Stars Apart, and the elegiac Back in Season unfurl into more reflective states of being, variously contrasted by mediative percussion, flute, solo guitar, or swarms of electronica and echoing clusters of electric piano. All coalesce to build into the beguiling atmospherics which forms a vital layer within the Soft Machine sound world. It’s been a kind of tradition with the group to include new arrangements of older Soft Machine numbers from the band’s illustrious back catalogue. These have included numbers as varied as Chloe and the Pirates, Kings and Queens, Out-Bloody-Rageous, etc.

On Other Doors they’ve revisited the very first album, originally released in 1968, to include Kevin Ayers ‘Joy Of A Toy. Fred Baker, makes his studio debut with Soft Machine. A well-known figure on the Canterbury Scene not only is he the perfect choice for the group but he’s also is a long-term fan of the repertoire.“The way I look at it is that this is all great music which we’re continuing to preserve and keep alive as we play it but also we’re adding to it all the time,” he explains. The idea for revisiting the number was Theo Travis’ he says and has been part of the band’s live setlist for a while. “I’ve added some extra harmonies and other things to it, so it’s got my stamp as well as going back right down to Kevin Ayers's original. It somehow fitted in with all of the new material as well as the older tracks we do. It’s amazing the amount of young people coming along to gigs who are liking the wide range of music we play.” The album also contains Penny Hitch, a track originally heard on 1973’s Soft Machine Seven. This features the first of two appearances of Roy Babbington who provides the bass lines underpinning Karl Jenkins’ composition while Fred plays the sinuous lead melody on his fretless bass. The pair also worked together as a duo on Now! Is The Time, a number originally based on a theme Babbington brought into the sessions, with Fred and Roy both adding and expanding the scope of the piece.

If the album ushers in a new member in the shape of Fred Baker, it also acts as a fond farewell to drummer John Marshall, who joined Soft Machine midway through the recording of 1972’s Fifth. At the age of 81 Marshall has decided to retire making Other Doors his final studio album with the group. “I’ve known John since 1975 when I first joined Soft Machine and of course, we’ve worked through the years together intermittently ever since. His drumming always meant a lot to me,” says Etheridge. “We worked over three days in the studio and John played great. It sounds terrific.” Indeed, Marshall is on whip-cracking form throughout the album bringing his trademark musicality and decisive presence. With Other Doors, he brings his distinguished career to a rousing conclusion.

Intense, celebratory, and consistently impressive. Other Doors is the sound of a group determined to press forwards with an integrity and sense of purpose that’s quintessentially and definitively Soft Machine.

Returning with the second and final installment in the doom-laden The Exuviae Of Gods EP series, Part II once again contains two never-heard brand new Mournful Congregation tracks and a re-recording of an old classic from the band’s ’90s demo era.

The EP opens with “Heads Bowed,” which the most fanatical Mournful Congregation fans will recognize from their An Epic Dream Of Desire demo from 1995, now given new life through the eyes and ears of decades of extreme doom songcraft and studio-work. After that look back, “The Forbidden Abysm” and the side-long “The Paling Crest” remind one how far Mournful Congregation have come, and yet remain as true to their original purpose as ever. Like the previous EP, artwork is once again handled by Karmazid, bringing the monadic into the dyadic. Thus perfecting the natural order of primordial principles…

And so concludes the dual-pillar compendium of devouring gloom and exaltation that is The Exuviae Of Gods. A balm to quiet the restless spirit as the world awaits the inevitable birth of the years-in-the-making sixth Mournful Congregation album.

Dedicated 21st Century polymath KAY Logan continues to expand her soundworld in every direction at once with her Helena Celle alias. A maximalist internal landscape of broken Jungle patterns, distorted synths and heavily warped instrumentation bent out of cognizance, If You Can’t Handle You At Your Worst, Then I Don’t Deserve Me At My Best is Logan’s most danceable, most fun and most gloriously congealed record to date. Conceived in part as a response to her 2016 debut release If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst, 2023’s update employs similar principles (degrading technology, the joy of chance, an outsider’s gaze onto the dance floor, an embracing of the occult) to delirious effect. If I Can’t Handle was lo-fi and fragile in its technoid recasting of dance music, here Logan’s confidence allows a frantic playfulness that retains the spontaneity of all her output. It’s the work of a creative spirit reveling in the possibilities of sound, rhythm, texture and pattern. Helena Celle’s music opens up psychic space in front of the listener and invites them in. In this world, sounds and tropes once recognisable are rendered fractal, spectral and continually melting in and out of recognition. Simply put, Helena Celle might be detouring Drum & Bass, Techno and Breakbeat with a prankster’s grin but the result is pure ecstasy crushed into a part of the listener’s consciousness hitherto untroubled

Welsh post-punk unit Chain Of Flowers return with their lofty and long-simmering sophomore full-length, rich with reckonings, reverb, and redemption: Never Ending Space. Despite some of the songs dating back a few years, the record first began materialising in earnest during the pandemic, by which point most of the band had relocated from Cardiff to London. Reunited and rejuvenated, they picked up where they left off, booking two multi-day sessions at Hackney hub Total Refreshment Centre with producer Jonah Falco. In this time they successfully channelled their kinetic chemistry into 10 full-blooded anthems of torn dreams, poetic delirium, and “hope stretched too far.”

Musically, Never Ending Space skews notably more maximal than the group’s previous work, fleshed out with trumpets, saxophone, synth, percussion boxes, and spoken word. (Smith jokingly calls them The Chain Of Flowers Orchestra). Yet the songs still swing and soar with a charged heart, ripe with hooks, drama and ragged melody. Opener “Fire (In The Heart Of Hearts)” stirs to life on a tide of wiry guitar and defiant horns, facing down the embers of love that still glow in the wake of pain: “Peace came tumbling like a shower of bricks / The mind twists slowly till everything fits.” A tense energy ripples throughout – from the nocturnal rush of “Serving Purpose” and “Amphetamine Luck” to the bruised battle cries of “Torcalon” and “Old Human Material.” Outliers like “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves” hint at proggy possible futures, while instrumental vignette “Anomia” offers an intriguing glimpse at a lesser heard facet of the band: swaying, shadowy, subdued.

The album’s title track is also its closing cut, a stomping, sparkling ode to “the wrong side of the night, where time goes to die.” Smith describes the scene: “Everyone’s talking, screaming, trauma bonding, but no one’s listening. Broken dialogue. Shouting over each other. You want to switch off, but everyone’s too fucked.” The guitars spiral and slide towards the oblivion of dawn, the chance to crash and do it all again. The song’s refrain captures the elision of time, spilling through the haze of days, from chaos to acceptance: “I can’t see the clock through the shrouds of smoke / Does it matter? / Common ground / In a never ending space.”

Welsh post-punk unit Chain Of Flowers return with their lofty and long-simmering sophomore full-length, rich with reckonings, reverb, and redemption: Never Ending Space. Despite some of the songs dating back a few years, the record first began materialising in earnest during the pandemic, by which point most of the band had relocated from Cardiff to London. Reunited and rejuvenated, they picked up where they left off, booking two multi-day sessions at Hackney hub Total Refreshment Centre with producer Jonah Falco. In this time they successfully channelled their kinetic chemistry into 10 full-blooded anthems of torn dreams, poetic delirium, and “hope stretched too far.”

Musically, Never Ending Space skews notably more maximal than the group’s previous work, fleshed out with trumpets, saxophone, synth, percussion boxes, and spoken word. (Smith jokingly calls them The Chain Of Flowers Orchestra). Yet the songs still swing and soar with a charged heart, ripe with hooks, drama and ragged melody. Opener “Fire (In The Heart Of Hearts)” stirs to life on a tide of wiry guitar and defiant horns, facing down the embers of love that still glow in the wake of pain: “Peace came tumbling like a shower of bricks / The mind twists slowly till everything fits.” A tense energy ripples throughout – from the nocturnal rush of “Serving Purpose” and “Amphetamine Luck” to the bruised battle cries of “Torcalon” and “Old Human Material.” Outliers like “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves” hint at proggy possible futures, while instrumental vignette “Anomia” offers an intriguing glimpse at a lesser heard facet of the band: swaying, shadowy, subdued.

The album’s title track is also its closing cut, a stomping, sparkling ode to “the wrong side of the night, where time goes to die.” Smith describes the scene: “Everyone’s talking, screaming, trauma bonding, but no one’s listening. Broken dialogue. Shouting over each other. You want to switch off, but everyone’s too fucked.” The guitars spiral and slide towards the oblivion of dawn, the chance to crash and do it all again. The song’s refrain captures the elision of time, spilling through the haze of days, from chaos to acceptance: “I can’t see the clock through the shrouds of smoke / Does it matter? / Common ground / In a never ending space.”

On Everything Harmony, the fourth full-length studio release from New York's The Lemon Twigs, the prodigiously talented brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario offer 13 original servings of beauty that showcase an emotional depth and musical sophistication far beyond their years as a band, let alone as young men. Everything Harmony successfully blends the brothers' distinct personalities while giving voice to their eclectic influences. Opening the album with the unassuming acoustic folk of plaintive "When Winter Comes Around," which echoes the sophisticated grandeur of classic Simon & Garfunkel recordings, they immediately switch things up to the sunny classic pop motif of "In MyHead." "Corner of My Eye" channels an Art Garfunkel-like vocal melody over a moody, vibraphone-tinged backing track suggesting the chamber pop of Brian Wilson. While they had no grand concept for Everything Harmony, both the D'Addarios felt a "palpable mood of defeat" prevailed while writing and recording it. "New To Me" was inspired by their shared experience with loved ones suffering from Alzheimer's, "What You Were Doing" is dressed in the tortured jangle of vintage Big Star, while "Born To Be Lonely," written after watching John Cassavetes' Opening Night, deals with what Brian calls "the fragility that often comes with age." Everything Harmony is a unified song cycle born of shared blood andcommon purpose. With two musical heads being better than one, there's no shortage of ideas to draw on. Their only impediments are time and the challenge of keeping up with their own prolific musical inspiration. "We share an intuition and tend to be influenced by one another," says Brian, "so the lyrical ideas on this record tend to complement each other. Writing has never been the issue for us. It's completing, editing and compiling that takes the time. We're trapped in a web of songs!"

Power trio Dommengang deliver heavy psych rock on new album Wished Eye, out April 21st. The album delivers super tasty, dirty guitars, serpentine psychedelic grooves, and propulsive drumming with gleeful abandon. Guitarist Dan "Sig" Wilson switches from explosive to expansive on a knife"s edge, laying down wailing hooks before evaporating into bristling fuzz. Bassist Brian Markham and drummer Adam Bulgasem"s foundations play with time, galloping forward or stretching out into the cosmos. Wished Eye is an expression of the sheer joy of making music together. Delivered with greater confidence and exuberance than ever before, Wished Eye captures the force of a Dommengang show and their explorative nature - from euphoria to transcendence. Where previous Dommengang albums evoked a restlessness and a yearning for the open road, Wished Eye takes you on that journey with a seasoned band that has found the key to traveling without ever leaving home. Wished Eye is the studio album of a band that, live, ignites chaotic release and otherworldly meditation. To capture this energy and freedom in the studio, the trio tracked all the songs together to tape and let experimentation run wild. This journey of exploration was indeed linked to all members relocating to Portland, Oregon, finding a new home for their ideas to flourish. Markham explains: "We jammed several times a week for two years, at times with no real goal but to play music and make noise together. Lots of nights were followed by backyard hangs around the fire." Sig elaborates: "We went into rehearsal with no expectations other than to let every idea breathe and let it go as long as needed." Working without time constraints or limitations, they could dig deeper than ever into their shared experiences.

Meaning can come from surprising places. In 2020 the Irish guitarist Cian Nugentmoved back into his family home in Dublin to care for his mother, Kathy, who wasthen recovering from a stroke and experiencing aphasia (difficulty with speech). Shebegan saying: "she brings me back to the land of the living" seemingly out of nowhereand with little knowledge of its origin or meaning. "It stuck with me," says Cian, who atthe time was working on songs for what would become his 4th album, and felt it wouldmake an apt title for that record. "The songs here act as a way of processing change andaccepting new futures." Kathy also provides the cover art, a painting she made while stillin the hospital.Seven years since Nugent's previous album, She Brings Me Back To The Land Of The Livingmerges the previously explored styles across Night Fiction (2016), the expansive Born WithThe Caul (2014) and his enigmatic debut Doubles (2011). Extensive touring across NorthAmerica and Europe, including work as a guitarist with Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker and NapEyes, provided Nugent with a greater understanding of his musicianship and a clarity of purpose -all of which contributed to the making of his nest album to date.

A gorgeous and gripping portrait of Fenne's last two years, Big Picture was pieced together in an effort to self-soothe. Tracked live in co-producer Brad Cook's North Carolina studio, the album delineates the phases of love and becomes a map of comfort vs claustrophobia. Though its creation took place amid personal and global turmoil, the ruminative yet candid Big Picture is Fenne's most cohesive, resolute work to date, both lyrically and sonically. "This isn't a sad album _ it's about as uplifting as my way of doing things will allow," she says. "These songs explore worry and doubt and letting go, but those themes are framed brightly." With confidence and quiet strength, each track provides an insight into Fenne's ever-changing view of love and, ultimately, its redefinition _ love as a process, not something to be lost and found. While the album was written alone in Fenne's Bristol flat - a fact intentionally reflected in its compact sonic quality - Big Picture was transformed from a solitary venture into a unifying collaboration during the recording process when she was joined by her touring band, Melina Dutere of Jay Som (mixing), Christian Lee Hutson (guitar and co production), and Katy Kirby (vocals). Notably, these 10 songs are Fenne's first and only to have been written over the course of a relationship; 2018's On Hold and 2020's Breach both confront the pain of retrospection, saying goodbye to a love that's gone. Big Picture does the exact opposite _ rooted firmly in the present, it traces the narrative of two people trying their hardest not to implode, together. "This album is an observation of the way I think about love, the selfexamination that comes with closeness and the responsibilities involved in being a big part of someone else's small(er) world," summarizes Fenne. "It was written in a place of relative emotional stability - stability that felt unstable because of its newness, but also because of the global context. 2020 was the year of letting go, but we'd all already let go of so much and nothing felt like mine anymore. Writing always did, though, so that's what I chose to do."

Assassins did what many bands do: they grabbed a moment out of the air and slammed it onto tape machines and hard drives with relentlessness, cunning, and an attitude.

It was in Chicago, mid 2000’s, and though there was energy in the music scene, it wasn’t coalescing into anything you could use as a heading in the musical encyclopedia. Drag City, Thrill Jockey, Bloodshot, Tortoise, Andrew Bird, 90 Day Men – amazing labels and bands, but discrete and siloed and separated by boundaries that weren’t very real.

In the midst of that complicated morass, Assassins generated a collection of songs that became the album YOU Will Changed US. And it did.

There was confidence built into the fabric of the project: 5 members, 2 singers, massive synced video walls and samples streaming from laptops swirling in three dimensions around the stage. They could go from subtle atmospheric moments to a gargantuan wall of sound instantly. It was hard to do- months in cold practice rooms troubleshooting sections of songs or reworking synthesizer patches put the band through a self-imposed boot camp. And it brought them together as a sort of hive-mind focused on one thing: that these songs could connect. They could cut through the noise and share a state of mind with other human beings.

And it worked. Those early shows were mind bending. It was fun, loud, drunken, and rewarding- that time together, before the record deal, before the tragic let down of being traded and gobbled up by the major label system. The years after that got more difficult, more complicated, more human.

Leading us here: the musical journey of the Assassins has ended. With the up-coming release of their second and final album THE Year That Never Came, we finally get to hear, and feel, the final statements of their inspiring chemistry.

In July of 2021, founding member, songwriter and singer Joe Cassidy unexpectedly passed away. THE Year That Never Came is the culmination and end point of a collaboration that started in the early 2000’s with a chance meeting and excited conversation with Aaron Miller at a gig in Chicago. Quickly joined by David Golitko on keyboards, Merritt Lear on vocals and guitar, and Alex Kemp on bass.

It was Miller who saw Joe Cassidy’s song writing in a new context. Cassidy had been known for his beautiful, post- pop inflected Butterfly Child, a thoughtful, regal project where Joe’s emotions could soar. Miller saw a different context for that voice- not dreamy, but immediate, not just hopeful, but demanding. He took Joe’s open hand and suggested that it could be a fist, raised in the air, with a crowd of other people doing the same.

At the time of his death legendary composer and songwriter Jimmy Webb (who wrote such hits as ‘Wichita Lineman and MacArthur Park) said Joe ‘was a creative and generous producer but, more importantly, he was a creative and generous friend.’

With the release of THE Year That Never Came, this band, this relentless creative force, has to finally relent. No one in the band could see a future Assassins that doesn’t include Cassidy. So in one last act of will, for the love of their friend, they did the rigorous work of finishing the songs that they had started together for the second album.

Assassin’s obsession with the notion of time, from YOU Will Changed US to THE Year That Never Came, flows from the most natural question we all have to ask ourselves: what do I do now? Because: how we react today to life’s unpredictability - that is the tomorrow we build for ourselves.

A gorgeous and gripping portrait of Fenne's last two years, Big Picture was pieced together in an effort to self-soothe. Tracked live in co-producer Brad Cook's North Carolina studio, the album delineates the phases of love and becomes a map of comfort vs claustrophobia. Though its creation took place amid personal and global turmoil, the ruminative yet candid Big Picture is Fenne's most cohesive, resolute work to date, both lyrically and sonically. "This isn't a sad album _ it's about as uplifting as my way of doing things will allow," she says. "These songs explore worry and doubt and letting go, but those themes are framed brightly." With confidence and quiet strength, each track provides an insight into Fenne's ever-changing view of love and, ultimately, its redefinition _ love as a process, not something to be lost and found. While the album was written alone in Fenne's Bristol flat - a fact intentionally reflected in its compact sonic quality - Big Picture was transformed from a solitary venture into a unifying collaboration during the recording process when she was joined by her touring band, Melina Dutere of Jay Som (mixing), Christian Lee Hutson (guitar and co production), and Katy Kirby (vocals). Notably, these 10 songs are Fenne's first and only to have been written over the course of a relationship; 2018's On Hold and 2020's Breach both confront the pain of retrospection, saying goodbye to a love that's gone. Big Picture does the exact opposite _ rooted firmly in the present, it traces the narrative of two people trying their hardest not to implode, together. "This album is an observation of the way I think about love, the selfexamination that comes with closeness and the responsibilities involved in being a big part of someone else's small(er) world," summarizes Fenne. "It was written in a place of relative emotional stability - stability that felt unstable because of its newness, but also because of the global context. 2020 was the year of letting go, but we'd all already let go of so much and nothing felt like mine anymore. Writing always did, though, so that's what I chose to do."

A gorgeous and gripping portrait of Fenne's last two years, Big Picture was pieced together in an effort to self-soothe. Tracked live in co-producer Brad Cook's North Carolina studio, the album delineates the phases of love and becomes a map of comfort vs claustrophobia. Though its creation took place amid personal and global turmoil, the ruminative yet candid Big Picture is Fenne's most cohesive, resolute work to date, both lyrically and sonically. "This isn't a sad album _ it's about as uplifting as my way of doing things will allow," she says. "These songs explore worry and doubt and letting go, but those themes are framed brightly." With confidence and quiet strength, each track provides an insight into Fenne's ever-changing view of love and, ultimately, its redefinition _ love as a process, not something to be lost and found. While the album was written alone in Fenne's Bristol flat - a fact intentionally reflected in its compact sonic quality - Big Picture was transformed from a solitary venture into a unifying collaboration during the recording process when she was joined by her touring band, Melina Dutere of Jay Som (mixing), Christian Lee Hutson (guitar and co production), and Katy Kirby (vocals). Notably, these 10 songs are Fenne's first and only to have been written over the course of a relationship; 2018's On Hold and 2020's Breach both confront the pain of retrospection, saying goodbye to a love that's gone. Big Picture does the exact opposite _ rooted firmly in the present, it traces the narrative of two people trying their hardest not to implode, together. "This album is an observation of the way I think about love, the selfexamination that comes with closeness and the responsibilities involved in being a big part of someone else's small(er) world," summarizes Fenne. "It was written in a place of relative emotional stability - stability that felt unstable because of its newness, but also because of the global context. 2020 was the year of letting go, but we'd all already let go of so much and nothing felt like mine anymore. Writing always did, though, so that's what I chose to do."

Since the inception of Anxious in 2016, the band has always acted with purpose. This may seem like a simple premise, but for five kids still in high school at the time, it's quite an accomplishment. Early songs were packaged in limited run demo tapes with accompanying zines and hand-dyed t-shirts. Weekends were filled with regional runs of shows outside of their Fairfield, Connecticut homebase. With this amount of effort it's no wonder that within a few years of graduation, Anxious has built a solid foundation for their debut album to flourish upon.On Little Green House, Anxious explores what it feels like to enter adulthood in unflinching detail. The Connecticut band unpacks struggles, joys, and hard-earned realizations in a way that makes them feel wise beyond their years. Anthemic songs like lead single "In April" and guaranteed sing-along "Growing Up Song" thread the often difficult melodic-hardcore needle in a way that feels both nostalgic for the emo renaissance of yesteryear and precisely built for the current moment of genre defiant pioneering.

Since the inception of Anxious in 2016, the band has always acted with purpose. This may seem like a simple premise, but for five kids still in high school at the time, it's quite an accomplishment. Early songs were packaged in limited run demo tapes with accompanying zines and hand-dyed t-shirts. Weekends were filled with regional runs of shows outside of their Fairfield, Connecticut homebase. With this amount of effort it's no wonder that within a few years of graduation, Anxious has built a solid foundation for their debut album to flourish upon.On Little Green House, Anxious explores what it feels like to enter adulthood in unflinching detail. The Connecticut band unpacks struggles, joys, and hard-earned realizations in a way that makes them feel wise beyond their years. Anthemic songs like lead single "In April" and guaranteed sing-along "Growing Up Song" thread the often difficult melodic-hardcore needle in a way that feels both nostalgic for the emo renaissance of yesteryear and precisely built for the current moment of genre defiant pioneering.

Nothing raises the spirit like the soaring guitars and evocative atmospheres of post-rock, and in the past 2 years we needed it more than ever: to be dragged out of the quicksand of apathy, to be reminded of what it means to feel alive_ Philadelphia-based fve-piece HIROE (pronounced `hero-way') deliver 5 stunning tracks that serve this purpose more than anything else we've heard this year.HIROE's architecture is built over the walls of sound created by the band's three guitarists Eric Kusanagi, T.J. Schilling, and Jef Dent, towering over the foundation of the huge sounding bass of Jill Paslier and the powerful drumming of Mike Norris. The larger-than-life sound of the band is forged by a carefully selected all-star line up of producers, their debut being recorded by Mario Quintero (Spotlights), mixed by Matt Bayles (Caspian, Mono, Russian Circles, Isis, Pelican) and mastered Will Yip (Caspian, Circa Survive)."We wanted to hold ourselves to a very high standard, so to sonically achieve our goals, we enlisted the help of Mario, Matt, and Will," explains Kusanagi, indicating that this is a production team HIROE will likely continue to employ in the future. "Mario was essentially another member of the band in the studio," continues Kusanagi. "They all brought their ideas to the table to help us achieve something greater than just recording a band in a room."Wrought is a work of a quality that is rare among debut albums, an album which epitomizes the original idea of the genre as described by Simon Reynolds in The Wire back in 1994. "Post-rock means using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than rifs and power chords". Wrought is confdent, powerful and incredibly well-produced, combining the elegant, pretty side of post-rock staples like Pg.Lost, Mogwai and God Is An Astronaut with the heaviness of Deftones or Thrice.Somewhere within the soaring rifs and the crushing heaviness of Wrought lies a moment in which the listen...

Guitar and bass duo Gong Gong Gong charge out from Beijing's underground scene with a distinct vision and uncompromising sense of purpose. The duo taps into a wavelength uniting musical cultures, drawing on inspirations as wide-ranging as Bo Diddley, Cantonese opera, West African desert blues, drone, and electronic music. Despite the band's decision to eschew traditional rock percussion, on their debut LP Phantom Rythm, the locomotive chug of Tom Ng's guitar combines with Joshua Frank's thumping, harmonics-laden basslines to conjure an aura of ghostly snare hits and timpani overtones. Over Frank's enigmatic melodies, Ng sings in Cantonese, piecing together abstract tales of absurdity, doubt, desire, and lust. Synchronized to the point of near-telephathy, "the Gongs" use their minimalistic tools and idiosyncratic playing style to challenge the notions of rock n' roll and strip the form down to its bare essentials: rhythm, melody, and grit.

All the rage and fear and uncertainty of recent times has been poured into the album's 11 tracks, resulting the rarest of rock'n'roll albums: one with a sense of purpose. But where the title song and anthemic first single Storm – which questions whether people are prepared for the aftershocks of both the pandemic and the government's high-level malfeasance – are both fuelled by a righteous sense of injustice, other bolder, emotions also shine through.

That ol" spirit and image of SF has meant a lot of things loved and lost over the past couple centuries - but the most recent golden age is still cooling in the hearts and minds of many nu music enthusiasts, god bless "em! In truth, it"s already hardened into fact and myth - or in the case of this fantabulous GOD? release, into retrospective compilation, with the far-flung fascinations of the Folding Cassettes label repping the time and place for our dew-eyed purposes.Folding Cassettes - yup, a cassette label - was pretty much done and sorted when the new era of peak cassette improbably broke wide in the early twenty-teens. Back in 2001, when founded by Mike Donovan, it was more representative of the exclusive confines of the urban underground, well represented as always around the Bay area. Mike had been jitterbugging through the scene for several years, playing with this group and that, starting a label and releasing some ACTUAL LPs and CDs (to no avail) - and with notoriety fronting Sic Alps still several years hence, he had the time and energy to reach out and tap the shoulder of his fave local talents, not to mention legends, resulting in a sequence of dozens of delightfully EFFED SF-ite releases on Folding Cassettes.The gambit? Run. The various musics curated included everything from lo-fi to free-form to metal (so far as rock was concerned), with further genre distinctions including abstract electronics, laptop noise, contempo-jazz-fusion, country-folk and even comedy, all of it delivered with a highly demanding, archly punk sensibility. The players? Hailing from names you might recognize today - members of O.C.S. (multiple ones!), Gang Gang Dance, Child Abuse, Krallice, Lightning Bolt and Comets on Fire, all of them getting down with the freedom and some truly head-cleaning sounds. Plus Kit Clayton (as himself)! Mikey Wild! A slice of (the now-defunct style of (now impossible)) anonymous crank call comedy! And even a little number from curator Mike D. himself! All burned into vinyl for the f...

A great pop record is like a great friend: an intimate confidante, a shoulder to cry on, and a partner in crime when you're ready to get dolled up and dance the pain away under the disco ball (or in front of your bedroom mirror.) That's what you'll find on MARCI, the solo debut from Marta Cikojevic of Montreal soft-rock group TOPS, who steps out on her own in self-assured style with a guileless collection of synth pop songs that brim with unabashed sincerity. The confidence of this debut belies the fact that Cikojevic has never formally written songs before, though she's been a student of melody since her childhood in rural Ontario, when she would sing along to the radio pop divas du jour, perform in the church choir, and participate in piano recitals. The middle child of five sisters, Cikojevic describes herself as a shy singer at home, who would instead seek out secret spots_the forest behind her home or a broken down van on their property were favorites_to practice her singing and record the songs she would make up herself into a handheld recorder. She was encouraged to do so by her grandfather, a refugee from the former Yugoslavia, who would sing and record both original songs and traditional Croatian folk songs on a cassette dictation machine_she still has some of the tapes they made together. Eventually she would make her way to Toronto where she played in several groups before joining TOPS as a keyboardist in 2017 and moving to Montreal. When she decided to make a solo record, it was a given that she'd work with her TOPS bandmate David Carriere, describing him as "a great pop writer" who shared her vision for what she wanted to achieve with her music.Carrierre and Cikojevic approached MARCI with the idea that they wanted to craft hits_songs that were catchy and danceable while still being emotionally honest and down-to-earth. The record was put together over the course of a year in a Montreal apartment reminiscent of a 1993 pawnshop, full of synthesizers and obscure instruments dating back to the...

“The plan was to make twenty 90-second tracks designed as TV themes,” says Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat, of the initial thought behind his new instrumental album as Nyx Nótt “But it wasn't a satisfying listen, it was too gimmicky and silly.”

So instead, Moffat decided to stretch the idea out, plunge deeper, and expand the music into full tracks, “making some of them quite long and dramatic, with the odd swift turn here and there.” In fleshing these tracks out into more fully realised songs he began sourcing samples from professional TV and film music libraries. “The focus then turned to making a proper album out of these modern library sounds,” he says. “I decided to stick with the Themes From title and named the tracks after the sorts of shows they made me think of when I listened back.”

The result is a record that explores genre themes such as: ‘Thriller, ‘Porno’, ‘Caper’ and‘Swashbuckler’, and acts as an audio equivalent of channel hopping through a unique TV station programmed by Moffat. “I still wasn't sure about all this until I did the album cover, which brought it all together,” he says, of the artwork that places an old smashed TV unit front and centre with a woman perched on top. “It has echoes of old TV compilations but is pretty cheeky and slightly sexy in that old 70s compilation style. I wanted this one to look a bit more fun than the last one, as well as hopefully sound a bit more fun too.”

Aside from being a fun experience, it is also a stirring and immersive listen, one that allows the listener to imagine their own accompanying visual scenarios to each musical theme. The opening ‘Docudrama’ marries a gently creeping beat with strings that glide from tense to sweeping, while ‘Porno’ is all seedy smoky jazz that feels plucked right out of Travis Bickle’s late night trips to porn cinemas in Taxi Driver.

Touches of jazz pop up in other places too, on ‘Hardboiled’ this merges with subtle pulses and gargles of electronics that build to a rousing crescendo of horns and bleeps, and on ‘Caper’ there’s a vivacious full jazz band skip to the lively swinging rhythms. “There's a few more jazzy elements here,” Moffat says. “Although I'm not quite sure where that came from. Although, like everyone else, I've had plenty of time to be introspective recently, so I decided the next Nyx Nótt album should be more upbeat and encourage some occasional foot-tapping.”

However, what becomes apparent, the longer you spend in the world of Themes From, is how singular and unique the tone of each composition is. “Each track has its own individual feel,” says Moffat. “The idea was to sound like a different composer and band throughout.” It’s a stylistic leap that continues Nyx Nótt’s trajectory as one that shares no direct link to Moffat’s other projects. “I approach them in completely different ways and with a different purpose in mind,” says Moffat. “I don't think Nyx has ever heard of Arab Strap, and certainly doesn't own any of their albums.” It’s also a notable shift from the debut album under this moniker, and suitably given the theme, Moffat has created a visual comparison between these two sonic worlds. “If the first Nyx Nótt album was like looking out on dark prairies before dawn, this is more like a walk through a neon Soho after a few cocktails.”

By early 2020, Kayleigh Goldsworthy had finally figured out who she was. The long-time hired-gun musician from Syracuse and based in south Philadelphia, who had spent a decade backing up the likes of Dave Hause, Bayside, Frank Iero, and others, was ready to commit fully to a solo career of her own work. The day after New Year's Day 2020, Goldsworthy started recording her second solo LP, seven years after her debut Burrower, with Will Yip at Studio 4 outside Philly. Then everything changed. The job and life Goldsworthy had pursued since her teen years was ripped away: tours, shows, studio time, even band practices and writing sessions, all gone. Along with those went away a hard-won sense of self. All those things that had given Goldsworthy the confidence and push to believe in herself and her work disappeared. "I had figured out who I was," says Goldsworthy, "then this whole thing happened, and I had to figure out who I was again." These are the conditions that created Learning To Be Happy, a story of undoing and becoming that begins at what Goldsworthy thought was the end: that assuredness and strength of January 2020. This story unspools over a thrilling, winding saga of scrappy, arena-ready pop rock, charged pop punk, and acoustics-and-piano balladry. The LP's 10 tracks are often heavy and sometimes dark, but always relentlessly confident and hopeful, threaded through with the sort of bruised optimism that rewards all those who do the difficult work of wrestling with what it means to be happy.