I’d never heard of her but someone recommended a listen she was around in the 60s/70s and supported Hendrix and Muddy Waters amongst other notable names.
Ellen McIlwaine, was fiery slide-guitarist and singer who came to prominence in the late 1960s, has died aged 75. She performed with Jimi Hendrix in Greenwich Village and formed what was then a rare thing – a woman-led rock band – only to strike out on her own after she realised her bandmates “expected me to do the laundry after we finished onstage”.
Raised in Japan by American missionaries, McIlwaine grew up listening to Japanese folk and classical music, as well as the New Orleans soul and blues she heard on the radio. “If you know Ray Charles, you can tell where I got everything I know,” she once said. “It’s a little hard to see because I’m a different colour and a different sex.”
McIlwaine played the harmonica, accompanied herself on the piano, and sang her own songs with a voice that was both delicate and booming, echoing through the Gaslight Cafe and Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. But she was perhaps best known as a masterful guitarist who danced between frets and used unconventional tunings, inspired by blues musician Johnny Winter
‘All To You’ has this stunning wild and free vocal – like a hummingbird darting here and there with pure unpredictability. Her voice and delivery resonate deeply with me, original and unusual melodies that I love.
There’s a joy to the song that’s been giving me a lot lately. She’s also a mean slide guitarist which certainly is something that I love to hear. The album cover for ‘We The People’ is just amazingly powerful too – a picture of her with her auburn hair flowing. It feels iconic and timeless.
In partnership with Rhino Records and Grateful Dead Productions, for the First time on vinyl, For the Grateful Dead, the music from the vault never stops.
The Grateful Dead Movie, directed and edited by Jerry Garcia and Leon Gast, is a documentary concert film which captures the band, their associates, and their (extremely) devoted fanbase during a historic 1974 five-night run of concerts at the Winterland Auditorium in San Francisco, CA. Which, at the time, were to be the group’s last shows ever. These recordings capture the Dead at the height of their mid 70’s predominance and effectively marked the end of the first act of the group’s 30 year career, as a yearlong hiatus immediately followed.
The Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack now holds legendary status among Dead Heads. Not just for the group’s superb playing, but it also documented the last shows where their infamous “Wall of Sound” sound system was captured to tape, as well as the return of drummer Mickey Hart to the band’s line-up. It is now regarded as a pivotal moment in the Grateful Dead’s long strange trip. Available for the first time in any format since 2005, and on vinyl for the first time ever, Mondo is proud to offer our first collaboration with the Grateful Dead featuring stunning audio and visual reproduction.
The dates were pivotal in the Dead’s legendary career as it marked the end of its usage of the Wall ofSound, constructed from hundreds of loudspeakers for live performances. The shows came before a planned band hiatus, too, which brought increased focus to the gigs. (The Grateful Dead wouldn’t tour again until June 1976.)
“Widely considered one of the greatest runs of shows in the Grateful Dead’s history, October 1974 at the Winterland featured inspired, exciting and out-of-this-world playing,” said Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux in a news release announcing the box set’s release. “Thankfully filmed for the Grateful Dead Movie, these five shows were the only 1974 performances recorded to 16-track analogue tape.
This box set features the full 44-song tracklist originally featured on the 2005 CD release, configured for the vinyl format.
The soundtrack contains Dead setlist standards such as “Uncle John’s Band,” “Casey Jones,” “Truckin’,”“Sugar Magnolia” as well as pretty much every major song in the Grateful Dead’s 1974 repertoire, including “Dark Star,” “The Other One,” “Playing In The Band,” “Eyes Of The World,” “Morning Dew,” “China Cat Sunflower,” “I Know You Rider” and “Weather Report Suite.”
Pressed on 10x solid color, audiophile quality discs by Optimal Media, mastered by David Glasser at Airshow Mastering with lacquers cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, and Plangent Processes tape speed correction by Jamie Howarth. This premium set also includes a 42-page hardcover book featuring an extensive liner note essay by Nicholas G. Meriwether, alongside rare and previously unpublished photos courtesy of Retro Photo Archive. Original illustration, design and art restoration by Madalyn Stefanak and book design by Justin Goers and Chris Minicucci.
Only 3,000 individually numbered units of the collection will be sold. Each of the 10 audiophile-quality LPs are in a different color vinyl.
The news of this elusive vinyl soundtrack release comes about two months after the death of Dead founding member Bob Weir, who had also been the front man for Dead & Company, which continued to perform until August 2025. His death leaves only drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart as surviving members. Singer Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, died at age 78, in November 2025. Founding member and bassist Phil Lesh died in October 2024.
Described as “one of the sexiest albums in music history,” Marvin Gaye’s number one record “I Want You” is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. In celebration, UMe has planned multiple vinyl releases.
“I Want You“, while it a Top Ten smash for Marvin Gaye in 1976, is not as generally as well-known as its predecessors for several reasons. First, it marked a sharp change in direction, leaving his trademark Motown soul for lush, funky, breezy disco. Secondly, its subject matter is as close to explicit as pop records got in 1976. Third, Gaye hadn’t recorded in nearly three years and critics were onto something else — exactly what, in retrospect is anybody’s guess.
From the amazing Ernie Barnes cover painting “Back to Sugar Shack” to the Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson string and horn arrangements to Leon Ware’s exotic production that relied on keyboards as well as drums and basses as rhythm instruments, “I Want You” was a giant leap for Gaye. The feel of the album was one of late-night parties in basements and small clubs, and the intimacy of the music evokes the image of people getting closer as every hour of a steamy night wears on. But the most astonishing things about “I Want You” are its intimacy (it was dedicated to and recorded in front of Gaye’s future second wife, Jan), silky elegance, and seamless textures. Gaye worked with producer Leon Ware, who wrote all of the original songs on the album and worked with Gaye to revise them, thus lending Gaye a co-writing credit.
Gaye had a big task following up 1973’s Grammy Hall of Fame album “Let’s Get It On. He found a collaborator in Leon Ware, known for his work with Michael Jackson, The Miracles, and Minnie Ripperton among others, and the two worked on the record in Marvin’s new custom studio, now known as “Marvin’s Room,” on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The title track is a monster two-step groover with hand percussion playing counterpoint to the strings and horns layered in against a spare electric guitar solo, all before Gaye begins to sing on top of the funky backbeat. It’s a party anthem to be sure, and one that evokes the vulnerability that a man in love displays when the object of his affection is in plain sight. Art Stewart’s engineering rounds off all the edges and makes Gaye’s already sweet crooning instrument into the true grain in the voice of seductive need. “Feel All My Love Inside” and “I Want to Be Where You Are” are anthems to sensuality with strings creeping up under Gaye’s voice as the guitars move through a series of chunky changes and drums punctuate his every syllable.
In all, the original album is a suite to the bedroom, one in which a man tells his woman all of his sexual aspirations because of his love for her. The entire album has been referenced by everyone from Mary J. Blige to D’Angelo to Chico DeBarge and even Todd Rundgren, who performed the title track live regularly. By the time it is over, the listener should be a blissed-out, brimming container for amorous hunger.
“I Want You” and its companion, Ware’s Musical Massage, are the pre-eminent early disco concept albums. They are adult albums about intimacy, sensuality, and commitment, and decades later they still reverberate with class, sincerity, grace, intense focus, and astonishingly good taste. “I Want You” is as necessary as anything Gaye ever recorded.
“I Want You 2″, a special 2LP set featuring bonus tracks, alternate takes, and rarities first issued on CD in 2003. Pressed on 180g vinyl, the packaging houses an exclusive lithograph, and introductory liner notes by R&B artist and songwriter Arin Ray.
Sun Room the Californian band – whose line-up now consists of vocalist Luke Asgian, guitarist Ashton Minnich, and bassist Max Pinamonti – played to a crowd of 500 avid Inhaler fans, offering sun-drenched surf-rock ragers like “Sol Del Sur” and “Something That You’re Missing,” and performing as if the West Hollywood venue was their own backyard.
It was a tour that would see the band open for the Irish rockers around the country and earn the approval of a large portion of their fanbase in the process. Steadily, the band gained traction – having cut their teeth in the Southern California house show circuit, the natural next step was scaling that live energy to match the countrywide phenomenon they’d become. “It felt good to us at that time, but if we watched ourselves playing four years ago, we would be like, ‘Wow, you guys suck,” Pinamonti says . “Four years later, we’re definitely very comfortable with each other. And I feel like as long as you feel comfortable, it’ll just get better and better.”
“Ritual of Chaos“,their brand-new EP, finds Sun Room at an age-old point in their career. Having exhausted their naivety as a new band and entered the ranks as a trusted one, the three-piece turn to a topic they now know like the back of their hand: Change. It’s a title that came naturally: “It was the most representative of what most of the songs are about, which is just being in the stage of life we’re in. Being in your twenties and having chaotic experiences with relationships and whatever it is,” Pinamonti says. “I feel like it presented itself to us, rather than us thinking for weeks about it.”
The music video for standout track “On Fire,” which flaunts the EP’s eponymous line: “Ritual of chaos every single night through the city / Just to see those eyes.” Pinamonti shares that the first thing he heard about the music video was that there would be fire, and I joke that could go quite a few different ways. “Exactly,” he laughs. “I remember we had the initial riff idea for a really long time, and then we made a little demo of it. Maybe six months later, one of us found it on our phone, and then we just worked on it, and it just clicked. It got lost for a while, and then we found it again, gave it new life.”
Despite these changes, one thing remains steadfast: Sun Room will always be a band on the move. They’re preparing for supporting slots with Flipturn and a headlining tour soon thereafter, which will bring them back to old stomping grounds and introduce them to new ones. “We’re playing in Montana for the first time, and playing in Pomona. It’s pretty close to where we are, but we’ve never played there,” Pinamonti says, “and then we’re hitting a lot of similar cities that we have before on our fall headline tour, which is a good thing because hopefully the same people will come back.”
the Californian band’s brand new EP, ‘Ritual of Chaos,’
This the fourth full-length from Manchester trio The Orielles has been self-heralded as a completion of a cycle – a return, of sorts, to the indie, song-led roots of their 2018 debut ‘Silver Dollar Moment’. Tempering the unfettered experimentation of their last outing, 2022’s ‘Tableau’ (where tracks clocked in anywhere between 50 seconds and eight minutes), ‘Only You Left’ does indeed emerge as a more structured project, roughly bound by a central polarity of “wood versus metal” – categories inspired by the band’s dual studio locales of Hydra and Hamburg.
It’s a textural contrast that colours not just their lyricism – ‘The Woodland Has Returned’; ‘All In Metal’ – but their compositions, too, with the former characterised by organic instrumentation and unfurling harmonies, and the latter by harsher lines and atmospheric closeness.
Most interesting, though, are the moments these two material motifs converge: in ‘Shadow Of You Appears’, stabs of increasingly urgent, Psycho-like strings push to the point of elastic limit, before its propulsive, grounding guitar hook pulls us back from the brink; similarly, ‘Tears Are’ pairs the breathy cool of Esmé Hand-Halford’s airy vocals with grungy riffs and, later, an exhale of simple acoustic guitar, imbued with folky, bucolic warmth. Then there’s ‘Ember’ – built on skittish switchboard flashes and a resonant two-note bass refrain, it blossoms into an anxious, knife-edge soundscape of oppositional beauty.
By the record’s final third, however, its already loose ties are slackening, and the closing tracks start stretching to fill space beyond their timestamp, curiously all-consuming but intangible and untethered. A circle completed, then? Not quite – The Orielles have never dealt in such concise shapes.
There’s a lot to be said about consistency. From the release of his self-titled 2011 debut on, James Blake has maintained a spot at the top level of electronic music, entirely undeterred by ebbs and flows in the genre’s wider popularity. Now, for ‘Trying Times’, his first solo record in three years, James goes it alone. Self-released through his own Good Boy imprint, it foregoes much of his previous record’s density for a curated cherry pick of the individual elements that have driven his career. There’s the rhythmic simplicity of ‘Walk Out Music’, his trademark genre-hopping on the Dave-featuring ‘Doesn’t Just Happen’, and the largely lyricless underground fever dream of ‘Rest of Your Life’.
Elsewhere, there’s innovation on the soul led ‘Didn’t Come To Argue’, again featuring regular collaborator Monica Martin, the falsetto beaty of ‘Through The High Wire’, and an unexpectedly welcome orchestral flourish on cathartic closer ‘Just a Little Higher’. “Something’s wrong in the city I was born in,” James croons in its opening moments.
“I’m breaking, I hide it well,” he reveals on the title track, with it finding himself again in an exploration of the multiple components that build his sound. It seems that adversity has taken him back in and out of the clubs, between sombre reflections and ethereal hope, and ultimately to a record that couldn’t be more consistently him. It paints this, his seventh studio album, as a compendium of his best parts, and perhaps his first to truly do so.
Soda Blonde are an Irish alternative pop band from Dublin, Ireland, formed in 2019. The group consists of singer and songwriter Faye O’Rourke, guitarist and visual artist Adam O’Regan, bassist Donagh Seaver O’Leary, and drummer Dylan Lynch. All four members were previously part of the critically acclaimed indie band Little Green Cars before forming Soda Blonde following its disbandment.
Soda Blonde released their second studio album, “Dream Big“, in September 2023 through their independent label, Overbite Records. Written, produced, and mixed by the band themselves, the album marked a creative evolution for the group, showcasing a bolder and more expansive sonic palette than their debut. It incorporated elements of art-pop, rock, and folk, while retaining the emotionally charged lyricism and meticulous arrangements for which the band had become known
“Dream Big” explored ambition, disillusionment, and the psychological fallout of contemporary life. In interviews, the band described it as “a mature awakening to the world at large,” reflecting on systemic pressures and personal limitations in the pursuit of meaning and success. Songs like “Bad Machine” addressed cycles of self-sabotage and conformity, while “Midnight Show” and “Why Die for Danzig” delved into themes of media saturation, performativity, and existential dread.
“Dream Big” cemented Soda Blonde’s position as one of Ireland’s most innovative and self-sufficient indie bands.
Soda Blonde are: Faye O’Rourke Adam O’Regan Donagh Seaver O’Leary Dylan Lynch
Los Angeles six-piece The Sophs have ridden a wave of notoriety ever since signing to Rough TradeRecords on the strength of their demos. The band’s brutal honesty, flamingly intrusive thoughts, and broad genre-spreading caught the attention of the label immediately. At any moment, The Sophs are entering pop-punk; blazing through funk; talk-singing to the audience. Their enthusiasm for every iteration is evident, and Ramon’s rich, full voice deftly nestles into endless categories, utterly chameleonic. When they’re playing together in a room, you see nothing like the character they’re putting forward. Instead, you feel a bombastic, thrilling energy that underlies the sextet’s creative power.
After signing to Rough Trade Records on the strength of their demos – which they cold-emailed to lableheads Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee before they ever even played a show. Following last year’s releases of stand-alone singles ‘I’m Your Fiend’, ‘Sweat’, and ‘Death in the Family’ and worldwide touring, the band are ready to unleash their debut album “Goldstar”.
Rough Trade heard the sort of creativity and variety — and “don’t expect me to act pretty” sentiment — that could get The Sophs — including Ramon, Sam Yuh (keyboards), Austin Parker Jones (electric guitar), Seth Smades (acoustic guitar), Devin Russ (drums), and Cole Bobbitt (bass) — a slot on nearly any stage. At any moment, The Sophs are entering pop-punk; blazing through funk; talk-singing to the audience. Their enthusiasm for every iteration is evident, and Ramon’s rich, full voice deftly nestles into endless categories, utterly chameleonic.
“We never try to be as versatile as we end up being,” Ramon said. “Goldstar” has a Delta Blues-style song; it has a ZZ Top-inspired tune. To some degree, The Sophs see song creation like pop art: they’re focused on the idea of reproducing something over and over again until it’s meaningless. “I want to steal and plagiarize and borrow,” Ramon explains.
Most of The Sophs’ songs don’t let the listener relax — mostly because you never know what’s coming next. The band has a passion for sudden and complete destruction, for playing with the tension between pulled-back silence and total explosion. That’s where you hear The Sophs members’ as they really are: explosively positive, happy, collaborative. Think of the “degenerative posturing” instead as a “jester’s privilege.” When they’re playing together in a room, you see nothing like the character they’re putting forward. Instead, you feel a bombastic, thrilling energy that underlies the sextet’s creative power.
Despite one of the first things on the album you hear being synth sounds that emulate the patter of raindrops, the elevating sensation you experience throughout this record is the kind of music that you associate with sun tans and warm grass. Yes, the overall feel of the record complements this sensation, but the beauty lies in much closer inspection, as things run deeper than a promise of Spring-soaked electronica.
Art School Girlfriend has dabbled more with experimentation on her third record, Lean In. Ditching the bedroom aesthetic for a studio, this self-produced epic is the kind of electronic pop album which even those who aren’t fans of the genre will no doubt get on board with. It’s a combination of minimalist and maximalist, the kind of record that has one overarching theme but where the individual songs contained under that umbrella are clearly distinct from one another.
That raindrop-like synth on the opening track, ‘Doing Laps’, is replaced with a building and pulsing sense of excitement in ‘LYATT’ as the words “Love you all the time” are repeated over and over again, donning a beat that doesn’t ever seem to drop but instead just continues riding high and keeps you there.
ASG dabbles with funk on this record as well, which you hear in tracks such as ‘The Field’, ‘Almost Transparent’ and ‘The Peaks’. Each of these walks a similar line sonically but is completely different to one another at the same time.
In complete contrast, other songs are slow, moving, and emotional. You can hear this on the likes of ‘Save Something’ and the closing number ‘Framer’, which still keeps that electronic pop style in its heart but gives you something that you could also put on in a dark room and get lost in.
No matter what your mood, there’s a song on this record for you, and they all combine to make a platter of human emotion served on top of a tray of otherworldly instrumentation. Perhaps the rationale behind this move is the mix of emotions that ASG admits to feeling while putting this album together. It’s truly a record that embodies a specific moment in time, as what she was feeling throughout the process of making the record is reflected in the songs themselves.
“A lot of things in parallel,” she called it, “Grief, joy, love, anxiety, hopelessness, hopefulness, the effects of age, capitalism, technology.” You can call it all of those things, as they’re ever-present. But I’ll save my breath slightly and simply refer to it as a masterpiece.
Despite their name potentially identifying themselves as maverick detectives from a 1970s detective show, or cast members of East Enders, Slags are actually rooted in the famously gusty city of Chicago, and Valentine’s Day Eve saw the release of their latest, long-awaited release; the five-track cassette “Playing Pretend”.
Fusing Devo-esque weirdo electronica with kitsch sensibilities and an unwaveringly punk attitude, the tape marks a particular highlight of this year’s egg-punk offerings. Written entirely by The Marshmallow Man, who, you would have to assume, is the cardboard bloke on the cover of the EP, “Playing Pretend” is charming in every aspect of its existence, but it maintains some genuinely fantastic song writing at its core.
“Crawford’s remarkable creative momentum continues with the arrival of a new Slags EP; a sugar-rush of impish synths and roguish hooks with a punk backbone. Disarmingly playful without ever tipping into excess. I can’t help but smile to it.”
Slags – ‘Playing Pretend’ Released February 13th, 2026 on Boot Liquor Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 