The Fat Angel Sings

Sourced from electrifying live performances across October 10th-12th, 1968, this collection showcases Hendrix at peak creativity, delivering towering versions of his most iconic songs alongside extended improvisations that reveal new dimensions of his musicianship. From the blistering intensity of ‘Fire’ to the soulful sweep of ‘Little Wing’ and the psychedelic charge of ‘Are You Experienced?’, this curated single LP set offers a powerful snapshot of Hendrix in his prime.

Experience the raw electricity and boundary pushing creativity of Jimi Hendrix with this definitive 1 LP black vinyl edition of ‘BBC Sessions’ – a release showcasing some of the most dynamic and intimate performances ever captured by the BBC. Recorded between 1967 and 1969, these sessions highlight Hendrix at his most spontaneous and inventive, delivering explosive renditions of his classics, unexpected covers, and rare arrangements unique to these broadcasts.

It contains all the surviving tracks from their various appearances on BBC radio programmes, such as Saturday Club and Top Gear, recorded in 1967.

At a BBC radio session, a practice still alive in British radio today, a band is required to record material in a studio quickly with limited overdubbing, largely limited to and relying upon their live sound. Many groups as part of this tradition choose to record some songs that are not part of their main repertoire. The album also includes the only two surviving Hendrix UK TV soundtracks (both BBC) Late Night Line Up (“Manic Depression” only survives) and the 1969 Lulu Show (complete). 

“BBC Sessions” therefore offers its own unique example of the Experience sound, and a revealing glimpse of a song from their early repertoire Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” and their only known studio recording of Bob Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?”

Apart from the “live” in studio versions of well-known Experience songs, there are several unique studio recordings of songs, i.e. “Driving South” (three versions), which includes several guitar lines derived from Albert Collins’ “Frosty” (1962) and “Thaw Out” (1965), “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man”, “Catfish Blues”, “Hound Dog”, “Hear My Train A Comin'” (two versions) and a couple of novelty tracks: the amusing parody of a BBC Radio 1 jingle “Radio One”, and a recording with a young Stevie Wonder on drums (a cover of Wonder’s own “I Was Made to Love Her”).

It also includes the sound track from the band’s infamous appearance on Lulu’s television show in 1969.

This collection has been re-released as part of the Hendrix Family’s project to remaster Jimi’s discography in 2010 by Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings. The re-release contains two digitally remastered sound discs with “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” bonus track from August 24, 1967,

Celebrating its 40th Anniversary in March 2026, “5150” is the first of four albums Van Halen recorded with Sammy Hagar as lead singer. To mark this moment, The band are releasing an expanded edition of this classic with a remastered version of the original album, a disc of rare singles edits and B-sides and a previously unreleased performance from the band recorded on August 27th, 1986. Rounding out the package will be a blu-ray inclusive of the first HD release of the band’s classic 1986 live video Live Without a Net and a promo video for the track ‘Dreams’. Featuring the evergreen tracks ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’, ‘Dreams’, ‘Love Walks In’ and ‘Best of Both Worlds’

Coming after Dave Lee Roth’s acrimonious departure and heralding the arrival of their new singer Sammy Hagar, 1986’s “5150” was always going to be pivotal for Van Halen. It turned out to be more than that. The band had spent the late 70s and early 80s building up an irrepressible head of steam, but Roth’s egomaniacal behaviour on and off stage and guitarist Eddie Van Halen’s desire for respect alongside his fame were increasingly incompatible.

Hagar was not a familiar figure to Van Halen fans who did not know or care about his Montrose past or his solo hit singles, but his singing style – more straightforward than Roth – fitted in well, and “5150” gave them their first No.1 album, on the back of three hit singles: a couple of power ballads in Why Can’t This Be Love and Love Walks In, plus the inspiring, anthemic Dreams.

The production, by Foreigner’s Mick Jones, was tighter and more commercial than anything Ted Templeman had achieved on earlier albums, and left no room for the florid flights of fancy like “Panama” or “Hot For Teacher” that had characterised their previous album “1984″.

So the risk had paid off, and Van Halen looked set to dominate the hard rock/pop scene for a decade or more, especially when 5150’s follow-up album OU812 also hit the top spot. But it turned out Eddie was allergic to singers in general, and the second time things went tits-up it set off a chain of events from which the band never recovered

This five-disc reissue of “5150″ is notable for not including anything new or previously unreleased – a dubious honour.

The first two discs bring you the remastered album on CD and vinyl. There’s a second CD of single remixes, B-sides, etc. The third CD lifts the audio from the band’s Live Without A Net 1986 video from New Haven, Connecticut, which does at least include half a dozen decent rarities: the band play a couple of Hagar solo songs “I Can’t Drive 55” and “There’s Only One Way To Rock” Hagar sings a couple of Roth-era Van Halen songs “Panama” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” and together they maul a couple of covers The Troggs’ “Wild Thing” and Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll”. The fifth disc is a Blu-ray that includes the “Live Without A Net”

 video and a couple of forgettable promos.

Pink Floyd “Live From The Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975” has been restored and remastered by Steven Wilson. A Pink Floyd concert from the Los Angeles Sports Centre from 1975, during the band’s Wish You Were Here tour, is to be released on vinyl and CD for the very first time.

Pink Floyd “Live From The Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975” will be available from Sony Music as a special four LP clear vinyl version, which will be released exclusively for Record Store Day on 18th April, followed by a 2CD edition on April 24th.

At the time of the Los Angeles Sports Arena shows, Pink Floyd were in a period of creative transition. While a new album had originally been expected earlier in 1975, the band embarked on their North American tour whilst still developing new material live, on stage

Pink Floyd “Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975” spotlights the band during their rapid ascent. “The Dark Side of the Moon” had taken Pink Floyd from a hugely successful breakout British band to one of the biggest rock groups on the planet.

Arenas and stadiums would now play host to their performances. The Wish You Were Here Tour was announced in early March 1975, just one month prior to commencing. The shows instantly sold out and broke box office records, including that of the Los Angeles Sports Arena, which in a single day sold all of its 67,000 ticket allocation for the scheduled four-night run. An extra fifth show signalled a residency, and sold out within a matter of hours. The recording that lays the foundation of this historic release was created by the late bootlegger Mike “Mike the Mic” Millard, whose tapes from concerts across Los Angeles in the 1970s became renowned for their surprisingly clear sound quality.

To conceal his recording equipment from venue security, Millard would often pretend to be disabled and arrive to concerts in a wheelchair. Many of Millard’s bootlegs were pressed onto vinyl unofficially, however he did not condone the sale of his recordings for profit. Pink Floyd’s penultimate concert at the Los Angeles Arena was no exception, remaining unreleased and unheard by all but a few audio trading collectors, until now.

The concert opens with both “Raving and Drooling” and “You’ve Got To Be Crazy“, both of whch evolved into “Sheep” and “Dogs”, which would feature on their 1977’s tenth album, “Animals”, before the epic “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” kicks in, both parts separated by “Have A Cigar”, also from “Wish You Were Here”, before the whole of “The Dark Side Of The Moon” is played, followed by an encore of “Echoes”.

The recording has been meticulously restored and remastered by Steven Wilson from tapes that originated from the legendary late bootlegger Mike “Mike the Mic” Millard, whose tapes from concerts across Los Angeles in the 1970s became renowned for their surprisingly clear sound quality.

Many of Millard’s bootlegs were pressed onto vinyl unofficially, although he did not condone the sale of his recordings for profit, and these recordings were heard for the first time when released as part of the 2025 UK album “Wish You Were Here 50” box set.

Pink Floyd: “Pink Floyd Live From The Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975“
1. Raving and Drooling (Live bootleg – Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
2. You’ve Got To Be Crazy (Live bootleg – Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
3. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (1-5) (Live bootleg – Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975 )
4. Have a Cigar (Live bootleg – Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
5. Shine on You Crazy Diamond (6-9) (Live bootleg – Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
6. Speak to Me (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
7. Breathe (In The Air) (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
8. On the Run (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
9. Time (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
10. The Great Gig in the Sky (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
11. Money (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
12. Us and Them (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
13. Any Colour You Like (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
14. Brain Damage (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
15. Eclipse (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)
16. Echoes (Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975)

Eric D. Johnson announced a new Fruit Bats album and shared the title track, “The Landfill”, due out June 12 via Merge. It’s the follow up to last year’s “Baby Man“, and about it, he says, “Full swashbuckling band vibes, laser beams aimed at your heart as usual, all my lyrical preoccupations distilled further down into the heart cavity.”

The first single is the title track, which is accompanied by a video directed by Adam Willis. Johnson says:

This is my 6th video with the great Adam Willis, AKA Brother Willis. Another in our long line of collabs which are often funny with cold opens and strange characters plumbing the depths of the human psyche. The very first brainstorm session, we landed on Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an initial reference. Especially the notion of a man at a crossroads who is haunted by a mysterious shape. Later that morphed into the idea that, for some strange reason, I live a double life as a tortured art star in Europe. And that my music career there is completely unknown. Truth be told, Fruit Bats have had a strange journey as more or less a cult band for a long time. Things have gotten bigger in recent years in North America but we ARE still quite obscure in Europe. This is a less than subtle nod to that fact.

Silly and obscure as these concepts may be – the video still plays to the lyric and feeling of the song. The notions of memory and legacy and following signs that may or may not lead you down the right path. Adam and I always like winking in these videos but the concepts and stories are still kinda poignant at the end of the day.

Fruit Bats album, out June 12th, 2026, on Merge Records

Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean releases her new solo album Julia next month, and the new single, “Please Let Me Remember This,” was inspired by The Beach Boys’ “Busy Doing Nothing.” The song “started with two questions,” she says. “Why are our sad and painful moments easier to remember than our happy ones? And why can’t we choose what we let go of, or what we get to keep? There’s a surrender that comes with memory, and it’s always fascinated me. I wanted to create a song using these little vignettes to explore the lack of control we have over what we remember. I wanted to capture the desperation that comes with trying to turn an immaterial experience into something that could be held onto.”

Drop the needle on Julia Cumming’s solo debut “Julia” and the very first notes you hear are her voice. A clear, and unadorned declaration of stepping out on her own. Within seconds, she sings her agency into being, fingers meet the piano keys, striking just the sparest of chords.

I sing these words for me
To hear the sound
To let them ring To drown you out

As the hi-hat kicks in, “Julia” sweetly recites a litany of ways that she has been told she’s too much or not enough, wrapped in halcyon production that has echoes of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick. Album opener, and debut single “My Life” packs a punch in a warm embrace. A belted-out proclamation of liberation – doubters, misogynists, and the industry be damned. Not only is she not too much, but she has always been enough. This thesis statement of a song was the key that unlocked a creative door that New York City-born multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and Sunflower Bean’s bassist, Julia Cumming, had been waiting for since her teens.

In fact, it has taken nearly two decades, two bands, four EP’s, four albums, three labels, and relentless touring for Julia to finally get to the pivotal moment at her piano when “My Life” set the wheels in motion to writing and recording her new album. As touring with Sunflower Bean to promote their third album “Headful of Sugar” drew to a close in 2023, Julia had compiled enough songs to begin the process of figuring out what to do with them. She flew to Los Angeles without much of a plan, only the desire to try out working with an assortment of producers to bring the songs to life.

Ahead of their spring tour of the EUK and Ireland, Miki Berenyi Trio have shared a new single. “‘Island of One’ took shape because I became quite obsessed with the track ‘Just A Western’ by Nilüfer Yanya last year, and the Latin-y beat got me inspired,” Berenyi says. “But I wanted a lively, catchy song to add to our live set, so it ended up less laidback and more 60s-breezy with some driving, scratchy guitars – once all three MB3 members pile in on the embellishments, a song ends up a fair distance from where it started!

Miki Berenyi Trio are Miki Berenyi on vocals/guitar (Lush), Kevin ‘Moose’ McKillop on guitar (Moose) and Oliver Cherer (Gilroy Mere, Aircooled). The three musicians first worked together during Piroshka’s 2021 tour – Miki and Kevin being founder members, Oliver coming in on bass to replace Mick Conroy (Modern English) who had moved to the US.

As ever, recording and production took place in our various home-studio set-ups, and the song was mixed by our brilliant Bella Union labelmate, Paul Gregory.”

Vince Clarke (Erasure), Neil Arthur (Blancmange), and Benge have a new project, Doublespeak, and their self-titled debut is out on May 29. It reimagines 11 of their favourite songs from the past four decades, and the first single is their rendition of Fad Gadget’s “Back To The Nature.”

Their self-titled debut album sees them put a new electronica feel on tracks from ABBA, The Carpenters, Young Marble Giants and more, as they share their cover of Fad Gadget’s ‘Back To The Nature’

The ‘Doublespeak’ album is divided between songs from the postpunk netherworld brought blinking into the light (Fad Gadget, The Sound, Young Marble Giants), pop radio monsters ushered back down a dark stairway into the club (ABBA, David Essex, The Carpenters) and buried treasures from the 1990s onwards (The Magnetic Fields, Ed Dowie and Laptop).

The roots of the new synth pop supergroup group stem back to 2017, when Arthur – who had already recorded a track for Vince Clarke’s project, The Assembly – suggested that the two join forces to put a unique spin on some of their favourite songs from the past four decades.

They then brought Benge into the line-up, following him collaborating with Arthur on the Fader project and also working with the musician by co-producing six Blancmange albums.

They are set to release their self-titled debut album – which sees them reimagine a selection of classic and cult songs with a new analogue electronica feel – on May 29th.

The 3rd collaborative album between Les Claypool & Sean Lennon is an elaborate concept record reflecting on morality, the warnings of A.I., and the slippery slope of optimization without empathy.

Told across 14 songs – which ooze with classic psychedelic / progressive rock stylings – and the accompanying comic book by Rich Ragsdale, The Great Parrot-Ox and The Golden Egg of Empathy is a peak for both The Claypool-Lennon Delirium and rock music at large.

“The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy“, is a cautionary tale of what could be in store for humanity if we continue to favor machines over men. It is a tale of a technocracy eclipsed by paperclips; a young man destined to unravel the fabric of his father’s folly, and a sacred feathered Goddess (played by WILLOW), who holds the egg-shaped key to their future.”

Les Claypool of Primus and Sean Onon Lennon release their new album as The Claypool Lennon Delirium, “The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy”, on May 1st, and they’ve given us another preview with “Meat Machines.” “Some people think humans are just biological machines,” Ono Lennon says. “They think free will is a hallucination and we’re destined to be replaced by robots. Not only are they happy about this, but they’re actively trying to make it happen as fast as possible. Some of us think we still have a choice. We think there’s something special about living, breathing and feeling. We believe we can shape our own destiny, because we know we are more than just ‘Meat Machines.’”

The 3rd collaborative album between Les Claypool & Sean Lennon (the previous sold over 150,000 combined) is an elaborate concept record reflecting on morality, the warnings of A.I., and the slippery slope of optimization without empathy. Told across 14 songs – which ooze with classic psychedelic / progressive rock stylings – and the accompanying comic book by Rich Ragsdale, The Great Parrot-Ox and The Golden Egg of Empathy is a peak for both The Claypool-Lennon Delirium and rock music at large.

Squirrel Flower says her new single “Wheels,” which features Babehoven and Billie Marten, was inspired by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris’ 1987 “Trio” album. “I wanted to write a song that really let my voice shiiiiine, and the final vocal take is the original scratch take, sleepy and loose,” she says. “Maya and Billie recorded their angel harmonies remotely and perfectly. Inspired by a gas station attendant a couple years ago telling me ‘may your wheels stay on the ground.’”

Recorded live at 12 AM in a makeshift studio in Door County, WI, the collaborative single captures the ever-present beautiful uncertainty of life on the road. With a classic sound and warm Rhodes piano from Free Range’s Sofia Jensen, the track is anchored by Williams, Marten, and Maya Bon (Babehoven), whose voices intertwine in harmonies that swell with an almost choir-like brilliance.

Speaking about the song’s creation and inspiration, Williams shared the following story:

“While on tour a couple years ago, a gas station attendant said to us, ‘may your wheels stay on the ground.’ I thought that was so beautiful + it inspired the song while driving through a harrowing snowstorm between Boston and the Hudson Valley in February 2025. I had my Townes Van Zandt live cd playing, and sang this song into my phone mic while listening to Townes, dodging ice on the highway.  I really wanted to write a song that let my voice shine in a way that my heavier songs don’t always allow. I got to the Babehoven house in Hudson and played it for Maya. She wrote a stanza (“you said you wanted/something i don’t/i am always coming/just as you go”), helping me finish off the song.

This summer, Squirrel Flower will hit the road solo alongside The Beths and Spoon, for what will be a jam packed June. 

Friends, past tour mates, songwriters, and musicians Maya Bon of the duo Babehoven, and Ella Williams of Squirrel Flower, are thrilled to share their first ever collaborative release – a cover of “My Life in Art” by beloved British rock band Mojave 3.

On making the cover, the two shared, “We ate lentils by candlelight + sat by the fire + imagined the future beyond the snowy fields… where a new version of a classic song would come to roam”

Their take on the Slowdive-adjacent group’s song is a beautifully lush and layered rendition that breathes with new life. 

Performed by: Maya Bon and Ella Williams Guitar, bass, drums, keys: Ryan Albert Acoustic & electric guitar: Ella Williams Accordion: Ella Williams