Highly anticipated second album, one and a half years after their critically acclaimed debut LP. Featuring members of the now-defunct band The Drones. Recommend If You Like: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Nick Cave, The Slits,Protomartyr, The Drones, Gang of Four, IDLES.
“I’ve invented fake news as a genre of music,” Gareth Liddiard observes with a laugh. Heʼs talking about Maria 63, the closing track on Tropical Fuck Stormʼs sophomore LP “Braindrops”. The song takes aim at the once-marginalized alt-right conspiracy theories that now seem to be a driving force behind the rise of fascism in global politics. “It may be the most stupid song ever written,” Liddiard jokes. Heʼs wrong, Maria 63 is emblematic of Tropical Fuck Stormʼs keen ability to mine the extreme edge of pop cultureʼs periphery for potent musical and conceptual spice.
Tropical Fuck Storm were formed around 2017 in the city of Melbourne, Victoria along Australiaʼs south-eastern coast. The band released their debut long-player A Laughing Deathin Meatspace on Joyful Noise Recordings in 2018. Each of the bandʼs four members bring considerable experience to the group. Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin were part of the long-running and critically-acclaimed act The Drones, while Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel have performed in a variety of well-received projects. Perhaps itʼs that wealth of rock and roll experience that allows Tropical Fuck Storm to so expertly deconstruct and distort the genreʼs norms. “Everything we do, we try to do it in a weird way. The whole album is full of weird beats, and just weird shit everywhere,” Liddiard explains. He cites Doc at the Radar Station-era Captain Beefheart as a key sonic touchstone, and Braindrops certainly shares the Captainʼs penchant for pounding abstract grooves.
It’s a amazing doozy, perhaps even more so than its predecessor — and keep in mind, this is coming from a band known for slinging tales of Soviet chess machines, shellfish-related conspiracy theories, and “antimatter animals.” Consider the tremulous guitar riff leading off album opener “Paradise” a facsimile for the record’s sun-poisoned strain of dadaist pop: an prolonged, paranoid sirens’ song peppered with references to Pokémon, Eugene Leary, global warming, and leg-humping dogs. Highlights include “The Happiest Guy Around,” a rowdy cut that, with its chattered vocals and ebullient energy, recalls a Beegees simulation gone awry; and the bristling title track, a sprightly, staccato race against the doomsday clock.
Tropical Fuck Storm have achieved a uniquely off-kilter sound on Braindrops.
Ghost Funk Orchestra’s “A Song for Paul” is a dazzling experimental jazz record. The New York-based collective describes their sound as “blurring the line between soul and psychedelic,” and that rings true on A Song for Paul.Dedicated to group founder Seth Applebaum’s grandfather, the album opens with the soft, yet dizzying “Intro”. Elsewhere “Walk Like a Motherfucker,” is a groovy, old-school-sounding with blazing horns track that harkens back to the psychedelic music of the past. The titular song is a Latin-jazz influenced track with steady drums and piano. The closing “Outro” leaves listeners with an ambient track filled with muted guitar notes. Ghost Funk Orchestra is making music on their own terms and A Song for Paul is a solid entry point to their sound.
Ghost Funk Orchestra are a mystery. Plain and simple. Dirty, soulful production, verbed and fuzzed out guitars, mysterious vocals that feel like a lost score to a Quentin Tarantino film. The brainchild of one-man producer/musician/arranger Seth Applebaum, GFO is forging new territory and blurring the line between soul and psychedelic.
We are uber-proud to present their first full-length effort for our Karma Chief label imprint. This is just the tip of the iceberg for this group, already well into producing their follow up LP, this is a group we truly believe will become a prolific force in the modern psychedelic scene.
Written, arranged, and performed by Seth Applebaum
The album’s name, August, refers to the month in 2017 when Lay quit her day job and fully gave herself over to music. This was her liberation as an artist, and the album is devoted to paying that forward to her listeners. Lay may be the most chilled-out artist you’ll ever meet. Despite fronting her tranquil solo act and being a guitarist / singer in the indie-rock band Feels, she never pressures herself to overachieve. In keeping with the humbled, contemplative nature of August, most tracks clock-in at three minutes or less. She saved indulgence for the production. She recorded the album with her longtime friend, musician Ty Segall at his home studio on the East Side. Also in the mix is Mikal Cronin, who played saxophone on the album’s opener, Death Up Close.
Shannon Lay’sSub Pop debut, “August”, will be out August 23rd and she’s just shared the lovely, lightly psychedelic and string-laden title track. “I believe whoever you record with tends to affect the mood of music and Ty Segall really brought this jovial sense that I hadn’t really explored yet.” “Once you get rolling with him, he just throws these ideas at the wall. And you’re like, ‘I would never have thought of that!’ I couldn’t have hoped for a better guide and energy to help create this record.”
This record means a lot to me and I have to give a huge thank you to everyone who made it possible. I hope all who hear it will be inspired to give even more of their lives to what they love. Be kind to yourself and enjoy this mystical journey we are on, It is all a dream and it is yours for the taking.
Brooklyn art-rock five-piece Bodega are well aware of their city’s storied underground rock traditions, but rather than pilfering that sound, they decided to add something fresh to the city’s lineage. Their debut album “Endless Scroll” was produced by Parquet Courts’ Austin Brown, and it features an experimental, fluid sound that decries technology addiction, gentrification and the mind-boggling “pizzacore” scene while mythologizing Titanic’s Jack Dawson and celebrating female masturbation. Taking cues from Gang of Four and the B-52’s, co-lead vocalists Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio possess an infectious art-punk spirit and spit out droll lines left and right while guitarist Madison Velding-VanDam plays like a chugging, post-punk version of Wilko Johnson. Throughout the album’s 14 tracks, you’re met with blaring and sharp instrumentals paired with laugh-out-loud observational quips (“Your playlist knows you better than a closest lover”) that fit the common gripes of 2018 like a glove.
it’s itchy, scratchy perfect pop that makes you want to sing along..even without knowing the words. Bodega’s debut album was “Endless Scroll” a collective dialogue with the machine and the public. Ping-ponging vocals are set to Ben’s deconstructed guitar, Nikki’s samples of old and new technology, the driving minimalism of standing drummer Montana Simone (IDIO Gallery), the angular spasms of lead guitar Madison Velding-Vandam (The Wants) and the tight, hypnotic bass lines of Heather Elle (Please No Radio).
Bea Kristi is all of 19, and her music as Beabadoobee has already evolved in profound ways. She got her start as a bedroom-bound pop singer whose hushed, Elliott Smith-inspired whispers radiated soft intimacy. But as her star has risen — after going viral on YouTube in 2017, she’s released a handful of EPs and racked up tens of millions of streams — her newest singles have located her sharper, more forcefully anthemic edges.
Following the release of a handful of EPs on Dirty Hit, home to The 1975, beabadoobee celebrated mainstream success as the guest vocalist on Powfu’s UK top five single Death Bed (Coffee For Your Head). The track sampled beabadoobee’s 2017 debut Coffee, and paved the way for her first solo charting single, Care. Listed on the BBC’s Sound Of 2020 and nominated for the BRIT Award’s Rising Star accolade, beabadoobee (real name: Beatrice Laus) revealed details of her Fake It Flowersf ull-length in July 2020, to be released in October of this year.
Based on your previous use of Gigs and Tours, we think you might be interested to know about Beabadoobee’s latest announcement! Beabadoobee, one of the UK’s most exciting recent breakthrough artists has confirmed a run of headline shows for 2021 in celebration of the release of her debut album next month!
The artist has also recently shared her new single ‘Worth It’ from her highly anticipated upcoming debut album ‘Fake It Flowers’, out October 16th via Dirty Hit.
The ‘Fake It Flowers’ tour will take place in September and October next year and includes a hometown show at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town.
There was a Leeds music scene at the time that revolved around the Leeds University Art Department, and local bands The Gang of Four and The Mekons were doing well. Kelvin had briefly replaced Hugo in The Gang of Four and was recommended to Delta 5 as a drummer. Kelvin and I played in a band in York together so I went along to audition and joined in May 1979.
First release “Mind Your Own Business” / “Now That You’ve Gone” – 1979. The Gang of Four were recording their album, Entertainment, in the WorkHouse in the Old Kent Road and they decided that they could help us out at the same time. We stayed with them on a houseboat on the Thames at Cheney Walk, Chelsea and their manager Rob Warr arranged for us to go in and record whilst they were out at a Madness/Specials gig in Camden.
“You” was supposed to be the first recording but it wasn’t happening so we changed tack and recorded both songs in about 8 to 10 hours. We had only been together a few months and done about 3 or 4 gigs by this time. Rob took the tapes to EMI who were paying for the studio but they passed – no surprise there – so Rob went to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade. Geoff came to see us at The Global Village (later Heaven) and we met him afterwards and agreed to a deal on a handshake.
John Peel was given a pre-release copy and he decided to play it twice that night. The next day we got a call asking if we’d like to do a session for him – yes please!! Then, we were off and running.
“Delta 5” and “Make Up” included on this CD are from that session of February 1980. We recorded a follow-up, “Anticipation” / “You” in February 1980. We were gigging more often at this point and “You” turned out pretty well. More gigging in Europe and the UK; around 1980 – 81, we played quite a bit at The Lyceum in London and shared the bill with The Gang of Four a few times, Echo and the Bunnymen, B52s, Specials, Teardrop Explodes and U2 to name a few. We toured with The Gang of Four and Pere Ubu in 1980.
In September 1980 we did our second Peel session, which included “Triangle,” which is included on this CD. Later in September 1980 we went to the USA.
We played New York and all along the East Coast. Then we went West, and “Shadow,” “Circuit,” and “Journey” are all from a show we did at the Berkeley Square in Berkeley, CA. Back to England in October and we recorded “Try”/ “Colour” with the Bad Manners horn section who we had met at a festival In Finland. In February 1981 we toured Holland and Belgium. In March 81 we signed with the Pre record label in April we went into Rak Studios in St John’s Wood to record an album. Rak was Mickie Most’s studios and The Animals, Hot Chocolate and Sweet had recorded there.
We experimented quite a bit on the album and perhaps we should have just recorded the songs as they were – the session versions included here are more a reflection of how we were live as they were all recorded quickly in one or two takes.
None of us really liked the title of the album but it was a compromise – I think we argued quite a lot back then. We did a UK tour culminating in a headline gig at The Venue London. We even had a horn section including Rico on trombone.
We went back to the USA for a few shows on the East Coast in May and came back to England in June. We recorded “Innocenti,” “Train Song,” “Final Scene” and “Singing The Praises” for a Richard Skinner session in July 1981.
The album came out somtime late in 1981 and we went to Holland in October – I decided it was time to leave when we got back – I think Julz and then Kelvin left and Bethan & Ros made one more single with new personnel before calling it a day in 1982.
The early days were the best and although we did argue a lot, (what band doesn’t!), we also had a lot of laughs – for a couple of years we got to play live and make some records, and then that was enough.
A “must have” best of by this influential 1980’s Leeds, UK group that is still name-checked and covered by current bands.
Versus was formed in 1990 by Richard Baluyut, Fontaine Toups, and Edward Baluyut in New York City. The band was noted forits marriage of pop songwriting and vocal harmonies to the “loud-soft” dynamics of grunge and alternative rock. They were also noted for their proficient and disciplined musicianship and for their credo of “meat, sports, and rock. There have been rumblings for years amongst ardent fans about Versus working on a sci-fi concept album. The band had essentially disappeared from the public eye since releasing 2010’s On the Ones and Threes, until the excellent Ex Nihilo EP materialized in May on a new label, Ernest Jenning Record Co.
The announcement of a new LP, Ex Voto, to be released in August, also on EJRC. A discussion with the band’s frontman Richard Baluyut reveals allusions to science fiction and spirituality, equally arcane and universal.
Melina Duterte is a master of voice: Hers are dream pop songs that hint at a universe of her own creation. Recording as Jay Som since 2015, Duterte’s world of shy, swirling intimacies always contains a disarming ease, a sky-bent sparkle and a grounding indie-rock humility. In an era of burnout, the title track of her 2017 breakout, Everybody Works, remains a balm and an anthem.
Duterte’s life became a whirlwind in the wake of Everybody Works. After spending her teen years and early 20s exploring an eclectic array of musical styles—studying jazz trumpet as a child, carrying on her Filipino family tradition of spirited karaoke, and quietly recording indie-pop songs in her bedroom alone—that accomplished album found her playing festivals around the world, sharing stages with the likes of Paramore, Death Cab for Cutie, and Mitski.
In November of 2017, seeking a new environment, Duterte left her home of the Bay Area for Los Angeles. There, she demoed new songs, while also embracing opportunities to do session work and produce, engineer, and mix for other artists (like Sasami, Chastity Belt). Reckoning with the relative instability of musicianhood, Duterte turned inward, tuning ever deeper into her own emotions and desires as a way of staying centered through huge changes. She found a community; she fell in love. And for an artist whose career began after releasing her earliest collection of demos—2015’s hazy but exquisitely crafted Turn Into—in a fit of drunken confidence on Thanksgiving night, she finally quit drinking for good. “I feel like a completely different person,” she reflects. Positivity was a way forward.
The striking clarity of her new music reflects that shift. After months of poring over pools of demos, Duterte, now 25, essentially started over. She wrote most of her brilliant new album, “Anak Ko”—pronounced Anuhk-Ko—in a burst during a self-imposed week-long solo retreat to Joshua Tree. As in the past, Duterte recorded at home (in some songs, you can hear the washer/dryer near her bedroom) and remained the sole producer, engineer, and mixer. But for the first time, she recruited friends—including Vagabon’s Laetitia Tamko, Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott, JustusProffitt, Boy Scouts’ Taylor Vick, as well as bandmates Zachary Elasser, Oliver Pinnell and Dylan Allard—to contribute additional vocals, drums, guitars, strings, and pedal steel. Honing in on simplicity and groove, refining her skills as a producer, Duterte cracked her sound open subtly, highlighting its best parts: She’s bloomed.
Inspired by the lush, poppy sounds of 80s bands such as Prefab Sprout, the Cure, and Cocteau Twins—as well as the ecstatic guitarwork of contemporary Vancouver band Weed—Anak Ko sounds dazzlingly tactile, and firmly present. The result is a refreshingly precise sound. On the subtly explosive “Superbike,” Duterte aimed for the genius combination of “Cocteau Twins and Alanis Morissette”—“letting loose,” she says, over swirling shoegaze. “Night Time Drive” is a restless road song, but one with a sense of contentedness and composure, which “basically encapsulated my entire life for the past two years,” she says—always moving, but “accepting it, being a little stronger from it.” (She sings, memorably, of “shoplifting at the Whole Foods.”) Duterte focused more on bass this time: “I just wanted to make a more groovy record,” she notes.
The slow-burning highlight “Tenderness” begins minimally, like a slightly muffled phone call, before flowering into a bright, jazzy earworm. Duterte calls it “a feel-good, funky, kind of sexy song” in part about “the curse of social media” and how it complicates relationships. “That’s definitely about scrolling on your phone and seeing a person and it just haunts you, you can’t escape it,” Duterte says. “I have a weird relationship to social media and how people perceive me—as this person that has a platform, as a solo artist, and this marginalized person. That was really getting to me. I wanted to express those emotions, but I felt stifled. I feel like a lot of the themes of the songs stemmed from bottled up emotions, frustration with yourself, and acceptance.”
The title, Anak Ko, means “my child” in Tagalog, one of the native dialects in the Philippines. It was inspired by an unassuming text message from Duterte’s mother, who has always addressed her as such: Hi anak ko, I love you anak ko. “It’s an endearing thing to say, it feels comfortable,” Duterte reflects, likening the process of creating and releasing an album, too, to “birthing a child.” That sense of care charges Anak Ko, as does another concept Duterte has found herself circling back to: the importance of patience and kindness.
“In order to change, you’ve got to make so many mistakes,” Duterte says, reflecting on her recent growth as an artist with a zen-like calm. “What’s helped me is forcing myself to be even more peaceful and kind with myself and others. You can get so caught up in attention, and the monetary value of being a musician, that you can forget to be humble. You can learn more from humility than the flashy stuff. I want kindness in my life. Kindness is the most important thing for this job, and empathy.”
Rebirth takes place when everything falls apart. DIIV—Zachary Cole Smith [lead vocals, guitar], Andrew Bailey [guitar], Colin Caulfield [vocals, bass], and Ben Newman [drums]—craft the soundtrack to personal resurrection under the heavy weight of metallic catharsis upheld by robust guitars and vocal tension that almost snaps, but never quite…
The same could be said of the journey these four musicians underwent to get to their third full-length album, “Deceiver”. Out of lies, fractured friendships, and broken promises, clarity would be found.
“I’ve known everyone in the band for ten years plus separately and together as DIIV for at least the past five years,” says Cole. “On Deceiver, I’m talking about working for the relationships in my life, repairing them, and accepting responsibility for the places I’ve failed them. I had to re-approach the band. It wasn’t restarting from a clean slate, but it was a new beginning. It took time—as it did with everybody else in my life—but we all grew together and learned how to communicate and collaborate.”
Shannon Lay is a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles. The title to her sophomore full-length is a reference to the month she decided to quit her day job and devote herself to her music full-time, back in 2017. “Nowhere” is a song about living in the moment without fear of where the road you’re on may take you. August is out August. 23rd on Sub Pop Records.
Transcendent folk-pop artist Shannon Lay will release this August, her Sub Pop Records debut, worldwide on August 23rd. You can now watch to her latest offering “Death Up Close” which serves as the album’s centerpiece. “With that song, I wanted to recognize that everyone else is going through something and reflect on that. Don’t be so close-minded to think you’re the only one who’s got issues, in fact, find comfort in the thought that everyone is on their own journey” Lay explains. What starts as an Eastern-influenced song morphs into an avant-garde sound bath. “I had this idea of the violin ascending. Then Mikal Cronin came in with the saxophone and just blew me away. I love the idea of building a song like that, take people by surprise.”
Shannon drifts into nostalgia and loss while sitting on a couch in a familiar place we could all call home. “Death Up Close” from the Shannon Lay album “August”.
As previously reported, Shannon Lay will be a member of Ty Segall’s Freedom Band for the full album residencies in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, Berlin, and Haarlem.
August is now available from Sub Pop. LP .UK, and Europe will receive the limited Loser edition on orange vinyl (North America) and Sun Yellow vinyl (UK/EU) while supplies last.
