The Fat Angel Sings

Recorded as a live film in their Los Angeles practice space in the summer of 2020 during the pandemic, and originally billed as “Live From The Astral Plane“, Death Valley Girls’ “Levitation Sessions” live album has finally been given a physical release. Featuring songs from the garage rockers’ fourth album “Under The Spell Of Joy” get an airing alongside other career highlights.

Neon swirl vinyl LP on The Reverberation Appreciation Society.

Off the back of winning the 2024 Mercury Award for their debut album This Could Be Texas; Leeds’ finest band English Teacher release an exclusive limited edition 140 gram, 10” Crystal Clear vinyl of their Live from Maida Vale EP. The EP includes 2 stunning covers of “Birds of Feather” by Billie Eilish and LCD Soundsystem’s “New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down”.

Following the huge success of their 2024 debut album “This Could Be Texas” that culminated in their Mercury Prize win, Leeds’ finest indie band English Teacher reveal a new live EP “Live From BBC Maida Vale”. Largely recorded for BBC Radio 6Music, these five tracks include two great covers of Billie Eilish’s ‘Birds Of A Feather’ and LCD Soundsystem’s ‘New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’.

Our version of ‘Birds of a feather’ by Billie Eilish from our ‘Live from BBC Maida Vale’ EP

A bruising and shadowy return to form from original Smashing Pumpkins members Jimmy Chamberlin, James Iha, and Billy Corgan. Recorded in the immediate aftermath of their 33- song concept album, “Atum”, “Aghori Mhori Mei” harkens back to the band’s early 90’s canon; where guitars, bass, drums, and spiking vocals ruled, A return to the classic Pumpkins sound of the early 90’s, featuring the original line-up of Corgan, Chamberlain and Iha, unfortunately sans D’arcy (when will those guys make up?!?). Expect fuzz-drenched guitars, pounding drums and the main man big ol’ Billy to craft more pop hooks than you can shake a gish at.

The Smashing Pumpkins’ catalogue is a study in duality, alternating between explosive, metallic hard rock and shimmering, experimental art-pop. “Sighommi,” the lead single off “Aghori Mhori Mei, lands in the former category, full of lithe grooves and bone-crunching guitar chugs. Billy Corgan’s melodic sneer is the cherry on top, giving “Sighommi” an intangible sense of longing even as its guitars crash like waves against the rocky shore.

LP on Martha’s Music. Includes poster exclusive to indie stores.

“Shazam” is the second studio album by English rock band the Move, released in February 1970 by Regal Zonophone. The album marked a bridge between the band’s quirky late 1960s pop singles and the more aggressive, hard rock, long-form style of their later albums.

It was six songs, three Roy Wood originals on Side One, and three seemingly disconnected cover versions on the flip, all delivered with Rick Price’s growling electric bass, the off-kilter drum fills of Bev Bevan (the edges of which got sanded off somewhere around ELO’s second album), lots of 12-string electric guitars from Wood and the stylish veddy-veddy British vocals of Carl Wayne. (And some between-song comments from passers-by recorded on Great Portland Street in London.)

“Shazam” bears down and never lets up, even on would-be ballads like “Beautiful Daughter” that hold some elements of that gritty aftertaste of menace that the harder rocking tunes embrace, like “Hello Susie” which jumps into a 6/8 time middle-eight, stretching further afield with some Bevan tom-tom fills, drenched in a tight echo. The song in a more sanitized version was a hit for Amen Corner, sung by Andy Fairweather-Low, but said hit never equalled the nutty abandon of the Move’s original.

The centerpiece of “Shazam” is “Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited,” a wayward revision of an earlier track the band had done on their debut album; with musical quotes from The Nutcracker, Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” liberally ladled into the midsection of the song, the re-do stretches the original version into nearly nine minutes of musical insanity, topped by Carl Wayne’s neo-cabaret delivery of Wood’s sing-song lyrics.

And turning a Frankie Laine cover of Mann-Weil’s “Don’t Make My Baby Blue” into an exercise in glorious heaviosity highlights the disparity between Wayne’s sweet singing and the grinding electric backing track.

Overall, “Shazam” was and is an incredibly satisfying listening experience; fifty-four years old, and still a regular resident of my turntable. And when I play “Hello Susie” on my car stereo, the windows go down, the volume goes up and the singalong starts anew. 

Nonesuch Records releases a deluxe edition of Wilco’s 2004 Grammy Award–winning album “A Ghost is Born”. The box set comprises either nine vinyl LPs and four CDs or nine CDs – including the original album, alternates, outtakes, and demos, charting the making of “A Ghost Is Born” plus the complete 2004 concert recording from Boston’s Wang Center and the band’s “fundamentals” workshop sessions.  It includes 65 previously unreleased music tracks as well as a 48-page hardcover book with previously unpublished photos and a new liner note by Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr.

“A Ghost Is Born” was released commercially on June 22, 2004, debuting at No. 8 on USA chart. The album, which Mehr calls ‘an eclectic array of dark ballads, upbeat pop songs, Krautrock chug, noise rock freakouts, and roots rock abandon,’ was widely acclaimed as one of 2004’s best, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NPR, NME, the Associated Press, The Wire, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and Uncut, among many others.  The album earned the band its first Grammy, for Best Alternative Music Album.  The album also won a Grammy for Best Recording Package.

For the “A Ghost Is Born” recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Mikael Jorgensen; Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the band’s previous release “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, co-produced the album with Wilco.  Leroy Bach left Wilco at the completion of the sessions and the band announced the addition of two new members: Pat Sansone and Nels Cline. Sansone and Cline toured with Wilco to promote “A Ghost Is Born” and that line-up has remained unchanged since 2004. 

As Tweedy said to Mehr for his new liner note, “Making that record, and then finding this line up, that was the start of something – of having a band that can play anything. That’s why, 20 years later, we’re still here and still going.”

Wilco first began sessions for what would become “A Ghost Is Born” in early 2002 at Chicago’s Soma E.M.S., where they had mixed “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot“.  Much of the album was tracked live in the studio with O’Rourke and engineer Chris Shaw.  They also reunited there with engineer and soon-to-be-bandmate Mikael Jorgensen.

At Soma, the band began sketching out music using Tweedy’s notebooks of lyrics, poetry, and prose. Mehr notes: ‘In between more traditional song tracking, the group would engage in a series of conceptual improvisations in the studio.  These musical experiments, broadly known as ‘Fundamentals’… were part of what Kotche said was ‘an attempt to search for a new group identity. To see what we could make this band into.’’

In the fall of 2003, the band relocated to New York to finish recording at Sear Sound.  “It seemed like the band needed to get out of Chicago, get out of the working mode they’d been in, and only be thinking about making a record,” O’Rourke told Mehr.  There, playing together in the corner of a large studio, the album began to take its final shape.

Emerging from a period of addiction and rehab, Tweedy discussed how he feels about “A Ghost Is Born” in retrospect.  As he told Mehr, “I was worried the album was going to feel like something dark and not me anymore.  But the album was ahead of me as a person.  It was the part of me that I was trying to preserve – enthusiastic and furious about the world, as well as open and loving.  I reached that in the music, before I could get there emotionally on my own.”

“A Ghost Is Born” was the second Wilco release on Nonesuch Records, preceded by the landmark “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. The relationship with Nonesuch would last nearly a decade and include two more studio albums – “Sky Blue Sky” and “Wilco” (the album) – along with a live album and a live DVD, plus reissues of earlier records, before Wilco began its own label, dBpm.

releases February 7th, 2025

Produced by Wilco and Jim O’Rourke

Tom Petty’s estate have approved an expanded reissue of Petty and The Heartbreakers’ cult favorite “Long After Dark” as well as a limited theatrical reissue of “Heartbreakers Beach Party”, a legendary lost documentary created for MTV by Cameron Crowe in his directorial debut. But the party isn’t over yet: the estate is teaming up with Third Man Records to release a vinyl-only live set for the first time.

“Live in Edinburgh 1982: The Gennaro Tapes” is a triple album capturing a set at the Edinburgh Playhouse in Scotland at the close of 1982, just about a month after “Long After Dark” hit record store shelves.

With the band newly energized following the addition of new bassist Howie Epstein, this set captures a powerful 20-song set that includes tracks from the new album (lead single “You Got Lucky,” “Change of Heart,” Straight Into Darkness,” “A One Story Town”), favourites from their growing catalogue (“Don’t Do Me Like That,” “Refugee,” “Breakdown,” “Listen to Her Heart” and a powerful opening version of “American Girl”), and even a fistful of classic rock and soul covers (The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” a one-two punch of The Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and The Byrds’ “So You Wanna Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”). The set was captured on cassette from the soundboard by one of the band’s most loyal road crew members, house mixer Gennaro Rippo, and “has not been touched since the day it was captured, pressed directly from cassette to vinyl.”

“Live in Edinburgh” will be available on vinyl in three colour variants: turquoise (for Petty’s official web store), orange wisp (for all independent record retailers), and maroon “reverse splatter” (for Third Man’s official web store; we’ll update with this link as it goes live). All tracks recorded live at the Edinburgh Playhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland – 12/9/1982. 

All three versions will be released next Friday, November 29th.

Esoteric Recordings is proud to announce the release of a new re-mastered four disc deluxe expanded boxed set limited edition (comprising 3 CDs and a DVD) of the legendary self-titled debut album by Barclay James Harvest.

This expanded reissue has been newly re-mastered from the original master tapes and features an additional 33 bonus tracks drawn from new 5.1 surround sound & stereo mixes from the original multi-track master tapes, BBC radio sessions from 1968 and 1971, the singles “Early Morning”, “Brother Thrush” & “Taking Some Time On”, a rare Woolly Wolstenholme solo demo from 1969 of “The Sun Will Never Shine“, along with the 1968 short film Mr. Sunshine.

INCLUDES A LAVISHLY ILLUSTRATED 68 PAGE BOOK WITH MANY PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN PHOTOGRAPHS & NEW ESSAY BY BJH SPECIALISTS KEITH & MONIKA DOMONE ALSO INCLUDES A FACSIMILE OF THE 1970 BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST ORCHESTRAL TOUR PROGRAMME, TWO FACSIMILE PRESS RELEASES FROM 1968 AND 1969, POSTCARDS AND A REPLICA 1968 RECORD SHOP POSTER FOR THE “EARLY MORNING SINGLE”

In April 1968 Barclay James Harvest released their first single, “Early Morning”, on EMI’s Parlophone label and became the first signing to EMI’s progressive label Harvest Records (named after them) the following year. Their self-titled debut album was released in June 1970, and saw BJH successfully fuse an orchestra with rock to create a unique, sometimes pastoral, form of symphonic progressive rock. Produced by Norman Smith (also famed for his work with Pink Floyd and the Pretty Things), Barclay James Harvest was dominated by the twelve-minute epic “Dark Now My Sky” and also featured such wonderful material as The Iron Maiden, Mother Dear, When the World Was Woken and the fine rock tracks Taking Some Time On and Good Love Child. The album established Barclay James Harvest as one of Britain’s most unique groups and paved the way for a remarkable career and a catalogue of music that continues to endure.

The set also includes a lavishly illustrated 68 page book with previously unseen photographs and an essay by BJH specialists Keith & Monika Domone. Additionally, the set includes a facsimile of the 1970 Barclay James Harvest orchestral tour programme and two facsimile press releases from 1968 and 1969, postcards and a replica 1968 record shop poster for the “Early Morning” single.

This special edition of Barclay James Harvest is a fitting tribute to a fine band.

A DELUXE 4 DISC LIMITED EDITION BOXED SET OF THE CLASSIC 1970 DEBUT BJH ALBUM

“Field Theory” is the second studio album from Dublin four-piece Melts. Recorded live to tape at Black Mountain Studios in Summer 2023 and produced by Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox, it’s a collection of turbulent electronic psych-rock shaped by bulldozing motorik synth lines, densely layered guitars, primal percussion and the cavernous vocals of frontman Eoin Kenny. While their highly-praised 2022 debut ‘Maelstrom’ dealt with forces on a larger scale affecting a whole city, “Field Theory” explores connections on a smaller, interpersonal scale.

The title takes the scientific term Field Theory, which describes how forces interact and influence particles around them, and applies it to the interactions between people, to the space between all of us, how people interact and affect others around them. Expanding on the album’s themes, Melts write: “Like gravity we are drawn to and miss people and like light waves we love people and are loved. We live in orbits of each other, drawn by unseen forces. The album explores these forces, how we relate to each other, the people we live with and the people we live without. At the heart of “Field Theory” lies the realisation that we inhabit each other’s worlds as much as our own, through a field of wide-ranging forces, as important as the ones keeping the planets in place.”

MELTS’ album ‘Field Theory’, April 12th 2024 on Fuzz Club

Our long-awaited third album ‘Insight’ feels like the defining moment of the band’s history and the conclusion of a trilogy: It’s everything our debut ‘Observed in a Dream’ (2016) and the sequel ‘Prepared for a Nightmare’ (2020) hinted at — and more. Mixed and mastered by Maurizio Baggio (known for his work with The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher, and The Vacant Lots), our sound has been refined into a sharper and more expansive sonic landscape than ever before. This album sees us exploring greater depths and heights, embarking on a hypnotic journey through the shadows, filled with pulsating post-punk, shimmering shoegaze and atmospheric psych-noir.



The recording process was a bit different than on our previous releases. Frontman Trond Fagernes penned and recorded the guitar, bass, and vocals with a drum machine first, then acoustic drums and synths were added later as well as guitar contributions on some songs by returning founding member Rune Øverby. This process enabled more experimentation and creative freedom with each instrument before adding them layer by layer.


‘Insight’ is the album we’ve always wanted to create, but at the same time it’s the most personal and emotionally hardest we’ve made so far. Lyrically, it delves into a wide range of emotions, from somber reflections about loss and sorrow to feverish depictions of love, escapism and catharsis.



“Wildly addictive mix of post-punk, shoegaze and psychedelia.

Performed by:
Trond Fagernes (vocals/guitars/bass)
Ola J. Kyrkjeeide (drums)
Kenneth Eknes (synth)
Rune Overby (guitar on track 6, 8 & 9)

“Crippled Crow” is the final single from Oslo post-punk/dream-gaze band Mayflower Madame’s upcoming album ‘Insight’

Billed as her debut solo album, this feels like a more than worthy follow up to 2002’s amazing “Out of Season” (credited as a collaboration with Rustin Man). “Lives Outgrown” features production by another Talk Talk alumni, Lee Harris, and contains sonic ghosts of Gibbons‘ past; some haunting, subtle echoes of the anxious moods explored on Portishead’s Third – but there’s a general tilt away from the jazz and soul that has previously informed her work in favour of some kind of ancient British folk through a dreamlike prism. 30 years of music and not one single miss. A masterpiece. 

Beth Gibbons releases her debut solo album “Lives Outgrown“. Featuring 10 beautiful new songs recorded over a period of 10 years, the album was produced by James Ford and Beth Gibbons with additional production by Lee Harris (Talk Talk).