The Fat Angel Sings

So similar in name to Dr Hook but don’t be alarmed this is something completely different. It has been voted one of the rarest records of all time and was released in an edition of less than a hundred back in 1972.  Instead what we have is another one of those 1970s private press LPs unearthed by Numero Group.

D.R. Hooker was a robe-clad hippy going through a midlife crisis and made this wonderful spiritual album which showcases a rare songwriting talent mixing acid-rock, folk and on ‘Falling Asleep’ something that sounds like Syd Barrett meeting Love. Hints of Rodriguez too, certainly on the opening ‘Forge Your Own Chains’ which leads off an album that is way more sophisticated than it has any right to be and rightly deserves a larger audience.  

“The Truth” is somehow out of time and very of its time—it’s very, very 1972. Washy, psychedelic grooves drift along, occasionally dipping into electronic processing and heavy guitars, while Hooker make attempts to come to terms with the psychedelic movement. The songs are fuelled by this tension between psychedelia and religion. After the carefree 1960s, and the prevalence of free love, be-ins, and LSD, the 70s took a decidedly darker, more paranoid turn. For some, drugs clearly were not the answer, and “The Truth” is clearly rooted in Hooker’s desire to find something more concrete and less fleeting. In the title track, he asks “Does it seem to pass you by / Or do you try to change your mind”, as if giving voice to the inner turmoil highlighted in songs such as ‘Forge Your Chains’, a discussion about hedonism, and whether “the hard stuff ain’t so bad”. 

“The Truth” is a tantalising prospect. Much like its namesake, the album is elusive and amorphous. For a start, it was a private press—a very private press. Only ninety-nine copies were ever made, which made it something of a Holy Grail for collectors.

As the final studio album to feature guitar virtuoso Michael Schenker before his temporary departure from UFO, “Obsession” holds a special place in the band’s storied history.

“Obsession” was released at a pivotal time for UFO. It was the band’s seventh studio album and followed the success of “Lights Out” (1977), which firmly established the band as a force to be reckoned with in the hard rock and heavy metal scenes. While “Lights Out” broke into the UK Albums Chart “Obsession” continued this momentum, further cementing UFO’s reputation as one of the leading rock acts of the late 1970s.

On “Obsession”, UFO showcased a more atmospheric and darker sound, signaling the deepening collaboration between vocalist Phil Mogg and guitarist Michael Schenker. The album features iconic tracks like “Only You Can Rock Me” and “Cherry,” both of which became staples in the band’s live performances. The album’s production, handled by Ron Nevison, helped give it a polished yet powerful sound, one that would stand the test of time.

The 2024 Remastered Deluxe Edition: of “Obsession” has been crafted with great care, using the original production tape transfers and remastered at AIR Mastering.

One of the standout features of this deluxe edition is the inclusion of a previously unreleased 2024 mix of “Live At The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland“. While parts of this performance originally appeared on UFO’s legendary “Strangers In The Night” live album, this new mix—engineered by renowned producer Brian Kehew—offers the best version to date, straight from the original multi-track tapes. This live set captures UFO at their peak, with Schenker’s blistering guitar work and Mogg’s commanding vocals on full display.

In addition to the remastered album and live material, the 2024 Remastered Deluxe Edition also includes four bonus tracks. Notably, the set features an alternate version of “Cherry,” giving listeners a fresh perspective on one of the band’s most beloved tracks.

Two of the bonus studio tracks were recorded at The Record Plant during sessions for “Strangers In The Night”, adding another layer of historical significance to this release. These tracks highlight UFO’s creative energy in the months following “Obsession’s” release, offering a glimpse into the band’s dynamic during one of their most productive periods.

Upon its original release, “Obsession” was met with critical acclaim for its blend of hard rock, intricate melodies, and atmospheric elements. The album’s success further solidified UFO’s standing in the rock world, and Michael Schenker’s contributions were particularly praised. Schenker’s innovative guitar work on “Obsession” became a key influence on future generations of guitarists, with tracks like “Hot ‘n’ Ready” and “Pack It Up (And Go)” showcasing his remarkable technical ability and creativity.

Although Schenker departed the band shortly after the release of “Obsession”, the album remains a defining moment in UFO’s discography. It bridged the gap between their earlier, more straightforward rock sound and the more complex, progressive elements that would follow. “Obsession” is regarded as a landmark album, not just for UFO but for hard rock and heavy metal as a whole.

The deluxe packaging includes a poster booklet with liner notes by esteemed music journalist Michael Hann, featuring interviews with key band members Phil Mogg, Andy Parker, and Michael Schenker. This detailed insight into the making of “Obsession” offers fans a deeper understanding of the album’s creation and its lasting impact.

UFO – Obsession [Deluxe Edition] available on 2CD with poster booklet + 3LP vinyl. Includes a new previously unreleased 2024 mix of “Live at the Agora Ballroom”, Cleveland, 16th October 1978, plus 4 bonus tracks (CD format only), new liner notes, and new interviews.

The “Obsession” (2024 Remastered Deluxe Edition) will be released on November 8th, 2024,

Mermaid Chunky are an audio visual duo made up of artists Freya Tate and Moina Moin. Bathing in milkmaid serenity and improvised chaos, the duo boast of pumping trance rhythms, and seriously arousing sax solos. Catching their live performances may cause havoc on your retinas as they are often accompanied by euphoric sculptural visuals.

“It was really surreal,” recalls Moina Moin, of the day in 2022 when DFA Records founder James Murphy invited Mermaid Chunky, the duo Moin formed six years earlier with best friend Freya Tate, to sign to his label and support his group LCD Soundsystem at the Brixton Academy.

Delighting in playfulness, performance art and ambient-folk reveries, Mermaid Chunky may seem an unusual signing for the hyper-cool DFA. But after hearing tracks from their 2020 debut “Vest” on the online radio station NTS, Murphy was entranced, emailing to tell the duo: “You’ve restored my faith in music.” Now their first full-length album for the label, “slif slaf slof”, looks set to work that magic on the public at large. It presents a beguiling world where looped recorders tootle primitive melodies, where charmingly homemade house bangers rub shoulders with squelchy rodeo funk, and where a catalyst of eccentrics.

Mermaid Chunky hail from Stroud, Gloucestershire, and met 13 years ago at Stroud Valleys Artspace, a complex of studios and performance spaces Moin’s parents helped found in the mid-90s. “We both shared this really stupid and bizarre sense of humour, based around being silly and breaking things down,” says Tate. Members of a local youth ska orchestra, they formed a break-off “girl band” with all the girls from the orchestra. “But then people started slipping off to uni, so it ended up just being Moina and me.”

The duo duly booked a gig at a local poetry night. “We rehearsed in my dad’s kitchen without any instruments, just me whacking a stuffed toy rabbit on the countertop,” remembers Moin, “and we made up this song around it.” The show itself snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, or perhaps vice versa. “It was chaotic: we forgot how to play the song; I fell and knocked over the keyboard,” says Moin.

“But everyone was laughing,” adds Tate. “And we were like: ‘Hey, that went well!’”

Tate moved to Brighton to study; when she returned and found herself “in that post-uni period, feeling like a weird blob, some sort of failure, like I’d dropped from outer space”, she and Moin refocused their energies on Mermaid Chunky (named after a kind of yarn). “We started experimenting with loops, and it got weirder and weirder,” says Tate. “We felt quite incubated in Stroud, able to jump around and do things.”

A mission statement took shape: Hang out, make jokes, dress up. “We’re quite visual and performative,” says Moin, who produces the band’s videos, as well as designing their onstage costumes with Tate. Mermaid Chunky’s lyrics are monologues, short stories and character studies that evolve out of late-night conversations on long drives where, Moin says, “all of a sudden these weird characters surface, and we have no idea what they will do next”. Moin plays saxophone, rather excellently in fact. Tate plays keyboards and operates a drum machine her mum got “for 20 quid at a car boot sale. I don’t really care about fiddling with technology. I’m not very Aphex Twin-y. I just grab the sound, I don’t care whether it’s cool or not.”

Their disregard for cool may be the gift that enables Mermaid Chunky to cook up such bewitching music. “Céilí”, the lead single from “slif slaf slof”, was born at a show at a warehouse in Hackney Wick, east London.

“Céilí” took shape that night, as they ran recorders through loop pedals and added new-age synths, chanting and tribal drum patterns. “We were playing ‘stripped-down’, because we hadn’t been able to bring all our usual gear,” says Moin. “We were improvising on limited equipment, the stuff we’d started off with: Freya’s mum’s drum machine and the recorder I’ve been playing since I was really young; these two meaningful, characterful sounds that represent us. We were dancing, really taking these sounds seriously in a beautiful, celebratory way, seeing each other and hearing each other.”

Beyond the weaponised weirdness and arty playfulness, there is great emotion within Mermaid Chunky’s music: a celebration of these women and their friendship and the lives they’ve chosen. “We’re very in our own bubble,” Moin admits, but she knows their music affects people. “People will come up to us after gigs and say: ‘I related to that, I loved that so much.’ Younger women say: ‘I can’t wait to go and make some music of my own.’ And we still make mistakes at our gigs, but people are like: ‘I can’t wait to make mistakes of my own, and push something over as well.’ They really like to see that you can do things your own way. These songs bring a lot of joy, which feels like an honour.”

For Moin, however, the process is the point. “Mermaid Chunky is about Freya and I connecting in this different realm. When we’re practising, it’s like a party – you feel mad, you feel really great, and you feel like you’ve won. It doesn’t matter how it’s received. It’s such an extravagant pleasure to be able to communicate with someone else by whacking a stuffed toy rabbit on a table.”

 “slif slaf slof” is released on DFA Records on 13th September.

‘Reason Enough’ is a more melodic work than we’re used to hearing from Crows, “rather than being all-out punk”, as the band’s Steve Goddard puts it. “It feels less lo-fi, cleaner and more well-rounded as a result,” James Cox adds. 

Lyrically, Cox drew heavily from a difficult year, both personally and in terms of facing up to a weighty news cycle. A general sense of malaise, isolation, unease and a desire for growth in spite of it all permeates ‘Reason Enough’ – an album which strikes a satisfying balance between existentialism, soul-searching, and a discerning brand of indie-rock. Can’t wait to see this translated to a stage – their live shows are something else, and we’ve got the battered boots & purple bruises to prove it!

Crows have arrived. ‘Reason Enough’, their third studio album, is the one the band have taken the longest to write. Partly because they had to fit the exercise around working full-time jobs, but also because of the freedom that was afforded to them around this specific project, which takes the post-punk four piece’s historically adrenaline-fuelled sound into fresh territory. Though the band’s punk spirit remains intact, sonically, they’re more refined and cohesive than ever; it’s the most mature Crows have ever sounded, without compromising any of their intrinsic grit. Following 2022’s ‘Beware Believers’ and their 2019 debut ‘Silver Tongues’, ‘Reason Enough’ lands September 27th 2024 via Bad Vibrations / Fuzz Club.

For the occasion, James Cox (vocals), Steve Goddard (guitar), Jith Amarasinghe (bass) and Sam Lister (drums), swapped their usual rehearsal space, a small studio in Homerton, East London, for the cavernous walls of a “weird little studio” – as Goddard puts it – in Stroud, Gloucestershire. More specifically, a former Catholic church and convent where the band parked themselves up in the crypt, which was more conducive to inspiring the foundations for ‘Reason Enough’. “Having a more relaxed approach this time around meant we could explore different stuff,” Goddard says. “We don’t want to sound the same as we did before – this is our third album, we have to move on. And so we fucked around a bit more.”

Armed with dozens of ideas, they returned to London in a bid to finesse them all alongside Mercury Prize-nominated producer and master of the polished indie record Andy Savours (Black County, New Road, My Bloody Valentine). The result: a concise, 10-track album which goes a long way to show Crows’ sonic versatility. It’s more melodic work than what Crows have previously done, “rather than being all-out punk”, as Goddard puts it. “It feels less lo-fi, cleaner and more well-rounded as a result,” Cox adds.

Lyrically, Cox drew heavily from a difficult year, both personally and in terms of facing up to a heavy going news cycle. “I went pretty unhappy with the lyrics and vocals,” he says. “I wanted to moan a bit. If the last album was angrier, this one is definitely sadder.” Indeed, a general sense of malaise, isolation, unease and a desire for growth in spite of it all permeate ‘Reason Enough’ – an album which strikes a satisfying balance between existentialism, soul-searching, and a discerning brand of indie-rock: “We’re doing the same thing, but a lot better. This is Crows in high definition.”

“Balances aggression with moments of introspective beauty… Crows’ most cohesive and fully realized work to date. ★★★★” The Line of Best Fit. “The tightest and broadest they’ve sounded, with punk sensibilities wrapping themselves around arena-ready post-punk propulsion. ★★★★” DORK

“A captivating return that levels-up in every direction… This will get under your skin immediately. 9/10” Clash Magazine, “The most melodic, hook-filled and engaging record of their career. ★★★★” Louder

To celebrate the release of ‘Reason Enough’ the band will be hitting the road starting next week for a run of UK/EU ‘Reason Enough’ tour

New album ‘Reason Enough’ out September 27 2024 via Bad Vibrations

A truly deserved Mercury Prize win for Leeds based four-piece English Teacher. A band that wholly represent the power of investing in our beloved music scene from the grassroots up. The Leeds-formed four-piece, fronted by Lily Fontaine, impressed the judges with their “winning lyrical mix of surrealism and social observation, alongside a subtle way of wearing its musical innovations lightly”, on songs such as “I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying”, “Albatross” and “Broken Biscuits”.

“We just thought we’d make a band,” Fontaine said, while her bandmates paid tribute to members of the Leeds music community, including the Brudenell Music Social Club’s owner, Nathan Clark.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

A record brimming with the personality and originality to revitalise British guitar music, it has been a real pleasure celebrating their debut album ‘This Could Be Texas’ as a Rough Trade Album of the Month, Album of the Year So Far 2024 title and now a Mercury Prize-winning album.

English Teacher perform “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” on Later… with Jools Holland.

One of the most exciting emergent acts in Yorkshire since the start of the 2020s, Leeds-based band English Teacher present their debut EP ‘Polyawkward’. Featuring ace 2021 single ‘Good Grief’ and new track ‘A55’, this five-track collection showcases Lily Fontaine’s sharp punk song writing and the group’s concentrated, enthusiastic post-punk energy.

For fans of Yard Act, Wet Leg and Fontaines D.C..

Such an adventurous record which flows beautifully, with so many ideas and sounds woven together…I can hear influencers such as stereolab , moonshake , 90,s shoegaze & baggy dance beats , hey it’s all happening. Hearing this record for the 1st time, there are constant surprises on where Dummy go to next..

At times, sublimely beautiful & then an attack of full-on dirty guitar sounds on a filthy krautrock-in-beat . Fabulous stuff from the whole band . Dummy is a rock band from Los Angeles comprised of Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O’Dell, and Joe Trainor. Their debut full-length “Mandatory Enjoyment” (Trouble in Mind Records) arrived in late 2021, becoming one of the year’s sleeper hits and garnering praise from Pitchfork, Stereogum, and more.

Coming out of lockdown, the band spent two years touring in support of the record, and it is this transformational experience that pulses through “Free Energy”, the exhilarating follow-up to “Mandatory Enjoyment”.

A creatively restless band, Dummy (Ewell: drums, synths, bass; Maatman: vocals, synths, organ; O’Dell: vocals, guitar, organ; Trainor: guitar, bass, synths) wanted to get harder, dancier, more psychedelic for their next record. This meant applying explorative potentials of electronic textures to the elemental qualities of rock i.e. more vocal loops, sampling, more crazy rhythms, and playful synths – but make those samples of Trainor’s guitar, let Maatman sing bolder, experiment with using cold mechanical elements in warm and sparkly ways, and lean harder into traditional-yet-still-awesome forms of rock guitar experimentation like feedback The result is a record that celebrates music’s ability to move the body, whether that be through a teeth-rattling wall of MBV-esque noise, a sticky pop chorus, or a joyous drum machine—or, if you’re Dummy, maybe all of them in the same song.


Pop music has always been a big part of Dummy’s sound and it manifests in different ways all over “Free Energy” the bubbly synth sequence made with a Korg EM1 popping all over “Nullspace,” the revved-up drone-pop inspired by second and third wave Dunedin Sound bands like Look Blue Go Purple and Dadamah, and the motorik beat powering “Nine Clean Nails,” perhaps the most confidently pop song Dummy has ever recorded and one that exemplifies “Free Energy’s” balancing of live performance intensity with electronic augmentations, the dancier rhythmic elements created out of a drum loop recorded by Ewell while the bridge recalls the Feelies with call-and-response guitars from O’Dell and expressive vocals from Maatman.


“Free Energy” also features guest appearances from Oakland-based saxophonist and electroacoustic artist Cole Pulice (Moon Glyph) contributes saxophone and wind synths and Jen Powers of Powers / Rolin Duo (Astral Editions, Feeding Tube Records). 

released September 6th, 2024

Dummy Is: Alex, Emma, Joe, Nathan


“Luck and Strange” is David Gilmour’s first solo album in nearly a decade. Charlie Andrew takes over as co-producer, after Gilmour released a pair of LPs with Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music. ‘Luck and Strange’ was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is Gilmour’s first album of new material in nine years. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with ALT-J and Marika Hackman. Of this new working relationship, David says, “We invited Charlie to the house, so he came and listened to some demos, and said things like, “Well, why does there have to be a guitar solo there?” and “Do they all fade out? Can’t some of them just end?”. He has a wonderful lack of knowledge or respect for this past of mine. He’s very direct and not in any way overawed, and I love that. That is just so good for me because the last thing you want is people just deferring to you.”

The majority of the album’s lyrics have been composed by Polly Samson, Gilmour’s co-writer and collaborator for the past thirty years. Samson says of the lyrical themes covered on ‘Luck and Strange’, “It’s written from the point of view of being older; mortality is the constant.” Gilmour elaborates, “We spent a load of time during and after lockdown talking about and thinking about those kind of things.”

Polly has also found the experience of working with Charlie Andrew liberating, “He wants to know what the songs are about, he wants everyone who’s playing on them to have the ideas that are in the lyric informing their playing. I have particularly loved it for that reason.” The album features eight new tracks along with a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers’ ‘Between Two Points’ and has artwork and photography by the renowned artist Anton Corbijn. Musicians contributing to the record include Guy Pratt & Tom Herbert on bass, Adam Betts, Steve Gadd and Steve DiStanislao on drums, Rob Gentry & Roger Eno on keyboards with string and choral arrangements by Will Gardner.

The title track also features the late Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, recorded in 2007 at a jam in a barn at David’s house.

Some contributions emerged from the live streams that Gilmour and family performed to a global audience during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021; Romany Gilmour sings, plays the harp and appears on lead vocals on ‘Between Two Points’. Gabriel Gilmour also sings backing vocals. The album’s cover image, photographed and designed by Anton Corbijn, is inspired by a lyric written by Charlie Gilmour for the album’s final song ‘Scattered’.

Of working with his family on ‘Luck and Strange’, David says, “Polly and I have been writing together for over thirty years and the Von Trapped live streams showed the great blend of Romany’s voice and harp-playing and that led us into a feeling of discarding some of the past that I’d felt bound to and that I could throw those rules out and do whatever I felt like doing, and that has been such a joy.”

Of note for Floyd fans: The title track includes an archival performance from Gilmour’s late bandmate Richard Wright.