The Fat Angel Sings

Deep Purple’s 1972 album “Machine Head” will be reissued as a 3CD+Blu-ray+LP super deluxe edition next month.

The English rock band’s sixth studio album was famously due to be recorded at Montreux Casino before it burnt to the ground. The band ended up setting up the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio in the nearby Grand Hotel which was closed for the Winter, Overlook-style. These events were depicted in the classic track “Machine Head” has been reissued many times, so what new content does this super deluxe edition offer? Well, Dweezil Zappa has remixed the record in stereo and in Dolby Atmos. The new stereo mix features on the coloured vinyl LP (“opaque white with hints of purple”) which is included in this super deluxe and on the first CD in the five-disc set, which is also home to a 2024 remaster (two versions of the album on one CD). The new stereo and Atmos remixes also include ‘Never Before’ B-side, ‘When A Blind Man Cries’., which starts side two of the vinyl version of this album.

The two CDs both include live performances. The first, recorded on 9th March 1972, at the Paris Theatre in London, captures the group on their “Machine Head” Tour. The second is previously unreleased; it was recorded in April 1971 at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland (yes, the same one that burned down eight months later). This is an “audience recording” which covers songs the band recorded prior to “Machine Head“, including ‘Child In Time’ (from 1969’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra), ‘Speed King’ (from 1970’s “Deep Purple in Rock”), and ‘Strange Kind Of Woman’ (from 1971’s “Fireball” ).

The blu-ray audio features the new Atmos Mix, and the original 1974 US Quad Mix and three tracks in 5.1 Surround Sound. The new stereo mix is not listed amongst the content (go figure) and why the whole album, rather than just three tracks, isn’t included in 5.1 (from the old DVD-Audio) is a mystery.

The super deluxe edition includes a 60-page book with new sleeve notes and the usual archive and rare photos.

A huge new box set from Parlophone Records will chronicle David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era from the origins of the character in 1971 through the recording of 1972’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust” and the numerous promotional appearances and live performances that followed.

The 5-CD, 1-Blu-Ray collection “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!” is set to feature 29 unreleased tracks spanning early demos, outtakes, alternate versions, and live recordings.

Highlights include a alternate version of “Lady Stardust,” a previously unheard version of the deep-cut rarity “Shadow Man,” and an uptempo rendition of the Who’s “I Can’t Explain,” which Bowie later covered on his 1973 album “Pin Ups”.

The audio-only Blu-Ray disc contains the 2012 remaster of the original album alongside “Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth)”, an album of recordings from the famous 1971 Trident Studios sessions that will also be released as a limited-edition vinyl LP for Record Store Day on April 20th.

There are two books included in the set, a 112-page collection of liner noters, photographs, and interviews and a 36-page reproduction of Bowie’s personal notebooks from the era.

David Bowie’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!” is a 5CD and 1 Blu-Ray Audio set that explores David Bowie’s journey from February 1971 through the creation of the Ziggy Stardust character, the recording of the iconic “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” album, and captures the international mania that surrounded the Ziggy phenomenon in the form of UK radio sessions and TV performances, as well as live tracks from Ziggy and the Spiders’ 1st October 1972 show at the Boston Music Hall.

“Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!” contains 29 unreleased tracks, covers early song writing demos, recordings from David’s band, The Arnold Corns, rehearsals at Bowie’s then-home, Haddon Hall, BBC sessions, singles, live performances, plus outtakes and alternative versions from the original album recording sessions, which have been newly mixed by original album producer, Ken Scott.

“Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!” also contains two books. The first is an extensive 112-page book with detailed liner notes, memorabilia, contemporary reviews and articles, rare photographs from Barrie Wentzel, Michael Putland, Mick Rock, Sukita and Alec Byrne, as well as brand-new notes and interviews with Ken Scott, Mark Carr Pritchett and David’s plugger from the time, Anya Wilson. Accompanying the main book is a 36-page compiled reproduction of David’s personal Ziggy Stardust era notebooks.

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and composer Julia Holter releases her new single “Evening Mood” today ahead of her forthcoming sixth studio album “Something in the Room She Moves“, out March 22nd on Domino. With “Evening Mood,” Holter had in mind invoking the love hormone oxytocin, with Dev Hoff’s portamento fretless bass lines and Beth Goodfellow’s soft mallet heartbeat-like drums as foundation. Over the heavily-filtered rhythm section, an array of sparkling voices swim: Holter’s gliding vocals, Chris Speed’s soaring birdlike clarinet, and bright Prophet pads by Tashi Wada.

The “underwater” production style was informed by a heavy dose of Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo, her daughter’s favourite movie at the time, about a fish that turns into a little girl. “I was inspired by the transformability of creatures, and how this malleability works alongside our capacity for love. I wanted everything to feel very liquid,” she says of the song, which features a “heavily filtered ultrasound heartbeat” sent through a phaser. “I wanted it to sound like it was inside the body.”

“Evening Mood” comes via a video by Dicky Bahto featuring dancer Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta.

This is not your average Fat White Family song, with Lias Saoudi detailing his “big brother Tamlan’s circumcision at age 5 without anaesthetic in the mountains of Algeria.”

The video was shot by Tamlan on location in Maillot, the small town from which the Saoudi dynasty hail.

Giving some background to the track, Lias said:

I was sat with my family at xmas. My whole immediate family. My long-divorced parents and their respective partners. My big and little brother. Two dogs. One cocker spaniel named Jarvis, and a French Pitbull called Pepe. Me and my little brother had managed to tidy away our long running blood feud just long enough so that we might enjoy this bi-annual festive reunion. The idea for this reunion – which we refer to as Legends of the Fall after mum’s favourite film, a film about warring brothers that slip in and out of exile – occurred not long after my big brother was deported from China, after having called it home for 15 years. There was a sense of rallying round at that time. Of making an effort to make Tam feel at home. My parents divorce wasn’t pretty. You’d have bet your life at the time that no further Xmas together was remotely possible. I’m proud that as a bunch, we can let by gones be by gones, even if only once twenty years or so has passed.

Both previous times Legends of the Fall has taken place, it’s ended in a serious breakdown of some descript. Usually tearful, with occasional threats of violence and bodily harm. That’s why we opted for bi-annual. You need a fallow year. You need to let the engines cool. This December just past all of the drama occurred off screen, in the preamble to the event itself. Endless crsis talks about the beef I’m having with my little brother. Xmas was a song of peace, as a result. We’d burnt ourselves out already. Anyway, on the second night we’re all sitting around eating sugar watching Rocky IV and this tune came up. Today You Become Man. My big brother started harping on about it. This got me nervous, as I hadn’t (still haven’t) played it to my old man. Tam asked if we could stick it on, I told him I didn’t have the album link. File’s expired. I then sank into a kind of dread, what being a little hash stoned, running it around in my head over and over: did I just make all that up? Fuck. Have I gone too far here? I must have sexed up the dossier at least. Surely. I’m forever sexing up the dossier. This will be the end of it. Out of the will levels. Cheerio Bashir. Fuck.

Before long, in lieu of the recording, my big brother started recounting his experience in full. This was a relief. We’d get straight to the bottom of it.  No festering anxiety to spoil what’s left of Rocky IV. This was earlier than my big brothers usual slot time with the circumcision anecdote. Usually you have to wait until you’re deep in the session before he brings out the big gun. Once you’re lucidly enjoying your night, around 3 or 5am, once you’re totally relaxed, that’s usually when he’ll strike. A matinee performance for the whole family it was then. To my absolute joy, his version matched up to mine almost perfectly, with nominal protest from my dad as to the details. Then a deeper joy, a continuation of the tale which I’d not yet heard. A post script from hell. Several years after the olde worlde, anaesthtic-less gential mutialion/enhancement of my big brother, he was a guest at the ceremony of our younger cousin Amine. According to Tam, after they slice off the mini neck warmer, they place it into a little satchel. Tam made it his business to get a hold of this satchel right after Amine’s moment of truth, then to dance around the room flailing it up above his own grinning head in celebration of this newly minted manhood.

I can think of few weirder things that might happen to you at age five then getting shipped form northern England to Kabyle for this. It’s kind of like alienation squared. Once you rotate back to Huddersfield, who have you got to share your experience with? At least the little lads in Maillot have got each other, they’re brothers of the olde worlde chop. The chop is part of their collective identity. It doesn’t mark you out as utterly unique, as somehow outside everybody else. My brother is one of those people that turn everyhtng into a joke. His sense of humour is abstract in the extreme. Sometimes I wonder if he’s pathologically incapable of taking anything seriously. Reality is there to be laughed at, and little else. That’s not to say he’s devoid of empathy, it’s just his basic way of computing the world is through ridicule. There’s no off button. I wonder if his making abstraction his homeland truly began with the absurdity in the high Atlas? And in turn, given that I only became an artist pretty much because my big bro told me to when I was 11, is it where a large part of my own leaning into the strange begins? What made Tam inevitably made me, growing up in umpteen different places, one constant was your big brother. I tried to emulate him in everything. Maybe I’m clutching at straws there. Appropriating his suffering. I don’t know. I’m certainly commodifying it. One’s thing for sure though, if you had to choose one of the three Saoudi brothers with whom to fight a war, you’d choose Tam each time. If we’re talking a frontline roll, at least.

New album “Forgiveness is Yours” is out April 26 via Domino Recordings.

Broadcast present two new albums for 2024: “Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006-2009”, and “Distant Call – Collected Demos 2000-2006”

“Spell Blanket” comprises songs and sketches drawn from Trish’s extensive archive of 4-track tapes and MiniDiscs.  It features demos from 2006-2009 that the late Trish Keenan recorded on four-track and were potentially for the group’s fourth proper studio album (Trish died on January 14th, 2011.) That’s to be released May 3rd via Warp Records ,The recordings lay the groundwork for what would have been Broadcast’s fifth album, offering a window into Trish and James’ creative process during the post-Tender Buttons period from 2006-2009.

Then on September 28th (which would’ve been Trish’s 56th birthday), “Distant Call”, in contrast to “Spell Blanket“, is a collection of early demos that were worked into finished productions appearing on Haha Sound, Tender Buttons and The Future Crayon singles/EPs from the era, as well as two songs discovered by Broadcast co-founder James Cargill after Trish’s passing: “Come Back To Me” and “Please Call To Book” which were “her response to Broadcast’s 2006 ‘Let’s Write A Song’ project, where fans were asked to submit lyrics on a postcard which would then be worked into a finished song.” .

“Distant Call” is a closing of the door on Broadcast and will be the last release from the band.

“Spell Blanket” – Collected Demos 2006-2009 will be released via Warp Records on May 3rd.

“Distant Call” – Collected Demos 2000-2006 will be released via Warp Records on September 28th.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds have announced new album “That Delicious Vice” which will be out April 19th via In the Red. It’s their first album in eight years, and the first with a new trio line-up of the band which now features multi-instrumentalist Mark Cisneros (ex-The Make Up) alongside long time drummer Ron Miller.

Kid Congo, effortlessly cool guitar goon for The Bad Seeds, The Gun Club and The Cramps returns with his Pink Monkey Birds in tow. Combining pulpy garage pop, slide-guitar country and latin rhythms, “That Delicious Vice” is a riot from start to finish and also notably features a melding of the minds between Kid Congo and Alice Bag, something latently desired by any LA punk fanatic. Released by In The Red, “That Delicious Vice“, will prove impossible to put down, and possibly quite tasty.

“Because Mark is playing guitar, sometimes we have songs with two guitars,” says Kid, who has over the years spent time in The Gun Club, The Bad Seeds and The Cramps. “And then sometimes, he plays bass on a bass six [i.e. — the electric bass version of the mariachi instrument, the bajo sexto]. So, that is a new development. We lost a member and decided to try to do it as a three piece — more space, you know?”

The first single from the album is “Wicked World,” a duet with fellow L.A. punk legend Alice Bag. “Yeah, we were around that ground zero, that tight circle of friends,” says Kid, “But there was a lot of cliquiness going on, even though the scene was so small. Everyone knew each other, but I was more with The Screamers and she was more with The Bags and the punk thing. You know, I was more arty farty!” 

Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief is releasing a new solo album, “Bright Future”, via 4AD. Now she has shared another song from it, “Free Treasure.” It was shared via a lyric video.

In 2020, Lenker released two solo albums, one simply titled “songs” and another simply titled “instrumentals”, via 4AD. “Bright Future” Philip Weinrobe co-produced the album, which also features contributions from Nick Hakim, Mat Davidson, and Josefin Runsteen.

In the autumn of 2022, Lenker was pleased that three of her friends (“some of my favourite people,” as she describes Hakim, Davidson, and Runsteen in a press release) had the time to take a break from their own music careers and join her at Double Infinity, an analogue studio in a forest. The three musicians didn’t really know each other that well. “I had no idea what the outcome would be,” Lenker admits, but says the results turned out well. “It was magical,” she says.

Of Davidson, Lenker says: “I’ve known Mat a long time. It doesn’t matter what instrument, his spirit just pours through.” Lenker has known Hakim since she was 17. “The way Nick would hold my songs, he would put every ounce of love,” she says. Of the trio of collaborators, Lenker adds: “I think the thing these people have in common, they are some of the best listeners I know musically. They have extreme presence.”

Summing up the recording of “Bright Future“, she says: “It felt like everyone’s nervous systems released. Once we were IN the song, somehow we just knew. No one stopped a take. We didn’t listen back. I only listened after everybody else left.”

We are very pleased to introduce you to “As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again” our ninth studio album, out June 14th on our very own YABB Records.

We know that June is a ways away; in the meantime, please set aside 20 minutes of your day to find a comfortable place to either sit or lie down and feast your ears on “Joan in the Garden,” the last song on what is our first intentional double album. The song also features Mike Mills of R.E.M. on piano and backing vocals.

For over 20 years, The Decemberists have been among the most original, daring, and thrilling American rock bands. Their distinctive brand of hyperliterate folk-rock set them apart from the start, releasing nine full-length albums that are unbound by genre and highly ambitious. Now the beloved indie band is back with their first new album in six years, “As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again” – not only the longest Decemberists album to date (and their first intentional, proper double-LP) but also their most empathetic and accessible, its 13 songs like semaphores of mutual recognition for our fraught times and faint hope.

Reuniting with producer Tucker Martine (R.E.M., Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens) who began working with the band on “The Crane Wife”, the album features R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, The Shins’ James Mercer and Lizzie Ellison on background vocals. Songwriter Colin Meloy will tell you proudly, is the best Decemberists albums and perhaps the ultimate realization of 22 years of work.

In many ways, “As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again” feels like an aptly titled renewal for The Decemberists. The first full-length release on YABB Records, the band’s own label, after a run of nearly two decades with Capitol. As they were once, here are the Decemberists again, now an independent band empowered by singing stories that sound instantly familiar and convey some bit of hard-won wisdom.

Official audio for “Joan in the Garden” from The Decemberists’ upcoming album, ‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again,’ out June 14th

Melbourne four-piece Parsnip who have recently announced details of “Behold”; their new album, set to be released 26th April on Upset The Rhythm, are back with a new song, “Turn To Love.” This time around the band looks to the spiritual for divine inspiration. The track expands on an English translation of a poem by Indian saint Mirabai, featured in “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda. Parsnip’s energetic, DIY punk sound collides with Mirabai’s message of love being the key to finding the divine, a sentiment echoed in the song’s closing lines.

The music video for “Turn To Love” is just as eclectic as its inspiration. A burst of colour during the chorus evokes the transition to the magical Land of Oz. Influences from photographer Serge Lutens, the Oskar Schlemmer Triadic Ballet, Yohji Yamamoto’s fashion campaigns, and even costumes from the Ziegfeld Follies and American circuses (1870s-1950s) all come together to create a visually stunning accompaniment to the song.

Of the track Parsnips Paris Rebel Richens says “Imagine what the world would be like if everyone stopped for a moment or two every day and fixed their attention on the heart. All anyone really wants is love. This song is a plea, for everything that you do in the outer, the most profound changes must be made within. It is not a weakness, if anything, choosing love is courageous and wise.”