On September 15th we are releasing a Deluxe Version of ‘Expert in a Dying Field’
It’s a double LP! It includes ‘A Real Thing’ and ‘Watching The Credits’, as well as demos and a solo acoustic recordings. The acoustic version of ‘I Told You That I Was Afraid’ is out today and you can listen it in all its wobbly glory. On The Beths’ deluxe version of the album “Expert In A Dying Field”, ElizabethStokes’ songwriting positions her somewhere between being a novelist and a documentarian. The songs collected here are autobiographical, but they’re also character sketches of relationships — platonic, familial, romantic — and more importantly, their aftermaths.
The shapes and ghosts left in absences. The question that hangs in the air: what do you do with how intimately versed you’ve become in a person, once they’re gone from your life? The third LP from the New Zealand quartet houses 12 jewels of tight, guitar-heavy songs that worm their way into your head, an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz.
Thanks Lily Paris West for the artwork, and Bevin Smith for mixing the acoustic tracks 🙂 And thanks Lindsey Byrnes for the photo 📸 And also Carpark Records and Ivy League Records
A Certain Ratio return with a brand new 4-track EP set for release on limited edition 12” vinyl and digitally on 22 September 2023. The new release follows their latest album 1982, and includes three newly commissioned remixes of tracks from the album, alongside a brand-new track ‘Day by Day’, written and recorded with Ellen Beth Abdi – a seamless extension of 1982 to complete their playfully named 2023 EP.
We’re excited to announce a brand new 4-track EP follow up to 1982 called “2023” (naturally). it features 3 new remixes by our friends Werkha, The Emperor Machine and Jade Parker plus a brand new track Day by Day written & recorded with Ellen Beth Abdi.
Thrilled to announce I will release my sixth studio album ‘Jonny’ Friday, October 13th.
On his latest album as The Drums, New York-based indie pop artist Jonny Pierce plunges into the work of healing from childhood trauma and the long shadow it casts over adulthood.
The sparkling, eponymous Jonny unfurls a love letter to a galaxy of younger selves, all hungry to be nourished, all rejoicing now that they finally get to belong. Playful, heartbreaking, raucous, and serene all in turn, Jonny embraces the mess of life in all its facets. It renders the magic that happens when you fall in love with yourself down to the marrow.
Soaring to alt-pop prestige on arrival, The Drums have released studio albums that deftly walk the line of aching melancholy and irresistible pop sensibilities, presented through a kaleidoscope of pastel guitars, reverb, modular synthesizers and drum machines. It’s a sound that’s wholly unique, and unmistakably The Drums.
16 songs birthed out of my deepest wounds and out of my wildest joys. When I listen back to it, I hear my soul reflected back at me. I think you’ll find yourself somewhere in it too. For today however, I offer you a brand new single from the album. Listen to “Better”
released July 12th, 2023
Written, performed, produced, engineered and mixed by Jonny Pierce All Instruments played by Jonny Pierce
A 5CD set containing remastered 84 tracks; 52 tracks are on CD for the first time of which 22 tracks are previously unreleased. Beautifully packaged in a high-quality clamshell box containing the 5 individual CDs in card wallet sleeves. Featuring expanded versions of the band’s first three albums plus two additional discs containing their first two EPs, tracks by Landscape III and a comprehensive selection of 7” edits, 12” extended versions, remixes, B-sides, instrumentals and live tracks. With a fully illustrated 52-page perfect bound book containing brand new sleevenotes, lyrics, biographies, archive photos, original artwork, press cuttings and more.
The set includes expanded versions of the band’s first three albums plus two additional discs containing their first two much-loved “Event Horizon” EPs, tracks by Landscape III and a comprehensive selection of 7″ edits, 12″ extended versions, remixes, B-sides, instrumentals and live tracks + a 2023 remix of top five hit ‘Einstein a Go-Go’
All tracks were mastered from high-resolution digitisations of the original analogue master tapes. The ‘previously released’ tracks from the analogue stereo two tracks, the ‘remixes’ and ‘instrumentals’ from digitisations of the original analogue multi-tracks, and the ‘live’ tracks were mastered from edited digitisations of the original analogue stereo live recordings. Released with the full involvement of all the original band members.
On 21st July we will release ‘Landscape A Go-Go: The Story Of Landscape 1977-83’, a 5CD collection of the seminal catalogue from the synth-pop pioneers who spearheaded a new electronic movement over four decades ago, best known for the groundbreaking singles ‘Einstein a Go-Go’ and ‘Norman Bates’.
‘Landscape A Go Go’ features expanded versions of the band’s first three albums (‘Landscape’, ‘From theTea-rooms of Mars …. to the Hell-holes of Uranus’, ‘Manhattan Boogie-Woogie’), plus two additional discs containing their much-loved “Event Horizon” EPs, tracks by Landscape III and a comprehensive selection of 7″ edits, 12″ extended versions, remixes, B-sides, instrumentals, and live tracks, alongside a new, 2023 remix of top five hit ‘Einstein A Go-Go’.
Notable highlights include the electro-pop brilliance of Landscape’s first vocal release ‘European Man’ (with both the 7″ and 12″ versions available for the first time ever on CD) – presciently catalogued ‘EDM 1’ for Electronic Dance Music – which dealt with the impact of computers on society and universal basic income, alongside the previously unreleased tracks ‘(I’d Love to) Fly Away’ and ‘When the Chips Are Down’, recorded at the start of the ‘Tea-rooms’ sessions. In addition, this exhaustive collection also includes a fully illustrated 52-page booklet containing brand new sleeve notes, lyrics, biographies, archive photos, original artwork, press cuttings and more.
“The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald” was on the original “Black Album” release. ‘Alien’ AND ‘Untitled 1’ are from these sessions. Think of this as a companion record to the “Black Album”.
“What will theDandys do next,” you ask? Well, we’ve got some shows lined up for this October with The Black Angels we know you’ll flip over.
Courtney Taylor-Taylor Peter Holmström Zia McCabe Brent DeBoer
Last month, L.A. psychedelic rockers Frankie and the Witch Fingers returned with a new single called “Mild Davis,” which continued the punky retro haze the group has come to be known for within a community of like-minded artists in their Southern Californian garage-rock scene. Yet “Futurephobic,” the follow-up single from their forthcoming record “Data Doom”,feels much more in line with the album title’s vintage dystopian sci-fi connotations, swapping weed-smoke riffs for frigid new wave pulses and staccato vocal deliveries.
“The main riff was an idea we came up with during the writing process for our album “Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters”…but we kept it in our back pockets, as it wasn’t quite fitting in with the theme of that album,” the band shares. “When we started writing “Data Doom“, it re-emerged very organically and everyone latched onto the idea surprisingly fast and ran with it. We expanded on the main riff and came up with the other parts and overall arrangement while writing with our new lineup in our studio in LA. The whole process went surprisingly smoothly.
We added backing vocals and overdubs while on tour last year in Europe, doing all the passes to complete the song from various apart-hotels, attics in France and Amsterdam.”
Although the recording process was smooth, the recording’s post-punky flow is anything but. To match the song’s ’80s B-movie aesthetic is a video that leans into that decade’s sci-fi/horror imagery, wherein Ronald McDonald does a pretty bad job of selling the viewer his product.
The Los Angeles psych-punks’ new LP “Data Doom” lands September 1st via Greenway Records and The Reverberation Appreciation Society.
A new box set from the Doors titled “Live at the Matrix 1967: The Original Masters” will arrive on September. 8th, showcasing the group’s live prowess as they were on the cusp of stardom. The Doors were a few months away from stardom in March 1967 when they played five sparsely attended shows at a small club in San Francisco called The Matrix.
The collection will be available on a three-CD and five-LP configurations, limited to 21,000 and 14,000 copies, respectively. Bootlegs of The Matrix shows have circulated among fans for years and were popular despite the poor audio quality of most copies. The sound began improving in 1997 when the first two songs from The Matrix shows were officially released on The Doors: Box Set. Even more performances followed in 2008 on “Live at the Matrix 1967” regrettably, it was discovered soon after that all the recordings were sourced from third-generation tapes, not the originals.
“Live at the Matrix 1967” is culled from five shows that the Doors played in March of that year at the Matrix, a San Francisco pizza parlor-turned-nightclub co-owned by Peter Abram and Jefferson Airplane founder Marty Balin. The performances have circulated as bootlegs for years, and the songs on the upcoming box set have been sourced entirely from Abram’s original master recordings and remastered by the Doors’ longtime engineer and mixer Bruce Botnick.
The vinyl version of Live at the Matrix 1967 contains all 37 songs performed across the five shows. A March 7th rendition of the jazz instrumental “Bag’s Groove” is exclusive to the vinyl set and comes on a 7″ single — one of two never-before-heard recordings along with “All Blues.”
The “Live at the Matrix 1967” performances took place just two months after the Doors released their eponymous debut album and six weeks before the single release of “Light My Fire,” which catapulted to the top of the charts in the summer of 1967. “We were on the lip of great success, and we didn’t know it,” drummer John Densmore said of the landmark recordings.
The Doors ‘Live at the Matrix 1967’ Box Set Arriving in September
Cheerbleederz are Kathryn, Phoebe and Sophie, three pals from London. They formed the band through a mutual appreciation for their other projects and the desire to write music in a collaborative, and unselfconscious space.
Already boasting a fine pedigree of lo-fi underground hits between their individual members’ various bands (Fresh, ME REX, and Happy Accidents), with their new project the trio have hit upon an instantly infectious brand of no-frills, melody-driven punk. Taking influence from the likes of The Breeders, Snail Mail, Hop Along, Alvvays, Charly Bliss and Cayetana, their songs touch thoughtfully on the lived experiences of women and marginalised people
It’s here! The magnificore DIY trio of true punks Cheerbleederz have finally unleashed their new album ‘Even In Jest’ to the world. Oh world, YOU. ARE. WELCOME!
There are wonderful words fizzing all about the internet, but these ones from Punktastic are very pleasant and will get you right to the point if you’ve not heard these chums before.
“Sitting about halfway between the bright pop sound of The Big Moon and the more DIY punk of bands like Martha, it feels friendly and accessible but with an edge. At times…wonderfully noisy including angular guitar tones…you can’t escape this being an intensely likeable record.”
London-based ‘indie-supergroup’ SUEP announce their long-awaited debut mini-album “Shop”, a collection of six oddball, car-boot-sale pop songs with a sprinkling of theatrical storytelling. Led by Georgie Stott (of Porridge Radio, Garden Centre) and Josh Harvey, SUEP was born out of a near-decade of playing in sheds and barns with like minded personnel, holding a mutual love for Paul McCartney, Jona Lewie, the B-52s, Devo and other performative freaks enjoying themselves.
Following a move to London from Brighton, the pair added George Nicholls (The GN Band, Joanna Gruesome, The Tubs), Will William Deacon (PC World, Garden Centre), and Ollie Chapman (Boil King) to the line-up. The five-piece take turns writing songs and taking the lead vocal duties in a wonderfully playful but coherent collaboration, with their debut mini-album “Shop” being a kaleidoscopic off kilter pop ride, taking the listener through haunted castles, deprived encounters, days lost to the imagination in bed, and through the integral friendships that give SUEP the energy to keep dancing to their own beat.
The album was arranged and recorded in the Red Lion Boys Club, an ex-youth centre in which Georgie and Josh both lived. Using equipment collected by Josh in his travels as a bootsale and market trader, the sports hall was transformed into a makeshift studio for a few days, with sessions conducted by producer Matthew Green (Sniffany & The Nits, The Tubs, etc.)
Mark Riley (BBC 6 Music) described SUEP’s debut single and album opener, ‘Domesticated Dream’ (2021) as “perfect pop music.”
The joyfully kitsch track brims with a 70s Yamaha disco beat, deep bass, nostalgic drum machines, and hooky melodies. Possibly the most psychedelic and infectious track born out of lockdown, it tackles homelife, drinking too much, and making big plans that never come to fruition, but with a big technicoloured positivity for the future of the human-race, with the chorus’ refrain, “the psychedelic 4000s,” predicting the return of the psychedelic Age of Aquarius in a couple of millennia time.
The following single ‘Misery’ (2021) is pure cosmic swing-pop wizardry in part inspired by spy music and The Supremes. Ollie, The track’s baritone vocalist, describes it as “A love song disguised as a song about loss. It’s about cherishing the things that matter but it’s also about having the courage to say goodbye,” with each line of the song a small story about a different character.
Whilst latest “Shop” taster ‘In Good Health’ is darkly euphoric like a pleasantly strange meeting of Siouxsie Sioux and Jona Lewie. It’s a playfully discombobulating mix of 80s jangly guitar, chirpy keyboard and moody post-punk tackling mental health, drug addiction, and the power of friendship, written after the song’s vocalist Georgie came out of hospital following a mental health crisis. “I wanted to write a song that encapsulated how important my relationships with my friends and boyfriend were at that time” she explains “…and one that also felt dark like I did at the time. I couldn’t go outside due to anxiety surrounding my health so I stayed inside for weeks.
People would visit and watch films with me or let me tattoo them or make music with me. My community helped me recover.” Elsewhere on “Shop” is ‘Just The Job’ fronted by Harvey and described by him as “About the relief of accepting a menial existence, and allowing life to be boring – but (within that) how the small things are the important ones, how pulling a sicky or extra long lunch break are important things to do for yourself, and how easy it is to miss the joy of every day once you get comfortable in a routine.” It’s an anthem for working people who’ve had enough – and a crowd favourite at SUEP gigs.
The darker undertones and post-punk angles of the Georgie-fronted ‘Onions’ is inspired by the crapness of cliques, with the band calling the song “A cry of welcome to all;” and finally the hooky ‘Friend of Mine,’ described as “A love letter to all the people that come and go throughout your life no matter how long you know them” – another number recalling Jona Lewie, mixed with a little sprinkling of Jonathan Richman in Harvey’s vocal delivery.
Having gone from high school acoustic DIY punk to homeless Venice boardwalk busker to acclaimed folk/blues-rooted singer/songwriter, Sunny War flings poison-tipped arrows on her startlingly personal new album — many pointing right at her, some already having found flesh. Largely written in her LosAngeles apartment with the lights off and empty bottles surrounding her after a breakup, the songs grapple with depression, addiction, and love’s death, yet are inviting in their darkness. The tone is set with opener “Love’s Death Bed,” its gloom floating on cascades of deft fingerpicking and spirited, gospel-like call-and-response with a chorus including guest Allison Russell.
The mix of frank emotions and engaging tones continues throughout, from spritely group sings to muted solitary contemplation. There’s fire too: a cover of Ween’s “Baby Bitch” features a children’s chorus (in truth, three adult men with voices sped up, Chipmunks-style) singing “Fuck you, you stinking asshole.
“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the now Nashville-based singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso known as Sunny War. “One of them is very self-destructive, and the other is trying to work with that other half to keep things balanced.” That’s the central conflict on her fourth album, the eclectic and innovative “Anarchist Gospel”, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out.
Extreme emotions can make that battle all the more perilous, yet from such trials Sunny has crafted a set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles, as though she’s marshaling all her forces to get her ideas across: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments. She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes and a highly innovative guitarist who deploys spidery riffs throughout every song.
Because it promises not healing but resilience and perseverance, because it doesn’t take shit for granted, “Anarchist Gospel” holds up under such intense emotional pressure, acknowledging the pain of living while searching for something that lies just beyond ourselves, some sense of balance between the bad and the good.
The Fat Angel Sings 