The Fat Angel Sings

Atmos Bloom is the dreamy, gazey duo made up of Manchester-based musicians Curtis Paterson & Tilda Gratton. the project began as a means to escape from a lock-downed world… but later bloomed into something a little bit more special.

Through a desire to explore the indie duo’s shared love of dream pop and music they had written. Shortly after the band’s formation, Atmos Bloom’s debut and self-titled EP was released employing lo-fi recording techniques and offering a form of cathartic escapism during troubled times.

The band is heavily inspired by bands such as Beach Fossils, Castlebeat and Fazerdaze with their lo-fi recording techniques and soothing dream pop.

Offering a blissful lo-fi soundscape, Atmos Bloom is a perfect bedroom pop record to drift off to at night.

released July 15th, 2022

Parlophone Records proudly announces David Bowie “Divine Symmetry”, a four-CD, one blu-ray box set. This collection celebrates the twelve months running up to the release of the album “Hunky Dory” in December 1971 via home demos, BBC radio sessions and live and studio recordings.

“Divine Symmetry” contains 48 previously unreleased tracks/demos from the period, and new alternative mixes of “Hunky Dory” tracks by original co-producer Ken Scott.

As the title suggests, the set is an accompaniment to “Hunky Dory” in the same way that the Conversation Piece set was to “Space Oddity” and the The Width Of A Circle set was to “The Man Who Sold The World“.

Two books accompany “Divine Symmetry”, a 100-page hardback book featuring exclusive memorabilia and photos alongside a 60-page replica composite of Bowie’s notebooks from the era featuring handwritten lyrics, costume drawings, recording notes and set lists. The sleeve notes have been written for the release by Bowie expert Tris Penna, along with contributions from “Hunky Dory” co-producer Ken Scott, lifelong Bowie friends Geoff MacCormack and George Underwood, singer Dana Gillespie, guitarist Mark Pritchett, Friars Aylesbury promoter David Stopps, publisher Bob Grace and photographer Louanne Richards.

‘Kooks’, recorded by Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson for the BBC’s Sounds Of The 70s presented by Bob Harris is available now for download and streaming single. It was recorded at Kensington House, Shepherds Bush, London, Studio T1 for BBC Radio on 21st September, 1971 and broadcast on 4th October, 1971. 1971 was a pivotal year for Bowie. He signed a record deal with RCA Records, he met Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop while in New York, became a father and penned the song ‘Kooks’ as a show of paternal pride, played live for the first time that June with Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder, the band that would later be christened the Spiders From Mars and recorded the classic album “Hunky Dory”.

Teen Suicide have released their long-awaited new album, “honeybee table at the butterfly feast”, from Run For Cover Records. Having already drawn early attention from the likes of Stereogum, The FADER, BrooklynVegan, Paste Magazine, and more, the album offers some of the band’s most ambitious and varied work to date–even for a group who have always been known to keep listeners on their toes. Teen Suicide mastermind, Sam Ray, wrote the sixteen song opus while working through serious health issues and a very real sense of urgency permeates the album’s wide range of sounds and ideas.

What would an autumn playlist even be without at least one overly emo, slightly overwrought, yet astoundingly pretty acoustic guitar ballad?. The (in)appropriately named Teen Suicide managed to overcome their inconsiderate band name to create one of my favourite albums this year, and one of its many highlights finds singer Sam Ray pining for a lost love at precisely this time of year.

Recalling early Beach Boys ballads like “Your Summer Dream” and “Lonely Sea” he sings, “I fell in love with you the first time in spring/ So it’s only right we’re leaving now the leaves have changed.

Since forming Teen Suicide in 2009, Ray has led the project through endless sonic shifts and evolutions, always leaving listeners on their toes but completely along for the ride. From scrappy lo-fi punk to bombastic post-rock to ambient soundscapes, the most consistent thing about Teen Suicide–and its various permutations, like American Pleasure Club–is Ray’s intense creativity and the deeply compelling songwriting that results from it. “honeybee table at the butterfly feast” was written over the course of several years while Ray struggled with a mysterious respiratory illness, which made it very difficult to perform and record—and eventually led to a near death experience. Yet the album is still vibrant and wide-ranging with Ray’s artistic restlessness resulting in a genre-spanning journey that finds the songwriter beginning to unpack a new phase of life.

Teen Suicide has never been an easy project to pigeonhole, and that’s truer than ever on the mercurial “honeybee table“, as Ray embraces his and all of our everyday battles to find fulfillment, as well as an expansive sonic palette, with wide-open arms.” – Paste Magazine

“get high, breathe underwater (#3)” by Teen Suicide, from the upcoming album ‘honeybee table at the butterfly feast’ out August 26th, 2022 via Run For Cover Records

It could only be called alchemy, the transformative magic that happens during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ most tuned-in moments in the studio, when their unique chemistry sparks opens a portal, and out comes a song like “Maps” or “Zero” or the latest addition to their canon, “Spitting Off The Edge Of The World ft. Perfume Genius, an epic shot-to-the- heart of pure YYYs beauty and power. A thunderstorm of a return is what the legendary trio has in store for us on “Cool It Down”, their fifth studio album and their first since 2013’s “Mosquito”. The eight-track collection, bound to be a landmark in their catalogue, is an expert distillation of their best gifts that impels you to move, and cry, and listen closely.

“To all who have waited, our dear fans, thank you, our fever to tell has returned, and writing these songs came with its fair share of chills, tears, and euphoria when the pain lifts and truth is revealed. Don’t have to tell you how much we’ve been going through in the last nine years since our last record, because you’ve been going through it too, and we love you and we see you, and we hope you feel the feels from the music we’ve made. No shying away from the feels, or backing down from what’s been gripping all of us these days. So yes we’ve taken our time, happy to report when it’s ready it really does just flow out,” says Karen O.”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs played two shows in the United Kingdom this summer. Playing the O2 Apollo in Manchester, England, on June 5th, At the O2 Academy Brixton in London on June 7th, with support from Dry Cleaning and Anika are also on the bill. Karen O and co. have promised to play new songs at the shows.

Whatever happened to Yeah Yeah Yeahs? While their peers in groups like The Strokes and Interpol have remained active since their early-’00s come-up, artists such as The Walkmen and The Moldy Peaches officially called it quits (more or less), and LCD Soundsystem has, uh, done both (to say nothing of the front people from this scene who have quietly pivoted to acting careers), there’s been little word on the YYYs front since returning to the festival stage in 2017 with a vague “watch this space” message circulating with news of those shows. 

Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ statement reads: OK UK! We are coming to lend our light to dark ages and holy shit are we ready to play our hearts out for you!! Yeah it’s been 9 years since we’ve graced your club stages! Yeah we’ve got some tunes so fresh and so new to try out on you! Yeah the bill is so MAJOR with Dry Cleaning and Anika in London and English Teacher in Manchester. Dress up! Make a night of it! Support your fave band that you may have seen debut at Brixton back in ’02!! Yeah let’s not wait another decade to see each other again! CANNOT WAIT! They don’t love ya like we do!! Luv YYYs

“Yeah we’ve got some tunes so fresh and so NEW to try out on you!” Alongside some festival sets this summer, including Primavera Sound, the dates mark the band’s live return for their first shows since 2019. 

“The Will To Live” was produced by Titus Andronicus singer-songwriter Patrick Stickles and Canadian icon Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen) at the latter’s Hotel 2 Tango studio in Montreal. Drawing on maximalist rock epics from “Who’s Next” to “Hysteria”, Bilerman and Stickles have crafted the richest, densest, and hardest hitting sound for Titus Andronicus yet. All at once, the record matches the sprawl and scope of the band’s most celebrated work, while also honing their ambitious attack to greater effect than ever before.

“It may strike some as ironic we had to go to Canada to record our equivalent to “Born in the USA,” quips Stickles, “but the pursuit of Ultimate Rock knows no borders.” For his recent stretch of personal stability, he credits a newfound domestic bliss and steadfast mental health regimen (“Lamictal is a hell of a drug”) as well as the endurance of what has become the longest-running consistent line-up of Titus Andronicus, Liam Betson on guitar, R.J. Gordon on bass, and Chris Wilson on drums.

On the crueller side of the coin, however, “The Will To Live” was created in large part as an attempt to process the untimely 2021 death of Matt “Money” Miller, the founding keyboardist of the band and Stickles’ closest cousin. Stickles explains: “The passing of my dearest friend forced me to recognize not only the precious and fragile nature of life, but also the interconnectivity of all life. Loved ones we have lost are really not lost at all, as they, and we still living, are all component pieces of a far larger continuous organism, which both precedes and succeeds our illusory individual selves, united through time by (you guessed it) the will to live.

When Titus Andronicus made their long-awaited return to the stage in 2021, it was to celebrate the anniversary of their landmark breakthrough “The Monitor”, and the act of playing that material before an ecstatic audience left the band determined to deliver an album that would reach for those same lofty heights, relying this time less on the reckless fire of youth and more on the experience and perspective at which a band only arrives with a thousand shows under their belt. Through this golden ratio, Titus Andronicus have arrived at the peak of their creative powers. From its adrenalizing opening instrumental “My Mother Is Going to Kill Me” to its wistful closing benediction “69 Stones,”

“The Will to Live” conjures a vast landscape and sends the listener on a rocket ride from peak to vertiginous peak. Rock fans will find themselves a feast, whether they crave barn-burning rock anthems such as “(I’m) Screwed” and “All Through the Night,” rapid-fire lyrical gymnastics “Baby Crazy”, symphonic punk throwdowns “Dead Meat”, or an adventurous excursion into the darkness that delivers thrills as it breezes boldly past the seven-minute mark, “An Anomaly.”

As if that wasn’t enough gas for the tank, “The Will to Live” features sterling contributions from members of the Hold Steady, Arcade Fire, and the E Street Band, as well as duets with the aforementioned Betson, former Titus Andronicus drummer Eric Harm, and Josée Caron of the Canadian rock band Partner.

The album comes packaged with gorgeous triple-gatefold artwork by illustrious illustrator Nicole Rifkin, a Hieronymus Bosch–inspired triptych which mirrors the three-part structure of the narrator’s perilous voyage across the corresponding three sides of vinyl.

All together, this esteemed ensemble, with Stickles and Bilerman determined and defiant at the helm, have found “The Will to Live“—now, the question is… will you?

The forthcoming seventh studio album by Titus Andronicus, ‘The Will to Live,’ available September 30th from Merge Records.

The iconic Pixies forged an influential path for alt-rock during their first era, while their post 2004 reunion has seen them alchemize more sophisticated dark arts — a return which has them add another three U.K. Top 10 albums to the three they achieved on their first run. Now as fired up as ever before, Pixies will release their eighth studio album “Doggerel”, a mature yet visceral record of gruesome folk, ballroom pop and brutal rock, haunted by the ghosts of affairs and indulgences, driven wild by cosmic forces and envisioning digital afterlives where no God has provided one.

And all the while, right there on the news, another distant storm approaches. Guitarist Joey Santiago says, “This time around we have grown. We no longer have under two-minute songs. We have little breaks, more conventional arrangements but still our twists in there.”

Singer-guitarist Black Francis adds, “We’re trying to do things that are very big and bold and orchestrated. The punky stuff, I really like playing it but you just cannot artificially create that shit. There’s another way to do this, there’s other things we can do with this extra special energy that we’re encountering.”

“Doggerel“ is a mature yet visceral record of gruesome folk, ballroom pop and brutal rock, haunted by the ghosts of affairs and indulgences, driven wild by cosmic forces and envisioning digital afterlives where no God has provided one. And all the while, right there on the news, another distant storm approaches.

the new album “Doggerel”, out on September 30th.

“The Blues Don’t Lie” is the amazing new album from Buddy Guy, and is the legend’s 34th studio album, and the follow up to 2018’s Grammy-winning album “The Blues Is Alive and Well”. Produced by songwriter/drummer Tom Hambridge, “The Blues Don’t Lie” features guest stars including Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, James Taylor, Jason Isbell and more. The album will be released exactly 65 years to the day that Guy arrived in Chicago on a train from Baton Rouge in September of 1957, with just the clothes on his back an his guitar.

His life would never be the same, and he was born again in the blues. “The Blues Don’t Lie” tells the story of his lifelong journey. Reflecting on this body of work, Buddy says ‘I promised them all  B.B., Muddy, Sonny Boy — as long as I’m alive I’m going to keep the blues alive.’ He has indeed proven that again.

‘The Blues Don’t Lie’ is available everywhere September 30th.

The album “While Across a Crowded Room” isn’t considered among his best works, songs like the tension filled “When the Spell is Broken,” the spellbinding ballad “Love in a Faithless Country” and the harder-rocking “Fire in the Engine Room” are important to anyone’s Richard Thompson collection. He was still reeling from a contentious divorce from Linda Thompson at the time as titles of those songs and others such as “She Twists the Knife Again” make it clear. Of course Thompson isn’t known for cushy love songs, but this is yet another example of how his witty, incisive wordplay, stunning guitar work and knack for catchy melodies makes even the edgiest lyrics often sing-along worthy.

Thompson always has enormously gifted backing musicians, but this band, which includes the singing/guitar playing duo of Christine Collister and Clive Gregson (they also had a clutch of excellent albums together) along with the great Gerry Conway on drums was one of his finest. Collister’s vocals in particular are beautiful and pointed as they substitute for Linda Thompson on reprises of tunes recorded with his ex-wife and revisited here. Gregson is a wonderful second guitarist even if “Summer Rain,” his solo moment, slows down the set’s momentum as does Collister’s eight minute impressive but snoozy “Warm Love Gone Cold.” Thompson guitar is searing throughout, whipping off his typically inventive guitar on six-string showcases like “Shoot Out the Lights,” “Wall of Death” and especially a spectacular, nearly nine minute, concert closing, pre-encore “Tear Stained Letter.” He ramps up the drama on “For Shame of Doing Wrong” with wonderful harmonies from Gregson and Collister, the dark, yearning ballad “How I Wanted To” and a riveting “Love in a Faithless Country,” the latter performance alone is worth the price of admission.

As a teaser for Thompson fans, the final tune “Skull and Cross Bones” (an obscure rockabilly cover originally by Sparkle Moore) with a typically insane guitar solo, never appeared on any Thompson studio album. With its “you’re a jinx to my soul” lyrics, it seems like another kiss-off to his ex-wife.

Even with a few too many ballads, this is not only a long awaited expanded title to Thompson’s huge catalogue, but an essential addition to any fan’s collection and a reasonable place to start for anyone unfamiliar with his now-legendary talents.

 The “Perro” Tapes, the Perro Sessions and the ’70 David Crosby Sessions. Each with a slightly different track count and running order. In short, Perro (Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra) was the name given to a loose camaraderie of Bay area players and their simpatico southern California brethren, including, but not limited to, members of CSNY, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and beyond. Regarding the sessions leading up to Crosby’s 1971 LP “If I Could Only Remember My Name”, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Greg Rolie and Mike Shrieve. While never commercially released, a number of the “Perro” tracks would later appear (re-recorded) on various studio efforts by the principals involved, namely said David Crosby LP.

A fully realized embodiment of the sound of California’s folk/rock/psychedelia movement of the time, the record is arguably Crosby’s finest moment. As such the “Perro” sessions further harness that fleeting zeitgeist. A rough-hewn, faded, snapshot. Writing about this set, here, in 2006, a commenter criticized the sessions noting that while the musicianship was “as strong as you would expect from the cream of the Marin County scene, the whole thing has the feel of a stoned weekend jam in someone’s living room.” I suppose one man’s trash truly is another man’s treasure, as, for me, therein lies the session’s charm. Yes, it does feel like “a stoned weekend jam in someone’s living room” – albeit one with some exceptional players.

What is the “Perro Sessions” Read on…courtesy of Wiki: The Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra is a nickname given to artists who recorded together in the early 1970s. They were predominantly members of Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Their first album together was “Blows Against the Empire”, when they were known as Jefferson Starship. The name changed to Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra for the next album, David Crosby’s “If I Could Only Remember My Name”. During the sessions for Crosby’s album at Wally Heider Studios, the musicians of each band were invited to the sessions and rehearsed hours of material, and everything was recorded.

Material played during these recorded sessions in 1971 was used for Crosby’s album (the “Perro Chorus” is credited on the song, “What Are Their Names”) and several other solo albums after Crosby’s . The name Jefferson Starship was later used for Paul Kantner and Grace Slick’s new band formed in 1974. Paul Kantner recorded a solo album in 1983 as a tribute to this time, Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.

An Airplane & Crosby, Stills Nash favourite written by David Crosby…recorded here at Elektra records producer Paul Rothchilds house (producer of the Doors & Love etc..) in Los Angeles ’67 he works on what was at the time a brand new song and its facsinating to hear the man at work playing around with the basic tune and doodling around with shapeless words…

Later Paul Kantner would add two complete verses with Stephen Stills adding just the one …both the Airplane and CSN used the song to good effect on album’s with the CSN version used at the beginning of the ‘Woodstock” movie as people walk along in darkness kicking up dust in the evening light….

One of my favourites songs ..that opening line ‘if you smile at me, I will understand…’ Crosby copped from a notice board outside a baptist church in Florida….

When the Crosby, Stills & Nash box-set was being put together, some mystery reels were found. All of the CSNY tape collection was brought in to one place for the first time, including personal collections of Barncard, Joel Bernstein, Nash and Stills.

The material on the Perro tapes was very interesting, but had nothing to do with CSNY. There were 4 reels of 2 track mixes made in 1971 during the sessions (obviously there is more that has never been mixed). The tapes were put into storage in Graham Nash’s vault. Paul called Nash in 1992 and requested DATs of those tapes. This was the first time they had been outside of the CSNY organization. They were copied at A&M Post Production audio and my personal DAT was made at that time. The roots of PERRO go back a lot further than 1971. 1 guess it had its inception in the early years of the ’60s (prior to the Airplane, the Byrds et al) when Kantner, Crosby and Freiberg used to hang out, play music, get high and rap together around Venice Beach. That was the initial bond, the start of it all.

Track listing: 0:00​ – Kids and Dogs 6:51​ – Jorma & Jerry’s Jam v1 21:09​ – Mountain Song (v 2&3) 30:21​ – Loser (Versions 1-4) 39:01​ – Mountain Song (v4) 47:24​ – The Wall Song 53:34​ – Eep Hour 58:30​ – Jorma & Jerry’s Jam v2

Besides the wonderful Perro tapes, also there is a bootleg of David and the Dorks at the Matrix, which was the members of the Grateful Dead and David Crosby playing many of the tunes from those sessions and David Crosby’s ensuing “solo” album.