The Fat Angel Sings

Debut album from Ireland’s pre-eminent punk/noisy, alt-rockers Gurriers. Recorded in Leeds at the Nave with Alex Greaves, “Come and See” explores how existential mundanity in the 21st century is now essentially lived in the digital realm, and society has blindly sleepwalked into this actuality without realising the full extent of its corrosive damage.

“Come And See” not only includes songs of raging intensity but equally brilliant song-writing, the record includes the singles “Des Goblin”, “Nausea”, “Sign Of The Times” and a new definitive recording of ‘Approachable’.

Recorded in Leeds at the Nave with Alex Greaves, “Come and See” explores how existential mundanity in the 21st century is now essentially lived in the digital realm, and society has blindly sleepwalked into this actuality without realising the full extent of its corrosive damage.

“Come And See” not only includes songs of raging intensity but equally brilliant song-writing, the record includes the singles “Des Goblin”, “Nausea”, “Sign Of The Times” and a new definitive recording of ‘Approachable’.

taken from the album “Come and See” released 13th Sept,

Did you ever think of me as kind of a lovable loser? This is a vulnerable question for me to ask you. (I can already hear the response: “I wouldn’t say ‘lovable’…”) But this is how I’ve cast myself in our new song. “One Hand Free.”

We recorded it in the same sessions as our record “Goodbye Small Head“, but left it off because I tyrannically declared that it didn’t fit the album, even though we all loved it. It’s a tale of isolation and romantic disaffection that has escalated to the level of biological identity. Did you ever get so bummed out that you were no longer sure what class of animal you were? This is my despondent disavowal of mammalian membership. But in a fun way!

We made a music video for it too. Boston music scene legend JJ Gonson shot some of it with me at a the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Our great drummer Sam Durkes put the rest of it together and edited it and made it the odd little post-MTV experience that it is. He designed the cover art for the single too. Because he’s the best.

I think “One Hand Free” might also be a break-up song about the end of a long abusive relationship, namely, my imagined love-hate affair with the pop culture public at large. I just have this general feeling like I’m done with letting their cruel gaze take up space in my head?

Not you guys, though. You guys are my one and onlys.

Anyway, parse that for awhile if you will, or just enjoy the gorgeous alt-country sounds of the Ezra Furman Band at our effortless best.

Lucrecia Dalt’s A Danger to Ourselves is a daring yet intimate reflection on the unfiltered complexities of human connection. Stripping away fictional narratives present on the artist’s last several album endeavours, A Danger to Ourselves arrives from a place of emotional sincerity.

Sonically unravelling like a deeply personal conversation, Dalt’s voice is focal, supported by a lush array of acoustic orchestration and percussive instrumentation, and an esteemed cast of collaborators.

Dalt, born in Pereira, Colombia, was raised in a family of music enthusiasts who encouraged her to pick up a guitar when she was nine. Dalt followed this creative impulse, becoming fascinated with computer-based production and leaving a burgeoning career as a civil engineer, moving from Medellín to Barcelona and ultimately Berlin, where she developed her distinctive, adventurous sound.

Her work has spun into increasingly accomplished terrains with Anticlines (2018) and No era sólida (2020), and notably, ¡Ay!, Dalt’s 2022 breakthrough sci-fi bolero album. Along the way, Dalt expanded her practice into scoring for films like On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024), HBO series The Baby (2022), and the forthcoming psychological horror Rabbit Trap, while creating sound installations and performances that showcase her luminous modulations and distinctive, evolving vocal approach.

A Danger to Ourselves emerged from fragmentary declarations Dalt scribbled while navigating life on tour for ¡Ay!, and the formative moments of a new relationship. She began crystallising these intimate fragments into musical compositions in January 2024, giving gradual form to a purposeful constellation of songs.

The album’s sonic architecture builds upon dynamic drum loops provided by collaborator Alex Lázaro, whose percussive backbone, as on ¡Ay!, became a canvas for Dalt’s layered vocals. Rather than following conventional melodic structures, the album generates musicality through the interplay of basslines, rhythms, and compositional design.

A Danger to Ourselves reveals Dalt’s uncompromising quest for sonic clarity, where bold production choices and meticulous recording techniques encourage both voice and instrument to harmonise with newfound depth and radiance. Distinctly anti-conceptual, A Danger to Ourselves is a poetic instinct by which Dalt ushers in an unobstructed focus on the music itself, using vocals that vibrate past the songs’ parameters, and observing the beaded echoes of primal, romantic thrill.

Lucid attention to detail is palpable in every measure, a dedication that spins in concentric circles, forming a field that unifies the personal and ethereal. Drawn from intuitive experiments, the album uses simple gestures and intricate compositions to weave wandering lines, as in “divina,” which moves between Spanish and English through elastic soundscapes and mesmerising auditory collage.

LIVE AT THE AQUARIUS THEATRE: THE FIRST PERFORMANCE

On July 21st, 1969, The Doors lit up the Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood with one of their most electrifying and underrated performances. “Live At The Aquarius Theatre: The First Performance” captures The Doors at their peak: loose, loud, and locked in.

Now available as a 180-gram 3-LP set from Analogue Productions, limited to 2,000 numbered copies and pressed at Quality Record Pressings, this edition features a 2016 mix by longtime Doors engineer Bruce Botnick. The result is a crystal-clear listening experience that brings new life to that summer night in ’69.

“The new mix is a revelation… The resulting clarity gives this concert new life – and as a bonus, side six features material from the soundcheck that preceded the show.” – Bruce Botnick

Releases November 21st

New Candys are set to make a powerful return in 2025 with the release of their highly anticipated fifth album, ‘The Uncanny Extravaganza’, via Fuzz Club Records. Marking a bold evolution in the band’s sound, the album blends their signature rock roots with electronic influences and cutting-edge production by Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher). The result is a genre-defying sonic experience that could be their most compelling work yet – veering between aggressive, gritty sounds, synth-driven rhythms, and dreamy, melancholic minimalism.

It also opens a fresh chapter for the band, showcasing a new lineup with core members Fernando Nuti (vocals, guitar, synth, programming) and Dario Lucchesi (bass, synth, programming), alongside Emanuele Zanardo (guitar, backing vocals) and Francesco Giacomin (drums, percussion, sampler). This record follows their 2021 release, ‘Vyvyd’, which led to shows across North America and Europe through late 2023.

The creation of ‘The Uncanny Extravaganza’ began in late 2022 when the band started working on new material. Nuti, the band’s primary songwriter, says: “It was an intense and exciting time. I had many songs and ideas that I wanted to try out with the band, and we ended up debuting ‘Crime Wave’ live. We don’t live close to each other and can’t rehearse very often, so using our home studios became the solution. This new process gave us the opportunity to experiment further, and it allowed me to quickly explore different arrangements to find the best one for each song”.

Lucchesi’s growing interest in electronic music also played a pivotal role in shaping the album’s direction, making his transition from drums to bass a natural evolution. He elaborates: “The line up change and the shift to bass created a situation where I could bring new ideas to the band. Working alone, with my own pace and methods, allowed me to explore and express myself more effectively. I found it refreshing to play remotely, exchanging projects and seeing the progress of the songs that both Fernando and I could work on, handling all the instruments and breaking away from the roles established on stage and on previous albums”. Their collaboration resulted in standout tracks like ‘Regicide’ and ‘Night Surfer’, with contributions from Zanardo and Giacomin further enriching the band’s evolving sound, culminating in some of the best songs New Candys have ever written.

Production was handled by Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher), who worked closely with the band throughout 2024, spreading the recording sessions across the year to focus on individual tracks in detail. “After self-producing all our records, except for the first, we wanted to collaborate closely with Maurizio on this one”, explains Nuti. “We’re thrilled with the final result. With “Vyvyd”, we just scratched the surface of electronic elements, this time we wanted to fully embrace them and find a new balance. I couldn’t imagine us finishing a song using only the instruments we normally play live, it wouldn’t have been interesting, contemporary, or new enough. Also, I couldn’t have cared less about making a stylistically and genre-cohesive album. In fact, the less categorizable and the more bizarre it was, the happier we were. I wanted each track to feel unexpected, a constant surprise. Just when you think you’ve figured out what kind of record it is, the next song makes you realize you’re wrong”.

The album’s sonic variety, a hallmark of New Candys’ music, is more pronounced than ever. Its title combines contrasting terms that reflect the band’s multifaceted artistic vision. From the aggressive, gritty sounds of ‘Regicide’ and ‘Crime Wave’ to the minimal, melancholic tones of ‘Aquawish’ and ‘Final Mission’, the record spans a wide range of styles. Tracks like ‘Night Surfer’ and ‘Wild Spaghetti West’ feature western and surf-influenced riffs, while ‘Cagehead’ and ‘You’ll Never Know Yourself’ offer psychedelic outros.

Lyrically, the album delves into surreal and sometimes cryptic themes, with a recurring motif related to water, inspired by the band’s proximity to Venice. Nuti reflects on how everything underwater transforms, appearing dreamlike, distorted, inaccessible, and often lifeless, and uses this imagery metaphorically, relating it to reality to inspire both the lyrics and the artwork. The album also conveys a sense of rebellion, considering how the pandemic provided an opportunity to rethink priorities, a chance that world politics missed.

With ‘The Uncanny Extravaganza’, New Candys continue to evolve, blending their signature sound with fresh influences to create what could be their most compelling work to date.

release on May 30th, 2025.

Under the moniker of Night Beats, Texas native Danny Lee Blackwell has spent the last fifteen years exploring a nexus of vintage rhythm & blues, after-midnight soul, and sun-scorched psychedelia. On Night Beats’ latest offering, Blackwell presents two markedly different renditions of his song “Behind the Green Door.” On side A, we’re treated to a down-tempo, minor key track drenched in the haze of vice, as if some aspiring Motor City outfit had travelled down to Austin and snuck into the studio to cut a song while The 13th Floor Elevators were on a smoke break. Or perhaps it’s more akin to a meeting between Ray Charles, Skip Pence, and Link Wray. Or maybe it’s Joe Tex grappling with Gram Parsons. Or Duane Eddy pairing up with Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Or maybe it’s just years of Blackwell distilling and translating the sounds around him into his own concoction. Ultimately, “Behind the Green Door” is an invitation to enter the kingdom and dwell in the garden while the shadow of doubt looms nearby, a subconscious journey into the delights and pitfalls of unknown territories made manifest in the music of Night Beats.

Blackwell says of the single: “This song started as a lone star instrumental, something I pieced together in my studio in 2024. I imagined dusty roads and dimly lit dance halls. I wanted the guitars to shimmer like heat waves on an open road. The rhythm to pull like footsteps across a wooden floor, soaked in smoke and neon. The lyrics followed, drawn from past and present—unwavering love, transcendence. The ‘green door’ is that threshold between devotion and disillusionment. The story lives not just in the words, but in the tones and textures, if uncovered.”

Side B features the Rah John version of “Behind the Green Door.” According to the Night Beats camp, Rah John was discovered by Blackwell on his recent expedition to the island Koh Khram Yai, located off the coast of Pattaya in the Gulf of Thailand. Not much is known about the young artist besides his love for 70’s Thai disco and dancehall tapes received from local sailors. Hearing a streak of revelry buried in the Night Beats’ tune, Rah John summoned a sunnier, breezier, and more exotic side to the Rhythm and Blues sway of the original.

Los Angeles power trio Primitive Ring – Charles Moothart (Fuzz, Gøggs, Ty Segall’s Freedom Band), Bert Hoover (Hooveriii, Groop) and Jon Modaff (Hooveriii, Groop, Frankie & The Witch Fingers) – have been keeping the momentum rolling in every way they can since they emerged in early 2025. ‘Rolling Greed / Cocaine Man’, which came out September 12th 2025 and the latest in a string of 7”s released this year, further drives home the whole primal ethos of the band: just follow the internal compass and walk. Following releases on In The Red, Greenway Records and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, for the fourth instalment in this set of 45s they have joined forces with London-based record label Fuzz Club.

The first two Primitive Ring 7”s, ‘In The Ground / Golden In Your Eyes’ and ‘Poisonous Gift / TV City’, were shot straight from the hip. Written and recorded almost instantly on a Tascam 388 in Hoover’s garage with Eric Bauer. On ‘Burning Greed / Cocaine Man’ and its predecessor ‘Luck / I’ve Been Waiting For You’, though, the approach was more deliberate.

This time the tracks were laid down over a few days in Moothart’s rehearsal space turned studio, after the band had begun playing live – the urgency and vision for the band much more palpably honed in as a result. “I think “Rolling Greed” is my favourite Primitive Ring song to date. It’s both more catchy and more wild than the previous tunes”, Moothart says: “We are all pushing ourselves a little harder on this track, while still trying to deliver a baseline bulletproof skull thumper.”

The B-side to ‘Rolling Greed”s scorched riffing comes in the shape of the more pared-back acoustic cut ‘Cocaine Man’, written on the fly with a loose, wide-open feel – “like a hangover nap under a redwood tree with a cool breeze blowing, kinda painful but ultimately surreal and enjoyable.” A vibe echoed in the lyrical subject matter just as much as the music: “Both of these songs are referential to modern day fascist realities, but again in a somewhat surreal way. ‘They’re rolling greed up in their sleeve, they’ll never leave or let us be’. ‘Calling the bluff on their game’. ‘Our father the wretched king, he’d sell the world to keep his diamond ring’. Devo was right.”

It was a difficult time for me when I started working on this album. I had just uprooted myself from the city apartment building where I’d been living for twenty years to a house in a more rural town two hours away where I knew no one when one of my best friends died (“Ashes”), and then my dog died (“Constant Companion”), then my mother was diagnosed with esophagus cancer (“Scratchers”). I was pretty depressed for a solid year (“Long Slow Nervous Breakdown”) and lost and very lonely (“Harmonizing With Myself”). I was thinking about fate and circumstance and about how I’d ended up where I was (“Where Are You Now”).

However much or hard I try, it seems, I’ve never had much control over much in my life.

I should say here that my mother’s younger brother was struck and killed by lighting at the age of 16 and when I asked her how this affected her worldview, she told me that it made her believe that there is a predetermined plan for each of us.

With this album I was contemplating these ideas–fate, powerlessness (“Popsicle”), the effects of trauma (“Wouldn’t Change Anything,” “Fall Apart”,” Strong Too Long”), the ways we can’t and don’t change.

I hold on to humility and gratitude (most of the time) rather than (constant) bitterness, and I have hope, mostly in the form of the music that I make, even if its subject matter is sometimes kind of grim. This practice of putting songs together has always sustained me and given my life—as uncontrollable as it feels– meaning and purpose, even in the darkest times. “Lighting Might Strike” is largely about that; the music itself is pulling me out of a big hole (“All I’ve Got”) in real time, in the time it took me to make the album.

Chris Anzalone played and recorded all the drums from Arlington, Massachusetts. Ed Valauskas played and recorded most of the bass from Cambridge, MA. I did the bass on a few songs, plus all the guitars, keyboards, vocals, and percussion, in my house (“My House Is Not My Dream House”) in western MA. The talented Pat DiCenso then mixed and mastered it all. The whole thing took about two years—broken up in pieces and chunks (I went on tour for six weeks last autumn, etc.) — to complete. – Juliana Hatfield 

releases December 12th, 2025

Frank Zappa’s famous 1978 Halloween show at New York City’s Palladium will be released as a box set on October 24th.

The Super Deluxe Edition of the set will feature 62 tracks on five CDs and will be packaged in a special box that includes a Zappa devil mask, a pitchfork with light and a book featuring rare photos and memorabilia.

In addition to the October 31st, 1978, concert at the Palladium, “Halloween 78” also includes the first concert from October 27th, which served as a run-up to the Halloween night performance. Zappa and his band — drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassists Arthur Barrow and Patrick O’Hearn, keyboardists Peter Wolf and Tommy Mars, guitarist Denny Walley, percussionist Ed Mann and violinist L. Shankar — performed the nearly four-hour Halloween concert in 1978 without a set list.

Throughout the performance, he led the group through favorites like “Dancin’ Fool,” “Peaches En Regalia” and “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow.” The show also featured some songs that had not been on Zappa recordings, including “Suicide Chump,” “Easy Meat,” “Keep It Greasy” and “The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing.”

listen too “Ancient Armaments” from the upcoming “Halloween 78“

The audio on this is amazing. “Ancient Armaments” was a frequent opener for Zappa shows during that era (as were other instrumental songs like “The Deathless Horsie”, “Persona Non Grata”, “The Purple Lagoon”, and “Twenty One”). Frank Zappa and his band played shows to please his audience ..and he always did. Almost 4 hours is something mostly unheard of, as many bands play the same 90 minute set from town to town. Not Frank though. He was always mixing things up and (according to band member interviews) would often not even have written the setlist until the day before/the day of the show. Frank played 2 shows at the Palladium on October 27th (matinee and evening shows), 2 shows at the Palladium on October 28th (matinee and evening shows), 1 show on October 29th and then the Halloween show on October 31st consisting of 36 songs! No show had the same setlist although most shows did include the obligatory Big Hit Single “Dancin’ Fool” . Really looking forward to hearing this complete “Halloween 78” release.

Halloween was Zappa’s favourite holiday; he staged annual concerts to celebrate the event, beginning in 1972 with a performance in New Jersey. In 1973, Zappa and his band performed in Chicago; in 1974, he began hosting the Halloween shows in New York.

“Halloween 78” marks the fourth special box set to include Zappa’s famous Halloween concerts, previously released have been “Halloween 77” came out in 2017, followed by “Halloween 73” in 2019 and 2020’s “Halloween 81″.

Two vinyl versions and a single CD edition will also be available.

The Antlers are back with a new album, “Blight”, the follow-up to 2021’s “Green to Gold“. It finds singer-songwriter Peter Silberman exploring the impacts of accelerating technology, artificial intelligence, and environmental neglect. “I felt like for the sake of the message of this record and what I was trying to get across with these songs, the details were what was going to make the difference, because they create an image that you then see in your mind and can be hard to shake,” he said in our inspirations interview. “‘Carnage’ is talking about these different instances of accidental animal cruelty, and for me, when I had seen some of that, I can’t erase the image from my mind. And it changes the way I think about the creatures I’m sharing space with.”

The Antlers have announced a new album. Blight, the follow-up to 2021’s “Green to Gold”, arrives October 10th via Transgressive Records. I enjoyed the band’s last album, but there’s nothing on it quite like the new single ‘Carnage’, which, in its hushed devastation, might stand among Peter Silberman’s best.

“‘Carnage’ is a song about a kind of violence we rarely acknowledge violence not born of cruelty, but of convenience,” Silberman said in a statement. “Innocent creatures are swept up in the path of destruction as their world collides with ours, and we barely notice.”

“Blight” was tracked over the course of a few years, with most of the recording and production taking place in Silberman’s home studio in upstate New York. “So much of the record was conceived while walking these massive fields,” he explained. “I felt like I was wandering around an abandoned planet.”

Expounding on the newfound directness of his lyrical approach, Silberman added: “The consequences of accelerating technology and environmental neglect feel imminent; that sense of urgency made me want to speak more candidly. The present-day specifics are so unsettling, and tomorrow’s possibilities are so surreal… there’s no need to mince words.”

Following “Green to Gold”, Silberman helped co-produce Wild Pink’s breakout “ILYSM” and released the debut album from Cowboy Sadness, his instrumental band featuring David Moore (Bing & Ruth) and Nicholas Principe (Port St. Willow).