The Fat Angel Sings

Nearly 20 years since they first began, there are few bands who’ve created a canon as determinedly innovative and consistently critically acclaimed as The Horrors. Emerging as zeitgeist-shaking garage-goths on their 2007 debut ‘Strange House’, before taking a shoegaze-nodding sharp left on their Mercury-nominated follow up ‘Primary Colours’, since the beginning they’ve roamed between genres and atmospheres freely. The Horrors are set to return to our stages as special guests for our 20th birthday party, following their appearance headlining in 2018, This follows the announcement of their first album in 7 years ‘Night Life’, set for release on 21st March, with a new configuration of the band. Their recent release ‘Trial By Fire’ described by CLASH as ‘’A Gothic journey through East London environs after midnight’’, gives a taste of what audiences can expect, and we can’t wait to hear more!

2011’s ‘Skying’ won the NME Award for Best Album; ‘V’ was heralded as “a triumph” in a five-star Guardian review, while 2021’s pair of EPs – ‘Lout’ and ‘Against The Blade’ – marked a visceral new chapter with their most industrial, uncompromising output yet.
Whilst the end results have changed, however, at their core has always been the same unbending commitment and bloody-minded allegiance to the cause.
The Horrors are not and will never be a band that approach the job lightly.
They’re musicians who’ll funnel everything they are into the process, at the expense of health, wealth and sometimes sanity.
And so, whilst sixth album ‘Night Life’ sees the band once more shapeshift into a new form, with a new sonic outlook and – this time – a new line up, in some ways The Horrors are still as they ever were.

The second volume of this highly collectable series, covering the pivotal years of 1969–70.

The Island Book of Records Volume II documents the years 1969–70, during which Island sought to build on its success with the Spencer Davis Group by seeking out new British rock talent. By the end of the period, Island was emerging as a major British label, one that could boast releases from Jethro Tull, Nick Drake, King Crimson, John and Beverley Martyn, Fairport Convention and Cat Stevens.

Featuring material from recent interviews and from media interviews of the time, and including a comprehensive discography of 45s, The Island Book of Records Volume II is lavishly illustrated with gig adverts (very many at venues that no longer exist), concert tickets, flyers, international LP variants, labels, LP and 45 adverts and other ephemera collector’s dream.

Featuring material from recent interviews and from media interviews of the time, and including a comprehensive discography of 45s, The Island Book of Records Volume II is lavishly illustrated with gig adverts (very many at venues that no longer exist), concert tickets, flyers, international LP variants, labels, LP and 45 adverts and other ephemera collector’s dream.

It’s been a while (five years) but Bambara have finally announced a new album, “Birthmarks”, and here’s the first single.

‘Birthmarks’ emerges directly from the band’s favoured aesthetics and themes, but captures them with a new sense of sonic adventurousness and thematic subtlety, resulting in a collection of songs that are somehow both the band’s most apocalyptic and most poignant.

“Pray to Me” from the upcoming album, “Birthmarks”, out March 14th 2025 via Bella Union

Reid Bateh – Vocals, Guitar, Piano and Noise
Blaze Bateh – Drums, Percussion and Organ
William Brookshire – Bass, Piano and Synth

Cornwall-based UK band Low Harness release their debut album, “Salvo”, on December 6th via via Krautpop! and here’s an early taste that owes a little to Broadcast. Say the band: “Bloodplay is about the lengths people go to for pleasure, to escape from the banality of everyday existence and act out their most subversive urges. Even if we do not give in to these fantasies, or are too afraid to realise them: a place exists in our imagination where we cannot be judged playing them out.”

Channelling atonality and noise alongside expansive shoegaze and hypnotic krautrock, “Salvo” captures a sense of instability and unknown terrors; political unrest, impending and current wars, economic crisis, environmental collapse and the loss of loved ones.

“The video was shot in an abandoned leisure centre which served as a perfect fantasy backdrop for this song where the subject was able to daydream in complete isolation.

It stars “Pink Baby” local drag artist and passionate advocate for Falmouth’s queer community, Through her love of dance and adoration of the colour pink, Pink Baby explores themes of gender oppression, disability rights, and queer joy in her performances.”

A union of four seasoned DIY minds, Low Harness was born in 2023 when they met through working at Penryn DIY hub the Fish Factory Arts Space. With Hannah and Martin Pease favouring alternative tunings, it was only a matter of time before they were writing together. Joined by Ed Shellard on drums and Alex Harmer on bass, the record emerged quickly after practising in a friend’s garage, with sonic touchpoints including 90s noise rock, Sonic Youth, Wire, MBV, Glenn Branca, and Einstürzende Neubauten. To finish writing “Salvo“, they took part in a week’s residency at local venue The Cornish Bank, before heading to an old 19th century chapel to record.

This organic urgency with which the record was written lends a propulsive dynamism to the tracks. It’s also balanced with an expansiveness, a sonic landscape that sees the angular and motorik style of Hannah and Ed’s previous projects combine with Martin and Alex’s noise and shoegaze stylings. Across the album, this manifests in a rich sound palette. There’s the brooding post-punk of apocalyptic manual ‘Exit Plan’, complete with Siouxsie Sioux vocals, and the pensive pedalboard-psych of ‘Forever In My Head’, a daydreaming song about inertia. ‘Bloodplay’ sees the band musing on the extreme lengths people can go to for pleasure, with Broadcast-inspired vocals soaring over eerie pop melodies, and album closer ‘Admissions’ combines twanging, disco-punk with capacious noise, instrumental intervals featuring prominently throughout.

On the simultaneously tender and furious ‘Lungs’ – a track about grief and the loss of a sibling, Hannah meditatively drawls “if everything’s taken away/ what is love for?”. It’s a powerful and raw line that captures something of the vital essence that the band has poured into this debut; “Salvo” is a strikingly confident introduction to a band who refuse to look the other way.

The band will head out on a UK this December and today share third single from the new album, “Bloodplay”, featuring Broadcast-inspired vocals soaring over eerie pop melodies.

The Beat, from the UK, never made the same album twice during their short late-’70s / early-’80s run. Their 1980 debut, “I Just Can’t Stop It”, is a ska classic; 1981’s “Wha’ppen?” saw them exploring dub reggae, African music, and more socially conscious lyrics; and 1982’s “Special Beat Service” went more towards cosmopolitan pop and yielded US new wave / MTV hits with the singles “Save it For Later” and “I Confess.”

The double LP Deluxe Edition of “Special Beat Service” features the original album on the first LP (translucent red vinyl) and a treasure-trove of b-sides, non-LP singles, remixes and live cuts on the second disc (translucent blue vinyl), including “March of the Swivelheads,” an instrumental dance remix of the album’s “Rotating Head,” which was famously used in the “race home through the backyards” sequence in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. This RSD Black Friday exclusive is limited to 3000 copies.