MARTY WILLSON PIPER (The Church) – ” Hanging Out In Heaven ” Record Store Day Release 2019

Posted: March 4, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Hey All,

I’m very happy to announce that on Record Store Day 2019 and after nearly two decades of floating in digital space, I finally see the vinyl release of Hanging Out In Heaven. It will be a blue-tinged double record, set with two extra tracks – Queen In Her Jeans and Dressed Up As You. These additional songs were recorded in London around the same time and were always intended for the vinyl version.

Hanging Out In Heaven began in LA with Shep Lonsdale, engineer on Starfish and GAF, helping me record some songs at his home studio. Shep was also a drummer and played on half the record. I’d written some songs since the release of Spirit Level in 1992 but I’d become very busy in the period between Spirit Level and Hanging Out In Heaven, touring and making records with All About Eve in England. The Priest=Aura US tour had been cancelled due to disappointing sales in relation to the previous two releases so I had plenty of time for All About Eve.

I was living in Sweden at the time and during a break recording for Hanging Out In Heaven continued in the town of Gävle with Andreas Ahlenius (After Everything Now This and A Box Of Birds were recorded at Andreas‘ Blue Room studios). Hanging Out In Heaven was somehow suspended in mid-air after leaving LA and I had some new songs that I wanted to add to the album. I had worked with Andreas as my engineer when I had produced an album for Swedish artist Håkan Ahlström in 1997. Christer Björklund from the Håkan Ahlström project stepped in for the remaining drum tracks for the new songs. I must add that encouragement to finish the project came from Robert Rankin Walkerat Heyday Records. After hearing the LA sessions he supported me in adding the new tracks and mixing the record to completion.

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The album opened with fan fave Forget The Radio and featured many songs that have appeared in the live set over the years – the lilting You Bring Your Love To Me and an early version of I Don’t Think So, recorded live in the studio. It also contains Sanctuary, a song that everyone likes but is hard to play live without a band plus playfully suicidal After Eight. Wreck has featured live as an acapella sea shanty, more often played in seaside towns and Wondering featured desert dweller Patti Hood on her century-old harp. Then there’s Andreas‘ creaking foot pedals on the piano for All That Remains. The song was written singing into a cassette recorder whilst on holiday in Fiji as a stopover from Australia to Europe. It also includes What Is Her Name, written for, wait for it, Charlie Cox age 12, who is now Daredevil on Netflix! Whilst on holiday with his family in Queensland, he asked me could I write a song where you saw a girl that you liked and you didn’t know but wondered what was her name? This was the result.

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There’s an interesting fact about Wondering and I Don’t Think So. Both were written as jams to tape and rerecorded later as they went down on the day they were conceived – the lyrics, the melody, the chords, the arrangements, were all realised on the spur of the moment. Swan featured me playing friend Keith Fuller’s black Gretsch duo jet guitar. It was Keith that replaced Johnny Marr when he left The The. He also played guitar on Goodbye.

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I hope you enjoy the album, I always wanted to see it out on vinyl. I will also add that we had to cut the vinyl from the CD copy as the original master tapes are long gone. One track, Waves Towards The Moon, has some distortion that is also on the CD and we weren’t able to do anything about it in the transfer. Overall the record sounds fine to me. One thing we were able to fix was the readability of the lyrics. On the original CD version the lyrics were so small you could barely read them, plus they were written like handwriting which made it extra hard.

Last but not least, the artwork has been changed for this release, despite Anthony Collins’ pic of me floating in a sea of blue being used for the original album, the effect used has also been lost to the analogue robots of yesteryear, so we decided to go with my Swedish friend Jan Uddenfeldt’s classic pics of me as a young lad, exploring the archipelago North of Stockholm, sometime in the eighties.

Thank you to Olivia for art direction, Jan and Anthony for the pics, Lizzie for joining the dots. Shauna for the promo, all the musicians and Stephen Judgeat Schoolkids Records – The Label for making this happen with Robert at Heyday who also managed to find the one copy of Queen In Her Jeans that was thought stolen by the corgis.

Marty for RSD 2019

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MARTY WILLSON-PIPER, is best known as a long-time member of Australian psychedelic rock band The Church and then All About Eve. But he’s super prolific and loves collaborating, so many also know him as a member of Anekdoten, MOAT and Noctorum.

On Record Store Day 2019 and after nearly two decades of floating in digital space, the world will finally see the vinyl release of Marty’s fifth studio album ‘Hanging Out In Heaven’. It will be a blue-tinged double record set with new artwork and two extra tracks (‘Queen In Her Jeans’ and ‘Dressed Up As You’). These additional songs were recorded in London around the same time and were always intended for the vinyl version. Now the time has come.

SEBADOH – ” Act Surprised “

Posted: March 4, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Indie-rock pioneers Sebadoh return with their first new studio album in more than six years “Act Surprised”. The inventors of lo-fi indie rock return with a 15-track blast of melodic melancholy, all delivered by the smudged middle finger of Dinosaur Jr original Lou Barlow…

“The first line of this song: ‘I get the feeling you don’t feel me’ is pretty good. It could be a line in an Ariana Grande song, I like it,” said Lou Barlow. “I followed it from there through some general complaints about a composite character in my life, someone I could never crack. Sometimes the walls are too high. If you think about it, the resistance was always there, even in the very beginning. What to do? Pick endlessly at the seams? Replay moments in my head looking for a way to explain it all? No, stop, there is no one answer and that’s OK…Celebrate the void.”

Act Surprised continues the soulful collaboration that’s defined the band since 1991’s Sebadoh III and 1994’s Bakesale. The new batch of songs reaffirms how vital the creative partnership is between members Barlow, Jason Loewenstein, and Bob D’Amico.

When Barlow recently moved back to his home state of Massachusetts following a series of personal changes, he pressed the restart button and, in time, felt the incentive to reach out to Jason and Bob again to reunite and start work on a new album. The trio convened and began recording in their original stomping grounds in Northampton, MA where they first formed back in 1988. Along with producer/sound engineer Justin Pizzoferatto, Sebadoh have delivered one of the best records of their career. Act Surprised is a 15-song collection that’s as dynamic and visceral as anything the band has ever committed to tape.

Their first studio album since 2013’s ‘Defend Yourself’ and their first release with Fire Records, Lou Barlow and team return with a smorgasbord of beautifully dysfunctional tunes harking back to their finest college rock anthems.
It’s Barlow at his introverted songwriting best; matter-of-factly delivering a stream of self-questioning stories, punctuated by detuned guitars, spine-tingling time changes and throwaway one liners.
A grainy post grunge postcard wrapped in bittersweet melodies with an aftertaste that’s pure heartbreak.
More songs about growing up wrong for those who continue to act surprised at life itself – all illegibly handwritten and lovingly submitted to vinyl.

Lowenstein stated, “Of all the records we have made in our long career, this is definitely the most recent.” Releases May 24th, 2019

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FOXWARREN – ” Sunset Canyon “

Posted: March 4, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Foxwarren

Foxwarren comprises Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf (please check out his solo albums) along with his childhood friends Dallas Bryson and brothers Darryl Kissick and Avery Kissick. Last year, they released a self-titled debut album, and today are announcing their first-ever tour, which kicks off in their hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan at the end of May. To celebrate, the band have a brand new video for the dreamy “Sunset Canyon.” Directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick, the video is shot through a warmly lit vintage filter, capturing a glamorous cruise along the winding California hillside.

The video features actress turned talk show host and honest-to-God amazing person –– Busy Philipps. “Working with Laura-Lynn on the video was so amazing,” says Philipps in a press release. “She is such a talent and I loved the easy going vibe of the day, wandering through the canyon with her in my mom’s dress from the sixties.”This track from Foxwarren just fits the aesthetic faultlessly.

“Sunset Canyon” by Foxwarren from the self-titled album, available now on Anti- and Arts & Crafts

STARCRAWLER – ” She Gets Around “

Posted: March 4, 2019 in MUSIC
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Starcrawler have shared a brand new track. Our favourite Los Angeles band, Capturing front-person Arrow de Wilde’s manic live performance, “She Gets Around” was produced and mixed by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, David Byrne, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and was the first of many times to come that guitarist Henri Cash, drummer Austin Smith and bassist Tim Franco have had a chance to really spend time in a studio and aim to make a record vs simply document a live moment. “She Gets Around” hints at 90s alt-rock bands such as The Breeders and Nirvana, while showcasing the strange, one-of-a-kind spirit and ferocity that is Starcrawler.

The first taster of their forthcoming second album, ‘She Gets Around’ comes ahead of summer tour dates alongside the likes of The Distillers, Beck and Cage The Elephant.

‘She Gets Around’ is the latest single from Starcrawler, out now on Rough Trade Records.

JULIAN COPE – ” Fried “

Posted: March 4, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Julian Cope - Fried cover

Julian Cope was always an odd sort of pop star and his song “Reynard the Fox” kind of epitomise this. Julian had this oxymoronic desire for stardom, undercut with a deep contempt for what success actually meant for him. Having fought his way out of the punk underground into the Top 10 with his band The Teardrop Explodes, utilising his photogenic cheekbones as a major asset, he immediately backpedaling to obscurity. None of this is particularly unique, but having gone into hiding, Julian then spent years striving to get his fame back on his own terms, with a small, loyal fan base rooting for him and a hostile, disdainful music press very much against him.

Reynard the Fox was the opening track on the album “Fried”, Julian’s second solo album after the split of The Teardrop Explodes.  and just six months after Cope’s debut solo album World Shut Your Mouth. Cope retained guitarist Steve Lovell (and guest oboe player Kate St. John) from the previous album, but added his Drayton Bassett musical foil Donald Ross Skinner on rhythm and slide guitars, former Waterboys drummer Chris Whitten and (on one track) former Mighty Wah! guitarist Steve “Brother Johnno” Johnson.

Its preceding album, World Shut Your Mouth, had been a disappointing sales wise, but Julian had high hopes for Fried before it came out.

“When Fried was released, people would love me again. It would be a cult classic AND it would be huge. I was certain of that.” said Julian. 

This was in 1984, three years after his solitary hit single. Yet he still viewed the likes of Madonna and Wham as peers. Reynard the Fox was conceived as a reaction against the success of those acts’ overblown style – instead of pushing the boundaries, he now “utterly rejected all novelty. If it hadn’t been done before, then I wasn’t interested”, he said. That’s how he came to record a version of a medieval European folk song, mixed with elements of Thomas Grey’s antique lyrical poem The Fox and the riff from Them’s 1966 single “I Can Only Give You Everything” as the opener to his latest comeback album.

All this is recalled in Julian’s brilliantly self-deprecating and highly entertaining autobiographical books, Head-On and Repossessed. He recounts his change from dedicated straight-edge, teetotaler to substance-addled maniac in the drag of one joint, his brief spell as a teen idol, followed by years in hiding as an obsessive vintage toy collector and his constant battles with the music press who, with some justification, dismissed him as a weird, sub-Syd Barret joke. Stunts like appearing on the cover of the Fried album naked, under a giant turtle shell, pushing a toy truck on top of the spoil heap of an abandoned mine in Alvecote really didn’t help Julian’s argument against this assessment. Incidentally, the spoil heap on that photo is the same Warwickshire mound “by a freezing swamp” that Reynard runs to in the lyrics. It was a favourite place of Julian’s during his reclusive years.

Despite the unique cover and dramatic brilliance of Reynard the Fox, Fried didn’t prove to be anything like as successful as Julian Cope had imagined Several songs featured little or no backing, with Cope accompanying himself.. But he did return to the pop charts as a solo artist a couple of years later, most notably with the hit single World Shut Your Mouth.

Having achieved recognition as a talent in his own terms, the music press finally began to take this most idiosyncratic performer seriously and his nineties output was critically and commercially successful. He’s been putting out albums ever since, in between writing highly acclaimed, scholarly books on music history and archaeology.

He may have blown his chance to become a contemporary of Wham back in the eighties, but Reynard the Fox sounds a hell of a lot better today than Club Tropicana ever did. The commercial failure of the album led to Polygram dropping Cope. He would subsequently hook up with a new manager – artist and musician-cum-prankster Cally Callomon – and sign a new deal with Island Records.

thanks 50thirdand3rd.

WAND – ” Thin Air “

Posted: March 3, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Swerving between out-of-focus parable, travel diary, pep talk, polemic, love song, and lullabye, Wand’s forthcoming long-player Laughing Matter has its eyes on a lot of prizes. With lyrical and musical shades varying between Wand’s darkest nights and most pastoral days, there’s a nuanced, eclectic emotional scope onLaughing Matter that’s not been quite so nakedly apparent on any previous Wand release.
Their second single from the forthcoming release is “Thin Air,” which demonstrates their evolving desires to break every convention they encounter, to joyously recombine the fragments of formerly familiar territory.  The radical approaches in “Thin Air” are buoyed by Wand‘s autodidact enthusiams, as DIY impulses create a delirious cascade of molten guitars and a twinkling of keys.  With our institutions crashing all around us, “Thin Air” offers a departure from the decadent mindlessness of the mundane for the electricity-free hills above the town. Gamelan guitars roll into to an arena-worthy chorus: “don’t you dare turn your back again”. Take this directive to heart and heed to Wand’s command, put your hands to the wheel and let go.
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Listen to “Thin Air” now and prep yourself for Laughing Matteron April 19th!

ART BRUT – WE ARE SCIENTISTS – ” Wasabi ” 12″ Vinyl Record Store Day 2019

Posted: March 3, 2019 in MUSIC
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Way back in 2006, Art Brut and We Are Scientists toured together and released a split single just for the occasion where they covered each other’s songs. To celebrate the 13th year of that occasion, or something, Art Brut and We Are Scientists are re-teaming as WASABI (We Are Scientists Art Brut International) for a nine-track Record Store Day 2019 12″ featuring more covers of each other’s songs, and new originals including an Art Brut song about Record Store Day (“Art Brut do not make limited edition singles / we make TOO MANY”). Both bands combine forces for a cover of The Traveling Wilburys’ hit “Handle with Care.”

Our record label tried to make this Art Brut vs We Are Scientists, but it doesn’t work like that. WASABI are a motherf*cking gang! It’s a legendary team up! Crushing all other bands with our Traveling Wilburys covers and awesome songs. We’re on the same side. Wasabi vs ALL OTHER BANDS!”

“I thought it would be great for WASABI to cover The Traveling Wilburys because both bands are Supergroups,” Eddie tells us. “At the time, though, I didn’t know Supergroup meant a group of people from other bands. I just thought it meant we were super! and we are, fucking super awesome, just like the Wilburys.”.

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WASABI (We Are Scientists Art Brut International) 12″ tracklist:

SIDE A:
1.) Slow Death (WAS previously unreleased song)
2.) I Hope You’re Very Happy Together (WAS cover of an Art Brut song)
3.) She Kissed Me and It Felt Like a Hit (WAS cover of an Art Brut song)
4.) Handle With Care (The Travelling Wilburys Cover by WAS and Art Brut)

SIDE B:
1.) Properties of Perception (Art Brut cover of a WAS song)
2.) Nearest Exit is Behind You (Art Brut previously unreleased song)
3.) Started Smoking Again (Art Brut previously unreleased song)
4.) Lets Get Drunk About it (Art Brut previously unreleased song)
5.) Record Store Day (Art Brut previously unreleased song)

Record Store Day 2019 is April 13

FEWS – ” Into Red “

Posted: March 3, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Dark and textural rock outfit Fews emerged from scattered origins with a bold 2016 debut entitled Means. Working mostly out of London, the band had roots in separate Swedish towns and grew from an online friendship between Malmo musician Fred Rundqvis and David Alexander, who moved from San Francisco to Sweden to start Fews with Rundqvis in 2013.

This is their second album “Into Red” expands on the tension-heavy tones of Means, retaining some of that album’s repetitive rhythmic churn while branching out into more dynamic songwriting and exploring shoegazey guitar tones and angular approaches to songwriting.

Lead single “Paradiso” highlights some of these shifts in the band’s style. The terse and moody song finds partially spoken vocals bending around verses before exploding into enormous choruses. The song nods to both the uneasy vocal delivery and eerie songcraft of the Pixies as well as the walls of guitar noise implemented by less championed shoegaze acts like Loop or the Telescopes. Angst is the primary emotion on much of Into Red, from the dissociating narration of early-Radiohead-esque album opener “Quiet” to the grinding, bass-driven “Business Man.” Fews walk a thin line between dissonance and pop throughout Into Red, always tempering their knotty post-punk impulses with moments of soaring harmony.

One of the strengths of the album is how it moves between claustrophobia and clarity, gracefully switching gears from cluttered, repetitive blasters like “Anything Else” to more spare (if dour) tunes like “Suppose” or album standout “97.”

Into Red feels distant but still sees the band reaching for more emotionally connective expressions. Fews grow as a band on this effort by putting their struggle to balance sonic upheaval and messy, ungrounded feelings in the center of every track. This is a song about our favourite pursuit: apathy . This is ‘More Than Ever’.

Taken from the 2019 album ‘Into Red’,

FRANKIE and the WITCH FINGERS – ” Pleasure “

Posted: March 3, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Frankie and the Witch Fingers’ upcoming LP, ZAM, bleeds beyond borders and boundaries. Its opening preternatural sounds bubble up out of the primordial soup, spilling into our world, invading the inner recesses of the listener’s mind. Like a two-headed snake wrapped around the skull, the album pendulates between winding instrumentals and dancey riffs that pop like supernovas out of the black void. Just when a song goes one way, it propels another through long stretches of a cosmic inferno.

Bringing glimmers of krautrock and funk, its eleven tracks unleash a versatile and tenacious weight, slithering between the sexy, the aggressive, the vivacious, and the disorienting—until the living invasion is felt—ZAM—a supernatural entity summoned by four madmen obsessed with tearing open a gateway to dark space. After being pulled apart atom-by-atom, the listener is reconfigured on the other side, born unto starry wasteland. Where head is separated from body. Where music is seen and apocalyptic soundscapes flow to revelation. A funhouse undercurrent pulses through the album’s epoch, reflecting a carnival mosaic shrewdly lulling and doggedly brutal. As one track bleeds into the next, that hour of running time becomes wormhole travel, until the listener returns earthbound, transmuted, craving more odyssey.  (Record Company Blurb)

Los Angeles’s Frankie and The Witch Fingers latest double LP is out now!,
“…the band is melting down details from Krautrock, funk, soul, psych, and space then ladling them into the loving cup atop the alter of Hawkwind.” – Raven Sings The Blues,
“ZAM is the kind of record that does not want its listeners to catch a breath, and perhaps the ever-expanding universe of indie-rock — indie-rock of the psychedelic persuasion, to be exact — needs more of this.” – Shindig
“The album leans on everything from krautrock, funk and psych to prog and garage rock, ensuring an adrenaline-pumping trip no matter what.” – Paste

“They’ve produced an album that is both an expansion and a refinement on what has come prior; broader in its scope, maturer in its delivery, and braver in its exploration. In a word: sha-fucking-ZAM!” – The Skinny
“On this sonic manifesto, Frankie and The Witch Fingers flirt with prog and experimental music, but use these concepts more for inspiration rather than strict instruction, resulting in high-energy headbangers with white-hot guitars and ferocious drums.” – LA Record

“ZAM is the best rock n roll has to offer.” – ANON Magazine
“…it’s clear that the psych rock outfit have been knocking back the black milk.” – Popbollocks

NILUFER YANYA – ” Miss Universe “

Posted: March 2, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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23-year-old Londoner Nilüfer Yanya has made waves with her eccentric, indie-rock-tinged soul and pop. Her debut album, Miss Universe, will drop on March 22nd via ATO Records, and it’s filled with hard-hitting, glistening pop songs with a mature and one-of-a-kind artistic vision (the album is interwoven with spoken-word interludes from a fictional medical company, her frantic new single, “In Your Head,” was among our list of Best Songs of January for her sassy vocals, glittery synths and driving indie-rock riffs. Other standouts include the headbanging “Heavyweight Champion of the World” with its wonderfully bare guitar plucks, charming vocal flutters and punchy melodies as well as the electro-rock stunner “Paralysed.”

Nilüfer Yanya’s debut album, Miss Universe, is out March 22.

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