The Fat Angel Sings

Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967 was recorded at the 17,000-capacity venue as the Jimi Hendrix Experience returned to The US after their all-conquering first trip to The UK, and finds the trio playing for an audience who have gathered to see headliners The Mamas & The Papas.

The recording comes from a previously unreleased (officially or otherwise) two-track recording made on the night, which has been restored for release by Hendrix’s longstanding recording engineer Eddie Kramer. “The audience was there to see The Mamas & The Papas,” says future Paul McCartney guitarist Brian Ray, who attended the show as a 12-year-old. “They haven’t heard of Jimi Hendrix. I’d never heard of Jimi Hendrix, and he couldn’t be more opposite of The Mamas & The Papas as an act, culturally, physically, in every possible way he was the opposite. 

“Here comes this guy and there’s only three of them on stage and they have these afros and these wild, ornate, very theatrical clothes. Jimi proceeds to shred, and it’s loud but it’s musical, and then it becomes so physical. He starts playing the guitar under his leg, and now it’s behind his back, and now he’s playing it with his mouth, and now he’s on the ground on his knees and he’s like humping it, and it, to me was mind blowing. 

“It was sort of every human characteristic; it was beauty, grace, it was sexual, violent, gentle, it was just everything all at once in one band coming out of this one guy. I wouldn’t say that the audience response was quite the same as the response I was having. My sister [Jean, from folk act Jan & Dean] and I were going bananas, and the audience was like [soft clapping] and they were trying to figure it out.” 

The show would be The Mamas & The Papas last, while Hendrix would return to the Hollywood Bowl the following year as headliner. A two-track recording of that show also surfaced recently, and was included in the 50th Anniversary deluxe box set of “Electric Ladyland” in 2021.

To accompany the album, a new mini-documentary, Monterey Pop To The Hollywood Bowl, has been released. The 12-minute film tells the story of the build-up to the show, and features new interviews with Brian Ray and Mamas & The Papas vocalist Michelle Phillips. 

“We had never heard of him,” Phillips says of the legendary Monterey show. “I had absolutely no idea what to expect. And when I saw him perform I was mortified. I had never seen anything like this, I’d never seen anybody treat their instruments like this. He was pouring lighter fluid over his guitar and then setting it on fire and – I really was shocked. I had no experience with this kind of rock and roll theatre. And that was the first time I had ever seen it.”

“Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967” is released on November 10th

The Mountain Goats’ catalogue is thick with recurring characters—Jenny, who originally appears in the “All Hail West Texas” track bearing her name, as well as in “Straight Six” from “Jam Eater Blues” and “Transcendental Youth” side two jam “Night Light,” is one of these, someone who enters a song unexpectedly, pricking up the ears of fans who are keen on continuing the various narrative threads running through the Mountain Goats’ discography before vanishing into the mist. In these songs, Jenny is largely defined by her absence, and she is given that definition by other characters. She is running from something. These features are beguiling, both to the characters who’ve told her story so far and to the listener. They invite certain questions: Who is Jenny, really? What is she running from? Well, she’s a warrior and a thief, and, this being an album by the Mountain Goats, it’s a safe bet whatever she’s fleeing is something bad. Something catastrophically bad.

“Jenny from Thebes” is the story of Jenny, her southwestern ranch style house, the people for whom that house is a place of safety, and the west Texas town that is uncomfortable with its existence. It is a story about the individual and society, about safety and shelter and those who choose to provide care when nobody else will.

The third single and music video, “Murder at the 18th St. Garage,” off our forthcoming album ‘Jenny from Thebes’ (out Oct 27), Rather than being coy about it let me tell you that somebody gets killed in this song, which is, at best, a short-term solution to Jenny’s problems, not that I’m saying she herself did anything. It’s her word against his now and he can’t talk anymore and she’s long gone by the time the EMTs get to 18th Street. Under oath, I will testify that she was with me because I am with her. I knew when I wrote this tune that Wurster-Hughes Inc. would eat it up like a big tasty snack, and guess what, they did. Lace up your dancing workboots but wear some inserts because this one’s a sprint.

The Mountain Goats star in the new music video for “Murder at the 18th St. Garage,” the new single from “Jenny from Thebes”, out worldwide October 27th.

The first two minutes of Sun June’s third album, “Bad Dream Jaguar”, is a reverie – Laura Colwell’s voice floats above a slow-burn, sparse synth, conjuring a tipsy loneliness, a hazy recollection, a disco ball spinning at the end of the night for an empty dance floor. Sun June’s music often feels like a shared memory – the details so close to the edge of a song that you can touch them. And as an Austin-based project, their music has also always felt strangely and specifically Texan – unhurried, long drives across an impossible expanse of openness, refractions shimmering off the pavement in the heat.

But on “Bad Dream Jaguar”, Sun June is unmoored. The backdrop of Texas is replaced by longing, by distance, by transience, and a quiet fear. The only sense of certainty comes from the murky past. It’s a dispatch from aging, when you’re in the strange in-between of yourself: there’s a clear image of the person you once were and the places you inhabited, generational curses and our families, but the future feels vast, unclear – and the present can’t help but slip through your fingers.

We put out the final single off our record today. “Mixed Bag”. It’s about the comforts and frustrations of well-worn relationships with people and places. It’s about living in Texas and getting mad!!!!

There’s a mix of hi-fi and lo-fi; some songs, like “Texas,” which the band had to learn at a breakneck pace ahead of their recording session, was recorded on a first take, live in the room, while “Eager” and “Easy Violence” feature early vocal takes from Colwell, the final songs built atop the demos. The latter track details staying up all night, being a menace to society, falling into bad patterns, but is followed by “John Prine,” a drumless, piano-based ballad, a mash of pedal steel manipulated to sound closer to synths.

Sun June’s records have always been deceptively airy sounding in the face of melancholia, belying its densely textured foundation in a sense of ease. The layers on “Bad Dream Jaguar” don’t tangle but they float, sheaths of divergent and luminescent sonics hanging together as the sun goes down, darkness seeping in.

The record exists in the chasm between giving up and going all-in. And a flicker of quiet confidence powering through, a small hopeful glow at its core.

“Bad Dream Jaguar” the whole dang record comes out 20th Ocober 2023. 

Pinch Points present their first-ever vinyl pressing of their 2018 debut EP “Mechanical Injury”, celebrating the 5th anniversary of the release and featuring new bonus track ‘Pave Me’. This EP was originally released on cassette in 2018 through Roolette Records. 100 red cassettes were initially printed in ‘Australia’ alongside 100 yellow EU tapes through Six Tonnes de Chair, followed by a repress of 100 black/white cassettes in Australia.

“Mechanical Injury”, was self-recorded in the band’s Coburg house over 3 hours, just months after forming. Listening today, this EP represents the start of the evolution of Pinch Points’ songwriting.

There’s a carefree slant to these songs. Pinch Points went down the riff rabbit hole until sections seemed to reach their natural conclusions, feeling fun and comfortable.

This EP was notably featured in Bandcamp’s top 100 releases of 2018. Editorial director J. Edward Keyes famously said: “…What comes across on Injury more than anything is a pure, unfiltered sense of joy; make no mistake: the machine that’s causing the titular injuries is capitalism, and the band is far from thrilled about it. But they’ve found a way to merge protest music with party music—think “Rock Lobster,” if it were about overthrowing the government. Pinch Points put the “riot” back in “riotous.”

The digital and vinyl versions of this EP reissue feature a 7th track ‘Pave Me’ which was written alongside the other songs but never properly finalised or recorded until now. It was self-recorded in the same room in Coburg, almost 5 years later. 

released September 10th, 2023

Written, recorded & produced by Pinch Points.

Zev Powell – Drums (track 1-6)
Isabella Orsini – Drums and vox (track 7)
Adam Smith – Guitar, vox
Acacia Coates – Bass, vox
Jordan Oakley – Guitar, backup vox

“Dreamviloence” is Bambara’s full-length follow-up to their acclaimed debut EP “Dog Ear Days” (2010). After playing countless deafening shows in their hometown of Athens, touring the US in sweaty house shows and sharing bills with Iceage, Grimes, Liturgy, A Place to Bury Strangers, and Parts and Labor, Bambara decided to leave their beloved Athens and move to a basement apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn for a change. Here they practiced, slept and recorded for the majority of 2012. Following the release of a Kate Bush cover and a 10 minute improv noise EP “Rings” early in the year, Bambara began to work on “Dreamviloence”.

With a minimal recording set-up and little sunlight, the band was able to completely capture the dark, grimy, noisy sound they are known for while maintaining the lush beauty that glues it all together. Reid’s voice croons and snarls the fragmented images of the city. Blaze and William’s driving rhythm section plows and swings through the dirge of vocal noise with furious power. Bambara doesn’t want you to get comfortable in “Dreamviloence”. They prefer to send you through vortexes of haunting noise before you reach the dreamy euphoria waiting in the wreckage.

released September 22nd, 2023

Over five albums fronting Gum, not to mention the nine he’s made as co-leader of psych cosmonauts Pond, Jay Watson’s restless imagination has treated us to some of the most sonically diverse explorations of the past decade. On “Saturnia”, however, these visions have coalesced into the richest, but also the most coherent work of Watson’s career to date.

When you’ve got the ability to merge any combination of sounds and moods that pop into your head, there’s a temptation to cram everything you can into each second of tape. The lesson for Watson this time was to realise that sometimes you have to strip away a great idea for the benefit of the song.

Opener “Race to the Air” provides the perfect curtain raiser. Soaring into view like a gigantic interplanetary craft, it takes in a sparkling vista of cosmic disco all robo grooves and quivering strings, while “Would It Pain You to See?”, perhaps one of the most surprising songs on the album, is a glistening slink of sensual R&B.

Indeed, one of the most rewarding things about “Saturnia” is how the songs pivot and change unexpectedly throughout, beginning as one thing before launching off into a completely different stratosphere.

Jay Watson…dives even further into immersive, otherworldly soundscapes on his sixth album as GUM, leveling up his multi-instrumental prowess for his most dynamic and ambitious solo outing yet. – NME

New single ‘Argentina’ taken from the new album ‘Saturnia’ out now on Spinning Top Records.

Katy J Pearson has shared ‘Fire Leap’, a track taken from Katy J Pearson & Friends Present Songs From The Wicker Man, an 8-track EP featuring covers of tracks from The Wicker Man soundtrack which is out today as part of the 5-disc The Wicker Man 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition. The track also features musical contributions from Drug Store Romeos, Wet Leg and Sarah Meth.

The EP, which will be released digitally on Heavenly Recordings on 31st October, also features musical contributions from H Hawkline, The Broadside Hacks, Orbury Common and Bert Ussher as well as remixes by Richard Norris and Stone Club.

The EP came about as Katy had previously included a cover of ‘Willow’s Song’, Paul Giovanni’s track from the soundtrack to the 1973 cult film The Wicker Man, on her last album, “Sound Of The Morning“, released on Heavenly Recordings in July 2022.

She was subsequently asked to re-imagine the soundtrack for the 5-disc The Wicker Man 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition, Studiocanal’s box set reissue of the cult Brit-horror film to mark the film’s 50th anniversary.

Earlier this year Katy released her new version of ‘Willow’s Song’, re-recorded especially for the EP and featuring London folk collective Broadside Hacks, to coincide with THE WICKER MAN: THE FINAL CUT, which was shown for one night only at a number of UK cinemas and the Pilton Palais Cinema on the first night of Glastonbury Festival on the evening of Summer Solstice, June 21st.

Recorded in session at the Electronic Sound studio earlier in 2023, Andy Bell’s Glok project is a swirl of electronic psychedelia with processed guitar spiralling around the soundscape. It has its roots in Andy’s background as co-conspirator in shoegaze legends Ride, also best known as the Ride guitarist and formerly the bassist of Oasis, as well as taking inspiration from similarly experimental forefathers like Neu! and Can. At the same time, Glok encompasses echoes of decades of British electronic music and club culture to produce a mind-expanding trip of dazzling sounds. As GLOK, Andy has released two prior albums “Dissident” and “Pattern Recognition” which turned out to be a surprise dance chart number one.

Andy said: “ GLOK started off as an attempt by me to start to make electronic film scores. I didn’t get to make any, but I did get offered the chance to put some tracks out on cassette on a label called Bytes. The cassette sold out, and we decided to make vinyl, that sold out as well, and away we went.

The album is an exclusive Electronic Sound release only available here, and this first edition of just 500 units pressed on transparent yellow vinyl is sure to sell out fast.

Like this year’s acclaimed ‘Moving On Skiffle’, ‘Accentuate The Positive’ sees Van Morrison returning to one of his childhood passions: this time rock ‘n’ roll. Growing up in Belfast shortly after World War II, he was immensely inspired by the heady sounds of 20th century blues and rock ‘n’ roll. Several decades later, Van Morrison now revisits the genre by reimagining some of his personal favourites for ‘Accentuate The Positive’, and infusing those timeless songs with an energy that constantly challenges and expands upon its traditions.

Growing up in Belfast shortly after World War II, he was immensely inspired by the heady sounds of 20th century blues and rock ‘n’ roll. Listening to artists such as Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and The Everly Brothers, it wasn’t long until Van was intuitively reinterpreting these sounds with his own band in local hometown venues.

For this record, Van Morrison lends his own signature sound to some of his personal favourites for “Accentuate The Positive”, and infusing those timeless songs with an energy that constantly challenges and expands upon its traditions. Van’s inimitable voice combined with superb arrangements and highly accomplished brings a fresh zeal to such great songs as The Johnny Burnette Trio’s, ‘Lonesome Train’, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’ and Big Joe Turner’s pioneering rock ‘n’ roll hit, ‘Flip, Flop and Fly’. “Shakin’ All Over” is actually a song Morrison played decades back

Special guests featured on the album include vocals from Chris Farlowe and electric guitar from the late Jeff Beck on “Lonesome Train” and guitar from Taj Mahal on “Lucille” and “Shake, Rattle & Roll.”

“Rock ‘n’ roll is about simplicity, sincerity and expressive power and there’s no way you can get away from that,” said Van Morrison in a statement. “That’s why it’s good and that’s why it’s lasted.” It’s spirit music.’

Morrison’s re-imagined version of “Problems” is the latest preview of “Accentuate the Positive“, a new album due out soon

Black Pumas have released “Mrs. Postman,” the second track to be shared ahead of their the second recording album “Chronicles of a Diamond”, out on October 27th via ATO Records. The track, which features a hypnotic piano melody, head-nodding drums, and a well-placed tambourine beneath vocalist Eric Burton’s spectacular voice, was written alongside keyboardist JaRon Marshall, marking the first time Black Pumas have co-written with another musician.

Regarding the collaboration, multi-instrumentalist Adrian Quesada explained, “JaRon and I used to get together on afternoons and make hip-hop beats for fun, and ‘Mrs. Postman’ ended up coming out of one of those sessions.” Along with the new single—and a music video directed by Amos David McKay—the Austin-based soul duo has announced new tour dates for 2024 spanning Europe and the US.

“Mrs. Postman” previews the new Black Pumas album ‘Chronicles of a Diamond’ which will be released on October 27th