Funkadelic‘s back catalogue of Westbound studio albums is being reissued on vinyl via ORG Music. On August 29th, the reissue series kicks off with the band’s 1970 self-titled debut album, with audio restored and remastered from the original master tapes by mastering engineer Dave Gardner and tape restoration specialist Catherine Vericolli.
“It’s very rare for an archivist and a re-mastering engineer to be in the same room with the source material on a project,” Vericolli said in a statement. “To investigate, troubleshoot and make decisions as a team to best serve the releases. The approach is unorthodox, but the more we dug in, the more we realized that the magic of this undertaking wasn’t just in the tapes, or the incredible history that surrounded us in the studio—it was in the process. It was in the collaboration and trust.”
In the months that follow, other celebrated albums from the group will be released, including “Free Your Mind…and “Your Ass Will Follow”, “Maggot Brain”, and more.
Funkadelic’s debut album alone would be enough to secure Westbound’s legacy, let alone a roster that includes Ohio Players, Junie Morrison’s solo albums, The Detroit Emeralds, Denise LaSalle, The Counts, Dennis Coffey and so many more who continue to deeply influence soul, R&B, rock, funk and beyond.
Irish band Just Mustard are back with their first new music in three years. “Pollyana” picks up where 2022’s “Heart Under” left off, with blisteringly loud guitar haze floating atmospherically around a driving bassline and breakbeat drumming.
The latest from Just Mustard finds them taking a deeper dive into the experimental ambiance of shoegaze. A minimalist drone of sound anchors the vocals, holding the song together. Katie Ball’s voice has just enough of a piercing quality to make this work. If you were hoping for a more guitar-oriented track, this is not it, but it does work well at creating the dreamy vibes that keep the band from being boxed into a singular aspect of the genre they are associated with.
The video was directed by singer Katie Ball, who says, “We shot the video using different CCTV and VHS cameras around our hometown Dundalk trying to have as much fun as possible, the kind of fun that makes you feel sick almost instantly, which suits the themes of the song.”
We are also happy to announce that we have a run of intimate shows across the world this September. Sign up to our mailing list at justmustard.ie to access presale 10am local time tomorrow, Wednesday 18th June.
Death Valley Girls – “Live From the Astral Plane”. Originally recorded back in 2020 in the heart of a global pandemic, the band reunited to record a live film in their practice space in Los Angeles, CA. Revisited and remastered in 2024, pressed on beautiful splatter vinyl for the very first time.
“Wow! Getting to do this project was such an honor, and a treat! We finished recording our record “Under the Spell of Joy” one day before lock down. Rolling out an album under normal circumstances is a huge, and all consuming job. Then figuring out how to compassionately, respectfully, and successfully roll out an album during a worldwide catastrophe, and especially an album about spells, and incantations for joy, was a real head scratcher! Getting to work on this live recording during that period allowed us to focus on a way we could be most helpful in a world of sorrow, and forced us to be creative. We were desperate to be of service.
We realized astral projection – and concepts around leaving the 3D experience was an exciting idea. If we could connect people on the astral plane, we wouldn’t have to feel so alone! So we decided to start the session with an introduction on how to astral project! Learning how to meditate on this concept turned out to be the greatest gift, and a lasting escape during this terrible time. This recording finally getting to be on vinyl is so exciting! The idea that we can all meet up in the sky, and leave our problems behind for a bit is such a fun exercise! Now all you gotta do is drop that needle and fly! Thank you for letting us !” – Death Valley Girls
Bonnie Bloomgarden – Vocals, Guitar, Keys
Nikki Pickle – Vocals, Bass
Rikki Styxx – Vocals, Drums
Larry Schemel – Guitar
Recorded at The Cone with Dante Aliano in Los Angeles
Parisian psych institution, La Femme, unleash a discography spanning set dripping in LSD and casual chic, transmitted from a smoky room in Normandy, France. The Session comes on the heels of their new LP, “Paradigmes”, and upcoming world tour.
“We have recorded this session in the country side of Normandy, France, an intimate set in a rustic old home. We played our most psyches track, according to the Levitation Sessions spirit, recorded by the fireplace in the darkest hours of the night.
The spirit of the Psych Fest was haunting the room, and so were psychedelic ghosts, they were living in every one of the musicians of the band. We were time traveling, the spirits of the 60s rising back from the dead. The track “Sphynx” was written during Austin Psych Fest 2014 in Austin, Texas, and we are pleased to bring it back home. Danser sous acide” – La Femme
Filmed in Normandy, FR
Easter 2021 saw the return of the noirish alt-goth roustabouts Desperate Journalist to the Bodega in Nottingham, who pile back into the marketplace with a brand new single called ‘Fault’ on April 2nd. Driven along by Simon Drowner’s ear-popping bassline ‘Fault’ finds the quartet in impeccably brutalist form, all banshee howls and lacerating lyrics from singer Jo Bevan. “And those teenage hang-ups are hard to beat / When your closet is piled up with defeat,” she snaps at one especially prickly point, as alongside her guitarist Rob Hardy and drummer Caz Hellbent add fuel to the sonic flaming. ‘Fault’ is the first track to be hauled from Desperate Journalist’s thoroughly forthright fourth album, ‘Maximum Sorrow!’, recorded entirely in Crouch End in lockdown.
Here’s what Jo says of this first shot from the long playing bows…“The lyrics for ‘Fault’ were initially written quite intuitively and informed by what sounded good mouthwise with the kind of melody I thought the song needed – quite sonorous, Jim Kerr-y vowels. As I edited it into something which actually made sense, it naturally turned into a memory-screed about a terrible flat I once lived in and how the place itself seemed to reflect all the misery going on in my life at the time. I quite like the idea of a song sounding so big and dark and kinetic but with lyrics set mostly in quite a small space where nothing really happens except for unexpressed turbulent emotion. “Structurally it’s unusual for us in that it a) doesn’t have many guitars on it and b) has a shifting hook/chorus which doesn’t happen at the times you’d necessarily expect. It was more of a textural exercise to record too which was really enjoyable and interesting – there are two drumkits on the recording and also synth undercurrents to make it extra propulsive and intense. ”So post-punk has made it into the springtime pages of The Sunday Times? Oh, DO keep up – Desperate Journalist have been raging against the corporate machine for aeons with their melodramatic blend of traumatised guitars and artbroken vocals. In fact, ‘Maximum Sorrow!’ will represent their fourth full album release in the six years since the ‘Desperate Journalist’ debut appeared in 2015. Sophomore effort ‘Grow Up’ stormed out in 2017 and 2019 saw the search for ‘In Search Of The Miraculous’.
Throw in a couple of five-track EPs (‘Good Luck’ and ‘You Get Used To It’) and their melody-shattering proficiency is apparent for all to see. Add in a litany of ten-out-of-ten media reviews and utterly devotional followings from desperate fanboys and fangirls from Birmingham to Berlin and Desperate Journalist’s incredibly credible status is more bulletproof than ever before.
In fact, what really is impressive this time around is that ‘Fault’ sounds so alive but as it was written and recorded in lockdown it has never actually been played live – now that really does take some creative skillings.
Released July 2nd, 2021
Hand Habits, is the project of multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Meg Duffy, has announced a new LP. “Blue Reminder” is slated to arrive on August 22nd via Fat Possum. It’s led by the bristly, yearning new song ‘Wheel of Change’, which comes paired with a video from director Otium.
“Both lyrically and in its production, this song is about the impossibility of return—you can’t go back to the way things were, no matter how much you might want to hold on to a time, or a feeling, or a person,” Duffy explained in a press release. “Lyrically there’s a kind of desperation (‘I need it now more than ever’), but in it there’s also a request, ‘don’t take it away just yet,’ which is not a question but a demand, and I wanted the production to reflect that. That in longing, there can be this sharper, wild edge. Like, no I need this, give it to me, don’t take it away.”
Duffy recorded “Blue Reminder” in Los Angeles with co-producer Joseph Lorge. It features a crew of collaborators including Alan Wyffels, Gregory Uhlmann, Olivia Kaplan, Blake Mills, Tim Carr, Daniel Aged, and Joshua Johnson and Anna Butters of SML. “For this record I set out to no longer shapeshift when it came to the person I become in the face of love,” Duffy shared.
“Of course the weight of the past is always in the room with me when I sit down to write,” they added. “It is filtered through my way of making even the most precious moments imbued with something blue — the constant reminder is there — but I have spent so much time writing as a means to work through pain, or place blame on myself or others, and I am at a point in my life where I’m more interested in acceptance, forgiveness, and exploring what it means to need and be needed.”
Back in 2023, Hand Habits released the mini-record “Sugar the Bruise”. Last year, they contributed to the solo piano music compilation piano1, and recently joined the National’s Matt Berninger on his single ‘Breaking into Acting’.
Franz Ferdinand have shared new versions of two tracks included on “The Human Fear“, which was released via Domino Recordings in January. Those two new songs are a version of “Build It Up” with the great Johnny Marr on guitar and a live version of “Hooked,” which was recorded at Barrowlands in Glasgow and features London-based indietronica figure Master Peace.
The new version of “Build It Up” came from a live Amazon session in which the band was joined by Marr. The collaboration apparently went swimmingly, as the band and the former Smiths guitarist eventually hopped in the studio to record their version.
“Johnny is an inspiration. Literally,” shared Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos. “I sat in my bedroom as a teenager trying to work out how to play his melodies. To hear his distinctive playing on our song is glorious. He’s elevated it in that way only he can.”
Both songs were originally featured on the band’s 2025 LP “The Human Fear“.
Royel Otis have shared another new track called “Car” alongside the news that their sophomore studio album, “hickey”, will arrive on August 22nd. The single was co-written by the band (Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic) with writer/producers Blake Slatkin and Omer Fedi. The track is a lo-fi jangly pop cut with a chorus that looks in the rear view on days of yore. It strikes that nostalgia nerve in all the right ways as Pavlovic sings: “Yeah, I’ll meet you in the car on the corner / But we know it’s gotta change sometime / You know I love the taste of your water / But I think it’s time to say goodbye.”
The Sydney indie-pop duo Royel Otis are facing criticism following the release of their new single ‘Moody’, with some listeners accusing the band of using misogynistic language in the track and allegedly deleting online comments calling them out for it.
The band also recently announced an upcoming tour in support of the new material which will find them initially headlining cities across North America.
“Car” (Official Music Video) by Royel Otis, shot in New York City.
Frankie Cosmos has shared an official video for the album opener, “Pressed Flower,” off the group’s forthcoming long-player, “Different Talking“, available worldwide on June 27th. Directed by Adam Kolodny, the video stars comedy icon Tracey Ullman alongside the band and others.
Greta Kline’s sixth record as Frankie Cosmos is another solid if slightly monotonous showcase of her brisk, pleasant brand of indie-pop, only occasionally doling out flashes of wit and unexpected stylistic flourishes. In 2014, Greta Kline, the singer-songwriter behind the moniker Frankie Cosmos, emerged as a new voice to be reckoned with with her small but impactful debut “Zentropy”. That record stood out for a myriad of reasons: the economical runtime (no track runs over 2.5 minutes), the gentle yet exacting DIY sound design, and Kline’s soft, fluttery vocals, which could transform mundane personal anecdotes and straightforward observations into quietly devastating poetry. For a brief, fleeting moment, “Zentropy” made twee cool again, evoking the oft-maligned aesthetic that populated much of the indie-pop/rock sphere in the mid-to-late-2000s but infusing it with a twist of millennial malaise.
Kline has continued to refine her no-frills sonic template with minor adjustments. Her most accomplished work remains 2016’s “Next Thing”, which effortlessly streamlined Kline’s intimate song-writing and nimble production style into a simple yet striking record that clocks in at just under 30 minutes. Frankie Cosmos has also morphed from just a stage name for Kline into a four-piece band that includes guitarist Alex Bailey, keyboardist Katie Von Schleicher, and drummer Hugo Stanley. That Kline has maintained a consistent and disciplined sound after expanding her project is commendable, but “Different Talking”, her sixth and latest LP, is more or less the same as what she’s been making up to this point: brisk, accessible, slickly produced indie-pop .
Frankie Cosmos’s frontperson, Greta Kline, shares, “It’s a dream come true to have Tracey Ullman star in this video. She’s the funniest person I know, and brings love, depth, and care to every character she plays. Getting to play dress-up with her and find this Manhattanite havoc-wreaker character was a blast. The Director, Adam Kolodny, brought the perfect framework to our crazy concept. This song, for me, is about figuring out who you are, moving on while looking back, and feeling the effects of memories on locations. The video is about someone running around NYC in a disguise, causing a chaotic chain of events for the locals (played by my band).”
“Different Talking”, Frankie Cosmos upcoming album, is available to stream from your SubPop.com account right now with any purchase of the album!
‘Different Talking,’ out June 27th on Sub Pop Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 