The Fat Angel Sings

‘Open For Business’ is the third LP by Australia via Baltimore trio Smoke Bellow. The effects of the pandemic loom large on this LP. The title makes reference to the Maryland governor’s motto ‘We’re Open For Business’ whilst the composition of the LP took place together, as normal, and then over email once lockdown too effect.

Meredith and Christian are originally from Brisbane and Sydney, Australia. Meredith is a social worker. Christian is a nursing student. Both play guitar and sing. Manny is from Baltimore. He drums on an irregular kit. Smoke Bellow is an exercise in pastiche, catharsis, fun and positivity. 

The group blend post punk, minimalism, highlife, psychedelia and komische. A whole range of influences come from Sly and Robbie to ESG to Steve Reich.

Transcontinental, experimental duo Smoke Bellow have been at it since 2012, relocating from Australia to Baltimore, MD & back again and then BACK AGAIN (now firmly settled in Baltimore). The duo released the “Blooming/Middling” LP in 2014, followed by “Isolation 3000” in 2018 (both on Baltimore label Ehse Records) After a line-up shuffle, they eventually recruited one of their favourite drummers and dear friend, Emmanuel Nicolaidis (Thank You, Oh Hang). which found the duo refining their sound into a dizzyingly attractive mixture of kosmiche serenity, minimalist composition, test-card psychedelia, and highlife guitar.

Half of the songs were written in a room together and the second half via email (for obvious reasons). At the time they were listening to a lot of post punk and were struck with the partnership of drums and bass as propulsive instruments. The trio started writing songs around that idea – with the rhythm as a brace to hang their decorations.

Sonically, Smoke Bellow are inspired by disparate sources. The heyday of Compass Point studios’ famed rhythm section of Sly and Robbie sustained them for months. Others included good old VU, ESG, guitar hero Zani Diabate, The Raincoats (especially their under-appreciated second album, Odyshape), the frenetic sound collisions of the Flying Lizards, the ever warm blanket of Yo La Tengo, the evolving repetition of Stereolab, the understated genius of Asa Osborne, as well as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. The David Byrne/ Robert Wilson “Knee plays” reminded them of the joy of the spoken word set to music. Lyrically, Best & McHugh drew from life in Baltimore, from isolation (again), memories of life in Melbourne, their friends and each other. “We wanted to talk about resilience and resistance.” Says Best.

Releases September 17th, 2021

Smoke Bellow are: Meredith McHugh, Christian J. Best, Emmanuel Nicolaidis

From the record “Open for Business” out September 2021 via Trouble in Mind. Video shot, edited and directed by Kari Nye and David Zimmerman.

‘What A World’ is the eighth LP by psychedelic rock band Mountain Movers. Over their eight LPs the Connecticut four-piece have perfected the lolloping Crazy Horse-style rhythm section, the face melting guitar solos synonymous with stoned psych rock and the quiet/loud dynamic. For fans of Bardo Pond, Comets on Fire, Düngen and White Heaven. 

Watching the Mountain Movers’ progression over the course of the past decade has truly been a treat. Their earliest beginnings saw the band documenting Dan Greene’s vast catalogue of songs, while displaying a rotating cast of New Haven musicians’ unique skills. The band produced three albums and several singles of polished indie rock in this incarnation. However, their fourth album, 2010’s Apple Mountain, saw the band transition to stranger territory; home-recorded and employing an arsenal of miscellaneous instruments, the record bore a folk-psychedelic element not displayed on their previous work. Shortly after Apple Mountain, constant members Greene and Rick Omonte were joined by lead guitarist Kryssi Battalene and drummer Ross Menze to form, what is now, the band’s longest running lineup.

The band has since produced a series of singles, lathe-cuts, cassettes, 2015’s Death Magic; an album that melded Greene’s song writing with the bands ability to stretch out and improvise. In 2016, they previewed the “Sunday Drive / No Plans” cassingle (recorded at former drummer John Miller’s home studio), giving us – the listener – the first glimpse into the Movers’ newest modes.

Two instrumental improvisations clocking in at just under 20 minutes that bring to mind names like Neu! and Ash Ra Tempel, as much as they do any number of American psychedelic acts of the 1960’s. The band’s sixth, eponymous album “Mountain Movers” is bookended by two long-form jams with three perfect, crystalline pop songs sandwiched in between, mirroring both aspects of the band & representing the most fully realized recorded representation of the band’s live show to date. Expect it to surface in May, 2017 on Chicago’s Trouble In Mind Records.

On the Rollercoaster tour of early 1992, it seemed that if Damon Albarn couldn’t get past My Bloody Valentine, he was going to try and get over them. Or possibly under. Such was his athleticism as Blur presented their opening act set of post-Baggy, pop-psychedelia, it seemed as though while the Jesus and Mary Chain and Dinosaur Jr were there as musical diversions, Blur were partly there for sport.

On that night, as others on the tour, lots were drawn as to the order of the bill – as per the tour name, a band might ascend to dizzying heights one night, only to plummet alarmingly the next. Other tour lore which had filtered down to the audience concerned the PA system, a matter in which Blur seem not to have been consulted. Instead, the more sonically-mindful and established names on the bill (JAMC and My Bloody Valentine) were said to have reached a peaceable accord about the arrangements.

Peaceable accord, as the holocaust section of You Made Me Realise enters its tenth minute – I’m guessing tenth, my watch seems to have stopped – is, however, a long way from the state we’re in. Apparently JAMC have suggested the PA should be big. My Bloody Valentine have countered that it also needs to be clever. As the strobes fire and the noise pounds what remains of the crowd into a psychedelic submission – the revelation dawning is that something isn’t being destroyed here, but being magnificently created – you’d have to suggest they’d got the right tools for the job.

As you’ll read in this latest Uncut special, here to mark the 30th anniversary of MBV’s masterpiece “Loveless” album, among other Shoegaze landmarks of 1991, this state between song and abstraction was a place where many of our featured bands of this period made their home. We pay our respects the forebears – the architects, perhaps – of the scene, namely JAMC, Cocteau Twins, Spacemen3 and MBV.

We also celebrate with deep writing and entertaining archive features the standard bearers of the “scene which celebrates itself”, who made Shoegaze (or “Shoegazing” as we called it then) what it was: Pale Saints, Lush, Slowdive, Moose, Ride, and Chapterhouse. We swim deep in the best albums, EPs, and ephemera. We’ve covered the ongoing Shoegaze revival in a curated playlist by Sonic Cathedral supremo Nat Cramp, and got some ‘gaze legends to make us a tape of what they were listening to at the time of their ascent to glory in the late 1980s. A particularly great honour is to have reconnected with Lord Tarquin, once NME’s Boswell of the scene within the scene. He now takes a trip down memory lane on the changes the years have wrought.

All round, we’re really quite pleased with what we’ve come up with here. If anyone else likes it, as musicians used to say 30 years ago, that’s a bonus.

Barry Adamson has released his first music since 2018’s anthology Memento Mori, and it comes in the form of the incredible track ‘Broken Moments’. Hear it below!

Barry also has his exciting upcoming autobiography on the horizon, ‘Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars’. He’ll be launching the book at the Walthamstow Rock ‘N’ Roll Book Club on 30th September, where he’ll be in conversation and playing some tracks live!

released September 2nd, 2021

Rough Trade Shops tip. This band is special. Horsegirl are a noisy rock trio from Chicago composed of Penelope Lowenstein, Nora Cheng and Gigi Reece, all 17-18 years old. Inspired by the shoegaze and post-punk sounds of the ’90s US and UK indie underground, in their year together they have played contemporary art museums, all ages venues, open mics and house parties. The ‘Ballroom Dance Scene’ b/w ‘Sea Life Sandwich Boy’ 7” is their first physical release and is out via Sonic Cathedral.

This is Horsegirl’s directorial debut

First written during a Chicago teacher’s strike in 2019, ‘Ballroom Dance Scene’ presents Horsegirl’s glassy guitars and vocal counterpoint, like a cross between Yo La Tengo and The Raincoats. The competing vocal melodies cascade over one another, detailing the lives of various fictional characters. With a title inspired by a misread product name sold at their local grocery store, ‘Sea Life Sandwich Boy’ was the first track Horsegirl wrote together and comes across like Pavement or The Breeders (or, perhaps more accurately, The Amps).

Released 17/09/21 on Sonic Cathedral Records

Welcome to this brand-new collection of every single
Bob Dylan album on high-quality 180-gram vinyl plus your collectors’ magazine.

For the first time ever, discover the works of the iconic singer-songwriter with a collection of Bob Dylan’s studio albums (including double and triple LPs) on high-quality 180 gram vinyl alongside an eight-page fact-packed companion magazine.

Every issue of Dylan Vinyl: The Definitive Collection comes with a fantastic eight-page magazine that explores the context to the album, offering insights into the global events surrounding its creation, detailed notes for every track and information about recording sessions and personnel.

Song writing project of Justin Sullivan (Kevin Morby, The Babies, Flat Worms). Songs from the cafe of eternal youth.

Album is in pre-order and will be available on February 11th, 2022.

Releases December 1st, 2021

Recorded at Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles on March 6th, 7th and 8th and at Compn’y Studios in Burbank on March 11th, 12th and 15th. Produced by Justin Sullivan and Jarvis Taveniere.

Horns on “Let Me Let It Go” engineered by Spencer Guerra and recorded at Loantaka Sound. Cover photo by Jeff Davenport. Layout by Mike Krol.

From the album, “Forever Night“, available on February 11th, 2022 on Dangerbird Records.

In early December, Hand Habits, aka Meg Duffy, shared a photo alongside Sasami Ashworth that revealed an exciting development: “Me and my producer [SASAMI] we are almost done with my LP3 hello internet.” Arriving two years after Duffy’s last solo effort, 2019’s placeholder, a new Hand Habits record will be much-needed after the chaos of 2020. To tide yourself over in the meantime, watch Duffy cover Tom Petty’s “Walls” alongside Angel Olsen.

Hand Habits, the project of Los Angeles-based musician Meg Duffy (they/them), is back with their new album “Fun House” – the most ambitious Hand Habits album to date. Produced by Sasami Ashworth and engineered by Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), the record was not intended as a reaction to the pandemic, but it was very much the result of taking a difficult, if much-needed, moment of pause. Emboldened by going into therapy and coaxed by Ashworth to push the songs into unexpected new shapes, the resulting music is more acutely personal and stylistically adventurous than anything you’ve heard from Hand Habits before. The push/pull of styles, paired with songs that move deftly between the present and past, give the record a wildly diverse, hall of mirrors quality that befits its name. Where previous Hand Habits records could be fairly insular affairs, “Fun House” feels ebullient, lush, a fully-realized conversation.

releases October 22nd, 2021 through Saddle Creek Records.

Produced By: Sasami Ashworth