The Fat Angel Sings

Metal Box was the band’s second album, originally released on 23rd November 1979. Metal Box is issued in a square metal tin (CD and LP) (the 1979 original was issued in a round metal film canister) with an embossed PiL logo. Include a 72 page booklet together with an exclusive poster, art-prints (LP version) and postcards (CD version). With all lyrics written by John Lydon ‘Metal Box’ was recorded with original PiL members Keith Levene and Jah Wobble. Original drummer Jim Walker had left, to be replaced by a succession of drummers. ‘Metal Box’ came out less than a year after PiL’s debut ‘Public Image: First Issue’ yet it was nothing like its predecessor. Things had changed, and so had PiL. While outside pressures mounted PiL channeled their energies (negative and positive) into a record that would set them apart back in 1979, and indeed today in 2016. Whether it be John’s powerful and passionate vocals; Keith’s wailing guitar and melodic synths; Wobble’s sub-disco reggae basslines; or the crashing rhythm that holds it all together, ‘Metal Box’ has many strengths. The album was originally released as 3 x 45rpm 12″ singles, housed in a metal ‘film’ canister. As made by ‘The Metal Box Company’ in London’s East End; hence the name. The deluxe edition includes rare and unreleased mixes from the recording sessions, along with B-sides and BBC sessions, plus a live recording from a now legendary unplanned show at Factory Records Russell Club in Manchester arranged on the day of a Granada TV appearance in 1979.

Limited copies come with a bonus CD of Dan Carey dubs / mixes / re works of album tracks. Toy return with a new 10 track album Clear Shot on Heavenly Recordings. Splitting their time between Tom Dougall and bassist Maxim Barron’s place in New Cross and Dominic O’Dair’s flat in Walthamstow, where they set up a makeshift studio and laid down the early album demos, Clear Shot began to take shape in the first half of 2015. Taking inspiration from an esoteric blend – Radiophonic Workshop, Comus, the scores of Bernard Herrmann, John Barry and Ennio Morricone Fairport, Coum, Acid House, Incredible String Band, The Langley Schools Project, The Wicker Man soundtrack and even the direction behind Electric Eden, Rob Young’s book about the development of folk music in the U.K. – by the time they entered Eve Studios in Stockport in October 2015 with producer David Wrench, the band were clear about the direction the album should take. The result is their most coherent and confident album to date; lushly cinematic, shot through with their most expressive melodies thus far and coated with a ‘sheen’ courtesy of Chris Coady (Beach House, Smith Westerns, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), who mixed the album in LA with some of the reverbs and vocal processors used on Purple Rain, across the 10-tracks strands of ideas appear, sink and re-emerge in an almost modal jazz manner. Clear Shot sees Toy working both in bigger colours and more minutely crafted detail, achieving an altogether higher level of artistry than before

Midlake celebrate the 10th anniversary of ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’ with a deluxe reissue via Bella Union on 180 Gram gold vinyl, complete with a B2 pull-out poster, handwritten lyrics and previously unseen photos. The cover artwork has been reimagined in a fittingly flushed, hallucinatory painting by neo-impressionist (and pavement-scorching skateboarder) Brian Lotti. The original album is accompanied by a special bonus 7″ featuring two previously unreleased tracks, the plaintive rolling lament of ‘The Fairest Way’ and the revelatory psychedelic swirl of ‘Festival’, two tracks recorded before original vocalist Tim Smith departed the band. In 2006, Van Occupanther was hailed as an instant classic and over the course of the next year proved to be the band’s commercial breakthrough. While their debut, 2004’s ‘Bamnan and Slivercork’, had drawn acclaim alongside comparisons to Grandaddy and Radiohead, Midlake looked further afield and deeper within for the follow-up. Suffused with a romantic yearning for the simpler life, this was a record pitched between 1871, 1971 and somewhere out of time: between Henry David Thoreau and Neil Young’s ‘After the Gold Rush’, between 1970s Laurel Canyon thinking and a longing for something more mysterious. Rich reserves of wistful melody, dreamy horns, rolling guitars and plaintive pianos reflect its elusive, idiosyncratic narratives: a couple long to be robbed by bandits so they can start anew, an outcast scientist ponders his pariah status, a woman chases a frisky deer, a river leads who knows where yet leaves you little choice but to follow… Famous admirers included Thom Yorke, Beck, The Flaming Lips, Paul Weller, James Dean Bradfield, St Vincent, actor / skateboarder Jason Lee and The Chemical Brothers, and the album went on to secure high placings in the end-of-year polls. Since then, their influence has perhaps been felt in the breakthrough of many a band or singer at one with the stuff of beards, bucolic yearning and blissful West Coast harmonies, from Fleet Foxes to Band of Horses, The Low Anthem, Jonathan Wilson, Matthew E White and beyond. Not that Midlake stood still to lap up the praise: a band acutely attuned to nature’s shifts, they embraced change. In 2010 they ventured into darker psych-folk thickets for The Courage of Others and backed John Grant on his celebrated breakthrough album, ‘Queen of Denmark’. When Tim Smith subsequently departed, guitarist / singer Eric Pulido stepped up to the lead vocal role for 2013’s freshly exploratory ‘Antiphon’. Since then, Pulido and various Midlake members have embarked on a new musical project with a cast of all-stars including members of Grandaddy, Franz Ferdinand, Band of Horses and Travis, for an album due for release next year. All of this serves to reminds us what fertile seeds were sown with ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’: a modern classic, made of vintage craft and timeless magic.

Third World Pyramid is the first album that was fully recorded and produced at Anton’s new Cobra Studio in Berlin . It is the 15th full length release from the Brian Jonestown Massacre recorded from early 2016. Featuring Ricky Maymi, Dan Allaire, Joel Gion, Collin Hegna and Ryan Van Kriedt from the band. Also Emil Nikolaisen from the Norwegian band Serena-Maneesh joins the band on this album, plus vocal performance Tess Parks and Katy Lane.

Iggy Pop’s Post Pop Depression album, a collaboration with co-writer and producer Joshua Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age, is his most critically acclaimed and commercially successful album for many years. On 13th May 2016, Iggy Pop brought his Post Pop Depression live show to London’s revered Royal Albert Hall and almost tore the roof off! With a backing band including Joshua Homme and Dean Fertita from Queens Of The Stone Age and Matt Helders from the Arctic Monkeys, Iggy delivered a set focused almost entirely on the new album plus his two classic David Bowie collaboration albums from 1977, The Idiot and Lust For Life. Fans and critics alike raved about the performance and this will definitely be remembered as one of Iggy Pop’s finest concerts.

8CDs, Collectors Box Set with 16 Page Full Colour Booklet with Background Liners and Rare Images.
Exhilarating live performances across 4 decades of Bob Dylan masterpieces. Since coming to prominence in 1962, Bob Dylan has never ceased to create and innovate, his remarkable songwriting being matched by the quality and quantity of his live performances. This 8-disc set gathers several historically important sets, all originally recorded for broadcast on various different stations, including WBAI-FM, WNBC-FM and others. They find him playing intimately and in front of huge crowds, with material ranging from protest folk to rock’n’roll, and are accompanied here by background notes and images.

Mapping The Rendezvous is the fifth studio album from Courteeners and follows the spectacular success of 2014’s Concrete Love and the subsequent tour that saw the band sell out venues all across the country before playing a record breaking seven nights at the Manchester Apollo last Christmas

Psych-pop fuzz freaks The Lovely Eggs tell it like it is with their new single Drug Braggin. The Lovely Eggs are back again with another fuccked up, fuzzed out freak single . Released on eye-watering psychedelic swirl vinyl. The limited edition 7” sludge pop mind-melter sees the pair (Holly Ross and David Blackwell) take on their latest pet hate: drug posers. Sick of hearing people crowing about how many drugs they’ve done on a night out or at a festival, The Lovely Eggs retort with a big fuck-you to the pricks with a typically surreal insight in to their crazy world. The B-Side On the Line is another new song, which was recorded with an electronic voice unit with a strange disembodied American accent after Holly was diagnosed with a vocal nodule. This brand new material represents yet another twist and turn in The Lovely Eggs‘ musical odyssey, cementing their reputation as one of the most exciting, innovative and genuine bands on the UK underground scene. In keeping with their other recent releases, Drug Braggin is accompanied by artwork and video by cult underground artist and baboon keeper Casey Raymond. The artwork has been created so that it seems never ending as it is joined at every corner in a self repeating pattern, keeping the viewer trapped inside The Lovely Eggs self contained world. It shows Holly and David having a mental meltdown as a result of too much exposure to drug braggin’.