The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement to announce that my version of it will be out October 27th. To be perfectly honest, this is my most FAVORITE re-record I’ve ever done because the 5 From The Vault tracks are so insane. I can’t believe they were ever left behind. But not for long! Pre-order 1989 (Taylor’s Version) now.
Package details: 1989 (Taylor’s Version) Vinyl 21 Songs Including 5 previously unreleased songs from The Vault 1 of 4 Editions: Collectible album gatefold jacket with unique front and back cover art 2 Crystal Skies Blue vinyl discs 1 of 4 Editions: Collectible album sleeves including lyrics and never-before-seen photos for each version
As they set to work on their highly awaited sophomore album, Black Pumas broadened their palette to include a dazzling expanse of musical forms: heavenly hybrids of soul and symphonic pop, mind-bending excursions into jazz-funk and psychedelia, starry-eyed love songs that feel dropped from the cosmos. The debut was nominated for 7 Grammys and reached one million album equivalents. Chronicles Of A Diamond arrives as the fullest expression yet of their frenetic creativity and limitless vision.
Duran Duran return with their new album Danse Macabre. The 13 song collection features: three brand new songs; haunting covers of songs by artists such as Billie Eilish, Talking Heads, The Rolling Stones and The Specials; and new versions of Duran Duran classics from their own catalog. It also includes a rare b-side and fan favorite: “Secret Oktober 31st”. Guest artists include producer, guitarist and composer Nile Rodgers, Victoria De Angelis of Mĺneskin and former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. Exquisitely packaged with a fold-out poster, the record features images adapted from a collection of authentic vintage séance photos that band member Nick Rhodes sourced at auction.
Like so many of the most essential rock bands, The Gaslight Anthem have a rare gift for finding glory in the inescapable pain of being alive. On their new album History Books—their first new music in over nine years—the New Jersey-bred four-piece bring their soulful breed of punk to ten thrilling songs exploring everything from mortality to mental illness to the more precarious dimensions of human connection. In the tradition of their seminal sophomore album The ’59 Sound, The Gaslight Anthem’s sixth full-length ultimately achieves of the tremendous feat of hitting every raw nerve while endlessly inspiring wildly triumphant singing-along.
“A lot of this record is questioning all the bad stuff we see in the world and the difficult things we go through in life, and asking how to deal with it,” says vocalist/guitarist Brian Fallon, whose bandmates include drummer Benny Horowitz, bassist Alex Levine, and lead guitarist Alex Rosamilia. “I think the answer is that we’re all in this together and that somehow makes it okay, even when it’s anything but easy. The main message of the album is empathy.”
The first release from their own Rich Mahogany Recordings (a label distributed via Thirty Tigers), History Books finds The Gaslight Anthem working with acclaimed producer/engineer Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie) and recording at his Bridgeport, CT-based Tarquin Studios. “We didn’t have any interest in reinventing what The Gaslight Anthem sounds like,” Fallon reveals. “We wanted to stay true to ourselves but also let Peter do what he does best, which is to make things sound beautiful and sad and fun and exciting all at the same time.” Featuring a guest appearance from longtime Gaslight Anthem champion Bruce Springsteen, History Books matches its unfussy yet gracefully crafted sound with the force-of-nature energy that’s defined the band since getting their start playing basement shows back in the mid-aughts. “None of us wanted to make a very somber or serious record showing how much we’ve matured,” says Fallon. “We’ve all changed and grown and learned so much, but the overall mood was a feeling of excitement to be back together and making music that means something to us.”
The follow-up to 2014’s Get Hurt, History Books takes its title from a heavy-hearted track about the power in letting go of what no longer serves you. “I think forgiveness is so important on so many levels, but I’ve learned that in some cases you need to cut ties with the people who’ve done you harm,” says Fallon. Rooted in lyrics that perfectly encapsulate Fallon’s penchant for gorgeously lived-in poetry (e.g., “Nights of smoke and dirty jokes/Darkened rooms with lonely ghosts/They were beautiful some time ago/But time keeps rollin’ us on”), “History Books” also echoes the album’s themes of transience and transcendence. “In some ways each song is a history book—they each tell a story of the past, and all the things that we’ve left behind,” Fallon points out.
History Books is available on CD, LP, Indie-exclusive Yellow Vinyl, and a "Ten Bands One Cause" Pink Vinyl. Proceeds from the "Ten Bands One Cause" edition benefit the Red Door Community, an organization that provides community support for both those diagnosed with cancer and their caretakers.
Jenny from Thebes began its life as many albums by the Mountain Goats do, with John Darnielle playing the piano until a lyric emerged. That lyric, “Jenny was a warrior / Jenny was a thief / Jenny hit the corner clinic begging for relief,” became “Jenny III,” a song which laid down a challenge he’d never taken up before: writing a sequel to one of his most beloved albums. The Mountain Goats’ catalog 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. This is what a follow-up to All Hail West Texas entails. But if you think about the Mountain Goats as they were in 2001, when Darnielle wrote and recorded that album on his own, mostly into his Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox, and how they are now as the recording and touring outfit of Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster, you may find yourself asking how. That occurred to Darnielle, too. “If we’re going to do a sequel to a record that was recorded almost entirely on a boombox,” he asks, “why not do the opposite and make it as big as possible?” Decamping to Tulsa, Oklahoma’s legendary The Church Studio with Grammy-winning producer/engineer Trina Shoemaker (Sheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions), that is exactly what the Mountain Goats did. Jenny from Thebes is a lush collection of showtunes, pushing Darnielle as a vocalist and the Mountain Goats as a band, broadening their sonic palette once again by leaning into influences like Godspell, Jim Steinman, and The Cars. The resulting album cuts a path that is simultaneously full of allusions longtime Mountain Goats fans will spin entire mythologies from while also being their most inviting record for those who’ve yet to be converted to the cause. Lifted by Matt Douglas’ horn and string arrangements, the dreamy guitar of Bully leader (and Bleed Out producer) Alicia Bognanno, and backing vocals from Kathy Valentine of The Go-Go’s (“Only One Way,” “Same as Cash,” “Going to Dallas”) and Matt Nathanson (“Fresh Tattoo”), the album is a widescreen musical in scope, a melodrama of richly detailed characters and sweeping emotions. Explaining the title of the album, Darnielle notes that Jenny is not unlike a character from Greek literature, someone on the verge of an unimaginable tragedy whose signs and portents will not make themselves known to her until she finds herself amidst the wreckage. “These things never happen in isolation,” he says. “One bad event leads to and is the reason for another bad event. Jenny should know that you can’t keep a safehouse in a west Texas town, but she’s too wrapped up in the process and has to go through the loss to understand how it happened.” Whether or not she comes to understand how it happened, the events of Jenny from Thebes set Jenny on the run. A woman and her custom yellow and black Kawasaki held in the memories of a vanishing few, someone who held the gate for as long as she could, as a warrior might, before disappearing into the night like a thief.
For over two decades, Taking Back Sunday has cultivated a massive, dedicated fanbase built around music that reverberates with supreme sincerity, desire, and connection. The influential, multi-platinum selling rock band brought mature songcraft and pop sensibilities to punk’s rigid conformity, helping expand the genre’s contours while carrying the band to new heights. Now, Taking Back Sunday is set to release their eighth studio album titled 152, (named for the Charlotte, NC offramp that became a popular meet-in-the-middle stop for a group of friends) produced by Tushar Apte (BTS, Blackpink, Nicki Minaj)
Sam Hunt’s Between the Pines (Acoustic Mixtape) was originally released via his website in October 2013. Some of the songs later appeared on his debut studio album, Montevallo, while some were recorded by other artists. The mixtape was released in October 2015 by MCA Nashville. Now, it’s available for the first time on vinyl. This 2 LP set is pressed on CREAM vinyl. Indie Exclusive.
Whether we look for him or not, we all find God somewhere. It could be in nature. It could be in church. It could be in the metaverse. It differs for each and every one of us. In terms of where God might be, The Kills aren’t necessarily saying, but the duo (Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince) certainly sound like they’ve seen him. How else could you explain the primal call-and-response between Alison’s full body blues-soul vocal catharsis and Jamie’s swaggering, guillotine-smooth guitar transmissions on the duo’s sixth full-length offering, God Games?
Jon Pardi will release his first-ever Christmas album in 2023 that will include standards and originals. Featuring 12
tracks with such holiday favorites as “Winter Wonderland” and “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” as well as new
original songs like “Beer For Santa” and “I’ve Been Bad, Santa (with Pillbox Patti).” Jon has released four studio
albums: Write You a Song (2014), California Sunrise (2016), Heartache Medication (2019), and Mr. Saturday Night
(2022). He has also charted 14 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. Available on
limited-edition GOLD vinyl.
'Who We Used To Be' is James' first studio album since the acclaimed, top 3 'Once Upon A Mind' in 2019. This time out he has worked with a variety of producers including Jonny Coffer, Red Triangle, Jack & Coke and Steve Robson.
Prince & The New Power Generation’s multi-platinum album, Diamonds And Pearls, dazzlingly remastered for the very first time by Prince’s original mastering engineer Bernie Grundman.
LP1-2: Diamonds And Pearls - Remastered for the very first time
LP3-4: 15x newly Remastered Singles Mixes & Edits
The Deluxe Edition contains 28 audio tracks on 4 black 180 gram LPs, capturing the very most important tracks released by Prince & The New Power Generation in 1991/92.
The Deluxe Edition opens with Prince & The New Power Generation’s multi-platinum album, Diamonds And Pearls, dazzlingly remastered for the very first time by Prince’s original mastering engineer Bernie Grundman.
Also included are 15 of the incredible remixes and B-sides from the era, including the never commercially released “Gett Off (Damn Near 10 Min.)” mix, all of which have also been remastered for the very first time.
Mayer Hawthorne cut his teeth in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he started making beats and DJing at the height of Detroit hip-hop. Since his debut heart-shaped seven-inch, Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out, dropped via Stones Throw in 2008, Hawthorne has released four LPs, raking in accolades from esteemed publications like GQ, New York Times Magazine, Playboy, and Rolling Stone. From NPR's proclamation of his imminent stardom to BBC Music's endorsement of his authentic soul, his artistry has captivated the hearts of critics and fans alike. With a wealth of additional press coverage and features in notable outlets such as Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair, in addition to appearances on Conan, Letterman, Kimmel, The Today Show, and beyond, Hawthorne's cultural impact is undeniable.
Not only do critics and fans love Hawthorne, but his peers do, too. He opened for Amy Winehouse on her final tour before she tragically passed away, and served as direct support for Bruno Mars twice; he crafted modern yacht rock jams with Pharrell poolside in Miami and John Mayer called his debut the “album of the year” on Twitter. His songs have soundtracked episodes of Girls, the end credits of the final episode of Ugly Betty, and is the only non-Kanye song in the famed Spike Jonze directed short film, We Were Once A Fairytale. Hawthorne has written and produced the lion’s share of his catalog, and apart from his solo work, he collaborates with hip-hop producer Jake One on their boogie funk super-group, Tuxedo, which is now three albums and multiple world tours deep.
After the release of his last album Man About Town on Vagrant Records in 2016, Hawthorne launched the next phase of his career as a producer and writer for fellow artists. Recent credits include Jordan Ward’s single “Lil Baby Crush” released through Interscope Records,“Truth or Dare” by Chika featuring Freddie Gibbs, and most notably “Options featuring JID” from Doja Cat’s double platinum album Planet Her, which earned him a Grammy nomination.
This summer, Hawthorne debuted “The Pool,” a swirling, smoke-filled song that guides the listener towards transcendence. Written and produced entirely by Hawthorne, this song is where rebelliousness and carefree living intertwine, inviting you to embrace the thrill in psychedelic adventures. Now, Hawthorne is ready to share his fifth studio album, For All Time, an immersive experience that transcends boundaries and embraces the shadows. On this record, he delves deep into the depths of the human heart, exploring the complexities of love and the raw emotions that accompany it. It's a captivating blend of dark, sexy, and moody vibes that will transport you straight into a smoky, art deco jazz club. For All Time is a celebration of a love that burns with intensity, leaving an enduring mark on the soul.
Named after one of her signature catchphrases, Like..? is the best showcase yet for 23-year-old rapper Ice Spice’s defiant charm. Packed with Instagram caption-worthy lyrics and inventive instrumentals from Ice and her frequent collaborator and executive producer RIOTUSA, the Bronx Baddie's new project features the hits "Munch (Feelin U)," "Bikini Bottom," and "In Ha Mood." Deluxe Edition LP is pressed on BABY PINK vinyl and contains 5 bonus tracks, including the single “Deli,” and a new version of “Princess Diana” featuring Nicki Minaj.
Released in 1983 at the height of the Satanic Panic, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL catapulted MÖTLEY CRÜE to superstardom. Delivering on the hype and promise of their PLATINUM debut Too Fast For Love, MÖTLEY CRÜE second album hit the US Top 20 and was certified 4X PLATINUM. For many music fans, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL was the first time they witnessed an album with this imagery and lyrical content on mainstream retail shelves. 40 years later, THE CRÜE is still going strong, bigger than EVER and headlining STADIUMS around the World! So come now Children Of The Beast, be strong and SHOUT AT THE DEVIL...
"Read Southall can sure turn a phrase. This record is the gasoline for the love machine, he says of the bands new album, the exhilarating and self-titled Southall. The record sparks and burns with 11 crank-it-up songs that expertly combine country, rock & roll, and the dust and grit of the bands native Red Dirt scene. Produced by Eddie Spear, Southall manifests the true band album that singer Read Southall first envisioned, a bands album that roars with raw and loud collaborative power with glimpses of hard rock and metal, along with easygoing back-porch vibes. The group formerly known as the Read Southall Band now makes music where every member of Southall brings lyrics, melodies, and full songs to the table. It's the colors of different people with different influences making music, Southall says. That's why we changed our name to Southall.
Vinyl reissue of the long-out-print 2006 release. Peeping Tom is Mike Patton with special guests Norah Jones, Massive Attack, Dan The Automator and more.
Action Adventure is DJ Shadow's seventh solo LP, an inward-looking project, made for Shadow alone without any collaborators. DJ Shadow explains, “This album is about my relationship to music. My life as a collector and curator. All my records and tapes.”
“Ozone Scraper” is the lead single of the album campaign. It represents the feeling of transportation, of jet engines lifting the passenger somewhere impossible. It's one of DJ Shadow's favorites on the album, as it's an invitation to strap in and also sets the table for the kind of deep listening Shadow loves.
Bruce Hornsby‘s landmark 1998 album Spirit Trail turns 25 this year. In September, Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers will launch a fall tour honoring the occasion with a Spirit Trail: 25th Anniversary Edition boxed set. Spirit Trail 25th Anniversary is a 3-album box set that includes the remastered album, four unreleased tracks and ten live songs.
Video Age make breezy and timeless songs that are so ineable, they can only be the result of a decades-long friendship and songwriting partnership. Across four albums, Ross Farbe and Ray Micarelli have gleefully worn their influences on their sleeve, writing inviting tunes that reference sounds ranging from disco to pop and indie rock. On their latest LP, Away From The Castle, the New Orleans duo have strayed from nostalgia and instead have honed their own unique musicality, making songs that sound like themselves with a taste of inspiration from classic singer-song-writers of the 60s and 70s. The album is a testament to the possibilities that come from getting out of your comfort zone, the freedom of writing vulnerably and unselfconsciously, and the joys of getting to work with your closest companions.
Over the course of his career, Joji has become one of our most enthralling yet enigmatic artists, with over 16 billion combined streams to date. This year marks the 5th anniversary of his iconic debut album BALLADS 1, his platinum-certified seminal full-length project which contains some of the biggest hits in his career – including multi-platinum hits “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” and “YEAH RIGHT”. BALLADS 1 laid the bedrock for what’s to come – melancholic themes and soulful vocals, layered over lush yet grimy lo-fi textures. In 2022, following on the heels of the 2X Platinum single “Glimpse of Us”, Joji released his latest album SMITHEREENS, which expands on the powerful emotions of the breakout hit. On the album, Billboard raved, “Anyone familiar with Joji’s dulcet tones and emotionally revealing lyricism could have predicted that he’d become a solo star.” SMITHEREENS came 2 years after his sophomore album Nectar, which bowed out at #3 on the Billboard 200 album chart. In June 2023, following sold-out shows at the iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City and The Kia Forum in Los Angeles, Joji announced the PANDEMONIUM North American Tour which hits arenas this Fall.
“I’m still learning how to experience joy, how to be free, how to be comfortable in my own skin,” says Jaime Wyatt. “A lot of us grow up feeling like we have to hide who we are just to be accepted, but that comes from a place of fear and judgment. I wrote these songs as a way of letting go of all that, as permission to feel good.”
Feel Good, Wyatt’s extraordinary new album, is more than just a permission slip, though: it’s an invitation. Recorded with Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada, the record is bold and ecstatic, built on tight, intoxicating grooves that belie the songs’ substantial emotional stakes. Wyatt’s writing is raw and intuitive here, tapping into the deep recesses of her subconscious as she reckons with grief and growth, and her delivery is visceral to match, cutting straight to the bone with equal parts sensitivity and swagger. Taken as a whole, the collection stands as a radical act of creative liberation from an artist already known for pushing limits, a genre-defying work of healing and self-love that tips its cap to everything from Al Green and Otis Redding to Waylon Jennings and Bobbie Gentry in its relentless pursuit of peace and pleasure.
Celebrating the 15 Year Anniversary of The New Kids On The Block’s "The Block" with The Block Revisited, the original Boy Band collaborates with K-POP’s newest superstars to bring the Pop Event of 2023! “Dirty Dancing (Dem Jointz Remix)” unites the legendary pop icons together with JOSHUA, DK & DINO of SEVENTEEN with a fire remix by Grammy Award Winning Producer Dem Jointz.
Catch A Fire, the fifth studio album by Bob Marley & The Wailers, was included in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. This 50th Anniversary Edition includes the studio album (LP1), Live at the Paris Theatre in London – previously only ever bootlegged (LP2), a bonus disc of alternate, extended and instrumental Jamaican tracks (LP3), plus a 12” single featuring 3 live tracks from the Sundown Theatre in Edmonton, with an etched image on the reverse side.
LOVE + POP is a snapshot of a moment in not-so-far-away time; something fast, loud, moody and a little dangerous. It is, in some ways, classic Current Joys: full of wild ambition, sneaky hooky, and songs that move from concept to completion with a prolific speed. But LOVE + POP also explodes myriad expectations with aggressive, deconstructed production, house music influence, and a guest appearance from Lil Yachty.
Personally curated by Johnny Marr, Spirit Power encompasses songs from across four widely acclaimed UK top ten solo albums 2013’s The Messenger, 2014’s Playland, 2018’s Call The Comet, 2022 double album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4), non-album single releases ‘Armatopia’, ‘The Priest’ (w/ Maxine Peake), two brand new songs, plus a cover version of Depeche Mode’s‘ I Feel You’, released for Record Store Day 2015 and revealing the degree to which Marr has found his métier as a vocalist of singular expressive power.
Gatefold, White Vinyl. Bad Wolves refuse to follow. Instead, the platinum-certified Los Angeles band-John Boecklin [drums], Daniel"DL" Laskiewicz [lead vocals], Doc Coyle [lead guitar, backing vocals] and Kyle Konkiel [bass, backing vocals]-circumvent convention by stretching the boundaries of hard rock with earthquaking heaviness, enigmatic experimentation, and enthralling melodies. Bulldozing boundaries is nothing new for the boys though and their upcoming album, DIE ABOUT IT, continues to carry on that narrative. With a story that emphasizes the sarcastic statement pointed towards those defending their own beliefs into absurdity, wrong or right, the Bad Wolves believe if you're gonna cry about it then you might as well DIE ABOUT IT.
Vinyl LP pressing. 2023 release. Little Bit of Sun is the fourth full-length studio album by Semisonic and the band's first full-length album in 22 years. Includes "Grow Your Own", "The Rope", and "Out of the Dirt".
“I know where Dan Treacy Lives” And so do you if you live in Baltimore You may try to look them up neé Barrett, neé Clark But just ask the Postman, they reside under the name The Smashing Times.
Known poets about town, Filthy mother nature’s sons, Called out for Tea Cozies and old wrinkled clothes, But put on ‘oh so well’- with Jangle and Verve “the night belongs to poets and madmen “ Drinking cups of hot tea after a dance alone in the rain A Tom Courtney Movie plays in the background. Oh so surreal.
Cold War Kids have announced their 10th studio album, Cold War Kids, which will arrive on November 3 via AWAL. The band’s singer and songwriter Nathan Willett describes: " This is our self-titled record. Everybody gets one. This felt like the right time because the sound of this record is the sound that makes Cold War kids unlike any other. I’m so proud of these songs. They took a long time to come together. The longing and struggle and joy I wanted to express are personal to me and I am so excited to share it with our fans who have come with us on the journey.”
The epic tale of Cold War Kids has long been informed by deeply personal songcraft, enthusiastic experimentation, and an avowed commitment towards forward motion. The band continues their ascent, becoming one of the biggest rock bands of their generation amassing more than half a billion streams, consistently churning out alternative radio hits, selling out tours and headlining festivals worldwide.
The band just wrapped a North American tour supporting Tears For Fears and will be going on their own headline tour at the top of 2024 with dates to follow.
Sum 41 celebrates 23 years with All The Good Sh** now available on vinyl for the first time! Originally released in 2009, this greatest hits compilation focuses on 14 hit singles from each of the band’s studio albums from 2001-2008.
Time Fades Away was the first live album released by Neil Young. He is backed on the album by The Stray Gators, the band who played on Harvest, and including the superb musicians Ben Keith, Jack Nitzsche, and Tim Drummond. David Crosby and Graham Nash are special guest musicians. The album followed the release of Young’s hugely successful album Harvest, and when it was released in 1973 it featured all previously unreleased songs. To commemorate the 50thanniversary of this album the track “The Last Trip To Tulsa” (originally released as a B-side to the 1973 single of “Time Fades Away”) has been added to the album. This limited-edition LP is pressed on clear vinyl.
Featuring remastered audio, taken from the ‘Chasing The Sun’ reissues - available for the first time as one collection - ‘The Masterplan’ is an extraordinary collection of B-sides originally featured on singles from Oasis’ era-defining first three albums, ‘Definitely Maybe’ (1994), ‘(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?’ (1995), and ‘Be Here Now’ (1997). Far from being inferior to the singles they backed, many of the 14 tracks that feature on ‘The Masterplan’ have become as cherished as the band’s biggest singles from that seminal period. The album includes tracks ‘Acquiesce’, ‘Half The World Away’, ‘Talk Tonight’, Oasis’ iconic live cover of The Beatles’ ‘I Am The Walrus’ and the epic title track. Noel has often described ‘The Masterplan’ as one of the best songs he has ever written. Formats include CD, Heavyweight Black LP and limited-edition Silver LP, to celebrate 25 years. ‘The Masterplan’ charted at No.2 in the UK Official Album Chart UK selling over 122,000 copies in its first week. It went on to be certified triple platinum and has sold over three million copies worldwide.
Roe Kapara‘s debut vinyl release on Epitaph Record brings the songs from his wildly successful 2023 digital release, i hope hell isn’t real ep, together with his catalog of singles from 2021- 2022.
“Nobody was born cool” proclaims Roe Kapara. “Where’s the fun in that?” After relocating from Nashville to Los Angeles just before the pan- demic, the St. Louis-born singer/songwriter did what any reasonable 20-something would: find solace online and build a community. Soon, his burgeoning digital fanbase hit six digits, enthralled by his endearingly unpretentious personality but also by his irresistible music, a modern swirl of indie, psych, dream pop, and alternative.
Dwelling on the death of his own past is a common theme through Kapara’s music, throughout a catalog of DIY singles like “Everyone’s Dying” and “Past Grow” that helped boost his streaming listeners into the 2 Millions and TikTok audience over 350,000 (with 5.8 Million likes.) But just as he’s willing to expose vulnerable parts of himself in his songs, he’s quick to shine the mirror outward to address the creeping dread of modern life: consumerism, corporate greed, climate change, the general feelings of the younger generation in 21st-century America.
Combining these two sides of his musical personality – deeply relatable yet unafraid to stand up and ask life’s big questions – into pop songs makes for a musical journey that’s a little off-kilter, sure, but all the better and more interesting in the end.
For his first album as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, 2021 International Chopin Competition winner Bruce Liu has compiled an enthralling survey of 200 years of French keyboard music, from Baroque to modern. The phenomenal young Canadian pianist has subtly adjusted the action of his instrument to highlight the differing musical styles. The album’s title WAVES alludes not only to the nature theme that runs throughout the program, but also to the sheer spontaneity of Liu’s music-making.
Recorded in August 2003 at the Pageant in St. Louis, Missouri, Little Feat perform a career-spanning set including a couple from their (at the time) soon-to-be-released album, Kickin’ It At The Barn. The band is comprised of Paul Barrere (guitars, vocals), Sam Clayton (percussion, vocals), Kenny Gradney (bass), Richie Hayward (drums, vocals), Bill Payne (keyboards, vocals), Fred Tackett (guitar, trumpet) and Shaun Murphy (vocals, percussion). 2 CD/Blu-ray.
Big Big Love is the first single from the eponymous album that is a mantra for embracing humanity with kindness. The single will be released in conjunction with the Michael Franti & Spearhead tour date celebrating a return to Red Rocks on June 2. Franti announced the US Big Big Love tour on January 31 which launched May 13 and runs through August 20.
Michael Franti is a globally recognized musician, humanitarian, activist, and award-winning filmmaker revered for his high-energy live shows, inspiring music, devotion to health and wellness, worldwide philanthropic efforts and the power of optimism. Throughout his multi-decade career, Franti has earned three Billboard No. 1's with triumphantly hopeful hits "Sound of Sunshine," "Say Hey (I Love You)," and "I Got You," as well as sic Top 30 Hot AC singles, 10 Top 25 AAA singles and three Billboard Top 5 Rock Albums.
Michael Franti & Spearhead continue to foster their community both on and off stage with a wish granting non-profit, Do It For The Love, founded by Franti and his wife, Sara. Do It For The Love brings those with life threatening illnesses, veterans, and children with severe challenges to concerts worldwide, fulfilling over 3,300 wishes and touching the lives of over 12,000 people to date. Franti also owns SOULSHINE Bali, a 32-room top-rated boutique retreat hotel located in Ubud, Bali.
Born out of reverence for their favorite bands and the need for an outlet to express personal influence, A Country Western out of Philadelphia finds themselves in the knotty crossroads of slowcore and shoegaze. As the group puts finishing touches on new music, they have brought their self-titled album AND debut EP Phenom (B Side) to vinyl format for the first time ever! This release encapsulates the earliest era of the band through home recordings with digital transposition and sample chopping.
Before These Crowded Streets is the third studio album by Grammy award-winning rock band, Dave Matthews Band. Originally released in spring of 1998, the album received both critical and commercial success. Dethroning the Titanic soundtrack, which sat atop the Billboard 200 for 16 consecutive weeks, Before These Crowded Streets was certified triple-platinum and began the band’s impressive streak of six No. 1 albums in a row. The LA Times said: On this album, the band places an even higher premium on musical proficiency. Songs such as “Rapunzel” and “The Stone” are built around vertiginous polyrhythms and serpentine riffs that dart around Matthew’s clenched vocals, yet always manage to lock into an enjoyable groove.
The band continues to play a majority of the songs from this album in their nightly sets while on tour as it’s been a favorite among fans for over two decades. The 25th anniversary edition comes as a standard black 2LP vinyl with an exclusive new booklet featuring rare photos. Lacquers cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
The band's biggest strength is musically how they keep you on your toes. In The Pines continues to evolve with every record showcasing the depth in talent that this band has. Introducing “Painting By Numbers,” where In The Pines plug in their guitars and showcase their psychedelic prowess across these expansive Ten tracks. The amount of sound that In The Pines creates deep in these grooves are layered, hazy, and thick. With the guitar tone, reverb, and deep nuance in production this LP is great for a deep listen. Get this record on your turntable, and dig into Painting By Numbers.
Painting By Numbers, In The Pines’ upcoming release, was recorded at Futureappletree Studio Too by engineer Patrick Stolley. Produced by In The Pines, the group features Michael Shular (Guitar/Vocals), Charlie Horn (Guitar/Vocals), Alex Dungan (Drums/Vocals) and Patrick Zopff (Bass/Vocals). Recorded in two sessions throughout July 2021 and March 2022, this album is the first to feature the group's most recent member Peter Foley on synthesizers, and guest vocalist Eva Patterson on opening track “Threshold.” Mixed by Dalton Allison (Post Animal) and Patrick Stolley (Futureappletree Studio Too), PBN twists the group’s signature psychedelic sound into an atmosphere of fuzzy, distorted shoegaze. This album meticulously layers saccharine, philosophical vocals with heady guitar tones, steadfast yet varied bass lines, and powerful drums that frequently build into a shimmering wash of synthesizers.
Lyrically, each song on Painting By Numbers is searching and introspective, at times evoking religious imagery and frequently expressing a restless but determined sense of motion. For example, the song “Let It Slide” culminates the band repeating “I just can't seem to let it be” before a rush of instrumentals closes the song, and the album is replete with motifs of wheels, breezes, and doors discussed over thrumming, repetitive drum and bass lines. However, as choreographer Pina Bausch once said, “Repetition is not repetition…The same action makes you feel something completely different by the end.” This album is an incredible example of that effect, and each moment of repetition on Painting By Numbers is followed by a break in pattern that acts as a release of tension and masterfully articulates a fresh change in the album’s direction.
In “Liquid Cure,” they croon of a lover being “lost in the grand design.” Such a statement is reminiscent of the experience of listening to this album, an ecstatic blur of shoegaze-y melodies which break down to reveal songs that are structural, detailed, and complex—a work of art painted by numbers. The result is an album that is spiritual, intoxicating, reflective, catchy, and surely In The Pines’ most nuanced work to date.
There was one irrepressible Chicago club act that refused to be replaced by any DJ’s sound system. Maxx Traxx (and Third Rail before them) were a scene unto themselves in the early 80s, happening live on-stage five-plus nights a week somewhere in the 312. Their two LPs, both recorded in 1982, are like catching a bullet train, a sheer energy ride almost too explosive to be captured by studio tape. And yet these two stone classics would remain unanswered by a city as it moved determinedly toward the motorik sound of house. Hop the turnstile and move with this complete document of Chicago’s last great club band told in detailed text, newly revealed photos, and complete studio recordings painstakingly remastered.
William Eggleston is a famed photographer and musician credited for iconic album covers such as Spoon’s Transference and Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American. 512 was inspired and recorded at the Parkview Apartments in Memphis, Tennessee where Eggleston lived for almost ten years.
The apartment was full of art and inspiration: cameras, naturally, but also high-end stereo tube amplifiers and objects that you’d rush towards money in hand at your local flea market. But also a gigantic nine foot Bosendorfer grand piano and a massive grand vintage JBL theater speaker console. His home was overwhelmed by music.
By recording there the album captures not just his performances, but also the vibe of the place; it often felt as though there were artists lurking in the aether listening along. His visitors over the years were no small change: Lee Friedlander, Carl Sagan, Dennis Hopper, Paul McCartney and many others came to see him and listen to his hypnotic “Musik”. You can hear local traffic, a dog barking, weather; reality, in other words. But there was another space layered on top, a kind of surreality echoing his music, as you can imagine a gathering of musicians listening in, eager to join him. Thus came along 512 which features the legendary Brian Eno on bells and production from Leo Abrahams (Regina Spektor, Paul Simon, Jon Hopkins).”
The Vinyl Collection, Volume 2 brings together Billy Joel’s monumentally successful albums from the later part of his career; Glass Houses (1980), The Nylon Curtain (1982), An Innocent Man (1983), The Bridge (1986) and Storm Front (1989), River of Dreams (1993). Also includes 2 titles on vinyl for the first time; the 2-LP Fantasies & Delusions, and the 3-LP Live from Long Island recorded in 1982.
All titles were sourced from the original album masters and includes a 60+ page booklet featuring Billy’s personal observations and an essay by Rob Tannenbaum.
Current ACM Entertainer of the Year, Chris Stapleton is set to release his 5th Studio Album- Higher on November
10th on 2LP/180 Gram Vinyl. This Indie Store Exclusive version will be Opaque BONE Vinyl. The album will include
14 songs including the first single “White Horse”. Chris has won numerous awards including eight Grammy Awards,
10 Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards including current Entertainer Of The Year, and 14 Country Music
Association (CMA) Awards. He was named the ACM's Artist-Songwriter of the Decade. In 2023, Rolling Stone
ranked Stapleton at number 170 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. Indie Exclusive Bone 2 LP.
Last November in London, Cat Power took the stage at Royal Albert Hall and delivered a song-for-song recreation of one of the most fabled and transformative live sets of all time. Held at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in May 1966—but long known as the “Royal Albert Hall Concert” due to a mislabeled bootleg—the original performance saw Bob Dylan switching from acoustic to electric midway through the show, drawing ire from an audience of folk purists and forever altering the course of rock-and-roll. In her own rendition of that historic night, the artist otherwise known as Chan Marshall inhabited each song with equal parts conviction and grace and a palpable sense of protectiveness, ultimately transposing the anarchic tension of Dylan’s set with a warm and luminous joy. Now captured on the live album Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, Marshall’s spellbinding performance both lovingly honors her hero’s imprint on history and brings a stunning new vitality to many of his most revered songs.
This landmark compilation has introduced generations of fans to the incredible history of the most storied band in music. For its 50th anniversary, the collection has been expanded with 9 additional tracks added chronologically, including “Blackbird”, “Glass Onion” and the new song, “Now And Then”. The last Beatles song, “Now And Then” completes John Lennon’s 1970s vocal and piano demo recording with parts played by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as well as a new arrangement for strings. The 3LP collection now features 37 tracks, 6 of which have new mixes for 2023. The set’s 9 newly added tracks are collected on its 3rd LP. An insert contains new sleeve notes by journalist and author John Harris. For current fans and future generations alike, the new 1966 – 1970 collection is a joyous celebration of The Beatles’ timeless musical legacy.
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of R.E.M.’s eleventh studio album, Up. This special pressing – replicating the original package – offers the newly remastered album across 2-LPs, pressed on 180-gram vinyl. The album features the singles "Daysleeper,” “Lotus,” “Suspicion” and “At My Most Beautiful.”
Mick Jenkins releases new single "Smoke Break-Dance" featuring JID, which arrives today alongside an Andre Muir-directed music video. Produced by Stoic, the song is the first taste of his forthcoming album The Patience that will arrive on November 10th via RBC Records/BMG. The Patience marks Jenkins' first full length release since 2021's Elephant in the Room.
Speaking about the album, Jenkins shares:
The Patience: As best I can be, I am a person who does everything within his power to change his situation. I think with some level of consistency, that behavior inevitably leads you to a point where you have to wait. A point where the things that now need to happen to move you forward are no longer in your control. I see this as a period of time in one's journey, no matter the length, where the unseen things must take place; The muscles must tear and repair, the understanding of a concept coming to you in a moment completely devoid of artistic intention. It’s through these moments where I’ve found myself being the most frustrated with patience.
And this body of work sounds like that frustration.
The body of work reflects Jenkins' status as a young veteran in his craft. First breaking out with his 2014 mixtape The Water[s], he has established himself as one of the most dexterous contemporary lyricists over the course of 3 full length albums and 4 EPs since that mixtape's release. The Patience is the sound of an artist that is still young and at the full height of their artistic powers, wizened by the years spent grinding to reach this point, but eager to prove their continued vitality. The result is Jenkins' most urgent artistic statement since his breakthrough.
aespa presents their fourth mini-album, featuring the title track `Drama' with its powerful track loop and captivating hook. This album showcases aespa's vocal growth with a variety of genres including charismatic hip-hop, lovely bright dance music, and sweet acoustic pop. With this album, aespa brings a new chapter to their SMCU lore by writing stories on their own way through unique music and visuals - now breaking out from the trauma caused by a series of events with Season 1's `SYNK OUT' and `Hallucination Quest', and also the unknown anomalies in Season 2
Ice Breaker (Color Vinyl). Hadsel is the first new full-length record since Beirut's 2019 release, "Gallipoli," and the first on Zach Condon's own label, Pompeii Records. Recorded in the Norwegian island of Hadsel shortly after a physical and mental break forced Condon to cancel is 2019 tour, Condon was looking for a place to recover after being left in a state of shock and self-doubt. Working in isolation, Condon explains, "I was lost in a trance, stumbling blindly through my own mental collapse that I had been pushing aside since I was a teenager. It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonising many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me. The few hours of light would expose the unfathomable beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and the hours-long twilights would fill me with subdued excitement. I'd like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music. The resulting is collection of songs beautifuly reflect that vulnerability, sense of self-determination and belief that after collapse, one can learn to manage on their own again.
Crowned as the winners of the 2023 MTV VMAs Best K-Pop, Stray Kids are back with a brand-new album titled ROCK-STAR, now available in a LIMITED
STAR VER. Contents of the album include: CD, Photo Book, Photo Card (random 1 of 16), Unit Photo Card (random 1 of 4), Panorama Mini Poster
(random 1 of 3), Sticker, Folded Poster, Film Photo Cards Set (random 1 of 2), Special Mini Poster (random 1 of 8) & 4-Cut Photo. US/EU Retail Exclusive:
Postcard. Dimensions: 164 x 224 x 5 mm.
Recorded at Oberlin College, Ohio in 1953, the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Jazz at Oberlin” album is one of the earliest works in the cool jazz genre. As well as Dave Brubeck (piano) the album also features Paul Desmond (alto sax), Lloyd Davis (drums) and Ron Cotty (bass). This new edition of the album is released as part of the OJC Series and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI with all-analog mastering from the original tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. It is presented in a Tip-On Jacket.
F8 (pronounced fate) is the eighth studio album by American heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch, released on February 28, 2020, by Better Noise Music. It is the first Five Finger Death Punch album to feature drummer Charlie Engen, who joined the band following the departure of founding drummer Jeremy Spencer. F8 is also the band's first album to be released through Better Noise Music. Written and recorded from May to October 2019, F8 is considered a rebirth of the band, according to guitarist Zoltan Bathory. This reissue with alternate artwork was pressed on gold nugget vinyl and is packaged in a gold foil gatefold jacket.
Double vinyl LP pressing. 35th anniversary edition. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the second studio album by Public Enemy, originally released in 1988.
"LEFT" sees Helmet – comprising frontman Page Hamilton, drummer Kyle Stevenson, guitarist Dan Beeman, and bassist Dave Case – carve out a musical landscape that is taut, muscular, and direct. Hamilton’s lead guitar lines feel like everything from downed power lines arcing to exploding resistors in shortwave radios. On "LEFT" every snare crack hits like gunfire, every solo seemingly a manifestation of rabies-induced psychosis.
Guided by Hamilton alongside co-producers Jim Kaufman and Mark Renk, and mastered by Howie Weinberg, the 11 songs on the new album are leaner and meaner in their execution than previous aural throwdowns. "LEFT" is powered by unbridled determination, a renewed sense of purpose and a desire to create more new dialects within the musical language Hamilton invented via his use of drop-D tuning.
Echoes, Spaces, Lines collects Trans-Millenia Consort, Plot Zero, and Spectre, the first three albums by the late West Coast composer, healer, and medium Pauline Anna Strom. Exploring all corners of the multiverse through transpersonal form and freedom, Strom’s first three albums share a singular sensibility, different streams flowing from the same oracular font. Echoes, Spaces, Lines establishes Strom’s rightful place in the canon of great synthesists. Restored and mixed from the original reels by Marta Salogni, newly remastered, and adding Oceans of Tears, a fully realized but previously unreleased album exclusive to this box set, these are the first official reissues and the definitive encapsulation of Pauline Anna Strom’s prolific and visionary early work. These four-disc LP and CD box sets include 12 and 16 page booklet containing liner notes, an unearthed interview with Strom, and unseen ephemera.
Daneshevskaya (Dawn-eh-shev-sky-uh), the project of New York’s Anna Beckerman, writes songs steeped in the folklore of her own personal history. Her artist (and real middle) name comes from her Russian-Jewish great-grandmother, a person whose presence she has always felt although their paths never crossed in real life. Beckerman grew up in a musical family; her father is a music professor, her mother studied opera and her own songs often feel spiritual, less so by any religious connotation and more as a hymn-like, archival record of Beckerman’s own past, present and future.
This recording has never before been released or even bootlegged. It captures the Jimi Hendrix Experience at a unique moment in their illustrious career. Before a sold out audience of 17,000 people, the Experience overwhelmed an unsuspecting audience with a superb show that encompassed his renditions of songs by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters as well as signature songs such as “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary”. Are You Experienced, the group’s debut album, had not yet been released by Jimi’s label Reprise.
In the decade or so that hard-working New York quartet Sunwatchers have operated, the group has steadily & subtly refined their sound - a brain-blasting mixture of jazz, psychedelia, krautrock, punk, noise, & Saharan blues - into something that is avant-leaning enough to appeal to the discerning jazz & experimental music fan & weird & wooly enough to get the true heads’ toes tapping. Music Is Victory Over Time is the band’s 5th album, and fourth for Chicago-based Trouble In Mind Records, seeing the long-running lineup of Peter Kerlin (bass guitar), Jim McHugh (guitars), Jason Robira (drums), and Jeff Tobias (alto saxophone and keyboards) in prime form.
The album’s beguiling title stems from a note scrawled in a book about electronic music donated to PITGOOSE Prisoner Books, the grassroots prison literature program run out of The P.I.T. (aka Property Is Theft - McHugh’s Anarchist community space, venue and info-shop located in Los Sures, Williamsburg). Scrawled as marginalia modifying a paragraph about durational minimalist composition, the concept illuminates music’s material and spiritual power to subdue the sensation of the passage of time, both as an experiential phenomenon and as a creative, communal and socio-political force. McHugh says: “The notion resonated with the our individual and communal experiences of loss, trauma, stasis and frustration since 2020, our three-year semi-silence as a band relative to our previous characteristic prolificacy, and our progress, projects and evolution since.”
Album opener World People is a classic Sunwatchers number whose title expresses their Anarcho-Internationalist ideology (and the atypically multi-culti make up of their crowds), with an underlying melodic resonance to New Orleans funeral marches ŕ la Albert Ayler — a triumphant call to arms to all peoples. Live fave Too Gary’s gang vocal shout punctuates a motorik rager named for a phrase often uttered by a badass eight year old skateboarder McHugh knew with a speech impediment (it means “that’s too scary”). T.A.S.C. (or “Theme For Anarchist Sports Center”) is inspired by Sonny Sharrock’s maligned 80’s output & sounds exactly like a wrathful, mutant version of a prime-time athletic show theme, replete with the requisite “sitcom ending.” The sun- scorched Foams - a longform piece intended to depict natural stuff like tides, nightfall, and time slowly passing, ancient, peaceful and slightly gross all at once - practically jumps out of the speakers, its palpable intensity crackling in your eardrums. The title of Tumulus’ might reference an ancient burial mound, but the music itself might be the group’s most high-tech song to date, complimented by an arpeggiating sequencer, three different forms of tape delay and an electric saxophone; ecstatic, fiery & deeply spiritual. There Goes Ol’ Ooze is a smoky creeper that lets Tobias & Kerlin take a walk for a while, with respectful nods to the Stones and Steve Reich. Song For The Gone closes out the album, showcasing a sincerely tender moment for the gang, written and recorded initially at McHugh’s home on Spanish guitar in 2020 (as an expression of love and resolve for dear friends who had recently, tragically died) its cascading, bluesy melody attuning itself to our own collective unconscious grief.
Having the distinct pleasure of being the first band to record in John Dwyer’s new LA-based recording studio Discount Mirrors (after Ohsees, who were literally loading out as the band loaded in), Music Is Victory Over Time boasts a beefed up sound. The band worked closely with in-house engineer Eric Bauer - facilitator, troubleshooter, sonic obsessive, a legendary freak and a DIY lifer. McHugh says “JPD would blast in and fuck with the board, interject ideas, tell stories, whip up a frenzy if we needed. We stayed in the adjacent room, lived on tacos and chocolate, overdubbed in sweatpants. All the right moves.” The band also had full access to the studio’s epic armory of gear: amps, axes (it’s Dwyer’s Eddie Harris model electric sax), synths, a bass guitar once belonging to Klaus Flouride of the Dead Kennedys. Crucial for the sounds and the vibe.
The album art was created by Josh MacPhee, the activist artist, author, archivist and founding member of both the radical artist collective Just Seeds and Interference Archive, a public collection of materials from social movements based in Brooklyn. MacPhee's participation in the project works as a statement of Sunwatchers' progressive utopian intentionality, and organically underscores their involvement in revolutionary projects within and without of their hometown.
Listening to Music Is Victory Over Time, Sunwatcher’s rebellious spirit & unbridled enthusiasm remain fully intact, but the secret sauce is their infectious irreverence in the face of the horrors of this world. Much of our best cultural commentary is Trojan-horsed to the general public via humor & satire & the band has a knack for lacing the ridiculous with the radical. It’s good to have them back.
JC Sanford follows up his two previous trio albums (Imminent Standards Vol. 1 & 2) with a decidedly different approach to the trio format. Featuring pianist Michael Cain and bassist Anthony Cox, New Past delves into Sanford’s diverse compositional style and improvisational approach. From collective improvisations to complex harmonic forms and grooves, the trio traverses a vast sonic and textural world of Sanford’s original compositions, with a smattering of interpretations of jazz standards.
Immerse yourself in the kaleidoscopic musical universe of Masha Ocean Quartet's new album, "Kaleidoscopic Realities". This mind-bending fusion of jazz, blues, classical music, soul, latin and other genres is a must-listen for fans of adventurous music. Featuring collaborations with renowned musicians such as Robin Banerjee and Daniel Torres, this album is a true sonic journey, taking listeners on a wild ride through different musical cultures and eras.
40th anniversary vinyl edition of Southern Californian punk pioneers Social Distortion's debut album Mommy’s Little Monster. Newly mastered from the original analog tapes and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the album contains the nine original songs, including title track “Mommy’s Little Monster” and single “Another State of Mind”, and is newly packaged in a gatefold jacket to match the original release.
Released to celebrate influential jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery’s centennial, The Complete Full House Recordings brings together all the recordings from the Full House sessions with two previously unreleased performances. Featuring Johnny Griffin, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers & Jimmy Cobb this collection has new liner notes by journalist Bill Milkowski and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl with mastering from the original analog tapes by Joe Tarantino and lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio.
On the heels of the four song EP, "Together" featuring old friend Mike Love, Rising Tide is ready to share the full story of Pixel Prison with their global following. This full length, double gatefold vinyl LP features new collaborations with Love, reggae legend, Clinton Fearon and more. The LP also includes two Dub versions of album tracks. Original album art has been created by renowned Japanese artist Tokio Aoyama.
Originally released as a hand-numbered CD on New Year’s Eve of 2004, Last Light captures Tor Lundvall’s hushed songcraft at its most ghostly and grayscale, stripped bare like branches bracing for winter. Initially conceived of as “a piano album with sparse electronics” (with the working title November), Lundvall’s palette steadily expanded, incorporating synthesizer, samples, bass, metronomes, and his signature spectral vocals. A journal entry from the spring of 2002 proved formative to his evolving vision: “I remember watching the blueish-grey light shimmering outside and hearing distant sounds echoing far away, eventually sinking into silence and stillness.”
The album’s 12 tracks are steeped in this sense of autumnal transience, of bearing witness to what fades. The music moves in whispered swells, between dirge, drift, and devotional. Synths chime like slow-tolling bells; percussion shuffles and shivers, icy and isolated; bass traces a low- lidded plod – it’s a mode both austere and seductive, lulling the listener into its landscapes of deepening dusk. Lyrically, Lundvall’s language skews observational and depressive (“through lace curtains / grey light falls / dark clouds gather / in my soul”), with each song like a gauzy glimpse into a different tableau framing winter’s descent: rust-colored leaves, frozen ponds, cold crescent moons.
Lundvall has long considered Last Light a “personal favorite” in his discography, and it’s easy to hear why. In texture, finesse, and pacing, it vividly evokes the rare mood of fragile, frosty pastoral noir depicted in his iconic oil paintings. His is an art of the half-seen and half-remembered, of fleeting figures, shapes and shadows, and gathering darkness. Of all that disappears, and the ghosts that never leave: “So I wait / as the years / slowly drain the magic and the light / and the girl / I never loved / haunts me through the dark roads of my life.”
Chicago's Magic Touch label gets the Numero Group treatment. Available for the first time ever on 7", Boogie Holy-Grail "Too Far Gone" has been "Too Hard To Find" on the second hand market since first introduced to the masses via the legendary cratesmith Mark Grusane of Mr. Peabody Records.
The surprise companion to The National’s April release First Two Pages of Frankenstein, Laugh Track is the band’s most freewheeling, all-hands-on-deck album in years. If Frankenstein represented a rebuilding of trust between group members after 20+ years together, the vibrant, exploratory Laugh Track is both the product of that faith and a new statement of intent. Reveling in the license to radically upend its creative process, The National honed most of this material in live performances on tour, and captured those invigorated versions in impromptu sessions at producer Tucker Martine’s Portland studio. Two nights later in Vancouver, the nearly eight-minute album closer “Smoke Detector” was recorded during soundcheck, completing a body of work bristling with spontaneity and vintage rock energy that makes a perfect complement to the songs found on its more introspective predecessor.
Limited edition on glacial blue vinyl. Iron & Wine's Who Can See Forever is an accompanying live record to the film of the same name. Captured at Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, the soundtrack features nineteen songs from the twenty plus year career of singer-songwriter Sam Beam. Having found inventive ways to re-invent his catalog live over the years, Who Can See Forever offers new and fresh versions of Iron & Wine songs including "The Trapeze Swinger", "Boy With a Coin" and "Naked As We Came." The film - initially intended as a live concert film - evolved into a visual portrait capturing Beam during a creative outburst that earned him four Grammy nominations in four years. Like his music, the film touches on universally personal themes as Beam juggles being an artist, husband and father. Taken as one, the soundtrack and film are a fascinating first-time glimpse behind-the-scenes of Iron & Wine.
Global superstar Post Malone holds the record for most RIAA Diamond certified singles in history. The Diamond Collection is a compilation of his top hits to date, including “Congratulations (feat. Quavo),” “Sunflower” with Swae Lee, “White Iverson,” and more. The physical release includes the Diamond certified hits as well as additional tracks.
Global icon and recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Dolly Parton, has joined forces with some of rock music’s most legendary artists along with today’s biggest stars for her first-ever rock album, Rockstar. The ever-evolving Parton teamed up with an all-star roster of musicians for the 30-song collection which includes 9 original tracks and 21 covers of iconic rock anthems.
Over-Nite Sensation turns 50 years old. To celebrate this iconic album, we present a 4CD + 1 Blu-ray Audio Super Deluxe showcasing 88 total tracks with 57 unreleased tracks & mixes. Featuring the 2012 remaster of the original album by Bob Ludwig along with additional masters, highlights and mix outtakes from the original 1973 sessions mastered by John Polito. Also included are live recordings from 1973 showcasing the same band that recorded the album, one from the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles and the other recorded at Cobo Hall in Detroit. The Blu-ray contains the album newly re-mixed in Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround by Karma Auger and Erich Gobel at Studio1LA, Zappa’s original 4-channel Quadraphonic mix (available for the first time since 1973), and the Hi-Res stereo 2012 remaster at 192K24B and 96K24B. The package features unseen photos from the album cover shoot along with liner notes and essays by Mark Smotroff and Vaultmeister Joe Travers.
ColleGrove was the "gumbo” or “jambalaya" of two of the most prominent and influential names in hip hop, 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne. 2 Chainz hailing from College Park, Georgia, and Lil Wayne from Hollygrove, a neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana, the two combined their hometown roots to create the title, ColleGrove. Released in 2016, ColleGrove has racked up 2.8 billion global streams to date, honoring a musical friendship that has sustained two decades. After much anticipation and almost 8 years later, fans will finally be able to enjoy the powerful duo's follow up album, Welcome 2 Collegrove. The upcoming project is not only a perfect merge of 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, but it also features some of the best icons in music today, including Usher, 21 Savage, Rick Ross, Fabulous, Benny the Butcher and more. Welcome 2 Collegrove is the next installment of this powerful duo looking to serve up real raps, cultural flair and authentic brotherhood.
Keith Urban #1’s CD includes 24 #1’s Hits on 2 CD’s (all packaged in 1 jewel case) from his entire catalog of albums. The album spans from Keith’s very first #1 song to his latest and includes duets with Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Eric Church, and Julia Michaels. This is the ultimate Keith Urban album and a must have for all fans. Each CD will include a limited-edition double-sided poster.
Shania Twain releases her record-breaking Greatest Hits album for the first time on 180g black vinyl! Selling over 100 million records, Shania is the best-selling female country artist ever, and this compilation showcases why. Including her iconic songs “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”, “Any Man Of Mine,” “You’re Still The One,” and “Forever And For Always”, this updated remastered release now contains her newest hit “Giddy Up!” and fan favorite “Life’s About To Get Good.”
Following the release of the critically acclaimed Random Access Memories 10th Anniversary Edition earlier this year, this new iteration of the GRAMMY-award winning Album of the Year strips away all drum and percussive elements from the album, giving listeners the ability to dive deeper into the layers of instrumentation on each track. 2LP vinyl gatefold package with an 8 page booklet.
Toby Keith just doesn’t sing #1 hits, he also writes them, solo, hence 100% Songwriter, compilation of 13 Keith self-penned country music hits featuring 5 #1 singles: "Should’ve Been a Cowboy," "Who’s That Man," "You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This," "Courtesy of The Red White and Blue (The Angry American)" and "Who’s Your Daddy". During Keith's career he has achieved 42 top 10 hits, 32 No. 1s, 40 million albums sold and more than 10 billion streams.
The Phoenix symbolizes a new beginning. The fire burns off the last vestiges of the past as the bird spreads it's wings and takes flight into the future. The Polyphonic Spree harness the flames of rebirth on their 2023 full-length offering, Salvage Enterprise. Led by frontman, founder, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and visionary Tim DeLaughter, the group embark on their next season. They're reverent of their history, yet they're also ready for an even brighter tomorrow."Across all of the music I've done, lyrically there's a sense of desperation and a moment of convincing myself I'm going to make it through regardless of how the music dresses up," notes Tim. "On this one, I struggled with the amount of vulnerability I was experiencing and was willing to share both musically and lyrically, but ultimately decided to let it play out. Now that it's done, I'm happy with the dance between the two. It's a 'rising-from-the- ashes' record."Salvage Enterprise beckons complete immersion. Opener "Gallop- ing Seas (Section 44)" affixes softly strummed acoustic guitar to an orchestral hum as Tim urges, "Hold on through the galloping seas." "We're all galloping through rough waters," he says. "I tried to describe the process as well as I could and encourage people to keep their heads above the storm and the waves. Ride it out. It's going to be okay. It starts off very calm and introspective, and you can envision where it's going."Flute echoes over nimbly plucked guitar during "Shadows On The Hillside (Section 48)" as keys twinkle. A glorious harmony amplifies the nostalgia of "Hop Off The Fence (Section 49)." It concludes with "Morning Sun, I Built The Stairs (Section 52)." Optimism strains through his hopeful intonation, "I learned to fly, the more that I become a new reason, I want to try," uplifted by boisterous horns and cinematic strings. It crashes into an Ennio Morricone-style crescendo bolstered even higher by operatic vocals."There is an arc of leaving the world behind, stripping your old self away, and becoming new again," he offers. "You're shedding off this old world, and you're heading into the future. It's an epic ending. You've made it. You're going to be alright."In the end, The Polyphonic Spree are the soundtrack to that light at the end of the tunnel.
Back To Moon Beach is an EP by no one’s definition but Kurt Vile’s. For Kurt, this collection is an expression of just
how deep his well of non-album material runs. This includes six tracks culled from various sessions over the last
four years, and represents a wide swath of the inspirational musical community Kurt surrounds himself with. Indie
Exclusive Coke Bottle Clear LP. (Verve Records)
Andrew Bird on Outside Problems: I wanted to record Inside Problems outside, but this plan fell apart when it became clear that some dude with a wood chipper could really ruin our day. I did so much casual recording during the pandemic, in my backyard or in Ojai, that I gathered enough outdoor recordings to make Outside Problems. Most of these were made without any intention of making an album, just improvisations on simple themes, some of which make up the musical backbone of Inside Problems.
Following his acclaimed, self-released 2019 album Songs from the Valley, John Vincent III returns with Songs For The Canyon. Co-produced by John Vincent with Tom Elmhirst (Adele, David Bowie, Beck), Tony Berg and Ryan Hadlock, Songs For The Canyon is a massive leap forward from a traditional artist who has already built a diehard fanbase on the strength of his classic, stripped-down, indie-folk tinged sound.
2023 release. Vince Clarke, the primary composer and musician in Erasure, and previous songwriter and member of Yazoo, Depeche Mode, and The Assembly, presents (unbelievably) his first-ever solo album, Songs of Silence. As the album title suggests, Songs of Silence is a lyric-less, instrumental album and is hugely evocative for that. Unlike anything you've previously heard from Vince Clarke as an artisan of dynamic electropop, Songs of Silence has about it a more sober ambient electronic beauty; it's unique characteristics put it in a category of it's own.
ELO songs were always coming on the radio when I was growing up. They were a reliable source of pleasure and fascination (except for "Fire On High" which scared the heck out of me). With this album of covers I wanted to get my hands deep into some of the massive '70's hits but I am also shining a light on some of the later work ("Ordinary Dream" from 2001's "Zoom" album, "Secret Messages" and "'From The End Of The World", both from the '80's).Thematically, I identify with the loneliness and alienation and the outerspace-iness in the songs I chose. (I have always felt like I am part alien, not fully belonging to or in this Earth world.) Sonically, ELO recordings are like an amusement park packed with fun musical games with layers and layers of varied, meticulous parts for your ears to explore; production curiosities; huge, gorgeous stacks of awe-inspiring vocal harmony puzzles. My task was to try and break all the things down and reconstruct them subtly until they felt like mine. Overall I stuck pretty close to the originals' structures while figuring out new ways to express or reference the unique and beloved ELO string arrangements. An orchestra would have been difficult or impossible for me to manage to record, nor did I think there was any point in trying to copy those parts as they originally were. Why not try to reimagine them within my zone of limitations? In some cases I transposed string parts onto guitars, or keyboards, and I even sung some of them (as in "Showdown" and "Bluebird Is Dead").Recording the album was a kind of complicated and drawn-out process since I was doing all of my tracks at home in my bedroom (drums and bass were done by Chris Anzalone and Ed Valauskas, respectively [in their own recording spaces]), and I kept running into technology problems that would frustrate me and slow me up. But eventually I got it all done. A labor of love. - Juliana
Grammy nominated and quadruple platinum pop rock superstars Plain White T's return with their self titled album that includes a mix of gorgeous acoustic love songs and the pop rock majestic singalongs they are known for. With notable press in 2023 from CNN, People, Entertainment Tonight, Newsweek and more, Plain White T's have proven to be a continued musical force as well as a career band that shows no signs of slowing down.
Deafheaven’s monolithic second LP Sunbather, was not only a massive success in 2013, it created a radical shift in heavy music culture, an acceptance of the genre by previous outsiders, and a trailblazing sound that heretofore hadn’t been heard outside of learned circles. It was a reville introducing the changing of the guard in metal, featuring phenomenal reviews across the board, and breaking the mold used by buttoned-up indie types and false-flag musical dilettantes intent on keeping the status quo. A maverick release in every facet, the cornerstone for the triumph that is Sunbather truly lies in its world class songwriting. From the opening anthem “Dream House,'' it's clear to see that Deafheaven was soaring triumphantly into the unknown, through the emotional highs and lows, the fire and rain, and onto the unseen road ahead. Lyrically, Sunbather examines themes of existentialism, diving headfirst into the abyss, and the pursuit of self-discovery. The album's title itself is similar in scope, representing the embrace of the light and movement out of the dark unknown. Sunbather takes influence from the majesty of early Emperor and underground US heroes Weakling, the dark beauty of France’s Alcest, the introspective nature of post-rock and shoegaze gods like Mogwai and Slowdive, as well as the DIY spirit of punk ranging from Fugazi to Man is the Bastard to create a new realm for their emotional and expansive epics. The result is the nihilism and icy darkness found in black metal melding perfectly with the pensive, ethereal nature of shoegaze and the expansive dramatics of post-rock to create a new landscape. By juxtaposing propulsive and harsh blast beats and riffs against soaring melody, Deafheaven had refocused the blind-hate nature found at the kernel of black metal into a melancholic and singular journey to explore the unknown. Considering metal’s staunchly negative relationship with the press, Deafheaven’s Sunbather was nothing less than a true triumph. An immediate success at the time of it’s release, Sunbather blasted through the glass ceiling that limited so many other heavy music bands before them. Lauded by virtually every major critical outlet, Sunbather is the picture perfect ideal of a music darling– leading to sold out shows around the globe in increasing numbers. Sunbather would eventually become a year end favorite, repeatedly named one of the best albums of 2013 and landing on top 10 lists that were previously alien to heavy music– outlets like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, the New York Times and the like. And while the critics were dogpiling on the compliments, the conservative nature of heavy metal could not help but spin things in the opposite direction. As the saying goes, ‘the first one through the door catches all the bullets.’ “The easy answer was it was totally positive and overwhelming,” says founding guitarist Kerry McCoy with a bit of a chuckle when asked about his feelings about the response to Sunbather. “But in actuality it was also kind of frustrating. We were grateful for the positive notes, but there were people who thought we were the worst thing to ever happen to metal and others who thought that we claimed to invent the genre. Neither were true.” In addition to the game-changing musical approach, the band’s aesthetics were nothing if not utterly controversial as well. Designer Nick Steinhardt’s striking cover with use of a highly stylized font and a pale pink as the chosen color is not only a masterstroke in contemporary design, it was a true middle finger to the black metal establishment– one that prided itself on a lo-fi black and white aesthetic. The bright and easily recognizable cover openly positioned the album as a true outsider unafraid to duck genre boundaries. Formed in 2010 in San Francisco, California with the core duo of George Clarke and McCoy, the pair completed their debut demo with Jack Shirley, who would eventually helm Sunbather, releasing it on limited cassette. The cassette became an underground phenomenon, leading to a record deal with Deathwish Inc who released the cassette in limited numbers on seven-inch. After recruiting a live band, the five piece recorded their debut LP Roads to Judah and embarked on a series of shorter tours to promote the release. When the time came for the follow-up, the band slimmed back down to the original duo and added drummer Daniel Tracey– creating what many believe to be one of the most important musical statements of the ‘10s. The release would be their third with Jack Shirley. “Honestly, Sunbather gave us a career,” says McCoy with candor. “Before then we were working jobs and had these grandiose dreams, but that was the record that turned us into a real band. Because of that record, we ended up meeting a lot of people around the world that changed our lives and set us on the path we’re on now.” Ten years later, Deafheaven is nothing less than a mammoth and live touring juggernaut, with fans across the far reaches of the earth and a flawless live lineup of Shiv Mehra on guitar (joined in 2013) and Chris Johnson on bass (2017) in addition to Clarke, McCoy and Tracey. One of the most important and original rock bands of the past fifteen years, the long-awaited reissue of this pivotal release celebrates its tenth anniversary with a fresh shine and coat of paint– a newly remixed and remastered sound by original producer Jack Shirley with available spacial audio, an updated look to the packaging in all formats courtesy of the album’s original designer Nick Steinhardt, and deluxe color vinyl that includes a gatefold jacket with spot UV printing and 2 full-color printed inner sleeves. Whether a newbie to this colossal record or a familiar party, the anniversary edition is a crucial addition to the collection of any erudite music fan.
How Were We To Know" featuring production from Jonny Coffer (Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus), Jim Jonsin (ASAP Rocky, Usher, Eminem), DI Genius (Drake, Raye, Sean Paul), Rxwntree, Chris Loco and Mac & Phil. This latest pop record is reminiscent of Emeli's debut in 2012, when she had her first breakout hit.A singer/songwriter with a highly resonant voice and musical influences across adult pop, R&B, and jazz, Emeli Sandé regularly provided guest vocals for several of the U.K.'s most successful grime artists before she embarked on a successful solo career in 2010. She was already a BRIT and MOBO winner when she released her debut album, Our Version of Events (2012), a chart-topping, multi-platinum U.K. blockbuster that spawned four Top Ten pop singles and led to the number two hit Long Live the Angels (2016). Sandé returned at the end of the 2010s with Real Life (2019), by which point she also had numerous Top Ten entries as a featured artist, including Chipmunk's "Diamond Rings" and David Guetta's "What I Did for Love." Her forthcoming record "How Were We To Know" features production from Jonny Coffer (Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus), Jim Jonsin (ASAP Rocky, Usher, Eminem), DI Genius (Drake, Raye, Sean Paul), Rxwntree, Chris Loco and Mac & Phil -expected release November 2023.
20th anniversary deluxe edition of Evanescence’s 2003 debut, Fallen. Featuring the stratospheric hit singles "Bring Me To Life," "Going Under," "Everybody's Fool" and "My Immortal." Since it's release, Fallen has become one of the world’s best-selling albums of all-time, with more than 17 million copies sold worldwide. This remastered and expanded edition includes B-sides, rarities, and more.
LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. The soundtrack of the award-winning documentary includes timeless hits from Little Richard like “Tutti Frutti”, “Rip It Up”, and “Long Tall Sally”, plus two covers from Valerie June and Cory Henry, and a piece from the film’s original score, composed by Tamar-Kali Brown.
The first of two albums recorded at the legendary final appearance of the Bill Evans Trio at the Village Vanguard, these recordings have long been recognized as capturing the unique interaction that characterized the trio of Evans, LaFaro and Motian. This new edition of Sunday At The Village Vanguard is released as part of the OJC Series and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI with all-analog mastering from the original tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. It is presented in a Tip-On Jacket.
Experience the captivating soundscape from one of 2023’s biggest blockbusters on the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Original Score) vinyl. The sequel to 2019’s Oscar-award winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse broke the global box-office on release, and the critically acclaimed, viral hit-making score is now available on vinyl for the first time.
Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton returns to expand upon the Spider-Verse’s iconic, multi-versal soundscape with a genre-defying score that seamlessly combines a 100-piece orchestra with DJ scratching, operatic vocals, techno beats, punk rock, acid-house-inspired Indian percussion, soaring synth solos, and even…a prominently sampled goose. From the Gwen Stacy’s fan favorite motif to Spider-Man 2099’s internet-breaking theme music, the film and its intricately-woven score is sure to transport you into some wildly unexpected parallel dimensions.
This double vinyl release comes pressed on two kaleidoscopic, multiversal orange and purple marbled LPs, featuring highlights from the score hand-selected by Daniel Pemberton. The package includes a stunning soft-touch gatefold jacket with spot gloss, a double-sided collectable poster and two printed sleeves with custom art – plus, an 8-page art booklet featuring liner notes from Daniel Pemberton and art from the film.
After reaching a milestone with their Top 5 album on the Billboard 200, ENHYPEN members JUNGWON,
HEESEUNG, JAY, JAKE, SUNGHOON, SUNOO and NI-KI are back with a new album titled ORANGE BLOOD to
continue their story. Now available in the ENGENE Ver. with each version specific to each member. Contents of the
album include CD, Photobook (random 1 of 7), Message Card, Photo Card A, Photo Card B (random 1 of 7),
Postcard, Photo Sticker and Drawing Sticker. Dimensions: 182 x 132 x 11 mm.
The Smile’s new album Wall Of Eyes, will be released on 26th January on XL Recordings. The new album, was recorded between Oxford and Abbey Road Studios, and is produced and mixed Sam Petts-Davies. It features string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra. Wall Of Eyes is the follow up their 2022 debut LP A Light For Attracting Attention
Strawberry Shortcake Splash LP (Indie Exclusive). The Menzingers are an absolute institution. The Philadelphia punk legends' multi-decade reputation as road warriors with an unbeatable catalog is cemented as hard truth-and their seventh album, Some Of It Was True, stands as their most immediate-sounding and energetic record to date. The follow-up to 2019's sensational Hello Exile accomplishes the daunting task of capturing the Menzingers' distinctive live energy in the confines of the studio, resulting in a sound that's both rich, raw, and complementary to the group's increasingly prismatic songwriting approach. More than 15 years in, the Menzingers are still holding their listeners square in the immediate present, and Some Of It Was True documents that power in thrilling fashion.
"We wanted to make a fun record and write songs that we wanted to play live, and that's exactly what we did," co-vocalist/guitarist Greg Barnett says "We've always said that we want every album to sound live, but we never recorded an album live before. This was the first time we committed to that idea. We wanted to sound like how our band sounds onstage." Making the process easier: Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, the War on Drugs, Waxahatchee), who joined the Menzingers in El Paso's legendary Sonic Ranch studios and lent his incredible ear for raw, immediate sound to help the band achieve Some Of It Was True's in-the-room live feel. "The Menzingers are as real as it gets," Cook says on his time in the studio with the band. "I had an absolute blast working with these guys and was moved to tears many times. They are truly dedicated to artistic growth, and to each other, in ways I found both refreshing and beautiful. I am now a lifer."
Goth Babe is Griff Washburn enjoying himself. Originally from Tennessee,Griff currently lives full-time on a 36ft off-grid sailboat named LOLA. He's exploring the coast of Mexico with his dog Sadie, catching fish, surfing, and writing/recording his debut project LOLA which will see an album, short-film and headline tour of the same name.
Polaroid Lovers is the 7th studio album from four-time GRAMMY winner Sarah Jarosz. Produced by Daniel Tashian, Polaroid Lovers is a bold creative statement that sees Jarosz exploring new sonic territory. The 11 songs on the album, all co-written by Jarosz with songwriters including Tashian, Jon Randall, Ruston Kelly, and Natalie Hemby, touch on themes both personal and universal: love, longing, and finding one’s place in the world.
Liverpool’s acclaimed sensual existentialist Brad Stank today announces the release of his resolutely romantic new album In The Midst of You on January 26th via his new label Sunday Best Recordings. He launches the album alongside the quintessentially Brad ‘Natty Wine’ and its accompanying video. The new single ‘Natty Wine’ neatly encapsulates the many charms that emerge throughout the album. With Brad backed by soulful female vocal harmonies, the song’s jazzy psychedelia possesses a touch of twanging Americana, its warm and vibrant live instrumentation making for a song as relaxed as a Sunday afternoon in the sun. It’s also notable for featuring Brad’s favourite percussive instrument deep in the mix: a wooden frog. He adds, “This is a tongue-in-cheek song I wrote after being gifted a bottle of natural wine by a friend. I’m a working-class boy who would much rather drink shitty lager at a party, like Stella or Holsten Pils. I’ve got no right to be writing a song about natty wine but I was feeling bougie. It’s a love song in disguise, I liked the imagery of lyrics like, ‘Your sweet loving just keeps dripping from the vine.’” In The Midst of You finds Brad in late night lothario mode, his previous seductive style now taking a more resolutely romantic and perhaps surprisingly spiritual direction. The phrase “in the midst of you” comes from the Bible, Zephaniah 3:17, “the full quote is something along the lines of “God is in the midst of you” - basically meaning that you have to look inward for peace or enlightenment, etc. the album is about that in parts and also, as always, I tried to put a romantic twist on it so that the “in the midst of you” is about being in love with somebody. It’s kind of a juxtaposition but I’ve always enjoyed taking spiritual messages and giving them a double meaning, explains Brad. “Hopefully it’s a positive message of prostrating yourself to somebody, or to spirituality or something - but giving yourself fully to something, being in the midst…”
Introducing Office Dog, hailing from Otepoti/Dunedin and residing in Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland. The trio, led by Kane Strang on guitar/vocals, alongside Rassani Tolovaa on bass and Mitchell Innes on drums, present their debut album Spiel — out January 26, 2023 via New West Records Records. Assembling intricate musical collages, Office Dog fearlessly explore the depths of complex emotions through layers of tension, release, and celestial lyricism.
Office Dog formed in 2021. Amidst a busy solo career, front-person Kane Strang sought a more collaborative musical outlet. He teamed up with fellow musicians and previous collaborators Mitchell Innes and Rassani Tolovaa, and the trio began writing together across various locations in Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland. Over the next year, fragments began assembling into songs, ultimately culminating in the creation of Office Dog’s debut full-length album, ‘Spiel’, recorded in collaboration with producer De Stevens at Roundhead Studios and mastered by Jonathan Pearce (The Beths).
Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes return with their fifth studio album, 'Dark Rainbow' - set for release on 26 January 2024. The Rattlesnakes have built a reputation for blistering anthems that owe as much to brooding desert rock as it does hardcore and power-pop. They’re redefining punk-rock with a sound that straddles eras and genres, putting The Rattlesnakes in a category all their own, while also challenging tired cliches and setting the world to rights.
Multi award-winning, platinum-selling artist, Tom Odell, returns in 2024 with his 6th studio album, Black Friday. Armed with a newfound sense of freedom and creative control, this new era of Tom’s career has seen him grow his online fanbase by millions, play the biggest live shows of his career and become one of the most streamed British artists in the world. Moving forward as an artist firmly in the driving seat, 2024 heralds Tom’s third album in three years.
Blue Raspberry is Katy Kirby’s follow up to her renowned debut album Cool Dry Place, which came out in February 2021. Singer/songwriter Katy Kirby introduced her warm, articulate vocals, perceptive lyrics, and playful adult-alternative style on her debut album as she toured tirelessly supporting bands like Waxahatchee, Andy Shauf, Julia Jacklin and Alex G.
That record was a tried-and-true folk collection, perfectly displaying the chops of a young songwriter and emanating the warm feel of a band in a room; Blue Raspberry, made with the same band and producers (Logan Chung and Alberto Sewald) , hits the gas and enters completely new territory as we see Katy truly step into her own as a songwriting force. She fearlessly leans far into baroque piano pop on tracks like ‘Redemption Arc’ and the title track ‘Blue Raspberry’, and lyrically she explores themes of loss and queer love. Very few are able to capture the same emo- tional, theatrical magic of artists like Fiona Apple, Tom Waits and Joanna Newsom but Katy pulls it off on this record; standout ‘Drop Dead’.
Bursting out of Detroit Rock City and hailed by The Michigan Daily as "the past, present, and future of rock n' roll," Mac Saturn has grooves at its heart, playing with a buoyant energy that makes dancing a command rather than an option. As drummer-turned-frontman Macc -- who sings everything with the assurance and swagger that’s as much Harry Styles as Mick Jagger -- puts it: “The songs are rock, but they’ve got that other thing going on — that funky, dancey, Motown, whatever you want to call it — that makes them our own thing.”
The six-piece covered a lot of ground on its last year's debut EP Until the Money Runs Out, from the hip-swiveling “Diamonds” and “Mr. Cadillac” to the urgent punch of “Persian Rugs." Since then, they've become known for their electrifying live shows that harken back to the glitz and glam of 70s rock stars. Their own sold-out headlining shows are packed with fans singing along with every word - even to songs that haven't been released yet - and their tours with The Struts and Dirty Honey have only inspired more people to enter Mac Saturn's orbit.
A vibrant and irresistible earworm, "Mint Julep" is the first single off their upcoming debut album, Hard To Sell (releasing January 2024). The album was produced by The Rust Brothers - aka Al Sutton, Marlon Young, Herschel Boone - at Rust Belt Studios (Greta Van Fleet, Electric Six, Mark Foster) and mastered by Bill Skibbe (Jack White, Franz Ferdinand, Wallows).
"Unbroken" is a very New Model Army album, full of guitars but with the emphasis on bass and drums that characterizes all the band's work. "First Summer After", the opener of the album and the first single, spreads a deep road movie feeling and takes you on a trip you'll want to see more of.
TEC is a journey through the past four years, reflecting on Lil Tecca’s rapid ascent, subsequent challenges, and ultimate triumph as he has navigated his evolution. With TECexecutive produced by Lil Tecca and Taz Taylor, Tecca embraces his comfort in his own skin and a newfound confidence, diving deeper into his roots and personal narrative. The fourth studio album from Lil Tecca includes the previously released tracks “500lbs” and “HVN ON EARTH” featuring Kodak Black.
Just 23 years old and already a seasoned veteran of Nashville’s elite songwriting community, Conner Smith has become one of Country’s most anticipated new artists, a talent mixing prime-of-life passion with old-soul perspective. Continuing to deliver next level music to his loyal fan base, Smith showcases his authentic storytelling and soulful voice throughout his full-length debut Smoky Mountains, featuring GOLD-certified “Take It Slow,” viral hit “I Hate Alabama” and chart climbing “Creek Will Rise.”
Pillar - "One Love Revolution" / One Love Revolution is the seventh album by Pillar. Originally released in August 2015, the album charted on Billboard's Top Alternative Albums (#25), Top Hard Rock Albums (#17), Top Rock Albums (#42) and Top Christian Albums (#8). Featuring tracks "One Love Revolution," "Disconnect," and "We Ride." Now available on vinyl for the first time! Indie Exclusive Flaming Orange LP. Limited Edition.
Introducing " COWBOY BEBOP: The Real Folk Blues Legends" a vinyl masterpiece with captivating designs by Toshiaki Uesugi, celebrated for his work for the Cowboy Bebop franchise. This LP, carefully supervised by the legendary Yoko Kanno, compiles tracks from the whole Cowboy Bebop discography including Blue, No Disc and Knocking on Heaven’s Door, featuring the iconic "The Real Folk Blues." This release brings to vinyl for the first-time classics like "Call Me Call Me" and "Blue," delivering to fans a unique sonic experience. Join the legacy of one of the most successful anime series of all time.
This vinyl set features deluxe 2x LP Discs, pressed on 140g deep red 12" vinyl. It includes an insert print with song track lists, song credits, extensive liner notes and interviews with Yoko Kanno, all housed in a gatefold jacket.
Presenting "COWBOY BEBOP: Songs for the Cosmic Sofa” an auditory journey with striking designs by the acclaimed Toshiaki Uesugi, known for his work for the Cowboy Bebop franchise. This LP, curated with the guidance of Yoko Kanno, is a collection of chill-out and downtempo tracks taken from the Cowboy Bebop discography. Explore iconic songs like “Adieu “from Cowboy Bebop: Blue (featuring Emily Bindiger)and a brand-new recording of the hit “The Real Folk Blues” (Featuring Mai Yamane). Join the cultural phenomenon that is Cowboy Bebop in this outstanding vinyl format.
This vinyl set features a deluxe LP Disc, pressed on 140g Light-blue 12" vinyl. It includes an insert print with song track list, song credits, extensive liner notes and interviews with Yoko Kanno, all housed in a single pocket jacket.
A fifteen song cycle that takes a journey to the center of the self. Ty’s been on this kind of trip before, so he’s souped up a vehicle that’s all his own – a sophisticated machine – to take us there this time. The conception of Three Bells arcs, rainbow-like, into a land nearly beyond songs – but inside of them, Ty relentlessly pushes the walls further and further in his writing and playing to cast light into the most opaque depths.
Original Soundtrack for A24’s Past Lives, featuring original score by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen and the original song “Quiet Eyes” by Sharon Van Etten. Pressed on cloud white vinyl, with original paintings by renowned artist Na Kim.
Remastered reissue of acclaimed singer-songwriter John Moreland's sophomore album, In The Throes (2013), featuring "Break My Heart Sweetly" and "3:59 AM"
“New Blue Sun is the continuation of discovery for me. My entire career has been fueled by this and it is the only thing that keeps me honest. This album is the most honest and interesting offering I can give today. I never could have imagined in high school, when I started rapping and doing music that I would be here right now playing wind instruments. Ha. This life ride always surprises me. I’m here for it.” — Andre 3000
This limited edition 3-LP vinyl is pressed on 180g black vinyl with fold out poster, printed inner sleeves and note from the artist.
GRAMMY award-winning popstar and acclaimed songwriter Kim Petras releases her debut album, Feed The Beast, on Amigo Records (a division of Republic Records). Feed The Beast is 15 tracks of pure pop perfection; an album about sacrificing every part of yourself for your biggest passion in life that sees her embody a modern-day pop Andromeda – a spin on the classic Greek tale. Her offering to her beast, the lead single “Alone,” features diamond-selling hip hop icon Nicki Minaj. Indie Exclusive ART ALBUM CD release comes in a 12 x 12 gatefold jacket package. Limited Edition.
Bright & Black is metal music and orchestral music, two worlds existing in parallel, now clashing together by having
metal writers compose directly for the orchestra. Performed by the Baltic Sea Philharmonic conducted by Kristjan
Järvi with soloist Eicca Toppinen. Written by Eicca Toppinen (Apocalyptica), Fredrik Ĺkesson (Opeth), Erik
Danielsson (Watain), Nico Elgstrand (Entombed AD), Tomas Haake/Dick Lövgren (Meshuggah) and more.
Recorded in fall 2022 in Estonia. World tour in 2024. Indie Exclusive Black/White Splatter 2 LP with signed artist
photo included. Limited Edition.
There’s a double meaning to the title of What Now, the revelatory new album from Brittany Howard. “With the world we’re living in now, it feels like we’re all just trying to hang onto our souls,” says the Nashville-based musician and frontwoman for four-time Grammy Award-winning Alabama Shakes. “Everything seems to be getting more extreme and everyone keeps wondering, ‘What now? What’s next?’ By the same coin, the only constant on this record is you never know what’s going to happen next...”
What Do We Do Now is the fifth solo studio LP recorded by J Mascis since 1996. This is obviously not a very aggressive release schedule, but when you figure in the live albums, guest spots, and records done with his various other bands (Dinosaur Jr., The Fog, Heavy Blanket, Witch, Sweet Apple, and so on), well, to paraphrase Lou Reed, “J's week beats your year.”
What Do We Do Now began to come together during the waning days of the Pandemic. Utilizing his own Bisquiteen Studio, J started working on writing a series of tunes on acoustic with a different dynamic than the stuff he creates for Dino. “When I'm writing for the band,” he says, “I'm always trying to think of doing things Lou and Murph would fit into. For myself, I'm thinking more about what I can do with just an acoustic guitar, even for the leads. Of course, this time, I added full drums and electric leads, although the rhythm parts are still all acoustic. Usually, I try to do the solo stuff more simply so I can play it by myself, but I really wanted to add the drums. Once that started, everything else just fell into place. So it ended up sounding a lot more like a band record. I dunno why I did that exactly, but it's just what happened.”
Two guest musicians are playing this time out; Western Mass local Ken Mauri (of the B52s) plays piano on several tracks. Since J himself has some experience with keys, when asked why he needed a hired gun, he says, “Ken is great, and he plays all the keys. I tried playing some keyboards on the first Fog album, but I'm really only comfortable playing the white notes, so it's kind of limiting. [laughs] Nowadays, I could just turn the pitch on a mini Mellotron to play different sounds, but black keys just seem hard. For whatever reason, I just like banging on the white ones. Seems like it's harder to figure out how to stretch your fingers around the other ones.”
Mauri has no such qualms and plays all the keys very damn well. He sounds especially great on “I Can't Find You,” where he is Jack Nitzsche to J's Neil Young, creating one of the album's loveliest tunes. The other guest musician, Matthew “Doc” Dunn, is also prominent on this track. Dunn's steel guitar manages to both widen and soften the musical edges of the music, giving it a full classicist profile. Dunn is an Ontario-based polymath who J met through Matt Valentine. After J played on Doc's great 2022 Sub Pop single, “Your Feel,” he figured it was time for payback. Both Dunn and Mauri add beautifully to the songs here, helping to transform them from acoustic sketches into full-blown post-core power ballads.
What Do We Do Now is the finest set of solo tunes J has yet penned, and the way they're presented is just about perfect. Asked if he would be touring to support the album, J says he'll be doing some weekend dates, but he probably won't be putting a band together. And I'm sure these songs will sound great solo and acoustic, but the arrangements on this album are truly great and put a cool, different spin on Mascis' instantly recognizable approach to making music.
So, what do we do now? Not sure. But apparently, what J does is to make one of his most killer records ever. Hats off to him.
A 4-LP set, Music Box: 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition presents the original album Music Box in its entirety on Disc One with the noteworthy addition of "Everything Fades Away" (previously available only as an international bonus track). Discs Two and Three premiere a variety of previously unreleased tracks including "Workin' Hard,""All I Live For (Extended Version),""My Prayer,""Hero (2009 Version),""Anytime You Need A Friend (Extended Mix,") "Music Box (A Capella)"and two live performances from Top of the Pops: "Dreamlover"and "Without You." Disc Two also includes Mariah Carey's duet with Luther Vandross on "Endless Love"as well as two brand new remixes from Grammy Award nominated DJ Terry Hunter: "I've Been Thinking About You"and "Workin' Hard." Disc Four, "Mariah Carey Live at Proctor's Theater, NY - 1993" presents Mariah's complete showcase for the first time and features eight previously unreleased concert performances. (The Proctor's Theater performances of "Hero"and "Dreamlover"are the only two previously released tracks from the concert.)
From the Dolls-meets-the-devil opening title track to the desperate Sister Lovers-adjacent finale "The Findings," The Interrogator is thirteen vibrant, crackling, scary and hilarious songs which taken together represent nothing less than a thorough and thrilling moral inventory of our decadent and depraved times. Following up and doubling down on the themes of last year's lionized cult favorite For Executive Meeting, Elizabeth Nelson has authored an album as politically potent and pointedly hilarious as antecedents like The Mekons’ Rock 'n' Roll and Neil Young's on On the Beach and wed it to the sound of ZZ Top's Eliminator. As writers like Rob Sheffield and Robert Christgau have known for years Elizbeth Nelson has been one of our very best songwriters for going on a decade. On the charged anthem "Bad Day for the Group Chat" she reassesses the current state of affairs: "I have bested all my peers.”
A true heiress of the rich musical history of her native New Orleans, Britti is an arresting new voice in her triumphant debut, Hello, I’m Britti. Inspired by musical luminaries from Diana Ross to Dolly Parton and influenced by contemporary legends from Beyoncé to Sade, the album is one of immense gravity and a personal love letter to the place she calls home. Signed, co-written, and produced by Dan Auerbach, the album is fresh and wondrous, with a levee-like hold on her own heritage.
Mellow War is Taylor McCall’s 2nd studio album and first production project. This album was co-produced by Taylor McCall and Sean McConnell. This album features Taylor’s late grandfather during his days in Vietnam on the cover as well as the intro track, “Sinking Sand”, from his days as a pastor. His mother also is singing in the choir. Mellow War explores the balance of good and evil, destruction and healing and the importance of having faith in the darkest of times.
The Who By Numbers is their 7th studio album, produced by Glynn Johns and released in October 1975. A
powerhouse record, the album reached Top 10 on both side of the Atlantic. It contains the standout tracks “Slip Kid,”
“Substitute” and “Squeeze Box.” The Who By Numbers is now available on black LP as a superior vinyl half cut
master. Engineered at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell from tapes prepared by Jon Astley and packaged in
original sleeve with obi stripe and certificate of authenticity.
Quadrophenia is the 6th studio album by The Who, released in October 1973. The band’s 2nd rock opera is often
regarded by many as their best album. Delve into the intricate story of Jimmy, a mod coming to terms with life head
on. Quadrophenia is now available on black 2 LP as a superior vinyl cut half-speed master. Engineered at Abbey
Road Studios by Miles Showell from tapes prepared by Jon Astley and packaged in original sleeve with obi stripe
and certificate of authenticity.
Maddie’s 2022 EP, You Might Not Like Her, marked the end of a chapter for Maddie at the same time it marked a beginning for her fans, a teeter-totter of an experience for the singer-songwriter who, at the time of its release, had moved on to writing a new body of work about a new chapter in her life. Having left behind the Boise church community where she long served as a worship leader to move to Los Angeles where she came out as queer and explored what that meant to her for the first tangible time, inspiration was flowing at a moment when some of her most meaningful songs were bringing her back to the past she’d left behind. “It was such a weird whiplash to see people connecting with those songs on such a deep and meaningful level knowing that I’d already processed everything within them months and months ago,” she says. “It was like everyone listening to the songs I was performing was 12 months behind my own healing process – and it was even wilder performing them knowing that I had so many more, newer stories I was just waiting to be able to share.”
Now That I’ve Been Honest lays bare those stories in chronological order, a raw, triumphant, honest and refreshing personal story in her debut album that signals the arrival of one of music’s most important new voices. As sonically textured and layered a debut you’ll find, Now That I’ve Been Honest professes to be a coming-of-age story detailing Maddie’s life since moving to Los Angeles, while continuing to build upon the sound foundation of her early work and the community she’s created and fostered in her music. “The EP was me in a lot of ways deconstructing who I was,” she says. “The album is me saying, ‘Well, now that we've gotten that taken care of…’” The digital album was released October 20th.
Giant Rooks is back! After the indie band celebrated international success with their debut album “Rookery”, they are now releasing their second album “How Have You Been?” with 14 new songs.
THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES (MUSIC FROM & INSPIRED BY) IS THE OFFICIAL SOUNDTRACK TO THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED NEW FILM IN THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA. THE SOUNDTRACK WAS EXECUTIVE-PRODUCED BY NINE-TIME GRAMMY®-WINNING PRODUCER DAVE COBB (CHRIS STAPLETON, BRANDI CARLILE, STURGILL SIMPSON) AND FEATURES “CAN’T CATCH ME NOW”, WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY OLIVIA RODRIGO.
“Prelude To Ecstasy is a pendulum which swings between the extremes of human emotion – from the ecstasy of passion to the sublimity of pain – and it is this concept which binds our album together. This is an archeology of ourselves; you can exhume our collective and individual experiences and influences from within its fabric. We exorcised guitars for their solos, laid bare confessions directly from diary pages, and summoned an orchestra to bring our vision to life. It is out greatest honour and pride to present this offering to the world, it is everything we are.” – The Last Dinner Party
Chelsea Wolfe’s latest album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, is a rebirth in process. It is a powerfully cathartic statement about cutting ties, as well as an important reminder that everything we do is ultimately connected.
Madi Diaz has been making records and writing songs professionally since the mid 2000s, but it wasn’t until she released 2021’s History Of A Feeling that she felt the glare of wider notoriety. It wasn’t her debut album, but it certainly felt like it. She made her daytime and night time television debuts, embarked on her first solo tour since 2012, and supported Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen on tour, and also collaborated with them on record. Harry Styles handpicked Diaz to open for him in arenas and stadiums in North America, and was so taken by her captivating live show, he asked her to be a member of his touring band, to sing alongside him all over Europe and the UK, as well as continuing to open the show in various cities. After three months on the road touring internationally, Diaz is back in Nashville, and gearing up to release her new album, Weird Faith, perched on the precipice of her moment. Featuring Kacey Musgraves and produced by Sam Cohen and Konrad Snyder, the album feels expansive and exploratory, showcasing her growth as a songwriter and speaking earnestly about the fears that come from falling in love again.
The Dead South grow more adventurous and assured with each new album. For their fourth full-length record, they brought producer Jimmy Nutt to Mexico City, where they recorded 13 songs full of plot twists, family trees, grudges, insurance scams, bacon, burials, banjo riffs and more. The Dead South flawlessly execute banjo rolls and lightning fast mandolin tremolos, 3-part harmonies and songs of classic themes -murder ballads, disloyalty, ghosts and the like, with a wink and a smile. Where Bluegrass meets Bach meets Billy Talent, for fans of Frank Sinatra and Tool alike, you’ll find The Dead South’s Chains & Stakes. Chains & Stakes is truly a “Dead South” collection in the balance of darkness and levity that has come to define their unmistakable style.
10th Anniversary Expanded Deluxe Edition of The Marshall Mathers LP2. It features 11 bonus tracks, including B- sides and instrumentals. Originally released on November 5, 2013, the album serves as a sequel to The Marshall Mathers LP released in 2000. It features the singles “Berzerk,” “Survival,” “Rap God,” “Headlights” and “The Monster,” which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album won Eminem a record sixth GRAMMY Award for Best Rap Album and is now certified 4x platinum. 4 LP set on 180g black vinyl.
Ken Exclusive Cover - Includes 2 bonus tracks - The Limited Edition Barbie the Album Indie Exclusive Vinyl. The groundbreaking and star-studded musical companion to the summer blockbuster film Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The album features new tracks from an unprecedented lineup of artists including Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, Dua Lipa, Lizzo, KAROL G, Charli XCX, PinkPantheress, Ava Max, Dominic Fike, Khalid, The Kid LAROI, Tame Impala, HAIM, GAYLE and FIFTY FIFTY feat. Kali. Barbie star Ryan Gosling also joins the robust roster of soundtrack artists with his iconic original song performed as his character, Ken. Barbie The Album has received over 2 Billion streams worldwide to date. The album debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 Chart with over 126,000 albums. The album boasts the largest sales week on vinyl for a theatrical film soundtrack in Nielsen history.
Multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning musician and composer, Dhani Harrison, has announced the release of INNERSTANDING, his first solo album in six years. The new album will be available as a 2LP Neon Yellow color vinyl edition on February 9th, 2024, via H.O.T. Records/BMG.
“Here we are in a new world and here is the new album that has come forth from it.” Dhani Harrison on his new album, INNERSTANDING.
Last week Harrison released the first track from the album, “Damn That Frequency”, which features Blur’s Graham Coxon on saxophone. In addition to his appearance on that track, Coxon also features on guitar on four other songs on INNERSTANDING. The album also features guest appearances from Liela Moss from The Duke Spirit and critically acclaimed Australian singer Mereki. The album was produced by Harrison and co-mixed with GRAMMY® Award-winning producer Paul Hicks (The Beatles, Joe Strummer, The Rolling Stones).
Les Claypool's 'Adverse Yaw: The Prawn Song Years' Box Set is available for pre-order. This 5 album set spans Les' solo career over the course of various projects, encompassing the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, and The Fancy Band. Enjoy 'Live Frogs Sets 1 & 2', the long out of print 'Purple Onion', 'Of Whales & Woe', & 'Of Fungi & Foe', LPs, and for the first time ever, 'The Big Eyeball In the Sky' with entirely remastered audio on limited edition, colored 180 gram vinyl.
Expanded 40th anniversary edition of Violent Femmes' self-titled debut featuring the remastered album, plus B-sides, live sessions, and rare demos. Housed in a lift-top box with die-cut darkened window detail revealing the box contents, the set includes three 180-gram LPs plus a replica 7" single, along with a book featuring new liner notes by journalist David Fricke and interviews with the band. Includes the classic anthems “Blister in the Sun,” “Please Do Not Go,” “Gone Daddy Gone,” and “Add It Up.”
RSD Essential 052 -The Beach Boys’ iconic 1966 album, Pet Sounds, is universally hailed as one of popular music’s most important recordings of all time. This very special pressing comes to you on Coke Bottle Clear vinyl. Pet Sounds is remastered in Stereo with faithfully replicated original artwork.
RSD Essential 053 - On this, the band’s second album, the core emphasis remained a nexus point between country, folk, psych, and classic rock all shrouded in mystery, and Hope Sandoval's trademark drowsy drawl remained swathed in echo. The hit single “Fade Into You” brought Mazzy Star unprecedented success.
Indie Exclusive - For the first time on vinyl, Rockabye Baby presents fan-favorite Lullaby Renditions of Sublime, featuring Lime Vinyl and full color sleeve with children’s activities.
20th anniversary album of all new material, including a new original song, by globally renowned classical crossover group Il Divo. First album with new member Steven LaBrie, after the passing of founding member Carlos Marin in 2020.
Il Divo takes flight in 2024 with their 10th full-length album, “XX.” Once again, they leap forward creatively, expanding the style and vision all at once.
“The album really has a sound to it,” Sébastien goes on. “It’s exciting to hear where we’re going. It’s Il Divo, but it’s the next chapter.”
“There’s something magical about how we did the tour in 2022, became close friends, and are making music together,” Steven elaborates. “It’s incredible.”
A new dawn for Il Divo begins now.
“For me, music is more than entertainment,” says David. “It separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. The human voice is capable of things that everyone in an audience can vibrationally relate to. We have all been through sadness and happiness. Il Divo translates extreme emotions into a modern experience of humanity. This isn’t background music. We’re vibrationally mirroring how you might feel and enabling catharsis to happen. We want this to continue as long as we can. As long as we have breath and are able to do what we do at the level we do it, that's all we want. We want to create windows of transformation for anybody who's willing to listen.”
“Everything we do is for the audience,” Sebastien states. “Carlos will always be in our hearts. We’re sharing as many moments of joy as we can on stage. It’s a gift when what we do connects with anybody. For us, it’s not about receiving, but about giving and being of service to others. There’s nothing more powerful.”
“After losing a brother and living through so much over 20 years, Il Divo and our music are not a smidge tired,” Urs leaves off. “Il Divo has not lost any bit of its right to exist, with its potential and possibility to make beautiful, emotive, strong, and very high quality music. These are the most important things to me—Il Divo is here after 20 years, and Il Divo is here to stay.”
Rock juggernaut Futurebirds’ newest release – a 22-track live compilation titled …Thanks Y’all – is a benchmark that not only celebrates 14 years together, it’s also a testament to the sheer iron will of a group of musicians hungry for the fruits of its labor.
The Athens, Georgia-based group once again teamed up with storied My Morning Jacket guitarist/producer Carl Broemel for the latest chapter of a seamless, bountiful partnership that initially came to fruition with the 2021 EP, Bloomin’, and was followed up with the 2022 EP, Bloomin’ Too.
Recorded over 9 shows in February of 2023, the live compilation finds the “Carlbirds” firing on all cylinders, with the best highlights captured for posterity on …Thanks Y’all. The album delivers the sound and energy of the live concert experience, as though the listener were standing dead center in the raucous crowd.
Singer/guitarist Daniel Womack says, “We're long overdue for a live release and feel super lucky to have one of our mentors quarterbacking the project. Carl takes us to another level and I think the stoke translates well in these versions" Scheduled for a December 1st digital release, …Thanks Y’all will also be available as a 3-LP vinyl set on February 9, 2024.
Kali Malone’s anticipated new album “All Life Long” is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L’Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden.
Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone’s music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages.
Malone’s new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019’s breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone’s compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O’Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve.
All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across its 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition’s internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony.
The titular composition “All Life Long” appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice. In the latter, Malone pairs the music with “The Crying Water” by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, “All Life Long” moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator’s relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. “Passage Through The Spheres,” the album’s opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamban’s essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamban defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs.
This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and its fixation on the infinite, but draws its weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.
One of the leading lights in Europe’s experimental rock domain, The Pineapple Thief bring you their 14th album, It Leads to This, on February 9th 2024. The band features founding member Bruce Soord (guitar/vocals) plus Jon Sykes (bass/backing vocals), Gavin Harrison (drums/percussion) and Steve Kitch (keyboards).
“The band was once described as a 'fucking nightmare' to be around, whilst we are lovely people we do embrace the chaos that comes with all of this so found it fitting to title our next album as such. The songs themselves mainly follow this theme but relate to all aspects of life. Lyrically, it is more of the same... no metaphorical meanings, no fantastical story telling, no pretentious bollocks.... Just tales of a life lived as it will always be.”
Orgōne is back in California and coming in hot with Chimera, a fire-breathing spectacle of psychedelic Afro-soul. Produced by Sergio Rios (Neal Francis, Say She She), Chimera is an electrifying, dream-like odyssey, tripping through the hazy swamps of New Orleans, weaving textures of entrancing voodoo soul, thrumming Afro-funk, and stoney psych-rock.
In Chimera, the heavy-hitting new LP from Orgōne, out February 9th, 2024 on 3 Palm Records, the Los Angeles-based outfit carves tough, gritty, infectious grooves into heady dance rhythms. Taking its name from a mythical beast with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, Chimeraconjures a state that is at once trance-like and heart-poundingly exciting.
The album opens like a heady puff of smoke in the face with “Hallowed Dreams,” drawing the listener into a state where reality blurs and the music takes control. The focus track, “Zum Zum,” is a hooky Afro-funk dance floor heater that synchronizes your heart rate to its propulsive percussion, the hypnotic rhythm building into a raucous, psychedelic climax. On the raw and rousing “Tula Muisi (Dance Like Them),” a tapestry of Afrobeat and heavy psych-rock bolsters the singer calls for unity and respect, which translates to “Hear the music, and dance like them.”
Known for their gripping instrumentals and incendiary live show, the band is firing on all cylinders and the earned confidence of this time-tested, cult-favorite crew is on display throughout Chimera.
From its inception, Orgōne has always been a chimera — a multifaceted creation and the physical manifestation of impossible quixotic dreams. Chimera will delight fans of early Orgōne while showcasing the band’s effortless and endless ability to shape-shift. It’s an electrifying, mesmerizing record sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener rapt.
"Easy, easy..." Only Sea Power could turn a football chant into an artwork with... ease. From this bounding refrain of No Lucifer, via Waving Flags' serenity, the balm-like No Need To Cry and the joyous Trip Out, 2008 album Do You Like Rock Music? reflects the band's ability to find glacial beauty in the commonplace, making soul-stirring epiphanies an everyday occurrence. Expanded for its 15th anniversary with sessions and B-sides, this kaleidoscopic record encapsulates Sea Power's true heart.
The 15th anniversary reissue of Sea Power’s Mercury nominated album, Do You Like Rock Music? is released on Feb 9, 2024. The band are celebrating the reissue with a string of dates in the UK playing the album through in its entirety.
The limited-edition LP is housed in gatefold glow in the dark sleeve with orange vinyl & a picture disc, plus sleeve notes written by Roy Wilkinson.
TANGK is, at its core, a love album. Open to anyone who requires something to shout out loud in order to fend off any encroaching sense of the void, now or forever. TANGK is a bona fide pop record in a way we’ve never heard from IDLES before, that is, something for everyone to pass around and share, communal anthems intended for overcoming our grievances. The word - pronounced “tank” with a whiff of the “g” - began as an onomatopoeic reference in-studio for the sound of a guitar tone, but has grown into a sigil for living in love. Joe sings on TANGK in a way we’ve never heard before, completing his transformation from post-punk firebrand into soul singing evangelist. TANGK was co-produced by Nigel Godrich, Kenny Beats, and IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen.
Hailed as "the reigning heavyweight champions of Southern rock" (No Depression), Atlanta-based quintet Blackberry Smoke is back with their 8th studio album, Be Right Here, produced by Dave Cobb. Be Right Here follows 2021's You Hear Georgia, which was the best-selling Country and Americana/Folk album in the country, entered at #7 on the Billboard Rock Albums chart and #4 on the Billboard Top Albums chart. Released to critical acclaim, No Depression praised the band for being “as much students of singer-songwriter-folk and outlaw country as they are of jam-based, chest-pumping rock,” ” while Guitar World declared "Many try to reproduce that holy grail, golden-era-of-classic-rock sound through their six-string escapades, yet only a handful ultimately succeed. One such band who succeeds in spades is Blackberry Smoke, whose most recent album You Hear Georgia serves up 10 tracks of pure rock ‘n’ roll bliss.”
In addition to Blackberry Smoke—Starr (vocals, guitar), Richard Turner (bass, vocals), Brit Turner (drums), Paul Jackson (guitar, vocals) and Brandon Still (keyboards)—the album also features background vocals from longtime collaborators The Black Bettys.
The music of Atlanta trio Omni has always swung fast and hit hard. And Souvenir, their fourth album and second for Sub Pop, packs their biggest punch yet. Inactive during the majority of the pandemic–the longest downtime in their history–they approached this recording with lots of pent-up energy. Guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos, and drummer Chris Yonker converted their creative fuel into sharp, driving songs that land immediately, sporting chopping riffs, staccato beats, and wiry melodies.
Why does Souvenir sound so sharp? Because each track is a compact unit that stands on its own, reflecting the time and place in which it was created. That’s why Omni called the album Souvenir: it’s a collection of audio objects, a stash of musical miniatures. Think of it as a family photo album, a binder of rare playing cards, a shoebox holding precious gems.
Take “Plastic Pyramid,” the first song Omni wrote after coming out of lockdown. Filled with twists and turns, it’s a journey unto itself, charged by clanging chords, spinning rhythm, and Frobos trading lines with Izzy Glaudini of Automatic, with whom Omni toured with last fall. (Glaudini sings on two other Souvenir tracks, the first guest vocalist the band has collaborated with). Or take opener “Exacto,” a slicing web of intertwined guitar and bass. Its razor-fine notes and syncopated beats perfectly match pointillist Frobos lyrics such as “Exacto, de facto, concise, quite right”–a line that could well be an Omni mantra.
The precision and clarity of Souvenir comes from some new Omni developments. For one, this is their first album with Yonker as their full-time drummer, and his forceful playing adds exclamation points to every pointed moment on Souvenir. In addition, the trio worked with Atlanta-based engineer Kristofer Sampson for the first time. Sampson pushed the band to a higher degree of power, with Frobos’s vocals more upfront in his pulsing mix and the rest of the music leaping out of the speakers.
You might notice that Frobos’ singing is a bit more emotional and even nostalgic this time around. In crafting his vocals, he was inspired by the early college radio rock of formative favorites like REM, the Cure, and Big Audio Dynamite–the kind of bands whose melodies could have been top 40 hits in an alternative universe. The lyrics on Souvenir are also by turns funny, absurd, and even cryptic. A wry humor has always coursed through Omni’s songs, and this time, it comes in shades of both dark and light. In “Granite Kiss,” an “astronomical” love story concludes with the hope that “we can decay together,” while in “PG,” a romantic walk in the park includes a rose-colored mugging.
Immediacy rushes throughout every moment of Souvenir, making it the band's most powerful album to date. Omni has truly crafted a musical keepsake–a set of songs that you’ll want to keep close, an aural memento you'll cherish for the rest of time.
"On RAT WARS, HEALTH, are not only making the heaviest, most genre-obliterating music of their career, they’re documenting just how insane it feels to be alive right now. It’s The Downward Spiral for people with at least two monitors and a vitamin D deficiency. “RAT WARS” is a definitive statement on the insanity and the insipidness of contemporary life. "
The Mess We Seem To Make is the eagerly anticipated debut album from Crawlers. Digging deeper into what fans already know and love about their eclectic alt-rock sound, it builds on the relationship of trust they have with producer Pete Robinson and engineer Tom Roach at Liverpool’s Coastal Studios and takes on a whole range of challenging topics; trauma, sexual politics, mental health, the general goings on in a young person’s life.
Legendary indie-rock band Grandaddy has announced a brand new studio album Blu Wav set for release February 16, 2024 via Dangerbird Records. A prolific storyteller, Jason Lytle is inspired by the overwhelming beauty of nature to the mundane moments that spark life’s strongest memories. Introducing pedal steel into the band’s repertoire for the first time, buoyant lead single “Watercooler” comments on the dichotomy of both. It was inspired by having his own outdoorsy rock guy (in both senses of the word) lifestyle while his partner had an office job. Lytle shares, “Most of my relationships have involved girls who worked in office settings. This song is about the end of one, or perhaps a few, of those relationships. Listeners will also notice the pedal steel on this track and eventually on many others from the forthcoming new album. It’s a first for Grandaddy, and I couldn't be more thrilled about this fact.” With the album title Blu Wav meant to be a literal mash-up of “bluegrass” and “new wave”, the new collection has a distinct feel, a uniform vibe, and a somewhat unexpected sound. It was conceived as Grandaddy maestro Jason Lytle was driving through the Nevada desert, and Patti Page’s "Tennessee Waltz" came across the classic country station on the radio. He was immediately intrigued by the possibilities of what it might sound like to keep the slow sway and sweet, simple lyrics of the bluegrass waltz while adding layers of dense synthesizers and the electronics of new wave. It incorporates the lo-fi lushness and sometimes-psychedelic orchestration Grandaddy is known for with Lytle’s first foray into true country. Seven of its 13 songs are waltzes, and as Lytle notes, “there’s an inordinate amount of pedal steel.” Grandaddy recently celebrated their legacy with a series of 20th anniversary reissues including the acclaimed Sumday Twunny box set which earned a Pitchfork ‘Best New Reissue”. Lytle also contributed vocals to a posthumous Sparklehorse album by request of his friend and fellow psychedelic pop auteur Mark Linkous’ family. Grandaddy has released five official LPs, most recently 2017’s Last Place. Grandaddy members include Jason Lytle, Aaron Burtch, Jim Fairchild, Tim Dryden, and the late Kevin Garcia, who passed away in 2017.
Written in the topsy-turvy days following two different breakups, San Fermin’s poignant new album, Arms, is a testament to the band’s ability to transform pain and isolation into catharsis and healing. The songs are more minimalist than ever before, stripping away much of the sonic ornamentation the Brooklyn eight-piece has come to be known for in favor of a more raw, direct sound reflective of the album’s candid, plainspoken lyrics. The result is a deeply moving, compassionate collection, one that moves from anger and disappointment to clarity and acceptance as it balances devastation and hope in equal measure. Founded in 2013, San Fermin rose to early acclaim on the strength of their self-titled debut, which bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone had initially envisioned as a one-off featuring more than 20 collaborators. NPR hailed the album as “one of the year's most surprising, ambitious, evocative and moving records,” while Pitchfork called breakout single “Sonsick” “deliriously infectious.” Buoyed by the record’s success, Ludwig-Leone put together a full-time band and hit the road, performing everywhere from the Tiny Desk to Lollapalooza and sharing bills with the likes of alt-J, Courtney Barnett, the National, and St. Vincent. In the years to come, the group would go on to release three similarly lauded albums, prompting The New Yorker to celebrate their “knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis.”
"The Glorification of Sadness" is more than an album about relationships. The celebration of finding your way back after leaving a long term relationship, being empowered even in your failures and taking responsibility for your own happiness. It is her most personal album to date, drawing on her own experiences with Paloma acting as the anchor to direct a deeply personal narrative and album.”
Produced by award winning producer and composer Martin Wave and co-written with JKash, Andrew Wells, Ellie King and Charlie Puth. It has ALL the makings of a new era of Paloma. It’s confident. It’s cinematic. It’s empowering. It’s compelling from beginning to end, all powered by the kind of anthems that transformed her into an icon. The single is about finding the confidence of walking away from a relationship and being empowered with your own happiness, its limitless expression of pop allows it to sit comfortably next to Paloma’s many chart successors and then some.”
If Talk Show’s exhilarating full-length debut, Effigy, feels more like a film than an album, that’s no coincidence. The band crafted the collection to soundtrack to a fictional nightclub. “One of the biggest influences on this record was the intro to the movie Blade, where this character’s being dragged through a meatpacking plant and into the vampire rave,” says frontman Harrison Swann. “There’s so much tension and anticipation and intimidation in that scene. We wanted to create the kind of music we’d play if we were performing in that club, to put ourselves into that scene and see how far we could push it.” With Effigy, Talk Show do more than just push their sound; they completely reinvent it. Produced by Remi Kabaka Jr., of Gorillaz, the record offers up a bold and exhilarating showcase for the band’s dramatic evolution, drawing on everything from The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy to Nine Inch Nails and The KLF as it taps into a raw, primal sound at the intersection of techno, electronic, industrial, and rock music. The songs are dark and gritty, fueled by blistering guitars and explosive drums, and Swann’s vocals are nothing short of hypnotic, leaning on repetition and restraint to reach for transcendence in the midst of swirling sonic chaos. The result is an immersive, multi-sensory experience, one that conjures up a dark, sweaty warehouse packed with moving bodies all radiating heat and desire, anxiety and release, ecstasy and desperation. “When people talk about dance music, they often talk about escapism or freedom or drugs, but to me, that’s a really reductive view,” says Swann, a Manchester native. “I’ve been in some sketchy clubs where I’ve been scared shitless. We wanted this music to embody all of it.” Hailed as one of the UK’s most exciting new bands, Talk Show first came together in 2017, when Swann met bassist George Sullivan, drummer Chloe MacGregor, and guitarist Tom Holmes at Goldsmiths, University of London. A series of critically acclaimed singles and raucous live shows led to the band’s internationally lauded debut EP, These People, which arrived in March of 2020, just as the entire world shut down. By the time the pandemic had subsided enough for Talk Show to properly tour the collection, though, the group had already begun to move on creatively, trading in the brash post-punk of their early work for a ferocious, guitar-driven vision of dance music that would help earn them festival slots everywhere from Pitchfork Avant-Garde to Sonic Wave in addition to a four-star review from the NME for their 2022 follow-up EP, Touch The Ground. “The shift in sound wasn’t so much about changing who we were as it was about finding ourselves as a band,” Swann reflects. “It just felt like the most natural thing in the world to us, and we’re never going back.” The transition led the group’s writing process became inherently more collaborative, and when it came time to begin work on Effigy, MacGregor and Sullivan often found themselves laying the groundwork for songs, generating high-energy grooves for Swann and Holmes to build layers and textures over. The band created an imaginary club to help guide the sessions, too, naming it Effigy (something to be worshipped and despised at the same time) and visualizing every detail from the ground up. What would it look like? Where would it be located? How would it feel to wait in line? To walk through the doors? Once recording was complete, Talk Show teamed up with director Ashley Rommelrath to bring their visuals to life, designing gatefold artwork depicting the club as a physical place and shooting a series of videos set inside. “I’m reluctant to call it a concept album because these aren’t narrative songs,” Swann reflects. “I’ve never been the kind of writer to spell everything out. I’d always rather build a world and set an atmosphere and let you lose yourself inside of it.” Press play on Effigy and it won’t take long. Pulsating opener “Gold” sets the scene, with relentless drums and bruising, distorted guitars pumping like adrenaline through your veins as Swann implores you to “just feel it / just feel it” with escalating fervor. Like much of the album, it’s a song rooted in ambivalence and delivered with a snarl; there’s a sense of menace in Swann’s delivery, an uneasy feeling that things could turn dark at any moment. The taut “Oh! You’re! All! Mine!” flirts with disaster, while the breakneck “Red/White” spirals into oblivion, and addictive lead single “Closer” edges towards an ecstasy that seems perpetually out of reach. “We get closer and closer / closer and closer /closer and closer / over again,” Swann sings, repeating the passage a half dozen times with an increasingly manic intensity. “Utilizing that kind of repetition allows me to build a rhythm and raise the stakes and put new meaning into the line each time,” he explains. “Working with Remi really helped me harness how much nuance I could put into my phrasing, how much more powerful it could be to whisper than to shout.” Such nuance is ultimately at the core of Effigy, which rewards repeated listens with subtle shading hewn into its imposing walls of sound. Listen closely and you’ll hear hints of trip-hop, flashes of heavy metal, even touches of new wave and funk. The incendiary “Got Sold” tips its cap to the Beastie Boys; the entrancing “OIL” nods to Tricky. It’s album closer “Catalonia,” though, that takes the biggest chances, playing out like a pulse-pounding journey from room to room through the Effigy club as Swann delivers a mix of muted vocals and heavy breathing. “We wanted to take you from standing outside in the freezing cold straight into the heart of the sweatbox,” Swann explains, “straight into the warm glow of the club.” In typical Talk Show fashion, the ending is an ambiguous one. “Maybe we’re alone,” Swann sings on a loop, his voice disappearing into the ether as the beat forges inexorably on. Perhaps we’ve lost him in the crush of the crowd; perhaps his voice was in our head all along. Either way, there’s no going back.
Grief Chapter is an album with songs rooted in mortality, grief, and living fearlessly. Tracks like “Nobody Escapes,” “To My Heart,” and “Head Shrink” are sure to ignite their devoted legion of fans, and undeniable alt-rock anthems “Explode!,” “Days,” “Normalize” and “The Matrix” will sound at home on festival stages and amphitheaters they’ll be headlining in the US next summer. The album was produced by Mother Mother frontman Ryan Guldemond, and mixed by the revered Rich Costey.
East Los Angeles quartet Levitation Room’s floaty, cosmic songs are always a trip. Since forming nearly a decade ago, they’ve self-produced dizzying, otherworldly music that’s connected with fellow travelers in the hallucinogenic world of outré rock music. Led by singer and guitarist Julian Porte along with founding members Gabriel Fernandez (lead guitar) and Johnathan Martin (percussion), the band has enchanted live audiences at Desert Daze and on tour with like-minded groups Post Animal and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. The band’s vivid sound has found them placed on popular playlists like Modern Psychedelia and the legendary superproducer’s Danger Mouse Jukebox. Their 2015 debut, “Friends,” has surpassed 18 million streams. Joined by new member Kevin Perez (bass) in 2021, Levitation Room have continued to expand their colorful, unearthly sound, a process that has culminated with the vibrant new album Strange Weather. Collaborating with former Brian Jonestown Massacre keyboardist Rob Campanella, Jason Kick (Mild High Club), and Black Crowes’ Joel Robinow, Levitation Room take a new step in their story and vision with Strange Weather. The record’s lyrical narratives—about love in the park, life in the city, and the fact that “The world today is such an illusion”—are appropriately steeped in ’60s sonics and a dreamy, lo-fi atmosphere. It’s spacey, celestial guitar music for escaping into, and “it feels just like heaven.”
Voir Dire, the momentous album by Earl Sweatshirt and Alchemist, undoubtedly represents the long-awaited convergence of two rap titans. Earl's personal and intricately woven wordcraft, along with Alchemist's treasure trove of obscure, captivating samples, combine to create an artistic chemistry that permeates "Voir Dire" (which translates from French to "Speak Your Truth"). Earl accomplishes just that as he delves into the analysis of specific phases of his life, particularly in the past where his reflections resonate with immense potency, meticulous detail, and profound insight. The album features notable Los Angeles wordsmith Vince Staples on two tracks and esteemed rap artist, MIKE. On Voir Dire, unmatched lyricism and remarkable maturity take center stage, while personal experiences such as new fatherhood emerge and evolve over stripped-down, spacious Alchemist production — culminating in what many consider to be the best rap album of the year.
Adding to Chicago’s long lineage of forward-thinking indie rock, Friko transform each song into a moment of collective catharsis. On their full-length debut, vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger sustain the combustible energy of their break-out single Crimson To Chrome, merging elements of post-punk, chamber-pop and experimental rock, magnifying their music’s exhilarating power with a barrage of spirited ensemble vocals. Poetic, explosive, and sublimely raw in feeling.
Consider this your invitation to Café Molly, a lounge bar like they don’t make them anymore. The lights are low, the martinis are ice cold, the banquettes are velvet, and the stage is set for the electrifying talent of whistler Molly Lewis. After the exotica stylings of The Forgotten Edge EP and the tropicalia-indebted Mirage EP, Molly wanted to encapsulate the sound of Café Molly for her debut album On The Lips, a dreamy tribute to classic mood music, it conjures up misty visions of classic Hollywood jazz clubs, Italian cinema soundtracks and lingering embraces between lovers.
Recorded with producer Thomas Brenneck of the Menahan Street Band at his newly-built Diamond West Studios in Pasadena, and with something of an open door policy during the sessions, a stream of acclaimed musicians ended up across the album’s 10 tracks, including Nick Hakim, Latin Grammy-nominated Brazilian guitarist Rogę, Leland Whitty and Chester Hansen of Canadian instrumental group Badbadnotgood, Chicano soul group Thee Sacred Souls appear on the melancholy ‘Crushed Velvet’, experimental jazz pianist Marco Benevento and El Michels Affair’s Leon Michels.
With her intoxicating compositions, and wry brand of stagecraft (she might not be singing up there, but she can sure tell a joke) Molly Lewis looks set to join her heroes in the storied lore of the Los Angeles lounge scene and beyond. So pull up a chair, order your favorite drink, and prepare to fall for On The Lips.
Originally released in 2010, ‘4x4=12’ is the fifth studio album by Canadian electronic music producer & composer deadmau5. The Grammy-nominated album includes some of deadmau5’ biggest single hits, such as “Some Chords”, “Animal Rights” with Wolfgang Gartner, “Sofi Needs a Ladder” as well as “Raise Your Weapon” with Greta Svabo Bech.
This album charted in the Top 100 Dance Albums charts across the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, & more, reaching RIAA Gold certification in the U.K.
Lil Peep - Lil Peep Crybaby 1st Press 45rpm - n interviews that followed the release of Crybaby, and even afterwards during press runs for HELLBOY as well as Come Over When You're Sober Pt. 1, one of the most consistently asked (and answered) questions that would be thrown at Peep usually teetered around the lines somewhat of "aye Peep, love what you've been doing with your past couple of projects man, but what's the deal with that massive Crybaby tattoo you got on your forehead?" - To which, he would typically answer, "I got the Crybaby tat to keep me grateful, to remind myself that even if I'm going through a lot, there are kids across the world that don't even have clean water or know when their next meal will be, so I got it to remind myself that I need to be grateful for what little I have, and to keep pushing through for those who can't." - With this context now surrounding the whole ethos of this project, it seems fitting that the whole mixtape essentially focuses on Peep's hopes, dreams, and overcoming the emotions that ever so powerfully bled through nearly every song on here one way or another. Whether it's through the haunting coke lines on "Lil Jeep" and the Radiohead-sampled "Falling 4 Me", or through the ambitious glimpse into the future that initially got him signed in the first place with the Smokeasac-produced signature track "Nineteen", he flips blatant samples and turns them into his own songs. For example, there's a borderline "Wonderwall' cover (and hear me out on this one) in the shape of "Yesterday," where he paints a bleak picture of getting out of a toxic environment with the chorus "Change my name, shave my head // Tell my friends that I'm dead, run away from the pain // Yesterday is not today, it's not the same," that winds up adding to the source material more often than it taking away anything. - More notably though perhaps, is that he never conveys a sense of giving up when singing/rapping about any of these topics, and that only aids the sense of triumph found in moments all throughout the record. While it may seem like Peep is promoting all of the wrong things, what people don't seem to realize is that he never condones it; it's almost as if he's telling the listener to not make the same mistakes as he did, which eventually led to his untimely death just over a year later.
Real Estate’s sixth full-length album Daniel was recorded in an ebullient nine-day spree in RCA Studio A, in Nashville with celebrated producer and songwriter Daniel Tashian. In 11 compulsively tuneful songs, they connect the uninhibited wonder of their earliest work with the earned perspective of adulthood.
Martin Courtney actually learned of Tashian through his daughter, who adored an album he’d produced, Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour. The band reached out and spotted an instant connection despite their distinct wheelhouses—the Grammy-winning Nashville country-pop guy who’d helmed several smashes and the Northeast indie rock quintet with narcotic guitars. Real Estate had been thinking about R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People and ’90s “soft-rock radio,” the background music of their youth. Tashian helped lead them back toward it, toward an improved edition of the less self-conscious band they’d been at the start.
Several days into recording, all five members of Real Estate were discussing album titles when someone suggested “Daniel,” simply because it seemed funny to bestow a human name upon a record. Was it for Daniel Tashian? Maybe. Was it a nod to The Replacements’ Tim? Possibly. Was it the sign of a band that has now been around long enough to take its music seriously without taking itself or its perception too seriously? Absolutely.
Offering fuzzy grunge-pop with doses of shimmering synths and emo angst, Ned Russin co-fronted Title Fight before halting in 2018 & Ned began playing music as Glitterer. Now a full band, Glitterer returns with Rationale combining 90s grunge, capital-R riffs a la The Stooges, & a keyboard lead that gives self-depre-cating melodrama., After relying more on synths for the entirely solo, home-recorded Glitterer LP in 2017, he involved collaborators on the crunchier Looking Through the Shades in 2019. This trend toward driving indie rock grit with ‘90s influences continued on 2021’s Life Is Not a Lesson and now Rationale.
DUST BOLT are returning with their new modern metal album SOUND & FURY with an huge impact of Thrash Metal vibes, heavy guitars, rolling drums and true metal vocals! The band is known for their clear statements and their great commitment, for example, they support Fridays for Future.
I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME's second album, GLOOM DIVISION, is a glimpse into the mind of Dallon Weekes. Produced by Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, MGMT), the album is the follow-up to iDKHOW’s Razzmatazz (ft. the #1 Alternative Radio single "Leave Me Alone"), & an EP ft. the gold record "Choke.” The most autobiographical work to date from Weekes (formerly of Panic! At The Disco), GLOOM DIVISION leaves listeners with the same sense of euphoric fascination that sparked the album’s creation.
"My first EP, June McDoom, was hugely inspired by the minimal sound of the 60s and 70s folk era. I wanted to reimagine a couple of those songs more stripped down as a follow up to that first EP. Judee Sill's songwriting and arrangements have impacted me deeply, and so I hoped to honor the music she made by recording a version of her song, “Emerald River Dance” – one of my favorite songs for many years and a song I still sing at most of my shows. The first time I heard “Black is the Color” was Tia Blake's version that she recorded in 1971, and then Nina Simone's performance inspired me to try and record a rendition of my own. While writing "On My Way" and "The City," I always imagined versions of those songs stripped down with three-part harmonies, which I was finally able to do here with dear friends, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Kate Davis, who have both been big inspirations to me throughout the years. One of my close friends, Sam Weissberg – who I met while studying in jazz school when I first moved to New York City – worked with me and arranged the harp and strings for each song. I produced the songs and tracked the remaining instruments and vocals with Evan Wright at our new studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that we share with our friend, Nick Hakim (who also provided backing vocals on “On My Way”)." - June McDoom
“I’ve been wanting to make a record like this for a long time. The band, Franny and I produced it ourselves in my living room with no adults present. It’s all acoustic, not an electric lick on the album…banjos and mandos and string basses and stripped-down drums. I put a ton of work into the tunes and I’m pretty proud of this batch. Had a little help from my old co-writing pal Jaida Dreyer on a couple, also wrote a good one with my screenwriter buddy, Brian Koppelman. Lots of gambling songs and lots of minor keys. And my band guys absolutely killed it too, they’re all badasses.
I’m dedicating the record to my old compadre, Ian Tyson, who passed away a few months back. I’ve named the album for him as well. ‘El Viejo’, or ‘the old one’ is what our mutual friend Tom Russell took to calling him in later years. The title track is a pretty special one for us.
We had a blast making this thing, and we hope you enjoy it too.”
April Fool's Day is a 1986 American black comedy mystery slasher film that follows a group of college students vacationing during April Fool's Day weekend on an island estate, which is infiltrated by an unknown assailant. This Deluxe Edition release marks the first availability of the album on vinyl in 35 years, and features the first-ever release of the film’s original orchestral score, as well as five unreleased bonus tracks from the composer Charles Bernstein’s vaults.
The band’s long-awaited album, Moon Healer, is a vivid illustration of what happens when creativity, aggression, and volatility tangle for the first time in years. Like Sun Eater, Moon Healer is musically multifaceted, unabashedly brutal, and compellingly conceptual. The first single, “The Agony Seeping Storm,” is a mathematically mind-blowing hybrid of bludgeoning death metal specializing in unconventional riffing that echoes the resemblance of legendary experimentalists like Cynic, Atheist, and Gorguts. A newly refreshed and reinspired lineup--Davy, guitarists Tony Sannicandro and Al Glassman, bassist Nick Schendzielos, and drummer (since 2020) Navene Koperweis--seamlessly pick up the mantle where their previous album, Sun Eater, left off.
When Mick Mars stepped back from touring with Mötley Crüe – the band he co-founded more than 40 years ago – following their massive summer 2022 Stadium Tour, it seemed like the end of an era. Really, it was the beginning of a new one.
The legendary guitarist, whose riffs, solos and overall devastatingly heavy sound powered the L.A. icons through four decades of world-conquering, multi-platinum sonic mayhem is, as he demonstrates on his debut solo effort, still a serious force to be reckoned with. Only now, listeners are reckoning with more Mars than ever before. “When it comes to my playing, there’s the Mötley side and the Mars side,” the guitarist says. “Either way, I always have a very clear vision of what I want to do.”
On the aptly-titled The Other Side of Mars, fans get that vision in its full, multifarious glory. To be sure, there are plenty of characteristically riff-tastic, tough-as-nails hard-rock anthems (the rampaging “Loyal to the Lie,” the deep-in-the-pocket groove-rocker “Ain’t Going Back,” the hooky and melodic “Right Side of Wrong”) to be heard on the record. But The Other Side of Mars also shows the 71-year-old guitarist heading into new and uncharted territory, tearing through caustic, modern metal (“Broken On the Inside”), conjuring gothic-tinged soundscapes (“Undone”), digging into anguished, slow-burning power balladry (“Killing Breed”) and unspooling bluesy, cinematic instrumental workouts (the album-closing guitar showcase, “L.A. Noir”). The music throughout the 10-track collection, meanwhile, is otherwise studded with slide guitars, violins, violas, keyboards, glitchy freak-outs and all manner of sonic surprises.
“There’s a lot of ideas that I have that, I don't want to call them ‘left,’ but they are, you know what I mean?” Mars says. Regarding those stylistic turns, he continues, “My feeling has always been, I might gain some fans, I might lose some fans. But what they’re hearing, it’s all me.”
The guitarist enlisted a crack team of musicians to help him along the way. A key contributor to the project was Winger and former Alice Cooper keyboardist (and, like Mars, Nashville resident) Paul Taylor, who, in addition to performing on the record and assisting Mars in co-writing many of the tracks, introduced the guitarist to powerhouse vocalist Jacob Bunton. “Jacob came into the studio and it was like, bam!” Mars recalls. “And I just said, ‘Yeah, he’s the guy.’ And most of his vocals were one take.” The supporting band was rounded out by Korn drummer Ray Luzier, as well as two additional in-demand Nashville musicians: bassist Chris Collier and singer Brion Gamboa, who contributed lead vocals to two songs, “Undone” and “Killing Breed,” both of which, Mars says, “required a little bit more of an angsty, desperation kind of thing. And Brion really came to the table with that.”
But while Mars surrounded himself with a new cast of players for the sessions, there was one figure who represented a significant link to his storied past: Michael Wagener. The much-lauded German producer and engineer worked behind the boards on Mötley Crüe’s 1981 debut, Too Fast For Love, and his relationship with Mars stretches even further back. “I had known him for a long time, and I actually brought him to Mötley,” Mars says. Working with Wagener this time, the guitarist continues, “he had such an understanding of where I wanted to go with the material. And he never said ‘Hey, do this,’ or tried to change my mind or anything like that. He was just really adamant about recording what I wanted to record, and making sure we recorded it right.”
The result is a record unlike anything Mars has offered up in his more than 40-year career. Take the piano-and-strings track “Memories,” which, Mars recalls, he began writing “back when I was still touring with Mötley. I gave it to Paul Taylor, and I had him transpose all my parts to keyboard. And then I said, ‘That’s it.’ I didn’t want any drums, I didn’t want any over-the-top, here-comes-the-sun-over-the-mountains in the chorus kind of crap. I wanted to keep it simple, and focus on the melody.”
Or “L.A. Noir,” which, Mars says, was inspired by “old ‘30s and ‘40s B-movies about sleuth detectives, flatfoots, private eyes, that kind of stuff. I came up with the main lick maybe 30 years ago, and never really had a chance to do anything with it until now. I love that big-band sound and era, so we tried to capture that, but with a real sleazy, noir-ish vibe.”
As for the album’s leadoff track and first single, “Loyal to the Lie”? Well, that one was easy. “I wanted to do something that was just big and mean,” Mars says with a laugh.
But no matter what direction he’s going in on The Other Side of Mars, what ties it all together is “that people are going to hear my tone – my sound,” Mars says. “I am what I am. Nobody else can do it. And like everyone, I’ve got a limited number of years. So I'm gonna do all I can to do a lot of stuff.” To that end, he says that even as he unleashes The Other Side of Mars on the world, he’s already working on a follow-up. And while he remains a member of Mötley Crüe (“when they need me, I’m here,” he says), Mars is no longer spending his days and nights in arenas and stadiums throughout the world. Which means, he says, he has more time to pursue his own musical muse.
“I'm trying to keep growing,” Mars says. “Because if you stop learning new things, if you stop playing new things, if you close your mind, you’re done. You have to keep moving and creating. Next!”
Olustee is a masterpiece of soul-shaking music. JJ’s deep Southern roots and skill as a storyteller shine through, whether he’s rocking with gospel-tent fervor or slowly winding his raspy voice around a lyric of heartbreak and loss. It’s an aggressively groove-driven record fueled by JJ’s gritty vocals and funk-infused guitar playing.
Traumatic Livelihood is the highly anticipated debut album from Jazmin Bean. The non-binary, London-based artist continues their evolution, by inviting listeners into their unparalleled universe of alternative, infectious pop. Traumatic Livelihood is emotionally laden, and explores themes of consent, addiction, and relationships. It pairs otherworldly visuals with music that represents the sound and spirit of Generation Z’s genderless subculture – unapologetic and impossible to define.
Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra, they/them) announces their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, due February 23, 2024 on Nonesuch Records. The record represents a new phase of beginning in Segarra’s lauded evolution as a storyteller. Created during a period filled with grief, when they found inspiration in radical poetry, railroad culture, outsider art, the work of writer Eileen Myles, and the history of activist groups like ACT UP and Gran Fury, discovering a stronger, singular style of writing that felt like a long-awaited revelation. In each song, lyrics serve as memory boxes for Segarra to process their trauma, identity and dreams for the future. Segarra uses their lyrics as a way to immortalize and say goodbye to those they have loved and lost, to illustrate the many shapes and patterns of time’s passing, and honor both the heartbroken and the hopeful parts of themselves. Though the record was made in North Carolina and produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee), the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based Segarra brings listeners to places far beyond, evoking vivid experiences of small shops and buffalo stampedes in Santa Fe, childhood road trips and Florida storms, struggles of addiction in the Lower East Side, days-long journeys to outrun the cops in Nebraska, and more.
The followup to their acclaimed Nonesuch debut, Life on Earth—which landed on Best of 2022 lists from the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR Music, Mojo, Uncut, among others—The Past Is Still Alive sees Hurray for the Riff Raff reunite with Brad Cook, while further expanding their creative cast of collaborators. Anjimile, Conor Oberst and S.G. Goodman all join Alynda Segarra on vocals at various points throughout the LP, with a band of musicians including Cook, Libby Rodenbough, Matt Douglas, Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, Phil Cook, Yan Westerlund and Mike Mogis, who also mixed the album.
The “nature punk” of Life on Earth marked a departure for Hurray for the Riff Raff, as they contemplated surviving and thriving amidst a world in crisis The Past Is Still Alive brings the focus back inwards. The arrangements are raw, the melodies direct and indelible, and the lyrics personal, yet largely rooted in family and community. There are love songs to real characters, locations and mythic figures like Sky Red Hawk (“Buffalo”), the first trans woman Segarra ever met (“Hawkmoon”), queerness and sacred spaces (“Colossus of Roads”), leaving home behind (“Snake Plant”), short-lived romances and the wisdom gained through chaos (“Vetiver”). Elsewhere, in the self-portraits painted on “Alibi,” “Ogallala” and other album highlights, Segarra reflects on the land they have traveled, the hardships witnessed and bravery gained while running away from everything and everyone they knew at age seventeen, hopping freight trains and hitchhiking across the country with a band of street urchins.
In recent months, Hurray for the Riff Raff debuted a stage adaptation of their beloved 2017 album, The Navigator, based on their quest to reclaim their Puerto Rican identity. They also toured with Bright Eyes and First Aid Kit, performed for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and NPR Music’s 15th Anniversary Concert, played festivals like Pitchfork and more. Next spring, they will bring the music of The Past Is Still Alive on the road, for a headline tour across the US, UK and EU, that they have partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes to supporting This Must Be the Place and their work to distribute Naloxone - the lifesaving medicine that reverses an overdose – at events across the nation.
It was January 2016, in the middle of New York City’s biggest blizzard on record, when the Nashville rock-country band Those Darlins found themselves stranded in Brooklyn, trying in vain to finish their farewell tour. The group had spent ten years touring and recording together; it was time for something new. As the snow blanketed the East Coast, turning entire cities into crisp white silence, frontwoman Jessi Zazu and drummer Linwood Regensburg thought about their own blank slate in front of them. They had a plan: Take a month off, get some much-needed rest after this grueling run of gigs, then get straight back to work on a new album. The blank page never stayed blank for Jessi Zazu for very long; she was always relentlessly doing, bursting with ideas, whether she was painting or writing, mentoring young musicians in her community or leading grassroots activism initiatives. There were more songs to be sung, more notes to be played, more issues to shine a light on.
But just as the pair were set to begin their next project, Zazu was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the project was put on hold. When they returned to it in earnest that summer, after finding out that her cancer had spread, they believed that having a creative outlet again would help. “I don’t know if she felt the same way or not,” Regensburg says, “but watching this situation play out in my head, it was like I was equating it to some kind of hero journey. This person, who I believe to be invincible, overcomes a dire circumstance and the writing and recording of the music is all just part of the legendary comeback story. But that’s not what ended up happening, unfortunately.”
A year after that snowstorm, as winter stretched into the spring and summer of 2017, Zazu and Regensburg would work under the moniker Mama Zu in fits and spurts, getting as much done as they could any time she felt well enough. When the pair first began collaborating, they had come up with a process of collaboration in which Zazu would send Regensburg a recording of lyrics she had written—sometimes in fragments, sometimes as a core of what the song would be—and he would build a demo around it. After she got sick, they found that the process synced with her treatment schedule. Zazu could send Regensburg a voice memo on a Monday, do chemo on a Tuesday, and in the following days that it took for her to recover, Regensburg could build a demo to send to her for feedback, ping-ponging back and forth until they felt they had enough to finish the tracks in the studio. By late summer, the pair had recorded and mixed an album to near-completion. Tragically, though, final work on the album was halted after Zazu passed away that September at the age of 28. The unfinished album was put back on the shelf. “After she died, I didn’t want to touch it,” Regensburg says. “I didn’t want to play the songs or listen to the songs, let alone finish them. It just seemed like such a daunting task with a lot of layers—there was a lot of work left to do, but then there was also this exhausting underlying emotional component that pops in and hangs around the moment I’d open a session.”
Years passed. Distance grew. Healing began. By 2020, Regensburg felt ready to finish what they had started, he says, “both for her sake and for my own sanity level. I was the only person left with this project.” Working on their songs again was therapeutic, even if doing so brought on a new set of challenges as he both polished nearly-finished tracks and rebuilt songs out of disparate parts, from the drum track on an older, alternate recording to a simple phone demo. “It was a way of spending time with her, and kind of the only capacity in which I could,” he said. “But then, I was also left with a lot of creative choices without her. Even though I had played most of the instruments, it had still been a totally collaborative thing; if there was a part I played that she didn’t like, she was clear about that. If someone’s gone, you can still talk to them, but you can only assume what their feedback might be. So I was stuck with a lot of musical choices that I’d be working under the context of, I hope you like what I did here.”
The resulting album, QUILT FLOOR, out February 23rd on Thirty Tigers, is bursting at the seams with life, ferocious and fierce. The glory of QUILT FLOOR is that there’s no note of sickness or sorrow to be found in it; where all of Zazu’s songwriting was personal, rather than turn inward, her gaze—even during her greatest battle—was fixed firmly on the world around her. Colored by the aftermath of a new era in America, a period in which many were both grieving and galvanized, Zazu’s songwriting has perhaps only grown more relevant as time has passed. Men who behaved badly are returning from their supposed exile. People have forgotten how to treat others with kindness; if we’re not the main characters of our own stories, we’re the background players of someone else’s content. It seems as if, at any given moment, part of the world is on fire. There’s plenty of fury to be had at the present, but what good is it without faith in the future’s potential for change? Rejoice! Our times are terrible, as the artist Jenny Holzer once proclaimed—an ethos Zazu had in spades.
After thirteen years of hibernation, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, the most gloriously uncategorizable American band in existence, has emerged from stasis to proudly announce the imminent release of their fourth studio album, of the Last Human Being. The album marks the first release of AVANT NIGHT - a new imprint headed by Nick Ohler and facilitated by Joyful Noise Recordings.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, comprised of multi-instrumentalists and rotating vocalists Nils Frykdahl, Carla Kihlstedt, Michael "Iago" Mellender, Matthias Bossi, and Dan Rathbun, plays an arsenal of instruments ranging from the somewhat standard (drums, electric guitars, bass, electric violin) to the rare (bass harmonica, nyckelharpa, marxophone) to the homemade (Slide-Piano Log, Electric Pancreas, Pedal-Action Wiggler). The group has consistently evaded easy categorization, garnering accolades from across the aisles of contemporary classical music, prog rock, industrial music, metal, avant-garde improv, and more. Their music, inturns bashing and bucolic, enveloping and unsettling, tends towards long-form epics interspersed with mysterious field recordings.
"As this slow-rolling planetwide Anthropocene Extinction event deepens, Sleepy- time's work has only grown more resonant, more prescient," offers Mer Yayanos, current symposiarch and secretary of the Museum's long standing social math club, the John Kane Society. "What better time for them to Bring Back the Apocalypse than right now,with a new full-length record that integratesthe past and the future?"
Laetitia issues a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth: we’re urged to finally evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation. Her songs score the complexities and harmonies within this directive: organ, guitar, bass, synth, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums, and a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir, working intricate chord/tempo/and dynamic changes, as Laetitia’s empathic presence leads the way.
Girl With No Face: Allie X’s fourth album, Girl With No Face, is a daring excavation of her identity. A maniacal journey into the mind of an artist who just spent three years in isolation, refusing any input as she became the solitary producer, writer and creative voice for the first time in her career. “This record documents an intense struggle for power and control – creatively, professionally, mentally and physically,” X explains. Inspired by the technology and hedonism of the early 80’s new wave scene, the album’s analog-leaning songs are a series of stark contradictions – retro in feel but ultra-modern in subject matter, pointed, unpredictable yet danceable, approachable while delightfully menacing. In short, Girl with No Face is completely orthogonal to the hyper-tuned, automated shapes that dominate today’s alt pop. “Instead of following any trends, I just wanted to indulge myself in all my favourite stuff this time. I wanted limitations. No plug-ins. I chose a bass synth, drum machine, string machine and embraced the shortcomings and grittiness of this old temperamental equipment. The result was something that felt messy, raw, and direct, which was really exciting to me.” Infused with early 80’s British experimentalism, with nods to The Human League and New Order, the album is a strident move away from 2020’s introspective and spare Cape God -- so much faster, more threatening. “The best comparison I can make is intentionally locking yourself in a room and sitting in front of a mirror staring at yourself. When everything is refracted through your lens you get high on the sense of power and control. But as you get to know yourself intimately, you see your own ugliness, your limitations, your pain. It’s terrifying and enlightening all at once. A total ego fuck.” - Allie X
"First time on vinyl! Ipecac is celebrating their 25th Anniversary in 2024 with special indie exclusive vinyl throughout the year. We’re starting it off with one from label co-founder, Mike Patton and his 2005 project with The X-Ecutioners, which has never been on vinyl before!
Mike Patton is the legendary frontman for Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk and countless others, and for this release, he teamed up with one of the most respected DJ crews in all of hip-hop. The collaboration came about after both factions performed a few improvisational live shows together. With the sweet scent of chemistry soon wafting through the air, it was decided to take it a step further - collaborate on a full-on recording. What you get are 23 tracks that approximate a head-on collision between hip-hop and the wild and whacky world of Ipecac."
Jacob Collier - "Djesse Vol. 4" / Crafted in the famed studio beside his London bedroom, as well as various corners of the globe, Djesse has explored Jacob Collier's wildest dreams, and Vol. 4 brings the series to a most dramatic and thrilling conclusion. While his music is proudly unclassifiable, Collier enters a distinct sonic universe with each volume, which he likens to the different phases of a day. With Vol. 4, the saga ends at the incandescent light of dawn, alchemising a full spectrum of emotion into a massive, joyous moment of awakening and human potential. Indie Exclusive Orange Color in Color 2 LP. Orange 2 LP]
Peace Okezie, the brainchild behind Master Peace, does not mince his words. He needs to get things out and embodies the phrase, “If you’re going to say it, just say it.” While never careless or unsympathetic with his words, the phrase is an affirmation that fuels him.
Lucky for us, his energy is on par with the idiosyncratic, effervescent and most importantly, extremely good music he makes with intention and a keen ear. Master Peace’s music is about inviting people into the weird, wonderful and cacophonous world he’s created. Attracting listeners who crave rebelliousness and divergence from the norm.
Master Peace’s debut album How To Make A Master Peace, pushes the parameters of genre more than ever. Peace flexes his inspirations by cutting through the sonic generations of British music that have raised him. ‘I Might Be Fake’ has the urgency of 2005’s ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ by the Long Blondes, mixed with the spaciness of the late noughties Klaxons catalogue. ‘Shangaladang’ is an ode to Peace's black music inspirations, with a nod to Skepta; here he adapts the lyrics ‘I’ve got my hood mates and white niggas” from the rapper’s 2016 song ‘Man’ to fit his more rugged, The Clash-like tune.
The raucous artist has been hailed as the new voice of British Indie and was a “One To Watch” nominee at the 2023 AIM Awards. The 11 track album is a pastiche of the alternative music the British artist was raised on, from Arctic Monkeys & Friendly Fires to Gorillaz. His headline tour, culminating at the iconic Scala, will see Master Peace create his own legacy in British Indie music, and this album is a statement of intent.
Mannequin Pussy’s music feels like a resilient and galvanizing shout that demands to be heard. Across four albums, the Philadelphia rock band that consists of Colins “Bear” Regisford (bass, vocals), Kaleen Reading (drums, percussion), Maxine Steen (guitar, synths), and Marisa Dabice (guitar, vocals) has made cathartic tunes about despairing times. “There’s just so much constantly going on that feels intentionally evil that trying to make something beautiful feels like a radical act ,” says Dabice. “The ethos of this band has always been to bring people together.”
Their new album, I Got Heaven, which is out March 1 via Epitaph Records, is the band’s most fully realized recording yet. Over ten ambitious tracks which abruptly turn from searing punk to inviting alternative pop, the album is deeply concerned with desire, the power in being alone, and how to live in an unfeeling and unkind world. It’s a document of a band doubling down on their unshakable bond to make something furious, thrilling, and wholly alive.
Following the 2019 release of their critically acclaimed third album Patience, Mannequin Pussy returned in 2021 for their EP Perfect. They toured that release relentlessly and added guitarist Maxine Steen to the band’s official lineup. The band changed their entire creative formula, choosing to write together in the studio in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton , over slowly crafting tracks at home. “Everyone felt empowered to speak up about their own ideas to make this thing the best it could possibly be,” says Regisford.
RSD Essential 056 - For over four decades, Slayer have remained the most important and influential Speed Metal band in history. Reign In Blood is their 1986 mind-numbing opus featuring 10 tracks including 'Angle Of Death', 'Necrophobic', 'Altar Of Sacrifice' and more. RSD Essentials is excited to bring you an exclusive Clear w/Red Splatter colorway.
In another world, society has built an immense mountain. To make the mountain bigger, they must make the hole they live in deeper and deeper. All of society is built around the creation of the mountain, and a mountain religion dominates all thought. At the top of the mountain is rumoured to be a huge mirror that reflects endlessly recurring images of the self, and at the bottom of the pit is a giant golden snake that is the primal fear of all believers. A “Mountainhead” is one who believes the mountain must grow no matter the cost, and no matter how terrible it is to dwell in the great pit
Throughout the past 4 years since our last studio album, we’ve seen a huge shift in our careers and what honestly has felt like a powerful movement in the weather. It has felt like a “Norther” storm-front that we’ve been trying to hold on through. As a band, it took right around 10 years of heavy touring throughout the U.S. before we caught any kind of large ‘break’; and our hope is that these 13 tracks are a perfect culmination of what makes up our unique sound. The entire album was recorded over the course of about 8 months, with only 2-3 day gaps to record at a time, in between shows and travel. We hope the sound is large enough to blur genres, while staying completely genuine to the sounds that our earliest fans keep coming back for. From honest, singer-songwriter ballads, to powerful folk and Celtic-rock instrumentation; we hope there is something here that resonates with everyone. We are Shane Smith & The Saints from Austin, TX and this is our brand new album, “Norther”.
With his new album Y’Y (pronounced “eey-eh, eey-eh”), Amaro Freitas steps into a new realm of musical creation. A realm rooted in magic and possibility, and tempered by a sense of stewardship for the earth’s bounties.
Side A serves as an expression of connection to the earth and to the ancestors, paying homage to the forest and the rivers of Northern Brazil with both the music and the album title, Y’Y, a word written in the Sateré Mawé dialect, an ancestral indigenous code that means water or river. And by bringing to life lessons he learned in the Amazon about the incandescent power of enchanted spirits who intervene on behalf of the community in times of struggle.
On Side B, Y’Y shows the connections between the global Black avant-jazz community. Bringing together multi-instrumentalist Shabaka Hutchings, harpist Brandee Younger, bassist Aniel Someillan, guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, the music creates an artful conversation by weaving together jazz traditions from across the world, while staying rooted in the unique sounds and rituals found in Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cultures.
Freitas continues to intwine ancestral knowledge into music on Y’Y by bringing his fresh, “decolonized” interpretation of Brazilian jazz and sharing music that may well shatter our preconceived notions of what jazz can be.
In such turbulent times it's important to stand closely together as humanity instead of fighting each other. That's exactly what the new Firewind album 'Stand United' is about! In addition to societal problems and environmental issues, which are the main topic in ten new tracks, we are expecting the strongest masterpiece of band history. In line with the new release, the band around ex Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Gus G. and vocalist Herbie Langhans (formerly Avantasia) will spread their message of 'Stand United' all over Europe in spring 2024. Combined with MASTERPLAN they will play a big co-headliner tour, among Germany, France, Spain, Sweden and many other countries. 'Stand United' will be released on March 1st, 2024 - available as several limited splatter and marbled vinyl variations, CD digipak and digital version. Also available as Digipak CD.
Playing Favorites isSheer Mag’s third full-length and first with Third Man Records, the band capitalize on a decade’s worth of devotion to their own collective spirit—a spirit refined in both the sweaty trenches of punk warehouses and the larger-than-life glamour of concert halls—emerging with a dense work of gripping emotions, massive hooks, and masterfully constructed power-pop anthems. This is the record the Philadelphian rock and roll four-piece has always been destined to make.
Lang Lang presents with this album a treasure trove of musical discoveries. Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2 was recorded with a stellar cast, the Gewandhausorchester and Andris Nelsons and is for Lang Lang a true romantic masterpiece that rivals the greats like Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky.
New Years Day is a female fronted hard rock and metal band from California. A feminine powerhouse with the intriguing dark image, they have over 50 million music video YouTube plays and over 1 million combined devoted and engaged followers. New Years Day have been playing for crowds of 10,000 plus people all over the world for the past 5 years. They have played some of the biggest stages in history, including WrestleMania 2021 in front of 75,000 people and millions more on national TV.
The Kitchen Dwellers invite you to join them on an extraordinary journey with their highly anticipated 4th studio album, Seven Devils. Produced by Grammy winner Glenn Brown (Billy Strings, Greensky Bluegrass), the ascending Montana quartet continues to redefine the boundaries of bluegrass, folk, and rock.
Inspired by Dante's epic voyage through the Nine Circles of Hell, the album guides the listener through a similar exploration. Each track represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins, while others draw inspiration from "The Divine Comedy," serving as checkpoints on this musical descent into the abyss. The Dwellers invite the listener to treat this experience as a musical journey inward - to the self.
Guitarist Max Davies emphasizes that Seven Devils is the band's most collaborative work yet. "Each song contains a piece from everyone in the band. Every tune on the record holds musical ideas from each one of us. For this reason, we think it sounds the most like us that any record has.”
With Seven Devils, Kitchen Dwellers continue their musical evolution, presenting their most mature and intricate work to date.
Albert Hammond is one of the most prolific, versatile songwriters and performers of his or any generation. His earliest solo hits include “It Never Rains in Southern California” and “The Free Electric Band.” His contributions to popular music (writing and and/or contributing to hit songs by Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias, Diana Ross, Starship, The Hollies, Joe Cocker, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin) across genres and generations.
Albert’s most recent releases include “ “Legend II,” and “In Symphony," all celebrations of his storied songbook with new interpretations of his most emblematic compositions… “The Air That I Breathe,” “One Moment in Time,” “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” and “When I Need You” (amongst many others).
Body of Work is an all new, original, and essential addition to this iconic canon.
Written during a time of tumultuous change, Body of Work is the moment a master songsmith takes a step back to reflect on the world:
"This is the first step I had to take and the album is what I discovered about me and all of us once I started here says Albert. I can feel the discomfort and impatience in it. That’s just the honest feeling when the world changes for you from Oasis to desert, from beauty to chaos… freedom to fences."
From gutsy opener “Don’t Bother Me Babe” through the wistful “Looking Back” and closing with the reflective “Goodbye LA,” Body of Work is an album for the ages, crafted with 50 years of words, experience, and wisdom.
