Rock & Indie 113 Items

Red/Black Splatter Vinyl Originally issued in 1995, ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ is considered as one of the most important and influential metal albums of all time. Featuring the classic tracks ‘Blinded by Fear’, ‘Cold’ and ‘Suicide Nation’, the album married melodic sensibilities with razor edged aggression to devastating effect. Pressed From THE Original Master Tapes. This Album HAS Been Specially Recreated Using ‘fdr’ – Full Dynamic Range MasterING - Allowing THE Music’s Nuances TO Shine Through AND Giving This Classic Album A More Ferocious AND Dynamic Sound, Enabling THE Listener TO Immerse IN THE Full Audio Heaviness Like Never Before.

With 'Erotico', French indie pop duo Charlotte Fever unveil their second EP. A new opus with sensual and tropical accents. True to their habits, the group offers us tracks with retro sounds that alternate between exuberant energy and lots of tenderness.

Chelsea Wolfe has always been a conduit for a powerful energy, and while she has demonstrated a capacity to channel that somber beauty into a variety of forms, her gift as a songwriter is never more apparent than when she strips her songs down to a few key components. As a result, her solemn majesty and ominous elegance are more potent than ever on Birth of Violence. There is a core element to Chelsea Wolfe’s music—a kind of urgent spin on America’s desolation blues—that’s existed throughout the entirety of her career. Her latest album, Birth of Violence, is a return to the reclusive nature of her earlier recordings. The songs stem from humble beginnings little more than Wolfe’s voice and her Taylor acoustic guitar. Her longtime musical collaborator Ben Chisholm recorded the songs on a makeshift studio and helped fill them out with his modern production treatments and the occasional auxiliary flourish from ongoing contributors Jess Gowrie (drums) and Ezra Buchla (viola). “These songs came to me in a whirlwind and I knew I needed to record them soon, and also really needed a break from the road,” Wolfe says. “I’ve spent the past few years looking for the feeling of home; looking for places that felt like home. The result of that humble approach yields Wolfe’s most devastating work to date.

Chelsea Wolfe has always been a conduit for a powerful energy, and while she has demonstrated a capacity to channel that somber beauty into a variety of forms, her gift as a songwriter is never more apparent than when she strips her songs down to a few key components. As a result, her solemn majesty and ominous elegance are more potent than ever on Birth of Violence. There is a core element to Chelsea Wolfe’s music—a kind of urgent spin on America’s desolation blues—that’s existed throughout the entirety of her career. Her latest album, Birth of Violence, is a return to the reclusive nature of her earlier recordings. The songs stem from humble beginnings little more than Wolfe’s voice and her Taylor acoustic guitar. Her longtime musical collaborator Ben Chisholm recorded the songs on a makeshift studio and helped fill them out with his modern production treatments and the occasional auxiliary flourish from ongoing contributors Jess Gowrie (drums) and Ezra Buchla (viola). “These songs came to me in a whirlwind and I knew I needed to record them soon, and also really needed a break from the road,” Wolfe says. “I’ve spent the past few years looking for the feeling of home; looking for places that felt like home. The result of that humble approach yields Wolfe’s most devastating work to date.

“When musicians have this intensity in them, they often get to it 5 sooner and stay put. Ms. Wolfe sounds like she’s using it by choice, not disposition; she can use different kinds of darkness as colour or tincture." - NY Times // “The reigning dark priestess of goth-scarred art rock.” Rolling Stone // Hiss Spun is Chelsea Wolfe’s sixth album. Following her acclaimed 2015 album Abyss, Hiss Spun is at once dynamic, heavy, and raw. NPR shared the song “16 Psyche,” saying, “Wolfe has always possessed a talent for dynamic song writing, particularly concerning the theatre of the soul. But the masterful "16 Psyche" is a full-on ride, and one that finds her at her most commanding and climactic yet." Recorded by Kurt Ballou (Converge), the album was conceived as an emotional purge, a means of coming to terms with the tumult of the outside world by exploring the complexities of one’s inner unrest.

“When musicians have this intensity in them, they often get to it 5 sooner and stay put. Ms. Wolfe sounds like she’s using it by choice, not disposition; she can use different kinds of darkness as colour or tincture." - NY Times // “The reigning dark priestess of goth-scarred art rock.” Rolling Stone // Hiss Spun is Chelsea Wolfe’s sixth album. Following her acclaimed 2015 album Abyss, Hiss Spun is at once dynamic, heavy, and raw. NPR shared the song “16 Psyche,” saying, “Wolfe has always possessed a talent for dynamic song writing, particularly concerning the theatre of the soul. But the masterful "16 Psyche" is a full-on ride, and one that finds her at her most commanding and climactic yet." Recorded by Kurt Ballou (Converge), the album was conceived as an emotional purge, a means of coming to terms with the tumult of the outside world by exploring the complexities of one’s inner unrest.

10 Year Anniversary LP Edition! Out of print for nearly a decade, we are proud to announce the much-demanded new vinyl edition of this legendary collaboration. Black or coloured LP in full-colour sleeve with printed inner sleeve. "Recoiled" is a rambunctious alchemy, of magikal COIL sensibilities and hi-tech home circa 90's mixing technique, all fused in the cave-like early studios of Danny Hyde / Peter Christopherson.These were the unrestrained PRE- BIG studio- mix downs, of four songs which long time Coil admirer / collaborator Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) requested Coil to remix. Reznor sent over the original multi-tracks and DATs to Hyde / Christopherson, who independently mixed versions and then met to synch both creations, molding them into these master versions. ”Recoiled” includes a fuller, more opulent version of the track 'Closer', which eventually made it onto the opening credits to the movie "SE7EN". These 5 lengthy compositions are pre-Ableton / laptop generation type priest song creations, with the use of baby alarms and numerous wires to create bespoke effects. These legendary tracks were always rumoured to exist and, only the due diligence of a dedicated NIN forum who hunted them down, are released/unleashed for your listening pleasure. 4 of the tracks were released on the download-only "Uncoiled". A bonus, previously unheard track from the same sessions closes the album. Jhonn Balance is also manifest on this gilded constellation. Beautifully remastered.A dizzying reworking of the NIN classic by the late and legendary Industrial duo (The Times)Beautiful, the stuff of legend (5/5, Deaf Sparrow). The music here is so thrilling... a pure and inspired collaboration (8/10, Louder Than War) A curious electronica that tends towards the lysergic, the downbeat and the perverse (Fact Mag) As time capsules go it's pretty darned effective (The Line Of Best Fit) A1. Gave Up (Open My Eyes) (5:28)A2. Closer (Unrecalled) (7:41)A3. The Downward Spiral (A Gilded Sickness) (7:59)B1. Eraser (Reduction) 8:45B2. Eraser (Baby Alarm Remix) (8:54)

Suns of the Heart is a follow up to Junior Boys and Caribou live collaborator Colin Fisher's Reflections of the Invisible World and the preceding album V le Pape.

Suns of the Heart was created as part of the process of building on the relationship of documenting Fisher's live solo process and augmenting it over the course of 3 records with studio compositional ideas.

With Suns of the Heart, Fisher connected with his good friend David Psutka, who released Reflections of the Invisible World on his label Halocline Trance, to engineer and produce the project.

The concept for the album was to deconstruct Fisher's live process and apply a studio sampling methodology from hip hop to establish foundational layers for each track. Psutka was the perfect partner for this endeavor considering his long history of electronic music as well as his appreciation for interesting conceptual ideas.

Psutka essentially became a co-composer for a few tracks and was an indispensable force in constructing this unique document. Together they sampled various sounds, textures, incidental sounds from me on various instruments, reconfigured them in Psutka's daw and then built compositions on top of them.

Conceptually this reflects Fisher's live process, where he samples and loops sounds in transparent ways and orchestrate textures, sounds, chord changes into fully realized compositions in real time. The freedom in the studio scenario enables complete separation of each sound and texture for mixing, orchestration, and composition. The result is a compelling augmentation of his live process with the addition of Psutka's skill and conceptual sense for an entire new synthesis of ideas to something not previously possible or imaginable.

The album title and track titles were all inspired by the work of Henry Corbin.

Dead Bob is the solo incarnation of John Wright, drummer from long time and apparently legendary but now retired Punk rock band NoMeansNo. Life Like, a NMN cover actually, is the first album John has released on his own. Though primarily written and performed by John he can not take all the credit having engaged the help of several friends to get this thing done including—Byron Slack (Invasives), Kristy Lee Audette (Rong), Ford Pier (doa, Rheostatics), Selina Martin, and his son Aidan Wright, as well as two old collaborations with his brother Rob in the writer's chair Recorded and Produced by John in the wilds of British Columbia, this album's material spans several decades and there is lots more in the archives. As might be expected the songs roll out cohesively but defy the cookie cutters and pigeon holes hence "Genre" is a tough one to convey but one thing that is not unclear is it is not to be listened to quietly! Play loud and enjoy!

Outernational pop group Derya Yildirim & Grup Simsek unveil the second and final part of their double album "Dost 1&2". Once again, their subtle and groovy Anatolian psych folk sound matches the powerful quality of the songs often led by Yildirim"s sublime vocals and baglama (Turkish lute). With "Dost 2", the band have broadened their songwriting horizons and refined their idiosyncratic arrangement skills.Most of "Dost 2""s material was composed by the band, with two notable tracks composed by guitarist flautist Antonin Voyant whose melodic work brings the music to an unnostalgic, yet deep and meaningful place. The lyrics were penned by Derya Yildirim in collaboration with Berlin based writer Duygu Agal, adding another string to Grup Simsek"s bow.

Outernational pop group Derya Yildirim & Grup Simsek unveil the second and final part of their double album "Dost 1&2". Once again, their subtle and groovy Anatolian psych folk sound matches the powerful quality of the songs often led by Yildirim"s sublime vocals and baglama (Turkish lute). With "Dost 2", the band have broadened their songwriting horizons and refined their idiosyncratic arrangement skills.Most of "Dost 2""s material was composed by the band, with two notable tracks composed by guitarist flautist Antonin Voyant whose melodic work brings the music to an unnostalgic, yet deep and meaningful place. The lyrics were penned by Derya Yildirim in collaboration with Berlin based writer Duygu Agal, adding another string to Grup Simsek"s bow.

) With her 5th studio album, "When I Look In Your Eyes", Diana Krall made a perfect debut on her new label Verve Records in 1999. Under the direction of legendary producer Tommy LiPuma, the Canadian pianist and singer showed herself from two sides: once with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Johnny Mandel, then again in a more intimate setting with changing duo, trio and quartet line-ups. The album earned Diana Krall her first Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album and was also nominated in the "Album of the Year" category.

VERVE ACOUSTIC SOUNDS SERIES: mastered fully analogue from the original tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, QPR pressing (180 g), firm tip-on gatefold (Stoughton Printing), padded inner sleeve.

Y2K prepper-rock for the underemployed. Tracked at home in 1999, the 1975 EP expands on Stratosphere's slacker-positive dreamscape, with layers of guitars both clean and fuzzy, humming organ, and_gasp!_a drum machine. Needle down, candles on.

Mother Twilight is the second Faun Fables album. It has since been noted by Scottish author R.J. Stewart as a work containing true artifacts of the oral underworld tradition. Dawn and Nils made a hand-assembled first pressing and peddled it to nearly every bar and rural hall across North America from 2001-2003. Drag City reissued the CD in 2004.Things are glowing outside, enough to bring any sun worshiper in for the night. But you must remain outside and begin walking. It"ll prepare you for the night, which otherwise comes as a chilling surprise. If you pay attention this time, maybe you"ll understand why you"re becoming invisible. When your memory began, it wasn"t startling, wasn"t a mistake. It came out of an old, dark and familiar thing, like a storyteller, like Twilight... so save us from fear, mother, and tell your story.Dawn McCarthy"s creative background was forged in oral tradition amidst a large musical family in Spokane, Washington; studying piano, music theater, rock bands, guitar, folklore and ethnomusicology. Dawn cut her teeth as a singer and performer with various bands and cabarets in Madison, Wisconsin and New York City, most notably as yodeler with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, who inspired her to want a gypsy life with a kindred spirit someday. Her focus took a pivotal turn in that direction in 1997 with a solo quest through the UK and Ireland and their bardic traditions; singing songs in clubs and homes, all the while undergoing a pastoral, psychological experience with the land. Upon her return to the States, a fateful meeting with Oakland, CA born-and-raised Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) moved McCarthy back to the West to begin a new creative collaboration in the thriving hills and art community of the San Francisco Bay Area.Since 1999, Faun Fables have released six albums and performed their animist, otherworldly folk music across North America and Europe, with shows in Australia, New Zealand and Israel, as well. Dawn"s writing and voice (described by The...

Overloaded with buzzy guitars, explosive drums and snotty vocals, National Threat, the debut full-length from Detroit street rockers FEN FEN, is guaranteed to melt the needle off your Crosley Cruiser and mysteriously empty out your parents' beer cooler.

Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side is now Gentle Ben and His Shimmering Hands: a new line-up means a new album! Here's the new line-up: Ben Corbett (aka Gentle Ben, vox in SixFtHick), Tony Giacca (bass in SixFtHick, guitars in GB&HSS), Dan Baebbler (guitars in SixFHick, bass in GB&HSS) and Jhindu-Pedro Lawrie (drums)."Brut" is how the album is titled and brut it is! The band creates create music of a rare and savage beauty. Soaring highs, crunching lows and in between only the sound of grown men crying into their beers and young lesbians gasping for air.

“In November of 1982, I went into the studio with Government Issue to record what was to be their first full-length album. Up until that time, they had only released the Legless Bull 7-inch EP, and the tape they recorded early 1982 would take over a year and a half to be released as the Make An Effort 7-inch EP. The members of G.I. excelled at driving each other crazy and there was a lot of arguing, but still we had a great session at Inner Ear and we managed to track 20 songs in one day. From the beginning the band had been divided on what to record, and it was only after much debate that they decided to leave off the material they had recorded with the earlier line-ups and only put out 10 new songs. In early 1983 Dischord was strapped for cash, meaning that we could only work on one release at a time. Since all of our money was tied up with the manufacturing of Minor Threat’s Out of Step 12-inch EP, the G.I. record would have to wait. A new DC label, Fountain of Youth expressed an interest in releasing Boycott Stabb, so it was decided to do a ‘split-label’ record. In this case, Fountain of Youth put up the money and we let them use the Dischord Records name to help with context and distribution. It has since been reissued on a number of different labels and formats, but after coming across the master tapes and hearing the songs that had been left off, we thought it would be cool to release the complete session, and to fi nally release the record on Dischord proper. In going through the tapes, I discovered that most of the outtake songs were never mixed, so earlier this year I took the recordings back into the studio. Hearing the separated tracks amazed me. Such great playing and songs! With the technological advances in the recording world making multi-tracking and overdubbing so common, it’s easy to forget that studios could also be used as something more akin to a photo-booth, capturing what was happening at that very moment. Most of the early Dischord sessions were essentially ‘live’ recordings, so the bands had to be able to play, and because the budgets were minuscule, they had to get the songs down in short order. G.I. stepped up on both counts.”—Ian MacKaye, August 2010.

Hannah Mohan’s new album is a first in more ways than one. Time Is a Walnut is the first solo release from the Western Massachusetts singer and songwriter, after nearly a decade fronting indie-pop band And the Kids. The album also comes amid the longest stretch Mohan has spent in one place since she left home at 16 to hop freight trains and hitchhike across North America.

Making music has been at the center of Mohan’s life ever since, even as other circumstances have changed—sometimes radically. A long-term relationship crumbled in 2019. Then the pandemic arrived, bringing an end to her band. After writing a batch of new songs taking stock of her situation, Mohan asked Alex Toth of Rubblebucket and Tōth to produce them, the latest installment of a longtime friendship and occasional creative collaboration.

Although Time Is a Walnut is a breakup album, don’t go in expecting tearjerkers. Mohan draws from a richer palette here, with themes of messy eroticism on the sultry “Soaked,” altered consciousness on the buzzy rocker “Heaven and Drugs," and navigating personal hells with Lady Lamb on “Hell.” Throughout, the songs showcase Mohan’s powerful voice, prismatic melodicism and distinctive lyrical sensibility as she processes major events in her life.

In the early 1980s, Britain had a vibrant cassette culture that now gets spotlighted through a limited edition 12" featuring multi-instrumentalist Kez Stone's project, Imago. He was a notable name in Cornwall and the West Country's music scenes with previous projects, Artistic Control and Aaah! which have come back via reissues many times in the last ten years. Imago was a new one-ff project that first emerged with one track on the Perfect Motion compilation curated by NTS Radio's Bruno and Flo Dill and now the full LP, originally released in 1985 on the local label A Real Kavoom, has been remastered and added to with three additional gems. Stone's teenage punk influences sit next to Imago's eclectic approach to sound that blends new wave and psychedelic elements into something irresistible.

The recording is plush on noise and tape saturation, staying fervently true to their sound from their self released tape “Love Or Perish”. Thudding high gain rhythm machines, crackling guitars and looping hypnotic bass lines around it all. Blending mid tempo industrial post-punk and dream pop, Hard Gloss doesn’t leave behind the 80s influences for Emily’s new visions. The album is bookended & intermitted by industrial synth-scapes driving home the band’s disposition.

Reissue of the classic 1987 LP by former Barracudas vocalist, Jeremy Gluck in collaboration with Nikki Sudden (Swell Maps + Jacobites) & Rowland S Howard (The Birthday Party + These Immortal Souls) with contributions from Jeffrey Lee Pierce (The Gun Club) and Epic Soundtracks (Swell Maps + Crime & The City Solution). The original LP track 'Hymn' has been removed (Jeremy never liked the vocal) and replaced with a different sounding reprise of the opening track 'Looking For a Place To Fall' at the end of side one, making it feel like a suite. New liner notes by Jeremy Gluck. Soviet Red Vinyl

To celebrate 50 years of this mighty band - A brand new studio album by the legendary Johnny Moped! Green vinyl limited to 425 copies! First up, that title - Quonk! What's that all about?Johnny - I have no idea where the name Quonk! come from! it seemed rather weird for a possible album title.Slimy - Incidental noise that's picked up _. We are a bit like that _ Johnny Moped's Quonk! is very Quonk le Donk (saucepan lid landing on head) and it's available soon from all Damaged record outlets.Marty - This one's for Toad really. It was his call and it's a great title for a Moped album.Robot - The band suffers from Quonking pretty regularly, so we thought we'd make a whole album of it.It's been five years since your last album Lurrigate Your Mind. How come it's taken so long to write and record this one?Johnny - it must have taken up to five months to rehearse for that album. Around the same time as previous albums.Slimy - Toads are slow moving creatures.Marty - Because we're old and very very lazy.Robot - That's pretty quick for us, it was over 30 years between 'Rock 'n' Roll Rookie' and Cycledelic. We wanted to make sure it passed quality control before letting it loose on the world. It sounds like you had a fun time recording it. Is that the case or was it more painful this time round?Johnny - We did have a lot of fun recording those albums starting from Real Cool Baby and Lurrigate Your Mind. Classic albums! I have enjoyed recording all of our albums from Cycledelic up to our latest album (problems aside!)Slimy - Creating Quonk! was fun _ always thrills me when the sounds come together _ Johnny and his band have a plethora of tunes. Yeah! It was alright.Marty - Bits were really easy and other bits were really hard. A lot of the songs on any Moped album really only take shape in the studio. And Dick Crippen helps a lot with how they turn out. I'm very proud of this album and the band and Johnny have worked really hard to make the best record we can.Robot - Yeah it's always fu...

To celebrate 50 years of this mighty band - A brand new studio album by the legendary Johnny Moped! Pink vinyl limited to 425 copies! First up, that title - Quonk! What's that all about?Johnny - I have no idea where the name Quonk! come from! it seemed rather weird for a possible album title.Slimy - Incidental noise that's picked up _. We are a bit like that _ Johnny Moped's Quonk! is very Quonk le Donk (saucepan lid landing on head) and it's available soon from all Damaged record outlets.Marty - This one's for Toad really. It was his call and it's a great title for a Moped album.Robot - The band suffers from Quonking pretty regularly, so we thought we'd make a whole album of it.It's been five years since your last album Lurrigate Your Mind. How come it's taken so long to write and record this one?Johnny - it must have taken up to five months to rehearse for that album. Around the same time as previous albums.Slimy - Toads are slow moving creatures.Marty - Because we're old and very very lazy.Robot - That's pretty quick for us, it was over 30 years between 'Rock 'n' Roll Rookie' and Cycledelic. We wanted to make sure it passed quality control before letting it loose on the world. It sounds like you had a fun time recording it. Is that the case or was it more painful this time round?Johnny - We did have a lot of fun recording those albums starting from Real Cool Baby and Lurrigate Your Mind. Classic albums! I have enjoyed recording all of our albums from Cycledelic up to our latest album (problems aside!)Slimy - Creating Quonk! was fun _ always thrills me when the sounds come together _ Johnny and his band have a plethora of tunes. Yeah! It was alright.Marty - Bits were really easy and other bits were really hard. A lot of the songs on any Moped album really only take shape in the studio. And Dick Crippen helps a lot with how they turn out. I'm very proud of this album and the band and Johnny have worked really hard to make the best record we can.Robot - Yeah it's always fun...

“The alt-folk fixture returns to more traditional material.” Pitchfork

Originally released in 2010, now re-issued on vinyl. A live recording of “Las Canciones”; a visceral celebration of the persistence of popular anonymous song based on the work of legendary socialist poet Federico García Lorca, a Granada born literary pioneer. Featuring songs from his 1931 collection of mysteriously beautiful flamenco tunes.

A poetically rich collection created by Foster and Herrero for their acoustic band, formed while living in the Grenadine Sierra.

“Foster’s vocals, met by husband Herrero’s frantic and raw gypsy-band orchestration, demonstrates the sense of urgency in the music’s message well and carries ‘Anda Jaleo’ to an elevated state.” The Line Of Best Fit

Originally released in 2011, now re-issued on vinyl. Their follow up to the acclaimed ‘Anda Jaleo’. A document of Josephine Foster's magical partnership with Victor Herrero breathing new life into timeless traditional melodies, drawing from the Spanish-folk traditions of Castile, the Basque, Santander and the Costa Brava.

Kaycie Satterfield leans into the endless, prickly change inherent in life. So when the guitarist and singer-songwriter broke her wrist in 2020 and was entirely unable to play her instrument for months, she had no choice but to embrace change. “Guitar is my main source of continuity,” she says. “So I had to learn how to think outside of my current conventions and to work with limitations.” On one hand, she needed to figure out how to write and play with one hand tied behind her back. But the fact that around the same time she had to go through four moves and a breakup meant she'd have to make peace with far more drastic change. And rather than be stuck in dated patterns and stories, Satterfield was newly determined to tell her own story her own way. The resulting album, Rosie (due July 12th via Earth Libraries), is a glistening slice of indie rock that bolsters Satterfield’s impeccable songwriting with a new perspective and rich, synth-driven production.

From one of the last few concerts of King Crimson’s final US tour of the ‘70s, “usa” was issued as an epitaph for the band in Spring 1975 as a single album, at a time when doubles or even triple live albums were considered more the norm for live releases. Deleted towards the end of the vinyl era in the mid-1980s, it remained unreleased in the CD era until the expanded edition was finally issued in October 2002. In common with much of Crimson’s output, it was not well received by critics when originally released, though its critical reputation grew immeasurably in the intervening years to the point where a review of the “21st Century Guide to King Crimson” boxed set in 2004 identified the album as the point

Drag City is excited to present the first ever vinyl pressing of guitarist Lee Underwood"s under-sung 1988 acoustic guitar opus, California Sigh.Guitarist Lee Underwood"s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley"s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music - but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus California Sigh has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! This first time vinyl-edition reveals Lee"s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths and co-production from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence.In the years following the release of California Sigh, Lee wrote and recorded two solo piano CDs, Phantom Light and Gathering Light. Additionally, he wrote Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered, a memoir of their time together, as well as three books of poems, Timewinds (2010), Diamondfire (2016) and Into Light (Poetic Matrix Press, 2021). He continues to live in Northern California.

This record is the first complete collaboration between Lefteris Volanis and Dimitris Pagidas who along with Vasilis Dokakis have formed the trio No Clear Mind over the past 15 years.

“Outside the long walls” is a musical creation whose canvas is filled primarily with a mix of electronic and guitar, organic synthesizer sound, saxophone, electric pianos bound together with drums and percussion, xylophone along with intervening soundscapes. There is a deeply melodic work with a strict sonic and timbre aesthetics that reference the new wave and post-punk outsiders, folk, progressive, space rock and world music for the past decade interspersed with tributes to the soundtracks of the 60s and 70s European cinema.

The band use both Greek and English lyrics interchangeably since the vocals are simply a means of achieving aural magic.

Ex-Here We Go Magic frontman Luke Temple emerges with a new project, LukeTemple and The Cascading Moms. Debut album, Certain Limitations.Lauded for his contributions to Here We Go Magic and Art Feynman, Luke Templebrings his signature off-kilter grooves and melodies to his new project's debutalbum Certain Limitations. The trio's sound takes influence from the likes of DireStraits and The Velvet Underground, weaving together intricate guitar work, and apropulsive rhythm section, with a touch of jazz sensibility that recalls the ECMcatalog.A product of serendipity, The Cascading Moms were formed when in need of aband for an upcoming show, Temple brought together Kosta Galanopolous, acollaborator from his Art Feynman project, and Stuart, a musician he already knewin LA. When these three came together to rehearse, a spark ignited, revealing acreative connection that transcended that first show that brought them together.The album's lead single, "I Can Dream," originally appeared on Art Feynman's HalfPrice At 3:30. However, aer reworking it with the Cascading Moms, the songtook on a new life. This reinvention exemplifies Certain Limitations' core concept:a collection of songs honed and reshaped through the improvisations and collaborativespirit of three musicians creating and exploring a new sonic world.

A band who have justifiably been championed across the world, Tokyo’s Melt-Banana have been responsible for some of the most complex punk rock ever made … that far outshines ninety-nine percent of most other bands out there. The band once described their live show as “Shooting machine gun and laser beam, chaos in order.” And I think that pretty much sums them up. — Olli Siebelt, BBC No wave without the self-conscious pretension, avant garde composition compressed into one-minute-or-less bursts, urgency, intricate destruction, pure glorious abandon. Melt-Banana play the same way that Repulsion, Naked City, The Ruins, or The Boredoms all make you want to scream and dance and kill your neighbors. This is not music that we are conditioned to accept. This is you delirious with joy scraping your five senses off the floor. —Matthew Moyer, Ink19 Melt-Banana are in a league of their own. There are other extreme hardcore bands out there who are experimental and unique but Melt-Banana are more than that. They area giants amongst infants. Masters amongst pupils. Kings amongst serfs. Nobody can do what they do and nobody can adequately use words to describe them. —Jeb, Crass Menagerie

“Memo PST was formed in 2022 by longtime associates Orville Neeley and Chris Shaw.

“The band released a self recorded cassette demo and played a handful of shows in California before setting up shop at Discount Mirrors (the neighborhood studio owned by John Dwyer and Eric Bauer) to lay down an LP.

“Recorded the first five days in May of 2023, the debut album from Memo PST features twelve blasts of raw and primitive Los Angeles punk rock, with Orville Neeley (Bad Sports, OBN IIIs) handling songwriting duties and Chris Shaw (Ex-Cult, Vile Nation) handling vocals and lyrics.

“The debut long player from Memo PST is everything fans have come to expect from the two longtime fixtures in underground rock, but also features some of their most memorable songs yet, including ‘I Used To Be A Pretty Boy’ the debut single from the band that sold out in hours via record label In The Red.

“The black and white album cover photo (taken behind the iconic rocker shop Worship) and the stark presentation that Memo PST has thus far deployed is a clear statement that this is punk made for punks, and the band has little to no regard for current trends created and championed by those less informed.

“Written, recorded, and released in Los Angeles, this is the latest chapter in the LA transplants discography, and only the beginning of what we can expect to hear from the songwriting duo.

“Rounding out the live lineup is life long Los Angeles punk Danny Clodfelter on bass and San Clemente surf punk Jackson Todd on drums. Crumple up your scribblings, this is Memo PST.” —Johnny Dog Face

During a European tour by HADES, it became apparent that the band would soon disband. Guitarist Dan Lorenzo formed Non-Fiction with Dan Nastasi (MUCKY PUP, DOG EAT DOG), who subsequently recorded an EP. However, the line-up carousel was to turn again and HADES and WATCHTOWER singer Alan Tecchio and bassist Kevin Bolembach (later SEVEN WITCHES, JACK FROST and others) came on board. In 1991, the debut "Preface" was released on Grand Slamm Records, in Europe on Steamhammer/SPV. At the time, the band's doom metal leanings must have puzzled many fans of HADES and WATCHTOWER, while fans of this style remained ignorant at a time without the Internet. It is astonishing that certain trademarks of HADES can still be found in the music of NON-FICTION (see also the 1995 reunion album by HADES). In 1992, the second album "In The Know" was released, which is considered a fan favourite and was only released on CD at the time. Once again, the cover artwork is reminiscent of the art of Hipgnosis (Pink Floyd, UFO etc.). Many fans have been waiting for an LP version, which is now available 32 years later.After the release, Non-Fiction successfully toured with Savatage and Overkill, where they could also be seen in Europe. Both HADES and WATCHTOWER (with Alan Tecchio) are - sporadically - active again today and quite a few fans hope that Non-Fiction will also make another appearance. The musical continuation, albeit a little more modern, is currently Dan Lorenzo‘s band PATRIARCHS IN BLACK, which is successful in the USA. TBC

One Step Closer signal a sea change with Songs for the Willow. With last year's This Place You Know, the band had already mastered a unique stripe of mournful melodic hardcore informed by eclectic emo influences. But on Songs for the Willow, they've tapped into a dynamic, emotionally powerful, and sonically intricate post-hardcore space inhabited by the charged aura and artistic nuance of landmark early 2010s records like Title Fight's Floral Green and Touché Amoré's Is Survived By. But ultimately, Songs for the Willow moves this sound forward into new territory.

Learn To Die is a bold new step for a group of musicians, artists, and writers that has at least nominally been considered a punk band. A stylistic overhaul. For those who have been following along, it’ll carry some surprises. Slender began over a decade ago as a semi-improvisational cassette recording project, a casual collaboration between a few friends that was initially documented by two self-titled cassette-only releases released in 2014 and 2015 respectively, now both unavailable and out of print. Most fans, however, will know Slender for their two most recent releases, Walled Garden (2017) and Time On Earth (2019), both released on the tastemaking London art-punk label La Vida Es Un Mus. Their prior work has earned them comparisons to anarcho-punks Crass and The Snipers, lo-fi flagbearers Swell Maps and Pink Reason, and artrockers Cromagnon and Amon Düül. Here, however, such comparisons feel largely unfounded and the band feels somewhat peerless. Moments of artpunk brutalism, lo-fi experimentalism, and kosmiche detours grace the fabric of Learn To Die, but the album reaches for more than pastiche. Teasing the rarified worlds of chamber music and musique concrete, Slender manages something intangible and strange. A vocoded voice intones multi-lingual poems alongside tinny guitars and sampled strings and flutes. Three chord janglepunk anthems arise suddenly out of a cosmic mist crafted by analogue synths reciting the poetry of machines. The album moves in ways reminiscent of works by artists as varied and singular as Nobukazu Takemura, Chuquimamani-Condori, Coil, and Robert Wyatt, but it doesn’t necessarily occupy the same realm as any of them.”—Leah B. Levinson

Originally released to a fan base and music press that were unprepared for the band to move on from the punk fury of “Crossing The Red Sea”, The Adverts “Cast Of Thousands” has since been recognized as a lost classic of the time. TV Smith’s cutting observational lyrics and sharp musical instincts saw his song writing grow and move in unexpected directions. The primal thumping was replaced by dynamic and driving drumming, acoustic guitars and probing solos emerged, and Tim Cross joined to add keyboards and fill out the overall sound. The one constant was the pounding throb of Gaye Advert’s bass. Encouraged to experiment by surprise producer Tom Newman (Mike Oldfield “Tubular Bells”) the band found themselves stretching creatively, both in song writing and recording techniques. They might agonize over the sound of recording a match being lit in the middle of one song, while doing a single take of a vocal via a microphone hung in the bathroom for another. Giant choirs were built meticulously over multiple tracks, while the sound of a rat running through the reverb room would be captured forever. The results wrapped some of TV’s best songs in strange and inventive sounds to compliment his anti-pop smarts and rock and roll heart. They did not know it at the time, but the band was falling apart. Tensions would soon rise to the level that replacement players were called in to finish their final tour. Punk fans left them in droves. Critics skewered the singles from the album. Their record label had moved on to the next big thing. Feeling that they had reached a creative peak made the tumble even harder to swallow. Time has been very kind though, and fans discovering punk after the first wave have been able to hear “Cast” for what it is - a brilliant and biting collection of rock and roll. Still full of stomp and swagger even when stripped down on “My Place” or via the anthemic surge of “Television’s Over”, with TV’s hook factory on full display on the anti-love song “Love Songs”, and the band closing the album with the creeping ballad “I Will Walk You Home”; The Adverts had grown from a great punk rock band to a great rock band.

Soft rock"s seminal band, The Blue Jean Committee, originated from blue-collar Chicago when the now legendary Clark Honus (Bill Hader) and Gene Allen (Fred Armisen) dropped out of sausage school to create the band of their dreams. With the help of famed music manager AlvinIzoff, the band reinvented their hard Chicago-blues image to instead transcend the laid-back essence of California. After studying bands like The Beach Boys, The Blue Jean Committee as able to find theirsignature sound and rise to the top of music charts. Despite Chicago"s resistance to their "vegetarian" facade and "hippy" vibe, the band became known for creating the quintessential California album. Theirdebut album, Catalina Breeze, spawned six consecutive hit singlesfor the band and for a moment it seemed like they would be a long-term fixture on the American musical landscape. However, some relationshipsare more complicated than they appear on the surface, and nowhere didthis ring more true than for Gene Allen and Clark Honus, as their infamous on-stage fight at the Hollywood Bowl Animal Rights Now Benefit and subsequent break-up has since become the stuff of legend.Fans of the "Chicago band with the California sound" can celebrate once more!After over 30 years apart, Gene and Clark were recently reunited for their induction into the Hall of Fame in April 2015.

Classic Black vinyl, 1000 pressed. A punk classic, gloriously anthemic power pop from the cult UK outfit. On 17 March 1978, a mere six months after the release of their self-titled debut, The Boys second album “Alternative Chartbusters” was released (once again, produced by Dangerfield & Steel). As AllMusic recognises, “Alternative Chartbusters” was way ahead of its time, a buried treasure that only got dusted off much later: “Condemned at the time for offering up little more than a straight carbon copy of its predecessor, the second Boys’ album has since ascended to the pantheon of power pop greats, a combination of the band's own inestimable position at the forefront of what, by early 1978, was already a burgeoning movement, and their seemingly effortless grasp of the rudiments of, indeed, a great pop song.” Along with the Sex Pistols, Clash and the Damned, The Boys were part of the first wave of the mid-1970’s UK punk explosion. Armed with an arsenal of killer Steel/Dangerfield songs The Boys became the first UK punk band to sign an album deal in January 1977 and subsequently released two albums, their self-titled debut and the follow-up “Alternative Chartbusters” in quick 7 succession. Highly regarded by the music press and their contemporaries, yet somehow criminally ignored by a wider punk audience, unable to grasp their heritage of vintage rock ‘n’ roll that went back to Chuck Berry courtesy of The Beatles. Their well-crafted songs, together with Steel and Dangerfield’s layered harmonies, even led to them being described as ‘The Beatles of Punk’

The Cat’s Miaow return to World Of Echo with Skipping Stones: The Cassette Years ’92-’93, their second compilation for the imprint, and the fourth in a loosely defined series of reissues associated with the group (also including The Shapiros’ Gone By Fall: The Collected Works of The Shapiros and Hydroplane’s Selected Songs 1997-2003). It’s a smart selection of songs by one of Australia’s finest independent pop music groups, whose initial run, across the nineties, was as mysterious as it was bewitching. A generous double album featuring thirty-five songs drawn from The Cat’s Miaow’s history, Skipping Stones lets listeners in on a bunch more secrets.

An even deeper pass through the archives of The Cat’s Miaow, Skipping Stones is a welcome follow-up to 2022’s Songs ’94-’98, which pulled together material from seven-inch singles and compilations. Diving into the four cassettes that the group released over a two-year period, Skipping Stones is full of surprises, rich with unexpected and inspired detours, while reminding everyone just how clear and distinct The Cat’s Miaow’s music was from the very start. Looking in from the outside, they always felt like a group that knew just what they were doing, but intuitive as they are, they weren’t forcing anything: these songs always sound exactly what they need to be, rough edges, playful moments and all.

It's also a fascinating snapshot of one arm of the ‘international pop underground’. While they were clearly listening to music from the US, UK and elsewhere – there are glimpses of Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3, Beat Happening, and The Pastels in some of the songs here – The Cat’s Miaow also feel, consciously or not, part of a continuum of Australian underground pop that takes in The Particles, The Lighthouse Keepers, The Cannanes, The Honeys, Even As We Speak, and The Sugargliders (who they would cover several times). Like those before them, The Cat’s Miaow balanced opposing forces in their music: naivete and knowingness; fragility and strength; worldliness and world-weariness; play and seriousness; heartache and pleasure.

The four cassettes that Skipping Stones draws from – Little Baby Sour Puss, Pet Sounds (both 1992), From My Window, and How Did Everything Get So Fucked Up (both 1993) – were released or assisted by Toytown, a Melbourne cassette label of rare taste, savvy and intelligence, run by Wayne Davidson. Toytown felt like the perfect early home for The Cat’s Miaow, their cassettes rubbing shoulders in the label’s catalogue with brilliant groups like Sukpatch, The Ah Club, Kitty Craft, and Land Of The Loops. The local context is just as important, too, with The Cat’s Miaow sharing their time and creative vision with friends in The Ampersands, Stinky Fire Engine, Girl Of The World, Super Falling Star, Pencil Tin and The Sugargliders. And cassettes were an important form of exchange – cheap, easy to reproduce, not too expensive to send interstate or overseas, they were the most accessible DIY format for any group starting to spread the word about their noise.

All of this is to say, the thirty-five songs here landed in several different contexts, national and international, which goes part-way to explaining the group’s curious cosmopolitanism, the style and spirit in their sound. The Cat’s Miaow may have been bedroom dreamers, but their songs were richly informed, with the sweetest of girl-pop moves sashaying into walls of tremolo-d and distorted guitar, jangling six strings tangling with melodic bass that’s pure Peter Hook/Naomi Yang, while the gentle trickle of a drum machine or the earthy twitch of brushes on drum skins provided the spine for Kerrie’s and Bart’s lovely, unforced singing.

There are a clutch of gorgeous songs here that would reappear in a different form on later releases, classics like “The Phoebe I Know”, “Third Floor Fire Escape View”, “Not Like I Was Doing Anything” and “You Left A Note On The Table”, but plenty of other magic too, all of it finding its way to vinyl for the first time (some tracks appeared on compact disc via the compilations A Kiss and A Cuddle [Bus Stop, 1996] and Songs For Girls to Sing [Drive-In, 1997]). Remarkably, The Cat’s Miaow have also recently released a split single with Rocketship featuring newly recorded material and returned to the stage for their second-ever gig.

But this double LP on World Of Echo feels like the very core of the thing – some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful, effortlessly lush and deeply moving pop music you’re likely to hear.

Following on the theme from last year’s critically acclaimed The Hypnogogue. 15 new songs take the story further.