Indie / Alternative

80s synth magic for the four-track mind.

DIY outsider Rick Cuevas was a post-punk refugee on a vision quest for a hit. Tracked at home in 1984, "The Birds" is that 40-year-delayed viral smash, one of eight retro-futurist anthems that make up Cuevas' debut album. Remastered from the analog masters, this 40th anniversary edition replicates the 200-copy original for max teleportation value.

Suntub’ is the second full length album from ML Buch, a double record of 15 pieces by the Danish composer and producer, entering further into the realm of electric guitars and layered vocals along with exploring new instrumental expressions. With an offset in open tunings on a 7-string Stratocaster, slide and fretless tablet guitars and deep-sampled virtual guitars, the album draws up narratives and locations in a distant time. Props like puddles, well buckets, bone barrels and flesh rags live in these scenes, suspended in air, drifting about, climbing stairs and ladders, all given life through guitar sensibilities and visceral vocals.

Suntub’ is the second full length album from ML Buch, a double record of 15 pieces by the Danish composer and producer, entering further into the realm of electric guitars and layered vocals along with exploring new instrumental expressions. With an offset in open tunings on a 7-string Stratocaster, slide and fretless tablet guitars and deep-sampled virtual guitars, the album draws up narratives and locations in a distant time. Props like puddles, well buckets, bone barrels and flesh rags live in these scenes, suspended in air, drifting about, climbing stairs and ladders, all given life through guitar sensibilities and visceral vocals.

Suntub’ is the second full length album from ML Buch, a double record of 15 pieces by the Danish composer and producer, entering further into the realm of electric guitars and layered vocals along with exploring new instrumental expressions. With an offset in open tunings on a 7-string Stratocaster, slide and fretless tablet guitars and deep-sampled virtual guitars, the album draws up narratives and locations in a distant time. Props like puddles, well buckets, bone barrels and flesh rags live in these scenes, suspended in air, drifting about, climbing stairs and ladders, all given life through guitar sensibilities and visceral vocals.

A muffled cry into the technological darkness, Contemporary Movement slid into the world right as the MP3 was seeping out of college dorms. A 39-minute drift into the void, drenched in Cold War-era reverb and then submerged in four track hiss for good measure. Duster constructed a Brutalist masterpiece on the outskirts of a suburban mall, as if to say, “We were here.” “Music for dark spaces and closed eyelids, deeply psychedelic but without sprawl, ambient music with a serrated edge of punk.”—The Ringer “Warm, fuzzed-out sounds that hit home like a tight, melancholic embrace from your favorite person.”—Viceiframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1682543875/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless>Contemporary Movement by Duster

The mid-2000s underground stir surrounding Studio, the project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, feels nearly lost to time. West Coast, their seminal 2006 debut, captured a faraway romanticism of Balearic brushed up against Krautrock, disco, dub, and afro-beat, with pop lyricism lifted from new wave, all made modern by two art school grads in Gothenburg. First pressed in a small vinyl-only run via their own Information label, the album has been notably absent from most streaming services, and the internet’s record of its initial impact is all but fossilized from a bygone blog era, while its sound is simply untraceable to any one moment in music. Presented with a minimalist black circle LP design, the set possessed an uncanny escapist sensibility, underscored by track titles like “Life’s A Beach!” but otherwise entirely on the suggestion of that sound, imagined, displaced, and subconsciously amalgamated. Some called it “the missing link between The Cure and Lindstrøm,” Pitchfork heard Durutti Column and Can, as the duo’s story became swept up in a loosely developing scene — adjacent first to the label Service (Jens Lekman, The Whitest Boy Alive) and later Sincerely Yours (The Tough Alliance, jj) — and a precursor to the 2010s boom at the axis of electronic and psychedelic music guided by indie greats like Caribou, Four Tet, and Darkside. Featuring six free-flowed tracks that glide between hypnotic instrumental terrain and anthemic pop architecture, West Coast succeeded in its premise, a trance-inducing, deja vu-like destination instantly identifiable and endlessly replayable. By late 2007, following its expanded CD repackaging as Yearbook 1, the songs were staples of year-end lists, including best album write-ups by Pitchfork, FACT Magazine, and Rough Trade. While Lissvik and Hägg kept busy, Studio’s proper follow-up never came, thus adding to West Coast’s strange allure and legacy. In 2025, the record sees renewed appreciation, remastered and reissued by Ghostly International. West Coast took shape throughout much of Studio's existence. The earliest recordings trace back to sessions held at Lissvik’s art school and Hägg’s rehearsal space between 2001 and 2004. During this period, Lissvik co-founded the Service label, creating a platform to release music, produce T-shirts, and host events. Service organized large parties, and the art school served as both a club venue and office, in a style reminiscent of Factory Records and Haçienda. Aside from their three initial 7-inch releases on Service, they kept most of their music to themselves for several years. Hägg remembers, "All these recordings were just piled up and we dusted them off and started to deconstruct and assemble them in a more drawn-out fashion." In 2005, they left Service, flirted with breaking up, and then revisited material and wrote two new songs at Hägg's Ferry Terminal Studio and Lissvik's N.47 studio, which he jokingly dubbed the "Beach Ball of Death sessions" due to the slow processing strain put on his Power Mac G4. Hägg continues, "I had started a disco club night with a friend and we went deep down the rabbit holes of Balearics, space rock, and strange leftfield dancefloor stuff. This probably seeped into Studio's output. Around the same time, with Dan slowing drums down to half tempo, finishing ‘No Comply’ and creating ‘Radio Edit’, the B-side of Studio's first 12", a West Coast blueprint was born.” Soon songs were finalized and sequenced from countless sketches and layers, and the titles clicked into place after being kicked around for a while. The title for the pulsing, guitar-driven “Self Service” was inspired by Lissvik’s visit to the office of the Paris fashion magazine and chosen to mark their newfound independence. Thematically, a larger vision emerged. “Somehow, I knew I wanted to make a conceptual record that, although only imaginary at that point, could represent or define how our city sounded,” says Lissvik. “I was totally immersed in a word bubble and was really struggling with lyrics for one of our potential instrumentals. While walking back to the studio one day after a lunch break, ‘West Coast’ appeared in my mind. I ran back to the studio, wrote down the lyrics for ‘West Side,’ and suddenly ‘Life’s A Beach!,’ ‘Indo’ and the rest of the potential instrumentals all made sense.” Sonically, the set represented years of developing taste as well. In the same breadth, they cite DJ Screw, J Dilla, and Joy Division, along with early ‘80s European live DJ sets from the likes of Beppe Loda, DJ Mozart, and Baldelli as reference points. “The anything-goes mentality was very encouraging and was a big cornerstone to the Studio sound,” says Hägg. “But there’s so much more to the picture, we were not that young then and had lots of musical baggage in our suitcases, the new thing was that we finally let it all come through, not bound by any borders that was often the case with music identity in Sweden during the ‘90s.” West Coast is defined by its swing, an ability to lock into loops and beat-grids while still prioritizing looseness and genuine surprises across long passages with layers constantly appearing and fading from the mix. Songs can momentarily fall out of step or change course, like 10 minutes into the hazy opener “Out There” when the bass line suddenly dips back beat for 4 bars and then returns on the beat, giving way for a dubbed-out breakdown and ascendent finish. Or take the 13-minute “Life’s A Beach!” which eases into a soft, tide-changing crescendo just before the 9-minute mark, returning anew on an optimistic bass line as the guitar gets moody above the shimmering wash. Hägg says, “It always transcended very well live, like an implosion. It’s a very tricky song to play, due to strange rounds so it’s such a relief when one gets there, probably what you hear is a big sigh.” In the afterglow of the record’s 2007 reception, as their oft-mentioned un-Google-able name and Myspace page made rounds and West Coast was cemented as “one of the finest pieces of electronic music you ́ll hear this year,” per The Guardian, Studio receded from view, clouded behind a mountain of remix requests (including belter for Kylie Minogue and Stockholm’s Shout Out Louds) and label bureaucracy. But both artists, now well into respective careers beyond Studio, have come to peace with West Coast as their most enduring effort together. Lissvik adds, “It serves as a good reminder for me to keep to that decision and promise and to continue exploring and growing.”

“Into The Blue is the clearest portrait of who I am as an artist. It’s me through and through,” says multi-instrumentalist Aaron Frazer. A daring blend of soul, psychedelia, spaghetti western, disco, gospel and hip-hop, Into the Blue represents the impressive range of Frazer's sonic talents. Frazer maintains the unmistakable falsetto and classic songwriting he’s known for, but plants Into the Blue firmly in the now with a hip-hop mentality at its core, weaving together genres and production techniques to form something new. Into The Blue was conceived, like so many classic records, out of heartbreak. Frazer moved cross-country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and embarked on a journey that’s reflected in the album’s themes of grief, loneliness, and searching for healing. “Into The Blue really means heading into the unknown. That has been the last year of my life and I'm still in the blue,” Frazer explains. “But there are also songs here that celebrate love and the giddiness of a new relationship and all that. That's part of a breakup to me, processing the whole thing, remembering the things that were right as much as the things that were wrong.” Frazer wrote on every track and played several live instruments on the album. The title track, “Into The Blue”, is a haunting, resolute anthem, combining cinematic strings and tough-as-nails breakbeats as Frazer heads west. “Here I go, to a place where the broken heart knows,” he sings. “It’s all I can do. Back into the blue.” “Payback” is an explosive dancefloor heater, featuring shimmering tambourines and driving bass lines. Northern soul drums meet snarling fuzz guitar, hurdling towards its epic conclusion. The album features moments of towering arrangements, recalling David Axelrod and Ennio Merricone, balanced by rawness, incorporating iPhone recordings and one-take vocals. For Into the Blue, Frazer enlisted Grammy-winner Alex Goose as co-producer, known for his crate-digging samples and collaborations with hip-hop artists like Freddie Gibbs, Madlib and Brockhampton. Frazer also experimented with samples for the first time on a record, drawing from unexpected sources like 90s R&B group Hi-Five. Though Into the Blue is born out of heartbreak, Frazer hopes it leaves listeners with a sense of optimism. “You know, you can still laugh on a day when you're grieving,” he says, “there’s no peaks without valleys,” he says, but Into The Blue sees Aaron Frazer at new heights.

- Double LP including both Pinball I & Pinball II

- Gatefold jacket

Grammy Award-winning producer Leon Michels of El Michels Affair's new album features Shintaro Sakamoto on lyrics and vocals for one track! The track, “Indifference,” will be released domestically on 7-inch vinyl by zelone records!

Leon Michels' main project, El Michels Affair's new album, “24 HR SPORTS,” will be released on September 5 by US label Big Crown Records.

Shingo Sakamoto has contributed lyrics and vocals to one track on the new album, and the 7-inch vinyl (Japan-exclusive edition) of the track “Indifference” will be released on July 30 (Wed) via zelone records. The B-side features “Clean The Line,” a track from the album that showcases the Suginami Children's Choir from Tokyo. The zelone 7-inch will feature a fold-out artwork design by Shitaro Sakamoto.

Exael, aka Berlin's naemi, who has been involved in the key areas of contemporary experimental music such as Soda Gong, West Mineral, and Beer On The Rug, has released her latest album, BREATHLESS, SHORN, on vinyl from Ulla's new label 28912! This work, which blends drowsiness, distortion, introspection, and emotional fluctuations into an intimate dream pop/shoegaze format, is a fantastical beauty like an acoustic poem that rises from the corner of a bedroom and floats in the depths of memory.

Re-issue of New York singer-songwriter Nina Nastasia's Steve Albini produced debut LP from 2000 - back in print after nearly two decades.

"In October of 1999, Nina Nastasia recorded the album that would finally document her well-seeded career as a local singer-songwriter in New York City. It was exemplary of Nastasia’s style, delicate string arrangements, the restrained beauty of her live band, the deceptive simplicity of her voice, and poignant, life-wise lyrics. The following year, “Dogs” was released on CD by micro-indie label Socialist Records. By the end of 2000, the “Dogs” CD was out of print. But “Dogs” had a special grassroots effect on Nina Nastasia’s music career, as fans of the record would correspond across internet message boards and zines, discussing songs and soliciting copies of the rare edition. The album would also mark the beginning of a lasting peer relationship with noted recording engineer Steve Albini. In 2004, Touch and Go Records reissued “Dogs” on CD and, for the first time, on vinyl. The vinyl quickly sold out and remained out of print for nearly two decade… until now."

On the eve of Drop Nineteens' first live performances in 30 years, we are excited to announce the reissue of the band's 1992 shoegaze masterpiece, Delaware. "Reissue" is slightly misleading as Delaware has never actually been issued on vinyl in the United States. Delaware is the debut studio album by American band Drop Nineteens released on June 19, 1992. Despite the albums release over 30 years ago, and the band remaining inactive from 1993 onwards this album has remained a favorite of shoegaze fans for decades, and was listed as one of the 50 best shoegaze albums of all time by Pitchfork in 2016. This lasting love of the record has cemented the band as one of the most influential bands of the genre from their time. Over the last several years the album has found a new audience that has championed Delaware along side of the band's mostly UK 90's contemporaries. A new legion of Drop Nineteens fans have likely discovered their music through streaming services, rather than on 120 Minutes. Tracks like the towering "Kick The Tragedy" and pop songs "Winona" & "Delaware" sit next to more experimental moments like "Reberrymemberer." And while the album is certainly a wild ride, it all flows together as easily as singers' Greg Ackell and Paula Kelley's vocals.Now for the first time, this record will be available via a USA pressing on yellow colored vinyl. Remastered for vinyl by Carl Saff the album will be available on June 21st.

Big Black was started by Steve Albini in 1982 while he was attending Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Lungs, the first Big Black release was recorded by Steve on a borrowed 4-track. He played everything on the EP himself - except the sax bleating courtesy of pal John Bohnen and the drums courtesy of Roland. Soon after, Steve recruited Jeff Pezzati (Naked Raygun) on bass, and Santiago Durango (also Naked Raygun) joined them on guitar. In 1983, together with live drummer Pat Byrne, they recorded the Bulldozer EP. By 1984, the band had done some touring and recorded the Racer X EP and the start of the Il Duce 7". After that, Jeff returned to Naked Raygun and was replaced by Dave Riley. In 1985, Big Black recorded their first full-length, Atomizer, as well as finishing the Il Duce 7". Atomizer was released in 1986 along with the release of the Hammer Party compilation CD. In 1987, the Headache EP and Heartbeat 7" were released. That same year, the band recorded and released the 7" of The Model/He's A Whore as well as their second full-length album, Songs About Fucking. They toured extensively (for Big Black). And they broke up.

The band Unknown Mortal Orchestra sometimes enjoys making purely instrumental music. In addition to the vocal-based records they’re more well-known for, they’ve also begun to make an instrumental series called the IC where they spend time in a chosen city and improvise and collaborate on non-vocal music. Recently the band spent time in Colombia to make music and initiate their new keyboard player Christian Li. The resulting sessions have become IC-02 Bogota, a musical document of the time they spent in that exciting city and the possible background music for some strange parties and night drives in your future.

Gilla Band Ireland’s favourite Avant-punk quartet has re-issued The Early Years EP, a collection of out of print 7” singles and covers originally released on Any Other City Records and The Quarter Inch Collective and then on Rough Trade Records in 2015. The re-issue features new artwork based on the original colour blocks plus The Cha Cha Cha has now been remastered alongside the rest of the tracks and is ready for the dancefloor once again.

Fan fave (and live setlist staple) featured on the collection is an eight-minute cover of post-dubstep mastermind Blawan’s absurdist banger and demented earworm “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage” that, simply put, is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before or since.

Rough Trade release limited edition 7-inch singles boxsets to celebrate label's formative years (1978-1993) Having consistently released music by innovative, visionary, and transformative artists, Rough Trade have been defining record collections since their first release in 1977 (RT001 saw the shop help French punks Metal Urbain put out single Paris Maquis), continuing to release cutting edge albums and tracks right up to, and including the present day, with their current roster boasting the likes of Amyl and The Sniffers, Pulp, Jockstrap, Anohni, Dean Blunt, Sleaford Mods and many more. Now, to mark 45-plus years of the label, its co-MDs Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis have indulged in a rare retrospective look, personally putting together two boxsets featuring some of their favourite singles released by Rough Trade during its formative years. Accompanied by new sleeve notes featuring the pair's recollections, impressions and opinions, these limited-edition collections are no bog-standard trawl through the back catalogue but a personal look at the hits, gems, bangers, growers, underrated classics and more. Chronicling Rough Trade's emergence from behind the counter of the West London shop of the same name in the late 1970s, the first boxset in the series fizzes with the daring, Do It Yourself attitude that underpinned punk and subsequent musical expressions that surrounded the label's birth. "Typically for Rough Trade there wasn't a strategy,” says Jeannette of her and Geoff's enduring partnership at the heart of Rough Trade Records. "We just jumped in and hit it off. So, we've stuck together!"

Graham Jonson is drawn to the comforts of melody and noise. How the two conspire in tension, tonally and atonally, stirring up memory and mood. This quality animates the technicolor world of quickly, quickly, the psych-pop project that emanates from Kenton Sound, his basement studio in Portland, Oregon. “Everywhere your eye lands, there’s another curio to marvel over,” noted Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne when he visited Jonson’s recording space for a Rising feature just after the release of his “strikingly original” 2021 debut LP, The Long and Short of It. Since then, Jonson formed a live band, released his Easy Listening EP in 2023, got into production projects (for Moses Sumney, Kid LAROI, and SahBabii), and navigated the up-and-downs of a young musician, the sustainability of tours and relationships. While shaped by personal bouts and fallouts, his highly-anticipated full-length follow-up finds Jonson making music that’s universal, open-ended, and rewarding, like great songwriters can do. He set out to make a folk album but couldn’t help coloring it in with noise; a confluence of lush instrumentation and unexpected sounds. Ambitious yet intimate, hi-fi yet homespun, the idiosyncratic songs on I Heard That Noise curve around the contours of everyday life with warmth, wit, and dissonance.

When asked to unpack the inputs of I Heard That Noise, Jonson cites the unpredictable vocal melodies and sound design of Phil Elverum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie), the raw emotion of Dijon, and the timeless cadence of Nick Drake. While drums were the focus of Easy Listening, he challenged himself to think outside of the beat with new material: “to see how much I could do with a song, specifically with production, without having a beat to it… there are moments with drums but it was more about the space in between.” Songs utilize visceral delay and distortion; sometimes, they melt out of frame before the peak or take sharp turns with sudden chord changes or sweeping jolts he likens to “jump scares” in film. “Experimenting with the idea of being comfortable, and then some crazy shit flies at you, takes you out of it for a second, and then maybe brings you back in.” What makes these non-linear choices effective is that Jonson remains a natural pop architect, knowing where to push and pull, add and subtract; and essentially, how to draw in and hold one’s attention.

Themes reach from recent experiences — a breakup followed by “periods of either being miserable or, like, living…trying to better myself” — to childhood memories. There’s a recurring low-frequency hum in his neighborhood; he and his friends have come to know it as the “Kenton Sound” (which gives his studio its name), and they’ve narrowed it down to some industrial testing site nearby. Every time it vibrates, he thinks of that time he heard “that noise” while skateboarding outside his mom’s house. Similar, but louder, scarier, a sky siren of sorts. “I remember all the dogs started barking in the neighborhood at the same time...a really weird, bizarre phenomenon.” The thought pattern, scattered with a cathartic headspace, led him to record the title track, where an abrasive intro dissipates into a sweet piano ballad about remembering and surrendering.

Jonson has a knack for interludes and outros, and he’s in full stride here; the opener’s ambient wobbles snap into the stomp of “Enything,” which at one point swelled with so much information he needed to get a new computer. Above bright and jagged guitar lines, harmonized with backing vocals from friend and past tourmate Julia Logue, Jonson playfully rattles through everything he’d do (“for you”). He’s quick to admit he often dreads the process of writing lyrics, yet the loose wordplay of “Enything” is proof his subconscious runs clever.

On “Take It From Me,” subtle sonic flourishes surround acoustic strums and tender keys as Jonson recalls the resignation of a night when a relationship’s end was imminent (“a great storm is coming over the hill.”). He explains, “I've always found peace in knowing that other people, even if I don't know their exact experience, may have the same feeling that I do.” The mantra-like reprise of “Take It from Me” carries that notion, a soft reassurance before the song washes away.

Kenton Sound’s ceiling can attest to the truth of “I Punched Through A Wall.” Jonson says in reality, the act emerged from a silly intrusive thought. The image (“The silhouette of myself”) lent a figurative scene to wrap real angst around. “I feel love like a cannon ball / I like being ripped apart,” he sings over one of the record’s sweetest, most pop-forward arrangements. As the chorus takes its final pass, a gentle piano phrase gets clipped by an outburst of power chords and feedback, repeating the lines twice as loud.

“Raven” crosses fable-like fiction with the sad story of a friend who lost his way; and just when the track’s innocent country twang settles in, he pulls the rug out with near-metal levels of heavy. The juxtaposition gets to the heart of I Heard That Noise. By excavating the extremes of his sound, Jonson not only brings the best out of himself but introduces myriad ways to engage with his music, which grows ever more inviting and boundless. 
<p><iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=824606394/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;">I Heard That Noise quickly, quickly</iframe></p>

A muffled cry into the technological darkness, Contemporary Movement slid into the world right as the MP3 was seeping out of college dorms. A 39-minute drift into the void, drenched in Cold War-era reverb and then submerged in four track hiss for good measure. Duster constructed a Brutalist masterpiece on the outskirts of a suburban mall, as if to say, “We were here.” “Music for dark spaces and closed eyelids, deeply psychedelic but without sprawl, ambient music with a serrated edge of punk.”—The Ringer “Warm, fuzzed-out sounds that hit home like a tight, melancholic embrace from your favorite person.”—Viceiframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1682543875/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless>Contemporary Movement by Duster

"My career has been a lesson in patience," says Annahstasia, having cultivated her musical language between blazes of intimacy and independence across different lives, locations, and iterations, loves lost and gained, expectations evaded and recreated. The rising troubadour's proximity to love — for and from others, in society at large, and deeply within herself — guides the spirit of her soulful, poetic folk songcraft. Love is the elemental constant, alongside her distinctly resonant voice, shading the singer-songwriter's music since her earliest self-taught recordings, back when a 17-year-old Annahstasia Enuke was discovered and propelled into the pressures of an industry that nearly stifled her greatest strengths. Artistic resilience, gratitude, and dedication to process have yielded Tether, Annahstasia's full-length debut on art-forward indie label drink sum wtr, a collection of beaming torch songs, orchestral hymns, and astral anthems that feel lived-in, drawn from the human experience and the spectrum of love.

Annahstasia assembled the pieces of Tether slowly and with deep intention; she's carried these songs with her on the road, sang them for friends and strangers, and evolved them over time alongside her personal revelations. "The song is written, and then I have to live with it and see if I really believe what I'm saying," she explains. She brought material to sessions at the storied Valentine Studios in Los Angeles, joined by producers Jason Lader (ANOHNI and the Johnsons, Frank Ocean, Lana Del Rey), Andrew Lappin (Cassandra Jenkins, L'Rain, Luna Li), Aaron Liao (Liv.e, Moses Sumney, Raveena) and a range of accomplished musicians, including featured guests aja monet and Obongjayar. The recording became instinctual, done only in live takes to capture the feeling of the room, the community of the music. The sequencing was just as essential; she arrived at a flow with shifting energies and poignant arcs. The instrumentation swells, at times understated and others supremely lush, and through each arrangement, Annahstasia's voice rings true, open-hearted, and free. "I've come into the power of my voice as a medium," she says. "As a tool of expression, I am able to shape the emotional space around me."

Lyrically, Annahstasia embraces the nuance of poetry, inviting listeners to engage in words laced with meaning, whether ruminations on romance or social constructs. She sees the opener "Be Kind" more as a poem than a song, "a reflection upon the beauty of the mundane and the grandeur of everyday life…a reminder to myself and others to be kind to each other." The track's minimalist atmosphere picks up where 2024's Surface Tension EP left off, with her vocals left bare and up-front, exploring the capacity of her gift with newfound latitude as strums, strings, and keys enter the frame.

The palette expands for "Villian," welcoming drums, brass, and horns into a sweeping nod to healing. "We are all made of both shadow and light. From some angle, we have all been the villain of the story," she adds, suggesting that often, the only way to move on is through understanding that "we are all trying our best, negotiating survival." At its triumphant peak, above gospel-like shouts, she delivers the reprise with a smile: "Take it / Take it back / This dull knife of memory / I still hear your voice inside my head / Says that I'm the villain of the story."

Album centerpiece "Slow" emerges from a chance connection with London-based Nigerian musician Steven Umoh, aka Obongjayar. After exchanging DMs, Obongjayar came to one of her shows, and the two artists talked for hours afterward; "he was like a lost brother," she says. Later, they wrote and demoed the track in the living room of her Airbnb in London, where they huddled around a single ribbon microphone. "I'm just playing the guitar, and our eyes are locked; it was very sensual and intense." Emboldened by one another, their voices orbit and coalesce, trading verses on the signals the universe sends us ("I heard it on the wind / To go slow"), harmonizing the last stanzas ("What's the worst that can happen / If we just let it happen"). Without proper album plans at the time, the song sat for a while; then, in another cosmic chance, Obongjayar happened to be in town during the Tether sessions. Annahstasia reflects, "It was a beautiful experience to have us all in the room. The artistry, the moment, a real acceptance of African art where these two Nigerian musicians are coming together and making something very tender and pretty outside genre expectations."

Later, Annahstasia finds a kindred spirit in aja monet, the NY-based surrealist blues poet and her new labelmate, who lends stunning prose and voice to "All is. Will Be. As it Was." Given only the prompt of "open air," monet wrote the lines on the ride to the studio. Together with Annahstasia on guitar and Ashley Fulton on piano, they captured the piece in its purest form as if bottling a breeze.

Annahstasia described the EP prelude to this culminating set as a "romantic war," and the artist truly thrives amidst and after drama. She taps into a punk sensibility for "Silk and Velvet" — "I'd say it's punk in the sense that it is really dry, really stark and selectively dissonant." A clashing of cello and piano mirror pointed lyrics about "living with the hypocrisy of having revolutionary ideologies but consumerist tendencies." The tension comes full circle on "Believer," a song she's been trying to get right for years, now finally recorded in the right place with the right people. Nearly every instrument on Tether returns in full force; towering percussion, jagged guitar lines, and howling singers encircle Annahstasia at the mic as she enters a fantasy of rock stardom. "I love how in making a record, you get to make a film and pick which direction to take it. Now I have this version that I blast in my headphones, play air guitar, and pretend I'm performing it for 100,000 people." The sheer power of Tether is the result of patience, and it's not hard to picture such a dream realized in good time. 

 

Mac DeMarco, the cult-favourite singer-songwriter known for sampling on Sekito Shigeo's ‘The Word II’ and collaborating with Haruomi Hosono, released his third studio masterpiece in three years in 2017 on indie giant Captured Tracks. The demo of his third studio album This Old Dog, released in 2017 on indie giant Captured Tracks, is now available on cassette. It's an accessible lo-fi indie-pop album with psychedelia.

Adrian Sherwood returns with the mutating rhythmic soundscapes of The Grand Designer, a four track EP and the latest instalment in On-U Sound's long-running and much-loved 'disco plate' series.

The title track and lead single is out today, and serves as a trailer for a forthcoming full-length album, with different instruments filtered through Sherwood's bank of effects over an irresistible groove, and typically deft percussive detail.

"Let's Come Together" flips the same rhythm into a mystical dub, with sadly departed friend and collaborator Lee "Scratch" Perry providing typically off-the-wall vocal interjections. It also serves as a reminder of the wealth of collaborative projects Sherwood has released in recent years, releasing critically acclaimed new albums not only with Perry, but also Horace Andy, Sonic Boom & Panda Bear, African Head Charge, Spoon, Creation Rebel, Pinch, and more.

"Russian Oscillator" perhaps cleaves closest to the Sherwood & Pinch records, experimental electronics weaving in and out of heavy sound system sonics and a ruffneck dancehall adjacent swing.

The EP closes with "Cold War Skank", a left hand turn off the highway into scorched desert blues, distorted slide guitar patterns over widescreen film score atmospherics.

Available as a strictly limited and collectable 10" vinyl, mastered and cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, housed in a classic On-U disco plate sleeve, with cover collage by Studio Tape-Echo.

A new age lightness of being guides NNF alum Baptiste Martin to gently optimistic ambient, H-pop and glitching electronica styled results on a debut for Stroom, inseparable from its back story, regaled by the label below:

""I was admitted to Son Llàtzer Hospital in Mallorca on October 1, 2024, following a psychotic shock”.

This could well have been the opening sentence of a confessional novel but it’s not. It’s the first line of an email, which landed in my mailbox seemingly out of nowhere. The words were written by Baptiste Martin, the composer behind Les Halles.

In his letter, sent as a pdf document, Baptiste offered his friends a concise but striking report on his whereabouts from the past months. In brief, Baptiste was lost, found, lost and found again, yet seemingly forever confined to the walls of his cerebral interior. The letter describes a loss of grip and self-control, like a baby water turtle trying to hoist his way out of the fish tank by scratching the glass walls, without any result.

Baptiste is a musician and not a writer. His opening line is thus followed by an album, not a novel. This is the album. Yet, ‘Original Spirit’ doesn’t tell the story of his psychotic shock as a linear nonfiction, it offers a vague resolution to all the mischief in life: the hope for the existence of an original spirit, untainted despite all that might happen during the course of a life.

The album provokes images of what I would perceive as indeed an original spirit of oneself: an abstract nothingness breezing through landscapes of colours, searching for places beyond the boundaries of what we call freedom in the material world. A stream of sound, nostalgic to a time that never existed, a mystical loophole that we know isn’t there yet still crave for. In short: the sound of an uncannily serene feeling beyond hope."

Following the release of Drop Nineteens’ first album in 30 years, Hard Light and the re-issue of their 1992 shoegaze masterwork Delaware, we are excited to announce the official release of Drop Nineteens’ 1991. This LP comprises the band’s first two demo sessions which were mailed out via cassette to labels in 1991 finding their way to the UK music press and generating instant buzz and an ensuing feeding frenzy to sign the band. After signing with Caroline Records Drop Nineteens decided to write an entirely new record, Delaware, for their first official release, leaving the songs on 1991 behind, frozen in time. Swells of layered guitars and buried vocal harmonies adorn these tracks, displaying Drop Nineteens when the comparison to their UK contemporaries like Slowdive and Ride were apt. 1991’s songs, recorded with a low fi charm, show an ambitious young band capable of writing songs filled with texture and hooks, on the eve of their breakthrough with Delaware.

Jagjaguwar is proud to release the long lost Julie Doiron album 'Broken Girl', expanded to include her first two 7"s. It was originally released in 1996 by Doiron after her band--the psychedelic folk group Eric's Trip--had crumbled around her, under the temporary moniker "Broken Girl". The name did nothing to hide her feelings regarding the breakup of her band and the relationships that she shared with its members; neither did the songs on the record. The twelve songs from the original album come across like an epitaph for a departed lover. 'Broken Girl' was indeed a new beginning for Doiron, both as a solo artist as well as a record label executive. The first two Broken Girl 7"s (both included on this reissue), as well as the self-titled full-length were released on her own label Sappy Records, a label which went on to release her Juno Award-winning 'Julie Doiron & the Wooden Stars' full-length as well as releases by Moonsocket, Orange Glass, Snailhouse, and Elevator to Hell.

'Broken Girl' was a watershed for Doiron, showing her to be the sort of songwriter and performer that Eric's Trip only hinted at. Achingly beautiful and showcasing her vocal style and personality as a songwriter, the reviews immediately put her in the same class as Leonard Cohen in terms of importance as a Canadian solo artist. The album was self-recorded in the same home-y manner as the classic Eric's Trip albums which helped--along with albums by peers Sebadoh, East River Pipe and Smog--define the bedroom aesthetic of the early '90s. While some rock scribes would call it lo-fi, the fidelity of the recordings that Doiron and her Eric's Trip mates employed in the first half of the '90s was clearly the most appropriate medium. The close-mic'ing of everything from the vocals to the swirling guitars and peaking drums created a sense of real intimacy (while avoiding a lot of the awkward pitfalls that so many confessional songwriters run into) and suburban claustrophobia. It is very easy to see the four-piece as a Nick Drake-like entity who had been raised on the far East Coast of Canada in Moncton, New Brunswick on the SST catalog (Eric's Trip took their name from the Sonic Youth song from Daydream Nation) and whose nucleus was a four-fold of independently-minded co-dependents with no need for a producer or other intermediary to the recording process which might break the spell for even a moment.

Initially released in a scant edition of 1,000, 'Broken Girl' went immediately out of print and has become a highly sought-after collector's piece.

"Fellow Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen once titled an album Songs From A Room. Montreal-based Julie Doiron apparently took up residence there and removed whatever furniture was left behind."--Rob O'Connor, Rolling Stone