Indie / Alternative
471 products
Taking influence from 1960's Thai funk - their name literally translates to "Engine Fly" in Thai - Khruangbin’s debut album ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’ is steeped in the bass heavy, psychedelic sound of their inspiration, Tarantino soundtracks and surf-rock cool. The Texan trio is formed of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald “DJ” Johnson on drums.
‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’ was recorded at their spiritual home, a remote barn deep in the Texas countryside where their first rehearsals took place. The band listened to a lot of different types of music on the long drives out to the country but their favourites were 60s and 70s Thai cassettes gleaned from the cult Monrakplengthai blog and compilations of southeast Asian pop, rock and funk. This had a heavy impact on the direction of the band, the scales they used and the inflection of the melodies; which coupled with the spaciousness of the Texan countryside culminated in Khruangbin forming their exotic, individual sound.
Although the band was conceived as an instrumental outfit, ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’ features the first Khruangbin recordings with vocals. Tracks ‘People Everywhere (Still Alive)’, ‘Balls and Pins’ and recent single ‘White Gloves’ show a new dimension to the band.
“We never really thought of ourselves as having a “singer” but we knew that we wanted a voice for Khruangbin. We decided to write about something close to us, tell a story as simply as possible, and sing it together.”
The seeds of Khruangbin were sown when Mark and Laura were invited to tour with Ninja Tune's YPPAH supporting Bonobo across his 2010 American tour. The tour galvanised the two of them to start making music together more seriously, with DJ - he and Mark have played in the same gospel band for years - the natural choice for drums.
Sharing their first recordings, Bonobo included Khruangbin's ‘A Calf Born In Winter’ on his 2013 Late Night Tales compilation. Subsequently signed to Late Night Tales offshoot Night Time Stories, ‘A Calf Born In Winter’ was released as a single in May 2014, four track EP ‘The Infamous Bill’ followed in October, with covers EP ‘History Of Flight’ on Record Store Day 2015.
“We feel like there is an ease that comes from being immersed in a space, away from the distractions of the city and everyday life. We make our music in a barn, in the Texas hill country, because it makes sense to us. Being there allows us to make music that comes naturally, and that’s what we wanted this album to be. We wanted to make a record that just let the music happen, and we hope that’s what you can hear.”
Adrian Sherwood delivers a brand new full-length work for 2025, The Collapse Of Everything. A meticulously constructed album from the master mixologist, pushing his ever adventurous sound into new frontiers.
Although underpinned by a natural dub sensibility, the music presented on The Collapse of Everything fluidly crosses genre borders and seamlessly fuses a wide range of influences from a lifetime of listening and producing.
Featuring Brian Eno, Doug Wimbish, Keith Le Blanc, Cyrus Richards, and more. Mastered and cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery. Artwork by Peter Harris.
This is NEW MANUKE's first album. Shake your hips, shake the world, keep on movin', Maximum volume!
download code included with the record.
+2 bonus tracks
友人カ仏 from Moe and ghosts - 通過 (Rap Phenomenon Remix Demo)
Madteo - Hatsuentou (Madteo's Edit #2)
Respraying familiar bittersweet indie themes with contemporary DAW gloss, Danish duo Snuggle guide references to Cocteau Twins, The Sundays, Elliott Smith and Young Marble Giants thru modernist trip-pop structures that'll surely appeal to anyone into ML Buch, Erika de Casier, Smerz or that new James K record - another Escho smash basically.
Founded by Copenhagen underground mainstays Andrea Thuesen Johansen (of noise-rock trio Baby in Vain) and Vilhelm Tiburtz Strange (of smoove pop four-piece Liss), Snuggle is a fittingly modest Escho supergroup whose sound shouldn't be a huge surprise to devotees of the label. Baking themes that have been circling the RMC scene in the last few years, their debut album is almost sickeningly sweet - and hard to stop nibbling away at. It's a tray of detached, melancholy pop that's formed so flawlessly - rooted in a spread of sonic ingredients that we've never stopped going back to over the years - that it sits comfortably alongside contempo genre staples like 'Suntub'.
Theusen's voice falls somewhere between Alison Statton's and Harriet Wheeler's, cool, detached and achingly fragile, and is well matched by Strange's controlled but cannily penned miniatures. He sounds like Robin Guthrie covering 'Here's Where the Story Ends' at first on 'Dust', eventually offsetting the warbled, well-phased guitar chords with just-gritty-enough breaks that snap us in the direction of the trip-hop revival. Indie adorned with powdery boom-bap drums and samples wasn't a complete anomaly in the '90s - just poke thru the Grand Royal catalog and bands like Bran Van 3000 or Sukpatch, for example, who recently got a shot of adrenaline from Concentric Circles' reissue campaign. And the sound has finally come of age, an Ableton-era hallucination of music that's recognizable but not completely rinsed.
These elements are most prominent on the chugging, grungy opener 'Sun Tan' and the chirpy 'Driving Me Crazy', that's fleshed out with tasteful cello scrapes from Naja Soulie. But Snuggle lock into a deeper, more mysterious groove on 'Marigold' balancing out their dry, boxy drums with early Factory riffs before sliding towards Air's sensualized exotica in the final act, and Theusen's vocal melody is transfixingly twisty on 'Playthings', draped around splashy dubwise snares and a killer bassline from Strange. And although 'Sticks' sits way too close to the coffee table for our liking, 'Water in a Pond' sounds like Hope Sandoval singing Elliott Smith - unmissable, basically.
Tsapiky music from Southwest Madagascar features wild ecstatic vocals, distorted electric guitars, rocket bass, and the amphetamine beat! Unlike anything else, this is THE high life music you've always wanted - ceremonial music played with abandon and extreme intent, honoring the living and dead alike. In Toliara and its surrounding region, funerals, weddings, circumcisions and other rites of passage have been celebrated for decades in ceremonies called mandriampototse. During these celebrations – which last between three and seven days – cigarettes, beer and toaky gasy (artisanal rum) are passed around while electric orchestras play on the same dirt floor as the dancing crowds and zebus. The music, tsapiky, defies any classification. This compilation showcases the diversity of contemporary tsapiky music. Locally and even nationally renowned bands played their own songs on makeshift instruments, blaring through patched-up amps and horn speakers hung in tamarind trees, projecting the music kilometers away. Lead guitarists and female lead singers are the central figures of tsapiky. Driven as much by their creative impulses as by the need to stand out in a competitive market, the artists distinguish themselves stylistically through their lyrics, rhythms or guitar riffs. They must also master a wide repertoire of current tsapiky hits, which the families that attend inevitably request before parading in front of the orchestra with their offerings. This work, a constant push and pull between distinction and imitation, is nourished by fertile exchanges between various groups: acoustic and electric, rural and urban, coastal or inland. What results during these ceremonies is a music of astonishing intensity and creativity, played by artists carving out their own path, indifferent to the standards of any other music industry: Malagasy, African or global.
Unfolding over twelve nocturnal and nostalgic hours, Walk Don’t Run is a buddy-comedy-thriller chronicling the unraveling of a lifelong friendship one manic diner dash, hijacked Woodie Wagon, Big Dipper roller coaster ride, and 3AM surf sesh at a time. Soundtracked by demos culled from the Ry-Ko discard pile, Moody's instrumental shortcut is a snapshot of the mid-’60s surf music crash. In keeping with the film’s overnight theme, Walk Don’t Run trades in the loping, dreamy balladry of the era, shooting the echo-y curls of the private beach underground well after dark. If you want to stay friends—WALK DON'T RUN.
Feed Like Fishes is Should's first full-length record — an album of noisy, sedate, and minimal pop songs. Falling somewhere between shoegazer, slowcore, and postrock, Feed Like Fishes is a wonderfully complicated record that echoes the sounds of Yo La Tengo, Slowdive, Bedhead, and Galaxie 500. The album also includes Should's take on The Wedding Present song "Spangle."
The album begins with "Fish Fourteen," a fuzzed-out lo-fi instrumental inspired by Colin Newman's instrumental solo record, Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish. "Sarah Missing" fits perfectly with the work on Should's A Folding Sieve album, with its unforgettable vocal chorus awash in shoegazing delight.
"It Still Would" and "It's Pull Is Slight" are moderately-paced indie rock tunes that bring to mind Bedhead, the latter song featuring a parade of bells throughout its extended coda.
"Memdrive" encircles whispered vocals with gliding bass and guitar lines in the spirit of Main's early work. Should also explore Apollo-era Brian Eno on "Inst2" substituting heavy analog-delayed guitar notes for Eno's keyboards.
"Both Eyes Open" ends the record with a nod to the melodious, delicate side of Yo La Tengo with Marc and Tanya's coupled vocals going down as sweet as sugar.
Feed Like Fishes is Should's first full-length record — an album of noisy, sedate, and minimal pop songs. Falling somewhere between shoegazer, slowcore, and postrock, Feed Like Fishes is a wonderfully complicated record that echoes the sounds of Yo La Tengo, Slowdive, Bedhead, and Galaxie 500. The album also includes Should's take on The Wedding Present song "Spangle."
The album begins with "Fish Fourteen," a fuzzed-out lo-fi instrumental inspired by Colin Newman's instrumental solo record, Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish. "Sarah Missing" fits perfectly with the work on Should's A Folding Sieve album, with its unforgettable vocal chorus awash in shoegazing delight.
"It Still Would" and "It's Pull Is Slight" are moderately-paced indie rock tunes that bring to mind Bedhead, the latter song featuring a parade of bells throughout its extended coda.
"Memdrive" encircles whispered vocals with gliding bass and guitar lines in the spirit of Main's early work. Should also explore Apollo-era Brian Eno on "Inst2" substituting heavy analog-delayed guitar notes for Eno's keyboards.
"Both Eyes Open" ends the record with a nod to the melodious, delicate side of Yo La Tengo with Marc and Tanya's coupled vocals going down as sweet as sugar.
After a half decade slog in the Gilman Street punk scene as The Vagrants, Brian Jay, Nick Gancheff, Craig Miller, and Dave Henwood resurfaced with a new name and a new sound. Their mid-punk crisis in full bloom, the quartet abandoned dissonant guitars and garbled glass vocals in favor of a jangly, albeit introspective mood. Neither shoegaze nor emo, and sonically exiled from their Lookout Records peers, Pot Valiant carved out their own corner of the East Bay, releasing two singles and a brilliant LP before imploding in mid-1994.
By early 1994 Pot Valiant had graduated from brooding high school punk band to young adults with an ever widening spectrum of influences. Gone were the palm-muted guitars and downcast lyrics, replaced with a modern rock sensibility and command of the subtleties of the loud/quiet dynamic. The group’s sole LP was tracked in early 1994 for the Benicia-based Iteration Records, and released via famed distribution black hole Dutch East that summer to heady critical praise. The 10-song Transaudio was awash in dense, ringing guitars, powerful drumming, and a hushed vocal approach more at home in a bar than an all ages club tucked into an industrial part of Berkley.
Majesty Crush are a Detroit based shoegaze band from the 90s, but lightyears ahead of their time. They released their first and only studio album Love 15 on Dali Records, which was a subsidiary label of Warner/Elektra but folded shortly after its release. The album offers listeners a dreamy, guitar-driven sound that blurs the lines between indie rock and pop - something that is a defining feature of Majesty Crush.
If punk culture and aesthetics ever had a poet, it would undoubtedly be Kō Machida. Best known as the visionary frontman of the pioneering punk band INU and later acclaimed as a novelist, essayist, and professor, Machida has built a career at the intersection of raw musical energy and razor-sharp literary craftsmanship. Eleven years after the groundbreaking 1981 masterpiece INU – Meshi Kuuna!, Machida returned with a new creative chapter: the album *Harafuri*. This record marked a significant evolution, fusing his uncompromising lyrical power with the modernized sonic force of Kitazawagumi, a band whose sound became the perfect canvas for Machida’s sharp wit and emotional depth. Now, Harafuri sees its first-ever official reissue, presented with utmost care and attention to detail. Every element has been restored to honor both its cultural resonance and artistic precision. Most notably, this edition includes meticulously retranslated English lyrics—bringing Machida’s singular voice to an international audience without losing its vivid intensity and layered meaning. At once biting, poetic, and ferociously alive, Harafuri is more than an album: it is a literary and musical landmark that speaks across time and geography. With this reissue, listeners everywhere are invited to rediscover Kō Machida not only as a pioneering punk icon but as one of Japan’s most vital contemporary voices.
Come Back Down, the new album by Nashville experimental-pop duo Total Wife, was born from the edge of sleep. When composer and producer Luna Kupper would begin to fall asleep during late-night mixing sessions, the songs would follow her into the halfway place between dream and lucidity. Like Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, she’d wake with a new perspective on the puzzle she was piecing together. “I’m a psychological mixer — I’m trying to think of how someone’s experiencing the sound, versus getting stuck in trying to make all these different tones and using all this gear to make something sound a certain way,” Kupper says. And like a spiral from waking life into dream, the songs on Come Back Down are endlessly self-referential, building whole universes from a single point. Kupper sold all of her synths to make rent before she started working on the album, and so every inorganic sound is instead built from samples of the band’s own work. A guitar on one song may be reprocessed and used as a synth on the next, while everywhere on the album vocal samples are taken from a single unreleased cover of Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars.” In tribute to this process, the album was almost named The Julia Set after the mathematical equation which feeds into itself again and again, creating beautiful fractal images. The intention was to create something complex but accessible; experimental, yet precise and without abstraction. In her lyrics, too, main vocalist and co-composer Ash Richter is as straightforward as she’s ever been. She drew on her experience of pandemic isolation to write about connection and disconnection, using her lyrics as a tool for the communication that was missing in everyday life. On the soaring, shoegazey track “peaches”, a storm that forced the cancellation of a recording session became a metaphor for emotional distance. “still asleep” chronicles Richter’s euphoria after Total Wife’s first tour, and watches it begin to curdle into paranoia. “Thank the full moon, my heart is overflowing,” she sings, before: “Is there such a thing as too happy?” The experience of isolation was prompting Richter to think back to her childhood, a time marked for her by solitude and natural play — climbing trees, making mud pies, getting lost in the woods. On tracks like “in my head” and “second spring”, she uses the imagery of nature to recall that time and forge a connection with her lonely inner child. “I feel connected with transcendentalist writing and magical realism — trying to convey things in a concrete way, but with that element of psychology and mystery,” she says. Richter and Kupper, friends from high school, formed Total Wife in 2016, relocating from Boston to Nashville in 2020. Both are visual artists as well as musicians, which they incorporate into their work with Total Wife via layered and purposeful visuals. A DIY streak underpins everything that they do — from handling their own artwork and music videos to recording their own music, releasing tapes through their label Ivy Eat Home, and hosting house shows in the basement they’ve christened Ryman 2. In Nashville they’ve settled into a weirdo scene living under the record industry’s floorboards, a hive of collaborative and creative energy that has made them excited to call the city home. They also assembled a live band for the first time shortly after moving to Nashville, consisting of Ryan Bigelow, Sean Booz and Billy Campbell — injecting their creative process with a jolt of spontaneity and aliveness that has fed back into Come Back Down.
I Against I is the third studio album from Bad Brains, originally released in 1986 on SST Records. It remains influential to this day, inspiring countless punk, ska, reggae, and hardcore bands with its innovative sound and uncompromising attitude.
This reissue marks the eighth release in the remaster campaign, re-launching the Bad Brains Records label imprint. In coordination with the band, Org Music has overseen the restoration and remastering of the iconic Bad Brains’ recordings. The audio was mastered by Dave Gardner and pressed at Furnace Record Pressing.
Bad Brains is the self-titled debut studio album recorded by American hardcore punk/reggae band Bad Brains. Recorded in 1981 and released on (then) cassette-only label ROIR on February 5, 1982, many fans refer to it as "The Yellow Tape" because of it's yellow packaging. Though Bad Brains had recorded the 16 song Black Dots album in 1979 and the 5-song Omega Sessions EP in 1980, the ROIR cassette was the band's first release of anything longer than a single. The release includes the original liner notes by Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. This reissue marks the second release in the remaster campaign on the band's own Bad Brains Records imprint with Org Music. In coordination with the band, Org Music has overseen the restoration and remastering of the iconic Bad Brains' recordings. The audio was mastered by Dave Gardner at Infrasonic Mastering.
Vinyl LP pressing. Rock for Light is the second full-length album by Bad Brains, released in 1983. It was produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars. We're proud to present the original mix of the album, for the first time in decades, as the band originally intended. Most fans will be more familiar with the 1991 reissue, which was remixed by Ocasek and bass player Darryl Jenifer. In addition to new mixes, that version used an altered track order. This reissue marks the fourth release in the remaster campaign, re-launching the Bad Brains Records label imprint. In coordination with the band, Org Music has overseen the restoration and remastering of the iconic Bad Brains' recordings. The audio was mastered by Dave Gardner at Infrasonic Mastering and pressed at Furnace Record Pressing.
It just goes to show that a 3.5 score on Pitchfork doesn't matter in the end. Not that the taste-making site would review anything with less popularity than Charlie XCX these days but if it did (and they dared still give low scores) then in twenty five years time rest assured that the album will be getting a luxury reissue. That's basically what's happened with Tristeza's lovely shimmering post-rock album Dream Signals In Full Circles back out after twenty five long years.
