MUSIC

Queer tweemo from the pop fringe of Little Rock, Arkansas’s thriving ’90s DIY scene. Paper Airplanes, Paper Hearts gathers Everyone Asked About You’s complete recorded works, including the Let's Be Enemies LP and their two and a half 7"s released between 1997-2000. Remastered from the original DATs for maximum nostalgic crunch, this deluxe 2xLP is housed in a gatefold tip on sleeve and includes a 20-page book crammed with flyers, photos, lyrics, and an extensive essay on this crucial missing link between midwest emo and the Moog synthesizer.

Step inside the world of Ginger Root. Cameron Lew makes it easy to do so; every considered detail is his own manifestation, written, designed, and executed as an all-encompassing diorama of sound and sight. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and visual artist from Southern California, Lew has crafted his project steadily since 2017, inviting a fervent and growing legion of fans into storylines drawn across mediums: captivating albums with accompanying films and globe-spanning tours. The Ginger Root sound — handmade yet immaculately polished synth-pop, alt-disco, boogie, and soul — takes shape through Lew's lens as an Asian-American growing up enamored by 1970s and '80s music, specifically the creative and cultural dialogue between Japanese City Pop and its Western counterparts from French Pop to Philly Soul to Ram-era McCartney. He spins his retro-minded influences and proliferates savvily in the present, synthesizing a songwriter's wit, an editor's eye, and a producer’s resource into something singular and modern. SHINBANGUMI, his long-awaited third LP, and Ghostly International debut set for physical release in 2024 with a visual album component, translates roughly to a new season of a show. It finds Lew more poised, idiosyncratic, and intentional than ever in a new chapter of life, unlocking "exactly what Ginger Root should sound and feel like," he says. "In terms of instrumentation and musicality, it's the first time that I felt very confident and comfortable with what everything should be comprised of. On the more personal side, I'm coming out of the last four years of writing, touring, and living as a different person; SHINBANGUMI is a platform to showcase my new self." In parallel with the songs and his real-life artist story, unfolding across the sequential music video series, Lew resumes the conceptual narrative from his 2022 EP Nisemono, which follows Ginger Root as a newly-fired music supervisor in 1987 starting his own media conglomerate, Ginger Root Productions. "If you watch music videos one through eight, you'll be presented with a story that’s comparable to a traditional movie; something I've always wanted to do.” Splitting sessions between locations in Japan and back in Orange County, Lew paid extra attention to SHINBANGUMI’s track arrangement, tapping his close circle for input, including members of his live band and his longtime video collaborator, David Gutel. He sees the album’s arc in multiple acts, mapping the chronological listen with "just the right amount of like front-end punch and then letting you breathe, then sending you even faster in the middle section, and so on…I wanted to grab you by the collar in a good way and then not let you go until the last song." "No Problems" acts as the opening title sequence and a bridge to new terrain, with its singable basslines, swaggering guitar riffs, and clever keyboard hooks calling back to past fan favorites now with expanded scope. "All the sonic logos of Ginger Root are in this song," Lew says. "Better Than Monday" pokes fun at our universal dread of the week’s reset and plays with expectations, starting in a crunchy lo-fi space before blasting into hi-fi splendor, a super-charged, bass-bending stomp that rides out on his reprise, "It's the waitin' that you do (whatcha doin?)." What makes Ginger Root special is the project's ability to weave influence beyond pastiche into a bigger picture, exploring that rarified pop pleasure center where referential meets refreshing. "There Was A Time" honors the homespun melody-making of his favorite solo Beatle (early ‘70s Paul). Thinking about the song's utility within the overall sequence, like a scene break, Lew sought to write a lighter pop song. It doubles as the sweet wind-up for "All Night," a four-on-the-floor burner, a Ginger Root club cut albeit still with live instrumentation, inspired by his friend's seemingly endless night out in Paris. "This was my one attempt at writing a track that you can bump all night, but being the introvert that I am, I couldn't write it about me." With "Only You," Lew delivers his first straightforward take on the oft-cited genre: "I wanted to sit down and be in the mindset of, if I were to write a true City Pop song, what would I want it to sound like?” The result is an anthem brimming with deep bass disco grooves, shimmering synth glissandos, and a howling outro from the school of Prince and Chaka Khan. Meanwhile, the infectious and uncharacteristically guitar-driven "Giddy Up" stems from Lew’s love for The B-52s and Devo. Unpacking the message, he adds, "It could be a relationship with something, a passion, a project or whatever. If you want to do it, you gotta giddy up, buckle in, pull your boots up, and go for it." For "Kaze," recorded on a dusty drum kit in a karaoke bar in the middle of Tokyo's Asakusa district, he evokes the Tin Pan Alley sound of a hero, Harry Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra). Lew considers "Show 10" the spiritual heart of the record, the track that reminded him why he keeps Ginger Root going. Towards the end of his last album season, Lew recalls one night when tour fatigue was setting in, feeling like he didn't want to play the same set again: “I remember walking out into the crowd and seeing all the people who had high hopes for this show. I was like, man, you know, I've got to give it 10. I've got to show people my best." And with SHINBANGUMI, he has.

The music of LA-based Sudanese-American artist Dua Saleh (they/them) explores the inner self and the world at large. With their long-awaited full-length debut, a collection of R&B-infused electronic indie-pop songs titled I SHOULD CALL THEM, they portray the spiritual power, resilience, and joy of love. Equal parts imaginative and lived-through, it's a statement record only Saleh could make. Across three EPs since 2019, heralded by The New York Times ("commanding"), NPR ("visionary"), and Pitchfork ("ambitious and riveting") — alongside their breakout role in the Netflix series Sex Education — Saleh has deftly fused and inverted genre conventions with a socially conscious style driven by melody, grit, and bravado. Saleh’s foundation as first a skilled poet and their close ties to the indigenous roots have enriched their music with incredible depth. In 2023, they signed with Ghostly International with the punk-leaning standalone single “daylight falls” and took the cover of GAY TIMES as their Rising Star in Music honour recipient. Now squarely at the helm of their first LP — guests include Ambré, Gallant, serpentwithfeet, and Sid Sriram — Saleh shapes their most vulnerable work to date, an apocalyptic narrative informed by environmental anxieties and their experiences as a lover, holding personal truth and hope amidst chaos. Sonically, the album ushers in a new era for the artist whose boundless sound continues to expand. "It's important for me to heal by being fully myself," says Saleh, referring to the outsized role identity and gender expression play in their process. "I am being honest with myself with this record, this is my story." They see queer love as an act of defiance, be it figuratively, in the album's storyline, which follows two lovers at the end-of-times, or literally, in the many oppressed cultures around the world. They reference inspirations in popular culture with trans and queer representation such as Japanese manga and various memes like the one the album’s title winks at. They credit Minnesota, where Saleh came of age, for its inclusivity and catalyzing encouragement, and pay homage to the Midwest with the pulsing opening track "chi girl," which details the playful pursuit of a crush in Chicago. Saleh finds a kindred spirit in serpentwithfeet, who duets with them on the striking, string-backed "unruly." "Something about his voice is so captivating," says Saleh. "I think our connection musically is queerness, being able to have that against-all-odds connection with somebody where we may have had to resist our identity initially when we were younger. There's a power that queerness holds for both of us." The song pairs otherworldly atmospherics with a tangible bounce. serpentwithfeet rings questions into the night ("how'd I get so unruly") as Saleh trails with hushed hooks and sly verses. Throughout I SHOULD CALL THEM, Saleh is elastic in how they use their voice and tune the scenery to love's sweetness and the moments that challenge it. "want" uses straightforward R&B rock elements to underscore feelings of betrayal and resignation. "pussy suicide" is pure jealousy. Flanked by a looping guitar riff and moody trap beat, Saleh's delivery adopts different pitches, from low, morphing drawls to high-register raps. They go tender on the Sid Sriram-featuring "time & time again." Saleh says the song reflects someone who "could have been the forever person but we weren't meant to be in this time. We still have this deep bond and, maybe this happens more in queer relationships, we still look out for each other." It embodies the softness required to survive. On the smooth, surrealist back half highlight "television," they harmonize with Ambré. "I feel a spiritual rush when I listen to the music that comes out of New Orleans, and I feel it in my gut with Ambré’s," says Saleh. Gallant guests on "coast," playing the classic R&B counterpart to Saleh's hyper-pop-inspired vocal take. Album closer "2excited" finds the characters in Saleh's story embracing a rapturous love realized as the world crumbles — signaled by a 'Black Metal R&B' blowout of ascending percussion and guitar, saxophone sighs, and guttural cries. It is ecstasy and dread personified, catharsis for modern times, and a thrilling example of an artist unafraid and thriving.

“I could not be alive alone,” a longtime family friend said to Merce with a smile. “None of us could be alive alone.” Within the quiet, cascading corners of Pittsburgh lies a community – nothing short of one large family – that spans zip codes, histories, occupations, and generations, always tumbling into itself, propped up by steadfast pillars of conviction toward spiritual and emotional mutual aid. The kind of earnest community scaffolding that gets bandied about, wielded as conjecture, particularly in an age of increasing fracture through digital sublimation, is alive and quite well within the universe surrounding Merce Lemon. When asked how the city has inspired her creative practice, she responds with a characteristic joke wrapped in an earthen warmth – “There are big hills, three rivers, and more bridges than anywhere in the whole world.” Growing up in a family of art and music in a city with a small, but vigorously supportive scene, Merce has been going to shows here her whole life, even playing them with the “grown up” friends of her parents – as recently as a few years ago, her band was comprised of her own father and his peers in the Pittsburgh music community. Merce took a step back in 2020, after releasing her last album 'Moonth', to reassess during an era of anxiety and lockdown – even the reliably nourishing exercise of sharing and playing music felt precarious. “I was grappling with what kind of relationship I wanted with music in my life. It was just something I’d always done, and I didn't want to lose the magic of that – but I was just having less fun.” In this time of restless non-direction, she turned her gaze inwardly, down to the roots – figuratively and literally. “I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer. I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time I just slowly accumulated songs.” A never-ending creative hunger, supported by the community framework she’d always been able to depend on, had been newly fertilized by the wide-eyed inspiration that came from plunging her hands into both the earth’s soil and her own. Rooting around for an answer, finding and turning in her palms what had been buried there all along – from this rediscovery, imbued with the vitality of earth’s green magic, 'Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild' sprouted forth. The album emerges, enveloped in propulsive guitars and saccharine-sweet songs of blackbirds and blueberries, from the dead-calm center of a pastoral frenzy in a manner that one could argue as erratic, reckless — a grave misconception, as Merce is just as aware of where she’s being pulled from as she is curious about where to go next. Her sound is built upon a reverence and gratitude for the natural world, how paying respect to it charts a more confident path through the choppy waters of the heart. On the soft and confessional “Rain,” she maps memory onto the stillness of the landscape around her, panning for clarity in an endlessly blue sky: “I can see your relentlessness / in the muddy puddles where retting is / shattering the splintered stalks / where golden braids pour into drops." In her music, romantic and familial love rips into and out of itself, barely registering as disparate feelings in the flurry of reckoning. Lead single “Backyard Lover” is an honest and incisive exploration of this confused, raw intimacy. In it, a warm memory gently meanders alongside warbling steel and guitars, tinged with a classic outlaw haze, before it suddenly erupts with the frustration of a broken promise, making way for a cathartic sonic fury – “what dying felt like / a wooden spoon tossed in the fire / cause nothings good enough / you fucking liar.“ The song’s climax deftly uncovers the formidable heartbeat hidden underneath the floorboards of her creative expulsion: loss. “So many of my songs are touched by and explore death, specifically in relation to the loss I experienced of my best friend when I was fifteen years old” says Merce. “That loss has forever changed me and who I am in my relationships to lovers, friends, family." In reconciling the quiet conflict of a desire for closeness and a solitude cultivated by distrust, there is a fierceness, a persistence in her vulnerability, matched in droves by the wildness of her band. These songs range, often within the structure of a single track, from ballads to blown out electric riffs combating feedback, harmonies concealed behind wailing guitars, both dependent on each other as they careen towards new meaning. They build slowly, synthesizing a naturalist’s penchant for romance and nihilism to create the warring, triumphantly escalating nature of Merce’s lyrics and her band’s heavy entropy. For Merce, the only certainty is the endlessly shifting nature of a river, roaring straight past a dogwood, never missing the opportunity to watch a petal fluttering to the ground in the rear view. They are songs of belonging just as much as they are songs of longing – ”Say I was a lonely gust of wind / could I redirect them,” she muses in “Crow”, one of the more hopeful tracks on the record. Its structure is simple, gentle acoustics pushed forward by an ever-present and fluid percussion that guides the song as naturally as Merce hopes to guide the “murderous flock,” forgoing the voyeur in all of our hearts and comfortably settling in the supportive role of a shepherd – “I’d make a city of this ghost town / even let the crows come / rest their necks / and nest their young.” There is an oaken strength in 'Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild' that makes it easy to love – once wild, still free, honest and familiar. Its genesis is timeless, its restlessness eternal – it is one cohesive yet unanswered question built around, and dependent upon, the life-giving force of nature that came before Merce. The album’s closing track also inspires its title – a lonely ballad of forlorn projection into an unknown future, forever protected by the comforting green of Pittsburgh’s hills, rivers, bridges, and homes: “Old man howling / laughing his teeth out / with the dogs down the hill. And a tree fell / I smell the wood / and the bark is coming off in sheets / I write my words down on it. And honestly / the thoughts of a husband / weighing on me.”

“I've been thinking a lot about Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. That was a really important touchstone in my mind,” says ANOHNI of her sixth studio album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross. “A couple of these songs are almost a response to the call of What's Going On, from 2023. They are a kind of an echo from the future to that album from 50 years ago.”

As the British-born, New York-based artist’s first full album since 2016’s HOPELESSNESS, ANOHNI explains that the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it.

A record its creator acknowledges is inextricably both personal and political, and one that is full of heartfelt music that also questions its own right to be heard, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross demonstrates music’s unique capacity to bring harmony to competing, sometimes contradictory, elements.

“For me, there's no heavenly respite; creation is a spectral and feminine continuum, and our souls are an inalienable part of nature.”

In 2022, having sought producer recommendations from Rough Trade Records’ Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis, ANOHNI began working with Jimmy Hogarth (Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Tina Turner) noting his sensitivity towards soul music. Having always helmed and written her previous records – bar HOPELESSNESS, for some of which, producers were invited to submit instrumentals – this kind of collaboration was a first for ANOHNI. “There was a great ease to this songwriting process,” she says of her writing and recording sessions with Hogarth. “I loved making this record in a way that I've never done before.”

Bringing in with her several years of texts, ANOHNI and Hogarth shared musical ideas and sketched out a series of demos with Hogarth playing guitar. Hogarth then assembled a studio band – including guitarist Leo Abrahams and string arranger/instrumentalist Rob Moose – to record the full album.

“Many of the recordings on this record – like“It Must Change”and “Can't” – capture the first and only time I have sung those songs through. There's a magic when you suddenly place words you have been thinking about for a long time into melody. A neural system awakens. It isn't personal and yet is so personal. Things connect and come alive.”

Hogarth’s intuitive guitar leads the listener across ten songs, touching on elements of American soul, British folk and experimental music. ANOHNI places her heart on the line and in a groove in the opening track “It Must Change,”describing systems in collapse with a note of compassion for humanity: “The truth is I always thought you were beautiful in your own way / That’s why this is so sad.”“Scapegoat” waivers between tenderness and instrumental brutality, “Take all of my hate into your body / It doesn’t matter what you’ve got to give / or why you want to live / You’re my scapegoat / It’s not personal.” The primordial, Kali-esque curse “Rest” positions the record at moments in conversation with experimental rock of the 1970s: “Rest like the enemy of all that sees / Rest like the enemy of all that breathes / In the poison ocean blue / She’ll come home to you.” “Go Ahead” presses melody through dissonance. “You are determined to take me down / Go ahead kill your friends / I can’t stop you.” My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross shape shifts through its subject matter: the loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, privilege, denial, ecocide and the tidal power of Earth, isolation, Future Feminism, and the intention that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our religious ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature.

“You know how they always said that light was the opposite of darkness? / It’s just fire in darkness, creating life / So those opposites, they don’t exist / It’s just an idea that someone told you” (“It Must Change”)

ANOHNI’s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. “I don’t want you to be dead, I can’t accept it,” she cries out at the climax of “Can’t.” “We’re not getting out of here / No one’s getting out of here / This is our world,” she murmurs on “It Must Change.” “How sweet the vista, the portal view / On my way to black and blue,” she grieves on “Sliver of Ice,” a remembering of some of the last words Lou Reed shared with her.

A portrait of gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop features on the cover of My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross, reflecting a 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work. Paintings by Sylvester Hustito, a Zuni Two Spirit artist from New Mexico, depict another crucial vision of America, from a queer, indigenous historical point of view. On “You Be Free,” ANOHNI sings from with heartbreak about the passing of trans intergenerational knowledge: “Done my work / My back was broke / My back was a bridge for you to cross / Then I wished in the aftermath / That the Earth would take my life / Like she took the lives of my Mother and my Sister.”

“I'm careful with the emotional pathways I am drawing. The stories we tell ourselves are the basis of our cultural mythologies, and often a foreshadowing of our destinies. We live in a world where story-telling has become another abuse of power, a threat, fake news, anti-female, anti-nature,” ANOHNI says of her intentions as lyricist. The album artwork states simply ”IT’S TIME TO FEEL WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING”. In some ways it feels as if she is reaching across her life’s expression, and has found a moment of unique composure, wearing her long exploration of disarming intensity, but with the maturity of a painter choosing colors.

On listening to My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, one is reminded of music’s power and ability to articulate the political and the personal concurrently. “As much as I was British or American, I was identified as a non-viable part of family, community, church, society. At moments I was deemed not worth protecting, as being expendable, on account of my femininity. Ultimately that was a gift for me because it brought me unique insight into the societies I found myself having to navigate. It forced me to be more willing to look at who and where I really was.”

With “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” Marvin Gaye made a visionary plea for the environment in 1971, a gesture that ANOHNI has echoed across her own output, from “Rapture” in 1992 and “Another World” in 2009, to “4 Degrees” and “Why Did You Separate Me From The Earth?” from her last record HOPELESSNESS in 2016.

ANOHNI’s approach since her last record has shifted from someone tasked with challenging global denial, to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. “I want the record to be useful. I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief.”

“I see myself as a part of a process. I know that I'm not there, but I feel that someone in the future might know how to get there. An innovation in our way of dreaming or thinking might help us get back home. I hope that this record is another step in that direction. As problematic and broken as it might be, maybe there's an element in this music that's going to be useful to a future iteration of us. They're going to be able to distill what's right about it and make something better out of it. So I do my work hoping that someone's going to be able to pick it up and take it further, that it can be a source of something positive at some later point in our evolution – if we're lucky to continue to have an evolution.”

“We are each moving through massive impersonal systems that we feel powerless to change. And yet we're being asked in this moment to pull back the curtain and recognize these systems for what they are - not the preordained will of a god, but something we created over centuries. If we can’t do this collectively, we will forfeit our remaining ability to influence our trajectory. We have to dismantle systems that are destructive, and yet upon which many of us are dependent. Whether it’s because of malevolence, or fear, or addiction… ultimately it’s been one big survival strategy. We've never been faced with a challenge this consequential before as a species. Because of their structural hatred of Femaleness, Abrahamic religions and capitalism can only realize an apocalyptic future, rather than facilitate the emergence of a life-sustaining sensibility that might allow us to continue to exist as a part of Nature. So that's a challenge that we're facing now.” 

The follow up to their well received debut album ‘Moot!’, the record draws influences from alternative guitar music in its many forms, using electronic manipulations and sampling techniques to redefine it's context, not settling on any one style but moving through them in search of new connections. By exploring these relationships, Moin delivers another collage of the known and unknown, punctuated by words that are just out of reach.

Southern California shoegaze squad Cold Gawd return to Dais for their second and most supreme suite yet of crushing downer bliss: 'I’ll Drown On This Earth'. From the defiant scream that kicks off opening cut “Gorgeous,” the album rips in what singer and principal songwriter Matthew Wainwright describes as “go for it” mode: holding back nothing, wasting no time. Although the bulk of the songs were written in 2022, recording sessions weren’t booked until March of 2024, which allowed ample time to refine and distill the music’s hooks, heaviness, and haze. The result is a perfect storm of distortion and dream pop, cracked love songs cloaked in swooning walls of noise.Recorded at Paradise Recorders in Anaheim, California with Colin Knight (of post-punk unit Object of Affection), Wainwright tracked the strings while Cameron Fonacier handled drums. The process was efficient and effective, sharpened by years of performance. Anthemic headbangers like “Portland,” “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned For A Thing I Cannot Name,” and “Malibu Beach House” sound as dynamic as they do dialed-in, soaked into the bones of the players. The lyrics came last, written by Wainwright a week before recording. Moods of surreality (“I can hear the blood in my fingers / nothing tunes out / the world’s too loud”), infatuation (“I will follow / everywhere you go / any way to feel / how you glow”), and melancholy (“God kept me around / for no good reason”) flicker and fade within a fog of memory and reverb.As on 2022’s 'God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here', Cold Gawd's contemporary vision of shoegaze manifests intriguingly in outlier moments, like the hushed, whirlpool reverie of “Tappan,” or the vaporous, slow-grind downtempo of ““Nudism”” (complete with regal piano outro). Theirs is a muse as vivid as it is varied, from Loveless, to Drake, post-hardcore and Beach House. Drown evocatively captures the expanding canon of Cold Gawd, dense with riffs and raptures, escape and revelation, channeled from stacked amps and hidden powers: “Give praise / to whatever / I got time for / hallelujah.”

Consider this your invitation to Café Molly, a lounge bar like they don’t make them anymore. The lights are low, the martinis are ice cold, the banquettes are velvet, and the stage is set for the electrifying talent of whistler Molly Lewis. Molly’s soft-focus cocktail music conjures up visions of classic Hollywood jazz clubs, Italian cinema soundtracks and lingering embraces between lovers. After the exotica stylings of The Forgotten Edge EP and the tropicalia-indebted Mirage EP, Molly wanted to encapsulate the sound of Café Molly for her debut album On The Lips, a dreamy tribute to classic mood music. That spellbinding sound, which usually comes to life in Los Angeles, has also popped up in Mexico City dancehalls, graced the runways of Paris and London Fashion Weeks, and made a magical appearance at a children's fairyland. Molly Lewis’s love for this smoky corner of the world doesn’t end with her songwriting. She is a devotee and an archivist, capturing and enlivening the pieces that endure. She was a regular at the legendary shows by Marty and Elayne, the lounge duo who spent almost 40 years playing LA’s Dresden bar. The duo came to global fame after an appearance in 1996’s Swingers and kept going long after that spotlight faded, finally finishing their nightly residency after the death of Marty at the ripe age of 89 last year. “That felt like the end of an era,” says Molly. But there are still flashes of that world to be found, and she finds them. “I’ve been spending a lot of time in New York lately, where there are a lot more of those moody, classic jazz bars,” she explains. Molly celebrates the poet Kenneth ‘Sonny’ Donato, a former drinking buddy of Charles Bukowski, on the album’s swooning ‘Sonny’. “He’s a total LA character with a great voice and great style, as well as a champion of me and my music,” says Molly, who met Sonny when he was tending bar at Hollywood’s iconic Musso and Frank. “He would MC my Café Molly shows and introduce the night with a poem about LA. Everyone loves him.” Over the past few years Molly has flexed her one-of-a-kind musical skill alongside Mark Ronson on the Barbie soundtrack, as well as with Dr Dre, Karen O, actor John C Reilly, Mac De Marco, fashion houses Chanel, Gucci and Hermes, and folk rock royalty Jackson Browne. After a performance with longtime friend Weyes Blood on Burt Bacharach’s The Look of Love during a Café Molly evening at LA’s Zebulon, Molly supported the singer on a US tour, introducing her sound to a brand new audience. “I forget sometimes that what I do has that factor of surprise and uniqueness – it is something that most people have never seen before,” says Molly. She too might never have entered the idiosyncratic world of whistling had she not as a teenager seen the 2005 documentary Pucker Up, which details the International Whistling Competition. Equally amused and bemused by the eccentric event, in 2012 she competed herself. Spending her early twenties in Berlin she then moved to LA to work in film – and returned to the contest in 2015 to take home first prize. One evening Molly did a turn at an open mic at the Kibitz Room, a tiny late-night bar inside historic LA deli Canter’s. Her display led to appearances at performance art happenings across the city, and she soon caught the ear of independent record label Jagjaguwar. On The Lips was recorded with producer Thomas Brenneck of the Menahan Street Band, Budos Band, Dap-Kings and El Michels Affair, at his newly-built Diamond West Studios in Pasadena. The pair bonded over the work of 1960s soundtrack composers Alessandro Alessandroni and Piero Piccioni, and, with something of an open door policy during the sessions, a stream of acclaimed musicians ended up across the album’s 10 tracks. “We were all sitting around having beers and amazing people would just come by,” says Molly, who fitted out the studio with a vintage tiki bar she picked up at a local flea market. “It was a wonderful place to be social, sometimes almost too social!” Step forward Nick Hakim, who would lend bossa nova piano to ‘Cocosette’, which also features the smooth sounds of Latin Grammy-nominated Brazilian guitarist Rogê. Elsewhere Leland Whitty of Canadian instrumental group Badbadnotgood lends a searing saxophone line to the jazzy ‘Lounge Lizard’, while Sal Samano and Alex Garcia of Chicano soul group Thee Sacred Souls appear on the melancholy ‘Crushed Velvet’. Badbadnotgood’s Chester Hansen also plays bass across the album, while Beck collaborator Roger Joseph Manning Jr. lends organ to the lush ‘Moon Tan’, which pays homage to film score composer Piero Umiliani. Experimental jazz pianist Marco Benevento and El Michels Affair’s Leon Michels both crop up on the perky ‘Silhouette’. There are a couple of covers, too, just like you’ll hear at a Café Molly night. This time it’s Dave Berry’s 1960s pop standard ‘The Crying Game’ and Jeanette’s ‘Porqué Te Vas’, which Molly fell in love with after hearing it on the soundtrack of Carlos Saura’s acclaimed 1976 drama Cría Cuervos. “The original is such a great song – I always wanted to do a few covers and I don't really gravitate towards more upbeat music in my own songwriting, so it was fun to try and think of a more upbeat track to include, to try to kind of change up the movement of the record.” With her intoxicating compositions, and wry brand of stagecraft (she might not be singing up there, but she can sure tell a joke) Molly Lewis looks set to join her heroes in the storied lore of the Los Angeles lounge scene and beyond. So pull up a chair, order your favorite drink, and prepare to fall for On The Lips.

Japanese musician Hakushi Hasegawa/長谷川白紙 proudly announces their new album Mahōgakkō/魔法学校 for LA-based Brainfeeder Records, out July 24th. As part of the announcement, Hasegawa shares a new single and video – “Boy’s Texture” – serving as the album’s second single after last year’s “Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)”. The news arrives alongside Hasegawa’s grand gesture of revealing their face to fans for the very first time, unveiling a new side of the elusive and compelling artist.

“Boy’s Texture” sprints with all the energy of springtime. A warm, easygoing guitar forms the track’s main center, a through line as skittering synths, pounding drums, and a chorus of voices swirl around it. The video, directed by Gauspel (Brandon Saunders), explores the desire to find a missing piece of yourself in the wild. “Most people hold this preconceived notion that your being will be complete upon this revelation and that the broken pieces that comprise you will find their final puzzle piece,” he explains. “But there is no such grand revelation, just self-reflection… just you.”

Mahōgakkō, translating to “Magic School,” also seeks to make sense of a chaotic, vibrant world by letting itself get swept up in it. A balance of pop and pandemonium, the album is one of extremes, where chipmunk-pitched voices square off against percussion set to speed metal’s tempo and volume. Noise and melody, cutesy and aggressive, acoustic and electronic — all come to a head in a process Hasegawa calls the Explanatory Ratio.

“The balance is probably the only thing in my work that is intentional and very important to me,” shares Hasegawa. “In many of my songs, I use a scale that I personally call the ‘Explanatory Ratio’ to guide my work. This is not a sophisticated musical theory at all, but simply a subjective scale that looks at the balance of sounds that are explainable to me and sounds that are not explainable to me, and whether or not they are distributed in the ratio that I set for each piece.”

Mahōgakkō finds Hakushi pushing their boundaries to the absolute limit, with hyperspeed jungle and breakcore traded up for the even more pummeling onslaughts inspired by Tanzanian singeli so that they become just another texture in the wild sonic landscapes. And just when your senses are bordering on overloaded, Hakushi gifts you a moment of sweet reprieve before the roller coaster sets off again with hectic syncopations and harmonic jumps not for the faint of heart.

Impressively, the eye of this maelstrom revolves solely around Hasegawa, who taps only a few select collaborators to enliven their vision. Those who caught lead single “Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)” will recall bassist Sam Wilkes added depth to the track juxtaposed against Hasegawa’s high-pitched singing. The lone featured vocalist rapper KID FRESINO lends his voice to “Gone,” where FRESINO’s determined flow seems to ground the skittering drums from spiraling out of control. NYC-based jazz composer Miho Hazama likewise lends her own form of control to “KYŌFUNOHOSHI”, guiding horns and saxes brought in by Yohchi Masago, Ryo Konishi, and Tomoaki Baba (J-Squad).

With Mahōgakkō there is no doubt that this is the sound of a once-in-a-generation artist not just breaking boundaries for Japanese music but global music culture and it will leave you with no doubt that Hakushi Hasegawa is only really just getting started. 

Prospect Hummer, 2005 EP by Animal Collective featuring Vashti Bunyan on three tracks, is reissued on black vinyl

The second part of Matador’s reissues of the essential early records by Texas’s Butthole Surfers continues with three of their most insane slabs -- 1985’s ‘Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis,’ 1987’s ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ and 1988’s ‘Hairway to Steven.’

The period during which these records were first issued parallels the Buttholes’ transition from being weirdo Texas outcasts to becoming internationally recognized smut-kings of the American underground. In 1985 they were still the sole province of hallucingen-soaked punk rock freaks. By 1988 they had toured Europe, had records licensed internationally, and bought a house in Driftwood Texas to serve as their home base. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

‘Hairway to Steven’ is a blast, ranging from the blood-smeared guitar-overload of “Jimi” to the acoustic guitar-based sing-along sweetness of “I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas” to the Fugs-like ranting of “John E. Smokes.” Yet somehow, the album managed to get the straight media to actually notice. For all its strangeness, ‘Hairway’ got rave notices in places that had never paid the band any attention previously. It was the Buttholes’ last album of the ‘80s and marks the beginning of their ascendance into something akin to commercial success. Not that the band actually imagined anything at all like that occurring.

The second part of Matador’s reissues of the essential early records by Texas’s Butthole Surfers continues with three of their most insane slabs -- 1985’s ‘Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis,’ 1987’s ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ and 1988’s ‘Hairway to Steven.’

The period during which these records were first issued parallels the Buttholes’ transition from being weirdo Texas outcasts to becoming internationally recognized smut-kings of the American underground. In 1985 they were still the sole province of hallucingen-soaked punk rock freaks. By 1988 they had toured Europe, had records licensed internationally, and bought a house in Driftwood Texas to serve as their home base. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

‘Hairway to Steven’ is a blast, ranging from the blood-smeared guitar-overload of “Jimi” to the acoustic guitar-based sing-along sweetness of “I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas” to the Fugs-like ranting of “John E. Smokes.” Yet somehow, the album managed to get the straight media to actually notice. For all its strangeness, ‘Hairway’ got rave notices in places that had never paid the band any attention previously. It was the Buttholes’ last album of the ‘80s and marks the beginning of their ascendance into something akin to commercial success. Not that the band actually imagined anything at all like that occurring.

言わずと知れたスロウコアの大名盤！これは是非聞いておくがいい。自国のソウル、ゴスペル、ファンクにとどまらず、ニューエイジ・ミュージック始祖ヤソスや日本からは原マスミまで、世界各地のオブスキュアなサウンドを掘り起こしてきた米国の大名門〈Numero〉からは、1998年に〈Up Records〉からリリースされたDusterのデビュー・スタジオ・アルバム『Stratosphere』が25周年を記念してアニヴァーサリー・リイシュー。スロウコアの第一波の頂点にたつ一枚であり、子宮の中で聞くべき！暗い空間と閉じた瞼のための音楽にして、パンクの鋸歯状のエッジを持つアンビエント・ミュージック。

Tracked in the decade after Duster went on hiatus, Canaan Amber's debut solo EP CA demonstrates the California-born guitarist's affection for San Francisco jangle and Santa Cruz surf. Crawling at a banana slug's pace, Canaan wraps the loneliest one-string guitar solos around a cluster of hollow rhythms and ghostly mumbles. The original 2012 five-song CD has been expanded to include seven other demos plundered from the prolific songwriter's vault. More Wolf Moon than Black Moon, CA continues to explore and map the hidden galaxies that make up the Duster universe.

Gather your loved ones, Together is here. Duster’s fourth album is a 13-song exploration of comfortable, interplanetary goth. A sonic vaseline of submerged guitars, solder-burned synths, and over-driven rhythm tracks. “I know people say, ‘Oh Duster music so sad, we've even said it ourselves before,” Clay Parton said. “But it's a lot more like absurdism than nihilism.”

Step inside the world of Ginger Root. Cameron Lew makes it easy to do so; every considered detail is his own manifestation, written, designed, and executed as an all-encompassing diorama of sound and sight. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and visual artist from Southern California, Lew has crafted his project steadily since 2017, inviting a fervent and growing legion of fans into storylines drawn across mediums: captivating albums with accompanying films and globe-spanning tours. The Ginger Root sound — handmade yet immaculately polished synth-pop, alt-disco, boogie, and soul — takes shape through Lew's lens as an Asian-American growing up enamored by 1970s and '80s music, specifically the creative and cultural dialogue between Japanese City Pop and its Western counterparts from French Pop to Philly Soul to Ram-era McCartney. He spins his retro-minded influences and proliferates savvily in the present, synthesizing a songwriter's wit, an editor's eye, and a producer’s resource into something singular and modern. SHINBANGUMI, his long-awaited third LP, and Ghostly International debut set for physical release in 2024 with a visual album component, translates roughly to a new season of a show. It finds Lew more poised, idiosyncratic, and intentional than ever in a new chapter of life, unlocking "exactly what Ginger Root should sound and feel like," he says. "In terms of instrumentation and musicality, it's the first time that I felt very confident and comfortable with what everything should be comprised of. On the more personal side, I'm coming out of the last four years of writing, touring, and living as a different person; SHINBANGUMI is a platform to showcase my new self." In parallel with the songs and his real-life artist story, unfolding across the sequential music video series, Lew resumes the conceptual narrative from his 2022 EP Nisemono, which follows Ginger Root as a newly-fired music supervisor in 1987 starting his own media conglomerate, Ginger Root Productions. "If you watch music videos one through eight, you'll be presented with a story that’s comparable to a traditional movie; something I've always wanted to do.” Splitting sessions between locations in Japan and back in Orange County, Lew paid extra attention to SHINBANGUMI’s track arrangement, tapping his close circle for input, including members of his live band and his longtime video collaborator, David Gutel. He sees the album’s arc in multiple acts, mapping the chronological listen with "just the right amount of like front-end punch and then letting you breathe, then sending you even faster in the middle section, and so on…I wanted to grab you by the collar in a good way and then not let you go until the last song." "No Problems" acts as the opening title sequence and a bridge to new terrain, with its singable basslines, swaggering guitar riffs, and clever keyboard hooks calling back to past fan favorites now with expanded scope. "All the sonic logos of Ginger Root are in this song," Lew says. "Better Than Monday" pokes fun at our universal dread of the week’s reset and plays with expectations, starting in a crunchy lo-fi space before blasting into hi-fi splendor, a super-charged, bass-bending stomp that rides out on his reprise, "It's the waitin' that you do (whatcha doin?)." What makes Ginger Root special is the project's ability to weave influence beyond pastiche into a bigger picture, exploring that rarified pop pleasure center where referential meets refreshing. "There Was A Time" honors the homespun melody-making of his favorite solo Beatle (early ‘70s Paul). Thinking about the song's utility within the overall sequence, like a scene break, Lew sought to write a lighter pop song. It doubles as the sweet wind-up for "All Night," a four-on-the-floor burner, a Ginger Root club cut albeit still with live instrumentation, inspired by his friend's seemingly endless night out in Paris. "This was my one attempt at writing a track that you can bump all night, but being the introvert that I am, I couldn't write it about me." With "Only You," Lew delivers his first straightforward take on the oft-cited genre: "I wanted to sit down and be in the mindset of, if I were to write a true City Pop song, what would I want it to sound like?” The result is an anthem brimming with deep bass disco grooves, shimmering synth glissandos, and a howling outro from the school of Prince and Chaka Khan. Meanwhile, the infectious and uncharacteristically guitar-driven "Giddy Up" stems from Lew’s love for The B-52s and Devo. Unpacking the message, he adds, "It could be a relationship with something, a passion, a project or whatever. If you want to do it, you gotta giddy up, buckle in, pull your boots up, and go for it." For "Kaze," recorded on a dusty drum kit in a karaoke bar in the middle of Tokyo's Asakusa district, he evokes the Tin Pan Alley sound of a hero, Harry Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra). Lew considers "Show 10" the spiritual heart of the record, the track that reminded him why he keeps Ginger Root going. Towards the end of his last album season, Lew recalls one night when tour fatigue was setting in, feeling like he didn't want to play the same set again: “I remember walking out into the crowd and seeing all the people who had high hopes for this show. I was like, man, you know, I've got to give it 10. I've got to show people my best." And with SHINBANGUMI, he has.

aja monet’s poems are a work of gravity. A surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, aja won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007. In 2018, she was nominated for a NAACP Literary Award for Poetry and in 2019 was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. Her work moves, constantly, between origin and outcome, allowing them to exist in converse. In her debut album when the poems do what they do, releasing June 9 via drink sum wtr, we glimpse her indefatigable commitment to speak. Those thematic origins of this album at times center around Black resistance, love and the inexhaustible quest for joy. In when the poems do what they do, aja monet appears as a woman of letters and storm, her poems do not roar in pentameter - but rather in storm surge because, “Who’s got time for poems when the world is on fire?!.” And this work isn’t one to pull apart into one liners, these are poems of things felt. There is a fullness here that can’t be encapsulated in even the boundaries that language offers. aja is joined in effort on this album by musicians Christian Scott (trumpet), Samora Pinderhughes (piano), Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Luques Curtis (bass), Weedie Braimah (djembe) and Marcus Gilmore (drums). Together, creating music that is insistent and unrelenting. When you finally reach the end of this album, you are left with a similar feeling you get when heartbroken, the gravity of barrelling back down to earth, sopping wet with tears, out of breath, overcome with love, despair, hope, and all too aware that all of this, is over far too soon. When the poems do what they do, they do absolutely everything.

ike an unsent love letter to a psychedelic London where everyone is trying to find their way to a secret Television Personalities gig, Cuneiform Tabs emerge with an astounding debut of lo-fi pop and DIY experimentation. A hazy collage of joyful heartaches, twisted children's TV themes and sing-song melodies, the album echoes the sounds of '60s AM radio from a dozen narrow alleyways to the North. Over 18 months, the Tabs' Matt Bleyle and Sterling Mackinnon traded 4-track tapes between the Bay Area and the UK. While they previously played together in indie band Violent Change, the duo's physical distance and their songwriting process of building, blurring and distorting across the Atlantic would create something no one saw coming. Grabbing any instruments at their disposal and splitting vocal duties, Bleyle and Mackinnon pushed their Tascam to its limit to make glittering, odd-shaped gems. There is an insular feel to Cuneiform Tabs, suited for late nights after the entire city has stumbled into dreamtime or lazy afternoons when you can't quite recall where you need to be, but you know you won't make it there on time. It's like a pirate radio show where Bob Pollard alternates Swell Maps and Cleaners From Venus records while randomly unplugging various bits of gear and reading passages from a book on R.D. Laing.。

“Music is a very personal thing. How you deal with your music is very closely linked with how you deal with your life. If you misuse your capacities as a musician, you’re misusing your capacities as a human being and you’re taking humanity in the wrong direction”
- Arthur Russell – 03/17/77 Soho Weekly News

“In outer space you can’t take your drums - you take your mind”
- Arthur Russell

In 1986 Arthur Russell was diagnosed with HIV, that same year he released his career-defining masterpiece ‘World of Echo’, the first and only solo album issued during his lifetime.

Arthur had found his voice and a fresh direction with a set of new, transformative material, unlike anything he or anyone else had previously released. His illness ensured that the artistic growth and sense of exploration encapsulated in ‘World of Echo’ would be tragically curtailed. Within six short years Arthur was gone.

Arthur’s final years were filled with a renewed commitment to creativity and unceasing live and recording work. He regularly performed the ‘World of Echo’ material and incorporated several of its compositions in collaborations with choreographers active in New York’s innovative dance community. Arthur worked closely with Diane Madden, Allison Salzinger, Stephanie Woodard and John Bernd, usually playing his cello and effects boxes off stage as the choreographers’ pieces were performed. In 1993 Arthur posthumously received a prestigious Bessie Composer Award for his work in the dance world.

Picture of Bunny Rabbit’ features nine previously unreleased performances from this era compiled from completed masters culled from two unique test pressings, including one, dated 9/15/85 by Arthur, provided by his mother and sister. A further four tracks were discovered in his tape archive. The track listing includes an exceptional and dramatic solo recording of “In The Light of a Miracle” and the enigmatic title instrumental “Picture of Bunny Rabbit”, written especially for a friends pet rabbit. The bulk of the material was recorded with engineer Eric Liljestrand at Battery Sound Studios, New York, which was located directly opposite the World Trade Center and at Arthur’s apartment studio in the East Village. 

The second part of Matador’s reissues of the essential early records by Texas’s Butthole Surfers continues with three of their most insane slabs -- 1985’s ‘Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis,’ 1987’s ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ and 1988’s ‘Hairway to Steven.’

The period during which these records were first issued parallels the Buttholes’ transition from being weirdo Texas outcasts to becoming internationally recognized smut-kings of the American underground. In 1985 they were still the sole province of hallucingen-soaked punk rock freaks. By 1988 they had toured Europe, had records licensed internationally, and bought a house in Driftwood Texas to serve as their home base. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

‘Hairway to Steven’ is a blast, ranging from the blood-smeared guitar-overload of “Jimi” to the acoustic guitar-based sing-along sweetness of “I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas” to the Fugs-like ranting of “John E. Smokes.” Yet somehow, the album managed to get the straight media to actually notice. For all its strangeness, ‘Hairway’ got rave notices in places that had never paid the band any attention previously. It was the Buttholes’ last album of the ‘80s and marks the beginning of their ascendance into something akin to commercial success. Not that the band actually imagined anything at all like that occurring.

Federico Ughi Together with Leo Genovese and Brandon Lopez Explores the Spaceways in the New Multidimensional LP/CD ‘Infinite Cosmos Calling You You You, Vol. 1’ Federico Ughi, drum wizard and producer, is back with an album under his own name for the first time in five years. The project features outstanding musicians: Leo Genovese, originally from Argentina but now Brooklyn-based on keyboards and synths, and Brandon Lopez from NYC on upright bass. This album celebrates the advanced creative dialogue between these artists by fully immersing the listener in the world of sound conjured by the trio. The expansive scope of this experience suggests that Ughi's artistic enterprise extends beyond the music itself to the idea of connection between artists, music, and the audience. In this conception the musicians are conduits for the delivery of cosmic sound, the music world, the cosmic dimension of sound and light. The message is launched towards the audience and refracted back through them, aspiring to achieve a sort of universal consciousness through presence and participation. The trio moves away from a specific genre, opening up to limitless possibilities. Anything is possible when these improvisers listen to each other so closely. This music is dynamic and defies particular labels. It’s the universal language of sound, frequencies, beat and vibration. The project is strongly influenced by the music, philosophy, and persona of Sun Ra, to whom one of the tracks is dedicated. The album will be followed soon by Vol. 2, containing the other half of the material recorded on the day at Sear Sound, the oldest recording studio in NYC.

From outsider disco to ambient to improvisational folk, the giant Arthur Russell's famous album "Calling Out of Context" has been reissued as Rough Trade analog edition!
Released in 2015, this work was recorded in 1982 and 1983, and the following year in 1985, the original 1/4 inch tape of the sound source produced as a test press board called "El Dinosaur", "Indian Ocean" and "Untitled".・From the master, Arthur Russell's partner Tom Lee and Steve Knutson compiled 9 tracks.
In addition to an unreleased/alternate take that emphasizes echoes and rhythm machines, the instrumental track "Ocean" is one of the most beautiful songs in the discography.
A must-have board for fans that includes "Movie"! !

“ A ‘Pear’ of albums on one vinyl LP... a combo of heavy psychedelia, drum and bass grooves, bouncy boogie, catchy tunes and sprinkles of tastee horns, keys and strings thrown in... kinda like a thumb over the genre-hose nozzle, something for everyone and nothing for someone... guaranteed! “ “‘Grow A Pear’ has been in the works for 5 years. What started as my contributions for the ‘new’ Butthole Surfers’ album that was not to be... turned into a solo album I recorded with contributions from some of my favorite flavor players to create an album that most represents where I came from and bridges to where I’m at right now. My wishes for the future, is that everyone in the world will finally ‘Grow A Pear’ “ -JD Pinkus, 2024 (Butthole Surfers / Melvins / Honky / Helios Creed...) The 1st pressing is limited to 555 hand-numbered LP's on 150gm black vinyl, available exclusively through the Shimmy-Shop. Also available on 150gram Clear Vinyl. The free digital download card that accompanies each vinyl purchase also includes special "digital-only" bonus material. 'Grow A Pear' features a veritable cornucopia of American Indie music radicals! - Åsa Söderqvist and Lina Ericcson of Shitkid, Paul Leary of Butthole Surfers, Sam Coomes of Quasi and Jon Spencer’s Hit Makers, Mike Savino of Tall Tall Trees, Walter Daniels of Bigfoot Chester, Mike Alfred of Shed Alford, Jed Willis of Khandroma, Michael Brueggen of Honky and Syrup, Billy Sheeran of Billy Sheeran.... ...and it seems like only yesterday that Shimmy-Disc released JD Pinkus' 'Fungus Shui', his second solo “space grass” banjo album. The album was written, recorded, and mixed by Pinkus himself at Plastic Cannon Studio in Asheville, North Carolina and was mastered by Kramer.

Big Crown Records is proud to present Zero Grace, Liam Bailey’s sophomore album on the label. Following the success of 2020’s Ekundayo album, the tried and true chemistry of Bailey and producer Leon Michels (El Michels Affair) is on full display again as they take the sound they established and push it further. On Zero Grace they lean more into the bleeding heart singer-songwriter side of Liam. The result, much like Bailey himself, is impulsively honest without reserve. Born and raised in Nottingham, England, the son of an English mother and 2nd generation Jamaican English father, Liam will admit his early childhood was fairly chaotic and filled with "all the cliche racism that happens when people started mixing up in the '80s in England." Liam got his early influences from his mom’s record collection. Bob Marley and Dillinger, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix would eventually shape the singer/songwriter we know today. Fast-forward to 2005, Liam is in London performing at every open mic and acoustic night he could, hustling with hopes of landing a record deal. It was through this time that Liam first teamed up with Michels, musician/producer luminary, and the co-founder of Brooklyn's own Big Crown Records. Liam flew out to New York and those first sessions together produced the now classic tunes “When Will They Learn” and “I’m Gonna Miss You” which still gets spins at Reggae spots around the globe and were co-signed by heavy hitters like David Rodigan & Don Letts. That first trip to NYC brought a lot of industry attention to Liam, including being noticed by a just-famous Amy Winehouse who heard one of Liam's apartment-made, lo-fi recordings, and liked what she heard. Regardless of the audio quality, Liam's particular sound shone through—all guitar, warm-rough and genuine soul. Eventually Liam signed to Polydor and wound up bumping against the typical major label industry obstacles. They already had an idea of the Liam they wanted to make, promote, and push. With the typical large advance enticement, Liam did his best to trust that path. "Maybe I can make it work,' that's what you're thinking," Liam remembers, "but, you quickly find out that you can't." Zero Grace is full of freedom and love, in fact, working with Leon Michels and Big Crown Records has encouraged Liam to be himself. On album opener “Holding On '' Bailey speaks to his observations & fears when looking out at the world in front of him and also to the dedication it has taken to get on the other side of his personal trials & tribulations. “Dance With Me" is an instantly infectious two-stepper that nods to those incredible soul records that were coming out of Jamaica during the early Reggae days. Bailey steps into the dance with hopes of finding a new love and pulls us all out on the dance floor with him. “Disorder Starts At Home” is another close to the chest tune that addresses the difficulties he struggles with from his early chaotic childhood and his progress in getting past them. "Mercy Tree" is a powerhouse of Reggae Rebel Music. Bailey addresses the racial tensions that plague humanity and encourages everyone to step up and do their part to help foster equality. What starts out as a declaration of injustice turns into a call for action and an inspiration for hope. Bailey has managed another album that moves across genres but remains entirely cohesive. The title Zero Grace represents his uninhibited energy. He wears his heart on his sleeve, he speaks his mind without filters, and he has little concern for formalities where his ambitions are concerned. He won't be held back ever. One thing is for sure, his talent speaks for itself, and it is on full display on this album.