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Originally recorded in the early 1990s, inrain's 'Rise' sweeps up the only material from A.R. Kane's Rudy Tambala and Cranes vocalist Alison Shaw, a long-lost bridge between shoegaze, dub, electro and trip-hop. Essential listening if yr into Seefeel, Locust or Zurich. Back in 1991, inrain appeared on Rough Trade's Singles Club series with a brief but brilliant 7" that sounded as if it'd been beamed in from another planet. A.R. Kane had been forward thinking, sure, but these three tracks - 'Grow', '...And Julie Rose' and 'Sleep' - juxtaposed Shaw's dreamy vocals with dubby, spacious electronics and shimmering guitars in a way that wouldn't really rise to prominence until years later. Music From Memory does the heavy lifting here, remastering that original 7" from the original DAT tapes and adding the extra track 'Biology' and an alternate version of 'Sleep' to bump up the package. But it's those original tracks that have us by the throat - we really can't believe they've been so slept on over the years. '...And Julie Rose' sounds like it should have been picked up for a Duophonic release a decade later, while 'Sleep' completely pre-empts Seefeel's 'More Like Space EP' that wouldn't appear for another couple of years. Prophetic stuff.
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.
Big Crown Records is proud to present the sophomore full-length from Les Imprimés, Fading Forward. Spearheaded by self-taught multi-instrumentalist and producer Morten Martens, the album explores mortality, escapism, and a myriad of experiences associated with love.
Martens made a tremendous impression with his highly acclaimed 2023 debut Rêverie and has since cultivated a diehard fanbase whose demographics are as wide-ranging as the influences that shape his music. He mixes tones from ’60s and ’70s soul with arrangement nods to doo-wop records, takes drum energy from hip-hop, and covers the whole thing with vocal stylings drawn from ’90s and 2000s alternative. But it is Martens’ lyrics, emotion, and delivery that truly bring everything together and help him stand out from his peers. There’s an infectiousness and pop sensibility in the writing, executed with the utmost class and taste, giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens with repeat listens.
Hailing from Kristiansand, Norway, Martens plays nearly every instrument on Fading Forward, produces and arranges the album, and of course sings. “It’s soul music, but I don’t exactly have the soul voice,” Morten explains humbly. “But I do it my own way, in a way that’s mine.”
Album opener “You & I” is Morten’s homage to his partner, who sticks it out “through the chaos and the blunders” with him. Punchy drums and cascading pianos make this one a proper two-stepper and an anthem for those lucky enough to find someone who understands them and helps them through the parts of life where they need it most. “Again & Again” slows the pace and deals with the heavier side of love and life, as Martens professes his resilience through the mishaps, heartbreak, and letdowns of love affairs gone wrong. “Untainted Love” brings the sweet side of new love center stage with a tune that plays on the title of the Gloria Jones classic. “Get Lost” leans into the metaphysical with an invitation to leave reality behind and spend time with Les Imprimés, where there’s room to dream. “Only Love” is built over a gritty drum break, with a chorus that is simple yet profound, and an arrangement that gives it the energy of a mantra. The album turns to the dancefloor on “With You,” an uptempo, uplifting tune about a fleeting encounter that leaves you pining for more. Martens longs for her, but joyfully—as if simply remembering that such a connection is possible is exactly what he needed. Martens is joined by guest vocalist Ama Li on “Miss the Days,” a slow-burning ballad that reckons back to simpler times when love felt easier. Fading Forward closes on a wholly somber note with “Paradise,” a tune that wishes freedom and peace to a friend who passed away.
In the small town of Kristiansand, Norway, there is a huge talent who spent much of his life laying low and playing in the background. Signing to New York’s Big Crown Records inspired Morten Martens to begin sharing his own music. The response to his debut Rêverie pushed him out of the studio and onto the stage, serving as inspiration to push his artistry to new heights—heights that are fully realized on Fading Forward.
Greg Mendez has always been an economical songwriter – he wields restraint and simplicity as tools, the core of his songs sharpened into simple, cutting truths. On Beauty Land, his new album and debut LP for Dead Oceans, we’re guided by a wry but forgiving narrator, an underdog who has learned to balance cynicism and faith. These songs are self-effacing without self-pity, carefully constructed altars of imperfection channeled through pop melodies, shimmering but urgent guitars, and a voice that reaches for choir boy innocence. The bulk of Beauty Land was recorded directly to tape, almost entirely alone in Mendez’s makeshift home studio in Philadelphia – a small room with no natural light. It’s his first full length since his unexpected self-titled breakthrough in 2023, which was a slow burn success following 15 years of writing and recording music in relative obscurity between Philly and New York. Beauty Land picks up where we left off three years ago – plumbing the depths of grief, love, and addiction – but its intense, quiet clarity shows Mendez at his songwriting best. Parts of Beauty Land feel like a lucid dream, dented characters carve their way through a world that’s cartoonish and warped – the broken-clock march of “I Wanna Feel Pretty,” the chiming toy piano on “Gentle Love.” “Mary / Dreaming” begins as a sparse, finger-picked lament before cutting abruptly to a deflated, Beach-Boys-but-make-it-fucked-up resolution that brings both melancholy and joy; a sense that all things can be true at once. None of the 14 tracks here break three minutes, but they tell stories that span lifetimes. Death floats through the record, whether it appears as a memory or a threat. Everything feels precarious. There’s a fragility to how these songs are built: the way the funeral organ hits alongside the morphine on “Looking Out Your Window,” the devastating simplicity of “Frog,” with its slowed-down keyboard and bare refrain: “Please forgive me for my faults.” Beauty Land feels, at times, impossibly lonely. Which makes it really count when it doesn’t – like when Mendez sings in harmony with his wife and bandmate, Veronica near the end of “So Mean” and it feels like a cherished reunion, a fleeting moment of redemption, a temporary parting of the seas.
Sakura is without doubt the most loved and lauded entry in Susumu Yokota’s catalogue.
The music unravels like cascades of petals falling from the eponymous cherry blossom trees. Yokota intended to ‘express ki-do-ai-raku (the four emotions; joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness) through music’, and throughout Sakura, the effect fluctuates between profound tranquillity, hesitation, melancholy and joy with ease, addressing the fickle nature of human emotion, while transcending the inclination to label moods entirely.
Sakura became Yokota’s best selling album. It was greeted with universal acclaim, lauded by Philip Glass and Brian Eno and launched Yokota internationally.
‘A bittersweet beauty, heightened by the sadness that all things must one day end.’ - Martyn Pepperell
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.
He was a member of the legendary psychedelic band “Hallelujahs” and “Idiot O'Clock” with Shinji Shibayama and others, which was praised to the highest degree by the late Hideo Iketsuzumi, owner of Modern Music, who presided over the prestigious “P.S.F. Records” that represented the psychedelic underground in Japan. Naoiki Toushi is one of the residents of Kyoto's famous underground music mecca, the rock cafe “Dragstore,” and is also a founding member of the famous Hijokaidan. Released on Shibayama's Org Records label, “III” is one of the most popular cult albums of his career, and has been eagerly awaited by fans and collectors alike for an official reissue, including a bootleg LP reissue from overseas.
6月下旬再入荷。Meditationsでも本当に長い間に渡って愛され続ける驚異の大名盤『Romantic Piano』でお馴染みの Gia Margaret の新作『Singing』がリリース！病によって声を失った経験から2020年リリースの『Mia Gargaret』、前作『Romantic Piano』でアンビエント寄りの作風へ踏み出した彼女が本作では声を取り戻しつつあり、一方で、その静けさと優しさはさらに深まっている。数年間声を出せなかった彼女は、代わりに音で語る方法を磨き、響きの細部と感情の精度を研ぎ澄ませてきた。その感覚は今作にも受け継がれ、ピアノの小さなフレーズや静かなアレンジが驚くほど繊細に響く。楽器、機材、アレンジ、声、ひとつひとつに深い情緒を見出し、信じること。その積み重ねが、音と音のあいだの空気までも音楽として息づかせているよう。透明なピアノの響きと、ささやくような歌声、余白が大きく、全てが控えめでありながら、静けさの中に確かな生命が灯る。Gia Margaret が沈黙の先で見つけた新しい声のかたちが、静かにしかし力強く、聴く者の心に触れてくる。
Every artist has to discover their voice. Gia Margaret didn’t find herself until she lost hers. With a vocal injury that kept her from singing for years, she developed other musical languages, mastering the grammar of an intricate, homey form of ambient music pioneered by Ernest Hood and perfected by The Books. Now, her physical voice healed and her artistic voice honed, she comes full circle with Singing, her first vocal album since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer. Led by soft piano lines that fall like breath on glass, the music on Singing evidences the same jeweler’s sensitivity to detail that she developed in her silence.
“There was a time when I really didn’t know if I would sing again. So once I healed, there was a lot of internal pressure to come back strong,” Margaret says. “I didn’t know who I was anymore. So it felt like beginning again, and reconnecting with these very old, old parts of myself.” This feeling of intermixed alienation and rediscovery is palpable across the album. In opener “Everyone Around Me Dancing,” she watches a party from the wings, aware of how her body keeps her from communal joy while also providing new modes of self-knowledge. Shut out from the scene, she is “closer to the ground, the planet.” In “Alive Inside,” she’s so far away from the source that she’s praying to whoever might hear (“a god, a friend that’s gone, a spirit”). As her voice rises, it seems to be trapped in a web of distortion; it’s as if in her pursuit, she’s pushing at the very boundaries of what can be said.
The process of making Singing was one of learning how to trust each of those feelings. The album was partially recorded in London with Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth, who helped Margaret unify the spree of ideas she had for “Good Friend,” an album highlight that includes Gregorian chant by ILĀ and turntable scratches, among many other things. David Bazan and Amy Millan also make appearances, as do Kurt Vile and Sean Carey, while Margaret’s longtime collaborator Doug Saltzman plays on and co-produces much of the record. Deb Talan, previously of The Weepies, lends her voice, piano, and guitar to the album's closing—and definitive—statement, "E-Motion."
Gia Margaret is always singing. Every note of this album sings a warm requiem to her past selves; every layer sings her future self into being. Across the album, she applies the lessons of speechlessness—the quasirational ways we communicate without communicating, the way formless sound can cut to the heart of things like a scalpel—to her own artistic voice.
Greg Mendez has always been an economical songwriter – he wields restraint and simplicity as tools, the core of his songs sharpened into simple, cutting truths. On Beauty Land, his new album and debut LP for Dead Oceans, we’re guided by a wry but forgiving narrator, an underdog who has learned to balance cynicism and faith. These songs are self-effacing without self-pity, carefully constructed altars of imperfection channeled through pop melodies, shimmering but urgent guitars, and a voice that reaches for choir boy innocence. The bulk of Beauty Land was recorded directly to tape, almost entirely alone in Mendez’s makeshift home studio in Philadelphia – a small room with no natural light. It’s his first full length since his unexpected self-titled breakthrough in 2023, which was a slow burn success following 15 years of writing and recording music in relative obscurity between Philly and New York. Beauty Land picks up where we left off three years ago – plumbing the depths of grief, love, and addiction – but its intense, quiet clarity shows Mendez at his songwriting best. Parts of Beauty Land feel like a lucid dream, dented characters carve their way through a world that’s cartoonish and warped – the broken-clock march of “I Wanna Feel Pretty,” the chiming toy piano on “Gentle Love.” “Mary / Dreaming” begins as a sparse, finger-picked lament before cutting abruptly to a deflated, Beach-Boys-but-make-it-fucked-up resolution that brings both melancholy and joy; a sense that all things can be true at once. None of the 14 tracks here break three minutes, but they tell stories that span lifetimes. Death floats through the record, whether it appears as a memory or a threat. Everything feels precarious. There’s a fragility to how these songs are built: the way the funeral organ hits alongside the morphine on “Looking Out Your Window,” the devastating simplicity of “Frog,” with its slowed-down keyboard and bare refrain: “Please forgive me for my faults.” Beauty Land feels, at times, impossibly lonely. Which makes it really count when it doesn’t – like when Mendez sings in harmony with his wife and bandmate, Veronica near the end of “So Mean” and it feels like a cherished reunion, a fleeting moment of redemption, a temporary parting of the seas.
Greg Mendez has always been an economical songwriter – he wields restraint and simplicity as tools, the core of his songs sharpened into simple, cutting truths. On Beauty Land, his new album and debut LP for Dead Oceans, we’re guided by a wry but forgiving narrator, an underdog who has learned to balance cynicism and faith. These songs are self-effacing without self-pity, carefully constructed altars of imperfection channeled through pop melodies, shimmering but urgent guitars, and a voice that reaches for choir boy innocence. The bulk of Beauty Land was recorded directly to tape, almost entirely alone in Mendez’s makeshift home studio in Philadelphia – a small room with no natural light. It’s his first full length since his unexpected self-titled breakthrough in 2023, which was a slow burn success following 15 years of writing and recording music in relative obscurity between Philly and New York. Beauty Land picks up where we left off three years ago – plumbing the depths of grief, love, and addiction – but its intense, quiet clarity shows Mendez at his songwriting best. Parts of Beauty Land feel like a lucid dream, dented characters carve their way through a world that’s cartoonish and warped – the broken-clock march of “I Wanna Feel Pretty,” the chiming toy piano on “Gentle Love.” “Mary / Dreaming” begins as a sparse, finger-picked lament before cutting abruptly to a deflated, Beach-Boys-but-make-it-fucked-up resolution that brings both melancholy and joy; a sense that all things can be true at once. None of the 14 tracks here break three minutes, but they tell stories that span lifetimes. Death floats through the record, whether it appears as a memory or a threat. Everything feels precarious. There’s a fragility to how these songs are built: the way the funeral organ hits alongside the morphine on “Looking Out Your Window,” the devastating simplicity of “Frog,” with its slowed-down keyboard and bare refrain: “Please forgive me for my faults.” Beauty Land feels, at times, impossibly lonely. Which makes it really count when it doesn’t – like when Mendez sings in harmony with his wife and bandmate, Veronica near the end of “So Mean” and it feels like a cherished reunion, a fleeting moment of redemption, a temporary parting of the seas.
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.
Big Crown Records is proud to present the sophomore full-length from Les Imprimés, Fading Forward. Spearheaded by self-taught multi-instrumentalist and producer Morten Martens, the album explores mortality, escapism, and a myriad of experiences associated with love.
Martens made a tremendous impression with his highly acclaimed 2023 debut Rêverie and has since cultivated a diehard fanbase whose demographics are as wide-ranging as the influences that shape his music. He mixes tones from ’60s and ’70s soul with arrangement nods to doo-wop records, takes drum energy from hip-hop, and covers the whole thing with vocal stylings drawn from ’90s and 2000s alternative. But it is Martens’ lyrics, emotion, and delivery that truly bring everything together and help him stand out from his peers. There’s an infectiousness and pop sensibility in the writing, executed with the utmost class and taste, giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens with repeat listens.
Hailing from Kristiansand, Norway, Martens plays nearly every instrument on Fading Forward, produces and arranges the album, and of course sings. “It’s soul music, but I don’t exactly have the soul voice,” Morten explains humbly. “But I do it my own way, in a way that’s mine.”
Album opener “You & I” is Morten’s homage to his partner, who sticks it out “through the chaos and the blunders” with him. Punchy drums and cascading pianos make this one a proper two-stepper and an anthem for those lucky enough to find someone who understands them and helps them through the parts of life where they need it most. “Again & Again” slows the pace and deals with the heavier side of love and life, as Martens professes his resilience through the mishaps, heartbreak, and letdowns of love affairs gone wrong. “Untainted Love” brings the sweet side of new love center stage with a tune that plays on the title of the Gloria Jones classic. “Get Lost” leans into the metaphysical with an invitation to leave reality behind and spend time with Les Imprimés, where there’s room to dream. “Only Love” is built over a gritty drum break, with a chorus that is simple yet profound, and an arrangement that gives it the energy of a mantra. The album turns to the dancefloor on “With You,” an uptempo, uplifting tune about a fleeting encounter that leaves you pining for more. Martens longs for her, but joyfully—as if simply remembering that such a connection is possible is exactly what he needed. Martens is joined by guest vocalist Ama Li on “Miss the Days,” a slow-burning ballad that reckons back to simpler times when love felt easier. Fading Forward closes on a wholly somber note with “Paradise,” a tune that wishes freedom and peace to a friend who passed away.
In the small town of Kristiansand, Norway, there is a huge talent who spent much of his life laying low and playing in the background. Signing to New York’s Big Crown Records inspired Morten Martens to begin sharing his own music. The response to his debut Rêverie pushed him out of the studio and onto the stage, serving as inspiration to push his artistry to new heights—heights that are fully realized on Fading Forward.
More top tier biz from a resurgent Scenic Route label, this time in a more bare-boned and classic sounding singer-songwriter mode courtesy of Oakland-raised and Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ivy Knight, produced by Deer park (fakemink, Ecco2k, evilgiane) and tipped if you’re anywhere on the line from Joanne Robertson to Sam Amidon, Dagmar Zuniga to Mark William Lewis. "Ivy Knight’s songs reflect a city dreamer creating a new world to sink into: across Iron Mountain, she conjures imagery of barren Southwest American landscapes as she recounts memories that feel beamed from generations past, channeling folk melodies and old trail ballads of the late 50s and early 60s. Much of her work has been created both within, and in reference to the Hudson Valley, where she met frequent collaborator Deer park (fakemink, Ecco2k, evilgiane) who produced and engineered."
Second solo LP by Princ€ss member + Maria Somerville and Mel Keane collaborator Finn Carraher McDonald aka Nashpaints - via new Dublin label Mirror World.
"Nashpaints is Finn Carraher McDonald from Dublin. Following up his debut album "Blindman The Gambler”, recent activity as a member of Princ€ss and production on Maria Somerville’s “Luster” & Mel Keane’s “Airs”, Nashpaints releases his second album "Everyone Good Is Called Molly” via Dublin label MirrorWorld.
"standing so close to someone else vision becomes touch
Standing with ɘnoɘmoƨ, looking at each other in the mirror and not recognising th - htiw gnidnatS
Apparently,
Three people will lie while listening to this album..
Zzz….they will endup in the same place
Generally, this song will be played but,
here is a guy watery eyed on the train"
Nashpaint’s releases his second album
EveryonegoodiscalledMolly. NOT ALL MOLLYS, Never anything else"
One part THC and two parts MDMA; the first offering from DIIV chemically fuses the reminiscent with the half-remembered building a musical world out of old-air and new breeze. These are songs that remind us of love in all it’s earthly perfections and perversions. A lot of DIIV’s magnetism was birthed in the process Mr. Smith went through to discover these initial compositions. After returning from a US tour with Beach Fossils, Cole made a bold creative choice, settling into the window-facing corner of a painter’s studio in Bushwick, sans running water, holing up to craft his music. In this AC-less wooden room, throughout the thick of the summer, Cole surrounded himself with cassettes and LP’s, the likes of Lucinda Williams, Arthur Russell, Faust, Nirvana, and Jandek; writings of N. Scott Momaday, James Welsh, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and James Baldwin; and dreams of aliens, affection, spirits, and the distant natural world (as he imagined it from his window facing the Morgan L train). The resulting music is as cavernous as it is enveloping, asking you to get lost in its tangles in an era that demands your attention be focused into 140 characters.
Winston Hightower “100 Acre Wood” [klp315/prnl65] Winnie’s world hasn’t always been easy Some say he could have been famous but there were complications. He had a brush with success but life got in the way. “Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.” So it was up to Winston Hightower to grab it, hold it and make himself heard One man in love with the sound of American lofi. What is in the ashtray of Winston Hightower’s ‘Day in the Life’? 14 songs that give carefree camouflage to a wistful heart - it's radiant throughout. 33RPM
Big Crown Records is proud to present the sophomore full-length from Les Imprimés, Fading Forward. Spearheaded by self-taught multi-instrumentalist and producer Morten Martens, the album explores mortality, escapism, and a myriad of experiences associated with love.
Martens made a tremendous impression with his highly acclaimed 2023 debut Rêverie and has since cultivated a diehard fanbase whose demographics are as wide-ranging as the influences that shape his music. He mixes tones from ’60s and ’70s soul with arrangement nods to doo-wop records, takes drum energy from hip-hop, and covers the whole thing with vocal stylings drawn from ’90s and 2000s alternative. But it is Martens’ lyrics, emotion, and delivery that truly bring everything together and help him stand out from his peers. There’s an infectiousness and pop sensibility in the writing, executed with the utmost class and taste, giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens with repeat listens.
Hailing from Kristiansand, Norway, Martens plays nearly every instrument on Fading Forward, produces and arranges the album, and of course sings. “It’s soul music, but I don’t exactly have the soul voice,” Morten explains humbly. “But I do it my own way, in a way that’s mine.”
Album opener “You & I” is Morten’s homage to his partner, who sticks it out “through the chaos and the blunders” with him. Punchy drums and cascading pianos make this one a proper two-stepper and an anthem for those lucky enough to find someone who understands them and helps them through the parts of life where they need it most. “Again & Again” slows the pace and deals with the heavier side of love and life, as Martens professes his resilience through the mishaps, heartbreak, and letdowns of love affairs gone wrong. “Untainted Love” brings the sweet side of new love center stage with a tune that plays on the title of the Gloria Jones classic. “Get Lost” leans into the metaphysical with an invitation to leave reality behind and spend time with Les Imprimés, where there’s room to dream. “Only Love” is built over a gritty drum break, with a chorus that is simple yet profound, and an arrangement that gives it the energy of a mantra. The album turns to the dancefloor on “With You,” an uptempo, uplifting tune about a fleeting encounter that leaves you pining for more. Martens longs for her, but joyfully—as if simply remembering that such a connection is possible is exactly what he needed. Martens is joined by guest vocalist Ama Li on “Miss the Days,” a slow-burning ballad that reckons back to simpler times when love felt easier. Fading Forward closes on a wholly somber note with “Paradise,” a tune that wishes freedom and peace to a friend who passed away.
In the small town of Kristiansand, Norway, there is a huge talent who spent much of his life laying low and playing in the background. Signing to New York’s Big Crown Records inspired Morten Martens to begin sharing his own music. The response to his debut Rêverie pushed him out of the studio and onto the stage, serving as inspiration to push his artistry to new heights—heights that are fully realized on Fading Forward.
Big Crown Records is proud to present the sophomore full-length from Les Imprimés, Fading Forward. Spearheaded by self-taught multi-instrumentalist and producer Morten Martens, the album explores mortality, escapism, and a myriad of experiences associated with love.
Martens made a tremendous impression with his highly acclaimed 2023 debut Rêverie and has since cultivated a diehard fanbase whose demographics are as wide-ranging as the influences that shape his music. He mixes tones from ’60s and ’70s soul with arrangement nods to doo-wop records, takes drum energy from hip-hop, and covers the whole thing with vocal stylings drawn from ’90s and 2000s alternative. But it is Martens’ lyrics, emotion, and delivery that truly bring everything together and help him stand out from his peers. There’s an infectiousness and pop sensibility in the writing, executed with the utmost class and taste, giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens with repeat listens.
Hailing from Kristiansand, Norway, Martens plays nearly every instrument on Fading Forward, produces and arranges the album, and of course sings. “It’s soul music, but I don’t exactly have the soul voice,” Morten explains humbly. “But I do it my own way, in a way that’s mine.”
Album opener “You & I” is Morten’s homage to his partner, who sticks it out “through the chaos and the blunders” with him. Punchy drums and cascading pianos make this one a proper two-stepper and an anthem for those lucky enough to find someone who understands them and helps them through the parts of life where they need it most. “Again & Again” slows the pace and deals with the heavier side of love and life, as Martens professes his resilience through the mishaps, heartbreak, and letdowns of love affairs gone wrong. “Untainted Love” brings the sweet side of new love center stage with a tune that plays on the title of the Gloria Jones classic. “Get Lost” leans into the metaphysical with an invitation to leave reality behind and spend time with Les Imprimés, where there’s room to dream. “Only Love” is built over a gritty drum break, with a chorus that is simple yet profound, and an arrangement that gives it the energy of a mantra. The album turns to the dancefloor on “With You,” an uptempo, uplifting tune about a fleeting encounter that leaves you pining for more. Martens longs for her, but joyfully—as if simply remembering that such a connection is possible is exactly what he needed. Martens is joined by guest vocalist Ama Li on “Miss the Days,” a slow-burning ballad that reckons back to simpler times when love felt easier. Fading Forward closes on a wholly somber note with “Paradise,” a tune that wishes freedom and peace to a friend who passed away.
In the small town of Kristiansand, Norway, there is a huge talent who spent much of his life laying low and playing in the background. Signing to New York’s Big Crown Records inspired Morten Martens to begin sharing his own music. The response to his debut Rêverie pushed him out of the studio and onto the stage, serving as inspiration to push his artistry to new heights—heights that are fully realized on Fading Forward.
The complete studio recordings from The American Analog Set's second chapter. Destroy Destroy Destroy gathers the Texas slow-krauters Know By Heart, Promise Of Love, and Set Free LPs, Everything Ends In Spring EP, and an additional two discs of singles, B-sides, alternates and outtakes. Accompanying 36-page booklet is flooded with photos and handwritten scraps from the band's dreamy post-Y2K era. Punk as fuck, for real.
lovesliescrushing's Bloweyelashwish is an ambient masterpiece, originally recorded in 1992 with a 12-string guitar, 4-track recorder, looping pedal, and boundless reverb. Scott Cortez’s project, alongside the haunting vocals of Melissa Arpin Duimstra, transformed bedroom daydreams into a serene, moonlit journey on a timeless sea. This expanded and remastered double album features five additional tracks, each distortion-laden and hypnotic, alongside lyrics and a replica postcard to guide listeners deeper into its world. Blindness, not eyewash, is the intended experience.
Netherlands-based artist Jonny Nash returns to Melody As Truth with his new solo album, ‘Once Was Ours Forever.’ Building on 2023’s ‘Point Of Entry,’ this collection of eleven compositions draws us further into Nash’s immersive, slowly expanding world, effortlessly connecting the dots somewhere between folk,
ambient jazz and dreampop.
While ‘Point Of Entry’ was characterised by it’s laid-back, daytime ambience, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’
arrives wrapped in shades of dusk and hazy light, unfolding like a slow-moving sunset. Built from layers of gentle fingerpicked guitar, textural brush strokes, floating melodies and reverb-soaked vocals, moments come and go, fleeting and ephemeral.
From the cosmic Americana of ‘Bright Belief’ to the lush, layered shoegaze textures of ‘The Way Things Looked’, Nash’s versatile guitar playing lies at the heart of this album, gently supported by a cast of
collaborators who each add their unique touches. Canadian ambient jazz saxophonist Joseph Shabason makes a return appearance, providing his delicate swells to ‘Angel.’ Saxophone is also provided by Shoei Ikeda (Maya Ongaku), cello by Tomo Katsurada (ex-Kikagaku Moyo) and Tokyo acid folk artist Satomimagae (RVNG) lends her haunting multilayered vocals to ‘Rain Song.’
As with much of Nash’s work, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ deftly finds an equilibrium between softness and weight, offering the listener ample space to interpret and inhabit the music on their own terms. Through his uncanny ability to blend the pastoral and the profound, the idyllic and the insightful, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ arrives as a tender and understated offering, infused with warmth and compassion.