Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Berlin-based producer and DJ Barker has long been an underground innovator associated with plenty of vital labels but he hasn't dropped a new solo EP for a couple of years now. Thankfully he rights that wrong and and steps up to the 30 year strong Smalltown Supersound out of Oslo with a new four track offering that "sees him inverting the musical equation and exploring both the variability and sonic possibilities of a kick-drum." Opener 'Birmingham Screwdriver' will rewire your brain with its fizzing frequencies and skewed bass, 'Wick and Wax' is bright and hyperactive techno-pop and the flipside gets much more raw and dark. A fine return.

Review: Popular Hull-based shoegaze quartet bdrmm are building up to their latest tour with the release of single 'Standard Tuning, arriving hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed second album, 'I Don't Know'. Written and recorded during those same sessions and very much similarly flavoured, it continues a fine vein of form right now, with high praise coming in from the likes of Rolling Stone and Consequence. This special 10" also comes with a remix of the live favourite 'Alps' by Ninja Tune/Cambria Instruments electronica specialist Nathan Fake.

Review: Hull and Leeds-based band bdrmm finally follow up their acclaimed debut album Bedroom - which was instantly passed as a modern day shoegaze classic - with a new EP. It features the recent single 'Port' as well as fresh remixes by the ever more essential Daniel Avery, plus Working Men's Club, A Place To Bury Strangers and others. That single, 'Port,' took the band in a new direction with a darker sound fun of distorted drones and beats, with howls of anguish and manic guitar frenzies. That is carried over into the rest of the EP next to some radical reworks.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


2022's stunning album Once Twice Melody was a fine example of Beach House doing what they do best - living bang up to that name, with intimate-but epic instrumentation falling somewhere between surf-y jangle and grand shoegaze. 'Become' is definitely on a similar tip, and as such feels much like an extension of the long form.
Dig a little deeper, though, and scratches begin to show. While the full-length record represented Beach House reaching for the stars, or at least the moon, and stepping into the role of festival headliners, here the sense of pure confidence and occasion is less pronounced. That may not be a bad thing, mind, because while Once came across like a finished article, refined and prepared, things here seem somehow rawer, as though we're sitting in on a session as oppose to getting the signed off product.

Review: Founding Bees members Paul Butler and Aaron Fletcher recorded the original Sunshine Hit Me on the Isle of Wight in their own home garden studio which they called The Shed. A year after release in 2003 it got recognised with a Mercury Music Prize nomination and spawned some big singles. Now, 20 years on, it arrives once more but in an all-new and dubbed-out fashion. The six cuts include three which have never previously been released in any physical format and bring a fresh dimension to the originals.

Review: Following on from their widely acclaimed album Afraid To Leave, Berlin's beautiful maudlin post-punk outfit Bleib Modern presents a compilation of remixes and reworks by esteemed artists from across darkwave, post-punk, and EBM. From IV Horsemen's club-worthy rendition of 'Bitter Smile' to M!R!M's dreamy synthpop take on 'Into The Night' via Dune Messiah's crooning 'Loony Voices, 2 Afraid 2 Leave: Remixed Reimaged Reloaded Part 2 offers truly diverse interpretations. With contributions from luminaries like The KVB and Blind Delon, it provides a fresh perspective on Bleib Modern's sound and serves as an exciting interlude that showcases the band's versatility and paves the way for future creations

Review: Effective communication relies on being succinct. Boygenius clearly know this given their track record for naming things. 2023 saw the trio - Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus - drop their debut album, The Record, and now, a few months down the line, we have The Rest: an EP made up of the other bits that didn't quite make said LP.

If you're completely new to the band, then let's start by saying these offcuts that didn't fit would put many a group to shame, which tells you just how good the full record is. Here, though, we have the lo-fi, dream-indie-pop crackle and fuzz of 'Black Hole', a track of huge emotional resonance, heartfelt, heartbroken yet hopeful semi-folk on 'Afraid of Heights', and the delicate, tender, and incredibly personal letting go balladry of 'Voyager', just for starters. Sublime confirmation Boygenius are your new favourite thing.

Review: Royal Wavetable Mellodies & Old TDKs by Mexico baed artist Brainwaltzera is a perfect coming totters of the symphonic, the synthetic, the organic and the electronic. It's a record that could be a lost 70s classic as much as a new school homage to minimalism, experimental ambient and vintage synths. In fact, this is a selection of archive recordings in the artist's characteristically idiosyncratic style that we cannot get enough of. The collection of tracks are gorgeously native and innocent, with wispy melodies and retro keys all smeared and smudged into moving pieces of ambient that are beatless but dynamic.

Review: Phoebe Bridgers' critically acclaimed and fan approved alternative indie long player Punisher has four tunes from it reversioned on this great new 12". Arranger Rob Moose is the man doing it having worked with Sufjan Stevens, The National, Bon Iver and may others. What he brings is a luscious new sound with majestic, sweeping new orchestral arrangements that bring new perspective to one of last year's best records. This one is sure to win as many new fans as it will please the old ones.

Review: This new compilation by the (literally) grassroots Spanish label Soil pays tribute to the late incipient goth band Bauhaus - known for their volatile performances, blackened and deathly sound, and later controversial antics. Aiming to highlight the band's admixture of glam with goth, irreverent demeanour, and strange fusions of dub, regional music and post-punk, artists and groups such as Years Of Denial, Selfishadows and Radikal Kuss deliver six curveball takes on Bauhaus' great songs, from 'All We Ever Wanted' to the unmatchable 'Dark Entries'.

Review: Music For Dreams label head Kenneth Badger was so inspired by the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to the classic Michael Mann film The Thief that he and Tolga Bo0.95yu0.95k from the Turkish band islandman decided to write their own soundtrack to an imaginary movie. They managed to write 10 tracks within 24 hours while imagining a film that told a story about two people stuck on the arctic ice cap where one tries to fool the other. Influences from Vangelis, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream all feature in what is a superb and escapist listen.

Review: Rune Bagge's inviting new mini-album, Grab a Star, is a second outing on the Northern Electronics label. It is one steeped in beautiful melancholy with narrative themes and a beautiful back-lit cosmic glow that makes it seem all the more otherworldly. The delicate synth craft defines the entire selection of tracks and brings thoughtfulness and tenderness to a range of rhythms and tempos. Some work for the club, some are more for lost-in-the-moment home listening, and all are essential. This is machine music but with a real heart and soul of its own.

Review: Italian composer and modular synth wizard Caterina Barbieri makes a debut on the Light-Years label here with a profound work of ambient beauty. Known for her musical vortexes, she warps space and time with her compositions and has done ever since breaking through with 2017's double-album Patterns Of Consciousness. Spirit Exit again finds her start up her modal rug and get to work in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It's a personal work that "takes inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time." The transportational sounds are as complex as they are emotive from front to back.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett returns with a third solo album that makes another assured leap forwards. The artist here sounds truly relaxed and comfortable in herself and with her art. She serves up an exquisite world of sound that is intimate and inviting thanks to the fine production work from Stella Mozgawa, who is known for her work with Warpaint, Sharon Van Etten and Kurt Vile. This most intimate and personal work has alluring groovers like 'Before You Gotta Go' and the optimistic 'Write A List Of Things To Look Forward To.' It arrives on a lovely limited gatefold blue vinyl with a spot-varnished sleeve.

Review: If you're even close to 35-years-old, the initialisation "MTV" and the word "Unplugged" likely conjures images of peak-hype Nirvana, arguably the most defining and revered of all this format's many moments. Nevertheless, Courtney Barnett's electric-free contribution to the series, recorded live in Melbourne, may well be the best conceived in the episodic series. Rather than going down the usual "Unplugged" route - hits, covers of classics and a few from the new album, sans power chords, - Barnett confirms what those paying close attention have always known to be true. Yes, she's an inspiring and inspired artist, as work like "Nameless, Faceless" shows (here turned into a duet even more resonant and chilling than the original). But she's also a community leader, a gifted collaborator who has nurtured peers - and with half this album reimagining others, she's clearly still determined to let them shine.

Review: Don't believe everything you read - the fifth Bat For Lashes album confirms this girl (or woman) found herself musically and thematically some time ago, freeing up creative energy to explore new approaches to deliver her often mournful, always heartfelt songs inspired by personal crises and private longings. On this outing there's more than a hint of 1980s pop evident in the mix. Shades of Prince ("Feel For You"), Madonna ("So Good"), Bowie's Berlin days and electro-era Gary Numan (the stunning, infectious instrumental "Vampires") cast the record in a nostalgia that suits the sense of yearning that always seems to pervade Natasha Khan's work. Simply name-checking reference points is lazy and unfair, though. This is an incredible collection of tracks moulded in the artist's own image - bold, beautiful and instantly captivating. Then again, it would be surprising if anyone had expected anything less.

Review: This new album from Benny Sings comes in various different formats - a blue vinyl included, while this version is a straight back wax copy. It features Amsterdam-based artist Benny Sings - who recently had his ART album reissued on Sings - returning with an all new and new eighth solo studio album. For the first time, it is one that finds him working with a single producer throughout - and that producer is the well known beatmaker Mr Kenny Beats. It was a partnership that came together after a chat over social media and the pair immediately felt comfortable with each other. Benny instructed Kenny that he wanted to make the biggest record he has to date and that's what they have done.

Review: Portland-based Kevin Palmer tucks himself away in a shed to make his music, so the myth goes. Wherever he makes it, he has always cooked up something special in the in-between electronic worlds. Now he lands on Blundar with a brand new album on numbered and heavyweight translucent green vinyl that offers up 12 tracks of ambient, dub and downtempo experiments which are at times intriguing and cosmic and others laid back and beautifully lazy. Each one is deftly detailed with myriad synth sounds, and atmospheric motifs and they all add up to a perfectly deep, dreamy and immersive listen.

Review: Raincoats' bassist Gina Birch may have delivered the alternative rock 'n' roll song of the year in 'I Play My Bass Loud', title track on this, her debut album, and the record's opener to boot. There's always something to be said for saving the best for a little into an LP track list, but when you're making such bold and unforgettable statements of intent we also appreciate the need to dive right in. A low slung - and fittingly bass heavy - downtempo plodder that oozes cool, swagger, pithy observations and witticisms, it almost feels out of time with today's world, invoking the stoned end of 1990s garage heroes in all the best ways. From thereon in, it's hard to fault anything here, with songs ranging from the weird, jerky 'I Will Never Wear Stilettos' to the ultra-minimalist experimental offering 'I Am Rage', dub wise 'Digging Down' and tortured soul grit of 'Wish I Was With You'. A phenomenal release you need in your life.

Review: The Black Keys are back with more of that raw, bluesy-soaked rawk they do so well. The duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney wrote this new album in the studio, laying down initial ideas in Nashville before expanding the sessions to include collaborators such as Billy F. Gibbons, Greg Cartwright and Angelo Petraglia. Everything you love about the 'Keys is right here, and lead single 'Wild Child' has all the hooks and ear-snagging chorus lines you could wish for, with that dirty, overdriven guitar sound that has been their calling card since they first broke through 20 years ago.

Review: Two years after Marc Richter released his most widely available album Back To Comm album, Alphabet 1968, on the ever amazing Tape imprint, he delivered another landmark with Earth. Originally, the music was conceived to accompany two screenings of the video Earth by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. First commissioned for the Sydney Festival 2011, the visual work was scored by Melbourne's Oren Ambarchi for the grand unveiling, but then toured the planet, with different musicians invited to reimagine the soundtrack for different locations. Germany's Black To Comm was enlisted for Berlin and Krakow, and as the smart money was always on, he offered up a strange, beguiling, abstract but highly visceral score. Almost impossible to describe, at once witty but incredibly sad, troubling and intriguing, traumatised but honest, it might be the perfect accompaniment to a film in which several frames are dedicated to landscapes piled high with human corpses. Following the two live performances, the producer opted to make these 'tunes' his next record, which is now finally getting a reissue.

Review: When Black To Comm's staggeringly powerful Alphabet 1968 first landed, rather confusingly in 2010, it stood out on a burgeoning ambient and drone landscape for several reasons. Firstly, it was rather short. Certainly in comparison to similar sounding releases of the day - less than 45 minutes. Secondly, it managed to cram, or rather delicately introduce, myriad sub genres and styles within the relatively brief run time. Each track comes across as though it is autonomous, yet the collection really needs to be explored as a whole to get the full impact. So while 'Trapez' has this stunning, purposefully naive quality to it - like a music box fed through various levels of distortion, chimes straining through the muffled playback - preceding number 'Forst' is this grand, palatial overture of refrains and background marching drums, taking up a full quarter of the entire album on its own. Elsewhere, 'Traum Gmbh' brings fret and chaos to the equation, shrill notes invoking horror movie scenes, while 'Musik Fur Alle' invites us into an aural realm that owes much to candlelit folk tales.

Review: Brooklyn's Tyler Gilmore, aka BlankFor.ms, has released on Works for Tape and Piano, a full-length on Puremagnetik and has remixed The Cinematic Orchestra and Para One. Here he drops a new album on Mystery Circles that comes on hugely limited red vinyl. Once again it showcases his richly textured, emotive ambient music that is all made using his collection of analog synthesisers, an old spinet piano and degraded tapes. His experimental techniques result in some truly moving and impactful ambient that stays with you long after it has finished playing.

Review: The Blow Monkeys' classic debut Animal Magic sees a well-deserved 4xCD reissue, physically looking back on the year of 1986, in which elegant lead singles such as 'Digging Your Scene' took New York by storm. The album blends pop, funk, new wave and soul, likening the human condition rightly to that of animals - and it's no surprise that there's an anticapitalist bent running throughout the album too. A wealth of bonus material here appears too, as sophisticated sax, synth and reverb sway off into the horizon.

Review: Those of a certain vintage may remember Blue, an IDM and ambient techno duo who released a string of pleasingly otherworldly EPs and albums in the late '90s. The Path of Least Resistance Meets The Point of No Return marks the duo's return to action after 22 years, albeit via a set of tracks originally intended to be released as an ambient album back in 2001. These updated and reworked versions are apparently different to those in their archives, but that doesn't matter; what's on offer is becalmed, otherworldly, often unusual and uniformly emotive, with highlights including the squelchy bass and elongated organ chords of 'Spacepport', the Pete Namlook style ambience of 'Ava X', the deep space symphony that is 'She Found The Colours' and the becalmed brilliance of 'Crystalline Form'.

Review: One of the most successful British bands of the last 3 decades, Blur are back with their first new album in over 8 years: The Ballad of Darren. The album was produced by James Ford and recorded in Studio 13, London and Devon, and is the sound of a band at the very top of their game.

The Ballad of Darren is the band's ninth studio album, their first since the chart-topping The Magic Whip in 2015, with artwork featuring an image by British photographer Martin Parr.

Region code: ABC (universal)

Review: When it comes to a reissue such as this it can't be understated just how arresting the work of Boards of Canada can be in the right situation. This EP, that came to light in between Music Has The Right To Children and Geogaddi, represents the enigmatic duo at their most powerful, channeling their energy into four long-form tracks that draw on all of their combined strengths. "Kid For Today" is haunting and dark but utterly heartbreaking, whilst "Amo Bishop Roden" heads into more mysterious territory. "In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country" is eerie in its titular invitation to join a cult, and "Zoetrope" tips its hat to Terry Riley et al in its looping phrases, but really there's no describing the magnificence of these gems, pleasingly reissued on vinyl to beat the Discogs chancers.

Review: Those with a penchant for Latin disco pop will be in their element here, with the debut album from angel-faced Chilean-Norwegian falsetto Boy Pablo serving up a particularly generous helping with its title track. Accompanied by a worth-checking-out video helping tell its semi-autobiographical take of a young kid falling in love and playing football, it's enough to make some swoon.

Similarly slick, but heavier on the synths, 'I Hope She Loves Me Back' should make it clear that the overall theme here as anything amorous, wistful and smooth, with guitar licks and playful beats ensuring the artist is walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Which, at times, is more cocky than bashful - "Hey girl, do you like me? I guess that's a stupid ass question." Enough said.

Review: Chase Smith aka the W.T. Records and Apartment associate and documentary filmmaker Christa Majoras are back as brainwave research center with their second full length, Mosaic. Once again the sonically inquisitive pair mix up analogue synths with electro-acoustic experiments, epic and adventurous soundscapes and plenty of raw texture, hooky pop melodies and innocent rhythms. Along the way the duo take influence from their heroes including Ennio Morricone, John Carpenter and Kraftwerk on a record that was laid down in the back of Smith's synthesizer repair shop. It's an absorbing listen once more from this increasingly vital pair.

Review: No longer simply the nearly-man egomaniac chronicled in the movie Dig, Anton Newcombe is now viewed with the kind of reverence he probably always felt he deserved, a modern master of classic psychedelia with a glint in his eye, having carved out a trademark sound that transcends retro trappings by its constantly questing and adventurous nature. The Spacemen 3-referencing sleeve of this new effort - his third work in the last two years and 15th BJM album in total - somewhat belies a sound that could come from no other maverick, its widescreen sweep locking horns with synapse-shredding experimentation.

Review: If you weren't already in love with Conor Oberst (with or without Bright Eyes) then this special outing on Dead Oceans is sure to change that tune, perhaps almost as much as the band changed theirs for a good proportion of the tracks on here. I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning was the outfit's landmark sixth studio album, unveiled in 2005 on the same day as their seventh LP, Digital Ash In A Digital Urn (how's that for confidence?) and is also available in a new issue today.
Sticking with what is essentially a side note on the era that birthed those records-proper, here Bright Eyes go all out on reworking Digital Ash tracks, retaining the sweetness of the first incarnations, but adding a sense of mayhem, chaos, and outright deviance to the score. The result is folk, boozy, woozy, and heady stuff. A little like walking into a bar on a cold winter's night to find familiar friends in full song.

Review: Erased Tapes, London's purveyors of the new garde in ambient music, take on one of the legends in revered Oregon folk experimentalist Peter Broderick. On the Partners LP, he starts out with the spoken word poetry of the title track, then the sombre piano piece "In A Landscape", complete with eerie tape hiss lurking in the background. Other highlights include the emotional and bittersweet "Carried" and the awe inspiring closing track "Sometimes" where Broderick's vocals come gloriously come into the fold, on a price which is truly captivating and special.

Review: Baby Buddha is the experimental new wave duo of Charles Hornaday (vocals, guitar, electronics, drums) and David Javelosa (vocals, electronics, clarinet). Born from late night improvisations of San Francisco synth-punks Los Microwaves with a rotating cast of musicians. Live shows would include music, projections, dance and performance art in both clubs and gallery spaces. In 1980, Howie Klein's 415 Records released their first single of Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man". In 1981, 'Music For Teenage Sex' was their first full length album released via Poshboy Records. It featured Los Microwaves' Meg Brazill, Poshboy boss Robbie Fields, and Kathy Peck as "Tammy Why-not", who later went on to found H.E.A.R (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers). In January 1983 Kathy, Charles and David went into the studio with a couple of Kathy's original "country" songs and began working on a sophomore album. They also incorporated songs from a live multi-track recording of a concert at the Graffiti Club on June 6th 1984. The album titled 'Everyone Is My Age' sat unreleased until 1987 due to relocation to Los Angeles and eventually found a home on David's Hyperspace Communications, the original label for the first Los Microwaves singles. For this first time reissue we've added a previously unreleased bonus song "What's Going On," a Kathy Peck original. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The vinyl comes housed in the original jacket featuring a collage by David Javelosa and includes an insert with lyrics, photos and liner notes.