NEW RELEASES 24.07.20

Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters - 2LP €32.99/CD €13.99 (SONY) - Limited Opaque Perarl Vinyl - The unhurried artist’s first studio album in eight years is astonishing, intimate and demonstrates a refusal to be silenced.

Kamaal Williams - Wu Hen - LP €23.99 (Black Focus) - Limited Red Vinyl - Wu Hen is the sophomore album from Peckham visionary Kamaal Williams an invitation to elevate to a higher state. Cinematic strings from Miguel-Atwood Ferguson and virtuoso saxophone from Quinn Mason are textural additions that make for a deeper, multi-layered experience than previous releases. Bringing groove back to the forefront, Wu Hen oscillates between celestial jazz, funk, rap and r&b reinforced with the rugged beat-heavy attitude of grime, jungle, house and garage – a self-styled fusion Kamaal describes as Wu Funk.

CRASS - Normal Never Was - 12" €14.99 (One Little Independent) - Limited Red Vinyl - Late last year, anarchist punk icons Crass took the step of making the original separate track stems of their seminal debut album The Feeding of the Five Thousand available as a free download on One Little Indian Records. With a call to take the original sixteen track recording in its pre-mix state, the intent was for people to create their own remixes and interpretations and breathe fresh life and ideas into this revolutionary music. The first results of this creative process are ready to be heard. All monies raised from the project will go to the charity ‘Refuge’

BOB MARLEY - Legend - LP €23.99 - Limited Picture Disc - Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Legend stands tall as one of the best-selling and best-loved albums in history, touching millions with a beautiful flow of Bob’s most memorable songs, from One Love / People Get Ready to Get Up, Stand Up, Is This Love to Jammin’, Could You Be Loved to Three Little Birds, and eight more classics . And now, in celebration of BobMarley75, the album is available in a limited edition picture disc presenting the iconic cover shot backed with a previously unseen image of Bob.

Shirley Collins - Heart's Ease - LP €24.99 (Domino Records) - Limited Deluxe Sleeve Edition - Shirley Collins releases Heart's Ease, her second album for Domino. Heart’s Ease follows 2016’s Lodestar; which on its arrival, seemed like a musical miracle - an enthralling new LP from a woman who is widely acknowledged as England’s greatest female folk singer, but who had not recorded an album for 38 years. With Heart’s Ease, Shirley delivers a record even stronger than Lodestar having completely regained her confidence, and singing so well that you can’t believe she was away for so long.

PJ Harvey - Dry - Demos - LP €23.99 (UMC) - 11 track collection of demos of all songs from the debut studio album Dry by PJ Harvey, available for the first time since 1992, and previously unreleased as a standalone album. Features brand new artwork with previously unseen photos by Maria Mochnacz.

PJ Harvey - Dry - LP €19.99 (Too Pure) - Dry is the debut studio album by PJ Harvey, originally released on Too Pure Records on 30 March 1992. The album was recorded at The Icehouse, a local studio in Yeovil. Critically lauded both on release and retrospectively, the album contains the singles Dress and Sheela-Na-Gig. Back in print for the first time in almost 20 years.

Spoon - Soft Effects - 12"€15.99 (Matador) - Soft Effects, the legendary EP is newly recut from the original masters. Soft Effects is released as part of the Slay On Cue series, which sees the reissue of the band’s first eight records in original editions

Spoon - Telephono - LP €19.99 (Matador) - Telephono, The debut studio album from Spoon, originally released in 1996. Newly recut from the original masters. Girls Can Tell is released as part of the Slay On Cue series, which sees the reissue of the band’s first eight records in original editions

Seasick Steve - Love & Peace - LP€20.99(Contagious) - The album sees Steve mixing up all of his much-loved ingredients to deliver a fresh new record that offers the perfect antidote for the troubled times in which we live. Full of hope for the future, it’s a great mix of boogie, blues, rock, Americana and folk – all delivered in Seasick Steve’s unique style. It’s a sizzler of an album. - SOLD OUT BACK IN NEXT WEEK

Courtney Marie Andrews - Old Flowers - LP €22.99 (LOOSE MUSIC) - On her third album for both Fat Possum and Loose Records, Courtney Marie Andrews has pulled in to one package all the songwriting skill, vocal prowess, and musicianship displayed on previous albums, into one career defining statement. A break-up record for sure, though due to Courtney's extraordinary storytelling gifts, more of a modern day coming-of-age tale of love won, love sustained, and unfortunately, love's inevitable dissolution.

Roger O'Donnell - 2 Ravens - LP €20.99(Caroline International) - 2 Ravens is a new project by Roger O’Donnell, of The Cure. The album is very personal to Roger and is heavily influenced by his life in rural England. It was written at a very stark and sparse time of year with Roger having just returned to solitude in December 2016 after a world tour with The Cure.

Diana Ross - Supertonic: The Remixes - €22.99 (UMC) - Following Miss Ross’s four No. 1 Club hits comes a full album of classic songs turned “inside out.” The remixes are by producer Eric Kupper and are all created from the original multi-track masters taken from the Motown vaults.

Carly Rae Jepsen - Dedicated Side B - LP €13.99 (Polydor) - Jepsen released Dedicated Side B on the year anniversary of the release of Dedicated as a gift to her fans. The set includes previously unreleased music from the Dedicated sessions and shot to #1 on the iTunes chart upon release. Here now released physically on vinyl with 6 tracks.

John Foxx & The Maths - Howl - LP €22.99 (Metamatic) - Limited Orange Vinyl - John Foxx And The Maths return with a new line-up on their 5th studio album, Howl. Former Ultravox guitarist Robin Simon joins Foxx, Benge (Ben Edwards) and Hannah Peel after previously guesting with The Maths at their debut Roundhouse show in 2010.The Maths have created an album of dark, writhing glamour.

Thurston Moore - Trees Outside The Academy (Remastered) - LP€23.99 (Daydream Library Series) - Cream & Army Green Swirl - Originally released in 2007 This was Thurston's first solo outing since 1995's Psychic Hearts. Remastered.

Autotelia - I - LP €24.99 (Rocket Recordings) - Green Vinyl - Autotelia’s sound - as chronicled on their debut release for Rocket Recordings - evolved purely of its own volition, as its makers were happy to allow their own chemistry and interplay to take their distinct course. This zen-like simplicity of approach has been more than rewarded, as the impulses and intentions blossomed into meditative extrapolations both sonically rich and spiritually bewitching. Although some observers may able to detect parallels with the blissful drift of Cluster’s II, the glowing ampstacks of Spacemen 3’s Dreamweapon or the becalmed modernism of late ‘70s Eno in these radiant trance states, the core sound of Autotelia remains in splendid isolation, an incandescent and unearthly tapestry of echoes and vibrations channeled direct from the id and the ether, yet one that maps out a voyage sonically between vintage memories and future epiphanies.

Jessy Lanza - All The Time - LP €18.99 (Hyperdub) - Limited Pink or Tourquoise - Jessy Lanza's first album since 2016's Oh No, is the most pure set of pop songs that she and creative partner Jeremy Greenspan have recorded, reflective and finessed over time and distance.

Bab L' Bluz - Nayda - LP €22.99 (Real World Records) - Blue Vinyl - Moroccan-French power quartet, Bab L’ Bluz, reclaim the blues for North Africa. Fronted by an African-Moroccan woman in a traditionally male role, Bab L’ Bluz are devoted to a revolution in attitude which dovetails with Morocco’s ‘nayda’ youth movement – a new wave of artists and musicians taking their cues from local heritage, singing words of freedom in the Moroccan-Arabic dialect of darija.

Howling - Colure - 2LP €25.99 (Counter Records) - RY X and Frank Wiedemann reunite as Howling to present ‘Colure’ the sophomore full-length record from their joint musical enterprise released via Counter Records on 24th July. RY X, solo alternative artist and member of The Acid, and Frank, one half of me, bring fans a bigger, sharper follow-up to their debut, ‘Sacred Ground.’ On ‘Colure’, the Berlin-based Wiedemann and Los Angeles-based RY X conjure transcendent creations out of their contrasting musical backgrounds and environments. The album is assuredly dualistic: electronic and acoustic sounds sit comfortably side-by-side, and big melodic hooks are laced into hypnotic club productions.

Jon Hassell - Seeing Through Sound - LP €22.99 (Ndeya) - A companion piece to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, this second volume in the pentimento series presents eight new tracks by the music visionary, continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing

Neck Deep - All Distortions Are Intentional - LP €22.99 (Hopeless) - Limited Orange Vinyl - With this album Neck Deep continue carving out their own unique space within rock, punk, and alternative music.

Nicolas Bougaïeff - The Upward Spiral - LP €25.99 (Novamute) - Blue Vinyl -The Upward Spiral is Nicolas Bougaïeff’s debut full-length album release on Mute, following the release of three EPs on the seminal electronic label’s techno offshoot, NovaMute. The new album explores elements of acid, techno and tempo modulation through a compositional lens, drawing on the Canadian-born, Berlin-based artist’s love for avant-garde forms and long-standing relationship with the electronic music community.

VARIOUS ARTISTS - VARIOUS CHANNELS VOL. 1: NYC - 12"EP €13.99 (DARKER THAN WAX) - spotlighting select artists making waves - including Jitwam, James Tillman, Toribio, Ensemble Entendu, David Marston and Tristan Arp. Eclectic sound spectrums from R&B/Soul, Balearic Grooves, House, Broken Beat and beyond.

ANDRE BRATTEN - SILVESTER - 2LP €21.99 (SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND) - Silvester is Mayhem and Schnitzler reimagined. Or deconstructed and then rebuilt. However you term it, a remix turned into a new Andre Bratten unlike any he has recorded before, haunted by the echoes of Mayhem's grisly legacy as well as Klusters early industrial music's concrte looped experiments. 5 new tracks and 50 minutes of new music. An album of abstract freeform structures morphing elements of kraut, techno, ambient, black metal, industrial, minimalist and drone. A perfect fusion of two dystopian extremes of Norwegian underground music.

STRFKR - FUTURE PAST LIFE - LP €21.99 (POLYVINYL) - Limited Orange Vinyl - The immaculate but danceable pop that has long been STRFKR’s calling card is pushed into exciting new places on Future Past Life. It’s a strange and beautiful sonic environment, one that finds STRFKR growing as they embrace the chance and spontaneity that brought these songs about in the first place.

AMM - AMMMUSIC - LP€19.99 (Black Truffle) - The first vinyl reissue of the classic debut album from Amm, Ammmusic. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form. Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British jazz avant-garde – Keith Rowe and Lou Gare had played with the great progressive big band leader Mike Westbrook and Eddie Prévost played in a post-bop group with Gare – Amm quickly evolved from a free jazz group into something decidedly more difficult to categorise.

The Acacia Strain - Slow Decay - LP€20.99 - Nothing describes Slow Decay, the tenth studio offering from core titans The Acacia Strain, better than its own opening decree. After the surprise Christmas release of critically acclaimed It Comes in Waves, the band hinted there was more to come. Little did we know they’d follow their best album in a decade – which found the veterans experimenting with full on death and doom in an ominous, galactic post-metal universe – with an immaculate, jaw-shattering return to form.

Primal Fear - Metal Commando - 2LP€25.99 (Nuclear Blast) - Metal Commando does that and more within every note: It’s fresh, it’s furious, it’s hungry. It's a work that's almost bigger than the band itself, even 22 years deep into their career. It' also a record which sees Primal Fear return to their first label Nuclear Blast.

HAKEN - VIRUS - 2LP+CD €29.99 (InsideOutMusic) - Since releasing Vector in October 2018, Haken have completed headline tours the world over, played sold-out shows across Europe and North America as support for Devin Townsend and picked up a Prog award for their efforts too! All the while, they have been quietly, secretly working on the follow-up album, entitled Virus.

Richie Spice - Valley of Jehoshaphat (Red Hot) - 7" €7.99 (VP) - Modern roots artist Richie Spice returns with a double-portion of classic roots with producer Clive Hunt. Re-make of Max Romeo hit casts Richie Spice as a current day leader for roots reggae.

ALPHA STEPPA & PUPA JIM - Dear Friend - 12" €10.99 (Steppas) - Dear Friend is quickly becoming an anthem for an international, inter-generational fight for a sustainable future. The single edition includes exclusive vocal and dub mixes, plus two powerful and uplifting instrumentals featuring the great King David Horns and Ras Divarius – sleeved in the Steppas Records house-bag made from high quality 100% recycled card.

Earl White Jr - Very Special Girl / Never Fall In Love Again - 7" €12.99