Recently Added Vinyl

2 vinyl editions, one blue one orange both on 160 gm vinyl, both include downloads. 

Whether their muse lies in 60s sci-fi soundtracks, The Radiophonic Workshop, the prototype electronic sounds of The United States Of America, the retro-futuristic edge of Broadcast, the dream pop ambience of Angelo Badalamenti/Julie Cruise, or the shimmering shroud of Mazzy Star, will doubtless be raised in countless interviews.

But what matters more is that Death And Vanilla have woven a stunning tapestry that envelops all that preceded them, into a literally head-turning album, of kaleidoscopic proportions... Formed in Malmö, Sweden by Marleen Nilsson and Anders Hansson, Death and Vanilla utilise vintage musical equipment such as vibraphone, organ, mellotron, tremolo guitar and moog, to emulate the sounds of 60s/70s soundtracks, library music, German Krautrock, French Ye-ye pop and 60s psych.

They revel in the warmth of older analogue instruments to create a more organic sound, each loose wire and off-kilter noise adding to the rich atmosphere. After a handful of successful releases including a debut EP in 2010, their self-titled LP in 2012 – which sold out on pre-order – and a beautifully designed 7” single, the experimental pop duo were invited to compose a live soundtrack for the classic horror film, Vampyr (1932), for the Lund Fantastisk Film festival in Lund. Now, newly signed to Fire, the band return with ‘To Where The Wild Things Are.’

Named after the Maurice Sendak children’s book, the album is comprised of pop music with a wild, dreamy and experimental edge, celebrating imagination and the ability to travel to stranger recesses of the mind. ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ starts off with some of the most “pop” songs they’ve ever recorded, typified in the sweet and melodramatic “Arcana”, and the classic pop inspired “Time Travel”. Like Sendak’s book of the same name, the album then proceeds into stranger and stranger territory, resulting in some of the most experimental material Death and Vanilla have produced, such as the six minute “Something Unknown You Need to Know” and the machine-like, surf-guitar track “The Hidden Reverse”.

The band recorded the new album themselves in their rehearsal space, using just one microphone – a 70’s Sennheiser – which they bought at a flea market for a tenner. It is this unconventional recording process that gives Death and Vanilla their unique personality; using a trial and error approach to recording has rewarded the album with a strangeness that would not have otherwise been achievable.

Creating deliciously enticing soundscapes, full of moody moogs, swirling melodies and breathless vocals, their influences on ‘To Where the Wild Things Are’ are apparent and diverse, ranging from Ennio Morricone to Scott Walker, Tom Dissevelt to Norman Whitfield, The Zombies to Sun Ra, and Bo Hansson to The BBC Radiophonic workshop. 

Due to rising international pressure, Joanna Gruesome's new album Peanut Butter will finally enter the world via Fortuna POP! (UK/Japan), Slumberland (US) and Turnstile (RoW). Rival groups will be disappointed to learn that the record is a further experiment in combining hyper-melodic pop music with sonic violence. Officials have confirmed that the album contains a record number of hooks, traces of nut and elements of jangle pop, British hardcore punk, atonal music, screaming and drone organs. Yet they have issued warnings of "a marriage of radical politics with peanut butter spread". One authorised statement reads: 'Weighing in at a concise 25 minutes, the album hurtles through its ten songs, each one a succinct, powerful gem.'

Like their debut, the new album was recorded by MJ from Hookworms, with the aim of heightening the group's "pop" and "aggressive" elements to excessive and hitherto unrecorded levels.

As songwriter Owen Williams explains: 'We tried to make it shorter, more economical and attempted to pack as many hooks and screams in as quickly possible in order to avoid short changing the consumer or wasting her/his/their time. Lyrically it's more obtuse and surreal but also attempts to mock trad masculine rock themes whenever things do get more lucid. But sometimes musically we embrace them by doing embarrassing guitar solos. I'm not sure how much else I'm at liberty to say but one thing I will disclose is that the record is a response to threats posed by rival groups."

The record has also seen the group explore new and potentially dangerous lyrical territory. Opener Last Year is reportedly about experiencing personal tragedy and the occult in a waterpark and a pizza restaurant. Yet Jamie (Luvver) is a straightforward pop song about having a crush on someone named Jamie, queer literature and Welsh public transport. These tracks are followed by the incredibly catchy Honestly Do Yr Worst, a song about espionage, rival groups and the radical possibilities of peanut butter spread.

Things become surreal on There Is No Function Stacy, a song about 'someone called Stacy who wrongly believes a party is happening that she's been invited to. The narrator has to painfully explain to her that there was never a party and she fabricated it all', while on Crayon Williams addresses his approach to lyrics directly. 'Sometimes you can undermine hetero macho rock shit through nonsense words, obtuse statements, action, melody, sound or aesthetic rather than through traditional lyrics.'

Speaking confidentially, one official confirms that 'The sixth track, I Don't Wanna Relax, is yet another hook-filled potential single. This is swiftly followed by Jerome (Liar), a fan favourite based on a subversive folk tale.' On Separate Bedrooms, the group cover a song by Bristol DIY act Black Terror (now performing as 'CUP WINNERS' CUP'), a group known for their attention to melody. The penultimate track is the 'crushing, sparkling' Psykick Espionage, a song about telepathy and the occult in rock'n'roll, and 'the first time I ate an avocado'.

The record is brought to a close by Hey! I Wanna Be Your Best Friend, a heartwarming number about radical friendship and Thin Lizzy appreciation. Under media interrogation, guitarist George Nicholls confesses to the themes of the record: 'It's about radical politics, fancying people and espionage. The first record was more about violence and revenge fantasy, whereas this one is more about peanut butter."

Comprised of Alanna McArdle (vocals), Owen Williams (guitar), Max Warren (bass), George Nicholls (guitar & organ) and David Sandford (drums), the band members originally met on a wine tasting holiday. Their debut album Weird Sister took the world by storm when it was released in September 2013, and went on to win the 2014 Welsh Music Prize. Overwhelming press support saw glowing, hysterical reviews across the board with particular interest from media outlets 'Pitchfork' and 'the NME'.

On the radio their singles have scored a remarkable four out of four on the 'BBC 6 Music playlist' and the band have played sessions for both 'Lauren Laverne' on '6 Music' and for 'Huw Stephens' on 'BBC Radio One'. Since the release of Weird Sister the band have been constantly hounded, surfacing from hiding only to release split singles with Bristol's Trust Fund and New York's Perfect Pussy, as well as touring with Los Campesinos!, Speedy Ortiz and Stephen Malkmus.

Tracklisting:

1. Last Year 
2. Jamie (Luvver) 
3. Honestly Do Yr Worst 
4. There Is No Function Stacy 
5. Crayon 
6. I Don't Wanna Relax 
7. Jerome (Liar) 
8. Separate Bedrooms 
9. Psykick Espionage 
10. Hey! I Wanna Be Yr Best Friend

Godspeed You! Black Emperor (GYBE) returns with its first single LP-length release since the group's earliest days in 1997-99. Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress'clocks in at a succinct 40 minutes and is arguably the most focused and best sounding recording of the band's career. 

'If Godspeed around the turn of the millennium felt like a band of the moment, now, in a time of rapid cultural turnover and bite-sized music consumption, they feel out of step in a very necessary way.' - PITCHFORK

'This Montreal collective still sound like nothing else - ¦The Godspeed ethos of wordlessly eliciting universal truths remains as devastatingly effective as ever.' - THE GUARDIAN

Working with sound engineer Greg Norman (Electrical Audio) at studios in North Carolina and Montréal, GYBE slowly and steadily put the new album together through late 2013 and 2014, emerging with a mighty slab of superlative sonics, shot through with all the band's inimitable signposts and touchstones: huge unison riffage, savage noise/drone, oscillating overtones, guitar vs. string counterpoint, inexorable crescendos and scorchedearth transitions.

Following Godspeed's return from a long hiatus at the end of 2010 to begin playing live shows again, and with the hugely acclaimed Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! release in 2012 marking their first new release in a decade, the group continued to perform regularly on their own headlining tours (and as headliners at many leading festivals), often including a new multi-movement piece in concert over the past couple of years.

Known to fans and through live show recordings by the sobriquet 'Behemoth', GYBE has gradually distilled this new work down to a fastidious and uncompromising essence in the studio, with the swing-time swagger of the opening unison riff in 'Peasantry or Light! Inside of Light!'' giving way to increasing microtonal divergences and an exhilarating immersion in the harmonic power of massed amplified instruments, before collapsing into some of the most visceral and unalloyed noise/drone the band has yet committed to tape on 'Lambs'Breath' and 'Asunder, Sweet'.

The album closes with 'Piss Crowns Are Trebled', a 14-minute piece of vintage Godspeed, where ascending and descending guitar and violin melodies intertwine over gut-rattling distorted bass in 3/4 time, segueing into a pummeling four-on-the-floor series of sparkling, soaring crescendos.

Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress'finds Godspeed in top form; a sterling celebration of the band's awesome dialectic, where composition, emotion and note-choice'is inextricable from an exacting focus on tone, timbre, resonance and the sheer materiality of sound.

Tracklisting:
1. Peasantry or Light! Inside of Light!'
2. Lambs' Breath
3. Asunder, Sweet
4. Piss Crowns Are Trebled

Right from their inception in 1976, back in the first stirrings of punk, Wire went about making music in a subversive, conceptual way, setting themselves apart from both their peers and their influences.
'I had this idea that I wanted to avoid things that had a particular kind of tradition,' explains singer and guitarist Colin Newman. 'I thought the three-chord trick was too simplistic and that the one-chord trick would be better. Or the two chord trick where the second chord is definitely not the right chord.'
Bass guitarist and vocalist Graham Lewis identifies another trait that has run throughout the group's lifetime. ' People said, we were mysterious, arch and dark. But the only way of doing that successfully, is by also having a sense of humour. You have to have that balance. With Wire there's a peculiarity, a contrariness and that can be funny."

This questing approach has served them well in guarding against repetition and cliché. In context, Wire's last album, 2013's aptly titled Change Becomes Us was another case of 'Expect the unexpected' as it found them extensively reworking a rich cache of material abandoned amid a temporary
break-up in the early 80s.

Their 13th studio album - simply titled Wire - comprises material that was written with the album in mind, but toured extensively first, as well as songs that Newman introduced to the group in the studio just prior to recording. The idea was to get the most spontaneous reaction possible from the musicians, and far from the rough and ready results one might expect from such a tack, Wire is full of swooning pop melodies with a 60s tinge and an irresistible, near motorik rhythmic momentum. One can recognise certain melodic inflections, guitar and bass motifs, and drum rhythms from Wire's idiosyncratic vocabulary but it has a remarkable freshness. The basic tracks were recorded at Rockfield Studios with overdubs added at Brighton Electric. The 11 tracks selected for release were the ones that came together most naturally.

From the outset Wire was an alliance between four very different characters and continues today with the addition, in 2012, of It Hugs Back guitarist Matthew Simms, who is around thirty years younger than the other group members. 'With Matt there was a really new dynamic that had appeared in the group's sound and that was something we wanted to capture, utilise and be creative with,' says Lewis.
Wire is the first album where Simms has been involved in formulating the material from the ground up, but when the group's particular chemistry starts working he is now very much part of the process.

Lewis provides most of the lyrics for the album, their subject matter encompassing love songs, cryptic narratives and coded messages. One time, Newman asked Lewis to send over some unfinished, unformatted text so he wouldn't be bound by what to use for the chorus. This material spawned two songs written on the same day, Split Your Ends'and the droll In Manchester'. The latter has the disorientating and rather absurd situation of having 'In Manchester' as a soaring chorus, when the song is not about Manchester beyond a single line in the lyric.

As the album progresses, some of the sunlit pop tunes become more shadowy and it ultimately plunges into the musical black hole of Harpooned', eight churning minutes of the group's darkest, most abrasive music to date, and a favourite in live performances since 2013.

'The point where our personal narratives meet is all about change - moving on and keeping it interesting for ourselves,' says Newman. 'We're in it for the long haul and this is a one-way trip.'

Live dates outside the UK will be announced soon.

Tracklisting:
1. BLOGGING (3.46)
2. SHIFTING (3.17)
3. BURNING BRIDGES (3.17)
4. IN MANCHESTER (2.42)
5. HIGH (1.52)
6. SLEEP-WALKING (7.31)
7. JOUST & JOSTLE (2.12)
8. SWALLOW (4.17)
9. SPLIT YOUR ENDS (3.31)
10. OCTOPUS (3.16)
11. HARPOONED (8.23)

Anton says:

Brian Jonestown Massacre returned last May with their 14th full-length album Revelation'to critical acclaim. It is the first album

Tracklisting:

Side A:
1. Après Le Vin
2. Philadelphie Story (with Soko)
3. La Dispute
4. L'Enfer
5. Elle s'échappe

Side B:
1. Le Cadeau
2. Le Sacre du Printemps (with Asia Argento)
3. Le Souvenir
4 - Les Trois Cloches
5. Bonbon
6. L'Ennui
7. Bonbon Deux
8. La Question
9. Au Sommet