Tough Love Records
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Visit product page →“But into my miserable brain, always concerned with looking for noon at two o’clock"
- Charles Baudelaire (1869)
The Foreign Department is the second album by Astrel K, the solo project helmed by Stockholm-based British ex-pat, Rhys Edwards. Those already familiar with Edwards’ work will likely know him for fronting the cultishly great Ulrika Spacek, and given he operates as the principal songwriter in both projects, much of the same hallmarks of his cathartic, elliptical songwriting are present in Astrel K. Nonetheless, The Foreign Department feels like a rubicon moment of sorts, and the album that Edwards has unconsciously been working towards his entire creative life.As a title, The Foreign Department offers an instructive guide for the listener, framing a life-in-transition/artist-in-exile document that maps two impromptu moves in twelve months for its songwriter: the first from London in pursuit of a relationship, the second between homes in Stockholm as that decade long relationship then suddenly dissolved.
Indeed, diffusion, dissolution and reconstitution feel like appropriate touchstones for its recurring themes. Written amidst the flux of two states, at once isolated from home and then any established emotional anchor, the resulting eleven tracks came to represent a precognitive search for shifting identity and with it forming an unwittingly biographical record. It's commendable and somewhat telling that during this shake up, Edwards somehow landed upon his most realised and original work.With a former life stripped away, there emerged an opportunity to reinvent a sense of self through art, now not just as a writer, but a composer also. Developing the confidence to arrange songs in ways he'd previously considered off-limits, while also taking cues from the opulent string and brass arrangements of records like Mercury Rev's Deserters' Songs and Death of A Ladies Man by Leonard Cohen, Edwards enlisted a range of performers to bring to life the mini-symphonies forming in his head. Perhaps it's inevitable that an album written while facing the consequences of being alone would eventually ossify around the process of bringing people together.
For all its troubled origins, The Foreign Department is a remarkably warm sounding collection. Edwards' lyrics are typically knotty and neurotic, dancing around the poetry of quarter-life anxiety, but the music itself is often joyous and even uplifting, the combination expressing that neat duality of melancholic euphoria.
Lead single, 'Darkness At Noon', likely captures this all best. Named for the French idiom "midi a quatorze heures", the maddening idea of attempting the impossible for the sake of some greater possibly pointless cause, it directly grapples with the opposing notions of wanting and not wanting, of being here and being there at the same time. The conflicting and impossible self. It’s something Edwards addresses in the song at perhaps his most open, opining, “I know I want to be seen, but I hate most of what comes out of me”. And yet here is, putting it all out in the open and on the line, the dialectics of his enlightenment up on show.
Edwards sings variously of crises, "torrid pieces of art", of "houses on fire" and not "having the guts for it", yet these troubling sentiments are framed by seemingly incongruous swelling strings, chirping horns or motorik percussion, creating that sense of pushing forward or floating above, of wrapping your troubles in dreams, a salve for the moments when you get a bit too much for yourself.
Tracklisting:
1. Heavy Is the Head
2. Darkness At Noon
3. By Depol
4. Brighter Spells
5. Firma
6. Birds In Vacant Lots
7. The Foreign Department
8. C Ya!
9. A Rudderless Ship
10. Daffodil
11. R U A Literal Child? -
Sold outLimited to 250 copies.Visit product page →
Leeds-based five-piece AUTOBAHN announce themselves to the world with their unapologetically sinister and aggressive self-titled debut EP.
A record for, and of, the night, AUTOBAHN conjure the dystopian nightmare world of 80s post-punk across three unrelenting tracks. Consider them Leeds'very own Lost Boys, cloaked in feedback, showing their teeth.
Despite forming in February 2013, and playing their first gig just months ago, they appear eerily fully formed. The group - a bunch of unknowns - have notched up word-of-mouth acclaim for their handful of visceral live shows, appearing on stages with the likes of Merchandise and Eagulls.
While those bands are appropriate touchstones for those new to AUTOBAHN, if you look closer you'll notice in their velvet jackets and puffed shirts a stargazing glamour at odds with their peers. On the surface, AUTOBAHN are a classic modern day punk band. But dig a little deeper and there's a colourful underbelly to their sonic ambitions, vivid like a new bruise.
Their name's a reference to Kraftwerk, hinting at a European intensity, while tracks like the scabrous Lost Tongue', are transgressive in the same way as early Public Image Limited. What's more, there's real catharsis at the heart of these songs: the opening track, 'Seizure', is about having a small fit in Brighton, while all the lyrics point to a very millennial sense of helplessness.
AUTOBAHN 1, then, is a bacchanalian trawl through the psyche, kind of unhinged, and staring right through you.
Tracklisting:
1. Seizure
2. Force Fed
3. Lost Tongue -
Sold outLtd one sided 12'.Visit product page →
'They're really fucking good' - CRACK
'Tense and aggressive Bauhaus-misery' - NME
'A band who sound like they truly mean it' - Loud & Quiet
Leeds-based five-piece AUTOBAHN follow last year's sold out debut EP, 1., with a second 3-track 12', out 7th July. 2. channels the same aggressive post-punk of their debut, but feels sharper, more focused in its intent. And it's hardly surprising - the first EP was a document of the band's first three songs.
Time has afforded the chance to hone the creative process with an almost military precision: cut the excess; find the point; hammer it home. If that approach recalls the crack-the-whip intensity of early Greg Ginn-led Black Flag rehearsals (legend states that Ginn would have the band practice 8 hours a day, 6 days a week), then it's fitting of the conditions in which the music was conceived. AUTOBAHN's practice room also plays host to Leeds'DIY hardcore/punk venue, and elements of that lifestyle have filtered into these new songs, in spirit if not aesthetic. Indeed, AUTOBAHN should not be mistaken for a hardcore band and its associated dogma.
There's too great a range of influences at play - current listening includes Chron Gen, Tubeway Army and Rowland S. Howard. This breadth of influence has informed the band from conception, but it's never been as manifest as on 2. You can hear it on the krautrock-inspired EP closer, Ulcer', with its metronomic intensity and subtle-but-persistent synth line, and in the myriad of guitar lines that close Pale Skin'.
A nod must also be made here to producer Matt Peel, who the band credits for pushing their songwriting in new directions.
Tracklisting:
1. Pale Skin
2. Unhinged
3. Ulcer -
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'I don't have any repressed emotions that I know of. The world I write about is a jaded version of reality, but where it comes from isn't quite apparent to me yet'Following the release of two self-titled EPs over the past 12 months, AUTOBAHN announce details of debut album, Dissemble, out on 21st August via Tough Love. Dissemble was recorded with Matt Peel at The Nave, a hometown studio situated in the wholly appropriate setting of a disused church. The band co-produced the record with Peel over six intense weeks at the start of 2015, dedicating all of their time to the studio and taking potentially unhealthy cues from the legacy of notorious obsessive, Martin Hannett. The result is an album that pushes the band through various degrees of light and shade, but ultimately into new, unexpected sonic spaces.
'You need to remember all of this world I write about is a warped reality of people I've known or experiences I've been in. I think you can just tell when a bands from Leeds, can't you?'
Motivated by the encouragement of a supportive local scene, AUTOBAHN formed in Leeds in early 2013, and immediately began playing live across the north of England. Those early forays across the Pennines were vital in not only helping the band form their own sound, but also hold a symbolic role in understanding their genesis. The North as both idea and identity is integral to what AUTOBAHN are, where post-industrial landscapes intersect with sudden wide open spaces, a place where community is central, but loneliness can be palpable. There's a dark, oppressive edge to their music, but a hopefulness too. Sisters of Mercy, yes, but also brothers in arms.
'The first track was intended to be a link to the past records. We leave the past behind after that.'
AUTOBAHN first came to the attention of Tough Love via a local support slot with Tampa romantics, Merchandise, and reached the wider world with the release of two now sold out 12's. Those first recordings suggested a classic modern punk band with a penchant for death and glamour, and an impatience to be heard. Time and touring has afforded them the ability to shift gear significantly, and the renewed ambition of Dissemble stands as testament to that. The band were immediately a thrilling live force, but on this album they're wider, more urgent when they want to be, more thoughtful when required. Dissemble is an appropriate title (meaning to conceal one's true motives), because there's something canny at work here. The surface suggests despair, but scratch deeper and the lyrics display a lightness of touch that skewers the over-earnest and overly-serious.
'Dissemble is a twisted romantic view of how AUTOBAHN think: don't take life too seriously'
Life is a joke, but AUTOBAHN aren't laughing. How could they?
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'Melancholy and darkness, and dissonant, uncomfortable music, resonates with us, for whatever reason,' says singer and spokesman Craig Johnson. 'The new record is more melancholy than dissonant. I feel we're just opening up a bit more on this record.'Visit product page →
A sliver of strings, a squeal of feedback, pulsing drums, sheets of steely guitar and sonorous bass, and a rough, declamatory voice - from these primary components, Leeds quintet AUTOBAHN unfurl their second album, The Moral Crossing, which adds more finesse, dynamic and colour to the commitment and energy shown on their 2014 debut Dissemble - an album that Louder Than War described as, 'driving, powerful and passionate - ¦ tapping into addictive darkness of our past and reminding us that that we cannot escape its attractive desolation.'
While Dissemble was made by imagining what the late, great producer Martin Hannett would do, The Moral Crossing is the sound of what AUTOBAHN would do. To capture the new sonic details of the band, lead singer and principal songwriter Craig Johnson, guitarists Michael Pedel and Gavin Cobb, bassist Daniel Sleight and drummer Liam Hilton decided to give up their practice room that doubled as a hardcore/punk venue (which influenced their original sound, as did a love of The Birthday Party) and build their own studio space.
They found a former double-glazing firm, under a disused bridge, in Holbeck (Leeds'red light district), and despite having no experience of such a job, they undertook this feat. It took a year from ripping out the existing contents to finishing the album - which was then mixed in New York by Ben Greenberg, known for his work with the Sacred Bones label.
On top, Johnson taught himself how to make a record after the studio was built. 'I was down there nearly every night,' Johnson recalls. 'It was pretty horrible at times, but worth the pain to have control over everything. We've had the chance to create the sound we want, at times it's more melancholic, and romantic.'
Part of the shift comes from Johnson's newly honed melodies such as Vessel'and Torment', part from a greater use of electronics, such as the synthesiser underpinning a haunting Future', evoking neon-lit rainy-nocturnal rides through a cityscape, likewise the album's title track, which is one song to benefit from the judicious addition of violin and cello. '!'d been listening to classical music, and I'd seen the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra doing Beethoven's Ninth, which was mint, but I felt out of place, that people were looking down at me,' Johnson recalls. 'So, it's good to bring some of that to the record. A couple of tracks, Torment'was one, we ended up replacing the guitars with strings - whatever was best for the song. Like the French female voice in Torment'too, it just felt right.'
This time around, AUTOBAHN decided to create their fearsome depth charges by building the tracks as they went along rather than working on completed songs. As a name, AUTOBAHN has been a bit misleading, as they sound quintessentially Leeds, not Munich or Dusseldorf, but Johnson chose the name because he loved the repetition of rhythm. With Hilton - surely one of the best young drummers alive - driving, Johnson requested they all, 'imagine they were all different part of a machine: a steam engine, say. Again, it just felt right. And then we put it all together. The lyrics came right at the end.'
Johnson's lyrics on The Moral Crossing combine to form a whole: the theme of a birth, 'but that person had no choice in the decision. And then it's about the different outcomes that could happen. Which could be glorious or torturous.'
The words and songtitles suggest more torture than glory - for example, 'A selfless crucifixion / You've nailed in the hard sell' in the manic Obituary': 'Pain out of control' in Torment': 'With your withered hand / Drag me deeper into the fallen ground' in the escalating drama of Fallen'- a word, alongside 'fall', that crops up in several songs. Though Johnson points out that another line from 'Fallen', 'Give a break to that child in the noose' is an example of AUTOBAHN's, 'dark northern humour' (another example was the billboard ad for Dissemble: a hearse, parked outside a funeral parlour, with the band's name in flowers, next to a group of kids holding balloons - ¦)
And though Johnson admits to sudden negative episodes (documented by Low/High', another slowburner that eventually bursts into flames), 'they don't last long. Actually, as a band, we're more optimists. I don't find talking about this stuff as dark', but it's stuff people don't usually want to talk about - execution, rising from the dead, depression, feeling utterly lost and unsure where to go. To understand the moral crossing, to go one way or the other, and how it can change your life. For me, saying this stuff out loud give the feeling that there's a future.'
On Low/High', Johnson sings, 'You're floating higher now / No more discontent' and in the part-spoken word litany that is Creation', 'I want to be there for you / I want to rise on through.' To reinforce the optimistic feeling, gospel singers from the local church sing on both tracks. 'I wouldn't call it holy'but some of the lyrics they were singing were about going to a higher place, even if the whole lyric might contradict that,' says Johnson.
AUTOBAHN have checked their own moral compass, and chosen the hard way - not just building their own studio, but to keep confronting the dark stuff. But their music is infused with the joy of exorcising the darkness: to be there, and rise on through. There is a future, and AUTOBAHN and The Moral Crossing are very much part of it.
Martin Aston, August 2017
Tracklisting :
1. Prologue
2. Obituary
3. Future
4. The Moral Crossing
5. Torment
6. Low/High
7. Execution/Rise
8. Creation
9. Fallen
10. Vessel
Release Date: 03/11/2017 -
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Big Ups' second LP, Before A Million Universes, is at once a fist in the face of complacency and a sonic affirmation to, in Walt Whitman's words, "let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."
Pretty heady subject matter... Joe Galarraga (vocals), Amar Lal (guitar), Carlos Salguero Jr. (bass), and Brendan Finn (drums), met studying music technology at NYU. Five years later, the city's notorious crucible of garbage, money, and humanity has had a profound and delightful impact on their art.
"Tell me what you're worth / Salary, two weeks off work?" Galarraga screams on "Capitalized," as the bassline frantically roams our conscience like a wet-nosed dog. Galarraga's vocals burn with the heat of a thousand day jobs.
Yet all this righteousness is worth as much as a Che t-shirt if it lacks humility, and more than any of the band's previous work, Before A Million Universes plumbs the depths of self-deception in wickedly clever ways. Who doesn't own a coat made of "The Feathers Of Yes"?
"Count the ideas in my head so I can love every one," our protagonist coos before Lal's guitar tosses lightning bolts through his cloud. "And it feels so warm / wrapped in self-righteous truths."
"Yawp" unspools the exercise in futility that is the overexamined life to the tune of a lumbering giant stomping across a field of insecurities. "How many times can you be poured through the still to the point of perfection? / I've dropped myself through the coils so many times but always come out with something missing / And the proof's so high it makes me dizzy."
The album's emotional and musical core lies in "National Parks," a song Galarraga wrote as a tribute to the sacrifices his mother made to raise him.
We're led through the anger and bewilderment'at his mom's solitary walks through their neighborhood and the selfishness inherent to childhood'and into a coda where you can almost see the sun streaming through the trees of Galarraga's park, drums steady and swelling, a transition in tone and mood that this band has nearly perfected. "I think I saw her say to herself / This is everything I've missed."
Before A Million Universes is Big Ups at their most sincere, urgent, and vital' a salty kiss from the wet lips of Brooklyn's bard.
Tracklisting:
1. Contain Myself
2. Capitalized
3. Posture
4. Feathers of Yes
5. Meet Where We Are
6. Negative (intro)
7. Negative
8. Hope For Someone
9. Knight
10. National Parks
11. So Much You
12. Proximity Effect
13. Yawp -
Visit product page →Brendan Finn, Joe Galarraga, Amar Lal, and Carlos Salguero Jr. met whilst learning about specifications of Cat 5 cables in New York City. Shortly after, they formed a band.
Big Ups blend punk, post-punk, metal, and indie rock into a salty mash that gets stuck to the roof of your mouth. At their brightest, they have been likened to The Descendents, but at their sludgiest, they call to mind bands like Pissed Jeans and The Jesus Lizard, albeit with an Albini-esque metallic clang.Their debut album, Eighteen Hours of Static, was recorded by Charles DeChants in the rock 'n' roll labyrinth known as Excello Recording in Brooklyn over three days.
The album is one characterised by aggressive mood swings. The band slows their usual frantic pace on the burner Wool ' a song about dealing with suffering. They toy with dynamics on white-knuckle grip of TMI, Little Kid, and Fresh Meat. But not to worry ' the mania is still there; first single Goes Black and Atheist Self-Help demand attention with their searing guitars and colossal drums.
Lyrically, the album is a meditation on truth, faith, and science (the record's title is a reference to Carl Sagan's Contact), but like all the best bands, Big Ups don't necessarily have all of the answers, but they'll keep asking the right questions¦Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Body Parts
2. Goes Black
3. Justice
4. Grin
5. WoolSide B:
1. TMI
2. Little Kid
3. Atheist Self-Help
4. Disposer
5. Fresh Meat
6. Fine Line -
Sold outVisit product page →Repressed on frosted clear vinyl, 500 copies only...Danish four-piece Communions have announced details of a new EP.
Communions will be released on Tough Love Records on Monday 1st June. The self-titled EP features lead track Out of My World and is accompanied by 4 other tracks, all recorded in their hometown of Copenhagen. The EP is the second release on Tough Love Records, following the release of AA-side single So Long Sun/Love Stands Still at the end of 2014.
The limited 7” sold-out and Pitchfork were quick to praise the A-side and hone in on their musical influences:
“The song oozes effervescent warbles—from vocalist Martin Rehof, and the interplay of shimmering guitars, and lovely crescendos of reverb, reminiscent of early Stone Roses.” (Pitchfork)
Communions, made up of brothers Martin and Mads Rehof, Jacob van Deurs Formann and Frederik Lind Köppen, are fast-gaining attention for their transcendent melodies, delicate guitar lines and emotive pop songs about naivety and youth.
Tracklisting:
1. Forget it's a Dream
2. Wherever
3. Restless Hours
4. Summer's Oath
5. Out of My World -
Sold outCommunions, made up of brothers Martin and Mads Rehof, Jacob van Deurs Formann and Frederik Lind Köppen, are fast-gaining attention for their transcendent melodies, delicate guitar lines and emotive pop songs about naivety and youth.Visit product page →
"oozes effervescent warbles'from vocalist Martin Rehof, and the interplay of shimmering guitars, and lovely crescendos of reverb, reminiscent of early Stone Roses.' (Pitchfork)
Following two sold out pressings of Communions' So Long Sun 7" and the self-titled 5 track EP, Tough Love have collected the two releases together on one CD for the first time.
The 7 tracks document the Danish four-pieces impressive evolution from teenage proteges of the Copenhagen Mayhem scene (IceAge, Lust for Youth, Lower) to perhaps the most accomplished young songwriters in the country.
Tracklisting:
1. Forget it's a Dream
2. Wherever
3. Restless Hours
4. Summer's Oath
5. Out of My World
6. So Long Sun
7. Love Stands Still -
Sold outBlack Vinyl - 200 copies.Visit product page →
CRUISING are a four piece from Dublin and Belfast made up of Benni Johnston (Vocals), Claire Miskimmin (Guitar/Bass) Neil Brogan (Guitar/Bass) and Sarah Grimes (drums).
With previous/ongoing experience in bands such Girls Names, September Girls, Sea Pinks and Logikparty, CRUISING began in 2013 as a side project for all four.
Named for William Friedkin's gay exploitation shocker from 1980, the debut single You Made Me Do That (taken from the killer's line in the film) dropped in early 2014 on Soft Power records and was recorded live as it was written.
Practicing sporadically and playing a string of incendiary/chaotic live shows when schedules allow, CRUISING have now miraculously recorded their debut EP proper for Tough Love.
Recorded in two days in a freezing railway arch studio (Dublin's Guerilla Studios) in January 2015, and mixed at Belfast's Start Together, the self titled EP shows the band in various guises, morphing between popper'd up Agit-Punk (the re-recorded You Made Me Do That, Woman), psyched out post-punk (Lifting), and riff driven bangers (Safe Corridor, Cutlass, The Spectacle).
Tracklisting:
1. The Spectacle
2. You Made Me Do That
3. Safe Corridor
4. Lifting
5. Woman
6. Cutlass -
Sold out"Guitar-flecked electro at its most hypnotic and sublime" Sunday TimesVisit product page →
'Unfettered adrenalin rush' MOJO (4/5)
'Fun with a capital F', but there are moments of gravitas too. Not easy to do that' NME (8/10)
Light in Your Mind is the first new material from CYMBALS in 2 years, and their first album since 2014. If the wait seems long for the listener, for those involved in its creation the time in between pulls in a lifetime of unexpected experiences. That Light In Your Mind even exists is a testament to not giving in.
Since their inception, CYMBALS line up has been subject to a great deal of change. Amidst that change there has always existed the songwriting duo of Jack Cleverly and Dan Simons, who formed the band in 2011 with the sole intention of 'having fun'.
A noble aspiration, but one that became increasingly hard to realize when the realities of a 9-5 existence started to corrosively rub against the expectations of being in a band that wanted to tour the world. At various points over the last 6 years and across 3 albums, a rotating cast of at least 10 other people have formed some version of CYMBALS.
More still have contributed to Light In Your Mind - Justin Goings and Josh Hefferman both provide drums, while Alabaster DePlume plays saxophone on Fully Automated Luxury'. Producer Kristian Robinson (Capitol K) is a major presence across the album and played a key role in guiding the transition from the band's sound on their previous record to this one.
The music itself possesses a sedimentary quality, a residue of each contributing member compressed into what it is that band have become. Consistent throughout has been the relationship between Cleverly and Simons. Failing relationships, betrayal, addiction, illness: the emotional challenges were huge.
Thankfully, they were not insurmountable. Second track Car Crash'addresses that period head-on, a typically effervescent synth line from Simons disguising lyrical content that traverses that fine line between blind arrogance and tortured self-loathing. Like all the best CYMBALS songs, it deals in unexpected contrasts.
Much the same can be said of the structure of the album as a whole, eclectically comprised of melodically memorable pop songs ('Car Crash', 'Talk To Me'), bucolic instrumentals ('My Body', 'Numbers') and longer, pensive songs that explore the space in between ('ASMR', 'I Thought I Knew You'). As final track Lifetime Achievement Award'concludes, a synth loop first heard on the opening track is subtly re-introduced, completing a circle of sorts.
Tracklisting:
1. Decay
2. Car Crash
3. Talk To Me
4. I Thought I Knew You
5. My Body (Winter Mix)
6. Where Nothing Can Be Defined
7. Splitting
8. Euphoric Recall
9. ASMR
10. Fully Automated Luxury
11. Lifetime Achievement Award -
a cosmic, philosophical treatise disguised as an indie rock record. ' PitchforkVisit product page →
Wanna wake up wanting to listen to records / But those old feelings elude me / I raise a toast to the rock n' roll ghost, sings Cymbals Eat Guitars frontman Joseph D'Agostino on the hyper-adrenalized XR, which sounds like a Tonight's the Night outtake recorded at triple speed, with its braying harmonica and spitfire vocal delivery. It's the track that perhaps best captures the spirit of the band's third LP, LOSE, one of coping with abject loss and grief by rediscovering what you've always loved, as difficult as it may be'?the redemptive power of music.
For D'Agostino, this entailed coming to terms with his best friend and musical collaborator Benjamin High, who passed away suddenly seven years ago, just as Cymbals Eat Guitars began recording in earnest. LOSE is a very apropos title because it refers not only to losing Ben, but also it's about a sort of nostalgia, a longing for a time when music meant everything to you and your friends, and it seemed like one great rock record could change everyone's life the way it changed yours, says D'Agostino.
It's about being in mourning for your long-held belief that music could literally change the world. That's the contradiction at the heart of LOSE... You're disillusioned, but somehow you can do nothing else but rail against that feeling mightily and try, once again, to make a record that makes you and everyone else 'wake up wanting to listen to records'. And indeed, the band, rounded out by bassist Matthew Whipple, keyboardist Brian Hamilton, and drummer Andrew Dole, alongside producer John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile), do little wallowing. This is a raucous affair, an Irish Wake, ultimately rooted in nothing less than a celebration of just being alive. What's perhaps most impressive about LOSE is the manner in which D'Agostino comes clean with his emotions, tackling seemingly ineffable mourning without equivocation.
There are no $5 words that you'll have to pull up dictionary.com for... some of the lyrics are directly confessional. Very open, no obfuscation, he explains. I lost my dear friend a while ago and I've sort of been addressing it in song for most of my career, though you probably couldn't really tell until now. It's just a direct expression of grief. I figured if I confronted it head-on on record it'd make for some interesting music.
1. Jackson2. Warning3. XR4. Place Names5. Child Bride6. Laramie7. Chambers8. Lifenet9. Hip Soul -
LP is ltd , colour is called 'blue suede shoes'.Visit product page →
RIYL: Felt, Television Personalities, The Wake, Orange Juice, The Pastels, Young Marble Giants, Veronica Falls.
'angels of light have your souls in a vice / we want to be free / we want to be loved / we want to be kissed from heaven above' David West, Dream on Dreamer
When Tough Love first began putting out records, one of the guiding motivations was to release music that sounds like the music David West makes. We didn't know it at the time, because we hadn't yet heard of him. It's funny how the very thing you're looking for falls into your lap.
If you don't already know of David, and the various guises he performs under, then I'm a little envious, for you have a lot to discover for the first time. Peace or Love, is the second album to be issued under his own name. That can be either your starting point, or your continuation down a road.
The facts: Peace or Love is the follow-up to USA/Australia-based musical artist David West's 2015 cassette release, Drop Out Of Collage. Peace or Love is a collection of songs stemming from wild and free bedroom four-track cassette recordings and personal hard drive sample raiding, with contributions from various musical friends in Perth, Western Australia and SF/LA, California.
West draws inspiration from free-thinking artists of the past and present on this polyphonic platter, from soft indie strumming and free soundscapes, to disco and soul-pop. West currently plays in the guitar pop band Rat Columns, synth-pop project Liberation and post-punk trio Rank/Xerox, and has been in varied acts such as Lace Curtain, Burning Sensation, Total Control and Whalehammer.
If you were feeling particularly grand, you could say that David West has created his own ecology, or you could just say he's a very busy man. I told David over email that Peace or Love feels like an album that was made specifically for me. His reply? 'It is for YOU. And YOU. And YOU. And YOU - ¦Peace or love is the same thing - you want to be free and you want to be loved....but you gotta choose one' This is music from the margins that deserves a place in the middle of anyone's heart. // 'it's peace or love baby / you said it before / that you want it all / it's peace or love, baby' - David West, Peace or Love.
Tracklisting:
1. Untitled
2. Peace or Love
3. Do You Miss Me Around
4. Dream on Dreamer
5. Darkness in My Heart
6. At Pease
7. Darkness in My Heart 2
8. Happiest Man In The Room
9. Au Contraire
10. In Love
11. Darkness in My Heart 3 -
David West is a musical artist from Western Australia based in New York City. He's been active in the shifting sands of underground pop for over a decade. Not dissimilar to the main character in Star Wars, his musical career began in a backwater desert village, in this case, Perth, before he migrated to more glittering metropolises like San Francisco and Melbourne, and finally landing in his current home of New York.Visit product page →
He presently plays in the contemporary outfits Rat Columns, Rank/Xerox and Liberation. In the past he has participated in such groups as Lace Curtain, Burning Sensation and Total Control. DW began releasing eponymous platters in 2015 with the Night People/Happy Endin' full-length cassette Drop Out Of Collage.
This was followed in 2016 by the Peace Or Love LP which featured the radio semi-hit Dream On Dreamer'. DW's move into the "own-name" category of artists came as his other bands began to develop defined identities. He felt that recording under his own name would be an excellent umbrella for both roving experimentation and a more frivolous, post-modern style of pop music that would not fit in the frameworks of his other projects. Also, after crafting band names for over a decade, it was just time.
Cherry On Willow is DW's audio pop vision for 2017. It differs from the last two DW releases by introducing a more collaborative framework, creating the backing group Teardrops - an open ensemble of friends and collaborators, including Bob Jones of Eaters, Louis Hooper of Rat Columns, Mikey Young of Total Control and Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Raven Mahon of Grass Widow, dynamite drummer Griffin Harrison and other supremely talented individuals from the past and future.
The recordings were quite live and spontaneous, hoping to catch some of the magic involved in speed and improvisation, harvesting creative sparks from his musical colleagues and himself.
The album was recorded in various places in the latter half of 2016 - by DW in his practice space in New York City; in a rental rehearsal room in Glasgow; and a garage studio in Guildford, Western Australia, where Rat Columns' recent LP Candle Power was also recorded. Cherry On Willow was recorded quickly and with a 'first thought best thought' philosophy, to capture an old-school pop feeling, with rough edges intact, human movements tracked and uncut. Swiping liberally from various strains of underground pop, glam, rock'n'roll, synth-pop and disco.
RIYL: Felt, The Wake, Orange Juice, The Pastels, Feelies, Belle and Sebastian, Rat Columns.
Tracklisting:
1. Morning Rain
2. Cherry On Willow
3. Joy
4. Love Comes On
5. Time To Forget
6. Reds For The Blues
7. Soft
8. Swan's Beat
9. Call Me Sometime
Release Date: 20/10/2017 -
(250 Black Vinyl).Visit product page →
Display Homes are an Australian three-piece pop band that formed one night in late 2016 at a pool table in Marrickville - Greg and Darrell met Steph, who'd just come back to Sydney from Germany and reckoned she could play drums.
Their first practice involved an abysmal attempt at a cover of Thin Lizzy's "Dancin in the Moonlight'", and they soon realised Steph clearly hadn't been in a band before and Greg shouldn't sing. Regardless, the connection between them all was obvious, and the songs began to crop up naturally.
Just a few months after their first trip to the studio, Display Homes'self-titled debut 7" is being released through London-based record label Tough Love Records on [XXX]. The three songs were recorded in April of this year in David Akerman's studio in Marrickville, and just like all great current Australian music, they were later mastered by Mikey Young.
As far as debuts go, it's effortlessly perfect. In this brief time together, the band have played a host of short and fast shows across Australia, alongside other great locals such as UV Race, Low Life and Orion. Buoyed by the inherent intensity that informs the Sydney DIY music community and a shared love for a wide range of 80s music, Display Homes play discordant pop-orientated post punk with a refreshing lack of self-awareness and lyrical honesty.
In fact, Steph's autodidactic approach to music means the lyrics were formed into songs somewhat unknowingly. As each song originates from a foolish nature and a tendency to improvise songs in any day-to-day situation, the end result is a set of direct, slightly jarring but infectious pop songs.
RIYL: The Au Pairs, Pylon, Priests, XTC, Essential Logic, Bush Tetras, Delta 5.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Climate Change
Side B:
2. Men
3. Bist Du Da -
Visit product page →1. Lawrence
2. I Could Die
3. When You Cry
4. No More Words
5. Nothing More To Say
6. I Lose
7. Cut Up
8. Bury Me
9. Kiss Goodbye
10. Séance On A Wet Afternoon -
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Limited Cream Vinyl / Black Vinyl / CD.
Northern Ireland's Girls Names return this autumn with their third full-length album, Arms Around a Vision, due for an October 2nd release via long-term home, Tough Love Records.
'We look to Europe for inspiration. For romance. For the idea of a better life,' says the band's frontman, Cathal Cully, when discussing the album. 'For me, living in Belfast just makes you focus on your own art.'
True, Girls Names formed in Belfast, but they've long considered themselves a European band. The distinction is important - their vision of Europe is one of weird, labyrinthian histories, blackest-ever-black coffee, and long drives to dismal places. Romantic notions for those of a certain disposition, but behind the thousand-yard stares they've always been a soft-hearted lot. As the title of Arms Around a Vision would suggest, they're all set to let love in.
The band initially came together as a relatively lean two-piece back in the summer of 2010, but over the course of a handful of EPs and three very different albums, they've grown in number and ambition. Their last album, The New Life, was an unexpected underground hit in early 2013, taking the band around the world and garnering much critical praise, culminating in nominations for both the Northern Irish and Irish Music Prizes. Emboldened by the reception to that record, in March they returned with an 11-minute single that was played in full on Radio 1 and, typically, does not feature on their new album. Girls Names like to do things a little differently.
On Arms Around a Vision, they're more widescreen than ever but also more direct and aggressive. The bass, drums and guitars are still there, but so are saxophones, organs, detuned broken guitars and pianos, and even sheets of metal assaulted with hammers. Conceptually, Arms Around a Vision acts as a love letter to European elegance - Italian futurism, Russian constructivism, Germany's Zero Group and both Neubaten and Bowie's Berlin.
Love and pain, romance and fucking. It's all in there somewhere. Grand claims, perhaps, but in an ever bleak world, why not skygaze? The album opens with Reticence', a song in two parts that's half metallic knockout, half midnight swagger. It sounds unlike anything they've ever done before, and is a perfect primer for an album that treads a course between Eno-era Roxy sleaze, Birthday Party dissonance and M.E.S'three R's: repetition, repetition, repetition.
As confident as it sounds, hardship has equally played a role in shaping Arms Around a Vision. 'I'm not starving or anything, but I've practically been living hand to mouth since I was 22,' confirms Cully. 'Most guitar music now is just a playground for the rich middle classes and it's really boring and elitist. We're elitist in our own way, in that we're on our own and you can't fuck with us when we've nothing to lose'. The near-6 minute A Hunger Artist'tackles that subject full on, addressing that age old adage of suffering for one's art.
While the songs aren't narrative-driven as such - the band still generally favour abstraction and ambiguity - there is a consistent underlying message: 'We've got nothing. We've never had anything. And we don't expect to. The only person I ever wanted to impress was myself. I've never got anywhere close to succeeding in doing that until this album. I'm proud of it. I think I can start saying I'm a musician now.'
Tracklisting:
1. Reticence
2. An Artificial Spring
3. Desire Oscillations
4. (Obsession)
5. Chrome Rose
6. A Hunger Artist
7. Málaga
8. Dysmorphia
9. (Convalescence)
10. Exploit Me
11. Take Out the Hand
12. I Was You -
Primitive Desire is an 11-track collection of the first ever studio sessions by Girls Names, recorded in 2009 in Belfast.Visit product page →
It compiles their debut EP originally released on Captured Tracks, the eight songs that originally featured on the long-out-of print You Should Know By Now mini-EP released on Tough Love, and a hereto-unreleased bonus track.
Primitive Desire is exactly as labeled and provides fans with a document of the band's early years as a two-piece, fuelled by a distinct nervous energy and nascent dark edge that would manifest itself much more obviously on subsequent albums.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Blood River
2.Tear Me Down
3. Blood Well
4. Graveyard
5. I Guess
6. Warm Hands, Cold Heart
Side B:
7. Running Scared
8. If I...
9. Oh, Girl!
10. Don't Let Me In
11. Don't Let Me Drown
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