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Rune Grammofon
Arve Henriksen 'Towards Language'
£20.49
Rune Grammofon
Arve Henriksen 'Towards Language'
£20.49
With 'Towards Language' trumpeter Arve Henriksen is back with his trusted long time musical partners Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. Arve first collaborated with the pair on the much loved and highly praised 'Chiaroscuro' (2004), Arve's second album, and later on 'Cartography' (ECM 2008) and 'Places Of Worship' (2013).
Also an important part of the line-up is Eivind Aarset, the ECM associated guitarist extraordinaire. 'Towards Language' is Arve's ninth album (eight on Rune Grammofon and one on ECM) under his own name, in addition he has collaborated on records with artists like David Sylvian, Jon Balke, Trygve Seim and Trio Mediaeval, as well as a dozen albums as founder member of free noise trio Supersilent.
Arve has never been short of praise when it comes to expressing the importance his collaborators and musicians have on the creative process. Asked to comment on his new album, and its title, here's what he has to say: 'To express something on your own can be quite challenging at times. I have for years been in creative collaborations with musicians and producers that have ecouraged and inspired me. With this help and inspiration to discover new sounds and music I have struggled and made my way to gradually be able to create some sort of language and a way of telling stories with my trumpet and singing.
They have all coloured and gradually transformed me through different artistic timezones that I have passed through. All the information, concerts, discussions and impressions have had a significant impact on the process of gradually coming closer towards the core of communication through music.
With this recording, the good help and inspirational artistic contributions from Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang at the recording session in Oslo has led to these selected tracks. Music that has a connection to 'Places of Worship', but this time recorded 'live' in the studio in a chamber music like approach inspired by contemporary elements from composers like Toru Takemitsu and Manuel de Falla, to traditional organ music, and at the end of the album bringing in a traditional 'kven' (ancient Nordic song tradition) theme from the roots of my family from the North of Norway, sung by Anna Maria Friman of Trio Mediaeval.
Tracklisting:
1. Patient Zero
2. Groundswell
3. Towards Language
4. Demarcation Line
5. Transitory
6. Hibernal
7. Realign
8. Vivification
9. Paridae
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Visit product page →Release Date: 28/02/2025
Initial LP pressing on black and white coloured vinyl.
Nothing is ever easy for Black Spiders, never straightforward, there’s always a plethora of circumstances, bad luck and karma. Their last album, released in 2023, was titled ‘Can’t Die, Won’t Die’ and here we are at the dawn of 2025 and they’re still not fucking dead. Back with a brand-new album of high-voltage smashers, the Sheffield righteous rockers are set to release new album ‘Cvrses’ this coming February 28th on Dark Riders via Cargo Distribution.
Featuring twelve new tracks of exactly the kind of soaring rock ‘n roll action we’ve all come to expect, love and demand from Black Spiders, their intentions are the same now as they were from the very the moment they started back in 2008 – be true to yourself, no compromise.
“Stick to that formula and everything will be alright is what we hope and then with a little bit of luck life might surprise you,” says guitarist Pete Spiby. “It’s our fifth album, from the point of view of myself and Irwin. It’s our best. Our statement of intent has not changed from day one.”
Recorded once again at Axis Studios in Doncaster with producer Matt Ellis behind the wheel, ‘Cvrses’ is, and of course all bands say this, very possibly their best album yet. It successfully distils everything that is thrilling and life-affirming about Black Spiders unique brand of thumping heaviness. Massive riffs, massive hooks, massive beats. It’s all massive.
Opening song ‘Never Enough’ is as good a statement of intent as you’re ever going to get, crashing in with three cracks on the snare from drummer Wyatt Wendels, before a strutting garage rock riff pumps the album into immediate action.
“Never Enough is where the initial idea for the album title ‘Cvrses’ came from,” explains Pete. “It‘s the reality of how you can be relentless in the pursuit of something, but once you get over the crest of that hill, there’s another hill in the distance. More obstacles in life. So, everything is always just out of reach, but the positive side of that is you’re still striving, living.”And from that moment on, ‘Cvrses’ steams through a rollercoaster ride of rock emotions, from the hand-clapping ramalama of ‘Cool Reaper’, to the soaring balladry of ‘Dia De Muertos’, it’s all there, fully intact and in your face, right where proper rock should be.
And why is the album called ‘Cvrses’? Well, ‘Cvrses’ has double meanings, on one hand it’s a supernatural punishment, invoked to do harm, and it’s also a very old English swear word. Both of these meanings ring true in every sense of the word in relation to Black Spiders.
“As long as that drive is in the tank, we will keep going, because that’s what we need to do,” summarises Pete and Cvrses to anyone that tries to stop them.Black Spiders will tour the UK in April 2025.
Black Spiders are:
Adam Irwin - bass
James Evans - guitar
Nate Digby - guitar
Wyatt Wendels - drums
Pete Spiby - vocals + guitarTracklisting:
Side A
1. Never Enough
2. Cool Reaper
3. Sorry Not Sorry
4. Idol Hands
5. Tom Petty’s Lips
6. Castile De La Roja (skit)
7. Dia De MuertosSide B
1. No Superman
2. Go!
3. Up All Night
4. Curses (skit)
5. Obey
6. The Mofo Sauce
7. Rotten To The Core
Lil Death (hidden track) -
Visit product page →2LP is yellow vinyl cut 45 RPM in gatefold jacket + download. CD Digi.
Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic end of 2020, the Mountain Goats frontman passed the time trapped at home watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008’s Mesrine, vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle The Freakmaker.
Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure and futility of vengeance. But there’s no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are. “On earlier tapes you’ll find these sound samples,” Darnielle says. “‘Oh, where’s this sample from?’ It’s from whatever movie I was watching while I was sitting around on the couch with a guitar. I watch a movie, somebody’d say something that I like the sound of and I’ll write that phrase down. And then I would pause the VHS, write the song, record the song on a boombox, and go back to watching my movie. I got into doing that again; I just kept watching action movies and taking notes on what they’re about and on what the governing plots and tropes and styles are. It was very much like an immersion method acting technique.”
The resulting performance is Bleed Out, a cinematic experience unto itself. One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begat another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about and the causes and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances. “We often make a record and then bring in some guests who flesh out the textures,” Darnielle says. “And for this one, it was very much like a pack mentality. That sort of seemed to proceed from the songs.”
One new face was that of Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, recommended to Darnielle by his manager as a producer who could help nurture the rougher edged sound these songs requested. “We met up and hit it off. She’s a great guitarist. It was kind of just a lark, to see what would happen, and it was totally great.” Running narrative themes are not new to Mountain Goats projects, especially in recent years, be it the pro wrestlers of 2015’s Beat the Champ or the goths of 2017’s Goths. Darnielle was drawn to the antiheroes of the hard-boiled action flicks he was bingeing, particularly the ways in which their quests for justice were almost all inevitably doomed.
Bleed Out could be all one movie, from the opening training montage to the demise in the elegiac closing title track. Songs like “Make You Suffer,” “First Blood,” “Hostages,” and “Need More Bandages” do what they say on the tin, telling typically vivid, deliberately recognizable vignettes of desperate characters in no-win situations who plan on taking as many people down with them as they have to. But Darnielle sees these as unconnected stories that feel universal in their desire for justice, if not in their wanton bloodshed.
Anthems don’t get more straightforward or anthem-y than “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,” tapping into an anger that’s easy to reach in 2022, even if the solutions aren’t. Few people think as much, or as well, about violence and its portrayal as John Darnielle. His recent bestselling novel Devil House (his third) is all about the relationship between tragedy and entertainment, though he is careful to downplay any parallels to Bleed Out beyond a natural attraction to terrible things as a coping mechanism. “That’s what catharsis is,” he says. “When you are able to experience something that is frightening to you but you don’t have to be harmed by it that experience is really valuable. I think we’re reflecting on the nature of what we consume and of what it says about us.”Tracklisting:
Side A
1 Training Montage
2 Mark on You
3 Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome
4 Extraction PointSide B
5 Bones Don’t Rust
6 First Blood
7 Make You Suffer
8 Guys on Every CornerSide C
9. Hostages
10. Need More BandagesSide D
11. Incandescent Ruins
12. Bleed Out -
Visit product page →Pull the Rope, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine, casts the Eno Williams and Max Grunhard–led outfit in a new light. The hope, joy, and sexiness of their music remain, but, further honing the edge of their acclaimed 2022 album Electricity, the connection they aim to foster has shifted venues from the sunny buoyancy of a sunlit festival to a sweat-soaked, all-night dance club.
Williams and Grunhard attribute this shift to a matter of collaborators, recording Pull the Rope with Sheffield-based producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A.) over the course of two weeks. The way the pair wrote songs changed significantly rather than Eno penning lyrics to music generated by Max and company’s jamming, Orton started with Eno and Max writing together before adding the band.
With less time in the studio and a new way of considering how they built songs, the duo found making decisions about Pull the Rope’s sound quicker and more instinctual than before. “Ross is from Sheffield, which has an edgier, more industrial vibe than London,” Grunhard explains. “He hears things differently than us, is more grounded in rave and grungier sounds, and knew when to add drums or push the instrumentation more. It was very different for us, but it lends itself to where Ibibio Sound Machine is going.”
In melding their songwriting process, Grunhard and Williams have, impossibly, pulled the trick of making Ibibio Sound Machine a tighter band than ever before, building out from their core in a way that highlights the electrifying group of musicians they play with. Rather than recording with the full band in the room, Pull the Rope was sculpted, elements added and shaped by Grunhard, Williams, and Orton along the way.
As a result, Pull the Rope is a nimble, sleek machine that’s thrilling from the first note of the opening title track, Eno’s otherworldly voice and PK Ambrose’s throbbing bass driving through a kaleidoscopic array of house, post-punk, funk, Afrobeat and disco, bangers and ballads, making an argument for unity that begins on the dancefloor. “We are the places we grew up, the places we’ve been, and the people we’ve met along the way,” Williams says. “Hopping around the globe, we’ve found that people are fundamentally the same they’re people. Opposing sides push and pull, but there is an alternative to war, violence, and suffering.” Lead single “Got to Be Who U Are” literally globetrots, name checking locales across the world that would feel disparate were it not for how well-traveled they are.
Eno growing up in the musical melting pot of the Ibibio region of Nigeria and Max being a conservatory-trained musician from Australia, one could call their meeting in London and formation of Ibibio Sound Machine predestined. “Mama Say” and “Let My Yes Be Yes” touch themes of female empowerment. They’re indicative of the band’s depth as they push further into the electronic; “Mama Say” hits notes of electropop while “Let My Yes Be Yes” fuses electro to Afrobeat. Ibibio Sound Machine have always imbued their music with political consciousness, and the light that shines through in Williams’ vocals and voice has never felt more necessary.
The sound of Pull the Rope, then, is hope in darkness, bliss in spite of bleakness. Once again, Ibibio Sound Machine are here to provide the soundtrack to the best night of your life, and the better world to come.Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Pull the Rope
2. Got to Be Who U Are
3. Fire
4. Them Say
5. Political IncorrectSide B
6. Mama Say
7. Let My Yes Be Yes
8. Touch the Ceiling
9. Far Away
10. Dance in the Rain -
Visit product page →Black LP contains poster + download. CD digipak.
What do we hold on to from our past? What must we let go of to truly move forward? Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield spent much of 2018 reckoning with these questions and revisiting her roots for answers.
The result is Saint Cloud, an intimate journey through the places she’s been, filled with the people she’s loved. Written immediately in the period following her decision to get sober, the album is an unflinching self-examination. This raw, exposed narrative terrain is aided by a shift in sonic arrangements as well. While her last two records featured the kind of big guitars, well-honed noise, and battering sounds that characterized her Philadelphia scene and strongly influenced a burgeoning new class of singer-songwriters, Saint Cloud strips back those layers to create space for Crutchfield’s voice and lyrics.
The result is a classic Americana sound with modern touches befitting an artist who has emerged as one of the signature storytellers of her time. Many of the narratives on Saint Cloud concern addiction and the havoc it wreaks on ourselves and our loved ones, as Crutchfield comes to a deeper understanding of love not only for those around her but for herself.
This coalesces most clearly on “Fire,” which she says was literally written in transit, during a drive over the Mississippi River into West Memphis, and serves as a love song to herself, a paean to moving past shame into a place of unconditional self-acceptance.
Over the course of Saint Cloud, which was recorded the summer of 2019 and produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver), Crutchfield peels back the distortion of electric guitars to create a wider sonic palette than on any previous Waxahatchee album. It is a record filled with nods to classic country, folk-inspired tones, and distinctly modern touches.
To bolster her vision, Crutchfield enlisted Bobby Colombo and Bill Lennox, both of the Detroit band Bonny Doon, to serve as backing band on the record, along with Josh Kaufman (Hiss Golden Messenger, Bon Iver) on guitar and keyboards and Nick Kinsey (Kevin Morby) on drums and percussion.
Saint Cloud marks the beginning of a journey for Crutchfield, one that sees her leaving behind past vices and the comfortable environs of her Philadelphia scene to head south in search of something new. If on her previous work Crutchfield was out in the storm, she’s now firmly in the eye of it, taking stock of her past with a clear perspective and gathering the strength to carry onward.Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Oxbow
2. Can’t Do Much
3. Fire
4. Lilacs
5. The Eye
6. Hell..Side B
7. Witches
8. War
9. Arkadelphia
10. Ruby Falls
11. St. Cloud
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