Your cart is currently empty!
Scopitones
The Wedding Present 'Locked Down And Stripped Back Volume Two'
£15.49
Scopitones
The Wedding Present 'Locked Down And Stripped Back Volume Two'
£15.49
Release Date: 05/04/2024
Locked Down And Stripped Back Volume Two features home recordings of Wedding Present classics along with a previously unreleased song: ‘That Would Only Happen In A Movie’.
The first volume in the series came about when David Gedge’s annual festival At The Edge Of The Sea went ‘virtual’ in 2020 and the band recorded semi-acoustic versions of songs to be streamed. An album of the tracks was compiled and released due to popular demand.
The same thing happened the following year and so Volume Two features tracks initially recorded for 2021’s online festival. There’s a bevy of guest stars on this second album! Jon Stewart [of Platinum-album-selling Sleeper fame] reprises his new role as Wedding Present guitarist but is joined here by some Wedding Present members of old.
Peter Solowka, from the band’s first line-up appears on ‘Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm’ playing his second instrument, the accordion, while Hit Parade guitarist Paul Dorrington contributes to a re-working of the Top 30 single ‘Blue Eyes’. Long-time Wedding Present bass player Terry de Castro returns to infuse the album with her own unique style, while current Wedding Present bass player Melanie Howard takes over the lead vocal duties on a beautiful version of 1986’s ‘At The Edge Of The Sea’. Last, but certainly not least, Amelia Fletcher – backing vocalist on George Best and Bizarro – also returns to the party!
Tracklisting:
1. Brassneck
2. No
3. Careless
4. Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm
5. What Have I Said Now?
6. Perfect Blue
7. Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft
8. That Would Only Happen In A Movie
9. At The Edge Of The Sea
10. Blue Eyes
11. Dare
12. Octopuss
As on the first volume, each musician recorded and filmed their parts at home and, as before, it is fascinating to see how stripped-back arrangements bring out different aspects of these brilliant songs.
Tracklisting:
1. Brassneck
2. No
3. Careless
4. Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm
5. What Have I Said Now?
6. Perfect Blue
7. Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft
8. That Would Only Happen In A Movie
9. At The Edge Of The Sea
10. Blue Eyes
11. Dare
12. Octopuss
Locked Down And Stripped Back Volume Two features home recordings of Wedding Present classics along with a previously unreleased song: ‘That Would Only Happen In A Movie’.
The first volume in the series came about when David Gedge’s annual festival At The Edge Of The Sea went ‘virtual’ in 2020 and the band recorded semi-acoustic versions of songs to be streamed. An album of the tracks was compiled and released due to popular demand.
The same thing happened the following year and so Volume Two features tracks initially recorded for 2021’s online festival. There’s a bevy of guest stars on this second album! Jon Stewart [of Platinum-album-selling Sleeper fame] reprises his new role as Wedding Present guitarist but is joined here by some Wedding Present members of old.
Peter Solowka, from the band’s first line-up appears on ‘Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm’ playing his second instrument, the accordion, while Hit Parade guitarist Paul Dorrington contributes to a re-working of the Top 30 single ‘Blue Eyes’. Long-time Wedding Present bass player Terry de Castro returns to infuse the album with her own unique style, while current Wedding Present bass player Melanie Howard takes over the lead vocal duties on a beautiful version of 1986’s ‘At The Edge Of The Sea’. Last, but certainly not least, Amelia Fletcher – backing vocalist on George Best and Bizarro – also returns to the party!
Tracklisting:
1. Brassneck
2. No
3. Careless
4. Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm
5. What Have I Said Now?
6. Perfect Blue
7. Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft
8. That Would Only Happen In A Movie
9. At The Edge Of The Sea
10. Blue Eyes
11. Dare
12. Octopuss
As on the first volume, each musician recorded and filmed their parts at home and, as before, it is fascinating to see how stripped-back arrangements bring out different aspects of these brilliant songs.
Tracklisting:
1. Brassneck
2. No
3. Careless
4. Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm
5. What Have I Said Now?
6. Perfect Blue
7. Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft
8. That Would Only Happen In A Movie
9. At The Edge Of The Sea
10. Blue Eyes
11. Dare
12. Octopuss
Related products
-
Visit product page →‘Mercy Of The Crane Folk’ is the beautifully accomplished second album from Athens GA’s Immaterial Possession. A theatrical soundscape littered with subconscious flashbacks, retro keyboard flurries, wandering Morricone-esque guitar and dreamy Sumac-like harmonies.
Featuring the ethereal eerie dream pop of former artist commune residents Cooper Holmes and Madeline Polites, with drummer John Spiegel and Elephant 6 descendant Kiran Fernandes (keyboards, clarinets, flutes). Additional contributions come from drummer Jon Vogt who can be heard on ‘Mercy Of The Crane Folk’ and ‘Birth Of Queen Croaker’.
It’s a haunting and immersive trip into the inner psyche of these nomadic soothsayers; a psychedelic dance party from a half-lit underground world; breathlessly eerie and all consuming; a salubrious sojourn that sounds like nothing else.
Filled with a kind of peculiar optimistic uncertainty that any quest to make sense of a drowsy recollection of simpler and far better times would have; ‘Mercy Of The Crane Folk’ is soft and serene summoning up a fanciful folkloric place where, undoubtedly, the mysterious crane flock prosper.Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Chain Breaker
2. Mercy of the Crane Folk
3. To The Fête
4. Medieval Jig
5. Siren's TunnelSide B
6. Current In The Room
7. Ancient Mouth
8. Cypress Receiver
9. Birth of Queen Croaker
10. Red Curtain -
Visit product page →Italian singer songwriter Marta Del Grandi returns with ‘Selva’, her most intricate and shimmering effort yet, a refined devotional suite of astute pop that flows effortlessly, uniting emotional complexity, divine organic arrangements with a sci-fi finish.
If her debut ‘Until We Fossilize’ showed all the qualities of Marta’s unique approach, tip-toeing between Laurel Canyon dust, Lynchian etherealism and dramatic Morricone scores, ‘Selva’ delves deeper into the undergrowth, showcasing an ambition to deliver a whole new universe, her own ecosystem, where the strength of her voice alone is the pillar to build on.
Beams of choral light radiate and permeate each track, with layered vocal drones creating a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures, as almost to guide us hand in hand across Marta Del Grandi’s enchanted universe.
The ambition is blinding and the outcome is here to prove it: 12 songs of sprawling ethereal pop that is vivid, immense and fully illuminated.
“Ultimately compels with its detached, lynchian ambience.” ALLMUSIC
“Bucolic yet often emotionally complex, her songwriting – patching electronic synths against ambient elements, with a touch of modern classical – taps into areas that go beyond words.” CLASHTracklisting:
Side A
1. Mata Hari
2. Eye of the Day
3. Chameleon Eyes
4. Snapdragon
5. Marble Season
6. End of the World Pt.1Side B
7. Two Halves
8. Polar Bear Village
9. Good Story
10. Selva
11. Stay
12. End of the World Pt.2 -
Visit product page →On 'Models', Lee Gamble liberates sonic spectres to inform a suite of illusory anthems, subliming vulnerable, half-remembered fragments of dream pop, Soundcloud rap and trance in the process.
Sung by cybernetic voices in an almost wordless language, his widescreen memories reverberate across the last few decades of pop history, smudging Elizabeth Frazer's surreal poetry into disembodied diva cries and Lil Uzi Vert's abstract, AutoTuned mumbles.
Extracting haunted fragments of synthetic corrupted chatter and indecipherable non-words to sculpt dreamy pop simulacrums, Gamble takes the concept of the pop producer to its logical extreme; examining how intonation and language is engineered to monopolise our attention, his magical inversion of pop playing like a bewitching symphony of earworms.Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Purple, Orange
2. Juice
3. XIth c. Spray
4. She’s NotSide B
5. Phantom Limb
6. Blurring
7. Your Weight on my Arms -
Visit product page →Following the news that all three Lush albums are going to be reissued, Emma Anderson, the band’s co-founder, has announced her debut solo album, Pearlies, which will be released by Sonic Cathedral on October 20, 2023.
One of the most underrated British songwriters to emerge from the era that encompassed shoegaze and Britpop, she has teamed up with producer James Chapman (aka Maps) for this collection that combines effervescent electronic pop with psych and folk textures with lyrics covering themes such as confronting your fears, embracing independence and moving on in life.
It arrives fully formed with a burnished beauty (aided by the mastering skills of Heba Kadry) that belies its somewhat protracted creation, which began with Emma feeling disillusioned after Lush’s 2016 reunion came to an abrupt end. Left with songs and bits of music originally intended for the band, she began working with cellist and string arranger Audrey Riley and Robin Guthrie, formerly of the Cocteau Twins, both of whom encouraged her to sing her own songs.
Covid put a temporary halt on proceedings, but the decision had been made. When Sonic Cathedral introduced her to James Chapman at the start of 2022, Pearlies quickly took shape and blossomed into a masterpiece, the perfect mix of Emma’s incredible, idiosyncratic songwriting and James’ electronic production nous. Plus, a little extra guitar magic on four tracks courtesy of Richard Oakes from Suede.
The finished album has somehow written its own narrative. By her own admission, Emma tends to write words and “see what comes out”, but Pearlies seems to tell the story of her decision to go it alone, with opener ‘I Was Miles Away’ posing the question: “See if I make it on my own”.
The rest of the album provides the answer as it takes in everything from the unexpectedly funky first single ‘Bend The Round’, to folky finger-picking and film theme references, via psych leaning electronic pop reminiscent of Goldfrapp or Melody’s Echo Chamber.
It concludes with ‘Clusters’, a stunning, Stereolab-style groove which begins with the line “and now the party’s over, the music’s at the end”. Thankfully, that is not the case. This incredible album is just the start of Emma’s long-awaited solo journey.Tracklisting:
1. I Was Miles Away
2. Bend The Round
3. Inter Light
4. Taste The Air
5. Xanthe
6. The Presence
7. Willow And Mallow
8. Tonight Is Mine
9. For A Moment
10. Clusters
v
