Today is full of amazing new music. Maybe the best new release Friday yet, certainly our favorite. Come in.
Hello, Friends.
Welcome to September. Our pick of all albums leads unanimously (and perhaps predictably) to Spiritualized® and the utterly brilliant new LP And Nothing Hurt. They are quite possibly our favourite band, certainly one of the most important of our lifetime and we've been hanging on this new installment since we got tipped off a good year back that things were happening... perhaps for the last time! And Nothing Hurt - released today on Bella Union - is the eighth studio LP from Spiritualized® and is another grand, swooning statement. It is pretty, hazy and meticulous at the same time, a daydream of rock’n’roll, gospel and psychedelia. On 'I'm Your Man' (in particular), it is perhaps the most complete they have ever sounded, it's a perfect song.
Available on CD, LP (Indie white vinyl pressing) and Deluxe Vinyl.
+ Deluxe Vinyl - Box (two-piece, base + lid), Outer sleeve, Inner sleeve, 24 page book (saddle stitched, 250gsm cover / 150gsm pages), Orange Vinyl Edition, Download code.
This is the ultimate one-two punch. Also released today, our Record of the Week (of this week, and pretty much any week) is the return of the maestro, Chilly Gonzales third Solo Piano album. To those uninitiated, it is a collection of solo piano meditations from the Grammy-winning, Guinness World Record holding, chamber music leading, music school operating, producing, rapping raconteur that fall into the same world as Grieg, Debussy and Satie. This third collection (as the bonus D side "The Secrets of" explains) is about finding new darker tones, experimenting and how this plays against what solo piano can be. It is smart, funny and utterly sublime. Nobody does it better, such a treat.
London-based cellist, composer and producer Oliver Coates releases Shelly's on Zenn La today via RVNG INTL . You wanna talk about smart (he studied at the Royal Academy of Music, been an artist in residency at London’s Southbank Centre, and received the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award), this is properly brilliant, flashes of Arthur Russel with searching and sonically stunning production. Guest vocals from Malibu and chrysanthemum bear and beautiful counterbalances against the beats and drive. Honestly can't recommend this highly enough.
Lee Drift would like to let you know that 'Zenn-La' is the name of Marvel Comics super-hero 'The Silver Surfer's home planet. Thanks, Lee.
The week doesn't stop, we're still only getting going. Maribou State return on the Ninja Tune imprint Counter Records with Kingdoms in Colour. The basis of the record is fragments, field recordings and tones collected around the world on and off tour and this gives it a really lush sense of movement and motion. Really brilliantly put together this one, it retains the intimacy of their debut but sounds positively kaleidoscopic beside it. Lush artwork too!
+ Really limited turquoise pressing for the indie shops.
The brilliantly named Perth psych band Psychedelic Porn Crumpets release High Visceral [Parts 1 & 2] today and we have a REALLY limited splatter pressing.
An amazing story this one, one of the years most exciting. In 1970 the Southern soul music maverick Jerry Williams, Jr. made the most radical move of his career. Frustrated with music business politics Williams reinvented himself as Swamp Dogg, an irreverent anti-hero smashing the conventions of commercial R&B music. "Jerry Williams Jr. has been a perpetual weirdo—at least since he embraced Frank Zappa and LSD." - Pitchfork. Love, Loss and Auto-Tune finds Williams teaming up with Poliça’s Ryan Olson and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, producers and musicians several generations his junior, represents an artistic rebirth of sorts for the soul veteran. It's a real must listen, weird and super addictive.
+ Limited gold vinyl pressing for the indie stores.
When we heard the elevator pitch we turned off... When we heard the record we were pretty stunned. Honey Hahs has really got something quite special about it. Dear Someone, Happy Something is the debut album by London based sisters Rowan, Robin and Sylvie. The three sisters from Honor Oak Park in South London, with an average age of only 13 and a ½ years old, that write songs that reflect a disarmingly frank child’s-eye view of the world. We've played this a lot in the last few weeks, it's really got something special going on.
+ Exclusive yellow vinyl pressing for the indies.
Teleman return, armed with a freer, more collaborative approach to both writing and recording. Their new album Family of Aliens, is a fluid collection of glorious pop-songs fluent with new electronic textures and united by the sharp lyricism, buoyant guitars and instantaneous melodies that are synonymous with Teleman.
+ Indie bricks shop-only edition on limited red vinyl.
London-based punk band Sauna Youth release their third album under the thrilling and fatal moniker Deaths. A proper punk album with loads of guts Love this band.
Leeds-based Menace Beach return with news of their third album Black Rainbow Sound. Plenty of Motorik beats and they've spent loads of time on the guitar tones which sounds LUSH. Vocal interplay is glorious too and there are smart changes of pace and production. Dead good, indie pressing and Brix Smith appears on the first and last tracks... a Brix sandwich.
Burn Slow is Chris Liebing's first album release for Mute. It is a minimalist electronic epic and start of a new chapter for one of techno’s leading authorities. Guest spots from Polly Scattergood, Miles Cooper Seaton, Aleen and Gary Numan. Another album this week with stunning artwork too.
Katie Crutchfield revisits six tracks originally recorded in 2012 with now-dormant experimental recording group Great Thunder. Now through the eyes of Waxahatchee. Great stuff.
Alongside this there is The Lost Record on Merge from Escape-ism, David Bowie Zeros 7" Picture Disc, Hatchie's Sugar & Spice EP on Heavenly and Mr Sir Paul McCartney with Egypt Station.
Last little treat this week is a reissue on Jagjaguwar from NYC experimental rockers Oneida. In 2000-2001, when Each One Teach One was written, recorded, and conceptualised, Oneida was a pretty hectic organization, committed to confrontation and tragipsych and Wu-Tang and electro relentlessness. Its full of energy and rhythms and the best part of two decades later, we're RIGHT into this today.