Love is in the air today at Drift HQ. A fantastic week of new music, broken down and adored from us to all of our crushes...
Hello, loves.
February's Record of the Month is extraordinary... so much so in fact, we should just call off the search... you will not hear a finer compilation this year. Light In The Attic’s Japanese Archival Series continues with Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990. Beautifully delivered, it is an unprecedented overview of the country’s vital minimal, ambient, avant-garde, and New Age music – what can collectively be described as kankyō ongaku, or environmental music. The collection features internationally acclaimed artists such as Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Joe Hisaishi, as well as other pioneers like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Yoshio Ojima and Satoshi Ashikawa, who deserve a place alongside the indisputable giants of these genres.
We honestly can not recommend this amazing album highly enough, it's quite perfect.
Record of the Week is Fyah from Theon Cross, and it is absolutely and totally all PURE FIRE 🔥🔥🔥. Theon will be known to you already as part of the award-winning Sons Of Kemet, and he truly plays Tuba like no-one else. It's an album that drips with booming horn, sweaty dancefloor bangers and feels like a love letter to London's vivid cultural heritage. Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd feature heavily, also Wayne Francis of Steam Down guests. This is an album we'll be blasting all year long.
LA-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Sean Hellfritsch returns to Leaving Records with Sharing Waves, his second outing for the label as Cool Maritime and we are really feeling it. Cosmic electronic music with a lush flow. Any of you who had feelings about Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's last couple of LP's would do well to check Sean out, he's her beau (we only mention this as it's St Valentine's day) and there is a similar natural energy to the synths. Lovely.
Hollow Earth is the new album from Pye Corner Audio aka Martin Jenkins, his third for Ghost Box. Gloriously retro-futuristic electronics. Very cinematic sounding with ambience and low tempo techno sitting perfectly side by side. Can't rave enough about how great this guy is, get involved.
Peter Sagar returns as Homeshake on the Captured Tracks sister label Sinderlyn with Helium, and we had an exclusive Dinked Edition. We're afraid they are, naturally, long gone. But we do have some nice colour (indie shop) vinyl editions and the album has some lush lo-fi R&B and synth textures.
Soul icon Chaka Khan returns with Hello Happiness, her first LP in eleven years. Funk and Soul jams and vocally she sounds awesome.
+ Indie version pressed on limited, peach coloured vinyl.
ALL is the brand new album from Yann Tiersen and his tenth long-player so far. It's the first album to be recorded at Tiersen’s new studio, venue and community centre, The Eskal, built in an abandoned discotheque on the island of Ushant. Some really stunning moments on this one.
+ LP version is on double heavyweight vinyl with an etched fourth side.
Recorded at the iconic RAK studio, Other People's Lives is the debut LP from Stats. Loads of fun this, it ricochets between 1970s art rock, 80s synth grooves and cosmic disco-pop.
+ The Indie Edition LP comes with MP3 and is on Neon Pink vinyl.
Ladytron return with their first new album in seven years. Their new self-titled record has - naturally - some killer dancefloor moments, but it's the intricacy of what they are doing as songwriters that feels especially appealing.
Australia's Methyl Ethel return on 4AD this week with their third LP Triage. Super complicated pop with layers and turns but a really bright and very approachable listen. This will be all over the radio!
Piroshka is a super super group helmed by Miki Berenyi - frontwoman of British shoegazers Lush. Berenyi is joined by her partner, Moose’s KJ McKillop, as well as their friends, Modern English’s Mick Conroy and Elastica’s Justin Welch. Brilliant production and consistently uplifting.
Perfect Son is Polish singer and producer Tobiasz Biliński and Cast is his Sub Pop debut. Another brilliantly produced one, BIG synths.
Pinegrove return with Skylight, the long-delayed follow up to 2016's widely-acclaimed breakthrough album, Cardinal. Both CD and LP editions include an entire bonus album, Skylight II (the album performed acoustically). They're still mathsy, but it's raw and cut back. Good stuff.
Robert Ellis returns with Texas Piano Man. Released on Valentine's day (that smooth operator), it's another glorious collection of ballads from the Texan. We have a very limited (150 copies!) 150 Gram Sky Blue Vinyl edition.
Czarface Meets Ghostface!!! Twelve brand new tracks produced entirely by The Czar-Keys (7L & Jeremy Page) and facing off with Wu-Tang Clan’s GHOSTFACE KILLAH. This is so good!
Bleeding On the Soundtrack is the second in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical albums written by Ruarri Joseph as William The Conqueror and is centred around childhood, fatherhood and motherhood. This first run of the LP is pressed on white, 180g heavyweight vinyl.
+ A reminder that Ruarri and band will be joining us instore this Friday night at 7pm to play live.
Big DFA repress... The Confuse The Marketplace 12" from LCD Soundsystem has not been in print and for sale since 2012. Originally released in 2007, the EP contains two non-LP tracks, including the 12 1⁄2 minute slo-mo disco workout Freak Out / Starry Eyes and the instrumental burner Hippie Priest Bum Out (made popular on ‘Fabriclive 36: Murphy and Mahoney’).
We have a very limited Orange vinyl pressing (on Southern Lord) of Sleep's iconic Dopesmoker. Man, we LOVE cranking this bad boy up, it's still so seismic... full body. LUSH.
Les Disques du Crepuscule label presents a new remastered edition of The Only Fun In Town, the influential debut album by iconic Scottish guitar group Josef K, originally released on Postcard Records in July 1981. Limited to just 500 copies, pressed as a double LP on black and gold coloured vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve.
Last one this week and it's an album that should be in every collection. Soul Jazz Records re-release Nova, the debut album from the legendary Steve Reid. As a radical jazz artist, Steve Reid played with an extraordinary group of artists - Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, James Brown, Ornette Coleman, Lester Bowie and many more. He began his career as a teenager in the 1960s as a drummer at Motown. Reid was born in the South Bronx and grew up in Queens, New York, three blocks away from John Coltrane. In 1969, Reid refused to enlist to the Vietnam war and was arrested as a conscientious objector and given a four-year prison sentence. Spiritual jazz meeting avant-garde and free jazz with some really quite punky moments. Lions of Juda is the kind of cut you could listen to back to back all day. Maybe we will!
Enjoy your evening, have fun digging through these and look forward to seeing you all soon.
- Drift