Oh Dios mío! Such a good week of new music, with a bunch of stuff out today that we've been totally hammering on the stereo these last few weeks!
Hello, Friends.
Record of the Week is Sentimental, the rich and jangling debut album from London (via Buenos Aires) trio Value Void. As much as they can sound sunny and full of sunset melancholia, they whirl up some pretty brooding pieces with some sinister vibes, psychotic timing on the riffs and a mad-eyed beat. That is one of the treats of this fine debut, it moves around loads with folk and all sorts played out in a very proto-punk way beneath ghostly double vocals. No retro styling, they just recorded it onto tape, and the effect makes it hard to place them anywhere between 2018 and 1988.
+ LP is pale green vinyl and limited to 500.
Following on from excellent Sex & Food LP in April, Unknown Mortal Orchestra finish up the year with the release of album number five in IC-01 Hanoi. The seven-track instrumental LP was recorded as part of the Sex & Food sessions in Hanoi, Vietnam, and is a real trip. Lush tones and bringing more jazz than ever before into the mix against the scorched psychedelia.
Soft Hell is Pill’s second full-length album, a raucous and thrashing LP that feels soaked in NYC's rich history of punk, post-punk and outsider art. There is so much drive, each song stumbles into a joyous canter with unhinged (cryptic and hugely funny) lyrics. Lustrous feedback, screaming and honking saxophones and yelping lyrics. We love this band and Soft Hell is a brilliantly encapsulating statement about the collective din they make.
Huge return today with the most marvelous Julia Holter releasing Aviary. We'll be honest, we only heard it for the very first time on Wednesday night and unsurprisingly it is grand, challenging and utterly brilliant. Each second is beautifully considered. Deep and dense like the classical music suites that act as her base palette. It is an utterly epic 90 minutes, with moments of ambiance and experimentalism. We'll have to listen a few more times to get any real sense of whether we're actually smart enough to rightfully be enjoying the album this much, but man... she is utterly brilliant and this LP is a proper treat.
* Ten points to Pill and Mexican Summer who sent us our own hand-rendered custom sleeve for the Soft Hell tape case.
Thom Yorke returns to XL Recordings with Suspiria, twenty-five original compositions written specifically for Luca Guadagnino's reimagining of the 1977 Dario Argento horror classic. 'Suspirium' is a real stunner, a hypnotic piano ballad with his unmistakable vocals front and centre. Across the LP there are some really chilling tones and the sound design is lush, very special indeed actually.
He's back... Take a tour through Ty Segall’s musical psyche with his new solo album, Fudge Sandwich, a collection of Segall’s take on eleven songs that were originally done by other people. These aren’t just cover versions. Cover versions happen at weddings and high school band battles. Cuts from Funkadelic, Neil Young, Grateful Dead, Gong and more.
The band name. The title. The sleeve art. The 20 seconds it takes to be totally hooked. A Laughing Death in Meatspace is the phantasmagorical debut album by Tropical Fuck Storm, a fraught vision of algorithmic apocalypse. Featuring Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitchin from Australian heroes The Drones, Tropical Fuck Storm is an end-of-days consciousness-stream across nine seething tracks. Opening track 'You Let My Tyres Down ' might be the finest album opener fo the year... amazing stuff.
+ Limited Green Slime colour vinyl.
Another addition to the Daptone rock subsidiary WICK Records today with The Ar-Kaics' In This Time. Features current and ex-members of Chain & The Gang, Pygmy Lush, and The Shirks. Moody lo-fi garage rock. Really good stuff.
Honey is the first album in eight years from Robyn and it's well worth the wait. It is prime dancefloor pop and she is always such a brilliant focal point, a really emotive singer. Production is magnificent, glimmering with folds and folds or reverbs and synths. Smart.
+ LP is due in 2019.
B.E.D is the new collaboration from Baxter Dury, French Dance music pioneer Etienne De Crécy & Delilah Holiday of London punks Skinny Girl Diet. Raunchy, winking disco pop... such great delivery by all.
Blurring the lines between electronic pop, dance music, synthesis and kosmische, Swiss group Klaus Johann Grobe are hard to pin down... but that's pretty thrilling. Du bist so symmetrisch is a real vibe record and they really take ownership. Highly recommended.
Also today Micah P. Hinson returns with When I Shoot At You With Arrows, I Will Shoot To Destroy You, The Twilight Sad release the 10" Videograms ahead of their new LP, Mystery Jets release the HYPER limited Live To Vinyl 12", a self-titled Crooked House LP on DFA and Mute release Memento Mori [Anthology 1978 - 2018], a 40th-anniversary release charting Barry Adamson’s writing and recording career.
Last new one, Public Service Broadcasting have again written about something that happened with White Star Liner, the story of RMS Titanic. LP due early December.
ps... it sinks.
Been a lot of fun this week remembering how much we love the self-titled Grinderman debut. Cannot believe how long this has been out of print... Utterly thrilling stuff.
+ Green vinyl limited to ONLY 750 copies on green coloured vinyl for the UK.
We have a fresh pressing of Spacemen 3's Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To.
2018 Stereo Remaster of The Kinks' The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. Original album on 180 gram heavyweight vinyl, from original tape high definition transfers. This edition includes original gatefold artwork replicated, insert with notes and band photos.
First part of the Bauhaus 40th anniversary reissues today on 4AD with In The Flat Field and Mask. Limited colour pressings.
"Cosmic Visions Of A Latin American Earth: Venezuelan Rock In The 1970s & Beyond" is the second collection of music from Venezuela in the 1970s and beyond to be released on Soul Jazz Records. Just as weird and just as addictive as the first one. Top stuff.
Spooky and pertinent timing. Stranger Things composers and electronic veterans Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein return with Stranger Things: Halloween Sounds From the Upside Down, which features 14 original unreleased tracks from the series specifically curated to be as creepy and atmospheric as possible. Limited vinyl pressing on ‘Pumpkin Orange’ coloured vinyl.