A week of great quality and quantity. Bleeps, boops and some angry amplifiers.
Brothers Stephen and David Dewaele return as Soulwax with All Systems Are Lying, their first album in eight years. It is such a great combination of their early band-led work and their rich history of dancefloor music. Modular synths boopin’, but all clearly being driven by people and there is just enough wonk! Lots of nuance, but when the beats hit, the beats hit!
+ If you are quick, we have exclusive double Transparent vinyl and the boys have signed them for us.
Some Like It Hot is the new LP from London trio bar italia and it’s right good. The biggest victory is that it coherently sits together as an album, with each song so varied and different across guitar based music. Three different vocalists, and all three of them have different modes from whispered and sultry to yelping and snarling. Played this a bunch of times and kept going back for more.
+ Available on Turquoise colour vinyl.
+ Whilst stocks last, we have bumper stickers and signed postcards.
Off the Record is a new double album from jazz vanguard Makaya McCraven that collects together four extended plays; Techno Logic, The People’s Mixtape, Hidden Out!, and PopUp Shop. All tracks are based on live recordings, rich in improvised energy, then carefully re-sculpted by McCraven with extensive editing, overdubs and post-production. There are so many moods here, the amount of ground covered is just so hugely impressive. A right belter.
Okay, get this… Hostile Design is the first LP in more than 20 years from Washington, D.C. post-punk band, Black Eyes. Yeah! The album is composed of six all-new songs, written directly in the wake of the band’s April 2023 reunion shows and they are indeed, proper hostile. Dark and dangerous music, dubby bass and drums warping around, with wailing sax and plenty of screams. It is primal stuff, dynamically going up and down in hypnotic loops. Really, really good stuff.
Diary of a Candle is the absolutely fantastic new LP from Faten Kanaan. Using early music and baroque textures, the synthesist creates deeply romantic and filmic soundscapes. The way they slowly evolve with string swells and boinks is just something else. So rare to hear something totally unlike anything else. Bloody great.
Philadelphia rock band TAGABOW - They Are Gutting a Body of Water - release their fourth LP LOTTO and it really is a dark treasure. It gets big, like cavernous big! With shoegaze textures in waves and other dark and hard catharsis. Live and vicious music, highly recommended.
+ Available on limited Red Ripple colour vinyl.
Californian vocalist and outstanding violinist Sudan Archives returns on Stones Throw with a new LP called THE BPM and it is club texture gold. Dancefloor-ready and full of great lifts, her voice in the middle of it all remains human and really alluring. The production is so imaginative, a maximal whirl of timbres.
+ Available on exclusive double Red Ruby colour vinyl.
Absolutely riotous celtic folk-punk from Brògeal with Tuesday Paper Club. A proper love letter to pints and pavements in Falkirk, with some very sweet and very funny moments too. Loads of heart.
+ Available on Sky Blue colour vinyl.
+ We have some signed cards that will ship with LP orders.
Also this week. Helen Ballentine returns as Skullcrusher with her second LP, And Your Song is Like a Circle. We have that one on exclusive Copper Nugget Marbled colour vinyl. Icelandic folk band Of Monsters and Men return with All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade. We have very limited signed prints. Bin Juice is a (very limited) collection of outtakes and B-Sides from The Lovely Eggs. Packaging is superb! The Mercury Prize-nominated The Last Dinner Party return with Party From The Pyre. Supreme dancefloor pop with Games People Play from Desire on Italians Do It Better. Deadbeat is the fifth full-length album from Tame Impala and he’s cranked the high concept pop right through the roof. Vast and impressive, available on Exclusive Coke Bottle Clear colour vinyl.
Lastly this week, a Dinked Edition double for you. Passenger is the debut album from Manchester-based duo Nightbus and this one absolutely flew out the door when we announced it back at the end of July. Shadowy and mysterious, but not dark necessarily, it’s more of a billet-doux to late night suburbia.
+ Available on limited Translucent Blue vinyl.
Long Fling is the eponymous debut LP from Pip Blom and Willem Smit of Personal Trainer, and as you might well imagine, this one swoons hard. The vast majority of its tracks fly past in under three minutes, gorgeously quixotic pop nuggets with crunch and drive. Their voices sound fantastic together, and there is a real groove to the songs too, with knotty riffs and offbeat production.
+ Available as a limited Dinked Edition.
