Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Golden Lion Sounds is the label attached to the legendary pub in Todmorden that has hosted everyone from Andrew Weatherall and ALFOS to synth wizard Richard Norris. It is he who is behind this latest 7" alongside Rude Audio. 'This Song's For You' (feat Findlay Brown) is fusion of indie, cold wave and synth with dreamy vocals drifting over typically lush chords and silky drums from Norris. It's a perfect soundtrack to a lazy afternoon in the sun. On the flip, Rude Audio's 'The Grinning' has a more psychedelic sound with loopy synth arps spiraling up to the stars and back again in colourful fashion.

Review: Regis and Female's Againstnature album from 2000 gets the full reissue treatment here by Berlin label, Tresor. Released under their given names Karl O'Connor and Peter Sutton, the record is a noted zenith of the Birmingham techno scene of the era. It has had a major influence on the music that was released in the years after and has here been remastered for a fresh double vinyl pack. As well as the original sounds, there is also 'Theme From Streetwalke,' a track that was previously released on a Tresor compilation. The tracks are heavy but relatively stripped back. They're packed with texture and atmosphere and never less than hugely compelling.

Review: Robert Rental is an artist as influential as he is overlooked. An anchor of the early British DIY and post-punk scene, his name is most frequently uttered alongside illustrious collaborators such as Thomas Leer and Daniel Miller. Dark Entries and Optimo ally to illuminate some of Rental's early solo works with an expanded reissue of his debut 7" Paralysis /A.C.C.. Both labels have previously excavated Rental's catalog; we reissued the collaborative LP with Glenn Wallis in 2017, and Optimo released a collection of demos in 2018.

Review: Indica Dubs and Kai Dub link up here for their second collaboration, which is the first release of the year for the label. It features the full flavour and futuristic stepper that is 'Elevation Dub', complete with wooden hits and Digital pads, warrior chords and a nice sleek aesthetic. 'Higher Dub' then flip sit into a more heady affair with plenty of mad studio effects and endless reverb, floating toms and sizzled pads. These triumphant tunes are primed and ready for big plays on huge sound systems.

Review: Happenstance can be a fortuitous element. A union-funded single discovered in a dusty store, a long disbanded band found, leads to unreleased post punk dubs in a box of unreleased demos.

Formed during the mid-80s in the downbeat town of Walsall, their music is a blend of disparate influences from 50's crooners, blues and reggae to Killing Joke and The Bunnymen; Ron's Neighbours were out of step with the perfect pop of the C86 indie generation.

Their only single - "To The Fight" - a split 7" was supported by the Trade Union Resource Centre, while many gigs were benefits for striking miners, leading to a loyal local following.

Engineered by Ozzy Osbourne's brother Tony, tracks were recorded at an 8 track bedroom / home studio, while a terraced house served as rehearsal space. Here Ron Next Door was born. When a tape recorder was left running it captured the long-suffering neighbour for posterity. His outburst gave the band and song, its name.

Experimenting with drum machines, the resultant jam track, here in its "Alternative Mix", languished unheard until now. Ron's 'Black Country' tones lead to driving bass / percussion against crashing Stratocasters and repeating, refrained vox - a post punk dub turned symphony.

The B side, Sitting On Top of the World, is an indie anthem, becoming their theme, a blend of grandiose and banal that characterised their songs.

Review: Music From Memory are spending some time exploring the world of music created for dance and performance. There's a common interest in experimentation between the mediums, but not at the cost of musicality, which comes here with a distinct 80s veneer. Gerard Stokkink has a thread of drama and poise about the vivid synthscapes of "Yellow Turtles" while the self-titled track from Ivory Playground calls to mind the delicate fingerpicking guitar you might expect to hear from Alexis Georgopoulos & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Atlantis Transit Project have a heavier tribal lilt to the percussion on "Bird Perspective", and Ramuntcho Matta's "Zoique III" holds a mirror up to the freaky disco drum work of Jan Schulte and Niklas Wandt.

Review: David Holmes' first solo album since 2008's The Holy Pictures, Blind On A Galloping Horse now comes to Heavenly Recordings. A politically-charged LP full of sonic interrogations of political disaster and turmoil, Holmes here joins the cast of artists using their art to provide solace to music fans suffering at the hands of the Uncertainocene. With updated versions of the previously released singles 'Hope Is The Last Thing To Die' and 'It's Over If We Run Out Of Love', as well as a recording of an unreleased song by Holmes' late friend Andrew Weatherall, we're reminded of conflict, migration and othering, as all manner of voices combine to form a diverse but unified whole against a backdrop of leftfield post-punk - be they the spoken word accounts from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees now welcomed as residents in Belfast, or the French and Irish observers of the UK's turmoil of recent years.

Review: Way back in 1995, the late Susuma Yokota joined forces with Ray Castle, an Australian producer then based in Japan, for an album of 'tribal-ritual ambient' tracks as Mantaray. For whatever reason, the trippy, partially mixed patchwork of effects-laden percussion, mind-altering electronics, dreamy chords and mind-altering vocal samples was not released on vinyl first time round - hence this edition from archival release specialists Transmigration. It's a genuinely unique album that's alternately becalmed and unsettling, offering a psychedelic drift through hallucinatory, dawn-ready soundscapes that features plenty of subtle nods towards Japanese and Indigenous Australian musical culture. It's basically a slept-on 90s ambient classic, so this vinyl reissue is well worth picking up.

Review: Electronic icon Jeff Mills links up with fellow Detroit talent Rafael Leafar for this one on his own Axis, and it is yet another sublime exploration of the cosmos through the medium of techno. Leafar brings all his next level multi-instrumentalist skills and strong love of jazz to the duo and when combined with Mills' ability to speak through his machines, it makes for a unique record. The icy percussion rolls deep, taking you into another dimension each and every time while the noodling sax brings sombreness and soul. Big, splashy cymbals, dark chords and a real sense of mystery and intrigue keep you utterly locked throughout.

Review: The latest of Radiohead's reissues is an utter avalanche of material. 'Kid A Mnesia' itself is an 'album mashup' between their two albums Kid A and Amnesia; both projects are remastered and released side-by-side on the same LP. It doesn't stop there: for the fanatics, there's an exclusive third disc, Kid Amnesiae, which contains formerly unheard material both recording sessions, as well as Kid Amnesiette, a cassette of B-sides. This ultra-deluxe edition is, decidedly, one for the ultra-fans. Besides the radical electronic fever dreams making up both projects, this version contains the never-before-heard song 'If You Say The Word' on the bonus CD. Remastered on vinyl and cut at half the speed of the original LP, it's an audiophile's banquet. Also watch out for the exclusive booklet of drawings that come with the special edition of this special edition.

Review: A quarter century old now, yet these art-rock giants and eternal malcontents seem as restless in their muse and motion as ever - still chronicling an increasingly complicated and strenuous age yet doing it with finesse, grace and innovation. The urgent, invigorating strains of single 'Burn the Witch' were no anomaly, and 'A Moon Shaped Pool' shows them shaking off the more insular tendencies of their last opus 'King Of Limbs' to engage and electrify in a way that they haven't truly managed for years - radiant, celestial ambience shares space here with impressive ire and emotional engagement, with these peerless experimentalists delivering a record that transcends both their own work and the vast majority of the musical landscape they survey.

Review: There was naturally much excitement when A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead's surprise ninth studio set, popped up on streaming and download services back in May. Here it gets a CD release, offering those who prefer physical products a chance to bathe in its' woozy eccentricities. Seen by some as a return to their arty rock roots following an extended period spend exploring electronics, the album's 11 tracks draw on a variety of influences (krautrock, ambient, Pavement, James Blake, Stockhausen, intense melancholia etc.), with predictably impressive results. Occasionally elegant, string-laden and grandiose, always beautiful, and sometimes intensely moving, A Moon Shaped Pool is undeniably up there with the band's best work.

Review: British duo Raime are back with the first album since 2012's brilliant Quarter Turns A Living Line and their signature style of dark ambience and haunting imaginary soundtracks which incorporate jungle, dub and post-punk influences into the mix also. The album is said to be largely influenced by their side project Moin which incorporates rock and metal influences too. According to Blackest Ever Black "the DNA of dub-techno, garage/grime and post-hardcore rock music spliced into sleek and predatory new forms." Highlights include the moody subtractive rock of "Dialling In, Falling Out", the dub and post punk crossover of "Dead Heat" and the brooding mood-lighting of "Cold Cain".

Review: 2014 was a tumultuous period for Polachek as she and her band grew apart; She wanted to create an aesthetic world, make the band dress better and invest in visuals. Needless to say, the 2010s indie band Chairlift wasn't entirely on board. Polachek was creatively parched and set about a production career, producing 'Arcadia' on her laptop whilst on tour using only MIDI instruments, laptop microphone and field recordings (like on the atmospheric 'Hissing Pipes at Dawn'). This period continued with Polachek beginning to perform in small venues in New York under different names, donning a blonde fringed wig and creating an expansive, yet quaint universe that would unquestionably influence the creating of her breakout solo debut 'Pang' 5 years later. Arcadia spans from ambient medieval-esque wind sections to zany strings that conjure up gusts billowing through green pastures with blue skies overhead. 'Dominic' has stood the test of time as the most popular of the tracks, a relationship that's a 'perfect disaster'. Highlights are the organ-led 'Backwards & Upwards' on purging infatuation, stepping backwards to move upwards as Polachek puts it, and 'Lady's Got Gills' with its whistles and what may be a blend of harp, yangqin and guzheng that backs a story of a woman contained. Arcadia is lo-fi cinematic, in a sentence, and a must listen to Polachek fans.

Review: Phoebe Guillemot's world-building as RAMZi has yielded us a plethora of exquisite albums since she first emerged in the tape-oriented scene around 2013. She's gone on to helm different projects, tour the world and generally blossom as a singular and gifted artist. After a string of self-released LPs, she's popped up on Music From Memory with one of her most refined works to date. Hyphea unmistakably belongs in the RAMZi-verse, full of the same mystical, softly shaped flora and fauna which makes her music so inviting, but there's also a sense of structure and purpose here which suggests she was honing her expressions - a natural progression for an artist who can make electronic music sound so very natural indeed.

Review: We are honored to release 'A Boy Alone', a double LP set from Manchester electronic music pioneer Eric Random. Best known for his early recordings for New Hormones and Les Disques du Crepuscule and collaborations with Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks), Cabaret Voltaire and Nico. As an original member of The Tiller Boys with Shelley, Random injected a healthy dose of Krautrock into the dour Manchester post-punk scene in 1978/79 before going solo the following year. Random's first 7" "Subliminal"/"23 Skidoo" was released in 1981 via Les Disques du Crepuscule and explored ominous sonic surrounds. That same year also saw the release of a second 7" single on New Hormones, "Dow Chemical Company"/ "Skin Deep". Both tracks offered bubbling, rhythmic sound patterns, and were the first to feature other musicians that would become know as The Bedlamites. Consisting of Lynn Walton on vocals, Ian Runacres and Andy Diagram of Dislocation Dance, and bassist Wayne Worm, aka Wayne Sedgeman. Their debut 12" single "Subliminal Seduction"/"Bedlam-a-Go-Go" was released in 1982 through Plurex, mixing arid funk textures and sparse melodies. That same year the group contributed proto chill-out track "6.55" to Plurex compilation 'Hours' and the highly filmic track "In Cassette Conference" to the Touch cassette package 'Feature Mist'. In 1983, Random spent several months in the Himalayas with a group of musicians from the Kulu Valley and studied non-Western instruments such as tabla. On returning to Manchester, Random convened a new group of Belamites including Walton, Sedgeman and drummer Graham Dowdall aka Dids of Ludus. They released the 12" single "Mad As Mankind"/"Dream Web Of Maya" in 1984 on Cabaret Voltaire's Doublevision, embracing electronic, industrial and dub styles. In 1985 they contributed the soothing "Pure Power" to Food Records' "Imminent Episode One" compilation. Our reissue also includes 4 unreleased bonus tracks from Eric's archives recorded between 1981-1984. The whole set adds up to 115 minutes of sinister, somnambulant Random music. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. Each copy is housed in a gatefold jacket designed by Eloise Leigh featuring a spread of ephemera, photos with liner notes by James Nice of LTM.

Review:  Mental Groove offshoot Music Pour La Danse knows a thing or two about tieless techno. And they don't come much more vital than the self titled 1994 debut album from Jonah Sharp (aka Spacetime Continuum) and David Moufang (aka Move D). It never quite got the props it deserved back then and has been an underrated gem ever since but this reissue should put paid to that. It is a holy meeting of lush ambient design, cavernous dub spaces, hints of glistening IDM melody and deeper than deep techno drums that leave you feeling cleansed inside and out.

Review: Red Axes have always operated in their own little niche within underground electronic music. The Israeli duo has plenty of genuine guitar-playing skills which they bring to a fine grasp of synth work and a love of acid, wonky grooves and psychedelic colours on labels like Disco Halal and K7. Now they step up to fabric with a new album that also post-punk and new wave flourishes to tracks recorded as live jams in their home studio. It's packed with energy and mischief and is another superbly singular offering from the duo.

Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers have found some good form of late with a new album Unlimited Love earlier in the year now followed by a surprise second new album. Anthony Kiedis and co's Return of the Dream Canteen is a second Rick Rubin-produced album. The group said of the album "We went in search of ourselves. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundreds of times along the way. Once we found that slipstream of sound and vision, we just kept mining." This one sounds like classic Chilis with plenty of funk and big riffs as well as great songwriting.

Review: The Town That Cursed Your Name is a welcome return from Glenn Donaldson aka The Reds, The Pink, The Purples. The LA-based artist says of the record that "I realised as I was piecing it together that it's a song cycle about trying to live while also feeling called to make music. The album addresses that duality ably with wry observation and a mix of the micro- and macroscopic realness Donaldson is so well-loved for. This record is heavier than the last with more fuzzy guitar textures and heavier lines throughout. From lo-fi to college rock, the influences here are varied and the songs are both beautiful and dazzling.

Review: National Album Day celebrates some of the best full-lengths ever and you'd be hard-pushed to argue that REM's Automatic For the People is not one of those. This edition of it is a special limited edition 180 g yellow vinyl that will remind you of some of the maudlin American rocker's best bits. The album itself is now well over 30 years old but is still thought to be one of the best albums of the 90s. It came after their breakout album Out of Time and did not disappoint, going on to be certified four times platinum in the US thanks to featuring some of the band's biggest hit singles 'Nightswimming,' 'Man on the Moon' and 'Everybody Hurts.'

Review: On their Eskimo album - which is in part famous because of its creepy artwork - The Residents explore with music, found sounds and sonic collages, the legends and myths of north America's native coastal tribes. The group travelled to the area to make field recordings, learn from and record with those peoples and then left for home with what they found. It took years for the album to come out and now it arrives with a booklet on double 12". It's pretty freaky to be honest - weird vocals, eerie synth whispers, distant animal grunts and breaking waves all make for unsettling and hugely evocative soundscapes.

Review: Lukid & Tapes combine their scuzzy sounds once more as Rezzett for this new and sonically fucked up outing on The Trilogy tapes. It's lo-fi music full of perfect imperfections and dusty sound sources, cruddy rhythms and distant cosmic noise that sounds both as if dug up from under many layers of ancient soil but also somehow sent back from the future. It is now a decade since this pair made their first outing but their sound remains fascinatingly original. For loose genre references, imagine breakbeat hardcore, 90s jungle, granular Detroit techno and raw Chicago house all chucked into a blender.

Review: From a cover image wonderfully displaying the proportional difference between humans and the world we call home, to the expansive pedal steel guitar chords that weep their way through the musical destinations here, Raymond Richards encapsulates the vast openness of the US in sound, offering aural interpretations of the beauty and desolation, hope and devastation this wildly rich but painfully unequal country is home to. Track titles are inspired by real pins on the map, although it's unlikely you'll recognise many - we're talking 'Paradise, California' (a swooning, sun-kissed closing overture), 'Astoria, Oregon' (a lilting, vast but quiet slice of ambient) and 'Roslyn, Washington' (which sounds like psychedelic country) rather than more obvious places like Los Angeles, where Richards stomped about with the likes of DJ Lovefingers and Slowdive affiliates Mojave 3 in the late-1990s.

Review: Shoegaze legends Ride's reissuing roll reaches their first four EPs; the first here, simply titled 'Ride', was emblematic of the band's sound and, outside of that sphere, paved the way for an entire genre. After that, and before 'Nowhere', came the subsequent EP's 'Play', 'Fall' and 'Today Forever', which make up this sprawling blue vinyl boxset. Once again, you can now bask in the shimmering waves that lap at this jolly band's feet, and ours.

Review: Released in 1994 on the ever-incredible Creation Records, Ride's Carnival of Light was the band's third full length, and didn't so much mark a shift but a progression in the journey of the critically acclaimed outfit, who still retain the shoegaze and noise pop elements we all fell head over heels for, but look to draw on more traditional British sounds, too. The result is something that might be described as a laddish, plugged-in take on folk, at times at least. Sadly, this wasn't quite what critics said about it, and after successive slamming in the press the band began to look unfavourably at the release, too, with frontman and guitarist Andy Bell even going so far as to describe it as "carnival of shite". More recently, he managed to make peace with it, and revisiting the songs now reveals myriad classics waiting to be rediscovered and appreciated out of the context and weight of expectations they were born into at the time.

Review: Tarantula is one of those bittersweet moments in the history of UK rock & roll. On the one hand, it's a fantastic album that showcases the natural talent and innovative approach to song craft that Ride had first grabbed attention with. On the other, it marked the beginning of the end for the group, or more accurately, the first chapter following the end - finally getting a release after the outfit had called time and gone their separate ways. Still, in so far as swan songs go, there are plenty to celebrate here. Tarantula is a purist's rock & roll extravaganza at times, with its gritty riffs and forward momentum, tracks like 'Burnin'' perhaps best typify this, or those looking for a taste of the genre's 1960s origin story might look to 'Deep Inside My Pocket'. But then it's all much more complex than that, too, with the reflective indie balladry of 'Castle On The Hill', noise pop on 'Gonna Be Alright', and hypnotising layers on 'Ride The Wind'.

Review: Here comes a special transparent yellow vinyl version of Romare's new album on You See. His latest album Fantasy finds the widely admired artist take something of a new approach to his work. The man born Archie Fairhurst gets nice and abstract with his samples as he also layers in his own vocals and instrumentation. He has said the album was inspired by log walks and watching films doing lockdowns, and it shows. Hints of 70s fantasy cinema also features and his trademark off-kilter electronic rhythms and kinetic grooves also play a big part in making this one another winner.

Review: Romare's third album is another exercise in finding the exact sweet spot where happy and sad collide. By now he is something or a master at it and here laces those sorts of sounds with a sense of spirituality, hints of disco, touches of identity and plenty of funk. These more serious influences come as a result of the artist becoming a father, but the album never grows too sentimental (though "Deliverance" sure is a nice adult lullaby.) Elsewhere there is slow acid on "High" and joyous, heartfelt melodic house on "Dreams." Versatile, emotional, dancey - what more could you want?

Review: Surprisingly, Arthur Russell's first posthumous collection of music, 1993's Another Thought, has never before been released on vinyl. With this gatefold double-album, Be With Records has finally set the record straight. It's well worth picking up, not least because the set, which was initially put together after raiding the legendary cellist-turned-producer's archive of unreleased recordings, is little less than superb. Full of hard-to-pigeonhole songs in Russell's unique style - effects-laden blends of cello, acoustic guitar, emotive vocals, twangy double bass and so on - Another Thought contains some of Russell's most refined and emotional recordings, including such classics as 'How We Walk on the Moon' and 'In The Light of a Miracle'.

Review: Where do you start with this epic collection? Arthur Russell should be no stranger to any music boffin, having been a tour de force on the New York underground during the 1970s and 80s. A maestro of disco, formative-era dance music, anything remotely avant-garde, despite having worked on some of the most iconic releases of the day, he only produced three albums before passing before time. "Iowa Dream" is what was left behind, or at least to some extent. Archived and - for years - never earmarked for release, thanks to the tireless efforts of composer Peter Broderick, this collection of demos, home recordings, and lost songs has been restored, edited and mixed, then carefully placed on this lovingly-conceived compilation. The result is a must-buy for fans and newcomers alike and will only serve to cement Russell's place in the pantheons.

Review: A musical polymath like no other, the late Arthur Russell turned his hand to a bewildering variety of different musical styles, from avant-garde torch songs to pounding disco, yet all imbued with his otherworldly songwriting skill and richly emotional voice. This posthumous compilation, however, collects together the more oddly accessible material that he created, in largely acoustic and country styles. The cowboy hat on the sleeve may be strangely appropriate here, but more than this, the blend of plaintive melancholy and freewheeling charm can only leave the listener wondering how Arthur Russell managed to avoid mainstream success in his all-too-brief career. A strange and beguiling transmission from a unique talent.

Review: The unique voice of Arthur Russell was taken away from us all too soon after he was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, but it was in that year that he also dropped his career-defining classic 'World of Echo'. That's the only solo album he produced but he managed to make plenty more music in his final years. This album, Picture of Bunny Rabbit, features nine previously unreleased performances recorded during that same special era and have been taken from two unique test pressings. These are dramatic, exceptional cuts as you would expect from this cult hero.

Review: Well, we couldn't really be happier. In fact, there is almost nothing to say about this album apart from the fact that it is absolutely, downright essential. Originally released in 1986 on Rough Trade here in the UK, it has been reissued a few time over the years but has always vanished in the blink of an eye and reappeared on the EBay and Discogs circuits for big bucks. Finally, you can indulge in a beautifully remastered version on virgin vinyl. In what is seen by many cultic Russell fans as perhaps his biggest achievement, the LP drifts in and out of light and shadows with utter ease, truly portraying the genius of the man who paved much of the way for modern electronic music generally. From start to finish, it's an ethereal mixture of sparse beats, effect manipulations and folklore, charismatically told by one of the only artists in the history of experimental music to really combine and successfully bind so many unexpected musical terrains. We are only mere mortals, so we won't describe the music to you...just get yourself a copy and see...