AOIFE NESSA FRANCES - Land Of No Junction (Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - 180g White Vinyl limited to 350 copies with linen grained sleeve and printed inner sleeve. Digital download also included.
The debut album of Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances is shot through with a sense of mystery - an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates songs with smokey luminescence. WithLand of No Junction, Frances has built a universe full of intimacy and depth, with lyrics written through a process of free thought writing. It lends the record fluidity, each song in dialogue with the next not only through language, but the way each musical choice complements or threads into another. “I would write without putting pressure on taking the song in any particular direction. It all carried itself naturally and instinctively with melody coming first and then structure later.”
STEPHEN MALKMUS - Traditional Techniques
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Creamy White Vinyl (limited to 490 copies) [*includes download code]Traditional Techniques, Malkmus’ third solo LP without the Jicks (or Pavement), is new phase folk music for new phase folks, with Malkmus as attuned as ever to the rhythms of the ever-evolving lingual slipstream. It’s packed with handmade arrangements, modern folklore, and 10 songs written and performed in his singular voice. An adventurous new album in an instantly familiar mode, Traditional Techniques creates a serendipitous trilogy with the loose fuzz of the Jicks’ Sparkle Hard (2018) and the solo bedroom experiments of Groove Denied (2019).
2LP - Purple Vinyl
Kelly Lee Owens' masterful second album Inner Song finds the convention-blurring techno producer and singer / songwriter diving deep into her own psyche—excoriating the struggles she's faced over the last several years and exploring personal pain while embracing the beauty of the natural world. It's a leap in artistry from a musician who burst forth on the scene with a confident, rich sound, and Inner Song is endlessly enticing when it comes to what Owens is capable of.
THE FONTAINES D.C. - A Hero's Death
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Clear Vinyl (Limited to 3000 copies)On sale online from 18.00 Saturday December 5th.
Barely a year after the release of their hugely acclaimed debut album 'Dogrel', which earned a Mercury Prize nomination and Album of the Year 2019 at both BBC 6Music and Rough Trade record store, Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. have returned with an intensely confident, patient, and complex follow up album. A Hero's Death arrives battered and bruised, albeit beautiful - a heady and philosophical take on the modern world, and its great uncertainty.
PROTOMARTYR - Ultimate Success Today
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Brick Red Vinyl (Limited to 490 copies)
Protomartyr release their fifth album, Ultimate Success Today, on Domino. Following the release of Relatives In Descent, the band’s critically acclaimed headlong dive into the morass of American life in 2017, Ultimate Success Today continues to further expand the possibilities of what a Protomartyr album can sound like.
Ultimate Success Today was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios, a late 19th century church, in upstate New York and co-produced by the band and David Tolomei (Dirty Projectors, Beach House) with mixing by Tolomei. Featured guest musicians on the album include Nandi Rose (vocals) a.k.a. Half Waif, jazz legend Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax), Izaak Mills (bass clarinet, sax, flute), and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello).
ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER - Sideways To New Italy
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Rose Coloured Vinyl limited to 500 copiesOn sale online from 18.00 Saturday December 5th.
After years spent looking out at landscapes and loved ones and an increasingly unstable world, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have turned their gaze inward, to their individual pasts and the places that inform them, on their second full-length, Sideways to New Italy. Led by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tom Russo, Joe White and Fran Keaney, the guitar-pop five-piece returned home to Australia after the relentless touring schedule that came following their critically regarded 2018 debut Hope Downs.
Feeling the literal and metaphorical ground under their feet had shifted, the band began grasping for something reliable. For Keaney, that translated into writing "pure romantic fiction" and consciously avoiding the temptation of angsty break-up songs, while Russo looked north to a "bizarre place" that captured the feeling of manufacturing a sense of home when his own had disappeared. The New Italy of the new album’s title is a village near New South Wales’ Northern Rivers – the area drummer Marcel Tussie is from. A blink-and-you'll-miss-it pit-stop of a place with fewer than 200 residents, it was founded by Venetian immigrants in the late-1800s and now serves as something of a living monument to Italians' contribution to Australia, with replica Roman statues dotted like alien souvenirs on the otherwise rural landscape. The parallels to the way the band attempted to maintain connections and create familiarity during their disorienting time on the road was apparent to Russo. "These are the expressions of people trying to find a home somewhere alien: trying to create a utopia in a turbulent and imperfect world."
The record's geographic identity emerged from the band losing their grip on their own, whether that was through the pressure of touring, the dissolution of relationships, a frustrating distance from their daily lives – or some combination of all three – that came from being slingshotted all over the world, playing sold-out headline tours and festivals including Coachella, Governors Ball, Primavera Sound, All Points East, and Pitchfork Music Festival. The notion of crafting, in Russo’s words, “a utopia of where your heart’s from,” permeates Sideways to New Italy, in which early attempts at writing big, high-concept songs about The State of the World were abandoned in favour of love songs, and familiar voices and characters filter in and out, grounding the band's stories in their personal
histories. There’s something comforting, too, in knowing the next time they’re buffeted from stage to stage around the world, they’ll be taking the voices of their loved ones with them, building a new totem of home no matter where they end up.
WORKING MEN'S CLUB
- Working Men's Club
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Picture Disc VinylPre-sale online from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Release date 5th of March 2021.
A rumble on the horizon. Gritted teeth, nuclear fizz and fissured rock. A dab of pill dust from a linty pocket before it hits: the atom split, pool table overturned, pint glass smashed — valley fever breaking with the clouds as the inertia of small town life is well and truly disrupted. Here to bust out of Doledrum, clad in a t-shirt that screams Socialism and armed with drum machine, synth, pedal and icy stare are Working Men’s Club, and their self-titled debut album.
Their eponymous collection of songs is equal parts Calder Valley restlessness and raw Sheffield steel; guitars locking horns with floor-filling beats, synths masquerading as drums and Minsky-Sargeant’s scratchy, electrifying bedroom demos brought to their full potential by Orton’s blade-sharp yet sensitive production.
Standouts include the nonchalant existential groove John Cooper Clarke — centred around the realisation that yes, even the luckiest guy alive, the Bard of Salford himself, will someday die. The washily-vocalled, Orange Juicily-guitared White Rooms and People, Cook A Coffee which is like a lost Joy Division number from an alternate universe and the frenetic, pew-pewing A.A.A.A.
JULIANNA BARWICK - Healing Is A Miracle
(Love Record Store Variant)
LP - Vinyl limited to 300 copies + Limited Edition 12"x12" Print
On sale online from 18.00 Saturday December 5th.
Julianna Barwick is a composer, vocalist and producer who makes deep, reflective compositions out of the human voice. Over the past decade and a half, she’s honed an intuitive approach to music, built on improvisation and a close affinity to a couple of trusted items of gear. She spins engrossing, expansive universes out of a single idea. Her fourth album, Healing Is A Miracle, on Ninja Tune, marks another distinctive meditation on sound, reverb and the voice. Built out from the same instinctive, improvisational approach as those which preceded it, she also draws on the input of three collaborators she’s nurtured long friendships with: Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Nosaj Thing and Mary Lattimore, gently nudging out at the edges of Barwick’s organically-evolved sound.
AOIFE NESSA FRANCES - Land Of No Junction
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - 180g White Vinyl limited to 350 copies with linen grained sleeve and printed inner sleeve. Digital download also included.Pre-sale online from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Release date December 18th
The debut album of Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances is shot through with a sense of mystery - an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates songs with smokey luminescence. With Land of No Junction, Frances has built a universe full of intimacy and depth, with lyrics written through a process of free thought writing. It lends the record fluidity, each song in dialogue with the next not only through language, but the way each musical choice complements or threads into another.
“I would write without putting pressure on taking the song in any particular direction. It all carried itself naturally and instinctively with melody coming first and then structure later.”
BRIGID MAE POWER - Head Above Water
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Gold Vinyl limited to 500 copies + BONUS Fire Records Compilation CDPre-sale online from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Release date 29th January 2021
Brigid Mae Power paints expansive songs that are effortless, hypnotic and folk-oriented like Judee Sill, Bill Callahan and Sharon Van Etten. The third album from the celebrated singer/songwriter, ‘Head Above The Water’ is a coming of age opus featuring a ground-breaking amalgamation of traditional folk and country - an engaging blend of strings, bouzouki, piano and Power’s distinctive vocal make this an achingly beautiful body of work. Recorded in analogue studio The Green Door in Glasgow with Alasdair Roberts co-producing alongside Brigid and Peter Broderick. It’s a continuing tale of everyday survival; more diverse, different, a bigger canvas, with broader brushstrokes… Country and traditional folk rub shoulders, making for a juxtaposition of threads, with added instrumentation from five musicians lured into the studio to provide larger dynamics. ‘Head Above The Water’ continues in that vein becoming more ethereal, more personal and even more alluring. After two lauded albums for Tompkins Square, Brigid Mae Power released her new album on 5th June via Fire Records. Now available on Ltd Edition GOLD vinyl.
“Power meditates on the dichotomy that’s always existed in her work, melding atmospheric bliss and stark desperation.” Pitchfork
“Power invokes the elements, either in contrast to internal weather or in sympathy with it.” The Guardian.
“Haunting and haunted” (The Line Of Best Fit),
“Stunning” ★★★★ Pitchfork “A triumph” ★★★★½ Uncut
“Remarkable" ★★★★ Mojo “Extraordinary” Sunday Times
“Ethereal” The Guardian
“Power at her finest” ★★★★ The Line Of Best Fit
“Enthralling” The Metro
★★★★ Financial Times
★★★★★ Hi Fi Choice
★★★★ The Guardian
★★★★ Irish Times
★★★★ Record Collector
★★★★ Music OMH
MODERN STUDIES - The Weight of the Sun
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Yellow Vinyl limited to 300 copies, DL card + BONUS Fire Records Compilation CD.Pre-sale online from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Release date 29th of January, 2021.
New album from kosmiche folk-rock quartet Modern Studies on LTD edition Yellow vinyl. A glorious compendium of haunted disco hallelujahs, mercurial krautrock chorales, cosmic pop adagios and euphoric, resilient, anthems.
‘The Weight of the Sun’ sees principal songwriters Emily Scott and Rob St John further their warm, esoteric field studies with Pete Harvey and Joe Smillie, as previously reconnoitred on ‘Swell To Great’ (2016) and ‘Welcome Strangers’ (2018).
“The exact point where Fairport Convention meet Jim O’Rourke at a remote Scottish railway station.” Tim Burgess
“Their best yet” ★★★★ Record Collector
There is a strange familiarity, and a welcome strangeness, in the quiet alchemy of Modern Studies.
Norman Records - Album Of The Week
“Beguiling” ★★★★ Uncut
“Their strongest album yet” ★★★★ Louder Than War
★★★★★ The Vinyl District
★★★★★ Narc
★★★★½ Norman Records
★★★★ The Scotsman
★★★★ Music OMH
LP - Pink Vinyl Limited to 300 copies + BONUS Fire Records Compilation CD. Pre-sale from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Item expected to arrive on the 29th January, 2021.
A Powys trio whose free-spirited invention and exuberant intensity flows through experimental pop: hypnotic, exhilarating and defiantly unique. The Welsh band Islet return with the release of their long-awaited new album, and now available on Ltd edition Pink Vinyl. Eyelet was recorded at home tucked away in the hills of rural Mid Wales. It took form the months following the birth of band members Emma and Mark Daman Thomas’ second child and the death of fellow band member Alex Williams’ mother. Alex came to live with Emma and Mark, and the band enlisted Rob Jones (Pictish Trail, Charles Watson) to produce. ‘Caterpillar’ described by Emma as “a song for my unborn child”. It's followed by syncopated lullaby ‘Good Grief’ with its haunting keyboard hook and icy percussion thawed by Emma’s yearning vocals about the quiet strength of generations of women. With nods towards Arthur Russell and Jenny Hval, ‘Geese’ is a mini symphony of driven electronica inspired by Welsh cultural theorist Raymond Williams’ novel People Of The Black Mountains. Young Fathers inflected rhythm can be heard on ‘Radel 10’ that accompanies the multi-tracked variations of Emma and defiant lyrics that were inspired in part by The Good Immigrant - the landmark anthology of essays on race and immigration by BAME writers.
“One of the best albums to come out of the UK in years” Louder Than War
“Unhinged, euphoric, wonderful.” Pitchfork
“They create an ideology that fuels creativity” The Quietus
“They invigorate life on the margins with this whirlwind of psychedelic pop” The Guardian
“Full of reflective, explorative psych wonderment” ★★★★ The Line Of Best Fit
Short listed for Welsh Music Prize 2020
★★★★★ The Vinyl District
★★★★★ Buzz
★★★★★ God Is In The TV
★★★★ AllMusic
TIM BURGESS - I Love The New Sky
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Transparent Splatter 180g Vinyl with signed Art Print (limited to 500 copies)On sale online from 18:00 Saturday, Dec 5thI Love The New Sky differs from its predecessors in that all twelve tracks were self-penned. I Love The New Sky lands somewhere between Paul McCartney's RAM and Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and certainly that recipe covers both the all-pervasive tunefulness and high quality. Stylistically, though, it runs the widest gamut, from Empathy For The Devil's gospel style rockabilly skip, through to the sophisticated song-craft of Sweetheart Mercury and the Nilsson-esque Sweet Old Sorry Me, with the angst-y gravitas of Undertow, which Tim describes as “a mood-changer, influenced by 10cc.”
The spark for ‘I Love The New Sky’ came after a year of touring another album, ‘As I Was Now’, which he’d made in 2008 but had a belated release ten years later. “That one was made in three days, just friends getting together”, he says – the amigos included Josh Hayward from The Horrors, Primal Scream Keyboard player Martin Duffy, Ladyhawke and My Bloody Valentine's Debbie Googe.
+ Love Record Stores Edition is pressed on transparent splatter vinyl; includes exclusive signed art print. “I didn’t realise the album hadn't actually come out as I had a copy of it on my ipod so I figured that maybe everybody did. So, all those years later I thought it would make an interesting release for Record Store Day. It did really well, so I was approached to tour it for Independent Venue Week and after that a load of festivals asked us to play too. Average Sex were the support band that then became my band so it was a brilliant little tour. After that, I was really energized, and I thought, Right, I'm going to do another album, but really concentrate on making it a solo record, where I write everything on my own and all the songs are the very best I can make them.”
ANNUAL - Modern Nature
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Army Green Vinyl (limited to 500 copies)Pre-sale online from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Release date 29th of January 2021
Released in August 2019, Modern Nature’s debut album - How to Live - crossed the urban and rural into each other. Plaintive cello strains melted into motorik beats. Pastoral field recordings drifted through looping guitar figures. Rising melodies shone with reflective saxophone accents, placing the record somewhere between the subtle mediations of Talk Talk, the stirring folk of Anne Briggs and the atmospheric waves of Harmonia.
The album was met with universal acclaim and featured in a number of publication’s ‘Best Of 2019’ lists. As the group took the album out on the road, Modern Nature became something even more expansive. “It feels like there's scope and room to grow. I want the group to feel fluid and that whoever's playing with us can express themselves and interpret what they think this music is” says bandleader Jack Cooper.
Their new mini-album Annual, recorded in December 2019 at Gizzard Studio in London, is another step towards something more liberated and a world away from the sound of Jack Cooper's previous bands. Will Young sits this one out, concentrating on his work with Beak, but How To Live collaborator Jeff Tobias takes a more central role, alongside percussionist Jim Wallis.
Annual acts as a companion piece to the band’s How To Live debut but also a pointer to the paths ahead.
SHIRLEY COLLINS - Heart's Ease
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Dark Green Vinyl (limited to 490 copies)
Shirley Collins releases Heart's Ease, her second album for Domino. Heart’s Ease follows 2016’s Lodestar; which on its arrival, seemed like a musical miracle - an enthralling new LP from a woman who is widely acknowledged as England’s greatest female folk singer, but who had not recorded an album for 38 years. With Heart’s Ease, Shirley delivers a record even stronger than Lodestar having completely regained her confidence, and singing so well that you can’t believe she was away for so long.
Recorded at Metway in Brighton, Heart’s Ease is as compelling and original as Shirley’s great albums from the Sixties and Seventies. There are traditional songs, of course, from England and the USA, but there are also more new songs than in the past (four non-traditional tracks) and there’s even a burst of experimentation that hints at possible new directions to come. Wondrous Love comes from an 18th Century English ballad about the infamous sea captain William Kidd, who was hanged for piracy in 1701. Collins first heard the hymn at a Sacred Harp Convention in Alabama (Collins and Alan Lomax recorded it on their field recording trip in 1959).
Collins’ intriguing choice of songs on Heart’s Ease includes two with lyrics by her first husband Austin John Marshall, a graphic artist and poet who produced several of her albums and had the inspired idea of getting Shirley to work with blues / jazz / world music guitarist Davy Graham on that extraordinary album Folk Roots, New Routes in 1964. There are more family memories with Locked In Ice, written by Dolly’s son the late Buz Collins and the most startling new piece is the finale, Crowlink, named after a pathway on the South Downs overlooking the English Channel “where I love to be,” in which Shirley sings against a moody, atmospheric fusion of Ossian Brown’s hurdy-gurdy, and electronica and field recordings of waves and sea birds from Matthew Shaw.
Heart’s Ease is a glorious reminder that Shirley Collins is still in a class of her own, both as a folk singer with a distinctive no-nonsense style that is all her own, and as an innovator.
LP - Limited Neon Orange Vinyl (limited to 490 copies)
Emerging from an all-too-long nomadic hibernation, LA Priest returns with Gene, his second album. Gene arrives five years after the iconoclast variously known as Sam Eastgate, Sam Dust and LA Priest thrilled the world with the cosmic pop of his debut album Inji, his first LP for Domino and his first solo output following the disbanding of former outfit, Late Of The Pier. Gene also follows the 2016 project Soft Hair in which Sam teamed up with Connan Mockasin for an instant cult-classic album. Gene, the album, is named after a brand-new analogue drum machine Sam dreamt up and built alone. Working in isolation for more than two years in California, Wales and England’s south coast, soldering iron in hand, Sam developed the inners of Gene using dozens of electrical circuits he made up himself. The creation came after a search for an alternative to the structure and rigor of standard drum machines. Its unique rhythmic patterns are the focal point for the album, which is coloured by lush, pastoral tones, paired with the influence of his environmental changes.
The product of clear-eyed focus, the record offers a one-way ticket into a dimension entirely of Sam’s own making. Gene is the most complete realisation of his vision yet. These songs are on a quest for meaning, exploring the limits of their maker’s abilities. Coaxed into life with the juicy groove of Beginning, the record struts and sparkles through Rubber Sky and What Moves towards the melancholic interlude of Sudden Thing and the gigantic noise of centerpiece Monochrome, taking a sharp turn in the final third towards something darker and more mystical. Gene was produced alongside London based artist, producer, DJ and founder of Phantasy records, Erol Alkan.
GEORGIA - Seeking Thrills
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Neon Orange Vinyl (limited to 490 copies)
Second album from the wonderous Georgia. Georgia is seeking a thrill. Her new album, Seeking Thrills, is a musically daring story of hedonism, self-discovery, and above all, the transcendental power of the dancefloor.
NAP EYES - Snapshot of a Beginner
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Coke Bottle Clear Vinyl with Alternate Art PrintOn sale online from 18.00 Saturday December 5th.
This one’s for the procrastinators and the slow learners. This one’s for the bungled and the botched, for the fumbled and humbled. This one’s for the late bloomers, and ultimately, Nap Eyes latest full length Snapshot of a Beginner is proof that sometimes, the late bloomers bloom brightest. Eight years and four albums into it, the artistic arc of Nap Eyes finds itself tracing a line alongside frontman Nigel Chapman’s daily tai chi practice. Those first years and albums are the cold mornings in the park: the measured movements, the joint aches, the self-doubt. With each new release, an incremental and invigorating step forward. And with the end of each album and tour, a return to the beginner’s practice. And now, Snapshot of a Beginner, Nap Eyes’s boldest, most concentrated and most hi-fi album to date, a study of that repeated return and all that it can teach you. Almost all the songs of Nap Eyes are whittled into their final form from Chapman’s unspooling, 20-minute voice-and-guitar free-writing sessions. Each member — drummer Seamus Dalton; bassist Josh Salter or guitarist Brad Loughead — then plays a crucial role in song development, composing around the idiosyncratic structures and directing the overall sound and feel of the songs. Until now, that final song construction and recording has been mostly done live in a room. But for Snapshot of a Beginner, the band went to The National’s neuvo-legendary upstate NY Long Pond Studio, working with producers Jonathan Low (Big Red Machine, The National) and James Elkington (Steve Gunn, Joan Shelley), the latter of whom also did pre-production arrangement work with the band. It took Nap Eyes a long time and a long practice to reach this artistic zen, but one gets the feeling throughout Snapshot of a Beginner that this balance is going to hold.
WILMA ARCHER - A Western Circular
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Creamy White Vinyl (limited to 490 copies)Within A Western Circular lies an exciting and varied crew of guest artists including MF Doom, Samuel T. Herring (Future Islands), Sudan Archives, and Laura Groves, all contributing vocals to his rich, dexterous compositions. These collaborations are the by-product of several years of writing and producing. Recently, he’s appeared extensively on the debut albums by Sudan Archives (writing the lead single, Confessions, no less) and Nilüfer Yanya (contributing seven songs), alongside work with Celeste, and another writer and production credit on Jessie Ware’s Devotion. An album that’s been in the works for the past half-decade, A Western Circular is a bold, reflective piece that directly relates to Archer’s personal experiences of life and death, centered on one particular week where they breathed with equal intensity. The record’s themes of greed, love and loyalty all relate back to that specific time. Inspired by author John Fante, A Western Circular is a spiritual voyage through life’s pushing and pulling: finding beauty in the rough, sadness in the bright. Ostensibly, it’s a poignant reflection on the duality of the human condition. On the record, Archer has uncovered new depths and forged an invigorating singular sound - supple and multi-layered, honouring his acoustic heritage and influence, while building a sonic universe that commands contemporary references to everything from Frank Zappa to Yasuaki Shimuzu, Robert Wyatt to Arthur Russell.
STEPHEN MALKMUS - Traditional Techniques
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Creamy White Vinyl (limited to 490 copies)
Pre-sale online from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Release date December 18th
Traditional Techniques, Malkmus’ third solo LP without the Jicks (or Pavement), is new phase folk music for new phase folks, with Malkmus as attuned as ever to the rhythms of the ever-evolving lingual slipstream. It’s packed with handmade arrangements, modern folklore, and 10 songs written and performed in his singular voice. An adventurous new album in an instantly familiar mode, Traditional Techniques creates a serendipitous trilogy with the loose fuzz of the Jicks’ Sparkle Hard (2018) and the solo bedroom experiments of Groove Denied (2019).
PERFUME GENIUS - Set My Heart On Fire Immediately
(Love Record Stores Variant)
2LP - Limited Red and Gold Vinyl (only 700 copies)
On sale online from 18.00 Saturday December 5th.
Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is the fifth studio album from Perfume Genius on Matador Records. It sees artist and musician Mike Hadreas re-teaming with Grammy-nominated producer Blake Mills and features contributions from musicians Jim Keltner, Pino Palladino and Matt Chamberlin. It was recorded in Los Angeles, where Perfume Genius settled in 2017 with longtime partner and musical collaborator Alan Wyffels.
The album explores and subverts concepts of masculinity and traditional roles, and introduces decidedly American musical influences. Throughout Hadreas plays with themes of love, sex, memory and the body, channeling popular music mythologies while irreverently authoring its own – from the delirious, Cyndi Lauper-nodding celebratory pop of On The Floor, specters of Elvis on haunted tremolo waltz One More Try, to the harpsichord- punctuated baroque pop of Jason, and gliding steel guitar and Balearic rhythm of Without You.
GREEN-HOUSE - Six Songs for Invisible Gardens
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Green Vinyl (Only 250 copies)
On sale online from 18.00 Saturday December 5th.
First released as a limited cassette and now available on vinyl in uncoated matte jacket designed by Michael Flanagan. For fans of Japanese ambient, environmental and new age, privately-pressed American new age from the 1980s, Brian Eno’s Ambient works. This release was written with the intention of transforming the listening environment and augmenting domestic space. The music is designed as a communication with both plants and the people who care for them.
LP - Emerald Green (Limited to 500 Copies)Pre-sale online from 18:00 on Saturday, December 5th. *Release date 29th of January, 2021.
Fired by his ongoing battle with mental illness, Shortly After Takeoff is the final, and finest, chapter of what Christinzio calls his “Manchester Trilogy”, following 2015’s How To Die In The North and 2018’s Deportation Blues. All three albums were created after the native Philadelphian had moved to Manchester. Like Deportation Blues, Shortly After Takeoff spans singer-songwriter classicism, gnarly synth-pop and ‘50s rock’n’roll, with Christinzio’s similarly distinctive, flexible vocal carrying a fearless approach to lyrical introspection, but the new album is a major leap forward in songwriting sophistication and lyrical communication.
NZCA LINES - Pure Luxury
(Love Record Stores Variant)
LP - Limited Vinyl Signed Copy (only 100 copies)
On sale online from 18.00 Saturday December 5th.
NZCA Lines, aka producer and multi-instrumentalist, Michael Lovett, releases his new album Pure Luxury via Memphis Industries. His first album since 2016’s Infinite Summer, it’s funk filled and frenetic, fizzing with electricity and teeming with invention.
Written and produced almost entirely by Lovett, yet featuring a wide range of collaborators, Pure Luxury revels in both the insular – the sound of one man processing anxiety-inducing world events - and the communal. It is a record of diverse styles, voices and textures, expanding the musical universe of Lovett’s previous albums whilst cementing his own playful voice with an inescapable sense of joy and excitement.
Tired of the now over-familiar sound of Big Analog Synths and words like glacial, austere, and wistful, he set out with one clear intention: to be Extra. Extra is the governing musical direction on Pure Luxury, accepting that we live in a world of dwindling attention spans whilst acknowledging that traditional notions of accessible musical form are fast becoming irrelevant in a world of online streaming.
The notion of being Extra is perhaps best encapsulated by the frenetic title track. Written in New York during a freak February heatwave, Pure Luxury is a response to the notions of luxury, status, and the insanity of pursuing material wealth in the face of environmental catastrophe. Lovett takes us on a technicolour joyride dripping with sarcasm, a hyped-up version of 21st century excess where gold trim hides rotten plywood facades, muscle cars are bought with credit cards and barbed wire fences separate luxury resorts from the slums beyond their walls.
Indeed, perhaps that’s what we need most when the world seems to be falling apart. Tomorrow might be scaring the hell out of us, but, as Lovett reminds us on the album’s closing track, “Tonight is all that really matters, as long as we keep dancing”.
