MDOU MOCTAR
TEARS OF INJUSTICE
CD / LP / INDIE LP
- Funeral for Justice (Injustice Version) / 02. Imouhar (Injustice Version) / 03. Takoba (Injustice Version) / 04. Sousoume Tamacheq (Injustice Version) / 05. Imajighen (Injustice Version) / 06. Tchinta (Injustice Version) / 07. Oh France (Injustice Version) / 08. Modern Slaves (Injustice Version)
Label: MATADOR
Mdou Moctar’s new album is Funeral for Justice completely re-recorded and rearranged for acoustic and traditional instruments. It is an evolution of the band’s critically-adored breakout – the meditative mirror-image to the blistering original.
In July of 2023, Mdou Moctar was on tour in the United States when the president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, was deposed by a military junta who made him prisoner at the presidential residence. They ordered the nation’s borders closed, leaving band members Mdou Moctar, Ahmoudou Madassane, and Souleymane Ibrahim unable to return home to their families. Plans to record a companion to Funeral for Justice – then still many months from release – had been in the works already, but the idea now took on new urgency and gravity. Two days after the tour wrapped in New York City, the quartet began tracking Tears of Injustice at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio with engineer Seth Manchester.
On Funeral for Justice, anger at the plight of Niger and the Tuareg people is plainly expressed in the music’s volume and velocity.
On Tears, the songs retain that weight sans amplification. They are steeped in sadness, conveying the grief of a nation locked into a constant churn of poverty, colonial exploitation, and political upheaval. It is Tuareg protest music in raw and essential form.
Available on indie exclusive sky blue vinyl.
EVERYTHING IS RECORDED
TEMPORARY
CD / LP / INDIE LP
[CD] 01. October / 02. My And Me (feat. Sampha, Laura Groves, Ricky Washington and Alabaster DePlume) / 03. Porcupine Tattoo (feat. Noah Cyrus and Bill Callahan) / 04. Never Felt Better (feat. Sampha and Florence Welch) / 05. Ether (feat. Maddy Prior) / 06. Losing You (feat. Sampha, Laura Groves, Jah Wobble and Yazz Ahmed) / 07. Firelight (feat. Florence Welch, Berwyn and Alabaster DePlume) / 08. The Summons / 09. No More Rehearsals (feat. Roses Gabor, Jah Wobble, Jack Peñate and Yazz Ahmed) / 10. You Were Smiling (feat. Samantha Morton) / 11. Norm (feat. Bill Callahan) / 12. Swamp Dream #3 (feat. Clari Freeman-Taylor) / 13. The Meadows (feat. Roses Gabor, Kamasi Washington and Ricky Washington) / 14. Goodbye (Hell Of A Ride) (feat. Nourished By Time)
[LP] A1. October / A2. My And Me (feat. Sampha, Laura Groves, Ricky Washington and Alabaster DePlume) / A3. Porcupine Tattoo (feat. Noah Cyrus and Bill Callahan) / A4. Never Felt Better (feat. Sampha and Florence Welch) / A5. Ether (feat. Maddy Prior) / A6. Losing You (feat. Sampha, Laura Groves, Jah Wobble and Yazz Ahmed) / A7. Firelight (feat. Florence Welch, Berwyn and Alabaster DePlume) / B1. The Summons / B2. No More Rehearsals (feat. Roses Gabor, Jah Wobble, Jack Peñate and Yazz Ahmed) / B3. You Were Smiling (feat. Samantha Morton) / B4. Norm (feat. Bill Callahan) / B5. Swamp Dream #3 (feat. Clari Freeman-Taylor) / B6. The Meadows (feat. Roses Gabor, Kamasi Washington and Ricky Washington) / B7. Goodbye (Hell Of A Ride) (feat. Nourished By Time)
Label: XL RECORDINGS
Temporary features an incredible roll call of collaborators including Sampha, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Florence Welch, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Alabaster Deplume, Jah Wobble, Yazz Ahmed, Laura Groves, Kamasi Washington, Rickey Washington, Roses Gabor, Jack Peňate, Samantha Morton, Clari Freeman-Taylor and Nourished By Time.
Created over four years from 2020 to 2024, Temporary was recorded in the main at Richard Russell’s own west London Copper House studio, alongside sessions in Tottenham, Cumbria, Dorset, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and is set to build on previous acclaimed releases including 2018’s eponymous, Mercury Prize-nominated debut album.
On Temporary, Russell reboots his musical DNA: while his music had previously been about rhythm, words and melody in that order, on Temporary he swaps rhythm and melody, the rhythm taking up less space and the melody coming to the fore. Musically some songs are inspired by the sonic thought experiment “what if folk music had ‘gone digital’ in the 80s, just as reggae had?”, while spiritually and lyrically the themes encompass grief and loss. The results – elevated by an intriguing and diverse set of collaborators who sound like the best and freshest versions of themselves – are the most luminous and relaxed compositions of Russell’s career. Every song sounds washed in sunshine and graced by tenderness. More fragile and quieter than previous Everything Is Recorded output, it might be one of the gentlest records ever made about death.
Available on indie exclusive red coloured vinyl.
ELECTRIC SIX
FIRE (21ST ANNIVERSARY EXPANDED EDITION)
CD /LP
[CD] 01 Dance Commander / 02. Electric Demons In Love / 03. Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother) / 04. Danger! High Voltage / 05. She’s White / 06. I Invented the Night / 07. Improper Dancing / 08. Gay Bar / 09. Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor) / 10. Getting into the Jam / 11. Vengeance & Fashion / 12. I’m the Bomb / 13. Synthesizer / 14. Neurocameraman (7-inch release, 2001) / 15. I Know Karate (7-inch release, 1996) / 16. Danger! High Voltage (Original 1994 4-track Demo) / 17. I’m On Acid (Live at Old Miami Aug 24, 1996) / 18. Christian Radio (Manchester) (Unreleased, 1997)
[LP] A1. Dance Commander / A2. Electric Demons In Love / A3. Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother) / A4. Danger! High Voltage / A5. She’s White / A6. I Invented the Night / B1. Improper Dancing / B2. Gay Bar / B3. Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor) / B4. Getting into the Jam / B5. Vengeance & Fashion / B6. I’m the Bomb / B7. Synthesizer
Label: XL RECORDINGS
Fire, the debut album by Detroit’s Electric Six exploded onto the scene in 2003 and broke dancefloors everywhere. Containing the hit singles “Danger! High Voltage!” with rumoured backing vocals by Jack White, and the iconic “Gay Bar”, the album celebrates its 21st anniversary this year.
Fire was recorded in 2002 and 2003 at White Room Studios and Ghetto Recorders in Michigan with additional work at Abbey Road and Olympic Studios in London. The first single from the album, “Danger! High Voltage” received glowing reviews and Pitchfork said it “drops a hard beat, announcing itself with taut wah-wah guitars before exploding into fuzztone and horns while singer Dick Valentine duets with the White Stripes’ Jack White”. The next single was “Gay Bar”, and the video was awarded Video Of The Year from both Q and Kerrang which helped it rise to #5 on the UK charts. The third single from the album, “Dance Commander” has an epic video which was made by acclaimed director Ruben Fleischer.
CD includes 5 bonus tracks.
DARKSIDE
NOTHING
CD / LP / INDIE LP
- SLAU / 02. S.N.C / 03. Are You Tired? (Keep on Singing) / 04. Graucha Max / 05. American References / 06. Heavy Is Good For This / 07. Hell suite, Pt. I / 08. Hell suite, Pt. II / 09. Sin El Sol No Hay Na
Label: MATADOR
It fittingly started from scratch. On their first two reinventions, Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington entered the studio with a clutch of scattered ideas and loose melodic fragments to mould into what became the revered ‘Psychic’(2013) and ‘Spiral’ (2021). But ‘Nothing’ reflected a search for form borne out of spontaneous elliptical jams, acoustic riffing, and digital levitations. And in a fundamental shift from their first dozen years as a band, Jaar and Harrington recruited their longtime friend and collaborator, the drummer and instrument designer Tlacael Esparza, to become a full-time member.
The outcome is magnetic and hieroglyphic. This album slips through the cracks of convention with serpentine guitars, extraterrestrial static, and cavernous drums. Haunted rhythms, distorted vocals, and uncanny beauty. No band but DARKSIDE could have made ‘Nothing,’ and in no moment but now.
Available on indie exclusive red coloured vinyl.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
KNEECAP (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK)
CD / LTD 2LP
- ‘Every fucking story about Belfast starts like this’ – Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh / 02. Parful – KNEECAP / 03. ITS BEEN AGES – KNEECAP / 04. Run – Mikey J / 05. ‘Nothing but a H.O.O.D’ – Marty Maguire & Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh / 06. Civil Rights – Mikey J / 07. ‘A wee operation’ – Michael Fassbender & Cillian Kernan & Aidan McCaughey / 08. Dad’s Gone – Mikey J / 09. Amach Anocht – KNEECAP / 10. ‘You bring a stolen car here’ – Michael Fassbender & Naoise O Caireallain / 11. Ceasefire Babies – Mikey J / 12. Guilty Conscience – KNEECAP / 13. ‘Love affair with the shniff’ – Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh / 14. C.E.A.R.T.A – KNEECAP / 15. Arrested – Mikey J / 16. 80% – Dirty Faces / 17. 3CAG (ft. Radie Peat) – KNEECAP / 18. The A Minor Set – The Bonny Men / 19. ‘No need to panic’ – Naoise O Caireallain & Gerry Adams / 20. Thart Agus Thart – KNEECAP / 21. ‘What the fuck was that?!’ – Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh & Jessica Reynolds / 22. Glue – Bicep / 23. Sick In The Head – KNEECAP / 24. Liberty Belle – Fontaines D.C. / 25. ‘Special delivery’ – Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh & Naoise O Caireallain & Adam Best & Cathal Mercer / 26. Phone Booth – Mikey J, Gemma Doherty and Simone Kirby / 27. Ash Plant – Absolute Lilt / 28. Belfast (Fuck the fuck off) – Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh & Kerri Quinn & Orbital / 29. Better Way To Live (ft. Grian Chatten) – KNEECAP / 30. Kneecapped – Mikey J / 31. Fall In Love Again – Alanna Royale / 32. Is a bullet – Mikey J, Gemma Doherty and Simone Kirby / 33. ‘The Irish for the end is…’ – Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh / 34. H.O.O.D – KNEECAP
Label: HEAVENLY RECORDINGS
Kneecap (Original Soundtrack) features tracks from the trio themselves alongside Bicep, Fontaines D.C., Orbital plus the film’s incidental music composed by Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante MBE interspersed with snippets of the film’s dialogue.
With a string of glowing reviews and handful of awards already behind it, the Irish-language semi-biopic award-winning film is one of the most-acclaimed movie releases of the year playing in over 500 cinemas across the U.K and Ireland. The film was recently selected by the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) to represent Ireland in the Oscar International Feature Film category having previously scooped the ‘Next Audience Award’ at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and the ‘Audience Award’ at the Galway Film Fleadh in July.
[CD] 6-panel digipak with pocket and folded poster.
[LTD 2LP] Limited orange (LP1) and green (LP2) coloured vinyl.
DEEP SEA DIVER
BILLBOARD HEART
CD / LTD LP
- Billboard Heart / 02. What Do I Know / 03. Emergency / 04. Shovel / 05. Tiny Threads / 06. LooseChange / 07. Always Waving Goodbye / 08. Let Me Go (feat. Madison Cunningham) / 09. Be Sweet / 10. See in the Dark / 11. Happiness Is Not a Given
Label: SUB POP
In the middle of July 2023 in a Los Angeles studio, Deep Sea Diver mastermind Jessica Dobson took a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just days earlier, her Seattle band played a series of semi-secret shows for devotees at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well, but, almost immediately, the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles between Southern California and the home studio she shares with partner, drummer, and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen. On that first night in Los Angeles, she broke down, wondering what she was doing there, what her band could do to fix it. For the first time ever, Deep Sea Diver retreated, heading home without an album. Did they need to scrap it all, to begin again with new material?
Not at all: Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. After that Los Angeles hiccup, longtime collaborator Andy Park asked Dobson how the new stuff was going over an early fall dinner. She admitted she needed help. In that humbling confession, she soon found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate Deep Sea Diver and led directly to the power and brilliance of Billboard Heart, Deep Sea Diver’s fourth album and first for Sub Pop. It is a coup, a triumph over self-doubt in which what first felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and strength. You can hear it in each of these 11 songs, the beating heart that makes everything here feel like a new anthem for finding your own way forward.
The cocksure Bad Seeds swagger of “Shovel,” the tender mercies of “Loose Change,” the serpentine machinations of “Let Me Go,” where Dobson tangles with fellow guitar dynamo Madison Cunningham: Billboard Heart immediately puts Deep Sea Diver in the company of St. Vincent, TV on the Radio, and Flock of Dimes, bands that have found newly ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. Dobson punches through her past here. As she howls during Billboard Heart’s rapturous title track, she is “welcoming the future by letting go of it.”
Exactly three years before Dobson’s galvanizing dinner with Park, Deep Sea Diver issued its third album, 2020’s Impossible Weight, via ATO, the colossal indie imprint that has helped My Morning Jacket, Alabama Shakes, and King Gizzard build careers across the last quarter-century. It was a significant step up for a band that had self-released its first two LPs. The surge of resources resulted in a groundswell of exposure, even a spot on Billboard charts.
First pressing on limited ‘Loser Edition’ transparent pink coloured vinyl.
DAVID GRUBBS
WHISTLE FROM ABOVE LP
LP
A1. Whistle from Above / A2. The Snake on Its Tail / A3. Hung in the Sky of the Mind / A4. Scapegrace / B1. Poem Arrives Distorted / B2. Later in the Tapestry Room / B3. Queen’s Side Eye / B4. Synchro Fade Pluck Stutter Slip
Label: DRAG CITY
Whistle from Above is David Grubbs’ first Drag City release in over a decade and his first-ever instrumental album for the label—and why shouldn’t it be? The suspiciously youthful Grubbs is four decades into his career, with former bands including Gastr del Sol, Squirrel Bait, and Bastro, along with a wild ride of collaborators including Bitch Magnet, Richard Buckner, Codeine, Tony Conrad, The Red Krayola, Royal Trux, Dirty Three, Edith Frost, Mats Gustafsson, Susan Howe, Will Oldham, Stefano Pilia, Taku Unami, The Underflow, Ryley Walker, Jan St. Werner, and The Wingdale Community Singers.
Whistle from Above is a colourful, compulsive set of instrumental pieces in which David and his chosen collaborators interact amid the steady roll of an expansive landscape based in the hypnosis of David’s immediately recognizable guitar style. Throughout the album, the listener may recall some places visited over the years, but will find them—as David and his traveling companions have as well—changed again, reactivated in a new light.
EDITH FROST
IN SPACE LP
LP
- Another Year / 02. Nothing Comes Around / 03. What a Drag / 04. Hold On / 05. Can’t Sleep / 06. Back Again / 07. In Space / 08. Little Sign / 09. Something About the War / 10. The Bastards / 11. Time to Bloom / 12. I Still Love You
Label: DRAG CITY
After a near-total silence of twenty years, Edith Frost is back again, and in full bloom with In Space. Her first new record since 2005’s It’s a Game is just in time — the world needs Edith’s voice back in the conversation. And her ineffable way with a tune . . .
Mark Greenberg, alongside longtime Frost A&R man Rian Murphy, brought fresh arrangement ideas to complement the strange-new-world vibe of Edith’s songs. Recorded at The Loft in Chicago, with invaluable contributions from Jim Becker (Califone, Air Blue Gowns), Sima Cunningham (Finom, formerly OHMME), Bill MacKay and Jeff Ragsdale, In Space feels like the most Edith Frost record yet made, pulled from deep inside with great feeling, awash in harmonized voices and — more often than ever before — featuring her own playing. Alternatively approaching and avowing connection, Edith’s crafty songwriting orbits the human exchange with an increasing sense of possibility. It’s what the world needs the most of today.
CINDY LEE
WHAT’S TONIGHT TO ETERNITY LP
LP
A1. Plastic Raincoat / A2. I Want You To Suffer / A3. To The Limit / A4. What’s Tonight For Eternity / A5. One Second To Toe The Line / B1. Lucifer Stand / B2. Speaking From Above / B3. Just For Loving You I Pay The Price / B4. Heavy Metal
Label: W.25TH / SUPERIOR VIADUCT
What’s Tonight To Eternity, Cindy Lee’s fifth long-form offering, showcases the project’s most entrancing strengths: ethereal snowdrift pop and sly nods toward classic girl-group motifs. Recorded at Flegel’s Realistik Studios in Toronto and featuring younger brother Andrew Flegel on drums, the album travels hand in hand with a spectral guide.
Flegel found inspiration for Cindy Lee in the form of Karen Carpenter, drawing on the singer / drummer’s early recordings as well as her look and style. “I found a deep interest and comfort in Karen’s story, which is a cautionary tale about the monstrosity of show business, stardom at a young age and being a misfit looking for connection. The darkness and victimizing tabloid sensationalism she suffered is easily tempered and overwhelmed by her earnest output, her artistry, her tireless work ethic. Something utterly unique and magical takes shape in the negative space, out of exclusion. What I relate to in her has to do with what is hidden, what is unknown.”
What’s Tonight To Eternity remains a mix of pop culture indoctrination, pain and suffering, hopes and dreams, fierce confrontations and wide-open confessional blurs. Closing with the song “Heavy Metal” (dedicated to the memory of former Women bandmate Chris Reimer) and adorned by Andrea Lukic’s Journal of Smack artwork, the album continues the bold and rewarding path on which Cindy Lee has embarked.
