MADI DIAZ
WEIRD FAITH
CD / LP
01. Same Risk / 02. Everything Almost / 03. Girlfriend / 04. Hurting You / 05. Get To Know Me / 06. Kiss The Wall / 07. God Person / 08. Don’t Do Me Good / 09. For Months Now / 10. KFM / 11. Weird Faith / 12. Obsessive Thoughts
With Weird Faith, Diaz , who “makes even the most immovable feelings open up with just a little time and space” (Pitchfork), comes up against a problem that has dogged songwriters since time immemorial: how do you write about romance, or love, without making it sentimental or fake? For Diaz, the answer was to explore how anxiety.
Madi Diaz has been making records and writing songs professionally since the late 2000s, but it wasn’t until she released 2021’s History Of A Feeling that she felt the glare of wider notoriety. It wasn’t her debut album, but it certainly felt like it. She made her daytime and nighttime television debuts, embarked on her first solo tour since 2014, supported Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen on tour, and collaborated with them on record. Harry Styles handpicked Diaz to open for him in arenas and stadiums in North America, and was so taken by her captivating live show, he asked her to be a member of his touring band, to sing alongside him all over Europe and the UK, as well as continuing to open the show in various cities. After three months on the road touring internationally, Diaz is back in Nashville and gearing up to release her new album, Weird Faith, perched on the precipice of her moment.
On her last album, History of a Feeling, Diaz confronted the dissolution of a long relationship and a nuanced breakup. “Writing that record was like throwing a dart at an emotional dart board,” she says. “I was trying to get closer to the bullseye of the core of what I was feeling with no goal other than processing my own grief.” Though it was scary to put those feelings out there for mass consumption, Diaz found the process of bringing the record on tour strangely healing. Fans screamed along to her set, and the power of hearing her words echoed back to her at a place like Wembley Stadium was affirming. “It’s so empowering to stand in a room hearing girls yelling as loud as they can possibly yell,” she says. While she penned songs for artists like Kesha, Little Big Town, and more, time on the road renewed Diaz’s excitement about her own project, her own story.
On Weird Faith, Diaz once again examines a romantic partnership, but this time, her songs are about falling for someone and the endless self-questioning a new relationship inspires. “After being really burned by love – maybe relentlessly burned by it – the album is about being brave and trying again. Doing it differently,” she says. “It’s in our nature to try to be brave like that. You see the car crash coming. Maybe it won’t happen, but you’re bracing for it anyway.” In the throes of new love, she repeatedly encountered the same questions: “Am I ready for this? Can I do this? Can I trust myself to know the good from the bad?”
Label: ANTI-
BURIAL
DREAMFEAR / BOY SENT FROM ABOVE 12″
12″
A. Dreamfear / B. The Boy Sent From Above
XL Recordings presents Burial ‘Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above’ on 12″ vinyl.
Label: XL
BRITISH SEA POWER
DO YOU LIKE ROCK MUSIC? 15TH ANNIVERSARY EXPANDED EDITION
2CD / LTD 2LP
[CD1] 01. All In It / 02. Lights Out For Darker Skies / 03. No Lucifer / 04. Waving Flags / 05. Canvey Island / 06. Down On The Ground / 07. Trip Out / 08. Great Skua / 09. Atom / 10. No Need To Cry / 11. Open The Door / 12. We Close Our Eyes
[CD2] 01. No Lucifer – Steve Lamacq ‘In New Music We Trust’ BBC Radio 1 Session / 02. Waving Flags – Radcliffe & Maconie BBC Radio 2 Session / 03. A Trip Out – Colin Murray BBC Radio 1 Session / 04. Open The Door – BBC 6 Music Hub Session / 05. Everybody Must Be Saved – b-side / 06. Ooby Dooby Do – b-side / 07. Save The Purple House – b-side / 08. Charlie Potatoes – b-side / 09. Total Confusion – b-side / 10. Elizabeth & Susan Meet The Pelican – b-side
[2LP] A1. All In It / A2. Lights Out For Darker Skies / A3. No Lucifer / A4. Waving Flags / A5. Canvey Island / A6. Down On The Ground / A7. Trip Out / B1. Great Skua / B2. Atom / B3. No Need To Cry / B4. Open The Door / B5. We Close Our Eyes / C1. No Lucifer – Steve Lamacq ‘In New Music We Trust’ BBC Radio 1 Session / C2. Waving Flags – Radcliffe & Maconie BBC Radio 2 Session / C3. A Trip Out – Colin Murray BBC Radio 1 Session / C4. Open The Door – BBC 6 Music Hub Session / C5. Everybody Must Be Saved – b-side / D1. Ooby Dooby Do – b-side / D2. Save The Purple House – b-side / D3. Charlie Potatoes – b-side / D4. Total Confusion – b-side / D5. Elizabeth & Susan Meet The Pelican – b-side.
Expanded for this 15th anniversary reissue with radio sessions and B-sides and extensive new sleeve notes. This kaleidoscopic record encapsulates Sea Power’s true heart. The album takes in meteorological disaster (‘Canvey Island’), celestial pollution (‘Lights Out For Darker Skies’), a rousing and intricate anthem to European unity (‘Waving Flags’) and a moving instrumental named after a piratical sea bird, ‘The Great Skua’, a track that has gone on to soundtrack several conservation films. The track ‘No Lucifer’ illustrates the scope of the album, a composition that places Big Daddy’s TV wresting chant (“Easy, easy”) beside Biblical ideas of Armageddon.
Limited orange vinyl & a picture disc, plus extensive new sleeve notes written by Roy Wilkinson.
Label: ROUGH TRADE
HELADO NEGRO
PHASOR
CD / LP / LTD LP
01. LFO (Lupe Finds Oliveros) / 02. I Just Want to Wake Up With You / 03. Best For You and Me / 04. Colores Del Mar / 05. Echo Tricks Me / 06. Out There / 07. Flores / 08. Wish You Could Be Here / 09. Es Una Fantasia
The eighth full-length album in Helado Negro’s catalogue follows his critically acclaimed 2021 album Far In.
Some of the seeds for PHASOR were planted in 2019 on Lange’s 39th birthday after a 5-hour visit to Salvatore Matirano’s SAL MAR machine at the University of Illinois. The machine is a complex synthesizer that creates music generatively with a vintage super computer brain and analog oscillators. It can create an infinite amount of possibilities in sound sequences. “I was enthralled by it,” Lange recalls.
That SAL MAR experience became the bedrock for PHASOR. It taught Lange more about himself and became central to his creative process. “It gave me special insight into what stimulates me,” Lange explains. “This pursuit of constant curiosity in process and outcome. The songs are the fruit, but I love what’s under the dirt. The unseen magical process. I don’t want everybody to see it because not everyone cares to see it. Some of us just want the fruit. I do. But I want to grow the fruit, too.”
PHASOR is Lange’s tightest collection—deep, atmospheric, meticulously executed. It’s aligned with 2019’s This Is How You Smile which found him incorporating more upfront drums and bass and focused grooves. His 2021 album, Far In, focused on being in quarantine—talking to your mother through Zoom instead of across a room. PHASOR, in turn, is a homage to going outside again. It’s a returning-to-life record, remembering what the sun feels like and letting it warm your skin.
After Far In, Lange relocated to Asheville, North Carolina and the landscape around him was essential to PHASOR—the crystalline mountains dotted with mica, wild blueberry bushes, and inky dirt surface constantly. He made the collection at his studio, across the hall from the studio of his wife, his frequent collaborator Kristi Sword, who created the album art drawings for PHASOR.
Available on indie exclusive coke bottle green vinyl.
