CD Preorders

Release Date: 10/05/2024

New Album From The Most Danceable Post-Punk Pop Band In The UK.

It’s like something has exploded!

CRUMBS have been incubating this, their second album, for a few years now.  Who knows how they kept all the energy in check.  It must have been like sitting on a volcano.  The songs burst out with pure pop fire, sending splinters of guitar, sharp lyrics and snatches of the catchiest backing vocals.

The rhythm section (Jamie and Gem): it’s like Delta 5 meeting Le Tigre in a dark alley in Leeds, fusing blindly and completely, and then forcing its way into the back entrance of a venue, sending volts through the limbs of the unwitting punters, forcing them to dance. This is TIGHT.

And as the lights come on and the indie kids throw themselves around, Ruth’s vocals sweetly assault their ears with anger, joy, political intelligence - and all around, Stuart’s guitar, sometimes twangly-melodic like the B52s, sometimes sweet and ringing like a memory of Scars, sometimes furious and feeding back, keeps you alert and thirsty for more.

These songs do NOT outstay their welcome.  Starts and ends are cut hard: no pre-echo, no wistful, drawn-out regretful fade-outs. CRUMBS have imbibed the key lessons taught by The Gang Of Four and The Au Pairs: never let the energy dissipate.  But there is more than anger here. The band have smuggled a pop sweetness into the disciplined shapes of their angular songs. You’re Just Jealous has sharp edges, but it’s generous too.

CRUMBS - a brief history.  They are based in Leeds, where they are active movers in the DIY scene that currently thrives in the North of England. They recorded a Marc Riley session in 2016, released their first album (on Everything Sucks) in 2017, toured extensively in 2018 and 2019, playing at the Brudenell Social Club with Swearin’ and Jeffrey Lewis, and at plenty of fests such as LaDIYfest and Specialist Subject’s birthday all dayer in Bristol, A Real Cool Fest in Bradford, Mousetival in Stockton and the Cambridge Indiepop Alldayer.

They spent the pandemic creating these new, tightly-wound, irresistible pop songs.

Tracklisting:
1. You’re Just Jealous
2. Stab Alley
3. Dear Deirdre
4. Diy Sos
5. Rest In Pieces
6. Let’s Not
7. 4291
8. Call Now
9. What’s It Means
10. Sad Snoopy
11. Mambo No.6
12. Too Many Creeps

Release Date: 24/05/2024

No Guitar (Deluxe Edition) combines the original album with two instrumental bonus tracks from the sessions, “Cavalry” and “C2”, a lush and intricate collection that covers a ton of ground—from the bittersweet jangle of power-pop, to indie-folk, Midwestern emo, and much more.

You can hear shades of shoegaze in “Hi-Elixir”, where a massive wall of fuzzy guitars recalls My Bloody Valentine; “Patience” has a sweet-and-sour bite that recalls acts like Archers of Loaf and Shudder to Think; while “URDoM” swings and sways with a tapestry of guitars reminiscent of American Football and Mineral.

The album marks the latest evolution for cross-continental duo Bernie Gelman and Joseph Brandel, who first met in high school and have been fusing their own unique musical sensibilities ever since, with Gelman operating out of the San Francisco Bay Area while Brandel currently resides in Japan.

“…this is the sound of the days before smartphones and the Internet got in the way of seeking adventure, of not knowing what the band sounded like before going to watch them, of taking a punt on an album that you actually had to buy to hear.” - Monolith Cocktail

“No Guitar squares all the previous works, making the songs much more impressionistic and imposing, at the same time moving away from the lo-fi trace that is common in their last two works, making the story really unpredictable and exciting” - Northern Transmissions

“...a remarkable sonic pastiche of many genres and eras.” - American Pancake

“...drives a sound that is effortless, cloaking the heavy thematic undertones such as isolation, romantic heartbreak, and the loss of a loved one. The lush and intricate songs cover a myriad of stylistic grounds, from power-pop’s punchy bittersweetness and rustling indie folk to the openhearted intricacy of Midwestern emo.” – Ghettoblaster

Tracklisting:
1. Shamble
2. Pastoral
3. Pop Song
4. URDoM
5. Reflector Mage
6. Dysfunction
7. Majesty
8. Hi-Elixir
9. Patience
10. Husk
11. Hotel
12. No Guitar
13. Cavalry (Bonus Track)
14. C2 (Bonus Track)

Release Date: 14/06/2024

The Return Of Tomorrow is Fu Manchu’s first new album in 6 years, and they made sure that it was worth the wait. Their 14th album is their 1st double LP of new material and it was conceived of as a vinyl listening experience.

The first LP features 7 songs in their iconic heavy fuzz sound including the first single, “Hands Of The Zodiac” and the relentlessly catchy “Loch Ness Wrecking Machine.” The second LP sees the band mellowing out with 6 slower tempo jams including the synth inflected “Solar Baptized” and the title track.

Both LPs are 45RPM for the thickest possible sound.

CD listeners need not worry, as this version of the album was mastered specifically for the format.

Like the band’s most recent album, Clone Of The Universe, and the band’s 3 part Fu30 EP series, The Return Of Tomorrow was recorded at The Racket Room in Santa Ana, California by Jim Monroe (Adolescents, Ignite) and co-produced with Fu Manchu.

This limited edition release of 4,000 units is packaged in a glossy gatefold jacket with printed sleeves featuring live photos of the band and includes one “Space” colored LP and one “Sky” colored LP.

Tracklisting:
1. Dehumanize
2. Loch Ness Wrecking Machine
3. Hands Of The Zodiac
4. Haze The Hides
5. Roads Of The Lowly
6. (Time Is) Pulling You Under
7. Destroyin’ Light
8. Lifetime Waiting
9. Solar Baptized
10. What I Need
11. The Return Of Tomorrow
12. Liquify
13. High Tide

Release Date: 17/05/2024

Following the release of her 2016 album On The Never, Never, Martin knew that she wanted to take a break from writing and recording music. She moved back to Liverpool, from London, and began an apprenticeship with world renowned flute maker Willy Simmons.

“I was now looking at an instrument I’d been playing all my life at a molecular level. The discipline and repetitiveness of learning a craft freed my mind from thinking about songs for a bit and made me focus instead on some of the toxic chemicals and blow torches used to make the flutes,” she says. “I’ve never been a particularly mindful person; I’m usually zipping from one thing to the next and this work had a pace of its own which I had to submit to. As well as making flutes, I was also repairing them, and this was the part I most enjoyed – the process of renewal. In a corny way, I experienced this renewal myself.”

Following this period, Martin felt inspired to make music again and began setting up her own home studio. “Around this time, I’d started to listen to Joanna Brouk and the I am the Center compilation of early New Age music on Numero Group. This music was nothing like my own but seemed to extend from the Harmonia records I love and exist outside of the album, gig, tour regime. It was so inspiring and freeing, and I tentatively began to experiment in the studio, with the textures of Brouk’s song ‘Maggi’s Flute’ in mind.”

Working closely with co-producer Iwan Morgan (Euros Childs, Cate Le Bon, Gruff Rhys, Georgia Ruth), the pair found themselves drawn to drum machines that wouldn’t stay in time, and a piano with a tuning mind of its own. “I rediscovered the sense of play which brought me into music in the first place,” says Martin. “The palette was infinite and without boundaries. Where my previous records had always operated within the instinct / lack of budget axis, I now had the possibility to sculpt sound, to remake, blend and remodel it for the first time.”

Living next to the main 86 bus route into Liverpool City Centre prompted the idea behind ‘Outside at Night’, of parallel lives on different journeys. ’Three Days’ mines a similar theme but focuses on the hidden lives we share with others, the shift workers paradox. “It asks, do we really know what happens to our closest people when they leave the house?” explains Martin.

Album opener ‘Prepared’ is a hymn to self-reliance but not to perfection, to working your own routes and abandoning the tape measure.  In part it’s about looking back at ways you judged yourself in past encounters and not recognising yourself: “I turned away again, was I even there?”.  Tied in counterpoint to this, closing track ‘Open Door’ works as a prism through which to view the album (copious drum machines, swelling synths).  It’s also as an answer of sorts to Martin’s search - new possibilities rage from cascading melodic and atmospheric structures, reaching some kind of midway between Harmonia’s ‘Deluxe’ and the polyrhythms of Francis Bebey’s Psychedelic Sanza.

Across the record there are vocal and sonic contributions from co-producer Iwan Morgan. “Iwan maintains he’s not a musician but kept singing in the studio and eventually I managed to persuade him to put it on record,” says Martin.  ’Living on the Wall’ is the clearest example of this, exuberant monster truck beats, insistent pianos and vocals delivered without irony, think Wrong Way Up era John Cale and Brian Eno meets YMOs ‘Firecracker’.

Collaborative sojourns to Marco Rea's The Barne studio in Clydebank and Mike Lindsay (Tunng, LUMP) in Margate allowed Martin to coax standout contributions from both, shaping the album as both artist and co-producer. The result is a unique fusion of folk, electronic, and experimental pop music that defies expectations and challenges the boundaries of contemporary music.

“In a twisting but circuitous way, Prepared is my composted scrapbook of the last couple of years. I was prepared to follow where the sounds took me, the sonic train left the station and led me on its merry way,” she says. “It’s not an album about flute repairing but it wouldn’t have happened without learning the discipline of preparedness, the small movement, the tweak and the renewal from Willy Simmons.”

About Laura J Martin

Laura J Martin has so far released three solo albums. Her latest, On The Never Never, was recorded in Nashville with members of Lambchop, Silver Jews and Jesus Lizard. A mercurial and bewitching live performer who interweaves layers of vocals, flute, mandolin and electronics; Laura and her band have toured regularly across the UK and Europe and supported acts such as PJ Harvey, Teenage Fanclub, Cate Le Bon and performed and collaborated extensively with Euros Childs. Consistently played and supported by BBC Radio 6 Music DJs such as Marc Riley, Cerys Matthews, Lauren Laverne, Gideon Coe and Stuart Maconie; Laura's most recent release was a collaborative project 'Wyndow' written with Lavinia Blackwall of Trembling Bells and released in 2021.

“An understated marvel” Uncut

“Beautiful and intelligent stuff” The Quietus

"An extremely unique sound, I love the combinations of textures she puts together"
BBC Radio 6 Music, Lauren Laverne

Tracklisting:
1. Prepared
2. Counting Time
3. Living on the Wall (feat. Iwan Morgan)
4. A Better Story
5. Three Days
6. Outside at Night
7. The Dials
8. Magic Mornings (feat. Iwan Morgan)
9. Open Door

Release Date: 12/07/2024

One mere year after their previous pitch-black sounding album Krypt, LA outfit Male Tears is back with a new full-length and – oh boy – everything is changed.
The used-to-be duo is now a four piece with James Edward as the sole founding member remaining and apparently this new line-up helped the original vocalist to shapeshift again.

Remember their very first debut album from 2021 and those dark synthpop sounds?
With their upcoming fourth album (in only three years), this American electronic-pop act from Southern California doubles the stakes once again and where Krypt was all about being goth and gloomy and disturbingly paroxysmal, Paradisco is somehow quite the opposite.

Eight new tracks of pure italo disco, hi-NRG and freestyle bliss that pick up where the band left off three years ago to pursue much darker realms. Now that the quest for darkness is done, it is time to polish our nails and dress up for the night-out cause there's more in life than feeling sorry for yourself. Yes you will need to cut out the deadwood but there is no change in stillness.

So join Male Tears and their new arsenal of bangers and floor fillers with assertive titles such as Out of my Life, Regret 4 Nothing and Leave it Alone.

Get yourself wrapped up in one warm cover of delicate nostalgia and reborn romanticism, driven by sounds that  pay homage equally to Miko Mission and Ken Laszlo, Lisa Lisa and Exposé and, well yeah, even The Smiths because say what you wanna say but you simply cannot not love The Smiths.

Embrace the vintage vibes that organically propagate from this new record's grooves and get in the mood for this new course in full-on 1980's Pop.

Tracklisting:
1. Talk to Me
2. Leave it Alone (feat. Corlyx)
3. Sex on Drugs
4. Out of my Life
5. Where Is It?
6. He Wants Everything
7. Regret 4 Nothing
8. This Party Ends in Tears (feat. Digital Love)

Release Date: 07/06/2024

The third album of powerfully vivid songwriting from Marina Allen. Beautifully orchestrated, highly melodic and delivered with unrivalled lyrical perspective. Across two acclaimed records, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter has ripened a rare harvest, but her third studio album is an arrival home.

Taking fragments and stories from Marina’s past, Eight-Pointed Star deftly weaves together a new future, in what feels for all the world like a glittering, clear-eyed modern classic of alternative folk and Americana. For fans of Aldous Harding, Fiona Apple and Waxahatchee.

Ineffable and timeless, this collection of songs holds a curiosity that’s as open to you as you are to them. Compared to the soaring and swelling compositions of Allen’s second album Centrifics or the innocent tranquillity of Candlepower, the world of Eight Pointed Star is more deeply addressing and open-armed.

It favours a type of soul-searching that doesn’t dwell in complications, and is open to answers. Rolling guitars rise and fall with the canyons and dust is kicked-up from the red scarred earth. Allen’s vocals pure and crystalline whilst the instrumentation is rich and bursting with brightness. You can hear contentment radiating from the music, with Chris Cohen’s production offering a full-band affair.

Allen’s affection runs deepest for singers who in her words can really sing, from The Roches to Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsom to Meredith Monk. But these influences vanish like ghosts in the attic when she starts to sing herself. Allen has a voice that stands up to the canon – inimitable – and it’s never sounded more resolute than it does here.

Tracklisting:
Side A
1. I'm the Same
2. Deep Fake
3. Red Cloud
4. Swinging Doors
5. Bad Eye Opal

Side B
6. Easy
7. Love Comes Back
8. Landlocked
9. Between Seasons

Release Date: 17/05/2024

The Lovely Eggs will release their seventh new album “Eggsistentialism” on Friday May 17th on Egg Records. Their third collaboration with Grammy Award winning producer Dave Fridmann, “Eggsistentialism” will be released on ltd edition “mind green” green 12” vinyl with more breath taking mind boggling art-work by illustrator Casey Raymond.

“Eggsistentialism” sees The Lovely Eggs return after a 4 year break since their Number One Independent Selling Album “I am Moron”. During that time they have made their own TV show Eggs TV (featuring Ian McKaye, Stewart Lee,  Katie Puckrik, Maxine Peake, David Shrigley and more), dueted with Iggy Pop, played a load of sold-out gigs and festivals and fought a campaign to save Lancaster Music Co-op (a community rehearsal rooms and recording studio where they live).

Recorded at home in Lancaster, with production advice from Dave Fridmann, the album was mixed at Tarbox Road Studios, NY with Dave Fridmann and the band.

As the title suggests, “Eggsistentialism” explores a much more personal, introspective, and reflective side to The Lovely Eggs world and sees the Eggs explore new sounds and experiment in unventured musical territories.

“The new album is really a reflection on what has been happening to us these last couple of years, stewing up in Eggland in our own juices,” explains Holly. “It’s about loss and strength. On this album you’ll hear us at our lowest and most vulnerable. Daily life is hard. Realising everything you grew up with and loved is never coming back, alongside the responsibilities of caring for others is sometimes hard to take. The album is about life and death. Eggsistentialism. It’s about dragging yourself through all the shit to get to the other side.”

“It’s a bit of a ‘wilderness years’ album,” continues Holly. “We haven’t released a new record since 2020 and in the meantime, we’ve been here fighting shit and trying to defend a right to a lifestyle that we’ve enjoyed here in this town for the last 30+ years as working musicians who refuse to get a “normal” job and tow the line. It’s about believing in something and not letting go. But that unwillingness to give in ultimately takes its toll. It does start to destroy you and the album is kind of a documentation of that destruction and collapse as well as the strength we’ve got to get through it all. Ultimately, this is a hopeful record about survival.”

Tracklisting:
1. Death Grip Kids
2. Nothing/Everything
3. Meeting Friends at Night
4. People TV
5. My Mood Wave
6. I Don't Fucking Know What I'm Gunna Do
7. Memory Man
8. Things
9. Echo You
10. I am Gaia

Release Date: 26/04/2024

London-based rock duo, Yur Mum, is set to release their highly anticipated album, "Duality," on April 30, 2024.

"Duality" serves as the sequel to their 2021 LP, "Tropical Fuzz," and encapsulates the band's essence as a fusion of contrasts – Female meets male, Europe meets South America, and rock meets Brazilian music.

Anelise, the bassist and vocalist, expresses, "It's a total yin and yang. We're embracing our differences and blending them together to create something unique." The album features recent singles 'Say Say' and 'New Beginnings,' which gained recognition on BBC's 6 Music and Radio 1, along with Spotify editorial playlists.

The duo's Brazilian roots are exposed in tracks like 'Hands To The Sky', 'Anhangá', ‘Café’, and ‘Snakes Don’t Fly’, featuring Myura Amara from PollyPikPocketz. In a bold move, Yur Mum has opted for an independent release, expressing pride in creating the album they envisioned.

Collaborating with producer Alex Gordon, known for his work with bands like Tigercub and CLT DRP. "Duality" promises a wild mix of beats and melodies, rocking out with fuzzed-up riffs. Yur Mum's iconic bass and drums have levelled up, bringing an even bigger sound. Beyond the high-energy tunes, the band explores themes like faith, guilt, existentialism, mental health, toxic people, classism, and immigrant catharsis.

The album cover, designed by Fabio Couto, portrays a fusion of the duo in an androgynous and striking composition. Fabio says it was captured “DIY style” with an old smartphone camera.

Yur Mum, consisting of Anelise Kunz and Fabio Couto, stands out in the two-piece band scene with their distinctive Fuzz Punk Rock sound and South American influences.

Tracklisting:
1. New Beginnings
2. Say It
3. Anhanga
4. Hands To The Sky
5. Snakes Don’t Fly
6. Guilty
7. Guilt
8. Obnoxious
9. Immigrant
10. Same Igual
11. Café
12. Go Back