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The latest by Arizona desert brotherhood Alex and Andrew Jarson aka Body Of Light further hones their smoldering strain of tempestuous synth-pop into a transformative suite of anthems, reveries, and reckonings: Bitter Reflection. Written in the wake of 2019's neo-EBM classic, Time To Kill, they sifted inspiration from hidden moments within their own arcana - childhood tapes, home movies, abandoned demos - asking themselves the question: "How can we make this grow?" Sampled snippets of voice, noise, synth, and field recordings flicker in the periphery of these 11 tracks, murmuring like nostalgias half-forgotten, or displaced memories. It's music pulled between twin flames of truth and desire, romanticization and reality, catharsis and control, born of a bond sealed by years, dreams, and blood. Working with Telefon Tel Aviv co-founder Josh Eustis in Los Angeles, the brothers incorporated an expanded array of live instrumentation - piano, bass, saxophone, acoustic guitar - in addition to vintage Akai samplers, Moogs, and archaic hardware, giving the album an eclectic, unpredictable palette. Opener "Get It Right" showcases their impressive refinement: sleekly cold drum machinery builds to a swooning chorus of synths and piano, then suddenly slips into a dream sequence bridge of strummed guitar and echo-shrouded vocals, before surging back to the main melody. Throughout, the songs shift gears and moods in evocative ways, as if bending to fleeting thoughts or lengthening shadows. Simmering synth lament "Strike The Match" captures the Jarsons' unique technique of co-crafted lyrics, accruing meaning as the world turns; though written long before, the track ended up being recorded the day Russia invaded Ukraine ("I fall asleep to the candlelight / things will be different but not tonight / it wouldn't be like you to strike the match / over and over, I can't understand"). A trio of intriguing instrumentals deepen the album's scope, echoing the duo's early experimental era as part of the influential Ascetic House collective. "Fortia," "Hyena," and "Deepcolorlights" drift in a prismatic gauze of whispered synths and oblique minutia, in the spirit of Boards of Canada at their most hushed and haunted. Elsewhere the record spins through a gallery of the band's ongoing fascinations: Depeche Modeesque declarations of dread and excess ("This Conversation"), brooding dance floor epiphanies ("Out Of Season"), smooth Thomas Dolby city skyline melancholias ("Never Ever"), lovesick looking glass ballads laced with Art Of Noise orchestral stabs ("On This Day"). A new age demands new waves, and Body Of Light belongs at the forefront of a resurgent generation fusing modern methods with the sounds of futures past. Singer Alex Jarson sees their muse clearly, at the axis of anguished transition, temporal collapse, and, just possibly, the brink of hope: "Time is dysphoric. The dream breaks down. Everyone's beginning to panic, but in the end something will come from it."

As Warped Tour pop-punk and American Apparel indie rock dominated the strange post-Y2K guitar-band milieu, Boston's Karate delivered an engrossing shot of rock that constantly shifted between several shades of subterranean sounds. The quiet moments on Karate's millennium busting fourth album carry much of that old, unbridled intensity, braided into subdued jazz melodies and slowcore restraint. Karate's transition into rock maturity bore supple fruit with Unsolved, presented here with three previously unreleased songs.

Ditz re-release their debut album, The Great Regression on eco vinyl after the first 1,500 copies sold out within a matter of weeks.

The 10-track album has been a long time coming – the five-piece first came together in Brighton at the end of 2015 and released their debut EP the following year. There have been a few line-up changes along the way, but they have been settled since their breakthrough tracks ‘Gayboy’, ‘Total 90’ and a cover of Peaches’ ‘Fuck The Pain Away’ in 2019, which prompted Joe Talbot from Idles to proclaim “Ditz are the best band in Brighton, if not the world”. Even though the various lockdowns slowed the band’s momentum for a while, they turned the situation to their advantage, using the downtime to fine-tune this incredible debut.

Abrasive but accessible, The Great Regression has been widely lauded as one of the most important British guitar debuts of 2022. Resident named it #4 best album of the year, Pitchfork gave it a 7.3, the likes of Steve Lamacq, John Kennedy, Jack Saunders, Joe Talbot and Tom Robinson all spun it merrily and Spiegel, Gigwise, Loud & Quiet, Upset, Flood, Under The Radar, Brooklyn Vegan, Pop Matters, Louder Than War and so many more fell in love.

Such themes of insecurity and gender pop up a lot over the course of the album, as well as lots of references to the human body breaking and being harmed in unnatural ways, although there’s no one overarching concept, simply because the songs have come together over such a long period of time. The title is not so much a reference to society going backwards, but more the band’s penchant for childish jokes. “Sitting in a van all day can get silly,” laughs Cal.

That’s not to say The Great Regression is in any way light-hearted. It’s full of anger, rage and despair. ‘Three’ takes some text from Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 sci-fi novel Solaris and applies it to the hollow activism of everyone from big corporations to middle class uni students.

Other literary touchstones include Sylvia Plath, William Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr, but even more influential is the band’s ever-growing pile of equipment. “We spent a lot of time during the recording process just trying to make unusual sounds out of pedals, or whatever we could find,” says Cal.

The album concludes with a cacophonous new version of ‘No Thanks, I’m Full’, which originally closed their debut EP in 2016. “Over the years the live version has evolved so much that we just had to record it again to do it justice,” explains Cal. “The lyrics are so old that I can’t place whether they are about the hazards of drinking or not drinking.”

It’s proof of just how far Ditz have come on in that time and a reminder that, in order to progress, you need to regress. And we’ll drink to that. Or not.

Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It's also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can't actually tell you how much we love this record because you'd never believe us, so we'll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019's Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman "Sun Ra" Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. "This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness," Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland's nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It's peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in "Mystic Mine," with its "Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country." So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: "The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B)," she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you've heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland's successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that's somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there's a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana's solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord-little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records-Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.

Øresund Space Collective (øsc), formed in 2004, is a totally improvising Scandinavian space rock band and has been releasing albums since 2006. The band has played concerts & festivals all over Europe. Their music is quite diverse and influenced by the ever-changing line up in the collective. The material on this LP was recorded in October 2010 on the 2nd day of recording and features a lot of different musicians from days 1 and 3. A lot of the material has a funky nature, but it is a very diverse album with a nice chillout sitar number and a lot of space rock!! Some of the tracks have been edited for the vinyl edition. Recorded at the Black Tornado Studios in København, Denmark in Oct. 2010 by Lars Lundholm Mixed & mastered by Dr Space at Estúdio Paraíso Nas Nuvens, Portugal in 2020 with sonic advice from Hasse Horrigmoe Artwork / layout by David Graham

Øresund Space Collective (øsc), formed in 2004, is a totally improvising Scandinavian space rock band and has been releasing albums since 2006. The band has played concerts & festivals all over Europe. Their music is quite diverse and influenced by the ever-changing line up in the collective. The material on this LP was recorded in October 2010 on the 2nd day of recording and features a lot of different musicians from days 1 and 3. A lot of the material has a funky nature, but it is a very diverse album with a nice chillout sitar number and a lot of space rock!! Some of the tracks have been edited for the vinyl edition. Recorded at the Black Tornado Studios in København, Denmark in Oct. 2010 by Lars Lundholm Mixed & mastered by Dr Space at Estúdio Paraíso Nas Nuvens, Portugal in 2020 with sonic advice from Hasse Horrigmoe Artwork / layout by David Graham

Tofu Resistance returns with his new ep “Thorídur”, marking his 3rd release on Ynfnd after his full length debut “1//23“ in 2019.

This EP sits comfortably between both the world of beats and a more relaxed environment. Returning to his roots, Tofu Resistance aka Tobias Kleine remembers his early influences of sample based music and classy hip hop grooves.

The result is a sonorous sketch of deceleration, answering with bouncy rhythms to nod your head to. You can hear him playing the drums, guitars and various other instruments on this record. A beautiful blend of organic and electronic production, adding his unique Tofu flavor.

A creation of ex-Warm Soda bandleader Matthew Melton and his wife Doris Melton, Dream Machine is a Los Angeles based psych-rock group with a keen ear for vintage sounds. Influenced by classic rock like Heart, Deep Purple, and Iron Butterfly, the group features Melton on guitar, bass and vocals, his wife Doris on organ, synth, and vocals, and Billy Odyssey on drums. After being unfairly cancelled by their former record label, Dream Machine went rogue, moving forward by releasing on Matthew Melton's own Fuzz City Records, and establishing a headquarters on their YouTube Channel where they document their analog recording process and discuss various topics. There's something for everyone on Dream Machine's highly anticipated 3rd studio album: "Living The Dream". It exists in its own space, somewhere between 70s Prog Rock and 80s Synth Pop. In a partial departure from the heavy psych and prog-influenced garage rock they've been previously known for, "Living The Dream" offers something new, with a more developed sound. Some tracks, including "You Forgot To Dream", feel like early 80s synth pop, and "Until Tomorrow" flirts with disco on an otherwise mellow rock track that soon erupts into a compelling synthesizer solo that will sweep all your cares away.

Das Berliner Projekt Sprung Aus Den Wolken gehörte in den frühen 1980er Jahren zusammen mit den Einstürzenden Neubauten und Mechanik Destrüktiw Komandöh zur "Geniale Dilletanten"-Bewegung. Die Band veröffentlichte erstmals 1981 eine EP bei ZickZack, 1982 und 1983 folgten weitere Veröffentlichungen auf dem hauseigenen Plattenlabel Faux Pas, danach bis 1991 auf dem französischen Label Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L"Acier. Das Stück "Pas Attendre" war Teil des Soundtracks von Wim Wenders" Film Der Himmel über Berlin und avancierte so zum Underground-Hit. Gründer der Band Kiddy Citny ist auch ein Maler. Seine Gemälde über die Berliner Mauer wurden weltweit ausgestellt und befinden sich heute in Privatsammlungen in den USA, Frankreich und Japan. Bureau B freut sich, das lange vergriffene, selbst-betitelte Album aus dem Jahr 1982 endlich wieder verfügbar machen zu dürfen. Liebevoll remastered, mit rekonstruiertem Original-Artwork, zahlreichen Fotos und Linernotes von Alexander Hacke.

Birth evolved from Astra, whose two albums for Rise Above Records - 2009’s ‘The Weirding’ and 2012’s ‘The Black Chord’ - had already reinvented classic sonic textures and mind-melds in lucid and intoxicating style. Conor Reilly and Brian Ellis nonetheless found themselves seeking out new life and new civilisations. Initially this led to a collaboration with Psicomagia’s Trevor Mast and Paul Marrone, although later Marrone (while he does play on ‘Born’) was replaced by Thomas DiBenedetto (of Sacri Monte, Joy and Monarch) as sparks began to fly in earnest. The result has been a debut which combines a questing spirit with a dystopian take on the here and now. Musically, whilst traces can be discerned of the dark and magisterial King Crimson of ‘Red’ herein, as well as the yearning cadences of early Yes and the delirious contortions of Van Der Graaf Generator, a whole host of influences made their presence felt in these mournful cadences, joyful solo passages and kinetic freakouts, from '70s mainstays like Aphrodites Child, Premiata Formeria Marconi and Area to the primitive folk of Robbie Basho and the symphonic soundtrack work of Osanna. Yet far from the trappings of retro chic and fashion-aligned classicism, these five celestial serenades stake their claim in a different headspace to most other exponents of the form. Certainly, it’s true that many of the audial shapes manifesting themselves here - the exploratory jazz-rock diversions, Mellotron and Hammond-abetted textures and the rich melancholia of the song-writing - may recall moments from progressive rock’s past and the listener may be forgiven for losing themselves in a gatefold-sleeved reverie. Nonetheless, this is a band which was thrown into life via the constrictions and temporal shifts of a global pandemic, as well as one which has largely set about chronicling a reality in which the surrounding world appears to be hurrying its own demise. Alchemical forces have done their considerable work with ‘Born’, in creating an uplifting album for the ages, 42 minutes in which past, present and future are blurred; an album haunted by earthly concerns even whilst its sonics aim for the stars.

Double LP on 45rpm black vinyl, housed in a gatefold jacket and obi strip. Includes art print & lyric book.

Heart Under, Just Mustard’s second album and first for Partisan Records, is an album that asks you to forget what you know. At every turn, this remarkable record reconfigures and stretches the ideas and ambition of a rock band, and turns a year of lockdown and personal struggles into a breathtaking artistic statement.

Across its 10 tracks, the album presents a coherent style and ethos – those scything guitars, Katie’s magical vocals – but still incorporates a wide and untethered vision. There are brooding, atmospheric rock songs ("Still", "In Shade") and others that apply a lighter, dreamier touch ("Sore", ""Mirrors"), all tied together with impeccable instrumentation and a united vision. On Wednesday, the band played with dreamier soundscapes and production techniques, and Heart Under serves as the next stage of this development, with every instrument brilliantly pushed to its limit and every boundary of the band stretched.

Fabienne moved to London in 1996, almost immediately joining the Bristols, a then studio project consisting of Liam Watson and Ed Deegan, two producer-engineers at Toerag Studios. After two albums, a few singles and several tours of Europe, the Bristols came to an end. Eager to carry on singing, Fabienne went solo in 2004. With the help of Liam Watson producing, Fabienne recorded her first album No Time For Sorrows concentrating on a more elaborate but similar style she had previously experienced with the Bristols.

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2022.

My Proud Mountain is proud to announce third volume of the series "Songs of Townes Van Zandt", that was started in 2012 and features various artists covering Townes Van Zandt songs.Songs of Townes Van Zandt Vol. III featuring Amenra, Cave In & Marissa Nadler and will be released on April 22, 2022. Steve Brodsky of Cave In about being part of the record:"In the winter of 2010, I did a solo tour with Scott Kelly of Neurosis and Bob Wayne. It was the 3 of us and Ansgar Glade traveling in Bob's "green machine" van around the UK and Ireland. At every show, Scott played the song "Caroline" and each time I heard it, I found myself enraptured. This was my introduction to Townes Van Zandt. Pretty cool that 10 years later, Ansgar has given me and Cave In this great opportunity to show our love for TVZ's music." Lennart Bossu of Amenra says:"Being Belgians, the very American folk and country of Townes Van Zandt is not exactly the music we grew up listening to, but upon discovering his songs in our early twenties, they immediately struck a chord with us. Even people who do not understand the lyrics can probably tell that they are listening to someone who has lived and suffered, and, oddly enough, at the same time find deep comfort in his soothing voice. It is the kind of comfort that often defines great music or art in general, and it made the prospect of trying our own hand at a few of his songs no less daunting. Nonetheless, when we were asked to be part of this collection of Townes Van Zandt cover songs, we felt excited and compelled to be part of it, as, in a way, it offered us a chance to do something in return for the great songs he has given us, and also be a part of a series of albums that are almost exclusively comprised of artists we deeply respect." Marissa Nadler about Townes Van Zandt:"I've been a fan of Townes Van Zandt's music for nearly as long as I've been writing songs. When I was starting out, a friend introduced me to Townes's music and I pretty much instantly fe...