Indierock | Alternative 152 Items

What Kind of Human Have I Become is a new vehicle helmed by Matt Plunkett (Cuticles, The Trendees, etc.). Conceived as a solo endeavor, the designation got a bit blurry following an invitation to record his new songs with Stefan Neville (Pumice, etc.) at the studio he shares with Ben Holmes (Oksun Ox, etc.) in Auckland.

Once in the studio, Plunkett’s songs puffed in a wholly new way with Neville at the controls, and backing and bits from both Neville and Holmes perhaps channeling Nag and Bendie. Fans of Matt’s past and current activities will find much to rejoice in here; Avoiding The Diggy Diggy Dogs plucks three songs from the sessions. More to come in due time.

“More than ever, people need to hear songwriters talk about their lives. We don’t always have to search for monster hits. We can just write about our lives and maybe that might actually work. That’s what this record is a lot of. A lot of massive songs, but also a lot of me just writing authentically and honestly about my life. Flyin symbolizes the next phase of my career. I feel like I'm flying into this chapter where I’m the best version of myself that I've ever been. Y’all better catch-up or you’re getting left behind. I’m on fire!”

"In July 2022 I was invited to open for the band Low who specifically wanted 'something weird'. I only had about 24 hours to come up with a set but decided to take up the generous offer. Recorded live to Tascam 8-track at the High-Noon Saloon in Madison, WI. Gear: Waldorf Quantum, Roland Rs202, Arturia Polybrute, Waldorf XTK, DSI Poly Evolver, and Korg Mono/Poly." - Vincent Presley (Those Poor Bastards, Zebras, Logan 5, Secret Creeps, etc). Live ambient, drone, experimental electronic. Side 2 can be played at 45rpm (how it was performed) or 33rpm (ultra slow gloom version). Hand-numbered edition of 115 copies.

The 9th studio album of the band tumido features trumpet player Alex Kranabetter (Soap and Skin, Vodoo
Jürgens). For more than 20 years Tumido has been on the lookout for something new, always on the move,
focused on energy in any form, driving rhythms, powerful bass, spacey drones. Trumpet has always been a big
part of their sound universe, so it felt very natural to collaborate with a master of trumpet sounds, Alex
Kranabetter and record an album together.
Lithox - a maelstrom you can't escape, sucked in by a hypnotic bass & driving rhythms into a trance world you
don't want to leave
Dwa - a summer hit out of Hades on the slide to hell.
180° - a volcanic eruption on a lonely island - pure energy;
Dirt Rodeo - the branches of the fire tree dance with laughter, clouds of smoke cloud the senses and the landing
is a success.

Trailer Bride's 1996 self-titled record is a long-lost relic of the blooming Chapel Hill, North Carolina music scene of the '90s. Superchunk, Polvo, Archers of Loaf and other indie rock darlings were leading the town's indie rock movement while Southern Culture on the Skids were pushing the alt-country genre forward. Then comes Trailer Bride who combined both of those worlds with a gothic, lo-fi sound that centers around Melissa Swingle's atmospheric vocals and cryptic lyrics. Swingle started Trailer Bride following the demise of her band Pussy Teeth and would later go on to form the indie rock duo The Moaners with Laura King (Bat Fangs, Speed Stick), but the dark, southern sound that defines Trailer Bride's debut record provides a mystifying listening experience a quarter-century later. No Depression said it best in their 1997 review: "They're impossible to describe, but whatever you wanna call it, they sound really good." The album is available for the first time ever on vinyl for Record Store Day Black Friday 2022. This 25th anniversary edition is pressed on cloudy orange vinyl and remastered for vinyl. Limited to 1,500 copies worldwide.

As subjects of a recent career spanning vault-clearing anthology, the likelihood that more old recordings by The Strange Girls might surface was an unlikely one. Thankfully it’s just what happened. Culled from leaky audience video recordings, Truly & Lyric features two Clayton Noone songs that never surfaced elsewhere. These date from around 2002 and feature the core duo of Kaaterama Morehu and Noone. Draped in artwork by Mark Anderson (Greymouth), Truly & Lyric offers another fleeting glimpse at The Strange Girls’ downcast beauty in action. Limited to 200.

Recorded Live At Wembley Arena, 19th January 1991 "The Greatest British Music Weekend" Bbc1 Radio Broadcast. With Glossy Printed Inner Sleeve.

Must we bleed to buy a bridge? A life led punk takes a left turn to there and back again lane, and we find Soup Activists. This is St Louis’ new mutant pop, Martin Meyer’s solo studio project (and ensemble live band). Mummy What Are Flowers For?, the act’s new LP on Inscrutable Records, is punk’s gift back to pop. Friends, penpals, and mail order maniacs will all be told, a princely player with a heart of gold journeyed to Lawrence Kansas to record and rock. With Sweeping Promises, MM ignored the studio clock. SP’s Caufield Schnug behind the board and Lira Mondal in front of the mic, providing supporting vocals.

Songcraft has always been an essential part of Marty’s world (Lumpy and the Dumpers, the Wad, Cal and the Calories, Fried E/m) and special care is provided on Mummy. There’s the crackle and verve of Dolly Mixture, the slyness of Television Personalities, and the pure fun of the Freshies. The pogo is an apt dance for album openers 'Jeffrey Jarvis' and 'Boys With Plants.' Curiously dressed adolescents lay the groundwork for 'Matching Teens' and its swinging organ and crunching guitar. Lira’s singing is furiously focused and fulfilling on “The Times,” bottled fun. 'It’s a hit! It’s a hit!' These are the screams I hear each night in the Soup Activists concert audience. Let 'Some Doves Don’t' be your introduction to new wave. 'Chaos Girls' is an anthem for the apocalypse that dances dangerously in a zone of perilous joy.

Martin has worn many hats, and now we are closer to the dome than ever before with this guitar-pop project. Big, freaky-beefy, and beautiful, Soup Activists’ new LP is personal. It’s strange when you’re living the dream. We are lucky to live in this wonderful world and to have Martin Meyer making it more wonderful."—Reese Higgins (Gentle Reminder Records)

Escape Forever is a signal from the past, a loose thread that pulls us from our nostalgia filled bedrooms into our present moment. Both a loving homage to teenage memories and an intense response to our current milieu. Soft Kill’s Escape Forever is thirteen raw tunes, musings and samples with Chicago artist RBTayskii as the spiritual tour guide. The record is delightfully centered around just the painful and joyful moment of creation, where guitars and melodies are supreme. Soft Kill attempts to grapple with the chaos of the world coming back to harmony, to reconcile with the past, to embrace it. A reverie on how to remain humble and intentional in an ever more complicated world. As Emerson once said we are artists because we are unsuccessful people living in an unsuccessfully realized world. Escape Forever tries to find transcendence in the knuckle bruising nightmare we came from instead of the realm of the phenomenal, praised and often overreaching. It harkens back to another era, but Escape Forever is decidedly the sound of us now. Edition of 500 copies on gold vinyl.

Instead of distorted guitars and thunderous drums, we've used mellotron, glockenspiel, and chimes to highlight Tool's dreamy melodies on ROCKABYE BABY: LULLABY RENDITIONS OF TOOL. These incredibly lush lullaby versions of Tool's best known songs will captivate and engage your baby while they drift off to slumberland.

Radiohead weave worlds of incredible sounds, design and imagery. Lush arrangements combine with epic performances. Their album KID a imagines the scope and power of music created by a newborn child. What will you baby dream about while drifting off to these seren interpretations of Radiohead's best-loved songs.

With a discography spanning decades, Panic! at the Disco's chart-topping hits range from pop-punk to soul to rock -- now, Rockabye Baby is calming things down to give you all the timeless Panic! classics, with a completely reinvented, baby-friendly sound.

The full album features lullaby-ified, nostalgia-inducing classics like “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and “This Is Gospel,” as well as Brendon Urie's newer superhits. Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Panic! at the Disco is sure to have you and your baby sound asleep by "Nine in the Afternoon".

The lullabies on this album use the airy melodies and beautiful imagery of Coldplay's best material, cutting to the heart and soul. Whether your little one is just plain Jane or sweet little Apple, these beautiful lullabies will warm their hearts and put a smile on their faces.

Perennial is an art project: Mod pop, post-hardcore, 60s soul, ambient electronic music, midcentury design, abstract expressionism, French New Wave cinema; it’s all collage material for Perennial. The band—electric organist Chelsey Hahn, guitarist Chad Jewett and drummer Ceej Dioguardi—is equal parts manic basement show bombast and studio-as-instrument headphone listening. To see the New England three-piece in person is to experience a 20-minute burst of kinetic energy: dynamic, reckless, electrifying. To put on one of Perennial’s records is to spend almost the same amount of time with impeccably layered studio-as-instrument punk modernism. Art History, the band’s newest full-length album (out June 7 via Ernest Jenning Record Co.), finds Perennial further experimenting with their angular cut-and-glue aesthetic. An adventurous 20 minutes of impressionist punk energy, British Invasion guitar pop chic, and Mod-inflected rhythm and noise rave-ups, Art History is both Perennial’s most giddily accessible and most artistically daring record to date. Edition of 275 copies pressed on clear with black and green splatter vinyl.

A sprawling patchwork of the artist’s dreams and fears, Parannoul’s third album After the Magic explores the enigmatic solo artist’s life in the wake of his second album’s overnight success.

Expanding on the shoegaze-shaded emo that made Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream so beloved by lo-fi and indie rock fans alike, After the Magic sees the anonymous auteur striving to write a follow-up as worthy of acclaim as the last.

Across the album’s ten songs, Parannoul plunges yet deeper into his diverse pool of influences, coming back to the surface with a record that captures and extends the magic of its predecessor. Unexpected flashes of orchestral ambient and glitched-out electronica meld seamlessly with Parannoul’s signature passages of noisy, distortion-laden shoegaze, offering a real time glimpse into the maturation of one of indie rock’s most exciting artists.

Six years ago, Oum Shatt released a critically acclaimed debut album that led to Song of the Year awards from Berlin Radio Eins ("Gold To Straw") and TAZ Popblog ("Power To The Women Of The Morning Shift"), as well as BBC and Arte features and appearances at Sxsw, Transmusicales in France and Electric Picnic in Ireland.

Now, the Berlin-based band, whose members are otherwise known from bands such as Kissogram, Fenster, Die Türen, Golden Showers and Peaches, consisting of singer and songwriter Jonas Poppe, founding member Chris Imler on drums, guitarist Richard Murphy, and Rémi Letournelle on bass and synthesizer – return with a second effort that even surpasses their debut. Building on the minimal-rock style of their debut album (Vogue Magazine), OUM Shatt weaves a mystic, at times psychedelic soundscape with meandering guitars, a wild percussive aesthetic, and Jonas Poppe’s evocative, mantra-like baritone. "Opt Out" also stands as a thematic concept album, delving into the individual's various forms of resistance against societal expectations. While drawing from obscure influences, the album remains unmistakably unique.

OBERHEIM! is the love child of Gothenburg's alternative backyard, born from the union of scattered guerrilla groups such as URAN, Exorcist GBG, Dirty Burger, The Population, Melody Fields, Lady Banana, and Tentakel. Their self-titled debut album is a psychedelic garage rock explosion that draws its lifeblood from bands like The Stooges, Can, Kraftwerk, and The Gun Club.

Nick Garrie was an unknown backpacker until his music was discovered in the late ’60s while busking in the South of France. Recognising his talent, work on a collection of recordings followed which would culminate in his legendary debut album The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas. Set to be released in 1969 on the influential French label Disc’Az, however due to the suicide of the label’s founder, Lucien Morisse, shortly before the album’s release date, only about 100 copies of this psych pop/soft rock masterpiece came into circulation. It became a cult album in the truest sense and was finally reissued almost 40 years later. With the death of Morisse, Nick took some time away from recording only to return under an alias, writing with Oscar and Golden Globe winning composer Francis Lai. His directory of credits only grew as he worked with Paul Samwell-Smith (The Yardbirds), Alun Davies (Cat Stevens’ Band), drummer Gerry Conway and Leonard Cohen. Nick Garrie grew his audience in Europe, penning an album that would top the charts in Spain. In 2005 the album The Nightmare of J.B Stanislas was reissued, achieving critical acclaim from The Independent, BBC & Record Collector. Nick’s resurgence combined with fascination of his back story led to a new generation of music fans and musicians appreciating Garrie’s work. In this tim he was collaborated with the likes of Duglas T. Stewart (bmx Bandits) Norman Blake and Francis McDonald (Teenage Fanclub) and Gary Olson (The Ladybug Transistor). Now, for the first time ever, the classic title track is to be released as a 7” single. It is also the first ever vinyl release of Nick’s work on a UK label. The B side is a song close to Nick’s heart Around the World. This track was also written in the ’60s but had never been recorded before. It was recorded at Nick’s home in late 2023 with the help of fellow 9X9 recording artist Jamie Whelligan and musician/producer Nick Frater.

Matt Loveridge is a prolific multi-instrumentalist condemned to Bristol, UK. He has over sixty solo records under various monikers, done before and after his time in Beak>, none of which appear on major streaming platforms, nor get much attention. His work as Mxlx is a miasmatic fog, and he tosses the listener deep into it. Kicking Away At The Decrepit Walls Til The Beautiful Sunshine Blisters Thru The Cracks is his most celebrated release (if one counts hate mail), and it appears here for the first time both on vinyl and somewhere not on his own site.

Songs swerve between ambient, electronic ambient noise, metal, and industrial. Vocal harmonies ride arpeggiated basslines and shimmering synth lines, ascending upwards before plummeting into distorted screams. And yet, Loveridge’s aggression does not overlook introspection. He faces one stripped of all pretense, creaking “I’ve got that dumb skull of yours locked in place,” apologizing, “I’m sorry for all that I’ve done in the name of myself” and laughing in one’s face, “Just kidding, I hope you rot in the ground.” Drawing from an obsession with literature, he’s converted a life stricken with bouts of depression and homelessness into febrile sonic turbulence. He channels the intensity of groups like Pharmakon and The Body, while embracing compositional noise like Colin Stetson. With droning organs, emotionless chanting, and fleeting walls of sound, his results have more to do with cosmic futility than petty score-settling.

Mxlx produces barren liturgies of raw emotion, like a fallen medieval monk given a synthesizer. He pulls the listener from comfort, spits in their eye, and abandons them as roadkill. An explosive catharsis not for faint hearts or distracted minds.

Mock Media's (Crack Cloud, N0v3l, Pottery, Painted Fruits) debut LP Mock Media II - out on Meat Machine captures this fire brand four piece's head - on plunge into enthralling existential contradictions: songs that explore the darkest corners of humanity, yet come out at the other end with the unwavering joy that marked their genesis. It's an album of sneaky eclecticism: the high-wired punk rock stylings serve as Mock Media's framework to clad their agog explorations into pop, electronic and world folk music. Mock Media, Canada's new supergroup, contains members: Evan Aasen, Garnet Aronyk Muhammad, Austin Boylan and Bennett Smith. Mock Media originates in Vernon, British Columbia, a small farming town surrounded by blue lakes and majestic mountain ranges. Such wholesome beginnings naturally sparked a heady wanderlust and DIV - spirit with in its founding members. The album's connective tissue is a knack for crafty, tongue-in-cheek pop melodies and the kind of plucky story telling that chronicles the greater complexities of life-chapters where strife and survival are usually rife.

Minuit Machine is a duo from Paris known for their darkwave. Their 2013 debut EP Blue Moon showed a keen ear for using synth pads and harmonics to strike a melancholy mood whereas their first LP Live & Destroy showed them working with punchier and more up-tempo rhythms. Violent Rain is a reunion of all these musical genres. Influences are certainly worn on sleeves, and Minuit Machine are no exception, but what separates the wheat from the chaff is whether those classic sounds are being imitated or used as a toolset for exploring themes and ideas which are come by honestly. The emotion of Minuit Machine's music, rife with drama and gothic excess, leaves no question as to their motives.

“If rock ’n’ roll’s a dream, please don’t wake me.”

Midwife’s No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock ’n’ roll from within a body in motion.

No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.

Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.

Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.

“If rock ’n’ roll’s a dream, please don’t wake me.”

Midwife’s No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock ’n’ roll from within a body in motion.

No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.

Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.

Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.

“If rock ’n’ roll’s a dream, please don’t wake me.”

Midwife’s No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock ’n’ roll from within a body in motion.

No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.

Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.

Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.

Sorcerer Records present a reissue of Lubricated GOAT's debut LP Plays The Devil's Music, originally released in 1987. It's been out of circulation for over two decades, and Sorcerer Records presents this classic slice of underground Australiana in all its glory. Recorded over two recording sessions in mid-1986, one in Perth and one in Adelaide, Plays The Devil's Music wasn't really seen by LG founder/mainstay STU Spasm (ex-BEASTS OF Bourbon, Salamander JIM, et al.) as a part of any grand musical plan. He recorded these tracks with his friends Martin Bland, Brett Ford, and Pete Hartley and went back to Sydney with the tapes. John Foy of Black Eye Records loved the results and the band known as Lubricated Goat was born. Over the course of several more full-lengths and an EP or two, the band made themselves a reputation as one of Australia's finest purveyors of post-punk noise-rock before relocating to the US. The musical scene centered around the Black Eye label in Sydney at the time, with bands such as the 'Goat, Thug (featuring a young Tex Perkins), No More Bandicoots, Box The Jesuit, etc. remains one of Australia's richest, weirdest and most inventive conglomeration of musicians and artists, and Stu and company were right in the thick of it. Lubricated Goat were (perhaps correctly) often compared to the Butthole Surfers at the time, and their mix of punk, post-punk, noise, and a taste for the absurd puts them firmly in the same camp. Throw in a little bit of Stooges/Birthday Party-style grunt and a distinctly Australian sense of humor and you're getting close to the magic of early Lubricated Goat. This edition comes remastered c/o Mikey Young. Comes in original artwork and inner sleeve; Includes download card; Includes new liner notes from Stu Spasm detailing the history of the recording. Recommended for fans of: Butthole Surfers,Killdozer, Pere Ubu, Big Black, Birthday Party.

LIV Greene isn't running from herself anymore. She's pried herself open and let real longing, frustration, and love break free. Deep Feeler, her sophomore album, is a reckoning with reality, a vulnerable snapshot of hard-won self-acceptance. It's feminine, queer, and defiant. It also heralds the arrival of Greene as a powerful new voice who joins the songwriting tradition of Emmylou, Patty, Gillian, and Lucinda - in her own way. Greene self-produced and recorded Deep Feeler live to tape in Nashville's Woodland Sound Studios, with collaborator Matt Andrews (Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings, O Brother Where Art Thou) and a dreamy band of friends including Sarah Jarosz, Dom Billett, Elise Leavy, and Christian Sedelmeyer. The resulting collection of beautiful melodies and folk-rooted storytelling is a bold achievement: a piece of art that matters culturally, musically, and personally.

"Toujours l'été" is the very first Les Négresses Vertes Best Of on Vinyl. 12 classic track on white vinyl edition fairly priced , from" Sous le soleil de Bodéga", "Voilà l'été" to "Zobi La mouche " and Massive Attack's cult remix of "Face à la mer " .
Les Négresses Vertes are a cult french alternative band formed in 1987 with a unique sound. The original line up was a group of 9 friends, some of them never played music before : we can say they very quickly improved . They can be best described as a fusion of world music and alternative rock. Their particular music influences were Raï, Mediterrean music and French café / chanson française up to lyrics. They were in the same time a big band & a rock band with tremendous concerts throughout the UK & Europe . After two first and cult albums "Mlah" & "Famille Nombreuse" and the death of the former charismatic singer Helno, the band decided to keep on playing with Stéphane Mellino & (Matias) Canavese replacing Helno as the main songwriters & singers. After "Zig-Zague" & "Trabendo" albums, they disbanded in 2001.
Following a few live reunions , Stéphane & Iza Mellino ,original members, reformed the live band in 2018 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of cult debut album "Mlah" with an intensive French tour. They have kept playing since and will be back onstage from late spring 2024 for a 30 dates new tour visiting a few countries and very likely to be extended in 2025. Longue vie aux Négresses Vertes !