PNKSLM HHV Records 35 Items

The Stockholm based electronic punk duo Ghlow returns with new album Levitate, the follow-up to the acclaimed debut LP Slash and Burn, which was a stirring proof that there is something truly special in the musical bond between Emille de Blanche and Nikolay Evdokimov. Levitate is a daring and ambitious sequel that maintains that record’s sense of urgency whilst also finding room for experimentation and artful reflection – a record that distills Ghlow’s punk artistry down to its purest form yet.

7ebra is the project of 25-year-old twin sisters Inez and Ella from Malmö, who grew up playing music together. Inez plays electric guitar and sings, Ella plays a keyboard, organ and Mellotron - whilst manually playing drum samples with her feet - as they both sing haunting harmonies in a way that only twins can. Beautiful but punk, minimalist but epic. The duo are making big waves already, having toured with Future Islands and The Dandy Warhols as well as slots at festivals such as Sxsw, Eurosonic and The Great Escape. On the debut album Bird Hour, they effortlessly combine their own brand of minimalist indie rock hooks with the unique production stylings of Tore Johansson, known for his work on Franz Ferdinand’s debut album and The Cardigans. The album is out via Pnkslm Recordings (ShitKid, Les Big Byrd etc.) and the band will tour extensively during 2023.

The post-garage-punk and psychedelic power pop anomaly Chemtrails return with their upcoming third album – their boldest yet with a more danceable and rhythm-driven style, armed with their trademark fuzzy guitars and playfully sinister melodies. Working with producer Margo Broom (Fat White Family, Goat Girl) this time around, the group has traded in their DIY approach for a more hi-fi studio sound, remaining just as raw and wild as ever, but with a whole new level of focus and intensity.

The Stockholm based electronic punk duo Ghlow returns with new album Levitate, the follow-up to the acclaimed debut LP Slash and Burn, which was a stirring proof that there is something truly special in the musical bond between Emille de Blanche and Nikolay Evdokimov. Levitate is a daring and ambitious sequel that maintains that record’s sense of urgency whilst also finding room for experimentation and artful reflection – a record that distills Ghlow’s punk artistry down to its purest form yet.

ShitKid’s lo-fi indie/punk rock debut LP “Fish” polarised music fans across the world. Most the reviews came in either 5/5 or 1/5, which is just the way we like it. A thrilling start of a great career that included shows all over the world and making Iggy Pop a fan. This repress contains two bonus tracks and is a part of the Pnkslm 10 year anniversary repress series featuring represses of some of the Swedish label's sold out key releases.

On their bold and brilliant debut album 'Unsoothing Interior', Stockholm's Vero reflect the nature of life itself. Their songs prioritise feeling over perfectionism - what feels, or sounds, best - creating a record that tumbles through its contents with a sense of unpredictability, excitement and curiosity. It's an album full of raw guitar riffs that spin and swirl and fizz, and evoke the spirit of artists like Sonic Youth, Garbage and Pixies. The record, out May 6th via Pnkslm Recordings (ShitKid, Les Big Byrd, Holy etc.), is a document of the three musicians' own experiences, injected with a natural urgency that comes from both the reality in the songs and writing and recording them in a studio paid for by the hour. For its listeners, it acts less as a roadmap through the turbulence and more as a confidante to share the highs and lows, drama and desire with, encompassing everything from sex, friendship and figuring out exactly who you are.

On their bold and brilliant debut album 'Unsoothing Interior', Stockholm's Vero reflect the nature of life itself. Their songs prioritise feeling over perfectionism ' what feels, or sounds, best ' creating a record that tumbles through its contents with a sense of unpredictability, excitement and curiosity. It's an album full of raw guitar riffs that spin and swirl and fizz, and evoke the spirit of artists like Sonic Youth, Garbage and Pixies. The record, out May 6th via Pnkslm Recordings (ShitKid, Les Big Byrd, Holy etc.), is a document of the three musicians' own experiences, injected with a natural urgency that comes from both the reality in the songs and writing and recording them in a studio paid for by the hour. For its listeners, it acts less as a roadmap through the turbulence and more as a confidante to share the highs and lows, drama and desire with, encompassing everything from sex, friendship and figuring out exactly who you are.

The solo project of Malmö songwriter Katja Nielsen, of acclaimed punk combo Arre! Arre!, is finally ready to unleash her debut LP 'Violent Tendencies', a ten-track deep dive into the stories of female murderers. Expertly produced, Violent Tendencies, takes its cues from '60s garage rock and girl groups rather than the eighties infused goth pop of her early EP's, looking outward rather than inward for a rollercoaster that veers between a glut of different genres, themes and lyrical ideas, although still scored through with Nielsen's sharp ear for melody.

A leader in the Danish DIY scene' - NPR Mikkel Holm Silkjær, the frontman of Danish indie rock combo Yung, is finally set to release his long-awaited debut solo record as Holm - the first release with this solo project since 2018"s 'Dappled' EP. Titled 'Why Don't You Dance', it's a product of three years of writing and nearly six months of recording, it's a gleefully varied guitar-pop record that veers between styles, from the fizzing energy of 'Descending' and opener 'Intelligent Moves' to the gorgeously melodic 'Like a Dog' and 'The Rope', via the stately introspection of tracks like 'K's Choice' and 'Back Home'. Recorded by Yung bandmate Tobias Guldborg Tarp (who co-produced alongside Neil Robert Young), Why Don't You Dance is the sound of Silkjær stepping away from his group's predilection for taut rock and roll and instead embracing a different side of his musical personality, one defined by his sharp ear for a hook, as well as - crucially - his burgeoning ability as an expressive lyricist.

Tom Serner had always intended to make a debut solo album in 2020. He couldn’t have known, though, how the unique nature of the year would shape it. By the time the world began to grind to a halt in March, Serner found himself, like a lot of us, with plenty of time on his hands. “It gave me the opportunity to go deeper into a kind of research process.”

He’d always known that he wanted this first album under his Sindy moniker to be a love letter to the nineties influences he grew up with, continuing in the vein of Hits for Kids, last year’s thrilling five-track EP. Now, he had the opportunity to take deep dives in the catalogues of cornerstones of the decade’s alt-rock pantheon, starting first with Radiohead, charting their progression from post-grunge to experimental electronica. With that foundation laid, he turned to shoegaze, ob-sessing over My Bloody Valentine: “I was inspired by the textural approach to music over melo-dy, even though MBV have both - Bilinda Butcher’s soft, ethereal vocals and Kevin’s weirdo gui-tar tunings.” As the process wore on, he explored the more eclectic side of the Sonic Youth oeu-vre, reappraised Sebadoh’s legendary III, and found a kindred spirit in Daniel Johnston, who’s lyricism chimed with Serner’s desire to imbue his music with a naiveté brought on by freedom of thought.

The fruits of this musical odyssey are in the nine tracks of Horror Head, which plays like a paean to the stranger side of nineties alternative. Written at home in Stockholm and recorded in con-junction with co-producer Jacob Haage at Studio Ging Ging, the album is a technicolor realisation of Serner’s vision; it filters his influences through a dream pop lens, recasting a decade’s worth of indie rock in the mould of Cocteau Twins. Stylistically, it twists and turns through a slalom of fresh ideas, from the airy prettiness of ‘Big Scare’ to the driving noise pop of ‘Phantom Limb’. At the centre of it all are Serner’s breathy vocals - think an off-kilter Elliott Smith, delivering what Serner himself describes as “seriously deranged four-chord songs”.

As is so often the case with a solo project, Sindy allows Serner to explore thematic ideas that the democratic nature of Ruby Empress wouldn’t allow him to. “A lot of the tracks are just about try-ing to find a place in this confusing existence,” he explains. “They’re attempts to put these really big abstract ideas into the short-form of a song.” He reckons with his past on the record - sizing up where he is now, relative to where he’s been - and some songs hint at a higher drama that the music’s breezy feel belies, such as betrayal. Writing in his second language, though, allowed him to take novel approaches; some of the album’s lines are plucked directly from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after he binge-watched four seasons during the writing process.

What might seem like a mischievous nod to a favourite TV show actually holds deeper meaning; the show’s blackly comic outlook on death is something that strikes a chord with him. That helps explain where the record’s title came from; Horror Head is an album defined by its dichotomies, between the musical present and past, and between alternately sunny and gloomy outlooks. “I totally understand that thing of finding the beauty in horror,” he reflects. “That’s where I get a lot of my creative energy - somewhere in between the soft and the hard, the dark and the light, the difficult and the easy. The sound that comes out of that is usually melancholy. It’s very therapeu-tic.”

The British-Brazilian duo Cherry Pickles return with their second full-length The Juice That's Worth The Squeeze, out October 23 on the Swedish indie label Pnkslm Recordings (ShitKid, Hollow Ship, Chemtrails etc). Following on from last year's break-through debut album, the Birmingham based duo quickly set to work on the follow-up, offering up another set of disjointed and delicious tracks that ranges from noisy garage rock in the vein of the Oblivians to something more akin to the much-missed surfy indie rock of Girls.

These two vicious bastards (Black Mekon and his brother Black Mekon) were named after the legendary Black Mekong, illegitimate children of prostitutes visited by missionary preachers, abandoned to fend for themselves on the banks of The Mekong River. Their mobile church of jet-engine noise and pelvis-shattering drums has graced shores all over Europe, Japan, South America and the USA both headlining and at the personal request of Jon Spencer, Guitar Wolf, The Scientists, Kid Congo, King Brothers and more.

Over almost 15 years Black Mekon and his brother Black Mekon have put together a healthy back catalogue and while their most recent recordings have included their friends and family joining them, their latest effort THE Lumpiness OF Demand is a quick detour right back the start, recorded fast and live as a two-piece with all the consideration and skill of a flaming, wingless jet engine heading for the mountain.

ShitKid is back with new full-length album 20/20 ShitKid out August 21 via Pnkslm Recordings (Les Big Byrd, Hollow Ship, Holy etc), the second ShitKid full-length of 2020 following the Melvins & Paul Leary collaboration LP Duo Limbo/'Mellan himmel å helvete'. 20/20 ShitKid also marks the return of ShitKid as the solo project of Åsa Söderqvist, with bassist Lina Molarin Ericsson leaving after their US tour in support of Duo Limbo. Leaving the grunge-infused rock of Duo Limbo and the pop-punk of 2019's [detention] behind her, ShitKid's now continuing down the path of her 2017 debut LP Fish and the This Is It EP, opting for a unique alt-pop sound ranging from synth pop to garage rock while showcasing her growth as a songwriter and musician.

Stockholm, Sweden based HOLY aka Hannes Ferm is back with his third record Ryder, a massive step forward for the young artist. After 2018's hugely ambitious three-years-in-the-making glam-psych odyssey All These Worlds Are Yours which was released to acclaim from the likes of Consequence of Sound, Bandcamp Daily, Prog Magazine, The Line of Best Fit and more, Ferm decided to take a step in the opposite direction. Teaming up with producer Jacob Haage (El Perro Del Mar) for Ryder, Ferm's delivered an intimate synth pop record melding experimentation with conventional pop songwriting and again showcasing his ear for melodies, breaking new ground while still staying true to playfulness and immediacy that's been HOLY's signature from the start.

In the spring of 2019 ShitKid - Åsa Söderqvist and Lina Molarin Ericsson - headed over to the US for a couple of shows at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX but ahead of the festival they managed to squeeze in a couple of days in the studio ' first in LA with the legendary the Melvins and then in Austin with Paul Leary of Butthole Surfers. The new album Duo Limbo/'Mellan himmel å helvete' collects the recordings from these two sessions, half of which are ShitKid's first recordings in their native Swedish ' with a set of four songs to start with the band set out to record them in both English and Swedish, clocking in at just over 26 minutes. It's ShitKid's finest work yet with the duo backed by an all star line-up of Buzz Osborne (Melvins) and Dale Crover (Melvins, Redd Kross) on half of the album and Paul Leary and Josh Freese (NIN, Devo, The Replacements etc) on the other half.

Formed in Liverpool, and now also based in Manchester and Glasgow, Beach Skulls produces some of the best garage-pop heard in years. Featuring catchy songwriting and laid-back melodies, 'Slow Grind' provides all the summer hits you could want. Also suitable for listening during Winter!

As part of PNKSLM’s 10 year anniversary series of special releases/represses - we're over the moon to finally present ShitKid - "Rejected Fish"! This is the previously unheard, studio version of the now legendary debut album "Fish".

ShitKid originally recorded "Fish" at MFG Studios here in Stockholm, with myself Luke Reilly on production duties. The week before it got sent of to the vinyl pressing plant though, Åsa had a bit of a panic that it "sounded too good for ShitKid" - and she ended up re-recording all the songs herself on garageband (mostly in her car) - and this super lo-fi take was the version that ended up getting released.

Obviously at the time ourselves, plus our PR and radio partners were a little shocked, but as always, Åsa made the right move (in ShitKid we trust) and the album went on to be the best selling PNKSLM vinyl, streamed millions, won awards, and made fans out of the likes of Iggy Pop and Billie Joe Armstrong. And almost the best part was how divisive the lo-fi recordings made the record - Fish received both the best and worst reviews we've ever had on the label!