Sometimes less is so much more, and in the case of Sumie’s self-titled debut, the combination of her voice and an acoustic guitar casts the most hypnotic and disarmingly simple spell.
 
Born Sandra Sumie Nagano in Gothenburg, Sweden, she first began recording her songs in 2008, a few years after becoming a mother. Unlike her sister Yukimi, who fronts the electro-pop outfit Little Dragon, Sumie has pursued a solitary and acoustic path. “It was not a style or a sudden choice but more me playing my guitar and having two small children so I could not make much noise,” she explains. “But I also love minimal and delicate music, so that felt like a natural direction for me.”

Sumie

Show talked windows

pre-order album here

SUMIE - Show Talked Windows

Moon

Snowbird - Porcelain

Speed into

Sumie - Speed Into

Never Wanted To Be

Buy on iTunes

Sumie - Never Wanted To Be

Fleet Foxes - Montezuma - BBC Maida Vale Session

Fleet Foxes - Mykonos - BBC Maida Vale Session

Philip Selway - Coming Up For Air

BC Camplight - You Should've Gone To School

Ezra Furman - Restless Year

Philip Selway - Around Again - The Acid Remix

Ezra Furman - I Can Change (LCD Soundsystem Cover)

Mountain Man - Animal Tracks

Taken from the upcoming 2017 album 'Trials & Truths', available now for pre-order via Bella Union...

CD/Vinyl: https://bellaunion.greedbag.com/buy/trials-and-truths/
iTunes: http://geni.us/TrialsTruthsHTDL

Horse Thief - Another Youth

The Beat Escape - Half Empty Happiness

Deep Throat Choir's debut album 'Be OK' is available now on Bella Union...

iTunes: geni.us/DeepThroatChoirBeOK
Vinyl: bellaunion.greedbag.com/buy/be-ok-3/

Deep Throat Choir - Ada

Deep Throat Choir - Hunter

"Cloisters", the debut album from Charlie Coxedge, is available to order now via Bella Union:

Vinyl: bellaunion.greedbag.com/buy/cloisters-0/
Digital: smarturl.it/CloistersCCoxedge

Charlie Coxedge - Be

"Sign Of Age" is taken from the debut album "Life Is Short the Answer's Long" from The Beat Escape.  The album is due for release 27th April via Bella Union. 

Pre-order now: http://smarturl.it/TBE_LifeIsShort

Life Is Short The Answer Is Long

The Beat Escape - Sign Of Age

"Love You So Bad" is taken from the upcoming 2018 album "Transangelic Exodus", available for pre-order now via Bella Union: http://smarturl.it/EFTransangelicExodus

Ezra Furman - Love You So Bad

Taken from the upcoming album "Calm Down". Order here: http://www.smarturl.it/ARIROAR_CALMDOWN

Calm Down

Ari Roar - Implode

The Walkmen - Heaven

http://www.thewalkmen.com/heaven/ 

The Walkmen’s new album, “Heaven”, is the sound of a band hitting maturity, comfortable in its mastery, after a decade together. “When you’re starting out, you’re sitting there trying to come up with a big idea, but after a while, you learn about the process of writing,” says guitarist Paul Maroon. “You learn about your friends in the band and how they work best.” Singer Hamilton Leithauser backs him up. “I wrote more stuff that I liked for this record,” he says. “To me, they sound like classic American rock songs.”

It’s been ten years since the band made their debut album, Everybody Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone. Ten years since they mixed the lovingly recorded analogue tapes down to the cheapest CD burner they could find. Ten years since Leithauser broke Maroon’s arm in a celebratory wrestling match. Ten years since critics attached them to a New York scene they never wanted any part of. But when Leithauser sings “We Can’t Be Beat,” on the opening track of Heaven, he means it, like Cool Hand Luke getting up off the floor for one more round. “The world is ours,” he declares. This time, he may be right.

This spring, the band played a series of tenth anniversary shows that demonstrated how far they have outstripped their peers: two sets over two hours, no filler, rapturously received. In contrast, fellow graduates from the class of ’02 have burned out or faded from view.

The Walkmen are the great New York band of their generation, and in Heaven, they have delivered their third killer album in a row. Although Leithauser states that “our biggest accomplishment is just being here,” they are making the best music of their career and filling their largest venues yet, including a sold-out show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2011.

‘In The New Year’, a standout track on their fourth record, You & Me, implies that at one point there was pressure to quit: “My friends and my family, they are asking of me, how long will you ramble, how long will you still repeat?” Lauded as a stunning collection of songs, beautifully arranged, the 2008 album revitalised their career.

Lisbon, released two years later, confirmed that trajectory, garnering 4 and 5 star reviews for its short stories and spare, Sun Records sound. The clanging tones of Paul Maroon’s Rickenbacker Capri 360 and Gretsch Streamliner set the 1950s mood, as Leithauser channelled Orbison and Sinatra, in all their melancholy defiance.

On last year’s tours with Arcade Fire and Fleet Foxes, the Walkmen formed enduring friendships. “There’s a kinship,” says multi-instrumentalist Pete Bauer. “You feel like someone else is out there taking music as seriously as you’re taking it. You realise that you’re a lifer.” So when Fleet Foxes producer Phil Ek approached them, asking if they’d like to make a record with him, they travelled to the studio he uses in the woods outside Seattle for the most intense recording sessions they had ever experienced. “He was relentless,” says Maroon. “And in the end, you can hear the difference.”

“We have never been on better behaviour,” agrees Leithauser. “When Phil had an idea, we would be ‘OK, let’s try it.’ That’s not who we are! But we came up with a sound that we love.” Although the chime of Maroon’s guitar is unmistakable in the cascading arpeggios of Song For Leigh or the driving metallic riff of Heartbreaker, the setting is fuller, the production lush.

“There can be something brittle about our sound,” Maroon says. “He made it just a little bit warmer, a little bit stronger. When I play it in my car, it sounds strong, which I love.” On We Can’t Be Beat, Leithauser is Dion and his bandmates The Belmonts, singing pitch perfect doo-wop. On No-one Ever Sleeps, Fleet Foxes vocalist 
Robin Pecknold plays Don Everly to Leithauser’s Phil, supplying a low harmony at once classic and contemporary. 

The one song that the Walkmen insisted on, over Ek’s objections, turned out to be the track that pulled the record together and gave it a title. “Our children will always hear romantic tales of distant years,” sings Leithauser. “Don’t leave me, you’re my best friend. All of my life, you’ve always been.”

All five members of the band have kids now and if the impact of parenthood is hard to pin down in a single lyric, there is definitely a new openness and emotional honesty to the songs. “The detachment you can feel throughout our younger records is gone,” Leithauser says. “We felt like it was time to make a bigger, more generous statement.”

After ten years, the Walkmen have everything that a great band needs. Leithauser is a mature singer of phenomenal stamina who can trade The Rat’s raw anger for the yearning of Southern Heart in a beat. Drummer Matt Barrick can pummel ferociously and drop down to Buddy Holly’s tramcar click. Bauer is a consummate sideman, effortlessly switching from guitar to farfisa to piano as required, or trading instruments with bass player Walter Martin, who has also written his most resonant lyrics yet.

Most importantly, the old gang mentality has deepened, becoming something worthwhile and lasting. “I’m very proud of what we’ve done. We’ve stayed friends and those friendships have grown,” says Bauer. “We have survival experience and real love that children generate in your life.” Heaven is a definitive statement of purpose and commitment, from a band at the peak of its powers that is finally winning the recognition it deserves.

The Walkmen - Heartbreaker

The Courage Of Others

Midlake - Acts Of Man

Wild Nothing - Shadow

Pre Order the album here https://baloji.bandcamp.com/album/kaniama-the-yellow-version

Congolese-born, Belgium-based artist Baloji has released a new Afro-Disco single, "L'hiver Indien" (ft. Gael Faye), a faux feel-good track that beneath its euphoric exterior explores the disconnect of migrant communities in larger society. BlackBook premiered the remixed song from Baloji’s upcoming album Kaniama: The Yellow Version, out May 3 via Bella Union. Baloji discussed the album and more on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

The original "L'hiver Indien" - with over 2 Million Spotify streams - comes from Baloji’s previous album 137 Avenue Kaniama, released last year on Bella Union. The label is re-releasing the album as the artist originally intended it, as a one-track mixtape on May 3. In a world of fleeting singles, Kaniama: The Yellow Version brings back the full album listening experience.

Baloji is an artist in motion, a musician, poet, film director and man of many images and ideas. Baloji means “man of science” in Swahili, but shifted during the colonial period to “man of the occult sciences and sorcery.” With influences from Outkast and LCD Soundsystem to African rumba king Tabu Ley Rochereau and salsa music legends Fania Records, he mixes hip hop culture with Congolese guitars and a melodic approach with some French chanson structure. His perpetual motion is showcased in music videos like “Soleil De Volt,” where he fronts a satirical variety show band with flamboyant flare, also apparent in his sharp curation of Komono eyewear collections.

Baloji - L'hiver Indien (featuring Gael Faye)

SONIKKU - Sweat (SOPHIE Remix)

John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts (No Ceremony /// Remix)

John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts (Xinobi Remix)

Warp 7 Weft

Laura Veirs - Sun Song

Denial

I Break Horses - Denial

London based record label, home to Beach House, Father John Misty, Midlake, John Grant, The Flaming Lips , Susanne Sundfør and many more...

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