fire records

Television Personalities - The Painted Word (From The Painted Word)

Death And Vanilla
Release ‘The Tenant’
Out 2nd February 2018 
Limited Edition Magenta LP / CD

Pre-order link: https://deathandvanillamusic.bandcamp.com/

Following on from the deluxe reissue ‘Vampyr’ last year, comes Death And Vanilla’s unreleased live score of ‘The Tenant’ on limited edition magenta vinyl.

Originally scored by Philippe Sarde, this release sees Death And Vanilla reimagine the film’s soundtrack four decades on for a new audience. The haunting instrumental is a foreboding piece of dark and cinematic avant-garde music that’s alienated, lonely and melancholic. Moments of hallucination and delusion mirror the lead character Trelovsky. 

Recorded in 2015 at Cinemascore festival in Spain alongside a two-hour performance and screening of psychological thriller ‘The Tenant’ (1976).  With the band at their most minimal, the accomplished musicians once again bring the dark narrative to life with their expansive and ethereal noir sound. The recording features them as a trio - Marleen Nilsson (Farfisa Compact), Anders Hansson (Hagstrom Kent, Roland SP-404 and Technics SL-1200) and Magnus Bodin (Moog Prodigy and Musser M55).

Directed by Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski and based on the novel Le Locataire by Roland Topor, ‘The Tenant’ is the finale in his acclaimed apartment triology which included “Repulsion” (1965) and “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968).

Death And Vanilla - Dioz Delirium

Television Personalities unreleased new album
'Beautiful Despair'
Out 26th January 2018

Pre-order here: https://televisionpersonalities.bandcamp.com/

Television Personalities unreleased album 'Beautiful Despair' is released on 26th January 2018 on Fire Records. Recorded in 1990 by Jowe Head at his flat in Glading Terrace, Stoke Newington (shortly before it was demolished), over a number sessions on a portable 4-track cassette-tape machine.

Of the previously unheard songs, “I Like That In A Girl” was based on a conversation Daniel Treacy had with Lawrence of the Birmingham band Felt, hence the peculiar accent that Dan uses towards the end. “Love Is A Four-Letter Word” was a song the band would play regularly live and eventually evolved into “Love is Better Than War” and "I Suppose You Think It’s Funny”  displays Jowe and Daniel's double-falsetto skills.

Jowe Head on the track:
'If You Fly Too High' was based on an encounter with Evan Dando of The Lemonheads in Berlin; we did a memorable gig with them at the Ecstasy Madhouse in December 1989, when the Berlin Wall was being torn down.  Exciting times.  We jammed with Evan on stage that night, playing some tunes by Jonathan Richman and Johnny Thunders, as I recall.  That song also mentions Alan McGee, who was a great fan of the TVPS and Dan’s songs.  Alan openly admits that he emulated Dan’s style of music, and influenced his decision to run a mod-psychedelic club, The Living Room, and to start his label, Creation.

Dan Treacy: 12 string electric guitar, electric 6-string guitar, lead vocals.

Jowe Head: drum machine, synthesiser, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitars, autoharp, bowed psaltery, percussion, backing vocals.

Television Personalities - If You Fly Too High

Bardo Pond
New Release 'Volume 8' 
Out February 2nd 2018
Purple LP / black LP / CD

Brand new album from Philadelphia’s much loved neo-space rock stoner drone outfit.

A euphoric transcendental journey to a mountain top nirvana, a psychedelic tapestry that slowly unwinds as they travel onwards into the inner mind.

A 40-minute opus delivered from a hail of reverb soulfully caressed by a ceremonial flute, that makes way for a shroud of ‘Weld’—era Neil Young fog. 
Bardo Pond is your rather ruffled tour guide to this far off place, this distant sense of wonderment at the crossroads with bewilderment. 

Loved and lauded by the late Lou Reed and his wife Laurie Anderson, Jesus & Mary Chain, Mogwai and many more and acclaimed in the music press as such:

“Dinosaur Jr guitar power with the glacial grandiosity of Black Mountain, as if Isobel Sollenberger is conjuring a thunderstorm with the sound of her voice and riding it across the heavens.” Stereogum 

“One of underground rock’s most extraordinary enigmas” The Quietus

“They alter brain chemistry by the alchemical effect of distressed sound alone, aspiring to become engineers of the soul’s passage to alternate states of consciousness.” Tony Dale (RIP), Ptolemaic Terrascope, 2001
“Playing fuzzed out stuff of stoner dreams since the mid ‘90s.” Pitchfork

“Fugazi on acid.” Noisey

Bardo Pond - Kailash

'Rest' is taken from Hater's new EP 'Red Blinders' out 1st Dec on Fire Records.

Pre-order: https://haterfire.bandcamp.com/album/red-blinders

“Their ability to effortlessly write songs that are devastating in their lyrical impact yet bewitching to hear is only rivaled by a few.” Revue

“Their unique take on rock music feels familiar and lived-in, taking bits from indie-pop, post-punk, and classic rock.” Stereogum

"Gorgeous, achingly bittersweet vocals, perpetually swaying between comforting and devastating.” Gorilla Vs Bear

Hater Live Dates
29 Nov: Rough Trade East, London, UK 
30 Nov: Soup Kitchen, Manchester, UK  
01 Dec: Shacklewell Arms, London, UK  
02 Dec: The Taproom, London Fields Brewery, London, UK 
17 Jan: Hafenklang (Goldener Salon) , Hamburg, Germany  
18 Jan: Eurosonic Festival, Huis De Buirs, Groningen, Netherlands   
20 Jan: Roodkapje, Rotterdam, Netherlands 
21 Jan:  Paradiso (upstairs), Amsterdam, Netherlands  
30 Jan: Tape, Aarhus, Denmark 
31 Jan: Conne Island, Leipzig, Germany  
01 Feb: Underdogs, Prague, Czech Republic 
03 Feb: Groove, Lugo, Italy  
04 Feb: One Of A Million Festival, Baden, Switzerland  
06 Feb: FZW Indie Night, Dortmund, Germany 
07 Feb:  Manufaktur, Schorndorf , Germany  
08 Feb: Schokoladen, Berlin, Germany  
10 Feb: Ideal Bar, Copenhagen, Denmark

Hater - Rest

Pictish Trail 
New single 'Lionhead' & UK Tour

After a fervently busy summer which included triumphant appearance at festivals including Field Day, Glastonbury, Green Man and Lost Map’s Howlin’ Fling, and was capped with a shortlisting for the Scottish Album of the Year Award by popular vote, Isle of Eigg-based Scottish DIY electronic folk-tinged croft pop sonic hermit and Lost Map Records founder and director Johnny Lynch AKA Pictish Trail looks ahead to the cold season with the Winter Rewind Acid Reflux Tour. A self-styled “intimate yuletide Eigg-nog of Hebridean Casio folk, with stripped back, twisted and blissed out regurgitations of ol’ Pictish Trail favourites” it’ll take in a clutch of dates up and down the UK, and feature Johnny performing as a three-piece together with multi-instrumentalists Suse Bear(Tuff Love) and John B. McKenna from Monoganon, who also be the tour support. It’s the latest round of tour dates in support of Pictish Trail’s critically garlanded third album Future Echoes, which came out in September 2016 on Lost Map Records. Future Echoes earned ★★★★ reviews from MOJO, Uncut, Clash, The Arts Desk and The Scotsman among others. Pictish Trail’s bonkers epic video for the track ‘After Life’ was hailed by The Guardian as “a warped myriad of apocalyptic symbolism… brilliant”.  Now in 2017, Pictish Trail signs to Fire Records.

Pictich Trail Tour Dates:
24 Nov: The Studio, Hartlepool, UK 
25 Nov: Alternative Peers' Ball, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Scotland (full band) 
28 Nov: The Greystones, Sheffield, UK 
29 Nov:  The Cellar, Oxford, UK 
30 Nov: O2 Ritz, Manchester, UK (w/ Jane Weaver) 
01 Dec: The Hall, Lancaster, UK 
02 Dec: The Taproom, London Fields Brewery, London, UK 
04 Dec: Henry Tudor House, Shrewsbury, UK 
05 Dec: Gwdihw, Cardiff, Wales 
06 Dec: Crofters Rights, Bristol, UK 
07 Dec: The Prince Albert, Stroud, UK 
08 Dec: Rialto Theatre, Brighton, UK 
09 Dec: Union Chapel (Daylight Music), London, UK 
09 Dec: Paper Dress Vintage, London, UK - SOLD OUT 
10 Dec: Lost Map's Strange Invitation, Strongroom Bar, London, UK  
11 Dec: The Stables 2, Milton Keynes, UK 
12 Dec: The Crescent, York, UK 
13 Dec: The Trades Club, Hebden Bridge, UK 
16 Dec: Xmas Baubles, Lost Map all-day event, Summerhall, Edinburgh 
27 Jan: Celtic Connections, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Scotland 
28 Jan: Celtic Connections, Drygate Brewery, Glasgow, Scotland

Pictish Trail - Lionhead (Acoustic)

Lost Library EP
Order link: http://www.firerecords.com/product/various-artists-lost-library/ 

'Lost Library' features new music from Jane Weaver, Virginia Wing, Noveller and Death And Vanilla.

If you simultaneously pull the correct two albums from the wall-to-wall collection, the wall spins in true Hammer Horror style to reveal a secret passage that leads to the Lost Library, an eclectic shadowy domain where the audio is unique and ubiquitous. This isn’t music found on the high street – it’s a secret passion purveyed by those lost in sound in need of a soundtrack beyond Spotify.

In the Lost Library you will find music like nothing else. Take three examples:

The first from this exotic space features an eerie homage to a private press album that’s unobtainable, Danish and created by the hands of a man responsible for fermenting new age music, the mysterious Klaus Schønning. He produced Suzanne Menzel’s long lost ‘Goodbyes And Beginnings’ album in 1981. It’s a pre-genre dreampop variation delivered by Virginia Wing joined by the wonderful Jane Weaver. A marriage of meandering majesty.

That is followed by the menacing ambience of John Carpenter’s self-penned opening mélange to his claustrophobic epic The Thing delivered by the evocative sepulchral string-bending drone of Noveller. It’s a sound that represents the brooding human-inhabiting menace that The Thing’s cast unlock when an alien catapulted to earth finally thaws out. No-one is safe.

And, to conclude, why not re-imagine tradition; think what would happen if you took a song of Aaron-sweatered folk legend and turned it into a piece of echoey soft-to-the-touch analogue minimalism. You might add esoteric instrumentation, take nothing for granted and deliver the iconic guitar virtuoso Bert Jansch’s ‘Moonshine’ as an all-new glinting piece of melancholy. Too late, Swedish duo, Death And Vanilla has already done it. And it’s a haunting three minutes that never evaporates.

Jane Weaver And Virginia Wing - I Feel It Starts Again

Half Japanese - Why Not

The Jazz Butcher 
Out 9th March 2018
4CD - book back

Pre-order:
www.thejazzbutcher.bandcamp.com/album/the-violent-years

Expansive book-styled package of the first four albums from The Jazz Butcher’s early Creation Records’ years – 1988-1991.

Featuring the much praised ‘Fishcotheque’, ‘Big Planet, Scarey Planet’, ‘Cult Of The Basement’ and ‘Condition Blue”.

A sonic journey that takes The Jazz Butcher from a Weather Prophets-propelled rock ‘n’ roll visionary through to a lean jazz-tinged pop exponent.

Underlining the clever lyrics, witticisms, one-liners, melancholy, irony and conceptualisation of main man Pat Fish that came to maturity across his previous four albums for Glass (collected on Fire and much praised later last year as ‘The Wasted Years’).

Hailed by the press of the day:

“Punning, clever displays of hurt and revulsion.” Select

“That rare beast, an LP of cool, laid back pop.” Record Mirror

“A vicious mismatch of outrage, black humour and sentiment.” Sounds

“If it emanated from a more in-vogue source, would currently be having its maverick genius analysed to death.” Melody Maker

Praise for The Jazz Butcher’s ‘Wasted Years’.

“They are a band well worth re-visiting or discovering for the first time. A release very much recommended.” 8/10 Louder Than War

“An incomparable genre-bending act that requires a substantive re-evaluation. Between the pages and the artwork of this reissue lies a time capsule of a time that is just as pertinent today as the time when it was created.” 9/10 Under The Radar

The Jazz Butcher - Racheland

Half Japanese
Release new album ‘Why Not’
Out on Fire Records January 19th 2018
Pre-order: https://halfjapanesefire.bandcamp.com/album/why-not

We’re locked in the basement where tongue twisters and alliterations are the order of the day for Half Japanese. At first the band sound like The Velvet Underground fronted by David Thomas, then a long-lost college marching band with glockenspiel and brass straight from the Sunday School interjects. Let those chimes ring. 

Half Japanese have returned to peel further layers from their onion. They have a new album that's a square further on in their unpredictable musical snakes and ladders board. ‘Why Not?’ is a magical thing – it’s Springsteen’s ‘Born To Run’ recorded in a cupboard, it’s an ode to love, it’s a Wire song with two duelling guitarists being Zappa on helium, it’s Parquet Courts in a tantrum, it’s The Crickets contorted into ? and The Mysterians, it’s everywhere and nowhere, baby, it’s where it’s at.

On ‘Why Not?’ nuances are mused, situations explained, questions asked. Outside, zombies and demons roam and everyday aliens emerge from spaceships: it’s a technicolor film transcribed by Jad Fair and friends John Sluggett, Gilles-Vincent Rieder, Mick Hobbs and Jason Willett, their faces at the cracked window of their subterranean habitat looking out at the real world. 

They’re on a high from their last release:

“After all these years, his wiry voice still hits every song with a shock that’s equal parts joy buzzer and defibrillator, each barely in-key bleat alternating between laughable and life-affirming,” said Pitchfork of their last opus ‘Hear The Lion Roar’.

To which All Music added that “after nearly 40 years of music-making, they're still creating some of the most engaging recordings of their lives, and that's truly something to believe in.”

‘Why Not?’ goes further. It’s an even more intense concoction, it’s further out there. It contains pieces of fluffy thought-provoking music, a bag of sentiments delivered with a real sense of wonderment at how the normal world revolves; all powered with heart and soul, some crunchy guitars, a cello and reverb set-to-kill infiltrating their storytelling.

‘Why’d They Do It?’ quizzes track 11. Because they can.

Half Japanese - Zombie Island Massacre

Pere Ubu
4LP box set ‘LES HARICOTS SONT PAS SALÉS 1987-1991’
Released on 6th April 2018 

Pre-order: 
https://pereubumusic.bandcamp.com/album/les-haricots-sont-pas-sal-s-1987-1991

•	Third, and final, box set includes ‘The Tenement Year’ (1988), ‘Cloudland’ (1989), ‘Worlds In Collison’ (1991) and ‘The Lost Album’.

With Pere Ubu on hiatus since 1982’s excellent ‘Song Of The Bailing Man’, David Thomas had recorded a much-praised solo album and the band had now signed to a major label. In a period of rampant world commercialism, what would happen next?
 
Another crucial era for the band unraveled, Pere Ubu’s journey charted new undulating territory and so began a three-album escapade that retooled our understanding of what pop music is. The third in the four-part boxed set series, ‘Les Haricots Sont Pas Salés1987-1991’ sits between ‘The Architecture Of Language 1979-1982’ and ‘Drive, He Said 1994-2002’.

“Solid as the band can be, it's also likely to dissolve songs from the bottom up. For all Pere Ubu's uncertainty, the band isn't arbitrary; its music has the off-the-wall unity of a Marx Brothers routine,” said Jon Pareles of The New York Times on ‘The Tenement Year’.

One year later and things were further obscured with ‘Cloudland’ when they released “their industrial-strength equivalent of a class Beach Boys album from musicians more familiar with factories than surf.” (Greg Kot, Chicago Sun Times).  Then, in 1991, ‘Worlds In Collision’ became “the most atmospheric, carefully sculpted recording in the band's 13-album catalog.” (Tom Moon, Spin).

Here we have Pere Ubu between 1987 and 1991 with three phenomenal pop albums, together with the ‘The Lost Album’, an 11-track record of demos that sounds like they’d loosened the nut and bolts of the genre even further.  

Four of these tracks, ‘Around The Fire’,’ Down By The River’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘Invisible Man’ were recorded as demos for the album originally designed to follow ‘Cloudland’. Referred to by the band as ‘The Lost Album’ they are now joined with songs from ‘Cloudland’ that wouldn’t fit on the original vinyl release due to the length limitations of vinyl. The record also includes a tribute to Van Dyke Parks ‘Wine Dark Sparks’ and ‘Bang The Drum’ inspired by a Van Dyke Parks song. Genius.

Remastered by Paul Hamann at Suma Studio in February 2017 and designed by John Thompson, the four LP box set will be released on 6th April 2018.  Pere Ubu will also be on the road across Europe through May and June 2018.

Live dates:
22nd May: Zürich Rote Fabrik
23rd May: Fribourg Fri-Son 
24th May: Heidelberg Karlstorbahnhof 
25th May: Nürnberg Künstlerhaus 
26th May: Vienna Schauspielhaus 
28th May: Berlin Frannz Club 
30th May: Hamburg Hafenklang 
31st May: Amsterdam Paradiso
1st June: Diksmuide 4AD 
2nd June: Rotterdam WORM

Pere Ubu - LES HARICOTS SONT PAS SALÉS 1987-1991 - Sampler

Jane Weaver releases new 7” ‘The Lightning Back’
Out 6th April 2018

“She’s by some distance the best songwriter of the latter-day psych revivalists” Guardian

“A supernova talent” KEXP

Following an incredible year, Jane Weaver returns with indie store exclusive 7” ‘The Lightning Back’ on April 6th 2018. 

Widely considered the standout protonic pop song from Jane Weaver's unanimously revered Modern Kosmology, The Lightning Back sees the meteoric collision of micro-chip modulations and homespun harmonies courtesy of a self-sufficient artist who has in recent years become regarded as one of the countries finest in the field.  

This 3.5 minute pocket-pop implosion fuses subtle patch-bay arpeggios evoking the stylings of Wendy Carlos and (previous collaborator) Suzanne Ciani providing a deftly constructed framework for Weavers songwriting talents. Celebrating the intimacy and inhibition-free methodology found in her solo-power approach, The Lightning Back hears Jane's yearning lyricism rise through unique agile melodics seldom found in synthesised pop music.

This limited vinyl single also comprises a B-side in the form of a remix from London based art-noise-jazz-rock supergruppen Sex Swing.
Jane Weaver will be heading out on the road with her band across Europe from February 16th opening for Belle and Sebastian on a select number of tour dates. In the UK, she’ll also be touring with Public Service Broadcasting throughout April along with festival appearances at Greenman, Camp Bestival, Focus Wales and Halfway (Poland).

Live Dates
16 Feb: Muffathalle, Munich, Germany*
17 Feb: Admiralspalast, Berlin, Germany*
18 Feb: Batschkapp, Frankfurt, Germany* 
19 Feb: Carre, Amsterdam, Netherlands* 
21 Feb: DK Studio 1, Copenhagen, Denmark* 
22 Feb: Munchen Brewery, Stockholm, Sweden* 
23 Feb: Sentrum Scene, Oslo, Norway* 
24 Feb: Studios, Gothenburg, Sweden*
05 Apr: New Theatre, Oxford, UK **
06 Apr: O2 Academy, Bournemouth, UK **
07 Apr: The Dome, Brighton, UK **
08 Apr: Margate Winter Gardens, Margate, UK **
10 Apr: Corn Exchange, Cambridge, UK **
11 Apr: Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, Wales **
12 Apr: Olympia, Liverpool, UK **
13 Apr: De Montfort Hall, Leicester, UK **
14 Apr: Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland **
16 Apr: The Empire, Middlesbrough, UK **
17 Apr: O2 Academy, Sheffield, UK **

10 May: Focus Wales Festival, St Giles Church, Wrexham, Wales  
29 Jun – 01 Jul: Halfway Festival, Białystok, Poland 
8 Jul:  TRNSMT Festival, Glasgow Green, Glasgow, Scotland
21 Jul: Deershed Festival, Baldersby Park, North Yorkshire, UK  
26-29 July: Camp Bestival, Dorset, UK  
16-19 Aug: Green Man Festival, Brecon Beacons, Wales 

w/ Belle & Sebastian *
w / Public Service Broadcasting **

Jane Weaver - The Lightning Back

Modern Studies present new album ‘Welcome Strangers’
Released 18th May 2018
CD/LP/DL
Pre-order link: https://modernstudiesfire.bandcamp.com/

“Songs that see the mystical beyond the material” MOJO

‘Welcome Strangers’ is the second record by feral pop outliers Modern Studies. Elegiac and haunted, life-giving and triumphant, this beguiling return digs deep into landscapes both real and imagined, internal and external, in a work that might perhaps best be described as “kosmiche choral” or, if we’re pushing it “arts-und-crafts-werk”. Or, put simply, glorious pop music. 

It is an elemental and often spectral world of contrasting tones and hues that is found within ‘Welcome Strangers’, one whose lyrical vocabulary is of loss, light, air, sun, growth; of spires, seeds and phosphene dreams. Here is the Britain of visionaries such as Kate Bush, Broadcast or PJ Harvey, a nation of dark magic, conﬂict, celebration and confusion, all at the same time. 

Witness the incandescent chamber-pop of ‘Get Back Down’: underpinned by complex jazz rhythms, and string and brass ﬂourishes, it manages to be both understated and epic as it explores a similar sonic terrain to Wild Beasts. Or there’s ‘Horns And Trumpets’, a haunting musical perambulation that burrows deep into Britain, a warm-hued hymn for future generations, and ‘Let Idle Hands’, which abandons restraint halfway through and, in a moment of musical epiphany, runs joyously to the horizon. Meanwhile on ‘Phosphene Dream’ the honeyed harmonies of Emily Scott and Rob St. John wrap themselves around each other like Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood had they holidayed in draughty Glasgow tenements. Or perhaps – as on ‘Disco’ – they come closer to Kylie and Nick Cave. 

“It’s an ever changing thing - an organism,” explains principle songwriter Emily of Modern Studies’ collaborative creative process, “there is space for each of the band to experiment.” Shared band listening habits include Yamasuki, Van Dyke Parks, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Matthew E White, Basil Kirchin, and Nanci Griffith. 

Working at Pete’s Pumpkinfield studio in rural Perthshire through 2017, the band used a Creative Scotland grant to hire a chamber orchestra and a remote village hall to record them in. Contributors include sisters, wives, toddlers, freeform saxophonists and The Pumpkinseeds, an ensemble featuring violins, violas, cellos, trombones and vocals, brought together to play Pete and Emily’s collaborative string, brass and vocal arrangements. Truly, a family affair. 

As well as further ﬂeshing out the sound with analogue synths, tube organs, drum machines and mellotrons, some inventive techniques were deployed – a decayed tape loop of Emily’s vocals used to create the stuttering rhythm in Mud and Flame for example, or prepared guitars recurring as percussion and drones.

Now they proudly present ‘Welcome Strangers’, an album of modernist pop weirdness for the 21st century, a bricolage where classicism meets experimentalism and repeated listening unearths new stories for this contemporary age. More elaborate and expansive than its predecessor, this is music as cartography, Modern Studies mapping their own multi-dimensional internal world. 

‘Welcome Strangers’. Welcome all.

Modern Studies are: Emily Scott (vocals, organs, piano, double bass). Rob St. John (vocals, guitars, synths, harmonium, tape loops). Pete Harvey (cello, bass, piano). Joe Smillie (drums, mellotron, vocals).    

Ben Myers, February 2018

Modern Studies - Mud and Flame

Bark Psychosis’ second studio album
‘///Codename: Dustsucker’
Reissued on 25th May 2018
33 1/3 rpm double LP Gatefold / standard CD

Pre-order: https://barkpsychosis.bandcamp.com/

“Bark Psychosis deliver. And like Hex, Dustsucker sounds utterly unique”
Pitchfork

“The mark they left is indelible.”
Classic Rock

Following the reissue of ‘Hex’ in late 2017, Fire Records reissue Bark Psychosis’ second studio album ‘///Codename:Dustsucker’ (2004) “which finds the band in remarkable form” (Pitchfork). 

Arriving ten years after the band disbanded, the long-awaited and criminally overlooked follow up brings with it an evolution of their sound. Their experimentations are layered with blissed out electronics, shoegaze, post-rock and jazz are still at its fore as are Sutton’s crystalline vocals. Languid and brooding, the soundscapes are dark and sustained while their “trademark cocoon of limpid, rippling guitar figures and jazzy adornment is buffeted by sharp leftward turns” (Uncut).

Recorded in Graham Sutton’s East London DustSuckerSound studio between 1999 and 2004, it features contributions from Talk Talk sticksman Lee Harris and ‘found drumming’ from ex-band member Mark Simnett.

Bark Psychosis’ ‘///Codename: Dustsucker’ would go on to be their last studio album. The double LP gatefold is released on 25th May 2018.

Track list:
1.	From What Is Said To When It’s Read
2.	The Black Meat
3.	Miss Abuse
4.	400 Winters
5.	Dr. Innocuous/Ketamoid
6.	Burning The City
7.	INQB8TR
8.	Shapeshifting
9.	Rose

Bark Psychosis - From What Is Said To When It's Read

Virginia Wing 
Release new album ‘Ecstatic Arrow’ 
Out June 8th 2018
Limited Edition deluxe blue LP inc 20-page zine and poster / standard LP / CD

Their favourite records are the perfect counterbalance of the considered and the superficial. Whether it’s Madonna, Talking Heads or Holger Czukay - we enjoy these artists in the background with friends or profoundly and alone. 

Virginia Wing both understand and embrace this concept fully as they return with Ecstatic Arrow, an album which finds them in a place of renewed strength, optimism and clarity.

Recorded in Switzerland, in the family home of longtime friend and collaborator Misha Hering within the domesticity and gentle routine of communal life, the album represents a world as predisposed to solemn introspection as it is to blithe conviviality. 

Ecstatic Arrow borrows from the heterogeneous terrain of The Flying Lizard’s Fourth Wall, the exuberant technology assisted pop of Yellow Magic Orchestra and the playful sophistication of Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s Press Colour, arriving at the evergreen intersection of pop music and conceptual art. 

The resolute opener of Be Released and album centre point The Female Genius pair resonant Fourth World instrumentation with sonorous, loping drum patterns. Elsewhere, the sentimental march of single The Second Shift plays out like an after-hours ballad re-imagined by Wally Badarou and For Every Window There’s a Curtain is coloured by the blue-lit haze of an Eventide warped tenor saxophone.

Three albums in, the voice of Alice Merida Richards is more compelling and expressive than ever. The glacial deadpan of previous records has given way to a more candid, self-possessed delivery, showing an appreciation for the humour and tragedy innate in the downtown Arcadia of Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley or even Lynn Goldsmith’s Will Powers. 

It’s with this voice that Richards outlines a simple ideality that fortifies the entirety of Ecstatic Arrow - inequality pervades, destructive behaviours are inherited and each subsequent generation has to reconcile the debts of its precursor - yet a space exists within ourselves and each other that houses a fact we must be reminded of - we have the ability to choose. Even in moments of frustration; the ascerbic eye-roll toward male entitlement, Glorious Idea or the world-weary Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, there persists a joy for living that refuses to be confined.

A depiction of a group finally at ease with itself, Ecstatic Arrow is a tribute to the internal momentum that quietly guides us toward our destination. 

Live Dates:
9th March: UK, Salford, The White Hotel w/ Hookworms
17th March: UK, Glasgow, The Art School w/ Hookworms
18th March: UK, Newcastle, The Cluny w/ Hookworms
24th March: UK, London, Electric Brixton w/ Hookworms
25th March: UK, Sheffield, Picture House Social w/ Hookworms
6th May: UK, Salford, Sounds From The Other City w/ Xam Duo
25th August: UK, Totnes, Sea Change Festival

Virginia Wing - The Second Shift

Giant  Sand "Returns To Valley Of Rain"
Out 10th August
Blue colour vinyl / CD

Valley of Rain was Tucson’s Giant Sand’s debut album recorded in 1983, and eventually released by 1985. It included Howe Gelb on vocals, guitar and Winston Watson on drums for most of it, Tommy Larkins on drums for some of it and Scott Garber on fretless bass for all of it.

30 some years later, now that the band had been put to sleep indefinitely, those very first songs had begun creeping into the last Giant Sand tours. It somehow seemed appropriate to give them another shot with the proper amp just to see what they could’ve been. What made the idea more approachable was the availability of both original drummers living back in Tucson.
 
The first attempt came last summer with both Winston & Tommy and Thøger Lund on bass, as well as the 2 newest members, 29 year old Gabriel Sullivan and 23 year old Annie Dolan on double neck guitars. The sound was insane.
 
The funny part was Gabriel, who engineered and mixed the session, gave it an intentional 80s production sound. Howe later explained to Gabe he had been at war with that production trend since those first original recordings. So they all tried it again at Christmas time, this time with a newly discovered Fender 30 amp that had only been in production from 1980 – 1983. This new re-recording of that first album now sounds like it should’ve sounded. It was re-done for $400 and the same day and a half session time as the original. Scott Garber even drove up from Austin TX with his fretless to play so that the album is literally the originally line up for at least half of the songs. And yes, no pedal boards were used too.
 
The band intends to tour this summer playing only those Valley of Rain songs. GIANT SAND RETURNS TO VALLEY OF RAIN.

GIANT SAND - RETURNS TO VALLEY OF RAIN - Live Dates
04 May: Mercado Block Party Concert @MSA Annex, Tucson, AZ, United States
24 May: Tower Musikclub, Bremen, HB, Germany
25 May: Batschkapp, Frankfurt On Main, Germany
26 May: Rätschenmühle e.V. Geislingen, Geislingen An Der Steige, Germany
27 May: Dachstock, Berne, Switzerland
28 May: Feierwerk / Hansa 39, Munich, Germany
29 May: Kulturladen Konstanz, Constance, Germany
30 May: Druckluft, Oberhausen, Germany
31 May: Musik & Frieden, Berlin, Germany
02 Jun: Vega (Small Hall), Copenhagen, DK 
04 Jun: Parkteateret, Oslo, NO
05 Jun: Under the Bridge, London, UK
06 Jun: Concorde 2, Brighton, UK
07 Jun: The Fleece, Bristol, UK
09 Jun: Whelans, Dublin, IE
10 Jun: The Oran Mor Glasgow, UK
11 Jun: The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, UK 
02 Oct: Roots On The Rails, Chicago, IL, United States

Giant Sand - Tumble And Tear (Returns To Valley Of Rain)

★★★★ Mojo
★★★★ Uncut
★★★★ Record Collector

“Songs that see the mystical beyond the material” MOJO

‘Welcome Strangers’ is the second record by feral pop outliers Modern Studies. Elegiac and haunted, life-giving and triumphant, this beguiling return digs deep into landscapes both real and imagined, internal and external, in a work that might perhaps best be described as “kosmiche choral” or, if we’re pushing it “arts-und-crafts-werk”. Or, put simply, glorious pop music.

It is an elemental and often spectral world of contrasting tones and hues that is found within ‘Welcome Strangers’, one whose lyrical vocabulary is of loss, light, air, sun, growth; of spires, seeds and phosphene dreams. Here is the Britain of visionaries such as Kate Bush, Broadcast or PJ Harvey, a nation of dark magic, conﬂict, celebration and confusion, all at the same time.

Witness the incandescent chamber-pop of ‘Get Back Down’: underpinned by complex jazz rhythms, and string and brass ﬂourishes, it manages to be both understated and epic as it explores a similar sonic terrain to Wild Beasts. Or there’s ‘Horns And Trumpets’, a haunting musical perambulation that burrows deep into Britain, a warm-hued hymn for future generations, and ‘Let Idle Hands’, which abandons restraint halfway through and, in a moment of musical epiphany, runs joyously to the horizon. Meanwhile on ‘Phosphene Dream’ the honeyed harmonies of Emily Scott and Rob St. John wrap themselves around each other like Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood had they holidayed in draughty Glasgow tenements. Or perhaps – as on ‘Disco’ – they come closer to Kylie and Nick Cave.

“It’s an ever changing thing - an organism,” explains principle songwriter Emily of Modern Studies’ collaborative creative process, “there is space for each of the band to experiment.” Shared band listening habits include Yamasuki, Van Dyke Parks, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Matthew E White, Basil Kirchin, and Nanci Griffith.

Working at Pete’s Pumpkinfield studio in rural Perthshire through 2017, the band used a Creative Scotland grant to hire a chamber orchestra and a remote village hall to record them in. Contributors include sisters, wives, toddlers, freeform saxophonists and The Pumpkinseeds, an ensemble featuring violins, violas, cellos, trombones and vocals, brought together to play Pete and Emily’s collaborative string, brass and vocal arrangements. Truly, a family affair.

As well as further ﬂeshing out the sound with analogue synths, tube organs, drum machines and mellotrons, some inventive techniques were deployed – a decayed tape loop of Emily’s vocals used to create the stuttering rhythm in Mud and Flame for example, or prepared guitars recurring as percussion and drones.

Now they proudly present ‘Welcome Strangers’, an album of modernist pop weirdness for the 21st century, a bricolage where classicism meets experimentalism and repeated listening unearths new stories for this contemporary age. More elaborate and expansive than its predecessor, this is music as cartography, Modern Studies mapping their own multi-dimensional internal world.

‘Welcome Strangers’. Welcome all.

Modern Studies are: Emily Scott (vocals, organs, piano, double bass). Rob St. John (vocals, guitars, synths, harmonium, tape loops). Pete Harvey (cello, bass, piano). Joe Smillie (drums, mellotron, vocals).   

Ben Myers, February 2018

Summer Live Dates
25 May: Happiness Hotel, Leith, UK
27 May: Café Kino, Bristol, UK
28 May: The Lexington, London, UK
29 May: Mediterranéa, Stirling, UK
30 May: Blue Lamp, Aberdeen, Scotland
31 May: Glad Café, Glasgow, Scotland
01 June: Mackintosh Church, Glasgow, Scotland w/ The Pastels
23 Jun: Rip It Up Festival, Summerhall, Edinburgh, UK

Modern Studies - Disco

Virginia Wing 'Be Released'
Taken from 'Ecstatic Arrow' out 8th June

★★★★ Mojo ★★★★ Uncut ★★★★ Q ★★★★ Loud & Quiet

"Virginia Wing make music that triangulates leftfield jazz, ashram-dwelling new age, and warm synth-pop into something that feels calm and centred” Pitchfork

“Genuinely transcendent” Guardian

"Their best record to date, Ecstatic Arrow reminds us of the astonishing things you can do with pop music if you dare defy conventions." The Quietus
 
"One of the year’s most original and exciting records." Loud & Quiet
 
Our favourite records are the perfect counterbalance of the considered and the superficial. Whether it’s Madonna, Talking Heads or Holger Czukay - we enjoy these artists in the background with friends or profoundly and alone. 
 
Virginia Wing both understand and embrace this concept fully as they return with Ecstatic Arrow, an album which finds them in a place of renewed strength, optimism and clarity.
 
Recorded in Switzerland, in the family home of longtime friend and collaborator Misha Hering within the domesticity and gentle routine of communal life, the album represents a world as predisposed to solemn introspection as it is to blithe conviviality.
 
Ecstatic Arrow borrows from the heterogeneous terrain of The Flying Lizard’s Fourth Wall, the exuberant technology assisted pop of Yellow Magic Orchestra and the playful sophistication of Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s Press Colour, arriving at the evergreen intersection of pop music and conceptual art.
 
The resolute opener of Be Released and album centre point The Female Genius pair resonant Fourth World instrumentation with sonorous, loping drum patterns. Elsewhere, the sentimental march of single The Second Shift plays out like an after-hours ballad re-imagined by Wally Badarou and For Every Window There’s a Curtain is coloured by the blue-lit haze of an Eventide warped tenor saxophone.
 
Three albums in, the voice of Alice Merida Richards is more compelling and expressive than ever. The glacial deadpan of previous records has given way to a more candid, self-possessed delivery, showing an appreciation for the humour and tragedy innate in the downtown Arcadia of Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley or even Lynn Goldsmith’s Will Powers.
 
It’s with this voice that Richards outlines a simple ideality that fortifies the entirety of Ecstatic Arrow - inequality pervades, destructive behaviours are inherited and each subsequent generation has to reconcile the debts of its precursor - yet a space exists within ourselves and each other that houses a fact we must be reminded of - we have the ability to choose. Even in moments of frustration; the ascerbic eye-roll toward male entitlement, Glorious Idea or the world-weary Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, there persists a joy for living that refuses to be confined.
 
A depiction of a group finally at ease with itself, Ecstatic Arrow is a tribute to the internal momentum that quietly guides us toward our destination.

Live Dates
24 -25 Aug: Sea Change Festival, Totnes, UK 
11 Oct: Oslo, London, UK
12 Oct: Nice N Sleazy, Glasgow, UK
13 Oct: Now Wave, Manchester, UK

Pre-order link:
https://virginiawingmusic.bandcamp.com/

Virginia Wing - Be Released

Taken from their new album 'Siesta' 
Out 28th September
Pre-order link: lnk.to/hatersiesta

“Hater’s songs epitomize jangling grace as Caroline Landahl coos with maximum approachability.” NPR

“Their unique take on rock music feels familiar and lived-in, taking bits from indie-pop, post-punk and classic rock.” Stereogum 

“Gorgeous, achingly bittersweet vocals, perpetually swaying between comforting and devastating.” Gorilla Vs Bear 

Resolute in their sound, ‘Siesta’ is the perfect soundtrack for that summer romance and the inevitable break up. Heartbreak has never sounded so sweet! 

Hater’s powerful vulnerability and charm has seen them rise quickly through the ranks earning kudos from NPR (Austin 100), Stereogum (Best New Bands Of 2017), The Fader, BBC6 Music, BBC Radio 1 and more.

Sprawling guitars chime whilst slow burning grooves and classic rock rhythms allow tender-hearted vocals to soar over intelligible dream pop. Effortless and assured, the Scandi quartet drift eloquently into well-structured and stunning melodies.

Produced by Joakim Lindberg (Yast and Hey Elbow) at Studio Sickan within old railway sheds outside of Malmö Sweden. Hater tackle their personal experiences of life, love and relationships yet through their shared songwriting there's a togetherness. Synth pop earworm ‘It’s So Easy’ contrasts the slower paced 'I Wish I Gave You More Time Because I Love You' that blends beautiful sweeping sax from Inge Petersson Lindbäck. The haunting metronomic beat of ‘I Sure Want To’ calls to mind local residents Death And Vanilla, Hollywood glamour exudes on shimmering 'Things To Keep Up With' and 'Cut Me Loose' captures those long youthful days of summers gone by.. "Wouldn't it be fun? Noon is halfway and I feel gone".

Hater “boast Marr-esque guitars and vocals reminiscent of fellow Swedes The Concretes” (Norman Records) whilst having the pop sensibilities of The Chills, Alvvays, Snail Mail and Makthaverskan.
In early 2017 Hater released their debut album ‘You Tried’ blending jangle with grit, their recent EP ‘Red Blinders’ (Fire Records) soon followed in support of their first headline tour across Europe. Festivals in 2018 have already included SXSW, Eurosonic and Ment.

Hater release ‘Siesta’ on limited edition yellow opaque double LP, standard black vinyl and CD via Fire Records on 28th September.

Tour dates:
13 Oct: Debaser, Stockholm, Sweden
23 Oct: Aalhaus, Hamburg, Germany
24 Oct: Vera, Groningen, The Netherlands
26 Oct: London Calling Festival, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
27 Oct: La Zone, Liege, Belgium
29 Oct: Rough Trade, Bristol, UK
30 Oct: The Lexington, London, UK
31 Oct: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK
01 Nov: The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, UK
02 Nov: The Castle Hotel, Manchester, UK
03 Nov: Wheatsheaf, Oxford, UK
04 Nov: The Hope & Ruin, Brighton, UK
06 Nov: L’Espace B, Paris, France
07 Nov: Atheneum, Dijon, France
09 Nov: Blah Blah, Torino, Italy 
10 Nov: Efesto, Bologna, Italy
11 Nov: Moog Slow Bar, Ravenna, Italy
13 Nov: Scheune, Dresden, Germany
14 Nov: Marie Antoinette, Berlin, Germany
15 Nov: Glashaus, Jena, Germany

Siesta

Hater - Things To Keep Up With

Orchestra of Spheres
New album ‘Mirror’ 
Out 2nd November on Fire Records

Pre-order link: fire-records.lnk.to/oosmirror

"There must be a mirror between us... cos when I look at you, all I see is a reflection..."

Orchestra of Spheres welcomes you on a journey through the looking glass.

Mirror, a double LP and the band's 4th release on Fire Records, is an exploration of energies and atmospheres, from intense futuristic funk and sonic tape assemblages to windswept reflections from a far flung corner of the world. It combines Orchestra of Spheres' ecstatic rhythmic power and ritualistic vocals with an expanded orchestral palette including bassoon, harp, viola, bass clarinet, soprano sax, flute and bowed ektars.

The album was recorded at Building M, an old corrugated iron warehouse down the end of an industrial lane in Newtown, Wellington. Nestled between a cattery, a bowling green and the Wellington Zoo, Building M is the home and studio of Warwick Donald, a musician and engineer who's been recording underground local bands for many years. Sounds of revving motorbikes wafted through the studio's open windows, mingling with late summer cicadas and hungry lions at feeding time. The band set up in Warwick's big open recording room which doubles as the kitchen, living room and occasional gig space, and put his collection of old New Zealand amps, mics and homemade reverb plates to good use.

The open recording setup and group interplay nods towards psychedelic jazz explorations, with drummers Woild Boin and Farmerboy laying down deep grooves from which spring forth the syncopated bass lines of EtonalE, quicksilver synths of Mos Iocos and fuzz laden guitar of Baba Rossa. OOS dipped into Wellington's deep pool of creative musical talent to gather the additional timbres that take this musical journey into new sonic realms. Peter Daly's beautifully tense viola playing on the title track conjures a dark shadowy world while shawm-like reeds gives a funereal tone to Koudede, a lament for the great Tuareg guitarist and singer, who tragically died not long after Orchestra of Spheres supported Group Inerane in Utrecht. Another highlight is Black and White, where Mos Iocos's bell-like vocals create a whirlpooling sonic dreamstate.

Orchestra of Spheres

Born out of Wellington’s fertile creative music scene in 2009, the Orchestra of Spheres quickly gained a crowd of devotees, entranced by their sonically and visually ecstatic live shows.

Baba Rossa (aka Daniel Beban) - biscuit tin guitar/vocals
Mos Iocos (aka Nell Thomas) - vocals/synth/harp/flute
EtonalE (aka Erika Grant) - bass carillon/vocals
Woild Boin (aka Riki Gooch) - drums/vocals
Farmerboy (aka Reece McNaughten) - percussion

with... Peter Daly - viola; Isaac Smith - vocals; Lucien Johnson - soprano/baritone sax; Oscar Laven - oboe/bassoon; Blair Latham - bass clarinet; Jonny Marks - synthi AKS

www.firerecords.com/wp/orchestra-of-spheres/
www.orchestraofspheres.com
www.facebook.com/orchestraofspheres

fire records

Little Joe