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Figure Two

Fehlt - Withdrawal

I Am Not There Anymore

Lady Grey

Shut Ins

Channeling sold gold influences like The Pastels, Comet Gain, Orange Juice and The Aislers Set, The Umbrellas represent the fertile San Francisco Bay Area scene at its most pop-tastic. "Fairweather Friend" follows-up their surprise-hit 2021 debut in fine fashion, featuring sterling songwriting and arranging, bigger and more nuanced production, and terrific, assured vocals all around. The Umbrellas have swung for the fences with this new album and it's a bold, beautifully-executed success.

Fairweather Friend

The Umbrellas - Gone

“A national musical treasure" The Guardian

Steven Adams, formerly of The Broken Family Band releases new album DROPS on Fika Recordings in November 2023.

Since calling time on TBFB at the height of their success, Adams has released half a dozen albums under various names (Singing Adams, Steven James Adams, Steven Adams & The French Drops), his witty, incisive lyrics and melodic sensibilities taking in DIY indie rock, folky introspection, and off-kilter pop hooks. 

Originally from South Wales, Adams now lives in East London.

“Every record I’ve made has been in a hurry of some sort” says Adams of his new album, “and with this one I took my time”. DROPS is the first album to be credited to him as a solo artist since 2016’s Old Magick, his first new music since 2020, and his noisiest (IS THAT OK?) record to date.

Armed with a new batch of material, he began by upping sticks to the Welsh countryside to experiment with drummer Daniel Fordham and bassist David Stewart - both formerly of psych oddballs The Drink. The trio then took the songs to Big Jelly, a converted chapel on the south coast, with co-producer Simon Trought (Comet Gain, Johnny Flynn, The Wave Pictures) to lay down the basic tracks for DROPS.

Eschewing a full band set up (“I wanted to concentrate on one thing at a time”), recording sessions in East London followed with Laurie Earle (Absentee) on guitar and Michael Wood (Hayman Kupa Band, Michaelmas) on keyboards.

Adams then took the recordings home and to the French countryside, to work alone.“I finally got my head around home recording in 2020, while things were a bit quiet. Once I worked out how to record things I realised I didn’t have to think about time. I could let the songs evolve and change once we had the basic tracks down. After a while I started to think of them as paintings; trying something one morning, painting over it in the afternoon and attempting something completely different… it was about enjoying the process, making some bangers, playing around... and giving Simon the producer a mess to sort out when it came to mixing the record". Whenever Tom from Fika Recordings checked in to see how the album was progressing Adams would reply, “it’s taking ages but it’ll sound like it was recorded in an afternoon”.

The result is a dynamic and spirited collection of songs, with Adams's love of 90/00s US underground rock (Pavement's Bob Nastanovich is a fan) to the fore.

DROPS is a sonically compelling piece of work: from bleak/exultant opener Out to Sea and the motorik Living in the Local Void to the weirdly funereal Fascists (where Adams imagines the “little skip in our steps” that we’ll have upon outliving some baddies), and Day Trip's psychedelia in miniature. There are also moments of tenderness: the avalanche of empathy on closing track Cheap Wine Sad Face, and I Tried to Keep it Light’s “worse things could happen… I don’t know how, but give me time”.

Adams says: “I'm preoccupied by the passing of time and the way it affects how we feel. This record is about time and bewilderment and trying to make sense of things".

“…astonishing tenderness in its simplicity … brilliant lyrics.” Q Magazine
“…the tunes are instant and uplifting, but the real wallop comes from the lyrical imagery.” The Guardian
“…barbed modern life chronicles.” UNCUT

Drops

Living In The Local Void

Steven Adams - Living In The Local Void

Angels / Better Late Than Never

Better Late Than Never

http://www.4000records.com/artists/sgo

https://4000.fanlink.to/glimmer

Glimmer [Single]

SGO - Glimmer

PRE-RELEASE PREVIEW - DO NOT SHARE

Beige Banquet - Animals
Out 27/10/2023

Produced by Beige Banquet
Tracked by Matt Green at Head Cold Studios in Summer 2023
Mixed by David Forcier
Mastered by David Forcier
Artwork by Joe Munsey 

Press requests, interviews, video collaborations etc all welcome.
Contact: beigebanquetband@gmail.com

Beige Banquet are a London-based five-piece playing a bleak yet high-powered style of dark punk. Underpinned by a propulsive and motorik rhythm section, they combine robotic and percussive vocal deliveries with industrial textures and abrasive guitars to create frantic and driving sound. The band are set to release their sophomore album 'Ornamental Hermit', and first as a full band, on the 13th March 2024.

Produced by Beige Banquet with the help of engineer Matt Green (Sniffany & The Nits, Artefact, Joanna Gruesome) at Head Cold Studios and mixed and mastered by David Forcier (Civic) ‘Animals’ captures the band in a professional studio environment, moving away from the lofi bedroom recordings of previous releases, the studio provided a perfect environment for the band to develop compositionally and explore a more textural approach.

Combining layers of noise and bursts of saturated percussion, with a driving rhythm section, ‘Animals’ is a taste of the richer and more dynamic sound of their future releases, and captures the raw power of the Beige Banquet live show for the first time.

Beige Banquet - Animals

Written by Anna Olivia Böke and Dennis Mielke
Drums played by Thom Mills
Produced/engineered by Theo Verney
Mastered by Felix Davis

New > Old

Fang

Faux Text

Slumberland began operations in 1989, inspired by such musical happenings as C-86, early Creation, Sarah, Postcard, and the UK post-punk indie label scene. Since then we've covered a lot of territory, from punk to lofi noise to shoegaze and of course pop, releasing records from bands like The Aislers Set, Boyracer, Stereolab, Rocketship, Lorelei, The Ropers, The Saturday People and Black Tambourine.

By the mid 2000s we were starting to see a resurgence of interest in guitar pop and the start of the ongoing vinyl revival: the perfect environment for Slumberland! We launched into our latest phase of activity with as string of classic releases from The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Crystal Stilts, Frankie Rose, Veronica Falls, Allo Darlin', Joanna Gruesome and so many more.

2018 is our twenty-ninth year we are still going strong, ploughing our own furrow and bringing you unique, genre-defining (and genre-defying!) releases from bands like Smokescreens, Tony Molina, Papercuts, Business of Dreams, Peel Dream Magazine, D.A. Stern, The Spook School, Frankie Rose, Young Guv, Terry Malts and many, many more. As always, we operate entirely outside of the echo chamber of trends, fashion and phoney hipness. Slumberland bands are independent in the best way possible -- making music devoid of bullshit and true to their own voices, regardless of current popular taste.

The Umbrellas - Gone

Slumberland Records

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