analog heart 2013

born in a Clapton aquarium and catapulted into the sun; found coughing sea on the safety of a beach.

http://www.facebook.com/jrsea

played/recorded/produced by J.R.C.
additional recording/production by Tom Morris
mixed by Tarek Musa

Out Of Body Auto-Reply

Pre-order on 12" - http://toughloverecords.bigcartel.com/product/tlv067-girls-names-the-next-life-12-limited-edition-white-vinyl

Buy on iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/projektions-factory-floor/id673670761

Belfast four-piece Girls Names released their critically acclaimed second album, The New Life, in February and it marked a new direction for the band altogether. That directional shift is emphasized even further by Gabe Gurnsey from Factory Floor, who has remixed album track 'Projektions', adding FF's characteristic dance floor focus to Girls Names' motorik groove.

The track is taken from forthcoming EP, The Next Life,  a collection of remixes that will be released later this year on Tough Love (Europe) and Slumberland (US). Alongside Factory Floor will be interpretations of tracks taken from the album by David Holmes, Locust, The Soft Walls and Optimo.

Buy The New Life - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/the-new-life/id582840781

Girls Names will also be playing a host of European festival dates, as below. More tour dates to be added soon.

August
4th - Castlepalooza, Tullamore -
16th - Soundrive Festival, Gdansk
17th - Green Man Festival, Glanusk, Wales
September
13th - Debaser, Stockholm
14th - Phonofestival, Bergen
27th - The MAC, Belfast
28th - Pacrock Festival, Brussels

Girls Names - Projektion (Factory Floor Gabe Gurnsey Remix)

Taken from the forthcoming double A Side single Exploded View/Magpies Eyes out November 5th via CF. 7" is limited to 100 records and includes downloads of both songs plus 2 brand new tracks, also exclusive screen printed artwork by Lucy Jones. Pre-order here: http://cfrecords.bigcartel.com/product/sea-pinks-exploded-view-magpies-eyes-7-dl

Sea Pinks - An Exploded View

Sunridden

Buy Hypnotic Regression on iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/ie/album/hypnotic-regression-single/id583187872

Belfast-based four-piece Girls Names are a singular proposition, both geographically and psychically removed from their contemporaries at home and abroad. Released on 18th February, their second album The New Life is the sound of a band on the fringes striving to forge their own path, purposefully out of step - and time - with their surroundings. Weighed heavy with the grey landscapes of their hometown, The New Life is isolation laid bare, shot through with an undeterred sense of purpose and individuality.

The band’s performance at Primavera festival 2012 provided them with their first real opportunity to showcase the songs that were to comprise The New Life. The sunshine backdrop of the Spanish coastline offered a somewhat incongruous setting to the eerie dissonance of the new material, a kind of trial by fire metamorphosis rapturously received. Following a tour of Europe, the band returned home to record the album over a series of months. Having been produced by singer and songwriter, Cathal Cully, they’ve managed to capture that sense of otherness the performances at Primavera hinted at. The expansion to a four piece means the garage-clatter of the spritely pop songs of their debut have been replaced by a deeper, shadowy exercise in catharsis, driven by repetition, psychedelia and Dionysian crisis. And the record was born of a weighty concept too, as Cully explains:

“The New Life is not an over night change for Girls Names - just over two years in fact. Dead to Me literally was dead to us by the time it was committed to wax. But it's a learning curve. We started moving on as artists the moment we finished that recording session, maybe even before. Not to dwell on the past, The New Life is what happens when you reset everything back to zero and start again, but try to perfect. It starts back at zero the minute the needle hits the groove but we're also starting back from zero once the needle lifts at the end of the record. Ad infinitum. The New Life is what follows now.”

The album’s title track, and the first single to be taken from the album, is an ideal entry point. Just shy of 8 minutes long, it rotates around a hypnotic bass line, and in Cully’s evocation of renaissance, offers a perfect metaphor for the album as a whole. New single ‘Hypnotic Regression’ - available to stream here - reflects another side to the record. The reverb-heavy guitars and compelling melody are immediately memorable, but there are signs of experimentation, too; the white squall of the lead break; the uneasiness in the vocal echoes that furnish the verses. As such, The New Life, stands as a brave statement; the mark of the band untying themselves from the past and easing forth into the unknown.

The New Life will be released on February 18th on Tough Love (UK) and Slumberland (US).

Girls Names - Hypnotic Regression

Ashtray Navigations - Greatest Imaginary Hits (vhf#148 LP+4CD)

Ashtray Navigations - Greatest Imaginary Hits - D1 (Rob) - 04 - There Is A Ditch And There Is A Pit

lauraliesin.bandcamp.com/album/tara-clerkin-trio

Order

Tara Clerkin Trio - Hellenica

Taken from the album, Agitprop Alterna, out on April 3rd via Tough Love and Slumberland. Pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/agitpropalterna

Agitprop Alterna - master MP3s

Peel Dream Magazine - Emotional Devotion Creator

Taken from the record, Look Alive, out 1st May 2020 via Tough Love. Pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/StroppiesLookAlive

New EP - master (MP3)

The Stroppies - Holes in Everything

Taken from the album, Agitprop Alterna, out on April 3rd via Tough Love and Slumberland. Pre-order here - smarturl.it/agitpropalterna

Peel Dream Magazine - It's My Body

Taken from the Day By Day 12", out 8th May. Pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/DayByDay12 

-----
"Day by Day was actually written a few years ago but has taken on an eerie relevance in light of current events. As the title suggests, the song explores living in the present moment as a way of overcoming difficulties and growing stronger. Written during a dark time in our lives the song is about the struggle of carrying on, taking each day at a time in hope that things will eventually get better"

Co-produced by Doves’ guitarist, Jez Williams, Day By Day picks up where debut Night Drive left off, fragile, and amorphous, driven by a Kevin Shields-esque drone and underpinned by Katie Drew’s beautiful and delicate vocal.

The double A-side single, Day By Day / Katy Song will be released on 12” vinyl on May 8th and is limited to 150 copies.

White Flowers - Day By Day (Extended Edit)

The Reds, Pinks & Purples - I Should Have Helped You

Dirt

Taken from You Might Be Happy Someday, released 2nd October. Pre-order the LP here - https://smarturl.it/redpinksandpurples
--
Deep amidst San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood misty air and washed-out pastel blocks, Glenn Donaldson has been diligently creating minor masterpieces with rudimentary home technology for some time now. With The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Donaldson has finally created a vivid reflection of this dreary scene. You Might be Happy Someday is an oblique strand of SF outer-avenue cloud cover that stretches across the Atlantic to the grey docks of Bristol as captured in Sarah Records’ fetishized insert photos.

Despite the deceptively congenial presentation, Happy is often a heavy record. After a litany of Donaldson’s past iterations (from experimental abstraction to post-punk and pop), The Reds, Pinks & Purples is Glenn D’s most personal project. Balanced awkwardly atop almost ironically upbeat jangles and rhythms Mitch Easter might have captured on his reel-to-reel are prime cuts of bummer pop. Almost every track is written in second person, creating a feeling of overheard private inner conversations-on-repeat: soft-lob criticisms, supportive friend advice and embarrassing confessions, You Might be Happy Someday is a smeared window into the (kindly) cynical thoughts of a romantic misanthrope.

Like the work of other U.S. depresso-pop purveyors East River Pipe, The Reds, Pinks & Purples’ mini-album is the kind of record that is both unsettling and comforting. When you’re four drinks deep and you’ve worn your Smiths records out, You Might Be Happy Someday is on deck to have wine spilled on it while you dance alone in the kitchen.

You Might Be Happy Someday is released on Tough Love on 2nd October. Fittingly, the record will be pressed on to 'pastel pink' colour vinyl, with a limited run of 300 copies.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Last Summer In A Rented Room

Taken from You Might Be Happy Someday, released 2nd October. Pre-order the LP here - smarturl.it/redpinksandpurples
--
Ahead of the release of their Tough Love debut in October, Glenn Donaldson's prolific Reds, Pinks and Purples project have released the second track from the record, the poignantly titled 'Your Parents Were Wrong About You'. Lyrically, it's a perfect riposte to the challenges of a n unrelenting year, captured best in the line, "take good care of your friends, they won't always be there". As you read this, Donaldson's city of San Francisco is coated in a thick layer of smoke from nearby wildfires, and these words feel as appropriate as ever.

Reflecting on the track, Donaldson provides a little insight into its inspiration, a moving portrait of a dark situation. 
 
"I once had a girlfriend whose mother took me out to dinner basically to warn me that her daughter was a bad person. The tragedy of that has stuck with me all these years. This song is dedicated to anyone with toxic or undermining parents. They were wrong about you."

The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Your Parents Were Wrong About You

Taken from the Within A Dream EP, released 15th January 2020. Pre-order the limited edition 12" here - https://smarturl.it/WithinADream

Further info
Following the release of two 12"s in the past year, White Flowers return with the Within A Dream EP,  a recently recorded four song collection to be released on 15th January 2021. Alongside digital formats, it will be pressed to 12" transparent vinyl in an edition of 300.  

The four tracks on the EP came together earlier this year during various periods of enforced isolation, and somewhat inevitably reflect the conditions of their provenance, exploring themes of dissociation, multiple selves, and the role of the individual in an increasingly strange and fragmented world. Co-produced with Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius, Portishead), Within A Dream combines home and studio recordings in ways that display the duo’s growing ability to switch between grand sonic gestures and subtle sonic abstractions.

Alongside the three originals which explore the outer edges of post-punk, dreampop and shoegaze in increasingly alien ways, is a beguiling cover of Mama Cass’ ‘Didn’t Want to Have to Do It’. As with their version of Red House Painters' 'Katy Song' from their previous 12”, it's provides another example of how defined White Flowers' aesthetic has become, as they’re effortlessly able to shape the music of others to their own vision. Indeed, as with all their videos and records to date, the artwork for the single is again created entirely by the band, another example of their intentions to create a defined White Flowers universe distinctly their own.

Within A Dream EP (master - MP3)

White Flowers - Within a Dream

Girls Names - Projektion (Factory Floor Gabe Gurnsey Remix)

Tough Love

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