RATTLE RETURN!

25 November 2024

A band like Rattle know a lot about time, so the fact they’ve made the world wait six years for new music must simply be an exercise in delayed expectation, build-up and ecstatic release! True monarchs of the beat.

Upset The Rhythm are overjoyed to unveil today the band’s new single ‘Your Move’, a 15-minute hypnotic opus of boundless drum patterns and oft-wordless articulation. Minimal and magical in equal metre and measure.

‘Your Move’ features on the duo’s colossal third album entitled ‘Encircle’, out on Feb 28th through yours truly. ‘Encircle’ is available to pre-order now digitally, on CD, on 180g black vinyl and as a limited 180g hot-pink LP through all the best shops and our bandcamp & webshop here.

'LOOK FAMILIAR' OUT NOW!

15 November 2024

Today we released this stunningly elegant album by The Green Child! ‘Look Familiar’ draws heavily on a refined psychedelic pop, with Raven's scenically measured vocal often shadowing the ebb and flow, but the energy of having four people in the room resulted in making the songs more upbeat and multi-dimensional!

There are many standout moments across the album's ten tracks. 'Wow Factor' is a reverie of chiming guitar lines, dizzy, scurried melodies and floating centres. 'Arrows and Microtones' and 'Look Familiar' showcase The Green Child in a more reflective, expansive mode whilst ‘Private Laugh' comes alive with its crushed fuzz-guitar accompaniment and swirling synth eddies. This album sounds like constant renewal, never seeking comfort, its the sound of four musicians pushing each other to new heights.

‘Look Familiar’ is available now from all the best shops and our online store here.

A LONG BEAUTIFUL FLOWING CAPE

16 October 2024

The Green Child return today with the mesmeric, second track taken from their forthcoming album ‘Look Familiar’. Is there a better name for a single than ‘A Long Beautiful Flowing Cape’? Inspired by the media and online posturing this song unfurls with an infectious shuffling beat backed-up with a spry bassline. Shimmers of synth and twirling guitar tone provide a redolent vista for Raven’s vocal about distorted social contracts to flit through.

Available to stream everywhere now, ‘A Long Beautiful Flowing Cape’ is also accompanied by a visual treat of a video made by Wu Li Leung using early editing technology for newscasts. Too much!

‘Look Familiar’ (out Nov 15th) is available to pre-order now!

DREAM SONGS INDEED

04 October 2024

The sun is out! And so is this debut 7” EP from cosmic pop duo Robert Sotelo & Mary Currie!

‘Dream Songs’ is an archetypal meeting of minds, at once musing and magical. Robert Sotelo is a bedroom pop songsmith who lives in Glasgow. Sotelo has released six albums since 2017, three of which came out on Upset The Rhythm. He also performs in Order of the Toad, Dancer and Nightshift. Mary Currie is best known as half of touchstone DIY experimentalists Flaming Tunes, alongside Gareth Williams (of This Heat). Currie also performed in Officer!

‘Dream Songs’ is available now from all the best shops and our very own humble webstore here.

OUT TODAY - ORCHESTRA HITS!

20 September 2024

Ed Schrader’s Music Beat have knocked it out of the park with new album ‘Orchestra Hits’. These stunning nine new songs are packed with a ton of climbing bass grooves, percolating synth arpeggios and soaring vocals.

Ed Schrader’s Music Beat hover blissfully out their comfort zone here, writing songs that erupt with raw energy and cavernous emotional poetics. There’s is a Trojan horse style of pop music, what a joy to share this with the world! ‘Orchestra Hits’ is out now digitally and is also available on CD and transparent blue 180g vinyl too.

Order now

THE RETURN OF THE GREEN CHILD

5 September 2024

The Green Child re-emerge today with news of their sublime new album ‘Look Familiar’. Released by Upset The Rhythm & Hobbies Galore on November 15th, ‘Look Familiar’ documents the Australian band now that its grown into four people. Raven Mahon & Mikey Young are joined by Alex Macfarlane and Shaun Gionis on synth/guitar and drums respectively.

The Green Child still draw heavily on a refined psychedelic pop, with Raven’s hypnotic vocal often shadowing the ebb and flow, but the energy of having four people involved has made the songs more alive and mercurial.

Take a listen to first single ‘Wow Factor’ (out now), a reverie of chiming guitar lines, dizzy, scurried melodies and floating centres. ‘Look Familiar’ is available to pre-order now as a 140g, black bio-vinyl LP with obi-strip.

DREAMS SONGS & EXPECTATIONS

20 August 2024

Well this is a very special record to unveil! On October 4th Upset The Rhythm will be releasing a 7” EP from cosmic pop duo Robert Sotelo & Mary Currie! ‘Dream Songs’ is an archetypal meeting of minds, at once musing and magical. This 7” is the first pensive fruit to fall from the tree of their collaboration and today we’re sharing brooding single ‘Expectations’.

‘Dream Songs’ is available to pre-order from all the best shops and from our very own webstore here!

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL

16 August 2024

The Devil has all the best tunes! Ed Schrader’s Music Beat return today with vibey thrill ‘IDKS’, taken from their forthcoming album ‘Orchestra Hits’ (out Sep 20th on Upset The Rhythm). Double thumbs up to Tristan Wheeler for making such a wickedly FUN video!

‘Orchestra Hits’ is available to pre-order now!

ROMAN CANDLE

18 July 2024

Baltimore pop renegades Ed Schrader’s Music Beat return today with a rollicking new single entitled ‘Roman Candle’. It’s a driving powerhouse of nervy basslines, guitar glimmer and rabble-rousing vocals, taken from the group’s forthcoming ‘Orchestra Hits’ album, out on Upset The Rhythm (Sep 20th).

‘Orchestra Hits’ is available to pre-order now now digitally or on CD and as a limited transparent-blue vinyl version too!

SCREENSAVER - NEW SINGLE + TOUR

5 July 2024

What a fine day to share this new single from SCREENSAVER with the world! ‘Permanence’ is a terse thrill of a song, drawing on pent-up frustration and chronic intensity. ‘Permanence’ is out now digitally, including as this video that’ll make you wanna wield a baguette like a sword in future. Also just saying, not enough enough cat humanoids appear in music videos in general!

SCREENSAVER are hitting the autobahn in August, touring all over this Euro-portion of the globe, go see them if you can, their live show is wild! The band’s new album ‘Decent Shapes’ is out now on Upset The Rhythm too.

ED SCHRADER'S MUSIC BEAT

17 June 2024

Oh happiest of times! We’re unveiling ‘Orchestra Hits’ by Ed Schrader’s Music Beat today! ‘Orchestra Hits’ is the band’s first album with Upset The Rhythm in ten years, what? Time flies! The ever-evolving group have packed a ton of climbing bass grooves, percolating synth arpeggios and soaring vocals into these astonishing 9 songs, their best to date! We’re sharing first single ‘Daylight Commander’ here, part exercise in absurdity, part pop Trojan horse, enjoy!

‘Orchestra Hits’ will be released on Upset The Rhythm on September 20th and is available to pre-order now. The band are also hitting the road in the US/Canada later in the month with Future Islands so go witness the brilliance near the flame itself!

LOOM NO MORE!

14 June 2024

Massive moment today! Marcel Wave’s wonder of a debut album ‘Something Looming’ has unfurled into the world. These twelve immense songs are part trades club symphony, part itchy serenade and part wistful lament. Featuring the combined powerhouse talents of Sauna Youth and Cold Pumas players with the stunning addition of Maike Hale-Jones’ West Yorkshire brogue, Marcel Wave chronicle the hopes and dreams (often dashed) of the piping hot instant.

‘Something Looming’ is out now digitally and is also available on 180g black vinyl in all the best shops, including our own humble repository here.

Come join us tonight at MOTH Club in celebration of the record as the band, joined by The Pheromoans and The Plan treat us to a proper bash of an album launch.

PEG

5 June 2024

Marcel Wave’s stunning album ‘Something Looming’ comes out on June 14th, today we’re sharing pensive new single ‘Peg’. ‘Peg’ is an elegy for 1930’s actress Peg Entwistle and it’s accompanying vid is a technicolor tribute to her voiceless memory.

Come celebrate the release of ‘Something Looming’ with us at MOTH Club on Friday 14th June. Marcel Wave, The Pheromoans and The Plan will all be performing! Record launch o’clock!

EMPIRES INTO SAND

24 May 2024

Normil Hawaiians’ astonishing new album ‘Empires Into Sand’ is released today on digital platforms. CDs and LPs have arrived too, are they look / sound exceptional!

'Empires into Sand' is the first album of new material from Normil Hawaiians in 40 years. The group first refined their sound during the early 80s, hitting on a pastoral experimentalism that drew on ambient drone, motorik impulse and post-punk pep. 'Empires into Sand' came together in the familiar manner of their original three albums, with improvisation and nuance informing the blueprint of the tracks.

This is thought-provoking, boundary-bothering music. Honest in intent, a solidarity of vision. Listen and live! ‘Empires Into Sand’ is available to order from our webshop here.

PARSNIP - THE BABBLE & TOUR DATES

22 May 2024

Wow, this is the stuff that FUN is made of! Parsnip have an astonishing (and slightly psychotic) new video to share with you today for their latest single ‘The Babble’, they’re also coming on tour to Europe this October and playing London for us straight off the bat on October 1st at MOTH Club! You’re welcome!

Epic thanks to Puschen for whipping this tour into shape! Video made by Alex McLaren and filmed on the lands of the Wurundjeri people.

EARTH BALL - IT'S YOURS NOW!

17 May 2024

The sun has come out to shine on Earth Ball, check that spot-gloss on the sleeve!

Earth Ball’s immense album ‘It’s Yours’ is released today digitally and on this very fine crystal clear LP with printed inner sleeve, download card and accompanying painted art scrap from the band.

Musically this a mercurial record of energetic sax-flecked no wave spontaneity. Drums tumble over precipices, guitars grind along fluxing vortices and Jer & Izzy’s vocals usher wisdom and derision from the outskirts. Six mind-zapping transmissions from the Canadian underground trapped in aspic.

‘It’s Yours’ is available in all the best shops now, you can also pick up a copy from our webshop here ...or even better, grab a copy from the band directly when they tour the UK with Chris Corsano over the next fortnight:

May 20 - London - Cafe OTO

May 21 - London - Cafe OTO

May 22 - Manchester - White Hotel

May 23 - Bristol - Cube Cinema

May 24 - Shrewsbury - English Bridge Workshop

May 25 - Glasgow - Flying Duck

May 26 - Newcastle - Lubber Fiend

May 27 - Leeds - Wharf Chambers

May 28 - Nottingham - The Chapel

May 29 - Lewes - Con Club

STOP/CONTINUE

8 May 2024

Marcel Wave return with effervescent bop ‘Stop/Continue’ today, a punctual new single owing much to decaying industrial backdrops to childhood. ‘Stop/Continue’ dwells on derelict mills, spooling rivers and the unfaltering sweep of the second hand. We very much like songs with a heavy dose of rumination at UTR and if they come with a trippy video of waterways, tunnels and some dancing too, then all the better!

‘Stop/Continue’ is out now digitally, it features on Marcel Wave’s debut album ‘Something Looming’ out June 14th on Upset The Rhythm. Dive in!

MOON FM

30 April 2024

Moon FM is the scorching opening track of Earth Ball's debut LP 'It's Yours', out May 17th through Upset The Rhythm. The saxophone is searing hot here, pulling us through vortex after vortex whilst the drums pin down the momentum amid gauzily warped guitars. The accompanying video was shot by John Brennan from the band and features him walking backwards over the Cambie Bridge in Vancouver at twilight, only reversed so the traffic zips oddly backwards. Revel in it!

PARSNIP - OUT NOW!

26 April 2024

Greet today with Parsnip’s shining new album ‘Behold’!

The Australian group are an spirited ensemble, full of life, emotional complexity and humour. This has all contributed in making ‘Behold’ such a joy. This is their first album in five years and it’s a riot of dazzling performances and whip-smart DIY pop. Parsnip have made a record that drinks deep with wonderment and their vision is genuinely refreshing and at times devastatingly honest. We’re overjoyed to share it with you.

‘Behold’ by Parsnip is out now digitally and on crystal-clear vinyl through Upset The Rhythm. Our great mates at Anti Fade are releasing ‘Behold’ down under too. Parsnip will touring Japan next month and are also coming to Europe this October, watch out world!

NORTH ATLANTIC

25 April 2024

We’re sharing ‘North Atlantic’ with the world today! Another gem from the jewellery box that’s Normil Hawaiians first album of new material in 40 years. ‘North Atlantic' is the meditative closer on ‘Empires into Sand’ and features reworked drum samples taken from a short track called ‘South Atlantic’ from 1984 (Normil Hawaiians - What’s Going On?). Only this time the bass refrain is reversed and the song takes on an entirely new life with an uncanny string arrangement, birdsong and lyrics about impermanence, dream states and long shadows. Drink deep!

‘Empires into Sand’ will be released by Upset the Rhythm on May 24th.

EARTH BALL & CHRIS CORSANO ON TOUR

24 April 2024

The stupendous Earth Ball are touring the UK this May in support of their forthcoming album 'It's Yours', out May 17th on Upset The Rhythm. Best news... Chris Corsano will be keeping them company too. Both acts are playing all over the landmass, roundabouts and back again. Go see them live, they are A+ spectacular!

May 20 - London - Cafe OTO

May 21 - London - Cafe OTO

May 22 - Manchester - White Hotel

May 23 - Bristol - Cube Cinema

May 24 - Shrewsbury - English Bridge Workshop

May 25 - Glasgow - Flying Duck

May 26 - Newcastle - Lubber Fiend

May 27 - Leeds - Wharf Chambers

May 28 - Nottingham - The Chapel

May 29 - Lewes - Con Club

PARSNIP - THE BABBLE

11 April 2024

It’s time to start babbling with Parsnip, their incredible new single (out today) is packed with Kinks-ian panache and deceptive wordplay, beyond great! Their full album 'Behold' will be released on April 26th through Upset The Rhythm

MARCEL WAVE - SOMETHING LOOMING

4 April 2024

June 14th, what a prodigious day!

We will be releasing Marcel Wave’s inaugural album ‘Something Looming’, packed with eulogies for tragic actresses, ancient riverbeds and concrete obscenity. Marcel Wave (featuring members of Cold Pumas & Sauna Youth) are part trades club symphony, part itchy serenade and part wistful lament. This heady concoction of ‘Meades meets Pat-E-Smith meets Kirklees Borough Council’ will be formally baptised on stage at MOTH Club that very same day (June 14th) with an album launch (featuring The Pheromoans + The Plan), now on sale.

Check out their first single ‘Barrow Boys’, a raucous ode to the death of the docklands. Out now digitally and available to study in this suitably wavy VHS promo. ‘Something Looming’ will be released on June 14th by Upset The Rhythm and Feel It Records (in the USA). It is available to pre-order now on 180g black vinyl too.

PARSNIP - TURN TO LOVE

19 March 2024

Don’t turn back! Parsnip explode into colour, costume and creativity with their incredible video for new single ‘Turn To Love’. Out today digitally and featured on their forthcoming album ‘Behold’ (out April 26th through Upset The Rhythm). Blooming marvellous effort from the Australian DIY pop quartet!

EMPIRES INTO SAND

14 March 2024

Huge day today! Normil Hawaiians’ first new album in 40 years will be coming out on Upset The Rhythm on May 3rd. Titled ‘Empires into Sand’, the record is an incredible patchwork cloak of ideas drawing on ambient drone, motorik impulse, folk idiom and a certain cosmic uncanny.

A Windswept album recorded in a windswept Scottish coastal retreat, ‘Empires into Sand’ swims with short wave radio interference and overheard satellite transmissions. These are winding rivers of song, peopled with the displaced, determined, downhearted yet hopeful. Swirling atmospheres, field recordings, tape-looped drums, rapid synth flights and soaring vocals all abound in this echo from the now.

‘Empires into Sand’ will be released on gatefold LP, CD and digitally on May 24th, it is available to pre-order now from our shop now.

Lead single ‘Exiles’ is released today, exploring the continuous movement of human beings, check out the video for more sublime signs from the firmament.

TRISTWCH Y FENYWOD are a Welsh-language gothic rock power-trio. Conjured from the experimental underground of darkest Leeds, the group channels songs of bog bodies, flickering landscapes and queer enchantment for dual-zither, bass and electronic drums. Tristwch y Fenywod (The Sadness of Women) are Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, Petronn Sphene), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys). Formed in 2022, the music sounds like it could have been excavated from a haul of mouldering reel-to-reel tapes from the early 80s – like some recently rediscovered unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric, feminist goth. The dual-zither which leads their music is Gwretsien’s innovation, giving them a unique Celtic darkwave sound, but comparisons have also been drawn with The Cure circa “Pornography” and early Virgin Prunes. Their first record will be released this summer by Night School Records.

EKSTASIS is London/Bristol-based, Lorelei Hacking, generating complex modular patches backed by dramatic vocals, pushing an idiosyncratic sound.

TRISTWCH Y FENYWOD are a Welsh-language gothic rock power-trio. Conjured from the experimental underground of darkest Leeds, the group channels songs of bog bodies, flickering landscapes and queer enchantment for dual-zither, bass and electronic drums. Tristwch y Fenywod (The Sadness of Women) are Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, Petronn Sphene), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys). Formed in 2022, the music sounds like it could have been excavated from a haul of mouldering reel-to-reel tapes from the early 80s – like some recently rediscovered unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric, feminist goth. The dual-zither which leads their music is Gwretsien’s innovation, giving them a unique Celtic darkwave sound, but comparisons have also been drawn with The Cure circa “Pornography” and early Virgin Prunes. Their first record will be released this summer by Night School Records.

THE SEER is a multimedia live performance that combines spoken word, sound, theatre and video. The project is the creation of London based artist Conny Prantera and is constructed from a series of her poems, collages and paintings that narrate the life of a prophet echoing of Homeric myth, traditional folksong and dreamlike memories.

CALLAHAN & WITSCHER is the project of NYC-based musicians Jack Callahan and Jeff Witscher. Witscher has been one of the most daring voices in underground American music for two decades, highlighted by releases on Pan and NNA Tapes. Callahan’s focused, uncompromising approach to sound caught the attention of both Demdike Stare’s DDS label and Swiss composer Jürg Frey, who took Callahan on as his first composition student. Fans of their individual work might expect opacity, disruption, or rhythmic irregularity from their collaboration, but their debut LP ‘Think Differently’ sounds like a pitbull in a convertible, a sand-kicking beach party, the dopamine hit you get from 311 or Smash Mouth. It’s a punchy, crunchy, highly infectious record. How did Callahan & Witscher cut the path from the ghostly margins of avant garde musics to the gutters of post-grunge American hard rock? In the words of Callahan, “at some point, you start to need a stronger drug.”

The most potent characteristic of this stronger drug is the guitar. And not just any guitar, but a sassy, contagious, blithe guitar. Its presence is a drastic shift for two guys who’ve combined to make dozens of records over the years, not a single one of which has a recognizable guitar sound on it. Alongside the cool breezes and hyperactive fretwork of Callahan’s guitar playing, the songs are backboned by strutting, groove-happy vocals: all bark, all bite. Every song is a careful collage, light but dense, ornate with gang choruses, soulful femme vocals, autotune and whisper scratches. This accumulation almost manages to hide the record’s potent undertow of dread. ‘Think differently’ was released by Post Present Medium last September.

JAKE XERXES FUSSELL is a singer, guitarist and folk music interpreter who has distinguished himself as one of his generation's preeminent interpreters of traditional (and not so traditional) "folk" songs, a practice which he approaches with a refreshingly unfussy lack of nostalgia. By recontextualizing ancient vernacular songs and sources of the American South, he allows them to breathe and speak for themselves and for himself; he alternately inhabits them and allows them to inhabit him. In all his work, Fussell humanises his material with his own curatorial and interpretive gifts, unmooring stories and melodies from their specific eras and origins and setting them adrift in our own waterways.

On his latest album, When I’m Called—his first LP for Fat Possum, and his first as a parent - Fussell returns to a well of music that holds lifelong sentimental meaning, loosely contemplating the passage of time and the procession of life’s unexpected offerings. The album was produced by James Elkington and mixed by Tucker Martine. In addition to Elkington, it features the playing of Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station) and Joe Westerlund (Bon Iver, Califone). Blake Mills contributes guitars on several tracks. Joan Shelley and Robin Holcomb provide backing vocals.

JENNIFER CASTLE is a Canadian songwriter, musician, and poet. ‘Camelot’ (Paradise of Bachelors), Jennifer Castle’s extraordinary, moving 2024 chronicle of the artist in early middle age, charts a realer, more rooted, and more metaphorical place than the fabled Camelot of the Early Middle Ages (or its myriad depictions), but it too is a space more psychic than physical. In Castle’s Camelot, the fantastic interpenetrates the mundane, and the Grail, if there is one, distills everyday experience into art and art into faith, subliming terrestrial concerns into sublime celestial prayers to Mother Nature, and to the unfolding process of perfecting imperfection in one’s own nature. Co-produced by Jennifer and longtime collaborator Jeff McMurrich, her seventh record is at once her most monumental and unguarded to date, demonstrating a mastery of rendering her verse and melodies alike with crisply poignant economy. For all their pointedly plainspoken lyrical detail and exhilarating full-band musical flourishes, these songs sound inevitable, eternal as morning devotions.

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE have built a prolific and diverse body of work over the last 20+ years. Ben Chasny's project is an experimental amalgam of new folk, drone music, percussion and strange textures, with Chasny delivering an outpouring of eclectic releases in the early 2000s for various small labels before finding a longstanding home on Drag City. In 2003, Chasny began an association with Comets on Fire, which led to him becoming a full-time touring and recording member of the band. After recording and touring extensively with Comets on Fire in 2004, Chasny returned to the studio and issued the moving and beautiful School of the Flower on Drag City in January of 2005. Sun Awakens and Shelter from the Ash arrived in 2006 and 2007. After touring and a break in 2008, Six Organs began what would become a prolific return to force, releasing a further 18 astonishing records up to the current time. First was the release of the sonically expansive - and very electric - Luminous Night, followed by the double-disc retrospective RTZ, both of which appeared on Drag City. Chasny also plays in 200 Years alongside Elisa Ambrogio (of Magik Markers), with Donovan Quinn (Skygreen Leopards) in the project New Bums, and is also a member of tightly-wound improv unit Rangda, accompanied by Sir Richard Bishop and Chris Corsano.

Chasny more recently developed a card-based creative system called a Hexadic for making music and released several related albums before resuming his primary project with new work like 2021's The Veiled Sea and the 2024 Shackleton collaboration Jinxed by Being. This year Six Organs also released a fully solo album Time Is Glass, which consists of haunted, unsettled rural folk sounds. With Time is Glass, Six Organs of Admittance is captured once again in the intricate tangle of the fretboards, soaring in open skies above. Like lens flare cutting through the speakers; spider-webs cracking the windshield that holds back all the onrushing reality. Blowing the dust away, cutting a new path for cognition.

BILL MACKAY is a guitarist, improviser, composer, and singer based in Chicago. An accomplished collaborator with projects that include Katinka Kleijn (Stir, 2019), Nathan Bowles (Keys, 2021), and Ryley Walker (SpiderBeetleBee, 2017), MacKay is also a solo artist creating multi-dimensional works such as Esker (2017), Fountain Fire (2019) Scarf (2020), and Locust Land (2024), all released on Drag City Records. Bill’s music is a visceral crackling where it meets the air, and Locust Land can’t help but reflect its era more than any other in his discography. A restless energy and urgency is repeatedly felt in the driving momentum of “Keeping in Time,” “Glow Drift,” and “When I Was Here”, while a dogged persistence radiates from the tone colors and percussion of “Oh, Pearl.” The sense of searching, displacement and longing in vocal tracks “Keeping in Time,” “Half of You,” and “When I Was Here” speak literally to the tumult of current vibrations. Within the arrangements, there’s also departure from previous norms — in addition to the brilliant guitar work for which he is known, Bill plays a variety of keyboards, from piano to organ to synth, extending his music with the available voicings, while enriching the sound field without abandoning his signature brevity. For fans of his singing, and following in the recent tradition of Fountain Fire as well as his collaboration with Nathan Bowles, Keys, Locust Land expresses with an increased vocal presence — and heightened engagement, with Bill’s words and melodies drawing us closer.

MYRIAM GENDRON is a Montreal-based songwriter, guitarist and singer. Mayday is the third LP by Gendron, it follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, Not So Deep As A Well (2014) and Ma délire – Songs of love, lost & found (2021). Prior to her debut album, Myriam's primary musical focus was busking in Paris Metro stations, performing the songs of Leonard Cohen and others, accompanying herself on guitar. Through her day job, working at a Montreal bookstore, Myriam discovered the poems of American writer, Dorothy Parker, who was better known for her cutting wit than her verse. Inspired by Parker's words, Myriam wrote music to accompany a suite of them, then recorded the results in her bedroom. These recordings were issued as her debut LP, and continue to delight listeners who discover them, with their freshness, clarity and humor.

After a brief hiatus, Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), recording the 2LP, Ma délire, which combines traditional and original songs (largely in French) with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano. Mayday is an even more syncretic fusion of these elements. Most of the songs are original, in both English and French, and blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. Additional players this time include drummer Jim White (Dirty Three), guitarist Marisa Anderson, Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie (a fellow fan of trad/avant dynamism), Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba (whose horn actually gets the final “word”). Mayday is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. Beautiful work.

WOLF EYES have spent 26 years fusing together DIY electronics with the avant-garde sensibilities of Fluxus and the granite of dreary Midwestern life. Their new album 'Dreams In Splattered Lines' is a surreal dreamscape of disorienting sound collages, where hit songs are transformed into terrariums of sonic flora and decimated fauna. As if pulled from a fever dream, the surrealists of the 1960s converge with alien electronic blues musicians in an underworld of mystery. The air is thick with car wash radio white noise, crackling and fizzing like a toxic elixir, spoken word poetry transmissions as absurd and cryptic phrases. Each corroded aural environment is a microcosm of chaos, honed to razor-sharp precision. Swept away in a whirlwind of thirteen perplexing narratives, each one an unpredictable journey through subterranean worlds, a sonic trip of reality folded into itself.

Wolf Eyes have released three albums recently ‘Dreams In Splattered Lines' was preceded by the compilation of collaborations 'Presents Difficult Messages', and the band followed this up with the release of 'Wolf Eyes w/ Spykes', bringing a much sought after early release to vinyl for the first time, documenting a recording session pivotal to the ongoing development of the group’s sound. Alongside this has been the usual steady stream of lathe cuts, side hustles, art and inzanity. A new LP is due out soon charting Wolf Eyes’ recent recordings with Anthony Braxton too, look out!

CLEANERS FROM VENUS (Martin Newell joined by a live band) will be performing next spring in London on St Georges day no less. The group will be performing some classic Cleaners songs. Martin will be on guitar and piano - and talking. The band have drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, it will be special!

Martin Newell is a purveyor of ingenious pop music. His music is refracted from late 60s rock only shot through with invention from the rough-and-ready explosion of DIY tape releases in 80s Britain. As a songwriter, he’s right up there with Syd Barrett and Ray Davies, capturing a peculiar Englishness that’s very much his own.

Martin started his career in music aged 19 when he joined an Essex glam-rock band called The Mighty Plod as a singer and gigged in rough clubs, pubs and colleges for the next two years. In his early twenties he joined a hard rock/prog band from Ipswich called Gypp and gigged in the UK as well as touring northern Germany several times. In 1979, he won his first record contract and shortly afterwards his first single ‘Young Jobless / Sylvie In Toytown’ was released, first on an indie label and then with Liberty Records. In the 1980s he formed the anarchic and wonderfully offbeat Cleaners From Venus, who after much defiance of music biz convention, signed to a London record company and began making proper records which were well reviewed and well-received. He began co-writing songs with Captain Sensible in 1986, a relationship which endures to some extent to this day. In 1989 he and his friend Nelson, now of New Model Army formed The Brotherhood of Lizards, were signed to make an album and proceeded to promote it, touring the record by bicycle. This led to many TV appearances and some notoriety and amusement in the media. In 1993, with XTC's Andy Partridge in the producer's chair Martin made what was to become his most successful album ‘The Greatest Living Englishman’, hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as a rock classic. Over the last ten years Martin has continued to release exhilarating albums under his own name and as Cleaners from Venus, most recently a winsome new Cleaners album called ‘K7’ was released on CD and cassette.

A highly-entertaining live act, Martin Newell performs infrequently, refusing nowadays to tour at all. He has been the subject of a highly-praised documentary film Upstairs Planet (2019) which enjoyed premieres both in London and in New York. A second documentary The Jangling Man, the director James Sharp’s intimate portrait of Newell’s life and work, premiered in London and Los Angeles in October 2022.

THE GARDENERS are a jangle-pop inspired indie rock band hailing from London and Southend On Sea. Check out their sublime new single ‘Time to Breathe’ / ‘Sunlight’.

RICH(ARD) DAWSON has drawn so many long drafts from the whirlpools of Elemental North Eastern Archetypes, he may now be one himself. Fearless in his research and willingness to follow his inspiration, Dawson has created an impressive catalogue of music and storytelling steeped in both ancient myths and contemporary dread. A fog of sickness, trauma and mute inevitability inhabits his records and is often expressed in the havoc with which Dawson’s hands produce sounds from his long-suffering guitar, an instrument as bruised, individual and indefatigable as its owner.

Dawson’s forthcoming new album ‘End of the Middle’ (out Feb 14th through Weird World) is intricate, evocative, stripped-back, tactile and almost has the transportive ability to put you in the places and scenarios it describes. The album focuses around a family unit. “It zooms in quite close-up to try and explore a typical middle class English family home,” Dawson says. “We're listening to the stories of people from three or four generations of perhaps the same family. But really, it’s about how we break certain cycles. I think the family is a useful metaphor to examine how things are passed on generationally.”

The title of the new album End of the Middle is a suitably slippery contradiction, one that invites multiple interpretations: Middle-aging? Middle-class? The middle-point of Dawson's career? The centre of a record? Centrism in general? Polarisation? The possibility of having a balanced discussion about anything? Stuck in the middle with you? Middle England? Decide for yourself at this concert in the intimate, beautiful setting of The Clapham Grand, tickets are going to fly!

NAP EYES still bring to mind the bucolic ennui of the Silver Jews and Daniel Johnston’s jittery naïveté, but the sheen and maturity they boast lends a wide-angle appeal. Nap Eyes’ metamorphic fifth long-player collects a cache of nine fascinating songs recorded over the four years since their last album. ‘The Neon Gate’ (out now on Paradise of Bachelors) reveals classic touchstones (the uneasy interplay of physics and philosophy, perambulatory meditations, self-interrogating soliloquies, apertures of surreality, video games), but also evidence of divergent impulses toward nonlinear abstraction and longform improvisational composition (resulting in their most discursive, deconstructed, and deliquescent songs to date) and narrative and lyric formality, imparting the sense that Nap Eyes have transmuted, as has their understanding of what a song is, what it can do, where it might go.