Gigwise's 51 Best Albums of 2018

Maynard James Keenan’s rock supergroup has seriously grown up in the 14 years since their last album. The Tool frontman’s band is still angry—they’ve just found new, different ways to express it. The gargantuan riffs of APC’s past now make room for strings, piano, and post-rock builds. *Eat the Elephant* is thoughtful and brooding, but still heavy as ever (tracks like “TalkTalk” would fit right in on *Thirteenth Step*). Harps and horns make slow-burning “The Contrarian” frighteningly ominous, and “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” sounds so uplifting it’s unsettling—but its lyrics reveal a sardonic ode to modern life, while lamenting the loss of David Bowie and other legends.

Music for the weak. Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing Eddy Current Suppression Ring and The Fall among their biggest musical influences. Utilising both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barrelled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Oceans debut. From “Gold Hole,” a tongue-in-cheek take-down of rock narcissism, to lead single “Concrete” detailing the overwhelming moment of realising a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated “Tasteless” taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-to-day, Songs of Praise never pauses to catch its breath.

The title of Spiritualized’s eighth album is the back half of a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s *Slaughterhouse-Five*: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” In a tweet, Pierce explained that starting with *And* “presupposes that something, or everything, has happened before.” After almost four decades making music—often in response to personal crises including heartbreak, addiction, disease, and near-death experiences—everything *has* happened to Pierce before. *And Nothing Hurt* was born from a different kind of upheaval. In the flush ’90s, labels could let a band like Spiritualized splurge on ample studio time, 120 live musicians for a single track, and entire choirs. No longer afforded those luxuries, Pierce learned to use Pro Tools, painstakingly sampling sounds from classical recordings, and managed, with just a handful of backing musicians, to create an album every bit as gargantuan and emotional as ever. Pierce deftly moves between intimacy and maximalism, combining shoegaze, free jazz, somber ballads, lavish orchestration, and synths in ways that shouldn’t work, but do. “Let’s Dance” begins wistful and dainty, gradually building into a wild, brassy carnival. Likewise, the joyful “On the Sunshine” morphs from warm flutes into a cacophony of squealing horns and ecstatic jazz. *And Nothing Hurts* is a profoundly self-aware album acknowledging age, loss, and mortality. On “The Prize,” Pierce sings, “Gonna be shooting like a star across the sky/Gonna burn brightly for a while/Then you’re gone.”

In 2018, Low will turn twenty-five. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker—the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonies have always held the band’s center—have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music’s most steadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkest emotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its first quarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbook favorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release its most brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) album ever: Double Negative, an unflinching eleven-song quest through snarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in the brightest pop song of Low’s career. To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietly energetic and adventurous producer who has made records with James Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recent years while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver’s home studio, April Base. Burton recorded Low’s last album, 2015’s Ones and Sixes, at April Base, adding might to many of its beats and squelch and frisson beneath many of its melodies. This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garrington knew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds, to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, “a hip-hop guy” could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write and rehearse at home in Duluth, Minnesota, they would often head southeast to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, arriving with sketches and ideas that they would work on for days with Burton. Band and producer became collaborative cowriters, building the pieces up and breaking them down and building them again until their purpose and force felt clear. As the world outside seemed to slide deeper into instability, Low repeated this process for the better part of two years, pondering the results during tours and breaks at home. They considered not only how the fragments fit together but also how, in the United States of 2018, they functioned as statements and salves. Double Negative is, indeed, a record perfectly and painfully suited for our time. Loud and contentious and commanding, Low fights for the world by fighting against it. It begins in pure bedlam, with a beat built from a loop of ruptured noise waging war against the paired voices of Sparhawk and Parker the moment they begin to sing during the massive “Quorum.” For forty minutes, they indulge the battle, trying to be heard amid the noisy grain, sometimes winning and sometimes being tossed toward oblivion. In spite of the mounting noise, Sparhawk and Parker still sing. Or maybe they sing because of the noise. For Low, has there ever really been a difference?

In 2016, Alex Turner received a piano for his 30th birthday and started playing seriously for the first time in over 20 years. Songs for Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album eventually emerged—a collection of brooding, cosmic lounge-pop that’s typical of the band only in its disdain for playing it safe. Here, light-years from their previous riff-driven adventures, melodies unspool slowly but stick faster with every listen. A watering hole on the moon provides the conceptual framework for Turner to muse on life, pop culture, and technology with heavy-lidded introspection. “I need to spend less time stood around in bars/Waffling on to strangers about martial arts,” he sighs on “She Looks Like Fun.” He shouldn’t be hasty: Wherever he finds inspiration, it takes his band to daring new places.

In November 2017, Young Fathers announced that they’d completed work on a new album. The trio – Alloysious Massaquoi, Graham ‘G’ Hastings and Kayus Bankole – marked the news by previewing a brand new song, ‘Lord’ and a subsequent accompanying video. Just like their previous standalone 2017 single ‘Only God Knows’ (written for the Trainspotting T2 film and described by director Danny Boyle as “the heartbeat of the film”), ‘Lord’ provided an enticing glimpse of what to expect from Young Fathers’ third full album; something typically unique and exhilarating, but leaner, more muscular and self-assured than ever before. Today, Young Fathers announce full details of that album. Titled Cocoa Sugar, the twelve track album will be released on 9th March 2018 via Ninja Tune and follows the group’s previous two albums; 2014’s Mercury Prize-winning DEAD and 2015’s White Men Are Black Men Too. Written and recorded throughout 2017 in the band’s basement studio and HQ, Cocoa Sugar sees Young Fathers operating with a newfound clarity and direction, and is without doubt their most confident and complete statement to date. To celebrate news of the new album, Young Fathers today reveal a brand new single ‘In My View’. Accompanied by a video directed by Jack Whiteley, ‘In My View’ is available now. Cocoa Sugar will be available on CD, LP, limited LP and via all digital services. It features a striking visual aesthetic, with cover photography from Julia Noni and creative direction from Tom Hingston.

The Aussie dance-pop group know exactly how to start the party. In darkened bar just near heart of London, there’s a cartoon that’s come to life. While the rest of the city toils away watching the clock and waiting for home time, the bar staff here are working overtime to provide enough shots for their only customers – the living illustration that’s sprawled across table number 5. It’s a scene that needs to be seen to be believed. On one side, there’s a statuesque chap clad only in a pair of nothing-to-the-imagination hot pants sat next to a woman in a custom designed babydoll dress and shorts combo, it’s 6° outside. Facing them are two figures sat in silence; each veiled secretively in what look like a satanic beekeeper’s hat made of a material so black, the light seems to fall into it. The bar staff can’t work fast enough for them, shot after shot is delivered then downed but the demeanour never changes. Although the carnage going on is controlled for the time being (it’s 3pm after all – these people aren’t animals), there’s an air of nonchalance that seems to suggest that for them, it’s business time, all the time. It’s pure confidence, man. If Janet Planet, Sugar Bones, Clarence McGuffie and Reggie Goodchild weren’t a band already you’d be snapping at their heels demanding they form one before they left the bar. Fact is, they are. From Melbourne by way of Brisbane, Confidence Man are unarguably one of the hottest acts on the planet right now. A portable party that’s levelled dance floors and flattened festival crowds as it’s rolled out across the world, they are a machine custom designed to make you dance and lose your cool. How they formed is a matter of debate. Janet: “These guys (points to Clarence and Reggie, the veiled men) were real saddoes playing by themselves and I needed someone to play music with me. They were obsessed with trying to find someone cool and they saw me dancing in a club and were like, “We want that girl!” I knew if we were going to get anywhere, we needed a hot dude with a six-pack at the front of the stage to even things out because they were so damn ugly themselves. We were hanging out at the public pool one day and there was this hot pool guy cleaning the pool and dancing to the music in his head. He looked pretty good in hot pants and while his moves weren’t conventional, they had a certain flare. And now, we’re like mum and dad and these two are just our petulant kids.” *muffled disagreement from the veils* Sugar Bones: “Man, we’re all just trying to make it in this crazy world. *another shot goes down* It’s hard to work out what’s truth and what’s fiction when talking to Confidence Man – reality seems to bend around them with every glug of alcohol. They formed in Brisbane, four veteran musicians with no prior knowledge of the music scene they were entering. They moved into a big house together 1600 km away in Melbourne where the band took off at astonishing speed, thanks mainly to their full-force, unrelenting live show and their studio is in the study of their shared house. Even the factual information they share sounds outlandish – take, for instance, the tale of when they first realised the band had legs… Janet: “Golden Plains at the Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre in Victoria. They’re incredibly picky about who they book. They initially didn’t want to book us because they didn’t think we were cool enough. Our manager convinced them to come see us and they booked us on the spot. We were playing at 2 in the afternoon and there was no one there, it was blazing sunshine. Then the arena started to fill and before we knew it there were 10,000 people in front of us, screaming, getting down, jumping back up.” Perhaps then the best way to drill right into the band’s psyche is through their debut album. Confident Music for Confident People sets eleven tales of 21st century ennui to irresistible, irrepressible dance music. The opening lines of Try Your Luck (“I must confess/I’ve been sleeping with your ex/’Cos I heard he was the best/I must confess/I never would have guessed he would get so obsessed… I’m not surprised”) set the tone perfectly for what follows. Here is a set of songs that take the kind of all-consuming interior monologues that bored, disaffected youth are wrestling with the world over and places them square in the middle of the dance floor before adding call-and-response choruses for good measure. You’d almost think it was made in some kind of sonic laboratory by crazed muso-scientists if you weren’t sat in front of the record’s unflappable, gloriously flamboyant creators on a wet Tuesday afternoon. Elsewhere, Sugar Bones effortlessly nails the snorting and cavorting lifestyle of fantasist rock stars “who think they’re hot shit” (Don’t You Know I’m In a Band) while on C.O.O.L. Party, Janet coolly brushes off her obsessive partner (a guy called Dave – “a dick surfer boy drug dealer who works on Wall Street”) to what sounds like a rocket powered futurist Tom Tom Club backing track. On Out the Window, the band reluctantly emerge blinking into the bleachy sunlight from a darkened house party while a driving Balaeric backing track that’s worthy of imperial phase Happy Mondays rolls out behind them; Better Sit Down Boy presents three and a half minutes of the most perfect pop music you’ll hear all year, a track so urgent you can almost feel the wind whipping past your head as it speeds by. Confident Music for Confident People is big and brash and bright as hell, like Dee-Lite tooled up and ready for our berserk modern times. The perfect embodiment of the characters that made it, the album manages to be both wildly ambitious and deceptively simple. Listening to it, one gets the impression that Confidence Man could go anywhere from here. Janet: “Eventually we want to record an EP for each person. You know… Clarence McGuffie takes you down memory lane, Sugar Bones sings the blues, that kind of thing. Five tracks from each person’s perspective. The series would keep going and getting darker when you get to the veil guys. Reggie’s tales from the world’s least glamorous toilet cubicles…” Sugar Bones: “We’re obviously pretty confident, and real confidence knows no bounds. I don’t think there’s any end to the ambition really. Janet Planet for President. She could run on the slogan ‘I’m The Best’.” Janet: “Basically, we’re all wankers. Nice wankers.” Sugar Bones: “Loveable wankers.” Clarence and Reggie: Nod agreeably It takes real confidence to speak up and say that. They’ll go far. Now, more shots please, barman.

“I’m making pop records,” The 1975 frontman Matty Healy told Beats 1 host Matt Wilkinson. “When I say we’re a pop band, what I’m really saying is we’re not a rock band. Please stop calling us a rock band—’cause I think that’s the only music we *don’t* make.” It’s a fair comment: Thanks to their eclecticism and adventure, attempting to label The 1975 has been as easy as serving tea in a sieve. On their third album, the Cheshire four-piece are, once again, many things, including jazz crooners, 2-step experimentalists and yearning balladeers. What’s most impressive is their ability to wrangle all these ideas into coherent music—their outsize ambition never makes the songs feel cluttered. “I hate prog, I hate double albums, I hate indulgence,” said Healy. “I hate it when the world goes, ‘Hey, you’ve got our attention!’ and someone goes, ‘Right, well, if I’ve got your attention, how many guitar solos…’” Crucially, Healy’s lyrics add extra substance to—and bind together—the kaleidoscope of styles. On the neo-jazz of “Sincerity Is Scary,” he rails against a modern aversion to emotional expression. Broadly an album about love in the digital age, *A Brief Inquiry…* offers compelling insights into Healy’s own life. “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” provides an unvarnished account of his heroin addiction, while “Surrounded By Heads and Bodies” draws on his experiences in rehab and “Be My Mistake” examines guilt and compulsion. “Honestly, you can look at your work and be like, ‘What did I do there that someone likes?’” he said. “Me, when I’m, like, really personal or really inward, really honest, that’s when I get the best reaction.” Introspection needn’t breed a somber mood though. From the tropical pop of “Tootimetootimetootime” to the spry electro-indie of “Give Yourself a Try,” this is an album full of uplifting, melodic rushes. “My favorite records are about life,” said Healy. “It may be a bit of a big thing to say, but I like the all-encompassing aspect of life: You can have these bits, the sad bits, but don’t leave the dancing out, you know what I mean?”

The Breeders’ music is a ball of little contrasts: beautiful but rough, off-hand but confident, spacey but tactile, lived-in—an unfamiliar object knit from yarn. The group\'s first album with a fully reunited lineup from their breakthrough LP, *Last Splash*, finds them back on their private path, balancing rave-ups (“Nervous Mary,” “Wait in the Car”) with heavy-lidded ballads (“All Nerve,” “Dawn: Making an Effort”) and blasts of noise with girlish harmonies, gently pushing the familiar garage-band template in new directions. As always, their ace remains an ability to elevate naiveté to mysterious, almost supernatural levels—just listen to “Walking With the Killer.”

Pop quiz: Q: What do Quincy Jones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flying Lotus and a bunch of movie theatre janitors have in common? A: They’re all fans of Louis Cole. Confused? Don’t be. The Los Angeles based singer songwriter, producer and multi instrumentalist co-founded the alt pop/electro funk band Knower in 2009 and the band bagged a spot at a special “Quincy Jones presents” series of gigs for up and coming bands in LA. “I guess he thought our music was cool so he had us come over and we played some arrangements of ‘PYT’ and ‘Bad’ in his living room,” recalls Louis. “I guess it was kinda like an audition. I was there with my midi keyboard and he was eating guacamole and rocking out… there were literally three people in the room, it was totally surreal.” The Chili Peppers expressed their admiration on their recent world tour where Louis found himself playing support slots in Mexico City and across Europe. “I had no idea why I’d been asked to do a Red Hot Chili Peppers tour and I was backstage in Rome at the gig still none the wiser as to why I was there,” laughs Louis. “And then Anthony Kiedis comes up to me, looks right at me and says ‘Yeh I love that ‘Bank Account’ song. It’s super funky.’” He is right of course - ’Bank Account’ is super funky and it was a game changer for Louis. He uploaded a split screen video of him performing the song (sporting a customised McDonalds uniform shirt no less) to his YouTube channel in April 2017 and, propelled by the candid and relatable lyrics - “I don’t want to check my bank account. I’m too scared to check my bank account” - it went viral. So far it’s amassed 2 million + views, the vast majority of those by folks equally fearful of viewing their account balance. “I honestly thought nobody was going to care about that song. I just put it up because I wanted to show people that I had been practicing keyboard,” he laughs. “I came up with that four chord progression and all I wanted to do in that moment was be good at that four chord progression… I didn’t care about anything else. Then I was driving to a gig and I just came up with those lyrics because they were absolutely true at that time.” The runaway success of ‘Bank Account’ was in part, accidental, but Louis has a history of DIY film-making and uploading humorous performance videos to YouTube - it’s integral to his creative being - so it was really only a matter of time before he hit the jackpot. He says he was inspired by his friend Jack Conte (Pomplamoose) a singer-songwriter and entrepreneur who released the majority of his music as home studio split-screen performance videos (or as Jack refers to them - “Videosongs”) posted to YouTube. “Jack gave me this big pep talk in about 2009, basically saying: ‘You HAVE to pursue your music as a career!’ So I owe him a lot,” smiles Louis. As for the movie theatre janitors? Well they became fans via Louis’s contribution to the Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) - the third instalment in the Lego Movie franchise. Cole and regular musical sparring partner Genevieve Artadi wrote a perfectly pitched silly song for the soundtrack titled ‘Dance Of Doom’ that plays at the very end of the final credits when the only folks left in the theatre are the janitors. The YouTube comments explain the rest: “I was cleaning the theatre this movie was playing in… I’ve never laughed so hard during my shift in my life”; “I’m working in a small cinema and every time I have to clean up the hall after this movie I can hardly concentrate because the bassline is so awesome ^^”; and “This is the most absurd, screwball song I've heard in a long time. And I got to listen to it over a dozen times, while I cleaned the theatre.” Cole, whose main instrument is the drums (“But having said that my whole purpose is writing music and that is definitely more keyboard based so maybe that’s my primary instrument?”) has a background in jazz although the music he writes bears little resemblance to jazz in any pure or classical sense. His connection to the movement is more abstract: “One thing that I still feel connected to, that I guess is the root of jazz is pure freedom… no limits… just what you’re thinking right at that moment… a pure blast of limitlessness”. Growing up he obsessed over drummers Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Nate Wood and Keith Carlock, but says he also draws inspiration from movies such as 2001 A Space Odyssey and Tron. His studio set-up is modest (computer, mic, midi keyboard) and he writes and records at home - there are drums in the garage and a piano in the living room. “So far I really suck at being in a real studio,” he says. “There are too many possibilities and it freaks me out.” “Time” is Cole’s third album - a casual but addictive blend of quickfire, hook-laden electrofunk bullets and wistful, soft-focus balladry - and it’s compelling. "A lot of it is little thoughts, that I made into big songs… blasts of inspiration that I was lucky enough to receive,” he explains. “But it all comes back to my mission to create deep feelings through music.” Proudly DIY to date, Louis has built up an ardent fanbase for his own solo output and that of Knower who zig zag across the globe on tour. However in 2009 he met Dennis Hamm - keys maestro in Thundercat’s live band - who introduced Louis to Thundercat and Flying Lotus. “Dennis bridged the gap… he was the link. In fact, Flying Lotus asked Dennis if I would want to release something on Brainfeeder before he even asked me.” Louis’s new album features his friend Thundercat (with whom he worked on “Drunk” co-writing ‘Bus In The Streets’ and ‘Jameel’s Space Ride’) who returns the favour, contributing lead vocals on ‘Tunnels In The Air’. Genevieve Artadi and acclaimed jazz pianist and experimental composer Brad Mehldau also pop up on ‘When You’re Ugly’ and ‘Real Life’ respectively. Furthermore, ‘Last Time You Went Away’ features a 23-piece string orchestra - the Rochester Stringz from Eastman School of Music.

This UK trio deals in spacious harmony and driving rhythm, drawing in listeners with hypnotic, open-ended song forms and the kinds of beats and sonic elements one hears in electronic music. Pianist Chris Illingworth, bassist Nick Blacka, and drummer Rob Turner, along with the strength and virtuosity of their individual sounds, have developed a seamless blend and a way of conveying musical grandeur. The complex arc of \"Strid\" and the looping, asymmetric funk of \"Bardo\" and \"Reactor\" are among the highlights.

"Hitchhiking a ride to which galaxy exactly? Back to a light, but what light? Maybe the one that radiates the heat from an ancient sun, the one that blistered the back of Telemachus when he went looking for his dad after the latter had failed to return from the pub. Avi’s new record is the soundtrack of a parallel world; one of strange riches, of snortingly beautiful music displaying a Mycenaean loucheness. Something that is at once deeply unsettling and akin to a tropical pool you want to dive into after that last cocktail. You could even imagine Roxy’s Bogus Man would get a suntan out here. Avi is stage left, chief conjuror and bottle washer all at once; concerned with the minutiae of this other life he’s walked himself into. In Avi’s OtherWorld, old captains are microchipped, given a VR visor and set ashore to a deceptively smooth soundtrack. Somehow this music also suggests that the inner monologues in Hopper’s paintings have been thrust into a new plane(t)scape and made into mystery pop; with Avi playing at being both the sonic hunter and the hunted. It’s the inner pop sound that propelled Marvin Gaye to go to the provincial Belgian town called Ostend and play darts with the locals." – 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒸𝒶𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓇𝑒 𝐹𝓊𝓈𝒾𝓁𝑒𝑒𝓇 "Much like Burial, Avi understands how to integrate familiar real-world elements to evoke the paranoia and fear at the heart of the 21st century experience. His ability to find connections and meanings in the darkness is his finest quality and for those with a wandering ear, OtherWorld is one of 2018's most underrated gems." - 𝒰𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑅𝒶𝒹𝒶𝓇 “His fourth album, where his sonorous Bowie/Billy Mackenzie tones navigate aqueous depths, synth grind and planetarium-exotica beats, possesses many chrimeric qualities.” - 𝑀𝒪𝒥𝒪 𝑀𝒶𝑔𝒶𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑒 “Avi’s brand new record OtherWorld is a limo-drive through the (strange) sunlit uplands of his imagination.” – 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒬𝓊𝒾𝑒𝓉𝓊𝓈 “It's normally easier to argue that everything under the sun has been done before, but we'd say it's harder to argue that Mart Avi is like any other artist. And his new album OtherWorld is one of the best records we've heard in recent times, making him one of the hot new talents in the world right now." – 𝒢𝒾𝑔𝓌𝒾𝓈𝑒 “Estonian pop maverick Mart Avi is the embodiment of an enigma, creating a singular and complex artistic language that confounds the past and present, the familiar and the unknown.” – 𝒟𝓇𝑜𝓌𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝐼𝓃 𝒮𝑜𝓊𝓃𝒹 "And for one so in tune with the cultural zeitgeist and adept at using what the modern world has to offer, Mart Avi is an old spirit. You could also cast him as the Wilmington Man in code form, holding the door open to rock and roll’s past in a way that is utterly at odds with the increasingly inane (not to say mad), playlist and stats-driven conformities of the now. Yet, to twist again, this is the latest chapter in a hyper-modern affair, a timeless pop music that transcends the algorithmic idiocy of copying and points to new possibilities, new horizons." – 𝐿𝑜𝓊𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃 𝒲𝒶𝓇

Transangelic Exodus, Ezra Furman’s second album for Bella Union, is a new landmark for the American singer-songwriter: “not a concept record, but almost a novel, or a cluster of stories on a theme, a combination of fiction and a half-true memoir,” according to its author. “A personal companion for a paranoid road trip. A queer outlaw saga.” The music is as much of an intense, dramatic event, full of brilliant hooks, with an equally evolved approach to recorded sound to match Furman’s narrative vision. In honour of this shift, his backing band has been newly christened: The Boy-Friends are dead, long live The Visions. In other words, the man who embodies the title of his last album Perpetual Motion People is still on the move... Or in the vernacular of the new album, on the run. “The narrative thread,” Furman declares, “is I’m in love with an angel, and a government is after us, and we have to leave home because angels are illegal, as is harbouring angels. The term ‘transangelic’ refers to the fact people become angels because they grow wings. The have an operation, and they’re transformed. And it causes panic because some people think it’s contagious, or it should just be outlawed. “The album still works without the back story, though,” he vouches. “What’s essential is the mood - paranoid, authoritarian, the way certain people are stigmatised. It’s a theme in American life right now, and other so-called democracies.” After “Perpetual Motion People” was released in July 2015, Furman had moved back from California (Oakland) to his home town of Chicago. But after a year, he returned to the west coast (Berkeley this time). “I just seem to keep moving,” he sighs. Still, Transangelic Exodus was mostly recorded – as all Furman's records have been since 2011 - at his bandmate (saxophonist/producer) Tim Sandusky’s Ballistico Studios in Chicago, and with the other Visions - Jorgen Jorgensen (bass, and on this album, cello), Ben Joseph (keyboards, guitar) and Sam Durkes (drums/percussion). Just as Furman’s band hasn’t really changed, so his musical DNA remains intact – a thrilling, literate form of garage-punk rooted in The Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman and ‘50s rock’n’roll. But Transangelic Exodus is noticeably different to its predecessors. “2016 was a hard year,” Furman recalls. “While the political and cultural conversation devolved in a very threatening way, we travelled and toured a lot. We saw ourselves coming to the end of what we were, and we wanted to become something new.” Furman cites Vampire Weekend’s “Modern Vampires Of The City”, Beck’s “Odelay”, Sparklehorse’s “It’s A Wonderful Life”, Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly”, Kayne West’s Yeezus, Angel Olsen’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness and Tune-Yards’ Who Kill – “artists making the most interesting music with the available resources” – as influences on Transangelic Exodus, plus Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen and James Baldwin’s ground-breaking, gay-themed 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room. “My previous records were original in their own way, but got classified as an off-kilter version of a retro band, and I wanted something that sounded more original,” he explains. “So we took time off touring, and made sure we took time with every song. I demoed with different band members, and then combined different demos – some parts even made the final album. So, the sound is more chopped up, edited, affected, rearranged.” One prime example is the album’s lead single ‘Driving Down To LA’, a sparse, but explosive, mix of doo-wop and digital crunch. Another is the haunting ‘Compulsive Liar’. “I wrote it as a ballad on a classical acoustic guitar, but we made it stranger, which brought out the emotion of the lyric more than it would have in its original form,” Furman says. “It’s less predictable; you don’t know where the song might go, and that makes me happy.” Furman once said, “The opening lines of my records tend to be summary statements.” So, what does, “I woke up bleeding in the crotch of a tree / TV blaring on the wall above the coffee machine” (from ‘Suck The Blood From My Wounds’) say about Transangelic Exodus? “I like the opening lines so much, I had to keep them even though they don’t make a lot of sense! You’re dropped into this story or situation, unsure where you are or what’s going on, and suddenly you’re moving. That’s what being alive feels like to me. Unknown and intense. It’s a big part of the record’s mood.” Checking Furman’s successive album covers will show his personal journey, coming out as queer and gender-fluid, which the jagged, agitated ‘Maraschino-Red Dress $8.99 at Goodwill’ meets head on, namely “the painful experience of being a closeted gender-non-conforming person. Having ‘trans’ in the album title has a lot to do with being queer, like [album finale] ‘I Lost My Innocence’ [“…to a boy named Vincent”). That early experience marks the narrator for life. From a young age, because of issues surrounding gender and sexuality, I felt fated to have an outsider perspective. It radicalises you.” Transangelic Exodus addresses another kind of coming out, as Furman addresses his Jewish faith on record much more openly than before, from the shivery ballad ‘God Lifts Up the Lowly’ (which includes a verse in Hebrew) to the exquisite ‘Psalm 151’ and the line “I believe in God but I don't believe we're getting out of this one” in ‘Come Here Get Away From Me’, a heady blend of rock’n’roll rumble and ghostly clarinet. “There is a lot of longing and anger in those songs,” Furman reckons. “A longing for God, and God’s help, wondering how long this can go on. It feels like we’re in exile – the innocent, persecuted, oppressed and threatened. But it’s hard in pop culture to make explicitly religious statements, as many people – including myself - have been hurt by religion.” Part of Furman’s motivation is the, “fear of fascist takeover,” expressed in the video to ‘Driving Down To L.A’ (filmed in Virginia, and uncannily storyboarded before the state’s infamous Charlottesville “Unite The Right” rally), as Ezra and his angel are pursued by modern-day Nazis. “At school, we learned all about the Holocaust, and were invited to imagine what would happen if the Nazis invaded again. As white supremacy has become more explicitly institutionalised in the US, my childhood nightmares have started to show up in songs.” Crossing between love, gender, sexuality and religion, and singing in solidarity with the innocent, persecuted, oppressed and threatened, Ezra Furman has soundtracked the current fear and loathing across America like no other, while pushing ahead with his own agenda, always on the move.

Nothing is ever straightforward with Connan Mockasin, and nothing should ever be straightforward with Connan Mockasin. This riddled rule has never resounded more than on Jassbusters, Mockasin’s third album and first in five years. An unclassifiable, unconventional album that neither picks up from nor abandons the modes of 2013’s widely-embraced Caramel or its 2010 predecessor Forever Dolphin Love, Jassbusters foreshadows a five-part melodrama titled Bostyn ’n Dobsyn, directed by and staring Mockasin. Jassbusters soundtracks the unpredictable narrative of the television series in eclectic, electric ways. Whether bending genres for shits n’ giggles or collaborating with artists like James Blake (who might just appear on a Jassbusters track), MGMT, John Cale, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Connan Mockasin has always maneuvered in mysterious ways. After touring with the likes of Radiohead and Neil & Liam Finn (Crowded House), the Kiwi R&B surrealist continues assembling a cult around his theater, nay spectacle, of life with Bostyn ’n Dobsyn screenings and Jassbusters performances throughout October and November 2018.

After two concept albums and a string of roles in Hollywood blockbusters, one of music’s fiercest visionaries sheds her alter egos and steps out as herself. Buckle up: Human Monáe wields twice the power of any sci-fi character. In this confessional, far-reaching triumph, she dreams of a world in which love wins (“Pynk\") and women of color have agency (“Django Jane”). Featuring guest appearances from Brian Wilson, Grimes, and Pharrell—and bearing the clear influence of Prince, Monae’s late mentor—*Dirty Computer* is as uncompromising and mighty as it is graceful and fun. “I’m the venom and the antidote,” she wails in “I Like That,” a song about embracing these very contradictions. “Take a different type of girl to keep the whole world afloat.”

Since they appeared with their self-titled, self-released EP back in 2016, Flasher has exuded both a clarity of intent and a radiant self-confidence. Critically applauded from the start, that initial release offered a clear blueprint. By turns razor sharp and woozy, skipping from shoegaze to punk and back again, it offered confirmation of a band whose wiry energy and melodic ease made them instantly arresting. After the release of one more 7” (the wonderfully nervous stutter of Winnie), they quickly found themselves signed to Domino and have since been quietly working on their full-length debut - Constant Image. Recorded in 2017 across a few sleep-deprived weeks at Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, NY, it was produced by Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Deerhunter, War On Drugs) and crackles with invention. This isn’t the sound of a band finding their feet, it’s the rare sound of three people who know exactly what they want to achieve from the start. From their hometown of Washington, DC, with its rich history of idiosyncratic underground music, Flasher - Taylor Mulitz on guitar, bassist Daniel Saperstein and drummer Emma Baker - has emerged at the forefront of a vibrant musical present. The three of them share vocal duties, sometimes harmonizing in gorgeous counter-melodies that sweep you away, sometimes taking turns to sing in nervous fits of emotion. Constant Image is an album of anxiety and escape, but also one of euphoria and freedom. There’s weight and lightness here. It’s not often a debut album arrives in so complete a form but when it does you know you’ve got something special on your hands.

On robo-funk adventure “Get In the Mind Shaft,” Jack White recalls the wonder of first playing a piano chord by hitting three notes together. It’s a neat allegory for a record that feverishly forges disparate elements—hip-hop, country, gospel, electronic music, jazz—together to see what magic happens. Here, at his most playful, White obliterates any lingering notion of him as a garage-rock diehard. “Over and Over and Over” delivers a familiar but no less invigorating dose of high-voltage blues, but only after he’s successfully cross-pollinated rock and psychedelic funk (“Corporation”) and *rapped* through “Ice Station Zebra.” The cascade of ideas is dizzying, but two decades after White first committed himself to vinyl, his possibilities seem endless.

*Lower East Suite Part Three* is the New York combo Onyx Collective\'s first full-length statement—a follow-up to a pair of EPs in a series. Spearheaded by saxophonist Isaiah Barr, the punkish jazz group paints a picture of their fight for artistic survival amid the gentrification and soaring rents of lower Manhattan. The band plays loping melodies at loosely swinging tempos in a mainly acoustic jazz vein, with a raw, avant-garde energy never far from the surface. They also enlist downtown-scene notable Roy Nathanson on a few tracks to add a ragged alto sax counterpoint to Barr while motivating the pliant rhythm section of bassist Walter Stinson and drummer Austin Williamson.

Onyx Collective announce their debut studio album, “Lower East Suite Part Three”, out June 15th via Big Dada. The record features de-facto band leader Isaiah Barr on alto and tenor saxophone, Austin Williamson on drums, Walter Stinson on upright bass, Spencer Murphy on electric bass, and Roy Nathanson as guest saxophone on four tracks. A group of New York mainstays cross in and out of the Onyx universe and often performing live with the band, including Nick Hakim, Princess Nokia, Dev Hynes (Blood Orange), Wiki (Ratking), Julian Soto and Felix Pastorius. Onyx members quietly feature on a bevy of other artists’ records too, with Barr himself recently boasting 3 features on the new David Byrne album and making a cameo in Ibeyi’s live band for their performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Whereas previous Onyx Collective projects capture New York City's more romantic facets, “Lower East Suite Part Three” has a much more ominous sound, reflective of the dissonance that accompanies life in the city. After being forced out of their original practice space due to rising rent, Onyx Collective relocated their headquarters to Magic Gallery on Market St, located in a gritty pocket of Chinatown by the East River. “When I wrote the record I was thinking about concepts like eviction and gentrification,” explains Barr. “The record is born out of the challenges of being in New York.” Recorded at Magic Gallery, “Lower East Suite Part Three” is the first release from Onyx Collective composed of entirely written music. “The record is a graduation for us - from not just having a microphone at a session and spontaneously recording,” says Barr. “This is us doing it on our own, with our own engineer, with a very low budget. That survival is really what I think jazz is: creating with your surroundings, and making something that's a picture of that.” While the new music is more premeditated than the impromptu nature of their previous work, New York's deafening influence remains present. “To some degree it's controlled, but how much is it actually controlled?” continues Barr. “At the end of one of the songs you can still hear a siren from the street. Because we weren't in a professional studio, it's not a controlled environment. We're still in New York.” The group are known for their impromptu performances in both rugged DIY spaces and esteemed clubs alike. Onyx runs a manic energy through their classical training to create a show that at times feels as punk as it does jazz. Following a run of headline UK shows at the start of the year - which included playing to a full house at the legendary Ronnie Scotts - they return to the UK this Spring in support of Kamasi Washington, including a stop at London’s Roundhouse on 4th May. “Lower East Suite Part Three” is preceded by EPs “Lower East Suite Part One” and “..Two”, respectively released in October and December of 2017 on Big Dada, and follows the group's limited edition vinyl-only “2nd Avenue Rundown”, a collection of live recordings released via Supreme and Know Wave in 2016. Artwork for all three “Lower East Suite” releases is by renowned New York artist and director Julian Schnabel, who also contributes handwritten track titles to “Lower East Suite Part Three”.

Over the ten, symmetrical pieces of 'для FOR,' Kate NV scores her native Moscow environment with just enough whimsy to gurgle through the city cracks and grow psychotropic foliage. On her sophomore album, each sound assumes its own personality, moving through the album metropolis like miniature, mutating molecules viewed from NV’s apartment window. Vinyl edition includes multi-format digital download. For More Info: shop.igetrvng.com/collections/all/products/rvngnl50

Lykke Li’s fourth album shifts away from the dream-poppy breakup ballads of 2014\'s *I Never Learn* toward airy, melancholic takes on trap and R&B. Despite the contemporary framing (the idea of sadness itself has become a topic of campy, meme-driven internet fascination), *so sad so sexy* feels less like a bandwagon jump than the work of a singer/songwriter committed to exploring blue moods in all their musical forms. It hints at girl-group pop (“utopia”), power ballads (“bad woman,” “so sad so sexy”), prewar torch songs, and the gilded ennui of artists like Lana Del Rey and Drake (“hard rain,” “deep end”). Wounded but quietly triumphant, *so sad* is the sound of the cloud—and its silver lining.

Ought’s first couple of albums offered a tense, splintered if anthemic vision of post-punk, leavening their discord with hooks, their hail with the occasional hit of sunshine. Far more beautiful but no less exploratory, their third album finds them ascending to the gloomy grandeur of bands like The National or Protomartyr, from the gentle grit of “Disgraced in America” to the Joy Division-ish “These 3 Things” to the striking “Desire,” which blooms from a jagged whisper to a soul-dredging ballad.

Building on his background as a classical pianist and composer, British producer Jon Hopkins uses vast electronic soundscapes to explore other worlds. Here, on his fifth album, he contemplates our own. Inspired by adventures with meditation and psychedelics, *Singularity* aims to evoke the magical awe of heightened consciousness. It’s a theme that could easily feel affected or clichéd, but Hopkins does it phenomenal justice with imaginative, mind-bending songs that feel both spontaneous and rigorously structured. Floating from industrial, polyrhythmic techno (“Emerald Rush\") to celestial, ambient atmospheres (“Feel First Life”), it’s a transcendent headphone vision quest you’ll want to go on again.

Please note: Digital files are 16bit. Singularity marks the fifth album from the UK electronic producer and composer and the follow up to 2013’s Mercury Prize nominated Immunity. Where Immunity charted the dark alternative reality of an epic night out, Singularity explores the dissonance between dystopian urbanity and the green forest. It is a journey that returns to where it began – from the opening note of foreboding to the final sound of acceptance. Shaped by his experiences with meditation and trance states, the album flows seamlessly from rugged techno to transcendent choral music, from solo acoustic piano to psychedelic ambient.

In the wake of the EU Referendum, Damon Albarn decided to travel around Britain to get a sense of a nation plunged into dramatic change. After reconvening with his The Good, the Bad & the Queen bandmates—Paul Simonon, Tony Allen, and Simon Tong—those meditative journeys fed into their second album, *Merrie Land*. It’s an impressionistic portrait of a conflicted, confused land, with funfair organs, choirs, and tugging melodies folded into eerie but beautiful blends of folk, dub, and pop. Albarn talks Apple Music through his pilgrimage and the “strange emotions” that inform the album. **It’s hard not to feel real sadness listening to this record. Is that the point?** I think so, maybe, but I think it’s, if you could call something this, a beautiful sadness. I don’t know what that kind of means. **On the title track, you sing, “This is not rhetoric/It comes from my heart/I love this country.” This record is trying to not be angry or bitter or take sides, right?** No, no, no, I’m not trying to break the family up. I’m trying to be honest and deal with those strange emotions, like love of place. Even though I’ve traveled, it’s fair to say, around the whole world, I always come back home. What’s driven me as a creative person to explore other climes and cultures is what I grew up with in this country. That was what’s special about this country: the sense of openness. That’s what we’re missing with all this hastiness to get stuff done because we decided we had to get it done by this point. That’s all I feel. **You visited various parts of Britain to get a sense of the nation, going beyond the big cities to towns, including ones from British folk tales such as Banbury. Is this record your pilgrimage?** I’d never been to St. Albans or Luton or Banbury. I hadn’t even really been to Oxford. There were things I was very aware of—big cultural landmarks—that I’d never visited. So, in that sense, *pilgrimage* is a good description. I found ghosts everywhere. *Merrie Land* is a ghostly record. You just have to tune into the dissonance and the resonance in each place and work from there, especially if we’re going to try and give an impression. **The songs take us from train rides past World War I cemeteries in France to heavy nights in Blackpool pubs. You’ve packed a lot in here.** Yeah! I’ve never written so many lyrics, so that was a breakthrough for me. It’s something I’d like to explore—more words. I suppose it goes back to Jack Kerouac. Back to Betjeman on the train, it’s got a strong sense of kinship with that, and people like Patrick Hamilton and George Orwell. **Three weeks before the release of *Merrie Land* you were still on tour with Gorillaz. How easy is it to switch between bands?** I just love making music, so it’s not that difficult. I had a strange four days: I finished the massive, euphoric gig in Mexico City \[with Gorillaz\] and then came back to a little room \[in the UK\] to rehearse for eight hours and go on national television. The only thing I regret is that we didn’t have a “work in progress” sign hanging over the microphone stand. Or cones and tape round us. We should’ve been wearing hi-vis jackets: “We haven’t quite built this place yet, but we’re definitely working at it.”

From the first jangling sunshine chords on opening track ‘Mango’, Silver Dollar Moments announces itself as a proper piece of indie pop goodness. Then, across 45 minutes, it takes all kinds of turns, into ESG-ish yips and funk, dreamy-arch harmonies, disco synth-pows and stoner bongos, unsettling submerged voices - with all that and more it still flows like a fountain of indie pop, fresh and catchy and altogether. The album features the singles ‘I Only Bought It For The Bottle,’ ‘Let Your Dogtooth Grow’ and ‘Blue Suitcase (Disco Wrist).’

"Freedom's Goblin" flies us around the soundworld of Ty Segall in nineteen tracks, allowing him to do a bit everything for the free and the goblins of Freedom alike! Deep impact rock of all shapes and sizes and some of the most violent, passionate, funny and free pop songs of 2018.

PHYSICAL ORDERS FROM CANADA PLEASE ORDER FROM HERE : www.secretcityrecords.com/shop/felt/ There are those in our ranks who are touting this new triumphant collection from Montreal’s art-rock heroes SUUNS as the most outright grooved record they’ve made. But hold it right there. Not so fast. SUUNS have always had that deep groove on lock, albeit oft-slithering within an austere and/or sneering veneer. As alluded to by its title and neon-warm album art, SUUNS’ Felt is going to make you feel things. You’re going to learn something about your body listening to cuts like on DJ Shadow-leaning, head-bobber “Look No Further” or “Make It Real,” which could be a radio signal of a lost Silver Apples cut — that is, before it becomes a doomsday siren breakup song. Suuns is ruthlessly set on being one of the planet’s finest, bravest bands.

Sleep’s *The Sciences* begins with a three-minute warm-up of the same name. As though revving a long-dormant engine of feedback and distortion, it’s a fitting start to the legendary doom trio’s first album in almost two decades (released on 4/20, no less). Unlike their hour-plus stoner meditation, *Dopesmoker*, *The Sciences* is divided into six colossal tracks, anchored by the comforting familiarity of sludgy riffs and rumbling percussion. Throughout, you’ll find some of their greatest guitar solos (“Marijuanaut’s Theme”) and lyrics (“Giza Butler,” an homage to Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler), while stunning, reflective closer “The Botanist” is among the best songs in their genre-defining career.

Even after a couple of albums, the instrumental combo known as Szun Waves still sounds unknowable. British producer Luke Abbott’s synthesizers have a dreamlike quality, and Australian drummer Laurence Pike (Triosk, PVT) conveys the immediacy of a live jazz room, with Londoner Jack Wyllie’s saxophone hovering in mysterious, melodic spaces between. That strangely organic mix, wholly improvised, is everywhere on *New Hymn to Freedom*: the whirring, whooshing feedback squalls of “Fall Into Water,” the noisy, interactive tumult of “High Szun,” the loose swing feel and soprano sax chants of “Temple,” and the lonesome synth meditation of “Moon Runes.” On the longest piece, the closing title track, the trio explore blurred zones between jazz and experimental electronic music, easing gradually into tempo from the primordial haze.

Sometimes in improvised music there can be a distance between listener and players, a sense you’re sitting back and admiring their interplay and abstraction – but with Szun Waves’ second album, you’re right in there with them, inside the playing, experiencing the absolute joy the three musicians feel as they circle around each other, exploring the spaces they’ve opened up. The three members already have sparkling pedigrees of their own. Norfolk’s Luke Abbott is well known for his explorations of the zones between pure ambience and the leftmost fringes of club culture. With Portico Quartet and Circle Traps, Jack Wyllie has been in the vanguard of UK fusions of jazz, classical and club music. Australian drummer Laurence Pike has likewise found a unique voice in improvised and experimental music-making, whether in the bands Triosk or PVT, or as a solo artist. The trio’s musical relationship has grown naturally and steadily, and it shows. From Wyllie adding shimmering sustained sax notes to Abbott’s gorgeous ambient pieces in 2013, Szun Waves emerged when Pike was added to the mix, energising the sound but still keeping its levitational qualities. Their 2016 self-released debut album hit a natural groove – it was a “proof of concept” as Abbott says – and now they’re in a place of pure spontaneity: New Hymn To Freedom is a document of six entirely live improvisations – “no edits or overdubs” – and its title couldn’t be more apt.

On April 5th Instant Classic will release a brand new album from Lonker See. Entitled "One Eye Sees Red", the record consists of three complex tracks with a running time of over 40 minutes. "I believe this album shows our departure from stoner rock/psychedelic inspirations to improvised structures with a more complex approach to Lonker See's sound," explains Joanna Kucharska (bass, vocals). Recording session took place in January 2018 in Monochrom Studio. "The key actor in this process was our producer Haldor Grunberg who added a bright and selective sound to our playing," she adds. "Before entering the studio we made sure each track had it's own structure more or less finished, meaning completed. But we also decided to leave some space for improvising," recalls Kucharska. "And so the album became a mixture of our individual experiences. There's no main thought or motif behind it but we made sure that the songs have a sound that creates a bigger hole," Joanna says. Lonker See live: 05.04, Warszawa - www.facebook.com/events/166511347324481/ 06.04, Lublin - www.facebook.com/events/2017787248496022/ 08.04, Rzeszów - www.facebook.com/events/516456118716665/ 09.04, Kraków - www.facebook.com/events/176955289581561/ 10.04, Łódź - www.facebook.com/events/189307811801329/ 11.04, Wrocław - www.facebook.com/events/202230607179726/ 12.04, Praga - www.facebook.com/events/134759807214451/ 13.04, Poznań - www.facebook.com/events/274473559752281/ 14.04, Gdańsk - www.facebook.com/events/580726775597940/

Barrow/Fuller/Young

Even when you're married and you're best friends and you've spent a lifetime (18 years is a lifetime, right?) collaborating with each other, it's not often obvious what's staring you right in the face. “I've Tortured You Long Enough” is the tongue-in-cheek title of Mass Gothic's second album for this reason, among several others. Husband/Wife duo Noel Heroux and Jessica Zambri have always dipped in and out of each other's creative spaces, advising on their respective outputs and supporting one another. But never had they before completely committed to doing an entire album as a duo, sharing an equal load. The time had come. And thank goodness. They have dreamed up a record packed with the tension, chaos and beauty of a fluid and cathartic two-way conversation. In a universe increasingly threatening our abilities to work hard on communication and coexistence, their creative union isn't just inspired but important. “Why did it take us so long?” laughs Heroux from their home in Queens, New York. When Heroux put out 2016's self-titled Mass Gothic record, he was necessarily doing so as a solo entity. Mass Gothic was born as a necessary project for his workings following the aftermath of Hooray For Earth's end. Plagued by his own insecurities and anxieties, Heroux wasn't yet ready to deal with putting his trust and confidence into another shared project. He wasn't in a place to take on the burden of those responsibilities with another individual, especially not an individual so fundamental to his existence. So what changed? He can't exactly pinpoint when the phrase “I've Tortured You Long Enough” came to him. It was before a single song of this record was written. But it became a mantra, almost a premonition. Says Heroux, “It just popped into my head,” explains Heroux. “You can say it to a loved one, or to a friend. Or you could wish someone say it to you. It covers so many bases but it's taken on extra meaning in the past couple of years while everybody is at each other's throats; frustrated and confused all the time.” The most important application of the phrase, however, was upon Heroux himself. He had tortured his own psyche long enough, and was particularly in need of forcing himself out of his comfort zone and letting go of that prior stubbornness. “I've struggled greatly with telling myself that I can't do things, or that things aren't good enough.” he says. Then in the Fall of 2016 circumstances led him to face his biggest fears head on, because he physically had no other choice. “We rented a small tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. We put ourselves away and worked on music all day, wondering what it would feel and sound like,” explains Zambri. It began with Zambri penning the first iterations of 'Keep On Dying', a synth-laden call-to-arms that recalls the frantic energy of Animal Collective and the celestial torch-bearing of Bat For Lashes. Zambri had the melody and lyrics, and Noel arranged the chords to finish the song. Then things started snowballing. While the writing may have begun in New York, it relocated to LA while their lives became totally in flux. They threw caution to the wind last January and got rid of their Brooklyn apartment. Not only that, they also purged all their belongings, except the bare bones for making an album: instruments and recording equipment. They bought a car and lived out of a duffle bag of clothes for an entire year. They drove to LA, lived with their co-producer Josh Ascalon, and wrote and wrote and wrote. “The entire record from start to finish was done without having our own place to live,” marvels Heroux now. “Maybe we wouldn't have been able to do it if we were anchored at home. We were forced into it. Jess was trying to open me up and if we could have just sat on a couch and thrown on the TV it probably wouldn't have worked.” The partnership has distinctly evolved the project's sound. Mass Gothic was a far more diverse debut, and as the most successful debuts do it was just Heroux by himself, throwing a hundred different ideas at the wall. He describes it now as “the hellish sounds” of his own brain. Its follow-up therefore is a far more intentional meeting-of-minds. Their openness to work with one another had to come without rules as neither of them could afford to hold back. Last Spring, for instance, when they thought they'd done all the work and had a fully mixed album, they realized separately that it had way more potential. While they were preparing to go on tour with Zambri's sister, Cristi Jo, and her sister's boyfriend Joseph Stickney, Heroux woke up one morning, turned to Zambri and said: “Oh god, we have to fucking re-record the whole album.” The rehearsals were the equivalent of pre-records, and they knew the tracks could accomplish so much more. Although he was afraid to say it out loud, they both agreed it was what was required. The final ten days took place in the studio in Brooklyn where they laid it down from start to finish with Rick Kwan (Chris Coady mixed the record and Heba Kadry mastered it). “It was too pristine before,” says Zambri. “We wanted it to be perfect but it wasn't breathing. Even if there would be tension, we wanted it to flow like water.” On that front they've achieved a remarkable arc. Bookended by the tracks 'Dark Window' and 'Big Window', it begins from a place of uncertainty, overwhelming disquiet and self-doubt, and it works towards a feeling greater than the individual. Via an optimistic number of romantic love songs ('Call Me', 'J.Z.O.K.', 'How I Love You') the record basks in the acceptance of co-dependence. Even though the works are intensive, there's an element of ease to their overall message. The chords and beats may feel squeezed and claustrophobic at times, but expansive guitar tones and electronics allow the listener to deep dive into a chasm of potential. “Overall it's a conversation between the two of us,” explains Zambri. It isn't autobiographical to the point of alienating its listener though. It’s important that the songs provoke. It's a record that concludes with the comfort in knowing that you can be both independent and successful in a relationship, which speaks quite literally of the pairs' experience giving in to this process with one another. Written by Eve Barlow

Seven is the magic number. What’s more, this is about more than the number of days in the week or continents in the world - psychologists have theorised that the human memory’s ability to calibrate information on a short term basis is mostly limited to a sequence of this length. Thus, it seems strangely fitting that Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - the Newcastle-based maximalists whose riffs, raw power and rancour have blazed a trail across the darker quarters of the underground in the last five years, have made a second album in King Of Cowards which does its damnedest to take consciousness to its very limits. Moreover, another notable seven is dealt with here - that of the deadly sins. As vocalist and synth player Matt Baty notes “In terms of how the theme came together I’d relate it to throwing paint at a canvas in a really physical and subconscious way, then stepping back to analyse it and seeing it all as one piece. It wasn’t until then that I saw there was this continual thread of sin and guilt in the lyrics throughout the album. For a long time I’ve questioned how and where guilt can be used as a form of oppression... When can guilt be converted into positive action? After typing all of the lyrics up I realised I’d unwittingly referenced every one of the seven deadly sins throughout the album. That’s the fire and brimstone Catholic teachings I picked up at school coming into play there!” The period since Pigs’ Rocket Recordings 2017 debut Feed The Rats - a mighty tsunami of rancorous riffage and unholy abjection that wowed critics and wreckheads alike - has seen the band build on their incendiary live reputation far and wide, from the sweatiest of UK fleapits to illustrious festivals like Roskilde. Perhaps the most relentlessly head-caving outfit of an alarmingly fertile scene operating in Newcastle at present, the band have all been busying themselves in a variety of activities, with Baty running Box Records (home of underground luminaries like Lower Slaughter, Casual Nun and Terminal Cheesecake) and both himself and bassist John-Michael Hedley playing in Richard Dawson’s band - indeed Dawson himself guests on King Of Cowards, both on synth and as part of a vocal ensemble on the opening “GNT” - moreover, guitarist Sam Grant has been working hard on a new incarnation of Blank Studios, which began its life with the recording of this very album. This opus sees the band entering a new phase as a sleeker yet still more dangerous swineherd, with ex-Gnod and Queer’d Science drummer Chris Morley joining the ranks and a new approach being taken to its creation. The Iggy-esque drive to dementia, Sabbath-esque squalor and Motörhead-style dirt may still be present and correct yet the songs are leaner, the longdrawn-out riff-fests sharpened into addictive hammer blows and the nihilistic dirges of yore alchemically transformed into an uplifting and inviting barrage of hedonistic abandon. Against all odds, the writing of this record entailed encounters with actual pigs. “We hired a remote, converted barn in the Italian countryside and spent a week there writing the bulk of the album and trying to make friends with wild boar.” notes Adam Ian Sykes. “The results are shorter, more concise songs with, I guess, a little more focus, especially thematically. We wanted to shift slightly from our old jam-based way of working. In places, the album gets darker than Feed the Rats, especially lyrically but we also tried to get a fair amount of levity in there.” “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” So George Orwell noted at the end of a certain slim volume. King Of Cowards is nothing less than just such a metamorphosis, one in which - in a blur of primal urges and beastly physicality - this band shows us just which animalsare really in charge of the farm.