The Quietus Albums Of The Year So Far Chart 2022

Born from the fractal innerworld of Vymethoxy Redspiders, better known as Urocerus Gigas from Leeds-based xenofeminist crisis energy rock duo Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop's debut is a synaesthetic acid bath that cracks open the doors of perception to reveal a sonic landscape of ineffable beauty, divine femininity and continual transformation. "Psychonautic Escapism" sublimes Guttersnipe's teeth-gnashing spacegrind aesthetic leaving washes of dream pop ambience, dilated speedcore fusillades and shapeshifting psychedelic dub effects. It's an album that lodges itself creatively between Cocteau Twins, Arca, Basic Channel and Napalm Death, lysergically fluxing imperceptibly between seemingly contradictory sonics and philosophies. Miss VR took 14 long, difficult years to write the album, which developed cautiously as she broke through the misery of her pre-transition life with shoegaze music, rave and psychedelic drugs in Leeds' queer underground. An existence languishing in negativity, soundtracked by extreme music was replaced with the opportunity to experience euphoria, elation and ecstatic freedom, emotions that coalesce sensually on "Psychonautic Escapism". These formative experiences are the album's initial building blocks, assembled between 2007 and 2018 as Miss VR came to grips with her reality as an autistic/ADHD trans woman and the multi-dimensional psychotropic experiences that assisted that realization. And as V's worldview expanded and shifted as she lived a fresh life, the music itself developed spiritually. In 2018, after being impressed with producer Ross Halden's work with Guttersnipe, Miss VR asked him to assist her with developing The Ephemeron Loop's fragmented songs and visions. "I learned a lot about why people don’t usually combine various kinds of sounds or styles in music," she admits. "It is very difficult to get it to all work together!" But after two-and-a-half years of the duo navigating a "labyrinth of fragmented Reason 5 and Logic projects," re-recording and processing, and working tirelessly on complex arrangements and compositions, they eventually found a light at the end of the tunnel. The finished album is towering and ambitious, Escher-like in its illusory reconstruction of familiar elements into brain-altering forms. The album begins with 'Psychonautic Escapism (Cold Alienation)', decorating Miss VR’s disembodied moans with throbbing dub techno synths, insectoid digital percussion and disorientating high-BPM electronics. Her vocals hover weightlessly between My Bloody Valentine's Bilinda Butcher and Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser, and on 'Lattice Dysmorphism of Lysothymic Oneiroid Cytoterrain' drift against grinding industrial hardcore kicks, serrated bass and Lorenzo Senni-esque trance pointillism. On 'Trench Through Pink Death', Miss VR’s voice mutates into a shrill scream as she directs the music from splattered free-flowing doom into harsh hyper-speed death metal and breakcore. Woven together with both precision and delicacy, "Psychonautic Escapism" turns a rough patchwork of ideas, experiences, feelings and vivid emotions into a glorious neon tapestry. In living and exploring the realities of autism, ADHD and trans identity, Vymethoxy Redspiders has masterminded a sonic language that feels fresh, urgent and shockingly honest. Psychedelic is a term that gets thrown around far too loosely at the moment - in this case there's just no better way of describing the album's scope.

When Kendrick Lamar popped up on two tracks from Baby Keem’s *The Melodic Blue* (“range brothers” and “family ties”), it felt like one of hip-hop’s prophets had descended a mountain to deliver scripture. His verses were stellar, to be sure, but it also just felt like way too much time had passed since we’d heard his voice. He’d helmed 2018’s *Black Panther* compilation/soundtrack, but his last proper release was 2017’s *DAMN.* That kind of scarcity in hip-hop can only serve to deify an artist as beloved as Lamar. But if the Compton MC is broadcasting anything across his fifth proper album *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers*, it’s that he’s only human. The project is split into two parts, each comprising nine songs, all of which serve to illuminate Lamar’s continually evolving worldview. Central to Lamar’s thesis is accountability. The MC has painstakingly itemized his shortcomings, assessing his relationships with money (“United in Grief”), white women (“Worldwide Steppers”), his father (“Father Time”), the limits of his loyalty (“Rich Spirit”), love in the context of heteronormative relationships (“We Cry Together,” “Purple Hearts”), motivation (“Count Me Out”), responsibility (“Crown”), gender (“Auntie Diaries”), and generational trauma (“Mother I Sober”). It’s a dense and heavy listen. But just as sure as Kendrick Lamar is human like the rest of us, he’s also a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the most thoughtful MCs alive, and someone whose honesty across *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers* could help us understand why any of us are the way we are.

There’s an expansive, uplifting quality to caroline’s 2022 debut, the sense of a large group of people—eight, in this case—together in a room, breathing as one. Cozy as the music can feel, it’s an unusual blend: the woodsy, rustic quality of ’70s British folk, the grandeur of classic Midwestern emo, the abstractions of post-rock and free improvisation. By either grace or design, the closest metaphors are found in nature: a blossoming dawn (“Dark Blue”), crashing waves (the chaotic finale of “Natural death”), ice thawing in sun (“Skydiving onto the library roof”), and wind rippling through grass (“zilch”). Together, they ebb, flow, fray, and coalesce—emphasis on *together*.

UK eight-piece caroline’s eponymous debut album often cascades with force like an avalanche, squalling and rumbling on the edge of all-out collapse. At other points they slip back into impossibly fragile moments of quiet – a simple bassline or a rattle of snare the only sound amid a dark sea of silence. caroline know exactly the right balance between restraint and release. These songs are expansive and emotive pieces, their rich palette drawing on a mixture of choral singing, Midwestern emo and O’Malley and Llewellyn’s roots in Appalachian folk. “Sometimes things sound much better when there’s empty space,” says Llewellyn. “Sometimes you might populate [a song] with too many things and forget that an element on its own is enough.” Elsewhere on the record the band have employed a collage-like technique, combining snippets of lo-fi recordings from a myriad of different locations – a barn in France, the members’ bedrooms and living rooms, the atmospheric swimming pool in which they also filmed sublime live sessions for ‘Dark blue’ and ‘Skydiving onto the library roof’ – with more traditional group sessions at the Total Refreshment Centre and their studio in Peckham. The growth that began as a scrappy guitar band above a pub many years ago is still continuing. caroline’s astounding debut album is merely the first step.

Chicago rapper/producer Saba’s first full-length since 2018’s critically acclaimed *CARE FOR ME* looks existentially inward instead of projecting outward. Whereas its predecessor was often perceived through the lens of grief, with his cousin John Walt’s tragic death weighing considerably on the proceedings, his third album explodes such listener myopia with a thoughtful and thought-provoking expression of American Blackness. Though its title might suggest scarcity on a surface level, these 14 songs exude richness in their textures and complexity in their themes. “Stop That” imbues its gauzy trap beat with self-motivating logic, while “Come My Way” gets to reminiscing over a laidback R&B groove. His choice of collaborators demonstrates a carefully curated approach, with 6LACK and Smino bringing a sense of community to the funk-infused “Still” and fellow Chicago native G Herbo helping to unravel multigenerational programming on the gripping “Survivor’s Guilt.” The presence of hip-hop elder statesman Black Thought on the title track only serves to further validate Saba’s experiences, the connection implicitly showing solidarity with sentiments and values of the preceding songs.

Listeners coming to the *Drive My Car* soundtrack because of the movie’s accolades may not be familiar with its composer, Eiko Ishibashi, but those attuned to the more refined corners of underground music probably are. Like her collaborator, Jim O’Rourke—who plays guitar here, and also served as mixer—Ishibashi makes music that can scan as avant-garde but rarely feels confrontational or experimental, touching on lounge-jazz (“Drive My Car”), drifting electro-acoustic pieces (“We’ll Live Through the Long, Long Days, and Through the Long Nights”), crystalline piano (“The Truth, No Matter What It Is, Isn’t That Frightening”), and sound collage (“Cassette”). The unifying thread is a sense of delicacy and lightness: nothing oversold, nothing overplayed. Some soundtracks drive their subjects; Ishibashi frames.

Listeners get a sense of Mary Halvorson’s writing for The Mivos Quartet on the latter three tracks of *Amaryllis*. But on *Belladonna*, the companion album from the same year, the pairing of the Mivos strings and Halvorson’s guitar becomes the sole focus. While the horns and rhythm section of *Amaryllis* make for a busier, more groove-oriented sound, the sparser texture of *Belladonna* renders it more guitar-centric. In a sense, The Mivos Quartet becomes a string quintet, though Halvorson’s instrument is plucked rather than bowed, and she makes liberal use of pitch-shifting and bending effects to tweak her otherwise clean and unadorned hollow-body sound. (Four minutes into “Flying Song” is a particularly stark example.) The writing is sonically rich, dense with counterpoint and astringent lyricism, with a porous boundary between composed and improvised elements. In the closing minutes of the title track, Halvorson takes an aggressive turn, multitracking distorted lines over a metal-like cello riff. For a moment, the aesthetics of shred crash the chamber-music party, right before the whole affair comes abruptly to an end.

In the five years between Syd’s solo debut, *Fin*, and its follow-up, the singer-songwriter experienced her first major heartbreak. It upended her world right as our social lives were already contracting under the weight of the pandemic, giving her plenty of time to mourn and then heal. Most of the songs on *Broken Hearts Club*, despite its name, were written before that, when she was still swaddled in the bliss of deep, reciprocal love. What results is a conceptual evolution of romance and its subsequent unraveling, traced over the course of the album. “CYBAH” (as in “could you break a heart”—one of the few songs written after the fact) captures the ambivalence of catching feelings, as fear begins to give way to surrender. Warm fuzzy feelings abound. They\'re in the ecstasy of “Fast Car,” an ode to not-so-secret rendezvous and stolen kisses, and the sentimental delight of “Sweet” and “Control,” both emblems of infatuation transforming into safety and comfort. Around “Out Loud”—a gorgeous plea to be desired and adored without shame which becomes especially cogent through the voices of Syd and Kehlani, both of whom are gay—cracks begin to emerge, before the all-out shattering of “Goodbye My Love.” Love is a risk and deserves music that reflects as much, and likewise, within the space of *Broken Hearts Club*, Syd shows up more vulnerable than ever. The lilt of her voice shifts forward, front and center to sing the kind of lyrics that could only come from real-life inspiration. There\'s no hiding here. It may be her most personal album to date, but it resonates far beyond.

"I FEEL TRASHED"

Traditionally, a band releases their debut album and heads out for an extended stretch on the road, honing their live chops, twisting their songs into new shapes. But when Black Country, New Road released *For the First Time* in February 2021, that route was blocked off by the pandemic. Instead, the London-based band set out to tweak and tamper with their experimental post-rock sound for a transformative second album. They might not have been able to travel, but their music could. “By the time the first album came out, those songs had existed for so long that we were very keen to change the way we wrote music,” bassist Tyler Hyde tells Apple Music. The material that makes up their second record, *Ants From Up There*, soon came to life, the group using the labyrinthine “Basketball Shoes,” which had been around before their debut, as a springboard. “We wanted to explore the themes we’d created on that song,” says Hyde. “It’s essentially three songs within one, all of which relatively cover the emotions and moods that are on the album. It’s hopeful and light, but still looks at some of the darker sides that the first album showed.” The resultant record sees the band hit hypnotic new peaks. *Ants From Up There*, recorded before the departure of singer Isaac Wood in January 2022, is less reliant on jerky, rhythmic U-turns than their debut (although there is some of that), with expansive, Godspeed You! Black Emperor-ish atmospherics emerging in their place. “Fundamentally, we relearned an entirely new style of playing with each other,” says drummer Charlie Wayne. “We learned a lot about how to express ourselves just for each other rather than for anything else going on externally.” Here Hyde, Wayne, and saxophonist Lewis Evans take us through it, track by track. **“Intro”** Lewis Evans: “This uses the theme from ’Basketball Shoes,’ compressed into these little micro cells and repeated over and over again. It’s just a straight-up, impactful welcome to the album.” **“Chaos Space Marine”** Tyler Hyde: “In this song, we allowed ourselves to get out all the stupid, funny joke style of playing. It was just our way of saying yes to everything. There are many things across the album—and in previous songs from the last album—that are seemingly good ideas, but they’ve come about through a joke. I think the rest of the album is much more considered than that. It’s our silly song. It’s a voyage. It’s a sea shanty. It’s a space trip.” **“Concorde”** Charlie Wayne: “I love how it follows the same chord progression the whole way through, and it’s driven but very soft. It’s got real moments of delicacy, and it’s a song that we all thought quite a lot about when we were getting it together. When you’re restricted to that one-chord sequence, you want it to feel as though it’s going somewhere and progressing, so the peaks and troughs have to be considered.” **“Bread Song”** LE: “It’s like two different songs in one. You’ve got this really quite flowing and free track in a melodic and conventional harmonic way, but rhythmically free and flowing accompaniment to Isaac’s vocals. It feels quite orchestral, and the way that we all play together on this recording is so in sync with each other. We were listening to each other so much, so the swells that one person starts making, people start responding to, and everybody is swelling at the same time and getting quieter at the same time. Then it turns into this almost Soweto, kind of township-style pop tune at the end. It’s a really fun ending to an intense, emotional tune.” **“Good Will Hunting”** LE: “This is another slightly silly one, and it’s got a really silly ending which actually never made the cut on the album, but it’s heavily driven by the riff on the guitars. I think at the time we were listening to quite a bit of Kurt Vile, especially rhythmically. I can remember a conversation about when we wanted the drums to come in and to be super straight, super driven. Then for the choruses, rhythmically, to completely flip and not feel like they were big at all. So for both the choruses, the drums are just tiny.” **“Haldern”** TH: “We were playing at Haldern Pop Festival in north Germany during lockdown. We’d just been allowed to fly for work purposes, and we were doing this session. We did two performances there, and the second one was a livestream, and we weren’t allowed to play songs that weren’t released. At the time, that left us with not very much that we weren’t already bored with, so we decided to do some improv. It was a very lucky day where we were all very in sync with one another. So ‘Haldern’ was totally from improv, which is not how we write ever.” **“Mark’s Theme”** LE: “This is a tune written kind of for my uncle who passed away from COVID in 2021. I wrote it on my tenor saxophone as soon as I found out. I just started playing and wrote that. It’s a reflection on him and my feelings towards him passing away and everything being really bleak. He was a massive fan and supporter of the band, so it felt right to put that on the album and to have his name remembered with our music.” **“The Place Where He Inserted the Blade”** CW: “For me, this is about as far away as we went from the first album. Aesthetically, where the first album has moments of real dissonance and apathy, ‘The Place Where He Inserted the Blade’ is very warm and rich and quite uplifting. I think it strikes right to the heart of what the album is for me, which is fundamentally being in the room, making music with my friends.” **“Snow Globes”** LE: “This is another tune where we really thought about what we wanted from it before we wrote it. We had examples of things we liked, and one of them was Frank Ocean’s ‘White Ferrari.’ We liked the idea of it almost being like two different bands \[playing\] at the same time. So you’ve got this quite simple but quite heart-wrenching, fugal-sounding arrangement of all the instruments with a drum solo that is just crazy and doesn’t really relate too much to what is going on in the other instruments. We react to the drum solo, but he doesn’t react to us. It’s that kind of idea.” **“Basketball Shoes”** TH: “It’s essentially a medley of the whole album. It’s got literal musical motifs that are repeated on different songs in the album. It touches on all the themes that we’ve been exploring, and it’s the most climactic song on the album. It wouldn’t really make sense to not finish with it, it’s so exhausting. It’s such a journey. I think you just wouldn’t be able to pay much attention to anything that followed it because you’d be so wiped out after listening to it.”

Black Country, New Road return with the news that their second album, “Ants From Up There”, will land on February 4th on Ninja Tune. Following on almost exactly a year to the day from the release of their acclaimed debut “For the first time”, the band have harnessed the momentum from that record and run full pelt into their second, with “Ants From Up There” managing to strike a skilful balance between feeling like a bold stylistic overhaul of what came before, as well as a natural progression. Released alongside the announcement the band (Lewis Evans, May Kershaw, Charlie Wayne, Luke Mark, Isaac Wood, Tyler Hyde and Georgia Ellery) have also today shared the first single from the album, ‘Chaos Space Marine’, a track that has already become a live favourite with fans since its first public airings earlier this year - combining sprightly violin, rhythmic piano, and stabs of saxophone to create something infectiously fluid that builds to a rousing crescendo. It’s a track that frontman Isaac Wood calls “the best song we’ve ever written.” It’s a chaotic yet coherent creation that ricochets around unpredictably but also seamlessly. “We threw in every idea anyone had with that song,” says Wood. “So the making of it was a really fast, whimsical approach - like throwing all the shit at the wall and just letting everything stick.” Their debut “For the first time” is a certain 2021 Album of the Year, having received ecstatic reviews from critics and fans alike as well as being shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize. Released in February to extensive, global, critical support - perhaps best summed up by The Times who wrote in their 5/5 review that they were "the most exciting band of 2021" and The Observer who called their record "one of the best albums of the year" - the album made a significant dent on the UK Albums Chart where it landed at #4 in its first week, a remarkable achievement for a largely experimental debut record. The album also reached #1 on Any Decent Music, #2 at Album Of The Year and sat at #1 on Rate Your Music for several weeks, remaining the record to generate the most fan reviews and site discussion there this year. Black Country, New Road were also declared Artist Of The Week and Album Of The Week by The Observer, The Line Of Best Fit and Stereogum, and saw features, including covers and reviews, from the likes of Mojo, NPR, CRACK, Uncut, The Quietus, Pitchfork, The FADER, Loud & Quiet, The Face, Paste, The Needle Drop, DIY, NME, CLASH, So Young, Dork and more. With “For the first time” the band melded klezmer, post-rock, indie and an often intense spoken word delivery. On “Ants From Up There” they have expanded on this unique concoction to create a singular sonic middle ground that traverses classical minimalism, indie-folk, pop, alt rock and a distinct tone that is already unique to the band. Recorded at Chale Abbey Studios, Isle Of Wight, across the summer with the band’s long-term live engineer Sergio Maschetzko, it’s also an album that comes loaded with a deep-rooted conviction in the end result. “We were just so hyped the whole time,” says Hyde. “It was such a pleasure to make. I've kind of accepted that this might be the best thing that I'm ever part of for the rest of my life. And that's fine.” Black Country, New Road's live performances have already gained legendary status from fans and has seen them labelled "one of the UK's best live bands" by The Guardian. After the success of their livestream direct from London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, stand-out performances at SXSW and the BBC 6 Music Festival, and following a sold-out UK tour this summer, high-profile festival appearances, and a 43 date UK & EU tour to follow in the Autumn with sold out US dates next year, the London-based seven-piece today announce further UK & IE dates in support of the album for April 2022, preceded by their biggest London headliner to date at The Roundhouse in February. Black Country, New Road Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, mastered by Christian Wright at Abbey Road, will be available as part of the Deluxe LP and CD versions of ‘Ants From Up There’. Fans who pre-order any format of ‘Ants From Up There’ from the Black Country, New Road store, their Bandcamp page and the Ninja Tune shop, will be able to gain access to the pre-sale for the 2022 UK headline tour dates. The full set of dates are as follows: 22/10/2021 - Rotondes, Luxembourg 23/10/2021 - Bumann & Sohn, Cologne – DE (SOLD OUT) 24/10/2021 - Botanique Orangerie, Belgium – BE (SOLD OUT) 25/10/2021 - Le Trabendo, Paris - FR 27/10/2021 - Le Grand Mix, Tourcoing - FR 28/10/2021 - Lieu Unique, Nantes - FR 29/10/2021 - Rockschool Barbey, Bordeaux - FR 1/11/2021 - Teatro Duse, Bologna - IT 2/11/2021 - Auditorium Della Mole, Ancona - IT 05/11/2021 - Circolo della Musica, Turin - IT 06/11/2021 - Bogen F, Zürich - CH (SOLD OUT) 08/11/2021 - Underdogs', Prague - CZ (SOLD OUT) 09/11/2021 - Frannz Club, Berlin - DE (SOLD OUT) 10/11/2021 - Hydrozagadka, Warsaw - PL (SOLD OUT) 11/11/2021 - Transcentury Update Warm Up @ UT Connewitz Leipzig - DE 12/11/2021 - Bahnhof Pauli, Hamburg - DE 14/11/2021 - Le Guess Who? Festival, Utrecht - NL 16/11/2021 - Paradiso Noord, Amsterdam - NL (SOLD OUT) 20/11/2021 - Super Bock En Stock, Lisbon - PT 21/11/2021 - ZDB, Lisbon - PT (SOLD OUT) 29/11/2021 - Chalk, Brighton - UK (SOLD OUT) * 30/11/2021 - Junction 1, Cambridge - UK (SOLD OUT) * 01/12/2021 - 1865, Southampton - UK * 03/12/2021 - Arts Club, Liverpool - UK (SOLD OUT) * 04/12/2021 - Irish Centre, Leeds - UK (SOLD OUT) * 06/12/2021 - O2 Ritz Manchester, Manchester – UK * (SOLD OUT) 07/12/2021 - Newcastle University Student Union, Newcastle Upon Tyne - UK * 08/12/2021 - SWG3, Glasgow - UK * 09/12/2021 - The Mill, Birmingham - UK * (SOLD OUT) 10/12/2021 - The Waterfront, Norwich - UK * 12/12/2021 – Marble Factory, Bristol – UK (SOLD OUT) * 13/12/2021 - Y Plas, Cardiff - UK * 15/12/2021 - Whelan's, Dublin - IE (SOLD OUT) * 08/02/2022 - Roundhouse, London - UK 18/02/2022 – DC9 Nightclub, Washington, DC – US (SOLD OUT) 19/02/2022 – The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA – US (SOLD OUT) 22/02/2022 – Sultan Room, Turk’s Inn, Brooklyn, NY – US (SOLD OUT) 23/02/2022 – Elsewhere, Brooklyn, NY – US 25/02/2022 – Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA – US (SOLD OUT) 26/02/2022 – Bar Le Ritz, Montreal, QC – CAN 28/02/2022 – Third Man Records, Detroit, MI – US 01/03/2022 – Lincoln Hall, Chicago, IL – US 03/03/2022 – Barboza, Seattle, WA – US (SOLD OUT) 04/03/2022 – Polaris Hall, Portland, OR – US 05/03/2022 – The Miniplex, Richard’s Goat Tavern, Arcata, CA – US 06/03/2022 – Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA – US 08/03/2022 – Zebulon, Los Angeles, CA – US (SOLD OUT) 09/03/2022 – Regent Theater, Los Angeles, CA – US 06/04/2022 - The Foundry, Sheffield - UK 07/04/2022 - O2 Academy, Oxford - UK 09/04/2022 - Liquid Room, Edinburgh - UK 10/04/2022 - The Empire, Belfast - UK 11/04/2022 - 3Olympia, Dublin - IE 13/04/2022 - Albert Hall, Manchester - UK 14/04/2022 - Rock City, Nottingham - UK 16/04/2022 - Concorde 2, Brighton - UK 17/04/2022 - O2 Academy, Bristol - UK 02/06/2022 – Primavera Sound Festival, Barcelona - ES 08/07/2022 - Pohoda Festival, Trencin – SK * - with Ethan P. Flynn Pre-sale to The Roundhouse show and April 2022 UK / IE dates available from Tuesday 19th October at 9am BST. Tickets go on general sale on Friday 22nd October at 9am BST.

One of a pair of strong 2022 releases, Mary Halvorson’s *Amaryllis* finds her in a sextet lineup with Patricia Brennan’s vibraphone as the primary harmonic instrument and tone color. As a brass section and as individual soloists, trombonist Jacob Garchik and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill are superb in every respect. Bassist Nick Dunston and drummer Tomas Fujiwara achieve an ideal balance of driving, funky rhythm and sensitive support. On the latter half of the album, Halvorson adds the adventurous strings of the Mivos Quartet, offering a glimpse of the sounds she’s able to summon with Mivos on the full-length companion release, *Belladonna*. The breadth, detail, and sheer character of her writing on these releases is a marvel, attesting to her prodigious growth as an artist in this period.

Welsh producer/vocalist Kelly Lee Owens released her ultra-personal second album, *Inner Song*, in August 2020, in the thick of the pandemic. With any plans to tour the record scuttled, that winter she managed to decamp from her London home to Oslo—just before borders were closing again—for some uninterrupted studio time. Much like *Inner Song*’s rather short 35-day gestation, after a month of work with Norwegian avant-garde/noise producer Lasse Marhaug, Owens emerged with *LP.8*, her most experimental, liberating record yet. On her previous full-lengths—this is actually her third, not her eighth—Owens alternated between deep, plodding techno tracks and moody synth compositions, over which her lithe vocals floated effortlessly. But on *LP.8*, the contrasts—between the earthly and the ethereal—are felt more deeply. The opener, “Release,” plays like a lost Chris & Cosey cut, its crunchy precision finding that sweet spot between industrial and early techno. On the New Age-y “Anadlu,” “S.O (2),”and “Olga,” hints of Enya’s influence shine through, but the songs’ gauzy atmospheres are often counterweighted by brooding undertones. “Nana Piano” is a melancholy solo piano sketch, unfettered except for some gentle birdsong in the background. But the closing “Sonic 8” is Owens at her most direct and visceral: She channels all sorts of frustrations while intoning, “This is a wake-up call/This is an emergency” over a beat so skeletal and abrasive that it sounds like a frayed wire swinging dangerously close to the bathtub.

Born out of a series of studio sessions, LP.8 was created with no preconceptions or expectations: an unbridled exploration into the creative subconscious. After releasing her sophomore album Inner Song in the midst of the pandemic, Kelly Lee Owens was faced with the sudden realisation that her world tour could no longer go ahead. Keen to make use of this untapped creative energy, she made the spontaneous decision to go to Oslo instead. There was no overarching plan, it was simply a change of scenery and a chance for some undisturbed studio time. It just so happened that her flight from London was the last before borders were closed once again. The blank page project was underway. Arriving to snowglobe conditions and sub-zero temperatures, she began spending time in the studio with esteemed avant-noise artist Lasse Marhaug. Together, they envisioned making music somewhere in between Throbbing Gristle and Enya, artists who have had an enduring impact on Kelly’s creative being. In doing so, they paired tough, industrial sounds with ethereal Celtic mysticism, creating music that ebbs and flows between tension and release. One month later, Kelly called her label to tell them she had created something of an outlier, her ‘eighth album’. Lasse Marhaug is known for hundreds of avant-noise releases, previously working with the likes of Merzbow, Sunn O))) and Jenny Hval, for whom he produced her acclaimed albums Apocalypse, Girl, Blood Bitch and The Practice Of Love. A label mate of Kelly’s, Marhaug has recorded for Smalltown Supersound since 1997. Welsh electronic artist Kelly Lee Owens released her eponymous debut album in 2017 and followed this up with 2020’s Inner Song. She has collaborated with Björk, St. Vincent and John Cale. In April, she returns with LP.8.

HELLS HEADBANGERS is proud to present CANDELABRUM's highly anticipated third album, Nocturnal Trance, on CD, LP and cassette formats. CANDELABRUM hail from Portugal, renown in the past decade for its polarizing raw black metal scene. The nameless mainman behind the band has been involved within that scene for many years, and even before his native scene found worldwide recognition. And even within that scene/idiom, CANDELABRUM stands alone, enigmatic and electric: his works are slavishly reverential of ancient black metal whilst simultaneously unorthodox. The band's two albums to date, 2016's Necrotelepathy and 2018's Portals, are equally astounding modern classics which emit a strangely shimmering quality amongst an explosion of emotive rawness. Both albums are immersive and mesmerizing experiences unto themselves. Wisely prizing quality over quantity, CANDELABRUM only emerge from the shadows when a new experience is fully formed and ready to curse/haunt/liberate the listener: at long last, Nocturnal Trance. Truly titled, this third album is a strident synthesis of its monolithic predecessors as well as form meeting content. Conceptually, Nocturnal Trance deals with the same theme of Necrotelepathy and Portals: death and the passage to a different plane, beyond. On those previous CANDELABRUM records, the figure on the front cover is always "moving" - crossing the passage, as it were - but this time, the mainman chose to clearly portray the passage from absolute darkness to an ominous monochromaticism: both a blinding light and a complete lack of it, going beyond darkness and back around to an absence of literally everything. Such transition poignantly plays out across the five component compositions comprising the 39-minute Nocturnal Trance. While no less raw than those predecessors - in fact, newcomers to CANDELABRUM will be stunned by such a soundfield - above and below those lysergic layers of the album betray a wealth of new(er) sensations, ones that encompass a respectably wider range of musical moments and emotions. Because indeed, CANDELABRUM is nothing if not emotive, which is all the more amazing given that the chosen canvas is resolutely RAW black metal. Likewise, that range also spans both ends of the spectrum, equally so from delirious dissonance to majestic melody, creating a contrast that paradoxically makes CANDELABRUM's monochromaticism somehow kaleidoscopic. Darkly uplifting, beautifully violent, Nocturnal Trance is everything its title promises it to be. Death is represented as a release, the liberation of the spirit to an unbounded state, and indeed is that what the brave listener will experience here: a triumph over time, space, and matter. As ever, CANDELABRUM hold the keys to the Beyond.

Recording Nov 2019 by Manu Laffeach at Chaudelande Studio Mixage: Ernest Bergez Mastering vinyle et cutting : Daniel Krieger Mastering digital : Ernest Bergez Pressage : VinylRecordMakers Production : Standard In-Fi, Florence Giroud, Zamzamrec Texts: Florence Giroud & Raphaël Defour Julia Kremer for Kremer & Bergeret William Blake for Moments in love Special thanks to all the Chaudelande team, Arthur James, Le Point du jour Cherbourg, Le Réaume, Samuel Antonin, Lionel Catelan, Zamzamrec, Corentin, Jérôme Bouve and Joy, sunshine of my life Florence Giroud

Dean Honer is a Sheffield based musician, producer and founding member of many iconic electronic music bands including The All Seeing I, I Monster, The Moonlandingz and The Eccentronic Research Council. He has worked as a producer for bands such as The Human League, Add N to X and Roisin Murphy. Kevin Pearce is a songwriter from Essex. He has received plaudits for his work from The Independent, The Guardian and Mojo magazine. His music has been used on HBO programmes in the USA as well as BBC TV shows in the UK. Dean explains the background and inspiration for the album: “The idea for The Sound of Science had been in my head for a number of years. “Being a parent of young kids I endured a lot of very cliched and awful children's songs that were attempting to combine education and entertainment. These quickly became a form of torture to me, something that the CIA might use in covert operations to flush out a drug cartel from their hideout. It became apparent that there was a desperate need for informative songs and music that were appealing and bearable for both children and their parents. “I recruited my friend Kevin Pearce, (who I have produced and collaborated with on various projects over the years), to bounce ideas off and who could put together a nice series of chords and could sing! Which helps when writing songs. Kevin is from an acoustic folk background and I'm more of a one finger synth player in the Human League tradition. I thought it would be interesting to mix the folk and electronic element together for children’s songs. “We then recruited various artists to sing on the tracks including PsychFolk singer Sharron Kraus, performance artist Heidi Kilpaleinen (HK119), synth goddess Tara Busch, artist and ex Add N to X man Steven Claydon and vocalists Liza Violet and Tom O'Hara. “Kevin and I are both interested in science and astronomy so that was the obvious direction for the album. Writing songs about various scientific subjects was interesting and a challenge. Aiming them at children meant that we didn't need a PHD for the lyrics. It became more about conveying a sense of wonder and presenting some amazing facts to audience. “In 2018 we were asked by Sheffield University to work on a live version of the album and to collaborate with some of their senior scientists on the project. This turned The Sound of Science into a live performance spectacular involving scientific experiments on stage, a live band performing the songs, plus 3D visuals created by Human in Sheffield. We performed 3 shows over two days and the reaction from kids and their parents was amazing. More festival shows due in 2020 were curtailed because of the pandemic, but we hope to get the show back on the road in 2022.” The Sound of Science is available in gatefold coloured vinyl and CD editions. The package includes an accompanying booklet beautifully designed and Illustrated by Nick Taylor for spectral-studio.co.uk

SUBREAL is pleased to announce its seventh release, Cruda (SR007) from label co-founder Siete Catorce. Cruda is full of forms gathered from the producer’s world, sonic articulations that have followed him throughout his life and work: music distortedly blasting through the street, a family dancing cumbia, birdsong from the trees, the psychedelic pitch-blackness found deep inside a rave. Underneath these volatile sound-images lies the fortified, thumping groundwork of sub-bass, rough and distorted textures, and the uniquely bouncy polyrhythms that have characterized his work as a producer. Siete Catorce is the electronic music project of Mexicali-born musician, Marco Polo Gutierrez, who has become as known for his hybridization of Mexican and Latin-American sounds with deep club sensibilities as his unrepeatable and distinctive rhythmic syntax. He runs the music label Subreal from Los Angeles, California with producer Amazondotcom.

In sharply differing ways, thoughts of place and identity run through Fontaines D.C.’s music. Where 2019 debut *Dogrel* delivered a rich and raw portrait of the band’s home city, Dublin, 2020 follow-up *A Hero’s Death* was the sound of dislocation, a set of songs drawing on the introspection, exhaustion, and yearning of an anchorless life on the road. When the five-piece moved to London midway through the pandemic, the experiences of being outsiders in a new city, often facing xenophobia and prejudice, provided creative fuel for third album *Skinty Fia*. The music that emerged weaves folk, electronic, and melodic indie pop into their post-punk foundations, while contemplating Irishness and how it transforms in a different country. “That’s the lens through which all of the subjects that we explore are seen through anyway,” singer Grian Chatten tells Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson. “There are definitely themes of jealousy, corruption, and stuff like that, but it’s all seen through the eyes of someone who’s at odds with their own identity, culturally speaking.” Recording the album after dark helped breed feelings of discomfort that Chatten says are “necessary to us,” and it continued a nocturnal schedule that had originally countered the claustrophobia of a locked-down city. “We wrote a lot of it at night as well,” says Chatten. “We went into the rehearsal space just as something different to do. When pubs and all that kind of thing were closed, it was a way of us feeling like the world was sort of open.” Here, Chatten and guitarist Carlos O’Connell talk us through a number of *Skinty Fia*’s key moments. **“In ár gCroíthe go deo”** Grian Chatten: “An Irish woman who lived in Coventry \[Margaret Keane\] passed away. Her family wanted the words ‘In ár gCroíthe go deo,’ which means ‘in our hearts forever,’ on her gravestone as a respectful and beautiful ode to her Irishness, but they weren’t allowed without an English translation. Essentially the Church of England decreed that it would be potentially seen as a political slogan. The Irish language is apparently, according to these people, an inflammatory thing in and of itself, which is a very base level of xenophobia. It’s a basic expression of a culture, is the language. If you’re considering that to be related to terrorism, which is what they’re implying, I think. That sounds like it’s something out of the ’70s, but this is two and a half years ago.” Carlos O’Connell: “About a year ago, it got turned around and \[the family\] won this case.” GC: “The family were made aware \[of the song\] and asked if they could listen to it. Apparently they really loved it, and they played it at the gravestone. So, that’s 100,000 Grammys worth of validation.” **“Big Shot”** CO: “When you’ve got used to living with what you have and then all these dreams happen to you, it’s always going to overshadow what you had before. The only impact that \[Fontaines’ success\] was having in my life was that it just made anything that I had before quite meaningless for a while, and I felt quite lost in that. That’s that lyric, ‘I traveled to space and found the moon too small’—it’s like, go up there and actually it’s smaller than the Earth.” GC: “We’ve all experienced it very differently and that’s made us grow in different ways. But that song just sounded like a very true expression of Carlos. Perhaps more honest than he always is with himself or other people. All the honesty was balled up into that tune.” **“Jackie Down the Line”** GC: “It’s an expression of misanthropy. And there’s toxicity there. There’s erosion of each other’s characters. It’s a very un-beneficial, unglamorous relationship that isn’t necessarily about two people. I like the idea of it being about Irishness, fighting to not be eroded as it exists in a different country. The name is Jackie because a Dubliner would be called, in a pejorative sense, a Jackeen by people from other parts of Ireland. That’s probably in reference to the Union Jack as well—it’s like the Pale \[an area of Ireland, including Dublin, that was under English governmental control during the late Middle Ages\]. So it’s this kind of mutation of Irishness or loss of Irishness as it exists, or fails to exist, in a different environment.” **“Roman Holiday”** GC: “The whole thing was colored by my experience in London. I moved to London to be with my fiancée, and as an Irish person living in London, as one of a gang of Irish people, there was that kind of searching energy, there was this excitement, there was a kind of adventure—but also this very, very tight-knit, rigorously upkept group energy. I think that’s what influenced the tune.” **“The Couple Across the Way”** GC: “I lived on Caledonian Road \[in North London\] and our gaff backed onto another house. There was a couple that lived there, they were probably mid-seventies, and they had really loud arguments. The kind of arguments where you’d see London on a map getting further, further away and hear the shout resounding. Something like *The Simpsons*. And the man would come out and take a big breath. He’d stand on his balcony and look left and right and exhale all the drama. And then he’d just turn around and go back in to his gaff to do the same thing the next day. The absurdity of that, of what we put ourselves through, to be in a relationship that causes you such daily pain, to just always turn around and go back in. I couldn’t really help but write about that physical mirror that was there. Am I seeing myself and my girlfriend in these two people, and vice versa? So I tried to tie it in to it being from both perspectives at some point.” **“Skinty Fia”** GC: “The line ‘There is a track beneath the wheel and it’s there ’til we die’ is about being your dad’s son. There are many ways in which we explore doom on this record. One of them is following in the footsteps of your ancestors, or your predecessors, no matter how immediate or far away they might have been. I’m interested in the inescapability of genetics, the idea that your fate is written. I do, on some level, believe in that. That is doom, even if your faith is leading you to a positive place. Freedom is probably the main pursuit of a lot of our music. I think that that is probably a link that ties all of the stuff that we’ve done together—autonomy.” **“I Love You”** GC: “It’s most ostensibly a love letter to Ireland, but has in it the corruption and the sadness and the grief with the ever-changing Dublin and Ireland. The reason that I wanted to call it ‘I Love You’ is because I found its cliché very attractive. It meant that there was a lot of work to be done in order to justify such a basic song and not have it be a clichéd tune. It’s a song with two heads, because you’ve got the slow, melodic verses that are a little bit more straightforward and then the lid is lifted off energetically. I think that the friction between those two things encapsulates the double-edged sword that is love.” **“Nabokov”** GC: “I think there’s a different arc to this album. The first two, I think, achieve a sense of happiness and hope halfway through, and end on a note of hope. I think this one does actually achieve hope halfway through—and then slides back into a hellish, doomy thing with the last track and stuff. I think that was probably one of the more conscious decisions that we made while making this album.”

"2020’s A Hero’s Death saw Fontaines D.C. land a #2 album in the UK, receive nominations at the GRAMMYs, BRITs and Ivor Novello Awards, and sell out London’s iconic Alexandra Palace. Now the band return with their third record in as many years: Skinty Fia. Used colloquially as an expletive, the title roughly translates from the Irish language into English as “the damnation of the deer”; the spelling crassly anglicized, and its meaning diluted through generations. Part bittersweet romance, part darkly political triumph - the songs ultimately form a long-distance love letter, one that laments an increasingly privatized culture in danger of going the way of the extinct Irish giant deer."

“I literally don’t take breaks,” ROSALÍA tells Apple Music. “I feel like, to work at a certain level, to get a certain result, you really need to sacrifice.” Judging by *MOTOMAMI*, her long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s award-winning and critically acclaimed *EL MAL QUERER*, the mononymous Spanish singer clearly put in the work. “I almost feel like I disappear because I needed to,” she says of maintaining her process in the face of increased popularity and attention. “I needed to focus and put all my energy and get to the center to create.” At the same time, she found herself drawing energy from bustling locales like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which she credits with influencing the new album. Beyond any particular source of inspiration that may have driven the creation of *MOTOMAMI*, ROSALÍA’s come-up has been nothing short of inspiring. Her transition from critically acclaimed flamenco upstart to internationally renowned star—marked by creative collaborations with global tastemakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Oneohtrix Point Never, to name a few—has prompted an artistic metamorphosis. Her ability to navigate and dominate such a wide array of musical styles only raised expectations for her third full-length, but she resisted the idea of rushing things. “I didn’t want to make an album just because now it’s time to make an album,” she says, citing that several months were spent on mixing and visuals alone. “I don’t work like that.” Some three years after *EL MAL QUERER*, ROSALÍA’s return feels even more revolutionary than that radical breakout release. From the noisy-yet-referential leftfield reggaetón of “SAOKO” to the austere and *Yeezus*-reminiscent thump of “CHICKEN TERIYAKI,” *MOTOMAMI* makes the artist’s femme-forward modus operandi all the more clear. The point of view presented is sharp and political, but also permissive of playfulness and wit, a humanizing mix that makes the album her most personal yet. “I was like, I really want to find a way to allow my sense of humor to be present,” she says. “It’s almost like you try to do, like, a self-portrait of a moment of who you are, how you feel, the way you think.\" Things get deeper and more unexpected with the devilish-yet-austere electronic punk funk of the title track and the feverish “BIZCOCHITO.” But there are even more twists and turns within, like “HENTAI,” a bilingual torch song that charms and enraptures before giving way to machine-gun percussion. Add to that “LA FAMA,” her mystifying team-up with The Weeknd that fuses tropical Latin rhythms with avant-garde minimalism, and you end up with one of the most unique artistic statements of the decade so far.