It’s a mammoth undertaking, featuring 106 “(mostly) original (mostly) unreleased”  tracks from 106 different artists, a number chosen to mark the 106 years since the British Government’s 1917 Balfour Declaration. Obviously, that’s too many artists to list, but rest assured it contains a ton of good stuff, including acts we have featured in the past, such as Swim Camp, Tuxis Giant, Kitchen, Greg Mendez, Bummer Camp, Shunkan and more.

You can only get access to the music by making a direct donation to the PCRF via the donation page. Once you’ve done that, email or DM a screenshot of the donation to Bee Side Cassettes (beesidecassettes@gmail.com) to be sent a download.

Due to overwhelming demand from both artists and donators, Bee Side Cassettes have decided to work on a second compilation, For Gaza Vol. 2. This one will comprise of 75 tracks, symbolising the 75 years since the start of The Nakba, the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians by Israeli settlers during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

For more information and the full tracklist, visit the Bee Side Cassettes Bandcamp page.

Cover art by Nicole Rifkin

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This balance between various states of being is central to the record, as the Philadelphia-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist explores how what has been not only continues to bubble forth into the present but actively shape it, ultimately coming to understand the self as a fluid and ever-evolving thing. Greg Mendez is therefore a self-titled album which very much warrants its title. A record which portrays its creator as he was, is and potentially could be.

Latest single ‘Maria’ recreates the immersive nature of memories with a hazy, melodic sound, representing a sonic equivalent of the kind of transportive reverie a certain thought can conjure. But within this encompassing mood is something more subversive, the very first lines calling into question the veracity of memories and our attempts to mould the truth in our favour. “Every time you say you wanna know me I get anxious,” Mendez sings with the guarded uncertainty of someone wary of opening up, “cause I would probably tell you about some dumb shit.” But despite this emotional circumspection, it’s ultimately a song as richly evocative as the memories it talks about.

Watch the video by Luke LeCount below:

Greg Mendez is out on the 5th May via Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes and you can pre-order it now.

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“Thriving on a diversity of influences and intentions and underpinned by the constant desire to invent new things.” That’s how we described Hybrid Dimension II by The Allegorist, an album which highlighted the visionary style of Berlin-based artist Anna Jordan. One so committed to the world it created, it was performed in an entirely fictional language. Forthcoming album TEKHENU promises to be no less ambitious, again using narrative-based compositions to conjure a mythical world at least partly inspired by ancient Egyptian imagery and shaped by metaphors for human connection. Latest single ‘Howling With The Wolf’ finds such common bond in the animalistic drivers at the heart of every human, re-establishing our connection to the natural world and embracing the wilderness as a plane of interconnection.

TEKHENU is out on the 5th May via Awaken Chronicles and you can pre-order it now.

American Grandma – Stone Cross

The slowcore project of Denver‘s Jensen Keller and Caden Marchese, American Grandma is prepping to release their brand new album Rare Knives of Light later this spring, and single ‘Stone Cross’ finds the outfit at their shimmering best. Positioning itself at the ambient end of the spectrum, the song does not eliminate the dark heft of the genre so much as leaven it, the ascending tones lifting the entire weight of the sound, shadows and all. So as Keller asks a series of cryptic questions, what emerges is curious blend of the physical and intangible—a mirage you can feel between your fingers, a dream or prayer brought to life.

Does the sun shine bright forever?
Will I commemorate you with a painted sign?

Constant Follower & Scott William Urquhart – Waves Crash Here

Last summer we featured Constant Follower and their beautiful record Neither Is, Nor Ever Was. As we described, the project represents “a struggle between calmness and distress, between the real and imaginary, and indeed between the desire for and fear of such clear boundaries.” But ultimately “embraces this turmoil, and in doing so offers a fundamental reimagining of memory, of the past and future, the real and not.” The band are now gearing up to release Even Days Dissolve, a new album in collaboration with Scott William Urquhart, and lead single ‘Waves Crash Here’ shows a continued engagement with both memory and the natural world. With its evocative sweeps and fine detail, Urquhart’s guitar evokes the duality of permanence and ephemerality of the environment which inspired it, and Constant Follower’s Stephen McAll again turns to the poetry of Norman MacCaig to guide his moving, precise writing. Watch the video by animator George Farrow-Hawkins below:

Even Days Dissolve is out on the 14th April and you can pre-order it now.

Eyesore & The Jinx – An Ideas Man

Liverpool post-punk trio Eyesore & The Jinx return this May with a new double-single 7″ An Ideas Man / Do What You Love. We’ve previously described the outfit’s work as “cutting and hysterical, as though the banality of society has pushed them over the edge,” and ‘An Ideas Man’ finds them no less enraged with the world unfolding around them. It’s a twitchy song about “cult of landlordism and a parasitic ideology which has become pervasive in its wake,” as Josh Miller explains, taking on the voice of the titular figure in all of its self-congratulatory smarm. The sound’s taut angles threaten to spill over into some violent climax, and in a world in which men will kick you repeatedly on a punctual monthly rota and pretend they are doing you a favour, how else should our songs sound? As Miller concludes: “In short, it’s about how much I fucking hate landlords.”

Greg Mendez – Goodbye / Trouble

Later this year, Philadelphia‘s Greg Mendez will return with a self-titled full-length via Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes. Following on from 2020’s Cherry Hell, a record we described as “taking the themes of Townes Van Zandt, Connie Converse and Elliott Smith and casting them in the bedroom pop spirit of today,” the new album sees Mendez continue this honest reflection, digging into the past to re-examine painful experiences while never losing a wry edge too. “There’s a lot of pretty bleak memories in the songs,” he explains, “but one thing that I hope comes through is that nothing is ever fully dark.” Lead single ‘Goodbye / Trouble’ captures the style perfectly, a lo-fi pop number rooted in memories while waiting for some present transcendence. Watch the video by Video by Doug Dulgarian (of they are gutting a body of water) below:

Greg Mendez is out on the 5th May via Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes.

Kassi Valazza – Corners

Back in January we introuduced Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing, the forthcoming album by Portland artist Kassi Valazza on Fluff and Gravy Records (US) and Loose Music (UK). Writing of lead single ‘Watching Planes Go By’ we described how her timeless country singer-songwriter style “bears all the hallmarks of the best retro tracks while refusing to fall for nostalgic imitation.” Now Valazza has unveiled the record’s second single. Titled ‘Corners’, it’s a tender but tentative love song that again draws on psych-styled folk as much as it does from Americana, unfurling with an easy emotional ache as though from a decades-old dusty radio. Valazza’s voice sits at the sweet spot between soft and strong, tired and heartsick but holding onto a golden romantic hope.

I wonder if I called you
would it be alright
to say I loved you

Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing will be released by Fluff & Gravy Records / Loose Music on 12th May. Pre-order it now from the Kassi Valazza Bandcamp page.

Monde UFO – Government Employee

As their name might suggest, there’s something otherworldly about the work of LA‘s Monde UFO, but new album Vandalized Statue To Be Replaced With Shrine, out next month via Quindi Records, shows just how varied this ethereal mood can be. First single ‘Visions of Fatima’ led the listener into a decidedly downbeat mystery, channelling the miracle of its title to speak of shifting wonders and cloaked truths. But described as “a sun-kissed trip of low-key lounge surrealism, bizarro storytelling and shuffling exotica splendour,” latest track ‘Government Employee’ shows off a different dimension to the record. One where the laidback rhythms evoke an alternate version of visitation, the lyrics playing with an almost Pynchon-esque restlessness beneath the languorous surface.

Nyokabi Kariũki – fire head

Last week, Kenyan composer and sound artist Nyokabi Kariũki released FEELING BODY, her debut full-length album on New York label cmntx records. Combining everything from experimental electronic, contemporary classical and East African traditional music, the album explores Kariũki’s experience of living with long-COVID for the entirety of 2021. The record is built around a central motif of the voice, utilizing Kariũki’s full vocal range as well as spoken word recordings and text-to-speech software, what she describes as “a way to express visceral feelings and noisy thoughts.” It also features contributions from violinst Yaz Lancaster and trumpet player Michael Denis Ó Callaghan, their playing manipulated to echo symptoms of the persistent illness. Nowhere is this clearer that on standout track, ‘fire head’, a genuinely unsettling piece which layers a field recording of Ó Callaghan disassembling then reassembling his trumpet with a cacophony of automated voices repeating the line “They stopped asking if I was ok.”

Shalom – Lighter

Later this week, Brooklyn-based Shalom will release her debut album Sublimation on Saddle Creek. We wrote a preview of the album last month, describing it as “a bracingly honest exploration of a young life,” that “combin[es] stories of partying and trauma, love and breakups and feelings of disaffection,” and admiring its mixture of bold, direct indie pop and emotional nuance. Ahead of the record’s release, Shalom has unveiled the final single ‘Lighter’. It’s probably the most pop-oriented song on the album, the carefree atmosphere masking its themes of discontent. “So done with being myself,” Shalom sings in the chorus, “I’d rather be anyone else, I’m tired of being a fighter.” Watch the animated video by Rory Alene below:

Sublimation releases 10th March via Saddle Creek. Order a copy now from the Shalom Bandcamp page.

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As displayed on debut Everything Tastes Bad, an album released in 2018, there’s a certain bounce to the instrumentation, be it with a playful garage rock edge or almost pop punk-style propulsive momentum, and Della Monica helps develop something of a sixties sensibility too with vivid vocal harmonies. All in all, it mark Snowhore as the best of both words, experimenting with style without ever sacrificing the intimacy of tone.

Because Everything Tastes Bad is an inherently personal album, crafted around a variety of relationships dear to Isley. This might be the end of dear friendship, the trials of unrequited love, or the relationship between family members when tested by addiction and suffering. “Without much intention,” Isley explains, “each song ended up being a testament to the impact that, for better or worse, each relationship had on my life.” The result is wide ranging and conflicted, where love, resentment and pain are not mutually exclusive, or even clearly distinctive from one another in the shapes they come to take.

This month sees Snowhore team up with the good folks at Devil Town Tapes for a special edition reissue of the record, including the first physical release with lilac and transparent pink versions of cassette. We’re delighted to share the release, and decided to ask Isley a few questions about Snowhore and the record’s new lease of life.

Thanks for speaking with us, and congratulations on the release. Why did you decide to reissue the album, and how did the partnership with Devil Town come about?

Hi Jon! Thanks for having me! The two actually sort of go hand-in-hand. Jack reached out to me at the end of 2020 about reissuing the album as a tape release. When the record first came out in 2018 we opted to just put it up on Bandcamp, play a release show and call it a day. I was kind of hesitant to reissue at first because this record is full of some of the first songs I ever wrote, so it’s a little like looking back at pictures of yourself from middle school. But I was also excited about the idea of a physical release, plus I didn’t think Jack would offer to release it on DTT if he didn’t see something in it. Everyone he’s put out thus far has been awesome, from Bedtime Khal to Greg Mendez to Omes. So here we are!

How do you work on writing songs as a band? Do the others have input too, or do you write the songs first and give everyone input from there?

I’m kind of a creative hermit and I’ll only really write a song when I have the space. If I like what I get from that process I’ll bring it to Kaytee and Greg and just ask them to play what they hear or feel. They’re both insanely talented and intuitive musicians and I feel super lucky to make music with them. Snowhore wouldn’t be what it is without them.

There’s a candid quality to the writing that proves striking – pretty much every song on the EP is about a relationship of one kind or another. Did you set out to create something so personal and forthright? Or does your life just seep in when you’re writing?

I am a messy songwriter and I kind of do everything at once. The melody informs the music informs the rhythm and I’ll play with fake words the whole time until something sticks. And then I guess it’s just word association? I think in that way my life kind of just seeps in, like subconsciously I know what story I’m trying to tell and then as I write it I start to understand what I’m saying. I think like most creative people I am sensitive with a capital “s.” I’m usually using songwriting in one way or another to process something that’s hard for me to talk about.

On ‘Sad Song’ you sing about being twenty-three and nothing having changed, and it got me wondering how it feels revisiting such personal songs now, with a certain amount of time having passed? Does there feel like there’s any distance between then and now, or are the tracks as emotionally immediate as ever?

Kinda dumb, but I was actually twenty-two when I wrote that song but thought “twenty-three years” was a better lyric. My life was in a state of really tumultuous transition where I was cutting out a lot of people and things that were not good for me. Looking back on that period of time feels like looking at someone else’s life because I’m in such a wildly different place than I was when I wrote these songs. I think in that lyric about nothing changing I was acknowledging that yeah, I’m not a homeless junkie anymore but I’m still utterly fucking miserable. Sad Song is actually especially loaded for me. So many things about myself and my life that needed to change have changed since then and I’m really grateful for that.

Do you have any idea what comes next for Snowhore?

Hopefully we’re gonna start recording a new record this year! I think we’ve grown a lot as a band and I’m really excited to share the songs we’ve been working on. Thanks again for having me and for the thoughtful questions.

Everything Tastes Bad is out now, and you can get it from Devil Town Tapes (UK) and the Snowhore (US) Bandcamp page.

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Locate S,1 – Personalia

Recording under the moniker Locate S,1, Christina Schneider stretches the boundaries of pop to create strange, beguiling songs that play light and dark off of one another. Following a successful tour with Frankie Cosmos in 2019, Locate S,1 signed with Captured Tracks and will release their second album, Personalia, this April.

The title track is the record’s first single, and represents the ideal welcome into the world of the album. Taking it’s title from a Mary Ruefle poem, ‘Personalia’ rises from a period of personal darkness toward something brighter, its clever, determined lyrics pitched somewhere between honesty and self-deprecation. It’s a potent mix, a spell which conjures life, and by the close Schneider is fired into orbit by her own energy once again.

Almost killed myself so I went home
I just cannot take these local shows
Tom T. Hall said don’t let your music kill you
But I’m no country boy
I’m just some punk

Personalia is out on the via Captured Tracks and you can pre-order it from the Locate S, 1 Bandcamp page.

Ratboys – I Go Out At Night

After the success of previous records AOID (2015) and GN (2018), Ratboys are back this month with the third album, Printer’s Devil, on Topshelf Records. Crafted around themes of instability and change, the record seeks to make peace with upheaval by defusing the fear it brings, and such a headspace proved conducive to a real development of the band’s sound. “There’s definitely a lot of uncertainty about what’s next,” explains lead Julia Steiner. “But I like to think that, in the midst of creating a lot of vulnerability for ourselves, we’re confident and becoming more self-assured.”

Latest single ‘I Go Out at Night’ makes good on that sentiment, finding Ratboys building upon the style they’ve been developing across their previous records. Settling as a four-piece, with Marcus Nuccio (drums) and Sean Neumann (bass) joining founding duo Dave Sagan and Steiner, the project has fully transcended its acoustic beginnings while preserving the original spirit—delving into power pop, garage rock and alt-country to not only highlight the Ratboys range but also best chart the ever changing world in which it is created.

Printer’s Devil is out via Topshelf Records on the 28th February and you can pre-order it now.

Sea Offs – Will (You)

The collaborative project of songwriters Olivia Price and Rashmit Aror, Sea Offs make an atmospheric collision of folk and rock that manages to inject a tangible urgency without puncturing the enveloping ethereal tone. Released in 2017, album What’s the Point? displayed just how evocative a blend this can be. “Every moment on the album, from the dazzling highs to the locked-away lows,” we wrote, “is threaded not just with an unshakeable sense of isolation but the equally persistent suspicion that things need not always be this way.”

This spring sees the band return with a brand new release, and lead single ‘Will (You)’ shows that they have lost none of their impact. Let loose into a delicate miasma of ambient tones and driven by a deep drum beat, Price’s vocals move from crooned questioning to steely determination, eventually rising into a cathartic closing section. Thematically, the song “discusses body ownership in a relationship,” the band explain. “The detachment one can feel sexually when there is no emotional connection to serve as a basis.”

Greg Mendez – Bike

Philly native Greg Mendez has been making music since 2006, self-releasing CDs from home alongside his presence on Myspace and the not-yet blossoming DIY scene in the city. Years struggling with addiction, homelessness and mental health issues meant that his output was sporadic through the 2010s, but Mendez released his debut full-length ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in 2017, and is now back with a brand new record, Cherry Hell.

A joint release between Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes, the album represents another link the chain of American songwriting, taking the themes of Townes Van Zandt, Connie Converse and Elliott Smith and casting them in the bedroom pop spirit of today. Lead single ‘Bike’ is one such example, a song based around “wanting to change and longing to be someone else” that dreams against the restrictive nature of our one single life—pining for experiences wide and disparate so as to exist more fully, free from the accumulated dirt of our positions in the world.

Mount Sharp – Ordinary

Writing back in August, we describe Mount Sharp‘s ‘Apostate’ as a song “indebted to the past but shaped by present conditions, concerned with the personal and the political when exploring what it means to be pushed away from someone or something.” The track was the first single of forthcoming album That Shadow, a record that will finally be released this month.

To increasing the anticipation, the Brooklyn band have release a brand new single, ‘Ordinary’. Ramping up the energy from the half-paced ‘Apostate’, the track is one of jangling confidence, bringing to mind the way Nap Eyes juxtapose loose-limbed inquisitiveness and deadpan lyrics, though injecting a punk energy too. There’s a dark humour to the way the track ebbs and flows, the lulls shaking into intense collisions of noise, as though firing itself through its own gathering motion, all tied together by the cutting lyrics.

How many times before it starts to feel ordinary
How many (how many) before
Cause I heard I’ll start to feel things relatively
And I don’t know if that sounds good or bad anymore

Normal’s just what you’re used to
And you’re surprised
So find all the space your anger takes
And try not to make all of it about you

That Shadow is out on the 22nd February and you can pre-order it now from the Mount Sharp Bandcamp page.

Silo’s Choice – Annwn

Silo’s Choice is the moniker of Chicago resident Jon Massey, a musician interested in pushing the boundaries of rock to further its conceptual and political scope. Forthcoming album Twilight on the Trail dials back slightly on the more idiosyncratic elements of previous releases, allowing a sincere immediacy to flourish (“less Mahler and more Joni Mitchell,” in the words of the artist), yet still the art-rock foundations remain. As such, the record seems perfectly positioned to explore big themes without straying too far into the inhuman abstract.

Lead single ‘Annwn’ is a clear progression in this sense. Named after the otherworld of Welsh mythology, the track takes on theme of death and mourning from an oblique angle, focusing not on the usual sadness and suffering but rather the mystery life’s end. Annwn was a world of peace and eternal youth, death with the pain removed, and Silo’s Choice uses it as a foil to examine mortality in a new manner—melancholic perhaps, but also joyous, lost in the sublime of that which we do not know.

and how i long to see the old things
the old world written in the old words
consumed with my body in a long fire
and wake up to the sound of a new chord

do you float?
does your spirit sink into the earth?
i think you slip sideways into a new birth

Jesse Blake Rundle – Radishes and Flowers

“A story of longing arranged into a bed of radishes and flowers.” That’s how Jesse Blake Rundle described his latest single, aptly named ‘Radishes and Flowers’. Adapted from Wallace Stevens’s ‘Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges’, the song is the title track of an entire collection inspired by the poetry of Stevens, crafted to match the source material in both theme and shape.

Rundle is a self-taught musician who utilises unconventional tuning to form a singular style, an aesthetic that proves the perfect mode with which to capture the nuanced life of Stevens’s Florida. As the title track shows, Rundle’s arrangements are capable of both whimsical creeps along the small details of our world and grand swells of emotion, achieving a balance between macro and micro that makes for a striking and beautiful sound.

Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She knelt upon the ground
And gathered round,
With flowers blue, gold, and green

Isadora Eden – Anhedonia

Hailing from Colorado, Isadora Eden is a songwriter who pairs dark, searching lyrics with a moody sound, ranging from intimate simplicity to something altogether fuller and more striking. The lead single from a forthcoming EP, ‘Anhedonia’ makes this apparent, its stark style lending the sound a haunting edge.

The track is produced by Corey Coffman of Gleemer, and there’s certainly a shared emotional depth between the projects, the sounds so rich and evocative that their undoubted melancholy takes on an affirming quality. Opening with little beyond a simple acoustic guitar and Eden’s poignant vocals, the track soon welcomes jags of guitar and a driving drum beat, swelling beyond its minimalist beginnings and taking on an elevated form.

i’m alone again
like i wanted to be
didn’t i say
that i wanted to be
i guess it’s easier now
i guess it’s easier now

there’s gotta be a break
someday
i don’t wanna be left behind

Shadwick Wilde – Rain

You might know Shadwick Wilde as the front man of Louisville band Quiet Hollers, though he is writing solo music too. Latest single ‘Rain’ was written after Wilde was asked to perform at the Climate Strike in 2019, in particular a song for Greta Thunberg who was in attendance via her solar powered yacht. Originally averse to the idea, Wilde latched onto a a song he had started months earlier, the line “clean on the inside, free as the sun” suddenly taking on a new meaning as this young person arrived on her boat.

With help from Sarah Balliet (of Murder by Death) on cello and Shelley Anderson on bass, Wilde crafts a sullen soundscape of dark tones, the plaintive strings weaving their way over backdrop and conjuring a place of perpetual rain. There’s a fatality to the track, though hope too, as though the narrator has given up their own future but retains a vague belief in the possibility the next generation might somehow succeed.

We’ll leave our home to you
our fugitive daughter
and all we’ve built for you
will be reclaimed by the water
giver of life and destroyer of worlds
red, gold and coral, mother of pearl

Wilde expects to release an album later this year so be sure to follow him on Twitter for more news.

Thanks for stopping on by! Be sure to check out the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing, and do let us know what you’ve been listening to on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

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