After single ‘good morning, harrison, it’s time to go‘ introduced the transportive nature of this style, Okkyung Lee has returned with brand new track, ‘let’s walk down to the swamp together’. A song “inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories I was obsessed with in elementary school,” as Lee explains. Or, more specifically, her own unique experience of those stories as created via the conditions in which she encountered and interpreted them. “I read them in Korean translation, where the word 늪 (swamp) was used for “marshes”—though 습지 (wetland) would’ve been more accurate, she continues:

The only swamps I knew back then were the tropical ones with alligators, which didn’t seem to match the eerie English landscapes described in the stories. That slight mistranslation gave the setting a more exotic atmosphere. Since there were no swamps in Korea—and no internet, duh—I remember trying so hard to imagine what this specific “swamp” might actually look and feel like. In the end, I decided it must be a place hauntingly beautiful, mysterious, and tinged with danger. So, the title became an invitation: to walk together into the unknown—and into my childhood memories at the same time.

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Hailing from California and now based in Glasgow, Alvidrez is a composer and writer who works at the intersection of faith and defiance. Album Antiphon, coming next month on Memorials of Distinction, is built around their renunciation of American evangelicalism, its mix of folk, ambient and drone both reaching back into the past and presenting an epiphanic present. Lead single and opener ‘Hymn For The Corner’ is the perfect example, its rich yet hazy sound conjuring the softened fog of memory, yet its core holds the immediate sense of bright revelation. The old dogmas might have revealed themselves hollow, but Alvidrez is here to show wonder exists beyond the orthodox.

tired of heaven
tired of chemtrails
signing the papers
for a house in this dark land
no one could tell me
how to sing all my songs
it’s a hymn that will show me
that I’ve got it all wrong

Any Other – If I Don’t Care

Any Other, the recording project of Italian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Adele Altro, will release their third album stillness, stop: you have a right to remember later this month on 42 Records. Latest single ‘If I Don’t Care’ serves an encapsulation of their idiosyncratic sound. “This song is about me learning to let go of things that make me angry,” Altro explains, “both personal and societal stuff. It’s reasonable to be angry about inequalities, but at some point you need to distance yourself from that stuff just a little, otherwise it will impact your mental health in an even more negative way.” But anyone expecting a song full of calm wisdom couldn’t be more wrong, with Altro reaching this newfound understanding via a mixture of frustration, impatience and defiance, all bound together to reach an urgent, building catharsis. Watch the video below, produced by 42 Records and EDERA (Milan) and directed by Giulio Rasi, with art direction by Cecilia Grandi.

stillness, stop: you have a right to remember will be released on 26th January via 42 Records. Pre-order a copy from their webstore.

Astrid Sonne – Boost

Later this month, London-based Danish composer Astrid Sonne will release her third record, Great Doubt, via Copenhagen label Escho. For an artist who has made a name in experimental and ambient fields, the album represents something of an evolution, adding vocals and beats for the first time in a foray into the realms of arty pop and contemporary singer-songwriter styles. Latest single ‘Boost’ is one of the record’s instrumental tracks, but the beats are front and centre, charging things with an energy fitting of the title. “I made ‘Boost’ lying in my bed, it’s a quite energetic track coming from a not very energetic place,” Sonne describes. “There’s a sense of release to Boost and a feeling of not caring too much, which can be good sometimes when you need to seek out new settings.”

Fela Dakota – Pour Your Soul

Describing themselves as “a trapeze artist of the midnight-thoughts,” Fela Dakota is a singer-songwriter from Bath whose work smoulders with intensity. Released by Folk Boy Records, ‘Pour Your Soul’ is their debut single and a bold introduction indeed. Built on a minimal background that evokes a dark and cavernous void, Dakota’s vocals arise from this abyss with a combination of romantic grace and tortured fervour, swinging from a quivering whisper to a full-throated roar that lights up the negative space with incandescent feeling. The result is an arresting song that falls somewhere between lament-like hymn and desperate cry into the night.

‘Pour Your Soul’ is out now via Folk Boy Records.

Loic Moonmattress – Sleepless in Eugene

Released as part of the Sunseekers collective, ‘Sleepless in Eugene’ is the title track of a new three-song EP by Edmonton artist Loic Moonmattress. Effortlessly straddling ambient, hip hop and folk styles, the song blurs the line between personal intimacy and wide open space, channelling that strange nocturnal headspace where everything is at once immediate and reflective. Such a liminal space speaks to the themes of the song too, which finds its narrator in a kind of limbo—between youth and adulthood, love and loneliness, consciousness and dreams. “I finished [the track] alone in Whitby, Ontario and very far away from the places and people that inspired it,” Loic Moonmattress explains. “I think of it like a letter to those places, those people, and those times.”

Malachi Graham – Spare Me

With album Caretaker on the horizon, we’ve featured Portland, Oregon-based songwriter Malachi Graham several times in recent months, most recently with single ‘Wonderful Life‘. Another example of Graham’s willingness to delve into the uncomfortable corners of personal relationships to better illuminate the love and suffering therein. Latest track ‘Spare Me’ is no less affecting, a song described as a “relationship meditation and post-mortem” which rakes the coals of a toxic relationship to find both pain and complicity. The work of Malachi Graham doesn’t emerge from its investigations with simple findings or much by way of comfort, and feels all the more authentic as a result.

Middle Sattre – Hate Yourself to the Core

We’ve been anticipating Tendencies, the upcoming record from Austin-based outfit Middle Sattre ever since single ‘Pouring Water‘ had us making comparisons to Sufjan Stevens and Typhoon. Follow up ‘Stop Speaking‘ was no less evocative, with lead Hunter Prueger drawing on the experience of growing up queer in the Mormon church to castigate the cruelty of conservative voices. With the album set for release next month, Middle Sattre have returned with another single which challenges such poisonous influence. Namely, ‘Hate Yourself to the Core’ explores how no-one escapes from such an environment untouched, with pernicious views sinking into the subconscious no matter how differently you might feel. “I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding internalized homophobia,” Prueger explains. “There’s this idea that if you’re gay, then you can’t be homophobic. I wanted to write a song that very clearly lays it all out and explains how this can happen.”

Watch the video below, directed by Maya Lam with performance and choreography by Stephanie Shin:

Tendencies will be released on 9th February. Order it now from the Middle Sattre Bandcamp page.

Mol Sullivan – Goose

We previewed GOOSE, the forthcoming debut full-length album by Mol Sullivan back in November, with ‘Still Tryin’, introducing an exploration of a nascent sobriety. “[The single] uses a hushed, bruised style to welcome the listener into a raw period of life,” as we wrote, “but there’s a glimmer of something else too, a newfound freedom to move towards some better future. Set deep in those early days of a new beginning where everything feels possible yet tenuous and a little too vivid to bear.” With the record out later this month, Sullivan has returned with the title track to not only further develop the themes of personal introspection but introduce the spirit guardian that lends the album its name. It starts bright and folky, but soon slides into tricky complexity, emotions captured perfectly with the tense and idiosyncratic chamber pop instrumentation.

Am I a swan or just a goose
I’d bet the latter, grab my purse
it’s not so difficult a choice
between a joker and a fool
without giving them a voice
do you want an ocean or a pool?

Watch the video by Andrew Spohn below:

GOOSE is out on the 26th January and you can pre-order it now.

Sailor Honeymoon – Bad Apple

After winning comparisons to The Ramones, Kim Gordon and Bikini Kill with debut single ‘Cockroach’, South Korean punk trio Sailor Honeymoon have returned with new track ‘Bad Apple’. The song is the first teaser of a debut EP pencilled for release in the spring on Seoul and London-based label Good Good 굿굿. The band’s entire ethos revolves spontaneity and freedom, offering a sense of ragged, fun abandon as the perfect antidote to the dominant force of K-pop and the pristine polish it champions. ‘Bad Apple’ is an ideal entry point for the uninitiated. A raucous song which stares down a bigoted ‘friend’ without so much as a flinch. Watch the video directed by Kim Taeyoung below:

‘Bad Apple’ is out now via streaming services.

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The solo project of Australia‘s Keeley Young, Claude offers a warm and reflective brand of folk, its gentle sound utilising restraint to map out the depth of its emotion. New single ‘Tamarind’ highlights the interplay between openness and caution inherent to the style, its earnest tone inviting the listener close while retaining a certain guarded nature. As though aware of both its power and fragility, and understanding what it is able to give away without betraying its own needs.

Too many days passed, without a word.
I think, you’ve liked fucking with me.
But I’m heading home to a house filled with warmth,
and I feel okay with holding your scorn;
and maybe someday you’ll see, how misinformed,
you were.

‘Tamarind’ is out now and is available from the Claude Bandcamp page.

Eldridge Rodriguez – Scars in the Vein (feat. Thalia Zedek)

We’ve covered the music of Boston‘s Eldridge Rodriguez several times, most recently with singles ‘Megalodon‘ and ‘Have I Gone Too Far‘. Both tracks are part of forthcoming album Atrophy, and although the release is still TBC, the outfit have unveiled another song to tide us over. Described as a “rant on the ineffectuality of performance activism,” ‘Scars in the Vein’ tears into the moribund politics of the perpetually online, mourning the energy expended grandstanding and fighting with bad faith commentators when it could be put towards more direct action. The song sees the Thalia Zedek (Come, Live Skull, E) lend her vocals, finding catharsis if not hope in its impassioned cynicism.

Atrophy will be released sometime in the future on Midriff Records, so keep an eye on the Eldridge Rodriguez Bandcamp page for more information.

Jake Tittle – Fair Warning

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Jake Tittle has put out a number of releases on Anxiety Blanket Records, building a collection of  heartfelt tracks which push beyond acoustic folk into pop and soft rock. With James McAlister on drums and Lexi Vega (Mini Trees) on backing vocals, latest single ‘Fair Warning’ takes Tittle’s sound in a different direction, the backing beats adding a certain brooding attitude to a song caught amid the dark clouds of a storm. “I wrote ‘Fair Warning’ in the middle of a dying relationship,” he explains, “I was so scared of being alone that I refused to accept that it was dying and that hurt me even more.”

‘Fair Warning’ is out now via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can grab it now from Bandcamp.

Lori Goldston – The Waves And What’s Under

Composer and cellist Lori Goldston has had a wide ranging career. From scoring films, operas and dance productions to collaborating with the likes of David Byrne and The Wedding Present, not to mention touring with Nirvana in the early nineties. Stylistically her work is equally plastic, reaching across classical, folk and post-rock styles, and forthcoming album High and Low is no less ambitious. The ‘High’ portion of the record consists of solo cello pieces written for and toward the late Geneviève Elverum, and single ‘The Waves And What’s Under’ highlights the mournful beauty of the sound. During her illness, Elverum described feeling “herself floating in the air above a mountain.” Goldston explains. “I had a kind of vision about playing music that would help keep her floating easily there, and at the same time sustain the ripples of her presence in the world.”

High and Low is out on 7th October via SofaBurn and you can pre-order it now.

Mamalarky – Mythical Bonds

Mamalarky have announced brand new LP Pocket Fantasy, coming out on Fire Talk Records later this year, and lead single ‘Mythical Bonds’ shows off the new direction of their sound. After last year’s double single Meadow / Moss, Livvy Bennett, Michael Hunter and Noor Khan push into a brighter, more playful sound, its mischievous energy geared towards a sense of fondness. “I really needed to write something to accurately show Noor how much her friendship means to me, and our journey as musicians and friends,” Bennett explains. “We need more songs about friendship.” Check out the video directed by Ambar Navarro below:

Pocket Fantasy is out on 30th September via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it now.

Mark Mulcahy – Won’t You Be My Neighbor

Back in January, Perpetual Doom released Stayed Tuned: Season One, a TV theme covers compilation which saw the likes of Macie Stewart, Karl Blau and Dawn Riding take on everything from the themes of Twin Peaks, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse to those of Cheers and Fraiser. This month sees the beginning of a brand new season, with a new cover released every Thursday and acts like Accessory (AKA Dehd‘s Jason Balla), Bill MacKay, Wild Pink, Vetiver, Sarah La Puerta, Leon III and others promised. This week sees Mark Mulcahy take on Fred Rogers’s ‘Won’t You be My Neighbor,’ adding a shadowy strangeness while keeping the sentiment at song’s heart.

Stayed Tuned: Season 2 is up and running now on Perpetual Doom and you can follow it on Bandcamp.

nina gala – we looked like angels

After releasing a couple of EPs, Baltimore’s nina gala is set to released her debut full-length album swan heart this autumn, and lead single ‘we looked like angels’ gives a glimpse of what to expect. A sweet track where romance and melancholy marble together, the bright shimmer of the guitars evoking the celestial imagery as gala’s vocals hark back to some lost love. “One day I’ll call you again / you’re a memory till then,” she sings, “something I can reach out and touch / but can’t touch back.” Left for now to remember fondly, hoping the heavenly being might descend again.

Nothing Really – Backseat Driver

The time since Melbourne‘s Nothing Really released their debut EP Yuck has been anything but easy, various personal upheavals and losses compounding an already difficult period. New single ‘Backseat Driver’ emerges from this phase, a track shaded by discouragement as though turned cynical by recent times. But within the despondency lies something else. An attempt to recognise the value of persisting despite everything, and in doing so helping others too. Indeed, vocalist/guitarist Vic Austin describes the track as “a reflection on how to care for others while also giving them the space to make their own mistakes. These lyrics are really about learning how to be a better friend.”

‘Backseat Driver’ is out now and available from the Nothing Really Bandcamp page.

Oh Lonesome Ana – MEG/\DETH TEE

Sacramento’s Oh Lonesome Ana released their debut full-length MEG/\DETH TEE earlier this month. The collection is inspired by and built around the poetry and prose of friend Johnny Allen, adapted into music by the band’s Evan Bailey. The title track offers a glimpse of the kind of melancholic yet wryly humorous tone which results. A meditation on the passing of time which identifies what changes, what is lost and what remains behind. “Am I too old to wear this Megadeth tee?” asks one such verse. “How could anyone / After all these years / Still like me?” Like Allen before them, Oh Lonesome Ana might not have an answer for such questions, but in ensuring they are still asked, offer hope in the very process of searching. Of continuing on in spite of everything.

Pat Keen – Love & Drugs

Writing of album Cells Remain back in 2020, we described Pat Keen‘s music as a “complex web of arrangements […] experimentation devoid of pomposity or pretension,” which attempts to conjure the nuances of a person’s inner life. The Minneapolis-based artist returns this month with ‘Love & Drugs’, a new single which furthers this ideal, exploring how chemicals might alter the appearance and texture of life, and how care is required to get the balance right. All delivered with a bright yet understated confidence, Keen’s vocals barely more than a murmur. Like confessions told directly into your ear.

Precocious Neophyte – AIWA

Haling from Seoul and based in Chicago, Precocious Neophyte is a songwriting project that germinated from a period of demoralization. “I decided that I would never play the guitar in front of people,” explain the liner notes of new album Home In The Desert. “I shut myself in. Cocooning. Just read Korean novels, a little poetry.” But their thoughts eventually turned to past times, old friends, watching the dawn over Hongdae. And thinking about home led to the guitar again. Solo jams at first, eventually a band. An album with singles like ‘AIWA’, which offer the past like dreams to experience anew.

Titus Andronicus – (I’m) Screwed

This autumn sees the return of Titus Andronicus with brand new album The Will to Live on Merge Records, and latest single ‘(I’m) Screwed’ finds them as passionate and furious as ever. Patrick Stickles has carved out a place among the best songwriters in the country over the past decade and more, and the new album is no less ambitious. A meditation on the fragility and beauty of life, and a railing against all those things which refuse to grant it the respect and reverence it deserves. “Naturally, though, our long-suffering narrator can only arrive at this conclusion through a painful and arduous odyssey through Hell itself,” Stickles explained to Pitchfork. “This is a Titus Andronicus record, after all.” ‘(I’m) Screwed’ drops us into the deep end, the narrator trapped on all sides as his beliefs are tested. Check out the video by Ray Concepcion below:

The Will to Live will be released via Merge Records on 30th September and you can pre-order it now.

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With Lentz relocating to Japan to make video games (we told you they were cool), times are a’changing for Nice Legs, though luckily for us they teamed up with Fox Food Records to put out a double A-side last hurrah, Strange Family. First is ‘Mighty Three’, a honeyed cinematic rock song, playing like a slow-dance dream where reality is just off, each movement highlighted by a shimmer and shake. As such, the track occupies a curious space between then and now, nostalgia and immediacy combining into what could be fond memory, keen hope for the future, or some psychedelic vision of the present as seen from a sixties summer night.

“Day like today, can’t bare to see the sky.
It’s the most magical sound in the world
and these are magic times”

‘Ashtrays’ is dreamy but in a different way, the background synths swelling and receding in peculiar patterns behind Walker’s vocals. If the previous track was a magical haze then this is a pensive fog, a weird, semi-transparent blanket that clouds the surroundings and forces you into introspection. Still, as you might expect from Nice Legs, the song is far more than some dejected lope, fizzing and popping with quirks and oddities while Walker’s vocals find the perfect pitch, coming to your ears like nostalgia captured and purified.

“My head hurts from smoking
just waiting my turn
when I just want to say
country songs make me homesick”

Strange Family is out now via Fox Food Records (who are unfortunately out of alpine white lathe cut square vinyl) and Campers Rule Records (who’s crystal clear editions are also sold out). Oh well, grab it as a name-your-price download instead!

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‘Funny Man Routine’ is not as spiky as anything on Ride With Me, Henry Demos swooping in and smoothing over the edges with fuzzed-out reverb. The vocals sound naive and unsure, less swaggering rock demigod, more odd and eccentric outsider, part Withered Hand, part Evangelicals. Think of the track as a lo-fi surf rock, dream pop encore, simultaneously sunny and strange, capped off with the final lines which are funny and weird and sad all at once.

“Doing my funny man routine for the football team at school.
If I showed them the sad parts, would they walk out on me.
So I showed them the sad parts and they fell in love with me.
So I showed them the sad parts and they cried for me”

You can buy ‘Funny Man Routine’ now from Table People’s Bandcamp page on a pay-what-you-can basis. If you’re in the area, be sure to get to Strange Fruit for 9pm in order to catch Nice Legs, JuckJuck GRUNZIE and Table People’s last hurrah. It’s 5000won + free pizza and Table People merchandise, so you’d be a fool not to go (unless, like us, you’re 9000 miles away). All the details are here.

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Galaxy Express might describe themselves as a “high octane, runaway bullet train”, but you get the sense, at least on this newest album, that the driver has wrested back control and running right on schedule. You can buy Walking on Empty now from a variety of places, collected neatly by Loverock.

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Because we still have a fair amount of tapes left, and obviously want to raise as much as possible for Worldreader, we have decided to run a special holiday offer. So, as suggested below in stylised sans serif, entering the code ‘HOHOHO’ at the checkout on Bandcamp will get you a handsome 40% off both digital and physical copies of the compilation. This will still cover the production cost of the cassette, but remember all profits go to charity, so every extra pound you give will be a pound well spent.To refresh your memory, here’s what you’ll be getting if you put some of your hard earned cash towards Quiet, Constant Friends:

Side A

Danielle Fricke – The Well
Lotte Kestner – Cattleya
Wes Tirey – Akhnilo Blues
Pasture Dog – Everything That Rises Must Converge
Old Earth – Pretty Steep
Salt Altars – Little Big Man
Henry Demos – Not Her
Beat Radio – Mexico City
Sondra Sun-Odeon – Hair

Side B

Nathan Amundson – Haruki Murakami
Windmill – Jim & The Rather Large Nectarine
ARMS – The Book of Love
Oh, Rose & Sawtooth – TV
Free Cake For Every Creature – Don’t Go Away (Ahumpf Acgroof)
John Ross – The Overlook Hotel
Kissing Fractures – I Drank Phosphorus With Aunt Lucy
Nice Legs – Past Lives
Ben Seretan – King of Crumbs
Trouble Books – Oak and Linden Tree Abridged
Lewtrakimou – I’m a Book on Tape
Nadia Reid – Runway

Grab a download or cassette now via our Bandcamp page, and be sure to remember to use the code ‘HOHOHO’ for your discount.

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We covered Henry Demos, the solo project of Mark Lentz of Seoul-based Nice Legs, back in April, writing about his split release with Lewtrakimou on Fox Food Records and utilising superlatives such as ‘kinda weird” and “thoroughly original & enjoyable”. ‘Not Her’ is a slight departure from the semi-psychedelic rock of I Was Trying To Get There…, a swirling, mostly-instrumental track that sounds positively cosmic, which is perhaps unsurprising as the finale contains what is allegedly the world’s oldest poem (although don’t hold us to this fact):

“Your eyes

The stars

Ten thousand years

Your eyes

The stars”

The artwork is by Wake The Deaf’s resident artist Erika (who also designed the album cover), drawing upon the mewling of the opening.

You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now ahead of its release on the 17th October, including some rather pretty cassettes (even if I do say so myself).

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Tierpark are the latest act to emerge from this talent pool. Self-described as a “dreamgaze noise rock” band, the outfit draw upon a wide range of influences to create an experimental brand of post-rock. With complex rhythms, peculiar time signatures and a disregard for common conventions, the band produce songs of surprising intricacy without moving too far from the accessible pop/rock template, allowing the listener a way in to their strange dreamscapes. Their latest album, The Moment Two Worlds Meet, is out later this month, and we are delighted to share the second track with you now.

‘Shadow Play [그림자림그]’ is a perfect example of Tierpark’s atypical style. Think a mix of the idiosyncratic art-rock of Dirty Projectors and the eccentricity of Bjork, with post-rock overtones and a Minus The Bear-style mathy tinge, and you are getting somewhere near pinning down the sound. The vocals have shades of recent favourite Bells Atlas, adding a further texture to what is already a vivid track, and despite being an ignorant Westerner with no knowledge of Korean, Sehee Kim’s lyrics and delivery provide more than enough to convey the general concept behind the song. Have a listen below:

The Moment Two Worlds Meet is set to be released on the 20th September. You can pre-order it now via the Tierpark Bandcamp page.

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Their début full-length, Ride With Me, manages to get pretty close to these goals. Opener ‘Glass Matters’ has a Britpop vibe, that sort of radio-friendly gaiety of 90s guitar band, while the vocals lend the song a kooky, unconventional edge. This peculiarity continues with the title track, a blend of who-gives-a-damn lyrics and spiky guitar solos delivered in a manner difficult to peg, Pavement meets the original post-punk generation. The irregular aspect in toned down for ‘Monarchy’, a buoyant song where the guitars are sparkling and the percussion sharp and the vocals like one big promise, all melded together like a declaration of hope.

‘Thank You’ changes the tone again, sounding like a shoegaze song covered by a 70s garage band, while ‘Real Good Time’ and ‘Touch a Tiger’ are slow and atmospheric, the percussion tempered behind shimmering, psychedelic guitars. The guitars pick up again for ‘Hometown’, the song swinging toward the pop-punk end of the spectrum with heartfelt lyrics of hometowns and halcyon youth.

The final songs see another change of direction. ‘Mennonites’ is jangly and carefree, almost straying into ska-punk territory with the bouncy guitars and half-sung, half-spoken lyrics, but the three closers (‘Chiko’, ‘Finnish Prisons’ and ‘Dirty Wedding) flick between grungey rock and moody punk, reminiscent of the weirder Japandroids material if it switched out the raw noise for something more idiosyncratic and quirky.

You can buy Ride With Me now from the Table People Bandcamp page.

P.S. Table People are part of the Loose Union collective, which you should check out.

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