[engl] Heaven's End is the debut album.

[engl] All three LOOP John Peel sessions collated on one vinyl album from 1987 – 1990, these are some of the best recordings by LOOP. Remastered by Kevin Metcalf when the CDs were reissued in 2008, REACTOR has decided to reissue the famed WOLFFLOW 2LP for RSD 2017. In a new / updated sleeve, with new printed innerbags. Wolf Flow captures LOOP in their ascendency in the the late 90s, featuring tracks from all three of their albums, a cover of Rocket USA and the track Sunburst (b-side of Arc Lite)…theres a 10 minute version of Straight To Your Heart! Essential!! Recorded live at MAIDA VALE STUDIOS.

[engl] Louis Philippe is living the big dream: He's a famous football journalist AND a pop star. He writes, arranges, sings and plays the most elegant pop songs on our side of the Atlantic, he released on the legendary label él Records and his influence on the great Japanese Shibuya sound cannot be underestimated. So we are very pleased to present a long overdue compilation of some of the greatest Louis Philippe songs from the years 1994- 2007. Many of these songs are from albums that have been out of print for a long time, and some of them are being released on vinyl for the first time The album was expertly compiled by Louis Philippe's friend and sometime musical partner Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas), who also wrote the liner notes. In them O'Hagan writes and recommends: „Lose yourself in this record and let me warn you. You ?ll be humming the tunes and reliving the chorus ?s and key changes for an age, and if you ?re a songwriter you will probably be lifting the melodies without realising is. That ?s the sign of a timeless classic.“ Anyone who knows the works of Louis Philippe will immediately agree with O'Hagan. Those who do not yet know Louis Philippe will agree with O'Hagan at the latest after listening to this album for the first time. They say that when Smokey Robinson sings, you hear violins. And when the great Louis Philippe sings, the sun rises, even on 21 December at midnight.

[engl] Back in the heady days of 2007, long before social media was the reigning king of entertainment, when people still picked going out to live shows over streaming movies, there was a band that made a little blip on the heart monitor of the Medway music scene before disappearing almost as quick. The Lovedays were a British pop band, in the retro meaning of the word "Pop". With influences ranging from Brian Wilson and The Who, to Steve Winwood and Roy Wood, The Lovedays aspired to be part of the next generation of classic pop purveyors. Their eponymous debut received 5-star notices as far afield as the US, with only self-distribution and promotion, along with noted appearances at The Cavern Club in Liverpool and Kennys Castaways in New York in 2009. They took hiatus in 2010, for pastures new. Ben Jones, the frontman and leader of the band, moved to Austin, TX, where he is part of the roots duo, Beat Root Revival.

[engl] Marietta is the new project of Guillaume Marietta after The Feeling Of Love.

[engl] Sophomore album by Marietta, La Passagère follows Basement Dreams Are The Bedroom Cream (Born Bad Records, 2015), which was lauded by French daily newspaper Liberation, magazines Les Inrockuptibles, Magic, New Noise and online magazine Noisey. After touring with his band for two years and playing well-received concerts at Villette Sonique, Rock en Seine, Levitation Festival, Musiques Volantes, Bars en Trans, laureate of leading French development prize Fair 2017 Guillaume Marietta has come back with nine songs written in French for the first time. The album was recorded in Los Angeles by Chris Cohen, singer-songwriter and producer extraordinaire, with two albums signed on Captured Tracks and past member of Deerhoof and The Curtains. Mixed by Kenneth Gilmore, permanent member of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, who counts in his mixing catalogue Front Row Seat To Earth by Weyes Blood and My Dreams Dictate My Reality by SOKO. A carnal, sensual, hallucinating and melancholic record, fed by representations of the woman, the modern city, self-abandon, paranoia and redemption. La Passagère is inhabited by the ghosts of Syd Barret and Lou Reed, and nods to contemporary productions by Kurt Vile, Cate Lebon, Tim Presley, Kevin Morby, and of course Chris Cohen.

[engl] In 20 or 30 years, we’ll talk about Guillaume Marietta the same way we talk about Arthur Russell or Robert Johnson today – people ignored by their contemporaries and rediscovered later in prestigious anthologies or picaresque documentaries. Future being rather incertain these days, it would maybe be better if you didn’t lose any time and enjoy Marietta right away. Sure, it won’t be easy to map Marietta’s journey – one of the key players of the GrandeTriple Alliance De l’Est, an anarchic scene which exploded between Metz and Strasbourg in the early 2000s, fronting bands such as A.H. Kraken, Plastobe?ton and The Feeling Of Love. In 2015 he released his first solo album, Basement Dreams Are The Bedroom Cream, an amazing collection of 4-track twisted lullabies who got him comparisons with Syd Barrett and John Frusciante. Then comes his second LP and suddenly you lose the track – footprints have been covered – no more of that sweet demo sounding folky weirdness : La Passage?re is recorded in Los Angeles with Chris Cohen and it’s a lush and mesmerizing record, like Berlin with windows wide open or a sun-drenched The Idiot. A record that gives Marietta’s music new layers of depth and complexity – even if he loses part of his audience in the process. Following this would be tough – and hazardous No studio sessions in LA, no 4-track demos, Prazepam St. has been recorded with cracked computer music software. Richer and fuller than the two previous records, this new LP is also, paradoxically, unbashed and easier to grasp. “I wanted to have fun,” says Marietta. Build a dark and bright world with my little hands and raw material, like David Lynch when he did Eraserhead “- one of the main keys to the album. It is also, more involuntarily a synthesis – there’s the raw side of the first album, that more flamboyant and ambitious of the second, but also small pieces of AH Kraken, Feeling Of Love and even Funk Police. Marietta went back to some of his teenage years fovorite records – Sonic Youth, Beck, Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, but also Jim O’Rourke or David Pajo – “Pajo” is a nod to te guitarist from Slint whose solo project Papa M is a mainstay on Guillaume’s record collection. Prazepam St. is also a dark and twisted record, as its title shows – a reference to an anxiolitic used for severe depression. “I have often tried to speak in my lyrics of the way the human mind works, of our contradictions, of our inner darkness, explains Marietta. And this time I wanted to bring the lexical field of drugs into my texts. Our body and mind are shaped by these substances that we use and abuse and I wanted to play with that. It’s a chemical album. » Proof made with « Dmpa », a molecule used as a chemical castrator on American sex offenders, transformed here into a battered folk song crushed by samples, rhythm machines and breaks from outer space. Or « Aluminum”, a solid and shiny but highly harmful element, like the incandescent ride full of rumbling synths, which opens the album – not an innocent choice: “Aluminum fairly well reflects our ability to accept all the things that we are presented with as being necessary for our daily life, concludes Marietta. Despite the experience, we always do the opposite of what is good for us. ” Like ignoring Marietta records, for exemple. Awaiting for 20 or 30 years to praise them. But you know what? He’s here. Right now. Enjoy.

[engl] Mellie’s first EP „Have Head“, released in spring 2020, was a small manifesto of brooding. While the urban zeitgeist wants to shake this off once and for all in order to just get things done and be even more productive, Mellie explicitly appreciates the permanent thinking-things-through. The whole thing comes with a melancholic, opaque sound which is shaped by sometimes discordant, often catchy guitar riffs and repetitive, almost paralyzing basslines. The trio‘s sound is anything but forced or exhausting, on the contrary: Mellie’s music is in many places subtle, in the very best sense of the word, sometimes even shy. Krautrock-like, repetitive passages bring a reduced version of early Stereolab to mind. „First Fridge“ calls up memories of Sonic Youth’s brighter and poppier songs.

[engl] Long-awaited debut album from progressive and psychedelic rock band from Pula, Croatia, offers a berserk kick start into their world of music. Influenced by Kyuss, The Mars Volta and Tool.

[engl] Weaving a fragile thread through collectible outsider genres such as acid folk, French jazz, Braziliana and world music it is virtually incomprehensible that this incredible one-off solo album by mononymous Occitan language singer, songwriter and activist Miquela has managed to evade notoriety and wider affection zover five decades. Captured via a humble makeshift studio set-up in a classroom in 1977, this startlingly crystalline recording is one of the best examples you are likely to hear, not shying from ambitious small string arrangements and intimate Gallic jazz infusions this LP represents the quiet storm erupting from the pride and protection of the ancient “romance” language known as Occitan, as spoken by less than 1.5 million people in Southern France (as well as parts of Italy and Spain). Naturally combining a wide range of influences, and fuelled by the same impassioned fervour found in privately pressed minority language records from Britanny, Catalonia and Wales, Miquela’s first and only solo record was recorded by request of poet Ives Roqueta for his exclusively Occitan language label Ventadorn. Including players from Miquela’s surrounding area of Toulon the album also enlisted arrangements from important musicians such as co-author Jean-Michel Mariou, jazz contrabass player Didier Capeille (later affiliate of Marseilles’ Etron Fou Leloublan), and guitarist Gilles Cardon, who would regularly play for Britanny based label Nevenoe (knotting the ties between both French language rehabilitation movements). Released and well-received by a supportive and emotional Occitan fan base, this would be Miquela’s only ever solo LP (preceded by a 7? picture sleeve EP, drawing similarities to Welsh label Sain) and laid the foundations for future releases with her folk rock girl group Lei Chapacans (The Vagabonds) which led to tours as far as Sardinia, Yemen and Moscow. As a vital forerunner of a maligned genre of Occitan femme-folk singers such as Estela, Nicòla, Jacmelina, Rosina De Peira E Martina and Claudia Galibert, this LP marks the start of a journey that would eventually find its beloved protagonist at the heart of the galvanised Occitan language media.

[engl] The first progressive girl group of the French Occitan language pop scene bring you folk funk, sun-baked bossa, Coltrane jazz and their own brand of punky Dizco rural against an untouched French Balearic backdrop spanning the late 70s and 80s. If even the most assiduous of European record collectors consider the Occitan language music scene to be France’s best-kept secret then it’s as fair to say that the incredible multifaceted recordings of langue d’oc prog girl group Lei Chapacans has spent the last four decades hiding in plain sight. In all fairness this overlooked treasure chest of minority language excursions into folk funk, Balearic, bossa, John Coltrane penned jazz, baroque psych, Palestinian poetry, comedic synth skits (and even the rawest form of femme-fronted multiingual punky disco) has been stowed away in inconspicuous photographic record sleeves, falsely evoking something closer to contemporary C&W while oft-misplaced in record shop cassette racks alongside “traditional” spoken-word and scholastic albums. So for the uninitiated, don’t be too hard on yourself. The fun starts here. For those who are familiar with the rare and sought-after one-off solo album by Occitan singer Miquela and have craved for more, then you’ve come to exactly the right place. Lei Chapacans (a name that roughly translates to The Vagabonds) is the all-girl vocal group assembled by Miquela herself just two years after her debut release, having toured the word and snubbed major label record deal offers with a steadfast allegiance to the protection of the Occitan language in which this album is primarily penned and performed (minus a small amount of German and sarcastic English in one rebellious instance). For European collectors with a penchant for French savoir faire, but have further yearnings for folkloric femme funk, then it’s time to look towards the Occitan sunset where you will meet Lolo, Miquela, Sophie, Irena and Denise. These amazing, and undeniably culturally important recordings might have taken some time to find a wider audience, but for music lovers, crate diggers and vinyl vultures alike there are still a lot of tasty morsels out there to be scavenged and devoured, ask any self-respecting Chapacan and they’ll concur wholeheartedly.

[engl] Thirteen perfectly balanced, keyboard saturated songs 7lutter like 7lags threaded on a string: a collection of 7leeting thoughts stirred by the winds of Eighties pop. Riffs soar, the drum machine gallops and vocals are as carefully blended as a mango smoothie on a white-sky day. Modal Melodies is the duo made up of Violetta Del Conte-Race (Primo! / The Glass Picture) & Jake Robertson (Alien Nosejob, etc.) The group stemmed from a loose chat at Geelong’s Jerkfest in early 2021, where they made plans to help each other complete some un7inished demos. After emailing ideas back and forth through lockdown, they were soon able to be in the same room together to structure their quickly blossoming songs. Vio added vocals from home and Jake mixed them into their sessions. Six to eight months after making their 7irst arrangements, Modal Melodies had matured into this debut record. There’s something about a duo - something intimate and serious: it requires full trust and an act of balance. These are people who have listened to so much music they know how to make tunes in a way that seems intuitive. Karen Marks, Saada Bonaire and Lena Platonos have been mentioned as influences, but it seems like the biggest inspiration to cite came from each other. There’s an untamed instinct for melody, and layers like clouds, slowly rolling in. Drenched with colours and understated tension in parts, coupled with reckless joy, this album speaks to this moment.

[engl] "On one hand, the music is very melodic and cheerful. The lyrics, however, deal with death, decay, change ... no wonder we are rather popular with the undead," says singer, guitarist and songwriter Bid of the new THE MONOCHROME SET album "Spaces Everywhere". A very particular humor. And a very unique sound: Although this time banjos, Hammond organ, female backing vocals and even flutes can be heard on the new album, experts and laymen alike will recognize: This is THE MONOCHROME SET. Undistorted, nervous guitars, like the soundtrack to a Nouvelle Vague film ... but one featuring Michael Caine, Louis de Funès and Belmondo (directed by Andy Warhol).

[engl] Released in February 1980, their first album "Strange Boutique" – featuring the band's percussion-heavy theme song (predating Adam & The Ants' "Kings of the Wild Frontier" by months) and the Johnny Marr-anticipating "Love Goes Down the Drain" – caught The Monochrome Set in full flight, quickly followed by the equally taut, funny and adventurously dynamic "Love Zombies".