[engl] Since the mid-1990s, Stockholm’s Last Days of April have created a succession of luminous, hook-laden LPs, earning the band’s lead vocalist, guitarist, and all-around auteur, Karl Larsson, a reputation as a bonafide songwriter’s songwriter. With EVEN THE GOOD DAYS ARE BAD, Larsson and Co. return with their 10th long player (following 2015’s Sea of Clouds), a shimmering collection of eight new Larsson-penned songs that show him at the apex of his craft and LDOA achieving new levels of strength, honesty, and brilliance.

[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] "Heavy music for nerdy people", that's how someone once described the music of Mint Mind. "For" or "from"? Both, of course. After the first "VG+" songs, you get a feeling of what the world of Mint Mind looks like: instruments and amplifiers from several decades loosely piled and organized. In front of, next to and between are synthesizers and effects, some as big as microwave ovens. On the crooked record shelf are handfuls of comics, albums by New Order, Devo, the B52s, almost the entire SST catalog, as well as Krautrock classics by Can and Faust. "VG+", Mint Mind's third album, has become a great, cross-generational indie rock album. Mint Mind are sitting in the Upper Room Studio, a separate area of Rick McPhail's small industrial loft in Hamburg-Altona. This is where the new Mint Mind album VG+ was created. Rick, who grew up in Maine, USA, looks to his fellow musicians. They are a little younger than him. Christian Klindworth (Fluppe) is 40, Friedel Viegener is 22. Rick grins and says, "I'm a polite and cheerful person but I need moments to vent and that's what I do in my music. I usually get angry about the same things as young people. A lot of the things that suck today sucked in the 80s and it wasn't easier to fight them back then.” The album is about anger, optimism, a politician with little fingers or influencers who secretly lead a normal life. Some lyrics are funny, others serious: "Glow" is about love and appreciating good moments in difficult times. "Youth And I" deals with the question of why different generations with the same ideas on topics such as the environment, women's and LGBTQIA+ rights or even the economy do not manage to form a unity, but instead allow themselves to be disturbed by something as silly as age differences. The sound of Mint Mind combines sweet and sour, fuzzy riffs with the freedom and sentiment of 80’s post-punk/indie. Synthesizers have become a more central instrument this time. From playful and strange sounds to the eerie and dark, the album is littered with textures and ear candy to discover. The album title is well chosen. "VG+" is taken from the Goldmine Grading Standard for the evaluation of used vinyl records and means "Very Good +" - background noise can occur occasionally, but not always. Older folks might certainly feel reminded of Dinosaur Jr. or The Cure, the younger ones of Diiv, Wavves or Gurr. And for a moment, the world is Very Good + (with background noise) for everyone. Speaking of background noise: When Rick is not swinging his self-made Lego guitar at Mint Mind, he takes care of the technic, roadies and lead guitar in Tocotronic or spins records. In the Hamburger bar Mutter he plays Album/Adult Oriented Rock under the motto "AOR-Alles Klar?". He moderates the songs and with a telephone receiver converted to a microphone the guests can also make requests. As the morning dawns over Hamburg, Rick packs up his Billy Joel, Chicago and Steely Dan albums, grabs his skateboard and rides back to his studio with the rising sun at his back. “Sultan of Squat” furthers the band's trajectory into themselves, polishing off thirteen songs filled with dubious characters, whimsical retreats, and even the odd love song. As with previous releases, The Cowboys refuse to make their bed in any single genre. Lead track, “The Sultan of Squat'' opens the album with an earworm salute to America’s pastime while lofting a lyrical curveball of dark, defeated humor. The boys kick it into high gear, playing with the finesse and dexterity ten years as a band instills. It's automatic - whether they're launching into classic Midwestern garage punk (“Raining Sour Grapes”), dialing things back to piano-driven power pop (“Token Drifter”), or western slide guitar pop-rock ballads ("She's Not Your Baby Anymore"), The Cowboys are simply incredible across “Sultan of Squat”. This could well be The Cowboys' finest hour as a group, and six albums in - that's no easy feat. The best of the Midwest is back under the bright lights, pouring collective blood, sweat, and tears into a sound equal parts then and now. *LP includes 11x17 full color poster

[engl] Die Mobylettes' have been around since the early 90's and have since then been Germanys premier All-Girl-60's Band! Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Brill Building Pop, Holland-Dozier-Holland and Phil Spector come to mind here. Northern Soul as well. Very cool. 'Immer schlimmer' is the bands first album in a decade!

[engl] With 'The Monochrome Set – Radio Sessions (Marc Riley BBC 6 Music 2011-2022)' we revive the great tradition of releasing radio sessions of great (independent) acts. And what could be more natural than starting our series with a band that represents the indie ethos like few others in following their own unique artistic vision without compromise. The most unique thing about the radio session recordings is that they encompass a mixture of concert and studio. The bands are freer than in studio recordings at the same time more focused than in live performances - gems from the bands repertoire which might not have been played live are often preserved only in the radio sessions. The Monochrome Set - Radio Sessions contains all the BBC 6 sessions recorded for and hosted by the great Marc Riley from the years 2011-2022. 32 songs in total including well- known hits like "Eine Symphonie des Grauens", "Jet Set Junta" and "Alphaville" as well as fantastic versions of seldom heard or not so well-known songs like "Rain Check" or "Hip Kitten Spinning Chrome". With the kind support of the BBC, we are now able to release these recordings of the most demonstrably intelligent, dark, witty and British of all guitar pop bands on record for the first time. Radio Sessions" by THE TELESCOPES and COMET GAIN are planned for the near future. Stay tuned!

[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".

[engl] 33 years after the release of the classic “Volume, Contrast, Brilliance... Vol.1” comes this wonderful collection of unreleased and rare demos. Spanning 1978 to 1991, these range from DIY to high quality studio recordings - many are real gems, but some also failed to be released or properly recorded for a variety of reasons (which are explained in the liner notes) - bad timing, odd decisions, even forgetfulness! The range of styles displayed are typical of this iconic and highly influential band - slices of their sound can be heard throughout the indie and mainstream genres of many countries.

[engl] "As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your life is thinning out and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself: that went a bit quick. In certain moods, you may want to put it rather more forcefully. As in: OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!... then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past." – Martin Amis 2024 marks 40 years of Pete Astor making records, a suitable anniversary point at which to take stock and double back on songs that first appeared on records by Astor-fronted combos such as Creation Records trailblazers The Loft and The Weather Prophets and Matador recording artists The Wisdom of Harry, as well as selections from solo albums that appeared on labels such as Danceteria and Static Caravan. Astor’s motivation for TS&NR, as his extensive notes below make clear, is manifold. Some songs are effectively re-examined in the way one might linger over a resonant picture from a box of old photographs – connecting with the essence of a younger self. Other songs are newly recast in wiser and more reflective hues, while others simply demanded exhumation from wilfully opaque, lo fi non-production. The songs chosen are not the obvious ones - there’s no "Up the Hill and Down the Slope" or “Almost Prayed” here - but have been selected for more interesting, often esoteric, reasons. Astor is accompanied by an estimable band of co-conspirators, evolving out of many hours spent playing music together on records and at shows over the last decade. They are drummer Ian Button, (Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge, Go Kart Mozart), bassist Andy Lewis (Paul Weller, Soho Radio and Blow Up DJ), guitarist Wilson Neil Scott (Summerhill, Felt, Everything But the Girl) and keyboardist/ multi-instrumentalist/ producer Sean Read (Dexys, Mark Lanegan, Dave Gahan, Iggy Pop, Manic Street Preachers, Beth Orton, Chrissie Hynde...). Together they’ve revisited these lost gems of songs in a manner that has allowed Astor to balance the way that they still make sense to him now, looking both to the future and to that big and interesting new country, the past.

[engl] Great music and deep inspiration, can come at the most unexpected moments. At the most difficult times, and sometimes at the most contented ones, too. In 2021 Robert Forster had a batch of songs written over a period of three years which he knew would be the basis of his next album. The songs felt strong, like they belonged together. They surprised him, too. They had different things to say, more openly personal about those closest to him. He had the beginnings of one other song too, just music and a melody, no lyrics as yet. There was no rush to complete it, since he was also working on his first novel. It felt like the new songs could wait. Life soon had other plans. In July of 2021, Robert’s wife and sometimes musical partner Karin Bäumler was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and so began the intense emotional challenges of hospital, tests, chemotherapy, of hopes and fears. As it had often been in their lives together for 32 years, music was like a rock, a place they could go. “We started to strum songs at night to unwind after a big day, and Karin knew them because I had written them in the house,” Robert says. “When you are concentrating on a song the rest of life goes away, and music became a beautiful escape hatch for us.” In July, Karin talked with Robert of the fight ahead. Soon after, with Karin resting in another room, Robert quietly played that new song he had set aside and whispered “She’s a fighter, fighting for good”. Those lines became the only lyrics needed for She’s A Fighter, the extraordinary opening track and first single from the new Robert Forster album, The Candle And The Flame. “I have always written from life, about things that are close, but what Karin was going through felt too big to write about,” Robert says. “I thought if I did try to write about it the song would be 100 verses long. The only room I could see in this piece of music was for those two lines and that took me right down to the basics. I couldn’t have done it any other way.” Life found a new rhythm. Karin and Robert’s son Louis came to the family home in Brisbane most days, joining the music sessions. Friends dropped in with meals and one of them was Adele Pickvance, bassist with Robert on the final three albums by The Go-Betweens. She would join the music-making too. “We weren’t thinking of making a record. We decided to put our lounge room songs down on tape in a studio so that we would always have a recording of this thing we did.” Time was precious. The songs were recorded quickly at Brisbane studio Alchemix, without headphones, without overdubs, everyone in a studio room together, eye to eye. “Listening back to the day’s recordings, two of the songs in this raw form sounded complete to Karin and I. We wondered, could an album of songs be recorded in the same way?” After a medical procedure in October that year, Karin continued recording when her health allowed, sometimes just a day or two in a month. The joy and respite the music gave them was priceless as Karin drove the album to completion, shortly after finishing her course of chemotherapy in March 2022. Some will hear songs on the new album with titles such as It’s Only Poison (“The body is a temple/The mind is a box/Your heart is like a river that no one can stop”) and Always (“Time moves in one direction/And there’s been a breakdown at the intersection out on Highway 5”) and conclude these must have been written after Karin’s diagnosis. They weren’t. Nor was Tender Years, one of the greatest love songs Robert has written in a career that now stretches across nine studio albums with The Go-Betweens and seven solo albums of original material. The Roads is set in the countryside of Bavaria, Germany, where Karin and Robert met and lived for many years. Go Free is a song from lockdown, as is There’s A Reason To Live, inspired by the discovery of an old concert ticket in a jacket pocket. All three are saying, better times can be up ahead. I Don’t Do Drugs I Do Time is a clear-eyed observation from a mature perspective (“I remember when we first met/Where you sat and what you said”), as is the album’s closing statement, When I Was a Young Man. Robert says: “That was triggered by a show on Radio National where guests were asked, ‘What’s the most important year of your life?’ For me that was when I was 21, moved out of home, The Go-Betweens began, I started to write good songs.” What he did not know then was how far those songs would take him. Or that at 65, with the help of family and friends, in the most testing of times, he would deliver an album of songs as rich, as meaningful, as life-affirming, as true, as anything a younger person might dream.

[engl] Robocop Kraus are back! Incredibly, “Smile” is the first new Robo album in fifteen years. Produced by Jan Philipp Janzen (Die Sterne, von Spar etc.), it sounds very much like ... no ... it sounds exactly like Robocop Kraus! Can we agree, once and for all, that the band often cited as Germany’s answer to “The Make Up / Franz Ferdinand / Talking Heads / The Rapture / Devo” have their own inimitable sound? Which is no small achievement. Come to think of it, how did we achieve the feat of lasting so long without Robocop Kraus? And another thing: how did the band manage to come up with the best album in their history, some 25 years after the debut performance in a Hersbruck youth centre? An album that leaves the anaemic, success-obsessed indie scene in its wake and one that we can already say will be among the most invigorating releases of the year, even though 2023 has only just begun. “Smile“ is an aptly chosen title. The Robos gallop fiercely and fearlessly through an array of musical styles and themes. No false modesty, no malice, embracing the spirit of “Innocent Fun”. Is that doing them a disservice? Not in the slightest, in an age of meticulously plotted musical paths (and life plans), such naive exuberance and inventiveness are more than just charming, they are positively subversive. “Smile” fizzes with impetuous energy and shines with the serenity of a band who have played over 800 gigs all over the world and yet play every single song as if their lives depended on it. “What’s sizzling in those pots, strange kitchen aromas” asks the opening track “Young Man”, fuelled by drums and bongos. Then comes the “Innocent Fun” we alluded to, a touching coming of age story, flaunting a euphoric power pop shiny suit. The first single “On Repeat” floats on dreamy synthesizer waves before drifting into the Kraut-disco. “World/Inferno” is dedicated to the group of the same name, with whom the Robos toured Europe and the USA in the 2000s. The New York band’s vocalist died last year. “Under control” is a new wave banger that sets the emotional state of too much sentiment to music. A state which is swiftly reined in on the next track, thanks to the great rationalist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Another highlight is the pop ballad “Cradle of Filth” which recounts an episode with the eponymous metal band on the night train to Saint Petersburg. There are flashes everywhere of that innate, idiosyncratic, unmistakeable Robocop Kraus sense of humour, never ironic, never detached. As those (and there are many) who have attended a Robocop Kraus gig or acquired one of their records will know, this band is on our side, they mean well with the world. On “Smile”, Robocop Kraus have succeeded in eluding the downward spiral that would see them end as a tiresome cult band or, perish the thought, a dusty legend. Yes indeed, they’ve charmed their way out of that trap. All this time, they’ve been hidden away, keeping themselves fresh like a deep-frozen gateau, waiting to be savoured when the time is right.

[engl] Long time no hear: after an extended hiatus and just the occasional gig, Robocop Kraus have rewired and reunited. They’re back in the game. Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the band was formed, a period which saw them release on labels like L’Age D’Or, Epitaph, and Anti. Now they have put together a compilation featuring all of the tracks which, for one reason or another, were not available on their regular albums, with an intriguing number of rarities and previously unreleased material. Founded in the late 1990s by members of former (secondary modern and grammar) school bands in the small Middle Franconian town of Hersbruck, endowed with the most rudimentary technical skills on their respective instruments (the deal was that every band member would play an instrument he had yet to master) and unafraid of hammering out songs from blatantly pilfered or well-worn musical ideas, the band was, to all intents and purposes, set up to fail. Nevertheless, Robocop Kraus became the love of our lives: 5 albums between the years of 1999 and 2007, the first on the band’s own label Swing Deluxe, the last on the internationally renowned Epitaph label. Hundreds of shows across Europe, the USA, Russia and Japan. Encounters and friendships with people and bands, adventures and events in squats, bars and clubs. Enough answers? Things quietened down in 2010, a lengthy break with just the odd show here and there. But last year, 2021, we had to concede that Robocop Kraus really are the love of our lives: a concert request was spontaneously accepted – surprising even the promoter, not to mention ourselves. Back to the rehearsal room. Now we are six and we have more instruments too. We had to listen back to the old songs so we could practise, and as we rummaged through the archives we happened upon the 28 songs now gathered here together for you. They range from our very first recordings to songs for (and in) 2022. EPs, compilation tracks, a few all-time faves like Poor Soul Relax (on vinyl for the first time) and previously unreleased songs or alternative versions. This ist he first ever Robocop Kraus double vinyl (check), with superb artwork by Lorenzo Zimmermann and meticulously detailed liner notes courtesy of the band, divulging no end of anecdotes or secrets true and false.