In 2005, Mclusky disbanded and some members went off to pursue a new band, Shooting At Unarmed Men. "Mcluskyism" is the definitive career spanning collection of songs that brought you more feelings than you even knew existed. This single disc of A sides, available at mid-price, will remain in print after the limited triple disc edition runs out.

Shame thrives on confrontation. Whether it be the seething intensity crackling throughout debut LP Songs of Praise or the adrenaline-pumping chaos that unfolds at Shame’s shows, it’s all fueled by feeling. NPR’s Bob Boilen noted, “Of the 70 bands I saw at this year’s SXSW, the band Shame seemed to mean what they played more than any other.” Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist John Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing The Fall and Wire among its biggest musical influences. Utilizing both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, Shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barreled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Oceans debut. From “Gold Hole,” a tongue-in-cheek takedown of rock narcissism, to lead single “Concrete” detailing the overwhelming moment of realizing a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated “Tasteless” taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-today, Songs of Praise never pauses to catch its breath

Scheduled for release in March 2019 via Denovali Records,Emitteris the third release by UK based instrumental ensemble The Pirate Ship Quintet. This follows their highly acclaimed 2007 self-titled debut EP and 2012’s full length, Rope for No Hopers.
Once again taking their favoured DIY approach, the album was recorded and mixed by the band, giving them complete control over the record’s direction and nuance. Emitterwas mastered in the US by renowned musician and engineer James Plotkin, who has also worked with the likes of ISIS, Earth and Sunn O))).
The album features a number of collaborators including award winning modern classical composer Emily Hall (Bedroom Community) adding the voices of her curated choir to ‘Companion’and ‘Wreath’. Further vocal performances come from soloists Blythe Pepino (Vaults/Mesadorm) and award-winning singer-songwriter Emily Barker.
The title track ‘Emitter’ showcases celebrated saxophonist Andrew Hayes (Run Logan Run/Tezeta), whose bright jazz flourishes and rending wails add a deeply plaintive touch. The band’s cellist Sandy Bartai (London Symphony Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales) delivers the sombre laments that are the calling-card of The Pirate Ship Quintet.
Emitteris the band’s most ambitious release to date, shying away from traditional songwriting paradigms and encouraging the music to progress into more eclectic spaces. This has allowed the band to explore their individual tastes and influences. The album flows organically between smaller, tightly-focused pieces and longer, more expansive suites which together form a cohesive soundscape.
The Pirate Ship Quintet’s core line-up consists of Sandy Bartai (cello), Alphie Matthews (guitar), Jonathan Sturgess (drums), Jonathan Ziapour (bass) and Alex Hobbis (guitar).

Composer and producer Thomas William Hill returns to Village Green Recordings with 'Grains of Space'.
'Grains of Space' started life as a series of minimal loops, recorded using a viola da gamba – a stringed instrument most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque eras – and a loop pedal. Using the negative space within each loop as the primary drive for composing, Thomas began a process of ‘joining the dots’, allowing the silence to dictate the next layer, informing the length, pitch and timbre of notes.
Between the overlap and juxtaposition of multiple layers, Thomas began to see melodies and rhythms emerging from relatively erratic elements:
“I began to see these loops - and recorded music in general - as a kind of fixed perspective that could be exploited. In isolation, a single layer may be no more than one or two notes punctuating four bars of silence, but when laid over multiple variations on that theme, disparate notes start to dance with each other and new connections take form, like constellations or deconstructed sentences.”
Using those recordings as the foundation, Thomas began incorporating a wide variety of other instruments into his palette, including bowed metallophones, gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, African kalimbas and metal tongue drums, as well as drum machines and analogue synthesisers.

Working with Brian Eno, Manzanera returns to the prog-rock of Roxy Music's early 70s albums on "Quiet Sun Mainstream". Expression. 2004.

The twenty-first century acceleration of culture is such that the mundane everyday increasingly seems to be spinning out of control. Amidst a warp and distortion of reality whereby alienating modes of contact interweave with intimidating power structures. Inhabiting the city thus quickly becomes no less than a constant battle for both time and space.
This is the landscape intrepidly explored on ‘Arrow’ - the London-based duo Gum Takes Tooth’s third album and first for Rocket Recordings. Searing and visceral yet suffused by melancholy and elegiac atmosphere, it’s also no less than a manifestation of the subconscious of the band themselves.
“I was experiencing a very difficult few years, as was most of the rest of the world - filled with contradictory contrasts of uncertainty, moments of cavernous bleakness shot through with searing revelations, ecstatic truths and joyous hope” reflects Jussi Brighmore of the band. “Basically, becoming a dad in these times, thinking of the present and the future that it’s aiming to construct, has brought all these up, intensely magnified and amplified.”
Forming in 2009, the duo of Brightmore and drummer Tom Fug quickly established a unique approach whereby drum-triggered electronics were manipulated to achieve a dynamic, rhythmically driven and flagrantly unclassifiable fury that flirted with both speaker-ripping psych-rock pyrotechnics and synapse-shredding acid house deliverance whilst stubbornly avoiding any of the trappings or clichés of either.
Forging their own distinct geometric trajectory through two albums in 2011’s ‘Silent Cenotaph’ and 2014’s ‘Mirrors Fold’, their polyrhythmic sleight-of-hand proved itself as much a strength as their unique take on vocal processing -“current communication demands we fragment ourselves, our voices, through the prism of countless distinct media channels” notes Jussi. “I feel that our approach to voice reflects this” Thus, the band mapped out a landscape in which the influences of Coil, Warp Records, The Knife and Lightning Bolt were alchemically transformed into an innovative and pulverising onslaught.
Yet ‘Arrow’, recorded by Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse studio in the capital, marks a new chapter for the band. “It’s been a time of enormous change for all of us given what’s happened over the last few years, to London, the place we live, Maybe it’s a more explicitly personal record for me as a result.” notes Jussi, “Ever more omnipresent and vacuous global tropes cementing economic inequality, nervous amnesia and being as complicit as anyone else in all that.”
Thus, the appropriately claustrophobic and intense repetition of ‘No Walls, No AIr’ deals lyrically with London as an ‘entropic ouroboros’ - a city eating itself - whilst the doom-laden and cinematically monochrome ‘A Still Earth’ imagines a dystopian future devoid of humans and entirely populated by self-perpetuating industry.
Yet ‘Arrow’ also offers hope for the future, and never more so than on its title-track: “It concerns the small change victories and comforts our culture portions out to us to placate us and prevent action towards change - the lie of self-empowerment and paranoia is the ‘weapon offered as a gift’” elucidates Jussi. “It ends with a call to arms to look inward to find the weapon to overcome this:”
“The Arrow’ is so called because it flies in a straight line or arc but it never repeats its structure, or goes back on itself” - and thus, a singularly appropriate metaphor for Gum Takes Tooth themselves. Mavericks to the last, perpetual square-pegs and a band intent on forging onward to break all or any paradigms before them, creating a collection of kinetic anthems to battle everyday oppression - a work
of machine-driven mania with its very human heart on its sleeve.

Nicholas "Nick" Currie, more popularly known under the artist name Momus, is a Scottish songwriter, author, blogger, and former journalist for Wired. For over thirty years he has been releasing albums on labels in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan.

Strut proudly present the brand new studio album from Nubiyan Twist, ‘Jungle Run’.
Now one of the leading lights in the UK’s new generation of soulful, genre-fluid artists, the Leeds-born and now London-based 10-piece collective have created their finest recordings to date, effortlessly weaving together elements of jazz, soul, hip hop, African styles, Latin, dub, hip hop and electronics in a flow of thought-provoking and life-affirming music. Recorded at the band’s own self-built Henwood Studio in rural Oxfordshire, the album effortlessly moves through different voices from the band’s circle.
The inimitable, timeless vocals of Nubiya Brandon lead the way on the album’s title track about breaking preconceptions and promoting equality, “Where you from? I’m from wherever I be.” Saxophonist Nick Richards vocals the killer first single from the album about inner turmoil and a search for the truth, ‘Tell It To Me Slowly’ while rising Ghanaian star K.O.G. appears on the Afro jams ‘Basa Basa’ and ‘They Talk’.
Percussionist / singer Pilo Adami voices the infectious bossa-jazz jam ‘Borders’. The band also draft in two African legends for guest duties with the original Afrobeat maestro Tony Allen on ‘Ghosts’ and Ethio jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke contributing vibes on the sinuous ‘Addis To London’. “The depth of talent and ideas that every member of this group has brought to the table for this album is incredible,” says producer and orchestrator Tom Excell. “Conceptually, "Jungle Run"; is all about connecting different people and cultures whilst exploring the journey of individuals. This album is the pinnacle of everything we have done to date and to collaborate with the godfathers of Afrobeat and Ethio Jazz and celebrate their music in a modern context was very humbling.”
The album is another landmark for a band that has been consistently developing their sound since their formation in 2015 at Leeds College Of Music. ”One of the biggest factors in our sound was the exciting music scene in Leeds,’ explains saxman Joe Henwood. “From a reggae night called ‘Sub Dub’ to venues playing whacked out experimental jazz.” Since then, the band’s self-titled debut album (2015), EP ‘Siren Song’ (2016) and single ‘Dance Inna London’ (2017) have become classics in their own right and their live show has become an essential ticket; previous live highlights have included high profile slots at David Byrne’s Meltdown at the South Bank and Glastonbury West Holts.
‘Jungle Run’ is released on 15th February on CD, 2LP and digital. Cover artwork comes from acclaimed designer Marcus Davies and the album is mastered by The Carvery. Nubiyan Twist tour across Europe from November 2018.

Following the release of 2018’s acclaimed pair of albums Staccato Signals and Drone Signals, Ben Chatwin returns in March 2019 with Altered Signals.
As the title suggests, Ben has enlisted the talents and imaginations of a host of electronic producers to reconfigure the original ten compositions featured on Staccato Signals, injecting new life into a project already seething with texture, dynamism and emotion.
Highlights include Planet Mu stalwart Ital Tek’s remix of ‘Silver Pit’, which seizes the slow-burning cataclysmic energy of the original and reforms it with the bold, cinematic crescendos that characterised his 2018 album Bodied. Steve Hauschildt, who also released a new album last year, Dissolvi, repurposes the alien yet organic synth sounds from ‘Helix’ into a multi-dimensional blissful ambient techno workout.
Strictly speaking, this is the second ‘remix’ album of the Signals project - with Drone Signals, Ben already took the material in one direction by feeding string parts into an array of modular and analogue synthesisers. With this new album, he once again relinquishes control - a central conceptual underpinning of the project - by working with some of his favourite producers working in the electronic world.
Though the music ranges from ambient to acid techno, this is nevertheless a dynamic and cohesive work that’s sure to excite fans of both of Staccato Signals and Drone Signals.

Snow Ghosts have announced the release of their third album, A Quiet Ritual, out May 3rd. The band have also released the brand-new single, ‘Rip’, the first track to be taken from the album.
A chaotic blend of visceral, frenzied energy and haunting lyricism, ‘Rip’ deals with the violence of grief in its suddenness and cruelty. Unnerving discord and pulsating ambience permeate the track, with semi-spoken vocals and powerful instrumentation building to an expressive climax of cathartic release.
The track is the first to be taken from their upcoming album, A Quiet Ritual. Centring on the theme of death, the album seeks to process the shock and grief of bereavement and its aftermath, as well as casting back across history and other cultures for their own metaphors and coping strategies.
The band explain, “’A Quiet Ritual’ maps out stages of the grieving process and how every individual deals with it in their own unique way. Most importantly how they handle their own heart and the other fragile hearts inevitably scattered around them. The song ‘Rip’ is about the initial shock of grief, the effect it has on loved ones and the untimely destruction of dreams.”
Recorded in a castle in the countryside and two years in the making, A Quiet Ritual is written for an ensemble of classical and modern instruments including the carnyx, an Iron Age Celtic boar-headed horn excavated from a bog in Deskford, Scotland. For the carnyx, they enlisted the services of John Kenny, one of just a few musicians able to play the instrument and the first to do so in modern times.
The mix of instruments is indicative of the idiosyncratic timelessness common to this album and all of their previous works: having had a historical context present on their previous albums, the inclusion of the carnyx ties the release together, combining ritualistic themes with an instrument commonly used in rituals or as an offering in ancient culture.
Snow Ghosts are Ross Tones, Hannah Cartwright and Oliver Knowles. Formed in 2008, their musical interests reside in our own time, the beginning of time and all points between. The trio explore the complex weave of the eternal, love, death and nature through the contemporary mediums of genres spanning electronica, post-rock and heavier sounds to create an immersive, physical ambience.