For their first meeting, Richard Youngs (Glasgow) and Raül Refree (Barcelona) have created a suite of stately, circular longform songs that manage to connect Tim Buckley's Happy Sad to Federico García Lorca to plainsong liturgy. The largely acoustic and quietly urgent All Hands Around the Moment finds Youngs in an impassioned and emotional space he’s rarely inhabited since Sapphie, elevated by lush chamber folk/jazz compositions that incorporate piano, guitar and more, performed by both Youngs and Refree.
The four pieces that build the whole of All Hands Around the Moment harness transcendence in repetition, and feature gorgeous progressive minimalism in full spectrum. Dark existential themes flow into mystic uplifting expressions of humanity., without missing a beat. In its timelessness and prescience, the realities present in All Hands Around the Moment make for a powerfully engrossing listen from top to bottom.
credits
released December 6, 2019
Raül Refree: instruments
Richard Youngs: instruments, vocals, lyrics

Oakland's KHIIS, on this, their first full-length record, unleash a torrent of killer riffs, building songs of purpose and power, absent of the chaos and noise that engulfs many modern hardcore records. While such noise obviously has its place in the canon of punk and its raw machinations, KHIIS know they don't need the obscurant balm of feedback, they stand clear and robust, simply put: they've just got the fuckin riffs. Similarly the vocals are declamatory and forthright, not wild ghosts of delay and reverb, determined attacks, stark in their fury. KHIIS charge mightily through nine striking tracks of thick, full-blooded hardcore punk, taking no prisoners (Joe Briggs)
Bezoar jacket design by Ji Hwan with insert and poster by Austin M.
Recorded and Mixed by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios.
Mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios.

The British gang arrived like a breath of fresh air with their Mercury Prize nominated debut album ‘Love In The 4th Dimension’ back in April 2017. Fronted by Juliette Jackson, The Big Moon unleashed song after song fizzing with melody and charm.
The forthcoming second album, Walking Like We Do, was recorded in Atlanta alongside Grammy Award winning US Producer Ben H. Allen III (M.I.A./Deerhunter/Bombay Bicycle Club).
The band are Juliette Jackson, Soph Nathan, Celia Archer and Fern Ford.

It’s just about finding this feeling that makes you want to jump out and fuck it all and go seek a thrill” - Georgia
The new LP, Seeking Thrills is a sharply paced and fascinating album, packed with injections of lightness and fun, pared with rich, bubbling melodies that makes listening to it an experience that takes you into the party, through electro-pop into R&B, and back again. Her deep, brooding reflections carry us through euphoria, heartache and melancholy but always with the memory of the good times. Georgia is reminding you of the altitude of your last real thrill, and when we turn the record on, we’re there again, aching for more.
Heavily inspired by Chicago House and Detroit Techno of the early 80s, Seeking Thrills fuses analogue club sounds with solid pop songwriting and showcases Georgia's lifelong love affair with the drums.

Porridge Radio grew out of Dana Margolin's bedroom, where she started making music in private. Living in the seaside town of Brighton, she recorded songs and slowly started playing them at open mic nights to rooms of old men who stared at her quietly as she screamed in their faces. Though she eventually grew out of them, for Margolin these open mic nights unlocked a love of performing and songwriting, as well as a new way to express herself. She decided to form a band through which to channel it all, and be noisier while she was at it - so Porridge Radio was born. Inspired by interpersonal relationships, her environment - in particular the sea - and her growing friendships with her new bandmates (bassist Maddie Ryall, keyboardist Georgie Stott, and drummer Sam Yardley) Margolin's distinctive, indie-pop-but-make-it-existentialist style soon started to crystallise. Quickly, the band self-released a load of demos and a garden-shed-recorded collection on Memorials of Distinction, while tireless touring cemented their firm reputation as one of UK DIY's most beloved and compelling live bands. As the band's sound - bright pop-rock instrumentation blended with Margolin's tender, open-ended lyrics - has developed and refined, Porridge Radio have also received enthusiastic radio airplay on the BBC, Radio X and more. Now, they are taking that development a step further, as they put out their label debut, Every Bad

Porridge Radio are a British indie rock band formed in Brighton in 2015

Porridge Radio are a British indie rock band formed in Brighton in 2015

The songs comprising Keeley Forsyth’s debut album Debris are, she states simply, “like blocks of metal that drop from the sky.”
With its minimal arrangements placing her recollections and dissections of sometimes harrowing experiences front and centre, Debris showcases her elemental voice and an outpouring of candid, haunting lyrics detailing the seismic ruptures which take place behind closed doors. “There was a lot going on in my life that was heavy and hard,” she adds. “Songs were made under that moment.”
Born and raised in Oldham, Forsyth first made her name as an actor, but while the creation of music has been a constant feature in her life, she’s taken the long road to its release. A deeply intuitive and singular musician, she began writing several years ago, accompanying herself on harmonium and accordion.
“I came up with lots of songs in a very short space of time,” Forsyth recalls. “Most songs were written in the time it took to sing them. But I held them close, and often thought I needed to do something with them. It never felt right to go out and look for it. I felt like I needed to wait and move when I felt inspired.”
That inspiration struck one evening while listening to the radio, where she first encountered pianist and composer Matthew Bourne’s work. “I heard his music and suddenly I could hear them both together,” she says of her songs and his compositions. “I felt compelled to write to him. He got straight back and said he loved what I was doing.” What followed were quick and instinctive collaborations with Bourne and producer and musician Sam Hobbs, with the initial burst of momentum Forsyth felt when writing carried through into the studio, preserving the intricacies and accidents that make an album human.

Originally a Goth-flavored post-punk outfit, the Cure evolved into one of the truly seminal bands of the '80s, and ultimately one of modern rock's most celebrated and influential acts. Guided by creative visionary Robert Smith, the Cure's signature sound balances a dreamy pop savvy with a dark, brooding majesty and fuses superbly crafted, literate songs with a feverish emotional intensity. The band's early catalog-newly remastered and expanded wtih a wealth of rarities-is a series of masterpieces that laid the groundwork for their phenomenal and enduring popularity.

Together with co-producer James Dring (Gorillaz, Jamie T, Nilüfer Yanya), best friends Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen have woven '925' like a dreamscape in which idyllic and hellish scenes intermingle, forcing the question of what is real and what is make believe. Inspired by everything from Hermann Hesse to Aphex Twin and old-school crooner Tony Bennett, their experimental and holistic approach marks them out as a thoroughly 21st century band; from their open-minded approach to genre to their creativity allowing them to self-produce the music and direct accompanying videos.
Joined by drummer Lincoln Barrett and Campbell Baum on bass, Sorry emerged from a thriving scene of bands in London, and though 925 is their debut album, it is by no means their first statement. It follows a series of mixtapes, released sporadically and used as a way to experiment with the disparate influences and sounds that give 925 its distinctively modern and apocalyptic sound.
Where previous singles and mixtapes earned the band their status as one of the most vital and relentlessly creative new British bands of the moment, 925 is a record which will undoubtedly cement their status as true originals and cross-genre innovators in 2020 and beyond.

Catherine Bush CBE is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. In 1978, aged 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights", becoming the first female artist to achieve a UK number one with a self-written song.

My new album Song For Our Daughter is coming out this week, ahead of our planned schedule. In light of the change to all our circumstances, I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and at its best, provide some sense of union.
It’s strange to watch the facade of our daily lives dissolve away, leaving only the essentials; those we love and our worry for them. An album, stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it, is essentially a piece of me, and I’d like for you to have it. I’d like for you, perhaps, to hear a strange story about the fragmentary, nonsensical experience of trauma and an enduring quest to understand what it is to be a woman in this society. When I listen back to it now, it makes more sense to me then when I wrote it. My writing, as ever, was months, years, in front of my conscious mind. It was there all along, guiding me gently through the chaos of living. And that, in itself, describes the sentiment of the album — how would I guide my daughter, arm her and prepare her for life and all of its nuance? I’m older now, old enough to have a daughter of my own, and I feel acutely the responsibility to defend The Girl. The Girl that might be lost, torn from innocence prematurely or unwittingly fragmented by forces that dominate society. I want to stand behind her and whisper in her ear all the confidences and affirmations I had found so difficult to provide myself. This album is that strange whisper; a little distorted, a little out of sequence, such is life.
I want you to have it.
--Laura Marling

Slow Reels combines Ian Hawgood's love of reel-to-reel tape machines and vintage synthesizers with James Murray's melodicism and richly textured digital sound design. Their Morr Music debut, ‘Farewell Islands’, is an arresting, fluorescing album that blends full-frequency dronescaping with a slow-burning ambient minimalism.
Ian and James met on the UK minimal music scene releasing each others' music on their Home Normal and Slowcraft labels. Their recording collaboration began remotely while Ian lived in Warsaw, spending long nights with his collection of reel-to-reel machines: “I created a number of loops with an old and sadly dying Akai which was noisy and would stutter quite a bit. I also found myself using older tape on cracked reels and the effects of this really helped develop a newer path for my own work”. James began to weave piano, guitar and synthesizers into the material from his London studio, combining the two artists' tonalities into something so unexpectedly compelling it took them both by surprise. Ian then transferred these manipulations back onto tape, further refining and defining the sound during deep dive experimental analogue mastering sessions.
The role of old technology in Slow Reels' work lends a sense of decay and transience sure to resonate with admirers of William Basinski, Rafael Anton Irisarri and Benoît Pioulard, but the underlying melodies set a clear counterpoint: a longing for the vivid is deeply grounded within this music. The four cinematic, long-form movements of ‘Farewell Islands’ possess a delicate romanticism and emotional urgency that engages and gradually overwhelms the listener.
The islands of the title are both real and notional, as James explains: "places of meaning to both of us in our lives, found now only out of time, belonging outside the present and out of reach”. This nostalgic farewell also marks a fresh beginning, as the duo's ongoing Brighton-based studio sessions generate further reels of unearthly electronic landscapes that seem to hiss, warble and granulate their own way onto tape.

Tara Clerkin Trio present their self titled debut LP on Laura Lies In. Similar to that directorial effect of filming at double speed and then slowing down for playback, the record ambles with assurance, expertly paced.
Opening with a jovial cacophony before the beatific ‘in the room’ confidently relieves, washing away any unease with an innately alien familiarity.
Coming to with the padded percussive patterns of 'Helenica', taking a moment to remember where you are in this temporal smudge. The serene contemplation of 'Any of these' signals we're homeward with a dependable afterglow, a friend you don’t need to thank for a good weekend.
A record existing disconnected from the daily getyadowns, a holiday from life, optimism as resistance against mundanity, something extraordinary amongst the ordinary, positively grey.
Recorded and produced by Dominic Mitchison. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux.
credits
released January 31, 2020