The Shadows is the new album from Leeds-based six-piece Tomorrow We Sail. Building on their debut release For Those Who Caught the Sun in Flight (Gizeh, 2014) over the course of three years, this new work combines perfectly the soaring atmospherics, gorgeously intertwined vocal harmonies and dramatic shifts in tone and dynamics that have come to characterise Tomorrow We Sail’s sound. Yet, there is a new sense of urgency here. Very much an album of its time, The Shadows draws upon the same sense of connection to both past and present that defined its precursor but features storytelling that’s even more defiant and deeply personal.
Like its predecessor, the record features seven songs but from the chiming guitars of opening track Side By Side it is clear that the stately pace of For Those Who Caught the Sun in Flight has made way for a far more dynamic and driving energy; perhaps best captured in the righteous anger of The Ghost of John Maynard Keynes. Tomorrow We Sail still invoke a keen sense of measured grace in their songwriting - from the sweeping, elegiac title track, through to the sparse, restrained, yet haunting beauty of Winifred and To Sleep. Urgent, yet assured, The Shadows demands your attention.

印象有如躲藏在雾气中歌唱的天使一般，甜美的歌声充满了不食人间烟火的飘渺，这是精灵才能描绘出的声音图像，在每一个音符间释放情意的梦幻乐音。
来自于英伦的新迷幻风潮下的他们在这张专辑里用相当简单的乐器配置制造出一种慵懒而迷蒙的美感，有着民谣传奇歌手Nick Drake的优雅、Cowboy Junkise的飘渺柔情，另外还有Bob Dylan歌曲般的深情感人。其实这也是一只很低调的乐队，保持了4AD以往乐队的风格，走神秘路线。第一次听到的时候就放下了手上的事情，能让人如此投入的音乐越来越少了，也许是心的感动越来越麻木了吧，但是毕竟还是找到了一些难忘的经历，耳朵在纷繁的世界中越来越遮掩着自己的本吧，其实就象自己的心一样，渐渐地把自己孤立于外界之中，然后看着路人狂发感叹，“这帮傻X，干嘛呢”。说完了有点儿后悔，因为他们在用同样的心理语言对你说着同样的话。孤立未必是件坏事儿，更多地独立地感触自己的时间，同样未必是件坏事儿。偶尔也让音乐暖暖自己的心吧。

After becoming the biggest breaking British rock band with their self-titled 2014 debut album, Royal Blood’s eagerly anticipated second album ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’ will be released on June 16th on Warner Bros. Records. Royal Blood’s breakthrough was huge. Their debut album was the fastest-selling British rock debut in three years, hitting #1 in the UK, going Top 20 in twelve countries, and selling over a million copies. Before they knew it they were performing for Howard Stern, touring with Foo Fighters, holding dressing room audiences with Jimmy Page in New York, and being presented with a BRIT for Best British Band in 2015 by the very same guitar god. Their ascendency was further underlined with major awards courtesy of Kerrang!, NME and Q.
The ten tracks that feature on ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’ were written in instrumental form during sessions in Brighton, Hollywood, Los Angeles and Nashville. Always trying to explore ways of stripping their enormous sound back to give it more space and impact, inspiration for the lyrics came from events in vocalist/bassist Mike Kerr’s life since the band first found huge success. In November 2016. Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher, along with producer Jolyon Thomas, spent six weeks in a studio in Brussels that was decked out like a New York diner and featured a warehouse of antique gear. ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’ was subsequently completed after a final session in London with their debut album’s co-producer Tom Dalgety. The album’s first single ‘Lights Out’ ups the ante from their debut with a wrecking ball of a groove cemented by Thatcher’s thunderous rhythms, while Kerr wrangles the twisted invention of his bass riffs to a whole new level. Their patented two-man artillery of carefully constructed melodic aggression is prevalent throughout, especially in ‘I Only Lie When I Love You’ which is a compelling cowbell-assisted reminder of the power of a stop-start riff and a strident chorus. There are times where Royal Blood are more visceral than ever – notably the gargantuan introduction to ‘Hook, Line & Sinker’ and also the intense denouement that brings ‘Looks Like You Know’ to a close.
While the album finds Royal Blood refining their melodic might, there are other moments that fulfil their aim to create songs that will add new dimensions to their live sets. Adorned with Kerr’s falsetto, ‘Don’t Tell’ drops the intensity to mesmerising effect, while ‘Where Are You Now?’ pulsates with a bounding energy that’s quite a step apart from anything else in their catalogue. The Royal Blood palette is also expanded with the complementary addition of piano or keyboards on four tracks, including the foreboding album closer ‘Sleep’.

横跨英美两地录制、挪威双人制作组合Stargate与酷玩乐团御用制作人Rik Simpson联手打造！
赞扬爱的美好、歌颂出生命的灵性奥妙、灌注正面积极能量的嬉皮人生哲学！
超豪华全巨星阵容：「玩美女神」碧昂斯、「前绿洲合唱团灵魂人物」诺尔盖勒赫、「瑞典神奇女王」托芙萝、奥斯卡影后-葛妮丝派特罗…等倾力相助！
占据滚石杂志『2000年代最佳乐团』第4席的Coldplay，先前所发行的6张专辑全数拿下全英金榜冠军，共缔造全球超过1亿张的唱片销售量，抱走多达7座葛莱美+8座全英音乐+5座MTV音乐+4座告示牌+3座世界音乐奖…等全球无数奖项，不仅承袭Britpop风格、延续Oasis、Blur、Suede等指标乐团所打下的美好九零英摇荣景，更缔造出专属Coldplay的音乐新纪元！他们从奠下基础的三部曲专辑“Parachutes”、“A Rush Of Blood To The Head”、“X&Y”，到一再立下新里程碑的“Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends”、“Mylo Xyloto”，再到稍微与以往风格不同、满溢心碎自我疗愈的2014年专辑“Ghost Stories”，都一再的惊艳全球歌迷！
每次推出新作即会启动世界巡迴演唱的Coldplay，在“Ghost Stories”发行后反而选择放下专辑巡演，立刻重回录音室进行此第7张录音室专辑“A Head Full Of Dreams”的录制。新专辑发行的消息当然是令所有乐迷引颈期盼多时，但Coldplay始终保持低调，直到2015年10月才开始陆续抛出些许线索，先是在伦敦地下铁出现印有与主唱Chris Martin某件T-shirt样式一样的神秘海报，而Coldplay也陆续在Twitter发佈类似设计的动画让全球乐迷密切关注！以往在专辑封面与内页设计就会下足功夫与巧思的Coldplay，这次邀请阿根廷籍超现实主义视觉设计师Pilar Zeta与Coldplay共同合作，以宇宙一切根源的生命之花图形作為专辑中心思想，传递极富禅思的宇宙世界观。此次Coldplay横跨英美两地进行录制，请来格莱美奖挪威超级製作组合Stargate，与从“Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends”专辑后就与Coldplay长期合作的御用製作人Rik Simpson联手打造，另外邀请3座葛莱美奖王牌混音师Phil Tan、本名为Tim Bergling的瑞典超级DJ Avicii，一同在Coldplay新作中客座担任歌曲后制混音！专辑中的另外一大亮点则是豪华的跨刀合作阵容，包括：「玩美女神」碧昴丝Beyoncé、「前绿洲合唱团灵魂人物」诺尔盖勒赫Noel Gallagher、「瑞典神奇女王」托芙萝Tove Lo、「70年代Soul Rock女伶」玛莉克蕾顿Merry Clayton，另外更特别邀请Chris Martin前妻，演而优则唱的奥斯卡影后-葛妮丝派特罗Gwyneth Paltrow与现任影星女友安娜贝尔瓦莉丝Annabelle Wallis分别献唱！
预购即拿下全球53国iTunes专辑榜冠军，彷彿为“Mylo Xyloto”二部曲的新专辑，充满著无限能量、大量的缤纷色彩以及积极的生活态度。荣登全球45国iTunes榜冠亚军、爽朗而热情的首波公开单曲「Adventure Of A Lifetime」，赞扬生命中不可预期的人事物都是一种新鲜的冒险，呼吁人们拥抱并珍惜人生所有，是首抱持积极正面态度的作品；专辑开场曲、媲美「Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall」的专辑同名歌曲「A Head Full Of Dreams」，偌大的旋律格局、律动十足的舞动节拍，正是人因梦想而伟大的最佳主题曲；继与Rihanna合作后，这次邀来R&B天后「玩美女神」碧昴丝Beyoncé在冲劲十足的「Hymn For The Weekend」一曲中献唱，在缤纷的摇滚画布中增色R&B曲风元素的美丽佳作；「Everglow」则是有Chris Martin前妻葛妮丝派特罗Gwyneth Paltrow献声的话题歌曲，虽然两人婚姻已画下句点，但两人曾经拥有的特别情谊也在这首浪漫的歌曲中留下足跡；插曲「Kaleidoscope」则是来自13世纪伊斯兰苏菲派重要诗人鲁米Rumi的「The Guest House」部分诗作，使用鲁米在西方国家的主要诠释者-美国诗人Coleman Barks的有声朗诵版，再搭配乔治亚天才古典钢琴家卡蒂雅(Khatia Buniatishvili)的演奏，并在尾段巧妙置入一小段美国总统欧巴马在教堂所演唱的「Amazing Grace」。Chris Martin约莫在三、四年前接触到这首诗，寓意为人们所产生的各种情绪其实都是天上给予的恩赐，即使当下感受不到但回首过往时的确让他有很大的回响与冲击，因此他改变了看待这个世界的角度与方式，也希望将这样的感悟传递给所有人，如此一来便催生了这首与专辑中心思想不谋而合、合情合理并极富禅意的插曲；虽然安排在专辑曲序最后但举足轻重的「Up&Up」，再度邀请「玩美女神」碧昴丝Beyoncé、「70年代Soul Rock女伶」玛莉克蕾顿Merry Clayton、Chris Martin现任影星女友－安娜贝尔瓦莉丝Annabelle Wallis开口献唱，更邀请「前绿洲合唱团灵魂人物」诺尔盖勒赫Noel Gallagher弹奏歌曲最高潮、引人入胜的精彩吉他Solo，可谓是众星共同献技合唱、为生命所绽放的无限精彩齐声喝采的旷世之作！
Coldplay从“Ghost Stories”的自我沉淀省视后，让灵魂再度蜕变，為生命灌注丰沛的动力，幻化出七彩的美妙光芒，以音乐歌颂生命、赞美人生，愿与宇宙共鸣再回馈给这个世界，反射给每个聆听他们音乐的人，让每个灵魂从中再次得到勇气与活力。“A Head Full Of Dreams”专辑名称其实早在几年前就已经决定，却迟迟未找到契机创作，一直到现在终于催生，Chris Martin将此辑比喻为「哈利波特最终章」，也许意指著可能是Coldplay的最后作品，对此Chris Martin持保留态度，表示他们得要将这张专辑如此定位才能毫不保留地将最好的他们投注其中，因此“A Head Full Of Dreams”也是Coldplay有史以来最乐在其中、最自豪的一张作品！

Jessie J为即将于5月15日上映的电影《Pitch Perfect 2 | 完美音调2》献唱原声Flashlight

New Devices is the 3rd album from Leeds based trio and Mercury Prize nominees Roller Trio. A unique trio, their sound is modern and gritty, pushing sonic boundaries to their limits. Switching the feel of a tune in a heartbeat from edgy improv to anthemic power riffs to reverb-swamped note storms, Roller Trio are powerful and progressive. For this album, the line-up includes Chris Sharkey, a guitarist at the cutting-edge of contemporary guitar improv, alongside James Mainwaring, saxophone & electronics and Luke Reddin-Williams, drums. Their mix of high octane technicality and deceptively catchy tunes has transcended their Jazz heritage, bringing them acclaim from fans and critics alike. Their eponymous debut album was nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize and the band were also nominated for MOBO's Best Jazz Act that same year.
The new album’s theme is as relevant as it could be in today’s social climate. New Devices reflects people’s confused relationship with technology and the public participation in self-surveillance. As James explains: ‘We couldn’t have made this album without technology, the devices used in music making and the online communication, yet we’re concerned about the future and the impact social media will have on the next generation - Do we really have a grip on our relationship with technology?’.
The music is dark, gritty and urban - menacing bass lines underpinned by squalling improvising from guitar and sax attaining ultimately uplifting fulfilment. Built from sound fragments of Leeds nightlife formed and reformed through the musical intelligence and instrumental brilliance of the three musicians it’s an exhilarating, rollicking ride - an exercise in freeform free fall, a three for all free-for-all, moderated by the musical logic and compositional rigour of the pieces.
credits
released June 22, 2018
Engineered by Ben Eyes (Moral Alignment and STUDIO VISIONARY) at the Trevor Jones Studio, University of York
Mixed by Chris Sharkey and Alex Bonney
Mastered by Peter Beckmann at Technologyworks Mastering

This Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) recording offers high-resolution sound and is playable on both standard CD players and SACD-compatible devices.

LAMB重组后新专辑

On her stunning debut, the tenor saxophonist and rising member of the London jazz scene meditates on her humble family heritage, the continuum of jazz history, and the power of collective action in our present moment.

After the heavy-hearted indie folk of her debut, the Bristol singer-songwriter returns with a scruffier, more far-ranging record about developing a self in your twenties.

The EP, entitled Femme, is a powerful statement of what the 22 year old is most passionate about and consciously explores Ajudha’s personal experiences of race, gender, and sexuality. Describing the purpose behind her explorations, Ajudha explains: “I want women to feel empowered, I want people of colour to feel their voices are heard or experiences shared and I hope that my music can help people to accept and love themselves in ways I am still learning to do.”
The EP features two new tracks that both reveal a side to Ajudha’s music that we haven’t yet seen. “Where Did I Go?” is a much more delicate track that acts as a nostalgic, stripped-back love song where Ajudha’s vocal ability is put at the forefront as it floats above dreamlike strings and a magical cupid-like harp. Yet, beneath its swooning production, Ajudha questions her position in a relationship and how it affected her personal growth when she allowed herself to get too comfortable and the sense of dilemma seems to grip her soaring vocals throughout.

Marcus Hamblett is a musician from Brighton, UK. The Quietus wrote his music "could be called post-rock if it didn't also sound pre-rock or maybe as if rock had never happened & folk, modern jazz & the classical avant-garde had merged into a stream of hip, innovative music to soundtrack the changes & discontents of the second half of the twentieth century instead, & Joe Meek had dug John Cage.''

“Portico Quartet stake claims to territory occupied by Radiohead, Cinematic Orchestra and Efterklang”. The Guardian *****
Portico Quartet return with Memory Streams, their fifth studio album and one that continues the journey that first started with 2008’s Mercury nominated debut Knee Deep in the North Sea. It’s a creative path that has seen the band embrace new technology and explore ambient and electronic influences alongside minimalism, jazz and beyond. It is a process that has encouraged change. Each album has seen the band expand its palate or explore new trajectories. From the gentle charm of their breakthrough’s inimitable mix of jazz, world and minimalist influences, to the tight-knit brilliance of Isla, the electronic infused eponymous Portico Quartet to 2016’s return Art in the Age of Automation (the band’s most electronic statement to date) they have never been a band to look backwards. Each record has been its own world, its own statement and offered its own meaning. It’s the mark of a band that has always both stood apart from any scene and been prepared to challenge its self and find new things to say and to push the limits of what they could do.
It is an approach that has encouraged the band to plough their own furrow. Drummer Duncan Bellamy notes that “For better or worse I think we have always been quite an isolated band. Perhaps that comes from never feeling like we really belonged to or fit in to a scene when we first started making music” While for saxophonist Jack Wyllie “ I feel more connected to other musicians these days and those relationships influence the sound we have in some way. But I wouldn’t say we feel a part of scene, it still feels quite out on its own, which is cool, because it helps the music feel unique”.
The band’s new album, Memory Streams is part of the same continuum and yet, as the name hints, there is a sense here of a remembering, shards of past influences, hints of ideas re-forged. For Wyllie, Memory Streams “feels in some ways about the identity of the band, about the records we’ve made before, and the memory of them” whereas for Bellamy it suggests “a torrent of imagery, accessing and reliving archived memories, perhaps not even your own”.
Sonically, the album embraces the classic Portico Quartet sound pallet of drums, saxophone, bass and Hang-Drums, but nonetheless the sound has modulated, become more modern, whilst still channelling the beauty and mystery which has always marked the very best of Portico Quartet’s music. It’s the sound of a band at ease with its self who after a dozen years of recording and playing together are able to simultaneously explore and embrace their own identity.
Memory Streams also marks a return to a more predominantly band orientated sound than AITAOA and its partner release, the mini-album Untitled. Bellamy says “we wanted to create something that had texture, fibre and space to it. Something that felt vivid, real and alive”. During recording the band re-amped a lot of the sounds on the record, a process which lends a sense of depth and spaciousness to the sound. Wyllie adds, “We tried to reduce the pallet to what really identified the band and also as a way to help us write - it’s not easy if you have unlimited possibilities. But it was also was an interesting challenge as it was about writing something new, that felt like a development, whilst also drawing on the past”.
Memory Streams opens with With, Beside, Against which has an expansive, quietly unfolding quality that makes it the perfect album opener and was also one of the first tracks they wrote for the album. Signals is a creeping, mysterious track that captures the spirit of the record. It’s hypnotic, rolling quality builds throughout with shades of a classic Portico Quartet tune but with a ‘tougher’ edge. The outstanding Gradient is a more produced piece. Mixing lo-fi and beautifully recorded acoustic parts together it grows from a simple, repeated Hang-Drum motif, outwards into a searching hypnotic crescendo. Ways of Seeing is a synthesis of minimalism and more dancefloor-oriented rhythms. A lone pulse from the drum machine cuts through a haze of chiming, swirling Hang-Drums and pads built from shards of looped saxophone. Memory Palace is a distant echo of the motif from Gradient, and is a bare, slow piano piece shrouded in a mist of saxophone noise. The punchy Offset is all about motion and tension and Bellamy’s drums pound in response. Dissident Gardens is an intricate, hypnotic track in 3 parts. Almost prog like in rhythm but has a strong minimalist element to it with Farfisa organs as the repetitive top lines. Double Helix begins with string swells, it stops and jolts as if someone is switching TV channels before locking into a deep groove. The beautifully sparse, emotional heft of Immediately Visible sits in a powerful lineage of Portico Quartet tracks such as Line, Rubidium and Beyond Dialogue. It was largely improvised in the studio and offers the perfect ending point for the album with its sense of journey and deep well of feeling. An album that locates their music in an age where we have unfettered access to a vast and ever expanding archive of imagery and ideas, Memory Streams both embraces and builds on Portico Quartet’s own unique music and legacy and locates their music firmly in the present.

From David Toop
Maybe these titles, torn as they are from cinema screens and the pages of literature and philosophy, give a feeling of romantic or sexual love or some dark pool of nostalgia but that’s not it, or it could be if you want it for yourself but not for me, not now; for me it’s about the teeming proliferation of complex events in the world, their vivid, hyperreal intensity as this human life steps closer to its end and their sense of fading, like a mist that thins out to leave not a clear bright day but almost nothing of substance as all that beauty is crushed, burned, dug up, wiped out, to be replaced by banality, so it’s about a language of love and desire in which we speak openly to all the unknowns, the speculative, the ancestral, the forgotten, the different, the extinct, the unimaginably distant and vast, the incomprehensibly small and intimately close, the fast or the slow, as if as we spoke we were becalmed in a wooden galleon off the coast of Java, sleeping microscopically in soil of a thousand years hence, hearing the voice of a dead person from the rim of a vibrating cup, gliding backwards and weightless through the alleyways of a city unrecognisable yet heartbreaking in its poverty, speaking in conference with winged and amphibious beings, crouching in a cavern whose opening only reveals the spectre of many wonders now apprehended as memories of the skin, heard through cheekbones, nostrils, the crepitation as a neck turns, pains of the knee and thumb and some not yet fully understood sensation within the throat which suggests a way of comprehending that which is being lost of this magical place. All I desire is what already exists or once existed, now falling asleep outside the world.
Don’t ask me about genre or consistency. Who cares? Half the world is drowning; the other half is in flames. Each story is an animal, a plant, something you drink, a surface you touch, a faint line, some memory emanating from a cardboard box. “’Things’ in themselves are only events that for a while are monotonous,” wrote Carlo Rovelli in The Order of Time. Maybe sounds are melting ‘things’, tired of the monotonous real.
Apparition painting is the term used to describe a certain type of ancient Chinese painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In these works, often associated with Chan (Zen) teachings, the ink used to depict the subject was exceptionally pale, the background lacking in any detail. As Yukio Lippit has written: “This combination results in remarkably self-dissembling images that somehow compromise their own visibility. Apparition painting appears to capture its subjects in mid-fade, as if managing to preserve only a dimly translucent afterimage of a bygone entity.”