In the U.S., Soft Cell, the British duo of singer Marc Almond and instrumentalist David Ball, was a classic one-hit wonder, that hit being the remake of Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love," which dominated dance clubs and eventually peaked in the pop Top Ten with its synth-pop sound and Almond's plaintive vocal in 1981-1982. In the U.K., the group not only had a longer career, but also influenced a raft of similar performers. Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, originally released in Britain in the fall of 1981, contained both the band's first hit and its follow-up, "Bedsitter," its title referring to what in America would be called a studio apartment. (A third U.K. Top Five hit, "Say Hello Wave Goodbye," emerged from the LP.) At full album length, lyricist Almond's primary preoccupation, only suggested in "Tainted Love," was spelled out; this was a theme album about aberrant sexuality, a tour of a red-light district. The point was well made on "Sex Dwarf," with its oft-repeated chorus "Isn't it nice/Sugar and spice/Luring disco dollies to a life of vice?" Songs like "Seedy Films," "Entertain Me," and "Secret Life" expanded upon the subject. The insistent beats taken at steady dance tempos and the chilling electronic sounds conjured by Ball emphasized Almond's fascination with deviance; it almost seemed as though the album had been designed to be played in topless bars. British listeners saw through Almond's pretense or were amused by him, or both; more puritanical Americans tended to disapprove, which probably limited the group's long-term success stateside. But the music was undeniably influential. The 2002 CD reissue added two lengthy 12" single mixes of "Tainted Love," one of them a medley with the old Supremes hit "Where Did Our Love Go," the other a dub version.
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Wang Chung are an English new wave band, formed in London in 1980 by Nick Feldman, Jack Hues and Darren Costin. The name Wang Chung is Chinese, meaning "yellow bell" in English, and is the first note in the Chinese classical music scale.

Stunning debut of lilting bliss for guitar x synth by manc bosom buds Celestial, quietly resplendent in a classic vein of soft touch Balearic blues and kosmische hues that comes very highly recommended if you’re into anything from The Durutti Column to Vincent Gallo’s classic ‘When’, from Roméo Poirier's poolside washes to Move D’s lilting Conjoint productions, or even the instrumental splendour of HTRK at their most diaphanous.
Bathed in moonlight, ’I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night’ is the gorgeous debut by childhood friends Celestial, arriving in the glistening wake of 2021 gems on the same label by Romance, Not Waving, Spivak, claire rousay & more eaze. Convecting a richly sanguine sound gleaned from a Sequential Circuits Sixtrak synth and Fender guitar with the results mottled to frail AGFA tape, it’s the modest and warm soul on display that speaks to a quieter side of the rainy city psyche, picking up a fine thread of etheric inspiration that leads back to The Durutti Column via Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris, Texas’ soundtrack and Iasos’ intoxicating new age, with a fragile, gauzy vision of instrumental songcraft ripe for getting lost in dappled fantasy.
Practically synaesthetic in their spatial sensitivity, the six songs make a real virtue of reverb, echo and ferric hiss that swaddles their lyrical phrasing with a cottony texture. Favouring an analogue haze over digital clarity, their sound unspools with a kaleidoscopic, nostalgic quality surrendered in shimmering waves of bliss and a back-of-the-eyes swirl between the hash haze of ‘Endless’ and northern gothic tone of ‘Lonely Weekend.’ Tape hiss resembles drizzle outside in the lowlit langour of ‘Hat Full of Rain’, and we can practically taste the petrichor in ‘The Perfumed Garden’ - basically a smudged take on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross', leading to ASMR levels of synth tingles with an unmistakeable northern melancholy of ‘At The Rivers Edge’, especially in its gloaming coda.

Bassist and composer Milo Fitzpatrick (Portico Quartet) launches new collaborative project with saxophonist Jordan Smart (Mammal Hands)
Vega Trails is a new project from double-bassist and composer Milo Fitzpatrick, a founder member of Portico Quartet, who has also performed with the likes of Nick Mulvey and Jono McCleary and features saxophonist Jordan Smart (Mammal Hands, Sunda Arc) in a richly powerful duo bringing together two powerfully charismatic musicians. The project which takes its name from Carl Sagan's science fiction novel 'Contact' (a book about signals of new life detected from the Vega system) and was born out of a desire to bring the elements of bass and melody to the foreground in their rawest form and Fitzpatrick explains that he deliberately chose the stripped back approach.

Kula Shaker2022最新专辑《1st Congretional Church of Eternal Love and Free Hugs》

The debut EP from the UK metalcore revivalists is a triumph of concision. Whatever you like about the genre, you can find it here.

Debut album from The Smile – comprising Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, with Tom Skinner from Sons of Kemet.

4AD旗下前传奇乐队Lush的主音吉他手Emma Anderson的新音乐事业的开始——签约于Cocteau Twins的独立厂牌Bella Union下Sing-Sing的首张专辑。乐队的另二分之一是主音Lisa O'Neill（音乐背景更偏重于电子舞曲风格），不同音乐背景的两人的结合创作出的《The Joy of Sing-Sing》是欢快浪漫唯美的，充满了梦幻流行乐的甜蜜醉人气息...不论是Lush的fans还是喜欢Dream Pop的朋友都不要错过了 。。

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The solitude of this album is one of abandonment rather than liberation. It traffics in silences and painful proximity: the instruments are so intimately recorded that their flaws and weaknesses create much of the musical texture; the very mechanics of instrumentation seem to serve where the instruments themselves falter: the honk and spent air of the woodwinds, the scratching on worn guitar strings, the limits of Hollis' vocals. And the silences that seems to threaten the life of every song are poised as failures: the instruments or the voice or even the prosody of the lyrics simply give way into slight moments of emptiness. The refrain of "Watershed" seems a regretful admission of (and half- hearted apology for) all those inevitable silences.
On the whole, Hollis' lyrics read like Symbolist poetry: presented without syntactical scaffolding, or simply as unpredicated images, or fragments of passed conversation. The music runs from loping elegaic jazz to stark Nick Drake-ish folk and even to ambient passages reminiscent of Eno's aimless piano on Music for Airports. In short, Mark Hollis conjures the great emptiness and futility which it undoubtedly inherits from the life of its maker.

Digitally remastered reissue of 1985 album featuring Paul Weller. 15 tracks including 'Walls Come Tumbling Down', 'Cometo Milton Keynes' and 'Boy Who Cried Wolf'. When first released in the States this album was known as 'Internationalists'. 2000 release.

Stellar Drifting is 10 tracks of widescreen, futuristic electronic music. With features from the likes of Soak, London Grammar and Domino’s own Panda Bear, Stellar Drifting is George’s most ambitious project to date. George keeps his roots deep within the electronic music scene, bringing in pop melodies, club rhythms and other UK dance music elements whilst pushing the boundaries of his sound.