Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 16 May (2025)

This album is dedicated to the memory of my Dad Peter Maries whose love and dedication showed me the way With thanks to; Everyone at Invada Records - for their ongoing support, but mostly their humanity. Geoff, Redg, Stu, Charlie, James & Craig Mandy, Liam & Tom, thanks for comin for the ride Paco, Muni & all the dogs, Steve Albini, Liz Maries, Louise Parker, Alice Ratcliffe, and anybody who has supported me in any way over the past years.

Radio Armageddon is the return of the voice that never left. Chuck D delivers a seismic broadcast of truth, rhythm, and resistance – uniting hip hop’s pioneers and new gens alike in a fearless soundtrack for the times.

Acclaimed Italian singer-songwriter Damiano David releases his debut solo album “FUNNY little FEARS.” Since emerging back onto the scene Damiano’s debut solo project was launched to a feverish response from fans globally. “FUNNY little FEARS” contains 13 astonishing songs. The Album includes among the others the Global Hit ‘ Born With A Broken Heart’ and the latest single “Next Summer”, a powerful track with a raw emotion that waves through joy and pain. Damiano will embark on a massive 2025 global tour with dates across Europe, Australia, North America, South America and Asia in 2025.

Natural Light is an album filled with love songs about a society on the brink of collapse. No longer the hopeful young upstart or a stubborn folk-punk, Dan Mangan emerges as a voice to articulate our troubled times with tenderness and humor. Love songs about a planet on the brink of collapse. Campfire songs for a world on fire. Standard black vinyl, gatefold jacket.

Goodbye Small Head is the name of this record. Twelve songs, twelve variations on the experience of completely losing control, whether by weakness, illness, mysticism, BDSM, drugs, heartbreak or just living in a sick society with one’s eyes open. These songs are vivid with overwhelm. They’re not about someone going off the rails, they are inside that person’s heart. The songwriting here is a revision to William Wordsworth’s famous proclamation that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” I can agree with that, except for the tranquility part. This poetry, my poetry, arrived in the midst of the storm. It was written as I teetered toward the edge. (I did the edits once I was safe again.)

Grails – the experimental rock institution who have cultivated a quarter-century career out of crate-plunging cultural curiosities – returns a mere two years after the lauded Anches En Maat with their most personal and emotionally resonant album to date. While the band still revel in rearranging bizarre and obscure sources into something often revelatory and surreal, Miracle Music does so with an ascendant melodic power that feels hallowed. The Miracle Music lineup includes cofounders Emil Amos (Om, Holy Sons, Lilacs & Champagne) and Alex Hall (Lilacs & Champagne), alongside returning members, AE Paterra (Zombi, Majeure), Jesse Bates, and Ilyas Ahmed. Produced by Amos, Miracle Music reunites the group with recording engineer Jason Powers and his Type Foundry studio in Portland, Oregon, where the earliest Grails records were made more than two decades ago. Replete with acoustic and electric guitars, synths, woodwinds, brass, samples, percussion – and featuring horn arrangements by Kelly Pratt (David Byrne, M. Ward) – Miracle Music unveils an exquisite new horizon for Grails. Creatively tireless as ever, Grails balance the boundary-pushing claustrophobia of early Industrial music with the airy melodies of Classical compositions to craft the heavy mood that is Miracle Music. In a catalog defined by mercurial departures, this is Grails’ most sentimental and high-minded trip yet.

Matt Maltese's sixth studio album is his most insular and intimate to date, and his first fully self produced effort since second album Krystal. Hers exists in a twilight world, pairing heartfelt songwriting and dry witticism with the gentle quiver of strings, a flourish of woodwind or the sound of a creaking old piano. Though its wounds may still feel tender to the touch, Maltese made Hers with several years’ perspective on the events that inspired it, processing the complexities of a serious romantic relationship and its ending through the rearview.

Japanese-British singer and producer Miso Extra has made her infectious journey through everything from tongue-in-cheek rap and sultry R&B to tuned-up hyperpop and dancefloor electronica, with each wandering sound guided by her expert ear. Her debut album, Earcandy - featuring collaborations from DJ Boring, Metronomy, AK Paul, Samo, Tyson and MICHELLE - cements her status as an irrepressible and confident new talent, capable of transforming the exciting, spontaneous moment of creation into delight for the ears. Decamping to Damon Albarn's Studio 13 in London over summer 2024, she co-produced the album with Grammy Award-winning engineer Riccardo Damian (Mark Ronson, Ezra Collective, Jorja Smith, Sampha). Across 12 tracks, she takes us on a journey of lovelorn vulnerability, growth, and self-empowerment, while traversing the K-Pop and UK Garage references of the earworming "POP", the lovesick lyricism and bass-heavy R&B beats of "Good Kisses", the synth-house swing of "Certified", and the reverb-laden '80s melodics of "Ghostly". On Earcandy, Miso expands her sonic universe to produce the fullest expression of her restlessly roving sound.

Flickering Resonance marks Chicago rock institution Pelican's first album in six years. With founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec rejoining the band for his first full length since 2009’s What We All Come To Need, the album’s eight songs tap into the spirit of their formative era when Schroeder-Lebec teamed with fellow guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw and brothers Bryan and Larry Herweg (on bass and drums respectively) during the heyday of Chicago’s all ages hub Fireside Bowl. The venue’s variegated booking style would often result in post-hardcore, space-rock, indie, metal, and emo bands sharing bills, unwittingly providing a vast template of influences for the young band. "A lot of people didn’t hear it at first,” says Schroeder-Lebec of the band’s roots in a panoply of punk-related subgenres. “I was like, well, I guess the metal world is where we fit. But now we're more willing to acknowledge all the suits we’re wearing.” Though Pelican’s thick sonic backbone remains intact, via a recording by longtime ally Sanford Parker (a collaborator as far back as their first EP), the songs on Flickering Resonance demonstrate a more humanistic side of the band. Songs like “Pining For Ever” and “Indelible” tease Pelican’s doom-metal bonafides while feeling equally ebullient and earnest - playing like a downtuned Texas Is The Reason transmuted to a post-rock landscape. Meanwhile songs like the searing lead single “Cascading Crescent” act as an appreciation for the glimmers of joy that occur even in the bleakest landscapes, as represented by an opening cavalcade of heavy riffs that pivot mid-song to a sugar rush of pastoral melodies. “When Laurent left and we were able to carry it through, there became a real sense of gratitude for the fact we still have this artistic outlet and a community of people who want to support it,” states Shelley de Brauw, referencing Schroeder-Lebec’s ten year sabbatical from the group. That feeling of deep, grounded appreciation doesn’t just dwell within the band members, it’s expressed outwardly in every track on Flickering Resonance. Because at the core of Pelican are four individuals who have grown both separately and together, and always will.

Rico Nasty returns with a new studio album, Lethal on Fueled by Ramen (Atlantic Music Group). Rico Nasty is known for her own particular brand of rage-rap and for her outrageous on-stage, online, volume-up persona. But as she grew up, she started to feel trapped by the character she created. Lethal is a reckoning of who Rico is at 27 with the trap-pop teen persona she created more than a decade ago. Executive produced by Grammy nominated producer Imad Royal, the album still features all the hallmarks of a Rico Nasty record - female rage, heavy guitars, humor - but there are also notes of femininity, introspection and a more complex framing of all the angles of Rico - the performer, the mother,& the adult.

Even now, as he reaches his eighth decade, with a lifetime of accolades and a seminal body of music behind him, Robin Trower is still chasing the biggest high he knows. It always starts the same way, with a road-scuffed Fender Stratocaster and a revved-up Marshall amplifier, those skilful fingers exploring the fretboard until a riff sticks and a new song ignites. And from the cultural flashpoint of Sixties London with Procol Harum, through 1974's stadiumfilling Bridge Of Sighs, right up to this year's acclaimed Come And Find Me, it's these addictive moments of creation that have kept the guitarist vital, relevant and contemporary while his peers trade on past glories. "Some people say I'm driven, but I think it's just the love of doing it," reflects Trower of a multi-million-selling solo catalogue fast approaching thirty releases (and that's before you compute his collaborations with everyone from Jack Bruce to Bryan Ferry). "I play guitar every day and just through messing around, ideas happen. I can never feel the songs coming. But all of a sudden, you get a sliver of an idea and you think, 'Oh, what's this?'"

Spill tab is an LA-based artist, French-Korean songwriter and producer. Since 2019, spill tab has evolved her project through three EPs. Writing and recording while touring with Sabrina Carpenter and Wallows, spill tab road-tested her new songs to see what might land best with an audience who had never heard her music before. "The best songs come from writing the main idea in a day, as it's so instinctual," she says. "That's what I put on the record." Her debut album, ANGIE, is out via Because Music. 

The songs of Better Dreaming came to Garbus and Brenner with unusual ease. They asked themselves what would happen if they simply let the songs come out, following any trail they wished - first thought, best thought style. There was a strong desire to move, to make music that would enter the ear and immediately loosen up the joints, get the whole body wiggling. After covid-isolation, and time away from touring and live shows, the desire to be moved by music was undeniable. The insane experience of growing an actual human being influenced this as well. Garbus and Brenner’s 3-year-old can be heard singing on “Limelight”. The song was born from dancing together as a family to George Clinton. The kid liked the demo so much that whenever Garbus and Brenner tried to push the track forward with a new version or edit, he would demand the first version. Thus the infectious, effortless original groove stayed true

Your Grandparents are fascinated with time. It can neither be created nor killed; there’s never enough of it, but it can stretch on forever. Time is a form of currency that can be saved, spent, and gambled away. It can be wasted. Wounds heal, the flocks march from field to fold, and, in the end, it makes fools of us all. “I think time is a circle, infinitely repeating itself,” says producer Cole Thompson. “And there’s a bunch of smaller circles within the larger one. Everything we experience is cyclical in the micro and macro.” On their drink sum wtr debut, The Dial, the Los Angeles trio — producer Cole Thompson and vocalists DaCosta and Jean Carter — deeply consider these disparate ideas. The record works as a meditation on time, but posits that in order to truly grasp the concept and all of its ambient qualities, one must remain rooted in the present. The group, who met in middle school in Culver City and are now in their mid-late 20s, has been making music for a decade, patiently watching the pieces of their career fall into place. They seemed to snatch their genre-agnostic but hip-hop-rooted songs from the cosmos, seizing on a moment of inspiration — a loop here, a turn of phrase there — and proceeding in a stream of consciousness. “We’d link up in the studio, and whatever anyone experienced in a week is what ended up on the track,” says Thompson. The Dial took shape more slowly, the result of what DaCosta calls “focused intentionality.” “There was a shift in our mindset,” he explains, “We wanted to be more comfortable going back to the drawing board and refining.” All told, the album took shape over the course of more than two years. After some initial sessions in Joshua Tree, Your Grandparents chipped away at The Dial, careful not to rush any one element into place. The result is stunning: a kaleidoscopic trip through heartaches and joys, moments of frustration and hope. Cole Thompson’s production reaches through time, gathering up influences from divergent eras and meshing them into a singular whole. There’s the house-meets-G-funk slink of “Be Cool,” the smooth Dilla-time boogie of “Down,” and the ESG-informed dance-punk of “BAD NEWS.” DaCosta and Jean Carter are deft performers, effortlessly switching from elastic band rap flows to golden-hued melodies. Album opener, “The Dial,” establishes the theme. By the time the trio sat down to complete the song, they’d landed on their time motif but needed a way to fully express it. “We wanted to relay that message that things will work out when they’re supposed to,” says DaCosta. “The best way to get the most out of hard situations is to keep your head down and work with integrity.” Jean Carter and DaCosta float over Thompson and Josh Conway’s breezy funk instrumental, singing, “Now when my sun sets, and I look at the dial/ I wanna surely say I wasted no time.” It’s a warm, inviting tune, one that came together over the course of only a couple days and, as Thompson says, “sounds exactly like how it felt to make it.” Over the dreamy '90s pop sonics of “Ali & Jen,” the vocalists ruminate on life’s harder lessons, understanding that with time comes wisdom, recognizing the necessity of more painful moments. “Conversations,” a late album highlight, is an exercise in vulnerability. “It’s very therapy-inspired,” Jean Carter reveals. “I was trying to take more of an initiative toward bettering my mental health. It was another pocket of purpose we could tap into: People are feeling these things, but not nearly enough people are getting help. We wanted to normalize those emotions and offer something people can jam when they feeling that type of way.” Your Grandparents’ songs are big-hearted and welcoming, filled with the wide-eyed wonder of youth and the sobering wisdom of aging. They’re writing about the ethereality of it all, the moments that contour your existence, the things you’ll look back on when doing that final assessment. The Dial is a beautiful, empathetic piece of work that understands the contexts from which it came and builds upon them, walking that fine line between contemporary and timeless.

Bach Collegium San Diego's debut release with Rezurrection Recordz, A Sonic Youth, showcases two vibrant early works by J.S. Bach and Handel, composed around the year 1707. Recorded in the fall of 2021, the album highlights Bach's Cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden, where his mastery of Lutheran tradition meets the emerging Italian style, presented through a bold chorale fantasia. In contrast, Handel’s Dixit Dominus captures the youthful composer’s fiery and virtuosic response to the vibrant musical atmosphere of Rome. BCSD’s interpretations bring a distinctive vitality, offering fresh insight into these well-loved compositions.