Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 21 March (2025)

"Constant Noise" follows the band's incendiary debutalbum 'NAILS' which earned widespread acclaim andappeared in album of the year lists inc. Louder ThanWar (#1), BBC 6Music, NME, The Quietus, The LineOf Best Fit and more."We're still angry" says vocalist Kingsley Hall, "justangry in a different way to before. If the previousrecord was black and white, we wanted this to betechnicolour."The first taste of this new musical direction came inthe form of "Land Of The Tyrants", which saw theband delving into bass-heavy, dance inflectedrhythms and subtle industrial undercurrents. Followup single 'Relentless' featured The Libertines' PeterDoherty and saw the band move further into ambientelectronic atmospherics.Doherty is just one of the collaborators on the newrecord, Zera Tønin, the singer of queerpop-electro duoArch Femmesis, Neil Cooper of Therapy?, andMiddlesborough rapper Shakk all make cameos. Inaddition to the guest musicians, the album also featuresproduction from James Welsh (Phantasy Sound), andJames Adrian Brown (ex-Pulled Apart ByHorses)who helped to guide the new direction. Theresult is an album that gleans as much from the likes ofUnderworld and Leftfield as it does the likes of TheStreets or Beastie Boys in their pomp, or even the 90s /early 00s Indie Sleaze-era.Orange vinyl comes with full album download incl. twotracks not on vinyl ('Continual' and 'The Brambles')

While Moneyball is punctuated by uncertainty, at its core it is still tethered to the inherently spiritual relationship the bandmates have not only with each other, but with the world that surrounds them. Recorded over a six month period in their Long Beach studio, the ten songs that make up the record find cohesion “not just in the art but the physical space”: the band’s self-made studio as well as their longstanding friendships. Produced by Reeves and mixed by Phil Ek (Modest Mouse, Duster, Fleet Foxes), you can begin to pick up the separate stylings and personalities of the band members by the songs they independently write (five out of the six band members have vocal and lyrical credits on the record) before bringing to the band at large, where the songs often grow into new forms all together. 

Tell Dem It's Sunny is an introspective album, that explores elements of London artist Greentea Peng’s personality and lived experiences in a record that seamlessly weaves together an array of genres from Hip-Hop to Jazz, Neo-soul, Trip Hop, Ragga, Rock, Dub and Drum & Bass, all anchored by her signature sage vocals.

After a decade making the most of improvised recording spaces set in warehouses, trailers and lofts, Japanese Breakfast's fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), marks the band's first proper studio release. Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills, the record sees front-woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner pull back from the bright extroversion that defined it's predecessor Jubilee to examine the darker waves that roil within, the moody, fecund field of melancholy, long held to be the psychic state of poets on the verge of inspiration. The result is an artistic statement of purpose: a mature, intricate, contemplative work that conjures the romantic thrill of a gothic novel.For Melancholy Brunettes follows a transformative period in Zauner's life during which her 2x GRAMMY nominated breakthrough album Jubilee and her bestselling memoir Crying In H Mart catapulted her into the cultural mainstream, delivering on her deepest artistic ambitions. Reflecting on that success, Zauner came to appreciate the irony of desire, which so often commingles bliss and doom. "I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted," she says. "I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die."The plight of Icarus and other such condemned ones lends For Melancholy Brunettes it's most persistent theme, the perils of desire. Like light dispersed, it's spectral parts take the album's characters through cycles of temptation, transgression and retribution. On "Orlando in Love" - a riff on John Cheever's riff on Orlando Innamorato, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo - the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren's call, his 69th canto (even in the lofty realm of classical myth Zauner has a soft spot for innuendo). "Honey Water" plumbs the quiet rage of a woman married to an unfaithful man, watching him cede again and again to lust like a base insect perpetuating it's own demise.Sadness is indeed the dominant emotional key of this record, but it is sadness of a rarified form: the pensive, prescient sadness of melancholy, in which the recognition of life's essentially tragic character occurs with sensitivity to it's fleeting beauty. Zauner finds space enough inside it for glimmers of hope. They are the consolations of mortals that poets before her have called out to and that poets after will continue to rediscover: love and labor, and though they run like tonic resolutions through the record's many episodes, they sound most saliently on it's final song, "Magic Mountain," an engagement with Thomas Mann's famous novel of the same name. For her, making any work feels like scaling a mountain, but from the perch of For Melancholy Brunettes, she surveys the future.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma returns with Gift Songs, a deep distillation of touchstones and influences drawn from the natural world and his spiritual practice. Enlisting a brilliant cast of collaborators, and blending a rich sonic palette of guitar, modular synthesizer, and acoustic instrumentation and arrangements, Cantu-Ledesma illuminates a profound sense of humanity and transcendent possibilities across a suite of five sublimely minimal compositions.Drawing it's title from Cantu-Ledesma's belief that music is a gift, a form of magic, born from specific conditions, rather than a singular conception, and as a nod to Shaker "gift drawings," regarded as gifts from God to maker, the slow emergence of Gift Songs provoked in the artist how one might sculpt instrumentation and arrangements to invoke experiences in the natural world: "being amongst running waters, hearing wind through trees, or the rhythm of hiking to a vista with friends at twilight." The resulting sound, subtly influenced by Cantu-Ledesma's parallel practices as a Zen priest and a hospice worker, provokes a deep resonance with the landscape and rhythm of the seasons of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where he settled with his family four years prior, around the release of his last album Tracing Back the Radiance, each movement, shift, and transition built from evolutions of microscopic change. In conceiving Gift Songs, Cantu-Ledesma embraced the possibilities of openness and chance: allowing for the interplay of sounds to guide it's course under the direction of the album's collaborators: Omer Shemesh (piano, arrangements), Joseph Weiss (engineering, bass guitar), Clarice Jensen (cello), and Booker Stardrum (percussion). What emerged was a desire to work as acoustically, and environmentally attuned, as possible, showcasing the humanity of the performers, and an unexpected love affair with piano and percussion, the rhythms and tones of which speckle across the album's effortless flow. From the shimmering clarity of arpeggiating piano that marks the album's first few bars, quickly submerged in dense textures of rhythm and tone, Gift Songs presents a sense of ambient grace: sonorities that dance outside of time and space, implying something far greater than themselves. Amounting to a deeply organic and introspective form of minimalism that emphasizes the distinct qualities and idiosyncrasies of each instrument and it's player, Gift Songs manifests as a series of conversant movements within a greater whole. As the densities of "The Milky Sea" subside, Cantu-Ledesma arcs into achingly exposed spaces, carved by sparse piano lines atop delicate chaplain organ drones that glacially unfold across "Gift Song I", "Gift Song II", and "Gift Song III", before concluding with the rising glow of "River that Flows Two Ways", an immersive, long-tone work for Hammond B3 and pump organs.Refined and deeply emotive, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Gift Songs encounters the veteran, process-based experimentalist unveiling a profound meaning within the elegance of it's lattice of sound, occurrence, and space.

Lola Kirke is a powerhouse of creativity - a gifted artist, writer, and actress with a story as dynamic as her talents. Born in the UK, shaped by New York, and now thriving in Nashville, she channels her life experiences into art. Her highly anticipated album, Trailblazer, delves into the defining moments of her journey, exploring the complexity of relationships with family, friends, and lovers. This is Lola at her most authentic - unapologetically bold and undeniably captivating.

There are poets like the great Mary Oliver, who mightsuggest that one's primary function when moving through theworld, for as long as they have life and the ability to move throughthe world, is to play close attention to that which others may foolishlycall small, or quotidian. The brain and heart are both containers, withas much space as you wish for them to have, and to live is to createcollections of found affections. Sounds from your beloved andfamiliar blocks, movements of the trees and the people beneaththem, the way someone you adore may hold you for a few lingeringseconds before releasing from a hug and vanishing into a crowdedcrosswalk. To think of our living, our making, and our loving in thisway means that, at least for some of us, we may be propelled forwardby the prospect of what's next. What moment we can hold and placein our overflowing pockets.The work of Lonnie Holley is, for me, a work of this kind ofaccumulation and close attention. The delight of finding a soundand pressing it up against another found sound and another until,before a listener knows it, they are awash in a symphony of soundthat feels like it stitches together as it is washing over you. Tonky isan album that takes it's name from a childhood nickname that wasaffixed to Holley when he lived a portion of his childhood life in ahonky tonk. Lonnie Holley's life of survival and endurance is one thatrequired - and no doubt still requires - a kind of invention. Aninvention that is also rich and present in Holley's songs, which are fulland immersive on Tonky, an album that begins with it's longest song,a nine minute, exhaustive marathon of a tune called "Seeds," whichbegins with a single sparse sound and then expands. Chants, faintkeys, strings, and atop it all, Holley's voice, not singing, but speakingplainly about working the earth when he was young, the violence heendured in the process of it all, going to bed bloodied and in painfrom beatings. The song expands into a metaphor about place,about the failures of home, or anywhere meant to protect you notliving up to what it sells itself to be, even if you tirelessly work at it,work on it, work to make something worthwhile of it."Seeds" not only sets the tone for an album that revolvesaround rebirth, renewal, and the limits of hope and faith, but ithighlights what Holley's greatest strength as a musician is, to me,which is a commitment to abundance, and generosity. He is anincredibly gifted storyteller with a commitment to the oral tradition,such that many listeners (myself among them,) would be entirelycontent sitting at the feet of a Lonnie Holley record and turning anear to his robust, expansive storytelling. But Tonky is an album asexpansive in sound as it is in making a place for a wide range offeatured artists to come through the door of the record and feel athome, no matter how they spend the time they get on a song.

More Eaze and Claire Rousay’s collaborations are effortlessly joyful, their music evoking the warmth and respect they have for each other. Their bond goes back to their youthful hometown of San Antonio, Texas where they played in country outfits and noise rock bands respectively, and each pushed their music to extend beyond the traditions and conventions of genre. More Eaze (the moniker of violinist/multi-instrumentalist mari maurice) and Rousay have spent the past decade pushing boundaries, standing together at the vanguard of genre-shattering music that thrills and surprises with its vulnerability and creativity. no floor weds their prowess as sound designers and masterful skills as composers with their skills as acoustic instrumentalists.

For more than 25 years, My Morning Jacket have achieved an incredibly rare feat in rock & roll, upholding a long-established cultural legacy while sustaining the curiosity and creative hunger of their earliest days. For their 10th studio album, the band teamed up with GRAMMY Award-winning producer Brendan O'Brien (Springsteen, Pearl Jam) for what may be their most masterfully realized work yet, once again expanding the limits of their sound while elevating their artistry to unprecedented heights. Available on "Summer Sky" color vinyl with custom inner sleeve and 4-page insert.

In the Fall of 2022, Phil Cook found himself living alone in a small home at the edge of field and forest in North Carolina's Piedmont. For most of Cook's life he lived near the hearts of the towns he had called home, near the groan of traffic and hubbub of coffee shops. Such close quarters helped make the gregarious Cook a prolific collaborator, from co-founding Megafaun to working with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger, and endless others. But Cook's closest neighbor now was a trailhead, so he went and listened, enraptured first by the stillness and then by the manifold birds. He began leaving his windowsill slightly cracked each night, so that the dawn chorus greeted him. Cook began recording these tangled bird songs, and he slowly joined them. With the sun finally high, Cook would listen to the day's recordings and improvise in real time on the instrument that remains the first and most steadfast love of his musical life, the piano. When Cook left that cabin after a year, he moved into a home of his own in Durham, with plenty of space for his two boys to play and for something he'd never actually owned-a proper piano. Over the next several months, Cook spent untold hours drilling down on these pieces. During lessons with the Southern gospel great Chuckey Robinson, the pianist had challenged Cook to sustain fewer notes, to stop clouding and crowding his melodies by using the instrument's pedals as crutches. His music suddenly had more clarity, with the sounds and the feelings they ferried given more room to function. Cook dug into the danger and delight, into the idea that we twist our bodies into knots trying to understand what is best for our hearts. In April 2024 Cook returned to Wisconsin's Chippewa Valley where he was raised. His lifelong friend and bandmate, Justin Vernon, had just finished an overhaul of April Base, the studio compound where Cook has worked on more than a dozen records during the last 15 years. Cook asked Vernon to produce Appalachia Borealis as simply as possible-merely to listen and offer feedback in two extended afternoon sessions, to talk about the right takes and make sure that they'd captured the heart. It, of course, got more complicated, as they experimented with the process. Vernon would add or subtract the bird songs to Cook's headphones, seeing how they impacted his playing. Or they would route his notes through a massive reverb chamber, Cook responding in gossamer improvisations. Appalachia Borealis is a deeply poignant and personal set of 11 piano meditations, built with the emotional range of a full and open existence. Inspired by those windowsill improvisations, it reflects not only the turmoil and sadness of a fraught time for Cook but also the hope, light, and joy of looking for the other side. You can sometimes still hear the birds whose tune and time helped to inspire so many of these songs. Even when they're not within earshot, their essence remains.

Selena Gomez and benny blanco team up to release their first project as a couple, `I Said I Love You First' via SMG Music LLC & Friends Keep Secrets under exclusive license to Interscope Records. The album celebrates the pair's love story, giving fans a unique window into their relationship. This album came together organically as a direct result of the comfort that they both felt when working together creatively, allowing them to produce art that authentically reflects their experiences. It chronicles their entire story - before they met, falling in love, and looking to what the future holds. Available on candy cane red vinyl.

The sounds, songs, and passages within Power Sucker are the very reason that Young Widows are still a band after an 11-year creative pause; they remain masters at making music with equal parts sonic and emotional weight. Young Widows have inspired scores of underground artists across the globe with their unique collage of noise-rock, hardcore, and post-punk and pioneering presentation. The Young Widows sound - or more accurately, the Young Widows feel - is in full battering ram motion on their fifth studio album. The heaviness of Power Sucker isn't mysterious. The Louisville, Kentucky power trio play their individual parts with such recognizable precision and style that once entwined together each completed piece becomes an integral part of the puzzle. The sizzling guitars, growling bass, and lock-tight drums rip through the pavement that Young Widows had previously laid to allow the most forward-moving vocal arrangements of their now two-decade career. Historical accomplishments aside, Power Sucker has the shock and wonder of a new band's debut album. After all, this is the regrouping of three passionate lifers once again sharing their undying love for the art of sound. No one and no thing can take those powers away.