Browse by Label: UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)

Artist:	CHOPS/HELHESTEN
Title:	Split LP
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	UTR 013LP

"This split release is part of a series of records from Upset The Rhythm documenting the fertile and often overlooked experimental/underground scene in the U.K. CHOPS marry up their love of fidgety drum patterns, effect-drenched saxophone and synthesizer showdowns in such a way that every broken sound that swelled forth is caked in euphoria and creeped-out gravity. After amassing multiple PA-systems into their live setup the band embarked on a series of ear-bleeding shows across the country, allowing their improvised chaos to solidify into the unpredictable genre-warping curiosities that they recorded for this debut. Helhesten's Dithyramb is a collision of energies, stretching and distorting the inherited sounds and shapes of records full of yowl and lo-fi discord with the zeal of the gutter-punk, free music underground making ecstatic noises across the globe right now. A dissonant clatter of precariously structured outer-rock pieces is bound fast by revolving guitar and viola drone, piano clonk, and crumbling tape loops. From these uncertain foundations the clarinet and vocal squall attack, build, and finally fall out completely, only for the beat up three-stringed Fender to lurch forward again for the final flare-up. This split LP is an enticing glimpse into the U.K.'s very own experimental underground, showcasing two of the most interesting new British bands out there. Both sides were recorded by John Hannon at No Studios, a man as committed as Upset The Rhythm to helping document this new wave of talent so close to home." On split purple and white vinyl.

Artist:	MAUS, JOHN
Title:	Love Is Real
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	UTR 015CD

"John Maus lives and works in Austin, Minnesota. Although first drawn to our attention as a core member of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and keyboard player with Animal Collective's Panda Bear, Maus has proved himself an extraordinary musician with a distinctive sound in his own right. Love Is Real is an album of contrast, of obscurity and familiarity, of darkness and light. Moments of intense disco anxiety warning against the sins of avarice ('Too Much Money') find themselves rubbing shoulders with romantic virtuoso fugues ('Green Bouzard'). The juxtaposition of the buoyant '80s synth pop alongside John's sombre, sometimes even morose lyrics is another good example of this tension. 'Without you girl, I'm going over the edge,' Maus sings over the four-to-the-floor dance rhythm of the album's prescient closer 'Times Is Weird.' Over the fantastical keyboard gymnastics of 'The Whole World's Coming Apart,' John finds relief in repeatedly confessing 'This is my nightmare, my nightmare.' It's contrasts like these which point towards John's preoccupation on this album with confused emotions and misunderstood intentions. Ariel Pink, Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Scott Walker, Echo & The Bunnymen, Goblin, Ultravox, Joy Division, The Cure, Bach."

Artist:	HIGH PLACES
Title:	Vision's The First.../Namer
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	UTR 018EP

"High Places are two in number. Mary Pearson and Rob Barber, both Brooklyn dwellers, create a unique and joyous union of world beat, dance music and underground pop. Standing atop the summit of a towering mountain certainly provides a great perspective but it's the overpowering feeling of awesome majesty that is key to understanding the band. That sense of grandeur and wonder is almost impossible to tether in words yet their music seems dizzy under its influence. 'Vision's the First...' is an expansive and playful track showing High Places develop their songs into a more complete work where tribal gamelan-clang rhythms punctuate the breezy data shimmer of their chiming ambience and echoing forest sound. The song unfolds in a reflective manner much like Mary's hyper melodic lyric on creativity and sharing secrets. 'Namer' is a track about leaving home, finding comfort through familiarity and identity. Mary's vocal is hushed but clear as it ventures through the dance of bubbling and vibrant nature sounds, leaving the freaky panning drums to swell and pulse like the sea on a full moon." White-colored vinyl.

Artist:	SOFT BOILED EGGIES
Title:	Try It Again
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	UTR 019LP

"Some words from the band: 'There are a lot of inspirations for this record. A lot of these songs were already written and planned out before we went to the studio. The only song we made up in the studio was 'Permanence.' I already had the chords but the lyrics and stuff were maybe inspired by the Joy Division movie that we had just seen at the theatre. Not that it sounds anything like Joy Division, it's just that it was inspired in that sense. You can hear 'Glassy Eyes' has the guitars of Jesus And Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine which Ben had been reading about and listening to. It was an experiment and it really fit in with the song. The song 'October Days' is really influenced by Scritti Politti and almost steals parts of it, but one would never guess. It's also one of the first songs I ever wrote. Somehow it also seems like one of the most complicated songs. Anyhow, the guitar parts are inspired by girl bands somehow, and Ben added the reggae beat which made it perfect. The live drums mixed with the electronic drums make it sound so strange and awesome, and all the percussion and the guitar leads just sound really great to me. Ben came up with a lot of those beautiful guitar leads, just like in 'Permanence.' 'Only Loved At Night' is a Raincoats cover. It was really hard to do, but fun. We experimented a lot with different sounds and a lot of toys. We even recorded the water sounds in the bathroom. The experimentation with toys and percussion sounds and bells pervade the entire album. Somehow it was just so much fun doing it that it went into almost all the songs.'"

Artist:	FUTURE ISLANDS
Title:	Wave Like Home
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	UTR 023CD

"Future Islands are a post-wave dance band from North Carolina -- now residing in the fertile 'music capital of awesome' Baltimore. Future Islands play a terse yet passionate music wrought from a stripped back palette. Gerrit Welmers' cartwheeling synthesizer melodies tumble across the austere wilderness of William Cashion's post punk bass pulse, driven ever forward by Eric Murillo's ecstatic feel for rhythm. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the band's sound however takes shape in the form of Sam Herring's distinctive guttural vocal, delivered as Glenn Danzig if he ever found himself in a Shakespearean tragedy. Wave Like Home is a breathless testament to romance and grasping chances, forever enthralled to the optimism of trying again. It's a sincere and sometimes painfully honest record about chasing broken dreams and finding courage in a forsaken heart. An album infatuated with timescales like always and forever. From the broken elegy of woozy opener 'Pangea' through the euphoric fun trips of 'Old Friend' and the upbeat 'Seize A Shark,' the album never drifts far from reflection amongst its highest highs. For every throbbing track recalling breakneck pursuits there's a soulful reminder of the quieter side of a melodramatic heart. 'Beach Foam' is glorious, swelling synth work perfectly capturing the crashing waves that incite such hungry philosophy in the song. 'In these arms I can feel my home, breaking from inside' sings a desperate and forlorn Samuel on title track 'Wave Like Home.' 'Save me from loving you always,' he retorts on sober paean 'Heart Grows Old.' For all the hope and regret felt across the album it is rather apt that final track 'Little Dreamer' catches up with Future Islands at their most starry-eyed. Not even the chatter of birdsong can drown out the unabashed sweet sentiment of this closing song, so deeply consumed it holds a torch up into the darkness of the coldest corner of humanity."

Artist:	KIT WITH MIKE WATT
Title:	Dreams Are Burned
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.00
Catalog #:	UTR 026EP

"KIT are a super-melodic experimental rock band. They make very fast, short, defiant songs that play with and subvert pop music. Maybe they'll start off playing a song straight (sweetness and light abounds), before you know it everything gets flipped on its head and chased into chaotic abstraction. KIT songs can typically embrace hardcore rush, pop verse, jagged noise and cheer rally, all within the same moment; raw positivity and instinctive song-writing holding it all together. KIT has written a batch of new songs that break past song-lengths and delve into structural experiments with the ferocity of past efforts. Vice Cooler hit on the idea of having Mike Watt guest on the tracks, and while George's suggestion that we cover Jefferson Airplane's psychedelic classic 'White Rabbit' with Watt on vocals was canned, they did re-visit one of Broken Voyage's tracks, 'Flat Earth', a paean to the band's home town of Oakland. Three others are filled out with melodic runs by the Minutemen and Stooges legend (the bass used on this jam has sadly since been stolen by some karmically cursed Canadians) while KIT's Stove Touchstone holds down the official bass duties. Some horn overdubs with Jenna Thornhill of Silver Daggers and Mika Miko also find their way into the mix." On heavyweight gray vinyl.

Artist:	GAY AGAINST YOU
Title:	Righteous Signal, Sour Dudes
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	UTR 028LP

"With Righteous Signals, Sour Dudes, Joe and Lachlann have written a new album which leaps and bounds over their debut Musclemilk, released in 2007 by Adaadat. The dual title is symbolic of the struggle for creative compromise and two pals who are still learning how to work together -- they couldn't agree, so they named it twice -- it works out. Similarly, the music clashes, too, it strikes bargains and agrees to disagree. The album finds progressive rock trying to sit alongside synth-pop and Afrobeat, whilst disco bumps into hardcore, before transcending tropically. There's a lot going on but somehow it makes sense. Album opener 'Cruisin' is a reckless, careering 8-bit punk sideswipe, with hollered words and an ardent keyboard line. 'Geomancer' is a bubbling brew of stammering beats and coupled vocals. 'Stranded In Jurassic Park' tells the tale of buddies chased by dinosaurs into the path of five desert dwelling aggressors over a pulsating call and response track, which shape shifts with every line. The band try their hand at epic balladry with 'Glorious Dawn2,' whilst 'Magic Eye' is a breakneck pop song lost amidst the pogo and guitar wrangle. Righteous Signals, Sour Dudes is an album about unsatisfactory magic, testing friendships and Niels Bohr. It is also a record about forgetting boundaries and forgiving fun." On bubblegum-colored vinyl; includes poster and lyric insert.

Artist:	BIRD NAMES
Title:	Bird Names Sings The Browns
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	UTR 029LP

"Alone to themselves, Bird Names has been singing a strange sweet song for four years. The song tells about the horror and wonder of truth in an acid-scrambled brogue pieced together from old pop and country music. In their singing they celebrate the honesty of the grotesque, the spirituality of ambiguity, the joy of singing. With Bird Names Sings the Browns, the group's fifth album (following a 10" EP and April 2008's Open Relationship), Bird Names has made a statement of their artistic resolve and capacity. It is a moody pop album scribbled in loose, intuitive musicianship, kissed with love and friendship, built by the power of radical unconscious play. The band produced the album themselves (as they have most Bird Names albums), engaging their 1/2" tape studio with the amateur's imagination, inspiration and crudity. Sings the Browns is folk in its frankness, privacy, melancholy; psychedelic in its conjuring the displacement of drug experience; pop in its melody, stickiness, demand of obsessive listening."

Artist:	STICKS, THE
Title:	The Sticks
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	UTR 030CD

"The Sticks are a stripped down garage party band from Brighton. They bash drums, sway on the bass and claw at guitar - often swapping over instruments between songs live - and yelp with melodic abandon and delight. The Sticks were recently dubbed as 'semi-amateur'; this may be true. With cheap, unreliable equipment they manage to tease out a cacophony of crashing drums and raucous guitar melodies. Finally arriving with their debut self-titled full length, The Sticks have blown the roof off 2007's 10" record and a number of previous singles. Now a trio, the band's sound is more curious than ever. Recorded in an old community hall in Brighton with rudimentary equipment, these songs bounce off the walls with inventive urgency. Thumping deconstructions of 60s riffage give way to more moody bass driven post-punk clatter. These arrangements are certainly crude in nature reflecting the group's limited abilities as musicians, but it is this unpolished approach that draws the listener into the whole potentiality of the music making process." Includes 10 extra tracks not on the 2x7" version.

Artist:	GENTLE FRIENDLY
Title:	Ride Slow
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	UTR 031CD

"Using a wide palette of sound that successfully captures the intensity of their live performance, Gentle Friendly's debut album Ride Slow is an adventurous record, which surpasses the band's lo-fi origins and demonstrates an uplifting emotional range. Thematically a fatalist document, Ride Slow records snapshots of feeling, of conversation, which overlap and phase through different songs. While their self-acknowledged influences (Arthur Russell, Bruce Springsteen, Top 40 hip-hop) are detectable, this album showcases Gentle Friendly as a band who have found their own language, drawing on nostalgia and ritual in equal measure, whilst continuing the tradition of English eccentricity and popular song. Ride Slow works exceptionally well as a continuous piece of music, the band choosing to work with London producer Twins to mix the album through its rounds of echo drench and repetitive rapture. The record glides seamlessly between songs of euphoric warmth to broken stammering rhythms to crushing walls of atmosphere. Tracks like 'Real Fighters,' 'Sleng Teng' and 'Clean Breaker' burst with energy, careering along with thunderous intent, in stark contrast to the album's more reflective moments like the dreamy 'Lover's Rock' and the ambient wash and vocal cycling of 'R.I.P. Static.'"

Artist:	FOOT VILLAGE
Title:	Anti-Magic
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	UTR 032LP

"After a recent collection of singles, EP tracks and remixes on Gilgongo, Foot Village return with their new record proper called Anti-Magic. Describing Anti-Magic as a collection of drum essays embracing the physical and rejecting the imaginary, Foot Village rise to a concept. First album World Fantasy was concerned with songs about other countries, whilst follow-up Friendship Nation documented the founding of Foot Village as a nation in its own right. With this new album the story of the nation's first war is discussed. A war in opposition to magic and spirituality. A record about resistance to the heathen hordes of sorcerers, prophets and pretenders. This is not a story that Foot Village are telling to make them look like saviors, though. It's a warning to not believe everything you're told. Contrary to a first listen to the band's run riot sound, Foot Village are decidedly anti-jam. Very few parts of the record are improvised and their songs are heavily worked on and involved. This can be appreciated on this new album more than ever. 'Crybaby' starts apprehensively with a cowbell and cymbal rattle, until the rim shots and vocals pour in, making way for the military march gone carnival signature beat to stamp its presence on the song." Gatefold sleeve, nudity.

Artist:	FORMER GHOSTS
Title:	Fleurs
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	UTR 035LP

"Former Ghosts is the synthpop-inspired band formed and led by Freddy Ruppert (of This Song Is A Mess But So Am I) and consisting of Jamie Stewart (of Xiu Xiu) and Nika Roza (of Zola Jesus). The album sweeps through you with it's sweet melodic side, sprinkling in sharp, chaotic, discordant moments -- as if to punish you for having enjoyed yourself, for having let your guard down. 'Dreams' plays through with melodies and textures reminiscent of early synth-pop, kept alive with the warm heart-like thumping of the synthetic kick drum. Freddy's (This Song Is A Mess But So Am I) vocals crawl low through the hallucinatory soundscape, led on by the gentle buttering of Jamie's back-ups in the chorus. Jamie's (Xiu Xiu, etc) influence on the album enters obliquely, buttering some of the albums harder edges, organizing the sometimes disoriented moments of glitch and electro-mania. He plays an unfamiliar role -- softer, more understated (in his particular context) -- but in his familiar style. Starring solo on 'I Wave,' you're drawn into the springy synths, cushioned by his smooth voice--the track is almost a reprieve from heavier textures found elsewhere in the album." On white vinyl.

Artist:	TRASH KIT
Title:	Trash Kit
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	UTR 036CD

"Trash Kit are a gang of facepainted flag-bearers who have a wild feel for melody and a heartfelt kick inside each song. Mixing chaos, considered songcraft and overlapping harmonies in equal measure the female trio sound as joyful as they are focused. Rachel Aggs, Rachel Horwood and Ros Murray formed the band in early 2009, and since then have been lighting up London, energizing the UK underground with their raw performances and promise. Trash Kit have a sound of their very own, it's both urbane and primal, drawing on the potential of punk and the naturalism of an internal folk music. With their self-titled debut album they have successfully captured their narrative enthusiasm without losing any charm."

Artist:	COLD PUMAS
Title:	Beat Mystery/Party Drip
Label:	UPSET THE RHYTHM (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.00
Catalog #:	UTR 039EP

"Cold Pumas specialize in pounding, motorik repetition that grabs the groove for dear life. This new 7" on Upset The Rhythm finds Cold Pumas at the zenith of their dance orientated weird-outs. 'Beat Mystery' is an epic growing repeato-jam, echoing guitar driven along to euphoric heights with a propulsive energy. The drums hit hard into a kraut vault, shimmering away into cymbals just at the right breathing moments before the guitars pull you onwards. Towards the climax of the song Cold Pumas unleash some haunted vocal blurring before the song finally shudders into a grave. 'Party Drip' is equally as restless and relentless in its kinetic punch but certainly channels a more heavy club-based ecstasy. Tumbling drums punctuate the sweet clang and lilt of the guitar work, allowing the track to slip inside a (slightly) more conventional song form occasionally without losing its four-to-the-floor spirit. Both tracks truly testify to Cold Pumas being one of the most exciting bands of the new UK underground, we're excited to hear where they go next as anything seems possible or probable even." On blue vinyl.

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