GLITTERBEAT - Forced Exposure

$15.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 9/16/2022

Middle Eastern psych-rock collective Al-Qasar's debut album is an explosive mix of heavy Arabian grooves, global psychedelia, and North African trance music. The band calls it "Arabian fuzz." Brazenly electric and deeply connected. When continents collide, they make a thunderous sound. Al-Qasar create the soundtrack to that fission on their full-length debut, Who Are We? The musicians came together, from France, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and the United States. Shows followed, first in France, then in Europe and the Middle East. They put out an EP, the widely-lauded Miraj, recorded in Cairo. Work on Who Are We? began in December 2020, with Attar Bellier composing eight tracks that writhe and roar in skillfully controlled chaos. Bass, drums and traditional percussion create a deep, irresistible groove for the foundation, while electric saz and guitars build a wailing wall above, with Moroccan vocalist Jaouad El Garouge's ecstatic voice, steeped in his Gnawa upbringing, pulling inspiration from history as it strides into the future. Drawing on years of experience working in Los Angeles studios, Attar Bellier produced the album. Who Are We? translates the sound that inhabited his head into something physical that stirs spirit, heart and feet. The Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra was a natural addition to "Ya Malak," his inimitable voice reciting a translation of Egyptian revolutionary poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, elevating the record's social critique while showcasing the first-ever English recording of Negm's work. Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth layers textured, brooding guitar over the first two cuts, "Awtar Al Sharq" and "Awal." The sweeping drones embrace the Moroccan bendir groove to magical results. Hend Elrawy, the acclaimed Egyptian singer whom the band met in Cairo, brings her powerful voice to "Mal Wa Jamal", whose Arabic lyrics promote a female-centric and humbling outlook on prostitution and its consequences. Like the other songs on the album, its social consciousness is carefully veiled in images. "Hobek Tawrat," for instance, can be taken as a love song, with its seductive, ringing opening on the electric saz that leads up to the aching voice of New York-based Sudanese innovator Alsarah (Alsarah & The Nubatones). One of the band's great coups is the track "Barbès Barbès," an ode and homage to the neighborhood in Paris where Al-Qasar first came together. The iconic Mehdi Haddab (Speed Caravan) added his oud virtuosity to the track. Who Are We? is a deep, exhilarating album. Its intensity never wavers, music that pulls from the hypnotic roots of North African trance and threads it into a fabric with the elaborate beauty of Arabic scales and the shock and thrill of rock'n'roll. Mixed by Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age, PJ Harvey). Mastered by Grammy-winner Dave Collins.

$20.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 9/16/2022

A thrilling collaboration between the acclaimed Belgian composer/instrumentalist Catherine Graindorge and the ever-iconic Iggy Pop. Haunting string and electronic textures melding with Iggy's baritone, cautionary tales. A deep dive into the heart of these unsettled times. It all began with the radio. Together, they've forged a meeting of minds and spirits that's resulted in the The Dictator, an EP that combines their talents: her music, his voice. "He played two tracks of mine on his BBC 6 Music show,"Graindorge explains, "so I sent an email addressed to Iggy to the producer of the show, saying that I was very honored and that I'd be delighted to work on a track with him. It was completely spontaneous; I never thought anything would really happen." But it did. To her disbelief and absolute delight, a reply came two days later: Catherine, I would love to make a track, Iggy. In addition to solo work and being part of the band Nile on WaX, she's worked with artists like Nick Cave, Hugo Race and esteemed producer/musician John Parish. Still, she expected nothing more than to add her violin to a song of his. Instead, she recalls, "Iggy said to send him a track. I began to improvise, and came up with three pieces at home. We communicated and began to exchange ideas." Her wish turned into a fever dream of creativity. "Over Christmas I recorded another track that was more rock. That grabbed him. Then he wrote the lyrics for 'The Dictator' two months before Russia invaded Ukraine." His inspiration came from her sounds and musical structures, and the world he sees around us. "There is a gothic masonry at work here, with a very old force abetted by very cunning structures," Iggy observes about Catherine's music. "My contribution is to report, through words, the current threat, and the longing for happiness and peace."

$24.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 9/16/2022

LP version. Middle Eastern psych-rock collective Al-Qasar's debut album is an explosive mix of heavy Arabian grooves, global psychedelia, and North African trance music. The band calls it "Arabian fuzz." Brazenly electric and deeply connected. When continents collide, they make a thunderous sound. Al-Qasar create the soundtrack to that fission on their full-length debut, Who Are We? The musicians came together, from France, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and the United States. Shows followed, first in France, then in Europe and the Middle East. They put out an EP, the widely-lauded Miraj, recorded in Cairo. Work on Who Are We? began in December 2020, with Attar Bellier composing eight tracks that writhe and roar in skillfully controlled chaos. Bass, drums and traditional percussion create a deep, irresistible groove for the foundation, while electric saz and guitars build a wailing wall above, with Moroccan vocalist Jaouad El Garouge's ecstatic voice, steeped in his Gnawa upbringing, pulling inspiration from history as it strides into the future. Drawing on years of experience working in Los Angeles studios, Attar Bellier produced the album. Who Are We? translates the sound that inhabited his head into something physical that stirs spirit, heart and feet. The Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra was a natural addition to "Ya Malak," his inimitable voice reciting a translation of Egyptian revolutionary poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, elevating the record's social critique while showcasing the first-ever English recording of Negm's work. Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth layers textured, brooding guitar over the first two cuts, "Awtar Al Sharq" and "Awal." The sweeping drones embrace the Moroccan bendir groove to magical results. Hend Elrawy, the acclaimed Egyptian singer whom the band met in Cairo, brings her powerful voice to "Mal Wa Jamal", whose Arabic lyrics promote a female-centric and humbling outlook on prostitution and its consequences. Like the other songs on the album, its social consciousness is carefully veiled in images. "Hobek Tawrat," for instance, can be taken as a love song, with its seductive, ringing opening on the electric saz that leads up to the aching voice of New York-based Sudanese innovator Alsarah (Alsarah & The Nubatones). One of the band's great coups is the track "Barbès Barbès," an ode and homage to the neighborhood in Paris where Al-Qasar first came together. The iconic Mehdi Haddab (Speed Caravan) added his oud virtuosity to the track. Who Are We? is a deep, exhilarating album. Its intensity never wavers, music that pulls from the hypnotic roots of North African trance and threads it into a fabric with the elaborate beauty of Arabic scales and the shock and thrill of rock'n'roll. Mixed by Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age, PJ Harvey). Mastered by Grammy-winner Dave Collins.

$24.00 IN STOCK

LP version. A mysterious matrix that echoes disparate (but strangely compatible) sonic strands: deep griot traditions, Fugazi, Can, '70s era Zappa, Black Midi, the full throttle rush of Nyege Nyege Tapes. Emerging from an original dimension in sound, the polygenesis Avalanche Kaito redefine what it is to talk with the ancients whilst leaping forth into a futuristic chaos of noise on their debut album journey. A palpable experience with each sonic blast, each layer a revelation, this simultaneously taut but expansive universe, in which the oral traditions of the West African griot converge with Belgium post-punk, exists in its own space. Urban griot and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse (vocals, tama, peul flutes, mouth bow) fortuitously collided with Brussels noise punk musicians Benjamin Chaval (drums, electronics) and Arnaud Paquotte (bass) from the group Le Jour du Seigneur, after a friend of theirs in Burkina Faso played Kaito some of the duo's pummeling music. Through a twisting sequence of events, the trio eventually met and began developing the sound world of ancestral proverbs and dataist inspired technology that defines the album. Although the album is being released six months after the debut Dabalomuni EP showcase, the guitarist from that extraordinary otherworldly session, Nico Gitto is now part of the transformed setup; not so much replacing Paquotte as expanding the sound into another direction. With the help of the visual language program PureData (an open-source apparatus for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works) and his pummeling, rattled drumming, Benjamin and his sinewy bassist foil Arnaud create an effective torque and tumult for Kaito's commune with his roots and life in a very different bush of ghosts. Within that space, you'll not only hear super charged traces of post-punk but the tribal, free jazz, prog, and industrial-electronica as well. Kaito's griot ancestry and the band's motivation is a spontaneous escape from the addiction of the online world, a reconnection with the ritual of a live performance. Although created in a studio setting that live in the moment feeling and dynamism is authentically recreated on this album. The practice of improvising in the studio with meticulously arranged pieces blows up and out into the inter-dimensional slackened bass stalk of "Sunguru", and the wilder hysterics and danger of the progressive deconstruction "Douaga". In that postpunk mode, a Jah Wobble-like throbbed esoteric bass converges with more celestial manifestations on "Goomde", whilst "Eya" features a certain Scott Walker atmospheric gloom and earthy soul tumbling drums. At any one-time this trio are snarling yet hypnotic, willowy but thickened with a brooding menace.

$15.50 IN STOCK

A mysterious matrix that echoes disparate (but strangely compatible) sonic strands: deep griot traditions, Fugazi, Can, '70s era Zappa, Black Midi, the full throttle rush of Nyege Nyege Tapes. Emerging from an original dimension in sound, the polygenesis Avalanche Kaito redefine what it is to talk with the ancients whilst leaping forth into a futuristic chaos of noise on their debut album journey. A palpable experience with each sonic blast, each layer a revelation, this simultaneously taut but expansive universe, in which the oral traditions of the West African griot converge with Belgium post-punk, exists in its own space. Urban griot and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse (vocals, tama, peul flutes, mouth bow) fortuitously collided with Brussels noise punk musicians Benjamin Chaval (drums, electronics) and Arnaud Paquotte (bass) from the group Le Jour du Seigneur, after a friend of theirs in Burkina Faso played Kaito some of the duo's pummeling music. Through a twisting sequence of events, the trio eventually met and began developing the sound world of ancestral proverbs and dataist inspired technology that defines the album. Although the album is being released six months after the debut Dabalomuni EP showcase, the guitarist from that extraordinary otherworldly session, Nico Gitto is now part of the transformed setup; not so much replacing Paquotte as expanding the sound into another direction. With the help of the visual language program PureData (an open-source apparatus for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works) and his pummeling, rattled drumming, Benjamin and his sinewy bassist foil Arnaud create an effective torque and tumult for Kaito's commune with his roots and life in a very different bush of ghosts. Within that space, you'll not only hear super charged traces of post-punk but the tribal, free jazz, prog, and industrial-electronica as well. Kaito's griot ancestry and the band's motivation is a spontaneous escape from the addiction of the online world, a reconnection with the ritual of a live performance. Although created in a studio setting that live in the moment feeling and dynamism is authentically recreated on this album. The practice of improvising in the studio with meticulously arranged pieces blows up and out into the inter-dimensional slackened bass stalk of "Sunguru", and the wilder hysterics and danger of the progressive deconstruction "Douaga". In that postpunk mode, a Jah Wobble-like throbbed esoteric bass converges with more celestial manifestations on "Goomde", whilst "Eya" features a certain Scott Walker atmospheric gloom and earthy soul tumbling drums. At any one-time this trio are snarling yet hypnotic, willowy but thickened with a brooding menace.

$23.50 IN STOCK

Beautifully recorded in situ in the Rif mountains in the autumn of 2019, this 110-minute double-CD presents these legendary musicians expansively and unhindered. Based in Jajouka, Morocco, The Master Musicians are a collective of Jbala Sufi trance makers, committed to creating a contemporary representation of their centuries-old musical tradition. The album is produced by long-time band leader Bachir Attar, and with all but one of the tracks exceeding ten-minutes in length, it is clear that these recordings authoritatively grasp the textured essence of this timeless ensemble. Deeply hypnotic and earth-shakingly intense.

Text by acclaimed music critic Stephen Davis: "... The latest musical adept to turn inland at Larache, pass through Ksar, stop by the Tatoft caïd, and find the occluded road to Jajouka is the Italian musician and engineer Jacopo Andreini. In late 2019, as the planet was closing down, and as stories circulated about the musicians' vulnerability in today's world, Jacopo was hired by Bachir to make comprehensive recordings of the complete Jajouka music catalog. His mission, supervised by Bachir, was to record as much as possible -- hours and hours over the course of a week -- of Jajouka's varied styles (anthems, flutes, violins, singing) in their tin-roofed madrassa, using the latest sound gear -- eons away from Brion Gysin's 1955 reel-to-reel Uher machine. This selection of tracks from these sessions is the latest testament to the mystic enchantment and spiritual worth of Jajouka, captured in audio fidelity of the highest degree. The double-reed rhaita music recalls that Jajouka once provided musicians to Morocco's royal court. 'Khamsa Khamsin (The 55)' and 'Opening the Gate' are themes once deployed to accompany the Sultan to the mosque, and back again, as early as 1912 and before. The acoustic and percussive fiddle songs called Jibli ("mountain music") are typical of what is played for visitors to Jajouka after a savory evening meal of couscous and tagine. These songs are descended from Andaluz music, the millennium-old melodies of Moorish Iberia. Jajouka, its musicians, and traditions are indeed vulnerable and in transition in this rapidly changing era. It is lovingly curated projects like Dancing Under the Moon, plus the blessings of Baraka, and some luck and hard work by Bachir Attar and the current generation of the Master Musicians, that will hopefully see their ancient folkways survive into better times for everyone. Jajouka's is healing music for our viralized world."

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Yīn Yīn's dazzling second album dives even deeper into dancefloor propulsion and space travel atmospherics than their lauded debut The Rabbit that Hunts Tigers (2019). The beautiful, old and somewhat staid city of Maastricht, where the band is based, isn't really conducive to setting up a bustling music scene: and it's a place where the outsiders quickly recognize each other. Yīn Yīn are all "nightlife people", which meant their friendship initially came about through co-organizing and deejaying DIY parties. Things started to move for real when Yves Lennertz and Kees Berkers decided to make a cassette tape that drew on references to Southern and South East Asian music. Once the idea was formed, Lennertz and Berkers wasted no time in taking "a lot" of instruments to a rented rehearsal room in a small village near Maastricht. They asked friends to help out, and they became a full band: with Remy Scheren on bass, Robbert Verwijlen on keys and Jerome Cardynaals, and Gino Bombrini on percussion. A "united against the world" stance is also heard at the end of "Declined by Universe". It's a funny, maybe surreptitious statement of belief in what they do. Yīn Yīn also wanted to create an illusion of strength in other ways: "Declined By Universe" sounds as if there is a large group of people playing, not just the core band. Nods to brilliant, invigorating dance music abound, some of the thumping beats in numbers like "Chong Wang" the title track and "Nautilus" drop some thumping 1990s-style electric boogie and Italo disco chops along the way. Then there is "Shēnzou V.", which plots a stately course between eastern-inflected pop music, Italo, and Harmonia-style electronic meditations. The expansive richness in sound and feel may be down to the fact that more samples, drum computers, and synthesizers are used on The Age of Aquarius than in their previous records, a process that intertwines with real-time playing in the studio. "Faiyadansu", for example, started with a sample found on an old traditional Japanese koto record. Cosmic appropriations of time also crop up in the titles, which may give the lie to some of the band members' preoccupations with the state of the world. An old trope musically the Age is most famously referenced in the hippie musical, Hair. Other direct references to cosmic times are in the track names "Kali Yuga" and "Satya Yuga": the Kali Yuga, in Hinduism, is the fourth and worst of the four yugas (world ages) in a Yuga Cycle, preceded by Dvapara Yuga and followed by the next cycle's Krita (Satya) Yuga.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Yīn Yīn's dazzling second album dives even deeper into dancefloor propulsion and space travel atmospherics than their lauded debut The Rabbit that Hunts Tigers (2019). The beautiful, old and somewhat staid city of Maastricht, where the band is based, isn't really conducive to setting up a bustling music scene: and it's a place where the outsiders quickly recognize each other. Yīn Yīn are all "nightlife people", which meant their friendship initially came about through co-organizing and deejaying DIY parties. Things started to move for real when Yves Lennertz and Kees Berkers decided to make a cassette tape that drew on references to Southern and South East Asian music. Once the idea was formed, Lennertz and Berkers wasted no time in taking "a lot" of instruments to a rented rehearsal room in a small village near Maastricht. They asked friends to help out, and they became a full band: with Remy Scheren on bass, Robbert Verwijlen on keys and Jerome Cardynaals, and Gino Bombrini on percussion. A "united against the world" stance is also heard at the end of "Declined by Universe". It's a funny, maybe surreptitious statement of belief in what they do. Yīn Yīn also wanted to create an illusion of strength in other ways: "Declined By Universe" sounds as if there is a large group of people playing, not just the core band. Nods to brilliant, invigorating dance music abound, some of the thumping beats in numbers like "Chong Wang" the title track and "Nautilus" drop some thumping 1990s-style electric boogie and Italo disco chops along the way. Then there is "Shēnzou V.", which plots a stately course between eastern-inflected pop music, Italo, and Harmonia-style electronic meditations. The expansive richness in sound and feel may be down to the fact that more samples, drum computers, and synthesizers are used on The Age of Aquarius than in their previous records, a process that intertwines with real-time playing in the studio. "Faiyadansu", for example, started with a sample found on an old traditional Japanese koto record. Cosmic appropriations of time also crop up in the titles, which may give the lie to some of the band members' preoccupations with the state of the world. An old trope musically the Age is most famously referenced in the hippie musical, Hair. Other direct references to cosmic times are in the track names "Kali Yuga" and "Satya Yuga": the Kali Yuga, in Hinduism, is the fourth and worst of the four yugas (world ages) in a Yuga Cycle, preceded by Dvapara Yuga and followed by the next cycle's Krita (Satya) Yuga.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Rough-hewn and exhilarating, EL Khat's second album Aalbat Alawi Op.99 is a deep dive into leader Eyal el Wahab's Yemenite roots and their inspired re-imaginings. A careening orchestra of percussion, horns, strings, electricity and el Wahab's own DIY instruments. Mesmerizing retro-futurist sounds. El Khat. Named for the drug used so widely chewed across the Middle East, the band's music is certainly addictive, more so with each outing. Their second album, Aalbat Alawi Op.99, is a disc full of joys, where the melodies unfold one after the other, involving and catchy. "I tried to be simple in the structure," explains Eyal el Wahab, the group's leader and heart, who composed and arranged almost everything on the album. Aalbat Alawi Op.99 is very much his vision. "It's a bit like pop music, where the soul is four chords and a melody. The difference is in the expression." That sense of expression and meaning flows through the first single, "Djaja," where he sings "From Yemen and beyond America/We are all together and I am alone." This is music that both looks over the shoulder to his family's past and forward to the world that lies outside. El Wahab plays many of the instruments on the album, things like the dli and the kearat that he constructed himself. A skilled carpenter, it's something he started doing several years ago, using his skills to make music from the items people discard. A child of the Yemeni diaspora who's grown up in Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel, it's a practice that harks back to the family homeland, where even rubbish can become an instrument. Where the last album, Saadia Jefferon, saw Eyal el Wahab bring a funky, psychedelic re imagination to the traditional Yemeni songs that electrified him when he first heard them, this is a disc almost entirely filled with his own compositions, something close and personal that constantly looks back to his family's homeland on the Arabian Peninsula. "Joyously mixing authentically Arabic musical tropes with ethnomusicological forgeries. Vigorous psychedelic stomps...an exciting new discovery." --Uncut

$24.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Rough-hewn and exhilarating, EL Khat's second album Aalbat Alawi Op.99 is a deep dive into leader Eyal el Wahab's Yemenite roots and their inspired re-imaginings. A careening orchestra of percussion, horns, strings, electricity and el Wahab's own DIY instruments. Mesmerizing retro-futurist sounds. El Khat. Named for the drug used so widely chewed across the Middle East, the band's music is certainly addictive, more so with each outing. Their second album, Aalbat Alawi Op.99, is a disc full of joys, where the melodies unfold one after the other, involving and catchy. "I tried to be simple in the structure," explains Eyal el Wahab, the group's leader and heart, who composed and arranged almost everything on the album. Aalbat Alawi Op.99 is very much his vision. "It's a bit like pop music, where the soul is four chords and a melody. The difference is in the expression." That sense of expression and meaning flows through the first single, "Djaja," where he sings "From Yemen and beyond America/We are all together and I am alone." This is music that both looks over the shoulder to his family's past and forward to the world that lies outside. El Wahab plays many of the instruments on the album, things like the dli and the kearat that he constructed himself. A skilled carpenter, it's something he started doing several years ago, using his skills to make music from the items people discard. A child of the Yemeni diaspora who's grown up in Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel, it's a practice that harks back to the family homeland, where even rubbish can become an instrument. Where the last album, Saadia Jefferon, saw Eyal el Wahab bring a funky, psychedelic re imagination to the traditional Yemeni songs that electrified him when he first heard them, this is a disc almost entirely filled with his own compositions, something close and personal that constantly looks back to his family's homeland on the Arabian Peninsula. "Joyously mixing authentically Arabic musical tropes with ethnomusicological forgeries. Vigorous psychedelic stomps...an exciting new discovery." --Uncut

$15.50 IN STOCK

With B FLAT A this much acclaimed quartet from Gdańsk have produced their most epic and visceral statement to date. A universe where echoes of Can, Syd Barrett, and Fugazi lovingly collide. Trupa Trupa consists of "four friends and captains" with different personalities: something that creates, in the words of singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, "troubles", which lead to "both a democracy and a polyphonic situation." You could also look to their formidable back catalog and sift through a body of work that can often sound hard, or blunt. Trupa Trupa look to confront evil. The band often does this openly and without compromise; even if the lyrics love to deal in metaphor or intrigue. Inevitably, COVID hangs over everything like a broody rain cloud. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski talks of a "visible paranoia" in the studio during the recording of B FLAT A. According to Kwiatkowski the record -- worked on when an American tour had to be canned at the last minute -- is a "kind of a study of disintegration and decomposition." Though still carrying the weight of unseen or unheard histories, whether ancient or modern, B FLAT A is the release where the provincial math rock, woozy psychedelia, and heavy folk elements finally coalesce in that most unfashionable of things, a sound that can fill a stadium. The band has always been able to shake the roots of any mountain in terms of making a noise but their new record showcases a new, outward-looking sensibility that could moonlight as the kind of sludgy, primetime pop-rock music that Pink Floyd once ensnared half the world's youth with. Listen to the airy "All And All" for example, with its gentle, organ bound melody. It could be a Beatles fly by, or a lost snippet from that period when Rick Wright took over song duties from Syd Barrett in the Floyd. In this regard it seems now that their last two releases, 2019's Of the Sun and 2017's Jolly New Songs (XRAY 136CD/LP) were brilliant teases, "existential" records that played footsie with the listener. B FLAT A is a much more upfront affair, armed with a quiver full of sonic arrows such as potential world hit, "Uniforms". This track, with its Guided By Voices-style simplicity, boils down all the nefarious, quixotic, algorithmic thoughts about "belonging" to a terrifying statement, "I wanna be all my uniforms". B FLAT A also foregrounds one of Trupa Trupa's great strengths, namely, their collective ability to make incredibly tactile, physical music. Nothing is left to chance, there is never the idea that the song and the texts have to undergo an awkward introduction after both have been created.

$24.00 IN STOCK

LP version. With B FLAT A this much acclaimed quartet from Gdańsk have produced their most epic and visceral statement to date. A universe where echoes of Can, Syd Barrett, and Fugazi lovingly collide. Trupa Trupa consists of "four friends and captains" with different personalities: something that creates, in the words of singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, "troubles", which lead to "both a democracy and a polyphonic situation." You could also look to their formidable back catalog and sift through a body of work that can often sound hard, or blunt. Trupa Trupa look to confront evil. The band often does this openly and without compromise; even if the lyrics love to deal in metaphor or intrigue. Inevitably, COVID hangs over everything like a broody rain cloud. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski talks of a "visible paranoia" in the studio during the recording of B FLAT A. According to Kwiatkowski the record -- worked on when an American tour had to be canned at the last minute -- is a "kind of a study of disintegration and decomposition." Though still carrying the weight of unseen or unheard histories, whether ancient or modern, B FLAT A is the release where the provincial math rock, woozy psychedelia, and heavy folk elements finally coalesce in that most unfashionable of things, a sound that can fill a stadium. The band has always been able to shake the roots of any mountain in terms of making a noise but their new record showcases a new, outward-looking sensibility that could moonlight as the kind of sludgy, primetime pop-rock music that Pink Floyd once ensnared half the world's youth with. Listen to the airy "All And All" for example, with its gentle, organ bound melody. It could be a Beatles fly by, or a lost snippet from that period when Rick Wright took over song duties from Syd Barrett in the Floyd. In this regard it seems now that their last two releases, 2019's Of the Sun and 2017's Jolly New Songs (XRAY 136CD/LP) were brilliant teases, "existential" records that played footsie with the listener. B FLAT A is a much more upfront affair, armed with a quiver full of sonic arrows such as potential world hit, "Uniforms". This track, with its Guided By Voices-style simplicity, boils down all the nefarious, quixotic, algorithmic thoughts about "belonging" to a terrifying statement, "I wanna be all my uniforms". B FLAT A also foregrounds one of Trupa Trupa's great strengths, namely, their collective ability to make incredibly tactile, physical music. Nothing is left to chance, there is never the idea that the song and the texts have to undergo an awkward introduction after both have been created.

$24.00 IN STOCK

Hunkered down and unable to record together, in 2020 the Mekons created a glorious digital chain letter of an album. Exquisite is a sprawling manifesto of connection and defiance that deftly slides through fiddle tunes, digi-dub, fireside ballads and urgent rock n' roll. And that's just side A. The original recording plan was to have been a whole-band-in-a-room session in Valencia, Spain. When the pandemic rendered that impossible the process took a sharp swerve. This legendary group from Leeds, have written contemporary music history for the last 40 years as radical innovators of both first generation punk and insurgent roots music, and Exquisite is another powerful vector of that legacy.

"In Paris, in 1925, Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp invented a game they called 'cadavre exquis,' derived from a phrase that came up when they first played: 'le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau' ('the exquisite corpse will drink the new wine'). Basically each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. During the plague years of the early 21st Century, the Mekons adopted this method as a means of collectively assembling lyrics and tunes and recording their new albums. Scattered in various locations from the West Coast of California to the East End of London, they sang and played into their mobile phones and emailed, uploaded and messaged their wailings, beatings, scratchings and strummings around the globe through the billions of interconnected nodes of our networked panopticon. Mike Hagler assembles the results in Chicago and sends them to be mixed by The Baron at Chateau Trumfio. While the world goes hyper-speed to NetNever avidly acting out the crazy jags of meltdown capitalism electrified dancing corpses and waves of virus plunge into burning oil seas of ancient systemic racism ravaging and squawking out of this nightmare sleep of reason, come chlorinated chickens home to roost in nests of hypocrisy, impunity and conspiracy. We put on our goggles and look to the Madderworse, scanning our eyes towards the acid horizon of annihilation, take virtual joy if you can. And, well, you just might be tired from having to take to the streets: what better time to settle down with a fancy cocktail of medical drugs and dig the Mekons' new surrealist sounds..." --Colin Stewart, Bridlington

$24.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Kuunatic is a thrilling Tokyo based tribal-psych trio bolstered by diverse global sonics and powerful female vocals. Drawing on the members' different musical and cultural perspectives, their music explores ritual drumming, pulsing bass lines, atmospheric keyboard sounds and Japanese traditional instruments. Gate of Klüna is Kuunatic's much awaited debut album. Produced by Tim DeWit (Gang Gang Dance) the record reveals a mesmerizing soundworld that transcends genres and hemispheres and succeeds in being both boldly experimental and wildly catchy. Kuunatic are: Fumie Kikuchi on keys and vocals, Yuko Araki on drums and vocals, and Shoko Yoshida on bass and vocals.

Although formed in Tokyo in 2016, a city that is very much on this planet, Kuunatic first looked to another heavenly body to shape their project. In interviews the band have cited that their name is drawn from kuu, the Finnish word for the moon; inspired in part by original Finnish guitarist, Sanni. The listener is advised not to cast their net too narrowly, as Kuunatic's music seems to invoke many responses around the world. You might hear echoes of weird off-kilter hybrids and psyched-out chamber music from the likes of Os Mutantes, Basil Kirchin, The Raincoats or Manfred Hübler. But musical interpretations will inevitably circle around their home base on their "other" planet, Japan. Japanese audiences sometimes consider Kuunatic as "amplified" Shinto shrine maidens (miko). Fumie chips in. "Our sound consists of many different kinds of music, but certain unique Japanese instruments and their sounds give a special atmosphere to Kuunatic's world. Japanese traditional music exists in very close proximity to us even if we don't go to see Gagaku (Japanese shrine music) or Kabuki (Japanese traditional theatrical performance). Fumie has been playing the Kagura flute (Japanese shrine music flute) since childhood, Shoko's name includes the Japanese character 笙 which means a Japanese traditional instrument, and Yuko sometimes visits a Homa burning at a temple and listens to their powerful chanting rhythm..." The possibilities to project onto Kuunatic's music are endless. This is because the band has created that rare thing, catchy music that is impossible to pigeonhole. The track "Lava Naksh" is a form of renaissance dance; a pavane, maybe, albeit with Kraftwerk's early organ sound. "Full Moon Spree" could be a ritual version of The Fall's "What You Need". "Raven's War" is a dry-as-dust progressive soundtrack, it could be a lost cut from the Valley of the Dolls record. The transportive elements in all are key: certain beats and near-melismatic melody lines hark back to archaic processional and ritual music.

$24.00 NOT IN STOCK

Glitterbeat Records reissue the out-of-print debut album from Brazil's ten-piece instrumental powerhouse: Bixiga 70. Originally released a decade ago, the self-titled record is the bold mission statement for the acclaimed albums that followed. Urgent and uncompromising. An inspired soundworld where Afro-Brazilian traditions and retro and contemporary sonics seamlessly meld together. Bixiga 70, the ten-piece horn driven instrumental group from São Paulo, have in the last ten years firmly established themselves as one of the most acclaimed and influential exponents of contemporary Afro-Brazilian sounds. Guitarist Cristiano Scabello says that the recording of the debut album, "was the beginning of a long and happy story in which we spent a lot of sweat, hours of rehearsal, dedication, research and study." Keyboardist and guitarist Maurício Fleury feels that the album's raw but optimistic vibe is possibly even more pertinent today: "we could feel that we were doing something that felt important then and we tried to come up with a Brazilian answer to what we were listening to from abroad. I think that listening to this album nowadays can bring some of that hope that we shared at that time, shedding some light on the dark times we are going through." Named after the cultural melting-pot of their home base in São Paulo's Bixiga neighborhood, with a tip of their hats to the inspiration of Fela Kuti's Afrika 70 band, Bixiga 70 came together from diverse musical backgrounds and from their inception operated as a collective, sharing the songwriting duties and the running of their recording studio. In fact, the band's embryonic musical endeavors began at their Traquitana studio on 70 Treze de Maio street (one of Bixiga's busiest nightlife areas). It was from those energized recording sessions that the first album was born, sessions where the band passionately explored elements of Brazilian, Latin and African music to create inspired, dance-floor shaking instrumental themes and anthems. Considered by many to be the birthplace of samba music in São Paulo, the vibrant Bixiga neighborhood fed their collective imaginations as the band created their own individual and surehanded take on the '70s cosmopolitan music of Ghana and Nigeria, the rhythms of African-Brazilian religious terreiros, hip-hop, space jazz, malinkê, cumbia, carimbó and blaxploitation soundtracks. From the very first album the band created a compelling mélange that almost immediately propelled Bixiga 70 to the forefront of Brazil's contemporary instrumental music scene -- a place where they have remained ever since. The band's self-titled debut is anything but the typical first album. It is in its own way, every bit as accomplished as the records that followed. It is the watershed. A deep and unforgettable first cut. Gatefold sleeve.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Kuunatic is a thrilling Tokyo based tribal-psych trio bolstered by diverse global sonics and powerful female vocals. Drawing on the members' different musical and cultural perspectives, their music explores ritual drumming, pulsing bass lines, atmospheric keyboard sounds and Japanese traditional instruments. Gate of Klüna is Kuunatic's much awaited debut album. Produced by Tim DeWit (Gang Gang Dance) the record reveals a mesmerizing soundworld that transcends genres and hemispheres and succeeds in being both boldly experimental and wildly catchy. Kuunatic are: Fumie Kikuchi on keys and vocals, Yuko Araki on drums and vocals, and Shoko Yoshida on bass and vocals.

Although formed in Tokyo in 2016, a city that is very much on this planet, Kuunatic first looked to another heavenly body to shape their project. In interviews the band have cited that their name is drawn from kuu, the Finnish word for the moon; inspired in part by original Finnish guitarist, Sanni. The listener is advised not to cast their net too narrowly, as Kuunatic's music seems to invoke many responses around the world. You might hear echoes of weird off-kilter hybrids and psyched-out chamber music from the likes of Os Mutantes, Basil Kirchin, The Raincoats or Manfred Hübler. But musical interpretations will inevitably circle around their home base on their "other" planet, Japan. Japanese audiences sometimes consider Kuunatic as "amplified" Shinto shrine maidens (miko). Fumie chips in. "Our sound consists of many different kinds of music, but certain unique Japanese instruments and their sounds give a special atmosphere to Kuunatic's world. Japanese traditional music exists in very close proximity to us even if we don't go to see Gagaku (Japanese shrine music) or Kabuki (Japanese traditional theatrical performance). Fumie has been playing the Kagura flute (Japanese shrine music flute) since childhood, Shoko's name includes the Japanese character 笙 which means a Japanese traditional instrument, and Yuko sometimes visits a Homa burning at a temple and listens to their powerful chanting rhythm..." The possibilities to project onto Kuunatic's music are endless. This is because the band has created that rare thing, catchy music that is impossible to pigeonhole. The track "Lava Naksh" is a form of renaissance dance; a pavane, maybe, albeit with Kraftwerk's early organ sound. "Full Moon Spree" could be a ritual version of The Fall's "What You Need". "Raven's War" is a dry-as-dust progressive soundtrack, it could be a lost cut from the Valley of the Dolls record. The transportive elements in all are key: certain beats and near-melismatic melody lines hark back to archaic processional and ritual music.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Much acclaimed Cyprus-based trio return with a thrilling fourth album. The record pushes their trademark Mediterranean sonics into a deep psychedelic and avant-folk direction. A danceable fever storm of stringed instruments, multi-layered singing and trombone-driven low end. For Cyprus's Monsieur Doumani, those night hours of blackness have lured them in a very different direction for their fourth album, Pissourin. Since their beginning in 2011, the trio have been globally-lauded for their innovative, highly-charged acoustic reinventions of the Cypriot tradition. After eight years, founding member Angelos Ionas had decided to leave the band. To replace him, Andys Skordis, who was already a touring guitarist with the group, joined full-time and began to contribute his own ideas. They were ready to embark on a very different journey. The pissourin (Cypriot dialect for total darkness) "brought us the different elements -- the moon, stars, planets, rivers -- and the creatures that appear in the songs are actors in this quest." It was an idea that stretched Monsieur Doumani past the Cypriot tradition they'd been exploring. It gave them the freedom to draw inspiration from far beyond Cyprus while staying connected to their roots: adding the punch and raw power of rock, the wild colors of Turkish psychedelia, even the hypnotic draw of West African music, which weaves its cord around the melody on "Alavrostishiótis". Monsieur Doumani also went electric. Technology offered the band a vastly broader palette of sound. Pedals also allowed them to think of their instruments in ways that simply hadn't been possible before. They began using the guitar as more than a rhythm or harmonic instrument, letting it provide basslines and work with the trombone. The looper allowed them to make it into a drum. Suddenly Monsieur Doumani had a huge sound. It's startling, a real electric shock. This music they make on Pissourin is overwhelming, a tsunami that surges relentlessly from the very first note of the opening track, "Tiritíchtas". The band's new sound was complex, built from interlocking layers and instrumental filigree. To have the attack the music needed, everything had to be careful and precise. Pissourin isn't just the darkness, but the creatures who inhabit it: Those who find their freedom in the night and the madness it can hold. Beings like the hobgoblins, the "Kalikándjari", and their hypnotic dance that grows in intensity as it progresses.

$24.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Much acclaimed Cyprus-based trio return with a thrilling fourth album. The record pushes their trademark Mediterranean sonics into a deep psychedelic and avant-folk direction. A danceable fever storm of stringed instruments, multi-layered singing and trombone-driven low end. For Cyprus's Monsieur Doumani, those night hours of blackness have lured them in a very different direction for their fourth album, Pissourin. Since their beginning in 2011, the trio have been globally-lauded for their innovative, highly-charged acoustic reinventions of the Cypriot tradition. After eight years, founding member Angelos Ionas had decided to leave the band. To replace him, Andys Skordis, who was already a touring guitarist with the group, joined full-time and began to contribute his own ideas. They were ready to embark on a very different journey. The pissourin (Cypriot dialect for total darkness) "brought us the different elements -- the moon, stars, planets, rivers -- and the creatures that appear in the songs are actors in this quest." It was an idea that stretched Monsieur Doumani past the Cypriot tradition they'd been exploring. It gave them the freedom to draw inspiration from far beyond Cyprus while staying connected to their roots: adding the punch and raw power of rock, the wild colors of Turkish psychedelia, even the hypnotic draw of West African music, which weaves its cord around the melody on "Alavrostishiótis". Monsieur Doumani also went electric. Technology offered the band a vastly broader palette of sound. Pedals also allowed them to think of their instruments in ways that simply hadn't been possible before. They began using the guitar as more than a rhythm or harmonic instrument, letting it provide basslines and work with the trombone. The looper allowed them to make it into a drum. Suddenly Monsieur Doumani had a huge sound. It's startling, a real electric shock. This music they make on Pissourin is overwhelming, a tsunami that surges relentlessly from the very first note of the opening track, "Tiritíchtas". The band's new sound was complex, built from interlocking layers and instrumental filigree. To have the attack the music needed, everything had to be careful and precise. Pissourin isn't just the darkness, but the creatures who inhabit it: Those who find their freedom in the night and the madness it can hold. Beings like the hobgoblins, the "Kalikándjari", and their hypnotic dance that grows in intensity as it progresses.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Sun-baked instrumental meditations played on local string and percussion instruments. Yearning vocals and songs that evoke the mystifying realities of everyday life. Recorded live and outdoors on Grande Comore island by acclaimed producer, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Zomba Prison Project). The Comoro islands are known locally as the "islands of the moon." We Are An Island, But We're Not Alone is the first album of original songs ever to be released from the region. Volume #8 of Glitterbeat's Hidden Musics series.

Producer Ian Brennan tells the story of how the album came together: "It took us six flights to get to the tiny African island, well sequestered in the Indian Ocean and uninhabited by man until centuries after Christ. It is a nation with no army, only police. A place where women don thick mud-masks for sunblock . . . Shortly after arriving, we inquired about the ndzumara (a double-reed pipe, or primitive oboe), and were sadly informed, 'He died.' The last living player had just passed, the sound of the instrument ostensibly lost forever with him. We were left to only imagine its resonance . . . When searching for music, often the stronger artist is hidden behind another, more famous, but lesser one . . .In this case, a slick and successful man named Hassain led us to another non-musician named Hassain who connected us with a musician who was quite good and he ultimately introduced us to his friend and mentor, and that person, Soubi (and his partner, Mmadi) turned out, at last, to be the real deal."

$15.50 IN STOCK

The legendary Malian singer/guitarist returns with his most personal and immersive album to date. Intimately recorded with a small band, Binga dives deep into Samba Touré's Songhoy roots. During the 15th and 16th centuries the Songhoy people ruled the largest empire in Africa. It stretched across the entire western Sahel, famed for the glory that was Timbuktu. But there's another place that lies a little under a hundred kilometers south of that history. Binga is the region that encompasses the vast space below the Saharan desert in Mali. This is where guitarist and singer Samba Touré grew up, and it still owns his heart -- Binga is the title of his fourth Glitterbeat album. With Binga, Touré has made sure those roots show proud and strong. With his bass player having moved to the US, it was a stripped-down combo of guitar, ngoni, calabash, and other percussion that entered the studio to record Binga. The result captures the lean tautness of the sound. The only addition on a few tracks was harmonica. That paring-back to the bare bones gave the musicians space to create what Touré calls "a communion between the instruments." As always, the groove is the foundation, the circling, mesmerizing riffs of Touré's guitar and the heartbeat rhythm of the calabash. It's relentless, mesmerizing, and the voice and the commentary of the ngoni revolve around it. This is music without embellishment, the very essence of Songhoy. Instrumental flourishes appear, but they're only brief, sharp flashes, like the conversation between guitar and ngoni at the end of "Sambalama". The focus is kept squarely on the power of the songs -- all sung in Sonhgoy, unlike previous albums. Touré has never shied away from describing the realities of life in his homeland. "Sambalama" is a joyful statement of standing tall and hoping for better days to come while on "Kola Cissé" Touré offers a praise song the memory of the late head of the Malian Football Federation. Two old Songhoy pieces bookend the disc, "Tamala" and "Terey Kongo", and both are filled with light, celebrating the history of the Songhoy people. Binga is the music of a realist. It's a cry from the soul, but even more, an affirmation of a nation's history, and Samba Touré's pride in it.

$15.50 IN STOCK

The follow-up to Chuck Johnson's acclaimed Balsams LP (VDSQ 021LP), The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar. This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider palette of sounds, adding strings and piano, to dive deeper into the sound bath of Johnson's meditative music. The Cinder Grove is a profound, affecting statement on the nature of loss and irreplaceability as well as a major addition to the canon of Johnson's work. It's a suite of requiems for lost places. Many of the spaces that once fostered affordable living and creative work now only exist in sonic memory, like the echoes of ghosts. Like much of the California landscape in recent years, some of these spaces having succumbed to fire. Others, to the equally inexorable forces of gentrification. While his 2017 LP Balsams was intended to provide the listener with a space for respite and calm -- even healing -- The Cinder Grove seeks to remember what has been lost while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit and the natural world. In making The Cinder Grove, Johnson dug through archival recordings from Oakland DIY performance spaces to digitally extract their reverb and echo qualities. He then applied these effects -- as well as the digitally modeled reverberation of a redwood forest -- to the tracks on The Cinder Grove, allowing the pieces to bask in the lush virtual spaces, and in the process realized that these sonic re-constructions can only ever be approximations. We try to make spaces what we want them to be, whether in memory or in the material present. Chuck Johnson - pedal steel guitar, synthesizers, Yamaha electronic organ, treatments with: Sarah Davachi - piano; Marielle V. Jakobsons - violin; Hilary Lewis - viola and violin; Crystal Pascucci - cello.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Liraz, the highly touted Israeli-Persian singer, returns with a buoyant and border-busting new album. Shimmering electro-pop meets pulsing dance rhythms and retro Persian sonics. Includes clandestine collaborations with Iran-based musicians and composers. For her second album, Zan ("Women" in Farsi), the Israeli- Persian singer collaborated online with composers and musicians from Iran. Everything had to be secretive to avoid the gaze of Tehran's mullahs and secret police. The result is her private revolution, songs with a true message, music to make people dance and smile -- and above all, think. The songs on Zan are the fulfilment of a dream, taking Liraz deep into the soul of the country that fills her heart and populated the stories her parents told her as a child -- but one she's never seen. Her family, Iranian Jews, moved to Tel Aviv in the 1970s. Yet although Liraz was raised in Israel, she's always believed that "my culture is Iranian." The real revelation came when she moved to the US for three years to work as an actress, appearing in several big-budget movies, including A Late Quartet and Fair Game. In Los Angeles she found a huge Iranian community. When making Naz (2018), she wrote and sang in Farsi, the music at times exploring the sounds of pre-revolution Iranian pop music. On Zan, she worked with Iranian musicians, some anonymously, and let her voice and her music resonate further. One of those anonymous players, a female percussionist based in Tehran, features on the opening track, "Zan Bezan," (in English "Women, Sing") alongside Liraz's Israeli band. It's an insistent, catchy piece of electro-pop with heavy musical nods to Iranian pop stars of the 1970s like Googoosh; the message of female empowerment, however, is absolutely contemporary. Another secret Iranian collaborator worked on the powerful earworm that's "Joon Joon," where the dance beats erupt straight from a 1970s Tehran disco, while the big chorus implants itself in the brain and refuses to leave. Zan is an album of contrasts, like "Shab Gerye," the ballad that Liraz knew she needed to include "because the words and music fit so perfectly. It's a love song about reality," or the aching closer, "Lalai." The album continues breaking the walls her mother and aunts began to dismantle. But it does much more: it burrows under borders. It connects countries and cultures. Zan, Liraz insists, is the second chapter of the story that began with Naz. But it's also one that stands alone.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Liraz, the highly touted Israeli-Persian singer, returns with a buoyant and border-busting new album. Shimmering electro-pop meets pulsing dance rhythms and retro Persian sonics. Includes clandestine collaborations with Iran-based musicians and composers. For her second album, Zan ("Women" in Farsi), the Israeli- Persian singer collaborated online with composers and musicians from Iran. Everything had to be secretive to avoid the gaze of Tehran's mullahs and secret police. The result is her private revolution, songs with a true message, music to make people dance and smile -- and above all, think. The songs on Zan are the fulfilment of a dream, taking Liraz deep into the soul of the country that fills her heart and populated the stories her parents told her as a child -- but one she's never seen. Her family, Iranian Jews, moved to Tel Aviv in the 1970s. Yet although Liraz was raised in Israel, she's always believed that "my culture is Iranian." The real revelation came when she moved to the US for three years to work as an actress, appearing in several big-budget movies, including A Late Quartet and Fair Game. In Los Angeles she found a huge Iranian community. When making Naz (2018), she wrote and sang in Farsi, the music at times exploring the sounds of pre-revolution Iranian pop music. On Zan, she worked with Iranian musicians, some anonymously, and let her voice and her music resonate further. One of those anonymous players, a female percussionist based in Tehran, features on the opening track, "Zan Bezan," (in English "Women, Sing") alongside Liraz's Israeli band. It's an insistent, catchy piece of electro-pop with heavy musical nods to Iranian pop stars of the 1970s like Googoosh; the message of female empowerment, however, is absolutely contemporary. Another secret Iranian collaborator worked on the powerful earworm that's "Joon Joon," where the dance beats erupt straight from a 1970s Tehran disco, while the big chorus implants itself in the brain and refuses to leave. Zan is an album of contrasts, like "Shab Gerye," the ballad that Liraz knew she needed to include "because the words and music fit so perfectly. It's a love song about reality," or the aching closer, "Lalai." The album continues breaking the walls her mother and aunts began to dismantle. But it does much more: it burrows under borders. It connects countries and cultures. Zan, Liraz insists, is the second chapter of the story that began with Naz. But it's also one that stands alone.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Firmly established as an influential voice in the burgeoning Russian DIY rock scene, Lucidvox's incendiary mixture of atmospheric psych-rock, heavy riffs, and Russian folk mystery has already gained them both critical attention and audience loyalty outside of their hometown of Moscow. We Are (мы есть) is their first international album release and the next element in their rapid rise. Bands in which all or most of the members learn how to play their instruments just to be in the band are something of a special category in the history of popular music. British avant-gardists Wire and American roots hit-makers Creedence Clearwater Revival come to mind, as do, in varying degrees, post-punk legends like The Raincoats and The Slits. The individual player's inexperience becomes an asset -- they are free to create without the burden of past prejudices -- and the sound attains a mysterious balance. Formed in 2013, Lucidvox comprises four women based in Moscow: Alina (vocals/flute), Nadezhda (drums), Galla (guitar), and Anna (bass). The band's original repertoire consisted of cover versions of songs by Sonic Youth, Pixies, White Stripes, and Warpaint. Being in a "girl band" was, from the beginning, an essential and empowering concept. Lucidvox quickly became a tight circle that encouraged musical experimentation, emotional honesty, and future plans. After a year or so of playing covers, the band began to assemble original material, which had its own sonic footprint. And like everything else in Lucidvox, the songwriting process was highly democratic from the start. Unlike the majority of bands, this process allows all of them to contribute lyrics. The lyrics for the most part revolve around intense personal experiences. While Galla notes that the overall sound of the new album is "more powerful, more rock," the band's trademark post-Siouxsie and the Banshees squall is now more nuanced than ever. There is more depth and space, and more sense of the majestic rumble that the band conjures up in a live setting -- an experience in which the ensemble lays down an interlocked, almost krautrock-like groove. Even as their international reputation has grown, they have never considered singing songs in English, and in the band's sonic explorations, there has always been a subtle nod to Russian traditional music and folklore. Lucidvox is at the front of this growing wave, along with Moscow's Glintshake and the fast-rising St Petersburg band Shortparis.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Firmly established as an influential voice in the burgeoning Russian DIY rock scene, Lucidvox's incendiary mixture of atmospheric psych-rock, heavy riffs, and Russian folk mystery has already gained them both critical attention and audience loyalty outside of their hometown of Moscow. We Are (мы есть) is their first international album release and the next element in their rapid rise. Bands in which all or most of the members learn how to play their instruments just to be in the band are something of a special category in the history of popular music. British avant-gardists Wire and American roots hit-makers Creedence Clearwater Revival come to mind, as do, in varying degrees, post-punk legends like The Raincoats and The Slits. The individual player's inexperience becomes an asset -- they are free to create without the burden of past prejudices -- and the sound attains a mysterious balance. Formed in 2013, Lucidvox comprises four women based in Moscow: Alina (vocals/flute), Nadezhda (drums), Galla (guitar), and Anna (bass). The band's original repertoire consisted of cover versions of songs by Sonic Youth, Pixies, White Stripes, and Warpaint. Being in a "girl band" was, from the beginning, an essential and empowering concept. Lucidvox quickly became a tight circle that encouraged musical experimentation, emotional honesty, and future plans. After a year or so of playing covers, the band began to assemble original material, which had its own sonic footprint. And like everything else in Lucidvox, the songwriting process was highly democratic from the start. Unlike the majority of bands, this process allows all of them to contribute lyrics. The lyrics for the most part revolve around intense personal experiences. While Galla notes that the overall sound of the new album is "more powerful, more rock," the band's trademark post-Siouxsie and the Banshees squall is now more nuanced than ever. There is more depth and space, and more sense of the majestic rumble that the band conjures up in a live setting -- an experience in which the ensemble lays down an interlocked, almost krautrock-like groove. Even as their international reputation has grown, they have never considered singing songs in English, and in the band's sonic explorations, there has always been a subtle nod to Russian traditional music and folklore. Lucidvox is at the front of this growing wave, along with Moscow's Glintshake and the fast-rising St Petersburg band Shortparis.