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viewing 1 To 25 of 54 items
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CD
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SCR 205CD
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Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell releases a new compilation album called Strange Loops & Outer Psych. The release marks the end of the campaign for Andy's second solo album Flicker (SCR 200CD/LP), which came out to great acclaim in February 2022, and rounds up 16 tracks from his recent run of three EPs -- I Am A Strange Loop (SCR 207LP), The Grounding Process (SCR 204LP) and Untitled Film Stills (SCR 206LP) -- that were made up of remixes, acoustic versions, and covers of songs that inspired the album. The new CD release includes four tracks that weren't included on the original limited-edition vinyl releases. It also includes his fuzzed-up cover of Yoko Ono's song "Listen, The Snow Is Falling" -- which was recently given the official seal of approval when Yoko herself tweeted the video -- and the majestic Maps remix of "It Gets Easier", as heard on Lauren Laverne's show on BBC Radio 6 Music. There are further remixes by David Holmes, Richard Norris, bdrmm, A Place To Bury Strangers, and Claude Cooper, as well as covers of songs by The Kinks, Arthur Russell, and Pentangle and five fragile acoustic takes on album tracks. "Almost a year to the day since I released my second album Flicker, here is a technicolor companion piece that pulls together the tracks from the EPs to color in the edges of the record," says Andy. "Influences, stripped down acoustic reworks and remixes by my friends, comrades and heroes all hopefully help the listener see where my head was when I made Flicker, but also it stands up as a decent listen in its own right." The CD was mastered in New York by Heba Kadry and is sequenced like a mixtape, which makes for a proper listening experience. "Hatful Of Hollow is my favorite Smiths album, just saying," explains Andy.
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10"
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SCR 207LP
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Clear/pink splatter 10" vinyl. Reworkings of songs from Flicker by David Holmes, Maps, Richard Norris, and bdrmm. "It was so great to see what came back when I gave these tracks from Flicker to various comrades, friends and heroes to play with," says Andy. "They've given them a new technicolor life." "David Holmes requested the opening track as he had formed a bit of a connection with it, and what he came up with turns the song into a hallucinogenic beast, taking pride of place here as the opening track but in a whole different way to how Flicker opens. James Chapman AKA Maps has taken 'It Gets Easier' to a bigger, brighter and shinier place, he's given quite a downbeat track a euphoric and epic sheen. I couldn't put Richard Norris's lovely widescreen take on 'Something Like Love' better than the man himself -- in his own words he found the 'hitherto undiscovered sweet spot between 'Roscoe' and 'Outdoor Miner' and he tapped into the melancholy euphoria at the core of the song. bdrmm's remix of 'Way Of The World' is one for headphones. There are so many great moments to love, all held together by a bassline worthy of Jah Wobble. Astonishing!"
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10"
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SCR 204LP
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Clear/green splatter 10" vinyl. Stripped-down versions of tracks from Flicker. "'Something Like Love' is the most popular song from Flicker and one of the oldest, starting life in the '90s. It's probably the only one that dates back to the Ride era. The riffs for 'World Of Echo' were written while I was on tour with Oasis, at the height of my La's obsession. It went through a few iterations from then onwards, but never had a final melody until last year. 'She Calls The Tune' was the first song I wrote after I joined Oasis, 'Lifeline' was another riff I came up with while on tour with Oasis. I remember being on a UK tour with Shack, and sitting around backstage on acoustics with Mick and John Head jamming around the Simon & Garfunkel version of 'Scarborough Fair'. It was always called 'Lifeline' but I never found the right lyric for it until recently."
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10"
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SCR 206LP
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Clear/blue splatter 10" vinyl. Songs that inspired Flicker by Yoko Ono, Pentangle, The Kinks, and Arthur Russell. "The idea was that I would be covering songs which helped in some way to color in the edges of the picture of the influences that make up Flicker," explains Andy. "The song 'Jenny Holzer B. Goode' on the album refers to a few of the female artists from the music and art worlds who I find inspiring, including Yoko Ono, so it felt right to include a cover of 'Listen, The Snow Is Falling', my favorite Yoko Ono song. Pentangle's 'Light Flight' came out in 1970, the year I was born. Nat Cramp, the head honcho of Sonic Cathedral, requested that I cover 'The Way Love Used To Be'. I'd never heard this song despite being a big fan of The Kinks, but it's lovely and it felt very natural to do a version. Arthur Russell has been a big reference point for all my music - there is something impressionistic and open-ended about his records. I guess you could describe the production style I'm trying for on 'Our Last Night Together' as World Of Echo meets This Mortal Coil doing Skip Spence."
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LP
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SCR 215LP
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LA five-piece Dummy follow 2021's acclaimed debut album Mandatory Enjoyment (released by Trouble In Mind) and their single for Sub Pop with Dumb EPs, a compilation of their first two EPs from 2020, remastered especially for vinyl by Simon Scott from Slowdive. EP1 was recorded from late 2019 and released in May 2020, both digitally and on a tape by Maryland punk label Pop Wig. Translucent green vinyl. "Dummy has all the makings of a modern cult band" --Pitchfork. "Like a scrappy, punch-drunk Stereolab or a blissed out, mantra-hypnotized Wire" --Aquarium Drunkard
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CD
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SCR 230CD
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Mark Peters releases a second solo album Red Sunset Dreams on Sonic Cathedral. The follow-up to his hugely acclaimed debut Innerland (SCR 094CD/LP, 2018), which was one of Rough Trade's albums of the year when it came out in 2018, it features a number of guest musicians, including former One Dove singer and songwriter Dot Allison and pedal steel legend BJ Cole. Like its predecessor, Red Sunset Dreams is an album about an imaginary landscape. Whereas Innerland was an introspective psycho-geographic trip inspired by Mark's move back to his hometown of Wigan and the memories it stirred up, Red Sunset Dreams looks outwards, across the Atlantic to the United States of America, but very much through a UK prism; a representation of the subconscious Americana that's buried deep in our collective psyches. The result is an incredibly evocative trip through the landscapes of old Western movies, exploring their links with the North West of England while touching on wider themes such as isolation, freedom and dementia. Sonically, it builds on the palette of the previous record with instrumentation equally inspired by the ascendant ambient Americana movement and classic country-rock. As a result it ends up somewhere between Acetone's peerless I Guess I Would, Diamond Head-era Phil Manzanera and the dusty instrumentals on the second disc of David Sylvian's 1986 classic Gone To Earth. Mark has spent the four years since Innerland recording and releasing Destiny Waiving, his third collaboration with Ulrich Schnauss, and recently followed up 2020's new Engineers recordings (the ambient perambulations of Pictobug) with a reissue series of the band's much sought -after early albums. He has recently put a brand-new band together and will be playing a series of live shows following the release of Red Sunset Dreams.
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SCR 230LP
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LP version. Red vinyl. Mark Peters releases a second solo album Red Sunset Dreams on Sonic Cathedral. The follow-up to his hugely acclaimed debut Innerland (SCR 094CD/LP, 2018), which was one of Rough Trade's albums of the year when it came out in 2018, it features a number of guest musicians, including former One Dove singer and songwriter Dot Allison and pedal steel legend BJ Cole. Like its predecessor, Red Sunset Dreams is an album about an imaginary landscape. Whereas Innerland was an introspective psycho-geographic trip inspired by Mark's move back to his hometown of Wigan and the memories it stirred up, Red Sunset Dreams looks outwards, across the Atlantic to the United States of America, but very much through a UK prism; a representation of the subconscious Americana that's buried deep in our collective psyches. The result is an incredibly evocative trip through the landscapes of old Western movies, exploring their links with the North West of England while touching on wider themes such as isolation, freedom and dementia. Sonically, it builds on the palette of the previous record with instrumentation equally inspired by the ascendant ambient Americana movement and classic country-rock. As a result it ends up somewhere between Acetone's peerless I Guess I Would, Diamond Head-era Phil Manzanera and the dusty instrumentals on the second disc of David Sylvian's 1986 classic Gone To Earth. Mark has spent the four years since Innerland recording and releasing Destiny Waiving, his third collaboration with Ulrich Schnauss, and recently followed up 2020's new Engineers recordings (the ambient perambulations of Pictobug) with a reissue series of the band's much sought -after early albums. He has recently put a brand-new band together and will be playing a series of live shows following the release of Red Sunset Dreams.
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CD
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SCR 210CD
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Pye Corner Audio releases a new album, Let's Emerge!, for Sonic Cathedral. It's his first studio outing for the label following the acclaimed live recording Social Dissonance, which came out on vinyl earlier in 2022, and it features Ride guitarist Andy Bell playing on five of its ten tracks. From the first glimpse of the artwork to the first note of the music it's a marked deviation from Pye Corner Audio's more traditional shadowy sounds. Whereas his last outing for Ghost Box (2021's Entangled Routes) was inspired by the underground fungal pathways through which plants communicate, this one is very much above ground, bathed in sunlight and acid-bright psychedelia. Designer Marc Jones's bold and ultra-vivid artwork consciously references the likes of LFO, Spacemen 3, and the early output of Stereolab. "I think it mixes together many of my earliest influences," explains Martin. "I've been a long-time fan of Spacemen 3 and Stereolab. Their moments of repetition and drone have always seeped into what I've tried to create. I was living in a small apartment and I'd stripped down my studio set-up when I was recording this album. This enabled me to focus on a few key pieces of equipment and explore them fully." The recordings were fleshed out by Andy Bell. "When I met Andy, we agreed that we needed to work together in some way. After I'd remixed a few tracks from his album The View From Halfway Down, he kindly repaid the favor." The end results -- mastered in New York by acclaimed engineer Heba Kadry -- are incredible, from the first stirrings of opener "De-Hibernate", via the glorious "Haze Loops" and "Saturation Point", the album slowly but surely awakens, blinking and feeling its way into the light. It all culminates in the epic closing track "Warmth Of The Sun" which, with its vocal harmonies and acid breakdown, is seven and a half minutes of pure release. "That one's about life's simple pleasures," concludes Martin. "The Beach Boys, tremolo guitars, infinite drones, Spacemen 3. Let's emerge from this darkened era and feel the 'Warmth Of The Sun'. The last few years have seen huge changes, both personally and in a wider perspective. The album title is a reaction to this, a collective (tentative) sigh of relief. Here's to new beginnings and a sense of hope."
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SCR 199LP
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LP version. Orange vinyl. The EP is the Hull and Leeds-based band's first major release since their debut album, Bedroom, which was hailed as a latter-day shoegaze classic when it came out in July 2020. "Port", which was originally released as a single last October, marked a major step forward for the band. Sounding not unlike the Low of Double Negative (2018) or Hey What (2021) deconstructing The Temptations' "I Know I'm Losing You", it's a much darker sounding song; its distorted drones and beats burst into life with frenzied guitar and howls of anguish. "It helped us consider the band in a much more fluid perspective," says bassist and synth player Jordan Smith of the pivotal track. "Swapping instruments and redefining roles gave us time to spend working on new and more intriguing sonic ideas." This new experimental and more electronic approach was expanded as the standalone single release grew, almost accidentally, into a full EP, which features radical reworkings by Daniel Avery (a fearless, all guns blazing techno stomper); Working Men's Club (New Order's "Sub-Culture" meets a long-lost early Warp Records classic); A Place To Bury Strangers (a feedback frenzy of total sonic annihilation); Tom Sharkett from Manchester krautpoppers W.H. Lung (DFA Records goes down to the death disco); Jonathan Snipes from LA-based experimental hip-hop trio Clipping (glitchy beats imploding into a wall of white noise); and Jordan himself, as Mouth Company, who brings proceedings to a close with a slow-mo trip-hop treatment. "To have so many influential artists to us putting their own piece of DNA on what has become such an important track to us is so humbling," gushes Ryan. "It's brand new territory for us, and we just feel so lucky to have everybody involved." The EP is being released ahead of bdrmm's dates supporting shoegaze legends Ride in April and will be followed by their eagerly-awaited second album, which they are currently working on. "I am so excited to embrace the next chapter of bdrmm."
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CD
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SCR 199CD
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The EP is the Hull and Leeds-based band's first major release since their debut album, Bedroom, which was hailed as a latter-day shoegaze classic when it came out in July 2020. "Port", which was originally released as a single last October, marked a major step forward for the band. Sounding not unlike the Low of Double Negative (2018) or Hey What (2021) deconstructing The Temptations' "I Know I'm Losing You", it's a much darker sounding song; its distorted drones and beats burst into life with frenzied guitar and howls of anguish. "It helped us consider the band in a much more fluid perspective," says bassist and synth player Jordan Smith of the pivotal track. "Swapping instruments and redefining roles gave us time to spend working on new and more intriguing sonic ideas." This new experimental and more electronic approach was expanded as the standalone single release grew, almost accidentally, into a full EP, which features radical reworkings by Daniel Avery (a fearless, all guns blazing techno stomper); Working Men's Club (New Order's "Sub-Culture" meets a long-lost early Warp Records classic); A Place To Bury Strangers (a feedback frenzy of total sonic annihilation); Tom Sharkett from Manchester krautpoppers W.H. Lung (DFA Records goes down to the death disco); Jonathan Snipes from LA-based experimental hip-hop trio Clipping (glitchy beats imploding into a wall of white noise); and Jordan himself, as Mouth Company, who brings proceedings to a close with a slow-mo trip-hop treatment. "To have so many influential artists to us putting their own piece of DNA on what has become such an important track to us is so humbling," gushes Ryan. "It's brand new territory for us, and we just feel so lucky to have everybody involved." The EP is being released ahead of bdrmm's dates supporting shoegaze legends Ride in April and will be followed by their eagerly-awaited second album, which they are currently working on. "I am so excited to embrace the next chapter of bdrmm." CD version includes poster.
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LP
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SCR 210LP
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LP version. Translucent yellow vinyl. Pye Corner Audio releases a new album, Let's Emerge!, for Sonic Cathedral. It's his first studio outing for the label following the acclaimed live recording Social Dissonance, which came out on vinyl earlier in 2022, and it features Ride guitarist Andy Bell playing on five of its ten tracks. From the first glimpse of the artwork to the first note of the music it's a marked deviation from Pye Corner Audio's more traditional shadowy sounds. Whereas his last outing for Ghost Box (2021's Entangled Routes) was inspired by the underground fungal pathways through which plants communicate, this one is very much above ground, bathed in sunlight and acid-bright psychedelia. Designer Marc Jones's bold and ultra-vivid artwork consciously references the likes of LFO, Spacemen 3, and the early output of Stereolab. "I think it mixes together many of my earliest influences," explains Martin. "I've been a long-time fan of Spacemen 3 and Stereolab. Their moments of repetition and drone have always seeped into what I've tried to create. I was living in a small apartment and I'd stripped down my studio set-up when I was recording this album. This enabled me to focus on a few key pieces of equipment and explore them fully." The recordings were fleshed out by Andy Bell. "When I met Andy, we agreed that we needed to work together in some way. After I'd remixed a few tracks from his album The View From Halfway Down, he kindly repaid the favor." The end results -- mastered in New York by acclaimed engineer Heba Kadry -- are incredible, from the first stirrings of opener "De-Hibernate", via the glorious "Haze Loops" and "Saturation Point", the album slowly but surely awakens, blinking and feeling its way into the light. It all culminates in the epic closing track "Warmth Of The Sun" which, with its vocal harmonies and acid breakdown, is seven and a half minutes of pure release. "That one's about life's simple pleasures," concludes Martin. "The Beach Boys, tremolo guitars, infinite drones, Spacemen 3. Let's emerge from this darkened era and feel the 'Warmth Of The Sun'. The last few years have seen huge changes, both personally and in a wider perspective. The album title is a reaction to this, a collective (tentative) sigh of relief. Here's to new beginnings and a sense of hope."
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LP
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SCR 188LP
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In the heady days prior to the pandemic, on October 23, 2019, Pye Corner Audio headlined Sonic Cathedral's 15th birthday bash at The Social in London (on a bill that also included bdrmm and Andy Bell). Now, following a limited cassette release in 2020, the incendiary performance -- which mixes improvisations with reworked material from across his career -- has been remastered by Antony Ryan (ISAN) and is to be made available on vinyl for the first time. Wryly titled Social Dissonance, it comes on green and blue swirl vinyl in a striking fluoro green and neon blue sleeve by designer Marc Jones. "This is a recording of a gig in a small space with a big heart," says Pye Corner Audio, aka Martin Jenkins. "A memory of a night before the world changed completely. However, new alliances were formed and friendships made in that basement in Little Portland Street." Indeed, Pye Corner Audio went on to collaborate with Andy Bell on an acclaimed series of remixes and the Ride guitarist returned the favor by playing on some new recordings that will be coming out on Sonic Cathedral later this year. Blue/green swirl vinyl.
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CD
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SCR 220CD
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XAM Duo -- the Yorkshire-based pairing of Matthew Benn and Christopher Duffin -- follow up their acclaimed self-titled 2016 debut (SCR 120CD/LP) with XAM Duo II. They have spent the past few years collaborating with Virginia Wing and releasing the fun single "Tisch Tennis", as well as playing live with everyone from Stereolab, Sonic Boom, and Michael Rother to Jessy Lanza, The Necks, and Anna Meredith. They are also both members of Holodrum, the band formed from the ashes of Hookworms whose debut album came out earlier this year. Despite being over five years in the making, XAM Duo II is a much more concise affair than their debut, clocking in at just under 30 minutes. The journey begins and ends with the beat-driven "Blue Comet" and "Cold Stones", taking in shorter ambient jams along the way, making use of saxophone, drawn-out tape chords, floating Rhodes piano, and spaced-out synths, alongside very precise and intentional, sequenced and punchy synth tones. With the digital approach it could feel cold and processed, but it's the opposite -- warm and natural. This is something that is reflected in the striking artwork by long-time collaborator Jonathan Wilkinson which comes from a series of prints inspired by his time hiking around the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire. One thing that has stayed the same is the influence of The Sopranos, with three of the six tracks on the album named after episodes of the classic series.
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LP
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SCR 220LP
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LP version. XAM Duo -- the Yorkshire-based pairing of Matthew Benn and Christopher Duffin -- follow up their acclaimed self-titled 2016 debut (SCR 120CD/LP) with XAM Duo II. They have spent the past few years collaborating with Virginia Wing and releasing the fun single "Tisch Tennis", as well as playing live with everyone from Stereolab, Sonic Boom, and Michael Rother to Jessy Lanza, The Necks, and Anna Meredith. They are also both members of Holodrum, the band formed from the ashes of Hookworms whose debut album came out earlier this year. Despite being over five years in the making, XAM Duo II is a much more concise affair than their debut, clocking in at just under 30 minutes. The journey begins and ends with the beat-driven "Blue Comet" and "Cold Stones", taking in shorter ambient jams along the way, making use of saxophone, drawn-out tape chords, floating Rhodes piano, and spaced-out synths, alongside very precise and intentional, sequenced and punchy synth tones. With the digital approach it could feel cold and processed, but it's the opposite -- warm and natural. This is something that is reflected in the striking artwork by long-time collaborator Jonathan Wilkinson which comes from a series of prints inspired by his time hiking around the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire. One thing that has stayed the same is the influence of The Sopranos, with three of the six tracks on the album named after episodes of the classic series.
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2LP
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SCR 200LP
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Restocked; double LP version. Clear vinyl. Flicker is the second album from Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell. This 18-track double album finds Andy moving towards classic songwriting, notably on the reflective lead single "Something Like Love", the strident harmonies of "World of Echo", the joyous refracted loops of "Jenny Holzer B. Goode" and the fuzz-laden late-60s balladeering of "Love Is The Frequency". Stylistically, the four sides of Flicker take in everything from modern psychedelia to fingerpicked folk, whimsical baroque pop, and Byrdsian 12-string beauty. It's a breathtaking array and makes it even more abundantly clear that Andy has entered a purple patch in his songwriting, hitting a new velocity in contrast to his initial inhibitions about becoming a solo artist. Flicker is also an apt description for the genesis of the album. At the start of 2021, Andy returned to the stems of the recording sessions he made at Beady Eye and Oasis bandmate Gem Archer's North London studio and added fuel to the fire, writing melodies and lyrics and turning them into fully formed songs. The same sessions were also the starting point for The View From Halfway Down (SCR 170CD/LP, 2020) and this album picks up where that one left off, quite literally, with the very first words being "I was halfway down?" This is the first of several playful, possibly intentional, references to albums and song titles that litter the record like a musical breadcrumb trail. As much as this is a modern sounding and forward-looking record, it's also very much about looking back, something that is clear from the first glimpse of the front cover -- a previously unseen outtake from Joe Dilworth's photo sessions for the inner sleeve of Ride's debut album, Nowhere (1990). "When I think about Flicker, I see it as closure," explains Andy. "Most literally, on a half-finished project from over six years ago, but also on a much bigger timescale. Some of these songs date back to the '90s and the cognitive dissonance of writing brand new lyrics over songs that are 20-plus years old makes it feel like it is, almost literally, me exchanging ideas with my younger self." Some of it remains unspoken, taking place sonically rather than verbally: the album has a reflective, meditative feeling throughout.
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CD
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SCR 200CD
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Flicker is the second album from Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell. This 18-track double album finds Andy moving towards classic songwriting, notably on the reflective lead single "Something Like Love", the strident harmonies of "World of Echo", the joyous refracted loops of "Jenny Holzer B. Goode" and the fuzz-laden late-60s balladeering of "Love Is The Frequency". Stylistically, the four sides of Flicker take in everything from modern psychedelia to fingerpicked folk, whimsical baroque pop, and Byrdsian 12-string beauty. It's a breathtaking array and makes it even more abundantly clear that Andy has entered a purple patch in his songwriting, hitting a new velocity in contrast to his initial inhibitions about becoming a solo artist. Flicker is also an apt description for the genesis of the album. At the start of 2021, Andy returned to the stems of the recording sessions he made at Beady Eye and Oasis bandmate Gem Archer's North London studio and added fuel to the fire, writing melodies and lyrics and turning them into fully formed songs. The same sessions were also the starting point for The View From Halfway Down (SCR 170CD/LP, 2020) and this album picks up where that one left off, quite literally, with the very first words being "I was halfway down?" This is the first of several playful, possibly intentional, references to albums and song titles that litter the record like a musical breadcrumb trail. As much as this is a modern sounding and forward-looking record, it's also very much about looking back, something that is clear from the first glimpse of the front cover -- a previously unseen outtake from Joe Dilworth's photo sessions for the inner sleeve of Ride's debut album, Nowhere (1990). "When I think about Flicker, I see it as closure," explains Andy. "Most literally, on a half-finished project from over six years ago, but also on a much bigger timescale. Some of these songs date back to the '90s and the cognitive dissonance of writing brand new lyrics over songs that are 20-plus years old makes it feel like it is, almost literally, me exchanging ideas with my younger self." Some of it remains unspoken, taking place sonically rather than verbally: the album has a reflective, meditative feeling throughout.
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CD
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SCR 190CD
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An expanded edition of the 2005 debut album by Sennen, hailed as a latter-day shoegaze classic, with seven bonus tracks. When Sonic Cathedral first started out as a club night in 2004, there were a number of bands around that reminded us of the stuff that had made the label fall in love with music about 15 years earlier. In this so-called "nu-gaze" scene, alongside the likes of Engineers and Amusement Parks On Fire, were an unassuming four-piece from Norwich called Sennen; they played lots of shows for Sonic Cathedral, and their mixture of melody and noise made them stand out. Their debut album, Widows, was released on October 24, 2005 by the Hungry Audio label to great acclaim from websites such as Drowned In Sound, who, in their 9/10 review, described it as "enticing, invigorating and most importantly extremely enjoyable." American webzine Somewhere Cold went even further, saying "they have produced what should become a classic in the genre... they have taken it to a new level with their patient compositions, influx of slowcore elements and incredibly talented instrumentation." Sennen have gone on to release a number of albums, the most recent being 2016's First Light, and their music has featured on big TV dramas such as One Tree Hill and True Blood. However, Widows remained a much sought-after time capsule of early noughties experimentation. The new, expanded edition doubles the original album with another seven contemporaneous tracks, many of which were live staples at the time, but have never been released before. Remastered by Slowdive's Simon Scott.
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CD
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SCR 185CD
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Cheval Sombre releases his fourth album. It is his second album this year, and a companion piece to Time Waits for No One (SCR 180CD/LP), which came out at the end of February 2021 to great acclaim. Like that album, it has been produced and mixed by Sonic Boom and features guests including Galaxie 500 and Luna frontman Dean Wareham. Cheval Sombre is the nome d'arte of Chris Porpora, a poet from upstate New York whose otherworldly psychedelic lullabies on his self-titled album from 2009 and its follow-up, Mad Love (2012), won him a cult following. Coming just three months after Time Waits for No One, Days Go By furthers the overarching theme of the inexorable and inevitable march of time and, musically, comes across like John Fahey sitting in with Spiritualized circa Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. The title Days Go By is actually taken from the lyrics of the previous record's title track -- and this is just one way in which the records are inextricably linked, via a number of symmetries. Both have ten tracks, with eight originals, one instrumental and a closing cover version, which this time around is a take on Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts' "The Calfless Cow". As the intersecting flight paths of the two birds on the respective covers show, there are also plenty of differences. Not least, the mood, which on Days Go By is lighter, airier, punctuated by strings which are even more beautiful. Chris likens it to Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, but in reverse order. "How wonderful to discover that on the other side of experience, there is an innocence which has endured," he explains. "Beyond politics, love affairs, worldly woes, even life and death, it's true -- there is a calm after the storm ... You've got all these songs around conceptions of time, it's over eight years since your last album, you decide to release twin records . . . Time Waits for No One is a dark record, already reminiscent of the shadowy days of winter, of the trials of the pandemic. If Days Go By can coincide with the promise of springtime, bringing with it light, lifting spirits -- then I know my work has been done."
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LP
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SCR 180LP
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LP version. White vinyl. Cheval Sombre releases his third album -- his first solo release for more than eight years, following 2018's critically acclaimed collaboration with Galaxie 500 and Luna frontman Dean Wareham, and the first of two new albums scheduled for 2021, both of which have been produced by Sonic Boom. Cheval Sombre is the nome d'arte of Chris Porpora, a poet from upstate New York whose otherworldly psychedelic lullabies on his self-titled album from 2009 and its follow-up, Mad Love (2012), won him a cult following. Time Waits for No One ushers in his most prolific period, and serendipitously the world has finally slowed down to his pace. This is no lockdown record, but Cheval Sombre's reclusive, reflective music is its perfect soundtrack. "I've always said that what I really want to do with music is to give people sanctuary," he explains. "Pandemic or not, the world has always felt as though it were spinning out of control to me, and so if folks have slowed down, I do see it all as an opportunity to discover vital realms which have always been there, but we've been too rushed and distracted to encounter." Time Waits for No One is also his finest and most fully realized body of work to date and, appropriately enough for a record that has taken so many years to come to fruition, across eight original songs, an instrumental and a closing cover of Townes Van Zandt's "No Place to Fall", its overarching theme is time itself; what it is and what role it inevitably plays in all of our lives. But the record is also timeless, contrasting the musical simplicity of Cheval Sombre's open-tuned acoustic guitar curlicues with the beautiful, sweeping and ornate arrangements of Sonic Boom's keyboards and Gillian Rivers' and Yuiko Kamakari's strings. The end result is something akin to Daniel Johnston backed by the Mercury Rev of Deserter's Songs. Elemental and earthbound, but simultaneously and very subtly shooting for the stratosphere.
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CD
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SCR 180CD
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Cheval Sombre releases his third album -- his first solo release for more than eight years, following 2018's critically acclaimed collaboration with Galaxie 500 and Luna frontman Dean Wareham, and the first of two new albums scheduled for 2021, both of which have been produced by Sonic Boom. Cheval Sombre is the nome d'arte of Chris Porpora, a poet from upstate New York whose otherworldly psychedelic lullabies on his self-titled album from 2009 and its follow-up, Mad Love (2012), won him a cult following. Time Waits for No One ushers in his most prolific period, and serendipitously the world has finally slowed down to his pace. This is no lockdown record, but Cheval Sombre's reclusive, reflective music is its perfect soundtrack. "I've always said that what I really want to do with music is to give people sanctuary," he explains. "Pandemic or not, the world has always felt as though it were spinning out of control to me, and so if folks have slowed down, I do see it all as an opportunity to discover vital realms which have always been there, but we've been too rushed and distracted to encounter." Time Waits for No One is also his finest and most fully realized body of work to date and, appropriately enough for a record that has taken so many years to come to fruition, across eight original songs, an instrumental and a closing cover of Townes Van Zandt's "No Place to Fall", its overarching theme is time itself; what it is and what role it inevitably plays in all of our lives. But the record is also timeless, contrasting the musical simplicity of Cheval Sombre's open-tuned acoustic guitar curlicues with the beautiful, sweeping and ornate arrangements of Sonic Boom's keyboards and Gillian Rivers' and Yuiko Kamakari's strings. The end result is something akin to Daniel Johnston backed by the Mercury Rev of Deserter's Songs. Elemental and earthbound, but simultaneously and very subtly shooting for the stratosphere.
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LP
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SCR 170LP
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2022 restock; LP version. Blue vinyl. Ride guitarist/singer Andy Bell releases his debut solo album. The product of a gradual, four-year process and finished during lockdown, the album was entirely written and recorded by Andy, engineered by Gem Archer and mastered by Heba Kadry. Back in 2016, Andy was inspired by David Bowie's death to be more proactive about finishing his songs, more confident about sharing them and to channel all of this into finally making a solo album. He laid down some tracks in former Beady Eye and Oasis bandmate Gem's studio, but got diverted when Ride's live reunion blossomed into a full return. A run of two albums, an EP and two world tours later, it would take a pandemic to give Andy the space to complete The View From Halfway Down. From the ecstatic psych pop of "Love Comes In Waves", to the heady loops of "Indica" and deeply groove-led "Skywalker", the eight tracks mix summery melodies with soundscapes and studio experimentation. The end result sits neatly between Ride's widescreen shoegaze and GLOK's textured electronics, variously inspired by The Stone Roses, Spacemen 3, The Beatles, The Byrds, The Beta Band, Stereolab, Neu!, Can, John Fahey, The Kinks, The La's, The Who, and the United States Of America. As for the album title, it comes from a particularly dark episode of BoJack Horseman and a poem that scriptwriter Alison Tafel wrote for the penultimate show. The spoiler-free version of the story goes like this: "The poem describes someone committing suicide by jumping to their death and the regret the protagonist experiences when he sees 'the view from halfway down'. Although, of course, it's too late to change what's going to happen. I read this poem as having a message of suicide prevention: if you could see the view from halfway down, you would never go through with anything that would end your life. I've never been suicidal, but I felt really moved by this brilliant poem when I watched the show during Ride's US tour in Autumn 2019 . . . The early stages of lockdown, you could feel the tension in the air, causing what felt like a global panic attack. But, in common with what I've heard from others who can experience anxiety for no reason in their everyday lives, I felt strangely calm in the midst of all of this, seeing things in my life very clearly. Such clarity allowed me to finally compile this record..."
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CD
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SCR 170CD
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Ride guitarist/singer Andy Bell releases his debut solo album. The product of a gradual, four-year process and finished during lockdown, the album was entirely written and recorded by Andy, engineered by Gem Archer and mastered by Heba Kadry. Back in 2016, Andy was inspired by David Bowie's death to be more proactive about finishing his songs, more confident about sharing them and to channel all of this into finally making a solo album. He laid down some tracks in former Beady Eye and Oasis bandmate Gem's studio, but got diverted when Ride's live reunion blossomed into a full return. A run of two albums, an EP and two world tours later, it would take a pandemic to give Andy the space to complete The View From Halfway Down. From the ecstatic psych pop of "Love Comes In Waves", to the heady loops of "Indica" and deeply groove-led "Skywalker", the eight tracks mix summery melodies with soundscapes and studio experimentation. The end result sits neatly between Ride's widescreen shoegaze and GLOK's textured electronics, variously inspired by The Stone Roses, Spacemen 3, The Beatles, The Byrds, The Beta Band, Stereolab, Neu!, Can, John Fahey, The Kinks, The La's, The Who, and the United States Of America. As for the album title, it comes from a particularly dark episode of BoJack Horseman and a poem that scriptwriter Alison Tafel wrote for the penultimate show. The spoiler-free version of the story goes like this: "The poem describes someone committing suicide by jumping to their death and the regret the protagonist experiences when he sees 'the view from halfway down'. Although, of course, it's too late to change what's going to happen. I read this poem as having a message of suicide prevention: if you could see the view from halfway down, you would never go through with anything that would end your life. I've never been suicidal, but I felt really moved by this brilliant poem when I watched the show during Ride's US tour in Autumn 2019 . . . The early stages of lockdown, you could feel the tension in the air, causing what felt like a global panic attack. But, in common with what I've heard from others who can experience anxiety for no reason in their everyday lives, I felt strangely calm in the midst of all of this, seeing things in my life very clearly. Such clarity allowed me to finally compile this record..." LP version comes on blue vinyl.
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12"
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SCR 159EP
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Limited-edition EP released to coincide with the Austrian shoegaze duo's extensive European tour. Pressed on snow white vinyl, it compiles three remixes of tracks from 2019's acclaimed debut album All That Ever Could Have Been (SCR 155CD/LP) that have only been released digitally to date. Maps' version of previous single "Weep, Gently Weep" takes the glacial and grandiose structure of the original and adds an avalanche of electronic beats and snow-capped synths. William Doyle (formerly East India Youth) turns the title track into an ambient epic, with sequencers bubbling like mountain springs, and the bells from the Tyrolean sheep ringing out on what is essentially an Alpine version of The KLF's Chill Out. Mark Peters, meanwhile, combines "Parts I" and "II "of "Coming Of Age" and relocates them from the Alps to the windswept hills of northwest England that inspired his own album, Innerland, resulting in six minutes of cloudy ambient beauty, before the skies clear for a stunning Kevin Shields-style sunset. Rounding out the EP is a brand-new re-recording of their classic song "Glimpse", here re-titled "Another Glimpse" and amplified in every way, veering from serene Sigur Rós to splenetic Smashing Pumpkins within eight minutes.
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12"
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SCR 152EP
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Lead track "Fosas Limitadas" is percussion heavy with strident synths and choppy guitars, sounding like a mix of Stereolab and Wire, before bursting into a chorus that sounds like the best Spanish psych-pop single you've never heard. An appropriate analogy as, according to singer/guitarist Lorena Quintanilla, the song (which translates as "limited graves") "talks about the inconsistence of our memories." "I like the rhythm -- the demo made me think of [Survivor's] 'Eye Of The Tiger'," adds guitarist Alberto González, with a laugh. "It's a fun song in a weird way. It sounds like if it was melting..." The other new track, "El Olivo", is a lament for the old house they lived in when they first moved to the city of Ensenada in 2017. "Lorena had a dream about this huge olive tree," explains Alberto. "In the dream, there was golden oil emerging from it and she saw the tree as an infinite source of abundancy and wellness. A year after her dream, we moved to that 100-year old house and turns out there was an old olive tree in the backyard. The tree is now gone along with the house --the greedy owners demolished everything in the property to build a gym or some other elitist business." The EP is rounded out by remixes of two songs from De Facto (2019). CC Crain, aka Cooper Crain from Cave and Bitchin Bajas turns "Lux, Lumina" into a disturbing dub noise, like Broadcast covering PiL's Metal Box, while Pye Corner Audio sets the epic "Unificado" adrift on a sea of analogue synths. Transparent orange and green moon phase vinyl; Edition of 300.
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2LP
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SCR 155LP
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Double LP version. Pink Cadillac color vinyl. Innsbruck-based Lars Andersson and Phillip Dornauer's shoegaze-inspired beginnings coalesced on their acclaimed 2017 EP, Glimpse, which did just as it said, offering a tantalizing peek into their world; the full, glorious vista is now revealed on their accomplished debut album. And All That Ever Could Have Been really is breathtaking. It begins with an almost 15-minute post-rock epic and takes in nods to ambient, dreampop and even prog, with echoes of Galaxie 500, Low, Beachwood Sparks, Dungen, The Besnard Lakes, Sigur Rós, and M83. Its eight tracks belie both the band's youth and their small number, forming a mountain of sound that suggests they are more of a geological outfit than a musical one. "Skeletal, celestial shoegaze [that] reflects the cold beauty of the Austrian Alps" --Stereogum.
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