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viewing 1 To 12 of 12 items
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LP
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WSR 072LP
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With 2022's critically acclaimed album Ghosts (WSR 016B-LP), enigmatic Shropshire group Haress marked out their own place in a growing landscape of artists navigating the world of the traditional and the rural in new ways. Ghosts led to the normally reclusive Haress venturing out from their base in the Shropshire Hills for live performances with the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Shovel Dance Collective, Big Brave, Steve Von Till and appearances at Supersonic and Krankenhaus Festivals -- not to mention making fans of everyone from Kevin Martin to James Holden in the process. Skylarks is perhaps the natural conclusion of these past few years for the group. Whereas previous Haress recordings have embraced something of the unknown in the process of their making, Skylarks sees a well-travelled group of musicians carefully craft long and expressive pieces of music in a powerful and instinctual way. The music here might be long, but it never sprawls out of control. The telepathy present in live performance has been harnessed and used to carefully compose and arrange these four pieces, narrating a journey through landscape and time that is as powerful as it is beautiful. Inspired by found folk songs, the power of nature and the power of community and Ben Myers' brutal tale of resistance, Haress have created a genuinely epic soundtrack to a world both past and future, real and imagined. The ambience and atmosphere of the recording (expertly captured by Phil Booth of JT Soar Studio on location in the group's hometown of Bishop's Castle) is entirely natural, the sound of an ensemble playing live in the room around you. The only vocal interjection this time comes from a choir of voices, replicating the communal singing that has been the centerpiece of Haress live performances. When the voices emerge, it feels truly euphoric and heavy. Not heavy as in metal, but heavy as in the Earth itself -- a primal, joyful gut punch to the system.
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3LP
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WSR 073LP
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45 songs to commemorate 45 years of Sweet Williams aka Thomas House. Patchwork quilt or collaged map, this is his weirdest, funniest and darkest record to date. Thomas House has been busy in the years since Sweet Williams' last LP. Tunes that grew from fragments on old tapes or came fully formed in dreams in the small hours. He was sending Wrong Speed Records a fistful of new songs every couple of weeks. Nobody knew where this was leading. There was a half-joke about House releasing his own version of The White Album. Bringing in neighbor Carl Jehle to co-produce, the pair spent last summer putting Four Five together in long, delirious sessions, stretching through the forty-plus mid-afternoon heat into the balmy small hours. More than a hundred songs were on the table. A significant chunk of the work was completed while House recovered from emergency dental surgery. The results, House says, can be taken as a whole "if you're mad enough," or as three separate LPs. What's clear is that a triple LP has afforded the possibility to stretch out in directions Sweet Williams have not previously explored. Tape loops and warped, sampled voices butt up against brief, punky earworms. Influences are either worn on sleeves or nigh impossible to discern. Ever present, as ever, are repetition, space, and the sputtering growl of petrol guitars. Four Five is a masterpiece. The perfect mix of spontaneity and obsession; of serendipity and sheer force of will. Not to mention maybe the only justifiable triple album ever made. FFO: Hood, GBV, Lungfish, The Breeders.
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LP
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WSR 016B-LP
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Black vinyl re-press. Originally released in 2022, Ghosts met with deserved critical acclaim, being included in many album-of-the year lists and seeing Haress leave their base in the Shropshire hills to play festivals such as Supersonic, Krankenhaus and Boundaries and share stages with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Shovel Dance Collective, Big Brave, and Steve Von Till among others. Recorded in a disused water mill over a week in North Wales, Ghosts feels like the perfect blend of free-wheeling accident and careful orchestration, both site-specific and uncanny in its evocation of place and time. Circumstance and environment shape the music -- rough drones and found sounds naturally link together beautiful guitar-and-drum pieces, as vocals and trumpet float in and out like the specters the album title suggests. Ghosts feels delightfully unpredictable but complete and singular, inviting repeated listens and an emotional connection like few others. FFO: Lungfish, Tinariwen, Earth, Fairport Convention, Talk Talk.
"This blissed-out psychedelia is not quite pastoral -- there's nothing twee about these unwinding grooves -- yet evokes water and wood, light and shadow, a place of forgotten labor and the absent human form with a beguiling grace." --The Quietus
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LP
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WSR 046B-LP
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Limited repress of much anticipated debut album from this Leeds-based electronic duo, following high-profile UK festival slots, and shows alongside luminaries Sleaford Mods, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Warmduscher, Sea Power, Moonlandingz, The KVB, jellyskin are finally ready to unleash In Brine, their first full length release. The result of four years spent writing, recording, and refining the album between Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Palamos, and Berlin, In Brine showcases the many talents of Will Ainsley and Zia Larty-Healy in a work straddling iridescent electronica, tungsten-tipped techno, art pop, and queasy, brown acid folk. The songs are pieced together with themes of longing, misadventure by the sea, desire and aquatic apparitions that showcase Larty-Healy's warm but urgent vocal range, as at home around the campfire as it is in the club. The pair's meticulous arrangement and rearrangement, sculpting, recording, and mixing was a glacially slow process of adaptation, mutation, cooperation, growth, and, yes, natural selection. The pair brought in Berlin based co-producer, mixer and masterer Lewis D-t to help finesse the tracks into fat-free hunks of ecstasy and sonic exploration, their rich depths marking In Brine as an album everyone should be talking about this summer and beyond-all nine tracks will have feet moving and hearts swelling in equal measure. RIYL: Jockstrap, Working Men's Club, Stealing Sheep, Broadcast.
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LP
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WSR 042LP
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A Haunted Tongue is the third album by Colossal Squid, the solo project of producer/virtuoso drummer Adam Betts. The first self-titled Colossal Squid album (2016) was intended by Betts as a way of exploring the process of creating music from purposefully limited tools (a drumkit and electronica) and finding a place where technology and live performance could happily meet. In comparison, the second album Swungert (2019) acted as a chance to see if the music written from that same process could be molded (via collaboration and editing) into something more traditionally recognizable as a "song." A Haunted Tongue moves things on one step further, letting the process and approach fade into the background, freeing Betts to balance a million inspirations and filter them through an anything-goes punk aesthetic that results in a feeling of freedom that is both refreshing and rare. The language of A Haunted Tongue isn't straightforward or easily classified but yet the message is clearly understood and embraced by the listener at a primal level. That message is one of hope -- channeling the shared euphoria of communal musical experience and searching for an uncynical and personal expression of positive energy that can move people and resonate with them.
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LP
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WSR 052LP
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Limited edition LP in a beautiful metallic-printed sleeve. 12 beautiful instrumentals from the Shovel Dance Collective banjo player and instrument maker, conjuring new worlds from the traditional and the cosmic. Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder. At Fargrounds is her third solo album, her first for the Wrong Speed label and the latest in a rich catalogue that repositions the spectral, vulnerable sound of the banjo away from its familiar role as signifier of the past and onto lands brave, new and unexplored.
"...she knows how to knit atmospheres, and does so to especially powerful effect during 'Scene 4b''s three minutes of stunning bowed banjo, yearning with longing and dread, while showing off her talent, curiosity and range"--Jude Rogers
"[Jacken is] an emotive player with high technical ability. Further, she builds banjos and other instruments, and that intimate knowledge of the bones and fibres holding everything together means that her playing has very few cracks"- Foxy Digitalis
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LP
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WSR 058LP
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The much-anticipated debut album from Leeds post-punk power-trio and 6Music favorites Objections. Optimistic Sizing is comprised of ten kitchen-sink dramas, ten miniature worlds to lose yourself in. The key topics are covered: performative royal mourning, ill-suited sexual relationships, coastal gentrification, motormouth bigots and -- of course -- snogging. These tales of 21st century existence are set to a musical backing that is joyous and wild. The guitar operates as a detonation device, a musical firework display to energize and punctuate the songs. The bass anchors with irresistible melodic and rhythmic hooks. The drums make complex and dizzying patterns seem effortlessly human, natural and always very, very danceable. Objections might follow the Minutemen music-as-socialism blueprint but rather than be constrained by these apparent limitations, they are somehow freed by them. That real estate might be clearly divided but it is vast, limitless, and ready to be explored. Objections formed in the post-lockdown period after drummer Neil and guitarist Joe's former band (and cult favorites) Bilge Pump slowed to an amicable halt. They wanted to continue the musical dialogue they had built up over decades and turned to Claire Adams (Nape Neck, Beards) to start something new and Objections was born. Pink vinyl limited to 200 copies. FFO: The Casual Dots, The Ex, The Slits, Gang Of Four, No Means No, Erase Errata.
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LP
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WSR 040LP
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Thomas House has been making music for a long while now. First as the driving force behind Charlottefield and then as a team player with acts as diverse as Picore, Sloath, Joeyfat and Haress. When Charlottefield disbanded, House changed things up. No more would his personal musical endeavors be dependent on the complex politics of the "band." Like Palace Brothers or Smog, Sweet Williams may have a band name but to all intents and purposes this is solo music, albeit with a stellar supporting cast of musicians when time and serendipity allows (or doesn't). House has always worked with a purposefully limited palette of sounds and stuck to the idea that the human voice and electric guitar is enough to communicate with. But for those paying close attention the change over the years has been revelatory. Sweet Williams is economical and direct. Its languid pace at first appears hard to penetrate. The immediate flavor is one of loneliness and of absence. There are no immediate "bangers," no radio hits. However, as with all of House's work, tiny moments of light welcome the listener in. The sudden warmth and beauty of "Settlement," the wild guitar solo (courtesy of Cristian of Picore) on "Old Smoke," the occasional jarring lyric to recalibrate the listening experience, Sweet Williams proves House's most melodically adventurous record to date, scattered with surprises that delight and reward.
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CD
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WSR 050CD
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In Blood is the 14th album by Hey Colossus and the follow-up to 2020's critically acclaimed Dances/Curses. It was typical of a band so well-known for stellar live performances to release their most successful album at a time when they were unable to back it up on the road. As was the case for many, lockdown changed the band's lives in unexpected ways. Some felt a form of cabin fever at not being able to continue to make music (diverting their energies elsewhere -- founding Wrong Speed Records for starters) whereas others relished the peace and quiet, perhaps questioning whether they wanted to return to the life they had before. Gigs (so long the lifeblood of the band) were booked, postponed, and cancelled. Things began to unravel and perhaps for the first time since the band formed in 2003 it was hard to see how it could continue. A plan was hatched to attempt to re-energize and reassemble the band: they would begin work on a new album. They would approach this as though a Somerset version of The Desert Sessions -- members old and new and guests would contribute as and when time and restrictions allowed. Lyrically, British folk and ghost mythology provided the starting position for the song themes ranging from mutated stories of grief and loss written in the 14th Century ("Perle"), spiritual reawakening by ancient apparitions ("Avalon") to the growth of nature after devastation ("Can't Feel Around Us", "Over Cedar Limb"), a metaphor also for spirit and body renewal and rebirth after trauma. The results sound free of any genre shackles and it suits Hey Colossus. They have taken the expansive anything-goes approach that made Dances/Curses so successful and fine-tuned and shaped it into an eight-song single album that never treads water or fills time. The prominent vocals steer the listener through the music, defining it as opposed to punctuating it (or being buried by it). In Blood positions Hey Colossus somewhere new, outside of perceived contemporaries and in a more rarefied place altogether, alongside "classic" bands like The Cure, Killing Joke, Sonic Youth, Dead Can Dance, or even New Order (or The F-word of course). The band changes but in doing so remains the same. Hey Colossus only sound like Hey Colossus. The album is a calling card for the band in their 20th anniversary year. As odd and challenging as long-term fans would expect or hope for, but somehow more accessible and to the point than ever before.
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LP
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WSR 050LP
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LP version. In Blood is the 14th album by Hey Colossus and the follow-up to 2020's critically acclaimed Dances/Curses. It was typical of a band so well-known for stellar live performances to release their most successful album at a time when they were unable to back it up on the road. As was the case for many, lockdown changed the band's lives in unexpected ways. Some felt a form of cabin fever at not being able to continue to make music (diverting their energies elsewhere -- founding Wrong Speed Records for starters) whereas others relished the peace and quiet, perhaps questioning whether they wanted to return to the life they had before. Gigs (so long the lifeblood of the band) were booked, postponed, and cancelled. Things began to unravel and perhaps for the first time since the band formed in 2003 it was hard to see how it could continue. A plan was hatched to attempt to re-energize and reassemble the band: they would begin work on a new album. They would approach this as though a Somerset version of The Desert Sessions -- members old and new and guests would contribute as and when time and restrictions allowed. Lyrically, British folk and ghost mythology provided the starting position for the song themes ranging from mutated stories of grief and loss written in the 14th Century ("Perle"), spiritual reawakening by ancient apparitions ("Avalon") to the growth of nature after devastation ("Can't Feel Around Us", "Over Cedar Limb"), a metaphor also for spirit and body renewal and rebirth after trauma. The results sound free of any genre shackles and it suits Hey Colossus. They have taken the expansive anything-goes approach that made Dances/Curses so successful and fine-tuned and shaped it into an eight-song single album that never treads water or fills time. The prominent vocals steer the listener through the music, defining it as opposed to punctuating it (or being buried by it). In Blood positions Hey Colossus somewhere new, outside of perceived contemporaries and in a more rarefied place altogether, alongside "classic" bands like The Cure, Killing Joke, Sonic Youth, Dead Can Dance, or even New Order (or The F-word of course). The band changes but in doing so remains the same. Hey Colossus only sound like Hey Colossus. The album is a calling card for the band in their 20th anniversary year. As odd and challenging as long-term fans would expect or hope for, but somehow more accessible and to the point than ever before.
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LP
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WSR 038LP
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"Enablers (no the) first made music together in San Francisco in 2002. Their individual histories join the dots through the major musical events in America of the '80s and '90s: the fertile Texas underground, Homestead Records, New York noise, Bay Area metal, the post-Nevermind goldrush and everything that got left in its wake. As with all the best bands, they formed by accident. Author and poet Pete Simonelli convinced guitarists (and fellow bar-dwellers) Joe Goldring (Swans) and Kevin Thomson (Nice Strong Arm) to provide musical backing for a few poems. The addition of drummer Yuma Joe Byrnes (of 4AD's Tarnation) sparked Enablers into life, away from the cerebral idea of a "book project" and into the infinite possibilities of a living, breathing band. We agreed that (Enablers) were not going to sound like much of what had already come before in the vein of "spoken word" recordings: a voice in front of a droning, basically static piece of music. We wanted solid musical compositions with dynamic and tense arrangements." --Pete
They've been doing that very thing, collectively, from day one. Simonelli punctuates the thrilling out-rock of the musicians as if directing the chaos with each jabbed finger or kick of a boot, rhythms explode on a single syllable or are seemingly sucked back into their shell by a breath in the text. Goldring and Thomson constantly reinvent the wheel, using the limitations of guitar to their advantage, always surprising listeners with new possibilities. It is primal, powerful, and absolutely hardcore. In the tradition of the punk and underground era they grew up in, Enablers have always treated each new recording as a bookmark in time used to generate resources to tour. Some Gift is their seventh LP and the first on Wrong Speed Records. It represents a summation of the history of the band. It recalls the incendiary power of the early records whilst being delivered with a loose, human feel that can only have been cultivated through the time and experiences they share together. These seemingly gradual changes in sound from album to album reveal themselves as revelations once fully experienced and understood as a whole. It sounds like this music comes effortlessly to the players, yet it leaves the listener punch drunk, exhausted and elated.
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LP
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WSR 018LP
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New band from Leeds/Glasgow. Here are some words from T House (Sweet Williams, Charlottefield): "Ostrich tuned and chronically distressed, The Web Of Lies is Neil Robinson (Buffet Lunch) and Edwin Stevens (Irma Vep, Yerba Mansa). Having played together years back in Robert Sotelo's band and forged a singular connection, the pair have been biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment Nude With Demon, their first LP, lurches from the incendiary to the world-weary, like a drunk alternately haranguing and commiserating on the rush hour tube. Drafted quickly in a handful of hungover early morning sessions, fleshed out with a few carefully chosen collaborators -- Kathryn Gray (Mia La Metta, Nape Neck), Dylan Hughes (The Birth Marks), Ruari Maclean and Jess Higgins (Vital Idles), Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club) and Dan Bridgewood Hill (dbh) -- it's one long dribbling lunge at the grab strap, regret seeping from the pores, mitigated by wry humor and, when the rage momentarily subsides, the suggestion of humanity." For fans of: Comets on Fire, The Velvet Underground, '60s garage, early Flaming Lips.
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