CIMS In The Groove
WOMB is Purity Ring's long-awaited third album, following the much-loved and extremely influential Shrines (2012) and Another Eternity (2015). The 5-year gap between albums has only served to distill the gorgeous and ethereal Future Pop for which the band is known.
NCT 127's 2nd full length album `NCT #127 Neo Zone' will be released on March 6th with 13 tracks expressing NCT 127's unique music color. The album's exclusive title `Neo Zone' builds high expectation while implying a brand-new introduction to NCT 127's music world. The album includes a photo book, lyric book, postcard, a folded poster (initial run only), 1 sticker, 1 circle card (random 1 of every 9), and 1 photo card (random 1 of every 9).
CD – Hardcover Book w/ 32-page booklet
Pearl Jam will release their much-anticipated eleventh studio album, Gigaton, on March 27th. It marks the band's first studio album since 2013. "Making this record was a long journey," explains Mike McCready. "It was emotionally dark and confusing at times, but also an exciting and experimental road map to musical redemption." 2020 officially marks 30 years of Pearl Jam performing live, with over 85 million albums sold worldwide and a 2017 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
4-panel digipak w/ matte coating, includes 16-page lyrics booklet
What do we hold on to from our past? What must we let go of to truly move forward? Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield spent much of 2018 reckoning with these questions and revisiting her roots for answers. The result is Saint Cloud, an intimate journey through the places she’s been, filled with the people she’s loved.
FRIDAY FOREVER is the second album from multi-artist project Everything Is Recorded, helmed by producer artist Richard Russell. This follows the critically acclaimed and Mercury Music Prize nominated debut of 2018, Everything Is Recorded by Richard Russell. FRIDAY FOREVER takes on a multi-lensed perspective of a classic night out, followed closely by the sobering reflections of the next morning. The album features an array of new collaborators ' in British rappers Aitch, FLOHIO and Berwyn, Irish singer songwriters Maria Somerville and Kean Kavanagh, the inimitable voices of A.K. Paul, James Massiah, and returning vocalist Infinite Coles ' as well as established names like Ghostface Killah and Penny Rimbaud.
Amalie Bruun has always paved her own path, challenging underground preconceptions of heavy metal ever since the release of her debut Myrkur EP in 2014. Her first two full-length studio albums, 2015’s M and 2017’s Mareridt, recast black metal in the most personal yet expansive of terms, their blending of Amalie’s Danish folk roots with tempestuous internal struggles breathing new life into a subgenre whose followers can be rigidly possessive.
With the release of her new album, Folkesange, Amalie Bruun has set out to journey into the very heart of the Scandinavian culture that marked her childhood. Folkesange relinquishes black metal for a refined yet far-reaching evocation of traditional folk, combining songs ancient and new to sublimely resonant effect.
After the nightmare-induced visions that wrought themselves throughout Mareridt, Folkesange offers an emotional sanctuary, a means to reconnect to something permanent and nature-aligned. It’s an awareness that’s become deeply bound to the album’s organic, regenerative spirit, from the opening track Ella’s heartbeat, frame-drum percussion and crystalline vocals that become the grounding for a rapt, richly textured awakening, to the gentle carousel of the closing Vinter, with its nostalgia-steeped connotations of seasonal, snowfall-bewitched awe.
Storytelling, rites of passage, and the invocation of a continuity that passes through time and generation are all part of folk music’s tapestry, and Folkesange taps into all these currents in their most essential form. In part a purist’s approach to the genre, free from over-interpretation and fusion, the use of traditional instruments throughout, such as nyckelharpa, lyre, and mandola offer a deeper, more tactile connection to their source, an unbroken line of communication back to the past.
But the album is no museum piece; it resonates in the here and now, aided by the spacious production of Heilung member and musical collaborator Christopher Juul. Cinematic yet intimate, Folkesange exists in a state of boundless reverie, bourne by string-led drones, cyclical, elegiac rhythms and Amalie’s frictionless voice, all carrier signals for deep-rooted, ancestral memories, and associations felt on an elemental level.
It’s a binding of the otherworldly and the earthy that echoes the the subject matter of many of the tales themselves. Written by Amalie, Leaves Of Yggdrasil’s medieval cadences bind tragic love story and mythology, full of both fairytale wonder and deeply human foible. Tor i Helheim, its dreamily persistent rhythm redolent of both innocence and encroachment, is based on a poem from the Icelandic Eddas, relating a journey into the underworld of Hel where the sparse nature of the accompaniment becomes the medium that carries you along in its thrall.
An immersive experience in its own right, but also belonging to a wider, pagan folk-based renaissance that has attracted a devoted following worldwide, Folkesange answers a need that has become ever more pressing in turbulent times. A zeroing in on a resonance that is both intrinsic and enduring, it’s a rediscovery of personal grounding, and an experience that reaches beyond culture to remind us of a shared, deeply rooted inheritance. A tuning fork that binds the personal and the universal, Folkesange is a reminder that the most transcendent experiences are those closest to home. (Words by Jonathan Selzer)
2020 release, the third album from the Los Angeles-based instrumental supergroup. Recorded by legendary engineer Jim Scott (Wilco, Rolling Stones, Tom Petty) at his studio in Valencia, CA, this new collection began with... a drum machine. The Sequential Circuits Drumtraks from 1983, to be specific. The Circles band members-guitarist Neal Casal (Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Ryan Adams), bassist Dan Horne (Cass McCombs, Jonathan Wilson), keyboardist Adam MacDougall (Black Crowes) and drummer Mark Levy-were searching for a sound, something more upbeat than previous releases. Cue the Drumtraks. The seven-track collection marks a stylistic shift from their previous LPs. It's an evolution that sees the band embracing a sleeker, shinier, even dancier version of themselves - a cosmic disco of the body and the soul, still anchored in the groove, but ascending to the stars.
2020 release. Everything is alright now. Alex Brown Church - the man behind the dark folk, indie rock band Sea Wolf - wants you to know that from the start. Really. Sea Wolf's eagerly anticipated fifth LP, Through A Dark Wood proves it in 11 textured, sometimes-acoustic, sometimes-electronic, unabashedly honest tracks.
Grouplove kicked off 2020 with their anarchistic, high-energy new single “Deleter,” and show no signs of slowing down in the lead-up to their fourth studio album HEALER – out March 13th via Canvasback/Atlantic Records. The Los Angeles based five-piece has spent the past two years writing and recording their most visceral and cathartic songs to date, all while experiencing and bearing witness to a great deal of change, trauma, and growth. From recording in El Paso within eyeshot of the border during the height of the family separation crisis, to brain surgery for frontwoman Hannah Hooper, to immersing themselves in new creative spaces with producers Dave Sitek and Malay – their new album represents a re-birth and a full-circle return to their initial idealism.
The second album from Melbourne, Australia's Cable Ties brings a towering wall of '70s hard rock and proto-punk to songs that explore hope, despair, and anger but offer no easy answers. Cable Ties' fundamental elements-a driving rhythm section, anxious and emotive guitar playing, defiant, passionate songwriting, and Jenny McKechnie's earthshaking voice-are complicated on Far Enough by nuance and ambivalence.
Best friends Asha Lorenz and Louis O'Bryen have woven their debut album 925 like a dreamscape in which idyllic and hellish scenes intermingle, forcing the question of what is real and what is make believe. Inspired by everything from Hermann Hesse to Aphex Twin and old-school crooner Tony Bennett, the duo's experimental and holistic approach marks them out as a thoroughly 21st century band which had been evident in their early mixtapes and singles.
Lilly Hiatt felt lost. She’d just returned home from the better part of a year on tour in support of her acclaimed third album, Trinity Lane, and, stripped of the daily rituals and direction of life on the road, she found herself alone with her thoughts for the first time in what felt like ages.
So Hiatt did what’s always come most natural to her in times of questioning and uncertainty: she picked up a guitar. Over the course of the ensuing winter, she wrote new music that grappled with her sense of self and place in the world, reckoning with issues that had been bubbling beneath the surface of her subconscious in some cases for years. The result is Walking Proof, Hiatt’s fourth and most probing collection to date. The record walks the line between Hiatt’s rough, rock and roll exterior and her tender, country roots. Lilly Hiatt’s not feeling so lost these days, and with Walking Proof, she’s crafted a roadmap to share with the rest of us.
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Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter, Jessie Reyez will unveil her debut album Before Love Came To Kill Us on March 27th. The album includes the RIAA Gold-certified single "Imported" with 6LACK and capitalizes on the release of the acclaimed Kiddo and Being Human in Public EPs which have garnered more than 750 million combined global streams to date. The Toronto-born, Colombian-bred powerhouse has racked up award nominations and wins including Juno Awards (Breakthrough Artist winner), MTV Video Music Awards, BET Awards, iHeart Radio Music Awards and more. She's also flexed her songwriting prowess on records for other artists including Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa's "One Kiss", Calvin Harris & Sam Smith "Promises", Normani's "Slow Down" and more. Her list of collaborators include Eminem, Daniel Caesar, 6LACK, Kehlani, Karol G, Tainy, Pink $weats and more.
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Forever Just Beyond is the first Clem Snide record to be released in 5 years. It was produced by Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers
Necroscape is the 2nd album from Mike Patton and Anthony Pateras' modernist electro-acoustic rock proposition t t ma. Joined by violinist Erkki Veltheim and drummer WIll Guthrie in quartet formation, this record continues to employ the wayward orchestrations and arresting physicality of their 2014 debut Geocidal, yet is renewed by a melodic language which grounds it's multi-coloured twists and turns in hallucinatory lyricism. Where Geocidal was loosely based on futuristic post-colonial dystopias, its even cheerier successor is sculpted around isolation in the surveillance age; and although lofty/high-concept sounding, this is still an intensely fun and heavy listen. Necroscape synthesizes a lot of territory: odd-time rock, musique concrète, otherworld grooves, soul, industrial noise, microtonal psychoacoustics .seemingly strange bedfellows on paper, yet in the ears they surprisingly coalesce into 13 songs which playfully challenge our notions of sonic logic and make you move at the same time. In a nutshell, listening to Necroscape creates the weird sensation of exclaiming "of course!" and "wtf?" simultaneously. 5 years in the making, Necroscape mushroomed organically from Pateras' production based on tape loops, analogue synthesis and rarified keyboard instruments in combination with Patton's dense vocal arrangements, Veltheim's exploratory violins and Guthrie's unique percussive strategies. The result is a handmade, kaleidoscopic tour-de-force which re-imagines songwriting as something other. Artwork features beautiful leather sculptures by Talitha Kennedy, tiled lyric sheet and limited edition white vinyl. t t ma invites you to listen.
The lead singer of beloved heartland-punk band The Gaslight Anthem, Brian Fallon steps away from that sound and into a stripped-down Americana space on his third solo album, Local Honey. Produced by Grammy-award winning producer Peter Katis (The National, Frightened Rabbit, Death Cab for Cutie), the album showcases Fallon's songwriting in small vignettes, from a loving devotional for his daughter to a vengeful murder ballad.
Cool jazzy sounds spiked with pop, hip-hop, reggae, soul, calypso all in the service of positive vibes. Look beyond those seductive Surfaces where the musical depth of the band's principals, Colin Padalecki & Forrest Frank, shines. On new album Horizons the duo challenges the concept album. Influences from warm older sounds are reimagined & repainted in a modern musical pallet. Each song is unique in feelings yet each belongs in this atmosphere, layer by layer forming the realm that is Horizons.
Black Pumas has announced their highly anticipated debut album set for release on June 21. The band is led by the creative partnership between Grammy Award-winning guitarist / producer Adrian Quesada and 27-year-old songwriter Eric Burton. Burton is a relative newcomer who arrived in Austin in 2015 after busking his way across the country from Los Angeles, while Quesada has a storied reputation for playing in bands like Grupo Fantasma and Brownout.
After the two connected via friends in the Austin scene, they began to collaborate on a new sound that transmutes soul into something idiosyncratically modern. Reminiscent of Ghostface Killah and Motown in equal measure, this original sound ensured that Black Pumas’ weekly residency at C-Boys quickly became “the hottest party in town” (Austin-American Statesman).
Devotion, the second album from Margaret Glaspy, is a collection of twelve love songs, reflecting the phases of romance –appreciation and frustration, doubt and adoration. While Glaspy has become known as a skilled guitarist; on Devotion she shifted her songwriting process, building these tracks on computer-based tools like MIDI and Ableton before opening them up on guitar. The result is a new sonic terrain that highlights her vulnerable lyrics and unique emotive vocals.
Three, the 21st album from legendary Australian instrumental trio The Necks, is a winding, textural, and visceral musical exploration through three individual, contrasting tracks that each delve into separate tenets of their sound. Three's variety of tones and structures offer a glimpse into the boundless, immersive sonic universe The Necks have been constructing, through recorded and live performance, for over 30 years. From its very first moments, 'Bloom' rattles and propels listeners through a dense, mesmerizing soundscape of unceasing intensity. Directly juxtaposing the consuming rattle of the opener, 'Lovelock,' dedicated to the memory of Damien Lovelock, former frontman of The Celibate Rifles, is a weightless and atmospheric threnody that ruminates in the quiet and overwhelming moments of grief. The final setting of Three is one of warmth and familiarity. 'Further,' is a confident, seductive groove in a quintuple meter, reminiscent of the groups' work on records like Sex (1989) and Aquatic (1994). Contrasting the style of their celebrated improvisational live act, the group's studio work is meticulously sculpted from beginning to end. On Three, Chris Abrahams (piano), Lloyd Swanton (bass), Tony Buck (drums/percussion), and their long-time backend collaborators Tim Whitten (engineer) and Doung Henderson (master) have again scrupulously built music that focuses on the most intricate edges of staggeringly immense, diverse worlds. From strained to still to smoky, each piece of Three marks itself as distinct and its own, but all feel representative of Australia's greatest cult band, The Necks.
The No Ones , a bi-continental collaboration featuring Scott McCaughey, Frode Strømstad, Peter Buck and Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen, is a band that stretches from the southwest of Norway through Athens, Georgia to the northwest corner of the USA, consisting of members from I Was A King, The Minus 5, The Baseball Project and R.E.M. As this pedigree almost dictates, they wield Fender and Rickenbacker guitars, cutting, chiming and fuzzing their way through songs dealing with abduction, interstellar mysteries, witchcraft, and more mundane fare like climate change, gentrification, and the desolation of the soul. The vocal harmonies and psychedelic flourishes fuse the sunny turbulent sounds of the '60s with the darkness and decay of today.
Critically acclaimed indie rock mainstays Born Ruffians return with their sixth studio album, JUICE, on Yep Roc Records. JUICE finds the band moving into a more confident and polished direction, bringing to mind 1970s songwriting prowess with layered, and mature production sensibilities. The album was produced by Graham Walsh, known for his work with Alvvays, !!! (Chk Chk Chk), and Holy F*ck.
2020 release. Born from the DIY/all-ages scene in New York, Thick make music with the raw defiance of punk and addictive melodies of pop, punchy and catchy and wildly tongue-in-cheek. With their live show typically spawning a mosh pit described by Stereogum as "more like an aggressive hug," the Brooklyn-based trio brings an unchecked intimacy while building a deep and unshakable solidarity with the audience.
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2020 release. The band is known for their fast, punk-influenced two-piece bass and drum songs, with both their music and image being characterized by "DIY principles, thrift store-cum-glam fashion style and a vast list of influences." The brothers classify their sound as "vada vada," a philosophy which Wyatt Shears describes as "an idea that represents pure creative expression, that disregards all previously made genres and ideals".
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2020 album from the surf punk band. Everything Seems Like Yesterday is the studio follow-up to their 2018 album Hypochondriac and the 2019 live release Live At The Observatory.
Half Waif Nandi Rose is on her own again, and three songs into her forthcoming album The Caretaker, the singer, songwriter and producer declares her fearlessness: "Baby don't worry about me, I don't worry about you." Here, on "Ordinary Talk," Rose meditates on the heaviness of ordinary moments, the constellation of tears and chores and self-doubt and small talk that comprise being a person, accompanied by her most cinematic, pulsing arrangements to date. It's an apt introduction to The Caretaker, an ax-lbum that negotiates the space between working alone and with others, between isolation and connection. The result is her boldest work yet. Over the course of eleven songs, Rose creates the lush world of a humid summer night, dreaming of and reaching for a season in which she is her "best self."
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On April 3rd, breakout artist Kiana Lede will release debut album KiKi via Republic Records. Features current track "Mad At Me" which is climbing the Rhythm radio charts. 2019 saw the rise of Lede as her hit track "EX" achieved RIAA Gold Certification. Her YouTube channel -where her career began by posting viral cover songs like "One Dance x Needed Me mashup"- surpassed 1M+ subscribers. Additionally, she served as support on Ella Mai's sold out spring tour & sold out her own headline fall tour.
'The man singing these songs isn't exactly the same man who wrote them,' says Pokey LaFarge of Rock Bottom Rhapsody. In early 2018, LaFarge relocated from his longtime home base of St. Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles, California. New songs came quickly to LaFarge in his new environment, but new temptations soon found him, as well. LaFarge admits that he experienced a significant 'fall from grace' during the last months of 2018. Shortly before the recording of Rock Bottom Rhapsody began, LaFarge experienced a spiritual awakening ' and the faith he re-embraced in his hour of darkness helped to buoy him through the making of the album. Despite the trying period that preceded its recording, Rock Bottom Rhapsody is ultimately far more uplifting and life-affirming than its title would suggest. 'Did it add something to the record? It certainly did. I mean, I don't know if it made it better; it just is what it is. It's not up to me to decide if people are going to feel that'
‘Earth’ is an album of rediscovery and adventure by Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, being released under the moniker EOB. Written and recorded over five years during any possible break from the making and touring of Radiohead’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’, the album deftly veers from moments of delicate folk to euphoric house, its songs seamlessly pinned together by unswerving melodic hooks and candid lyricism. A spirit of collaboration runs through 'Earth' from the production team of Flood, Catherine Marks, Alan Moulder and Adam ‘Cecil’ Bartlett to the extraordinary musicians O’Brien assembled to bring these tracks to life; bassist Nathan East, drummers Omar Hakim and Glenn Kotche, and The Invisible’s multi-instrumentalist leader David Okumu. Portishead’s Adrian Utley appears on two tracks, whilst Laura Marling duets with O’Brien on stirring closer “Cloak of The Night.” But every group of collaborators needs a leader, and Earth is all O’Brien’s vision. “I wanted to make a record from the heart,” he says. “I wanted to make something direct. I wanted to talk about love, your family in the immediate and the wider sense, where we are on the planet, the bigger picture, life and death. I wanted to make a big hearted, warm and colorful album… something hopeful and full of love.” Featuring the singles “Shangri-La”, which sways between syncopated beats and twisted rock, and “Brasil”, a track that morphs from a tender opening into a heightened-state rhythmic banger, ‘Earth’ marks a new beginning for Ed O’Brien.
The New Abnormal is the long awaited new album from The Strokes, and the band’s first album in seven years. The album was announced with the first track and video, “At The Door.”
The New Abnormal is The Strokes’ sixth studio album and was recorded at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, California, with producer Rick Rubin. The album’s cover artwork is a painting called ‘Bird on Money,’ by famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The Strokes are singer Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr, bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti.
2020 release. Returning to the studio as Watkins Family Hour, Sean and Sara Watkins consider 'brother sister' a duo-centric record - yet one that feels bigger than just two people. With Sean primarily on guitar and Sara on fiddle, and with both of them sharing vocals, the siblings enlisted producer Mike Viola (Jenny Lewis, Mandy Moore, J.S. Ondara) and mixer-engineer Clay Blair to harness the energy and honesty of their live sound.