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Available to buy now in the melodic shop:
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Your Ear Knows Future is the second album by Brighton’s Baikonour, aka Jean-Emmanuel Krieger. Three years on from For The Lonely Hearts Of The Cosmos, his acclaimed debut, Baikonour has delivered another burst of smart, proggy poptronica, bursting with Gallic charm and myriad, fully realised ideas.
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Two years on from his debut album Nebulae, the latest release from Outputmessage – aka New York-born Bernard Emmanuel Farley – is the stunning Resurface EP. In an age when dance music and electronica is undergoing an identity crisis, Resurface is stirringly forthright: This is whipsmart instrumental electronica, sounding both futuristic and old school with it's hints of techno and Krautrock. And it’s totally flab-free, edited into brain-jolting chunks.
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Contrary to what their name might suggest, Working For A Nuclear Free City are not “a bunch of tree hugging hippies.” One play of their debut double album, Businessmen & Ghosts, should confirm it. This is the sound of techno music played on guitars, a band whose range varies from acoustic tenderness to full-on, apocalyptic sonic booms.
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Tokyo Moon is the latest single from Windmill, the London-based artist who, through the majesty of his critically acclaimed debut album, Puddle City Racing Lights, is already being described as the British answer to Arcade Fire. Possessed of a voice that sounds like Neil Young on a helium comedown, Matthew ‘Windmill’ Dillon produces songs that swell with bruised emotions, fragile melodies and bombastic orchestration.
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Kids Aflame is the debut full-length by Arms, aka 26-year-old Brooklynite Todd Goldstein. Inspired by a love of "sad/weird/insular genius types" like Neil Young, Stephin Merritt, and David Byrne, Arms' music cloaks catchy tunes in fuzzy, echo-laden production and Goldstein's melodramatic, crooned vocals. A true one-man band, Goldstein recorded Kids Aflame over a period of three years in various apartments across Brooklyn. "I'm self-taught in this home-recording business, so I didn't really know what I was doing –except that I wanted to make the kind of music I've always wanted to hear but haven't."
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No Fighting In The War Room is the debut album from hotly-tipped Sheffield four-piece Harrisons. Fans of earthy lyrics, northern accents, hard guitars and good old fashioned rock 'n' roll read on, but don't be too quick to pigeonhole. Harrisons may hail from the same fertile scene that spawned the ubiquitous Arctic Monkeys, but this debut album is in a class of its own. "We feel we have made an album of diversity" say the band. "It sounds like everything we wanted and more."
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Fit is the latest single from Windmill, the
Buckinghamshire-based artist who, through the majesty of his debut album, Puddle
City Racing Lights, is already being described as the British answer
to Arcade Fire. Possessed of a voice like Neil Young on a helium comedown,
Windmill's songs swell with bruised emotions, fragile melodies
and bombastic orchestration. Beginning with a sting of brass, Fit finds
Windmill pleading, 'Please pull your weight', over the ubiquitous
piano, jagged guitars and cacophonous drums.
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'Whirring' is the debut single from Arms,
aka 24-year old Brooklynite and multi-instrumentalist Todd Goldstein.
In Arms (one of Goldstein's three bands, including indie pop up-and-comers
Harlem Shakes and lo-fi duo the Sea & the Gulls), influences ranging
from Stephen Merritt to Slowdive to post-punk are channelled into music
that looks beyond the usual realms of the singer songwriter - think
of Arms as a band, but with one person calling all the artistic shots.
In Arms' incandescent first single 'Whirring' (and
its B-side, 'Jon The Escalator'), a Chameleons-esque shimmer
engulfs a soaring, hopeful melody, with lyrics alluding to the time when
Goldstein first moved to New York, struggling to cope with big city life.
Clearly, the sound of the Big Apple got under his skin - his songs
are, at once, very personal and very New York.
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Heading up the hotly anticipated debut album No Fighting In The War Room, Dear Constable is the latest single from Sheffield scamps Harrisons. And like previous releases Wishing Well, Blue Note and Monday’s Arms, it’s another blue-collar belter; a vitriolic rant set to an infectious dance beat.
“Dear Constable is basically an open letter of complaint to society,” say the band. “It kind of sums up what we’re all about – it’s got a good solid groove and, unlike a lot of music today, it actually says something.”
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'Strings and percussion, ominous echoes and soft, sweet choirs add
richness to tales of asthmatics and fashion houses, plastic pre-flight
seats and boarding lounges that you can't help returning to.' The
Guardian
You might not know his name yet, but you soon will. Windmill - aka
26-year old Matthew Thomas Dillon - is emerging as one of the country's
best singer-songwriters, his music a heady distillation of US indie,
early '70s melancholia and twisted folk-pop. Born and raised in
Newport Pagnell, Dillon's music has always been his escape. Puddle
City Racing Lights may be his first ..proper' release,
but it follows countless homemade albums recorded on a £140 four track and intended for only him and a few close friends to listen to.
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'It's psychedelic dance music for a generation that prefers liquor.' Pitchfork
'Like listening to a hipster jukebox as the past moves in and out
of focus.' Mojo
Following their critically acclaimed, eponymously titled debut album,
the ever-prolific Working For A Nuclear Free City are
set to release four brand new tracks as the Rocket EP. In WFANFC's
world, there are no constants. The album found favour with fans of dance
music, electronica
and indie for its wide-ranging musical styles and textures. The Rocket
EP looks set to do the same, encompassing loose, Beta Band-style grooves,
neat Krautrock touches and even a spoken word intro (Shangri-La's,
eat your heart out).
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Manchester's sonic terrorists The Longcut are
set to start the New Year in style with news of a cracking double A side
single, Idiot
Check
/
You
Got The Love. The former is a standout track from the band's
live set that didn't quite fit the mood of last year's critically
acclaimed debut album, A Call And Response; the latter is exactly what
you're hoping it is - a post-rock cover of the classic The Source
feat. Candi Staton track. And there's a back-room change too: this
release sees the band going indie with a 7"-only
release.
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Monday's Arms is the latest single from Sheffield rockers Harrisons,
and it's further proof that this is a band to watch for 2007. Eschewing
the upstart leanings of previous releases Blue Note and Wishing Well,
this latest single finds Harrisons in full-on, floor-filling disco mode,
but in a down-to-earth, working class hero kind of way. We ain't
talking Scissor Sisters here.
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The latest release from Outputmessage –aka New
York-born Bernard Emmanuel Farley - is an intriguing
prospect: five unique remixes of Sommeil, a highlight of his
2006 album Nebulae. A celebrated remixer himself, Outputmessage
has enlisted a few friends to give their own slant on the Kraftwerk-inspired
original. It's a royal treatment for a track that almost
didn't make the final cut. “It's one of my favourite
tracks on the album and could have been lost,”says Bernard.
.“I thought it was too simple but I'm glad I recorded
it now.”
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