ROSE MCDOWALL - 'OUR TWISTED LOVE'

Formats

• LSSN044 - 12"

Details

The Our Twisted Love E.P. constitutes the most contemporary recordings by Rose McDowall available, heralding her return to live performance and songwriting. Building on the groundwork laid by McDowall with her group Sorrow, and various collaborations with key figures in the post industrial landscape, it features a full band recording and long-form songwriting that draws heavily on both McDowall’s keen sense of pop melody and melancholy. Breaking into a harmonium drone and Rose’s instantly recognisable, vocal, the epic title song unfurls at a glowing, glacial pace. Never hiding her love for the Velvet Underground, Our Twisted Love reminds the listener of 70s-era Nico, but McDowall’s fragile vocal has a spine-tingling fragility of its own. Guitarist Dru Moore provides shimmering chords that dress the melody, itself framed with multi instrumentalist Eilish McEvil’s plucked violin strings. Rose’s gorgeous twists with the vocal erupt into a full band jam, with bassist Clay Young, acclaimed cellist Jo Quail and drummer Lloyd James joining in for a neo-folk, dronist excursion that elevates the song into psychedelic territory. This Calling sparkles with 12 string guitar and violin and would, given another production, easily fit into McDowall’s earlier material. A song that laments the songwriter’s battle with depression, taken in tandem with the title song, McDowall describes extreme mental states, a natural inclination to melancholy while creating something uplifting in the process. Make It Easy On Yourself is McDowall and band’s rendition of the Bacharach and David classic. Taken at a slower place, nocturnal in mood, the iconic chord structure sounds achingly eldritch in this outing, the band paying respects to the original while adding its own, distinct, faded light. McDowall’s vocal performance is beamed straight from the deepest night, fragile, emotional and perfect. While undoubtedly some distance from the sparkling pop music Rose McDowall made her name with in the mid 80s as half of Strawberry Switchblade, and later with Cut With The Cake Knife (reissued in 2015 by Night School / Sacred Bones) Our Twisted Love sounds like the culmination of a career combining classic pop songwriting with darkness. An artist who has always embraced experimental impulses and self-sabotage in her pop career, Rose McDowall’s Twisted Love has found its own space in the world.

Tracks

SIDE A: Our Twisted Love (8:10)
SIDE B: This Calling (4:16)
Make It Easy On Yourself (4:18)

Press

Audio & Video

CHAIN & THE GANG - 'BEST OF CRIME ROCK'

Formats

• ITR310 - LP

  759718531015

• ITR310CD - CD

  759718531022

Details

** LAST 100 REMAINING COPIES ON COLOURED VINYL**Chain & The Gang are different than the rest—you won’t see their name on the garbage heap of hyped bands pushed by paidoff web-zine tastemakers. They’re not “jingle-core,” tattooed onto your subconscious via Madison Avenue mind-control ad campaigns. They’re not middle brow NPR indie-listening for Prius-owning cubicle rockers or a tiresome teenage retread of ’90s surrender sludge. No, Chain & The Gang are singular, terrifying, and unparalleled. Not only the most ferocious live combo ever witnessed but also the world’s only anti-liberty rock ’n’ roll group. Their motto? “Down with Liberty … Up with Chains!” This band doesn’t care about grades, likes, traffic or hits. They don’t petition publicists for goofy hype or pander to the corrupt institutions who molest rock ’n’ roll and use it as their plaything. Chain & Co. don’t play that game. They want total destruction of the insipid rock ’n’ roll status quo and the foul system from which it purports to offer relief, but in fact keeps afloat. They’ve released five uncompromising records, each one a brilliant, tossed-off sketchbook of insolence and provocation: Down with Liberty … Up With Chains!, Music’s Not For Everyone, In Cool Blood, Minimum Rock ’n’ Roll, and Experimental Music. Now only one is needed: Best Of Crime Rock. Just recorded, it’s easily the best record, with the most passion, the most accuracy, the most cunning, and the most vigor. Every song on these records is a classic, each lyric an anthem. The tunes are simplistic to the point of parody; call and response rhythm chants which infiltrate the consciousness and leave the listener forever transformed. Each group member is a star. But together they’re something greater than the parts. An irresistible combo that provides the best hope for the future and the only answer to the embarrassing slime pit called “culture.” 

Tracks

LISTING 1. Devitalize 2. Certain Kinds Of Trash 3. Why Not? 4. The Logic of Night 5. I See Progress 6. What Is A Dollar? 7. Mum?s The Word 8. Free Will 9. Come Over 10. Livin? Rough 11. ?Nuff Said 12. Deathbed Confession

Press

UK only coloured vinyl LP version // 400 copies only

Audio & Video

LOST BALLOONS - 'HEY SUMMER'

Formats

• ZZZ149 - LP

  881970014910

• ZZZ149CD - CD

  881970014927

Details

Texas and Japan team up for a trans-pacific, two-man summertime pop explosion! Lost Balloons are Jeff Burke (Radioactivity, Marked Men, etc.) and Yusuke Okada of Japan’s incredible Suspicious Beasts. Hey Summer is their second album, following 2015’s self titled debut on Germany’s Alien Snatch Records. The two play all the instruments (although there is a live lineup as well) and split singing / songwriting duties. It works fantastically well as an album, meant to be listened to from start-to-finish. Wistful, sun-shiny ’60s-inspired pop with a bit of ’80s college rock jangle and even a little modern garage / Americana twang, this album represents a pretty big departure from a normal Jeff Burke project (and although it’s sonically a little closer to Okada’s Suspicious Beasts, it veers farther afield of his normal songwriting comfort zone as well). Burke says that this album is probably the least “punk” record he’s ever done. It confirms what everyone has long suspected: these two can master any genre they tackle, and make it fully their own.

Tracks

1. Change Your Mind 2. Not My Time 3. Paint 4. Don?t Find Me 5. Numb 6. Feed The Pain 7. Losing Time 8. Hey Summer 9. You Tried 10. Nobody 11. Noose

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Audio & Video