RIVAL CONSOLES - 'NIGHT MELODY'

Formats

• ERATP087LP - 12"

  4050486111802

• ERATP087LE - LP (COLOURED)

  3700551784790

Details

*REISSUED ON LIMITED EDITION BLUE VINYL*London-based electronic songwriter Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles to release his most personal work to date in the form of a mini-album titled ‘Night Melody’ through Erased Tapes on 5th August 2016. During the release of his acclaimed full-length album ‘Howl’ and heavy touring in late 2015, Ryan came out of a 13-year long relationship and found himself making music throughout the winter months. The result of his efforts is a 34-minute, 6-track mini album ‘Night Melody’, born out of and shaped by long hours working into the night. It’s nocturnal in sound; mysterious in the way that the early hours so often are. “I found myself, in a silent home, with the days getting dark very early. I’ve never before in my life been affected by the lack of light so much. I just remember it always being night time. I would either make music into the night, go out drinking with friends, or go to parties and dance into the early hours, every day, week after week, month after month, until eventually the days became brighter again.” The opening statement ‘Pattern of the North’ starts off with a collage of spliced synth melodies, inspired by anxiety that accompanies going home for Christmas. It’s followed by ‘Johannesburg’, an early sketch gradually filled out during his tour in South Africa. “After playing it around some of the cities, I got a lot of inspiration to bring it to life and push it into something that really moves me. I think this is one of my most colourful pieces of music, with its driving rhythm and almost a homage to Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ towards the end, with a build of very simple, hypnotic parts. I especially love that for over five minutes the piece is tied to just one note. This makes the ending very dramatic, because all of a sudden there is this harmonic change.” ‘Lone’ started life around the time Ryan was working on his ‘Sonne’ EP in 2014. It’s the result of constant adjustments to find the perfect balance of fragility and assurance. As everything on the album, it’s a carefully considered, emotionally mature piece. “I think, as I get older, I need music to represent something and not just sound interesting, though of course the two are connected.” The closing statement ‘What Sorrow’ is a fitting end to the album, building from gentle melancholia to a joyous crescendo. It’s a sensibility that’s central to the record; joy and sorrow both find their counterpoints. “This record is very personal to me and I hope it offers something for other people, as it helped me to make it and to listen to it. Almost every synth line was recorded intuitively, without perfection but with a lot of intention and expression. I’m not interested in making something sad or making something happy. I want music to be bittersweet, to be more complex, like life – containing moments of vibrant colour and hope, as much as darkness and sadness.” This summer will see Ryan follow on from his recent North American Tour with the appearance at many festivals including Lovebox, Secret Garden Party, La Route Du Rock, Sea Change and Tale of Us-curated Afterlife party at Space, Ibiza.

Tracks

A1. Pattern Of The North
A2. Johannesburg
A3. Slow Song
B1. Lone
B2. Night Melody
B3. What Sorrow

Press

Rival Consoles reissues his fan favourite Night Melody on limited edition blue vinyl

Audio & Video

SUPAKARMA - 'S/T'

Formats

• SK001LP - LP (COLOURED)

  5060446128275

Details

*SOLID RED VINYL* Indie rockers release self-titled debut album after 20 year wait. The end of the nineties was nigh. Britpop mania was over, and the Y2K bug was about to wreak global damage at the turn of the new Millennium. Remember that? In Milton Keynes a quartet of musicians were diligently crafting in the rehearsal room and didn't care much about bugs or anything else. They were consumed by their creations; harnessing the best bits of an exploded genre, and giving their songs a brash, experimental indie rock edge. It was all sounding exciting. The band (frontman Daniel Binks, guitarist Jamie Paul Morris, bassist Steven Sciberras and drummer Ben Hallett) soon took their sounds out of the rehearsal space and into the live, cutting their teeth on the London circuit and making their mark at select festivals in the low countries. They found favour with those dates, and their musical musings landed them an extended stay at top-flight studio, Great Linford Manor (PJ Harvey, The Charlatans, PiL, Skunk Anansie) with esteemed producer Tony Platt (AC/DC, Bob Marley and Sparks). Everything should have been magnificent, and very nearly was, until band friction during the recording process led to the session unravelling. Instead of the promised robust release, an acrimonious split left the project unfinished and gathering dust. Those tracks might well still be sitting on the shelf today, were it not for the devastating loss of guitarist Jamie in 2019. His untimely death reopened lines of communication between the remaining members, and where there had been discontent, there was a realisation that they had unfinished business, and the band have reconvened to deal with it. “We decided we would finish the album as a tribute to Jamie and feel that even after all this time the music still has its own place out there in the musical void,” said Ben, “Once finally released others might stumble across it and appreciate what we made. It just took a while.” The listener will journey from the raw jagged post-punk guitars that air with You Could Be My Heroine through the anthemic swagger of tracks The Way It Is and Calmer Coaster, to the delicately poised acoustic of My Own Advice, perfect for showcasing the range and fragility of Daniel's voice, and the epic melancholic flower powered finale of I Remember You. It took two decades and a tragic turn of events to re-ignite the flame, but in these 'Karma' times the band have made good on their promise from years ago. “I was pleasantly surprised when revisiting these songs at how fresh and punchy they still feel. We were able to give them a bit of a facelift in terms of the sound, but the raw energy needed little in the way of encouragement,” said Tony Platt, who was back for the production process, “I guess the band were somewhat ahead of their time!” An album that would have been ahead of its time but is most definitely a release for the here and now. Supakarma will be available as a strictly limited-edition vinyl (300 copies/ Solid Red VInyl) release and available on all streaming platforms on Glass Mile Records on August 4th.

Tracks

Side A
What Are You Waiting For?
Digital Vision
New Test Cannonball
Demons
Side B
The Way It Is
You Could Be My Heroine
My Own Advice
Calmer Coaster
I Remember You (Say Goodbye)

Press

Audio & Video

DIPPERS - 'CLASTIC ROCK'

Formats

• 187GONE - LP

  795154138418

Details

Whether it was fear of the trademark bogeyman emerging from small-hours infomercial hell or it was just time for a change, but the artist(s) formally known as Thigh Master is now Dippers. As they put singles and an album or two behind them, most guitar pop groups tend to shed any rough edges, exuberance, energy, propulsion and other associated special elements in the name of “maturity,” “increased focus on songwriting,” and other concerns that basically translate to a prolonged yawn. Thigh Master was always a strident, more rambunctious proposition, and this is carried over 150% to Dippers. For the first album under said moniker, (Thigh Master) founder and leader Matthew Ford (vocals, guitar, drums, bass, synth, percussion) is again joined by Innez Tulloch (vocals, guitar, keys, synth, bass, melodica), who is now Ford’s principle songwriting partner. Longtime Thigh Master collaborator Dusty Anastassiou (Dag, Permits) provides some guitar action on a handful of tracks. Dippers’ 2023 full-length, Clastic Rock for Goner Records, doubles down on Ford and crew’s supernatural skill at something possessed by only a tiny handful of very special entities that exist under the voluminous banner of indie-jangle / pop: immediacy. The album is filled with stop-start dynamics that work to create hooks within hooks (a trick at which this band excels). Like a lot of new favorite albums, this one was recorded and conceived of (at least partially so) during the pandemic lockdowns. Though, if one sifts through the Thigh Master discography, one might notice that sporadic home recording sessions are not a new concept to the group. The intervals of ragged, jangly guitar riffs interspersed with waves of sonic mischief pulls from the sounds of stylistic historical royalty such as Television Personalities, pre-bizarro Wedding Present and the scrappier of C86 / Rough Trade / Postcard Records quantities, classic Flying Nun (namely The Verlaines, The Bats, The Chills, 3Ds, Look Blue Go Purple) and the ’80s / ’90s groundwork laid by fellow Aussies The Go-Betweens, The Moles, The Cannanes, and the early years of Half-A-Cow Records (Smudge, Sneeze, The Plunderers, etc).

Tracks

1. S.I.M.
2. Tightening The Tangles
3. Comment?s Grip
4. Encouragement In Brackets
5. Kitchen Paralysis
6. Staggering The Recipe
7. A Tense Dream (After The Fact)
8. Drop To Inoperant
9. On The Bend
10. Dredging With A Clasp
11. Recurrent Sight
12. Dockside Spectacles
13. Lala Falls (Porto And The Clouds)
14. Takings From The Bar

Press

For fans of C86, Rough Trade, Postcard
Records, Flying Nun, The Go-Betweens

Audio & Video

THE DOUBLE - 'RELAXIN IN THE JUNGLE'

Formats

• ITR371 - 7"

Details

Brand new 7-inch from the incredible duo The Double. Their first release since their debut album Dawn Of The Double in 2016. The Double are Emmett Kelly and Jim White—two dudes with resumes so massive it's not even worth bothering to try and drop names. For the recording session that produced this single they brought in bassist Matt Lux. The music The Double make is rhythmic, hypnotic and percussive. Says The Double of this new single, “after the Dance Craze, we took off to go relax in the jungle with our buddy Matt Lux”. 400 copies made.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video