CRACK CLOUD - 'TOUGH BABY'

Formats

• MM008LPSP3 - LP (COLOURED)

  505244202268

• MM008CD - CD

  5052442022244

Details

*BLUE VINYL WITH OBI STRIP* Crack Cloud’s new album Tough Baby is both a clarion call and a life-manual for the listener. Unsurprisingly, it is a record with purpose and resolve. Nothing is wasted. Sometimes the music feels deliberately compressed, the essences extracted and bottled into an overpowering cordial, as on ‘115 At Night’, which sounds like an ‘80s Van Halen track being squeezed into another shape. And it’s difficult to see how a track like ‘Virtuous Industry’ can hold itself together, such are the sonic hoops it jumps through. The sharp angles and hook-laden guitar lines that were once seen as a trademark sound are less in evidence. Last track ‘Crackin Up’ does nod back to earlier releases with a booming beat and guitars that snag, like wool on barbed wire. Tough Baby contains music to think to, music with which to educate, agitate and organise. Zach Choy: “The name Tough Baby is an allusion to our Planet. To our Culture. And to our Selves.” It’s made to remind us that whilst we are all in the gutter to some extent, some of us are looking at the kerb.

Tracks

A1 Danny's Message 2:07
A2 The Politician 2:09
A3 Costly Engineered Illusion 3:19
A4 Please Yourself 4:51
A5 Virtuous Industry 2:54
A6 Tough Baby 4:34
B7 Criminal 6:11
B8 115 At Night 3:01
B9 Afterthought (Sukhi's Prayer) 5:18
B10 Cracking Up 2:56

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CLAMM - 'CARE'

Formats

• MM007LP - LP (COLOURED)

  5052442022190

Details

Clamm's music was already concerned with the woes of the world, but the last two years have added extra urgency to their blown out, dystopian punk power. New album Care is bigger, louder and darker than its predecessor. Clamm dodged lockdowns to record at Rolling Stock and Sound Park Studios with Nao Anzai (NO ZU, Cash Savage, Rolling Blackouts). Nao also plays fearsome synth on the album and has joined the band on- stage at recent shows. Saxophonist Anna Gordon (Mangelwurzel) contributes wild free jazz skronk to a number of tracks.

Tracks

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JOHN SOUTHWORTH - 'WHEN YOUR THIS, THIS IN LOVE'

Formats

• TAR114LP - LP

  5052442023234

Details

With When You're This, This In Love he put all his signature sounds together so if somebody was going to ask what record of his they should listen to then this would be a good start because it has all his styles of song done pretty good on it. He mostly sings folk songs sometimes dressed up as lounge-ballads, rock nocturnes, classical-chansons, time-traveling, lucid, jazzy feeling pop songs too. It might irk the base of your taste or the taste of your base.But it's not so contrarian as that. His songs are pleas. Laments. There's an olive branch behind his back.

Tracks

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CLAMM - 'BESEECH ME'

Formats

• MM004LP - LP

  5052442018759

Details

CLAMM could not have come from anywhere other than Melbourne, Australia. Theirs is a city that bleeds music. Iconic bands such as Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Total Control have built on the city’s history of open-hearted, fist-in-throat, fiercely independent music. Scenes centring around labels like Antifade, Flightless and Cool Death have held the torch for countless groups as good as any in the world. However, CLAMM arrived completely apart from any established scene or sound. They began playing shows in 2019, sharing bills with virtually any- one who would have them. Jack Summers (vocals/guitar) and Miles Harding (drums) had been friends and musical collaborators since early childhood. Under various banners, they performed for years with friends and siblings across Melbourne’s underground landscape. It wasn’t until they found Maisie Everett (vocals/bass) that the CLAMM picture was complete. Debut album Beseech Me was recorded with Nao Anzai (Rolling Blackouts, Floodlights, NO ZU) and mixed and mastered by Total Control’s Mikey Young.

Tracks

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