SLEEP - 'VOLUME ONE'

Formats

• TUP34 - LP

  759718083415

Details

BACK IN STOCK!! Volume One is the debut album. It was the only album recorded with original guitarist Justin Marler, before he became an Orthodox monk. Volume One showcases a darker sound and stronger doom metal influence than Sleep's later work. The image featured on the cover is taken from the Salvador Dali painting "Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon". Their only album as a four piece of Al Cisneros, Matt Pike, Justin Marler and Chris Haikus allmusic.com "For all their budding, precocious talent, Sleep's 1991 debut, Volume One, quickly betrays their still quite heavy debt to doom metal forefathers like Black Sabbath, Witchfinder, and Saint Vitus. Driven by Matt Pike and Justin Marler's lumbering mass of low-tuned guitar riffs, Al Cisneros' (still going as Luke here) serpentine bass and ragged screams, and drummer Chris Haikus' cyclopean kit pummeling, occasional highlights such as "The Suffering," "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream," and "The Wall of Yawn" prove less memorable than they are sensorially overwhelming. And yet, ironically, Sleep's rhythm guitars would never again be kept as under control, nor would their leads sound quite as refined as they do here (see the cleaner harmonies employed to good use on "Numb" and "Catatonic," for example). This was probably due to the onetime involvement of the significantly less stoned Marler, who would soon exchange the group for a monastery where he would study to become a monk. Fittingly enough, however, losing the versatility of a second guitarist was exactly what Sleep needed to focus their singular power into a crushing force, and the remaining trio would flourish immediately behind the sheer physicality of Pike's six-string style, as proven by 1993's superlative sophomore LP, Sleep's Holy Mountain."

Tracks

1. STILLBORN
2. THE SUFFERING
3. NUMB
4. ANGUISH
5. CATATONIC
6. NEUCHADNEZZAR'S DREAM
7. THE WALL OF YAWN
8. PREY
9. SCOURGE

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MELVINS - 'BULLHEAD'

Formats

• BR25CD - CD

  038161002526

• BR25 - LP

  038161002519

Details

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Available again with updated artwork and a new gatefold sleeve! Melvins' follow-up to 1989’s Ozma was 1991’s groundbreaking Bullhead. The songs are longer, the mood is calmer, yet more menacing. “Boris” (which gave the Japanese group their name) is a long, slow, low death march of addiction and self-abuse. “Zodiac” is a frantic punk rock machine gun blasting away at Buzz’s demons (both inner and outer). “Cow” is a happy baboon bashing away at the best drum solo of his life. “It’s Shoved” is a groovy beat for the cast of Shindig to bop along to, until their carefree performances of The Pony, The Mashed Potato, and The Watusi are horribly interrupted by the soundstage tilting up and sliding them all into a mangled heap of screaming dancers, broken cameras and flaming electronic equipment at the bottom.

Tracks

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MELVINS - 'OZMA'

Formats

• BR16LP - LP

  038161001611

• BR16CD - CD

  038161001628

Details

FINALLY BACK IN STOCK ON LP & CD!!! Ozma was recorded soon after Melvins made the move from Washington to San Francisco, and was their first release to include the diminutive yet mighty Lorax (Lori Temple Black) on bass. In fact, the first sound one hears at the album’s opening is Lori standing on her tiptoes to switch on her amp, thereby warning the listener of the onslaught to come. Distorted, down-tuned doom riffs start, stop, lurch sideways with no warning, and seem to end before they start. Buzz Osborne adds extraneous guitar static and vocal squeals. Drummer Dale Crover plays as if he’s inside a barrel going over Niagara Falls; the long, slow fall allows the space between beats to grow and grow until he crashes into the water with the vessel blasting apart in an explosion of drum rolls. The classic Melvins heavy grind is set up and broken up by assorted odd sidetracks: “Revulsion / We Reach” flows forward slower and slower until it eventually melts into a gooey feedback drone. “Raise a Paw” is a superball paddled against one’s head by a grinning village idiot. “Love Thing” enlists in the Kiss Army before getting dishonorably discharged.

Tracks

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LAURIE TORRES - 'APRES COUP'

Formats

• TU009LE - LP

  4251804187060

Details

 **REPRESS ALERT - TRANSPARENT CLEAR VINYL**Laurie Torres is a Canadian musician and composer raised in Montréal, Québec by Haitian parents. Since 2008, she has been a trusted stage and studio performer for Julia Jacklin, Pomme, and Land of Talk, as well as being a founding member of Folly & The Hunter, with whom she recorded four studio albums and toured Canada, Europe and the UK. In 2023, Laurie shifted focus to work on her own creations, a process of making time - the will and the need becoming omnipresent. Drawing creative inspiration from contemporary artists like Tirzah, Gia Margaret, Valentina Magaletti, Tara Clerkin Trio and ML Buch, 'Après coup’ finds Torres intersecting at a pivotal moment where artists whose marginalized identities are at the forefront in creating a beautiful array of “other options”. “Being othered and tokenized as a woman who plays music, as well as a queer and black person, takes a toll, while also positively feeding a strong urge to push and be seen.” Centering around piano, drums and synthesizer with interweaving field recordings, 'Après coup’ follows the precursor ep ‘Correspondances’ in the form of a sprawling 11-track album. Translating directly from French - afterwards, after the event - its title subliminally points at something deeper between the lines. Recorded in 2023 between tours in a small window of time where ‘normal’ life hadn't quite recommenced, Torres meticulously crafted her debut solo material in view of surrounding nature, all providing the perfect nourishment for long streams of improvisation. Built right up to the edge of a lake, Studio Wild in St-Zénon, Québec offered an unparalleled location and set up for her freeform creativity. Instrumental music seemed like a natural response and evolution for Torres who had long basked in the world of “pop music” as she elaborates: “I had an urge to use creativity as a sort of resting place, a place where things can unfold slowly and take time to reveal themselves. In other worlds words, I felt the need to make something slower, more elusive” Laurie ascends to a ‘flow state’ not dissimilar to the meditative tones of Nala Sinephro and the repeating figures of Duval Timothy. ‘Duvet’ emerges with a wide-open organ drone (Hammond B3) and stays still throughout, setting a welcoming mood. The joyful, velvety piano melodies begin to ring out before tentatively locking into a precise phrase around analogue delays that create a “breathing” effect. ‘Feux fuyants’ descends into otherworldly terrain with a burst of energy as her patterned drumming interlocks with a responding piano line fed through glitchy delays as the track folds in on itself. We return to serenity with ‘Reflets’, which moves between left and right hand piano phrases on top of an arpeggiating Farfisa synth that provides the glue and airiness. Field recordings embellish the album’s inner walls - all extracted directly from the location. Scraping, walking, singing into the air and the wind all make up its human, tangible fabric. On ‘Intérieurs’, she embraces the gifts and flaws of improvisation, leaving in an imprinted audible sigh, finding a raw beauty in the natural performance. ‘Clessidra’ insistently drives the album forwards with percussive brass cowbell tappings (one used for herds) matched with repeating piano patterns that sway in and out of sync with a surreal chorus of staggered vocal layerings. ‘Point-Virgule’ offers a delightful breathing moment ahead of ‘Correspondances’, a close relative to ‘Duvet’ stemming from a similar theme and progression. As we arrive at ‘Exit’ the pace steadies to where the piano and drums exist independently of one another, yet meeting on another latitude as if signaling the end of a conversation. With her ‘pop’ past workings never far away, Laurie artfully drifts between uplifting and melancholic hues, never overbearing or undermining one another. She plants seeds throughout and only in consuming the album in its entirety do we make sense of its seriality, as new meanings unfold where repetition and subtleties produce increasingly complex meanings. The immediacy of Torres’ recorded takes doubled with minimal overdubs create a fiercely direct, intimate and unpolished lo-fi beauty. ‘Après coup’ then is self-reflective, open and inclusive with Torres allowing herself to be fully seen. An album to be felt at close distance with unrivalled authenticity. This album stands as a testament to Laurie’s artistic evolution and serves as a beacon, inspiring her to continue nurturing her own creative pursuits and finding exhilarating freedom. “Après coup, to me, signifies that moment of conscience in the aftermath, fundamentally an experience of time, the relationship between the before and after.”

Tracks

1. Duvet 2. Lisière 3. Feux fuyants 4. Reflets 5. Int?rieurs 6. Carnets 7. Clessidra 8. Point-virgule 9. Correspondances 10. Golden t-shirts 11. Exit

Press

"Take yourself away to a nice quiet corner and enjoy this beautiful new track by Laurie Torres" - Deb Grant

"A very beautiful taster of her debut album 'Apres-coup'" - Mary Anne Hobbs

"An absolutely beautiful record" - Tom Ravenscroft

Audio & Video

CRAYON - 'HOME SAFE'

Formats

• ERATP175LE - LP (COLOURED)

  3700551786664

Details

At the heart of Home Safe is a question Crayon posed to his collaborators: “What does home mean to you?” The answer is heard across a stellar line-up of voices, including anaiis, Rhye, ELIZA, Yamê, Arthur Teboul (Feu! Chatterton), JPL (Tora), and painter-turned-singer Lossapardo, each contributing their unique perspective to this evocative sonic world. A central figure in the Parisian music scene and a trusted producer for French rappers like Josman, Dinos, and Prince Waly, Crayon now steps into the spotlight with a deeply personal, genre-defying, communal solo project. Home Safe traverses soul, folk, jazz, hip-hop, and electronic landscapes, drawing inspiration from his roots, community, and the complex idea of home. The album’s genesis took place in a shared Paris apartment, where Crayon and jazz pianist Bastien Brison hosted intimate Sunday jam sessions. These gatherings blended live music, dance, and visual art, creating an atmosphere of spontaneous creativity and raw emotion. Musicians, singers and rappers, Leo Walk and members from his dance company La Marche Bleue, together with visual artists Enfant Précoce and Julien Bernard, all came together in this unique collaborative space, shaping the spirit and energy that permeate Home Safe—a record that marries the grandeur of jazz orchestration with the intimacy of bedroom production. Following this vibrant period, Crayon faced a challenging personal chapter, retreating to his childhood home on the outskirts of Paris. There, over three years, he refined the album’s lush, warm sound—a seamless fusion of orchestral richness and quiet introspection. “Home Safe is about reconnecting with all the music I found comfort in in our little suburban home where I grew up on the outskirts of Paris,” Crayon says. “Remembering the smell of the fire in the chimney, with my stepdad’s folk records playing in the background.” The album’s cozy, intimate sound reflects this nostalgia, wrapping listeners in a warm embrace. “I had this need for quiet music,” he adds. Home Safe invites listeners into a richly layered world where sound, image, and emotion intertwine. This debut marks the emergence of an artist with a clear vision, profound sensitivity, and a unique ability to translate the intimate concept of home into a bold, genre-blurring musical statement.

Tracks

Tracklist:

A:
1. Home Safe (feat. Yam?, Tora)
2. Procrastination (feat. Zefire)
3. Strange People (feat. Rhye)
4. Kill Your Idols (feat. Lossapardo)
5. Feelings Don?t Rest (feat. Anaiis)
6. &Fly

B:
1. Diamond Miner (feat. FKJ, Eliza)
2. Midnight Blues (feat. Zefire)
3. Cristaux Liquides (feat. Swing)
4. Arthur et Le Cristal (feat. Arthur Teboul)
5. Exposed (feat. Lossapardo)

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SHANE PARISH - 'AUTECHRE GUITAR'

Formats

• PAL095LP - 2xLPs

  840526501786

• PAL095CD - CD

  195269398583

Details

**VINYL & CD IN STOCK NOW** This record shouldn’t, strictly speaking, be possible at all. It’s not just that Autechre’s music is electronic and Shane Parish’s is acoustic. It’s not just that Autechre come from electro and techno, while Shane’s solo guitar music is rooted in jazz, folk, and the blues. Those borders, between mediums and genres, are as porous as you want them to be. But Autechre are synonymous with difficulty, opacity, inscrutability—known for unparseable rhythms, cryptic riffs, and shapeshifting timbres. Even on their early records, before they’d begun building out the mind-bending software systems that have defined the past quarter-century of their music, the duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown were working at the very limits of their machines: eking melodies out of drum sounds, programming intricate polyrhythms of superhuman complexity, and writing sequences that defy attempts to decipher them. I’ve been listening to “Yulquen” for 31 years, and I still couldn’t tell you just what is happening between the melody and the beat; try as I might, I simply can’t count out the steps. Now take Shane: one guy, one guitar, two hands. Six strings. Ten fingers. (Throw in a tapping foot for when the timekeeping gets tricky.) That’s the sum total of what he’s working with. These are not the kinds of tools you’d think would be equipped for Autechre’s music. But if anyone could take on a project like this, it’s Shane. Informed by his years spent playing standards as a working musician in supper clubs and resorts around Asheville, North Carolina, he’s been arranging music for solo fingerstyle guitar for decades—much of it material originally written for and recorded on other instruments. On his astonishing 2024 album Repertoire, he tackled songs by Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Alice Coltrane, and even Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin, zeroing in on the essence of each and rendering it into his own sure-footed yet exploratory style. The origins of Autechre Guitar run deep. Last year, Shane posted a low-key nylon-string performance of “Slip,” recorded in his living room, on YouTube. But his first attempt at the song was actually way back in 2004, when he notated his first rudimentary transcription of its serpentine melody—a 29-beat phrase that seems to slip and slide over a 4/4 pulse, to subtly unsettling effect. He had returned to the song over the years, with a vague idea of eventually doing something more with it; finally, after Repertoire’s Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin covers—and with the urging of his wife, a die- hard Autechre fan—he decided to try his hand at an entire album of Autechre covers, and sat down to begin notating songs, one by one. Puzzling out the sequences. Arranging the counterpoints. Translating shades of pewter and graphite into something resembling a 12-tone scale. And, most importantly, finding ways to distill Autechre’s seemingly limitless details in ways that could be played by just 10 fingers without losing the soul of the song. It was, in essence, a kind of sleight of hand. The material on Autechre Guitar is drawn entirely from the 1990s—specifically, from the albums Incunabula (“Maetl,” “Eggshell,” “Bike,” “Lowride”), Amber (“Slip,” “Nine,” “Yulquen”), Tri Repetae (“Eutow,” “Clipper”), and LP5 (“Corc”). The reason is simple: That’s the melodic golden age of Autechre, when Booth and Brown were writing hooks that would go down as some of the most enduring, and emotionally satisfying, in the past three decades of electronic music. Shane has done a remarkable job of capturing those melodies and translating them for the steel strings of his Taylor 214E-G. Anyone who knows Autechre’s “Bike,” a dreamy highlight of their debut album, will instantly recognize the melody Shane has pulled out of it, high notes drizzling down like raindrops on the windshield while octaves in the bass swish back and forth, steady as wipers. But what I find even more fascinating are the examples where the connection isn’t so clear. Where the melody in the original song isn’t so obvious, say—like “Clipper,” with its droning pads and rigid bursts of arpeggio, or “Corc,” with its gamelan shimmer and open-ended riffs. “Eutow” is another one that stops me in my tracks every time: How on earth did Shane get from the original’s smear of supersaw pads, arcing glissando, and whipcrack electro beat to what he gives us here: a somber, Faheyesque report from the depths of solitude? Or just listen to “Nine,” whose portamento attacks he turns into pitch-bent blue notes straight out of the American South. (The album version of “Nine” is actually the original demo recording Shane made of the song; it’s the only take where he feels like he really captured the magic of that song.) Listening to Shane’s versions of these tracks, you intuit the way he’s had to reach deep inside each song, working by feel alone, to grasp its contours and come back with something that communicates its ideas, even if it sounds all but unrecognizably different. Ultimately, Autechre Guitar works on multiple levels. It’s a celebration of Autechre’s music, shining a spotlight on the durability and flexibility of their songwriting. At the same time, it’s an invitation to listen deep inside the music, to take part as active listeners in the process of translation and interpretation. And while it hardly needs to be said, it’s an invitation to simply get lost in Shane’s astonishingly fleet playing, which takes these songs of unfathomable difficulty and makes them seem practically effortless. –Philip Sherburne 

Tracks

1) Maetl
2) Eggshell

3) Eutow
4) Slip
5) Bike
6) Nine

7) Y ulquen
8) Lowride

9) Corc
10) Clipper

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VERSUS - 'THE STARS ARE INSANE'

Formats

• TB142 - LP (COLOURED)

  792487014211

Details

Considered by many the template for 1990s indie rock. Versus’ first full-length album became an instant cult classic. Recorded by Adam Lasus (Yo La Tengo, Helium, Lilys) at his Studio Red in March of 1994 and released just six weeks later in early May of that same year on the Teenbeat label. Finally back on vinyl LP with all new art on the outside (designed by Unrest’s Mark Robinson) and the original art on a full-color innersleeve, plus an OBI strip holding the package together. While the first pressing didn’t include the track “Fallow,” this edition has all 12 songs from the CD. Each of them remastered by Scott Anthony. Formed in New York City in 1990 by guitarist Richard Baluyut and bassist Fontaine Toups, Versus became one of the most important, influential and underrated bands in the then budding indie-rock genre. “They weren’t as influential as Pavement, as industrious as Guided By Voices, as idiosyncratic as Unrest, or as ubiquitous as Superchunk. But the part that Versus played in the indie rock underground of the 1990s can’t be overlooked. . . . Versus were the quintessential indie rock band.” — Pitchfork

Tracks

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HEDGE BURNERS - 'FALL OUT OF THE FUTURE'

Formats

• LEG045X - LP (COLOURED)

  5061041822155

• LEG045 - LP

  5061041822148

Details

Hedge Burners was born winter 2024 in Rye, when two pairs of mates collided at the right time - Jackson Allen, Arron Mawson, Shaun Gionis, Steph Hughes - a mixture of new friendships and decades long musical bonds - there was a rich catalogue of unfinished jams and ideas - their shared approaches creating a treasure map of sounds and experiments. With mutual influences, endless voice memos, a rehearsal space under the house and some sun, and water - the scrapbook of sounds over time formed into fully fledged songs, and the band into a unit. The energy of the initial sketches continuing into the band's easy connection, and their figuring out of the stories in the sounds. There's a familiar yet unique blend of rock n roll, country and punk, and a shared enjoyment in making stuff from scratch. They follow their noses, and keep mystery in the mix.

Tracks

1. By Water 2. Fall Out Of The Future 3. Twisted Vine 4. As The Headlights Go 5. Angel Lee 6. Long Time Listening 7. Strange Memory 8. Concrete Waterfall 9. Wild Deep Blue 10. Worlds Behind

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