ROSE MCDOWALL - 'CUT WITH THE CAKE KNIFE'

Formats

• LSSN027R - LP

  5061041822209

• LSSN027CD - CD

  5061041822223

Details

**REPRESSED DUE TO DEMAND**Cut The With The Cake Knife was recorded by Rose McDowall in 1988/89 following the break up of her group Strawberry Switchblade. Produced with the aid of several musicians in several studios, the album features songs written for the fabled second Strawberry Switchblade album. More importantly perhaps it showcases the honest, direct and life-affirming songs of one of the greatest unsung songwriters of the modern pop era at a tumultuous time in her career. Tibet opens the set and could be one of the best pop songs you’ve never heard. The innate sadness of the songs’ content – the loss of a friendship, impending sorrow – is heightened to heart-melting level by McDowall’s pop nous and melodic sensibility. Choruses and hooks are everywhere on Cake Knife, from the outsider take on stadium 80s pop in Wings Of Heaven to the spiraling, ecstatic So Vicious, a glorious anthem that highlights the human fragility in McDowall’s vocal performance, an instrument that has never lost the naïve purity it first exemplified in Strawberry Switchblade’s early 80s recordings. The centerpiece of the album, the title-track, is the greatest Switchblade pop chart hit that never was. Like the veiled melancholy of her former group’s hits, Cut With The Cake Knife hints at a darkness beneath the gloss, a darkness that saw McDowall delve into more esoteric territory with her subsequent recordings and collaborations. Cut With The Cake Knife serves as the bridge between the pop music McDowall had been making with her friends Jill Bryson, Lawrence from Felt and Primal Scream to what became a more extreme, deep sound informed by neo-folk and post industrial music. Rose McDowall’s role in the canon has always been one of an outsider. Beginning in Glasgow’s East End in the avant proto-noise group The Poems, achieving fame briefly in the 80s and then disappearing into counter-cultural folklore, the emphasis in the internet-age has been skewed towards her image and cultural significance. Unseen to many, her solo work, her groups Sorrow and Spell and her collaborations with a whole host of underground luminaries have still touched lives. As McDowall elucidates: “They're real sad songs, about real life. I've had people come up to me to say I'd connected with them and helped them. I remember a gig in America when we made a whole room cry. It was bizarre. A couple at the front of the stage started crying and then these two boys beside and suddenly everyone was crying. And I thought, "that's power." Night School’s issue of Cut With The Cake Knife includes unpublished photographs, extensive sleeve notes from Rose McDowall and 2 bonus tracks culled from the bootleg 7” “Don’t Fear The Reaper.” First vinyl pressing is Clear w/ Black swirl; 500 only / has DL card and booklet, with a poster CD has extensive booklet and is packaged in anO-Card.

Tracks

1. Tibet
2. Sunboy
3. Wings Of Heaven
4. Sixty Cowboys
5. On The Sun
6. Cut With The Cake Knife
7. Crystal Nights
8. Soldier
9. So Vicious
10. Don?t Fear The Reaper (2015 bonus track)
11. Crystal Days (2015 bonus track)

Press

"In McDowall?s world, cake and chaos go hand in hand. She?s the witch at the door of the gingerbread house, beckoning you inside."
- Pitchfork

Audio & Video

ALDEN HELLMUTH - 'TETHER'

Formats

• LTR062 - LP

  4066004773100

Details

In any band there is a constant push and pull. A state of tension and release between written music and improvisation, between leading and following each other. In the instinctive, unpredictable world of jazz, that push and pull can explode groups and compositions into entirely new forms, yet no matter how far each player might be stretched there is always something connecting them back to each other and back to the tune. A tether. For New York-based saxophonist and composer Alden Hellmuth, that innate sense of connection between bandmates and between the dual states of form and freedom is a crucial aspect of her creativity. Following her German Jazz Prize winning 2024 debut album Good Intentions, Hellmuth now returns with the aptly titled Tether, an eight-track exploration of jazz, punk and freeform improvisation that centers on the notion that regardless of how loud and unruly her band might get, the tether always ties the players back to the listener and their invigorating experience. Tether will be released via LEITER on limited edition vinyl and all digital platforms on June 26, 2026. “The record is a study in how to effectively write and communicate improvisational ideas,” she says. “We’re always bending and pulling to make something new out of the music in the present moment and even in the improvising world you have to stay tethered to other people in the band. All of us are connected.” Drawing on the free jazz double bass ensembles of Ornette Coleman and Andrew Hill, Tether sees Hellmuth enlist the thunderous ensemble of two innovative bassists – Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn – alongside drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Aja Monet) to deliver a suite of heavy low-end compositions. Panning each bassist left to right and playing off Wrenn’s and Kane’s distinct timbres, the resulting record veers from the frenetic rhythmic shuffle of opener ‘Microfictions’ to the punk-inflected riotousness of ‘Face The Wall’, the meditative bass harmonics and textural melodies of ‘Guesswork’ and the wonky polyrhythmic interchanges of the group’s take on the John Coltrane standard ‘Satellite’. Throughout, Hellmuth’s alto saxophone playing is bright, nimble and deeply felt, wreathing sharp lines through the heady bass-weight of her quartet to deliver a lead performance that only serves to uplift the group rather than subsume it in her virtuosity. “I want to challenge and push myself all the time,” she says. “There was a lot of energy behind the project and I hope people can feel that. It isn’t just a jazz record – the influences range from Anthony Braxton to Japanese punk bands like October Beaver to Deerhoof and we were just letting it all fly.”

Tracks

1. MICROFICTIONS 2. FAKE(RS) 3. DEFINITELY NOT FRIENDS 4. GUESSWORK 5. SUPPLY CHAIN 6. SATELLITE (K) 7. WITNESS 8. FACE THE WALL

Press

Audio & Video

F/i - 'INVISIBLE MEN'

Formats

• BMR139 - 2xLPs

  607287013916

Details

Birdman Records is proud to be reissuing Invisible Men, the early space explorations of electronic music pioneer F/i. In the mid-80s F/i was on the cutting edge of electronic bombast, producing cassette tapes of late-night interstellar sessions to be traded world over with the handful of heads that were plugged into similar perambulations. As a link between Throbbing Gristle and the Spacemen 3, this period of F/i has been woefully forgotten, until now. Later in the 80s, F/i would morph into Vocokesh continuing their space rock explorations. The 2LP set features founding member Richard Franecki, Brian Wensing and Steve Zimmerman, and includes the ultra-rare recording “Air” (produced around the same time as Invisible Men). For the first time on vinyl, a limited run of 500 copies will be released on June 26th.

Tracks

1. Untitled I 2. Untitled II 3. Untitled III 4. Untitled IV 5. Untitled V 6. Untitled VI 7. Untitled VII 8. Untitled VIII 9. Untitled IV 10. Untitled X 11. Air

Press

Audio & Video

EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING - 'IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS'

Formats

• SR007 - LP

  5061041822339

Details

Eddy Current Suppression Ring make a surprise return with their sixth album In Light of Recent Events. True to form, it finds the disinterested careerists sidestepping expectation and working on their own terms, in their own time. Dialled in through closed-door weekly jams across 2025, that pent-up energy has only leaked via pseudonym-billed small-room shows as Jimmy and the Ringtones and Top Hats, record shop in-stores and country detours, plus a pair of phantom straight-to-YouTube singles (‘Swimming Hole’ and ‘Hard To Be Moved’), each with accompanying films by Chris Middlebrook and Amiel Courtin-Wilson respectively.

Tracks

1. Sabotage 2. Bop 3. Hard To Be Moved 4. Turtle 5. Ulterior Motives 6. Ivory Tower 7. Swimming Hole 8. Empathetic 9. My World 10. On My Way Home 11. Past And Future

Press

Audio & Video

SICK GAZELLE - 'VELD'

Formats

• VB15 - LP

  769152435114

Details

With their second LP Veld, Sick Gazelle take their cosmic and instantaneous group communications to new levels of clarity and structure, without losing the spark of the jam. The band expands from longtime Chicago underground players Eric Block on guitar (Veloce) and vocalist/saxophonist Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) with drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) to include Douglas McCombs (Tortoise) on bass. Though these five tracks are sculpted from improvisations, they’ve been refined into song forms that illuminate the strengths of both the individual players and the chemistry of the quartet version of the combo. This comes through in Veld’s moments of reflective subtlety on tracks like “I’ll Come Running,” in the foreboding tension of the cinematic “Ocean Always Wins,” as well as in the charged grooves and dubby undercurrents of the sideways rocker “Hippies.”

Tracks

1. February 2. Hippies 3. I'll Come Running 4. Ocean Always Wins 5. Maybe You Were Right

Press

Audio & Video

DEAD STILETTOS - 'BODGE JOB'

Formats

• SGR0080 - LP

Details

"Manchester’s Dead Stilettos make good on their early promise with a debut album packed full of wired Detroit-proto-post-punk-inspired garage." - Louder Than War

Tracks

Press

Album of the week - Louder Than War

Audio & Video