In 2025’s film Dreaming of You, The Coral looked back a quarter-century at the creation of their Mercury Prize-nominated debut album. “It’s the sound of kids with their imaginations cracked open, allowed to run free,” offered James Skelly. “When you capture that, that can’t really be beaten,” added Nick Power. “You never get that again.” Recognising that the past is indeed a foreign country but impossible to escape has been a theme throughout the band’s lifespan, and the documentary process apparently brought this conundrum to the fore when subsequently making this thirteenth Coral album: consciously or otherwise, 388 summons the sounds that first cracked those impressionable teenage heads.
After three more or less conceptual albums…
Latest Entries »
A rare and never before released live performance by Chet Baker and his European quartet, including his long -term associate Nicola Stilo on flute and guitar. Recorded in Ferrara, Italy on the 9th of December 1987, just five months before Chet’s passing, this live performance finds the legendary trumpeter at his creative and performance best and captured in sound quality more akin to a studio session. Captured in superb sound quality, this 2CD set in deluxe digipak presentation includes an extensive booklet containing liner notes and rare photographs. As a first-time release recording, it will, undoubtedly, be much sought after by jazz collectors generally and the legions of Chet Baker fans in particular. Recorded live by Gianni Grassilli on the December 1987, Ferrara, Teatro Estense.
The Irish grunge-pop act, fronted by Dolores O’Riordan, broke on to the scene in October 1992 with their debut single ‘Dreams’, which peaked at No 27 in the UK chart and was swiftly followed by ‘Linger’ (No 14). The singles helped their debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? to (ahem) linger around the chart for over a year, eventually selling over half a million in the UK. Meanwhile, they became alt-rock stars in the US, with the album selling over five million. The new “33rd anniversary deluxe edition” comes in a variety of physical formats. Fans who already have the 2018 super deluxe edition of the album might be forgiven for feeling underwhelmed – that version added early demos, 1990’s Uncertain EP, B-sides and a disc full of live tracks and radio sessions.
For his second solo album, Blue Morpho, Ed O’Brien has teamed up with several excellent collaborators, notably Paul Epworth and Dave Okumu, who take the Radiohead guitarist into the new musical vistas that the narrative around the album indicate he was seeking. Finding himself seeking a new purpose and a sense of spiritual connection at a new phase in his life, the opportunity to painstakingly create Blue Morpho during sessions in Wales seems to have come at the perfect time for him. The sense of freedom and creativity on the one hand and sheer songwriting and performance quality on the other shines through throughout the record. This is at least the equal of Radiohead’s recent output and perhaps more pertinently firmly establishes O’Brien as a solo artist in his own right.
Last year, Third Man Records released the reissue of Detroit’s unheralded songwriting genius, Ted Lucas’ 1975 cult classic self-titled album Ted Lucas (OM), as part of an ambitious archival campaign intent on spreading the open secret of Lucas’s genius and putting an end to his unfair anonymity.
Third Man Records released Images of Life, a career-spanning, 3xLP retrospective boxset illuminating the staggering breadth and depth of Lucas’ work, out May 22nd. Disc one, Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965-1970), highlights Lucas’ flirtation with psychedelic major label clout via his bands the Spike Drivers, the Misty Wizards and the Horny Toads. Disc two, Rainy Days (1970-1974) contains the solo acoustic warmth and charm most similar to the music found on his self-titled album.
How do you make a documentary film about a man who was also a myth? About a musician who was more than a musician? About someone who asked us to trust our intuition more than our rational minds? This double LP contains the entire soundtrack to the accompanying PBS documentary! Includes liner notes from executive producer Bradford Smith about the making of Sun Ra: Do The Impossible, interviews from members of the Arkestra and a BluRay DVD of the doc!
Firelight assembled an incredibly talented team headed by Director/Producer Christine Turner, and six years later in June of 2025, our documentary, Sun Ra: Do The Impossible had its world premiere at the Tribeca International Film Festival. Our goal was to make a film…
Bleachers return with their latest album everyone for ten minutes, continuing the project’s evolution under the direction of acclaimed singer, songwriter, musician, and producer Jack Antonoff, an eleven-time Grammy Award winner. Over the past decade, Bleachers have cultivated a passionate global fanbase, celebrated for high-energy live performances and a strong sense of connection with their audience.
everyone for ten minutes is the inevitable culmination of a lifetime of devotion to bands for the six members of Bleachers and, ultimately, finds each one at their creative peak. Despite the moments where it briefly peers into darkness, it’s essentially an optimistic record that feels lovestruck and hopeful, leaping from…
What would happen if one were to mix LSD with fundamentalist Christianity? Hammock‘s Marc Byrd learned the answer when watching the moonrise and mistaking it for the apocalypse. Looking back, Byrd writes of “letting go of toxic shame and bad religion, while holding onto what is good, beautiful and true.” Rather than lamenting the delayed rapture, he writes, “Seeing and experiencing a moonrise is a miracle in itself.”
The Second Coming Was a Moonrise reimagines Christianity as a religion of seeking and sometimes finding, in which beauty possesses more power than dogma. The fact that Byrd references Philippians 4:8 in his description – and that by adding ten guests, he and Andrew Thompson end up with a group the same size…
…features five bonus tracks.
On their third LP, Down in Heaven, Twin Peaks hang on to their rough-and-raw disposition while drawing sonic inspiration from favorite albums of 1968, including, per press materials, works by the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Beatles.
Bolstered throughout the album by the addition of Wild Onion co-producer Colin Croom to the lineup on keyboards (notably organ), the era, if not a specific year, is resurrected from the moment the needle hits vinyl with the sassy, T. Rex-grooving opener “Walk to the One You Love.” Parts of the record capture the more reflective tone associated with the late ’60s, such as the regretful, even-tempered “Holding Roses” and the brass-embellished “Lolisa,” which could…
Future Islands are an emotionally charged synth pop group, known for their dexterous melodic touch, stately momentum and impassioned delivery. Over the past twenty years they have travelled a rare arc, from promising newcomers to best-kept secret, from cult favourites to heroes of the genre. As they reach this remarkable milestone, they resist the obvious move.
Instead of a ‘best-of’ compilation victory lap, Future Islands present From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth – an immediate and accessible collection – half of which has never appeared on streaming services – comprising alternate hits, rarities, and fan favourites that showcase the band’s palette and bring further colour to their uniquely universal appeal.
Formed in Brooklyn at the end of 2006, but now based in North Carolina, Yarn tend to lean towards the southern rock element of americana. The band started with a weekly Monday night residency at Kenny’s Castaways on Bleecker Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, a place that previously hosted up-and-coming local acts such as Patti Smith, the New York Dolls, and Bruce Springsteen.
Although it has changed at times during the band’s 20-year existence, Yarn’s line-up is, band founding member, songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist Blake Christiana (also co-producer), a rhythm section of bass player Rick Bugel and Robert Bonhomme on drums and, completing the line-up is Andy Thomas on lead guitar and vocals.
Saturday Night Sermon was recorded at…
The MerKaBa Brotherhood are Roman Norfleet (The Cosmic Tones Research Trio, Be Present Art Group) and Andre Raiah (Brown Calvin of Brown Calculus, Be Present Art Group).
If you copped Norfleet’s debut album, 2023’s Mississippi-released Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group, you’ll know broadly what to expect here. In fact, Raiah showed up on that album too playing keys, prompting the duo to focus and expand their collaboration. So, drawing from “esoteric texts, sacred imagery, and mystic thought” they strip down the bluster and follow their own rhythm, layering tape-fucked bells and chimes with circuitous Rhodes repetitions, marrying their geometric improvisations with effervescent soundscapes and psychedelic FX.
It’s fitting that this terrific compilation opens with the sound of people happily hanging out (on ‘Boustan El Achaar’) because Yassine Nana grew up in one of Mauritania’s most prestigious music families and was almost always surrounded by his siblings, taking them with him as he travelled to Paris and Rabat, this new formation of the family orchestra heading to studios beyond their home in Nouakchott.
With Yassine on lead vocals, and his brothers Mouftah and Ali and sisters Mouna and Djamila playing alongside, the eight tracks on Modern Pop from Mauritania (1984–1989) unfurl like a flag that stakes a claim for the legacy of this northwest African artist, including his role in shaping what would be the start of desert blues.
Ghalia Volt’s sixth album, Burn the House Down, was recorded in Nashville as Volt expanded her sound from her previous one-woman band style. Returning to the raw blues sound that first brought her attention, Volt sings with fire and plays with confidence on the satisfying record.
Working with producer JD Simo, the album is focused on capturing the emotional essence of Volt’s 11 blues-based songs, not necessarily aiming for perfection. Simo also plays guitar with Volt (both credited with slide and electric) while drummer Chris Powell and bassist Brian Allen hold down the low end. Songs were recorded mostly live in the studio after one or two takes to keep the energy high.
The crackling sound starts with the opener…
Appearing like a flash, Jimi Hendrix burst onto the international music scene of the mid 1960’s like nothing ever seen before or since. Born in Seattle in 1942, early life experiences both in the United States Army and as a backing musician for the likes of the Isley Brothers and Little Richard on the Chitlin’ Circuit helped serve as formative groundwork for what was to come.
With the release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first single in December 1966, a never-ceasing whirlwind would envelop Jimi and his music until his untimely death in September of 1970. What’s still fascinating, more than five decades on, is how prolific a creator he managed to be through his not even four years in the spotlight.
Of particular interest is Jimi Hendrix’s…
Ain’t nothin’ like it. Full blast and top down. Less than six years after changing the music landscape with its diamond-platinum-certified self-titled debut, Van Halen repeated the creative and commercial feats. Featuring groundbreaking performances, infectious chemistry, and four enormous singles, 1984 witnesses the band incorporating synthesizer elements that guitarist Eddie Van Halen had been championing — as well as seamlessly bridging pop and metal sensibilities into a cohesive melodic whole. A landmark that’s never aged a day, 1984 feels as fresh, fun, and innovative as it did in the Reagan Era.
Sourced from the original analog tapes and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition…
Alice Cooper’s 1975 Album Welcome to My Nightmare Reissued as Part of the Atlantic Records 75th Anniversary Series on Hybrid Stereo SACD. Mastered Directly to DSD From the Original Master Tape by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
With the 1974 disintegration of the original Alice Cooper group, Alice was free to launch a solo career. He wisely decided to re-enlist the services of Bob Ezrin for his solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare, which was a concept album tied into the story line of the highly theatrical concert tour he launched soon after the album’s release. While the music lost most of the gritty edge of the original AC lineup, Welcome to My Nightmare remains Alice’s best solo effort – while some tracks…
Sometimes you might hear an artist described as a force of nature. It’s a figure of speech usually reserved for big or eccentric personalities, people whose artistic vision is put forward so confidently and with such power that it brooks no argument. This could be applied to the Swedish singer and musician Sara Parkman, whose fourth solo album Aster, atlas tackles the biggest themes: life, death, faith, grief, and the passage of time. But Parkman is a force of nature in another way. Her music has an inherent intensity that seems to be drawn from elemental sources. Listening to her singing and her highly original arrangements, we are constantly reminded of wild and unknown landscapes, and of our smallness within them, but also of our gardens, the things we cultivate,…
Who is music for? Listener – or musician? Is a perfect record what matters, or the journey to make it? These are questions Dutch DJ/producer Martyn stirs in his latest album Music for Existing, released via his record label 3024. Described as “a love letter to the communal act of making music together”, the record features a sprawl of collaborators and friends including Duval Timothy, Dan Only, Lucinda Chua, Mark Cisneros, Mischa Porte, Cees Bruinsma andMusa Okwonga.
Music for Existing is a record dedicated to re-establishing connection in an increasingly insular world, whilst simultaneously demonstrating Martyn’s “profound love and appreciation for jazz, both in sound and approach.” While not inherently new, the fusion of the regimented,…
On Su Shaw’s self-titled debut as SHHE, the sea seemed to flood into her songwriting unbidden, imagined as it was by the water at her home in Dundee. When Shaw moved on to the ambient suite of DÝRA, set around the fjords in Iceland, she welcomed the water in.
At the same time, Shaw picked up a somewhat nomadic existence as an artist, moving from place to place, capturing field recordings and establishing environmental installations that flowed with the very currents and tides of the water itself, finally ending up in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, where THALASSA took shape.
Its six movements chart an ambient seascape that is heightened and alarmed. Processed voices mimic breathless gasps and sharp intakes,…