Karen & Peter – ‘Aggro Dulce’ CS + book
Cassette + 19-page booklet of Karen Schoemer’s poems to accompany the release, with beautiful artworks by Peter Taylor. In the fall of 2021, sound artist Peter Taylor and poet Karen Schoemer decided to create songs together, despite never having met. Both drew on the faded industrial landscapes of their respective countries. Peter was inspired by the Calder Valley in Yorkshire, with its history of coal mining and asbestos contamination; Karen had recently relocated to a rural town in upstate New York once known as “Factory Hill,” where remnants of 20th century fires and floods scar the landscape. Their independent investigations of disparate locales uncover commonalities that hint at wider, even universal, human conditions. Karen Schoemer is a poet and former music journalist who frequently collaborates with musicians including Oli Heffernan, Mike Watt, Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby. She contributed words to Ivan the Tolerable’s “Out of Season” (2020) and words and vocals to The Long Year (2021, both released by Stolen Body Records). With Mike Watt she records as the duo Jaded Azurites. She is vocalist for the upstate New York band Sky Furrows, which released its self-titled debut album in 2020. Peter Taylor has been making music as Mortuus Auris & the Black Hand/MAbH since 2008. He is also a visual artist working across many disciplines including photography, animation, illustration, miniatures and painting. He is based just outside of South West London by the River Thames.
Chihuahua – ‘Crythor Du’
Crythor Du is CHIHUAHUA’s follow-up to their 2021 debut ‘Violent Architecture’. A looser and more experimental approach, stemming from extended jam sessions a là CAN, is prominent across this record and features a wider range of instruments and influences than its predecessor. Jazz, noise, post and krautrock collide here and make Crythor Du a musical force to be reckoned with. Noisy Post-Rock from Manchester – Experimental and Uncompromising.
Tankengine – ‘Tankengine Tankengine Tankengine EP’
TANKENGINE were recently described as a band with ‘staggering potential’, which if nothing else gave their spouses a good laugh, and TANKENGINE TANKENGINE TANKENGINE is their third EP. They are Adam Hiles on vocals & guitar (yourcodenameis:milo, Mammal Club, The Shitty Beatles), Ross Harley on vocals & really good bass (yourcodenameis:milo, Ross Harley, Crucial Taunt) and Dr Ivan Diaz on drums (Little Moscow, Lingua Vulgaris, Jolly Green Giants). TANKENGINE TANKENGINE TANKENGINE is preoccupied with the nausea-inducing realisation that we’ve lost the receipt for the future we were sold. There’s no going back now and the only way out is through.
cowman – ‘slaughter’
After a lengthy hiatus from 2013 to making a return to the fray this summer, Benjamin Heal’s Cowman alter ego is back with a vengeance: hot on the heels of the ‘Crunch’ EP, which was essentially the salvage from an aborted album project, we have a full-length album proper in the form of Slaughter.