We’re back with a few new album releases to feature this week. It has already been a pretty great year full of solid releases. One of my favourites so far hasn’t even been an album, it is the EP “King of Anxiety” from Petite Noir, well now his full album is out and I’m starting to wonder if both the album and the EP can reside on my top list from 2015. There are still a few months to go but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that ended up happening. We also have releases from Destruction Unit and mewithoutYou in this week also. That mewithoutYou has been fairly elusive so grab it while it’s still around. All the details and sample tracks below. We also received a handful of restocks and a fancy looking Toy Story Picture disc.
We’ve been buying lots of used vinyl this month and will certainly be posting about that out soon, so keep checking in so you don’t miss something. Have an amazing weekend!
Petite Noir – La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful
Recorded at Box Ten Studios in London with Oli Bayston (Boxed In) and Leon Brichard (Ibibio), ‘La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful’ is a highly accomplished album with a unique concoction of influences. The record seamlessly fuses intricate contemporary electronics and raw post-punk energy with Yannick’s stirring, soulful vocals and African shuffles that echo his homeland. Named after a revered Congolese film of the same name, the album is both a beacon and a vessel of inspiration, offering empowerment to those who need it.
La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful represents the first full expression of what Ilunga calls ‘Noirwave’, which is more of a concept than a specific sound. Inspired by innovators like Mos Def and legends Fela Kuti and Tabu Ley, Noirwave encompasses a ‘new African aesthetic’, plain and simple. ‘I think for me, it’s just the story their music tells and the sense of freedom. It’s about seeing the positive in dark times’.
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Destruction Unit – Negative Feedback Resistor
For two years now, the psychedelic Destruction Unit has been keeping the world waiting for a new album. And it’s not because they’ve grown up or gotten soft, rather because they’ve been in the streets and in your backyards, pushing the freek agenda and imminentizing the alien-eschaton. They’ve been up and down and all around this globe, battling the greedy club owners, show promoters and control pigs to bring the new American heavy underground through your back door. Now here we are, with the psychedelic Unit’s second album for Sacred Bones, Negative Feedback Resistor.
In the spirit of solidarity with the other revolutionary communities of our sisters and brothers, the psychedelic Unit urges you to use this album’s energy, energy your speakers can hardly contain, for its intended purpose: to break the chains which you, at the dawn of your understanding, have fastened around your hands and feet. And to see to it that the thrones of every despot erected within you are destroyed. This is crazed-psychedelic-freek-noise guerrilla warfare and these are our streets. The pigs of the law can use their system to manipulate and censor our messages. The control creeps can keep their airwaves safe and comfortable. But none of them have been able to make us turn our voices or our guitar amps down. Destruction Unit sacrificed their ears to make this album as loud of a statement as possible. Will you lend them yours?
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mewithoutYou – Pale Horses
It’s impossible to imagine modern underground music without mewithoutYou: the influence of their fifteen-year legacy has been nothing less than seismic. Pale Horses, mewithoutYou’s sixth album, continues their unwavering artistic vision, while at the same time reinvents the band as uniquely as any of their fans would expect it to. Aaron Weiss has again produced a work of genius with his nonpareil poetic voice, rivaled only by the soundtrack the rest of his band has forced him to compete against through these eleven songs. The end result is a beautiful fusion not unlike the music found on the band’s most revered releases. The guitar work is precise: delicately soft and tender during lulling moments like the opener “Pale Horse” and fiercely riff-centric on the Brother, Sister reminiscent “Mexican War Streets.” Complimenting it is the constant combination of the catchiest bass lines you’ve ever heard and tasteful, steady drum grooves that harken back to Catch For Us the Foxes, the band’s revered second album. Epic in scope, Pale Horses is an emotional journey as captivating as any of their classic releases – referential to the best parts of their catalog with a distinguished vitality, captured in the band’s signature hauntingly iconic way.
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That’s it for now. How now brown cow?