Releases – February 2023

By the late summer of 1963, Reprise Records — the independent record label founded by Frank Sinatra three years earlier — had run into a few financial difficulties, partly because the label hadn’t produced any major chart hits, and was purchased by Warner Bros. Morris “Mo” Ostin, Reprise’s vice-president and general manager, had brought in “whiz kid” producer Jimmy Bowen in 1963. Bowen’s main job, at least in the beginning, was to produce hits for some of the younger Reprise acts, including a brand-new ...

CRAWL is the one-man blackened ambient doom entity helmed by mastermind Michael Engle andconsists solely of Engle performing drums, bass, vocals, synth and samples simultaneously all at once.This unique performance process is one that is undertaken during recording and in live settings.With “Damned”, Engle (current Boris live drummer) has created the most enormous and despondentCRAWL release yet. Through waves of immense negative energy and hopelessness being emittedthrough this sonic monolith not for the faint at heart, “Damned” is a singular ...

TITHE is a Portland, Oregon based band that constructs an unorthodox amalgamation of death metal, black metal, and grind without straying too far from the fundamentals of aggressiveness and depravity. Conceived in 2017 by vocalist/guitarist Matt Eiseman and drummer Kevin Swartz, the band spent its first years writing and releasing a self-titled EP before finding bassist Alex Huddleston at the end of 2018. This lineup went on to release the debut LP “Penance” in May 2020, which despite the challenge of releasing in the ...

TITHE is a Portland, Oregon based band that constructs an unorthodox amalgamation of death metal, black metal, and grind without straying too far from the fundamentals of aggressiveness and depravity. Conceived in 2017 by vocalist/guitarist Matt Eiseman and drummer Kevin Swartz, the band spent its first years writing and releasing a self-titled EP before finding bassist Alex Huddleston at the end of 2018. This lineup went on to release the debut LP “Penance” in May 2020, which despite the challenge of releasing in the ...

A new band on Sulatron! A spacey debut by this young ukrainian band!What they say about the album: Echo Colonnade is an album written, produced, and recorded by REFLECTOR in Bila Tserkva,Ukraine. Our journey from the very start till the release of the record lasted from 2016 to 2020 and we have faced a lot of challenges along the way. The three of us had to record using what we had in an abandoned basement and Sasha’s improvised home studio, ...

Formed in 2018, Ravenlight play an energetic brand of Progressive tinged Symphonic Power Metal which have gained them a reputation as one of the most exciting and unique bands to emerge from the Irish Metal scene in recent years. Starting with their 2018 EP release “End of the World“, Ravenlight quickly made their mark on the local scene and further afield with a number of shows across Ireland, including an invite to support progressive metal legends Evergrey in Dublin in March 2019.At the start of 2020, Ravenlight ...

After taking some 20 years off, Dutch gothic doom‐death act Celestial Season roared back in 2020 with a startingly ambitious comeback album called The Secret Teachings, then followed up in April of this year with Mysterium I. Now just a scant 7 months later they’re back with the second part of a planned trilogy, dropping Mysterium II in time for Christmas stocking stuffing. For those unfamiliar with Celestial Season’s sound, they’re in the same space as classic My Dying Bride and early Anathema, with ...

A blanket of smoke and incense billows from an attic-bedroom conversion as Electric Wizard makes arare appearance from his occult abode to make a sandwich or to record an episode of Most Haunted. Conan sits in the garage and uses his sharp fingernails to shape mythical creatures out of wood, sporadically bellowing songs of war into the night, begrudgingly quieting down when his mother threatens to take away his copy of The Silmarillion. Slomatics is the younger brother of the two aforementioned doomsters. He ...

Since 2005, Belfast based space-sludge juggernauts Slomatics have scoured the cosmic plains fordoomy inspiration. The universe is a vast place, and with their seventh album Canyons released in 2019, Slomatics haven’t run out of inspiration. Every Slomatics’ record tells a story. Their 2016 release Future Echo Returns was an earthy beast, dense and direct. Bone-rattling heaviness in the form of fuzz-laden doom was the main tool used on that record; in my review of that release I desired more tenderness, more humanity. Canyons is ...

FeaturesMandy Morton Folk‐rock’s magic lady recounts her ’70s heydayDark Hard (and soft) rock rumblings from a Northampton basementLaurie Styvers How a displaced US singer‐songwriter carved her niche in the early ’70sWhiteout Too glam, too country, just too good for the ’90s Britpop landscapeThe Standells LA garage gods who found fame with ‘Dirty Water’ and sometimes wore whiteRegularsThoughts & Words Your letters, tweets and emails Shindiggin’ What’s hot on the Shindig! turntableSubscribers’ Prize Draw Subscribe now and you could win the ...

This is psychedelic rock, the kind of rock that we could have had now if the line of true Woodstock had prevailed, the line of Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin, of Jefferson Airplane and Led Zeppelin. We hear the furious keyboards and Termenvox parts played by the band’s guitarist Vladimir Anchevsky. This is the first album by Rada & Blackthorn that contains more instrumental improvisations than vocals. Rada heard the tune and the lyrics of “The Moon Riders” in a dream. That is the most ...

2019 album and the 16th by British songwriter John Howard, Cut The Wire, gets its vinyl debut as part of Think Like A Key Music’s singer-songwriter series. The album, originally released on Spain’s You Are The Cosmos label, was written and recorded by Howard at his Una Casita studio in Murcia after working on his first autobiography, Incidents Crowded With Life. It was a creative process whose influence can be clearly heard on these new compositions.John plays and sings everything on the album, which starts ...

TLAK Goes DIY series presents a most welcome remastered edition of Games & Groceries by R. Stevie Moore. Originally a cassette album recorded in 1978 by this pioneer of home recording and do-it-yourself musical aesthetic. This double album features some of his most imaginative and entertaining writing and recording from this period, making it one of the most popular albums among RSM fans. Its music diverse, ranging from sunshine pop to newwave powerpop, with a fair share of novelty tunes, musique concrète and disco satire. Includes ...

TLAK Goes DIY series presents Songs For Cilla To Sing, a long lost tape recently discovered and recovered loaded with home demos recorded by cult-British songwriter and “king of lo-fi” according to Goldmine magazine, Brian Bordello (of The Bordellos). These were all songs meant for Cilla Black’s ears to hear and, hopefully, sing. The singer had retired by the time it finally reached her, but some songs duly appeared on other groups releases. Finally, collectors of underground music can marvel at what might have been ...

TLAK Goes DIY series presents A Tour Of British Duck Ponds by Fran Ashcroft. Best known as the record producer with a skill for using the minimum number of microphones and tracks to get the best sound. In this return to artistry, his solo album was recorded completely at home where he played every instrument himself. The very eccentric British tour is characterized by his “less is more” approach across its ten songs, driven for the most part by quirky, keyboard based tunes that will ...