Welcome back to our round up of new music for the coming month. As we head in to Autumn there are some great new vinyl releases heading our way. We've got the hotly anticipated live recording of Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones 1981 Checkerboard Lounge gig, new music from Tim Burgess and The Amazons, the debut record from Marcus Mumford and classic reissues by House of Pain and Blur.
Muddy Waters & The Rolling Stones - Checkerboard Lounge Chicago 1981
Due 2nd September 2022
On November 22nd, 1981, in the middle of their mammoth American tour, the Rolling Stones arrived in Chicago prior to playing 3 nights at the Rosemont Horizon. Long influenced by the Chicago blues, the band paid a visit to Buddy Guy’s club the Checkerboard Lounge to see the legendary bluesman perform. It didn’t take long before Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Ian Stewart were joining in on stage and later Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Lefty Dizz also played their part. This 2LP package is pressed on 140-gram Red Opaque (LP1) and White Opaque (LP2) vinyl and is packaged in a gatefold sleeve.
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Stealing Sheep And The Radiophonic Workshop - La Planète Sauvage
Due 2nd September 2022
René Laloux’s celebrated 1973 sci-fi animation ‘La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet)’, is overhauled with a re-imagined soundtrack by electronic modernists Stealing Sheep and legendary sound innovators The Radiophonic Workshop. This exclusive release is part of Fire Records’ re-imagined score series. “No institution has had a greater impact on the development of electronic music than the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.” - The Vinyl Factory. It’s a real pre-Avatar conundrum that Stealing Sheep, with the help of Bob Earland, Dick Mills and Roger Limb from the Radiophonic Workshop, unravel. Creating an ethereal excursion that’s narrated by Roger Limb; like a futuristic Martin Denny, or Dr Who gone ambient techno, with a hint of Forbidden Planet 50 years on. It’s an analogue swirl set in an off-world paradise; a field recording from the future. This is a creative, generation-spanning, union brought together to score this unique cult film. A must for fans of psyche electronica and Stealing Sheep’s formidable ‘Big Wows’ album. “Stealing Sheep devour a broad range of styles, incorporating everything from the dark dance-pop of Grace Jones to the experimentations of Radiophonic Workshop pioneer Delia Derbyshire and John Carpenter soundtracks.” The Guardian // ‘La Planète Sauvage’ is a thing of ambient beauty punctuated with electronic earworms that switches from intensely ominous to otherworldly dream like moments.
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House of Pain - Fine Malt Lyrics (30th Anniversary Edition)
Due 2nd September 2022
"Tommy Boy Records celebrates "30 Years" of House of Pain's debut album House of Pain (Fine Malt Lyrics) with remastered, limited-edition and standard versions. Everlast, DJ Lethal & Danny Boy formed House of Pain while attending high school and were signed to Tommy Boy Records after fashioning themselves as rowdy Irish-American hooligans, hitting the local rap & alternative music scene House of Pain (Fine Malt Lyrics) went multi- platinum and the self- titled debut album spawned the successful producer DJ Muggs, who produced the single "Jump Around". The song was also remixed twice by Pete Rock, one version featuring a verse from him and one without. "Jump Around" became a hit in 1992, reaching number 3 in the United States. A 1993 re- release of the song in the United Kingdom, where the initial release had been a minor hit, peaked at number 8. "Jump Around" was featured at position 580 on Q Magazine's "1001 Best Songs Ever," number 24 on VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the 90s," number 66 on VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop," number 325 on Blender's "500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born" and number 47 on NME's "100 Best Songs of the 1990s." The song is popular among dancehall DJs and is widely regarded in the United Kingdom as a club classic. The album also featured Cypress Hill member B-Real on "Put Your Head Out" and Funkdoobiest's Son Doobie on "House and the Rising Sun", both members of the musical collective Soul Assassins. Q magazine "…their music is of the dense, hard- hitting school of hip hop...the group have absorbed black rap's musical lessons and create a satisfying platform for their above average deliveries..." The Source "…a very solid and at times exceptional album...imagine if Licensed to Ill wasn't an upper middle class Jewish thing but rather a working class Irish thing...the atmosphere is like that of a cross between a frat party and a bar room brawl..."
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The Amazons - How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me?
Due 9th September 2022
Following two huge Top 10 records and sold out shows across the globe, one of the UK’s most exciting bands, The Amazons, release their stratospheric, anthem-packed new album How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me? - on Fiction Records.
The third record is both a love letter and a rallying cry. Expansive, uplifting, sun-drenched singalongs produced by Jim Abbiss (Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Adele), and featuring co-writing collaborations with the likes of Maggie Rogers and Jamie Hartmann, find the Reading 4-piece emerging from the darkness of 2019’s Future Dust full of lust for life and post-pandemic hope.
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KT Tunstall - NUT
Due 9th September 2022
KT Tunstall burst onto the music scene with her 2004 multi-platinum debut, Eye to the Telescope, which spawned the global hits "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" and "Suddenly I See." These songs established Tunstall as a captivating, must-see performer, as well as a Songwriter with a singular knack for balancing introspective folk and propulsive rock. "I feel there are two immediate, recognizable pillars of my style," she says. "I have this troubadour, acoustic guitar-driven emotional side. Then there's definitely a rocker side of me with sharper teeth." In the last few years, the Grammy-nominated Scottish Musician has expanded on these musical selves by focusing on a trilogy of records, where each album zeroes in on a single concept: soul, body and mind. The first, 2016's KIN, was the soul record; 2018's WAX was the body record, and the new NUT is the mind record. Produced by Martin Terefe, who co-wrote her 2005 global hit "Other Side of the World," NUT draws on Tunstall's love of percussive West African grooves as a metaphor for the learning patterns of the mind and is an eclectic album that seamlessly weaves together disparate styles. She found her writing mojo thanks to "Canyons," a song propelled by a grimy, heavy rock riff. In keeping with NUT’s theme, the song's lyrics are about the canyon-like physiology of the brain, and explore the parallels between humans developing unique identities and the way nature evolves and is shaped over time. Elsewhere, NUT’s lyrics and sound delve into KT’s own personal evolution, and the way we all evolve through the repetition of behaviors and our reactions to life experiences. "Private Eyes" grew out of Tunstall's brush with the vampiric downside of fame, while "Three," summarizes the arc of the trilogy, inspired by a journal practice where she would write multiple entries on one topic from the different perspectives of mind, body and soul. "It was necessary in the circumstances to make NUT completely differently from any other record I’ve made," Tunstall says. "But I was excited and ready for that. The reason I pursued music was because I had to avoid a repetitive job. I need to feel a constant sense of exploration in life. I've realized you can easily fall into repetition even in this job. And so for NUT, I was like, 'Come on, let's do what we said we were going to do. Let's push into something new.' What’s always most important is making an exciting, meaningful record that I love, and to have fun while I’m doing it."
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Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy (2022 Remix)
Due 9th September 2022
Manic Street Preachers release a radically reimagined version of their 6th album ‘Know Your Enemy’. The new version of the album has been entirely remixed and reconstructed to form two separate albums as originally planned. This deluxe release includes two previously unheard ‘forgotten’ tracks: ‘Studies in Paralysis’ and ‘Rosebud’, which is available online today (22nd July 2022). Beginning all wiry and cracked, ‘Rosebud’ soon opens out into a stuttering Hammond organ riff, a pensive rhythm track and a lyric that regrets “most things I never finished”. A Kieran Evans directed video for ‘Rosebud’ is online now. Following the success of 1998’s’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’, Manic Street Preachers planned an ambitious follow-up to be released as two distinct albums: an aggressive, rapid fire return to their roots called ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Door To The River’, a more conciliatory, reflective collection. During the recording sessions, the trio got cold feet and settled on a single album that forced often conflicting ideas to sit side by side on the same record. ‘Know Your Enemy’ was launched in February 2001 with a show at Teatro Karl Marx in Havana in front of the Cuban leader and charted at No.2 in the UK the following week, going on to see over half a million copies worldwide. The singles taken from the album: ‘So Why So Sad’, ‘Found That Soul’, ‘Ocean Spray’ and ‘Let Robeson Sing’ all reached the Top 20. Whilst going through the band’s archive to put together an anniversary version of ‘Know Your Enemy’, Nicky Wire found the original tapes of ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Door To The River’ that he’d made up in the studio during recording. When he put forward the idea of recreating those records, James Dean Bradfield agreed on the condition that he could remix the entire record with the band’s longtime studio partner Dave Eringa. The new mixes would bring a clarity to each record, losing extraneous studio effects and digital noise from the ‘Solidarity’ songs and stripping away unnecessary orchestration and embellishment from the tracks that made up ‘Door To The River’. Author and long-term band collaborator Robin Turner explains in his expansive sleeve notes that this release is “the Director’s Cut of ‘Know Your Enemy’. The picture has been painstakingly restored, cleaned up, brightened. Although it doesn’t aim to replace the original, it most certainly enhances it.”
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Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years
Due 16th September 2022
2022 marks 20 years since the passing of the legendary Joe Strummer. While best known as the frontman for The Clash, between 1999-2002 Strummer produced some of his most exciting work alongside The Mescaleros.
Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years is the first comprehensive collection highlighting this intense period of creativity and brings together the albums Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999), Global A Go-Go (2001), the posthumous Streetcore (2003), and Vibes Compass, a brand-new compilation of 15 B-sides and rarities, including never before heard tracks like 'Ocean of Dreams' (featuring Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols on guitar) and early demos of some of the Mescaleros best-loved tracks (“The Road To Rock 'N' Roll,” “X-Ray Style” and more), through to some of the original recordings from Joe's last ever sessions (“Coma Girl (Outtake),” “Fantastic” and “Get Down Moses (Outtake)”), all in one complete boxset.
All albums are remastered by Grammy Award winner Paul Hicks (The Beatles / The Rolling Stones / John Lennon / David Bowie) and are packaged in a richly curated boxset, featuring extensive new liner notes and interviews with Joe's friends, collaborators and The Mescaleros band members, plus never-before-seen handwritten notes, lyrics, and drawings by Joe taken from the Joe Strummer Archive.
Both the 4CD and 7LP boxes include four reproduction lyric sheets and chord charts, and the LP box includes an exclusive 12”x12” art print. Joe Strummer 002 serves as a loving tribute to Strummer’s final musical output, released in celebration of what would have been his 70th birthday year.
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Marcus Mumford - (self-titled)
Due 16th September 2022
The debut album from Marcus Mumford, frontman of Multi-Platinum, Grammy, & Brit Award winning band Mumford & Sons. The 10 track album features collaborations with Clairo, Phoebe Bridges, Brandi Carlile, & Monica Martin. Includes the lead tracks; ‘Cannibal, ‘Grace’, & ‘Better Off High’.
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Suede - Autofiction
Due 16th September 2022
Suede return with their ninth studio album Autofiction, set for release on 16th September 2022 via BMG. As Suede began work on the songs that would become Autofiction, they decided to go back to basics. In a move that recalled their most formative days, Brett Anderson, Mat Osman, Simon Gilbert, Richard Oakes and Neil Codling schlepped to a rehearsal studio in deserted Kings Cross to collect a key, hump their own gear, set up and start playing. Speaking about Autofiction, Brett Anderson said: "Autofiction is our punk record. No whistles and bells. Just the five of us in a room with all the glitches and fuck-ups revealed; the band themselves exposed in all their primal mess." First single ‘She Still Leads Me On’ is the track that reconfigured what the album could be. A beautiful song written from Brett to his late mother. As its title suggests, Autofiction is one of Anderson’s most personal records yet. Reflecting on the process of writing acclaimed works of memoir Coal Black Mornings and Afternoons With The Blinds Drawn helped Brett get a newfound perspective on himself as a performer and singer in the public eye, much of which has bled into the lyricism of Autofiction.
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Death Cab For Cutie - Asphalt Meadows
Due 16th September 2022
Formed in Bellingham, WA in 1997, Death Cab for Cutie almost immediately entered the ranks of the era’s definitive bands, fuelled in large part by the remarkable power of co-founder, vocalist, guitarist, and lead songwriter Benjamin Gibbard’s complex, often bittersweet songcraft. Asphalt Meadows is their tenth studio album and finds them exploring further into their own unique sound, evidenced by jagged lead single Roman Candles.
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Turin Brakes - Wide-Eyed Nowhere
Due 16th September 2022
Wide-Eyed Nowhere is Turin Brakes’ ninth full studio album, a set of new songs emerging 21 years after their seminal debut. It's no easy feat maintaining an optimistic attitude through the turbulence of the years, but the band found their own method down in deepest Tooting to produce this lean, bittersweet collection. The South London 4-Piece comprising Olly Knights, Gale Paridjanian, Rob Allum and Eddie Myer recorded this new set of songs at Twin Palms - Olly's garden studio - over the summer of 2021, choosing to let time infuse into the music and mature in a way it couldn’t in a pressurised commercial studio setting. Turin Brakes released Mercury Prize shortlisted the Optimist in March 2001 (achieving gold status in the UK), followed up by 2003’s Ether Song which featured the top 5 hit single "Pain Killer (Summer Rain)". The band has since moved on to rack up seven top 40 singles, seven top 40 albums and over a million record sales worldwide.
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Blur - Bustin' + Dronin'
Due 23rd September 2022
After a successful Record Store Day release, Bustin’ + Dronin’ will now be released on 2LP Black vinyl. Originally released in 1998 in Japan-only, this compilation features remixes of tracks from their 1997 eponymously titled, number one album. Originally only available as a 2-CD set including a Radio 1 John Peel session, only a handful of copies made their way over to the UK on import. Bustin’ + Dronin’ features nine remixes (note: no Peel Session) by William Orbit (tracks 1, 6, 7 & 9), Adrian Sherwood (2 & 8), Moby (4), Thurston Moore (5) and John McEntire (7) Please note unlike the RSD edition the 2LP Black vinyl will not include the original OBI-strip or replica insert.
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Tim Burgess - Typical Music
Due 23rd September 2022
Has there been a busier musician over the last two years? A more prolific artist? More creative? More heroic? Tim Burgess – as self-effacing a band leader, solo star, label runner, repeat memoirist and all-round caffeinated can-do kid as you’ll find – would certainly shrink from the latter accolade. “A hero??” he’d likely mutter with a shake of his boyish mop. “For playing some records?” Yes, Tim, we would say that. And not just because with the May 2020, mid-lockdown appearance of I Love The New Sky, his fifth solo album, he undauntedly pushed on with releasing an album that brought much-needed sunshine to a world enveloped in gloom. Over the course of the first year of the pandemic, Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties were a lifeline to many. At a time when the world shut down, we all retreated indoors, alone, and cancelled gigs were the least of our worries, the North Country Boy’s idea of utilising social media to unite us round a digital turntable was inspired. Meanwhile, Burgess was writing. And writing. And writing. From September 2020 to summer 2021, ideas poured out of Burgess. He’d been encouraged by Simon Raymonde, boss of his record label Bella Union ¬– and, of course, a former Cocteau Twin. He applied a musician’s logic: if you can’t tour your last album, write a new one. Then, when you can tour again, you’ll have two albums’ worth of songs to play. Well, now, arguably, Burgess has three albums’ worth of songs to perform live. Typical Music is a 22-track double, a blockbuster set of songs that are as expansive and diverse as they are rich. As fun as they are funky. That embrace heartache and love. That run the gamut, from ABBA (in the shape of guest vocalist Pearl Charles, whose own brilliant Magic Mirror album is the sound of the magic Swedes doin' disco) to Zappa (free-form studio experimentation is go!).
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Remember these are just some of what's coming this month, you can check out the rest of September's new releases here.