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SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS
Ghostory

Recorded in-between tours, Ghostory exemplifies a fervent progression of School of Seven Bells‘s growth as artists, preserving the common themes found on their last two releases but exposing them in different fashions: the familiar ethereal and enigmatic tones are omnipresent, surrounded by layers of influences from `80s pop, shoegaze and ambient electronic sounds. However, Ghostory comes with a story in mind: the tale of a young girl named Lafaye and the ghosts that surround her life. This album is truly School of Seven Bells‘ defining work, beautifully crafted and haunting, with the story of Lafaye permeating the psyche long after the music stops.

ARTIST: School of Seven Bells
TITLE: Ghostory
LABEL: Vagrant / Ghostly International
RELEASE DATE: February 28, 2012
TIME: 45:13 min.
WEB: http://sviib.com/

01. The Night [03:47]
02. Love Play [04:11]
03. Lafaye [04:14]
04. Low Times [06:32]
05. Reappear [04:10]
06. Show Me Love [04:44]
07. Scavenger [04:26]
08. White Wind [04:42]
09. When You Sing [08:34]

School of Seven Bells – Lafaye

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SHEARWATER
Animal Joy

Shearwater‘s Animal Joy is the first band’s album for Sub Pop. Led by Jonathan Meiburg, and featuring drummer Thor Harris, and bassist Kimberly Burke, Shearwater ditch the expansive approach of their recent records (particularly the epic trilogy of Palo Santo, Rook and The Golden Archipelago) to create a record that seems shockingly direct, immediate and intensely personal. Meiburg is no stranger to lush, crafted recordings, but this one sounds like no prior Shearwater incarnation.

ARTIST: Shearwater
TITLE: Animal Joy
LABEL: Sub Pop
RELEASE DATE: February 14, 2012
TIME: 43:10 min.
WEB: http://shearwatermusic.com/

01. Animal Life [03:38]
02. Breaking the Yearlings [03:08]
03. Dread Sovereign [03:51]
04. You As You Were [03:43]
05. Insolence [06:25]
06. Immaculate [02:26]
07. Open Your Houses (basilisk) [03:25]
08. Run the Banner Down [02:50]
09. Pushing the River [04:32]
10. Believing Makes It Easy [04:11]
11. Star of the Age [05:01]

Shearwater – Breaking the Yearlings

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SLOVE
Le Danse

Welcome to the addictive sound of Slove where the guitars purr and the synths glisten. Slove are a French band bridging the between addictive indie pop and electronica, and doing it successfully, may we add. They bring with them a talented gang of vocalists including Olivier Rocabois, Maik and Anne Laures and it makes for a pretty formidable mix. You may think you’d know what to find when you see the label “French dance music” but Slove take a sidestep away from what you’d expect.

ARTIST: Slove
TITLE: Le Danse
LABEL: Pschent
RELEASE DATE: November 28, 2011
TIME: 47:08 min.
WEB: http://plaisirdefrance.net/artistes/slove

01. Le Danse [04:58]
02. Do We Need [05:46]
03. The Brightest [06:10]
04. Flash [04:49]
05. Noisy Neige [04:28]
06. DMGM [01:24]
07. My Pop [04:50]
08. Carte Postale [06:14]
09. Find Out [03:29]
10. If Only I Had [05:00]

Slove – Flash

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WE HAVE BAND
Ternion

If prizes could be awarded for sheer variety of sonic scope, We Have Band would nab every one going. For the dynamic two lads ‘n’ a lass trio, their sophomore effort Ternion plays out as a mish-mash of clever indie ingenuity, electronica and synth-pop. But even that doesn’t do them justice, because, frankly speaking, just so much is going on in every track: like a zoo of assorted instruments let loose, Ternion’s disparate elements are free to play to their own devices.

ARTIST: We Have Band
TITLE: Ternion
LABEL: Naïve
RELEASE DATE: February 28, 2012
TIME: 84:35 min.
WEB: http://www.wehaveband.com/

01. Shift [04:38]
02. After All [04:13]
03. Where Are You People? [03:50]
04. Visionary [04:59]
05. What’s Mine, What’s Yours [04:11]
06. Steel in the Groove [05:00]
07. Tired of Running [04:38]
08. Watertight [04:00]
09. Rivers of Blood [03:12]
10. Pressure On [04:57]
11. Ternion Aside [26:57]

12. Shift (acoustic) [03:56]
13. After All (acoustic) [03:19]
14. What’s Mine, What’s Yours (acoustic) [03:35]
15. Watertight (acoustic) [03:10]

We Have Band – Where Are You People? (walls remix)

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VAGUE-À-BONDE
Involution / Evolution

Involution/Evolution is the debut album of Vague-à-Bonde (a.k.a. Nicole Alicia Brenny, former member of Waxx Maxx). Involution/Evolution was written and produced by Nicole herself entirely in her own bedroom, but that doesn’t mean any lo-fi attitude. The album is beyond doubt a professional product: by the end, what we hear here is an intelligent and brilliant songwriter that showcases her range of talents in 8 tracks that fall somewhere between Fleetwood Mac and K-Pop, the ethereal and the corporal. And, considering she is an independent artist self-releasing her first full-length, it is quiet a feat.

ARTIST: Vague-à-Bonde
TITLE: Involution/Evolution
LABEL: self-released
RELEASE DATE: February 22, 2012
TIME: 32:04 min.
WEB: http://vagueabonde.tumblr.com/

01. Voices [03:09]
02. Best Nights [04:23]
03. Ghosts [03:06]
04. MV [03:57]
05. Pop [04:23]
06. 1221 [03:53]
07. Something [03:58]
08. Sky [05:15]

Vague-à-Bonde – MV

removed by request

CALIBRO 35
Ogni Riferimento a Persone Esistenti
o a Fatti Realmente Accaduti è Puramente Casuale

Italian super-combo Calibro 35, with this 3rd release in their discography, scores a masterpiece that eats the previous two in one bite. Ogni Riferimento a Persone Esistenti o a Fatti Realmente Accaduti è Puramente Casuale simply draws a big line between the joke-fun-intentions the projects started with and the actual band, who really can’t avoid to put itself amongst the 5-6 most interesting Italian-ones. Everything was born some years ago with the excitant idea of bringing back to light the music of the 70s b-sides movies, but nowadays the band reveals a stylistic growth that, even without distancing itself from the initial intention, creates something absolutely innovative: funky riffs within elegant jazz ouvertures, blaxploitation-winds and tally-oh vocals which lay themselves down on fuzzy guitars, furious rhythms and delicious scoring. Calibro 35‘s maturity comes just as we expected it: welcome, funny, passionate and really, really ambitious.

ARTIST: Calibro 35
TITLE: Ogni Riferimento a Persone Esistenti o a Fatti Realmente Accaduti è Puramente Casuale
LABEL: Tannen
RELEASE DATE: February 7, 2012
TIME: 39:55 min.
WEB: http://www.calibro35.com/

01. Ogni Riferimento a Fatti Realmente Accaduti è Puramente Casuale [03:45]
02. Uh Ah Brrr [02:33]
03. Arrivederci e Grazie [03:13]
04. New Dehli Deli [03:24]
05. Il Pacco [04:04]
06. Passaggi nel Tempo [02:23]
07. New York, New York [02:54]
08. Buone Notizie [03:49]
09. La Band a del B.B.Q. (brooklyn, bronx, queens) [03:09]
10. Pioggia e Cemento [02:38]
11. Massacro all’Alba [05:32]
12. Ogni Riferimento a Persone Realmente Esistenti è Puremente Casuale [03:34]

Calibro 35 – Uh Ah Brrr

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APOLLO 440
The Future’s What It Used to Be

We guess that someone of you was waiting this one for quite a while. Apollo 440‘s previous album, Dude Descending a Staircase was released in 2003, and nine years is over an eternity in music industry nowadays. Kids of today probably have not even the memories of Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Dub as probably they don’t have a clue who the hell is Eddie Van Halen. Still and unsurprisingly, Apollo 440 came back with The Future’s What It Used to Be: a powerful and fresh album, the trendy dubstep frequency oscillations and bass wobblings are incorporated into their noisy electronics and rocking construction, and definitively they delivered (once again) a killer album as they mandatory should.

ARTIST: Apollo 440
TITLE: The Future’s What It Used to Be
LABEL: Stealth Sonic
RELEASE DATE: January 30, 2012
TIME: 46:23 min.
WEB: http://www.apollo440.com/

01. Stay Frosty [02:45]
02. The Future’s What It Used to Be [04:47]
03. Smoke & Mirrors [04:54]
04. Stealth Cantorum [00:08]
05. A Deeper Dub [05:22]
06. Love Is Evil [05:09]
07. Odessa Dubstep [04:55]
08. Motorbootee [04:12]
09. Traumarama [03:50]
10. Fuzzy Logic [05:37]
11. Music Don’t Die [04:44]

Apollo 440 – Traumarama

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AIR
Le Voyage Dans la Lune

Revered Parisian electronic duo Air (Nicolas Godin and JB Dunckel) were asked to compose an original score for the restored version of the classic 1902 silent film Le Voyage Dans La Lune (“A Trip to the Moon”) by Georges Méliès. This new album is the fully realized outcome of that collaboration. Georges Méliès is one of the central characters in Martin Scorsese‘s new blockbuster hit Hugo and his life and work (including the iconic “A Trip to the Moon”) is attracting a whole new wave of interest as a result. Features vocals and lyrics by Victoria Legrand of Beach House on Seven Stars and Au Revoir Simone on Who Am I Now?.

ARTIST: Air
TITLE: Le Voyage Dans la Lune
LABEL: Astralwerks
RELEASE DATE: February 7, 2012
TIME: 31:21 min.
WEB: http://en.aircheology.com/

01. Astronomic Club [03:13]
02. Seven Stars [04:23]
03. Ratour Sur Terre [00:33]
04. Parade [02:33]
05. Moon Fever [03:34]
06. Sonic Armada [05:05]
07. Who Am I Now [03:01]
08. Décollage [01:38]
09. Cosmic Trip [04:10]
10. Homme Lune [00:18]
11. Lava [02:53]

Air (feat. victoria legrand) – Seven Stars

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BAND OF SKULLS
Sweet Sour

Laughing in the face of the concept of the “difficult” second album, Southampton’s Band of Skulls seem to have rattled off Sweet Sour with ease as the album possesses the kind of cocky grandeur that we saw in some big combo of the past years. Benefitting from some pretty slick production (courtesy of Ian Davenport), Russell and Emma’s harmonies are so smooth they may as well be hanging out the window of an old Corvette, at the bottom of the garden path, with a single red rose in their teeth. But Sweet Sour is pretty much just that: velveteen vocals over filthy bass lines, soft, lengthy ballads juxtaposed with brutally brief numbers that are saturated with festival headline ambition. Don’t miss it.

ARTIST: Band of Skulls
TITLE: Sweet Sour
LABEL: Electric Blues
RELEASE DATE: February 28, 2012
TIME: 38:48 min.
WEB: http://www.myspace.com/bandofskulls

01. Sweet Sour [03:24]
02. Bruises [03:51]
03. Wanderluster [03:51]
04. Devil Takes Care of His Own [03:05]
05. Lay My Head Down [05:30]
06. You’re Not Pretty But You Got It Going On [03:05]
07. Navigate [05:40]
08. Hometowns [03:21]
09. Lies [02:28]
10. Close to Nowhere [04:33]

Band of Skulls – Sweet Sour

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TYING TIFFANY
Dark Days, White Nights

On this 4th studio album Dark Days, White Nights (successor of the great Peoples Temple where we saw electro-clash meeting new-wave), Italian-vamp-ex-suicide-girl Tying Tiffany has surprisingly chosen to record a new full release almost completely in the a strange dark-dream-pop style and to leave the more club-oriented electro-hardness a little bit behind. And this is nothing but an unconventional way for her to prove again that she stays one of the most important artists and style-icons of the last years in the alternative/indie/new-wave scene.

ARTIST: Tying Tiffany
TITLE: Dark Days, White Nights
LABEL: Trisol
RELEASE DATE: February 3, 2012
TIME: 37:35 min.
WEB: http://www.tyingtiffany.com/

01. New Colony [04:17]
02. Dark Day [03:17]
03. Drownin’ [03:25]
04. Sinistral [04:09]
05. She Never Dies [03:07]
06. Universe [03:32]
07. Unleashed [04:19]
08. 5 a.m. [03:14]
09. Lepers of the Sun [03:36]
10. White Night [04:39]

Tying Tiffany – Universe

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THERAPY?
A Brief Crack of Light

Along with The Wildhearts, Bush and Terrorvision, Therapy? were at the forefront of the post-grunge scene in the UK during the mid-1990s. Despite the charts being dominated by britpop, Therapy?‘s breakthrough came with the classic albums Troublegum and Infernal Love, accompanied by the hit singles Die Laughing and Diane. The last decade has seen the band retreating from their commercial success with a series of raw and riff-heavy albums. Now, following the double live act We’re Here to the End, Therapy? finally return with their 11th full-length record A Brief Crack of Light. We have to say that there is something about the new album that sounds renewed, as if the band have taken some time away to discover new music and rediscover themselves, but what is perhaps most impressive about this release is how the band never seem to run out of memorable guitar riffs and funky drum beats, with each song carrying on the energy from the last. Thankfully it would seem that Therapy? are still at the top of their game.

ARTIST: Theraphy?
TITLE: A Brief Crack of Light
LABEL: Blast
RELEASE DATE: February 14, 2012
TIME: 41:18 min.
WEB: http://www.therapyquestionmark.co.uk/

01. Living in the Shadow of the Terrible Thing [03:57]
02. Plague Bell [04:12]
03. Marlow [04:36]
04. Before You, With You, After You [03:33]
05. The Buzzing [03:39]
06. Get Your Dead Hand Off My Shoulder [04:08]
07. Ghost Trio [05:20]
08. Why Turbulence [03:33]
09. Stark Raving Sane [02:37]
10. Ecclesiates [04:25]

Therapy? – Marlow

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MARK LANEGAN BAND
Blues Funeral

What else do we need to say that hasn’t been alrealdy said about Mark Lanegan? It would be enough to enumerate the bands and artist he has sung with, such as Screaming Trees, Queens Of the Stone Age, The Twilight Singers, The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers and Isobel Campbell. Blues Funeral is the first Mark Lanegan Band album since 2004′s Bubblegum. It was recorded in Hollywood (California) by Alain Johannes at his 11ad studio. The music was played by Johannes himself and Jack Irons with appearances from Greg Dulli, Josh Homme and many others. Enjoy.

ARTIST: Mark Lanegan Band
TITLE: Blues Funeral
LABEL: 4AD
RELEASE DATE: February 7, 2012
TIME: 56:00 min.
WEB: http://marklanegan.com/

01. The Gravedigger’s Song [03:46]
02. Bleeding Muddy Water [06:20]
03. Gray Goes Black [04:14]
04. St. Louis Elegy [04:37]
05. Riot in My House [03:56]
06. Ode to Sad Disco [06:27]
07. Phantasmagoria Blues [03:19]
08. Quiver Syndrome [04:06]
09. Harborview Hospital [04:34]
10. Leviathan [04:25]
11. Deep Black Vanishing Train [03:09]
12. Tiny Grain of Truth [07:07]

Mark Lanegan – The Gravedigger’s Song

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LANA DEL REY
Born to Die

Sometimes stars emerge. Sometimes stars are thrust upon us. And sometimes stars simply slip into the atmosphere as if propelled by something otherworldly. It is into this last category that the astonishing presence, voice, look and feel of Lana Del Rey (born Lizzy Grant) falls. Musical stardom is not an option with Ms. Del Rey: it is her vocation. She calls herself the “gangsta Nancy Sinatra” and defines her genre as “Hollywood pop/sadcore”, a dramatic new loop for pop music. Lana Del Rey‘s direct influences were visual as well as musical: David Lynch, soundtracks for ’50s black and white movies, the whirring sound of the Ferris at Coney Island, fame itself. She lived in a New Jersey trailer park and decked her homestead in flags, streamers and seasonally inappropriate Christmas lights: this was Lana’s world now and it needed to sparkle. Whether or not it will work? That much we don’t know, but Born to Die says it seems likely that it will.

ARTIST: Lana del Rey
TITLE: Born to Die
LABEL: Interscope
RELEASE DATE: January 31, 2012
TIME: 41:27 min.
WEB: http://www.lanadelrey.com/

01. Born to Die [04:45]
02. Off the Races [05:01]
03. Blue Jeans [03:30]
04. Video Games [04:42]
05. Diet Mtn Dew [03:43]
06. National Anthem [03:51]
07. Dark Paradise [04:03]
08. Radio [03:35]
09. Carmen [04:09]
10. Million Dollar Man [03:50]
11. Summertime Sadness [04:25]
12. This Is What Makes Us Girls [03:58]
13. Without You [03:49]
14. Lolita [03:39]
15. Lucky Ones [03:47]

Lana del Rey – Born to Die (gemini remix)

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