The first of this week’s blockbuster releases comes from Bdrmm, whose trademark sound hasn’t disappeared by any means, the band’s more guitar-heavy beginnings being a blueprint and influence for many of the groups breaking through in the here and now. This is a time when shoegaze is enjoying its strongest revival since its inception in the ’80s, but those guitars are now incorporated into a broader, more expansive and varied sonic palette, and it’s immediately clear that the Hull band have broken new ground on Microtonic.
There was a collective desire for a new Doves album as soon as they closed the door on The Universal Want’s No.1 success, and ‘Renegade’, the lead single from their new album, Constellations for the Lonely, was written soon afterwards – the last song to be written in their famed creative rural retreat, Frank Bough Sound III. Physically unanchored, waving off a totem of their shared past and facing personal mountains to climb, a new, intense, filmic, classic Doves album was carefully nurtured.
Supertramp was, in 1979, one of the biggest bands in the world, following the release and extensive accompanying tour for the album Breakfast in America. Their complete set at the 8,000-seat Pavillon de Paris on 2 December that year, on the third of four sold-out nights, is now being released on LP and CD as Live in Paris ’79, the first time the audio has been available without the video.
More than 40 years on, Sex Pistols’ output from their original creative period together – forged amidst times of poor leadership and economic turmoil – continues to resonate in ways most could never have imagined. Not least those Stateside who witnessed the performances that make up this 3-disc release. The first of these, a performance at the South East Music Hall in Atlanta, Georgia on 4 January 1978, is released this week, with live recordings from their subsequent gigs at Dallas and San Francisco to follow in March and April.
While it should need little introduction, the now legendary Ace of Spades was a truly game-changing slice of hard-rock perfection. Igniting generations of music fans with its speaker-destroying riffs, ear-shredding volume and indomitable speed and style, this Motörhead classic pushed boundaries and changed the musical landscape forever. Amped up to 11, nothing was harder, nothing was faster – and, certainly, nothing was louder.
Our release of the week comes from Yazz Ahmed, who delivers a groundbreaking fusion of tradition and innovation on her stunning new album, A Paradise in the Hold, on which she creates a contemporary jazz project that is set to make a lasting impact on the genre. The record is a tribute to the sorrowful songs of Bahrain’s pearl divers, the strength of Arab women and the celebratory rhythms of women’s traditional drumming circles, while also telling the story of Yazz’s own decade-long voyage of self-discovery.
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