Non Exclsuive CD
The Travels represents a signpost in the continuing journey that is the songs of Berlin-based artist
Molly Nilsson.
Starting out by hand-dubbing CDrs and forging a singular path in the global pop underground, Nilsson’s
art has grown to the extent where hers is a precise songwriting devoid of unnecessary flourish. Her songs
are perfect silhouettes of feelings everyone shares but that few can articulate with such heart-rending, icy
pathos.
Journeys offer change - the possibility of renewal - and accordingly on The Travels Molly Nilsson’s
resonant voice is found curling around a new sense of optimism and wide-eyed discovery that was only
alluded to in her previous work. Songs like “Dear Life” might be spiked with a barbed sense of the
dejected, but the presiding feeling is one of optimism, of being in love with life despite a shield of
cynicism. “Dirty Fingers” brings a melancholy recognisable from previous work but with an incessant beat
and ecstatic underpinning it becomes apparent that a new force is at play here. In case the listener
missed it, “The Power Ballad” brings an endearing, sincerity to proceedings that also offers a tantalising
question: can you be sceptical about love but still be bewitched?
On her 5th long-player, Nilsson’s perspective is challenged and manipulated by changes in
environment and psychological space: like any other traveller the protagonist brings their own set of
values and emotional states to new places, colouring them with a wash of subjectivity. Like any other
traveller Molly Nilsson reacts to her environment and shares her unique version of it to other people.
Based loosely on Marco Polo’s “Travels” and reading like a map of the protagonist’s geographical and
inner journey, The Travels reveals new places and new emotions that are never the same to the
beholder. Nilsson’s art is in turning this subjectivity into a cloak that almost anyone can don for the trip
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
The Travels represents a signpost in the continuing journey that is the songs of Berlin-based artist
Molly Nilsson.
Starting out by hand-dubbing CDrs and forging a singular path in the global pop underground, Nilsson’s
art has grown to the extent where hers is a precise songwriting devoid of unnecessary flourish. Her songs
are perfect silhouettes of feelings everyone shares but that few can articulate with such heart-rending, icy
pathos.
Journeys offer change - the possibility of renewal - and accordingly on The Travels Molly Nilsson’s
resonant voice is found curling around a new sense of optimism and wide-eyed discovery that was only
alluded to in her previous work. Songs like “Dear Life” might be spiked with a barbed sense of the
dejected, but the presiding feeling is one of optimism, of being in love with life despite a shield of
cynicism. “Dirty Fingers” brings a melancholy recognisable from previous work but with an incessant beat
and ecstatic underpinning it becomes apparent that a new force is at play here. In case the listener
missed it, “The Power Ballad” brings an endearing, sincerity to proceedings that also offers a tantalising
question: can you be sceptical about love but still be bewitched?
On her 5th long-player, Nilsson’s perspective is challenged and manipulated by changes in
environment and psychological space: like any other traveller the protagonist brings their own set of
values and emotional states to new places, colouring them with a wash of subjectivity. Like any other
traveller Molly Nilsson reacts to her environment and shares her unique version of it to other people.
Based loosely on Marco Polo’s “Travels” and reading like a map of the protagonist’s geographical and
inner journey, The Travels reveals new places and new emotions that are never the same to the
beholder. Nilsson’s art is in turning this subjectivity into a cloak that almost anyone can don for the trip
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
More records from Molly Nilsson
1
Molly Nilsson - The Lonely Planet
2
Molly Nilsson - 1995
3
Molly Nilsson - H.O.P.E.
4
Molly Nilsson - Mountain Time
5
Molly Nilsson - Bunny Club
6
Molly Nilsson - Intermezzo: Palimpsest Galore
7
Molly Nilsson - Happyness
8
Molly Nilsson - Lovers Are Losers
9
Molly Nilsson - Clearblue
10
Molly Nilsson - My Body
11
Molly Nilsson - Titanic
12
Molly Nilsson - Bus 194 (All There Is)
13
Molly Nilsson - Tomorrow
Territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
LP 10th Anniversary - Red Gold Vinyl edition
Tracklist
1.The Lonely Planet
2.1995
3.H.O.P.E.
4.Mountain Time
5.Bunny Club
6.Intermezzo: Palimpsest Galore
7.Happyness
8.Lovers Are Losers
9.Clearblue
10.My Body
11.Titanic
12.Bus 194 (All There Is)
13.Tomorrow
To celebrate Molly Nilsson’s most enduring fan-favourite album to date, Night School and Dark Skies
Association are releasing a limited 10th anniversary pressing on Red-Gold vinyl, limited to 500 copies.
Since its release in late summer of 2015, Zenith has come to be considered Nilsson’s greatest album to date. Now
on its 6th pressing, in 2025 Zenith represents the mid-point in the songwriter’s career to date and contains firm fan
favourites in Mountain Time, Happyness and her most popular song, 1995. Zenith sits square between Nilsson’s
original flurry of DIY creativity and her later, outward-looking political material.
Original sales notes…
“A sweeping, cinematic, emotional change is in the air. Molly Nilsson’s sixth studio album Zenith begins with clear,
wide eyes open to Earth as we would love it to be but seldom is. Recorded in her home of Berlin and whilst touring
and, as ever, conceived, produced, written and recorded in solitude, Zenith is Nilsson’s big statement and
consequently her most affecting work to date. It sees her reveling in big arrangements, sweeping synth strings,
bigger choruses and emotions. Like the rest of us she looks within and to endless sunsets in wonder and
puzzlement.
That Molly Nilsson is a DIY cult figure is beyond question; she has always written directly and with wit straight down
the line between the universal and the personal. The difference with Zenith, and you can hear it in the opening
chords of opener The Only Planet, is that her scope is now much wider and her heart heavier than ever before:
over a post-ecstatic dusk, Nilsson serenades the globe in a loving embrace. Following on, 1995 is, arguably, one of
Nilsson’s finest songs to date. It’s one of those songs to learn the lyrics to, to listen to on repeat, a reason to wear
the grooves down to the bone, it’s why pop music can be one of the greatest art forms we have. It’s an example of
how, on this album, Molly draws the listener closer to her heart than ever before. There’s simply no escape from the
line “The plans that you made / when you still had the time / I’ve saved all the things that you left behind but by now
I guess I’d consider them all mine /Windows 95, is only a metaphor for what I feel inside / Although I’m older now /
there’s still an emptiness that’s never letting go somehow.” Show-stopper Mountain Time is the soundtrack to being
on the run, from societal conventions, from normative ideas of happiness, from your surroundings. It’s the
intoxicating call of the renegade. That’s not to say that Nilsson’s light touch has been forsaken for grandiose
statements. Bunny Club begins as a demo-sketch before breaking into a fast-paced tale of doomed romance with
big rave synths and Bus 194 (All There Is) sees Molly joyride through a city on a happy hardcore bus. But it’s
tracks like Tomorrow and another contender for best-ever-Molly moment, Happyness that the true scale of what
she’s accomplished reveals itself. We’re locked in a spiraling orbit, strings and bass whirling, gazing at the spinning
planet below us as we contemplate both the ultimate freedom in loneliness and the glimmer of hope in the Other.
Can we ever be truly with someone? Are we ever truly alone?
Over the 13 tracks here we get the impression that Nilsson may always be restless; like anyone else she has
conflicting feelings of love and hate. It’s just not many other people can tell you exactly how you feel before you
know it yourself.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LP 10th Anniversary - Red Gold Vinyl edition
Tracklist
1.The Lonely Planet
2.1995
3.H.O.P.E.
4.Mountain Time
5.Bunny Club
6.Intermezzo: Palimpsest Galore
7.Happyness
8.Lovers Are Losers
9.Clearblue
10.My Body
11.Titanic
12.Bus 194 (All There Is)
13.Tomorrow
To celebrate Molly Nilsson’s most enduring fan-favourite album to date, Night School and Dark Skies
Association are releasing a limited 10th anniversary pressing on Red-Gold vinyl, limited to 500 copies.
Since its release in late summer of 2015, Zenith has come to be considered Nilsson’s greatest album to date. Now
on its 6th pressing, in 2025 Zenith represents the mid-point in the songwriter’s career to date and contains firm fan
favourites in Mountain Time, Happyness and her most popular song, 1995. Zenith sits square between Nilsson’s
original flurry of DIY creativity and her later, outward-looking political material.
Original sales notes…
“A sweeping, cinematic, emotional change is in the air. Molly Nilsson’s sixth studio album Zenith begins with clear,
wide eyes open to Earth as we would love it to be but seldom is. Recorded in her home of Berlin and whilst touring
and, as ever, conceived, produced, written and recorded in solitude, Zenith is Nilsson’s big statement and
consequently her most affecting work to date. It sees her reveling in big arrangements, sweeping synth strings,
bigger choruses and emotions. Like the rest of us she looks within and to endless sunsets in wonder and
puzzlement.
That Molly Nilsson is a DIY cult figure is beyond question; she has always written directly and with wit straight down
the line between the universal and the personal. The difference with Zenith, and you can hear it in the opening
chords of opener The Only Planet, is that her scope is now much wider and her heart heavier than ever before:
over a post-ecstatic dusk, Nilsson serenades the globe in a loving embrace. Following on, 1995 is, arguably, one of
Nilsson’s finest songs to date. It’s one of those songs to learn the lyrics to, to listen to on repeat, a reason to wear
the grooves down to the bone, it’s why pop music can be one of the greatest art forms we have. It’s an example of
how, on this album, Molly draws the listener closer to her heart than ever before. There’s simply no escape from the
line “The plans that you made / when you still had the time / I’ve saved all the things that you left behind but by now
I guess I’d consider them all mine /Windows 95, is only a metaphor for what I feel inside / Although I’m older now /
there’s still an emptiness that’s never letting go somehow.” Show-stopper Mountain Time is the soundtrack to being
on the run, from societal conventions, from normative ideas of happiness, from your surroundings. It’s the
intoxicating call of the renegade. That’s not to say that Nilsson’s light touch has been forsaken for grandiose
statements. Bunny Club begins as a demo-sketch before breaking into a fast-paced tale of doomed romance with
big rave synths and Bus 194 (All There Is) sees Molly joyride through a city on a happy hardcore bus. But it’s
tracks like Tomorrow and another contender for best-ever-Molly moment, Happyness that the true scale of what
she’s accomplished reveals itself. We’re locked in a spiraling orbit, strings and bass whirling, gazing at the spinning
planet below us as we contemplate both the ultimate freedom in loneliness and the glimmer of hope in the Other.
Can we ever be truly with someone? Are we ever truly alone?
Over the 13 tracks here we get the impression that Nilsson may always be restless; like anyone else she has
conflicting feelings of love and hate. It’s just not many other people can tell you exactly how you feel before you
know it yourself.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
CD
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
CD
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - 1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2
Molly Nilsson - 2. Excalibur
3
Molly Nilsson - 3. Palestine
4
Molly Nilsson - 4. Jackboots Return
5
Molly Nilsson - 5. Wetcheeks
6
Molly Nilsson - 6. Red Telephone
7
Molly Nilsson - 7. Naming Names
8
Molly Nilsson - 8. The Communist Party
9
Molly Nilsson - 9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10
Molly Nilsson - 10. Point Doom
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
Black Vinyl LP, LTD 400
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Black Vinyl LP, LTD 400
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - 1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2
Molly Nilsson - 2. Excalibur
3
Molly Nilsson - 3. Palestine
4
Molly Nilsson - 4. Jackboots Return
5
Molly Nilsson - 5. Wetcheeks
6
Molly Nilsson - 6. Red Telephone
7
Molly Nilsson - 7. Naming Names
8
Molly Nilsson - 8. The Communist Party
9
Molly Nilsson - 9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10
Molly Nilsson - 10. Point Doom
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
Limited White Vinyl LP, LTD 400
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Limited White Vinyl LP, LTD 400
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - 1. Summer Cats
2
Molly Nilsson - 2. Perfect Past
3
Molly Nilsson - 3. Punks In Paradise
4
Molly Nilsson - 4. Plaza Italia
5
Molly Nilsson - 5. Blue Dollar
6
Molly Nilsson - 6. Maximo Says
7
Molly Nilsson - 7. Bar Roma
8
Molly Nilsson - 8. Malaysian Airlines
LP - Black Vinyl
Territory: WW-US-UK-FR-BNLX
Solo Paraiso will be available on vinyl for the first time in 10 years and Digitally for the first time.
Solo Paraiso is Molly Nilsson’s mini-album from 2014 recorded during a 6 month residency in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
For it’s 10th Anniversary, Night School and Dark Skies Association is making the most sought after long player in Molly
Nilsson’s catalogue available again on a new format with new artwork designed by Molly Nilsson and Jonas Raam.
Pop music rarely comes as honest and heartfelt as when delivered by Molly Nilsson. Having traveled around the world singing
to the romantic and the doomed, Nilsson found herself in the Summer of 2014 in Buenos Aires. Inspired by the crumbling urban
landscape and the heavy hearts that populate it, Sólo Paraíso is not only an ode to a specific time and space but a musical
novella that meditates on youth, idealism and belonging. The soundtrack to a summer you thought you had when looking over
bleached out old photo albums.
Sólo Paraíso has the feel of a bridge between the more lo fi, first phase of Nilsson’s career and the expanded sonic scope she
has employed in the last decade. Recorded quickly, with instinct and feeling of paramount importance over rectitude or
perfection, amongst the eight tracks of this mini LP are some of the biggest fan favourites of her career. As with all Molly
Nilsson songs, each of these tracks is bursting with perfect moments. Opener Summer Cats sails over sun-kissed piano
chords, chasing the sun eternally as it dips over the horizon, while show-stealer Blue Dollar draws parallels between the
doomed Argentine economy and the failure of a love affair. It’s the most feel-good, romantic peon to an economic downturn
you’ll ever hear. As Molly says “why is it so damn easy to break all the things that are so damn difficult to make?”
Using cracked synths, shimmering piano, heat-stroked drum machines and above all her direct, from-the-heart vocal delivery,
Nilsson’s songs have never been so precise and on-point. For fellow doomed romantics, Sólo Paraíso is the perfect sound for
an imperfect Summer.
Tracklist:
1. Summer Cats
2. Perfect Past
3. Punks In Paradise
4. Plaza Italia
5. Blue Dollar
6. Maximo Says
7. Bar Roma
8. Malaysian Airlines
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Territory: WW-US-UK-FR-BNLX
Solo Paraiso will be available on vinyl for the first time in 10 years and Digitally for the first time.
Solo Paraiso is Molly Nilsson’s mini-album from 2014 recorded during a 6 month residency in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
For it’s 10th Anniversary, Night School and Dark Skies Association is making the most sought after long player in Molly
Nilsson’s catalogue available again on a new format with new artwork designed by Molly Nilsson and Jonas Raam.
Pop music rarely comes as honest and heartfelt as when delivered by Molly Nilsson. Having traveled around the world singing
to the romantic and the doomed, Nilsson found herself in the Summer of 2014 in Buenos Aires. Inspired by the crumbling urban
landscape and the heavy hearts that populate it, Sólo Paraíso is not only an ode to a specific time and space but a musical
novella that meditates on youth, idealism and belonging. The soundtrack to a summer you thought you had when looking over
bleached out old photo albums.
Sólo Paraíso has the feel of a bridge between the more lo fi, first phase of Nilsson’s career and the expanded sonic scope she
has employed in the last decade. Recorded quickly, with instinct and feeling of paramount importance over rectitude or
perfection, amongst the eight tracks of this mini LP are some of the biggest fan favourites of her career. As with all Molly
Nilsson songs, each of these tracks is bursting with perfect moments. Opener Summer Cats sails over sun-kissed piano
chords, chasing the sun eternally as it dips over the horizon, while show-stealer Blue Dollar draws parallels between the
doomed Argentine economy and the failure of a love affair. It’s the most feel-good, romantic peon to an economic downturn
you’ll ever hear. As Molly says “why is it so damn easy to break all the things that are so damn difficult to make?”
Using cracked synths, shimmering piano, heat-stroked drum machines and above all her direct, from-the-heart vocal delivery,
Nilsson’s songs have never been so precise and on-point. For fellow doomed romantics, Sólo Paraíso is the perfect sound for
an imperfect Summer.
Tracklist:
1. Summer Cats
2. Perfect Past
3. Punks In Paradise
4. Plaza Italia
5. Blue Dollar
6. Maximo Says
7. Bar Roma
8. Malaysian Airlines
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - 1. Summer Cats
2
Molly Nilsson - 2. Perfect Past
3
Molly Nilsson - 3. Punks In Paradise
4
Molly Nilsson - 4. Plaza Italia
5
Molly Nilsson - 5. Blue Dollar
6
Molly Nilsson - 6. Maximo Says
7
Molly Nilsson - 7. Bar Roma
8
Molly Nilsson - 8. Malaysian Airlines
LP - Limited White VInyl Version
Territory: WW-US-UK-FR-BNLX
Solo Paraiso will be available on vinyl for the first time in 10 years and Digitally for the first time.
Solo Paraiso is Molly Nilsson’s mini-album from 2014 recorded during a 6 month residency in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
For it’s 10th Anniversary, Night School and Dark Skies Association is making the most sought after long player in Molly
Nilsson’s catalogue available again on a new format with new artwork designed by Molly Nilsson and Jonas Raam.
Pop music rarely comes as honest and heartfelt as when delivered by Molly Nilsson. Having traveled around the world singing
to the romantic and the doomed, Nilsson found herself in the Summer of 2014 in Buenos Aires. Inspired by the crumbling urban
landscape and the heavy hearts that populate it, Sólo Paraíso is not only an ode to a specific time and space but a musical
novella that meditates on youth, idealism and belonging. The soundtrack to a summer you thought you had when looking over
bleached out old photo albums.
Sólo Paraíso has the feel of a bridge between the more lo fi, first phase of Nilsson’s career and the expanded sonic scope she
has employed in the last decade. Recorded quickly, with instinct and feeling of paramount importance over rectitude or
perfection, amongst the eight tracks of this mini LP are some of the biggest fan favourites of her career. As with all Molly
Nilsson songs, each of these tracks is bursting with perfect moments. Opener Summer Cats sails over sun-kissed piano
chords, chasing the sun eternally as it dips over the horizon, while show-stealer Blue Dollar draws parallels between the
doomed Argentine economy and the failure of a love affair. It’s the most feel-good, romantic peon to an economic downturn
you’ll ever hear. As Molly says “why is it so damn easy to break all the things that are so damn difficult to make?”
Using cracked synths, shimmering piano, heat-stroked drum machines and above all her direct, from-the-heart vocal delivery,
Nilsson’s songs have never been so precise and on-point. For fellow doomed romantics, Sólo Paraíso is the perfect sound for
an imperfect Summer.
Tracklist:
1. Summer Cats
2. Perfect Past
3. Punks In Paradise
4. Plaza Italia
5. Blue Dollar
6. Maximo Says
7. Bar Roma
8. Malaysian Airlines
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Territory: WW-US-UK-FR-BNLX
Solo Paraiso will be available on vinyl for the first time in 10 years and Digitally for the first time.
Solo Paraiso is Molly Nilsson’s mini-album from 2014 recorded during a 6 month residency in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
For it’s 10th Anniversary, Night School and Dark Skies Association is making the most sought after long player in Molly
Nilsson’s catalogue available again on a new format with new artwork designed by Molly Nilsson and Jonas Raam.
Pop music rarely comes as honest and heartfelt as when delivered by Molly Nilsson. Having traveled around the world singing
to the romantic and the doomed, Nilsson found herself in the Summer of 2014 in Buenos Aires. Inspired by the crumbling urban
landscape and the heavy hearts that populate it, Sólo Paraíso is not only an ode to a specific time and space but a musical
novella that meditates on youth, idealism and belonging. The soundtrack to a summer you thought you had when looking over
bleached out old photo albums.
Sólo Paraíso has the feel of a bridge between the more lo fi, first phase of Nilsson’s career and the expanded sonic scope she
has employed in the last decade. Recorded quickly, with instinct and feeling of paramount importance over rectitude or
perfection, amongst the eight tracks of this mini LP are some of the biggest fan favourites of her career. As with all Molly
Nilsson songs, each of these tracks is bursting with perfect moments. Opener Summer Cats sails over sun-kissed piano
chords, chasing the sun eternally as it dips over the horizon, while show-stealer Blue Dollar draws parallels between the
doomed Argentine economy and the failure of a love affair. It’s the most feel-good, romantic peon to an economic downturn
you’ll ever hear. As Molly says “why is it so damn easy to break all the things that are so damn difficult to make?”
Using cracked synths, shimmering piano, heat-stroked drum machines and above all her direct, from-the-heart vocal delivery,
Nilsson’s songs have never been so precise and on-point. For fellow doomed romantics, Sólo Paraíso is the perfect sound for
an imperfect Summer.
Tracklist:
1. Summer Cats
2. Perfect Past
3. Punks In Paradise
4. Plaza Italia
5. Blue Dollar
6. Maximo Says
7. Bar Roma
8. Malaysian Airlines
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
MOLLY NILSSON - 1. In Real Life
2
MOLLY NILSSON - 2. You Always Hurt The One You Love
3
MOLLY NILSSON - 3. I Hope You Die
4
MOLLY NILSSON - 4. Bottles Of Tomorrow
5
MOLLY NILSSON - 5. Hiroshima Street
6
MOLLY NILSSON - 6. Intermezzo: The Party
7
MOLLY NILSSON - 7. Hotel Home
8
MOLLY NILSSON - 8. City Of Atlantis
9
MOLLY NILSSON - 9. Qwerty (Censored Version)
10
MOLLY NILSSON - 10. The Clocks
11
MOLLY NILSSON - 11. Skybound
Non Exclsuive, LP, LTD 300
1. In Real Life
2. You Always Hurt The One You Love
3. I Hope You Die
4. Bottles Of Tomorrow
5. Hiroshima Street
6. Intermezzo: The Party
7. Hotel Home
8. City Of Atlantis
9. Qwerty (Censored Version)
10. The Clocks
11. Skybound
“I hope you die by my side, the two of us at the exact same time, I hope we die not long from now, the two of us
at the exact same time”
By the time Molly Nilsson released History, she had already established a fledgling cult status built on homemade
YouTube videos and home-burnt Cdrs. Writing from a distance, it’s clear that History is the first classic album in
her canon and arguably a classic of the 21st Century underground music panorama.While the methodology on
History hadn’t changed from Nilsson’s previous 3 albums – it was recorded solo at The Lighthouse, Nilsson’s
home studio based on a Berlin crossroads – on this record the songwriting reached a new peak and the
emotional scythe cut deeper. Here, Nilsson managed to combine a cosmic, outward looking perspective with an
intimate knowledge of the human condition and its place in these turbulent times. In truth, no other songwriter has
excavated the modern psyche so clearly and perfectly.
The tracklist to Nilsson’s fourth album reads as an early greatest hits for Molly Nilsson followers and also serves
as the perfect entry point to a whole world the artist has been building for the last 10 years. In Real Life
crystalises the millenial obsession with relationships built online, with a generation paying for the baby boomer’s
excesses with their anxiety towards the harshness of every day life. It’s a call to arms for a generation who fell in
love on Skype. On I Hope You Die, one of Molly Nilsson’s most iconic songs, the songwriter flips the song title
into a tale of doomed romance, a relationship based on miscommunications and the thrill of the other. It’s also
one of the most heartfelt songs full of pathos written by anyone, an ode to obsession. Doomed romance, life lived
on the flipside of day and the role of the outsider in society are themes that crop up through-out History. On
Bottles Of Tomorrow, the narrator is sweeping up, in love with the night and examining the remains a society
leaves behind.
On City Of Atlantis, Nilsson veers from the plaintive balladry she had begun to make her name with, embracing
trance-like synth and dance music details to create an unlikely anthem using the mythological city as a means to
comment on the patriarchal rendering of history by power. With by now trademark panache, she turns
complicated subject matter into a glorious song that transforms into an ecstatic pop moment.
Hotel Home, another Nilsson classic, paints loneliness not as a debilitating anxiety, but as a powerful tool that
propels the artist forward through her travels. It’s a song that hints at an endearing self-awareness also; the writer
is never at home, living life on the road, content that “the world will find me when the time is ripe.”
There’s never been a greater time.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1. In Real Life
2. You Always Hurt The One You Love
3. I Hope You Die
4. Bottles Of Tomorrow
5. Hiroshima Street
6. Intermezzo: The Party
7. Hotel Home
8. City Of Atlantis
9. Qwerty (Censored Version)
10. The Clocks
11. Skybound
“I hope you die by my side, the two of us at the exact same time, I hope we die not long from now, the two of us
at the exact same time”
By the time Molly Nilsson released History, she had already established a fledgling cult status built on homemade
YouTube videos and home-burnt Cdrs. Writing from a distance, it’s clear that History is the first classic album in
her canon and arguably a classic of the 21st Century underground music panorama.While the methodology on
History hadn’t changed from Nilsson’s previous 3 albums – it was recorded solo at The Lighthouse, Nilsson’s
home studio based on a Berlin crossroads – on this record the songwriting reached a new peak and the
emotional scythe cut deeper. Here, Nilsson managed to combine a cosmic, outward looking perspective with an
intimate knowledge of the human condition and its place in these turbulent times. In truth, no other songwriter has
excavated the modern psyche so clearly and perfectly.
The tracklist to Nilsson’s fourth album reads as an early greatest hits for Molly Nilsson followers and also serves
as the perfect entry point to a whole world the artist has been building for the last 10 years. In Real Life
crystalises the millenial obsession with relationships built online, with a generation paying for the baby boomer’s
excesses with their anxiety towards the harshness of every day life. It’s a call to arms for a generation who fell in
love on Skype. On I Hope You Die, one of Molly Nilsson’s most iconic songs, the songwriter flips the song title
into a tale of doomed romance, a relationship based on miscommunications and the thrill of the other. It’s also
one of the most heartfelt songs full of pathos written by anyone, an ode to obsession. Doomed romance, life lived
on the flipside of day and the role of the outsider in society are themes that crop up through-out History. On
Bottles Of Tomorrow, the narrator is sweeping up, in love with the night and examining the remains a society
leaves behind.
On City Of Atlantis, Nilsson veers from the plaintive balladry she had begun to make her name with, embracing
trance-like synth and dance music details to create an unlikely anthem using the mythological city as a means to
comment on the patriarchal rendering of history by power. With by now trademark panache, she turns
complicated subject matter into a glorious song that transforms into an ecstatic pop moment.
Hotel Home, another Nilsson classic, paints loneliness not as a debilitating anxiety, but as a powerful tool that
propels the artist forward through her travels. It’s a song that hints at an endearing self-awareness also; the writer
is never at home, living life on the road, content that “the world will find me when the time is ripe.”
There’s never been a greater time.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - No Title
2
Molly Nilsson - No Title
3
Molly Nilsson - No Title
4
Molly Nilsson - No Title
5
Molly Nilsson - No Title
6
Molly Nilsson - No Title
7
Molly Nilsson - No Title
8
Molly Nilsson - No Title
9
Molly Nilsson - No Title
10
Molly Nilsson - No Title
11
Molly Nilsson - No Title
12
Molly Nilsson - No Title
Non Exclsuive LP (Yelllow Vinyl)
The Travels represents a signpost in the continuing journey that is the songs of Berlin-based artist
Molly Nilsson.
Starting out by hand-dubbing CDrs and forging a singular path in the global pop underground, Nilsson’s
art has grown to the extent where hers is a precise songwriting devoid of unnecessary flourish. Her songs
are perfect silhouettes of feelings everyone shares but that few can articulate with such heart-rending, icy
pathos.
Journeys offer change - the possibility of renewal - and accordingly on The Travels Molly Nilsson’s
resonant voice is found curling around a new sense of optimism and wide-eyed discovery that was only
alluded to in her previous work. Songs like “Dear Life” might be spiked with a barbed sense of the
dejected, but the presiding feeling is one of optimism, of being in love with life despite a shield of
cynicism. “Dirty Fingers” brings a melancholy recognisable from previous work but with an incessant beat
and ecstatic underpinning it becomes apparent that a new force is at play here. In case the listener
missed it, “The Power Ballad” brings an endearing, sincerity to proceedings that also offers a tantalising
question: can you be sceptical about love but still be bewitched?
On her 5th long-player, Nilsson’s perspective is challenged and manipulated by changes in
environment and psychological space: like any other traveller the protagonist brings their own set of
values and emotional states to new places, colouring them with a wash of subjectivity. Like any other
traveller Molly Nilsson reacts to her environment and shares her unique version of it to other people.
Based loosely on Marco Polo’s “Travels” and reading like a map of the protagonist’s geographical and
inner journey, The Travels reveals new places and new emotions that are never the same to the
beholder. Nilsson’s art is in turning this subjectivity into a cloak that almost anyone can don for the trip
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
The Travels represents a signpost in the continuing journey that is the songs of Berlin-based artist
Molly Nilsson.
Starting out by hand-dubbing CDrs and forging a singular path in the global pop underground, Nilsson’s
art has grown to the extent where hers is a precise songwriting devoid of unnecessary flourish. Her songs
are perfect silhouettes of feelings everyone shares but that few can articulate with such heart-rending, icy
pathos.
Journeys offer change - the possibility of renewal - and accordingly on The Travels Molly Nilsson’s
resonant voice is found curling around a new sense of optimism and wide-eyed discovery that was only
alluded to in her previous work. Songs like “Dear Life” might be spiked with a barbed sense of the
dejected, but the presiding feeling is one of optimism, of being in love with life despite a shield of
cynicism. “Dirty Fingers” brings a melancholy recognisable from previous work but with an incessant beat
and ecstatic underpinning it becomes apparent that a new force is at play here. In case the listener
missed it, “The Power Ballad” brings an endearing, sincerity to proceedings that also offers a tantalising
question: can you be sceptical about love but still be bewitched?
On her 5th long-player, Nilsson’s perspective is challenged and manipulated by changes in
environment and psychological space: like any other traveller the protagonist brings their own set of
values and emotional states to new places, colouring them with a wash of subjectivity. Like any other
traveller Molly Nilsson reacts to her environment and shares her unique version of it to other people.
Based loosely on Marco Polo’s “Travels” and reading like a map of the protagonist’s geographical and
inner journey, The Travels reveals new places and new emotions that are never the same to the
beholder. Nilsson’s art is in turning this subjectivity into a cloak that almost anyone can don for the trip
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
2
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
3
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
4
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
5
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
6
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
7
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
8
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
9
MOLLY NILSSON - No Title
Format: LP
1. In The Mood For A Tattoo
2. The Revenge Of The Stalker
3. More Certain Than Death
4. When I Have No Words
5. Berlin, Berlin
6. Europa
7. I Whisper In My Ear
8. The Crisis
9. Asleep In Stockholm
“Is the future any brighter? Is the darkness any lighter?
When Molly Nilsson began recording her second album Europa in 2009 the world seemed to be at a turning point and
she along with it. In the aftermath of a global financial crash, at the dawn of a new decade, the Stockholm-born, Berlinbased singer was busy moulding her songwriting into an idiocyncratic, personal mythology that would take her to every
continent, speaking directly to hearts in every corner of the globe. The first album on her own Dark Skies Association
imprint, the first recorded in her home studio The Lighthouse, Europa broke new ground for Molly Nilsson at the time. But
also it spoke earnestly to the world about an idealism, an openness and hope that has not dimmed in the 11 years since
its release. Europa contains the songs of a young, idealistic songwriter coming to terms with her genius for cutting to the
chase, saying it as it is and, most importantly, as it should be. Over 10 years on the artists’ vim and urge for change has
only got stronger but here you can see the bright hope begin to dawn.
Europa saw Molly Nilsson move away from the minimal primitivism of her debut These Things Take Time and
remastered by James Plotkin for it’s 2021 reissue it reveals a growing depth in her songwriting. Opener In The Mood For
A Tattoo, with synth overdubs on top of impeccable vocal harmonising, boasts a killer chorus hook before melting into
The Revenge Of The Stalker, with its shades of 80s synth pop building layered dynamics out of simplicity. More Certain
Than Death is a song of youthful rebellion, even if you didn’t know it at the time, forever searching for a way out of youth
while young. Of course now, over a decade since their release, these songs have been canonised in the alternative pop
realm like all of Molly Nilsson’s catalogue. The DIY aspect of these recordings may place them firmly in the milieu they first
gained popularity – the exploding world of DIY pop, blog-based music discovery and the seemingly endless possibilities of
the beginnings of of social media – but Europa’s songs are really made to be sung to and by people, they’re statements of
intent, of togetherness and defiance.
The album’s title track is a kernel of righteousness, an archetypal Molly Nilsson moment that contains all hope in its fist,
which steadily opens outstretched to everyone who listens. Europa was written in 2009 about the ongoing refugee crisis,
an open love letter to humanity. “The borders are only lines in the sand, the borders are divided by land (and invented by
men.)” Europa praises the idea of people coming together to make things better, to help each other. It’s not about this
Europe but the idea of having no borders to imprison people. Think of Europa as an alternate universe, where no one is
illegal, but free. It’s heady stuff to sum up in a song but of course Nilsson’s effortless chorus-writing render all these
notions and feelings in a few simple words. This is of course her chief talent, whether singing about heartbreak or global
financial meltdown and it is in abundance here.
Europa is idealism never dimmed, hope never blunted.
Europa is the final album in Molly Nilsson’s catalogue to be reissued.
25% of all profits will be donated to sea- watch.org, A non-profit organization that conducts civil search and
rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1. In The Mood For A Tattoo
2. The Revenge Of The Stalker
3. More Certain Than Death
4. When I Have No Words
5. Berlin, Berlin
6. Europa
7. I Whisper In My Ear
8. The Crisis
9. Asleep In Stockholm
“Is the future any brighter? Is the darkness any lighter?
When Molly Nilsson began recording her second album Europa in 2009 the world seemed to be at a turning point and
she along with it. In the aftermath of a global financial crash, at the dawn of a new decade, the Stockholm-born, Berlinbased singer was busy moulding her songwriting into an idiocyncratic, personal mythology that would take her to every
continent, speaking directly to hearts in every corner of the globe. The first album on her own Dark Skies Association
imprint, the first recorded in her home studio The Lighthouse, Europa broke new ground for Molly Nilsson at the time. But
also it spoke earnestly to the world about an idealism, an openness and hope that has not dimmed in the 11 years since
its release. Europa contains the songs of a young, idealistic songwriter coming to terms with her genius for cutting to the
chase, saying it as it is and, most importantly, as it should be. Over 10 years on the artists’ vim and urge for change has
only got stronger but here you can see the bright hope begin to dawn.
Europa saw Molly Nilsson move away from the minimal primitivism of her debut These Things Take Time and
remastered by James Plotkin for it’s 2021 reissue it reveals a growing depth in her songwriting. Opener In The Mood For
A Tattoo, with synth overdubs on top of impeccable vocal harmonising, boasts a killer chorus hook before melting into
The Revenge Of The Stalker, with its shades of 80s synth pop building layered dynamics out of simplicity. More Certain
Than Death is a song of youthful rebellion, even if you didn’t know it at the time, forever searching for a way out of youth
while young. Of course now, over a decade since their release, these songs have been canonised in the alternative pop
realm like all of Molly Nilsson’s catalogue. The DIY aspect of these recordings may place them firmly in the milieu they first
gained popularity – the exploding world of DIY pop, blog-based music discovery and the seemingly endless possibilities of
the beginnings of of social media – but Europa’s songs are really made to be sung to and by people, they’re statements of
intent, of togetherness and defiance.
The album’s title track is a kernel of righteousness, an archetypal Molly Nilsson moment that contains all hope in its fist,
which steadily opens outstretched to everyone who listens. Europa was written in 2009 about the ongoing refugee crisis,
an open love letter to humanity. “The borders are only lines in the sand, the borders are divided by land (and invented by
men.)” Europa praises the idea of people coming together to make things better, to help each other. It’s not about this
Europe but the idea of having no borders to imprison people. Think of Europa as an alternate universe, where no one is
illegal, but free. It’s heady stuff to sum up in a song but of course Nilsson’s effortless chorus-writing render all these
notions and feelings in a few simple words. This is of course her chief talent, whether singing about heartbreak or global
financial meltdown and it is in abundance here.
Europa is idealism never dimmed, hope never blunted.
Europa is the final album in Molly Nilsson’s catalogue to be reissued.
25% of all profits will be donated to sea- watch.org, A non-profit organization that conducts civil search and
rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - No Title
2
Molly Nilsson - No Title
3
Molly Nilsson - No Title
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Molly Nilsson - No Title
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Molly Nilsson - No Title
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Molly Nilsson - No Title
Non Exclsuive LP (Yelllow Vinyl)
DBL Gatefold LP w/ MP3, Galaxy Vinyl (Clear with Black smoke detail) &
Edition of 1000
2021 Vinyl aRepress, to co-incide with Molly Nilsson's new studio album and reissues of The Travels and Europa. First time this edition has been on CD
It would be easy to say that Molly Nilsson needs no introduction, but These Things Take Time is an introduction. Originally self-released in 2008 on a limited CDR run with hand-folded sleeve, Nilsson's debut album has slowly taken over the hearts of many. In 2014 this modern classic of autonomous, DIY pop and punk-as-you-like attitude is presented on vinyl for the first time in a beautiful edition featuring unreleased bonus tracks across two discs, an exclusive screen printed A2 poster and new sleeve notes from the artist.
Molly Nilsson's first recordings under her own name have grown in stature to occupy a prominent positioning in the global pop underground despite initially only being available on CDr. Though Nilsson's songwriting prowess and commandeering of other genres has grown since 2008, her unique voice is seen in raw form on These Things Take Time. Many of the themes she would develop later were inked first here: the romance of loneliness on "The Lonely," "Whisky Sour," "Hey Moon!", the folly and intoxication of youth seen in "Joyride," "Poisoned Candy" and dogged self-reliance as on "The Diamond Song" or "Wounds Itch When They Heal." Also included here are unreleased recordings from the same period that were left off the original release, a further window into a turbulent, exciting time for an artist just discovering her power to touch and communicate with the listener.
These Things Take Time tracklist:
A1 The Lonely
A2 The Diamond Song
A3 8000 Days
A4 Wounds Itch When They Heal
B1 Whiskey Sour
B2 Poisoned Candy
B3 (Won't Somebody) Take Me Out Tonight
B4 Hey Moon!
C1 The Home Song
C2 Joyride
C3 We're Never Coming Home
C4 Dinosaur Tears
C5 My Dream From Last Night
D1 Zur Tränen Bar
D2 Lend Me Your Love
D3 Some Need Powder
D4 Nightlife
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
DBL Gatefold LP w/ MP3, Galaxy Vinyl (Clear with Black smoke detail) &
Edition of 1000
2021 Vinyl aRepress, to co-incide with Molly Nilsson's new studio album and reissues of The Travels and Europa. First time this edition has been on CD
It would be easy to say that Molly Nilsson needs no introduction, but These Things Take Time is an introduction. Originally self-released in 2008 on a limited CDR run with hand-folded sleeve, Nilsson's debut album has slowly taken over the hearts of many. In 2014 this modern classic of autonomous, DIY pop and punk-as-you-like attitude is presented on vinyl for the first time in a beautiful edition featuring unreleased bonus tracks across two discs, an exclusive screen printed A2 poster and new sleeve notes from the artist.
Molly Nilsson's first recordings under her own name have grown in stature to occupy a prominent positioning in the global pop underground despite initially only being available on CDr. Though Nilsson's songwriting prowess and commandeering of other genres has grown since 2008, her unique voice is seen in raw form on These Things Take Time. Many of the themes she would develop later were inked first here: the romance of loneliness on "The Lonely," "Whisky Sour," "Hey Moon!", the folly and intoxication of youth seen in "Joyride," "Poisoned Candy" and dogged self-reliance as on "The Diamond Song" or "Wounds Itch When They Heal." Also included here are unreleased recordings from the same period that were left off the original release, a further window into a turbulent, exciting time for an artist just discovering her power to touch and communicate with the listener.
These Things Take Time tracklist:
A1 The Lonely
A2 The Diamond Song
A3 8000 Days
A4 Wounds Itch When They Heal
B1 Whiskey Sour
B2 Poisoned Candy
B3 (Won't Somebody) Take Me Out Tonight
B4 Hey Moon!
C1 The Home Song
C2 Joyride
C3 We're Never Coming Home
C4 Dinosaur Tears
C5 My Dream From Last Night
D1 Zur Tränen Bar
D2 Lend Me Your Love
D3 Some Need Powder
D4 Nightlife
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - No Title
2
Molly Nilsson - No Title
3
Molly Nilsson - No Title
4
Molly Nilsson - No Title
5
Molly Nilsson - No Title
6
Molly Nilsson - No Title
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Molly Nilsson - No Title
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Molly Nilsson - No Title
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Molly Nilsson - No Title
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Molly Nilsson - No Title
11
Molly Nilsson - No Title
Non Exclsuive LP
1. Absolute Power
2. Earth Girls
3. Fearless Like A Child
4. Kids Today
5. Intermezzo X – Wheel Of Fortune
6. Sweet Smell Of Success
7. Obnoxiously Talented
8. Avoid Heaven
9. Take Me To Your Leader
10. They Will Pay
11. Pompeii
“The letter X marks the spot, crosses over, literally with a cross. It’s the former, the ex-. The ex-lover known simply as “an ex”. Ex- is the latin
prefix meaning “out”. Exterior, an exit. Extraordinary. Excellent. It’s exciting. Generation X. X-files. X is the unknown. X is Extreme“
Extreme is Molly Nilsson’s tenth studio album. Recorded in 2019 and throughout the 2020 global pandemic at home in Berlin, Extreme
is a departure for Nilsson, an explosion of angry love. It’s an album of anthems for the jilted generation, soaked with joy and offering
solace, bristling with distorted, Metal guitars and planet-sized choruses that bring light to the dark centre of the galaxy. It’s an album of
the times, by the times and for the people. It’s a record about power. About how to fight it, how to take it and how to share it.
Absolute Power explodes with massive guitars, double kick beats and the instantly iconic line “It’s me versus the black hole at the
centre of the galaxy.” Nilsson’s performance itself portrays absolute power in its confidence but the song is a call-to-arms, an entreaty to
grasp the here and now, to take the power back. It’s Nilsson pacing the ring and we’re instantly in her corner. Earth Girls takes familiar
Molly Nilsson themes - female empowerment and subverting the patriarchy - but casually throws in one of the choruses of her career.
“Women have no place in this world” she sings, but it’s the world that isn’t good enough. Stadium-sized but still warmly hazy, Earth Girls
has its fists in the air, glorifying in harmony, almost ecstatic in its feeling good. Nilsson’s Springsteen-level conviction and righteousness
bleeds through the speaker cones, the cognitive dissonance between the song’s cadences and angry lyrics redolent of Bruce in his
prime. Female empowerment isn’t always an angry energy on Extreme, however. On Fearless Like A Child, Nilsson’s anthem to the
female body and women’s sovereignty of it, she croons over a mid-80s blue-eyed Soul groove. It sets a nocturnal scene as the narrator
surveys her past and her surroundings. Before we’re fully submerged in a dreamlike, Steve McQueen-era Prefab Sprout poem to
learning from your mistakes the song erupts into one of those lines only Molly Nilsson can get away with: “I love my womb, come inside I
feel so alive” she fervently sings. Against the backdrop of ever-encroaching, conservative rulings on women’s reproductive rights in
places like Texas, it’s simultaneously angry and full of love.
Every song on Extreme is a gleaming gem in a pouch of jewels. On Kids Today, Nilsson is the voice of wisdom, archly commenting on the
eternal struggle between youth and authority. Wisdom infuses Sweet Smell Of Success with a transcendent love that forgives the narrator’s
shortcomings and celebrates the moment, it’s a letter to the author from the author that asks “what is success” and concludes that this is it,
this song, this moment. It’s a rare moment of simple reflection that is generous in its insight to Nilsson’s inner life. “Success” is a tool of power
and we don’t need it… We need power tools and there are moments on Extreme where it feels like Nilsson is showing us how to find them. It's
an open conversation through out Extreme. She’s a warm, comforting presence through out the album and specially on these songs of
encouragement, songs perhaps sang to a younger Molly Nilsson or, really, to whomever needs to hear them. “They’ll praise your efforts, they’ll
call you slurs a rebel, a master, an amateur / Merely with your own existence, you already offer your resistance.” On Avoid Heaven she’s
even more direct, pleading with us to avoid concepts of purity and to embrace the glorious, ebullient, emotional mess we’re often in as a
method of upending the power structures who need things to be perfect.
They Will Pay brings back the big, distorted power chords in the form of a agit-punk, pop slammer. Of course, when Molly Nilsson does punk
pop we get the catchiest chorus this side of The Bangles or The Nerves. It’s rendered in an off the cuff, throwaway manner that is just perfect
in its roughness. However, it’s on Pompeii that Nilsson delivers the album’s epic, emotional heartbreaker. Like 1995 on Nilsson’s album Zenith,
or Days Of Dust on Twenty Twenty, the lyrics of Pompeii are heavy with a transcendent sadness, an aching poetry that cuts to the truth of the
heart like the best Leonard Cohen lines, though here delivered with an uplifting, life-affirming love. It contains the most personal moments of
Extreme, a song lit by the dying embers of romance. Yet it’s here where the alchemy at the base of all Nilsson’s best work is found. Turning
small nuggets of personal truth into big, generous universal moments that invite everyone to cry, to love and to fight the power. In an album of
jewels, it might be the shining star.
Molly Nilsson’s biggest, boldest and most vital album to date, Extreme is about power. Against the love of power and for the power of love
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1. Absolute Power
2. Earth Girls
3. Fearless Like A Child
4. Kids Today
5. Intermezzo X – Wheel Of Fortune
6. Sweet Smell Of Success
7. Obnoxiously Talented
8. Avoid Heaven
9. Take Me To Your Leader
10. They Will Pay
11. Pompeii
“The letter X marks the spot, crosses over, literally with a cross. It’s the former, the ex-. The ex-lover known simply as “an ex”. Ex- is the latin
prefix meaning “out”. Exterior, an exit. Extraordinary. Excellent. It’s exciting. Generation X. X-files. X is the unknown. X is Extreme“
Extreme is Molly Nilsson’s tenth studio album. Recorded in 2019 and throughout the 2020 global pandemic at home in Berlin, Extreme
is a departure for Nilsson, an explosion of angry love. It’s an album of anthems for the jilted generation, soaked with joy and offering
solace, bristling with distorted, Metal guitars and planet-sized choruses that bring light to the dark centre of the galaxy. It’s an album of
the times, by the times and for the people. It’s a record about power. About how to fight it, how to take it and how to share it.
Absolute Power explodes with massive guitars, double kick beats and the instantly iconic line “It’s me versus the black hole at the
centre of the galaxy.” Nilsson’s performance itself portrays absolute power in its confidence but the song is a call-to-arms, an entreaty to
grasp the here and now, to take the power back. It’s Nilsson pacing the ring and we’re instantly in her corner. Earth Girls takes familiar
Molly Nilsson themes - female empowerment and subverting the patriarchy - but casually throws in one of the choruses of her career.
“Women have no place in this world” she sings, but it’s the world that isn’t good enough. Stadium-sized but still warmly hazy, Earth Girls
has its fists in the air, glorifying in harmony, almost ecstatic in its feeling good. Nilsson’s Springsteen-level conviction and righteousness
bleeds through the speaker cones, the cognitive dissonance between the song’s cadences and angry lyrics redolent of Bruce in his
prime. Female empowerment isn’t always an angry energy on Extreme, however. On Fearless Like A Child, Nilsson’s anthem to the
female body and women’s sovereignty of it, she croons over a mid-80s blue-eyed Soul groove. It sets a nocturnal scene as the narrator
surveys her past and her surroundings. Before we’re fully submerged in a dreamlike, Steve McQueen-era Prefab Sprout poem to
learning from your mistakes the song erupts into one of those lines only Molly Nilsson can get away with: “I love my womb, come inside I
feel so alive” she fervently sings. Against the backdrop of ever-encroaching, conservative rulings on women’s reproductive rights in
places like Texas, it’s simultaneously angry and full of love.
Every song on Extreme is a gleaming gem in a pouch of jewels. On Kids Today, Nilsson is the voice of wisdom, archly commenting on the
eternal struggle between youth and authority. Wisdom infuses Sweet Smell Of Success with a transcendent love that forgives the narrator’s
shortcomings and celebrates the moment, it’s a letter to the author from the author that asks “what is success” and concludes that this is it,
this song, this moment. It’s a rare moment of simple reflection that is generous in its insight to Nilsson’s inner life. “Success” is a tool of power
and we don’t need it… We need power tools and there are moments on Extreme where it feels like Nilsson is showing us how to find them. It's
an open conversation through out Extreme. She’s a warm, comforting presence through out the album and specially on these songs of
encouragement, songs perhaps sang to a younger Molly Nilsson or, really, to whomever needs to hear them. “They’ll praise your efforts, they’ll
call you slurs a rebel, a master, an amateur / Merely with your own existence, you already offer your resistance.” On Avoid Heaven she’s
even more direct, pleading with us to avoid concepts of purity and to embrace the glorious, ebullient, emotional mess we’re often in as a
method of upending the power structures who need things to be perfect.
They Will Pay brings back the big, distorted power chords in the form of a agit-punk, pop slammer. Of course, when Molly Nilsson does punk
pop we get the catchiest chorus this side of The Bangles or The Nerves. It’s rendered in an off the cuff, throwaway manner that is just perfect
in its roughness. However, it’s on Pompeii that Nilsson delivers the album’s epic, emotional heartbreaker. Like 1995 on Nilsson’s album Zenith,
or Days Of Dust on Twenty Twenty, the lyrics of Pompeii are heavy with a transcendent sadness, an aching poetry that cuts to the truth of the
heart like the best Leonard Cohen lines, though here delivered with an uplifting, life-affirming love. It contains the most personal moments of
Extreme, a song lit by the dying embers of romance. Yet it’s here where the alchemy at the base of all Nilsson’s best work is found. Turning
small nuggets of personal truth into big, generous universal moments that invite everyone to cry, to love and to fight the power. In an album of
jewels, it might be the shining star.
Molly Nilsson’s biggest, boldest and most vital album to date, Extreme is about power. Against the love of power and for the power of love
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Non Exclsuive LP
1. Absolute Power
2. Earth Girls
3. Fearless Like A Child
4. Kids Today
5. Intermezzo X – Wheel Of Fortune
6. Sweet Smell Of Success
7. Obnoxiously Talented
8. Avoid Heaven
9. Take Me To Your Leader
10. They Will Pay
11. Pompeii
“The letter X marks the spot, crosses over, literally with a cross. It’s the former, the ex-. The ex-lover known simply as “an ex”. Ex- is the latin
prefix meaning “out”. Exterior, an exit. Extraordinary. Excellent. It’s exciting. Generation X. X-files. X is the unknown. X is Extreme“
Extreme is Molly Nilsson’s tenth studio album. Recorded in 2019 and throughout the 2020 global pandemic at home in Berlin, Extreme
is a departure for Nilsson, an explosion of angry love. It’s an album of anthems for the jilted generation, soaked with joy and offering
solace, bristling with distorted, Metal guitars and planet-sized choruses that bring light to the dark centre of the galaxy. It’s an album of
the times, by the times and for the people. It’s a record about power. About how to fight it, how to take it and how to share it.
Absolute Power explodes with massive guitars, double kick beats and the instantly iconic line “It’s me versus the black hole at the
centre of the galaxy.” Nilsson’s performance itself portrays absolute power in its confidence but the song is a call-to-arms, an entreaty to
grasp the here and now, to take the power back. It’s Nilsson pacing the ring and we’re instantly in her corner. Earth Girls takes familiar
Molly Nilsson themes - female empowerment and subverting the patriarchy - but casually throws in one of the choruses of her career.
“Women have no place in this world” she sings, but it’s the world that isn’t good enough. Stadium-sized but still warmly hazy, Earth Girls
has its fists in the air, glorifying in harmony, almost ecstatic in its feeling good. Nilsson’s Springsteen-level conviction and righteousness
bleeds through the speaker cones, the cognitive dissonance between the song’s cadences and angry lyrics redolent of Bruce in his
prime. Female empowerment isn’t always an angry energy on Extreme, however. On Fearless Like A Child, Nilsson’s anthem to the
female body and women’s sovereignty of it, she croons over a mid-80s blue-eyed Soul groove. It sets a nocturnal scene as the narrator
surveys her past and her surroundings. Before we’re fully submerged in a dreamlike, Steve McQueen-era Prefab Sprout poem to
learning from your mistakes the song erupts into one of those lines only Molly Nilsson can get away with: “I love my womb, come inside I
feel so alive” she fervently sings. Against the backdrop of ever-encroaching, conservative rulings on women’s reproductive rights in
places like Texas, it’s simultaneously angry and full of love.
Every song on Extreme is a gleaming gem in a pouch of jewels. On Kids Today, Nilsson is the voice of wisdom, archly commenting on the
eternal struggle between youth and authority. Wisdom infuses Sweet Smell Of Success with a transcendent love that forgives the narrator’s
shortcomings and celebrates the moment, it’s a letter to the author from the author that asks “what is success” and concludes that this is it,
this song, this moment. It’s a rare moment of simple reflection that is generous in its insight to Nilsson’s inner life. “Success” is a tool of power
and we don’t need it… We need power tools and there are moments on Extreme where it feels like Nilsson is showing us how to find them. It's
an open conversation through out Extreme. She’s a warm, comforting presence through out the album and specially on these songs of
encouragement, songs perhaps sang to a younger Molly Nilsson or, really, to whomever needs to hear them. “They’ll praise your efforts, they’ll
call you slurs a rebel, a master, an amateur / Merely with your own existence, you already offer your resistance.” On Avoid Heaven she’s
even more direct, pleading with us to avoid concepts of purity and to embrace the glorious, ebullient, emotional mess we’re often in as a
method of upending the power structures who need things to be perfect.
They Will Pay brings back the big, distorted power chords in the form of a agit-punk, pop slammer. Of course, when Molly Nilsson does punk
pop we get the catchiest chorus this side of The Bangles or The Nerves. It’s rendered in an off the cuff, throwaway manner that is just perfect
in its roughness. However, it’s on Pompeii that Nilsson delivers the album’s epic, emotional heartbreaker. Like 1995 on Nilsson’s album Zenith,
or Days Of Dust on Twenty Twenty, the lyrics of Pompeii are heavy with a transcendent sadness, an aching poetry that cuts to the truth of the
heart like the best Leonard Cohen lines, though here delivered with an uplifting, life-affirming love. It contains the most personal moments of
Extreme, a song lit by the dying embers of romance. Yet it’s here where the alchemy at the base of all Nilsson’s best work is found. Turning
small nuggets of personal truth into big, generous universal moments that invite everyone to cry, to love and to fight the power. In an album of
jewels, it might be the shining star.
Molly Nilsson’s biggest, boldest and most vital album to date, Extreme is about power. Against the love of power and for the power of love
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1. Absolute Power
2. Earth Girls
3. Fearless Like A Child
4. Kids Today
5. Intermezzo X – Wheel Of Fortune
6. Sweet Smell Of Success
7. Obnoxiously Talented
8. Avoid Heaven
9. Take Me To Your Leader
10. They Will Pay
11. Pompeii
“The letter X marks the spot, crosses over, literally with a cross. It’s the former, the ex-. The ex-lover known simply as “an ex”. Ex- is the latin
prefix meaning “out”. Exterior, an exit. Extraordinary. Excellent. It’s exciting. Generation X. X-files. X is the unknown. X is Extreme“
Extreme is Molly Nilsson’s tenth studio album. Recorded in 2019 and throughout the 2020 global pandemic at home in Berlin, Extreme
is a departure for Nilsson, an explosion of angry love. It’s an album of anthems for the jilted generation, soaked with joy and offering
solace, bristling with distorted, Metal guitars and planet-sized choruses that bring light to the dark centre of the galaxy. It’s an album of
the times, by the times and for the people. It’s a record about power. About how to fight it, how to take it and how to share it.
Absolute Power explodes with massive guitars, double kick beats and the instantly iconic line “It’s me versus the black hole at the
centre of the galaxy.” Nilsson’s performance itself portrays absolute power in its confidence but the song is a call-to-arms, an entreaty to
grasp the here and now, to take the power back. It’s Nilsson pacing the ring and we’re instantly in her corner. Earth Girls takes familiar
Molly Nilsson themes - female empowerment and subverting the patriarchy - but casually throws in one of the choruses of her career.
“Women have no place in this world” she sings, but it’s the world that isn’t good enough. Stadium-sized but still warmly hazy, Earth Girls
has its fists in the air, glorifying in harmony, almost ecstatic in its feeling good. Nilsson’s Springsteen-level conviction and righteousness
bleeds through the speaker cones, the cognitive dissonance between the song’s cadences and angry lyrics redolent of Bruce in his
prime. Female empowerment isn’t always an angry energy on Extreme, however. On Fearless Like A Child, Nilsson’s anthem to the
female body and women’s sovereignty of it, she croons over a mid-80s blue-eyed Soul groove. It sets a nocturnal scene as the narrator
surveys her past and her surroundings. Before we’re fully submerged in a dreamlike, Steve McQueen-era Prefab Sprout poem to
learning from your mistakes the song erupts into one of those lines only Molly Nilsson can get away with: “I love my womb, come inside I
feel so alive” she fervently sings. Against the backdrop of ever-encroaching, conservative rulings on women’s reproductive rights in
places like Texas, it’s simultaneously angry and full of love.
Every song on Extreme is a gleaming gem in a pouch of jewels. On Kids Today, Nilsson is the voice of wisdom, archly commenting on the
eternal struggle between youth and authority. Wisdom infuses Sweet Smell Of Success with a transcendent love that forgives the narrator’s
shortcomings and celebrates the moment, it’s a letter to the author from the author that asks “what is success” and concludes that this is it,
this song, this moment. It’s a rare moment of simple reflection that is generous in its insight to Nilsson’s inner life. “Success” is a tool of power
and we don’t need it… We need power tools and there are moments on Extreme where it feels like Nilsson is showing us how to find them. It's
an open conversation through out Extreme. She’s a warm, comforting presence through out the album and specially on these songs of
encouragement, songs perhaps sang to a younger Molly Nilsson or, really, to whomever needs to hear them. “They’ll praise your efforts, they’ll
call you slurs a rebel, a master, an amateur / Merely with your own existence, you already offer your resistance.” On Avoid Heaven she’s
even more direct, pleading with us to avoid concepts of purity and to embrace the glorious, ebullient, emotional mess we’re often in as a
method of upending the power structures who need things to be perfect.
They Will Pay brings back the big, distorted power chords in the form of a agit-punk, pop slammer. Of course, when Molly Nilsson does punk
pop we get the catchiest chorus this side of The Bangles or The Nerves. It’s rendered in an off the cuff, throwaway manner that is just perfect
in its roughness. However, it’s on Pompeii that Nilsson delivers the album’s epic, emotional heartbreaker. Like 1995 on Nilsson’s album Zenith,
or Days Of Dust on Twenty Twenty, the lyrics of Pompeii are heavy with a transcendent sadness, an aching poetry that cuts to the truth of the
heart like the best Leonard Cohen lines, though here delivered with an uplifting, life-affirming love. It contains the most personal moments of
Extreme, a song lit by the dying embers of romance. Yet it’s here where the alchemy at the base of all Nilsson’s best work is found. Turning
small nuggets of personal truth into big, generous universal moments that invite everyone to cry, to love and to fight the power. In an album of
jewels, it might be the shining star.
Molly Nilsson’s biggest, boldest and most vital album to date, Extreme is about power. Against the love of power and for the power of love
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
More records from Night School Records
1
Al Karpenter - 1. We Are All Karpenters
2
Al Karpenter - 2. Mundo Chabola
3
Al Karpenter - 3. Izugarrizko Buruak (Greatest Heads)
4
Al Karpenter - 4. A Brand New Astrophobia
5
Al Karpenter - 5. The Most Grudgeful Lie
6
Al Karpenter - 6. Tout Avant de Devenir Rein
7
Al Karpenter - 7. Stop The Genocide!
8
Al Karpenter - 8. Worm City
9
Al Karpenter - 9. Death Song
10
Al Karpenter - 10.Perfect Love
LP - territory: WW- USA/Benelux
LP LTD 300 with 8 page 12” booklet
Tracklist
1. We Are All Karpenters
2. Mundo Chabola
3. Izugarrizko Buruak (Greatest Heads)
4. A Brand New Astrophobia
5. The Most Grudgeful Lie
6. Tout Avant de Devenir Rein
7. Stop The Genocide!
8. Worm City
9. Death Song
10.Perfect Love
Released by Hegoa Records and Night School Records.
Greatest Heads is the fourth album by the radical Basque- Berlinesque group Al Karpenter. A
deconstruction of structured “rock” music, here Al Karpenter re-imagine “the band” to explore
the intersection between Free music, afro-beat, the avant garde and gonzo rock.
If Theodore Adorno wrote “To Write Poetry after Auschwitz is Barbaric” in 1949, Al Karpenter
attempts to answer the difficult question today; what kind of music can be done in the face of a
genocide? Álvaro Matilla, Marta Sainz, Enrique Zaccagnini & Mattin’s response to the planet’s
slipping into a vortex of hate is to create a music ecstatic, a music of protest bursting with multiple
musical languages and glossaries, full of overlapping histories and thrilling tensions.
Greatest Heads posits a plurality of musics both in opposition and intertwined: Al Karpenter play rock
instruments pulled apart in the studio in post-production. Distorted rhythm chunks bit-crushed and
dissipated, segments of freedom oppressed by waves of sound invading from every direction. The
interplay between the chief instrumentalists and renowned, storied sound artist Mattin creates
something akin to ESP freedom-seekers Cro Magnon playing in Miles Davis’ early 70s groups, The
Los Angeles Free Music Society tightening up into a clenched fist of plunderphonics and runaway
percussion.
We Are All Karpenters opens Greatest Heads with the most straight-forward song refrain of the record
accompanied by a band that soon crash into eruption, imagining Sun City Girls in full free rock mode.
The modulating synth sound soon sucks the band into its wake to create a spine-chilling climax of
distorted sound, made fully orgasmic with mastering engineer Rashad Becker’s attention to detail. On
Izugarrizko Buruak (Greatest Heads), Matilla intones in Basque over a mangled distorto-beat. A Brand
New Astraphobia creates a black space for a heavily processed guitar to blow up before falling to earth
at night, a gentle figure serenading the coming end.
On Side B, the band begins by being masticated by a brutal phaser, squelching and stretching the
music into new territories. The overt message of Stop The Genocide! is besieged by violence before
Worm City aggressively samples the ghosts of soul music, mixing in noise bursts, prepared piano and
swiping, abstracted sound. Epic closer Perfect Love feels like a beat poetry performance on a burnt
world, still grasping for community, for home, for some sort of human love. A Mad love, then; an angry
love fuelled by solidarity and collaboration.
The band’s cascading layers of references and polyglottal musics attempt to create the perfect lover,
alive with rage and disorientating ecstasy: Al Karpenter.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LP LTD 300 with 8 page 12” booklet
Tracklist
1. We Are All Karpenters
2. Mundo Chabola
3. Izugarrizko Buruak (Greatest Heads)
4. A Brand New Astrophobia
5. The Most Grudgeful Lie
6. Tout Avant de Devenir Rein
7. Stop The Genocide!
8. Worm City
9. Death Song
10.Perfect Love
Released by Hegoa Records and Night School Records.
Greatest Heads is the fourth album by the radical Basque- Berlinesque group Al Karpenter. A
deconstruction of structured “rock” music, here Al Karpenter re-imagine “the band” to explore
the intersection between Free music, afro-beat, the avant garde and gonzo rock.
If Theodore Adorno wrote “To Write Poetry after Auschwitz is Barbaric” in 1949, Al Karpenter
attempts to answer the difficult question today; what kind of music can be done in the face of a
genocide? Álvaro Matilla, Marta Sainz, Enrique Zaccagnini & Mattin’s response to the planet’s
slipping into a vortex of hate is to create a music ecstatic, a music of protest bursting with multiple
musical languages and glossaries, full of overlapping histories and thrilling tensions.
Greatest Heads posits a plurality of musics both in opposition and intertwined: Al Karpenter play rock
instruments pulled apart in the studio in post-production. Distorted rhythm chunks bit-crushed and
dissipated, segments of freedom oppressed by waves of sound invading from every direction. The
interplay between the chief instrumentalists and renowned, storied sound artist Mattin creates
something akin to ESP freedom-seekers Cro Magnon playing in Miles Davis’ early 70s groups, The
Los Angeles Free Music Society tightening up into a clenched fist of plunderphonics and runaway
percussion.
We Are All Karpenters opens Greatest Heads with the most straight-forward song refrain of the record
accompanied by a band that soon crash into eruption, imagining Sun City Girls in full free rock mode.
The modulating synth sound soon sucks the band into its wake to create a spine-chilling climax of
distorted sound, made fully orgasmic with mastering engineer Rashad Becker’s attention to detail. On
Izugarrizko Buruak (Greatest Heads), Matilla intones in Basque over a mangled distorto-beat. A Brand
New Astraphobia creates a black space for a heavily processed guitar to blow up before falling to earth
at night, a gentle figure serenading the coming end.
On Side B, the band begins by being masticated by a brutal phaser, squelching and stretching the
music into new territories. The overt message of Stop The Genocide! is besieged by violence before
Worm City aggressively samples the ghosts of soul music, mixing in noise bursts, prepared piano and
swiping, abstracted sound. Epic closer Perfect Love feels like a beat poetry performance on a burnt
world, still grasping for community, for home, for some sort of human love. A Mad love, then; an angry
love fuelled by solidarity and collaboration.
The band’s cascading layers of references and polyglottal musics attempt to create the perfect lover,
alive with rage and disorientating ecstasy: Al Karpenter.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
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LP - territory: WW- USA / Benelux
2LP Black Vinyl w/8pg 12” book
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
2LP Black Vinyl w/8pg 12” book
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LP - territory: WW- USA / Benelux
2LP LTD TRANSPARENT PINK VINYL Vinyl w/8pg 12” book
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
2LP LTD TRANSPARENT PINK VINYL Vinyl w/8pg 12” book
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LP - territory: WW- USA / Benelux
2LP ULTRA LTD MIRROR BOARD PRESSING ON CRYSTAL CLEAR VINYL, HAS THE BOOKLET, AND AN EXTRA 6 PANEL FOLDED POSTER, ONE OF TWO IMAGES.
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
2LP ULTRA LTD MIRROR BOARD PRESSING ON CRYSTAL CLEAR VINYL, HAS THE BOOKLET, AND AN EXTRA 6 PANEL FOLDED POSTER, ONE OF TWO IMAGES.
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LP - territory: WW- USA / Benelux
2CD w/ 24pg book
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
2CD w/ 24pg book
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Molly Nilsson - The Lonely Planet
2
Molly Nilsson - 1995
3
Molly Nilsson - H.O.P.E.
4
Molly Nilsson - Mountain Time
5
Molly Nilsson - Bunny Club
6
Molly Nilsson - Intermezzo: Palimpsest Galore
7
Molly Nilsson - Happyness
8
Molly Nilsson - Lovers Are Losers
9
Molly Nilsson - Clearblue
10
Molly Nilsson - My Body
11
Molly Nilsson - Titanic
12
Molly Nilsson - Bus 194 (All There Is)
13
Molly Nilsson - Tomorrow
Territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
LP 10th Anniversary - Red Gold Vinyl edition
Tracklist
1.The Lonely Planet
2.1995
3.H.O.P.E.
4.Mountain Time
5.Bunny Club
6.Intermezzo: Palimpsest Galore
7.Happyness
8.Lovers Are Losers
9.Clearblue
10.My Body
11.Titanic
12.Bus 194 (All There Is)
13.Tomorrow
To celebrate Molly Nilsson’s most enduring fan-favourite album to date, Night School and Dark Skies
Association are releasing a limited 10th anniversary pressing on Red-Gold vinyl, limited to 500 copies.
Since its release in late summer of 2015, Zenith has come to be considered Nilsson’s greatest album to date. Now
on its 6th pressing, in 2025 Zenith represents the mid-point in the songwriter’s career to date and contains firm fan
favourites in Mountain Time, Happyness and her most popular song, 1995. Zenith sits square between Nilsson’s
original flurry of DIY creativity and her later, outward-looking political material.
Original sales notes…
“A sweeping, cinematic, emotional change is in the air. Molly Nilsson’s sixth studio album Zenith begins with clear,
wide eyes open to Earth as we would love it to be but seldom is. Recorded in her home of Berlin and whilst touring
and, as ever, conceived, produced, written and recorded in solitude, Zenith is Nilsson’s big statement and
consequently her most affecting work to date. It sees her reveling in big arrangements, sweeping synth strings,
bigger choruses and emotions. Like the rest of us she looks within and to endless sunsets in wonder and
puzzlement.
That Molly Nilsson is a DIY cult figure is beyond question; she has always written directly and with wit straight down
the line between the universal and the personal. The difference with Zenith, and you can hear it in the opening
chords of opener The Only Planet, is that her scope is now much wider and her heart heavier than ever before:
over a post-ecstatic dusk, Nilsson serenades the globe in a loving embrace. Following on, 1995 is, arguably, one of
Nilsson’s finest songs to date. It’s one of those songs to learn the lyrics to, to listen to on repeat, a reason to wear
the grooves down to the bone, it’s why pop music can be one of the greatest art forms we have. It’s an example of
how, on this album, Molly draws the listener closer to her heart than ever before. There’s simply no escape from the
line “The plans that you made / when you still had the time / I’ve saved all the things that you left behind but by now
I guess I’d consider them all mine /Windows 95, is only a metaphor for what I feel inside / Although I’m older now /
there’s still an emptiness that’s never letting go somehow.” Show-stopper Mountain Time is the soundtrack to being
on the run, from societal conventions, from normative ideas of happiness, from your surroundings. It’s the
intoxicating call of the renegade. That’s not to say that Nilsson’s light touch has been forsaken for grandiose
statements. Bunny Club begins as a demo-sketch before breaking into a fast-paced tale of doomed romance with
big rave synths and Bus 194 (All There Is) sees Molly joyride through a city on a happy hardcore bus. But it’s
tracks like Tomorrow and another contender for best-ever-Molly moment, Happyness that the true scale of what
she’s accomplished reveals itself. We’re locked in a spiraling orbit, strings and bass whirling, gazing at the spinning
planet below us as we contemplate both the ultimate freedom in loneliness and the glimmer of hope in the Other.
Can we ever be truly with someone? Are we ever truly alone?
Over the 13 tracks here we get the impression that Nilsson may always be restless; like anyone else she has
conflicting feelings of love and hate. It’s just not many other people can tell you exactly how you feel before you
know it yourself.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LP 10th Anniversary - Red Gold Vinyl edition
Tracklist
1.The Lonely Planet
2.1995
3.H.O.P.E.
4.Mountain Time
5.Bunny Club
6.Intermezzo: Palimpsest Galore
7.Happyness
8.Lovers Are Losers
9.Clearblue
10.My Body
11.Titanic
12.Bus 194 (All There Is)
13.Tomorrow
To celebrate Molly Nilsson’s most enduring fan-favourite album to date, Night School and Dark Skies
Association are releasing a limited 10th anniversary pressing on Red-Gold vinyl, limited to 500 copies.
Since its release in late summer of 2015, Zenith has come to be considered Nilsson’s greatest album to date. Now
on its 6th pressing, in 2025 Zenith represents the mid-point in the songwriter’s career to date and contains firm fan
favourites in Mountain Time, Happyness and her most popular song, 1995. Zenith sits square between Nilsson’s
original flurry of DIY creativity and her later, outward-looking political material.
Original sales notes…
“A sweeping, cinematic, emotional change is in the air. Molly Nilsson’s sixth studio album Zenith begins with clear,
wide eyes open to Earth as we would love it to be but seldom is. Recorded in her home of Berlin and whilst touring
and, as ever, conceived, produced, written and recorded in solitude, Zenith is Nilsson’s big statement and
consequently her most affecting work to date. It sees her reveling in big arrangements, sweeping synth strings,
bigger choruses and emotions. Like the rest of us she looks within and to endless sunsets in wonder and
puzzlement.
That Molly Nilsson is a DIY cult figure is beyond question; she has always written directly and with wit straight down
the line between the universal and the personal. The difference with Zenith, and you can hear it in the opening
chords of opener The Only Planet, is that her scope is now much wider and her heart heavier than ever before:
over a post-ecstatic dusk, Nilsson serenades the globe in a loving embrace. Following on, 1995 is, arguably, one of
Nilsson’s finest songs to date. It’s one of those songs to learn the lyrics to, to listen to on repeat, a reason to wear
the grooves down to the bone, it’s why pop music can be one of the greatest art forms we have. It’s an example of
how, on this album, Molly draws the listener closer to her heart than ever before. There’s simply no escape from the
line “The plans that you made / when you still had the time / I’ve saved all the things that you left behind but by now
I guess I’d consider them all mine /Windows 95, is only a metaphor for what I feel inside / Although I’m older now /
there’s still an emptiness that’s never letting go somehow.” Show-stopper Mountain Time is the soundtrack to being
on the run, from societal conventions, from normative ideas of happiness, from your surroundings. It’s the
intoxicating call of the renegade. That’s not to say that Nilsson’s light touch has been forsaken for grandiose
statements. Bunny Club begins as a demo-sketch before breaking into a fast-paced tale of doomed romance with
big rave synths and Bus 194 (All There Is) sees Molly joyride through a city on a happy hardcore bus. But it’s
tracks like Tomorrow and another contender for best-ever-Molly moment, Happyness that the true scale of what
she’s accomplished reveals itself. We’re locked in a spiraling orbit, strings and bass whirling, gazing at the spinning
planet below us as we contemplate both the ultimate freedom in loneliness and the glimmer of hope in the Other.
Can we ever be truly with someone? Are we ever truly alone?
Over the 13 tracks here we get the impression that Nilsson may always be restless; like anyone else she has
conflicting feelings of love and hate. It’s just not many other people can tell you exactly how you feel before you
know it yourself.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Strawberry Switchblade - SIDE A: Spanish Song
2
Strawberry Switchblade - SIDE AA: Trees & Flowers
3
Strawberry Switchblade - SIDE AA: Go Away
Territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
FORMAT: 7” LTD Black Vinyl (700) + Booklet
Tracklist:
SIDE A: Spanish Song
SIDE AA: Trees & Flowers / Go Away
2025 Repress.
Originally released in limited formats in 2017 and having since been repressed several times, 2025 sees
a new pressing to acknowledge the enduring legacy of this recording. In 2024, the song Trees & Flowers
became an unexpected hit on Tik Tok and introduced a new generation to these timeless songs.
“1982 4-Piece Demo” is the first official, fully-licensed and unreleased material to be released under the name
Strawberry Switchblade in 30 years. Since disbanding amid major record label acrimony and personal differences
in 1986, the already-cult band have since grown in stature and legend. Trailblazers in many ways, the band’s
mythology justifiably centers around the charismatic duo of Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, but that isn’t a
complete picture.
Bryson and McDowall’s growing friendship, having met some years earlier on the punk scene, became a creative
partnership: Bryson’s art school background and McDowall’s history in avant-punk group The Poets meant
Strawberry Switchblade was a band pitted against many established norms. The band’s very first incarnation,
an all-female 4 piece, recorded one demo at Glasgow’s Hellfire Club and played a handful of gigs. Friends
Janice Goodlett and Carole McGowan completed the line up on bass and drums respectively. Strawberry
Switchblade would eventually pair down to a duo and go on to chart success but it’s in these raw, passionate
recordings that the songwriting and vocal elements were being hammered out and explored in real time.
“Spanish Song” is a previously unreleased song. With Rose McDowall’s instantly recognizable lead vocal
dovetailing with Bryson’s harmonies and lead guitar, it’s the first glimpse at an alternative history of Strawberry
Switchblade. This incarnation could easily have been featured on a Nuggets compilation or a precursor to the indiepop revolution that would take over British bedrooms a couple of years later. Trees & Flowers is instantly
recognizable, a bona fide classic that would earn the band its first record deal. Here it’s given a more forceful rhythm
section: Goodlett and McGowan’s playing is in fact accomplished and doesn’t hint at the bands’ youth. Go Away
would also surface later on the band’s debut LP but here it is a moody-garage stomper with a psychedelic, haunting
refrain.
These 3 songs point to a tantalizing future of the band that was never realized.
Remastered and restored by Sean Pennycook from the original cassette, with artwork based on a single
photographic contact sheet (the only visual evidence of the band in this form) and with a booklet of photographs and
new text from contemporary Stephen Pastel.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
FORMAT: 7” LTD Black Vinyl (700) + Booklet
Tracklist:
SIDE A: Spanish Song
SIDE AA: Trees & Flowers / Go Away
2025 Repress.
Originally released in limited formats in 2017 and having since been repressed several times, 2025 sees
a new pressing to acknowledge the enduring legacy of this recording. In 2024, the song Trees & Flowers
became an unexpected hit on Tik Tok and introduced a new generation to these timeless songs.
“1982 4-Piece Demo” is the first official, fully-licensed and unreleased material to be released under the name
Strawberry Switchblade in 30 years. Since disbanding amid major record label acrimony and personal differences
in 1986, the already-cult band have since grown in stature and legend. Trailblazers in many ways, the band’s
mythology justifiably centers around the charismatic duo of Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, but that isn’t a
complete picture.
Bryson and McDowall’s growing friendship, having met some years earlier on the punk scene, became a creative
partnership: Bryson’s art school background and McDowall’s history in avant-punk group The Poets meant
Strawberry Switchblade was a band pitted against many established norms. The band’s very first incarnation,
an all-female 4 piece, recorded one demo at Glasgow’s Hellfire Club and played a handful of gigs. Friends
Janice Goodlett and Carole McGowan completed the line up on bass and drums respectively. Strawberry
Switchblade would eventually pair down to a duo and go on to chart success but it’s in these raw, passionate
recordings that the songwriting and vocal elements were being hammered out and explored in real time.
“Spanish Song” is a previously unreleased song. With Rose McDowall’s instantly recognizable lead vocal
dovetailing with Bryson’s harmonies and lead guitar, it’s the first glimpse at an alternative history of Strawberry
Switchblade. This incarnation could easily have been featured on a Nuggets compilation or a precursor to the indiepop revolution that would take over British bedrooms a couple of years later. Trees & Flowers is instantly
recognizable, a bona fide classic that would earn the band its first record deal. Here it’s given a more forceful rhythm
section: Goodlett and McGowan’s playing is in fact accomplished and doesn’t hint at the bands’ youth. Go Away
would also surface later on the band’s debut LP but here it is a moody-garage stomper with a psychedelic, haunting
refrain.
These 3 songs point to a tantalizing future of the band that was never realized.
Remastered and restored by Sean Pennycook from the original cassette, with artwork based on a single
photographic contact sheet (the only visual evidence of the band in this form) and with a booklet of photographs and
new text from contemporary Stephen Pastel.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Strawberry Switchblade - SIDE A: Spanish Song
2
Strawberry Switchblade - SIDE AA: Trees & Flowers
3
Strawberry Switchblade - SIDE AA: Go Away
Territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
FORMAT: 7” LTD Coke Bottle Clear Vinyl (300) + Booklet
Tracklist:
SIDE A: Spanish Song
SIDE AA: Trees & Flowers / Go Away
2025 Repress.
Originally released in limited formats in 2017 and having since been repressed several times, 2025 sees
a new pressing to acknowledge the enduring legacy of this recording. In 2024, the song Trees & Flowers
became an unexpected hit on Tik Tok and introduced a new generation to these timeless songs.
“1982 4-Piece Demo” is the first official, fully-licensed and unreleased material to be released under the name
Strawberry Switchblade in 30 years. Since disbanding amid major record label acrimony and personal differences
in 1986, the already-cult band have since grown in stature and legend. Trailblazers in many ways, the band’s
mythology justifiably centers around the charismatic duo of Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, but that isn’t a
complete picture.
Bryson and McDowall’s growing friendship, having met some years earlier on the punk scene, became a creative
partnership: Bryson’s art school background and McDowall’s history in avant-punk group The Poets meant
Strawberry Switchblade was a band pitted against many established norms. The band’s very first incarnation,
an all-female 4 piece, recorded one demo at Glasgow’s Hellfire Club and played a handful of gigs. Friends
Janice Goodlett and Carole McGowan completed the line up on bass and drums respectively. Strawberry
Switchblade would eventually pair down to a duo and go on to chart success but it’s in these raw, passionate
recordings that the songwriting and vocal elements were being hammered out and explored in real time.
“Spanish Song” is a previously unreleased song. With Rose McDowall’s instantly recognizable lead vocal
dovetailing with Bryson’s harmonies and lead guitar, it’s the first glimpse at an alternative history of Strawberry
Switchblade. This incarnation could easily have been featured on a Nuggets compilation or a precursor to the indiepop revolution that would take over British bedrooms a couple of years later. Trees & Flowers is instantly
recognizable, a bona fide classic that would earn the band its first record deal. Here it’s given a more forceful rhythm
section: Goodlett and McGowan’s playing is in fact accomplished and doesn’t hint at the bands’ youth. Go Away
would also surface later on the band’s debut LP but here it is a moody-garage stomper with a psychedelic, haunting
refrain.
These 3 songs point to a tantalizing future of the band that was never realized.
Remastered and restored by Sean Pennycook from the original cassette, with artwork based on a single
photographic contact sheet (the only visual evidence of the band in this form) and with a booklet of photographs and
new text from contemporary Stephen Pastel.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
FORMAT: 7” LTD Coke Bottle Clear Vinyl (300) + Booklet
Tracklist:
SIDE A: Spanish Song
SIDE AA: Trees & Flowers / Go Away
2025 Repress.
Originally released in limited formats in 2017 and having since been repressed several times, 2025 sees
a new pressing to acknowledge the enduring legacy of this recording. In 2024, the song Trees & Flowers
became an unexpected hit on Tik Tok and introduced a new generation to these timeless songs.
“1982 4-Piece Demo” is the first official, fully-licensed and unreleased material to be released under the name
Strawberry Switchblade in 30 years. Since disbanding amid major record label acrimony and personal differences
in 1986, the already-cult band have since grown in stature and legend. Trailblazers in many ways, the band’s
mythology justifiably centers around the charismatic duo of Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, but that isn’t a
complete picture.
Bryson and McDowall’s growing friendship, having met some years earlier on the punk scene, became a creative
partnership: Bryson’s art school background and McDowall’s history in avant-punk group The Poets meant
Strawberry Switchblade was a band pitted against many established norms. The band’s very first incarnation,
an all-female 4 piece, recorded one demo at Glasgow’s Hellfire Club and played a handful of gigs. Friends
Janice Goodlett and Carole McGowan completed the line up on bass and drums respectively. Strawberry
Switchblade would eventually pair down to a duo and go on to chart success but it’s in these raw, passionate
recordings that the songwriting and vocal elements were being hammered out and explored in real time.
“Spanish Song” is a previously unreleased song. With Rose McDowall’s instantly recognizable lead vocal
dovetailing with Bryson’s harmonies and lead guitar, it’s the first glimpse at an alternative history of Strawberry
Switchblade. This incarnation could easily have been featured on a Nuggets compilation or a precursor to the indiepop revolution that would take over British bedrooms a couple of years later. Trees & Flowers is instantly
recognizable, a bona fide classic that would earn the band its first record deal. Here it’s given a more forceful rhythm
section: Goodlett and McGowan’s playing is in fact accomplished and doesn’t hint at the bands’ youth. Go Away
would also surface later on the band’s debut LP but here it is a moody-garage stomper with a psychedelic, haunting
refrain.
These 3 songs point to a tantalizing future of the band that was never realized.
Remastered and restored by Sean Pennycook from the original cassette, with artwork based on a single
photographic contact sheet (the only visual evidence of the band in this form) and with a booklet of photographs and
new text from contemporary Stephen Pastel.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Mope Grooves - No Title
2
Mope Grooves - No Title
3
Mope Grooves - No Title
4
Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
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Mope Grooves - No Title
2LP, LTD 500 , Black Vinyl -- Territories: WW-US,CA,UK,FR,BENELUX
The final album from stevie’s Mope Grooves,
the seminal Portland collective. A 2 hour, 27
track masterpiece of touching, warped music
that transcends genre into a realm of pure
inspiration.
All profits from this release will be donated to
Survived and Punished charity.
Tracklist:
1.Controlled Burn
2.Aileen
3.Pieces Of God
4.Forever Is A Long Time 03:19
5.Do You Hear Music
6.Home Sick
7.We Won
8.Swail
9.Here Comes The Moon
10.Hallway Of Crucified Angels
11.Fox Highway
12.Harp Circles
13.Wind Follows Me Home
14.Cap Hits The Button
15.Si Fuese Violeta
16.Wall Of Swords
17.Switch Cars
18.Continue & Intensify
19.Les Anges Passent
20.Here Comes The Rain
21.Turning Fire
22.Simple As That
23.Life Is Good
24.Dora
25.Isn't It Hard
26.Tired All The Time
27.Box Of Dark Roses
Through the fog of our grief in the wake of the earth-shattering loss of our beloved angel Stevie, on this
day which would have been her 35th birthday, we announce the release of Mope Groove’s final album; Box
of Dark Roses. A 27 song, 2XLP of songs that Stevie prepared for release before she left. In addition to the
music, Stevie provided extensive liner notes to accompany the album. These are included with the album in
the form of a zine, or as a digital PDF, respectively.
"If i'm ever hard to get a hold of u can find my whole heart in here."
-Stevie (from her liner notes)
Rest in peace sweet angel. We love you forever.
Stevie provided the following statement on the album before her departure:
"all artist profits and digital proceeds will be redistributed in perpetuity to incarcerated or formerly
incarcerated survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, especially the many women and other
gender marginalized ppl incarcerated for defending themselves against their attackers. funds will be
allocated to the Survived and Punished NY Mutual Aid Fund, a comparable organization, or directly into
commissary funds or fundraisers of incarcerated survivors.
"box of dark roses is a 27 song LP where the same images repeat and repeat until you might have some
idea of what roses have to do with armed struggle, trans autonomy, losing your house (again), angels,
women political prisoners, violence returned to sender, suicided poets, refusing to recant, insisting on life,
& how the revenge of twenty billion screaming ghost women could unmake the worst of all possible
worlds”
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
The final album from stevie’s Mope Grooves,
the seminal Portland collective. A 2 hour, 27
track masterpiece of touching, warped music
that transcends genre into a realm of pure
inspiration.
All profits from this release will be donated to
Survived and Punished charity.
Tracklist:
1.Controlled Burn
2.Aileen
3.Pieces Of God
4.Forever Is A Long Time 03:19
5.Do You Hear Music
6.Home Sick
7.We Won
8.Swail
9.Here Comes The Moon
10.Hallway Of Crucified Angels
11.Fox Highway
12.Harp Circles
13.Wind Follows Me Home
14.Cap Hits The Button
15.Si Fuese Violeta
16.Wall Of Swords
17.Switch Cars
18.Continue & Intensify
19.Les Anges Passent
20.Here Comes The Rain
21.Turning Fire
22.Simple As That
23.Life Is Good
24.Dora
25.Isn't It Hard
26.Tired All The Time
27.Box Of Dark Roses
Through the fog of our grief in the wake of the earth-shattering loss of our beloved angel Stevie, on this
day which would have been her 35th birthday, we announce the release of Mope Groove’s final album; Box
of Dark Roses. A 27 song, 2XLP of songs that Stevie prepared for release before she left. In addition to the
music, Stevie provided extensive liner notes to accompany the album. These are included with the album in
the form of a zine, or as a digital PDF, respectively.
"If i'm ever hard to get a hold of u can find my whole heart in here."
-Stevie (from her liner notes)
Rest in peace sweet angel. We love you forever.
Stevie provided the following statement on the album before her departure:
"all artist profits and digital proceeds will be redistributed in perpetuity to incarcerated or formerly
incarcerated survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, especially the many women and other
gender marginalized ppl incarcerated for defending themselves against their attackers. funds will be
allocated to the Survived and Punished NY Mutual Aid Fund, a comparable organization, or directly into
commissary funds or fundraisers of incarcerated survivors.
"box of dark roses is a 27 song LP where the same images repeat and repeat until you might have some
idea of what roses have to do with armed struggle, trans autonomy, losing your house (again), angels,
women political prisoners, violence returned to sender, suicided poets, refusing to recant, insisting on life,
& how the revenge of twenty billion screaming ghost women could unmake the worst of all possible
worlds”
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Tristwch y Fenywod - 1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2
Tristwch y Fenywod - 2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3
Tristwch y Fenywod - 3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4
Tristwch y Fenywod - 4. Llwydwyrdd
5
Tristwch y Fenywod - 5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6
Tristwch y Fenywod - 6. Gelain Görs
7
Tristwch y Fenywod - 7. Awen
8
Tristwch y Fenywod - 8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
Black Vinyl LP, 2025 REPRESS
Tracklist
1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4. Llwydwyrdd
5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6. Gelain Görs
7. Awen
8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moonglow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock powercoven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch
Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The
Courtneys).
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just
10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod ("The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the
Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and
bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial
rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the
waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric,
occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony
around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads.
Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts
Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can
Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass
and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical
theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album,
particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee
breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.
The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Black Vinyl LP, 2025 REPRESS
Tracklist
1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4. Llwydwyrdd
5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6. Gelain Görs
7. Awen
8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moonglow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock powercoven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch
Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The
Courtneys).
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just
10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod ("The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the
Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and
bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial
rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the
waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric,
occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony
around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads.
Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts
Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can
Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass
and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical
theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album,
particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee
breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.
The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Yuching Huang - 1. Fly! Little Black Thing
2
Yuching Huang - 2. Love
3
Yuching Huang - 3. Confessions From A Soul
4
Yuching Huang - 4. Thoughts
5
Yuching Huang - 5. Thunder In Heaven
6
Yuching Huang - 6. In My Room
7
Yuching Huang - 7. The Song Of Summer
8
Yuching Huang - 8. JohnJohn
9
Yuching Huang - 9. Alright
10
Yuching Huang - 10. You, An Illusion
LP - The Crystal Hum is the debut vinyl release by Taiwan-based artist Yuching Huang and her first release for Night School.
1. Fly! Little Black Thing
2. Love
3. Confessions From A Soul
4. Thoughts
5. Thunder In Heaven
6. In My Room
7. The Song Of Summer
8. JohnJohn
9. Alright
10. You, An Illusion
The Crystal Hum is the debut vinyl release by Taiwan-based artist Yuching Huang and her first release for Night School.
A beguiling dreamscape of crackles, spluttering, love-struck Casios presided over by the the spectral vocal and guitar
work of Huang, Yuching sings love songs at the end of this world and the beginning of the next. Recorded during a
hiatus from her group Aemong (a duo with artist Henrique Uba) in Berlin, these songs elevate Huang’s unique vocal
style and grasp of atmospherics. The Crystal Hum deconstructs balladry, Garage, guitar music and reforms it into a
unified ghostly otherworld version of these languages.
The Crystal Hum thrums with buried desire, trails of nocturnal reverb seeping out of apartment windows, diaristic vocal
performances and deeply emotive, evocative Western-style strings. Formulated by Yuching Huang after periods of frustration
and experimentation, the album is an exercise in minimalism and paring back, with some tracks like JohnJohn featuring little
else than an elastic bass, spring reverb trails, an interjecting vocal and swelling, dislocated synths. The effect is spellbinding,
the soundtrack to getting lost in the labyrinthine, closed streets of Venice, Taipei, Hong Kong, or mirror versions of them in the
imagination.
On opener Fly! Little Black Thing, a subterranean funk bassline roots Huang’s singing, a rudimentary, unreliable beat
floundering in whimsy underneath. Demure, dream Dance music, Huang references classic lo fi experimenters Suicide and
Arthur Russell as well as Night School label mates The Space Lady and Ela Orleans. In fact, after the release of Aemong’s
third album Crimson, Huang credits the direction of The Crystal Hum to being enchanted by The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits,
the landmark lo-fi recording made by Susan Dietrich Schneider in 1990. The new, minimalist approach to her sound world
reveals and shrouds in equal measure. On the heart-melter Love, a sultry mid-tempo Casio + bass backing drops into the ether
with Huang’s vocal swimming in preternatural void before emerging anew, in awe at the world. Every chord change heralds new
perspectives, every guitar flurry swells and drips emotion, nothing is wasted and space billows out from between the grooves.
Huang never reveals more than necessary, making this an in-between love album: the right amount of mystery and darkened
mirror shines wanely on The Crystal Hum while remaining fragile and vulnerable in the sweet spots. Turning over in pillowing
smoke and night in the dark corners, Huang sings in both Mandarin and English. The songs speak of earthly matters seemingly
at the edge of dissipating into nothing. Distorted, beguiling Sambas warble like sweating dancehalls in an imagined Lynchian
60s, as on Thoughts. Closer You, An Illusion warps a classic 60s Girlgroup bassline beloved of the likes of Les Rallizes
Denudes into a slight ballad on the edge of the void, held back by the teary-eyed, wistful and enveloping vocal cooed by
Huang. Each song feels like a love song dedicated to the bits between worlds, between beats, the negative space between
people where desires, feelings and loss hangs in the air, resolute and unresolved.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1. Fly! Little Black Thing
2. Love
3. Confessions From A Soul
4. Thoughts
5. Thunder In Heaven
6. In My Room
7. The Song Of Summer
8. JohnJohn
9. Alright
10. You, An Illusion
The Crystal Hum is the debut vinyl release by Taiwan-based artist Yuching Huang and her first release for Night School.
A beguiling dreamscape of crackles, spluttering, love-struck Casios presided over by the the spectral vocal and guitar
work of Huang, Yuching sings love songs at the end of this world and the beginning of the next. Recorded during a
hiatus from her group Aemong (a duo with artist Henrique Uba) in Berlin, these songs elevate Huang’s unique vocal
style and grasp of atmospherics. The Crystal Hum deconstructs balladry, Garage, guitar music and reforms it into a
unified ghostly otherworld version of these languages.
The Crystal Hum thrums with buried desire, trails of nocturnal reverb seeping out of apartment windows, diaristic vocal
performances and deeply emotive, evocative Western-style strings. Formulated by Yuching Huang after periods of frustration
and experimentation, the album is an exercise in minimalism and paring back, with some tracks like JohnJohn featuring little
else than an elastic bass, spring reverb trails, an interjecting vocal and swelling, dislocated synths. The effect is spellbinding,
the soundtrack to getting lost in the labyrinthine, closed streets of Venice, Taipei, Hong Kong, or mirror versions of them in the
imagination.
On opener Fly! Little Black Thing, a subterranean funk bassline roots Huang’s singing, a rudimentary, unreliable beat
floundering in whimsy underneath. Demure, dream Dance music, Huang references classic lo fi experimenters Suicide and
Arthur Russell as well as Night School label mates The Space Lady and Ela Orleans. In fact, after the release of Aemong’s
third album Crimson, Huang credits the direction of The Crystal Hum to being enchanted by The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits,
the landmark lo-fi recording made by Susan Dietrich Schneider in 1990. The new, minimalist approach to her sound world
reveals and shrouds in equal measure. On the heart-melter Love, a sultry mid-tempo Casio + bass backing drops into the ether
with Huang’s vocal swimming in preternatural void before emerging anew, in awe at the world. Every chord change heralds new
perspectives, every guitar flurry swells and drips emotion, nothing is wasted and space billows out from between the grooves.
Huang never reveals more than necessary, making this an in-between love album: the right amount of mystery and darkened
mirror shines wanely on The Crystal Hum while remaining fragile and vulnerable in the sweet spots. Turning over in pillowing
smoke and night in the dark corners, Huang sings in both Mandarin and English. The songs speak of earthly matters seemingly
at the edge of dissipating into nothing. Distorted, beguiling Sambas warble like sweating dancehalls in an imagined Lynchian
60s, as on Thoughts. Closer You, An Illusion warps a classic 60s Girlgroup bassline beloved of the likes of Les Rallizes
Denudes into a slight ballad on the edge of the void, held back by the teary-eyed, wistful and enveloping vocal cooed by
Huang. Each song feels like a love song dedicated to the bits between worlds, between beats, the negative space between
people where desires, feelings and loss hangs in the air, resolute and unresolved.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Sorrow - No Title
2
Sorrow - No Title
3
Sorrow - No Title
4
Sorrow - No Title
5
Sorrow - No Title
6
Sorrow - No Title
7
Sorrow - No Title
8
Sorrow - No Title
9
Sorrow - No Title
10
Sorrow - No Title
11
Sorrow - No Title
CD 20 page booklet / O-Card / 500 only - Territories: WW-US,UK
Limited to 500 only.
Available on CD for the first time in 25 years!
1. Soldier
2. Love Dies
3. Turn Off The Light
4. Haunting
5. Fear Becomes You
6. October Faul
7. Wishing Stone
8. Nomadic Man
9. Epiphany
10. Angel
11. Sleep Now Forever
Sleep Now Forever is the second and final album released by Sorrow, the post-Strawberry Switchblade group fronted
by singer Rose McDowall. Originally released in 1999 and long since deleted it is a cornucopia of pastoral, elegiac folk
music, swirling atmospherics, hymnal compositions and above it all the alternating towering and fragile vocal
performances of McDowall. Recorded in the late 90s with fellow band member and co-songwriter Robert Lee, Sleep
Now Forever is the definitive statement by the now defunct group and Rose McDowall’s most complete long-form work
to date.
Released through the group’s own Piski Disk Records, Sleep Now Forever was distributed by World Serpent which
struggled through the early 2000s with financial woes, eventually folding due to bankruptcy in 2004. Due to the company’s
troubles, Sleep Now Forever was never distributed widely and was a victim of the company’s failure. Released on CD only,
original copies are now rare and only traded on second hand channels. Remastered by Mikey Young for a limited vinyl release,
Sleep Now Forever will be released on April 20th on double vinyl format, with one side an exclusive etching by Glasgow artist
Holly Allan.
Despite its rarity, Sleep Now Forever enjoys a firm cult following. The album’s textures are expansive, lush, deliciously detailed
and celestial. Recorded in home study Velvet Hole by Rose McDowall and then-husband Robert Lee, the album enlists an
array of players from the underground Neo-folk / industrial scene: Nigel McKernaghan (Uilleann pipes, Whistles), Susan
Franknel (Bassoon), John Contreras (Cello) and Lawrence Frankel (Oboe, Cor Anglais). The eleven songs here revolve
around McDowall’s instantly recognisable voice. Brought up singing in the Catholic Church, McDowall’s vocals are impeccable
and angelic, particularly on tracks like Turn Off The Light where her experiences with religion are canted over soaring oboe
and guitar backing. By far the most evolved and realised version of Sorrow’s vision, it feels somewhat criminal that music this
beautiful could be lost to time until now.
McDowall’s lyrics throughout Sleep Now Forever deal frankly with mental health, depression, altered states, death and
redemption. Wave upon wave of harmony drench each song, McDowal’s vocal multi-tracked and imperious. Opener Soldier
benefits from Robert Lee’s use of the studio as instrument, summoning forth a lilting group performance of sparkling guitar and
percussion that recalls the Velvet Underground. Mikey Love’s master treats the compositions to brand new frequency
dynamics and space. Harmonium and string drones form the counter to McDowall’s vocal on Love Dies, a slow, lurching
lament that feels transcendent. On Haunting, the arrangement is orchestral and aching, bleeding into Fear Becomes You, with
chord and harmony structure that recalls the baroque sixties pop of West Coast Pop Experimental Art Band or the 60s
psychedelic folk movement. A towering, beautiful statement, this elegy for times lost and moonlit-illumination is finally
resurfacing from the darkness.
Sleep Now Forever is being released on 2LP on April 20th, 2024. Limited to 500.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Limited to 500 only.
Available on CD for the first time in 25 years!
1. Soldier
2. Love Dies
3. Turn Off The Light
4. Haunting
5. Fear Becomes You
6. October Faul
7. Wishing Stone
8. Nomadic Man
9. Epiphany
10. Angel
11. Sleep Now Forever
Sleep Now Forever is the second and final album released by Sorrow, the post-Strawberry Switchblade group fronted
by singer Rose McDowall. Originally released in 1999 and long since deleted it is a cornucopia of pastoral, elegiac folk
music, swirling atmospherics, hymnal compositions and above it all the alternating towering and fragile vocal
performances of McDowall. Recorded in the late 90s with fellow band member and co-songwriter Robert Lee, Sleep
Now Forever is the definitive statement by the now defunct group and Rose McDowall’s most complete long-form work
to date.
Released through the group’s own Piski Disk Records, Sleep Now Forever was distributed by World Serpent which
struggled through the early 2000s with financial woes, eventually folding due to bankruptcy in 2004. Due to the company’s
troubles, Sleep Now Forever was never distributed widely and was a victim of the company’s failure. Released on CD only,
original copies are now rare and only traded on second hand channels. Remastered by Mikey Young for a limited vinyl release,
Sleep Now Forever will be released on April 20th on double vinyl format, with one side an exclusive etching by Glasgow artist
Holly Allan.
Despite its rarity, Sleep Now Forever enjoys a firm cult following. The album’s textures are expansive, lush, deliciously detailed
and celestial. Recorded in home study Velvet Hole by Rose McDowall and then-husband Robert Lee, the album enlists an
array of players from the underground Neo-folk / industrial scene: Nigel McKernaghan (Uilleann pipes, Whistles), Susan
Franknel (Bassoon), John Contreras (Cello) and Lawrence Frankel (Oboe, Cor Anglais). The eleven songs here revolve
around McDowall’s instantly recognisable voice. Brought up singing in the Catholic Church, McDowall’s vocals are impeccable
and angelic, particularly on tracks like Turn Off The Light where her experiences with religion are canted over soaring oboe
and guitar backing. By far the most evolved and realised version of Sorrow’s vision, it feels somewhat criminal that music this
beautiful could be lost to time until now.
McDowall’s lyrics throughout Sleep Now Forever deal frankly with mental health, depression, altered states, death and
redemption. Wave upon wave of harmony drench each song, McDowal’s vocal multi-tracked and imperious. Opener Soldier
benefits from Robert Lee’s use of the studio as instrument, summoning forth a lilting group performance of sparkling guitar and
percussion that recalls the Velvet Underground. Mikey Love’s master treats the compositions to brand new frequency
dynamics and space. Harmonium and string drones form the counter to McDowall’s vocal on Love Dies, a slow, lurching
lament that feels transcendent. On Haunting, the arrangement is orchestral and aching, bleeding into Fear Becomes You, with
chord and harmony structure that recalls the baroque sixties pop of West Coast Pop Experimental Art Band or the 60s
psychedelic folk movement. A towering, beautiful statement, this elegy for times lost and moonlit-illumination is finally
resurfacing from the darkness.
Sleep Now Forever is being released on 2LP on April 20th, 2024. Limited to 500.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
CD
Tracklist
1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4. Llwydwyrdd
5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6. Gelain Görs
7. Awen
8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moonglow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock powercoven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch
Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The
Courtneys).
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just
10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod ("The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the
Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and
bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial
rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the
waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric,
occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony
around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads.
Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts
Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can
Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass
and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical
theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album,
particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee
breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.
The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
CD
Tracklist
1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4. Llwydwyrdd
5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6. Gelain Görs
7. Awen
8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moonglow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock powercoven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch
Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The
Courtneys).
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just
10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod ("The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the
Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and
bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial
rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the
waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric,
occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony
around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads.
Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts
Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can
Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass
and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical
theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album,
particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee
breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.
The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LP, Terrtory: WW-UKUSA-BNLX
**LTD PINK VINYL REPRESS**
Tracklist: 1. The City Was 2. Always 3. Comet 4 4. Behind The Fire 5. Feel The Way 6. Sonya's Lament 7. Already Over 8. What We Found 9. With Us For Now 10. Wider Arcs 11. The Return
It’s abundantly clear from the first bars of their 5th studio album Through Other Reflection, that this is, and could only ever be, The Soundcarriers. From the enchanting vocal duets of folk-bidden Chanteuses Leonore Wheatley and Dorian Conway; to the precise bass lines of Paul Isherwood and the limber, jazz-cool, Hal Blaine-esque drums of his his co-songwriter Adam Cann; from the fairy-like flutes, 60s-garage guitars and organ sounds pilfered from the archives of exotica - listening to the Soundcarriers resembles a rediscovery of all the most prized, esoteric corners of the 1960s, all bundled up, warped and refracted through the quartet’s astutely modern cultural lens. Channelling Tropicalia, Middle Eastern psychedelic Jazz/Funk, The French Library sounds of Nino Nardini, and a whole host of lavish obscurites beside, Through Other Reflection delivers another sonic adventure from one of the most unique and distinctive voices of British Psychedelia.
After an 8 year wait for their album 4 - 2022’s Wilds - it thankfully didn’t take so long for the follow-up this time round. In many ways, this feels like a companion to Wilds; recording again at their Nottingham warehouse studio, Through Other Reflection retains that same organic glow, all the passions and imperfections of a tightly clipped unit jamming out these living, breathing pop-art nuggets as if straight onto the acetate.”We wanted to keep an air of spontaneity with this album and not get too bogged with the recording process”, explains Cann, “It was more a case of getting the songs as tightly written and arranged as possible first so we could get them down quickly in the studio. It always takes longer than you think”
Less packed with strident pop hooks as its predecessor however, the music of Through… has been given extra licence to breathe, stretch out, and wander more uncharted terrains. While gleaming psych-pop of tracks like ‘The City Was’, or ‘Already Over’ confidently carry on from where they left off, from the album’s 2nd track ‘Always’, the trip becomes a little less predictable. Starting out as a smoky Procol Harum-meets-French-Psych organ ballad, the music drifts, as if of its own accord into an eerie, garage trance that lingers, cycles, and hypnotises, growing ever stranger, reaching ever-further away from its point of conception.
And almost every track on Through Other Reflections holds that outer-body moment, where the band fix themselves on a limber, lysergic groove, lose all grip on time and reality, and melt themselves away into a liquid state of blind euphoria. There are sequences on this record that feel more like rituals than songs, built upon a single hypnotic rhythm which, like the centre of a vortex, pulling everything under its beatific command. Take the finale to ‘What We Found’ for instance, sounding like a ghostly march across the psychedelic moors, or ‘Feel The Way’, where a single athletic drum-loop rises and rises, growing ever more urgent and suspenseful underneath its frantic harpsichords and rasping flutes.
Full of such rich stylisms as these, The Soundcarriers showcase themselves as abstract storytellers par excellence by virtue of their textures and arrangements alone. Resembling Romantic composer Maurice Ravel, but if he had just a four-piece rock band at his disposal, Through Other Reflects is rich with detail; there’s shakers, rattles, clarinets, booming drums; there’s synthesiser swarms, chiming xylophones, vintage organs and experimental Cluster & Eno-esque ambiences. Within all this nuance the music flows like some undisclosed narrative swathed in a magnetic secrecy. “It almost comes across like a story in some ways”, says Cann of the album, “the music is quite sectional with elements of exotica and cinematic type layers, it's a good balance of grooves, tunes and weirdness”. No more is this “epic cinematic feel” heard more proudly than on short instrumental ‘Sonya’s Lament” - its innate, hauntological atmospheres befitting a Peter Strickland soundtrack, or the classics of Lex Baxter, the so-called ‘Founder of Exotica’ himself.
On the other hand, providing a greasier undercurrent to all these bucolic sounds is a leaning towards a more “direct” lyricism referencing more “external concerns. Laying down the first tracks for the album in the wintry gloom of pre-lockdown 2020, and drawing inspiration from time spent in Berlin, Through Other Reflections returns to some of the post-apocalyptic futurism explored in 2014’s Entropicalia - a loose concept album inspired by J.G Ballard’s The Drowned World. “The songs explore a disillusionment with the way things are going particularly after 40 years of neoliberalism”, says Cann, “They follow that folk-song tradition of wanting to escape to an imagined time, but here it’s more urban than pastoral. The first couple of ideas I came up with when doing some music in Berlin and had some time to wander aimlessly. And think the atmosphere seeped in, particularly on The City Was and Already Over.
He continues, “One aspect of the title, ‘Through Other Reflections’ is about synthesis and layers of influence. How things can be filtered through other things and change the perspective. This is something you get in cities as well.” Though, as with everything The Soundcarriers make, “It can mean anything. It also just sounds kind of cool.”
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
**LTD PINK VINYL REPRESS**
Tracklist: 1. The City Was 2. Always 3. Comet 4 4. Behind The Fire 5. Feel The Way 6. Sonya's Lament 7. Already Over 8. What We Found 9. With Us For Now 10. Wider Arcs 11. The Return
It’s abundantly clear from the first bars of their 5th studio album Through Other Reflection, that this is, and could only ever be, The Soundcarriers. From the enchanting vocal duets of folk-bidden Chanteuses Leonore Wheatley and Dorian Conway; to the precise bass lines of Paul Isherwood and the limber, jazz-cool, Hal Blaine-esque drums of his his co-songwriter Adam Cann; from the fairy-like flutes, 60s-garage guitars and organ sounds pilfered from the archives of exotica - listening to the Soundcarriers resembles a rediscovery of all the most prized, esoteric corners of the 1960s, all bundled up, warped and refracted through the quartet’s astutely modern cultural lens. Channelling Tropicalia, Middle Eastern psychedelic Jazz/Funk, The French Library sounds of Nino Nardini, and a whole host of lavish obscurites beside, Through Other Reflection delivers another sonic adventure from one of the most unique and distinctive voices of British Psychedelia.
After an 8 year wait for their album 4 - 2022’s Wilds - it thankfully didn’t take so long for the follow-up this time round. In many ways, this feels like a companion to Wilds; recording again at their Nottingham warehouse studio, Through Other Reflection retains that same organic glow, all the passions and imperfections of a tightly clipped unit jamming out these living, breathing pop-art nuggets as if straight onto the acetate.”We wanted to keep an air of spontaneity with this album and not get too bogged with the recording process”, explains Cann, “It was more a case of getting the songs as tightly written and arranged as possible first so we could get them down quickly in the studio. It always takes longer than you think”
Less packed with strident pop hooks as its predecessor however, the music of Through… has been given extra licence to breathe, stretch out, and wander more uncharted terrains. While gleaming psych-pop of tracks like ‘The City Was’, or ‘Already Over’ confidently carry on from where they left off, from the album’s 2nd track ‘Always’, the trip becomes a little less predictable. Starting out as a smoky Procol Harum-meets-French-Psych organ ballad, the music drifts, as if of its own accord into an eerie, garage trance that lingers, cycles, and hypnotises, growing ever stranger, reaching ever-further away from its point of conception.
And almost every track on Through Other Reflections holds that outer-body moment, where the band fix themselves on a limber, lysergic groove, lose all grip on time and reality, and melt themselves away into a liquid state of blind euphoria. There are sequences on this record that feel more like rituals than songs, built upon a single hypnotic rhythm which, like the centre of a vortex, pulling everything under its beatific command. Take the finale to ‘What We Found’ for instance, sounding like a ghostly march across the psychedelic moors, or ‘Feel The Way’, where a single athletic drum-loop rises and rises, growing ever more urgent and suspenseful underneath its frantic harpsichords and rasping flutes.
Full of such rich stylisms as these, The Soundcarriers showcase themselves as abstract storytellers par excellence by virtue of their textures and arrangements alone. Resembling Romantic composer Maurice Ravel, but if he had just a four-piece rock band at his disposal, Through Other Reflects is rich with detail; there’s shakers, rattles, clarinets, booming drums; there’s synthesiser swarms, chiming xylophones, vintage organs and experimental Cluster & Eno-esque ambiences. Within all this nuance the music flows like some undisclosed narrative swathed in a magnetic secrecy. “It almost comes across like a story in some ways”, says Cann of the album, “the music is quite sectional with elements of exotica and cinematic type layers, it's a good balance of grooves, tunes and weirdness”. No more is this “epic cinematic feel” heard more proudly than on short instrumental ‘Sonya’s Lament” - its innate, hauntological atmospheres befitting a Peter Strickland soundtrack, or the classics of Lex Baxter, the so-called ‘Founder of Exotica’ himself.
On the other hand, providing a greasier undercurrent to all these bucolic sounds is a leaning towards a more “direct” lyricism referencing more “external concerns. Laying down the first tracks for the album in the wintry gloom of pre-lockdown 2020, and drawing inspiration from time spent in Berlin, Through Other Reflections returns to some of the post-apocalyptic futurism explored in 2014’s Entropicalia - a loose concept album inspired by J.G Ballard’s The Drowned World. “The songs explore a disillusionment with the way things are going particularly after 40 years of neoliberalism”, says Cann, “They follow that folk-song tradition of wanting to escape to an imagined time, but here it’s more urban than pastoral. The first couple of ideas I came up with when doing some music in Berlin and had some time to wander aimlessly. And think the atmosphere seeped in, particularly on The City Was and Already Over.
He continues, “One aspect of the title, ‘Through Other Reflections’ is about synthesis and layers of influence. How things can be filtered through other things and change the perspective. This is something you get in cities as well.” Though, as with everything The Soundcarriers make, “It can mean anything. It also just sounds kind of cool.”
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Sorrow - Soldier
2
Sorrow - Love Dies
3
Sorrow - Turn Off The Light
4
Sorrow - Haunting
5
Sorrow - Fear Becomes You
6
Sorrow - October Faul
7
Sorrow - Wishing Stone
8
Sorrow - Nomadic Man
9
Sorrow - Epiphany
10
Sorrow - Angel
11
Sorrow - Sleep Now Forever
2LP, 2nd Pressing
Black Vinyl, one side etched.
Limited to 300 only.
With Lyric insert, matt sleeve with spot varnish front detail.- Territories: WW-US,UK
1. Soldier
2. Love Dies
3. Turn Off The Light
4. Haunting
5. Fear Becomes You
6. October Faul
7. Wishing Stone
8. Nomadic Man
9. Epiphany
10. Angel
11. Sleep Now Forever
Sleep Now Forever is the second and final album released by Sorrow, the post-Strawberry Switchblade group fronted
by singer Rose McDowall. Originally released in 1999 and long since deleted it is a cornucopia of pastoral, elegiac folk
music, swirling atmospherics, hymnal compositions and above it all the alternating towering and fragile vocal
performances of McDowall. Recorded in the late 90s with fellow band member and co-songwriter Robert Lee, Sleep
Now Forever is the definitive statement by the now defunct group and Rose McDowall’s most complete long-form work
to date.
Released through the group’s own Piski Disk Records, Sleep Now Forever was distributed by World Serpent which
struggled through the early 2000s with financial woes, eventually folding due to bankruptcy in 2004. Due to the company’s
troubles, Sleep Now Forever was never distributed widely and was a victim of the company’s failure. Released on CD only,
original copies are now rare and only traded on second hand channels. Remastered by Mikey Young for a limited vinyl release,
Sleep Now Forever will be released on April 20th on double vinyl format, with one side an exclusive etching by Glasgow artist
Holly Allan.
Despite its rarity, Sleep Now Forever enjoys a firm cult following. The album’s textures are expansive, lush, deliciously detailed
and celestial. Recorded in home study Velvet Hole by Rose McDowall and then-husband Robert Lee, the album enlists an
array of players from the underground Neo-folk / industrial scene: Nigel McKernaghan (Uilleann pipes, Whistles), Susan
Franknel (Bassoon), John Contreras (Cello) and Lawrence Frankel (Oboe, Cor Anglais). The eleven songs here revolve
around McDowall’s instantly recognisable voice. Brought up singing in the Catholic Church, McDowall’s vocals are impeccable
and angelic, particularly on tracks like Turn Off The Light where her experiences with religion are canted over soaring oboe
and guitar backing. By far the most evolved and realised version of Sorrow’s vision, it feels somewhat criminal that music this
beautiful could be lost to time until now.
McDowall’s lyrics throughout Sleep Now Forever deal frankly with mental health, depression, altered states, death and
redemption. Wave upon wave of harmony drench each song, McDowal’s vocal multi-tracked and imperious. Opener Soldier
benefits from Robert Lee’s use of the studio as instrument, summoning forth a lilting group performance of sparkling guitar and
percussion that recalls the Velvet Underground. Mikey Love’s master treats the compositions to brand new frequency
dynamics and space. Harmonium and string drones form the counter to McDowall’s vocal on Love Dies, a slow, lurching
lament that feels transcendent. On Haunting, the arrangement is orchestral and aching, bleeding into Fear Becomes You, with
chord and harmony structure that recalls the baroque sixties pop of West Coast Pop Experimental Art Band or the 60s
psychedelic folk movement. A towering, beautiful statement, this elegy for times lost and moonlit-illumination is finally
resurfacing from the darkness.
Sleep Now Forever is being released on 2LP on April 20th, 2024. Limited to 500.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Black Vinyl, one side etched.
Limited to 300 only.
With Lyric insert, matt sleeve with spot varnish front detail.- Territories: WW-US,UK
1. Soldier
2. Love Dies
3. Turn Off The Light
4. Haunting
5. Fear Becomes You
6. October Faul
7. Wishing Stone
8. Nomadic Man
9. Epiphany
10. Angel
11. Sleep Now Forever
Sleep Now Forever is the second and final album released by Sorrow, the post-Strawberry Switchblade group fronted
by singer Rose McDowall. Originally released in 1999 and long since deleted it is a cornucopia of pastoral, elegiac folk
music, swirling atmospherics, hymnal compositions and above it all the alternating towering and fragile vocal
performances of McDowall. Recorded in the late 90s with fellow band member and co-songwriter Robert Lee, Sleep
Now Forever is the definitive statement by the now defunct group and Rose McDowall’s most complete long-form work
to date.
Released through the group’s own Piski Disk Records, Sleep Now Forever was distributed by World Serpent which
struggled through the early 2000s with financial woes, eventually folding due to bankruptcy in 2004. Due to the company’s
troubles, Sleep Now Forever was never distributed widely and was a victim of the company’s failure. Released on CD only,
original copies are now rare and only traded on second hand channels. Remastered by Mikey Young for a limited vinyl release,
Sleep Now Forever will be released on April 20th on double vinyl format, with one side an exclusive etching by Glasgow artist
Holly Allan.
Despite its rarity, Sleep Now Forever enjoys a firm cult following. The album’s textures are expansive, lush, deliciously detailed
and celestial. Recorded in home study Velvet Hole by Rose McDowall and then-husband Robert Lee, the album enlists an
array of players from the underground Neo-folk / industrial scene: Nigel McKernaghan (Uilleann pipes, Whistles), Susan
Franknel (Bassoon), John Contreras (Cello) and Lawrence Frankel (Oboe, Cor Anglais). The eleven songs here revolve
around McDowall’s instantly recognisable voice. Brought up singing in the Catholic Church, McDowall’s vocals are impeccable
and angelic, particularly on tracks like Turn Off The Light where her experiences with religion are canted over soaring oboe
and guitar backing. By far the most evolved and realised version of Sorrow’s vision, it feels somewhat criminal that music this
beautiful could be lost to time until now.
McDowall’s lyrics throughout Sleep Now Forever deal frankly with mental health, depression, altered states, death and
redemption. Wave upon wave of harmony drench each song, McDowal’s vocal multi-tracked and imperious. Opener Soldier
benefits from Robert Lee’s use of the studio as instrument, summoning forth a lilting group performance of sparkling guitar and
percussion that recalls the Velvet Underground. Mikey Love’s master treats the compositions to brand new frequency
dynamics and space. Harmonium and string drones form the counter to McDowall’s vocal on Love Dies, a slow, lurching
lament that feels transcendent. On Haunting, the arrangement is orchestral and aching, bleeding into Fear Becomes You, with
chord and harmony structure that recalls the baroque sixties pop of West Coast Pop Experimental Art Band or the 60s
psychedelic folk movement. A towering, beautiful statement, this elegy for times lost and moonlit-illumination is finally
resurfacing from the darkness.
Sleep Now Forever is being released on 2LP on April 20th, 2024. Limited to 500.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Tristwch y Fenywod - 1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2
Tristwch y Fenywod - 2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3
Tristwch y Fenywod - 3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4
Tristwch y Fenywod - 4. Llwydwyrdd
5
Tristwch y Fenywod - 5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6
Tristwch y Fenywod - 6. Gelain Görs
7
Tristwch y Fenywod - 7. Awen
8
Tristwch y Fenywod - 8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
LIMITED GLOW-IN-THE-DARK VINYL REPRESS DUE TO THE RAPID SELLING OUT OF THE FIRST PRESSING!!
Tracklist
1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4. Llwydwyrdd
5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6. Gelain Görs
7. Awen
8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moonglow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock powercoven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch
Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The
Courtneys).
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just
10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod ("The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the
Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and
bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial
rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the
waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric,
occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony
around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads.
Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts
Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can
Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass
and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical
theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album,
particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee
breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.
The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
LIMITED GLOW-IN-THE-DARK VINYL REPRESS DUE TO THE RAPID SELLING OUT OF THE FIRST PRESSING!!
Tracklist
1. Blodyn Gwynedd
2. Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du
3. Y Trawsnewidiad
4. Llwydwyrdd
5. Byd Mewn Cysgod
6. Gelain Görs
7. Awen
8. ‘Nes I Ddawnsio Efo’r Lleuad
Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moonglow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock powercoven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch
Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The
Courtneys).
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just
10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod ("The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the
Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and
bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial
rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the
waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric,
occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony
around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads.
Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts
Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can
Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass
and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical
theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album,
particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee
breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.
The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
CD
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
CD
Tracklist
1. Prologue - Proud Destiny
2. Excalibur
3. Palestine
4. Jackboots Return
5. Wetcheeks
6. Red Telephone
7. Naming Names
8. The Communist Party
9. The Beauty Of The Duty
10. Point Doom
Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in
California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany,
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s
instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom,
oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album
from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her
music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was
among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle
he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen
letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an
acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of
new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On
Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and
the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this
the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest
bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the
lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About
Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme
did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of
old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed,
slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to
the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K
etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout,
however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in
referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of
fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
1
Karl D’Silva - 1. On The Outside
2
Karl D’Silva - 2. Entropy
3
Karl D’Silva - 3. Wild Kiss
4
Karl D’Silva - 4. Flowers Start To Cry
5
Karl D’Silva - 5. The Crucible
6
Karl D’Silva - 6. Nowhere Left To Run
7
Karl D’Silva - 7. Real Life
8
Karl D’Silva - 8. Shine Brightly
9
Karl D’Silva - 9. The Butcher
10
Karl D’Silva - 10. Love Is A Flame In The Dark
territories:WW-US,CA,UK, BENELUX
Black Vinyl LP
Tracklist
1. On The Outside
2. Entropy
3. Wild Kiss
4. Flowers Start To Cry
5. The Crucible
6. Nowhere Left To Run
7. Real Life
8. Shine Brightly
9. The Butcher
10. Love Is A Flame In The Dark
Love Is A Flame In The Dark is the debut album by experimental songwriter Karl D’Silva. A raw labour of love, a towering
spire of twisted steel, tenderness and becoming, it’s a body of songs that belies the virtuoso talents of an artist whose
reputation has been built on collaborating with various avant garde underground luminaries. Self-recorded at home in
Rotherham and pulsing with the conviction of a true believer, these songs burst out of their self-consciousness to meet life
head on, bristling with energy, 10 glimpses of the human spirit in the darkness.
Recorded throughout 2021 - 2023 and mixed in Leeds with engineer Ross Halden, D’Silva has constructed a Pop language for
himself. Mutated songs that owe a small debt to the post-Industrial music of Cabaret Voltaire, Nine Inch Nails and Coil,
they’re nonetheless powered by a vigorous tenderness, earnestness and D’Silva’s knack for melody. Each song is meticulously
sound-designed, using synthesised sounds created from scratch married with D’Silva’s virtuoso playing on saxophone and
guitar. The songs on Love Is A Flame In The Dark are unabashed, earnest love letters to living, requiems for a world fading away
and small gestures of solidarity in the face of entropy.
Until now, D’Silva’s fingerprints could be found on live dates with Thurston Moore, Oren Ambarchi, Hardcore pioneers Siege
and Rian Treanor as well as recordings by previous groups Trumpets Of Death and Drunk In Hell. Primarily associated with
the alto saxophone in his improvisation work, Love Is A Flame In The Dark features a dizzying array of instrumentation, all
played by D’Silva. D’Silva’s current membership of the group Vanishing may be a good touchstone for the dense, sonically
thrilling world-building on the album but the most striking instrument, perhaps, is D’Silva’s voice. With a soulful, rasping timbre
resulting from prolonged intubation as a new-born, his vocal is both fearless and tender. On the soaring, electronic body mover
Wild Kiss, thundering percussion is in service to Karl’s voice full of desire, arching up into a flayed falsetto. It’s a trick repeated
on Flowers Start To Cry, where it’s deployed against the backdrop of layers of ripping alto and thudding drum programming
that recall Nine Inch Nails’ visceral production, if they were covering a Prince hit. These songs capture the essence of 2024’s
Karl D’Silva music; pure physicality breaking down to reveal a shining, compassionate vulnerability.
The full breadth of Karl D’Silva’s instrumental prowess is in evidence from the off. On The Outside imagines blooming out of
personal apocalypse with a soundscape of synth, saxophone worthy of any late 60s Free Jazz blower and crushing sound
design. Entropy is planet-sized synth pop, Nowhere Left To Run uses midi-string orchestration to tell a story of light emerging
from the dark. It’s a theme picked up throughout the album: The Butcher is a political parable, the narrator holding power to
account with grotesque, brutal imagery. It’s on a track like Real Life that the true message emerges, however. D’Silva is peering
through the layers of artifice, struggle and the fog of daily living to find a life full of energy, connection and light. Each song here
is a route into this light, out of the darkness.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore
Black Vinyl LP
Tracklist
1. On The Outside
2. Entropy
3. Wild Kiss
4. Flowers Start To Cry
5. The Crucible
6. Nowhere Left To Run
7. Real Life
8. Shine Brightly
9. The Butcher
10. Love Is A Flame In The Dark
Love Is A Flame In The Dark is the debut album by experimental songwriter Karl D’Silva. A raw labour of love, a towering
spire of twisted steel, tenderness and becoming, it’s a body of songs that belies the virtuoso talents of an artist whose
reputation has been built on collaborating with various avant garde underground luminaries. Self-recorded at home in
Rotherham and pulsing with the conviction of a true believer, these songs burst out of their self-consciousness to meet life
head on, bristling with energy, 10 glimpses of the human spirit in the darkness.
Recorded throughout 2021 - 2023 and mixed in Leeds with engineer Ross Halden, D’Silva has constructed a Pop language for
himself. Mutated songs that owe a small debt to the post-Industrial music of Cabaret Voltaire, Nine Inch Nails and Coil,
they’re nonetheless powered by a vigorous tenderness, earnestness and D’Silva’s knack for melody. Each song is meticulously
sound-designed, using synthesised sounds created from scratch married with D’Silva’s virtuoso playing on saxophone and
guitar. The songs on Love Is A Flame In The Dark are unabashed, earnest love letters to living, requiems for a world fading away
and small gestures of solidarity in the face of entropy.
Until now, D’Silva’s fingerprints could be found on live dates with Thurston Moore, Oren Ambarchi, Hardcore pioneers Siege
and Rian Treanor as well as recordings by previous groups Trumpets Of Death and Drunk In Hell. Primarily associated with
the alto saxophone in his improvisation work, Love Is A Flame In The Dark features a dizzying array of instrumentation, all
played by D’Silva. D’Silva’s current membership of the group Vanishing may be a good touchstone for the dense, sonically
thrilling world-building on the album but the most striking instrument, perhaps, is D’Silva’s voice. With a soulful, rasping timbre
resulting from prolonged intubation as a new-born, his vocal is both fearless and tender. On the soaring, electronic body mover
Wild Kiss, thundering percussion is in service to Karl’s voice full of desire, arching up into a flayed falsetto. It’s a trick repeated
on Flowers Start To Cry, where it’s deployed against the backdrop of layers of ripping alto and thudding drum programming
that recall Nine Inch Nails’ visceral production, if they were covering a Prince hit. These songs capture the essence of 2024’s
Karl D’Silva music; pure physicality breaking down to reveal a shining, compassionate vulnerability.
The full breadth of Karl D’Silva’s instrumental prowess is in evidence from the off. On The Outside imagines blooming out of
personal apocalypse with a soundscape of synth, saxophone worthy of any late 60s Free Jazz blower and crushing sound
design. Entropy is planet-sized synth pop, Nowhere Left To Run uses midi-string orchestration to tell a story of light emerging
from the dark. It’s a theme picked up throughout the album: The Butcher is a political parable, the narrator holding power to
account with grotesque, brutal imagery. It’s on a track like Real Life that the true message emerges, however. D’Silva is peering
through the layers of artifice, struggle and the fog of daily living to find a life full of energy, connection and light. Each song here
is a route into this light, out of the darkness.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore