"Archive: The Downwards Singles collects on one 12" the three original songs from Tropic of Cancer's brace of 2009-11 releases (now both out of print and highly sought-after) on Regis's Downwards imprint, with new artwork by Silent Editions. The influence of Tropic of Cancer's debut single, 'The Dull Age'/'Victims', on Blackest Ever Black cannot be overestimated: in some respects, it's BLACKEST000, the ur-Blackest record, and together with Raime's EP demo it sketched the outlines of a world we still inhabit, and are still exploring. Of course Tropic of Cancer would go on to release the The Sorrow Of Two Blooms EP on BEB two years later, and much else since (including debut album Restless Idylls), but 'The Dull Age'/'Victims', and its 2011 follow-up 'Be Brave', retain a special place in our heart. Now, to coincide with the release of the band's new EP (Stop Suffering), we're pleased to be able to resurrect them. It's obvious now, as then, what the mesmerising, mantra-like 'The Dull Age' owes to the saturnine ambience of 4AD and the early '80s goth/post-punk nexus, but we're freshly struck by the ancient folk-like purity of Lobo's wordless, ship-swaying vocal refrain, and to the song's echoes of Spector-grade 1950s death-discs: with its bruised rock-a-bye backbeat, skeletal arrangement and deep canyons of echo, the DNA of 'The Dull Age' can, we'd argue, be traced right back to The Paris Sisters' 'I Love How You Love Me'. Lobo and Mendez's confidence in repetition betrays not only a love of post-Velvets drone-rock but also an intimate understanding of minimal techno's stasis-in-motion, while the wanton reverb worship invokes classic dream-pop/shoegaze. It is, as it always was, the sound of falling: into eternal darkness or eternal light, who can say? 'Victims' comes from the same place, dialling up the atmosphere of moody jangle; Lobo's guitar and bass sting hard, a suggestively murmuring Mendez on vocal duties this time. If 'The Dull Age' and 'Victims' were made for a small hours performance at the Roadhouse (Lynchian is an over-used descriptor these days, but these narcotic dream-songs surely warrant it), then the void-gargling darkwaver 'Be Brave' is for the wired motorcycle ride home. Here we're introduced to the Suicide-al motorik rhythm that would carry on over into 'A Color' and subsequent TOC cuts; Mendez's voice leads, ricocheting with reverb and delay, channelling Mallinder and Minimal Man, but, as the pedal hits the floor, it's Lobo's moaned, amorphous backing part that exerts the most power - the voice of a dead lover watching over you, or perhaps beckoning you to join her. Archive: The Downwards Singles is the ultimate post-punk, post-techno death-disc, and a very proud, overdue addition to the Blackest Ever Black catalogue."

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"Stop Suffering is the new EP from Tropic of Cancer. It's the first music to emerge from Camella Lobo's project since the 2013 debut album, Restless Idylls, and features three new songs - 'Stop Suffering', 'I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over' and 'When The Dog Bites' - written and recorded by Lobo in LA, with additional production and mixing from Joshua Eustis (Sons of Magdalene, Telefon Tel Aviv). Lobo's deeply romantic, fatalistic music has always luxuriated in sadness, and that isn't about to change; but unlike TOC music of old, these new songs feel less about surrender: even if the title track does seem to address the S-M dynamic at the heart of any high-stakes relationship. This is not a record about loss, but about what comes after. Gone, or at least receding, is that decadent, fin-de-siècle preoccupation with decay, with the end. Stop Suffering is a new beginning. The towering, time-stopping title track is the culmination of Tropic of Cancer's work to date, at once intimate and immense. Eustis's bravura mixing wrings spine-melting effect out of each component, and the dubwise harnessing of space and bass pressure first showcased on Restless Idylls is now a defining feature of the band. The hypnotic, monochord intensity that characterised TOC's previous records gives way here to a more concrete song-narrative - which serves only to heighten the sensation of drowned-world psychedelia. Her divine alto still swims in reverb, but the words are clearer, there's a resolve to communicate through the aqueous haze. 'I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over', which appears here in a different mix to that which opens the US-only BEB comp I Can't Give You The Life You Want, is no less mesmerising, further highlighting Lobo's ever more sophisticated, painterly use of synth textures, and her plangent, otherworldly guitar work. The EP concludes with the elegiac, frozen-space ambience of 'When The Dog Bites'; Lobo's vocal is a radiant blur, consoling across a void of lonesome string-pads, vaporous noise and distant, tranquilized bass-drum detonations. "I've searched all the world," Lobo sings on 'I Woke Up...', "And it turns out I want all the world." With Tropic of Cancer it always comes back to longing: for the impossible, the irretrievable, the unrequitable.

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A unique synthesis of time-dilating folk-jazz romanticism, brittle chamber dub and plasmic post-techno electronics, Tarquin Magnet is Australian artist Tarquin Manek’s first full solo release on Blackest Ever Black, but by no means his first contribution to the label: he is one half of Tarcar (with Carla dal Forno) and a member of F ingers (with dal Forno and Sam Karmel), while his track ‘Not Missing You’ features on the BEB compilation I Can’t Give You The Life You Want. Manek has been busy elsewhere, too: he released Th Duo, an LP made under his LST alias, on Another Dark Age earlier this year. The disturbed and enchanted environments of Tarquin Magnet are the result of improvisation, domestic field recording and fastidious editing; for all its rough textures and strange juxtapositions, this is masterfully mixed and arranged music, its deep spatial dynamics and higher dub logic powerfully apparent. More info ... Tracklist 1:Sassafras Gesundheit 2:Fortunes Past 3:Fortunes Begun 4:Perfect Scorn 5:Blackest Frypan

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Please note this is not a new studio album but a compilation of previously released Regis productions and remixes for BEB, plus three previously unreleased cuts.


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Blackest Ever Black presents Fooling Around, a new E.P. from David West’s Rat Columns. The title track is nothing short of a modern rock ’n roll classic: co-written by West and Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring et al) it appeared in truncated form on Rat Columns' album Leaf (R.I.P. Society, 2014), but this is the first time that the original, longer, and definitive version has been given the vinyl pressing it so richly deserves. Its combination of void-chasing motorik, moody jangle, West’s plaintive vocal delivery and Young’s spaced-out synth embellishments makes for a song at once elegiac and relentless: think Splendour of Fear-era Felt or David Kilgour at his dreamiest, strapped to the engine of Neu!’s ‘Für Immer’, and you’re in the zone. The three cuts on the flip confirm the status of Perth native West (veteran of Rank/Xerox, Lace Curtain and Total Control among others) as one of the most powerfully accomplished songwriters in the underground today: the choppy riffage, breakneck tempo and zig-zagging melody of ‘Living In The New World’ summon Orange Juice or Modern Lovers, but with a darker, more delirious edge; ‘Strays’ reprises the swooning, summer-death psychedelia of ‘Fooling Around’; and bedroom-recorded stalker’s lament ‘Should I Leave You Alone?’ brings the EP to a perfectly bittersweet climax, as square-jawed dub bass, chewy tape FX and West’s downcast vox yield to baroquely beautiful guitar phrasing and limpid Moog tone-float. Available on 12” vinyl with picture sleeve, insert and download code (edition of 500), and digital formats. A1. Fooling Around (Long Version); B1. Waiting In The New World; B2. Strays; B3. Should I Leave You Alone?

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